#oneaday Day 183: Plague day with Mario

Felt particularly rough this morning when I woke up with a raging headache and a cough that could wake the dead. I was hoping to get some The Dagger of Amon Ra recorded this weekend, but I rather wisely decided against doing any today; we’ll have to see how I feel tomorrow.

Instead, I spent a significant chunk of today playing the Super Mario RPG remake for Switch. I’ve never played Super Mario RPG in any form, so I’ve been curious to try this for a long time, and something in my head makes an inextricable association between the holiday season and Nintendo games, so I thought I’d start it up and see how I got on with it. After all, what was originally a collaboration between Squaresoft and Nintendo was sure to be fun, right? And people always seem to be making references to both the game and some of its unique characters.

I’ve been very impressed so far. It’s a lot of fun, and it moves at a brisk old pace, as RPGs that originated in the 16-bit era tend to, but that doesn’t mean it feels like it’s rushing things. Rather, it’s paced well so that you’re constantly moving forwards, exploring new areas, meeting new allies and discovering new items. And, pleasingly, the game is a lot more than just running from story trigger to story trigger; there are some actual puzzles along the way to solve, too, along with some light platforming. The only thing I’m not a super fan of is the Hidden Treasure system, where equipping a particular accessory just tells you that there is a Hidden Treasure somewhere in the room you’re in, and then you just have to flail around hoping you headbutt it by chance.

As one would expect for a modern Nintendo title, the soundtrack is fantastic. I don’t know the original Super Mario RPG soundtrack all that well — aside from a couple of MIDIs I downloaded in the late ’90s to use in Klik and Play projects — but we have a fully reorchestrated version of the full soundtrack to go along with the updated visuals and the re-translated script. No speech, of course — it still doesn’t feel quite right to have a talkie Nintendo game — but the writing so far has been concise and pretty witty. Perhaps not to the same degree as Paper Mario, which is a series that essentially built off the back of Super Mario RPG, but I wanted to play this one first before I jumped into the Paper Mario titles for the first time. Yes, believe it or not I’ve never played one; my wife Andie has played most of them, however.

Anyway, Super Mario RPG helped make an otherwise fairly unpleasant day — the weather has been awful here today, too — fairly tolerable. And I even made some time to get all my Christmas shopping done earlier, too. So that’s good. But now it’s probably a good idea for me to go back to bed, and here’s hoping I feel a tad better in the morning. Not only do I want to record that The Dagger of Amon Ra playthrough, but I have the work Christmas do in the week, and I’d rather not still be coughing my guts up and feeling like a roasted dog turd by the time that rolls around.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 182: Unpopular gaming opinions

As a veritable old fart of video games, I am, of course, fairly set in my ways, as older folks are wont to be. And as such, I have come to hold certain opinions that appear to deviate from “the norm” among younger folks. You are not “wrong” to think differently to what I am about to describe below, but know that you are not going to convince me to change my viewpoint, because I have felt this way about all these things for years now.

So why am I writing this? I dunno. Something to write about, innit? Plus there might be some of you out there who actually agree with some of these. It doesn’t really matter. Let’s just start, shall we?

Games don’t “need” updates for months or years after their release

Baldur’s Gate 3 happened to drift across some form of feed that I was looking at the other day, and the thumbnail image that came with it proudly boasted something along the lines of “Community update 30”.

Now, whether this was just the 30th blog post for the community or the 30th actual update for the game I don’t actually know, but both are equally offputting to me. I haven’t even considered touching Baldur’s Gate 3 yet because it launched unfinished and apparently is still getting bits and pieces bolted onto it after the fact.

I hear it’s very good. I believe that it’s very good, as Larian has a good track record. But I have precisely zero desire to play it until it’s finished, because when a game as big as this gets significant updates after I’ve already ploughed a significant number of hours into it, I feel a bit hard done by. Worse, if I’ve already finished it by the time a significant update shows up, I feel very hard done by, because I should just have waited to play it.

Unfortunately, regular updates to games are expected by a certain class of The Gamers™, particularly those on PC. Look at the Steam reviews for any game that hasn’t had an update for a month or two and you’ll see people complaining about “devs abandoning the game” and it being a “dead game”.

No. Sometimes it’s just finished, and sometimes the devs would like either 1) a break or 2) to go and work on something else. I am, sadly, in the minority on this, but few things make me lose interest in a game faster than if it launches with a “roadmap”. Just delay the thing a few months and finish the fucking thing. Then I will play it.

DLC is worthless

As an extension to the above, if a game releases and then immediately announces that it is getting a bunch of DLC, I will also immediately lose interest. Not only does it make me feel like stuff has been cut out of the base game to make the DLC — and don’t throw the “well actually it’s developed at a different rate to the main game” argument at me, that is an easy problem to solve — but I am struggling to think of a piece of DLC that I have genuinely thought was actually worth the money.

I remember being particularly disappointed with the DLC chapters for stuff like Dragon Age and Mass Effect back in the day, and I haven’t seen much to change my opinion ever since those days. And, at the other end of the spectrum, you have games like Stellaris, where there is now so much DLC that it’s impossible to know what the “best” way to get started with the game is. So I just… don’t.

Mods are vandalism

“You should play games on PC!” the PC gamers say. “Because of mods!”

Fuck mods. I hate mods. A significant portion of them are outright vandalism to both the artistic and mechanical design of the teams that worked on a game. I saw someone on Bluesky earlier sharing an image of someone who had installed a “QoL” (“Quality of Life”) mod to STALKER 2 to remove all encumbrance mechanics from the game. STALKER 2 is a game about survival in difficult circumstances, and the encumbrance mechanics force you to determine whether you really need to carry various things around with you. By removing it, you’re stripping out part of the game.

Likewise, graphical mods can get in the bin, too. Games are designed with both a particular artistic vision in mind and are a reflection of the era in which they were designed, and I don’t really give a toss if you can add ray-tracing to something that didn’t have it before, or if you can make a game look like Generic Photorealistic Open World Game #927.

And I’m sure I don’t need to say anything about nude mods. I say this as someone who enjoys a good sexy game.

“But I need 357 mods to make Skyrim fun!” Then Skyrim isn’t a very good game, is it? Maybe play something else.

My only begrudging exception to this is in the case of games where extensibility is designed to be part of the game — stuff like Doom/Quake/Duke/whatever levels are fine with me, because those games were designed to be extendible. Although I must confess, when I play any of those games, I tend to stick to their official campaigns. And in some cases, mods for a game specifically designed to be mod-friendly inevitably remain perpetually unfinished and not as good as the stuff built-in to the game: most stuff for the excellent driving sim BeamNG.drive falls into this category, to name just one example.

I don’t want to join your Discord

I use Discord when I absolutely have to, for work and for the few groups of friends who are only reachable there. But I do not want to join a fucking Discord for every single game I play, and I don’t want to be bugged to join your Discord on the title screen for your game. Go away, leave me alone, and if I decide I want to engage in the official community for your game, I will seek out your Discord myself.

I absolutely do not want to have to join your Discord to read documentation or download helpful files. Host that shit on your website like a normal person.

I want your game to end

It’s all very well offering “potentially limitless replayability”, but I do actually want to be able to finish your game. If I can’t finish your game, I almost certainly won’t start it, because the way my brain works means that I will get annoyed by the fact I’m playing something that doesn’t have a “point”.

This is one of numerous reasons I think idle games and incremental games are dumb. Sure, numbers get big to a point that they become largely meaningless… but that’s it. There’s no sense of having achieved anything there. And I strongly suspect that a significant number of idle game fans have no idea that the genre largely stems from a pisstake at the expense of people who grind their way through mobile games with no conclusion.

Anyway, that’ll do for now, because I’m sure I’ve pissed someone off with at least one of the above. As noted at the beginning, though, I don’t care. I am an old man, I have things I like and things I dislike. And all of the above can get in the bin. A good evening to you!

#oneaday Day 176: Take a Bow

Today, I played through all of the first Laura Bow game, The Colonel’s Bequest. I enjoyed it a lot! You can read more about my thoughts on the subject right here, and a full Let’s Play of the game will kick off on my YouTube channel from tomorrow. It’s just three (long) episodes rather than a lot of 30-minute episodes like I did with The Case of the Serrated Scalpel last year, as I felt that fit the format of the game a bit better, and the overall structure of The Colonel’s Bequest is… well, quite different from pretty much any adventure game I’ve played.

But enough of that. What’s next? The Dagger of Amon Ra, of course! This is the follow-up to The Colonel’s Bequest, and I’m going to do my best to play it through and record it tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s longer, shorter, easier, harder… the only thing I do know is that it uses point-and-click controls instead of The Colonel’s Bequest’s text parser, and it quizzes you on what happened at the end, so you need to make notes, just like Laura herself.

Then after that, I’ll start having a look at The Crimson Diamond. Plus alongside all this, I might do something similar to what I did last year (“3 interesting DOS discoveries”, “5 DOS games I always wanted to play” and “5 of the best early FPSes”) if I can figure out what I might want to cover for videos in that style. I haven’t started looking yet. Racing games is a possibility — a good excuse to bust out the Screamer series, perhaps? — or flight sims. Space combat sims? I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. Looking at shareware stuff I used to like is also a distinct possibility, perhaps from the perspective of “shareware games I always wanted to try the Registered version of”, since the only Registered shareware game I had back in the day was Wolfenstein 3-D, which I got for free after making some levels that were included in the official “Super Upgrades” expansion pack.

I’ve probably told this story at least once on this blog before, right? Well, regardless, I’ll tell it again, ’cause you might be new around here. It’s a story of delightfully happy coincidence.

Back at the time I was playing Wolfenstein 3-D on the family PC, I was involved with a local shareware library. I did a bit of part time work helping them out at local computer fairs, writing their catalogues and that sort of thing. I don’t remember getting paid for this, but it was decent experience and I got lots of freebies from the shareware library, which was nice.

Among those disks that I got for free were numerous Wolfenstein 3-D editors, and they worked with the shareware version. So I made a bunch of levels.

I forget the exact circumstances of how the next bit came about, but I was browsing the GAMERS forum on CompuServe one day, when I found myself in contact with a gentleman called, as I recall, Carlton somethingorother. He was a representative from Apogee, and he was looking for new Wolfenstein 3-D levels to include in the upcoming data disk for the game. There was money on offer for anyone whose levels were included. After consulting with my parents — online safety and all that — I submitted my pack of ten levels to him, expecting never to hear from him ever again.

Imagine my surprise when a few months later, I got a package from the United States containing a cheque for $200, plus a registered copy of Wolfenstein 3-D and the new Super Upgrades pack, which included my levels, along with a bunch of other community contributions. So technically I’m a professional game designer.

But anyway. Yeah. That copy of Wolfenstein 3-D was the only Registered shareware game I had, because it was the early days of the Internet (in fact, via CompuServe, our “ISP” at the time, you couldn’t even access the Web, and had to append “INTERNET:” to any email addresses you were sending messages to outside of the CompuServe service) and my parents weren’t super-into the idea of sending $40 overseas in the hope of getting a video game back, and they absolutely weren’t going to share their credit card information online. As such, I became intimately familiar with a lot of “Episode 1s” and not a lot else… so exploring the “Episode 2s” and beyond for some games I liked back in the day might be interesting, for sure.

I’ll think of something. For now, I think it’s time to just play something fun for a bit without thinking about how to turn it into an article or video. Come to me, Donut Dodo…!

#oneaday Day 173: Staring down the barrel of #DOScember

#DOScember is the annual celebration of DOS gaming and computing on YouTube and surrounding environments (not to be confused with #DOSember, which is a Twitch thing) and, even though many of the original participants and organisers have become somewhat disillusioned with the whole thing for various reasons, it’s still a fun excuse to bust out some classic MS-DOS games and remind yourself of how good early ’90s PC gaming was.

I did a few videos last #DOScember that I not only enjoyed making, they also performed rather well on my channel. So I’m likely going to spend this December doing primarily DOS gaming stuff on my YouTube channel.

I’m thinking a few things at this point. Firstly, I’m quite keen to do another full adventure game playthrough similar to my The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel runthrough from last year. (This wasn’t a #DOScember thing, it was just something I felt like doing at the time.) I haven’t yet decided what I should do as yet; on the one hand, playing something I’m already familiar with should mean that I can get through it without getting stuck, but on the other, this might be a prime opportunity to explore a game I’ve never tried for the first time.

The temptation when thinking “I want to play an adventure game” is to jump straight to Sierra and LucasArts, and for sure, they are all solid choices. But there were other folks making adventures at the time, too, and I think the stuff from them is worth celebrating, too. At present, I’m leaning towards something from Access Software, as these are games I’ve never tried, and I know at least some of them (the Tex Murphy games and Countdown spring immediately to mind) are fondly regarded.

When considering that I probably want to play these games as a Let’s Play, I’d also prefer a game that isn’t “talkie”, so I can narrate and do the voices myself. It’s a silly little thing, but I do very much enjoy doing this, so it’s something I’m particularly looking for.

The other thing that I’ll probably do is at least a few “pre-scripted” videos like I did last year. Last time around, I looked at early first-person shooters, games I’d always wanted to try but never had the chance to, and interesting discoveries I’d stumbled across by chance. Those are solid formats, and all of those videos performed well; I’m thinking I might do something other than first-person shooters for the first bit though. Perhaps space sims or flight sims? Those are ripe for exploration, and they’re both genres I used to absolutely love.

Anyway, that’s the plan for #DOScember on the YouTube channel. If you have any good DOS adventure game suggestions (preferably of the point-and-click variety, and preferably not “talkie”, as outlined above) then I’d love to hear ’em. Otherwise, I’ll see you on the channel!

#oneaday Day 169: Analysis paralysis strikes again

I’m having a bit of a “moment” this evening. I want to play something, but my brain is bouncing every which way while I try and actually settle on something to spend some time with. Part of the issue is that I’ve started several things, and when this happens I find myself feeling “obliged” to try and finish those off, but part of me also wants to experience something brand new.

To clarify: all the things I’ve started I absolutely want to finish. But I think I may have inadvertently overwhelmed myself with everything I have on the go already. So indulge me a moment, if you please, while I attempt to make some sense of what my brain is thinking.

Games I have started but not finished (and which I want to finish): Mon-Yu, The Eden of Grisaia, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Yakuza 5, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings, Little Busters!, Rance Quest Magnum

Games I am considering replaying for New Game+/DLC etc: Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy XV, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Blue Reflection: Second Light

Games I quite fancy starting: Loop8: Summer of Gods (yes, I know it’s supposedly pump but I want to try it anyway), Rhapsody II, Kowloon High School Chronicle, Collar x Malice, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon

Games I feel like I “should” start at some point but which seem to get knocked down the priority pile regularly: Final Fantasy IV/V/VI Pixel Remaster

You can hopefully see the issue I have presented myself with: a veritable horde of long RPGs and visual novels, all of which I want to play and finish. And I’ve rather stupidly gone and actually started a bunch of them and left them half-finished, which is where my analysis paralysis is primarily stemming from.

So let’s take those “games in progress” and look a little closer.

Mon-Yu: Dungeon crawler that I started on stream, but have subsequently been playing off-stream, because I’m not sure it’s the best game to “build an audience” with. Has the advantage of being extremely light on the narrative, so it’s a game that, in theory, can be dipped in and out of as mood dictates. Its main disadvantage is that it’s quite tough, so rewards protracted sessions. It’s not super-long, though: I believe there are seven main dungeons and I’m on the fourth. So a bit of determination can probably bash this one out before too long.

The Eden of Grisaia: Visual novel that I’m really enjoying and have been wanting to see the conclusion to for nearly ten years. This is easy enough to fit in whenever, since it requires no decision-making, just concentrating on the unfolding narrative. I am presently about 50% through its main storyline, though there are some other stories that unlock after that is completed. This is something that, perhaps, I can play over lunch instead of watching videos, since I can just stick it on auto and watch it unfold.

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana: I love Ys, but I started this at the behest of one of my wife’s friends, who was drunk at the time and wanted to see it. This means I’m not particularly invested in my current playthrough, so it’s pretty much at the bottom of my priority list, and I might even just start it over when I come to play it “properly”.

Yakuza 5: I also love Yakuza and am keen to get up to date with the series, but doing so feels a tad overwhelming right now. I am fairly early in this and haven’t gone through much of the plot, but I have been enjoying the side activities, as is the law with Yakuza games.

Trails in the Sky Second Chapter: I had bold plans to play through “all of Trails“, which was a silly thing to promise myself. I enjoyed revisiting the first Trails in the Sky, but Second Chapter’s similarity to it made me feel a little burnt out going straight into it. I’m not far into this at all, but I’m far enough that I’m not sure I’d want to start over.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: I was doing great on the Atelier MegaFeature over on MoeGamer, but I kind of ground to a halt with this game, not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but at least partly because I started working on Rice Digital and thus didn’t have time to commit to personal projects like this. It has been long enough that I think I can probably start this over when I want to come back to it.

Little Busters!: I took this with me on an overnight trip to work to play out of curiosity, and enjoyed the few chapters I played through, but again, haven’t got far. Again, I think I would probably start this over when the time comes.

Rance Quest Magnum: Another game with Yakuza syndrome: I want to catch up on the series, but doing so is a daunting prospect. This game at least has the benefit that its early hours are relatively light on plot, and its quests are bite-sized, making it a game that you don’t necessarily have to devote hours to in order to get the best out of it.

I’ll also say it’s worth noting that recently I finished Silent Hope, which was one of those games that had been looming over my head for ages, and it felt good to finally knock that one on the head. I also played through 1000xRESIST the other day, and enjoyed that a lot.

Thinking about things sensibly, then, the thing that would make the most sense would be to play The Eden of Grisaia when my brain is alert enough to read, Mon-Yu when I fancy bopping things until numbers come out. I drop Ys VIII, Atelier Lydie & Suelle and Little Busters! without guilt for now, and come back to them fresh and from the beginning when I’m not so overwhelmed. I review how I’m feeling after finishing either Mon-Yu or The Eden of Grisaia (or both) and consider whether to pick up where I left off in either Yakuza 5 or Trails in the Sky Second Chapter at that point — in other words, defer that decision until one or two things are checked off.

That sounds good, right? Okay, The Eden of Grisaia it is for now, then.

#oneaday Day 168: On The Spectrum

I got that new Spectrum. I was going to call it a Spectrum Mini, but it really isn’t — it’s a well-crafted replica of the original 48K Speccy, rubber keys and all, only it has stuff like HDMI out, USB ports and suchlike.

Like TheC64 Mini/Maxi, TheA500 Mini and The400 Mini, it’s an emulation box with a bunch of built-in games (48 this time) and the ability to load your own stuff from USB.

As I type this, a vast collection of Spectrum games and demos are copying themselves to a USB stick, so I haven’t had time to try that side of things today. I have had a play with some of the built-in games, though, and they’re a really interesting mix.

There’s expected stuff like Manic Miner and Skool Daze — though no Jet Set Willy, interestingly — but of particular note is the selection of modern indies that are included. There’s some really cool stuff in there, including a 3D platformer called Cosmic Payback and and light-based puzzler called Tenebra, both of which I’ve had some fun with today.

The Spectrum is not a system I know well at all, having grown up an Atari boy. So I’m thinking I may chronicle some of my explorations and discoveries on YouTube. While I’m on, I’ve never really covered the built-in games on TheC64 and TheA500 Mini either, so between those three I think they’ll make some nice companion pieces to my 400 Mini playlist and all the other Atari stuff I’ve done.

These systems were bitter rivals back in the day, but today it’s easy to be in a position where you can appreciate all of them. And you should, because they all have unique charms, for sure.

Anyway, that’s a loose plan in place that I’ll likely start on tomorrow. For now, sleep beckons!

#oneaday Day 166: Only seven years late… and then some

Longtime readers of my blog and MoeGamer will know that the visual novel series Grisaia has been something of a defining influence on my media tastes for quite some time. Indeed, over on MoeGamer there’s probably a book’s worth of words on the first two games that I invite you to read at your leisure.

And yet. And yet. For some reason, despite coming to the end of second entry The Labyrinth of Grisaia in 2017 and being incredibly excited about the cliffhanger it ended on, and curious on how it might end up… I have only just got around to making a start on the final part of the original trilogy The Eden of Grisaia. I say “the original trilogy”, because since The Eden of Grisaia’s release in English, there have been numerous non-canonical spinoff titles released in the series, plus an entire second series of games known as Grisaia Phantom Trigger which, I believe, is eight volumes long. (Granted, I believe one “volume” of Phantom Trigger is a tad shorter than one of the original three Grisaia games, but still.)

Anyway, like I say, I have finally got around to starting The Eden of Grisaia. I was concerned it would be tough to get back into after seven years away from the series, but almost immediately I was reminded why I love this series, and why I’ve always considered it so important to me. So I’m definitely going to make reading through this final volume from the first trilogy an absolute priority, because I am thrilled to be back in the company of these characters.

But what is Grisaia? I mean, my simple answer to that is “go read the MoeGamer articles linked above”, but you may not have the time to read a five-figure word count on the subject. So I will attempt to summarise the series thus:

Grisaia is, in part, a coming-of-age story about people finding their place in the world. This might not sound particularly unusual for a visual novel, and indeed Grisaia initially looks like it’s doing its very best to be a fairly conventional high school romance sort of affair. There’s an unvoiced male protagonist, a harem of young women who all come to adore him for one reason or another, nookie (in the 18+ version, anyway, which is absolutely the version you should be playing) and multiple endings.

But there’s one fairly large spanner thrown in the works almost immediately, and that is the protagonist in question: Yuuji Kazami. He is anything but a “self-insert” or cipher for the player, and right from the opening moments of the first installment The Fruit of Grisaia it’s clear that something is up with him. We join him just as he has walked 150km to get to his new school, Mihama Academy, and over the course of his interactions with the five main heroines, we come to learn that he has a mysterious “job”.

Initially, the details of this “job” are kept exceedingly vague, but it becomes apparent very quickly that Yuuji is no ordinary high school boy. He is wise — and cynical — well beyond his years, and he uses this experience to help the heroines in various ways. He by no means acts as a “magic bullet” to solve all their problems for them, but his experience in the ways of the world helps him form an incredibly close bond with all five of them. In the original The Fruit of Grisaia, these bonds are implied to be exclusive, and indeed there are even “After Stories” in second part The Labyrinth of Grisaia that continue on that assumption.

But the main story of Grisaia really gets started in The Labyrinth of Grisaia. It’s there we learn all about Yuuji’s background — which I won’t spoil here for the moment, but it’s fair to say he is cynical, jaded and experienced in some curiously specialised skills with very good reason — and the whole thing concludes on a dramatic moment that effectively seems to take Yuuji completely out of the picture.

Now, it’s a bold series that seemingly removes its protagonist from proceedings two-thirds of the way through, but that’s exactly how final part The Eden of Grisaia starts. We switch to third-person narration and follow, for the most part, the exploits of the five heroines as they leave Mihama Academy behind and take on the seemingly impossible task of getting Yuuji back. We have occasional cuts back to Yuuji’s present situation, but the focus is still very much on the heroines. At least it has been for as far as I’ve read so far.

This is a really interesting narrative technique, because it makes it abundantly clear that while The Fruit of Grisaia very much had a kind of “dating sim”-style setup in which you had to pick the right choices to get onto your favourite girl’s route and then pick the right choices to get her “good” ending, The Labyrinth and The Eden of Grisaia have a very specific story to tell. Indeed, the main narratives of both unfold as a kinetic novel with no player input whatsoever. It’s testament to the quality of the writing (and the translation) that Grisaia remains so thoroughly compelling, even after it takes away both the player’s already limited agency in proceedings and the character they were supposed to be “inhabiting”.

Don’t mistake the switch to third-person narration as being boring, though. The Eden of Grisaia’s narrator may be omniscient and non-participant, but they very much have a personality of their own, and they have some exceedingly entertaining remarks to make at times — usually at the expense of Michiru Matsushima, the group’s resident “idiot”.

Thus far I am very much back in Grisaia mode, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. I also know that Grisaia games are a very long read — honestly, it’s knowing there are probably 30+ hours of reading ahead that caused me to put off Eden for so long — but I am going to take my time and enjoy it.

In the meantime, if you’ve never explored the series for yourself, I still highly recommend it. Yes, it’s a bit of a commitment to read all of it, to say the least, but it’s a journey well worth taking. It’s regarded as an absolute classic of the medium with very good reason, and my “Complete Box” version of it that I have on my shelf is absolutely one of my prized gaming-related possessions.

#oneaday Day 163: A thousand resistances

Having finished Death Mark II last night, I kicked off a recommendation today: 1000xRESIST, which is a game title I have no idea how to say out loud.

I played it for a good 6 hours or so in total, so I think it’s safe to say I’m having a good time. I thought I’d reached the end, but then a whole new bit started, and with it being half past 1 in the morning I thought I’d probably better stop.

I don’t want to spoil too much about the game because it’s very much a “story game” that is light on what we’d call traditional “gameplay” beyond moving around various beautifully presented environments, but I thought I’d pen a few words at least.

In 1000xRESIST, you play the role of Watcher, a clone of the mysterious “ALLMOTHER”, the sole survivor of a global crisis that wiped out the rest of humanity. An entire society of the ALLMOTHER’s clones has apparently sprouted up and is functioning about as well as can be expected in a futuristic post-apocalyptic dystopia where breathing the unfiltered air causes all your bodily fluids to leak out through your eyes.

What’s particularly interesting about this game is that you get to see the “past” of the ALLMOTHER via various means, and because your character is from a time period that is completely unfamiliar with concepts like “high school” and “boys”, there’s a marvellously “uncanny” feel to everything you do and see.

It’s not overdone, but it is almost intoxicatingly disorienting to begin with. As time goes on, you get used to it, though; you learn the curious little phrases that have come about as a result of generations’ worth of worshipping the ALLMOTHER, and you start to understand why this peculiar society functions the way it does.

There’s definitely a lot to unpack in the narrative as a whole, as there’s a swathe of different themes tackled at various times. It’s intelligently written, never patronising, and dear Lord is it (apparently) compelling, given the amount of time I’ve spent on it today.

Thankfully, I have a couple of days off work tomorrow and Tuesday, so I should hopefully be able to polish it off in that time. I’m keen to talk more about it, as I suspect pondering it on “paper” will help me process the many varied themes it brings to the table.

For now, though, sleep beckons.

#oneaday Day 162: Successful plans

I streamed yesterday, and my good pal Chris joined in. It was a successful stream — we both had a lot of fun. I haven’t figured out how to share my gameplay privately with Chris with audio, but he could at least watch what I was doing while we talked, and it’s so much easier to keep talking while playing when there’s someone else there to interact with.

During the stream, I concentrated on playing Toaplan games from the upcoming Toaplan Arcade 3 and 4 cartridges for Evercade. There are some real bangers among these, but as with most Toaplan games, they’re very hard! I reached an actual blockade in Dogyuun, which uses checkpoints, but we managed to clear the entirety of Fixeight and Snow Bros. 2 with judicious credit-feeding, both of which were a lot of fun.

I have the next couple of days off work so I think I’m going to take Sunday entirely for myself, perhaps to start having a look at 1000xRESIST, which a few people have recommended to me recently. I don’t really know much about this game, but what little I’ve seen certainly seems to be intriguing, so I’m looking forward to checking it out. It’s unfortunate there doesn’t appear to be a physical release at present, so I’m going to nab the Steam version; there are rumours that there might be a physical Switch version at some point, but nothing concrete as yet.

Anyway, things are OK right now. If you were wondering about progress on the whole “eating well” thing, I’m 11 pounds down on when I started, which is good… what was less good was the amount of weight I’d put on after our week’s holiday away, but at least that’s coming off again now! We’ve had a few days of feeling a bit “eh” about dieting this week, but we’re getting properly back into the swing of things on Monday. Sometimes you just need to get urges and cravings out of your system to continue being productive.

Oh, I know what else I need to do today. I need to write about Death Mark II, which I finished yesterday. More details will be forthcoming over on MoeGamer, but suffice to say for now that the entire Spirit Hunter series is absolutely magnificent, and anyone the slightest bit interested in top-quality, genuinely intelligent horror should definitely check all three games out. But like I say, I will talk more about the details over on MoeGamer.

In fact, I’m off to go do that right now. Ta-ta. If you missed the stream yesterday, here’s an archive for you to watch!

#oneaday Day 151: Scribbling down an idea

Hello. Indulge me this evening, if you please, because I want to make a note of an idea I have for a longer article that I’ll likely publish on MoeGamer at some point in the near future. It stems from a discussion I’ve previously had with my friend Chris (my MoeGamer Podcast co-star) about how RPGs are “categorised”, and how “western RPG” and “Japanese RPG” are woefully inadequate terms to talk about the RPG as it exists today.

I’m not going to go too into it today but I wanted to jot down the ideas that were rattling around my head while I was playing Silent Hope this evening. And that is to devise some sort of “taxonomy” for RPGs as they exist today. I’m thinking at the top level, you can split them into two distinct categories: narrative-centric RPGs, where the core of the experience is on enjoying the unfolding story; and mechanics-centric RPGs, where the main point of the game is fiddling with its various systems, optimising your characters and suchlike.

There are some games that straddle that line, of course, but for the most part, it’s pretty easy to split them down the middle like that based on what is clearly the main priority. Final Fantasy XIII, for example, is a narrative-centric RPG. Demon Gaze is a mechanics-centric RPG. Where things get quite interesting is that long-running series often go back and forth between being narrative- and mechanics-centric — Final Fantasy is a prime example of this.

You can then divide each half into further subcategories. Narrative-centric RPGs, for example, could be divided into cinematic RPGs, sandbox RPGs, visual novel RPGs and storytelling RPGs, while mechanics-centric RPGs could be split into first-person dungeon crawlers, isometric action RPGs, massively multiplayer games, roguelikes and various other categories, some of which intertwine and cross over with one another.

I haven’t thought about the idea in a lot of depth yet, as you can probably tell from the vagueness, but I think there’s an interesting concept to write about there. The reason I’m not writing about it in detail right now is because it’s 1am and I, as ever, have forgotten to write anything on here sooner. It is not beyond my capabilities to bash out a 3,000+ word epic at 1 in the morning, but I do have to work tomorrow and would rather do so having had something approaching a decent night’s sleep.

So that’s that. I will flesh out the concept in the very near future and post it on MoeGamer. Might even turn into a fun video. We shall see. Anyway, I have recorded the idea here now. Next job is to completely forget that I wrote it down here and revisit the idea in roughly 36 months.

Good night!