2332: A Musical Journey

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Let's try a little experiment, shall we? I'm going to start with a YouTube video of a piece of music I really like. Given that I've just come off a session of Ys Origin, let's make it a piece from Ys Origin. After that I'm going to see where the Related Videos take us, and we'll go on a little journey. I'll try and give a bit of useless trivia for each track.

To give things a bit of variety (though I'm not promising quite how much!) I'll pick the first Related video that isn't 1) a Recommendation for me based on past viewing and 2) from the same game, movie, whatever as the previous one.

Ready? Here we go.

This is the theme that plays in the final area of Ys Origin, and I particularly like it because it uses one of my favourite soundtrack techniques: making use of the main theme in a different way to how it sounded originally. When used in a finale sequence, as it is here, it gives the whole thing a nice feeling of "closure" — or at least of approaching the end, anyway.

To put it more simply, effective use of this technique can get you seriously pumped for the final battle. And Ys Origin certainly does it well.

Onward!

I haven't played Ys: The Oath in Felghana yet, but it's probably next up after I finish with Ys Origin. As such, this is the first time I've heard this piece, and I'm pleased to hear that it has Falcom's distinctive prog rock-inspired sound about it. While I don't really know a lot about prog rock itself, I do like the sound of music inspired by it, and it seems there are a number of Japanese groups that do it very well — Falcom's sound team being one. (Nobuo Uematsu's bands The Black Mages and The Earthbound Papas are some others, though they do arrangements of game music rather than directly soundtracking games for the most part.)

Unsurprisingly, YouTube is taking us on a distinctly Ys-ian journey. Again, I haven't played this game, so it's my first time hearing this track, and initial impressions are good. Again, it has the melodic rock sound to it, but it also makes use of some violin melodies, which I often find sound really nice in the context of instruments you might not typically associate violin with. Other examples of this being done well include its combination with electronic instruments in Final Fantasy XIII's main battle theme, and as part of a distinctly modern-sounding pop ensemble in Omega Quintet's two battle themes.

Yet another Ys I'm yet to get to, and I know I have at least a couple of friends who count this soundtrack among their favourites. The timbre of this one's soundtrack is a little "cleaner" and perhaps more artificial-sounding; there's certainly some synthesised brass going on, but the guitars and solo violins sound fairly convincing.

The slightly more artificial sound of the music is presumably down to Ys VI being an earlier release than Oath in Felghana and Origin, and Falcom's sound team still refining and developing their sound with new tech and capabilities.

We've escaped the Ys series! And we find ourselves involved with another Japanese video game company's internal sound team that is world-renowned as being Rather Good. In this case, we're with Gust, developers of the Atelier and Ar Tonelico series, both of which have simply lovely soundtracks.

This particular piece is from one of their slightly lesser known games, Mana Khemia, which is often regarded as part of the Atelier series due to its thematic and mechanical similarities.

And speaking of Atelier, here's a track from one of the more recent ones. It very much sounds like the distinctive sound Gust has put together for the Atelier series over the last few installments, featuring prominent use of traditional "folk-style" instruments such as harmonica and penny whistle.

I'm also a big fan of this track's title.

Staying with Atelier and moving forwards in time, this is from Escha and Logy, a game I don't know a lot about but know is reasonably well regarded in the Atelier canon. There's a pretty cool guitar solo in the middle of this track, too.

And we're up to the most recent Atelier game, Atelier Sophie, and a track with a pretty magnificent rhythm guitar part. There's also a hint of Nights of Azure in there with the prominent use of harpsichord/clavichord. In fact, this whole track wouldn't be out of place in Nights of Azure.

YouTube agrees. Nights of Azure was a really great game that I enjoyed a lot, and a big part of that was due to its wonderful soundtrack, also the product of Gust's sound team, but clearly heavily inspired by Michiru Yamane's work on the older Castlevania games. This sort of Gothic rock is perfectly fitting with the game's fast action and overall tone, and contrasts nicely with the more gentle music used in its story sequences.

Let's do two more, or we'll be here all night. This one's from Megadimension Neptunia V-II, a game which I'm sure you already know I liked a whole lot. This particular track was one of my favourites due to its heavy use of some distinctly retro-sounding synthesisers, which brought to mind a few things: the synthesised music of Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games, and the once-fashionable .MOD format of digital music, which effectively used short, digitised samples as "notes" on a virtual synthesiser-sequencer and allowed those who knew what they were doing to put together multi-track compositions.

Last one!

Eternal Sonata was an extremely peculiar concept for a game in that it's an RPG based around the noted Romantic composer Frederic Chopin. In keeping with that, the soundtrack has a distinctly Romantic feel to it, with authentic orchestral instruments used to give the music a very different feel to more obviously "gamey" pieces. The game also used some of Chopin's work directly in its soundtrack.

2331: Revenge of the Horde

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Patch day for Final Fantasy XIV today, and it seems like a good one so far. I haven't yet delved into absolutely everything on offer — partly because I went out for the evening — but what I've seen so far is pretty great.

Of particular note is The Final Steps of Faith, the big new Trial for this patch. This sees players taking on the mighty Nidhogg in a battle to the death as he brings the full force of his rage down on Ishgard and those he believes to have betrayed him.

The Final Steps of Faith is a cool fight, because — at the moment, anyway — it's genuinely challenging, even in its story mode incarnation. It's not excessively difficult by any means — the challenge factor comes from the fact that you actually have to pay attention to mechanics and can't just cheese your way through it. I'm all for this; while there's a certain amount of pleasure in being able to overpower old content with top-end gear, it's always a bit of a disappointment when fights that were once challenging, exciting and dramatic become a matter of simply soaking up all the damage being thrown at you and repeatedly smacking the enemy in the teeth.

I'm sure this situation won't last with The Final Steps of Faith, but for now it's nice to have an important storyline fight carry the appropriate amount of drama for the context.

This got me thinking back to the reasonably hefty amount of time I spent playing World of Warcraft, and how that game never quite got me feeling excited about combat. Things got a little better when I went a bit crazy modding the game's UI and added a "Jukebox" mod that allowed you to play music in combat, but it still never felt quite the same as an exciting encounter in a single-player RPG.

Final Fantasy XIV, meanwhile, absolutely nails the drama aspect. While the movement-heavy nature of combat means that it's not able to include the sort of cinematic camera work that people have associated with Final Fantasy since VII hit PS1s all those years ago, the combination of amazing music, gorgeously spectacular visual effects and a genuine feeling that you're struggling against a foe of unimaginable power help make the game's most important fights shine as some of the most memorable things I've ever done in a game — and certainly in an online game.

I've now finished the main story (and the enjoyable, optional "post-story" quest, which had a really heartwarming ending) so I find myself pondering what's next for Heavensward. While this patch brings the Dragonsong War plot arc to a close, there are still some unresolved threads that are clearly going to be tugged at further in the next couple of patches, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how the stakes will be raised towards some sort of dramatic showdown that will inevitably lead into the next full expansion pack.

And in the meantime, I hear those bloody Moogles need some help with their crafting…

2330: Play It Again

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So many games these days are designed to be played once and then put aside — or, in some cases, played forever and ever and ever and ever — that it's been quite a refreshing feeling playing through Ys Origin for a second time on a harder difficulty with a different playable character. It's making me quite nostalgic for the PlayStation 1 era in particular, and is reminding me somewhat of one of the earliest games I recall taking this sort of approach: Resident Evil 2.

Resident Evil 2 was actually really neat when it came to its multiple playthroughs. You'd play it once as one of the two lead characters, then play it again as the other lead to see what they were doing while the first lead was doing their thing. Then you'd start a new game as the other lead character, then play it again as the first lead character to see what they were doing while the other lead was doing their thing. Naturally this was a nightmare for continuity and meant that there wasn't really a "definitive" version of the story, but it didn't really matter: it meant you could go through the game four times and have a somewhat (albeit marginally) different experience each time.

But Resident Evil 2 — and indeed Ys Origin — didn't stop there. No, there were unlockable secrets, once the preserve of the mysterious tips pages in games magazines, but these days discovered by people with a lot of time on their hands in seemingly minutes flat. And they're significant secrets, too: Resident Evil 2 allows you to play an entirely new scenario as a character called Hunk as well as, rather oddly, a large block of tofu, while Ys Origin unlocks a third playable character after your first playthrough, then unlocks Time Attack, Boss Rush and Arena Modes after that, meaning that — assuming you want to carry on — the game is far from over when you've beaten the final boss with all the characters and seen all the story. And then there's the various difficulty modes and achievements to play with, too — it ultimately makes the whole game considerably better value than it might first appear, with its 6-10 hour playtime for a single runthrough.

I kind of miss this approach. There was a feeling of discovery and excitement as you worked to unlock secrets and extras in games, and you felt good when you achieved it, finally, because it was the result of actually achieving something in the game. These days, however, extra modes and stories are all too often the preserve of DLC, which just doesn't have the same magic at all, largely because you have to 1) pay for it and 2) don't have to earn it to unlock it.

I know not everyone likes having to unlock things to be able to enjoy it all, but it's always been something I've liked, and a fundamental part of many gaming experiences. Ys Origin — and, I anticipate, the other Ys games I'm yet to work my way through — is proving to be a pleasantly enjoyable reminder of The Good Old Days in more ways than one, and just another reason I'm becoming increasingly enamoured with both the series and Falcom as a developer.

2329: Another Trip Up Darm Tower

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I finished my first playthrough of Ys Origin earlier. I chose to play through for the first time with Yunica Tovah, who apparently handles most like Adol in the subsequent 3D Ys games, but now I'm going through it again with Hugo Fact, who plays impressively differently.

One thing that struck me with Ys II in particular, and it appears to be a pattern that continues with Origin and its ilk, is how much shoot 'em up DNA is in this series. Numerous bosses have distinctly "bullet hell"-style attacks requiring intricate dodging and pattern recognition, for example, but this connection is most obvious when playing Origin as Hugo, since even his basic attack involves firing bullets. Hell, he even has two "options" (sorry, "The Eyes of Fact") floating either side of him to fire additional bullets, which double in number when he uses Boost mode.

It's interesting quite how different a feel this contrasting playstyle provides, since you're otherwise going through pretty much the same levels and boss fights as in Yunica's story, albeit with different cutscenes and a few minor changes here and there. Boss fights in particular are a very different affair when playing as Hugo, since rather than it being necessary to get in melee range as with Yunica, as Hugo you have to play a lot more defensively, attacking from range in suitable openings and taking great care to avoid attacks, since Hugo is considerably squishier than Yunica is. Not only that, but Hugo's individual attacks do quite a bit less damage than Yunica's axe and sword swings, though he makes up for this by being able to attack 1) from a distance and 2) much more rapidly than Yunica.

I'm also playing this second runthrough on Hard difficulty; I'm not quite brave enough for the series' signature Nightmare difficulty yet, but I thought I'd step things up for Hugo, since I felt pretty confident with Yunica by the end of my first playthrough. It's noticeably harder, particularly when it comes to boss fights. I'm not entirely sure if this is down to enemies' boosted stats or simply the different way Hugo plays that I haven't quite gotten used to yet, but I'm finding myself having to retry boss fights more times than I did on Normal with Yunica.

One of the things I like about Ys Origin so far is that although the boss fights are very difficult, I don't think there's been a single encounter in the game where I felt like I was beating my head against a wall. In other words, although I might fail a boss fight several times in succession, I'd make noticeable progress each time, chipping away a little further at the enemy life bar each time until I was eventually successful. It's a matter of practice and skill rather than luck; in some ways, it reminds me quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV raid bosses, where you need to know what's going to happen in the fight before you can even think about being successful; flailing wildly isn't going to work, at all.

Anyway. I'm keen to get through Ys Origin for a second time with Hugo, and then polish it off a third time with the "secret" third character, whose story is quite a bit different from Yunica and Hugo's, from what I understand. By playing all three stories, you get the full narrative; this is an approach that some people find tiresome — particularly if they have to play through the same levels again with a different character, as you do here — but it's something I always enjoy. I really enjoy seeing stories from multiple perspectives, and while Ys is fairly conventional fantasy in many ways, it's well-written, well-localised and features some entertaining, endearing characters, so I'm more than happy to plough through it to see everything it has to offer.

Then after that, there's Time Attack, Boss Rush and Arena Mode, of course, which I'm curious to at least try… so much for being a short game!

2328: Play of the Game

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I'm really enjoying Overwatch. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I think it's the first competitive multiplayer game that I've actually wanted to "git gud" at enough to be truly competitive in the online sphere. I don't know if I actually have the skills or the talent to be able to do that, of course, but I've been performing reasonably well in the current "Quick Play" mode — effectively a "pre-season" warm-up — and getting a good feel for characters. So much so that when the proper Ranked Play mode makes an appearance in the near future, I feel confident stepping in and attempting to prove my worth.

Overwatch is also helping me to understand the appeal of e-sports. I'm still not entirely sure I would ever want to sit and watch a game of Dota 2 or something (as opposed to actually getting stuck in and playing it) but, playing Overwatch, I certainly feel something while I'm playing. It's particularly thrilling to claw back victory from the very jaws of defeat, and all of Overwatch's various game modes are well constructed to always make this a distinct possibility, meaning it's pretty rare to feel like you're being completely dominated unless your team is particularly incompetent.

It's quite entertaining to see the varying reactions of people you play against. Competitive gaming culture has, for the most part, instilled the impulse to type "gg" (Good Game) after a match has concluded — the online equivalent of a friendly handshake after a sports match — and more often than not you'll see this shorthand pleasantry being exchanged once the victor has been decided. (It's occasionally accompanied by "wp", which means "Well Played").

But there are some people out there who don't like losing. Some people like the guy who responded "no" to my "gg" after one match because he lost, and he didn't like losing. People like the guy who, in all caps, told his entire team to uninstall the game and that they were a "useless fucking team" after losing; he didn't like losing, either. And people like the guy who judged everyone on which character they picked, with sniper Widowmaker obviously being "for noobs".

Then, of course, there was the Chuckle Brothers my friend James and I encountered earlier, who starting sniping at each other in chat during the match and gradually escalated to threats to "wreck" each other. I may have prodded the fire a bit, but it was too hilarious not to troll a little bit; by the end of the match they'd both made themselves look like complete douchebags to the other participants, and one in particular (who was on the opposing team, who lost against me and my comrades) seemed to think that the fact he'd killed my character several times somehow made him superior than me and the rest of my team.

Me, I don't mind if I win or lose, because games of Overwatch are good fun, and the game is balanced well enough that I've only had one or two matches that I felt were completely imbalanced, and that was largely because the opposing side was using unconventional tactics that none of us knew how to counter. (Six Torbjorns is a force to be reckoned with… until you figure out Roadhog and Pharah.) It's a competitive game, after all, so by its very nature there has to be a winner and a loser in each and every match. If you want to win more, you practice and get better, just like anything — just like real sports. There's no sense getting angry and throwing a tantrum over it, because, more likely than not, that's just going to alienate you and make you less likely to be able to put a coherent team together — and coherent teams with good communication will always perform better at this sort of game.

I'm very interested to see how Blizzard plans to implement the ranked system into Overwatch; while I've never played Starcraft 2, I understand its online ranking system is pretty comprehensive and gives you a good idea of where you stand in relation to the rest of the community, so I'm expecting something similar here. I'm also expecting the game to have a good, long lifespan; Blizzard has a good track record of continuing to support its games over time — particularly those with multiplayer components — and with Overwatch proving as popular as it apparently has been so far (the amount of fan art out there already is insane!) I think we'll be seeing Overwatch tournaments and leagues for a good few years yet. And, for the first time, I want to be part of them.

2327: Not the Boss of Me

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It seems to be a bit of an unfashionable opinion these days, unless you're wanking over Dark Souls, but I really enjoy boss fights in video games. I have done ever since I encountered my first one: a big horrible tentacly thing that shot what looked like sperm at you at the end of the first level of Psyclapse's Menace, a not-terrible horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up on the Atari ST. (Its quasi-sequel Blood Money was better, or at least I thought it was, since I could actually complete a level in it; I never did beat that boss in Menace.)

Specifically, I enjoy boss fights that revolve around learning a boss's attack patterns, how to avoid or counter them and when are the openings you should use to launch your own attack. Conversely I tend to dislike boss fights where you're just up against a bullet-sponge enemy and they're either acting completely randomly or according to more unpredictable AI. I don't want them to act like a human opponent, in other words; if I want to fight something like a human opponent, I can just play a multiplayer game and fight actual human opponents.

Thankfully, it seems a lot of game designers out there feel the same way as I do, or at least enjoy designing encounters of this type. Final Fantasy XIV, for example, is full of bosses where you need to learn the mechanics, where to stand and what to do at all points in the fight, particularly in high-level challenges that require you to be on top of your game. Your average bullet hell shoot 'em up, too, tends to have bosses with predictable patterns that are as much about avoiding veritable hailstorms of bullets as they are about dealing damage to your opponent.

What I'm discovering with my first foray into the Ys series is that Ys has fantastic bosses. I would perhaps exclude Ys I from that description, owing to the fact that its bosses — particularly its final boss — are a bit rubbish, but from Ys II onwards, Ys bosses are exactly the sort of thing I really enjoy.

I'm currently playing through Ys Origin, which seems to be one of the more well-regarded recent installments in the series. Tonight I fought a boss which took a good four or five attempts to master, and I really enjoyed it; I didn't feel frustrated at any point, even when I failed, because I felt like I was learning something with each new attempt rather than just hoping my luck would be a little better.

The boss in question was "The Construct", who is a big giant mechanical beastie that lives in a lava pit. In the first phase of your fight with him, he has a couple of different attacks: pulling back one of his fists to slam it down a moment later on the platform you're standing on (which can be avoided by running away from the fist he pulls back), extending both his arms and spinning around (which can be avoided by a well-timed jump) and summoning a string of lasers from the ceiling (which can be avoided by moving out of the shining circle that appears on the ground a moment before the laser actually fires). The first phase essentially requires you to knock both of his hands off when he slams his fist down on the platform: avoid the slam itself, then dash back in and hit him in the mechanical wrist until his hand falls off.

Once you've done this, he then starts a different attack pattern: alternating between lurching forwards and biting the platform you're on (which knocks you back into the lava if you don't jump out of the way and avoid the shockwave this causes) and vomiting up an annoying little flamey creature which gets in your way and chips away at your health if you don't deal with it quickly. In this phase, you actually get to cause some damage to the boss's life bar by hitting him in the gem on his forehead when he bites the platform.

Following this, the process repeats, but harder; knock his hands off when he slams his fists down again, but this time there are bits of the platform missing you'll have to jump over when avoiding his various attacks. Then smack his forehead around a bit. Then the final phase adds an entertaining attack where he sweeps his hand slowly around the platform, knocking its sections into the lava as he does so, requiring you to run for dear life around the platform until he tires of this particular activity and returns to trying to turn you into a nice pâté.

I enjoyed this boss fight because at no point did I feel like it was patronising me, but at the same time I was able to figure out what I was supposed to do without resorting to guides and walkthroughs. It was an excellent piece of solid, enjoyable game design, and a potent reminder that sometimes the most technologically advanced ways of doing things with artificial intelligence and the like aren't necessarily the best.

2324: A Portal to Quality Filth

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One of the things the video games industry has had trouble with over the years is the issue of "adult" games. I'm not talking about M-rated violence-fests — those are seemingly fine. I'm talking primarily about those that contain explicit sexual content and/or themes a little more ambitious than you might find in your typical focus-grouped commercial blockbuster.

The stigma attached to adult games is largely due to retailer concerns. Specifically, retailers like Wal*Mart and Target in America have historically refused to stock games that have an AO (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board), despite the AO rating existing and making it abundantly clear that the title is absolutely not for children. The situation is almost certainly the same in Europe when it comes to PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings, with the added awkwardness that different individual European countries have different rules on what is regarded as "decent". Germany, for example, has less of a problem with pornography than some other countries, but is very strict on depictions of violence, with many high-profile triple-A games either not making it to Germany at all or being gutted (no pun intended) of violent content in the process.

In other words, making an AO game would historically have been commercial suicide for a publisher trying to make money from their product. After all, if you can't get stock on the shelves of popular retailers, your avenues for selling your product are inherently more limited, and when it comes to big budget titles, you need every sales channel you can get.

But now we live in the age of the Internet, of course, and brick-and-mortar retailers are less relevant to our buying habits. It's still nice to be able to go into a shop, pick up a product and walk out with it (having paid for it, obviously) immediately, but a significant number of people now err in favour of the lower prices offered by online stores. And when it comes to computer and video games, the rise of high-speed broadband and high-capacity hard drives has made games with no physical component whatsoever a prominent part of the digital landscape. In fact, the ability for software to be released as digital-only has allowed more developers and publishers than ever before to be able to bring their products to market — without overheads such as duplication and distribution, developers can focus all their time on their product and, subsequently, promoting their product rather than boring logistics stuff.

And yet we're still stuck with the stigma over AO games. Console manufacturers won't allow AO games on their platforms' storefronts — presumably because it would be all too easy for minors to circumvent any sort of age gate technology and buy porn on Mummy's credit card (suggesting that they should perhaps think about stepping their age gate game up) — and Steam, while allowing a couple of games with boobs in to be sold on the platform, still seemingly stops short of allowing outright porn/hentai games to be sold. (There is, of course, a whole argument about why it's okay for The Witcher to have fairly explicit porking in it, yet the slightest hint of an anime titty gets the big red cross, but we won't get into that now; nor will we get into the "double standard" argument re: violence vs. sexual content.)

This has meant that until now, AO games have typically been sold direct or through specialist distributors. J-List, for example, sells AO visual novels in both physical and digital format from its own publishing arm JAST USA as well as third-party localisation companies like MangaGamer. MangaGamer also sell their own products on their own website. Localisation powerhouse Sekai Project, meanwhile, have their dirty little not-so-secret arm Denpasoft to sell their AO titles (or AO versions of titles that get a wider, edited release for platforms like Steam). It's good that we have all these places to buy AO titles, but until now there hasn't been a unified Steam-esque platform for them.

There still isn't quite that, but what Nutaku (very NSFW link!) is building is a step in the right direction. Nutaku, for the unfamiliar, is a website that sprang up relatively recently and provided adult browser games — typically the sort of gacha-driven free-to-play fare that you'd get on mobile phones, only with more porn. More recently, however, they've decided to launch a digital distribution platform for a variety of AO titles — primarily visual novels, as they tend to be — in collaboration with the popular publishers I've mentioned above.

This is a big deal. A centralised place for AO games to be distributed and for players to build up a library is a great thing, and helps deal with the inherent fragmentation of the market we've had up until now with everyone only distributing their own stuff (with the exception of J-List selling physical copies of some MangaGamer titles). While Nutaku's implementation of its storefront currently leaves a little to be desired — you have to buy games with the "Nutaku Coins" premium currency that is also used in their free to play browser games, and you can only purchase this in bundles rather than the exact amount you need to buy a game — it's very much a step in the right direction, and a system that is hopefully going to allow AO games to thrive in the online market. Perhaps it will even inspire some competitors to come along, or for services like Steam to have an age-gated 18+ section.

And it's started strong; some well-regarded titles such as the 18+ version of Princess Evangile are available on Nutaku's platform, and Sekai Project has even released the 18+ version of Sakura Dungeon first on Nutaku — even before the all-ages version hits Steam or the 18+ version releases on its own Denpasoft store. Let's hope it keeps up this momentum — and if you want some quality filth, be sure to support what they're doing.

2323: Gateway Games

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There's a good piece in the latest newsletter from Glixel, the upcoming new website that my brother's working on in collaboration with the folks at Rolling Stone. The article focuses on Blizzard's approach to game design, and how they rarely do anything completely new, and instead take an established formula that is often regarded as impenetrably complex or difficult to get into (especially once a community has been established) and make it accessible to the masses.

This isn't a matter of "dumbing down", though. No, it's rather intelligent game design: it strips out the complicated things that more "hardcore" games have in them as a means for players to show their skills, and instead focuses on the core experience, creating an "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of situation.

The most recent example of this is, of course, Overwatch, which takes the basic formula set in something like Team Fortress 2, strips out all the complicated bits that have been bolted on to that game over the years, and makes an enjoyably easy to get into but tactically rich multiplayer shooter that pretty much anyone can enjoy. But Blizzard's past work fits this mould, too, with perhaps their most famous work being World of Warcraft, which successfully made massively multiplayer online RPGs — traditionally not particularly user-friendly experiences — accessible and enjoyable to the masses.

It's not just Blizzard that does this, of course. There's great value in producing solid "gateway games" to particular genres, as they provide a means for people to learn about potentially new favourite styles of game without getting bogged down in complicated rulesets and techniques. Hopping genres from multiplayer shooters to dungeon crawler RPGs, Experience Inc's Demon Gaze provided an excellent jumping-on point for me to learn how these traditionally challenging, complex games worked, and built up my confidence to tackle the significantly more complicated, difficult and long Dungeon Travelers 2. Elsewhere, Codemasters' GRID series strikes an excellent balance between arcade-style handling and the greater realism of more "sim"-like racing games such as Gran Turismo and the early Forza games. Cave's Deathsmiles is a good introduction to bullet hell shooters. Dead or Alive 5 is a good game to learn about one-on-one fighting games, particularly with its excellent tutorials and practice modes.

Board games do this, too. Some of the most popular and well-respected board games out there are "gateway games" to more complex experiences. Ticket to Ride, for example, teaches players about dice-free mechanics, set collecting and strategic unit placement without overcomplicating things with unnecessary rules. The Settlers of Catan is a great introduction to "building" games where you have to manage resources in order to construct various things. And deckbuilding games like Ascension and Star Realms can lead naturally into more customisable card games such as Android: Netrunner, Magic: The Gathering and suchlike.

Some people never move beyond these gateway experiences, and that's absolutely fine. To be perfectly honest, I think I'm most comfortable with the simpler end of the spectrum when it comes to board games in particular, and I'm definitely digging the simplicity of Overwatch, as recent posts have doubtless made clear. What's important about these experiences, though, is that they're inclusive, allowing more people to enjoy hobbies traditionally thought as complex and difficult to get into than ever before. And having more people to play with is pretty much always a very good thing indeed.

2320: Never Pick One Main

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This advice is true for many different class-based games, be they massively multiplayer online RPGs like Final Fantasy XIV or competitive games like Dota 2 or, indeed, Overwatch. (Yes, it's another Overwatch post, for which I make no apologies.)

Overwatch is an interesting case study, though, in that unlike the other examples I gave above, you can change your character and indeed your complete role in the team at any time — either immediately after dying or if you're back in your base. This leads to a whole new interesting metagame where your team isn't bound by the principles of the "holy trinity" of tank, healer and damage-dealer (or, in Overwatch's case, the holy quartet of tank, support, offense and defense) and can instead evolve and change as a match progresses according to the team's needs.

Because this is such A Thing in Overwatch, you absolutely shouldn't pick a single character and "main" them like in other character-based games like competitive one-on-one fighters. At the bare minimum, you should be familiar with a hero in each of the four roles, and ideally you should at least know what every hero is capable of, even if you're not particularly skilled in playing as them.

You can read guides about this, but the best way I've found to learn which hero is good against which opponent is simply to experiment and see what happens. That way, you'll naturally figure out which heroes you enjoy playing and who they're effective against.

I have a number of heroes that I've started gravitating naturally towards so far. I intend to expand my repertoire over time, but for the moment here are my favourites.

In the offense role, I'm a fan of Tracer. Her rapid fire guns immediately hit their target when you fire them, so there's no need to lead targets in the same way as you need to with those who shoot more obvious projectiles — you still need at least a reasonable degree of precision, though. Her absolute best features are her special abilities, though. Her Blink ability lets her teleport a short distance up to three times in succession, letting her quickly dart across doorways and passages that are covered by dangerous sentry types such as Bastion or Widowmaker. And her Recall ability is great for confusing an enemy, as well as providing a means of self-healing by not only rewinding her location, but also the value her health was at a few seconds ago.

For defense, I like Mei. Her Ice Wall ability is great for blocking off specific routes and funneling the opposing team down a route you can cover more easily. Her weapon also has a great deal of flexibility; the short-range "ice thrower" acts a bit like a flamethrower only, you know, colder, and also has the added benefit of freezing enemies, initially slowing them and eventually freezing them completely for a brief moment. Her alt-fire, meanwhile, fires an immensely accurate icicle bolt that proves devastating to snipers such as Widowmaker, dealing a huge chunk of damage in a single hit at medium to long range. Combine this with her ability to freeze herself, making her temporary invulnerable while self-healing, and her Ultimate, which causes a freeze and damage effect over a decent-sized area, and you have a great defensive hero who is more than capable of going toe-to-toe with dangerous, occasionally insurmountable-seeming threats like Reinhardt.

In the tank role, I enjoy D.Va. D.Va is interesting to me in that she's not necessarily designed to soak up a huge amount of damage in the same way as some of the other tank characters, but is instead a rather mobile unit that can put out a good amount of close-range damage while having much better survivability behind enemy lines than the Offense heroes. Her absolute best thing, though, is her Ultimate, which self-destructs her mech suit, taking anyone in a significant radius with it, including herself if she doesn't get out of the way. What's fun about this ability is that you can combine it with her mech suit's jump jets ability, effectively "throwing" the self-destructing mech at the enemy team from a distance while she skips off happily into the distance. Also she's adorable.

Finally, in the support role, I've had most success with Lucio. A speedy character with a passive "aura" effect rather than a more active healer like Mercy, Lucio is an excellent support character who is very capable of putting out a decent amount of damage in his own right. His decent mobility thanks to his high speed and Wallride ability allows him to move unpredictably and avoid damage, while the relatively short cooldowns on his abilities let him provide either speed boosts or decent healing to nearby companions on a pretty consistent basis. Not only that, but the fact his buffs and healing work as an aura mean that he can concentrate on wrecking some fools while he's benefiting the team, meaning he can help out in several ways at once.

I'm sure I'll discover new favourites in the near future, but for now these are the ones I've had the most success — and fun — with.

2319: Pass into the Iris

Overwatch is still excellent.

I'm tempted to leave it at that, but I should perhaps qualify my statement.

It's difficult to pin down a single, truly appealing element of it because there are so many, and that's perhaps it's biggest strength: there's something in there that will appeal to most people who are at least vaguely receptive to the idea of competitive first-person shooters.

For me, the absolute best thing about it is its accessibility. There's a wide variety of different heroes, some of which are more difficult to use, but all of which are rewarding. Plus some absolutely wonderful balancing has clearly gone into the game's development, since each hero has a clear "counter" that is eminently suitable for dealing with them when they start giving you grief.

It's a game with accessibility for casual players, in other words, but one which has sufficient depth to keep competitive players interested in the long term. It will be interesting to see how the community as a whole takes to the ranked competitive games when they launch soon, and whether the game as a whole takes off as an e-sport.

It's rather enjoyable to be in at the very beginning of what is clearly going to be a thriving game with the longevity of Valve's classic Team Fortress 2, a game to which Overwatch is often compared, and not unreasonably so. However, where I found Team Fortress 2 to be completely intimidating (due to the fact that by the time I had a computer and Internet connection that could handle running it, everyone else who had been playing for years was infinitely better than me, and it felt impossible to get any better), with Overwatch I'm finding it easy to contribute to a team effort, pick the right heroes for the right situation and help get the job done.

What seems nice about the community as a whole — at least on PC, I can't speak for the console versions — is that the player base isn't afraid to have a bit of fun. Earlier tonight, for example, I had a game where the opposing team started out by posting three Winstons (a giant Tesla cannon-wielding gorilla with a rather refined voice and attitude) outside our base, and gradually, as the match progressed, everyone else participating switched to Winston too, until by the end of things we had an absolutely chaotic melee made up of twelve mutant gorillas all going all HULK SMASH on one another at once. The results of that game really didn't matter in the end, because everyone involved had such a great time, and of course it was followed up with a couple of other matches in which everyone picked the same character again. Six Reinhardts bearing down on you is certainly a sight to behold, though this situation helped me realise Pharah's value in that she can leap high into the air and rain rocket death down on Reinhardt from above while staying well out of range of his big-ass hammer.

Overwatch is a game that hasn't forgotten a core reason we play games is, well, to play. It's a consistently joyful, smile-inducing experience that the vast majority of the community seem to play well and with a good attitude; you get the occasional ragequitter yelling "uninstall the game now" when their team loses, but they are relatively few and far between in my experience so far, and when this happens most people just shrug and move on. Overwatch's excellent matchmaking coupled with the significant player base means that their team slot will be filled in a matter of seconds anyway, so it's no great loss to the other players if that person wants to ragequit.

Assuming Blizzard keeps supporting Overwatch as much as it claims it will — we're promised free new heroes and maps on a fairly regular basis; the only "premium" paid content is the ability to purchase the Loot Boxes containing skins and other customisation items that you acquire for free every time your account levels up anyway — I can see myself playing it for a long time. And it's a nice feeling to find a multiplayer experience like that: it's one I can easily share with friends, since there's none of the MMO issue of you "outlevelling" each other, getting to different stages and being unable to play together due to the disparity in your characters' power levels, and its 5-10 minute matches make it eminently friendly to the more busy people I know who perhaps only have half an hour here and there to play some games together.

So yes. Overwatch. If you've been on the fence about grabbing it but you like the sound of it, stop hesitating and grab it. Then we can go and shoot some fools together.

Cheers luv.