#oneaday Day 601: Whatcha Been Playin’?

I have been playing precisely two games recently, one of which I only returned to today and the other of which you can likely deduce from recent blog posts.

Yes, Xenoblade Chronicles is still going strong and is still magnificent in its excellence. So solid is the gameplay that very quickly you cease to notice the little presentational defects such as the blurry faces, the Final Fantasy X-style nonexistent lip-syncing in certain scenes (but perfect in others) and, of course, the fact it’s on the Wii.

Final Fantasy XII was often compared by its players to MMOs. Structure-wise, it was quite similar, with large, sprawling, expansive zones making up a large interlinked open world which could be freely explored assuming you didn’t aggro some beast 30 levels higher than you. Combat was quasi-real time, with auto-attacks and triggered abilities. And the Gambit system worked in the same way as being a party leader in an MMO — you were explaining what you wanted your teammates to do and when. The only thing really missing from the MMO structure was a wealth of quests to undertake in place of grinding simply by killing enemies. Sure, there were the Hunts, and those were cool, but ultimately they were all quite similar, albeit with increasingly ridiculous challenge factors as the game progressed.

Xenoblade Chronicles doesn’t deviate too far from this formula, though the changes it makes are quite welcome. The Gambit system has been ditched in favour of some excellent party AI who genuinely seem to know what the right thing to do in a given situation is, so long as you’ve made sure their equipment and skills are levelled appropriately. Unlike FFXII, you can’t switch characters at will during battle to trigger specific abilities, though when protagonist Shulk gets a premonition of a particularly devastating attack, it is possible to warn your teammates, which then allows you to pick one of their abilities to use.

The Tension system is an interesting addition, too. Characters’ morale is tracked during combat and reflected in their portraits by their health bars. Should a battle go badly, teammates will get demotivated and start missing or generally being crap. Cheering them on and praising them for cries or dodges helps get their morale back up, and the background music and battle cries all reflect how the fight is going. It’s a nice touch.

Quests are present, too, by the hundreds. Unlike FFXII’s relatively limited number of Hunts available at once, entering a new zone in Xenoblade generally means you’re about to be bombarded with quests. Some are simple and formulaic for each area — kill x beasts, find x collectibles, kill x boss — but then there’s a range of mini-stories to follow too, most of which allow you to build up your Affinity Chart, a worryingly comprehensive “family tree” of every named character in the game and their relationship to one another. I’m yet to see if this information becomes super useful, but even if not it’s neat to see it all mapped out.

So; 34 hours in so far and I now have a nice selection of characters to play with. Between battles you can switch your lineup whenever you like, so you can spend the whole game controlling a character who fits your preferred playstyle if you like, whether that’s tank, healer or damage dealer. Of course, changing things up not only adds variety but also allows you to build up Affinities between different combinations of party members, so you’re indirectly encouraged to do so. And mercifully, inactive characters receive XP at the same rate as active ones so there’s never any need to switch up characters just because someone’s 10 levels behind, unlike FFXII.

But enough enthusing about that. It’s certainly on track to be my Game of the Year so far. Which is nice.

The other game I went back to playing today was Minecraft, thanks to the “leaked” version 1.8 patch. This “Adventure” update gives Minecraft a good kick up the bottom and while it still doesn’t structure the game as such, it gives much more incentive to wander off in hope of discovering cool things. The new landscape generation makes for some spectacularly diverse worlds with deserts, canyons, plains, forests, dungeons, caves and all sorts to discover. I have taken to a strategy I should have used a long time ago — when going off exploring, I build a path as I go, making it significantly easier to find my way back to my buildings and storage when I need to. This hasn’t stopped me being murdered horribly by monsters down one of the horribly inviting deep holes dotted across the landscape which lead to the many random dungeons. But I don’t mind — adventuring is risky business. Sure, you could stay above ground and chop down trees and whatnot, but don’t you really want to see what’s down there…?

While 1.8 clearly still needs work — it’s occasionally buggy and experience points do literally nothing right now — it’s very exciting to see the game getting closer and closer to the state it will be in when it’s eventually declared “finished”. We all know that won’t be the case, though, as the team at Mojang is more than likely to keep adding stuff even after release. And even if they don’t, the mod community is likely to step up and show their stuff, too. It’s going to be a big deal.

Another working week beckons from tomorrow so it’s time to bid you good night.

So… Good night.