#oneaday Day 659: Justice for RTS: achieved... again

I realised I never followed up on RoseTintedSpectrum's recent YouTube woes that I posted about a while back. Chances are if you're familiar with Rosie's work, you already know that there was, thankfully, a happy ending to the situation: he got his YouTube Partner Program status back, which means he can get paid again, with the only unfortunate news being that there would be a month or so's delay before he would be able to get what was owed to him during the demonetisation incident.

If you're not familiar with Rosie's work, however, I thought I'd take today to highlight some of the great things he's been doing, because he's a hardworking lad who makes consistently entertaining YouTube videos on a variety of subjects. He shot to (relative) stardom when he decided to cover the questionable classic UK TV show GamesMaster, and, having previously been a channel primarily about old games (and longstanding GamesMaster rival-though-not-actually-that-similar show Bad Influence!), he decided to lean into what had brought him some success, and cover old TV instead.

GamesMaster is still a recurring feature — his most recent video covers the legendary "Dave Perry Super Mario 64 Incident" — but he also looks at old kids' TV shows, too, and offers commentary that is both hilarious and insightful, and without dropping into either dry, boring quasi-academia or just straightforward summaries of the shows accompanied by occasional "oh my God, you guys, I can't believe they did that" reactions.

Anyway, here's some of my favourite videos from him. I recommend subscribing to his channel and giving them all a watch — many of them are on the long side by the very nature of covering entire series at once, but he punctuates these with short videos about fluff like Rainbow and Rosie and Jim if you want something a bit shorter.

Here's the aforementioned video about GamesMaster and The Dave Perry Incident. It's worth watching the prior videos in the run-up to this, as it's interesting to revisit the show and contemplate how it evolved (and not always for the better) from series to series, but this one, which many of the newer members of Rosie's audience have been eagerly awaiting for some time, represents some of his best work to date.

California Dreams is not a show I remember ever seeing back in the day, and having seen Rosie's retrospectives on it, I'm not sure whether or not I would have been into it. It's undoubtedly rubbish, particularly when viewed from a modern perspective, but it's also a really interesting show to explore, and Rosie's videos on the subject do a great job of explaining why. You won't come away from them desperate to watch the series as a whole, but even if you never saw it back in the day, you'll feel like you have a better understanding of its existence and its context.

Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House is another show I don't think I ever saw, and I'm not sure I would have watched it when I was a kid even when it was on. However, like his retrospective on California Dreams, Rosie manages to make a look back on the subject compelling, interesting and frequently hilarious — as well as pointing out the weirdly dark nature of a show about stop-motion animated toys, in which the title character is, by a significant margin, the least important character in everything that unfolds on screen.

And finally, from his earlier (pre-GamesMaster) channel, a video on Xenon 2, and how the reality of a game that was popular back in the day can differ quite significantly from the critical consensus on its original release — and how people who cling relentlessly to the latter can make it quite difficult to talk about something.

Rosie's a good lad who puts a ton of effort into his videos, and I'm happy to see he's enjoyed so much success over the last few years. His recent woes with YouTube — along with a similar, but worse situation back in 2024 — are an unfortunate reminder that this sort of success can be worryingly fragile through no fault of the creator. So go give him a view or two, and if you like what you see, consider becoming a YouTube member or a Patreon supporter. Good work — particularly when it's achieved without the usual manipulative "influencer" tactics — deserves to be compensated, or at the very least, appreciated.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 658: A random selection of pieces of music that make me smile

It's getting late and I haven't thought of anything to write and I'm full of curry, so let's do a MULTIMEDIA POST, shall we?

I'm partly inspired by a discussion I had earlier in a Discord that I'm a member of, in which we talked about things we liked from creators who clearly just made things for the joy of creating them — not in the hope of "going viral" or making a living out of them. I'm talking about stuff like Badgers, Badgers, Badgers and its ilk — although as it happened, a lot of those works did end up going viral and doubtless making their creators a fair amount of money. The point is that they weren't created with that in mind from the outset.

Funny, silly comedy songs and animations aren't the only thing I want to talk about today, though. More broadly, I just want to share a few things that always make me smile. Not always because they're funny, but because I just find them uplifting in some way. And where better to begin than with the irrepressible Hatsune Miku?

I'm not sure what exactly caused me to hyperfixate on this piece of music from Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S so much, but make no mistake; I most certainly did hyperfixate on it, as for a significant portion of my time playing the Picross-esque puzzles in Logic Paint S, I had set the in-game playlist to be nothing but this track.

I think I like this just because it's undeniably cheerful, bouncy and upbeat. It feels like it fits Miku nicely, and it's a good accompaniment to doing some puzzles — or just for when you need a bit of a pick-me-up.

My first encounter with Cave's classic bullet hell shoot 'em up series Dodonpachi was on iOS devices, where there was an excellent version of Dodonpachi Resurrection. One thing which still stands out about the mobile version of this game is that it features an exclusive game mode that not only has its own mechanics, it has a completely different soundtrack to the game's regular, rather more moody score.

People like the standard Dodonpachi Resurrection music a lot, and to be sure, it's good. But there's something I really like about these completely new tracks from the mobile version — and particularly this one, which accompanies the opening level. It's got that real adventurous "we're setting off on a brave, bold mission!" feel to it that I really like; it's full of hope for the future, rather than a bleak sense of submission to the endless horrors that await. And I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.

I maintain that Inti Creates' Gal*Gun games are some of the best games that no-one will admit to playing because they're about making girls collapse in euphoric ecstasy by pointing at them. All three of them are really solid rail shooters, each with their own distinctive mechanics and story to follow, and they all have great soundtracks, too.

This track, used for a lot of the regular levels in Gal*Gun 2, is a short but sweet track that really sums up the game's energy. There's not a trace of maliciousness anywhere in any of the Gal*Gun games, and their music never fails to make me smile.

Right, time we had a silly one. I remember coming across this one for the first time and absolutely pissing myself laughing. It still always makes me chuckle now… particularly the "Cock!" break in the second verse.

This sort of thing is very representative of what was going on in the Badgers, Badgers, Badgers-adjacent space on sites like rathergood.com, b3ta.com and Weebl's Stuff back in the mid '00s to the early '10s. The thing I like is that although endearingly lo-fi, particularly in the vocal samples, the whole thing is very well put together and works as a standalone song. It's just better with the animation.

Regrettably, the original animation for this piece is no longer available. It used to be that you could type in "2204355" into Google Search, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky" and it would take you to a technicolour Flash animation featuring a pixelated dancing guy from an old KFC advert and this delightful chiptune remix of the theme from ALF. Thankfully, the person behind the music came forward and published the music in its full glory on YouTube some 15 years ago, so even though the Google trick doesn't work any more, we can, at least, still enjoy the tune.

Side note: this blog is old enough that I blogged about when I first found this. It was, it has to be said, a particularly dark period in my life, when I had just split from my first wife and was at the lowest I've ever been. I happened to stumble across this one evening and found that it drove the darkness away for a few minutes at a time, so I watched that stupid animation over and over for hours. Thank you, mystery 2204355 creator, and thank you, Zalza, for helping me in my hour of need, even if you have no idea that you did so.

I wrote a bit about Sbassbear the other day, but I can't not mention their most recently published Game Grumps remix, as it's one of their best yet. Once again, this is a video I just keep returning to because it makes me smile.

Actually, to hell with it, there's another Sbassbear one I love also, and I can't pick between these two, so you're getting both:

I love BEANS because it's just so chaotic and ridiculous. But I love Shnigedy Ding Dong because it encapsulates the feeling you get when playing Tetris Effect Connected — and specifically, the wonderful mode where three people team up against another player, every so often bringing their independent wells together into one giant superwell, accompanied by a massive crescendo in the music and… as Dan says in the video, "ohhh, I love it so much!"

Right, that's enough. Off to bed with me now.

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#oneaday Day 655: I would rather play Atari 2600 games than mobile games

I probably don't need to say anything more than the headline, but I will expand on it for the sake of having actually written something today. I mean what I say, though! I would genuinely rather play literally anything on the Atari 2600 than a modern mobile game. And with the 2600 being so easy to emulate these days — not to mention the fact I have worked on both devices and game cartridges featuring Atari 2600 games — you can even take the experience on the go with you.

I remember when mobile gaming first became a thing with the Java phones. Well, actually, technically it first became a thing with Snake and the other games no-one remembers on the Nokia 3210 and company. But expandable mobile gaming — by that I mean the ability to download new games onto your phone — really took off in the Java era.

At first, it was mildly exciting… at least until you downloaded a Java game and realised that a lot of them were Not Very Good. Often not for lack of trying, and there were some genuinely decent ones — I recall a good version of Lumines, for example — but for the most part, they were a pale imitation of even the dedicated handheld games consoles that were around at the time. The Game Boy and its successors ruled the roost in that regard for a good long while — and deservedly so.

The advent of iOS was a huge shift, though. Anyone who was around for the launch of the App Store will doubtless remember things like ngmoco's output (before they became free-to-play garbage peddlers), Epic's "Castle" tech demo that eventually became Infinity Blade, and doubtless many others that are lost to time. Quite literally in many cases, because these were digital-only games that were often exclusive to iOS — and while I'm sure some have been preserved, I bet there are plenty more that we'll never see again.

Things seemed… interesting for a while. The ambition of this new breed of mobile game was hard to fault, but many folks (including me) found that touchscreens were less than ideal for console-style experiences. The best games were ones that were built around the inherent limitations and inaccuracy of a finger-based touch interface — or which used other methods of control, such as tilt.

Then, one day, Apple announced that it would be introducing the concept of "in-app purchases". I knew immediately that this would be an awful idea, as the general gaming community had a collective bee in its bonnet about DLC at the time, and adding DLC to mobile games sounded like a really bad idea in that climate.

Unbelievably, though, I underestimated quite how awful things would end up becoming in the mobile space. While there are still a few "premium" games available for a one-off purchase these days, most of them are available on other platforms with actual controllers, leaving the vast majority of mobile-exclusive titles these days as free-to-play gacha crap.

I've done my time in the gacha mines. I've made the mistake of thinking I'd sling a game twenty quid to "support" it because I'd been playing it quite a bit and I liked the look of the current character banners. But in more recent years I've become hyper-aware of quite how much those games exploit horny young men in particular, with massively sexualised artwork designed not to add depth to the characters they depict, but purely to get said horny young men convinced to open their wallets in the hope of acquiring a JPG — or an animated GIF if you're lucky — of their favourite waifu in a skimpy outfit. And I say this as someone who likes sexy games!

No more. I swore off all mobile games quite some time ago now, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Now, at the times when I would typically want a mobile game — when I have a few minutes to spare, when I'm bored, when I just want something to do with my hands that I don't have to think about too much — I will quite happily reach for an Atari 2600 game, because those fit the bill perfectly.

Your average Atari 2600 game can be played for sessions of maybe 1-5 minutes at a time, and that feels like a satisfyingly self-contained play session. You can keep playing to beat your high scores, or to get a little further, or compete against a friend if you're playing together — or you can move on to something else, and have another 1-5 minutes of fun. And at no point in the entire process will these games attempt to monetise your erection.

On that note, may I remind you that Activision Collection 2 is coming to Evercade next month…?

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#oneaday Day 654: Jensen Huang is an enemy of the arts

The headline is probably not news to most of you reading this, but I feel like it's worth commenting on, because the NVidia CEO just can't seem to keep his mouth shut.

To recap: a little while back, NVidia introduced its new "DLSS5" technology via transparently obvious Digital Foundry advertorial video. I still don't really know what DLSS is, or what it used to be I guess, but this latest incarnation of it did… not go down well, to say the least.

The reason? It's fucking generative AI, because of course it is. In this case, it's generative AI that takes two multi-thousand dollar graphics cards to render a slop filter over the top of the perfectly functional graphics the game already had. Early defenders tried to convince everyone else that it was just "improving the lighting", but then Huang came out and said the following:

First of all, [the critics are] completely wrong. The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI. It's not post-processing at the frame level, it's generative control at the geometry level.

(Tom's Hardware)

Okay. So it is generative AI. Which sucks. And everyone hates. And in this instance, it is adding what is colloquially referred to as a "yassification" filter atop character graphics in particular, making them look markedly different from their actual, canonical designs. You know, the ones that artists worked on.

Today, Kotaku posted what I would argue is a bit of a fluff piece on the subject, quoting Huang extensively. Huang is presumably in some sort of "damage control" mode — although not that much, because the part of NVidia that makes decent graphics cards for gaming PCs and consoles is of very little importance to a company that has very much thrown its entire lot in with generative AI.

From the Kotaku piece, quoting Huang, who was speaking on a recent episode of Lex Fridman's podcast:

DLSS 5 is 3D conditioned, 3D guided. It's ground truth structure data guided. And so the artist determined the geometry we are completely truthful to. The geometry maintains in every single frame.

Okay, first of all, what the fuck does "ground truth structure data guided" mean? Secondly, I'm sure the geometry is still there, it's just underneath a hallucinated AI-generated image.

He goes on (emphasis mine):

Every single frame, it enhances but it doesn't change anything. The system is open, you could train your own models to determine, and you could even in the future prompt it. You know, 'I want it to be a toon shader, I want it to look like this kinda,' so you can give it even an example. And it would generate in the style of that, all consistent with the artistry, you know, the style, the intent of the artist. And so all of that is done for the artist, so that they can create something that is more beautiful, but still in the style that they want.

So let me get this straight. It "doesn't change anything", but it does "generate in the style of" how it is prompted, am I getting this right? So it does, in fact, change something?

And who is doing this "prompting", exactly? Who is saying "I want it to be a toon shader"? The end user? Because that sure as fuck doesn't sound like being "consistent with the artistry and intent of the artist". Or is it the artist? Because if an artist wants their visuals in a toon style, they'll design them in a fucking toon style in the first place and they don't need the slop machine to do it for them. Or they don't if they're an artist with any fucking skills, anyway.

All this just confirms exactly what we've known for a while now: Jensen Huang is an enemy of the arts. He doesn't give a shit what the "style and intent of the artist" are, because his magic slop machine can just overwrite it and make it look "more beautiful". Fuck the artists who worked hard on each scene, each character, each object. Fuck having a coherent, distinctive artistic vision and visual style — bring on the uncanny valley AI slop! Fuck everyone who makes it their life's work to bring interactive worlds and the characters who inhabit them to life!

Jensen Huang, you are a rancid little fuckboi who, years after this bubble pops, will be looked back on as one of the most insidious, dangerous influences on the arts that there has been for a very long time. I'm not sure what sort of legacy you think you're leaving behind, but I can tell you with great confidence that it will not be a flattering one.

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#oneaday Day 650: Games for Children

I read an article earlier that annoyed me a bit. I'm not going to link to it partly because I don't want to send any particular ire in the author's direction, and partly because it wasn't this specific article that annoyed me, but rather a common talking point that it used as its central thesis.

The relevant quote is this (and I'm aware this is probably as good as linking to it, but whatever; statistically speaking, most people probably can't be arsed to search for it, and the rest think asking an AI will get them a meaningful answer. That latter group are wrong and cunts, by the way.):

I think we need to start acknowledging that too many adults are evaluating games like they're up for the Booker Prize when instead they're well-constructed children's books. We don't need to pretend. We'd be better off being real.

This argument primarily came about because some folks have been looking at the recent Pokémon game, Pokopia, as a reflection on life in a world without humans, and life in a world living with the results of climate change.

The thing with art is that it's a subjective thing. There's authorial intent, to be sure, but there is also the very specific, very personal reaction that someone has to something. And that comes from somewhere. And if multiple people are saying the same things, independently of one another, there's clearly something in the work that speaks to people who are on a particular wavelength.

With that in mind, I feel like it's the height of arrogance to describe something as being childish, which is the main core argument that annoys me not just about this piece, but about other thinkpieces along these lines. Sure, Pokopia is a game designed to be sweet and colourful and friendly to kids or inexperienced gamers, but that doesn't mean it's completely incapable of saying something.

I add to this: being aimed at children does not mean something has lesser value, either. There's a vast canon of "children's literature" out there that is well worth reading by adults today, because it stands up not as "books for kids", but simply as well-crafted stories. Another objection I have to the argument above is that by using a phrase like "well-constructed children's books" as a diminutive, reductive way of talking about things, you are, by extension, implying that nothing designed for kids can have any broader cultural value.

It's an ongoing thing that certain portions of Terminally Online people in particular like to bring up: that Games Have Bad Stories. And it's bollocks! Just as in any medium, there are games that do have bad stories, yes, but there are also many, many examples of those that have good stories. Great stories, even. The implication behind the sentence "too many adults are evaluating games like they're up for the Booker Prize when instead they're well-constructed children's books" is that "games, as a medium, will never have the same value as another medium that I consider inherently more valuable".

I haven't played Pokopia so I can't comment on the specifics of that case. But I can comment on a vast number of other games that very much are worthy of exploring with detailed critique and analysis. I write about many of them over on my other site, MoeGamer! The most recent thing I have written about over there at the time of writing is the incredible Esoteric Ebb, a game that is about as far from being a "well-constructed children's book" as it's possible to be. (And yes, I know I said I wouldn't pick on that article specifically; it just so happens that this particular quote is especially symptomatic of the issue I'm talking about.)

The core thesis of the piece in question is that "we all need to be more honest" when we're talking about games. And I don't necessarily disagree with that. There's a lot of criticism out there where people look at a game and complain about something that it isn't — and which, in many cases, it has never purported to be — rather than evaluating whether or not it was successful at what it was actually trying to do, whether that was implicit or explicit. (I wrote about this back in 2013 on USgamer, now archived on MoeGamer. If you want to know more, look up John Updike's rules for literary criticism.)

But "being honest" doesn't mean that you just go "ah, games are all just children's books, not like real literature and art" and be done with it. Critical, artistic and literary analysis has a place in writing about the medium, whether the subject under discussion is something as seemingly breezy and lightweight as Pokopia, or something as dense and philosophical as Esoteric Ebb.

Video games have been around for a very long time now — and, moreover, using the medium as a means of storytelling is now very well-established in its own right. At some point, the thing we need to "be honest" about is the fact that the medium as a whole is mature, and that there's absolutely no problem with treating it as such.

If you want to treat video games as nothing more than a throwaway bit of fluff that makes you feel better of an evening, I'm not stopping you. There is great value in having something you enjoy that you don't need to engage with on a level beyond "I like doing this because it makes me feel good". But don't throw around "we all need to" like it's some great unacknowledged, universal truth. If someone finds greater artistic, creative value in something and you just don't see it — perhaps just be honest, say you don't get it yourself, and move on. No need to tell everyone else that they're doing it wrong.

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#oneaday Day 647: The third 9th Dawn

Just recently, I have returned to a game I really enjoyed when I first tried, but never got around to finishing. That game is 9th Dawn III: Shadow of Erthil from Valorware, which is a delightfully rough-round-the-edges but made-with-heart game that feels like a classic PC game from days of yore, but has enough modern aspects to it to make it feel right at home on console (Switch, specifically, where I am playing.)

I came back to this because Limited Run put up 9th Dawn Remake for preorder recently, and I was reminded that I had been enjoying 9th Dawn III up until the point I put it down in favour of something else. So I decided to go back. And, if you're wondering, no, you don't need to play 9th Dawn (Remake) and/or 9th Dawn II before III.

The simple elevator pitch for 9th Dawn III is that it's a large, open-world RPG presented from a top-down 2D perspective. It has real-time combat primarily driven through twin stick shooter-like mechanics, and when playing on gamepad it has a Final Fantasy XIV-esque hotbar system, whereby holding a trigger and pressing one of the face buttons or directional pad controls allows you to trigger various abilities.

It's more Diablo than Baldur's Gate for the most part — though the thing I'd probably compare it to more than anything is something like World of Warcraft. You can wander around the world as you see fit, step into dungeons as you discover them, and level up a wealth of different skills, including a number of crafting options. There are no character classes, so you can build your character according to the way you like to play — and this also means that you can change up how you're playing quite easily, too. Some items of equipment have certain skill requirements, but it's a simple matter to train up to a level where you can use them — and immensely satisfying when doing so allows you to use a weapon that increases your damage output by a good 10x or more.

One thing I particularly like about the game is the way it implements dungeons. Each dungeon is quite a substantial, self-contained challenge in its own right, and while they initially look quite "open", there's often a good route to take through them, and in taking that route you will gradually unlock a number of shortcuts back to earlier areas. The game tracks your percentage completion of each dungeon, measured by how many of the "ability coins" you have found and whether or not you have beaten the main "boss" enemy in each dungeon, allowing you a clear sense of when you've done everything "important" — but there's often a nice amount of random loot to be found outside of these core "objectives".

It's a game that has a lot of interesting, interlocking systems, but which is very easy to pick up and play, and quite enjoyable to just spend an evening with, hacking and slashing your way through all and sundry. Also, you can recruit monsters and summon up to 10 of them to fight alongside you, which is immensely satisfying.

I'm a long way off beating the game — it's a big 'un! — but I'm having a lot of fun with it right now, so I'm going to stick with it for the immediate future. I'm interested to see quite how powerful you can get by the conclusion to proceedings. I'm hoping for some Diablo III-style huge numbers — given that I'm level 20-something and already putting out four-figure damage, that's entirely within the realm of possibility. Fun times await!

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#oneaday Day 645: I do not need Gaming Copilot. No-one does

Apparently, three weeks almost to the day after the new AI person in charge of Xbox said that they wouldn't let Xbox become overrun with slop, Xbox has announced that it will be launching a slop generation feature that you can use right on your console!

It's Gaming Copilot! Something absolutely no-one asked for! The world's least popular lying plagiarism bot, shoehorned into the console brand that is seemingly determined to fast-track itself into becoming the world's least popular console!

I do not understand this. I do not want this. I do not understand why people think anyone wants this. It is an oft-overused line, but I come to gaming to escape from all the annoying bullshit of real life — which includes lying plagiarism bots — and not to talk to my fucking Xbox. I do not want my games console to "help" me or offer "advice" (and, given the inaccuracy rate of generative AI, I use those terms loosely) and I certainly do not want or need it to be a "companion".

The people pushing this bullshit have absolutely no understanding of what makes good games work, and why people enjoy good games. At GDC, there was a Google demonstration about how chatbots could power NPCs, and their showcase involved a random nobody in an 8-bit Final Fantasy-style RPG babbling on for three pages about their daily routine. The executives who think this is a good idea are impressed because people can "ask anything" to any character in the game. Anyone who has ever played a game with characters that talk to you will know that writing decent NPC dialogue is an art; it needs to balance worldbuilding with helpful advice, without bogging things down too much with, say, three pages of meaningless waffle from a random townsperson. Google's demonstration does none of this correctly.

And Gaming Copilot completely misses the point of everything, too. Today's games are incredibly, wonderfully immersive, transporting players to a whole other world where they can be someone else and achieve things that are impossible in reality. The best games are full of moments of organic discovery and the joy of play — although there's a whole other discussion to be had about modern game design, particularly in the triple-A space — and absolutely do not need a fucking chatbot listening to everything you do. It is not a substitute for having an actual friend, and it is not a substitute for looking up information from someone who knows the game inside out and can offer you well-sourced, helpful advice.

"Oh, but you can just say what you want instead of having to look it up!" Yes, you can, but if you can't guarantee it will be correct — which you absolutely fucking cannot — then what is the point? Plus where do you think all this information that it is offering you is coming from? That's right, the hard work of people who actually took the time to assemble all that information. And you can bet your fucking ass that Gaming Copilot will not credit the sources of this information, because it certainly isn't doing so in the early demo videos that are currently circulating.

I'm so tired. I'm so tired. The video game medium is in a fucking disastrous state. Earlier today, I saw someone actually say it is in the worst position it has been in since the Great Global Video Game Crash of North America back in '83, and while I'm not sure we're at "burying things in the desert" territory just yet — at least partly because the overwhelming amount of software available today is mostly digital — it's becoming increasingly clear that things are absolutely fucked. Game Key Cards, always-online games, perpetual development roadmaps, live service games — all of it is just driving people like me, who have been involved with gaming since its very inception, far, far away.

At least if everything does come crashing down in the next few years, there is still a rich library of games from between the late '70s and now to enjoy. With each passing day, and with every announcement of Some New Bullshit, I feel increasingly like just packing in "Modern Gaming" altogether and living my life with the games I have in my collection right now.

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#oneaday Day 644: Resident EEEEEVIL... SIX

I'm playing Resident Evil 6 right now, in my ongoing attempts to Finally Catch Up on the series as a whole. I had been led to believe that this one was Not Very Good, but I've been enjoying it so far. It's definitely leaning hard on the action angle rather than feeling like "traditional" survival horror, and it's very setpiece-led and linear, but it's been enjoyable so far. It's definitely the most "big budget action movie" the series has been up until this point, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing; we are, after all, talking about a series that has always involved rocket launchers, cartoonishly evil villains and giant slobbering monsters.

I'm intrigued to see how the other characters' campaigns play. I am currently on the last chapter of Leon's campaign, and that has definitely been quite action-focused. Supposedly the other campaigns each have their own distinct gameplay focus, so I am intrigued to find out what that really means — or if, as I suspect, it is just marketing waffle that doesn't really mean anything.

The game clearly being designed for co-op play isn't nearly as bothersome as it was in Resident Evil 5, as your computer-controlled partner when playing solo isn't a complete idiot, and you don't have to worry about managing their inventory, health and ammunition. Plus the overall way the game controls feels much more up-to-date than Resident Evil 5's cumbersome control method did; Resident Evil 6 pretty much uses the conventions of modern third-person shooters, with the only real concession to survival horror tradition being the necessity to hold a button to draw your weapon and aim, rather than being able to fire "from the hip".

There have been some spectacular moments so far, and a few mildly annoying bits, but on the whole it's been a worthwhile journey so far, and I'm glad I've taken the time to play through all the games in the series up until this point. It's a series that has a thoroughly interesting history — and the recent remakes are rare examples of remakes making things significantly better than their predecessors. The PlayStation originals of the first three will always be special to me, mind, as I was playing them during what was probably the happiest period of my life.

I wonder if Code Veronica will ever get the remake treatment? It's certainly a prime candidate for it, but it also sometimes feels like an entry in the series Capcom would rather we all forgot about. It's the only entry in the series that there's no easy way to play on modern platforms today (either in "original" or "remake" form) and that's a bit of a shame; it was a significant moment for the series, being its first shift into full 3D, although my one enduring memory of it is not picking up enough grenade launcher ammunition to be able to beat the boss on the plane at the end of Claire's first section!

Anyway, Resident Evil 6 is fun. Some may well argue that it's not very "Resident Evil", but honestly, having played a big chunk of the series now, like many long-running series, it is not, and never has been, one simple thing. Resident Evil 6 is just an example of it going in one particular direction — and, from what I understand, the seventh goes a very different way after that, too. No bad thing! I'm looking forward to finally getting on to the most recent ones, as I've heard lots of good things about them, though have managed to remain mostly unspoiled on them, too.

There's four campaigns of gloriously silly action movie nonsense to survive first, though, so I better get on with it!

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#oneaday Day 637: Slow Roads

I'm very fond of weird little software toys that don't really have a point, but which have obviously had some love, care and attention devoted to them. One of my favourites in this regard is a Web-based driving "sim" of sorts known as Slow Roads. You can fiddle around with it here.

Slow Roads isn't really a "game". There's no objective, no win state, no fail state, no punishments for doing things "wrong" and indeed no "right" way to do things, save for the implied suggestion that you stay on the road. As you can see from the screenshot above, this is not mandatory.

Slow Roads plops you into a procedurally generated world based on either the rolling English countryside — the sort of undulating terrain you'd see if you were driving around the Peak District, say — and invites you to just drive. There's no other cars on the roads so you can drive as safely or unsafely as you like; this is a pure playground in which you can take your electric car, bus or futuristic motorcycle and just go. It's a pleasantly liberating, relaxing experience that I find myself turning to in quiet moments when I just want to do something, but I don't want to have to think about it too hard.

I forget who first pointed me in the direction of Slow Roads and even when it was. I've definitely had it on my bookmarks bar for several years at this point, and over the course of those years it has continued to evolve gradually. The first version I tried only had the car and the countryside terrain in the daytime. Over time, more features have been added, including the ability to adjust the countryside scene between four different seasons and four times of day and set the weather conditions, choose how winding (or not) you want the road to be, how wide you want it to be and a variety of characteristics about how the controls handle.

The game has somewhat sim-like tendencies in how it handles. You have to slow down for corners, and the three different vehicles have a very different feel to how they handle; the bus, for example, appropriately feels like a large, lumbering vehicle that it's probably not a good idea to throw into a corner at 80mph, while at the other end of the spectrum, the bike provides a frighteningly fast thrill ride, and could probably get you around the most twisty roads at high speed once you learn how to handle it.

That's it. That's all Slow Roads is. There's no point to it. And yet I love it. It's not trying to be anything that it's not. It's not being designed for "player retention" or "monetisation". It just is. It's a lovely little thing, and if you've never spent any time fiddling around with it, I highly recommend it.

The one long-term goal for Slow Roads appears to be for it to have a standalone Steam release, which looks set for April of this year (2026 if you're reading in The Future, assuming we're not all dead by then), with a demo towards the end of this month. It will be great to see this project finally come to some sort of "fruition", such as it is, and I have whiled away more than enough hours in the Web-based version to quite happily toss the developer a few quid when the full version finally arrives.

Now, maybe just a few miles before bed…

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#oneaday Day 636: Esoteric Ebb and Flow

Well, my original plan was to play at least one of the bonus episodes of Resident Evil Revelations this evening, but then I was distracted by some screenshots of a game that apparently came out recently, and which I hadn't previously heard of: Esoteric Ebb by Christoffer Bodegård, published by the "indie publisher to watch" of the moment, Raw Fury.

Here's one of the screenshots that convinced me to buy and play this game:

If you're looking at that and thinking something along the lines of "cor blimey guvnor, that sure does look like Disco Elysium and no mistake", you'd be absolutely right. The game isn't trying to hide its inspiration. But the other thing you may well notice from this screenshot is that this is Disco Elysium, But Fantasy.

In Esoteric Ebb, you play the role of The Cleric, an ostensible agent of the government who has been sent in to investigate an explosion in a local teahouse. As befits a CRPG hero, whether or not you actually get stuck right in to this "main quest" is entirely up to you, because the small but well-crafted world of Esoteric Ebb certainly has lots of distractions. You do have a time limit, though; the setting is having its first ever democratic election in five days' time, and the current sitting government would really rather all this unpleasantness was quietly dealt with before that happens.

If you've never played Disco Elysium (or, indeed, games like it, since they appear to be Becoming a Thing right now) the simple pitch is this: they're a cross between classic "Infinity Engine" RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment and the like, with almost all of the combat removed, and a strong emphasis on the game responding to you a bit more like a human dungeon master during a tabletop gaming session would. That means all of your stats get a workout, with most sequences in the game involving either passive skill checks (which you will just automatically pass or fail based on your current stats) or active skill checks (where you roll a die and your stats can potentially boost or penalise the score).

Crucially, failure is not necessarily a bad thing, because it can lead to amusing situations or alternative solutions — much as real tabletop sessions are often at their best when things get a little improvisatory.

Skill checks are only half the story, though. The other defining feature of a game following the Disco Elysium mould is that your stats "talk" to you, reflecting your character's often conflicted inner monologues about the situations in which they find themselves. Exactly how helpful you will find these "Chimes", as Esoteric Ebb calls them, depends on those aforementioned passive skill checks; failure often means you misinterpret a situation, fail to notice something or do something clumsy, depending on the context, while success can mean anything positive: performing a complicated physical task correctly, finding just the right words to say in an awkward situation, feeling empathy for the person you're talking to.

Esoteric Ebb adds a few additional features atop this, too. One of the most notable is that you can examine any of the interactable characters, and a skill check of variable difficulty (with the exact stat being tested depending on the character you're examining) will determine how much information you can tell about them just from looking at them. Failing to pass the check at all means you just about notice their basic appearance; passing higher difficulty level checks will let you know their level, class, stats and even pieces of information they would rather remain hidden — you might recognise someone who is trying to conceal their identity, for example. These pieces of information can often be used in conversation.

Other interesting features are the interconnected web of quests in place of the usual quest journal; this indicates how various happenings around the city relate to one another, and upon successfully finishing one of the major quests, you then get to reflect on the situation and allow your stats to "debate" one another, with the eventual result being a nice chunk of experience and a new feat based on the eventual conclusion you came to. In this way, there's a real sense you're building your character just by playing the game; you do "level up" in a conventional RPG style, and you can increase one of your stats when you do so, but it's not just about gaining experience — and, indeed, given that it's a game where it's impossible to grind, you're best off just exploring the world and seeing what happens.

This can, of course, sometimes have fatal consequences in unusual ways. Thus far I have died from attempting to retrieve a shiny object that was stuck in a set of gears, which caused me to get crushed and then fall to my death just to make sure, and from being eaten by a "Roper" enemy hiding in the rocks. I also narrowly escaped death in the very first scene of the game, where I felt an uncontrollable urge to try and eat a path through a room-filling pile of apples, but thankfully my sense of self-preservation kicked in early enough to allow me to survive.

It's a really fun game, so long as you're on board with a slow pace. There are combat encounters in the game, but rather than being a matter of lining up and attacking or quasi-strategic combat, these instead unfold much like all the other encounters in the game: through skill checks, dialogue and choosing actions to take that are always more interesting than just pressing "attack".

I played for a good few hours this evening, and I'm looking forward to exploring it further. The full thing is apparently about 10-15 hours or so, so it's not a game that outstays its welcome. This, to me, is a selling point. It also means it's potentially replayable, and in a choice-heavy game like this, that's always a good thing.

So yeah. A confident thumbs-up from me on this one from my few hours with it this evening, then. Grab it on Steam (don't think there's any news of console or alternative PC storefront releases as yet) — it's 10% off until the 14th.

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