2491: No, I Won't "Stop Buying Physical Video Games Already!"

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This argument seems to crop up every so often as we move ever-onwards into the supposed "digital age", and this time around it was clumsily espoused by Damon Beres of The Huffington Post.

The thrust of Beres' argument is that because digital sales are up, we should all simply stop buying physical products. "[The rise] is pretty good news for one reason in particular," he argues. "Physical video games are basically obsolete wastes of space and resources."

I can see where he's coming from to an extent. Physical games take up space that not everyone has. If you're living in a particularly cramped apartment, for example, you may not want to devote lots of shelves to DVD-size cases when they could be better used for something else — or perhaps even abandoned entirely for those who have gone truly Spartan in their accommodation arrangements.

But Beres' argument is flawed thanks to a few factual inaccuracies, and one absolutely honking issue, the latter of which we'll come on to in a moment.

"You may not realise it," says Beres, "but if you're gaming on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, the actual disc you buy at the store doesn't really do much. Games need to be installed on your system's hard drive because the consoles can't run games directly off the Blu-Ray discs."

False. Running games from disc is often a much more efficient use of the limited hard drive space both the PS4 and XB1 have available to them, since many games only install the most important files to the hard drive and then pull the data from the disc itself as required. There are exceptions to this rule — graphically intensive triple-A games tend to do full installs to quicken load times, for example — but the last few games I've played on my PS4 booted up straight away after putting the disc in, suggesting that the game perhaps only installed the main executable file and most frequently accessed data files and little else.

Beres continues his argument thus: "Gaming is also more convenient when you move to a digital library. Any games you want are stored on your hard drive and boot up the moment you select them — no getting off of the couch to switch discs out."

Also false… sort of. With entry-level PS4 and XB1 systems only having 500GB hard drives (and the Wii U having an even more pathetic 32GB straight out of the box), there is a hard limit to how many digital games you can have installed on your console at once, after which you will need to delete them and re-download them at a later date if you want to play them again. And with more substantial games weighing in around the 50GB mark, this is a long download, even on fibre-optic broadband; much longer than the time it takes to get a disc down from a shelf and put it in a slot.

This brings us neatly onto the humdinger of the point that Beres has failed to address at all in his article: the question of archiving. At present, we have access to digital console games at the whim of Sony and Microsoft. Sure, right now we can redownload our games as many times as we want if we need to shuffle the contents of our consoles' hard drives around, but what happens in another 5-10 years when a true next generation of consoles shows up? I certainly don't believe that Sony and Microsoft are going to keep the respective digital download stores for old platforms available forever; Sony has already shuttered the PSP's PlayStation Store access, for example, forcing those who hadn't already downloaded their purchases to upgrade to a Vita or PlayStation TV if they want to keep their content. I find myself wondering how long the PS3 PlayStation Store will survive… hopefully they'll at least wait until I've played my PlayStation Plus copy of Yakuza 5.

This is less of an issue on PC, where we're not locked into a specific storefront, despite a significant chunk of gamers choosing to make use of Valve's digital platform Steam as their default means of managing their gaming library — at least partly due to the regular deep discounts we get on even brand new titles on most digital platforms. If Steam were to shut down tomorrow, there are a wide variety of other places on the Internet where you can download the same games, be it alternative digital storefronts such as GOG.com, or even directly from developers' and publishers' websites. PC gamers are also free to back their games up onto physical media whenever they like, and PC gaming is also less subject to the "generational" issues that consoles have, since with each new iteration of the popular operating systems, there are talented developers — amateur and professional alike — dedicated to ensuring that old games continue to work on modern systems.

With consoles, however, we don't have those failsafes in place. If PSN or Xbox Live goes down, no digital games for you. If and when those storefronts close permanently, you'd better hope you'd already downloaded everything you want to keep, otherwise it's lost forever — a potent reminder of the oft-quoted condition in most software's licensing agreements that you are not buying the software itself, merely the right to use it.

Keep a library of discs and cartridges, however, and you can always play your games, regardless of whether you have an Internet connection or if the services in question are working correctly. Keep a library of discs and you get to archive these experiences for future generations — or indeed for yourself — to be able to enjoy ten, twenty, thirty years down the road.

This may not be a priority for every gameplayer — the sort of person who plays nothing but yearly Call of Duty or FIFA installments is unlikely to care, for example, since they tend to play with the mindset that games are disposable experiences — but for those who value gaming as a form of creative expression, as a crafted entertainment experience or even as art will almost certainly want to keep "the games shelf" around for many years to come.

2490: Root Letter: Some First Impressions

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Today I've been playing a bunch of Root Letter from Kadokawa Games, localised and published by PQube over here. I'm honestly surprised that I've heard pretty much jack squat about this game except press releases from the publisher, because it's turning out to be a most intriguing, enjoyable visual novel/adventure game hybrid.

Root Letter's basic premise runs thus. 15 years ago, you were penpals with a high school girl named Aya Fumino. In total, you exchanged ten letters with one another before drifting apart, but one day, 15 years later, you discover an eleventh letter with no postmark. In this letter, Aya appears to confess to a murder, but gives no details about the crime, the victim or her current status. Understandably somewhat perturbed by this alarming discovery, you set off for her hometown with only her return address to guide you.

Upon arriving, you find an empty plot where her house is supposed to be, and quickly discover two rather strange stories: firstly, that while the Fumino house did indeed once stand on that plot, it burned down fifteen years ago; secondly, and more disturbingly, the only person by the name of "Aya Fumino" that people in the area seem to know died twenty-five years ago from a mysterious disease.

What unfolds from this point is a mystery story as you attempt to piece together what really happened to Aya — and, if the stories about her death are true, who the person you've been corresponding with actually is — by using her letters from 15 years ago as guidance. Using a combination of the information in the letters and evidence you gather through investigating scenes and conversing with various characters, you gradually come to figure out the identities of "Aya's" classmates, each of whom theoretically hold a piece of the puzzle, but all of whom are extremely reluctant to speak of the past, and of their classmate — the girl you knew as Aya — in particular.

I'm roughly halfway through a first playthrough after a little over five hours, and I believe there are four discrete "routes" for the final two chapters to take, varying according to how you remember your replies to Aya's letters went at the start of each chapter. It's given me a solid idea of how the game works.

Essentially, it's a modern take on old-school "ADV"-style visual novels such as Nocturnal Illusion in that you're given an interface and a variety of actions to perform — including moving between locations, looking at things in a location, asking characters about topics, showing items from your inventory to characters and just standing around thinking — but in practice there's generally only one "correct" option to push the story onward. At the end of most of the chapters, there's an "investigation" sequence where you interrogate someone you suspect to be one of Aya's classmates from 15 years ago, using knowledge you've obtained and physical evidence you've gathered to destroy their arguments.

If this all sounds a bit Ace Attorney, you'd be absolutely right; the structure is very similar, with the standard wandering around exploring gameplay mirroring Ace Attorney's investigation sequences, and the interrogation sequences working much like the courtroom scenes, right down to having a limited number of chances to present the correct piece of evidence and proceed. Pleasingly, the interrogation sequences also feature some ridiculously overdramatic music that rivals Ace Attorney's classic Pursuit ~ Cornered! theme in terms of ramping up the intensity.

One interesting mechanic the game has comes from the protagonist's nickname "Max", which comes from his apparent predilection to give things everything he's got, even when it's not strictly necessary to do so. In mechanical terms, this is represented as "Max Mode", where a meter pulses up the sides of the screen with four different divisions, each representing a particular "intensity" of comment that you want to fling at someone. The bottom of the meter represents simple statements, moving up through lightly provocative, very provocative all the way to "I can't believe you just said that". When these sequences present themselves, you have a limited amount of time to determine how intensely would be appropriate to argue the point Max is presently debating, and the meter moves seemingly unpredictably at times, making it a bit of a test of reactions as much as choosing the right option. Fortunately for those blessed with less than stellar reflexes, you don't lose a "life" if you get one of these wrong; you can simply try again.

Thus far the story has been highly intriguing and hinted at several different directions it could (and probably will) branch off into in its final chapters. The setup is an interesting one, and it's satisfying to gradually see the truth slowly coming into focus as you progress. I have no idea what the actual "truth" is at this point, but I'm very interested to find out.

Since this game has had so little coverage on the Internet at large, I'm going to devote some time on MoeGamer to it at some point in the near future. Whether there's enough to give it the full Cover Game treatment or if it will simply be a one-off article remains to be seen, but count on some more detailed thoughts once I've seen how the whole thing ends up.

For now, if you've been thinking about grabbing this, I'd say do so. And if you've never heard of it and enjoyed titles like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, you'll definitely want to give this one a go.

2489: Kingsglaive

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I watched the Final Fantasy XV movie Kingsglaive this evening. It was pretty spectacular, and as something to get one in the mood for Final Fantasy XV it does its job admirably. Taken by itself, it's perhaps a little heavy on the action sequences and light on the justifications that link them together, but for a Final Fantasy fan such as myself, it was fanservice heaven.

Unlike the previous Final Fantasy movie The Spirits Within, which wasn't based on an existing game and only had the loosest of thematic similarities to the venerable series, Kingsglaive very much knew who its primary audience was. As such, the whole thing was riddled with little nods and references to other games in the series.

A wide shot of the Lucian city of Insomnia had a billboard for the "Bank of Spira", a reference to Final Fantasy X's world. Water-based summon Leviathan just happened to be in a giant fishtank present at a highbrow reception. One of the enemy airships inexplicably had everyone's favourite pervy octopus Ultros inside it, though sadly without a speaking role. The "demons" that the antagonists of the piece, the Empire, bring to bear on the Lucians are a dead ringer for Final Fantasy VII's Diamond Weapon. And let's not, of course, forget the presence of Knights of the Round who, after Heavensward, have now played a starring role in two consecutive Final Fantasy works as opposed to being a "secret" summon for the truly dedicated player to uncover.

The movie did a great job of setting the scene and introducing some of the lore that is clearly going to be central to Final Fantasy XV as a whole. It's nice to see that the game is incorporating elements of both classic Final Fantasy — crystals being of paramount importance to the world's magic being the main one — and the more recent titles with modern-to-futuristic technology being in evidence.

I'm a big fan of settings that combine technology and magic, and I think it's traditionally been a rather underexplored variant on fantasy. Sure, the idea of magic combined with the modern world has been popularised by the Harry Potter series in recent years, but it's something that is always interesting to explore, I think. There's a quote from horror game Outlast that stuck with me and that I will now probably butcher for you now: "show a man from the past technology and he will think it is magic; show a man from the present magic and he will think it is technology." This is the core of what's interesting about it, I think: if you have magic, why do you need technology, and vice versa?

This is something I also found interesting about Shadowrun Hong Kong, which I finished earlier today. Shadowrun actually almost plays down its fantastic elements outside of some occasional references to "The Awakening", mages occasionally being among the foes that stand in your way and the fact that orks, elves and dwarves are happily wandering around in a traditionally human-only world. By de-emphasising the fantastic elements, they simply felt natural and "normal" even though they're far from reality.

Final Fantasy has always played up its more fantastic elements, by contrast, and Kingsglaive was no exception to this rule, with a spectacular and lengthy final battle raging between the protagonist and the antagonist, set to a backdrop of gigantic summoned titans and demons smacking the shit out of each other, the foreground and background conflicts taking turns to mirror one another.

I absolutely love this particular breed of overblown insanity and always have done. It's so fantastic and unbelievable that it becomes perfect escapism: something that literally cannot be done in reality, so becomes all the more appealing to be a part of, even if it's only as a passive observer.

If the main game of Final Fantasy XV is half as spectacular as Kingsglaive was, I'll be very happy indeed. But since it's the centrepoint of an incredibly ambitious transmedia campaign encompassing a computer-generated move, an anime series, mobile games and then finally the damn game itself when it comes out at the end of this month, I'm anticipating something even more joyfully exuberant.

I don't doubt the game will have its haters, as its predecessors also have. (I've given up arguing with people who can't see the good in the FFXIII series, it's just not worth the stress.) But I for one cannot wait to step into Noctis' lovingly-rendered boots and start exploring this fantastic new world, and watching Kingsglaive this evening has made the wait just a smidge more agonising.

2488: That Happened

Are you familiar with the subreddit /r/thatHappened? It is one of the more popular subreddits out there, devoted to posting the sort of "PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE!!" garbage that people so like to festoon their social media walls with these days.

Posts that crop up on /r/thatHappened typically have a number of things in common.

Firstly, they usually involve someone making a point of saying they were doing something entirely mundane, like going to school or filling their car with petrol.

Next, they introduce another character of some description, typically a stranger, but one whom the author of the post mysteriously seems to know absolutely everything about, right down to their ethnicity, age, employment status, affluence and anything else you'd care to mention.

Optionally, a child can be involved in the story. If a child is involved in the story, said child will be quoted saying something that no child in the world has ever said, something which can easily be discerned by the use of vocabulary or turn of phrase. Even at my most precocious growing up, when I knew what words like "floccinaucinihilipilification" and "antidisestablishmentarianism" meant (and how to spell them), I still spoke like, y'know, a kid. Kids in these stories never do, usually coming out with some sort of profound wisdom you'd normally expect to hear from a wizened old karate master or something.

The author of the story, the character they introduced (who is inevitably a minority of some description) and/or the child will then become involved in some sort of altercation with an antagonist, who is almost definitely a white male, because as we all know white men are all literally Satan.

The story will then go one of two ways. 1) The author, the character and/or the child will then devastate their opponent in some exaggerated manner, either physically or with razor-sharp wit. The white male(s) will then inevitably leave with their tails between their legs. Alternatively, 2) The author, the character and/or the child will suffer some sort of sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic or transphobic indignity that is so profoundly terrible that the author's immediate reaction was to post it on Facebook rather than take it to the authorities.

In the case of 1): If the altercation took place in a public place such as a school, petrol station or coffee shop, everyone surrounding the author, the character and/or the child will then spontaneously break into applause and at least one person will be crying.

In the case of 2): The author will blame the altercation on a major event that has happened in the news recently and will confess to be "crying right now", with bonus points if they are doing so "into [their] cereal" or some other foodstuff.

In both cases, the author will then attempt to sign off with some sort of quasi-poetic but ultimately asinine truism and encourage everyone to Like, Comment and Share their post to "raise awareness". Said post (which is inevitably set to Public visibility, even if the author typically keeps their social media pages private) will then receive multiple thousands of Likes, Comments and Shares through the phenomenon of virality, with a significant number of people sharing it doing so blindly without bothering to ponder how exactly something quite so improbable happened, or indeed questioning the author on further details of the incident. (This was a terrible racist/sexist/ableist incident, don't you know? You can't ask questions, you might traumatise the poor soul further!)

Once you're familiar with this template, you can spot bullshit a mile off. I encourage you to get intimately acquainted with it before clicking that "Share" button in the future. On a related note, I also encourage you to familiarise yourself with Snopes.com if you aren't already.

That is all.

2487: The Utter Insignificance of You and Everything You've Ever Known

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I had the great pleasure of seeing Professor Brian Cox speak at the Southampton Guildhall this evening. This isn't the sort of thing I'd generally go along to, but a friend had an extra ticket and said he would rather it went to someone in his immediate circle of friends rather than his backup list, so along I went.

I won't pretend to have followed much (or possibly any) of the lecture as a whole, but it was an interesting and inspiring experience to be in the presence of someone so obviously knowledgeable and passionate about their work. Cox's lecture was punctuated by occasional interruptions from his podcast partner Robin Ince, perfectly timed so that just when the sciencey bits were getting a bit heavy, he was there to inject some much-needed levity into proceedings with impressions of his colleague and Brian Blessed, among others.

Cox's lecture was on cosmology and the study of the universe, with particular emphasis on theories surrounding the Big Bang, the theoretical period of "inflation" which took place before the Big Bang that we've historically regarded as the beginning of everything — "the day with no yesterday" — and how modern theories suggest that what we understand as "our universe" might actually just be one of a potentially infinite number of "bubbles" out there in the wider context of perpetually inflating space.

I won't bore you with the science or the mathematics — largely because I didn't understand a lot of it and can't accurately remember the rest of it — but I will share with you one thing that I found particularly impactful in his whole lecture.

My friend Emily told me as we were going in to the lecture that she was almost hoping for a reminder of how utterly insignificant we and everyone around us actually are in the grand scheme of things; how unimportant our little blue dot is to the universe as a whole, and how little things like, say, Donald Trump being elected president of the United States really matter when you actually think about it in the context of the whole universe.

Cox delivered on this front, acknowledging that while we are a seeming anomaly — the Fermi paradox suggesting that if there were other advanced civilisations out there, we should almost certainly have seen some sort of evidence of them by now — we are ultimately insignificant to the universe as a whole. Just one pale blue dot, as Sagan put it, a "very small stage in a vast cosmic arena".

And yet both Sagan's quote and Cox's lecture continued beyond this point: apparent insignificance can also be interpreted as uniqueness that should be cherished and treasured. We may be just one pale blue dot, but it's our blue dot, a home we've made our own, for better or worse. And each of us may just be one individual taking up a tiny fraction of a tiny pale blue dot, but there is no-one in the world exactly like us, there never has been and there never will be. All of us, every single one of us, is precious and important in our own way, because there'll never be anyone quite like us ever again.

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot," said Sagan in his famous 1994 speech. "Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light… to my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

2486: One and Only Post About America's New President

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America elected Donald Trump, noted toupee wearer and generally unpleasant person, as their President. This is either terrifying or highly amusing — or perhaps a combination of both.

I have no love for Donald Trump. He's shown himself repeatedly in both social and popular media to be a bigoted twat who frequently speaks without thinking, promising entirely unreasonable things and making objectionable comments about all manner of groups of people. He is not, in short, who I would have voted for as President, were I an American.

I feel that it's worth contemplating exactly why so many people voted Trump, though, much as it was also worth contemplating why so many people voted Brexit, and why so many people voted for the Conservatives to govern the UK after seemingly widespread dissatisfaction with their previous work and particularly their former leader David Cameron.

This article from The Guardian offers an explanation.

Clinton’s supporters among the media didn’t help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation’s papers, but it was the quality of the media’s enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here’s what it consisted of:

Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.

Her scandals weren’t real.

The economy was doing well / America was already great.

Working-class people weren’t supporting Trump.

And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.

How did the journalists’ crusade fail? The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach?

In short, instead of allowing people to make their own mind up and encouraging them to think critically about both candidates — or the pros and cons of Brexit vs Remain, since a very similar situation unfolded with that vote — the mainstream media attempted to rely on its power over society by clearly marking one option as the "wrong" one. Trump is evil because x,y,z, Brexit is bad because a,b,c. It didn't stop there, though. It then repeatedly listed all the reasons why you would be a terrible person for voting for the "wrong" option along with all the reasons you would be an absolute paragon of virtue, ally to the oppressed and generally wonderful human being if you voted for the "correct" option.

It may be that if you critically analysed the positions of both options, you still thought that Hillary was the right choice, and if so, great. If it had been left at that, she could have probably won. But people need to reach that conclusion naturally rather than being shepherded away by barbed wire, locked gates and signs saying "DANGER! TRUMP AHEAD". People, particularly in the age of the Internet, are curious beasts, and if you tell them they can't or shouldn't have something, that will only make it more attractive to a particular type of individual. "Why is the media so absolutely adamant that I shouldn't choose this option?" they'll think. "What are they trying to hide?"

We are in an age of social media, where buzz and influence can be created artificially to a certain extent, but more commonly it is an organic, natural process that occurs seemingly randomly and at the bitter, twisted and above all unpredictable whims of the great Internet Gods. In this age, where everyone likes to feel like Their Opinion Matters — and where we're repeatedly told that Our Opinion Matters, even when it clearly doesn't — people really don't like to be told what to think. People really don't like to be talked down to or told that a conclusion they may or may not have reached themselves is "wrong", or that there is only one "correct" option, regardless of whether or not you personally actually think it's right for you if you take a closer look at it.

This kind of attitude — a "journalists' crusade", as Frank puts it in his Guardian piece — leads to people feeling bitterness and resentment towards the media. We're already in a place where general trust in the media is at something of a low, so it wouldn't have taken much to push people into "spiteful" mode, where they deliberately go against whatever the media is telling them to do simply to send a very clear message: we want to make up our own minds, and fuck you for trying to tell us we're awful people for doing so. There is, of course, a certain irony in doing this causing everyone who feels that way to vote the same way, but when you only really have two practical options, there are limits to how effectively you can protest.

"[Hillary Clinton] was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment," writes Frank. "An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine."

Well, I'd say that sledgehammer has well and truly been taken to that machine, and a clear message has been sent. I'm not excusing the result or saying that it was the "right one", just saying what has seemingly happened from an outsider's perspective. It is pretty much exactly the same reason there is so much resistance to perceived "political correctness" — people do not like to be told how to think or feel.

It remains to be seen whether or not this election result is ultimately "good" or "bad" for America — and the world — as a whole, but as a friend on Facebook noted, "I look forward to four years of people learning how little power the President has."

2485: The Value of Short Experiences

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You know me, dear reader, I love getting my teeth into a meaty RPG as much as the next man — assuming the next man is as much of a loser as I am — but sometimes it's nice to cleanse the palate with something shorter. Perhaps even something that you can finish in a single sitting.

I thought this with Outlast and its DLC, which I played recently, and I've also thought it with the visual novel Negligee, which I'm going to do a writeup for on MoeGamer later this week. I also think it whenever I play games that are friendly to bite-size sessions, like arcade-style games where the emphasis is on getting better at a short, sharp experience rather than slogging your way through hundreds of levels.

There seems to be something of an assumption among many people online these days that a game somehow lacks value if its developers don't "support" it post-release with regular updates. Now, in some cases, this makes sense — massively multiplayer games like Final Fantasy XIV would grow stale quickly if they didn't get an injection of new stuff to do now and then, for example — but in others, particularly games that are heavily story-based, there's a great deal of value in simply drawing a line under it, saying "that's it" and calling it finished.

This clamouring for constant updates is particularly pronounced in the mobile game sector, where a lot of games seem to have designs on being "massively multiplayer" experiences anyway, even when they involve little to no actual player interaction. Google Play and App Store reviewers (and, to a marginally lesser extent, Steam reviewers) will get seriously whiny if even the dumbest of timewasters doesn't have regular updates with new levels or seasonal events or whatever — and even worse if the experience costs "too much" for what they perceive the mythical money-to-hours ratio is supposed to be — and it always bothers me a bit. Are they seriously saying that they don't want that game to ever end, that they'll be happy doing nothing but flicking birds at pigs or matching candy sweets forever? I can't imagine feeling that way. I need new and interesting things to do on a fairly regular basis; while my longstanding love affair with Final Fantasy XIV would seem to run counter to this statement, that game does at least reinvent itself with new stuff every so often, and I play other things alongside it anyway.

Back to the original point, though: there is a great deal of value in shorter experiences that forego bloat and filler in favour of a concise but still enjoyable experience. Not everything needs to be a 50+ hour epic, at least partly because no-one has time to play all the 50+ hour epics that are already out there, let alone a new one.

Outlast would have got exhausting and tiresome if it was any longer than it was — the main game was already skating on that boundary by the time I finished it; I much preferred the snappier DLC — and Negligee tells the story it wants to tell in less than an hour, albeit with eleven different endings to encourage replays. A game that provides an enjoyable experience without taking over your whole life is something to be celebrated, particularly when you're waiting for the next exciting thing to come over the horizon as I am right now with the imminent Final Fantasy XV. And I for one am glad that there are plenty of developers out there who don't feel the need to add unnecessary bloat to their games for the sake of an artificially inflated playtime, or a set of Achievements, or simply because the ever-whiny general public insists that £15 is "too much" for a game that is over in two hours.

Short game developers, I salute you, and you'll always have my business in that awkward period just before a big release! 🙂

2484: Further Adventures in Hong Kong

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Shadowrun Hong Kong continues to be an excellent game. The best thing about it, I think, is quite how varied the different missions are — and how the game is structured, allowing you to accept multiple missions at a time, but forcing you to focus on a single one at a time once it begins. This approach helps prevent the problem a lot of Western RPGs have, where you get completely bombarded with quests and have no idea where to go and which order it is "best" to do them in, leading to an unfocused, meandering experience.

Shadowrun Hong Kong, meanwhile, features missions that take maybe 30-60 minutes to complete, tops, each of which has its own set of objectives and mini storyline to follow through. And they're not all a matter of "go somewhere, have a fight, get out again".

Over the course of last night and tonight, I've completed a variety of missions and no two have been alike. In one, I had to infiltrate a museum and steal the most valuable artifacts possible without tripping the alarms. In another, I had to solve a serial murder case — this had the option of concluding without combat were I to let the culprit go free. In another still, I had to disrupt the qi flow in the offices of a company that took great pride in its geomancy.

What it kind of feels like — which is fitting, given Shadowrun's background — is a tabletop role-playing session, with discrete adventures linked together to form a campaign, each of which features its own story, evocative narration and interesting characters. Where Shadowrun differs from other games that have attempted to evoke the feeling of tabletop roleplaying sessions, however, is that it keeps things focused and trims the fat.

It doesn't have Baldur's Gate's problem of pretty much everything being lootable, only for you to discover to your dismay that 95% of the containers in the game house identical rubbish shortswords and suits of leather armour. It doesn't have The Elder Scrolls' problem of everyfuckingthing being pick-upable, making it extremely difficult to distinguish meaningful, helpful items from pointless window dressing, particularly if, God forbid, you drop a key item in the room where you've been storing all the thousands of wheels of cheese you've been hoarding "just in case". And it doesn't have the older Dungeons & Dragons games' problem of sticking a little too rigidly to the tabletop ruleset and consequently not really taking full advantage of the benefits of playing on a computer.

The combat in Shadowrun takes this approach, too. It doesn't overwhelm you with tactical options, but it does allow you to do things like take cover and use your weapons in a variety of different ways according to your proficiency with them. Not everyone in the party is necessarily a "combat" character, either — my protagonist, for example, is a Decker, which means she's more suited to marking targets using her knowledge of technology than actually firing a gun or going toe to toe with opponents — though I must admit, this didn't stop me from outfitting her with retractable cybernetic claws for close combat should the need ever arise. Who doesn't want to be Cyber-Wolverine?

All in all, Shadowrun Hong Kong has been a pleasure to play so far. It's telling an interesting story and its mechanics are really solid. Its graphics are nothing special but, having grown up on Baldur's Gate and Fallout, this really doesn't bother me all that much — and, like those old classics, Shadowrun's visual shortcomings are more than made up for by its spectacularly good sound design, with excellent music complemented by ambient sound that shifts in volume and position according to where your character is standing on the map. It's incredibly atmospheric and does a great job of immersing you in the setting despite unfolding from the typically rather impersonal-feeling isometric viewpoint.

A winner, then. And cheap in GOG.com's current sale! Grab yourself a copy now and you won't be disappointed.

2483: Shadows of Hong Kong

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GOG.com has a sale going on right now; it's really rather good. Like their previous sales, they have a tiered reward system where if you complete various arbitrary tasks on the website and/or buy a couple of games, you'll get some freebies, no questions asked. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to acquire a few titles I've wanted to grab for a while, even if I didn't want to play them immediately.

Among the titles I nabbed in the sale today were two of the new Shadowrun games: Shadowrun Hong Kong and Shadowrun Dragonfall. I've spent a bit of time with the former this evening and come away very impressed — and a little surprised.

I'm not particularly familiar with the Shadowrun setting, but it's a concept I like: combining hacking, grime-and-neon cyberpunk with orcs, elves and magic fantasy brings together two of my very favourite things, so Shadowrun was always something I was interested in. I'd just never gotten around to checking it out.

I went in expecting something along the lines of the old Infinity Engine role-playing games — that is to say, largely functional graphics, excellent writing, deep character and party building and a non-linear storyline in which you were free to pursue all manner of different sidequests at your leisure before deciding that yes, now was the right time to go and confront The Big Bad, whoever it was this time around.

What I got from Shadowrun Hong Kong was… almost that, but with enough differences to the standard formula to give it a very distinct identity.

I'll back up a moment and give you some background. In Shadowrun Hong Kong, you play a player character of your own design, who can be male or female and any of the main races found in the setting: human, ork, elf, dwarf or troll. You can then either pick a starting class or build your own by spending "Karma", the game's skill point equivalent. There are no traditional experience points or levels in Shadowrun; you simply gain Karma in varying degrees for accomplishing various tasks. Consequently, you can build some interesting characters without having to "grind" as such.

The opening of Shadowrun Hong Kong sees you contacted by your onetime foster father Raymond Black, who urges you to come to Hong Kong to discuss something very important. When you arrive there, you're met by your adoptive sibling Duncan, an ork man that you grew up with but subsequently became estranged from following an unfortunate run-in with corporate security in your past. Your reunion is far from joyful, since Duncan doesn't quite know what to make of you having spent so much time apart from you, and before long it becomes clear that something very bad indeed is going on. A group of mercenaries that Black hired to escort you are murdered along with Duncan's superior officer Carter, and all of a sudden you're on the run, thrust into Hong Kong's seedy underbelly to wipe your old identities clean and take up the mantle of Shadowrunners: individuals who work on the fringes of society, often doing illicit deeds for whoever will pay the most. Your eventual aim is to determine what has become of Black, and perhaps to make sense of some mysterious dreams you start having shortly after the story begins.

So far so RPG. Where Shadowrun Hong Kong diverges from what I expected is in its structure: rather than unfolding in a large open world that you can explore at will a la Baldur's Gate or the first two Fallout games, Shadowrun Hong Kong is instead mission-based. There's a "hub" area from which you can interact with NPCs, purchase equipment and accept new missions, but each of these missions are self-contained areas that combine a variety of different gameplay styles, each telling their own mini-story along the way, ultimately — I presume, anyway — combining to tell the entire narrative.

The missions are pretty varied; none of them appear to be simple "get to point X" or "kill Y". Rather, you're often given a fairly vague objective — perhaps with some optional additional tasks along the way — and then left up to your own devices to decide how to handle it according to how you've built your character and the party you've brought with you.

One of the first missions in the game, for example, sees you having to deliver a message from the local crime lord Kindly "Auntie" Cheng to one of her underlings, who has started to take things into his own hands a little too much. In order to get to the recipient, you can fight your way in through the guards that block the entrance (in which case you'll fail the optional "don't kill anyone" objective), or you can sneak across the rooftops, or you can hack the electronic locking system in the basement, or you can learn the keycode to another "secret" entrance. Along the way, you'll encounter a number of side objectives, including assisting a young woman who is researching qi flow in the area and retrieving a stolen credit stick from an old man who is mugged by one of your target's henchmen. Most of these side objectives can be resolved in multiple ways, too; for example, when attempting to recover the credit stick, you can fight the guy and take it by force, attempt to smooth-talk your way through the situation or use your knowledge of criminal culture (assuming you have it) to appeal to his sense of "honour among thieves".

If and when combat does erupt, the action switches to mechanics straight out of the more recent XCOM games. Each character has a number of "action points" per round, and these can be used on moving, using items or performing various attacks with their weapons. More powerful techniques, spells or items tend to take multiple action points to perform, and some also have a "cooldown" of a number of rounds before they can be used again. There's a simple cover-and-flanking system in play, allowing you and your enemies to gain tactical advantages over one another through careful movement, and as your characters grow stronger they have more and more different abilities available to use.

Hacking, meanwhile, results in a gloriously abstract minigame straight out of a 1990s RPG whereby you control an "avatar" of yourself in cyberspace, attempting to avoid the various security measures or brute-forcing your way through using "combat" programs if necessary. Reach your eventual destination — be it a valuable piece of data or simply the method to unlock an electronic door — and you'll have another minigame within the minigame, whereby you'll have to remember numerical combinations and then decrypt a sequence of glyphs before time runs out. And, in true cyberpunk tradition, fucking up hacking can damage your physical body, so you have to be careful.

The whole thing is tied together by a wonderfully evocative script written by people who actually know how to write, combining vibrant, descriptive narration with believable dialogue. In many ways, it's as much a piece of interactive text-based fiction as it is an RPG or tactical strategy game; whatever it is, I really like it so far, and am looking forward to playing some more as a much-needed break from all the Palace of the Dead in FFXIV!

2482: Palace of the Dead: Solo Guide

Been soloing a bunch of Palace of the Dead in Final Fantasy XIV over the last few days, so I thought I'd assemble some tips for those who are looking to challenge it.

General tips

Take your time on the early floors. You want to equal or exceed the boss' level when you reach it, so clear each floor thoroughly rather than rushing through. You can safely avoid enemies once you hit level 60.
Stay aware of your surroundings at all times. Most floors have patrolling monsters; keep an eye out for these and engage them in the corridors between rooms before pulling the monsters in the rooms themselves.
When fighting on the normal floors, DPS as hard as you can. Summoners, use Garuda-Egi. Tanks, use your DPS stance. The quicker things die, the easier a time you'll have. In most cases you'll probably want to concentrate on one enemy at a time — pull from a distance whenever possible.
When fighting bosses, the priority is on doing mechanics rather than DPSing as hard as possible. Summoners, get Titan-Egi to tank for you. Tanks, use your tank stance.
Drink potions whenever you can if you're not at full health. The last thing you want is to die to a landmine or exploding chest.
Save Pomanders of Serenity for floors where Auto-Heal is disabled. Most of the other floor effects aren't really anything to worry about, but Auto-Heal not working can really fuck you up.
Don't use Pomanders of Safety and Pomanders of Sight on the same floor because they're redundant. Safety removes all traps on the floor, and Sight allows you to see traps and thus avoid them. There's no need to use both.
Pomanders of Alteration are a gamble best used before you hit 60. If they spawn Mandragora-type enemies on the next floor, that's free EXP. If they spawn Mimics, however, you're in for a miserable time.
When using one of the transformation Pomanders, remember that you're not invincible. The Manticore may be able to kill everything in a single hit (assuming Knockback isn't disabled by a floor effect) but its HP and defense are the same as yours in your regular form.
Transformations are immune to Toad traps, and Pacification/Silence doesn't affect the transformation's ability. Landmines are still very dangerous, however, particularly as you can't drink a potion to heal yourself while transformed.
Save Pomanders of Resolution for the floor 100 boss. You'll need all three during the fight.

Enemies to watch out for

Hornets, found in the 1-10 block, have Final Sting, which will do a shitload of damage if you let it go off. You can actually run away from it and avoid the damage if you get far enough away, but it's best to try and kill the hornet before this happens.
Slimes, found in the 11-20 block, cast Rapture if you take too long killing them. This will almost certainly kill you, so kill them as quickly as you can.
Gaze attacks — marked by a very obvious glowing purple eye over the enemy model while they're casting it — can be avoided completely by simply turning your back to the enemy. It's particularly important to do this when dealing with Palace Cobras (petrification), Palace Deepeyes (powerful paralysis) and Palace Pots (Mysterious Light, which causes heavy damage and Blind).
Morbols will show up in the 11-20 block towards the end, complete with Bad Breath attack. Run towards them for the easiest path to avoid the large cone AoE.
Wraiths have a huge AoE attack that causes Terror. If you can stun it, do so. Otherwise, run for dear life as soon as you see the marker appear.
Palace Skatenes will cause Sleep on you shortly after they cast Chirp. This isn't a huge issue, however, since you'll wake up immediately upon taking a hit.

Boss tips

Floor 10: Palace Deathgaze

Pretty easy, and if you've fought basic Deathgaze-type enemies in the game you'll know what to expect. It has a heavy attack called Whipcrack that will do a chunk of damage, so pop a potion after it does this. Stormwind (a large cone AoE) and Bombination (circular AoE) can both be avoided. Aerial Blast covers the whole arena and causes Windburn (damage over time for a few seconds). It will cycle through these abilities until one or the other of you are dead.

Floor 20: Spurge

The Easy Way: Level to 35 or 36, pop a Pomander of Strength and a Pomander of Lust and then just go ham on Spurge and you'll probably kill it before it summons its first set of Hornets if your gear is up to snuff.

The Proper Way: There are two main phases to this fight, and they simply cycle around and around. In the first, Spurge will twat you for a chunk of damage with Bloody Caress, then fling two circle AoE attacks at you — one around itself and one aimed at you. During this time, keep your HP topped up and wail on Spurge as much as you can. The second phase starts when Spurge moves to the side of the arena. At this point, two Hornets will spawn, and Spurge will stay in place, occasionally shooting a large linear AoE attack called Rotten Stench. Avoid Rotten Stench while knocking the Hornets down as quickly as possible — otherwise they will use Final Sting on you — before returning to the punishment on Spurge.

Floor 30: Definitely-Not-Hydra

Pretty easy. When it hits you with Ball of Fire or Ball of Ice, immediately move to avoid the effect of the circular area the attack causes — damage over time for Ball of Fire and slowed movement for Ball of Ice. Keep hitting it while this is going on, and try not to bait any Balls of Fire or Ice into the very middle of the arena. When Definitely-Not-Hydra moves to the centre of the arena and starts casting Fear Itself, stand inside its hitbox to avoid the attack completely. Then repeat the process.

Floor 40: Ixtab

Ixtab will spew void crap over the ground every so often — move out of this to avoid damage. He will then summon two Bhoots which you should kill as quickly as possible to avoid being caught in their attacks. He also has an arena-wide attack that causes Terror, often causing you to stumble into the Bhoots' area of effect if they're still up. Aside from this, not a lot else to say.

Floor 50: Edda Blackbosom

Pay close attention to what Edda is doing. If she uses Cold Feet, turn away to avoid its Terror effect. If she uses In Health, you'll either need to get well away from her or stand right on top of her — react quickly to the AoE marker, but you have plenty of time to get from one extreme to the other if the cast goes off. If you get hit by In Health, one of the letters on the floor will light up. The more of these lit up when she casts Black Honeymoon, the more damage you'll take. Aside from this, she's pretty straightforward. Watch out for In Sickness, which causes Disease and slowed movement; cleanse this off yourself if you can.

Floor 60: The Black Rider

A few things to watch out for here. Firstly, keep out of the large purple circles he drops on the ground at all cost — they cause Bleed, which deals heavy damage while you're in them. Secondly, watch out for the aether sprites he summons around the outside of the arena and don't get caught in their blasts, as these deal extreme damage. Their appearance will often coincide with his charge attack, a linear AoE marker that follows you around. While this is casting, make sure your back is to a "safe spot" away from the aether sprites to avoid being knocked into their blast radius.

Floor 70: Big Snake Thing

I can't remember Big Snake Thing's name, but it's a big snake thing. The most important thing to do in this fight is move Big Snake Thing out of the watery patches it drops on the ground when it casts Douse. While it is in these areas, it gains Haste, which makes it nigh-impossible to avoid Electrogenesis when it casts. Aside from this, Big Snake Thing should cause you no real difficulty.

Floor 80: Definitely-Not-King-Behemoth

This is a daunting fight, but fairly straightforward if you know how to handle all the mechanics. Firstly, when DNKB casts Charybdis, move well away from the AoE marker because it will drop a tornado. Said tornadoes inflict a heavy damage over time debuff if you get sucked into one, and periodically they will suck in everything around them — there'll be a very brief AoE marker to show the effective range of this when it happens, so to be safe don't be anywhere near the tornadoes. Next, when DNKB walks away from you, follow him, because he's about to use Trounce, a massive conal AoE attack that is much easier to avoid if you're right next to him. Thirdly, at around 10% HP remaining, he will begin channelling Ecliptic Meteor, and unlike the other times in the game where this happens, there's nothing to hide behind. Try and kill him before it hits, but don't worry too much if it does — it hits for about 80% of your HP, so if you're topped up before it happens, you'll be safe and free to finish him off after the attack.

Floor 90: The Godmother

This is a bit like the final boss of Pharos Sirius (Hard). Attack The Godmother until a red bomb spawns, at which point you should stun its Blast ability if you can and kill it as quickly as possible while avoiding the AoE markers from the untargetable smaller bombs that spawn around it. When it's down, return to wailing on The Godmother. When a blue-grey bomb spawns, hit it with an instant ability while facing The Godmother to knock it towards her. You want the blue-grey bomb's Hydrothermal Combustion ability to hit The Godmother and interrupt her ultimate attack. From here, simply repeat these two processes until The Godmother is down.

Floor 100: Nybeth Obdilord

Try to make sure you have three Pomanders of Resolution by the time you reach floor 100 — block 91-100 seems to throw them at you, but save them up from earlier blocks to be safe if necessary. Nybeth himself isn't too much of a threat if you take care to avoid his AoEs, particularly the large cone-shaped Doom attack. The important mechanic in this fight is the adds that he spawns at roughly 90%, 70% and 30% of his HP remaining. As soon as they appear, pop a Pomander of Resolution and use Kuribu's attack to firstly kill the enemies, and then use the ability again on their corpses to remove them permanently from the fight. Click off the transformation before you turn your attention back to Nybeth. Repeat two more times and you're home free.