1514: New Journeys in the Dark

We finally got around to starting a new campaign of Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition (hereafer Descent to save my own sanity) recently. We eventually abandoned our original campaign on the "finale" quest after getting a number of rules exceedingly wrong for the entire campaign, which meant that the party of heroes were exceedingly overpowered, while the Overlord (me) was vastly underpowered.

This time around, we're going to do it right. I'm playing a hero this time around, so it'll be fun to be on the other side of the table, and we're also playing with the Lair of the Wyrm expansion, which adds a couple of new character classes plus rules for "rumors" and extra quests that bolt on to the existing campaign. They're mostly fairly minor changes, but it should be fun.

The new class I'm playing as — a Geomancer — is looking like it has potential to be fun. Beginning with a ranged magic weapon and the ability to summon a stone familiar which can subsequently make use of aforementioned ranged magic weapon, levelling up eventually equips me with the ability to summon more than one stone, detonate them and blast enemies in the vicinity, and all sort of other happy funtimes.

I actually haven't really explored the other classes all that much, but the way Descent is designed makes for an interesting set of combinations. Each player gets to pick a hero character, and that hero has fixed stats and special abilities (one of which can always be used, one of which may only be used once per "encounter" in a quest) — but from there, you can pick one of several specific classes for that hero's archetype. This allows for a ton of variety, particularly given that the game and the expansion certainly don't skimp on the available heroes. I'm looking forward to working through the campaign and getting a feel for how my character fits into the party as a whole.

The game continues to impress me as a good balance between cooperative and competitive, strategic and thematic play. It is, I think, one of the best games in our collection for keeping pretty much everyone around the table happy for one reason or another, and thus I'm always glad to be able to get it out.

As I think I've probably mentioned before, one of the things I particularly like is that it isn't a straightforward dungeon crawl, despite how it positions itself on its packaging and in its marketing. No, instead it's more of a small-scale skirmish game in which a small team of heroes faces off against a modest force of monsters, with both sides trying to complete objectives that are usually a lot more interesting than just "kill all of the other team". In the introductory quest, for example, the Overlord's task is to get five goblins off the map — and said goblins keep respawning even if the heroes kill them. The heroes, meanwhile, are tasked with defeating a strong boss monster while simultaneously attempting to block the flow of goblins. All of the quests are like this to one degree or another; it gives the game a pleasant feeling of asymmetry while keeping things interesting for both sides and preventing it from becoming mindless hack-and-slash.

There's also a really nice system of dice for combat. A basic attack uses a blue six-sided die, which determines whether or not you hit and a small amount of damage. Equipped weapons then add additional dice to this basic die of either the yellow or red variety. Yellow dice do less damage overall, but they have more in the way of "surges" — energy markers that, when rolled, can be used to trigger special abilities. They can also be used to increase the range of ranged weapons — in order to hit something at range, you have to roll a high enough number as well as hitting with the blue die. Red dice, meanwhile, are largely focused on dealing more damage.

On top of that, there are brown, grey and black defense dice that reflect how much protection a character has thanks to their equipment and innate abilities — but then certain weapons have a "pierce" skill that allows them to ignore some defense. The systems all gradually build on top of each other, but things never get overwhelmingly complicated. It's satisfying.

In fact, the only thing I'm really not a fan of about Descent is that the box insert it comes with is absolute garbage — in fact, I chucked in in order to get everything fitting in the box a bit better. Between all the miniatures, the zillion tokens and the big thick cardboard map tiles, there's a lot of stuff in that box, though, and it's tricky to keep it organised. I'm going to have to look into a better storage solution for it if I want to play it a bit more often, I think!

1510: Hidden Ninpo

Been playing a bunch more Senran Kagura Burst over the last few days, and the more I play, the more I like it.

This is partly because of the interesting, well-told story that actually bothers to explore its characters in some degree of depth thanks to some lengthy visual novel sequences, but that's not what I wanted to talk about today. No, instead, today I wanted to talk a little about how what initially appears to be a simple, straightforward brawler grows more and more interesting to play as you progress.

Senran Kagura Burst gives you five playable characters on each of the two "sides" of the story, plus some secret characters, I believe — haven't unlocked them yet, but there's a conspicuous question mark on the character select screen. Initially, these characters all have their own distinct characteristics — from the Hanzou path, Asuka has speedy attacks, Ikaruga has a long reach, Yagyuu hits hard, Katsuragi fights without weapons and Hibari hits lots of times — but they all "handle" fairly similarly. In other words, at the outset of the game you can pretty much button mash and get some good results.

Thanks to an RPG-style levelling system, however, the characters evolve as you play them in several ways. At various level boundaries, they unlock new "arts", usually in the form of extending their usual combos, but as you play levels in one of two modes — Yang, which is "normal", for want of a better term, and Yin (or "Frantic"), which sees the girls stripping off all their clothes (and defense) in exchange for a massive damage boost — you build up power in your Yang and Yin stats. Separately from your experience level, you unlock new Yin and Yang abilities as these statistics build up, until eventually fighting in Yin and Yang are as different as… well, you know. Playing a level in Yang sees you chaining together massive combos and getting ridiculous hit counts — potentially well into the thousands if you're good at chaining knockouts together — while playing in Yin sees you steaming through, obliterating everything in your path. I finished the first boss level in the game in two seconds earlier thanks to a level 30 Asuka with a fully buffed up Yin stat.

The game doesn't start with these two "modes" feeling different, however; no, it takes some time until the differences start to take effect — initially the only difference is in what the girls are wearing as you fight. But as you gain levels and increase the Yin and Yang stats, more and more depth is gradually added to the game until you're playing something a lot more technical and interesting than what initially appeared to be a fun but fairly mindless button-basher.

This becomes particularly apparent as you work on several characters at once — the story often forces you to use specific characters the first time you take on a level, and so you'll get some experience with all of them while undoubtedly finding favourites. Again, initially, all the characters feel very similar outside of their obvious differences in weaponry, but again, over time, they start to become more and more distinct. Asuka, for example, becomes a whirling death machine able to hit lots of enemies at the same time with a spinning attack, then launch them all into the air. Katsuragi, meanwhile, actually changes significantly from her low-level incarnation; rather than being able to launch enemies simply by hammering the Fast Attack button and unleashing a combo, Katsuragi begins requiring Heavy Attacks to be in the mix in order to successfully launch them. This forces you to play Katsuragi noticeably differently from the other characters — and I'm sure the others are different again, and I'll come to discover their own quirks over time.

The pace at which all this happens is really good, too; you start getting additional techniques and new moves just as hammering "Y" repeatedly starts to get a little tiresome and you start wondering whether there's anything more to it. It's not long after that your rate of pressing the attack buttons slows down from the frantic pace it almost certainly begins at, and you start actually counting how many attacks you get in in order to use the moves you want to. In a funny way, it reminds me a bit of Bayonetta, which I still regard as the benchmark of 3D action games — there was never a moment in Bayonetta where I didn't feel in control of the character, and that, likewise, gradually grew in complexity (and, consequently, in how rewarding it was to play) over time. Bayonetta is probably a superior game with more variety than Senran Kagura, but to get a similar vibe from it is testament to the latter's satisfying brawling.

Anyway, if you've been hesitating over picking this up — perhaps you're an American holding out for a possible physical release? — then, well, I'd strongly advise you to grab a copy if you enjoy a good brawler. And then help me bug Xseed to bring the Vita game to the West, too.

1508: Learn Through Play

Learning through play is not just something for pre-schoolers; it's something you can continue to do throughout your life, and I absolutely love it when you twig that it's happened.

My earliest memories of genuinely learning something from a video game that wasn't explicitly an "educational" title came in the mid-'90s when MicroProse was on top form churning out flight sim after flight sim. I learned that the F-19 wasn't real and the F-117A was; I learned how aircraft carrier takeoffs and landings worked; I learned about the physics of flight — though admittedly, most flight sims that weren't made by SubLOGIC and subsequently Microsoft didn't have particularly accurate flight models — and I learned about real-world conflicts around the world, primarily in Libya and the Gulf.

More recently, my love of Japanese games has equipped me with a surprising amount of knowledge about Japanese culture and how people go about things over there. Shenmue taught me to take your shoes off when entering a Japanese person's house; School Days taught me about saying itadakimasu before starting to eat; Persona taught me about national holidays and the way schools work in Japan. Granted, relatively little of that is what we might term "useful" knowledge (unless, of course, you're going to live or work in Japan) but it's still pretty cool to learn it.

My Japanese class this evening showed me that even Final Fantasy XIV has successfully taught me things, primarily through its seasonal events. Currently running, for example, is an event called "Little Ladies' Day", which I discovered is actually a real-life Japanese celebration in March known variously as Girls' Day, Doll's Day or hinamatsuri. In the questline for the seasonal event in the game, you're tasked with taking a doll around and showing it to people, and references are often made to it being far too expensive for most people to afford. Coincidentally, the real-life dolls displayed as part of hinamatsuri celebrations are often elaborate creations that are well out of the price range of casual collectors.

This isn't the first time Final Fantasy XIV specifically has taught me something like this; last month, the Valentine's day celebrations had a distinctly Japanese flavour about it, too, particularly when it came to the whole "exchanging chocolates" thing. That and the costume you received as a reward for completing the questline there made you look like you were heading off to work at a maid café — no bad thing, indeed.

I find it pretty fascinating to consider video games being used in this way — to passively impart knowledge without you realising it — and am particularly inspired by the prospect this raises of my favourite entertainment medium being a brilliant means of encouraging understanding and empathy between different cultures. The industry as a whole still has a very long way to go with regards to diversity, of course — while it's possible to learn a lot about Japanese culture through games, you're less likely to be able to interactively immerse yourself in, say, Middle Eastern or African culture, or even subcultures from closer to home — but I have faith that over time, we will start to see more and more interactive experiences that genuinely have something to teach us, whether that's knowledge we can actually apply in the real world, or simply a means of better understanding our fellow human beings. That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

1504: Life and Hometown

As promised (well, suggested) I booted up Senran Kagura Burst for the first time last night, and I've felt a strong urge to keep going back over the course of today. The reason? It's one hell of a lot of fun. Who'd have thought it?

The reason I like it so much is not, as you might conjecture, all the bouncing boobies (though I won't lie, the various members of the main cast all push my buttons in various different ways — why deny it?) but rather the fact it plays like a modern-day brawler. Streets of Rage at turbo speed, if you will; the only thing that's really missing to make it into a truly authentic arcade brawler is a cooperative two-player mode, which appears to be sadly lacking.

Still, this isn't a massive omission on a handheld game, and particularly not when there's seemingly so much to work your way through. There are two hefty stories to play through, each with five different playable characters, and when you've completed each level you can go back and replay it with any of the other characters in order to earn rankings and experience points for them. And then you can play it with each character in "Frenzy" mode, whereby they do 750% more damage but take considerably more damage on account of the fact that all their clothes have fallen off and they're fighting in their swimsuits. In other words, you can play each level up to ten times altogether — five for each character normally, then again with each of them in Frenzy mode — and have an enjoyable experience each time.

Like the classic brawlers of yore, Senran Kagura's controls are simple and straightforward, but can lead to satisfyingly ridiculous combos. Senran Kagura's main contributions to the ridiculousness are the "Aerial Rave" skill, whereby landing a combo on enemies makes a green circle appear, and tapping the A button at this point launches them into the air for further punishment, and the Hidden Ninja Art attacks, each of which are themed around an animal and cause varying amounts of disaster for the enemies around or in front of you depending on which one you unleash.

There's some lightweight RPG mechanics in there, too; completing levels earns you experience points, which levels the girls up, and new Hidden Ninja Arts become available every so often. Moreover, "Yin" and "Yang" bars build up depending on how many levels you've played in Normal or Frenzy mode, with various benefits (and potential shortcomings, particularly in the case of Yang) becoming available to you as these bars increase. It looks, then, as if the game will gradually grow in complexity as it progresses — though from the look of things, it will still remain pleasantly accessible.

I haven't got that far into the game's story yet — I've been having too much fun challenging the first few levels with all the characters — but so far the cast seems to be a loveable bunch, each with their own distinct personalities. Many of them are anime trope-tacular, of course, but I have no problem with this whatsoever; tropes become popular for a reason, after all — and I'm particularly intrigued to see how their personal stories unfold over the course of the game, as I know that those who particularly enjoy the series see the character development as a real highlight of the whole thing.

Further thoughts to follow, I'm sure; for now, I'm off to kick some Shinobi ass!

1503: Please Insert Gear 2

I finished the first disc of Metal Gear Solid today. I miss disc swaps; as inconvenient as some people find them, many games used them as an important part of their drama — look at how Final Fantasy VII's first disc ended, for example, or indeed how Metal Gear Solid closes off its first disc.

More than that, though, I'm impressed with how well Metal Gear Solid is holding up. I mean, sure, there are some aspects that have dated worse than others — the painful lack of motion capture and facial animation in the cutscenes being the most glaring issue, and the somewhat clunky controls being another — but as an interactive experience, its limited technology certainly doesn't hold it back from being a thrilling, compelling and exciting experience just as worth having today as it was back when it first came out. (And I maintain that the original is just… better, somehow, than the technically superior The Twin Snakes for GameCube; the revamped music and voice acting in that version just didn't feel quite right, somehow)

I'm also quite impressed with how much of the game I've remembered since its original release. I don't think I've beaten it that many times over the years, but I still remember all the peculiar little quirks as if it was only yesterday I played — changing the controller port for the Psycho Mantis battle; how to spot Meryl when she's in disguise; how to get Meryl to be in her pants when you reunite with her; how to get out of prison. (Actually, I must confess to messing the latter part up — I remembered the whole "ketchup" thing, but cocked up knocking the guard out and ended up being released by the Ninja, which I didn't even know was a possibility. You learn something new every day.)

Snake remains an awesome hero, too; convincingly badass, yet vulnerable and human at the strangest of times. He's at his most interesting when interacting with the diverse other members of the cast; whether it's struggling to show his feelings for Meryl or trying to work out the best approach to dealing with Otacon, who is terrified to the point of literally pissing himself one moment; overconfident and cocksure the next; emotional and irrational the next.

The game still packs a surprising amount of emotional punch, too, even with its primitive technology, and it's at least partly down to Kojima's strong direction of the game's cutscenes. Say what you will about the series and its lengthy storytelling sequences between bouts of crouching in the dark (and, of course, "Snake, SNAKE, SNAAAAAKE!", which I have heard a good few times today during some challenging sequences I didn't remember quite so well) — Kojima knows how to make a good movie with some interactive elements, and I think it's a fairly well established fact by now that I have absolutely no problem with games that prioritise storytelling over what we might traditionally call "gameplay". (I'm particularly looking forward to revisiting Metal Gear Solid 2's infamous 20-minute cutscene towards its conclusion.)

Anyway. Onward to disc 2 tomorrow, and a confrontation with Metal Gear, along with some other parts I've no doubt forgotten. For now, time for bed, possibly with some Senran Kagura Burst before sleepytime… Oh yes.

1501: A Hind D

I've finally acquired all of the mainline Metal Gear Solid games and have decided to play them through. To date, I've only ever played the first two (the first two Metal Gear Solids, not the first two Metal Gears), though I have had a copy of Snake Eater on my shelf for years now that I am yet to boot up. (Despite this, I picked up a copy of the HD collection for PS3. Why not, eh?)

Despite the fact that I've only ever played the first two, I have always thought of the series very fondly. I recall playing the original PS1 game to absolute death when it first came out since it was far and away one of the most gobsmackingly impressive console games around at the time.

Today, it's not looking quite so impressive thanks to its 320×200 resolution, limited colour palette (so much dithering!) and complete lack of facial animations, but Hideo Kojima's artistic intentions still clearly shine through thanks to excellent, movie-like direction of the cutscenes and high production values for music and voice work. In terms of sound, at least, the original game is very much on a par with modern games, with spectacular voice acting and a stirring, memorable score accompanying the action.

I think one of the reasons I enjoy the Metal Gear Solid games I have as much as I do is because they quickly subvert expectations. Obviously I don't have the same expectations of them as I did back when I first played them, but I still remember how enjoyable it was to see the game's setting and narrative evolve from gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war to comic-book style character-driven tale with a series of ridiculously overexaggerated villains. The gritty, manly super-soldier preventing nuclear war story is still there, of course, but with all the other stuff going on atop it, it becomes far more interesting than your average Call of Duty or whatever.

This is, in part, Kojima's craft. He can blend things together remarkably well. He can blend the realistic and the fantastic; the mundane and the ridiculous. The first game is relatively tame compared to what happens in some of the later installments — even the second one — but it's still not afraid to let its hair down every so often with villains like Psycho Mantis, who requires you to plug your controller into the other slot so he can't read your mind, and Vulcan Raven, who manages to come off worse in a fight against Snake even when attacking him with a tank.

Divisive though it may be, I'm also a fan of how Kojima tells his stories. My friend Mark described the Metal Gear Solid games as one part tactical stealth action game, one part movie and one part radio drama, and it absolutely is true. The stealth action stuff is solid, enjoyable and challenging; the movie is well directed and as enjoyable as anything I've seen on the big screen, despite only starring computer-generated characters; and the radio drama that unfolds any time you whip out your Codec to chew the fat with any of Snake's colourful cast of allies is well acted and always worth sitting through. I feel a bit sorry for those who feel the need to skip cutscenes and dialogue; they're missing out on a significant part of the Metal Gear Solid experience.

Anyway. This time around I'm hoping to make it all the way through to the end of 4. I've renewed my interest in the series somewhat since looking a little into the new games Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, you see, and it would be nice to be up to date with what's going on before I play those. Plus everyone always says Metal Gear Solid 3 is amazing, so I should probably see what they're all banging on about at some point, huh?

1500: Make a Run

[Aside: Gosh. 1,500 daily posts. Good job, me. I'd celebrate, but I already had something in mind to write about today, sooo…]

Spent a pleasant hour or two teaching and playing Netrunner this evening. This is the third time I've had the opportunity to give this interesting game a go now, and each time I play, I like it a little more.

I think the best thing about it is the psychology aspect of it. Like a good game of poker, success in Netrunner relies as least partly upon reading your opponent, figuring out how they're likely to act and taking advantage of it. When playing as the Corporation, for example, choosing which of your Remote Servers you're going to install Ice in front of is extremely important: do you think your opponent will assume your most valuable cards — the ones they're trying to steal in order to win the game — are heavily protected behind Ice, or will he see through the common bluff of leaving valuable cards unprotected as if they're no big deal?

There's a wonderful sense of tension in the game, on both sides, and the game is seemingly balanced in such a way as to encourage this feeling as often as possible.

In the last game I played today, for example, I was playing as the Corporation, and a victory on points was looking likely. My last Agenda card — the cards I needed to spend credits on to "advance" in order to score — was heavily protected behind three pieces of Ice, and I had enough credits to rez all of them without any difficulty. Moreover, I could see that my opponent James didn't have the Icebreakers he'd need to defeat my pieces of Ice, so I was feeling pretty confident. I advanced my last Agenda until it was one token away from final victory for me, and then it was the end of my turn.

Naturally, James used this opportunity to make a final Run on my Remote Server, obviously hoping to pick up my Agenda and bring himself closer to victory, while denying me the win. He began with the Tinkering card, which made one of my already-revealed pieces of Ice into a type that his Icebreakers could deal with. Uh-oh. He also had enough money to power up his Icebreaker enough to crack through it and deactivate its subroutines. Uh-oh. James broke through the first piece of Ice without any difficulty, so I rezzed the next one — an infuriating little card called a "portal" whose main effect was to send James back to confront the first piece of Ice again. This would fuck him over nicely, since he didn't have enough credits left to confront it again, but unfortunately his Icebreaker was of the correct type to bypass the portal without any difficulty.

This left the final piece of Ice for him to confront. My confidence had evaporated by this point, but I rezzed it anyway. It was pretty weak, but its subroutine would end his Run immediately — and best of all, it transpired that it was of a type his Icebreaker couldn't crack.

My heart leapt. I had done it. I had fended off an attack that had got a whole lot further than I thought it was going to — and now I was going to win for sure. And win I did — and great it felt, too.

I'm starting to get my head around this game now, and I'm really interested to play it some more. It's a big challenge — one false move, or an unfortunate draw of the cards, can leave you in serious shit or even with an instant loss if you're not careful. But knowing the things to watch out for allows you to prepare for most eventualities — and if you're playing against an evenly-matched opponent, it can lead to some genuinely thrilling faceoffs.

I'm not quite brave enough to approach the clearly experienced Netrunner players in the Monday night board game group as yet, but I'm definitely keen to play more. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so soon.

1499: Per. So. Na

So, Atlus confirmed today that the four new Persona games — Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth for 3DS, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for PS3 and 360, Persona 4: Dancing All Night for PlayStation Vita and Persona 5 for PlayStation 3 — are coming to English-speaking territories. And there was, as they say, much rejoicing.

My love of the Persona series is well-documented on these very pages, but I'm particularly pleased the three spinoff titles are all making it West. I'm especially excited about Dancing All Night — as evidenced by yesterday's post, music games are very much my jam, and Dancing All Night is looking very lovely indeed. I can take or leave Persona 4 Arena Ultimax for now — I'm still yet to beat the first one, though I will get to it eventually — and Persona Q intimidates me a little as someone who is still yet to play an Etrian Odyssey game. But all of them are appealing in one way or another; all of them are games I will play and love.

And then there's Persona 5, which we know next to nothing about so far. I'm really looking forward to this. The Persona team's previous game on consoles was Catherine, which turned out to be seriously great — not to mention a hefty challenge — and set a certain level of expectation for what a Persona 5 might look like. I'm thinking cel-shaded visuals interspersed with anime cutscenes, and that same sense of exquisite stylishness that has permeated the series since at least its third installment.

As for the others, I would worry that they're milking Persona 4 dry were it not for the fact that all the spinoff games featuring the Investigation Team and pals are very different beasts. Of the upcoming titles, only Persona 4 Arena Ultimax is remotely similar to a Persona 4 game we've already had — and given that game's surprisingly visual novel-ish nature, I don't mind all that much, since it's the story that's the important thing, rather than the fighting. (Although competitive players might disagree.)

As for Persona Q and Dancing All Night, though? I can't wait to give them a try — particularly, as I say, the latter. Rise was adorable in Persona 4, and the opportunity to spend another game in her company as she does what she does best — singing and dancing in an indefatigably cheerful manner — is not something to be passed up, particularly with the prospect of other Persona 4 stars putting in an appearance, too. Yu, Persona 4's original protagonist, looks particularly fetching strutting his stuff — I very much like how he's taken on a lot more of his own personality since the original game thanks to spinoff titles and the official anime adaptation.

But sadly we have a fair while to wait before we can get our hands on them. Persona Q and Ultimax aren't showing up until autumn of this year, and Dancing All Night and Persona 5 are next year. Still, the fact they're not just around the corner is probably a good thing — gives me time to clear my backlog a bit, not to mention review the several games I've got on my plate at the moment!

1498: Diva

I've been playing a bit of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F on PS3 recently. Every time I play it, I'm reminded that I really love rhythm games, regardless of whether or not they have "famous" music in them. (More hardcore Miku fans than I would probably be able to do a better job of explaining how each and every one of the tracks in Project Diva F is famous, but I'm happy just knowing "the one from Nyancat", "the one from Leekspin" and "the one from Black Rock Shooter" for the moment.)

It helps, of course, that Project Diva F is an excellent rhythm game. It doesn't do anything too complicated with its gameplay — it's just tapping or occasionally holding buttons to the beat, sometimes breaking for some analogue stick-flicking rather than button-pressing — but has a good scoring system that rewards you in a number of different ways: overall accuracy, successfully completing high-pressure "technical zone" sequences and unlocking the "true" end to a track by completing another special bonus zone. You can then bump up the challenge factor through a nifty risk/reward mechanic whereby it becomes easier to fail a track, but in exchange you get considerably more "Diva Points" to spend on goodies if you successfully make it all the way through.

I tend to judge music games based on how "in the zone" they make me feel. A good music game makes you feel at one with the rhythms in its tracks, and you feel like the buttons you're tapping have a real connection to the song. This doesn't necessarily mean just tapping out the beat — I recall vividly explaining to my friend Woody way back when that the various button-presses in Vib Ribbon didn't necessarily follow the vocal lines or the drum beat, but were in fact more like what you'd do if you were drumming your fingers to the song, and the note patterns in Project Diva F are much the same way. Sometimes you're tapping out the rhythm that Miku and friends are singing; others, you're following the guitar line, or the drums, or something else that is prominent in the soundtrack. Learning each track is a matter of familiarising yourself with what you're "playing" at any given moment, and how it fits in with the song as a whole.

In short, Project Diva F gets me feeling very much "in the zone" while I'm playing. It's one of those music games that's hypnotic to play, though the fact that notes come from all directions means that you're not left with that strange "the whole room is scrolling!" feeling that I always got from lengthy Guitar Hero or Rock Band sessions. The background videos are a lot of fun, too, featuring Miku and her friends getting up to various misadventures just like real pop stars in real music videos.

And the customisation. Man. I have a thing for playing dress-up in video games, and Project Diva F does not disappoint in this regard at all. Each of the game's characters has a hefty number of different costumes to unlock, with various accessories on top of that. Then you can decorate each of their rooms, and unlock amusing, silly cutscenes when they interact with the items. Some of the items even have a practical function — setting Miku's alarm clock puts her to sleep, for example, and she'll wake herself (and you) up when the timer expires. Arguably not all that useful on a TV-attached console such as the PS3, but a nice touch — and I can see it being cool on the Vita version we're supposedly getting in the West relatively soon.

I haven't even touched the frankly terrifying Edit Mode yet, in which you can cut your own music videos and set up your own playable note patterns to your own music. If I jump down that particular rabbit-hole, I can see myself getting thoroughly lost, so I've held off for now. But I'm sure I'll investigate at some point in the near future.

If you're a fan of music games as I am, be sure to check it out; don't worry that you might not know many of the songs — you'll pick them up by the umpteenth time you play them to perfect your score!

1497: Lab Work

Andie and I had another go at Pandemic: In the Lab this evening. I really like it; it completely changes the dynamic of the base game and, although it offers the potential to slow all players down considerably — for those unfamiliar, it makes the process of curing a disease considerably more complicated than just collecting enough cards — it encourages much more cooperative play, which is good.

The reason for this is that the new "Lab" mechanics allow more than one player to collaborate on putting together a cure for one of the four diseases. No longer is it a case of trying to get five cards of the same colour into the hands of one player (four if they're the Scientist) — instead, one player can "sequence" the disease by playing an appropriately coloured card; another can test the cure by playing another appropriately coloured card; other players still can collect samples of the diseases required to build the necessary molecular structure for the cure itself. Finally, one player only now needs to collect three cards rather than five — because two have already been played to sequence and test the cure — in order to finally cure it. Despite the curing process taking more steps, then, this actually frees up players to stomp off around the world doing a bit of curing while collecting additional samples.

It's still bloody hard, though. Andie and I played on the Introductory difficulty with just four out of the seven Epidemic cards, and we still lost — once without discovering any cures at all, and a second time after discovering two, with the third and fourth on the way. This is pretty much in keeping with the base game of Pandemic, which has a relatively low victory rate — particularly when playing on the more difficult settings with additional Epidemic cards — but has a pleasingly different feel to it all.

So far it seems to be a great expansion. In fact, I've been really impressed with both of Pandemic's expansions to date — On the Brink added a wide variety of new ways to play (which, to my shame, I'm actually still to try any of) plus a bunch of new character roles, while In the Lab's main contribution is this new "Lab Challenge" mode. I'm not sure if I'd want to play the game this way every time, but that's the beauty of it, in a way; you don't have to. The expansions have both been build in such a way that it's easy to pick and choose the bits you bolt onto the base rules. If you want to play vanilla Pandemic with nothing more than the new roles, no problem. If, conversely, you want to play the Lab Challenge with a Bio-Terrorist player and a Virulent Strain, you can. It's your choice, and that's pretty great.

Anyway. Looking forward to playing it more. Now we have a better handle on the way the new mechanics work, I have faith that we can save the world from the terrible plight of Itchy Scrot and Brown Rot once more. Maybe.