2236: Games You Probably Haven’t Tried But Should: Croixleur Sigma

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I’m a big fan of the Japanese doujin (indie) scene’s work and have been ever since I first came across the rather wonderful Recettear by EasyGameStation and its equally wonderful localisation by Carpe Fulgur. Much like the Western indie scene, the Japanese doujin scene is the home of the type of games that men in suits decide “won’t provide a good ROI or conversion ratio” or whatever shit they talk about in boardrooms these days.

Unlike the Western indie scene, however, which has a strong tendency to err on the side of “art games” — works that make use of gaming conventions in the service of telling a story or delivering some sort of message to the audience — the Japanese doujin scene has a strong tendency to make very “pure” gaming experiences that, while they sometimes have strong narratives, are primarily concerned with being fun to play and feeling like classic console and arcade titles from the PS1 and Dreamcast eras.

Croixleur Sigma by Souvenir Circ is one such example. I’ve had the pleasure of following Croixleur’s development since it was first released as a rather simplistic, albeit enjoyable, arena-based brawler a good few years ago now, and over time it’s blossomed into a genuinely excellent arcade-style game with a surprising amount of depth. With its recent PlayStation 4 release by publisher Playism, we finally have what is probably the definitive version of Croixleur, and it’s well worth your time and £11.

As previously mentioned, Croixleur is an arena-based brawler specifically designed to channel Devil May Cry’s Bloody Palace mode, in which the protagonist fights their way through increasingly challenging waves of enemies with a mind to completing the challenge 1) as quickly as possible 2) without dying and 3) scoring as many points as possible. In Croixleur’s case, you take on the role of one of four charming young weapon-wielding ladies and hack and slash your way through various types of monsters, hopefully before the 15-minute timer or your two arcade-style continues run out.

Croixleur initially seems disappointingly simple. Tapping the attack button unleashes a basic combo, but this isn’t altered by moving directions or changing weapons or anything. You can jump and do the same combo, or you can dash.

You can probably make it through the game just mashing the attack button, but it would be very tedious. Thankfully, that isn’t all there is to Croixleur, not by a long shot. No, Croixleur is very much based around being as fluid and elegant as possible; every action is possible to “cancel” into another — in other words, while one animation is going off, you can hit the button combination to do something else and that thing happen a lot sooner than it would have if you’d let the animation finish and set it off from a standing start. Effective fighting in Croixleur, then, becomes a combination of hitting weak enemies with your basic attack, dashing to other enemies to get into position, and using the unique special attacks each of the collectible weapons offer in order to best deal with the situations in which you find yourself. There’s also a “smart bomb”-like ability that has a limited number of uses; this is particularly useful against the stronger, larger enemies that less frequently show up.

There are only three basic enemy types in Croixleur: a goblin thing, a goblin wizard thing and a flying eyeball bat thing. While you might think this would cause the game to lack variety, things are mixed up a bit by a couple of palette variations of each: brown ones are weakest, blue ones take more hits and are more aggressive, red ones are strongest and most dangerous. The advantage of there only being three basic types of enemy is that you can learn their attack patterns and “tells” in their animations and be able to deftly avoid their attacks in order to keep up your own assault; in order to get the best scores — and indeed to survive, full stop — you’ll need to avoid taking damage as much as possible.

Alongside the basic three enemies are a few larger types, too: there’s a big monster thing, a gold knight, a silver knight and a fuck-off massive dragon as the final boss. Having significantly more HP — and usually being accompanied by a horde of the basic enemies — means that you have to deal with these powerful foes is somewhat different ways, zipping in and chipping away at their health before they can wind up a powerful attack, or using a special move to pelt them with magic from afar.

Further variation to the game is added through the weapons that you collect as you progress. You can equip up to four of these when you start a new game, effectively allowing you to customise your heroine’s choice of special moves according to how you like to play. There are also a variety of entertaining visual accessories you can purchase with the coins you collect by defeating enemies, and these all have various benefits to gameplay. Plus they look fun.

Croixleur is not a complicated or long game, but it’s surprising how much depth it has. It’s very much an arcade game, and wouldn’t feel out of place on the Dreamcast, with its large, Sega-style countdown timer, ludicrous scores to attain and wonderfully fluid, 60fps action. Plus there’s a ton of unlockable stuff to uncover as well as the ever-present challenge of besting your own high scores — and those of your friends, too, of course.

Give it a try!

1924: Journeying Ever Onwards

So One Way Heroics Plus has pretty much devoured my soul with its wily ways and new features. I’ve been playing it a whole bunch, dying a whole lot and having a great time in the process.

I made a video of two unsuccessful runs earlier; here you go:

I’m really impressed with the additions to the base formula. In particular I’m excited about the fact that there are a number of new quests involved in unlocking the additional character classes; these quests replace the standard adventure to defeat the Demon Lord (or win in a couple of other super-secret ways) and task you with additional objectives, confronting you with new challenges and powerful foes on the way.

The small additions to the game’s interface are great, too. The hotbar in particular is an excellent addition, even if you only use it to quickly access skills like Awakening (your default “stop time for three turns” ability, which is very useful for getting out of a pinch) and Lockpicking. It’s also great to be able to customise the interface somewhat; it’s still a little cluttered thanks to it running in 640×480 (or upscaled 640×480 now, at least) but simple changes like being able to put your gauges at the bottom of the screen and the minimap up the top make it a lot easier to see where you’re going.

More subtle changes only become apparent if you’ve played both games. The pace of levelling has been considerably increased, but in exchange the “Goddess Statues” at which you can “spend” levels to get numerous benefits are considerably more expensive to use, and no longer provide the same possible bonuses every time. Skill merchants offer the ability to learn new abilities in exchange for stat levels, Iron Hags will make a random item for you (including “air”, which just means you’re out of pocket), benevolent Force practitioners will teach you defensive, utility or restorative spells… the list goes on.

And the game is still absolutely packed with charm and a surprising amount of depth. Most notably — and this was true of the original, too — is the fact that, despite initial appearances, the game does have a plot. Or, more accurately, a number of different intertwining narrative threads that only become apparent if you come into contact with the recruitable NPCs, figure out a way to stop the Demon Lord trying to set fire to you long enough to have a chat or try some of the daily “special campaigns” that add small but significant tweaks to the basic formula. A particular favourite that I had the other day was a world where every normal attack had a massive knockback effect on it, so you had to take care not to fight with your back to the encroaching Darkness lest you get slammed into it by your foe landing a blow. It shook up the way I played a great deal; unfortunately I didn’t quite get far enough to take full advantage of it by whacking the final boss of the Force Knight unlock quest into the Darkness — the main means through which you deal damage to this rather unpleasant adversary — but it was an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

I’m well and truly hooked then. And if you’re yet to discover the fun for yourself, I recommend giving it a look now. It’s just $6.99 and it will keep you busy for a very long time. You can grab it from publisher Playism, or soon from Steam, too. (If you buy it now at Playism, you’ll get a Steam key when that version releases.)

1916: How an MMO Taught Me to Be a Better Shmup Player, and Other Stories

Today I’ve been playing a few different games, including Grand Theft Auto Online, One Way Heroics and Crimzon Clover: World Ignition.

Before I go any further, I just want to share a video I knocked up in five minutes using GTA’s built-in video editor. I’m looking forward to having a play with this; I haven’t seen an in-game editor so flexible since Driver on the PS1, and my friend Woody and I used to spend hours making ridiculous car chase movies with that.

But GTA is not what I want to talk about today. Rather, I want to talk a little about the last game I mentioned: Crimzon Clover: World Ignition. As you can probably surmise from the overblown title, this is a Japanese game; those of you with particularly strong game genre intuition will also have doubtless correctly identified that it is a shoot ’em up, specifically of the danmaku (bullet hell) variety.

I grabbed Crimzon Clover this week as part of GOG.com’s recent “tower of sales”. They were selling a pack of shoot ’em ups, several of which I’d had my eye on for a while, and one of which (the rather marvellous Astebreed, which was one of the last things I reviewed over at USgamer) I already owned, but it turned out that removing that from the package actually made it more expensive, so now I have two copies. Anyway, I digress; the sale has now ended, but Crimzon Clover is still pretty cheap anyway, so if you’re looking for some fun arcade-style blasting action, you could do far worse than grab a copy — and remember, there’s no shame in playing on “Novice” difficulty, so long as you don’t use the “Continue” function!

For those who haven’t been following me for a while, are unfamiliar with the modern conventions of the shoot ’em up genre or with Japanese gaming in general, a danmaku shooter is characterised by its extremely hectic patterns of bullets filling the screen which, at first glance, look impossible to avoid. That is, until you realise that the ship you’re flying has a “hitbox” much smaller than its complete sprite, which means you can get away with “grazing” bullets so long as they don’t hit the (usually explicitly visible) hitbox. In fact, some danmaku shooters ever reward you for grazing bullets without being destroyed.

The other defining feature of a danmaku shooter is a somewhat convoluted scoring system. Crimzon Clover is a little more straightforward than some of the more obtuse systems that renowned genre specialist Cave has come out with over the years, but it still requires something of an understanding beyond “shoot everything” in order to get the truly high scores.

But again, chasing high scores isn’t what I wanted to talk about today; instead, I want to talk about something I noticed while I was playing Crimzon Clover earlier today, and that’s the awareness that I suddenly had of myself using disciplines I’d picked up from a completely different game: Final Fantasy XIV.

Crimzon Clover and Final Fantasy XIV would doubtless not appear to have anything in common at first glance, but bear with me. Boil both of them down to their purest essence and they are both games about learning attack patterns and responding to them. Neither of them depend on randomness for the most part, with every encounter instead being meticulously scripted and choreographed down to the last detail; both of them reward taking the time to familiarise yourself with these patterns and know how to deal with them. In other words, knowing your part of the overall intricate dance of death and destruction on the screen.

This becomes even more obvious when fighting a boss in Crimzon Clover and, indeed, most other danmaku shoot ’em ups. One thing that both Final Fantasy XIV and Crimzon Clover have in common is a phase-based structure for boss fights: the boss uses a certain set of attacks until you damage it a certain amount (or, in some cases, a certain amount of time passes), then it moves on to something else, then perhaps something else, then perhaps something else after that. The most complex fight in Final Fantasy XIV I’ve done to date, for example — The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4 (aka Turn 9, aka Nael deus Darnus) is split across four different phases, each of which is completely different from the last, and each of which requires learning independently of the others.

Crimzon Clover, meanwhile, is no exception to this rule, with bosses having set bullet patterns and special attacks according to which phase you’re on at any time; the one difference is that phase transitions are explicitly marked on the boss’ health bar in Crimzon Clover (and, again, in most other danmaku shmups) while in Final Fantasy XIV it’s a case of learning when the changeovers happen and how to time them so that you and your party are in a good position to deal with them when they happen. (The fact that Crimzon Clover is designed for one or two completely independent players while Final Fantasy XIV is designed for four to eight interdependent players is another difference, of course, but this added complexity is mitigated a little by the fact you’re not dodging literally thousands of bullets at any given moment. At least not in any encounter I’ve challenged so far.)

The thing I became aware of as I had a go at the first few levels of Crimzon Clover today — I haven’t managed to clear the game yet, as it’s pretty tough, even on Novice difficulty! — was that I was using most of the same skills I used while playing Final Fantasy. I was learning to observe patterns and anticipate what came next; I was moving into advantageous positions before all hell broke loose; I was learning from my mistakes rather than becoming frustrated by them.

These are all skills that, if we pull back and look at a lot of different games, are fairly common. But I’ve become most keenly aware of them while playing Final Fantasy XIV in particular, and it was a little surprising — and pleasing — to be aware of how applicable they were in a “cross-discipline” situation in a completely different game today. (And yes, Dark Souls fans, I know they’re applicable to that game too, but… I just can’t, okay?)

Also, Crimzon Clover is fucking awesome and if you like beautifully slick, gorgeous shoot ’em ups then I recommend you go grab yourself a copy from Steam or GOG.com right now!

1910: Please Proceed to the Right – One Way Heroics

I’ve been revisiting a game I reviewed a while back: One Way Heroics from Japanese indie developer Smoking WOLF and localisation specialists Playism.

I made a video, even.

For those disinclined to watch a complete 40-minute playthrough of the game (the first time I ever beat it, fact fans — lucky I was recording, eh?) I shall also use the power of written words to explain what’s going on and why you should give this game a shot.

One Way Heroics is a sort-of roguelike crossed with the auto-scrolling levels from old Super Mario Bros. games. If that sounds strange, you’d be right, but that’s what makes the game interesting.

The concept is simple: the Darkness is swallowing the land a bit at a time, and it’s up to you to track down the Demon Lord supposedly responsible for this whole mess and punch him in the face until he stops being such a rotter. The encroaching darkness is represented by the scrolling screen — every move or action you perform causes it to advance slightly, and if you fall off the left side of the screen, you die. Naturally, this opens up the possibility of getting “trapped” in places, so you have to plan your movements pretty carefully to make sure you don’t get stuck.

There’s a selection of different character classes to play, each with their own distinctive pixel-art appearance and base stats. They can be further customised by choosing “Perks” at the outset of the game, which give you skills such as lockpicking, swimming and mountain climbing, or simple bonuses to your base statistics. Each class has its own starting equipment and skills, too, and you’ll have the opportunity to unlock additional skills and abilities as you progress.

This is a game in which you shouldn’t get too attached to anything — the town you just visited, your character, your equipment — and should instead keep pushing onwards. As you progress, the path your journey takes will see you finding new items or upgrading your existing ones with scrolls you discover. Eventually, the basic weapon you start the game with can become something like what I had by the end of the video above: a high-quality sword that is difficult to break, sets things on fire and confuses enemies.

Although your characters and the worlds they explore are inherently “disposable”, there is a degree of persistence in the game: completing a run, whether or not it was successful, rewards you with “Hero Points” that can be spent on purchasing new perks and character classes or expanding your Dimensional Vault, allowing you to carry items across into a subsequent playthrough.

There’s also some interesting online features. Every day, a specific random world “seed” is set aside as one for online play, and while you don’t directly adventure alongside other player characters — it’s not “true” multiplayer — you get updates on how other people are doing and may occasionally run into the ghosts of those who were less lucky. If you successfully complete the game, you’ll be told how many people got there ahead of you and you’ll have the opportunity to compare your performance with them. It’s a simple, subtle and unobtrusive use of online features, and it works very well in the context of the game.

I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this game recently, and was delighted to hear the news that it’s being kind-of remade for Vita by Spike Chunsoft as part of their Mystery Dungeon series. As you’ll know if you’ve played it, this game would be perfect for handheld play, so I’ll absolutely be there when it releases!

For now, I’ve got a Demon Lord to punch in the face.

#oneaday Day 774: Non-Mainstream Games That You (And @starven) Should Play

Following yesterday’s post, I was asked by the fine @starven to recommend some specific titles outside of the mainstream that were worth trying. So rather than doing it half-heartedly, I thought I’d do it properly, with categories, links and all that nonsense. These are the titles which sprang (almost) immediately to mind, but they should provide plenty of entertainment to get you started with. This list covers titles I’ve played, not just games I’ve heard are good.

Here we go then. Bear in mind some of these games are a little older, but that’s actually a good thing, as it usually means they’re 1) cheaper and 2) likely to run on almost anything. All prices will be in GBP because I can’t remember the thing you put on the end of the Steam URL to show prices in dollars.

For further discussion of “underappreciated” games, be sure to drop by the Squadron of Shame and check out our podcast.

Adventure

Classic adventure games aren’t dead by any means — the ludicrous amount of money that Double Fine raised on Kickstarter should be evidence of this. Here are a few adventure games that are most definitely worth your time. I’ve also lumped a couple of visual novels into this category since the adventure genre is arguably its closest cousin.

Ben There, Dan That!/Time Gentlemen, Please!

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £2.99

A double-pack of point and click adventure games from Size Five Games (formerly Zombie Cow Studios) that have a deliciously British sense of humour. While neither have plots that could particularly be called “thrilling”, the best thing about these two games is the humorous banter between protagonists Ben and Dan. These games are strongly reminiscent of “golden age” LucasArts titles such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road.

The Longest Journey

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam, Good Old Games
Price: £5.99

A lengthy point and click adventure that isn’t afraid to swear when necessary. Features an interesting “parallel dimension” story, a strong, attractive female protagonist, some truly memorable characters and only one infuriatingly stupid puzzle. Its sequel Dreamfall is good, but not as good as the original.

Digital: A Love Story

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Where to get it: Official site
Price: Free

Technically a “visual novel” rather than an adventure game per se, Digital: A Love Story takes place entirely on the virtual desktop of an ’80s computer. To reveal too much more would spoil it completely.

Analogue: A Hate Story

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Where to get it: Official site
Price: $15

Follow-up to the above from the same author, Analogue: A Hate Story once again sees you interacting with the game via a virtual computer system, though this one is much more futuristic. There’s a lot of reading in this one and it’s initially bewildering, but the way in which you have to piece together the story yourself is fascinating.

To The Moon

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Official site
Price: £7.99

Freebird Games’ retro-styled story left me an emotional wreck by the end thanks to its beautiful soundtrack, emotionally engaging narrative and good balance between storytelling and interactivity. Again, to reveal too much would be to spoil it completely.

Corpse Party

Platform: PSP/Vita
Where to get it: PSN Store
Price: £11.99

Corpse Party is, like To The Moon, an adventure/visual novel which chooses to tell most of its tale through the use of 16-bit style top-down RPG sprites. Rather than To The Moon’s emotional tale, however, Corpse Party tells a horrifyingly gruesome ghost story that doesn’t pull any punches.

Ghost Trick

Platform: Nintendo DS, iOS
Where to get it: App Store (iOS)
Price: Free demo, £6.99 for full version (iOS)

An excellent puzzle adventure from the creators of the Ace Attorney series (which you should also play if you haven’t already). Ghost Trick spins a convoluted but entertaining tale about death, time travel, fate and the consequences of your actions. Notable for making use of some very unconventional game mechanics for the adventure genre.

RPG

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £12.99

Combining elements of Animal Crossing and Diablo while lampooning every JRPG you’ve ever played along the way, the utterly charming Recettear is a fine way to spend at least 40 hours of your time. The gameplay is simple but addictive, but the true star of the show is the excellent translation job by Carpe Fulgur.

Dungeons of Dredmor

Platform: PC, Mac
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £3.49

If you’ve never played a roguelike, this is a good place to start, since it has several levels of difficulty and the option to switch off permadeath if you’re a big wuss. It also features a delightfully offbeat sense of humour and enjoys excellent continuous support from the developer.

Cthulhu Saves the World/Breath of Death VII

Platform: Xbox 360, PC
Where to get it: Xbox Live Indie Games, Steam
Price: £1.99

Two short, retro-themed JRPG spoofs that are immensely entertaining to play. The creator is currently working on the third episode of Penny Arcade Adventures.

Dungeon Defenders

Platform: PC, Mac (soon), XBLA, PSN
Where to get it: Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PSN Store
Price: £9.99

Combine Diablo with Gears of War‘s Horde mode and give it a charming cel-shaded coat of paint and this is what you get. Up to four players take on incoming hordes of monsters in a frantic blend of action RPG and tower defense. Best played online, and the PC version is the best option due to its mod support and regular free DLC promotions.

The Witcher

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam, Good Old Games
Price: £12.99

Arguably one of the best RPGs ever made thanks to its excellent story, memorable protagonist and uncompromisingly adult nature. The Witcher is all the better for the fact it focuses on a small geographical area rather than providing a globetrotting adventure. It’s also notable for being a game which doesn’t treat you like an idiot, with the consequences of your choices not falling into neat “good” or “evil” categories, and repercussions not necessarily becoming apparent until considerably later in the game.

The Witcher 2

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam, Good Old Games
Price: £24.99

A visually-stunning RPG with challenging Dark Souls-style combat, a mature story and a ton of replayability thanks to the narrative diverging into two completely different paths halfway through. Has enjoyed a bunch of post-release support from the developer, and all of these additions will be incorporated into the upcoming Xbox version.

Xenoblade Chronicles

Platform: Wii
Where to get it: US customers will have to bite the bullet and get this from GameStop
Price: No idea, released in the US later this month.

An open-world JRPG on a grand scale, taking the best bits of MMORPGs and combining them with an excellent combat system, memorable characters, a great plot and at least 100 hours of Fun Things To Do. Also features gorgeous environments and a kick-ass soundtrack. If you enjoyed Final Fantasy XII, you’ll definitely get a kick out of this.

The Last Story

Platform: Wii
Where to get it: Not yet available in the US, coming later this year
Price: TBA

An RPG set in a small locale featuring brilliant characterisation and an unusual setpiece-based action combat system that blends RTS, character action and third person shooter elements. Also noteworthy for being over in 25 hours, making it ideal for fans of RPGs who can’t commit to the long haul.

Persona 3

Platform: PS2, PSP
Where to get it: Probably easiest to get the PSP version from PSN
Price: Check PSN or your local game store

Persona 3 combines elements of visual novel/dating sim games with dungeon-crawling and JRPG combat and manages to produce one a truly memorable video game with a great story, a bizarre but awesome soundtrack and a shitload of stuff to do. Arguably superceded by its successor Persona 4 in some respects.

Persona 4

Platform: PS2, Vita
Where to get it: Check your local game store or get the Vita remake when it launches
Price: Variable

Everything already said about Persona 3 applies here, though some say the combat isn’t quite as good. Great story and a lovable cast that you’ll be sorry to leave behind at the end.

Rusty Hearts

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam
Price: Free

Perfect World’s free to play brawler-RPG is great fun and never feels like it’s conning you out of money. You can enjoy an immensely satisfying multiplayer brawler without spending a cent, or you can drop the devs a few quid to speed up your levelling or apply some visual customization to your character. Nothing game-breaking, though, and certainly not “pay to win”.

Aquaria

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £6.99

Not technically an RPG as such, but its Zelda/Metroidvania-style progression means it can be sort of lumped into this category. A sprawling 2D underwater adventure with a great soundtrack, gorgeous artwork and an unusual, interesting story.

Games That Involve Shooting Things In Various Ways

I’m lumping anything that involves shooting things into this category, including FPS, shmups and other Games With Guns In Them.

Beat Hazard Ultra

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, iOS
Where to get it: Xbox Live Indie Games, PSN Store, Steam, App Store
Price: Variable

A brilliant twin-stick shooter that uses your own personal music collection (or Internet radio) to generate waves of enemies and psychedelic backdrops.

Gundemonium Recollection

Platform: PS3, PC
Where to get it: PSN Store, Steam
Price: £3.99

A simply marvellous bullet-hell shooter with an infectiously cheerful soundtrack and immensely challenging gameplay.

Jamestown

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £6.99

A Western take on the bullet-hell shooter based on the concept of England being at war with Spain on Mars. Outstandingly epic soundtrack and gorgeous pixel-art visuals.

No More Room In Hell

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Desura
Price: Free (Half-Life 2 mod)

If Left 4 Dead is a little too silly for you, this realistic zombie survival mod for Half-Life 2 feels more like an old Resident Evil game in first-person. Limited ammo, panicked dashes away from zombie hordes and a real necessity to cooperate with other players to survive make this a unique and rewarding experience.

Privates

Platform: PC
Where to get it: Official site
Price: Free

A “sex-ed shooter” from the creator of Ben There, Dan That! that sees players invading willies, bums and fannies (the British meaning of the latter) in an effort to wipe out various forms of itchy scrot.

Frozen Synapse

Platform: PC, iPad (soon)
Where to get it: Steam
Price: £18.99

Technically a turn-based strategy game, this unusual title’s game modes and structure actually have more in common with first-person shooters. Plan out your team’s moves for the next five seconds while your opponent is doing the same, commit your plan, watch the carnage unfold. Very tense, very exciting — and offers asynchronous play for those with a busy lifestyle.

Racing

Blur

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Where to get it: Steam, your friendly local game store
Price: £14.99

The last game from Project Gotham developer Bizarre Creations before they were shuttered by Activision, and a fine example of what happens if you combine Mario Kart-style powerups with real cars in real locations. The answer: enjoyable mayhem. Features a top-class multiplayer mode with Call of Duty-style progression.

Split/Second: Velocity

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Where to get it: Gamesplanet (PC, possibly UK-only), your friendly local game store
Price: £9.99

Best described as a “cinematic racer”, Split/Second combines ridiculous Burnout-style drift driving with the ability to detonate parts of the environment and bring them crashing down on your opponents’ heads. It’s an absolute spectacle to watch, and a thrilling rollercoaster ride to play, thanks in part to the amazing soundtrack.

#oneaday Day 773: Off the Beaten Path

The astute among you who follow my gaming posts (which, yes, I’m aware constitute an overwhelming majority of these entries — I am a passionate gaming enthusiast and an occasionally-professional games writer, after all) will be well aware of the fact that over the last few years, I’ve been drifting further and further away from the “mainstream” in terms of the titles I’ve been playing. This initially wasn’t a particularly conscious decision, but rather a reaction to the fact that I just wasn’t enjoying myself with the supposedly “big” titles of the day. I haven’t made it through any Halo games except the original and Reach, for example, and my few forays into Call of Duty have left me feeling by turns underwhelmed and insulted. Similarly, I’ve given up all hope of ever making it through the Assassin’s Creed series since it seems as soon as I think about playing through the older titles, Ubisoft goes and announces another one. You know, like they did today. Bastards.

I can’t quite pin down exactly when this shift in attitudes happened, but I do know that I’ve come across some truly remarkable games in the process. One of the most memorable of these is Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, which I picked up as part of one of Steam’s characteristically generous Indie packs during one of the service’s many sales, and promptly played all the way through for 40 hours. This was something of a difference from my expectation, which was that the game would be a shallow, social game-style experience with little depth and no long-term appeal. How pleasantly surprised I was when it turned out to be quite the opposite — deep, fun, well-written (kudos to Carpe Fulgur’s wonderful translation efforts — we’re talking PS1-era Working Designs-quality work here) and immensely satisfying to play. And not an Achievement in sight, either.

The attitude that I’ve decided to take as a result of discovering brilliant titles like Recettear and numerous others like it a little way off the “beaten path” is to simply say “fuck it” to the mainstream, and explore the things that I’m interested in, rather than the titles which the media makes it seem you’re “supposed” to be interested in. It’s been a very long time since I consulted a review prior to purchasing a new game, instead relying on a combination of word-of-mouth, intuition and simple, immediate, visceral reactions to screenshots, descriptions and other media.

This philosophy has also been born from the original ideals of the Squadron of Shame way back in the 1up days. Our original remit as a group was as follows, and I quote directly from the original 1up club page, which still stands today:

Games of Shame. You know you have them. They sit in your closet, collecting dust: Little jewels that you always tell yourself you are going to play, but never get around to. Well, that’s about to change, soldier. You’ve been drafted to join the Squadron of Shame. Here we, the elite members of the 1UP Radio boards, paratroop into the bargain bins and rescue the unappreciated games that deserve to be saved. From there we battle through the trenches as a squad. At the end of the day, we take a moment to break down what made the whole experience worth fighting for by sharing war stories, reflections, and cigars. But the fight isn’t just on the front of retro games: Any game deemed “fit for duty” by command can be put on the pile. At the end of the day, the reason we fight isn’t just to discover new experiences, it’s to answer that simple and fundamental question: “Why do we play?” Now suit up. The pile awaits.

I’ve pretty much stuck by those ideals as the years have gone by, always preferring to check out things that are outside of the mainstream, far from the things that everyone is talking about. I can’t help but feel you can have too much of a good thing in terms of game coverage, and this is a problem which is only compounded by the explosive growth social media has enjoyed over the last few years. By the time a big-name game comes out, there are very few surprises left due to the constant PR trickle of new screens, exclusive reveals, teaser trailers, live-action videos, behind-the-scenes developer diary videos, blog posts, interviews, features, podcasts, multiplayer betas and all manner of other things besides. And when the game does come out, everyone is talking about it on Twitter and Facebook, putting you at serious risk of spoilers — or at the very least, of a feeling of “saturation”.

So rather than bitch and moan about the state of the mainstream, the iron-fist rule of unscrupulous PR agencies and publishers destroying interesting, outlet-unique coverage and games that I have little interest in playing, I’m simply going to ignore stuff that doesn’t interest me and focus on things which sound intriguing. (I’m aware that this post may well constitute bitching and moaning about the state of the &c &c but… but… FUCK YOU, that’s what. WAIT I DIDN’T MEAN IT, COME BACK, I STILL LOVE Y—)

And, subsequently, I’ll cover them myself, right here. I may be late to the party on some titles, but in many cases, things don’t stop being relevant just because of their age, particularly with the number of HD remasters, portable remakes and backward-compatible devices we’ve seen recently. Providing these games with a little exposure here — “little” being the operative word, since I’m well aware of the relatively miniscule amount of traffic this blog generates, and am perfectly happy with that fact — will make me feel better, because then I then know that there’s someone out there (me) appreciating and giving some much-needed attention to titles which maybe don’t have a massive marketing budget or an omnipotent PR organisation managing and coordinating all their coverage. And, as small as my audience here is, if I write something, then there will be people reading about these titles, too. And if just a few of those people think “hmm, that does sound interesting” then I can feel like I’ve done a good job somewhere along the line.

So if I blog about something which sounds interesting and you decide to check it out for yourself, be sure to let me know. I’d love to hear your reactions to titles such as Katawa Shoujo, To The Moon, Recettear, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and numerous others. Over the course of the next few days/weeks/months, I’m intending to catch up on a variety of PSP titles, starting with Corpse Party and following with the portable Persona remakes. So watch out for those entries soon, and be sure to let me know your thoughts on those games if you’ve also sampled their charms.

And if you’re excited for Mass Effect 3, Assassin’s Creed III or, God forbid, the rumoured Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, then don’t let me stop you being excited — I’d actually love to hear about those games, from you, too. Just be aware I probably won’t be joining you in playing them!

Haunted Stereo Live at the Hobbit

So here we are again. After a somewhat touch-and-go start to the day after being molested by numerous pints of toilet cleaner masquerading as Lord of the Rings characters, I find myself here considering what it was I saw last night at the Hobbit.

Things began well when I managed to sneak in and grab a peek at the performers’ soundchecks earlier in the evening. When I saw that an electric ukulele was involved, I knew that this was going to be anything but traditional. However, as these things tend to go, it would be an hour or two between soundchecks starting and the actual performances beginning, so I took the opportunity to use every piece of mobile Web 2.0 technology at my disposal to write last night’s blog post, tweet like crazy, post pictures of The Hobbit’s pleasantly literate toilet graffiti to Tumblr and generally keep things rolling until the bands took the stage later. I also had the opportunity to people-watch a little, with The Hobbit’s diverse clientele once again failing to disappoint. From the old drunk babbling about chicken to the selection of surly-looking goths playing pool, The Hobbit is a fine place to witness most subcultures coming together in relative harmony for once. The only group not really represented was the humble chav, which I have absolutely no objection to. I’d much rather they’d all be off their faces on cheap lager at Jesters down the road than spoiling everyone else’s night.

But I digress. There were performances to watch, and it turned out to be a very entertaining, very pleasant evening.

I’m not going to talk much about the support acts here, but I did want to mention the first one. This was a solo female singer named Plat du Jour. She gave a good start to the evening’s entertainment with her songs. Although her arrangements were necessarily simple, given that it was just her and her guitar, her songs were pleasant to listen to, covered a variety of different moods – all too many performers stick too much to one style and one style alone – and she had a wonderfully friendly, down-to-earth manner with the audience. She also had a great voice, with shades of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons at times. I’ll be interested to see where things go with her performances, as she certainly has a lot of potential, judging by her performance.

The main event of the evening, however, was Haunted Stereo, made up of members Andy, Anja, Dave, Joanna, Kenta and Lewis. They describe themselves on their MySpace page as “melodramatic popular song/folk/indie”, which is immediately intriguing. The band’s lineup changes from song to song, with some songs focusing on traditional guitar and drum sounds, with others bringing the folk angle to the fore with violin and accordion taking centre stage, others still involving banjo, the aforementioned electric ukulele and even a glockenspiel at one point. They’re nothing if not diverse.

But what of the music? Well, their own description, as it turns out, is pretty apt. There’s a definite folky edge to many of the songs thanks to the instrumentation involved and the patterns used in the backings. The melodrama comes mostly from the vocal lines which are simple, subtle and sometimes mournful, rising over the top of the busy backing. The combination of instruments means that although at times the band’s pieces are filled with activity, with violin lines, accordion harmonies, banjo plucking, piano lines, drums and guitar parts all competing for attention, they have a pleasantly clean sound which, should you be that guy who sits there listening analytically until he learns how to hum the most obscure harmony part to a song, will make you very happy.

I was impressed with Haunted Stereo. I have a feeling they’re another band that maybe won’t be to everyone’s taste due to their out-of-the ordinary stylings and instrumentation, but there’s certainly a lot to like. The performers all obviously have great technical ability and versatility, and the songs are all extremely listenable, with more than a touch of Belle and Sebastian to one or two of them. They offer an interesting twist on the “folk rock” genre, artists of which The Hobbit seems to attract like flies (but, err, in a good way) and a sound that, even if it’s not your thing, is nothing if not memorable.

Live music is absolutely not dead. Musicians with genuine creativity, too, are still alive and kicking, and this gig proved that. However, it’s only by stepping outside the comfort zone of the national and commercial radio stations, and the pure banality of the popular music charts, that you find this creativity. What I’ve certainly opened my eyes to over these last couple of visits to The Hobbit is that there’s a lot of very talented musicians out there who have no desire whatsoever to appear on The X-Factor in order to be catapulted to stardom and a career of mediocre, predictable songs. This is a good thing, as my thoughts on commercial crap are well-known and well-documented. Haunted Stereo are anything but commercial, but they have carved out a comfortable niche all of their own and I wish them every success in building their fanbase and being stars of the melodramatic popular song/folk/indie world.

Good music should speak for itself. And it does. I’ve enjoyed some good music recently. You should switch off your radio and join me.

Penny Arcade Live at the Hobbit

Photography in this post courtesy of Laura Bishop. If you’re reading on Facebook and you can’t see said pictures, click here to see the full article.

So I went out the other night. This is a pretty rare occurrence and worthy of discussion in and of itself but I’m not here to do that. Instead I’m going to be focusing on the gig I went to see – Penny Arcade, live at the Hobbit pub, Southampton, UK. I’m going to say now to all the gamers reading that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Gabe and Tycho and the nomenclature of the band is a complete coincidence, apparently. Who am I to argue?

Live gigs here in Southampton are often a case of a million people crowding into a tiny pub that can seat about three old men and a dog around the fire, listening to ear-shatteringly loud music whilst downing drinks that look like they’ve been piped directly from the local toxic waste dump to the spigots, served frantically by an underpaid and overworked staff clearly insufficient in numbers to cope with the number of rabid, binge-drinking fans.

The Hobbit is, of course, no exception to this rule, with crowds regularly squeezing into its little downstairs bar (a little larger than the average living room) to listen to some tunes and destroy their brain-cells with the vibrant primary colours of the Lord of the Rings-themed cocktails. Actually, “themed” might be pushing things a bit far, as I don’t remember Gollum having a thing for Bols Blue, though many is the time that consumption of too many Gandalfs has led to a fall into darkness, albeit not accompanied by a big flamey demon thing. (Balrog. I know. Be quiet.) Despite all this, however, the Hobbit remains a popular nightspot with a lot of local acts of a variety of styles from the Southampton area performing there on a regular basis. Plus sometimes there’s a guy who comes around and sells fish. Really.

Penny Arcade, consisting of Alex Burton on guitar, Matt Rampton on vocals/bass and Tom Uplifter on drums, were performing as part of a complete evening’s set including other local performers Andy from Haunted Stereo, and Long Shore Drift. In total, they graced us with six songs, including Straight Through, I’m Not Sleeping, Are We Talking, Jaws of the Enemy, Katie and a work-in-progress song called “Rocket Ship” performed solo by vocalist Matt. Are We Talking and I’m Not Sleeping can both be heard on their MySpace page, if you’re reading this and are curious. You know you are.

Penny Arcade’s sound is a pleasingly smooth guitar-bass-drum combo which, when coupled with the distinctively melancholy sound of Matt’s vocals, is very listenable. The band keeps a deliberately lo-fi sound, with minimal guitar effects being used and repetitive, hypnotic guitar/bass riffs and beats making up the majority of the songs’ backings. Performing with a more “clean” sound and using minimal effects to hide behind can be a challenge for many bands as it often highlights the shortcomings of their own technical abilities, but Penny Arcade manage to perform very tightly together as an ensemble. Their songs have an intimate, personal feel to them, with Matt’s vocal performance style of eyes closed, mouth to the microphone and little in the way of body movement draws the audience in and encourages them to focus on what it is he is singing about throughout. This is a great style to perform in a venue as intimate/cramped (delete as applicable) as The Hobbit – arguably made rather more poignant by consuming just one too many Gandalfs to get one to that “drunken melancholia” stage.

Alex Burton on guitar (photo by Laura Bishop)

Penny Arcade’s style undoubtedly isn’t for everyone. They’re low on flashy glitz and overt showmanship, both in their unassuming physical performance styles and the sound of their music in general, but they’re all the better for it – to me, at least. All three performers look deep in concentration during their performance, which is in keeping with the “personal” feel to the songs, and the whole gig felt like the audience were being let in on some kind of secret. This is the kind of thing that I have a lot of time for, and it’s this kind of feel that keeps people coming to the Hobbit for gigs – however sticky the floor gets, however terrible those vibrantly-coloured cocktails may make you feel the next day, however many sweaty bodies you may be squeezing yourself up against (and not in a good way… usually) – it’s the intimacy of the venue and, by extension, the intimacy of the performances there that works so well. Penny Arcade fit right in, and I hope to see more of them in the future.

Matt Rampton on vocals and bass (photo by Laura Bishop)

As for the other bands? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t comment. Gandalf number three made me fall into darkness.

Art/Fart

Now with pictures! Happy now? 🙂

The idea of “games as art” is an over-discussed topic and has been since the days of the later Final Fantasy games, which many regard as one of many points where video games just started to show their potential to tell interesting stories in interesting ways.

So I’m not going to talk about games as art – at least, not “mainstream” games. I want to take a moment to share a few curious experiences I’ve had recently. I hesitate to call all of these examples except one “games” by virtue of the fact that they’re not really traditional “games” as such, more interactive artistic works, and I think that’s fast becoming a genre of its own – something I’m all for.

A few of these games are probably quite well known by the side of the gamer community that is interested in this sort of thing, a couple of others you may not have heard of. So I hope that by the end of this post you might be inspired to check out some things a little bit outside the box. You may well find them pretentious, boring and crap – I’m sure many people do – but like any work of “art”, there are bound to be differing opinions, expectations and feelings about them.

So let’s jump in with probably the most well-known of the titles I’m going to discuss today. There may be spoilarz ahead… and you can click the game titles to visit the sites for them. (If you’re reading this on Facebook, you might not be able to. Click here to read this post properly.)

Braid

Braid is a game by Jonathan Blow that represents, to me, one of the interesting things about the Xbox 360 – the fact that this is a console with such diversity that triple-A “blockbuster” titles like Gears of War 2 and independent “arthouse” (for want of a better term) games like this can happily coexist on the platform quite comfortably. With the recent launch of the NXE and the Community Games project, I think it’s relatively safe to say that Braid will not be the last game of its type that we’ll see.

But what is Braid? Ostensibly it’s a platform game that largely centres around puzzles rather than action. The central game mechanic is an interesting “time rewind” system which has an interesting twist put onto it in each of the game’s worlds. In some worlds, you can simply rewind time if you make a mistake. In others, certain areas or objects are immune to time manipulation, so you can rewind time in the areas around the object and remain unaffected by this. In yet others, time winds forwards while you run to the right and backwards while you run to the left. It’s an interesting mechanic that makes for some absolute brain-benders, and I maintain that I’m far too stupid to ever solve the game without help.

Still, the interesting thing about Braid for me, and the thing which divides opinion the most, is the “meaning” behind it all. Each world is preceded by a series of text interludes, describing the main character’s quest to reach a princess in floaty, dreamy, vague language and tying the central mechanic of each world in with the main character’s conflicting emotions and feelings about time, place, love and loss as he proceeds through the game. It’s a fine line between “emo bullshit” and “existential masterpiece” – and there’s plenty of people on both sides of the debate on this one. One thing is certain though, everyone who has played the game has plenty to say about it, whether it’s good or bad.

Passage and Gravitation

These two “autobiographical” games by Jason Rohrer at first glance appear to be simplistic “retro” style games with eye-catching super low-res pixel art. But look into them a little deeper (or, if you need a little prompting, as I did, read the Creator’s Statement that Rohrer has thoughtfully posted for each game) and you’ll find that each of these two games represent a deeply personal exploration of a certain aspect of “life” to Rohrer – with Passage offering a look at mortality, companionship, ambition, love, loss and the balance between these things and Gravitation looking at the concept of fatherhood, the creative process and again, the balance between these things.

Each is represented very simply with the aforementioned low-resolution pixel art. But it’s the little things about the presentation and the games themselves that carry the deeper meaning. In Passage you start on the left of the screen, with more of the “world” – your life – stretching out ahead of you. Very shortly after the beginning, you have the choice of picking up a companion, who then stays with you until almost the end of the game. This makes you unable to reach some areas of the game, but it’s actually quite difficult to consider leaving her behind. If you’re me, anyway.

As you progress through the game, you gradually move across the screen towards the right side, meaning that at the beginning, you are looking forward to what is ahead, while at the end you are looking back on where you have just been. Shortly before the end, had you chosen to take your companion with you, she dies, leaving you as an old, lonely man left to trudge on towards his own death alone. This moment, although it is represented simply by the companion suddenly turning into a gravestone and the speed of movement of your character suddenly cutting to a quarter of what it was originally, is a hugely touching moment due to how understated it is. For me, it put across the idea that death is unglamorous, is unavoidable, but there is always someone left behind to trudge on without the person who is gone. I found it to be quite a beautiful, thought-provoking sentiment that is all the more poignant when you read Rohrer’s description of the meaning behind the game.

Gravitation, conversely, does not deal with a subject such as death, but rather the struggle that a creative person has between his art and his family. The game starts with you playing “catch” with a child figure. Each time you bounce the ball back to the child, a little heart appears above their head, but you cannot make any progress in the game itself by doing this. To score “points”, you have to leap up a huge tower, with gravity that is constantly changing, presumably representing varying degrees of motivation (or “mania” as the Rohrer puts it), and collect stars, which fall to the ground and form rocks. Following this, you have to drop back down and push these blocks into a furnace.

The twist is, the more stars that drop, the less able you are to get to your child to play with them, as the rocks that appear form directly in front of your child, blocking your way to her, and this also seems to have an effect on the gravity of the game. So it becomes a balancing act between play with your child and the “work” of pushing the blocks into the furnace.

These two games are two of my favourite examples of this subgenre because of their simplicity of presentation and gameplay, and the amount of “interpretation” that can be had by looking more closely at what is happening. I think it’s also really interesting to see “autobiographical” games, as Rohrer calls them, and he himself points out that this is not something that many developers have done as yet.

The Majesty of Colors

This is another game that chooses to use 8-bit style pixel art as its means of presentation, giving it a distinctive look and character that seems entirely appropriate for the game. I can’t pin down why this is, but I love it. This is also the first of two games hosted on Kongregate, which originally became my favourite Flash games site purely for the presence of Desktop Tower Defense following my brother’s recommendations, but seems to be developing into an interesting community of indie developers, “interesting game enthusiasts” like myself, and illiterate 12 year olds who just want to play stuff with badly-drawn animé-style characters. Fortunately, like the Xbox 360, the groups seem to coexist quite happily, meaning we get titles like this.

In The Majesty of Colors, you play a betentacled sea monster. The game opens in black and white with balloons floating past your face and the “monster’s” inner monologue represented as text across the top of the screen. Grabbing a balloon and bringing it close to the monster’s eyes suddenly brings the world into vibrant colour, and the story itself begins. Essentially, the player can choose to manipulate the humans who appear on the scene either through violence or helping them, and this eventually leads to one of five endings, each of which involves the “monster” (whom, it transpires, is actually a person having a dream) awakening in very different ways.

I kind of don’t want to say anything else about this one, because I believe it’s worth experiencing. It’s a simplistic game with not a lot of “point” to it as a game, but it’s very much an interactive work of art to me.

Coil

The first of two games by Edmund McMillen, Coil is a self-professed game with no instructions that requests you “keep an open mind while playing”. It’s presented in a rather abstract manner, with mouse-driven mini-games interspersed with Braid-style text interludes. The story of the game appears to be deliberately ambiguous to provoke discussion, but the consensus from many people seems to be that it is about a woman who was raped and the feelings she develops towards the child that is the product of that incident.

Like The Majesty of Colors, I believe this is a “game” that’s somewhat open to interpretation, and another that will probably split opinion. The lack of instructions can make it challenging to progress, but it’s worth persevering with the story to see what you think of it.

Aether

Another from McMillen, Aether seems to be a rather personal story about childhood feelings of inadequacy in the eyes of others. Players swing through space atop the back of a curious blob-like monster trying to solve simple puzzles on planets to restore colour to their lives. The game is a somewhat abstract “journey into imagination” that seems to represent an individual’s struggle for validation and acceptance by others. It also has some fabulously hypnotic dynamically remixing music which really helps with the atmosphere.

So there you have them. Pretentious crap or an interesting method of displaying a work of art and telling a deeply personal story? I vote the latter, though I am more than prepared to hear people disagree, which they no doubt will!