1439: Titanic

Been making good progress with Final Fantasy XIV over the last few days and once again I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I've taken to the multiplayer-centric endgame content.

Tonight's job — the last-but-one step in the quest to acquire the almost-but-not-quite-ultimate weapon for my level 50 Black Mage class — was to fell Titan in his "Hard Mode" fight, a notoriously difficult boss battle that I had a considerable degree of uneasiness about going into — and which I was terrified of the prospect of jumping into with strangers.

As it happens, the fight wasn't all that scary if you know what you're doing — much like every other fight in the game. You'd think I'd have learned that by now.

Titan, like Ifrit and Garuda before him, is one of the "Primals" — major bosses that crop up over the course of Final Fantasy XIV's main story, and a good opportunity to test your party's skills against one very strong opponent without having to run through a long dungeon first. The battles against them — known as "trials" in game parlance — tend to be unfold in deceptively simple boss-fighting arenas, but the simplicity of the environment is to ensure there's nothing to distract you from the important thing: paying attention to what your opponent is doing.

Ifrit, Garuda and Titan all have abilities that are far beyond almost anything else you fight in the game, and a party that doesn't know what it's doing can wipe out very quickly if they're not careful. They're highly mobile fights that demand you recognise your opponent's attack patterns and know how to counter them — and how to avoid them. Titan in particular is highly dependent on the party being able to avoid a relentless string of devastating attacks — and the healers being able to deal with the few, less-damaging attacks that are unavoidable for the whole party.

Aside from Titan, I spent a bit of time playing with the Conjurer class earlier — this is the healing class that later becomes White Mage, but also has a few offensive skills, too. It's an interestingly distinctive class to play when compared to Black Mage, and a good demonstration of how Final Fantasy XIV makes even ostensibly similar classes play markedly differently from one another.

Black Mage and its predecessor Thaumaturgist involve highly destructive spells that cost large amounts of magic points to cast. The key mechanic to get your head around with Black Mage is the balance between "Umbral Ice" and "Astral Fire" — the former causes your ice-based spells to cost more to cast, but increases your magic points regeneration enormously, while the latter causes fire-based spells to cost more to cast and deal considerably more damage, and also stops all magic points regeneration. Essentially, Black Mages have a limitless pool of magic points that mean they can continue casting indefinitely, so long as they make the switch between Umbral Ice and Astral Fire at appropriate junctures — and, at higher levels, make good use of the MP-free, instant-cast spells that occasionally trigger.

White Mage and its predecessor Conjurer, meanwhile, are very different. Spells are considerably cheaper to cast, but there's no Umbral Ice mechanic to quickly regenerate magic points in a hurry — so you have to manage your spellcasting a little more carefully. The class also has an interesting "stance switch" option, allowing the white mage to swap their Intelligence (determines spell damage) and Mind (determines healing power) stats around, effectively making them either damage- or healing-focused at the touch of a button. And then, of course, there's the fact that white mages are mainly regarded as healers rather than damage dealers, and as such you have to be a lot more aware of people around you so you can heal them. The tradeoff for this, of course, is that people tend to like you because you can stop them from dying — and, once you reach a high enough level, you can even bring them back from the dead.

I jumped into one of the short party-based "Guildhests" earlier on to have a go at healing as part of a group with a relatively straightforward challenge. The party I was with was clearly very inexperienced — the fighter charged ahead without waiting for me to cast protection spells on him, and the damage-dealing mage seemed to take as much damage as he inflicted. I managed to keep everyone alive, though, and my reward from these random strangers whom I'll probably never see again was three "Player Commendations" — a new system introduced in the latest patch which allows players to show their appreciation for random teammates they were matched up with through the Duty Finder system. It's a very nice, friendly addition to the game, and I can't deny feeling a pleasantly warm and fuzzy feeling inside after a successful dungeon run when I see that little "You have received a player commendation" message in my chat window. Even better when there's more than one.

Anyway. With Titan down, the only thing left for me to do to get my Black Mage relic weapon is to collect 400 more Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy by running dungeons — should be easy enough. Once I've done that, I'll be well on the way to being appropriately geared for the Binding Coil of Bahamut, the most difficult dungeon in the game… or I can just start working on one of the other classes, with the eventual goal of getting their Relic weapons, too.

This post was probably indecipherable to those of you who don't play Final Fantasy XIV but eh. Whatever. Tomorrow I'll write about kittens or something.

1380: Suffer Like QWERTY Did?

There's a new Typing of the Dead game out.

There's a sentence I never thought I'd have the opportunity to type truthfully, but here we are on October 29 in the year of Our Lord 2013, and there's a new Typing of the Dead game out.

Lest you're unfamiliar with Typing of the Dead, allow me to explain.

Sega have a franchise known as House of the Dead. Originally, it was one of those big-screen arcade machines that you and a friend point plastic guns at and pretend you're blasting zombies. House of the Dead and its various sequels were notorious for having some of the worst voice acting ever witnessed in a video game, but also for being fun light gun shooters that didn't take themselves too seriously.

The Typing of the Dead, which came out in arcades in 1999 and was followed a couple of years thereafter by Dreamcast and PC ports, was a… varation on House of the Dead 2. Specifically, it replaced the light-gun shooting aspect with what essentially amounted to a series of touch-typing challenges — zombies would shamble towards you with letters, words or phrases attached to them, and in order to defeat them you'd have to type out their letters, words or phrases before they reached you. As the game progressed, the things you had to type got increasingly complex and silly, culminating with a final boss fight in which the ending you got was determined by how honestly you typed out the answers to a series of questions you were presented with.

The Typing of the Dead Overkill, which came out today, does for House of the Dead Overkill what The Typing of the Dead did for House of the Dead 2. In other words, it's pretty much the same game, only you type things out instead of shooting them. And it's glorious.

I never played House of the Dead Overkill when it came out as a Wii and PlayStation Move-based shooter — lightguns have long gone the way of the dodo — but I was dimly aware of the fact that it was Sega taking the inherent silliness of House of the Dead and turning it up to the maximum, producing a game that is refreshingly unafraid to be completely offensive to absolutely anyone and everyone as often as possible, but which underneath its boobylicious, foul-mouthed exterior, is an immensely enjoyable arcade game of the old-school variety.

The comic juxtaposition between the amusingly mundane things you're typing and the profanity-laced dialogue going on the in the background is hilarious, plus I can't not like a game whose three difficulty levels are "Bitch", "Agent" and "Motherfucker". Aside from the humorous aspect, though, Typing of the Dead Overkill seems to be a solid game underneath, too; there's lots of secrets to find in each level, which you need to grab by hitting the Tab key when you see them on screen in the environment, and a combo-based scoring system rewards you for being as accurate, skilful and quick as possible, so there's plenty of potential for enjoyable high-score chasing.

The voice acting isn't quite as bad as that seen in the original House of the Dead games, but while the actors involved are now clearly professionals, it's pretty clear they've been told to ham it up as much as possible. The characters — including the original House of the Dead's hero G — are broadly-painted stereotypes who all call each other "bitch" and "motherfucker" all the time, and the whole thing just revels in its childishness. It's refreshing.

Also, I've just discovered that the game also includes all of House of the Dead Overkill for those who want to play a traditional lightgun-style shooter. Bargain.

1370: What's Up, Red?

As predicted, I completed Tales of Xillia (like, Platinum completed) earlier, but prior to jumping back into Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory I decided to give Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller a try.

I've had my eye on Cognition ever since it was a modest Kickstarter campaign from a group previously best-known for a(n admittedly very good) King's Quest spinoff. It sounded interesting for a number of reasons: firstly, that it was a modern adventure game — the supposed "death" of the point-and-click genre was somewhat exaggerated — and secondly, that Jane Jensen (of King's Quest VI and Gabriel Knight fame) was acting as "story consultant". While this isn't quite the same as having her actually write it, it would, I thought, at least provide a greater-than-average chance of the game having a decent, well-written story.

I played through the first of the game's four episodes earlier, and was not disappointed. Given that most people I know who have played it seem to think that the first episode is the weakest, I'm very excited to see what follows.

Cognition follows the adventures of FBI agent Erica Reed, a feisty redhead haunted by her inability to save her brother from a serial killer three years prior to the events of the main plot. Erica's a little unusual, however, in that she has a strange supernatural ability that enables her to relive and even manifest memories from the past simply by touching things. Initially, all she can do is touch an object or body and witness a short snippet of what happened, but as the game proceeds, she learns a couple of new abilities under the tutelage of the Wise Old Mystic Woman Who Runs the Antique Shop.

It would have been easy for Cognition to play up its supernatural aspect and even rely on it too much to carry its mystery story, but Erica's abilities are used sparingly, subtly and effectively. It's rarely a "magic bullet" that allows her to do things a good forensics team wouldn't be able to do given enough time; it is, more often than not, used as a means of ushering the story along by providing clues.

It's much more complex than just flashbacks, though; in one of the best puzzles in the game, you're tasked with using your "regression" ability to reconstruct the memories of a key witness who can't remember some important information you need. By collecting information and using it to prompt the witness to remember things, you're able to manipulate the images of his memories to provide specific details — the colour of someone's dress, the time a photo was taken, what was written on a note — that ultimately lead you to the answers you seek. It's a clever system that works really well without resorting to mystical mumbo-jumbo — it's just something Erica can do and while it's clear that part of the plot is going to revolve around her struggling with these visions, for the most part she accepts it as just another tool in her arsenal.

Jensen's influence is apparent in the characters, all of whom are strongly defined. Erica herself initially appears to be somewhat "flat" personality-wise, but over time it becomes clear that she is, more often than not, being quite deadpan, and when she's around people she likes and trusts, she opens up and shows her more good-humoured side.

One of the things I'm particularly enamoured with is that I'm getting a slight "Dr. Naomi" vibe from Cognition. It's not quite the same, of course — Erica is an FBI field agent compared to Naomi's forensic investigator — but there are certain similarities. Most notably, on a number of occasions you're "quizzed" by characters on what you've learned from your investigations, with progression dependent on you giving the correct answers. The penalty for giving an incorrect answer isn't as harsh as in Trauma Team — there are relatively few moments in the game where you can die or "fail" — but it's nice to have a game check that you're paying attention in a suitable, plausible context.

I'm intrigued to try the subsequent episodes now. I have a feeling that four won't be enough!

1347: Om Nom Nom Nom (Plus)

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+ is a magnificent game, though I'm still at a loss as to whether or not Namco are taking the piss with that title or if they genuinely thought Pac-Man needed that many suffixes.

To be fair, though, Pac-Man CE DX+, as I shall refer to it from hereon, isn't actually all that unreasonable a title if you analyse it. It's a variation of Pac-Man (hence Pac-Man) that evolved into a version designed specifically for competitive play (hence Championship Edition) that subsequently evolved further into a considerably expanded version (hence DX, short for Deluxe) which was then expanded even further with some additional content for the new PC version (hence Plus).

If you haven't played Pac-Man CE DX+ yet, you'll be pleased to know that it's now available for PC via Steam as well as consoles, so you can play it pretty much regardless of whatever system you favour.

If you're a fan of the original Pac-Man, be warned, though; Pac-Man CE DX+ is a noticeably different game, though its ancestry is obvious.

While the original Pac-Man required you to repeatedly clear the same screen of dots over and over again while contending with the unwanted attentions of four ghosts, Pac-Man CE DX+ is a much faster-paced game. The maze is divided into two halves, each of which, when cleared, causes a piece of fruit to appear in the other half. Eating said fruit causes the empty maze to regenerate with a new layout, and thus the process repeats. In the main modes, you're against the clock, attempting to score as many points as possible in either five or ten minutes, so it's in your interest to find the quickest routes possible.

The twist on the formula that DX added was the ridiculous number of ghosts that can be involved. Rather than the four ghosts of the original Pac-Man, each maze half in Pac-Man CE DX+ has a number of sleeping ghosts who are disturbed if Pac-Man passes by them, at which point they form an increasingly long chain and chase him, following the same route he does. High scores are dependent on eating a power pill and then gobbling up a massive chain of ghosts, so as well as finding the best route through the dots, it's actually in your interests to attract as many ghosts in your wake as possible, too. There's very much an "optimum route" for each of the courses in the game, though human error means that, unless you've practiced enough to be literally perfect every time, there'll be slight variations in each run you make — usually costing you a few points or precious seconds in the process.

It's a really interesting game that maintains the basic mechanics of the original Pac-Man while simultaneously turning it into a kind of game that's hard to define. Is it a score attack game? Yes. Is it a puzzle game? Yes. Is it a racing game? Yes, kind of.

It's one of the most peculiar games I've ever played, and revisiting it thanks to the new PC version reminds me that it's also one of my favourite games of all time, and I highly recommend you give it a try if you've never had the pleasure. Enjoy, and I make absolutely no apologies if you end up addicted.

1314: Day One in Eorzea

So it's finally here: Final Fantasy XIV. Of course, this isn't the first time I've played, as well you'll know if you've been paying attention to my enthusing, but we're at last at the stage where the game won't be "turned off" for significant periods of time (maintenance periods aside), and all characters people are playing as now are for keeps. (Here's mine, if you happened to be curious.)

While I'm not exactly what I'd call a hardcore MMO player, I have been present at the launch of a number of reasonably-to-large-sized MMOs, including World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online and a few others I've doubtless forgotten. And I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised at how well things have been going for Final Fantasy XIV so far — more often than not, an MMO's launch is a complete disaster, with servers going down, significant gameplay problems and at least one Legendary Error that becomes a meme before the first day is out.

Today's experience on Final Fantasy XIV hasn't been completely flawless — on more than one occasion, there has been problems with the instance servers, for example. For those not au fait with MMO lingo, an "instance" is a private copy of part of the game world specifically for your character and, in some cases, your party. Final Fantasy XIV makes extensive use of instances not just for multiplayer dungeons, which is how World of Warcraft popularised their use to the world, but also to keep significant "story events" for your character private and free of naked catgirls wandering around ruining the atmosphere (or enhancing it, depending on your view on naked catgirls).

FFXIV isn't completely reliant on these instances, thankfully, but the game's main story quest and class-specific quests do make use of them quite frequently, so the fact that they haven't been working properly for part of today has meant some people haven't been able to make as much progress as they'd like to have done. Naturally, some players have expressed anger at this — this is the Internet, after all, where people start petitions to remove Ben Affleck as the next Batman, for fuck's sake — but, as ever, this isn't particularly reasonable. Sure, it'd be lovely to have the game working as intended from the moment it's turned on, but we're currently in an "Early Access" period, with official service not starting until Tuesday for players who didn't preorder or play the previous incarnation of the game. As such, it's a good opportunity for Square Enix to work out any last-minute kinks — like this instance issue — and ensure things are running as smoothly as possible when new, non-preorder players start to arrive.

I should also draw attention to the fact that Square Enix hasn't just been sitting back and letting these problems go on; they've been investigating the causes and trying their best to fix them. There was a maintenance period earlier today that temporarily fixed the instance issues, but then they came back; as I type this, they think they've found the solution, but are testing it thoroughly before rolling it out to the game proper. By later tonight, it should hopefully be a lot more stable.

So far, then, FFXIV's launch has been one of the smoother ones I've seen. It hasn't been without issues, no, but at the same time they've been handled as well as can be expected — and things can only improve from here.

So here's to many more adventures in Eorzea; I've had fun today, and I'm looking forward to the further adventures of my character Amarysse as she becomes an ever more skilled thaumaturgist.

1308: Adventurer's Guild

The Final Fantasy XIV beta closes down early tomorrow morning, so I've been making the most of it this weekend. I've levelled my Thaumaturgist class all the way to 20 — the level cap for the beta — and had a play around with the Weaver crafting class for a bit, taking that up to level 11. This gives me a nice head start ready for when live service begins — though the nice thing about Final Fantasy XIV is that if at any point you fancy a change, just switch out your weapon and bam! You're another class.

This carries its own considerations however — the main one being that if you switch to a class based in a city you've already done all the low-level quests in, you might struggle to find things to do if you're not used to all the additional stuff the game offers. In that particular situation, you turn to any one of a number of different possibilities: the short, snappy, time-limited Levequests; your Hunting Log, which challenges you to hunt down specific monsters in set quantities in exchange for very generous experience point rewards; Guildhests, which are short, extremely fun co-op challenges you take on alongside other players; or simply grinding.

I wanted to give another shout-out to the amount of effort that's been put into the game's story. As well as the usual MMO-style "random people need you to do odd jobs" quests you get around the place, there's a "main quest" to follow, too. After a certain point, this quest tasks you with travelling to the other two capital cities in the world to meet their leaders and start making preparations for what is clearly going to be some sort of Epic Battle later in the plot. What was particularly great about this quest was the fact that it makes you feel super-important — you're sent off on an airship to the other cities, and as the ship leaves, the Final Fantasy prologue theme triumphantly blares out, as majestic as ever. Then you get some awesome "meanwhile" scenes — something that doesn't tend to happen in MMOs — that give you a real feeling of the plot unfolding even when you're not present. There's some characters who look a lot like FFXII's Judges in play, it seems, and I'm looking forward to the inevitable confrontation with them later in the story.

It's hard to pin down one thing that's quite so satisfying about FFXIV because it really is an example of lots of overlapping systems complementing each other very well. There are lots of different ways to play, and plenty of means to ensure that you shouldn't find yourself getting bored or with nothing to do — unless, of course, you don't enjoy the base mechanics, in which case there's probably not a lot that can be done for you. The final game's going to be great; I can't wait to see what the future holds in updates and expansions.

1307: Thaumaturgist

You'll have to excuse any typos in this post; I'm very tired due to having spent a significant proportion of the day/evening playing the Final Fantasy XIV beta. And I'm pleased to confirm that it's very much living up to my expectations.

I'm playing a Thaumaturgist this time around — in the last phase of beta I played a Pugilist. I was a little concerned that the game would fall into the usual MMO trap of all classes playing in a pretty similar manner — spamming the same combination of hotbar items over and over again, repeat until dead — but the Thaumaturgist plays noticeably differently to the Pugilist. As it should be.

While the Pugilist is a melee character that demands you get close in to — and preferably behind — your enemies, the Thaumaturgist is a ranged magic damage dealer. Unlike your common or garden usual MMO mage, though, the Thaumaturgist makes use of an interesting mechanic that, thematically, represents their "aetherial balance" between "Astral Fire" and "Umbral Ice". Essentially, what this means is one of two things: if you're in Astral Fire state, you do increased damage with your fire spells, but they also cost more magic points to cast; if you're in Umbral Ice state, your spells do less damage but your magic points regenerate a lot more rapidly than they would usually. Playing a Thaumaturgist effectively involves knowing how to use these two states effectively to ensure you have good damage output while also keeping your stock of magic points high.

That's not all, though. Each of the classes in FFXIV has its own unique questline to follow, with new "episodes" in the story coming every five levels or so. The nice thing about these is that they have their own storyline to follow, but also they help teach you things about your class you might not have realised. The level 15 quest for the Thaumaturgist, for example, is essentially a stealth mission that teaches you about the effectiveness of your Sleep spell: you're tasked with sneaking in to retrieve an artifact, and rather than fighting the strong enemies who are between you and it, you simply put them all to sleep and prance through singing "trollolololol" or something.

What I've really been surprised about is how much effort's been put into the narrative side of things — something that's often neglected in MMOs. The genre giant World of Warcraft, for example, has an enormously rich and detailed setting to draw on, and yet — at least in its early incarnations, I haven't been back since Catacylsm — this storytelling potential was utterly squandered in boring quests that were given to you in the form of dull text readouts.

Final Fantasy XI, XIV's predecessor, was somewhat better in that there were "missions" as well as "quests" to do — these often incorporated cutscenes, story progression and even boss fights at times, but XI's difficulty and painfully slow progression meant that a lot of people might not have got very far.

XIV nails the balance. There's a ton of solo content you can do, with a storyline to follow that makes your character feel important. There are recognisable non-player characters whom you come to have various feelings about, and events occur that actually have some sort of meaning. There's also a lot of instanced battles where you get your own private special event without other players interrupting — proper boss battles. And these aren't just like fighting any other monster — sometimes you'll be battling alongside other non-player characters in a huge skirmish, other times you'll have to hold out against seemingly overwhelming odds until an NPC shows up to tip the balance in your favour.

It all feels like an actual Final Fantasy, in short, rather than an MMO with a Final Fantasy skin atop it. Your incentive for progression comes as much from the unfolding story and the cool setpieces as it does from gaining yet another level.

I haven't done a lot of group stuff yet, but I did try a Guildhest earlier. This also gave me the opportunity to try the Duty Finder system, whereby you mark yourself as wanting to do a specific multiplayer "thing" — be it a Guildhest, a dungeon or something else — and then let the game match you with other people looking to do the same thing automatically. Pleasantly, you can continue playing while you wait to find a party — it's a good time to take on the short, snappy, time-limited "levequests" for some pocket money and experience.

As for the Guildhest, it was short but very enjoyable. It was essentially a party-based arena battle intended to give players practice at working together and trying not to aggro multiple groups of enemies. Initially, you and your teammates must simply take out two parties of relatively easy monsters; then another set appears, accompanied by a huge boss monster. Inevitably, they all come charging towards you, so it becomes necessary to prioritise your targets — taking out the smaller things first before starting on the big boss. When you've successfully completed it, the iconic Final Fantasy fanfare plays as if you'd just completed a battle in a "normal" Final Fantasy game — a nice touch.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the game continues once it officially launches later this month — the current beta only allows you to progress up to level 20 and is still lacking a couple of features. The only real challenge is going to be — as ever — juggling both it and other games I want and/or need to play!

1294: Campaign Mode

Random bit of gaming trivia for you: the word "campaign" wasn't always synonymous with "single-player story mode." In fact, in the 16-bit era I recall playing numerous games in which the "campaign" was actually just one of several different game modes — it most commonly cropped up in flight sims, but occasionally made an appearance in other types of game, too.

Taking flight sims as the main example, a "campaign" mode tended to be what it sounds like: an ongoing campaign of the player against computer-controlled enemies, either through a linear sequence of missions like we have in many of today's single-player modes, or through a more dynamic, strategic sort of affair that changed and evolved as the player took various actions.

One particular example I can think of was the then-popular flight sim Falcon 3.0, which was one of numerous F-16 simulators around at the time. Past incarnations of Falcon had generally seen players taking on one-off missions, raising in rank and collecting medals through grinding the same missions over and over again. What Falcon 3 brought to the table was what was regarded as one of the best campaign modes ever seen in the genre at the time — I'm sure it's been bettered by all manner of other games since, but I remember it being quite impressive at the time.

Looking the game up to better refresh my memory, in fact, it seems that Falcon 3.0 was, in fact, one of the first games ever to incorporate a dynamic campaign mode, and this is what drew praise. In fact, so confident were developers Spectrum Holobyte that they even gave the campaign engine its own branding: "Electronic Battlefield."

Electronic Battlefield was originally intended to be a campaign engine that transcended individual games and allowed for multiple different products to interlink with one another for network games. Three games eventually made it to market: Falcon 3.0 itself, MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 (for it was tradition that the F-16s in flight sims at the time would spend most of their time fighting MiG-29s, their biggest rival from the Soviets) and Falcon 3.0: Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter, which simulated the F/A-18 Hornet. These three games could all talk to each other in network sessions, but I never got a chance to try it; sadly, this was in an age prior to widespread use of the Internet and online play in general, so when it says "network game" it actually means LAN play — a luxury only really afforded to those who worked in offices.

So how is this kind of "campaign" different from what we have today? Well, the main thing is that it's not scripted, and there doesn't necessarily have to be an "end". Falcon 3.0's campaign simulated a conflict in which the player is just one element; through completing or failing various missions, they could help or hinder the war effort as a whole, presumably eventually culminating in one side or the other declaring victory. I never saw that as I wasn't really very good at flight sims, despite enjoying them as a young 'un, but I could tell my efforts were having an impact on the virtual war as a whole.

It was kind of cool, really — despite the fact there was no ongoing "story" like in, say, the later Strike Commander (which again concentrated on F-16s, but had a much more arcadey flight model), there was a real sense of emergent narrative — of things happening due to your actions rather than just being plopped down in front of either a limited selection of missions, or randomly-selected scenarios. It was pretty neat.

I'm not sure why I blabbered on about all that — I just find myself thinking back to that every time a game makes me click on the word "Campaign" when what it really means is "Story".

1289: Oh When The... You Know

I've been playing a game for review this evening, but I can't talk about it yet because blah blah embargo, etc. So instead I'm going to talk about Saints Row The Third, which, conveniently, is available for whatever price you please as part of the latest (pretty incredible) Humble Bundle.

Grand Theft Auto has been losing me for a while. It took me a long time to get around to finishing Vice City — though I eventually did — and I never finished San Andreas or Grand Theft Auto IV at all. (I also own the two Grand Theft Auto IV side stories, but haven't touched them at all.)

The problem is that Grand Theft Auto had started taking itself a bit seriously. While it's still full of cringeworthy puns and scathing putdowns of American culture, the stories themselves have been getting a bit too "gangsta drama" for me; there seemed to be less of the colourful characters from earlier installments and more in the way of people calling each other "bitch" and "motherfucker". (Confession: I actually had to turn the subtitles on in San Andreas not because I couldn't hear the speech, but because I couldn't understand what the characters were saying.) This is probably a grossly unfair assessment, but I've been struggling to maintain interest in them for quite some time, and Grand Theft Auto V doesn't really have me hyped at all. (This makes the fact the Internet collectively jizzes its pants every time a new screenshot appears especially frustrating, as I'm sure you can sympathise.)

I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up Saints Row The Third for PC. I don't even think it was a Steam sale — I'm pretty sure I bought it at full price shortly after it came out. Reviews I'd read had been mostly positive, with a few criticising it for not having as interesting a setting as Grand Theft Auto, but most had mentioned one important thing: fun.

I'd never played a previous Saints Row game, so I had no frame of reference to compare The Third to except for Grand Theft Auto. And it quickly became apparent that Saints Row The Third was the game I'd been wanting Grand Theft Auto to turn back into ever since Vice City. Freedom to run around causing chaos; lots of side missions to do; a plot that was enjoyable, silly nonsense; and the fact that if you wanted to run down the street punching everyone in the face, it didn't really feel "out of character" for the protagonist.

Saints Row The Third is a playground. Sure, there's a plot to follow, but the main attraction is the "activities" scattered around the map. These vary from destroying as much shit as possible while on foot and equipped with infinite ammo to destroying as much shit as possible while in a bloody great tank. There are also missions where you have to drive around with a tiger in your car, arena challenges where you have to defeat enemies and avoid traps, and "insurance fraud" missions where you have to fling yourself into traffic and injure yourself as much as possible against the clock.

By far my fondest memory of Saints Row The Third is the one and only time I've had the chance to play multiplayer with my good friend Mr Alex Connolly, though. We just so happened to actually be online and available at the same time for once, so we jumped into a game together and caused chaos. There's really nothing quite like rolling up to a character you know is another real person, letting them jump in your Tron-style car and then tearing around the city to cause some havoc. Saints Row The Third doesn't significantly change its structure when played in co-op, but the simple presence of another player helps make it even more fun than it already is.

If you've never played Saints Row The Third and like the sound of a chaotic romp through something like Grand Theft Auto used to be, that Humble Bundle I linked above is a fantastic deal. Or, let's not forget, the fourth entry in the series is coming soon. But that… that I can't talk about right now.

1280: More Truckin'

I had an all-too-brief chat with my good friend Mr Alex Connolly earlier today, during which I briefly extolled the virtues of Euro Truck Simulator 2, which I played for a good few hours today. This post is primarily intended for Alex — and anyone else who is similarly curious about Euro Truck Simulator 2 — since we only had a brief moment to talk earlier.

Here's what Euro Truck Simulator 2 is all about, then.

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You start the game by creating your driver profile by giving yourself a name, naming your haulage company-to-be, choosing a logo for yourself and selecting a truck you like the look of. You then choose a home base somewhere in Europe, and then it's off to work you go.

Your first job is what is later referred to in the game as a "quick job" — you're provided with a truck already loaded up with cargo, and all you have to do is deliver it to the destination. If you elect to follow the tutorial, you're walked through various elements of the interface, though you're not told where a few important keys (headlights, windscreen wipers, indicators) are, so you'll need to check the options menu for that. (I recommend assigning all of those controls to a controller, if you're using one.)

Delivering cargo is a simple matter of following your GPS, which sits in the corner of the screen like a space sim's multi-function display. (Indeed, here it is multifunction, too, allowing you to switch between views of your route, diagnostic information and other helpful bits and pieces.) While driving, you'll have to be reasonably careful. Hitting things can damage your truck and potentially cargo, too — the latter will cost you some of your fee at the end of the run. Similarly, breaking the rules of the road will cause you to be fined, though much like reality, you can get away with speeding so long as no-one catches you doing it.

The roads are convincingly rendered, meaning you'll have to merge carefully onto motorways, slow down for country roads, and stop-start-stop-start at the traffic lights found in city centres. If you're driving in the UK, you'll have to drive on the left; head out onto the continent, meanwhile, and you'll be on the right. Both left- and right-hand drive trucks are available.

Once you reach your destination, there'll be a glowing parking space that you must reverse into. This is harder than it sounds, as trucks and trailers behave strangely when in reverse. You can, of course, press the "auto-park" button, but if you do so you're effectively declaring that you're a big wuss.

Once you've successfully parked and detached your cargo, you'll be rewarded with money and experience points, with a bonus if you parked yourself. Levelling up rewards you with skill points, which you can plug into one of several different skills — one allows you to transport hazardous (and consequently higher-value) cargo of various types; another allows you to take on more long-distance jobs; another still provides you with larger rewards for heavy, oversized or otherwise valuable cargo. You can effectively tailor your driver's profile according to the types of job you like to do.

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After a couple of successful runs, you'll be invited to head along to a truck dealership that sells the type of truck you indicated was your "preferred" type at the outset of the game. A new truck will inevitably be much too expensive for you to afford with the few thousand Euros you've acquired from a couple of jobs, so you'll receive an email shortly afterwards from the bank inviting you to take out a loan. Here you have a choice; keep doing quick jobs for reasonable pay until you can afford to buy a truck outright, or take out a loan, buy your own truck immediately, and ensure you make enough money each in-game day to pay off that particular instalment.

Once you have your own truck — which can be customised in numerous ways, more of which open up as you level up — you have a lot more freedom. You can freely drive around Europe at your leisure, and the in-game map keeps track of how much of the road network you've explored. Arriving at new towns "discovers" them and unlocks them as a starting point for future jobs; coming across "?" markers on the map reveals new truck dealerships, recruitment agencies for hiring additional drivers for your fleet and other facilities; stopping at petrol stations or hotels allows you to restore your fuel and fatigue levels respectively.

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Having your own truck allows you to take jobs from the "Freight Market" rather than the "Quick Job" menu. Here, you have to actually drive to the place where the job offer is — they expire after a while, so if you don't get there quickly enough, you're not doing the job — and then manually attach the trailer to your truck.

From here, it's a case of proceeding to do more jobs and build up your available funds, then gradually build up your fleet of trucks and drivers so it's not just you hauling shit around Europe, but your very own army of bearded chain-smokers too. Each of your hired drivers can be levelled up the same way as your own character, so you can get different drivers to specialise in different things.

All in all, it's a really neat game. I didn't think it would have much to offer beyond the initial appeal of "WOW I'M DRIVING A LORRY" but there's actually a surprisingly competent game in there, too. And even if you struggle to handle one of these many-wheeled beasts, you can have some fun by causing chaos on the open world. Which is nice.

Anyway, there's my enthusing on the subject of Euro Truck Simulator 2. It's surprisingly worth your time, particularly if you like open-world driving games where you just pootle around rather than killing everybody. Plus there's something inherently satisfying about driving such a gigantic vehicle and not killing everyone around you, or ending up on your side. (Though it is possible to end up on your side.)

So there you have it. Euro Truck Simulator 2. Enjoy.