2198: Petting Waifus and Gay Conversion

It came to light today that Nintendo of America apparently hasn’t stopped with the localisation edits to the upcoming Fire Emblem Fates that had already been revealed: it seems that the “petting” minigame, during which you can directly interact with the characters in your party — male and female — and improve your relationships with them has been excised completely. Kotaku described this as a “minor change in the name of localisation”.

Perhaps it is “minor”. Perhaps it is an unnecessary part of the game. Perhaps those who are unaware of the Japanese version won’t even know it was there to be missed. But none of this changes the fact that a feature of the game — with this being the first Fire Emblem game where you could directly interact with party members in this way — has been removed entirely from the Western release, giving English speakers a version of the game which is comparitively gimped when placed alongside its original Japanese source material.

Before I go any further, I’d like to talk a little about my general views on localisation. In short: localisation can be helpful and sometimes necessary to ensure that the right audience can access a work. The Ace Attorney series, for example, benefited considerably from its rather drastic localisation, opening it up to a much broader audience than those who would have been comfortable with a protagonist called Naruhodo Ryuuichi rather than Phoenix Wright.

For me, the key thing when considering how drastic localisation changes should or could be is the question of cultural context. Sometimes the inherently Japanese context of a work is important — key examples include titles like the Persona series, which is set in and around Japanese high schools; the Shenmue series, whose entire first game was set in a few lovingly rendered regions of a Japanese town; the Yakuza series, which is about as accurate a simulation of Japanese nightlife as you’re going to get, regular street brawls aside; the Senran Kagura series, which is steeped in both Japanese mythology and cultural peculiarities such as student rivalries and, you know, being a ninja; and any number of visual novels you’d care to mention, which often rely heavily on conventions of Japanese culture, particularly with regard to interpersonal relationships.

For other titles, though, it’s less important to keep this authentically Japanese feel to it. Something like my perennial favourite the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, for example, works well with the breezy tone of its localisation, though more diehard fans remain dissatisfied with character traits introduced through NIS America’s original translations of the PlayStation 3 games prior to Idea Factory International taking matters into their own hands. Likewise, the localisation of Final Fantasy XIV was excellently handled, featuring some well-done and deliberately flowery — almost Shakespearean at times — dialogue that many have noted added considerable depth to the original source’s writing. Indeed, in Final Fantasy XIV’s case, many of the things introduced through its localisation have found themselves “backported” to the Japanese version, so well-received were they — though I will admit if you know even a bit of Japanese, playing the game with Japanese voices and comparing to the English subtitles can be a little jarring.

Anyway: the point is, I’m not opposed to localisation where it’s appropriate or necessary to broaden a work’s appeal, and particularly if said work is aimed at mass market but is still riddled with Japanese cultural references no-one but 1) Japanese people and 2) weeaboos will recognise. Where a specifically Japanese tone and feel is necessary to an authentic translation of the work, though, I’d rather the translation be as literal (but readable) as possible where it can.

And so we come to Fire Emblem Fates. What we have here is a title that isn’t particularly Japanese in feel or tone, since Fire Emblem has always erred on a stereotypically Western approach to fantasy at times. As such, I wouldn’t be opposed to localisation changes that help a broad audience to access, understand and appreciate the work as a whole by toning down its “Japaneseness”.

That’s not what we’re getting though. Fire Emblem Fates’ most drastic localisation edits are nothing to do with helping people understand and access the work, but they are everything to do with minimising offense. Take the notorious “gay conversion” scene, for example: the original hoohah over this came about as a result of some Tumblrina spilling her spaghetti everywhere over what she perceived to be a male protagonist spiking the drink of a lesbian character and “converting” her to being straight enough to marry him. In actuality, the scene is about nothing of the sort: not only is the “magic powder” used to improve her battle effectiveness rather than get her into bed — fainting the moment you get close to a man isn’t a good way to wage war — but the female character in question, Soleil, might not even be gay in the first place, if the Fire Emblem Wiki is to be believed: all Soleil’s romantic interests are male, making the matter perhaps more one of something related to androphobia rather than homosexuality.

And as for the removal of the “petting” minigame, it just feels like a “mother knows best” moment; like we Westerners are somehow expected to be shocked and appalled enough at the prospect of physically interacting with a video game character and faint on the couch in protest.

I don’t like this trend. It feels like a reversal of all the good work that was done in the late ’90s and early ’00s, where games were regularly praised for having the guts to include adult content other than the “usual” violence. I vividly recall Sierra’s adventures Police Quest 4 and Gabriel Knight being highlighted as examples of the medium maturing because of their willingness to include the word “fuck” in their scripts, previously never heard in a game; and likewise I remember PC Zone magazine running a feature in one of its early issues about Megatech’s hentai games, noting that their willingness to tackle adult themes — just like anime, which was starting to become popular and fashionable in the UK around the same time — was a sign that some game makers were finally starting to acknowledge that games weren’t just for kids.

I’m no fan of Fire Emblem generally — largely due to a lack of experience with the series rather than an actual dislike of it — but these types of big changes made for the wrong reasons make me somewhat uncomfortable, because they’re sanitising works of art in the name of appeasing small but loud groups of people, many of whom likely wouldn’t have played the game in the first place. It’s babying the Western audience, protecting them from things that might “offend” us, whereas one of the best things about art — any form of art, whatever the medium — is its ability to challenge us and get us to think about things in a different way. If you wipe out everything that might offend someone somewhere from art, you’re left with a castrated culture that increasingly wants to retreat into its “safe spaces” rather than explore the strange, wonderful, terrible and fascinating things writers come up with.

Not to mention the inherent hypocrisy: Western games don’t get butchered in this way in the name of “think of the children”. Grand Theft Auto features strip club scenes where you can have a first-person view of a lap dance, which provides no gameplay benefits whatsoever. The recent Thief reboot featured a level where you could peek through a hole in a wall and witness an explicit BDSM sex scene — again, for no real reason other than for background decoration. One of the Far Cry games from a while back opened with a first-person sex scene. And there’s the multitude of banging scenes in the Witcher series.

I don’t object to any of the above — I’m of the opinion that it’s nice for games to treat me like an adult who can handle seeing sexual material. But when Western games get away with stuff as explicit as this, whereas Fire Emblem Fates gets butchered for something far tamer than anything the aforementioned games included, I cry foul. It makes me particularly uncomfortable as a fan of Japanese games to feel that titles from certain publishers or localisation teams aren’t providing me with an experience that’s completely true to the source material. It may still be great, sure — and everything seems to indicate that Fire Emblem Fates is an ambitious, excellent game — but the experience is somewhat marred by the knowledge that I’m missing out on something that other regions are more than happy to include.

I hope this is a trend which fizzles out quickly; the sooner we get over this inane desire to “protect” people from content they might want to see, the better; in the meantime, I’m more than happy to continue supporting developers and publishers who bring titles over mostly if not completely unscathed: groups like Idea Factory International, Marvelous Europe, Koei Tecmo (with the exception of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, of course), XSEED Games and latter-day NIS America.

“Gaming needs to grow up,” the argument frequently runs. Well, for that to happen, you need to start acknowledging players like adults first.

2176: Life on Mira

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I finished the main story of Xenoblade Chronicles X today, but my time with the game is far from over, since there’s still a whole lot to do once you clear the story.

I wanted to reflect a little on my experience with the game so far — 100 hours’ worth — and reiterate that I think it was absolutely the best game released last year that I had the good fortune to play. There may be some spoilers ahead, but I’ll try and keep them to a minimum.

The most common criticism I’ve read of Xenoblade Chronicles X is that its story is “weak” or “not as good as Xenoblade Chronicles“. While I don’t disagree that its manner of storytelling is an acquired taste, I don’t agree at all that its story is weak or of poor quality — nor do I agree with the assertion that the characters aren’t particularly well-defined.

Let’s take the first point first. I’ve already commented on this in depth in this post, but it bears mentioning again: Xenoblade Chronicles X’s storytelling is about more than the main scenario quests and the cutscenes. It’s an immersive storytelling experience in which you are part of the world of Mira, and things unfold around you, both with and without your intervention. The world changes and evolves as you complete missions and develop your relationships with characters, though the impact of your actions may not necessarily be immediately apparent. As you spend time in New Los Angeles and interact with its populace — initially all human, but later integrating several different xenoform cultures — you start to get a very strong sense of time and place from the people of Mira. It’s ultimately one of the most well-realised worlds I’ve come across since the Final Fantasy MMOs — and, from me, that’s high praise indeed, since these have previously been some of my favourite game worlds to hang out in.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s main story is a relatively straightforward affair, though its final act gets into some intriguing philosophical territory. But in many respects, the main story is the least important part of the overall narrative experience: the “true” Xenoblade Chronicles X, if you like, is in going about your day-to-day life as a BLADE, completing missions, interacting with others and developing your understanding of the world as a whole. Sidequests happen in the strangest of places at times, and you’ll encounter a huge cast of weird and wonderful characters, many of whom have “affinity” links with one another just waiting to be discovered. Each of these sidequests is crafted with care, attention and meaning, and many of them tell their own compelling little “short stories” in their own right; others still form part of a larger ongoing narrative proceeding in the background alongside the main scenario. As a complete package, it’s hard to think of an RPG with quite such a comprehensive narrative that you can explore in as much depth as you like.

Now, on to the second point: that of the characters. It’s true that the main scenario largely focuses on the characters of Elma, Lin and Tatsu, with even your avatar not getting a lot in the way of development — though it’s worth noting that in stark contrast to many JRPGs, you can play your character’s personality in a lot of different ways, and there are often consequences for the choices you make — but to say that the other characters don’t get explored is nonsense. For one, all the playable characters have their own chain of affinity missions and heart-to-heart events to explore as you develop your relationships with them, and some of these are even prerequisites for proceeding through the story. Plus, all of them have their own unique things to say during and after battle, with certain character pairings even having unique conversations with one another. Pleasingly, this even includes your avatar (who has a voice in combat despite being a silent protagonist for most of the game) — many of the things he/she says are responded to by other party members, which makes you feel like a more important part of the team than you might do otherwise.

Again, you’re free to explore this side of the narrative in as much or as little depth as you please, since most of the affinity missions are optional affairs. The content is there, though — like most things in Xenoblade Chronicles X, though, it simply isn’t handed to you on a plate. I like that, though; it gives a feeling of achievement when you discover something.

Final-ish thoughts for now, then? Xenoblade Chronicles X is a masterpiece of sci-fi, and the sci-fi game I’ve wanted to play since I was very young. It’s not perfect by any means — the Wii U hardware arguably holds it back a little at times, though not as much as the original Wii held back titles like the original Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story — but it really is an astoundingly good game, and a truly impressive achievement. It deserves to be celebrated a whole lot more than I’ve seen, and I shall continue to bang my drum about it for as long as anyone will listen.

2173: Three Swords

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2168: Xenoblade Chronicles X: My Game of the Year

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It being the 28th of December, I feel fairly confident in declaring my own personal Game of the Year, and it will probably not surprise any of you to hear that it is Monolithsoft’s spectacular Wii U role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles X. In this post, I will attempt to explain exactly why this game has impressed me so much — and why I’m disappointed (though, I must admit, unsurprised) that the popular games press has given so little attention and/or Game of the Year consideration to it.

The first thing to note about Xenoblade Chronicles X is that it is not Wii classic Xenoblade Chronicles. Aside from a number of similarities in the combat system — including a bunch of abilities that have been brought over wholesale from the original game — Xenoblade Chronicles X is a completely different affair to its predecessor. Where Xenoblade Chronicles’ focus was on its strong, linear narrative punctuated by sidequests, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s main scenario is, in many ways, the least important part of the whole package, with the incredible sense of worldbuilding produced by the numerous sidequests and optional events instead being the main point of proceedings.

Let’s go back a step, though, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with Xenoblade Chronicles X in general, and consider it on its own terms rather than getting too hung up on comparing it to its predecessor — which, as we’ve established, is a different (and not necessarily superior or inferior) experience.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s setup is classic sci-fi. Earth gets caught in the crossfire between some powerful alien races, and looks set for certain destruction. Numerous people manage to escape on colony ships, which take to the stars in search of a new home. Our story concerns the White Whale, a ship which crash-landed on a planet called Mira when one of the alien forces responsible for Earth’s destruction caught up with it and destroyed it.

The White Whale broke up on its destruction, but its habitation section remained intact, and humanity quickly set about converting this part of the ship into Mira’s first human city. Being modelled on 21st century Los Angeles, the city is dubbed New Los Angeles, and it doesn’t take long for a suitable system of social structure to be put into place and help ensure everyone is doing their bit for humanity’s survival.

Key to these efforts is BLADE, an organisation concerned with Building a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth — do you see what they did there? BLADE is made up of several Divisions, each of which specialises in important tasks for humanity’s continued survival, be it scouting for raw materials, defending the city from dangerous indigenous creatures or maintaining the peace within the city walls.

Your character — for you can create your own avatar in this, rather than playing a pre-scripted character as in the original Xenoblade Chronicles — awakens in a crashed escape pod with the obligatory JRPG amnesia. Discovered by a young woman named Elma, who immediately shows herself to be a capable combatant and responsible individual, you’re brought back to New LA and you join BLADE. From there, you become part of humanity’s efforts to settle on Mira — and to defend your people from the threat of the Ganglion, a collective of aliens who want nothing more than to wipe humanity off the face of the universe for reasons known only to themselves.

As you progress through Xenoblade Chronicles X, more and more interesting things open up to you. The first couple of chapters are story-centric, but allow you to wander off and explore the game’s enormous open world on foot as you see fit if you so desire. Once these are out of the way and your character has joined BLADE, you can start taking on missions, which range from simple MMO-style “collect this” or “kill this” Basic Missions to scene-setting, context-providing Normal Missions and character-centric Affinity Missions.

You’re free to progress through the twelve chapters of the game’s main story at whatever pace you choose, and the narrative is actually designed in such a way that it doesn’t provide a sense of dissonance if you leave the main scenario hanging for a while. Instead, each chapter of the main scenario is effectively a self-contained mini-story in its own right, so there’s no sense of putting Important Shit on hold while you go and pick flowers or hunt dinosaurs or whatever. This means that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story becomes as much about what happens in between those major story beats as it does during the more dramatic, cutscene-heavy nature of the main scenario.

In fact, in many ways, it’s the side missions of Xenoblade Chronicles X that are the best part of the game, because they render the strange world of Mira and humanity’s attempts to start over in far more detail than a linear story ever would. The side missions introduce numerous alien races, for example, many of whom choose to move in to New LA and coexist with humans after your successful first contact with them. Side missions also affect the world, and many of them are written in chains, where events that transpired earlier have an impact on what happens later, with some even having branching outcomes and questlines according to decisions you made earlier in the game.

Character development and customisation is pretty spectacular, being more akin to what you’d probably expect from a Western RPG than a Japanese affair. Your own character is completely customisable: you can switch between classes (and the associated weapons) at will, and mastering a particular branch of classes masters its weapons, allowing you to use them (and their associated abilities) in whatever combinations you see fit. You can also equip your character in armour that you feel suits your play style well, be this damage-absorbing heavy armour, evasion-heavy light armour or a mixture. Armour and weapons can be customised with augments, and upgraded with minerals mined via probes you place around the open world during your exploration. New armour, weapons and vanity clothing can be crafted. And your actions will cause various arms manufacturers to set up shop in the city, with the quality of their wares improving as you use their equipment and donate resources to their respective causes.

Once you hit the game’s halfway point, a whole other set of systems opens up as you gain access to “Skells”, the giant mechs that have been seen throughout much of the game’s promotional material. Skells are just as customisable as characters, perhaps even more so; they’re equipped with a vast array of weapons, each of which corresponds to a particular ability as well as affecting the Skell’s performance as a whole. You can swap out various pieces of armour and weapons, paint it a lurid shade of pink and name it “Murderbot” if you so desire. And then you can equip the rest of your squad with them once they reach level 30, too, building your party into an unstoppable force of Big Stompy Robots.

Pleasingly, gaining access to Skells doesn’t mean that you never participate in the excellent on-foot combat ever again. Rather, both in-Skell and on-foot fighting each have their own benefits according to what you’re doing. Skells are generally better for fighting larger opponents, while you get more experience for taking down opponents on foot. On-foot combat also features a mechanic called “secondary cooldowns”, where if you let a skill charge twice instead of just once before using it, it will have some form of added effect that could be anything from additional damage to being able to immediately reuse it. Skell combat, meanwhile, allows you to bind enemies so the rest of your team can wail on them uninterrupted, and also has an entertaining mechanic called Cockpit Time, where you get an awesome in-cockpit view of your character pulling levers and flipping switches to unleash the Skell’s weaponry on your opponent. You are invincible while this is going on, too, so you can enjoy it without having to worry.

Later still in the game, you gain the ability for your Skells to fly, which gives the game a whole different feel again. Flight allows you to access numerous locations that you wouldn’t have been able to get to before — plus Mira looks pretty beautiful from the air. It’s also incredibly impressive that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s world is genuinely seamless — you can take off from New LA’s residential district in your Skell, take to the skies and fly all the way north to the fiery region of Cauldros on the other side of the ocean without seeing a single loading screen.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is, for me, my Game of the Year because it makes me happy on so many levels. It’s a beautiful realisation of a classic sci-fi concept that has fascinated me for years. It features some of the best worldbuilding and sense of the setting being a real place that I’ve seen outside an MMO. It has incredible — and unconventional — music. And it tells great stories: the main scenario is interesting, compelling and dramatic, but just as entertaining are the more subtle stories told by the sidequests, the gossip you overhear in the streets and your own personal career as a BLADE.

Xenoblade Chronicles X deserves to be hailed as a classic. It’s the most ambitious, impressive console RPG I’ve seen for years — perhaps ever — and, while it has its flaws and perhaps may not gel with everyone who tries it due to the obtuseness of some of its systems, it succeeds far better in its attempts to provide a convincing simulation of surviving life on a new and hostile planet than any number of procedurally generated Early Access Minecraft knockoffs you’d care to mention.

Buy a Wii U. Buy Xenoblade Chronicles X. This game deserves to be a success, and it deserves to be celebrated much more than it has been to date.

2161: Story is About More Than Cutscenes

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One of the most common complaints I’ve read about Xenoblade Chronicles X recently is that “the story isn’t as good as Xenoblade Chronicles“. And, if you look at it in a somewhat superficial manner, that’s true to an extent; it suffers a little from the open-world RPG’s perennial problem that is putting Important Things on hold while you go and pick flowers or whatever.

You may feel this way until you get your head into the mindset of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s not a typical JRPG with a fast-paced, completely linear storyline that you can then break completely when the game opens up towards the end. With a few exceptions — most notably the giant mech “Skells” and, later, the ability to fly in them — much of the game is open to you from the very outset, and the whole game is designed around the concept of “what would happen if you (and the rest of humanity’s survivors) were stranded on an alien planet with no hope of getting away any time soon?”

In that sense, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s narrative — and the way it is told — starts to make a whole lot more sense. The story isn’t just about the “story quests” and the cutscenes they incorporate; there’s only twelve chapters to the main story, after all. Instead, the complete Xenoblade Chronicles X narrative consists of a blend of all the game’s elements: your freeform career as a BLADE operative and the emergent narrative that comes from your adventures in the field; the simple, short stories that come from the Normal Missions and give context to many of the NPCs in the world — and, in many cases, have significant impacts on the world as a whole; the more in-depth, character-centric stories of the Affinity Missions — which also have cutscenes and are fully voiced, unlike the Normal Missions; the conversations you overhear from NPCs you meet in town and in the field; the implied, non-explicit narrative you can deduce from the scenery of the world; and, finally, the “main” story itself.

I mentioned at the beginning the open world RPG’s curse of the party putting saving the world (or equivalent activities) on hold while they went to pick flowers, but in fact Xenoblade Chronicles X has been designed with that very criticism in mind. It’s strongly implied that a fair amount of time passes between each of the story missions, since there are numerous references to time-consuming things happening “off-screen” throughout. Rather than simply asking you to accept that several days/weeks/months have passed, however, it’s more than likely that, unless you’re taking a “critical path” approach to racing through the storyline as fast as you can, a significant amount of time probably will have passed between each of the story missions. And it’s in those “in between” moments that Xenoblade Chronicles X has some of its most interesting moments.

The aforementioned Normal Missions, for example. While these may appear to have had less attention lavished on them than the cutscene-heavy Affinity and Story Missions, in actual fact they tend to have more noticeable impacts on the world as a whole. As a result of Normal Missions and your choices therein, characters move around and live or die; buildings are built or destroyed; relationships between characters change; and, in the most drastic example of things changing as a result of your actions, new alien races move into the human city of New Los Angeles, meaning that you can then see them wandering around the streets as random crowd NPCs, talking to named members of their species and even accepting missions from them. As you play through the game, your understanding of Mira — and the wider universe outside the planet — begins to grow, as you get a feel for who the Ma-non, Zaruboggan, Prone and numerous others are, and, more importantly, how they feel about both one another and humanity.

The complete picture you build up in your mind as you play is one of the most comprehensively detailed pieces of worldbuilding I’ve seen for a very long time. It brings to mind the whole idea of “extended universes” for things like Star Trek and Star Wars, only in this instance, the “extended” universe is right there in the game for you to discover if you see fit. There’s no obligation to do most of this stuff — though some story missions have prerequisite Affinity or other missions before you can proceed — but doing so makes the game several orders of magnitude more rewarding, as it starts to tell its story in all manner of different ways rather than simply through cutscenes.

As the year draws to a close, there’s no doubt in my mind that Xenoblade Chronicles X is absolutely my “game of the year”. It’s full of all the things that I love, and, while its way of doing things may not to be everyone’s taste — particularly the complexity of its systems and the subtleties in its storytelling — I feel pretty confident in saying that it’s a landmark game that deserves to be counted among the greats of not just the RPG style of game, nor just the sci-fi genre of narrative games, but of gaming as a whole.

2160: Smash It

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Super Smash Bros. really has become something rather marvellous: a kind of interactive “museum” of gaming, wrapped in an incredibly accessible but surprisingly deep fighting game shell.

I mention this because I grabbed the new Cloud Strife DLC for the game earlier and have spent a bit of time getting to know the new character. I like him a great deal; his moveset makes me very happy indeed, consisting almost entirely of Cloud’s iconic Limit Break moves from Final Fantasy VII, and he’s also a character I feel reasonably confident about how to use.

I’ve had mixed feeling about Super Smash Bros. over the years, partly because I’ve never been that good at it, and I have a friend who is very good at it, meaning it’s not always 100% fun to play it with other people. Ultimately, though, I’m pretty sure I’ve come down on the side of liking it, because it really is a game like no other: the combination of characters, backdrops, music and sly references to all manner of games, both new and old, is absolutely delightful, and the complete antithesis to the homogeneous nature of most triple-A games.

It’s also a damn good fighting game. A few weeks ago, out of curiosity, I read the beginning of an e-book about how to git gud at fighting games, since I’ve never really got my head around them. The book recommended learning to play using Street Fighter II, since that is the foundation on which most modern fighting games are built, but I was very surprised to discover that much of the advice contained therein very much applied to Super Smash Bros. I could feel myself playing better immediately after reading the book; it was the most obvious example of learning something new and then immediately putting it into practice that I’ve felt for a long time.

There are, of course, all manner of questions over whether Super Smash Bros. is balanced, whether it’s “casual” and whether it’s a “fighting game” by the traditional definition at all, since it’s so different to your average one-on-one fighter such as the Street Fighter series. But its accessibility — no complicated button commands to learn here, allowing you to focus on using the moves effectively rather than struggling to use them at all — is its best feature, allowing rookie fighting game players to jump in and go toe-to-toe reasonably confidently against veterans. Sure, they’ll almost certainly get obliterated — since despite how chaotic Super Smash Bros. looks for the most part, it’s a very technical game that is almost frightening to watch high-level play of — but, unlike many other fighting games, it probably won’t be for lack of knowledge of the mechanics. No special meters, no indecipherable jargon; all you really need to know is that you need to smack your opponents around a bit to increase their damage gauge, and the higher their damage gauge is, the further they’ll fly when you whack ’em with a Smash move, with your ultimate aim being to knock or lure them off any side of the level.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be any good at Smash Bros., particularly compared to people who really know what they’re doing with their favourite characters, but it’s a fun time, and probably the fighting game series I’ve had the most fun with over the years.

But anyway. My original thinking that prompted this post was looking at the character select screen for my copy of Super Smash Bros., which includes the base game plus the DLC for Ryu and Cloud Strife, from Street Fighter and Final Fantasy VII respectively. Super Smash Bros. already has an incredibly diverse roster that draws from series ranging from Super Mario to Metroid via Star Fox and F-Zero, but the really interesting thing that started to happen in the last few installments is the addition of third-party, non-Nintendo characters, beginning with Solid Snake from the Metal Gear games a while back, and in the newer Wii U version, everything from Pac-Man to the aforementioned Ryu and Cloud.

Back when I was a kid playing Super Mario World on my Super NES at home, I would never have predicted that one day I’d be playing a game in which Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man, Cloud Strife, Ryu and the fucking dog from Duck Hunt all feature; it’s kind of mind-blowing when you think about it, particularly if the horrible names Sega and Nintendo fans — including the press! — used to call each other are still fresh in your memory!

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.

2154: Another Xenoblade X Post

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In conversation with a friend the other day, I realised one of the things I really like about Xenoblade Chronicles X: it feels like a new perspective on a genre of game I liked but was never particularly good at: the strategy/management/”god-game” genre, particularly with a sci-fi focus. Stuff like Alien Legacy, Outpost and its ilk.

The “new perspective” I mention refers to the fact that rather than acting as an overseer to your colonisation efforts, taking a somewhat detached view of everything that is going on and rarely, if ever, getting up close and personal with your colonists, Xenoblade Chronicles X sees you right in the middle of things. You’re not running the colony as such, but everything you do has such a significant impact on the game world that you might as well be.

The feeling of “being inside” a strategy game is further compounded by the game’s FrontierNav system, which uses the Wii U’s GamePad to display a hex-based map of the planet Mira, the game’s setting. Through methodical exploration and completion of objectives, you gradually “conquer” Mira hex by hex, setting up an infrastructure in the process. Placing data probes not only allows you to generate passive income of both credits and the raw material Miranium, it also allows you to collect rare resources from specific hexes, store more Miranium, increase the output of connected probes and all manner of other things. There’s actually a rather deep metagame of chaining probes together to maximise your income between all your sites.

And it’s important, too; this isn’t an RPG where you can just grind out money until you can afford the best equipment in the game. Instead, this passive income is one of the only ways for you to be able to afford things, and Miranium is incredibly important for a wide variety of purposes: investing in arms manufacturers to unlock new gear, upgrading existing equipment, crafting new items and donating to various causes in exchange for credits and other rewards.

Early in the game, this metagame doesn’t seem all that important, since you quickly find yourself with far more money than you know what to do with, meaning you can spoil yourself rotten on gear purely for aesthetic value thanks to the game’s “fashion gear” system. Once you gain the ability for you and your party members to use the giant walking mechs called “Skells”, though, your expenses start to mount up. Miranium is used to refuel them, while credits are needed to purchase frames, armour and weapons for them. Multiply these expenses by all the party members you want to equip with Skells (which is probably all of them eventually) and you’ll be spending a lot of money in total — but these investments are ultimately for the good of the colony as a whole.

What’s really interesting about Xenoblade Chronicles X compared to many other open-world games — and particularly MMOs, which it’s most commonly compared to — is the fact that, as mentioned earlier, your actions have a clear and tangible effect on the game world as a whole over the course of the whole story. For example, one chain of sidequests sees you helping to gather resources to build a water purification plant out in the wilds of Primordia; later, you’re sent there to investigate an incident out there, and it’s actually there on the lake where there was once just a rocky beach. Characters that were once standing around in town are now there, and it has its own little plotline to follow.

You’re not alone on Mira, either; the main scenario introduces you to a few members of other alien races on the planet — both indigenous and extraterrestrial — but there are plenty more sidequests that bring you into contact with all manner of other weird and wonderful peoples, and completing their requests causes them to immigrate to your colony. Once they’re there, they set up shop in a particular area and you’ll see them wandering the streets. Many of them provide beneficial services to the colony as a whole, and so your experience grows.

It’s a really satisfying, organic sense of progression through more than just bars getting longer and numbers getting bigger. There’s a wonderful sense of New Los Angeles becoming a real, living place, with people going about their business and clashing cultures learning to understand one another. It is, by far, the heart and soul of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which doubtless won’t be entirely to everyone’s taste — particularly those who prefer more structured linearity in their RPGs — but, for me, it’s basically created the sci-fi game I always wanted to play: a game where I not only get to build a colony on a new world, but where I get to actually run around inside that colony, meet people, help them, go out into the world and make an impact on said new world as I help humanity spread its wings in its new home.

Did I mention Xenoblade Chronicles X is an amazing game? No? Go buy it now. I want more of this sort of thing, please.

2153: Should You Buy a Wii U?

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The temptation to make this post just the word “YES” in 120-point bold underlined text is enormous, but most people will probably need a bit more convincing than that.

So, going against everything I learned about writing headlines — “never write a headline that is a question that can be answered with a single word” — I shall now attempt to explain to you why the Wii U is a really solid investment, certainly as much and possibly even more so than the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Hardware

The Wii U hardware may not pack as much of a punch as its competitors in this generation, but it’s a nice bit of kit. The console itself is a pleasant, shiny black box with subtle lights on the front, and it will look good under pretty much anyone’s TV. The accompanying GamePad is also an intriguing-looking piece of kit that is sure to be a conversation piece for people visiting your living room, and its second-screen functionality is impressive.

The Wii U doesn’t have the flashing disc slot that the original Wii did for notifications while it was turned off; instead, the GamePad can light up with announcements about new patches, new content and new releases. These announcements also appear as a banner ad on the Quick Start screen when you first turn the console on, so it’s usually pretty easy to find the thing that was announced.

The GamePad itself is a surprisingly pleasant controller, even with its enormous size. Its triggers are comfortable and ergonomic, despite not being that nice brand of squishy analogue that Microsoft in particular has specialised in, and all the buttons are easy to reach by people with normal-sized hands. The only slight adjustment some people may have to make is the fact that the A, B, X and Y buttons are presented in a mirrored arrangement to how they are found on the Xbox controllers (they go “YXBA” instead of “XYAB”) but this will be nothing new to anyone who had a SNES.

The Wii U Pro Controller is a really nice controller, too. It doesn’t come with the console, but it’s a worthwhile investment for those who don’t get on with using the GamePad as a controller, or simply as an extra controller for multiplayer games. Modelled somewhat on the shape of the Xbox 360 controller, it lacks analogue triggers but makes up for this with a much nicer D-pad than anything Microsoft has ever come up with, and a built-in rechargeable battery immediately puts it ahead of both the 360 and One controllers.

You can also use your old Wii Remotes, Nunchuks and Balance Board accessories on compatible games, which is a nice nod to backward compatibility that both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 lack. That said, some games don’t support some of the older, more specialised controllers such as the Classic Controller and Classic Controller Pro, so check the packaging for the games or reports online before expecting to jump into multiplayer. One example I can think of is Ubisoft’s ZombiU, which supports Wii Remote and Nunchuk, but not the Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro; for a second player to play with a controller, they must use the Wii U Pro Controller.

The only real letdown so far as hardware is concerned on the Wii U is the pitiful 32GB storage space it comes with. Fortunately, this is easily upgradeable using any standard USB hard drive, and this is highly recommended, even if you generally only play disc-based games — patches, DLC and optional “fast loading” content for larger games can chew through that available space incredibly quickly.

Oh, there’s also no Ethernet port; you’re stuck with wireless networking only by default, but a third party USB-to-Ethernet converter box works absolutely fine for those who prefer the stability and speed of a wired connection.

OS and Online

The Wii U’s OS is a natural evolution from the Wii’s “Channels” setup and is rather similar to the 3DS. One screen — the TV by default — shows a splash screen with your own Miis and others from the Internet — assuming you’re connected — along with icons representing popular games at the time and related Miiverse posts selected randomly from the community. The other shows a customisable grid of the disc you have inserted into the console and any software you have downloaded. There are also icons for the various tools the system offers.

The Wii U’s online service is a significant improvement over past iterations of Nintendo Network. Friend Codes are out of the window, replaced instead by the much easier to share Nintendo Network ID. Online activity is pushed into the background and is completely unobtrusive, perhaps to a fault; the only way you will know friends are online in many cases is if a game directly notifies you, or if you happen to press the Home Button and see a notification.

You’re also pretty limited in what you can do with friends. You can see what they’re playing and hit a link to it in the eShop, save their Mii to your console, and view their Miiverse profile, but that’s about it. There’s no chat, no messaging, nothing like that. For the most part, this is fine, since any Nintendo games that offer online functionality are generally designed to be played without requiring direct communication, but the option would have perhaps been nice. There are alternative solutions, though, so it’s not exactly a dealbreaker, particularly for those who prefer to play solo.

Miiverse is an interesting idea, with communities for most games as well as more general topics. It’s a good place to find comments and some surprisingly impressive fan-art for games, but its execution is a little slow and clunky to make it something most people will want to dip into on a whim. It can be a good place to find information, though, and it’s always interesting to see what people are saying about a game. The latest version of the Miiverse software also allows you to save screenshots and keep a “Play Journal” with annotated screenshots, which is a nice evolution of the notes page in the back of old game manuals.

The eShop is a well-designed storefront that makes discovering new things to play quite easy. A colourful front page features new releases — including, in many cases, music from the games — as well as links to the store’s various sections. A solid search function allows you to find what you’re looking for, but browsing can throw up some interesting surprises too.

The selection available is pretty good, though prices are not particularly competitive with physical editions and in some bizarre cases, digital versions even cost more than their physical counterparts. A big highlight of the platform is the Virtual Console section, which includes games from older systems ranging from the NES to the Nintendo 64 and even the previous-generation Wii, though the selection here is relatively small. It’s worth noting that switching the Wii U into “Wii Mode”, though, allows you access to the older system’s much more substantial Virtual Console library, though you’ll have to satisfy yourself with playing these versions in 480p rather than the lovely sharpness of 1080p, but in the case of retro titles this may not be a dealbreaker for many of you.

The main issue with the Wii U’s online functionality is that not much of it is explicitly explained. There’s a very convenient image sharing website that allows you to quickly post screenshots to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, for example, but you won’t know it’s there unless you happen to peek into the system’s default web browser bookmarks. A bit of experimentation — or perhaps being told about these things by friends — will reveal what it offers, though.

Games

This is the highlight, really. While the Wii U’s overall library is very small compared to the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, its quality is pretty consistently excellent. Here are some personal recommendations:

Super Mario 3D World — one of the best Super Mario games in years, Super Mario 3D World takes the isometric perspective of the 3DS game Super Mario Land and presents the player with more complex, longer levels and a wide variety of mechanics to learn and play with. It’s a beautifully presented game with wonderful graphics and music (and a somewhat redundant “cooperative” multiplayer mode that doesn’t really add much to the game) that is an essential purchase for anyone with a Wii U.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U — Super Smash Bros. remains one of the most accessible fighting games out there, but its hidden depths mean that it is one of the most consistently popular titles on the tournament circuit, too. It’s a tremendously fun game, and in terms of the sheer amount of content you get both on the disc and available as downloadable content, it’s hard to think of a fighting game with more to offer both solo players and parties of fighters.

Mario Kart 8 — It’s Mario Kart, so not much more needs to be said, really; it runs beautifully, it has some wonderfully inventive tracks (with more available via optional DLC) and it has an excellent online mode.

Super Mario Maker — It’s wonderful to see a resurgence of the “Construction Kit” genre of games, and Super Mario Maker is a wonderfully accessible, friendly opportunity for people to try their hand at making 2D platformer levels with a Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World or New Super Mario Bros U aesthetic. Even if you have no intention of creating levels, though, the sheer volume of custom levels available online is enough to keep any platform game fan busy, and the game’s voting system ensures that badly designed levels drop to the bottom of the rankings pretty quickly.

Splatoon — The shooter for people who don’t like shooters. Splatoon is a lovely twist on the team-based multiplayer shooter genre in that it’s never just about killing the other team; rather, it’s about claiming territory by painting it. A wide variety of weapon types and other equipment keep the game interesting in the long term without unbalancing it, and the fact the game is continually expanding over time means that it’s always… fresh.

Xenoblade Chronicles X — If you’ve read my posts over the last few days about this, you already know how I feel about this. It’s one of the most spectacular games I’ve ever encountered, one of the biggest open worlds I’ve ever seen and one of the best realisations of “sci-fi” in video games of all time. It’s not a game for the faint-hearted as it is absolutely riddled with interlocking mechanics that you need to figure out for yourself in most cases, but it’s a significant step forward for the role-playing game genre and absolutely one of the best games I’ve ever played.

NES Remix — Enjoy retro games but can’t quite face playing a whole one through? Enter the NES Remix series, two games that feature numerous snippets of various popular Nintendo games, coupled with bizarre challenges and sometimes complete revamps of how you play them. Can you get through Super Mario Bros. backwards as Luigi? Can you perform perfectly in Excitebike? Can you do anything involving Zelda II without wanting to throw things? SNES Remix now please, Nintendo…

Conclusion

Yes.

2152: Skelleton Crew

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I’ve finally reached a point in Xenoblade Chronicles X where I can start using “Skells”, the game’s giant robot mech thingies that bring to mind Xeno series progenitor Xenogears. I’m not sure I’ve mastered them at all yet, but they certainly add some interesting things to the mix — and, like most things in Xenoblade Chronicles X, you’re left to experiment a bit rather than having every piece of information you need spoon-fed to you.

A Skell is separate from your character; it’s effectively a new party member that replaces one of the on-foot characters. To acquire one, you need to complete the main scenario up and including Chapter 6, then complete the Skell License quest in the BLADE Barracks, which tasks you with completing an appropriate objective for each of the Divisions. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be generously provided with your first Skell for free, which allows you to get a feel for things somewhat. You and your party members will have to reach level 30 before you’re able to make use of any more Skells, though — but when all characters are at the appropriate level you can have an entire party of Skells when necessary.

That “when necessary” part is important; while it can be most enjoyable to go stomping all over everything and overkilling them with a giant robot, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s enemies and level scaling take size as well as level into account. In other words, let’s say you’re level 25: on foot, you can happily take down things around your own level — perhaps even slightly above — of a similar size to you. Tackle anything bigger, though, like the giant insects that you’ll see in Primordia, and you’ll almost certainly get flattened.

This is where Skells come in. Adding just one Skell to a party tips the balance in your favour, because a Skell is stronger than a person, and its simple presence increases the passive defense value of everyone on foot in the party. Adding more than one Skell to your party increases your overall total power level considerably. To give an idea of the difference it makes, earlier tonight I was reasonably comfortably taking on large enemies over 10 levels higher than me using two Skells: a Heavy-type one on my character, and the default (actually not very good) freebie you get on Elma. The two on-foot party members were usually KO’d by the time the fight was over, but since even KO’d members get experience for kills in Xenoblade Chronicles X — assuming the whole party doesn’t wipe — this wasn’t really a problem.

So Skells allow you to take on enemies that are both higher level and larger than you. They don’t make you invincible, though; you have to be a bit careful. Running out of HP in your Skell doesn’t kill you, but it does destroy the Skell, forcing you to continue the fight on foot. What happens then depends on if you pass the “Soul Challenge” reaction test as you eject from the Skell: get a Perfect rating and you’re fine, though you’ll still have to go back to base to pick up your repaired Skell; get a Good rating and, again, you’ll be fine, but you’ll lose one insurance “point” from your Skell when you retrieve it — once these are all gone, you either need Salvage Tickets or deep pockets to recover your wreck; miss the Soul Challenge completely and you’ll eject from your Skell with 1HP, which is seriously dangerous.

Skells have a few interesting mechanics in battle. Firstly, they can Bind enemies that are Staggered. Stagger is a status effect that is usually a cue to use an Art that has the Topple effect, knocking the enemy to the floor and giving you a few seconds of uninterrupted pummelling as they try to get back to their feet. Bind, meanwhile, temporarily puts the Skell out of action while it holds the enemy in place, but the enemy is completely disabled for longer than your typical Topple effect. Successfully Binding an enemy also restores some of your Skell’s fuel, which is necessary to use it in battle (and, later, fly).

The second interesting Skell mechanic is called “Cockpit Time”, and it’s awesome. Randomly throughout the battle, the camera will zoom inside your Skell’s cockpit to show your character sitting in the seat, working the controls and generally wrecking the enemy’s shit. When this happens, you are temporarily invincible and all your skill cooldowns reset, meaning you can immediately use them all again without having to wait. It happens at random, but it can make a huge difference, particularly in longer fights.

The third Skell mechanic worth playing with is Overdrive. On-foot characters can use Overdrive when they build up 3,000 TP and can then get various bonuses by stringing longer and longer combos together. Skells, meanwhile, build up GP rather than TP by fighting — and much quicker than on-foot characters — and, again, can trigger Overdrive when this reaches 3,000. Skell Overdrive doesn’t have a combo counter; instead, it just has a timer that randomly extends when it expires, possibly according to how much punishment you’ve been dishing out in the meantime. Combine Overdrive with Cockpit Time and you become an absolutely unstoppable killing machine for a few seconds. The feeling of power is simply marvellous.

I haven’t yet looked into optimising my Skells; the interesting thing about them is that the various weapons you equip to their hardpoints correspond to Arts you can use in battle, so optimising presumably means finding a good balance of stats, damage types, special effects, augments and Arts types. By tweaking your loadout, you can also effectively change the “role” of your Skell in a party situation; loading up on weapons with a Taunt ability turns you into an effective tank, for example, while other weapons come with Arts that can apply debuffs, affect enemy and party stats or boost damage from particular aspects of the enemy. It’s all very deep and customisable.

I’m yet to find quite the right balance between being on foot and being in my Skell — I’m sure there’s some sort of benefit to fighting on foot, perhaps against smaller enemies — but it’s been really interesting to explore so far. At 50 hours into this incredible game, I feel like I’m still learning things. And that’s pretty awesome.