Month: September 2015

2079: WTF is Wrong with Video Games? Absolutely Nothing

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Yesterday, social media was abuzz with something stupid that gaming site Polygon published. This is, of course, nothing unusual, since Polygon appears to have shifted its identity from “reinventing games journalism” to “posting the most idiotic things possible in the name of those sweet clicks from people who think we’re dumb, but really they are the dumb ones for clicking on it, oh wait, don’t use archive.is please, stop it, my aaaaad revenuuuuuue”.

Said article was called WTF is Wrong with Video Games? and was, in fact, an excerpt from an e-book of the same name by self-professed “Mean Guy” Phil Owen. As the title suggests, it’s yet another in a long series of navel-gazing articles that suggest video games need to “grow up” if they really want to be respected as art. And the main thrust of Owen’s argument throughout the piece is that “gameplay” gets in the way of “art”.

Dara O’Briain did a good comedy routine about Call of Duty a few years ago in which he commented on the seeming absurdity of a game restricting access to the rest of the story based on your skill — and yet it’s something that, over the years, we’ve become accustomed to. The concept of “story as reward” is a powerful motivation for many game enthusiasts — I’m one of them — and being able to advance an enjoyable story as a result of proving your own skills is often inherently more satisfying than just having a story served up to you passively.

But Owen’s argument is also a gross oversimplification of the situation. Let’s ponder a few things.

The interminable game/not game argument

As a medium, video games have expanded and flourished enormously over their lifetime — far more quickly than any other medium in history. Early games were technically limited and as such tended to focus on the mechanical aspects while making narrative little more than an afterthought. In other words, the technology simply wasn’t there for games to be able to tell a compelling story convincingly, so as such the mechanical aspects were emphasised, because even with primitive technology, it was possible to make something that was fun to play.

Today, of course, there are very few technological barriers to realising a creative vision. Modern 3D technology is more than capable of rendering photo-realistic scenes at convincing framerates; virtual reality allows us to immerse ourselves fully in virtual worlds; and many games have production values that rival the most expensive movies. But at the same time, alongside this improved technology has come the understanding that “video game” these days means far more than its literal definition. “Game” no longer means just something in which you prove your skill or master mechanics; it can refer to all manner of interactive entertainment, whether or not there’s a way for you to “lose” or “win”.

This aspect of things is what gets a lot of self-professed hardcore gamers’ backs up. “Gone Home isn’t a game!” they’ll cry, since Gone Home is the habitual poster boy for being “not a game”. “Visual novels aren’t games! Walking simulators aren’t games!”

Well… yes they are, assuming we’re using the term “game” as is most commonly used these days to refer to any form of interactive entertainment, however limited the interaction might be. They may not be the sort of games you want to play, but that doesn’t make them not games by the popular definition. All they show, really, is that the term “game” has really become woefully inadequate to describe the diversity of experiences we have these days. And none of them are “invalid” or “need to grow up”; some of them simply might not appeal to particular groups. And that is absolutely fine.

Games as art

I’ve been a believer in games as art since I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time, and its story blew me away with its emotional intensity and drama. It may be clichéd and laughable these days, but back on its original release, it was incredible. And I’ve held strongly to the fact that games are art ever since, with my understanding of what this really means changing and growing over time.

The mistake a lot of people make — Owen included — is assuming that “art” is synonymous with “narrative”, and this absolutely isn’t the case at all. Sure, some of the most explicitly “artistic” games out there place a strong focus on their narrative, but there’s plenty of artistry in purely mechanical games, too.

There are few places where this is more apparent than in the more technical side of arcade-style games: specifically, fighting games, shoot ’em ups and rhythm games. Fighting games — good ones, anyway — are precisely and immaculately tuned to be balanced in such a way that skilled players can make the on-screen characters do exactly what they want as the result of split-second decisions. Watching skilled fighting game players going at it is a thing of beauty, and something that relatively few of us can hope to master to quite such a degree.

Shoot ’em ups, meanwhile — again, good ones, anyway — are crafted in such a way as to be intricately choreographed, enemy waves hurtling onto the screen in such a way as to be both positioned in a way for the player to be able to defeat them and to be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Bullet hell games become a ballet of the player sprite weaving through screen-filling, moving patterns that, although initially appearing chaotic, are in fact orderly, predictable and navigable.

As for rhythm games, well, anyone who has played Project Diva f on Hard difficulty or higher will know well the fact that playing that game is more playing a percussion part for an actual piece of music from memory than paying any attention to what is actually happening on screen at any given moment. Just as shoot ’em ups are choreographed, so too are rhythm games, with player inputs complementing the existing music in such a way as to immerse the player in the creative work in a way that simply isn’t possible if you’re listening in a more passive way.

Games are art, and art doesn’t mean narrative. Deal with it.

WTF is wrong with video games?

Really? Nothing. Nothing at all. There may be some individual games that you, personally, don’t care for or enjoy playing, but that doesn’t mean the amorphous concept of “video games” has anything wrong with it. It simply means that you’re not playing the right games for you.

This, I think, is a key problem with Owen’s argument that the “game” gets in the way of the “art” (meaning “narrative”, in his case). Some people like that. Some people like being rewarded with story, or in-game trinkets, or numbers going up or whatever — and that’s an important part of the gaming medium as a whole. It’s not something that is present everywhere in gaming, of course, and when inappropriate mechanics are shoehorned into a situation where it really doesn’t make sense, it can be jarring and uncomfortable. But a lot of designers these days have a pretty good idea of what elements go well together with what. Naughty Dog made the decision that crafting shivs in The Last of Us complemented the game’s post-apocalyptic storyline, and the game as a whole was well-received for its combination of storytelling and gameplay.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, we have stuff like The Fruit of Grisaia, which is almost completely non-interactive — there are only five decisions to make in a single playthrough, three of which are totally irrelevant for four out of the five routes — and yet still manages to be incredibly compelling. So the kind of experience Owen is apparently looking for — interactive narrative without any requirement for skill — already exists, and is pretty damn good, too. Not only that, it comfortably exists alongside games that are pure skill — the aforementioned fighting, shooting and rhythm games — without anyone needing to tell each other that what they’re playing “isn’t a game” or that their experiences are somehow invalid.

I think the only W that is TF with video games right now is the unreasonable expectations and preconceptions some people come to the medium with. Video games are not everything to everyone, and neither should they be. No form of art is universally appealing to everyone, and video games are no exception. If you object to crafting shivs in The Last of Us, don’t play The Last of Us. If you object to wandering around a house without killing anything in Gone Home, don’t play Gone Home. It’s not as if you don’t have any other choices as to what you can experience from a medium that has become as incredibly broad and fascinating as gaming in 2015, and it can sometimes lead to pleasant surprises if you step out of your comfort zone and try something new once in a while.

Let’s not water down and homogenise gaming into a single, bland, lowest-common denominator, non-offensive, “universally appealing” form; let’s instead celebrate all the different experiences we can have on our computers, consoles, handhelds, phones and tablets. Let’s marvel in how easy it is for us to explore new worlds, to put ourselves in the shoes of another, to immerse ourselves in narratives more deeply than any other medium, to challenge our prejudices, to show our skills in ways that don’t require physical strength or even mobility and to engage our emotions in everything from a feeling of “fun” to blood-curdling “terror”.

WTF is wrong with video games? Absolutely nothing, so stop moaning and go play something.

2078: Two FFXIV Ideas That Will Never Get Implemented (Probably)

 

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I haven’t been playing Final Fantasy XIV all that much recently. This is partly down to the fact that I’ve been really enjoying the other stuff I’ve been playing, and also due to the fact that the current content is feeling a bit stale and stagnant; Heavensward came out quite a long time ago now, and aside from the introduction of raid dungeon Alexander (which proved to be a little underwhelming after the dramatic insanity of The Binding Coil of Bahamut) there hasn’t been much new stuff introduced. Consequently, the grind to get other classes to level 60 — or to gear up my main class, for that matter — isn’t feeling all that appealing right now, particularly as there really isn’t a huge amount to do at level 60 at the moment: two dungeons, two Extreme boss fights, and Alexander in its Normal and Savage incarnations.

This, along with some of the other stuff I’ve been playing recently, got me thinking about ways the formula could be shaken up a little — partly to make the grind a bit more bearable, partly to make replays of old content a more attractive option, and partly to address some common complaints of certain aspects of the player base, specifically the lack of challenge in dungeons and the desire to show off your skills a bit more outside of the tippest-toppest highest-level content.

Final Fantasy XIV is heavily based on instanced content such as dungeons and boss fights, so I had an idle thought that the addition of two optional ways of playing this content would make the game interesting: specifically a Time Attack mode, which would reward those who can slice through a dungeon at high speed, and a Score Attack mode, which will encourage “full clears” of dungeons as well as skilful play.

I’m no game designer and I am under no illusions that these ideas would ever be implemented into the game, but I’ll share my thinking for each mode, anyway.

Queueing

Added to the existing Duty Finder options — Undersized/Unsynced Party and Minimum Item Level — would be the options for Score Attack and Time Attack. You would only be able to challenge one or the other at a time, but there could potentially be some additional options such as difficulties, whether to run it with level/item level sync or not and so forth. (There could also perhaps be an additional option for a “Story” run, for those who want to enjoy dungeons for the first time as originally intended, which could perhaps make cutscenes unskippable, bosses untargetable until everyone is out of cutscenes and perhaps even force a minimum iLevel sync. Alternatively, not selecting Score or Time Attack could simply assume that the run is for “story” purposes, without the restrictions suggested above.)

Time Attack

There are a few ways this could work. The simplest means would be for the party’s clear time to be recorded, starting from when the barrier comes down at the outset of the dungeon and stopping when the dungeon’s final boss is defeated. The final time would give the party as a whole a letter grade between, say, D and S — D being the worst, S being the best — and the rewards for the dungeon would be adjusted accordingly based on the grade attained.

Each player’s best time is recorded, and this could provide additional incentives: perhaps a small extra reward if you beat your previous best, or leaderboards showing which players/parties/Free Companies/servers have cleared content most efficiently.

A second means of approaching this could be to give the party a fairly strict time limit countdown from when the dungeon starts, with time being extended by reaching checkpoints or defeating particular enemies. This provides the opportunity for failure — something which the game as a whole is lacking a bit, particularly in dungeons, where you can just respawn until the currently implemented and overly generous total time limit expires — as well as the chance to reward efficient play; again, the run should be concluded with some sort of rating system or bonus based on time remaining to encourage speedy runs.

My thinking behind this system is that there are already people who like to rush through dungeons as quickly as possible, and this often leads to conflict with people who aren’t as confident or simply prefer to take things slowly. Providing a separate “mode” for those who like to speedrun — as well as incentives for everyone in the party to be on board with speedrunning the dungeon — would, I feel, alleviate at least a certain amount of this tension. Plus trying to beat your best times makes for an inherently satisfying means of rewarding replays of old content.

Score Attack

This would be a little more complex, but the basic principle is the same as outlined above: clear a dungeon, get a grade, adjust the rewards according to how good the grade was.

In this case, the grade would come from the total score the party attains in the dungeon. The score could change via any or all of the following possible events:

  • Dealing damage/overall DPS
  • Defeating an enemy
  • Overkilling an enemy (dealing more damage than necessary to knock its HP to 0)
  • Landing hits in rapid succession (skillchains)
  • Hitting multiple enemies at once with AoE skills
  • Tanks maintaining aggro
  • Losing points for non-tanks taking aggro
  • Clutch healing (i.e. the same circumstances where a well-timed heal increases the Limit gauge)
  • Using limit breaks
  • Finding treasures
  • Defeating bosses quickly

There could then be a number of point bonuses awarded, either at the end of the dungeon or at checkpoints (likely the bosses):

  • Time bonus according to how quickly the section/dungeon was cleared
  • Bonus according to the percentage of all enemies in the section/dungeon defeated (encouraging full clears)
  • Penalties for party KO’s or failing to deal with boss mechanics properly
  • Bonuses for achieving specific goals such as overkills, enemies simultaneously defeated and the like

At the conclusion of the dungeon, the party receives a letter grade between D and S, with rewards increasing for better grades.

My thinking behind this mode is that it would force players to play in a slightly different way; it would require cooperation, players playing their job well and being more willing to be thorough about clearing a dungeon. Because well-geared players are less inclined to do full clears of dungeons, the rewards for performing well in Score Attack should provide sufficient incentive for them to play in this mode, since better gear will inevitably allow for the attainment of higher scores.

Someone out there doubtless has a compelling argument as to why both of these are stupid ideas — off the top of my head, perhaps the strongest argument against would be making something so “gamey” fit into the overall lore, though FFXIV isn’t above a transparently shoehorned explanation or two here and there. (See: anything PvP; the Crystal Tower weekly quest; anything involving the Wandering Minstrel; the recent seasonal event in which you could meet the developers) To be clear, these are not by any means serious suggestions in the slightest. I do think they’d both be pretty fun, though — and they’d certainly get me pumped up to chase some high scores and best times.

2077: Narrative Media

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Since I’ve become particularly interested in Japanese popular media, I’ve often found myself pondering which particular aspect is my favourite — in other words, what do I feel is the “best” means of enjoying a story that, in many cases, spreads its tendrils across a number of different forms of media with varying degrees of success?

There’s not really an easy answer to that, but I feel my own personal attitude towards it is inclined towards whatever the original version of the work was composed in, where available. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, by any means — on balance, I think I slightly prefer the anime of High School DxD to the manga, for example, and there are a number of interesting spin-off games that tell a completely different story to an anime or manga series, making them worthwhile in their own right — but I do tend to find myself preferring to experience a story as originally intended.

Part of the reason for this is enjoying a story in its original medium means that you don’t “miss out” on anything. In theory, anyway; that theory runs that a creative work is composed for a specific medium, and then adapted to other media at a later date. The adaptation process often involves editing, changing and even cutting content from the original, usually as a means of ensuring that the important beats of the story fit into what may be a more restrictive format. Consider an indefinitely running manga series that is adapted into 20-minute anime episodes, for example; you’re going to lose some detail, like it or not, unless you want the pace of the show to slow to a crawl. (Some long-running shows do indeed take this rather leisurely pace to their ongoing storyline, but for the most part, manga-to-anime adaptations tend to try and get through a significant amount of printed content over the course of 12-13 episodes.)

That said, different media are more or less appropriate for different ways of exploring material. Anime, as the most visually flexible of these media, allows you to outright depict things happening without having a narrator explain things (as in a visual novel, manga or light novel) and take a more subtle approach, implying things rather than making them explicit. At the other end of the spectrum, a novel relies almost entirely on the reader’s imagination, perhaps stimulated a little by illustrations here and there. The nature of text means that the inner thoughts and feelings of characters can be explored in much more detail than in an anime, and even from multiple perspectives.

Visual novels, meanwhile, tend to unfold from a single first-person narrative perspective. This allows for in-depth exploration of a specific character and their responses, feelings and attitudes towards various situations — as if you “were” that character. It’s not quite the same as a full-on game where you take full control of a character, mind; most visual novels give you relatively limited choices as to how they proceed, and the protagonist otherwise has a mind of their own: you’re just along for the ride. Some visual novels do experiment with multiple perspectives — The Fruit of Grisaia’s various routes each feature a sequence where the main heroine of that route narrates an important event in their lives, be it to the reader or to protagonist Yuuji; Deus Machina Demonbane, meanwhile, features a first-person protagonist narrator, but occasionally slips into third-person to depict things happening elsewhere when appropriate. For the most part, though, when you come to the end of a visual novel, the character you almost certainly understand the best is the protagonist.

Video game adaptations — i.e. those that aren’t visual novels — present their own challenges by allowing the player to control iconic characters and perhaps make them behave in ways that aren’t necessarily in keeping with their character as depicted in other media. This is partly a matter of attitude, though; someone who is already particularly engaged with a series and comes to a video game adaptation after reading the manga/visual novel/light novel or watching the anime may well find themselves “method acting” as the character they find themselves in full control of, even if the game mechanics do provide the opportunity for them to do unexpected and strange things.

In other words, I don’t really have a concrete answer for the question. At the moment, I’m particularly enjoying reading The Fruit of Grisaia’s visual novel, and after hearing how the anime adaptation packs the VN’s many hours of narrative and interesting happenings into just a single season, I feel that the VN is probably the best means of experiencing this story in full detail. At the same time, I’m enjoying the video game of Sword Art Online, the manga of Monster Musume, the anime of Himouto! Umaru-chan — there really isn’t a straightforward answer as to which one is “best”.

It sometimes pays to explore a single work in different media, though; the unwritten rules that “the book is usually better than the film” and “video game adaptations are universally terrible” don’t always apply!

2076: Sachi and the Maid’s Burden

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Finished Sachi’s route in The Fruit of Grisaia last night. Once again, this route proves to be significantly different in tone and theme than the others I’ve seen so far (Michiru’s and Yumiko’s) — it also felt like it was a bit longer, for reasons I’ll get into later.

As ever, this post will contain extensive spoilers for Sachi’s route in The Fruit of Grisaia. As such, if you want to avoid being spoiled, don’t read! Here’s a More tag to prevent accidental spoilage from my front page…

Continue reading “2076: Sachi and the Maid’s Burden” →

2075: Where’s the Luv for Muv-Luv?

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Yesterday, a new Kickstarter launched. This is nothing unusual in itself, particularly in the video games space, but the subject matter of the Kickstarter was. Specifically, it was a Kickstarter to localise Muv-Luv, a popular Japanese series of visual novels that originally appeared in 2003 and subsequently spawned a number of sequels, manga and anime spinoffs as well as a ton of merchandise.

Since its original release, Muv-Luv in its various incarnations has been extremely well-regarded, and it’s probably not unfair to say the series as a whole is an influential, culturally significant work; some even credit it with the creation of the popular “Moe Military” trend most recently seen in shows like Girls und Panzer and Kantai Collection.

The localisation of Muv-Luv  is Kind of a Big Deal, then, particularly as it’s gone un-localised for so long — officially, anyway; fan translations have been around for a while, but the legality of these is always questionable, particularly as enthusiasts sometimes turn to piracy in order to acquire the game in order to patch it, and in some cases the fan-translated version is even illegally distributed with the original game files included. The launch of this Kickstarter is significant in that it aims to bring a well-established, important series to the West officially and with the full cooperation of the original development team.

What’s even more significant about the Kickstarter is that approximately six hours after it launched yesterday, it had already smashed through its initial $250,000 funding goal. At the time of writing, still less than 24 hours since the campaign launched, it’s sitting at $313,571: well on the way to its first stretch goal of new CGs, music and unlockable content at $400,000, and putting Android and Vita ports within reach at $500,000. There are 39 days still to go on the campaign, and the excitement of enthusiasts is palpable.

And yet…

Nothing about this on Kotaku, a gaming site that has “otaku” as part of its name.

Nothing on Gamespot, one of the biggest gaming sites in the world, either; the site’s last use of the word “luv” was for a Nintendo 64 game. That’s three console generations ago.

The only mentions of it on Eurogamer are forum threads about the Japanese charts.

No mention of it at all on USgamer, even with their supposed experts on Japanese games and visual novels in residence.

And nothing on the behemoth that is IGN.

This isn’t to say that Muv-Luv’s Kickstarter success hasn’t been reported anywhere, of course; specialist Japanese sites such as Siliconera, Gematsu and Crunchyroll have all posted stories about the campaign, and social media has been abuzz with talk of the series, too.

But, as we’ve seen above, nothing at all on the biggest, most recognisable sites in the world — even those known to have writers on staff who are interested in Japanese games.

There’s an argument, of course, that Muv-Luv is niche interest and consequently not worth covering on these sites because there wouldn’t be significant interest. To that I would point out that on the front page of Eurogamer there is currently a story about a showering simulator getting banned from Twitch, on Kotaku there is a story about a Steam game called The Flame in the Flood that you probably haven’t heard of… IGN, meanwhile, has a story about a spoon that can take selfies... a story that turns out to be a video, as is so frequently and frustratingly the case these days.

In other words, “niche interest” shouldn’t be a barrier to coverage if that sort of stuff gets written about. And it could be argued without too much difficulty that Muv-Luv is of greater “importance” to the interactive entertainment medium as a whole than some showering simulator. (Seriously?)

Unfortunately, this is pretty much par for the course, it seems. Here’s what, by way of example, Kotaku had to say about previous culturally significant visual novel localisation projects The Fruit of Grisaia ($475,255 raised via Kickstarter, plus subsequent sales on Steam and Denpasoft) and Clannad ($541,161 raised via Kickstarter):

Yep, sweet FA aside from a couple of offhand mentions of their anime adaptations.

I know exactly why this is, of course: Muv-Luv, Clannad and The Fruit of Grisaia are all seen as “too small” to be of interest to the broad, general audience of a site like Kotaku or Gamespot, and perhaps there’s a point there: Muv-Luv has reportedly sold approximately half a million copies to date in Japan (plus over three million pieces of merchandise), which is small fry compared to today’s heavy-hitters. And yet there’s a bit of a paradox here: these sites have the reach and influence to make more people aware of these works — which are well-established as being of particularly high quality as well as culturally significant on their home turf — but instead they choose to focus on other things, be it predictable clickbait articles about whichever big-budget game has come out this week, or pieces about whatever the current indie gaming flavour of the month is.

Even so, and even taking into account the limited amount of time a games journalist has to report on the news each day — something which I know about first-hand, remember — it’s kind of a shame that the impressive success of this campaign and others like it haven’t even been acknowledged by the bigger, more mainstream sites. And yet they’ll take the time to complain about the Sorceress’ tits in Dragon’s Crown, or how Omega Labyrinth only appeals to kiddy-fiddlers, or how Senran Kagura is a game about nothing but breasts.

It’s little wonder that fans of Japanese games — and many gamers in general, for that matter — are turning their back on the games press of today.

2074: Karate Fight

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A little while ago, I wrote about my experiences with the fun, silly and provocative card game Tentacle Bento, which I picked up a copy of at PAX a while back. It occurs to me that I’ve also played its companion game Karate Fight, but haven’t written about that at all, so that’s what I’ll discuss today.

Tentacle Bento is a reasonably sedate game with a strong degree of randomness to it, but it’s fun for the silly situations it creates. It’s somewhat akin to Rummy in that it involves collecting various combinations of cards in order to score, though the special events and characters add some chaos to the mix that can flip the outcome on its head if you’re not prepared. Karate Fight, meanwhile, is a game determined almost entirely by randomness; there’s no real strategy involved, and instead, appropriately enough for the theme, it’s a game of fast reactions, observation and responding to situations.

NDJSPM310100-KarateFightIn Karate Fight, the entire deck is dealt out to all the players, who hold it in their hand face down. One at a time, they lay down and flip the top card from their deck in the middle of the table, and a number of rules then come into play.

If the card laid was an “attack” card, the next player has a number of draws indicated on the attack card to draw another attack or counter card, otherwise the attacker wins that hand and collects all the cards laid in the middle.

If a “Strike” card is laid, that triggers a “Hit” and everyone around the table has to slam their hand onto the pile in the middle, with whoever was first (i.e. on the bottom of the inevitable pile-up) taking the entire pile. A “Hit” is also caused by certain combinations of cards being laid down — all the attack cards being used in this particular hand, for example, regardless of other cards that have come in between, or the same defense card being used several times in a row.

A “Counter” card counts as an attack card and also reverses the direction of play. And a “Janken” card requires everyone to play rock-paper-scissors (in Japanese, naturally), with the winner taking the pile in the middle. Once someone gets all the cards, they win. The whole thing lasts about 15-20 minutes or so, even with stubborn players who seem to be doing nothing but passing cards back and forth between themselves.

Our game group is used to more sedate games in which you can take your time over your moves, but this seemed to go down pretty well when we tried it — perhaps because it was a break from the norm, and perhaps because its highly energetic, somewhat physical nature is inherently amusing. From my perspective, I certainly enjoyed its paciness — “thinky” games are somewhat prone to analysis paralysis, particularly with our group, and so this was an enjoyable change from what we usually play. It’s not something I’d consider bringing out as the “main game” for a session by any means — there’s a lot of luck and randomness involved, though it will ultimately come down to who has the best reactions, memory and observational skills — but it’s a fun warm-up, quick to play and a good means of getting people alert and aware. I also imagine it would be quite fun after a drink or two.

Also its boobylicious, panty-flashing artwork is clearly channelling Senran Kagura something rotten, which is no bad thing, unless you write for Vice.

2073: Night and Day

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Night and Day.”

Have you ever had an experience that was amazing the first time, but terrible the second time around? Or vice versa? What made it different the second time?

I had to think pretty hard about this one, because by now I have a fairly firm grasp of what I do and don’t like in a lot of aspects of my life, and consequently I’m inclined to seek out things I know that I’ll enjoy while avoiding things that I know I’ll dislike. There is value, of course, in trying something outside your usual comfort zone, but while this can sometimes pleasantly surprise you, often this ends up just confirming or reinforcing your existing perceptions.

One thing did particularly come to mind, though. I don’t know that I’d describe it as “amazing” and “terrible” for the first and second times, and it’s more of an abstract thing rather than a specific incident, but it otherwise fits the description.

I’m talking about playing a new piece of music for the first time, specifically — for me, anyway — on the piano.

I’m good at sight-reading. This still surprises me a bit, as it was always the part of the graded piano examinations that I hated the most (with the possible exception of aural tests, which still seem somewhat sadistic) but I think I can trace my ability to pick things up quickly back to my habitual place on the piano for the school orchestra and various other ensembles, including a local choir. Certainly in the case of my school, I was (arguably) the best pianist there, so I was often recruited to play piano parts that would otherwise go unplayed; more often than not, then, I was expected to pick up a new piece of music and be able to immediately play it.

And for the most part I can do that pretty well. However, one thing I’ve noticed about this is that the first time I play a piece at sight, it always feels like it sounds a whole lot better than any subsequent time I try to play it without sitting down and doing some intensive practice on it.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if this is actually the case or not — it may well be that my first attempts to sight-read something are a horrendous noise, with subsequent attempts only marginally better owing to the fact I at least have a vague idea of what to expect — but it certainly feels that way. Playing a new piece of music for the first time is enjoyable and exciting, assuming it’s not one of those pieces that demoralises you from the get-go by being ridiculously difficult and completely unplayable without months of intensive, low-tempo practice. As such, I wonder if that “high”, for want of a better word, that you get from trying out a new piece for the first time makes that first attempt “feel” better than subsequent efforts, when you know you “should” be able to do better.

I guess the above description could probably apply to a whole lot of things in life, now that I think about it. Trying something for the first time gives you that satisfying buzz of “I’m doing something new!” but after that, assuming you stick with it, you settle into more of a routine, and mistakes start to become more frustrating. At a certain point, you have to make that difficult decision as to whether you’re going to continue working on the thing in question in detail, or set it aside and try something else.

It’s a tough call with no right answers; no-one likes to feel like they’re “wasting” their time!

2072: Storybook Day

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “A Storybook Day.”

You have to spend one day as or with your favorite fictional character. Which one would it be and what would you do?

[NB: I am aware this is dangerously close to fanfiction territory, but whatever. Deal with it.]

Sometimes, you know before anything has happened that it’s going to be a peculiar day.

As odd circumstances go, suddenly waking up face-down on a hard floor, the sounds of civilisation and industry mingling somewhere in the distance, is probably near the top of the “most peculiar” list. And this is how my day began.

I open my eyes and groggily get to my knees. I seem to be in an alleyway, and there’s no-one else around. That would explain why no-one had come to my aid, then; I would have thought that a grown man lying face-down in the street would attract at least a little attention, but this makes a certain degree of sense. Not much, but a little, anyway.

My muscles expressing their displeasure at being disturbed from their slumber, I unsteadily brace myself against one of the alley’s walls and get to my feet. I seem to be facing a dead end of some sort; the alley doesn’t have much in the way of distinguishing features, aside from a couple of doors that look like fire escapes, and a dumpster or two towards the end. The alley itself abruptly ends at a strangely metallic wall.

“Stop right there!”

A feminine, assertive voice comes from somewhere behind me. I jerk upright, suddenly feeling a lot more awake than I was just seconds ago.

“Don’t move!”

I want to look over my shoulder. There’s something familiar about that voice.

“Um,” is all I can say. Somehow words seem to be failing me.

“Oooh!” comes another feminine voice, this one energetic and somewhat childish, from somewhere behind me. “Wassat?”

“My, my,” comes yet another woman’s voice, this one sounding somewhat more… regal, distinguished? “Isn’t this peculiar?”

I clear my throat and try, once again, to speak.

“I’m, uh,” I begin. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. I don’t think I’m really in a position to do so, from the sound of things.”

“Turn around,” says the first voice. It seems to be quavering slightly, but it’s only barely perceptible. “Slowly!”

I comply with the order and turn to face the ones who discovered me. I give a start as I see who I’m confronted with.

One young woman, clad in a short blue skirt, cropped top and stockings, is pointing at me with an aggressive look on her face. Her twin black ponytails are flapping in the slight breeze. Behind her is a tall, older-looking blonde woman with a calm, gentle expression on her face. And standing at her side, fists clenched and knees slightly bent in a stereotypical expression of excitement and curiosity, is a young-looking purple-haired girl who appears to be wearing a hoodie as a dress, paired with striped thigh-high socks and sneakers. I know without looking closely that her hoodie is tied up with HDMI cables.

I instinctively bow my head, because it feels like the right thing to do.

“Goddesses,” I say, trying to sound humble. “It’s an honour to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, buddy boy!” pipes up the purple-haired young girl before the twintailed girl has a chance to respond. “Whatcha doin’?”

“I wish I knew,” I say. “I just sort of woke up here.”

The twintailed girl is still pointing at me and looks like she’s about to speak, but this time she’s interrupted by the blonde woman’s gentle tones.

“Hmm, we did wonder what had happened,” she says. “Histoire mentioned some sort of strange energy from this region, and here you are.”

I couldn’t even begin to guess why I would be the source of a “strange energy”, but given that I’m standing face-to-face with three women I’ve only previously seen through a computer screen, I feel something very odd may have happened.

This time I’m the one to interrupt the twintailed girl just before she gets something out of her mouth.

“Lady Noire,” I say. “Lady Black Heart,” I correct myself. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here, but I’m kind of at your mercy here.”

Noire seems to shiver and then falter slightly, still pointing at me. I swear her cheeks blush slightly. Neptune, the purple-haired girl, gives a slight snicker and digs the blonde woman Vert in the ribs with her elbow.

“Here it comes,” she says in a stage whisper just loud enough for everyone to hear. Noire apparently ignores her.

“W-well,” she says. “Perhaps you’d better come back to the Basilicom and we can figure this out. But don’t misunderstand! I-it’s not like I’m doing this for you or anything! I just want to find out why a stranger suddenly appeared in my city!”

Giving Neptune a knowing smile and a nod, Vert moves aside to make room for me to pass, and I step out onto the streets of Lastation.

“So that is the long and short of it,” says the tiny girl perched precariously on a floating book. “It will take about three days to make the preparations.” Her facial expression doesn’t change, but for some reason I find myself thinking of an exaggerated emote as she speaks.

“Three days?” says Noire.

“Yes,” says Histoire, the tiny girl, whom I already know is a “tome”. “Although this individual has brought a substantial quantity of Shares into this dimension, it will still take time for the–”

“Yada, yada, yada,” says Neptune. “We got three days to go out and play!” She grabs me forcefully by the hand and starts to drag me out of the Basilicom, a large church-like structure that acts as Noire’s home, office and base of operations.

“W-wait!” says Noire, her voice oddly high-pitched. “We still don’t know anything about him! You shouldn’t just go off with him by yourself!”

“Who said anything about going on my lonesome?” says Neptune. “You’re coming out to play, too, Lonely Heart. It’s about time you had a break! I swear, you’d be working through the night if your body didn’t shut itself down every so often!”

“I concur,” replies Vert. “After all the strange happenings recently, I feel we could all do with some rest and relaxation.”

Noire puts her hands on her hips and looks like she’s about to object, but thinks better of it at the last moment.

“F-fine,” she says. “I can take a little time off, I guess. You are all visiting, after all.”

An hour later, I’m sitting at the head of a table with an array of colourful women. Noire is sitting to my left, Neptune to my right. Then, moving around the table, there’s Neptune’s little sister Nepgear; the sullen face — currently buried in a book, ignoring the situation — of Blanc; Blanc’s twin sisters Rom and Ram, the former of whom is looking very uncomfortable indeed; then Vert, who is wearing a borderline-indecent dress that shows off her considerable cleavage to great effect; and finally Noire’s sister Uni, who keeps giving her older sibling and Neptune furtive glances.

“I don’t understand what’s going on really,” bellows Neptune in what she clearly thinks is an authoritative tone, before indicating me with a wave of her hand, “but Mr. Dude here is our guest! So let’s show him how we have a good time! And you know what that means — pudding!”

On cue, several waiters — whose faces I, strangely, seem to forget the moment I look away from them — put a selection of large dishes on the table, each full of a colourful pudding of some description.

“I-is this all pudding…?” says Noire slightly uneasily.

“Yes!” cries Neptune, throwing her hands in the air and accidentally tossing the spoon she’d picked up so hard into the air that it embeds into the ceiling. “We’ve got strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, dogoo and lamb with rosemary!”

Noire doesn’t look convinced of the nutritional value of our dinner, but chooses to say nothing further. Neptune, meanwhile is clearly excited about it, and it’s hard not to go along with the sheer amount of energy she seems to exude at all times.

“Dig in!” she cries.

The three days pass far too quickly for my liking; a blur of pudding meals, trips to the local chocolate cake shop, multiplayer tournaments on slightly twisted versions of video games I recognise from my own dimension and some truly baffling conversations with the goddesses.

“I wish I could stay here,” I say to Noire as we both look out over Lastation from the balcony of her Basilicom. We’d both stepped out for a little air — and to get away from Neptune’s vacillations over what we should all do next, to be honest.

“Hm,” she says quietly, not turning in my direction. Her attitude towards me seems to have softened somewhat in the last few days; gone is the prickly, defensive young woman who confronted me in the alleyway, and taking her place is someone who seems to be strong, but carrying around a faint air of melancholy.

It’s silent for a moment; all I can hear is the faint throb of industrial machinery off in the distance. Then Noire turns to me.

“I think you’d like it here,” she says to me with a gentle smile, a slight flush in her cheeks. “And believe me, we’re all truly grateful for your faith in all of us. We get really competitive over the Shares, but it’s rare to find someone who has such value for all of us.”

I smile wryly.

“Is that all I am to you, Lady Noire?” I ask. “A fountain of Shares?”

“N-no!” she says hastily, her cheeks blushing even redder. “Y-yes! No! I…”

Her shoulders slump slightly and she closes her eyes for a moment. After a moment’s quiet, she begins to speak, her eyes still closed.

“You don’t belong here,” she says. “I… kind of wish you did, but you don’t. There are people waiting for you, aren’t there…?”

“Yes,” I admit.

“Then you should go back to them,” she says, opening her eyes and smiling softly. “We’ll always be here for you, even if we’re not standing right in front of you.”

I smile back at Noire.

“And I’ll be here for you,” I say. “You’ll always have my Shares.” Hesitantly, I reach out my hand and pat Noire on the head, ruffling her hair slightly. She doesn’t object, thankfully.

I turn around from the balcony to go back indoors and am unsurprised to see Vert, Neptune and Blanc crowding around the doorframe, clearly watching what has been unfolding with great interest. Neptune gives me a thumbs-up and an enthusiastic nod of the head. Noire doesn’t appear to have noticed her observers yet, and I feel I probably shouldn’t point it out to them.

I turn back to Noire.

“Lady Noire?” I say.

“Hm?” she says absently.

“I’ll miss you,” I reply. In an uncharacteristically assertive display of affection, I take her in my arms and hug her.

“Wh-what are you…” she objects initially, but after a moment I feel her shoulders relax and her own arms reach around my back. We stay like that for a moment. I glance over to the doorframe and see Neptune giving Vert a silent high-five. I can’t help but smile.

“Thank you,” says Noire. “Don’t forget us,”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I say. And I mean it.

The journey back was surprisingly simple. Histoire gave a technical explanation that Nepgear did her best to expand upon, but it frankly went in one ear and out the other. All I really had to do was stand before the Sharicite crystal and wait for Histoire to do her thing; she was waiting for “dimensional alignment” or something.

I faced my friends, who had assembled in the doorway to see me off. It was strange; these people had been “friends” to me long before I’d ever met them face-to-face, and so parting from them now, while sad, didn’t hurt as much as it could have done. I knew that when I got home I could see them again any time I wanted; it wouldn’t quite be the same as the experience I’d just been through, of course, but it was good enough for me. And I had a strange feeling that even if dimensions of time and space separated us, they’d all be able to make good use of the Shares I contributed.

As the Sharicite chamber fills with a brilliant white light, I raise my hand in farewell.

“Bye,” I say. It doesn’t feel quite like enough, but it also doesn’t really feel like goodbye.

“Bye-bye!” cries Neptune, followed by a slightly subdued chorus of farewells from the other goddesses and Candidates.

The light intensifies until I can’t see anything any more. I close my eyes. Then, I feel the light replaced by blackness.

There’s a strange chiming noise. I open my eyes again. I’m sitting up. Wherever I am, it’s dark, save for a small sign up in the upper-right field of my vision.

“You have earned a trophy!” it says.

2071: Eschatos

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The other day, I talked a bit about shoot ’em up Cardinal Sins. Today, I’ve been spending some time with its follow-up (or, more accurately, the follow-up to Judgement Silversword) Eschatos.

Eschatos is very obviously cut from the same cloth as its predecessors, since it plays almost identically. Its main difference is the fact that it’s a considerably more technically advanced game, boasting dynamic camera angles, full 3D polygonal graphics and all manner of other goodies. It’s not the most stunning game you’ll ever see, but it looks good for a game of this type, and it runs gloriously smoothly, which is of vital importance to the genre.

(At least, the original Xbox 360 version of Eschatos runs gloriously smoothly; at the time of writing the newly translated PC version has some framerate issues on nVidia cards, but the devs are working on resolving this.)

Eschatos is a shoot ’em up that understands that shoot ’em ups should be thrilling theme park rides: exciting and surprising at first, predictable after a few goes. That “predictable” part is important: the essence of getting good at a game of this type is learning what the game is going to throw at you and then dealing with it accordingly, which is something you can only do with practice.

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Eschatos makes the learning process quite straightforward by splitting each of its stages into areas, and each of its areas into waves. In order to get the best scores, you need to completely clear waves in succession (which increases your score multiplier) as quickly as possible (which nets you a time bonus, multiplied by your multiplier). Even boss encounters are broken down in this way, making it relatively straightforward to learn what to expect, with the challenge then coming from correctly and consistently dealing with it.

It’s particularly nice to note that the scoring system is easy to understand and parse, even on the game’s “Advanced” mode; having largely come to modern shoot ’em ups through Cave games, which tend to have some of the most complicated scoring mechanics known to man, this is a very pleasant surprise indeed, because it makes it easy to understand how to get better at the game: destroy more stuff more quickly, simple as that. (This is where someone chimes in and points out it’s actually much more complicated than that, naturally…)

I’m a fan. I must confess the 360 version had been on my shelf for a while unplayed, but the event release of the Steam version (and the realisation it could do with a patch) inspired me to dig it out again. I’m once again reminded that Japanese devs really are the masters of their craft… and, apparently, of glorious FM synthesis music that sounds like it’s straight out of a Mega Drive game.

Time to go chase some high scores!