2384: Turbo Kid: The Best ’80s Movie That Wasn’t Made in the ’80s

0384_001

After repeated exhortations of extremely enthusiastic approval from my friend Tom, I decided to watch the movie Turbo Kid this evening on Netflix. I was not disappointed.

Turbo Kid is a study in contradictions. It’s a movie that is a perfect recreation of 1980s action flicks, but it was made in 2015. It’s not a comedy, but it’s hilarious. It is, at heart, simplistic and straightforward, but nonetheless compelling and thought-provoking. More than anything, though, it’s terrible, but it’s stunningly brilliant.

Turbo Kid is set in the apocalyptic far-off future wastelands of the year 1997, where some awful disaster that isn’t really explained (but was probably something to do with the Cold War and/or robots) has turned everything to shit. Our story centres around a nameless young boy, known only as The Kid, who was orphaned early in the post-apocalyptic period, but who has, against all odds, managed to survive in the wasteland through scavenging and keeping his childish hopes and dreams alive through vintage comics about his favourite superhero, Turbo Rider.

Early in the movie, The Kid meets Apple, who initially seems to be a charmingly dimwitted young girl, but subsequently is revealed to be a robot, because ’80s movie. Apple is dying thanks to getting hit in a skirmish, and The Kid, who after some initial reluctance to even be around her having been alone for so long, agrees to help her find some replacement parts before her “heart gauge” (rather beautifully depicted in Zelda-style pixel art on an embedded display in her wrist) runs out and she deactivates forever.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice to say, The Kid finds himself taking on the role of Turbo Rider to the best of his capabilities, and there are plenty of ridiculous action scenes along the way, not to mention a particularly loathsome villain in the form of self-appointed wasteland baron “Zeus” — who of course has a connection with The Kid, because ’80s movie.

I was reading an article in a GamePro from a couple of years ago the other day, and someone — I forget who offhand, but I think it was someone like Tim Schafer or his ilk — made the very good point that the best comedy is made of juxtapositions, most commonly the juxtaposition of serious words with silly visuals, or vice-versa. Turbo Kid is pretty much entirely designed around this philosophy: it takes itself very seriously and never, at any point, winks knowingly at the audience to go “DIDYA SEE THAT?!”. Instead, it makes use of the exact same techniques ’80s action movies did to juxtapose the ridiculous with the deadly serious: terrible, extremely obvious special effects; excessive amounts of blood and gore; unnecessary swearing at the most bizarre moments; but, at heart, a rather touching story of a kid who realises he doesn’t want to be alone in the world any more.

Of particular note is the blood and gore, of which there is lots, but it’s so insanely exaggerated — again, like the best worst ’80s action flicks — that it’s impossible to feel grossed out by it. In one scene, a man gets his face thrust into the spinning blades of a blender. In another, someone gets his guts pulled out by them being attached to the back wheel of a bicycle (in this particular post-apocalyptic future, everyone rides pedal bikes — which sort of makes sense, when you think about it, as fuel would eventually run out). In the climactic battle scene, the dismembered torso and legs of two other enemy grunts become firmly lodged on the head of a third enemy. And, of course, Turbo Rider/Kid’s unique gadget is a device on his wrist that immediately causes anyone it is pointed at to explode into a fine red paste.

Turbo Kid really benefits from being written and constructed as an ’80s action flick, without any fourth wall-breaking self-awareness going on. In being designed this way, it provides commentary on how desensitised to violence we are these days — many of the more gory scenes in the film would likely have got the movie banned as a “video nasty” back in the ’80s — while at the same time pointing out how far popular culture has supposedly come in the last 30+ years. Or you can look at it another way: it can be interpreted as a fond look back at the ’80s, when not all entertainment was expected to have some sort of socially aware “message” behind it (with the possible exception of children’s cartoons, which tended to lampshade these messages extremely obviously) and it could sometimes just be about many boys’ childish fantasies: the ability to point at a bad guy and have them explode into goo.

If you have an hour and a half to spare, then, be sure to check out Turbo Kid on Netflix. If you grew up in the ’80s and/or you enjoyed Far Cry: Blood Dragon (which is a similarly hilarious but loving homage to the more ridiculous side of ’80s popular media), you will very much appreciate what it has to offer.

2383: Fencing with Fairies

0383_001

Doubtless I’ll be writing about this in more detail at some point in the near future over on MoeGamer, but while it’s still new and fresh I thought I’d give some initial impressions on Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force, Compile Heart’s latest PS4 release.

FFF:ADF, as I will refer to it hereafter, is a Neptunia Re;Birth-style reimagining of the PlayStation 3 game Fairy Fencer F. It includes the whole story of the original game, updated and expanded with all-new mechanics, plus a whole bunch of brand new content as well, making for what looks to be an absolutely sprawling mammoth of a JRPG that I’m very much looking forward to sinking my teeth into.

For the uninitiated, FFF:ADF casts you in the role of Fang, a lazy asshole who we’re introduced to as he’s been locked in prison for stealing bread. Three days earlier, it transpires, Fang pulled a legendary sword known as a Fury out of the ground, and thus found his fate inextricably intertwined with the adorably cute but rather headstrong fairy Eryn. Fang, wanting nothing more than a good meal and a warm bed, finds himself rather hastily recruited into a quest to find all 100 other Furies scattered around the world and use the power of the Fairies within to wake up the Goddess and prevent some sort of horrible catastrophe from occurring.

FFF:ADF follows Compile Heart’s usual RPG formula fairly closely. Town scenes are menu-based and allow you to visit a number of different locations to purchase and sell items or just chat with NPCs. As you progress through the game, more facilities become available in town.

When you leave town, you’ll likely be entering one of the game’s dungeons, which are filled with enemies you can see wandering around the map, and perhaps an event and/or a boss fight to complete.

Striking an enemy with your weapon while you’re in the field — a challenge made significantly easier than in the Neptunia series by the simple addition of a visual and auditory cue when you’re in range to connect a hit — allows you to get the jump on an enemy; mistiming it or letting an enemy run into your back, conversely, lets them ambush you.

Combat initially appears similar to the Neptunia series but there’s a few twists on the basic formula. For starters, characters only begin with a basic attack rather than a multi-hit combo. Multi-hit combos can be unlocked later — and they include fighting game-style techniques such as launching and juggling enemies — but initially the bulk of your damage will probably come from your special skills, which are further subdivided into weapon skills and magic spells.

The thing that’s looking most interesting about FFF:ADF at this early stage is its progression system. Whereas Neptunia’s character progression was completely linear — though once you unlocked abilities you could customise your characters to a minor degree, and Megadimension Neptunia made more of this by making different weapons capable of different combos — in FFF:ADF you earn WP (“Weapon Points”) through combat, which can then be spent on unlocking abilities, buffing stats and activating passive skills. In practice, there’s probably a “right” order to unlock things in — and if previous Compile Heart RPGs are anything to go by, you’ll probably unlock everything by the time you’re through — but it’s nice to at least feel like you have some options.

Other cool features include a battle system that allows up to six party members at a time, which will hopefully make for some interesting encounters later in the game — I only have two characters at present! Neptunia’s Challenge system is back, too, providing you with useful stat boosts in exchange for completing various tasks.

It’s early days yet, but FFF:ADF looks like Compile Heart’s most polished title to date; there’s none of the weird screen tearing from Omega Quintet and, so far, none of the frame drops of Megadimension Neptunia, and the 2D art (courtesy of Neptunia artist Tsunako) is as gorgeous as ever.

I’m looking forward to seeing what this game has to offer; everything I’ve heard from people who have already played it makes me feel like it’s going to be a really solid JRPG, and I’m excited to see what other gameplay features I’ll be fiddling around with as I progress further.

2382: A Tease

0382_001

Since I’ve just spent a bit of time painstakingly stitching together the various screens that make up the maps for one of my as-yet unrevealed game’s “worlds”, I thought I’d take the opportunity to tease said game a little by sharing said stitch.

Here we go, then:

This isn’t the complete map as yet, though most of the south to southeasterly portions are now done. There’s a fair bit to do in the north and the west of the map, and then I can finally start making some events to go on it. And building dungeons! Fun times ahead.

I decided early on to make the game non-scrolling and instead move screen to screen in a somewhat old-school fashion. This has proven to mostly be beneficial to my overall efforts of putting things together, because it means I can tackle it in small chunks rather than being overwhelmed by the prospect of creating an interesting scrolling map. It’s also been a challenge, however, to ensure that the player can’t wander off the side of one screen and find themselves on the next embedded in a wall. Fortunately, the very act of stitching the map above together has helped me to spot any such glaring errors and fix them easily.

To design this map, I did a simple old-school adventure game-style map on paper first, using a square for each screen or “room” and lines to indicate connections between rooms. Then I numbered each of the boxes, since RPG Maker numbers the maps you create, and the plugin I’m using for automatic transitions when you walk off the side of a screen is dependent on these numbers, before finally tackling it a bit at a time. In order to finish this “world” I’ll need to get up to map number 125; as of the stitch above, I’ve reached 84, so things are flowing along quite nicely so far.

I had a rough concept in mind for the overall map when I started, though it’s evolved a bit as I’ve been putting it together. I’m trying to give things a vaguely realistic scale rather than the skewed, exaggerated scale seen in RPGs with a “world map” screen; to put it another way, it’s more a Zelda approach to an overworld than a Final Fantasy, though the gameplay uses a separate turn-based battle screen rather than Zelda’s action RPG-esque combat.

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, this is just one of several worlds players will visit in the game. Each world is going to have a slightly different style of play about it: this one has the aforementioned Zelda-style overworld with discrete dungeons to complete; another is going to be a Resident Evil-inspired haunted mansion kind of affair with plenty of puzzles; a third will be a more linear sci-fi world; a fourth will place emphasis on character interactions and narrative rather than combat; and the final world, which you’ll only be able to enter once the previous four have been completed… well, that’s a secret!

As a great man once said, please look forward to it.

2381: Awareness is Half the Battle

0381_001

Remember a few days ago I wrote about my own particular take on “creative block”?

Turns out the simple act of explicitly acknowledging the fact I’m aware of this issue with my own attention span has helped me to do something about it.

In the times when I’ve been working on my RPG Maker MV project, I’ve been considerably more productive than I have been in the past, with far less staring into space and far more in the way of map-making. The current map count for the project now stands at 72, which means I’m well over halfway to assembling the first of the five “worlds” in the game, which is also likely to be the most complex and largest, and so a good idea to get out of the way first. (I know I’m well over halfway because I’ve mapped out what I want the final overall map to look like on paper, and numbered each of the individual “rooms”.)

I’ve also found this awareness to be very helpful when doing actual work rather than just pissing around with RPG Maker. I’ve finally had some freelance work start flowing in again, and I’ve been managing to sit down and concentrate on it enough to get it done efficiently and in plenty of time to submit for the deadline without having to do a last-minute rush on everything. (Even when I did a last-minute rush, I always got stuff in on time, mind you; it was just rather more stressful than it really needed to be.)

Whether this new way of thinking will stick around — and, for that matter, if it’s anything to do with the new anti-anxiety drugs I’m on, which have just about stopped making me feel perpetually stoned now, thankfully — remains to be seen, but I’m going to take full advantage of it while it’s here, and maybe even get a creative project or two actually finished. That’d be something, eh?

Incidentally, I’m not quite ready to reveal the full extent of my RPG Maker MV project as yet, since its very nature is something I’d like to keep as a bit of a surprise for some of my friends. Over the coming weeks as things start to come together, though, you can expect a few teasers of what I’ve been up to. I will, however, say up front that I’ve mostly been using RPG Maker MV’s stock art resources with it (albeit with some lovely lighting effects courtesy of a wonderful plugin), because that always seems to be something that people whinge about with RPG Maker projects, even those just done for “fun” like this one. I am hoping, however, that the story, the writing, the characters and the humour in it will more than make up for my own lack of artistic talent and consequent reliance on provided art resources.

There’s also going to be some great music in it; some of it stock RPG Maker tracks (RPG Maker MV’s provided music is seriously way too good not to include at least some of it!) and some provided by members of the RPG Maker community. If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I might even compose some of my own work for it, but let’s take things one step at a time, shall we…?

2380: Gal*Gun: Deeper Than You Think

0380_001

Lightgun and rail shooters generally aren’t regarded as particularly deep and meaningful experiences for the most part, and this is fine; after all, sometimes all you want to do is hold a plastic gun in your hand (or aim a crosshair) and blow seven shades of shit out of everything walking your way.

Sometimes, though, these games go the extra mile and provide a surprising amount of depth beneath the facade of mindless blasting. Nintendo’s Star Fox series has been a good example of this in the rail shooter genre since Star Fox 64, with its complex scoring and medals system, and Gal*Gun: Double Peace does something similar for the (lightgun-less) lightgun shooter genre. Which may surprise you.

Gal*Gun’s wrapper mechanics are that of a dating sim — a proper, full-on, stats-based one like True Love rather than the games that get called “dating sims” but are actually just visual novels with romantic themes. The protagonist has statistics determining his intelligence, athleticism, fashion style and lewdness, and these can be adjusted over the course of a playthrough either by taking girls into the “Doki Doki Field” and poking them until they emit some extremely suggestive moans, or by purchasing items between stages. The difference between the two approaches is that while purchasing items allows you to choose the stats you raise (or lower, if you need to) so long as you have the ability to pay for it, taking girls into the Doki Doki Field generally affects more than one stat at a time to a more significant degree, and each and every one of the girls in the game has a different impact on your stats. In other words, if you’re trying to form a particular “build” — something that becomes particularly important in the more “freeform” mode that unlocks after you’ve beaten the main story-based routes — you’d better learn which girls are most useful for your purposes.

The stats are relevant in a couple of instances. Firstly, in the story-based routes, your stats need to be at a particular level in order to choose certain dialogue options. For example, if your lewdness level is too low, you are unable to make lecherous comments towards the heroines, which is probably for the best. Secondly, in the freeform mode, in order to pursue a particular girl, you’ll need your stats to be in specific regions in order to be the type of guy they want you to be. I haven’t got far enough to try out this mode yet, but it presents an interesting twist on the formula; in the story-based routes, you can pretty much get away with just raising all your stats as high as possible in order to have the maximum available options in dialogue.

As for the story-based routes’ structure, they have a Good End and a True End, with the latter being dependent on a combination of your overall score for the playthrough being high enough and your affection rating with the heroine being high enough by the time you reach the final chapter. The latter is mostly a case of saying the right things in dialogue sequences, but it’s also affected by the “event” levels where you’re doing something other than just blasting incoming girls.

The scoring system, meanwhile, has a certain degree of depth to it, too. Most of your points come from fending off the girls who relentlessly charge towards the protagonist, but just blindly blasting away won’t get you the best scores. No, in order to score highly, you need to achieve “Ecstasy Shots”, which allow you to one-hit eliminate a girl by hitting her in a weak point. These are helpfully indicated when you move your crosshair over the girl by a piece of Japanese onomatopoeia appearing, though you can also learn where each girl’s weak point is over time, too. There are four main weak areas: red popups indicate you should hit them in the head, orange means the neck, yellow means the torso and pink means the legs.

Each time you get an Ecstasy Shot, your combo counter increases by one. Your combo is broken if you take damage or eliminate a girl “normally” without performing an Ecstasy Shot. There’s also an additional Quick Bonus for eliminating girls in rapid succession.

The Ecstasy Shot system makes the shooting a lot slower and methodical than the typical franticness of regular lightgun shooters, and there are a couple of other techniques you can use to tip the scales in your advantage, too. Firstly, shooting a girl anywhere but her weak spot without eliminating her stuns her for a moment, preventing her from doing her attack animation briefly. Secondly, holding down the fire button allows you to do a “Charged Shot”, which covers a wider area and can likewise stun enemies briefly. Thirdly, taking one or more girls into the Doki Doki Field and poking them until not-an-orgasm-honest causes a smart bomb effect to go off, taking out all girls in the vicinity as if you’d Ecstasy Shotted them. These techniques are particularly helpful — even essential — during the sequences where enemies come at you from all sides and you have to manually turn to face several different directions to fend them off as they approach.

As well as the points earned through eliminating enemies in each level — not all of whom charge at you, so some need to be quickly taken out as they wander past during transitions between “shooting gallery” areas — there are also three bonuses at the end of each level for clear time (the quicker the better), amount of damage taken and accuracy, ranked between one and five stars, with five stars providing significantly more points than anything below. Clear Time is a particularly variable one, as many of the levels offer branching routes, with some being significantly quicker than others, but perhaps counterbalancing this with fewer enemies to chain Ecstasy Shots off.

As well as clearing the various story routes and attaining high scores, there are loads of hidden collectibles to uncover throughout the game. Some of these are hinted at by the “requests” you receive on your phone between levels, and largely involve finding either hidden objects or characters and shooting or staring at them, depending on what the request was. Others are simply hidden objects and provide anything from point bonuses to new costumes — the game’s Dressing Room mode allows you to customise each and every character in the entire game to your own personal preferences (including undies), though disappointingly, the PS4’s Share facility is blocked while you are using this, meaning you can’t take pictures of your own personal take on the cast.

Alongside the hidden objects are student and teacher handbooks hidden in plain sight around the levels; shooting these unlocks parts of each character’s profile, and you can complete said profile by taking each character’s bust, waist and hips measurements by using the “zoom” function (also used to locate hidden objects by seeing through otherwise opaque scenery such as locker doors) and staring at them in the appropriate region before you blast them into euphoria.

On top of all that, there’s at least one hidden ending that you can achieve by fulfilling a particular set of conditions (they’re fairly obvious, but I wasn’t expecting them to actually lead to a full-on ending) and a Score Attack mode that allows you to play either a whole story route or an individual stage and record your best score and highest combo.

So yes. There’s a lot to this game. It’s no Time Crisis, in other words, which, while it was great, pretty much played all its cards within twenty minutes if you were the slightest bit skilled with a lightgun. Gal*Gun, meanwhile, looks set to keep me busy for a very long time indeed.

2379: Two Cats

0379_001

After the sad departure of Clover a little while back, it wasn’t long before Andie and I decided that it was far too quiet in the house without a pet around. It was surprising quite how much “presence” Clover and her predecessors had had in the house, and indeed it felt rather empty without her.

So it was that we headed off to the Stubbington Ark, a local RSPCA-run animal shelter, where we went “just for a look” at the cats they had up for adoption.

Naturally, we immediately found not one but two cats that we wanted to take home with us, and so we decided to set things in motion sooner rather than later. A couple of days later, a representative from the RSPCA was sniffing around our house to make sure we weren’t some sort of cat-killing psychopaths, and thankfully we got the all-clear; then yesterday, we got to pick up our new friends and listen to them howling at us from inside the cat carrier while we drove them home.

This is Ruby:

ruby

And this is Meg, which we’ve decided is actually short for Megatron. (If we were able to name our own cats, we were going to call them Patrick Stewart and Megatron, but Ruby and Meg both already had names, so Meg will just have to deal with being an effeminate Megatron on occasion.)

meg

They’ve both settled in very well, very quickly. The spare room is now “their” room, so far as they’re concerned, and they’re already finding the best places to sit and be in the way as much as possible.

We also had the inevitable “new pet scare” on the very first day we had them; Meg managed to jump out of a window that was only open a crack, and went for a little explore outside. Thankfully, she came back of her own accord after a few minutes, and we’re now sweltering in a house with no open windows while they get fully accustomed to their new home. It’s a rite of passage with every new pet that something like that has to happen, it seems; when we got Lucy rat she decided to pretend to be dead ten minutes after we got her home, which was mildly upsetting (though in retrospect it was probably to try and get Lara off her back, because Lara was fussing over her to a ridiculous degree); and pretty much all of the other rats managed to escape their cage quite early in their time with us and hide under various items of furniture.

So yes. We now have cats. Friendly cats. If you visit us, be prepared for that!

2378: People Ruin Everything: FFXIV Edition

0378_001

I quit Final Fantasy XIV today.

I am sad about this. Really, genuinely sad. The game has been an important part of my life for quite some time now, and will always be special to me — hell, it’s where I proposed to my wife.

But I think I’m gone for good this time. I’ve just had enough.

Not of the game, mind you; the game itself remains one of my favourites, with an enjoyably rhythmic combat system, plenty of distinction between classes and some truly memorable encounters — not to mention an incredible soundtrack and a great story.

No, I’ve had enough of the people who infest it.

The community’s slide into unpleasantness has been a gradual but noticeable process. Whereas I described FFXIV’s player base in my USgamer review (circa 2.0-era A Realm Reborn) as one of the most helpful, supportive and friendly communities in gaming, these days I regrettably can’t say the same — though I find myself pondering whether or not it’s because at the time I wrote that review, I’d only been playing endgame content for a short period.

Let me talk a bit about the incident that drove me over the edge today, then I’ll talk a bit in more general terms about what I feel has gone wrong.

A short while back — like, earlier this week — FFXIV introduced a new type of content called Deep Dungeon. This was a completely new way to play the game, and involved descending into a 50-floor dungeon with up to three companions and clearing it out, one randomly generated floor at a time. The rewards on offer include tokens called “potsherds”, which can be exchanged for various valuable items, and if you fully upgrade the weapon and armour you use in the Deep Dungeon — these are separate from those which you use in the main game — you get a high-level weapon for a level 60 character that is not quite the very best in the game, but certainly very respectable and suitable for all levels of content.

Upgrading the weapon and armour requires that you find silver treasure chests in the Deep Dungeon. Opening one of these will do one of three things: upgrade your weapon, upgrade your armour or explode, dealing damage to you and anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. The deeper you go into the dungeon, the more likely it seems you are to come across trapped chests, and your weapon’s upgrade level is also capped by your character’s level within the deep dungeon — also measured independently of progress in the main game. To put it another way: your weapon and armour can go up to level +30, and in order to upgrade them to this level your character must reach level 60 in the Deep Dungeon, though thankfully levelling up is considerably quicker than in the main game.

After completing all 50 floors once, it’s likely that your weapon and armour will be around the +10 to +15 mark, depending on how lucky you’ve been. This means you then have to challenge the dungeon again from floor 1 but with your upgraded gear, hoping you’ll get luckier on the deeper floors this time. As incentive to run it again, however, every 10 floors gives you a generous shot of gil as well as Allagan Tomestones of Poetics, Esoterics and Lore, all of which are used to purchase the best level 50 or 60 gear available, so it’s not as if running the upper floors again is a useless waste of time. Alternatively, if you enter the Deep Dungeon on a class you don’t yet have to level 60 in the main game, completing 10 floors awards you with a large chunk of XP for your character’s level in the main game, so it’s also a good means of levelling alternative classes.

You may have surmised from that description that this structure puts a lot of pressure on Floors 41-50 to get players up to the magical +30/+30 needed to take away a shiny new weapon into the main game. And indeed, this is where the problems arise, with players doing everything from skipping fights with monsters that they don’t feel the party “needs” to fight (despite some players not having reached level 60 at this point, and some enemies dropping treasure chests) to outright Vote Abandon-ing the whole dungeon if they don’t feel they got “enough” silver chests in the first couple of floors.

I ran into one of these people today: a white mage, which is to say, a healer, and so an important, useful part of any group. Deep Dungeon, unlike everything else in the game, doesn’t matchmake you into a party made up of one tank, one healer and two DPS, so it’s entirely possible you’ll find yourself running in a group with no healer at times, and as such having a healer in your group is something to be celebrated.

Unless it was this guy. Right from the very start of Floor 41, he ran off in completely the opposite direction to the rest of the party, leaving the remaining three of us to fight off monsters and get afflicted with various status effects that could have easily been cleansed if he had been there. But no; he had places to be, apparently, and finding those silver chests was more important than actually helping the other three people in there.

“Will you PLEASE stop running off?” piped up one of my companions halfway through Floor 42, obviously getting as impatient as I was with this git’s shenanigans.

“I’m skipping mobs,” replied our friend.

I then pointed out that not everyone in our party was level 60 yet — one was 56, one was 58 — and thus it would be in everyone’s interest to kill as many monsters as possible, particularly as it’s also necessary to kill a certain number to open the exit to the next floor anyway. He then complained about us being “slow” and “inefficient”, and took great umbrage at several of us accusing him of “speedrunning”.

Speedrunning is a bit of an issue in Final Fantasy XIV as a whole, particularly in dungeons, most of which are tuned more to the “casual” end of the difficulty spectrum, but nonetheless remain a good source of income for those valuable Tomestones. With a well-geared, confident party that knows what it is doing, most dungeons can be cleared in about 10 minutes or so, but this relies on everyone being both well-geared and confident in the speedrunning process, which usually involves the tank pulling as many enemies as possible at the same time, the healer working overtime to keep their HP topped up and the DPS doing area-effect attacks as much as possible.

It’s quick, sure. It’s also boring, because more often than not fighting like this means that you use maybe two or three of your complete suite of abilities, and fighting the monsters just becomes a case of standing in place hitting the same buttons over and over for ten minutes. Not interesting, and certainly not doing justice to the impressive encounters the Final Fantasy XIV team have created throughout the game. But no, at some point between 2.0 and 3.35, where we are now, someone somewhere decided that the de facto way to run dungeons was as quickly — sorry, “efficiently” — as possible, and woe betide anyone who slows it down for any reason, even if, say, the tank or healer say they don’t feel confident or geared enough to do it.

Now, the thing with Deep Dungeon is that speedrunning is largely pointless, because monsters respawn, everyone needs to level up, you need to kill a certain number of monsters to open the exit to the next floor and, as with any good role-playing game, if you split the party you’re probably asking for a bad time. With the levels being randomly generated, too, there’s no set route through each floor, either, so you can’t even work out a route that lets you avoid certain encounters as in certain fixed dungeons in the game, so it’s really more trouble than it’s worth.

That didn’t stop this obnoxious White Mage from arguing his case increasingly aggressively though, eventually descending to insults about his perception of the rest of the party’s skill levels. Hilariously, he even had a go at me on the grounds that I “wouldn’t last five minutes in Expert Roulette” (the current two highest difficulty level 60 dungeons, neither of which are very tough) — I chose not to engage with him by explaining that actually, I had been playing the game since its open beta and as such knew it pretty fucking well by this point. Instead, I just voted to dismiss him from the party; my companions silently agreed, and thankfully he was booted shortly afterwards, to be replaced by a much friendlier person who unfortunately wasn’t a healer.

This White Mage’s attitude is representative of a considerable proportion of Final Fantasy XIV’s player base as it stands today: the game, for these people, is about the relentless pursuit of “efficiency” so that they can acquire all the best gear, get all the achievements — achieve whatever they want to achieve, in other words — as quickly as possible then, in all likelihood, go on the official forums and Reddit to complain that three months is too long between content patches and that there’s “nothing to do”, despite smaller patches with additional features (such as Deep Dungeon, which was a significant addition) being added on a monthly basis.

I also saw this among a number of active Final Fantasy XIV players I used to follow on Twitter. There was a marked shift in their attitude over time; one person in particular that I started following as a result of attending an in-game “funeral” for a player who had sadly passed away in real life began as a very pleasant person to talk about the game with. But gradually over time he started caring more and more about parser figures — a parser being an external program you can run to see how much damage per second (DPS) everyone in the party is doing, a common means of harassing other players for “not pulling their weight” and technically against the game’s Terms of Service, though I don’t know of anyone who has been punished for it. He’d complain about parties he’d come across in Duty Finder; he’d post images of the parser figures; he’d shame people for not playing “well enough” or being “lazy”. That relentless pursuit of “efficiency”; your DPS must be this high to ride.

I just can’t stand it any more. It’s ruined the game for me. Dungeons that I used to love running, like A Realm Reborn’s final storyline dungeons Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium, lose all their drama by people skipping all cutscenes — and yelling at people who don’t — and speedrunning their way through as quickly as possible, even if someone in the group hasn’t seen this part of the story before. (Not coincidentally, those two dungeons were also the last to have lengthy cutscenes in the middle of the dungeon run.) If I decide I want a leisurely run through a dungeon rather than a stressful but boring speedrun, I get yelled at. If someone in the party makes a mistake and there’s a single death, everyone gets yelled at. And apparently not going fast enough in Deep Dungeon is now a cardinal sin, too.

Fuck all that. Fuck everyone who has ruined one of my favourite games of the last few years. And fuck this shitty behaviour being considered “normal” in all games, not just Final Fantasy XIV — indeed, I’m under no illusions, and am well aware that this sort of thing is a problem in all MMOs.

I just thought Final Fantasy XIV’s community was better than that. It certainly was once — at least, I think it was. But no longer. The buildup of this crappy behaviour and how not-fun this makes the game for me has led me to both cancel my subscription and uninstall the game completely for the first time ever since open beta. And I doubt I’m the only one who feels this way.

2377: Creative Block

0377_001

I don’t tend to suffer from creative block in the traditional sense: there’s never any shortage of interesting ideas rattling around inside my head (particularly while I adjust to my new anti-anxiety medication and consequently am wandering around in a perpetually stoned haze) — it’s just actually pushing forward and making them tangible in some form that I sometimes struggle with.

I’ll explain using RPG Maker as an example, but this applies to all manner of creative pursuits: music composition, writing, drawing and anything else I feel I might be able to turn my hand to on a particular day.

I’ll sit down to spend some time with RPG Maker, with something in mind that I want to achieve. In the case of my current project, I’ve even gone so far as to hand-draw some grid-based maps for the worlds in the game — pretty much essential for the structure I have in mind for at least two of the worlds players will be exploring, due to their open-ish nature. In other words, I have a clearly defined long-term goal to achieve: presently, it’s assembling all the necessary screen-size maps and ensuring all transitions are in place for the world of “Lucidia”, which is one of the four locales players will be exploring in the course of my game. I decided to assemble all the exterior maps before I even start thinking about putting obstacles, game structure, dungeons and events in place. Sensible, I think.

Anyway. When I sit down to do some mapping, I might put together a complete, nice looking map, then stare at it for a good ten minutes or so while I think about what the next screen will look like. Then I might playtest my game, even though I’ve already playtested it lots of times already, just to get the satisfaction of wandering back and forth between the new screen and existing screens. Then I’ll probably stare at it for a good few minutes, and only when I can break through this barrier of daydreaming what comes next will I actually produce the next map.

Having an awareness of this is somewhat infuriating, because it means it takes several times longer to achieve the things I want to do than it really “should” if I focus and knuckle down to it. That said, since becoming particularly aware of this trait over the last few days — I’ve always had a vague awareness of it, but over the last few days I’ve been noticing it particularly keenly for some reason — I’ve noticed my overall productivity on the project has increased quite a bit. I’ve so far assembled nearly a third of the overall map for Lucidia — a total of 53 separate screens so far, including the linear “prologue” chapter — and am feeling a lot more confident than I normally do with a creative project of this type that I might actually finish it, or at least the part I’m currently working on, at some point.

To put it another way, my own personal type of creative block is not for a want of inspiration; rather, it’s a matter of being overloaded with too much inspiration at once, and wanting to do everything all at the same time, eventually ending up doing nothing at all other than staring into space thinking “well, this should probably go like this…”

In this sense, this blog has proven to be an invaluable tool to help train myself in that I can normally churn out a whole post in one go without stopping or getting distracted in the middle. Normally. There may be a brief period of apparent brain-death while I decide on a particular topic for the day’s post, but generally speaking once I get going on a post, it flows pretty freely until I reach the end of it.

And here’s the end of it right now. I’m going to go and make some maps now. Honest.

2376: Gal*Gun: Gloriously Stupid

0376_001

Gal*Gun: Double Peace came out today, and my preorder from a while back arrived right on time. The limited edition comes in an absolutely enormous box thanks to the nice quality wallscroll in there.

But let’s talk about the game!

Gal*Gun, as I shall refer to it from hereon, is a peculiar affair that is part dating sim and part lightgun-style shooter. The story concerns our protagonist inadvertently being hit with a fully charged angel’s bullet that is 32 times the normal strength of a Cupid’s arrow, which means that for the next 24 hours, he will be completely and utterly irresistible to women. There’s a catch, however: if he fails to find his true love during this period of unprecedented popularity, he will remain alone for the rest of his life. Thus begins a rather peculiar adventure.

Gal*Gun is split into a number of different components when playing through its Story mode. Firstly, there are straightforward visual novel-style sections with occasional choices, some of which are locked off if your stats are too low or too high. Secondly, there’s an “intermission” between the action stages where you can visit the school shop to purchase items that either buff up your character’s base stats and personality traits or provide protection against various types of attacks. Thirdly, there are the rail shooter segments, which also incorporate “Doki Doki Mode”. And finally, there are minigames corresponding with various events.

The visual novel sections see you pursuing one of several different love interests, with the aim being to get their affection rating as high as possible by the end of the game. You’re given auditory cues when you make a choice as to whether or not you picked the correct choice to increase their affection rating, allowing you to make better choices on a subsequent playthrough. The presentation uses a combination of polygonal animated characters for most of the dialogue, and hand-drawn event pictures for noteworthy things happening. The 2D art is quite a lot more detailed than the 3D models, but the 3D models are animated nicely and presented in an attractive cel-shaded style.

During the intermission sequences, as well as purchasing various items from the shop, you can also read a virtual message board, on which the various characters in the game post about problems they’ve been having or things they’ve lost. These exchanges contain cryptic clues for hidden items you need to look out for in the coming action stage, as well as whether these hidden things are something you need to actually shoot or just stare at until they register. Sometimes you get a choice of stages to proceed onward to, and certain requests only apply to certain locations, so if you’re interested in pursuing a particular girl, you need to pay careful attention to her messages.

The action stages unfold in fairly standard lightgun fashion, with a few twists. Firstly, you’re not actually killing anyone; you’re fending them off with a “Pheromone Shot” until they collapse from “euphoria”. Different girls have different weak spots that allow you to one-shot eliminate them, and doing so is called an “Ecstasy Shot”. You can also zoom in while playing the action sequences, and this has several uses: firstly, it allows for more accurate (albeit slower) aiming; secondly, it allows you to see hidden things; thirdly, it allows you to see through things, including tree leaves, items of furniture and, of course, clothing. Ogling a girl for long enough also allows you to determine what her measurements are, which are subsequently recorded in the in-game database.

As you progress, the challenge escalates somewhat. Initially, the girls run towards you and “attack” you with love letters, hugs and kisses, but later in the game as the plot gets underway, you start coming across sadistic girls who have been afflicted by a demon’s curse; these rather aggressive young ladies like to slap, punch and step on you, and the only way to snap them out of it is to find the hidden “mini-demon” floating around them, then shoot it before eliminating them in the usual manner.

Success in the action phases increases a meter in the upper corner of the screen; when this is at 1 or higher, you can enter Doki Doki Mode and bring as many girls as the meter indicates. In Doki Doki Mode, the girl(s) are presented posing provocatively, and you’re tasked with finding where they like to be poked and rubbed to increase an affection meter at the side of the screen. The main use of this mode is to affect your stats, since each and every girl affects one or more stats in different ways. There’s a secondary benefit, though: successfully completing a Doki Doki sequence unleashes a “bomb” when you return to the action phase, making it a good way to clear a particularly stubborn crowd.

Finally, the event sequences occur when the protagonist and a girl find themselves in a somewhat awkward situation; for example, early in one of the routes, the hero’s love interest finds herself stuck in a window as she tried to escape being locked in the PE equipment closet. In order to free her, you have to find and shoot various hidden targets over her body, and in some cases do motions on the touchpad, to increase her “Satisfaction” level. Once this phase is completed, you then have a particular action to complete as many times as possible in a short time limit, then you repeat the process twice.

At the end of each section of the game, your score is tallied up and you are graded on your total progress. You’re also awarded Angel Feathers to purchase items from the store in the intermission menu.

There are several story routes, an absolute shit-ton of collectibles and a customisation system for all the characters in the game. There’s also a score attack mode that can be played independently of the main story mode.

Gal*Gun is gloriously, deliciously stupid. It knows exactly what it is, and isn’t trying to be intelligent or clever about it whatsoever. It’s colourful, high-energy, joyful fun with a filthy sense of humour, and yet it somehow manages to come across as charming rather than sleazy. The story is surprisingly enjoyable and the characters are fun; I’m looking forward to seeing what hidden depths this game offers! Failing that, just a bit of looking at pantsu will do me nicely.

2375: Mommy Issues

0375_001

Overwatch has finally seen the release of its first new hero since launch, in the form of Ana, a new Support character and mother of existing character Pharah.

Ana is an interesting concept for a support character because she’s based at least partly around sniping, which in Overwatch terms has traditionally been an approach reserved for Defender-type heroes. As a Support character, however, Ana’s role is actually surprisingly well-rounded, comprising both offensive and defensive capabilities and possessing an overall feel quite unlike any of the other heroes on the roster.

Ana’s basic ability is a sniper rifle that shoots bolts that either heal allies they hit or damage enemies. In both cases, the healing or damage process isn’t immediate — it takes a second or two for the value to affect the character’s health, though it’s not quite a long-duration damage or heal over time either.

What this essentially means is that Ana is able to heal people from a much greater distance than any of the other Support characters, though the tradeoff in this case is that you have to be reasonably accurate in order to register a hit on the person you’re trying to heal. You don’t have to be absolutely pinpoint accurate, but your reticle still needs to be roughly in the right area to register a hit, unlike Mercy or Lucio, who lock on to nearby targets and affect all targets around themselves respectively.

Ana’s other abilities throw some interesting twists into the mix. Her “E” move allows her to throw a grenade that provides an immediate burst of healing to anyone caught in the blast, along with a temporary buff to healing from all sources while it’s active. Like her gun, this grenade also has a negative impact on enemy characters, in this case dealing some damage to them and completely preventing them from being healed for a few seconds.

Her Left-Shift ability, meanwhile, is something of a game-changer: it’s a dart, shot out from her sidearm, that puts anyone it hits to sleep, causing them to collapse to the floor and be completely immobile for a few seconds. This is an absolute godsend against characters who can be difficult to push through such as Bastion, since it allows you to take the pressure off for a moment — just long enough to sneak in and finish the job. It’s also good for interrupting powerful Ultimate abilities from characters such as Reaper and Pharah.

All in all, Ana seems to be a strong addition to the roster. Her healing capabilities aren’t up to Mercy and Lucio’s standards, largely due to the accuracy requirement, but they’re solid enough, but her real benefit is the addition of some solid offensive skills. Her main weakness is in her mobility; unlike the two previous sniper characters Hanzo and Widowmaker, Ana has no means of easily getting up to higher ground, and so must either do her work from ground level or find more roundabout means of getting to good vantage points.