1729: Twintania's Revenge

I cleared Turn 5 of The Binding Coil of Bahamut in Final Fantasy XIV once again this evening, adding another member to the roster of our group of (hopefully) regular raiders.

This time around, I decided that I was going to try and tank it. Although I have a level 50, well-geared Paladin class that I'm pretty confident in using for straightforward stuff like dungeons, complicated 8-player fights like Turn 5 have been something I've generally shied away from to date, unless I could rustle up a group of people I know and trust — and whom I don't think will yell at me if I make mistakes.

I decided I wanted to give it a go this evening, however, if only to be able to help out other prospective Twintania-downers with more than one possible role in the future. And so I stepped up.

For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV or MMOs in general, a couple of definitions are probably in order. Tanking is the role in a party that maintains the attention ("aggro" or "enmity") of an enemy and takes the brunt of the damage while the rest of the group either stick them with the pointy end (melee DPS), throw pointy or flamey things at them (ranged DPS) or heal people as necessary. In 8-player battles such as Turn 5, you generally have a "main tank" (or MT) that maintains aggro on the boss for the majority of the time, and an "off tank" (or OT) that either has a different role to perform in the fight (as in the case of Turn 5) or alternates tanking the main baddie with the MT (a process called, unsurprisingly, "tank-swapping").

Being an off tank doesn't necessarily mean you have an easy job, though. In Turn 5, the off tank's job is actually probably harder than the main tank's, so I volunteered for the main tank role, while our other Paladin, who had previously main tanked Turn 5 on our previous clears, stepped into the off tank role to get some experience there.

The battle began. Jovayne, our off tank, started the fight, pulling Twintania and her three Scourge of Meracydia enemies to him and getting their attention. I then ran in behind him, used my Provoke ability on Twintania, then pulled her away from the main pack, as is the main tank's job in this fight.

It's at about this point you realise quite what a different affair tanking is to almost any other job on the battlefield. While if you're playing something like Black Mage or Bard, you're probably flinging things at the back of your foe, as a tank they are right in your face — and when it's something as giant and threatening as Twintania, the experience is genuinely intimidating, particularly as you see your hit points fluctuating by frankly terrifying amounts with each hit you take, though.

You have to trust in the people with you, though; unlike a single-player game, you can't do everything yourself in an MMO, and learning how to trust others is an important part of learning to play well. I'd take a lot of damage from Twintania's powerful attacks, but I knew that the healers would be there to keep me safe. I'd make their job easier by making use of my defensive abilities, which reduced some of the incoming damage, but ultimately my life was in their hands.

The rest of the fight progressed slowly as, on the whole, the party was fairly inexperienced compared to the last time we cleared it. We did make steady progress, though, with the notorious "Divebombs" phase, during which Twintania swoops across the battlefield, dealing heavy damage and an enormous knockback to anyone she hits, proving most troublesome, as ever.

Mistakes were made by all — particularly me, since I was playing a role that is still relatively unfamiliar — but eventually we made it through together. When we successfully passed the second most difficult phase of the fight (known as "Twisters", after the instant-death ability Twintania uses in this phase) and were into the home straight, it was a real, genuine, heart-in-mouth moment: just a video game, perhaps, but the feeling of genuine excitement of knowing that you are (probably) going to overcome one of that game's toughest challenges is absolutely magical.

I was really happy after we finished, since successfully tanking it felt like a significant milestone in my development as a player. I've talked before about how I feel like I'm actually quite good at this game, in contrast to a lot of other things I play, and broadening my virtual skill set in this way is very satisfying and enjoyable indeed. Plus it makes me feel like I'm growing in confidence — not just as a player, but personally speaking, too. That's pretty awesome, no?

1727: Warwolf One

I beat Ace Combat: Assault Horizon this evening. (Looking at the clock, it's nearly 2am… I guess I was enjoying myself, huh.)

I've already said a lot of the things I want to say about this game in yesterday's post, but having played the whole thing through from start to finish now, I feel I can talk about it with a bit more confidence.

The thing I most want to talk about, I think, is what it was clearly going for and whether or not it was successful.

What it was clearly attempting to go for was a dramatic military-style story with a personal angle. And, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it failed. Not miserably, but it still fell very short of what I can only assume were the team's ambitions.

To put this in context for those of you unfamiliar with the game, let me explain a little. The majority of Assault Horizon casts you in the role of Colonel Bishop, an ace fighter pilot who is wracked with recurring nightmares about facing off against a "shark-faced" rival ace. (Indeed, the first level is a dream sequence that — spoiler — you re-enact for real later in the game, only things turn out a little differently.) Bishop becomes embroiled in a war between the free world (the real world, unlike many other Ace Combat titles) and an army of Russian rebels. (This latter aspect allows the game to follow the Unwritten Law of Jet Fighter Games, which is that you must spend the majority of your time shooting down MiG-29s and SU-27s.) Said Russian rebels have access to a weapon called "Trinity" — an incredibly powerful nuclear device that you see the devastating effects of firsthand in several of the early levels. Naturally, it's up to Bishop to put a stop to all this nonsense by flying shiny planes very fast and blowing lots of things up.

Except it's not just up to Bishop; there are also a couple of other characters who provide a vehicle (no pun intended) for the other types of mission you'll be flying aside from air-to-air combat and air-to-ground assaults. One guy flies helicopters, so you get to play as him during the helicopter missions; the token ladypilot flies bombers, so you get to play as her during the few bombing missions — including a pretty cool "stealth" one where you have to avoid enemy radar cones.

The setup is fairly interesting, then; Bishop has the potential to be an intriguing character, confronting his own personal demons over the course of the story and developing into someone "human" as it progresses. Unfortunately, this potential is left largely unrealised; a short monologue at the end of the game suggests that he has learned something from his experiences, but the rest of the game's narrative really didn't make that particularly clear.

Things are worse with the other characters, who pretty much only appear to be there for the sake of it. Ladypilot is shoehorned into a rather hasty apparent romance plot in the final scenes of the game, having spent the rest of the game showing no form of interest in Bishop whatsoever, and Helicopter Man is… well, he flies helicopters.

Perhaps the biggest wasted opportunity is the "villain", who is teased a little early in the game — the "shark-faced" pilot from Bishop's dreams — and then introduced rather hastily towards the end. He's given little in the way of explanation, and his own personal motivations are pretty much used to bludgeon the player over the head with to say "This! Is! Why! He's! Evil!" at one point. He's a pain in the arse to shoot down in the final mission, so there's a certain degree of personal satisfaction in blowing him up, but this finale could have been so much more interesting if there were a lot more interaction between him and Bishop throughout the game. It is a poor antagonist who only reveals himself in the final chapters of a story, and it leaves Markov feeling like a rather weak adversary for Bishop.

Despite all that I've said above, however, Assault Horizon was an enjoyable experience in the way that a good action movie (with equally ill-defined characters) is. The missions were varied and fun — though a couple dragged on a little too long — and the presentation throughout was immaculate; the PC version looks lovely, and the action is accompanied by some wonderful music and excellent voice acting just to add to the whole "movie-like" feel.

It's just a pity so many opportunities for interesting narrative development were squandered, leaving the whole experience feeling a bit hollow afterwards. I'm not sorry I played it, as on the whole I did enjoy it immensely, but now my appetite has been well and truly whet for the earlier — apparently much better — installments in the Ace Combat series, which hopefully I will be getting my hands on very soon.

1726: Assault Horizon

Following on from yesterday's post, today I decided to give Ace Combat: Assault Horizon a try, partly because I was impatient to get started on my journey through the Ace Combat series, and partly because I was conscious of the fact it had been in my Steam library since one sale or another and I had never even installed it, let alone tried it.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is pretty much the black sheep of the Ace Combat franchise, so I figured it probably wouldn't be a terrible idea to try it first. That way I can see what the series is like now, and then compare it to what it was in the PS2 era. Ace Combat fans do not have the luxury of doing it this way around, so they inevitably see it as a series in decline — particularly now it's made the jump to free-to-play on PlayStation 3.

Now, as noted, I have no frame of reference for the rest of the series as yet, but if the other games are even half as enjoyable as Assault Horizon appears to be — and I'm led to believe that they're considerably better — then I'm very much in for a treat. But more on that when my copies arrive.

For now, let's talk a little about Assault Horizon. It was referred to by some on its original launch as being Call of Duty in the sky, and this isn't an altogether inaccurate comparison. There are lots of characters who have little in the way of… you know, character development, but who provide the framework for the different types of mission (one dude is a fighter pilot, another dude is a helicopter pilot, the token ladypilot flies bombers and transports); the missions and story are very much pre-scripted to fit the overall narrative; the narrative itself makes little in the way of sense but is enjoyable from the perspective of it simply being spectacular to watch.

And, for all the shit Call of Duty gets, this isn't a bad thing for this sort of game. Air combat should be spectacular and exciting — at least, if you're taking the "action movie" approach to it, as this game is — and when you approach it with that attitude, it doesn't matter so much that the game just flat-out defies the laws of physics on numerous occasions with regard to how the various vehicles handle. (The way the helicopter dodges missiles with a ridiculous barrel roll is a particular highlight.)

So far the combat itself has been enjoyable and satisfying, too. Early in the game, you can pretty much get someone in your sights and fire off a missile at them, but as you progress you start having to pull off more and more fancy manoeuvres to get into a position to get a kill. And it's here that the game's most controversial addition to Ace Combat veterans shows its head: Dogfight Mode.

Dogfight Mode is… well, I'm not really sure how it works, but I do know it's ridiculous. Rather than having to worry too much about pointing your plane in the right direction, Dogfight Mode consists of a sort of autopilot as you tail an enemy, though you still have to roll and pitch in order to keep them centred in a large circle on the screen in order to lock on with missiles. It's usually the most reliable means of ensuring you down an enemy — particularly the stronger "leader" enemies — but it's also used for some very silly white-knuckle setpieces throughout, as your quarry leads you on a merry chase between skyscrapers (with things like cranes collapsing around you, naturally) or perilously close to the ground. (And yes; turn the assist options off and the flight controls to the "proper" ones and you can indeed slam into the ground and immediately bring your mission to a premature end, like any good air combat game worth its salt.)

I fired Assault Horizon up out of curiosity earlier and have found myself playing it pretty much all evening. While I'm conscious of numerous things it could do a bit better, I've enjoyed my time with it so far, and I'm feeling like it was a good choice to give this one a try first, because from what I understand, things only get better from here. My mild curiosity has been upgraded to "can't wait" status.

Fox two, fox two.

1725: Jet Fighter Squad

On something of a whim (and after seeing a screenshot posted by Mr Alex Connolly), I downloaded a lovely-looking cel-shaded air combat game called Vector Thrust the other day. This is supposedly a spiritual successor to a series of games I've never had any contact with previously: Namco's Ace Combat franchise. After playing Vector Thrust a bit and enjoying it, I've managed to track down cheap copies of the PS2 Ace Combat games to tide me over until the fun-but-crashy Vector Thrust comes out of Early Access in a hopefully somewhat more stable state.

I can't speak much about Ace Combat as yet — though I'm looking forward to trying them, rather late to the party as ever — but giving Vector Thrust a go and subsequently ordering copies of what are supposedly the best Ace Combat games, it occurred to me that flying a supersonic, tooled-up jet fighter is something we don't get to do all that often in games these days, whereas it used to be a mainstay of computer (as opposed to console) gaming in general.

I used to play a lot of jet fighter sims when I was younger. This was primarily because my Dad, as something of a propellerhead, tended to be sent review copies back when he wrote articles for Atari magazine Page 6/New Atari User. My Dad preferred the more realistic end of the spectrum when it came to flight sims, however — he'd often spend some time with MicroProse's latest, then head right on back to Flight Simulator II in order to fly from one place to another in real-time with no-one shooting at him.

I wasn't averse to a bit of Flight Simulator myself — it was very satisfying to be able to fly what was, at the time, a super-realistic simulation. But I much preferred the action and drama of a good jet fighter sim. I talked a bit about F-19 Stealth Fighter a few posts back, but there were plenty of others — the rather arcadey action of F-15 Strike Eagle (and its sequel, which actually did become an arcade machine); the limited but challenging selection of missions in Falcon and the wonderful dynamic campaign of its later incarnations; the tricky carrier takeoffs and landings of Flight of the Intruder; the cinematic combat of TFX and EF2000; the outright "soap opera" nature of Origin's Wing Commander-in-the-sky spinoff Strike Commander. I developed a frighteningly comprehensive knowledge of modern air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance — particularly for someone of my age — and, having spent many hours reading the lengthy manuals (remember those?) for these games on the toilet, I knew a fair bit about the planes and how they worked, too, since this was the age of many manuals having a coffee-table book level of detail about them.

Ace Combat isn't, from what I understand, a sim. But neither is it the "3D shmup" of titles like After Burner and its sequel G-LOC. Instead, like Vector Thrust, it's somewhere in-between, offering a semi-realistic flight model coupled with ridiculous, "gamey" aspects such as your plane being able to hold terrifyingly huge amounts of missiles and dogfighting that is more inspired by World War II combat than what actually happens in the sky these days.

It's a kind of game we don't get all that often these days any more, and that's a real shame — though at the same time it's also encouraging to see titles like Vector Thrust (which, I understand, was put together by a teeny-tiny team) cropping up, even if this sort of thing would never get greenlit by a triple-A publisher these days, in all likelihood.

Regardless, I'm really looking forward to trying out Ace Combat for the first time; having read a little about them and listened to the (spectacular) soundtracks, they sound right up my alley — and will be a nice change from some of the other stuff I've been playing on the side to boot.

1724: Remake Rebirth

You may recall a short while back that I'd picked up a copy of Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 for Vita and that I'd played it a tiny bit. Well, I've played it a bit more now, and can comfortably say with some confidence that it is probably the best Neptunia game yet — and also a fine entry point into the series as a whole.

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia was something of a tough sell. While its story and characterisation was a hell of a lot of fun — it's what won me over and made me such a fan of the series in the first place — the gameplay was repetitive as hell and, while inventive with some of its mechanics, was highly flawed. I wouldn't have judged anyone who put it down after a few hours, in other words, as I know that not everyone can overlook mechanical and technical issues purely by virtue of there being an adorable main cast doing a variety of silly things.

The two follow-ups — the confused timeline and alternate universes of Neptunia mean that they're not "sequels" as such — completely overhauled the game systems to make them much better and more fun to play while maintaining the distinctive character that the first game had set in place. Until now, Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory had provided the definitive Neptunia experience — not perfect, by any means, but by far the most solid installment to date.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 builds on the solid foundation of Victory's mechanics and retcons them into the story of the original game. Only the story and characterisation have been revamped too. And the game frequently pokes fun at itself for being a remake.

In other words, far from being a simple makeover of the first game, Re;Birth1 is very much a new Neptunia game well worth playing in its own right.

And you can tell that the Neptunia team has had quite some time to refine their craft by now. Many of the series' trademark quirks are still present — the dungeon designs are still somewhat repetitive (many, if not all, seem to be copy-pasted from mk2 and Victory) and there are some characters, enemies and abilities that just appear to be flat-out unbalanced (possibly deliberately so, I might add) — but numerous nips and tucks have been made here and there to make it overall a very positive experience.

Victory's heavily random number generator-based Scout system is out the window, for example. This was the main means through which you unlocked "hidden" dungeons, enemies and items in Victory, and it could be a right old pain in the backside. Instead, Re;Birth1 replaces much of its functionality with the "Remake" system, in which you can craft various Plans in order to put new items in the shops, unlock new dungeons, add new enemies and add new gatherable items. There's still a slight element of RNG in play in that you need enemies to actually drop items you need to craft these plans, but it doesn't encourage save-scumming in the same way that Victory did.

Outside of gameplay, the writers (and localisers) have been honing their wit to a sharp point, too. Neptunia has always been a superb, on-the-nose satire and parody of both the games industry and modern anime, and Re;Birth1 is no exception. The original game, while amusing, featured a few jokes that felt a bit "forced" along the way; Re;Birth1's script, by contrast, flows much more nicely while still containing plenty of amusing references for those who know what to spot.

The biggest highlight for me, so far, though, has been how the relationships between the characters are depicted. There's a much stronger feeling that, after several games now, the writers have a strong feeling of who these characters really are and how they relate to one another. The banter between them is natural and enjoyable to witness, and those who have been fans since the beginning will doubtless enjoy certain friendships and rivalries explored in much greater detail than ever before.

I've still got a long way to go in the game yet, but I'm having a real blast; as with mk2 and Victory before it, I'm having a lot of fun just wandering around, getting into fights with the variety of silly enemies (many of which are themselves game references) and grinding for experience and abilities. It's a game that's fun to take at your own pace — you could charge straight through the story if you see fit, but there's a lot of fun to be had on the side, too, and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

So I think that's what I might go and do before I drop off to sleep. Nepu-Nepu!

1722: Shared Hardship on the Shores of La Noscea

I had an enjoyably bizarre experience in Final Fantasy XIV earlier on — and it's the sort of thing that couldn't possibly have been planned; the kind of emergent weirdness that only comes about when you put the unpredictability of humans into the mix with a set of systems that always play by set rules, regardless of context.

In order to explain the situation for those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, indulge me a moment, veterans, while I define a few things.

One of the main systems in Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Full Active Time Event (or FATE) system. These are essentially "public quests" that spawn at predictable points on the map, but on an unpredictable schedule. Some spawn more frequently than others; some are required to progress in certain quests; some are more "popular" than others owing to their convenient location or rewards on offer.

There are three important things to note about FATEs: firstly, they're time limited, usually providing you 15 minutes to complete the main objective, which is generally plenty of time; secondly, if you are standing inside the blue circle that represents the FATE area on the map and hit just one enemy once — even if it's just a glancing, accidental blow from a weapon better suited for channeling powerful magics than melee combat — you are considered to have "participated" in that FATE; thirdly, the number of people who participated in a FATE the previous time it spawned determines how difficult it is the next time around: in other words, at peak periods, FATEs are designed to be challenging for larger groups of people, whereas if the last time a FATE spawned no-one took part in it at all, the next time it appears it will probably be completable by a (well-geared) solo adventurer, perhaps with a chocobo companion in tow.

Completely separate from FATEs is a newer system called The Hunt, in which each area in the game has three Elite Marks that players can hunt down for substantial rewards: a B-rank mark, which you can fight solo, and which only offers rewards if you have a specific Mark Bill inviting you to hunt it down; an A-rank mark, which requires about 4-8 people minimum to take down, but which offers rewards according to how much you (and, in most cases, your party) contributed to the kill; and an S-rank mark, which is much more powerful but works along the same lines as the A-rank marks in terms of rewards. We're mostly concerned with A-rank marks here, since S-rank marks have special conditions that need to be fulfilled before they'll show up in most cases, whereas A-rank marks will just show up regardless.

A-rank marks spawn on predictable schedules — you can see the timers ticking away for the server I play on right here, for example — and appear roughly once every four hours. What normally happens is that hunting parties will gather when the first marks on the list are approaching the "four hours since last killed" mark, then spread out and start looking for the beasts to respawn. There then follows a phenomenon that has become known as the "A-Train", where hunting parties move from zone to zone and pick off all the A-rank marks on the list one at a time until they're all dead, at which point the parties will all disband — unless there's the possibility of an S-rank showing up — and reconvene again when the first timer on the list hits four hours. It's like clockwork; it's perhaps not how the designers intended the system to work when it was first designed — and indeed, it's been tweaked and reorganised several times since it launched — but if you can get involved (which is usually as simple as throwing up a Party Finder ad with the word "Hunt" in it) it can be both fun and rewarding, if not particularly challenging in most cases.

Anyway, the point here is that when an A-rank mark shows up, a horde of players normally follows — and I do mean a horde. We're talking maybe 30 or so people minimum, and usually much more than that.

When I was sauntering around the lands of Western La Noscea earlier today, hacking and slashing my way through some FATEs in an attempt to collect the very last Atma crystal I needed to upgrade my Paladin's relic weapon into its Atma form, I happened to stumble across one of these gatherings, who had showed up to fight the giant crab Nahn. Nahn, as it turned out, had spawned right in the middle of the FATE I had actually run to this area to complete, and as such there was something in the region of 50 people standing around, killing Sahagin indiscriminately to clear the area ready for the big group push towards Nahn. The important thing to note here is that the Sahagin they were hacking, slashing, punching and setting fire to (depending on class) were parts of the FATE I had shown up to complete, so as far as the game was concerned, when that FATE's boss fell, over 50 people had participated in it.

I'm sure you can imagine what happened a little later, after Nahn was defeated and after I returned to the area to complete the same FATE again as it happened to appear while I was passing through.

Yes, believing that 50 players being in the area, battering Sahagin left, right and centre, was a representative example of the zone's population at that particular hour, the game adjusted the difficulty of the FATE to cater not to little old me and the two other people who happened to wander into the FATE at the same time as me — oh no — but instead to the 50+ people who were no longer present, now doubtless considerably further down the tracks of this particular run of the A-Train.

I didn't notice this initially. I thought that the "trash" enemies that you have to defeat before the main boss monster showed up were a little stronger than I remembered, but I thought nothing of it. My companions and I slaughtered our way through them until the boss showed up, at which point I, as the Paladin — a protector "tank" type — got its attention by smacking it firmly upside the chops with my shield, and then began inserting my sword into various parts of its anatomy while my companions got busy with magic spells and poking it with a spear respectively.

I figured something was amiss when the health bar of the boss was moving very slowly despite us all unleashing our most powerful attacks. To put it in context, the boss' health was declining at roughly the same speed as a well-geared party taking on Ramuh Extreme, currently one of the most challenging fights in the game. Fortunately, the boss didn't receive a damage buff at the same time as his vastly increased hit points, otherwise we would have been in real trouble.

We persisted, though, shaving away a tiny sliver of health with each hit. Andie happened to be passing by at one point, and joined the fray to contribute a bit of extra damage from her Bard class. We were making progress, a tiny bit at a time, though the longer the fight was going on the more exhausted my Paladin was getting, my ever-declining TP (Tactical Points, used for triggering physical attacks) getting perilously close to the zero mark. I had the boss' attention pretty firmly, though, so I eased off the powerful attacks and let my (TP-free) automatic basic attack do its work for a little while.

The timer ticked down. We were into single digits of minutes remaining, despite the fact that we'd all entered the fray with the full 15 minutes on the clock. The boss was barely at 50% of his HP, and I was starting to doubt whether or not we'd be able to beat it. Still we persisted.

"DIE DAMMIT!" I typed in frustration, on the /say channel so that my companions (whom, aside from Andie, I didn't know) could "hear" me.

"for real!!!" came back the response from one of them. We'd shared a moment. It was nice. Still we fought on.

My TP had recovered a bit by now, so I triggered my Fight or Flight ability — which temporarily increases my Paladin's damage output — and started hacking away with a bit more gusto once again. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, but the boss' health bar seemed to be going down noticeably faster. It looked as if we might just make it.

In fact, it was beginning to look like we'd make it just as the timer hit zero. Would we pull it off?

Sadly not. At less that 1% HP remaining, the timer expired and we failed the FATE. Our characters all fell to our knees and wept for the 15 minutes of effort we'd just put in — and, of course, to add insult to injury, I didn't get an Atma crystal from that FATE either.

I don't regret the experience, though. As I say, I shared a moment with those other people who were there at the same time as me, all doubtless thinking the same things, willing their characters to do just that little bit more damage. When I happened to run into them again doing another FATE in the area about half an hour later, we exchanged pleasantries and had a laugh about how the new FATE was quite a bit easier than our earlier tragedy. Then we went our separate ways. It was a real "ships in the night" moment, but it made what would have otherwise been a frustrating experience into something highly memorable — and, indeed, something I ended up wanting to write about at length.

I've got one more Atma crystal to go before my Paladin's weapon and shield can be upgraded, hot on the heels of my Black Mage's weapon reaching the powerful Novus (second-to-top) upgrade phase recently. If I can have more experiences like the one I just described, though, I really don't mind it taking a little longer; shared hardships like that — while fairly trivial in this instance — can bring people closer together, even if it's just for a moment or two.

1721: Run the Gauntlet

I tend to be rather wary of reboots that are simply named after the thing they're rebooting, because in my experience of them they often end up either being 1) not very good or 2) not particularly true to the original. (Or, in some cases, 3) both.)

As such, I was a bit skeptical about the prospect of a new Gauntlet game, particularly as the screenshots for it on Steam made it look like the worst kind of drab, brown, "gritty" modern-day reboot that we've seen all too frequently recently.

However, my friend Tim dropped by for a visit today, and we decided to give it a shot. £15 is a price at which I'm more than happy to take a punt on something I don't know a lot about, and so I downloaded and installed it, and we jumped into the action.

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a very solid game indeed — and one that clearly shines the way Gauntlet was always intended to be played: in local cooperative play, with up to four players crowded around playing together.

In other words, Gauntlet, as the new game is simply called, deftly addresses my two main concerns above by being 1) good and 2) true to the original. Let's look at both elements in turn.

It's good

Gauntlet's mechanics are pretty solid. It's not trying to be Diablo or anything more complicated than the original game was: it's a straightforward hack-and-slash arcade game in which 1-4 players take on a variety of dungeons while attempting to gather as much treasure as possible.

Each of the four characters is made unique through the use of their own individual attack skills, including a super-skill that works on a cooldown. The Warrior and Valkyrie both specialise in close-combat, with their main distinction being that the Valkyrie can attack more quickly and block things with her shield, while the Warrior focuses on smashing his way through enemies. The Elf is a ranged attacker, in possession of a rapid-fire shot that works like a twin-stick shooter, a slower, more powerful sniper shot that is the only means of damaging some more powerful enemies, and a bomb, which can blow up groups of enemies. The Wizard, meanwhile, makes use of Magicka-style button combinations to cast spells — discovering which combinations do what is, seemingly, part of the fun.

These mechanics are supported by some arcade-style shenanigans where if you kill enough enemies at once (usually using a special skill) and then keep killing enemies repeatedly after that, you'll build up a chain with a score multiplier for as long as you can keep the carnage going. It's immensely satisfying to keep pressing your luck and keep the enemies coming as your score shoots through the roof — and if the Steam leaderboards are anything to go by (and if they aren't filled with cheaters, which I sadly suspect right now) it's possible to get some astronomical scores through careful combo-management. Far better than simple fire-and-forget.

When playing in co-op mode there's an element of competition, too; at the end of each level, you'll be shown how you stacked up compared to your companions in terms of points you earned by killing things and points you earned through snagging treasure. There's also a bonus for anyone who managed to keep hold of a shiny gold crown until the end of the level, making for some enjoyable scuffles as enemies knock it from your head and everyone scurries to be the first to reclaim it.

There's some interesting "progression" mechanics, too; as you play the game and achieve various milestones, you'll unlock various small bonuses to each of the four characters. None of them are game-breakingly powerful, but on occasion they can provide access to new abilities or allow you to approach things in a slightly different way. In other words, they keep things on a level playing field for those who have been playing for different amounts of time while simultaneously letting people feel like they're making "progress".

It's true to the original

While a lot is different, the core is the same: you make your way through fairly linear but maze-like levels, defeating enemies — which keep coming from enemy-spawning structures until you destroy these — and grabbing treasure. Every so often, you'll be faced with the powerful (and, in this incarnation, seemingly undefeatable) Death and have to run for your life, and, of course, there's always the risk of shooting the food, making healing somewhat more difficult. (Thankfully, the one aspect of the original which isn't maintained is the ever-ticking health bar, declining over time as a means of getting you to feed more money into the arcade machine; now, you simply have a stock of lives shared between all players which you can recharge pretty easily.)

The four-character dynamic is very true to the original, and they even keep their original colours — though they've had a bit of a makeover in some cases. The Valkyrie is no longer a sexy, skinny, bikini-clad supermodel, for example — instead she looks like a rather more formidable woman of war, as any good Valkyrie should. (Whether or not you still find that "sexy" is up to your own tastes, of course.) The characters all have voices and personalities, too, and while it's initially a little odd to hear a regional accent coming from the mouth of Questor the elf, the voices and personalities are well-chosen and give some much-needed flavour and humour to the game as a whole.

These may all sound like differences from the original rather than being true, but in reality they support the core gameplay and the core appeal element of Gauntlet, both back in the day and in this new incarnation: simple, straightforward, no-commitment dungeon-crawling with friends. It's a huge amount of fun even with just two people — I perhaps question its value as a single-player title but am willing to give it a shot — and I can imagine with four, each taking on the role of a different character, it will be an absolute blast.

And if you want even more trueness to the original? You'll be pleased to know that the sounds for picking up keys and potions are intact from the original game, the main theme plays on the title screen, and there's even a "Classic Mode" filter for the graphics, though I'm yet to try that for myself.

A pleasant surprise, then, and one I hope I'll have the opportunity to play with people again sometime soon.

1718: The Joyless Wankers of the Games Press

What I'm about to write would have been enormously unprofessional a few months ago, but since I'm no longer a member of the games press, nor do I have any intention of going back any time soon, I am more than happy to express myself freely.

My statement is simple: If you're that cynical about video games, find something else — anything — to write about.

I say this after a day in which not one but two utterly dreadful articles were brought to my attention — I'm not going to link to either; you can seek them out yourself if you're that interested.

First up was the review of Fairy Fencer F over on my former stomping grounds of USgamer. After witnessing… the reviewer in question's review style on a couple of other Japanese role-playing game titles — most notably the actually rather excellent Tales of Xillia 2, which he panned — and the fact that, back when I was still on the staff, he wouldn't review Atelier Rorona Plus on the grounds that a Google Image Search for the game looked "creepy", I wasn't altogether surprised to see that he tore this title to shreds, also. And he did so in such a way that told me three things: 1) he had a pre-existing dislike of the company that produced the game (Compile Heart) 2) he hadn't taken the time to engage with the game on anything more than the most superficial level and 3) he simply didn't give a shit about JRPGs as they exist in 2014.

I haven't yet played Fairy Fencer F, but given the way in which the review in question was expressed — telling people who might actually be interested in the game absolutely nothing about the game, its story or its characters and instead bashing Compile Heart and its parent company Idea Factory, bemoaning easily ignored technical issues and generally looking down its nose at people who might want to play it — I don't have much faith in it as a whole. I intend to give the game a fair shot myself once I have time to settle down with it, and when I do I intend to provide some detailed thoughts on the subject over at MoeGamer, much as I did with Tales of Xillia 2 recently.

Now, games journos will often point out how stupid it is to disagree with a review, which is, after all, a subjective opinion. And it kind of is; if you like something which someone else hates, then great; more power to you. But what we had here was more than that — it was an outright unhelpful review, instead more concerned with scrawling "I Hate Compile Heart" over everything than actually providing any sort of interesting, helpful analysis or criticism. It actually felt borderline insulting at times — though thankfully not so much as the site's notorious Hatsune Miku Project Diva F review, which was so offensive to fans of Japanese games that emphatic complaints from me and my then-colleague Cassandra led to the formation of my JPgamer column.

If this was a one-off, I wouldn't mind so much, but the reviewer in question has now done this several times — leading me to question the motivations for assigning him (or him stepping forward; I don't know which way round it was) to these titles in the first place. As the former staffer who single-handedly built up a ton of goodwill with fans of niche titles that get ignored at best, marginalised or even ridiculed at worst by other sites, I can't deny that it smarts a little to see all that goodwill getting well and truly pissed up the wall by giving the sort of games that I would have been all over — and that my fellow enthusiasts would have loved to hear more about — to someone who clearly and obviously hates them. Something that helped make USgamer unique has been lost; now it's just another site with a predictable "loljapan" attitude about it. I would rather the site simply didn't review these titles at all than let this joyless arse anywhere near one ever again, but sadly it's not up to me. How very disappointing.

But let's not get too hung up on Fairy Fencer F because this was, surprisingly, not the most stupid thing posted today. No, that honour goes to the epic-length editorial over on Polygon about finding the tutorial to the new Lord of the Rings game troubling. Why? Because at one point, you sneak up on your wife and kiss her, using the same control scheme and animations as you use later in the game to assassinate people and monsters. Somehow this bizarre objection was spun out to somewhere in the region of 1,500 words — an impressive achievement on the part of the author to take that long to say absolutely nothing, I must admit. (Although frankly, given the state of some of the entries on this blog, I'm probably not one to talk. But eh; there's a difference between a professional, commercial games site and a personal blog I use as an outlet for mental detritus.)

Polygon has been going down the toilet for a long time; I can't say I've ever been a particular fan of their uniquely pretentious brand of games journalism, nor the sanctimonious attitude of several of its staff writers, but since ditching their features staff a while back — the one part of the site that actually had anything meaningful or interesting to say — it really has been circling the drain. I wasn't surprised or angry to read this article today after someone pointed me in its direction earlier; my only real reaction was a sigh and a shake of the head. Games journalism in 2014, ladies and gentlemen; better to say 1,500 words of nothing at all about the week's big release than, you know, say nothing at all. Because if you make people angry you'll at least get some page hits as people share it indignantly.

Today has been one of numerous days that I've looked back on my time with the games press and thought "That was fun while it lasted, but I don't want to go anywhere near that ever again." If a prerequisite for being a member of the games press of 2014 is being a joyless wanker who can't find the fun in anything, then count me out. Give me a call when you ditch the clickbait business model, fire all these miserable tossers and start bringing on board people who are actually enthusiastic — even passionate — about this exciting medium. I won't be sitting by the phone waiting for your call, however; I've got better things to do.

You know, like playing games… and actually enjoying them.

1713: Yep, You Should Play Ethan Carter

I must confess I hadn't been paying all that much attention to The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. I knew several people whose opinions I trusted were excited about it, however, so I was always intending to give it a try. And with it releasing this week and Andie out of town for the weekend, I figured tonight would be the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

I completed it, as it happens — it's not a terribly long game, but it is a very worthwhile experience that I recommend you indulge in, preferably in a single sitting if you have three or four hours to spare.

But what is it? I hear you ask. Well, it's… Hmm. Sort of hard to describe, in one sense, but pretty simple in another.

Its developers describe it as a non-violent investigation game in which you attempt to track down clues as to the whereabouts of the titular character, a young boy who wrote a letter to the protagonist — the rather wonderfully named Paul Prospero — prior to the eventd of the game beginning.

Now, the description of "non-violent" usually points to an example of those games that are often derided (or sometimes celebrated) as "walking simulators" — games that are, in effect, little more than theme park attractions in which you wander around and have a story delivered to you through various means. Notable recent examples include Dear Esther — which kind of invented the "genre", if you can call it that; Gone Home, which famously got branded "Not a Game" upon the introduction of Steam's tagging system; and The Stanley Parable, which no-one seemed to mind too much because it was amusing.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not quite in the same wheelhouse as these games. Rather than funnelling you down a specific path, Ethan Carter offers a certain degree of freedom — though there's still a natural order you'll come across the game's main… bits.

It's these "bits" that distinguish Ethan Carter from your common-or-garden walking simulator, however, because each involves a degree of puzzle-solving, deduction and thorough investigation of the environment to succeed. And in order to see the game's story through to its conclusion, you'll need to succeed in all of these little mini-adventures scattered across the map.

The exact form of these mini-episodes varies with each one: some require you to simply find a bunch of objects in the nearby vicinity; some require you to figure out what happened where in a particular situation, and then correctly identify the order the events you uncovered occurred in; some are more traditional "puzzles" requiring a bit of lateral thinking and investigation to beat. The nice thing about the game's relatively brief length is that it never feels like it's repeating itself too much: the most-repeated game mechanic is the chronology-identifying system, and that usually comes at the conclusion of some other investigative work.

The most pleasing thing about Ethan Carter, though, is that it warns you when you start that it's not going to hold your hand at all, and then it's true to its word. No navigation arrows. No journal. No flashing objectives. Just you and your brain looking out onto the lovingly detailed (albeit fairly small) open world that forms the setting for Prospero's investigations.

And what a world. It may be small, but it's beautifully crafted; this is by far one of the best-looking games I've seen for a long time. Outdoors, grass, bushes and trees blow in the wind as the sunlight streaks down through gaps in the leaves. Indoors, light streaming in through windows shows dust floating in the breeze. Textures are beautifully detailed, meaning you can easily read things like book titles and small incidental signs without having to get right up close to them, and the overall atmospheric effects are marvellously convincing: there's a lovely gentle haze in the background, and although the explorable area of the map is fairly small, the background is rendered in a convincing enough manner to suggest that the area you're tooling around in is very much part of a much larger world. It's gorgeous — and it provided the workout I've been craving for my brand new nVidia GTX 970 graphics card, which handled it perfectly on max settings without breaking a sweat. Lovely.

I shan't get into the story of Ethan Carter now, since with it being so short, it's something you really should experience yourself. I will say, however, that I enjoyed it a great deal, and can recommend it highly — even if you're not normally a fan of non-violent "walking simulators". The puzzle-solving and investigative elements elevate this far above titles like Dear Esther and Gone Home in gameplay terms, and, although short, it's a satisfying game to work through and complete.

So go on. Set aside a few hours this weekend and go find out just where Ethan Carter has got to. You won't regret it.

1709: Stories All Around

Whenever I see a police car or an ambulance screaming down the road in the opposite direction to the way I'm going, I can't help but wonder where they're going, what they're doing and what the story behind that split-second encounter was. For a brief moment, my own story — usually something rather mundane like going to the shops or to get some petrol — intersects with that of some other people; an exciting, possibly tragic story that I will likely never know the details of.

That doesn't stop me wondering, though.

Stories are all around us. Everyone you see is living their own story. And while few of them live up to the obnoxious banner currently hanging in Southampton's WestQuay shopping centre (which promotes a local photography studio and reads "The Most Important Story Ever Told: Yours"), they're all different and they're all interesting in their own way. It can be kind of mind-boggling to contemplate quite how many things are going on at any given time, particularly when you contemplate how many things happen to you — however mundane — on any given day.

It's in acknowledging the fact that stories are going on all around us — and continue without our intervention — that it becomes possible to craft a convincing, compelling fictional world. And it's true across all forms of media: many comic books these days unfold in shared universes, with foreground events in one series fading into the background in others, but still being acknowledged; crossover TV shows keep their own narratives mostly parallel, but occasionally bend inwards a little to meet for a fleeting episode or two before diverging again; prolific authors spend volume after volume building up a convincing mental picture of how their world works, and the many adventures that the people therein have over time.

And the same is, of course, true of video games. The most well-crafted video games embrace this feeling of stories happening all around us at any time and, more so than any other medium, allow us to explore them at our leisure, pursuing the threads we're interested in to build up a full picture of what it must really like to be an inhabitant of a virtual world.

This sort of thing is particularly important in sprawling role-playing games, where a poorly crafted world can do great harm to the immersion factor of the game. It's the reason why the Elder Scrolls games have never really resonated with me: I never got the sense that the people wandering around and occasionally looking in my direction mattered; I never got the sense that they had their own personal stories, even when they formed the basis of a quest or two. There was the odd exception — tucked away in a few nooks and crannies were some interesting diary entries and illicit items that suggested all was perhaps not as it seemed with a character that seemed otherwise respectable — but for the most part, the identikit nature of most of the characters in these games was immensely offputting.

It will doubtless not surprise you to hear that this is one thing I feel Final Fantasy XIV does exceptionally well, much as its predecessor Final Fantasy XI did before it. Although the world is primarily populated by static NPCs who go about their same old business at all times of day or night — that and the players, of course — the game does, on regular occasions, make the effort to make the land of Eorzea feel truly lived-in.

This is most apparent in the relatively recently added "Postmoogle" quests, in which you're recruited (somewhat reluctantly) by the Deputy Postmoogle to deliver a series of letters to various characters around the realm. Mechanically, these quests are little more than "go here, talk to this person" fetch quests, but if you stop and pay attention to what is being said — and who is involved — they take on a whole new amount of meaning.

This is because they involve characters that you will have seen elsewhere out and about in the world in various contexts.

One quest sees you accompanying the aptly named Hunberct Longhaft and his two adoring Miqo'te companions around the city of Ul'Dah; your only previous contact with these characters will have been during one of the major "FATE" events out in the world, at which point there was little time for conversation, but just enough time to wonder exactly what was going on between Hunberct and the two Miqo'te.

Another sees you engaging in conversation with a group of four gladiators whom you've likely only ever encountered as the last "boss" of the dungeon Halatali (Hard). Another still delves into the background of the "aesthetician" — the character you can summon from your inn room to get a new haircut — and his Ishgardian heritage.

It's not just the Postmoogle quests that do this, however. Many of the sidequests that have been added since the game's launch acknowledge popular minor characters, such as the ill-fated adventuring party you run into early in the game's main scenario, whose erstwhile leader is beheaded in battle "off-camera" while you run your first dungeons. The next time you meet the group, the healer of the party — the deceased leader's fiancee — is carrying his head around in a bag with her, stricken with guilt; the next time you meet them, which is much, much later, at level 50, long after the initial main scenario is over and done with, things have gone very, very wrong indeed.

Final Fantasy XIV is far from the only example of this idea of stories being all around us being used effectively in video games, but it's one of the best in recent memory.

I still can't help wondering where that ambulance was going, though. I hope the person it was on its way to help is all right.