2320: Never Pick One Main

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This advice is true for many different class-based games, be they massively multiplayer online RPGs like Final Fantasy XIV or competitive games like Dota 2 or, indeed, Overwatch. (Yes, it’s another Overwatch post, for which I make no apologies.)

Overwatch is an interesting case study, though, in that unlike the other examples I gave above, you can change your character and indeed your complete role in the team at any time — either immediately after dying or if you’re back in your base. This leads to a whole new interesting metagame where your team isn’t bound by the principles of the “holy trinity” of tank, healer and damage-dealer (or, in Overwatch’s case, the holy quartet of tank, support, offense and defense) and can instead evolve and change as a match progresses according to the team’s needs.

Because this is such A Thing in Overwatch, you absolutely shouldn’t pick a single character and “main” them like in other character-based games like competitive one-on-one fighters. At the bare minimum, you should be familiar with a hero in each of the four roles, and ideally you should at least know what every hero is capable of, even if you’re not particularly skilled in playing as them.

You can read guides about this, but the best way I’ve found to learn which hero is good against which opponent is simply to experiment and see what happens. That way, you’ll naturally figure out which heroes you enjoy playing and who they’re effective against.

I have a number of heroes that I’ve started gravitating naturally towards so far. I intend to expand my repertoire over time, but for the moment here are my favourites.

In the offense role, I’m a fan of Tracer. Her rapid fire guns immediately hit their target when you fire them, so there’s no need to lead targets in the same way as you need to with those who shoot more obvious projectiles — you still need at least a reasonable degree of precision, though. Her absolute best features are her special abilities, though. Her Blink ability lets her teleport a short distance up to three times in succession, letting her quickly dart across doorways and passages that are covered by dangerous sentry types such as Bastion or Widowmaker. And her Recall ability is great for confusing an enemy, as well as providing a means of self-healing by not only rewinding her location, but also the value her health was at a few seconds ago.

For defense, I like Mei. Her Ice Wall ability is great for blocking off specific routes and funneling the opposing team down a route you can cover more easily. Her weapon also has a great deal of flexibility; the short-range “ice thrower” acts a bit like a flamethrower only, you know, colder, and also has the added benefit of freezing enemies, initially slowing them and eventually freezing them completely for a brief moment. Her alt-fire, meanwhile, fires an immensely accurate icicle bolt that proves devastating to snipers such as Widowmaker, dealing a huge chunk of damage in a single hit at medium to long range. Combine this with her ability to freeze herself, making her temporary invulnerable while self-healing, and her Ultimate, which causes a freeze and damage effect over a decent-sized area, and you have a great defensive hero who is more than capable of going toe-to-toe with dangerous, occasionally insurmountable-seeming threats like Reinhardt.

In the tank role, I enjoy D.Va. D.Va is interesting to me in that she’s not necessarily designed to soak up a huge amount of damage in the same way as some of the other tank characters, but is instead a rather mobile unit that can put out a good amount of close-range damage while having much better survivability behind enemy lines than the Offense heroes. Her absolute best thing, though, is her Ultimate, which self-destructs her mech suit, taking anyone in a significant radius with it, including herself if she doesn’t get out of the way. What’s fun about this ability is that you can combine it with her mech suit’s jump jets ability, effectively “throwing” the self-destructing mech at the enemy team from a distance while she skips off happily into the distance. Also she’s adorable.

Finally, in the support role, I’ve had most success with Lucio. A speedy character with a passive “aura” effect rather than a more active healer like Mercy, Lucio is an excellent support character who is very capable of putting out a decent amount of damage in his own right. His decent mobility thanks to his high speed and Wallride ability allows him to move unpredictably and avoid damage, while the relatively short cooldowns on his abilities let him provide either speed boosts or decent healing to nearby companions on a pretty consistent basis. Not only that, but the fact his buffs and healing work as an aura mean that he can concentrate on wrecking some fools while he’s benefiting the team, meaning he can help out in several ways at once.

I’m sure I’ll discover new favourites in the near future, but for now these are the ones I’ve had the most success — and fun — with.

2319: Pass into the Iris

Overwatch is still excellent.

I’m tempted to leave it at that, but I should perhaps qualify my statement.

It’s difficult to pin down a single, truly appealing element of it because there are so many, and that’s perhaps it’s biggest strength: there’s something in there that will appeal to most people who are at least vaguely receptive to the idea of competitive first-person shooters.

For me, the absolute best thing about it is its accessibility. There’s a wide variety of different heroes, some of which are more difficult to use, but all of which are rewarding. Plus some absolutely wonderful balancing has clearly gone into the game’s development, since each hero has a clear “counter” that is eminently suitable for dealing with them when they start giving you grief.

It’s a game with accessibility for casual players, in other words, but one which has sufficient depth to keep competitive players interested in the long term. It will be interesting to see how the community as a whole takes to the ranked competitive games when they launch soon, and whether the game as a whole takes off as an e-sport.

It’s rather enjoyable to be in at the very beginning of what is clearly going to be a thriving game with the longevity of Valve’s classic Team Fortress 2, a game to which Overwatch is often compared, and not unreasonably so. However, where I found Team Fortress 2 to be completely intimidating (due to the fact that by the time I had a computer and Internet connection that could handle running it, everyone else who had been playing for years was infinitely better than me, and it felt impossible to get any better), with Overwatch I’m finding it easy to contribute to a team effort, pick the right heroes for the right situation and help get the job done.

What seems nice about the community as a whole — at least on PC, I can’t speak for the console versions — is that the player base isn’t afraid to have a bit of fun. Earlier tonight, for example, I had a game where the opposing team started out by posting three Winstons (a giant Tesla cannon-wielding gorilla with a rather refined voice and attitude) outside our base, and gradually, as the match progressed, everyone else participating switched to Winston too, until by the end of things we had an absolutely chaotic melee made up of twelve mutant gorillas all going all HULK SMASH on one another at once. The results of that game really didn’t matter in the end, because everyone involved had such a great time, and of course it was followed up with a couple of other matches in which everyone picked the same character again. Six Reinhardts bearing down on you is certainly a sight to behold, though this situation helped me realise Pharah’s value in that she can leap high into the air and rain rocket death down on Reinhardt from above while staying well out of range of his big-ass hammer.

Overwatch is a game that hasn’t forgotten a core reason we play games is, well, to play. It’s a consistently joyful, smile-inducing experience that the vast majority of the community seem to play well and with a good attitude; you get the occasional ragequitter yelling “uninstall the game now” when their team loses, but they are relatively few and far between in my experience so far, and when this happens most people just shrug and move on. Overwatch’s excellent matchmaking coupled with the significant player base means that their team slot will be filled in a matter of seconds anyway, so it’s no great loss to the other players if that person wants to ragequit.

Assuming Blizzard keeps supporting Overwatch as much as it claims it will — we’re promised free new heroes and maps on a fairly regular basis; the only “premium” paid content is the ability to purchase the Loot Boxes containing skins and other customisation items that you acquire for free every time your account levels up anyway — I can see myself playing it for a long time. And it’s a nice feeling to find a multiplayer experience like that: it’s one I can easily share with friends, since there’s none of the MMO issue of you “outlevelling” each other, getting to different stages and being unable to play together due to the disparity in your characters’ power levels, and its 5-10 minute matches make it eminently friendly to the more busy people I know who perhaps only have half an hour here and there to play some games together.

So yes. Overwatch. If you’ve been on the fence about grabbing it but you like the sound of it, stop hesitating and grab it. Then we can go and shoot some fools together.

Cheers luv.

2316: Overwatch is Out, and It’s Awesome

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Well, it’s here: the only multiplayer-only first-person shooter I think I’ve ever actually been genuinely excited to play and be on board with from day one: Blizzard’s Overwatch.

The servers went live at a little after midnight my time, and aside from one incident where I lost connection from a game, everything seems to be running extremely smoothly. I am happy about this.

Here is a list of reasons why I like Overwatch when I typically haven’t got into other competitive first-person shooters:

It has characters. Call of Duty is boring to me because soldiers are boring. Overwatch has a wide variety of characters that includes cute girls. So that’s a win.
There’s no complicated metagame. No challenges to unlock weapons, no perks to worry about, no loadouts, no higher-level people dominating you through use of higher-level unlocks: everyone is on an equal playing field.
The “you must be this skillful to play” barrier is lower than a lot of other shooters. The thing that puts me off a lot of competitive shooters is the fact that it’s extremely difficult to learn how to play them effectively when some 10-year old can snipe you from halfway across the map before you’ve even got anywhere near the objective. Overwatch’s characters cater to a wide variety of skill and confidence levels, and most don’t require pinpoint accuracy to have a good time with.
The objectives are simple to understand but challenging to complete. The game modes may be straight out of Team Fortress, but they work. The Overtime mechanic makes for some genuinely exciting last-second turnarounds, too.
The weapons are satisfying. Each character only has one or two weapons at most, and they’re all great fun to use. They make good noises and feel powerful.
The game gives excellent feedback. Through the use of sound and HUD elements, Overwatch keeps you nicely informed on what’s going on. If you’re getting shot in the back, a nearby character will tell you. If you’re successfully hitting an enemy from a distance but can’t see it very well, a sound effect lets you know that your shots are on target. And most characters’ HUDs are designed so that you don’t have to take your eyes off the action to know important information.
The abilities give characters unique identities. Not only that, but you need to know the best ways to avoid and/or counter these abilities. That keeps things interesting.
The support characters are more than just healbots. Most of them are more than capable of putting out respectable damage, too, and some even have other interesting abilities to support the team.
D.Va. Say no more.

Now I’d better go to bed before I get tempted to stay up all night blasting fools… doubtless there will be a lot more of this over the next little while, though!

If you’re playing Overwatch on PC, feel free to add AngryJedi#2260 as a friend. If you do so, let me know if it’s on the North American or European servers, because Blizzard inexplicably region-locks its friends lists rather than having one global one.

2279: Matchmaking: A Great Way to Waste Time

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I downloaded the Doom beta on PS4 earlier out of curiosity. I hadn’t heard particularly positive things about it — though admittedly, this was mostly from disgruntled PC players who were whining about the lack of mod support and how it was “obviously built for consoles” — but as someone who actually used to really like Doom, I was interested to take a look.

I booted up Doom, fiddled around in the options a bit, took note of the entertaining options to weather, dirty up and scuff your armour in character customisation — not to mention painting it lurid shades of pink and purple — and then jumped into the multiplayer playlist.

Then, I waited.

And waited some more.

And then a bit more.

Well, okay, this perhaps makes it sound a bit longer than it actually was: it was probably less than five minutes in total, all told. But that was five minutes utterly wasted in which I wasn’t doing anything apart from staring at the screen and perhaps rotating my character model a bit.

My mind was cast back to a comment someone I follow on Twitter made a while back, whose sentiment was along the lines of “rather than wasting your time with endless, pointless matchmaking games, throw yourself into enjoying games with stories; games with clear beginnings, middles and ends”. At the time, I thought it a slightly extreme viewpoint, since I have enjoyed multiplayer matchmaking games in the past, but on reflection, he was absolutely right: for me, right now, matchmaking multiplayer games are a total waste of time and energy for what I find to be a subpar, unsatisfying experience compared to something that is either a bit more structured or something that has immediacy.

Doom isn’t the only game where I’ve encountered the tedium of waiting for matchmaking queues. Playing a damage-dealing class on Final Fantasy XIV often leads to long queues for dungeons — although at least in that game, you can do other stuff in the open world while queueing, though there are a few limitations on your activities to prevent your queue popping and you being unavailable. Grand Theft Auto Online is particularly unpleasant to try and find a matchmaking session in, since it’s riddled with people who pop into a lobby, then quit out again after five seconds if it’s not already full. And I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, too.

So, I think I’ve had enough. I’ve felt a slight temptation to check out things like Doom and even the more recent Call of Duty games in the recent past, but on reflection, I feel they’ll only frustrate me: time spent “waiting for players…” is time not spent enjoying a story in a single-player game, or trying to beat a high score in an arcade game, or chasing trophies in a game I’ve reached the post-game for.

This isn’t to say I’m not going to play multiplayer at all, mind you: TrackMania Turbo has an excellent multiplayer where you can just jump in and out of player-made rooms at will, with no waiting around for there to be “enough” people to play. And I have a lot of fun playing Grand Theft Auto Online with my local friends. Those represent two different ways of having a fun online experience without getting matchmaking systems involved.

Strangers who are beyond that great wall of matchmaking, then? Fuck ’em; I’ve got better things to do than wait for them to show up to my party.

2159: Splattack

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I spent a bit of time before my shift at work today playing Splatoon. Having finished the single player, I jumped back in to the multiplayer for a few games, and was reminded quite how much I like that game — a fact that surprised me somewhat when I first played it, given that I’m not normally one for competitive multiplayer shooters, team-based or otherwise.

Splatoon is a bit different from your usual multiplayer shooter, though, in that there are no game modes that require you to kill the other team. Instead, most of them are about territory control of various types: the basic “Turf War” game mode, for example, involves covering the ground with ink of your team’s colour, with the winner being decided by majority coverage after three minutes. Other game modes found in the Ranked Battle mode vary somewhat in what they require you to do, but none of them are straight-up deathmatches, which means there’s no necessity to be a 1337 MLG noscope pro.

Splatoon is testament to Nintendo’s desire to make games accessible to everyone. Competitive multiplayer shooters are historically rather elitist in nature, with inexperienced players often being mercilessly mocked or picked on until they “git gud”. Unpleasantness in chat — be it voice or text — is so expected that it’s become something of a cliché to talk about racist thirteen-year olds playing Call of Duty; consequently there are many people — myself included — who, preferring their games to be fun rather than an unpleasant experience, avoid this type of thing and thus tend to miss out on games that, despite everything, are often quite culturally significant, not necessarily from an artistic perspective, but as an activity that brings significant numbers of people together.

Splatoon could have easily been a disastrous failure, being a Wii U game. Yet it has gone on to become one of Nintendo’s biggest success stories all around the globe, with it rarely being difficult to find people to play with, whatever hour of the day you happen to be online. I was expecting it to be hard to get a full group together when I played this morning, for example, but was pleasantly surprised to be matched with a full team almost immediately — since Japan was awake and happily playing away already.

The other nice thing about Splatoon is that it doesn’t have a chat function. Like, at all. This drew some criticism on its initial release, since it’s sort of an expected feature in your typical multiplayer games these days, but in Splatoon’s case it really isn’t necessary or desirable. The GamePad screen allows you a tactical overview of the entire battlefield and what your team is up to, and simple controls allow you to send messages of support or requests for assistance to your teammates without having to speak. By taking away the chat facility, the ability to abuse one another is also taken away, keeping things family-friendly for everyone and encouraging veteran players to play nice with newbies, since if you’re not being a team player you’ll just end up dragging your teammates down and, in most cases, throwing the game as a result.

The other thing I particularly appreciate is that games are over quickly. No twenty-minute slugfests here; a single match is just three minutes long, meaning that even if you’re stuck with a team of AFKers, you don’t have to suffer for too long before things are mixed up and you can try again with some new companions. And since teams are jumbled up before each match, even if the same players stay together, it’s rare to see unfair dominance from one side or another.

Above all, Splatoon is just plain fun. It’s colourful, it’s energetic, it’s humorous and it’s highly enjoyable — even if you don’t typically like multiplayer shooters. I’d highly encourage you to jump on it even if it’s not usually your sort of thing — you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised by how much fun you end up having.

2149: Helping your Squad in Xenoblade X

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Been dabbling with and investigating Xenoblade Chronicles X’s online functionality today, so I thought I’d share some findings, because the game itself doesn’t make things entirely clear if you don’t know where to look for information. Said online functionality is possibly the most interesting use of connectivity in an ostensibly single-player RPG since the Souls series, though, so it’s worth exploring.

Squads

A Squad is a group of up to 32 players who are effectively put together in a “lobby” of sorts. You don’t actually play together for the most part, but the 32 players in a Squad can communicate with each other through the BLADE Report system, and the avatars of Squad members will show up in each other’s games.

Whenever you start a new session of Xenoblade Chronicles X, you have three choices:

Lifehold Squad indicates that you want to focus on single-player activities, so you won’t be bothered too much by the online functionality.
Conquest Squad indicates that you’re open to cooperative online shenanigans.
Friend Squad allows you to join a Squad a friend is a member of.

Note that a Squad isn’t persistent, so you don’t need to take note of the Squad number you join. If you want to play with friends, just use the Friend Squad mode. Otherwise, use the Conquest Squad mode if you want to play with others, and Lifehold Squad if you want to focus on soloing.

Communicating

The BLADE Report system allows you to communicate with others in your Squad. It’s anonymous for the most part, so some players have taken to “signing” their messages. With only 48 characters to play with per message, though, space is at a premium.

Use BLADE reports to offer advice, ask questions or brag. If asking a question, be as specific as you can within the character limit, since it may not be obvious what you’re talking about if you’re vague.

You can also communicate with other players when you’re in a Squad Mission by using the Emotes palette on the GamePad. Some emotes are purely animations, but most of the first page of them have accompanying voice clips.

Scouting

“Scouting” refers to hiring other players’ characters into your party, and making yourself available for hiring in turn.

There are two means of Scouting: via the Scout console in NLA’s Administration District, and by running into an avatar randomly around NLA or in the field. Friends’ avatars seem to show up more frequently around the entrance to BLADE Barracks, assuming you’re in a Squad with them, so if you want to deepen your Affinity with a friend’s character, this is the easiest place to find them.

Scouting through the Scout console will cost you credits according to the level of the character you’re hiring, but you’ll be able to keep them in your party for longer — generally 120-240 minutes. Scouting via running into a character in the field or around NLA is free, but they only stick with you for half an hour.

While partying with Scouted characters, you’ll notice a small white gauge under their portrait. This is their Scout Level, which will increase the more you complete activities with them. Increasing Scout Level nets you various rewards and also allows you to do more things together — just raising it from 1 to 2, for example, allows for use of the Personal Greeting instead of the Public Greeting.

To make yourself available for Scouting — you’ll receive rewards if other players hire you — use the Scout console and the Manage Registered Avatar option. Also check the Settings menu; there’s an option in there to automatically update your Scout avatar when you save your game.

Squad Tasks

Periodically, a Squad Task HUD element will appear in the lower right of your screen. This details several tasks for the Squad as a whole to complete before a timer expires: they will either involve killing enemies (yellow, orange or red icons) or collecting Collectibles (blue icon).

In order to see what each task is, hold R and tap L to cycle through the tasks. Note that you won’t get any help on where to find the targets, so ask your comrades using a BLADE Report if you’re not sure.

Yellow Hunt targets ask you to kill any enemies of a broad group such as Piscinoids, Humanoids or Mechanoids. Orange Hunt targets ask you to kill any enemies of a subgroup, such as Duogills, a subgroup of Piscinoids. Red Hunt targets ask you to kill a specific enemy, usually a Tyrant. Generally speaking, yellow targets will require the Squad to down 20 enemies of the relevant type, orange needs 10 and red needs 5.

Contributing to and clearing Squad tasks will net you Reward Tickets, which can be traded in at the Network Console in your BLADE Barracks. The rewards are mostly crafting materials, but this can be an easy way to acquire quest items or materials you need to develop or upgrade equipment without having to hunt hundreds of monsters or pray for good luck when grabbing Collectibles.

It’s in everyone’s interest to complete the Squad Tasks, so be sure to use BLADE Reports to tell others where targets are and encourage cooperation.

Squad Missions

Squad Missions are cooperative multiplayer missions for between one and four players. A Squad Mission opens up whenever one of the Squad Tasks is cleared — you’ll know this has happened because the greyed-out “SQUAD MISSION” text on the Squad Task HUD will turn blue and start to pulse. The more Squad Tasks the Squad clears, the more Missions will open up — and the better rewards will be on offer.

To start a Squad Mission, go to your BLADE Barracks and use the Network Console, then choose Squad Missions to see what is available. Time Attack missions unlock after Chapter 4 when you fight the first major story boss, and Support Missions unlock after you clear the main story.

A Squad Mission has a minimum level and a sync level. You must meet the minimum level requirement to start the mission, and if you exceed the sync level you will be synced down to it for the duration of the mission.

When starting a Squad Mission you have the option of completing it with your current party (which could consist of NPCs and Scouted player avatars) or to actively recruit. If you choose the latter option, all players in your Squad will receive a notification that you are recruiting for a Squad Mission and have the opportunity to join you if they meet the requirements.

When you start a Squad Mission, you’ll be placed in a new instance of your BLADE Barracks Network Room. When other players show up, they’ll automatically appear in your party. You can start the mission by using the door near the Network Console, or if you’re not the party leader — i.e. you joined another player’s recruitment drive — you can indicate you are ready by attempting to use the door. Players who are ready will have a green checkmark on their portraits in the party list, and the icon over their heads will pulse. If you’re leader, it’s your call as to whether or not you start a mission without a full complement of four people or wait for reinforcements.

Once the mission is underway, you have a limited amount of time to complete the objectives in the lower right of the screen, and a limited number of retries — usually 3. A retry is used up when a player chooses to respawn rather than waiting for a comrade to resurrect them; when the last retry is used, the mission will automatically fail, so if you’re down to the last one, don’t attempt to respawn unless you’re sure everyone else is about to die.

On the subject of resurrecting other players, remember that you need 3,000 TP to get someone up. The quickest way to build up TP is to use your melee weapon, even if you’re a ranged class such as Enforcer, Psycorruptor or Mastermind. Resurrecting another character will usually trigger a Soul Challenge, too, so be ready to hit B at the right time to give them some free healing. If you have any direct healing Arts, too, now would be the time to throw them at the person you just got up.

Divisions

At midnight every real world day, Division Spoils are dished out. Rewards on offer include consumable or saleable items and can be very useful in your adventures. The exact rewards available are determined by the Division rankings for the previous day, and ranking is determined by how many BLADE Points each Division earned collectively. You earn BLADE Points for pretty much any activity you do in the game, but you earn significantly more for the two “specialist” tasks each Division is known for.

BLADE Points are also used to rank up within BLADE, so it’s in your interest to pick a Division that fits with what you enjoy doing most. You can change at any time, though, so don’t sweat the initial decision too much.

Divisions also have support effects. You can take advantage of these by talking to your Squad’s characters in the field or in NLA, or they will activate automatically under certain circumstances — check the icons under the minimap to see which are currently active for you.

Conquest and Nemesis

Completing Squad activities will fill the Conquest gauge, which you’ll see on the Squad selection screen. When this is full, a Global Nemesis will appear as a Squad Mission and be available for a limited time — generally several real world days.

Fighting a Global Nemesis is a case of dealing as much damage to it as possible before your pretty much inevitable defeat. The more HP gauges you deplete, the better your rewards will be when the Nemesis period is over, or in the unlikely event that it is completely defeated.

You can’t just spam the Global Nemesis mission and chip away at its overall total HP, though (known as RP, for some reason) — you need BLADE Medals to jump in to a Nemesis encounter. These are acquired through completing Squad Tasks and Squad Missions, so if you want to take on these powerful enemies, jump into the online stuff and help out other players whenever you can!

2036: Splattering

Been playing a bit more Splatoon, and I really like it for a number of reasons. Turns out that Nintendo’s first real foray into the dedicated online multiplayer sphere (as opposed to titles like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, which include online but don’t make it a focal point) is a really solid effort that does things a bit differently from the norm and is consequently a better, friendlier, more accessible experience as a result.

Splatoon’s structure may seem restrictive to those who have been raised on more well-established shooter franchises. You can’t purchase any new weapons or other equipment (each piece of which confers a buff of some description, and which can be levelled up at least once to unlock additional abilities) until you hit level 4, and until you hit level 10 you’re restricted to playing just the “Turf War” battle mode.

In practice, though, this all works really well. Turf War — a mode where whichever team covers more of the map with their colour after three minutes wins — is a good introduction to the game, emphasising how it’s important to work together as a team. By the time you hit Rank 10, at which point Ranked Battles with different rulesets unlock, you should be pretty comfortable with how the game works and perhaps even have found a favourite weapon style.

The other interesting thing about how Splatoon works is that rather than throwing all the maps and modes into the rotation and making people either vote on them or set up their own lobbies, it simply uses a small, rotating roster: two maps for Turf War, two more for Ranked Battle, and one of the available game modes chosen for Ranked Battle too. Every few hours this rotates.

This is also an excellent system. It encourages you to familiarise yourself with the maps, and since there are only two in a given set at any point, if you settle down to play a few games, you’ll get the opportunity to learn their intricacies rather than being forced into always playing community favourite levels until the end of time.

So far I’ve only played the Splat Zones mode in Ranked Battle: a variant on King of the Hill in which you have to take control of one or more zones by painting its floor in your colour to score points. It’s a different experience to Turf War; while Turf War is usually on the move, often with a scuffle over the map’s middle ground, Splat Zones forces you to both go on the offensive and defensive according to the position you’re in. Taking advantage of the squids’ abilities to hide under their ink makes for some enormously satisfying stealth “kills” (sorry, “splats”) and there’s a real sense of fun when you manage to outwit an opponent who’s been giving your team grief.

I haven’t yet had the courage to jump into some games with the folks on the /r/splatoon Discord server, but they seem like a friendly bunch open to giving advice, so I may look into that in the next few days. After all, I am level 12 now; that’s at least a bit fresh, I think…

2030: Splatoon is Pretty Damn Good

Wandered into town today to take care of a few bits of business, and decided that I’d trade in some games I didn’t really play any more and that wouldn’t be difficult to find again (Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed, stuff like that) and pick up Splatoon.

I’ve been idly following Splatoon since it was released, but I’ve held off picking it up because I’m generally not a massive fan of competitive games, and while Splatoon does have a single-player mode, it’s most well-known for its online battles.

Well, after spending a couple of hours with it this evening, I’m kind of sorry I waited; it’s really, really good.

Most of you reading this are probably already familiar with Splatoon but on the offchance you aren’t, it’s a Wii U game from Nintendo that is a rare example of them putting out a non-Mario or Zelda-related IP. Moreover, it’s actually an all-new IP, and one that deserves to do well, since it has some great character designs and witty writing, even in a game so focused on competitive multiplayer.

I haven’t tried the single-player at all yet and I’m only level 6 in multiplayer, so I can’t talk about the complete experience as yet, but what I’ve played so far has been a whole lot of fun.

In your early hours of Splatoon, you’re restricted to playing “Turf War” mode; a four-on-four affair in which the two teams compete to cover as much of the level with ink as possible over the course of three minutes. At the end of the match, the area covered is totted up and a winner declared, and individual rankings are shown so you can see who was pulling their weight more than others.

The genius of Splatoon is that it’s a competitive shooter (third-person in this case) in which the emphasis is not on killing other players, but instead on surveying the overall situation of the battlefield and acting accordingly. There’s no voice chat, but this isn’t really a problem, since you can coordinate your efforts with others simply by glancing at the overview map on the GamePad screen and seeing what regions need your attention. The fact that all you’re expected to do is cover as much of the level as possible with ink keeps things simple and accessible — though you will give your team a small advantage if you can fend off your opponents, sending them back to their base and wasting a bit of time as they respawn and make their way back to where the action is.

The other thing I like about Splatoon is that it’s apparently possible to pick up and play it and immediately be quite good at it. Out of the fifteen or twenty matches I’ve played this evening — they’re short and snappy, which is lovely — I was on the losing team only twice. There’s plenty of variety in the weapons, but none of them (so far, anyway) feel like they’re massively overpowered or anything; most of them can be countered in some way or another, and even the “superweapons” can be dodged and avoided if you know to recognise the warning signs soon enough.

I’m convinced, then; this is a good game that I’m looking forward to exploring more in the coming days. And it seems there’s a really active community, too, both on Reddit and Discord, so I’m looking forward to getting to know some new people.

I can officially confirm, then, that I am indeed a kid now, a squid now, a kid now, etc. So that’s nice.

1972: Togetherness

You know, I really shouldn’t be surprised about this any more, what with us living in the Information Age or whatever it is we’re in, with the Internet an omnipresent, omniscient collective of intelligences (in most circumstances) that, as a whole, never sleeps. But it does.

What, I hear you ask? The fact that someone, somewhere in the world, is probably doing the same thing you are at the exact same time as you.

I don’t often think about this, but it occurs to me when I fire up a multiplayer game that isn’t the current “flavour of the month” or Call of Duty. For example, I downloaded Tetris for my PlayStation 4, as it’s a long time since I seriously played Tetris and I fancied something that I could play together with Andie. The PS4 version of Tetris has an online mode where you can play any of the game modes with up to three other people playing at the same time as you. In the case of the “Battle” modes, you can directly interfere with one another, as is the tradition in Tetris multiplayer, but there are also a number of modes where you’re pretty much just playing alongside other people, perhaps to compare performance or pick up tips.

Now, Tetris is one of the most well-known, loved and respected games in the world, but I still find it surprising that there are people out there who make time to sit down and compete online. I’d ask “why?” but then I’d be forced to ask myself why I had chosen to play it online, too — and their answer would probably be the same as mine: to have some sort of “connection” with another person, even if it’s a non-verbal one that is as simple as a shared interest. (Aside: Online Tetris players are frighteningly good.)

It’s not just Tetris, either; I can sit down and play a mobile game like Brave Frontier, Love Live! School Idol Festival or Drift Girls and jump into one of the online modes in those and still find a live opponent to compete against. Again, in most cases, communication isn’t direct — most of these games don’t have a chat facility due to the impracticality of it in a mobile game — but it’s oddly heartwarming to be sharing an experience with other people, even if it’s only for a few short minutes as you attempt to full-combo Snow Halation or raise your ranking in the Drift Girls world tour mode.

Anyway. It’s kind of cool to occasionally connect with people in passing like this; with gaming often being a relatively solitary pursuit, it is sometimes nice to feel like there are other people out there who are into the same things as you — and perhaps even to share an experience with them.

Now I’ve probably got time for a quick Love Live! score match…

1621: Requiem for a Dead Game

Pour one out, if you will, for Blur.

Longtime readers may recall that I was rather enthusiastic about Blur when it first came out — largely for what I thought at the time was a good example of how to use “social features” effectively. Of course now, in 2014, “social features” are everywhere in games and have a habit of getting in the way more often than not, so I’m not entirely sure I still feel the same way, but Blur certainly had a lot going for it.

Looking back on my past entries, I realise that I never really waxed lyrical about what a remarkable game Blur truly was, though. I talked a bit about its developer Bizarre Creations — Blur was to be one of its last games — but not about what made Blur special.

For the unfamiliar, Blur was a racing game. Nothing unusual for Bizarre Creations, who had previously given us the wonderful Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast, which was succeeded by the Project Gotham Racing series on Xbox platforms. Both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing struck a good balance between the realism of “driving simulator” games such as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, and the more arcadey thrills of titles like Ridge Racer and its ilk. Stuffed full of real-world cars screeching around beautifully depicted real-world locations mapped in what was considered for the time to be almost “photo-realistic” detail, both Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham in its various incarnations places a strong focus on driving stylishly in order to gain “kudos”. Powersliding around corners, overtaking your rivals, getting air off the crest of hills — all of it would add to your kudos bank, and there was an extremely addictive high score-chasing thrill to it all.

Blur, meanwhile, took the Project Gotham formula and added a twist that took it further from sim territory and well into the realms of arcade silliness. Although still involving real-life cars screeching around real-world locations, Blur went that extra step and incorporated power-ups too. Powerups that let you shoot homing missiles at your opponents, or rapid-fire bullets, or send out devastating shockwaves, or simply boost past your rivals while flipping them off.

Sound familiar? Sound a bit like Mario Kart? That’s because Blur pretty much was Mario Kart, albeit with much more realistic visuals and less fantastic tracks. It was genuinely something that hadn’t really been done before — there had been automotive combat games, but they tended to focus on destruction derby-style gameplay rather than racing with powerups — and thus it was immediately memorable.

And the multiplayer! My goodness, what a fantastic experience that was. Shamelessly lifting Call of Duty’s system of experience levels and unlocks, Blur’s multiplayer rewarded repeat play by providing you with all manner of ways to customise the way you play, as well as a selection of new cars to enjoy. The game was well-balanced, though, in that having a high rank didn’t necessarily confer you an advantage as such, just more options from which to choose. It was enormously addictive and, for someone like me who generally doesn’t enjoy competitive multiplayer games all that much, enjoyable for a surprisingly long time.

I booted the PC version up today after having a bit of a hankering to play again, and out of curiosity I fired up the multiplayer mode. There were four people online. Not four hundred, not four thousand; four. These people appeared to be actively playing, mind you, but it was certainly a far cry from the hundreds of people who used to populate the game. I admire their dedication to the game, but I also feel a bit sad that here we have an unfortunate aspect of the fast-moving nature of the modern games biz: Blur is unlikely to ever see a great deal of action as a multiplayer game again, making one of its best features now almost worthless. It’s a crying shame; Blur was sent out to die by Activision rather than being promoted properly — conspiracy theories have it that the company wanted an excuse to get rid of Bizarre Creations — and consequently never really had a chance to develop an active, long-life multiplayer community.

If I had a tad more influence, I’d do my best to try and gather people together for one last race around the game’s courses. But given that the PC version no longer appears to be available anywhere and the Xbox version requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription — which I no longer have — that’s something easier said than done.

I guess, then, that the good experiences of playing Blur multiplayer will have to live in my memory. The single-player is good — and still playable — but nothing quite compared to the thrill of taking on human opponents. It’s a pity very few people will have the opportunity to enjoy that, and I’m glad I had the chance to do so when the game was most active.