2118: Mini Metro

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A new release on Steam caught my eye earlier today: one Mini Metro, an abstract puzzle game based around the idea of subway systems. Feeling like taking a punt on something unusual, I downloaded it and was delighted to discover a simple to understand but tricky to master puzzle game with some highly original, interesting mechanics and a gorgeous, clean aesthetic.

Mini Metro places you in charge of the subway system of one of several cities around the world. The city itself doesn't make a huge amount of difference save for the map on which the gameplay is based: most of them have some sort of body of water which will require you to construct tunnels or bridges to traverse, and you only have a limited number of these to use.

The mechanics are simple: stations appear across the map, represented as large shapes. At each station, small shapes appear to represent commuters. The shape of the commuter represents the station they want to get to. They're not fussy about which one of several identical stations they get to, but they most certainly do want to get to, say, a "triangle" station. In order to fulfil their requests, you need to draw coloured subway lines between the stations in order to set up efficient routes. You begin with just a couple of available colours, but as each in-game "week" passes, you have the option of adding more lines to your network — though you have to be careful, as if you don't have an actual train to put on the line, it's not much good to anyone!

London (1138)

As the game progresses, more and more stations appear and the map zooms out to expand the available playing area. Certain stations may be replaced by unique symbols such as stars or pentagons, too, forcing you to ensure that these stations have good access from all lines, or at least a relatively straightforward route of interchanges to use. In order to manage with the growing requirements of your city's commuters, each "week" you get a new locomotive to add to your network, as well as the choice between either a new colour of line to add or an extra carriage to add to one of your trains, improving its capacity. Using these upgrades effectively is key to success just as much as laying out your lines carefully.

There's a few different ways to play, too: the standard mode simply ends when one of your stations becomes overcrowded, the endless mode keeps playing regardless of overcrowding, and the Extreme mode forces you to live with your mistakes, as unlike the normal mode you are unable to edit your lines or trains once you've put them down. There's also a Daily Challenge mode, where everyone gets the same level to play on a given day, and competes for the best ranking on leaderboards.

I've only played about an hour of Mini Metro so far, but I anticipate it being one of those games I dip into every so often when I have a few spare minutes to while away. It's an understated, fun little game with some excellent mechanics and a lovely aesthetic, and if you're a fan of more abstract games it's well worth a look.

2117: Preparing for the Coming Darkness

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The preliminary patch notes for the long-awaited Version 3.1 of Final Fantasy XIV were released earlier today, and there's a lot to take in!

Main Scenario

Heavensward's main scenario was satisfyingly complete, with a wonderful final boss fight. But, in the best tradition of Final Fantasy XIV to date, it teased a coming storm, specifically involving a "Warrior of Darkness", who is presumably intended to be some sort of dark counterpart to our own player characters, the Warrior of Light.

Yoshi-P spoke in a Japanese language interview recently in a bit more detail about 3.1 and what to expect from the main scenario. It seems like the game will be moving away from the completely linear main scenario quest it's had to date, and will instead have a number of concurrent storylines. The reason for this is partly practical — parallel storylines afford the opportunity for the devs to unlock group content a bit more quickly rather than relying on linear main story progress — and partly to allow the story to develop in a few different directions simultaneously. It should also — hopefully, anyway — discourage people from skipping the (actually really good, well-written) main scenario quests just so they can get at the new dungeons/trials/whatevers.

Anyway. I'm not yet sure where the main scenario will be taking us, but it's clear we'll be seeing more of the shadowy Ascians, who are the Recurring Bad Guys You Never Actually Defeat that you always need in an MMO. We'll also be seeing the Warrior of Darkness, presumably, and perhaps visiting some strange and wonderful locales. Given that Heavensward appears to be heavily inspired by Final Fantasy IV, it's entirely possible we'll be taking a trip to the moon at some point, though exactly how that will be implemented remains to be seen, particularly as there's still a whole lot of Hydaelyn left to explore.

Dungeons

As I've previously noted, the fact that there are only two new dungeons in 3.1 was initially disappointing to me, but hopefully they should be good fun. The Arboretum dungeon in particular sounds like it has the potential to be interesting and challenging, and Pharos Sirius (Hard) apparently has a bunch of surprises in store; it's not just a run from the top of the lighthouse down to the bottom, as its appearance in the recent trailer seemed to indicate.

On the raid front, the Void Ark 24-man raid dungeon will doubtless be a highlight. It looks like it will have a suitably menacing atmosphere that's a bit different from other dungeons we've seen to date. It also sounds as if there will be some sort of diverging path mechanic, where the three 8-man parties will split off in different directions to do different things at the same time. Whether this is similar to the Atomos fight in Labyrinth of the Ancients, which simply involved three groups doing the same thing in different places at the same time, or something more ambitious remains to be seen. Either way, I'm looking forward to it a great deal — particularly as we're making a big effort to try and get a full 24-person Free Company run going the weekend after the patch.

Trials

Thordan Extreme, or rather The Minstrel's Ballad: Thordan's Reign is the big highlight here. A reprise of the formula from The Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane, Thordan's Reign is a more difficult version of Heavensward's spectacular but disappointingly easy final boss fight. Supposedly its difficulty is tuned somewhere between the current Extreme primals Bismarck and Ravana, and the current "Savage" raid dungeon Alexander, though it was also compared to the notorious Turn 9, still regarded as one of the most difficult fights in the game, even when playing with unsynced item and character levels.

Thordan's Reign will apparently be a ten-phase fight, making it sound as if it will be one of the most complicated fights in the game to learn, depending on how complex each individual phase is. To put this in context, the previous most difficult fights in the game had considerably fewer phases: Turn 5 had five, Turn 9 had four, Turn 13 had four, though each of these phases had a number of different mechanics that had to be dealt with appropriately. It's entirely possible that each "phase" of Thordan's Reign will have just one or two different mechanics at a time, but we shall see!

The Diadem

This is the bit I'm most interested in: the Exploration Missions, in which you fly off in an airship (either borrowed from Ishgard or belonging to your Free Company) to explore floating islands in the sky. Once there, you have 90 minutes to piss about with up to 71 other people, killing monsters, finding treasure, gathering goodies and completing objectives. The rewards are worthwhile, too; Tomestones of Esoterics will be awarded for completing objectives, and treasure chests dropped by monsters will contain item level 210 equipment, which is theoretically among some of the best in the game, though their randomised secondary stats will make them either amazing or useless for anything other than spiritbonding.

The reason I'm most excited about The Diadem is that it's probably the most significant shakeup to Final Fantasy XIV's structure since the launch of A Realm Reborn. Up until now, the game has followed a fairly standard formula: solo content in the open world, group content in linear instances, occasional group open world activities such as FATEs and Hunts. The Diadem occupies a curious space somewhere between an instanced dungeon and open world content; the area you're in is instanced and time-limited like a dungeon or trial, but there may be other players in there at the same time as you and your friends, and the structure is inherently more open-ended than the extremely linearly designed dungeons and trials. In other words, a trip to The Diadem will not be something you can "learn" and then perform by rote like the current dungeons and trials — not that there's anything wrong with that format! — but rather, hopefully anyway, will provide a degree of randomness that will make things interesting to revisit time and time again.

Relic

The new Relic — known as an Anima weapon — isn't launching with 3.1, but is instead coming a month later in 3.15. The previous Relic quest was one of the most notoriously time-consuming activities in the game, intended to be an alternative route to getting one of the best weapons in the game for those who didn't want to — or weren't able to — raid. We know next to nothing about what the new Relic questline will involve as yet, but you can probably count on it involving grinding, revisiting old content, completing objectives and a shared sense of camaraderie with your companions as you're gradually driven mad by what initially appears to be a completely unreasonable, unmanageable set of expectations.

Despite being at times irritating and demoralising, the original Relic quest was ultimately extremely satisfying, as it's the most convincing "build your own lightsaber" moment I've experienced in any game. This was a single weapon that you kept hold of for a long time, gradually improving bit by bit until it was a force to be reckoned with… and eventually transformed into something even more impressive. Doubtless the new weapon will be a similar situation — and those who made the effort to get a Relic weapon all the way to its final "Zeta" form will be rewarded with being able to skip about 10 hours' worth of grinding, apparently, so that's nice. (Of course, it took quite a bit more than 10 hours to make said Zeta, but any bonus is better than no bonus in this instance!)

Gold Saucer

The new addition to the Manderville Gold Saucer is the interesting-looking real-time strategy game Lord of Verminion. This appears to be a surprisingly well fleshed out game in which there's finally a use for all the collectable minions everyone has been racking up over time. Each minion has its own element, stats and abilities, and they're thrown into virtual combat against either the CPU or another player as you attempt to smash up your opponent's structures before they do the same to you. It will be really interesting to see if the player base takes to this, or if it ultimately becomes little more than an idle distraction.

Gold Saucer is also finally being added to the Challenge Log, allowing a much easier means of acquiring MGP for the Gold Saucer's exclusive rewards, most of which are primarily intended for vanity purposes. Simply adding things like the minigames to the Challenge Log will hopefully encourage people to party in the Gold Saucer once again, as when it launched, it was a whole lot of fun, but these days it seems a little bit dead, since people have mostly moved on.

—

Patch 3.1 is out next Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it a lot, and I'm also looking forward to the inevitable surge of people coming back to the game to check it out, too; hopefully I'll see some people I haven't had the chance to play with for a while. Doubtless I shall be gushing further thoughts on 3.1 over these pages once I've had the chance to play around with it a bit, so Please Look Forward To It.

2116: Another Day, Another Instance of Games Journalism's Slide Into the Toilet

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Regular readers will know that bad games journalism is an absolute pet hate of mine. The reasons for this are numerous: respect for what my brother did during his tenure at PC Zone, EGM, 1up.com, GamePro and Gamespot; my own experiences in the industry — both trying to do the best job I possibly could and being forced out of it against my will; a desire to see good quality writing about games rather than cheap, lazy clickbait; and a desire to see games respected as the form of artistic expression that they are.

As such, I make no apologies for frequent ranty posts on how awful modern games journalism is in 2015, whether it's atrocious, prejudiced reviews of games that the reviewer has no interest in, outright insults and abuse towards particular subcultures and audiences, or, in today's case, pieces that simply shouldn't have been published, full stop.

Before you go any further, do please take a look at this article from VG247.

For those who are unfamiliar with VG247, allow me to put it in some context. VG247 is one of the larger, more successful, more active video games news sites that are based in the United Kingdom. With the death of CVG (formerly Computer and Video Games, one of the original games magazines from back in the '80s) VG247 is, along with Eurogamer, one of the few remaining UK-based gaming sites that are still putting out regular content as an actual proper business, making money and paying their employees and everything.

VG247 is, for the most part, a site that is quick with news stories, and certainly used to be a reliable secondary source when I was covering the news beat. It is, however, also a site that published a spectacularly unprofessional rant from one of its writers about how angry she was that a preview version of a PS4 game didn't have any playable female characters, along with a site that frequently publishes the self-indulgent ramblings of its founder and editor-in-chief Patrick Garratt, who clearly very much wants to be a modern creative fiction writer rather than someone who pays his bills by writing about silly old video games.

This latest piece — the work of Garratt, so unbeholden to the whims of a "superior" and consequently free of any sort of accountability — is, I think, a new low for the site. Entitled What it's like to get stoned and watch Uncharted 4, WiLD and Dreams dev sessions in Paris, the piece is ostensibly an attempt to put an interesting spin on coverage from last week's Paris Games Week event, interesting spin in question supposedly being the author's intoxication at the hands of "some brutal hash".

Whether or not Garratt was actually stoned when he wrote the piece is kind of besides the point — I get the impression from his distinctly arrogant responses in the comments beneath the article that he wasn't, and that the whole thing was some sort of elaborate trolling attempt — because the fact remains that, intoxicated or not, this is an absolutely atrocious piece of writing. It's disjointed, it barely has a structure and it reads like a page of notes rather than something that has actually been written up into an article. To its credit, it does at least mention some things about the games in question — unlike Polygon's dreadful Rock Band 4 preview from a month or two ago, where the author was more concerned about sipping his fizzy water and contemplating the political situation in the Phillipines than actually paying any attention to the game in question — but it's still just plain bad.

I'd ponder how and why this got published, but I've already answered that by revealing who the piece's author was. Garratt clearly doesn't have a lot of respect for this sort of event, carefully PR managed as they tend to be, and consequently seems to be demonstrating that lack of respect through something that reads worse than the crap the kids I used to teach at "challenging" schools used to scrawl in their English books. By initially making the assumption that Garratt actually was stoned when he wrote the piece, doubtless I fell victim to his trolling, but the fact is, it's not particularly effective trolling in the first place because it's not at all clear what point — if any — he's trying to make.

Games are art; I'm not willing to broker any sort of discussion on this any more. Games should be treated with respect when you're writing about them. This doesn't mean that you can't have fun or write "experiential" pieces about them — in fact, some of the most powerful pieces of writing about games describe the way interactive entertainment makes the player think and feel. But Garratt's piece here isn't any of those things; it's just a jumbled, garbled mess of words that doesn't go anywhere, say anything or have anything to add to the global conversation about games. It's not successfully criticising anything and it's not celebrating anything. And this is something that passes as "acceptable" on one of the few big sites that is still standing while others are dropping like flies.

To preemptively respond to any sort of criticism I might get for pointing this sort of thing out: yes, I am fucking bitter about the way I left the industry, because it came without warning one morning, and the more time passes, the more I feel I was lied to about the reasons I was pushed out. I put my heart and soul into the things I wrote about for Kombo, GamePro, USgamer and all of the other outlets I've contributed to over the years; I made a real effort, and I produced numerous pieces that I'm genuinely proud of. And to see that all that effort I made was for naught; that I — someone who treated every game I wrote about with respect, whether it was Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games for Wii, Time and Eternity for PlayStation 3 or The Fruit of Grisaia for PC — should be pushed out of the work I loved while Garratt is able to get away with posting unfiltered garbage like this — and even celebrated by an army of sycophants presumably desperate for freelancing opportunities on Twitter — is genuinely upsetting, painful and downright insulting.

It saddens me that modern games journalism has become such a joke. And it's nothing to do with GamerGate or anything like that; something has been rotten for the last few years, long before any Internet activists decided to band together and start pushing back against the things they didn't want to see any more. Knowing how much effort my brother put into turning sites like 1up.com into places that gamers could genuinely call "home" online, and how much effort I put in in my ultimately unsuccessful attempts to follow in his footsteps… it really does make me both sad and angry that the things both of us — and numerous others like us — did were ultimately useless, fruitless efforts. What we're left with now on the commercial side of games journalism is an insult to those who actually cared about and respected gaming enough to want to write about it for a living — not to mention an insult to the many hard-working people who toil to make ever more spectacular pieces of interactive entertainment to keep us happy for hundreds of hours at a time.

I sincerely hope that dedicated, enthusiastic small-scale sites like NicheGamer, Operation Rainfall, Digitally Downloaded and their ilk can make use of this opportunity to show readers that nonsensical gibberish or clickbait is not the only way; there is scope for intelligent, passionate writing about games that treats both its audience and the subject matter with respect. And I sincerely hope that readers will put their money where their mouth is and support efforts like this however they possibly can. Because shit like Garratt's piece here — and others like it — is simply unacceptable. It's terrible writing that serves no purpose other than to fuel the author's ego — the same could be said of this blog, of course, but then I'm not making any money from it, nor am I attempting to position this blog as any sort of professional news source — and has absolutely no place in the modern industry.

Unfortunately, with the number of people happily sucking Garratt's dick on Twitter over this article — not to mention the apologists and defence force in his comments section — I don't see the situation changing any time soon.

What can we do? Serious question…

2115: Jade Penetrate

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Had a go at a game that's been loitering in my Steam library for a while today: eXceed 3rd Jade Penetrate Black Package. This curiously named game is the third in a series of Japanese indie "bullet hell" shoot 'em ups that I grabbed in some Steam sale or other and have never really explored all that much. The first two games are rather Touhou-ish, while the third, developed by a different team and having a plot that seemingly has absolutely nothing to do with the first two, draws favourable comparisons to Cave's Mushihimesama series — that, coincidentally, is coming to Steam tomorrow.

Anyway. This being a Japanese game there is a plot where you perhaps wouldn't normally expect to find one, involving some sort of "to the death" tournament between what appear to be dragon girls aiming to rule over Pandemonium. As you might expect, angst and melodrama ensues and while none of it really matters to the actual game as such, the character designs are cute, the voice acting is decent and it infuses the game with a certain degree of personality that it might not otherwise have had.

The thing I like about eXceed 3rd is that it's not the kind of bullet hell game that immediately slams your face into a desk and then flushes your head down the toilet. It's accessible and easy to understand, though to get the highest scores you'll need to be a little more technical. There's just two modes of fire — a standard spread shot and a focused attack, which also doubles as a "precise movement" mode — along with the usual bombs, plus a super-powerful special attack. This charges up over time, but can also be charged by grazing bullets, collecting items and various other means.

Boss fights are split into clear and obvious phases, each with memorable names that assist with the learning process that is so important to this kind of game. In many ways, the boss battles are very much the focal point of the game, with the popcorn enemies during the main part of the level being more "filler" than anything else — though there are still some interesting bullet patterns to navigate through before you can challenge the stage's boss.

As is so often the case with Japanese indie games, eXceed 3rd runs at an incredibly low resolution — 640×480 — which means it will display on pretty much any screen and run at 60fps without too much difficulty. And as is so often the case with Japanese indie games, because eXceed 3rd has been specifically designed for this low resolution, it still manages to look good despite being technically inferior to pretty much everything else in the modern PC gaming market. The attractive, fluid visuals combine with an absolutely rockin' soundtrack to produce a shmup that really gets the pulse racing — exactly as it should be.

I don't feel I've played the game enough to comment in any more detail on it just yet, but I enjoyed the little I played earlier, and am looking forward to investigating it further. Pewpewpew!

2114: Million-Dollar Question

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In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Million-Dollar Question."

"Why do you blog?"

I've answered this question before numerous times on these very pages, but it certainly doesn't hurt to contemplate it again, particularly for the benefit of those who have only found me recently and are disinclined to trawl through over 2,100 previous posts to find previous answers.

I blog for numerous reasons. Mostly habit, to be perfectly honest; after 2,114 days of writing something each and every day, it is very much part of my daily routine now, even if I do habitually leave it until the "last minute", as I have done once again today, writing this at 1:10 in the morning when I have work at 9am.

The reason why I started, though, was to be part of something that sounded interesting. A few people I followed on Twitter at the time started talking about the hashtag #oneaday, which I investigated further and discovered was an attempt to write something each and every day for a year. The intention was not necessarily to write something good each and every day for a year, but more to get into the habit of writing something on a daily basis. The more you do something, the more you develop your craft, after all, and in something inherently creative like writing, the more you do something, the more you develop your own personal style, too. Since most of the people participating in the hashtag were games journalists to varying degrees, keeping their writing skills fresh was obviously a good idea.

I jumped on board — a little later than some of my comrades, but still within January. I kept an eye on what others were up to and sometimes drew ideas and inspiration from their work, but I was somewhat surprised to discover that a goodly proportion of the people who started in that January decided to abandon the project remarkably quickly. One of these people who jumped ship quickly was the person who appeared to have started the whole shebang in the first place. I decided that I was going to be stubborn, though, and I was going to stick it out until the end of the year.

So I did, along with a few others with a similarly stubborn streak. Then I kept going. Some of those others continued on with me; others joined the cause; others still abandoned the idea altogether. I continued for another year and kept going and going and going. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only member of the original crew who is still writing something every day, though I have stayed in touch with quite a few of the people I met over the course of the first couple of years of this project.

Writing something every day is challenging. Not because the act of writing is itself particularly difficult, but because it can be a real challenge to come up with something to write about every day. I don't like to spend too many days in a row writing about the same thing — those who follow me regularly will know that I could probably rabbit on about Final Fantasy XIV for months non-stop at a time — but rather spread my wings a bit and write about other topics, be they things that have happened that day, things that I've seen on social media, frustrations I've felt or successes I want to celebrate.

Finding those topics has encouraged me to use writing as an outlet for the things that occasionally swirl around inside my head and are in need of expressing, but which I find difficulty expressing out loud to another person face-to-face. Writing allows me to put things across I am unable to — or unwilling to — talk to people about in person, in other words. Interestingly, though, the more I write about things, the more I feel I am able to actually talk about them too; perhaps because I know that some people have read the things I've written and thus know all the most pertinent details before I start actually addressing them directly.

It's been a helpful form of quasi-therapy, in other words; it allows me to work through things that might feel like they were unresolvable or frustrating if I left them inside my head. Sometimes the things I want to talk about really are unresolvable, but the simple act of communicating them in some way relieves some of the "pressure" because I've been able to express how I'm feeling — and indirectly help other people understand what it is I'm thinking.

So, as long as I have an Internet connection, a keyboard and working fingers, I have no intention of stopping just yet. I do occasionally ask myself why I keep bothering when my regular reader numbers are so (relatively) low, but my answer is pretty much always the same: I'm writing for me first and foremost; if other people derive some entertainment, comfort or understanding from it, so much the better, but my first priority when I write is always expressing my own thoughts and feelings.

2113: The Dark Knight Rises

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Level 58 on Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV now… almost there! I'm still really enjoying the class, and I'm looking forward to having my full suite of abilities to play with. I feel like I have a good handle on how it all works, now; Dark Knight seems to be a pretty flexible sort of tank, able to mitigate a decent amount of damage Paladin-style as well as heal themselves to a certain degree through abilities like Souleater and a cross-classed Bloodbath.

And the damage. Oh the damage. I haven't played Warrior enough to know what sort of numbers they put out on the road to 60, but Dark Knight is miles ahead of Paladin in terms of killing efficiency. Paladin isn't built for killing, of course, being a mitigation tank, but Dark Knight seems to strike a nice balance between being able to take some hits and put out some impressive damage numbers. It helps, of course, that I'm wearing almost entirely Strength-boosting accessories rather than the HP-boosting Vitality accessories, but I haven't had a problem with having too few HP at any point yet, so I intend to stick with that particular course of action for the immediate future until something comes along that twats me for more than I can take in a single hit.

Mostly I'm keen to get Dark Knight safely to level 60 — and preferably item level 190 — in time for the 3.1 patch on Tuesday the 10th. There's a bunch of interesting new stuff coming to the game that I'd like to be able to explore with my new class, most notably the two new dungeons (for which gear shouldn't be a problem for, since I already have tank gear up to about item level 189 or so) and the Extreme version of The Singularity Reactor fight.

The latter is one of the main attractions of the new patch for many people. Taking a similar approach to the "Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane" fight from A Realm Reborn, it's a remix of the final boss fight from Heavensward with (presumably) considerably more complex mechanics and a higher challenge factor. This is good, since although Heavensward's final boss fight is undoubtedly spectacular, at current average gear levels you can trounce it pretty quickly. It doesn't make the fight any less impressive, of course, but I know I certainly wish it would last a bit longer. Yoshi-P and the team say that the new fight will have a mighty ten phases to learn, so I'm looking forward to seeing how complex it can really be. It has the potential to be one of the most interesting, complex battles in the whole game at this rate.

Other than the more conventional content, the other appealing aspect of 3.1 is the Island Exploration mechanics that are being added. Heavensward added the ability for Free Companies to build their own airships and send them out on exploratory voyages into The Sea of Clouds, after which they'd come back bearing goodies, sometimes having discovered islands in the sky. I haven't looked into this much at all — our Free Company has one particularly dedicated member who has been taking care of our fleet of airships so far, so I haven't really needed to. The Island Exploration system, however, actually allows groups of players — up to 24 at once — to party up and explore some of the strange places the airships have been discovering. Once there, it's a much more freeform experience than the rather linear dungeons in the game. You have 90 minutes to explore, fight things and find stuff. Exactly what you'll find remains to be seen, but we know there is Aetherial gear to be found as well as gathering nodes for miners, botanists and perhaps fishers too. There will also be objectives to complete, which will reward players with the all-important Tomestones of Esoterics, which hopefully will be dished out with sufficient generosity to make Island Exploration a viable alternative to endless Dungeon Roulette grinding.

Then, of course, there's the continuation of the main story. Heavensward's main story was great, in my book even better than that of A Realm Reborn, so I'm interested and intrigued to see where it goes next. The "vanilla" Heavensward experience ended with an intriguing cliffhanger concerning the "Warrior of Darkness", presumably some sort of counterpart to the player character's "Warrior of Light", but it remains to be seen exactly what this means. There's also a number of unresolved teasers from A Realm Reborn's finale that need wrapping up, so I'm hoping we'll see some more information concerning what was going on here, too.

It's an exciting time to be a Final Fantasy XIV player, for sure, and I'm very glad that deciding to make the switch to Dark Knight has got me out of the "rut" I was feeling like I was in with only Paladin at the level cap. I'm really looking forward to putting a level 60 Dark Knight through its paces and seeing what the future holds for the land of Eorzea — more than that, though, I'm looking forward to lots of friends coming back to play the game once there's some new content in place that they haven't run a thousand times already… yet, anyway.

2112: 1984

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In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "1984."

"You’re locked in a room with your greatest fear. Describe what’s in the room."

My immediate reaction to this prompt was to say that the room was absolutely full of spiders. And to be fair, that would pretty much scare the shit out of me, particularly if they were of the deadly variety.

But that would be too easy. Someone who truly wanted to break me psychologically — as opposed to kill me — would go for something much more subtle, and something that wouldn't physically hurt me, but which would deal some damage regardless.

And, on reflection, I came up with an answer pretty quickly.

There is nothing in the room. Nothing at all.

The walls are plain. The floor is plain. The ceiling is plain. When the door closes, you can't even see its frame, so flush with the wall it is. There's no clear delineation between floor, wall and ceiling; no sharp corners, no right angles; everything just sort of flows into one another, making the room take on a somewhat otherworldly quality where no matter which direction you face, you see the same thing.

The nothingness extends to sound, too. There is not a single sound in the room, save for any noises I might make. I become very aware of my own breathing, and of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. But there are no other sounds; I can't hear anyone moving around outside, and my captor certainly doesn't seem to be in any sort of hurry to communicate with me. Perhaps they're just watching somehow — though it's impossible to distinguish even a tiny spy camera anywhere in the room, because that would be a distinguishing feature by which I would be able to orient myself, and clearly that would go against the intention of this place.

The light level in the room would remain constant; not so bright as to be dazzling, but just slightly darker than comfortable. The kind of light you're bathed in when in an environment lit by a bare bulb; a cold light that seems devoid of home comforts and humanity. A light that is threatening, rather than welcoming. A light that beckons with a smirk on its face, rather than inviting you in with open arms.

And of course, there are no other people in the room. No-one communicating with me. No means for me to get a message to the outside, and seemingly no means for the outside to get a message to me, either.

It's lonely. And the combination of the ever-constant light level, the total lack of sound and the lack of people or even things with which to communicate makes it impossible to tell how much time is passing. There's nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to focus my attention on. The room is completely devoid of meaning; it's devoid of joy, but it's also devoid of other emotions, too. It doesn't even inherently inspire "fear"; it just is, and that's the scary thing about it. It's impassive, cold, unyielding. No way out. No way in. No-one to help me. No way to distract myself. I just have to wait. And wait. And wait. Alone.

That's a room that would break me. I don't know how long it would take, but it would get me eventually. So kindly don't put me in anywhere like that any time soon, please. Thank you.

2111: On Censorship, Bikinis and The Cheapening of Real Issues Through Stupid Arguments

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Controversy erupted once again recently in the gaming sphere when it seemingly became apparent that, despite saying they wouldn't, Nintendo of America had made edits to one of the characters' costumes in the upcoming RPG Xenoblade Chronicles X. (I'm still a little skeptical this has actually happened, but I'm going to work on the assumption that it has for now, since Nintendo has indeed done this before with games like Fire Emblem Awakening.)

The character in question is canonically "underage" (though remember that the age of consent in Japan is different to that in other parts of the world — legally, it's 13, though in certain areas of the country a higher age is enforced at the discretion of the local government) and one of her outfits was a set of bikini-like armour. Impractical, but not particularly offensive, and indeed nothing unusual for a Japanese role-playing game, which often have swimsuit costumes available either as downloadable content or unlockable extras.

As those of you who follow this particular part of the gaming sector can probably surmise, this quickly escalated into the inevitable clashing between those who are against censorship in any form, preferring an authentic experience true to the creators' original intentions, and those who believe that Japanese games are inherently "creepy", whom we've had words about before.

The usual argument against vaguely (or indeed explicitly) sexualised outfits in video games is that it is, yes, "creepy" with a garnish of paedophilia. This is a natural escalation of the current trend for feminist "criticism" (and I use that term loosely) of video games and popular media by people like Anita Sarkeesian and her ilk. Said "criticism" already fails to take into account the fact that sex and art have been inextricably intertwined for many hundreds — probably even thousands — of years, but criticism such as that we've seen of, in this case, Xenoblade Chronicles X and, at other times, games like Criminal Girls, Omega Labyrinth, Dungeon Travelers 2, Hyperdimension Neptunia and any number of other Japanese-developed games you might care to mention, takes this to a whole new level by cheapening the unfortunately very real, horrendous issue of child abuse.

I am no expert on child abuse, though remember I did once work as a teacher and consequently had the "telltale signs" of abuse drummed into me; I also came into contact with a number of children who had had somewhat difficult home lives, to say the least. Thankfully, I don't think I ever dealt with anyone who had been outright sexually abused, though there were certainly a few who had "seen some shit", as it were. This was often reflected in their behaviour in the classroom which, unfortunately, made them somewhat difficult to deal with, and difficult children were, frankly, one of the main reasons I decided not to continue pursuing teaching as a career. I just wasn't built to stand up to them, particularly when I knew — or at least had an idea — where their anger was coming from.

One thing I do know about child abuse and paedophilia, though, is that it is absolutely abhorrent. The very thought of a child suffering in such a way makes me feel sick to my stomach. And I know that most rational people that I count among my circles of acquaintances and friends would feel the same way too. Which is why it makes us so utterly livid that something as inherently harmless and stupid in the grand scheme of things as liking drawings or polygonal models of titties is equated with such a horrible, disgusting crime.

To put it another way: those who criticise anime-style art, Japanese video games such as Xenoblade Chronicles X — or indeed any form of fictional media that takes a non-literal approach to the representation of characters — are cheapening and devaluing the very real issue of paedophilia in modern society by applying that label to something that is, let's be clear here, absolutely completely and utterly legal, not to mention completely and utterly harmless, given that there are no "real people" involved at all. Child abuse destroys lives, and often leaves both physical and mental scars that never heal. Dungeon Travelers 2 features bosses who occasionally show you their bum when you beat them. Xenoblade Chronicles X has a character who wears a bikini. That's it. She's not even doing anything sexual in it, she's just wearing it. And yet that, it seems, is enough to bring out the editing scissors in the name of "catering to an audience".

Guess what, though: the "audience" you should be catering to is the audience that wants to see the work in its original form. That audience are passionate and enthusiastic about being able to enjoy work from another culture in their own native language. That audience wants to feel like they are having the same experience as their Japanese cousins, not being "protected" against things that they don't feel they need to be protected against. That audience will pay through the nose for the privilege of enjoying these delightful, surprising, wonderful games that, thanks to their laser-sharp focus on a very specific niche audience, feel like they're tailor-made for each and every individual consumer.

The audience that you are catering to by hacking away at content, though, probably weren't interested in these games in the first place. Do you really see Her Most Holy Ladyship Twatface Sarkeesian slogging through 100+ hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X? Do you see Jonathan Cuntrag McIntosh slapping down the readies for a copy of Fatal Frame? I certainly don't, and so no consideration should be given to their opinion whatsoever, and no consideration whatsoever should be given to people who believe that drawings are equatable to fucking child abuse, either.

Don't get me wrong, if the only choice I have to play and enjoy a game in a way that I understand is to purchase an edited version, I'll do it, because I believe showing companies that there are people out there hungry for the localisation of these games is more important than anything a "boycott" might imply — if anything, a boycott is more likely to send the mistaken message that there aren't people who want to buy these games. I'd import if my Japanese was good enough for me to have an enjoyable experience in the original language version, but it isn't, so that's not an option for me right now for anything other than games in which spoken or written text isn't a major part of the experience. (Shoot 'em ups, in other words.) This doesn't mean that I'm particularly happy with games having the editor's scissors taken to them in the name of "cultural differences", though; games are, like it or not, works of art, and to have to deal with an inferior version in my native language because someone, somewhere went "heavens to Betsy, think of the children!" isn't really acceptable.

Grow up. Deal with the fact not everyone likes everything. And if a polygonal character in a bikini offends your sensibilities or makes you think of child abuse, perhaps you're the one with the issues here.

2110: Stacking

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I've been back in the retail sector for a little while now — part time, temporary, but still in there — and it occurs to me that, despite the pay being low, I actually don't hate it. I even quite like it, I hesitate to say.

This is not entirely what I had in mind when pondering my career choices towards the end of secondary school. This is not what I had in mind when it looked like I was starting to build a career in the games press. This is not what I had in mind when I obtained a teaching qualification. But, well, it's where I am now — and it seems to be "working" for me pretty much as well as anything I've done before, perhaps even better.

You may consider this to not be particularly ambitious, and I'd probably agree with you there; I've been conscious over the last few years of the fact that I'm simply not very ambitious when it comes to career prospects. All I really want is to be comfortable rather than rich, and I value the situation where I can completely "switch off" from work at the end of a day and just enjoy my evenings and weekends.

The other thing which occurs to me is that retail seems to provide an environment that meshes well with whatever it is that makes my brain work the way it does. I didn't cope well with the traditional office environment, for example, because I couldn't deal with all the gossiping, backstabbing, politics and outright lying that went on every day. It didn't help, of course, that I was forced out of the job in question as a result of my immediate superiors not understanding what depression is or how to help someone with it. But then I hated that stupid, shitty, pointless job with all its stupid, shitty, pointless policies and procedures anyway, so despite getting the boot from it costing me a reasonably healthy salary, I'm not sorry I don't work there any more; I'm just sorry that the circumstances under which I left it occasionally leave me with horribly unpleasant "flashbacks" when I'm trying to get to sleep.

But I shouldn't dwell on the past too much; as I say, retail seems to provide an environment that meshes well with me. And I've been thinking about why that is: it's to do with always knowing what I should be doing. because the things that there are to do are always obvious. Gap in a shelf? Fill it. Customer at a till? Serve them. Customer with a question? Answer it. Back counter messy? Tidy it. There's always something to do, which takes care of what was my biggest frustration with the aforementioned office job: the fact that there sometimes simply wasn't anything to get on with. (And boy, they didn't like that being pointed out to them.)

I make mistakes, sure, because I'm still learning how things are done at my current job, but I pick things up quickly and I seem to have been making a good impression so far. It's tiring, too, but coming off a shift feeling knackered makes me feel like I've done something worthwhile rather than sitting on my arse all day — plus it's a kind of "exercise" that I can do without thinking about it.

So while it may not be particularly ambitious to say so, so long as I can keep bringing in some pennies each month with a combination of retail and the freelance writing work I'm doing on a regular basis (not for any websites or magazines, I'm afraid, so you can't "see" it anywhere) I think I can probably muddle through like this for the immediate future. I hope so, anyway; I just want to be able to relax and just get on with life rather than wondering what amorphous, unclear, foggy target I should be aiming in the general direction of next. I just want to live, y'know?

2109: Vermintide

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My friend Sam and I tried out Warhammer: The End TImes – Vermintide this evening, a game which has been positioned by various people as "Left 4 Dead in the Warhammer universe". I'm all for that as an idea, so we decided to give it a shot.

Turns out it takes most of its inspiration from its stablemate dungeon crawler board game Warhammer Quest, in that it is ludicrously difficult and very likely indeed to splatter your chosen heroes across the walls in fairly short order. Sam's tried the first mission on "normal" difficulty six times today, and we couldn't clear it once, though with two of us actually playing, thereby cutting down on the imbecilic AI, we got further than he was able to solo earlier in the day.

It seems like a good game, though. There's five different characters to play, each of whom have a different selection of gear to start with, and there's various bits of loot that you can collect and upgrade as you progress through the game — assuming you can actually clear a mission, of course. Having failed to clear the prologue mission, of course, we didn't see any of that, but it certainly seems that there should be a bit of variety in there — just the starting gear offers a couple of different ways to play for each class.

I tried out the Witch Hunter and Bright Wizard classes. The former is a plummy-voiced sort of chap with a sword (either one-handed or two-handed, depending on preference) and a pair of flintlock pistols that he fires alternately. The latter is a stern-sounding lady who wields a sword and a staff which can blast out simple fireballs or cast a particular spell.

The Witch Hunter seemed relatively straightforward. The choice of melee weapons gave him two distinct play styles — the one-handed sword allows you to slash quickly, making for a fast-paced experience when wading into melee. The two-handed sword, meanwhile, is much slower but deals much more damage, particularly when its attack is charged up. I'm not quite sure which one I actually preferred, but both were quite fun. The flintlock pistols seemed to be fairly accurate, too, making for satisfying ranged kills, often before the Skaven enemies noticed up.

The Wizard, meanwhile, had some interesting mechanics. Rather than ammunition for her ranged weapon — her staff — she has a little meter depicting how much she's tapped into the Winds of Magic. Casting spells — either the staff's basic projectile or the more powerful charged spell — increases this meter, which then gradually declines over time. If this pops over the top, she'll catch fire and potentially explode, which is not good, but going over a lower mark still causes damage to yourself if you're not careful. Playing as the Wizard, then, involves taking a bit more care with your shots and spells rather than just spamming fireballs at enemies. She also has the ability to "vent" her excess magic energy with the "reload" button, so during moments of downtime, it's advisable for her to do this — fling a couple of fireballs, hide, vent, pop out and fling a few more.

As you might expect from the name, Vermintide focuses pretty much exclusively on the ratmen Skaven monsters as enemies, but there's plenty of variety in there. Basic Skaven will swarm you like the zombies in Left 4 Dead, but there are also specialist monsters that will be familiar to anyone who played Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Advanced Heroquest in particular — there are Poison Globadiers, Warpfire Gunners, Assassins, Gutter Runners and all manner of other horrible bastards just waiting to make your life miserable, and, as in Left 4 Dead, many of them require cooperation to deal with. Packmasters, for example, grab a character with their hooked polearm and drag them away, so another player has to free them before they get "hung" from the polearm, at which point it becomes more time-consuming (and thus dangerous) to free them.

It was surprising quite how difficult the game was, but I'm interested to try it again — hopefully we'll be able to get a full four-player game going with a couple of other friends this weekend, so it will be interesting to see whether it's any easier with four human players!