2527: One for One!

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I completed my first couple of Pokémon trades over the last couple of days, giving me all three of the “starter” Pokémon from Sun and Moon to add to my Pokédex.

Since Pokémon is essentially a well-disguised trading card game (and a not-at-all-disguised trading card game in its Trading Card Game format, but that’s something else entirely) a key part of its appeal is working with other players to collect the things you want to collect.

This is an aspect of the game I always felt like I was obliged to miss out on in the earlier installments, particularly back in the Game Boy days when it was direct link or nothing. Although I had a number of friends who were big into video games, I didn’t know anyone who had a Game Boy and a copy of Pokémon, so I was denied access to what I understood from the beginning to be a significant part of the experience.

This has all changed with more recent platforms and widespread access to the Internet, meanwhile. Using Pokémon Moon’s Global Trade System (GTS) I managed to find a Rowlet that someone wanted a Pokémon I had for, and subsequently I listed another Pokémon I had and indicated that I was interested in acquiring a Popplio. The first trade was immediate, since the Rowlet owner had already listed the little owl for trade, and the second trade was complete within a day. As a relative Pokémon newbie, I wasn’t familiar with what is apparently a widespread Eevee trafficking market, but it seems as if evolved Eevees make for pretty reliable trade currency, so I’m probably going to have to farm some of those at some point.

Dipping my toes into this side of Pokémon is helping me to further understand the appeal of the series. Although the main game is a single-player adventure and there’s a significant amount of content to play through, both during and after the main story, a core part of the Pokémon experience as a whole appears to be the social aspect of it. And while Nintendo’s heavy-handed approach to online safety and privacy means that it’s literally impossible to communicate directly with another player — all communication is asynchronous, using a wide selection of preset words and phrases that auto-translate into different languages — there’s still a surprisingly strong feeling of “interaction” with other players when you successfully complete something like a trade or a Festival Plaza mission.

To be honest, I think I kind of prefer Nintendo’s way of doing things online these days — at least when it comes to playing with strangers. Playing with friends is a great laugh if you get on voice chat and indulge in some light-hearted banter, but when playing with strangers, there’s a fairly high probability you will run into at least one insufferable arsehole during a play session. With Nintendo’s approach, said insufferable arseholes are completely neutered and will never bother you or disrupt your enjoyment of the game. Of course, with Nintendo’s approach, your friends are similarly neutered, too, though chances are if you’re actual friends with those people you have alternative means of communicating anyway.

Meanwhile, my Pokémon Moon adventure is going pretty well. I’m onto the third island now with a strong team of Pokémon that cover a variety of different types, though I think I’ll be needing to train up some Ground or Rock types next. I also have an outfit that I’m pretty pleased with for the moment — big love to Nintendo and Game Freak for providing the option to purchase thigh-high socks in the very first clothing shop you come to — and I feel like I’m deepening my understanding of the overall metagame with every hour I play.

So yep. Think it’s safe to say I’m in this one for the long haul.

2521: Super Effective

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I’m continuing to enjoy Pokémon Moon. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion being keen to get to the end of my working day and be able to play it some more. I’m getting a feel for the shallow end of the overall metagame — most notably which types of Pokémon and attacks are strong and weak against other types — and I’m also getting curious to see what a Pokémon endgame is like after you’ve finished the story.

Of course, I’m a long way off the latter aspect in particular so far, since I’m still only on the second island in the game, coming up on that island’s second Trial. I am making good progress on the Pokédex, however, being roughly around 30% complete on the first two islands, and I’ve assembled what feels like a solid team of well-leveled Pokémon that feel like they’re pretty good for “general purpose” wandering around.

With the Trials on the second island, types become a lot more important, and the game drops a few hints your way as to which types of Pokémon you might want to make sure you have on hand for the upcoming challenges. The game seems to be well-paced in that the Pokémon you can catch in an area are of a suitable level to be reasonably competitive against both the local wildlife and Trainers, so grinding doesn’t seem to be too necessary unless you want to take a Pokémon you caught much earlier into the Trials. Even then, however, just making sure a low-level Pokémon is in your party while your stronger team members deal with the wild Pokémon of the area allows them to get caught up reasonably quickly, at least across the early levels.

One thing that occurs to me — and I thought this with what little I played of X and Y as well — is that Pokémon has quite a bit in common with MMOs these days. You don’t play in a persistent shared world with other people, but many aspects of the game are similar, particularly with regard to character customisation and competitive play. Of particular note is the “fashion” feature where you can adjust your avatar’s hair, makeup, eye colour and clothing and then share that avatar online through the Festival Plaza system. Your avatar can then be further customised through the text-based words and phrases they say when other players interact with them — asynchronously rather than in real-time, because this is a Nintendo game for kids, after all — and, later, you even get the opportunity to buy clothes that you see other characters wearing.

I haven’t tried the online trading and battling systems yet, but I understand they’re both fairly active. The trading facility in particular is a godsend when I think back to the early games; possibly one of the things that meant I bounced off Red and Gold back in the Game Boy days was because no-one else I knew was playing any of them, and thus I had no-one to trade or battle with. Nowadays, however, trading and battling is a simple case of visiting Festival Plaza and using the appropriate options — or, for someone in the same room as you, using the excellent Quick Link feature to quickly do something together.

Some 15 hours into the game so far, I remain curious as to whether it will hold my attention into its endgame and beyond, but I’m having a blast so far and anticipate I will continue to do so for quite some time yet.

2519: Chicken-chan x Lillie, OTP

One of the things that attracted me to try out the new Pokémon game was the amount of fanart it was generating even before its release. The Internet, it seemed, was particularly enamoured with Lillie, a major character in the story.

This animated GIF was the first time I noticed her:

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Said GIF is from the Pokémon anime rather than the game — and interestingly Lillie looks considerably younger in this than she does in the game and her official artwork, perhaps to ensure she is in keeping with the perpetually young Ash — but I found her immediately striking and endearing with her distinctive outfit, cute haircut and adorable reaction to Tauros. She doesn’t react at all like this when the player-protagonist encounters Tauros in the games, suggesting that her anime counterpart may be depicted as a slightly different character.

Anyway, I digress. Lillie caught my attention for some reason, initially with this GIF and subsequently with a considerable amount of fanart that started popping up around social media and suchlike.

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Here Lillie is seen closer to her depiction in the game, including her bag, in which she carries “Nebby”, a Cosmog Pokémon that she… “acquired” for reasons that are not yet apparent with my progress in the story. This somewhat pensive pose is also more characteristic of her depiction in the game; she’s shown to be a rather sensible girl who cares for Pokémon, but dislikes the world’s love of Pokémon battles because the participants often end up hurt. She’s constantly down on herself for not being a “proper trainer”, and attaches herself to the player-protagonist when the two develop an immediate connection by chance early in the narrative

You can play a male or female protagonist in Pokémon Sun and Moon, but with the Internet being the Internet, the fanbase of video games with Japanese origin loving a bit of yuri and the female protagonist being pretty cute in her own right, much of the fanart depicting Lillie with the game’s protagonist has focused on the same-sex pairing to varying degrees.

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The pairing is immediately appealing because the two characters are strong contrasts with one another. Lillie is blonde, pale and depicted as lacking in self-confidence, while “Chicken-chan” — so dubbed by a few people here and there owing to her silly hat — is dark-haired and shown to be curious, self-assured and more than willing to poke her nose into all manner of things. Even the way Chicken-chan walks in the games presents an air of confidence; she struts with great pride, while Lillie kind of saunters along, often looking like she’s hoping no-one will notice her.

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Naturally, there’s a ton of fanart out there suggesting that Chicken-chan and Lillie are more than just friends, such as this lovely image that looks like it’s straight out of a visual novel. And of course, there are plenty of images that take things… um… a little bit further, shall we say, but I’ll leave you to investigate Rule 34 for yourself if you dare.

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I really adore seeing the community as a whole get so wrapped up and invested in a fictional (and, one would argue, non-canonical) relationship between two characters in this way. It’s touching to see everyone “rooting” for these characters, and for so much of the artwork (explicitly lewd stuff aside, obviously) to just be so good-natured, positive and accepting that you can’t help but feel good when you see it.

I mean, obviously a lot of the appeal of the Chicken-chan x Lillie pairing is the simple fact that it’s two cute girls being cute together, but in a world where particularly vocal critics are constantly complaining about the “toxic” culture of gaming, the sheer volume of high-quality fanart of this kind — and the keenness with which it’s shared — is a reminder to us all that perhaps things aren’t quite as bad as the world’s perpetual whingers might want us to believe.

2517: Learn as You Play

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One of the most interesting things about the new Pokémon games is, I think, the online “Festival Plaza” component that allows you to indirectly communicate with other players, earn rewards and participate in communal challenges. It’s also the main hub from which you can challenge other players to battles, participate in tournaments, trade with friends or random people, list Pokémon for trade or seek out specific Pokémon that you’re after and a bunch of other things besides.

In typical Nintendo fashion, all the technical side of connecting to the Internet and communicating with other people is made as painless as possible — so much so that were it not for the lengthy connection process and the message on screen that says when you’re connected to the Internet, you’d think you were just playing another part of the main game. But you’re not; you’re in an area where every character you meet represents someone else who is playing the game somewhere in the world, and the things they say reflect things they have done and choices they have made.

One particularly interesting aspect of the Festival Plaza is the fact that you can host “missions”. These are simple minigames that usually involve running around the plaza and either talking to the correct people based on their greetings to you, or answering their questions correctly. The more points you score with correct actions, the more Festival Coins you earn, which can subsequently be used on Festival Plaza’s attractions.

What’s interesting about these missions is that it’s not just you playing them. Host one while you’re playing online and you may well notice your “total score” increasing faster than you’re contributing to it, and the number of participants rising. This is because when someone hosts a mission, other people connected to Festival Plaza at the same time receive a message and have the option to take part. Everyone who takes part gets rewards, and the higher the overall total score at the end — which can usually be inflated considerably by just a few more participants — the bigger the rewards everyone gets. It offers a nice balance of simple gameplay, light competitiveness — there’s a leaderboard at the end of the mission to show who contributed the most points — and jolly cooperation. And with Nintendo’s typical lack of direct communication facilities — something which I’m increasingly thankful for with the growing unpleasantness of many online playerbases — the whole thing just feels like a nice bit of fun.

The other interesting thing about these missions is that you can learn something from them. Some of them challenge you to name the correct types of Pokémon that would be strong against another particular type, for example, while some of them challenge you to pick out people who are naming specific types of Pokémon. But these missions aren’t all about the game itself; some of them are straight-up educational and seemingly developed in the interests of making people from all over the world feel a bit closer together. Of particular note are the “Language Lesson” missions in which all you have to do is find the people who are saying “hello”, “goodbye” or “thank you” in a given language. You’re given the set phrases to look out for in the mission information, then after that it’s up to you to remember them. By the end of the couple of minutes the mission takes, you’ll feel confident at saying those three phrases in another language, which is pretty neat.

Since Pokémon is primarily aimed at kids, despite a considerable adult-age enthusiast community of competitive players, I’m not anticipating any of these missions will get into anything too deep or complicated, but they’ve been a nice diversion from the main game, they feel in keeping with the overall tone of the whole thing and I’ve learned a thing or two from them, both about Pokémon in general and a couple of foreign languages to boot.

2250: Is There Anything More to ‘Senran Kagura 2’ Than Big, Bouncing Cartoon Breasts?

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Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson is actually something of an increasing rarity in the modern games sphere: it’s a sequel that actually rewards knowledge of its predecessors rather than acting as a standalone story or reboot. For sure, you can play through Deep Crimson without having played Senran Kagura Burst or Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus — despite the “2” in the title, this is actually the third in the series canonically, or fourth if you count the original Japanese release of the first half of Burst as Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls — but you will get far, far more out of it if you have knowledge of the setting, characters and backstory of what’s going on.

Senran Kagura as a series concerns itself with the happenings in the secret world of the shinobi. Trained in secret at specialised academies, shinobi are split into two main groups: “good” and “evil”. “Good” shinobi follow orders, help people, Do No Wrong, that sort of thing. “Evil” shinobi do the more shadowy work that is more traditionally associated with those of the ninja persuasion — assassination, espionage and generally being a bit of a bastard without anyone finding out about it until it’s much too late.

youma1 Life can’t be interpreted in such black-and-white terms, however; there are myriad shades of grey, and this becomes particularly apparent over the course of the Senran Kagura series’ overarching narrative threads and themes. In Senran Kagura Burst, the “good” shinobi of Hanzou Academy came to understand a little more about their “evil” Hebijo counterparts and that they weren’t so different despite their theoretically opposing ideologies; in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, we learned the truth about this stark good-evil divide: it’s an artificially created construct intended to provoke bloodshed between the two opposing sides, the net result of which lures horrific creatures known as youma out of the darkness so they can be slain by high-ranking shinobi.

In Deep Crimson, the questions over what “good” and “evil” really mean are further raised when the Hanzou students are tasked with initially capturing and then slaying a young girl called Kagura. Kagura, it seems, is destined to fend off the youma in particularly spectacular fashion, so surely the “good” shinobi want to keep her safe rather than splatter her over the nearest wall? Being good little, well, good shinobi, though, they set about making preparations for their mission, because good shinobi follow orders and don’t question them. It takes the “evil” shinobi of Homura’s Crimson Squad — the former Hebijo students — to convince them to think for themselves and realise that questioning this sort of drastic action is really probably okay if you stop to think about it for just a moment or two. And indeed, there’s quite a lot more to Kagura than initially appears.

youma2 In Senran Kagura Burst, the relationships between the Hanzou and Hebijo girls was explored through each of them fighting one another and coming to an understanding with their opposing counterpart. It was revealed that “evil” is actually a more inclusive concept than “good” in the world of Senran Kagura, since “good” can turn people away for “not being good enough”, while “evil” accepts everyone, no matter how nice or nasty they might have been in the past. Indeed, Burst’s storyline — particularly the Hebijo-specific path — takes great pains to humanise the Hebijo girls and depict them as interesting, flawed and often tragic characters who all have their own reasons for turning to the darker path.

In Deep Crimson, these relationships are further explored in a number of different ways, both through the narrative and through the game mechanics. A significant addition to Burst’s 2.5D brawling action is the ability to play missions in cooperative pairs, either with another player on a second 3DS system or with the AI taking control of the other character and you being able to switch the one you’re in direct control of at will. The game’s narrative makes a point of putting “opposing” — or perhaps it’s better to say “complementary” — characters together; here, rather than fighting against each other, as in Burst, the girls come to understand one another better by fighting alongside one another against the shared threat of the youma. This doesn’t, of course, preclude the fact that a number of comic misunderstandings lead to physical altercations between these pairs at several points in the story — Senran Kagura as a series has always known how to strike a good balance between pathos, drama and humour — but the net result of all the girls’ battles right up until the end of the game is that they all come to understand, appreciate and like one another better.

youma3 This paired-up action is more than just a gimmick, too; the way it’s presented really creates a strong sense of these characters being real people and having actual feelings towards one another. Whether it’s the tomboyish, loudmouthed Katsuragi giving the emotionless Hikage an enthusiastic high-five after a successful combat or the dour but utterly besotted Yagyuu catching her darling Hibari in a perfect princess hold after a joint special attack, the game’s beautiful animations are absolutely packed with personality, giving each character both a unique look and feel, making them all instantly recognisable.

This uniqueness extends to the way each of the girls plays as well. Far more so than in Senran Kagura Burst, at least, each girl has a very different fighting style, with their own unique button combinations required to unleash combo attacks and specific moves. While you can get away with button-mashing to a certain degree early in the game, once you start fighting more powerful bosses — and even more powerful individual enemies — factors such as positioning, launching, air control and dodging become significantly more important, and there are even some RPG-style status effects to inflict and contend with, just to make things that little bit more interesting.

Each character’s three special moves are unique, too; while some are simple area-effect nukes around the character position, others are charge attacks across the arena, good for cutting through swathes of enemies, while others have more specialised uses that can turn the tide of battle in your favour. Of particular note is Haruka’s “Death Kiss” move, which charms anyone hit with a large heart-shaped projectile and prevents them from attacking for a brief period; frustrating and combo-breaking when it hits you, massively useful when you’re able to do it yourself.

youma4 Unfolding across five separate chapters — each with an escalating focus and scope from the previous — and culminating with some dramatic moments of personal growth and epic conflict in the final chapter, Deep Crimson’s narrative is a strong one that is paced well and feels like it’s the series really hitting its stride. While Burst in particular felt like it was more concerned with introducing the characters and their relationships with one another — no bad thing in a series as characterisation-focused as this — Deep Crimson feels like the overall narrative of the series is moving significantly forwards. The characters aren’t treading water: their personal growth in the previous installments is acknowledged and used as a basis for this game’s narrative to build on, and this is where the particularly rewarding aspect of complete series familiarity comes in. It has, so far, been an absolute pleasure to witness these girls growing up and finding out more about themselves, their place in the world as people — and their place in the world as shinobi.

As I say, you can absolutely get some appreciation out of Deep Crimson if considering it in a vacuum, but the Senran Kagura series as a whole is at its most rewarding when you take in every piece of information available out there: creator Kenichiro Takaki and his team have created a very strong and believable setting and sense of context across these games, with some wonderfully human-feeling characters that interact with one another in relatable, believable ways — even when they’re being silly rather than serious. Like other prolific Japanese series such as Neptunia, the cast has transcended its original context to become a convincing set of “virtual actors” who wouldn’t feel out of place in situations other than fighting for their lives — indeed, we’ve already seen them put their weapons down and do other things in the immensely silly (but immensely entertaining) Senran Kagura Bon Appetit — and I sincerely hope that we see a lot more of these girls in the coming years.

Fortunately, I needn’t lament that my time with them has come to a close with the conclusion of Deep Crimson’s story, since Estival Versus has just released and is eagerly awaiting insertion into my PS4. More thoughts on that to come when I’ve spent some time with it.

Oh, hold on now, I didn’t answer the question in the headline, did I?

YES

2249: Catching Up on Deep Crimson

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My copy of Senran Kagura Estival Versus arrived the other day. I haven’t booted it up yet, because I realised that I was yet to play through its predecessor, the 3DS-based Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson. Since the Senran Kagura series is heavily narrative-based and subsequent installments often make reference to events in their predecessors — even between the “main” series on 3DS and the Versus subseries on Sony platforms — I didn’t want to jump into Estival Versus until I had, at the very least, beaten the main story of Deep Crimson.

I find the contrast between the 3DS and Sony incarnations of Senran Kagura to be quite interesting. The 3DS games, being the “canonical” storylines, for want of a better word, play like modernisations of 2.5D brawlers such as Streets of Rage, while the Sony games unfold with more of a sense of “3D”, feeling more like a blend between Dissidia Final Fantasy and Omega Force’s Warriors/Musou series. I’m torn as to which I prefer, to be honest; I’ve always had a major soft spot for 2.5D brawlers, and, upon firing up Senran Kagura Burst for the first time and discovering it was essentially a new Streets of Rage game, I was delighted. That said, the Versus series seems to be the one that tends to be more well-received, and I like the larger, extended cast that they incorporate.

I don’t have to pick a favourite, do I? No? Then I won’t. I love them all.

All right, Deep Crimson then. I’m coming up on the last missions of the game having blasted through the previous four chapters, and I’ve been really enjoying it so far. One thing that has developed considerably from Burst is the fact that each character feels very different to the others now. A lot of Burst could be got through by mashing the attack button and occasionally avoiding enemy attacks, though naturally you’d get more out of it — particularly in boss fights — if you learned some of the combos and when the characters’ special moves are especially effective. Deep Crimson, meanwhile, roundly punishes button-mashing, since there appears to be some sort of attack priority system going on, where hurling yourself at the front of an enemy while flailing wildly is a sure-fire way to get yourself defeated swiftly. Instead, mixing up light and strong attacks with air attacks, launches and special moves is essential; it feels much more like a “fighting game” than a button-mashing brawler, which is both enjoyable and rewarding. (Not that there’s anything wrong with a button-mashing brawler, of course; I still love me some Streets of Rage.)

Of particular note is the increased emphasis on special moves’ usefulness. I got through a lot of Burst and Shinovi Versus without making heavy use of these impressive, powerful moves, but Deep Crimson makes effective use of them a necessity. In a nice nod to series narrative continuity, all the girls start with their powered-up moves that they learned in the previous games, too, providing three distinct, situational moves to unleash at the appropriate time — and if you’ve wailed on your opponent enough to charge up your ninja scroll meter too, of course. There’s a nice mix between area-effect nukes, frontal cones, charge attacks and some outright bizarre abilities (Hibari’s “now I’m a giant and I’ma stomp on you!” move is particularly peculiar) that means learning how each character plays is essential; you can’t go in hitting buttons randomly and hope for the best, particularly in the tougher fights against stronger individual opponents or duos.

Narrative-wise, Deep Crimson raises the stakes significantly from Burst and even Shinovi Versus. Burst was, up until its final moments, heavily slice-of-life in nature, albeit slice-of-life with shinobi battles. There was a big, ridiculous final boss battle in its final chapter that teased where the series might go in the future, but then it ended. Shinovi Versus, meanwhile, again concentrated on the daily lives and backstories of the characters, but ended with an even bigger tease about the truth behind shinobi in the modern world: their mission to reveal and battle youma, hugely destructive evil creatures who demand blood sacrifices and generally fuck shit up.

After two games of us only ever seeing one youma though — Burst’s final boss Orochi, whom you fight both on the inside and the outside depending on which of the two main narrative paths you follow — I was beginning to wonder if youma were going to be one of those threats that was always mentioned in hushed whispers but never actually seen. I thought it would be disappointing if we didn’t get to fight some big slobbering monsters, though, because although it’s fun to see some shinobi-on-shinobi action, some big slobbering monsters would mix things up nicely.

Deep Crimson is well aware that I probably wasn’t the only person feeling like this, and opens with a retelling of Burst’s final moments, and then only continues to escalate from there. It tells an interesting tale that delves further into the overall series mythology — particularly the role of the high-ranking ninjas and of Kagura, a mysterious young girl who shows up and appears to be destined to fight youma.

The particularly interesting thing about the narrative is how it plays with the concepts of good and evil. This is always something that Senran Kagura has been particularly good at, with the majority of both Burst and Shinovi Versus exploring the nature of what “good” and “evil” shinobi really mean, and how people can find ways to build bridges across the frothing waters of conflicting ideologies. With Deep Crimson, though, the Hanzou girls — canonically the “good guys” — find themselves confronted with an order that they’re not sure is really the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Homura’s Crimson Squad, the former Hebijo Academy students and the characters originally positioned as the “bad guys”, are placed in the position of doing what you’d traditionally expect the heroes of the piece to be doing.

The other thing that’s interesting — and the thing I love the most about Senran Kagura as a whole — is how it juxtaposes the heavy, violent and often philosophical shinobi drama with the breezy silliness of a bunch of teenage girls trying to figure out who they are and what their place in the world is. Every single character in Senran Kagura is a well-defined, interesting person with a unique and worthwhile backstory, and they all get their own time in the limelight. Some characters — Homura is a particularly good example — undergo a huge amount of personal growth and development over the course of the series, and it’s been a real pleasure so far to watch these girls grow up, learn about themselves and their place in shinobi society.

This latter aspect in particular is what makes me so infuriated when people dismiss the series as “just boobs”. There’s some truly remarkable character and plot development going on in this series. Yes, there are big jiggly boobs; yes there are panty shots; yes, combat usually concludes with all the participants stripped down to their undies, but none of this takes away from the well-written, extremely well-characterised drama (and comedy!) that provides the context for the action. It truly is a series deserving of more credit than it gets, and as I close in on the end of Deep Crimson I find myself enormously excited to jump in to Estival Versus, whose core concept promises to tug at the heartstrings particularly strongly. But that’s a story for another day, of course.

“Just boobs” my arse.

2173: Three Swords

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Been playing a little bit of one of my Christmas acquisitions recently: the intriguing The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes. This isn’t a “mainline” Zelda game in that it’s not particularly narrative focused and is instead a largely cooperative multiplayer affair, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised quite how playable it is — and how it very recognisably has that Nintendo “magic” about it.

Triforce Heroes casts you in the role of a Toon Link who may or may not actually be Link and throws you into the town of Hytopia, which is currently undergoing something of a crisis: the local evil witch is apparently cursing everyone who is getting a bit too fashionable, and thus it’s up to the local heroes (for whom the populace have very specific requirements) to sort things out once and for all.

It’s an eminently stupid premise, obviously, but in a way that works in the game’s favour, because the lack of focus on a coherent narrative allows the game to instead concentrate on gameplay, and in a multiplayer-centric affair, this is by far the best approach.

Triforce Heroes unfolds over a series of discrete levels, each of which makes up a number of different regions in the Drablands, the area the witch calls home. As you complete the various levels, you’ll acquire materials and Rupees, both of which can be used to create new costumes for maybe-Link and confer special abilities and bonuses — or, in some cases, penalties. You then repeat the process, gradually increasing your completion and/or grinding levels you’ve already done for more materials. That is, so far as I can determine, it. But rather than being a throwaway affair, it’s actually rather compelling.

It helps that the levels are well designed to necessitate cooperation. Unlike, say, Super Mario 3D World, where additional players were more of a distraction than anything else, Triforce Heroes’ levels are specifically designed with three players in mind. Most of the cooperation involves picking up and throwing around the other two players to reach out-of-reach platforms — not-Link, as ever, can’t jump — but also making use of the “totem” ability to create a stack of up to three people in order to shoot at/smack/bomb/collect things that are too high off the ground for a single player.

One particularly charming aspect of the game is that as with most Nintendo online games, Triforce Heroes has no means of directly chatting with other players. Instead, you’re given a set of endearing emotes ranging from “Over here!” to “Noooo!” that you can spam at will. Most players have already developed a means of “communicating” using these emotes creatively — and, indeed, it’s a heartwarming moment when you come together with two strangers all spamming the “cheerleader” emote to signal your joy at having completed a particularly difficult area of the dungeon you’re in.

Perhaps best of all for those who have friends with 3DSes, though, is the fact that the game supports Download Play, meaning that only one person needs to actually own a game cartridge for a group of three to be able to enjoy some cooperative fun. Obviously this doesn’t apply when it comes to online play, but for local multiplayer sessions I can see it being a riot — I’m looking forward to trying it sometime.

It’s not the sort of game I see being a thing you’d spend hours on at a time. But as something to while away a few minutes with at a time, Triforce Heroes is an impressive achievement: a cooperative game where yelling at each other is kept to a minimum, and where the whole experience just feels so delightfully wholesome that you can’t help but enjoy it with a big smile on your face.

2140: Rate Me!

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I’ve been thinking about user reviews. It’s a long-standing joke that user reviews aren’t always entirely useful, particularly when it comes to people who think they’re more hilarious than they actually are, but on balance, I think they’re a pretty good thing. Or, rather, I do actually look at them when considering whether or not to purchase something or make use of a service.

The reason I got thinking about this is because I tend not to leave reviews myself very often. I am, for the most part, one of those people who tends only to leave bad reviews when I hate something, and just let good work go silently appreciated.

This is no help to anyone, of course, because recommendations are just as important — if not more so — than advice to Steer Well Clear. And, given I’m a reasonably intelligent sort of chap and I make use of user reviews to inform my purchasing decisions, I should probably make more of an effort to be helpful to other prospective purchasers.

From hereon, then, I’m going to try and review more things in the hope that the things I have to say are helpful to someone. I’ve already done a fair few Steam reviews over the years, and I always make a point of trying to be informative when I write them. But I’m also going to try and review more of the apps I use on my phone, and software I download on my other devices such as my 3DS, Vita and PlayStation.

I’m actually quite taken with Nintendo’s approach to reviews on the Wii U and 3DS; rather than allowing people free reign with their comments, it simply asks a number of simple questions that, in their own right, are quite informative and helpful. Firstly, there’s the question of whether you think the game would appeal more to men or women. Then it asks you how old the person who enjoyed the game the most was. Then it asks you to give it a star rating between one and five, and finally asks you whether you think it’s more suitable for “Everyone” or “Gamers”, and whether it’s more suited to “Casual” or “Intense” play sessions.

Five questions that give you a reasonably good idea of what the game experience is all about, and it takes a matter of seconds to fill them out. I am all for that.

In that spirit, then, I present to you a series of five-word reviews of things I’ve played recently.

Nintendo presents New Style Boutique 2: Fashion Forward – More fun than you’d think.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – Still relevant now, in 2015.

The Legend of Zelda – The Dark Souls of Zelda.

DiRT Showdown – Lots of fun in cars.

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed – Mario Kart meets Blur. Yes!

Mini Metro – Minimalist puzzler with lovely sound.

Hyrule Warriors – Impa is the most badassest.

OutRun 3D – Arcade classic still plays well.

Streets of Rage 3D – Mega Drive brawler still fun.

2128: Point to Point

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I’m apparently on a minor retro kick at the moment, what with playing The Legend of Zelda and, also, downloading the “3D Classics” version of OutRun on my 3DS.

I love OutRun. It’s one of those games that I used to see in the arcade but, for whatever reason, didn’t play very often. (I feel it was probably something to do with my Dad baulking at the idea of paying 50p for one credit, but I usually managed to convince him that it was worth paying this much to play G-LOC, which at least had aeroplanes in it.) We also had the dreadful Atari ST port of Turbo OutRun, which I actually rather enjoyed despite its atrocious framerate, appalling load times (in the middle of a race!) and loss of various animations and game features if you had less than 1MB of RAM in your computer.

Despite all these setbacks, OutRun has always remained a racing game that I’ve been very fond of, and when the Shenmue series hit Dreamcast with a variety of playable Sega games right there within the game itself, I spent a great deal of time recapturing past glories (or, more commonly, indignities) on OutRun and Super Hang-On. When the PlayStation 2/Xbox era rolled around, I spent a lot of time playing the wonderful OutRun 2, which brought the basic gameplay of the original up to date with fresh graphics, but otherwise played just like an old arcade game. And when the Xbox 360 got a tweaked port of OutRun 2 on its downloadable Xbox Live Arcade service, well, of course I was going to play it again.

3D Classics OutRun is arguably a step back technology-wise from OutRun 2 and its spinoffs; it’s based on the original 16-bit sprite-based graphics rather than being rendered in full polygonal glory. This is true to the original game, however, and there are a few little tweaks here and there to bring it a bit more up to date. It runs at 60 frames per second, for one thing, making it look smoother than the arcade version ever did, and makes excellent use of the 3DS’ glasses-free stereoscopic 3D for some impressive visual effects. Possibly my favourite “pointless but cool” feature in it, however, is the simulation of the arcade cabinets’ movement that you can turn on; OutRun was one of the many arcade games in the period that had “Deluxe” cabinets featuring hydraulics that would cause your seat to move around as you played. Your field of vision on the tiny screen of the 3DS isn’t quite the same as literally feeling your car being slammed around corners, but it’s a decent enough approximation, and a fun (and optional) effect to play with.

But enough about the technical side of things; every time I play some variation on OutRun I find myself pining for this lost age of racing games. Not necessarily because of the graphics or the style of play or anything — playing racing games with strict countdown time limits can be a bit of a culture shock these days! — but because they feature a subtle difference from most modern racing games in that they are point-to-point racers rather than lap-based.

I like point-to-point races, and we don’t see nearly enough of them in modern racing games. There are exceptions, mind you: Burnout 2 had a nice little feature where once you completed the various events in one area, you then had a point-to-point race to get to the next one; Burnout Paradise was almost entirely point-to-point races; the Midnight Club series took an enjoyably chaotic approach to point-to-point racing by allowing you to choose your own route through an open-world city, so long as you hit the checkpoints along the way. But despite these examples, many of the racers we have today are lap-based.

Why is this something I care about? Well, lap-based racers are fun, of course, and allow you to learn the course, even within a single race. Point-to-point racers, meanwhile, have a wonderful sense of going on a journey, and in the case of games like OutRun, it’s immensely satisfying to successfully reach the next stage of said journey and see what new scenery there is to admire a little further down the road. OutRun even takes this one step further, by providing a fork in the road at the end of each stage, allowing you to continue in one of two different directions to create your own custom route through the game.

3D Classics OutRun isn’t a deep game in the slightest, especially when held up against more modern examples. But there’s a purity to the experience that you just don’t get in more realistic fare; it’s a game that revels in the enjoyment of taking a fast car on a rollercoaster ride and seeing how far you can get this time. I love it, and I’m happy it’s still a relevant game in 2015!

2058: Hi Games Journalism, It’s Time We Had Another Chat

And so soon after the last one! My goodness me. It’s almost as if you don’t listen or have any consideration for your audience whatsoever. Although if you’re writing for “dead” people, I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since the dead don’t usually talk back.

Today in Unacceptable Articles That Should Never Have Gotten Through the Editorial Process, If There Even Is One, I present Vice UK’s depressingly predictable article “Is There Anything More to Senran Kagura 2 Than Big, Bouncing Cartoon Breasts?”, written by one Mike Diver, someone whom I have never previously heard of, but whose credibility has, for me, already fallen in the toilet as a result of this single article.

I learned early on that you should never write a headline that is a question that can be answered with a single word. There are a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that most people will look at the headline, think of their own personal answer to the question and then not bother to read the article to find out what the author thought. But beyond that, these sorts of headlines are often inherently loaded questions, too, demonstrating clear prejudice before you even get into the article itself. In the case of Diver’s article here, it’s immediately apparent that he has come to Senran Kagura 2 with the assumption that there is “nothing more” to the game than “big, bouncing cartoon breasts” and, as such, will probably take some convincing that, in fact, the series is considerably deeper than that. Or, more likely, he simply won’t even entertain the possibility that his prejudices might, in fact, be mistaken and based on flawed assumptions.

Diver kicks off his article by burying the lede — admittedly only by a single paragraph, but he still opens the article by talking about Metal Gear Solid V, Mad Max and Super Mario Maker instead of Senran Kagura 2. This is an immediate warning sign; it sends the signal that he would rather be doing anything other than writing about Senran Kagura 2, which, of course, begs the question as to why he is writing about it in the first place, but I think we all probably know the answer to that already. (Hint: it rhymes with “dicks”.)

Diver’s second paragraph then introduces Senran Kagura 2 by giving some important context: the fact that he downloaded the game “a couple of weeks ago” and, since that time, has “played maybe an hour” of the game in total, across “five or six brief sessions” that we can extrapolate to have been no longer than ten minutes each. He also briefly discusses developer Tamsoft’s history, implying that the PS1 era’s Toshinden is their most noteworthy and “acceptable” work, while everything since (including Senran Kagura and Oneechanbara) has been “rather more exploitative fare”. (He’s not wrong to call Oneechanbara in particular exploitative, but in that game’s case in particular, it’s a direct reference to “exploitation” horror films and as such is rather more clever than he gives it credit for.)

“60 minutes is enough to know what [Senran Kagura 2 is] all about,” writes Diver. “Breasts. Boobs. Tits. Baps. Knockers, Bosoms. Norks. Melons. Insert your own local, colloquial variation, here. Seriously. That’s it. Breasts. This is a game about breasts.”

I would perhaps be more receptive to this appraisal were it not for the fact that Diver contradicts himself in the same paragraph by saying “oh, sure, there’s fighting too, and a storyline I cannot even begin to fathom on account of it directly following the events of its preceding game, Senran Kagura Burst, which I’d not even heard of prior to picking this up.”

Hold on there. Hold on just a minute. There’s a little thing that you can do as a journalist called “research”. If you’re not familiar with a series — and the fucking great “2” in Senran Kagura 2’s title should be a pretty obvious tip-off that it is part of a series and a sequel to something — then you should probably find out a bit more about it before you jump in halfway. You wouldn’t start reading The Lord of the Rings (or watching the movies) halfway through The Two Towers without at the very least familiarising yourself with a synopsis of what had come before; you wouldn’t start watching Breaking Bad halfway through its third season and then whinge that you had no idea what was going on; you wouldn’t read His Dark Materials starting at the third book. (Or at least, you shouldn’t do any of these things, or if you do, you shouldn’t moan that you “cannot even begin to fathom” what is going on, because it’s your own stupid fault.)

“There’s an extremely long, context-setting intro, but I fell asleep halfway through it,” continues Diver, again contradicting himself by demonstrating that the game clearly does make an effort to get people up to speed even if they haven’t played Burst, and also demonstrating a clear unwillingness to engage with the game on anything more than the most superficial level.

Here’s the thing: Senran Kagura, as a series, is essentially a visual novel in which story sequences are punctuated by brawler-style action sequences — the 3DS games feature 2.5D-style fighting similar to arcade classics such as Streets of Rage, while the Vita and PS4 games feature 3D brawling somewhat akin to the Dynasty Warriors series. Although the games are regarded as “brawlers”, their main reason for existence is not, as Diver claims, “breasts”, but to tell their stories. And they do this through a medium that Japan has proven time and time again to be an effective means of exploring and developing characters: the visual novel.

It is quite surprising to a lot of people coming to Senran Kagura for the first time quite how much effort the game makes with its storytelling. Certainly, it’s not particularly flashy in its execution — it alternates between “NVL”-style full screens of text overlaid on static backdrops or event images for longer, more dramatic sequences or internal monologues exploring characterisation, and “ADV”-style head-and-shoulders conversations for shorter, more incidental and immediate conversations between characters — but it’s an effective means of getting its point across. The longer NVL sequences put the story in context and often feature past-tense narration explaining things that happened in the past, while the shorter ADV sequences give us an insight into how the characters are right now, and how they are responding and reacting to one another.

In other words, ignore Senran Kagura’s visual novel sequences — or “fall asleep” during them — and you are Missing The Point fairly spectacularly, not to mention completely invalidating your own assertion that “this is a game about breasts”.

“That a game like this can come out in 2015 is ridiculous,” continues Diver, now in full-on table-thumping mode. “It’s brazenly, unapologetically sexist. And it’s all as arousing as a dinner date with Des O’Connor, where [at this point Diver trails off into his own bizarre fantasy which I will spare you for now]. The thin waists and titanic whimwams might represent wank fantasy material for teenage boys who, for some reason, can’t bring themselves to find actual pornography on the Internet, but to a grown adult, a married man, a father of two, this is just the dullest, most tired tripe masquerading as titillation. I get more excited making toast.”

Here we get to one of the important issues with Diver’s appraisal of the series: his assumption that it is pornography. As anyone who has actually played the series will tell you at great length, Senran Kagura is most certainly not pornography. It has positive attitudes towards sexuality — most notably fetishes such as sadism and masochism as well as lesbianism — but that doesn’t make it pornographic.

Even the game’s notorious “clothes ripping” mechanic and its jiggly breasts don’t make it pornographic; both of those things have been put in there for two reasons: firstly, simply as part of the game’s aesthetic, in the same way that Bayonetta has masturbating angels and naked witches all over the place but isn’t “porn” — to be honest, you sort of stop actively noticing it after a while, and it just becomes “the way the game looks” — and secondly, as a reflection of the characters’ attitudes towards their own bodies, sexuality and selves as a whole. Compare Haruka’s positive glee as her opponent shreds her defenses to Mirai’s embarrassment at her skinny, childlike body no longer being hidden by her big, baggy Gothic Lolita dress as a great example of how this is used as a means of characterising the cast in a non-verbal manner.

Diver then plays what he clearly believes to be his trump card: that he’s a “grown adult, a married man, a father of two” and that this somehow makes him better than all this. To refute this, all we have to do is go back to his first paragraph, where he mentions Metal Gear Solid V (a game in which you can make a horse shit on command), Mad Max (a game in which you fix up a pretend car and blow up people you don’t like) and Super Mario Maker (a game in which you fashion crudely-drawn penises out of platforms floating in the sky in a magical mushroom kingdom, and then invite your friends over to giggle childishly as they leap all over them). I don’t actually think all of these games can be reduced down to these stupid descriptions, of course — but in the same way, Senran Kagura as a series cannot be reduced down to “this game is about breasts”, particularly after just 60 minutes across five or six sessions with a single game in the fucking series.

It continues, though. “Yet this is a game — a series, which has spawned its own manga and anime offshoots — with so many fans,” says Diver with apparent surprise that something he doesn’t like could possibly be popular or well-received. “Sales of the games to date have passed the million mark [significant for a niche-interest title like this] and coverage elsewhere has emphasised the gameplay improvements made to Deep Crimson, compared to its predecessor. And, you know, I’m absolutely fine with people playing this game, and enjoying it (be fair, most likely in the privacy of their own homes, despite the portability of the platform), and claiming that they’re primarily in it for everything but what’s inside all those fancy blouses.”

No you’re not, Mr Diver. You are not “fine with people playing this game, and enjoying it”, as your incredibly judgemental parentheses indicate. But we’ve already covered this; in your five or six ten-minute sessions with the game, you made no effort to engage with its more interesting aspects, and instead chose to reduce it down to “what’s inside all those fancy blouses”. I feel that you, sir, may be the one with the issue here.

“Of course, they’re fucking lying, as this is a game about breasts,” continues Diver, proving the point I made in the last paragraph. “And nothing else, so stop kidding yourself. You’re not playing Deep Crimson for its multi-layered gameplay, for its sole playable male…”

Hold on a minute. Games journalism as a whole is always whingeing about how there’s no female representation in games, and yet here we have a game with eleven playable female characters, each of whom are developed and explored in great detail across the course of the series as a whole, and yet the “sole playable male” is something worth fixating on or criticising? I’m not even sure what point Diver is trying to make by mentioning this — perhaps the mistaken assumption that horny young men refuse to play as women and as such will only want to play as Murasame? I don’t know. But I digress.

“…its pair battles or its tangled tale of… sorry, again, no idea, but I get that the baddies aren’t all that bad in the big scheme of things.”

Senran Kagura’s “baddies” want to summon youma and take control of these legendary monsters to assert their dominance over the world, and have no problems resorting to kidnapping and even murder in order to further their own goals. I guess Diver is right about one thing: he really does have “no idea” about what the game’s “tangled tale” is all about.

“You’re playing it because misshapen cartoon girls with weirdly massive eyes, piss-poorly made outfits and ginormous gazongas do it for you,” he continues. “And that’s okay, I suppose. Better that you feel up fictional girls on your 3DS screen rather than grope a stranger on the bus.”

Hold on a fucking minute there. The rest of this piece has been dismissive and judgemental, yes, but this particular passage crosses the line into just plain offensive. The not-at-all-subtle implication that people who enjoy Senran Kagura would be committing sexual assaults in public if they didn’t have their terrible, awful pornographic games to sate their depraved appetites and slake their thirst for young flesh is absolutely unacceptable. I don’t think any more really needs to be said about this, particularly as we’ve already had words about this. You do not imply that portions of your audience are criminals based on what kind of entertainment they choose to enjoy. You do not demonise people based on their open-mindedness. And you do not get to pass judgement on a game you have played for “five or six” ten-minute sessions without making any attempt to engage with it beyond “this is a game about breasts”.

This article is completely unacceptable, and should never have made it through Vice’s editorial process — if indeed there even is one. I’ve mentioned before that I strongly believe in a case for specialist writers who know what they are talking about in the field of video games, and nonsense like this just goes to prove the point. Diver’s article achieves nothing other than reinforcing prejudices and frustrating people who know better. It doesn’t drive discourse about gaming forwards, it’s utterly backwards and completely closed to debate; for all Diver’s protestations that he’s “fine” with people liking it and that it’s “okay, I suppose”, it’s abundantly clear that he believes anyone who has even a passing interest in the Senran Kagura series is a sexual deviant who is just one 3DS away from committing a criminal sexual assault in public.

Well, Mr Diver, your attitude is not fine. It is not “okay, I suppose”. Your piece is a vile, hateful, ill-considered and poorly researched screed about a topic you clearly have no business writing about. Go back to Mad Max and pimp up your wasteland-mobile, since that’s clearly what you’d rather be doing — though I’ll expect a 3,000-word essay from you about how the game’s depiction of women is “problematic” by the end of the week, assuming Polygon’s Phil Kollar doesn’t beat you to it.

In the words of Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki, “the world is full of stuff people will think is fun to them. It just seems so pointless to waste your time on things you don’t like or can’t understand.” If only a few more people took those words to heart.