Life In Grey

Rantings, ravings, reviews and random writings. Also a lot of alliteration.

[theoutsidenormal]

Hunger and Thirst Meter Mechanics in Games Need to Have More Gameplay Impact

Tacked on hunger and thirst meters with no real tangible gameplay value are threatening the design and continuing success of games in the survival genre. In this post I attempt to show examples of good and bad implementation of the practice of so-called 'protagonist-babysitting', and discuss possible ways to continue improving on and innovating in an over-saturated survival game market.

Not long ago, I watched an interesting video by Jim Sterling, an entertaining and unique YouTube game journalist with some fascinating insights into some of videogames’ most prevalent modern tropes. The video in question, a rant on the trend of ‘protagonist babystitting’, raised some interesting thoughts.

For the uninitiated, ‘protagonist babysitting’ is the practice of tracking a videogame character’s needs in arbitrary bars such as ‘hunger and ‘thirst’, and having such bars become essentially timers until the player is to feed himself. If you’re thinking about The Sims, you’re not far off the mark, except in a lot of modern games, particularly those where the themes are centred on survival, give you direct control over the character you are babysitting.

At its best, protagonist babysitting can reinforce an important theme of survival gameplay and could offer greater immersion into the gruelling nature of survival in a hostile environment. On the other hand, at its worst, it is a shameless example of unoriginal thinking as developers attempt to be on trend by pasting in hunger bars where they are not needed in the interest of simply having something that other popular games have.

While games like Minecraft and Don’t Starve can get away with their protagonist babysitting mechanics, thanks to their status as early trend-setters in the survival genre, I would say the implementation of the hunger bar is still a better implementation than some more recent survival games.

In Minecraft, the meter is basically a timer that counts down until you need to eat; however this issue is mitigated somewhat by the gameplay integration of the meter; once it has been depleted enough the player is significantly slowed and unable to sprint, and when the bar is full, health is slowly regenerated. Using such mechanics as a way to gain power-ups through positive reinforcement is one way that I feel makes the balancing act of using a hunger meter in a survival game work better, while at the same time being more immersive as it makes sense that one’s strength would be diminished when suffering from starvation.

Don’t Starve’s implementation is, on the other hand, even more acceptable, because the whole game is centred around the theme of managing hunger in a hostile environment, and so it makes sense that the hunger bar would be an ever present threat in such a game. However, an even better innovation comes from the fact that there are craftable items that can slow the depletion of the hunger bar, giving further freedom to the player to reduce the looming threat of starvation.

I think that what these examples show is the importance of integrating a hunger bar into the gameplay itself, not just having it as an additional meter to which the player should be paying attention. In the aforementioned early survival games, the hunger meter offers tangible gameplay benefits that help the player survive rather than just being a babysitting requirement that will kill the player if they ignore it.

A bad example of this takes place in Subnautica. While I truly love the game for being a unique and enjoyable spin on a tired-out genre with its focus on biology, underwater tech and base building, it is difficult to defend the hunger and thirst meters in the game.

My first complaint is that the bars offer no tangible benefit or restriction to the player in gameplay terms, except for simply killing the player if they are allowed to deplete completely, meaning that the meter is completely arbitrary and not integrated into the gameplay whatsoever. Immediately, player engagement with these bars feel simply like they are satisfying an arbitrary complaint set upon them for no real reason beyond ‘other survival and crafting games have this’. The frustrating thing is, it would be so easy to enable some kind of mechanical change as a result of starvation, such as tying swimming speed to how close the hunger bar is to 100%, or even setting gameplay benefits to eating and drinking regularly, such as being able to see further in the water (which I think would be an excellent benefit considering the limited draw distance that comes from setting the majority of the game underwater).

My second complaint with the implementation of protagonist baby-sitting in Subnautica is that it tears the player right away from some of the best aspects of the game, where you are exploring deep underwater cave systems and becoming truly immersed in its excellent sense of place and exploration, suddenly there’s this annoying little beeping noise to remind you that it’s time to eat, which usually requires tearing yourself away from your beautiful surroundings to go back to base to cook food, as while you can gather and eat food in its raw form, it really only works as a temporary solution to help the player’s meter last a few more moments so they have time to get back to base. This is further exacerbated by the fact that drinkable water is impossible to craft without using a fabricator. In this case, the hunger and thirst meters seem to just take the form of padding, to make the player take longer to gather resources explore around the map, which is a shame because it is astonishingly beautiful.

Perhaps the previous complaint, however, could have been justified as simply an inevitable issue given the game’s status as a survival game, but my third complaint is what propels the issue into a real problem; the meters simply deplete too fast. Using a protagonist-babysitting model is a difficult balancing act to be sure, because if hunger depletion is set too slow, then the game’s difficulty is set too low and integration of the mechanic with the gameplay systems becomes more difficult, because unless there is a very significant benefit of constantly feeding your player when not needed, most players would be content to ignore the bar until they are absolutely desperate. On the other hand, setting hunger depletion too fast, as it is in Subnautica, gives the player a sense of being pestered by the protagonist. You truly do get a sense of artificial babysitting, not unlike an actual baby constantly crying for something, be it food, nappy changes or attention. We want our games to be fun, not more stressful than looking after a constantly crying baby, after all.

I think that Subnautica, for all its strengths, represents a poor implementation of the hunger and thirst bars, simply because no real gameplay consequences or benefits seem to come from keeping the meters topped up, apart from death from neglecting them for too long, and because the protagonist-babysitting model tears away players from the really good parts of the game as what feels like a needless distraction, which is made worse by the meters depleting so quickly that it just feels like the player is being pestered by a real life baby for arbitrary reasons. It is a shame, because Subnautica otherwise is an excellent and enjoyable game. However, I think that due to its status as an Early Access game, as development continues this issue may be addressed in a satisfactory way, and I only hope that the developers of Subnautica will see the negative attention that is coming to the protagonist-babysitting model as more and more mainstream games tack it onto their gameplay as an afterthought, so that they can make this change before the game is ready for full release.

The most important thing about protagonist babysitting however is not that it is always bad, but it is a balancing act, much like any other creative choice in game design. If the survival game genre is to continue going from strength to strength, developers must be careful to set this balance just right so that their games aren’t accused of simply having a tacked-on survival element for the sake of it. I think that the way ahead is to look at what early adopters of the trend have and haven’t done in their implementation and trying to come up with innovative ways to make the player feel less like they are babysitting and more like they are engaging with a hostile environment in a desperate fight to survive.

[theoutsidenormal]

Resident Evil 7 is an experience that feels undeniably authentic

Tone and tropes made Resident Evil 7 such an improvement over its predecessors. I attempt to argue that the game made important steps forward by looking back at just what made its series feel true to itself, and by allowing itself to exist within that universe made it that much better than previous games in the series.

'WHADDYA BUYIN?!' The words, spoken gruffly, echo against the walls of a damp, dark cave, while a man wrapped in a headscarf chuckles his way through transactions, using money that I got from selling a brass pocket watch that had been fished from a well filled with wet, stinking excrement. The image is comical, as my crap-coated keepsake earnings translates into a first aid spray and presumably some kind of magic blessing on my handgun that means I am able to reload faster.

After I finish my shopping, the gruff merchant closes his jacket and waves me off, calling 'come back anytime!' after me as I press forward, eventually coming to a haunting graveyard, the atmospherics chilling me to the bone as a crow caws as if warning me away. A thick fog descends around me and then I hear the shrill scream of an unseen female assailant, murderously gripping a kitchen knife, her eyes aglow with evil as she calls for my death. The tension could be cut with such a knife, as I hesitantly wander around my foreboding surroundings in search of the scream's origin.

Such a story, adapted from just five minutes of gameplay, tells you all you need to know about what it feels like to play Resident Evil 4; the game shifts dramatically in tone from one moment to the next, from cheesy dialogue written with one's tongue pressed firmly into his cheek, to nerve-wracking tension and dread in just those five minutes.

In a lesser game, such a disconnect between the serious and the comedic could be called 'immersion-breaking', or 'disjointed', but in Resident Evil 4, widely considered one of the best and most-influential action titles of all time, the result is decidedly flavoursome - instantly, the game fits right into its own niche and becomes something instantly memorable, ironically the disconnect between the cheese and the tension only adds to the sense of immersion in the wacky world in which the game is set.

To say that Resident Evil's universe is odd is an understatement. In this world, men with huge biceps can punch boulders, one can heal crippling wounds instantaneously by eating plants, and doors can be unlocked by playing the piano conveniently located just a few feet away. Such elements wouldn't be out of place in a comedy-adventure game like Monkey Island, but instead these are staple tropes of the flagship franchise of the survival horror genre.

The important thing about this kind of authenticity is that the developers are creating experiences in order to be 'true' to the Resident Evil 'feel'. I hesitate to use the word 'formula' in this instance, because the 'formula' of Resident Evil has been thrown out the window enough times that such a word feels nonsensical in this context. However, I think the most important part of a Resident Evil game is the commitment to the vision of a horror B-Movie. The best moments in the series come from such an approach; Leon Kennedy's quip exchange with scenery-chewing villains in the fourth installment, and even in the first installment, with its Jill Sandwiches and Masters of Unlocking. Such moments have the kind of quality of bad horror movies of old, and if nothing else, the Resident Evil series definitely holds that influence clearly over its head.

This is where Resident Evil 7 succeeded where 6 failed. While the older entry in the series tried to wow with an approach to action not unlike a Michael Bay movie, with bombast, big explosions and frantic gunfights, it had all but ditched its previous horror influences in favour of an experience that simply did not feel like it belonged in Resident Evil. The truth of this is clear in how the game was received; many thought that while it was a well-polished, functional videogame it just was not what the series needed, and I think this is because it was lacking that undeniable element universal in Resident Evil; authenticity.

In 6 there were goofy moments, certainly, but the goofiness came from the game simply trying too hard to be something bigger than it was, not from understanding where it had come from. Trying to think back to Resident Evil 6, it just did not feel as hands-down memorable as other entries in the series; at least 5 had boulder-punching, after all. There simply wasn't a singular sense of feeling in the game; the adventure offered was set in a wide variety of locales, but none were allowed to stick, to show off how and why the atmosphere was creepy. It's telling that my favourite location in the game was also the one that seemed closest to a scene in Resident Evil 4; the scene in the church in Leon's campaign. The atmosphere became grim and the design of the levels at this point were excellent and felt truly in the style of the series. It is only a shame that the game was not confident enough in this vision.

However, 7 succeeded in all the areas where its predecessor fell flat. Right from the start there was an excellent sense of place; the swampy, ramshackle map where the game is set just bleeds atmosphere and feels strongly like approaching the village of Resident Evil 4. Particular attention is paid to the environment, which is dilapidated, dirty and broken, perfect for a horror setting. 

Then the rest of the game's character set in; when compared with the over-the-top action of Resident Evil 6, 7 feels claustrophobic, slow and plodding. The difference is like night and day, especially as day turns to night in the game and you are acquainted with the Baker family; a group of people torn from all the negative stereotypes of the South of the USA. Much like the great villains of 4, Salazar and Saddler, the Bakers, Jack, Marguerite, and Lucas, are allowed to chew the scenery to their heart's content; their overacting adding to the general sense of unease and terror surrounding them. Even just looking at the characters there is something off-putting about them, a design decision that is almost certainly deliberate.

The storyline of the game shows that the developers understand where Resident Evil is at its best; aping and translating B-Movie horror tropes into videogame form with a sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-terrifying sense of character for added effect. Influences from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hallowe'en, Evil Dead et al. are clear from the outset. Jack Baker, in particular, apes a perfect horror movie villain; overacting in a way that is almost comical in his every movement, but then when he is threateningly bearing down on you there is a massive sense of panic that will certainly get your heart beating faster. The disconnect is meticulously paced, showing far more refinement than even the scene described in the first paragraph. It is undeniable that a sense of authenticity, the 'feel' of Resident Evil, has returned triumphant in this game.

Special honours go to Lucas, whose conversations with the player are a great send-up to the sharp radio dialogue between Leon and Salazar in Resident Evil 4, the villain allowed to go all-out in how much of an asshole he is, and the protagonist simply trying to make quips and one-liners as the 'straight-man' in all of this insanity. For this reason, I think Lucas' dialogue perfectly fits the tone of the game, and demonstrates the singular commitment to the vision of Resident Evil 7.

While I can get away with simply saying that Resident Evil 7 was excellent because of its commitment to horror, I believe that when you look deeper into what has changed between this game and its immediate predecessor is its commitment to Resident Evil, the series and the tropes associated with it. While 6 tried to evolve the series into something new, 7 looked precisely at what the series was, and through its tone, authenticity of character, embracing its B-Movie tropes, and allowing its world to exist in its totally-illogical way, perfectly recreated an experience that is truly, genuinely Resident Evil.

The reason for the series' wackiness is, in my opinion, all about authenticity. In creating such ubiquitous insanity, Resident Evil has crafted its very own niche and offers deep, albeit nonsensical immersion into an experience that is truly its own. It creates its own rules and sticks to them, even if the rules don't make much sense. This wackiness gives the series a definitive 'flavour', such that if you pick up and play any game you can instantly recognise that you are playing a Resident Evil game.

[theoutsidenormal]

PC Vs PS4: On a Budget

Everyone who is into gaming in any sense has had their fill of the PC Gaming Master Race and its numerous myths. Of course, anyone who buys a PC for gaming instantly becomes better than God himself, incredibly handsome and incredibly intelligent and instantly able to rule any online discussion with beautiful, insightful comments such as ‘lol consoles are lame’.

Joking aside, anyone who is serious about gaming knows that a PC is the best way to experience a game. Games running on a well-built PC load faster, run smoother and look better. If money is no issue, and if you want the best experience for gaming, then play on a PC; this point is not under dispute.

However, this doesn’t mean that PC is the best solution available for a certain budget. People cite many reasons for buying consoles; game exclusivity, plug-and-play accessibility, and budget. Many arguments discussing the reasons for buying consoles inevitably fall into a flame war over whether exclusives are worth it, and whether consoles really do offer plug-and-play anymore with the rise of day-one patches.

Something I’ve noticed when reading through some of these flame wars, though, is the vagueness of PC gamers when it comes to the budget argument. Often at this point arguments break down into hand-waving and anecdotal rubbish, suddenly these keyboard warriors, all too willing to break down the specific statistics and math of why their chosen platform is better, suddenly become vague and wave their hands in dismissal. Countless times, I have read ‘pfft, my PC runs it fine on my hardware which is old anyway’, when before this argument was brought up, the same commenter would have been rubbing his nipples while enthusiastically shouting to all who would listen about his ‘32 gigs of RAM and Titan graphics cards’, and then topping off the argument with some vague comments about Steam sales.

So, I decided to try and find out for myself whether or not there is a budget point at which it would be better to buy a console for gaming purposes. I have scoured the internet for PC parts and component to see if the savings asserted by PC gamers are real or just a myth.

To start out with my research, I picked the game that I would be using as a yardstick. I decided on Doom (not to be confused with the original Doom game from the 90s), as it was a fairly recent AAA title that was quite popular with benchmarkers and people pushing their hardware. I figured this game would make a good comparison because it is a major, popular title that a significant portion of gamers would consider buying a console or PC in order to run.

To run Doom on a PS4, you simply need a PS4. I’m going to leave the online component out of this at the moment and focus on what you need to simply run and play the game. Off the shelf, most gamers can expect to find a PS4 available at Tesco for £279.00. This package includes everything you need to run Doom except, of course, the game itself, which retails for £24.98. Overall, this adds up to a price of £303.98, meaning that this is the price a PC has to beat for Doom.

At this point in any budget argument that I’ve seen on the internet, PC gamers mostly will tell you that they can put together a rig that can beat a console for cheaper than this retail price. Of course, they are as vague as ever as to how they would put together this rig, but there are also some who claim it is in fact, easy to do so and doesn’t take much research. Naturally, such people say this without pointing you to any tutorials. So I did my best to find the cheapest options, scouring different websites that offer to build your PC for you, to finding hardware that meets the requirements at their cheapest possible price on eBay under the presumption of building the PC myself with these parts, as according to PC gamers this is not much harder to do than plug HDMI and power cables into the back of a console. Trusting the sage advice of the Master Race, I went about my search to find the cheapest possible PC to run Doom on minimum.

In order to give the PC the absolute best chance at succeeding here, I made the following allowances; I didn’t include the price of finding a monitor (I felt this would be unfair as I didn’t include the cost of a TV in the price of buying a PS4 anyway), and when it came to hardware such as mice and keyboards, I simply picked the cheapest possible ones I could find, which no self-respecting gamer would ever realistically use for playing games with but I wanted to give the PC the best chance at doing well on a budget.

Before I went into finding out the prices of getting a PC to run Doom, I needed to know what it would take to run Doom. Thankfully, PC gaming is a treasure trove of information and tutorials, and I quickly and easily found the minimum specs for the game were as follows:

·         Intel i5-2400

·         8GB RAM

·         Windows 10

·         NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (2GB)

·         45GB HDD

Bear in mind, this is to run the game at minimum settings, with no bells and whistles. At minimum settings, a PC is generally only slightly, if at all better than a console for performance and graphics. So, I’m looking at the specs needed to run the game at a quality that most PC gamers would tell you is too bad to really enjoy on a PC, and at a quality where the levels of performance are comparable to a console.

Using a simple, easy ‘build-your-own-PC’ website called PC Specialist, the cheapest I could build a PC with these components or closest-and-cheapest-possible substitutions was £555. Doom is listed on Steam for £39.99, which is actually more expensive than the PS4 version at £24.98. This surprised me, given nearly every PC Master Race commenter asserts the savings of buying PC games on Steam over console games at retail, often telling me that I could get ten PC games for the price of one console release. But let’s ignore that argument for now, and substitute the Steam edition of the game for a cheaper PC DVD option available on Amazon for £22.99, which is in fact cheaper than the console release. Overall, the cost of running Doom on the cheapest possible built-for-you PC I could find was £577.99.

Therefore, the cost of a machine to run Doom in terms of PC gaming is £274.01 more expensive than the option of buying a PS4 and the game itself, interestingly, fairly close to the £279.00 asking price of a PS4, so you could almost buy two consoles for the same price of buying a PC.

This was a massive surprise for me, actually, as I discovered it, as I thought the price disparity would be much closer, to the point that I could find some kind of justification that allowed a PC gamer to dispute the price difference’s significance, but when you can buy two PS4s for the price of a single PC to run a game that would run on the cheaper option, I was simply blown away. In fact, it seemed as if the PC Master Race was…wrong! Joking aside, the level of price difference was actually a massive surprise, I was not expecting the difference to be quite at that level.

Not one to be disheartened, I continued on, determined to find the truth behind the cloak of mystery, specs and stats that is the world of PC gaming, and went looking for parts that I could use to build a PC myself. Note: at this point I decided not to go looking at second-hand or anything that looked remotely dodgy. The whole point of the argument that PC gamers make is that it’s easier and cheaper to build a PC than to buy a console, and that anyone with basic knowledge can do this. Basic knowledge, to me, meant buying from reputable sources of whom I can be fairly confident of the quality of the hardware. At this point most PC gamers will argue that they can find the parts cheaper, I tend to find. However, if you have to go scouring dodgy merchants to find the parts, how much cheaper and easier would it be to build a PC even if you could make up the price difference of £274? I was honestly stressed enough trying to find these parts at a reasonable price sticking to sellers who I could track down if there were any issues.

Building my own PC in this manner added up to a total of £509.20. This was for a PC that very closely matched the specs needed to run Doom. The price was true to the date I did my research, which was one month prior to when I wrote this article. Here is a list of components and the lowest prices I found for them:

·         Intel i5-2400: £85.40

·         ASUS H110M-R Motherboard: £66.30

·         8GB RAM: £38.49

·         NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 (2GB): £75.00

·         500GB HDD*: £41.99

·         BD/DVD Drive*: £24.99

·         Power Supply: £34.49

·         Cooler: £24.55

·         Sound Card: £23.99

·         Wi-Fi Card*: £8

·         Windows 10: £79

·         Mouse: £2

·         Keyboard: £5

*For these items, you could get the price cheaper by replacing them for cheaper versions or removing entirely (such as a DVD instead of a BD/DVD drive, or smaller HDD) as by my own reckoning, they aren’t absolutely necessary for the PC, but I tried to match exactly what a PS4 could offer in terms of what came out of the box, so I decided to go for a PC that could play Blu-Ray discs and have the same amount of HDD space as the out-of-the-box PS4.

Overall, this added up to a total price of £509.20 for a PC that could run Doom, not a very significant saving on the original price of a built-for-you PC. With the £22.99 asking price of Doom on PC, this adds up to a total of £532.19, which is overall £228.21 more expensive than the option of buying a PS4.

Again, I was surprised by the price difference; I had been told many times that if you wanted a PC cheap you had to build your own, and that the savings were highly significant. This has proven not to be the case for my requirements. I think this is a positive reflection, however, on the price of ‘built-for-you’ PC options, showing that such an option is still very viable for less knowledgeable users who don’t want to risk building a PC themselves.

In my best attempt to give the PC the best run at cracking the budget argument, I googled for other people who had built their own PCs to viably run Doom, and I came upon this article ( http://hexus.net/gaming/features/pc/92996-here-play-doom-sensible-pc-budget/ )by Parm Mann on Hexus.net, who were much more successful than I was in their search it seemed, as they found a viable PC for the price of £430, which is much more successful than what I had managed. This still comes up with a price disparity of £126, which is in fact closer to that zone of dispute where a PC gamer could explain away this disparity.

However, in writing this article, I have come up with some further considerations for the argument. Firstly, there is always the sticky issue of the plug-and-play accessibility of the PS4. This may be different with the upcoming release of the PS4 Pro and mid-gen upgrades, but assuming the same product lifespan as the previous generation, which began with the Xbox 360 in 2005 and ended in 2012 with the Wii U, we can expect seven years of use out of the PS4. Considering here, we built a PC on the bare minimum of what is acceptable to run a modern AAA title, what is the likelihood that this same PC will, as of 2019, run the latest, most modern games? Despite the hand-waving and assertions by PC gamers, I highly doubt that this bare-bones option would still work in this case without spending some money on an upgrade. At the end of the day, it is important to recognize the fact that you can put Doom in on the PS4 now, and expect it to run, and presuming the same product lifespan as last-gen, you can put a modern, AAA title on the PS4 in 2019 and it will run just the same.

Another thing to bear in mind is that, unfortunately the PC is unstable and poorly-optimised. It seems there’s always news of a developer letting a game run badly on the PC and just taking the flak, such as in the case of the Arkham Knight controversy. To get a game on the PC you are accepting you are going to navigate a potential minefield of readmes and option files to desperately tailor, tinker and gutting the game until it runs on your PC. Here again, it shows that a console has the use of being plug-and-play, and compatible, at a fraction of the price that you would get any kind of functionality using the PC.

It is important to stress also that the average user just wouldn’t have the technical know-how or patience necessary to build or find a PC in this way. PC Gamers argue that it is so easy and cheap to find a PC on a console budget, but as I have shown, the opposite is true, as I have stressed and strained to find a PC even remotely in the price range of a PS4 to run the same game.

If the user does decide to build a PC, there would be a lengthy, stressful period of troubleshooting and reboots until the user finally manages to come across a configuration where the PC doesn’t melt on pressing the ‘on’ button. This is without mentioning the not-insignificant cost of potential catastrophic failure from the damage caused to components if you get it wrong, leading to having to buy components again if they become damaged as a result of the tinkering, just adding onto the not-insignificant cost of a PC.

One final consideration is vital to putting this myth to rest however; the great, looming shadow of Steam sales. Often on these sales, games are heavily discounted, up to even 75% reduced or more. This is a very significant saving, PC Gamers argue, to the point that a PC could even pay for itself in the long run from such savings.

However, my research has cast doubt on this. Assuming the retail price of Doom on Steam is £39.99, this means that at a 75% saving (which, in truth is actually quite rare when it comes to newer AAA titles), you are paying £9.99. However, you are still paying upwards of £116 (£126 - £10) more to play Doom on a PC. Assuming this, you would need to buy 4.2 games at the 75% discounted price (4.2*£29 = £121.80, making up the price difference) to have ‘made up’ the value difference, meaning you are paying another £40 (4 * £10) on top of the £430 it cost for your PC, meaning that you’d have spent £470 in total. Considering that such savings on the newest AAA titles are incredibly rare on Steam, however, it would be fairer to assume a 33% discount as is more common. Assuming a 33% discount on a AAA title at £39.99 brings the retail price to £26.39, interestingly more expensive than the £24.98 current asking price of Doom on PS4, this brings a £15.01 saving on the title. In order to ‘make up’ the price difference of £126, you are in total buying 8.39 games at £24.98, which brings up a total extra spend of £209 on top of the cheapest possible £430, bringing the total spend to £639. Steam sales do save money, certainly, but in the long run and I am not sure a gamer on a budget would be happy to spend £209 to ‘make back’ the difference, especially given the fact that Steam sales are one-off events that don’t coincide with the release dates of many of the better AAA titles.

Overall, it is plain to see that there is an argument for consoles as budget, plug-and-play compatible ways to get to play the most recent releases in an acceptable manner. Doing my own research and arithmetic to come to terms with the total expense of finding a PC to play a modern AAA title, which in the absolute best case is £126 and in the more common layman case is £228 more expensive than buying a PS4, and given that Steam sales take another £209 on top of that to make any kind of ‘saving’, I have come to the conclusion that at this budget price point, perhaps it is more acceptable to buy a console to play the game, especially given the considerations of stress and expensive upgrades later down the line.

In conclusion, it is not under dispute that the PC is the king of gaming and is the way to play the best games at the best graphics, when you’re willing and able to spend the kind of money needed. However, at a budget and accessibility level, it appears that the plug-and-play, easily-accessible nature of a console offers benefits at certain segments of the market that can’t be discounted by even the most passionate PC Master Race enthusiast.

[theoutsidenormal]

Undertale Review

Undertale-Review:

Toby Fox’s stylistic JRPG is a journey into traditional gaming tropes, attempting to invert them in inventive ways to surprise and delight gamers with an adventure that feels both retro and innovative. The result is an astounding and creative video game where the player can revel in the unexpected, if you are willing to deal with the sometimes subpar graphics and a weird and wonderful storyline where it is sometimes difficult to make head or tail of what is going on. Undertale was released on the 15th September 2015 for PC, having previously been Kickstarted and pushed through Steam’s Greenlight program. It is currently available on the Steam Store for £6.99.

Undertale is a very different kind of game, but a very enjoyable one. The time I have spent on this game is time well-spent and I feel that this is one of the few video games that can be accurately described as ‘art’. The world is inventive and the story and gameplay are well-intertwined in novel and surprising ways. Personally, my experience with this game was nothing short of mind-blowing, and I enjoyed every second of playing it, feeling a joy in this game such that I haven’t felt in a long time.

Graphically, it is obvious to see that the game takes its inspiration from JRPG titles such as Earthbound and Mother 3. While I have not played such games myself, I have been exposed to plenty of gameplay footage to see the striking similarity of those games to this one. It is very retro-inspired and ‘pixelly’, as you navigate the vaguely-human looking sprite of a small child around a colourful pixelated world akin to 8 and 16-bit adventures of yesteryear. As far as graphics go, this game isn’t stellar, nor is it meant to be. However, in terms of aesthetics, the game is enjoyable and consistent in its vision and as a player I was engrossed and immersed in the world without needing to be dazzled by AAA 3D rendering.

The world of Undertale is expertly and painstakingly crafted, every inch of what you play in this game feels meaningful in some way, as part of a joke or a reference or as part of the overall canvas. Each area in the game fits in an excellent way thematically, and some of the areas aesthetically feel like pure artistry; as an example, there are some truly amazing bittersweet sequences involving blue flowers in a damp cave section mid-game, and a truly beautiful moment involving raindrops that makes one stop and experience a pang of emotion in their stomach.

Instead of talking about the game’s graphics, it would be more accurate to describe the cohesive aesthetics of the game throughout as art. Everything in this game seems to have a personality or a purpose and it is through this attention to detail that one can become immersed in the world and find it truly beautiful.

The range of locales in the game provides for an interesting experience. Players progress through different environments, each with a very well-defined theme that runs through the area. Each area feels individual to itself and captures a feeling in a very powerful way, obviously just as the developer of the game intended.

Sound wise, the game is nothing short of a masterpiece and I am unapologetic in saying this. I have found myself astounded by every track in this game, again matching to a coherent theme and aesthetic perfectly. There are songs to laugh with, there are songs to cry with. The music is so perfectly-crafted for the game, and it was a shock when I read that the developer was a self-taught musician who for the most part designed his own music. I would, in fact, recommend that you buy the soundtrack along with the game if you decide to purchase because the sound design is that good. 

Another interesting point to note is that the game’s mechanics take a turn for the strange; saving the game for example, is actually a very important plot point that gets commented on, and the way you play permanently alters the game files and with it, the responses you get from characters on subsequent replays of the game. There are even a few times where the game deliberately breaks the fourth wall on your PC in a dubious fashion that leaves you feeling uncomfortable.

One major drawback to the game is its length; a single playthrough of the game takes around six hours, give-or-take. However, in order to ‘fully’ complete the game and see everything that’s on offer, the player is required to play through the storyline another two times; once on a pacifist run (showing mercy to all monsters in the game, finishing with zero kills and full exploration), and if the player is so inclined to permanently change their game without being able to change it back to normal unless they delve into the game’s files, again on a genocide run (killing all possible monsters in the game). This means that the game’s length can extend to 12 or up to 18 hours, not counting the probability of some gamers to want to replay just to experience the storyline a second time. When comparing the length of the game to the value proposition, as the price currently stands at £6.99, I will say there are some games you can get cheaper, some with a better value, but few games are quite so artful or likeable as Undertale has been for me. The price and value of the game is definitely a point to consider when deciding whether or not to buy the game, overall. Another drawback to the game is that the aesthetics and graphics aren’t for everyone; this is definitely a game for a certain type of player, someone who appreciates retro graphics and isn’t looking to be wowed by the latest AAA rendering techniques. There are arguably better-looking games out there, even for the price of £6.99, but I feel that a player would be buying into this game more for the aesthetic, so my advice would be to look up a few screenshots and maybe a spoiler-free video of the gameplay (this game’s value is highly dependent on whether or not the player has avoided any plot spoilers) to see if this game would be appealing.

A third issue to consider is that this game is purely plot-based. While gameplay-wise the game has some good moments, especially with its bullet-hell style in the fights, it is very clear that this game’s enjoyment is purely based around the plot and storytelling. If you are a gamer looking purely at game mechanics, this game isn’t for you. As for the plot itself, stylistically and in a storytelling sense, it is very love-it or hate-it; some people will enjoy the outright geekiness of some parts of the game, some people won’t and the references will fly over their head.

Finally, I think something that a player should consider when they get this game is that things will get weird in the late game. Without going too much into spoiler territory, this game will do some weird things and break the fourth wall, hard, and when this happens it can be very confusing, but at the same time it can also be rewarding, so this aspect of Undertale may either serve to frustrate, or to enhance its trope-breaking uniqueness; your mileage may vary.

In conclusion, however, my time playing Undertale has been incredibly enjoyable. It is an amazing journey into a weird and wonderful world packed with genuine characters who are loveable in every sense of the word. I would say that, while this game is weird and strange in places, its uniqueness and willingness to play with traditional gaming tropes makes it a feat of fun and innovative design. This game is well worth the price and is very much a complete package; the aesthetics and sounds and storyline, if you’re inclined to like this kind of game, are truly excellent. Given the other positive reviews that the game has received, it is safe to say that Undertale will continue to remain in gamers’ hearts and souls, and will stand the test of time as something we will be talking about many years from now.

Pros: Excellent storytelling and narrative. Humorous. Interesting characters and engaging world. Willing to play with tropes in new and very innovative ways, charming retro aesthetics, decent gameplay and a very interesting take on a JRPG.

Cons: Love-it or hate-it type storyline, for some gamers it just won’t appeal, some references can go over your head, outdated graphics (but only if you’re the kind of gamer who cares about that kind of thing), relatively short gameplay length, some of the fourth-wall meta-references where the game seems to break outside of its own world can be a bit jarring and uncomfortable. I would recommend this game for most people who can enjoy a retro-styled game. I would also recommend it for anyone who wants to play a game that will innovate and surprise them, and anyone who likes playing games for the story and are willing to put up with things a little on the weird side. I think this game is intensely rewarding, and ultimately achieves its goal of breaking tropes and subverting expectations at every turn, Undertale a great, artful game that will stand up as being among the best experiences of 2015.

[theoutsidenormal]

50 Shades of Jar Jar

So I found a translator online that lets you write passages to read like Jar Jar Binks’ speech: http://www.jar-jar-binks.com/translator.jsp And naturally, in the interest of celebrating the new Star Wars trailer, I came up with the ‘amazing’ idea of translating passages of 50 Shades of Grey that I can find online into Gungan. This is the horrific result: "“show missa howa yousa pleasure yourself … keep still … we’re goin to has to jobbin on keep yousa still,baby … let’s see if weesa ganna make yousa comein likein dis … you’re so delicious wet.biiig one,missa wanna yousa … i’m goin to doo-doo yousa now,miss steele … hard .comein for missa,ana." "“i pull him deeper into missa mouth so missa ganna feel him at da back of missa throat and then toda front again.missa tongue swirls around da end.he’s missa very very own christian grey-flavor popsicle.missa suckin harder and harder … hmm … missa inner goddess is doin da merengue with some salsa moves." I think I need some brain bleach...

[theoutsidenormal]

Super Mario Maker Review

Super Mario Maker-Review: The latest Mario platforming title attempts to pass the joy of Mario creation onto its players, with expectedly-varying success. An excellent and enjoyable title that is recommended for both players and creators, if you are happy to sift through and search for the good levels among a mixed bunch. Super Mario Maker was released on September 10th in Japan, September 11th in Europe and North America, and September 12th in Australia, in 2015. In the UK, Super Mario Maker is priced at around £34.99 at most major retailers as of October 11th, 2015. Super Mario Maker offers many more experiences than what a player would expect. My time with the game, admittedly relatively short due to school commitments, has been equal parts enjoyable, frustrating, moving and satisfying. This game encapsulates, in my opinion, all of the things that ‘Maker’ style games should aim for. Given that Nintendo has primarily family-friendly values and what has been considered by many as a fairly slow and behind-the-times approach to the increasingly-online trend of gaming, it is a major surprise to see that Super Mario Maker has embraced the online world, giving full creative reign to the players. It is remarkably easy and pain-free to access the online component of this game. Super Mario Maker, quite simply, provides players with the mechanics and objects required to create stages within popular 2D Mario games, and tasks them with creating their own levels, either for the enjoyment of themselves or for the world through the game’s online functionality. The idea is brilliantly simple and remarkably intuitive, in the kind of way that makes one slap their forehead and wonder ‘why hasn’t Nintendo done this before?’ The truth is, Nintendo has done this before in the form of Mario Paint, but to my own recollection, I don’t remember a game that has allowed players to quite so easily access game elements and place them to create fully-functioning Mario levels. The gameplay is split into two parts, titled intuitively ‘Create’ and ‘Play’. Both behave exactly as one would expect (as a side comment it is interesting that, by my knowledge, the British release of the game uses the verb ‘Create’, while the American release appears to use ‘Make’ instead). Picking ‘Create’ takes the player into the creation interface, which is designed as a matrix of squares of pre-defined size. Players can then place different game elements common in the Mario universe, such as Pipes, Goombas, Koopas, Mushrooms and even Bowser into different areas of the level precisely using the stylus and the Wii U Gamepad’s touch screen. Levels have a minimum and a maximum size, and sublevels can also be created to create elements such as secret areas or branching paths to interesting effect. The interface is designed so that players can drag and drop their desired objects into the level from a menu of elements listed at the top of the interface’s HUD. This approach allows for instant pick-up-and-make simplicity. It is remarkably easy and accessible to get the hang of the interface, which could easily have been the opposite for a creation title. The interface is, without a doubt, a strength of the game. It is well designed and easy to manipulate and use. There was little in the way of frustration in my time with the game when it came to creating. Everything came to me organically and naturally, and I barely had to look at the game’s manual, which it should be noticed is characterised in a pleasant manner with a friendly assistant to guide you through the intricacies of the title. It also helped that the music was enjoyably mixed in the creator such that it rarely got annoying, and the way that the game calls out the different objects to you as you place them down was charming (as the call out matches the pitch and tone of the background music, more often than not, I was placing elements to the rhythm). I definitely experienced the joy of creation while making my own stages. My only gripe with the interface is that sometimes undoing and deleting course elements was a bit annoying, and the multi-select and copy tools were also fairly clumsy, but nothing that I couldn’t get used to as I spent more time creating. Initially, the amount of elements available for the player to use is limited, with a small amount of items available on the first day of playing and more becoming available as the player plays more of the game. This can be either through placing enough elements into levels to unlock the next set, or by coming back day after day and spending time creating stages. This has been a source of some criticism by others, however, I feel that this method of progression helped me to gain a slow building mastery of how to use the items in levels so as to make designing stages less intimidating. It would have been intimidating to be tasked to make levels when given a massive palette of everything available all at once; the game’s progression is carefully designed to ease you into creating and it’s all the better for it. It’s safe to say that the creation section of Mario Maker is extremely well-designed, intuitive and fun to use. It’s almost inspiring in its own way and I haven’t come up completely blank for level creation yet. However, it is not without its drawbacks: for one, it is missing some vital elements of other 2D Mario stages that are very conspicuous by their absence, notably slopes and checkpoints (as an aside, I really want to the Penguin suit back for the New Super Mario Bros themed levels!). It has been reiterated a lot by other reviews but I don’t think the need for these two elements can be understated as they can allow for longer, more rewarding stages and maybe some more accessibility and less frustration on the part of the player. It can be very frustrating to get past all the hard parts of a brutally-designed level only to fall at the final hurdle and have to start again from the beginning. Another drawback of the creation section is that extra lives have become completely useless, making it difficult to incentivise players for things like extra exploration. This is because when tackling the stages themselves, the player is given infinite tries, an undoubtedly important step for the online component as there are some seriously brutal creators out there, but for people wanting to create tense experiences or to give a sense of reward with extra lives this can be a fairly big issue. This isn’t solved by the 100 and 10 Mario Challenge modes, which only let players keep three of the extra lives they collect during gameplay of any individual level. This could be solved in the future by maybe allowing players to create a collection of stages to a coherent ‘World’, and allowing them to challenge players to complete the World with a set amount of lives, and set their own amount of extra lives obtainable. Given the current feature of requiring players to complete their own levels to prove it’s possible to beat the stages, something like this could easily be implemented with a similar rule, with perhaps extra reward for creators who make popular Worlds. Indeed, it appears Nintendo have made a few steps in that direction, with evidence in the course selection screen where levels are organised into groups of four. In addition, the navigation of the online interface is troublesome; it is very difficult to find the exact levels you want and in some cases I have found myself lost in the menus. Unlike the creation interface, I don’t think that the selection menus feel natural or organic at all, trying to find the exact menu screen you want is akin to fumbling in the dark to find a light switch. The final and ultimate drawback is that ultimately, you are probably not going to be able to create as amazing a level as the lead designers of Mario have done. In addition, creating a level that would become popular is a very tricky and difficult science, and will lead to some frustration at your levels not being played or liked. However, the community of the game has so far been really good in my experience and there is very little outright toxicity as I have noticed, except for in some of the comments in the extremely popular levels, but nothing near as bad as what a gaming session in a popular FPS on other consoles could generate. The ‘Play’ section of the game is exactly what one would expect. Players can choose from levels made by others in the online course selection area, or they can play sample courses, or they can play any of the courses that they have already created. The courses range from a variety of 2D Mario styles, based on four key games in the franchise; Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros Wii U are all on offer. Each level has its own expected tiny variations on the formula but with plenty in common and some tweaks for added consistency to make it easier for creators to switch between them on the fly. Mechanically, the game performs as well as one would expect. The platforming has been honed to perfection over years of game design experience, and there is little more to say on the base controls, which work like a dream. Needless to say, if you have enjoyed any Mario game over the years, the same platforming formula is here and it is just as good. Super Mario World levels in particular feel ‘just right’. The game performs well, except for in the few cases where players have deliberately placed as many objects as possible in a densely packed area to stretch the Wii U for comedic purposes. On the other hand, there are some remarkably complex levels that run just fine and the way the precision timing of all the elements work out perfectly in the more intricately-designed levels is testament to how well the game is put together. However, in terms of level design, Super Mario Maker obviously is going to be more of a mixed bag. Any game like this is only as good as its players, and thankfully there are some amazingly designed courses that really stretch the tropes of the Mario franchise in fresh and interesting ways. Some of the levels have really amazed me, my favourites being the non-linear courses where the creators use some very clever tricks and flourishes to create courses that truly feel branching and like a mini-adventure, despite the framework being definitively 2D Mario. The course editor allows for some really zany levels to come out and for the most part the community has really shown some collective genius in creating levels of all genres and styles, really stretching what you think should be possible in a Mario game. Some of these even do surpass the original level designers themselves in my opinion, in spite of my previous statement that players may find themselves unable to create a level quite as well as the experts do. On the other hand, there are some really bad levels, and others that obviously come from younger players who aren’t quite as expert or as experienced as many of the better creators, and there are of course the levels made purely to annoy the player. I myself am guilty of creating a horrible course that really was made to annoy the player at every turn; whenever the player looks like he should jump and does, I placed an invisible block to deflect him into a death pit, quite mercilessly. I think overall, however, the level design of Mario Maker is fairly amazing and enough to really subvert a player’s expectations and even come up with some truly awesome surprises. You can almost always find a level you will enjoy. There is a lot of fun to be had here. In terms of replay value, this game is billed as ‘the Mario game that never ends’ on the official Nintendo page, and that much is true. This game will last as long as people keep making levels for it, and it is potentially endless, especially with the tantalising possibility of extra DLC in the future with even more options for the creator. There are already millions of levels available online at the time of writing and this list will only grow. Graphically, the game looks very nice. In terms of aesthetics, the course styles all look distinct but all are equally pretty; nostalgic and distinctive in their own ways. I particularly like how Super Mario Bros, 3 and World have had little tweaks added such as shadows that make the game look a little more like a pop-out book in a way. However, it is unfortunate that Super Mario Bros Wii U is about the weakest style graphically; if you look carefully, you can see there is just something wrong with the way the enemies are animated; the outline of the Goombas’ sprites in particular looks a little jagged. They look almost like they stick out from the scene rather than blend into the style. It’s a crying shame really, because Mario has always been colourful and beautiful in its own right and this game is no different. As a major lover of aesthetics over raw graphics power (it doesn’t matter how big your graphics muscles are, just that you use them right), I think this game does for the most part hit the spot, although those jagged outlines really got to me in a way that I found jarring. The game’s sounds are mixed. While the sound design of Mario has always been stellar and monumental, standing as something that all gamers know and love, here it just seems additive rather than anything interesting by itself. I almost didn’t notice the music after a while, but I must say that the music for Super Mario World is really satisfying and enjoyable. There isn’t much in the way of new, big sound design that will win any awards here in my opinion. Conclusion: Overall, Super Mario Maker is an excellent package for both creators and players. The creation interface is superb, the online functionality is excellent and so far enjoyable, the graphics are aesthetically pleasing and unique as always, and the final product is a very playable game with almost infinite replay value that will be enjoyable no doubt for months if not years to come. This is a fitting tribute to gaming’s most iconic mascot and is well worth buying. I would recommend this game for people of all ages, and anyone who has enjoyed a Mario game in their life. I would also recommend, however that parents are careful and exercise due caution with allowing their children to download some levels. While they are moderated to an extent, it is impossible to guarantee that all experiences will be age appropriate with a game of this nature. Still, there is no denying that the final product is immensely enjoyable, and thanks to the nature and charm of this game, it is undoubtable that anyone can find something to love in Super Mario Maker. Pros: Excellent interface, design and game mechanics, charming graphics, interesting levels and amazing examples of user creativity. Infinite replay value and very fun to both play and create. Cons: Average soundtrack, nothing new or amazing, potential for annoying levels and internet toxicity, disappointing New Super Mario Bros graphics, difficult to navigate menu screens. Overall, this game is strongly recommended because of the sheer creativity of players, volume of content, excellent game mechanics and controls and the charming nature obvious throughout.

[theoutsidenormal]

Diablo 2 First Impressions

Well-voiced, enjoyable. I like the way the game is paced and I like the graphics, and the blood splatter. My Barbarian has a beautiful ponytail. So do the Fallen Demons I’m killing. Do they use the same barber or something?   Spike Rodent. Isn’t that just a hedgehog in all honesty? I’m killing zombies, demons and hedgehogs.  I JUST STEPPED ON A RAT AND IT MADE A SMUSHING SOUND!

[theoutsidenormal]

Belated ‘Don’t Stay In School’ Reaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xe6nLVXEC0   This truly is an excellent video and it really highlights a lot that is wrong with the education system as it is. I was not taught much useful in school or why it was useful and as I am currently in university and living as an independent young adult, it is glaring just how big the gaps are from never having been taught. It is terrifying how much schools are failing young people. However, I am doubtful and pessimistic about change. One thing that I don't like about the modern day system is that there is an obsession with making things 'harder' for pupils. Every time results day comes for any major set of exams, GCSEs and A Levels in particular, the achievements of the students involved are always undermined by grumpy and bitter middle aged conservatives who come out with all kinds of hate and drivel: 'The exams these days are too easy, these students don't deserve these grades'. I usually like to call these the 'back in my day brigade', because they're always moaning about how school in their day was so much harder, they had to walk uphill for forty miles in constant freezing snow until their legs fell off and when they got to school the teacher would cane them so hard they would have to go to hospital after school to get their injuries fixed, after which their father would beat them until they died and dance on their graves afterwards (Usually this brings to mind the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch).  The problem is that the 'back in my day brigade' are the main voters of the UK these days. These people who read the Daily Mail and spout hatred of anything to do with the 'yoof' of today with their 'happy slapping hoodies and ASBOs'. Any attempt to make exams easier is met with pure vitriol from these elements; they would only be happy if school these days had a 100% failure rate and whipped you every day.  How are we supposed to make any kind of educational reform that will help this situation, that will focus resources less on teaching pointless rubbish and hard equations, when currently the trend is 'harder harder harder' when it comes to schooling? Quite simply, offering to teach children life skills is not a priority, but instead the priority is to create a system that scores points. A cold system with no emotions and works purely on seeing individuals as nothing more than statistics. The only way we're going to see real change is if a miracle happens, to be honest, and that makes me very sad.

[theoutsidenormal]

A Random Review: Final Fantasy X

A Random Review: Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X was undoubtedly a classic that defined the PS2 era. It was one of the first games that truly showcased the exceptional graphics capabilities of its generation and received stellar review scores at the time of release. It had certainly cemented a place in gamer’s hearts with its bittersweet story and bright, cheery graphics, along with its oftentimes cringeworthy voice acting.

I’m not normally a fan of JRPGs, and when this game first came out, I wasn’t a fan of RPGs in general. I was a young gamer who was heavily into fast-paced action games. I felt that the Final Fantasy series, despite being astoundingly popular among my peers at the time, was over-rated and ultimately boring. The grinding and stats-crunching elements just did not interest me whatsoever when I was young and I just couldn’t appreciate this game for what it was.

However, the short experience that I did have with this game, I enjoyed. I played it in quite a simple way, really; just grind and grind until I was a strong level and kill the monsters. This made the game feel quite tedious by the point that I had put it down, but I had enjoyed the ride for what it was worth; mainly thanks to the stellar graphics and beautiful art design, and for the community aspect of sharing strategies and information with my classmates in school, with the rumours around this game whispered in the dark corners of the playground with a kind of grungy notoriety. People would often spread rumours such as: ‘did you know if you pushed this combination of buttons in battle you would become invincible’ or ‘if you go here you’ll find a weapon that does millions of damage!’

We were strange kids.

Anyway, after I had put this game down (or rather, lost it while moving between homes), I was left somewhat unsatisfied as I hadn’t really gotten a chance to fully appreciate the story. I had no motivation to continue thanks to the tedious grinding elements, but I wanted to see the storyline through to its end. Unfortunately the fact that I had lost the game meant that I would forever be unsatisfied by my journey into the world of Final Fantasy X.

Until now.

The game has been re-released as a HD Remaster edition for all the modern consoles. I picked up the PS3 edition myself with some glee, as I had discovered a love for RPG games that had been kindled thanks to my experiences with modern games such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Fallout 3. I felt that maybe now with my personal growth in patience and maturity, I would be able to enjoy this game to a far greater aspect than I had before. Maybe now I could work past the more tedious aspects and grind out a better experience from this game.

That much was definitely true.

The first thing that struck me about the HD Remaster of Final Fantasy X was the graphics. They were every bit as beautiful and breathtaking as I remembered. The world of Spira is wonderfully colourful and every single screen of this game looked like a work of dazzling fantasy art. I felt that everything had aged beautifully. This can be attributed in part to the shiny HD gloss that the Remaster has given to the game but honestly, I don’t think this version of Final Fantasy X is all that improved, or at least not to a significant game-changing level. That is not to say that it is a poor remaster, in this case, it’s more my opinion that they didn’t need to change all that much to still have a beautiful game. I think that it is just a glossing-up to improve the already-good graphics to a level acceptable for the HD console era and this serves to make the game stand out wonderfully. You really feel as if this game was an impressive piece of art for its time and it can even stand out graphically today.

The gameplay of Final Fantasy X is a bit weaker than its beautiful graphics. But it is still very strong today. My main gripes are with the random encounter system; the frustration of being abruptly pulled from exploration into a battle screen in the most jarring way possible is something most gamers can relate to, and it is certainly obvious to see the reasons why modern RPG games have largely done away with this system.

The combat system itself, however, is largely enjoyable and more rewarding than I remembered. Typical to most RPGs and JRPGs there is an element of grinding, of walking pointlessly back and forth to grind skills and stats and this can be boring, but FFX is one of the better games of the spectrum. The system is built much more around the speed stat and the order of character actions than anything else. You have a neat little tooltip at the side of the screen that shows whose turn is up next and a large part of the game’s strategy is formed around manipulating the turn order to give yourself the biggest advantage. I feel that this was a greatly enjoyable part of the game and it drew attention well to status spells; in most RPG games I’m guilty of playing only with offensive spells or attacks and largely ignoring status effects and buffs. On the other hand success in Final Fantasy X is largely governed by using these tactically to guarantee a win in battle and this forces you to think, which brings about a very rewarding experience from combat. There are a ton of other systems at work, as well as plenty of spells and moves you can use such that the game has hundreds of hours of content packed just into mastering its combat.

The levelling system of the game is interesting as well. Instead of traditional levelling, Final Fantasy X opted to have you improve your own stats through something called the Sphere Grid, by placing spheres into slots in a menu to improve the stat assigned to that slot. It is an interesting system and one that at first, I felt that it was a little tedious, but then by mid-game I had really gotten into it and was at a point where I was looking forward to levelling up to see what new buffs I could add to my characters.

There is a ton of gameplay in Final Fantasy X. There are a multitude of minigames to keep you occupied from the main quest, although they are varied in their quality. Chocobo racing in particular was an example of a poorly-designed minigame. For a lot of people, Blitzball in particular has also been singled out as a significantly bad minigame. Unfortunately, these sidequests are indeed hit and miss and not every gamer will enjoy them. Blitzball is polarising, and very easily seen with disdain, however, with patience and mastery of the mechanics behind the minigame, it is not the horror that some gamers have exaggerated it to be, and even crosses the line to be enjoyable for me. Making matters worse is the fact that in order to get the highest level items completion of these games are required, which is an unfortunate aspect that drags down what would be a point in the game’s favour. If the minigames weren’t required for certain late-game content, I wouldn’t have minded their inclusion. However, overall I can easily say there is a lot of gameplay, and there are definitely plenty of enjoyable hours to be had in this game. If only it weren’t so frustratingly bad in its worst parts.

The sound design of this game is nigh-on perfect. The atmosphere of the game is as clear and beautiful as the graphics. Not one sound track felt out of place and I really enjoyed every single track of music, with some songs I consider beautiful as far as background music goes. The Calm Lands in particular is one area of the game which I consider to have amazing background music. After a really tough and harsh time for the characters in the storyline, here you hit the last stretch of the game, and thanks to the music you can really feel a sense of calm before the storm, but in such a way that you savour the experience. In particular, this was an area I didn’t want to leave and this was largely thanks to the beautiful music. Other tracks in the cutscenes are simply breathtaking, even artful. The music that plays as you enter Zanarkand in the later parts of the game is so emotionally charged it gives you a tightness in the chest as you press on. Even the opening cutscene that plays when you start the game has beautiful music, and serves as a fitting prelude to the adventure ahead.

One aspect that really drags down the sound design, however, is the voice acting. In large parts, it’s very out of sync with the character’s lip movements, even considering the era in which Final Fantasy X was produced. In addition, the characters tend to have annoying line delivery in places, and oftentimes the emotions that the actors played during these scenes did not match well to the emotions they should have been playing. Part of the guilt for this does, however, have to go to the screen-writers, who were guilty of a few hit and miss scenes. Wakka in particular was one character who became completely unlikeable to me in the latter stages of the game, and even irrelevant. On the other hand, I will say that as the first entry in the series to have voice-acting, there can be some forgiveness given to the writing, as there would have been a lack of experience in creating a Final Fantasy game that is suitable to be voice-acted. Still, it’s a real shame to see as the sound design is beautiful overall, and the voice acting was just below-par in places.

The storyline of Final Fantasy X is beautiful, if not making sense at times. I felt every emotion that the characters felt during their journey, and you really get a sense of adventure out of the game, thanks to the fantastic locale that was designed for the game and the world that had been created. Spira is a place where you want to be and each and every single part of the game feels like a labour of love. There are some seriously breathtaking moments, from the first time you set foot in the Calm Lands to Yuna’s dance in Kilika, there are a lot of amazing storyline moments in this game that really make you feel something. By the end of the game, I personally felt very emotional and wrung out by the bittersweet ending, which is a testament to just how well-executed the story was. 

People say Final Fantasy X was a poor story compared to other games, but I think this game’s story was very good. At its heart, it was a bittersweet and tragic love story and a story about an adventure, a story about learning to overcome misery and mostly, a very human story about people trying to find a way to defeat sorrow. The character of Yuna became very sympathetic to me in the later game, a woman willing to give literally everything to the world, a woman who does nothing but give, and is just about the strongest character I’ve seen emotionally. There are some stand out characters other than Yuna and just about everyone you see in the game you can feel something for, even Jecht, who initially was cast as a villainous character you had to hate, became a very sympathetic and likeable character by the end.

Overall, for all its flaws, Final Fantasy X is a beautiful, breathtaking adventure into a world that you would never want to leave. Even today it stands out for its beautiful design and you can see the love poured into the game by its designers. The gameplay is deep and can keep you engaged for hundreds of hours, despite being hit and miss in some places, the sound is beautiful despite some poor voice acting and the story and characters are first rate. However, this game is flawed; many minigames will leave you frustrated and flustered, and the voice acting is laughable, and there are questionable elements of design that just serve to confuse the gamer. There are a lot of influences of the often-times weird tropes of Final Fantasy in this game, and that results in a very love-it or hate-it style for these tropes in particular. However, you can easily look past these, with the game’s sheer beauty and artfulness in the big picture.

This is a game I would recommend if you’re willing to sink a lot of hours into the game to understand its systems, if you’re not too frustrated by random encounters, and if you are able to look past some big flaws. I wouldn’t recommend it to the easily frustrated, or to anyone who doesn’t like JRPGs in general. It is both a great game, and a deeply flawed one, but if you’re willing to brave the journey, the world of Final Fantasy X will leave you feeling like it was definitely worth the adventure.

Final Fantasy X is available as part of the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster available for PS3 for £20 and PS4 for £30, as well as a PSVita version for £20. Given that you get two full games for this price and the long gameplay hours that a dedicated gamer would find in these games, it certainly makes for a good value proposition, I would say it is more than worth the price.

[theoutsidenormal]

Final Fantasy X Blitzball

Because 10-6 = 0

[theoutsidenormal]

‘Simple’ recipes

I look up simple breakfast ideas, and I get given 'bake your own avocado bread with infused herbs and banana' and I'm just like 'Dude I just meant an alternative to a fucking ham sandwich'

[laughhard]

Being in a relationship

Marshall and Lily really do remind me so much of my own relationship it makes me laugh!

[theoutsidenormal]

A Random Review: Dark Souls

What can be said about Dark Souls that hasn’t been said already?

People tend to throw about the words ‘flawless masterpiece’ at this game, and sing its praises to the skies or, well, the sun. It’s hard to really gauge just how much of the love for Dark Souls is down to how enjoyable it is at a game, and how much of it is down to hype. The game has taken on a notoriety, a dark horse that inspires whispers of awe where it is mentioned.

I think what has made this game so powerful in the eyes of the gamers is the way it seemed to have acted as an antidote to the wider market forces of its time. People were getting fed up of the yearly releases of the so-called ‘triple-A market’. They were sick of the formula of chest-high walls and gruff voices and big guns, and they wanted something new, something that changed the game, and most of all, I think they wanted something to remind them of when they started gaming.

Critics often tended to say that Dark Souls was a throwback of sorts, a love-letter to the brutal difficulties of the videogames of the past. Its brutal difficulty, along with a story that was hard to get your head around and confusing in the best of ways, seemed to be inspired in part by the games we used to play.

I think a huge part of the game’s outstanding reception is that it was a niche game. This was a game that didn’t try to be for everyone, but it was a game that could easily chew you up and spit you out, a game that required you to think and to change everything you knew about the gung-ho rush-in-kill-everything gameplay of its time.

People call it a masterpiece because of its difficulty and the way it seemed to be the exact opposite of what the popular kids were doing. Gaming was a newly-popular hobby, just finding its way into the mainstream, and many of the people who were into it before it got big felt alienated by the influx of people taking part. The in-crowd was now gaming, and it was hard for many to understand their identity as a gamer.

Dark Souls helped these people find their identity. It was a masterpiece of necessity, an outstanding game of its time.

But is it truly deserving of its universal praise?

As someone who was fairly late on the bandwagon, I picked up Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition a couple years ago in one of the Steam sales for a fairly cheap price. I had heard of the game’s crushing difficulty and held off on playing it for this reason; Dark Souls was a game I had to be ready for, not something I could just play for fun.

When I finally worked up the bravery and booted the game, I was equal parts nervous and excited. I had butterflies in my stomach as I sat through an exciting cutscene depicting the backstory of the game. I was told spine-chilling tales of dragons, great battles and the Undead curse. I felt like this was a game that was going to be big, a game that could quite easily go over my head.

Playing the game, however, was equally interesting. I quickly got the hang of the controls, and felt that terrifying moment of panic as I came up against my first boss. Eventually, I found my route forward and came to beating the monstrous creature. I was then thrown into the game proper.

A couple of months later, and I had finished the game. It was a strange experience at the best of times, and a lot of work to understand. It was a long game that left more questions than answers at its conclusion. I felt both a sense of achievement, and of disappointment.

Dark Souls is a good game with good production values. The opening cutscene, as I had described earlier, was beautiful, well-described and narrated and was exciting. However, one weakness of the game is that the story is difficult to follow and understand, and this is something that’s fairly obvious from the get-go. The cutscene does its best job of explaining what is happening, but it would take a newbie to the game a good long while of studying to get the plot truly down in their mind.

The story as it is told is fantastic and capitalises on its themes well. This story is tragic, terrifying and bitter-sweet in so many ways and you will be captivated and want to dig into the surface of the confusing lore. But I just wasn’t a fan of it, myself. I think there was something missing. A different gamer would roll his eyes and tell me to work harder for the game, but I do believe that more effort could have been made into making the story something bigger and more explicitly stated, without sacrificing on its quality. I personally felt that the story was more half-finished than deliberately confusing.

On the other hand, I can see why the developers chose to make the story the way they did. A large part of gaming’s past was the memes that arose from the implied story behind the games. Looking at Dark Souls, it’s fairly plain to see this was the idea that From Software had, and it worked well to inspire such memes. It just didn’t sink in well with me.

As for the gameplay, it was tight and expertly crafted. Something that was very different about this game from, say, Skyrim, was that it could be mastered. At the best of times, Skyrim’s combat felt like it contained equal parts chance to skill, and was floaty and strange more often than not. On the other hand, Dark Souls combat was a different beast entirely, every movement is carefully calculated, and every swing of your sword carries a kind of weight that is not seen in other games. You definitely ‘feel’ the combat in this game. But one of the biggest sellers of the gameplay for me was that, if you were sufficiently good enough and really devoted yourself, the best possible player in the world could do a perfect run, I believe, and play through Dark Souls without taking any damage whatsoever (this is excepting one of the bosses in the game which requires you to die before you can beat him). Unlike Skyrim, I felt this game could be ‘mastered’ and someone could play this game in a ‘perfect’ run-through. This gameplay was nigh-on-perfect for me.

As for another important gameplay aspect, the difficulty of the game, I hadn’t experienced the ‘brutal’ game that many others had sold Dark Souls to be. However, I felt that this game was ‘brutally fair’. Your every death was your own fault and resulted from your own failures. As the gameplay was as tight as previously mentioned, your deaths could easily result from a poorly timed sword swing or shield bash, and you were punished harshly for your failures. But these failures were always your fault.

There were some sections that were hard and difficult and a couple of times I experienced intense rage, not least thanks to the rules of the game; if you die, you lose all your accumulated experience (in the form of ‘souls’) that you haven’t spent on level-ups or weapon upgrades, and your precious ‘Humanity’ (a resource that increases your stats, including your chance of finding valuable items from corpses), would be lost, left at your corpse while you respawned at a campfire. You could go back to your corpse to regain your power, but if you died on the way to returning to this point, all of those precious resources would be gone forever. I experienced this twice in my first play-through, and it was a very harrowing and upsetting time, and the gameplay gets white-knuckle tense as you carefully make your way to your corpse, knowing that you cannot afford a single mistake. Few times has my heart-rate spiked at such an experience.

However, for all of the ‘brutality’ that gamers sell for the game, I did not at any point feel that the game was ‘too hard’. I felt the game had a fair difficulty and I think the main reason players call this game hard is because it requires a significant shift in strategy from thoughtless gung-ho attacks like most triple-A releases allow for. In a Call Of Duty game, you can just keep firing and regenerating health until the other guy is dead, and often death carries little penalty other than a temporary annoyance. Such a game requires fast, fluid and action-packed and oftentimes reactive and thoughtless gameplay. On the other hand, Dark Souls requires a lot of strategy. It needs you to carefully think and rethink every action, constantly weighing the risk of your moves. Would a shield bash be too risky? Is it better to try to strafe around this enemy to get to his back at the risk of making a mistake while I wait, or is it better attempt to parry and riposte his devastating attacks, with the risk that if I am just a millisecond too late in my movements I could be killed in a single shot? Am I too low-level for this area? Should I go here at the risk of meeting an enemy that is far too powerful for me to handle right now?

In total, Dark Souls is not a game that is brutally difficult, but a game that requires you to think from a different perspective than most other games, and I think this is the source for many gamers’ claims of this game being horribly hard. Personally, I think the gameplay hits that sweet spot between ‘challenge’ and ‘too hard’. It is well-designed and at no point did I ever put down my controller and say ‘there’s no point even trying’ with this game.

Graphically, I’d say the game is competently made. I wouldn’t go out and say the graphics are amazing, however. I would say that it’s strictly par for the course of its time, and certainly, this game matched up to what you could expect out of the consoles. On the other hand, however, the aesthetics were fantastic. You could feel the atmosphere oozing out of every crack and crevice this game had to offer. Dark places felt terrifying and ugly and the glimpses of the wider environment inspired a deep sense of awe. However, I felt that this would have been improved massively with more effort made into the graphics, as sometimes I felt like some of the textures were a little disappointing in places. On the other hand, there game did have some moments that took my breath away graphically, in particular, the first time I set eyes upon the huge and beautiful city of Anor Londo. There are indeed some moments that could stand up graphically to the best consoles could offer.

In addition to the story, graphics and gameplay, the game’s sounds are worth a mention. They are understated compared to other games but I think that this works to the benefit of the game. The sound is certainly well-designed and adds to the aforementioned ‘weight’ of combat. Each sword swing makes a wonderful sound and every single effect you hear is well-designed to give you a particular feeling. One of my highlights of the games was during a boss fight when dramatic opera-style music started to play and I felt the rising panic as I struggled to survive the onslaught. The game is full of moments like this, where the sound is expertly designed to fit the mood; you can feel the sense of foreboding in the quieter moments, and the overwhelming panic in the big set-pieces.

However, the sound design is not without its weaknesses. I felt in particular that the voice acting was below-par in a big way, and that the voices were often too quiet and often faded in among the natural ambience of the game. There was a strange disconnect that I felt with the characters, where the dialogue seemed even stranger and more disjointed. I understand that the theme requires that often characters be insane and perhaps a little creepy, and often the voice-acting complements this, but I really felt like the acting was underwhelming and perhaps a little unprofessional even, like the developers just put in a placeholder voice while waiting for a better actor to come in and do a better job.

The game is also helped by the value proposition. One single playthrough of this game can take tens of hours, and there is a meaty New Game Plus system that keeps the game scaling with you. If you are dedicated, this game could easily keep you occupied for hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Overall, is this game the flawless masterpiece that gamers often describe it to be? I wouldn’t say so, unfortunately. I don’t feel that this game quite elevates to levels that other gamers and critics have set upon it. However, I would say it is a really good game and is very well made to its themes, everything in this game is crafted to fit with its tone. This game is a great example of how a developer could create something so deeply coherent that anyone could easily get lost in how well-designed it is; Dark Souls is a veritable triumph of coherent design.

I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a deep experience. I wouldn’t say this game is for everyone, but I would say that if you are looking for something with a lot of hours of gameplay and a very strange, quirky and dark story, Dark Souls provides an excellent value proposition of hours-to-cost, and a very tight, enjoyable combat system that will have you wishing that other RPGs had the same. I wouldn’t recommend this game to people who don’t have the time to dedicate to it, or people looking for something with a brighter atmosphere; I would say this game is very dark story wise and oftentimes you can feel a little gloomy playing it, so I wouldn’t recommend this for people who need a ‘nicer’ experience. This game is enjoyable to only a certain crowd who are looking for a game with deep atmosphere and very tight thematic direction.

As of right now, Dark Souls is selling for £19.99 on Steam, and on a sale it can easily reach half of that. Personally, I got my copy for £15, and I would say that this game is more than worth it in terms of value if you are of the right persuasion to enjoy it.

[theoutsidenormal]

How to Make Your Writing Document Look Professional

So, as a result of university studies, I’ve fallen into a particular habit of formatting my writings in Microsoft Word so they look a certain way thanks to the requirements on my coursework. I find personally that this format in MS Word works really well, looks professional and just makes your writing that bit nicer looking, so here’s what I do the minute I open Word:

Change font to Times New Roman, often when you’re writing for assignments people ask for a particular group of fonts, most reliably, Times New Roman falls under this category. It’s a nice looking font and looks like you’re reading a novel, most of the time. 

Change the font size to 12. When I was young and first getting into writing my personal preference was size 10, because of the way my own reading style worked. But 12 is a good size and again, it’s what a lot of places ask for. 

Times New Roman in size 12 is most often what seems to be the ‘universal standard’ for professional-style writings, I tend to find. 

Right click on the page, go to ‘Paragraph’. Under ‘Indentation’, there is a drop-down box called ‘Special’. Select ‘First line’. This indents the first line in the paragraph, which is a very useful tool and makes it easier to read in a big way. 

Staying on the same menu, under ‘Spacing’ change ‘Line spacing’ to double. This may look a bit jarring if you’re used to no spacing, but more often than not publishers and literary agents ask for double-spaced work so get into the habit. It also has the useful feature of making walls of texts look a bit less intimidating, and gives space for proof-readers/markers to write down notes in the spaces between the lines. Again, a fairly universal standard by my own findings.

Finally, close the menu, and go up to the alignment options (the horizontal bars you see on the ‘Paragraph’ tab up top), and select ‘Justify’. This is just an extra touch of polishing your text up. It makes the right-hand margin of text all fit to the margin fairly exactly, meaning that it looks a lot less messy and much sharper and polished, which is good for when you want to make an impression.

Just a few standards I’ve learned to live by in my time writing, hopefully this will help you. In short:  Open Word-> Font to Times New Roman-> Font Size 12 -> Paragraph-> Indentation-> Special: ‘First Line’ -> Spacing: ‘Double’-> Close Indentation-> Alignment: Justify. 

[theoutsidenormal]

Political Post Tips

Some suggestions as things will be getting more and more political over the next few weeks and conflict will be getting more intense with the upcoming elections:

-NEVER tell anyone who you're voting for. I've found that doing this more often than not leads to conflict and arguments. Everyone has something to say about your party. Thanks to negative and smear campaigning by all main parties, every single political party is now a 'horrible' thing to vote for, apparently. -DO NOT use personal insults/tactics on the political leaders. Don't tell other people that X Politician is a bad person and you shouldn't vote him. If anything, tell them WHY. Too much of politics is 'Oh he's going to get in-the horror! Vote for me because I'm not him' rather than what it should be which is 'You should vote for me over him because of x y and z'. Use POLICY not PERSONALITY. -DO NOT negative campaign. Too often are we told to 'vote for us-we're not the other guys'. It's wrong, and I'd like to vote for you because I want to, NOT because you're not someone else. -REALISM AND TACTICAL VOTING SHOULD NOT RULE OUT YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS- I'm not going to suddenly start voting against my own views because the party that supports it 'isn't realistic' and 'isn't going to get in'. I will not compromise on my future. -TRY TO AVOID POLITICS. If you can at all, do not post about your political views. Someone will find something to be offended about, guaranteed.

Personally, I'm going to vote for my own preference, I'm already decided having read up on policy and previous experience what I will do. No amount of adverts or people screaming at me will change my mind.

Remember folks, talking about political preference is a fast and hard way to destroy friendships. Keep the arguing civil and positive.

[writingbox]

I've always heard that writing a MC off yourself is a 'cop out' and a sign of a lazy writer and that it somehow takes away from the story. Would you agree with this? If so, how can I prevent me from 'writing myself in'? Thanks so much!

I’ve heard this said a lot, and I’ve heard so many writers saying their MC is always part them. Mine are. Look at Stephen King; almost every one of his MCs are writers cracking under the pressure.

I believe it’s absolutely unavoidable to write a bit of yourself into your stories. In fact, I believe they’re better if you do. As long as the characters are well rounded, relateable, interesting, and open to change, then who cares where your real life inspiration comes from?

But that’s my beliefs, and there will be people out there who totally disagree. That’s what makes life interesting.

Just don’t use your characters to preach your beliefs. You’re writing to entertain readers, not to persuade them to your way of thinking on an issue.

Don’t worry if a bit of you sneaks into your characters, really. Good luck.

[theoutsidenormal]

Well, many of my favourite writers have been guilty of putting a part of themselves into their characters. Look at Kathy Reichs; Temperance Brennan is unashamedly based on her own experiences as a forensic anthropologist. Lee Child puts a bit of himself forward; in interviews he admits that his ability to write gruesome fight scenes comes from personal experiences in schoolyard fighting, not to mention the fact that he is about the same height as his character (if a little less bulky). You should also remember that many of the characters we write in stories are often intended to be caricatures or aspects of real life people. Often stories are at their best when they’re speaking from an authentic-to-life point of view. 

Not to mention the fact that ultimately, no matter how hard you try you will always self-insert yourself at least a little into your writings. You can’t really fight it and of course some of your little characteristics are going to come out in the people you write. 

Something you should consider is that as a writer, often it’s easiest to write about something close to you. Allowing some of your own aspects to sneak into your characters is something that will happen and it will give your characters a grounding in reality, in something someone really ‘feels’. 

Part of what makes a character great is often how genuinely ‘human’ they are. At the end of the day, we’re assigning human characteristics to an abstract object of our imagination and expecting them to walk and talk like people. The best way to write about people is to observe them, and who in your life have you ever observed better than yourself?

It’s obvious we should avoid gratuitous self-insertion to the point of cliche. I’m not going to put a character with my name in my stories and have him be the burgeoning voice of all that is good and be the strongest and best character by all aspects of his life, that would make me no better than a thirteen year old writing fan-fiction. 

But outside of that, is it really that bad to give your character a few aspects of yourself? You will for certain be able to write convincingly from their point of view, your character will be grounded in humanity as a result and from what I can see, people will do it anyway. What is a character if not an extension of some part of ourselves? In order to imagine ourselves in the position of our characters, how else would we manage it if there was not a part of us actually in those characters? I think it is futile to try to completely avoid doing such a thing from a psychological point of view. At some point we are grounded by the limits of our own imagination. 

That’s not to say you shouldn’t strive to separate. Create more characters with opposing views. If you like television and your character likes television, create another character who can’t stand it. Use each character as an opportunity to expand the scope of your book. Treat them each as different people with different views, just akin to individuals in the real world.

Outside of the obvious steps you can take to avoid making horribly cringe-worthy work, which are simple and so easy an idiot can do it, there really isn’t any harm in creating characters from aspects of yourself. At the end of the day, all characters will have some grounding from your own psyche, like it or not, and it will all help to write from a more human, more relatable perspective. 

[theoutsidenormal]

Online Gaming is a Disgusting Troll-Filled Hate Fest and I Hate It

While people may say Nintendo is crap for online, other companies should take note of at least a couple things that they have done that Xbox Live/Playstation network hasn't done so far. 

My main point is, restricting communication between gamers that aren't your friends. Nintendo, either by design or by the bad design aspects of their games, pretty much don't let you trash talk. 

One of my memories on going online on Mario Kart 8 is that you couldn't say anything except variations of 'Woo, Mario Kart!'. Outside of that, the community feels different, more friendly.

The problem is, when Nintendo inevitably listen to the gamers and open up communications and more seamless online integration, it's going to lead to millions of twelve year olds and other douchebag gamers and their 'suck my teabag fagit' type talking. 

One thing Nintendo realises that others don't, whether or not you agree with the design philosophy, is that gamers are dick-ass scumbags who do not deserve to communicate.

I think that this aspect of their online is something other companies should learn from because at the end of the day, my girlfriend is too scared to play online with me on anything other than a Nintendo platform because of the abuse that she will inevitably receive from being a girl. Sexism is rife in gaming no matter what you say, and online on a videogame is a terrifying place to be when you’re a woman, speaking from what I’ve gathered from friends’ experiences and from my girlfriend’s experiences. I’ve even seen a rape threat happen to a woman (who I didn’t know) while I was playing Halo. 

A lot of people criticise Nintendo for being backwards in the online space, but I think going forward restricting what gamers can do to each other online is the better way to go. 

Like I said at the end of the day, gamers are scumbags. I've been told to kill myself, I've had my in-game characters teabagged in disrespect, I've been called all kinds of names, homophobic and even racist (though I am a white male, I have been called derogatory remarks associated with racism against others) remarks, I've been told to sterilise myself, to die, and yes, there have been tons of rape jokes. 

This kind of behaviour in games is why it's disgusting to be in the online space and Nintendo by design, whether it be bad design or good design in your opinion, have reduced that in their own online spaces. 

The Miiverse community is a very wonderful place the few times I've stopped there. There are a few idiots who make you roll your eyes but I’ve never seen outright maliciousness as there is in other game spaces. Play a game on any other console or on PC and you will instantly want to take a shower. 

It's disgusting and we seriously need to clamp down as a community, introduce legislation and rules on communication and do more to make gaming a positive place. Because right now, it's disgusting and I'm ashamed to be a gamer.