#oneaday Day 689: Noire Patterns

I've been playing L.A. Noire recently. I haven't finished it yet — I'm partway through the Vice cases at present — but I feel it's worth sharing some thoughts. I didn't play the game when it first came out for various reasons, and always fully intended to grab the PC version, especially once it was rumoured to come with all the additional DLC which had been released for the console editions.

The first thing is that that facial animation tech is absolutely gobsmacking. I've never seen character faces that look quite so natural. Sure, the bodies are sometimes a bit wooden, and occasional non-motion captured animations make themselves glaringly obvious, but the nuances in the facial expressions make it a sight to behold. So kudos for that.

Next up, there is waaaaay too much driving. I looked at my stats in the options menu and found that I'd spent well over 2 hours driving from place to place. Sure, you can skip over these sequences, but then you miss out on some of the conversations between protagonist Cole and his partner, which help with characterisation.

This leads on to the whole question of whether or not this needed to be an open-world game. It's cool to be able to drive around L.A. and see the sights, sure, but I tend to find myself ignoring the scenery and just trying to get to the destination as quickly as possible. I don't know L.A., either, so I don't have the benefit of being able to go "Ahhh, I recognise that!" along the way.

Further to the "open world" thing, there really doesn't need to be all the extra achievement-whoring crap. I have precisely zero desire to drive around looking for film reels, police badges and hidden vehicles because it's plainly obvious that is not what the game is about. It's a police drama, about solving crimes. And it does that job pretty well — so why is all the other nonsense in there other than for padding? Who knows.

In terms of the game structure outside of this nonsense, it's very good. I really like the idea of a game being structured as a set of "short stories" like L.A. Noire is. Each case stands by itself as a standalone story, but also fits into a bigger picture. In many ways, it's kind of like a TV series, with each of the "desks" Cole works on being like a season on a show. There's clearly some sort of overarching plot, too, though that hasn't made itself hugely obvious as yet, except through the newspapers you occasionally find around the place. At least, I'm assuming all that becomes relevant at some point.

The investigation and interrogation gameplay is all right, but there's a few flaws, particularly when it comes to the interrogation side of things. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have an idea that a piece of evidence in your inventory would prove a suspect is lying, but upon pressing the "lie" button, Cole proceeds to make a completely different accusation. This is mildly annoying, but doesn't seem to impact things too much.

Then there's the glaring plot holes that come about if you do things in the wrong order. Trouble is, sometimes it's not clear what order you should do things in. I ended one case with a one-star rating and I'm not sure how I could have done things differently to provide a different outcome. And yet in another case, the villain wound up dead and my "review" screen said that there was no evidence or witness testimony. Bizarre.

Despite these flaws, though, I'm enjoying the game. The story is interesting enough to keep me playing and while the characters aren't necessarily what I'd call likeable, they're certainly interesting. It is a little jarring to continually hear characters refer to Cole's family and yet we never see them, however. Or perhaps that's a plot point — I don't know. I guess I'll find out as I get towards the end.

So far as evolution of the adventure genre goes, I'm not sure L.A. Noire presents quite the right way to do it. It certainly does a lot of things right — I'd love to see that animation tech used in a more traditional adventure, for example — but there's all this useless fluff in the middle. And stealth sequences are never fun, unless you're playing Metal Gear Solid or Thief — games specifically designed around the mechanic. Everyone knows that. At least L.A. Noire has the good grace to allow you to skip them if you fail them three times — a nice throwback to the days of the awful arcade sequences in Dynamix's adventure games such as Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China.

So I'll play it through to its conclusion, for sure. Game of the Year? No way. But it's certainly a solid offering that will be of interest if you enjoy adventure gaming or crime dramas.

#oneaday Day 688: Bananaphone

[Edit: Inadvertently only saved this as a draft yesterday instead of publishing. My apologies!]

The Internet is full of weird and wonderful things, as doubtless you well know. Most of these things are designed purely to waste time or make you laugh — or, in most cases, both.

Such is the case with the wonderful Procatinator, which has brought all sense of productivity on the Internet to a standstill over the last few days.

What is it? Well, as you might have gathered from the title, it's a procrastination tool that features cats. Specifically, amusing cat GIF images which are presented on a loop, coupled with a strangely appropriate (and clearly carefully-selected) piece of music.

The interesting thing about it is that obviously someone has spent a fair amount of time on this. The website itself is pretty slick, and it couldn't have been easy to collate a huge library of cat GIFs and link them to pieces of music.

Here are some highlights:

Cat number 33 features the Beastie Boys. It's alarming quite how well this works.

Cat number 34 features the Bananaphone song, which I defy you to evacuate from your head once you've heard it once. Particularly when you relate it to the image herein.

Cat number 14 is notable purely for the entertaining image of a cat using a sewing machine.

Cat number 6 is… just, well, see for yourself.

I'm impressed at the dedication of whoever was behind Procatinator, because they've taken the time to archive a huge collection of cat GIFs and then go to the trouble of putting them on a website which inspires pure joy in everyone who sees it.

I wonder if they put it on their CV?

#oneaday Day 687: E for Exploitative, A for Arseholes

EA and I are done. I will not be purchasing any of their future titles (with the possible exception of BioWare titles — though even those are becoming prone to the problem I'm about to describe) and I think the world should pay attention to what they're up to, rather than simply letting them get away with it.

What, then, is their sin?

Exploitation of consumers, to put it in simple, general terms. This accusation covers a variety of unpleasant behaviour, and none of it is good for people who like playing games and holding on to their money. Let's delve into these things one at a time.

Origin

Let's start with EA's digital distribution platform Origin. I don't have a problem with digital distribution platforms which aren't Steam, but EA needs to accept that I, along with many other gamers out there, choose to rely on Steam for the vast majority of our PC gaming needs.

There are a variety of reasons for this, not least of which is Steam's ubiquity and social functionality. If you want to see what your friends are up to in an Xbox Live style, chances are, you'll be able to see via Steam. Most people even add their non-Steam games to their Steam library, so you'll always be able to see what they're up to.

Origin has designs on this too, with its own integrated social functionality, but no facility to add non-Origin games. And given that the platform launched with only EA titles, few people are going to want to switch to Origin as their primary means of communicating with friends during gameplay. It's just silly to try. Steam works, no pun intended. It works well. That's why it's popular.

Alongside this, there's the shady business of EA removing its titles from Steam on the grounds of mysterious, non-specific "policies" that supposedly no other digital distribution services impose on poor little EA. Funny how these objections only arose shortly after Origin showed up.

And then there's the fact that increasing numbers of people are reporting that they're losing access to their games — even single-player titles — following often wrongful bans from the EA forums. Granted, some people who have been in touch deserved a forum ban (come on, do you really think making your username "TheGreatRapist" is really going to depict you as a fine, upstanding member of the community?) but even then, there is no way that behaviour on forums should prevent people from accessing the content they have paid for. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a good investigation into the matter at present.

And then there's EA's stubbornness even when it comes to online games. In their recent mobile releases (which we'll come on to shortly) all online functionality is handled not through Game Center which is, let's not forget, built in to iOS, but instead through Origin. This has the ridiculous side-effect of meaning that you can't use the Game Center app to do things like check high scores or compare games — something which it is designed for.

Anyway. Enough about Origin — except for the fact that EA's adoption of that particular name is like rubbing dirt into the good name of Origin Systems, who produced some of the finest games ever created.

Project Ten Dollar

This is all the rage now, and not just with EA. I blame EA for introducing it, however, since it was they who talked about it first. But it is not cool to lock off content from full-price games, whether it's single player or multiplayer. If I pay £40/$60 for a new game, I damn well expect to get what I paid for on the disc without having to enter a selection of alphanumeric codes. And if I buy a used copy of the game, I likewise expect to get full access to the game. People don't tear out the last five chapters of a second-hand book, people don't erase five random scenes from a second-hand DVD. So why should a game be gutted for those of us who didn't want to buy it new, whether that's due to financial constraints or simply being unable to find a new copy?

An episode of Extra Credits had a good solution for this which would be perfectly palatable to me. If they must lock off content, then charge less for the game in the first place. Sell me a disc with the single player gameplay on for considerably less than $60 and charge me an additional $15-20 for the multiplayer mode — a $15 to $20 that I don't feel obliged to pay, largely because I rarely play multiplayer modes, anyway — particularly in games that don't need them.

As it is, Online Passes are a transparent method of fleecing more money out of consumers. They are indefensible.

Drip-Feed DLC

This largely relates to BioWare games. I would much rather have a full-on expansion pack for $15-20 than drip-fed DLC which often adds very little to the experience. The few pieces of Dragon Age DLC I've played really weren't worth the money — they didn't even integrate with the main campaign — and they've put me off checking out Mass Effect 2's offerings.

Part of this is for pricing reasons. But part of it is, again, due to the fact that I'd much rather have the whole game up front. In the case of Mass Effect 2, why not hold the release back and include the content in the game? Answer: because it makes more money, which is kind of the root of all these problems. Money-making trumps consumer convenience and goodwill every time.

Thar Be Whales!

By far the most obnoxious behaviour that EA has been indulging in recently relates to its mobile games. First of all, they updated their iOS version of Tetris. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. All iOS developers update their games fairly regularly, whether that's with bugfixes or additional content. And, for the most part, buying that app in the first place means that developer is happy to provide additional content to you for free throughout the product's active development lifecycle.

Not so with EA. They removed the original version of Tetris from the App Store before replacing it with the new version, meaning that even people who had already bought the original and wanted to take advantage of the new features had to pay again. Dishonest.

Couple that with the fact that the game has added compulsive, manipulative social game features such as an utterly meaningless "rank bar" and virtual currency — both of which you can pay real money to jack up at a higher rate — as well as a subscription option (for Tetris! Seriously!) and you get something altogether unpleasant.

Then there's Theme Park. Theme Park was a brilliant strategy/building game which many people would love to play again today in its original form. It doesn't need anything changing. But no — EA decided that it really needs to be a gameplay-free social game, complete with aforementioned compulsive, manipulative mechanics such as an XP bar and purchasable virtual currency. Not only that, though, but some of the rides in the game cost up to $100 of real money to purchase. Let that sink in for a moment. To buy certain attractions in Theme Park, you need to pay more than the cost of one and a half full-price console titles.

The trouble is, there are just enough idiots out there who have more money than sense who will pay these ludicrous prices just to be "the best". These people are unaffectionately known as "whales", for obvious reasons — and it only takes a few of them to make such a business strategy worthwhile.

In all, I'm pretty ashamed of EA right now, and have no desire to give them any of my money for the foreseeable future. The trouble I have is that they're swallowing up otherwise reputable companies like BioWare and forcing them to fit in with their shady business practices. I have no doubt that Mass Effect 3 will be a great game, but I also know that it will have an Online Pass, it will doubtless have a "robust post-release DLC strategy", it will surely cut out content from the main game to sell back to me at a later date, and it will almost certainly only be available on Origin for PC.

I long for the days when EA were the ones with the funny logo that looked like EOA, and they make games like M.U.L.E. and Racing Destruction Set. I know you can't go back, but you can move in a direction which doesn't make you look like you just want to squeeze your customers for every penny they've got, rather than provide them with quality entertainment.

In summary: sod off, EA. Get back to me when you've had some humble pie.

Talking Point: What do you do when a favourite developer (BioWare) is an cahoots with an organisation like EA? I like BioWare games, as I've said above. But I'm strongly tempted to not buy any more for the reasons outlined above. I certainly won't be purchasing anything from Origin and especially if it's an Origin exclusive. Competition is good. Removing your products from the competition (Steam) is not.

#oneaday Day 686: The Times, They Have Changed

Been playing a selection of games recently. Besides the bullet hell joy I mentioned yesterday, I've also been playing L.A. Noire on PC and Neverwinter Nights 2 along with a bunch of emulated games that were absolutely totally positively legal to download. Between these games, I've been getting a pretty diverse gaming experience, and it's also allowed me to reflect on how much gaming has changed over the years.

Let's focus specifically on Neverwinter Nights 2 for a moment. Structurally, it's relatively similar to the RPGs we see BioWare coming out with today (despite being developed by Obsidian) but the pacing is completely different to what we see in something like Mass Effect or even Dragon Age, its nearest "modern" equivalent.

Remember the fantasy cliche of the lead character starting as a farmhand or something and eventually becoming some sort of godslayer by the end of the game? That's pretty much what Neverwinter Nights 2 does. You start the game in a small wetlands village in the middle of nowhere, just as their annual Harvest Fair is taking place. And before anything exciting happens at all, you have to go around the fair, complete several mundane tasks and, in collaboration with your party members, complete a number of simple challenges to introduce you to the basics of combat, magic and the like.

It works well mechanically, but in terms of that immediate "BAM!" factor that draws you in to the game, it's somewhat lacking. Gamers looking for some sort of immediate gratification or heroics will probably find themselves disappointed for at least an hour or two before Plot Starts Happening.

It was the same in the earlier D&D titles like Baldur's Gate. The first couple of hours of Baldur's Gate were spent inside the walls of Candlekeep, doing errands for wizards and clearing out basements of rats. RPG cliche stuff — and the sort of thing we don't tend to find ourselves doing too much these days because people want to get straight to the heroics. And that's fair enough.

What the snail-like openings for these games do provide, though, is a brilliant sense of unease once you finally get out into the world to embark on your quest. You may have been able to best the local hard men in the Harvest Brawl, but what are you going to do when something that actually wants to kill you comes lurching at you?

The answer, in all likelihood, is die. This particular breed of RPG isn't afraid to kick your ass right up until about level 5 or so — only then do you start getting to a stage where you can hold your own in a fight. And you level a lot slower than you do in a JRPG.

This is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, early combats become an exercise in managing your very limited capabilities, and simple victories over wild creatures feel like you've achieved something. This is realistic. Imagine if a wolf attacked you right now. Would you be able to handle it? If you did manage to survive the encounter without your throat being torn out, you'd feel pretty badass, right? That's what happens in Neverwinter Nights 2.

The flip-side to this is that the second your curiosity gets the better of you and you wander blindly through a door you perhaps shouldn't, you're immediately confronted by a dude who shouts "I AM AN EVIL WIZARD!" and promptly proceeds to obliterate you with spells you won't be using for a good 40 hours yet. This, too, is realistic (leaving aside the whole "magic isn't real" thing) but is also immensely frustrating, particularly as the autosave system in Neverwinter Nights 2 and, indeed, the Baldur's Gate series is best described as "erratic" and "unpredictable". It's very easy to lose lots of progress because of one stupid act if you don't get into the habit of perpetually whacking that F12 (quicksave) key when things start looking a bit hairy.

Is this good or bad? It's certainly different. In playing Neverwinter Nights 2, I've had to adjust my mindset to a somewhat more "hardcore RPG" configuration. Rather than being able to charge in blindly to a situation, safe in the knowledge that if it all goes horribly wrong, I'll simply resume from a moment before the fight and try again, I have to think. I have to pause. I have to strategise. I usually have to turn off the Party AI function because the other characters are overly fond of running in to the middle of a large group of enemies before getting their appendages hacked off within a matter of seconds.

It's certainly a different approach. Frustrating AI aside, it makes you a much more cautious player, which is sort of fun. The Souls series is based on this concept, after all, though executed somewhat differently. It also means that when you do reach the high levels of badassdom, you really feel like you earned them, rather than the more gradual trickle-feed approach which JRPGs' rapid levelling provides.

It's an approach that won't be to everyone's taste — and those who crave the immediacy of modern games will likely switch off the game the first time they're downed by a pathetic skeleton minion, never to return. But perseverance and patience are key, and once you get your head around that, there's a rewarding experience to be had.

Neverwinter Nights 2's basic campaign is regarded by some as "not great" — particularly in comparison to its expansion packs, which are supposedly excellent — but I've been enjoying it so far. Already we have some strong characterisation in the party members — something Obsidian is always good at — and a few hints of what the Big Plot might be, though no sign of whatever the Big Bad might be as yet. I am still only on the game's first act, however, so there's plenty of time for epic stupidity to occur along the way, and I'll be looking forward to it.

In the meantime, there's bandits to kill, skeletons to shatter into pieces and zombies to get diseased by.

#oneaday Day 685: I'm In Hell

Bullet hell, that is.

Despite not being very good at them, bullet hell shooters are rapidly becoming one of my favourite genres to unwind with. Actually, "unwind" might not be quite the right word, given the sense of tension they tend to provoke, but… oh, I don't know. They're fun, all right?

Most recently, I've been playing Gundemonium Recollection, which is available on PSN and Steam. It's cheap, too — at about £8 for it and two other excellent shmups, it's certainly one of the more low-cost entries in the genre out there. Hell, even Cave's iPhone games cost more than that.

Not only does Gundemonium Recollection have a fabulous title, it also exemplifies many of the things that I — as a relative newcomer — believe are "typical" for the genre. We have a cute, big-eyed anime art style. We have lots and lots of bullets. We have game mechanics that go a little beyond "move" and "shoot" but not by much. And we have beautifully, wonderfully cheesy music.

The whole aesthetic is one of the things I find most endearing about the whole thing. Speak to your stereotypical dudebro about what constitutes a "hardcore" game and, depending on how into their games they are, you'll get all manner of different answers. They will likely involve either first person shooters or MOBA games, however, and almost certainly will feature the colour brown prominently. What they likely won't feature is 18th century anime girls with Old West-style revolvers flying through the sky and shooting down everything from things that look like Angry Birds to scantily-clad women with massive knockers sitting astride gigantic rocket launchers.

And yet, from experience, I know what the more hardcore game is.

You can get good at, say, Call of Duty or Halo relatively quickly, and certainly be able to beat the games on their Normal difficulties without too much, well, difficulty. They're friendly to short, quick-fire play sessions in multiplayer, and even the single player campaigns tend to be split into bite-size, episodic chunks, with you running from one setpiece to the next — in Call of Duty's case, perpetually following along behind an NPC who gets to have all the fun while you watch — towards an eventual, inevitable conclusion.

Gundemonium Recollection, meanwhile, is hard with a capital ARRRRRRGH. While the whole game is no more than about 15-20 minutes in length, as is typical for the genre, reaching the end of the game is a significant feat, particularly as you're encouraged to attempt it without continuing. And once you do manage to make it through to the end, you then have your score to consider. How can you pump it up? How can you maximise your scoring potential in each stage?

Bullet hell shooters are less mindless than their name suggests. The stereotypical "shmup" involves dodging up and down while hurling increasingly-ridiculous weaponry at incoming enemies. And yet in bullet hell shooters, the actual "shooting" side of things is the least important factor. The skill you have to practice is dodging all those bullets — no easy task, but successfully pulling it off makes you feel like a badass.

In fact, achieving anything in the game, whether it's progressing twenty seconds further than you did previously or beating your high score, makes you feel like a badass. There is, in fact, quite a comic juxtaposition between how badass you feel having achieved something in the game and the incredibly cute anime art style and music.

Such is the way of Japanese games, though. The culture of "gamer" (whatever that actually means) is significantly different over there, meaning we get little gems such as Gundemonium Recollection and its two sequels springing up out of nowhere and providing something infinitely more fun that Brown Shooty War-Bang Soldier of Duty XIV.

Assuming you don't mind failing. A lot. Perhaps that's the key difference. In a title like Gundemonium Recollection, you can fail. You can fail embarrassingly quickly if you suck as much as I do. Conversely, to go back to our earlier examples of supposedly "hardcore" Western games, there's little to no consequence for failure. Die in a single player Call of Duty level and you just restart from your last checkpoint. Lose a multiplayer match and you can just try again — it doesn't matter at all, because you still got XP and a little closer to the next batch of unlocks.

In practice, you're actually achieving much the same kind of thing in Gundemonium Recollection, only the progress you've made isn't necessarily reflected with perpetually-filling progress bars and unlocks. Rather, you're making progress with your own skills, improving your own abilities at playing the game, and as a natural extension of that, you'll be able to get further, score better, or take on the more frightening difficulty levels. (I haven't graduated off "Novice" yet, and still felt like a badass when I finally took down the final boss.)

So, then, the next time you describe yourself as a "hardcore gamer" to someone, just consider that somewhere out there there's someone playing a game about flying magical girls with revolvers who is infinitely more hardcore than you could ever hope to be.

#oneaday Day 684: The Great... You Know

I am depressed. That much is probably self-evident to those of you who have been following me for a while. Writing about it is often a cathartic experience, though talking about it in person is somewhat more difficult. That's why if you have ever met me face to face, you might not think anything was wrong. But there is, has been for a long time and probably will continue to be for a considerable period to come.

I shan't get into the specifics of this particular bout, as some of them are personal to me and I have no desire to share them or make them public — the whole "losing my job" thing is a contributing factor, but there are other things, too. What I did want to talk about was the effect of a visit from "Des", my own personal black cloud of despair, personified as, well, a big black cloud in the comics I did on this blog a while back (and will be returning to in the New Year).

Depression is different for everyone, and everyone copes with it differently. Some cope with it better than others. Others turn to self-destructive coping mechanisms which cause a spiral of upset both for themselves and — often unwittingly — the people around them. I'm not quite sure where I fall. My behaviour when I get depressed isn't conducive to feeling particularly better, but I don't abuse my body in any way — the closest I come to indulging in any kind of vice is going out and getting a coffee and a cake because I feel like I "deserve" one. That's probably not particularly helpful in and of itself, but it's a different kind of coping mechanism to drink, drugs or self-harm.

"Coping mechanism" is a bit of a misnomer, because very often, it doesn't involve much in the way of actual "coping". For me, when depression hits, it hits hard. I feel like a darkness has descended on me and all I want to do is lie down, close my eyes and let it engulf me. And it does. And once I'm in there, it's very difficult to get out again. Even if I open my eyes to eliminate the physical side of the "darkness", once it's wormed its way into my mind, it's very difficult to summon up the motivation to do anything — even move, at times. It takes an enormous strength of will to break out of that cycle — it sounds ridiculous, I know, but ten minutes before writing this post I was lying on my sofa simply staring into the middle distance, the occasional thought of "I should move" or "I should do something rather than just lying here" being quickly swatted away by a general feeling of complete and total apathy towards everything. The feeling of wanting to cry came and went several times, as did the sense of frustration at the fact that there wasn't one concrete "cause" of the way I was feeling to do something about, or lash out at. Eventually I succeeded in my Will check and managed to lift myself up and muster the strength to sit down and write this.

I'm not sure if writing this is actually helping matters or hindering them. I'm not sure if sharing this sort of thing is a good idea. But getting these difficult thoughts out of my head is my main "coping mechanism", and the way in which I can do that most ably is through writing. Talking is good, too, but that carries with it its own particular set of unique anxieties, too, whereas while I'm writing, it's just me and the blank page in front of me, the words falling into place and explaining the feelings I'm experiencing.

I have never been to the doctor about depression. Actually, that's not quite true. Towards the end of my first stint teaching in UK classrooms (music, secondary) I eventually reached "breaking point" one day. Behaviour of the class was just so appalling that I had to walk out of the room and immediately burst into tears. I was swiftly escorted into the nearby Arts office in the drama department and plied with soothing words. They didn't help. I needed to get out. I left that school that day and didn't come back, getting signed off by my doctor at the time for "work-related stress", which is exactly what it was. Had I not taken that step to say "whoa there, this is too much to handle", I'm not sure I'd be writing this now.

Since then, I haven't returned to the doctors — for anything, in fact, let alone depression. The problem is, I don't know if it would help, were I to show up and say "I think I'm depressed". I don't particularly want to go on medication as that carries with it its whole own set of considerations, and the prospect of counselling makes me concerned about money — particularly as I'm now out of a job. And beyond that, the suggestions are always the same — eat well, get exercise. I know all that, and most of the time I am doing all that.

Depression is an uphill struggle, and every time you reach what looks like the summit you get a period of respite. But before long you're climbing again, scrabbling frantically for a foothold. The goal is always the same: to lift yourself into the clear blue skies above the cloud layer, free from all the darkness below. Some people manage it. Others aren't so lucky.

As for me, I'm a fighter. I'll keep going. I'll get through this shitty period, just like I've got through every previous shitty period in my life. And doubtless there will be more in the future. I just wish I was one of those people who can laugh off adversity and see every annoyance as a new challenge to overcome, rather than a spike trap smacking you repeatedly in the face, sort of like this:

Unfortunately, I very much fall into the latter camp.

#oneaday Day 683: Debrief

So, for the last 30 days I've been doing (almost) nothing but creative writing on here. What have we learned?

Firstly, I remembered that creative writing is fun. Not that I'd particularly forgotten that fact, but I've always enjoyed it, ever since a young age. It's actually knuckling down and doing it that can be the stumbling block for many, though — which is, I guess, what projects like NaNoWriMo and what I was doing here are all about. Once you discipline yourself to do something, then you can do it, no problem — over the course of the last 30 days I've churned out over 30,000 words of creativity. Whether or not they're any good is another matter, of course — but they're there, and once they're there, they can become a starting point to something else, even if that "something else" turns out to be something completely different, simply spurred on by what you've achieved previously.

Secondly, improvisatory storytelling is fun, although not necessarily the most practical way to write something coherent. As I said at the start of the whole exercise, I hadn't planned anything out, created any characters, settings or overarching plot — I was making things up as I went along. This was probably evident from any number of plot holes that I'm sure are still in there, and points where I retroactively made something relevant, perhaps not in the way I'd originally intended. Why? Because when I originally wrote something, I'd had one thing in mind, only to come up with a Brilliant New Idea a couple of days later that made the original something either irrelevant or very difficult to fit in to things.

Thirdly, tenses are a bugger. I made a conscious decision once I introduced Evie's narrative to distinguish the two narrators through their use of tense, but it was so easy to naturally shift to the wrong one throughout the course of one chapter. I'm pretty sure I spotted it every time it happened, but if there are a few examples of incorrect tenses, then I apologise.

Fourthly, I already knew this, but stream of consciousness is a fun way to explore characters. With stream of consciousness writing, you can create an interesting, compelling character and narrative without any other characters being present. The majority of Adam's story was just him, for example, and Evie didn't speak much until later. The characters' internal monologues can provide interesting ways to explore the way they think and feel without having to have conversations with others to make things explicit.

I picked up on the whole "stream of consciousness" thing back at school when we read Jean Rhys' Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea, a book which explores exactly what happened to Mrs Rochester before she became the scary woman in the attic. I can't remember a huge amount about the book itself, but many things I've written since that time have taken the first person stream of consciousness approach, as it's a style in which I enjoy writing. Other influential books from my past include the Adrian Mole series — diary-style writing is often pretty similar to stream of consciousness, after all, though there has to be something of a suspension of disbelief at times as few real diaries would include complete word-for-word transcriptions of conversations that had happened — and (don't laugh) John Grisham's The Rainmaker, which was the first book I ever read that wasn't written in past tense.

On the whole, I'd say the experiment was a success. Tucked away in my Google Docs account right now is 14,455 words of another story I'm writing — and this one I have mostly planned out, or at least have some "key events" and characters in mind. One day I might actually get around to finishing it — and since I find myself with a bit of free time on my hands at the moment, I guess there's no time like the present. As such, assuming no-one suddenly phones/emails me on Monday and hires me, I will start doing a bit of (non-blog) writing each day in lieu of having an actual job. Who knows? Something awesome might come of it. At the very least, a creative project which has been on my drawing board for about a bajillion years might finally come to fruition, which will be satisfying. And, frankly, given some of the dross out there which does make it to publication, I'm pretty sure I can do better. I mean, I know I'm not the perfect writer — no-one is, and to assume so is both arrogant and very, very stupid — but I like to think I'm pretty good, at the very least. And also, you only get better through practice, right?

The one thing I can say about the last year is that I've got a ton of experience writing. I mean, I know I did the year before too, what with contributing to sites like Kombo and GamesAreEvil as well as writing this nonsense every day, but this year it's been my actual full-time job, and for the vast majority of that time I've had the privilege of working with some talented editors who know their craft and give good feedback. Too many outlets these days settle for getting things published as quickly as possible rather than taking their time over ensuring everything is as good as it can be. This year, I've picked up a bunch of little tips to ensure good-quality output. Even if I've had to spend the whole year professionally spelling words like "theorise" and "colour" incorrectly. (Love you, USA.)

So, where to from here? We'll see. It's a weekend coming up (it is, right? Losing one's job causes one to immediately lose all sense of what day it is, in my experience.) so that will be spent attempting to relax and unwind after, frankly, what has been a particularly crappy week. Following that, on Monday, as I say, I'll be setting aside some time to do some non-blog writing every day in lieu of actual work, and seeing how that develops. And from there, who knows?

On the job front, there are several irons in the fire at the moment, so hopefully something will come of (at least) one of them. Now I have a bunch of experience under my belt, hopefully I won't find myself spending a year out of work again. Because that sucked a big pile of donkey dick. An actual pile of it. And I have no desire to return to that situation. So I won't.

Hopefully, anyway.

Enough rambling from me. Have a pleasant weekend, all.

#oneaday Day 682: Wasteland Diaries, Final Part

[Read from the start. If, you know, you want to. Excuse any typos or errors along the way — this was written along the lines of NaNoWriMo: get it done, (maybe) fix it later. It was also mostly written at ungodly hours in the middle of the night. AND NOW THE CONCLUSION.]

I have come to a decision, and I'm ready to stick to it and live with the consequences, whatever they might be. It's a scary moment, but also a liberating one. By freeing myself from uncertainty and committing to a course of action, I feel that I can positively move forward and take on the future head-on.

Earlier in the morning, Clarkson had called me and said that Adam wanted to see me. I'd had an instinctive feeling when I woke up that today would be an important day, and that feeling's only been growing ever since then.

I've made an effort. I've done my hair, put on a little makeup for the first time in I can't remember how long, and I've found something nice to wear rather than PJs or a horrible, faded old T-shirt. If it's a big day, I should look the part, and to do so I've found a dress I always liked. I've lost a bit of weight ever since all this started, so it hangs a little loosely in some parts, but it stays up, at least, and is probably the most respectable thing I own.

I set off down the street in the direction of the hospital, wondering how the day will unfold. While I've committed to my own course of action, I'm well aware I'm only one of two people in this scenario, and it's entirely possible that things might not go the way I expect. In the end, nothing is certain.

I stop proceeding down that chain of thought because it leads to hesitation, uncertainty and nervousness, none of which I can afford right now. This chapter of my life ends today, and I'm not going to let self-doubt stand in the way of all that. I will do my part to strive towards the future I want, and then I'll just have to see what happens.

It starts drizzling with rain as I walk down the street and, inevitably, I've forgotten an umbrella. Fortunately, the rain doesn't built to the levels it has in the past few days, but it still soaks my hair, putting it at severe risk of doing that fuzzy thing it always does in damp conditions. I may as well have not bothered sorting it out.

I quicken my pace and before long have arrived at the hospital. I follow the familiar path up to Adam's room, and find Clarkson waiting outside for me.

"Hello, Evie," he says, a serious expression on his face. "Go on in, he's awake."

I push open the door and walk into the dimly-lit room. Adam is lying in the bed, propped up into an almost-natural sitting position. He looks tired, still.

"Hi," he says, his voice cracked and weak. "Glad you're here."

"Me too," I say, sitting down in the chair next to him and taking his hand. "I–"

"Wait," he croaks, interrupting me. "Please, let me talk first."

"Okay," I say.

"Evie," he says. "I've come to a realisation after the very strange experiences I've had."

He pauses, swallows and licks his lips before continuing.

"After you… told me you weren't ready to be a mother, I jumped to a conclusion," he says. "I jumped to the conclusion that it was all about me. That you didn't want me, that you didn't see a future with us both in it."

"That's not what I thought at all," I say quietly. "But I understand why you thought that, and why you did what you did. I'm sorry I did what I did in the way I did. I'm sorry — I'm sorry I killed our baby."

He smiles and shakes his head.

"When I ran from you, I felt like the world had been destroyed," he says. "I felt like you were the one who had destroyed it. Everything ceased to have meaning, and I felt that there was no place for me in a world like that. Everything, everyone was dead to me."

He pauses and coughs a little. I move to help him, but he just shakes his head, dismissing me. I sit back down again.

"I know now that I was wrong," he growls, his voice weakening. "I know now that it wasn't you who was being selfish, it was me."

There's a silence for a moment. I can't deny it, even with the guilt I feel over causing all this.

"It wasn't your fault," he says, as if reading my thoughts. "You didn't cause this. I did. My own stubbornness, my own stupidity."

I see his eyes filling with tears. I let him speak.

"You weren't the one who ended my world," he says, "I was the one who ended yours. I've put you through all this. I've made you suffer. And for what? It's not fair. I can't keep doing that to you. I can't ruin your life any more. I can't hold you down. I can't keep you back. You're not my property. You're not mine to command."

He changed. He's like a different person. No — he's like the person I first fell in love with, not the hollow wreck of a man who'd been plummeting towards rock bottom even before all this happened. It's good to see him back again. And a feeling of relief sweeps through my mind.

"No," I say, smiling. "I'm not. But I've learned something, too. What we are is a team. We work together. We decide things together. Neither of us has to be alone. Neither of us has to make the difficult decisions by ourselves. What's done is done, and I hope you can forgive me, but I can assure you it will never happen again."

"I know," he says, quietly. "You were the one who led me back to reality, Evie. By following you, that's why I'm here. You were the whole reason for my journey. You saved me, whether or not you intended to."

"What journey?" I say. "What do you mean?"

He smiles and closes his eyes. I feel his fingers wrap around mine.

"This is the end," he says. "And the beginning, all at once."

#oneaday Day 681.5: RIP GamePro

[Apologies for the interruption to the ongoing story — it will end tomorrow. This needed to be said today, though.]

Today, an era came to an end, as the announcement came that GamePro in its current form would be no more as of December 5, 2011. Both the website and the new quarterly magazine have been shuttered, and all of us on staff suddenly find ourselves without a job. The GamePro brand itself will be folded into PC World, where it will most likely die a quiet death, unnoticed.

This is, of course, suckitude of the highest magnitude, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. It is tough times in the super-competitive publishing industry, particularly in the overcrowded video games market. I shan't pretend to understand the business reasons behind the closure of GamePro when we were enjoying viewing figures the likes of which the site had never seen — but it seems to be something of a sad truth in today's games journalism industry that nothing lasts forever. If you want job security, it ain't the sector you should get yourself into.

What has been touching is the amount of support people have shown for GamePro on Twitter and various other social networks today. The magazine and site was a lot more widely-known than I thought — at times I'd wondered if UK journos and industry types were even aware of it — and everyone, it seems, was sorry to see the back of what had, after all, been a fixture in gamer culture for many, many years, particularly in the U.S.

GamePro, of course, has personal meaning to me, too. My brother spent ten months giving both the magazine and its web presence a much-needed shakeup (see his blog post today for more) and made it something that was interesting and relevant to the modern gamer. And once he left and I had the opportunity to jump in on news reporting duties, I know my contributions played a part in the site's growing success — growth that has been sadly cut short by today's news.

While I'd never met many of the GamePro team face to face, it was a close-knit bunch of people who got on well together, from what I could make out, anyway! I felt like a valuable member of the team despite being halfway across the world, and I always felt like my hard work was appreciated — which is why I continued to work so hard and contribute as much quality content as I could to the site. I made a distinct effort to not cover the same stories that all the big news blogs did — that's counter-productive. Rather, I took inspiration from sources such as GameSetWatch (which, coincidentally, also died today), Kill/Screen and numerous others to dig up interesting nuggets of information on fascinating indie titles, peculiar happenings in gamer culture and opportunities for discussion and debate. I was happy with the approach; I feel it gave GamePro a unique take on the news which wasn't just a case of rewriting press releases and rewording stories from other sites. And on the occasions where I did write stories based on press releases, I made a conscious effort to actually write a story rather than just reword the press release. I'd read up on the background of the companies involved, find out precedents for interesting events and throw in some interesting trivia if I had some to hand.

And now it's all over. I'm sorry to see GamePro go, but I'm hopeful that the staff will be able to find themselves suitably awesome positions to move on to. As for me? I couldn't say. Working for an American site has been a great deal of fun but it's had the side-effect that I'm known more in the States than I am in my own country. While I'd hope my experience and output would speak for itself regardless of the geographical location of the site on which it was published, I do wonder which side of the pond any future writing gigs might come from.

With that, then, ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses and toast the late GamePro. You'll be missed.

#oneaday Day 681: Wasteland Diaries, Part 29

She was there, and talking, and I heard her, and then she was gone and I felt sleepy. I drifted off into slumber, but this wasn't like it had been before. This was restful and relaxing. When I woke up, I felt invigorated, though my body still felt stiff, and unable to move, and I was still strapped to an array of beeping, whirring machines.

An older guy with a kindly face came in to see me. I recognised his voice, though I wasn't sure from where. He did some tests. I felt him fumbling around on my body, but it didn't hurt. I wasn't sure exactly what he was doing as I couldn't lift my head up to see.

"Don't worry," he said to me. "You're probably feeling a little disorientated right now. And that's perfectly normal. So is that feeling of numbness and stiffness in all your limbs. You haven't moved for a good long time."

I tried to reply, but no sound came out.

"You keep resting," he said. "You'll be fine from here."

I wanted to believe him. This room that I was in was claustrophobic, and being stuck on my back wired up to gadgets and gizmos wasn't helping me. I felt anxious, and suddenly keen to be outside.

I wasn't even sure where "here" was. The memories of my desperate flight up the stairs away from the beast were still with me, though details were fading. Had that really happened?

I frowned. Feeling in my face was starting to come back, so I wiggled my eyebrows comically as I pondered the meaning of what had transpired. I must have looked ridiculous, but fortunately the man had left by this point.

I was confused. What was real, and what was fake? She had been a prominent part of what I'd just been through, but then she was there when I woke up too, and it didn't seem to add up.

I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. I felt as if parts of my body were slowly coming back to life. The sensation was distracting enough to divert my thoughts away from the confusion of my situation. I twitched my toes and my fingertips, though moving whole limbs still felt like an impossible task. I moved my nose in a sneer, and back down again, and wiggled my eyebrows again for good measure. I opened my mouth and tried to make a sound, but my throat was so dry it simply came out as a zombie-like gargling. I wanted to laugh at how absurd I must look right now, but it too much effort.

I heard the door go again and opened my eyes. I tried to move my neck, but it didn't go anywhere. Before long, the older guy's face was before me again. I think he was sitting or kneeling next to the bed on which I lay.

"Adam," he said. "Welcome back. I'm sure you're very confused, and you have many questions, and equally are finding it very difficult to answer them right now. So let me try and explain what has been happening to you.

"You have been in a coma for some time now. You took one hell of an overdose, but fortunately your ladyfriend was able to call for an ambulance and get you here in time to save you. She wasn't with you when it happened, as you'd had a falling-out, but you'd sent her a text message — a technological suicide note, as it were. She did the right thing and saved your life by calling us straight away.

"Since that time, you've been unconscious. We've been monitoring you closely, and it's clear that your brain was very active during that time — dreaming, in a sense. Not all coma patients dream — it depends on how much damage the brain has suffered, if any. But we could tell that your brain was still alive and well, if not what was going on."

A dream? That would explain the vagueness of the memories I have of what I've been through, and why they're fading so quickly.

"Evie came to see you almost every day," he continued. "She never gave up on you. She'd spend time with you, talk to you, read to you. She gave up her life for you. It's not often you see that amount of commitment to another person."

"Guilty," I eventually managed to murmur in a choked voice. "But… My fault."

"No-one's to blame," he replied. "Or if either of you are, there's no sense in assigning blame at this point. You've reached the end of one thing and the beginning of another. This is a turning point. Whatever happened before doesn't have to matter now. You can start afresh — if you want to, of course."

Although details of my long journey were slowly disappearing into the darkest recesses of my memory as we spoke, I still recalled the conversation I'd had with Evie over that table, and how I'd responded to her admission.

"ALPHA AND OMEGA WILL UNITE," that strange text message had said. It had stuck in my mind because of how unusual and out of place it was, but now I understood.

The beginning and end will unite. It meant so many things. What I had thought would be the beginning of a new life with Evie and the baby turned out to be the end of everything. The end of the world was the beginning of my journey. The end of my journey was made up of the events which had caused it to begin in the first place. And now that chapter of my life was ending, causing a new one to begin.

I was ready to face that future. But was Evie?

As I felt my strength returning and my body awakening after its long slumber, I knew that the next day would be the true day of reckoning.