1670: At Your Side

[Edit, 16/08: Apologies for those who missed this yesterday — it seems I composed an entry and then didn't publish it properly. I present it now, better late than never. As if you care.]

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.

1668: Gentleman Friends

Longtime readers may recall that some time ago I extolled the virtues of a (Vita-compatible) PSP game called Sweet Fuse — a game that I've recently returned to in order to clean up some endings I missed.

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.

1664: The Myths of Modern PC Gaming

I witnessed a surprisingly civil online discussion earlier on about that rather tired old topic, console vs. PC gaming, but despite the civility it seems that a lot of people on the "pro-console" side of the fence still hold more than a few misconceptions about what PC gaming is all about.

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.

1661: Dead Dancing

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.

1657: Bloodlines

For a bit of a change this evening, I decided to fire up a game I've been meaning to play through and beat for a long time: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. And, despite its now somewhat dated-looking visuals and inconsistent-quality audio, I've really enjoyed what I've played so far.

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.

1655: Tease Me, Tease Me, Tease Me... Actually, Don't

I'm not entirely sure how I got onto EA's mailing list, having not played any of their games for a substantial period of time, but I do know all it took to get me to immediately unsubscribe: this email.

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.

1654: Pay Attention, Bon-- Err, Remington

I felt like trying something new today, so after toying with the idea of downloading legendary military sandbox Arma III (and eventually resisting — its £35.99 price point is a little too high for me to consider taking a risk on it at the moment) I wandered over to GOG.com and took a look at a game that has caught my interest several times over the years: Sid Meier's Covert Action.

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.

1650: Ascension

You may recall a while back I talked a little about an indie game called Towerfall, a game that was originally intended to be the poster child for the ill-conceived Android microconsole the Ouya, but which subsequently came to other platforms including PS4 and PC. When I originally talked about it, I'd only tried the Versus mode — the mode the game was originally built around — but today Mark and I gave the cooperative two-player Quest mode a shot.

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?

1649: UUUUURGH

Been showing off the Wii U today, and as part of this process I decided to pick up a game I've been meaning to give a shot for a while — Ubisoft's ZombiU. So far it seems to be an interesting game, for sure, albeit not one without a few glaring problems, not least of which is a game-breaking bug relatively early in to the whole experience.

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.

1645: Animus

A long road finally came to an end today — no, nothing important, it was just a lengthy quest in Final Fantasy XIV. Specifically, it was the quest to upgrade my weapon's "Atma" incarnation into its more powerful "Animus" form, which means it's now just one step away from being its (currently) ultimate "Novus" incarnation.

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.