I briefly logged into Twitter earlier to see if I'd had any messages or mentions — I still get a few, so it's worth poking my head in occasionally — and the first thing I saw on my timeline (which, naturally, had reverted to the stupid "Top Tweets" view since I hadn't logged on for a while) was someone I follow having to defend herself against accusations of racism because of a YouTube video she made about one of Mortal Kombat 11's endings.

Needless to say, I haven't missed this. I have not missed the feeling of anxiety that Twitter brought (past tense) me; I have not missed the feeling of walking on eggshells any time you express an opinion; I have not missed the thought police patrolling for wrongthink; and I have definitely not missed the memes.

Memes are an important part of Internet culture and can often be amusing, but Twitter ends up being the place where they all go to die. One person posts something that is vaguely funny, then everyone has to get a piece of the action, posting their own variation on it. And after not very long at all (my patience and tolerance had worn down to a matter of minutes by the time I decided to take an extended break) they become extremely tiresome, because after a while you realise that it's just a bunch of people not actually saying anything worthwhile, just copying one another in an attempt to say the "right" things to get noticed, shared, liked, whatever.

The same is true for the outrage crowd, too. Those crying "racist" at the person I mentioned above were all following the exact same playbook. Their replies were indistinguishable from one another; there was no individuality there, no personality. Someone being willing to engage, discuss and debate was a rarity worthy of note and gratitude; but for the most part, it was all about the snarky comments, the passive-aggressive quote tweets and, again, trying to be seen to be saying the "right" thing to get noticed, shared, liked, whatever.

As I say, I don't miss it. So I don't see myself coming back "properly" any time soon. I'll leave the MoeGamer account open to share my stuff and check messages very occasionally, but Twitter is no longer a social tool I have any desire to make use of whatsoever — nor do I "need" it, seemingly. My traffic stats for MoeGamer and my videos have been no different regardless of whether or not I'm actively engaging with Twitter. And more importantly, my life and mental health have been considerably better since I decided to step away.

There are plenty of other ways to reach me if you do want to talk, after all! You're looking at one of them right now. 🙂

It was my birthday today! I'm 38. That's nearly 40, which I presume is an age by which you are supposed to have "grown up" somewhat, but I'm in no particular rush, nor do I feel any particular need to.

"Grown ups" are boring. Several of my local friends are "grown ups". They're always complaining about having to deal with their children, or their perpetually packed schedules and the fifteen holidays a year they seem to go on. And they rarely seem to have any fun. I say "rarely" rather than "never" because we do at least manage to get them to do things occasionally, but it's becoming an increasingly infrequent occurrence. In fact, one of these friends ducking out at the last minute made the difference between the weekend just gone being a quiet one and its originally intended purpose of lots of enjoyable group-based gaming. Oh well, at least Chris and I got a great podcast recorded instead!

So yeah. I may be a year older, but as with most recent years, I really don't feel it. Honestly I feel like mostly the same person I was at university, and that was nearly twenty years ago at this point. That is, I think, the most surreal part of the ageing process — things that feel like they are still in the recent past are now half your life or more away. I think this is why I struggle a bit with my friends being "grown ups" — the friends in question were the people I hung out with at university, so it remains difficult to adjust to a life in which we can't just do fun things on a whim at the drop of a hat. Well, I usually can, but I appear to be the exception.

I can't be too upset with getting older. Being a bit older has put me in a position where I am reasonably financially secure, and able to enjoy the things I love without guilt over spending money on them. This, in turn, allows me to enjoy those things in new and varied ways. MoeGamer and YouTube are two prime examples; besides technology and Internet speeds not being what they are now back when I was at university, I simply wouldn't have had the resources to be able to do what I do now. The fact I am able to is something I am grateful for.

And of course, I am grateful for your support and friendship. As I noted over on MoeGamer earlier today, this marks the fifth anniversary since the site's first post, and it's become an important part of my life ever since that day five years ago. And while I do still feel some bitterness and resentment from how my past career in games journalism was snatched from me without provocation or warning, had I remained part of the commercial press I would not have had anywhere near the freedom I have now to do what I do.

So here's to being a little bit older, not even a tiny bit wiser… and as independent as ever. Thanks for your support, and here's to many more years. 

It's nearly 3AM as I've been editing the new episode of the podcast all day and then playing some Dragon Marked for Death with Chris this evening, so you'll forgive me if I don't have a lot of words left in me!

I thought now might be a good time to give you a sneak peek at the Final Fantasy XI funtimes we have ahead of us at some indefinite point in the future. Note that this is an MMO, and as such it will almost certainly end up being a long series, with long individual episodes!

Still, over the course of these nearly two hours (I know, I know… I totally lost track of time while playing, I was enjoying myself so much!) you should be able to get a basic feel for what the game is all about, and eventually there are all sorts of exciting adventures to be had!

But every journey begins with a single step and all that… 

How great video games are. What a wonderful medium it is, and how much pleasure it brings me to have been present for so much of its evolution, development and advancement.

I say this as I'm riding the emotional high from beating Sonic Forces, which I'll be writing up on MoeGamer next week. Taking this journey through the complete Sonic series has also been a journey through a significant part of gaming history, stretching right back to the 16-bit era all the way to the present and beyond. Along that journey, even though it was with just one series focusing on one main character (and his friends), it's a real pleasure to see how creators have done their best to experiment, try new things, make things better.

Your opinion may, of course, vary on whether things have really gotten "better" over time — there are certainly a lot of ways in which they can be argued to have lost their way a bit, and this excellent, long video by Accursed Farms details just one way in which certain parts of the business have definitely gotten worse — but, on the whole, I find myself thinking "gosh, I'm really glad I got into video games" more often than I think "I wish I'd never got into video games". (I don't actually think I've ever thought the latter, to be honest, though I have said out loud that an all-streaming future will be the point at which I jump off the bleeding edge and become a purely "retro" gamer.)

Games have consistently brought me joy over the years. They've kept me company when I was lonely, sad or anxious; they've helped bring me together with new people and give me something to talk about. They've provided an outlet for my creativity and a hobby that extends far beyond just playing the games; I do what I do on MoeGamer and YouTube because I love it.

This was all rather gushing, wasn't it? But Sonic Forces' ending was pretty great, and I just came away from the whole thing thinking "I love video games". So I thought that might be a fine thing to write about!

Now it's time for bed. I have a podcast to edit tomorrow!

Ugh. Yesterday was the very definition of a complete write-off. I woke up in the morning suffering the excruciating pain my hernia occasionally causes me, requiring me to call in sick to work (and almost certainly have to "explain" on my return why this day off sick just happened to be immediately before the weekend and two holiday days… I hate Policy and Procedure) and causing me to desire nothing more than to return to bed.

Andie went out early to go to the doctors, then, likewise not feeling all that well (albeit for different reasons) also returned to bed. This was at about 9am or so. When we awoke, it was 4.30 in the afternoon.

Normally when I have a lie-in, my body naturally doesn't let me laze around any longer than about midday at the latest. Yes, that's still pretty lazy, but sometimes it's just nice to not have to deal with the morning. 4.30, though? I haven't slept in that late since the very depths of my 2010 depression shortly after my first wife left me and I wasn't really sure how to deal with… well, anything, really.

Thankfully, today has been marginally more normal in terms of bodily timekeeping and I haven't been suffering in pain, so I haven't messed up my body clock any more than it undoubtedly already is, but still. It threw my schedule right off, hence the lack of post yesterday. Apologies! But here we are.

Anyway. I hope you had a better Friday than I did, and that your Saturday has been pleasantly refreshing so far.

I've seen a bit of complaining and cynicism over the upcoming release of Persona 5 Royal recently, and honestly, I can't get on board with it. Why? Because I'd much rather expanded, enhanced versions of games were done this way than via DLC.

Those of you who have been following me for a while will know that I'm becoming increasingly interested in the topic of game preservation, and a significant obstacle to that is the culture of "post-launch support" that has developed over the course of the latter half of last generation and all of this generation. To put it simply, if you buy a physical copy of a game today, in a significant number of cases, that disc becomes mostly worthless after a while thanks to the sheer volume of patches, additional content and DLC added after release.

Post-launch support is seen as a good thing by the broader gaming community today, with people praising companies like Capcom for adding in Bloody Palace mode to the new Devil May Cry, or Sony for adding a new "Survival Mode" and challenges to Days Gone. (In the latter case, this additional content was announced before the release of the game!) And in some respects, it's good to see companies wanting to make their game the best it possibly can be.

But… shouldn't that be done before launch? Particularly when we're talking about game modes that have been an established part of the series for a while now (Devil May Cry) or what essentially amounts to difficulty settings (Days Gone)? This may not seem relevant right now, but consider a few years down the line when the PS4 is a "retro" system. Will Sony's servers still be up and serving these patches and DLC? If not, you'll be stuck with a disc that doesn't contain the "full" game as people experienced it today.

In some cases, this is worse than others. Probably the most worthless physical edition out there right now is the original release of Final Fantasy XV, which has undergone such radical changes and additions since its original launch that it is almost unrecognisable. Not only that, but the version on the disc was buggy as shit, requiring a large Day One patch to even make the damn thing work properly in the first place. In this instance, the release of the later Royal Edition made perfect sense… though I've still held fire on that, since at the same time as announcing that, they also announced that there would be more DLC. Hopefully we'll get a proper "Ultimate Edition" at some point that includes absolutely everything.

And this is why I'm not mad at Persona 5 Royal. Everything I've heard about it suggests that it adds a significant amount to the base game, much as Persona 3 FES did for Persona 3, or Persona 4 The Golden did for Persona 4. That additional content hasn't been released piecemeal; it's all being provided in one big lump, and on a disc to boot. This means that said additional content won't be lost in the great digital void; it can be archived and preserved. And that's important.

If you don't want to support this model, that's absolutely fine. Persona 5 in its base form still exists, and looks like it may well be coming to Switch. Once Persona 5 Royal releases, OG Persona 5 will probably be pretty cheap, for PS4 at least. And it's still a great game. But for those who enjoyed it and want more, I'd much rather companies take the P5R approach than piecemeal DLC and Season Passes.

I realise I'm in the minority on this right now, but I think some people need to consider the bigger, more long-term picture.

I think I'm going to do it: I'm going to "run" a Final Fantasy marathon. And unlike most marathons, I'm going to include the MMOs. I already have experience of XIV and know that the main storyline for that is beatable in about the same amount of time as a "normal" RPG, but XI is a bit of a dark spot for me. I've played it several times over the years but never really got very far; I do know that its incarnation today is considerably easier and quicker than it was back when I played semi-actively, so it shouldn't be nearly as much of a timesink as it used to be.

I've actually wanted to see XI's story through for the longest time, because it's apparently really very good, especially once you get into Rise of the Zilart and beyond. It seemed a bit impractical for the longest time, however, what with how party-centric the game used to be. It was built after the Everquest rather than World of Warcraft mould, after all, so there was a strong focus on parties fighting things that would absolutely flatten a solo player.

Now, however, probably the biggest benefit to solo players is the addition of the "Trust" system. Using this, you can cast spells to summon "alter egos" — effectively copies of NPCs from throughout the main story — and they can be your party members. Most people seem to think that you can solo 99% of FFXI as it exists today using only Trusts, with only the "grand finale" to the storyline — the final battle of the Rhapsodies of Vana'Diel storyline — proving difficult for some.

As such, this means you can effectively now play FFXI like a "normal" RPG, with the fact that the Trust characters are all characters you meet and interact with in the game world only adding to this feeling. With this in mind, it's my intention to include a playthrough of FFXI's storyline up to at the very least the conclusion of the Chains of Promathia storyline, which seems to be pretty widely regarded as a particular high point. I'm not going to get involved in endgame stuff or heavily grind-heavy content — though the nature of the game means that there'll be a certain amount of grinding along the way anyhow — but I would like to see why people say the story is so good.

The reason I'm mentioning this now is that I'm conscious how old FFXI is. I know it's still enjoying a surprisingly healthy player base for a game of its age, but one day it won't exist any more. And if I haven't seen it through by then, I know I will regret it. So I'm going to make a start on recording this sooner rather than later; I won't publish it until the appropriate point in my complete marathon, however long that takes, but I'm going to get started now so there's no chance of Vana'Diel going up in smoke while I'm still pootling around Final Fantasy V or so.

If you lovely Patrons are interested, I can always put the videos up as Unlisted so you can watch them well ahead of when they'll actually be released; let me know if you're curious to see FFXI in 2019 in action! Otherwise, I'll simply start "banking" episodes and put them out at the appropriate point in the complete marathon.

I'm excited! This is an endeavour I've been meaning to undertake for many years now, and with the game in its current state, it feels like it might finally be practical. Watch this space for updates… and in the meantime I'm thinking about kicking off the marathon proper with Final Fantasy I (likely the PSP version) very soon.

I've brought this up on the podcast a few times, but I thought I'd attempt to compile a list of some of the minor, largely incidental things in gaming that I have found inexplicably pleasing over the years — and primarily in my early years. Why? Because I still have half an hour of work and I'm bored.

• Lives displays that say "[name] x [number]" – I don't know why this really caught my attention back in the 16-bit days, but I really liked it, actually specifically seeking out games (usually platformers) that had this as a UI convention. I think it stemmed from the first time I played Sonic the Hedgehog, and I saw it as one of the things that distinguished Japanese console games from the Western computer games I'd typically been playing up until that point.

• Health bars that change colour then "drain" – For example, a health bar that starts yellow and indicates damage by a chunk of it turning red, then draining to its lower current level. Probably the most commonly seen example of this is in fighting games, with Street Fighter II probably being the first time I saw it. I particularly like it in non-fighting game contexts, however.

• Health bars that animate smoothly – Related to the above, only this time when I think about this, I'm specifically thinking about City of Heroes (RIP) and its lovely, smoothly animating, sparkling HP, MP and XP bars in the corner of the screen.

image via MMOs.com, obviously

• Health bars with coloured layers – I apparently have a thing for health bars. I first saw this back at university in Shining Force II, which I was playing vicariously through my friend Sam, who was obsessed with it and delighted to discover he could re-enjoy it through emulation. I was especially pleased to see Kingdom Hearts make use of it, too.

• Boss health bars that say "BOSS" in big letters – See above.

• Constantly visible XP bars – If you're making an action RPG or MMO and you don't have a gradually filling XP bar on screen at all times keeping the player motivated, what on Earth are you doing?

• Stripy skies – Another holdover from my having home computers at home rather than consoles. The graphical trickery required to produce a background with a gradient effect was something i respected and appreciated, and thus I tended to "like" games with stripy skies more than those without. MiG-29M Superfulcrum was better than its predecessor because it added a stripy sky. And was also a better game.

• 2D platform games with hills – I've discussed this on Atari A to Z before. This was another "computer vs console" thing for a while, though later Atari ST platformers started incorporating smooth hills rather than "steps".

• Racing games with hills – Apparently I also have a thing for hills. But when you'd grown up with resolutely flat "vanishing point" racers such as Pole Position and The Great American Cross-Country Road Race, you too would be excited when something like Continental Circus or OutRun took you on a veritable roller-coaster ride.

• Use of "1P" and "2P" instead of "Player 1" and "Player 2" or "1up" and "2up" – This stems from the fact that I didn't get a lot of chances to visit arcades in my youth, since here in the UK they're very much a seaside thing. The computer games I played at the time, if they included a "player marker" at all, tended to say "Player 1" or "1up", whereas arcade games (I'm typically thinking of Konami beat 'em ups) would use "1P". I automatically liked any computer or console game that used "1P" slightly more than one that did not.

• Ridiculously elaborate status panels that take up half the screen – Today, I understand why these were typically incorporated into home computer versions of arcade and console games — to keep the frame-rate up by only requiring a smaller "viewport" for the action to unfold in — and, by extension, why we don't see them today… but I kind of miss them. They were an opportunity for the game's graphic designer to let rip with a bit of creativity, even when all you really needed was a score and lives display.

• Games that have dramatic, pounding music while you're setting options – G-LOC. I'm thinking of G-LOC. Part of the reason I liked that game in the arcades was simply the music that played while you were choosing your difficulty level. It really got you in the mood!

• Games that have some sort of time-of-day mechanic, particularly if it's quasi real-time – I'm primarily thinking of Rise of the Dragon here, which I really liked the time management aspect of, but I've always had a soft spot for any game that has a clock prominently on screen for some reason.

I'm sure there's plenty more, but these are the ones that spring immediately to mind. In most cases, I'm not sure why I like these aspects… I just know that I did back then, and I still do!

Good morning! Sorry I missed last night, I was up until 1am finishing off Sonic Lost World, which I will be writing about later today. Yes, I know this isn't really an excuse, given that I had the whole rest of the day to potentially write something, but, well, I didn't. So here we are!

It's another four day week at the day job from today. Yesterday was a bank holiday here in the UK, as was last Friday, so we had a thoroughly pleasant four-day weekend. Well, it wasn't complete rest and relaxation, as my mother-in-law was visiting, as I noted in the previous post, but she's not really a hassle to have around and she often tends to do helpful and productive things around the house and garden for us, so her visits are always appreciated. Now our "catio" has some very nice-looking plants in pots!

Andie also fitted a cat flap to the back of our house so the cats can come and go from the house to the catio as they please. Patti, being a cat who clearly hasn't really been outside before we had her, is still extremely nervous of not being in the house, so she hasn't made use of it yet, but I was surprised and delighted to see Meg immediately knowing what to do with it, and over the course of the day clearly making use of it several times without prompting. Evidently she's had one before, presumably at the house she lived in before we had her.

Having the cat flap in will be good for Meg, as I always felt a bit guilty leaving her shut in the house while we're both out, but it's been necessary for her safety and our own peace of mind ever since we lost Ruby last November. I still miss her so much and don't want anything to happen to either Meg or Patti if we can possibly prevent it. Meg still likes to try and sneak out of the front door occasionally, but she seems to have mostly accepted how things are, and even seems to like the catio now it's a bit sunnier. Patti, meanwhile, as I say, doesn't really "get" outside just yet, but she's always curious to follow Meg whenever she goes out.

After this week, I have a three day work week next week, as I have both Monday and Tuesday off for both my birthday and my employment anniversary. It's going to be weird going back to "full-time" at this rate!

My cat Meg is a tsundere. I've always suspected this to a certain degree, but the last couple of days have proven it beyond all measure.

My mother-in-law is presently visiting, and this has caused our newer cat Patti to spend the last day and a half hiding. She's very confident with me and Andie now, but she's not very good with strangers and tends to try and stay out of sight.

Longstanding readers will recall that Meg and Patti have been having a somewhat strained but vaguely tolerant relationship up until this point, with sightings of one another usually accompanied by a bit of hissing and occasionally one launching themselves at the other (usually Patti launching herself at Meg). This would, naturally, suggest to the casual observer that they do not like one another.

However, Patti has a tendency to follow Meg around at a distance, particularly if she goes outside, so it's quite clear that she wants to try and be friends. And for the last day and a half, while Patti has been in hiding, Meg has very obviously been looking for Patti and been a bit out of sorts.

In other words, Meg is putting up a grumpy front but clearly actually holds some sort of feelings of vague affection for Patti. Further evidence of her tsundereness can be seen in her behaviour towards us — sometimes she just likes to go and sit somewhere quiet where she won't be bothered, while at others she'll come and demand affection or simply appreciate a bit of attention.

I know that what I'm describing here is not unusual at all for cat behaviour, but I just find it quite amusing that Meg's tsundere tendencies have been at an all-time high over the course of the past couple of days. Maybe there's hope for the pair of them yet.