2531: Planning to Unplug

After some discussion with my friend Chris recently — partly inspired by my recent post on mobile phone apathy — I’ve made the not particularly difficult decision to try and “unplug” as much as possible from the general noise of the Internet in 2017.

And I’m talking about more than just stepping away from Twitter and Facebook like I have done a few times in the past, as positive as those experiences turned out to be for me. I’m talking about a pretty thorough purge, and a return to a simpler, quieter life with fewer external stressors.

You see, the allure of the Internet and its ability to connect people from all over the world has kind of worn off somewhat for me. The last few years have demonstrated that there are a significant number of people out there who are more interested in conflict, oneupmanship and narcissism than actual meaningful interaction. The fall from grace of the games press — and many game journalists’ pretty much unveiled hatred of their audiences — is just one of many examples of this, but the overall negativity that infuses what feels like the vast majority of online communications these days is just proving to be more trouble than it’s worth.

I don’t need that. It’s not adding anything to my life — nothing good, anyway — so, I figure, why continue to put up with it? There’s no need to.

As such, starting on New Year’s Day, I’m going to begin a process of unplugging as much as I possibly can. Twitter and Facebook are both going completely, since the annoyance both of those bring to my life far outweighs the benefits of both of them. More significantly, I’m planning on ditching the smartphone age in favour of an older, simpler phone that doesn’t bug me every five minutes with updates and notifications. At this point, I’m strongly considering picking up a second-hand N-Gage I’ve seen on Amazon, since that has the added benefit of being an underappreciated and increasingly rare gaming platform as well as a phone I very much enjoyed using when I originally had one.

I’m also going to draw my time with this blog to a close. I’m satisfied with what I’ve achieved here since I started, but the time has come to move on. I’m not going to give up regular writing, mind you; I’m still going to post weekly articles over on MoeGamer, since those have a clear focus, and I’m also intending to start a weekly TinyLetter as a more private, more personal substitute for my daily updates here. I’ll post details on how to sign up for that towards the end of the year, so those of you who want to continue to follow what I’m up to can do so.

I’ll be keeping more personal means of communication open. My email address and Google Hangouts accounts will still be active, as will my gaming accounts on Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. But the shouting into the void that is public social media will, hopefully, become a thing of the past. It’s no longer enjoyable, useful or fun, so I have no need for it.

I’m not going to put my personal email, Google Hangouts and gaming account addresses in this post for obvious reasons, but if you are interested in staying in touch via any of these means, please feel free to drop me a line via my Contact page explaining who you are and how you know me. If we’ve chatted before in the past, great, no problem; if we’ve never spoken before, however, please do include a bit about yourself in your message.

That’s the plan, then. And I anticipate that it will lead to a happier, more peaceful and less stressful 2017 for me. At least I hope it does, anyway!

2530: Pokémon’s World of Colour and Joy

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One of the things I tend to find pretty consistently appealing about the types of RPGs I enjoy playing is the fact that they’re typically set in rather colourful places, even if the stories told in those places sometimes veer into dark territory.

It occurred to me during conversation with my friend Chris last night that this is one of the things that I’m finding particularly enjoyable about Pokémon Moon, too. Except in Pokémon’s case, it arguably goes a little further: everything about that game is designed to make the player feel like they’re special, like they’re valued as a human being and like they’re loved.

Although the game has its antagonists — mostly the entertainingly incompetent Team Skull this time around, who are channelling the attitudes of youths desperately trying to be “gangsta” — the emphasis is not on any great conflict. Instead, it’s on your protagonist’s journey across the islands of Alola, gathering Pokémon and growing in strength and confidence as a trainer.

The way the characters interact with your protagonist is endearing and warm. You’re welcomed to the game as soon as you start, and in the early stages it feels like the game is “holding your hand” but not in an obnoxious way. After a certain point, it feels like it shakes you by the hand and invites you to explore more freely, but always wants you to know that “safety” is never far away. Your achievements are recognised and celebrated, and even your Pokémon act in ways that emphasise your bond with them — “[name] endured the hit so you wouldn’t be sad!” is the one that tugs at the heartstrings the most as you see them cling on to consciousness at 1HP after taking a particularly heavy blow.

To put all this another way, Pokémon Moon is one of the most endearingly “Nintendo” games I’ve played for a long time. It’s a game that invites all its players — regardless of their actual age — to remember the joy and wonder of being a youngster. It’s a totally inclusive game that has something to appeal to everyone — and best of all, without any sense that it’s either attempting to fulfil a “diversity quota” or frantically virtue signal about how progressive it is. It has cute girls and hunky boys; it has people of all manner of different skin colours; it has cool Pokémon and cute Pokémon; it has an enjoyable story and mechanical depth; and it has this all-encompassing sense that everyone involved with the project simply wanted all the end users, regardless of age, race, gender or any other characteristic that people like to divide themselves up by, to have a really nice time playing it.

At this time of year it’s exactly the sort of thing I needed to play to forget about the cold, dark nights of winter and the increasingly exhausting debacle that is Christmas.

2529: Mobile Phone Apathy

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I’ve always thought of myself as something of a gadget-head, but over the last few years I’ve become increasingly underwhelmed and bored with those most ubiquitous of devices, the mobile phone.

I remember getting my first mobile phone towards the end of my schooldays. It was a big fat Motorola thing with an extendable aerial, and I remember the most exciting thing about it was discovering that I could hold down a button to write lower-case letters in text messages, whereas I’d previously been writing in all-caps like a grandmother learning to use email for the first time. (We were all writing in all-caps like a grandmother learning to use email for the first time at the time.)

Every year or two after that, there was the excitement of The Upgrade. I upgraded from my Motorola to a Nokia 3210, which was exciting because it had Snake on it, and everyone loved Snake, despite it being something that I’d played some 15 years earlier on my old Atari 8-bit computers. Then I upgraded to a Nokia 3330, which had Snake II on it (which was essentially Snake with mildly better graphics). These two phones were pretty similar to one another, though this was also the age that phones were getting smaller rather than bigger, so the 3330 was pleasingly compact after the relatively bulky 3210.

After that, I went for a Sony Ericsson phone that had a colour screen and a camera. Well, I say it had a camera; actually, the camera was a separate unit you had to snap on to the bottom of it which took photos at approximately the size of a postage stamp that weren’t any use to anyone. The colour screen was nice, though.

After that, I got a phone whose make and model I can’t remember, but which I think was actually one of my favourite phones of all time. It had a pretty big screen — in colour again, a reasonable quality camera and, best of all, the ability to record sounds that could subsequently be used for ringtones, message tones, alarm tones and all manner of other things. It was a lot of fun, and an early phone to support Java, too, which meant you could download games for it. And there were some decent games available, too — most notably the excellent puzzle game Lumines, which had previously been something exclusive to PSP owners.

If I remember correctly, my next phone after that was the ill-fated Nokia N-Gage, which I picked up out of interest in its gaming capabilities. I actually ended up liking it as a phone more than a gaming device, since its vertically-oriented screen made a lot of games impractical and tricky to play, but the dedicated directional pad, the way you held it and the big, bright, clear screen made it a very comfortable personal organiser device. Sure, you looked dumb talking on it — it was notorious for its “side-talking” posture, whereby you looked like you were holding a taco up to your ear while talking on it — but I rarely talked on the phone anyway, so this simply wasn’t a big issue for me. It’s actually one of my most fondly remembered phones.

I forget if I had any other phones between the N-Gage and the iPhone that I was given for free while I worked at Apple — I was working retail during the launch of the device — but none spring to mind. The iPhone, meanwhile, was actually a little underwhelming when it first launched; while its bright display and capacitive touchscreen certainly looked lovely, iOS 1.X was severely limited in what you could actually do with it. About the most interesting thing you could do with a first-gen iPhone was browse the “full” Internet rather than only WAP-enabled mobile-specific pages. (Interestingly, with responsive sites, we’ve now actually gone back to having mobile-specific pages, albeit with a lot more functionality than old-school WAP sites.)

The iPhone was a bit of a watershed moment for mobile phones, though, because it’s at that point that devices stopped being quite so different and unique from one another. Each and every iPhone is much like the last — perhaps a little faster, a little bigger, a little clearer, a little more lacking connection ports we’ve previously taken for granted — and each and every Android phone is much like the last too, except, of course, for the ones that function as inadvertent incendiary devices.

I’ve had my HTC One M8 phone for over two years now. I picked it up as an upgrade from my crusty old iPhone 4 because I was bored with iOS and wanted to see what Android was like, and discovered that yes, I liked Android, though it’s just as boring as iOS is. Now, even as I’m eligible for an upgrade to the newest, latest and greatest, I have absolutely no desire to investigate my options whatsoever. The M8 works fine for what I use it for, and I find most new phones virtually indistinguishable from what the M8 offers. Again, they might be a little bit faster or offer a higher resolution screen — although at the size of a mobile phone, there comes a point where resolution becomes completely irrelevant, since individual pixels are too small to distinguish — but they don’t do anything new or exciting in the same way that my pre-smartphone upgrades offered.

Each and every upgrade before the iPhone I had was genuinely thrilling, and something I wanted to show off to people. Each phone was unique from the last, and each brand offered its own particular twist on things. Now, the actual devices themselves are uninteresting and virtually indistinguishable from one another; simply a delivery medium for their operating system of choice. And operating systems aren’t interesting.

I think a big part of my growing cynicism and apathy for this particular side of technology also comes from the fact that the mobile marketplace in general just feels a bit sleazy. Ever since the world was given in-app purchases — something which I knew would be a terrible idea as soon as it was announced — we’ve been subjected to revolting, exploitative free-to-play garbage, ad-infested messes and all manner of other bullshit. Rather than being the cool, exciting gadgets they once were, mobile phones feel increasingly like just another way for advertisers to invade your life and snake oil salesmen to part you with your case — although what part of life isn’t this way these days?

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that I’m in no hurry to upgrade my HTC One M8, and in fact, I’ve considered on more than one occasion actually “downgrading” to a feature phone rather than a smartphone. Maybe I should see how much N-Gages are going for on eBay…

2528: 30 Day Video Game Challenge All in One Day Because Otherwise I Won’t Remember to Do the Rest of It

Every so often, one of those “30-day challenges” does the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and whatever, and while I’m often tempted to participate, I know that a few days in I’ll probably forget all about it.

So to prevent that from happening, I’m going to answer all 30 prompts from the “30 Day Video Game Challenge” — which most people seem to have been doing throughout December, which is nearly over, anyway — in one post because fuck convention, I do what I want because I’m a strong independent woman who don’t need no man.

All right. Let’s begin.

1. Very first video game

Honestly hard to recall, because I grew up with gaming as part of my household. I was born in 1981 and estimate I probably started playing video games around the age of maybe 4 or 5 or so, which would mean my first video game would be one of the hundreds of pirated Atari 8-Bit games that my father and brother had acquired from the local “computer club”.

Let’s go with Star Raiders, even if it wasn’t, because Star Raiders is awesome and naming that as my first video game surely gets me some gaming hipster cred.

2. Your favourite character

I have a whole bunch of favourite characters from a variety of different franchises, so again it’s hard to pick one. If absolutely pressed to name just a single one, however, I think I’d probably have to go with Estelle from Trails in the Sky. She’s cute, sassy, tomboyish and immensely appealing to me in all manner of different ways, both in terms of her looks and her attitude.

3. A game that is underrated

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia. While its technical shortcomings are self-evident from the moment you start playing it, and it makes some baffling mechanical decisions, it’s one of the most memorable games I’ve ever played, through a combination of its absolutely charming characterisation and those aforementioned baffling mechanical decisions.

4. Your guilty pleasure game

I have no guilt in enjoying any games whatsoever, regardless of their content. I guess the only one I probably wouldn’t make a point of talking about in polite company would be Custom Maid 3D 2, and even then I have been known to talk about its interesting stat-raising gameplay as much as its explicit polygonal pornography.

5. Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)

I’ve encountered quite a few relatable characters over the course of my years in gaming. It’s tempting to pick someone like Noire from the Neptunia series for her somewhat solitary tendencies, though I wouldn’t describe myself as tsundere as she is. Someone like Rosangela Blackwell from the Blackwell series of adventure games from Wadjet Eye Games springs to mind; she’s a writer who attempts to make the best of a difficult situation. And okay, I don’t have a ghost partner with whom I put restless spirits to rest, but I did feel a certain degree of kinship with Rosa’s general personality and attitude.

6. Most annoying character

The dude who had the “FOLLOW” marker over his head for almost the entire duration of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, who got to do all the interesting things while I ran along behind him shooting predictable waves of bad guys. That was the last Call of Duty I ever played.

7. Favourite game couple

Gotta be someone from Grisaia here, though I’m somewhat torn between Yuuji and Amane (Amane was my own personal “best girl”) and Yuuji and Yumiko (whom I felt arguably made a “better” couple). Let’s say Yuuji and Amane.

8. Best soundtrack

Final Fantasy XIV. My enthusiasm for Square’s reborn MMO may have lapsed for the moment, but I never, ever tire of its masterful soundtrack by Masayoshi Soken.

9. Saddest game scene

The end of To The Moon. That was the first game since the first time I played Final Fantasy VII to genuinely make me sob uncontrollably.

10. Best gameplay

This is near-impossible to answer because I play so many different types of games that aren’t directly comparable. If we’re just talking games I’ve played in the last year, Dungeon Travelers 2’s beautiful mechanics and level design are definitely near the top of the pile.

11. Gaming system of choice

Again, hard to pick one, since I do a lot of gaming on a variety of different platforms. I think in terms of “platform that has the most games I want to play on it”, though, it’s between PS4 and Vita, with Vita having the slight edge by virtue of having been around a little longer as well as being backwards compatible.

12. A game everyone should play

Splatoon. It’s just such an utterly joyful experience — and totally free of the arrogant elitism that often plagues online games, thanks to Nintendo’s arguably overprotective approach to online interactions — that even the most staunch anti-multiplayer gamer can’t fail to have a good time with this one. And then it goes and has a fantastic single-player mode with one of my favourite final bosses of all time, too. Everyone should play Splatoon, and I hope it makes a comeback on Nintendo Switch.

13. A game you’ve played more than five times

I’m assuming this means “to completion”. Final Fantasy VII is the first that springs to mind (I completed this at least 10 times during the first summer I became aware of the series) but you can also throw in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, too.

14. Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper

15. Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now.

(Stock screenshot, I know, but I can’t be arsed to turn my PS4 on and go through the faff of getting a screenshot off it.)

16. Game with the best cutscenes

The big “oh shit” moment halfway through Final Fantasy Type-0 is going to take some beating this year, but Final Fantasy XV also has plenty of incredible cutscenes, too. I can’t in good conscience give this one to anything but a modern Final Fantasy game.

17. Favourite antagonist

Metal Face from the original Xenoblade Chronicles. In the English… uh, British dub, he struck an incredible balance between being comedic and terrifying. I remember I was genuinely shocked at quite how far that game went with the brutality and unpleasantness, and Metal Face was a great figure to express your anger towards.

18. Favourite protagonist

I’ve already given “favourite character” to Estelle from Trails in the Sky, so it’s only right I give this one to Nepgear. Yes, Nepgear, because she was totally the protagonist of Neptunia mk2/Re;Birth2 and I will not hear a word said against the dear girl by anyone. Also I like Nepgear because she reminds me of myself. If, you know, I was a pretty young girl with a figure to die for rather than a 30-something hairy dude.

19. Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in

20. Favourite genre

RPG, no question. Honourable mentions to point-and-click adventures, visual novels and arcade-style racing games.

21. Game with the best story

If you count visual novels, The Fruit of Grisaia, with absolutely no hesitation.

If you don’t count visual novels, which I know some people don’t, then I loved the Ys series, particularly Ys Origin. The amount of thought which had gone into the lore of that world is simply incredible, and Origin brought the legends you learn about in the first two games well and truly to life.

Damn, now I want to play Ys Origin again.

22. A game sequel that disappointed you

Mass Effect 2 is the only example that springs immediately to mind. I was one of the few people who actually rather liked the clunky RPG systems of the original, so I was disappointed when 2 felt like more of a conventional shooter, both in terms of mechanics and structure. The story was decent and I enjoyed my time with it, but not enough to want to either go back or play the sequel.

23. Game you think had the best graphics or art style

I absolutely adore the art in the Atelier series, particularly the Arland trilogy. The lovely soft lines and pastel colours project such a wonderful aura of calm about them, and that’s something that’s altogether much too rare in an era of increasing grimdark.

24. Favourite classic game

At last, a question where I can honestly put Star Raiders as my answer and know there can be no argument about it.

25. A game you plan on playing

Trails in the Sky SC, Trails of Cold Steel and Trails of Cold Steel II. I’ve only played the first Trails in the Sky, but that was enough for me to fall in love with Estelle.

26. Best voice acting

The original Corpse Party on PSP. This was the game that made me switch from dubs to Japanese voiceovers whenever I get the opportunity. Although the audio was in a different language to one I understood, the sheer amount of passion that the actors infused their lines with was incredible, and a big part of the reason that game had such a profound impact on me.

27. Most epic scene ever

Battling Bahamut in Final Coil in Final Fantasy XIV is hard to beat, if that counts as a “scene”.

28. Favourite game developer

I’m a fan of Falcom and Square Enix’s Final Fantasy team, but I’ve grown to adore Idea Factory/Compile Heart over the last few years, so I think it’s only right to give this title to them.

29. A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving

Criminal Girls. I picked it up mostly out of curiosity — and partly because I’d heard people call it shit and wanted to judge for myself — but discovered to my surprise that it was a brilliant game with some inventive mechanics and a thought-provoking story.

30. Favourite game of all time

I haven’t played it for years now, but whenever anyone asks me this question my immediate thought is always Final Fantasy VII. So it’s probably that.

Honourable mentions to Recettear, Geometry Wars 2 and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+.

2527: One for One!

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I completed my first couple of Pokémon trades over the last couple of days, giving me all three of the “starter” Pokémon from Sun and Moon to add to my Pokédex.

Since Pokémon is essentially a well-disguised trading card game (and a not-at-all-disguised trading card game in its Trading Card Game format, but that’s something else entirely) a key part of its appeal is working with other players to collect the things you want to collect.

This is an aspect of the game I always felt like I was obliged to miss out on in the earlier installments, particularly back in the Game Boy days when it was direct link or nothing. Although I had a number of friends who were big into video games, I didn’t know anyone who had a Game Boy and a copy of Pokémon, so I was denied access to what I understood from the beginning to be a significant part of the experience.

This has all changed with more recent platforms and widespread access to the Internet, meanwhile. Using Pokémon Moon’s Global Trade System (GTS) I managed to find a Rowlet that someone wanted a Pokémon I had for, and subsequently I listed another Pokémon I had and indicated that I was interested in acquiring a Popplio. The first trade was immediate, since the Rowlet owner had already listed the little owl for trade, and the second trade was complete within a day. As a relative Pokémon newbie, I wasn’t familiar with what is apparently a widespread Eevee trafficking market, but it seems as if evolved Eevees make for pretty reliable trade currency, so I’m probably going to have to farm some of those at some point.

Dipping my toes into this side of Pokémon is helping me to further understand the appeal of the series. Although the main game is a single-player adventure and there’s a significant amount of content to play through, both during and after the main story, a core part of the Pokémon experience as a whole appears to be the social aspect of it. And while Nintendo’s heavy-handed approach to online safety and privacy means that it’s literally impossible to communicate directly with another player — all communication is asynchronous, using a wide selection of preset words and phrases that auto-translate into different languages — there’s still a surprisingly strong feeling of “interaction” with other players when you successfully complete something like a trade or a Festival Plaza mission.

To be honest, I think I kind of prefer Nintendo’s way of doing things online these days — at least when it comes to playing with strangers. Playing with friends is a great laugh if you get on voice chat and indulge in some light-hearted banter, but when playing with strangers, there’s a fairly high probability you will run into at least one insufferable arsehole during a play session. With Nintendo’s approach, said insufferable arseholes are completely neutered and will never bother you or disrupt your enjoyment of the game. Of course, with Nintendo’s approach, your friends are similarly neutered, too, though chances are if you’re actual friends with those people you have alternative means of communicating anyway.

Meanwhile, my Pokémon Moon adventure is going pretty well. I’m onto the third island now with a strong team of Pokémon that cover a variety of different types, though I think I’ll be needing to train up some Ground or Rock types next. I also have an outfit that I’m pretty pleased with for the moment — big love to Nintendo and Game Freak for providing the option to purchase thigh-high socks in the very first clothing shop you come to — and I feel like I’m deepening my understanding of the overall metagame with every hour I play.

So yep. Think it’s safe to say I’m in this one for the long haul.

2526: Quiet Weekend

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I’ve been working all week, and I now have two full days — a proper weekend — to look forward to. And I am indeed very much looking forward to it.

In particular, I’m looking forward to spending some more quality time with Final Fantasy XV and Pokémon Moon, both of which I’ve had the chance to play sporadically throughout the week, but not for particularly protracted periods of time due to the necessity of getting up the next day in time for work.

I’ve always appreciated free time with no commitments, but nothing really makes you appreciate it quite like a week of hard work, whatever form that hard work takes — whether it’s getting out of the house and doing something in exchange for money, or simply doing something useful at home.

Although the work I’m doing is just temporary — it’s the same seasonal position in retail I held last year — I’m enjoying it, and I’m noticing a few positive things about myself in the process. In particular, I’m finding it a lot easier to quite simply talk to people and feel like “part of the group”. Whether this is a result of working with the same people I worked with last year and consequently not having to build new relationships from scratch, or if it’s something to do with the new medication I started on about a month back, I’m not sure — it’s probably a combination of those two things — but I am, on the whole, feeling uncharacteristically satisfied with certain aspects of myself at present.

There are plenty of things I’m unsatisfied with too, of course — most notably having put a bunch of weight back on since losing a bunch with Slimming World last year, though since changing medication I have subsequently discovered part of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the pills I was on earlier in the year — but for now I’m trying to enjoy life as much as I can. I don’t doubt that in January when my temporary position comes to an end that things will get a little difficult and tight once again, but I have a few plans in place for things to do and some potential opportunities to pursue.

It’s perhaps a tiny bit early to review the whole year, though most people will probably agree 2016 has largely been a big pile of shit. That said, this last couple of months have proven to be a little better than the rest of the year, at least, so all I can really hope for at the moment is that the worst is over and that this is the start of the long climb back out of the abyss into something resembling a normal, satisfying, happy life.

It remains to be seen what 2017 has to hold, but I’m not worrying about that too much for the moment. Right now, I have a full weekend to look forward to. And I intend to enjoy it as much as possible by doing as little as possible.

2525: The “Politics in Games” Thing

This article appeared on industry-centric gaming publication GI.biz recently, and it’s fair to say it’s rustled a few jimmies around the Internet.

Not without good reason, it has to be said, because the arguments made therein are, quite frankly, getting into some batshit crazytown conspiracy theory territory — ironically while accusing the gaming community themselves of becoming embroiled in conspiracy theories of their own.

The main thrust of the article — a central, flawed assumption — can be found in the first paragraph. “‘Keep Politics Out Of My Games’ was a snappy rallying cry,” writes author Rob Fahey, “but it was never an option.”

Thing is, very few people are arguing to “keep politics out of games” completely. What people do, however, object to is the injection of politics into gaming criticism when it’s unwarranted, unnecessary, obtrusive and, frankly, rather predictably dull. Mainstream outlet Polygon is perhaps the most egregious example of this; the site’s reviews have become such a joke to many with their over-reliance on so-called “progressive politics” that they’re the subject of frequent parody and satire. This, after all, is the site that complained about The Witcher not having enough black people in it, and a site that previewed Rock Band 4 with an article expressing how bored the author was at the PR event, and how he longed to talk to someone about politics in the Phillipines.

Outside of the more ridiculous examples like this, passionate gamers, particularly those into smaller-scale games from Japan, have also lost patience with games being unfairly derided beneath the bulletproof umbrella that is “feminist criticism”. Series such as Senran Kagura have frequently been lambasted for supposed sexism when in fact all they are is sexual, and that’s not even the main point of their existence. These ill-informed critics that post lengthy screeds deriding the lengths of the characters skirts and the size of their breasts never bother to look any further than the superficial appearance of the game; they never bother to explore the games’ treatment of sexuality, or of teenagers going through their own personal journeys of self-discovery, or of the series’ intriguing and fascinating exploration of the concepts of “good” and “evil”.

The most recent game in the firing line for “feminist” critics is Final Fantasy XV, for two main reasons: firstly, the all-male party of playable characters, and secondly the existence of the character Cindy. The former, these critics argue, are nothing more than a male power fantasy, while the latter, they say, is nothing more than male-gaze sexualisation.

Let’s unpack both of these for a moment, if you’ll forgive the digression from the original point. The main cast of Final Fantasy XV are themselves a diverse group of individuals despite all being male. Noctis is a young man who is attempting to come to terms with new-found responsibility and terrible loss; Prompto is of a similar age, but filled with youthful exuberance; Ignis is calm, mature and very much the “big brother” of the group; Gladio is the closest we get to a “male power fantasy”, though it’s abundantly clear he’s been designed very much with female players in mind, much like his fellow cast members.

The cast spend a lot of time not doing particularly “manly” things. They’re completely incompetent when it comes to maintaining their car, for example — the game’s opening sees them having broken down and having no idea what to do about it save for pushing it to the nearest garage — and in the latter hours of the story they spend an awful lot of time crying and saying how much they love each other. Ignis cooks ostentatious feasts. Prompto takes selfies like a teenage girl. And while Gladio remains stoic for a lot of the time, his obsession with Cup Noodles shows that he has a softer side too.

As for Cindy, well. Firstly, her outfit is provocative, yes, but she lives in an area of the map where characters are constantly complaining how hot it is, so it’s unsurprising she’s chosen to wear something that shows a bit of skin. On top of that, she works in an enclosed space with machinery, which is likely to make things even hotter.

But her outfit isn’t even important, and judging her purely based on her appearance — as a number of self-consciously “progressive” critics have done — is quite literal objectification, failing to take into account any of her reasons for doing so and, more importantly, her importance as a character.

Cindy is an important character in the story, and moreover, she’s one of the most capable characters in the story. As a woman, she dominates the typically “masculine” world of car maintenance, putting the main cast to shame with her technical knowledge and ability to repair, retune and customise the Regalia to their specifications. Despite Prompto in particular being obsessed with her beauty, all of the guys acknowledge that she is married to her work and consequently none of them are likely to get a look in. Indeed, despite a slightly flirtatious manner at times, Cindy is all business for the most part, while the four boys of the main cast are the ones who are more likely to talk about love and their feelings. Doesn’t sound very “male power fantasy” to me.

As I say, I digress, because I don’t want this to turn into a Final Fantasy XV article all of a sudden, but what I’ve just pointed out there hopefully demonstrates the disparity between what the self-described “progressive” types are accusing Final Fantasy XV — and numerous other games like it — of, and what is actually going on.

The clarion call to “get politics out of my games” is not, then, a call to remove progressive themes from games at all. It is, however, a call for virtue-signalling progressive types to actually take a closer look at the media they are attempting to criticise, and acknowledge that more often than not, it’s doing things a lot better than they’d care to admit. And you don’t need a game to effectively go “LOOK, WE HAVE A BLACK GAY TRANSGENDER PROTAGONIST” to be truly progressive; indeed, the very best form of “diversity” is that which you barely notice until you think analytically about it after the fact.

2521: Super Effective

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I’m continuing to enjoy Pokémon Moon. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion being keen to get to the end of my working day and be able to play it some more. I’m getting a feel for the shallow end of the overall metagame — most notably which types of Pokémon and attacks are strong and weak against other types — and I’m also getting curious to see what a Pokémon endgame is like after you’ve finished the story.

Of course, I’m a long way off the latter aspect in particular so far, since I’m still only on the second island in the game, coming up on that island’s second Trial. I am making good progress on the Pokédex, however, being roughly around 30% complete on the first two islands, and I’ve assembled what feels like a solid team of well-leveled Pokémon that feel like they’re pretty good for “general purpose” wandering around.

With the Trials on the second island, types become a lot more important, and the game drops a few hints your way as to which types of Pokémon you might want to make sure you have on hand for the upcoming challenges. The game seems to be well-paced in that the Pokémon you can catch in an area are of a suitable level to be reasonably competitive against both the local wildlife and Trainers, so grinding doesn’t seem to be too necessary unless you want to take a Pokémon you caught much earlier into the Trials. Even then, however, just making sure a low-level Pokémon is in your party while your stronger team members deal with the wild Pokémon of the area allows them to get caught up reasonably quickly, at least across the early levels.

One thing that occurs to me — and I thought this with what little I played of X and Y as well — is that Pokémon has quite a bit in common with MMOs these days. You don’t play in a persistent shared world with other people, but many aspects of the game are similar, particularly with regard to character customisation and competitive play. Of particular note is the “fashion” feature where you can adjust your avatar’s hair, makeup, eye colour and clothing and then share that avatar online through the Festival Plaza system. Your avatar can then be further customised through the text-based words and phrases they say when other players interact with them — asynchronously rather than in real-time, because this is a Nintendo game for kids, after all — and, later, you even get the opportunity to buy clothes that you see other characters wearing.

I haven’t tried the online trading and battling systems yet, but I understand they’re both fairly active. The trading facility in particular is a godsend when I think back to the early games; possibly one of the things that meant I bounced off Red and Gold back in the Game Boy days was because no-one else I knew was playing any of them, and thus I had no-one to trade or battle with. Nowadays, however, trading and battling is a simple case of visiting Festival Plaza and using the appropriate options — or, for someone in the same room as you, using the excellent Quick Link feature to quickly do something together.

Some 15 hours into the game so far, I remain curious as to whether it will hold my attention into its endgame and beyond, but I’m having a blast so far and anticipate I will continue to do so for quite some time yet.

2520: The Grand Tour

I’ve been watching Amazon’s new “totally not Top Gear, oh wait it is really and we’re not even trying to hide it” show The Grand Tour recently. So far I’ve watched the first three episodes and it’s been a lot of fun.

The show follows Top Gear’s format pretty closely, usually featuring a single longer film split into two or more chunks over the course of the episode, punctuated by shorter regular features that are usually played more for laughs than anything. The longer film tends to offer a blend between Clarkson, May and Hammond’s usual silly activities and some thoughts on their cars of the week, deflecting the common criticisms of Top Gear’s latter years in which people accused it of not really being a car show any more.

The longer features have been enjoyably varied so far. One week featured a hilarious sequence of Clarkson, May and Hammond attempting to complete a military exercise — in this case, the “car of the week” was used to assist them in their getaway from an eventually successful rescue mission — while another featured an attempt to recreate the “Grand Tour” of years gone by, whereby wealthy young gentlemen would travel around continental Europe in an attempt to learn more about culture and the arts. (The latter was enjoyably undermined by Hammond turning up in a noisy Dodge and repeatedly doing donuts at every opportunity while Clarkson and May drove an Aston Martin and a Rolls-Royce in an attempt to be more “refined” respectively.)

The shorter features are a little hit and miss. “Conversation Street” — essentially a part of the show where the three talk in a rather unstructured manner similar to the “news” section of Top Gear — tends to work well, as the group has great chemistry as always, and plenty to talk about. “Celebrity Braincrash”, meanwhile, ostensibly a segment where they invite a celebrity on to participate in a difficult quiz, but where the celebrities in question inevitably die in some comedically ridiculous manner on their way to the tent that plays host to the show, is a gag that kind of ran its course in the first show and would have probably been better served being replaced by something new in subsequent episodes.

Likewise, the show’s replacement for the Top Gear test track is a cool course with some entertaining gimmicks, but “The American”, the show’s Stig-equivalent, isn’t a patch on the understated, mute hilarity of Top Gear’s anonymous driver. Like Celebrity Braincrash, “The American” is a bit of a one-note joke, though thankfully in this case not one that is repeated in every episode.

Despite its flaws, however, I’ve been enjoying The Grand Tour, and it’s proven to be an enjoyable successor to Top Gear. I watched a few episodes of the new Top Gear with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc and didn’t hate it, though it wasn’t the same at all; the chemistry and sense of genuine friendship that Clarkson, May and Hammond had built up over the years simply wasn’t there with the new cast. Fortunately, with the existence of The Grand Tour, this is no longer an issue, since those who enjoyed Top Gear’s old way of doing things can now simply get more of the same.

Some might call that unimaginative. I would call it eminently sensible on Amazon’s part, and great for the people who just wanted more of the show they enjoyed without radical changes.

2519: Chicken-chan x Lillie, OTP

One of the things that attracted me to try out the new Pokémon game was the amount of fanart it was generating even before its release. The Internet, it seemed, was particularly enamoured with Lillie, a major character in the story.

This animated GIF was the first time I noticed her:

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Said GIF is from the Pokémon anime rather than the game — and interestingly Lillie looks considerably younger in this than she does in the game and her official artwork, perhaps to ensure she is in keeping with the perpetually young Ash — but I found her immediately striking and endearing with her distinctive outfit, cute haircut and adorable reaction to Tauros. She doesn’t react at all like this when the player-protagonist encounters Tauros in the games, suggesting that her anime counterpart may be depicted as a slightly different character.

Anyway, I digress. Lillie caught my attention for some reason, initially with this GIF and subsequently with a considerable amount of fanart that started popping up around social media and suchlike.

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Here Lillie is seen closer to her depiction in the game, including her bag, in which she carries “Nebby”, a Cosmog Pokémon that she… “acquired” for reasons that are not yet apparent with my progress in the story. This somewhat pensive pose is also more characteristic of her depiction in the game; she’s shown to be a rather sensible girl who cares for Pokémon, but dislikes the world’s love of Pokémon battles because the participants often end up hurt. She’s constantly down on herself for not being a “proper trainer”, and attaches herself to the player-protagonist when the two develop an immediate connection by chance early in the narrative

You can play a male or female protagonist in Pokémon Sun and Moon, but with the Internet being the Internet, the fanbase of video games with Japanese origin loving a bit of yuri and the female protagonist being pretty cute in her own right, much of the fanart depicting Lillie with the game’s protagonist has focused on the same-sex pairing to varying degrees.

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The pairing is immediately appealing because the two characters are strong contrasts with one another. Lillie is blonde, pale and depicted as lacking in self-confidence, while “Chicken-chan” — so dubbed by a few people here and there owing to her silly hat — is dark-haired and shown to be curious, self-assured and more than willing to poke her nose into all manner of things. Even the way Chicken-chan walks in the games presents an air of confidence; she struts with great pride, while Lillie kind of saunters along, often looking like she’s hoping no-one will notice her.

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Naturally, there’s a ton of fanart out there suggesting that Chicken-chan and Lillie are more than just friends, such as this lovely image that looks like it’s straight out of a visual novel. And of course, there are plenty of images that take things… um… a little bit further, shall we say, but I’ll leave you to investigate Rule 34 for yourself if you dare.

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I really adore seeing the community as a whole get so wrapped up and invested in a fictional (and, one would argue, non-canonical) relationship between two characters in this way. It’s touching to see everyone “rooting” for these characters, and for so much of the artwork (explicitly lewd stuff aside, obviously) to just be so good-natured, positive and accepting that you can’t help but feel good when you see it.

I mean, obviously a lot of the appeal of the Chicken-chan x Lillie pairing is the simple fact that it’s two cute girls being cute together, but in a world where particularly vocal critics are constantly complaining about the “toxic” culture of gaming, the sheer volume of high-quality fanart of this kind — and the keenness with which it’s shared — is a reminder to us all that perhaps things aren’t quite as bad as the world’s perpetual whingers might want us to believe.