2030: Splatoon is Pretty Damn Good

Wandered into town today to take care of a few bits of business, and decided that I'd trade in some games I didn't really play any more and that wouldn't be difficult to find again (Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed, stuff like that) and pick up Splatoon.

I've been idly following Splatoon since it was released, but I've held off picking it up because I'm generally not a massive fan of competitive games, and while Splatoon does have a single-player mode, it's most well-known for its online battles.

Well, after spending a couple of hours with it this evening, I'm kind of sorry I waited; it's really, really good.

Most of you reading this are probably already familiar with Splatoon but on the offchance you aren't, it's a Wii U game from Nintendo that is a rare example of them putting out a non-Mario or Zelda-related IP. Moreover, it's actually an all-new IP, and one that deserves to do well, since it has some great character designs and witty writing, even in a game so focused on competitive multiplayer.

I haven't tried the single-player at all yet and I'm only level 6 in multiplayer, so I can't talk about the complete experience as yet, but what I've played so far has been a whole lot of fun.

In your early hours of Splatoon, you're restricted to playing "Turf War" mode; a four-on-four affair in which the two teams compete to cover as much of the level with ink as possible over the course of three minutes. At the end of the match, the area covered is totted up and a winner declared, and individual rankings are shown so you can see who was pulling their weight more than others.

The genius of Splatoon is that it's a competitive shooter (third-person in this case) in which the emphasis is not on killing other players, but instead on surveying the overall situation of the battlefield and acting accordingly. There's no voice chat, but this isn't really a problem, since you can coordinate your efforts with others simply by glancing at the overview map on the GamePad screen and seeing what regions need your attention. The fact that all you're expected to do is cover as much of the level as possible with ink keeps things simple and accessible — though you will give your team a small advantage if you can fend off your opponents, sending them back to their base and wasting a bit of time as they respawn and make their way back to where the action is.

The other thing I like about Splatoon is that it's apparently possible to pick up and play it and immediately be quite good at it. Out of the fifteen or twenty matches I've played this evening — they're short and snappy, which is lovely — I was on the losing team only twice. There's plenty of variety in the weapons, but none of them (so far, anyway) feel like they're massively overpowered or anything; most of them can be countered in some way or another, and even the "superweapons" can be dodged and avoided if you know to recognise the warning signs soon enough.

I'm convinced, then; this is a good game that I'm looking forward to exploring more in the coming days. And it seems there's a really active community, too, both on Reddit and Discord, so I'm looking forward to getting to know some new people.

I can officially confirm, then, that I am indeed a kid now, a squid now, a kid now, etc. So that's nice.

2029: Our Video Future

I've been playing a bit more with making some videos using the PlayStation 4 and its ShareFactory software. As it turns out, today I actually hit the upper limit of how many clips of commentary it's possible to add to a single project; apparently I need to record narration all in one go, then split it up later if necessary rather than recording in small chunks!

This was today's project:

Sword Art Online Re:Hollow Fragment is a really good game that I'm enjoying a whole lot, and making a video about it seemed like a good idea, because a lot of people who haven't taken a chance on it and just started playing it really don't know anything about it at all. My good friend Chris Caskie, for example, specifically thanked me for showing all the different parts of the game across the course of my six-minute video, since gameplay footage he'd seen in the past had only ever shown a tiny (and, from the sounds of things, boring) excerpt of what's actually on offer.

I think I've found a format I like working in, too: I never felt quite comfortable doing "Let's Plays" or recording live reactions as if I was streaming a game. At least part of this, I feel, is due to the fact that, as a viewer, I don't really have much interest in Let's Plays and streaming, because I'd much rather play a game than watch someone else play it. What I do appreciate, however, is the opportunity to see a game in action, find out a bit about it and perhaps a touch of personal opinion as to whether or not it's worth exploring. I am also uninclined to spend 20 minutes watching someone go through options menus and whatnot; short and relatively snappy is the key, summarising everything I might want to know about the game without rambling on and on about it for too long.

So that's the format I've adopted in my last couple of videos. I feel it works well; I've been pleased with the result (though not so much with the sound quality; I need to 1) adjust the sound levels between the game footage and my commentary recording and 2) invest in or find a pop filter for my headset microphone, which is otherwise proving to be pretty good for this) and I actually find myself going back and watching the videos I've recorded again; considering a few years back (prior to the first time I went on a podcast) I absolutely loathed and detested the sound of my own voice and would rather have stuck my head into a woodchipper than listened to myself, this is Progress of sorts, I guess.

I think the fact I'm enjoying making these videos — and that I can do so quite quickly — is important though. I will always be someone who enjoys writing about games first and foremost, and that's what the magazine project I'm currently working on is all about. For a basic "review" of sorts, however — which is effectively what I'm doing with these videos, or at the very least providing some first impressions after a few hours of play — video seems to be an eminently suitable medium, perhaps even better than dry written words on a page.

Perhaps I'll even be able to make some money off this sort of thing eventually, though I'm realistic here; my viewing stats have broken three figures on, I think, just one of my videos posted to date, with the others having anywhere between 10 and 70 views. That's not at a point where it's worth putting ads on my videos as yet, though that said I haven't really made a huge effort to try and promote what I'm doing; I'm just putting it out there to see what people think.

If nothing else, it's something to do on empty, tedious days, and I'm having a whole lot of those at the moment.

2026: Hollow Fragment

The next "big game" of the moment for me is Sword Art Online: Re: Hollow Fragment, a PlayStation 4 rerelease of an earlier Vita game, which itself was an expanded version of an even earlier PSP game. The Vita version had a notoriously dreadful translation, but I'm pleased to report that the PlayStation 4 version is at least readable — though the conversation system is still bafflingly nonsensical at first.

Sword Art Online, for those not into the animes, was a popular show a couple of years back. It was one of those "mainstream" shows that became really popular and which everyone subsequently decided they hated for one reason or another. I never quite understood the hate; sure, it was cheesy as fuck in places, but it was an enjoyable, beautifully presented show with an amazing soundtrack and a concept I've always loved ever since I played .hack for the first time: the MMO that is trying to kill you.

The Sword Art Online anime concerns Kirito, a protagonist who is a blatant self-insert for the writer, but I won't hold that against anyone, since self-inserts can be a wonderful means of escapism. Kirito becomes trapped in the new virtual reality MMO Sword Art Online after the game launches out of beta and the "logout" button is removed by its designer, capturing all 10,000 launch day players in the virtual world. To make matters worse, said designer — the villain of the piece — informs the players of a little tweak to the rules of the game: if they are forcibly removed from their VR equipment, or if they run out of HP and "die" in the game, then their VR equipment will fry their brain with microwaves, killing them instantly.

There's a get-out clause, though; if the game is cleared by someone defeating the final boss on the 100th "floor", everyone who survived will be allowed to escape. After two years of the game, it becomes apparent that this goal is still a long way off, and player numbers are dwindling as more and more people either fall victim to carelessness or despair along the way. Ultimately, the first arc of the anime concludes with Kirito and his friends defeating Sword Art Online's designer and freeing themselves from the virtual world of Aincrad, only to find themselves in numerous subsequent adventures in other virtual worlds. You'd think they'd learn.

Hollow Fragment, meanwhile, takes place in a reality where Kirito's defeat of Heathcliff at the end of the first arc was not the end of Sword Art Online, and the players find themselves still trapped within the game. Moreover, they discover that once they pass the 75th floor — the floor where Kirito defeated Heathcliff — they are unable to return to the lower floors, and many of their skills and items become "corrupted", mere shadows of their former selves. The game, then, continues; it looks as if the only way to escape really will be to defeat the boss on the 100th floor.

Except that's not all, because clearing out 25 floors of dungeon would be far too easy a task. In the opening of the game, Kirito finds himself transported to the "Hollow Area", an unexplored part of the Sword Art Online world where strange things happen and rare, high-level monsters and items abound. Acting as a sort of "testing area", the Hollow Area allows Kirito to uncover a number of mysteries surrounding the virtual world of Aincrad as well as beef up his own character's power significantly through various research trees. The flow of the game then becomes a journey back and forth between three distinct components, then: Aincrad, the Hollow Area, and what I like to refer to as Waifutown.

Aincrad is pretty straightforward. Upon arriving on a new floor, you're shown a big tower off in the distance and informed the boss is waiting for you at the top of it. Between you and said tower are several overworld areas populated by enemies, so you'll need to fight your way up to the boss room in order to challenge it. Along the way you'll also need to gather intelligence on the boss by completing quests and defeating specific named monsters (NMs) as well as helping your fellow "players" to level up enough to take on the challenges ahead. Each "floor" is pretty linear in its design, though the dungeon at the end of it is more maze-like and unfolds across several levels, and you'll be doing a fair amount of backtracking to complete quests.

The Hollow Area works a little differently. Rather than a linear sequence of areas leading to a dungeon maze, the Hollow Area is an interconnected network of zones more akin to a regular RPG or even MMO map. The Hollow Area is split into several different regions, each of which you'll need to build up points in by completing "Hollow Missions" that appear and disappear in real-time as you play. While completing Hollow Missions, you can take on research tasks, which give you specific objectives to complete; once these are completed, you can then implement the research into Kirito's character to improve it. You have to content with bosses here, too, though in the Hollow Area they guard region transitions rather than separate floors.

Waifutown, meanwhile, is what you do when you're not adventuring. The town on the 76th floor that acts as your adventuring home base is home to most of the characters who got their own episode in the original Sword Art Online anime arc, along with a couple from the later arcs (Leafa and Sinon) who have been shoehorned in for the sake of having a few more waifus to pursue. In town, you can shop, upgrade weapons and hang out with your fellow adventurers. This latter aspect is important; by hanging out with your prospective adventuring partners, you can increase your relationship with them (up to and including sleeping with them) which subsequently helps them perform better in battle. By building up your relationship as well as "training" their AI by praising it when it does well, you can tailor each of the companion characters to your own liking. Or you can pick a waifu and spend the whole game with them if you so desire.

Sword Art Online is an enormous and surprisingly complex game. There are a lot of different systems at play — it's going all-out with the "simulated MMO" aspect in this regard — and, while it's daunting to begin with, the many different ways in which it's possible to progress in the game make it feel like you're always achieving something, and that there's always a choice of things to do at any given moment. While its graphics look like butt outside of the beautiful 2D artwork — its PSP roots are very apparent — it really doesn't matter all that much; it plays satisfyingly well, feeling quite like a high-speed Phantasy Star Online at times, and there's a wonderful, constant sense of discovery and exploration as you work your way around this strange and wonderful virtual world. (And yes, I'll probably make a video about this at some point so you can actually see how it plays.)

Also you can bed Lisbeth. 10/10

2024: Galak-Zed

Been playing some Galak-Z on PS4 today. This is a game I've had my eye on for a while, and it's finally been released.

Galak-Z, for the uninitiated, is a "roguelite" — that is, it incorporates some aspects of roguelikes (most notably permadeath and randomly generated elements) while adding some persistent elements and making the overall experience a bit more friendly and accessible to the average person who gets frightened by ASCII.

It's actually got quite a bit in common with the indie darling Rogue Legacy from a while back, in that there's a constant sense of "progression" even when you're fucking things up repeatedly, because even when you mess up, you'll be unlocking stuff that might make future playthroughs a bit easier. Make no mistake, though, Galak-Z is a challenging game that is not afraid to kick your arse.

At heart, it's a top-down space shooter in which you complete various missions that usually boil down to "find dungeon, find thing in dungeon, destroy/collect thing, escape". This simple structure works in the game's favour, as it keeps missions short and snappy with the possibility of variations along the way according to map layouts and the enemies you'll encounter. And treasure, of course; one of the most fun aspects of Galak-Z is gradually outfitting your ship with all manner of death-dealing machinery and hoping it will save your life when one of those bastard Hammerhead ships starts chasing you.

Rather than simply tasking you with surviving as long as possible, Galak-Z is mission-based. To be specific, it's split into five "seasons", each of which requires you to complete five episodes in a row without dying in order to progress to the next. In a charming nod to '80s era Saturday morning cartoons — which the game's whole aesthetic is based on — each episode has a randomly generated title and writer, plus some enjoyable banter between the playable protagonist A-Tak and the heroine Beam.

I'm not sure what the game's longevity will be like as, having not yet finished the first season, I can't say with confidence whether the later missions are more adventurous and complex. It's certainly holding my interest right now, but I feel it may need a bit more to keep me playing in the long term. It remains to be seen whether it will provide that for me, I guess — count on a situation report when the time comes!

In the meantime, I made another video with ShareFactory detailing the game, how it works and what it's all about. Take a look!

2022: Video Star

Been experimenting a bit more with video today. Specifically, I had a play with the PlayStation 4's app ShareFactory, which allows you to take video clips and screenshots you've saved while playing PS4 games, then edit them together with commentary, music, transitions and effects into something that can then be rendered and uploaded (almost) directly to YouTube, Facebook or DailyMotion.

ShareFactory is a decent bit of software, it turns out, and works quite nicely with the DualShock 4 controller. Its interface is initially a little difficult to parse, since it's largely icon-based and not immediately apparent what all of said icons are actually for, but once you get your head around it it mostly works well.

ShareFactory is no Final Cut, obviously, but then it doesn't need to be. To make an effective gameplay video, all you need at most is the game footage along with perhaps some still images, some music and some commentary. There's no real need for multiple tracks of video or anything like that — though I believe ShareFactory does support picture-in-picture if you have a PlayStation camera — because you're not making a multi-angle extravaganza of a movie; you're making a video about a game.

I learned something else while making my ShareFactory project, too; I much prefer making videos that are "pre-scripted" rather than improvised Let's Play-style videos. This is probably due to the fact that I also prefer watching videos that are pre-scripted rather than improvised Let's Play-style videos. I grew up on traditional media, remember; I'm not really interested in watching Kids React To Something Pretty Mundane, nor am I interested in listening to someone's reactions in real time as they play something for the first time. I am, however, interested in seeing video used in the "documentary" style; footage of something relevant, with explanatory commentary over the top. This sort of thing doesn't have to be dry and boring, either; more importantly, though, it tends to be a lot more concise, with pre-scripted videos more often than not clocking in at considerably lower durations than Let's Plays.

More to the point, though, it means that I can write something in a "traditional" manner, then just read it out (with feeling!) when it comes to time to record the video. The only real difference is that in the script I found it was a good idea to mark where different video clips/sections should begin. That really helped with editing later, particularly with the way ShareFactory's workflow goes. I could take a clip at a time, record the commentary, then trim/split the clips down to fit the commentary afterwards. After that it was a simple matter to upload it to YouTube and share it with the world.

What's that? You want to see it for yourself? Okay then!

2019: Hero of Daventry: Some King's Quest First Impressions

Following on from my post the other day, I downloaded the first episode of King's Quest on PlayStation 4 today, and gave it a bit of a go earlier. Andie seemed to be enjoying it, so I paused for a bit while she went and had a nap, then we went and had dinner. Will probably play some more tomorrow.

First impressions are very good indeed, though. The game has a gorgeous art style, wonderful animation and a spectacular voice cast, including Christopher Lloyd, Josh Keaton and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

Most notably, though, the game is very much aware of its heritage. I was concerned that a new developer taking on such a legendary series would lose some of the magic of the original — or worse, try and retrofit their interpretation over the top of the existing format, or "reboot" it — but my mind has been very much set at rest so far, with a story and characterisation that feels very true to King's Quest's lightly comedic (but, at times, surprisingly dark) fairy-tale nature.

Of particular note in the animation regard is how much care and attention has been lavished on protagonist Graham. Although he's now a beautifully animated 3D model with a dramatically billowing cape as opposed to a tiny pixel dude with yellow skin, there's a bunch of wonderful little touches in the new game as callbacks to the original King's Quest games. Make Graham walk instead of run, for example, and his slightly cocky strut looks just like the crude walking animation of the original game's sprite. And in one sequence, you jump into a river; the animation as Graham flails about in the water is pretty much exactly the same as his old sprite did any time you wandered into a body of water and forgot to type "swim".

And, pleasingly, the new game incorporates the original series' fondness for killing you off in a variety of horrible ways — though, given the game's narrative framework of an elderly Graham narrating his past adventures to his granddaughter, any unfortunate demises are represented as Graham either making a mistake in his memories or cracking a joke.

The use of old Graham as narrator allows the game to do something that a lot of modern adventure games these days don't do: use a narrator. This is one thing that made Sierra adventures unique and distinct from their biggest rivals LucasArts — in every one of their games, the narrator was as much of a character as the characters who had actual dialogue. In most cases, the narrator wasn't a participant in the narrative, instead taking an omniscient viewpoint of what was going on, but there was a very clear sense of authorial voice that was often distinct between Sierra's different series. The narrators of King's Quest used flowery language and occasional cringeworthy puns — a habit Graham has picked up in the new game — while Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry used lowbrow humour to good effect. Gabriel Knight, meanwhile, took the bold step of having a narrator with a very strong Creole accent explain what was going on — stylistically appropriate, though initially jarring if you were used to the somewhat cleaner, more easily understandable tones of the American narrators of Sierra's other games. (Once you became accustomed to her drawl, however, she delivered some delightfully sarcastic zingers at Gabriel's expense throughout the game.)

Pleasingly, old Graham's narration pays attention to what you are doing and has a variety of responses for when you try to do the same thing over and over again. There's no Discworld-style "That doesn't work!" here; instead, keep trying to do something that's clearly wrong and old Graham will come up with more and more fanciful reasons about his futile attempts, until eventually his granddaughter stops him in most cases. There's also a delightful running joke about That One Adventure Game Item You Use For Everything when you discover a hatchet which comes in useful for a while. After its final task, however, Graham leaves it behind, with old Graham putting special emphasis on the fact that he would "not need it ever again". (Prior to this, of course, you were free to attempt to use it on anything and everything, with suitable comments from both Graham and Gwendolyn along the way.)

So far, then, I'm delighted by how King's Quest has turned out. It's smart, funny, beautiful and captures the essence of the old games while bringing them right up to date. I'm looking forward to see how the remainder of this first episode continues — and how the series as a whole develops over time.

2018: How to Win at Omega Quintet

I finally finished getting the Platinum trophy in Omega Quintet this evening, and feel I've had a thoroughly satisfying time with that delightful game. It remained fun for all of the 170 hours I played it for — excluding the Order Break-happy bosses in the DLC dungeons, which can fuck right off — and I'm pleased that Compile Heart has got off to a running start in the PS4 era.

One thing I noticed, though, is that there aren't many guides out there for Omega Quintet. GameFAQs doesn't even have an FAQ page for it, though the discussion boards are quite active. As such, it's fairly likely that there are people out there who want some hints and tips about how to get good, particularly as in its later hours (and particularly post-game) Omega Quintet can get quite challenging.

Here are some helpful tips, then. These all assume that you have progressed at least far enough in the game to have the full party of five.

Arrange your party either in a straight line formation, an "M" or a "W" shape. Whoever is in the middle slot (I recommend someone like Otoha or Kanadeko, since they have high Stamina) should have Takt paired up with them. The reason for this is that this means Takt can cover the maximum number of party members with Group Defense if the party is hit by an area-effect attack.
Speaking of Takt's defense abilities, always use them. Not only do they reduce damage, they also cause status ailments to be resisted by all party members being hit by the attack, even if you accidentally hit Pair Defense instead of Group Defense on an area-effect attack. Neither Pair nor Group Defense will block stat drains, however.
In the early game, stick with the girls' default weapons — spear for Kyouka, fists for Kanadeko, hammer for Otoha, gun for Nene and fans for Aria. In Disc Analysis concentrate on unlocking and upgrading the relevant weapon skills; you can always branch out later.
Also in the early game, consider specialising each girl. Kyouka's high Vitality (speed) makes her ideal as a "buffer" since she usually goes first in the turn order, so equip her with skills like Scorch Choir, Chorale, Bastion and Charge to allow her to buff up the entire party's stats. Aria, meanwhile, makes a good healer due to her high Divinity, while Nene makes a good "mage" with her high Knowledge stat. Otoha and Kanadeko are your de facto physical attackers, so concentrate on getting their weapon skills up to scratch as soon as possible, then choose elemental skills that complement and support the others.
Go for big bonuses when you can. You earn bigger bonuses the bigger the number of hits in a single combo (i.e. before an enemy gets a turn), the more enemies you defeat simultaneously (on a single turn; doesn't have to be in a single action), the more HP you Overkill an enemy by, the more Links you get (more on those in a sec), the higher your Voltage is (more on that in a sec, too) and the more Requests you complete if you trigger Live Concert Mode.
Links are your way to earning lots of experience, EP (money) and Approval (which unlocks quests). Pay attention to the type of attack the interface says a skill "links" to, and use them in this order whenever possible. The more links you chain without a break, the bigger your bonus at the end of a fight.

Links also help with earning Voltage, but the most reliable means of bumping up the Voltage meter is to get lots of critical hits. To do this, use area-effect attacks and reduce the enemy stats as much as possible. If the damage numbers that pop up when you hit something are red, that's a critical hit and will earn you Voltage. Note that only physical (Mic) skills will critical; E Skills will not, so even though some E Skills hit lots of times over a wide area, they're not good for earning Voltage. They are, however, good for earning bonus actions through the hit count.
Consider Chain Skills when picking discs to set on each girl. Some are more useful than others. By far the most useful of all is Cosmic Fan, which you obtain late in the game. This requires four different girls to cast Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution. It hits for a bunch of times, but its main benefit is that it reduces all the stats of everything it hits — and it covers a wide area. If you have the slots for it, give all five girls Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution, because this way you can case Cosmic Fan five times in succession if turn order lines up correctly and you use Harmonics.
Speaking of Harmonics, use it whenever you can, but don't waste it. Manipulate the turn order by using abilities or items with low wait times, and don't forget to use Takt's Pursuit to knock enemies back in the turn order. Ideally, you want each Harmonics to have all five girls ready for action, preferably to hurl out some Cosmic Fans and debuff the enemy into oblivion.
Order Break is the most annoying thing in this game, and it's not immediately apparent what triggers it if you're not paying attention. The specific conditions vary according to the party of enemies you're fighting — certain enemy lineups in the post-game will even cause an immediate Order Break at the start of a battle, even if you got a Surprise Attack in on them. The most common conditions for triggering Order Break are reducing an enemy below 50% of its HP, Guard Breaking an enemy and defeating an enemy. Consequently, you want to try and avoid meeting any of these conditions until you're in a situation where you can unleash the Harmonics combo from hell to obliterate everything in a single turn.

Speaking of the Harmonics combo from hell, here's how to kill pretty much everything in the late game with ease:
- Level up all five girls' hammer or fan skills to at least proficiency level 7. The quickest way to do this is on the lower levels of the Training Facility dungeon, which are also good for earning a lot of experience. Hammers are recommended in preference to fans, but it will depend what equipment you have available.
- Learn Takt's Special Fanfare skill if you have the skill points for it, and assign this to Level 2 Live Concert. Special Fanfare significantly increases damage from Special Skills, so it's important for finishing battles quickly.
- Make sure all five girls have all four Cosmic Fan spells. (Cremation, Legato, Aubade Crush and Absolution).
- If you've kept developing Nene as a mage-like character (Knowledge-focused equipment), also give her Flame Typhoon and Raging Vortex.
- Give all the girls Earth Assault.
- Make sure all the girls have the main area-effect skills for the weapon whose proficiency you've levelled. Important ones are Ultimate Crush and Howling Earth for hammer, Light Crescent and Herd of Artemis for fan. If you have the skill points to spare, upgrade these and the Cosmic Fan spells as much as you can.
- Fight a weak enemy somewhere and end the fight with Voltage level 5. Note that if you return to the Office, your Voltage will be reset, so if the tough enemy you want to kill is out in the world, you'll need to defeat a weak enemy in a world dungeon (Verdant Greenbelt is a good bet), while if you're in the Training Facility, you'll need to defeat a weak enemy on an early floor, then move directly to the floor the fight you're struggling with is on without returning to the Office first.
- Surprise Attack the enemy you want to beat if possible. This should see all five girls' turns lined up at the start of the battle. If there's a gap in the turn order, escape if possible and either reduce the Vitality of the speediest characters by removing Vitality-boosting equipment, or boost the vitality of the slowest characters (Nene is usually the problem here) with amps or equipment.
- If you're fighting a boss or quest mob, Surprise Attacks may not be possible. In this case, you'll need to manipulate the turn order using Takt's Pursuit and defending. Try to line up all five girls without triggering Order Break, so take care you don't do too much damage to the enemies in the process.
- Assuming you got the turn order lined up (preferably with a Surprise Attack) immediately trigger Harmonics and cast two Cosmic Fans. Do not cast Cosmic Fan through the Chain Skill menu, however; cast each individual component one at a time on the same target, which should be somewhere in the middle of the enemy party. The reason for this is that Cosmic Fan's Chain Skill menu option does not input the commands in the right order to maximise your Link bonus. The order you should choose is: (Girl 1) Cremation, (Girl 2) Legato, (Girl 3) Aubade Crush, (Girl 4) Absolution, (Girl 4 again) Cremation, (Girl 5) Legato, (Girl 1), Aubade Crush, (Girl 2) Absolution. After this, Defend with everyone. This will have several important effects: it will lower the enemy's stats enough to let you get critical hits more easily, it will boost everyone's action count to at least 6 or 7, possibly the maximum of 8, it shouldn't do enough damage to trigger Order Break, and the Vitality debuffs it applies will hopefully allow you to get another immediate turn with all five girls lined up.
- If you do get this second turn — which most of the time you should, assuming you don't trigger Order Break — trigger a Level 2 Live Concert Mode (which should have Special Fanfare attached to it if you have it) and then immediately trigger Harmonics again.
- Now follow this sequence, which assumes everyone is equipped with a hammer. Make sure all the E Skills target the same enemy in the middle of the formation in order to trigger Cosmic Fan:
  Kyouka: Cremation
  Otoha: Legato
  Kanadeko: Aubade Crush
  Aria: Absolution, Cremation
  Nene: Legato
  Kyouka: Aubade Crush
  Otoha: Absolution, Cremation
  Kanadeko: Legato
  Aria: Aubade Crush
  Nene: Absolution, Cremation
  Kyouka: Legato
  Otoha: Aubade Crush
  Kanadeko: Absolution, Cremation
  Aria: Legato
  Nene: Aubade Crush
  Kyouka: Absolution
  Nene: Flame Typhoon, Raging Vortex, Earth Assault (for extra Link bonuses and to increase the hit count)
  All other girls in succession: Earth Assault (to bump up the hit count)
  If you're at Voltage level 2 or higher: Aria: Solitary Rhapsody (otherwise ignore this step)
  All other girls in succession except Otoha: Ultimate Crush, Howling Earth, if enough action points left use Break Prototype on the strongest enemy to maximise hit count.
  Otoha: Ultimate Crush, Howling Earth, if enough action points drop in a Break Prototype on the strongest enemy, then finish with Shrine of Hope on an enemy that has Guard Break (which will probably be all of them after that mauling, but prioritise moth- or plant-type trash enemies, since these have the weakest Magnetic Fields) and which also allows the area of effect to hit everything. (Shrine of Hope gets significantly more powerful the higher the hit count is, hence the overblown combo leading up to it.)
- Everything will probably be dead after that. If you left a boss-level enemy standing but killed all the trash, you'll probably suffer an Order Break, so defend through it as much as possible and cleanse any debuffs or stat reductions as soon as you can afterwards. From here try to keep the boss debuffed with a combination of Cosmic Fan in Harmonics when possible, and Aria's Solitary Rhapsody and appropriate E Skill. It's also a good idea to Paralyze and Seal the boss using water and earth skills respectively, and any skills that have SP Break are useful too; if you can actually make the boss run out of SP, it will only use basic attacks on you, which can still hit hard without stat debuffs, but which won't inflict ailments on your party.

The last bit in particular, although complicated and requiring some preparation, will make the difference between fights that drag on for half an hour and fights that are over in two turns. If you're stupid enough to go for the Platinum trophy like I did, you'll need to master it for efficient Approval Rating farming in the post-game!

Well, now I've written 2,000 words that have probably baffled most regular readers of this blog — sorry! — I hope, if you stumbled across this blog while Googling things about Omega Quintet, that my tips have proven at least a little helpful, and I hope you continue to enjoy this great game!

2017: Quest for the Crown

It's weird to see a new King's Quest game on sale. I haven't tried it myself yet — I'm probably going to — but the early buzz surrounding it is very positive indeed, even sans involvement from series creators Roberta and Ken Williams.

For those not quite as old and jaded a gamer as me, King's Quest was one of the very first graphical adventure games. I hesitate to call it a "point and click" adventure, because although it supported mouse control, you actually had to type things in to a text parser in order to actually do anything. As the series progressed, it gradually and noticeably improved; by the fifth installment, it had made the full transition to a more conventional point-and-click interface as well as offering a "talkie" CD-ROM version; the seventh installment abandoned traditional pixel art in favour of some distinctly Disney-esque animation, and the eighth… well, most people don't talk about that one.

For me, King's Quest as a whole is an important series to me. It represents one of the earliest game series I played, and also some of the earliest games I actually played to completion. They also represent an early form of using the video games medium as a means of telling a story — albeit a very simple one in the case of the first couple of games; from the third game onwards it started to get quite ambitious — as well as a wonderfully vivid realisation of the world of fairy tales.

Back in the days when King's Quest first appeared, it wasn't at all unusual for games to take heavy inspiration from existing works of art. Numerous games made use of famous classical tunes for their "themes", for example, and others drew liberally from popular mythology for inspiration. The original King's Quest games were no exception, as they saw you running into everyone from Rumplestiltskin to the Big Bad Wolf — and, in many cases, dying horribly at the hands of fairy tale monsters.

Despite the fact that it drew heavily on popular mythology, though, King's Quest had a feel and an atmosphere all of its own. Like the best fairy tales, it presented a world that appeared colourful, happy and vibrant on the surface, but which was mean, horrible and out to get you underneath. The King's Quest games were notorious for having a wide variety of means for the protagonists to die throughout them, ranging from being eaten by a giant to tripping over your wizard master's cat while being too far up the stairs, and subsequently breaking your neck when you hit the ground. So frequent (and frustrating) were the death scenes in King's Quest and other adventures from the same stable Sierra that main rival LucasArts made a specific marketing point of the fact that it was impossible to die or get stuck in most of their games — with the Indiana Jones games being the only real exceptions, and even there it was pretty difficult to die.

But as frustrating and irritating and, at times, downright illogical as the old-school King's Quest games could be, they represent one of my formative experiences. They're something that helped me understand a medium that, as you'll know, is very important to me. They're something I shared with my family, since many of us used to play them together and try to solve them. And they're something that I will always have fond memories of.

It's for this reason that I'm really happy to see King's Quest making a comeback — and, moreover, to see that it's being received very well so far. I'm excited to give it a try for myself very soon, and I look forward to seeing how the subsequent episodes develop over the course of the series.

2016: What an Achievement

I was chatting with my friends earlier this evening about the matter of achievements and trophies in games. As long-term readers will know, my opinions on these metagame awards that were introduced with the last generation of games consoles have gone back and forth somewhat, but on the whole I feel I'm starting to come down on the side of liking them.

The reason for this is simple: after nearly 10 years of them being A Thing in gaming, a lot of developers are getting the hang of how to use them effectively — and the reasons for using them.

There are, in fact, several reasons for the existence of achievements. From a developer perspective, they provide feedback on just how much people are playing games and what they're doing. This is why so many games have a "started the game" achievement — look at the rarity statistics on PSN and you'll see that there are a surprising number of people who have booted a game up for long enough to add the trophy list to their profile, but not actually started to play it. I couldn't even begin to contemplate what the reasons for doing this might be, but it happens; as an example, the wonderful shoot 'em up Astebreed gives you a trophy for completing the interactive prologue sequence — something you have to do before you can even access the game's main menu — and yet only 91% of players have accomplished this, suggesting either that 9% of players simply turned the game off for some reason or other during the prologue, or were unable to complete it. And I'm not sure that last option is even possible.

From a player perspective, a well-designed trophy list provides a metagame to layer on top of the existing game structure. They can provide challenges for players to complete and encourage them to explore a game in full rather than simply making a beeline for the credits — and, again, those rarity statistics suggest that relatively few people who pick up any game, regardless of length and quality, make it to the end, which is kind of sad — or suggest new ways to play.

A good example from recent memory that I'm still engaged with is Compile Heart's PS4 RPG Omega Quintet. I have gone for the Platinum trophy in most of Compile Heart's games to date (largely the Neptunia games) because I have a keen awareness of how the developers probably use them for statistics, as mentioned above. I see attaining a Platinum trophy — which for those unfamiliar with PSN is the trophy you acquire when you have achieved all of the other trophies in a game — as a mark of support for the developer; a sign that someone out there cared enough about a game to play it to absolute death. (Omega Quintet's Platinum trophy, incidentally, has a 1.1% rarity rating, which is not altogether surprising as going by my own experiences it's something of a beast to attain.)

And in Omega Quintet's case, that Platinum trophy really is a sign that you have explored everything the game has to offer, because it's a good trophy list that runs the gamut from "deal 1 million points of damage in a single combination attack" (something that gets significantly easier the further in the game you go) via "complete all the quests" (something which you can miss in a single playthrough if you're not fastidious about cleaning up quests before advancing the story) and "see the True Ending on Advanced difficulty" (having figured out the conditions to do so, of course — hint: get Aria and Otoha's affection levels to 4 to guarantee this) to "defeat Double X" (a superboss who sits at the bottom level of the optional Training Facility dungeon and provides one of the stiffest challenges the entire game has to offer)

The interesting thing about Omega Quintet's trophy list is that by the time I finished my second playthrough (during which I achieved the True Ending on Advanced difficulty) I had only accomplished about 50% of the available trophies. Deciding early on that I wanted to go for the Platinum, I jumped into the post-game (the ability to keep playing the game after you've beaten the final boss and seen the end of the story) to explore what these additional challenges might be.

Nearly 50 hours of gameplay later, I'm still playing, though the end is finally in sight. In those 50 hours, I've beaten the 13-floor Training Facility dungeon, pretty much mastered the game's combat system — the extreme difficulty of the Training Facility encounters, including Double X, demands that you know what you are doing, otherwise you will get your ass kicked, even if you grind all the way up to the level cap of 999 — maxed out the affection values for all my party members, mastered all the weapon proficiencies with Kyouka and have come pretty close with a couple of the others, completed all the sidequests and recovered all the hidden archives. This latter one is particularly interesting, as the archives reveal an absolute ton of story context that isn't made explicit in the main narrative, largely because it's not directly relevant to the main cast's personal stories, but instead provides some interesting background lore and worldbuilding context. You stumble across some of these as you simply explore the main game, but quite a few of them are hidden in post-game content.

In other words, without the trophies to give me a nudge in the direction of this additional content, I might not have gone looking for it. One might argue that the game not necessarily signposting this sort of thing is a problem, but if the trophy system is there — and it's compulsory to use on both Xbox and PlayStation — it may as well be used to push people on to explore things further. Combine that with PSN's "rarity" feature and there's a really nice sense of… well, achievement when you know that you're one of the 1.1% who has seen everything Omega Quintet has to offer.

(Just two more trophies left to go: kill 10,000 enemies and get 1 billion approval rating points. I sense that the challenging DLC dungeons and bosses — including the fearsome Banana Demon pictured above — will be my main means of achieving this!)

2015: Ziggurat Vertigo

One of the best — or worst, depending on your perspective — things about PlayStation Plus is that there are regular deals on a wide variety of games, seemingly almost at random. During these sale periods, games drop to Steam sale-tier prices (i.e. £2-3 for a typical indie game) and consequently make trying some new things out a rather more appealing prospect than it might be under other circumstances.

So it was that I came across a PS4 game called Ziggurat the other day. I didn't know much about it, but it sounded like it might be fun, so I grabbed it for £3 and gave it a shot. Turns out it is a lot of fun — and nothing to do with a not-particularly-good iOS game by the same name that I played a while back. (Thankfully.)

Ziggurat is the latest in the interminable line of "roguelites" out there; that offshoot of the roguelike genre that keeps the "permadeath" and "procedurally generated" parts and ditches the heavy-duty stat crunching and turn-based exploration in favour of something a bit more immediate, accessible and, in many cases, action-packed. Sometimes it works better than others; procedural generation is something that is very impressive on paper, but in practice it can often lead to levels that are chaotic messes with no real sense of "design" about them, just some tiles splattered around the map at random. This sort of thing is fine in an ASCII roguelike, but less fine in a game with actual visuals.

Thankfully, Ziggurat eschews the totally random approach and instead constructs its levels in a modular manner, somewhat similar to how board games like Advanced Heroquest and Descent construct their dungeons. Rooms are linked together by corridors to make an enclosed map; you start in one place, have to find a "portal key" somewhere in the level, then take it to the boss room, fight the boss and continue to the next level. It's a simple, tried but true structure and fits well in the context of the game.

There is a sort of plot to Ziggurat, but it's of the "back of a napkin" tier from old-school arcadey games from the 8- and 16-bit era. You're some sort of wizard, and every so often the opportunity arises to fight your way through the eponymous Ziggurat to become a super-awesome elite wizard. It's more likely that you will die, though, which is okay, because the "sacrifices" of unworthy novices pay tribute to the old gods, or something like that. It doesn't really matter.

What you do need to know is that Ziggurat is pretty much a spiritual successor to Heretic and Hexen, two games that came out back in the golden age of 2.5D sprite-based first-person shooters. Heretic and Hexen were noteworthy in that they were first-person shooters that opted for a fantasy setting rather than the (then) more common space marine situation. (Military shooters were still somewhat niche interest at this point, and multiplayer was something that was only really played by people who had IPX networks at their workplace.) Despite the fantasy setting, though, neither Heretic nor Hexen were role-playing games; they were action games through and through, with most of the weaponry on offer having clear analogues in more conventional modern and futuristic weaponry.

Ziggurat follows this pattern nicely. You start with a basic magic wand that is a rough analogue to the peashooter pistol that was the default weapon in games like Doom and its ilk. As you progress, you'll acquire spellbooks (shotguns), magic staves (machine guns) and alchemical weapons (rocket/grenade launchers). Each of these weapons requires a different colour mana (ammo type) to power, with the exception of the pistol… sorry, wand, which recharges its mana over time if you stop firing.

The interesting addition to the Heretic/Hexen formula — and something that Hexen II touched on — is a progression system. As you defeat enemies, they drop "knowledge crystals" which provide experience points. Filling your experience bar causes you to level up and be able to pick from cards that depict "perks" of various descriptions. These are randomly drawn each game and range from immediate benefit (heal life, regain mana) to ongoing buffs (recover health when you enter a new room, increase the amount of mana you can hold for a particular weapon) to temporary buffs (magic wand does double damage in your next combat). Once you've picked one, on subsequent level ups you generally get the option to buff up a perk you've already taken or add a new one to your collection. There are even some perks that allow you to choose from a wider selection of perks on subsequent level ups, so there's a fair bit of variety.

Structurally, Ziggurat isn't quite as freeform as Heretic and Hexen. Rather than fighting your way through a linear-ish level, you freely explore the level, uncovering rooms one at a time. Rooms will generally be either a "special" room of some description — perhaps with traps, treasure or the portal key — or a standard room with a swarm of enemies to defeat. If you encounter enemies, you're deemed to have started "a battle" and are locked in the room until you defeat all of them. There's a decent mix of enemies, ranging from carrots that charge at you screaming to ghostly maidens that fling some description of otherworldly shit at you. Like the classic first-person shooters of yore, different weapons are more or less practical against different enemy types, though a generous auto-aim facility makes aiming and shooting with the controller less of a chore than it is in some games.

A pleasantly old-school throwback in Ziggurat's overall structure is the fact that you have a score, though you don't find out what it is until the end of a level or the end of your game. You score points for all sorts of things, ranging from collecting items to clearing rooms — and, obviously, the longer you survive, the higher your score will be. There's even an "Endless" mode to challenge for those who are gluttons for punishment — though I'm yet to make it past the second level on normal mode!

Ziggurat is a lot of fun, then, and if you're looking for something relatively quick and throwaway to play — and you miss the '90s era of first-person shooters — then you could do far worse than give it a shot, if you'll pardon the pun.