2134: Hyrule Warriors is My New Favourite Musou

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I’d been meaning to check out Wii U title Hyrule Warriors for some time, and my recent Zelda bingeing seemed to be an ideal time to do it. I primarily picked the game up as something to play as a co-op game with a local friend, but I’ve found myself playing through a number of missions this evening and having a great deal of fun.

I’ve always enjoyed the Musou games since Dynasty Warriors 2 on PlayStation 2. Their hack-and-slash nature appeals to the brawler fan in me, but they’ve always had a surprising amount of depth to them — not necessarily in the combat itself, but in choosing the right characters for the job, keeping an eye on the overall battle situation, and responding appropriately to what is happening.

For the unfamiliar, the Musou series covers the various Warriors games, including the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi series. Hyrule Warriors was an interesting break from the norm for developers Omega Force in that rather than being loosely (very loosely, in some cases) based on established historical fiction such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it’s based on an established other property — in this case, the Legend of Zelda series.

It isn’t the first time Omega Force has tackled a licensed Musou game; there are Warriors games based on the popular anime and manga One Piece, Fist of the North Star and Gundam, among others. But Hyrule Warriors is arguably one of the more “accessible” properties that the team has chosen to adapt into the Musou style, since Zelda is one of Nintendo’s properties with near-universal appeal, and much more ripe for adaptation than, say, Mario.

Hyrule Warriors, like its stablemates, casts you in the role of one of several different playable characters and tasks you with turning the tide of a large-scale battle on a sprawling map. Your character is just one part of your “side’s” overall efforts, but you’re considerably more powerful than the rather dim footsoldiers that litter the battlefield, usually standing around looking perplexed. You’re not alone, though; in two-player mode, a second player takes on the role of one of the other present allied generals to support you, and even in single-player you’ll find yourself fighting alongside other characters: they’ll come to your aid, but you’ll be expected to do the same in return.

In what I’ve played of Hyrule Warriors so far, there seems to be quite a bit more variety than, say, the Dynasty Warriors series, thanks in part to the setting being considerably more fantastic than ancient China. But it’s not just about the monstrous enemies and magic flying around — it’s also about varied objective during battle. It’s pretty rare, even in the early stages of the game, to be confronted with a battle that simply involves cutting a path to the enemy boss; instead, you’ll find yourself supporting your troops in various areas, capturing strongholds to gain a foothold and advance into enemy territory, dealing with counterattacks from enemies and, in true Zelda style, occasionally accidentally clipping a chicken one too many times with your sword and inviting the wrath of its myriad friends, who will come and peck you to death in pretty short order.

The game also makes use of its Zelda roots well by adding a number of mechanics based on the iconic Zelda inventory items. As you progress through the game’s “Legend” mode, you’ll acquire various items that can be used in battle, ranging from bombs (blow stuff up, reveal secrets) to a bow and arrow (shoot things) and a boomerang (cut down things that a sword just won’t chop). Fulfilling various secret requirements in battle will also reward you with heart containers and pieces of heart to extend your characters’ life bars, and Ocarina of Time’s Gold Skulltulas make an appearance, too, spawning on the battlefield when you fulfil a specific condition and then requiring you to track them down by searching a marked area of the map and listening carefully for their telltale scraping sounds.

I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game so far; I’ve only played Legend Mode as of now, but there are a variety of other ways to play, with one of the most interesting sounding being Adventure Mode, which tasks you with exploring a grid-based map based on the original NES Legend of Zelda game and fighting various battles in order to take control of it piece by piece. I don’t yet know how well this is executed, but I’m looking forward to trying it out. Even if it turns out to be bobbins, though, just the battles in Legend Mode have proven to be more than worthwhile and enjoyable so far — and it looks very much as if the game has continued to develop and expand long after launch, if the multiple pages of patch notes that appeared the first time I booted the game up are anything to go by!

I’m looking forward to trying it out co-op later this week, all being well, but in the meantime I can already confidently say that it’s one of the best Musou games I’ve played to date, and anyone who enjoys a good bit of hack and slash should most definitely check it out, Zelda fan or no.

2128: Point to Point

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2064: Makin’ Marios

I picked up Super Mario Maker for Wii U the other day. I originally wasn’t going to bother with it, but a lot of positive feedback from people I know, like and trust convinced me to give it a shot.

I like the concept of games with built-in level designers very much, but the execution has to be good to make them something I want to engage with in the long-term. TrackMania does it well; LittleBigPlanet less so. For me personally — and this doesn’t apply to everyone, I know — the key is the balance between simplicity and flexibility: the freedom to realise your creative ideas without it being too much work to do so.

Fortunately, Super Mario Maker strikes an excellent balance, and part of that is due to how it gradually dishes out new parts, themes and level types over time from launch. It can be mildly frustrating to have a level concept in mind and be unable to realise it completely until you’ve unlocked the relevant pieces of content, but there are ways to game the system if you feel that strongly. In the meantime, though, it’s worth exploring the initially limited toolset, because artificial limitations can often stimulate creativity in the strangest of ways.

It’s ridiculously easy to make a level in Super Mario Maker. Choosing from a palette of objects at the top of the screen, you just draw things onto the level using the Wii U GamePad stylus. There are limits on how much you can put down, but they’re pretty generous; likewise, the overall width and height of a level can be fairly large. We’re not talking Metroidvania territory, of course, because that would go against the philosophy of a Mario game, but you can certainly put together some fairly intricate designs in the available space if you so desire.

As with any type of game like this, it’s always fascinating to see what other people have come up with, and the creative ways in which they’ve used the tools. TrackMania, for example, fostered a subculture of track creators who made “press forward” tracks, in which all you had to do to complete it was simply continuously accelerate; the design of the track would take care of the rest, automatically flinging the car through a series of ridiculous stunts, with objects placed in the absolute perfect locations to ensure that you always landed in the right place and the right way up.

It’s the same with Super Mario Maker. The game’s only been out for a few days, and some of the most popular levels out there are already of the “don’t press anything” variety; in other words, they play themselves. These levels aren’t any challenge to play, of course, but it’s fascinating to see the intricate “machinery” these creators have put together, and worthy of respect, because it must have been a painstaking process of trial and error to get it working perfectly.

As for me, I haven’t unlocked everything just yet, but I’ve been enjoying dipping in and out of the game, playing a few levels here and there and even making a few. I like the whole package very much, though there are a few things it would be nice to see expanded on over time: most notably, it would be good to see the in-game score and coins actually matter, because outside of the “Mario Challenge” modes, in which you’re presented with a randomly selected series of levels to complete, even the concept of “lives” is completely irrelevant. It would be good to see some sort of leaderboard system with clear times, scores and number of attempts, for example, and perhaps coins could be used to unlock additional features.

It remains to be seen if Nintendo will expand this over time, but with Mario Kart and Splatoon on Wii U, Nintendo has shown itself to be open to the idea of games growing and changing over the course of their lifetime. Super Mario Maker already has a wealth of content in it, but it would be fantastic to see more features — perhaps even based on the Amiibo compatibility, since most currently available Amiibo already unlock character sprites; it would be cool to be able to unlock visual themes, sound effects and music through the Amiibo, too; I might even be tempted to collect a few more then.

In the meantime, though, Super Mario Maker is an enjoyable package that is well worth a purchase. Even if you never make any levels yourself, it’s great to fire up for a quick blast of Mario action — and if you do make your own levels, it will give you a whole new level of appreciation for what professional level designers do all day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

1785: Smashing Fun

After an enjoyable online session with one of my Final Fantasy XIV guildies the other night, I sat down to spend a bit more time with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U earlier today.

My hesitance to play that much until now has largely been due to the fact I hadn’t really picked a “main” — that is to say, a character I would generally play in preference to anyone else, given totally free choice. Maining a character involves learning their moves and the best situations in which to do them, and is a bit more effort than just bashing buttons and hoping for the best — a playstyle I’m not quite convinced I’m entirely beyond just yet.

A bit of play with Zero Suit Samus (of Metroid series fame) against my friend the other night as well as today has me thinking that she’ll be a solid choice, however. She’s a speedy character, and I’m a fan of being able to quickly dodge out of the way of trouble, and her moves are all pretty easy to understand. She has a medium-range projectile attack, a slightly shorter range electric whip jobby plus a few satisfying combos, uppercuts and the like. Her dashing regular attack is a powerful kneebutt to the chest (or face for the shorter characters) which is simple enough to understand, and in modes such as Multi-Man Smash, where your opponents are significantly weaker than normal but come in much greater numbers, this is more than enough to send your foes flying into the distance for a satisfying knockout.

I got in some good practice with Zero Suit Samus (distinguished from her fully armoured counterpart) in the Multi-Man Smash modes, which I cleared for the first time with her, as well as the arcade-style All-Star Mode, which sees you fighting your way through Nintendo (and guest) characters from throughout the ages in reverse chronological order, beginning with recent additions to the roster such as Wii Fit Trainer and working all the way back to classic characters like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U really is a somewhat daunting package when you first pick it up, much like its predecessors. The sheer wealth of different ways to play is bewildering and baffling at first, but it won’t take long for you to find your favourite modes — and, pleasingly, there’s no obligation to play the modes you don’t particularly enjoy, since most of the unlockables can be obtained in several different ways ranging from simply playing a certain number of matches to completing specific modes or achievements. Today I unlocked a couple of extra characters, including Mr. Game and Watch — the poorly animated silhouetted figure from Nintendo’s early ’80s LCD game-clocks, complete with bip-bip-boop sound effects — and R.O.B., the ill-fated plastic robot that would supposedly “play” with you on the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System on games like Gyromite. (Turns out he’s much better at fighting than he is at wielding a controller.)

I’ve enjoyed the Smash Bros. games over the years, but I wouldn’t say they’ve been absolute favourites. This latest installment, however, is proving to be an addictive little beast, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how to take my game to the next level. Then one day, I might be able to actually beat my friend Tim, who is frustratingly and irritatingly good at it, assuming you let him play as his mains (inevitably, as a Zelda fan, he mains Link and Ganondorf.) In the meantime, however, I’ll be continuing to grapple with Zero Suit Samus until I’ve got that flying knee timing just so.

1778: Enough with the “Nintendo on Mobile” Nonsense

Another article about whether or not Nintendo should move into the lucrative but (largely) morally bankrupt world of mobile phone games came up today, this time from Forbes.

Thankfully, Forbes’ Erik Kain actually has his head screwed on correctly, unlike the various analysts who have, over the last few years, said that Nintendo “should” go mobile owing to the decline of dedicated handheld gaming in favour of gaming on smart devices, and the general underperformance of the Wii U compared to both its peers and its predecessor the Wii.

Nintendo’s in a very different position to where it was during the Wii and DS years, for sure, but the company is coming into the Christmas period in a strong position with regard to games. The Wii U in particular is in a much better position than it has been, with strong first-party titles like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. (as well as Captain Toad Treasure Tracker soon) doubtless having places on many Christmas lists. The 3DS, meanwhile, is largely keeping to itself for the most part, but still has an enormous library of great games to draw from — not to mention backwards compatibility with the wealth of fantastic software available on DS.

Kain brings up an excellent point in his piece, which is something I’ve been saying for a while: Nintendo shouldn’t move into mobile game development because the philosophy behind it is fundamentally different to the way Nintendo does things. And not, for my money, for the better; while excellent mobile games like The Room, 80 Days and the like exist, for every one of those there’s a Candy Crush Saga, a Hay Day, a Clash of Clans: mindless tapping games designed not to be in any way fun, but instead to extract as much money out of their players as possible. And, worryingly, players are lapping these up. The aforementioned games all make obscene amounts of money each month — enough to be able to afford advertising campaigns that rival (and in many cases exceed) the presence of the most big-budget triple-A titles — and they’re all a load of cack.

Nintendo, conversely, is all about the fun, and I’ve been reminded of this as I’ve played Super Smash Bros. and revisited Mario Kart 8 this week. Nintendo makes games by the old book: they’re not trying to be movies, they’re not trying to be spectacular, they’re simply trying to be enjoyable fun that anyone can pick up and have a go with, but which those willing to put in a bit more time and effort can get even more out of. Every time I play a Nintendo game, it feels like that Christmas I got a Super Nintendo; they’re games just made to be enjoyed and savoured for the joy of playing, nothing more. They have no desire to be “art” — though for sure there’s artistry in both their aesthetic and top-quality mechanical design — nor any desire to say something about the human condition; they’re just… you know, fun.

Moreover, they’re games that are designed to gradually train players to get better and progress a little bit at a time, demonstrating their skill rather than how deep their pockets are. If you get stuck in a Nintendo game, it’s up to you to get good, scrub; no paying to skip a difficult bit here.

Up until very recently, Nintendo games didn’t even have downloadable add-on content; that’s changed with Mario Kart, but even that demonstrates Nintendo’s “players first” attitude. Rather than pre-purchasing the DLC costing as much as a new game as tends to happen with new triple-A games and their obnoxious “Season Passes” on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, Mario Kart’s DLC costs £12 and clearly shows exactly what it is you’re getting for your money and when. (8 new tracks and 4 new characters now; another 8 new tracks and 4 new characters in May of next year; alternatively, you can pay about £8 and get just the first half now.) Not only that, but when playing online, the player-base fragmentation issue that DLC creates is deftly taken care of by a simple on-screen button that asks whether or not you want to play with the new tracks included, or just those that came on the disc. Simple, effective.

I have not played a single mobile game for… probably well over a year now. Very little has appealed — though I do intend to give 80 Days a go at some point — and, moreover, the problems both Android and iOS have with discoverability have only continued to get worse and worse as time has gone on; the market is flooded with identikit crap from developers trying to make a quick bit of cash from reskinning existing games and cloning popular titles. There’s the odd diamond in the rough — stuff like Monument Valley, Threes! and the aforementioned 80 Days — but it’s very much in the minority and, frankly, even these great games are very rarely up to the standard of what you can get on 3DS and Vita, whether technically or in terms of gameplay.

Conversely, I take my 3DS and my Vita to work every day and play an hour of something like Senran Kagura Burst (3DS) or Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 (Vita) every lunchtime, and I have an absolute blast. I can enjoy a game without requiring an Internet connection, without having to pay up to progress, and without “social features” constantly bugging me to share my every move on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’ll continue to prefer dedicated handhelds for portable gaming for as long as companies like Sony and Nintendo continue to make them, and it will be a sad day for me when the only available portable gaming platforms are mobile phones and tablets. I hope that day never comes.

Now, maybe a Neptunia dungeon or two before sleep…

1776: SMAAASH

Not realising that Black Friday has apparently become A Thing over here, I went into town to pick up a copy of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U earlier. It took over half an hour of queueing in Game to pick up a copy, but at least I didn’t get to the front of the line and find there were none left. (I didn’t get a Gamecube controller adapter, though; stupid “preorders only” rule.)

Most of you reading this probably know what Super Smash Bros. is, but on the offchance you don’t, it’s become one of Nintendo’s flagship series over the years thanks to it essentially being a disc full of Nintendo fangasms. It’s sort of a fighting game — though nowhere near as technically demanding as more traditional fighting games — that stars a wide variety of characters either from Nintendo’s own lineup or from games that have appeared on Nintendo consoles at some point or another, as well as one or two special guests.

I’ve been playing a bit of the new game this evening and like its predecessors, it appears to be a lot of fun, if somewhat overwhelming in terms of the sheer number of different things available to do. There’s a straightforward Smash battle, Classic Mode, All-Star Mode, Events Mode, Stadium Mode, online and probably several others I’ve forgotten, each of which are subdivided into various other things and most of which can be played either solo or with friends. Some can be played cooperatively with a partner against the computer, others are purely competitive. The most extreme multiplayer offering the new game has is an utterly chaotic 8-player mode in which it’s nigh-impossible to tell what the fuck is going on, but it’s an enjoyable sort of nonsense nonetheless.

There are some interesting additions, too. The ability to create your own fighter using any of the Miis on your Wii U console makes for some entertaining possibilities, particularly since they’re customisable with three different fighting styles, selectable (and unlockable) special moves, equipment, costumes and headgear. The Amiibo functionality, where you can use small figurines to communicate with the game via the Near-Field Communication panel on the Gamepad, is fun, too, and not quite what I expected; rather than your Amiibo containing a fighter than you personally use, it instead acts as more of a sort of virtual pet that you can feed equipment to (don’t think too hard about how that works), customise the special moves of and gradually level up by allowing it to participate alongside you in battle. Because the figurine itself holds data, you can then take it to a friend’s house and bring your Amiibo into their game, too, so they can face off against the fighter you’ve been training up to be an unstoppable killing machine.

I’m really happy to see slightly lesser-known games such as Xenoblade Chronicles getting headline character love, too. Xenoblade’s protagonist Shulk is an enjoyable, interesting character to play as, and the Xenoblade stage is challenging and cool-looking. (Plus it features recurring villain Metal Face showing up to cause mischief throughout, which is a lot of fun.) It sure makes me pretty hungry to see the new Xenoblade game in action on Wii U, though…

Aside from that, the customisation of the game has never been better. You can tinker around with how frequently items appear, which music plays in which stage and how often and even switch levels to a stripped-down, simplified “Omega Mode” (essentially little more than a floating platform) for a true test of your skill without environmental hazards being a pain. There’s even an online mode — “For Glory” — where you play without items on Omega stages, and I have a feeling this is where the true Super Smash Bros. legends will learn to shine.

It’s unfortunate that none of my friends are around this weekend as I was hoping to have a good session of local multiplayer with them. Still, I shall console myself with the vast amount of other content in the game — and perhaps attempt to give some online friends a kicking — and smile as the Wii U once again shows that it has some of the most enjoyable, most interesting and most polished games in all of the “next” generation of console hardware.

1597: Mario Kart 8 is Fucking Great

(Hey, that rhymes. It’s like it was meant to be.)

So, yes, Mario Kart 8 is, as the title says, fucking great. And it’s a surprisingly complete-feeling package this time around, too; past installments of the series have typically not been anywhere near as interesting if you’re sitting around by yourself, but the excellent online mode in Mario Kart 8 means that there’s always some interesting, enjoyable competition to be had even if you don’t have anyone to play with in the same room as you.

As ever, though, it’s when you have people over to play that the game absolutely shines. I bought it primarily with the intention of this evening happening — my regular board gaming friends came over, we ate curry and then played Mario Kart 8 instead of something tabletop. And it was fab.

The thing that has always been good about multiplayer Mario Kart is also the thing that frustrates people the most — the fact it can all turn at a moment’s notice. One minute you’ll be happily driving along in first place, not a care in the world, and the next you’ll be pelted by blue, red and green shells, knocked back into the middle of the pack as you friends whizz by you, giggling.

This is, of course, infuriating when it happens to you, but with the nicely tuned balance of Mario Kart you’ll have the chance to get your revenge before very long. The further down the pack you are, the nastier the items you get are, so unless you were knocked out of the running moments from the finish line — which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility — there’s always a chance to claw your way back to a respectable position.

Ultimately, the nice thing is that it doesn’t matter all that much because it’s simply fun to play. The simple controls and well-tuned difficulty level mean that anyone can pick it up and have a go, while the myriad shortcuts and special techniques mean that those who want to take their game to the next level can do so. Just remember, though, getting out in front effectively paints a big target on your back, so don’t be surprised when the dreaded blue shell comes a-knockin’.

I could tell that the game was well-received by my friends from the amount of foul language it was producing. I find it remarkable that Nintendo’s family-friendly games provoke more bitching, swearing and cursing than pretty much any other game I know. Even our go-to multiplayer titles like Super Street Fighter IV and TrackMania don’t make us yell and curse like we were during our Mario Kart session this evening, and the cursing grew in volume and intensity as we worked our way through the eight cups. Eventually, my friend James was reduced to a gibbering wreck, no longer using words and simply making what he apparently believed to be insulting noises, having previously passed through stuttering, peculiar insults (“W-wank yourself!”) and some frankly unprintable utterances that would probably get certain quarters of the Internet angry at me (or James) were I to repost them here.

Anyway. That’s that. I hope there will be more Mario Kart 8 in my future, because that was one hell of a lot of fun. Nintendo very much still has the magic.