2226: Sephirot, The Fiend

Final Fantasy XIV's new patch came out today, bringing with it some new dungeons and a spectacular new boss fight against Sephirot, The Fiend, one of the Warring Triad previously seen in Final Fantasy VI.

Unlike most of the other Trials that have been in the game so far, the Sephirot battle is separate from the main questline, and having a pop at it earlier revealed why: it's surprisingly tough! Once you know what you're doing, though, it's pretty straightforward. As such, I thought I'd share my observations from a couple of goes today in the hope of helping out anyone struggling with it.

Note that this isn't intended to be a particularly comprehensive guide and I can't remember the exact names of many abilities, but given that the Sephirot fight is largely dependent on observing animations and visual cues rather than cast bars, ability names aren't actually terribly helpful here.

So then. Here's how it works. I think.

Phase 1: That's Not Sephiroth

First phase is pretty straightforward. Main tank should pull Sephirot and turn him away from the rest of the group as normal and proceed to wail on him. Apply DoTs and AoE DoTs as appropriate.

Sephirot has a few different attacks in this phase. He has a conal AoE in front of him called Triple Trial, so this is the main reason the tank faces him away from the group. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but you'll want to keep the MT's HP as high as possible. MT should save cooldowns for the moment though.

Next is a jumping attack away from the MT onto a random player, after which he returns to the MT. Again, the damage isn't horrific, but keep on top of things. Priority after the jump should be topping off and shielding the MT for what comes next.

Sephirot will pull his left arm back ready to deliver a powerful punch. (Note that if you are tanking him, his left arm will be on the right of your screen, as you're facing him.) When this happens, MT should blow a suitable defensive cooldown (Shadow Skin or Rampart is enough) and Convalescence if you want to help out your healers a bit. When the animation completes, the big punch Sephirot was winding up for will deliver a powerful tankbuster in the region of 16-17k or so, though this can be reduced with cooldowns and shields.

Other than this, Sephirot has a large AoE that he blasts out towards a non-tank member of the group, which should be healed through.

At around 60%, Sephirot will become untargetable and spawn a bunch of adds. Both tanks should pick them up and pull them all together for DPS to AoE them. Prioritise the larger adds first, as they hit a bit harder and have more HP. As one set gets close to being killed a second set will spawn, so be ready to pick them up and bring them to the group.

When the adds are down, Sephirot will do his ultimate. You have quite a long time to prepare for this, so make the best use of the time. Sephirot will fall backwards off the platform and nothing will happen for a few seconds. Use the time to heal everyone up, then when you see Sephirot's newly giant hand grab the platform to pull himself up, drop Sacred Soil or other suitable defences ready for the incoming damage.

Phase 2: He Got Big

Tanking Sephirot is less important here, since he stays in one place and fires out mechanics at random players rather than whoever has aggro. Tanks should feel free to switch to DPS stance and wail on him as much as possible.

Note that Sephirot's hitbox is huge and you don't need to be standing anywhere near his model to actually hit him. Target him and stand on the edge of the circle on the ground and you'll hit him no problem; this is important for one of his main abilities in the phase.

At intervals throughout Phase 2, Sephirot will drop blue puddles on the ground. After these have sat there for a moment, he'll slam his fist down on the puddle, knocking everyone backwards. To counter this, stand near (not in) the puddle with your back to the side of the arena furthest away from you — think the final boss of Neverreap. He'll do this three times, so run back into position after being knocked back: first one is always directly in front of himself, then on the left, then on the right.

For Sephirot's other attacks, you once again need to watch his animations rather than cast bars. When he lowers himself down so his head is level with the platform, he's preparing to do a huge raid-wide knockback, so stand in front of him with plenty of space behind you to avoid falling off.

Immediately after the knockback, three adds will spawn: two that you've seen before and one tornadoey whirlwind thing. DPS down the tornadoey whirlwind thing as quickly as possible and it will drop a (harmless) tornado marker on the ground: this will be important in a moment. Then kill the other two adds. Shortly after you've done this, a big flashing arrow marker will appear over the tornado marker, so get in it. Sephirot will probably do a small knockback on you while you're getting into position, so make sure you immediately move back into the tornado: the reason you do this is so that the tornado blows you up in the air to avoid Sephirot's devastating arm-sweep attack, which is an instant KO if you get hit by it.

When Sephirot seems to charge energy into his chest, everyone should spread out because people are about to get hit by energy blasts with splash damage. Simple enough to avoid.

When two players are marked with shining silver markers — the same as in Turn 13 if you've done that — these two players should move to the sides of the arena to bait Sephirot's Earthshaker line AoE move away from the rest of the group. (Yes, this is indeed the exact same Earthshaker that Bahamut Prime does.)

When Sephirot holds two orbs out in front of him… I must confess I'm not entirely 100% on what this mechanic does, but it appears to be something similar to the Angra Mainyu fight in World of Darkness in that the arena is split into two different coloured sections, and you need to stand in the correct one. Perhaps someone can clarify in the comments if you have a better idea.

Shortly before or after the two orbs, Sephirot will summon two towers similar to those seen in later stages of Turn 13. Like those towers, you need to stand in them to minimise raid-wide Bad Stuff happening. Only one person needs to stand in each tower.

After that, these mechanics just repeat, though Sephirot will be flinging small circle AoEs around the place while all this is going on too, but these are easy enough to dodge.

Congratulations, you've toppled The Fiend!

2209: Exploring the Cosmos

Been playing a bit of Elite Dangerous: Horizons this evening and realising the "dream" of something I've wanted to do since I started playing: hop in a ship, point it in a particular direction and just go see what's out there.

I haven't got that far yet, to be honest — I'm still in populated space, albeit getting down to the dregs of the tiny factions rather than the warring empires of the PowerPlay system — but I can see interesting things on the galactic horizon, and I fully intend to check them out and see what's there.

The nice thing about Elite is that you can do this and it's a viable way to play the game. Its exceedingly freeform nature — more freeform than pretty much any other game I think I've played outside of Minecraft — allows you to play how you see fit, and enjoy it how you want. If you want fast-action combat dogfighting, it's there. If you want to run courier missions, that's there. If you want to collaborate with other players to strategically expand the influence of one of the major powers in the galaxy, that's there, too. Or, as previously mentioned, if you just want to hop in a ship, point it in a particular direction and just go see what's out there… well, you can do that too, because the galaxy is one hell of a big place.

Exploration gameplay is relatively straightforward. Equip a ship with the appropriate scanners — basic versions of which come as standard — and when you hyperspace into a new system, you can scan for astronomical objects. Once you've located some, either via your scanners or visually, targeting them and flying close-ish to them allows you to run a detailed scan of them and record the information in your ship's computer. You can then sell this information when you get to a suitable space station or colony that is at least 20 light years away from where you acquired the data — it's assumed that most areas are familiar with the region immediately around them — and profit accordingly. It's a valid career path with its own progression and the opportunity to make your own distinctive mark on the game universe: whenever someone visits something that you were the first one to discover, they'll see your name there, proudly recorded for all time as the first person to find that thing, whether it's a big burning ball of fiery sun, an unremarkable lump of rock or a spectacular planetary system.

I haven't travelled far enough to be one of these pioneers as yet, I don't think, but I'm already getting into a region of space that is less populated, both with the computer-controlled factions and players. The station my ship is currently parked at as I type this has seen just 12 player-controlled ships pass through in the last 24 hours, compared to the hundreds or thousands the more "core" stations in the centre of the populated area see every day.

I find the exploration aspect inherently satisfying for some reason, despite the fact that objectively speaking it's quite boring and repetitive — although I did get interdicted by an unpleasant NPC called "Starquake" earlier, who battered my ship about a bit before I was able to activate my Frame-Shift Drive and jump away from him — but mostly I'm curious to see what's out there, if anything. The original Elite had some strange things going on in the far reaches of the galaxy — most notably the spectacularly irritating Thargoids, who had a habit of pulling you out of hyperspace and killing you horribly — so I'm curious to see if there's anything interesting hidden in the furthest reaches of the galaxy.

There are a bunch of places I'm just curious to see, too. The "Coalsack" area looks most intriguing, what with its ominous black cloudiness, and, of course, the immense density of the galactic core is surely worth trying to see. Of these places, the Coalsack is probably reachable relatively easily; the galactic core perhaps less so, but I'm interested to see how far I can go. Theoretically, my current ship has infinite range thanks to its Fuel Scoop hardware, which allows me to refuel by harvesting the gases of appropriate stars, so as long as I don't get stranded in a region with crap stars and/or blown up by pirates or aliens who are hiding deep in "unpopulated" space, I should be good to go for quite some time. And think of the money I'll make when I eventually get back to human space to sell all this exploration data.

Oh, God, I have to fly back as well, don't I… Maybe I shouldn't go too far…

2204: Elite

I spent a chunk of today trying out Elite Dangerous: Horizons. This was actually pretty much my first experience with Elite: Dangerous generally, aside from giving the tutorials a go yesterday, but I felt I was long overdue to try it out, particularly as I had bemoaned the lack of a good Star Trek game the other day. Elite is not a good Star Trek game, but it is one hell of a space sim. And, for once, that "sim" part seems apt; this certainly isn't an arcade-style dogfighting game, as evidenced by the fact that in several hours of play today, I didn't fire a single shot.

I used to really enjoy space games back in the 16-bit era — particularly those of a more free-form nature such as Paul Woakes' Mercenary series, Rainbird's Starglider series (particularly the enormously ambitious second installment) and, indeed, the original Elite. I say that — Elite is actually one that I never quite managed to get my head around when I was young, because there was a lot of things to think about while you were playing, and pages full of numbers that confused and bewildered me. Also docking with those spinning space stations was fucking impossible, so every time I tried I usually ended up quitting in disgust after smashing my ship to smithereens on the space station you start near.

I made the mistake of reading a few Steam reviews of Elite: Dangerous before giving it a go; while there are a few fair criticisms there, there's also a whole lot of whining about 1) not knowing what to do and 2) Frontier's business model for the game which, if you're unfamiliar, sees them essentially re-releasing the game at full price each year with the promise of a year's worth of major updates to the game systems. It's perhaps better to think of it as a yearly subscription fee, particularly as the game has a significant massively multiplayer element for those who care to engage with it.

Anyway. Discarding the Steam reviews and jumping in to try things out for myself, I was quickly enraptured by the feeling of flying my Sidewinder. I even unplugged the 360 controller and plugged in my 11-button joystick; it's no full HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) setup, admittedly, but it feels great when used in a game like this, particularly with the lovely visual feedback the game gives you with regard to movement: unlike the original Elite, whose cockpit was a static bitmap with a viewport into the flat-shaded 3D polygonal universe outside (I was playing the Atari ST version, so it had colours!), Elite: Dangerous' cockpit is set up to feel like you're actually sitting in it. Handling the controls causes your viewpoint to shift slightly according to how you're moving; it tilts when you roll, pulls forward and back when you speed up and slow down, and pulls up and down when you pitch. Given the game has been designed for virtual reality headsets from the get-go, it's understandable that the game would model head movement pretty well, but I'm glad to see that even when playing on a flat (admittedly large) TV screen it still looks very convincing.

What I've found most satisfying about the game so far is the moment-to-moment simulation of flying your ship. Everything you do is just satisfying to pull off, just for the sake of doing it. Especially fun is taking off and landing from various structures and space stations — and, in Horizons, you can now land on planets, too, either at settlements with dedicated landing facilities or just on the ground if you find a suitably smooth patch of terrain to set down. The handling of the ship is beautiful; pulling the stick around feels like you're wrenching a big, slightly unwieldy lump of metal around in zero- or low-gravity, and the sound design, where you hear your thrusters firing and your engines throbbing according to whatever you're doing, is absolutely impeccable. There's even a wonderful crescendo of your engines reverberating off the ground and surroundings as you set down for landing; it is, I think, the most convincing depiction of plausible pure sci-fi space travel I've seen for a very long time, perhaps ever.

The most common criticism of Elite: Dangerous is that it's "a mile wide and an inch deep", and I can kind of see where that's coming from: interactions with NPCs are rather sterile and menu driven, though later updates look set to put "faces" to significant characters in the universe. There's no prescribed narrative, either; you can get involved in the PowerPlay mechanic to swear allegiance to one of the various factions attempting to control the universe, which actually has a significant effect of the game for all players, but there's no "story" to follow as such besides that which you make for yourself.

In many ways, I think I sort of prefer that for Elite, though; while I do love a bit of story in my space games a la Wing Commander and the like, when playing something as freeform as Elite a story can kind of get in the way a bit, making you feel obliged to go and do certain things rather than exploring the galaxy at your own pace, making a name for yourself however you see fit.

I'll be interested to see if Elite holds my attention, but for now, it certainly feels like the space game I've wanted to play since I was a kid.

2196: Starward Rogue, a Game About a Severed Head in a Mech

I took a look at Arcen Games' latest today. I've followed this interesting developer for a few games now, most notably A Valley Without Wind and its sequel: two games that fused, oddly enough, turn-based strategy with Metroidvania-esque platform shooting. Arcen's latest game Starward Rogue continues the dev's tradition of fusing disparate genres together, in this case arcade shooters and roguelikes.

I say "disparate"; Starward Rogue isn't the first game to combine roguelike elements with a shoot 'em up core, but it is the first I recall seeing designed around the principles of Japanese-style arcade shooters, particularly those of the "bullet hell" variety. That means intense, complex bullet patterns that you need to navigate through as well as enemies to defeat, and it makes for an exciting, very interesting take on a genre that all too often coasts along without any real innovation.

Starward Rogue casts you in the role of a severed head in a mech as you attempt to rescue someone called Rodney from the depths of a dungeon called the Megalith. I believe these two elements are a reference to one of Arcen's other games, but it's one I'm not familiar with at this time. Fortunately, no real knowledge of whatever the other game it's referring to is required; it's simply a bit of fanservice for those who have played the game's spiritual predecessor. Rodney is an entertaining character in his own right, though my only direct contact with him so far has been in the tutorial sequence.

Starward Rogue's gameplay is balanced nicely between exploration and action. Each level of the Megalith is split into discrete rooms, each of which has to be cleared of enemies before you can move on to the next one. Unlike similar games such as The Binding of Isaac, though, Starward Rogue's rooms are often more than a screen wide and tall, and there are a number of unique designs and layouts that you'll encounter over the course of the game, which are then combined with various enemy and trap waves — the latter tending to be non-destroyable obstacles or gun turrets that will spew out hot fiery death as you try and take down the enemies, then deactivate when you've cleared the room.

Levelling up is a simple process: no stat allocation here, simply pick one of three randomly selected perks. These vary from increased damage to having a full map available from the start of the floor — and even being able to skip the rest of the floor you're on. Alongside these passive bonuses you get from levelling, you can also equip and upgrade your infinite-ammo main gun, your recharging Energy-based weapon (which recharges when you enter a new room) and your limited-ammo Missile weapon. There are also various other passive upgrades you can collect, and one-shot consumable items that generally have some sort of "smart bomb" effect.

Much like the aforementioned The Binding of Isaac, Starward Rogue is a game intended to be replayed and rechallenged. There are a number of different mechs with which to play the game, and there's a checklist of enemies and items you've found over the course of all your runs. There are also five difficulty levels to choose from, with Very Easy all but guaranteeing a full clear run unless you are the very worst kind of incompetent moron, and the highest difficulty claiming to offer difficulty on a par with the legendary Touhou series. And on top of that there are a bunch of achievements to earn, too, so it's very much a game that will keep you busy for a long time if you get it — though it's accessible enough to be able to pick up every so often for a quick blast even if you've left it alone for a while.

I completed a Very Easy run earlier — there's no shame in starting either a roguelike or a shoot 'em up on the lowest difficulty, and this game is both! — and am already looking forward to giving it another shot soon. If you're a fan of The Binding of Isaac and its ilk — "roguelites", to use the popular term — then you could do far worse than give Starward Rogue a look.

2190: Rubble Without a Cause

I played through the second episode of the new King's Quest game today. It's a lot shorter than the first one, so I was able to get through it in a single sitting. Despite being fairly short, though, it's an interesting contrast from the previous episode; rather than being a relatively large (for an adventure game) open world with a non-linear series of puzzles for you to tackle at your leisure, Rubble Without a Cause, as the second episode is known, takes place in a much more confined environment, and largely focuses around one big puzzle: how to free everyone from captivity at the hands of the goblins.

Yes, instead of throwing us back into Daventry, Rubble Without a Cause puts us underground in a goblin prison complex. Graham is dismayed to discover that most of the major characters from the town of Daventry appear to have also been abducted, along with the eccentric merchant's "unicorn" Mr. Fancycakes. Thus begins a quest to find a way out of this predicament.

There's a twist, though: unlike most adventure games, you don't have all the time in the world with which to achieve your goals. Unfolding over the course of several days, the adventure sees the health of all of the prison's occupants — with the exception of Graham — decline as the days pass. Thus you're presented with some difficult, mutually exclusive choices throughout as you determine who it is best to give medicine and food to as they require it. And once you start getting closer to escaping, you need to determine which potential companion is going to provide you with the best chance of succeeding, and ensure that they are in good health for when you make your attempt.

The small scale of the episode initially felt a little disappointing, but on reflection after finishing it, I very much liked the concept of it being based around one central problem for you to solve, and felt this was a good use of the episodic format to provide a short-form but complete-feeling experience. You can solve it in a number of different ways, too — it is, I believe, even possible to complete the episode without anyone running out of health and being carried away by the goblins, but I most certainly did not succeed in that particular endeavour today.

In many ways, the King's Quest episodes we've seen so far are a great example of "gaming short stories" — quite literally, since they are presented as stories narrated by the ageing King Graham (whom I'll be very surprised to see survive the fifth episode) to his grandchildren. This presentation of the narrative as a participant narrator looking back on his past actions is an interesting twist on how old Sierra games such as the original King's Quests used to work, with a strong contrast between the omniscient, non-participant narrator and the in-character dialogue between characters. King's Quest, as a series, maintained this style of presentation until its seventh installment, and it's good to see new developers The Odd Gentlemen returning very much to the "feel" of the classic Sierra adventures.

So was Rubble Without a Cause worth playing, given its short length? Well, if it was a standalone game by itself, I'd perhaps feel a little short-changed at its small scale and short length. In the context of the whole series, though, it makes a good, nicely contrasting follow-up to the excellent first episode, and has me once again hungering to know what happens next!

2187: Entering the Caves of Qud

It's been a while since I delved into a full-on proper roguelike — and by "proper" I mean none of that "roguelite" nonsense — so I was excited to give Caves of Qud a go after picking it up in the Steam sale a while back.

So far I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this game — largely because it's very fond of killing players off even in its introductory quests — but I like it a whole lot already, simply for the sheer amount of depth there is to it, while simultaneously remaining pretty much as accessible as it's possible to be for an almost-ASCII roguelike.

Caves of Qud is a far-future roguelike in which you play the part of Some Dude/Gal who shows up in a small settlement one day and… well, there's no real initial goal beyond finding out what interesting things there are in the mysterious and far-off region of Qud up in the top-right corner of the map. The inhabitants of the first village are more than happy to present you with a few quests, however, and it's these that will provide the motivation for your initial explorations.

Caves of Qud gets interesting before the game proper starts, though. Being set in the far future, we're not in a land of elves, orcs and goblins here; we're in a land where horribly mutated individuals are the norm, and indeed it's entirely possible for you to play the game as a four-armed furry narcoleptic esper who is good at butchery and first aid, and perhaps beneficial to do so. For those who prefer slightly more "conventional" characters, you also have the option of playing as a "True Kin", who start the game with better attributes, but less customisation, and as such are, in theory, better for beginners.

The mutations are pretty interesting, since many of them have attached game effects, not all of which are directly related to dealing or soaking damage. A character that is able to spit slime, for example, doesn't do so to damage enemies — instead, slime causes anyone who steps on it to have a chance of slipping, including yourself. In this way, it can be used as a defensive measure when gobbed out between you and the enemy while you're attempting to sprint away and heal the wounds you've taken.

That's not to say the more conventional aspects aren't interesting, though. The game has an intriguing twist on the usual roguelike formula of having unidentified items: as you progress, you'll occasionally come across "artifacts", which you can use your character's intelligence to attempt to make some sense of by examining them. Sometimes these artifacts are useful pieces of equipment; at other times, they're a folding chair. You can, however, use this knowledge to your advantage by offloading the aforementioned folding chair to a character that isn't all that bright on the grounds that it's a Mysterious and Wonderful Artifact From the Old World. There are lots of wonderfully subtle touches that the game doesn't explicitly tell you about, too. Little graphical effects may look like glitches until you realise that they're raindrops, or water splashing as something moves beneath the surface; characters, enemies and monsters can get splattered with blood during combat; and not every enemy is worth engaging "just because it's there". Stumble across a Slumberling in a dungeon, for example, and you'll discover that poking it with your sword is a very bad idea indeed; take a moment to examine it before poking it, however, and you'll discover that these are creatures that spend most of their time in a deep hibernation, completely oblivious to their surroundings — and that they really don't like being disturbed.

As I say, I feel I've barely scratched the surface of all the possibilities this interesting game offers so far, but it keeps me coming back for more despite its high level of difficulty — rather than easing you in and then spiking after an initial "tutorial" area, Caves of Qud starts hard and stays hard — and one day I might actually get beyond that first dungeon… until that time, however, I shall enjoy building new characters with increasingly outlandish combinations of mutations and watching them die at the hands of a swarm of snapjaws as they bleed to death after tripping over a thorny plant in the floor having been terrified by a nearby piece of Dreadroot.

2177: Black Screen of Death

I've noticed something annoying about technology, particularly entertainment technology: the moment you want to revisit something you haven't played/watched/listened to for a while, the technology that makes doing so possible is almost certainly going to fail somehow.

This has happened to me on numerous occasions ever since I was a youngling. From games that refused to boot on our old Atari 8-bit to… well, today, games that refuse to boot on my Windows PC, it's an inordinately frustrating experience.

It's more frustrating than something just normally not working, because the fact that you haven't indulged in the thing in question for a while means that you build up a certain degree of anticipation in your mind for the first time revisiting it in weeks, months, perhaps even years. As such, it's extremely disappointing when you find yourself unable to satisfy your hunger for the thing you were craving.

Today, I had an extremely strong desire to play Bizarre Creations' swansong Blur, one of my favourite racing games of all time. I own both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of this game — the PC version being something that I'm actually seemingly rather lucky to own, since it has been pulled from the Steam store at some point in the last few years — but I was keen to play the PC version, since it runs at a superior framerate and resolution to the 360 version. Plus I'd been having idle thoughts about doing a "racing games supertest" series of videos, and Blur was one of the games I particularly wanted to highlight.

Blur has run fine on my machine before and I don't think I've made any significant changes to it since the last time I ran it. I've perhaps replaced the graphics card in that period — which may be the issue, though I don't see why — but that's about it. But no; I was to be denied. I fired up Blur via Steam, saw the familiar noisy Activision logo followed by the now somewhat forlorn-seeming Bizarre Creations logo… and then the menu music started.

And then nothing happened. No spinny thing in the corner saying the game was loading. No main menu. No prompt to login. Just the menu music, and a Steam popup with the CD key that I was unable to dismiss.

I tried again on the offchance it was a random crash; no luck. I took to Google in an attempt to find the cause of the problem, or indeed if anyone else had had it — note to game developers: if you name your game a single word, please don't name it after a common graphical setting, because it really makes situations like this a lot more difficult than they need to be — but I was ultimately disappointed, since this was, inevitably, one of those situations where lots of people in the last five years have had this problem, but none of them have come up with an adequate solution.

I tried the few solutions that were offered, and swore silently at Yahoo! Answers commenters making inane, generic comments about Windows updates and checking video drivers, but none seemed to work. As I type this, I'm restarting my PC — a rare treat for that machine, which tends to stay on most of the time — in a last-ditch attempt to see whether or not that works. If it doesn't, I guess I'll have to be satisfied with the 360 version; no great loss, since that's the version I originally "discovered" the game with, but it would be nice to run it at 60fps and 1080p.

Oh well. It's getting late now, anyway, so probably no Blur for me this evening. Fingers crossed I can get it working eventually though…

EDIT: Restarted computer. Game now works. Maybe those Yahoo! Answers idiots weren't such idiots after all.

2175: Nail'd It

My good friend Mr Alex Connolly was kind enough to donate me a copy of Nail'd on Steam over the Christmas period. This is a game he's mentioned to me before, but I'd never gotten around to trying it. Now I'm regretting not checking it out sooner!

Nail'd is an offroad racing game from Techland and Deep Silver, the developer-publisher combo perhaps best known in recent years for the Dead Island series and its not-really-but-sort-of follow-up Dying Light. It's an unshamed arcade racer experience, with no pretensions towards having a plot or any reason for existing beyond simply being fun — nor, it must be said, is it making any attempt whatsoever to be the slightest bit realistic.

Nail'd is ridiculous. There's no other word for it, really. From the moment you squeeze the accelerator and you immediately ramp up to approximately three thousand miles per hour in less than a tenth of a second, it's clear that this is not a game intended to be taken seriously. This feeling is further cemented when you take your first jump and spend a good ten seconds airborne before landing with no ill effects, and set in diamond when you crash for the first time and your quad-bike explodes into fragments, while your driver goes spinning off into the distance with exaggerated ragdoll physics.

Taking part in a race in Nail'd is a rollercoaster ride. There's dips and undulations, huge jumps, banked corners, environmental hazards, narrow gaps to traverse and stunts to perform. Pleasingly, there are multiple routes through each track, too, bringing the races a feel somewhat akin to EA's classic SSX series back in its heyday, particularly as many of Nail'd's races are downhill point-to-point affairs rather than circuit races.

I hadn't previously been particularly interested in motocross or ATV racing games before, and I don't know how many of them are like Nail'd. But I do feel I've been missing out on some crazy offroad fun with this game, at least; it's an absolute pleasure to play, it's a challenge while keeping its mechanics extremely simple, and it's one of the most thrilling, exciting racers I've come across, ever. It's just a pity that the multiplayer servers are no longer active, so it's not currently possible to share the ridiculousness of a Nail'd race with other people, except by doing some jiggery-pokery with the LAN mode and external software.

My arcade racing renaissance continues, then; Nail'd has been a delight to discover, and it's inspiring me to check out some other racers I haven't spent all that much time with — or haven't tried at all — with a mind to doing a full roundup at some point in the future, either here on the blog or in video format, or perhaps even both!

Now I think I'll go hurl myself off a few cliffs before bedtime…

2174: Souls

I've tried on several occasions to get into the Souls series from From Software, and have never quite succeeded, despite liking the overall atmosphere of the whole thing. This time around, though, I feel I'm finally starting to Get It. Kind of.

I'm playing Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, the rejigged and enhanced version of Dark Souls II that was released for PC and next-gen platforms a while back. It was a Steam sale acquisition; for its low price, I was willing to give it another chance, so I jumped in on the understanding that Dark Souls II is, on the whole, perhaps a little easier to get into than the other games of the series. I'm not sure if I believe that yet, but I feel like I'm starting to get a feel for it all.

There are several things to get into your mind when you start playing Dark Souls. Firstly, it's a good idea to think of it a bit like a "single-player raid". You need to learn things: develop a strategy and execute it, preferably flawlessly. This is particularly apparent when fighting the game's bosses, but it also applies to regular enemies: most of the time they spawn in the same places, so you can prepare for ambushes where they got the jump on you the first time you went down that particular corridor, and instead slice them to ribbons before they can even touch you.

On a related note, Dark Souls' combat, while initially appearing to be relatively straightforward, is very "Japanese" in nature in that it has a heavy reliance on pattern recognition. When fighting everything from the most lowly of crap enemy to the biggest of bosses, you need to recognise the patterns of their attacks and counter them accordingly: dodge them to avoid taking damage, and take advantage of an opening to attack, while simultaneously being aware of your own stamina so you leave a bit left over to dodge out of the way when the next attack comes.

Yes, Dark Souls is not a game where you can flail wildly and hope for success. My early encounters with the Souls series saw me hating that Stamina bar and how quickly it gets used up, but this time around, again, I feel like I'm getting more of a feel for it. You can almost relate it to a turn-based sort of system in a strange sort of way — or perhaps it would be more accurate to compare it to the "cooldown" system used by most MMO combat systems. In other words, you can't just spam the attack button and hope an enemy is dumb enough to walk into your swing; most attacks are slow and ponderous enough to leave openings wide enough for enemies to hit you, even while you're mid-attack. As such, timing is crucial.

So far, I'm playing a mage-type character, since it allows me to deliver some decent damage from afar, which in turn helps me to develop my confidence to fight the more difficult opponents a bit more. I'm getting a feel for the hand-to-hand combat too, though; I can now pretty confidently dispatch lowly opponents with a dagger rather than a couple of spells to the face, though it remains to be seen if my overall play style will change too dramatically by the time I get to the end of the game… if I get to the end, of course.

So, then, I think I finally sort of "get it". I'm not sure I love it quite as much as some people do yet — I don't think I'm far enough in to feel that way — but I'm interested enough to keep going and find out more. Which is, you know, nice.

2169: Starting GRID (2)

One of my acquisitions in this year's Steam sale was Codemasters racing game GRID 2. I already owned the previous GRID game and had enjoyed what I played of its multi-discipline racing, but hadn't delved into it in depth. The price that GRID 2 and its more recent sequel GRID Autosport were going for was too much to resist, however, so I snagged copies of both and have been putting the former through its paces over the last few days.

GRID 2 was a bit of a controversial release when it originally came out, since it's a distinctly more "arcadey" affair than its predecessor. That's not to say that the original GRID was particularly sim-like in the first place, but the true petrolheads of the Internet appreciated things like its lavishly detailed first-person cockpits and semi-realistic handling. In contrast, GRID 2's emphasis on drift-heavy driving and the removal of the cockpit view led to a bit of an uproar among the racing enthusiast community, who saw it as a step backwards from its well-regarded predecessor.

Me, though, I love it; GRID 2's slidey handling is exactly the sort of thing I love in a racing game, and to be honest, while I love the way a cockpit view looks, I find it extremely difficult to race from that perspective, since visibility is so limited in most cases, and you don't have the peripheral vision you'd have in reality. Consequently, I much prefer racing from a bumper or bonnet cam (preferably the latter) since I find it much easier to judge my own position and have a feeling of spatial awareness during a race.

I also appreciate GRID 2 for its attempt to spin a story throughout its single-player game. All too often, racing games are rather dry affairs in which you navigate boring-looking menus to get to the actual racing, and there's often very little in the way of personality. GRID 2 doesn't go so far as to be Wing Commander with cars — although man, I would so play that game — but it does feature voiceovers and a sense of narrative progression as you play through the game. It's not a complex narrative — you're an up-and-coming driver headhunted by an eccentric rich dude who has decided he really wants to set up a new worldwide multi-discipline racing league, and your efforts as the face of the series allow you to build up the fanbase required for the WSR to become a success — but it works well in context, and it's punctuated nicely with infrequent cutscenes, including authentic-looking TV broadcasts featuring full-motion video rather than in-engine characters.

This sense of narrative progression and personality carries over into the actual racing gameplay, too. You're constantly getting advice and feedback over your radio while you race, and most race series highlight a named rival for you to try and beat. While the personalities of these rivals aren't developed all that much outside of text messages and social media posts in the menu screens, it's a nice touch that gives you more of an incentive to do your best than simply trying to get into first place.

The game also makes minimal but cinematic use of music: most races don't have background music, instead featuring some impressive sound effects that allow you to hear not only the roar of the car's engine, but the rumbling of the tyres on different surfaces, the sound of the crowds as you whizz past them, and other environmental sounds according to where you're racing today. There's an exception to this, though: when you get into the final races of each season, the final lap or sector of each race is accompanied by some electro-orchestral music that lends a real sense of drama to proceedings, making some already butthole-puckeringly tense finishes even more exciting. Good job there.

There's a good variety of events, too, with both circuit races and point to point races — a subject that I was talking about wanting to see more of just a few weeks ago — as well as time attacks, overtaking challenges, endurance races and all manner of other disciplines. The aforementioned petrolheads don't seem to like the fact that the game's career mode insists that you participate in all the disciplines, since most seem to prefer picking and choosing their favourites, but I really like the amount of variety this brings to the campaign: it, again, gives a good sense of progression as each new season presents you with new disciplines to conquer and new types of car to get to grips with. By the time you reach the end of the career mode, you'll most likely be a well-rounded driver able to turn your hand to all manner of different events — ideal for jumping online and taking on all-comers.

So I like it a lot so far, then. I'd go so far as to say that it's shaping up to be one of my favourite arcadey racers for quite some time, and I'm very interested to explore it in more detail over the coming weeks.