1084: Darkdeath Evilman

So, I seem to have jumped down something of a rabbit-hole with regard to my current gaming. Specifically, I seem to have jumped down the NIS America rabbit-hole, which means lots of brightly-colored anime-style JRPGs with heavy degrees of ridiculousness. Hyperdimension Neptunia, which I discussed yesterday (and which I'm aware is developed by Idea Factory rather than Nippon Ichi themselves), is a fine example of said ridiculousness being taken to the extreme with its personifications of gaming platforms and companies as cute anime girls with a habit of flashing their panties.

I decided to start something on portable in parallel, though, so I had something to play on the toilet/in bed/in coffee shops. I wanted to pick something that was portable-friendly — i.e. something you could dip into in short sessions rather than feeling like you need to spend hours at a time playing, but which would last a good long while in total. The game I picked for this purpose was the rather gloriously-titled Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman for the PSP/Vita, a game from the Disgaea team and one which wears its influences on its sleeve.

Z.H.P. (as it shall be known from hereon) is an isometric-perspective tactical roguelike RPG that plays somewhat like Disgaea (which is normally a strategy game somewhat akin to Final Fantasy Tactics, if you're unfamiliar) would play if you only controlled one character and could only move them one space at a time per turn. It follows the traditional style of roguelike gameplay, in other words — you move, the enemies move, but between moves you can stand still and contemplate what to do next without fear of getting twatted while you come to your decision. As per usual for the genre, you find yourself exploring a series of increasingly-difficult, increasingly-complex randomly-generated dungeons in an attempt to become as strong as possible and eventually take down the titular bad guy Darkdeath Evilman.

There's a bit of a twist on the usual formula, though. Rather than featuring a permadeath system that forces you to start over when you bite the big one in a dungeon, Z.H.P. instead features a rather odd levelling system whereby each time you enter a dungeon, you start at level 1, but your total levels gained over your lifetime playing the game determines your base statistics. If you die, you lose all the loot you acquired on that particular dungeon run, but any levels you gained are added on to your total level count, boosting your base statistics by a little and meaning that the next time you start a dungeon run, you'll be slightly stronger even though you're still technically level 1. If that makes your head hurt, don't worry — it starts to make sense after playing for only a short period.

The eventual aim of the game is to work your way through the story and make the nameless, voiceless protagonist (who, rather endearingly, is canonically named simply Main Character) into the hero he was supposed to replace — the Unlosing Ranger, the only one who can defeat Darkdeath Evilman. Every so often in the story, you'll find yourself returning to Earth from the Bizarro Earth in which you've been doing all your dungeon-crawling, and thrust into a traditional JRPG-style battle against Darkdeath Evilman, who is your stereotypical "final boss" sort of character. As the game progresses, these battle sequences become increasingly elaborate — they start with a first-person 8-bit sequence somewhat reminiscent of the end of the original Phantasy Star and gradually progress to… well, I'm not sure yet as I haven't got that far.

There are some fun additions to the basic roguelike formula, and it's here that the Disgaea influences are apparent. You can pick up enemies and fling them around, for example, though disappointingly you can't simply lob them off the edge of a precarious platform into the lava below. You can also throw items from your inventory, many of which have special effects. It also provides a use for items that have degraded to a durability level of 0%, meaning that the bonuses they normally provide are completely ineffective until repaired. If you don't want to spend your limited funds on repair bills, simply throw them at the enemies.

Then there's the guest appearances from the Prinnies, the weird explosive penguin-like things from Disgaea. Early in the game, you inexplicably find yourself married to one and gain the once-per-expedition special ability to summon your "wife" and have her bring you a lunchbox to restore your endurance points.

I could go on, but I would like to play the game a bit more before I talk about it too much. Early impressions are very positive, though, and if it's anything like Disgaea this will be a game designed to keep one occupied for a frighteningly long time. If you're looking for something endearingly bizarre but which backs up that bizarreness with solid gameplay and good presentation, you could do far worse than check out Z.H.P. — it works on Vita, too, so you can just download it from the PSN store rather than attempting to track down a physical copy.

See you in the dungeon, dood!

1083: Hyperwhatnow Nepperwho?

I finished Trails in the Sky this morning (not last night — it got to 4am and I still hadn't reached the final boss so I decided to save it for this morning, and it was well worth the wait) so today saw that age-old question, "What to Play Next" rear its head.

I fancied something light-hearted and silly, so I chose Hyperdimension Neptunia. I knew nothing about this prior to starting to play, and just knew that it was rather silly, very Japanese, packed with rather unnecessary fanservice (that I secretly quite enjoy) and not necessarily what you'd call "good" by the traditional definition. However, given that many of the games I've enjoyed most of all over the course of the last year have not been what you'd call "good" by the traditional definition (Nier springs immediately to mind) I was willing to give it a chance.

I think I'm going to like it.

Hyperdimension Neptunia casts you in the role of Neptune, a personification of the cancelled console the Sega Neptune. Cast out of Celestia by her goddess sisters (each of whom represents one of the Xbox, PlayStation and Wii respectively) and forced to fend for herself in the lands of Gamindustri, it's up to her to… well, I don't really know yet, as I haven't got that far and the events in the intro left her with amnesia which she conveniently points out is to help the players understand what is going on. I swear I'm not making any of what I just said up. This is indeed a game that represents the seventh-generation "console wars" as ridiculous anime-style battles between anthropomorphised hardware manufacturers.

Besides the silly premise, which I have a lot of time for, there actually seems to be quite an interesting game under there, too. The game unfolds in several distinct components — visual novel-style storytelling sequences; a "between missions" bit where you can shop, read background information and discover sidequests; and dungeon-crawling. The game isn't really a traditional JRPG in terms of structure — there's no wandering around field screens or towns, for example, and the story scenes all unfold using head-and-shoulders shots of the characters rather than in-engine graphics, like a visual novel rather than a standard JRPG.

Where the interesting gameplay comes in is in the dungeon-crawling component. Structurally, this is very straightforward — you wander around a dungeon finding treasure chests and occasionally getting into random battles. The characters in your party each have "dungeon abilities" that recharge over time that allow them to do different things — Neptune can smash through obstacles, for example, while Compa, a character who appears early on, can trigger tough battles at special summoning zones to temporarily lower the random encounter rate, and IF, another early character, has the ability to lead the way to normally-invisible treasure chests.

The battle system is turn-based, but makes use of an "ability points" system, whereby each character has a certain number of points that they can spend on their turn. Each move they do costs ability points, and up to four moves can be chained together into a combo. Certain moves allow the combo to continue registering with second, third, fourth sets of four button pushes, and the longer a combo goes on for, the better.

It's this combo system that provides some rather daunting complexity to the battle system. You're not limited to the basic skills the game provides for you. Rather, you can redefine pretty much any combination of four buttons to perform any of the character's unlocked skills to create custom combos. Some skills are learned through levelling up, others through acquiring CD-Rs and CD-R/Ws with skill information on. CD-Rs have preset skills; CD-R/Ws have customizable skills that you can rename and visually tweak by importing an image from your PS3's photo library. So yes, you can have a spell that summons, say, Twilight Sparkle to kick some ass. This is, as they say, awesome. And hilarious. It also gives people an actual reason to load some images into their PS3's photo library, which is surely worthy of praise.

So thus far it seems like an interesting game, albeit one with more than a few flaws. On the technical front, the frame rate and graphics aren't all that great (though the visual novel scenes look lovely and feature animated characters); the dungeons look like they might be a bit "samey" over time; and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining its more complicated aspects in detail. But, for me anyway, part of the joy in this sort of thing is in discovering the hidden secrets for oneself and working out just what the fuck is going on.

It's early days yet, but I've enjoyed what I've seen so far. Let's see if it has what it takes to keep me playing in the long run!

1082: Squeakers

Apologies for the lateness of the hour, but I'm on the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in Trails in the Sky, and it was getting rather difficult to stop playing. It was one of those times where you start playing at an eminently reasonable hour in the evening, look up and it's suddenly nearly 2am. Oops. I will likely push on to the finale tonight, since it's the weekend and all.

But I don't want to talk about Trails in the Sky today. (Well, I do, but I am specifically choosing not to.) Instead I thought I'd talk a bit about our pet rats. Those who have been following for a while will remember we got Lara and Willow back in June but Willow sadly died a few months later. We left Lara on her own for a little while to see how she was, but she became much less energetic and looked very sad, so it wasn't long before we went out to try and find her a playmate.

I was a bit worried about this, as Lara and Willow knew each other and got along very well with one another despite being polar opposites personality-wise — Lara is adventurous, curious and mostly quite gentle; Willow was nervous, jumpy and had a habit of biting. (I didn't get bitten, but Andie assures me that a rat bite fucking hurts.) I'm not sure if they were related, but they certainly got along well. What would happen if we introduced a new, unknown rat into the mix?

We found out when we got Lucy, who was younger than Lara and thus about half her size when she first arrived. We introduced them to each other on "neutral territory" (the bathtub, in this case) and they both had a wander around and a bit of a sniff and didn't seem to mind each other, so we put them both in the cage to see how they got on. Lucy just hid in the corner not moving for several days, with the exception being the time she terrified us by lying down on her back and pretending to be dead to stop Lara hassling her. We were worried that Lara was being too aggressive towards her, so we tried putting Lucy in a carry box for the night so she could get some rest, but put the carry box inside the cage so that Lara could get used to her scent.

Lara's behaviour when we did that was both adorable and heartbreaking. You could see her panicking. She thought that we were taking her new friend away from her, and she was frantically scrabbling away at the box trying to get to Lucy. Lucy, meanwhile, was happily getting some rest at last. When we opened up the box in the morning, both of them were fine, and over time they got to know each other, established a pecking order and Lucy started behaving a bit more normally.

The thing that surprised me about owning rats is how much personality the pair of them have. I've never owned small furry creatures before, so I didn't know much about them. (My family had cats when I was younger, and my brother has dogs and cats, but no small furry things.) But the pair of them do obviously have different attitudes and responses to things. I'm not sure how much of this is me projecting human characteristics onto them, but it certainly looks that way, anyhow. As I said above, Lara is adventurous, curious, mostly gentle, protective of Lucy and absolutely loves coming out of the cage to explore all the nooks and crannies of the room. Lucy, meanwhile, is cheeky — there's no other word for it, really. She regularly sneaks up on Lara and tries to bite her playfully, and you can see Lara just gritting her teeth and putting up with it most times it happens, though occasionally she'll give Lucy a slap on the nose. As Lucy has grown, she has become more confident, and will hold her own in the play-fights the two of them have now rather than losing every time. She's also just started coming out of the cage to explore, though not quite as far afield as Lara just yet, and she's much more talkative than Lara, who stays quiet most of the time. Lucy, meanwhile, is always squeaking (I never knew before owning rats that they squeaked like mice!) and makes a hell of a noise when the two of them are play-fighting, which made us worry a bit the first few times they did it.

Rats are great pets, then. They're very social — they'll get up and climb up the side of the cage to come and see you if they know you're nearby or if you talk to them — and they're fun and relaxing to watch. They're amusing and entertaining once they get brave enough to step out of the cage and wander around the room, too, though they're almost impossible to catch standing still, particularly if they're female, as apparently female rats are much more inquisitive than the somewhat lazier males. It's also a bugger to get them back in the cage if you're in a hurry, but both of ours will return of their own accord when they've had enough "playtime", so I assume this is fairly common behaviour.

I'm glad we got them, in short. It's nice to have a bit of life in the house when I'm stuck here working by myself (or on evenings when Andie is elsewhere, like tonight) — it helps the place feel less "empty". I sort of wish I'd learned this a bit sooner. 🙂

1081: Reasons to Get a Wii U (or a Friend Who Owns a Wii U): Nintendo Land

I had some friends over tonight for some computer and board game action. I lost our game of Agricola as usual (though not by as much as normal — I'll take that) but what I really wanted to talk about was the game we played earlier in the evening — Nintendo Land.

I had a feeling that Nintendo Land would go down well, but I'm super-impressed by quite how much fun it really is. We were concentrating on the competitive games, based on the Mario, Animal Crossing and Luigi's Mansion franchises, and all of them provide chaotic fun for up to five players along with an apt demonstration of exactly what the Gamepad controller device brings to the table.

The Luigi's Mansion game sees the player with the Gamepad taking on the role of a ghost and up to four players with Wii Remotes playing the part of ghost hunters armed only with torches. The ghost's job is to knock out all the ghost hunters by sneaking up on them and touching them; the ghost hunters' job is to reduce the ghost's hit points to zero by shining light on it. The twist is that the ghost is invisible on the TV screen, which the hunter players are referring to, and only the ghost player gets a full overview of where they are in relation to the others on the Gamepad screen. The ghost also occasionally reveals itself when lightning flashes and when it performs a "dash" action, and the hunters' controllers vibrate when the ghost is nearby. The ghost player has an on-screen marker showing the boundary of where the vibrations will occur, meaning they can play some amusing mind games with the other players if they desire.

The Animal Crossing game, meanwhile, casts the Gamepad player in the role of two guards and the Wii Remote players in the role of animals trying to collect sweets. The animal players have to collect a particular number of sweets before the guards catch them three times, though the more sweets they are carrying, the slower they move. The twist with this one is that the single Gamepad player controls both guards using the dual analogue sticks on the Gamepad, and their viewpoint pans and zooms to keep both guards in view at once, while the players on the TV may only see what is in their immediate vicinity.

Finally, the Mario-themed game casts the Gamepad player in the role of Mario and the Wii Remote players in the role of various-coloured Toads. It's Mario's job to stay un-caught until a timer expires, and it's up to the Toads to capture him as quickly as possible. Like in the Animal Crossing game, the Toads may only see what is in their immediate vicinity, and their controls are deliberately clunky and awkward to make it more challenging for them to catch the more agile Mario. The Mario player, meanwhile, has a screen that shows both an overview of the entire level (including where the two Toads are) and a close-up of their immediate surroundings. For the most part, the Mario player will be using the overview map to try and stay out of trouble, but when the Toads get near the close-up view comes into it own as Mario tries to avoid their tackles.

These three games offer a tiny subset of what Nintendo Land has to offer — there are a selection of more cooperative games on offer as well as a bunch of single-player games for the Gamepad that would still be fun for friends to take it in turns on.

The interesting thing about Nintendo Land is that it's a slight shift in attitude from Wii Sports, the pack-in game with the previous-generation Wii. Wii Sports was designed to be accessible and intuitive, making use primarily of motion controls that anyone could perform. Nintendo Land, meanwhile, assumes a basic level of "game literacy" — familiarity with a controller being used "traditionally" — but still remains accessible to a wide audience. Consequently, it strikes a good balance between being casual-friendly as well as challenging and fun to veteran gamers.

Next week I'll hopefully have the opportunity to play both Nintendo Land and the excellent Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed with a full complement of five players, so I'm looking forward to that. The games described above are great fun with three; I can only imagine the chaos with five. I can't wait.

Think about that. When was the last time you played a game that you couldn't wait to get your friends over to your house for?

1080: How These Endless "Friendzone" Rants Make Me Feel

Good morning. Today another article about "nice guys" and the concept of the "friendzone" appeared. Here it is.

Today I would like to talk about how this article made me feel.

It made me angry, and it made me want to cry.

Why? Not because I am the sort of person who exhibits those behaviours — I certainly do not expect women I am friends with to immediately jump into bed with me, particularly because I'm now in a committed, loving relationship with someone who is super-awesome — but because I recognise some of the things being described, and the fact that they are being twisted, generalised and used as a means of shaming people feels like a punch in the gut.

I don't normally talk about this stuff because it's embarrassing and difficult to talk about, but I am going to make an exception for today as a means of making my point. This article made me feel like absolute fucking shit, even though I know it was not about me. I am going to talk about my past relationships and how they came to be, though naturally I will omit names and personally-identifying details.

Some context for those who are newcomers to this blog or don't know me very well: I suffer a pretty strong degree of social anxiety, and have done since an early age. I feel enormously uncomfortable when around strangers, clam up completely when faced with the prospect of making small talk, and even, at times, find it difficult to talk to my own friends or relations.

As you might expect, these circumstances are not ideal for getting together with someone. Consequently, even as all my peers around me at school were getting into relationships, going out with people, having sex and bragging about all of the above, I was left constantly frustrated and bewildered. My already-active imagination would picture what it might be like to be in a relationship with someone — note: relationship, not simply having sex — and I'd even go so far as to imagine how those conversations might go in great detail. One of the diaries I kept as a teenager included numerous fantasy scenarios of how I might get a girl I liked to talk to me, and how I might express my feelings. Sex did not enter into this at all — I simply wanted to be with that person. (I'm aware writing fantasy conversations in itself is creepy, but I was ashamed of these entries the moment I wrote them, and inevitably ended up throwing them away immediately.)

The fact I overthought these things meant, inevitably, that I never did anything about them, and I was always absolutely mortified any time a friend of mine would tell the girl in question that I liked them. I hated myself — you can thank near-constant bullying through primary school and a fair proportion of secondary school for that — and thought that the girl discovering that I liked her "in that way" would cause her to immediately hate me because I was certain that no-one would ever want to be with me. (This never happened, of course, but it's the way my mind worked, and to a certain extent still does.)

Fast-forward a bit, and I got into my first relationship during a school production. I had got very close to a female friend of mine, and after the fact I learned that most of my friends were expecting us to get together as part of the production. However, what actually happened was that she set me up with a friend of a friend whom I didn't know very well and didn't particularly fancy. I'm not particularly proud of saying this, but I entered into that relationship because I was worried no-one else would be interested in me, and I wouldn't get another chance. (I was young. And stupid. And suffering from what I now recognise to be mental health issues.)

As it turned out, said relationship grew quite nicely over time, and I realised I actually did quite like this girl — I just didn't know her that well before we were pushed together. We did a lot together, I got on well with the rest of her family and it was all looking good.

We never had sex, though. I remember vividly "missing my chance" on this. We were sitting in her bedroom one day fooling around, and she mumbled something to me. I couldn't make out the words because she was embarrassed to say them out loud. In retrospect, it was obvious that she was saying "I really, really want to make love to you" but I was too scared to make assumptions — too wrapped up in my own self-loathing to believe that anyone would ever want to have sex with me. I asked her what she said, and to say it more clearly. She wouldn't. The moment passed.

A couple of months later, it was our school prom. We went together. We did not leave together, because she cheated on me on the dance floor with a guy she is now married to. Good on her, I guess.

My only other relationship at school was one which lasted from Monday to Friday of one week, during which time I saw my paramour precisely once and kissed her once before she decided at the end of the week that actually, she didn't want to go out with me after all, and that we should go back to being friends again. Once again, sex did not enter the equation. The fact that our relationship began at a recording of Songs of Praise may have had something to do with that. (I swear I am not making that part up.)

Fast forward to university. Early in my student career, I met someone who seemed perfect for me. We spent a ton of time together. She was constantly in my room, she was into the things I was into and we had a great time together. I knew very early in our relationship that she was someone I wanted in my life. I was attracted to her, I liked the person she was and I wanted her around as much as possible.

I said nothing. Because I was too scared. Because I hated myself. Because I thought she would hate me and think I was some sort of disgusting pervert if I said anything. Consequently, she got together with someone else, who I spent a healthy proportion of time absolutely despising as a result. (Said person is now, paradoxically, one of my closest friends. Funny how things work out.)

I liked a couple of other people at university. I even went to the effort of sending a secret Valentine to one, complete with a cuddly toy and some truly dreadful poetry. (I am never writing poetry again.) She immediately knew it was me and let me down gently. I left it at that and we continued being the friends we were before. Again, sex didn't enter into the equation. I just liked this person and wanted to be with them.

My next girlfriend at university was someone I got together with at a Christmas meal for one of the groups I was a member of. I'd never met her prior to that night, but we hit it off and were in each other's arms by the end of the night. Neither of us were the one-night stand types, though, so we went our separate ways at the end of the evening and arranged to meet up again. We went out a few times, but she dumped me after I bought her a Christmas present because it made her feel "weird". That made me feel weird.

We subsequently met up again later a few times and went out, but we eventually lost contact. To this day, I'm still not entirely sure quite what went on there, and if I could have done things anything differently. Ships in the night and all that.

I could go on, but we'd be hitting a bit close to home if I started talking about some of these other relationships. What I wanted to (hopefully) make clear by sharing some of these things is that in many cases, a dude making friends with a girl and complaining of not being able to take things any further is not always a case of "putting in kindness coins and expecting sex to fall out", as runs the phrase I've seen numerous times recently. In many cases, it is a simple case of the dude in question not knowing how to express that he would like to take things any further. In more cases than one, you can probably see that I blew my chances with someone largely as a result of my own crippling self-loathing and lack of confidence.

I have had a number of situations in my life that fall into the "friendzone" category by popular definition, and I'm fully aware they're my own fault for not expressing myself properly. But it's not a case of being a creeper, or of expecting a woman to provide me sexual gratification in exchange for my kindness — in every single fucking case I wanted an actual relationship with that person; because I wanted to be with them; because I wanted to share my life with them; because I felt we understood each other. It was not because I expected them to have sex with me. It was not because I wanted to have sex with them. I didn't express myself because I was too fucking terrified to say anything to them, because I was too fucking terrified that they would run away from me screaming if they thought I was a creep who was leching after them.

You see, herein lies my problem with articles like the one I shared at the start of this post. They are gross generalisations. There are men out there who don't know when to quit. There are men out there who have unreasonable expectations of women. There are men out there who see women purely as sex objects there for their own gratification.

I am not one of them.

But every time I read one of these endless fucking "friendzone" articles that uses a lot of words to say almost nothing we haven't seen a hundred times already, I feel like shit. I feel like a creep. I feel like a piece of sub-human scum. Why? Because I recognise some of the situations being described. I have been in some of the situations described. And yet, apparently, the following quote from the above article is universally How It Is:

Here’s the hard truth, Friendzone. You’re not a nice guy. You are a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who’s too afraid of rejection to just tell a woman how you really feel.

Yes. Yes I am. Yes, I am a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who is too afraid of rejection to tell a woman how I really feel. Do you know why I am afraid of rejection? Because I hate myself. Because the early part of my life was spent with people reinforcing my own self-hatred through near-constant bullying and harassment. Though those days may be long gone, the mental scars remain. And every time you say shit like the above, even though it may not be intended to be about me specifically, I take it personally. And it hurts. And it makes me angry. And it makes me want to cry.

It hurts even more when you make the assumption that I am afraid of rejection purely because I want sex. As I have hopefully outlined above, in every single case I was the one who wanted an actual relationship but found myself unable to express it properly. I'm pretty sure I can't be the only person in the world who feels like this, so every time you publicly shame "friendzone guys" like this, you run the risk of doing some very real damage to what is probably already a very fragile sense of self-esteem and self-worth for those people you have inadvertently and inconsiderately lumped in to your catch-all descriptions. While you may cause some of the creepers to re-evaluate their behaviour and start behaving in a less misogynistic manner — though personally I feel it is unlikely that they will read anything like the article above and take it to heart — you're just as likely to make people who already lack confidence to never ever want to put themselves out there. (Those are the people who will read the articles.)

I am very fortunate in that after my last relationship — which led to marriage — fell apart and nearly destroyed me completely, I found someone who loves me for who I am, respects me and is a good match for me. Not everyone is so lucky. If I were still alone right now, I don't want to think about how awful I'd be feeling. Fortunately, instead I find myself on the way back up from the bottom rather than slowly sliding into the abyss.

So just fucking stop it with the "friendzone" and "nice guy" articles. Please. We get it.

(As an aside, I would like to stop writing about this now because I know it's probably quite tiresome to read. But in this instance I felt it important to respond to the article linked above. I will return to writing about something more entertaining tomorrow. Hopefully. None of you die or anything in the next 24 hours.)

1079: It's 2013

Welcome to the first day of a new year. Doesn't feel much different, does it? That's because it isn't, really, yet we ascribe such huge importance to the December 31/January 1 changeover that you'd believe the world ended and was subsequently reborn every New Year's Eve.

I've seen a number of people expressing such cynical sentiments recently, and they do sort of have a point. But at the same time it's quite nice to have a relatively arbitrary place to draw a line under everything and say "right — that's enough of that, time to move on with new and better things."

I do it myself, as you've probably noticed. I refer to 2010 as a "bad year" because it was largely memorable for the bad things that happened in it. 2011 and 2012 were relatively unremarkable throughout their duration, with relatively little to distinguish the two of them, and yet here, now, on January 1, 2013, I still find myself looking forward to a new year as if something is going to be magically different. And yet we all know it's probably going to be the same old, same old for the most part, because those big changes in the world take significant amounts of time.

This is true of new year's resolutions, too. While it's admirable to use the start of a new year as a "starting line" for a new challenge, many people are a bit unrealistic about their own expectations of themselves. "I'll get fit," they'll say. "I'll lose weight." It's not that simple — those aren't behaviours that you can just "turn on", sadly, otherwise life would be much easier for the fatties of the world. It takes time to change, and it's easy to fall off the wagon. Believe me, I know.

As such, I'm not going to make any grand, sweeping statements about what I will or won't achieve in the coming year. It would be nice if I could get fit and lose some weight, but I know from past experience that neither of those things are particularly easy. There are plenty of other things I would like to achieve, too, but none of those are easy, either. As such, setting unrealistic expectations for myself is only going to set me up for future disappointment. Much better to set some long-term targets and use the year to at least start working on them, even if they do not come to complete fruition in a single year. After all, unexpected things have a habit of throwing spanners in the work. Best-laid plans and all that.

As such, here are some things I am going to make a start on (or, in some cases, revisit) in 2013, with no promises of any of them actually being finished in 2013:

I will do some form of exercise at least twice a week. I've had a hefty period off from running, gymming or indeed anything — a combination of depression and a general lack of motivation sapped my inclination towards doing these things towards the end of the year. Now I'm in our new place, I will make an effort to use at least two days in the week for sweaty purposes. I anticipate this will primarily take the form of taking my bike to Southampton Common, which is very near our house and eminently suitable for cycling around.
I will work on my visual novel book. I have already made a start on this, and now I'm a bit more settled, I'm in a position where I can devote some time to it regularly.
I will make a game. It will be a small-scale, not-overly ambitious game made with RPG Maker, and it will probably be rubbish. But I will use my writing skills and creativity to make something I can show to other people. If I find myself able to make said game relatively quickly, I might even make another one that is better.
I will play the piano several times per week. I have had relatively little motivation to make music for a while (again, partly due to depression and whatnot) but I will regularly settle down and attempt to get my skills back up to scratch.
I will see my friends more often. I am fed up of being a hermit. I know I am not an especially social person, and social anxiety doesn't make that any easier, but I would like to see my friends more often — for coffee, food, board games, video games, whatever. I am in the right place to do it, so I will take full advantage of that where possible.

I also have a more concrete target in mind, but I will keep that to myself for the moment, and perhaps share it in the near future.

For now, after an exhausting couple of days, I think I need a rest. Back to regular working days tomorrow for me — if you, too, are heading back to work, I hope you've had a suitably relaxing break and are ready to go back to the grindstone. And for everyone, I hope you had a wonderful (or at least tolerable) New Year celebration — here's to 2013 being a good one. Cheers!

1078: Things I Hope We See the Back of in 2013

As I noted yesterday, 2012 was a reasonable year, if a relatively unremarkable one. However, it did play host to a number of trends that really, really need to fuck the fuck off. Here is a selection of my picks for things that I would very much like to not see any more next year.

Gangnam Style

LOOK! LOOK AT THE FUNNY KOREAN MAN! HE DANCING! HAHAHAHAHA

No. Fuck off. When your "viral sensation" gets performed on X-Factor, you know it has officially jumped the shark.

The phrase "jumped the shark"

I can remember it now, but I originally had to look this up five or six times before I could actually remember what it meant. It is a Happy Days reference, for heaven's sake. Is there not something a bit more, you know, timely you could refer to? Or perhaps just say what you mean? Speaking of which…

Using the term "nice guy" to mean "creep"

I have ranted at length on this subject before so I will spare you that this time and simply say that by doing this you are simply perpetuating the stereotype that people who describe themselves as "nice guys" are creeps and rapists-in-training. Some of them are creeps, to be sure, but some of them are simply shy people with poor social skills. I count myself in the latter category, and have referred to myself as a "nice guy" in the past, and now feel hideously guilty about that. So quit tarring everyone with the same brush and find a new term to describe creepy guys who make women feel uncomfortable, regardless of what they call themselves. I suggest "creepy guys who make women feel uncomfortable" or perhaps just, you know, "creeps". Capitalising Nice Guy or adding a ™ is not an acceptable way of creating a new term.

Reducing complex sociological issues to binary debates

This is apparent when you look at a number of different issues in today's sociological climate, but it's particularly evident any time someone starts talking about sexism and/or feminism. If you're not in support of the most vocal, outspoken, ranty people who are standing up against sexism, you're a misogynist. If you are someone who speaks out against sexism, regardless of whether or not you're being obnoxious in your arguing techniques, you're a "feminazi". If you try and have a reasoned, rational debate on this subject, you're "part of the problem". There are no shades of grey here.

(Clarification that I am annoyed I feel obliged to include: My beliefs: sexism is bad, regardless of who it is directed towards. Women are awesome. Men are equally awesome. If the world learned this and treated people accordingly, it would be a much nicer place. Yelling incoherently at people is not the same as re-educating them.)

"dot TXT" Twitter accounts

NaNoWriMo participants, fanfic authors and bloggers are all pretty brave to put their work out there for public scrutiny, so how do you think they might feel about having extracts of things they have written or said quoted out of context, posted to Twitter and then retweeted to all and sundry? Yeah. Cut that shit out. On the subject…

Public shaming

Twitter users like "@fart" spend an awful lot of time trawling the social network for examples of things like "ungrateful teens" at Christmas, retweeting what is apparently their most offensive tweet and then, as a bit of frantic backpedaling, encouraging their followers not to harass these people. (I'm aware @fart isn't the only one, but he's certainly one of the most well-known.) Sites like BuzzFeed then collect together these tweets and post them as evidence of "first world problems" and other such bullshit. An example was here, but it has since been removed by the author, perhaps partly as a result of this article on Slate.

Public shaming of people for things like this is a horrible way to behave that makes you little more than a bully — especially in cases such as this, where we see that all is not necessarily as it first appears. Call people out if they are genuinely being publicly offensive, sure, but don't hold them up for ridicule.

Tumblr

Back in 2008, I posted this short entry in which I lamented the fact I didn't really know what Tumblr was for or why anyone would want to use it. Now I know: it's for telling the world how awful white people, men, and white men are. The second a white person says something stupid, you can count on there being a Tumblr for it within a matter of minutes, which runs whatever "joke" there was well and truly into the ground, often setting world records for how quickly it can make grumpy people like me want to set fire to anyone who makes such a reference.

White straight cis male guilt

Much of the above leads to white straight cis male guilt. (If you don't know what "cis" means, it is an abbreviation of "cisgender", which is where an individual's self-perceived gender matches their sex, and the opposite of "transgender". I had to look it up, despite the number of people who are now using it regularly, often in an attempt to make themselves look super-socially aware.) Being a white straight cis male is not anything to be ashamed of, but from the number of people who preface pieces of work by seemingly apologising for being the person they are, you'd think it was the worst thing in the world. The white straight cis male viewpoint is just as valid as the black gay transgender female perspective, and nothing to feel guilty about.

The only thing you should feel guilty about is not giving viewpoints other than your own the time of day, regardless of your ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, sex and any other factors. You can give respect to viewpoints other than your own without diminishing the relevance of your own contributions.

Variations on that Keep Calm and Carry On poster

If I never have to see an "amusing" poster that says "Keep Calm and [something that isn't Carry On]" again in 2013 and beyond, I will be happy. Indeed, if I never see a piece of merchandise that has the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan on it again in 2013 and beyond, I will be happy. For those who were unaware, the original poster was put out in very limited quantities in 1939 to raise the morale of the British public in the face of the rise of the Nazis, and was subsequently rediscovered in 2000, at which point it exploded and was everyfuckingwhere. Ironically, the reaction on seeing a "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster is now a crushing sense of distress at the state of the modern world rather than a feeling of increased morale.

Data limits

We're living in the future. We really are. We carry around gizmos in our pocket that are straight out of Star Trek, and yet our usage of them is artificially limited by mobile phone companies' desire to squeeze as much money out of us as possible. That didn't happen in Star Trek.

Negativity towards new tech

The new consoles that have been released recently — 3DS, Vita and Wii U — were all met with negativity upon their initial release. The situation with 3DS has improved somewhat, but Vita is still struggling a bit, and it's too early to say with Wii U so far. These are all great bits of kit that, in many cases, don't deserve the beatdowns they get. In 2013 I'd like to see a much greater focus on the things that these systems do well, and things that people who have bought one can appreciate, rather than endless Why Not To Buy One pieces.

Sales figures being equated to whether something is any good or not

People don't like buying stuff that isn't selling (see: Vita) but this doesn't mean that those things aren't actually any good. The Vita (sorry to keep harping on about it, but it's a good example) is a gorgeous piece of kit, but people are ignoring this arguably more important fact because its sales figures aren't very good.

Fact: pretty much everything I've enjoyed this year has been a "niche" title that hasn't been designed to sell in massive quantities. Not everything has to be a blockbuster.

Unnecessary mobile social networking apps

If you're considering seeking funding for a new mobile app that "lets you Like anything!" or is yet another Instagram ripoff then just stop. Now. No-one is going to use your product for more than five minutes. Before you design your app consider whether or not the world really needs it or would at least find it somehow beneficial. If the answer to either of those questions is "no", then reconsider what you are doing.

Blind reposting

This has been a particular issue on Facebook this year. People see something that they think is amazing (like that supposed Morgan Freeman quote on the school shooting) and then blindly reshare it to their Facebook friends without checking to see whether or not it's actually true. It subsequently spreads and spreads and spreads, because very few people along the way bother to fact-check it. When someone does fact-check it, discovers it to be bollocks and says so, they are often lambasted. "It does no harm," people will say. "It's a nice quote, does it matter who said it?"

Well, perhaps not in the case of a thought-provoking quote misattributed to Morgan Freeman, but when you see the massive virality of scaremongering posts accusing, say, Red Bull of containing a chemical that causes brain tumours, that's when you can hopefully start to see where the problem lies.

Let me introduce you to Snopes.com. If something sounds suspiciously like bollocks, it probably is, so check it out on Snopes.

____

I could go on but I've already written nearly 1,500 words so far. I think if all of the above just went and vanished in time for the new year, I'd be happy for maybe a few days at least. Then something new will undoubtedly come along to irritate me, and I can write another post like this on December 31, 2013. See you then.

(Actually, I'll see you tomorrow, but you know.)

Oh, and happy new year for later, I guess.

1077: New Year's Honours

I know it's December 30, but I'm out for New Year's Eve tomorrow night (just at a friend's house — I don't really do obnoxiously loud, drunken parties any more) and probably won't feel particularly inclined to write a lot tomorrow evening. So I thought I'd look back on the year that was, as is traditional for regular bloggers to do around this time of year.

Actually, looking back, I didn't really do that at this time last year. Instead I apparently wrote a bit about the board game Pandemic, The Old Republic (was it really a year ago I was playing that and actually enjoying it before the move to suffocating free-to-play pretty much removed everyone's desire to ever play it ever again?), Minecraft and insomnia. (The above subjects may be somewhat related.) This leads me to believe that the year that was in that instance (being 2011) was not something especially worth looking back on.

And is this year? As I've been writing these first few paragraphs, I've been pausing occasionally to consider this question. Was 2012 in any way notable or interesting? It certainly wasn't a "bad" year as such — no, 2010 had that pretty much covered and thankfully I haven't had a year that bad since — but neither was it a particularly exciting year. I guess that's sort of good, though — if the most you can say about a year as it is ending is that it just sort of passed by relatively without incident, then I suppose that's a good thing.

There were good things, of course. The fact that I'm sitting in a flat/apartment/whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit in Southampton — a place I've been trying to get back to ever since 2010 went and fucked everything up — is testament to the fact that Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really, and I'll certainly take Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really over Things Are Going Really Fucking Terribly and I Just Want to Cry All Day and All Night. I've done both, and I don't recommend the latter.

But yes. The move back "home" to Southampton is a big positive step. I am now within walking, biking or short driving distance from the vast majority of my friends that I would like to see much more often, which makes me feel good. Okay, none of them have come to visit me yet, but I think I can excuse that, what with it being a rather busy and chaotic time of year and all. Also, delaying their arrival a little increases the chances that we will have got rid of the hundreds and thousands of massive cardboard boxes that are seemingly breeding in this place as we unpack stuff and assemble new pieces of furniture. (We now own a new wardrobe. It's a bit bigger than we initially thought, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as the rooms in this place are pleasingly large.)

What else happened in the last year? I did jury service for the first (and hopefully last) time, in which I got to see how the court system worked for a relatively major case which had to be subsequently abandoned and restarted at some indefinite point in the future. It was an interesting experience, though I would have enjoyed it more if I had a regular job in this country I could just easily take time off from, was not suffering with some sort of hideous plague and was not in the process of moving house (and consequently spending several nights sleeping on the floor of a house with no furniture in it). As I predicted it might do, jury service prompted an immediate re-examination of my life and consideration of whether or not law would be Something Interesting to Look Into.

Regarding Something Interesting to Look Into: this is an occasional crisis of confidence I have at various points in my life where I wonder whether or not I'm on the "right" path career-wise. I've been back and forth over a few careers, after all — classroom teacher, private music teacher (though that was never enough to support myself on), retail store employee, software trainer, regular contributor on a mainstream video games site, regular contributor on a specialist social/mobile games site — and frequently find myself pondering what next steps might be. Where do I go? Do I want to go there? Should I stay doing what I'm doing — which is comfortable, fun, relatively challenging and something that I'm good at — or should I do some sort of complete (early) mid-life crisis turnaround, retrain as something that I'm not currently and make a career out of that? I honestly don't know. But now's not really the time to be thinking about that.

It's funny. When I titled this post "New Years Honours" I anticipated that I was going to be able to make a list of Specific Happenings in 2012 that were particularly noteworthy, but this has turned into something of a ramble, really. I apologise. Still, it's something to think about.

All right, let's make a list of a few things just to round things out.

Best Video Games I Played: School Days HQ, Katawa Shoujo, Trails in the Sky, Pandora's Tower, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, The Walking Dead

Best Wee I Did: Friday morning this week, it was well over a minute long.

Favourite Technology Purchase: My Novatech laptop, which runs everything from visual novels to TrackMania 2 in relatively portable form without a hitch.

Most Pleasing Restaurant Chain Discovery: Yo! Sushi — I don't care how authentic it is/isn't, it's delicious.

Medium I Abandoned Completely and Don't Feel Any Regrets About: Movies.

Medium I Embraced Wholeheartedly and Don't Feel Any Regrets About: Anime. Also visual novels.

Amount I Earned by Emptying my Small Change into the Coinstar Machine in Sainsburys: About £80

Amount I Earned by Music Magpie-ing Almost my Entire CD Collection (Except for the Stuff They Wouldn't Take Like Spice Girls and Other Stuff That Escapes Me Right Now): About £80

Amount I Anticipate I Will Probably Get for Selling My Knackered Old Car Next Year: About £80

Most Expensive Purchase: New sofa

Most Expensive Purchase That is Probably Impossible to Get Into Our New Flat: New sofa

Meme I'm Most Sick Of: Grumpy Cat

Number of People I've Blocked on Twitter for Arguing Too Aggressively or Unreasonably (Not Necessarily Towards Me): Too many to count

Number of Completely Unnecessary Mobile Social Networking Apps I Have Encountered in the Course of my Job This Year: Too many to count

What I Can Smell Right Now: Smoked mackerel

What I am Going to Do After This Blog Post: Make a warm milk, go to bed, play Trails in the Sky.

Why I am Still Thinking of Things to Put in This List When I've Clearly Run Out of Ideas: I don't know.

Good night.

1076: My Favourite T-Shirts

[Author's Note: This post is a response to my girlfriend's accusations that posts about video games are "boring". She wants "boring", I'll show her "boring".]

[Supplementary Note: Both she and I are joking. But I'm still going to write about My Favourite T-Shirts just because I can.]

I have a lot of T-shirts. I primarily wear T-shirts. I work from home so, to be honest, you're lucky if I get dressed at all for my average working day, but most days I do manage to cover up my disgusting hairy flabby body with some form of cloth-based accoutrements that generally take the form of jeans and a T-shirt. Consequently, I have collected a wide variety of T-shirts over the years, relatively few of which I have actually paid for.

The reason for this is that, as many of you will know, my brother is one John Davison, veteran of the games industry and, at various points in his life, a member of the staff of publications as diverse as Games-X, Mega Drive Advanced Gaming, PC Player, PC Zone, Electronic Gaming Monthly, the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, 1up.com, What They Play, GamePro, Gamespot and doubtless some others I've missed along the way. (Kudos if you recognise the earlier ones, incidentally.)

Why is this relevant? Well, because as anyone currently working in the games industry knows, working on a mag or website means freebies. Freebies are somewhat ridiculed these days, with wearing a freebie T-shirt to a professional engagement seen as a big ol' faux pas, but I've never had a particular problem with people wearing them, largely because I spent a healthy proportion of my childhood wearing them. Nowadays, the ones that still fit (which is quite a few, due to the fact that freebie T-shirts inevitably come in gigantic sizes) have a certain degree of retro charm about them, though I must confess that many of them have fallen by the wayside and/or into the bin over the years.

So, then, without further ado, here are my Top Five Favourite T-Shirts.

The "More Drinks Kevin" MDK T-Shirt

I like this T-shirt (which I don't have a picture of, I'm afraid) for two reasons: 1) it bewilders people who have no idea why my T-shirt says "MORE DRINKS KEVIN?" on the front and "MDK" on the back and 2) it has long sleeves, meaning it's nice and warm. This is, I think, the only T-shirt from the numerous freebies my brother gave me over the years that I actually still have. It has survived my numerous house moves, the collapse of my life a couple of years ago and my subsequent clawing back to my current status of "not doing too badly, thanks." I don't wear it that often, but it's a nice reminder of simpler times.

Rattlesnake! Theatre Group Official Shirt

I have two of these (and no pictures right now) and they are among my most-worn T-shirts. They are old, grotty and horrible and really only suitable for bumming around the house in, but I like them a lot because they remind me of one of my favourite times of my life — going to the Edinburgh Fringe with the Southampton University Theatre Group (which we inexplicably redubbed "Rattlesnake!" temporarily for the trip) and putting on two shows for two weeks.

Persona 4

I have a Persona 4 T-shirt. It doesn't fit very well so I don't wear it very often, but I like it. It came free with my copy of the game. It is bright yellow (the kind that is not just "yellow" but "YELLOW!") and features a minimalist TV design with colour stripes and the "You Are Not Me" phrase from the game.

"FK In The Coffee"

I have a lot of time for anyone who enjoyed Deadly Premonition, because Deadly Premonition was brilliant. Consequently, anyone who successfully identifies the reference on this T-shirt is destined to be a lifelong friend.

Minimalist Pony T-Shirt

I like this T-Shirt because it allows me to declare myself as a card-carrying Brony to people who are "in the know", while to others it simply looks like some sort of retro pixelated design. I'll let those of you who haven't seen this type of T-shirt before into a secret: the key is in the colours.

Those are my favourite T-shirts. I hope you liked them.

[Supplementary note: I'm not sure these actually are my favourite T-shirts, but they're the first ones that sprang to mind that were vaguely interesting. I have a lot of T-shirts. Maybe if this post proves popular I'll share some more. Won't that be nice? Yes, yes it will. Now I am going to bed. Good night.]

1075: Those Trails in the Sky Get Longer

[Author's note: See, I resisted the temptation to make another "Tits" joke in the headline. You should be proud of me.]

After a bit of a break to play some other stuff, mainly Persona 3: FES, I am back on my Vita and proceeding nicely with Trails in the Sky.

Trails in the Sky, for those who missed the earlier post I made about it, is a role-playing game for the PSP and Vita from Falcom. It also happens to be one of the best role-playing games I've played in recent memory, for a diverse array of reasons, some of which I've already talked about and others of which I will touch on today.

Plot-wise, Trails in the Sky isn't your conventional JRPG. I'm over 30 hours in now and there's been no trace of any villain wanting to take over the world, call down a meteor, kompress time [sic], sit inside a mountain going "MWAHAHAHAHA" or indeed any of the other things that JRPG villains typically want to do. In fact, I'd be hard-pushed to identify a single "villain" as yet — there have been villainous groups and individuals, sure, but not a single character that I'd particularly identify as a specific "antagonist". No-one with silvery-white hair flowing down their back; no-one with a good line in evil laughs; no "evil empire" to fight back against. The closest we've had is a few men clad in black, and they're clearly working for someone.

While this may cause you to worry about the game being directionless — what's an epic RPG without an antagonist taunting you throughout making that final boss smackdown all the more satisfying? — in actual fact the opposite is true. The focus may be different, but there's most definitely a plot with direction and good pace going on here.

The focus in this case is the relationship between the two lead characters Estelle and Joshua, foster siblings and a classic case of a "will they, won't they" relationship that will undoubtedly come to smooches by the end of the game's 50-hour quest. The main thrust of the game's story is the pair's journey around the game world, training their abilities and learning more about themselves, each other and the way they feel about one another. Third and fourth party members come and go, but Estelle and Joshua are permanent fixtures, with the player taking direct control of Estelle for the vast majority of the game.

Estelle is a great lead character, largely because she's not a traditional female protagonist. She may be pretty cute visually — as a redhead/brunette with twintails, she's seemingly designed to appeal specifically to me — but personality-wise, she's certainly far from demure, cute or helpless. She's spunky, loud, opinionated, brash, sarcastic and quick to anger. At the same time, she doesn't deny her feminine side to herself — even if she seemingly tries to hide it when others are around. There are a number of scenes, particularly late in the game, where she tries to come to terms with her own feelings towards Joshua that give us some interesting insight into what she's really thinking behind her slightly-abrasive facade.

The side-effect of Estelle's somewhat tomboyish nature when she's around other people is that said other people tend not to treat her in a particularly "girlish" manner, often deriding her for not particularly conforming to gender stereotypes and acting in a "mannish" or "boyish" manner. She takes it in her stride throughout, often swiping such comments aside with a sarcastic rebuttal or two of her own, and you get the impression that she is someone who is thoroughly comfortable in who she is — or at least comfortable with the "public face" she shows to people. Despite her self-assuredness, though, a sure-fire way to make Estelle skittish and nervous is to bring up the possibility of her getting together with Joshua, which in many cases makes her literally want to run away or furiously deny any such accusations, even if it's blatantly obvious that she's thought about it more than once in her life.

I'm looking forward to seeing the game through to its conclusion. It's structured very nicely in that you always feel like you're doing something, and grinding has been absolutely non-existent so far. Wandering monsters provide relatively trivial amounts of experience points, and are primarily used to acquire the "Sepith" gems used to craft new special ability items called Orbments, and if you're that way inclined, you can race through most of the game without stopping to have random encounters at all if you don't want to — though you may find yourself struggling to acquire better spells if you do so.

In short, it's nice to play a JRPG that focuses on the good things about the genre — exploration, discovery, questing, character development and narrative — and doesn't force players to live with frustrating and outdated conventions like grinding. If you're an RPG fan toting a PSP or Vita, you should consider Trails in the Sky an essential purchase, as it is a fine example of how the genre is alive, well and more than happy to not follow the traditional Final Fantasy "OMG WORLD IS ENDING" route. (That's not to say that doesn't have a place, of course — I still love saving the world, but I'm well aware many others are sick of it.)

Check out the official website to find out more — and I believe there's a sequel inbound at some point in the near future, too.