1672: It's Time to Take "Simulator" Back

On a whim, I downloaded a game called F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 from retro gaming specialists Good Old Games the other day. This was the sequel to a game I used to play a whole bunch on the Atari ST, our main family computer back in the late '80s to early '90s — F-19 Stealth Fighter.

F-19 and F-117A are both the brainchild of Sid Meier, the legendary game designer who is most well-known for the Civilization series these days. Back in the '80s and '90s, though, Meier and his compatriots at MicroProse — a company which he co-founded — were specialists in the field of simulations of various kinds. And not just flight sims, either; notable early MicroProse titles included submarine simulator Silent Service and air traffic control simulation Kennedy Approach as well as the detailed but accessible jet fighter sims like F-15 Strike Eagle that the company was most well-known for.

That "accessible" part was an important part of the appeal of MicroProse games — even as a young child, I was able to pick up a joystick and happily fly a virtual F-15 or the non-existent F-19 (and its real-world counterpart the F-117A) without crashing, for the most part. (Landing was — and still is — troublesome, but it was ever thus.) And yet the games were packed with detail and options that allowed you to make the experience more realistic if you so desired — systems that could get damaged or fail in flight, more complex flight models, less forgiving physics models for landing and all manner of other goodies. In other words, they were games that both my young self and my confirmed propellerhead father could get something out of — although the latter often noted that SubLogic's (and subsequently Microsoft's) Flight Simulator series was considerably more "true to life" in numerous ways.

Booting up F-117A Nighthawk: Stealth Fighter 2.0 (which is a fancier version of F-19 Stealth Fighter rather than a completely new game in its own right) made me realise that a full-on, proper simulation like this is something of a rarity these days. Oh, sure, we still get the odd authentic simulator like Euro Truck Simulator and Farming Simulator, but for the most part, simulators aren't what they used to be.

And I mean that literally: the definition (or usage, at least) of the words "simulator" and "simulation" have changed over time, and branched off in a couple of directions: first they were co-opted by social game developers to describe isometric-perspective clickfest non-games like FarmVille and CityVille and, more recently, they've been adopted in a humorous sense by games like Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator — games that are making a joke out of the fact that they bear little to no resemblance to reality whatsoever. (A joke that some might argue has gone a little bit too far now, but that's not really what I want to get too hung up on right now.)

An honest-to-goodness flight simulator, though? A rare sighting — along with their closely related cousins, the space flight simulator. (In the latter case, we're usually into the realms of pure science fantasy, but good space flight sims treat their subject matter with as much respect as those games that are firmly based in the real world. See: X-Wing, Tie Fighter, FreeSpace.) And that's a bit sad, really, because surely with the power of modern systems we could do some absolutely kick-ass flight sims these days.

Flight sims were, during the '90s and early '00s, showcase titles for powerful computers. Fast processors were needed to crunch the numbers for increasingly realistic flight models, and the dawn of the 3D accelerator video card age brought us texture-mapped visuals that were forever pursuing the "photo-realistic" ideal. No-one ever quite managed it, but there were more than a few games that got pretty close — and even when they didn't, there were plenty of games that managed to suspend one's disbelief enough through atmosphere and a feeling of authenticity to make you feel like you were really sitting in the cockpit heading off on a deadly mission into enemy territory.

F-117A is a prime example of this. Its visuals consisting entirely of flat-shaded polygonal graphics with occasional dots appearing on land and sea to give a (surprisingly convincing) feeling of speed and altitude, the game nonetheless remains somewhat terrifying thanks to its stealth mechanics. You need to fly under radars and make sure you don't do anything that will attract attention — no firing off weapons unless you've reached your target; no hitting the afterburners to get where you're going a bit quicker. The little gauge in the cockpit that reflected your visibility to enemy radar — a nod to accessibility rather than something I for a moment believe is present in a real F-117A cockpit — became something you'd glance furtively at before returning your attention to the occasional radar "blips" you'd see on the cockpit's multi-function displays. You'd lower the nose and drop altitude still further, terrifying a few Libyan farmers as you flew past a few hundred feet above their heads. Then, when your target was in range, you'd lock on, open the bay doors, release your payload and then get the hell out of there before pursuers arrived on the scene.

I miss that sort of experience. I know I can still have it with F-117A, but it would be awesome to see what that game would look like had it been made today. I wonder if we'll ever see a resurgence of this kind of game? It's not beyond the realm of possibility; after all, traditional PC roleplaying games, point-and-click adventures and all manner of other genres have made successful comebacks in recent years — I think flight sims are long overdue their time in the sun.

1664: The Myths of Modern PC Gaming

I witnessed a surprisingly civil online discussion earlier on about that rather tired old topic, console vs. PC gaming, but despite the civility it seems that a lot of people on the "pro-console" side of the fence still hold more than a few misconceptions about what PC gaming is all about.

Let's take a moment to address some of these points.

PCs require maintenance.

While this was once true, with Windows 95, 98 and XP seemingly all having some sort of built-in failsafe that caused them to slow down to barely usable levels after about a year or so, necessitating a full reinstall, Windows 7 and beyond, in my experience, run perfectly happily without complaint and without requiring anything special to be done in order to keep things running efficiently. If updates to drivers or other software are required, the respective pieces of software will generally notify you — or, in many cases, simply update themselves in the background without you ever knowing. All you, the user, really need to do is ensure you have some sort of security software installed to protect yourself against viruses and the like.

PC games are riddled with compatibility problems.

Another issue from the past that is, in 99% of cases, no longer relevant. If you're trying to run an older game, then perhaps you may run into some issues — though in most cases, a quick Google will reveal what you need to do to get it running on a modern machine, and the solution is often simple — but if you buy something new (and by "new" I mean "released within the last five years") all you generally need to do is put in the disc or click the "install" button in Steam, then start playing as soon as it's ready. Easy.

PC games require adjusting settings.

The limit of most setting adjustments I do these days is as follows:

1) Ensure game is running at 1920×1080 resolution if it doesn't default to that (and most do).
2) Adjust detail level if framerate is unsatisfactory and game doesn't auto-suggest best settings (and most do).

I think everyone can manage that.

[Console X] does [Y]!

PCs do literally anything you want them to. Consoles have access to selected digital media sources, sure, but on PC you can access anything available on the Web, not just those services with apps that have been specifically designed for the system. Not only that, but thanks to services like UnblockUs it's a snap to access digital content that is normally region-locked to other territories. (UnblockUs will work with consoles, but it requires far more tinkering with the settings than the PC version does — on PC you simply download a small executable file, run it and then turn it on and off from the Windows System Tray as needed.)

Oh, but Kinect…

Shut up.

[Console X] has [exclusive game]!

This is the only mildly compelling argument in favour of consoles, but in reality, choosing a digital entertainment system is far more than just choosing the exclusives. (And there's nothing wrong with having several systems on hand for just this reason.) PC versions of games are, in most cases, the definitive versions, with the best graphics, most customisable settings, mod support (official or unofficial) and the greatest flexibility with regard to control schemes. Even a shoddy console port on PC (I'm looking at you, Binary Domain) is technically superior and more impressive than its console counterpart — and for those who care about such things, PC games will typically all run in true 1080p without breaking a sweat.

As for those exclusives, well, PC as a platform, having been around for a lot longer than anything else on the market, has a gigantic library of games, far bigger and more diverse than any one console will ever be able to offer. If you claim there isn't a PC game out there that interests you, you aren't looking hard enough. Plus thanks to services like GOG.com, old games are still just as relevant as the latest and greatest — something which simply isn't true on the latest consoles due to the lack of backward compatibility.

You want specifics? If you think that Destiny is a compelling reason for consoles being "better" than PC, ponder this for a moment: Destiny is a blend of two game genres — first-person shooter and massively multiplayer online RPG — that have been the PC's bread and butter for years now. While Destiny itself may not be coming to PC — although, to be honest, I'll be very surprised if it doesn't eventually — there are plenty of alternatives and equivalents.

I prefer gaming from my couch.

So game from your couch. Most modern PC video cards have at least one HDMI out socket, allowing you to connect your computer to your TV just like a console. The HDMI port also carries audio, too, so you don't have to faff around with separate audio cables and speakers like you once did either. Couple that with the fact that Xbox 360 controllers are natively supported by Windows (both wired and wireless — though you will need an adapter to use the wireless ones) and wireless keyboards and mice are more affordable than they've ever been, and there's absolutely no reason you can't have a great PC gaming experience from your couch. Make use of Steam's Big Picture Mode to manage your game library and the experience is all but indistinguishable from using a console.

Note: Nothing in this post is intended to say that consoles are in some way "bad" or "inferior" to PC — I still play games on PC, console and handheld devices. There's a certain joy in being able to insert a disc and just start playing — though with the rise of mandatory installs, this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, even on console — and there are, admittedly, a number of interesting console-exclusive titles that, in some cases, may never make the jump to PC.

The original discussion stemmed from someone's question about whether they should spend a chunk of money on a PlayStation 4 or a new phone, and PC was touted as a third option — one I'd firmly stand behind. Speaking as a former member of the games press, at present I can't in good conscience recommend the PlayStation 4 to anyone simply on the grounds that there aren't enough interesting games available for it that you can't get anywhere else… yet. This will doubtless change in the future — there's a lot of great-looking stuff coming next year — but speaking right now, in August 2014, a PC is a much more sound investment for both video games and home entertainment purposes.

1661: Dead Dancing

Fancied a bit of a change today, so I decided to grab a copy of a game I've been keeping one eye on for a while now: indie title Crypt of the NecroDancer, which hit Steam Early Access recently.

Several hours later, I realised that I'd been playing Crypt of the NecroDancer for a very long time, and I was starting to do everything — not just in-game actions — in time with the beat in my head.

Rewind a moment, for those unfamiliar with Crypt of the NecroDancer: what the hell is this curiously-named game? Well, it's yet another example of one of the current "indie darling" genres: the roguelike. But this game's a bit different from the many, many other procedurally generated hack-and-slash RPGs out there, in that it's actually more of a rhythm action game than anything else.

Yes, you read that correctly: a rhythm action game. Crypt of the NecroDancer eschews the complexity of more stat-heavy roguelikes and RPGs in favour of an extremely simple system that only requires you to use four buttons on the keyboard: the directional arrows. Everything you do involves pressing one or two of these keys in time with the music — even using items. It takes a little getting used to, but the reason for this lightweight control system becomes obvious almost immediately: this is a game about sticking to the beat, watching for patterns and learning to exploit them, not about min-maxing your gear and gaining experience. It has a distinctly arcadey feel to it thanks to mechanics like score multipliers and powerups, and it's structured in such a way that play sessions are quick and brutally difficult, particularly once you get out of the first of the four "zones" that make up the game in its current Early Access form.

Speaking of Early Access, this is one of the most "complete" Early Access titles I've played to date, consisting of four zones with four levels each (three standard, one boss), each of which has their own music, composed by Danny Baranowsky, of Super Meat Boy and Desktop Dungeons fame. The music is absolutely fantastic, covering a variety of different electronic dance music styles and tempi, and gives each level a unique feel that you'll come to know and love (or hate) very well as you try again and again to make a little progress.

Progress in the game is somewhat akin to that other well-regarded lightweight roguelike of the moment: Rogue Legacy. Through playing the game normally, you'll acquire diamonds, which can be used to purchase permanent upgrades for the dungeon and your character, ranging from extra health to new items that show up in chests. The twist is that diamonds "expire" after you enter the dungeon again, so in order to unlock something expensive you'll need to collect all the diamonds you need in a single run — something that becomes "easier" (in that you'll start picking up more than one diamond at once) as you get into the harder zones.

The whole game is utterly charming, with some lovely pixel art — though a V-sync option would be nice to prevent the occasional bit of screen tearing that is apparent — and some well-designed, distinctive monsters, each of whom have their own attack patterns you'll have to learn how to tackle while staying on the beat. The use of a female protagonist feels a bit like she's there for the sake of it just so people can point at the game and use it as an awesome example of a game that uses a female protagonist by default — but this isn't a problem as such, more a pointed response to the growing focus on social issues that much of the games business has right now, for better or worse. Only idiots will actually complain about it, and besides, the finished version will have numerous unlockable characters, anyway, a la Spelunky, so I can only assume that those who do have violent objections to playing as a woman for any length of time will be catered to in this way.

Long story short, Crypt of the NecroDancer is looking (and sounding) absolutely fantastic so far, and I can't wait to see the finished version. There's every possibility that this could be one of the next big things in the indie space, and I would absolutely love to see it on other platforms — its quick-fire gameplay would make it an ideal fit for Vita in particular. Let's hope it sees enough success to make that happen.

1657: Bloodlines

For a bit of a change this evening, I decided to fire up a game I've been meaning to play through and beat for a long time: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. And, despite its now somewhat dated-looking visuals and inconsistent-quality audio, I've really enjoyed what I've played so far.

Bloodlines, as it shall be known hereafter, is an interesting game. Based on the White Wolf pen-and-paper role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, itself part of White Wolf's larger World of Darkness setting, it's an excellent take on the role-playing genre and a fantastic adaptation of its source material. The reason why it's so fondly regarded — even with its flaws and bugs necessitating the creation of a community-made patch well after its developers had abandoned it — is because it does things a little differently from other games of a similar type.

Vampire: The Masquerade was a fairly unconventional beast (no pun intended) in its pen-and-paper incarnation, too. Eschewing dungeon-crawling and loot whoring in favour of in-depth role-playing based on a shockingly well-realised world and society — World of Darkness features one of the most richly detailed explanations of vampiric culture since… well, ever, really — Vampire: The Masquerade was a game that rewarded those who sought interesting, unconventional and creative solutions to problems. There was combat, sure, but it was always rather heavily implied that getting into a true fight was something of a last resort for members of vampire society. Rather, you'd make use of your wits, your intelligence, your social skills and your charisma — with a bit of help from your supernatural vampiric abilities — and, more often than not, be able to get through situations without ever drawing your weapon.

Bloodlines is rather similar. It does cater to those players who enjoy the idea of swinging a tyre iron around and caving people's skulls in — although the combat is, it must be said, rather rudimentary compared to more modern real-time RPGs like The Witcher and Dark Souls — or even those who enjoy first-person shooting. But, for me, far more rewarding is the opportunity to get through most situations by making use of your vampiric powers, which vary according to what kind of character you create at the start of the game.

Much of Vampire: The Masquerade is based on the interactions between various clans of vampires, and each of these clans has its own specialisms. Some have magical abilities; others are strong fighters; others still are true "creatures of the night", able to disappear into thin air right before their enemies' eyes. The character I'm playing this time around is a Malkavian; their defining characteristic is the fact that they're, well, insane — but they can use this fact to their advantage by channeling their mental energy outwards to do things like inflict terror on others or make enemies have hallucinations. In conversation, Malkavians tend to speak in riddles, and, pleasingly, the dialogue options you have available to you when playing as a Malkavian are all borderline gibberish — though the longer you play, the more these riddles will start to make sense to you. Oh, and Malkavians also hear voices while they're wandering around. And occasionally stop to have a conversation with a roadsign. You get to "roleplay" all of this — something I haven't seen since the early Infinity Engine games, which featured differing dialogue depending on things like your Intelligence score.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Bloodlines is that it uses all these traditional RPG mechanics without putting the player in the usual "god mode" perspective, watching the action unfold from above. No; instead, taking heavy cues from its contemporaries such as Deus Ex and the like, Bloodlines has plenty of "immersive sim" elements about itself, too: hub-based areas to explore, with buildings you can go into and investigate even if the game's quests haven't directed you to yet; objects you can pick up and manipulate; computers you can fiddle with by actually typing things into them; and a sense that, in a rather simplistic manner, the world will respond to the way you behave in it.

While we have plenty of open-world, non-linear RPGs today, nothing that's emerged recently has quite the same feel about it as Bloodlines. I've played it through once for about 20 hours or so — though to my shame, I never beat it — and I'm now very interested to take it for another spin with my adorably mental protagonist. If you haven't yet sampled its bloody charms — and can look past the visuals of a pre-Half-Life 2 Source Engine game — then I strongly recommend you give it a look.

1654: Pay Attention, Bon-- Err, Remington

I felt like trying something new today, so after toying with the idea of downloading legendary military sandbox Arma III (and eventually resisting — its £35.99 price point is a little too high for me to consider taking a risk on it at the moment) I wandered over to GOG.com and took a look at a game that has caught my interest several times over the years: Sid Meier's Covert Action.

I remember first seeing adverts for Covert Action back in multi-format games magazine Advanced Computer Entertainment (aka ACE) way back around 1990, when the game first came out. I recall being intrigued by the prospect of what looked like a fairly convincing "spy game" — something that hadn't really been done at the time, and certainly not in the way that Covert Action chooses to do things.

Covert Action is, unlike other espionage-themed games on the market, very much a "spy simulator". Straddling a line somewhere between a surprisingly huge number of different genres, Covert Action casts you in the role of superspy Max (or Maxine) Remington as he (or she) attempts to foil the devious plots of various bands of criminals around the world. These plots range from simple thefts all the way up to the construction of doomsday devices, but the execution remains the same: gather evidence, infiltrate facilities, intercept communications and eventually — hopefully — bring the perpetrators to justice. Or, if you're as incompetent as me, arrest a few of them and allow the remaining criminals to happily get away with what they were planning.

Covert Action is split into a number of different components. The "main" part of the game, if you can call it that, involves moving from location to location both within cities and around the world, and choosing the best course of action. Actions always take varying amounts of time, so if you spend too long dilly-dallying around, you'll find the criminals get one, two, three steps ahead of you before you know it. This is a game about preventing a crime before it happens rather than solving a crime that has already happened, and as such you have to go about things a little differently to how you might do in other games; you have to anticipate what your opponents' moves might be, then react accordingly, ideally to catch them in the act and be able to arrest them in such a manner that causes the remainder of their plot to fall to pieces.

Choosing to perform various actions in the game's locations triggers minigames. Choose to wiretap a building's phones, for example, and you'll be confronted with a challenging PipeMania-esque puzzle where you must reroute power away from both the phones and the alarm systems of the building. Choose to decrypt an intercepted communication from one of the perps and you'll actually have to crack the code using your own brainpower. Opt to tail a suspect and see if they lead you anywhere interesting, and you'll find yourself playing an oddly strategic driving game in which you order two cars around in an attempt to follow the suspect without arousing their suspicions. And choose to break in to a facility and you'll have to actually infiltrate it yourself.

It's this latter part of the game that tends to form the meat of most investigations — and it's also an aspect that Meier himself was somewhat dissatisfied with, feeling that the game's minigames weren't tied together in a coherent enough manner. Break-ins are not the only option for gathering information, but they're by far the most efficient and as such you'll spend quite a lot of time doing them.

They take the form of an interesting pre-Metal Gear stealth action game in which you control Max as s/he explores a randomly generated building, opening filing cabinets and drawers and photographing all the files s/he can. You'll also have to deploy bugs in various items of furniture in order to raise your ability to perform remote surveillance on the building, and recover incriminating evidence from safes if you want to "turn" your opponents over to your side rather than simply arresting them. Some interesting, rudimentary AI sees guards patrolling the building and looking out for unusual things — containers you neglected to close, for example. You can also trick them somewhat by knocking one of them out and then disguising yourself in their uniforms — in a nice touch, your disguise will only continue to work if you don't allow them to look at your front or side for any length of time, leading to some comic situations as Max stares at a wall, hoping that the guard who just opened the door behind him/her doesn't decide to come in and check the room more thoroughly.

All the while you're investigating, the criminals are working on their plot in the background, and if you're not quick or careful enough, they will succeed. Regardless of whether you "win" or "lose" a case, however, the game continues, and you're evaluated on your performance, with a certain number of points being available for each mission according to who you managed to arrest, what key items you managed to confiscate and whether you actually managed to foil the plot at all.

It's a difficult, challenging, ambitious and somewhat flawed game, but it's a magnificent example of the creativity of game developers in the early '90s — particularly MicroProse, who were well-known for this sort of game around that time. It's also a game absolutely crying out for a remake — with today's technology, it's more than possible for someone to do the game's grand vision even more justice than the hardware and software of 1990 would allow.

That said, Covert Action still stands up remarkably well even today, despite its dodgy AdLib sound effects and horrid 16-colour EGA graphics. If you're looking for something a little bit different to entertain you for a while, I'd urge you to check it out.

1610: Titan Falls

Just wanted to share my enthusiasm for what I felt was a significant (gaming) achievement this evening: finally successfully toppling Titan's Hard Mode incarnation in Final Fantasy XIV without dying, without being blown up by bombs, without getting hit by Weight of the Land (too many times) and without doing anything stupid. The secret? Zoom out the camera.

For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV's endgame, Titan Hard Mode was formerly one of the hardest encounters in the game, taking the form of an 8-player variation on one of the main story's 4-player bosses. Mastering (or at least clearing) the fight is an important part of endgame play, since acquiring your class's "Relic" weapon requires you to beat him along with the other two Hard Mode primal fights and two original bosses Dhorme Chimera and Hydra.

The actual battle against Titan bears some resemblance to its story mode counterpart in that Titan makes use of many of the same abilities throughout. The main difference is that the fight is overall a lot longer and incorporates a few new mechanics — most notably the addition of "Bomb Boulders" that drop down from the sky in set patterns and then explode in sequence, requiring the party to quickly and carefully manoeuvre from position to position in order to avoid damage — and while avoiding Titan's other abilities such as Landslide, which can knock you off the arena and out of the fight completely if you're not sharp enough.

Like the other Hard and Extreme mode Primal fights in Final Fantasy XIV, Titan Hard is quite a "choreographed" fight that requires the party be in the right place at the right time, and respond quickly to prompts on the screen. Titan always uses the same abilities in the same order, so there's very much a sequence and timing you can learn, though there will be slight variations on exactly what you need to do each time you play owing to people standing in different places.

It may sound odd to say, but it's a strangely beautiful sight to see a party pulling off a fight like Titan Hard efficiently and effectively. The group moving as one from place to place in response to the incoming threats is a very satisfying thing to watch, particularly when you're part of it. It's a hard thing to convey to anyone who hasn't experienced it for themselves, but in many ways it's like pulling off an impressive "dance" as a group — eight people working as one (for the most part… there's usually at least one person who falls off remarkably quickly, and up until tonight it's usually been me) to achieve a common goal.

I must confess to feeling pumped up and happy about my victory this evening — and, now, much more willing to jump into the Trials Roulette mode of the Duty Finder, which I'd previously been extremely hesitant about making use of despite the helpful rewards on offer. The Extreme Mode primals may still be a while off before I can confidently tackle them — same for Twintania, the notorious boss that guards the end of the first super-tough endgame dungeon The Binding Coil of Bahamut — but for now, I feel I have conquered Titan Hard and can move on to stiffer challenges.

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Andie, too, who has been playing Final Fantasy XIV and has just got her first character to level 50, putting my friend James — who has been playing a lot longer — to shame. Nice job, W'khebica (an authentic Miqo'te name, apparently) — I look forward to enduring the endless Myth grind with you at my side.

1568: Prepare for To... no, I'm not making that joke

Towerfall! I'd heard good things about this indie-developed game, but had never tried it prior to this weekend. And blow me if the positivity wasn't justified.

Towerfall — not to be confused with Titanfall — is a game for up to four players, available on PC, PlayStation 4 and, oddly enough, Ouya, where it was originally intended to be a flagship title for the ill-conceived Android microconsole. I'm extremely thankful that the developers weren't stubborn about sticking with Ouya exclusivity; this way, a lot more people get to play their game, and no-one has to buy an Ouya.

Anyway. There are two ways to play Towerfall: Versus and Quest. I haven't tried Quest yet, but we played some Versus in between board games over the weekend. And it was a huge amount of fun. The concept is extremely simple: up to four players face off against one another armed with bows and a very limited number of arrows, and must defeat the other players. You can defeat a player by either shooting them or jumping on their head Mario-style, in which case you'll get a point — but if they end up killing themselves thanks to your actions, you won't get a point.

That is, basically, it. The simplicity of the game is what makes it work so well, and everything else that goes on simply builds on this extremely simple formula. Collectible treasures that pop up around the level might replenish your arrows, or might give you a new type of arrow to play with such as arrows that explode or arrows that drill through walls. Or they might just do something weird; particular favourites in this category include one that turns the lights out on the level, meaning it's a lot more difficult to see the platforms and hazards; one that causes the background to start swaying drunkenly and everything to start moving at half-speed; and one that causes the whole level to scroll one whole screen in any of the four cardinal directions. (Levels are wrap-around, so you can run off the left edge and reappear on the right; this scrolling trick really messes with your perception of how this works while it's going on.)

One thing I was particularly impressed with was the "variants" menu when setting up a new game. Rather than being confined to playing the game in just a single way, Towerfall features a huge variety of options for you to tweak the experience. If you want to play without arrows, knock yourself out (by having someone land on your head). If you want to start with the more powerful arrows, great. If you want to be able to come back as a ghost and continue harassing the other players rather than simply being eliminated from a round, that's an option too. There's a huge amount of flexibility, and a bit of experimentation will help make the experience into a game that hopefully everyone participating will be able to enjoy.

The only potential downside to the game is that it's only possible to enjoy its multiplayer delights with other people in the same room as you. Frankly, I greatly prefer this to playing online, but for those who have friends who are difficult to gather in the same place at the same time, this may be a problem. Still, I'm hopeful I'll have the opportunity to play it a whole lot more in the future; when we move into our new house — which is pretty soon now! — we'll have a lot more room for hosting, and even a spare bed. So late night Towerfall sessions are very much a go!

1538: Loot Whore

Playing both Final Fantasy XIV and Diablo III — two fundamentally similar but also quite different games — this weekend has got me thinking about loot. Yes, this is a very specific thing to be thinking about, but I find the two games' differing approaches to providing the player with new equipment to be quite interesting.

At heart, the difference between the two games is in whether gear acquisition is purely vertical (Final Fantasy XIV) or whether there's a degree of horizontal… ness about it, too.

What do I mean? Well, in Final Fantasy XIV, the equipment you put on your character is largely determined by your level. And when you hit the level cap, you then work your way up through several "tiers" of equipment that are increasingly challenging to acquire. Item Level 50 items are provided to you as the final stages of your class' quest; Item Level 60 items come from entry-level endgame dungeons; Item Level 70 items used to come from endgame currency and now come from more challenging endgame dungeons; Item Level 80 items come from Crystal Tower; Item Level 90 items… you get the idea. Everything comes from a specific place, and you generally have to "work" for it — items you purchase require grinding out the requisite amount of currency before you can afford them by running dungeons and other content, while items you acquire as loot from dungeons are random drops that, in many cases, will require a large number of runs of the same dungeon to acquire a complete set of.

In Diablo III, conversely, you are constantly thrown new gear. Every other fight you get into, a monster drops something. And with the recent Patch 2.0, it's usually something interesting that has an impact on your stats, damage, healing potential or other stuff. You'll be swapping out equipment very regularly as you find new bits of gear; consequently, equipment starts to feel a lot more "disposable" than it does in something like Final Fantasy XIV. Diablo certainly has an element of vertical progression, too, as items get gradually better over the course of the whole game and have minimum level requirements to use, but when you strap on a new piece of armour it's on the understanding that you might not be holding onto it for very long, unlike, say, my Sorcerer's Coat that my Final Fantasy XIV Black Mage has now been wearing for a number of months now. (That thing must reek.)

There are other ways to handle it, too. Japanese role-playing games tend to take a vertical approach, with new "tiers" of equipment presenting themselves as you progress through the linear storyline, with the "ultimate" equipment usually either tucked away in a secret place or secreted behind a significant challenge. Western role-playing games tend to allow pretty much any character to strap on anything at all, though if your class isn't proficient in it you can expect penalties to your performance. Western role-playing games also tend to festoon their worlds and dungeons with hundreds of the same shitty pieces of armour and weaponry, and then hide a few good bits and pieces in the deepest darkest dungeons. And then you have weird hybrid games like The Witch and the Hundred Knight, which is a Japanese role-playing game that takes heavy cues from loot-whoring role-playing games like Diablo, which combine a toned-down degree of player choice/horizontal progression with vertical advancement as the game goes on.

It must be a really tricky balance to get right, and I don't envy the people who have to design all that gear and ensure it's reasonably well-balanced for the game. (Although unbalanced super-gear can be a lot of fun, too, so it's not unusual to find at least one massively overpowered piece of gear in many games — at least in the single-player sphere.) I'm not sure, on the whole, which system I prefer — if indeed any — because they each have their pros and cons. I really like the sense of achievement that acquiring a new piece of equipment in Final Fantasy XIV brings, for example — it feels like you've done something major. Conversely, I like that the sheer volume of loot in stuff like Diablo allows you to tweak and tailor your character a lot more to your liking — but it is a faff to have to keep comparing stats every few minutes.

There you go. One of the nichiest posts I've ever done. It's late. I'm going to bed.

1535: El Psy Kongroo

I've already written on the subject at some length over on USgamer, but on the offchance you haven't paid us a visit recently, I thought I'd wax lyrical about my initial experiences with Steins;Gate here, too.

Steins;Gate, for the unfamiliar, is a visual novel from popular developer Nitroplus, whose name you may remember from the excellent "giant robots fight Cthulhu" visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane that I played a while back. Unlike Demonbane, it's not an eroge — though Demonbane's sex scenes were, for the most part, more horrifying and uncomfortable than anything else — but it's still an unabashedly adult affair, just one without any graphic uglies-bumping. It's an enormously well-respected title, known better to most people in the West through its apparently excellent anime adaptation, and an official English localisation has been a long time coming. But come it finally has, thanks to localisation and visual novel specialists JAST USA — one of my favourite publishers in the world for the last few years — and finally everyone can get in on the action.

Steins;Gate is a science fiction tale that, for the few hours I've played so far, centres largely around the concept of time travel and parallel worlds. The main character is a gloriously chaotic individual afflicted with chuunibyou ("middle school second-grade syndrome") — he's utterly convinced that he's a mad scientist and that he's being pursued by a shadowy group called The Organization. Whether or not his delusions turn out to be true or not remains to be seen, but it's certainly an interesting setup; much like Demonbane put the player in the shoes of a protagonist that was a character in their own right rather than an obvious blank-slate cipher, so too does Steins;Gate.

This time around, the narrative influences aren't drawn from Lovecraft, but instead from popular science and science fiction, both Eastern and Western. The game makes frequent references to real-life concepts, particularly with regard to topics like time travel and parallel world theories as well as the real-life modern-day myth of time traveller John Titor. The game makes unsubtle changes to things it mentions throughout (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure becomes Juju's Bizarre Adventure, for example, while the IBM 5100 computer Titor supposedly travelled back in time to retrieve becomes an IBN 5100), presumably to avoid breaching about a bajillion copyrights, but it's always clear what it really means. There's a constantly updated glossary you can refer to as you play, too, that gradually fills up with a wealth of information ranging from Japanese cultural tidbits to scientific and technology history.

It's clearly a setting that has had a lot of thought poured into it. In many ways, although the premise, style and genre are completely different, Steins;Gate reminds me of Aselia the Eternal in the sense that the writers obviously had a very clear vision of how their version of the world worked and how the various characters fit into it all. This was very true in the case of Aselia the Eternal, which I maintain has one of the most well-realised, well-depicted fantasy worlds of any game I've ever played, despite the inherent restrictiveness of the visual novel genre, and is already shaping up to be very true in the case of Steins;Gate. Nitroplus' title goes a step further with all the supplementary information you can refer to as you play — not to mention the fact that clicking the "Internet" option on your in-game phone opens an actual website for the main character's "Future Gadget Lab".

And speaking of the phone, the means through which you interact with Steins;Gate is bizarre and intriguing. Rather than making the usual binary choices that visual novels tend to present you with, Steins;Gate instead makes use of the protagonist's phone as its main means of interaction. As you progress, you'll receive email messages from characters and have the option to respond to them or not; you'll also receive phone calls and have the option of answering them or not answering them, and various other things will happen in and around your phone. The choices you make as to whether or not you engage with these various distractions determine the paths down which the plot proceeds, giving the flow of the story a much more "natural" feel than some visual novels with extremely obvious decision points. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Anyway. I'm but a short way into the overall plot as a whole as I type this and thus there's not a lot more I can say thus far save for the fact that I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to seeing where it goes. It's an immediately intriguing, compelling tale with some fascinating, unconventional characters and an utterly gorgeous art style, so if you're looking for a new interactive story to delve into, I'd encourage you to check it out and grab a copy as soon as you can.

1490: Bros Before Titans

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been playing a bunch of Atelier Rorona this weekend, but tonight I decided to play through something a few people have been bugging me to try: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. And it proved to be the perfect antidote to the endless Titanfall chatter there's been on social media all weekend.

For those unfamiliar, Brothers, as I shall refer to it hereafter, is a game about the titular brothers going on a quest to find the cure for their sick father. It sells itself as a "single-player cooperative game" and that's not actually a bad description in mechanical terms — using both thumbsticks on a controller, you control both brothers, and use the triggers to make each of them interact with things. Big Brother is stronger, taller and older; Little Brother is more agile, smaller and more childish. Most of the game's puzzles revolve around working out which brother is the most appropriate one to use in a situation, and whether or not they need to work together, which they usually do.

But mechanics are probably the least interesting thing about Brothers. Where the game really shines is in telling a compact, emotional story whose characters are introduced, undergo some serious, well-paced growth and bring the story to a fitting conclusion… all without saying a word. Or not a word in English, anyway; I'm not entirely sure if the language the characters speak in the game is real or just a Simlish-style made up language, but it doesn't matter — the meaning is got across through a combination of context, body language, facial expressions plus other presentational elements such as music. The game packs a seriously powerful emotional punch by slowly building up these characters and giving you a chance to get to know them before throwing them into harrowing situations that will tax the emotional constitution of even the most hard-hearted soul.

I cried three times over the course of the game, but as we've probably established in a number of posts over the last 1,490 days, I am somewhat susceptible to this sort of thing, not to mention a lot more willing to allow my emotions to leak out through my eyes if something affects me strongly. I'm not actually sure if game makers have genuinely got better at emotional storytelling over the past years, whether I've become more susceptible to emotional manipulation, or something in between. It doesn't really matter too much, I suppose; the fact that a game like Brothers can have a legitimately emotional impact is something that's worth celebrating and praising in itself — it doesn't necessarily need to be compared to anything else.

I'm being deliberately vague about details of the plot here because I believe that if you're reading this and have access to some sort of gaming device on which you can play Brothers, you should definitely give it a go. It's a short game — it took me just under 3 hours to get all the way through — and not a particularly challenging one either, but it's not about challenging the player (in mechanical terms, anyway — it's definitely emotionally challenging). Rather, it's about telling an interesting, compelling story in a somewhat unconventional and interactive way. It's the kind of story that might work as an animated movie, but which has a whole lot more power added to it by virtue of the fact that you're the one in control.

Grab a copy for PC here. And if you're planning on playing it, I recommend not reading up on it at all beforehand. It's an experience best had with beginner's mind, and one best had in a single sitting. So set aside a few hours, grab a controller, turn out the lights and enjoy a fantastic story.