#oneaday Day 606: While You Sleep, They'll Be Waiting . . .

I started up Wing Commander III tonight in celebration of its recent rerelease on Good Old Games and in protest against all the Gears of War 3 excitement that's slowly building up. (I hate Gears.) And by golly, I miss that series something rotten. (Wing Commander, not Gears of War.)

I remember first playing the original Wing Commander and being gobsmacked by its then-revolutionary cutscenes and effort in telling a story. In fact — and this was always a big taboo in the early days of PC gaming — Wing Commander's dedication to spinning a compelling, if cheesy, space opera yarn made me consistently enjoy it far more than the X-Wing series.

Wing Commander III was something special, though. One of the first games to boast a multi-million dollar budget. An early outing for Mark Hamill, now a mainstay of the games industry. Full-motion video in a glorious 256 colours coming out of its ears. And, bizarrely, a porn star cast as the ship's mechanic.

It's difficult to pin down exactly what it is that's so appealing about the Wing Commander series — III and IV in particular — but I have a feeling it's the good balance between plot and spacefaring action. Missions are short enough that you can get through a bunch in a single sitting, but they don't feel like "throwaway" efforts — there's always something to do, even if it's just a patrol. But it's the fact that you're rewarded for completing them with advances in the plot — or sometimes just getting to know the characters a bit better — that made the game fun for me. Despite the fact it's essentially Top Gun in space, with all the cheesiness that implies, Wing Commander's cast is memorable, even years later. I can still recall Malcolm McDowell's star turn as the deliciously sinister Admiral Tolwyn years later, and it's always nice to see John Rhys-Davies. Hamill, too, puts in a good performance — at the time, the game invited references to Star Wars thanks to Hamill in the leading role, but if Wing Commander III showed one thing, it's that Hamill had grown up, got better hair and was no longer Luke Skywalker.

I'd almost go as far to say that I have fonder memories of the Wing Commander series than I do of the Star Wars saga. I mean, sure, I respect Episodes IV, V and VI and the culture they created, but despite the username by which I typically go online, I'm in no real rush to watch them again — neither am I in any hurry to go pick up the Blu-Ray box set which released recently. Wing Commander III rereleased on Good Old Games, though, for $5.99? I was straight in there. (This may have something to do with the fact that the Star Wars Blu-Ray set costs nearly 70 quid, while Wing Commander III offers an equivalent, if not greater, amount of entertainment for less than a tenth of the price.)

Nostalgia, as they say, isn't what it used to be. But sometimes you revisit something from the past and find it's just as awesome as you remember. So far, Wing Commander III, in all its grainy-video glory, has fallen squarely into that category. While modern takes on the space sim genre (what few examples there are left) often offer pleasingly deep and freeform experiences, there really is something to be said for the structured, narrative-heavy approach that Wing Commander offered.

And if you've never tried the series for yourself? For $5.99, you can surely afford to check it out.

#oneaday Day 131: Thoughts on Star Raiders

1979's Star Raiders and its 1986 sequel are, to me, two of the most memorable games I've ever played. The original Star Raiders was notable for being a pretty convincing simulation of what it might like to be to fly a spaceship and defend a galaxy that absolutely, 100% wasn't ripped off from Battlestar Galactica, oh no, from the "Zylons". Sure, it had crude graphics and sound, but its interesting blend of spaceflight, combat and light strategic elements made it a compelling example of early gaming that is actually still perfectly playable today, unlike many other retro "classics". It also taught me what "red alert" meant long before I ever saw my first Star Trek episode.

Its sequel upped the ante with better graphics, a wider variety of foes to battle against and more things to do than just fly around and shoot Zylons in space — you got to orbit planets, take on motherships, bomb bases and all sorts of things.

Now, some 25 years after the last Star Raiders game made an appearance, we have a brand new one for both Xbox 360 and Windows (and, if Sony ever gets PSN up and running again, PS3.)

I will preface this by saying that if you are thinking about playing this game on a console, just don't, all right? If you never played Wing Commander III on PlayStation 1, you've never known the horror of having too many controls and not enough buttons on your joypad. Hint to developers: if you need to include a "shift" button in your joypad-based control scheme, you may wish to rethink it somewhat.

Try it on a PC with a proper Giger alien-penis joystick and some not-inconsiderable control redefining, though? Now that's more like it. What we have here is a relatively simplistic space game that, unlike many recent examples, remembers that space is three-dimensional, and that it is, in fact, possible to "loop the loop" in space, along with go up and down, turn left and right and roll around your axis.

A good start. Add a transforming ship to that mix and you have some interesting possibilities. Your all-new Star Raiders ship (called, inexplicably, "Jasper") can transform between "Attack" (constant forward movement, high top speed, poor turning, guns and missiles), "Assault" (mech-like move-and-strafe, lower top speed, excellent turning, guns and heavy laser beam) and "Turret" (rapid aiming, snail's pace movement, super-powerful heavy weapons) modes. When I first started playing, I wondered why you'd ever want to switch out of "Attack" mode, until I realised that I was spending an awfully long time chasing down Zylon fighters that were more manoeuvrable than me. So I switched to "Assault" mode and found that I could kill them rather more easily. And "Turret" mode came in handy for dealing with capital ships.

The first few missions were a bit samey, despite claiming to be "recon" and "combat" missions — they all seemed to involve "destroy [x] number of Zylon fighters", possibly against a time limit. But then the fourth "story" mission came along, which tasks you with finding a piece of a secret weapon that will help you deal with a Zylon secret weapon. Said piece of secret weapon is stashed somewhere in an asteroid. And this asteroid is pretty big. So big that when you're flying over its surface, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were conducting a planetside mission. Not only that, but part of the mission involves going inside the asteroid, at which point switching to Assault mode effectively turns the game into Descent, which is awesome. I'll ignore, for now, the fact that the game crashed on me at this point just as I was about to finish that mission.

I wasn't sure what to think of Star Raiders when I first started playing it. Then I looked at the clock and realised I'd been playing for nearly two hours. So something must be right somewhere. It's clearly not the original game in any shape or form — the "galactic map" interface in the game is a glorified mission select screen rather than the strategic overview of the original — but what it does offer is a good, fun, if simplistic space combat game with some nice ideas and a horrendously poor control scheme on console.

At £6.99, though, you can probably afford to take a chance on it, though, right?

Oh, if you're interested, then…

Old:

New (previously-mentioned Descent bit):

#oneaday, Day 111: Chaos, The Battle of Wizards

It's a sad but true fact that returning to the games of your youth usually ends in disappointment as you realise that gaming has moved on a lot, and those games never got a re-release on Xbox Live Arcade or the like for a very good reason — they're not very good.

But there's a few exceptions. Specifically, anything made by Julian Gollop is still just as fresh as it was back then.

How do I know this? Thanks to the Elite ZX Spectrum Collection app for iPhone. This app features a decent Spectrum emulator and a selection of games, most of which can be bought via in-app purchase in packs of six. One such pack is a Julian Gollop pack, which contains five fantastic strategy games and one utterly awful bouncy-ball atrocity, the less said about which the better. At least — hopefully — after that, Gollop figured out what he was good at and what he wasn't.

The games included in the pack are Chaos, Lords of Chaos, Rebelstar and its sequel and Laser Squad. I can't remember what the bouncy one is called but it involved catching balloons and wasn't fun at all.

The strategy games, on the other hand, are another matter. Chaos is the simplest of the bunch, with Teletext-quality graphics and feeble beep-and-fart type sound effects, but it's an immensely competitive game that supports up to eight players. It works well as a "pass the phone" game, too. And casting a Gooey Blob that gets out of hand never gets old.

The remaining games are all fundamentally very similar, featuring the same basic gameplay mechanics and gradually-improving graphics. In fact, if you've played the X-COM games, you've played these games too. That's no bad thing, though, because X-COM is awesome. Featuring turn-based multiplayer action, they're, in many ways, virtual boardgames that don't demand any throwing of dice or getting out a billion pieces or avoiding bumping the table or spilling curry on them or anything like that. And the Spectrum controls, while a little clunky, manage to work pretty effectively on the iPhone app. It helps that the keys are labelled, rather than my first experience with Chaos on a PC based emulator, where my friend Sam and I spent a good half an hour or so attempting to work out by trial and error what keys did what.

So if you're jonesing for more X-COM and don't object to playing on a touchscreen, then grab the Elite ZX Spectrum Collection and the Julian Gollop pack. I can guarantee that you won't be disappointed, and you'll be surprised that retro gaming can still be fun, deep and rewarding rather than vaguely upsetting.

Day 459

#oneaday, Day 44: The Late Review - Final Fantasy XII

Since I'm currently going through my backlog of games and beating them one at a time, it seems only fitting that I should write a sort of "review" of each one as I come to their (hopefully inevitable) conclusion. So tonight it's the turn of Final Fantasy XII, one of several "black sheep" of the series thanks to its complete defiance of established series conventions and adoption of a quasi-Western RPG style of gameplay. I will try and avoid as many spoilers in this post as possible.

I will preface this by saying, as always, that I am a total Final Fantasy fanboy. I don't care if they're clichéd, I don't care if big tentacley angel monsters as final bosses are overdone, it's what I expect from a JRPG, and it's what I inevitably get from the Final Fantasy series in particular. Overwrought melodrama, gratuitous and unnecessary love stories and the inevitable destruction of the world that only a plucky band of teenagers (and one guy in his twenties who inevitably gets referred to as "old man" throughout) can prevent? Sign me up. I love it.

So it was something of a surprise that Final Fantasy XII eschews most of these things. The melodrama is kept to a minimum, any romantic subplots are handled with the subtlest of nudges and winks rather than faintly embarrassing scenes accompanied by someone singing and the small ensemble cast is likeable, realistic and "human", typically ridiculous Final Fantasy costumes aside. (Penelo must be really sweaty by the end of the game.)

In fact, for once in a Final Fantasy game, the plot almost takes a back seat to the gameplay. There are large tracts of the game where you're given a lot of freedom—something happens, the party comes to the conclusion that what they really need to do next is travel to something that is inevitably on the complete opposite side of the game world to where they are right now and then it's up to the player how to proceed. They could go straight there using the various means of fast travel. They could walk straight there. Or they could wander off and go and do some of the many, many sidequests, most of which are available throughout the game rather than the usual Final Fantasy trick of saving them all until just before the world really needs to be saved right now please. Granted, you still have the somewhat silly opportunity to go and do all these things while the final confrontation patiently waits for you right in the middle of the map, but you just know that people would bitch and moan if you didn't have the opportunity to do this. It's also worth noting that the amount of time between the "point of no return" and the ending of the game is actually pretty short, so it's not as if you have to go off and do all the sidequests then spend 6 hours battling through the final dungeon. This is a refreshing change.

By far the most refreshing thing about the game is the battle system, though. I waxed lyrical about this back on Day 5, but it's worth mentioning again. The combat system, combining the best bits of a quasi-real-time MMO-style combat system and the "active pause" style of a BioWare RPG whilst keeping it optimised for a console, works astoundingly well, especially once you get the hang of using Gambits. By automating common actions such as curing and buffing, you're not making the game unnecessarily easy, you're making your play more efficient. Are you really getting any more from a game where you're manually selecting to cast "Haste" on your attackers every few turns?

I described the Gambit system as being akin to the "huddle" you have when playing an MMO with a well-organised group. The best way to use it appears to be to give everyone clearly defined roles. For me, this means one tanking attacker, one who solely focused on healing HP and status effects and a third who focused on buffing the tanking attacker with Protect, Shell, Regen and Haste. All of them got stuck in hitting things with sticks and hammers when they didn't have anything else to do, but this setup worked extremely well and saw me through most of the game. Any mishaps could be quickly dealt with by popping up the menu and dealing with them manually. And in boss battles where circumstances suddenly shifted, such as them suddenly becoming immune to physical attacks? Well, that was just a case of popping open the main menu and adjusting the attacking Gambits to use Magicks instead.

It's a great-looking game for a PS2 game, too. Sure, there's rough edges when playing on an HDTV, but it's clear to see this is a well-crafted, well-designed world with distinctive-looking characters. The animations in cutscenes are excellent, too, with some high-quality facial animations doing a great deal to help forget the laughing scene in Final Fantasy X. One tiny bugbear with the graphics is that all the FMV sequences are in 4:3 while the game itself happily runs in 16:9 but this is a minor issue, as the vast majority of story sequences are rendered in-engine.

The sound is probably the weakest bit of the game. The voices are heavily, heavily compressed, though the acting itself is generally very good. The music is unmemorable, however, which is quite unusual for a Final Fantasy game. It has character, and sounds like Final Fantasy Tactics (which is understandable, given their common setting) but there's nothing anywhere near as iconic as One Winged Angel on display here, which is a shame. There's also a couple of areas that repeat music from earlier in the game, too, which seems a little lazy, given that the vast majority of areas have unique music. It's hardly a deal-breaker, though.

Final Fantasy XII is often described as the FF for people who don't like FF. And it's absolutely true—the crushing linearity of earlier entries in the series is nowhere to be seen (although the main plot is firmly on rails, you're free to wander off and do your own thing at any time right up until the finale) and there's very little need to "grind" by running around in circles waiting for random battles to happen. In fact, it's possible to "grind" without noticing simply by travelling from one place to another—the numerous long-distance journeys that the plot tasks you with seem to set you up to take advantage of this fact.

At the same time, these elements may put some people off. Some people enjoy the tight focus that a strictly linear plot gives, and indeed in FFXII it's very easy to lose track of what happened in the story when your last cutscene was eight hours ago. The plot picks up pace towards the end, though, and you find yourself wanting to press forward and see things through to their conclusion. How quickly you choose to do so is entirely up to you—so if you're a fan of a tight plot, you could probably romp through fairly quickly. If you're a completionist, though, there's plenty to keep you occupied here. I beat the game after 98 hours with barely half of the sidequests completed. Then there's secret weapons to find, a boss with 35 million HP to take down, secret Summons, optional areas to explore and doubtless many other things besides.

So in summary then, I was very, very impressed with the whole game. As a Final Fantasy fanboy, I enjoyed the fact that it still felt like a Final Fantasy game whilst playing very differently to the more "traditional" entries in the series. And as a fan of good games? Well, this is very much a Good Game.

The only thing that makes me a little sad is how few people will probably be inclined to play it these days. With the lack of backward-compatibility on new PS3s, playing it will either involve tracking down a PS2 or using an emulator. It's wholly worth it, though, as it is without doubt one of the best RPGs I've had the pleasure to play for a long time, and certainly one of the finest entries in the Final Fantasy series. A pity we probably won't see its like from Squeenix again.

#oneaday, Day 35: In Praise of Last Gen

An oft-had discussion in gaming is what constitutes the "golden age" of gaming, or indeed if there has even been one.

For some, it's the age of the arcade, when games were designed for pure fun and nothing else—besides emptying your pocket of quarters/local equivalents, of course. For others, it's the home consoles of the NES era; others still, the 16-bit wonderment of the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive. For yet others… You get where this is going, I'm sure.

For me, the golden age will forever be the PS2 era. I didn't always think this was going to be the case; I remember playing PS2 games for the first time and thinking they were graphically impressive, but somehow lacking the "magic" of my favourite PS1-era games, particularly when it came to JRPGs. It took time, but the PS2 gradually proved itself as a force to be reckoned with, with a gigantic library of excellent titles (and an even bigger library of fucking awful ones) and the kind of backing from the public that Microsoft and Nintendo could only have dreamed of in those days. Funny how things change.

The thing is, being unemployed and skint as I am at the moment, I'm finally getting around to attempting to beat some of the PS2 titles that have sat, under-loved, on my shelf for years now. Final Fantasy XII is my current project: I'm now over 60 hours into it and still loving every minute. It's struck me while playing FFXII that it seems to be a much more infrequent occurrence that a current-gen (360, PS3 or Wii) game will grab me in quite the same way as numerous titles from the PS2 era did… and indeed still are.

I wonder how much of this is down to graphics. Naughty Dog aren't far from the truth with their jokey "next-gen filter" option in Uncharted; an increasing number of games in the current generation are looking increasingly interchangeable, with "gritty", "realistic" graphics often winning out over vibrant colours. There are exceptions, of course, and I discussed a number of these the other day.

I don't think it's just visual character, though; I think the way games are designed and consumed has changed considerably since the PS2 days, too. Look at the number of people who Achievement-whore these days. More often than not, this takes place not through a desire to see everything the game has to offer, but instead to line up their shiny virtual trophies on their virtual shelf and brag to their friends. The social side of gaming is cool, sure, but what happened to gaming just purely for the sake of fun?

There's no reason for these people to want to 100% Final Fantasy XII, for example. There's no public way of recognising your achievement besides actually telling people. But I think that's kind of a good thing, personally—if you want to be a hardcore insane idiot and complete every insanely difficult hunt, clear out every unnecessarily difficult area just for the satisfaction of knowing you have, that's great. But there's no feeling of "obligation" to do so—the person who storms straight through FFXII's main quest without exploring the side content is getting their money's worth just as much as the hardcore insane idiot.

But in games with Achievements these days, many people feel that they haven't got their money's worth unless they 1000G/Platinum Trophy the game. And in many cases, some of those Achievements and Trophies are enormously tedious collectathons (Assassin's Creed), forced replays of lengthy games (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) or encouragement to completely remove any "meaning" and sense of consequence from moral choices in games (any game that has separate Achievements for completing quests/levels in multiple different ways, thereby encouraging saving before "important" bits, then reloading and replaying just to get said Achievements).

Screw that; I'm just as guilty as the next man or woman of Achievement-whoring at times. But spending such a protracted period of time in the company of a last-gen game without all that bollocks to think about is giving me pause for thought. Are things really moving in the right direction?

It makes me a little sad to think that there's a generation of gamers now who have no idea what gaming life pre-Achievements was like—and with Sony's ditching of PS2 support on the PS3 and Microsoft's woeful "backward compatibility" (I use the term loosely) on the Xbox 360, it's becoming more and more unlikely that newer gamers will have the opportunity to explore that side of gaming—and then even if they do, they'll probably be put off by "ugly" SD graphics. Look at how much snobbery people have towards the Wii's graphics now.

Do I have rose-tinted specs when it comes to looking at last-gen gaming? Perhaps. But I'm more than happy to live in the past, if so.

#oneaday, Day 294: Filthy Rogue

The roguelike genre is one I only discovered relatively recently. In fact, I was a relative latecomer to the whole RPG genre, only getting to grips with it for the first time with Final Fantasy VII. As such, for a good few years, I felt that RPGs were all about strong stories, interesting (and sometimes clichéd) characters, a buildup to an epic final conflict and some of the best music you'll ever hear.

As such, when I played an RPG that wasn't so strong on the story and focused more on loot-whoring or level-grinding, I found myself losing interest quickly. It was long after its release that I finally beat Diablo II and, to this date, I've never beaten it on anything other than the normal difficulty level.

That changed when I came across Angband, though. Angband looks like the sort of game you used to play on Teletext. Sure, there are graphical tilesets you can customise it with. But at its heart, it's a text-based game with about a bajillion keyboard commands.

But you know what? The kind of emergent narrative that came out of several intense Angband sessions rivalled any pre-scripted tales that Squeenix have ever come out with. Largely because it was so unpredictable, and that any screw-ups were inevitably your fault for failing to prepare adequately, rather than the fault of the game mechanics itself.

Take the time my oil lamp ran out on the fifth level of the dungeon. This meant, in gameplay terms, that I couldn't "see" new passageways ahead of me—namely, they weren't revealed on the map—unless I banged into a wall, which then helpfully revealed said wall on the map for me. My first reaction in this instant was, of course, to panic. Death in Angband doesn't mean restoring a saved game. Oh no. Death in Angband means your save game getting deleted and you having to start all over again. This adds an enormous amount of pressure on you, the player, to get it right. And it also makes you kick yourself when you realise that you didn't bring enough oil to fuel your lamp.

So off I went, slowly "feeling" my way along the walls of the corridors in an attempt to find the stairs up… for five floors. This sounds like an impossible task. But after a fairly lengthy period of methodical, careful searching (and a few terrifying combats in the pitch darkness) I finally managed to emerge victorious to town level, stock up on oil and provisions and jump back into the dungeon with renewed fervour.

Of course, I promptly got twatted by an Ogre, making all that work utterly meaningless. But it didn't matter—it was a fun experience unlike anything I'd experienced in a game before. And I've struggled to repeat it with any game since then.

Not through lack of trying, though. There are some great roguelikes out there, many of which are a lot more accessible than Angband. I have three favourites I'd like to share with you right now, one of which is, of all things, a board game. The other two are iPhone games.

Sword of Fargoal is actually a remake of an old Commodore 64-era title which didn't look like the picture above. No, it looked like this:

The best thing about Sword of Fargoal is its simplicity coupled with a surprising amount of hidden depth. While Angband is rather intimidating to get started with, with pretty much every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) mapped to something, Fargoal simply requires that you get to grips with moving and using a context-sensitive button in the top-right corner. And keeping an eye on the text display at the top of the screen for hints and cues, too. Combat is a case of running into an enemy—the player and monster will then take turns bashing each other until one or the other falls over or one runs away. Gold is collected to sacrifice at altars throughout the dungeon for experience point bonuses. And the rest is left to the player to discover. The more you play, the more you start to notice little graphical details and cues tipping you off to the location of traps or treasure.

And it's challenging, too. There are 15 levels to explore, all of which are sprawling monstrosities with several areas. And when you make it to the bottom to recover the titular blade, you then have to escape again. I haven't even made it to the bottom yet. It's a lengthy, challenging quest. And despite the fact that death is permanent, it's addictive and easy to return to.

Then we have 100 Rogues, which takes a slightly different approach to that of Sword of Fargoal. While Fargoal's quest is lengthy, 100 Rogues can potentially be beaten in one sitting. Key word here being "potentially". 100 Rogues is particularly brutal, fond of surrounding the player and battering them to a pulp. Fortunately, the player also has a Diablo-style skill tree at their disposal, including a number of attacks that can beat back several enemies at the same time.

It's very difficult, though, and the descriptions of the game on the App Store don't even try and hide the fact that you will die. A lot. In fact, there's even a Game Center Achievement for having sent the titular 100 rogues to their eventual demise.

I only picked this up recently, but it's immensely appealing due to its 16-bit graphics and soundtrack. It looks and plays like a Genesis/Mega Drive game, in a good way. It's a bit buggy in places but the author appears to be committed to regular updates.

Finally, one of my favourite roguelikes of all time is Warhammer Quest, a game that involves you having people you actually don't mind being in the same room with. Featuring all the genre staples—a randomly generated dungeon, permadeath, brutal difficulty, vast amounts of phat lewt—it's very much the board game equivalent of Rogue et al. Even better, everyone gets to join in on the fun—there's no need for a Game Master player (unless you really want to use one) as the rules cater fully for monster "behaviour".

Couple that with the game's immense customisability (it's a word) thanks to its use of Games Workshop Citadel Miniatures line of figures and you have a game with limitless potential. And hundreds—hundreds—of tiny pieces of card and plastic.

So there you go. A whistlestop tour of the roguelike genre. And I didn't even mention Moria or NetHack once.

#oneaday, Day 219: I Like 'Em Chunky

I've been playing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game recently. Besides being an excellently fun game that hearkens back to the golden days of the brawler, it also has some of the most adorable graphics you'll ever see. By deliberately rendering things in low-res pixel art, it somehow manages to have approximately three thousand times more charm than the shiny brownness that is Gears of War. Granted, Gears isn't a cartoony game, so it's probably not an apt comparison. But even 3D-rendered "cartoony" or light-hearted games pale in comparison to some good old-fashioned pixel art.

It's been a curious transition for art styles over the last few years. As 3D technology got better and better, the pressure was on developers to produce something that looked more and more real. The expression "if graphics don't get any better than this, I'll be happy" was trotted out with every new console generation. People spent hours looking down at the floor in Halo marvelling at how realistic the grass texture was. (Just me? All right then.) Putting things in higher and higher resolution was seen as the gold standard; something for everyone to strive for. Getting something running at 60 frames per second in 1080p? The Holy Grail.

Somewhere along the way during this process, pixel art spent some time being undesirable. I remember emulating Final Fantasy VI on my PC back when I first discovered emulation, and finding the huge pixels made incredibly clear on the PC monitor to be very offputting. I felt like I couldn't see the detail. This wasn't taking into account the fact that by the very nature of pixel art, some detail has to be omitted.

Today, though, I find myself playing PS1 sprite-art based games on my PS3 with all the filters turned off so that I can see those sharp edges. And Scott Pilgrim handles this in the same way. All the artwork is rendered in a deliciously unfiltered manner, which means you can see the "stepping" on diagonal lines, the black outlines around the character sprites and the necessary omission of detail. No-one has a nose, for example.

But you know what? It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. And I'd take a hundred games drawn in this way over another Unreal Engine 3 game. Perhaps it's just oversaturation or "next-gen fatigue" and I'd eventually get sick of pixel art again. But certainly right now, I find it to be an incredibly attractive art style that I'm really glad to see a resurgence of. And my favourite use of HD graphics is, ironically, to render low-resolution pixel art in all its sharp-edged glory.

So you can keep your next-gen sweaty-faced protagonists. (Except Nathan Drake and Elena. They may live.) Give me a good old-fashioned big-eyed protagonist with giant fists and no nose any day of the week. KPOW!

#oneaday, Day 209: Coming Soon

Tomorrow night, The Squadron of Shame are back in action after something of a hiatus.

For those of you unfamiliar with our unique brand of discussion and podcastery, let me explain what it's all about, and when the new podcast hits, you'll be able to come and join the fun.

The Squadron of Shame started as a result of a feature on 1up Yours dubbed "The Pile of Shame". The term has since spread around the Internet somewhat, and it refers to all of the things that you've bought and never got around to reading, listening to or playing. In the case of the original 1up feature, it referred to that pile of games you have on your shelf that are begging to be played, but somehow inevitably get left behind whenever the latest triple-A hotness makes an appearance. The first game they took on was the excellent Psychonauts.

As it happened, the feature was somewhat short-lived on the 1up podcast. But a number of community members ran with the concept on the companion forums for the 1up "radio" output. We formed a club page on 1up which is still there, though largely inactive these days. We'd pick a game which was supposed to be good (or at least interesting), play it through as a group and discuss it all together. Some fascinating discussions resulted, and it also allowed many people to expose themselves to a variety of games which they might not have done otherwise. Games like Star Control II, Freespace 2, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and Psi-Ops.

As time moved on, the group wanted more. The merging of all the 1up boards into one mangled mess meant that the reasoned debate of the old threads was much more difficult. Topics would get derailed and it was clear that a new approach was needed.

Thus began the SquadCast, the Squadron of Shame's official podcast. Starting with independent rabbinical adventure game The Shivah, select members of the group banded together to do what they did best: play through a game together, then put their heads together and have a discussion about it. Ably hosted by the fine Mr Chris Whittington and edited/produced in a sort-of OKish manner by my good self, the show is now 29 episodes strong and has covered subjects as diverse as the Commodore 64, Russian FPS-adventure depress 'em up Pathologic and charming indie puzzler Machinarium.

Following circumstances beyond their control (mostly beyond my control, I admit) there's been something of a gap since our last episode. So we've thought that now is the time to take a break, consider how to make the show better and come back stronger than ever with some brand new output in a whole new format.

So, tomorrow we're recording. And next week we'll be proudly presenting The Squadron of Shame SquadCast, Season Two. Taking some of the advice we got from Jeff Green, Shawn Elliott, Ken Levine and some others who I've forgotten speaking on the Podcasting for PR panel at PAX East, we've made some changes.

The show's going to be bi-weekly. This means that rather than have variable gaps as everyone clamours to complete a "mission" before we talk about it, some regularity will allow us to build up a more, well, regular listenership.

Next up, it's going to have a static cast of host Chris Whittington, Mark Whiting, Jeff Parsons and myself with occasional guest spots available where appropriate. Jeff is in the process of composing us a brand new theme tune, too, so it's going to be a complete sonic reboot.

Most importantly, though, each episode is no longer going to be focused on a specific game. Instead, the focus will be on particular "topics", with occasional traditional "mission" podcasts interspersed as appropriate. This means that people will hopefully be more inclined to tune in regularly and hear what we have to say, rather than skipping episodes about games they have no interest in. As part of this, the official Squawkbox of the Squad will be playing a more prominent role, with community questions and discussions a regular occurrence. If you already have a WordPress account, you can head right over and start chatting with us. If not, it's simple to sign up. Everyone who's interested in discussing video games and who isn't afraid of the odd (all right, frequent) wall of text is very welcome to pay us a visit.

Besides the changes, it'll be our same wordy, intellectual, chin-stroking discussion about video games, representing one of the most unique podcasts on the Internet. We'd love it if you could join us for our relaunch. Visit the Squawkbox, follow us on Twitter, become a Fan… sorry, Like us on Facebook and find our past episodes and those of our sister podcast The Exploding Barrel Podcast here.

2010 is going to be a great year for the Squad. We hope you'll come along for the ride.

#oneaday, Day 205: Protect Me, Knight!!

As I've said before, the Xbox Indie Games Marketplace is a veritable treasure trove of golden doubloons mixed in with stinky, festering turds of considerable awfulness. Tonight I'd like to share with you another one of these golden nuggets of goodness.

It's called Protect Me, Knight but in the Marketplace it's listed under its Japanese name which I don't know how to type owing to its excessive use of kanji. Kanji? Whatever they are. Yes, it's a Japanese game—those of you who have explored the Indie Marketplace will be aware that the Japanese titles on there often have some of the best production values and gameplay. Even if said production values and gameplay are perpetually stuck about fifteen years in the past.

Take Protect Me, Knight, for example. This is a game so committed to its retro presentation that upon loading it, the graphics sometimes corrupt and you have to blow on the cartridge by pressing A. This is a joke which is funny the first time but which can mercifully be skipped after this point.

Once you're into the game proper, you're shown a screen with a princess in a castle imploring the player to "HELP ME MY HERO" and "KILL !@#?ING GOBLINS". Leaving the game in its attract mode summons up some of the finest Engrish you will ever see. I won't spoil it for you here. But it's absolutely legendary. In fact, it's such a wonderful example of Engrish that it's almost impossible to believe that it wasn't done deliberately.

Anyway, the game is a 4-player co-operative game where players can pick one of four characters—Fighter, Ninja, Amazon or Mage—to play as in order to protect the princess from the hordes of "!@#?ING GOBLINS" who want to re-kidnap her. This is achieved on a NES-style static screen. Players run around frantically beating the crap out of all and sundry by hammering the A button or pressing B to use each character's unique skill. Players can also build barricades around the princess and even push her out of harm's way. Scoring hot combos causes the princess to throw "LOVE POINT" at you, which doubles as currency and experience points. Between levels, "LOVE POINT" can be spent on powering up characters, or during levels they can be spent to build or upgrade barricades.

It becomes very hectic very quickly. And with multiple players, it's a hell of a lot of fun. It's an incredibly simple game—and pretty short, too—but it is unashamedly fun. And the Engrish continues throughout the game. The skill descriptions for each new level are hilarious. For example, the fighter's top skill (a spinning melee attack) is described as "MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!" (with previous levels being "TORNADE!", "MORE TORNADE!", "MORE MORE MORE TORNADE!" and… you get the idea.)

It's a stupid yet fun game in an unashamedly retro style, yet it's unmistakably a next-gen take on a retro title. There's no way a NES would be able to handle the hundreds of sprites on screen that this game throws at you without breaking a sweat.

It would make a great XBLA title with online play and leaderboards. Sadly, its immense Japaneseness is sure to see it eternally relegated to the backwater of the Xbox Marketplace that is XBIG. Still, I've done my little bit to raise exposure to it now. So gather three friends together, fire up this game for a very reasonable 240 points and Have A Fun!!

#oneaday, Day 82: The Pile of Shame

Hello everyone! Late again. I'm just going to stop writing that at the start of my posts, as it appears that 2am is prime blogging time in my stupid world. Oh well. I could have worse vices at 2am. Or indeed at any time.

Few fun things to report. Well, one really, and one I can't talk about yet until I know a bit more. First up, I'm going to be writing for an upcoming retro-gaming site called B4HD, which specialises in games from the pre-HD era. (B4 HD. Geddit?) It was brought to my attention by the lovely and talented Jennifer Allen, who is also partaking in this One A Day nonsense (one of the few people who are still left) and also happens to be the deputy editor of the site. So thanks, Jen, for pointing it out. It's right up my alley. Now I just need to write something ready for its launch.

I also have several potential freelancing irons in the fire, so we'll have to wait and see if those come to anything. I'm being more proactive about it now, though, and badgering people I haven't heard from for a while. It's not really in my nature to act like that, but I'm learning. Assertiveness and all that. Plus journalism can be pretty cut-throat, so I better toughen up, right?

For the remainder of this post, I think I may just be lazy and list my current Pile of Shame – in this case, games I haven't finished – since it was Jen's post I linked to that inspired this one. So here goes. Starred games indicate games that I have at least started and played a reasonably significant amount of in the past. Non-starred ones have either not been played at all or very little. Some of these I will probably never get around to ever. But they're still there, mocking me.

PS1

Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI

PS2

Final Fantasy XII*

ICO

Metal Gear Solid 3

Resident Evil 4

killer7

Persona 3 FES*

Odin Sphere

Project Zero/Fatal Frame*

Psi-Ops

Shadow of the Colossus*

GameCube

Resident Evil Zero*
Resident Evil Remake

Xbox 360/XBLA

Borderlands*
Numerous titles in the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (particularly the Phantasy Star series, Story of Thor, Shining Force II and Shining in the Darkness)
Alien Hominid*
Braid*
Castle Crashers*
Forza 3*
Lode Runner*
Perfect Dark*
Puzzle Quest*
Shadow Complex*
Splosion Man*

PS3/PSN

Matt Hazard: Blood, Bath and Beyond
Final Fantasy XIII*
Disgaea 3
Shatter's last two Trophies
Uncharted 2 multiplayer
Building a level in LittleBigPlanet

PC – god-damn Steam sale in early January saw to this one.

King's Bounty
King's Bounty: Armored Princess
Mount & Blade
Uplink*
Jade Empire
KOTOR as Dark Side
Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark
Neverwinter Nights 2
Baldur's Gate 2*
Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
Morrowind* (played EXTENSIVELY, never got anywhere NEAR finishing)
Homeworld 2
Dungeon Siege 2
The entire Myst series
Gabriel Knight 3*
The Police Quest series
King's Quest IV
The Witcher*
Freelancer*
Startopia*
Ghost Master
Martian Memorandum/Mean Streets
Realms of Arkania
Relams of Arkania 2
No-One Lives Forever 2
Unreal Tournament 3

Yeah, that's right. Kicking it old-school with some of those PC games. It's actually quite fortunate I have little-to-no money coming in right now as I clearly have a backlog to last me until the end of time. Couple that with the fact that I'm in a World of Warcraft phase right now (halfway to level 75 with my best character now) and there's clearly plenty to be getting on with. So a big middle finger to all the triple-A games that have come out since Assassin's Creed 2.

Of course, when Blur and Split/Second come out soon, this will all go to pot. Still, never mind.