Nami Bits 1

Hey all,

I haven't posted for aaaaagessss :(
But I made this! Yay!

Nami is my favourite character and I'm hoping to make a full series of them.

Until Dawn came along with her big mouth!

I play too much League of Legends, so I barely find time to play any other games which I can then go on to discuss with you. But an unusual thing happened lately, I started to feel that I had played TOO MUCH LoL! *Gasp* So I am going to take advantage of that and start a new game.

Hayden Panettiere is in this.

I chose Until Dawn, a survival horror by theme, but less Silent Hill and more Heavy Rain by style. I didn't know this (I hadn't read anything about it) and that possibly affected my judgement of the first two hours. I'm about 2 1/2 hours in and so I may have to come back to this when I am done and do a 'part 2', as I may be wrong about it!

*SPOILERS?* 

I'm not going to discuss specific story points, but I am going to discuss the form of the game.

I started playing Until Dawn with the lights off, it's one of those games; horror, scares, atmosphere, tension, right? The set up is more like a TV drama though, with a cast of main characters and an HBO opening sequence. The structure splits the game into 'scenes' where the different characters do their own thing and then reconvene, and after about an hour or so you get a 'Previously on Until Dawn' section, which recaps the story so far. I found this to be the singularly most annoying thing about the game. I had only played for an hour, did the developers REALLY think that I would have forgotten what had happened already? It wasn't like I had last played a week ago, I had JUST done it!

How do I make Mike into the biggest douchebag?

The cast seems to be made up of teenagers (though some are questionably in their 30's) and you get to play as each character from time to time. They have individual personalities and complex relationships with each other, which you can nurture or hang out to dry through your actions. (I have only just realised this, so now I am going to be angling for some Dragon Age style same gender relationships or something). Most of the characters are annoying dimwits though, so most of my decisions (see below) were based on that. It's set in a huge isolated ski lodge with NO PARENTS and the biggest bath you have ever seen, so it is time to 'party like porn stars'. Oh and to remember what happened here exactly a year ago when two of our friends went missing. Bummer. Conveniently we are all back together and there is no phone signal. Let's hope we all stay safe this time!

The first time the gang got together, such fun!

You really don't 'play' much of this game. There is a lot of pressing buttons when you are prompted. This gets mighty tedious, pretty quick, and the game is possibly too hand-holdy. If you enjoy opening drawers (who doesn't!?!?!) then you will love this game. Like many games with an explore element you have to find clues. You spot the shining white dot that signifies something to investigate, walk over, an X appears on the screen (yes I get it- dur) and once pressed your character will position themselves to open/pick up whatever you have found. But you have to press another button to do this. These characters are so dumb they can't do anything for themselves. 'You want me to look in this drawer? Sure, I'll just bend down and place my hand nearby. Let me know when you are ready for me to ACTUALLY open this drawer.' I press R2. 'Okily-dokily, let's open the drawer!' Maybe not so dumb that they can't open the drawer, but so dumb that they are not trusted to open the drawer without supervision.

Heroic, obviously!

Sometimes you have a time limit in which to press the correct button which does add a bit more energy and engagement to the game. I have never quite learned which side square and circle are on, much like I have never really mastered left and right, so there were some panicky moments when I scrabbled to press the right one (remember I was playing in the dark). When you wait so long for something to do which isn't just walking or opening drawers, these quick time events (QTEs) are sweet relief, but annoying when your hands and brain are out of practice and you fuck it up. When I finally got to shoot something I was all in a tizz because the controller wasn't inverted (my preferred style) and there is no option to do this. But when I realised that this isn't a shooting game, but is actually a 'point your reticle at a shape on the screen and click a button game' then that made all the difference and I could relax.

I can't wait for the sex QTEs though. They have been so tantalisingly promised but have so far not materialised. We just walked/ran in sheer terror really freaking far to a remote cabin and now I have to light a fire before I get some. I'm guessing that I will have to press some buttons to do that. FML. The one opportunity I had so far to kiss someone I chose not to because the guy was a dick.

I think they wanted to call it 'The Butterfly Effect'.

Along the way you are making decisions that affect the game- the butterfly effect (as we are reminded over and over through dialogue, imagery, game mechanics etc.) is very much a whoop-ass force here so you have to think about how you respond. Or not, it's my first playthrough so I don't really care about which ending I get. Sometimes the choices are too binary though, you only get two and they don't always cover exactly how you would like to respond, like telling Emily how incredibly loathsome she is.

So do I like this game? I decided I'd played enough for one session and wanted to turn it off, but in the same way that I would accidentally get drawn into the OC or One Tree Hill (despite it being overly dramatic drivel) I found myself wanting to watch a little bit more. Wait did I type 'watch'?

There are some good dramatic scenes (I would usually write set pieces, but interactivity is so low that they don't even count as that), the consequences storyline is an interesting one, there are some scares that genuinely made me jump, the voice acting is mostly very good and against all odds it has me hooked and I do want to finish it at least once. Women are subtly sexy and sexual without wearing next to nothing- because why would you wear any less? It's got to be pretty freezing up that mountain. Puffer jackets and body warmers, yes please.

I had a dream about that magnificent bath last night, so that clearly stuck with me.

Games I played when...I was 16

Playing LoL the other day I happened to be matched with a bunch of very pleasant chaps, and we decided to play a few games together. It's quite rare to meet people who are this nice and fun to be around online, so it was great to be able to get to know them. On talking to them a bit I learned that some of them were only 16, which made me feel mega old!

It got me thinking about the games I played when I was 16. I got my first PC when I was 16, and it was the family's PC so had to be shared. It spent a little time in my Mum and Dad's bedroom, and then eventually found it's way into the dining room. It had no internet, and it had a 486 motherboard, and (I think) 4mb of RAM. It ran on Windows 95 which was practically space-age at the time. I remember watching Weezer's Buddy Holly video over and over again, which I found easily because my other fascination with the computer was being able to open folders, create folders, move stuff and delete stuff (remember how the page of paper would disintegrate as it approached the bin?)

 

It was time I put the computer to better use. I wrote a play set in 1950's America completely in wordpad. And then I lost it. I used it to listen to Oasis CDs; I had a 100 years of the Daily Mail CD-ROM which I occasionally used for homework, and I drew stuff in paint (something all ages can relate to!)

But really I just wanted the computer to play games on! So in tribute to those jolly young fellas, here are the top 5 PC games that I played when I was 16. I have had to borrow some videos from YouTube for this, as I don't own all the games anymore. 

1. X-Wing

This was around the time when we were anticipating the re-release of the Star Wars films, and X-Wing filled that gap perfectly. You got to pilot an X-Wing and take part in missions that took place in the Star Wars universe. Rumour had it you could actually do the deathstar trench run, but I never got that far. About four missions in I was tasked with catching up with a freighter ship that was about to enter hyperspace. I could never catch it, try as I might. I have no idea what it was that I was doing wrong. I'd asked R2 to redirect all the power away from the shields and lasers and into speed, but I could never get there. The freighter would disappear off the edge of space and I'd have to return back to base embarrassed.

Watch this guy do a better job than me.

Skip to 2.51 to get to the game itself.

2. Doom

So violent! I can't believe my parents let me play this. Perhaps they had no idea that's what I was doing. I don't remember the music in my version, perhaps it just didn't work. So much stuff just didn't work back then, and I had no idea whether it should be working or not. Remember there was no internet to consult, and none of my friends played PC games :(

Anyway I'm pretty certain I used the arrow keys to move around, I don't think a mouse was involved. I remember the noise of the doors opening and what BFG stood for (tee hee hee).

3. Command and Conquer

Now when you watch this video you might be surprised by how low-fi and crappy it looks. But I see it and think- Oh Yeahhhhh! Everything about it seems so familiar like this is the only version of Command and Conquer. Those Power stations, tanks, APCs, soldiers- that's what all power stations, tanks, APCs and soldiers should look like. This was such a seminal game for me that any RTS had this to answer to first. How good is this compared to Command and Conquer? Hmm?

I loved the base building missions, not so much the 'protect this person' missions.

Skip to 1:07 for actual gameplay.

4. Age of Empires

A little bit of a cheat, I was actually 17 when I played this. For some reason we seemed to get this pretty quickly after it came out, which was unusual as my family had no idea about the latest releases back then. My favorite way to play was to set up a custom game of 20 minutes with 3 AI opponents. Then I would see who could get the highest score in that time. I just loved the base building part of the game so much that I could just do that over and over and over again. It also meant that I pretty much always won (tee hee). Who needs war anyway? I seem to remember that they removed this type of custom game in the sequels, and so the original AoE was a staple for me until it would no longer run on my computer :(

5. Street Fighter II

Just see how long you can watch this for before the music does your head in. For some reason we never had Street Fighter II on the Mega Drive (our console of choice) but we bought it for the PC. Controls-wise, I'm not sure if that made much sense. I did enjoy button mashing, but I can't say I was very good at this. My brother used to beat me, and that made me very cross.

Special mention goes to: Minesweeper

Who would have thought that there was another Mine related computer craze that wasn't Minecraft. Preceding it by 21 years, Minesweeper was a classic. Pro tip for you all for your minesweeper speed runs- press both left and right mouse buttons to clear away more empty spaces.
Writing this blog made me want to play, so I searched for it on my computer- and it ISN'T ON WINDOWS 8.1! WHAT???? So I had to go here to play http://minesweeperonline.com/

Thank you minesweeper for all the hours. (Of fun, frustration and flipping hell).

I am better than this really, I'm just out of practice

Goodbye PlayStation Home

Today marks a sad event in video games history- the closure of PS Home. It happened just over an hour ago, and even though I wasn't a regular visitor I feel a great sense of melancholy.

Many people I know worked on Home and it became such a strong feature of their lives. From the animator who designed the 'running man' dance, to the designer who created Scribble Shooter, to the developer who voiced the elf in the Xmas Event 2013, and to the producer who loved Home like no other, nurturing it, communicating with fans about it, visiting it regularly.

She understood it's potential, just like many others did. A niche who were loyal to the end. A fanbase who had great times there, made friends and lasting loving relationships. They spent a lot of money there too; some are disappointed that they won't be seeing a refund. Such is the nature of digital content I suppose, whilst you might feel you own the item. You don't own the infrastructure that it needs to exist.

I messaged her last night to tell her that I would be thinking of her as she pressed the button to take Home offline. And this morning, I was. At 8am on the dot I thought of her, pressing that button and saying goodbye to a huge part of her life.

We are all sad that the closure of Home wasn't marked in a more commemorative way. This was left to the fans to organise themselves and I'm sure they did a good job of that. It just felt a little like Sony let Home slowly die quietly, rather than hosting a huge 'bon voyage' party and inviting everyone it once knew.

Even with that said, well done to Sony for taking a risk and for believing in it for so long. Just a shame that it couldn't continue.
Congratulations to London Studio for what you achieved. It is unprecedented and will go down in history, whichever way it is written.

Goodbye PSHome, you will be missed.

Meta-critic

Hey all!

Welcome back, to you and to to I.
Does absence make the heart grow fonder?

I haven't played a FPS in years. When League of Legends came along it occupied my gaming space like no other game had ever done before, and I found I had no time for other games. Gaming ceased to be my hobby, League of Legends became my hobby. Playing LoL, watching LoL, reading about LoL, patching LoL, trying out the new game modes, shopping for new skins and champs, stressing about ranked. You can see why it pretty much becomes a full-time occupation.

When I started streaming at the start of the year I started off with LoL, either NAMI TIME! <3 <3 <3 (for ranked games) or ARAM TIME! <3 <3 <3 (for ARAM, obviously). But as you know I got next to no views and I started to wonder what else people might like. I also had a bit of a hankering for Left 4 Dead 2. So I streamed a few games of this and it was 50% more popular than my LoL stream. As in, before I would get maybe 2 views, L4D2 brought me 3. Ah well. (I did get my first ever comment of "headshot!", but I didn't reply in time and they soon left.)

What I was most excited about though was the different game experience. I jumped into L4D2 looking forward to the more unrehearsed, panicky, fun moments that this kind of game can bring. After a while, LoL can feel a little formulaic in the way it is played. The pseudo-state of gaming enlightenment that is the 'meta' evolves and the game loses its random nature. New patches go some way to spicing it up a little, but it isn't long before a new meta emerges (just like the Highlander, there can be only one) and cuts the head off the old one. Now everyone must obey the new meta-king.

So I thought that playing L4D2 would be a break from the rigidity of LoL. The summer holidays to the dull but necessary term-time. It was certainly chaotic. It turns out that my friends had been playing this a little in lunch breaks and so had kept up a little practice. I however, had not played it in well over two years.

First challenge, press WASD, not QWER. This is harder than it sounds. QWER is so much more natural for a human hand. Perhaps FPS pro-gamers of the future will have evolved a strange claw where a sixth finger grows out underneath the middle finger and rests beautifully on S.  (Put your fingers on WASD to see what I mean.) After three seasons of QWER my hand had muscle memory and was afraid of change.

Next. Woah, where the hell am I looking? I remember I prefer my mouse inverted. Quick ESC to fix that.

Aaaaand let's go! It was fun! It was panicky! It was fun because it was panicky! But what's that I see emerging through the haze of jolly good freedom? No, surely not. No, it can't be! A meta! A bleeding meta. Just what I'd hoped to avoid. Turns out that the people who never left L4D2 have been secretly plotting and scheming to scientifically calculate the exact route; the exact moments; the exact hiding places; the exact weapons to take; the exact zombies to shoot and the ones to run past etc.

So precisely two rounds after starting to have fun, I stopped. I was getting killed left, right and centre. When I played as an infected, I couldn't find anywhere to spawn; either getting popped immediately or spending my whole time chasing the survivors through the level until the ultimate embarrassment pops up- You are too far away, press E to respawn :( Oh god. I fail at staying alive. I fail at being re-animated.

So onto my next game, Dirty Bomb.

It's a battle based team FPS, with no sign of zombies despite the radioactive threat. But it is new, hurrah! No meta yet, and hopefully never. It's currently in Beta and should be out very soon. I have only played the Objective maps in casual mode but so far I love it. I still am finding WASD difficult, and killing people is not really my speciality, but Dirty Bomb is very inclusive. Come one, come all!

Can't shoot but can press E every 5 seconds? Welcome :D
Don't have a clue about what's going on but can follow your teammates around? Welcome :D
Get confused when you are revived but know that you can press Q for an airstrike? WELCOME :D

It's hard to read, but I'm getting 5XP for putting an ammo pack down here.
You get even more if someone picks it up!

The reason this works is because you get points for practically anything you do that helps the team. The game is so generous in its rewards making it such a positive experience. Even if you are bottom of your team you have probably still racked up 1000+ points, so you know that you are contributing. The games are quick and so before you have done too much wrong it's onto the next map for a fresh battle.

So, for me, right now, Dirty Bomb is a real joy to play and I can't wait until I can run around with friends in there. Thank you Splash Damage/Nexon.

LoL might have to to contact my PA to find a gap in my schedule.

Someone silence that streaming child!

Hey!

After the disappointment of languishing in Bronze 4/5 for the majority of the 2014 season, I have turned my attention to a new challenge. I'm still playing too much LoL, but now I want to share it with the world.

I have been playing around with the idea of streaming games. I like the idea of sharing game experiences (you will know that from my earlier posts), and streaming seems to be the next logical step.

I've watched a few streams of pro LoL players, particularly Krepo and Kev1n and I have enjoyed the level of interaction that this can bring. You can watch them, listen to them, react when they react, join in on jokes and even chat with them (via the chat box, which you type into).

A lot of people use this to goad the person playing, some say offensive things and get kicked, but a lot of people just join in an have a jolly old time.

So it looks fairly easy to do. I have a computer with my game on, internet connection, a headset and a webcam.

What else do I need?

1. An account with www.Twitch.tv. There are other streaming platforms available, but this is the one most gamers use.
2. A program to stream your games. Twitch suggests a few; I went with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). It is both free and seemingly unlimited in its features. You will need a tutorial to help you set it up though as it is a bit complex.
3, People to watch you. This is what I have struggled with so far. I have had a maximum of 3 people watching me, but no one typed anything into chat, so I guess they could have been some kind of bot.

I'm still learning and trying to overcome the silliness of talking to myself, so I will keep my progress updated here.

If I get more than 3 people watching me I will let you know :D

What have I been up to?

Well, I haven't posted anything for a while!

Got to get back on track and have a little think about what I've been up to since JANUARY! (oops)

I've been learning to code, just a little bit, in JavaScript. So far I have drawn a plate of food, a box with the word 'rug' on it, a frog's face and a pig.

All created in code :D Very proud of myself.

The pig was supposed to resize proportionally, but at the moment it doesn't. I have so much more to learn :D. I have been doing this through Khan Academy and the tutorials are pretty straight forward to follow. You get achievements when you compete tasks too, and you know how I like collecting those :D

So I need to keep going with the coding. I'll keep you up to speed with my next amazing creation!

Cute Picture

Not really an official post, but just a quick one while my game is loading. I won't do too many of these I promise.

This is my cat Fleur watching BoTA with us before Christmas. She just loves LoL.

<3 <3 <3

Cuteness out.

Gaming Holiday

Whoop! Its the Christmas holidays and that certainly means that I have a lot more time on my hands to do a lot more gaming :D.

Except I will be away from my beloved League of Legends for a whole week whilst I am visiting family and I'm sorry if I come across as all teenagery, but that sucks.

Nevermind, there will be other things to play. LoL season 4 doesn't start until January anyway; I am itching to get back stuck into soloqueue though.

So currently on my playlist is Lego: Marvel Superheroes on PS4. This is an old favourite and I'm sure you all know the format. Just that this time it is enormous! You have the whole of central New York to run around and I'm starting to think that it might actually be bigger than Fallout 3.

Contrary to my regular posts, I don't really have a problem with this game, and no philosophical issue to mull over. It's just good fun.

Flying can be a bit tricky, and sometimes it isn't 100% clear what you have to do to advance but for a quick pick-up-and-play it's definitely recommended.

This game was featured in Jon Snow's infamous interview with Charlie Brooker on the PS4.

(I'm sure you've seen this, but you could watch it again!)

In my previous post about Brooker's programme 'How Video Games Changed the World' I argued that video games didn't need this kind of history/beginner's guide documentary because there were plenty people out there who already knew that stuff and we are ready for a programme which will go beyond that and treat video games as more than just a novelty for kids and nerds.

A friend suggested that my argument was null and void because Jon Snow's hapless attempts at even understanding the cut scenes (let alone playing the game) illustrated how un-mainstream they were.

So during this holiday, I will carry out my own experiment and see how my Mum and Dad respond to Lego: Marvel Superheroes. Is everyone of that generation so far removed from video games that they genuinely seem frightened of them?

Or was Snow just trolling Brooker, and us?

Merry Christmas!

How Videogames Changed the World

So how did video games change the world? Charlie Brooker’s prime-time documentary was definitely highly anticipated, and after watching the Brooker vs Snow unterview on Friday, I thought that this would be his chance to speak to a willing audience who had no intention of interrupting him.

But did it answer the question it posed? Did we learn why video games are a really important cultural medium?

Here’s 7 reasons why I felt it unfortunately missed such a huge opportunity to really get to grips with why everyone should start to take games seriously.

1. The Countdown Format

Completely unnecessary and misleading. I would have much preferred it to be structured around theme, or (putting my teacher hat on) argument. What does 25 mean? What does 1 mean? Are we that dumb that we can’t understand something unless it is given a number? (And yes I understand the irony here, I have given a reason for my numbering though.)

2. The History of Videogames

When are we going to move on from Pong? Do we really have to start with that everytime? Whilst video games are still a relatively young medium, if we really want to discuss why they are so pertinent to 2013, then we need to discuss games now. The Pong section was very long in comparison with other more recent games, and I just don’t really feel it added much context.

3. Nostalgia

Why did this potentially groundbreaking documentary have to resort to talking heads telling us ‘how great’ a game was? It couldn’t help degenerating into an ‘I Heart’, full of remember whens and fuzzy memories. This is the kind of cheap television that Mr Brooker has previously slammed, and it is hard to take it seriously once it adopts this style.

This documentary could have been seminal itself, but it seemed to chicken out at the last minute and pander to the (supposed) audience. It was Saturday night, 9pm, on a terrestrial channel after all. I’m sure (and I hope) that this was because some commissioning editor didn’t quite get what it was Charlie Brooker was trying to do, and thought they knew best about the format; so I don’t completely blame Brooker, but was the prime-time slot really worth selling out for?

4. Labrinth’s Tekken contribution.

I loved his contribution to the section on video games music. The idea that his (very popular) songs have been influenced by videogames was an example of how they have changed the world, but it wasn’t really developed and taken seriously enough. However, I really don’t see why we needed the part about him using Tekken moves in a fist-fight. If we are going to say that video games do prompt and suffer from copycat behaviour, then don’t we need to address it a little more and no just laugh it off? Ah the memories...

5. Twitter at #1.

This was a brave move. It is a really interesting concept, and I can see Brooker’s point. But putting it at #1 feels like a gimmick. The gamification of RL is there to be seen, but there are better examples that won’t make the audience think that this isn’t just something that videogames fans have made up to flummox ‘outsiders’. Perhaps Brooker could have discussed something like Nike+ first, and then sashayed into his ‘ahah, blam!’ moment.

6. Contributors ‘fake memories’.

This is more a personal gripe, but I wasn’t too keen on contributors who are clearly not old enough to have played Space Invaders around the time it came out telling us what it was like. There’s no problem with them speaking in the present tense in this case. If we want to speak to people who aren’t already fans of videogames, then we shouldn't speak to them in a way that makes them feel like they aren’t welcome unless they were there in 1978.

7. The Title.

The programme gives itself a tricky job when posing such a grandiose question. Unfortunately it was too distracted to ever give a coherent answer. Too much factual information and memories,  and and not enough argument.

Now surprisingly enough, I still really enjoyed the programme, despite my gripes. That’s because I too am a person that enjoys going ‘oh yeah!’ about each game mentioned (except Elite, I didn’t know that one...) The nostalgic angle is very enjoyable, but I wanted to be educated as well as entertained, and I feel it missed the mark. What could have been a remarkable moment for video games seems to have been lost.

Quest to Progress II

So far things are going well:

I'm top of my group!! That was unexpected, and I am very proud. Just need 38 more points before I can start to qualify for a promotion...

A little bit later...

I am giving up for today. I started with two losses (aargh!) and lost about 30 points :( I dropped down to third in my division.

Luckily I just had a win and I am back up to 58, which currently puts me back on top.

Losing is so demoralising, you lose so many points. Luckily that last game must have been against some tough opponents, as it has shot me right back up the charts. Let's hope I can maintain this.

Freemium Woes

I've been replaying the excellent Plants Vs Zombies, but this time on my smartphone. And I have certainly had a very good time.

So I was so chuffed to see an advert pop up one day telling me to download PvZ 2! Hurrah! It really is about time! (the slogan- you will know what I mean when you play it.)

It was free! Free! Wow! Thank you, thank you for giving this to us for free :)

So, some graphics improvements, changes to the music, slightly different zombies and plants, but effectively the same game. Grrrrrrrreat! Something about travelling through time...erm...not sure...why??? But still great.

After playing a few levels, some gameplay changes were introduced which are mostly unnecessary I think, especially the power ups. I do like the plant food though, this is a nice addition and it is fun to see what happens when you use it on each plant. Still having fun, but starting to move away from the simplicity that made PvZ so appealing.

Then I get to level 11 and there is a gate that I can only get through if I have enough stars (another addition, don't ask). I don't have enough stars, but the game insists that I click on the 'stargate'. So reluctantly I do.

Pirate Seas! The next zone! Hurrah.  But I don't have enough stars... I need 8 and I have 4 (or something, I can't remember the exact amount, don't get cross). But if I want to I can buy the next level for £2.99.

Not a huge amount, but I'm pretty sure I bought the whole PvZ smartphone game for less than that. Suddenly I see why it is free.

It just jars with me that I'm in the game (PvZ 2 is VERY immersive, thank you) and suddenly I'm being asked for money. Surely the point of the game is to enjoy playing it, not to just pay your way through it, playing as little as possible? (Remember I'm a 100% completion freak.)

I'm not as used to these kinds of games as you lot might be. I tend to ignore any real money transactions and stubbornly grind my way through the game, because that's the purpose of a game right? To win with skill, practice, dedication and the odd bit of luck. PvZ 2 is perhaps the first time that it has been pushed in my face quite so much.

Sigh. It is a sign of the times. I understand why freemium is needed. I'm quite happy to have PvZ 2, which possibly wouldn't exist without it. And I am happy to have BF4, which again might not be possible without EA exploring new ways of making money.

But I don't think I will be contributing in that way. *Stubbornly folds arms*

The Last of Us...too violent?

***Just realised I didn't post this, it is a little bit old now, but my thoughts remain the same. Except we have now finished it.***



I'm currently watching The Last of Us, and it is a brilliant game. It has a very engrossing survivalist horror plot, and the gameplay is mostly fluid and engaging. The characters evoke sympathy and are believable, and the game does some fairly brave things with them.

So what's wrong?

I am enjoying the game a lot, and it is one that I want to see through to completion (narrative completion). But there are some parts that I think are a bit too violent.

If you want to avoid any spoilers, then you should not read on! Play the game yourself and then come back, and let me know what you think.

This gap will save your eyes...

So firstly, the character you play does some particularly violent things when killing enemies. In video games, we are all very familiar with shooting people or perhaps whacking people with some kind of melee weapon. Because we are familiar with it, perhaps we are desensitised, and this could be the root of why I have an issue with some of the actions which are more than just straight forward shooting or whacking. I am not desensitised to it.

It has been suggested that the game is just being realistic, and we are not supposed to enjoy the killing, but indeed to be repulsed by it.

This would be a good idea; but you do far too much killing, and quite a lot of it is of the extra-violent variety that I have an issue with. If you only ever had to kill 5 people throughout the game in a particularly violent way, then maybe I could accept the strong violence as necessary to the experience of the game.

One argument as to why the violence may be perceived as particularly strong in The Last of Us is that you play a game (command the character to do certain actions), and therefore you are active in the violence; but that you watch a film, and you are passive. Being active in the violence can perhaps make it feel stronger. It is an interesting idea, but I am watching this game being played, and so I don't feel I could apply that theory here.

Another counter argument to this is that in this game, you do not always directly control what happens. Many times Joel has grabbed a person from behind, ready to smother/strangle them quietly, but suddenly this doesn't quite work, and instead Joel will push them to the ground and then stamp on their face. It does seem bizarre (even to me as I write this) that I would have an issue with one method of killing over another, but I do. The stamping on the face is firstly much more violent (how many times have we seen this before? - hence a lack of desensitization) and also it is not what was intended, therefore coming as a surprise and being more shocking than the original method.

When your character (you) does these things we accept that because the story has been set up to make him/her the hero, we are doing them for 'good'. We can kill as many people as we like/need to, but we are not in the wrong, they are for trying to kill us. We have learned this through film, TV and comic books. Our 'guy' is always the good guy, and if he/she does some questionable things then we treat it as collateral damage for the greater good.

YOU HAVE TO KILL...

I have an issue with the game mechanic which alerts us to who we need to shoot and who we can talk to. I understand that without it it would make the game very difficult, but it seems odd that we sometimes walk in a room and shoot, and sometimes we talk to other humans. In the real world how would we know this? When we get to your brother's hideout, he isn't visible at first. Why didn't you just kill those on guard (including your sister-in law- ooops)? And in other cases, how do we know that we haven't just killed a potential ally? (Perhaps this is more me trying to turn it into an RPG- and also you know how much I like the 100% completion goal; what is their back story?!) It feels a little like we shoot first, ask questions later and that actually we didn't care about the questions anyway. Killing people is the point of the game. How many can you kill? And if you wanted to try to play it completely stealthy and avoid killing, the game doesn't let you. YOU HAVE TO KILL.

I remember one moment where we are being pursued by a human character, looking for revenge. "You killed my buddy" he yells. Gosh, I didn't realise anyone had buddies in games, except the protagonists. You are just a faceless minion/henchman/guard/soldier/criminal, surely? Does this make us reflect on what we have done? We killed someone's buddy, possibly in cold blood, for no reason. Maybe for a brief moment; but then our attention turns quickly back to killing him too. It is an interesting addition by the developers though.

The body count in this game is so high, that it is hard to imagine that there is anyone left, what with the plague and this renegade wandering about. It is a little contradictory to the idea that we might be on a quest to save humanity from the plague when we have just killed so many men, some presumably uninfected. (An interesting aside here is that you do not kill any women, unless they have been infected and are therefore physically altered. All the humans you kill are male.)

And there's another point...

Secondly, you have some pretty violent things done to your character too. Usually the hero is infallible. His/her motives are unquestionable, and his skills and methods are the best (once you have gotten to grips with the controls). You are going to 'die' a hundred times, but it won't stick, because you are the best. You are the hero.

You might get shot and die. We are used to that. That's not a problem, it is regular fare in this kind of game. However there are some ways to die in this game that again, because of their rarity, are more violent. In particular I recall getting caught by one of the Clickers. It's not nice when this happens, he/she will bite you and it's gross. But this one time, the Clicker grabbed Joel's top and bottom jaw in each hand and pulled...

This was a total shock. It was also quite unnecessary. Surely the Clicker's modus operandi is to infect Joel too. A completely dead Joel will not spread the epidemic. It is interesting to think that the designers wrote this and and had the animators create it, for just this one moment (I haven't seen it again since, but we are not quite finished). Interesting or not, it goes onto the evidence pile for this game being too violent, or at least more violent that I expected or am used to. (As another aside, this Clicker demonstrated free will- perhaps the Last of Us 2 will feature his story).

I've written enough now...

So whether you agree with me that The Last of Us is too violent or not, I think it is clear that it certainly pushes the boundaries in terms of what is 'acceptable' and 'ordinary' in games. Whether the developers knew this and set out to do this, I don't know, but I feel that they have done something unusual here. It is good to do something different, we don't want games becoming too formulaic, and this gives me plenty to ponder over. It is interesting to think why certain elements of games are considered 'ordinary', and of course there is the media violence debate which is real and needs to be addressed whether you think video games contribute or not.

Pro-Gaming Here I Come...

Yesterday I started my pro-gaming career.
Well, I started playing ranked games with the intention that I could get good enough to join a team.

Ultimately though, I know that this is not going to be a reality. But it will be fun trying.

I play League of Legends, and I main Support. Or- I only every play support, if I can at all help it. I *can* Mid or ADC, but if I can't get those then I will have to leave :(  (embarrassing)

Anyway I really surprised myself, because I was placed in Silver IV, which is much better than I thought, (expected Bronze tbh).

So here begins my quest to progress through to challenger. Or at least stay in Silver IV. But I should have a nice silver border to show off come 11th November when season 4 starts.

I will keep you updated. So far today, won my first Silver IV game, lost my second. Hmmm.



Quest to progress is a nice little rhyme. Perhaps I should be a poet instead. Or a rapper.

100% Completion Freak

I am that person. Though I will hasten to add that I don't always get there.

I want to argue that there are two ways to go about playing a game, the 'complete the narrative' approach and that the '100% completion' aim.

Just when is a game completed?

I am just offering my thoughts on the subject. I can imagine there is lots of academic writing on this subject already, and if you can think of any beauts then please let me know and I will happily devour them :)

Some preparatory reading!

First of all I would like to invite you to read a blog post by my friend.  http://gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonBrislin/20130529/193201/Balancing_Narrative_And_Gameplay.php

He writes about narrative in games and it is a very enjoyable read. After reading this I wanted to reply to some of the points he makes; particularly about sidequests and how they can detract from the narrative, because completing them can seem quite contrary to the point of the game.

To understand this fully we need to understand what audiences view as 'the point of the game'.
Is it to complete the storyline? Is is to collect all items etc. (100% completion). Or might it be that you can enjoy a game thoroughly without completing anything?

I can think of plenty games that I have played/watched that I haven't completed and I have still enjoyed. The failure (if you want to call it that) to complete could have been down to skill level (ahem), especially in the Mega Drive era of not being able to save. But is is also often due to a lack of time; and sometimes when you leave a narrative based game for a while and come back to it, the twists and turns of the plot are such that they can become overwhelming, and frankly, lost on me.

The game gets left, but enjoyment is not necessarily tarnished. Now this might be a *me* thing, I have also done this with Cloud Atlas (a book), I just didn't bother reading the last scenario as I felt satisfied enough with the others.

So Deus Ex: Human Revolution remains unfinished, but I am happy. On the other hand, when I finished Silent Hill 2, I wished I hadn't, as the final boss was much easier to fight than some of the other characters (e.g. Pyramid Head *shiver*) and it was a massive anti climax. I was disappointed, as I felt I should have had a better reward (a more difficult boss fight).

Satisfaction

So completion could be linked to satisfaction, and obviously this is going to be different for each player. The narrative itself doesn't always offer satisfaction. Sometimes a player might enjoy a game so much, that they wouldn't want it to be over, and this is where sidequests come in.

I want to talk about two games in particular that I think are kings of the sidequest. Any Final Fantasy game, and Fallout 3.

In the Final Fantasy games there are always loads of other quests to complete besides the main narrative. It wouldn't feel like you were playing a Final Fantasy game unless you fully interacted with these other adventures. You know you are taking on a 100+ hour beast when you first turn one of these games on. Who can forget Chocobo racing, Chocobo digging (my personal favourite!), Blitzball, the card game in Final Fantasy IX and everyone's favourite- maxing the health to 9,999 (until they pushed it to 99,999- that is a challenge too far, even for me :( ) Some of the quests did directly help with the main narrative; you might get a more powerful weapon for example, but the game is still very much complete-able without grinding every single map and looking in every single nook and cranny. So there is more to it than just feeding into the main narrative. I guess there is a lot of pleasure to be had here if you are a 'collector', or dare I say it, an obsessive type.

In Fallout 3, it was the thrill of finding somewhere new and 'off the beaten track' that pushed me towards the 100% completion aim. Obviously you weren't going to find anything that the developer didn't put in there, but I still felt that what they did put in was there to challenge you, and I'd love to think that they were placing cabins, underground bunkers and deserted towns in the outer reaches of the game world, hoping that no one would ever find them. Am I the first to wander into this abandoned factory??? Has anyone else picked up all the radio signals??? Make sure you talk to EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER as well, as you do not know what juicy tidbit you might miss out on. I felt a great sense of wonder and discovery when stumbling across something new because of my relentless self-imposed quest to reveal everything. So again, here I gained a lot of pleasure. (Writing this made me think of Baldur's Gate, and how I insisted on revealing every single pixel of the maps between towns, and if there were trees or rocks that prevented this, it really annoyed me- that's the 100% completion aim!)

So it satisfied me to search these places and it gave me great pleasure to find something new, or to collect all of a set of something. If I had just played the narrative and wanted to stay immersed in the game world (more specifically the unity of time- 'we have to fight the monster immediately' etc) then I would not have been able to get this kind of pleasure and satisfaction.

Sidequests for all?

I am not totally disagreeing with the points made in the article. I do think that there is a time and a place for sidequests. The games I discuss above are both ideal for this kind of gameplay, whereas others aren't. So developers need to consider sidequests carefully. Are you making a sidequest kind of game? Or not? Make sure they add value and don't detract/distract.


For me, killing the big boss means the game is over. No more game. On to the next game. And I feel like when a title has so much more to give then that is a shame.

Or am I just a little bit obsessive?

L2P Noob

How seriously should you take online gaming?

Is it for fun or is it a serious pastime?

When playing a team online game, what should your attitude be towards winning?

Sometimes I play ranked games and the consensus is that these are the games that you should take seriously. If you play in a real world sports team (which I also do) there are friendly games, pick up games and league/tournament games. The league and tournament games are the ones you should take seriously, and in online gaming these can be compared to ranked games. Especially if you play for a pro team; then obviously you should always want to win, and you will spend a lot of time preparing and practicing so that you can do just that.

When you play an unranked game, especially when you have been automatically matched up with teammates, then this is what I would consider to be like a pick-up game in the real world. Pick-up is arguably more fun than a tournament, because it is more relaxed. You are playing the game for the fun of playing the game, nothing is at stake here. This doesn't seem to be the way in online gaming.

But...? Winning...???

Now obviously winning does increase the fun, and so I can see an argument for wanting to win. However we know how this works- if there are two teams then *someone* will have to lose. It's annoying when that happens, but it does happen. So does losing always mean that the enjoyment of the game is immediately lost?

I don't think so. You may still feel that you as an individual played a good game, or you developed your skills in some way. Sometimes it is actually down to technical difficulties, though a "lag!" call is hard to greet without skepticism. Sometimes you are simply outclassed by the opponents (which will quite often be denied by your furious teammate - no they're fed/op- *humph* *sulk* *whine* etc)
But you have the knowledge that it is only a game, you can play another (if it isn't past your bedtime- zing!) and learning to cope with losing from time to time is something we all have to deal with in life.

If you genuinely are bitter about losing, then I suggest you take a break from the game and do something else, because this angry energy is going to ruin you. And if you are just in it for a good old troll, then again, there are more healthy ways to be, not just towards others, but to yourself.

Good Grief!

What surprises me when I play online games, is the incredibly negative attitude some people have, even your own teammates. You will all be familiar with cries of "noob!" More lately I have come across "Waste of an Account", "Pls uninstall this game", "Worst (insert character here) EU".

So to call someone the worst player of that character in the whole region is, in my opinion, just a little extreme. For starters there is no way they could have played with everyone who has every played that character. Seemingly logic has no place here.

Or what about "L2P, noob!". Again logic would say that if someone is playing unranked, then they are learning to play- by taking part in a game against real world opponents they are developing their skills and applying and consolidating their knowledge, all key components of learning something. By definition, learning means to develop, not to just be instantly good at something from the word go.

But ultimately it seems that what these people really mean is:

You cannot see me, you do not know who I am, I am protected by the internet, so therefore I am going to boost my ego by being rude to you.

Its incredibly tiresome, but most of the time it is easy to ignore the comments. And when you do feel ready to play ranked, you will be surprised to find (as I was) that most people are nicer there.

Of course you should always play to win, but it is important to accept that this isn't always going to happen. So be competitive, but well spirited. Be ready to learn from others and remember, it is only a game.

Finally a big should out to all the people that say nice things and congratulate teammates, and even opponents from time to time. This is what makes you feel a better person. I look forward to meeting more of you when I am next online.

A Handy Glossary!

If anyone is reading this but you are not familiar with some of the terms I used above- have no fear :)

L2P - Learn to play

OP - Overpowered (a particularly strong character)

Fed - A character that has a lot of kills, usually because of a weak opponent

Log in Screen

Hello all, welcome.

There are two things on your mind right now; the first is that the layout is a bit shonky, (this might improve in time...) and the second is that the name of the blog is only half decent.

Why a shed?

Well it rhymes with dead; and as we all know, I am trying to make a pun on the title of a video game, The Typing of the Dead, which looks like this:

Extraordinary

So this blog is about video games. I really do love playing and watching games and I hope that I will be able to write something here that you might like, or you might want to discuss. I hope not to be just another games blog, but I am not quite sure what my USP is yet.

How you can help...

I really like the "Typing of the..." part, but if anyone can think of a more suitable pun then I'd be glad to hear it.

I went out specially to take a photo of my shed, but if anyone has any ideas I can always take another photo. As another little challenge to keep you all interested, who can tell me the name of the game referenced by the  little dude in the top left corner? And for bonus points- what do you think he is shooting at?

Let me know what you think so far, but bear in mind my brain will only process sensible comments, so I will have to delete anything that isn't polite or clean.

OK I'm off to write a sensible post now.