2308: An Open Letter to @wilw About Games as a Lifeline, "Male Tears" and Inexplicable Blocks

Hi Wil,

You don't know me, and I don't know you. Apparently I've done something to offend you in the past, though, because you have me blocked on Twitter. I don't know why and I don't know when this happened because as far as I know, we've had no direct interaction on any occasion ever, but I will apologise for whatever it was anyway. I will also express my sincere disappointment that someone I used to look up to as a bastion of what modern nerd culture should aspire to feels somehow threatened or upset with something I've done in the past — threatened or upset enough to simply cut me off from the prospect of ever interacting with him.

I was an avid viewer of many of the Geek and Sundry videos when it first launched — particularly Tabletop, which introduced my friends and I to a number of board games that are still in our regular rotation. Tabletop was an excellent show that gave a good flavour of how the various games played — even if there were occasional bits of fuzzing over the rules in the name of keeping things snappy! — as well as providing a great opportunity for some of the most entertaining, fun people in geek culture to come together and have a good time. A good time that was infectious — so enjoyable was the atmosphere on Tabletop that it felt like the audience was right there with you all, sitting around the game table, rooting for your favourite player to win and commiserating with you when you inevitably came lost. (As the resident person in our tabletop gaming group who perpetually comes last in pretty much everything, I could relate to your position quite a bit.)

On a more serious note, nerd culture in general is something that I've talked a lot in the past about giving me a lifeline when I needed it. In the case of video games, they've provided a constant and much-needed centre of stability in a life that has often been chaotic and beyond my control and understanding; in the case of tabletop gaming, they provide one of the few means of face-to-face social interaction in which I feel completely comfortable, whether it's with close friends or, as it was for me this Friday evening just gone, complete strangers. I think it's the fact that interactions over a tabletop game are, for the most part, clearly structured: it's why I gravitate towards games with clear rules, turn structures and player roles as well as those with strong themes that include flavour text I can read out dramatically to our group. Conversely, those games that require a certain degree of negotiation or freeform interaction are those I feel less comfortable with, since I'm sometimes not quite sure what I'm "supposed" to say.

But all that's by the by; it's just a bit of context of who I am. Needless to say, games of both the video and tabletop variety are extremely important to me; as you said in your keynote speech at PAX East in 2010, "some of the happiest days of our lives would not exist without games and gaming. Games are important. Games matter." I agree entirely, and when I took a risk, flying from the UK to Boston, MA for that PAX East — my first time attending such an event, and only, I think, the second time I'd taken a solo trans-Atlantic flight — I found somewhere that I really felt like I belonged. My life was, at that point, a bit of a mess: my marriage was falling apart — my wife at the time would go on to leave me shortly after I returned from Boston — and I didn't have a reliable source of income. Games gave me a sense of being grounded; somewhere to retreat to when I couldn't face the terror that everyday life at the time confronted me with. Games gave me common ground with which I could interact with other people; games gave me something to talk about, something that I could call "mine".

That time in my life was turbulent. I've had ups and downs since then, and as I type this I'm very much in a "down". Over the years since 2010, I've come to recognise the importance of acknowledging one's emotions, the causes of these emotions and the ways to deal with them. I'm not afraid to cry as I once was back in high school; as someone who sometimes has difficulty expressing exactly what he wants to say verbally, there are times when bursting into tears says more than words ever can; there are others when the act of opening those floodgates allows the repressed emotions to be released in a more controlled manner once you've calmed down a bit, letting you communicate what's really bothering you after the storm has subsided. Crying is important. Crying matters.

Which is why this image you posted on Twitter bothers me so much:

For anyone reading this letter who doesn't already know, the expression "male tears" is usually used by the more toxic side of online activism as a means of demonising men — usually straight, white men — when they wish to express themselves. It's largely brought out during arguments between the more militant side of feminism and those — usually, but not exclusively, men — who are tired of all the sociopolitically charged fighting that takes place every day on the Internet, particularly those who fight back somewhat aggressively with foul language, threats and exhortations for people to kill themselves. The "joke", such as it is, is that all this unpleasantness just bounces off the noble "progressive" types — referred to disparagingly by their critics as "Social Justice Warriors" or "SJWs" for short, an epithet which these people flip-flop between absolutely hating and trying desperately to reclaim in the same way black culture has largely reappropriated "nigga" for itself — and is just interpreted as straight, white men crying about something not going their way for once; the fact that "male tears" is written on a mug allows the "progressive" activist the opportunity to drink from it, suggesting that they relish the opportunity to feed on the tears of their enemies.

Pretty unpleasant however you look at it, and while the original intention may not have been to reinforce traditional ideals of what these same people call "toxic masculinity" — stereotypes such as "big boys don't cry" and "be a man for once" — I can't help but look at it that way. Speaking as a (straight, white) man who does cry, isn't ashamed of the fact that he cries and, in fact, has cried quite a bit over the last few months due to his own life situation and the suffering of the person he loves most dearly in the world: to see the idea of "male tears" used so gleefully and indiscriminately as a means of oneupmanship, of proving one's "progressiveness" feels grossly distasteful and insensitive. To have it proudly promoted by someone I once looked up to as almost an idol; someone I thought I could aspire to follow in the footsteps of; someone who proved that a person with my interests could find success and a place for themselves in the world? That just feels like a stab in the back, with a few good twists for good measure.

I don't deserve to feel like that, and I'm pretty certain I'm not the only person who feels this way. Some may express their disappointment and upset with this more eloquently or more aggressively than others, but however they choose to register their discontent and however much or little I agree with their methods of expressing it, I understand it completely. As someone who, now 35 years of age, was often ostracised and ridiculed for his interests and hobbies in his youth, was subsequently delighted when geek culture started to become fashionable over the course of the last decade and most recently has noted with a growing sense of discomfort that the things he finds most relatable, most important to him are those that are getting relentlessly torn down in the name of being "progressive"? It hurts. A lot.

I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't hurt anyone. I just want to be left alone to enjoy the things I enjoy with friends who also enjoy those things, and likewise to leave those who are interested in different things to do what they enjoy. I don't care about this perpetually raging culture war that has all but destroyed meaningful online discourse around video games in particular over the last five or six years, and put a serious strain on a number of friendships. I don't believe in a "one size fits all" approach to inclusivity and diversity, which is what many "progressive" types seem to argue for; I instead subscribe to a "many sizes fit many" ethos, which makes for a more vibrant, interesting and cross-pollinating culture in the long-term. And yet somehow, at some point, I've been branded with a scarlet letter, thrown in the pit with all the other social rejects. I've also been called a paedophile, a pervert, a misogynist and plenty of other things besides. My crime? I like Japanese video games with pretty girls in, and frequently argue against the misrepresentation of these games as soft porn in the mainstream press by those who won't take the time to engage with them.

Frankly, the whole situation makes me want to cry, but now I feel I shouldn't, because it will just, apparently, give you some sort of satisfaction. And that, to be honest, seems like the very inverse of your own credo, your own Wheaton's Law, of "Don't be a dick!"

You almost certainly won't read this, Wil, because having blocked me on Twitter I'm not sure there's any way you'll see it outside of someone you haven't blocked directly sharing it with you, and I don't see that happening. But I wanted to post it anyway; even if you don't read it, hopefully it will bring some sense of comfort to those who feel the same way I do about all this; put some feelings into words; provide a sense of solidarity.

As you argued in your speech, this feeling of solidarity, of belonging, is extremely important. We should all strive to help each other feel like we belong doing the things we love with the people we love in the places we love. With photos like the one posted above, you deliberately block off people from feeling like they can engage with this part of culture they adore, and people they might well otherwise get on with. And whether or not you believe that "male tears" only applies to men who don't know how to behave themselves politely and appropriately, know that it can — and will, and has — been interpreted in a way that just comes across as exclusive, combative and gatekeeping: the exact opposite of what you yourself argue we should aim for.

This whole situation needs to stop, as soon as possible. I hate it. Everyone else I know hates it. Can't we all just get around a gaming table and settle this the old-fashioned way: with dice, cards and chits — maybe even some fancy miniatures?

Thank you for your time, and thanks for reading, whether you're Wil Wheaton (unlikely) or some random passer-by who just wanted to see what I had to say.

Love & Peace
Pete

2305: Fighting Talk

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I spent a bit of time playing some Dead or Alive 5 Last Round online with a friend from Final Fantasy XIV earlier. (Hi, Neon!) I've never really played a fighting game online before — it's a genre that has something of a reputation as being brutally unforgiving to newcomers, and with good reason, since the fighting game genre is one that attracts significant numbers of people good enough to actually get paid to play these games.

Thankfully, my friend Neon appears to be of a roughly equal level of skill to me, since we had a series of matches and we both came out roughly equal in terms of victories and losses.

So far in Dead or Alive 5 I'd been focusing on the Training mode, attempting to learn some combos and moves for characters I liked the look of, because I'd love to get past the "button mashing" phase that everyone goes through when they first pick up a fighting game. As such, I was a bit hesitant to even jump into the story mode, because I didn't feel like I knew any characters well enough. But I thought I'd give fighting another person a go — and I'm glad I did.

Fighting Neon gave me a potent reminder of exactly why I've always liked the Dead or Alive series in preference to perhaps more established, popular fare like Capcom's Street Fighter series. It's kind of hard to describe the exact feeling, but I think it's best described as the game feels instinctive, almost primal. You can spend hours learning the specific button combinations to pull off specific moves at the right time — and doubtless the really good players do that — but at a fairly rudimentary level, which is where I'd generously put myself, the fighting system works in such a way that you can look at what's going on on the screen, push directions and attack buttons and have something that "feels" right unfold in front of you. Opponent blocking high blows? Get in there with some low kicks. Taunting you? Charge in and tackle them with a running throw. Knocking you off balance with a flurry of blows? Block, block, block dammit, oh for fuck's sake. (I never have quite mastered blocking in fighting games; given how important and helpful — and tied to the series' iconic countering system — it is in Dead or Alive, I should probably do something about that.)

I haven't yet picked a "main" to play with. I will almost certainly end up going with Kasumi, at least initially, because Kasumi is hot and I vaguely know some of her effective moves. Today I also particularly enjoyed playing as Hitomi (who appears to have wonderful reach with her kicks) and Momiji (though I haven't done any training with her yet, so I was taking wild stabs at her moves). I also discovered that, as I previously thought, I want to steer clear of slower, heavy-hitting characters, because I very obviously don't know how to handle them effectively and tend to get my ass handed to me if I try and fight with them in the same way as the Kasumis and company of the world.

My few games today were an eye-opening experience, then. I'm definitely up for playing some more; if you, too, suck at fighting games and would like a punching bag to play with, feel free to hit me up on PSN under the ID Angry_Jedi.

2304: Blizzard's New Phenomenon

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I know I wrote about Overwatch the other day, but having been, well, present on the Internet for the past few days I think it's fairly safe to declare that Blizzard has an honest-to-goodness phenomenon on its hands.

Overwatch's open beta (read: free demo — the best marketing tool they could have possibly used) ended at the start of this week, but people haven't stopped talking about it since. They also haven't stopped producing fan art, incorporating Overwatch characters into memes and cartoon strips, discussing strategies, taking the piss out of people who play nothing but Bastion and admiring Tracer's admittedly fine posterior.

It's kind of remarkable, really, because it seems to have come out of nowhere and evolved organically without a trace of interference from the marketing or PR machines. A few weeks ago, I knew very little about Overwatch and had little interest in it; after a couple of days with the beta on both PS4 and PC, I'm well and truly sold and am happily enjoying the wealth of fan-made content that's been produced seemingly in just the last few days.

Blizzard has always been a somewhat unconventional developer-publisher, producing wildly popular games that eschew popular conventions — mechanically, aesthetically and even functionally. Their insistence on using their own proprietary client Battle.Net to distribute, update and even sell their latest games initially drew criticism — particularly in the case of Diablo III — but as the world has become more and more comfortable with the idea of being always online and multiplayer-centric titles, these complaints have started to fade into the background until now, Blizzard's ecosystem allows it to have extremely successful titles without having to rely on the more established distribution channels such as Steam.

Overwatch's stealth marketing is another example of this. While there have been TV spots, video ads and site takeovers for the game, it has never felt like an aggressive marketing push in the same way that a Call of Duty or a Battlefield sees. Instead, Blizzard chose to rely on the most powerful marketing tool in the world these days: word of mouth. Putting their absolute confidence in their game and releasing it to the public for free for a few days achieved more than any multi-million dollar marketing campaign ever would; it allowed people to try the game for themselves and either confirm that yes, they did want to play it, or, in many cases, sate their curiosity as to what it was all about. In more than one case, the satiation of that curiosity has led to additional sales.

So why is Overwatch such a phenomenon? Well, a lot of it has to do with its striking visual design — it's immediately recognisable — but I think the biggest contributing factor is its wildly varied selection of playable characters. There's something for everyone in Overwatch's cast, whether you're into moody, dark types; big, stompy robots; hot girls; cute girls; frightening muscle-bound girls who probably have a Tumblr page; Westerns; sci-fi… there's a bit of everything. And somehow despite this massive variety in its cast, Overwatch feels coherent and none of its characters feel like token inclusions.

This, naturally, leads to people picking favourites — never underestimate the power of the waifus! — which, in turn, leads to people producing fan-created content based on their favourite characters. And, from there, other fans can enjoy this content and express how much they like their favourite character through sharing these fan-made productions or engaging with the artists. Over time, a whole meta-community outside of the game builds up, even bringing in people who don't actually play the game but just like watching it, or appreciate the art direction, or like the look of the characters.

In short, Blizzard would have to do something absolutely spectacular right now to fuck up Overwatch. I'm really looking forward to giving the full version a go at the end of the month, and if you're up for a multiplayer rumble in its wonderfully colourful world, be sure to hit me up.

2303: Review in Progress

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I've noticed a lot of gaming sites posting "review in progress" articles for new releases recently. And while there is a time and a place for this sort of thing — most notably in the case of massively multiplayer online games, or multiplayer-centric titles that are dependent on their communities — I don't think it's a particularly appropriate way to handle single-player games.

The idea of a "review in progress" is for the author of the article to post their thoughts and opinions about the game as they're playing it, updating it over time before coming to a final judgement and a score, assuming the publication in question does scores. This does kind of make sense in a way, because some games are slow burners that take a while to learn, and it can be interesting to see how someone's reactions and feelings change over time. But at the same time, I find myself asking why the author didn't just hold fire until they'd beaten the whole thing, then talk about their complete "journey" all in one go. That makes for an interesting structure for an article; in the case of games with strong emergent narratives but challenging mechanics — something like a Paradox strategy game, for example — it can even provide the basis for a compelling "story" of how the reviewer learned how to manage their empire more effectively after their incompetent beginnings.

The reason why "reviews in progress" exist should be obvious by now, though: they're there to hoover up some of those sweet, sweet clicks from people Googling, say, "valkyria chronicles remastered review" or "overwatch review" or whatever else the latest hotness might be. Because the word "review" is in there, these half-finished articles show up in search results (assuming the tech guys at the sites in question have done their SEO homework) when what people are really looking for is detailed, authoritative, helpful and knowledgeable information on games they're interested in. It's one of many examples we have today of the inner machinations of the press being self-serving rather than in service of their readership.

More than that, though, as someone who's floated in and out of the games press since he was a teenager, I find the idea of a "review in progress" somewhat objectionable on another level. When I took on my first ever writing assignments, I did so on the understanding that you should finish the game you're writing about before putting pen to paper in order to be able to give a complete, in-depth appraisal of everything it had to offer. Granted, this was in the magazine age, when publications had rather more time to assemble their articles, and also in an age where there weren't nearly as many games released every week as there are today — not to mention an age where 100-hour games were pretty much unheard of — but still, I think it's a good goal to aspire to.

If you're a professional critic, regardless of what you think the "purpose" of game reviews are, people are going to come to you on the assumption that you know what you are talking about, and that your articles will be well-researched, informative and helpful for making a purchase decision, or simply to find out more about a game. If you're not doing your job properly — in other words, if you're posting garbage like this or this, to give two extreme examples — then you shouldn't be at all surprised when you become the object of ridicule that the average modern games journalist is today.

In other words, the games press would be a whole lot better — and more helpful to its readers — if it stopped worrying about churning out articles to release dead on embargo time, and instead only post pieces when the author in question actually has a full, complete and knowledgeable understanding of the thing they are commenting on.

Sadly, I don't see this happening any time soon.

2301: Overwatch

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I decided to give the game everyone seems to be talking about — Blizzard's new first-person shooter Overwatch — a bit of a go this weekend. They were running an open beta, after all, so there was no risk whatsoever involved in downloading it and giving it a shot.

And what do you know — it's actually pretty good. I'm not sure if I'm sold enough on it to want to pick up a copy when it comes out later in the month, but I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with it over the last couple of days.

For those who have perhaps heard of Overwatch but not found out any more information about it, it is, in many ways, similar to Valve's classic Team Fortress 2 in that two teams made up of various different characters with different capabilities face off against one another in order to complete an objective of some description. In the game as it stands at the moment, the objectives on offer include a "king of the hill" type affair, where over the best of three rounds, each team has to control a particular area on the map for a certain amount of time; an "attack and defend" situation, where one team has to defend a point against assault from the other team; an "assault" variant, where the attacking team has to escort a slow-moving "payload" vehicle from one end of the map to the other while the other team stops them; and a mode that mixes the "attack and defend" and "assault" objectives together.

Like Team Fortress 2, the different characters have different roles on the team. Offensive characters are nimble but fragile, with their weapons and abilities concentrating on inflicting damage efficiently. Defensive characters have the ability to do things like lay down turrets or, in the case of one particular character, turn themselves into a turret. Tank characters have a huge pool of health points so are designed to act as a distraction for the other team. And support characters generally have some sort of useful ability to help the team out — usually some form of healing, buffing or both.

Where Team Fortress 2 only had one character of each archetype, though, Overwatch has several, each of whom has a unique weapon and loadout of special abilities. Weapons have clips of ammo and have to be reloaded when empty, but you have infinite clips, so there's no hunting around for ammo or any punishment for spray-and-pray gunplay. You can restore your health by returning to your home base, similar to how Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm works. And if you find a hero isn't working out for you, you can switch either when you die or when you're in your base.

Overwatch strikes an excellent balance between simplicity and tactical depth. The characters are all easy to learn in terms of mechanics, but applying their weapons and skills to situations throughout a match is the real challenge. That and not blowing yourself up in some instances; my favourite character so far, D.Va, has the ability to self-destruct her mech suit, killing anyone nearby, which is an absolutely devastating skill, but also very likely to take you with it if you don't immediately run away.

There's also a fun metagame that doesn't fall into the Call of Duty trap of excessive challenges and skill levels: you simply have an experience level, which gives you a "loot box" every time you level up, and the items in the loot box are randomly selected skins, animations, spray paint logos and voice clips for the various characters in the game. None of these have any effect on the characters' abilities — they're just there as cool collectibles as an incentive for players to keep playing. The choice to make Overwatch a full-price game rather than a free-to-play affair also seems quite sensible, too; while some may balk at paying full whack for a multiplayer-only game, there's a substantial amount of content in here, both heroes and maps, and Blizzard claim that they're going to support the game post-launch with new, free add-on content rather than paid DLC. A round of applause for them, then; doubly so since their parent company is Activision, who loves milking the annual Call of Duty installments dry.

The other nice side-effect of it being a full-price game is that everyone has access to everything from day one. Everyone can pick a favourite character and get to grips with them without having to wait for them to come around in a free-to-play rotation; everyone is, in other words, on a level playing field to begin with, with no advantage given to someone who has paid up for characters, boosters or whatever.

As I say, I'm not yet sure if I'm convinced enough by the beta to hand over 50 quid for the full game when it releases later in the month, but I will say it's the most fun I've had in a first-person shooter for a very long time indeed, and I generally don't go in for competitive first-person shooters. The beta seems to have had some positive attention, too, so hopefully it will enjoy a solid community for some time — long enough for it to be worthwhile for Blizzard to keep adding new content.

If you want to give it a go for yourself, I believe you have until Monday morning to try it out. Better hurry!

2299: The Sprawling Endgame of Dungeon Travelers 2

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I must admit, when I first started playing Dungeon Travelers 2 I was concerned that its dungeons were a bit on the small side compared to the dungeon crawler I had previously played, Demon Gaze. As the game progressed, however, it became apparent that I didn't have anything to worry about.

And then I heard about the post-game content. And then I got into the post-game content.

Demon Gaze had a certain amount of post-game content — most notably a fairly straightforward dungeon where you re-fought all the bosses from earlier in the game, then a horrendously difficult true final boss right at the end. It took me quite a while to plough through it, mind you, though this was partly due to the fact I was also chasing the Platinum trophy, which necessitated a certain amount of grinding on the random number generator in the hope of getting some of the best item drops in the game.

Dungeon Travelers 2's postgame is on a whole other level, though. It's practically a whole other game's worth of content; you finish the main story of the game around about the level 50 mark or so, and the postgame will take you to 99 (and beyond, if you level reset in the hope of "crowning" your characters through permanent stat bonuses) across a number of different dungeons.

What I find most fascinating about Dungeon Travelers 2's postgame is how much effort has been put into it. I find myself wondering how many people will beat the final boss of the main story, watch the credits roll and then put the game down. It would be perfectly valid to do so, after all, since the game is technically "complete" then, even if you haven't even seen half of what it has to offer. There aren't even any specific trophies for the postgame — the only trophies you're likely to see pop in the postgame is the enormous grind that is "kill 20,000 enemies" (you won't even have killed 10,000 by the end of the main story, but you most certainly will have at least 20,000 under your belt by the end of the postgame) and the Platinum. In other words, the only reward you're going to get from seeing the game through to its true end is the satisfaction of having beaten it.

But boy, is that going to feel good when it happens. The postgame dungeons are significantly more challenging than their main story counterparts, and in some cases make use of mechanics that haven't been seen anywhere else in the game. There are dungeons where you have to contend with the relationship between several different floors, dungeons where you have to flip switches to open coloured doors in the right order, dungeons where you have to bring certain classes in order to pass through certain doors (bet you wish you'd leveled Tsurara now, huh) and dungeons that are just a single floor, but absolutely enormous.

Each of the dungeons has two or three bosses to fight as you progress through them, and a level 99 God boss at the very end who will most likely destroy you if you charge in there when you first reach them. Instead, what you're supposed to do is explore each dungeon until you reach a trigger point (normally just before the door to the God battle) which opens up the next one. In a couple of cases, you have to increase your Quest Rank to a certain level before the next dungeon will open up, too, so hopefully you've been paying attention to the Quests as you go through the game!

I'm currently on the second-to-last dungeon, Gear Castle. This is a five-floor futuristic tower with a lot of puzzles. The first floor featured switches that opened blue or red doors (and closed the others), while the second was largely based around conveyor belts that you could switch the direction of with levers around the level. The third, which I'm currently on, features a mix of these two aspects, and I'm yet to see what the fourth and fifth floors offer.

Once I'm through Gear Castle I'm on the home straight: all that stands between me and final victory — aside from that 20,000 kills trophy, which I have no idea how close I am to — is the 30-floor Tower of Bogomil and whatever lies at the very top. I understand that reaching the 26th floor of Bogomil is a significant moment, as it's at this stage your party should be levelled enough to take on the Gods, so I'm looking forward to that with a certain amount of trepidation.

All in all, the clock is going to be well over 200 hours by the time I'm finished with this beast, and I have absolutely loved it throughout. It's seriously one of the best dungeon crawlers — if not RPGs, generally — that I've ever played, and more people need to play and love it.

Assuming I make it to the end by then, I'm planning a month of coverage on MoeGamer next month. There's certainly a hell of a lot to write about.

2298: Holiday on Zack Island

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I wasn't just trying Dead or Alive 5 Last Round out of the blue yesterday; I was inspired to finally pick it up after playing some Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, which I've been enjoying a great deal.

For those unfamiliar, the Dead or Alive Xtreme series has very little to do with the fighting game series Dead or Alive save for involving some of the same characters — specifically, kickboxer and playboy Zack, who owns the various tropical paradises the Xtreme games unfold on, and a selection of lovely ladies from the series indulging in various holiday-ish activities.

The first Dead or Alive Xtreme game — Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, which many people thought might be a joke when it was first announced — was released on Xbox and largely focused, as you might expect, on playing volleyball, but there was a curious dating sim metagame attached, too, where you could give gifts to the various girls in the hope of getting them to partner up with you — you can't play beach volleyball without a partner, after all.

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 on Xbox 360 was a very similar game but had a couple of additions to the original formula. Most notably, it added jetski racing, which was a hell of a lot of fun, and provided a reliable means of making money for those who weren't very good at volleyball or some of the smaller activities the game offered.

And so we come to Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 on PlayStation 4, which in many senses is a bit of a step backwards for the series in that it's closer to the original game in structure, but manages to remain enjoyable regardless. I miss the jetskiing in particular, but I'm enjoying the volleyball and other activities, and the fact that the game is a lot less obtuse about things like what gifts the girls like, what is happening to your relationship levels and suchlike makes it a much more pleasant experience. Couple that with a simple mission and levelling system plus a "grade" given at the end of every 14-day virtual vacation, and despite being pared back in terms of content, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is, in many regards, the most well-structured game in the series.

The thing I like about Dead or Alive Xtreme — all of them, but most recently 3 in particular — is that it's just plain relaxing to play. Gentle, chilled out music plays in the background as you engage in various activities ranging from beach volleyball to rock climbing or a tug of war on floating platforms in the swimming pool. As day gives way to night, your chosen girl heads back to her hotel room and has the option to hang out in the casino and play roulette, blackjack or poker. Then the whole process repeats again.

The reason why it's so relaxing is that it doesn't put any particular pressure on you to play in a given way. "Mission" pop up every so often, either from the girl you're controlling or Zack, and these provide rewards for the overall metagame, but they're strictly optional. In the case of the girls' missions, they can provide a good indicator of how well you're doing on this playthrough, though — in order to get the best score at the end of her holiday, you need to have completed 7 of her specifically numbered missions, ending with "Satisfy [girl] by the end of the vacation".

Aside from that, though, you can tackle the game how you see fit. You can focus on trying to get a complete collection of swimsuits for a favourite character. You can work on trying to satisfy as many of the girls on the island as possible in a single playthrough — pretty difficult when you first start playing, but as you level up their "excitement level" over time, it becomes easier. Or you can switch to "Owner Mode" and just use the game as an attractive software toy, allowing the computer to take control of your chosen girl in various activities while you play with the camera angles and take photographs.

Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 is notorious for not getting an official English localisation due to some controversy a while back. There is some debate over whether or not publisher Koei Tecmo really believed that the game would be subject to backlash from social justice types when it was released, but you can bet if the game did see an official Western release, we wouldn't hear the end of it from the numerous holier-than-thou publications and writers on the market today.

The silly thing is, it's not offensive in the slightest. It's sexy, sure, but Dead or Alive has always featured spectacularly beautiful women, and this in itself isn't offensive. Some of the swimsuits are quite revealing, and some of the minigames cause an entertaining "swimsuit malfunction" for the loser, though the suit in question doesn't actually fall off or anything — it just comes untied and stays magically attached. In other words, there's no nipples, no fannies, no bumholes, no fucking, no kissing and definitely no holding hands. It's just an all-female cast hanging out on the beach, playing games and having fun rather than punching each other in the tits like they do in the mainline Dead or Alive games.

To put it another way, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, like its predecessors, is a game that it's just nice to play. It's not a deep game, it's not a complicated game (unless you want to optimise your playthrough strategies for the fastest progress) and it's not a difficult game, but it is a game that it's just thoroughly pleasant to spend time with, and I predict it's one I'll keep coming back to when I just want to chill out and enjoy myself without thinking too hard about anything.

The perfect virtual holiday, in other words.

2296: Games Called "Simulator" That Aren't Simulators: A Joke That's Run its Course

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Back in the Good Old Days, my Dad played a whole lot of Flight Simulator, both in its SubLOGIC days and subsequently when it became a Microsoft product. (He still does, though perhaps not quite as much as he used to.)

One recurring joke we had in our family was taunting my Dad by saying that Flight Simulator was a game (which it is), which he would inevitably respond to by vociferously declaring that "it is not a game", because he didn't play games. (He has relaxed this policy in recent years, largely due to the advent of iOS.)

While I didn't agree with his assessment of what a game was, I did, however, understand where his argument came from. Proper noun Flight Simulator was a cut above even other lower-case flight simulators in terms of realism and depth, and noteworthy at the time for being one of the only civil aviation flight sims. It was also noteworthy for being one of the first ever open-world sandbox games, in that there were no goals whatsoever besides those that you set for yourself; there wasn't even really a "fail" state, since if you crashed, you could just respawn and start again.

By far the most noteworthy thing about Flight Simulator was the fact that it did exactly what its title suggested: it provided an accurate simulation of what it was actually like to fly a plane. That means no simplified controls; that means no throwing your plane around the sky; that means the need for at least a basic understanding of physics (including lift, thrust and drag) in order to even get off the ground. And even outside of the more obvious realism aspects such as the flight model, even navigation was simulated accurately; you had to tune navigation radios, follow the needle and so forth. Many real-life honest-to-goodness pilots actually trained to fly on instruments using Flight Simulator, such was its level of realism and detail when it came to this side of things, even if the graphics weren't particularly impressive in the early days.

As a result of all this, I came to associate the word "simulator" with… well, simulations. Virtual depictions of something real — and a depiction that errs more on the side of realism than providing a thrilling gaming experience.

This morning I received an unsolicited Steam invite to a group promoting an upcoming game called Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016. This is what Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016 looks like.

If you have never encountered the modern use of the word "simulator", Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016 pretty much sums it up. These days, although Flight Simulator still exists, the word "simulator" is much more frequently used in a "hilariously" ironic manner to describe something ridiculous, obviously unrealistic and filled with puerile humour.

I generally have nothing against puerile humour for the most part, but the use of the word "simulator" for this kind of thing is just getting a bit beyond a joke now. In just the last few years we've had Surgeon Simulator, Goat Simulator, Shower with Your Dad Simulator, Zombie Training Simulator, Corporate Lifestyle Simulator, Domestic Dog Simulator… and, well, literally hundreds of others. While there are a few genuine simulators in among the dross — the most noteworthy being titles like Euro Truck Simulator and its ilk, which follow the Flight Simulator mould of actually providing a realistic simulation of a real-life activity — the vast majority of these games are designed to be stupid visual jokes for YouTubers and streamers to whoop and holler over on videos with headlines like "CRAZY game from HELL?! SHOWER with YOUR MOM!!"

More than anything, I find it a bit frustrating to see the word "simulator" thrown around so casually these days because sometimes you just want to actually indulge in a genuine simulation of something — you want to see what it's like to drive a truck, use heavy construction machinery, fly a plane, launch a rocket, whatever — and this nonsense's use of the word completely devalues the word "simulator" to such a degree that it's now meaningless. Moreover, it's actively difficult to find real simulators — which, in the past, have had pretty functional, self-explanatory titles, such as Flight Simulator — among all this shit.

Ultimately this sort of thing is just another side-effect of the attention deficit disorder that the Internet seems to collectively suffer from. The population of the Internet staggers drunkenly from meme to meme, desperately searching for the next joke they can milk until it becomes the opposite of funny, then all the people who only use Facebook can start posting about it and it officially becomes dead, at which point a new meme shall rise and everyone shall become sick of it once more.

Perhaps I'm just old and cynical. Or perhaps I'm just tired of Steam and the mobile app stores getting flooded with "joke" games like Pregnancy with Your Mom Simulator 2016. People complained about the Wii being laden with shovelware, but that was nothing compared to the shit we see on Steam and mobile in 2016 — shit that distracts attention away from stuff that is actually noteworthy and interesting.

2295: You Should Play Aselia the Eternal

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JAST USA recently released Aselia the Eternal on Steam. The game's been around for a good few years now — its original Japanese version for even longer — but its release on Steam will doubtless allow a whole new audience to (hopefully) enjoy it. I will now attempt to explain why it is worth giving it a go.

Aselia the Eternal is a combination of a visual novel and a strategy game. The overall balance is very much in favour of the story side of things — it's a good six hours of reading before you get to the game's first strategy battle sequence — but when you do get to the strategic aspect, it's a game that puts up a good fight.

The narrative concerns the player-protagonist Yuuto, who finds himself drawn into another world populated by people who speak a completely different language to him. Unable to find his way home, he gradually learns to communicate with these people — the ones with whom he's staying known as "Spirits" — and finds himself recruited into the army as an "Etranger", a wielder of a powerful, sentient sword that regularly threatens to eat his soul.

Gradually, as Yuuto becomes more and more involved in the lives of the Spirits, he starts to worry less and less about trying to find his way back home and more about helping to resolve the conflict that threatens to tear this fantasy world apart. As such, the narrative becomes very much a high fantasy sort of affair — war on a grand scale, magic and mayhem around every corner, transcendence of humanity not at all out of the question — and builds to a thoroughly exciting conclusion that I won't spoil here.

The story is compelling, interesting, well-written and well-translated, but it's the gameplay part that is perhaps the most interesting thing about it, since it's one of the most original takes on strategic RPG-style combat I've seen. Virtually eliminating all luck from the equation, combat in Aselia the Eternal is actually about putting units together in small squads to perform most effectively according to what type of unit they are — and by doing this correctly you can effectively guarantee that you'll win a conflict before you reach it. The tricky part is in finding those suitable combinations in the first place.

The basic rules of engagement have each of your squads made up of three ranks — a frontline fighter, a mid-range tank and a support fighter bringing up the rear. Each of the different types of Spirits perform best in a particular slot: Blue Spirits (such as the eponymous heroine) do their best work as speedy damage dealers in the front row; Green Spirits tend to have the highest defense and HP, so sit in the middle; Red Spirits often have support abilities that can damage an entire enemy squad or provide suitable benefits to your own, so sit at the back. You're not limited to this arrangement — and indeed, with Yuuto in the mix, who is none of those things, you'll have at least one squad with an unconventional lineup — but there are clearly optimal ways to do things, making each of the battles in the game as much of a puzzle as a strategic RPG experience.

Aselia the Eternal comes together so nicely because everything it does is in service to its narrative and worldbuilding. Despite not having an open world you can freely explore, its excellent storytelling and descriptive narration builds a wonderfully convincing setting that gives the strategic sequences genuine meaning and drama. And, as a result of that worldbuilding, your units in the strategic sequences become more than just sets of stats and abilities; they become people. People who you don't want to see die, because yes, this game has permadeath.

The question of being "more than just a soldier" is one of the main narrative themes explored in the game, and it's a rather wonderful moment when you realise that you, the player, are having the same epiphany that the characters in the game are. There are some wonderfully touching sequences with Yuuto and the Spirits as they get to know one another, and you're right there with them. And, as the narrative ramps up and you bring more and more allies with you, the tension becomes palpable as you take them into battles that you really don't want to see them lose.

I don't want to say too much more because part of the wonder of Aselia the Eternal is exploring the experience for yourself and discovering everything this remarkable work has to offer. Suffice to say if you enjoy in-depth storytelling — and lots of if — and aren't averse to a bit of red-hot strategy action, you should most certainly check it out. And then strongly consider supporting JAST's recent release of the sequel Seinarukana, which I'll be investigating for myself in the near future!

2291: Alienation: Loot, Guns and Unobtrusive Multiplayer

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I'd been umming and ahhing over whether or not to give Housemarque's latest PS4 game Alienation a go, but I eventually decided to take the plunge and try it out this evening, even feeling the trepidation I already did that it would have too great a focus on online multiplayer for my liking.

Thankfully, it turns out to be an excellent game that looks to have a decent amount of depth — and best of all, while it does have an emphasis on online co-op (as well as optional Dark Souls-style "invasions") it can be played solo or with friends only if you so desire, though I don't doubt that soloing the game will prove to be an exercise in frustration.

But what is it? Well, it's basically Diablo with guns, with a touch of competitive arcadey high-score systems added for good measure. It's not an out-and-out arcade game like previous Housemarque titles Resogun and Super Stardust in that there's a persistent campaign with character levelling, skill trees and all that good stuff, but it does feature mechanics such as score multipliers, powerups, bonuses and the like. Plus apparently once you finish the main campaign there's a whole host of more arcadey stuff to enjoy — randomised levels, harder difficulties, special mission types — and so there's clearly a fine pair of legs on this game.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying. The guns feel suitably powerful, and the interface reflects your interactions well, with health bars being chipped away, damage numbers flying around and overdramatic pyrotechnics punctuating every firefight. The destructible environments are both impressive and hazardous, and there's a good variety of both enemies to contend with and weapons with which to dispatch them. Objectives are simple and straightforward — usually "go here and interact with this" or "go here and blow up these things", at least in the first few levels — but allow for game sessions to run smoothly with minimal aimless wandering and backtracking, and minimal need for voice communication, for that matter, which is the aspect of the online multiplayer I was most concerned with. (I hate voice chatting with strangers.)

Thankfully, in the few games I played this evening, no-one was using voice chat; everyone was instead making use of the three preset stock phrases "Over here!", "Wait!" and "Nice!" assigned to the D-pad. This was all that was needed for effective teamwork and coordination, and because the game doesn't particularly reward lone wolves or trolls — it is a purely cooperative affair, after all, unless you enable the Invasion feature, which is strictly optional — there's no real reason for someone to jump into a game and spoil the experience for everyone else. Consequently, while there wasn't much in the way of socialising between me and the players I teamed up with for a few missions, I don't mind that at all; it was a pleasant enough experience just fighting alongside them, and I don't actually really need the social element to feel like playing with others is worthwhile.

This is what I mean by the game having "unobtrusive multiplayer". The multiplayer is drop-in, drop-out, meaning that you can start playing without having to wait for hours in a lobby for three other people to be on the same mission as you, and once the other players are in there are no interruptions; they appear in your game seamlessly, and the action isn't interrupted any time they want to access the menus to level up or change their gear. In a way it's kind of just like playing with computer-controlled squadmates, only it's actual humans from all over the world controlling them. You may wonder what the point of this is, but it just works, okay? And speaking as someone who is generally terrified of playing online games with other people — particularly cooperative ones, which, oddly, seem to foster some of the most aggressively perfectionist assholes in all of gaming — I found my brief foray into Alienation this evening to be most satisfying and enjoyable.

I'll definitely be playing some more; the combination of loot whoring (with variable rarity items a la Diablo), upgrading weapons, cooperative blasting and high score chasing — with your "score" here doubling as the experience points you earn in a mission — makes for an addictive formula that I'm pleased and happy I decided to take a chance on.