1722: Shared Hardship on the Shores of La Noscea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1713: Yep, You Should Play Ethan Carter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1708: Playing on Home Turf

Regular readers of this blog will be well familiar with how much I enjoy Final Fantasy XIV (as does Andie now, too) and, for sure, I've had a blast since the game's original beta sessions last year. I've been fortunate enough to be able to run with the same people since I started playing — the Giant Bomb Free Company — and most of them have been playing fairly constantly since launch, so there are usually some familiar faces online at any given time, and other people come and go around that stable of predictable, reliable players.

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?

1695: Goodbye Despair

My copy of Danganronpa 2 showed up today. I haven't cracked it open yet, because I'm not sure I'm quite awake enough to appreciate its dark charms right at this second — and also because I have several other games on the go right now, too. But it's a game I'm particularly excited about, largely because the first game was so good. So let's talk about it.

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.

1693: Rieze Maxia-Elympios Relations

Even after spending a week writing in great detail about it over on MoeGamer, I'm still having an absolute blast with Bandai Namco's (or is it Namco Bandai? I lose track) Tales of Xillia 2, the direct sequel to one of my favourite recent console role-playing games.

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.

1690: One Lunchtime with Velocity 2X

As promised, here are some thoughts about FuturLab's new release Velocity 2X, one of my most anticipated Vita games.

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.

1689: Revving Up

Once I've finished writing this blog post, I'm going to go and play Velocity 2X on my Vita, a game that I've been looking forward to for quite some time.

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!

1688: Rebirth

The nice thing about having an uninterrupted hour for a lunch break — something which I have at my new job (yes, I'm going to keep mentioning it while the novelty is still there), and something which I often did not have when I was working in schools, retail and even games journalism — is that it provides the ideal opportunity to get in a bit of handheld gaming time.

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…

1678: Old Man of the Forest

Been a little while since a Final Fantasy XIV post, so here's one for your delectation: I was fortunate enough to be around for our Free Company's first clear of the Extreme difficulty version of the Ramuh boss fight this evening. I'm thrilled about this; I've never been present for a first kill before, and it's an enormously satisfying moment, knowing that 1) you've been part of the culmination of a group of people's efforts, and 2) your own skills and abilities are up to the task of taking on some of the game's most challenging content.

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.

1677: Twin Sticks

I love a good twin-stick shooter, though I must confess I wasn't really aware of it as a sub-genre of the shoot 'em up until Geometry Wars on the Xbox 360. (Fun fact: that game, more than any of the other early titles on that console, was the reason I picked up my own 360. Fast forward a generation and I find myself unable to justify a PS4 for Resogun — a game which is, admittedly, jolly good. Hmm.) I guess I was sort of aware of it with Smash TV on the Super NES — and what I thought was an extremely peculiar control scheme when I played it — but I never played the original Robotron or anything.

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!