#oneaday Day 239: Two Quests in one day

I recorded some videos earlier. I really like doing adventure game playthroughs, so I decided to play through both King's Quest II (I've already done the first one) and Space Quest, the latter of which I've never played all the way through by myself, but which I've fallen asleep to Dan from Game Grumps playing on numerous occasions.

I was hoping to get The Dagger of Amon Ra done also, but it turns out playing and beating three adventure games in one day is just a little too ambitious, so I've settled for just the two mentioned. The Dagger of Amon Ra is still on the list, though; I found The Colonel's Bequest far too interesting to just leave Laura Bow hanging like that.

I mostly enjoyed the experience of these two games. King's Quest II is a game I have fond memories of playing as a kid, though I'm not sure I ever actually beat it when I was younger. Space Quest was mostly a pleasure, also, save for two truly awful and mandatory sequences you have to endure: a "skimmer" race where you have to dodge incoming rocks, and a slot machine sequence where you need to earn an obscene amount of money using a purely luck-based system. (If you're playing a later revision of the game, there is a cheat to bypass this sequence, but sadly, the ST version I was playing was not said later revision, so I had to do it "the hard way".)

I always find it fascinating to go back to adventure games, because when I was younger actually making it all the way through one seemed like a literal impossibility. Particularly if we're talking about Sierra games, which most certainly are not afraid to kill off the player regularly, or leave them in a situation where they forgot an item earlier in the game that is mandatory to progressing later. King's Quest is probably more notorious than Space Quest in this regard, but as it happens, of the two games I played today, King's Quest II was probably the gentler, fairer of the two, while Space Quest had several opportunities to miss important objects and completely screw your entire playthrough over.

But no. Those games that seemed impossibly huge and insurmountable as a child are almost laughable in their length today. Actually, no, I don't mean that; both King's Quest II and Space Quest (annoying bits aside) are just the right length to be satisfying, so far as I'm concerned, but I do feel like if a modern equivalent of both of these was released today, they would be quickly review-bombed by entitled Steam kiddies whinging about "lack of content" and "no updates, abandoned game".

For me, though, it's nice to be able to power through a game like this in the space of a couple of hours — possibly even quicker if you know exactly what to do and the best order to do it in. I certainly enjoyed recording these two videos today — and I'm looking forward to publishing them over on YouTube over the course of the next few days. Now, though, it's 1.15 in the morning and I should probably go to sleep. Adventure is calling, but an adventurer also needs his rest, to be sure!

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.

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#oneaday Day 235: Being conscious of game design might make games less enjoyable

There are a few terms that are bandied around the gaming enthusiast sphere that I've really come to loathe: "gameplay loop" and "quality of life". The reason for this is that any time discussion involving these terms comes up, I find myself pulled right out of any sense of immersion I might have had in something, and start thinking of something purely in terms of its mechanical and structural features.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, of course, because the artistry of video game design isn't just about making pretty graphics, composing stirring music and writing a compelling story. Indeed, there are many games that completely lack a narrative element, making their mechanical and structural elements the important bit you should be looking at if attempting to analyse a title as a creative work in any level of detail.

But there are also times where it just sort of sucks to be aware of the man behind the curtain; of all the things that are going on that make something look interesting and compelling. By being aware of all the digital ropes and pulleys behind the scenes, it becomes harder to suspend your disbelief and treat something as a coherent, creative, artistic work.

I became particularly conscious of this in Final Fantasy XIV over the last couple of years. This is by no means the only example where I've felt this, but it's one where I have felt it particularly keenly, so I'm going to use it as a specific example.

When I started playing Final Fantasy XIV, I absolutely adored it, and it will always be special to me, not least because it's the medium through which I proposed to my wife. But over time, it's started to feel less like an immersive world in which to exist and live another life, and more like a series of buttons to push in order to make the next thing happen.

Part of this is down to predictability. Final Fantasy XIV's main scenario has a predictability problem — not in the narrative itself, but in the way that narrative is delivered. Essentially, it goes like this:

Arrive at new major location, unlock new fast-travel point
Do couple of story quests to introduce location
Map suddenly explodes with sidequest icons, all confined to the location you're in
Do sidequests (because if you're anything like me, unfinished sidequest icons are complete anathema)
Do next few story quests
Map suddenly explodes in sidequest icons again (it always does it twice)
Do sidequests (see above)
Do next few story quests
Do dungeon/trial
Move on to next major location
Repeat

I hate that I'm aware of this, and I can't "unsee" it. Because over the course of the last few expansions, I found myself reaching a new location and not thinking "cool, a new place to explore and get to know!" but instead just thinking "those sidequests are going to pop up any minute now, and I'm going to have to do them before I move the story on, even though I've already outlevelled the story by a considerable factor". The whole thing started to feel a bit like it was just doing things by rote precisely because it was so predictable; you never stumbled across someone in the wild who had a cool "secret" quest for you to do, for example.

Part of the reason for this ties in with those terms I used above: "gameplay loop" and "quality of life". The relevance of "gameplay loop" should already be self-evident: it's the predictable sequence of events you go through when you play the game. "Quality of life", though, bears a bit more discussion — and not just because when I hear that term I always think "making your beloved pet/family member comfortable before their imminent death" rather than "making the menus a bit nicer to navigate".

Modern gamers are obsessed with "quality of life improvements" in games. In short, ways to make playing the game more efficient and, supposedly, comfortable. "Quality of life" is why Final Fantasy XIV only ever gives you sidequests in populated areas in big, predictable chunks like this; it's so those who want to power through the story and get to the endgame — where "the real game" starts for many MMO players — can do that, while everyone else can, in theory, take their time over enjoying the story.

Except, as I've outlined above, it doesn't really work like that, because this structural element is so flagrantly transparent that it actively detracts from my feeling of immersion in the game world and whether or not I care about the various communities of non-player characters that I encounter over the course of the story. And it's really hampered my overall enjoyment of the game in recent years.

Some of this is, perhaps, a me problem. But I also think it's symptomatic of a broader problem with gaming in general. Both players and designers are seemingly obsessed with creating an experience that is as "frictionless" as possible, where everything you might want to do in a game is always within arm's reach, and while you might have to put in a bit of time to see everything, you probably won't have to work too hard for it.

In Final Fantasy XIV, this is visible not only through the game design itself, but in the way the western player base seemingly likes to play the game: all third-party externally hosted spreadsheets and timers designed to get each session being as "efficient" as possible rather than just enjoying the ride. I don't like it, and it's not as if I can just ignore it, either, because there are elements of the game — notably The Hunt and FATEs, which both involve things spawning semi-randomly around maps, and which are inevitably dominated by those with a spreadsheet on a second screen to tell them where to go next — that I simply can't engage with due to the way other people play; all because of their obsession with "efficiency" and "quality of life".

As I noted the other day, I'm replaying Xenoblade Chronicles right now. And while this is, to an extent, prone to the exact same problem I describe with Final Fantasy XIV above, it also isn't afraid to throw unexpected elements in your path such as questgivers hiding in an obscure corner of the map or who only appear under certain conditions, nor is it afraid to present you with an objective that you can't just quickly grind out in five minutes. I've had a quest in my log since near the beginning of the game challenging me to demonstrate friendship between two female party members, for example; you don't even get a second female party member to be potential friends with the first one until a good 25+ hours into the game.

Rather than that being annoying, I appreciate that. It's something I keep at the back of my mind while I'm playing and, while it does inform the way I play to a certain extent, I'm not just thinking "I need to do this for a mechanical benefit or to progress the story". It ultimately doesn't matter if I complete that quest or not, though the rewards are nice. But I want to, because Xenoblade Chronicles gets you in a mindset where it's enjoyable to help the virtual people, particularly if it requires some effort on your part. This is, of course, taken to an extreme by the "rebuild Colony 6" sidequest that pretty much lasts the duration of the game, whereby you'll need to find collectible items, enemy drops and recruitable NPCs to rebuild a ruined colony that suffered an attack from the game's main antagonists, the Mechon.

Again, though, because that objective is there as a long-term thing to engage with rather than a throwaway sidequest to power through just so I can see the next main scenario event, I actually give a shit about it. It's not trying to be part of a "gameplay loop" and it certainly doesn't care about your "quality of life" if the drop rate on some of these materials is anything to go by… but y'know what? I like it. I appreciate it. It doesn't feel like the game is pandering to my laziness.

Being aware of a game's structure can hurt the narrative in other ways, too. For example, it's extremely rare that playable characters in an RPG are put into any real peril, meaning that if you see a cutscene where they're suffering, they're probably going to be all right in the end. One could argue that this is a problem shared with serialised television, in which the contracted regular cast members will always be all right regardless of whatever scrapes they get into in each episode (unless their contract's up at the end of the season… RIP Jadzia Dax), but it somehow feels more pronounced in gaming.

There are, of course, rare exceptions to the rule — anyone who played Final Fantasy VII back in 1997 will be well aware of probably the textbook exception — but they don't come up often, particularly in games that go for a somewhat lighter tone. In short, game designers don't want to take away a playable character that people might have invested time and effort into customising and levelling up, because they'll see that as "poor quality of life". It's why you don't often see the "party member becomes the final boss" trope, either; people would be upset, and not because of the way the story went.

In talking about this, I'm reminded of the fuss there was over the ending of Fallout 3, which originally ended with your character selflessly doing… something or other (I forget what) in a heavily irradiated room, meaning the last thing you did in the game was die. I absolutely loved this when I first encountered it, because I thought it was an incredibly symbolic and ballsy thing for the developers to do — even if, when you stopped to think about it, it didn't make a ton of sense, because you were with a radiation-proof mutant at the time who could have quite happily done what you did with absolutely no risk to himself whatsoever.

But to me, that plot hole didn't matter. The ending was dramatic and symbolic. "This is my last act in this horrible world," that ending made you say. "I hope it makes life better for someone." But no. Because people wanted to keep playing after the ending, it got patched out, making the actual end of the story much more of a wet fart in comparison. I lost a lot of respect for Bethesda that day, and it was frustrating to see mechanical and structural elements win out over narrative, making the latter significantly weaker and less impactful than it was before.

Your mileage may vary with all this, and I'm sure it's possible to train your brain out of seeing all the metaphorical Oompa Loompas going about their business. But for me, I kind of long for the days when I was innocent and full of wonder; back then, I never found myself thinking "how did they do that within the constraints of the game engine and overall structure?", because I was too busy thinking "wow, that's cool". And, as I get older, I can't help but feel like that sense of starry-eyed wonderment was much more fun.

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#oneaday Day 234: The return of The Sims?

Supposedly The Sims and The Sims 2 are getting the rerelease/remaster treatment at some time around the end of the month. It is the 25th anniversary of the series this year, and it appears that EA is actually listening to people for once and (supposedly) bringing back two of the most fondly regarded entries in the series, neither of which have been available for a very long time — and I don't believe the original The Sims has ever been available digitally, since it came from that dark and mysterious time where you had to go to a shop to buy PC games. (Yes, I miss it. I would be much more of a PC gamer if it was possible to have a physical PC game collection.)

I used to really enjoy The Sims. The original game came out at an absolutely perfect time for me: while I was at university. As someone who had previously enjoyed the SNES version of SimCity (aka the best version… apart from the bugs) and Sim City 2000, I was intrigued to see creator Will Wright doing something a little bit different. The idea of a "life simulator" was something that had captured my imagination from around the 16-bit age; Activision's Little Computer People existed, but I wondered what something with a bit more "game" to it might look like.

Something really enjoyable, as it happened. The Sims, just in its base form, was an absolute revelation. Not only did I have fun with it, but everyone in my flat at university enjoyed getting involved, too. I'd made virtual versions of all of us, and everyone liked to check in every so often to see how we were all getting along. Because I rather overdid the size of our house when I started playing, we all had to sleep in recliners in the large communal living area for a while, but as everyone got jobs and started bringing in the Simoleons, we were able to live a rather luxurious life.

The Sims is interesting to think back on, because it's from a time where you could release a "sandbox" game and it wasn't anything unusual. Moreover, these games didn't need anything like achievements, daily quests or other engagement-bait to get people to enjoy playing them. They were enjoyable just because… well, because they were good. I'm actually rather interested to revisit the original The Sims just to see how well it holds up today. Obviously the graphics will look a tad dated, but I bet the gameplay still has it where it counts.

The Sims 2 I remember owning, playing and enjoying, but I don't recall playing it quite as much as the original for one reason or another. It certainly wasn't because I didn't like it or anything — I recall picking up several of the expansions for it — but for some reason it doesn't stick in my mind quite as much as the original. I know it's an especially fondly regarded entry in the series, though, so it might be fun to have another look at.

I really enjoyed The Sims 3, even though that was really the point that EA started truly taking the piss with the number of expansions and "Stuff" packs — something which has been taken to a frankly obscene degree with The Sims 4, which I've never played. I had a lot of fun with the World Adventures expansion in particular; I really liked the "dungeon crawling" subgame that added to the mix, as it made you make use of the game's mechanics in a rather different way.

I'm normally loathe to give EA money, particularly as they seem all-in on the AI fad right now, but I might make an exception if they don't fuck up the ports of these games — which is, of course, a distinct possibility. But we'll see; sources seem to reckon we'll see them by the end of the month, and there ain't much left of the month. Further reports as events warrant!

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#oneaday Day 233: Rearranging

This weekend has mostly been about Rearranging Things. I was getting to a point where I was out of room for new games in the living room, see, so something had to give at some point. And, this weekend, that something has well and truly given. I haven't quite finished the entire process, but the net result is that I will have a lot more room both in my study upstairs and in the living room, giving the game collection a bit of room to continue to grow in the near future. Assuming Switch 2 continues to be as good for physical releases as the current Switch, that will most certainly continue to happen.

Here's a rundown of what I've done, if you care:

Packed away the vintage computers (Atari ST, Atari 130XE). As much as I love them, whenever I'm "doing something" with either Atari 8-bit or ST, I'm doing it via emulation of some description, primarily so I can record the process. Recording the real ST and/or 8-bits isn't out of the question, but with stuff like The400 Mini and Hatari so readily available, there's really little reason to keep the old stuff out for the moment.
Packed away a significant chunk of Atari ST software. I've kept the games out because even if I'm emulating them for a video, it's nice to have the packaging and manuals available to use — plus those shelves make a nice backdrop for videos. The stuff I've packed away is all either educational, productivity or music/audio software — stuff that I really have very little reason to make use of.
Packed away all my big box PC games. Realistically, if I'm going to play one of these games, it's going to be via GOG.com/DOSBox or eXoDOS. It would be nice to have the boxes and manuals available on hand, but there are plenty of solutions available for doing that "virtually" if required.
Moved all the stuff that was just taking up space in the cupboard in my study into a "to go into the loft" pile. Most of that was vintage computer stuff, and if I'm packing the main vintage computers away there's little reason to have, say, an Atari ST monochrome monitor knocking around.
Moved a chunk of PlayStation 2 games from the living room to the cupboard in my study. There's a Billy bookcase in there that I can now reach now all the crap's been moved out of there, and I've put PS2 games that I don't want to get rid of or which won't be worth very much in there, keeping the PS2 shelves downstairs for stuff I might still want to play on the big TV. This has freed up a bunch of extra shelves for the collection down here to expand into.
Moved all the Evercade stuff into my study. Since I work up there, it makes sense to have it all up there — plus if I want to make videos on Evercade stuff, it's much more convenient to have them on a shelf next to me rather than downstairs, as much as I enjoyed displaying the collection with pride in the living room.

I have not yet rearranged the existing Switch games to fit the newly available space, but I basically have about four full shelves available to use that I didn't have before, which is nice. I'm glad I was able to do this without having to throw away or get rid of anything; while I know putting stuff in the loft can seem like a death sentence for some stuff, at least I know it is there if I do want to get it back for whatever reason — or if we eventually decide we want to move to a bigger place. (I'm still holding out for that lottery win… it hasn't happened yet.)

Anyway, all that's really left to do today is to get a binbag and clear all the crap away from my actual working desk in the study so I can use it for, y'know, working tomorrow. That can wait until after dinner, though. I need a sit down now!

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#oneaday Day 214: Anticipating Xenoblade... again

I'm a big fan of the Xenoblade Chronicles series from Monolithsoft and Nintendo, though I must confess I am very behind; I haven't yet played Torna, The Golden Country (the spinoff to the second game) or Xenoblade Chronicles 3 yet, nor have I replayed Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition on Switch. And yet here I am, gradually getting hyped for the return of Xenoblade Chronicles X in March.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is kind of special, see. While most of the rest of the series is pretty well-known to be awesome, outside of the few folks who can't handle anime-style aesthetics, Xenoblade Chronicles X has always been more of a cult favourite. For starters, it came out on Wii U, which means only a few people bought it, and it's also quite a different beast to the mainline Xenoblade Chronicles titles, arguably making it a bit more of an acquired taste for some.

Lest you're unfamiliar, the Xenoblade Chronicles series are a range of vast, open-world RPGs that take the concept Final Fantasy XII kicked off — MMO-style mechanics and structure in a single-player game — and run with it. For miles and miles and miles.

The mainline Xenoblade Chronicles titles are beloved not just for their expansive, beautifully crafted worlds, but also for the wonderful characters that make up the main cast. Each of them feature a wonderful balance between player freedom and in-depth storytelling, allowing you the opportunity to experience a truly epic narrative while also getting to know the complete, vast world very well.

Xenoblade Chronicles X differed a little from what was, at the time, its only predecessor, in that it downplayed the central narrative somewhat. Indeed, it's possible to blast through the entire main story of Xenoblade Chronicles X much quicker than any other game in the series. And this led some people to think that it "wasn't as good" as the original Xenoblade Chronicles.

In fact, Xenoblade Chronicles X isn't any lighter on story content than its predecessor. It's just structured very differently, primarily because of its overall concept. Rather than going on a long "hero's journey"-style quest, you're simply part of an organisation. Sure, you end up being the one who does some important and noteworthy things, but when it comes down to it, you're just another cog in a machine much bigger than you are.

Xenoblade Chronicles X's concept is that you, and a chunk of other humans, have crash-landed on an alien planet called Mira, and there's absolutely no hope of getting your spaceship back into space; moreover, there's likely no Earth to go back to, since the whole reason you were in space was escaping an alien invasion.

Consequently, rather than sitting around crying and gradually turning into cavemen, the former crew of the spacecraft decide to repurpose what's left of the ship as a city, then set about exploring the planet and making the best use of the resources that surround them. To that end, you're recruited as a BLADE: a Builder of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth. This means you need to go out, find resources, build things to exploit those resources, deal with the local fauna, collect things and just generally make a big ol' map of Mira as a whole. And Mira is very big.

While playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, there's a really nice feeling that you're playing a game that is as much strategy/management game as it is RPG. On the Wii U, the Gamepad's second screen featured a hex-based map of the planet that you could use to plan your expeditions, build things and invest in areas; the long-term gameplay of Xenoblade Chronicles X involves "conquering" each of these hexes in various ways, be it through completing missions, discovering landmarks, defeating powerful foes or various other objectives.

And every time you come back to the city of New Los Angeles, as it becomes known, you will have new people to talk to, new sidequests to discover, new little stories about humanity's home away from home. It's a massively immersive game that I feel like I barely scratched the surface of back when I played it on Wii U, and I'm really looking forward to giving it another go when the Switch version rolls around.

Couple that with some interesting and quite innovative online features — which will be much easier to take advantage of on a platform people actually own — and you have a game that promises to take up a lot of your life.

Oh, and it has an amazing soundtrack that you will either love or hate.

I'm sure there's plenty more about the game that I've forgotten, but I do remember the game as a whole with great fondness from when I first played it and declared it my Game of the Year nearly ten years ago… and bemoaned the fact that it didn't get anywhere near the press attention and general praise that it clearly deserved, likely primarily because it was a Wii U game, and what kind of idiot bought a Wii U? (Hi.)

So yeah. Expect great enthusing about Xenoblade Chronicles X when it comes out. I'm just wondering whether or not I can fit in Torna, The Golden Country and/or Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before that happens… given that I'm playing through Fire Emblem Engage also right now.

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#oneaday Day 212: Engage!

I've been playing Fire Emblem Engage since I finished Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and I've been having a lovely time. Fire Emblem is a series that has always passed me by despite it being, in theory kind of in my wheelhouse.

I say "kind of" rather than "completely", because while I absolutely love the high drama fantasy RPG side of the narrative, I've always had a bit of a rocky relationship with strategy games. I'm not good at them, see, and I've always had a hard time trying to determine how to get better at them. Because while there are plenty of guides out there for games like Fire Emblem, none of them simply sit you down and talk you through how to play them effectively. And that, for me, has always been a problem. It's why I bounced off Fire Emblem Awakening on 3DS, the last entry in the series that I tried, and why I have held off on playing the copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses that's been on my shelf for several years at this point.

Why am I playing Fire Emblem Engage when Three Houses, a game almost universally considered to be superior in every way, is right there on my shelf? Well, because I had somehow got it in my head that Engage was a little more "straightforward" — and, perhaps more importantly, shorter. Three Houses is an absolute beast of a game, particularly if you do all the narrative routes (which I'm assured you should), whereas Engage is a once-and-done sort of affair, with replay value coming from the harder difficulty levels.

Mechanically, I don't think Engage is any more straightforward than what I know of Three Houses. There are elements where it's arguably more complicated, in fact — most notably with regard to the Emblem Bond and Skill Inheritance systems — but I wasn't to know that going in, and I'm about 25 hours in now, so, well, I guess I've dealt with it successfully.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm playing on Normal difficulty and Casual mode — i.e. the one without permadeath. I was having enough difficulty with the initial missions in the game that adding the opportunity to completely gimp my playthrough via poor performance seemed like an unwise choice. I am new to the series, I am still finding my feet in how it all works and how to play effectively, and thus I want minimal barriers to just enjoying myself. The options are there, so I'm using them.

With that "guardrail" in place, Fire Emblem Engage is still quite challenging. If you lose a unit during a mission, you still have to do the rest of the mission without that unit, and that can really fuck you over. It took me a few early-game missions to figure out what I was doing wrong, but then something interesting happened: I figured out what I was doing wrong.

This is not something that normally happens with strategy games. I normally end up being trounced by whoever I'm playing against, then never wanting to play it again as a result — or, in the case of tabletop affairs, not getting much opportunity to "practice". But with Fire Emblem Engage, I've ploughed on, and I've started to get a real feel for how the strategy works, and what is effective. I still make mistakes now and then — and the game's generous "Draconic Time Crystal" mechanic that allows you to undo stupid moves has been very helpful here — but I am definitely getting better at How To Play Fire Emblem. And that's a good feeling.

Because Being Able To Play Fire Emblem means that you can Enjoy Fire Emblem. And there is a lot to enjoy. The story of Engage, while relatively clichéd RPG fare — dark dragon long thought safely sealed away has come back, heroic band must gather a bunch of rings to summon enough power to drive the bastard back to the abyss — has been really compelling so far, and the character-centric nature of modern Fire Emblem is exactly what I like in this sort of game. I'm getting a real feeling that I'm getting to know the individual characters, both through the protagonist character's interactions with them and their interactions with one another.

For the unfamiliar, modern Fire Emblem features a relationship mechanic whereby units can "support" one another by fighting alongside each other in combat and doing activities together between battles, and your reward for reaching a new milestone in two characters' relationship with one another is a "support conversation", which depicts the two of them getting to know one another. There's not a Support mechanic in play for every pairing of characters in the game, but plenty that make logical sense, and it's lovely to see everyone getting to know one another, having comedic misunderstandings and deepening their feelings of friendship.

Anyway. I'm not sure how far through the game I am — I reckon probably about halfway maybe? — but I've been playing it all weekend and having a great time. I should almost certainly have it finished ahead of Xenoblade Chronicles X coming out on Switch in March — because you better believe I'm revisiting that game thoroughly having adored it on Wii U — but in the meantime I think I'm a convert to the series. I'm sure longstanding fans will scoff at me playing on non-permadeath mode, but I bet all of them reload a save the second anyone dies anyway. Also it doesn't matter how someone else enjoys a video game.

So yeah. Fire Emblem, pretty good. Who knew?

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#oneaday Day 206: Impending reorganisation

The living room, which is wall-to-wall video games of all descriptions, is fast approaching a point where it needs a Big Reorganise. I'm conscious of this because 1) my wife keeps bugging me about it (which, to be fair, she's entirely justified in doing), 2) because my Switch shelves, by far the most "active" in my collection, are approaching capacity, and 3) because at some point in the not-too-distant future, there's going to be a Switch successor and, assuming all the reports about it being backwards compatible are true — that better include having a cartridge slot and not just be a digital affair — that part of the collection is only going to continue expanding.

I dislike having to think about this because it involves making some tough choices. I'm disinclined to get rid of much stuff completely, largely because a lot of the stuff I own I either want to have on hand to be able to play, or wouldn't be worth that much were I to drag it all down the local CEX and trade it in. (The stuff that would be worth trading in from a financial perspective is all stuff I want to keep readily accessible.)

That leaves the main alternatives being seeking somewhere larger to live, which neither my wife nor I really want to do, or going through, being a bit "selective" about the stuff that is kept readily accessible, and squirrelling away the less "important" stuff up in the loft. This latter approach is looking like being the most practical and/or desirable thing to do right now.

So the big question is: what stays down here and readily accessible, and what goes in the loft?

Right now I'm thinking the following, from all the stuff that is currently on my shelves both in the living room and in my study upstairs:

Big box PC games, presently in the study, can go in the loft. I have nothing with which to read that original media, and any of those games I do want to play I almost certainly have on GOG.com, Steam or the eXoDOS archive.
Atari ST games, also presently in the study, I am a bit torn on. While putting them up in the loft would free up a lot of shelves for other uses, I like having them on display, because they're my childhood. Also, while I'm still making videos about Atari home computers, it's nice to have them on hand to be able to look at the documentation and packaging. So they're a "possibly stash away if I really need the space".
Atari hardware, currently filling up the closet in my study, can realistically go in the loft. As much as I adore the original machines, I do the majority of my Atari-related stuff on The400 Mini for Atari 8-bit, and Hatari running on my mini PC for ST. Freeing up some space in that cupboard would be a huge benefit.
Nintendo DS and 3DS games, presently on one shelf in the living room, can probably be organised and stacked a little differently to take up less space. This consideration is of increasing concern as the Evercade library, which is presently on the shelf above, expands, as it's nearly at the limit of the one shelf it's on.
PS1 games can stay down here. I don't have a lot of these and they don't take up much room.
PS2 games I think I can go through and strip out a big chunk of the collection I'm unlikely to spend a lot of time with any time soon. I have a lot of "interesting curiosities" in the PS2 library that I'm loathe to get rid of (and which, as outlined above, probably won't net much in a trade/sale) but which I'm unlikely to spend a lot of time playing in the immediate future. Once I've gone through and picked all these out, I can probably trim the fat of the PS2 library quite considerably and pack the rest away to get back out if we ever move, or if we figure out some form of alternative storage solution.
PS3 games can stay where they are. I don't have a lot of these.
Likewise PS4 and PS5. Of the three, I have the most PS4, and there are also a lot of games among the PS4 library that are on my "to-play" list for the near future.
Wii games can probably undergo a "trimming the fat" session like PS2. I don't have nearly as many Wii games as PS2, but still a good couple of shelves worth, some of which likewise falls into the "interesting curiosities I want to keep but am in no hurry to play" pile.
Wii U can definitely have the fat trimmed to those games that haven't been ported to Switch, and those games which have been ported to Switch that I haven't (yet) bought the Switch port of.
Original Xbox is slim pickings so can stay as-is.
Xbox 360 can undergo a PS2-style fat-trimming process, for exactly the same reasons.
Switch can stay as-is.
The Limited Editions I have on display, taking up quite a few shelves, can probably be organised a little differently or more tightly, freeing up a bit more room.

That sounds like a plan to me! I'm sure that was of very little interest to any of you reading, but I feel better having got a rough plan down on "paper". I'll be tackling this once the Christmas decorations come down, so not for a little while yet, but I'll be sure to share the results once the process is complete!

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#oneaday Day 202: Boxing clever

We're finally home. I say "finally"; we were only away for a couple of nights, but the cats are pleased to see us and they are already enjoying their presents. As I type this, Oliver is happily chewing and dragging his new toy around, and Patti is just sitting near me, happy that her favourite person is back where he should be.

The rest of today is going to be spent doing as little of value as possible. I'm going to veg out and play some more The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and… probably not much else. I would like to write something about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, which I finished literally immediately before we left for our Christmas trip, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow.

I'm still very much in a Nintendo mood, so I'm currently forming a vague plan for something along the lines of a "Year of Nintendo" special feature over on MoeGamer. There's a lot of first-party Nintendo stuff on Switch that I haven't played, let alone written about yet, and this might be a good excuse to knuckle down and get on with that. Plus it's highly likely that the Switch itself is coming to the end of its lifespan; while the successor hasn't yet been revealed, now seems like a good time for some sort of retrospective exploration of all the "big name" games for the platform, all in one place.

Anyway, that's something to think about further tomorrow. I've also spent some of my Christmas money on filling a few first-party gaps in my Switch collection — Nintendo stuff rarely, if ever, drops in price, so I may as well pick it up when I have a bit of spare money to burn. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into some titles I've been putting off for a long time — like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which I'm pretty sure someone bought for me several Christmases ago — and potentially having a "big project" to work on over the course of the year. There's also Xenoblade Chronicles X in March, and I am very excited to revisit that game; it'll be particularly cool to check out its multiplayer features on a more popular platform than its original host of the Wii U.

That's about all my brain is capable of processing right now, so it's time for Zelda. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and here's to the end of another shitty year.

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#oneaday Day 199: Turns out Balatro is pretty good

People have been banging on about how good Balatro is for ages now, so the other day I decided to actually download it and give it a go. I had nothing in particular against it, but I am also inordinately wary any time something — particularly an indie darling — gets hyped up as much as Balatro has been.

In this case, I think the praise the game has received is very much deserved. Balatro is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be, and all it does is achieve that goal. It doesn't have any pretensions of being high art, it's not doing that thing where "you think it's a card game but it's actually a horror game lololololololooool", it's not psychologically profiling you or gearing up for a singular jumpscare as your playtime hits exactly 256 minutes. It's just a game that has a clear, non-narrative premise, and executed brilliantly.

Balatro is ostensibly a card game "roguelike", but as with most games that bastardise that term these days, all that really means is that there are randomised elements to each game, and when you lose you have to start over from the beginning. There's also a persistent element where the more you play, the more potential "things" you unlock to appear in a run, so even if you beat a run in it quickly, the more you play, the more varied things should, in theory, get.

Balatro is based around poker — a fact which caused the European games rating board PEGI to shit itself and whack it with a completely undeserved 18+ rating well after it had already been released — but is not really a "gambling" game as such. The poker connection is simply the means through which you interact with the game, and it has rather more relaxed rules than "real" poker. In terms of poker variations, Balatro is probably closest to electronic video poker — a fact which it leans into with a nicely understated fake CRT look and some nice pixel art.

Your aim in Balatro is to sequentially defeat a series of "blinds" and "bosses" by scoring a particular number of points in a limited number of hands played. Each round allows you a certain number of discards, and each "hand" played can have between one and five cards.

Each of the common poker hands — high card, pair, two pair, three of a kind, full house, four of a kind, flush, straight, straight flush, royal flush, five of a kind — has a base value that is calculated as a number of "chips" multiplied by a value known as "mult". The base number of chips is then added to by the value of the cards played — with face cards being worth 10 and aces 11 — and the result is the number of points you attain for that hand. Naturally, the more complex poker hands are, at the outset of the game, worth more points.

One interesting thing about Balatro is that you don't have to play "legal" hands. If you just want to get rid of some cards but you have a pair, you can play the pair plus three more cards, and the three "extras" will just get discarded and redrawn. You can also just discard and redraw up to five cards at once a set number of times per round. So long as you meet the score target, you move onto the next round, which has a higher target — and, if it's a "boss" round, which occurs after "small blind" and "big blind" rounds, some special rule comes into play.

The boss rules vary quite considerably from run to run. Sometimes a single suit might be "debuffed", meaning any cards of that suit you play don't add any extra points to a hand during scoring — though they're still considered a valid part of the hand. Sometimes, some or all of your cards may be drawn face down, forcing you to either play blind or use up your discards. Sometimes you have to reach the target using just a single hand. And there are plenty more variations besides.

In order to keep up with the escalating score targets, between each round you can access a "shop", which allows you to purchase specific cards or randomised booster packs to help you out. Planet cards boost the base value of specific poker hands. Arcana cards have various special effects that often allow you to transform cards into more valuable versions of themselves. Spectral cards have particularly powerful effects and don't come up all that often. And standard booster packs simply allow you to supplement your standard 52-card deck with additional cards that may work out in your favour.

Probably the most significant thing you can buy at the shop is a Joker. Rather than simply acting as a "wild card", Jokers instead provide continual passive benefits, and there are many possible effects. Some simply provide a flat increase to chips or mult. Some have conditional bonuses, where you need to play particular cards, or hold particular cards in your hand. Some have special abilities that can be activated in various ways. They are always absolutely key to your success, and the Jokers you choose to hold onto will direct the way you play quite significantly.

For example, a torn Joker provides you with a big bonus if you play hands of 3 cards or fewer at a time. This obviously discourages you from playing things like Full House and Four of a Kind, so you will want to seek out planet cards that boost things like Pair, Three of a Kind and High Card.

Another Joker grows in power according to how many Arcana cards you play, so you will want to specifically seek out ways of acquiring as many of these as possible. Another still provides significant bonuses if you play 10s and 4s as part of your hand. And the list goes on.

The thing I think I like most about Balatro is that it takes something everyone can relate to — playing with cards — and implements it in such a way that would be largely impossible (or at least very impractical) to do in real life. It is exquisitely designed; very easy to pick up, but tricky to master, and each run is markedly different from the last.

Perhaps best of all is how it doesn't overcomplicate things. No needless dialogue, no plot, no explanation of why you're playing this curious twist on poker or attempt to tie it into a greater storyline. The game just is. It has no goal other than to provide a satisfying, enjoyable experience for the player — and it succeeds at this absolutely admirably.

I've always been someone who enjoys narrative in games — but sometimes you just want to play something without getting bogged down in story context. Balatro provides exactly that. And, given that Microsoft now charges a subscription fee to make Windows Solitaire ad-free, I feel like Balatro absolutely should take its place as the office timewaster of choice. It has the same appeal elements as Windows Solitaire, after all — and not a microtransaction or ad in sight. Bliss.

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#oneaday Day 198: MoeGamer year in review, 2024

Hey! You! Reader! Do you read my other site MoeGamer? If not, you're missing out! It's the site where I put a lot more care and attention into things rather than farting something out for daily posts, and it plays host to some of the games writing I've done that has made me most proud over the years.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some highlights from this year, complete with links so you can go and enjoy them at your leisure. I'm not updating MoeGamer as regularly as I used to — the perils of having a job you actually like, and thus less time to spend writing during the workday! — but I've still written a fair few pieces this year, and I'd like to share some of them with you now.

A Re-Introduction

Click here to read!

In this post, I explained my decision to finally move MoeGamer off WordPress.com and onto self-hosted. This was partly down to my running out of disk space on my WordPress.com account and the absolutely extortionate price they wanted for an expansion, but I'd been thinking about doing so for a while anyway. At the start of this year, I finally took that step.

Famicom Detective Club

Click here to read part 1, The Missing Heir!
Click here to read part 2, The Girl Who Stands Behind!
Click here to read part 3, Emio, The Smiling Man!

Early in the year, I was in the mood for a bit of virtual detective work, so I finally stopped waiting for the physical release of the first two Famicom Detective Club games on Switch that was clearly never coming, and downloaded the double-pack. I absolutely adored them, but felt a bit sad that we probably wouldn't see any more of them. I was proven wrong later in the year with the surprise announcement and release of Emio, The Smiling Man, which took everything good about the first two entries and married it to a brand new story — which takes the honour as probably the darkest, bleakest Nintendo game ever released.

Another Code: Recollection – the way remakes should be

Click here to read!

I'd been thinking about picking up the DS and Wii duology of Another Code games for ages. With the Switch remake of both, I no longer needed to — but I'm glad I finally experienced these stories.

Helldivers II and the Battle Pass Delusion

Click here to read!

Helldivers II made me angry. Not because I begrudged the game's existence — I really enjoyed developer Arrowhead's previous work, such as the vastly underappreciated first Helldivers and its fantasy counterpart Magicka — but because of the amount of apologism for rancid modern business practices that came along with it. Battle Passes are shit, full stop, and a game being not quite as predatory as other games that use them still means it's predatory.

One Piece Mansion: the puzzle of stress management

Click here to read!

A kind YouTube viewer occasionally sends me goodies, one of which was this oft-overlooked PlayStation title from Capcom. I found it thoroughly interesting, so I wrote about it.

Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEPBLUE could have gone deeper

Click here to read!

The headline says most of it: this exploratory platformer from Inti Creates was excellent while it lasted… but the limited amount of time it lasted is also my main criticism of it.

The lost art of "just enjoying something"

Click here to read!

This is a sentiment I've expressed here in the past, too, but I feel it's a problem when people seem incapable of just enjoying something on its own merits. This article was particularly spurred on by the explosion in "modern gaming is DEAD!" videos on YouTube in the last year or two.

The enshittification of the video games press

Click here to read!

The perpetual negativity of people online is, in part, driven by the enshittification of everything — including the games press. In this piece, I talk a bit about my personal experiences, and why seeing so many sites fall down the "endless guides" SEO juice drain is so saddening.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Click here to read part 1, Falcom's Forgotten Gem!
Click here to read part 2, musings on the "school RPG"!
Click here to read part 2, on Falcom's best-in-class worldbuilding!

This year I had several bouts of "this game has been on my shelf for literal years, let's actually play it". This was the result of one of those. Shortly after I beat the game, a new localisation (with 100% less "*chortle*" from what I understand) was announced for Switch. I am tempted to buy it again because it really was an excellent game. I am a silly person.

The growing important of media with a positive vibe

Click here to read!

A good pal of mine wrote a review of Atari's Lunar Lander Beyond, and bemoaned how cynical the game's script was. That got me thinking; there's a lot of bleak, dour media out there, making stuff with a positive vibe feeling like an increasing rarity. I decided to ponder why that was important.

The Good Life: SWERY's Lake District holiday

Click here to read!

SWERY makes odd games that often have a lot to say, and The Good Life, an open-world game about being a grumpy American journalist stuck in the Lake District, was absolutely no exception to this.

The Missing: a violent, personal journey

Click here to read!

This game, also by SWERY, was an absolute masterwork in narrative through mechanics, telling a thoroughly compelling story about identity and self-acceptance.

Princess Peach Showtime: a short run on stage, destined to be forgotten

Click here to read!

Princess Peach Showtime! was a good game, but it's testament to the usual quality of Nintendo titles that it just being "good" meant that it was considerably less memorable than many of its stablemates.

Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution – satire through design?

Click here to read!

Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution is, I think, the first game in the long-running Neptunia series that I haven't adored. And I got the impression by partway through that this might have actually been intentional.

Disco Elysium: modern-day interactive fiction

Click here to read!

Disco Elysium is amazing and everyone should play it. Here is why.

Sengoku Rance: deep yet accessible empire building

Click here to read!

Sengoku Rance is often held up as the absolute best entry in Alicesoft's storied eroge series, and I can understand why.

A new taxonomy of RPGs

Click here to read!

I decided to expand a shower thought into something more substantial.

Spirit Hunter

Click here to read part 1, Death Mark!
Click here to read part 2, NG!
Click here to read part 3, Death Mark II!

For once, I was between games when October rolled around, so I decided to finally tackle the whole Spirit Hunter series, which had been languishing on my shelf for a while. I came away incredibly impressed.

There's plenty more than just these, but the above are some of my favourite pieces from the year gone by. Stop by MoeGamer and have a browse, or check out the index to see everything I've posted this year.

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