2171: Pain

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There are many types of pain in the world. There’s physical pain, which can range from mildly annoying to excruciating and debilitating. There’s mental pain, which, likewise, can range from occasionally distracting to life-consuming. There’s emotional pain, which ranges from feeling a bit blue to wanting to end your own existence.

Few things compare to the pain you feel when helpless to do anything to help someone you love, though. This pain cuts deep, right through your very soul, and threatens to rip out the very core of your being. It’s as excruciating, life-consuming and debilitating as all of the very worst the other kinds of pain have to offer, with the added joy that there’s absolutely no way whatsoever to treat it. If there were, you wouldn’t be feeling it in the first place.

Mostly this pain stems from a position of impotence: a position of complete powerlessness to do anything to help resolve that which is causing your special person anguish. It’s the frustration at not knowing what to do, and at the things you do try not being enough or not working. It’s the realisation that there really is nothing you can do but watch as someone else suffers, and just hope that people who are better qualified to sort things out are able to sort things out — or, in the worst possible circumstances, that things will just resolve themselves somehow.

I do not know how to deal with that pain, and I am suffering dreadfully from it. And I feel bad bringing it up, because the pain I feel is something intangible that is a consequence of someone who is physically suffering. But it’s there, nonetheless, and it probably needs “treatment” of some sort just as much as the physical pain does.

I don’t even know where to begin, though. Let’s hope that the old saying about time healing all wounds is really true.

2170: The Slowest Racing Game You’ll Ever Play

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My good friend Mr Alex Connolly saw that I had been investigating various racing games recently, and recommended something of an oddball curiosity to me: the rather literally named Off-Road Drive, a charming, clunky mess of a game from Russian publisher 1C Company.

Off-Road Drive is a game about offroading. Not offroading in the usual video game sense — that is to say, racing like you’re playing Ridge Racer, only with mud textures — but rather a more realistic(ish) take on offroading in heavy duty vehicles more suited to chores on the farm than barreling around courses at high speed.

The interesting thing about Off-Road Drive is that it goes into a lot more detail than many other racing games, yet at the same time manages to do so without making itself completely obtuse to the non-petrolheads among us. The game features not only the usual accelerate and brake buttons, but also switches to toggle between two- and four-wheel drive, do something or other with your differential, hoist yourself up with a winch, downshift into a low gear and let the air out of your tyres.

You may wonder why on Earth you would want to do any of those things and it’s initially baffling. However, a good tutorial mode gives you an introduction to the most common hazards you’ll face while offroading — and the appropriate tool from your arsenal to make use of when attempting to traverse it. By the end of a couple of laps of the tutorial circuit, you should have a pretty good idea of how things work and what you should do when. It’s perhaps best thought of as a racing game in which you’re required to use various special abilities at specific points on the track; thinking of it this way rather than trying to get your head around what the “differential” does is the way to go, it seems.

Off-Road Drive is not a particularly polished product. It doesn’t support VSync in full-screen mode, leading to screen tearing; its menus are clunky and don’t work properly with a controller (despite the game itself supporting controller); controller buttons are labelled the wrong way around (LT instead of RT and vice-versa); and its collision detection is occasionally a little questionable, but there’s little doubt that the developers set out to create something different to the norm and have succeeded in producing something that’s actually rather interesting and fun to play.

One of the greatest things about gaming is that it gives us the opportunity to try things we’d never do in real life. I don’t see myself ever flinging a Land Rover around a muddy course in Thailand, so Off-Road Drive acts as an eminently suitable substitute for now, at least.

Now, to go and look up what the fuck a “differential” is.

2169: Starting GRID (2)

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One of my acquisitions in this year’s Steam sale was Codemasters racing game GRID 2. I already owned the previous GRID game and had enjoyed what I played of its multi-discipline racing, but hadn’t delved into it in depth. The price that GRID 2 and its more recent sequel GRID Autosport were going for was too much to resist, however, so I snagged copies of both and have been putting the former through its paces over the last few days.

GRID 2 was a bit of a controversial release when it originally came out, since it’s a distinctly more “arcadey” affair than its predecessor. That’s not to say that the original GRID was particularly sim-like in the first place, but the true petrolheads of the Internet appreciated things like its lavishly detailed first-person cockpits and semi-realistic handling. In contrast, GRID 2’s emphasis on drift-heavy driving and the removal of the cockpit view led to a bit of an uproar among the racing enthusiast community, who saw it as a step backwards from its well-regarded predecessor.

Me, though, I love it; GRID 2’s slidey handling is exactly the sort of thing I love in a racing game, and to be honest, while I love the way a cockpit view looks, I find it extremely difficult to race from that perspective, since visibility is so limited in most cases, and you don’t have the peripheral vision you’d have in reality. Consequently, I much prefer racing from a bumper or bonnet cam (preferably the latter) since I find it much easier to judge my own position and have a feeling of spatial awareness during a race.

I also appreciate GRID 2 for its attempt to spin a story throughout its single-player game. All too often, racing games are rather dry affairs in which you navigate boring-looking menus to get to the actual racing, and there’s often very little in the way of personality. GRID 2 doesn’t go so far as to be Wing Commander with cars — although man, I would so play that game — but it does feature voiceovers and a sense of narrative progression as you play through the game. It’s not a complex narrative — you’re an up-and-coming driver headhunted by an eccentric rich dude who has decided he really wants to set up a new worldwide multi-discipline racing league, and your efforts as the face of the series allow you to build up the fanbase required for the WSR to become a success — but it works well in context, and it’s punctuated nicely with infrequent cutscenes, including authentic-looking TV broadcasts featuring full-motion video rather than in-engine characters.

This sense of narrative progression and personality carries over into the actual racing gameplay, too. You’re constantly getting advice and feedback over your radio while you race, and most race series highlight a named rival for you to try and beat. While the personalities of these rivals aren’t developed all that much outside of text messages and social media posts in the menu screens, it’s a nice touch that gives you more of an incentive to do your best than simply trying to get into first place.

The game also makes minimal but cinematic use of music: most races don’t have background music, instead featuring some impressive sound effects that allow you to hear not only the roar of the car’s engine, but the rumbling of the tyres on different surfaces, the sound of the crowds as you whizz past them, and other environmental sounds according to where you’re racing today. There’s an exception to this, though: when you get into the final races of each season, the final lap or sector of each race is accompanied by some electro-orchestral music that lends a real sense of drama to proceedings, making some already butthole-puckeringly tense finishes even more exciting. Good job there.

There’s a good variety of events, too, with both circuit races and point to point races — a subject that I was talking about wanting to see more of just a few weeks ago — as well as time attacks, overtaking challenges, endurance races and all manner of other disciplines. The aforementioned petrolheads don’t seem to like the fact that the game’s career mode insists that you participate in all the disciplines, since most seem to prefer picking and choosing their favourites, but I really like the amount of variety this brings to the campaign: it, again, gives a good sense of progression as each new season presents you with new disciplines to conquer and new types of car to get to grips with. By the time you reach the end of the career mode, you’ll most likely be a well-rounded driver able to turn your hand to all manner of different events — ideal for jumping online and taking on all-comers.

So I like it a lot so far, then. I’d go so far as to say that it’s shaping up to be one of my favourite arcadey racers for quite some time, and I’m very interested to explore it in more detail over the coming weeks.

2168: Xenoblade Chronicles X: My Game of the Year

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It being the 28th of December, I feel fairly confident in declaring my own personal Game of the Year, and it will probably not surprise any of you to hear that it is Monolithsoft’s spectacular Wii U role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles X. In this post, I will attempt to explain exactly why this game has impressed me so much — and why I’m disappointed (though, I must admit, unsurprised) that the popular games press has given so little attention and/or Game of the Year consideration to it.

The first thing to note about Xenoblade Chronicles X is that it is not Wii classic Xenoblade Chronicles. Aside from a number of similarities in the combat system — including a bunch of abilities that have been brought over wholesale from the original game — Xenoblade Chronicles X is a completely different affair to its predecessor. Where Xenoblade Chronicles’ focus was on its strong, linear narrative punctuated by sidequests, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s main scenario is, in many ways, the least important part of the whole package, with the incredible sense of worldbuilding produced by the numerous sidequests and optional events instead being the main point of proceedings.

Let’s go back a step, though, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with Xenoblade Chronicles X in general, and consider it on its own terms rather than getting too hung up on comparing it to its predecessor — which, as we’ve established, is a different (and not necessarily superior or inferior) experience.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s setup is classic sci-fi. Earth gets caught in the crossfire between some powerful alien races, and looks set for certain destruction. Numerous people manage to escape on colony ships, which take to the stars in search of a new home. Our story concerns the White Whale, a ship which crash-landed on a planet called Mira when one of the alien forces responsible for Earth’s destruction caught up with it and destroyed it.

The White Whale broke up on its destruction, but its habitation section remained intact, and humanity quickly set about converting this part of the ship into Mira’s first human city. Being modelled on 21st century Los Angeles, the city is dubbed New Los Angeles, and it doesn’t take long for a suitable system of social structure to be put into place and help ensure everyone is doing their bit for humanity’s survival.

Key to these efforts is BLADE, an organisation concerned with Building a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth — do you see what they did there? BLADE is made up of several Divisions, each of which specialises in important tasks for humanity’s continued survival, be it scouting for raw materials, defending the city from dangerous indigenous creatures or maintaining the peace within the city walls.

Your character — for you can create your own avatar in this, rather than playing a pre-scripted character as in the original Xenoblade Chronicles — awakens in a crashed escape pod with the obligatory JRPG amnesia. Discovered by a young woman named Elma, who immediately shows herself to be a capable combatant and responsible individual, you’re brought back to New LA and you join BLADE. From there, you become part of humanity’s efforts to settle on Mira — and to defend your people from the threat of the Ganglion, a collective of aliens who want nothing more than to wipe humanity off the face of the universe for reasons known only to themselves.

As you progress through Xenoblade Chronicles X, more and more interesting things open up to you. The first couple of chapters are story-centric, but allow you to wander off and explore the game’s enormous open world on foot as you see fit if you so desire. Once these are out of the way and your character has joined BLADE, you can start taking on missions, which range from simple MMO-style “collect this” or “kill this” Basic Missions to scene-setting, context-providing Normal Missions and character-centric Affinity Missions.

You’re free to progress through the twelve chapters of the game’s main story at whatever pace you choose, and the narrative is actually designed in such a way that it doesn’t provide a sense of dissonance if you leave the main scenario hanging for a while. Instead, each chapter of the main scenario is effectively a self-contained mini-story in its own right, so there’s no sense of putting Important Shit on hold while you go and pick flowers or hunt dinosaurs or whatever. This means that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story becomes as much about what happens in between those major story beats as it does during the more dramatic, cutscene-heavy nature of the main scenario.

In fact, in many ways, it’s the side missions of Xenoblade Chronicles X that are the best part of the game, because they render the strange world of Mira and humanity’s attempts to start over in far more detail than a linear story ever would. The side missions introduce numerous alien races, for example, many of whom choose to move in to New LA and coexist with humans after your successful first contact with them. Side missions also affect the world, and many of them are written in chains, where events that transpired earlier have an impact on what happens later, with some even having branching outcomes and questlines according to decisions you made earlier in the game.

Character development and customisation is pretty spectacular, being more akin to what you’d probably expect from a Western RPG than a Japanese affair. Your own character is completely customisable: you can switch between classes (and the associated weapons) at will, and mastering a particular branch of classes masters its weapons, allowing you to use them (and their associated abilities) in whatever combinations you see fit. You can also equip your character in armour that you feel suits your play style well, be this damage-absorbing heavy armour, evasion-heavy light armour or a mixture. Armour and weapons can be customised with augments, and upgraded with minerals mined via probes you place around the open world during your exploration. New armour, weapons and vanity clothing can be crafted. And your actions will cause various arms manufacturers to set up shop in the city, with the quality of their wares improving as you use their equipment and donate resources to their respective causes.

Once you hit the game’s halfway point, a whole other set of systems opens up as you gain access to “Skells”, the giant mechs that have been seen throughout much of the game’s promotional material. Skells are just as customisable as characters, perhaps even more so; they’re equipped with a vast array of weapons, each of which corresponds to a particular ability as well as affecting the Skell’s performance as a whole. You can swap out various pieces of armour and weapons, paint it a lurid shade of pink and name it “Murderbot” if you so desire. And then you can equip the rest of your squad with them once they reach level 30, too, building your party into an unstoppable force of Big Stompy Robots.

Pleasingly, gaining access to Skells doesn’t mean that you never participate in the excellent on-foot combat ever again. Rather, both in-Skell and on-foot fighting each have their own benefits according to what you’re doing. Skells are generally better for fighting larger opponents, while you get more experience for taking down opponents on foot. On-foot combat also features a mechanic called “secondary cooldowns”, where if you let a skill charge twice instead of just once before using it, it will have some form of added effect that could be anything from additional damage to being able to immediately reuse it. Skell combat, meanwhile, allows you to bind enemies so the rest of your team can wail on them uninterrupted, and also has an entertaining mechanic called Cockpit Time, where you get an awesome in-cockpit view of your character pulling levers and flipping switches to unleash the Skell’s weaponry on your opponent. You are invincible while this is going on, too, so you can enjoy it without having to worry.

Later still in the game, you gain the ability for your Skells to fly, which gives the game a whole different feel again. Flight allows you to access numerous locations that you wouldn’t have been able to get to before — plus Mira looks pretty beautiful from the air. It’s also incredibly impressive that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s world is genuinely seamless — you can take off from New LA’s residential district in your Skell, take to the skies and fly all the way north to the fiery region of Cauldros on the other side of the ocean without seeing a single loading screen.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is, for me, my Game of the Year because it makes me happy on so many levels. It’s a beautiful realisation of a classic sci-fi concept that has fascinated me for years. It features some of the best worldbuilding and sense of the setting being a real place that I’ve seen outside an MMO. It has incredible — and unconventional — music. And it tells great stories: the main scenario is interesting, compelling and dramatic, but just as entertaining are the more subtle stories told by the sidequests, the gossip you overhear in the streets and your own personal career as a BLADE.

Xenoblade Chronicles X deserves to be hailed as a classic. It’s the most ambitious, impressive console RPG I’ve seen for years — perhaps ever — and, while it has its flaws and perhaps may not gel with everyone who tries it due to the obtuseness of some of its systems, it succeeds far better in its attempts to provide a convincing simulation of surviving life on a new and hostile planet than any number of procedurally generated Early Access Minecraft knockoffs you’d care to mention.

Buy a Wii U. Buy Xenoblade Chronicles X. This game deserves to be a success, and it deserves to be celebrated much more than it has been to date.

2167: Boxing Day

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Today was Boxing Day, apparently a day when everyone and his dog decides to go shopping, because having a single day of the year when you can’t go shopping is apparently too much for some people to deal with.

While I certainly don’t begrudge people the business they have brought my place of work over the festive period, since they keep me in a job for the time being, I do find myself a little bewildered at the eagerness to get right back out into an absolutely rammed town centre and do something it’s possible to do almost every single other day of the year.

I guess it’s the promise of “sales” that has people enraptured with the idea of immediate post-Christmas shopping: the prospect of being able to pick up a bargain with any money and/or vouchers that came their way to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our Lord, but looking around town today I can’t honestly say that I saw anything I’d particularly regard as a “bargain”. Sure, some stuff was maybe a little bit cheaper than it is usually, but we’re talking a reduction of like 20-25% at most in many places, which doesn’t amount to all that much.

Mostly the thing that bewilders me about immediate post-Christmas shopping is the fact that people are willingly giving up time where it’s absolutely fine — even encouraged — to slob around at home doing nothing of any consequence save for eating, drinking and playing with toys, and instead spending money they probably don’t really have on things they’re not sure they want, perhaps for people they don’t really like.

Oh well. As I say, I certainly don’t begrudge these people their choices, since the amount of money we took today — a lot of it cash, too, making for some impressive wads in the tills — is proof enough that online hasn’t quite killed the high street just yet, and it’s keeping me in employment for the moment, and hopefully for a bit longer after the holiday season is officially over. That last bit remains to be seen, so fingers crossed.

As for me, though, I don’t plan on doing any shopping anywhere other than Steam over the next few days, and I don’t have to get off the sofa to do that. I have two days off now, so I will most certainly be doing as little as possible over the course of the next 48 hours to ensure I’m rested, relaxed and ready for action as we creep towards the new year.

I hope you all had a thoroughly pleasant Christmas, and that you’re having the chance to enjoy at least a bit of a rest over the holiday period.

2166: A Merry Christmas to You

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Merry Christmas! Admittedly, at the time of writing it is now officially Boxing Day where I am, but it’s still Christmas in certain parts of the world as I type this, so my well-wishes totally count.

It’s been a very nice day. Andie and I decided to have a Christmas by ourselves this year, without travelling to either of our respective parental homes and instead visiting both respective sets of parents a little later in the festive season.

For the last few years, Christmas hasn’t felt like a huge deal. I — perhaps understandably — no longer felt the intoxicating sense of anticipation that I felt throughout December when I was a child, and in many cases, Christmas Day came and went without me feeling particularly festive at all.

This year felt particularly pleasant for some reason. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s been a difficult period for me, Andie and numerous other people we know, and it was nice to have a day where we could completely switch off from all that and just relax. Perhaps it’s the fact that we had a deliberately low-key Christmas, with no obligations or commitments whatsoever.

That’s probably part of the reason some people find the festive season so stressful. Modern society places so many obligations and commitments on us around the festive season that it can be difficult to just enjoy some time away from work and/or hanging out with your family and friends. Sometimes you just want to open some presents, eat a shitload of biscuits and play computer games for the rest of the day without having to worry about the people you’re supposed to visit, the people you’re supposed to phone and the things you’re supposed to do.

So that’s what we both did today. And it was lovely. Tomorrow I have to go to work, because retail, but I have two days off after that, so you better believe I will be making the most of them by doing as little as humanly possible. My bum-imprint on the sofa is ready and waiting to be occupied.

Anyway. A very merry Christmas to you, wherever you are reading this from in the world, and may the rest of your holiday season be suitably festive.

2165: Dirt Showdown and Vulgar Racing

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I am a fan of what I described to my friend Alex yesterday as “the vulgar side of racing games”. This is a pretentious way of saying that I’m a fan of arcade racers more than more realistic fare, but it kind of goes a little deeper than that: I’m a fan of racing games that firmly put an emphasis on fun and spectacle as opposed to providing a faintly plausible virtual driving experience.

Codemasters’ Dirt Showdown, which I picked up in the Steam Halloween sale, pushes all of my buttons in this regard.

Dirt Showdown is the very essence of vulgar racing. It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s very American (despite the Codies being British), it’s full of scrappy-looking cars that you’d expect to find burnt out in a council estate in Croydon… and it’s a ton of fun.

A lot of Dirt Showdown’s fun factor comes from its hyperactive nature — and this is true both within single events, all of which are chaotic and specifically set up to encourage full-contact racing, and within the game structure as a whole. The single-player campaign sees you flip-flopping from one discipline to another — one minute you’ll be racing, the next you’ll be smashing your way around a course made up of barriers, the one after that you’ll be trying to knock all of your opponents off a raised platform — and multiplayer is much the same, with the added chaos of some rather “sport-like” competitive games modelled on Capture the Flag and Halo’s Oddball mode.

You’re never stuck doing the same thing for very long, in other words, and this is what keeps the game interesting. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you setting the multiplayer mode to do nothing but races, but where’s the fun in that? The beauty of Dirt Showdown is that it encourages you to master flinging your car around with a variety of different goals in mind, be it dispatching opponents as quickly as possible, or simply beating them to the finish line.

The big appeal element in Dirt Showdown for me, though, is the fact that it’s an honest-to-goodness arcade racer. This is not a game intended to be taken seriously or be regarded as a sim; it’s not a game where you can admire lovingly detailed cockpit views; it’s a game about taking a hunk of junk (or, indeed, a few licensed rally cars) and then hurling it at a bunch of other hunks of junk and seeing who comes out on top. It’s a game about tapping the handbrake rather than using the actual brake to go around corners; it’s a game that features races specifically designed to encourage pileups. I approve of all of this.

Plus it’s super-cheap in the currently running Steam sale. So if you haven’t given it a shot yet — assuming you’re a racing game person — be sure to check it out.

2164: The Specialists

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I find the evolution of British developer-publisher Codemasters rather interesting, since they’ve been part of my life since I was very young, and they’ve changed significantly over the years.

When I was a kid, Codemasters was a label primarily associated with budget-price games for 8- and 16-bit computers. Their games were typically released on a wide variety of platforms ranging from the ZX Spectrum to the Commodore Amiga and everything in between, and development of these games was such that every platform had a decent version of their games within the limitations of its respective hardware. It was quite an impressive achievement, when you think about it, especially considering the sheer number of different platforms that were around between the ’80s and ’90s.

Old-school Codemasters’ most well-known franchise was probably the Dizzy series. Vaguely positioned as a home computer alternative to the fashionable “mascot platformers” of the consoles — stuff like mainstays Mario and Sonic as well as third-party attempts like Bubsy and Cool Spot — the Dizzy games were actually rather interesting in that they weren’t so much platform action games a la Mario and Sonic, but instead were more akin to adventure games. You explored a 2D side-scrolling open world, you probably wanted to make a map, you collected items to put into your inventory, you used said items to make things happen and solve puzzles.

Each Dizzy game was essentially the same structurally, but they differed in setting, and this often made a surprisingly large difference to the overall “feel” of the games. Compare Treasure Island Dizzy, which unfolded on a tropical island, to Fantasy World Dizzy, which took place in a world that stretched from the ground to the clouds. Despite having the same basic mechanics, both were very distinctive from one another, and well worth playing.

I’m not sure when it was that Codemasters shifted from a budget label to their present position, but it’s gratifying to see what a huge success they’ve made of themselves in the last few years in particular. Not through modernising Dizzy, though; instead, the Codemasters of today is a very specialist publisher, focusing entirely on racing games of various descriptions.

And it’s been a huge benefit to them to focus on this one, single genre of game that they’ve ended up being rather good at. Much like the different Dizzy games shared mechanics but had a unique look and feel to them, the various series that Codemasters offer today all have similar structures and mechanics, but unique feels to them. Compare the rally-centric Dirt series with the disparate disciplines of the GRID series, for example — or even the destructive chaos of Dirt Showdown to the rather more disciplined but still fun Dirt 3.

An awful lot of developers and publishers these days try to have a broad portfolio and appeal to lots of different people. But, to my mind, Codemasters have the right idea: find what you’re good at, then focus exclusively on that. That’s how you build up a loyal fanbase who will almost certainly purchase pretty much anything you put out — and how you become recognised as industry leaders in your specialist field.

Now, about applying the same philosophy to the games press…

2163: The Shallow End of Deep Crimson

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I finally got around to firing up Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson today and so far I’m already very impressed — both with how it’s a significant improvement on the 3DS original game, and how it’s a markedly different experience to both its Nintendo-based predecessor and its Vita-based spinoff Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus.

For the uninitiated, Senran Kagura is a series involving two rival ninja schools, one of “good” shinobi and the other of “evil” shinobi. The Versus spinoff series introduces two additional groups into the mix, each with their own narrative, but the mainline series focuses on the conflict — and, at times, cooperation — between the Hebijo and Hanzou academies, and their respective elite classes.

Senran Kagura tells its stories via several forms of media within the game itself: narration-heavy visual novel sequences delivered from a first-person perspective by one of the characters, allowing us insight into how that particular character thinks, feels and responds to the situations in the narrative; more “game-like” talking head sequences between characters, involving animated, very expressive character models; and dialogue during gameplay itself. The series is noteworthy for its depth of characterisation, relatable casts and total lack of shame when it comes to discussing everything from the philosophy of “good” and “evil” to sexuality.

The first Senran Kagura game we saw in the West — actually a compilation of the first Japanese Senran Kagura game and its follow-up, which made the original “villains” of Hebijo playable and provided them with their own story — played out like a modern version of Streets of Rage. Unfolding from a side-on 2.5D perspective, you (usually) ran from right to left, beating up everyone who got in your way until a big flashing “GO” sign appeared indicating you should move onto the next area and repeat the process. Many levels concluded with a boss fight against one of the shinobi from the opposing school, and there was a bizarre final boss fight that kind of saw Shit Get Real just before the credits rolled.

Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, meanwhile, eschewed its predecessor’s 2.5D nature in favour of something more akin to a scaled-down Dynasty Warriors. Battles now unfolded in full 3D arenas, though the basic structure of the game remained the same — fight enemy group, proceed to next area and/or wave of enemies, fight boss, win. The shift to 3D gave the game quite a different feel, but the combat was tight and responsive, and every character felt very different.

Senran Kagura 2 shifts the style of play once again, blending elements of the original game and Shinovi Versus to create something that — so far, anyway — seems to be a lot of fun. Rather than providing the full freedom of a 3D arena, Senran Kagura 2 instead unfolds from fixed camera angles, mostly presenting a vaguely side-on view, but with considerably more depth than the first game. The game actually makes very good use of the 3DS’ stereosopic 3D visuals to allow you to judge depth, range and distance, and, given the 3DS’ lack of a right stick to control the camera, this more “controlled” perspective on the action makes a lot of sense.

I’ve only played a few of the introductory levels so far, but already the game feels a lot more challenging than its predecessor, too; while button mashing will get you through trash enemies reasonably reliably, bosses no longer respond to such simple tactics, instead demanding that you position yourself carefully, wait for a suitable opening and then use an appropriate attack to get within range without putting yourself in danger. I can see the Super-Secret Ninja Arts being Super-Secret Ninja Useful too, since these are often a good means of throwing an enemy off balance as much as dealing significant amounts of damage to them.

I’m pretty excited about the new structure of the game, too; as well as the main story, Senran Kagura 2 features a couple of additional modes. Youma’s Nest sees you working your way through a “pyramid” of challenge levels and attempting to complete as many of these as possible without healing in order to earn rewards; Special Missions, meanwhile, allow you to earn new equipment for your shinobi as well as presenting you with challenges under various conditions.

There seems to be a whole lot more variety to the experience, and lots of things to unlock. I’m excited to get stuck in, because I both enjoy the Senran Kagura games as old-school brawlers, and enjoy spending time in the company of these lovely characters, too.

Hidden Nin-Po!

2162: That Not-So-Wonderful Time of the Year

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It seems to me that this holiday season has been, for many people, a period of inordinately, disproportionately Bad Times. I’ve had some shittiness to deal with myself, which I won’t go into here, but just from browsing my Twitter feed each day it’s clear that I’m not alone in having a tough time of it right now.

This post, then, is perhaps to reassure those who are feeling a similar way that they’re not alone, that there are other people out there who understand the way they are feeling, and who would hang out with them, play video games with them, share lewd pictures of anime girls with them and/or hug them as appropriate. I say this as someone who would enjoy all of the above with the people I’m talking about.

This holiday season feels like a highly concentrated form of the tension that has permeated all of 2015. There’s been a thoroughly unpleasant undercurrent of “walking on eggshells” with regard to political correctness, and it feels like it’s been coming to a head recently.

Arguments over whether or not Hermione in the Harry Potter series is black erupted today, with both sides attempting to claim some sort of moral superiority in a frankly rather childish, stupid and utterly pointless conflict that didn’t need to happen in the first place. But this is far from the only thing that’s been highly charged; even the new Star Wars movie became politicised, with some commentators making more of the fact that its leads feature a black person and a woman than the fact that, by all accounts, The Force Awakens appears to be something of a return to form for the series.

Among it all, the ever-bubbling conflict between the so-called “Social Justice Warriors” — blowhards who want to look like they’re saying the “right” things with regard to political correctness, but who are actually just seeking glory for themselves rather than having any real interest in changing society for the better — and people who just want to be left the fuck alone to enjoy whatever they want has continued, with the former group in particular continuing its trend of making wild accusations without any sort of proof, blaming all of society’s ills on “GamerGate” and “the Men’s Rights Activists” rather than taking the time to get to know any members of these groups and contemplate why they are at loggerheads.

This perpetual “culture war” makes me incredibly sad, because it has poisoned what used to be lively and interesting public discussion and debate over subjects such as video games. Anita Sarkeesian’s appearance on the scene, with her oh-so-brave step of saying that sometimes common tropes in video games favour men over women — while conveniently ignoring the hundreds, even thousands, of excellent female characters in gaming — acted as a catalyst for all manner of nutjobs to come out of the woodwork, and this whole movement seems to have grown in prominence by a huge amount in the last year. Fans of Japanese games and anime on social media are particularly perturbed that there are no mainstream sites remaining that are willing to give niche Japanese titles the time of day, instead preferring to look at them on a superficial level, brand them “sexist” or “misogynist” and move on, when in fact, in many cases, these “otaku games” are far more progressive than any bullshit these loudmouths might come up with. Seeing these discussions makes me all the more sad that I was strongarmed out of my position at USgamer, where, as many of you know, I ran a weekly JPgamer column, celebrating the weird and wonderful entertainment that our friends in the East — and the intrepid localisation teams — brought us.

It’s not so much the lack of media representation that saddens me in this instance, though; it’s the sense of alienation I feel when I see people that I thought were friends starting to spout ill-informed nonsense in the name of being “progressive”. Mockery, public shaming and similar behaviours are not progressive, and I cannot support them or anyone who condones them — speaking as someone who was bullied throughout school, and who suffered a horrendous targeted harassment campaign a couple of years back, I know what harm dogpiling can do to your wellbeing. It surprises and upsets me to see friends who once suffered the effects of being publicly humiliated by these assholes now joining their ranks and gleefully indulging in that sort of reprehensible behaviour. A case of “if you can’t beat them, join them” perhaps — but whether or not that’s the case, it still sucks to feel like you don’t know someone any more.

This post has rambled and perhaps got a little off-topic somewhere along the way, but all these thoughts are swirling around my head right now, and this holiday season feels like something of a focal point for all the misery, tension and discomfort that 2015 has brought to numerous people I know, including myself. The world feels like it’s getting worse, not better, and when you’re someone who tries their best to be a good person and not hurt anyone, this is exceedingly frustrating and upsetting.

Hopefully 2016 will be a better time for everyone, but at this stage I’m not particularly confident. I hope I end up pleasantly surprised.