2439: Rescue on Fractalus

I'm bored, tired and ill, so aside from wheezing and feeling sorry for myself today, I distracted myself from negative thoughts by making a video about one of my favourite games of all time: Lucasfilm's Rescue on Fractalus.

A lot of people tend to assume that Lucasfilm's games output began with their fabulous SCUMM-driven adventure games from Maniac Mansion onwards and ended with some limp-wristed Star Wars spinoffs, but they were actually pretty active in the early days of computing. Not only that, their games became known for being some of the most technologically advanced titles out there, with Rescue on Fractalus being an early example of spectacular first-person perspective flight, shooting and rescue action.

Rather than using polygons, which were only just starting to be explored on home computers by Braben and Bell's Elite in 1984, Rescue on Fractalus, which came out earlier in the same year, made use of fractals to generate its three-dimensional landscapes. The effect was a much more "organic"-looking landscape than what we'd come to expect from polygon-based titles in their early years, and remains an impressive technological achievement considering the power of the host systems even today. Sure, it may not be perfect by modern standards — the frame rate is janky, there's a lot of pop-in, the game doesn't quite seem to know how to respond when you collide with a solid object — but when you consider this was first released to the world in 1984, I think we can forgive all these things, particularly when the game itself is so solid.

In Rescue on Fractalus, you fly a craft called the Valkyrie down to the titular planet, whose atmosphere is so toxic it makes a Gawker publication look like a bereavement support group. A number of pilots have crash-landed, and it's your job to save them by finding them, landing nearby, waiting for them to come up and bang on your airlock door, letting them in and then speeding off on your way. This is a simple process in the early levels, but as you progress, you start having to contend with mountaintop laser cannons, kamikaze flying saucers, aliens impersonating pilots on the ground and even flying by night, necessitating even more reliance on your ship's instruments than normal.

I loved Rescue on Fractalus back when I first played it because it provided one of the most convincing, dramatic representations of flying an advanced spacecraft that I'd ever seen. The realistic cockpit view with instrumentation, the wonderful two-channel "whistling" sound of the ship's engines — entirely unique to Rescue on Fractalus, making it instantly recognisable to hear as much as see — and the fact that the game involved more than just "point and shoot" captured my attention as a child, and it's a game I still delight in playing even today.

But those aliens hammering on the windshield still scare the shit out of me.

2438: Gunslinger

Eager for a short palate-cleanser after polishing off Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force last night, I sought the counsel of my online friends. Mr Alex Connolly was first to answer the call, suggesting Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, a game which I recall had everyone very excited a few years back, and a game which someone — possibly Mr Connolly himself — had provided me with a gift copy of at some point in the recent past.

I have no experience with the Call of Juarez series as a whole, or with Westerns in general, but I was willing to give it a shot (no pun intended) as it had been so well-received on its original release — particularly for the amount of content it offered for its budget-tier price.

I liked it enough to play through the whole thing today, but I was left with mixed feelings. There were some things I really, really liked about it, and a couple of things I absolutely detested.

Let's start with the positives, chief among which is the story and the way it is handled. Presented as the recollections of ageing bounty hunter Silas Greaves, the game unfolds over the course of a series of levels punctuated by attractive cutscenes featuring the Silas of today and the companions in the saloon that he is telling his tall tale to. During gameplay, Old Silas narrates the action — with his descriptions reflecting what you're doing and the choices that you make along the way — as well as performs most of the dialogue on the cast's behalf.

Gunslinger particularly plays with the "unreliable narrator" trope through Silas presenting alternative explanations of what happened — sometimes saying "well, I could have done this…" at which point you have to play through the hypothetical situation before it rewinds to what actually happened. Silas also posits that much of the history of the Old West as told by "dime novels" isn't quite what happened, and in fact he just happened to be present for some of the most notorious events in the region alongside the most notorious outlaws of the period. Indeed, in the game you run into everyone from Jesse James to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, though with Silas' flair for the dramatic, you can never quite be sure if he was telling the truth all the way through his story.

Gameplay-wise, Gunslinger adopts a somewhat arcadey mould by featuring a combo system and points being awarded for kills. Kill bad guys in rapid succession and your multiplier climbs; dispatch them in ways other than just filling their torsos full of lead and you get additional base points multiplied by the multiplier. This isn't much of an issue in the story mode — though points convert directly to XP, which can unlock various passive skills that make Silas' journey a bit easier — but is brought to the forefront in the Arcade mode, where you're tasked with attaining high scores in short, narrative-free levels.

Gunslinger's style initially appears at odds with its gameplay mechanics, because you're using Old West weaponry — six-shooters and rifles that are painfully slow to reload, breaking the "flow" of combat somewhat. Unlock a few skills, however, and you'll find things become much more fast-paced and frantic, particularly once you obtain the ability to repeatedly hammer the reload button to reload more quickly. By the end of the game there's a nice rhythm to the combat for the most part, and the story provides sufficient incentive to continue exploring.

There are two real things I didn't like at all about Gunslinger, however. First of these was the prompt "You're straying too far from the story…" that pops up if you walk more than three feet in the "wrong" direction during a level. This is simply bad game design; the levels should be designed in such a way that the player is confined to the "story area" without feeling like they're confined. If there's open space, let them use it! This became a particular issue in the final level as the Sundance Kid bore down on Silas with a shotgun; it was impossible to get more than a few feet away from him to hide without this annoying message popping up, which also happened to break Silas out of a sprint any time it appeared, too.

The other thing I didn't like was the dueling system, although it was stylistically appropriate for the genre. In duels, you have to move Silas' hand back and forth with the A and D keys so that it's hovering over his holster, ready for a quick draw, while simultaneously manoeuvring an erratic, drunken mouse pointer over the enemy you're facing off against. Once the enemy draws, you have a split-second to click the mouse button to draw your pistol and shoot them dead before they do the same to you. Trouble is, even with high "speed"and "focus" ratings obtained by performing the aforementioned manipulations, it often seemed to be a matter of luck as to whether Silas actually drew his gun as you expected and managed to get off a shot. Supposedly you're able to dodge the bullets that come at you in this mode, but I don't think I ever successfully achieved this; all my duels were won by what felt like dumb luck and perseverance. Perhaps there's more to it than that, but I didn't like their execution at all.

Aside from these issues, I enjoyed Gunslinger a lot. Its story was presented in an unusual, effective manner and its levels were well designed with plenty of variety rather than all being set in drab, brown "Old West" type settings. I'm not sure whether I liked it enough to play through it again on the harder difficulties, but I'll probably check the Arcade mode out, at least. As for the mode where you can voluntarily subject yourself to more Duels? I think I'll pass!

2437: Ultimate Fencer

I finished up Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force this evening, including getting the Platinum trophy, and I've come away thoroughly satisfied with what is possibly Compile Heart's best game to date, although it's a close-run thing between this and MegaDimension Neptunia V-II.

I was particularly impressed by how much the two new narrative paths diverged from the original Fairy Fencer F's storyline — while they involve many of the same dungeons, locales and characters, the important stuff about the story is very different indeed, right from the characters' personalities in some cases all the way to their motivations and eventual goals.

I found the fact that the game wasn't afraid to be a bit dark to be very much in its favour. Its colourful Tsunako character designs would suggest an adventure similar in tone to the Neptunia series, but in actual fact Fairy Fencer F is lighter on the comedy, heavier on the drama and even tragedy at times. That's not to say there isn't any comedy at all — what comedy there is tends to be well-timed in order to lighten the mood after some particularly heavy exposition — but it's not the main point of it all.

This seems to be a direction that Compile Heart is moving in with its recent releases, and one that it seems to feel comfortable with. The Neptunia series has been expressing greater confidence with storytelling as it has proceeded, too — while the first game felt a bit like a string of amusing events loosely tied together with the semblance of an overarching plot, mk2/Re;Birth2 took a much darker tone with some truly odious villains (and one of the series' most notoriously unpleasant optional endings) and Victory/Re;Birth3 had a much stronger sense that it had been composed as a complete story rather than a series of episodes. As for MegaDimension Neptunia V-II, that had its darker elements — particularly towards the end — and consequently, narratively speaking, was the most "structurally sound" of the series.

I didn't play the original Fairy Fencer F when it came out, but I've now experienced that game's story thanks to Advent Dark Force's Goddess arc. It's clear that Compile Heart wants to experiment with more ambitious narratives, but thought, quite rightly so, that Neptunia probably wasn't the best place to do it (although that said, mk2's Conquest ending is effective precisely because it is so tonally dissonant with what you've been conditioned to expect from the rest of the series). Fairy Fencer F jumps in headfirst with a likeable cast of rogues, many of whom are a bit morally ambiguous, and which Advent Dark Force does a good job in exploring over the course of its three distinct narrative paths.

Perhaps most striking about Advent Dark Force is that it isn't afraid to let main characters die — something that would be unthinkable in a Neptunia game, regardless of how dark the overall plot got — and it demonstrates this early on. In most of the narrative paths, which take place after a "time loop" at the end of the common route, then diverge in three very different directions, protagonist Fang seeks to atone for the deaths he directly or indirectly caused in the common route, with varying degrees of success. Each path features a different combination of characters from the complete playable cast, with some of these characters dying or even being on the "other side" in different routes.

Of particular note is the character Sherman, who — mild spoiler, sorry — is the villain in the original Fairy Fencer F story, but in the Vile God arc he spends a significant amount of time being the protagonist in Fang's absence. In the Evil Goddess arc, meanwhile, he has a more complex role that I'll leave for you to discover.

One of the other great things about the additional routes in Advent Dark Force is that it gives some of the "filler" characters from the original something to do. Fairy-loving scientist Harley, for example, doesn't have a whole lot to do in the original game's narrative, but in the Evil Goddess arc in particular she plays a leading role. Likewise, in both the Vile God and Evil Goddess arcs we see a lot more of the taciturn child assassin Ethel, including how she became the person she was and how it came to be that she could only communicate through the word "kill" with varying intonation.

After having finished all three routes, I'm left with the feeling that I have when I finish a good visual novel: I have a good, solid understanding of all the characters, the situations in which they found themselves and the world which they inhabited. And, if the post-credits sequence in the Evil Goddess arc — clearly intended to be the "true" path — is anything to go by, then I have little doubt that we're going to see more of these characters in the future. I certainly wouldn't complain about more Fairy Fencer F games if it gives Compile Heart a chance to spread their wings and explore more ambitious narrative themes — particularly if the game itself is as good as Advent Dark Force ended up being.

I'll say one more time for now: if you're still ignoring (or worse, deriding) Compile Heart games and call yourself a fan of JRPGs, you're missing out on some great experiences. Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force is a good entry point to start exploring their work for yourself if you feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of Neptunia out there already; if you enjoy good, traditional JRPG stories, solid combat, wonderfully loathsome villains (one of them even does the ol' "ohohohohohoho!" beloved of '90s anime) and a colourful, immensely memorable cast of characters you can't go wrong with this one.

2435: Memories: Read

I finished Read Only Memories earlier. I liked it a lot! I posted a review on Steam, but I thought I'd post it here too because I'm feeling lazy.

Read Only Memories is an adventure game in the '90s mould, seeming to draw specific inspiration from titles like Snatcher and Rise of the Dragon, and set in the same world as the (later, and wonderful) VA-11 HALL-A.

On the whole, it's a great experience. The pixel art aesthetic really works for the game and has clearly been designed by people who know what good pixel art looks like. Everything about the interface, including the font, is well-designed to look like a retro adventure game, and the FM-synthesis soundtrack complements it nicely.

Puzzles are relatively thin on the ground but in a couple of cases are more interesting than "use the thing on the thing", which is worthy of note, though the final puzzle in the game seems to play by some inconsistent rules that can lead to failure seemingly by no fault of your own.

The story is well-written and filled with interesting characters, plus deserves note for having a number of possible solutions to various situations, though not all will lead to the "best" ending. The game encourages you to consider the consequences of your actions and the things that you choose to say, even though those consequences may not become apparent until much later. I very much liked that your behaviour over the course of the whole game affected some later events rather than choices having an immediate impact on what was going on.

The overall plot is one of tolerance and understanding, and strikes a good balance between casting the player (whom you can name and gender as you desire, since you never see them) as an "everyman" sort of character prone to putting their foot in their mouth when confronted by groups they don't quite understand, and presenting a solid message about acceptance, learning to trust one another and personal growth.

The only real criticism I'd level at the game is that its handling of gay and transgender characters feels a little ham-fisted, with their presence and the "reveals" of their identity seemingly being calculated to go "SURPRISE!" rather than simply blending them into the setting. Big burly, manly bartender dude? SURPRISE! Next time you meet him, he has another big hairy dude all over him calling him "hon" at every opportunity (though that said, I couldn't help but like Gus). Meet an eccentric, long-haired, bearded TV producer? SURPRISE! They're a lady! That and the presence of a non gender-specific character demonstrates just how awkward using singular "they" as a pronoun is in dialogue.

Ultimately it doesn't hurt the overall plot at all, but these instances stick out like sore thumbs when they happen as they just don't quite feel like they're in keeping with the tone: the implication elsewhere in the plot is that society has moved beyond discrimination by gender and sexuality, and instead onto discrimination against those who are "augmented" in some way, either through cybernetics or genetic hybridisation. To specifically draw attention to gay and transgender characters in this way as the game does feels counter to this implication, which is otherwise well handled.

This game's spiritual successor VA-11 HALL-A handles gay characters much more elegantly by them simply… just being there, no big deal, no big fuss about who they are, no sense that the game is holding you down and urging you to admire how progressive its views are.

I played this game before the big update that adds voice acting, and if you're interested in this game, I'd encourage you to do the same. The few parts of the game that do already have voice acting (just the intro and epilogue at present) are immensely jarring with the rest of the game's presentation, and the delightful beepityboopityboop noise that dialogue makes throughout the rest of the game is a much more powerful stimulus to the imagination than a voice actor whose interpretation of the character may not match the one you have in your head after reading the text.

Overall, Read Only Memories is a game I give a solid thumbs up. The issues I mentioned above are minor in the grand scheme of things, but hopefully the team will learn from them — and from the things VA-11 HALL-A did better, despite being produced by a different team — and produce even greater works in the future.

2434: Crewsin'

I've been spending some time with Ubisoft's The Crew for the last few days. I actually picked it up shortly after release but didn't play it all that much. With the recent announcement that the base game would be free throughout September (you can still claim a copy here at the time of writing) I thought I'd give it another go.

What is The Crew? Allow me to elaborate in video form, because I can.

I'm left wondering why I didn't play The Crew more when it first released, because it occurs to me that it's what I wanted from a driving game for quite some time: the elusive ideal of the "caRPG", or an RPG with cars if you prefer less clumsy portmanteaus.

The Crew ticks all the boxes that I wanted. For one, it has a plot that is reasonably interesting and features some characters that, while a bit cliched, occasionally have some entertaining things to say — the protagonist offhandedly complaining to his FBI handler that he really wanted a shower because he'd been in his damn car for days was a nice bit of self-reference to the fact that The Crew doesn't have any on-foot missions. The plot itself may be Fast and Furious-level nonsense, but it works in context.

Secondly, it has a levelling system that is actually meaningful. Unlike games such as Forza Motorsport, which largely seem to have a levelling system just to show how long you've been playing, The Crew's levelling system actually works like one in a more conventional RPG — some gear is level-locked, your cars get more powerful as you level up and there's an MMO-style "endgame" once you reach the cap, further improving your abilities by getting better and better loot.

Which brings us on to the third point. The Crew is also a loot-whoring game, which is something I never thought I'd say about a racing game, but it's true. Any activity you complete rewards you with loot, with better results giving you better gear. You get immediate feedback on whether the gear is better or worse than your current setup by means of an "item level"-like system for each of your cars, and events have recommended vehicle levels so you never tackle anything that is going to be way too difficult for you.

In case you're still not quite convinced about The Crew secretly being an RPG, well, there are different classes of cars, too. Fullstock cars are exactly as they came out of the garage. Street cars are modified street-legal cars for road races. Dirt cars are suitable for offroading and stunts. Raid cars are powerhouses that can take a beating and dish one out too. Perf cars are extremely fast. And there's plenty more where that came from — even more with the Wild Run expansion, which adds several "extreme" specs to the list, too.

And then there's the multiplayer, which to be honest I haven't tried all that much yet. There's a sort of passive multiplayer a la Test Drive Unlimited as you zip around the open world, occasionally passing other players by. You can queue up for PvP-specific missions. You can recruit people to help you out with story missions, which then have to be played fully cooperatively — race missions, for example, mean that your teammates just have to make sure that you win by fair means or foul, whereas missions where you have to wreck a fleeing vehicle are likely to be much easier with company.

And on top of all that, The Crew makes driving around its vast open world interesting by 1) having some lovely scenery and 2) scattering Project Gotham-style skill challenges around the roads, tasking you with everything from slaloming around markers to simply getting as far away from your start point as possible. Each of these reward you with loot and experience, making them the equivalent of "trash" enemies in a more conventional RPG.

I'm enjoying the game a lot. Handling is enjoyably slidey and arcadey, just how I like it, and there's a ton of stuff to do, yet enough structure to ensure that you never get overwhelmed with too many options at any one time. And it feels like the best use of Ubisoft's open-world formula to date, with plenty of hidden things to find that reward you with experience, loot and even hidden cars to uncover.

The Crew is free for the rest of the month on PC. Be sure to claim your copy here.

2431: I Also Made This

I made another video today in an attempt to further solidify my knowledge of Hitfilm 4 Express, and indeed to refresh my subject knowledge with regard to video editing in general, as it's one of those skills that can atrophy from non-use, particularly with how non-intuitive professional-grade programs can be.

I'm still in two minds about the advent of video on the Internet and how, for young people in particular, it has taken the place of good old fashioned text Personally speaking, I'd still rather read a good article with nice screenshots than watch a video — particularly if I'm out and about on my phone and am not in a situation where listening to the audio of a video would be practical — but I'm forced to reluctantly admit that for gaming content, video does sort of make sense.

Video games are, for the most part, a dynamic, audio-visual medium in which the way things move around the screen and the noises they make are just as important as what they look like as still images. This is more true for some genres than others — shoot 'em ups such as the two games I've covered with my videos over the past couple of days are a good example. But even in more sedate games, there's value to being able to actually demonstrate what the thing looks like in motion, how its interface works and all manner of other things. And while you could take the TotalBiscuit approach and make hour-long videos about options menus — there is value there for some people — I think the real strength in video coincides with the atrocious attention span most people have these days: short, snappy summaries of what something is all about and why you should pay attention to it.

I don't yet know if I've nailed that format in my videos just yet, but I'm enjoying making them if nothing else. Plus insofar as creative projects go, they could potentially end up forming a "portfolio" of sorts should I find myself in a position where my video-making skills might potentially get me a job of some sort. That would be nice, wouldn't it? I'm trying not to think about it too much, but as I'm broke it's kind of constantly on my mind.

Still, I guess this counts as a vaguely productive use of my time, and I did at least apply for two jobs earlier today, so I can say I got something done. Unfortunately none of those somethings quite pay the bills at present, but, well, doing something is better than nothing, non?

2430: I Made This

It's been a surprisingly productive day, both in terms of "things I wanted to do" and "things I had to do". I got the bit of work I had to do done, and even had time to write a hefty piece on One Way Heroics' mechanics over on MoeGamer and make a short video about Atari classic River Raid.

Here's said video, if you're curious.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about making this video, as its production involved the discovery of a really fine piece of free software: Hitfilm 4 Express.

Hitfilm 4 Express is a fully-featured non-linear video editor in the Final Cut mould, with a particular emphasis on compositing. It allows you to import media in a variety of formats — both still images and video sequences — and edit them together using an extremely professional-looking (and rather daunting!) collection of tools. Once your masterwork is complete, you can then export it to all the usual formats as well as upload it completely seamlessly to YouTube with minimal fuss.

I'm particularly enamoured with the YouTube connectivity as my past experience with making movies using my PC has been with Windows Movie Maker, which by default exports in a horrible format that YouTube then has to spend several hours converting and optimising after you upload it. This video, meanwhile, was ready to watch mere minutes after uploading, suggesting that Hitfilm 4 Express was smart enough to encode it in the appropriate format for YouTube automatically without me having to do anything else. It even kept it in 1080p/60fps format, which is arguably a bit wasteful for a video about an Atari 2600 and 8-Bit game, but eh; YouTube viewers are picky bastards and whinge if you don't upload in the highest quality possible even if it is of practically no benefit to the source material whatsoever.

Anyway. I've barely scratched the surface of what Hitfilm 4 Express offers so far, but I'm in love. It's a full, professional-grade package for free that can be further expanded by purchasing effects modules that plug into it — which is where they make their money. It's free software that isn't riddled with toolbars for your browser, pop-up adverts and nag screens — it's simply an excellent package that did exactly what I wanted it to with minimal fuss, albeit a little bit of reading the manual.

On that note, probably time for bed. (If you're wondering about the posting time, Andie is working nights at the moment which means both our sleep patterns are pretty screwed. I'm taking advantage of the quiet time to Get Things Done.)

2428: Seal the Vile God... For Good!

I finished my first playthrough of Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force tonight. I completed my first playthrough, as I'm sure most people do, on the Goddess route, which is (mostly) the same as the PlayStation 3 original. Having never quite gotten around to the PS3 original, it was all new to me, so it was an exciting journey to take.

I found Fairy Fencer F — the Goddess route, anyway — to be an interesting experience because it's by far the most "traditional" RPG that Compile Heart has put out, in that it has a spiky-haired male protagonist who goes on an Oprah-worthy journey of personal growth over the course of the entire story, a band of plucky companions that he attracts to his cause through his own charisma and personal magnetism, a plot that involves aspects of faith and religion, and a suitably climactic battle against a supernatural being at the end.

This is in stark contrast to, say, the Neptunia series, where the overall plot is often the least important aspect of the game (though MegaDimension Neptunia V-II placed greater emphasis on the overall plot and was one of the best Neptunia games I've played as a result) and instead the main attraction is the developing relationship between the recurring cast members.

Fairy Fencer F is ample proof that Compile Heart has what it takes to butt heads with the masters of the genre, though, at least in terms of characterisation and storytelling. Their method of interacting with the game world affords it fewer opportunities for demonstrating the sheer level of detail Falcom puts into works such as the Legend of Heroes series — Compile Heart RPGs typically flow like visual novels punctuated by dungeon crawling rather than the more free-flowing experience that is a Falcom RPG — but the game nonetheless manages to paint a convincing picture of the world in which the story takes place, and the people who make the story happen. It achieves this by taking an approach Compile Heart also adopts in many of its other games: keeping the scale of things relatively small. Fairy Fencer F features only one town and a few dungeons in its immediate (rather geographically diverse) vicinity, and consequently you get to know the area and the people in it pretty well, both through the main story and the optional interactions with incidental characters around the town and its various locations.

Of particular note in the story as a whole is the protagonist Fang and his relationship with the two leading ladies of the piece: his fairy Eryn, with whom he constantly bickers but obviously trusts absolutely, and Tiara, whose first encounter with Fang and Eryn comes when she tricks them into drinking paralytic tea so she can steal the Fury the duo were in pursuit of. Tiara in particular demonstrates herself to be a complex character over the course of the complete narrative, and while the big "revelation" about her identity may not be a big surprise to those who have played a lot of RPGs, the story takes some very surprising twists and turns, particularly immediately leading up to the "split point" where the new version diverges into three different narrative paths.

Also noteworthy is the game's tendency to demonstrate that people aren't necessarily always as "good" or "evil" as they might immediately appear. Indeed, one of the most squeaky-clean characters in the game turns out to be a bit of a bastard, while overtly playing for Team Evil is a noble swordsman whom Fang can eventually recruit to his cause (fail to do so and he kills himself, a shot of darkness I'm not entirely used to seeing in Compile Heart games!), a young woman who spends her free time caring for orphans using the Obligatory Big Bad Corporation's funds, and a salaryman who is only perpetrating less-than-noble deeds to care for his wife and child, whom it is clear he genuinely loves a great deal.

This "people aren't exactly what they seem" theme is also seen to a lesser extent through Tiara, who acts like a "proper lady" — her Japanese speech is riddled with watakushi and desu wa, both of which are verbal signals that we're dealing with someone who either is "noble" or at least wants to put across the impression that they are — but is actually, as Fang puts it, "nasty" underneath. And the trope is explicitly lampshaded in the form of the character Pippin, who appears to be a strange green cat-like creature, and who constantly extols the virtues of not judging a book by its cover. Indeed, Pippin remains something of an oddball enigma right up until the very end of the game, but after a while you just start thinking of him as an odd person, not an odd green cat-like creature.

All in all, my 50-hour first playthrough of Advent Dark Force leaves me feeling like it's Compile Heart's strongest game to date — yes, even better than the already excellent MegaDimension Neptunia V-II — and hungry for more. Fortunately, there is more — I have two more narrative routes to play through, plus a Platinum trophy to chase. I'm particularly interested to see how the two other narrative routes differ from the Goddess route — whether it's a few changed events or a complete restructuring of the story. I'm kind of expecting the latter based on what I've seen people discussing, but either way, I'm looking forward to spending more time with this great cast of characters.

Serious talk: if you're still rejecting Compile Heart games just because they're Compile Heart games, you're missing out on some truly great RPGs. Including this one.

2427: 10 Atari 8-Bit Classics*

Still curious about the Atari 8-Bit? Here are 10 classic games.

River Raid

The 2600 version of River Raid has been whored around the place numerous times over the last few years, but the infinitely superior Atari 800 version never gets any love.

While the formula remains the same — fly up the river, don't crash into the sides, don't run out of fuel, blast any helicopters, ships and bridges in your way — the execution is better thanks to the addition of numerous features that use the additional power the 8-Bit computers had over the 2600.

Atari 8-Bit River Raid also had tanks, hot air baloons, jet planes that flew across the screen ignoring the river boundaries and more complex level designs. It's still a top-notch shoot 'em up today.

Miner 2049'er

Any self-respecting Atari enthusiast will almost certainly put this game near the top of their "favourite games" list, though interestingly I didn't warm to it much first time around. Replaying it again now, however, I see its appeal — it's a well-crafted platform game with interesting environmental puzzles that never gets too complicated for its own good.

Playing the role of renowned (and rather chubby) mountie Bounty Bob, it's your job to make your way through a uranium-infested mine in search of the nefarious Yukon Yohan. In order to do this, you need to "paint" every platform in each screen by walking over it, while simultaneously avoiding the mutant uranium beasties that prowl the platforms. But in true Pac-Man tradition, grabbing a bonus item allows you the temporary ability to turn the tables on the meanies, eliminating them from the screen and helping to clear a path for you.

Star Raiders

Again, the 2600 version of this has been re-released time after time, but the Atari 8-Bit version is much better. It's the original 3D space sim, essentially being a more action-oriented take on the traditional grid-and-vector-based "Star Trek" game that can be played on anything from a mainframe to a graphic calculator.

Aliens are invading the galaxy. You need to stop them. You do this by reviewing the galactic map, determining which of your starbases are in most immediate need of attention, then warping to the aliens' location, blasting them to smithereens and then repeating the process until the galaxy is safe once again.

Notable for being more complex than simply "point and fire", you had to manage your energy levels by determining when was (and wasn't) an appropriate time to switch on systems such as your shields and targeting computer.

Star Raiders II

Not perhaps as fondly regarded as the legendary original, I still loved Star Raiders II (originally intended to be a licensed game of the movie The Last Starfighter), because to me it kept what made the original great while improving almost every aspect of it.

Instead of a grid-based galactic map, you now had a convincing looking solar system map and could even orbit planets. The enemies you confronted were more than just fighters that went down with a single shot, too; in one of the earliest examples of boss fights, Star Raiders II often put you up against enemy destroyers and battlecruisers, requiring you to change tactics somewhat.

Star Raiders II also saw you going on the offensive rather than playing strictly defensively, too; when you thought you saw an opportunity, you could warp into the aliens' star system and bomb their planets in an attempt to stop their invasions once and for all.

Oh, and you could fly your ship into the sun and the on-screen cockpit would melt.

Ballblazer

An early Lucasfilm game, Ballblazer was a split-screen arcade sports game for one or two players. The basic premise was similar to soccer in that you had to gain possession of a ball and shoot it between the opponent's goal posts, but there was only one person on each team and the goalposts moved.

Ballblazer made use of a convincing first-person 3D perspective using a patchwork grid effect on the ground and automatic 90-degree turns whenever you needed to face the ball. Despite its simplicity, the game was fiercely competitive, and had some fantastic music, too.

Rescue on Fractalus

$rescue_on_fractalus_atari_us_8$

I mentioned this the other day, but I can't talk about 8-Bit classics without discussing Rescue on Fractalus, another early Lucasfilm game.

Unfolding from a first-person in-cockpit view, you were sent down to the planet Fractalus (so named because its 3D landscape was generated using fractals) to rescue crashed pilots and fend off the evil Jaggi forces. The game was remarkably complex for its time, featuring numerous keyboard commands that made it feel like a proper simulation of flying an advanced spacecraft, and the 3D graphics were extremely impressive.

Rescue on Fractalus was most noteworthy for its little touches: the sound of a pilot banging on your airlock door would get more and more faint if you failed to open it for him in a timely manner; if you switched your engines back on before the pilot was on board, you'd fry the poor bastard to a crisp; and occasionally on later levels, the downed pilots would turn out to be aliens that would leap up and hammer on your windshield. Absolutely terrifying… until you switched the engines back on for their benefit and watched them fry.

M.U.L.E.

One of the finest multiplayer games of all time, and one of the finest strategy games of all time. Accessible and understandable yet filled with complexity, M.U.L.E. was — is — an absolute masterpiece.

Marooned on the planet Proc Irata (seriously) for six or twelve months depending on the difficulty you were playing on, it was up to you to make the most of the situation by making use of the land that was granted to you and which you bought at auction. You could assign land to harvest food, energy, smithore or, on the higher levels, a "cash crop" called crystite. The type of terrain determined what type of facility a plot was most suitable for, with the river running down the middle of the map being the most abundant for food, while mountains were best for smithore.

M.U.L.E. challenged you to combine cooperative play with competitiveness — while you were competing against three other players, all of whom could be human-controlled if you had an Atari that supported four joysticks, if you didn't all work together to ensure the colony as a whole had enough food, energy and smithore to survive the next month, you'd all be in trouble.

The game made use of an interesting graphical depiction of negotiating prices by allowing buyers and sellers to "walk" up and down the screen to determine the prices they were willing to buy or sell at. By meeting another player — or the colony store — you could buy and sell goods as you saw fit — stockpile for later or sell for a high price right now?

Final Legacy

A lesser-known game, this one, Final Legacy was a strategic shoot 'em up with elements of Missile Command to it, and, like many other games of the period, was the embodiment of Cold War paranoia.

In Final Legacy, you were in charge of the good ship Legacy and were tasked with destroying the nasty horrible enemy missile bases that were pointing their nasty horrible missiles at your cities. You had to torpedo enemy ships, blast the enemy bases with your laser cannon and shoot down the missiles that inevitably got fired the moment you started attacking a base.

Later difficulty levels added some interesting mechanics such as having to destroy "Intelligence" ships in order to find out the locations of the enemy missile bases, but mostly the game was about frantically zipping back and forth between four different screens and hoping you didn't accidentally let anyone get nuked.

Batty Builders

Another lesser-known game, this time from the once-prolific English Software. Batty Builders saw you in the role of a builder attempting to build a wall. In order to do so, you'd have to catch bricks falling from the conveyor belt at the top of the screen, then toss them into place in the wall, all without killing yourself in the process.

That's pretty much all there was to it, but it was enormously addictive, and is noteworthy for being one of the earliest examples of a frantic puzzle game I can remember.

Bruce Lee

An interesting and peculiar game, Bruce Lee combined elements from a number of different game types, most notably beat 'em up and platform adventure.

As Lee, you'd have to make your way through each screen collecting lanterns. Attempting to stop you from doing so were an anonymous ninja and The Green Yamo, both of whom would pursue you around each screen with a surprising amount of simulated intelligence (or, in the case of Yamo, who could be controlled by a second player, actual intelligence), making your life miserable. Fortunately, you could deal with them by giving them a smack in the chops or a flying kick to the face, though they'd always be back.

Bruce Lee remains one of the finest licensed games out there, thanks in part to the fact that it's not trying too hard to follow any particular movie. It's still a fun platformer today.

* your definition of "classic" may vary, but I enjoyed all these.

2426: If You're Going to Play Multiplayer, FFS Stick it Out Until the End

I played my ten placement matches for season 2 of Overwatch's Competitive mode earlier. Nine out of those ten games featured at least one salty asshole quitting the game early because their team lost a round — both on the team I was on and on the opposing team on different occasions — and in Competitive mode, the game doesn't backfill positions with people queued up to play like it does in Quick Play; when you queue for a Competitive game, you're put into a game from the very beginning rather than immediately joining one in progress if a space is available.

This was mildly annoying the first time it happened, but with each subsequent time it got more and more irritating. It's not only bad sportsmanship to strop off in a sulk if you're losing, it's also a major pain in the ass to the rest of your team. It would be akin to Wayne Rooney suddenly deciding that he doesn't feel like playing any more and wandering off the pitch in the middle of a football match. Except in Overwatch, the teams are only six people, so the loss of just one person is keenly and immediately felt.

The trouble that these early leavers have is that they can't handle losing. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that the team who just "lost" could enjoy a comeback in the subsequent round — this can and frequently does happen in Overwatch, which is mostly very well balanced like that — and instead ditch the match altogether, leaving their team a man or more down and on the way to what is now pretty much a guaranteed loss rather than something that could be fought back from.

What's particularly dumb about early leavers is that when they leave a game, the match is counted as a "loss" in their records anyway, so they're taking the worse option — a 100% chance of getting a loss versus a less-than-100% chance of getting a loss by staying and trying to help the rest of the team to a comeback.

I sort of understand. It can be demoralising to feel like you were steamrollered by another team who perhaps genuinely were more skilled than you. But it's the very height of special snowflake syndrome to believe that you are entitled to win every game you play — perhaps these players were the kids who grew up in schools that had sports days with "participation trophies" rather than actual winners. And clawing your way to a victory when the jaws of defeat were closing on you is immensely satisfying — my favourite games of Overwatch are the ones that end up being really close, not the ones where my team smashes our opponents into the ground.

Blizzard have penalties in place for those who leave matches early, but they're clearly not severe enough. For the Competitive scene in Overwatch to succeed, early leavers need to be actively discouraged through harsh punishments. I hope that the Overwatch team are paying attention to this problem and that it gets resolved in the next season of Competitive play.

In the meantime, if you're an online player, do the decent thing and see your matches through to conclusion, even if they don't seem to be going all that well. As I say, you keep playing, you have a less than 100% chance of getting a loss recorded on your all-important statistics. Leave early, however, and you absolutely definitely will get that loss. So stop being selfish pricks and play your damn matches to completion.