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There's been a noticeable upswing in negativity and general bleakness recently — not just in my own head, but online, too. Ridiculous, pointless arguments and drama on social media really seem to be getting out of hand — in the last few days we've had a bunch of pointless bullshit over both Persona 5 and Animal Crossing, of all things — and everyone just seems to be emotionally exhausted.

I mean, I'm not really surprised; I'm even feeling a bit of the ol' fatigue and I was one of the first people to welcome the "lockdown" situation with open arms, since it's not as if I really go out and do anything most of the time, anyway. But somehow, the whole "go out, don't forget your mask, make sure you plan ahead and don't do anything you don't need to, also you're probably not going to see your friends for a very long time" has been starting to feel… I don't know if "oppressive" is the right word, but it's certainly weighing heavily on everyone.

The trouble with people taking out their frustration and aggression online is that it cuts off that one potential source of relief from lockdown frustration and loneliness. If you can't go out and hanging out online is undesirable, what are you supposed to do for some sort of meaningful contact with other people that won't send one or the other of you into an apoplectic rage? Beats me; I was never any good at this stuff before this whole situation started.

Oh well. Just gotta be British about this. Keep on keeping on, stiff upper lip and all that. It's not as if I don't have lots of things to do that don't require leaving the house. It'd just be nice to live in a world that felt a bit more "normal". But I suspect that's not happening for a little while yet.

Hang in there! And get some sleep; that's what I'm off to do right about now.

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details. You've got until November 28.

Didn't get quite as much done as I wanted to today as I'm really struggling to shake this pain off this weekend, but I did manage to get six videos recorded and ready to go, so I should be satisfied with that. I think I've resolved with myself that I'll record the remaining four I wanted to get done during the week at times when I'm bored with the day job. I get bored a lot with the day job, so I can probably be a lot more productive on my various projects if I turn "bored time" into "me time" rather than "sleep time" — as much as it is nice to go back to bed after the frustratingly daily "Morning Catch Up Call".

My trouble is that I tend to think of things in "all or nothing" terms. Because I wanted to get ten videos done this weekend, "only" having done six feels like I've "failed" somehow, even though I've actually accomplished over half of what I wanted to do, and I have the whole week to catch up on those remaining four. The strange way the human mind works and all that. We are, for sure, a curious and flawed species.

Anyway, it's not quite bedtime yet so rather than stressing about whether or not I feel up to recording any more this evening (I do not, but my brain is trying to tell me that I "should") I think I'm going to settle down with a nice bit of Warriors hack-and-slash to chill out for a bit, and hopefully I'll feel a bit better in the morning. If not, yum yum painkillers I guess!

Hope you've all had a pleasant weekend!

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details. You've got until November 28.

Was going to do a bunch of recording today, but after recording all the intros I was still feeling some of the pain I was suffering from last night, so decided to take it easy for the rest of the day. I have filled my day with enjoying the first few hours of Atelier Ayesha, and a bit of grinding (and actual story progress) in Warriors Orochi 2.

Obviously I'll have much more to say about Atelier Ayesha a little way down the road, but I like what I see so far. It feels authentically Atelier, but it also feels noticeably different to the Arland series. Among other things, the atmosphere of the whole thing is completely different, which is unsurprising given the whole "Dusk" concept in this trilogy, but it's a nice change. Subtle, but definitely appreciated — and the trademark Atelier wholesomeness is definitely still there, too, albeit with a tad more melancholy this time around.

The alchemy system is very different this time around. Well, that's not quite accurate, I guess; it actually feels like it's blending elements from a few sources. There's some basic principles from Arland's systems there, plus Mana Khemia's "add one ingredient at a time" thing, where things happen based on the order you put things in the pot, plus the beginnings of what would become Atelier Lulua's elemental affinity system for producing effects on the final item. It's very interesting; I haven't quite got my head around all of it yet, but it's still early days so far.

Meanwhile, Warriors Orochi… well, you probably know how I feel about Warriors games by now. I was initially a little disappointed at how similar Warriors Orochi 2 is to its predecessor, but the more I play, the more its differences become apparent. I mean, it's still quite similar, but the new stories, new combinations of characters, new objectives, new abilities and new modes keep things interesting; I tried one of the "Dream Mode" stages earlier today, which provides you with a predefined team of three and challenges you to complete a fairly lengthy scenario. It was a good time.

Mostly, though, the core addictive quality that I discovered in my original video playthrough of Warriors Orochi is present and correct here. The objective-based unlocking of abilities that can then be globally applied remains, and the weapon fusion aspect remains absolutely essential to powering up your characters. In my progress this evening, I crossed a definite power boundary from "these officers are a bit tough" to "IT'S TIME TO SET LU BU ON FIRE", which is always a satisfying moment. And the nice thing is that because the abilities are global unlocks and the characters are mixed up in the various modes, beginning a new Story Mode campaign never feels like you're having to start over completely from scratch.

I want to cover Warriors Orochi 2 and other Warriors games in more detail at some point, but Warriors Wednesday was too much work. Perhaps I'll just do some occasional articles when I feel I have something to say, much like I did with Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends Definitive Edition a while back.

Anyway. The pain seems to have mostly passed so I'm going to have a sandwich and get some sleep, then hopefully I'll get some recording done tomorrow. Today has been pleasantly chilled, aside from putting up with said pain, so I'm ready to get stuff done tomorrow for sure!

Suffering a fair bit of pain from my hernia this evening, so forgive me if this is short and/or incoherent!

We've reached the end of another week. Everything is all sort of blurring into one at the moment; it seems like just yesterday that I was complaining "why is it only Monday" to my wife, and here we are at the end of another week. I guess that's a good thing, maybe? Although it's not as if there's particularly anything worth waiting for right now… nothing with a concrete date, anyway. At least, it doesn't feel that way; those excited for the next-gen consoles have doubtless been eagerly awaiting their release, but I'm just not feeling the hype at the minute.

This weekend and next I'll be recording some videos to get in the can ready for the next few weeks. Don't forget that if you're an S-Rank Patron you can submit your questions for the inaugural and experimental Q&A video at the end of the month — drop by this post and leave a comment there (not here!) if you want to take part. There's been a few great questions so far but it'd be nice to have a few more — if you've already submitted one, feel free to drop another one!

Anyway. I think it's about time I went and lay down and howled in pain for a bit. This will pass, so long as I can convince my cats not to step on it for an hour or two. That's the most challenging bit.

Have a pleasant evening!

Twitter's been rolling out its new "Fleets" thing over the last few days. I usually use Web Twitter, but earlier I decided to install the Twitter app on my phone and see if there was any value to Fleets whatsoever.

There is not. At least, not for me. I scrolled through all the "Fleets" that were currently available to me, and they were all, without fail, utterly vapid nonsense that served absolutely no purpose whatsoever. On top of that, the interface for them is such a blatant ripoff of Instagram's equally pointless "Stories" feature that I'm surprised there hasn't been any sort of legal shenanigans.

I uninstalled the Twitter app less than five minutes after I installed it. Web Twitter on mobile has not, thankfully, been infected by this nonsense yet.

This is grumpy old man moaning, I know, but one of the things I used to value about Twitter was how it was a fairly lightweight, simple, straightforward approach to social media. It was originally pitched as a "microblogging" site, after all — a place where people would post short, 140-character things about what they were up to. Fairly vapid in itself, one might argue, but as people started to use it, it became clear that it was possible to have conversations and even form friendship groups.

Now, if we look at Twitter today, people often argue that it's the worst possible platform on which to have a meaningful discussion, and I pretty much agree with that. Twitter was built as a platform to, basically, chat with people, and nothing more. You'd post a thing, someone might reply, that was that. Over time, we started to get "retweets" (which, if you're a relative newcomer to Twitter, were originally implemented by someone actually copy-pasting another tweet, writing "RT @username:" in front of it and having about 5 characters left to comment) that started to dilute the original point of the platform… and this was just the beginning of the colossal mess the whole platform is now, with its constant attempts to force a non-chronological timeline on you, the constant barrage of ads and the focus on "engagement metrics" and "amplification" rather than, you know, talking to people.

Fleets is just another sign that Twitter has completely lost sight of what it was originally for — and what a lot of people on the platform wish they could still use it for. Doubtless money was involved — I suspect it won't be long before we start seeing "Promoted Fleets" — and no real care or attention was given to the actual userbase.

But you know what they say… if you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product. That, regrettably, feels more and more obvious every day!

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details. You've got until November 28.

Those of you active on social media recently may have seen that all of USgamer's staff has been laid off, presumably with the intention of either closing the site altogether or leaving it as some sort of click farm in the long term. Either way, I'm not shedding any tears over it; while working at that place was literally a dream come true when I first started, the way I was treated by former editor-in-chief Jeremy Parish in particular — culminating with me being made redundant on my birthday so he could hire his friends instead of that British twat who liked anime games — has left me with a sour taste in my mouth ever since.

However, that's not to say that I achieved nothing of note at USgamer. I feel like my time there really helped me establish both my voice as a writer, and my specialist knowledge. It helped me understand the things I wanted to pursue and learn more about — and ultimately, although the circumstances were unpleasant, it led me to create MoeGamer, and that is why some of you are here reading this right now.

I looked over the archives of USgamer today (side note: their site navigation is completely broken and it appears no-one has noticed for the last six years) and discovered that I posted well over a thousand articles during my time there. Most of those were news stories and, as such, probably aren't worth preserving, but there were a significant number of reviews and feature articles that I had written. I spent a bit of time earlier today downloading and preserving all of these, because with the future of the site completely unknown, there's every chance that they will just disappear one day.

So I'm going to preserve some of them myself. Some things aren't particularly relevant any more, as they were written in response to particular happenings or periods in the games industry, but others are timeless — and it's those articles that I'm going to republish on MoeGamer over the course of the coming weeks and months.

There's a bunch of these articles that I'd completely forgotten I'd written. I'll leave some as a surprise for you for when I republish them, but one of the ones I was most pleased to discover was a detailed breakdown of my whole "find the good" philosophy that I've always adopted on MoeGamer. I had totally forgotten that this was actually based on an established theory of criticism — specifically, John Updike's personal rules of literary criticism, which he published in his 1975 collection of prose Picked-Up Pieces. They (still) make a lot of sense, and are broadly applicable to any form of creative media.

Anyway, keep an eye out for these republished articles in the coming weeks; they'll likely be tagged in their own section of the site under the "From the Archives" heading, which also includes articles from MoeGamer's less focused "1.0" incarnation (2014-2016) as well as a number of columns I wrote for a defunct site known as Games Are Evil.

I may have been completely ghosted by all of USgamer's former staff — reviews editor Mike Williams, who helped launch the site alongside me back in 2013, name-checked literally everyone who had ever worked on the site except me in his farewell piece — but I'll be damned if the blood, sweat and tears I poured into that site over my time there is going to go to waste. Our creations in the digital realm are all too fragile, and all too easily lost to things that are nothing to do with you. So I can at least ensure that some of the work I'm proud of lives on!

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details. You've got until November 28.

Atelier Lulua is down for the count — and I even managed to get all of the endings in a single run, too. The wonders of games without time limits. I was correct yesterday — all I needed to do was 1) make better armour and 2) make bigger bombs. Specifically, fire bombs. Last boss is weak to fire, and was actually kind of a pushover with the right party lineup and preparation. But I guess that's always what Atelier's been about, really!

Anyway, it's on to the Dusk series next. I'm not starting that tonight because it's getting a bit late already, but I'm excited to finally make it this far. I know the three Dusk games — and Escha & Logy in particular — are favourites of a lot of people, so I've been very curious to check them out for the longest time, and now I can do so with that lovely all-in-one cartridge that Play-Asia did a while back. I know nothing about the Dusk games besides some of the character designs, so I'm looking forward to exploring them.

Given that I'm a bit ahead of schedule (I've still got two Atelier Meruru articles in me), I might make some time to play through a couple of shorter things in the meantime, too. As I've noted recently, I've been playing both Dead Rising and Quantum Theory, and I think both are full of interesting things worth writing about. I'm also going to look into Capcom's Lost Planet series soonish (as soon as my 360 copy of Lost Planet Colonies arrives, specifically) as I know that's got a lot of cool things to investigate. Chris and I are also tentatively planning some sort of "seventh generation Capcom" or "Japanese shooters" episode of the podcast in the near future, too, so all of the above fit right in with all that.

Anyway. Andie and I seem to be coming down with something — not the dreaded 'rona, I don't think, but an annoying cold — so I'll leave that there for now and bid you good night. Have a pleasant evening!

I thought I was going to beat Atelier Lulua this evening but the final boss absolutely wiped the floor with me. Whoops. Guess I need to spend a little bit of time doing some endgame crafting, huh?

I'm in two minds about the final boss being the most difficult thing in a game. It all kind of depends on the overall structure of the game in question. If it's a linear thing where the final boss is literally the final thing you do in the game, then fine; in situations like RPGs, where there are often lots of optional things to do, it's sometimes nice to have a final boss that you can overpower relatively easily simply by virtue of having prepared properly.

I mean, I guess in this case I can probably still achieve that by crafting some better items/equipment, but still. It's a little frustrating to get wiped out repeatedly — particularly as in one instance it obliterated my team before I could do anything. But we can learn from this experience! I have learned that I need to increase the speed of my team to ensure they act first, bump up their resistances and preferably make them immune to having the item command sealed, because that absolutely gimps the alchemist characters in the party. Such as, you know, the protagonist.

I don't really have a point. It's after midnight, though, so I should probably stop trying for now and give it another shot tomorrow, huh?

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details.

One thing I've always said about my work on MoeGamer is that I make a specific effort to "find the good" in pretty much everything I play. It's extremely rare that I come across a game with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever — and I tend to take the attitude that if it exists, it's probably important to someone, even if that someone is just the creator.

With this in mind, I came to Quantum Theory on Xbox 360, a third-person shooter from the director of Fatal Frame. This is a title that has a woeful Metascore, but which both Chris and I have always found intriguing for one reason or another. And, as you'll know very well if you've been following my work for a while, a low Metascore is often reason for me to check something out rather than avoid it like the plague — particularly now games like this can be picked up for pocket change.

I'm a few hours into the game now, and, as you might expect, I'm having a much better time than the reviews from when it first came out might suggest. Coming at it with an awareness of gaming history and a decent understanding of mechanics, too, I'm seeing things that it's doing that were ignored or written off back when it was first reviewed.

Most notably, I'm keenly aware of the fact that it is not, as many reviewers claimed, a Gears of War clone. Yes, the base mechanics are suspiciously similar to Epic's popular title — right down to including the "roadie run" and the sticky cover — but the structure is very different. In practice, it functions in an almost arcadey manner — you work your way from room to room, dispatching all the enemies there, before moving on. There's an almost "rail shooter" feel to it at times, in that enemies come from various places around the stage, and you need to use your observational skills to deal with them, prioritise your targets and keep yourself safe.

I finished for the evening just at the point where a new mechanic is introduced: a sidekick character called Filena, who you can basically "throw" at enemies for a melee attack, and use in combination attacks and suchlike. You get a very brief preview of how this will all work in the game's introductory mission, but from this point on it looks like it's going to be a standard part of gameplay.

I'm looking forward to exploring the game further — and the knowledge that it's the work of Makoto Shibata just makes it all the more interesting to me. It's very obviously one of those games from the period when a lot of Japanese devs and publishers were trying to "appeal to the West" — but it's also got plenty of interesting, unique things about it, and I think it got a pretty raw deal back in the day. So, when I've had time to plough through it, I will do my bit to rectify that situation!

Anyway, for now, it's bedtime. Should polish off Atelier Lulua tomorrow, all being well — I'm pretty sure I've got my save file primed for all the possible endings, so looking forward to seeing the various conclusions!

Hope you've all had a good weekend. Speak soon! Or not. You know what I mean. Just being conversational. Anyway. Bye.

S-Rank patrons: Don't forget to get your questions in for the November 2020 Q&A. Click here for details.

Been playing a bit of Dead Rising on and off recently, and I feel like, as with so many other games from that period, I'm appreciating it a lot more than I did back when it first came out. I think it's testament to how much I've learned about game design, mechanics and whatnot that I can go back to these games that, for one reason or another, I bounced off a bit "back in the day" and have a lot more fun with them.

As with most stuff along these lines, I'll write more about Dead Rising on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it, but so far I'm very much appreciating its curious take on New Game Plus. This was actually a common point of contention when it originally came out, and I don't recall any game handling its saving in quite the same way since. I guess there's an argument for roguelikes with persistent progression having an element of what Dead Rising did, but I certainly can't think of many games with fixed content that encourage you to New Game Plus it before you've even finished it once.

On the offchance you're unfamiliar, here's how it works. In Dead Rising, you earn "PP" (hehe) or "Prestige Points" for all sorts of things — small quantities through combat and much larger quantities for major achievements such as defeating bosses, discovering and rescuing survivors and reaching particular milestones in your kill count. PP is just another term for experience points; as you gain PP, you fill a meter, and when this fills, protagonist Frank goes up a level. Unlike an RPG, however, there isn't a flat increase to his stats with every level up; instead, with each level up you get a random improvement to one thing: attack power, run speed, throw distance, inventory space, maximum health or the skills you're able to use.

The intention behind the system is for you to see how far you can get through the game until you either fuck up the main story (which you can do by taking too long over its various objectives) or die, at which point you can either load your most recent (and only) save, or you can save Frank's current status — level, stats, available skills — and delete your progress through the story. At this point, you start the game again, only more powerful than first time around. And in theory, it gradually gets easier, both as Frank grows in power with each "reset", and as you learn important things about the game and its world.

For example, after my most recent fuck-up, I learned where the maintenance tunnels key is, which allows you to use a variety of shortcuts around the game's mall setting. Next time I start over (with my now level 20 Frank) I can make a beeline straight for that key as soon as I have the free time to do so, and start using those shortcuts right away. It's an interesting twist on the memorisation required for certain arcade-style games — and in fact, there's a fair bit of arcade DNA of various descriptions throughout Dead Rising. This shouldn't be surprising, given that it's from Capcom, but it's one of those things that I wouldn't have spotted back in 2006, but am very aware of now. Besides my own work, I have my conversations with Chris on the podcast to thank for my keen awareness of this sort of thing these days.

Anyway, I have plenty more playthroughs to do before I make it through the whole game, I suspect, so it'll be a little while before I write this one up. I'm certainly finding it to be an intriguing, experimental game, though, and am looking forward to picking it apart further.

Hope you're all having a good weekend so far. I'm going to get some recording done tomorrow, even though I still have a couple of episodes still ready to go from my week off a while back. Have a pleasant evening!