I'm not entirely sure where this sense came from. Perhaps from years of playing old computer games that didn't include an automap facility. Perhaps from time in the Cub Scouts, at least part of which involved knowing how to read a map. Perhaps from how I used to enjoy just looking at maps. I remember having a kids' world atlas that I absolutely loved just… looking at.

Or perhaps it's something I developed a bit later. I know that I certainly became particularly aware of it once I had left home for university, because it came in very handy every time I got absolutely smashed and had to somehow find my way home in the dark. Despite numerous very drunken evenings, there was not one single occasion where I didn't make it home — even when the night had, for one reason or another, concluded at the house of someone I didn't know very well in an unfamiliar part of town.

Did I develop this skill back then? Perhaps. But it's something that's stuck around with me. I also feel very conscious of it any time I drive to a new city, because I tend to find that I can get a good feel for how all the roads connect to one another quite quickly, even when it's a place I've never been before. This came in quite handy any time I had a job interview in an unfamiliar place, because it meant that even if I initially had trouble finding the place I was supposed to go to — I always left with plenty of time to spare just in case this happened — I would come away from the day with a better understanding of this new place. This is information that may or may not have ended up being useful in the future, depending on whether or not I ended up getting the job.

I do find it especially helpful in virtual worlds, particularly when you have an experience like Big Walk which deliberately eschews the trappings of modern game user interfaces in favour of a more minimalist experience that is dependent on cooperation and communication. On multiple occasions in our session this evening, I was able to lead us right back to something we had previously visited without having to look at a map, and this, I feel, is a helpful quality in a group that is effectively orienteering in the wilderness in the hope of finding exciting and intriguing puzzles to complete. (Okay, I did take a wrong turn once, but nobody's completely perfect.)

One of the things I've determined via various means that I could really do with getting better at is acknowledging the things I am actually good at; the things about me that other people might actually value; the things that I can be proud of and feel okay about feeling proud of. After this evening's session, I feel quite confident in saying that yes, I am quite proud of my sense of direction; I feel it is a useful skill that can help both myself and others, and I am glad to be enjoying an experience where it actually comes in handy, and where people value it.

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

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The post #oneaday Day 806: Absolute Direction (5 points) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I don't really know how to process this, so I'm just going to start typing and see what happens.

Many moons ago, you may recall me talking about a little group called the Squadron of Shame that originated on the 1up.com forums. We were a group of people who eschewed the big hits of the day in favour of the overlooked and underappreciated; our collective name was inspired by the term "Pile of Shame", which we first heard discussed on the 1up Yours podcast.

For the unfamiliar, the Pile of Shame is the pile of "stuff" you have that you keep meaning to get around to, but never do. You can have a Pile of Shame of pretty much any form of media, and pretty much everyone has one these days; some refer to it as their "backlog". The concept behind the discussion on the podcast was that the participants would take a game that they felt had passed them by — in this case, Psychonauts by Double Fine — then play it through independently and come back later to discuss it.

That never actually happened on the 1up Yours podcast because everyone involved was much too busy to be able to devote any time to such a project. But a group of us on the "Radio" forums on 1up.com thought it was a great idea, so we ran with it instead, playing through Psychonauts together and discussing it on the forums. We quickly gained a reputation for lengthy, in-depth discussion, but the Radio boards were a good place for that sort of thing, since they were generally relatively quiet, and free of the general console fanboy wars that were going on in the more generic forums.

I'm honestly not entirely sure if Jeff was with us right from the beginning, because to be perfectly honest he's felt like a fixture for as long as I can remember. In that respect, I think it simply doesn't matter whether he was there from the start or not; fact is, he was a part of our little group. A precious friend. A valued contributor to our discussions. Part of something bigger than each of our own, individual selves.

After 1up.com went through its slow, agonising death, much of the Squad drifted apart for one reason or another. Many of us moved to Twitter (from the period before it was The Worst Place On The Internet — yes, believe it or not, there once was a time like that) and there were several attempts to build our own little communal spaces online through shared blogs and forums. We got together and did our own podcast. Some of us even managed to meet face-to-face — and yes, that includes me, despite the vast majority of the Squad being in the U.S. and Canada. On one occasion I was happy to meet Jeff, who was pretty much how I had imagined him. That's a good thing.

The 2010s were, generally speaking, a fairly dark period for me for all manner of reasons that are beyond the scope of what I want to talk about today, but the net result was that I lost touch with a lot of people for a good few years, including former Squadmates. But when I emerged from the other side of things and found that there was a small but dedicated little unit of the Squad still hanging out online, chatting and sharing war stories, it was enormously comforting — and a big part of that comfort came from the fact that I saw Jeff was still there. He had always been there, even if I hadn't.

Jeff was the sort of person I always enjoyed seeing in the chat — and, of course, on that one occasion we were actually in the same place. He always had a kind word, something to contribute or something to share that he thought we'd be interested in. He was someone that it was simply nice to have around; as I say, he had always felt like a fixture, in a good way.

It's shocking, upsetting and scary to think that he could be gone so suddenly. The world has lost a wonderful person while so many other complete shitbags continue to exist.

It's not fair. It's not fair on Jeff, it's not fair on the people he leaves behind. But I hope, wherever he is now, that he knows how much people cared for him, and how much people are going to miss him now that he's gone. And that whatever is next is a better, more peaceful existence than the world we live in right now.

Farewell, Jeff. Forever a Squaddie.

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

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The post #oneaday Day 602: A farewell to Cpt.Carnage appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Likely to be a long one today, and I'm not entirely sure exactly what I want to say, nor exactly how to say it, but I ask you to indulge me, whether you're a regular reader, someone who stumbled across this page, or someone I specifically pointed in the direction of this post.

I'm just going to start typing and see where things go from there.

This is something I've been meaning to write for some time, but have never really known exactly how to write it. It's probably going to be difficult to write, it's probably going to be difficult contemplating the possible reactions to it, and I honestly don't know if it's a good idea to even write it at all in the first place. But having had… Feelings festering inside me for probably the best part of a decade and some change at this point, I think it's time I got at least some of them down on paper.

I was inspired to write this by Chris "Papapishu" Person's excellent post over on Aftermath, I'm Only Here Because I Was A Forum Poster, in which he contemplates how, in the mid 2000s, he found a community of like-minded folks on the forums for 1up.com, and that, via a somewhat roundabout route, resulted in him being a professional games journalist, initially for Kotaku and subsequently for Aftermath.

Pishu isn't the only person for whom this is true. I can probably attribute my current position indirectly to those days back on the 1up.com forums, and Jeff Grubb and Mike "Tolkoto" Minotti of Giant Bomb, both specifically namechecked in Pishu's piece, almost certainly have their own similar stories. Those heady pre-social media days on 1up.com were, it's fair to say, a real high point for online socialisation for me and for many others, and I feel like things have only gotten worse since the collapse of that site and its consequences: the community scattering to the four winds, never really settling down and calling one place "home" ever again.

I first came to 1up.com because of the family connection. My brother, John Davison, helped to launch the site, and was also working on Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine at the time. 1up.com was a bold new experiment in online video game-related media: its social features were, at the time, pretty revolutionary, allowing any of its users to start a blog, create a club with its own private message board, and post on the forums. The site still had professional staff, of course, and for many folks the various 1up.com podcasts by that staff were a real highlight of the site. But for me, the thing that made me happier more than anything was the sense of community it had at its peak.

As someone who is what I now understand to be autistic, finding a community of like-minded nerds online was an absolute lifeline. Finally, I had a place where I could well and truly be myself, among "my people". And it didn't take long for me to find a niche within a niche: nerds who enjoyed video games, and who enjoyed talking about them at great length, in great detail, and with a mind to proper in-depth critical analysis rather than just flame wars or quickly writing things off because they didn't score over 80% in a review.

If you look back over the past entries of this blog, you'll see frequent references to "The Squadron of Shame". This was a loose conglomerate of 1up.com members who came together after a discussion on the 1up Yours podcast about "The Pile of Shame": what today tends to be referred to as "the backlog". The pile of games that you've bought, but haven't gotten around to. The games you always meant to play, but haven't. The games that don't get the time of day in reviews, but which you always thought looked interesting.

Fun fact: the first video I ever posted on YouTube was a hacked-together "trailer" for the games we'd covered up until that point.

1up Yours was initially intending to pick a game from the hosts' respective Piles of Shame, play it as a group, then discuss it the following episode, book club style. They didn't really manage to do that — and this isn't a criticism or admonishment of them, as they were all busy people — but a group of us on the forums thought that it was a really good idea… so we did it instead, beginning with the game the 1up Yours crew intended to cover: Psychonauts.

Squad "Missions", as they were known, took the form of a forum thread, in which the person proposing the "mission" would outline the reasons they thought the game in question was noteworthy and why they thought it could do with some in-depth discussion. These initial posts were often long and in-depth in their own right, and they set a good tone for the subsequent discussion: Squad threads became notorious as being wordy, but no-one gave us grief for it, and we often got a shout-out on 1up Yours for successfully picking up and running with the otherwise aborted concept.

One day, something terrible happened on those forums, and I'm not entirely sure why. Where there once had been a selection of subforums specific to particular types of discussion — including individual platforms, plus a special forum for the "1up Radio" podcasts, which is where the Squad threads resided — there were now just two forums: "Games" and "Not Games". Presumably this was done in an attempt to make moderation easier, but it was the beginning of the end for 1up.com's community.

The first Squad thread we posted under this new layout (in "Games") was immediately trolled by someone, clearly unfamiliar with how we had done things on the 1up Radio boards, complaining about a "massive fucking wall of text", and things derailed quickly from there. It was abundantly clear, both from this forum upheaval and various other behind-the-scenes happenings at 1up.com, that the writing was on the wall for this community, and so we started looking into alternative approaches. (1up.com actually hobbled along until 2013, but most of the community and staff left long before that.)

Many of us settled on the fledgling Twitter as a means of interacting with one another, but one of the most important things we did was organise a podcast. This would take the place of our megathreads on the 1up.com boards, and allow a rotating group of us — with several regulars — to discuss the games in-depth, in person, for as long as we wanted. Although severely lacking in confidence to speak up when surrounded by people I always felt were probably a lot more clever and articulate than I was, I quickly developed a reputation among the group as The Guy Who Was Good At Editing The Podcast, so my seat in pretty much every episode was all but assured, and I made a (now-defunct, and apparently non-archived) website that left a written record of all the podcast episodes and the things we discussed. (The episodes themselves, thankfully, survived — you can find them all on my Soundcloud.)

For a while, things went well, and friendships solidified. I even made the trip across the pond to visit various other members of the Squad (who were mostly North America-based) on multiple occasions, and we played host to some Squaddies on at least one occasion that I recall.

We changed the format in which we discussed things several times over the podcast's complete run, shifting from the "book club" format to focusing on a particular topic and bringing our own examples to the table. Things were good, for a while. Then we stumbled across Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel about a boy with a heart condition and how he came to love a group of girls with disabilities that he came into contact with when they all attended the same special school.

Katawa Shoujo was — is — a thoroughly interesting cultural artifact, if you're unfamiliar. It stems from the work of an independent Japanese artist named RAITA (if I remember correctly), who sketched some girls who had various forms of physical disabilities. Various members of the notorious imageboard 4chan found these images somewhat striking, and so, seven years after the original images' publication, they took the unusual step of forming a development collective of individuals from all across the world in order to bring these characters to life. The result was an absolutely fascinating visual novel that handled the subject matter infinitely more sensitively than anyone would have ever expected, given the origins of the development team being a website commonly referred to by many (not without cause) as a "cesspit".

In keeping with the visual novels that tended to come west at the time of its release, Katawa Shoujo was a sexually explicit game, featuring erotic scenes between the protagonist and each of the various heroines. Unsurprisingly, this made some people uncomfortable, particularly given the high school setting of the game and the way it (like many other localised Japanese works) left the cast members' ages somewhat ambiguous. And, although we had a great podcast discussion about the game itself — during which several of us opened up emotionally more than we'd ever done in public before — some damage had been done to our group. I don't blame the folks who splintered off or their reasons for it, but I am still sad that it happened, because it marked the beginning of the end.

We managed a few more episodes post-Katawa Shoujo, but eventually things petered out. We'd had plans for a Squadron of Shame website with its own forum to host discussions just like in the Good Old Days, but it took a long time for those to come to fruition, and it never quite built up the same momentum as in the 1up.com era. Eventually, it fizzled out completely, and after many years of reflection I probably can't say with any confidence that I was completely blameless in this.

Around the time of our Katawa Shoujo discussions, I'd started getting to know one of our members known as "Shingro" a bit better, and he was particularly interested in anime, manga and Japanese games. He, along with a couple of other people I knew in other places online (including Google+, remember that?) had given me some recommendations for some localised Japanese games to try — games that never got much attention from the press, weren't received particularly positively when they did, but which were likely to appeal to anyone who "got" what Katawa Shoujo was going for. Among those games were the early entries in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, the Atelier Arland series and the Ar Tonelico series.

I played and absolutely adored all of those games, and, along with Katawa Shoujo, found that I was experiencing something unusual and interesting: I was enjoying games that felt like they had been tailor-made to suit me and the way what I would later come to recognise as my neurodivergent brain worked. I recognised that they likely wouldn't appeal to everyone for a wide variety of reasons — and not just the sexually provocative element. They were unabashedly cheerful, they were colourful, they were often gleefully experimental (and not always successfully so) with their game mechanics, and their voice acting had a lot of screeching and shouting, particularly if you played in Japanese.

But I liked them for that; they knew their audience, and they unashamedly catered to that audience and no-one else with a laser-like focus. I started to discover hidden depths in these games; even the most silly-seeming ecchi titles, like Senran Kagura Burst, had something interesting to say, and they often had a lot less shame about it than many mainstream titles, many of which were still in their "dark and edgy equals mature" phase. In stark contrast to my growing disillusionment with triple-A games — Gears of War was my absolute last straw in this regard, as I hated that game and pretty much swore off "big games" after that — I felt like I was discovering gaming afresh for the first time.

And, naturally, I wanted to share the way these games made me feel. So I did. And for a while, things were okay, until I saw a few messages that made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Messages that, while it almost certainly wasn't the intent, given the sources, made me feel like I was being judged for the type of entertainment I was enjoying — entertainment that, let's not forget, I had recently come to feel was "speaking" to me like pretty much never before in my gaming career. Words like "creepy" and "perverted" were bandied about a bit too readily, and I… did not like that.

For a bit of context, I was struggling in my personal life around this time. (So what else is new?) Shortly after I took one of the aforementioned trips across the pond to meet some Squad members at PAX East in Boston, I split up with my first wife. And I… did not handle it very well. I felt betrayed, broken, utterly destroyed, and the things that I could cling onto for some degree of comfort in those trying times were of increasing importance to me. By the time Katawa Shoujo and the aforementioned other games came along, I was several years deep into A Difficult Time and, although I had met Andie, the wonderful person who is now my wife, I was still struggling and in great need of comfort.

I started to get frustrated when I saw the things I enjoyed come under what I perceived to be "attack". In the early to mid 2010s, this really started to come to a head, as the modern progressive movement started to really raise its head online — and was being more than a little abrasive about it, with public shaming often being the weapon of choice. In retrospect, I recognise how effective this can be — and how flaccid groups like the USA's Democratic party appear when they're not willing to step up and confidently declare their opponents to be Bad People — but at the time, I did not like it, particularly as I saw people I knew and cared about caught in the crossfire on multiple occasions.

At this point I should clarify that I have always had beliefs that are broadly in line with what one would call "progressiveness". I believe that straight white men have indeed been in a position of power and privilege for many years, and that marginalised groups, including women, have had an uphill struggle to stand on the same level — and that it is the responsibility of those who are in positions of power and privilege to help others up, so we can all benefit. I believe trans rights are human rights, I believe everyone has the right to love whoever they want to love, regardless of gender, and I believe racism is something we should have left behind long ago, and that it doesn't go challenged nearly often enough these days.

At the same time, part of my frustration stemmed from those mid-2010s feeling like I was being demonised for my gender and my sexuality in particular. I am sure at least part of this was down to my vulnerability at the time, but when I saw articles literally branding people who liked certain games as "creepy", "paedophiles" and "sex pests", I didn't like it. At all. Striving for equality, I felt, shouldn't mean dragging people down — particularly when there's a lot more nuance to the situation than just "white straight man = privileged". As someone having difficulty with my own personal situation — and what I later learned was neurodivergence — I certainly didn't feel like I was in the same position as the hypothetical straight white bogeyman, sitting in his suit with his perfect white teeth, counting his money and posting slurs on the Internet.

So I lashed out. There are numerous posts on both this blog and on MoeGamer where I did just that: I attempted to express how I was feeling about this. I attempted to express how these things that were important to me made me feel — and how it made me feel when I was called all manner of horrible names simply for what I liked, including by former colleagues. When I left USgamer, I was subject to some absolutely horrible abuse from an individual who joined the organisation as I was on the way out, and I received absolutely no support from anyone when that happened.

All this, as you might expect, eventually attracted the attention of the Gamergate crowd, who also counted among their number people who liked sexually provocative (or explicit) games, just like I did, and seemed to be forming a community of like-minded folks. I recognised even in the early days that Gamergate — and particularly its subreddit, KotakuInAction — was a scarlet letter, so I always took care not to publicly associate myself with the movement or even express support for it, particularly as things escalated and it became clear that no, for some of those people, it really wasn't about ethics in games journalism.

I maintain to this day, however, that among the early Gamergate crowd were some genuinely good people who wanted change for the better — and in a few cases actually achieved meaningful change that didn't involve any sort of bigotry — but with the inherently disorganised nature of the whole thing, it was, in retrospect, very easy for it to become an alt-right pipeline, and for bad actors to take control of things. And, as silly as it may sound for a dispute supposedly over video games to have such power, I firmly believe that at least part of the reason the world (particularly the online world) is in such a mess today is down to Gamergate.

Although I continued not to associate myself with Gamergate or its supposed beliefs, I found supporters from among its members for what little overlap we had. And I won't lie, it was nice to feel like there was someone who supported the way I felt, regardless of where they'd chosen to plant their flag. I found people who seemed to understand me, many of whom were on the periphery of the whole "culture war" by choice, much like I was, but who often got dragged into things whether they wanted to or not.

I continued to feel frustrated and vulnerable, though, like I was being pushed aside by people I had once called friends and a community I had once felt part of, all for the things I enjoyed. I continued to lash out, including towards people who had once been good to me, close friends, all because I felt like they had "sided" with people who didn't value my opinion, who wanted to brand me some of the worst names you can call people. And all because I liked anime-style games that occasionally crossed a line into sexual provocativeness or explicit scenes.

I said some things that I regret on multiple occasions, and I am deeply sorry about that. I recognise today that, in retrospect, I was standing at the very mouth of the alt-right pipeline and, if I had made some very different choices, I would be in a far worse situation than I am in today. Thankfully, I eventually recognised the danger I was in, and successfully changed my ways in such a way that I could continue to enjoy the things I loved without putting myself at risk of becoming one of those "everything I don't like is WOKE" idiots who infest online discourse today. And one of many positive results from that was a very enjoyable period in charge of Rice Digital, which subsequently led to my current position with Evercade — a job that, were it not for the necessity to check in on social media every day when I have otherwise mostly abandoned it for my personal life, would be 100% a dream assignment.

That doesn't change the regrets I have, though, and I wish I had come to the above realisation sooner than I did. There was still a period where I was in a bad place, and doing bad things, whether or not I really intended to. I deeply regret lashing out and pushing people away, and I wish I could make up for what I did, regardless of my reasons for it.

The reasons don't even matter any more; all that remains is the result, that being that I am growing older, I am mostly alone (except, thankfully, for the blessings that are my wife, cats and family) and in complete and utter despair at the mess I've made of my interpersonal relationships over the course of the last decade and a half.

I have many regrets. I am sorry to those I hurt. And I want to make things right. I just don't know how.

So this post is, hopefully, a start.

If you're reading this and you used to know me before… all this, I would like to know you again. I'm sure both our lives are very different to how they once were, hopefully for the better. On the whole, my life is much better than it was 10-15 years ago.

But I wish I hadn't lost those 10-15 years, and all the people I lost with them.

I am sorry to those of you I pushed away, either consciously or unconsciously. I am sorry to those of you I hurt. It doesn't matter if it was deliberate or not; if I hurt you, I hurt you, and I am sorry.

I just want things to go back to how they were during that one brief time in my life when I can say I was happy, when I felt I was accepted, when I felt I was among "my people". I know it can never be exactly the same as it once was. But I'm willing to put in the work needed to rebuild, reconnect and rekindle lost friendships.

Whatever it takes.

Thanks for reading.

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

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 251: I'm Also Here Because I Was a Forum Poster (or: Reflections on Losing a Community, Mistakes Made and a Desire to Reconnect) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I played it for a good 6 hours or so in total, so I think it's safe to say I'm having a good time. I thought I'd reached the end, but then a whole new bit started, and with it being half past 1 in the morning I thought I'd probably better stop.

I don't want to spoil too much about the game because it's very much a "story game" that is light on what we'd call traditional "gameplay" beyond moving around various beautifully presented environments, but I thought I'd pen a few words at least.

In 1000xRESIST, you play the role of Watcher, a clone of the mysterious "ALLMOTHER", the sole survivor of a global crisis that wiped out the rest of humanity. An entire society of the ALLMOTHER's clones has apparently sprouted up and is functioning about as well as can be expected in a futuristic post-apocalyptic dystopia where breathing the unfiltered air causes all your bodily fluids to leak out through your eyes.

What's particularly interesting about this game is that you get to see the "past" of the ALLMOTHER via various means, and because your character is from a time period that is completely unfamiliar with concepts like "high school" and "boys", there's a marvellously "uncanny" feel to everything you do and see.

It's not overdone, but it is almost intoxicatingly disorienting to begin with. As time goes on, you get used to it, though; you learn the curious little phrases that have come about as a result of generations' worth of worshipping the ALLMOTHER, and you start to understand why this peculiar society functions the way it does.

There's definitely a lot to unpack in the narrative as a whole, as there's a swathe of different themes tackled at various times. It's intelligently written, never patronising, and dear Lord is it (apparently) compelling, given the amount of time I've spent on it today.

Thankfully, I have a couple of days off work tomorrow and Tuesday, so I should hopefully be able to polish it off in that time. I'm keen to talk more about it, as I suspect pondering it on "paper" will help me process the many varied themes it brings to the table.

For now, though, sleep beckons.

The post #oneaday Day 163: A thousand resistances appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I was pretty intrigued, then, when Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur proudly announced the team's fifth project: a peculiar affair called This Starry Midnight We Make. Unlike Carpe Fulgur's previous output, it's not a role-playing game. It is… well, it's kind of baffling, to be honest. I guess technically it's a puzzle game of sorts, but I actually want to describe it more as a game about experimentation.

I sat down and played the demo version — available now on Steam, with the full version coming later this month — and recorded my experiences, bewilderment and all. Here's what happened when I had a go:

As you can see if you watched the video, the game blends visual novel-style storytelling with its main mechanic: creating "stars" in a magical basin that appears to influence what happens in Kyoto according to the astrological phenomena you create.

The basic format of the game involves plopping stones into this basin and watching them do stuff, then figuring out how to make them do other stuff. The basin is split into five elemental areas, represented by faint swirling coloured gases, and the combination of the elemental area you drop a stone into and the type of stone you drop determines what happens next.

As you progress through the game, you're tasked with a series of quests that ask you to create specific phenomena. What's interesting is that after an initial, rather brief and unenlightening tutorial, you're pretty much left to figure everything out for yourself. How, exactly, do you create a nebula? The game sure isn't going to tell you right off the bat, though it will record the phenomenon in your notebook once you've created it once, allowing you to refer back to it and check how you did it if you're not sure.

Beginning with the simple task of creating individual stars, the quests later start demanding that you create evolved forms of stars that involve mixing different types together, manipulating the amount of elemental gas in an area of the basin and even using "clay stars" to fuse others together. Beyond that, you're tasked with creating "constellations" using specific combinations of stars that you've created, and the game hints that once these have been created, they'll be used as "tools" to further manipulate your astral creations, though the demo stops before you get to see what this means for yourself.

What I found initially offputting but subsequently rather compelling about This Starry Midnight We Make is what I hinted at above: you have to figure out everything for yourself. And this is a huge adjustment from a lot of modern games, which spend much of their early hours walking you through every step of the mechanics you might be using throughout the game until you're absolutely sure you know what you're supposed to be doing. Not so in This Starry Midnight We Make. You are, in effect, a scientist, given some interesting things to fiddle around with and left to your own devices to try things out and see what happens. Some of the things you do will work — and these form genuine "Eureka!" moments, since you've figured them out for yourself — and others will not work, forcing you to analyse your "mistakes" and learn from them… or perhaps determine what caused an unexpected reaction to happen.

I find it difficult to envision how the game will carry this strange concept through a full-length narrative, but I'm kind of intrigued to find out. It's a slow burn of a game, for sure, and its obtuseness will doubtless put many people off within about ten minutes of starting, but if you put some time in and make the effort to actually experiment with it yourself, you'll find a strangely compelling experience waiting for you.

Do I recommend it? I'm hesitant to do so before seeing the full version, but I can at least recommend that you give the demo a try for yourself to see what you think and whether it might be for you. It's available now from Steam.

The post 1937: This Starry Midnight We Make appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

But it wasn't enough by itself to make me want to buy one. For a new platform to be truly compelling for me, there needs to be some long-form games that I'm interested in, whereas Resogun is an arcade game, intended to be enjoyed in relatively short bursts. This isn't a criticism of it, mind, but I'd have had a tough time justifying a PlayStation 4 purchase to myself purely on the strength of what is, essentially, next-gen Defender.

But oh, what a game Resogun actually is! I'm still skeptical of whether I'd have found it worth buying a PS4 for by itself — although in retrospect, I bought an Xbox 360 primarily because of Geometry Wars, which is even more simplistic than Resogun — but I'm absolutely in love with it, because it represents a true fusion between classic old-school arcade-style gameplay and modern presentation.

At its core, as previously noted, Resogun is similar to the classic arcade game Defender. You fly a little ship that can move and fire left and right at will. Like Defender, the game unfolds on a scrolling, wrapping stage, though here it's represented as a cylinder that you fly around the outer surface of. Like Defender, your job is to save little green humans from being abducted by invading alien flying saucers. Unlike Defender, there's significantly more to it than that.

For starters, the humans are held in captivity before you can rescue them. In order to do so, you need to destroy "Keepers" — special enemies that show up every so often with a green glow surrounding them. You'll get an audible announcement when some Keepers show up, but not a visual indicator showing where they are if they're around the other side of the level, so you'll need to find and destroy them quickly to save the human in question, because if you miss any of them — or, in some cases, destroy them in the wrong order — the human will immediately die. Succeed, however, and the human will pop out of his little prison box and start running around on the ground, at which point he becomes vulnerable to being abducted, falling into holes, drowning and being splattered by unpleasant things. He also becomes available to be picked up by your ship and transported to one of the rescue pods at the top of the level.

To complete a level, you need to proceed through three "phases". Each phase requires you to destroy a certain amount of enemies represented by a bar filling up at the bottom of the screen. When you complete a phase, you get a brief "time out" where you can still move and fire, but you're invincible and the enemies move in slow-motion. This allows you a moment to compose yourself and get yourself into an advantageous position before proceeding. The end of the third phase, however, jumps directly into a boss battle, with bosses taking the form of various peculiar geometric shapes that warp and twist before your very eyes as you shoot chunks off them and chip away at their energy bar. When the boss is dead, the whole level explodes and you move on to the next one. Repeat for five levels, beat game.

Except that's not all that there is to Resogun — at least not with the excellent DLC packages that have been released since it originally came out. Between these two packages (available as a bundle or individually) there are several new modes, including Survival, which places you on a single level and tasks you with surviving through a series of increasingly difficult days, acquiring power-ups by picking up humans; Protector, which requires you to deliver humans to cities to rebuild them and subsequently defend them from giant alien flying saucers; Commando, which casts you as a human attempting to protect his house from falling meteors in scenes somewhat reminiscent of Missile Command for a new generation; and Challenge, which gives you a series of unconventional ways to play the game and tasks you with completing some generally pretty fiendish objectives.

Resogun is unabashedly a score-attack game, and consequently it naturally comes with online support, allowing you to compare your scores both to your friends and the rest of the world's players. You can also filter these scores by time, allowing you to challenge friends each week or month to see who is truly the best (this week/month), and scores are tracked completely independently for each mode and difficulty setting.

Combine this with a robust ship editor, allowing you to create your own custom ships using the 3D "voxel" pixels from which the entire game is built (and which it is very fond of exploding things into at a moment's notice) and the ability to share said creations online and you have a remarkably "complete"-feeling package that, now I've spent some time with it, I'm pretty confident in recommending as an essential purchase for anyone with a PlayStation 4. (Assuming you like shooting things and watching numbers go up. And who doesn't like shooting things and watching numbers go up?)

So yeah. Buy Resogun. You won't regret it.

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I think the reason it's "working" for me is that I'm not attempting to make it the focus of my gaming life or anything, but it's something enjoyable to do during brief moments of downtime — sitting on the bog, waiting for pasta water to boil, being unable to get to sleep, that sort of thing. It also helps that it's a fairly solid game at its core, too; it's not the deepest game in the world, but it has enough substance to keep it interesting in short bursts.

What I find curious about it is that it's essentially Pokemon with all the fat trimmed off, and yet while Pokemon didn't hold my attention at all across the three installments I've tried — Red, Gold and Y — Brave Frontier has managed to keep me interested, and I think it's because of all the stuff that's been trimmed out from the Pokemon formula.

Pokemon, to me, always feels like it's not sure what it quite wants to be. It has the structure of a traditional RPG, but then the collectible, tradable and upgradeable aspect of a trading card game. It is arguably more widely renowned for its competitive metagame than anything significant it brings to the storytelling table, though it has managed to spawn a number of anime series and movies since it first burst onto the scene. The "JRPG" side of it and the "collectible monster battling" stuff always seem to be somewhat at odds with one another, and I think that's what's caused me to lose interest in them partway through every time I've tried.

Brave Frontier, meanwhile, focuses on the collectible battling side of things almost exclusively. There's no exploration, no wandering around caves, just battles of various descriptions and, between those battles, upgrading your units to be more powerful, stronger and capable of taking on tougher opponents. It's satisfying to build up a team that works together, whether you've been trying to go for a specific angle (all the same elemental type, for example, or perhaps a strongly defensive group that can survive against hard-hitting enemies) or whether you've been working with the hand you've been dealt, as I have been.

And the game presents you with interesting, meaningful choices to make every time you boot it up. I still dislike the use of "energy" bars in free-to-play games throttling your play sessions, but as I noted in my previous post about Brave Frontier, this game makes use of it as an interesting "risk/reward" mechanic by presenting you with the option to effectively "gamble" your potential play time against the possible rewards available.

You can spent small amounts of energy working your way through the "Quest" mode, which is a linear sequence of battles of gradually (very gradually) increasing difficulty tied together with a surprisingly not-that-bad, if cliche-tastic storyline. In doing so, you'll acquire a selection of not-very-good units (that can be used as "fusion fodder" to upgrade various aspects of your actually-good units) along with the game's currencies, and you'll also get a decent amount of experience.

Conversely, the daily dungeons that pop up throughout the week each cost significantly more energy to participate in but offer their own unique special characteristics and greater, more predictable rewards — the Monday dungeon, for example, offers significantly greater amounts of experience points than usual, providing you with the ability to level up your "Summoner" character quite quickly, in turn increasing your energy stock and the amount of "Cost" points you're allowed to spend on building your party; other dungeons throughout the week offer units that are required to "evolve" level-capped units to their next tier, large amounts of gold coins or various other rewards. Part of the thing that makes the game interesting is that you have to discover the value of each of these dungeons for yourself; it may not be immediately clear why you'd want to hunt down elemental idols, for example, but once you figure it out you'll know that you need to check in on that particular day to get your hands on some.

There's a certain amount of random-number generation (RNG) at work, of course, but as any MMO player will tell you, that's sort of part of the fun in a perverse, masochistic sort of way: imagine how much more satisfying it is to acquire something you've been trying to hunt down for over a week rather than having it handed to you on a plate. It's frustrating and annoying at times, sure — I'm currently in the aforementioned situation as I attempt to track down the last "Evolution unit" I need to upgrade my party member Selena into her next tier of power — but, as manipulative as it is, it keeps you coming back for another try.

Oh, and I've reached a stage now where my party is winning in the player-vs-player "Arena" significantly more than it loses now, which is satisfying to see. But then the game took me down a peg or two by throwing a boss at me that absolutely obliterated my entire party within a few turns. Time to get busy with the Fusion, I guess…

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Perhaps "all of its own" isn't quite the right description, mind, since Omega Quintet's combat is executed as something of a curious blend between the battle systems from the Atelier series, the Ar Tonelico series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII. That's quite a mixture, but it works really well, particularly when you pull off something as enjoyably silly as this:

The above sequence was recorded at just level 20, by the way; I shudder to think what numbers the girls will be putting out by the end of the game.

Interestingly, the game doesn't bombard you with the complete combat system right from the get-go; it gradually increases in complexity over the course of the first few chapters at a fairly sedate pace, allowing you to get comfortable and familiar with each new concept before a new one is introduced. Ultimately, by the time the complete battle system has unlocked, you should be well familiar with all the possibilities it has to offer. At about 15 hours or so in, I haven't seen everything the system has to offer, yet; for some, this may draw unfavourable comparisons to Final Fantasy XIII, which was lambasted for having a "20 hour tutorial", but it's worth noting that Omega Quintet does sidestep this issue a little by being somewhat less linear than Final Fantasy XIII was; at any given moment, there's a bunch of sidequests to do, hidden treasures to find, new areas to open up, items to craft, special items to unlock and all manner of other things to do. (And besides, there was nothing the fuck wrong with the way Final Fantasy XIII did things, anyway. So there.)

Here's roughly how the system works. Like the Neptunia games, you can get the advantage at the start of combat by attacking an enemy before they come into contact with you; conversely, letting an enemy touch you from behind will give them the advantage. How battle begins sets the opening initiative order, and from there the game follows a clear to understand turn order system, reflected by a graphical representation down the side of the screen.

Each party member has a number of actions per turn, increasing as they increase their overall proficiency with each of the game's five weapon types — axe, gun, spear, fans and gauntlets. These actions can be used to attack, use a skill or use an item, and when all the actions have been chosen, the party member performs each of them in sequence before the turn order moves on to the next combatant. Of key consideration when choosing skills is the "wait time" — more powerful skills will push the party member's next turn further down the turn order, potentially giving enemies the opportunity to attack several times before she can go again. Conversely, certain skills increase the enemies' wait time when they successfully land, so you can manipulate the turn order yourself to a certain degree.

Attacks, skills and even items have an effective range, represented by coloured lines on the ground. Do something to someone in the green area and it will be most effective; then comes blue, yellow and finally red, which means you either can't do the action at all, or it will be at severely reduced effectiveness. Certain attacks and skills also have a radius, either circular or a range of "tiles" horizontally, vertically or both, meaning you can hit multiple enemies at the same time. At the start of a party member's turn, you can move them forward or backward in the formation, allowing you to manipulate the positioning to your advantage. There are also "knockback" skills, which are self-explanatory, and "reverse" skills, which… uh, I'm not entirely sure what they do.

Here's one thing I have to nitpick slightly; there are certain aspects the game doesn't explain very well or, indeed, at all in some cases. The stat names, for example, don't take the usual Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense/Accuracy/Agility format from other Compile Heart games; instead we have Song Power/Stamina/Knowledge/Divinity/Technique/Vitality. You can work out what they are from a bit of experimentation, but it takes a bit of adjustment. Likewise, some of the status effects and added effects (such as the aforementioned "Reverse") aren't made very clear at all, though again, you can probably work these things out for yourself.

Personally, I'm actually all for games encouraging you to figure out some of their mechanics for yourself. You don't need to understand these things to get a kick out of Omega Quintet, but if you're the sort of person who likes to min-max your characters and have them fighting at maximum effectiveness, be aware that you'll need to get your hands a little dirty — particularly as the characters in Omega Quintet are significantly more customisable than, say, the Neptunia girls, who don't allow you to take any control over their development at all, though they do allow you to set up your own custom combos according to how you like to fight. In other words, Omega Quintet's apparently deliberate obtuseness at times will be a turn-off to some people, but personally, I actually like not being spoon-fed absolutely everything.

Anyway. It's good. Real good. And I can't wait to play more. So I'm probably going to do just that right now; I've got a combo record to beat, after all.

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Omega Quintet, lest you don't follow Japanese games with the same borderline obsessiveness as I do, is a role-playing game in which you take on the role of Takt, a rather sullen young man who occasionally has trouble with demonstrating the personality trait that he shares his name with. He has fairly good reason to be sullen, however; he lives in a dystopian future in which some sort of lurking unpleasantness called the Blare keeps showing up, driving people mad and turning animals into monsters. (Aside: In the Japanese original, it was called the Beep; I kind of wish they'd kept that name, particularly as the Japanese voices still use it!)

So far, so post-apocalyptic. It wouldn't be a post-apocalyptic JRPG without a band of plucky heroic types to save the day, however, so enter the Verse Maidens: young women who have the power to drive back the Blare with the power of their songs. Takt and his childhood friend Otoha get swept up in the world of the Verse Maidens as the "ever-17 Momoka" (who is actually 37, and starting to feel it) stumbles across them after exhausting herself clearing out a particularly nasty batch of Blare. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, Otoha awakens to her potential power as a Verse Maiden, leading Momoka to reluctantly retire and make way for Otoha and two other young, inexperienced Verse Maidens called Kana and Nene.

Idea Factory and Compile Heart have proven themselves to be talented at satirical games with the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, which pokes fun at the video game industry and video games in general. Omega Quintet, meanwhile, tackles the Japanese idol industry, a subject that Idea Factory has previously explored in Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection, and something we don't have an exact analogue to in the West. The closest equivalent we have is the phenomenon of "manufactured pop groups" like the boy bands of the '90s and the few examples of groups that have made successes of themselves following talent shows such as The X-Factor and its ilk, but neither of these go anywhere near as far as the Japanese idol industry.

Japanese idols have to contend not only with the most crazy, obsessive fans, but also with their management pretty much taking control of their entire life — including personal relationships, socialising and all the sorts of things that young girls should probably discover and explore for themselves in order to grow up as well-adjusted individuals. Omega Quintet reflects this through Takt gradually being trained up to become the Verse Maidens' manager and sternly told in no uncertain terms at regular intervals that he absolutely, positively must not do anything inappropriate with any of these girls, lest he tarnish their pure image and anger the fans — because Verse Maidens draw their power from their fanbase.

The character of Momoka is also used as a means of reflecting the falseness of the idols' lifestyles. We're initially introduced to Momoka as a young, beautiful, heroic woman whom everyone looks up to and depends upon, but as we see her exhausting herself on what turns out to be her last mission and subsequently revealing her true, rather abrasive personality, we come to understand that she's been playing a part — for twenty years, in her case. It will be interesting to see how the titular Quintet, once they assemble, will come to terms with this existence, and I suspect it will be an important part of the overall narrative.

Mechanically, Omega Quintet is fairly similar to other Compile Heart titles: there's a lot of standing around talking with some well-written, witty dialogue, punctuated with dungeon-crawling and snappy combat. Rather than repurposing the Neptunia combat system, however, Omega Quintet has its own rather deep and complex system that encourages you to be as flashy as you can while maintaining control of your characters' resources. There are some really interesting mechanics in there, such as characters being able to obtain bonus actions for their next turn by fulfilling particular conditions, and a Final Fantasy X-style "turn delay" mechanic allowing you to manipulate the turn order to your advantage. The protagonist also plays an interesting role by not directly participating in combat, instead offering passive support effects to the party and having a limited number of action points to be used throughout the fight either for follow-up "Pursuit" attacks after his current partner has performed an action, or stepping in to soak some of the incoming damage on his partner.

There's also a frighteningly deep-looking character customisation and advancement system that involves unlocking abilities on a "disc" that works a little like Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid, choosing abilities carefully for a limited number of slots, weapon proficiencies, equipment, outfits with upgradeable durability and "amp" slots for bonus effects, formations, chain skills and all manner of other things. I'm only about 5 hours or so into the game so far and it's clear there's a lot of systems I haven't been introduced to yet; it looks like the complete picture will be quite complex, but the game has proven very accessible so far, gradually introducing concepts and giving you ample time to familiarise yourself with them in practical situations before throwing something new into the mix.

Oh, and the soundtrack is amazing. Which you'd sort of hope for a game ostensibly "about" music. And, as usual for the genre, it's the battle theme that presents one of the best examples, featuring a distinctly Final Fantasy XIII-esque feel with its use of solo violin over driving rhythms. So what better way to wrap up these first impressions with said piece? Here you go.

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I was keen to check out P.T. then, since I'm now the proud owner of a PlayStation 4. P.T. was originally released under something of an air of mystery and it wasn't until people cleared it that their suspicions were confirmed and it was revealed to be a teaser for an upcoming "next-gen" Silent Hill game, developed as a collaboration between the dream team of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro.

I was especially keen to check out P.T. right now, because owing to Kojima's apparent departure from series publisher Konami and the seeming cancellation of Silent Hills — there are still some people who believe this might be an elaborate troll by Kojima, mind — it had been suggested that P.T. would no longer be available on the PlayStation Store after today, meaning that anyone who was interested to check it out would no longer be able to do so if they hadn't already downloaded a copy. If, indeed, Konami has cancelled Silent Hills — and, sadly, it looks as if that is the case — then there's no sense from a business perspective for having a teaser demo available, even if said teaser demo is both baffling and creative.

P.T. doesn't tell you anything. You wake up in a room with a cockroach scuttling away from you. You exit the room and find yourself in a house that has seen better days; it looks like the apparently absent residents have had some fairly major issues with drinking, drugs and violence — something which appears to be confirmed by the radio broadcast you hear shortly after entering the house, which speaks of the horrific murder of a whole family.

You wander through the house, eventually coming to an open door that seems to lead down to a cellar. Upon passing through it, you come to another door, only to find yourself back in the hallway you just left. From there, things start to get more and more weird as they go along — I shan't spoil the specifics, but suffice to say there's evidence of Metal Gear Solid-era Kojima mindfuckery at play here; the game appears to crash and reset at one point, for example, only to then continue on its way if you persevere rather than closing it in disgust, and the final puzzle requires you to wait for the clock to strike midnight, walk exactly ten paces forward, stop, wait for scary noises and then utter the name "Jarith" into your PlayStation microphone. (Yes, really, that is the actual solution; I just did it.)

While the "puzzles" throughout P.T. — if you can call them that — are brain-fryingly obtuse, even by adventure game standards (my eternal respect to the dudes who figured out the solution to that last puzzle), the experience as a whole is spectacularly terrifying, recreating a type of experience I hadn't realised I'd been missing for quite some time.

There aren't many modern games that are genuinely scary, you see. I'm talking a combination of lurking horror and occasional jump scares; Silent Hill has always been particularly good at the former, while the latter has usually been the territory of Resident Evil (which isn't what it used to be, but let's not jump down that rabbit-hole just yet). P.T. provides both, and it wasn't until I played it through this evening that I realised it's been quite a long time since a modern game made me feel genuinely uneasy, made me jump or made me actually cry out in surprise. (Yes, I did all of those things. I am a wuss.)

As a result, not only am I sad that we're seemingly not going to get a new Silent Hill game, I'm also sad that an increasingly rare example of proper horror gaming has been canned.

I'm glad I had the chance to experience P.T., though; it's quite something.

The post 1926: In My Restless Dreams, I See That Town appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I made a video of two unsuccessful runs earlier; here you go:

I'm really impressed with the additions to the base formula. In particular I'm excited about the fact that there are a number of new quests involved in unlocking the additional character classes; these quests replace the standard adventure to defeat the Demon Lord (or win in a couple of other super-secret ways) and task you with additional objectives, confronting you with new challenges and powerful foes on the way.

The small additions to the game's interface are great, too. The hotbar in particular is an excellent addition, even if you only use it to quickly access skills like Awakening (your default "stop time for three turns" ability, which is very useful for getting out of a pinch) and Lockpicking. It's also great to be able to customise the interface somewhat; it's still a little cluttered thanks to it running in 640×480 (or upscaled 640×480 now, at least) but simple changes like being able to put your gauges at the bottom of the screen and the minimap up the top make it a lot easier to see where you're going.

More subtle changes only become apparent if you've played both games. The pace of levelling has been considerably increased, but in exchange the "Goddess Statues" at which you can "spend" levels to get numerous benefits are considerably more expensive to use, and no longer provide the same possible bonuses every time. Skill merchants offer the ability to learn new abilities in exchange for stat levels, Iron Hags will make a random item for you (including "air", which just means you're out of pocket), benevolent Force practitioners will teach you defensive, utility or restorative spells… the list goes on.

And the game is still absolutely packed with charm and a surprising amount of depth. Most notably — and this was true of the original, too — is the fact that, despite initial appearances, the game does have a plot. Or, more accurately, a number of different intertwining narrative threads that only become apparent if you come into contact with the recruitable NPCs, figure out a way to stop the Demon Lord trying to set fire to you long enough to have a chat or try some of the daily "special campaigns" that add small but significant tweaks to the basic formula. A particular favourite that I had the other day was a world where every normal attack had a massive knockback effect on it, so you had to take care not to fight with your back to the encroaching Darkness lest you get slammed into it by your foe landing a blow. It shook up the way I played a great deal; unfortunately I didn't quite get far enough to take full advantage of it by whacking the final boss of the Force Knight unlock quest into the Darkness — the main means through which you deal damage to this rather unpleasant adversary — but it was an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

I'm well and truly hooked then. And if you're yet to discover the fun for yourself, I recommend giving it a look now. It's just $6.99 and it will keep you busy for a very long time. You can grab it from publisher Playism, or soon from Steam, too. (If you buy it now at Playism, you'll get a Steam key when that version releases.)

The post 1924: Journeying Ever Onwards appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I made a video, even.

For those disinclined to watch a complete 40-minute playthrough of the game (the first time I ever beat it, fact fans — lucky I was recording, eh?) I shall also use the power of written words to explain what's going on and why you should give this game a shot.

One Way Heroics is a sort-of roguelike crossed with the auto-scrolling levels from old Super Mario Bros. games. If that sounds strange, you'd be right, but that's what makes the game interesting.

The concept is simple: the Darkness is swallowing the land a bit at a time, and it's up to you to track down the Demon Lord supposedly responsible for this whole mess and punch him in the face until he stops being such a rotter. The encroaching darkness is represented by the scrolling screen — every move or action you perform causes it to advance slightly, and if you fall off the left side of the screen, you die. Naturally, this opens up the possibility of getting "trapped" in places, so you have to plan your movements pretty carefully to make sure you don't get stuck.

There's a selection of different character classes to play, each with their own distinctive pixel-art appearance and base stats. They can be further customised by choosing "Perks" at the outset of the game, which give you skills such as lockpicking, swimming and mountain climbing, or simple bonuses to your base statistics. Each class has its own starting equipment and skills, too, and you'll have the opportunity to unlock additional skills and abilities as you progress.

This is a game in which you shouldn't get too attached to anything — the town you just visited, your character, your equipment — and should instead keep pushing onwards. As you progress, the path your journey takes will see you finding new items or upgrading your existing ones with scrolls you discover. Eventually, the basic weapon you start the game with can become something like what I had by the end of the video above: a high-quality sword that is difficult to break, sets things on fire and confuses enemies.

Although your characters and the worlds they explore are inherently "disposable", there is a degree of persistence in the game: completing a run, whether or not it was successful, rewards you with "Hero Points" that can be spent on purchasing new perks and character classes or expanding your Dimensional Vault, allowing you to carry items across into a subsequent playthrough.

There's also some interesting online features. Every day, a specific random world "seed" is set aside as one for online play, and while you don't directly adventure alongside other player characters — it's not "true" multiplayer — you get updates on how other people are doing and may occasionally run into the ghosts of those who were less lucky. If you successfully complete the game, you'll be told how many people got there ahead of you and you'll have the opportunity to compare your performance with them. It's a simple, subtle and unobtrusive use of online features, and it works very well in the context of the game.

I've really enjoyed revisiting this game recently, and was delighted to hear the news that it's being kind-of remade for Vita by Spike Chunsoft as part of their Mystery Dungeon series. As you'll know if you've played it, this game would be perfect for handheld play, so I'll absolutely be there when it releases!

For now, I've got a Demon Lord to punch in the face.

The post 1910: Please Proceed to the Right - One Way Heroics appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So far as "game content" goes, there wasn't a huge amount of new stuff in this one — the main attraction was the one new Trial on the Steps of Faith, which we'll talk a little about in a moment. But "content" was never really the intention of this patch; it was always intended to be a narrative-centric patch to send off Final Fantasy XIV version 2.x with a suitable bang and prepare the playerbase for what might await them in Heavensward.

I shall endeavour to refrain from major spoilers in this post, but a few mild ones may slip in.

The storyline for Before the Fall Part 2 primarily concerns the Dravanian Horde's initial assault on the isolated land of Ishgard, a nation which was once part of the Eorzean Alliance alongside Ul'Dah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa, but which subsequently closed off its borders and effectively locked the majority of its people inside its city walls. The Dravanians — who are big fucking dragons — have been making incursions into Ishgardian territory for some time thanks to a longstanding war between the two nations, and indeed the adventurers of Final Fantasy XIV repel their attacks on a number of occasions through the dungeons you challenge over the course of your career.

This time it's different, however; there's rumblings of one of the Great Wyrms making an appearance, and before long due to various unfortunate circumstances and villainy, the Ishgardian protective wards on the giant bridge The Steps of Faith are under assault from Vishap, probably the biggest enemy in the entire game, and his assembled Dravanian forces. The new Trial sees you and seven companions battling Vishap as he makes his inexorable progression across the Steps of Faith, hopefully taking him down before he breaches Ishgard's last line of defence.

Following the pattern of past patches, this big battle (and it's a pretty huge, quite challenging battle) isn't the endpoint of the story; far from it, in fact. The overall conclusion to the A Realm Reborn storyline is quite genuinely shocking, surprising, dramatic and emotional. Oh, and long; the game warns you before triggering these cutscenes that you're going to be sitting and watching for quite some time. It's a worthy watch, though, and it drives home the fact that on the whole, A Realm Reborn has done a significantly better job with storytelling than pretty much any other MMO out there. You'll care about these characters and what happens to them — be it triumph or tragedy, and for sure there's a bit of both in the ending.

The finale isn't perfect — some have already criticised the parts where it takes agency away from the player character, though it didn't personally bother me all that much — but it forms a fitting conclusion to A Realm Reborn, bringing a sense of closure to the storylines that have been running for the last couple of years now while simultaneously building anticipation for Heavensward through the introduction of some new characters, the reintroduction of some we haven't seen for a while and an extremely intriguing cliffhanger right at the very end.

Now all we have to do is wait until June to find out what happens next… although in the meantime, we still have the Final Coil of Bahamut to defeat, so I'm sure that will keep us busy until the expansion arrives!

The post 1898: A Realm Concluded appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Fragile Dreams wasn't a particularly outstanding game from a mechanical perspective — its use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo made combat in particular extremely cumbersome, a fact not helped by the extremely limited repertoire of moves available for each weapon and the seeming inability to dodge quickly — but it nonetheless proved to be a consistently compelling experience from start to finish.

Fragile Dreams also didn't quite match up to its own ambition in storytelling: the final hours descend somewhat into your fairly typical "madman wants to destroy the world" (in this case, destroy the world again) scenario, and the overall plot itself is riddled with holes and inconsistencies. But again, this certainly didn't diminish from the overall experience.

Fragile Dreams was an oddly beautiful game. Despite being a low-resolution Wii title, it looked good. It had a distinctive aesthetic all of its own, and immediately set itself apart from other post-apocalyptic adventures by the simple use of colour and contrast throughout. There's a fair amount of crawling around in the dark by torchlight, but the game sensibly breaks this up with some colourful segments. Escape from a subway system earlier in the game and you're treated to the gorgeous, rich colours of dawn in the sky. Pick your way through a forest to a secluded hotel and you're surrounded by lush greenery. It's a far cry from the greys and browns that usually come with the post-apocalyptic territory, and it made the game less of a chore to play than the trudging through endless wastelands of something like the Fallout series.

There were some interesting characters, too. Much of the story is about protagonist Seto's desire to find someone with whom he can share his experiences — to laugh, to cry, to point out how beautiful something is. The characters he does run into throughout the course of the story all provide him with a certain degree of companionship, but none are quite the same as actual human company.

First he runs into what appears to be a piece of military hardware called "Personal Frame" or "PF", which has its own artificial intelligence and personality. PF provides good company for Seto for a few hours as he explores, and it's clear that Seto starts thinking of "her" (for although she looks like a backpack-mounted radio, she has a female voice) as a friend. This friendship is cut short, however, when PF's battery runs out and she "dies", leaving Seto all alone once again.

Then he runs into Crow, a somewhat androgynous-looking boy who appears to have cats' eyes and fangs. Crow initially antagonises Seto by stealing his locket — which is full of precious memories, including a screw he took from PF's "body" — and this results in a chase all over the abandoned theme park Crow calls home. Crow eventually admits defeat after taking a nasty fall from the park's Ferris wheel; seemingly against all odds, he survives, and claims to accept Seto as a friend, even going so far as to steal his first kiss because "that's what friends do" — something which Seto is somewhat surprised by, but which he doesn't reject outright. It becomes clear that all is not quite right with Crow, however, as many of the things he says are direct quotations from a children's storybook Seto finds a little earlier; indeed, Crow's true nature is revealed later when Seto discovers him slumped in a room with hundreds of discarded robotic bodies: Crow is indeed a robot, and their budding friendship is once again cut short as his batteries expire, leaving him, like PF, as an empty shell devoid of life and consciousness.

Seto's next encounter is with Sai, the ghost of a young woman who appears to have committed suicide or at least succumbed to a drug addiction; this isn't made outright explicit, but can be easily inferred from the pills scattered around her dead body and the syringes, tourniquets and other paraphernalia littering the room. Sai doesn't mention this and Seto clearly doesn't understand it, so nothing more is said; the two develop a close and honest friendship as a result, with Sai accompanying Seto for most of the rest of the game from this point onwards. Again, though, although Sai and Seto become fast friends, it's not quite the same as real human company for Seto; in a heartfelt speech to Sai, Seto admits that he just wants to share his experiences with someone else, to feel their warmth, to feel like he isn't alone, and for that, a ghost just isn't going to cut it, hence his game-long search for the mysterious silver-haired girl Ren.

The characters are all interesting, unconventional and have plenty left open to interpretation, and this is something of a pattern for the game as a whole. One of the strongest pieces of narrative design in the game comes through the use of "memory items"; bits and pieces of junk that Seto comes across in his journey that have the last memories of the dying world's inhabitants infused into them somehow. Some of these are mundane, some of them are profound, some of them form part of a larger story, some of them hint at the truth behind the situation in which the world finds itself. There's a sequences of recollections between a young woman whose legs became paralysed when she was a little girl and her botany-obsessed childhood sweetheart Mao that is particularly heartbreaking, for example.

After a while, then, you start to build up a very vivid mental picture of the game world both as it exists now and as it existed prior to the disaster that wiped everyone out. It's pretty bleak and lonely, but also fascinating to explore, and one of the most interesting things about the experience is how many unanswered questions it leaves at the end. Whether this is intentional or simply due to the writers not having thought about it — a bit of both, I feel, if an interview I read a few days ago is anything to go by — doesn't really matter in the end, since it's this thought-provoking nature that will keep you thinking about Fragile Dreams long after you've finished it.

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I am enjoying it a whole lot so far, and although I'm still relatively early on in the game, the interesting mission and map design is starting to shine through as the game adds more and more map gimmicks and mechanics to take into account while playing.

Of the last few missions, I've played, for example, one saw my party of four (Noire, Neptune, Vert and Blanc) fighting against the emphatically-not-Chun-Li-oh-wait-she-clearly-is "road pugilist" Lee-Fi. She was on the far side of a large arena whose walls were electrified, which means that knockback attacks had a use beyond simply getting enemies away from you. Some of the floor was electrified, too, necessitating careful route planning and an understanding of the game's "orientation" system, whereby the direction a character is facing when they start moving (you can change it freely) determines the initial direction they move if the target space is not in a straight line from their current position.

This was followed up by a fight against the emphatically-not-Solid-Snake-with-tits-oh-wait-she-clearly-is superspy Lid, whose battlefield was riddled with booby-traps, necessitating, again, careful navigation while fending off her supporting units. Two strips of the battlefield are also covered by large, heavy damage-dealing cannons, too, though once you notice that they can only fire in a straight line immediately in front of them it's easy enough to avoid them.

This was then followed by a battle against the Agarest-inspired character Resta, who was on the other side of a huge chasm, the only means of traversing which was a rickety railway carriage that could only hold three of your four party members at once. Resta also has an absolutely devastating super-move which obliterated my party in a single turn by dropping giant explosive bunches of bananas on their heads, so after my second "Game Over" of the game (the first being not paying attention to the cannons in Lid's stage) I realised that it was essential to take her down in a single turn and not get distracted by her supporting units, since the mission objective was simply to defeat her, not everything on the map.

Thus far the game has put up a reasonably stiff challenge. The first couple of missions are deceptively simple, but beginning with the Lee-Fi fight, things have been getting noticeably more difficult — and a little more gradually than most Neptunia games, which are somewhat notorious for inconsistent difficulty spikes throughout most of the experience, then becoming ridiculously easy once you pass a particular level threshold. The difficulty hasn't been insurmountable, though, and the new mechanics have been introduced gradually enough that I haven't felt as overwhelmed as I have done in similar games like Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, where I often can't work out why my strategy failed when it inevitably does. Here, failure seems to generally be the result of not paying enough attention — and given that you can examine all the units on both sides of the battle before you start fighting, there's really no excuse for the mistakes I have made up until this point; I've certainly learned to carefully survey the battlefield before charging in now!

I've always quite liked tactics games and even finished Final Fantasy Tactics way back in the day, but Hyperdevotion Noire is the first one I feel like I'm understanding a little better. It's designed well, plays well, looks great and features probably my favourite cast of characters in gaming. What's not to like?

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For the unfamiliar, Hyperdevotion Noire is another installment in my perennial favourite game series Hyperdimension Neptunia, or more accurately, it's one of several "spinoff" games that have broken free of the main continuity… not that Neptunia has ever been a series particularly concerned with internal continuity. In other words, it stands by itself as its own self-contained story, though naturally you'll probably get more out of it if you're already familiar with the characters and concepts involved.

Unlike most of the Neptunia games, Hyperdevotion Noire puts, oddly enough, PlayStation personification Noire in the leading role. Unfolding in a separate, parallel setting to the main Neptunia games (the land of "Gamarket" instead of "Gamindustri"), Hyperdevotion Noire opens with Noire dominating much of the world with her superior military might, army of generals (each of whom represents a well-known game series, such as the Metal Gear-inspired girl named "Lid" seen in the screenshot below) and overwhelming support from the people. Unfortunately, her position as top dog isn't to last; after being tricked into releasing the power of her "Shares" — the source of a Goddess' power in the Neptunia universe — monsters run amok in her city, people disappear and her once-trusted generals start fighting among themselves. It's up to Noire — along with the rest of the Neptunia gang, who show up pretty near the beginning of the whole affair — to sort out the mess she had a part in creating, find out who the mysterious woman "Eno" who set these events in motion is (hint: she looks uncannily like recurring series villain Arfoire) and ultimately unite Gamarket.

It's up to you, meanwhile, to take care of Noire and help her out as she goes about her business. Yes, like fellow spinoff Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection, Hyperdevotion Noire puts the player in the game as a first-person protagonist rather than simply telling the story of the main cast. Recruited as Noire's secretary shortly after meeting her, you're tasked with managing the party, strategising in battle, renovating and decorating Noire's headquarters and helping her make appropriate policy decisions as the citizens of Lastation come to her with requests.

The meat of the game comes in the battle sequences. Rather than being a dungeon-crawling, item-gathering/crafting RPG as the mainline Neptunia installments are, Hyperdevotion Noire is a strategy RPG, developed by Sting (of Gungnir, Knights in the Nightmare and Yggdra Union fame). Mainline Neptunia games have always had a slight element of tactics to their battle sequences thanks to positional bonuses, cleaving attacks and formation skills, but battles in those games are generally pretty short; punctuation to dungeon crawling. In Hyperdevotion Noire, a single battle represents a complete encounter and provides you with specific objectives: sometimes you'll simply have to defeat all enemies; sometimes you'll have to defeat a specific enemy; sometimes you'll have to complete objectives before a specific number of turns pass.

The game does a good job of introducing concepts to you gradually, and there's a bunch of interesting systems at play. Core to the game is the "Lily Boost" system, whereby characters can power up their relationship values with other characters, earn "Lily Points" and reduce the cost of their special moves by triggering their skills when adjacent to other characters, which causes the supporting characters to give the acting character an adorable little peck on the cheek. Chu! Although cheeky and flirtatious, the system adds an interesting dynamic to battles: you have to think very carefully about both turn order and formation when setting up attacks, especially when you're dealing with enemies who can hit several tiles at once. It's no good getting all set up for a four-way snog if an enemy with a massive cleave is just going to kill all of you at once when it comes to their turn, after all.

That's not all to think about, though. Battle maps include treasure chests in awkward-to-reach locations, which you'll need to acquire before completing your objectives if you want the goodies therein. A Final Fantasy X-style "Overkill" bonus rewards you with rare drops if you defeat an enemy with far more damage than you need to. Maps have variable elevation and environmental hazards — both of which can be conveniently bypassed if you switch the goddess characters into their flying "HDD" forms, but in order to do this you'll need to build up the Lily Points gauge first, and then it only lasts for three turns, so you need to make the most of it. Setting a specific character as the "leader" of the squad confers special bonuses (and, sometimes, penalties) on the group as a whole. Characters each have their own array of "challenges" to complete, each of which rewards them with significant stat bonuses.

There is a hell of a lot of game here. This is nothing new for a Neptunia game — I've easily spent over 100 hours on the last few installments in an attempt to get the Platinum trophies and hidden goodies — but considering this is a "spinoff" game and not technically part of the main series, it's impressive. I'm only a short way in to the overall plot so far, but I'm already enjoying both the narrative and gameplay sides; it's shaping up to be a fine installment in a favourite series, and all the more noteworthy for doing something a little bit different.

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You may wonder why I own a copy of a game I know nothing about. Well, it was from a while back, when UK retail chain Game was in a bunch of trouble and looked like it might be folding; they were selling off a ton of their stock at ridiculously low prices, so I took the opportunity to grab lots of things that looked even a little bit interesting with a mind to eventually playing them at some point in the future. Fragile Dreams was one of them.

So how is it? Well, pretty damn cool so far. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I don't think it was a feels-heavy action-RPG survival horror adventure game featuring the same "your Wii Remote is a torch" mechanic that worked so well in Silent Hill Shattered Memories. There's actually a touch of Silent Hill in the game's atmosphere, though in the case of Fragile Dreams it's not so much about psychological horror as an ever-present sense of loneliness and abandonment.

At the outset of the game, the old man whom protagonist Seto has been living with dies, leaving him all alone in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic landscape. We don't know anything about what has happened to humanity as the game begins, but little bits and pieces are revealed as you make your way through the game, both through elements of the environment that can be examined and "memory items" that allow you to hear the final thoughts of the world's former inhabitants when you take a rest to restore your HP and save.

Seto isn't completely alone in the world, despite initial appearances. Very early on, he encounters a silver-haired girl and proceeds to spend the next few hours (and, I'm guessing, going by my experiences so far, most of the game) chasing after her in an attempt to find out who she might be. Along the way he encounters some sort of sentient computerised backpack with mild self-esteem issues called PF, a not-quite-human person called Crow, a dead little girl with a penchant for cheating at hide-and-seek… and I don't doubt there will be more strange and wonderful characters to encounter before the story has reached its conclusion.

It's been a really interesting ride so far. The combat kind of sucks, but it's a relatively minor part of the game, and the "survival horror" elements of having limited inventory space and weapons that have finite usage before they break add a bit of tension to the experience. It's not been particularly scary so far, despite the presence of ghosts and whatnot, but it has been thought-provoking and emotional, even just four or so hours in. The emphasis appears to be more on the general atmosphere and feelings of loneliness than on outright trying to scare and disturb the player, and I'm fine with that.

There's a lot of subtle charm to the game, too. Seto is just a kid forced to find his own way in the world well before he would have normally had to, and while he handles his task with a certain degree of maturity that you might not expect from someone whose voice hasn't broken yet, his childlike qualities come through in game elements such as the automap which, rather than being a bland, clinical but clear affair, is presented as childish scribblings, complete with notes and doodles about scary and awesome things you've come across in your travels. Likewise, the baffling inclusion of lots of cats around the game world who can be tempted to come and play with you through the use of a cat toy makes for a welcome break from hitting ghosts with improvised weaponry, or trying to track down that one key you really need right now.

There's clearly a lot about Fragile Dreams I don't yet understand. But I'm very glad I chose to take a chance on it and see what it was all about; it's shaping up to be a fascinating, deeply memorable experience. I hope it manages to keep this up until the end.

The post 1891: Fragile Dreams appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

FFXIV's endgame raid is split into three main parts. The Binding Coil of Bahamut (which consists of Turns 1 to 5) is mostly — mostly — trivial in terms of difficulty these days owing to the fact that the average gear level of a level 50 character who plays a reasonable amount each week now exceeds the level these encounters were designed for by a considerable margin. As time has gone on, The Binding Coil of Bahamut has also been "nerfed" in terms of mechanics — i.e. made easier — and parties challenging it are now given a substantial buff to their HP, damage dealt and healing when they walk in, though those looking for a bit more of a challenge can optionally turn this buff off.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut reaches its conclusion with Turn 5, a notoriously difficult fight that sees a party of eight taking on Twintania, a very angry dragon. Turn 5 remains a challenge for many groups to this day not because Twintania is particularly difficult to kill in terms of her HP and damage — the aforementioned gear issue here makes the encounter much easier than it once was — but because everyone in the group needs to have a solid understanding of most of the fight's mechanics in order to succeed. Again, the power creep has meant it's easier to recover from critical errors, but if you don't know how to deal with her notorious Divebomb attack, for example, you're going to die and quite possibly take the rest of the group with you.

The Binding Coil of Bahamut is followed up by the Second Coil of Bahamut, which consists of Turns 6 to 9. These are significantly more challenging, even with the "Echo" buff to player HP, damage and healing. Mechanics are more unforgiving — though again, a number have been nerfed over time — and they're still not exactly the sort of encounters you can pick up and expect to coast your way through without knowing anything about them. Groups need to work together and be able to communicate effectively in order to pass through these challenges, and it all comes to a head with Turn 9.

Turn 9 remains notorious as one of the hardest fights in the game, even with the Final Coil of Bahamut subsequently being added after it. It proves to be a considerable roadblock to many groups, and indeed our party has been working on beating it for many weeks now.

The reason why it's such a challenge — even more so than Turn 5 — is because of its extreme complexity. In this one fight, which takes in the region of 10 minutes to complete, there are roughly as many mechanics as you'd see in at least four separate boss encounters earlier in the game. There is a lot to learn, and it feels like an insurmountable challenge the first time you jump in, but as our group have proven tonight, taking it a step at a time and practicing together whenever we get the opportunity allows you to eventually reach success.

And my God what a wonderful feeling it was as that HP bar dropped to 0% tonight. We'd had several close calls earlier in the evening — first a 9%, then a 10%, then a 6% — but there was no guarantee that we were going to beat it. But beat it we did, and many celebrations were had; now we have until June to make it through the Final Coil of Bahamut before the expansion pack Heavensward comes along and gives us an entire new raid set in Alexander to take on.

I'm looking forward to the challenge. The feeling of jubilation at finally defeating this notoriously difficult boss this evening is unlike pretty much anything I've ever experienced in any other game — and at least part of that comes from the game's multiplayer element. It wasn't just my victory, it was our victory. We worked together, we practiced, we communicated, and eventually we prevailed. And it felt great.

We poked our head into the first turn of Final Coil this evening, but didn't get anywhere, as expected. That's an adventure for another day! In the meantime, here's our clear video:

The post 1890: Nael deus Defeated appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Shinovi Versus is an underappreciated little diamond in the Vita library. It's an enjoyably over-the-top 3D action game vaguely in the vein of Dynasty Warriors (in that in a number of levels you hack and slash your way through hundreds of enemies, and your combo count frequently reaches the thousands) but also providing a fun take on fighting in 3D.

There are two… well, maybe three core appeal elements when we're talking about Senran Kagura, and Shinovi Versus in particular. The first is, of course, the fanservice element; let's not beat around the bush here, it's the reason the series exists in the first place. The girls are pretty, their boobs are jiggly, the costumes are sexy and as you fight, they get ripped. Despite the girls technically being ninjas and using a variety of rather painful-looking implements to battle one another, no-one ever seems to really get hurt or killed; the main damage anyone suffers is to their pride, since a well-timed Ninja Art at the conclusion of a bout can cheerfully whip off the underwear of your opponent, leaving them in no doubt as to who is the winner.

But anyway. The two main things I wanted to talk about were the narrative and the mechanics. The narrative I've already talked about in past posts: considering the game is regarded by outsiders as little more than gratuitous fanservice, if you're unfamiliar with it you may be surprised to note that the series features some excellent characterisation, including characters with genuine development and growth over the course of their stories. It's a game that's not afraid to juxtapose the serious and the absurd, either; while the main storylines for each of the four "schools" involved in the overall plot are fairly serious in tone, the girls' individual stories are more light-hearted in nature, leading to some ridiculous situations. It effectively allows us to see the cast "at work" and "at play", and it gives us a pretty good picture of who they all are as people.

Mechanically, the game is a delight. The control scheme is simple to understand, but the depth comes from the wide variety of characters and how very differently from one another they all handle. Some are friendly to simple button-mashing — Asuka is a good example, particularly once she unlocks her spinny death tornado move — while others demand mobility, observation, timing and sometimes unconventional tactics. By the end of your time with the game, you'll have at least one "favourite" character, both in narrative terms and mechanically, too.

It's a game bursting with content. There are four separate "episodes" to the story, each focusing on a different main cast, and each has a different tone. The scenes involving characters returning from Senran Kagura Burst on the 3DS are heartwarming, while the scenes involving new characters give us a good idea of what makes the newcomers tick. Depending on which order you choose to play the stories, you'll meet all the characters from several different perspectives, and between all these angles — and side missions like the girls' individual stories — you'll get a solid understanding of who everyone is and how they all relate to one another.

Not bad for a fanservice-heavy hack and slash. I'm pleased to be rediscovering it now that Criminal Girls is done and dusted, and looking forward to spending some time with the characters I don't know all that well yet.

The post 1889: My Dear Ninjas appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As such, it surprises me that despite having had a Backloggery account for about two years now, I've not done a whole lot with it. It is, I'd say, an ideal means of both tracking your game collection and your progress through beating as much of it as humanly possible — although the site isn't without its flaws.

The main issue with any sort of curation system like this, be it a database you set up yourself (which, to be honest, is pretty much what Backloggery is; the site simply provides an easily understandable front-end for your particular chunk of said database) or a pre-built solution is that it takes time to set things up appropriately. Backloggery, for example, is not at all useful until you've manually added each and every game in your collection to your account, a process which is not at all automated, and which requires you to go through, enter the title (without suggestions), choose the platform and any other pertinent details you might want to add.

I spent a bit of time playing around with it today and despite the initially daunting prospect of inputting the games I own and haven't yet beaten — there are a lot of them! — I actually started finding it quite fun after a while. What I particularly like about Backloggery is the ability to add your own personal flavour text to your database entries: you can add both a "progress note" describing what you're working on in the game at any given moment, or what you hope to achieve in it, and a review (complete with star rating) for some more detailed thoughts once you feel comfortable enough to express your thoughts about it in a bit more detail. The latter option sensibly has a character limit, so you're forced to be brief in your thoughts; it's not a space for an in-depth critique, rather simply some personal, immediate reactions to the game and perhaps a link to some more detailed thoughts elsewhere if, as I often do, you feel the need to write in great depth about something you've really enjoyed.

My Backloggery account at present is not complete by any means, but I'm going to work on adding my collection to it piece by piece. It might, then, provide the incentive for me to work through some of these games and share my thoughts on them. And, in theory, the site acts as a sort of social network, too — though I only have one friend I know on there at present — so you can use it as a means of sharing your thoughts on games and perhaps convincing friends to try out some particular favourites you've discovered in the course of delving into your own backlog.

As I say, it's not the perfect solution for this sort of thing by any means, but its presentation is cute and the fact it's been around for a good few years now without turning into something complete shit means that it's unlikely to just disappear in a puff of smoke one day, leaving all the curators' hard work for naught. I'll be interested to start using it a little more regularly to see if it adds any value to my gaming life. If you're on there, feel free to add me to your "multitap" via the link above.

The post 1885: Backloggery appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's easy to write Criminal Girls off as an oversexualised mess of an RPG, with a gratutiously exploitative minigame in which you spank, electrocute, drip liquid on and tickle a series of young women posing in suggestive positions. And indeed, even with the "pink mist" censorship introduced in the Western release of the game (and the loss of the girls' voices in these sequences) these sequences are pretty clearly sexual in nature: everything from the poses they're in to the provocative outfits they wear and their reactions after you've, uh, finished — all point to something that while it isn't outright explicit, is certainly rather close to the, if you'll pardon the expression, bone.

But, as with most material of this nature, it bears further exploration, and doing so reveals something a lot more interesting. Why are these sequences there in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, you're expected to complete them in order to unlock the girls' new abilities through five different "tiers", with each tier involving a slight variation on the touchscreen-based minigame. From a narrative perspective, you're "motivating" these girls — who are dead and in Hell, but being given a second chance — to try harder in their struggle for redemption, though in the original Japanese script, still audible through the Japanese-only voice acting, the wording was おしおき (oshioki: punishment) rather than "motivation". If we're being super-picky, we're not actually spanking, electrocuting, dribbling on and tickling the girls themselves; in the minigame you're removing "temptations" from their bodies via various means, and the removal of these "temptations" allows them to take a step closer to being free of sin and becoming "Blameless".

Interestingly, the girls' reactions to this treatment changes significantly throughout the course of the game. Early on, they react with fear and anger when you approach them with the intention of indulging in some "motivation time" and clench their teeth in pain afterwards; by the end of the game, however, they're starting to sound like they're actually enjoying themselves, even going so far as to praise you in some instances.

This can be interpreted in a number of different ways, not all of them positive, but given the themes of the game's narrative as a whole, it's pretty apparent that this is symbolic of the growing level of trust between these "delinquents" and the player-protagonist self-insert character. By the end of the game, they trust the player-protagonist completely, and are aware that the removal of their temptations brings them closer to redemption, in turn making them more powerful and more likely to succeed. A turning point in the story comes with all of the main cast confronting the sins that landed them in Hell in the first place, and it's only through the bonds of trust they've built between one another and with the player-protagonist that they're able to make it through this experience unscathed.

I'm yet to see how the story reaches its several conclusions, but I'm very interested to find out. It has been, for sure, one of the most unusual role-playing games I've played for a long time, both in gameplay and narrative terms, and one that I feel I'll be remembering for quite some time after it's left my Vita.

And no, not just for the kinky pictures.

The post 1881: Path to Redemption appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Happy to reach another weekend, even though the concept is relatively meaningless for me at present. I'm still on something of a PAX comedown, I think; I had such a great time over in Boston that coming back to the stark realities of my current situation was somewhat… jarring, hence yesterday's frustration. Onwards and upwards, though, I guess. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company is being fun at the moment. It seems that everyone has had the same idea as me — that they want to level all of the classes to 50 before the release of the expansion Heavensward in June of this year — and thus there are lots of people playing jobs they don't normally play in lower-level dungeons. It's fun to see people play stuff they're less familiar with, and it's also fun to get to know some of the other classes that I haven't tried out quite so much.

Today I've been playing a bit of Warrior, which is a tank class, and Bard, which is a DPS class with some support elements. I'd held off on levelling Warrior in particular because I couldn't think how it would feel that different from Paladin, which is my "main" class at present. It does have a distinctly different feel, though; just the animations and sound effects make this axe-wielding job feel a lot more cumbersome and hard-hitting than the relatively nimble, graceful-feeling swordplay of Paladins. The cooldown between skills is still the same, but it's surprising quite what a difference just those elements make. It's a more complex job overall, too, with a lot more possible actions to take at any given moment. Paladin is mostly about trying to mitigate damage as much as you can; as Warrior, you have a bit more flexibility and can put out some eminently respectable damage just by yourself. That flexibility means that there are a lot more abilities you use a lot more often, however; I'm not sure I love it, yet, but it's interesting to see the contrast, and it gives me hope that Dark Knight will provide a unique experience again despite being another tank class.

Bard, meanwhile, is a joy to play, and a big contrast from Black Mage, my main DPS class to date. Bard's ability to move while attacking is a complete change from the fixed-in-place heavy artillery nature of Black Mage, and it's a lot of fun. Playing Bard feels very "technical", for want of a better word; there's lots of keeping an eye on your abilities and triggering the appropriate ones at the right time. There's also a lot more "weaving" than other classes — i.e. slipping in extra skills that don't use the "global cooldown" timer between your regular attacks — which makes for some satisfying improvised combos rather than the more fixed sequences that many other classes use.

There's still plenty more to do to get to 50 — Warrior and Bard are both in the mid-30s so far, Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) is just level 15, as is Arcanist (which becomes Scholar and Summoner, arguably two of the most complex classes thanks to their use of pets) and I'm yet to try Lancer (later Dragoon) at all. Then there's all the crafting and gathering stuff to do, as well… I'm going to be busy for a while, but I have confidence I'll be well-placed by the time Heavensward comes out. And then it will be time for all-new adventures!

And what adventures they'll be, if this preview video is anything to go by. Can't wait.

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Maid is a peculiar and hilarious game, heavily based on random generation. Of course, you can pick and choose the characteristics you want to customise things a bit more, but the true joy of character creation in Maid comes from rolling dice and seeing what on Earth happens.

For example, the character I rolled was a boyish lolita (who actually is a guy) with an overactive imagination who was born into a hereditary line of maids and who binge eats when she has a "stress explosion". Another character rolled by one of our number was a super-cool blind ninja maid who wields a raygun (called Ray Charles… work it out) and who is actually a traitorous infiltrator of the master's household. There's a huge combination of characteristics, which make for some hilariously complex and deeply flawed characters.

We've spent about two hours creating characters and haven't actually tried playing the game at all yet, but it's been an absolute blast. From what I understand, it can be played in three different ways: purely based on randomly generated events, as a more structured "adventure" or in a competitive manner where all the maid players are attempting to win as much "favour" from the master as possible.

I've ordered my own copy of the game, since when I went to try and pick it up today at PAX it had sold out — apparently it's been a popular product for the past few years ever since it first came to light. Fortunately, I found that Amazon had a copy for a pretty cheap price, so I'm looking forward to perusing it at my leisure when I get home. And perhaps — hopefully — convincing some of my more open-minded friends to give it a try at some point!

It's a fine example of the creativity that you'll come across if you head a little bit off the beaten track — not just in video games, but also in tabletop games and other media, too. It's a gloriously chaotic game that doesn't take itself anywhere near as seriously as some of the more established tabletop role-playing games — not that that's anything negative in itself, but sometimes you don't want the hardcore "weight" of a Dungeons and Dragons and just want to play something a little… ridiculous. And Maid certainly appears to cater to that.

Can't wait to give it a proper try.

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Triple Triad, for the uninitiated, was a card game introduced in Final Fantasy VIII. It's a very simple game, although optional advanced rules can make it surprisingly brain-melting, particularly when they're used in combination. And it's a flexible enough game that, by playing around with these rules, a player with a "better" deck of cards isn't necessarily always going to beat someone with "bad" cards.

For those who have never encountered the game, here's how it works: There's a 3×3 grid onto which you and your opponent take it in turns playing cards from a hand of five. (This means there will be one card left over at the end.) Cards have four numbers on them, corresponding to the four edges of the card. When you lay a card down and it "touches" the edge of another card (for example, you played a card in the middle-left space while there was already a card in the central space, meaning the right side of your card is touching the left side of the card already there) you compare the numbers. Under the normal rules, if the number you laid down is bigger than the number that was already there, you flip the card and claim it as your own. (For example, using the situation above, if the card in the middle had a "4" on its left edge, and the card you laid had a "5" or higher on its right edge, you'd claim the middle card.) Whoever has the most cards under their control when the board is filled wins. Simple.

The advanced rules fall into several different categories. Variations on "Open" mean that you and your opponent reveal either three or all of your cards from the outset, allowing for a degree of forward planning. "Random" disallows you from using the five-card decks you've built yourself, instead pulling five random cards from your complete collection. "Order" forces you to play the cards from your deck in the order you put them in there. "Chaos" forces you to play the cards from your deck in a random order. "Reverse" flips the normal rules on their head, meaning smaller numbers now beat larger numbers — this rule makes a "bad" deck suddenly very good. "Ascension" causes cards of the same type to inflate in value the more of them that are placed on the board. "Same" allows you to claim cards if you put down a card and the numbers on two of its sides match two cards already on the table. "Plus" is a similar rule, only instead of matching numbers, the two sides must add up to the same value. Both "Same" and "Plus" can set off combos, too, allowing you to potentially take the whole board in one go with a lucky or well-planned move.

As you can imagine, combining these rules can make for a game with a surprising amount of flexibility, and change the feel of it altogether. But even in its basic form, Triple Triad is a surprisingly compelling little diversion, and the more you play it, the more cunning little strategies you'll spot and be able to adopt. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to challenge various non-player characters around the game world to a game — who may potentially give up some rare cards if you beat them — and also to play other players. In the latter case, you have the option of customising the rules to your liking, or throwing caution to the wind and having a "Roulette" match in which the rules are determined randomly. There are also regular tournaments — the first one started today — in which you have a set period of time in which to complete (and hopefully win!) as many games as you possibly can in order to score points and get yourself on the leaderboard.

It's an extremely well fleshed-out version of a game that was a lot of fun to play against the computer in Final Fantasy VIII; it's even more fun to be able to challenge friends to a game thanks to Final Fantasy XIV's massively multiplayer nature.

And if nothing else, it's something to do while waiting in a queue for a dungeon…

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As previously noted, it's a long and gruelling — though not especially difficult — process.

First you have the quest to acquire the weapon in the first place. This is an involved, multi-part affair that involves tracking its timeworn and weathered form down — usually from the depths of a monster-infested area — and then setting about finding the materials that master weaponsmith Gerolt needs to restore it to its former glory. Rather inconveniently, these materials can only be found in the somewhat uninviting lairs of Eorzea's Primals Ifrit, Garuda and Titan, so having already floored these massive enemies once during the course of the main story, you're now tasked with killing them again. This used to be a genuinely challenging task, back when the base Relic was pretty much the best weapon you could get in the game, but it's become almost trivial now thanks to how well-geared the vast majority of the level 50 population is now. There's also a dungeon to run (Amdapor Keep, which was the hardest four-player dungeon in the game when it launched, but which again has now become somewhat trivial) and two more boss fights against a Chimera and a Hydra that are new to the Relic questline.

After all this — and a bit of testing out the unfinished form of the weapon on unsuspecting members of Eorzea's beast tribes — you're finally blessed with an item level 80 weapon, which can be upgraded to item level 90 and made to glow in a rather fetching "this is special!" manner through the judicious application of Thavnairian Mist, a rare concoction that can only be acquired by exchanging Allagan Tomestones with collectors of rarities. Tomestones are a special currency rewarded for completing content at level 50 — since you no longer get experience points at this level, having reached the level cap, they form the basis for progression beyond this point. Pretty much anything that involves other people will reward you with Tomestones, be it four-player dungeons, eight-player Trials, twenty-four player raids or the extremely tough challenges of the Binding Coils of Bahamut.

This form of the weapon, known as Zenith, used to be pretty much the best weapon you could get outside of downing Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut — a tall order even for well-geared players even today — and acquiring one of the Allagan weapons. But as time went on and the game gradually expanded with each new patch, so too did the Relic quest.

It began with Atmas, a step which, for many, proves an insurmountable obstacle, but which sets the pace for the amount of commitment required to finish this lengthy process. Atmas are small crystals containing the souls of fallen warriors, and can be acquired randomly by participating in FATEs — public events that occur every so often in each of the game's zones — and completing them successfully. There are twelve Atma in total to collect, meaning you'll have to visit twelve different zones to participate in FATEs. In game terms, this step was designed to get level 50 players helping out with low-level FATEs, since a tweak to how experience points were awarded in the game's early days saw people turning to instanced dungeons for quick experience points rather than wandering around out in the open world helping one another.

The cruel twist in the Atma step was that once you'd acquired all twelve Atma, all that happened when you "upgraded" your weapon was that it lost its cool glow from the Zenith step. Its stats didn't change at all. But it was still an important step, because it made your weapon ready for the gradual upgrade process that came next.

By exchanging further Allagan Tomestones with a collector in Mor Dhona, you could acquire books telling tales of the "Zodiac Braves", and you're told that by recreating these tales of derring-do using your Atma Relic, you can improve it considerably. What this boils down to is a set of objectives — 100 specific monsters to kill, three specific dungeons to complete (or, more accurately, three specific bosses to beat), three specific FATEs to participate in and three specific levequests (short, repeatable quests) to complete. You had to do this nine times in total; each completed book rewarded you with a small increase to the stats on your Atma weapon, so it gradually improved over time. When all the books were completed, your Atma weapon regained its glow — a more substantial one this time — and became its Animus form.

Next up, you're told that you can improve the weapon further — and, crucially for this step, customise it — by infusing materia into a "sphere scroll". In order to do this, you need the sphere scroll itself (which costs yet more Tomestones), seventy-five pieces of Alexandrite as a catalyst to infuse the materia into the scroll, and at least seventy-five pieces of materia of the appropriate types to give your weapon the stats you want. Alexandrite can be acquired by participating in FATEs, bought with Allied Seals acquired by beating the giant monsters of The Hunt, or by digging it up using Mysterious Maps acquired from a strange old lady in Mor Dhona who appears to have been using them to clean her kitchen. The more materia you attach to the scroll, the higher the chance that the infusion will fail; fortunately, you only lose the materia if this happens, while the Alexandrite remains in your possession. Your reward for successfully infusing seventy-five points' worth of stats into the sphere scroll? Your Relic's Novus form, which has a somewhat more imposing glow.

For a while, again, Novus was the pinnacle of what you could have in terms of weaponry, and it was particularly powerful due to the fact that you could customise it. The materia to do this — particularly for popular stats like Determination (which increases damage) and Critical Hit Rate (which increases the likelihood an attack will deal considerably more damage than usual) — didn't come cheap, and the only other alternative was to "Spiritbond" equipment by using it to defeat monsters either in the world or in dungeons, then turn this equipment into materia, with random chance determining whether you'd get the kind of materia you wanted or a useless alternative. Thus, Novus was a long, difficult and expensive process for many, but taking the time to complete it would give you a strong weapon that would see you through pretty much anything the game could throw at you.

Then came another step. By "soulglazing" your relic and using it to collect soul energy — known colloquially as "light" owing to the fact your weapon glows with varying levels of intensity when it acquires this energy — you could make it more powerful still, improving the stats you'd infused into the Novus by a set amount according to the combinations and amounts you put in. In order to acquire light, you simply had to do pretty much anything that involved other people — dungeons, trials, even FATEs. Light was acquired at a very slow rate, however, and many resorted to running the same things over and over again for hours at a time in order to gain light most effectively. In practice, however, you could gain light at a good rate simply by playing the game as you normally would, attempting to acquire Tomestones to gear up your armour to match your increasingly powerful weapon. Upon filling your Novus with light, you'd be able to turn it into its Nexus form, the ultimate incarnation of the Relic you found all that time ago, and a weapon that you've truly helped to make your own.

But your efforts don't end there. Through this whole process, you've been developing a relationship with both a scholar of these ancient weapons and a local master blacksmith, and it eventually becomes clear that it's possible to recreate the legendary weapons of the Zodiac Braves themselves — but in order to do so there is, unsurprisingly, a somewhat convoluted process involved that requires you to do the dirty work of four separate individuals who have what you need to complete the weapon, but who aren't about to give their prizes up quickly.

By far the most gruelling part of this phase is acquiring specific items from specific dungeons. These are drops similar to the Atma in that there's only a random chance of you acquiring them when you complete a dungeon, and no guarantees. Consequently, you may find yourself running one dungeon lots and lots of times in order to acquire one specific item; at the other end of the spectrum, however, sometimes you get lucky and acquire it straight away. It's unpredictable and, at times, infuriating, but oh so satisfying when you get what you need.

After completing this epic slog, you're rewarded with a brand new weapon, recreating the form of one of the Zodiac Braves' weapons and infused with the soul energy you collected using your Relic. (These Zodiac weapons take the form of iconic weapons from past Final Fantasy games such as Excalibur for a Paladin, Kaiser Knuckles for a Monk, Yoichi Bow for a Bard and so on.) This is the stage I got to tonight: I now have Excalibur and its companion Aegis Shield.

But there's one final step to go: embracing the weapon's apparent sentience and sense of will, and forging an unbreakable bond between the two of you. In order to do this, it's another light grind similar to that for the Nexus, but this time instead of having to collect it all in one weapon, you gradually fill up twelve "mahatma" with soul energy, and the process is considerably quicker than before. This is the final step of a quest that's been in the game since launch, and your reward is a weapon that is likely to be the absolute best piece of equipment you can get until the expansion Heavensward arrives later this year and makes all this work irrelevant. (Actually, that's not quite true; producer Naoki Yoshida has said that those who put in the work to complete this questline will have a leg-up on whatever comes next come Heavensward time. Thankfully.)

It's a slog, to be sure, and it's even something that a lot of players will find offputting and want nothing to do with — thankfully, there are numerous alternative means of acquiring weapons, so even if you're playing multiple classes you don't have to go through this epic grind for all of them — but by God it's satisfying to reach a milestone in. I've likened it before to the idea of "building your own lightsaber" in a Star Wars game — something which has never been given the gravity it deserves, even in the Star Wars MMO The Old Republic — and it's true. By the end of this process, your weapon, even though it's just a collection of numbers, is part of you and your play style, and an important part of your character as a whole; the unbreakable bond between character and weapon isn't just for lore reasons — you'll feel it yourself as a player, too.

So wish me luck as I proceed on the final chapter of the Relic quest; I'm hoping to have Excalibur's "Zeta" form before I head off to PAX later this week. We'll see if I'm successful!

The post 1868: A Relic Reborn, Again (and Again) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

We're starting to reach that point in Final Fantasy XIV now. It's still eminently possible for players to get from level 1 to level 50 and beyond and complete all the PvE (Player vs Environment, or regular cooperative) content without too much difficulty — though Second Coil and Final Coil are still an insurmountable barrier for all but the most skilled players — but that's not, by any means, all that there is to the game any more. In fact, there's been numerous different potential "career paths" in the game since it launched, and these have only continued to grow and expand with their own "endgames" as the game has blossomed over time.

There's crafting, for example. Serious crafters will have levelled all of the crafting classes from 1-50 to get all of the possible cross-class abilities, and will have worked on their equipment to get it strong enough to create the more difficult crafts. They'll have worked out a good skill rotation to use for crafting items — much like a high-level PvE player works out a suitable skill rotation to maximise their damage output — and they'll have their own goals in mind, be it making millions on the market board from producing the most desirable items, or simply being able to make cool stuff for their friends.

Then there's gathering; much like crafting, gathering has its own endgame with new equipment to acquire and more and more difficult-to-obtain items becoming available over time. There's less of a "skill rotation" element to this — although skills are still relevant — and these classes act as a good complement to their crafting counterparts.

Then there's desynthesis, which ties in with crafting: through desynthesis, it becomes possible to turn items back into their component parts, which can sometimes yield rare items which either sell for a decent amount of money or which can be used to produce desirable items. Levelling this skill is its own, separate, convoluted process from crafting, but it pairs well with the crafting classes.

Then there's PvP (Player vs Player) combat, which takes either the form of small four-on-four battles in a little arena, or large-scale multi-alliance battles on a large map. Opinions vary fairly wildly as to whether PvP is actually any good or not — and the queues to get in to it are frequently hellish — but there are dedicated players out there who know all about the PvP-exclusive abilities and have access to some of the cool-looking PvP-exclusive equipment.

And most recently, the Manderville Gold Saucer provides a couple of career options for adventurers who tire of the XP and Tomestone grinds: Chocobo racing and Triple Triad. Chocobo racing has its own complex metagame that would make an interesting standalone title in its own right, and Triple Triad likewise.

In reality, most Final Fantasy XIV players dabble in most of the above at one point or another, prioritising one thing above all others at any given moment. At present, for example, I'm prioritising getting my "Zodiac" weapon for at least one of my classes; after that, I'm intending on spending some serious time chocobo racing when I'm not attempting to take down Second Coil and, hopefully, subsequently, Final Coil.

There's a ton to do. And it's incredibly daunting. And I love it.

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And they've done a great job! Gold Saucer has plenty of activities to participate in — although I with they'd have put in a Final Fantasy VII-style Battle Square with increasingly challenging handicaps — and lots to aim for. Only trouble is, it gives a game that is already bursting with content even more long-term goals for people to fret over — though for a game designed to be played over the long term, I guess that's not really an issue.

Highlights so far are, of course, card game Triple Triad, last seen in Final Fantasy VIII, and the chocobo racing, which is far more fun than it has any right to be. The best thing about these two attractions is that even low-level players can enjoy them — you only have to have reached level 15 to go to the Gold Saucer, which is a nice change from a lot of the other content that has been released over time, which is primarily aimed at endgamers.

Triple Triad is a simple card game in which two players face off against one another on a 3×3 grid. Drawing from a hand of five cards each, players take it in turns to place cards in one of the cells on the grid. Each card has four numbers corresponding to its four edges. If you put down a card next to another card and the facing edge "beats" the card that is already there (i.e. it's a higher number), then you take control of the other card. Whoever has the most cards under their control when the grid is filled is the winner. There are numerous other optional rules, but the basic game is simple to understand, hard to master and extremely addictive — thanks in part to the collectible aspect of it, with cards coming from beating NPCs, beating specific bosses in dungeons and numerous other sources.

Chocobo racing, meanwhile, is implemented similarly to Final Fantasy VII. You don't directly control the chocobo so much as encourage it to do things; you can make it accelerate, which costs stamina, and determine its horizontal position on the track; you don't need to worry about steering around corners, however. You can pick up Mario Kart-style items to help yourself or hinder your opponents, and special tiles on the course can likewise help or hinder you. It's immensely competitive and a whole lot of fun, with progression completely separate from your character's main levelling. It's practically a whole metagame in itself; I'm looking forward to exploring it in depth.

The other attractions are fun, too. Simple timed button-press minigames see you hitting things with hammers and punching Gilgamesh in the face, and "Gold Saucer Active Time Events" (or "GATEs") take place regularly and involve large numbers of players at one time doing everything from platforming challenges to stealth missions and dance competitions. There's a lot to enjoy.

I'm happy that Gold Saucer has ended up being a lot of fun. It provides some welcome relief from the grind elsewhere — particularly at endgame — and has the scope to develop further in the future. For now, I'm looking forward to expanding my Triple Triad collection and rising through the ranks of the chocobo racing leagues… yeah, this game still has its hooks in me as deeply as ever.

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This is, as I've noted in previous posts, one of the toughest fights in all of Final Fantasy XIV. Up until the Final Coil of Bahamut launched with patch 2.4 a while back, this battle was effectively the "true final boss" of the game, demanding that all eight party members know their jobs well, can learn mechanics and know what to do when. Since Final Coil became a thing, it's been gradually made a bit easier, but it will still absolutely obliterate any party who goes in there unprepared thanks to more than a few instant-kill mechanics, plus some seriously hard hits from both the boss and the additional enemies that show up over the course of the fight.

It's been a strong test for our assembled group, but it's brought us together and helped us understand how we all play. I've been developing some strong tanking skills — they're demanded in this fight, particularly if you take it on, as we are, with just one tank — and that's been helping me play better elsewhere in the game.

It's been an interesting personal journey so far. When I first started playing FFXIV, I had a ready-made group of acquaintances to play with thanks to the fact that someone I knew from 1up.com and Twitter invited me to come along. I was still somewhat anxious about playing with people I didn't know, though, particularly if it was in content that was new to me. I chose a DPS class (Black Mage) because they're perceived as having the least responsibility, at least in the early stages of the game — in late endgame encounters, they have a lot more to do — and they're less likely to get everyone killed. I didn't like running things without at least one person I knew, and I was nervous about asking for help.

There are still times today when I don't like running with strangers — usually if they're the aggressive, unpleasant, rude, elitist type — but I'm much more confident about it. I'm also happy to jump in on the healer or tank roles — roles which have direct responsibility for ensuring the rest of the group doesn't get killed. Black Mage will always have a space in my heart, of course, but I'm spending a lot of my time tanking on Paladin at the moment, and really enjoying it; I don't know if it's my "main" as such — my Black Mage is technically further advanced thanks to its progress in the lengthy Relic weapon quest — but it tends to be my default choice when given the option these days.

Anyway. Exciting times are ahead, since on Tuesday patch 2.51 is released, and coming with it is the long-awaited arrival of Gold Saucer and Triple Triad. I'm looking forward to it a lot; after that, it won't be all that long until PAX East!

In the meantime, I guess it's back to jobhunting, though…

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The absolute best thing about it is its atmosphere. Although the in-game visuals are PSP-level pixel art (sharply contrasting with the high-resolution character portraits, battle graphics and other visuals), they're evocative and distinctive, and the individual sprites have a lot of character about them, particularly in idle animations. When combined with the music and background sound, the game has a wonderfully palpable sense of menace about it — entirely appropriate for a game set in the depths of Hell.

In fact, the atmosphere and presentation bring to mind another game: Corpse Party. Criminal Girls is a (relatively) traditional RPG compared to Corpse Party's visual-novel-that-looks-like-an-RPG nature, of course, but in terms of atmosphere the two are quite similar. There's a sense that something unpleasant could happen at any moment, and a lovely juxtaposition between the often light-hearted banter between characters and the unpleasant things that are going on around them.

The characters keep things interesting, too. At the beginning of the game, you don't know anything about them, aside from their personalities. Initially, there's Kisaragi, who is seemingly full of rage and obsessed with materialism; there's the shy, childish Alice, who is one of the most adorable characters I've ever had in my party in any game ever; there's the determined, tomboyish Sako; and there's the obviously older, man-hating Ran. As the game progresses, additional girls join the group, and they each have their own distinct personalities — and, presumably, dark pasts — to discover.

The setup is immediately intriguing. Why are these girls in Hell? Why are they getting a chance to redeem themselves? Why have you been brought in to lead and "motivate" them? What do you get out of the whole situation? (Aside from being able to perv at the girls in a variety of costumes while you spank, electrocute and do various other S&M-ish things to the "temptations" that infest their bodies, of course, which is probably reward enough in itself for many people.)

I don't know the answers to any of these questions yet, but I'm enjoying the process of discovery. And this is one thing Criminal Girls does well. The dungeons may be somewhat blandly designed, but it's satisfying and fun to explore them and find their hidden treasures. Discovering how new skills work after a successful "motivation" session is enjoyable and interesting — particularly with the game's idiosyncratic battle system, in which you simply take suggestions from the girls rather than micromanaging them. And discovering more about what is shaping up to be a very interesting cast of characters is providing plenty of incentive for me to want to push onwards and find out the truth.

I'm enjoying it a lot, then. It's keeping me entertained enough that I now have copies of both Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 and Hyperdevotion Noire — both highly, highly anticipated games for me — and haven't yet popped them in my Vita for even a quick look yet. And I fully intend to see it through to the end before I indulge myself in more Neptunia than I know what to do with!

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So what did I do today? Well, I played my new piano a bit — I dug out a Mozart sonata I haven't played for literally years and took the first movement for a spin; it wasn't perfect, but I was surprised how much of it I remembered in detail — then applied for the aforementioned jobs and made a couple more videos. Again, said videos are experimental, somewhat rough-and-ready affairs, but I'm starting to get a feel for how it all works, and actually finding myself rather enthusiastic about producing them.

First up was a quick look at Mode 7's future sports game Frozen Cortex (formerly Frozen Endzone), which came out today on Steam after a period in Early Access.

Mic level ended up a bit high on this one, so the sound was a bit distorted, but at least you can hear me. (This is partly due to the fact that due to Frozen Cortex not using a "true" fullscreen mode and instead using a borderless window, I had to record using OBS rather than ShadowPlay, and haven't quite found the optimum levels for the former yet.) It's also marginally embarrassing to have video evidence of quite how incompetent I am at strategy games (that first conceded point where he just runs all the way down the side of the field because I was too dumb to notice there were no obstacles there… man) but I suppose messing things up makes for slightly more entertaining watching… perhaps? I don't know. Either way, it was nice to be able to get something immediately relevant out of the door.

Next up was a different type of experiment, this time with "pre-scripting" a video rather than delivering it off-the-cuff as I have been doing with the previous ones. Taking one of my articles on MoeGamer as a basis, I decided to record a video about the visual novel Kana: Little Sister, which is shortly getting an enhanced rerelease.

This took a bit longer to assemble as there wasn't any "game footage" per se — visual novels are tricky to make videos about as a result — and consequently I had to use the in-game artwork to put together a slideshow to accompany my narration. I then put some of the game's soundtrack in the background, and the result is what you see above. I'm quite pleased with the result; while just pretty much reading an article isn't necessarily the ideal format for Web video — particularly with shorter pieces — with a long-form piece like this it happened to work reasonably well. That and visual novels — particularly those with complex or challenging stories like Kana: Little Sister — are eminently suitable for in-depth exploration, commentary and criticism.

These videos may not go anywhere — and I haven't turned on ads/monetisation for them yet, as they don't have anywhere near enough views to warrant that — but if nothing else, producing these (and being able to do so quickly) is another string to my bow, and my YouTube channel will gradually become something of a portfolio that I can show off to people, perhaps even demonstrating the improvements I've made over time.

If you enjoy the videos, do please feel free to share them around a bit. I've only had a handful of views on each so far and it would be nice to know a few more people have seen them. Viewing figures aren't hugely important to me at the moment, but it'd be nice to see a bit of growth over time to see if there's any potential worth exploring here.

Now I'm off to bed; Criminal Girls awaits, but I'll save discussion of that for another day!

(Aside: just realised this is probably the only post on the Internet today that mentions Frozen Cortex and Kana: Little Sister within a couple of paragraphs of each other. Never say I don't push a few boundaries!)

The post 1858: A Day Like Today appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

First up, I took a bit of time to highlight a Steam Early Access game that I'm terribly fond of: Witch Beam's Assault Android Cactus.

(This video runs at 60fps if you whack it up to 720p resolution! Exciting! And, moreover, entirely appropriate for a video about Assault Android Cactus, since the devs are very pleased with how fast and fluidly it runs.)

I didn't find this too challenging to do because I know the game very well already. (In fact, several earlier takes of this video where the mic level was all wrong saw me talking for even longer than the 9-ish minutes in this version; I felt I should probably avoid breaking the 10-minute barrier, though.)

The video was recorded using nVidia's ShadowPlay software that I mentioned yesterday. It's supremely easy to use, though there are some slight limitations: it doesn't work in certain games that don't use "true" fullscreen or that don't use DirectX, and the audio recorded from the microphone is compressed somewhat, leading to the slightly "digital" sound of my voice you may be able to hear on the above video.

Still, I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

Next up, I decided to try something a little more experimental: a blind playthrough (i.e. trying it without knowing anything about it) of a game from my Steam backlog, in this case the indie platform puzzle game 1000 Amps, which I acquired from some bundle deal or other a good while back and promptly never played even once.

This turned out to be quite an interesting little game, and the blind playthrough with commentary was an enjoyable means of exploring it. I don't know if it makes particularly compelling viewing, but it was fun to sit there and talk about what I was thinking about and how it was making me feel as I was exploring and discovering it. It was kind of like sitting with a friend trying to figure something out for the first time, only the friend never said anything.

Actually, one thing I do quite want to try at some point is combining elements of the Squadron of Shame SquadCast, in which we discuss games in considerable depth, with this sort of thing. I feel going in "blind" but guided by someone who knows the game a bit better might make for some interesting discussions and an enjoyable format to explore. I shall put it to the relevant people and attempt to experiment with it while I find myself with a bit of time on my hands!

I fully intend to continue experimenting with these sorts of videos — and some other formats I have in mind, too — over the next few days and weeks. As I noted yesterday, I'm under no illusions that I'll be able to make any money out of these, but you never know what grows from the seeds of ideas. It's something I've been meaning to try for a while, and, well, no better time than the present, huh?

If you enjoy what you've seen here (assuming you watched them), do please feel free to share them around, like them, comment on them and whatever it is you kids do with the YouTube these days. There'll be more to come soon, and having now dipped my toe into this crowded marketplace, I'm actually pretty keen to get back to it, if only for fun.

The post 1857: Video About Vidya appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Criminal Girls drew some attention when it was first announced due to some seriously lewd scenes in which the player character "motivates" the titular girls through some touchscreen-based S&M play. It then drew some further attention when it was revealed that the localisation would seemingly obscure these scenes with pink fog and cut out the somewhat… suggestive voice acting. (As it happens, the voice acting is indeed gone, but as you progress the pink fog does fade away, revealing what's underneath.)

As so often tends to be the case with games that draw attention for their pervier elements, however, Criminal Girls has plenty of interesting stuff going on that doesn't involve spanking. It's a 2D, retro-style RPG of the 16/32-bit mould, and thus far — I'm only an hour or two in so far — it seems to be most intriguing.

At the game's outset, you, as the participant narrator-protagonist, find yourself newly employed by the forces of Hell and presented with a selection of young female "delinquents" who have the opportunity to be redeemed and resurrected if they can successfully pass the "four trials" and climb the tower in which they're incarcerated. It's your job to escort them on this journey and see where things go from there. Along the way, you'll fight monsters, solve puzzles and, as previously mentioned, indulge in a bit of naughtiness in the name of "motivation".

So far so Japanese. Thus far it's an intriguing setup, with the four initial girls not immediately revealing why they have been incarcerated or what their "delinquency" involved. There's also a suggestion early on that things are not quite going as expected in Hell, with the "convict" monsters showing up in places where they're not supposed to. Doubtless all will be revealed — in narrative terms, pervert — as the story progresses, and I'm interested to see how it goes.

What's probably the most interesting thing about Criminal Girls is its combat system. While nothing particularly fancy presentation-wise — in fact, it's one of the most visually bland combat systems I've seen, although the chibi representations of the girls are cute — the execution is the intriguing thing here. Unlike most RPGs, where you have the opportunity to micromanage what every party member is doing, in Criminal Girls you only have four options each turn, and that determines what the whole party will be doing. The available options are determined by which abilities the girls have learned through "motivation" sessions, and simply what they feel like doing on any given turn. Initially, the girls will simply refuse to do anything, but as they're motivated they'll unlock more and more abilities, and each turn it's simply a case of deciding which of the four suggestions the girls offer you is the most appropriate: do you go for an all-out attack with multiple members, or do you allow an individual to do something a little more special? So far it's simple, but I anticipate it becoming a very interesting system as the game progresses and more abilities open up.

I can't say a lot more about it yet as I've only played the opening section. I'm looking forward to discovering more about it, though; perviness aside (which I have absolutely no problem with, as you know) it's shaping up to be one of the more unconventional takes on the RPG genre I've played for quite some time.

The post 1855: Redemption appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Akiba's Trip is quite an unusual game, although perhaps not by Japanese standards. Combining elements of dating sims, visual novels, RPGs, brawlers and open-world action adventures, it all adds up to a curiously satisfying experience that, while relatively brief compared to some other games — my first playthrough took me about 20 hours, and that was with doing pretty much all of the available sidequests as well as a bit of fiddling around trying to level my skills up and collect some collectable things — proved to be highly enjoyable.

A highlight, as with many Japanese games, is the care and attention which has been poured into characterisation, both visually and in terms of writing. The localisation team at Xseed has to take some of the credit for the amount of personality the game has, too; as translations go, this is absolutely exemplary, remaining (so far as I can make out with my limited knowledge of Japanese) reasonably true to the original script while simultaneously incorporating plenty of cultural elements that will be familiar to Westerners.

A particular highlight is the main character, who is handled somewhat like the player's character in the Persona series, in that he doesn't speak out loud all that much — although he does have a couple of lines here and there, they're mostly confined to inner monologue — but the player is frequently given the option of how to respond to a particular situation. In many cases, the options given all lead to the same outcome, but the available choices are frequently hilarious; there are some real crackers towards the end of the game in particular, with my favourites being "It's dangerous to go alone! Take thi– I mean me!" and "I'm going to turn his dark utopia into a dark u-nope-ia!". (You kind of have to be there.)

These dialogue options do occasionally have a purpose, however, and that's the choice of route and subsequent ending that you get. Partway through the game, the story splits in a few different directions according to the various different heroines you encounter. I haven't seen how different these routes are yet — and I'm disappointed that there isn't a route for Kati Raikonnen, an incredibly endearing member of the main cast who, being "foreign", has a tendency to speak in what is represented as "Engrish" by the translation — but I'm keen to find out. It appears that this will be a painless process, too, since after clearing the game once you can turn on the option to specifically mark the dialogue options that will change affection levels between you and the heroines. Not only that, but there's no real need to do sidequests after your first runthrough — indeed, there's no real need to do sidequests at all if you don't care about trophies, though the money they get you is nice — and so you can zip through subsequent playthroughs pretty quickly, especially if you've taken the time to upgrade your weapons and clothing and carry them over into your New Game Plus.

I really wasn't sure what to expect when I booted up Akiba's Trip. I think I was expecting some sort of fairly straightforward brawler set in Akihabara, but what I actually got was far more akin to something like Yakuza. A surprising amount of depth, in other words, and an extremely well-realised setting that makes a great backdrop for the various stories within.

I hope we get the opportunity to revisit Akihabara at some point in the future; given that this version is actually the second game to bear the Akiba's Trip title — the first never made it out of Japan — that's not beyond the realm of possibility. I'll be there if and when it happens!

The post 1846: Akiba's Tripped appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Having a "normal" job kind of sucks like that, in that it's a lot harder to find the time to do the things you want to do or that you know you enjoy. I always manage to find time to write this blog each day, of course — though sometimes it's late in the evening when I publish something, and sometimes that something is a barely coherent mess — but keeping MoeGamer up to date was proving to be somewhat more difficult, at least partly because of the expectation I'd set for myself that everything I put on there would be erring on the slightly more long-form side of things rather than quick, snappy posts. (I'm firmly of the belief that there are plenty of people on the Internet who are capable or reading more than 250 words at a time, and it saddens me to see so many sites dumbing themselves down to cater to people with some sort of attention-deficit disorder.)

That dumbass IGN JRPG article from the other day (which I think I've already linked to more than enough; check out my response on MoeGamer to find out more) spurred me into action, though; I wasn't going to let such an ill-informed piece slide, so I guess I should be thankful to Colin Moriarty for that if nothing else.

From writing that piece, though — which was actually, I must confess, adapted from something I'd written a few months back but never gotten around to publishing — I felt the old bug biting again. I enjoy writing about games; not necessarily for profit, pageviews or comments, but purely for the enjoyment of expressing myself about things that I love. I have no particular desire to be a professional games critic or journalist any more — not now I've experienced firsthand how shittily many of us get treated, and certainly not now that the whole GamerGate situation has put the games press as a whole under more intense scrutiny than ever before — but I do still like writing about games, and I enjoy it when people stumble across my sites for whatever reason, like what I've written and decide to say hi. A number of people have dropped by either here or MoeGamer recently and said that they miss my work on USgamer; I'm happy to hear that, because it means that what I was trying to do with my JPgamer column paid off in at least a small way: it gave an often-ignored, often-ostracised subsection of the gaming community something that they could feel like was written for them. And I can say that with some confidence, because I count myself among that subsection of the gaming community, and I wrote those pieces — and indeed everything on MoeGamer — for me.

Going forward, then, I hope to be able to post at least one or two things on MoeGamer a week. I'm not going to attempt to stick to any sort of schedule nor beat myself up if I don't manage to post something — I'm not trying to make it into a business or even make a bit of pocket money from it — but I am going to use it as a place to post my thoughts about games I've enjoyed or am currently enjoying. And I hope other people will continue to enjoy it in that respect, too.

The post 1844: Back in the Game appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Akihabara is a popular setting for a lot of visual novels, games and anime because it's directly relevant to those who are engaging with the medium in question. Akihabara is the spiritual home of Japanese games, anime, manga and all other aspects of moe and otaku culture. It perhaps makes sense to set a Japanese adventure-role-playing-beat-'em-up-type-thing (Akiba's Trip) there, much as it makes sense to set a visual novel about the Internet, urban legends and all manner of science fictiony goodness (Steins;Gate).

But what about other places? Big American cities get a lot of love — New York in particular, but we've also seen places like Chicago and San Francisco come up a few times. If a game ends up being (at least partially) set in England, it'll inevitably be in London, of course. But, as I'm fond of telling visitors to this fair isle (people I know, obviously; I don't just sit at the airport arrivals line and tell foreign strangers they should go outside the M25 once in a while), there's a lot going on in other places.

That, of course, got me thinking what something like Akiba's Trip might be like were it set in, say, sunny Southampton instead of Akihabara. Southampton is not, of course, quite the same sort of otaku Mecca as Akihabara, but there are plenty of nerdy hangouts, and the historical side of the city could make for some interesting situations.

The main street of Southampton is long and wide; ideal for large-scale battles against armies of Synthisters. It often features market stalls just ripe for flinging an assailant through in dramatic fashion, and plenty of opportunities for environmental attacks such as making inventive use of a slushie machine or a curry hotplate. Its centrepiece is the shopping centre WestQuay, which is large and interesting enough to form a good interior setting: there are plenty of shops to go in, many of which sell clothes (acquiring various outlandish — and not-so-outlandish — outfits is a key part of Akiba's Trip) and the multiple levels would seem ripe for some Resident Evil-style environmental puzzles as ways up and down are blocked off in various ways, and you're forced to brave the horrors of, say, John Lewis in order to make your way down into the depths of the underground car park where otherworldly horrors await you.

All right, yes, I have let my imagination run away with itself a little bit here — and I must confess, any time I've been into town on a Saturday I have fantasised on more than one occasion about slamming someone into a slushie machine, though never, I might add, acted on it — but it just goes to show, really, that you can make pretty much anywhere into an interesting setting to do something in. So why do we always find ourselves taken back to the same places over and over again?

Perhaps it's the fact that they're universally recognisable. Perhaps it's the aforementioned relevancy angle. Or perhaps it's just laziness.

The post 1842: Soton's Trip appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba's Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.

One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba's Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct "chapters", each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)

If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba's Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I've found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.

Okay, Akiba's Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can't cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go "in" tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it's fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.

This isn't even getting into the meat of the game, though: there's a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like "Synthister" creatures; there's plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there's an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.

Plus, why on Earth wouldn't you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers?

The post 1840: Further Tales from Akihabara appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Akiba's Trip is a game that proved to be notorious for two reasons: one, that supposedly, it was a game about beating up girls and pulling their clothes off; and two, it features the transphobic slur "trap" used for its intended purpose, i.e. to insult a transgender person.

Both of these things are accurate; however, as is usually the case with this sort of thing, the fact that they were focused on by loudmouthed critics almost to the exclusion of everything else about the game obscured the fact that the other 99% of Akiba's Trip is a very interesting, ambitious experience indeed, and a game very much worth playing. Not to mention the fact that both of the heavily criticised elements can be fully justified through the game's narrative context.

In Akiba's Trip, you play you, assuming you're a floppy-haired male anime protagonist. (After clearing the game once, you unlock the ability to play as other character models, so from that point onwards you can play as a lady if you so desire; canonically, however, the hero is male.) After answering a seriously sketchy-sounding job ad about taking part in a drug test in exchange for as many rare anime figures and other merchandise as you can handle, you find yourself turned into a Synthister, a man-made vampire with superhuman strength and the ability to absorb "life energy" from people around you. While Synthisters aren't vulnerable to crosses and garlic like "real" vampires, they are still extremely sensitive to sunlight, however, with something of a propensity for exploding into a cloud of dust if too much of their bare skin is exposed to the elements.

I'm sure you see where this is going.

In short order, you're rescued from your precarious situation by another Synthister called Shizuku, and you make your way back to your group of plucky gamer buddies who hang out in a cool bar run by an old dude everyone calls "Pops". From here, you're tasked with investigating the Synthister threat as well as helping out the locals of Akihabara, primarily by either finding things in the district or by beating up people until you can pull their trousers off: the game's combat system is primarily about damaging clothing until it's in a state where you can whip it off, rather than whittling down a more conventional health bar. In order to defeat most enemies, you need to remove their headgear along with their top and bottom clothing. Interestingly, in contrast to something like Senran Kagura, a game which also has a heavy emphasis on clothing damage, the "strip" mechanic in Akiba's Trip is unsexualised; it's simply part of combat, and is, frankly, hilarious. (Not only that, but you'll find yourself stripping men as well as women; I believe my session earlier is the first time ever in gaming that I have defeated a man in full motorcycle leathers by diving head-first into his crotch, grabbing his helmet and flinging it away, then whipping his trousers off and tearing his jacket from his chest.)

Stripping aside, the big hook in Akiba's Trip is that it features a lovingly detailed rendition of the real-world Akihabara district of Tokyo in Japan — a Mecca for otaku of all descriptions for sure. Featuring recreations of real-life shops, some excellently authentic-sounding ambient sound and a pleasingly diverse array of random people wandering the streets, it's an enormously atmospheric game that it's a pleasure to just wander around and explore — particularly when you start to notice interesting things happening without any intervention from you.

I was searching for some street thugs with Shizuku at one point, for example, and I decided to try and ask a suspicious-looking man in the street for directions. He responded that he "wasn't into dudes" and refused to talk to me. As I pondered what to do next, he then started to hit on Shizuku, who stood there patiently while he said his piece and then, marvellously, wound up one hell of a punch and socked him right in the face, flattening him. He then ran away crying. It was a beautiful moment that just happened to occur due to me being in the right place at the right time.

If there's one game that Akiba's Trip reminds me of so far, it's Yakuza. The lovingly crafted real-world environment; the blend of JRPG-style mechanics with action game brawling; the fact the game acknowledges the more unpleasant, seedier side of humanity without judgement. (The aforementioned "trap" comment, for example, comes in the context of a forum thread you read on your phone; said forum thread was clearly localised by someone who has spent a lot of time on real-world forums, since the text-based "dialogue" is some of the most convincing and realistic I've seen in an English localisation for a very long time — right down to the use, or lack thereof, of punctuation, and the way that anonymous people online are quite frequently complete shitheads to one another.) That and the endless stream of sidequests to complete that have nothing to do with the main story but provide a pleasing sense of "place" and "context" to the overall setting; the NPCs who are delighted to relieve you of your money through various scams; the strong characterisation.

I've only played a couple of hours so far, but already I like it a lot. I'm playing the Vita version, which has a few technological limitations, but is proving enjoyable regardless; I can imagine that the PlayStation 4 version would be a most enjoyable experience indeed, particularly with its additional features and enhancements.

The post 1837: A Trip to Akihabara appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Why? Because whenever I consider purchasing something, one of the first things I do is have a look at the user ratings and reviews and determine whether or not they're 1) genuine 2) worth listening to and 3) something that might need to make me reconsider or confirm my purchase.

Of course, user reviews are very much open to abuse. You only have to look at some of the more notorious examples on Amazon or Metacritic to see the system at its worst… although these incidents can often provide a certain degree of amusement. (There's at least one Twitter account devoted to amusing Amazon reviews alone.)

But when they work, they can be extremely useful — and every time I write one, I'm reminded how much I have always enjoyed reviewing things. Not necessarily critiquing them in depth or from any sort of theoretical perspective, but providing a simple, straightforward analysis of how much I liked something, how it made me feel, whether I think other people would like it and all that sort of good stuff.

It's also really fun to write a negative review, though it's also very easy to be extremely unfair when you're doing so, which is why I try and remain positive most of the time. (People are also more inclined to disagree with something negative than positive in my experience, too, and I really don't enjoy arguing with people.) I have made one fairly consistent exception over the years, though, and that's with mobile games that have been truly, truly awful, particularly those that have desecrated beloved franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park and SimCity. (Oh, hi, EA.)

But I've decided as a belated and rather lame resolution that I'm going to start making an effort to review things that I've bought, played, used, whatever. Because if I make use of user reviews for their intended purpose — to find out what the average Joe on the street thinks of something that I'm considering purchasing — then I'm sure other people will do too. And, not to blow my own trumpet too much, but I feel like I'm quite good at expressing myself about the things I do and don't like about something.

I give it a couple of weeks before I stop doing it, but for now it's a little something I can do to help make the Internet as a whole a slightly better place. I made a start this evening by reviewing HuniePop on Steam; see if you can spot my review if you're pondering whether to drop some cash on a pornographic puzzle game!

The post 1834: Rate Us Five Stars appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

HuniePop is rude. It's even rude in its "censored" incarnation on Steam, but the uncensored version (available via MangaGamer or the game's official website) is marginally ruder. (To be exact, the uncensored version features visible vaginas both with and without man-juice spooged all over them, while the censored version covers such disgraceful shame-holes with panties, but is more than happy to still depict women masturbating, boobs and posing in distinctly provocative manners.)

Naturally, the rude bits are what people have mostly been talking about with regard to HuniePop, but as with most games that happen to include sexual content, there's a lot more going on than just a few (admittedly well drawn and rather erotic) pornographic pictures. A few days I talked a little bit about my first impressions of the gameplay; since that time, I've played a whole bunch more and got a good feel for the game; all that I have left to do now is seduce the love goddess Venus and two additional "secret" characters before I have 100% completed it… just in time for a promised Valentine's Day update which is coming down the pipe.

HuniePop has evolved quite a bit over its development cycle. Originally pushed as a bit more of a "life sim" where you'd have to manage your time effectively, make money from part-time jobs and take part in numerous activities, it was gradually simplified into its current form. Part of me is a little sorry that the full-on life sim incarnation never saw the light of day, but having spent over 6 hours now playing the final release, I can say that I think they made the right decision. The gameplay is kept simple and enjoyable, and that is, at least in part, what makes it so addictive.

Even the match-3 puzzle gameplay has a surprising amount of depth to it. Match-3 is a hugely overused genre, but HuniePop puts enough twists on it to keep things interesting. There's the need to avoid harmful tokens, for example, and the fact that each girl in the game has a "favourite" token that is worth considerably more points than others. The main depth comes from the items you can take into a "date" puzzle, though; these range from increasing the likelihood that a specific colour or type of tokens will fall when you clear space on the grid, to immediately consuming tokens of a specific type or in a particular area. Given that each girl has her own preferences — and according to how you play the game, your character will have their own strengths and weaknesses, too — it's very important to take the right items in to a date, particularly when you're attempting to win over the somewhat more hesitant girls, who require a much higher score in the puzzle game to advance to the next relationship level.

There's another enjoyable twist on the match-3 puzzle gameplay once you get the girls up to 4 or 5 "hearts" of affection and take them out at night, too: they'll demand to come home with you and that you give them a right old good seeing to. At this point, all nuance goes out of the window, and all you have to do is simply match as many tokens as you can as quickly as possible — no items, no preferences, no harmful tokens — while your partner for the evening moans and groans in what is, frankly, an exceedingly erotic manner through your speakers. It's a complete shift in pace from the cerebral, strategic gameplay in the normal dates, and oddly, it actually does a pretty good job of reflecting the intensity and passion of a sexual encounter through pure gameplay. It's difficult to describe; it's something that will be very clear if you experience it, however.

I'm developing a real soft spot for the characters, too. As I noted in my previous post, there's not a lot of plot development, though the developers have taken the time to give each character a distinct personality and relationship to the rest of the world. Porn star Jessie, for example, turns out to be the mother of college student Tiffany, though they don't speak and they never mention each other by name; it's something you'll figure out by yourself as you learn the various pieces of information you can pick up about each girl. And while the game is essentially about making sure you say what each girl wants to hear rather than necessarily what you really feel, there is nothing stopping you deciding to pursue a monogamous relationship with your virtual waifu and shun all the others — or at least try and remain consistent in your responses. (Okay, you won't get far and you're arguably missing the point of the game, but the option is there.)

One particular highlight of the game is the love fairy Kyu, who introduces the game concepts to you at the outset of the game, and eventually becomes a dateable character in her own right once you successfully bed one of the other characters. Kyu is hilarious. She's the main source of the game's self-aware humour, since she's written to be fully conscious of the fact that she's a character in a dating sim, and that the whole situation is ridiculous. She also comes out with some brilliant one-liners over the course of the game and sounds a bit like Pinkie Pie, which makes it all the more adorable and amusing when she not-particularly-seriously berates you for buying her gifts "just because you want to fuck [her]".

I've enjoyed the game a lot and, having come this far, fully intend to 100% complete it in the next day or two. Politically incorrect it may be, but it's a whole lot more fun than getting mad about stuff on the Internet.

The post 1833: Sexy Puzzle Skills appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Final Fantasy II came to Western shores considerably after its original release; it wasn't until the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy Origins that we'd get to play it in English for the first time, but, like its predecessor, it's subsequently been enhanced and ported to a variety of different platforms. I've been playing the PSP version via the Vita, which, again like its predecessor, incorporates a bunch of extra content, though I'm yet to encounter any of it aside from the entrance to an ominous-sounding (and huge-looking) optional dungeon.

Final Fantasy II is thought of in somewhat mixed terms by many people, to put it politely. It's absolutely hated by others, and those who like it are in something of a minority. I'm one of them, though; it's an interesting game, and while its mechanics don't quite work as well as they could, it was a bold experiment whose systems we can still see at work today in games like The Elder Scrolls and its ilk.

Final Fantasy II's unique selling point was that it had no experience points and no levels. Instead, you levelled up individual skills and stats by making use of them. Want to get stronger? Hit things. Want to get better at casting spells? Cast more spells. Want to be able to take more damage? Take some damage. It's quite logical when you think about it, though it does tend to encourage a certain degree of gaming the system, and there's a number of glaring flaws in it, too, such as the fact that characters in the back row of your party (which one of them is in by default at the start of the game) will never take any damage except from things that affect the whole party, and thus their HP counts will be left trailing considerably behind the rest of the group. The game is also somewhat notorious for seemingly encouraging players to attack their own party members in the name of boosting their HP quickly.

The PSP version maintains this peculiar levelling system, but so far I haven't really encountered a major issue with it, and like the PSP version of Final Fantasy I, the pacing feels like it may have been tweaked slightly, though this is only my gut feeling rather than being based on any research. But it certainly feels like the game's been made to push you onwards rather than force you to grind; fight a number of battles, and your characters' HP totals will increase naturally, for example, even if they haven't taken any damage recently. You still need to make use of appropriate actions to build up your stats, but there's a certain degree of natural progression that comes from just playing the game.

The interesting thing about Final Fantasy II's system is that it essentially allows you to build your own characters — something that wasn't really possible in its predecessor aside from choosing which three of the four available spells for each magic level your White and Black Mages got to choose from — by naturally moulding them to fit your play style. Because of the flexibility of the system, this also means that you can create unstoppable, multi-talented characters who are strong, tough and capable of flinging devastating magic spells around when required. (In fact, the game's ultimate magic requires that your character has advanced in as many different areas as possible in order to power itself up.) In practice, though, you'll probably tend to find that the characters naturally evolve according to how you use them.

In my party, for example, I have protagonist Firion as a fighter/white mage type character, or probably a Paladin in Final Fantasy terms. He is good at fighting with swords and using shields, but is also able to cast White Magic spells such as Cure, Life and Protect. Several of these spells start off being next to useless — Protect often "misses", for example — so you need to get him to "practice" them in the field to make them worthwhile additions to your arsenal. Taking the time to do that is eminently worth it, however.

The other interesting thing about Final Fantasy II that is unrelated to its unusual progression system is the fact that it's so story-heavy compared to its predecessor. Final Fantasy I was essentially a case of "Bad shit is happening in the world! Go explore and stop it!" and little else; Final Fantasy II, meanwhile, has named characters, events, cutscenes and a genuinely interesting ongoing plot. It's not what you might expect from your typical NES-era game, in other words; and with its new coat of paint in its more recent PlayStation and PSP incarnations, it actually stands up pretty well as a modern RPG.

I'm enjoying it, in other words, but I still have a long way to go yet!

The post 1831: Second Fantasy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

HuniePop finally released this week, and I've been playing it a bit. And, although it's the sort of thing that will make the social justice dickparade froth at the mouth (and indeed already has been, from what I've heard) it is, in fact, a whole lot of fun.

Unlike many "dating sims", which typically go down the visual novel route, HuniePop is a combination of mechanics from Dead or Alive Xtreme and Puzzle and Dragons. In other words, you move from place to place, buy gifts for characters and interact with them in order to build up your relationship values and other stats, then play an enjoyable little match-3 puzzle game to determine how successful your date with the girl you've been interacting with was.

It's a simple idea, but it's handled quite nicely. There's not a lot of ongoing plot throughout the game, but the girls have all been given their own distinct personalities, and are all introduced through a short, amusing scene where they interact with one of the other cast members. The "Western" angle comes in when these distinctly anime-esque characters open their mouths: rather than adopting the usual anime tropes seen in this sort of thing (tsundere, imouto, kuudere and so forth) the characters are… well, very Western. And very human. And not necessarily immediately likeable.

Take the character Audrey as an example. Audrey is quickly set up to be the Queen Bitch of the cast when you're introduced to her by witnessing her yelling at her hairdresser (also one of the game's dateable girls) with a string of obscenities and frankly rather unreasonable behaviour. Then once you start chatting to her she continually puts you down as some sort of colossal douchebag that won't get out of her way (largely because, well, you're pestering her with inane questions, so it's sort of justified) and threatens to "punch you in the dick" any time she gets too hungry to even think about doing anything else.

The other girls are a little more approachable than the rather abrasive Audrey, but they each have their own interesting quirks, and their personality traits affect the puzzle part of the game to a degree, too. The coloured tiles you're matching in the puzzle sequences represent different character traits such as sexuality, flirtatiousness, talent and romance, and each girl responds particularly well to one and not particularly well to another, with bonuses to matches made in those colours you've spent some "Hunie" (acquired by talking to the girls and saying the "right" things) building up the relevant stats for. Later "dates" with the girls — the ones that have the potential to lead to naughty picture shenanigans — have very difficult target scores to obtain, so you'll have to take full advantage of these systems to be successful.

HuniePop is charming, cheeky, lewd, rude and a whole lot of fun. It doesn't give a fuck what people think of it, and I think that's great — although in a pleasing nod to inclusiveness, you can play the game with your character as either male or female, with the girls becoming homosexual if you choose the latter option. While it may not have the narrative depth or character development of a more visual novel-style approach to the dating game, it's a solid and enjoyable game in its own right, and I'm glad I Kickstarted it. I can see it providing a good few hours of entertainment yet.

The post 1829: Life with the Hunies appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Before the Fall released today, opening the final chapter on Final Fantasy XIV's 2.0 storyline and preparing to usher in the age of Heavensward. For those who have been following the game, you'll know that major version updates such as this one — updates that come every three months like clockwork — tend to include a whole host of exciting new things to do, and this one is certainly no exception. In fact, I think I'd go as far as to say it is the absolute best update Final Fantasy XIV has received since its (re)launch in August of 2013.

I haven't been through everything yet, but here are a few thoughts on what I have taken on so far.

The Wanderer's Palace (Hard)

Many FFXIV players have fond (and not-so-fond) memories of The Wanderer's Palace, since it's the first level 50 dungeon you get to run that isn't story-related. Back in the 2.0 days, before Roulettes and Challenges and all manner of other weekly bonuses, speedrunning Wanderer's Palace (or WP, in FFXIV player parlance) was a popular pastime as it was a quick and efficient means of earning the "Tomestones" used to purchase gear post-level 50. It was also noteworthy as being a dungeon that featured the iconic recurring Final Fantasy enemies the Tonberries — a popular creature owing to their extreme cuteness and propensity to inflict horrible, horrible violence on people with kitchen knives.

In the original WP, the Tonberries were the bad guys. You fought a bunch as you progressed through the dungeon, were pushed ever onwards by giant Tonberry Stalkers that you couldn't kill, and eventually killed the Tonberry King at the end of the dungeon. WP's Hard incarnation, meanwhile, sees the Tonberries freed of the curse brought about by their King's rancour, and in need of help from an invading force of Mamool Ja beastmen.

With Tonberries being such a popular Final Fantasy mainstay, naturally players jump at the opportunity to "Save the Tonberries!" and thus I can see WP Hard being a favourite dungeon of many people — particularly as it's very well designed indeed. Its encounters are well-paced and interesting, and the dungeon does an excellent job of introducing a variety of mechanics throughout that are eventually all used in its final boss fight. It's a satisfying dungeon, and its "victory" cutscene is one of the most grin-inducing things in the entire game, so be sure not to skip it!

Amdapor Keep (Hard)

Poor old Amdapor Keep has had a rough life. Originally the toughest 4-player dungeon in the entire game at FFXIV's 2.0 release, it was subsequently made considerably easier until now, with most dedicated players outgearing it by a considerable margin, it is but a shadow of its former self.

Which, of course, is where Amdapor Keep (AK) Hard comes in. Because it's hard.

I must confess that having run it twice today I still don't really know how the first boss works, but I haven't had any trouble clearing — perhaps after a wipe or two if the party is new. It's cool to see the dungeon running with its creepy theme and a "headless horseman" boss, though; it looks great.

The second boss was a highlight for me, particularly as the first time I ran it my friend was bellowing "Whooo! BOOGYMAN!" in my ear. Because the second boss is indeed the Boogyman, and he enjoys hiding in the shadows, only to be revealed by a pulse of light from an enterprising (and irradiated) adventurer. "What you can't see cannot hurt you," he taunts, shortly before he hurts you very badly indeed.

The best thing about the dungeon, though, is the "gauntlet" before the final boss. Trapped in a room with fiery walls and four Demon Walls closing in on you, you're challenged to take down an intense few waves of enemies before you get squished between our demonic friends. It's exciting, and every time I've done it so far it's been thrillingly close to complete failure when we pulled it off — though I'm sure it will get easier with time (and gear).

The final boss, whom I now can't call anything but "Firedad" after a friend misread his name earlier, is a distinctly Kefka-esque entity with some nasty attacks. It's an extremely well-designed, challenging but enjoyable encounter, and a fitting finale to a difficult but satisfying dungeon. Good stuff.

The Keeper of the Lake

The main "story dungeon" for Before the Fall is essentially a lightweight Praetorium, complete with overdramatic music and tons of Imperials to fight. It's an extremely attractive dungeon with a variety of different landscapes to enjoy as you climb up its towering structure, but the real highlight is the final boss encounter against Midgardsormr, a giant and rather terrifying dragon who is so big you can only fight his head… and his two smaller dragony friends that wake up over the course of the fight.

The encounter is a good one because there's lots to do. There are many different things to dodge, and it keeps you on the move throughout. It's no "tank and spank" encounter, in other words, and while not particularly mechanically complex, it's a real challenge.

In fact, it's a good example of what appears to be a recurring theme for this patch: challenge. In previous patches, people were well overgeared for the dungeons the moment they were released, but this time around even those who are sporting item level 120-130 gear are being given a run for their money with some tough encounters. I'm pleased to see this; one of the most common criticisms levelled at FFXIV is that it's too easy — despite having one of the most notoriously challenging endgame raids in the entire MMORPG genre — and these dungeons more than make up for this.

Speaking of which…

The Chrysalis

The "secret" Trial that was teased prior to release is a fight against an Ascian, and unlike the pathetic dickslapping you give Lahabrea at the end of Praetorium, this one actually puts up one hell of a fight.

It's mechanically fairly simple, as the Trials go, but it's a challenge to coordinate, since the damage comes thick and fast and the healers need to keep on their toes to keep both themselves and the tanks standing, particularly once our Ascian friend starts casting Quake III to damage everyone.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the fight comes where the boss slows down time by sucking you into an aetherial rift, and you're pulled into an inverted-colours landscape where all your buffs and debuffs last ten times longer than they would normally. And yes, this includes things like Paladin's invincibility buff Hallowed Ground, which literally makes you invincible for this entire phase if you pop it just before getting sucked in.

Again, like Keeper of the Lake, The Chrysalis is a challenging fight that keeps players on their toes, unlike a number of the earlier story encounters. (Leviathan in particular springs to mind; it's all but impossible to fail that Trial unless you are a terrible, terrible player.)

World of Darkness

The main event for many people in 2.5 is the grand finale to the Crystal Tower side story, a sprawling homage to Final Fantasy III in which three parties of eight players each (making a total of 24 players, maths fans) journey through the Labyrinth of the Ancients to the base of Syrcus Tower, climb Syrcus Tower and eventually leap through a tear in reality to pay a visit to the World of Darkness.

The previous two parts of Crystal Tower have been enjoyable raids designed to be completable by casual players. They demand significantly less in the way of coordination than The Binding Coil of Bahamut does, but they still put up a fight with complex, interesting mechanics that people need to understand.

World of Darkness dials this up to the maximum though, with some of the most interesting fights I've seen in all of Final Fantasy XIV outside of Coil. A particular highlight is the battle against Cerberus, in which a key mechanic is one of the three parties of eight getting shrunken down to tiny size and eaten by Cerberus, at which point they beat him up from inside his stomach before being vomited back out as the giant hellhound howls in pain. Meanwhile, the other two parties need to take advantage of the distraction created by the stomachache you cause and chain him back up again. It's unlike anything else in the rest of the game, and it's absolutely great.

The final battle against Cloud of Darkness is a good one, too. Again, not hugely mechanically complex, it's a thrilling, exciting battle where there's a lot more to do than just fling fireballs at the boss or poke it with pointy things. There are lasers to dodge, snakes to whack and clouds to disperse, and while it's challenging — particularly while people are still learning these encounters — it's a lot of fun. We finished our run with less than 10 minutes left on the clock.

Urth's Fount (Odin)

The Trial against Odin, last seen at the FanFest live events, is an enjoyable battle against one of the game's most notorious "FATE" bosses that has been in the game since launch. Odin shows up every few (real-time) days and terrorises one of the areas of the Black Shroud forest, at which point scores of adventurers dogpile him in an attempt to defeat him before he unleashes his devastating Zantetsuken move, killing everyone. (In many cases, it's a lot more likely that he completely eviscerates everyone well before he starts charging up Zantetsuken, but I have been present for several victories over him.)

The Trial version of the encounter uses many of the same things you see in the FATE battle, but by limiting it to eight players makes it seem a lot more manageable. The main tank takes a lot of damage, so the healers have a big challenge, and everyone else has tons of AoE skills to avoid throughout the fight, so it's another one where you can't be standing still for too long.

Ultimately, it's not a very difficult fight so long as you're used to dodging things, but it is an enjoyable one. It's nice to finally lay the smack down on Odin once and for all — although the post-quest cutscene neatly explains how and why even after you defeat him he keeps showing back up in the Black Shroud again and again and again.

There's a lot more I haven't explored as yet. Tomorrow is a day for the Hildibrand questline, a real highlight of the game for many people, and for checking out the new "Slaughter" mode in Player vs Player play, which sounds like it might be a lot of fun. For now, though, I've been playing all day, so it's probably time I got some sleep!

The post 1828: #FFXIV Before the Fall: Some Initial Impressions appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Sunday nights are rapidly becoming a highlight of my gaming week. It's the first time I've had a dedicated static raiding group to play an MMO with, and Final Fantasy XIV's raids are one hell of a lot of fun if you're with the right people — people who know their stuff, but who aren't above having a bit of fun with the experience.

For those who are less up on the MMO lingo, a "raid" is differentiated from regular dungeons and other, more casual-friendly multiplayer content by virtue of its difficulty, which primarily comes from the need to be organised, communicate and take responsibility for the things you're supposed to be responsible for. There's little room to be "carried" in raids, particularly if you're playing content that's on the (relative) bleeding edge, though if you're playing older stuff that people have since outgeared (and, in Final Fantasy XIV's case, the raid itself has also been made easier over time, too) there's a certain amount of margin for error.

Tonight our regular group tackled the final two Turns in the Second Coil of Bahamut, the second of three hardcore raids that are currently in Final Fantasy XIV. These raids are multi-part challenges that task eight players with working together coherently, and get consistently more challenging as you go through. The final Turn in each Coil is the most difficult by far, taking in very complicated mechanics and demanding that everyone is playing at absolute peak potential. A big stumbling block for a lot of players is Turn 5, the last Turn in the first Binding Coil of Bahamut, in which you take on the very angry dragon Twintania, but we successfully cleared that a while back without too much difficulty. The Second Coil of Bahamut is significantly more difficult throughout for the most part, but we've gradually worked our way through each Turn in… well, turn, and now we've arrived at the next big wall to scale: Turn 9 (also known as The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4).

Turn 9 is the most complicated fight I've attempted in Final Fantasy XIV to date. It's an incredibly daunting prospect, but it's a good example of what raiding is all about. It's not a fight you can just jump into and hope for the best; it's a fight where you need to know what you're doing, what you're responsible for and how to deal with the various situations the encounter presents you with.

Turn 9 is so complicated because, like most fights in the game, it unfolds over the course of several discrete "phases", but unlike many other fights in the game, each phase is completely different from the previous and would be mechanically complex enough to be a single conventional encounter in its own right. Tonight, we spent nearly an hour attempting it, and we managed to just about get our heads around the first phase after a bit of practice and a lot of initial bewilderment. There's a hell of a lot going on, and it's initially very difficult to work out what you might be doing wrong when everyone suddenly dies at a moment's notice. As you try again and again, though, you start to notice things; you start to recognise patterns in the boss's attacks, you start to be able to predict what's coming next and you figure out the best way for you to successfully handle your own responsibilities, until eventually you reach a stage where you can effectively run it on autopilot.

This is the way to handle Turn 9. Because it's so long and daunting, it's not an encounter you can just give people a simple explanation of and plough through without any difficulty. Rather, it takes time to learn each phase and to perfect the way your own unique group composition handles it. Getting things right is exciting and enjoyable, and successfully reaching a milestone in the fight — like the changeover between phases — is cause for celebration.

This evening, we successfully cleared the first phase, which involves everything from trying not to get meteors dropped on your head while ensuring that they are dropped in helpful positions for later to getting zapped with a rather unpleasant Thermionic Beam. Oh, and the main tank (which, for part of our run, was me) keeps exploding throughout the fight, too, which is nice for them. It's tense, and a lot of pressure on everyone, but it's a huge amount of fun to challenge with people you've come to know, enjoy the company of and trust.

I'm really looking forward to our next attempt, when we'll hopefully be able to survive for more than ten seconds when a bunch of nasty golems appear and try to kill us!

The post 1826: Nael Deus the Darnus Things appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

You probably want an engagement story, don't you? Well, all right, then. Settle down and I'll tell you one.

As regular readers will know, Andie and I are both regular players of the massively multiplayer online RPG Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. In a recent patch, developer Square Enix added the facility to perform a "Ceremony of Eternal Bonding" with a partner in the game — getting married, in other words. Any character can marry any other character, no matter their gender or race, making it a wonderfully inclusive part of a game that was already extremely inclusive to begin with. I mention this latter fact because Andie and I both play female characters: mine is Amarysse the Hyur Midlander (essentially a relatively normal-looking — albeit "Final Fantasy attractive" — human-type female), while Andie's is W'khebica the Miqo'te (a race of people with cat ears and tails).

As soon as the Eternal Bond stuff launched, Andie and I knew that we wanted to indulge in it. It's ultimately a silly thing that doesn't have a huge amount of relevance to the game as a whole — your main benefits for getting married are that you get a ring that allows you to teleport to your spouse's side once every 30 minutes and, depending on which package you signed up for, some of which cost real money, a selection of goodies including wedding attire, a two-seater chocobo mount and a minion to give to all your guests when they attend your ceremony — but we still wanted to do it. I also think it's quite a nice way to acknowledge a real-world relationship in the game itself — though, of course, there are plenty of people who are getting married just for fun.

Anyway. Andie and I got up early on Boxing Day to book our ceremony. Yes, you actually have to book; ceremonies occur at specific times on specific dates, so we had to get in early in order to get a practical slot. Given that we play alongside a lot of Americans, we wanted to book it for an America-friendly time that was also not in the middle of the night for us, so we eventually settled on Saturday January 3 in the evening our time, since you have to book at least a week in advance.

Now, since we'd been talking about getting in-game married ever since the possibility was launched, I'd been pondering secret plans in the run-up to this, and decided that yes, I wanted to put those plans into motion. I had not-particularly-subtly hinted to Andie that I might be interested in buying her a shiny ring, and invited her to indicate a selection of acceptable choices that would not cause me to be thrown out on the street or anything. I did some research, shopped around and eventually settled on one that she'd indicated she particularly liked. I finished work early on New Year's Eve and snuck into town to see if they had one in stock. They did, but not in the right size; I bought it anyway, as it was more that I wanted to have it as a symbol to go with the proposal than something I could put on her finger right away. (It transpired that she put it on anyway, got it stuck and we eventually had to go to A&E to get the damn thing off again! We now have one in the correct size.)

That was that; the plan was in motion, and there wasn't really any turning back now. Well, sure, I could bottle it and save the ring for another occasion, but really, honestly, our in-game ceremony felt like an ideal time to do it.

I set to work determining how I was going to do it, including worrying rather more than I probably needed to about whether I should actually ask the question in the game's text chat function, or just disappear from my keyboard for a few moments and ask her in person. (When we're both playing, she's on her computer upstairs while I'm downstairs in the living room, so it's not as if I could have just turned to her and asked her.) Eventually, I wrote a speech that I felt expressed what I was feeling adequately (albeit perhaps overdramatically) and resolved to deliver it during the twenty-minute period of the in-game ceremony where you are invited to exchange your vows with your partner. Most players who are doing the wedding thing for fun skip over this part or just allow their friends to set off some fireworks, cheer, whoop and holler, but it seemed like the ideal moment to me. So that was what I decided to do.

The day came, and we both logged on to play as normal. While it was tempting to surprise everyone with what I was up to, I decided that it would be prudent to share my plans with at least a couple of people so that I could ensure we had a decent turnout to our ceremony, and that people knew they had to behave themselves appropriately. I sent a "whisper" (private message) to my friend Cyra (aka Phil; we actually met him in the real world a while back when he happened to be in London the same day we went down to see the Distant Worlds concert) and informed him of my plans. He squee'd a bit (well, in a sort of manly way) and then told me to leave it with him; he'd inform some of the other regulars in our Free Company (guild) and between them they'd make sure people were 1) at the ceremony and 2) behaving themselves.

The appointed hour came, and Andie and I rode to the Sanctum of the Twelve in the East Shroud. Our friends were already gathered outside, and one had been crafting multiple copies of a hat that Andie's character habitually wears, then handing them out to the guests, so we were confronted with a crowd of people all wearing flowery hats. Then it was time to go in; Andie and I were escorted to our separate rooms to get ready, while the guests were taken to their separate waiting room to wait for us both to indicate that we were ready. We both changed into our wedding dresses, rang our Eternity Bells to indicate that we were ready, and then the ceremony began.

Conveniently, Cyra/Phil recorded the whole thing. You can watch it on his Twitch page, because WordPress doesn't want to embed the video for some reason.

And, well, this happened.

The post 1825: The Happy Couple (or: How I Proposed For Real in #FFXIV) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This may have something to do with the fact that I was playing the PSP version, also known as Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition, which has been substantially tweaked and rebalanced from both the original NES release and the subsequent enhanced PSone Final Fantasy Origins version, which I played last time I beat this first installment.

While there's an argument that it's worth experiencing the game in its original, purest, grind-heavy and rather difficult form — complete with its Vancian Magic system, just one of many influences the game drew from Dungeons & Dragons — the PSP version proved to be a lot more enjoyable generally. The pacing was better, there was a lot less running around in circles grinding — the original required you to do this to even beat the first boss, which appeared before the game's title screen — and the more traditional Magic Points system made some of the more lengthy encounters and dungeons later in the game somewhat more feasible.

Those late-game dungeons — four of which were added in the Game Boy Advance Dawn of Souls release of the game and the last of which was added in the Anniversary Edition release — proved to be really great, if a little bizarre. Collectively dubbed the Soul of Chaos, the first four extra dungeons live up to their name by tasking you with exploring 5, 10, 20 and 40 floors that feature set layouts but randomised floor orders and available treasures. There's not really a coherent theme to the dungeon floors as such — although the less interesting floors tend to be of an appropriate element to the dungeon's name: fiery caverns in Hellfire Chasm, for example — but the chaotic, unpredictable nature of them is what makes them interesting. On one floor you might be exploring a cave; the next you might be paddling a canoe around a flooded village; on the next, you might be attempting to navigate a maze of bookshelves while scholars mumble about their research and get in your way.

The final new dungeon, known as the Labyrinth of Time, was the most interesting by far, however. The Labyrinth of Time creates a new dungeon each time by picking ten different "puzzle floors" out of a selection of 30, then challenging you to beat these puzzles against the clock and with one or more of your abilities sealed off. The more abilities you seal off — and the more useful they are — the more time you have available to complete a floor. Run out of time and a dark miasma descends, damaging you every second and increasing the number of monsters you encounter.

The puzzles vary from simple observation puzzles, in which you have to answer questions about something you've just seen, to challenging physical tasks such as marching in line with a group of NPC soldiers. Like the Soul of Chaos dungeons, they have little to do with the overall Final Fantasy story — what little story it has anyway — but they're immensely enjoyable and challenging to complete. And then at the end of it all you have Chronodia, one of the toughest bosses in the game, to fight for ultimate bragging rights… oh, and the best sword in the game, too.

The first time I played Final Fantasy I, with the Origins release, I did so in order to understand the series' roots, and sort of had a good time, but found it a bit of a chore after a while. The PSP version, meanwhile, I found genuinely enjoyable, even from a modern perspective, and was inspired to go on and complete the game's most challenging content. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to anyone looking for a fun portable RPG experience — and those of you without a PSP can even play it on your phone.

Onwards to Final Fantasy II, then, which I remember enjoying quite a lot the first time I tried it (again, with Origins) but which is widely regarded to be one of the worst installments in the whole series thanks to its bafflingly bizarre mechanics. For Fynn! Wild Rose!

The post 1824: First Fantasy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Instead, I wanted to talk a little about a board game I got for Christmas and had the opportunity to try out for the first time this evening. It's called Betrayal at House on the Hill, and it's a game I've had my eye on for a while since seeing it on Wil Wheaton's board gaming show Tabletop.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is an unusual and peculiar game in that it's sort of two games in one. The first part is purely exploration and treasure hunting: you and up to five friends explore a creepy old randomly-generated house, collecting treasures and "omens" and having various events occurring — some good, some bad, some strange.

At a particular point, "the haunt" begins. The longer the initial phase goes on, the more likely the haunt becomes, since its likelihood of occurring is tied to the number of omen cards in play at any one time. (Omens, despite their, well, ominous name, often take the form of useful items, so it's actually in your interest to collect them, even with the inherent risk they carry.)

When the haunt begins, several things happen. First of all, one of fifty different scenarios is chosen according to the omen drawn and the room it was discovered in. Next, at least one of the players becomes a traitor. In most scenarios, it's known which player is the traitor, but there are a few examples of "hidden traitor" scenarios where one person is secretly working against the others.

At this point, the remaining players and the traitor are, as you might expect, in direct opposition to one another, but the interesting thing when compared to other, mechanically similar games such as Descent or other dungeon-crawlers with an "evil" player is that the two groups don't have all the pertinent information about one another: each side has a book revealing only information relevant to their side, and the rest they must figure out themselves. This includes, in the heroes' case, how strong, fast and intelligent the monsters they're facing are, and even what the traitorous player's end goal might be. Likewise, the traitor doesn't necessarily know what the players are up to, though his material might give him a bit of a clue — and the players' behaviour might give him even more of a clue.

As an example, the scenario we picked this evening saw one player come across a madman in the house's basement, which triggered the haunt. Zombies rose from the dead, and the original player character was killed, leaving the traitorous player in control of the madman and the zombies. His objective was simply to kill all the other players — a task which he completed fairly effectively and efficiently. Our objective as the heroes, meanwhile, was to trap the zombies by luring them into rooms that had been important to them in life — we knew which rooms these were, but the traitor did not, and there were specific rules about how the zombies moved that allowed us to "pull" them in particular directions through careful, strategic movement.

Unfortunately, things did not go all that well. My character died almost immediately after the haunt began having been flung into the basement earlier, not being able to find the way back up the stairs, getting surrounded by zombies and finally, embarrassingly, succumbing to nothing more than the heat from a furnace beneath the mansion. The others, variously, were eaten by zombies and brutalised by the madman, leading the traitorous player to a convincing victory.

I enjoyed the game a lot. The rules are straightforward and quick, turns are snappy and the split-personality nature of the game makes it very interesting. The 50 different scenarios coupled with the randomly generated nature of the house means that there's a whole lot of replay value, too, so I'm looking forward to giving it another go sometime soon.

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The Christmas break has been nice, and the fact I'd spent the previous few months at work, away from home (as opposed to working from home as I was previously) has made me appreciate it somewhat more. I've enjoyed the time off, I've enjoyed having the opportunity to just relax without the pressure to "do" anything, and I've enjoyed having the time to indulge in some favourite games, TV shows and anime without time commitments.

I finished the Hanzou story in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus today — that's one of the four stories in the game. I enjoyed it a lot; gameplay-wise, it's a significant improvement on the first game thanks to its jump to 3D, and its narrative is interesting. Throughout the course of the story, we learn some new things about the main cast as well as get introduced to the newcomers in this particular installment: the girls of the Gessen shinobi school, and the new members of the Hebijou school that Homura and her gang hailed from in the original game before being exiled following the events at Burst's finale.

My initial reaction to the Hanzou story was that I was slightly disappointed there weren't more of the visual novel sequences giving background on the girls and how they were feeling about various things — but on balance, I think there was a good amount. The game didn't try to do too much: it introduced one major plot/background point per character through several of these sequences peppered throughout the course of the entire narrative arc, and the rest of the story was delivered through snappy but enjoyable talking-heads sequences that were just about characters talking to one another, not narration. It worked well, and it teased just enough information about the Gessen girls to make me want to find out more about them: fortunately, I can now do just that by playing through their story, followed by Hebijou and finally Homura and her friends in the Crimson Squad.

I also, as we saw yesterday, made a start on Final Fantasy. I'll be writing more about that as I make more progress through it, though with my intended creative writing project in January this will likely be over on the Squadron of Shame forums rather than here.

I've also watched some anime for the first time in what feels like months; I've been continuing with the farming-themed series Silver Spoon, which was recommended to me by some anime-loving friends, and I've been reminded what a good show it is. It has an enjoyably understated plot about a teen boy feeling somewhat out of his depth in an agricultural academy, and some appealing, entertaining characters who occasionally reference recognisable anime tropes without being defined by them. There's one character in particular who looks like he would be more at home in a series like Dragon Ball Z, for example, so seeing him mucking out cows and working with chickens is rather entertaining, to say the least!

Anyway. Early-ish night for me tonight due to the aforementioned Danger of Work bell tolling, so I'll sign off there and simply say I hope you all had as restful and pleasant a Christmas as I had, and are looking forward to a good new year.

The post 1805: Christmas is Over appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I made a start on Final Fantasy today. I've played this a couple of times over the years, though never the original NES version. Rather, my past forays into it have been on the Final Fantasy Origins version on PlayStation 1, an upgraded port with 16-bit-style visuals and a significantly enhanced soundtrack over the bleepy, blurpy NES chiptunes of the original. (It was also bundled with a similarly upgraded port of Final Fantasy II, which was also the first time that game had ever made it outside of Japan.)

This time around, however, I'm playing the PSP version on my Vita. I wasn't expecting anything particularly different from the Origins version, but already something feels a little different. The pacing feels better when it comes to levelling; it seems to take a lot less time to gain a level, leading to significantly less running around in circles fighting armies of wolves just to beef yourself up enough to enter the first dungeon. The magic system's adoption of a more traditional magic points system rather than the NES original's D&D-style "you can only cast this level of spells this many times" mechanic also makes White and Black Mages seem somewhat less useless, which is nice.

The original Final Fantasy is an odd beast, really. It's unmistakeably a Japanese role-playing game in look and feel, but it's clearly heavily inspired by Western fantasy, even going so far as to directly reference numerous Dungeons and Dragons elements such as monsters, races and the like. It's abundantly clear that Final Fantasy is Dungeons and Dragons through a Japanese lens, in other words, and it works rather well. It's actually relatively rare for Japanese role-playing games to play the fantasy tropes completely straight these days, as they often tend to incorporate elements of sci-fi along the way, making for a curiously distinctive mix of influences. Nowhere is this more apparent in the evolution of the Final Fantasy series over the years, which has all but abandoned its roots with the most recent installments — with the exception of XIV, which is deliberately very true to said roots, directly referencing past games at numerous junctures throughout.

The limitations of video game storytelling in the era when it was originally released are still apparent in the PSP rerelease, but the gameplay additions at least make it significantly more playable to a modern audience. I'll be interested to see what tweaks — if any — have been made to the somewhat idiosyncratic Final Fantasy II for its PSP incarnation, but I have quite a journey ahead of me before I can start that particular adventure.

For now, it's time to let Garland try and knock me all down… I have a suspicion he will be unsuccessful in his efforts, and the lovely Princess Sarah will be returned to her rightful place in Cornelia Castle before long.

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For one reason or another, I've never made it right through the series, and consequently there are a couple of installments right in the middle that I've never played to completion, these being Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, both of which are regarded as some of the series' finest work with regard to game mechanics (in the case of V) and story (in the case of VI). It's not that I've never wanted to play these games through to completion, it's simply that I've allowed myself to get distracted by various other things and ended up losing my rhythm partway through a playthrough.

I've decided that I'd like to give it another go. This time around, I want to do something slightly different, however: this time around, I'm going to whack all the possible installments I can on my Vita and play them as handheld games. This means that I can do stuff like play through them on my lunch break at work as well as in bed, on the toilet or when I'm away from home. Final Fantasy wherever I go — an appealing prospect, being something of a fan of the series as a whole.

I'm also not going to get too hung up on each one being the only game I play at any given time, too. I will try and get through them in a timely manner, yes, but I'm also conscious of the fact that Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 is out soon and I very much want to play that, and I'm also conscious of the fact that I have an astronomical backlog of games to play, many of which contain doe-eyed moe girls that I just can't resist the allure of for too long before giving in. So if I do feel the need to give in and play something like Akiba's Trip (which I own but haven't booted up yet) I'm not going to feel guilty about "betraying" my Final Fantasy mission.

I do, however, want to try my best to work my way through all the main Final Fantasy games (and possibly Tactics) too, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think it'll be an enjoyable, cool thing to do: a journey through the very long history of one of gaming's most recognisable series. Secondly, there are a number of installments in the series that carry a strong degree of personal significance to me — fond memories of my younger days, and the way I felt when I first played them. Thirdly, although there are a couple of installments I've played several times — most notably VII, which I think is the game I've played through the most times to completion in my entire gaming career over the years — there are also some that I've only ever played through once (such as IX, X and X-2) that I'm keen to revisit, in some cases many years after I've played them. And then, of course, there's the matter of V and VI and the fact I've never beaten them at all.

What's brought this on, then? Well, aside from Final Fantasy XIV's love of referencing old games through both subtle and very obvious means, I got a copy of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call for Christmas, and it's just reminded me that this is something I've wanted to do for quite some time now. And if I keep putting it off, I don't think I'll ever do it. So there's no time like the present, I guess; I've ordered a big-ass Vita memory card which should be here over the weekend, and then I'll be jumping right in with the first Final Fantasy very soon. I'll be chronicling my thoughts over at the Squadron of Shame forum as I progress through the various games; watch out for a link once I get underway.

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Velocity 2X

The original Velocity, a PlayStation Minis title, put Brighton-based developer FuturLab well and truly on my radar. Blending an Amiga-style aesthetic with some modern, interesting gameplay, Velocity was something I hadn't really come across before: a puzzle-shmup. It combined elements of vertically-scrolling shoot 'em ups with the mind-frying dimensional manipulation of games like Portal to create something enormously enjoyable, very distinctive and hugely addictive. I liked it so much I played through the whole thing again when they rereleased it with enhanced visuals on Vita under the name Velocity Ultra.

So it's fair to say that I was very much intrigued by the possibility of a sequel, particularly after I had the opportunity to get my hands on an early version at the Eurogamer Expo a while back, and test-drive the new side-scrolling platform sections. When the full game finally came out, I was delighted to discover that it very much lived up to its potential — and that even more so than its predecessor, it was a game that continually "evolved" the further through it you went, with each new level gradually introducing new mechanics to the player until the game you're playing in the latter stages is almost unrecognisable from how it was at the beginning.

It has a lovely aesthetic, some excellent music and some supremely tight controls — utterly necessary for a game so focused on speedrunning as this. It's a great addition to the PlayStation Vita's library of more "quick-hit" games that are good for pick-up-and-play fun when you have a few minutes to spare — seriously, fuck 95% of mobile phone games nowadays — and it's a supreme challenge for even the most skilled gamers out there.

Assault Android Cactus

I'm not sure this counts, given that it feels like it's been in development forever and is still in Early Access, but I've certainly played it a whole bunch this year and really enjoyed it. Moreover, it's been wonderful to see how the game has continued to grow and change as its development continues — not to mention the fact that its small development team are lovely people who are a pleasure to talk to, also.

Assault Android Cactus, even in its unfinished state, is an extremely solid take on the twin-stick shooter genre. Taking inspiration from Japanese bullet-hell shooters as much as more Western shmups such as Geometry Wars, Assault Android Cactus features an array of unique characters, each of whom have their own distinctive ways of attacking and fending off enemies. Some are conventional enough, others are… less so. For some players, it'll be a matter of pride to master the more offbeat characters like Aubergine; for others, they'll want to chase high scores with the more "traditional" characters like the eponymous heroine Cactus.

Assault Android Cactus benefits from a clear and easily understood scoring system — something which many of its Japanese influences cannot boast! — and there's a strong emphasis on chasing the elusive "S+" rank for each level by attempting to chain all your kills together into a single combo while avoiding death. This is easier said than done on some levels — particularly the challenging boss encounters, which will give even the most seasoned veterans of the 8- and 16-bit era a run for their money.

I'm really looking forward to the finished version of this great game… and I'm especially looking forward to being able to take it on the go with me thanks to the upcoming Vita version!

Demon Gaze

I'm not going to pretend Demon Gaze is the best RPG I've ever played, but I have to give it an enormous amount of credit for getting me into a subgenre of RPGs that I've never really "clicked" with: the grid-based dungeon-crawler, or "gridder" to some.

Demon Gaze was enjoyable and unusual. Its Vocaloid-heavy soundtrack gave it a very distinctive audio-visual aesthetic, while its environments were varied and a lot of fun to explore. The Demon's Souls-style online features, whereby other players could leave messages on the floor for you to discover, were a lot of fun and occasionally helpful, even amid all the distinctly… inappropriate messages that were also left adorning the dungeon floor at times. The level design was wonderful, making use of simple but effective mechanics like one-way doors, forced movement panels, floors that damaged you and other staples of the genre to create some challenging levels that taxed your brain. And the combat, although simplistic, was enjoyable and nicely streamlined.

It had a surprisingly enjoyable story, too. My past experience with dungeon-crawlers is that they've tended to skimp a bit on the narrative front, which is one of the things I tended to find most offputting — I'm a narrative junkie, after all. Demon Gaze, however, managed to strike a good balance between the mechanics-heavy dungeon crawling and the somewhat fantasy soap opera-esque happenings that went on back at the inn any time you accomplished something significant. The memorable cast of characters with whom you'd interact between forays into the dungeons more than made up for your custom-created party members' relative lack of personality, though pleasingly, the game at least made an effort to incorporate said party members into "background narration" of numerous scenes just so they didn't feel completely irrelevant to the narrative as a whole.

It was a challenging game, too, though arguably a little inconsistent with its difficulty level. It starts incredibly tough, gets much, much easier as you level — so much so that I had to whack up the difficulty level to its highest to have any sort of challenge whatsoever — and then gets monstrously difficult again right at the end, particularly if you choose to pursue the optional post-game extra ending, which you really should if you want to say you've had the full experience.

Demon Gaze was definitely one of my biggest surprises this year, and it makes me much more inclined to seek out other dungeon-crawlers in the future — something I wouldn't have thought to do prior to giving it a shot.

—

More to come in the next few days.

The post 1801: Pondering Some More Games of the Year appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This year I don't really have a single Game of the Year as such, but there are a number of titles I feel are worth making specific mention of. So I'm going to mention them right now.

Steins;Gate

Previously, I knew Steins;Gate was a well-respected visual novel and anime series, but little else about it. When visual novel specialist JAST USA picked it up for localisation and publishing, however, I knew that I should probably to play it, if only to know what it was all about.

I wasn't disappointed.

Spinning an interesting, exciting but plausible sci-fi tale, Steins;Gate is an unconventional time-travel/parallel dimensions story featuring an extremely memorable cast of characters, a very well-realised setting (Akihabara and the surrounding area in Tokyo) and a compelling story that, although lengthy, certainly didn't outstay its welcome.

Steins;Gate will likely prove frustrating to some due to its pure visual novel nature, and the fact that the choices you make throughout are handled in a somewhat odd manner by interacting with the protagonist's phone. If you treat it as a multi-path story rather than a "game" as such, however, you're in for an absolute treat: it's one of the most exciting, thrilling and thought-provoking sci-fi stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing for quite some time.

To say too much more would be spoileriffic, but suffice it to say that Steins;Gate blends fantasy and (obviously well-researched) reality together to create a very coherent, solid whole that is eminently worth your time.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

This one doesn't really count as it came out last year, though I have been continually playing it since last summer, which is noteworthy in itself. Moreover, it's seen four major content patches since its original release, expanding the content on offer to players to nearly twice as much what was in there at launch. Pretty impressive stuff.

The reason why I'm still enamoured with Final Fantasy XIV is the promise for the future. The next major patch promises to wrap up the 2.0 storyline with some sort of Exciting Happenings, then after that it's into the expansion Heavensward (teased above), which promises all manner of new things going on — most noteworthy among them being whole new zones to explore, because although Final Fantasy XIV's patches have greatly expanded the number of dungeons and boss fights available for players to take on, the game's rather small world (by MMO standards, anyway — it's still pretty sprawling if you go around on foot) has remained the same size throughout, with only the town of Revenant's Toll in the Mor Dhona region undergoing noticeably significant renovations over time.

It's been interesting to play a game such as this at high level for such a long period of time. I feel I know the game very well by now, but there are still things I am learning, and the most challenging stuff in the game — we're currently working through the raid dungeon The Second Coil of Bahamut — is still genuinely challenging, even with high-level gear and a party of players that knows the encounter at least reasonably well. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Eorzea and its surrounding lands.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1

Regular readers will know all about my love for the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, despite its numerous flaws. Re;Birth1 is, to date, the best game in the series, bringing in the solid gameplay of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory and coupling it with a retelling of the first game's story.

Neptunia's core appeal for me is twofold: firstly, it's simply fun to play. The battle system is hugely enjoyable — if occasionally unbalanced — and it's that rare thing: an RPG where it's a pleasure to grind.

The second core appeal element is to do with its cast of characters, all of whom I absolutely adore. Neptune's hyperactive, childish nature is wonderfully contrasted with the tsundere personality of Noire, the quiet-but-occasionally-prone-to-rage Blanc, the "older sister" Vert and the other supporting characters, and the story, while silly fluff for the most part, is told in such a charming manner — featuring frequent fourth-wall breaking to bring the player into the experience alongside these cute girls — that it's difficult not to sit there with a huge smile on your face while playing through it.

I'm reliably informed that Re;Birth2 and Re;Birth3 are even better, so I can't wait to try them for myself: Re;Birth2 is coming West very soon indeed, and Re;Birth3 hit Japan recently, so we can expect it over here sometime soon-ish, hopefully!

Senran Kagura

I first encountered the Senran Kagura series early this year, and I'm absolutely hooked. Burst brought me an updated version of a game genre I've always been fond of — the 2D side-scrolling Streets of Rage-style brawler — and combined it with cute anime girls and a surprisingly strong story. Subsequent installment Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus — which also made it out this year — brought the gameplay into 3D fully intact, from what I can tell so far, and has cemented my love of the series. And as for Bon Appetit… well. All I can say is "L-lewd!"

The core appeal of Senran Kagura for me is not the fact that its cast is exclusively attractive women with massive knockers — although I'm certainly not complaining about this. (Aside: I actually rather like the fact that Senran Kagura's cast is, on the whole, somewhat on the more "curvy" side than many other video game and anime characters — and not just in the boob area.) Rather, it's about the fact that these characters are actually all very well-defined personalities, and the game explores them in great depth over the course of its unfolding narrative.

Knowing nothing about the game before playing it, I was very surprised to discover numerous levels opening not with short cutscenes then getting straight into the action, but with half-hour-plus visual novel sequences narrated from the perspectives of various different characters. By presenting the story in this manner, the player gets a uniquely personal perspective on the unfolding events as well as the opportunity to "hear" what they're thinking as well as saying. Normally in visual novels, we only get to hear the innermost thoughts of the protagonist character — normally, though not always, intended to be a self-insert for the player and consequently deliberately rather bland. Here, conversely, we're not playing "as" the girls; we're getting the opportunity to learn about them by effectively riding along inside their head as they come to terms with growing up as young shinobi, often on different sides to their friends.

My experiences with the three Senran Kagura games I've had the pleasure of playing to date means that this series is now right up there with Hyperdimension Neptunia in terms of games I'll happily rush out and buy without a second thought the moment they're released. Not bad for a game best known for T&A.

—

These are just a few of the games I've had the pleasure of playing this year. They're mostly games I played recently, I'm aware, so over the next couple of days I'm going to rack my brains a bit and think about some of the other games I've played that are particularly noteworthy, and share the joy with you lot a little bit.

That and frantically wrapping presents. It's nearly Christmas, after all.

The post 1800: Pondering Some Games of the Year appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

That "someone" was a person whom I only knew as Codex Vahlda, a Final Fantasy XIV player on the Gilgamesh server whom I became aware of this morning after a casual browse of Twitter.

I didn't know Codex at all. I don't even play on his server, so it's unlikely I would have come into contact with him unless he randomly showed up in a Duty Finder group for running a dungeon, since those pull players from several servers to make complete groups.

Sadly, I'll never have the opportunity to know Codex, as he passed away recently due to complications from renal failure. Both he and his family and friends seemingly knew that he was going to pass on, and it was as he lay on what was to become his deathbed that Final Fantasy XIV players from around the world, and from several different servers, all gathered in the same place — the beach in Ward 1 of the player housing district Mist — and held their own vigil for our fallen adventuring comrade.

Normally, this sort of thing is an event that you tend to hear about after the fact, but I happened to be online just as someone on Twitter was posting about the vigil taking place on Ultros, the Final Fantasy XIV server which I call home. Largely out of curiosity, I logged in to take a look at what was happening, ran down to the beach and, sure enough, found a line of players facing out to sea, "wind-up sun" minions out, bathing the group in a soft light, contemplating whatever they chose to be contemplating as they paid their respects to Codex. I joined them.

After a moment of quiet reflection, people spontaneously began letting off fireworks and balloons — these are items you can acquire in the game and are intended for use upon celebratory occasions such as seasonal events or the newly added "Eternal Bond" wedding system. It was a celebration not only of Codex's life, but also of how one stranger could bring all these disparate people from all over the world together in one place to do the same thing. It was a really, really beautiful moment, and extremely moving.

It's easy to think of the Internet at large, social media and online games in particular, as utterly "toxic" (that's a favourite word of critics at the moment) environments in which everyone is constantly at one another's throats. But every so often something happens that reminds you that an awful lot of human beings are fundamentally decent people, and that regardless of where you're from or what — if anything — you happen to believe in spiritually, the cycle of life and death is, pretty much without fail, something that will always bring us closer together with one another.

Rest in peace, Codex; I never knew you, but I hope wherever you are now, you feel the love of all the strangers who came together to celebrate your life today. May you forever walk in the light of the crystal.

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The original Chaos, for those unfamiliar, was a turn-based strategy game for up to 8 players, both human- and computer-controlled. The aim was simple: destroy your fellow wizards via any means you had available to you, be it direct-damage spells or an array of weird and wonderful creatures you were able to summon.

The "Chaos" of the title came in the form of a balance meter that tipped either towards law or chaos according to the specific spells that various players cast. As the balance tipped in one direction or another, the spells of that respective alignment became easier to cast, while their polar opposites became more difficult. Canny players could manipulate this to their advantage, though the ability to summon creatures as illusions meant that you could never quite be sure if your opponent had really summoned that Manticore or not… were you willing to potentially waste a turn attempting to "Disbelieve" it?

Chaos Reborn stays remarkably true to this original formula, albeit with a few changes. The maximum number of players is now 4 rather than 8, for one thing, and this is primarily to keep play sessions short and snappy — not a pair of adjectives you'd typically associate with turn-based strategy games, but having played a few games today, this particular approach is very welcome indeed, especially when I bear in mind so many multi-hour multiplayer Civilization games that never, ever reached any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Another core difference is the way spells are distributed. Rather than being given a random selection at the game's outset and then tasked with using them as effectively as possible, you now have a deck of "cards" depicting various spells and summoned creatures, and as you level up you'll gain access to more of these — though it's worth noting that these cards aren't necessarily "better", just different, so a level 1 player can still take on a higher-level player without the confrontation necessarily being a foregone conclusion.

This "cards" aspect looks to be interesting, as it promises the ability to build your own decks of spells as you unlock new creatures and attacks. There's a lot of potential to build your own personal play style, and it will be interesting to see how different people approach the game, how to build their decks and how to use the cards therein most effectively.

Chaos' roots are very much in board gaming — the original Spectrum version was even published by Games Workshop — and this aspect very much comes to the fore in Chaos Reborn. Between the deckbuilding and the ability to play games in an asynchronous manner as well as against live opponents, the game has a huge amount of potential, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops over time. For now, the Early Access version is a decent, if slightly limited package, but exciting things are on the horizon.

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The thing I liked about Senran Kagura Burst on 3DS is that it was a thoroughly modern take on Streets of Rage-style brawlers — you know the kind: walk from left to right punching things in the face and trying not to get punched in the face yourself. I was a little worried about Shinovi Versus, to be honest; I liked the simple but satisfying button-mashy gameplay of Burst so much that I was concerned the shift to 3D wouldn't be quite as enjoyable to play, what with those pesky extra degrees of freedom to worry about.

Turns out I needn't have been too worried. While the 3D gameplay does have its own idiosyncrasies — the camera can be a pain on occasion — at heart, it still feels very much like Senran Kagura. That means obscenely huge… combos (it's not at all unusual to see combo counts numbering into the hundreds or thousands — though with the more sprawling nature of most stages now, it's significantly more challenging to chain one long string of connecting attacks together without a break), single characters wading into swarms of enemies and punching them into orbit, special moves that range from the faintly plausible to the utterly ridiculous and, of course, ninja girls fighting until each others' clothes fall off.

Senran Kagura Burst felt a tad button-mashy at times, with the Hanzo girls in particular suffering a little from the "hammer the light attack button" syndrome. To be fair, as the girls levelled up, new combos became available that often required you to carefully time your use of the heavy attack button as well as the light attack, but for the most part you could get through a lot of the game with a single button.

Shinovi Versus initially feels a little like this, but try a few different characters and their differences start to become apparent. Poster girl Asuka is very much of the "hammer the light attack button" mould and consequently is suggested as a beginners' character, for example, while Hanzo's resident adorable character Hibari serves up an array of difficult-to-use but effective close-range slap and kick attacks, plus the strange little quirk that it's actually quite tricky to get her out of the air and back onto solid ground once she's up there, thanks to the fact that her aerial light attack appears to cause her to trampoline up and down on whoever happens to be unfortunate enough to be underneath her.

Your opponents are more than simple damage sponges, too. They block, they parry, they counterattack and you need varying approaches to even get near them in some cases. Unlike Burst, there's not really one simple strategy that will serve you well for the whole game; instead, you'll have to assess the situation on the fly and determine whether you're best off charging head-on, trying to get behind them, attacking them from above or waiting to counter them when they approach you. It makes for some enjoyable and thrilling battles that are a lot of fun to take part in.

I haven't got far in the story yet but the early chapters of the Hanzo girls' narrative appear to pick up nicely where Burst left off, with the group's now well-established character traits now more evident than ever before. The rather quiet Yagyuu's obsession with Hibari is kind of adorable to see, particularly as Hibari is a complete contrast to her in almost every way: Yagyuu is reserved and uncomfortable with expressing her emotions, even as it's clear she genuinely loves Hibari, while Hibari is very loud, emotional and open with her affections. I can see there being some potential for interesting situations between the two of them as the story progresses, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

So far it seems to be a worthy successor to a game I ended up enjoying a lot more than I expected — a game whose appeal goes far deeper than the fanservice and smut it's primarily known for. It's a fine addition to the Vita library, and a great example of how to use a recurring ensemble cast very effectively. I feel it's going to keep me busy for a good few hours yet.

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For those unfamiliar with the series as a whole, here's a breakdown: Senran Kagura Burst on Nintendo 3DS was the first game in the series released in the West, encompassing what were two separate releases in Japan: Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows, and Senran Kagura Burst, which incorporated the story of Skirting Shadows and another full story with the five "antagonist" characters from the original. The two stories run in sort-of parallel — there are a few differences in terms of the events which occur, but they end up in the same place and conclude with the same events from different perspectives. The game itself is a modern-day take on brawlers like Streets of Rage and its ilk: you run from one end of a level to the other, beating up groups of enemies in order to proceed, occasionally squaring off against bosses.

Vita installment Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus is regarded as a "spinoff" — the numbered sequel Senran Kagura 2 is a 3DS title — but it follows on from the events of Burst and introduces numerous new characters as well as following the stories of the original cast further. It's still structured like an old-school brawler, but this time gameplay is in full 3D, lending the gameplay a feel somewhere between Streets of Rage, Dynasty Warriors and Power Stone.

Bon Appetit, meanwhile, is a "true" spinoff in the sense that it's not intended to be "canonical" to the main storylines of the other games, which are all fairly serious affairs about what it means to be a ninja, and how difficult it can be to grow up with all manner of difficult responsibilities and expectations thrust upon you. Bon Appetit, conversely, is about cooking, boobs and arses. Pairs of girls from the previous games pair off and engage in a cooking battle against one another, represented as a rhythm action music game played over the course of three rounds, with the loser of each round suffering the indignity of damage to their clothing — the iconic feature of the series as a whole is clothing destruction — and a comprehensive drubbing resulting in being stripped completely naked, covered in tactfully-placed whipped cream and chocolate sauce in order to pose provocatively atop the world's largest cake.

Bon Appetit has absolutely no shame whatsoever, and it's immensely enjoyable as a result. It's lewd and it's rude, but it's also a lot of fun to play, feeling very much like PS1-era rhythm games such as Parappa the Rapper and its ilk. There's a decent selection of catchy tracks — all originals, once again calling to mind PS1-era music games, particularly those with "character songs" such as Bust-a-Groove — and these vary from the fairly straightforward to the extremely challenging, with the two-lane note charts often being composed in such a way as to deliberately confuse you, a process made significantly easier by the backdrop occasionally being filled with giant gyrating bottoms and titties, particularly if you hit the single "heart" note in the song correctly.

In many ways, Bon Appetit is absolutely indefensible. It's pretty much fanservice in its purest form — in fact, it's striking a double fanservice whammy by being a particularly fanservicey game in a series already notorious for its fanservice — but in being this way it's doing exactly what it sets out to do: to provide a fun, silly and enjoyable opportunity to play with a cast of characters who are genuinely beloved by many in a context significantly far removed from their normal situations. The game states up front that it's not intended to be taken seriously, but manages to provide the player with an addictive and strangely compelling experience in the process, even once the initial appeal of "life and hometown" wears off.

So whatever you may find yourself thinking of it after what I've written above, I'm having an absolute blast. And you know what? I think I'm going to go and play a bit more right now.

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Take Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, for example, which I finally achieved the Platinum trophy for last night and consequently am (probably) done with for the moment. The Neptunia series as a whole is pretty self-referential, with protagonist Neptune in particular frequently breaking the fourth wall to address the player directly, and various other characters making it abundantly clear that they're aware of the numerous tropes that they embody and that the narrative as a whole is based around.

In spite of all this, though, it plays things fairly straight (well, as straight as it can when Neptune is involved) right up until the final encounter between the goddesses of Gamindustri and the villainous Arfoire. Spoiler: the heroines prevail, justice is served and peace returns to Gamindustri, with a happy ending for all — even more so if you pursue the "true" ending — prior to the credits. And in typical Neptunia tradition, the credits roll is a loving pixel-art homage to classic games of yesteryear, simultaneously recapping several major points in the main game's story while demonstrating the developers' encyclopaedic knowledge of classic game titles.

It doesn't end there, though; after the credits comes a wonderfully heartwarming little sequence in which all the major characters in the game address the player directly and thank them for playing. It feels very much like the video game equivalent of a "curtain call" in the theatre, with each character stepping forward in turn to, effectively, take a bow and allow the player a sense of closure — at least until the next game they feature in. Once that sequence finishes and you save your clear data, that's it; the curtains go down, the lights come up and it's time to leave the theatre.

But like the best theatrical productions and the actors who bring them to life, Neptunia's cast is bigger than the individual games they star in. Rather, despite the games not really having a coherent, canonical chronology of what happens when — the series is very fond of rebooting itself on a regular basis — these recognisable characters simply come together to do different things every so often, whether it's another big RPG adventure, attempting to make it as idols or fighting bad guys in a distinctly Senran Kagura-esque fashion.

The idol game Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection in particular is an interesting take on the series in that it's the first in which rather than the characters glancing sidelong at the player and making witty asides to them, the player is actually a participant in the ongoing story. In many ways it's an opportunity to "meet" your favourite characters in a far more intimate manner than previous installments have offered; in fact, it's rather more of a dating sim than an idol management game, since it largely revolves around building up your relationships with the four goddesses as opposed to actually trying to make their careers a particular success. To continue the theatrical comparison, it's like having the opportunity to appear in a production alongside a high-profile star — though the game does take great pains to note at its outset that its events are not "canonical", insofar as anything in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series is "canonical".

I mentioned Senran Kagura above, and this, too, presents an interesting example of how a stable of characters can be reused in a variety of different situations. First game Senran Kagura Burst — actually a compilation of the first two Senran Kagura games originally released in Japan — tells a self-contained story whose visual novel sequences give us some uniquely personal insight into the way the various characters think and feel about what is going on. This format is continued somewhat in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, officially a "spin-off" but actually following on from Burst's story.

And then you have Senran Kagura Bon Appetit, also known as Dekamori Senran Kagura. This game is, like Producing Perfection, a spin-off that is not intended to be taken seriously. An overblown, dramatic introductory sequence mirrors that seen in Shinovi Versus, before quipping at the end that you probably shouldn't take everything quite so seriously, so here is a game about large-breasted girls attempting to cook each other's clothes off in time to music.

Yes, you read that correctly; although Senran Kagura is most notorious for its large boobs and clothes-ripping mechanics, for the most part the storylines in Burst and Shinovi Versus are fairly serious in nature, exploring everything from young people coming of age, with everything that entails, to finding the true meaning of one's chosen path in life. Bon Appetit, meanwhile, does have a story — one that I haven't delved into yet, having only tried the "Arcade" mode so far — but largely revolves around the aforementioned cooking so hard your opponent's clothes fall off. And then admiring them covered in chocolate sauce and whipped cream afterwards.

It should be jarring; it should be weird, but somehow — assuming you're already on board with the series — it's not. It works. These characters are being treated more like "actors" performing different roles, albeit as the same people. It brings a sense of comfortable familiarity to the game — like seeing a favourite actor on stage or on TV — even as the games go into all sorts of weird territory, both in terms of subject matter and game styles.

I think right here is one of the reasons I find myself gravitating so strongly towards this style of game more than anything else: I'm a sucker for good characterisation, and if I find a particularly loveable group of characters that I enjoy spending virtual time with, I'll happily take that time together in any form it might happen to take — be it fighting monsters, training to be an idol, being a ninja or having a cook-off. Fortunately, I don't see the Senran Kagura or Hyperdimension Neptunia series going away any time soon, so I look forward to spending many more hours in the company of these virtual young ladies as time goes on.

Sad? Perhaps. But here's the thing: I've come to regard all these characters with genuine affection, even with the awareness that they're all exaggerated anime-style tropes on legs. And that, really, is the essence of moe: the feelings of love or affection towards fictional characters who are specifically designed to elicit such a response. I'd say their creators have done a pretty good job on that front, really.

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I'm dismayed not because I don't want more Hyperdimension Neptunia goodness to feast on, but rather because I didn't know that Re;Birth2 was coming quite so soon — although in retrospect, Re;Birth1 has actually been out for quite a while already, and I just took my sweet time over finishing it. I'm also somewhat dismayed due to the fact that Hyperdevotion Goddess Noire, a spinoff strategy-RPG take on the series starring my favourite character (the eponymous Noire) is, according to a good friend, coming in February — though with Re;Birth2 being delayed a week in Europe I wonder if this will affect Noire too.

I'm actually very curious to see how Re;Birth2 is treated. Re;Birth1 was an obvious massive jump from the original Hyperdimension Neptunia, with a completely rebuilt game system based on that seen in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, the third game in the series on the PlayStation 3 and, until Re;Birth1 came out, the best installment by far.

Re;Birth2, meanwhile, is a game that is a remake of a title that was much better in the first place. Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 was a lot closer in execution to what would become Victory; its battle system is similar (though not identical) and its game structure is, again, much more like what we see in Victory and Re;Birth1.

This leaves the story as the main thing that will probably be worked over. I enjoyed mk2's original story; it was perhaps a little heavy-handed at times with its anti-piracy message — even more so than the original game — but it featured some entertaining and adorable characters getting into a variety of scrapes, including some surprising and even quite disturbing situations. (The "Conquest" ending of mk2 is particularly notorious for not only being a "bad" ending that takes significantly more effort to get than the "true" ending, but also for taking a turn for the seriously grimdark in comparison to the rest of the game's candy-coloured shenanigans.) I find myself wondering whether it's going to have as significant of a rewrite as Re;Birth1 did, or if it's simply going to be revamped in terms of presentation — unlike other installments in the series, which used gorgeous 2D character art in dialogue sequences, mk2 used 3D polygonal models that looked significantly inferior to the 2D artwork.

I also find myself wondering whether or not there will be such a strong focus on Neptune's sister and mk2's protagonist Nepgear this time around; subsequent installments in the series have made a joke over Nepgear being "boring" in comparison to the lively, spunky Neptune and the poor girl — actually one of my favourite characters, since she's just so adorably earnest about everything — frequently ends up the butt of everyone's jokes.

I realise a lot of these questions are probably already answered by people who have played the Japanese version, but I've been doing my best to remain unspoiled and have so far succeeded. I'll be very interested to see the new game when it arrives, and I'll most certainly be continuing to support the series with my hard-earned money and play time. So bad luck, reader; you'll almost certainly be hearing more about it early in the new year!

The post 1790: The Second Re;Birth appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is noteworthy for one important reason: you don't have to set anything up. It's just there. It just, seemingly, works. And, unlike other, dedicated streaming solutions like Twitch and Hitbox, Steam's streaming is intelligent, only actually actively broadcasting when someone shows up and clicks the "Watch Game" button. This means that you can enjoy full performance when no-one is watching — streaming can cause a slight hit to graphics performance in some games — but seamlessly start sharing what you're playing with friends without having to do anything, and without compromising the experience with tiny windows, huge chatboxes and all manner of other rubbish.

This, to me, is the optimum solution for streaming — at least for me. It wouldn't work particularly well for professional streamers or those who run to more of a schedule, but for more casual players who simply want to use streaming as a means of showing other people what a game is like, it's absolutely ideal. I mean it when I said there was absolutely no setting up required, too: no buggering around with encoding, no worrying about bitrates, no creating application sessions or whatever. It just, as they say, works.

I'm still not the sort of person who will sit down and watch a scheduled stream of someone else playing a game — I'd much rather spend my time playing games myself — but that's not really what Steam's broadcasting system is for. Instead, as I noted above, its ideal functionality is for demonstrating games to one another, and pleasingly, it works with anything you run through the Steam client, not just games sold via Steam's storefront. In other words, any game that you've added to Steam via the "Add Non-Steam Game…" option in the menu — and which supports the Steam overlay, allowing you access to your friends list and chat functionality in-game — can be easily broadcasted using the new functionality.

But don't worry; if you're concerned about your lack of skills being shown off to the world and everyone showing up to laugh at you, you do have control over who can watch you. The first time someone requests to watch your game, you have several options — broadcast openly to anyone who wants to watch; broadcast to friends; or don't broadcast at all.

So far the only thing missing from the functionality seems to be some sort of record or archive function, though with the system's seemingly intended use as described above, I'm not sure we'll get that. I'm not too worried, though; I doubt there are many people who would want to watch three hours of prerecorded video of me grinding for my Relic Nexus weapon in Final Fantasy XIV — though there may be some people who have seen me playing it and are interested in taking a look for a few minutes just to see how it plays, as my friend Bowley did this evening.

I'm quietly impressed with the system, then; it'll be interesting to see how much it gets used once it rolls out into the Steam client proper.

The post 1789: Broadcasting Live appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Andie and I got engaged, too.

Hah! That made you look twice, huh. We didn't really. Well, we sort of did, though not in the traditional sense. Instead, taking full advantage of the new Final Fantasy XIV patch which came out today, we both signed up for the new Eternal Bond ceremony: Eorzea's take on marriage, with no restrictions on the genders or races of the two people involved. We didn't actually get "married" in-game today; doing so is more than a simple throwaway thing to do when you feel like it. Instead, it involves a number of different steps, none of which are difficult, but which do demand you demonstrate a certain amount of willingness to help each other out as a couple, which is nice.

First up you have to acquire "Promise Wristlets" by signing up for the ceremony on the game's website. There are three tiers of ceremony, ranging from the free one (where there's only limited customisation of the ceremony available) to Platinum tier (where you have the most possible customisation options, a prettier dress and free gifts to offer your guests). Gold and Platinum weddings cost real money, though not very much, and because Andie and I are both idiots, we went for the Platinum ceremony.

After making our intentions clear and being issued with our respective pretty dresses, we were informed that we'd need to prepare our own wedding rings. We worked together to acquire the materials necessary to do so — thankfully the ring itself isn't difficult to create — and soon enough we were ready to begin our preparations in earnest.

What followed was an enjoyable if straightforward "pilgrimage" quest where we had to visit all the main regions of Eorzea together, find the symbols of the Twelve — the gods of the lands — and pray before them. In doing so, we blessed our respective wedding rings with divine power, ready for the ceremony. We then had the opportunity to talk over what kind of ceremony we wanted and given the ability to customise the chapel to our liking. We had to actually agree on what we wanted, too, otherwise when the big day comes the officials simply pick one of your options and run with it.

That's all we could do for now; bookings for the actual ceremony — yes, you have to actually book — open on Friday, so we're going to have to get in when we can and find a suitable time and place to get virtually hitched and invite our virtual friends to come and watch and cheer us on. I'm actually very curious to see how the whole thing goes down; I know a number of massively multiplayer online games in the past have had the ability to get married in them, but I've never been in a position where I was actually able to get married to someone, whether "seriously" as Andie and I are doing so, or just to see how it worked with a friend. (I'm a bit of a traditionalist, though; while a virtual marriage isn't legally binding, of course, I do actually kind of believe it has a certain degree of meaning, and as such I'm glad to be able to do it with Andie; it wouldn't have felt right even just "trying it out" with anyone else if, say, she wasn't playing.)

I tell you what, though, even with all the charging past hordes of kobolds on chocoboback on the way to find another pilgrimage stone, getting virtually married is nowhere near as stressful as arranging the real thing!

The post 1787: Eternal Bond appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

My hesitance to play that much until now has largely been due to the fact I hadn't really picked a "main" — that is to say, a character I would generally play in preference to anyone else, given totally free choice. Maining a character involves learning their moves and the best situations in which to do them, and is a bit more effort than just bashing buttons and hoping for the best — a playstyle I'm not quite convinced I'm entirely beyond just yet.

A bit of play with Zero Suit Samus (of Metroid series fame) against my friend the other night as well as today has me thinking that she'll be a solid choice, however. She's a speedy character, and I'm a fan of being able to quickly dodge out of the way of trouble, and her moves are all pretty easy to understand. She has a medium-range projectile attack, a slightly shorter range electric whip jobby plus a few satisfying combos, uppercuts and the like. Her dashing regular attack is a powerful kneebutt to the chest (or face for the shorter characters) which is simple enough to understand, and in modes such as Multi-Man Smash, where your opponents are significantly weaker than normal but come in much greater numbers, this is more than enough to send your foes flying into the distance for a satisfying knockout.

I got in some good practice with Zero Suit Samus (distinguished from her fully armoured counterpart) in the Multi-Man Smash modes, which I cleared for the first time with her, as well as the arcade-style All-Star Mode, which sees you fighting your way through Nintendo (and guest) characters from throughout the ages in reverse chronological order, beginning with recent additions to the roster such as Wii Fit Trainer and working all the way back to classic characters like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U really is a somewhat daunting package when you first pick it up, much like its predecessors. The sheer wealth of different ways to play is bewildering and baffling at first, but it won't take long for you to find your favourite modes — and, pleasingly, there's no obligation to play the modes you don't particularly enjoy, since most of the unlockables can be obtained in several different ways ranging from simply playing a certain number of matches to completing specific modes or achievements. Today I unlocked a couple of extra characters, including Mr. Game and Watch — the poorly animated silhouetted figure from Nintendo's early '80s LCD game-clocks, complete with bip-bip-boop sound effects — and R.O.B., the ill-fated plastic robot that would supposedly "play" with you on the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System on games like Gyromite. (Turns out he's much better at fighting than he is at wielding a controller.)

I've enjoyed the Smash Bros. games over the years, but I wouldn't say they've been absolute favourites. This latest installment, however, is proving to be an addictive little beast, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how to take my game to the next level. Then one day, I might be able to actually beat my friend Tim, who is frustratingly and irritatingly good at it, assuming you let him play as his mains (inevitably, as a Zelda fan, he mains Link and Ganondorf.) In the meantime, however, I'll be continuing to grapple with Zero Suit Samus until I've got that flying knee timing just so.

The post 1785: Smashing Fun appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Sony's got a pretty comprehensive-looking gaming package at present, and one that covers a number of different markets. Speaking as someone who has not yet jumped into the next generation of hardware wholeheartedly — though I do own a Wii U — the PlayStation 4 is an infinitely more enticing prospect than the Xbox One. It's still not quite enough to make me want to rush out and buy one just yet — I'm still waiting for that absolute must-have game that I can't get anywhere else, and bear in mind my definition of "must-have" is somewhat different from the mainstream — but I'm getting closer and closer with every new announcement that comes out of Sony.

Speaking more objectively, though, the PlayStation 4 has a solid lineup of titles. Many of them are available on Xbox One as well, of course, but the PS4 versions are, in most cases, technically superior, running at better resolutions in many cases. As for exclusives, Sony has this pretty much stitched up. The Xbox One lineup of exclusives is a moribund array of unimaginative titles that tend to fit into the neat triple-A pigeonholes of "killing things", "driving things" or "doing sports with things" — there are a few exceptions, of course, such as SWERY's intriguing new project — whereas the PS4's lineup is vibrant, interesting and, importantly, worldwide, with Japanese developers rapidly jumping on board Sony's train even as they continue to eye Microsoft warily after the Redmond giant's two abject failures in the Far East.

The PS4 has the mainstream market pretty well stitched up, then, it seems — although with titles like Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II and its ilk coming to the platform, it looks set to follow in the PS3's footsteps and provide a great home for more niche titles, too, not to mention the array of excellent independent titles that are making the jump from PC to PS4, too.

And then there's the Vita. Sony still doesn't make a big deal about the Vita at events like this, which annoys some people, but really, a big keynote speech isn't the place to shout about how great the Vita is. The reason? Vita has carved out a rather wonderful little niche for itself as arguably the best place to go for… well, niche games. Highly creative indie titles? Check. Fanservicey Japanese games? Check. Non-fanservicey Japanese games? Check. Access to a staggering back catalogue of brilliant games from the PS1 and PSP eras? Check.

Developers and publishers alike are really starting to get a handle on what makes the Vita tick, and what those who own one like doing with their time. Rather than attempting to continue pushing the frankly dumb "triple-A in your pocket!" angle — the whole point of triple-A is that it's spectacular, and consequently built for the big screen — Vita devs and publishers are now embracing the fact that Vita is a handheld device whose players like the freedom to play either for a short session over lunch, or for more protracted periods of free time. The best Vita games are built with this in mind: FuturLab's Velocity 2X, for example, features lightning-fast, short levels that encourage you to replay for the best times and scores; even Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 which I've been playing recently is eminently handheld-friendly thanks to its short and snappy dungeons punctuated by clearly signposted event scenes that you move onto when you're good and ready rather than when you least expect it.

And let's not forget the PS3 in all this, still managing to remain relevant despite its successor having been on the market for a year now. Today we learned that Sega is bringing the much-requested Yakuza 5 to the West next year, and the new installment in the Persona series is coming to PS3 as well as PS4. On top of that, publishers like NIS America, Xseed Games, Aksys Games and their ilk are continuing to localise a wealth of interesting (and occasionally outlandish) Japanese titles for the Western market, so while those continue to flow in my PS3 won't be getting put away any time soon.

All this may sound rather fanboyish and perhaps it is, but the fact is, Microsoft has consistently failed to make me want to pay any attention to the Xbox One whatsoever — the first thing that still springs to mind when I think of the Xbox One is the stupid "Snap" functionality, which is something I don't think I've ever felt I wanted from a console — while Sony continually intrigues and excites me with each new announcement they make.

All it'll take is one great game to get me to grab an Xbox One, though, but at the moment I see that happening on PS4 first, by quite a considerably margin.

The post 1784: Follower of Black Heart appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

But I digress somewhat; taking the time off to recover has allowed me to catch up on some handheld gaming, because we all know handheld gaming is the best gaming when you're ill, because it's easily portable for those circumstances like, say, when you need to urgently rush to the toilet to fire off another salvo of acidic excrement that would probably make a pretty solid special move in combat were it not for the searing pain it temporarily inflicted on the origin point.

Um. Anyway. Yes. Handheld gaming. Specifically, I took the opportunity to try and beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, which I've been playing for a while now. Like most Neptunia games, I found myself not really wanting it to end, but I also eventually reached a point where I was running out of things that it was possible to do in a single playthrough, and so I powered on to the ending, beat the final boss, saw the credits (which, in typical Neptunia tradition, are accompanied by a glorious, lovingly rendered pixel-art, game-style synopsis of what you've just played) and promptly started a New Game + with a mind to cleaning up the last few Trophies I hadn't quite finished off. Specifically, I had four characters to recruit — Nepgear, Uni, Rom and Ram, the four "CPU Candidates" who were originally introduced in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 — and 100 million Credits to acquire via some means, but I decided to take a momentary detour to the game's optional "Colosseum" mode to fight some tough battles with the promise of various characters' ultimate weapons as a reward.

And hoo boy. Ultimate is the word. Rather than the gradual creeping up of stats that most weapons provided over the course of the normal game, the various characters' ultimate weapons boost their stats by a ridiculous degree, making even the toughest bosses melt like butter beneath your relentless onslaught. Couple this with the Celestia Bangle armour that you get for beating the game with the True ending — only one, sadly; if you want more you need to beat it multiple times — and you have a nigh-unstoppable fighting force.

Or so you'd think, anyway; pleasingly, even when geared up with this array of "best in slot" equipment, there are still plenty of stiff challenges throughout the game — challenges that were simply insurmountable when tackled with regular equipment, but which merely become quite difficult when equipped to the max in this manner. In the meantime, it becomes possible to hack and slash through the main story in a couple of hours (assuming you're skipping dialogue sequences) rather than the 55 hours or so it took me to beat it the first time — with story bosses that once proved a roadblock to progression falling after just one or two attacks in most cases. Eminently satisfying.

This is something that developer Compile Heart is good at, in my experience; while the difficulty curve throughout the game may be more of a pit of spikes of varying height on your first playthrough, breaking through the initial barrier and coming around for a second pass gives you a glorious feeling of power and supremacy over almost everything in the world — though there's still the odd enemy here and there that is more than willing to knock that cocky smile off your face if you're getting a bit too confident.

So far my post-game cleanup is going well; I've just unlocked Nepgear and almost have enough MB left to unlock either Uni or Rom and Ram (they come as a pair) by the end of this second playthrough. Then the only thing left is a whole lot of fighting one of the toughest foes in the game in the hope of acquiring 100 million credits. After that, I'll be happy to add Re;Birth1 to my list of "100% completed" (or at least Platinum trophied) games — a sure sign that I've had a blast with it.

Bring on Re;Birth2, then, I'm almost ready!

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One of the driving game series that I did find myself enjoying a whole lot over the years was Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing series, which actually began with the venerable (and awesome) Metropolis Street Racer on Sega's ill-fated 128-bit console, the Dreamcast. Project Gotham as a whole occupied a curious middle-ground between serious sim and arcadey racer; on the one hand, you were racing real cars around realistic environments and it wasn't really a "smash and bash" racer — in fact, Metropolis Street Racer even penalised you if you crashed too much, though this harshness was toned back a little in the later games, since they were already difficult enough — while on the other, you were flinging your car around with gay abandon, swinging its back end out whenever possible, darting between cone gates and playing chicken with upcoming walls as you tried to build up enough speed to actually leave the ground when racing down San Francisco's hilly streets.

In other words, Project Gotham demanded some genuine driving skill, but also knew that people liked having fun in cars, too — the sort of fun that would quickly get you arrested were you to try it… well, anywhere, really. Project Gotham allowed a safe environment for you to hop into various high-spec sports cars (and a few low-end crap cars towards the beginning) and just have some fun. It was later taken to the next extreme by the rather wonderful commercial flop Blur, which combined Project Gotham's semi-realistic racing (and real cars) with the stuff of pure fantasy — neon-coloured Mario Kart-inspired weapons that allowed you not only to race aggressively against your opponents, but to fire various explosive devices up their tailpipe, too. How sad that it wasn't more of a success than it was.

But I digress. Today I've been playing The Crew from Ubisoft, a game that I've been cautiously curious about ever since I first heard about it a year or two back. Promising a (somewhat scaled-down) recreation of the entirety of the United States of America, a variety of different mission types and a strong focus on working together with actual, real-life other people, it sounded like a natural evolution of the direction racing games had been moving in for a while.

Need for Speed Underground 2 introduced us to the idea of a racing game set in an open world. And boy did it work well. It worked so well that pretty much every Need for Speed game since has had some variation on this formula, with you driving around a vast (and suspiciously geographically diverse) map to discover events, take them on and complete them — or just to drive around for the fun of it. These open worlds didn't have the same level of detail about them as something like Grand Theft Auto, but they didn't need to; you only saw them from behind your windshield, and you never left your vehicle, unlike in Rockstar's classics. They did the job, though, and that was to provide you with an interesting environment in which you could get to know your car and the various roads, then challenge you with various events that would test your knowledge of both these things in a practical sense.

Later racing games played with this formula in different ways: Need for Speed Most Wanted had a strong emphasis on dramatic police chases, for example, while Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (the more recent version) actually allowed the choice of whether you were cops or street racers. Burnout Paradise, meanwhile, took that series' typically exaggerated crashes and built a whole game mode out of them, where you'd have to crash and then bounce your car along the street for as long as possible, hitting as many things as possible along the way. (Oh, you could race a bit, too.)

The reason why I'm bringing up all these other games is that The Crew, so far, feels like an entertaining mishmash of all of them. It has Burnout's crashcam, Project Gotham's driving through gates and beating speed milestones, Need for Speed's police chases. All of these different strands of DNA are very much apparent as you play, but for some reason it's Project Gotham I keep thinking of as I play, even though they're very different games; Project Gotham may have unfolded in realistic environments like The Crew does, but it took place entirely on enclosed courses rather than in open-world environments where it's possible to find shortcuts and go off-piste.

I think it's the variety of events which brings this to mind: most open-world racers in the last few years have included some sort of variation on the "race, destroy, time trial" formula, but The Crew adds a number of additional elements to the mix in the form of small, short skill challenges dotted around the various maps. Bringing to mind some of Project Gotham's short but teeth-gnashingly difficult challenges, the skill tests task you with everything from remaining above 50mph for as long a distance as possible in a time limit to slaloming around posts. And, of course, just completing these tasks isn't enough; there's bronze, silver and gold levels of completion to take on, plus online leaderboards.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the game, though, is the "co-op" multiplayer, as this adds a strange and welcome twist to the usual online racing formula. Instead of everyone jockeying for first position as usually happens — or, more accurately, the person with the best car screaming off ahead, never to be seen again, as everyone else fights for second — these events just require that someone wins. Everyone else's job then effectively becomes ensuring that the computer-controlled racers don't have the opportunity to catch the person who is screaming off ahead, hopefully never to be seen again; it becomes a team effort, and when it works, it seems like a whole lot of fun. Unfortunately, I've only had the opportunity to try event in this manner so far, but hopefully as more people pick up the game there'll be more chances to enjoy the game the way it was clearly designed to be played.

The Crew is often described as an "MMO", though at present that's not altogether accurate. The execution is somewhat like Test Drive Unlimited, in which you'll be driving around minding your own business and occasionally see other people in the area. When you reach an event, you have the option to "quick invite" anyone in the vicinity to join you, or you can pre-form a crew of up to four people to tackle challenges in a more organised manner. There don't seem to really be enough players online as yet — at least not on the PC version — to make this feature shine as it should, but I'm interested to see how — or indeed if — it grows in the coming weeks.

Even if it doesn't, the single-player offering seems fairly solid, and it has so far made a good start at fulfilling my wish of a racing game with a semi-decent story, so I'm intrigued to see what happens next. I'm also pleased to see the protagonist is a bespectacled, bearded Gordon Freeman lookalike rather than the usual self-consciously cool douchebags that usually populate this sort of game.

First impressions are pretty good then; more will doubtless follow very soon.

The post 1782: The Crew: Project Gotham for a New Generation? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Here are my top three original PlayStation games.

…Shit.

There are too many. There are way too many to choose from that I've played over the years. Some of them are incredibly obvious choices. Others are games that I have but a dim memory of playing, but which have stuck in my brain ever since. I can't choose three. I can't.

So I won't. Instead, I'm going to present some fake awards for the games that have stuck in my mind ever since I first played them. In some cases, it may have been 15-20 years since I played them, but they still carry significant meaning to me for one reason or another. In many cases, they may not even be among the best games on the platform, but for whatever reason I have remembered them fondly ever since.

Here we go then. The first one is an obvious one, but I don't think many people will argue against it.

The "wow, this is better than anything I've ever seen before" award

What other game could this go to than the original Ridge Racer?

The word "revolutionary" is thrown around far too much with regard to games these days, but Ridge Racer was genuinely revolutionary. It clearly demonstrated the vast difference in power between the 32-bit PlayStation and the 16-bit Super NES and Mega Drive that had come before.

Its slick 3D graphics and unapologetically arcadey handling — remember this was in the days when we were still using digital control pads rather than analogue sticks — made it an absolute joy to play. And despite a relative lack of content compared to modern games — there really weren't very many tracks at all, and all of them were based in the exact same environment — it was a game that could keep you occupied for hours as you tried to beat the irritating yellow car and its even more irritating later counterpart, the black car: an adversary so cocky that it often parked on the side of the road in order to allow you to catch up a bit.

A not-particularly-interesting anecdote about Ridge Racer is that it also kind of introduced me to electronic music. Prior to that game, I'd dismissed a lot of electronic music as being just noise — at least partly due to my parents regarding it as such — but over time I came to appreciate the weird and wonderful accompaniments to the racing on the soundtrack, and was much more open to the idea of listening to electronic music outside of games as a result.

The "holy crap, this is on the same system?" award

It would be remiss of me to talk about Ridge Racer and not mention the much later Ridge Racer Type-4, a game which came out much later in the PlayStation's lifespan but which still plays like a dream today.

Ridge Racer Type-4 was noteworthy not just for being a great game — and a great-looking game with what passed for "photo-realistic" visuals at the time of its release — but also for being beatifully designed, too. Take a look at the video above and tell me that those bright yellow animated menus aren't immediately distinctive and memorable — and instantly recognisable as being from Ridge Racer Type-4.

Everything about Ridge Racer Type-4 fitted together perfectly. The hour-long Grand Prix campaign gave you several mini-stories to follow through as you challenged various races in various vehicles. The vehicles you unlocked ran the gamut from the relatively sensible to the ridiculous, such as the jet-propelled monstrosity you unlocked later that really, really didn't like going around corners.

And the music. Oh, the music. At the time Ridge Racer Type-4 came out, my friends and I had discovered a genre of music known as acid jazz — a blend of jazz, funk and hip-hop typified by artists such as the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai. We would listen to pretty much nothing other than this type of music, and so we were delighted to discover that Ridge Racer Type-4's soundtrack consisted almost exclusively of music of this ilk — certainly a far cry from the early-'90s electronica of the first game — and even more delighted when we found that Namco had very much made this distinctive sound part of their in-house "style" for a while, as other games such as Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis (an honourable mention in this list) also had a rather jazz-funk flavour about them.

Racing games have come a long way, but few modern titles provide the same degree of satisfying arcade fun that Ridge Racer Type-4 still does. And now you can download and play it on PSP and Vita. And typing this, I'm very tempted to go and do that after I'm done here.

The "so I like RPGs now" award

Final Fantasy VII. I don't think I really need to say anything else about this, so here's the intro — still one of my favourite game openings of all time.

The "inexplicably burned into my memory" award

I played a lot of role-playing games on PlayStation — at least, after I discovered Final Fantasy VII and the genre as a whole — but I actually have a pretty good memory of most of them, and indeed enjoyed most of them, too, even those that were objectively lower-quality and lower-budget than other games available at the time.

One such game that has stuck in my mind for a long time is The Granstream Saga.

I remember only a few very specific details about The Granstream Saga: it had some lovely anime cutscenes; it had a great battle system that was somewhere between a traditional RPG and the real-time combat of games like Zelda; it featured two heroines called Arcia and Laramee (the latter of whom donates her name to my custom characters in games any time "Amarysse" is not available); and that none of the polygonal models had any faces.

I'm not sure why The Granstream Saga has burned itself into my memory quite as much as it has, but of all the RPGs I played on PlayStation, it's one of the ones I remember most fondly. I'd be interested to replay it sometime and see how it holds up, graphics aside.

The "I like this more than Zelda" award

Yes, I like The Adventures of Alundra more than pretty much any Legend of Zelda game I've played to date. (Disclosure: I only played a couple of hours of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, and haven't played Skyward Sword at all.)

Alundra surprised me, because it came along at a time where, so far as many teenage gamers were concerned — teenage gamers like my school friends and I, for example — it was 3D or nothing. 2D games were things of the past; it was all about the 3D now, and preferably games that came on more than one disc. (My friend Woody believed for many years that it was physically impossible for a game to be as good as FInal Fantasy VII, which came on three discs, if it only came on a single disc. This was despite me pointing out that the three discs of FInal Fantasy VII all included the exact same game data, and the only thing different between them was the prerendered cutscenes. I could never convince him.)

Alundra was staunchly 2D, though. It wasn't even a little bit 3D — games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which we'll get onto in a moment) supplemented their beautiful 2D art with 3D backdrops and other scenery elements, whereas Alundra was a pixel-art labour of love, with hand-animated characters, a distinctive and consistent aesthetic and the feel that, aside from the screen resolution, it may well have been possible to recreate on the Super NES.

After I got over my initial culture shock at playing a 2D game, though, I discovered something wonderful: a beautifully designed Zelda-style action RPG with, to date, some of the best-designed puzzles I've ever solved without the aid of GameFAQs. Alundra's puzzles were difficult — more difficult than that which Zelda typically offered — but never insurmountable, and consequently they gave a wonderful feeling of achievement when you successfully solved them.

The plot was pretty cool, too. In fact, it went on to inspire a story that I've had half-finished in my head and various word-processing documents ever since. One day I should probably finish that.

The "Hmm, 2D platform games are still relevant" award

2D platformers have had something of a resurgence in recent years thanks to the indie scene, but in the early years of the 32-bit era, developers and players alike were thoroughly enamoured with 3D, with everyone trying to recapture the magic of Super Mario 64.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night proved that 2D still had a place, however. And what a game it was.

The game was immediately striking thanks to its intro, seen in the video above. The beautiful pixel art, the incredible soundtrack — by gosh, I miss old-school Castlevania music — the cringeworthy but memorable voice acting and script… all of it combined to make the second-most badass intro sequence after Final Fantasy VII in my book.

What was perhaps most interesting about the Symphony of the Night intro, however, was the fact that it was actually the last level of the previous game. Only after you beat Dracula — in a fight that you couldn't lose this time around — did the game proper begin, and then you were in to one of the earliest examples of the "Metroidvania" genre: a type of 2D platformer where you could freely explore a single, huge world split into distinct areas, some of which were blocked off by the requirement for you to unlock specific abilities first.

Symphony of the Night as a whole was so great because it was designed well, played well, treated the player fairly and didn't outstay its welcome. It was over and done with in about 10 hours — including the "secret" second castle — and by that point you'd had an eminently satisfying experience filled with thrilling boss fights, challenging platforming and, of course, amazing music. It's no surprise that this Castlevania above all others is the one that keeps getting re-released.

The "this game is broken as hell, but I still love it to pieces" award

Bust-a-Groove took up a considerable proportion of one of our summers. Why? Because it was brilliant.

Bust-a-Groove was one of the earliest examples of "rhythm action" games that I remember playing, and took the unusual approach of being somewhat like a fighting game — it had different characters, each of whom had their own iconic stage, and you worked your way through them to a non-playable final boss. The whole thing was over in the space of about 20 minutes or so — a single playthrough was, anyway — but it was the kind of thing we all enjoyed playing over and over again with different characters.

Why was it broken as hell? Because of its multiplayer mode, and because of the nature of its gameplay. By requiring the player to input specific button sequences in time with the music, it was possible to get a "perfect" score on a level, and if two evenly matched players squared off against one another, it almost always ended in a stalemate. The game's answer to this was to provide a couple of special attacks that could be triggered in time with the music, but there was also a dodge button and a very obvious cue that these attacks were coming so, again, two evenly matched players would more than likely end in a draw, while two players of different skill levels would be a foregone conclusion.

As dumb as it was, the personality-packed characters, the detailed stages and the incredibly memorable soundtrack made this one of my favourite games of the PlayStation era.

The "I like this more than Zelda, too" award

Here in Europe, we got screwed over on the RPG front for a good few years, with many localised titles not making the hop across the pond from America. Fortunately, I had a modified PlayStation capable of playing imported games, so when I visited my brother in the States on one occasion, I took the opportunity to pick up a selection of games I couldn't get back home, one of which was Squaresoft's Brave Fencer Musashi.

Brave Fencer Musashi was a funny game. And I mean that in several senses. It was clearly Japanese through and through, but an excellent job on the localisation filled it with exaggerated Western stereotypes such as the valley girl princess (who calls the protagonist a "little turd" within two minutes of them meeting), the mystic who overdid it on the archaic English and the distinctly camp scribe named Shanky.

Structurally, it was peculiar, too. It had many of the trappings of an RPG — levelling up, HP, MP and the like — but the feel of a 3D platformer, with you exploring a world of gradually increasing size and getting into various setpiece scrapes against bosses and special events. I never got around to beating it, but it was a lot of fun, and I still have a copy on my shelf, so… hmm.

The… hmm.

I've gone on for over 2,000 words and I think I could probably continue if I tried. But I'm going to hold it there for now and perhaps revisit some more PS1 classics tomorrow.

* I lied. But you already knew that, huh.

The post 1781: My Top Three* PSone Games appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Hnng, I'm sure you will agree.

Lovely Noire aside, the PlayStation's 20th anniversary feels like a suitable occasion to share some fond memories of my time with Sony's platforms over the years, and what PlayStation has meant to me. I realise that by doing this I am, of course, falling into Sony's cunning marketing trap, but since I'm not a professional games journalist any more I can say whatever the fuck I want, not to mention post pictures such as that seen above.

Anyway.

My first memory of PlayStation is much like my first memory of many consoles from the SNES and Mega Drive era onwards: a unit came home with my brother, courtesy of his work on games magazines, accompanied by a few games, and thus I had the opportunity to try it out well before any of my friends ever did — though I would find myself biting my lip and never being sure whether or not five minutes after the poor chap had arrived was too soon to go rifling through his bags in search of technology and game cases.

The first three games I ever played on PlayStation were Ridge Racer, a pre-release version of Tekken (which had a bug or two here and there) and Raiden Project. Ridge Racer was, of course, absolutely gobsmacking at the time (though I still find it amusing that it upstaged itself with its fourth installment coming bundled with a remake of the original that ran at twice the resolution and twice the framerate) and Tekken was one of the most "physical"-feeling fighting games I'd ever encountered. (That cracking sound Paul Phoenix makes when he throws someone still makes me wince.) Conversely, I was initially unimpressed by Raiden Project owing to the fact that its 2D sprite-based graphics looked like the sort of thing the SNES and Mega Drive had been offering us for years by this point. (I later realised that I was being somewhat blinded by the then-revolutionary 3D graphics of the former two games, and came to enjoy Raiden Project a whole lot.)

Ridge Racer and Tekken were both noteworthy for incorporating something that I haven't really seen since: games to play while you waited for the main game to load. Ridge Racer offered Galaxian — and unlocked bonuses if you managed to complete it before the main game loaded — while Tekken offered Galaga. Both were impressive, arcade-perfect ports that ran flawlessly while the game loaded in the background, and I'm sad that this concept didn't take off more, perhaps due to Namco remaining somewhat tight-fisted with the technology. These days the best we get is an interactive loading screen that lets us practice our moves or something, but these tend to only come up once the game has already loaded, not the moment you put the disc in.

Eventually, for some reason, I came into possession of that same (Japanese) PlayStation that had originally come home with my brother. I forget the exact circumstances — I imagine it was due to him getting an official local model — but I was certainly extremely grateful for it. Unfortunately, as still happens with many console games today, the PlayStation was region-locked, meaning that it would only run Japanese games straight out of the box; running European games required you to either install a mod chip (which also enabled piracy, since it effectively bypassed the console's internal copy-and-region-protection systems) or make use of a somewhat questionable trick involving a piece of Blu-Tac, a pen lid, a Japanese game disc and the European game disc you were actually trying to play.

Oh yes, the disc swap trick: most PlayStation owners of the late '90s at least tried it at one point or another. Essentially the trick involved allowing the console to read the copy protection and region info from a disc it would normally accept, then quickly swap this disc out for the game you were actually trying to run. It was a somewhat perilous process that required you leave the lid of the console open at all times (propped open by the pen lid, which was also pressing down the button that told the console the lid was closed) and then whip out the first disc the moment it stopped spinning quickly. It often took a few attempts to get right, but my gosh, the first time I got Final Fantasy VII running in this way was an exciting day indeed.

Ah, Final Fantasy VII. I've waxed lyrical about this game many times on this blog, so I won't reiterate that here, but I will say that at the time it was hyped up to me as "a game that will actually make you cry" and it did not disappoint. It introduced me to the wonderful world of roleplaying games, and gave my friends and I many, many hours of entertainment, since we all finished it several times over. In retrospect, I have no idea how we had the time to do this, but I do know that to date, I have played Final Fantasy VII from start to finish at least ten times over.

Even in those early days, I was someone who enjoyed investigating interesting-looking and strange games, particularly those of Japanese origin. I recall spending a whole lot of time playing the wonderful dance-off game Bust-a-Groove as well as cracking RPGs such as Breath of Fire III, Star Ocean: The Second Story and, of course, subsequent installments in the Final Fantasy series. Visiting my brother over in the States also saw me picking up a number of games that, for whatever reason, never made it to the UK's shores: titles like Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Xenogears and Lunar: Silver Star Story.

I was well into university by the time I joined the PlayStation 2 generation. I wasn't an early adopter, but I was intrigued by this new console and the supposedly immense power it had. But once again when I picked one up, it was not to grab the latest and greatest new titles — the game I chose to purchase my console with was a little-known adventure by Konami known as Shadow of Memories, to date one of the most interesting narrative-based games I think I've ever played.

For the uninitiated, Shadow of Memories casts you in the role of Eike, a man who keeps getting murdered and then having the opportunity to go back in time and save himself. The solutions to the situations become increasingly convoluted as you progress through the story, occasionally involving travelling back hundreds of years in order to, say, prevent a tree from being planted and, by extension, removing the place your assailant was hiding. I'd encountered strong stories in games before — particularly through the aforementioned Final Fantasy VII and adventure games on PC — but Shadow of Memories was noteworthy for me in that it was a console game that had taken the bold step of having neither attack nor jump buttons — it was simply about exploring, enjoying the story and working your way to the truth. (To date, I still haven't seen the game's true ending; I should probably rectify that at some point.)

Shadow of Memories aside, it took me a while to come around to the PlayStation 2, largely due to the fact that for a little while, there didn't seem to be that many role-playing games available for it. I later discovered that this was an inaccurate assessment, of course — and in fact am still discovering great RPGs on the platform today, two hardware generations later — but it took me a little while to warm up to it.

Outside of RPGs, though, the PlayStation 2 did play host to some wonderfully memorable games. The Timesplitters series provided some of the best local multiplayer shooting since GoldenEye — largely due to being developed by the same people — while many a drunken evening was spent with my friend Sam post-Poundstretcher (the regular "everything is really, really cheap" evening at the Student Union) playing various incarnations of the Grand Theft Auto series. And some strange things from that era have remained in our collective vernacular ever since; if we'd never played State of Emergency (not Rockstar's finest hour, but actually a surprisingly fun game) we'd never have come across the phrase "[do something] for BOOOONUS SCOOOOORE!", which is frequently still used among our friendship group whether we're cooking, playing a video game or gathered around the tabletop for a board game.

I've had an interesting relationship with the PlayStation 3. Initially, I didn't quite see the point of it — in fact, I vividly recall doing some podcasts with my friends Edd and Woody where we were fairly merciless about that big ol' lump of black shiny plastic, but then we were all fairly obnoxious Xbox 360 fanboys at that point, too.

I forget what caused me to pick up one in the first place. I think it was simply a pretty good deal — the console and three games for an eminently reasonable price. The games were Ghostbusters, Fight Night and something else I've forgotten. I played about ten minutes of Ghostbusters, booted up Fight Night once and didn't play it, then quickly found that downloadable games like Flower were much more interesting than many of the retail titles available at the time. My Xbox 360 still got considerably more use — primarily due to the fact that multiplatform titles were often better on 360, and that my friends would typically play multiplayer on 360 — but I always held on to the PS3.

These days, the situation is a complete reversal. I haven't turned on my Xbox 360 for a very long time now — I don't think it's been a whole year, but it's certainly been a good few months — whereas my PS3 still gets regular use, largely due to the fact that, as has been the PlayStation platform's wont ever since its inception, it's still the best place to go for Japanese role-playing games, including titles like the Neptunia series which have since become some of my favourite games of all time. (Yes, really.)

And this isn't even getting into Sony's portable platforms the PSP and the Vita, both of which are criminally underrated platforms full to absolute bursting with top-quality entertainment to cater to all tastes and play styles. My Vita is getting more use than any of the other gaming platforms I own right now thanks to games like Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, and there's plenty more queued up beyond those two titles, on both PS3 and Vita.

As for the now year-old PlayStation 4? Well, I still don't have one yet, but frankly, with new Neptunia and Senran Kagura games both on the horizon for the new platform, it's clearly only a matter of time before I cave and grab one, isn't it? It just remains to be seen how long I can hold out. I've been doing all right so far, but it only takes one game — perhaps something unexpected — that I really have to play right now for me to take that plunge. Soon. But perhaps not just yet.

Anyway. Happy birthday, PlayStation. You — and let's not forget the myriad developers behind all the games I've talked about today and more — have brought my life great joy over the years, and you continue to fill my free time with fun and frolics even now, 20 years later. Long may it continue — for another 20 years and beyond, maybe?

The post 1780: Happy 20th, PlayStation appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

During the run-up to release, I'd misunderstood their reason for existence, assuming them to be a means of effectively customising an individual fighter to your liking, then being able to take it around to a friend's house and use your own custom character in multiplayer battles.

I had my concerns about this; any time you introduce an element of customisation to something — particularly if said customisation involves "growth" of power and abilities — you run the risk of giving an unfair advantage to anyone with the customisations, and a disadvantage to anyone playing with stock characters. I had a vision of someone coming over with a level 50 Amiibo and repeatedly kicking my arse with it, not necessarily because they were actually any good with the character, but because they'd simply levelled it up enough.

I needn't have worried, because Amiibos don't work like that. What they do instead is provide you with a computer-controlled opponent that plays alongside you, learns over time and levels up its abilities, gradually becoming stronger and more powerful. You can customise it by feeding it equipment and choosing the special moves it is able to use, and level it up simply by allowing it to participate in games — be it as an opponent in a free-for-all multiplayer battle (you can even go one-on-one against it) or as a teammate in cooperative or team-based modes.

What's interesting about this is that because there's a physical object involved as well as persistence — after you've finished a play session, you write the data back to the Amiibo simply by plopping it on your GamePad for a moment — there's a much stronger relationship between you and this small lump of plastic. I'd even go so far as to say you may well develop a kind of rivalry.

It sounds odd, but it's absolutely true. Andie and I were playing some multiplayer earlier, and we had the Amiibo as a third player for a while — although I took it out for a bit when she started winning pretty much every match. After Andie stopped playing, I brought the Amiibo back in for some one-on-one battles, and it's actually been a lot of fun trying to figure out how to beat her, because as she's levelled — a process which is pretty quick up until about level 30 or so — she's gradually become better and better at playing, and is now a rather challenging opponent that I can still beat, but who certainly doesn't go down without a fight. Victories against her feel somehow more meaningful than a battle against random computer opponents.

While I'm not sure how much the Amiibos add to the experience as a whole — I'm interested to take mine over to my friend's house to bring her into his game and see how that works — they're an interesting little twist, and the figurines themselves are attractive and eminently collectible. I'm not sure whether or not I'll collect them, but they're inexpensive and decent quality, so I'm not ruling out maybe a couple more, particularly if a Shulk one decides to make an appearance any time soon…

The post 1777: Rivalry With an Inanimate Object appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Most of you reading this probably know what Super Smash Bros. is, but on the offchance you don't, it's become one of Nintendo's flagship series over the years thanks to it essentially being a disc full of Nintendo fangasms. It's sort of a fighting game — though nowhere near as technically demanding as more traditional fighting games — that stars a wide variety of characters either from Nintendo's own lineup or from games that have appeared on Nintendo consoles at some point or another, as well as one or two special guests.

I've been playing a bit of the new game this evening and like its predecessors, it appears to be a lot of fun, if somewhat overwhelming in terms of the sheer number of different things available to do. There's a straightforward Smash battle, Classic Mode, All-Star Mode, Events Mode, Stadium Mode, online and probably several others I've forgotten, each of which are subdivided into various other things and most of which can be played either solo or with friends. Some can be played cooperatively with a partner against the computer, others are purely competitive. The most extreme multiplayer offering the new game has is an utterly chaotic 8-player mode in which it's nigh-impossible to tell what the fuck is going on, but it's an enjoyable sort of nonsense nonetheless.

There are some interesting additions, too. The ability to create your own fighter using any of the Miis on your Wii U console makes for some entertaining possibilities, particularly since they're customisable with three different fighting styles, selectable (and unlockable) special moves, equipment, costumes and headgear. The Amiibo functionality, where you can use small figurines to communicate with the game via the Near-Field Communication panel on the Gamepad, is fun, too, and not quite what I expected; rather than your Amiibo containing a fighter than you personally use, it instead acts as more of a sort of virtual pet that you can feed equipment to (don't think too hard about how that works), customise the special moves of and gradually level up by allowing it to participate alongside you in battle. Because the figurine itself holds data, you can then take it to a friend's house and bring your Amiibo into their game, too, so they can face off against the fighter you've been training up to be an unstoppable killing machine.

I'm really happy to see slightly lesser-known games such as Xenoblade Chronicles getting headline character love, too. Xenoblade's protagonist Shulk is an enjoyable, interesting character to play as, and the Xenoblade stage is challenging and cool-looking. (Plus it features recurring villain Metal Face showing up to cause mischief throughout, which is a lot of fun.) It sure makes me pretty hungry to see the new Xenoblade game in action on Wii U, though…

Aside from that, the customisation of the game has never been better. You can tinker around with how frequently items appear, which music plays in which stage and how often and even switch levels to a stripped-down, simplified "Omega Mode" (essentially little more than a floating platform) for a true test of your skill without environmental hazards being a pain. There's even an online mode — "For Glory" — where you play without items on Omega stages, and I have a feeling this is where the true Super Smash Bros. legends will learn to shine.

It's unfortunate that none of my friends are around this weekend as I was hoping to have a good session of local multiplayer with them. Still, I shall console myself with the vast amount of other content in the game — and perhaps attempt to give some online friends a kicking — and smile as the Wii U once again shows that it has some of the most enjoyable, most interesting and most polished games in all of the "next" generation of console hardware.

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Geometry Wars 2 was an absolute masterpiece, and one of my favourite games from one of my favourite studios — the sadly defunct Bizarre Creations, who were also behind some of my favourite racing games (the Project Gotham series and the wonderful Blur). It struck a perfect balance of challenge and instant gratification, allowing anyone to pick it up and play, but only those who took the time to concentrate on what they were doing to truly master it and attain the most astronomical scores. It also featured one of the finest implementations of online leaderboards of any game, ever. And the dissolution of Bizarre made me think that we'd never see a new game in the series. Here we are, though.

Is Geometry Wars 3 the masterpiece that its predecessor was? To be honest, it's a bit early to tell yet. I wasn't immediately taken with its new aesthetic — the old-school neon vector art has been toned down a bit in favour of a new (and still distinctive) look that I have a feeling will probably grow on me in time — but then I sat down to "try out" Pacifism mode (one of my favourite modes from 2, in which you may not fire your weapons and can only defeat enemies by dodging through exploding gates when they pass nearby), looked up and realised I'd spent somewhere in the region of an hour staring glassy-eyed at the screen just like I used to do with Geometry Wars 2. So that's a good sign, then.

Here are some further observations, bullet-pointed for your convenience.

• It has 3D levels. The flat plane is still there for "Classic" mode — essentially a retooling of Geometry Wars 2's modes — but in the main single-player "Adventure" mode you'll find yourself fighting on spheres, cubes, dishes, sausages, flat planes with holes in, circles with spinning walls and all manner of other peculiar arrangements. And it really adds a different spin (no pun intended) on the gameplay; having to consider the ability to "wrap" around a 3D shape forces you to think about your strategy somewhat differently to being enclosed in an arena. Not only that, but moving around on irregular shapes (such as the aforementioned sausage) can lead to you having to play with the battlefield skewed at some crazy and challenging angles if you're not careful about how you move.
• The music has been remixed. The tunes are all based on the various themes from Geometry Wars 2's various modes, but I think I preferred the old mixes. The new versions have suitably thumping bass and drum parts, but the mix of the Geometry Wars 2 versions just sounded "fuller" and more satisfying to listen to.
• There are bosses. In "Adventure" mode, anyway. Said bosses have a habit of 1) sitting on an awkwardly shaped playfield (the second boss, whom you fight on a cube, is a particularly troublesome chap) and 2) launching hundreds of enemies at you while you're attempting to fill them full of hot plasma death. Naturally, you only get one life for boss levels, too, so no fucking it up and hoping for the best.
• There's a progression and upgrade system. Again, this only applies to "Adventure" mode. Early in the game, you'll unlock a "drone" that follows you around and behaves in various ways according to which one you've selected. You can upgrade both your drone and its special attack using the little diamond-shaped Geoms you collect in the levels, which are normally used simply to increase your score multiplier. Additional drones and special attacks are unlocked by progressing through the levels in "Adventure" mode and by attaining a particular number of stars by beating target scores in each level.
• There's a weird new mechanic called Super State. The clichéd computerised voiceover will occasionally say "Super State" and inform you that there's an arrangement of static targets somewhere on the playfield. Destroy them all and you get a powered-up weapon for a brief time, rather than the approach from previous games where once your shots were powered up, they stayed powered up. It's a fun little twist that forces you to weigh up whether it's worth the risk of trying to destroy the targets, or simply muddle on with your regular weapon. It can be particularly perilous on "Adventure" mode's 3D stages.
• Leaderboards are still awesome. In the "Classic" modes, you can always see your nearest rival in the corner of the screen, and at the end of a session you can see how you stack up against your friends and the global leaderboards. In "Adventure" mode, each level has its own individual leaderboard for you to take on, giving you something to strive for even if you've cleared every level with three stars.
• There's an online mode. There are two ways to play, only one of which I've tried so far. Summoner splits players into two teams and then puts them in a Domination-style game where you have to capture towers by shooting them, and then the towers start coughing up enemies for you to destroy with your teammates. Highest score at the end of a short time limit — matches are really short and snappy — wins. Die and your team suffers a penalty to its score multiplier. It seems like fun, but unfortunately in the matches I've tried so far all of my opponents (and teammates for that matter) have just sat there and not done anything. This did mean I won by default, however, which was nice.
• There's a local co-op mode. I haven't tried it yet, but this was quite fun in Geometry Wars 2.

That's about it for my initial impressions, then. I'll undoubtedly play some more in the next few days and have some more detailed thoughts to ponder, but for now I'm quietly impressed. As I noted above, I'm not quite sure yet whether or not it's as good as Geometry Wars 2 was, but it's certainly a solid, enjoyable game that I'm looking forward to getting to know a bit better.

(Oh, and if you're playing the PC version, I recommend playing in Borderless Windowed mode; the full-screen mode inexplicably caps the frame-rate at 24fps, which is just baffling.)

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For the uninitiated, Dungeon of the Endless is a peculiar affair somewhere between roguelike, real-time strategy game, turn-based strategy game, tower defense game and board game.

Here's how it works. Your party of heroes (initially two, but expandable up to four by finding and recruiting additional characters as you progress) have crash-landed in a dungeon. The only way out is to use the otherwise destroyed spacecraft's energy crystal to power the ancient elevators which proceed upwards through the twelve levels of the complex. Inconveniently, of course, these elevators only go up one floor at a time, so on every level you have to go through the same process of exploring, finding the exit and then transporting the energy crystal from the start point to the exit. Do this twelve times and you win; let the crystal be destroyed or all of your heroes die and you lose.

Each level is randomly generated, and they get larger and more complex as you progress, but still follow the same basic formula. A level is constructed out of individual rooms separated by doors, and opening a door is akin to starting a new "turn" in Dungeon of the Endless' stablemates Endless Space or Endless Legend. Upon opening a door, you produce a particular amount of Food, Science and Industry, with the exact amount dependent on various conditions, including the heroes you have on your team, the modules you've built around the dungeon and whether or not there's anyone trained to operate said modules and improve their output.

Food is required for healing, levelling up and, occasionally, recruiting new heroes. Science is used for researching new modules to construct and resetting ability cooldowns. Industry is used to actually construct things. There's also a fourth resource called Dust, whose main use is to increase the power capacity of your crystal. Every ten units of Dust you acquire, you earn the ability to power an additional room. Powered rooms — which have to be connected to the crystal or to other powered rooms — can have modules built in them. Unpowered rooms have the chance of spawning waves of monsters every time you open a door — or indefinitely once one of your party members picks up the crystal and starts transporting it.

Playing the game effectively involves carefully strategising how you can balance exploring the dungeon to find the exit, constructing defensive positions to protect the crystal from attack, and powering rooms in such a way as to prevent enemies spawning in inconvenient locations — or perhaps to funnel them towards an easily-defended position. It's initially overwhelming, but once you master the basic strategy — power rooms along the path to the exit, place heavy defences in between where the enemies are likely to spawn and where you're going to be heading — it's satisfying, but still challenging. As the game progresses, the enemies get stronger and come out in greater numbers, so you'd better have levelled up your heroes and researched some better modules in preparation for the increasing intensity of the assaults.

Being inspired by roguelikes, Dungeon of the Endless has a pleasing amount of replayability thanks to random elements that make each playthrough a little different. The maps are different each time, for starters, but there are also more subtle changes like the technologies available to research. In the last game I played, for example, I had access to the "Knowledge is Power" turrets, which power themselves up significantly according to how much Science you've collected. I stockpiled an enormous amount of Science in the earlier levels, meaning that these relatively inexpensive turrets got me through a lot of the game thanks to their astronomical stopping power. (They didn't help me finish the last level, however, in which you're very short on power and other resources and powerful monsters just seem to keep coming.)

I haven't yet tried the multiplayer mode, in which you each control a single hero, but it has the potential to be interesting in a slightly different way to the single-player. I'm interested to try it sometime soon; hopefully the opportunity will arise!

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I put the word "remake" in inverted commas because to call Re;Birth1 a remake is to do it something of an injustice. This is a complete and total overhaul of the game from top to bottom — graphics, gameplay, mechanics, story, characters, music, everything. In essence, it's a completely new game that even those who played and enjoyed the original — I know there's some of you out there, even though it was the weakest in the series by a very long shot indeed — can get a huge kick out of.

All of the above said, Re;Birth1 does also recycle a whole ton of material from previous two games Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory — principally dungeon aesthetics and layouts, monsters and music. Consequently, those of you who played mk2 and/or Victory will probably find a lot of familiar material in Re;Birth1 but that's not actually a bad thing; the comfortable familiarity of the recycled material gives the game a feeling of consistency with its predecessors (for obvious reasons) while the new stuff that is included — no, it's not identical to its predecessors — stands out all the more for being a big contrast to the material that's been used in three games now. In essence, the game represents a refinement of the Hyperdimension Neptunia formula that developer Compile Heart has been experimenting with over the course of the previous installments and, while not completely perfect — a couple of minor elements from the previous games that I really liked have been ditched for Re;Birth1 — it is, by far, the definitive Neptunia experience, and a game that is beautifully designed for portable play.

Neptunia games have always been about two things: a silly, enjoyable, well-written and witty story coupled with some surprisingly compelling, grind-and-farm-heavy dungeon crawling. Re;Birth1 is no exception; its narrative retells the story of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia with a few twists here and there as well as a host of new characters, while there's plenty of incentive to dungeon crawl thanks to its quest system and one of the main mechanical highlights: the sprawling Remake system.

Remake allows you to craft various things. So far so conventional, but unlike many other crafting systems, Remake allows you to craft game mechanics as well as items, weapons and armour. Finding the game a bit challenging? Dig up a programmer's plan to weaken all the enemies and hack it into the game to make things a bit easier for yourself. Want to find the hidden treasures more easily? Build your own treasure scanner to enhance the minimap. Annoyed at that age-old RPG problem, "You Failed to Escape"? Craft yourself the ability to escape from battle with a 100% success rate.

Of course, all this makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is; to complete these plans you'll have to first of all find the plan in the first place — they can be anywhere from inside treasure cubes in dungeons to held by various NPCs around the world map that pop up after every major story beat — and then collect all the ingredients, most of which tend to come from monsters. The game doesn't hold your hand with this; if you want to craft a plan, you'll have to figure out where on Earth you're going to get all the bits from, though thankfully a straightforward dungeon and monster encyclopedia in the menu allows you to see which enemies haunt which areas, and what they might drop when you kill them — assuming they've already dropped it for you at least once. Through this system, you're encouraged to explore the various dungeons and fight as many different enemy types as possible in order to fill out that monster guide — the more complete it is, the less you'll have to look up on the Internet later.

The nice thing, though, is that it's all completely optional. There's no obligation to go fiddling around with plans at all — though your life will be significantly easier if you do — so if you simply want to plough through the main story as quickly as you can, that option is always open to you. Likewise, there's no obligation to complete quests, unlock optional dungeons or kill boss monsters — though failing to do so may well leave you a bit underlevelled come story boss time, at least on your first playthrough.

As with previous installments of the Neptunia series, the game is absolutely dripping with personality. Each character is a clearly-defined — though often (deliberately) tropetacular — person in their own right, with many of them poking fun at established video game and anime characters. Indeed, a number of the new characters for Re;Birth1 are direct references to game series and developers such as Steins;Gate creator MAGES., Senran Kagura publisher Marvelous AQL and legendary fighting game series Tekken. Each of these characters is beautifully designed to encapsulate the very essence of the thing they're supposed to be referencing; MAGES. wouldn't look out of place in Steins;Gate herself, for example, and even has alternate colour schemes that directly reference the characters Mayushii and Faris, while Marvelous AQL has costumes based on the Senran Kagura girls' iconic outfits.

It's a cliché to describe something as a "love letter" to something else, but I'm going to do it anyway. Hyperdimension Neptunia has always been a love letter to fans of Japanese video games and anime, being packed full of references both obvious and incredibly subtle, and Re;Birth1 very much continues that. It's a game that celebrates the joy of having fun with interactive entertainment, and I defy you to play through it with anything other than a huge smile on your face.

Except, of course, when Killachine flattens your party for the fifth time in a row because you didn't prepare properly and ended up with everyone stunned and clustered together, just waiting to be cleaved. You don't have to keep smiling then. But you'll probably try again rather than flinging your Vita across the room.

My only trouble with it is that I don't really want it to end. Although when those end credits do eventually roll, I can console myself with the fact that there are three new Neptunia games out there that I haven't played yet — strategy RPG Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart, the rather Senran Kagura-esque brawler Hyperdimension Neptunia U and probably the most exciting offering: PS4 title Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, a game that, if I don't own a PlayStation 4 by then, will almost certainly make me go out and buy one immediately the moment it is released.

Yes, I'm a fan. And unashamed of that fact. It's a series that consistently makes me smile; given how much I love it now, it's rather odd to (re)discover today that I've only been playing these games since January of last year. But I hope I'll be able to continue enjoying them for many years to come yet.

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I'm referring to the question of game length.

In an age where the public are seemingly ever more likely to rate interactive entertainment in terms of a "money per hours" ratio — look at the drubbing Gone Home got from certain quarters who felt that $20 was too expensive for the 2-3 hours of gameplay it offered — it should be abundantly clear to anyone who plays them that Japanese games, for the most part, consistently offer the absolute best value in terms of bang for your buck on the market.

Take Senran Kagura Burst, for example, which I finally pummelled into submission and 100% completion over the weekend during downtime between activities. This is a game that is essentially a spiritual successor to the arcade brawlers of yore — games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix: The Arcade Game and The Simpsons Arcade Game, to name but a few favourites from my own youth.

Unlike those brawlers, however, which typically tended to be no more than four or five levels long — they needed to theoretically be completable on a single coin credit and in a single sitting, after all — it took me in excess of 50 hours to complete all the levels in Senran Kagura Burst, and there's plenty more I could do after completing all the levels once: try for an A-rank on all of them; try and level up all the characters to 50; try and unlock all the characters' "balance" modes through using them in different ways; try to complete all the levels in the challenging "Frantic" mode; try to beat all the bosses with special moves; and try to see all the bosses' special moves without dying. Were I to tackle some of those additional challenges — and I'm not ruling out the possibility, as I enjoyed Senran Kagura Burst one hell of a lot — I'm sure that could easily put a significant number of extra hours on the clock.

Notably, though, a lot of this "extra" stuff is optional. You can romp through the main storyline of Senran Kagura Burst, ignoring all side missions and some of the clever things you can do with the characters, in probably about 10 hours or so, if that. (Most of that time will be reading the game's lengthy visual novel sections, which are skippable after you've completed that mission at least once.) And in doing so, you'll have had a satisfyingly complete experience from start to finish — particularly as the game's structure effectively feels like you're getting two (rather similar) games for the price of one thanks to the story unfolding from two different, parallel perspectives that meet up at various points.

The same is true for many other Japanese games, with RPGs being the clearest example. Your average Japanese RPG these days will take anywhere between 20 and 100 hours to clear first time through, assuming you don't just plough straight through to the ending, and that you take on a bit of side content and spend a bit of time fine-tuning your characters. After that, though, you have a choice: set it aside, satisfied that you've seen the conclusion to the story, or continue playing in the hope of enjoying everything else the game has to offer — often referred to as "post-game". Many modern RPGs also offer a "New Game Plus" mode, in which you can carry across certain things from your previous playthrough into a new run — the exact things you can carry across vary according to the game, but often include things like character levels, unlocked skills, equipment, secret areas uncovered and all manner of other goodies. This tends to turn you into a satisfyingly unstoppable powerhouse at the outset of your second playthrough as your buffed-up character cuts through enemies like butter, but is often necessary to take on some of the biggest challenges the game has to offer. Some games even withhold their toughest bosses and dungeons until post-game or New Game Plus, providing you with an incentive to continue playing even after the credits have rolled.

Even seemingly "short" Japanese games have a massive amount of longevity, too; take your average "bullet hell" shooter, for example, which typically follows the arcade machine structure of theoretically allowing someone to clear it on a single credit and in a single sitting. The true challenge of these games, however, comes from perfecting your game — achieving that single-credit clear (often known as a 1CC — 1 Credit Clear), beating your last high score, topping the worldwide leaderboards. The latter aspect in particular can become enormously competitive, and in the case of many shmups, requires you to fathom out an initially Byzantine-seeming scoring system in order to take maximum advantage of it.

And this isn't even getting into the truly, directly competitive titles such as fighting games, which have potentially limitless replayability if you're actually any good at them. (I am not, so I tend to play through the story mode, if there is one, and then be done, perhaps with an occasional two-player local match with friends if they're up for it.) Or driving games with ongoing online competition. Or all manner of other joyful experiences.

I'm not saying Western games don't offer any of this longevity — anyone who's super-into Call of Duty's multiplayer mode is doubtless raising their hand and going "Um…" right now — but for my money, and particularly in the single-player space, Japanese games can't be beaten for value in terms of how much entertainment you'll get for your £40.

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The Hanzou side of the story, which focused on the life and times of a group of female classmates in the Hanzou academy for "good" ninjas, was a lot of enjoyable fun, helping to make the already visually distinctive characters into interesting individuals that the player would want to find out more about. There's the leader of the group Asuka, who gradually grows in confidence and assertiveness as the story progresses; class rep Ikaruga, who is initially portrayed as the more "motherly", sensible figure of the group, but gradually steps aside as Asuka grows in strength; Katsuragi, who is very much the "older sister" of the group — and a character unabashedly comfortable with both her own body and her seemingly somewhat fluid sexuality; Hibari, who is immature and filled with self-doubt until she goes on a significant personal journey — an important part of the overall plot; and Yagyuu, whose quiet, understated love for Hibari is extremely touching to see.

Over the course of the Hanzou story, the girls encounter the girls of the Hebijou "evil" school for ninjas on several occasions, culminating in a final conflict against them at the conclusion of the story. Initially set up to be complete antagonists for one another, the final chapters of the Hanzou storyline take steps to humanise the Hebijou, showing both the player and the Hanzou girls that despite being on "opposite" sides, it's possible to find common ground and be friends.

This theme is explored in greater detail in Hebijou's own story. A key concept when considering Hebijou is the idea that the concept of "good" is selective and has stringent criteria to be accepted, while the darkness of "evil" will accept anyone. Consequently, a significant part of the Hebijou story that I've played so far centres around a disparate group of girls from wildly different backgrounds — most of whom have some sort of difficulty or tragedy in their past that they're trying to escape — coming together and finding this common ground; this reason to work together, even though they're "evil".

In fact, throughout the Hebijou storyline, it's easy to forget that these girls are supposed to be "evil" at all, and that's entirely the point the game as a whole is making: regardless of what "side" you're on, it's important to surround yourself with people that you trust and love. People that are true friends; people that can help you through your problems; people that, in some cases, know you better than you know yourself.

Hebijou's cast are an interesting bunch — perhaps even more so than the Hanzou girls. Leader-type Homura — a rough analogue to Hanzou's Asuka — is a girl of relatively few words who is good at being serious but tends to try way too hard when attempting to be "fun". Hikage, meanwhile, is a mysterious young woman who claims to have no emotions — so, as you might expect, cue plenty of scenes with the other girls trying to make her feel things. Mirai, on the other hand, is a young, painfully insecure girl who believes herself to be inferior both physically and in terms of ability to her peers. Next is Yomi, who uses the mannerisms of a privileged rich girl, but actually grew up in poverty, tends to have little to no money even now and who refuses all but the most very basic of charity. And finally Haruka, who is one of the most overtly sexual characters I think I've come across in any game in recent memory, aptly demonstrates that being "sexy" doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice the elements of your personality that make you into a normal human being. You can embrace your sexuality and your own particular tastes without letting them define you, in other words.

I've been really enjoying the Hebijou story so far and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops. Rather than simply presenting the events of the Hanzou side from an alternative perspective, it's an enjoyably distinct story in its own right, and, like its Hanzou counterpart, gives us an enormous amount of insight into some of the most well-defined characters I've come across in recent memory. I'm glad there's plenty more adventures of the Senran Kagura girls to come in future — in the immediate future, there's Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus for Vita, Senran Kagura 2 for 3DS and rhythm game spinoff Senran Kagura Bon Appetit. And you can bet your life and hometown I'll be playing them all.

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The first couple of days after a patch drops are an exciting, enjoyable time to be playing, because most people who are online at the same time as you are in a similar situation to you — they're learning new fights without any foreknowledge of what is to come, and with the fact that guides for these new fights tend not to crop up until a week or two after the actual patch drops, you have little option but to either try and figure things out for yourself or trust the word of the people you're playing with. It's a lot of fun, puts everyone on a much more level playing field than later in a patch's lifecycle, and leads to a certain degree of camaraderie as everyone comes together to work out the best ways to take things on.

After two days, we have a few bits and pieces figured out.

We know that the first boss in Sastasha (Hard) has a very powerful attack that hits anyone except the tank, and this can be stunned — though like most enemies in Final Fantasy XIV, it builds up a gradual resistance to Stun if you keep doing it over and over. Instead, it's important that the healers ensure no-one is afflicted with the "Slime" status effect when this attack comes, as although the attack is powerful, it will never kill you outright; the damage over time from Slime, however, may well finish you off after one of these almost-deadly blows.

We know that the second boss in Sastasha (Hard) is sometimes bugged, but that you can proceed through the fight even if it seems to have frozen up by stopping your attack for a moment.

We have no idea how the final boss in Sastasha (Hard) works, but it seems that killing all the Kraken's arms prevents it from summoning deadly waterspouts, while keeping out of reach of its tentacles allows you to pelt its head with impunity.

The Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard) likewise has three interesting bosses. The first is a multi-part boss who seems to go down quickly if you kill his parts in a certain order, ending with the head. He has a habit of summoning nasty quicksand traps for you to be dragged under.

The second Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard) boss features regular DPS checks, any time it starts casting 100,000 Needles (which actually only does 25,000 damage, disappointingly, but this is still enough to kill even the most well-geared tank). Throughout the fight, he has friends pop up, some of which are simple cannon fodder, one of which is aggro-locked to a random player — often the healer from the look of things — and another of which covers the main boss, protecting it from damage.

The third Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard) boss is relatively simple mechanics-wise, but enjoyable to play. Essentially you're playing Waves mode from Geometry Wars 2, avoiding occasional sweeping waves of mummies that run across the battlefield, cursing you if they touch you, while simultaneously trying to batter the boss down to size. Later in the fight, you also have to contend with a line-of-sight attack which also inflicts the curse status on you — get four stacks of this and you temporarily turn into a mummy, running diagonally across the field and potentially afflicting your allies with the curse in the process if they don't get out of the way.

Snowcloak, meanwhile, is unusual in that it's actually part of the main story for once — most of the other level 50 dungeons have been unlocked through sidequests. Snowcloak is a part of the main narrative, however, but it still works in much the same way, and again has three interesting bosses to power through, as well as some enjoyable "enemy gauntlets" to fight through.

The first fight in Snowcloak is relatively easy. Like the final boss of Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard), you're trying to avoid getting four stacks of a debuff on you — though in this case, it freezes you for a few seconds rather than turning you into a mummy.

The second fight in Snowcloak is becoming known as "Yeti Billiards" because it involves freezing Spriggan adds in the boss' area-effect attack, then hitting the snowballs this creates back into the boss. Freeze the same snowball more than once and it will grow in size, causing it to deal considerably more damage when it hits the boss.

The third fight in Snowcloak is actually pretty straightforward. You simply have to avoid icicles falling on your head, then spot the two that are going to shoot across the battlefield, injuring anyone in their path, then hide behind the third one before the boss does his group-wide Lunar Cry move, which freezes anyone it has line-of-sight with. There's a lot of moving around, and it's a lot of fun — if a little easy once you know what you're doing.

All this isn't even getting onto the utterly ridiculous but hugely enjoyable fight against Final Fantasy VI characters Ultros and Typhon, or the conflict against Shiva. There's been a lot to discover over the last few days, and people are still learning. It's a fun time to be playing; over time it will settle down into more of a "routine" like in previous patches, but for now, it's one of those times that, for the most part, tends to show the community at its best, most cooperative and most helpful towards one another.

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I probably don't have to tell you that I didn't hesitate to hand over the $20 for the complete collection of 32 games — many of these games were fixtures on my home PC while I was growing up, and even more of them were titles that I never got around to playing at the time for whatever reason. A surprising number of them hold up pretty well today, more to the point, and with the Anthology package updating them to run just peachy on modern Windows systems as well as providing rudimentary controller support, it's a great time to rediscover these great games.

Of the 32 games, I had heard of most of them — though a couple, like Arctic Adventure and Pharaoh's Tomb, were new ones on me. I'd played a decent number of them, too; particular favourites from the past included the Commander Keen games, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Shadow Warrior and, of course, Duke Nukem 3D. I'm pleased that the collection offers the opportunity to rediscover somewhat lesser-known titles like Bio Menace and Terminal Velocity, too; both of these were games that I only ever played the limited shareware versions of "back in the day" and was always curious to see how they developed in their full, registered versions. This being the mostly pre-Internet days, however, it wasn't as simple as just clicking "buy" on a game and having it on your computer moments later.

I really liked the shareware model, and I'm actually surprised it's not used as much these days, since the Internet would seem to provide an ideal delivery medium for this sort of thing. For those unfamiliar, a shareware game could be distributed for free, and generally provided a full and satisfying game experience in its own right. It would usually only form the first "episode" of a fuller experience, however, and to see how the story concluded — or simply have the opportunity to acquire new weapons and fight new enemies — you'd have to pony up the cash for the full, or "registered" version. In some cases, you had the option to purchase some of the game instead of all of it — Wolfenstein 3D, for example, featured six episodes, the first of which was free, the second and third could be purchased as a bundle, and the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes could be purchased as a separate bundle. Or, of course, you could buy the whole lot in one go.

The closest equivalent we have these days is, I think, the "episodic" games that companies like Telltale put out, but they're not quite the same; although there are sometimes special offers or even giveaways of the first episode, the game isn't built around the assumption that the first episode is not only free, but also freely distributable. That "share" part was important — you were actively encouraged to share the free episode with family and friends, and in that way these games built up a very early means of viral popularity, without the Internet to support it. Kids were already illegally copying games and sharing them with one another in the playground, after all; all shareware was doing was legitimising this to a certain extent — though I don't doubt that a few dodgy copies of registered versions probably did the rounds, too.

Sony sounds like it's trying some interesting "sharing" functionality with the PlayStation 4, but it's still not quite the same. Perhaps I'm just being nostalgic and looking back on it with rose-tinted glasses, but I do know one thing for sure: I have very fond memories of a lot of these games, and a surprising number of them still hold up very well today.

If you'd like to try them out for yourself, you can grab a copy of the complete Anthology here, or download and purchase some of the games individually if you prefer.

The post 1741: Shareware appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

While superficially similar, Ace Combat 5 is definitely a more refined package on more fronts, though both games remain well worth playing in their own right.

To clarify: Ace Combat 4 had an interesting, unconventionally told narrative and gameplay that, more often than not, boiled down to "score [x] number of points before time expires", with the odd break for "destroy all the marked targets before time expires". This is a huge simplification, of course, because it was the context in which these missions took place that made Ace Combat 4 interesting rather than the actual mission objectives themselves.

Ace Combat 5 mixes things up a bit by having a wider variety of mission objectives. 17 missions in, and I've only just had a "score [x] number of points before time expires" mission; prior to that, I've had everything from "capital ship" battles against submarines to air support missions flying cover for an aircraft carrier escaping a besieged city, and one particularly memorable (if challenging) mission where you had to locate a downed member of your squadron, then support the rescue helicopter as it came in to pick her up.

Ace Combat 5 also tells its story in a different manner to its predecessor. While Ace Combat 4 framed its narrative as a letter written from someone who knew the primary antagonist to you, the player, Ace Combat 5 tells a more "present-day" tale about the jet fighter squadron which you're a member of. Like Ace Combat 4, you gradually become known as a legendary pilot that enemy forces speak of in hushed tones, but there's a lot more humbleness and humility about it this time around; there's a strong emphasis on questioning the actions you're being asked to take in the war, and whether what you're doing is really justified. It makes for some compelling drama both during and between missions, and it's a big part of what makes the game so interesting.

Flying and fighting is an absolute joy, though, and that's what really matters here. Each plane feels noticeably different from the others — though all kind of throw realism out of the window in the name of fun — and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. The different weapons you'll be flinging around all have their own little quirks and idiosyncrasies, too, and it's interesting to gradually learn which plane (and attached special weapon) is most appropriate for which situation. Plus there's a fun little "levelling" system whereby scoring enough kills with a particular type of plane unlocks better variants in that family tree — you can gradually upgrade from the F-15C Eagle to the F-15E Strike Eagle, for example, and you can do this for an impressively wide selection of real-life planes.

I'm impressed quite how good the game looks, too. It features native 16:9 support, for one thing — something you couldn't rely on in the PS2 era, even with widescreen televisions becoming more widespread — but its visuals lack that muddiness that many PS2 titles often have when viewed on an HDTV. It's not pin-sharp, no, but it looks good — and my goodness, does it ever move smoothly, maintaining a solid 60fps at all times, even when all manner of scary shit is going on around you.

I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty smitten with this series. And, as I think I've said previously, I'm sorry I didn't have the opportunity to try it out when it first came along.

The post 1738: Aces High appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Been watching some of the live online coverage of FanFest today — that's the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, if you're unfamiliar.

The concept of a whole, large-scale event dedicated to a single video game may seem like an alien concept to some of you, particularly if you're more accustomed to events like E3 and EGX where hundreds upon hundreds of games are all vying for the press and public's respective attention. But with something like Final Fantasy XIV — which boasts somewhere in the region of 2.5 million players — it's understandable, particularly as the game is entering an exciting period.

This coming week or the next will see the release of the game's 2.4 patch Dreams of Ice, which is likely going to be the penultimate episode of the Final Fantasy XIV base game. We've already started seeing teasers for what the grand finale of the 2.X storyline will be, and doubtless Dreams of Ice will continue in that direction, taking in a spectacular-looking confrontation with Shiva along the way. Patch 2.5, which should follow along in about three months or so, looks set to provide a suitably epic conclusion to this story, and set things up nicely for the expansion Heavensward, which is coming in Spring 2015.

Aside from continuing the main storyline, Dreams of Ice will also wrap up the narrative surrounding the super-challenging endgame dungeons The Binding Coil of Bahamut, The Second Coil of Bahamut and, soon, The Final Coil of Bahamut. Those with the raiding chops to take on the challenges within will be rewarded with the truth behind the Calamity that befell Eorzea five years ago — and what's really going on with Bahamut. Is he going to wake up again and lay waste to the land, or…?

One of the interesting things about FanFest has been the panels, which have been broadcast live via Twitch, giving me my first reason ever to actually go to Twitch and watch something. And there have been some fascinating discussions, too; there was a great panel on the game's music earlier, and shortly before the time of writing there was a superb lore panel based around how the game's world is "written" and "built" — something that is a real strength of the game. Unusually for a largely Japanese game, much of the lore is contributed and composed by a Westerner (albeit one who grew up in Japan), and as such Final Fantasy XIV finds itself in a strong position to appeal to both Western and Eastern players. Its English localisation was so strong, in fact, runs the narrative, that Japanese players started to demand the same attention to detail, sense of humour and wit that runs through the English script, ultimately making all versions of the game into a superior experience. It was a heartwarming tale.

Mostly what FanFest has driven home is that Final Fantasy XIV is a truly global game, and that while it will likely never reach the same dizzy heights of World of Warcraft in its prime, it's in a very healthy position indeed — and that exciting times are ahead for those who make their second home in Eorzea. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds in the long term — but in the short term, there's this, at least:

The post 1735: Thal's Balls appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is a game that came out in 2001 for the PlayStation 2, sporting visuals that are still reasonably impressive (albeit low-resolution) today, and which run at an absolutely rock-solid 60 frames per second without breaking a sweat.

More importantly, though, it's a game that manages to be utterly compelling, addictive and thrilling while treating the player with respect and, at the same time, telling an interesting story in a rather unusual manner.

Given what I've experienced of Ace Combat 4 to date, it's easy to see why Ace Combat veterans were a little miffed at Assault Horizon — though I maintain that was an enjoyable enough game in its own right.

Ace Combat 4 is a lot more distinctive than Assault Horizon, though. While the newer game is clad in that unmistakeable "triple-A veneer" that makes a lot of modern games look gorgeous but lack a clearly defined visual identity compared to their contemporaries, Ace Combat 4 is immediately recognisable (although some may argue its interface takes more than a few cues from Metal Gear Solid).

At heart, it's a solid jet fighter sim that throws the odd bit of realism out of the window in the name of fun. Your plane carries an implausibly huge stock of missiles, for example, which is useful, because you'll find yourself shooting down an awful lot of planes and blowing up an awful lot of ground targets in each mission. You can't just fire them off willy-nilly, however — well, maybe you can at ground targets — since enemies will dodge and evade missiles, just like you can. To get a solid lock, you need to manoeuvre carefully behind an enemy and keep them in your sites as you fire off the missiles — and, unlike Assault Horizon with its Dogfight Mode, you have to do this manually rather than pressing a button to do so. It's a lot more challenging, but also a lot more satisfying, too.

The missions are far less scripted than Assault Horizon, too — though that's not to say they don't have interesting things going on. Throughout the first part of the game, you're often under threat from the enemy forces' superweapon Stonehenge, for example, and when you're warned it's about to fire you'd better make sure you're hugging the ground if you don't want to be blown to smithereens. In one particularly memorable mission, you have to fly back to your base while Stonehenge is firing at you, and the only means of getting low enough to stay under its devastating blasts is to fly through a rather perilous canyon.

I'm impressed with the storytelling, too. The game runs two parallel storylines throughout its campaign — one presented in a rather faceless manner to the player, a la many flight and space sims over the years, and another much more personal tale from the perspective of a child living in an occupied city. As you progress through the campaign, the effects of your victories are mirrored in this parallel storyline, until in its later stages you're referred to more explicitly, particularly after the mission where you shoot down the primary sort-of-antagonist-but-not-really's wingman. I haven't yet finished the game, but the smart money is on an epic final confrontation between Mobius One (me) and Yellow Thirteen before the credits roll.

I've been having an absolute blast so far, then. I don't think I'm far off the end of the game, and I'm looking forward to seeing what its sequels have in store.

Now why didn't I discover this series thirteen years ago?

The post 1730: Distant Thunder appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1727: Warwolf One appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1726: Assault Horizon appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1725: Jet Fighter Squad appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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!

The post 1724: Remake Rebirth appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1722: Shared Hardship on the Shores of La Noscea appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1713: Yep, You Should Play Ethan Carter appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The downside to the Free Company that I'm a member of is that the vast majority of people involved live in the States. This makes things a little difficult when I want to participate in things that practically necessitate forming a group yourself rather than relying on the game's built-in "Duty Finder" matchmaking system. It hasn't stopped me trying, of course — and I'm very pleased to have completed both The Binding Coil of Bahamut Turn 5 and Ramuh's Extreme Mode incarnation with my friends in the Free Company — but since these attempts normally necessitate staying up until about 3am at the earliest in most cases, they're not always practical, particularly now I have a proper job and consequently have to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning in order to arrive on time.

Enter our neighbours, then — yes, they're actually our neighbours; their Free Company house is right across the street from ours — the free company Loose Cannons, more commonly known as LoCo. I've seen these guys around a bit over time, but didn't really know them that well. They always seemed to be pleasant people, though, and they were always gracious enough to wave and greet me when I passed by them on my way to do something else.

After a while, a "linkshell" — essentially a custom chat channel, for those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV parlance — was set up to allow Giant Bomb and LoCo to communicate with one another, since the Free Company chat channels are restricted to members only, and you can only be a member of one Free Company at once. You can have up to eight linkshells, though, so I happily accepted the invitation — though, being me, I was somewhat hesitant to muscle in on what I saw as already-established social groups, and thus remained rather quiet around the unfamiliar people.

The other night saw an encouraging milestone, though; it transpires that many of the members of LoCo operate in the same timezone as me, and moreover, that a lot of them are interested in taking on the game's most challenging content, such as the aforementioned Binding Coil of Bahamut Turn 5, and the subsequent four-part raid the Second Coil of Bahamut. Since I'm also interested in challenging this content, but didn't want to muscle in on the established, US-timezone groups that had already naturally formed in Giant Bomb, this has the potential to be an ideal situation for me.

I've never been a part of a "static" raiding group before and indeed have usually shied away from this sort of thing in MMOs because I doubt my own skills, usefulness and ability to commit to the group. As I wrote the other day, though, Final Fantasy XIV is one of a few games that I actually feel confident that I'm quite good at, and the prospect of not only challenging myself but developing some close friendships with others who enjoy the game in much the same way I do is very exciting to me. I've often mentioned how playing Final Fantasy XIV can be as much of a social activity as a video game, and having a regularly scheduled evening where a predictable, reliable group all shows up and we work our damnedest to try and take down Twintania, Rafflesia and whatever lies beyond that? Well, that's something that I'm looking forward to a lot.

Is this how people on sports teams feel?

The post 1708: Playing on Home Turf appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There may be spoilers ahead. I'll try and keep them to a minimum, though.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (the first game) came out of nowhere for me. Originally a PSP title, it didn't get localised into English officially until the new(er) Vita version, courtesy of NIS America. I'm thankful that we did get it eventually — plus somewhat surprised that it's one of the few Japanese games that made it over to the West that was acknowledged and even celebrated by some critics. Why surprised? Well, because there's a lot of stuff in Danganronpa that is usually torn apart by Western critics — particularly regarding attitudes to gender — and yet, for whatever reason, this time around, it was celebrated as an excellent game.

But what is it? It's… well, it's a little strange, to be honest. It's sort of a visual novel, but there's more to it than that. There's freeform exploration and conversation as you investigate several different murder mysteries, then every so often the game turns into an even more chaotic take on Ace Attorney's courtroom sequences as you solve puzzles and pick out truths with your metaphorical "truth bullets".

Trigger Happy Havoc was bold, energetic and striking. Its colourful pop art-style visuals (with a peculiar but effective "2.5D" pop-up book-style aesthetic) were very distinctive and gave the game a unique visual identity, albeit one that wouldn't look out of place in a Persona game. Its music was catchy, memorable and fit the action well. The voice acting was excellent in both English and Japanese for once. And the writing was truly, truly excellent — with additional credit to NIS America for doing a great job with localising some difficult material in their own distinctive manner.

Danganronpa is a game you play for its story, and it's a mysterious one that will keep you guessing throughout. Unlike many other murder mystery games, where it's often obvious "whodunnit" quite quickly, Danganronpa regularly keeps you guessing right up until the truth is finally revealed. And the overarching plot that ties all the cases together follows this pattern, too; you'll have plenty of theories about what's going on by the time the "big reveal" comes around, but you might still be surprised by the truth.

Danganronpa is also a game you play for its characters, and they're a truly interesting bunch. Initially positioned to the player as the "ultimate" in their respective specialisms, they all gradually reveal themselves to be complex individuals with their own goals, motivations and priorities. In other words, they're not all very nice people on the inside, yet there are numerous occasions where you'll be forced to ally with even the most objectionable of the bunch in the name of seeking out the truth. The game also isn't afraid to kill off characters it's spent ages building up the player's relationship with, too, so don't get too attached to anyone you meet; it's probably safer that way.

Assuming Danganronpa 2 follows the pattern of its predecessor — and there's nothing to suggest that it doesn't — I'm in for a treat. If you're yet to experience the unique joys of these fantastic games, then grab yourself a Vita (if you don't already have one, of course!) and indulge in some thrilling murder mystery action.

The post 1695: Goodbye Despair appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Direct sequels are quite rare in the Japanese role-playing game space; long running series like Tales of and Final Fantasy typically take each new installment as a completely new experience, with the only things each have in common being perhaps some story themes, some item and skill names, maybe a few character names or references, and little else.

There's a fairly good reason that direct sequels are pretty rare in this particular genre, of course: they're damned difficult to do well, and if you're not altogether careful you'll open yourself up to accusations of simply recycling old content. This is a criticism that has been levelled at Xillia 2 and not altogether unjustifiably — the majority of towns, field areas and dungeons you'll visit in the early part of the game are lifted wholesale from the original Tales of Xillia with very few changes.

It's what you do with that recycled content that counts, though, and in the relatively few examples of direct sequels in the JRPG space, it's been handled pretty well. Final Fantasy X-2, for example, eschewed its predecessor's very linear path around the world in favour of having everywhere open from the outset, and multiple things available for you to work on at any given time. Final Fantasy XIII-2, meanwhile, fragmented its experience into a slightly messy tale of time travel with a non-linear narrative, completely at odds with the much-maligned linearity of its predecessor. And Tales of Xillia 2 effectively starts you at the other end of the world from its predecessor, showing life in the games' unusual setting from a pleasantly different perspective.

That's not all, though. While Xillia 1's world was relatively open to exploration, you still unlocked things in a fairly linear progression and tended not to go places until you were told to. In Xillia 2, meanwhile, you still unlock areas of the world according to your progression through the main story, but on regular occasions you are left to your own devices to explore, take on sidequests — many of which are repeatable or randomly generated — and simply do as you see fit in the world.

In this sense, Xillia 2 actually ends up feeling a lot more like a crossbreed between traditionally Eastern and Western approaches to role-playing games. You have the tight, linear, character-driven narrative of a Japanese role-playing game coupled with the freedom to go and see what's over that hill, in that cave, through those wood as seen in Western titles like the Elder Scrolls series.

In fact, Xillia 2 also takes some heavy cues from Japanese role-playing games that do things a little differently, too — most notably the latter two Persona games. Like those two classics, Tales of Xillia 2's protagonist is pretty much silent, though he does have plenty of personality despite not saying all that much. And like those games, your party members have their own unique individual storylines that are ascribed almost as much importance as the main narrative.

One of the strongest things about the original Xillia was the feeling that this was a real group of characters that had their own individual personalities, feelings and opinions on everything. Offhand comments in the field, frequently hilarious post-battle mini-scenes and the Tales series' trademark Skits all helped contribute to an atmosphere of these characters feeling like real people that you were meant to care about rather than collections of stats. (Mechanically, they're all very distinct, too, as it happens, but for me it's the personality of them all that really shines.) Xillia 2 continues this with aplomb, this time giving you somewhat more freedom to make choices as to how the main character responds to things. Certain choices will affect your relationship values with your party members, while other choices will change the outcome of scenes. It's an interesting change from Xillia 1's very "hands-off" approach to story, and it works well, particularly in the context of making the sequel feel distinct from its predecessor despite reusing a lot of content.

I'm yet to beat the game — I'm juggling it with the ever-present Final Fantasy XIV at the moment — but I'm looking forward to seeing how it all concludes. If you enjoyed (and beat!) the previous one, I can strongly recommend Xillia 2; as a sequel, it hits all the right notes, and you absolutely will not be disappointed with the opportunity to spend more time with these wonderful characters.

If you never played Xillia 1? Well, get that sorted right now, soldier; you're missing out.

The post 1693: Rieze Maxia-Elympios Relations appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Note that I am no longer a professional games reviewer, nor is this a review, and as such I am going to be thoroughly unprofessional and you are just going to have to deal with it.

Let's begin.

Squeeeeeeeeeee.

Ahem. Sorry. But I feel it's somewhat justified, because it's pretty much the noise my brain made when I started playing Velocity 2X for the first time last night, and continued over lunch at work today. It is immediately striking in many ways — the delicious, sharp-edged, flat-shaded vector graphic-style artwork; the rock-solid 60fps frame rate (it really does make a difference in a game like this); the gloriously colourful lighting effects; the thumping, catchy soundtrack; the subtle little effects like parallax effects "in front of" the main play area; the lovely animation on Kai when she gets out of her ship.

This beautiful presentation is married up to a beautifully designed game, too. Much like its predecessor, Velocity 2X starts very simple and gradually grows in complexity as you progress, layering mechanic on top of mechanic until you have a level 50 that is virtually unrecognisable from level 1.

It's not just the gradual growth that makes Velocity 2X a delight to play, though — it's the sheer fluidity of it all. This is something carried over from the original game, in which skilled players could seamlessly chain together short-range teleports, bomb-flinging, shooting, avoiding bullets and collecting shinies to make it look utterly effortless. It's entirely possible to do this in 2X, but the addition of the new mechanics makes it even more impressive when you can pull it off — particularly in the new side-scrolling segments.

And speaking of the side-scrolling segments, they're a lot of fun. They require a certain shift in your thinking from the top-down, vertically scrolling nature of the in-ship gameplay, but they're recognisably consistent, too. Kai's "Teledash" move is an absolute joy to use, and before long you'll be firing yourself through walls, flinging yourself high into the air and spraying bullets in a deadly arc around you without breaking a sweat. And, if the previous game is anything to go by, you'll need the skills you pick up in the deceptively simple early levels much later in the game — only there, you'll need to combine things together.

The pursuit of perfection is also present and correct in 2X. While it was easy enough to make it through the original Velocity without too much difficulty, scoring a "Perfect" rating on every level by collecting all the collectibles, scoring the maximum possible number of points and doing so was a lot more difficult. And indeed this seems to be the case in 2X as well — with the added twist that there's a fourth category of things to collect — the "Rekenium Shards" Kai collects while on foot — to add to the mix. It's challenging and addictive, and it makes you want to punch the air when you pull it off.

The whole thing is wrapped up in a much stronger story than the original game. The first Velocity did have a story, but it was very subtly told and a little too easy to ignore. When it's possible to go through a whole game and not realise the main character is female, that's perhaps a sign that you should pay slightly closer attention to the non-gameplay aspects. (Although fans of Metroid might disagree.)

2X strikes a good balance, though. The first time you challenge a level, you get a short bit of dialogue that helps to advance the plot and develop Kai's character. On subsequent occasions, however, you're straight into the action — no frustrating skipping over dialogue you've already seen. The story is quick, pacy and enjoyable, and supported by a considerable amount of "further reading" background material in the in-game Codex, unlocked through collectibles in the game.

So far I've had a great deal of fun with Velocity 2X, but I still have a long way to go. I've Perfected the first ten levels so far, and am looking forward to seeing how the game continues to develop. Perhaps most importantly, however, it seems like a great game to play at lunchtime, so you can count on my Vita being a fixture in my work bag for quite some time yet.

The post 1690: One Lunchtime with Velocity 2X appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Lest you're unfamiliar, Velocity 2X is the sequel to Velocity (and its Vita remake Velocity Ultra), the brainchild of a UK-based developer called FuturLab who are some of the nicest people in the industry.

I'll talk more about Velocity 2X when I've had a chance to sit down and play it for a while — I have played an early version, but I haven't even booted up the final release yet. Today, then, I wanted to talk a little about its predecessor, and why it means I'm excited to play 2X.

Velocity was a curious hybrid of genres, and it drifted and changed through different play styles as you progressed through it. Sometimes it was a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up. Sometimes it was a vertically scrolling racing game in which you had to fly efficiently and carefully in order to survive. Sometimes it was a clever puzzle game in which you had to teleport back and forth throughout the level in order to unlock the path to the exist. And more often than not, it was a beautiful, seamless combination of all these things.

The whole thing was wrapped in a wonderfully distinctive shell, too; an aesthetic that combined sharp-edged, flat-shaded vector graphics with Amiga-style background music to produce something that felt simultaneously retro-inspired but also thoroughly modern. The game regularly brought to mind 16-bit computer titles of my youth such as Goldrunner, but obviously it was quite a bit better than those. The atmosphere was there, though, and the understanding of what makes a truly satisfying, addictive game.

Velocity was a brilliant handheld game, too. Its levels were short, but very replayable in pursuit of the elusive "Perfect" ratings. Its leaderboard functionality perhaps left something to be desired — it wasn't at all clear how scoring worked, and it was ultimately fairly irrelevant since getting a "Perfect" rating would probably mean you got a very similar score to everyone else with the same rating anyway — but it wasn't really about competing against other people. Rather, it was you against the game; a series of increasingly fiendish, well-designed challenges that made great use of the game's simple to understand mechanics amid levels of greater and greater complexity.

Velocity 2X, if you were wondering, takes the basic formula of Velocity and adds an interesting twist to it all: platforming. Rather than being confined to your ship in a top-down perspective throughout the whole game, 2X incorporates side-on platformer segments, too. When I played the early version, these were already implemented well, and I understand they've only improved since then. I'm very much looking forward to giving it a try.

So that's exactly what I'm going to go and do right now. If you have a Vita and/or a PS4, I can say with some confidence that you should probably download Velocity 2X and enjoy it — yes, I say that with some confidence having admitted above that I haven't played the finished version yet. I have absolute faith in FuturLab bringing an ambitious project to fruition, though, so I wish them every success with their new release.

Further thoughts on the new game tomorrow!

The post 1689: Revving Up appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I have quite the backlog on both 3DS (well, DS if we're being completely honest about it) and Vita, and just recently I added another game to the latter's collection. I couldn't not, though; if you're a regular reader you will, of course, know that I couldn't possibly let a new Hyperdimension Neptunia game pass by without immediately purchasing it — even if I knew I wouldn't get to it immediately.

The game in question is Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, the curiously punctuated remake of the game that started the whole series off. I've played a little over an hour so far, and predictably, I'm totally in love with it.

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia was a funny game. I'd be wary of calling it "good" or recommending it even to the most open-minded, fanservice-positive players out there, but despite its many, many flaws I liked it enough to play it all the way through, then move on to its sequels Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. (And the Vita dating sim Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection, which I'm still yet to beat properly.)

Hyperdimension Neptunia was effectively a visual novel punctuated by repetitive dungeon-crawling sequences that ran at an appalling frame rate and featured a genuinely interesting but somewhat clunky battle system. I actually rather enjoyed this latter aspect a lot more than many other people; I appreciated the puzzle-like nature of setting up custom combos that you could chain endlessly — perhaps swapping back-line characters in and out along the way — and I was fascinated by manipulating the AI-driven in-battle item "crafting" system. This latter aspect was just plain bizarre — you had to set percentage chances that characters would use specific items upon meeting trigger conditions, and there was no means of just manually using an item.

The former aspect — the visual novel-style story sequences — proved to be the real draw for me, though. They were what kept me coming back time and time again, more than happy to endure the dungeon-crawling in the name of advancing the story and seeing what Neptune and her friends were up to next.

Hyperdimension Neptunia's story wasn't particularly complex, but one thing the series has been quite consistently throughout its surprisingly short lifespan is clever. Yes, that's right, clever. On the surface, it might seem like moe anime fluff full of squeaky-voiced girls squeaking at one another. And to a certain extent that's true. But beneath that candy-coloured exterior lies some clever, well-written satire of the ridiculousness that is gaming. Not the stupidity we've seen around gaming in the last few weeks, mind; rather, a series of on-point observations and sidelong glances at the way the different "factions" of the industry have behaved over the years. The way Sony likes to believe it's the best; the way Microsoft has habitually catered to specific types of gamers; the way Nintendo handles business with ruthless efficiency, even when it doesn't make any friends while doing so.

Not only that, but the series has been packed with plenty of references to numerous video games — through its dialogue, through its incidental recurring characters and even through the monsters you fight, which include space invaders, Pac-Man ghosts and sentient dating sims. All this added up to a considerable amount of charm that far outweighed its technical and design shortcomings.

Re;Birth1 had a lot to live up to, then. And based on an admittedly short amount of time with it so far, it appears to be living up to expectations. Rather than word-for-word recreating the original with the modernised, much better gameplay systems of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, it instead acknowledges (and frequently lampshades) the fact that it is a remake. Basic story beats have so far been similar, but the specifics of how you get to them are a bit different. And the gameplay has been totally revamped, featuring Victory's fantastic combat system — now explained far better than it has ever been in any previous installment — plus some interesting new tricks such as the "Remake" system, which allows you to "craft" everything from items to be sold in shops to new gameplay mechanics.

Amusingly, it runs far better on the Vita than it ever did on the more powerful PS3, too, and despite making use of a lot of the same audio-visual assets and even maps from the previous two games, it feels like a pleasantly fresh experience to be able to carry it around in your pocket.

If Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory was anything to go by, I expect Re;Birth1 to keep me busy for a very long time indeed. Now, if only there weren't a zillion and one other brilliant games out now all vying for my attention, too…

The post 1688: Rebirth appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm glad. One issue with MMO endgame play is that after a while, you're so well-geared that a lot of the challenges you'd normally take on become quite easy, and progressing becomes a matter of doing things almost by rote: you know that in this dungeon, you can afford to pull this many enemies before having to stop and fight them; than in this boss fight you need to stand here at this moment in order to make sure you don't die. I don't mind this aspect of play at all, as it happens — I actually rather like the heavily "choreographed" nature of many of the endgame encounters, as it's really quite an awesome sight to see eight people moving as one to dodge incoming attacks and position themselves appropriately to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. But the fact remains: a lot of stuff is quite easy.

Which is why I was keen to challenge myself with the Extreme difficulty boss fights — particularly those against Good King Moggle Mog XII, Leviathan and Ramuh, all of which I was yet to clear. I gave myself a double challenge for the first two by tanking them as a Paladin rather than going as my main class Black Mage; it was a lot of fun, and helped me gain some confidence in what goes on when you're tanking an eight-player encounter. For Ramuh, however, everyone needed to be on top of their game, and as such I was back in my lovely dark blue yukata — my current Black Mage outfit — to take on the old, somewhat electrifying presence of Ramuh.

I'd held off taking on the Extreme primal fights because the initial three against Garuda, Titan and Ifrit were all very difficult — unsurprising, given the Extreme moniker, of course, but I found them rather stressful rather than just challenging. Moogle, Leviathan and Ramuh were all a different matter, however; these were just plain fun fights in which yes, you needed to know and understand all the mechanics well in order to succeed, but they were enjoyable in that everyone had something interesting and useful to do; no-one was stuck just standing around flinging damage or "tanking and spanking".

It was also a great opportunity for bonding with the Free Company members. It's always nice to have the opportunity to do things together with other people, and as we've all been progressing at slightly different paces and discovering the things that we each enjoy doing, it can sometimes feel like those occasions are rare. Tonight was a great example of people pulling together for a common goal, though; we'd decided that we were going to beat Ramuh, and by gosh we sure did at that.

Now it is after 4:30 in the morning and I should probably get some sleep. I anticipate dreams filled with an old, bearded, lightning-flinging man.

The post 1678: Old Man of the Forest appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Since Geometry Wars, though, I've been a big fan of the twin-stick shooter, and it occupies a similar tier of affection in my brain to Japanese "bullet hell" shooters.

It was Geometry Wars 2 that truly cemented my love of this shmup sub-genre — and it was partly a result of the growing world of online console gaming. These days, we take online leaderboards and multiplayer functionality for granted — hell, it's in most mobile phone games — but in the earlier days of the 360, online functionality was still new and exciting. And Geometry Wars 2, although it handled it incredibly simply, worked brilliantly.

All Geometry Wars 2 offered in terms of online functionality was a separate leaderboard for each of its game modes, with the display of your friends' scores prioritised. While you were playing, the upper-right corner of the screen displayed the next friend's score that you needed to beat to move up a spot on the leaderboard, and it was surprising how enormously distracting this could be — to such a degree that some people even advocated putting masking tape over the corner of your TV so you weren't tempted to look while playing.

It worked brilliantly, though, and all the more so for the fact that, when Geometry Wars 2 came out, absolutely everyone was playing it. Herein, however, lies something of a mixed blessing: while the games industry has grown into a multi-billion dollar behemoth since that time, the sheer number of games around at any given moment these days means that it's become gradually less and less likely that we'll ever have a communal, shared, international experience like that ever again. Games like Geometry Wars 2 are now considered by some to be too simple for computers and consoles, instead finding a "better" home on mobile. (I'd question whether or not it's actually "better", however, since mobile phone control schemes for this sort of game still suck immense quantities of balls.)

That, thankfully, doesn't mean there aren't still devs making these games, however. In fact, two of my current favourite non-narrative games are relatively recent twin-stick shooters: Assault Android Cactus on PC (coming soon to various other platforms) and Super Stardust Delta on Vita.

Assault Android Cactus is the work of small Australian independent developer Witch Beam. I was completely unaware of the game prior to the Eurogamer Expo last year but a chance encounter with a preview build a few days prior caused me to frantically schedule an appointment with the developer's representative, who had flown over especially for the show. Their enthusiasm for their game was infectious — and it was clear they'd done their homework, citing classic Japanese shmups as their inspiration for the game, which despite being a twin-stick shooter very much had its own identity. Today, the game is still in Early Access on Steam awaiting its finishing touches, but it's already one of the finest shooters I've ever had the good fortune to play. I can't wait to take it on the go with the Vita.

Super Stardust Delta, meanwhile, is a twin-stick shooter from Finnish developer Housemarque and, I didn't realise, a distant offshoot of a series that originally began back on the Amiga. Combining elements of Asteroids, Geometry Wars and Ikaruga, Super Stardust Delta is, once again, proof that you can take a simple base mechanic — twin-stick shooting — and make it into something unique and enjoyable. It's also one of the most beautiful-looking games on the Vita, so if you want something for Sony's underappreciated handheld with which to impress people, it's a fine choice.

Anyway, the beauty of a good twin-stick shooter is that a single play session is only short. So I think I'm going to go sit in bed and play Super Stardust Delta for a bit before sleep. That sounds like a good way to close out my last week of freedom before work starts next week!

The post 1677: Twin Sticks appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So I finally finished Sweet Fuse this evening and I'm very happy I did.

For those disinclined to look back over my previous entries about this game, here's the quick version: it's a visual novel for PSP (Vita-compatible) in which you play Saki Inafune, niece of Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune, as she gets trapped in a theme park at the behest of a terrorist dressed as a pig. Along the way, she encounters a selection of fine-looking gentlemen and, over the course of seven days, gets to know at least one of them very well indeed.

Sweet Fuse has an utterly ridiculous premise, but ultimately it's little more than a gimmick or hook to draw you in to the game proper: the story itself plays itself admirably and consistently straight throughout, not being afraid to tone down the light-hearted humour in favour of some pathos or outright tragedy at times. Saki herself is at times a little ill-defined as a character, but such is the nature of the visual novel protagonist, whether they're male or female: they have to be flexible enough to make the various routes through the narrative plausible, and also non-specific enough to make them identifiable with for a wide proportion of the audience.

The nice thing about Sweet Fuse's story is that you don't get the whole truth in a single playthrough. In fact, depending on which of the game's cast members you choose to pursue, you might not get the truth at all. Follow the path for Towa Wakasa, young boy band idol, and you'll have an enjoyably romantic little tale in which you find out a bit about Wakasa himself — and how Saki feels about him — but you'll learn almost nothing about the motivations behind Hogstein's hijack of the park and the deadly game he makes the cast play. (You do, however, get a tiny teaser which is easily missed if you're not paying attention.) Conversely, play through the route for Subaru Shidou, detective originally intended to be in charge of the park's security on its opening day, and you'll get tantalisingly close to the complete truth without revealing absolutely everything. It's not until you play the route for the "secret" character, which only opens up from a second playthrough onwards, that you get a full, final and complete explanation of what has truly been going on.

And, without spoiling it here, I was surprised at the nature of the truth. As previously noted, the expectation for Sweet Fuse, given its premise and setup, is for the story to be rather light-hearted in nature — and indeed, there's a lot of self-consciously ridiculous stuff that goes on. But ultimately there's a serious core to what has been going on — and it doesn't feel out of place, despite the fact that the villain you're pursuing throughout the narrative is almost constantly dressed as a cigar-smoking pig with a disco ball around his neck.

Ultimately, your response to Sweet Fuse will depend on how much you care for the rather "hands-off" nature of most visual novels: despite the premise of the game being somewhat akin to the Zero Escape series, there are no real "puzzles" to solve as such; the most you have to do throughout the game is pick the right choice when one comes up, or occasionally pick out the most important word or phrase from a monologue in order to proceed. In other words, the game is extremely light on "gameplay" and this may disappoint a few people — particularly given that the theme park that forms the game's setting is supposed to be based on video games — but it works and, on reflection, is probably a sensible choice; breaking up the game with, well, "gameplay", would break its flow and run the risk of you not being able to proceed due to, to put it politely, a deficit in your own skills. By handling it this way, anyone can see the story through to its conclusion, and thanks to convenient quicksave, fast-forward and rewind functions, going back to see other possible outcomes to various scenarios is quick and painless, too. I played through two whole routes in a single day today, albeit fast-forwarding through the first three "common route" chapters and just making the appropriate choices where necessary. That still left four unique chapters per character, though.

I'm glad I played through Sweet Fuse, as it ended up being really, surprisingly good. I was immediately intrigued by the premise — and I love seeing the face of people when I explain it to them — but what I found was actually rather different from what I expected, in a very positive way.

If you have a Vita or a PSP and are hungry for an interesting story-based game to while away some time with, you could do far worse than a copy of Sweet Fuse, then. Highly recommended.

The post 1670: At Your Side appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This peculiar game is a visual novel-cum-dating sim in which you take on the role of Saki Inafune, niece of legendary game designer Keiji Inafune (of Mega Man and Mighty No. 9 fame), as she gets caught up in a plot led by a terrorist dressed as a pig to take over the video game-inspired theme park Inafune-san designed. Along the way Saki (and you) will encounter several gentleman friends, each of whom has their own unique narrative path that branches off in the latter half of the game after a shared beginning.

Sweet Fuse is what's known as an otome game, meaning it's primarily aimed at a heterosexual female audience — or at least depicts heterosexual romances from the perspective of a female protagonist. Such games are relatively widespread in their native Japan, but it's quite rare to get them localised for the Western market, which still seems to assume for the most part that the majority of gamers out there are testosterone-filled heterosexual men. As such, Sweet Fuse immediately sets itself apart from other games of its type — and this is without taking its unusual premise into account.

Speaking as a heterosexual gentleman who has played his fair share of bishoujo games (visual novels and dating sims aimed at a heterosexual male audience) I initially wasn't quite sure what to make of Sweet Fuse. In this type of game you're often encouraged to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist to such a degree that they rarely appear on-screen and, when they speak, their dialogue is unvoiced. This is, in theory, to allow the player to project themselves onto the protagonist and imagine it's themselves embroiled in the situations depicted throughout — be they fantastic, romantic, erotic, strange or just plain messed up. It's an effective device that tends to work well. But, I found myself questioning before I started playing the game for the first time, will this still work if the protagonist is a different gender to me?

The question of whether male players can "identify" with female protagonists is often mocked among the more social justice-happy members of the games press, but in the dating sim and visual novel space, where you're encouraged to inhabit the role of the lead character a lot more intimately than in other types of interactive entertainment, it's an important consideration. Part of the way these games work on an emotional level is down to your own personal opinions and tastes — who do you find attractive or desirable, physically, sexually, emotionally and in terms of their personality? If you're outside the target audience of a work, inhabiting the headspace of a protagonist that pointedly is not you, and considering potential partners that are contrary to your own usual sexual preferences, can that really "work"?

Well, of course it can; most of us have read books, seen films, watched TV series where we've rooted for characters to get together, even if they don't match our own characteristics or preferences — and for female fans of games, they have to do this a lot of the time anyway. All this is, I've found, abundantly true with Sweet Fuse. As a heterosexual dude, it's liberating to play the role of Saki and consider the virtues and vices of these different men as I choose which of the narrative paths to pursue. And, it turns out, it's not all that difficult to put yourself in Saki's shoes and contemplate which one is most attractive or desirable. (Urabe. Without a doubt.)

Like any good visual novel, Sweet Fuse's various narrative paths are all unique, but all feed into a single interpretation of what is going on. Pursuing a single character and then putting the game down gives you a satisfying ending to the story, sure, but in some cases doesn't reveal any of the truth behind the bizarre situation that forms the basis for the game. Others provide teases of information; others still are clearly the "main" routes that provide the most information. All are worth exploring — and it's for this reason that I've picked up Sweet Fuse again after quite some time not playing it.

With, I think, two routes left to go (plus possibly a refresher on the others I've previously completed) I still haven't got to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Count Hogstein and his apparent vendetta against the main cast. I'm very much looking forward to discovering the truth — the paths I've played to date have been by turns heartwarming, touching, intriguing and thrilling; now, it's time to see Saki's saga through to its conclusion, and wonder if we'll ever see a game quite like Sweet Fuse in the West again.

The post 1668: Gentleman Friends appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Let's take a moment to address some of these points.

PCs require maintenance.

While this was once true, with Windows 95, 98 and XP seemingly all having some sort of built-in failsafe that caused them to slow down to barely usable levels after about a year or so, necessitating a full reinstall, Windows 7 and beyond, in my experience, run perfectly happily without complaint and without requiring anything special to be done in order to keep things running efficiently. If updates to drivers or other software are required, the respective pieces of software will generally notify you — or, in many cases, simply update themselves in the background without you ever knowing. All you, the user, really need to do is ensure you have some sort of security software installed to protect yourself against viruses and the like.

PC games are riddled with compatibility problems.

Another issue from the past that is, in 99% of cases, no longer relevant. If you're trying to run an older game, then perhaps you may run into some issues — though in most cases, a quick Google will reveal what you need to do to get it running on a modern machine, and the solution is often simple — but if you buy something new (and by "new" I mean "released within the last five years") all you generally need to do is put in the disc or click the "install" button in Steam, then start playing as soon as it's ready. Easy.

PC games require adjusting settings.

The limit of most setting adjustments I do these days is as follows:

1) Ensure game is running at 1920×1080 resolution if it doesn't default to that (and most do).
2) Adjust detail level if framerate is unsatisfactory and game doesn't auto-suggest best settings (and most do).

I think everyone can manage that.

[Console X] does [Y]!

PCs do literally anything you want them to. Consoles have access to selected digital media sources, sure, but on PC you can access anything available on the Web, not just those services with apps that have been specifically designed for the system. Not only that, but thanks to services like UnblockUs it's a snap to access digital content that is normally region-locked to other territories. (UnblockUs will work with consoles, but it requires far more tinkering with the settings than the PC version does — on PC you simply download a small executable file, run it and then turn it on and off from the Windows System Tray as needed.)

Oh, but Kinect…

Shut up.

[Console X] has [exclusive game]!

This is the only mildly compelling argument in favour of consoles, but in reality, choosing a digital entertainment system is far more than just choosing the exclusives. (And there's nothing wrong with having several systems on hand for just this reason.) PC versions of games are, in most cases, the definitive versions, with the best graphics, most customisable settings, mod support (official or unofficial) and the greatest flexibility with regard to control schemes. Even a shoddy console port on PC (I'm looking at you, Binary Domain) is technically superior and more impressive than its console counterpart — and for those who care about such things, PC games will typically all run in true 1080p without breaking a sweat.

As for those exclusives, well, PC as a platform, having been around for a lot longer than anything else on the market, has a gigantic library of games, far bigger and more diverse than any one console will ever be able to offer. If you claim there isn't a PC game out there that interests you, you aren't looking hard enough. Plus thanks to services like GOG.com, old games are still just as relevant as the latest and greatest — something which simply isn't true on the latest consoles due to the lack of backward compatibility.

You want specifics? If you think that Destiny is a compelling reason for consoles being "better" than PC, ponder this for a moment: Destiny is a blend of two game genres — first-person shooter and massively multiplayer online RPG — that have been the PC's bread and butter for years now. While Destiny itself may not be coming to PC — although, to be honest, I'll be very surprised if it doesn't eventually — there are plenty of alternatives and equivalents.

I prefer gaming from my couch.

So game from your couch. Most modern PC video cards have at least one HDMI out socket, allowing you to connect your computer to your TV just like a console. The HDMI port also carries audio, too, so you don't have to faff around with separate audio cables and speakers like you once did either. Couple that with the fact that Xbox 360 controllers are natively supported by Windows (both wired and wireless — though you will need an adapter to use the wireless ones) and wireless keyboards and mice are more affordable than they've ever been, and there's absolutely no reason you can't have a great PC gaming experience from your couch. Make use of Steam's Big Picture Mode to manage your game library and the experience is all but indistinguishable from using a console.

Note: Nothing in this post is intended to say that consoles are in some way "bad" or "inferior" to PC — I still play games on PC, console and handheld devices. There's a certain joy in being able to insert a disc and just start playing — though with the rise of mandatory installs, this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, even on console — and there are, admittedly, a number of interesting console-exclusive titles that, in some cases, may never make the jump to PC.

The original discussion stemmed from someone's question about whether they should spend a chunk of money on a PlayStation 4 or a new phone, and PC was touted as a third option — one I'd firmly stand behind. Speaking as a former member of the games press, at present I can't in good conscience recommend the PlayStation 4 to anyone simply on the grounds that there aren't enough interesting games available for it that you can't get anywhere else… yet. This will doubtless change in the future — there's a lot of great-looking stuff coming next year — but speaking right now, in August 2014, a PC is a much more sound investment for both video games and home entertainment purposes.

The post 1664: The Myths of Modern PC Gaming appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Fancied a bit of a change today, so I decided to grab a copy of a game I've been keeping one eye on for a while now: indie title Crypt of the NecroDancer, which hit Steam Early Access recently.

Several hours later, I realised that I'd been playing Crypt of the NecroDancer for a very long time, and I was starting to do everything — not just in-game actions — in time with the beat in my head.

Rewind a moment, for those unfamiliar with Crypt of the NecroDancer: what the hell is this curiously-named game? Well, it's yet another example of one of the current "indie darling" genres: the roguelike. But this game's a bit different from the many, many other procedurally generated hack-and-slash RPGs out there, in that it's actually more of a rhythm action game than anything else.

Yes, you read that correctly: a rhythm action game. Crypt of the NecroDancer eschews the complexity of more stat-heavy roguelikes and RPGs in favour of an extremely simple system that only requires you to use four buttons on the keyboard: the directional arrows. Everything you do involves pressing one or two of these keys in time with the music — even using items. It takes a little getting used to, but the reason for this lightweight control system becomes obvious almost immediately: this is a game about sticking to the beat, watching for patterns and learning to exploit them, not about min-maxing your gear and gaining experience. It has a distinctly arcadey feel to it thanks to mechanics like score multipliers and powerups, and it's structured in such a way that play sessions are quick and brutally difficult, particularly once you get out of the first of the four "zones" that make up the game in its current Early Access form.

Speaking of Early Access, this is one of the most "complete" Early Access titles I've played to date, consisting of four zones with four levels each (three standard, one boss), each of which has their own music, composed by Danny Baranowsky, of Super Meat Boy and Desktop Dungeons fame. The music is absolutely fantastic, covering a variety of different electronic dance music styles and tempi, and gives each level a unique feel that you'll come to know and love (or hate) very well as you try again and again to make a little progress.

Progress in the game is somewhat akin to that other well-regarded lightweight roguelike of the moment: Rogue Legacy. Through playing the game normally, you'll acquire diamonds, which can be used to purchase permanent upgrades for the dungeon and your character, ranging from extra health to new items that show up in chests. The twist is that diamonds "expire" after you enter the dungeon again, so in order to unlock something expensive you'll need to collect all the diamonds you need in a single run — something that becomes "easier" (in that you'll start picking up more than one diamond at once) as you get into the harder zones.

The whole game is utterly charming, with some lovely pixel art — though a V-sync option would be nice to prevent the occasional bit of screen tearing that is apparent — and some well-designed, distinctive monsters, each of whom have their own attack patterns you'll have to learn how to tackle while staying on the beat. The use of a female protagonist feels a bit like she's there for the sake of it just so people can point at the game and use it as an awesome example of a game that uses a female protagonist by default — but this isn't a problem as such, more a pointed response to the growing focus on social issues that much of the games business has right now, for better or worse. Only idiots will actually complain about it, and besides, the finished version will have numerous unlockable characters, anyway, a la Spelunky, so I can only assume that those who do have violent objections to playing as a woman for any length of time will be catered to in this way.

Long story short, Crypt of the NecroDancer is looking (and sounding) absolutely fantastic so far, and I can't wait to see the finished version. There's every possibility that this could be one of the next big things in the indie space, and I would absolutely love to see it on other platforms — its quick-fire gameplay would make it an ideal fit for Vita in particular. Let's hope it sees enough success to make that happen.

The post 1661: Dead Dancing appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Bloodlines, as it shall be known hereafter, is an interesting game. Based on the White Wolf pen-and-paper role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, itself part of White Wolf's larger World of Darkness setting, it's an excellent take on the role-playing genre and a fantastic adaptation of its source material. The reason why it's so fondly regarded — even with its flaws and bugs necessitating the creation of a community-made patch well after its developers had abandoned it — is because it does things a little differently from other games of a similar type.

Vampire: The Masquerade was a fairly unconventional beast (no pun intended) in its pen-and-paper incarnation, too. Eschewing dungeon-crawling and loot whoring in favour of in-depth role-playing based on a shockingly well-realised world and society — World of Darkness features one of the most richly detailed explanations of vampiric culture since… well, ever, really — Vampire: The Masquerade was a game that rewarded those who sought interesting, unconventional and creative solutions to problems. There was combat, sure, but it was always rather heavily implied that getting into a true fight was something of a last resort for members of vampire society. Rather, you'd make use of your wits, your intelligence, your social skills and your charisma — with a bit of help from your supernatural vampiric abilities — and, more often than not, be able to get through situations without ever drawing your weapon.

Bloodlines is rather similar. It does cater to those players who enjoy the idea of swinging a tyre iron around and caving people's skulls in — although the combat is, it must be said, rather rudimentary compared to more modern real-time RPGs like The Witcher and Dark Souls — or even those who enjoy first-person shooting. But, for me, far more rewarding is the opportunity to get through most situations by making use of your vampiric powers, which vary according to what kind of character you create at the start of the game.

Much of Vampire: The Masquerade is based on the interactions between various clans of vampires, and each of these clans has its own specialisms. Some have magical abilities; others are strong fighters; others still are true "creatures of the night", able to disappear into thin air right before their enemies' eyes. The character I'm playing this time around is a Malkavian; their defining characteristic is the fact that they're, well, insane — but they can use this fact to their advantage by channeling their mental energy outwards to do things like inflict terror on others or make enemies have hallucinations. In conversation, Malkavians tend to speak in riddles, and, pleasingly, the dialogue options you have available to you when playing as a Malkavian are all borderline gibberish — though the longer you play, the more these riddles will start to make sense to you. Oh, and Malkavians also hear voices while they're wandering around. And occasionally stop to have a conversation with a roadsign. You get to "roleplay" all of this — something I haven't seen since the early Infinity Engine games, which featured differing dialogue depending on things like your Intelligence score.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Bloodlines is that it uses all these traditional RPG mechanics without putting the player in the usual "god mode" perspective, watching the action unfold from above. No; instead, taking heavy cues from its contemporaries such as Deus Ex and the like, Bloodlines has plenty of "immersive sim" elements about itself, too: hub-based areas to explore, with buildings you can go into and investigate even if the game's quests haven't directed you to yet; objects you can pick up and manipulate; computers you can fiddle with by actually typing things into them; and a sense that, in a rather simplistic manner, the world will respond to the way you behave in it.

While we have plenty of open-world, non-linear RPGs today, nothing that's emerged recently has quite the same feel about it as Bloodlines. I've played it through once for about 20 hours or so — though to my shame, I never beat it — and I'm now very interested to take it for another spin with my adorably mental protagonist. If you haven't yet sampled its bloody charms — and can look past the visuals of a pre-Half-Life 2 Source Engine game — then I strongly recommend you give it a look.

The post 1657: Bloodlines appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Said email came from BioWare, a company whose games I used to happily purchase "day one" when they came up, but whom since being absorbed by EA a few years back have become increasingly disappointing — to such a degree that now, when they send me a "teaser" email like this, I don't find it exciting, I instead find it bothersome.

This isn't exclusively directed at BioWare, of course. I have very little time for teasers anyway these days, and their use in the increasingly sprawling marketing campaigns for big-budget games is getting to a stage where they simply dissuade me from wanting to check the game out rather than intriguing me.

I started feeling this way while I was working in the games press. Teasers are infuriating to receive as a news writer, because more often than not there's absolutely nothing to write about. As a general rule, I avoided writing about them altogether unless there was enough intriguing material therein to spin a story out into at least 300 words. In most cases, there wasn't, and inevitably there were plenty of other more interesting things I could write about on any given day, so I was inclined to write about those instead. I can't help feeling that this is the precise opposite of what whoever came up with the teaser campaign may have had in mind when they lovingly constructed it.

Now I no longer work in the games press, teasers are even more irritating. They clutter up news sites who are less discerning about what they cover than I am — the above email has likely been spun into at least one "BioWare is Working on Something" story somewhere on the Internet by now — and, when I have neglected to unsubscribe from a company's newsletters and promotional emails like I had apparently done with EA, they clutter up my inbox, and believe me, that doesn't need any help filling up with crap.

What I find somewhat hilarious is when mobile and social game developers decide to do teasers for their upcoming games. As much money as these types of game inevitably make at the hands of stupid people, I simply can't take them seriously; nor can I believe that anyone could possibly get excited about the prospect of a new mobile game from notorious free-to-play conmen like, again, EA, King or numerous others.

I long for the days gone by, when protracted marketing campaigns simply didn't seem to happen. You got previews in magazines, sure, but these actually told you something about the game. Like, you know, its title — something which the BioWare email conspicuously fails to mention. (I don't know if the video gives any more information because I didn't watch it. Instead of watching it, I unsubscribed from EA's mailing list. Good job, there.) Or details about what kind of game it is. Or a bit about the story. Or anything.

That anything is how you get me interested in a new game — not waffling around the point with vague, pointless emails that tell me nothing. Show me something interesting — show me a reason to care, otherwise, spoiler, I won't give a shit.

The post 1655: Tease Me, Tease Me, Tease Me... Actually, Don't appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I remember first seeing adverts for Covert Action back in multi-format games magazine Advanced Computer Entertainment (aka ACE) way back around 1990, when the game first came out. I recall being intrigued by the prospect of what looked like a fairly convincing "spy game" — something that hadn't really been done at the time, and certainly not in the way that Covert Action chooses to do things.

Covert Action is, unlike other espionage-themed games on the market, very much a "spy simulator". Straddling a line somewhere between a surprisingly huge number of different genres, Covert Action casts you in the role of superspy Max (or Maxine) Remington as he (or she) attempts to foil the devious plots of various bands of criminals around the world. These plots range from simple thefts all the way up to the construction of doomsday devices, but the execution remains the same: gather evidence, infiltrate facilities, intercept communications and eventually — hopefully — bring the perpetrators to justice. Or, if you're as incompetent as me, arrest a few of them and allow the remaining criminals to happily get away with what they were planning.

Covert Action is split into a number of different components. The "main" part of the game, if you can call it that, involves moving from location to location both within cities and around the world, and choosing the best course of action. Actions always take varying amounts of time, so if you spend too long dilly-dallying around, you'll find the criminals get one, two, three steps ahead of you before you know it. This is a game about preventing a crime before it happens rather than solving a crime that has already happened, and as such you have to go about things a little differently to how you might do in other games; you have to anticipate what your opponents' moves might be, then react accordingly, ideally to catch them in the act and be able to arrest them in such a manner that causes the remainder of their plot to fall to pieces.

Choosing to perform various actions in the game's locations triggers minigames. Choose to wiretap a building's phones, for example, and you'll be confronted with a challenging PipeMania-esque puzzle where you must reroute power away from both the phones and the alarm systems of the building. Choose to decrypt an intercepted communication from one of the perps and you'll actually have to crack the code using your own brainpower. Opt to tail a suspect and see if they lead you anywhere interesting, and you'll find yourself playing an oddly strategic driving game in which you order two cars around in an attempt to follow the suspect without arousing their suspicions. And choose to break in to a facility and you'll have to actually infiltrate it yourself.

It's this latter part of the game that tends to form the meat of most investigations — and it's also an aspect that Meier himself was somewhat dissatisfied with, feeling that the game's minigames weren't tied together in a coherent enough manner. Break-ins are not the only option for gathering information, but they're by far the most efficient and as such you'll spend quite a lot of time doing them.

They take the form of an interesting pre-Metal Gear stealth action game in which you control Max as s/he explores a randomly generated building, opening filing cabinets and drawers and photographing all the files s/he can. You'll also have to deploy bugs in various items of furniture in order to raise your ability to perform remote surveillance on the building, and recover incriminating evidence from safes if you want to "turn" your opponents over to your side rather than simply arresting them. Some interesting, rudimentary AI sees guards patrolling the building and looking out for unusual things — containers you neglected to close, for example. You can also trick them somewhat by knocking one of them out and then disguising yourself in their uniforms — in a nice touch, your disguise will only continue to work if you don't allow them to look at your front or side for any length of time, leading to some comic situations as Max stares at a wall, hoping that the guard who just opened the door behind him/her doesn't decide to come in and check the room more thoroughly.

All the while you're investigating, the criminals are working on their plot in the background, and if you're not quick or careful enough, they will succeed. Regardless of whether you "win" or "lose" a case, however, the game continues, and you're evaluated on your performance, with a certain number of points being available for each mission according to who you managed to arrest, what key items you managed to confiscate and whether you actually managed to foil the plot at all.

It's a difficult, challenging, ambitious and somewhat flawed game, but it's a magnificent example of the creativity of game developers in the early '90s — particularly MicroProse, who were well-known for this sort of game around that time. It's also a game absolutely crying out for a remake — with today's technology, it's more than possible for someone to do the game's grand vision even more justice than the hardware and software of 1990 would allow.

That said, Covert Action still stands up remarkably well even today, despite its dodgy AdLib sound effects and horrid 16-colour EGA graphics. If you're looking for something a little bit different to entertain you for a while, I'd urge you to check it out.

The post 1654: Pay Attention, Bon-- Err, Remington appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's a hell of a lot of fun, maintaining much of the chaos of the competitive multiplayer mode while presenting its own challenges as you and a partner work together to fend off increasingly difficult waves of enemies.

As Mark pointed out while we were playing, the closest comparison is probably Bubble Bobble, but with Towerfall being a modern game, it does all manner of things that the technology of Bubble Bobble's era simply wouldn't have been able to manage. Things like lighting and distortion effects on the screen; slow-motion sections; complex enemy waves; physics effects; and all manner of other things.

The genius of Towerfall — and presumably the reason it's so well regarded as a top-tier indie title — is because it doesn't try to do too much. It's a series of single-screen arenas — a la Bubble Bobble — in which all you have to do is defeat all the enemies in a series of waves in order to proceed. But it's the design of these waves — and the enemies themselves — that makes the game so good.

Each individual enemy's behaviour is relatively simple, and it's straightforward to figure out how to deal with most of them without any prompting from the game whatsoever — this is a game that is well and truly of the old school, eschewing unnecessarily long and tedious tutorial sequences and instead throwing the player(s) straight into the action at the earliest possible opportunity. You learn through discovery rather than through being told — and in doing so, you can feel yourself getting better and better each time you play. And you'll need to — because this game is hard.

Yes, the pixel-art aesthetic isn't the only old-school thing about Towerfall; it also has the difficulty level of an old-school arcade machine. The first couple of levels are deceptively straightforward, then the difficulty starts to ramp up pretty quickly, culminating in some extremely challenging battles later in the game. Never do things become overly complicated, though; you're always dealing with the same types of enemies, with the same attack patterns, just in varying combinations. And it's the good design and pacing of each of these levels that makes the game so enjoyable and satisfying to play.

Well, that and the ability to fire an arrow at particularly troublesome enemies and pin them to the wall with it. Who hasn't wanted to do that to an army of slimes and grim reapers?

The post 1650: Ascension appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For those who have never encountered this Wii U exclusive, the best means of describing it is probably to use that tired old analogy: saying it's "the Dark Souls of [x]", where [x], in this case, is survival horror.

For once, though, that statement isn't altogether inaccurate, since so far as I can make out from what I've played so far, ZombiU simply is Dark Souls, albeit presented from a first-person perspective and set in modern-day London rather than From Software's dark fantasy classic. It has all the trappings of Dark Souls' basic gameplay — combat that's rather more methodical and careful than your typical action game, in which it's easy to become overwhelmed if you try and face off against too many enemies at once; online connectivity allowing you to write messages on the walls for other players to find; and the fact that death is an inconvenience that you can overcome to a certain extent if you can only get back to the point you died — and, in this case, defeat your former self, who has, naturally, become a zombie in the intervening period. (That is, unless you're playing the rather brutal Survival mode, in which you only have a single life in which to get as far as you can.)

It's an intriguing game, and an effective example of how the Wii U's unique features can be used to enhance a game experience. While the majority of the action unfolds on the TV screen, things like looting bodies and searching containers is done on the GamePad screen, leaving you vulnerable to attack while you do so — just as you would be if you stopped to rifle through your own bag. Furthermore, you can use the GamePad as a means of scanning the area and marking points of interest, which subsequently show up on your main screen and map as markers.

It's also a decent example of survival horror done well. By keeping the TV screen clutter to a minimum — there's very little in the way of HUD, and you have to look down at the GamePad to check your ammo — it provides a nicely immersive experience, and allows for wonderful, authentic "horror" moments such as pointing your gun at an incoming zombie, pulling the trigger and hearing that awful sound: click. There are some nice touches with the various characters you play as, too, such as certain characters obviously being terrified of the situation in which they find themselves, while others appear to take it in their stride.

I'm not 100% sure on whether it's quite my sort of game just yet, but I'm certainly willing to give it a go, and even if I end up not wanting to beat it I only paid £12.99 for it as a preowned copy, so I don't mind too much. There's also an intriguing-sounding multiplayer mode that I'd like to give a try.

So, game-breaking bugs aside — don't die while escaping from the supermarket in the early stages of the game! — it appears to be a solid experience, and one of the more interesting Wii U exclusives available.

The post 1649: UUUUURGH appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The quest to acquire and upgrade your "relic" weapon in Final Fantasy XIV is a pain in the arse, extremely time-consuming and, at times, very frustrating, but it's also one of the most rewarding things to do at endgame. It gives your character a continual sense of gradual progression — particularly during the Atma-Animus phase that I've just completed — and it gives you a series of long-term goals to aim for, which is important to keep things interesting.

I really like it, in other words, partly for the fact that it's everything what is effectively a "construct your own lightsaber" quest should be. Star Wars MMO The Old Republic featured a "construct your own lightsaber" quest that was not particularly big or epic, and the lightsaber you ended up constructing would often be replaced by something better along the line anyway. Final Fantasy XIV's Relic questline, meanwhile, turns this process into a long journey, with each milestone proving to be a satisfying improvement in your weapon.

The process begins with a sidequest that sees you tracking down a once-legendary smith who now spends his days at the bottom of a bottle in the depths of the Black Shroud forest. Eventually, you track down a legendary weapon appropriate for your class, but it's in a sorry state and can't be used. Newly inspired — though he'd never admit that — the smith challenges you to find a suitable "host weapon" and infuse it with materia to act as a base for the reconstructed relic. You then need to challenge several of the toughest bosses in the realm — at least they used to be, anyway — in order to get various materials that Gerolt the smith requires to reconstruct the relic. Eventually, you're left with a weapon that you've worked hard for — but it doesn't end there.

After infusing your weapon with additional power through a strange concoction known as Thavnairian Mist, you can then begin scouring the realm for Atma crystals. These elusive little things have a very low drop rate from FATEs, the public quests that pop up around the realm, and you need to collect twelve of them: one each from a variety of different areas. This is the part that proves most frustrating for a lot of people — there's not really any way that you can make the search for Atma crystals any easier other than just doing a lot of these FATEs, but from a game design perspective it's actually quite clever: it keeps even the low-level FATEs relevant for even level-cap players, meaning that low-level players who might want to use FATEs to gain experience points will usually have at least a few people to help out, since most FATEs are designed around the assumption that multiple players will show up and participate.

Once you've gathered twelve Atmas, you upgrade your weapon into its Atma form. Initially, this offers no improvement whatsoever over its previous Zenith form, but by purchasing and then completing the various trials in a set of books chronicling the exploits of the Zodiac Braves (the ones from Final Fantasy Tactics? Who knows?) you gradually upgrade your Atma weapon, a tiny bit at a time, until it's considerably more powerful than it once was. When you've completed all the books, your Atma weapon becomes an Animus, and it's then that the road to Novus begins — the road down which I'll soon be starting.

Upgrading your Animus to Novus is a similarly time-consuming process, but rather than simply grinding through tasks again, you instead make use of the game's "materia" system to infuse a magical scroll with various stats you would like to apply to your finished weapon. In total, you have to apply 75 points of stats to the weapon, but how you distribute those is up to you — with the only restriction being the hard cap on certain stats. This means that, unlike any other weapon in the game, you can customise your Novus to be the weapon you want it to be. If you want to emphasise Accuracy — essential if you plan on venturing into the challenging endgame raids The Binding Coil of Bahamut and The Second Coil of Bahamut — then you can. If you'd rather emphasise Determination, a stat that improves your damage output, you can. If you'd rather make your spells cast just that little bit faster, you can do that too. In most cases, the combination of stat caps and the requirement to apply 75 points to the weapon means that you'll end up doing a combination of things, but it's still possible to specialise to a considerable degree.

I haven't really considered what I'm going to do with my Novus yet, but work starts on it when I next start playing. In the meantime, I have my shiny, glowy new Animus to enjoy; it helps me kill things even faster than I already could as a Black Mage. I'm looking forward to trying it out soon.

The post 1645: Animus appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For those unfamiliar, The Binding Coil of Bahamut is a five-part dungeon for level-cap players. It was originally designed to be the absolute hardest challenge in the game, but has since been superseded by new content added in the three big patches there have been since launch. It's also been "nerfed" considerably, with players going in now being the recipients of the "Echo" buff — a 20% increase to maximum hit points, damage dealt and healing received. The thinking behind this gradual easing of its difficulty is so that, in theory, everyone will eventually be able to make it through — and that they might want to do so, because it offers some intriguing story content along the way.

Even with the 20% Echo buff, however, Turn 5, the fifth and final part of the dungeon, is still a stiff challenge. It's theoretically simple, consisting of nothing more than a boss fight between a party of eight people and a rather pissed-off dragon called Twintania, but it's a very demanding confrontation, requiring detailed knowledge of the mechanics, what to expect from the fight at every stage and fast reactions. As such, it's still a significant achievement to make it all the way through.

It's taken a good few hours — and several different parties — over the course of the evening to get through, but we eventually made it by the skin of our teeth. Not before we had an agonising defeat with Twintania's HP down to just 1%, of course, but we eventually made it nonetheless.

Turn 5 in particular is a good example of how high-level content in MMOs differs from more accessible challenges such as dungeons with lower player counts and open-world content. It demands either solid communication — which is why many players choose to make use of voice chat rather than the game's text-based chat — or extensive knowledge of what to expect from the fight. Or, preferably, both, because even with an experienced group, sometimes people's attention wanders, causing mistakes that can easily snowball out of control. Not only that, though, but as cheesy as it sounds, the amount of teamwork required for a successful clear is the sort of thing that really helps to build bonds between friends.

It's the kind of challenge that I don't think would be for everyone. Turn 5 in particular presents such a daunting challenge to many players that I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were plenty of dedicated endgame players who never cleared it. Which is a bit of a shame, as it's a spectacular, genuinely thrilling fight — and the perfect antidote to those people who feel that other content in the game is a little on the easy side. (It definitely is if you overgear yourself, which is quite easy to do these days.) Not only that, but my God, did it feel good when we eventually beat it. There may have been an audible "Yes!" from everyone participating when that HP bar finally dropped to 0.

Anyway. Battling that fearsome foe has led me to the doorstep of 4am, and so I'm going to go and get a few hours of sleep now. Well-earned, I'd say.

The post 1643: Twintania Down for the Count appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This phenomenon, which I tend to think of as "reverse hype", is a common issue with modern gaming. High-profile, big-budget games have every step of their development chronicled both internally and by the press, and this, for me, leaves me feeling saturated with information about them by the time they finally hit store shelves. (And, in the rare instances where I have tried out a triple-A game in recent memory, they have usually ended up being rather disappointing compared to what was promised.)

Destiny has been particularly bad today, though, because its "beta" launched today on PlayStation platforms, and as such social media has been filled with two things: people with "spare" codes and people begging for codes.

Let's not kid ourselves: this isn't a true beta in the development sense. It's a limited-access demo positioned as you getting the opportunity to preview an unfinished version of the game shortly before its official release. The fact that anyone who preordered the game gets not one but three "beta" codes is not generosity on Bungie's part — it's a convenient bit of free marketing. And, of course, it's working.

I'll add at this juncture that if you're playing and enjoying Destiny, great. I hope you like it, and I hope that, as an MMO, it provides enough interesting content to keep things interesting after launch. It is, however, just the latest in a long line of games that utterly dominates coverage and conversation, making attempts to talk or find out about anything else an exercise in frustration while the hype train continues clattering its way noisily along the tracks.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who gets frustrated with this seeming inability for both press and public to acknowledge the existence of more than one thing at once. And now, having left behind the games press as my profession, it's doubly frustrating because I'm not really in a position to do anything about it.

Thank heavens for groups like the Squadron of Shame, is all I can say. A haven of calm amid all the noise!

The post 1641: Return of the Hype Train appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For the uninitiated, 1up.com was a video games website that was originally born as a spinoff of Ziff Davis' multiformat magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly. It was one of the first community-driven video games sites, with as much of a focus on its community-generated content as on the professionally produced material from the site's full-time team (which, at one point, included my own brother).

For me, 1up was a site that had some good, talented writers and regularly put out interesting features, but it was that community that kept me coming back for more. It was one of my first encounters with the concept of "blogging", too — I wrote semi-regularly on the subject of what I'd been playing and it provoked some interesting conversations with others in the comments. This was in the days before social media dominated everything — and even the days before "don't read the comments" became a piece of accepted, common sense, popular wisdom.

The highlight, for me, though, was the forums. Specifically, the 1up Radio forums, which were the birthplace of the Squadron of Shame. Threads in this forum tended to follow the subjects of the 1up podcasts — 1up was also something of a pioneer in the then-fledgling podcast format — but often spun off in interesting and unexpected directions. One such example was the abortive attempt by the 1up Yours podcasters to tackle their "pile of shame" — games they'd owned for ages but had never gotten around to playing. The original intention of the segment on the show was for the hosts to play some of the same game that they had on their Pile, then discuss it the next week. Unfortunately, it didn't really take off as part of the show, but fortunately for the format — "gaming book club" seemed like a good idea — the community decided to take the idea and run with it.

The first couple of threads we did this for were simply branded "The Boardmembers' Pile of Shame" and explored games like System Shock 2 and Freespace 2. After a while, it became clear that it was the same group of people participating each time, and so the Squadron of Shame Club was born using 1up.com's Club feature — itself an interesting take on social media that I haven't quite seen the likes of since; in many ways, it pioneered microblogging long before Twitter became popular, though there was no character limitation, simply an ongoing, reverse-chronological order feed of conversation that we've tried several times to recreate with varying amounts of success.

1up has been dying for some time, though. The beginning of the end of that site for the Squadron of Shame was when the forums were merged into "Games", "Not Games" and something else that escapes me right now. Various disparate communities were pushed together; tempers flares; cultures clashed. An attempt at a Squad thread in these new digs was quickly derailed by some asshole with the attention span of a gnat yelling about "massive fucking walls of text" when, in fact, that had been our bread and butter for a long time by that point.

The Squad has kind of floated around the Internet ever since, eventually settling on our most recent digs, that will hopefully be "home" for some time to come. 1up, meanwhile, continued to tick along for a while before eventually being swallowed up by IGN and pretty much left to rot. The site was still there, though, with all its archives visible for all to see whenever they wanted.

Which is why so many people were surprised and upset today when going to 1up.com's front page simply gave what appeared to be an empty directory. Thankfully, at the time of writing, the front page at least appears to have come back, and if you can remember the not-very-friendly link, you can even get to the Squadron of Shame's original home.

How much longer will it be there, though? This is a sad and unfortunate aspect of the digital age — things that are the source of great memories are becoming increasingly impermanent. One day 1up.com will simply cease to be, and those memories will be nothing but that — memories. We've already lost a lot of things, such as our original mission threads on the old forums — it'd be a real shame to lose what's left of our community in its original form, though thankfully most of the Old Guard have followed each other around as digital nomads ever since.

So 1up.com may not be dead just yet, then, but today was a potent reminder that nothing lasts forever.

The post 1640: Not Quite Dead Yet appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I haven't really explored a self-hosted forum solution before — I've set up forums for various people in the past, but have always made use of pre-made free services, since that was all we needed to fit our needs at the time. In the case of the Squadron of Shame, we're trying to make this place our permanent home on the Interwebs, since we've been flitting around from place to place every so often ever since the 1up forums imploded.

Mostly, I've been impressed with phpBB's (let's go with that spelling for the sake of argument) flexibility and customisability. There are a whole lot of options you can tweak, and in doing so you can make the forum function in plenty of different ways — you can adjust the way users can interact with it, assign various levels of permissions to users, allow or disallow various board features and extend the functionality with plugins and mods.

The only real downside to it all, so far as I can make out, is that installing the aforementioned plugins and mods looks like a bit of a pain in the arse, eschewing a handy-dandy automated install process a la off-the-peg CMS systems such as WordPress and instead in most cases demanding that you edit multiple HTML, CSS and script files, uploading new files to the server and generally doing a whole lot of things manually.

It's been relatively minor issue so far, though, since most of the things I've wanted to do with the board have so far been covered by phpBB's comprehensive administration panel — including uploading attachments such as images, which is something that appeared to be significantly more difficult to include in previous incarnations of phpBB (we're using version 3).

It's been interesting, though, since, as I said above, it's not something I've really poked around in before. I've been learning a lot about what phpBB is capable of, and how it provides a flexible solution for building an online community with relatively minimal fuss. Of course, I haven't been getting involved on the hardcore coding and styling side of things — I'm leaving that up to my friend Mark, fellow founding member of the Squad and someone who does this sort of thing for a living — but I have been doing things that I'm able to easily resolve through a bit of tinkering in the admin panel. (I'm less likely to break things that way, too; past experience with manually fiddling around with templates and CSS files has taught me that I'm good at breaking things.)

Plus there's always the possibility that this sort of knowledge might prove useful in future job hunts. You never know. And it's not as if I have anything better to do right now, is it?

The post 1634: Pee Aitch Pee Bee Bee appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And the simple answer is that I, well, don't.

I had a feeling that this was the case. Being involved in the endless hype cycle for games that really don't need any more hyping up was starting to make me cynical even back in the GamePro days — hence my conscious decision to focus on unconventional, interesting and quirky stories rather than endless retreads of press releases from Activision, EA and Ubisoft. It was a decision that paid off in the short term — people started coming to GamePro to get away from the identikit coverage from other sites, and my stories contributed to a significant growth in traffic… right before the site folded, leaving us all out of a job. Bah.

On USgamer, aside from the news coverage — which I found increasingly hard to care about, particularly as we started having to refocus our efforts on covering the things that would definitely pull in traffic (i.e. the "big name" games of the moment: the aforementioned games that don't really need any more coverage and hype) rather than the interesting, unusual and underexplored areas of the business — I was fortunate enough to have a certain degree of leeway to write the sort of things that I'd want to read from a games site. Thus the JPgamer and BOARDgamer columns were born, providing specialist coverage on niche subjects — while neither of these would be likely to bring in readers by the millions, they were both the sort of things that would keep people coming back week after week, and judging by both the regular commenters and the disappointment expressed by readers when my departure was announced, they were successful in maintaining a solid, specialist audience.

Looking around at the other big sites, though, I'm seeing very little that makes me want to hang my hat on that community and call it my own. I'm seeing lots of very similar stories about how amazing No Man's Sky is supposedly going to be, or how awesome Destiny is supposedly going to be, or "everything we know" about Mass Effect 4/Dragon Age: Inquisition/Halo 5/whatever for the umpteenth time. I'm seeing very little stuff to read with any real meat on the bones, in other words — and with Polygon, the site that was supposed to reinvent games journalism, laying off the majority of its features team, it seems that interesting, long-form critiques and other, non-review, non-preview, non-news pieces are rapidly going out of the window.

And when sites do attempt to try something a bit different, it's inevitably on the increasingly tedious subject of sexism. This isn't to deny that there's plenty to talk about and criticise here, but the majority of articles on this subject are so blitheringly ill-informed with their GCSE Sociology-level critiquing of a subsection of the business as a whole — frequently completely ignoring parts that don't fit their ham-fisted, half-baked theories — that they're just painful to read, particularly when the author becomes so enormously defensive that they start insulting their readership rather than acknowledging the actually quite valid criticisms that come up in the comments section.

Or video. Fuck video. But that's a rant for another day.

Instead of professional games coverage, then, I instead tend to look to my friends. I discuss what I'm playing on Twitter, on Google Hangouts and on the new Squadron of Shame forums. Impassioned reports — positive or negative — from people I know and trust is infinitely more interesting than a carefully PR-orchestrated preview of a game that will inevitably be at least a little bit disappointing when it finally releases. I'd rather hear about something that's out now — that people have actually played, that I can track down a copy of and play should I like the sound of it — than something that, in many cases, is a year or more away. I'd rather hear about amazing discoveries that were released five or six years ago and sank without trace than something I can't install and play right now. And I'd rather share my stories and join the conversation than be preached to.

Essentially, then, I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't really give a shit about the modern games press in its current form. And I'm quite possibly not alone.

Which might explain why I'm in the situation I'm in now. Hmm.

The post 1633: Newshound At Rest appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Suffice to say, patch 2.3 is excellent. I, along with many of my Free Company-mates, took today to work through the new episode of the main scenario quest, which included a spectacular battle against Ramuh, Lord of Levin (aka "the old man who flings lightning everywhere") as well as a ton of other story content. I also completed the new Hildibrand questline — a comedic questline that, for many, has proven a highlight of Final Fantasy XIV's ongoing updates — as well as trying out all three of the new 4-player dungeons.

And I've barely scratched the surface. I've bought a room in our Free Company's house for my character, but I'm yet to fill it with furniture — there's just a bed, a couple of chairs and a table in there for now. I haven't even touched the new 24-player Crystal Tower raid, which promises to be an enjoyable clusterfuck, just like the previous 24-player Crystal Tower raid. And there's a ton of other stuff I'm yet to fiddle around with, too — not to mention returning to the tasks I was already working on prior to the patch, which will now be somewhat easier thanks to improved rewards from a bunch of game content.

So far there have been numerous highlights. Although some disliked the amount of dialogue and cutscenes in the main scenario quest, I enjoyed what was offered, as if you stopped to read it and see what was going on, it proved to be a nice "here's what's been happening elsewhere in the realm since last you saw these people" affair. There was also some neat — if rather obvious — foreshadowing of who the next "big fight" is going to be against.

The new dungeons are great, too. Tam-Tara Hard is particularly fun — as one of the low-level dungeons that comes up most frequently in Low-Level Roulette, Tam-Tara is a dungeon that many people were growing sick of, but its Hard incarnation successfully reimagines it into one of the best — if not the best — dungeon in the game. Featuring a creepy atmosphere, some brilliant boss fights and a narrative twist that is sure to please those who were paying attention earlier in the game, Tam-Tara Hard was a real highlight of today's session.

Stone Vigil Hard has proven more divisive, but it's certainly an interesting, challenging experience. The regular enemies are more than a match for even a well-geared party, and the bosses all make use of interesting mechanics that require far more than a simple "tank and spank" approach. This is nothing unusual for Final Fantasy XIV, which features some very involved boss battles throughout, but Stone Vigil Hard features some particularly interesting mechanics.

Finally, the all-new dungeon Hullbreaker Isle was great. Unfolding mostly outdoors, the "dungeon" sees you attempting to track down the treasure of the pirate Mistbeard. Along the way, you have to contend with various groups of angry wildlife, some unpleasant traps left behind to deter unwanted visitors, and, at the end, a rather annoyed kraken who wants nothing more than to pick you up, fling you around and splatter you with ink.

Final Fantasy XIV continues to go from strength to strength. It remains, as it has done since it launched last August, one of my favourite games, and if the strength of this new content is anything to go by, it has a significant amount of life in it. I'm genuinely intrigued to see where the main story is going, and in the meantime I'm really enjoying the other tasks and challenges the game faces me with. And there's some stuff — like the super-challenging endgame raid The Binding Coil of Bahamut — that I'm still barely touching. There is so much to do, and I'm having an absolute blast doing it — not to mention making some good friends in the progress.

Now, my brain is fried, so I should probably go and get some sleep. It's back to the doldrums of hunting for work tomorrow, though I don't doubt I shall reward myself with an hour or two in Eorzea as the day progresses!

The post 1632: Defenders of Eorzea appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Forums are the spiritual home of the Squad, since it's where we, as a group, first came together. But they're also one of the most long-standing parts of the Internet — one aspect of the ever-changing digital world that has actually managed to remain reasonably constant over the course of the last 15-20 years or so.

I recall my first experience with forums fairly vividly. Our first Internet service provider was CompuServe, one of several providers that, at least initially, didn't offer "true" Internet access, instead opting to provide its users with a gated set of online services exclusively for subscribers. (Full Internet access eventually came later, initially in the form of the ability to send email messages to Internet addresses instead of just CompuServe IDs, and later full-on Web access.) As part of this "gated community", CompuServe offered a swathe of forums on a whole host of specialist subjects. Unsurprisingly, I quickly found an online home in the GAMERS forum — you clicked the "GO" button and typed "GAMERS" to get there — and had my first experience of mingling with the online community.

The term "online community" these days has a certain number of negative connotations, due in part to the perpetuation of the narrative that the majority of people who post things online are somehow "toxic", and the fact that indeed, some people who post things online are somehow "toxic". But back in its early days, it was a different matter. "Flaming" and "trolling" were established terms, but they tended to be seen fairly rarely. There were extensive glossaries of the then-new emoticons and acronyms that started to creep into everyday usage, and new terms like "netiquette" were coined to describe how you should interact with other people online.

I honestly can't remember a whole lot about the sort of things I posted and discussed on the Gamers' Forum on CompuServe, but I do remember one thing vividly: I was into Wolfenstein 3-D at the time, and had been experimenting with a variety of mod tools for it, at least partly because I'd been helping a local shareware dealer write his catalogues that included a selection of Wolfenstein add-ons and editors.

Anyway, yes; I was into Wolfenstein 3-D and had spent quite some time working on a selection of new levels — ten of them, in fact. I uploaded them to the Gamers' Forum's download area for others to have a go at, but didn't think anything more of it and certainly wasn't expecting any feedback or anything.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was contacted by a gentleman named Carlton, who claimed to represent Apogee, the publisher of Wolfenstein, and also claimed to be interested in including my levels in an official expansion pack for the game. I'd be paid, he promised, and appropriately credited.

Frankly, I was at a loss as to what to do at this stage, but after some deliberation and discussion I took a chance and got in touch with Carlton, who took my contact details and promised to be in touch in short order.

Not a lot happened for a while, but then one day a package showed up. Inside it was a cheque for $200 and three floppy disks — one containing a full, registered version of Wolfenstein 3-D, and two containing the official expansion pack, the Super Upgrades pack. I installed the disks, browsed through the directory containing the game — and sure enough, there were my levels, credited to me. I was a professional game designer.

And all because of a forum. Pretty neat, huh?

The post 1631: GO GAMERS appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Rorona Plus is an interesting game, and one with good pacing. Beginning with simple tasks for which the time limit you're given is ample — leaving you with plenty of time to take on other tasks to build up your relationships and reputation in the town — the game gradually progresses in such a way that what is the same amount of in-game time starts to feel more and more claustrophobic. The things you're tasked with making start taking longer to produce, and the journeys outside the workshop to gather ingredients and battle monsters take up longer stretches of time, too.

Fortunately, to counterbalance this, you have a number of additional systems open up as you progress — you're able to "wholesale" items to the shops around town, allowing you to simply purchase useful "intermediate step" ingredients for more complex recipes rather than having to make them every time, and Rorona gets an assistant who can either be sent out to gather ingredients or craft items independently or Rorona. I must confess I didn't make nearly enough use of these facilities in my first playthrough, but you live and learn; I now recognise that in order to get everything done to such a standard as to unlock the numerous alternative endings to the game, it's necessary to make heavy use of them.

Herein lies the interesting thing about Rorona Plus: despite having the trappings of a conventional Japanese role-playing game, the meat of the gameplay is actually more about management and strategy. In order to see the most success, you'll need to plan your time effectively, and set up systems in order to save time whenever possible. Some of these can be constructed yourself — a furnishing system added in the Plus version allows you to build various items that confer helpful benefits on Rorona and her party — while others, such as the aforementioned wholesale and assistant systems, unlock naturally as you progress in the game, though some can be unlocked sooner if you trigger certain events more quickly.

I'm looking forward to playing through the game again knowing what I know now — plus I believe some stuff can be carried over to another playthrough — and seeking out the other endings. Whether or not I'll go for all of them remains to be seen — I'm keen to play the rest of the series, after all! — but I've had a blast so far, and I'm happy that there's plenty more where that came from.

The post 1627: Further Enthusing on the Subject of Alchemy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For a lot of people — those who have reached the endgame, anyway — this is the long and convoluted process of acquiring and subsequently upgrading your "Relic" weapon. It's a questline that was originally available in Final Fantasy XIV's 1.0 incarnation which was then rejigged, tweaked and revamped for when A Realm Reborn launched. Over the course of the last few patches, it's continued to expand — and in the process, it's created a highly memorable gaming experience, albeit one that will drive some people to madness.

Here's how it works. After beating the game's main scenario (as it existed in the base game when it launched), you can visit a smith named Gerolt in the North Shroud. Gerolt was once a master weaponsmith, but in the years since the Calamity it seems like he is now more frequently to be found at the bottom of a bottle than hammering out a masterwork. Until you show up, that is, having heard rumours of a legendary weapon.

Through a somewhat convoluted series of events that see you finally tracking down the relic — which is broken, naturally — and then defeating a series of increasingly ridiculous opponents in order to acquire the ingredients necessary to repair it, you find yourself with a new incarnation of one of the legendary weapons of yore.

But that's not where it ends. Acquire enough of the mysterious elixir Thavnairian Mist, and you can infuse your relic with additional power, turning it into its Zenith incarnation and giving it a rather fetching glowy effect in the process.

This used to be where the questline ended, leaving you with a level 90 weapon — one of the most powerful in the game at the time it launched. But then came the Zodiac Braves questline, during which you hear tell of the exploits of a band of legendary warriors and hope to use the information to upgrade your weapon further.

The first step in this process is to acquire twelve Atma, strange crystals that very rarely drop in all places around the realm of Eorzea. In gameplay terms, in order to acquire these, you'll need to complete the public quests (known as FATEs) in specific locations. Each FATE you complete with your Zenith relic equipped has a low chance of dropping the Atma for that location, and there are twelve in total. There are all manner of conspiracy theories about whether or not there's a way to game the system or if you really are at the mercy of the random number generator, but you'll get there eventually.

Once you've collected twelve Atma, they're infused into your Zenith weapon, turning it into an Atma. It loses its shiny glow, but changes appearance slightly in the process — in the case of my Black Mage's Stardust Rod, for example, the orb on the end which used to glow purple now glows in rainbow colours. It's not any more powerful, though — it's the next step in the process that makes the Atma weapon unique.

Continuing your research into the Zodiac Braves, it transpires that a number of books detailing the exploits of these legendary warriors are available, but the one who holds them isn't going to let them go cheap. Specifically, she's charging 1,500 Allagan Tomestones of Mythology — mysterious items left over by the 5,000-year old Allagan civilisation that are used as currency in certain parts of Eorzea — per book. And there are nine books to look into, each of which tasks you with a series of Trials of the Braves to follow in the footsteps of the legendary warriors. In gameplay terms, this means there are a number of tasks for you to complete, ranging from defeating specific monsters around the world to discovering and completing specific FATEs and other quests. Once one book is completed, your Atma weapon receives a small upgrade. When all are completed, the combined knowledge from the books  turns your weapon into its Animus form.

This is what I'm working towards at the moment. It's a long and time-consuming process and, frankly, a massive pain in the arse — Mythology Tomestones are acquired at quite a slow rate, so don't expect to be blasting out all those books in a weekend, unless you weren't planning on sleeping at all.

But at the same time, it's really quite satisfying. The upgrades you receive from completing a book are small but noticeable, and the prospect of an even more powerful weapon at the end of the process is a strong incentive to continue. Plus it helps give a feeling of "attachment" to this weapon you've put so much work into — it's something special that you've worked on, and it's become "your" weapon rather than just another item. This feeling further continues during the next phase of the process — upgrading the Animus weapon into a Novus — during which you have a strong degree of customisation over how your finished (for now, anyway) weapon will end up.

And, importantly, it's optional. If you don't think you'll be able to deal with the grind, you don't have to. There are plenty of other means of acquiring powerful weapons in the game — though expect to be challenging some of the game's toughest encounters in order to do so. Many people, even knowing how much work goes in to one of these weapons, are still voluntarily starting down the long road, though — and, as painful as the process can seem at times, it's something which you and your friends can bond over and swap war stories about.

Despite its negative aspects, then, I rather like it; it gives a feeling of investment in your character's development even after the experience points and levels have stopped flowing. It gives you a feeling of attachment to your weapon, much like characters in fantasy epics, or indeed the Zodiac Braves whose trials you're pursuing. And when you finally reach one of the important milestones in the process, good Lord is it satisfying.

Will I reach Novus or even Animus before patch 2.3 arrives — possibly bringing with it another step in the upgrade process? I have no idea, but I'm working on it, with my in-game friends cheering me on every step of the way.

The post 1626: Quest for the Animus appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

What follows, then, is an account of how the fight went, written (hopefully) in a means through which a non-MMO player can understand what is going on. I found it an exciting experience — and if you've never tried it, you learn something about what high-level play in a massively multiplayer game like Final Fantasy XIV is all about.

Turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut focuses entirely on one encounter: eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania, put there by the ancient Allagan civilisation to do their bidding. Actually, to be exact, it's eight comrades-in-arms against an ancient dragon named Twintania and her three friends, but said three friends aren't nearly as much of a threat.

The fight began with our de facto leader the paladin — a strong defensive fighter whose strengths lie not in doing a lot of damage, but instead in keeping the attention of enemies off the more fragile members of the party — charging in and provoking Twintania and her allies. The remainder of the group then followed — at a safe distance for those members such as myself, who were able to inflict damage from a distance — and concentrated on dealing with Twintania's three friends. Meanwhile, we were fending off attacks from Twintania and her companions — fiery rings that dropped on the floor and hurt a lot if you didn't get out of them as quickly as possible when they fell on you.

Once the three smaller dragons were down, the group turned its attention to Twintania proper, gathering around her with a strong defensive fighter at the front and another defensive fighter at the side, accompanied by our Scholar's fairy companion Eos. The group aggressively attacked Twintania until one of the three Neurolink devices around her neck dropped to the floor, at which point the real fun was about to begin.

A curious "blip-blip" sound — perhaps from the Neurolink? — heralded the imminent arrival of a fireball attack from Twintania on a member of the party. No-one knew who these attacks were going to target, but as soon as the telltale signs appeared, they ran to the defensive fighter and fairy standing to one side of Twintania and shared the damage with their two companions — a direct hit without the support of others would have meant instant death.

As the healers frantically worked to help those hit by the fireball recover, the rest of the group prepared for another troublesome ability Twintania had up her sleeve: the ability to summon a terrible conflagration and trap a combatant within. The telltale "blip-blip!" sound came again, but this time with a different marker; its appearance signalled that the victim was about to become caught in a fiery prison, and would need their companions to break them free before it exploded.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, it was impossible to break through the Conflagration before the next fireball attack came, but here it was possible to take advantage of a curious property of the Conflagrations: while those caught within were completely immobilised, it was possible to break in from without, and despite the temporary incapacitation, a Conflagration provided surprisingly good shelter and respite from the relentless fireballs.

After successfully dealing with this tense situation for some time, Twintania took to the skies and flew off. Had we driven her away? Of course not; this was just the beginning.

A second Neurolink fell from Twintania's neck; the signal that we had to move into a recessed part of the platform upon which we were standing — actually the right hand of the dormant dragon god Bahamut, who wreaked havoc on the realm of Eorzea five years previously. Keeping a careful eye on the dragon revealed when she was likely to swoop across our battleground, attempting to kill us off with her "divebomb" attack. Fortunately, staying nimble on our feet meant it was eminently possible to stay out of the way of these deadly swoops, and instead focus our attention on some new friends: three snake-like creatures, one of which was known as Asclepius and the other two of which were known as Hygieia.

Although terrifying and against the principles of everything we'd trained for up until this point, the party stood firm directly in front of these three new opponents, eyes occasionally darting to the sky in case Twintania decided to swoop in once more. We weakened the two Hygieia without killing them, then set to work on the Asclepius — and then Twintania resumed her assault. Once again, some nimble footwork saw us dodge all but one of the deadly swoops — the last of which knocked me clean across Bahamut's palm, but thankfully didn't finish me off — and it was time to deal with two more Hygieia that had appeared to join the fray.

Muttering an incantation under my breath, I summoned all my willpower and unleashed my Limit Break skill, calling down a shower of meteorites to pelt Asclepius and its four children with devastating, fiery projectiles. The two weakened Hygieia fell to the assault, enfeebling Asclepius, the two remaining Hygieia and the brave frontline paladins in the process. It wasn't long before the other two Hygieia fell, weakening Asclepius further in the process, and shortly after the larger snake was also defeated.

By this point, Twintania was obviously furious and preparing for some sort of last-ditch "ultimate" attack. We had but moments to dart for the safety of the fallen Neurolinks on the ground — and then to hope and pray as the room was filled with the brilliant white light of an aetheric explosion.

Not all of us survived the blast, and it wasn't long after this that Twintania's summoning of deadly whirlwinds finished the rest of us off. We collapsed to the ground — beaten for now, but determined to return once we had gathered our strength and prepared once again for the deadly conflict — and Twintania lived to fight another day.

The post 1623: Attack on Twintania, Part 1 appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The reason why it's a shadow of its former self is twofold: firstly, the average equipment level of most endgame players in Final Fantasy XIV is now considerably higher than it was when it first launched and Coil was the hardest thing in the game; secondly, you're now provided with a buff called "The Echo" upon entering, which boosts your HP, damage, healing and a few other bits and pieces by 15%. Second Coil has no such buff, but it will have one in the future, when Third Coil, or whatever comes next, is released — and so on as the game gradually ups the stakes time and time again.

This is a clever and sensible move on the part of producer Naoki Yoshida and his team. The Binding Coil of Bahamut, despite still being a very challenging set of mini-dungeons and boss fights even with the Echo buff, is part of Final Fantasy XIV's overarching story. Working your way through it provides you with information about the ancient Allagan civilisation, whom you keep discovering artifacts of throughout your travels, and also what the main recurring villains of the piece — the Ascians — are up to. It also provides a tantalising glimpse at what really happened to the dragon-like god Bahamut as part of the Calamity — the in-game, in-lore justification for the shutdown of Final Fantasy XIV's version 1.0 incarnation in 2012 — and what the artificial moon Dalamud was actually hiding inside itself besides Bahamut.

All interesting stuff, I'm sure you'll agree — well, you might not, but humour me. To put it another way, it's all stuff that people who are interested in the detailed lore and worldbuilding of Final Fantasy XIV will probably want to experience. And through the gradual "nerfing" of it as new content arrives, eventually everyone will be able to make it through Coil and see what's what — just some people will do it sooner than others.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up tonight is that I've been doing a bit of Coil myself this evening. This is something of a big step for me, as I've previously only ever set foot inside that place in the company of my comrades from my Free Company. With a lot of high-level content in any MMO — not just Final Fantasy XIV — it's assumed that you know what you're doing when you step inside, and that you won't mess things up, because in many cases one mistake can bring an entire eight-person team crashing to its knees.

This is, I'm sure you'll appreciate, an enormously daunting prospect, particularly for someone like me, who sometimes lacks confidence in himself. But tonight I not only voluntarily went into Coil "solo" (to be automatically matched up with seven other random players), I also did so on White Mage, a healer class, rather than my "comfort zone" (and main) class Black Mage. And while there were a couple of aborted attempts — largely due to poor party makeup rather than anyone making any horrendous mistakes — there was none of the rage, none of the aggression, none of the elitism that can make playing through difficult content even more daunting than it already is. On the whole, it was actually quite a pleasant experience, despite being challenging — and I was rewarded for my efforts, too, with a new ring for my Paladin and some new boots for my White Mage. Score!

I'm always secretly pleased with myself when I overcome a fear like that. Because although Final Fantasy XIV is just a game, and I understand that, the anxiety and fear I feel from social situations is as real online as it is when I'm getting tongue-tied trying to make small talk with someone I don't really know. My ticking that box in Duty Finder, queueing up and then repeatedly going back into Coil this evening might not sound like much, but believe me when I say it was actually quite a big step for me in terms of self-confidence.

And who says games can't do any good?

The post 1622: Another Turn in the Coil appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Longtime readers may recall that I was rather enthusiastic about Blur when it first came out — largely for what I thought at the time was a good example of how to use "social features" effectively. Of course now, in 2014, "social features" are everywhere in games and have a habit of getting in the way more often than not, so I'm not entirely sure I still feel the same way, but Blur certainly had a lot going for it.

Looking back on my past entries, I realise that I never really waxed lyrical about what a remarkable game Blur truly was, though. I talked a bit about its developer Bizarre Creations — Blur was to be one of its last games — but not about what made Blur special.

For the unfamiliar, Blur was a racing game. Nothing unusual for Bizarre Creations, who had previously given us the wonderful Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast, which was succeeded by the Project Gotham Racing series on Xbox platforms. Both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing struck a good balance between the realism of "driving simulator" games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, and the more arcadey thrills of titles like Ridge Racer and its ilk. Stuffed full of real-world cars screeching around beautifully depicted real-world locations mapped in what was considered for the time to be almost "photo-realistic" detail, both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham in its various incarnations places a strong focus on driving stylishly in order to gain "kudos". Powersliding around corners, overtaking your rivals, getting air off the crest of hills — all of it would add to your kudos bank, and there was an extremely addictive high score-chasing thrill to it all.

Blur, meanwhile, took the Project Gotham formula and added a twist that took it further from sim territory and well into the realms of arcade silliness. Although still involving real-life cars screeching around real-world locations, Blur went that extra step and incorporated power-ups too. Powerups that let you shoot homing missiles at your opponents, or rapid-fire bullets, or send out devastating shockwaves, or simply boost past your rivals while flipping them off.

Sound familiar? Sound a bit like Mario Kart? That's because Blur pretty much was Mario Kart, albeit with much more realistic visuals and less fantastic tracks. It was genuinely something that hadn't really been done before — there had been automotive combat games, but they tended to focus on destruction derby-style gameplay rather than racing with powerups — and thus it was immediately memorable.

And the multiplayer! My goodness, what a fantastic experience that was. Shamelessly lifting Call of Duty's system of experience levels and unlocks, Blur's multiplayer rewarded repeat play by providing you with all manner of ways to customise the way you play, as well as a selection of new cars to enjoy. The game was well-balanced, though, in that having a high rank didn't necessarily confer you an advantage as such, just more options from which to choose. It was enormously addictive and, for someone like me who generally doesn't enjoy competitive multiplayer games all that much, enjoyable for a surprisingly long time.

I booted the PC version up today after having a bit of a hankering to play again, and out of curiosity I fired up the multiplayer mode. There were four people online. Not four hundred, not four thousand; four. These people appeared to be actively playing, mind you, but it was certainly a far cry from the hundreds of people who used to populate the game. I admire their dedication to the game, but I also feel a bit sad that here we have an unfortunate aspect of the fast-moving nature of the modern games biz: Blur is unlikely to ever see a great deal of action as a multiplayer game again, making one of its best features now almost worthless. It's a crying shame; Blur was sent out to die by Activision rather than being promoted properly — conspiracy theories have it that the company wanted an excuse to get rid of Bizarre Creations — and consequently never really had a chance to develop an active, long-life multiplayer community.

If I had a tad more influence, I'd do my best to try and gather people together for one last race around the game's courses. But given that the PC version no longer appears to be available anywhere and the Xbox version requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription — which I no longer have — that's something easier said than done.

I guess, then, that the good experiences of playing Blur multiplayer will have to live in my memory. The single-player is good — and still playable — but nothing quite compared to the thrill of taking on human opponents. It's a pity very few people will have the opportunity to enjoy that, and I'm glad I had the chance to do so when the game was most active.

The post 1621: Requiem for a Dead Game appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Forums aren't all that fashionable these days, though they are still used somewhat, particularly for communities relating to specific software companies or even individual games. I can't say I've used one for a very long time indeed now, but having gotten back into the swing of posting on one thanks to the new Squadron of Shame boards, I can honestly say I've missed them.

The reason? They're completely different to the way modern social media works. While you may think that social media would be the ideal place to begin discussions and have in-depth conversations, in actuality modern social media is not at all well-suited for this task. Whereas many forums have long-life conversational threads that stick around for months or even years, the very nature of social media means that posts are transient — they're there one moment, gone the next, replaced by a cat picture, some vapid meme or One Of Those Clickbait Headlines That Makes Poor Use Of Headline Case And You Just Won't Believe. And while certain social media posts can attract a long string of comments and stick around for a while due to consistent interest — the reason why Facebook steadfastly refuses to organise posts in chronological order is because of this, if you were wondering — they'll still fall away far quicker than an equivalent topic on a forum.

This is fine for the sort of vapid nonsense that people post on Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis, but less ideal for more long-form discussion on more specific topics — such as the sort of thing we like to stroke our collective chins over at the Squadron of Shame. Now I know that many existing, well-established forums in 2014 — long-standing gaming forum NeoGAF is a good example — have proportions of the community that do not like seeing "walls of text" (even when they use paragraphs and punctuation and everything), but the fact is that forums are ideally suited to long-form discussion and thoughtful discourse. They're not instant messages, they're not time-sensitive, they're not places to post "fire and forget" comments that you never look at the responses to — they're places for asynchronous communication between people of similar interests, and an excellent means of having far more detailed discussions than is possible on social media in its current form.

Social media is crowded. Social media is noisy. Social media is like stumbling into the middle of a party, slightly drunk, and shouting whatever you feel like and hoping someone hears it. And, sometimes, that's fine, and can lead to beautiful interactions, friendships and even relationships. (I'm sitting in this house with the person I own it with because of Twitter.)

But a forum is like getting together a group of people with common interests — depending on the number of participants, it can be like a book club, a seminar or a large-scale gathering — and having a civilised, peaceful, thoughtful discussion on a particular topic. (Usually, anyway. This isn't to say forums are drama-free, but there's a lot less of the attention-seeking passive-aggression that's often seen on social media for the most part in my experience.)

As I said above, I'm not sure whether the Squadron of Shame will be staying on that free forum software for now or whether we'll be moving to our own site. But either way, the shift — or should I say shift back, since that's where the group was born — to a forum-based means of discussion has so far proven popular, and I think it will be good for the group in the long term.

If you're interested in joining us to talk about underappreciated and overlooked games, both new and old, drop by our new home and say hello.

The post 1620: Community Matters appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So, given Final Fantasy XIV's curious development history — for those who don't know, it originally launched in 2010, was heavily criticised for its numerous flaws, then closed in 2012, only to reopen as its current, completely revamped and considerably better-received form A Realm Reborn last August — I was curious to see exactly what the shutdown of the original version looked like. The shutdown of version 1.0 is crafted into the narrative of A Realm Reborn as an event in the game world known as The Calamity. During the events of The Calamity, there was a large-scale battle between the Eorzean Alliance (the three nations that player characters represent) and the Garlean Empire (the villains of the piece, who reprise their role in the main scenario of A Realm Reborn) and the moon Dalamud — actually a weapon created by the ancient Allagan Empire — was pulled down from the sky by dark magic. Dalamud broke open and revealed Bahamut, the giant and extremely pissed-off dragon god. Bahamut's rage pretty much obliterated most of Eorzea, forever changing the landscape, but not before the heroes of Eorzea — the players of version 1.0 — were pulled into "The Rift" outside space and time, to be released only once peace had returned to the realm… or once A Realm Reborn had been released.

With that in mind, then, here's how it went down from the perspective of several friends who apparently decided to see the apocalypse through together.

Although a simple event — it's just players standing around with some haunting music playing in the background for much of the video above — it genuinely feels like something momentous is coming to an end; like the world is really ending. The players know there's nothing they can do about it; they know that their (virtual) lives are shortly coming to an end, so all there is to do is to spend their final moments in the company of people that are important to them.

Watching the video made me want to shed a few tears, even though I didn't know the people involved. The quiet melancholy of the scene was surprisingly touching; as the time until the end of the world ticked down, the gathered friends started using their emotes and aesthetic items — fireworks and the like — to mark the end of their time together as a celebration, not a tragedy. Strange server messages started punctuating the chat log, and someone in the area was counting down the minutes until the switch was flipped and Eorzea would cease to be — at least temporarily.

Then, eventually, it happened; the world ended. It was marked not with a huge cataclysm in the game world, but with a simple change to a tiny element of the on-screen interface: the data transfer meter in the top-right corner of the screen changed from green to red, and the "R" number, indicating the rate at which data was being received by the player's client software from the game servers, dropped to zero. There was a moment of quiet as nothing happened — nothing could happen, as client and server were no longer communicating with one another — and then a black screen and a loading break, followed by the spectacular cutscene that closed Final Fantasy XIV's initial incarnation once and for all — and which also opened A Realm Reborn.

Prior to last August, I couldn't even begin to imagine what sitting through an event like this must be like for people who have been actively playing the game which it concluded — flawed or otherwise. Now, I can't help but think the whole thing would be an absolutely heartbreaking experience; although true friendships will persist outside of the game in which they were, in many cases, forged, the next time you see those people — whether it's in reality or in a new game altogether — they'll likely be very different. And those elusive moments you had together in your previous forms will be forever be trapped in the past — but they'll live on in your memories, as trite as that might sound.

I hope A Realm Reborn stays healthy and lively for many years to come yet — at its current rate, things are going to be fine for quite some time, I'd say, thankfully — but when it eventually does come to an end, I hope I have the opportunity to see its final moments through with those whom I've come to know through playing. We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll perform the Manderville, we'll set off fireworks — whatever we do, I can see it being a special but sad moment that will live with each of us in a way that very few other video games will be able to replicate. (Unless they're another long-running MMO, of course.)

Still, let's not be melancholy; patch 2.3 of A Realm Reborn is coming early next month, and it's bringing with it a continuation to the game's excellent and enjoyable story plus a whole host of other content. I and my Free Company are really looking forward to it — and if you're interested in joining, may I point out that it's currently available at a discount on PC as part of the Steam Sale?

I'll see you on the Ultros server, non?

The post 1618: The End of a World appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Take a look at the small preview for Senran Kagura 2 in the middle. Now imagine that you work for Xseed Games, the company that did an excellent job on the localisation of Senran Kagura Burst for 3DS a while back, and that looks likely to bring Senran Kagura 2 to Western audiences in the near future.

Well, you don't have to imagine; Xseed's outspoken Production Coordinator Brittany "Hatsuu" Avery had a few choice words to say on the subject:

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/statuses/480921145445609472

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480921515215437824

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480922219652972544

(Yes, it was; here's the piece in question, itself a needlessly inflammatory and ill-informed rant.)

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480923786846289920

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/480923975682252802

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/481109395963936768

https://twitter.com/Hatsuu/status/481110060555575296

Senran Kagura, lest you're unfamiliar, is a series of games that centre around the exploits of some rival schools that train ninjas. In the first game, released as Senran Kagura Burst in the West, the story followed both the "good" ninjas and their rivals at the "evil" ninja academy, in the process delving into the personalities and histories of characters in a far deeper manner than many other games. The all-female cast is made up of distinct characters, none of whom are downtrodden or defined by the way men have treated them in the past, as some Western critics have complained of games as a whole recently. The story itself sees these characters grow, develop and change, and by the end you have a very good idea of who these girls are, how they relate to one another and their place in the world.

Senran Kagura is also somewhat notorious for its costume damage system, that can leave player characters and bosses alike battling in increasingly tattered (and revealing) clothing as their fights progress. There's also a magical girl-esque "transformation" system whereby the girls can unleash their full hidden ninja skills by stripping down to their swimsuits, then magically re-robing themselves in a new costume. The transformation sequences are cheeky and sexy — unashamedly so — but the girls are, throughout the whole game, depicted as individuals who are firmly in control of the way they choose to present themselves  to the world. As anyone who has played and enjoyed Senran Kagura will tell you, there isn't a single piece of maliciousness in the game towards the characters; it simply revels in its sexy elements, and is rather refreshing as a result.

Now, as Avery says in her tweets above, people are free to dislike Senran Kagura for whatever reasons they like. But the Official Nintendo Magazine preview — and the editorial linked above — come across as not only needlessly spiteful, but also completely ill-informed. It focuses entirely on the fanservice element of the game — one of the most visible aspects, sure, and one deliberately played up in some of the game's marketing — and completely ignores the rest, writing off the enormously fun Streets of Rage-style brawling as "there's also some fighting and we guess we should mention that."

This is a problem — regardless of the intention with which the piece was written, whether it was intended to be "satirical", as some people have argued, or not — and not just for fans of Senran Kagura and its ilk. Writers for publications are tastemakers, and are in positions of power to dictate what their audience's opinions might veer towards. This is a simplification of how things actually work, of course — there are usually a lot more steps in the flow rather than a straightforward "hypodermic" model — but the fact remains that people who write things for high-profile publications have a lot of influence on how certain things are perceived. And when pieces like this get published, they cement popular perceptions — even if those perceptions are unfair or wrong.

Because ultimately Senran Kagura is pretty tame, when it comes down to it. As Avery writes on her personal blog in response to a fan question, Senran Kagura Burst was only rated "T for Teen" by the ESRB in America because there's really nothing in there that warrants a Mature 17+ rating. To suggest that having pretty girls with large breasts in a game makes it somehow unsuitable for younger players is to be exceedingly prudish — not to mention the fact that the game takes considerable care to depict all these characters as far more than simply large-breasted women.

Why are these popular perceptions a problem? Because they stop people from discovering cool games. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people dismiss colourful Japanese titles as being "creepy" or "for paedos" simply due to their aesthetic, when in many cases these games address many of the most common things that people complain about in the games industry today. Not enough female protagonists in games? May I point you to Hyperdimension Neptunia, Atelier, Tales of Xillia and numerous other Japanese games with fantastically memorable female leads? Too much brown, grey and dark blue? May I point you to the vibrant, bright colours of most modern Japanese role-playing games? Juvenile attempts at being "mature" ultimately boiling down to people saying "fuck" a lot and being able to peep in on people having sex? May I point you to the Ar Tonelico series, which features some of the most in-depth explorations of characters' personalities — including respectful treatments of their dark sides and sexual fantasies — that I've ever seen? Or if that doesn't appeal, may I point you to the piece that prompted this post in the first place, Senran Kagura Burst?

Fun fact: I reviewed the wonderful Atelier Rorona Plus this week. I was the only one who volunteered to do so. In the email thread discussing who wanted to take it on, one reason for turning it down included the fact that one person had looked at Google Image Search and it "didn't take long to find the creepiness". Atelier Rorona, for those who don't know, is one of the most charming, sweet and overwhelmingly nice games you'll ever play — it's not a fanservicey game by any means, yet the perception from someone who doesn't know about it is that there's "creepiness" involved. That's what we're dealing with. That's where these ill-informed rants by people who don't know what they're talking about lead to. That's why the games press could really do with specialist writers… and that's why I'm pissed off that I, someone who could more than ably step into that specialist role — and indeed have been doing so up until now — am shortly to be out on my ear.

Thankfully for people like Avery and companies like Xseed doing their best to bring niche titles to the West, there are plenty of people out there — fans — who do treat these games with the respect they deserve. It's just a shame so few of them are part of the professional games press in 2014.

Humour or not, I'm extremely disappointed in the UK Official Nintendo Magazine for the pieces mentioned above, but at least ignorance like that won't stop me from enjoying the games I enjoy. The frustrating thing, however, is that pieces like those mentioned above make it considerably more difficult to attract new people to these games; stigma is a powerful thing, and it's tragic to see it applied unnecessarily.

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For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV's endgame, Titan Hard Mode was formerly one of the hardest encounters in the game, taking the form of an 8-player variation on one of the main story's 4-player bosses. Mastering (or at least clearing) the fight is an important part of endgame play, since acquiring your class's "Relic" weapon requires you to beat him along with the other two Hard Mode primal fights and two original bosses Dhorme Chimera and Hydra.

The actual battle against Titan bears some resemblance to its story mode counterpart in that Titan makes use of many of the same abilities throughout. The main difference is that the fight is overall a lot longer and incorporates a few new mechanics — most notably the addition of "Bomb Boulders" that drop down from the sky in set patterns and then explode in sequence, requiring the party to quickly and carefully manoeuvre from position to position in order to avoid damage — and while avoiding Titan's other abilities such as Landslide, which can knock you off the arena and out of the fight completely if you're not sharp enough.

Like the other Hard and Extreme mode Primal fights in Final Fantasy XIV, Titan Hard is quite a "choreographed" fight that requires the party be in the right place at the right time, and respond quickly to prompts on the screen. Titan always uses the same abilities in the same order, so there's very much a sequence and timing you can learn, though there will be slight variations on exactly what you need to do each time you play owing to people standing in different places.

It may sound odd to say, but it's a strangely beautiful sight to see a party pulling off a fight like Titan Hard efficiently and effectively. The group moving as one from place to place in response to the incoming threats is a very satisfying thing to watch, particularly when you're part of it. It's a hard thing to convey to anyone who hasn't experienced it for themselves, but in many ways it's like pulling off an impressive "dance" as a group — eight people working as one (for the most part… there's usually at least one person who falls off remarkably quickly, and up until tonight it's usually been me) to achieve a common goal.

I must confess to feeling pumped up and happy about my victory this evening — and, now, much more willing to jump into the Trials Roulette mode of the Duty Finder, which I'd previously been extremely hesitant about making use of despite the helpful rewards on offer. The Extreme Mode primals may still be a while off before I can confidently tackle them — same for Twintania, the notorious boss that guards the end of the first super-tough endgame dungeon The Binding Coil of Bahamut — but for now, I feel I have conquered Titan Hard and can move on to stiffer challenges.

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Andie, too, who has been playing Final Fantasy XIV and has just got her first character to level 50, putting my friend James — who has been playing a lot longer — to shame. Nice job, W'khebica (an authentic Miqo'te name, apparently) — I look forward to enduring the endless Myth grind with you at my side.

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I won't spoil the story here, but I was pleased to see that it didn't end up being quite as predictable as I initially believed it would be. Those with a better mind for this sort of thing than I — I'm thinking mainly of my friend Lynette here, who can spot a plot twist coming a mile off, however well the author might have obfuscated it — may still find it to be predictable, but I found that there were a few interesting surprises along the way, and the conclusion was satisfying and, well, conclusive.

I stand very much by my feeling that it had the atmosphere of a 1990s PC game, and I've been trying to figure out quite what I mean by that. It's a combination of things, I think: the use of "real world" settings with various obstacles in the way so they don't end up having to render the entire interior of a building; the way that NPCs sort of mill around and occasionally have conversations with one another that occasionally give you little hints about the plot; collectible bits and pieces that help flesh out the world; and gameplay that is less concerned about being overly "cinematic" or based on spectacle than it is about using its mechanics to make the player feel involved in what is going on.

It is not a hard game, and since the protagonist is already dead at the outset, there are relatively few situations in which you find yourself in peril, making it a mostly fairly cerebral experience. Even the few instances in which you find yourself threatened by angry spirits (known in the game as demons) are more environmental puzzles than fast-action combat — you don't actually "fight" the demons as such; instead, the only way to defeat them is to sneak up behind them and "execute" them. Alternatively, in pretty much any situation where you're threatened by them, you can just sneak past, too, which is nice.

This latter aspect of the game called to mind a slightly more recent game: Silent Hill: Shatered Memories, a retelling of the first Silent Hill game that replaced the PS1-era "survival horror" gameplay with something a bit different, a bit more modern, and entirely combat-free. In Shattered Memories, the most you can do with the monsters that inhabit the dark world of Silent Hill is to block their path with something heavy — for the most part, you're simply fleeing from them, attempting to make your way back to the exit as quickly as possible. Murdered: Soul Suspect isn't quite that non-violent — you can defeat the demons through the aforementioned sneak attacks, after all — but playing a game that doesn't have a straight "attack" button that causes you to flail wildly at enemies is always a pleasant surprise.

It may sound contradictory to compare Murdered: Soul Suspect to late-'90s PC games and Shattered Memories, a title I described above as being "modern", but there are certainly elements of both in there — the atmosphere and structure of a '90s game; the unconventional approach to gameplay of Shattered Memories.

Ultimately, the whole thing ended up being a game that I'm very glad I played, and one which I have absolutely no hesitation recommending to anyone who enjoys a good ghost story, a good detective story or a bit of both. It's an enjoyable tale told well, and a worthwhile investment of 10 hours or so of your life.

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For the uninitiated, the premise is this: You play the role of Detective Ronan O'Connor, a sharp-eyed investigator in the traditional sense, complete with perpetual smoking habit and the dress sense of someone from the 1940s. Ronan is investigating a murder. Nothing unusual for a detective, you might think, until you discover that the murder he's investigating is his own. He's dead, you see, and not altogether happy about the situation in which he finds himself. And, in traditional ghost story fashion, he can't fully shuffle off this mortal coil until he unravels the mystery keeping him chained to existence.

Murdered: Soul Suspect has received rather poor reviews to date, with its Metacritic rating varying anywhere between the low 60s and the 40s depending on which platform you look at. And yet, as I've found in so many cases recently, these numbers do not paint an at all accurate picture of what the experience of playing the game is like.

It's enormously enjoyable. It's engrossing, well-written, well-acted and intriguing. Its blend of noir-style detective fiction and ghost stories is excellently handled, and the main storyline is backed up by some truly excellent supporting material, ranging from an exploration of setting Salem's history to some entertaining, authentically "campfire-style" ghost stories that you can unlock by discovering collectibles around the various environments in which you find yourself.

Gameplay-wise, it's rather simplistic: you wander around, you uncover clues — occasionally using your ghostly abilities to do so — and every so often you're quizzed on what you've discovered in order to progress. These quizzes may involve putting a sequence of events in the right order, deciding on the right piece of information to use to get a witness to do something, or simply making deductions based on the evidence you've found. Some of the questions and answers throughout are a little obtuse — and some are deceptively obvious — but the game never feels like it's punishing you for picking the wrong choice. Story is king here, and in this sort of game that's exactly how it should be.

In many ways, the game feels like a late '90s PC game, with its open, non-linear environments, lack of minimap and objective markers and… I don't know, there's just something about the general atmosphere of the whole thing that calls to mind titles like the original Deus Ex, Kingpin, Thief and any number of other titles from that similar era. It feels like a game out of its own time — and I kind of like that. (Oh, the PC version is also a tad buggy, too; I had to tweak an .ini file to get it running above 30 frames per second, and it works better with keyboard and mouse than it does with gamepad, but neither of these issues are something that has particularly hampered my enjoyment.)

There's an interesting cast of characters to explore, and some enjoyable banter between Ronan and Joy, a young medium who becomes his "sidekick" and pair of physical hands as his investigation progresses. The story itself — which I'm yet to finish — is looking like it might end up being fairly predictable overall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; plenty of hardboiled and noir fiction is, in itself, predictable and formulaic, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Murdered: Soul Suspect has been unjustly lambasted by much of the press. I'm not entirely sure what people were expecting from it going in to it; I'm really enjoying it so far, and its simplistic gameplay certainly doesn't detract from the fact that it tells an enjoyable, interesting and unusual story. And that's what I want; I don't need fast action sequences, sprawling open worlds or a story that drags itself out unnecessarily over the course of 40+ hours. With Murdered: Soul Suspect what I've got is a good, concise, enjoyable interactive story that doesn't overcomplicate itself with unnecessary mechanics and irrelevant content.

It's a game worth playing, in other words, and another nail in the coffin for the usefulness of most modern reviews, so far as I'm concerned.

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None of them appeared to be making any effort to rectify the situation.

Vita has been a self-fulfilling prophecy for some time now so far as the games press is concerned. It's an astonishingly good games system with backwards compatibility for PSP titles — enhanced backwards compatibility, more to the point, due to the fact you can map the right stick and touchscreen to PSP functions, allowing you more control flexibility than the original games offered — as well as a ton of its own interesting exclusives, ranging from the engaging and unusual 3D action-adventure Gravity Rush to the fantastic cartoonish golf game Everybody's Golf (aka Hot Shots Golf in the States) and a ton of Japanese role-playing games like Demon Gaze, Conception II, Persona 4 Golden and numerous others. On top of all that, it's rapidly becoming the de facto handheld for independent developers to deploy handheld versions of their games, so we're starting to see portable versions of indie classics previously confined to PC and TV-connected console: titles like Spelunky, Fez, Thomas Was Alone and, again, numerous others.

Still it goes without coverage. Still the narrative continues that Vita is "doomed" — or, in some cases, the system is ignored altogether. Is it any surprise that it's not selling particularly well if none of the tastemakers in the industry — and, like it or not, games journos, that's what you are — are celebrating the things it's doing well, or even acknowledging its existence in some cases?

Sony could be doing a better job, of course. Vita didn't get a lot of stage time at the company's E3 press conference, Japan's Vita TV has been rebranded PlayStation TV for the West and it's rare to see the Vita in promotional artwork by itself — it's more commonly depicted as a GamePad-like accessory for the PlayStation 4 — but at least they're trying, and representatives such as Shahid Ahmad are doing their best to keep the profile of the system high and solicit regular feedback from the people who do own it.

But I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the press here, who initially set unrealistic expectations for the platform — do you really want to play a triple-A experience on a small, handheld device? I certainly don't — and then followed this up with the aforementioned dismissal or lack of acknowledgement mentioned above. It's a sorry state of affairs, to be sure, made all the more tragic by the fact that Vita has a genuinely great library of games.

The situation mirrors Nintendo's struggles with Wii U somewhat, where the narrative has again been that the system is "dying" which has, in turn, made people more hesitant to pick it up. There's a slight difference with Wii U this time around, however, because Nintendo wisely chose to focus on Wii U with its E3 presentation. This year, 3DS — a system which is doing just fine — was hardly touched on in Nintendo's main presentation, while the bulk of the company's livestream was focused on Wii U and its upcoming games. It was a successful decision; people came away from Nintendo's presentation excited about the future of Wii U, even though a significant number of the games shown wouldn't be with us until next year.

I don't know what the answer is for Vita, or even if there is one. But what I would like to see, as my days in the games press draw to a close, is journalists taking a stab at not following the herd, at not perpetuating the established narrative, and instead attempting to explore what makes this wonderful little machine tick — and why it makes people like me so happy.

Will it happen? No idea. Regardless of whether people start giving Vita a fair chance, I'm extremely happy with it — and if you're at all interested in any of the types of games I mentioned above, I strongly recommend grabbing one as soon as you can.

The post 1605: Let's Have Another Word About Vita appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The reason for this is that, more so than any other type of game out there, MMO patches can considerably improve the experience of the game for everyone playing as well as adding new content to enjoy. And Final Fantasy XIV has definitely been delivering on that front since it launched.

Since launch, the game has, so far, enjoyed two major content patches and a few smaller patches along the way. These smaller ones are arguably the most interesting ones in many ways, because they tend to be the ones that improve the players' "quality of life" in various ways — perhaps through interface refinements, perhaps through balancing tweaks, perhaps through adjustments to the way the game works based on the community's feedback.

So far, we've seen all of the above. We've seen the easy to miss red targeting markers for enemy attacks replaced with more brightly coloured, pulsing markers. We've seen the addition of the Challenge and Sightseeing logs to give people more things to do and ways to earn rewards. We've seen adjustments to the endgame currencies as the average "item level" of endgame players gradually increases. And we've seen much-appreciated little usability tweaks, like the fact you can now get off a chocobo you're riding by pressing the shoulder buttons on your controller rather than having to twat about with hotbars and icons.

The game is still recognisable as what it was when it launched — it was already a solid game then, after all — but the refinements it has enjoyed ever since mean that it has been consistently, constantly improving — and, more importantly, it's proof that the development team is both willing to listen to players and implement some of their best ideas.

The game is going from strength to strength, in other words. And they said subscription-based MMOs were dead.

The post 1599: Through the Maelstrom Again appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For now, I wanted to wax lyrical about the visual novel medium once again, since sitting down and "playing" Steins;Gate for most of today has been an enjoyable, enriching experience — and the majority of the time I've spent with it has been spent reading, unable to influence what's happening on-screen.

Those of us who grew up with video games in the '80s and '90s had the mantra "gameplay is everything" drilled into us from an early age. As technology improved and the CD-ROM era dawned, we started to see more and more reviews pointing this out; more and more reviews highlighting the fact that beautiful presentation counts for jack shit if your game isn't up to snuff.

And for a while, this was actually kind of true. The games that sacrificed "gameplay" in favour of impressive presentation — usually of the prerendered cutscenes or full-motion video variety — tended to suffer in two regards. Firstly, they weren't very fun to play. Secondly, the only other potential redeeming feature they might have had — telling an interesting, enjoyable story — tended to crash and burn due to the low budgets of games at the time. It's all very well having real, live actors in your game, but if they can't act for shit then it doesn't make for much of an interactive movie.

Here's where visual novels contrast with the early '90s interactive movie craze somewhat, even though they started to grow in popularity around the same time. Visual novels embrace the fact that they don't have any "gameplay" — and by that I mean moving a character around a screen, having perceived "freedom" to do what you want and so on — and present themselves as nothing more than interactive stories; effectively little more than multimedia takes on Choose Your Own Adventure books. In fact, in many cases, visual novels are even simpler than Choose Your Own Adventure books in that the vast majority of the narrative is prescribed for you, and you'll make only a few choices over the course of the complete story, rather than one at the end of every page.

And yet this doesn't matter. Not having to deal with the consequences for every possible tiny little thing the player might decide to do in a more "sandboxy" environment frees up visual novel authors to concentrate on the story and the characters who help to tell it. It's perhaps for this reason that so many visual novels tend to go down the romance route; because the virtual relationships you build with visual novel characters are much more intense and intimate than in most other types of game — character-driven RPGs excepted, perhaps — many authors allow the reader a degree of wish-fulfilment through virtual dating. (Of course, at present the vast majority of visual novels are designed to cater to male heterosexual players, but there is an established marked for other players in Japan that is gradually starting to make its way over here; Sweet Fuse on PSP and the Hakuoki series for 3DS and PS3 are good examples of "otome games" designed for heterosexual female players, for example — let's see a few more of these in the future.)

Not every visual novel necessarily revolves around love, though. At one end of the spectrum, we have the phenomenon of the nukige, which are games that deliberately focus on being sexually provocative or exciting, but which tend to still include considerably more characterisation and story (and better acting!) than you'd see in your average Western porn film; at the other, we have visual novels like Steins;Gate, where love might perhaps enter into the narrative at some points, but in which the main point is a different theme or piece of subject matter. (In the case of Steins;Gate it's several different interpretations of time travel and parallel worlds, for example.)

What I find most enjoyable about these games is that there's no "gatekeeping" based on skill or dexterity. You sit down to play a visual novel, you know you'll be able to "finish" it, assuming you set aside the time to do so. Reading a walkthrough doesn't feel like cheating, either, since all you're effectively doing is looking up how to explore the alternative narrative paths. Good visual novels make effective use of multiple endings and narrative paths to further flesh out the story, too; the best ones can even leverage their "bad" endings into a meaningful narrative context, as I touched on yesterday.

What I think I'm saying is that I'd actually be perfectly happy if, for whatever reason, the only games I was able to play were visual novels. There's diverse enough subject matter in them to keep them consistently interesting, and in most cases they're just "gamey" enough in terms of presentation to sate that hunger for multimedia content that most of us have in the modern age.

Am I only going to play visual novels from now on? Of course not; but as a means of enjoying an interactive story, they're hard to beat.

The post 1573: Open Book appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Towerfall — not to be confused with Titanfall — is a game for up to four players, available on PC, PlayStation 4 and, oddly enough, Ouya, where it was originally intended to be a flagship title for the ill-conceived Android microconsole. I'm extremely thankful that the developers weren't stubborn about sticking with Ouya exclusivity; this way, a lot more people get to play their game, and no-one has to buy an Ouya.

Anyway. There are two ways to play Towerfall: Versus and Quest. I haven't tried Quest yet, but we played some Versus in between board games over the weekend. And it was a huge amount of fun. The concept is extremely simple: up to four players face off against one another armed with bows and a very limited number of arrows, and must defeat the other players. You can defeat a player by either shooting them or jumping on their head Mario-style, in which case you'll get a point — but if they end up killing themselves thanks to your actions, you won't get a point.

That is, basically, it. The simplicity of the game is what makes it work so well, and everything else that goes on simply builds on this extremely simple formula. Collectible treasures that pop up around the level might replenish your arrows, or might give you a new type of arrow to play with such as arrows that explode or arrows that drill through walls. Or they might just do something weird; particular favourites in this category include one that turns the lights out on the level, meaning it's a lot more difficult to see the platforms and hazards; one that causes the background to start swaying drunkenly and everything to start moving at half-speed; and one that causes the whole level to scroll one whole screen in any of the four cardinal directions. (Levels are wrap-around, so you can run off the left edge and reappear on the right; this scrolling trick really messes with your perception of how this works while it's going on.)

One thing I was particularly impressed with was the "variants" menu when setting up a new game. Rather than being confined to playing the game in just a single way, Towerfall features a huge variety of options for you to tweak the experience. If you want to play without arrows, knock yourself out (by having someone land on your head). If you want to start with the more powerful arrows, great. If you want to be able to come back as a ghost and continue harassing the other players rather than simply being eliminated from a round, that's an option too. There's a huge amount of flexibility, and a bit of experimentation will help make the experience into a game that hopefully everyone participating will be able to enjoy.

The only potential downside to the game is that it's only possible to enjoy its multiplayer delights with other people in the same room as you. Frankly, I greatly prefer this to playing online, but for those who have friends who are difficult to gather in the same place at the same time, this may be a problem. Still, I'm hopeful I'll have the opportunity to play it a whole lot more in the future; when we move into our new house — which is pretty soon now! — we'll have a lot more room for hosting, and even a spare bed. So late night Towerfall sessions are very much a go!

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The visual novel Steins;Gate jumps in head-first and attempts to spin a plausible example of how time travel might actually work were we to invent it in our lifetime. But despite the heavy science component — Steins;Gate really doesn't hold back on the science side of things, which will delight those who are particularly interested in the "sci" part of "sci-fi" — it is, at heart, a story about people and how they're affected by the strange, unnatural phenomenon of moving through time in a non-linear fashion.

SPOILERS AHEAD for the Suzuha and Faris endings of Steins;Gate — if you're on the front page, hit Continue Reading (or whatever it actually says) to, err, continue reading.

I've only seen Suzuha and Faris' endings of Steins;Gate so far (as if the spoiler warning above hadn't already tipped you off to that) but even in those, there's some interesting exploration of what the ability to time travel and/or affect the past — in the world of Steins;Gate they are two distinct things — would mean for an individual.

Specifically, it explores what they would mean for Rintarou Okabe, a gentleman who is already straddling that fine line between "sane" and "insane" with his own chuunibyou delusions. Of course, it becomes increasingly clear over the course of the story that even Okabe doesn't really believe his own delusions — for the most part, anyway. When he and his "lab mem" compatriots finally do manage to convert a microwave into a working time machine (of sorts) he starts to discover that, even knowing his fantasies were just that — fantasy — the world is a dark and scary place where things you took for granted can't just be believed at face value. He also gets several first-hand examples of the "Butterfly Effect" at work as he and his companions manage to send email messages to the past and subtly — or, in a number of cases, not so subtly — impact the present day.

I won't delve too deeply into all the mysteries of Steins;Gate today, but I did want to talk a little about both Suzuha and Faris' endings because they offer two "nightmare scenario" views of how time travel — often portrayed in sci-fi as the ultimate in glamorous "impossible things" — can come to impact someone's life.

In the run-up to Suzuha's ending, which is the first one it's possible to get, we discover that Suzuha is "John Titor", a figure from the future who has returned to what Okabe and co know as the present in an attempt to prevent the world's inexorable path towards dystopia. We learn that her goal was to procure an IBM… sorry, "IBN" 5100 computer, as this is essential to making a significant change to the timeline. Her original intention was to head straight back to the '70s, pick one up and then find a means of ensuring it got where it was supposed to be by 2010 — because, as it transpires, her time machine can only go backwards in time, not forwards.

But something goes wrong. Botched repairs to her time machine mean that when she finally arrives in the 1970s, she loses her memories. It's not until it's much too late that she remembers what her mission was and that she has failed it; she ends up killing herself in utter despair and loneliness, knowing that all her work was for naught.

Okabe, understandably distressed by the discovery that the girl he had said goodbye to moments ago had gone on to live a full life and then kill herself in despair, takes it upon himself to try and save not only her, but his childhood friend Mayuri too — who, due to the matter of "convergence", seems destined to die. The only way in which he is able to do this is to repeatedly use the "Time Leap" machine that he and his friends develop — a device which sends his memories and consciousness back to the past by up to 48 hours — and remain stuck in a time loop of the same two days over and over again.

Since Okabe keeps his memories each time, it quickly becomes an ordeal for him, and as the path to the ending continues, we see his mind finally start to unravel. And it's for real this time, not the fantasy world he was inhabiting before. He starts wondering what would happen if he were to indulge his dark fantasies and then turn back the clock once more; he considers letting his best friend Daru die in an easily avoidable accident, and he considers raping Suzuha. No-one will ever know, his darkening mind tells him, so why not just do it and see what happens? You might like it.

It's eventually Suzuha that manages to talk some sense back into Okabe as she manages to spot the warning signs of his mind coming undone, but just for a little while, we get a glimpse of a genuinely horrific scenario. It might sound enjoyable to be able to repeat two pleasant days over and over again, but consider the feeling of helplessness when you realise that nothing you do matters any more and that no-one around you knows the pain you're feeling or why you're putting yourself through it. Suzuha's ending makes that ordeal painfully apparent.

Contrast with Faris' ending, which takes a somewhat different approach. Earlier in the storyline, Faris sends an email to the past that has a profound effect on Akihabara, where the majority of Steins;Gate takes place. What we know in 2014 as a haven of moe and anime lovers goes back to being the "electric town" it was previously known as, with not a saucer-eyed anime girl in sight. Faris, previously a maid in a popular maid café in the worldline we come to regard as "home" from Okabe's perspective, becomes a champion RaiNet AccessBattlers player, but in the process manages to cause the IBM 5100 that Okabe and co. managed to acquire to disappear. In order to save Mayuri's life, Okabe needs the IBM 5100, and it seems like the only way to do that will be to undo whatever it was that Faris did.

It takes some time for that to come to light, but it's eventually revealed: Faris prevented her father's death, since on the "original" worldline, he died when attempting to "rescue" Faris from a fake kidnapping she staged as an elaborate attempt to confirm whether or not he really loved her. Her father surviving meant that she never sat on the city planning board for Akihabara and never had the opportunity to push the moe agenda forward; more to the point, though, it means that her father sold his IBM 5100 to pay the "ransom" for Faris, which meant that there was no way it could ever end up in Okabe's hands.

Eventually, Okabe and Faris devise a plan to change the worldline in such a way that neither Faris' father nor Mayumi have to die. But it transpires that in order to do that, things have to change significantly. In Faris' ending, none of Okabe's friends know who he is, except Faris. None of the rest of the game happened because they never met. None of his relationships are real; none of his memories are real; and because none of it happened, his time machine no longer exists, which means he's now trapped in this worldline.

Okabe comes to the horrifying realisation that he's more alone than anyone else in the world because he's literally from a different world — one that he can never return to. Fortunately, he has Faris with him to help him start to build a new life, but he'll still have those memories of the past — memories of things that never happened. Utterly chilling.

Between those two endings, Steins;Gate presents two ways in which time travel could really fuck you up. It's thought-provoking, emotional and disturbingly plausible.

And they say video games have universally bad writing.

The post 1560: Paradoxes and Worldlines appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

In fact, that's a bit of an understatement; on more than one occasion now the game has kept me up until well past 3 in the morning after I thought I'd just flip the Vita on for a "quick" game in bed before I went to sleep. (Granted, the last occasion this happened — last night — I had had far too much caffeine throughout the course of the day and was consequently finding it very difficult to sleep, but I could have done anything else with that time, and I chose to spend it lying in bed playing Demon Gaze.)

I've been trying to pin down what's so enjoyable about it and it's honestly quite difficult. It's not that there's no obvious good features about it; it's that they blend together somewhat, and different aspects of the game appeal in different ways according to the conditions under which you're playing.

Playing late at night, as I was, I was particularly enjoying the dungeon-crawling aspect of it. It's not quite as hardcore as the 3DS series it's taking pot-shots at, Etrian Odyssey in that you don't have to map the damn thing by hand, but it's still a game that, from the very outset, doesn't hold you by the hand and expects you not only to work things out for yourself but also to experiment with the mechanics just to see what happens.

The core game structure is based around capturing demons. In order to do this, you must explore the dungeon that is the demon's domain and capture all of the "circles" throughout by tossing a gem into them and then fighting the slobbering monsters that come out. Win, and you'll capture the circle as well as receive an item according to the gem you tossed. Lose, and, well, you're dead and better hope you had a recent save.

For the most part, this isn't an issue. The monsters that come out of the cirlces are usually the same monsters you get in the rest of the dungeon, though sometimes in considerably larger numbers. As such, if your party is well-equipped to batter its way through the monsters in the dungeon, they can probably deal with the groups that come out of the circles.

Until the demon master of the dungeon shows their face unexpectedly, that is. You're set up to believe they won't turn up until you've captured all the circles and found the boss fight location, but in actuality what happens is some time around when you capture about half of the circles in the dungeon, the next one you try for will summon the demon. And it's entirely possible they will smash your face in and then wear your buttocks as a hat, particularly in the first dungeon where your characters likely still aren't all that powerful or well-geared.

The first time this happened, I thought I'd done something horribly wrong. Surely the game balance couldn't be that broken? I experimented a bit; did the demon only come out of one circle, or all of them? (All of them.) Was it every time? (No, but seemingly most of the time.) Did using special abilities help? (A little.) Did levelling up help? (A lot.) Did better equipment help? (Also a lot.) By the time I'd reached my own conclusions — I should have just run away the first time I encountered Mars, then come back better-equipped and better-trained a little later, and probably with a healer in tow — it felt enormously satisfying to take the demon down and effectively clear the dungeon.

There are more subtle things, too. Occasionally you'll find "Loot Maps" as random treasures in battle, for example, and these will give an area name, an X and Y map reference and the name of the "power" you need to reveal the hidden treasure at that location. Trouble is, the area name never matches the actual area names — "Garden of Thorns" becomes "The Vine-y Land" — so you have to use a bit of your own brainpower and deduction to figure out what it's referring to. (Pro-tip: if the grid reference the map is pointing to appears to be a solid wall miles away from anything, you're probably looking at the wrong area.) You also have to figure out which of the demons the "power" names refer to — rather than saying "you need Comet, Mars or Chronos" it'll say something like "requires Dragon power" or the like. Again, there's a wonderful feeling of smug satisfaction when you successfully decipher a map and uncover the treasure hidden in the location — particularly when the treasure in question is something that you've been searching for for hours for a quest.

Demon Gaze doesn't give up its secrets easily, then, but for me, this is proving to be one of the best things about it as it makes your victories feel like genuine accomplishments. I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of the game not only to see how the interesting story proceeds, but also for more sweet old-school grid-based exploration and treasure-hunting.

It's bringing back fond memories of old titles like Lands of Lore, it of the Patrick Stewart-voiced intro fame, and will be a solid investment for any Vita-toting players who have a penchant for traditional dungeon-crawling. Watch out for it — and my full review — this week.

The post 1551: Late-Night Dungeon appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Like most good visual novels, Steins;Gate does an excellent job of drawing you into its world and helping you understand its protagonist. Despite being entirely composed of static images, character portraits and very occasional "event" images — much like every other visual novel — it manages to craft an extremely convincing setting. Or perhaps, given the game's focus on manipulation of time, the many-worlds interpretation and all manner of other goodness (this isn't a spoiler, by the way; it's a core theme of the whole thing), it would be more accurate to say "settings".

One of the most interesting things about the game is the effort to which Nitroplus (and, by extension, the translators) has gone to ensure that all the background detail in the world is consistent, detailed and, in many instances, based rather obviously on reality. An extensive in-game glossary allows you to look up information on a variety of different keywords that appear throughout the course of the narrative and dialogue — and these cover a range of subjects from real-life scientific theory to popular hypotheses put forward by science fiction, snippets of otaku culture, online culture, and "chuunibyou" conspiracy theories. Although the game takes obvious pains to twist things slightly from their real-life counterparts — IBM becomes IBN, for example; CERN becomes SERN; names of popular anime and manga get similarly bastardised — it's obvious that a lot is based on things from the actual, real world, and consequently it's hard not to feel like the game is subtly sneaking some genuine knowledge into your brain as you play it.

Okay, a lot of it may not be all that useful unless you have an otaku friend who constantly drops references you don't understand (Hi!) or are acquainted with a conspiracy theorist nutjob, but it's interesting that it's in there nonetheless — plus it helps provide a lot of the narrative with an interesting degree of context. It's also just plain cool for a narrative to be based on real-life urban legends such as John Titor and the question of what CERN are really up to with their Large Hadron Collider.

Aside from all that, though, Steins;Gate is simply a phenomenally well-written visual novel. It's long and wordy, sure, but all the exposition in the game's early chapters really pays off with some wonderfully strong character development. The protagonist in particular is a fascinating individual; being a "chuunibyou" conspiracy theorist himself with delusions of being a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma — a name his voice actor takes considerable delight in bellowing every time it comes up in the script — makes him far more interesting to inhabit the head of than many other "blank slate" protagonist characters seen in other visual novels. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with those — they often fit well with more "dating sim"-style stories in which the protagonist is usually intended to be a self-insert for the player — but, well, yes. Steins;Gate makes a convincing case for the protagonist being a strong character in their own right.

Anyway, three solid hours of reading earlier have driven my eyes a bit squiffy so I'm off to bed. Further thoughts will doubtless follow when I've finished the damn thing.

The post 1549: HOUOUIN KYOUMA appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I use the word "medium" when referring to visual novels rather than "genre" because in many cases, it's not entirely accurate to call them "games", despite the fact that they tend to be festooned in the trappings of video games. Most tend to include some sort of metagame element, be it a simple checklist of endings, a CG gallery with a completion percentage or, in the case of more complex games like Steins;Gate, even achievements. Most of them are presented in a distinctly game-like fashion, with console-style main menus that make pleasing noises when you click on them, colourful but clear text boxes with a little spinny thing in the corner that tells you when you've reached the end of the current paragraph, and all manner of other things.

And yet they're not games. Not really. They're interactive stories — some having no more than one or two meaningful choices over the course of the entire narrative, and some even eschewing the element of choice whatsoever — that make use of multimedia presentation to distinguish themselves from, you know, reading a book. The combination of static background images, static or lightly animated characters, music, voice acting, sound effects and text all combine to create a very distinctive effect — and one that can be a powerful poke to the imagination.

Books, of course, are the poster childs for stoking the fires of the imagination, but visual novels also do this, albeit in a different way. Whereas in a book it's left largely up to you how you picture the scene unfolding in front of you, in visual novels you tend to get a bit more in the way of audio-visual cues. You can hear the characters' voices (at least you can in recent releases; earlier VNs were text-only), you can see the characters, you can hear the music giving you an idea of the overall mood and, if the scene is a particularly important one, there'll be an "event" image depicting a dramatic moment from whatever is happening.

Far from being an inferior means of stirring the imagination, this approach works in a different way. While books provide the stimulus for mental pictures through descriptive text, visual novels simply use their multimedia element to do so, which allows them to cut back a little on the descriptive text and instead explore the protagonist's innermost thoughts, or engage in some snappy dialogue between characters.

Visual novels present a particularly good means of expressing a first-person narrative. While in first-person perspective books you tend to feel like you're just along for the ride, in visual novels it feels like you're taking a much more active role — even if your influence on the overall story is minimal. You're sitting inside the main character's mind looking out through their eyes and listening to their innermost thoughts — and even if the main character is some sort of awful jerk (as they often are in visual novels) this provides a very good means of exploring that character, why they are an awful jerk and how they may or may not go about changing themselves. Character growth! How about that.

This isn't to say visual novels have to be confined to first-person narratives, however. No; in fact, it can be very effective for a visual novel to "cut away" to another character, or even a complete shift in perspective to third-person. Nitroplus' visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane is a particularly good example of this being used effectively; during its first-person sections, it's something of a film noir tale about a down-on-his-luck detective and how he becomes embroiled in a series of increasingly ridiculous events. During its third-person sections, however, the true scale of what Kujou is involved in becomes apparent thanks to being able to get an overall picture of what is going on — coupled with the authentically overblown and distinctly Lovecraftian narration that accompanies these scenes.

Steins;Gate, also from Nitroplus, is a little more traditional than Demonbane in that it remains firmly stuck inside the protagonist's mind, but my gosh what an interesting head to be stuck inside, for Rintaro Okabe is a strange individual indeed — seemingly convinced he's a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma (which his voice actor bellows with admirable aplomb every time it comes up in the script) who is being pursued by "The Organisation", it's not entirely clear for a lot of the game whether Okabe genuinely has a screw loose or if he's just playing up for the people around him. The sheer ridiculousness of his statements would seem to suggest the latter, but then he does something so outrageous that you have to wonder about his mental state. And when Steins;Gate's overarching narrative threads start to get moving, things become even more murky.

The upshot of this is that Okabe becomes something of an unreliable narrator. And this is something that visual novels are particularly good at exploring. Saya no Uta is another particularly good example from what little I know of it, but there are countless others, too; when you're observing a narrative from a first-person perspective, after all, you're only getting one person's perspective on it — and how can you be sure that person is telling the truth?

That's the question, huh? Anyway. That's that for now. Check out Steins;Gate if you've got a yawning chasm in your life that can only be filled by utterly fascinating sci-fi; full review coming soon on USgamer.

The post 1547: Reading Steiner appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The game in question is Demon Gaze from Kadokawa Games, brought to the West by the ever-reliable NIS America. I didn't know a lot about this game prior to starting to play it save for the fact that it had upset a few people — as many Japanese games tend to — by featuring a selection of pretty anime-style girls with artwork that is occasionally on the suggestive side.

What I wasn't expecting from it was an old-school dungeon-crawler of the Wizardry mould, right down to creating your own party bit by bit as you can afford to, We're talking manually choosing race, class and appearance for your characters, then heading out into a grid-based dungeon to fight lots of monsters, solve some rudimentary puzzles and ultimately complete some quests.

What I also wasn't expecting was a rock-hard level of difficulty almost from the outset. Unlike in some other Japanese role-playing games, a level 1 character in Demon Gaze really is utter shit. Their stats are poor, their HP is low and it's very rare for them to have any useful abilities from their class. This makes life interesting when you can finally afford to recruit an additional party member and they have to start from this position of non-power while the rest of your adventuring brigade are happily chopping the heads off monsters left, right and centre. You have to take care of the newbie until they find their feet a bit, and then only let them step into the front lines when you're absolutely sure they can handle it.

Because this isn't a game that is afraid to kill you and dump you back at the title screen without any ceremony. Step into a fight you can't win and fail to get away quickly enough and there's no "retry" option, no fade-to-black-then-wake-up-back-at-the-inn, it's just Game Over. Reload. I hope you remembered to save every time you get back from an adventure because the game sure as hell isn't going to auto-save for you.

The other thing that is a bit of a culture shock is that the game doesn't hold your hand with regard to quests at all. "Go find this dude," the game will say. "Where are they?" you'll ponder. "Oh, you know," replies the game. "Out there. Somewhere. Come back when you find him." Cue plenty of enjoyable exploration and risk-taking as you search every nook and cranny to complete your objectives. Can the party survive trudging through that poisonous swamp? Only one way to find ou– oh, they're all dead.

In some senses, this old-school difficulty and unforgiving nature is going to put a lot of people off. But that's fine; titles like Dark Souls have proven there's a market for unforgiving games in which you have to take a bit more care than in many other modern titles, and Demon Gaze is seemingly designed along these lines. (That's not the only similarity, either; both Demon Gaze and the Souls series allow you to leave messages for other players that are then shared on the network, though the former lacks the latter's ability for true multiplayer.)

I'm a relatively short way into the game so far, but I'm really enjoying it. It's the sort of thing that feels like it could be a "long-term project" of a game; it's fairly light on the story side of things (though it does have some seriously adorable characters who often greet you and have their own silly little side-plots when you get back from an adventure) and surprisingly friendly to quick play sessions, making it an ideal handheld game for a bit of grinding on the bus or over lunch.

Full review coming towards the end of the month; for now, suffice to say, I like it a lot.

The post 1546: Gaze This Way appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I used to be a little disappointed to hear that MMO expansions and major patches tended to favour endgame players over those working their way up through the levels, but now that I am an endgame player, I completely understand the logic. There's already a bunch of stuff there designed to get people from level 1 to level 50; but the people who have reached level 50 need a constant, continual stream of New Things to Do otherwise they'll simply jump ship and go off to play something else. In a subscription-based game such as Final Fantasy XIV, this is exactly what Square Enix does not want to happen.

Patch 2.1 added a decent amount of new content for endgame players to work through, primarily in the form of new dungeons and Trials (complex boss battles) to play through. Patch 2.2, the most recent one, initially appears to be somewhat similar, but there's a bunch of more subtle tweaks here and there that are designed to keep people invested in the game in the long term rather than simply racing through the new content as quickly as possible, then taking to the forums to whinge that there's not enough to do.

Chief among this time-consuming stuff is the Zodiac Weapons quest. One of the first things you'll want to do upon reaching the level cap in Final Fantasy XIV is complete the "A Relic Reborn" quest, which outfits you with a good weapon for your class that can subsequently be upgraded. The quest is a lengthy affair that demands you work through some of the toughest battles in the game and then participate in enough endgame content to earn the special currency required to purchase some items. Once it's done, it's done, though, and for each class there was previously only really one weapon better than the Relic available, and that was extremely difficult to obtain due to it being secreted in what was formerly the hardest dungeon in the whole game.

Now, though, your Relic can be upgraded further through the new Zodiac Weapons quest. After maxing out your relic, you're then tasked with going on the hunt for twelve "Atmas" — mysterious items that are required to buff up your Relic weapon into something new and shiny. In order to obtain the Atmas, you have to participate in the "FATE" events around Eorzea — little mini-quests that pop up around the world map that anyone in the area can jump in and help out with. For each FATE that you attain a gold medal in, there's about a 5% chance that the Atma for that area will drop, and you need to obtain twelve Atmas in total, so I'm sure you can see how this will take a while.

A grind it may be, but it's had the side-effect of making FATEs relevant again, which is a good thing, since they're a lot of fun and had fallen somewhat into disuse after the rewards from dungeon-crawling became significantly better. Now, though, there's always bands of wandering adventurers crawling around the various areas and stomping through the FATEs, and due to the game's level-sync mechanic, no-one will ever come along and simply overpower them, making it no fun.

Once you've obtained the twelve Atmas, there's then a selection of books to work through, each of which have their own challenges to complete and each of which buff up the Zodiac weapon's stats by a particular amount when you complete them. And then you can do this for each class.

In other words, it's going to take a while to accomplish. Despite the fact it's a fairly unsubtle move to keep endgame players invested in the game in the long-term, having a long-term goal like this is actually rather enjoyable because it brings a wonderful sense of achievement when you do finally accomplish it. I have no doubt that I'll put in the hours required to get a Zodiac weapon for my Black Mage class, and I will probably do it for the other classes I get to 50, too. I'm in this game for the long run, and I'm really enjoying the flow of new challenges that appear every few months.

The post 1531: Zodiac Brave appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I have had the opportunity to at least unlock the Glamour system I talked about a few posts ago, and from there begin assembling my own custom outfits for my high-level classes. So far I've put together some rather fetching ensembles for my Black Mage and White Mage classes — Black Mage looks rather classy in a figure-hugging black skirt, white thigh-highs, black velveteen gloves and a low-cut black coatee with a lacy white collar; White Mage, meanwhile, is clad in what I can only describe as a slightly slutty tennis player's outfit, eschewing the usual frumpy robe of level 50 white mages in favour of a snug-fitting, bone white hempen camise up top and the borderline-indecent Cleric's Culottes (aka the tiniest miniskirt in the world) down below.

I followed my unlocking of the Glamour system with the unlocking of the new dance animations — I know where my priorities are, huh? — and after dinner I'll be delving into some of the more meaty new content. For now, it's time for dinner; I'll update this post with some pics and additional thoughts later.

—

Okay, I forgot to take any pics, but I've done the three new dungeons, and they're a lot of fun. One of the best things about much of Final Fantasy XIV's multiplayer content is how most of it eschews the straight "tank and spank" approach seen in many MMOs. It's a very movement-heavy game, and success in boss battles is dependent on knowing any special mechanics that might be in play along with having the ability to avoid incoming attacks.

A particular highlight was one of the bosses in the new Hard Mode version of the Brayflox's Longstop dungeon. Initially appearing to be a rather simple fight against a tough goblin, it's not long before the fight becomes highly chaotic, with exploding mines dropping into the battlefield and criss-crossing the arena with Bomberman-style cross-shaped explosions. Alongside all this, the boss is hurling stuff at you and summoning additional enemies, each of whom lock their attention on an individual party member, necessitating a quick takedown. You really have to stay on your toes and pay attention.

Another particular highlight was the final boss of the same dungeon, which had several different phases: hurling damage at it, staying out of its way as it careened around the outside of the arena, and using area-effect skills to push back swarms of bombs to create a safe zone in the middle of the area. Again, it's another fight where you really need to pay attention to what's going on around you rather than simply going through the motions of triggering the same skills over and over again.

It's the skill-based part of Final Fantasy XIV that, for me, distinguishes it from other MMOs where you might have a bit more character customisation. Everyone at level 50 in Final Fantasy XIV has the same abilities and probably very similar stats, too; the main distinguishing factors between individual players are pure skill and the equipment they're wearing. A skilled player in slightly lower-level gear will pretty much always beat a well-equipped player that is not very observant or not very good at dodging. We're not talking the level of dexterity and timing required by something like Dark Souls, for example, but it's pretty close in some fights — the challenging battles against Titan being probably the best examples.

So far I've barely scratched the surface of the new content. The three new dungeons were great fun and I can see myself running them lots of times, particularly as the rewards on offer are pretty good. Tomorrow and over the weekend, it's onto the main story content and the long-awaited continuation of the hilarious and bizarre Hildibrand quests, which have proven to be a highlight of the new content in both updates so far.

In case it wasn't clear, I continue to be super-impressed by Final Fantasy XIV. The fresh injections of content, the constant improvements to the game experience in response to player feedback and the great community of players I'm lucky enough to be able to enjoy the game with — it all adds up to one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've had for years. For those of you thinking of joining the fray when the PlayStation 4 version arrives in April, I look forward to showing you around Eorzea!

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I wasn't quite sure what to make of it initially. It's one of those games where there was a fair amount of negative buzz surrounding it quite early on, led by an early review from IGN that wasn't altogether kind. But if my experiences with Time and Eternity were anything to go by, I knew very well that "popular" opinion was something I was unlikely to mesh with, and thus I went in to The Witch and the Hundred Knight with an open mind.

I was very pleasantly surprised. What we have here is a very unconventional Japanese RPG in every respect. It's not turn-based, it's not party-based, it's not overly moe or ecchi, it's not a comedy. Instead, it's an action RPG with a surprisingly dark, deep storyline, and one of the most interesting main characters I've had the pleasure to hang out with virtually in quite some time.

Metallia, the eponymous Witch, is a horrible person. Or at least she initially puts herself across as one. She's foul-mouthed, she's quick to anger and she's aggressive. She appears to have no qualms about inflicting bloody revenge on those she feels to have wronged her, and she seems utterly miserable and bitter about everything.

Over the course of the game, we learn about her. We get to see her gradually letting new people into her life, and starting to seemingly trust them. We get some hints about where all that bitterness and rage has come from. And, quite early on, we also learn that Metallia is not long for this world — though not why immediately.

We observe all this through the eyes of the Hundred Knight, a supposedly mythical figure that Metallia summons at the outset of the game to do her bidding. The Hundred Knight is the player avatar, though, so you have a certain degree of autonomy from Metallia's wishes, and indeed can express your opinions non-verbally at various points throughout the game. You're still bound to Metallia, so progress in the overall plot is largely determined by eventually fulfilling her wishes of destroying the "Pillars of Temperance" and spreading her swamp around the world, but between those predictable story beats, the Hundred Knight gets involved in a number of distinct adventures, each of which forms itself into a neatly contained episode of the overall narrative.

A particularly effective episode is the seventh chapter in the game. I won't spoil the details for those who are planning on playing the game for themselves, but suffice to say that it tells a complete, surprising and interesting self-contained story with a surprisingly emotional payoff. It explores both Metallia and the other members of the cast who have joined by this point, and blends both humour and pathos to a surprisingly effective degree.

The pathos aspect is what I think I've found most surprising about The Witch and the Hundred Knight so far. Developer Nippon Ichi is typically known for relatively light-hearted fare, though in some cases (ZHP is a good example) there's often a more thought-provoking core underneath the exterior fluff. The Witch and the Hundred Knight is, I think, the first Nippon Ichi game where the "dark" aspect has been very much pushed to the forefront, with any comedic moments being somewhat incidental rather than the other way around. The narrative is bleak and, at times, genuinely sad without resorting to being overly "gritty". It's a stark contrast to what I wrote about a short while ago with regard to triple-A games; compared to Thief, which wants desperately to be treated as an 18-rated movie, The Witch and the Hundred Knight never feels like it's trying too hard and, consequently, ends up coming across as far more genuinely mature than Thief ever did despite being considerably more colourful and stuffed full of stylised, bizarre characters.

Anyway. As I noted in my review for The Witch and the Hundred Knight, I'm sure not everyone will be into the particularly abrasive personality of Metallia and her adventures, but if you're after an interesting action RPG with a compelling, unusual story and some satisfying, challenging game systems, you could certainly do far worse, so check it out if you have the chance.

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This isn't just a simple matter of, say, wanting to play "bad" games, though; as, again, I've said before, it's more to do with the fact that the "highest quality" games (by popular definition) tend to be the ones that play it most safe; the ones that stick to the established rules that will pretty much guarantee them a positive reception, whether that's mechanically or narratively. There's a reason why all "triple-A" games these days have very similar feelings and atmospheres about them — it's because that's what's been proven to work.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Upon reflection, I've come to the conclusion that the things I'm more interested in engaging with are the ones that allow me to bring something new to a conversation rather than regurgitating the same opinions that everyone else is espousing at the same time.

Take Dark Souls II, for example. A great game, no-one is going to deny that, but one for which your average online conversations about tend to run around and around in circles, usually involving one or another of the participants blurting out "Praise the Sun!" as if it's the height of wit. I have nothing to add to that conversation — at least partly because I haven't played Dark Souls II (I didn't like Dark Souls enough to want to invest in the sequel), but I doubt it would be different if I had.

Contrast with say, something I've played that other people haven't. It doesn't necessarily have to be an obscure game, just something that people might have passed up in favour of something like Dark Souls II or Titanfall. Immediately I have an in-road into an interesting conversation. "Have you played The Witch and the Hundred Knight?" is, for me, much more likely to lead into an interesting opportunity for a conversation and an opportunity to educate my conversational partner than "Have you played Titanfall?"

I've seen in happen in discussions with my friends before. A conversation that begins "have you played [game we've all played] before?" generally ends fairly quickly after we've done the requisite "oh, what about the bit where [cool thing happens]?" pleasantries. A conversation where I have the opportunity to tell someone about something cool they might not know about at all, however? That's hugely enjoyable; likewise, when I have the opportunity to learn about a type of game I don't normally consider from my friends, I relish the opportunity, too. I never would have considered the awesome things about Euro Truck Simulator, Crusader Kings 2 or all manner of other games out there had I not been willing to engage in conversation about them. I might not get around to playing some of those games in some cases — or if I do, there's no guarantee I'll like them — but I consider my life to be somewhat richer for knowing that they exist and that yes, there are people out there who love playing them, just as I love playing colourful anime games with big-eyed pretty girls in them.

But I've found this feeling extends somewhat to games that are in my wheelhouse, too; Bravely Default, for example. It's an astonishingly good, PS1-style JRPG, and yet when I think back on the games that I've played in the last few months, I look back much more fondly on the stranger, the more quirky and the more flawed titles rather than that, which is "objectively" (insofar as it is possible to be "objective" about the quality of a video game) better. I gave Bravely Default five stars when I reviewed it over at USgamer and I stand by that score, since it's great; when I come to look back on the most memorable games I played in 2014, however, I have little doubt that other titles are going to be far, far ahead of it.

This is what I like about gaming today, but it's also quite frustrating at times: there's a wealth of interesting, exciting and unusual games out there to play, but still the majority of conversation seems to fixate on the same one or two titles at the same time.

Perhaps I just need to make some new friends.

The post 1523: This or That appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The Squadron of Shame SquadCast certainly worked extremely well for the episodes we did it for, but it did often end up being a little more demanding on the editing time than I would have liked, particularly as we're all amateurs making use of not-brilliant equipment that often results in things like background hum, echo and other annoying flaws that are difficult to edit out. Much of my editing time was often spent manually trimming out echoes and funny noises, and in the case of a 2-3 hour episode — which most of our episodes tended to be — it would take the majority of the day to do this.

One of the things I'm wondering right now is how relevant the podcast format still is. Obviously I know that there's enough of a market for sites like Giant Bomb to keep making one every week, and for established podcasting personalities like Garnett Lee to be able to start a new show and have people follow him to see what he's up to. But I'm also conscious of the rise of alternative means of "consuming" (blech) content in the last couple of years, with YouTube being one particularly disruptive influence, and live broadcasts such as Twitch streaming and Google Hangouts being another.

Awareness of these alternative forms of media has made me ponder whether the standard podcast format is absolutely the best possible thing for the SquadCast going forward, or whether it's worth contemplating an alternative means of presentation (with an accompanying means of archiving/downloading where necessary.)

The SquadCast has always been a "book group" style of discussion surrounding a game or gaming-related topic, and it's worked well for us in the past. But gaming is also an inherently visual medium, which makes me wonder whether some form of video presentation might be worth experimenting with, perhaps combined with live broadcasting.

Another reason I bring this up is that Skype, which we have previously used to talk to one another and record the discussions we have, has become a largely unworkable mess ever since Microsoft bought it, making it impossible for me to "archive" the complete conversation just in case someone's individual recording fails to work properly. I haven't needed this facility on many occasions, but on the couple where someone's recording was destroyed by Audacity's frequent crashes, having that backup facility was a godsend. With the way Skype works now, though — you can't run it in more than one user account on a Mac at once, which is what I used to do — working this way is impossible without an unnecessarily convoluted setup involving more than one computer.

What I've been pondering is making use of something like Google Hangouts, which allows for a number of features that would seem ideal for a discussion about games. It allows participants to converse via either audio or video chat, and it also allows for the footage of the participants to be intercut with other things such as videos from YouTube and the like. For example, while discussing a particularly interesting scene in a game, making use of Google Hangouts would allow you to find that scene on YouTube and then broadcast it to the people watching the Hangout, which strikes me as an eminently good idea. Presumably it would also allow for playing footage while the conversation continues over the top, which is a little more interesting than just gazing at a bunch of talking heads for a few hours.

Google Hangouts can also be easily archived to YouTube, and then one of the many YouTube-to-MP3 converters out there can be used to archive an offline version of the discussion's audio, which can subsequently be released as a standard podcast for those who wish to continue listening in that way. It'll be rawer due to the lack of editing and its inherently live nature, but I've often felt when I edit a show that I was making the job a lot more difficult and time-consuming than it really needed to be.

Anyway. I'm just thinking out loud here. Interested to know your thoughts, though, particularly if you've been either a listener or a participant in the SquadCast at any point in the past. (Those who are neither, you can educate yourself thanks to our archives here.)

The post 1518: New Media appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1510: Hidden Ninpo appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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!

The post 1504: Life and Hometown appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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.

The post 1503: Please Insert Gear 2 appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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?

The post 1501: A Hind D appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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!

The post 1499: Per. So. Na appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

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!

The post 1498: Diva appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

So what the hell is Atelier Rorona and why should you care? Well, it's… I guess it's an RPG? It certainly has all the trappings of a typical RPG — hit points, experience points, levels, skills — but it's not at all your usual "band of plucky heroes saves the world" affair. No, instead it's a rather smaller-scale affair in which you play a young girl called Rorona who is tasked with saving the alchemy workshop in which she works by fulfilling a series of increasingly unreasonable requests. These all come from Meredith Alcock, the head of the Ministry of Arland, who is keen to stamp out alchemy in favour of industrialisation for his own, presumably greedy reasons. Failure to meet the requirements of the assignments brings your game to a premature end; successfully completing them means you're immediately presented with another one until you reach the conclusion of the game.

Amid all these assignments are numerous visual novel-style narrative paths that are woven throughout the course of the game, and which you can advance by improving your relationships with various characters by performing additional tasks for them. There are numerous endings to the game, and it's designed to be replayed several times. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to attempt to play as much of Rorona as possible before moving on to Totori, or if I'm going to cycle around Rorona, Totori and Meruru several times in sequence. Either way, I'm presently enjoying the experience enough to want to try and see as many of the endings as possible.

It's not necessarily the narrative that is the biggest draw in Atelier Rorona though. No, this being a Gust game, the emphasis is very much on an in-depth crafting system, which is excellent yet enjoyably distinct from that seen in Atelier's stablemate Ar Tonelico. In Ar Tonelico, crafting was a means of seeing various interactions between the characters and getting to know them a little better — plus getting some great items out of the experience in the process. In Atelier, meanwhile, the crafting system is the core of the game: it's the way you complete most of the assignments in the game, and the solution to most of the quests you're presented with to earn money or improve your relationship with other characters.

The reason it's so interesting is because it's a lot deeper than simpler systems seen in other games that require you to do nothing more than combine specific items to get a brand new item. In Atelier Rorona, you have to take the quality of your ingredients into account — and things like organic ingredients spoil over time — as well as the various "traits" they have attached to them. In many cases, these are nothing more than flavour — if you make a metal ingot that is "stinky" it doesn't affect the stats of any items you subsequently create using it, for example — but in others you can do things like boost the base effect of a healing or attack item, improve the stats on equipment and improve its quality beyond that which its component items would normally provide.

There's a lot of number-crunching involved to optimise your alchemy, and you can't always count on having perfect ingredients available, so sometimes you'll have to improvise somewhat. The ability to do this is reflected by some ingredient items for recipes being a generic category rather than a specific item. For example, when making a "Spring Cup" item that contains liquid, the exact liquid you put in there is up to you — it could be water, it could be tree sap, or something altogether more unpleasant. The items you choose to put in there will affect the final quality of the item, and experimentation is often very rewarding.

Key to doing well in Atelier Rorona is managing your time effectively, because everything you do causes the in-game clock to tick away, counting down towards each new deadline. Whether you're crafting something or going out into the field to gather ingredients and fight monsters, everything takes time, so if you want to optimise how you're playing the game — which is presumably important when going for some of the endings — you'll need to plan your time well. Probably better than I'm doing right now, but I'm fine with just seeing which ending I get first time, then specifically attempting to pursue one or more of the others on a subsequent playthrough.

If the other two …of Arland games are as enjoyable as Atelier Rorona I can see myself spending a hefty amount of time on this series. It helps that Rorona has an amazing soundtrack — I shouldn't expect anything less from Gust after Ar Tonelico's magnificence in that regard — but the gameplay is rock-solid too. I'm looking forward to crafting a whole bunch more pies, bombs and mysterious liquids over the next few weeks, and I don't doubt I'll report further on my progress as I continue.

The post 1492: The Alchemist of Arland, Reprise appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For those unfamiliar, Brothers, as I shall refer to it hereafter, is a game about the titular brothers going on a quest to find the cure for their sick father. It sells itself as a "single-player cooperative game" and that's not actually a bad description in mechanical terms — using both thumbsticks on a controller, you control both brothers, and use the triggers to make each of them interact with things. Big Brother is stronger, taller and older; Little Brother is more agile, smaller and more childish. Most of the game's puzzles revolve around working out which brother is the most appropriate one to use in a situation, and whether or not they need to work together, which they usually do.

But mechanics are probably the least interesting thing about Brothers. Where the game really shines is in telling a compact, emotional story whose characters are introduced, undergo some serious, well-paced growth and bring the story to a fitting conclusion… all without saying a word. Or not a word in English, anyway; I'm not entirely sure if the language the characters speak in the game is real or just a Simlish-style made up language, but it doesn't matter — the meaning is got across through a combination of context, body language, facial expressions plus other presentational elements such as music. The game packs a seriously powerful emotional punch by slowly building up these characters and giving you a chance to get to know them before throwing them into harrowing situations that will tax the emotional constitution of even the most hard-hearted soul.

I cried three times over the course of the game, but as we've probably established in a number of posts over the last 1,490 days, I am somewhat susceptible to this sort of thing, not to mention a lot more willing to allow my emotions to leak out through my eyes if something affects me strongly. I'm not actually sure if game makers have genuinely got better at emotional storytelling over the past years, whether I've become more susceptible to emotional manipulation, or something in between. It doesn't really matter too much, I suppose; the fact that a game like Brothers can have a legitimately emotional impact is something that's worth celebrating and praising in itself — it doesn't necessarily need to be compared to anything else.

I'm being deliberately vague about details of the plot here because I believe that if you're reading this and have access to some sort of gaming device on which you can play Brothers, you should definitely give it a go. It's a short game — it took me just under 3 hours to get all the way through — and not a particularly challenging one either, but it's not about challenging the player (in mechanical terms, anyway — it's definitely emotionally challenging). Rather, it's about telling an interesting, compelling story in a somewhat unconventional and interactive way. It's the kind of story that might work as an animated movie, but which has a whole lot more power added to it by virtue of the fact that you're the one in control.

Grab a copy for PC here. And if you're planning on playing it, I recommend not reading up on it at all beforehand. It's an experience best had with beginner's mind, and one best had in a single sitting. So set aside a few hours, grab a controller, turn out the lights and enjoy a fantastic story.

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This is… distressing to see, frankly. Uchikoshi's Twitter feed is heartbreaking to read. Even through the occasionally slightly broken English — his English is certainly better than my Japanese, mind — it's clear that there stands a passionate man who would like nothing better than to realise his grand vision for his magnum opus, a man constantly frustrated by the realities of the modern games biz — key word "biz" — and a man who genuinely feels bad that he's letting his fans down. I find it incredibly sad that someone doing such wonderfully distinctive things with interactive storytelling has been put in such a position in this, an age where story-centric games such as Gone Home, The Stanley Parable and numerous others can be held up and celebrated — even declared "Game of the Year" in some quarters of the Internet. Surely the modern industry is diverse enough to support both the Titanfalls of the world and a third installment in the Zero Escape series?

Perhaps it is — in fact, given the outpouring of support I've seen for it today, I know it is — and Uchikoshi simply hasn't yet found the right route to market. Despite the bleak, apologetic nature of his tweets, it's clear that he hasn't given up hope as yet. Following a heartfelt plea for any prospective investors to contact him directly via Facebook (I'm providing the link there on the off-chance that anyone rich is reading and feels like funding Zero Escape 3) he attempted to reassure fans that Zero Escape 3 "will definitely be released somehow, someday!" And I'd like to believe that he's right.

The question is "how?" Uchikoshi claims that he's considered crowdfunding but was concerned that it wouldn't be "persuasive" enough, but this may partly be due to the fact that crowdfunding is still yet to make a huge impact in Japan; it's still primarily a Western thing, with the exception of a few Japanese developers like Nigoro (though still in collaboration with Western publisher Playism, I might add) turning to the platform to fund projects such as La-Mulana 2. I would have thought that Kickstarter would be an ideal solution for Uchikoshi to clearly solicit and demonstrate fans' support for the Zero Escape series, but this may not help the situation in his native Japan, which is where the problems really are. I'm assuming there are some sort of rights issues involved with developer Spike Chunsoft that prevent him from striking out on his own and making Zero Escape 3 as an independent developer, or releasing 999 and Virtue's Last Reward (and Zero Escape 3) on PC, or…

Well, anyway. Sadly, I don't have the power to do anything about the situation. But it will be absolutely criminal if someone with as clear an artistic vision as Uchikoshi isn't able to realise his creative visions due to matters of "business". This is something I hope that the industry as a whole can solve together; regardless of whether or not you liked 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, you can hopefully agree that the gaming landscape is a richer place with titles like them in it. Creative, interesting games should be encouraged and rewarded; instead, if we're not careful, we'll drive people like Uchikoshi away forever and be stuck with an vicious cycle; an endless of soulless but profitable games, and no-one wanting to rock the boat by doing something a bit different.

That's a Doomsday scenario, obviously, and unlikely to happen, particularly while the Western indie space is flourishing to such a degree. Now we just need the East to follow suit.

I wish Uchikoshi the best of luck in his endeavours to get Zero Escape 3 into the hands of those of us who really, really want to see it, and would urge you to support him in any way you can if you believe in interesting, distinctive games that do some truly creative things with the medium as a means of interactive storytelling.

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For the uninitiated — and all the people who constantly claim they have no idea what Danganronpa is — allow me to explain.

It's a visual novel-cum-adventure game from Spike Chunsoft, the developers who brought us the Zero Escape series that consists of 999 and Virtue's Last Reward. Its concept is something of a cross between Corpse Party and Zero Escape: a disparate group of individuals are kidnapped, trapped in an enclosed environment (in this case, a twisted, not-quite-right version of a school, hence the Corpse Party comparisons) against their will, and then presented with a series of challenges between them and their final escape. In Zero Escape's case, this was a matter of solving puzzles and choosing the correct path to the end; in Danganronpa's case, meanwhile, it's a little more complex.

The game's Zero-equivalent Monokuma — a far more in-your-face and sinister antagonist than the largely hands-off Zeroes — challenges the game's cast to a "killing game" in which anyone who successfully gets away with murder graduates from the twisted school and gets to escape; meanwhile, everyone else gets "punished" by, well, being killed. Conversely, should the "Blackened" murderer be found out, they get punished, but the remaining students don't get to escape — they just have to continue their school life.

The game unfolds over a series of chapters, each of which involves the surviving members of the cast investigating the mysterious school, trying to get to the bottom of what is going on and then, subsequently, investigating a murder that happens. This is then followed by a "class trial" in which everyone argues and yells at each other and, if you've done your job correctly, the culprit is identified and punished. In between these phases, you get short periods of "Free Time" in which you can hang out with the remaining characters to build up your relationships, which subsequently unlocks "skills" for use in the trial segments.

These arguments are supplemented by Hangman-like sequences in which you have to recall specific pieces of information by spelling them out, rhythm action sequences in which you struggle to make yourself heard over someone's constant objections and, at the end of each "case," a Trauma Team-style summing up of exactly what happened by assembling a comic strip depicting the events leading up to the murder, and what happened after that.

It's a fascinating game; perhaps not as "clever" as 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, but that's no bad thing — while 999 and Virtue's Last Reward specialise in bending your brain around complicated narratives with peculiar structures, Danganronpa's relatively straight line to the finish still manages to have plenty of surprises, twists and turns along the way, and has no qualms whatsoever about killing off its main cast with alarming rapidity.

In short, my review has hopefully already made this abundantly clear, but if you have a PlayStation Vita and the slightest interest in intriguing, compelling murder mysteries, you should abso-posilutely pick up a copy of Danganronpa this week. No, I don't care if you're already playing Bravely Default. No, I don't care if you're getting stuck into Lightning Returns. Danganronpa is fantastic, and I don't mind admitting that I want as many people as possible to play it so we continue to see more and more games like this in the West.

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Spoilers follow for both 999 and VLR.

Damn. What a great game.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect in the plot of the new game after 999 wrapped up, because although 999's plot was pleasingly self-contained, it left things on an intriguing cliffhanger with regard to one character in particular — the peculiar and almost-naked Alice, whom, at the end of 999, you are led to believe may very well be an Egyptian mummy full of Ice-9.

Virtue's Last Reward initially appears mostly unconnected to 999 aside from a few elements — the presence of the character Clover, who looks somewhat different (and rather more cheerful) than her moody, brooding self in 999; the main "antagonist" (for want of a better term) being called "Zero"; and the main concept of the game's setting being the "Nonary Game," which involves attempting to escape through a door marked "9" (which, this time around, is visible from the very start rather than buried within the depths of the facility) and trying not to get killed by the bracelets locked to your wrists (which, this time around, inject you with anesthetic and muscle relaxant rather than blowing you up — something which I find somehow more horrifying than simply blowing up, despite the fact that the injecty-bracelets were designed to tone down the horror elements from 999.)

Aside from those aspects, however, it's not immediately apparent that there's any direct connection between the previous game and this one. The protagonist is different; there's no sign of characters from the first one (aside from Clover) and it's not immediately apparent whether or not the new Zero has any connection at all to the past one.

What's most intriguing about the overarching plot of Virtue's Last Reward is how it drip-feeds information to you. As you progress through the game, you gradually start picking up more and more pieces of information, but for the most part, the game doesn't put it together for you. In fact, there are several situations where you're just plonked in front of a computer's login screen and expected to figure out the user ID and password based on what you've seen before, but aside from that, you're also expected to draw your own conclusions about how the characters relate to one another, which of the numerous timelines down which the story can proceed is the "right" one (if any) and what things people tell you in one timeline might mean in another.

A particularly fascinating aspect of the game's structure is the fact that the in-game ability to "jump" from narrative node to node at any time is specifically addressed in game as Sigma and Phi are revealed to have the ability to send their respective consciousnesses forwards and back in time. In the absolutely, positively, completely, no-really-we-mean-it-this-time final final ending, the game even shatters the fourth wall by having the characters talking directly to you, and strongly implying that somehow you have been present through all this (and will likely be there in the sequel too).  It's mind-bending, but always remains coherent and consistent throughout; to paraphrase the game's unsurprisingly comprehensive TVTropes page, the game wilfully and happily breaks all of Knox's Ten Commandments of detective fiction, but does so in such a way that it remains true to the spirit of the rules — deus ex machina is kept to a minimum, and even the strangest stuff that goes on is eventually explained in a manner that is utterly convincing; that which isn't explained is used as a sequel hook and manages to do so without being unsatisfying — by the end of Virtue's Last Reward it's abundantly clear what actually went on in the new Nonary Game and as such it takes a bit of a sting out of the whole "Oh, but then they went off and did this, which we're not going to show you right now" stuff they pull at the end.

One thing I'm sure of having finished it now, though: that third game needs to get made. Given the relatively low sales of both 999 and VLR, I fear for the series' future, but I do hope that the third game gets made and wraps up the complete story. As it stands, it's a fascinating, brilliantly crafted story that would only really be possible through the video games medium, and it would be a shame to see it left as an unfinished work. It may have taken me a while to get around to finally playing these two games, but having done so, I'm confident in saying that a third installment is a day-one purchase for me, no questions asked.

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