#oneaday Day 483: I regret buying an expensive keyboard and mouse

A while back — probably a few years back at this point — I discovered the joy of a mechanical keyboard and a good quality mouse. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say I rediscovered it; growing up, after the Atari ST, we had a couple of "proper" IBM PCs, complete with Model M keyboard, and I have fond memories both of using that keyboard and of being able to hear it all the way downstairs when my Dad was typing on it upstairs.

But yeah; I started with a relatively cheap "Tecknet" wired mechanical keyboard and liked the feel and sound of that, so a little while later I decided to spend a bit of money and treat myself to some pricier models: specifically, a Razer Blackwidow V3 Pro keyboard and a Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed mouse. I chose the Blackwidow V3 Pro specifically because it was a mechanical keyboard that was also wireless — for a while, that was a hard combination to find — and the Basilisk X Hyperspeed because it seemed to be decent without being overcomplicated.

I regret my purchases.

Not because either of them are unusably bad or anything, but because both of them have just enough little annoyances about them to make me wish I'd just stuck with the cheaper kit I was using before — or going with another manufacturer. Razer is very much the basic bitch of PC pimping — although I will say their Kiyo X webcam is genuinely excellent, and I have absolutely no regrets there.

Let's start with the names. If I hadn't told you the Blackwidow was a keyboard and the Basilisk was a mouse, would you have been able to determine which was which? I still have to look it up every time, which is very unhelpful when Razer's software (we'll get onto that in a moment, believe me) informs me that the battery is low on one of them. It doesn't have a helpful little icon showing whether it's the keyboard or mouse; it just says the battery is low in the Blackwidow or the Basilisk. And I'm fucked if I can remember which is which. (Although writing this blog is, annoyingly enough, probably going to help me remember.)

Okay. So the Blackwidow. It's a nice keyboard — feels nice to type on, makes a nice clicky sound when you do so. But it has an eminently stupid design that causes it to get filthier than any keyboard I've ever used. Rather than having the keys in a slightly recessed cutout from the main body of the keyboard, which is easy enough to clean if you take all the keys off and then Hoover it or something, the keys "float" slightly above the keyboard case, which is otherwise solid. This means all manner of disgusting crap gets caught in between and beneath the keys within about five seconds of you starting to use it, and cleaning it seems woefully ineffective because immediately after doing so, it attracts filth again.

Possibly related to the perpetually filthy status is the fact that the volume knob on the top right of the keyboard is a real roll of the dice on whether or not it'll actually do what you want it to do. A significant portion of the time, it will do the exact opposite of what you are indicating you would like it to do, and sometimes it will just judder back and forth between two values. The particularly annoying thing about it is that I generally don't use it to adjust the volume, so any time I have to use it, it is because I have knocked it accidentally. And on multiple occasions it has taken several minutes to revert it to 100% after it had dropped to just 80% or so.

The Blackwidow has the obligatory RGB lighting that everything vaguely "premium" has to have on PCs these days, and this is all very nice, apart from the inexplicable fact that the hash key refuses to light up when the keyboard is in wireless mode. It's not broken, because it lights up when the keyboard is connected via USB, and it's not a faulty profile, because I've tried changing the profile and even setting the options for that key individually. It's just… fucked somehow in a non-mechanical way. And it's little annoyances like that which make you realise how surprisingly often you want to use the hash key in the dark.

Speaking of wired versus wireless, I discovered a while back that the keyboard will not charge its battery unless the Razer software is installed. This was something of a problem when I determined that the Razer software was causing my PC to freeze up. (It transpires that something else was wrong on a deeper level, because a complete reformat and Windows reinstall fixed the freezes, but still.) It's also just fucking stupid. What other USB device does not charge unless you are running a specific piece of software? One of the main benefits of USB is that you can just plug a thing into a socket and it charges, even if the computer doesn't know how to talk to the device otherwise. But no! Not the case with the Razer Blackwidow V3 Pro. So pro that it can't handle charging without its special software to hold its hand. Real fearsome.

Now, onto the Basilisk, which I think I hate significantly more than the Blackwidow, which at least is 98% reliably functional, wireless hash key aside. I have never had as many connectivity problems with a wireless mouse as I have done with the Basilisk. I don't sit an unreasonable distance away from my computer — basically the computer is under my TV, and the keyboard and mouse are on a coffee table in front of the sofa — but this goddamn thing will not stay connected if there is any form of obstacle in its path. And I mean anything. Put a box of biscuits in front of it so you can stuff your face while idly browsing YouTube? Flashy light, lost connection. Put a glass of drink vaguely in front of it for mid-game refreshment? Flashy light, lost connection. Put a discarded lunch plate on the table near it because you'll take it to the kitchen the next time you stand up? Flashy light, lost connection.

It's annoying, because other than this fairly glaring issue, the Basilisk is a nice mouse. It has a good, comfortable shape, nicely clicky buttons and a scroll wheel that, so far, does not appear to have suffered the same fate as the volume control on the Blackwidow — or, indeed, the fate every single Apple mouse I have used has succumbed to. You can actually scroll with it, in other words. It has a couple of side buttons that default to forward/back buttons when web browsing, but I don't really use them. As a basic mouse, it's comfortable, and were it not for the connectivity issues, I would like it a lot. Unfortunately, the connectivity issues happen frequently enough for it to be massively irritating.

"So just replace them!" you might say. "Reader, I spent £250 on the pair of them," I will reply. "I am going to at least attempt to get my money's worth."

And then, sotto voce, "And then never spend that much on a keyboard and mouse ever again."

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 482: Among the dead

I got off my arse and went for a walk this evening. I'm going to try and make a bit more of a habit of this. I know I have said this before, but since I am starting to see some success in establishing the good habits necessary for weight loss, I should get some exercise in there too, as that will help with the whole calorie deficit thing, as well as getting my body generally moving and hopefully a bit less stiff (not in a good way) than it has been for the last [x] years.

I mostly like going for a walk, even if in my current state I am painfully slow at getting anywhere, particularly if there is any sort of incline whatsoever. The annoying thing about where we live is that we're sort of at the top of a hill, so whichever direction I set off in to go for a walk, inevitably at least some of the way back involves going uphill to varying degrees.

I've tried a few different routes on various occasions, and the most… acceptable I have found strikes a good balance between being reasonably picturesque (a significant portion of it involves walking through the local cemetery, which, although maudlin, is also quite pleasant and peaceful), being a decent distance to get some reasonably good exercise out of, and not having overly difficult changes in elevation for my battered and broken body to have to contend with.

I find cemeteries quite interesting. I often find myself looking at the graves; part of me wonders if I'll see a name I recognise, but the rest of my brain explains that is fairly unlikely. As such, I find my own life briefly touching the fleeting existences of complete strangers and pondering their circumstances, and what kind of people they were. Sometimes there are clearly tragic stories, such as the extremely ornate memorial which had been raised to a baby who lived less than an hour. At others, there is clearly family history, with little quotes and well-wishes from people — usually couples. Sometimes it's just a simple expression of remembrance, such as with the rather out-of-place looking grave with the simple wooden cross marking its location, surrounded by more elaborate marble headstones.

Supposedly Benny Hill is buried in that cemetery. I didn't go looking for him; I just remember happening to notice his name marked on Google Maps when I was pondering a route to take before I left.

I thought about getting some sort of fitness tracker up and running before going, but then the part of my brain that is specifically trying to disconnect from stuff like that took over and reminded me that I don't need or even want "numbers" — the important thing is just getting out and doing it. Yes, yes, I know we're all supposed to do 10,000 steps a day, but all I find when introducing metrics into the mix is added anxiety. Just get out there, do the thing and be happy that you did it.

So I did!

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#oneaday Day 481: I have returned

I have returned! And I'm in a foul mood, apparently, but that's nothing unusual after having to do that drive. I set out at 5pm and got home at about 8.40pm. That's not fun. Granted, I did stop to have some dinner at the South Mimms services in an inevitably vain attempt to try and avoid the worst of rush hour on the M25, but still. It would be lovely to be able to leave my place of work and be home in a duration of time that is less than multiple episodes of a podcast. Although at least the journey does afford me the opportunity to actually listen to podcasts, which I otherwise don't really make much time for.

I am also in a less-than-charitable mood because the whole trip this time around felt a little bit pointless. It is always nice to see my colleagues in person because I like them, but the only real benefit of me actually being in the office today was that I could participate in a meeting by sitting in an uncomfortable chair near everyone else instead of sitting in my own comfortable chair via Teams. The rest of the day I was just sort of… there, and don't really feel like I achieved much that I couldn't have done from home. In fact, I generally feel like on my trips into the office I achieve significantly less than I do with a day working from home.

But oh well. This is the world we live in, and it's not that much of an inconvenience to have to do this once a month. Just enough to want to have a little moan about now and again. But now I am home, and I can see my cats (literally, they are both sitting staring at me as I type this) and be with my wife and play Final Fantasy Tactics, which arrived in my absence.

So I think that's probably what I'm going to spend the rest of the evening doing. I haven't played Final Fantasy Tactics through properly since the PS1 original, so it will be nice to do so with a translation that makes sense and the new voiceovers. I will do my best not to power through just to get to the bits with Ben Starr in, but I am making no promises.

On that note, it's time to get isometric and turn-based. Normal business will resume tomorrow. Probably.

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#oneaday Day 480: Post-hotel

Realised I forgot to write something last night. It is time for my monthly trip to the office, y'see, and as such I was spending the evening in a hotel. I was so caught up in watching Police Interceptors and then ProJared playing Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon that I completely forgot to blog. Oh well. Life goes on. I'm sure all none of you who thought "hang on, Pete didn't blog today" will get over the immeasurable disappointment.

But I am here now! It is lunchtime in the office, so I am banging something out before everyone else gets back from lunch. Today I have had a Meal Deal from Boots. It was adequate, though I am pleased to see that you can get those Walkers Extra Flamin' Hot crisps in an individual bag now rather than having to use willpower not to eat an entire big bag in one go. Diet is mostly on pause for the time while I'm away — back to normality once I get home this evening.

We were discussing plans for next year in the office this morning. Lots of exciting things on the way — and for once we're well ahead of schedule on getting a bunch of them ready, too. It's going to be interesting to see how some folks react to the things we have on the way — I think a fair few people are going to be very pleasantly surprised at what we have coming!

Anyway, people are starting to filter back into the office now, so I guess lunch break is over. There's only so long I can type away at this before people wonder what I'm doing, plus I have some meetings scheduled for this afternoon. And so, on that half-hearted note, that is that for now. I will be back this evening to catch up properly!

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#oneaday Day 479: The PS1 retro revival

I saw a fun trailer last night for a game called, rather amusingly, Parasite Mutant. Those of you of a certain age are probably already thinking "I wonder if that's anything like Parasite Eve", to which the answer is yes, yes it is, very much so.

The great thing is that this isn't even the only Parasite Eve-like that is on the way — the folks who made the excellent visual novel VA-11 HALL-A have also been working on one for quite some time. And it looks awesome — though when it comes out is anyone's guess at this point.

Yes, indeed, we are well and truly in an age where the original PlayStation is retro enough to have modern homages to it. In fact, we've been there for a while, with the indie horror scene latching on to the system's distinctive 3D aesthetic a few years back, and more and more developers deliberately adopting low-res, low-poly, unfiltered 3D as their game's distinctive look and feel.

So with all of the above in mind, here's a few PS1 games from back in the day that I think would be simply smashing to see some modern imitators of. In fact, some of these already have modern imitators on the way — I will do my best to link to those where I am aware of them. (If you are aware of any I missed, please do let me know.)

Ridge Racer

C'mon. Obviously. The 16-bit-style arcade racer has been present and correct in the modern scene for a while thanks to titles like Horizon Chase Turbo and Slipstream, and we've even seen a couple of homages to Virtua Racing, but we haven't seen that many Ridge Racer-likes. I'm not sure we've seen any, in fact — though I am aware of one that is currently early in development.

Yes, we're getting a new Screamer, but it's trying to be all modern and do the twin-stick drifting thing that Inertial Drift did. That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's not "PS1". Just make a new Ridge Racer or equivalent. Namco even released the original Ridge Racer on modern consoles, so there's a market for it!

Parasite Eve

On the off-chance some of you don't know what Parasite Eve is, the elevator pitch is that it's a cross between Resident Evil-style survival horror (fixed camera angles, limited resources) and an RPG. Combat unfolds using a variation on Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle mechanics, with a time bar that gradually fills up and allows you to act when it's full, but the twist of being able to move freely while it's charging. This adds an interesting blend of real-time and turn-based mechanics, whereby you can avoid enemy attacks, but you still have to wait your turn.

Parasite Eve was noteworthy for what was beautiful presentation at the time: pre-rendered backdrops with detailed (for the late '90s) polygonal characters atop them, punctuated by completely pre-rendered FMV sequences depicting major plot moments. It had two sequels, neither of which I've played (yet) but is currently in rights hell, making an official rerelease exceedingly unlikely — leaving the stage wide open for imitators (complimentary).

Brave Fencer Musashi

From the same era and publisher as Parasite Eve came something completely different. Brave Fencer Musashi was also a blend of things we'd seen before — in this case, the early 3D platformer (a la Crash Bandicoot) with the action RPG. It was a fully polygonal action game with a fair amount of platforming in it, and a delightfully silly script. I don't know how true the English script was to the Japanese original and kind of don't care, because the introductory "Princess! Sir Little Turd!" sequence is the stuff of legends.

Brave Fencer Musashi has a little in common with Konami's Mystical Ninja series, particularly its first N64 incarnation Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. And we've had a Mystical Ninja-like in recent years in the form of Bakeru, so surely a Brave Fencer Musashi-like isn't too much to ask for, no?

Any form of puzzle game

The PS1 was a golden age for puzzle games. And not just the competitive "versus" kind that still have a certain following today — the PS1 also played host to a wide variety of puzzlers, most of which could be enjoyed by a solo player for hours at a time.

The rise of the free-to-play mobile game all but killed the standalone puzzle game genre, but releases like Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris have showed that there's still something of a market there for them. It'd be lovely to see some developers have a crack at mechanics similar to those seen in lesser-known puzzlers like Starsweep and Landmaker as well as the predictable bubble shooters, match-three and line-clearing games we occasionally get today.

Vagrant Story

If someone wants to get really ambitious, they can pay homage to Vagrant Story, a thoroughly interesting Square Enix title that forms part of the loose "Ivalice" series that includes Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. (Although apparently its connections may just be fanservice.)

Vagrant Story was interesting for its ambitious storytelling and its unusual combat system, which, a bit like Parasite Eve, blended real-time and turn-based elements together, this time placing an emphasis on "risk". You could attack as often as you liked, but doing so would build up Risk, which reduces your hit rate but increases your critical chance. It's a tad more complex than that, with things like damage to individual limbs being tracked, but I think it's high time we revisited some of its ideas.

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#oneaday Day 478: Counting Cals

As I've alluded to a couple of times recently, the latest attempt at weight loss has been centred on counting calories. And thus far it's actually been going reasonably well — as is often the case when embarking on a new campaign of doing this, I lost a decent chunk of weight in the first week, but this week it's slowed down again, though it is still going down, which is good.

As my past experiences doing this have shown, the crucial thing is to be constantly aware of what you're putting in your mouth, and thinking carefully before you stuff anything in there. Recording everything helps you to be aware of such things, and in the process make some better choices.

Now, "better choices" doesn't have to mean "I stopped having any bacon sandwiches ever, and for breakfast now I have half a banana with a handful of chia seeds and am miserable for the rest of the day". No; it means "I had a big lunch, so I should probably go easy at dinner". Or it means "I treated myself to a McDonald's breakfast, so I probably don't need a lot for lunch". Or it means "I've had three bags of crisps today already, I probably shouldn't have any more".

Working within those simple boundaries, you can set limits for yourself without feeling like you're missing out on things. When counting calories, you absolutely can still have a nice cake if you feel like one, but that probably means you should hold back on the snacks (or have lower-calorie snacks) for the rest of the day. And it can sometimes be surprising how easy it is to save calories by making a few little swaps here and there.

I've never been hugely fond of salad, for example, but drench it in enough salad cream and it can be quite a pleasant (and filling) accompaniment to a simple meal, like a piece of breaded meat. And a plate of salad, even if absolutely drowning in salad cream, is quite a lot fewer calories than a big pile of chips.

As it happens, the only chips I've had since starting this time around were on our Work Day Out, when I was necessarily somewhat limited in my options for dining, so I thought I would just enjoy that day as I saw fit, without guilt.

My challenge in this upcoming week is going to come in the form of my monthly trip to the office, which usually involves me grabbing something to eat on the drive down, or perhaps from the supermarket next to the hotel, or the hotel restaurant. On previous occasions, I'm mildly ashamed to admit that I have made less-than-stellar choices when choosing what to eat — after a long, tiring, boring journey, all I want is to have something tasty. This time, I'm going to try and pay at least a bit of attention to the choices that I make. I can still satisfy myself; I should probably try and do so without devouring a huge bag of Doritos and two frosted yum-yums, as delicious as they are.

I'm still feeling pretty good at the moment, then. Things are moving in the right direction and, crucially, I'm not feeling bored or frustrated with what I'm eating. That last part is particularly important; there's nothing worse than being bored of what you're eating, because that's the time you're most likely to think "that was disappointing, I'll make up for it with an entire chocolate gateau".

Not enough calories left for a sandwich before bed, sadly, but I think I'll probably survive.

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#oneaday Day 477: The things all modern games do

I saw a fun comment a little while back — I forget who it was and even where it was posted, so apologies to the person who originally made it — that put forward a theory: you could release a game from ten years ago today, such as Metal Gear Solid V, and no-one would be any the wiser, outside of maybe some improvements in performance and/or resolution.

This made me laugh, because there's a certain amount of truth to it. It feels like modern mid-to-big budget games that have chosen "quasi-photorealistic" as their aesthetic of choice are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from one another. This type of visual style has long since stopped impressing me, and it's actually kind of starting to bug me how much all the top-end developers appear to be shamelessly cribbing from one another.

So here's a list of things that I would really rather see less of. Very few of these things are "bad" as such, it would just be nice to see some games that didn't do them.

Gears of War cam

You know the one. Third-person, camera shifted a little back from the character enough to see most of their upper torso but not their legs (because if you can see their legs you can see that we still can't quite animate people going up and down steps properly) and to the right, positioning the character just to the left of centre on your screen.

Bonus points if the camera wobbles around when the character is sprinting, in simulation of a cameraman running behind the character while attempting to hold an unwieldy camera steady.

The slow pan down to interactivity

The "seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay" thing stopped being impressive a long time ago. Final Fantasy VII pulled it off (kind of) in 1997. Just once, just once, it would be nice for a cutscene to end without a slow pan to Gears of War-cam while the background audio and music fades to calmness and the protagonist slowly, but perfectly in time with the camera pan, takes a stance ready for action.

Painfully obvious objective markers

"Go through the door". No, really? This door that I just spent half an hour solving puzzles to open? Really? You want me to go through it?

A health bar that grossly misrepresents how much damage you can take

To be fair, this has been a problem since Namco's Rolling Thunder gave you a segmented health bar that suggested you would be able to take up to eight hits before keeling over, then immediately killed you if you got hit by a single bullet. But this has become so common it's a bit of a problem ever since everyone decided that everything needs, to one degree or another, to be a Souls-like.

If you're giving me a health bar of a reasonable length, I don't want 75% of it to fall off the moment I take one hit from an enemy. Not every game has to have "brutal, hard-as-nails" combat, as marketing people like to put it. Sometimes it's okay — even desirable — to have flashy, button-mashy combat where the protagonist can take as much punishment as the enemies do.

Opening a single drawer from a chest and finding nothing

I don't know which game first did the "protagonist searches a chest of drawers by opening one completely empty drawer and 90% of the time doesn't find anything" thing, but it's an absolute plague these days. Granted, at the other end of the spectrum we have Shenmue, a game which can be looked upon at least in part as the world's most detailed cupboard-opening simulator, but I feel like there's probably a happy medium somewhere.

See also: lootable objects in non-RPGs with nothing in them. Why do you do this?

Progression mechanics in games that aren't RPGs

Stop it. I don't need to level up and I don't need to grind in every single game. Just give me what I need to beat the game from the outset. You may — may — under certain circumstances unlock new moves and weapons as the game progresses, but these should not be tied to any sort of "experience" system.

Photo mode and New Game+ added as post-launch updates

You know you're going to do them. Just put them in from the start.

And just for good measure, one thing I wish we saw more of:

Post-game unlocks that significantly alter the game

My benchmark for this is Silent Hill 3, which, under the correct circumstances, allows you to dress the protagonist Heather up in a retro-futuristic outfit and unleash her devastating "Heather Beam" on enemies. Optionally, you could also add an on-screen health bar to the game, which is not normally present because it's a survival horror game. These two elements completely changed the feel of Silent Hill 3, and offered an incentive to replay that wasn't just "play through the entire thing again with some minor changes to get a different ending".

These days, sadly, costumes are primarily DLC and additional modes that significantly alter the way the game plays just don't really feel like a thing any more. Part of this is down to modern games being considerably expanded in length over stuff from, say, the PS2 era (which is when Silent Hill 3 originally came out), but also some developers just don't seem all that willing to have a bit of silly fun with their creations. And that's a bit sad!

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#oneaday Day 476: A few first impressions from Silent Hill f

I'm excited to be playing a brand new Silent Hill game in 2025. I wasn't sure how I felt about Silent Hill f transplanting the series from late '90s/early '00s America to 1960s Japan, but thus far it appears to be a change that works. If you've played any entries in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series, you'll know that small-town Japan has plenty of scope for eerie activities, and such is the case with Silent Hill f.

I'm just shy of four hours in so far and thus far I've been having a good time. Protagonist Hinako, in true Silent Hill tradition, clearly has some Issues to work through, though the exact specifics of these haven't been revealed as yet, aside from the fact that her father is an abusive alcoholic and she resents her sister for moving away to get married. She also may or may not be dead; my internal jury's out on that one thus far.

As with prior Silent Hill games, Silent Hill f sees Hinako wandering through a sort-of open environment, stumbling across interesting happenings and finding horrific trouble at fairly regular intervals. This time around, rather than being completely alone, Hinako regularly runs into her school friends, who are seemingly seeing the same things she is seeing — there's always been some ambiguity in the series as to whether things are "really" happening — but for the most part she ends up having to act by herself in order to catch up with her peers in various ways.

Part of the narrative is clearly going to involve how Hinako is ostracised from certain parts of her supposed "friendship" group for refusing to conform to behavioural gender norms. Her best friend is an icky boy named Shu, and even as teens, they are still obsessed with their imaginary "Space War" games that they've been playing together since childhood. I'm interested to see quite how far the game ends up leaning into matters of gender identity, because it would very much be in keeping with the series' past of exploring psychosexual matters, among other things.

Much of Silent Hill f sees Hinako stumbling around in the fog as is series tradition, but likewise there are times when she finds herself in "other" places. In one sequence, she finds herself lost in a seemingly endless field of scarecrows and must solve a puzzle to find a way out; on several other occasions — seemingly when she's unconscious in the "fog" world — she goes somewhere completely different, shrouded in darkness, filled with mysterious temples and shrines, and guided by a man in a fox mask who almost certainly is not entirely trustworthy.

As you might expect, the game dives deep into traditional Japanese spiritualism and superstitions, with the main angle exploring the fox god Inari. There have been a couple of mentions of an "ancient god" that may or may not be Inari at various junctures too, though, so it remains to be seen where all that ends up — and whether Inari is a force one should feel comfortable putting one's faith behind.

Mechanically, it's pretty much as you would expect for a modern survival horror game. Combat takes a few cues from heavy-hitting stamina management action RPGs because of course it does, everything seemingly has to these days, but since the Souls games, trope codifiers for this type of experience, are effectively survival horror RPGs in many respects, it does make a certain amount of sense. It also helps to highlight that Hinako, as a teenage girl, is not a fighter. She can't take much punishment and she isn't particularly agile at swinging anything around with the intention of doing damage. As such, combat has a rather deliberate pace, though mistakes are punished quite severely, even on the default "Story" difficulty.

Initially I wasn't all that enamoured with this, but once you get a feel for its distinctive rhythm and learn to spot enemy tells — including some particularly explicit ones that allow you to counterattack — it's probably a good fit for Silent Hill, if indeed the series really "needs" combat at all. (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was an attempt to do a Silent Hill game without combat, and it was mostly successful, though the "chase" sequences it had in lieu of actual fights were, at times, a little frustrating.)

The puzzles have been interesting so far, though despite the default puzzle difficulty being "Hard" none have been too taxing as yet. The trickiest one thus far took place in the aforementioned scarecrow field and required reading of body language and facial expressions to match a particular statement; I'm not entirely sure I solved this one "correctly", but it made internal sense to me while doing so and thus I'm counting it as a success.

I'm intrigued, then. I want to know more about Hinako's situation and what is really going on with her. There are quite a few different ways I can potentially see things proceeding from where I am thus far, and in keeping with series tradition, not many of them promise a happy ending for our heroine. And we longstanding Silent Hill fans wouldn't have it any other way.

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#oneaday Day 475: A traitorous experience

As noted yesterday, today was a Work Day Out. Not a Work Day Out where we had to do any work, but a Nice Thing To Do Together, presumably for the purposes of "team-building" and suchlike. I may sound cynical, but honestly my workplace is such a nice, small company that any occasion like this just feels like a nice gathering of friends — albeit one where the boss foots the bill. Winner.

Our main activity for the day was The Traitors Live Experience, an interactive group game based on the (apparently) popular TV show. (I've never seen it. But that doesn't mean much these days.) I was a little concerned ahead of time that we might end up playing with strangers, but thankfully we had enough people in our group to ensure that our game, which had 11 people total (and could have supported up to 14) was entirely people who knew each other. While The Traitors TV show is based on the assumption that most of the participants won't know one another prior to playing, they have a lot longer to get to know each other; as such, since The Traitors Live Experience is just shy of two hours in length, I suspect it is best played with people you have, at the very least, a passing acquaintance with.

I'm going to explain how the game works now on the assumption that you, like me, have never seen The Traitors, so if you're a big fan of the show and you feel like I'm stating the obvious, I can only apologise. I am not able to comment on the experience from a fan's perspective, so this will have to do you for now.

After an opportunity to hang out together in a comfortable bar area (with seating!) before your game starts, you are led into the depths of the venue, through a series of creepy Resident Evil mansion-style corridors, until you eventually reach your "Round Table" room. Once ensconced in your seat of choice, which you will stay in for the majority of the game, your host introduces the game and how it works.

Before play proper begins, at least one Traitor is selected. This unfolds through everyone seated at the table blindfolding themselves with blackout goggles, then loud music playing while the host stalks around the room and taps one or more people on the shoulder, indicating that they are the Traitors for the game. The remaining players are the Faithful.

The Traitors Live Experience unfolds in two parts: "day"-based missions and "night"-based potential betrayals. During the day, the group as a whole is given some sort of task to complete, and successfully achieving this rewards the group as a whole with "gold". You don't actually win any cash (unlike the TV show) — the "gold" is simply a score of sorts. At the end of the game, if all the Traitors have been eliminated, the Faithful score all the points, while if even one Traitor remains, the Traitors take all the points. The venue has daily leaderboards for how well Faithful and Traitors have performed.

At night, everyone dons their blackout goggles once more, but the Traitors are invited to take them off partway through proceedings. At this point, one of several things can happen: they can "murder" someone by pointing at them; they can "blackmail" a Faithful, causing them to become a Traitor (though I believe there are conditions on when this can occur, such as when a Traitor is eliminated from the game) or nothing at all can happen. Once again, if someone is "murdered", the host silently taps them on the shoulder, and they remove themselves from the room before everyone else takes their goggles off.

Being murdered (or, in later rounds of the game, "banished" by the Faithful if they believe you are a Traitor) doesn't mean your game is completely over; instead, you are removed to a separate room where you can watch live camera feeds of the surviving players, and at various junctures you are given the opportunity to interact with the games they are playing by solving puzzles in the other room, or perhaps by finding creative ways to communicate "from beyond the grave", as it were. There was a nice vaguely "escape room" feel to this side of proceedings, helping even those who are eliminated early to feel involved in the complete game.

As it happens, I, a Faithful, was murdered quite early on due to my strong performance in one of the missions and making some solid observations during the pre-Banishment deliberations. I was worried that getting knocked out early would be boring and annoying, but actually it was rather fun, particularly once some other people joined me in the room and we had to discuss whether to help the survivors or actively sabotage their attempts.

The missions themselves are all pretty simple parlour game-style puzzles — I assume they have a bank of them available to randomise so that two games aren't exactly alike. In our game, we initially had a straightforward puzzle where we had to rotate dials on the table to accurately depict the cycles of the moon. This was followed by a "spot the difference" game where we were showed a model of a crime scene and some photographs of a few details from it, then shortly after, we were shown a different model of the same crime scene (and "the same but potentially different" photographs) and tasked with spotting five changes, with bonus points on offer if we could determine how the corpse was actually murdered.

After that, we had a game where we were challenged to press a hidden button under the table after an exact amount of time had elapsed — this was the one I excelled at, since I've always been rather good at that sort of thing — and, after I'd been eliminated, the group were tasked with arranging a set of Tarot-like cards in order (with us "assisting" from beyond the grave by flashing the lights in the Round Table room from afar) and, as the grand finale, the group were challenged to recreate several scenes shown in silhouette by equipping themselves with props and standing in place.

I don't know how close in execution the whole thing is to the TV show, but plenty of effort has been made with the presentation of everything. There's plenty of cool lighting effects, dramatic music and suchlike, and the "Round Table room" is nicely detailed, even concealing a secret exit to "Traitors Tower", where the finale sequence took place. The whole thing was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I overcame my initial misgivings about playing a game so based on social cues to enjoy the experience.

As I say, I feel like for certain types of people, the experience will lose some of its appeal if you attend in a small group and end up being paired up with strangers, but likewise some people will thrive in that environment. It's good that the game is seemingly flexible and doesn't force anyone to do anything they're uncomfortable with — prior to starting the game, you're given the opportunity to privately indicate if you'd rather not be a Traitor from the outset, though this doesn't preclude you from potentially being "recruited" later in the game if the Traitors' ranks find themselves thinning.

We followed our time at The Traitors Live Experience with a late lunch at The Ivy Market Grill, a posh and expensive restaurant on Covent Garden that lets you go "I had lunch at The Ivy" without having to actually go to the real Ivy in the West End or pay the astronomical prices required to become a member of The Ivy Club. I had a cheese souffle, a sirloin steak and a chocolate bombe for dessert. All of them were delicious and I am still stuffed even now, a good four hours after we finished eating. The diet has gone out the window for today, of course, but y'know what, it doesn't matter. I had a good time, and I can be back on track tomorrow. It's not as if I'm going to be eating like that every day, after all.

Anyway, all in all it was a very good day, and I'm glad I went along. I'm knackered now, though; on paper it might not sound like we did all that much, but when you take into account the train travel in both directions, add the walking required when progressing across London in various ways, add the energy required to keep your social batteries topped up for most of a day with the same group of people, it all adds up. So I'm back home now, writing this in my pants, feeling thoroughly satisfied. Probably an early night tonight, though.

Although Silent Hill f did arrive today, so…

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#oneaday Day 474: Archiving with mixed results

My 5.25" floppy drive and power source came today, so I've been tinkering this evening attempting to image some Atari 8-bit disks from the big boxes I have buried in a cupboard upstairs.

After a few frightening mechanical noises and some initial frustrations — the most annoying of which by far was discovering I had the floppy drive cable inserted into the Greaseweazle the wrong way around, causing the drive to perpetually spin and never actually read anything — I got the setup up and running, and successfully ripped a couple of disks, initially to the "raw flux" .scp format, and then converted them to the more commonly used (for emulators, MiSTer and suchlike) .atr.

(For future reference, Atari disks are 40 tracks, meaning you need to set Greaseweazle to read cylinders 0-34 and 35-39. I don't know the technicalities behind this, but it worked.)

My initial success was reassuring, but I had a number of failures after that. I think some of these disks may be beyond help — and frustratingly, so far it appears to be the disks with more "personal" contents.

I attempted to rip a disk that had some of my brother's early BASIC programming experiments on it (including a simple multi-choice adventure game called Treasures of Crylos that I remember being rather fond of), but the disk barely registered as having any contents at all when I attempted to rip it.

I had a little more success with "Pete's Disk 1", which was a SpartaDOS X-formatted double-density disk, so a bit of an unusual edge case. The disk seemingly ripped successfully, and loading it into an emulator with SpartaDOS X installed allowed me to view the disk directory, but I was unable to actually load and run anything from the disk. So close! So very close. Also man, SpartaDOS X could fit a hell of a lot of stuff on one floppy disk. No wonder my Dad set me up with it for my personal disks rather than trusty old DOS 2.5. You can squeeze a lot more on when your file sizes are measured in bytes rather than sectors.

Other successes I had included what we colloquially referred to as "The Dutch Demo", a multi-part graphics and sound demo that is, unsurprisingly, Dutch (and I don't think I've ever seen archived anywhere online, so I will be sharing that at some point); Red Rat's Technicolour Dream Demo, which is a slideshow of pictures produced with the software in question, which supported considerably higher colour depth than the Atari was "supposed" to support; and a couple of disks of collected games.

I haven't started ripping and organising in any great depth yet, but I would like to rip as many of these as I can, then archive them somewhere online. While most of the software on these disks is archived via other means elsewhere around the Internet, it's the little things, like the menu systems used to collect these games together, and the specific combination of things on each disk, which is unique to my own computing history — and something that I'm keen to preserve if at all possible.

I don't know how many of these disks are going to be salvageable. I'm already seeing that some brands of disk have much better longevity than others — thus far, Radio Shack and Verbatim's disks have had the highest success rate, with Wabash being the worst — so it will be interesting to find out exactly how much I might be able to recover and (re)discover throughout this process.

I'm done for the evening, though. Back to it on Friday, since tomorrow is a Work Trip. A fun Work Trip, but still one I have to get up early and catch a train for, so I better get some sleep.

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