Thomas Young's Writing Board

I'm Tom - I write for a living, and this is my space for all my writing that doesn't quite fit anywhere else. Opinions on Magic the Gathering, video games, movies and short stories ahoy!

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

A whole new world...

So I’ve been using this blog for a while now, but I’ve recently been getting frustrated by the lack of available features, due to this being a secondary blog.

So to remedy the situation, I decided to create a whole new blog! I’m copying over all my current content too, so it’ll still serve the purpose of keeping all my writing in one place.

If you want to find it (and keep reading the words I put on the internet) you can follow me at: https://tomyoungwrites.tumblr.com/

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Flinthook, or why Switch is great for indies

Originally, I was going to write a piece about how Flinthook is exactly the kind of game that deserves a second chance on the Nintendo Switch. But in between my first draft and finally publishing this piece, Tribute Games went ahead and confirmed a Switch port.

I guess I’ll take that as a sign of my good judgement?

So instead of making an argument as to why Flinthook deserves a Switch port, I’ll be telling you why you should buy Flinthook for your Switch.

But how do I already know that Flinthook is a great game for portable play? Well, thanks to my recent purchase of a GPD WIN, for the past few months I’ve been able to take the PC gaming experience with me on the go. That included playing Flinthook on my commute to and from work for hours on end. And oh boy is Flinthook amazing on a portable system. 

The game itself is a procedurally generated rogue-like with a focus on platforming - you traverse these platforms by flinging yourself around levels with a grappling hook.

Given that flinging yourself around levels accounts for roughly 75% of the gameplay here, it’s thankful that Flinkhook controls beautifully.

Speaking of beauty, this game is absolutely stunning in motion.  Made by the same team behind the equally beautiful Mercenary Kings, Flinthook combines fluid animation with spot-on pixel art to create a game that is a true joy to look upon. I can only imagine how crisp this game would look on a Switch screen.

For gameplay, you use your grappling hook to pull yourself towards any of the grapple-able rings that are littered throughout  the rooms of the pirate ships you board. Using the grappling hook feels natural, and the physics that determine your speed and direction feel suitably weighty. Within hours I was flinging myself through tough platforming challenges, able to anticipate exactly where I was going to land next.

Your primary method of attack is with your ‘blasma pistol’ which can be upgraded with different perks. These perks are all fairly basic, meaning your method of attack never really changes that drastically (compared to something like Binding of Isaac, where your attack changes dramatically every run).

And at any point, you can press the right trigger to activate a limited slow-mo meter (which refills very quickly). This allows you to slow down the action enough to line up shots on enemies, grapple at just the right time in order to get out of tricky situations and dodge incoming bullets.

This mechanic is great for giving you precise control exactly when you need it - and the limited usage before a recharge means you can’t overly rely on it either.

Once you combine all these mechanics together, you’ll be flipping around levels pulling off slow-mo shots that make you feel super cool. At least, they made me feel super cool.

In terms of progression, Flinthook has two systems it employs to make sure you always feel like you’re moving forwards. The first are ‘Black Market Coins’ you earn by beating bosses. You can exchange these for various items and permanent upgrades through a shop in the main menu. These include health upgrades, experience boosts and hardcore versions of levels.

The other way you progress through the game is via slowly unlocked perks, which you can equip before each run begins. Not only does this keep the game interesting, as you constantly unlock new tools to play with, it also allows you to remove some of the ‘bad RNG’ that roguelikes commonly suffer from.

...But if you’re a ran of rolling the RNG dice like me, you’ll pick the perk that gives you a random selection of perks each time you play.

By allowing you control over the perks they can choose before a run, you can tailor your perks to fit your playstyle. You can also buy buy further perks during a run, so that even if you find a set-up you want to stick with, it’ll still feel different every time you play thanks to bonus perks you pick up while playing.

The fact that each run feels different adds a lot to what makes this a great portable game. You’re guaranteed a new experience every time you boot it up, even if it’s only for 20 minutes.

This perk system is actually one of the few criticisms I have of Flinthook - compared to other games in the genre, these perks all feel relatively tame. It’s tough to get excited about 20 different perks that all boil down to ‘You have more health’ for example.

Jim Sterling recently talked about the Nintendo Switch being a haven for indies, and how the console allowed them to shine in a new spotlight away from the crowded Steam marketplace - and Flinthook exemplifies the need for this perfectly.

Flinthook is a game that deserved to be played by a lot more people than it has - Steam Spy reports that just over 60,000 people own Flinthook, with just over half of those people playing the game.

Bear in mind that this game was included in a Humble Bundle a few months ago, which no doubt boosted the number of owners dramatically.

So that’s why I’m incredibly happy for Tribute Games that they’re getting another shot at success with this upcoming Switch port. It’s one of my favourite games to come out of 2017, and I hope many more people get a chance to play it.

To conclude, Flinthook is a game I can’t recommend strongly enough. If you’re at all a fan of rogue-likes, or just want another game you can play in great 15 minute bursts on the go, Flinthook will make a great addition to your Switch library.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Rivals of Aether is... weird.

After picking it up in a Humble Monthly, Rivals of Aether was the latest game I took a crack at in order to keep getting through my Steam backlog.

What I found left me feeling oddly nostalgic, but I can’t say my experience was totally positive. 

You see, when I was a teenager, I used to play a whole lot of Smash Bros. Whenever I would hang out with my friends, it was our ‘go to’ video game.

I remember logging into the Smash Bros. website daily to see what would be updated with more information about Brawl, and then talking excitedly with friends in school about new characters and stages as they came around. It was a game that defined my social experiences growing up, easily eating up 500+ hours of my childhood.

As I was a frequent user of Newgrounds during my teenage years, I also ended up checking out some ‘Smash Flash’ games occasionally - purely out of curiosity. While I never thought those Smash Flash games had much merit, clearly Dan Fornace, the developer of Rivals of Aether did.

From the moment you pick up this game, it’s super clear where the inspiration for this game comes from. Mechanically, it’s almost identical, and a number of characters have moves that are carbon-copies of Smash Bros moves. However, it’s the similarities to Smash Bros. that end up being the downfall for Rivals of Aether, at least for me.

After years and years of playing Smash Bros, I’ve gained a good amount of muscle memory that I can now slip back into whenever I pick it up. With Rivals of Aether, the game is similar enough that my mind wants to fall back on that muscle memory, but it’s different enough that I can’t.

It’s like if after cooking 1,000 fried eggs, someone asked you to make an omelette. Sure, a lot of the steps are the same - but if you copy what you’re used to exactly, you’re not going to get the end result you want.

The characters don’t quite dodge with the smoothness that Smash Bros has, and characters feel much slower and less agile - the one character I felt comfortable with was the fastest in the game. Clearly, this game was designed by people who enjoyed Smash Bros. for being a technical fighting game - the changes that are made facilitate more balanced gameplay and more room for highly technical play.

The fact that Dan Fornace managed to create this game, perfecting exactly the experience he wanted from a fighting game is amazing, and something that should be applauded. Sadly, what Dan wants from a fighter and what I want from a fighter lie in different places.

Playing this game made me realise something about myself. I’m not drawn to fighting games because of their mechanics - something I also realise as I’m trying to teach myself Street Fighter V. Instead, I’m drawn to fighting games because of what they represent, and the characters they allow me to experience.

I could boot up Smash Bros. today, and have a blast playing as a wide range of characters, and get a huge hit of nostalgia when I do so. Nostalgia not only for Smash Bros. as it’s own game, but nostalgia for the series that the characters represent too. Being able to play as Ganondorf has a weight to it that these fighters can’t hope to match.

I can’t feel nostalgia for these characters because I don’t know them - and I can’t put that aside to enjoy the game on a technical level because that’s not why I enjoy fighting games. There’s something about the experience of inhabiting that character that I enjoy, and having control over them in a situation where my own skills can be translated directly into that character’s skills as a fighter.

I realise that a lot of my criticisms of Rivals of Aether boil down to me explaining why it didn’t appeal to me as a game - not the actual game itself.

And for what it’s worth, the game itself is fine. I’m sure people who enjoy fighters with technical depth will find way more to love here than I did. It’s a solid fighter that I think a lot of people would have fun with, if they’re looking for a variant on competitive Smash Bros Melee with *just* the right tweaks.

In a few years, I’ll have forgotten what Rivals of Aether felt like to play, who its characters were and what I disliked about it. But that lesson about myself, and gaining that understanding of exactly why I like the fighting games I do, is something that will stick with me for a long, long time. And for that, I have to give thanks to Dan Fornace.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

So I’ve been reading Parasyte

I’ve been caught up with my weekly manga series for a while now, and I’ve been on the lookout for a new manga series scratch that right-to-left itch. And in walked Parasyte, to scratch an itch I haven’t had scratched since I read Gantz for the first time.

I actually found this series by seeing a GIF of the new anime series (Parasyte - the Maxim) and being intrigued by it. A quick Wikipedia search later, and I was checking out the original manga that the show is based on. Originally published between 1990-1995, it’s clear that Parasyte set a lot of things in motion with regards to the ‘action horror’ manga genre.

Body horror isn’t something I read very often, but I’ve managed to read some of the ‘classics’ of the genre, with Gantz and Uzumaki under my belt. I’ve also read a number of Junji Ito’s shorter stuff, which are great if you’re in the mood for some disturbing visuals. So is Parasyte better than those? In my opinion... no.

Does it do a lot of things that you can appreciate, factoring in that it came before all of those? Yes indeedy!

First of all, the art is top-notch... at least where it matters. The parasytes themselves are just as otherworldly as they should be, and their ability to disguise themselves as humans leads to moments where exploiting the ‘uncanny valley’ enhances the artwork even further.

The rest of the artwork just looks like any other manga though - the characters have little to distinguish them from each other, and the visuals are just there to carry on the story. I can’t really hold this against Parasyte though, because the body horror aspect of the story is the reason you’re here.

The story ends up hitting some notes that are interesting, and attempts to tackle questions regarding the nature of humanity. However, this is where the manga really starts to show it’s age. Nothing is really handled here that hasn’t been brought up before in 1000′s of pieces of media, and over the years we’ve learnt to do it a lot better.

Our main character starts losing his humanity as time goes on, which is an interesting premise... but in the manga, this is conveyed by him slowly losing interest in his girlfriend.

Also, there are some moments that are very ‘90′s stupid’. But hey, you can’t be too harsh to a product of the time for being a product of the time.

So is it worth reading Parasyte? I’m going to have to say no. There are much better mangas that have a focus on body horror (such as Gantz) and much better stories that deal with the ‘what makes us human’ question.

If you’re interested in seeing the artwork that drew me into the series, a quick Google image search will throw up the best ones.

But if you’re a big fan of horror manga and want to see where the more modern stories got some of their inspiration, there’s still something to be gained from reading through the series - just don’t expect to be blown away!

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Tiredness

Despite consuming a large amount of media over the past two months that all deserves writing about, I’ve had a tough time finding the motivation to do it.

I started putting down my thoughts on Mindhunter and never got around to finishing it - maybe I will at some point, but replacing my fresh thoughts with what I can remember of a TV show months after watching it just doesn’t feel the same.

Realistically, I get plenty of opportunities to write that I just don’t take. It’s always easier to just stick on a tv show or a Youtube video and lounge on the sofa, not having to engage my brain.

I still think writing is great, and something I need to do more. It’s just that it’s something I currently need to be in the mood for... and I’m not in the mood for it that often.

Maybe I need to teach myself how to do it even when I’m not in the mood for it.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Super Short: Hero of the Kingdom

It’s tough to write much about a game I beat in under 5 hours... but here I go.

Hero of the Kingdom is a weird cross between a point and clink and a resource management game. Resource management would be implying a depth to this game though - in reality, it’s more of a ‘resource exchange’ game.

The story is so basic as to be entirely dismissable. You start off as a young boy, adventure across lands helping people and improving your skills/gaining new allies until you have a final battle with a guy literally called ‘The Dark Lord’. Most stories are at least constructed from a number of tropes, but the story here feels like it’s just one single trope.

Like I said earlier, the game comes across as a point and click combined with resource exchanging. Every single obstacle you face in the game requires you to have certain resources before you can accomplish it.

These resources can be equipment, weapons or food. Your health itself is even considered a resource, as you have to make sure you have enough stamina to accomplish certain tasks. So to get meat, you need to hunt deer - which means you have to have arrows, which you get by giving gold to the hunter... and so on and so on.

The result is a game that involves a lot of busywork as you flick from person to person, attempting to turn one resource into another via a 4 step program.

As a short distraction to play on the train while I listened to a podcast, this game did a perfectly acceptable job of keeping me occupied with some mindless busywork.

The idea of sitting down at your PC to play this though? Maybe if this was a flash game in the early 2000′s, but even then I’d have better recommendations...

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Ziggurat and the Rogue-lite Pallet Cleanser

For at least 2 years, I’ve been playing a lot of Magic: Duels on Steam. And by a lot, I mean I’ve sunk at least 400 hours into it. There are 3 main reasons for this:

I’m a big Magic: the Gathering fan

It was an excellent game to play while listening to podcasts

There was an achievement for completing 500 daily quests, which I became compelled to achieve after sinking enough hours into the game.

A few weeks ago I managed to get the achievement for completing 500 daily quests, which means I could happily put it down forever and find myself another game to play while I listened to podcasts.

That’s how I stumbled upon Ziggurat.

I started my search for such a game with the rogue-lites I own already on Steam. Rogue-lites are a great genre to play while listening to podcasts in my experience, as they’re both story light and gameplay focused. There’s no cutscenes that I need to worry about missing and most of these games tend to fall into a ‘rhythm’ where you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

Now when it comes to rogue-lites, I find it easier to discuss the mechanics by splitting them into two categories - first, the mechanics of how the game handles (controls and combat etc). Then, how the game encourages repeat playthroughs through the in-game mechanics. It’s the second part that makes a rogue-lite what it is, and also what usually differentiates it from others in the genre.

For the gameplay, the closest comparison I can make it ‘classic’ FPS games like Doom or Serious Sam. Not only does Ziggurart control like those games, but each combat encounter is structured similarly too. You enter a series of rooms, and have to fight off waves of enemies, strafing and firing off shots until either you or the enemies that fill the room have died.

This core aspect of the game is solid. Unless you’re playing a slow character, you move at a blistering pace through each room - especially when sprinting. I never felt like dodging shots was impossible, and jumping around to clear rooms quickly is satisfying. Enemies aren’t very diverse however, so you don’t really need to adapt your strategies that often. Once you find the ‘optimal’ way to dodge and shoot at foes, that technique can be applied to every fight.

Ziggurat encourages you to play again and again in a number of ways, but the main way is via unlocking new perks and choosing different ‘characters’ to play.

Each time you level up in a run, you’re (usually) presented with two different options to choose from. These perks can range from simple damage/speed increases to more interesting perks that make you take more damage in exchange for letting you level up faster.

Along with this perk system, there are a number of different characters you can play as. While none of the characters are so radically different that it changes the core gameplay experience, they’re different enough to make you change your playstyle. Some will encourage you to focus more on dodging due to their fragile health, while others encourage you to blitz from room to room due to an ever-draining life meter - which can be filled by killing enemies.

Unlike the items in Binding of Isaac, 80% of the perks you can acquire don’t actually change your overall plan. Sure, some perks will mean you’re more aggressive or reserved when taking on encounters, but how you play the game doesn’t really change.

I couldn’t help but contrast the character options in Ziggurat with Rogue Legacy, a game in which getting certain negative traits could make a run fundamentally different from your last. This goes a long way to encourage repeat play for me, as it doesn’t feel like you’re playing the same game over and over again.

Unfortunately for Ziggurat, it doesn’t do enough to make each run different. And while this wasn’t a huge issue for me as I enjoyed Ziggurat, I can see this being an issue for other players.

Another issue I have with Ziggurat is that to begin with, your possible unlocks in each playthrough are very limited. Also, with only 5 floors and a limited pool of enemy types, chances are you’ll have seen 90% of what the game is going to throw at you after your first 3 playthroughs.

Put all these things together and it means that once you understand the core mechanics, other than the different perks you get when levelling up, Ziggurat pretty much stays the same each time you play it.

For a roguelite, this goes against what most people are looking for. The good thing for me is that I wasn’t really looking for a new experience each playthrough. As I wanted to just put this on as something to play while zoning out to podcasts, the fact that the core mechanics didn’t change actually worked in the games favor!

As I came into this game with a rather odd requiremements, I have a strong suspision that I had a better time that I would have if I was looking for something in the caliber of FTL or Rogue Legacy. So while you should take my recommendation with a grain of salt, I’d like to think I still have some sense of what makes a game enjoyable!

My final recommendation: Give it a try, and if you don’t like it before you’ve sunk 2 hours into it, then you can rest assured that you wouldn’t like any of the hours after that.

But, if you do like those first two hours, then Ziggurat is a damn fine game to sink some time into.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

A year late, I’ve finally played Overwatch

Talk about late to the party, right?

I’m generally not a fan of games with a multiplayer focus, let alone games that are only multiplayer.  These days, I enjoy keeping my game experiences diverse and changing things up regularly - gone are the days when I’d sink hundreds of hours into Halo 3 or Call of Duty: Black Ops II. So far that reason, I didn’t put down the £40 when Overwatch first came out.

Nowadays though, it drops to a much more approachable £20 when it goes on sale, which is exactly what it dropped to when I finally picked it up. Even if I didn’t play it a huge amount, £20 for a game with Overwatch’s level of quality was totally acceptable to me.

And was I right to wait? Well... yes and no.

While Overwatch still gets discussed in a number of the podcasts I listen to (thanks to new hero additions and seasonal events) it’s nowhere near the ‘Overwatch fever’ of a year ago. Anyone who’s been a long time listener of the Co-Optional podcast can attest, Overwatch was talked about A LOT both pre and post launch.

Also, a lot of my social circles involve people who are big gamers. So even though I didn’t actually play any Overwatch myself, I was exposed to a lot of discussion around it regardless.

So after a year hearing second-hand about it, I launched Overwatch properly for the first time, and play my first three matches.

In each match, I try out a few different characters, but ultimately I fall back on using Mercy, simply because I have no idea what I’m doing. If I played as any other character, I was left feeling like I was always making the wrong choices. I was picking fights against characters that were naturally good against the one I was using.

I was getting lost on maps because I didn’t know which way to go to best reach key points. I also had no idea where health packs usually spawn, leading to me running around looking all over for them.

Thankfully, Mercy was there for me to fall upon.

Similarly to the medic in TF2, Mercy provided me with a method of playing Overwatch that meant my newness to the game wasn’t a hindrance to my team. I mean, I’m sure I was still a pretty bad Mercy, but that’s beside the point.

I didn’t need to know how to combat my opponents tactics, because my only tactic was to support my team. I didn’t have to worry about my health, because Mercy automatically regenerates hers.

Once I felt I’d had enough experience in how Overwatch’s core mechanics worked, I switched to my closest frame of reference when it comes to FPS games - Soldier 76. From my time spent listening to Overwatch discussions, I had been able to pick up that Soldier 76 was the closest character in the Overwatch roster to how Call of Duty plays. And this is true not just of his gameplay, but also his play style - just as you’re rewarded for flanking and map knowledge in COD, so you are with Soldier 76.

Thanks to the knowledge I’d gained from playing Mercy, I felt like I was now actively contributing to my teams success in a visible way.

And once I’d got the hang of Soldier 76, I quickly snowballed into trying out the rest of the roster with much more confidence.

In my experience since then, I’ve found that I naturally gravitate towards more ‘tanky’ characters such as Orisa and D.Va when I play. There’s a lot less pressure on these characters when it comes to precision aiming, which suits my relaxed play style to a tee.

Playing with friends

Now, as a team based first person shooter, Overwatch is best enjoyed with friends. And it’s a testament to Overwatch’s staying power that despite my friends having owned it for over a year, they were all willing to jump into a game with me when I asked. And as a team game, it works really well! I found that if I wanted to work together with my friends I could, but it didn’t require the CS:GO levels of co-operation that I dislike. Calling out enemy placements can be fun, but nowadays I just want to kick back and relax when I play a game.

Of course, some of these friends found it hilarious that I had no idea what most of these character did. Oftentimes I’d have to ask over voice chat what my ultimate did for a certain character, as I was afraid of wasting it.

I’d also often ask for advice from my teammates if I was having difficulty against a certain character on the enemy team - not all the counters are as obvious to me as others.

So, am I unhappy with my purchase of Overwatch?

Not really.

After spending so much of last year being bombarded with discussion about it, and knowing so many friends that enjoy it, it felt like I was finally joining in a conversation I’d been on the edge of since it had come out.

I’m not actively now playing it, but paying £20 to be part of that conversation is a fine price in my eyes.

Joining the conversation

My final note on Overwatch is regarding that ‘Joining the conversation’ feeling. Despite not playing the game myself for such a long time, I still found myself enjoying both the character designs and Blizzard’s cinematic shorts for it.

However, it always came with a reservation. As I’d never actually played the game, it felt like I couldn’t go around wearing an Overwatch t-shirt, or talking about how cool the latest cinematic was because I hadn’t actually played the game. This isn’t a negative per-say, as the point of a lot of the media Blizzard put out regarding Overwatch is designed to do just that - make you take note of this game you’re missing out on. And as my £20 now adds to the huge money pile they’ve made from this game, clearly it worked.

It’s not uncommon for video games to push themselves as something you need to buy so that you don’t ‘miss out’, and Overwatch is the biggest example of how advertising can create that feeling.

One final, final note.

Despite me not being able to play her at all, Sombra is my favourite character in the roster. What can I say, I’m a sucker for an undercut.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

So I’ve been listening to Starship Troopers

Thanks to my new job, I now have a 50 minute commute every weekday - which means I’ve got lots of time to catch up on podcasts and for the first time in my life, audiobooks.

To start off my venture into audiobook-land, I picked up a load of classic sci-fi novels… and the first novel I’m listening to out of that batch is Starship Troopers.

The Novel

While listening to this novel, I found that I often needed to remind myself of the time this novel actually came out. If it had come out in say 2014, I'd call it a strong novel that continues exploring themes we see commonly in militaristic fiction nowadays. Considering the time it did actually come out, I actually have this novel to thank for a lot of the games, movies and novels I enjoyed as a teenager. 

It’s a strange experience to discover the origin of so much of the media I’ve enjoyed, that’s for sure. From Halo to Mass Effect and Star Wars, I can see how not only the technology, but the way the narrative looks at the functions of the military in a critical manner has continued to be explored in many other directions.

Of course, it's also interesting to see what caused these things to be explored in the first place. A classic 'coming of age story' Starship Troopers uses the transformation of it's main character as a vehicle to demonstrate the positive influence that the military can have on a person. Despite being a low ranking member of the military, by the end of the novel, our main character is so elevated as a human being compared to civilians, it borders on ridiculous. I very much doubt that it's an accident that the novel becomes more structured, focused and interesting as his time in the military structures our narrator into a more focused and interesting person.

Final thoughts

Despite the cheesy impression I had from what I had seen of the movie adaptation, I was pleasantly surprised at how good Starship Troopers was. At it's core, it's a novel about the positive effect that a militaristic ruling system can have on society.

With such a focus on these philosophical ideas, there are a few characters who serve as mouthpieces for the points that the author wants to get across - Mr. Dubois being the stand out example. This shouldn't be construed as a negative though. Through his discussions with our main character, we’re presented with a number of contemporary ideas regarding military function, taken to the extreme, I often find that taking an idea to it's absolute extreme can be an excellent way to explore all the nuisances - by realising why you can’t take an idea that far, it’s easier to understand why it’s currently being taken as far as it is.

Finally, the greatest praise I can levy at Starship Troopers is that it fundamentally changed my outlook on the military - something that I previously had not much of an opinion on. While it's not quite enough for me to jump up and enlist, it's given me a better understanding of the people who are enlisted and commend the way being in the military had changed them.

And no, I’ve never watched the movie. Once I get a better phone (I’m currently one of 10 people in the world who owns a Windows Phone) I’m going to start putting movies on it. Having a long commute also lends itself to getting through those classic movies I’ve never got around to watching. So you can bet that Starship Troopers is going on my list of things to watch!

And I’ll write about it too. Promise.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

My thoughts on Song of the Deep

‘Metroidvania’ is such a strange term to me. For those who don’t know what it means, it’s used to describe video games that follow the progression system often seen in Metroid and Castlevania games.

And while a lot of the genre describers in video games describe the kind of gameplay you can expect (FPS, RPG, Puzzle, Platformer, Point & Click etc) Metroidvania games are instead categorised based on how you progress through the game world.

They all follow roughly the same formula - collect items that allow you to access certain areas, where you can get different items... and so on and so forth.

Song of the Deep is a Metroidvania game, and a basic one at that - but to call it ‘my first Metroidvania’ does a disservice to both the genre and this great game.

Song of the Deep follows the genre formula, but presents it in a style that’s distinct from anything I’ve seen in the genre before.

Song of the Deep is charming as hell - I was reminded of bedtime stories I was read by my Welsh grandmother as I was playing it. That’s a very hard thing to evoke in a game. The plot isn’t complex, but it doesn’t have to be. 

The mechanics aren’t complex either, but again, they don’t have to be.

The plot of Song of the Deep is about as simple as it gets, while being as complicated as it needs to be. You play as Merryn, a young girl who’s father went missing out to sea - prompting her to build a submarine and go after him. All the cutscenes in the game are presented in a storybook watercolour style, which makes a wonderful accompaniment to the simplistic story.

And the whole game is narrated by Siobhan Hewlett, who sets the tone beautifully. 

Speaking of beauty, the game itself is stunning. The backgrounds are always filled with motion, with large sea creatures slowly swimming their way across the ocean and sea life lighting up in front of you. On a couple occasions I actually stopped to just admire the scenery - something I rarely do in games.

The core gameplay is solid -  Merryn’s submarine controls exactly as you’d expect it to, feeling appropriately ‘weighty’ for something that’s travelling through water. There are plenty of upgrades to grab through your adventure that adjust both the way that you play and the areas you can access.

While the combat is basic, there is much more of a focus on exploration and puzzle solving in this game than other Metroidvania style games. This suits the narrative too - you’re not space-pirate-hunting-destroyer-of-worlds Samus Aran, you’re just a small girl looking for her father.

If you’ve picked up Song of the Deep in a Humble Bundle and it’s part of your backlog, or you’re looking for a cute little Metroidvania experience, I can strongly recommend Song of the Deep.

Oh, and if you’ve never tried a Metroidvania style game before, this is a excellent intro to the genre.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Here’s why I didn’t enjoy Deadlight

There’s starting to be a recurring theme here on my blog… I’m writing a lot about games I’ve been playing to get through my Steam backlog. Some of them have been great, others not so much - but good or bad, each one has given me something interesting to write about. So today, I want to talk about Deadlight. A 2007 game made at the heights of the ‘zombie fever’ (which seems to finally be dying down) and it’s an experience that’s left me with a lot to talk about - sadly for the game, not much of that is positive. 

The game is what I would call a ‘grounded platformer’ similar to Limbo or the dozens of other story focused 2.5D platformers that came out around this time. You have to do all the things you’d do in a normal platformer, but unlike something like Mario where you’re presented with a fantastical world to jump around in, in Deadlight you’re jumping around a representation of our real world. Although this time it’s a lot more zombie filled than usual.

Despite the title of this piece, there are some things I enjoyed about this game. Firstly, it looks really good in screenshots. There are a whole bunch of set pieces where the 2.5D nature of the game lends itself to looking really nice.

Also, unlike 90% of zombie games these days, just a single zombie poses a real threat to you. Unlike something like Left 4 Dead where you can just go ham with an axe and get through hundreds of zombies, in Dying Light taking down a single zombie with your axe is a long process that leaves you vulnerable.

This adds some much needed tension to certain parts of the narrative, as you have to judge whether or not it’s worth taking out a zombie in your path before you continue sprinting to safety. 

But, there’s a lot about this game that I didn’t like. First, the story goes on for far longer than it should. There’s a point where one of your allies is chained up and has to keep a zombie away from himself with just his feet.

You have to go around some obstacles to get to him... which takes about 15 minutes to do. Once you get to him, he’s still keeping the zombie at bay with just his feet.

Oh, and then the guy you just rescued needs medical attention - we’d better take a 40 minute trip to a hospital to get him some medical supplies... ignoring the fact that you’ve been finding medkits throughout the game that you’ve never picked up to carry with you.

Oh, and there’s a section of the game set underground with a ‘rat king’ who’s built an elaborate underground city, just for you to parkour all over. This whole section takes another 40 minutes or so, and has no bearing on the plot of the game whatsoever. It’s literally there to just pad out the game.

Deadlight also tries to employ the ‘twist’ narrative feature that a lot of indie darling 2.5D platformers employ. There’s meant to be a moment where ‘everything changes’ but instead you just find out something more about our main character. Sure, from a narrative point of view it’s quite a revelation - but it’s shown through a flashback from before the events of the game.

It’s presented as a major tonal shift in how we view our main character, but in a world with such a bleak tone already, it’s very hard for there to be any kind of tonal shift. You can’t go from brutal and hardhitting to brutal and hardhitting and expect the player to be shocked when you do so.

Oh, and I have to talk about the controls. They’re garbage.

The game wants to be a cinematic experience, but it wants to have all these cool moments be in engine. I can appreciate what they’re going for here, and when it works you feel really cool. All the platforming techniques you’ve learnt come together to help you escape these tense situations. But that doesn’t make up for all the times where it doesn’t work.

You’ll be running away from cool set piece, but then because you did a sprint jump instead of a normal jump, you’ll die and have to do it over again.

Oh, you didn’t realise that you’d just walked into a timed set piece where the building is falling down? Guess you’re getting caught by the falling debris and dying... guess you better try again!

You can chalk a lot of this up to the main character being ‘overanimated’. He’s meant to move in a realistic way, but this just translates to a lot of his animations having ‘locked frames’ where any inputs you make won’t actually translate to him moving in game. This is super frustrating when you’re trying to move quickly and he’s not responding because he’s in the middle of a long stumble animation.

Is Deadlight worth playing? Ehhhh not really.

For being a short game (roughly 6 hours) it still manages to go on for far longer than it should. The platforming is frustrating and the story doesn’t do anything you haven’t already seen in every zombie movie/game ever.

And it’s a shame, because you can see that a lot of effort went into Deadlight. There are moments where you can see the ‘narrative platformer set in a zombie apocalypse’ idea they had shine through.

But you’ve got to wade through a lot of garbage to get there. Far too much to make it a worthwhile recommendation.

... Oh, and they call zombies ‘shadows’. According to the creative director, “they are called shadows because they are a shell of their former selves and they literally look like shadows.” So you know what. Actually, screw this game.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Moving and habits (good and bad)

Recently I was fortunate enough to land myself a really really sweet job in London. The kind of thing I’d really hoped to get, but had been pretty nervous about whether I could actually get it or not.

So, since last month I’ve been living in a totally new city, getting used to new things and trying to fall into a new routine.

Which is my excuse as to why I haven’t been writing on here as much. Which I realise is a bad excuse, which is also why I want to write about this.

I’ve missed getting my thoughts onto the page (as it were) and I feel like I was on the right track with this blog.

I keep telling myself I don’t have the time, despite making plenty of time for more video games. Which is why going forwards, I’m going to make much more of a commitment to this blog. I get exposed to plenty of media, and I genuinely believe that forcing myself to write about the media I consume increases my enjoyment of it. I’m far more critical of what I am exposed to, and with a 50 minute commute (during which I’m not beginning to listen to audiobooks) I’ve got plenty of time to expose myself to new media. New media that I really want to write about.

The biggest regret of not writing for a long period of time is that I tend to work on here in drafts - I’ll start out by writing out the general idea of what I want to get down, and then build on it over time. That way I won’t worry about thinking of something later on, and I can keep the piece ‘on my mind’ while I do other things. I had about 6 different drafts floating around waiting to be finished, and now I’m not sure if I’ll be able to. If the pieces are about my thoughts on something, like a game (Tales from the Borderlands for example) then chances are it’s been long enough since I played it that I’m not confident enough to remember all of it.

Perhaps I’ll come back to some of these articles, but losing them is a good reminder of why it’s so important to keep myself writing. I’ve also experienced other pieces of media since then (such as Stacking and a number of albums) that I can still write about, but not as strongly.

Going forwards, I want to get back into the habit of writing on here. An increase in quantity might lead to a decrease in quality, but I’d like to think that SOME quantity is going to be better than the zero writing I’ve been doing for the past month.

More articles (on anything and everything I’m currently experiencing/thinking about) coming soon! Promise!

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

The writing in 'Remember Me'

In an effort to get through more of my Steam library, I recently played through ‘Remember Me’. A solid 6/10, it’s now a hallmark of a time in gaming where the 3D, action based story game with impressive graphics was at it’s peak. You can see just how much Arkham, Assassin’s Creed and other big budget games of the time fed into Remember Me. But I’m not here to talk about that - Remember Me’s middling levels of quality have been well documented since it’s release.

Instead, I want to focus on the story and the writing in the game.

While the game itself is average in almost every way - it was still enjoyable as an experience. A younger me would have probably enjoyed this game quite a bit more. Similarly to my play through of Red Faction, I was reminded of my Xbox 360 days. However, unlike the cheesy plot of Red Faction, the plot of Remember Me falls on the bad side of bad.

Again, a younger me wouldn’t have criticised the writing in this game. But since I’ve been writing these blog pieces, I’ve started looking more critically at the media I’ve been consuming - for better and for worse.

So what is it that made me dislike the writing in Remember Me so much?

Well, firstly it’s how it’s used to justify the motivations of both the characters and the setting. In a not-so-distant future, everyone has implants that allow them to manually access memories with perfect clarity - creating a dystopian future where memories are used as currency, and losing those memories turns you into a gibbering mess.

People buy happy memories to enjoy that feeling - but it’s never explained as to why you have to buy others, and can’t just re-experience your own.

And here’s the issue - the core concept behind the plot is very cool. I love the idea of an future where memory is such a focus for society. But you can’t get by on just concept, you need to make sure you build the world to accommodate that concept. That’s where Remember Me falls flat.

The plot hits on all the different points you need to build up the world they’ve created. You get to see how average people live their lives... once. You get to see how people buy memories... once.

And all the interesting stuff about how the world came to be like this? You can read about it in collectable text entries. Hmmm.

One of the biggest scenes that I’d point to is a flashback to our main character and her mother in a car. The delivery of the lines is so robotic, I didn’t realise initially that the characters were even related.

Characters talk over each other in such a way that it’s clear the actors had their lines recorded separately.

The games biggest offence comes near the end of the game, when the motivations behind the evil corporation bent on taking over the world. One of them was in a car accident caused by their daughter - which somehow turns them so emotionless that they’re willing to destroy and control human lives. Bear in mind, this car accident didn’t  cause them to lose anyone - nobody close to them died, and she was only injured herself.

The other antagonist of the story has become lost in memories, after succeeding in altering his daughter’s memory to remove all memories of the car crash happening.

Again, this is a car crash that didn’t kill anyone - but was enough to drive him to experiment on his own daughter with untested mind altering technology.

The plot strikes me as one that went through a range of changes - I imagine they had different scenes planned and storyboarded, and the issues arose when they had to put them together. That would explain why characters have their motivations all over the place - the original motivators had to be re-written, but the characters earlier/later scenes couldn’t be adjusted to account for that.

At least, that’s what I’d like to think happened - because to imagine that this is the actual story that the writers wanted to tell is a far more saddening thought.

Based on what I can gather regarding the critical reception of the game, the story seems to be what most people took issue with. And I can see why. It takes what would otherwise be a game with a baseline of quality that comes with a AAA budget, to one that's below average as a whole.

If you’re looking for a bit of a ‘palette cleanser’ between other games in your Steam library, I’d say Remember Me is worth a look - it’s not very long, and like I said, it’s got a baseline of quality simply thanks to the budget that was thrown at it.

But if you’re looking for a cool sci-fi story that explores the idea of memory, you’d be much better served reading one of Philip K. Dick’s amazing novels. So go do that instead!

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Thoughts on One Piece Pirate Warriors 3

I've been reading One Piece since I was in secondary school - and reading weekly since the Impel Down Arc. It’s a series that I’ve maintained my love for, even when my interest in other mangas has dropped off. I’ve read both Bleach and Naruto, and while I enjoyed both, neither of them can hold a candle to One Piece in my eyes. So, it was with high hopes that I went into One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 - and boy were my hopes met.

I've now put about 30 hours into the game, and wanted to get my thoughts down. This will be a shorter editorial than I usually do, as I’ll explain later.

To start, this is my first experience with a 'Warriors' game, having never played any of the previous Dynasty Warriors series. I knew roughly what kind of game it was, and my main exposure to the series has been through listening to Jim Sterling praise the series as a 'guilty pleasure'. After playing enough of this game, I can see why.

These games are all about the action, and here the action is ridiculous and satisfying at almost all times - the amount of power you feel after destroying thousands of soldiers with a single attack is incredible. In the game, you play as one of many characters from the One Piece universe, and are tasked with destroying thousands upon thousands of soldiers through a series of story and themed missions.

Each character that you can play as has the same basic control scheme with regards to movement and basic combos (ala Street Fighter) but each has a different moveset when it comes to their special moves. Some are more interesting than others, but each is worth trying out at least once. Each mission sees you put on a battlefield with territories you need to capture and different characters that you need to defeat - so you run around, unleash some super moves and keep going until all your objectives are complete. And that’s it!

Sure, the game gets repetitive - but playing as some of my favourite characters and blowing away hundreds of dudes at a time with cool, powerful moves is so fun. So, when the core gameplay is so good, I'm more than happy with repeating that gameplay loop over and over. The story mode covers the highlights of the massive One Piece tale through roughly 20 different missions. You can choose different characters depending on the mission you're currently playing too, so you’re not going to be stuck playing as Luffy the whole way through.

And this is where I admit that for a game I've spent so many hours in, I'm finding that I don't actually have a lot more to say. You choose different characters to play as, go on missions that occasionally have different victory/defeat conditions (don’t let a certain area get captured etc.) but other than that, there’s not much else to it.

And yet despite all that, it’s still a game I’ve sunk hours upon hours into - why? Well, it’s because I absolutely loved my first hour with the game, so when I realised that every single hour I spent with the game would be like that, I couldn’t have been happier.

That’s why I’d say that if you're a One Piece fan who's never played a Warriors game before, I'd recommend finding a demo for another game in the series first. Give it a try, and if you're sold on the gameplay after half an hour or so, I highly recommend adding this game to your wish list.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

So I’ve been drafting Modern Masters 2017

Thanks to both me and a friend of mine buying Modern Masters boxes, I had two chances to draft the new premium set of the year. Note that I drafted in a 6 and 7 man pod, so my experience is a little skewed based on that. But I still want to put my thoughts to paper (as it were) on how the set holds up!

In my first draft, I ended up building a Grixis deck full of flyers and removal. Not only that, but thanks to access to 6 guildgates, I was able to run Cruel Ultimatum AND cast it twice. Turns out all that text is very strong in limited. My first pick was a Broodmate Dragon, and I ended up picking up mostly black/red cards... which meant that when I saw that blue was open, I could swoop in and pick up some premium commons/uncommons that were going around the table.

In my second draft, I first picked a Domri Rade and ended up with a 6 rares Naya deck. This deck was the most busted sealed deck I’ve ever had the pleasure of running. With a Ranger of Eos and a Uvelwald Tracker to search up with him, I ended up winning each and every of my matches.

Turns out Fiery Justice is STRONG in limited.

Despite there being another person drafting Naya at the table, I still managed to put together a very strong deck - chalk it up to the luck of the packs.

I’ve heard good things about Shards of Alara sealed, and I can see how the three-colour environment lends itself to an enjoyable draft experience. By beginning with an allied colour pair, it’s easy to move into two different archetypes depending on the kind of colours you see being passed.

I’ll admit I’m not a great drafter, but thanks to this method of drafting, it was much easier to look for open colours - seeing as you only have two possible colours you’re looking to check. Seeing big three colour spells like Cruel Ultimatium make it much easier to see which shards haven’t been picked up yet too.

For example, in my second draft I was firmly in red/green but hadn’t committed to either white or black as my third colour. Seeing a fourth pick Fiery Justice made that decision a lot easier for me!

Sure, it didn’t mean that white was necessarily open - but the specific combination of red, green and white definitely was.

Despite my second draft experience being loaded with great limited rares, I still managed to notice a similar criticism I’ve had with previous masters sets - rares that do nothing in draft.

Don’t get me wrong - I understand the need to reprint something like Zur the Enchanter or Tarmogoyf for constructed reasons, but if you don’t know the format there are some definite traps you can fall into.

For example, in both of my drafts there seemed to be an overabundance of enchantment and artifact removal. And while there are plenty of splicers going around to make enough golem targets for incidental artifact removal justifiable (Thornscape Battlemage is amazing for this) it’s hard to justify running something like Seal of Primordium even as a one-of in your mainboard.

But you also have to factor in that Modern Masters is a premium set - chances are this won’t be your first draft. As long as you know what to avoid, you can have a great time in this environment.

So while everyone is getting excited for Amonkhet, should you go to that one last draft being offered by your local game store?

I’d say as long as you’re willing to take a hit on value (unless you’re one of the lucky ones who pulls the foil mythic...) then an evening of drafting Modern Masters 2017 is a solid investment.

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

So I’ve been playing Hand of Fate

As an avid Magic: The Gathering player, cards and card games in other media are something I’ve found myself gravitating towards. So when I heard about Hand of Fate, i was immediately interested. An RPG with card game elements (deck building, random drawing etc.) sounded amazing! Now, after playing the game for roughly 20 hours, I’ve put together my thoughts!

Hand of Fate was a game I had my eye on since I heard Totalbiscuit discuss it a few years ago - oftentimes I end up agreeing with his opinion on games, so I was very excited to give this one a try. These days, genre mashing seems to be becoming more and more common in games. You’ve got first person shooters with RPG elements (Ala Borderlands) or Rougelikes with shmup elements (Ala Binding of Isaac). However, there aren’t a huge number of games that are adding CCG elements to the mix - something that surprises me.

With all the ‘gamey’ elements of CCGs lending themselves so well to the video game format, it’s a great match if done right - and this great match is what saves Hand of Fate. While the other mechanics in the game are average at best, the card game elements of the game really shine.

So in Hand of Fate, you shuffle up a deck of encounter cards (which you can customize and unlock as you play the game) which are layed out to make a ‘dungeon floor’. You then have to bounce from card to card, managing your health, gold and food - all which engaging in different encounters that require you to make different choices.

Some of these encounters give you new equipment, some of them give you monsters to fight - the mystery of what each encounter will be was a big draw for me. Stumbling across a new encounter and having to work out what you needed to do was always a thrill.

However, the game does eventually start to run out of new encounters to throw at you...  The only issue I’d take with the encounter cards is that for some of them, there is always a correct and a ‘not correct’ option to choose. Once you realise what these are, you’ll always pick the correct one.

What about the story?

In most narratives, it’s easy to talk about how it handles the three-act structure, and how the different characters grow as the plot progresses.

However, due to the nature of Hand of Fate’s gameplay, it’s very tough to actually nail down any sort of story. Everytime you play, you’re experiencing different encounters in the form of cards - it’s alluded to that these are memories of your past life.

As such, these random events can happen in any order, and often happen multiple times. So, your main source of ‘story progression’ is the information provided to you by the dealer.

The dealer is enigmatic, constantly providing sarcastic commentary on your actions. While this was interesting enough for me, I can see where other players (who look for a story to get invested in) would be disappointed with what Hand of Fate offers in this area.

Let’s play some cards!

For the gameplay, I’m going to have to talk about the two different types of gameplay on offer - the card game elements, and the combat gameplay.

You have two decks that you can customise - your encounter deck and your equipment deck. Going on an adventure with a lot of skeletons? You’ll want to load your deck full of equipment that’s strong against them then!

This is just a basic example, but that’s pretty much how the customisation goes. Thankfully, you’re insentiveised to constantly customise your deck, due to how you unlock more cards. You see, once you complete an encounter for the first time, you are given a token. This token will then either unlock new encounters or equipment, or a combination of the two. And of course, the encounters that you unlock will also provide you with tokens once you beat them, and so on.

Outside of the customisation, the actual game plays closer to a roguelike than a traditional RPG. You’re constantly fighting against the random element of the cards you’re dealt - it’s perfectly possible to fail a 20 minute run because you’re dealt a card that just happens to take away more health than you currently have.

This random element does add tension to each session, because death is always a card flip away.

And the combat? It’s budget Arkham style combat, with strikes and counter blows, where you are encouraged to build up a combo by flowing from enemy to enemy. It works fine, but compared to combat systems like Arkham or Shadow of Mordor, it’s basic.

Final thoughts

Despite some frustrating moments due to the random elements of the game, I still had a great time overrall. The progression through the card unlock system was very satisfying, and despite the combat being very simple, it was also satisfying in it’s own way.

If you’re a fan of card games and roguelikes, Hand of Fate comes highly recommended - just be ready to accept a couple of losses to being dealt the wrong cards, and you’ll have a blast!

[thomasyoungwritingwords]

Thoughts on Logan

“A fitting end to the archetypal X-man of cinema”

As a franchise, X-men has had it the roughest out of all the superhero adaptations to film. I’d say that Spiderman is a close second, but even the web-slingers low-points don’t compare to what X-men fans have had to go through over the years.

In the series, one character has always stood out - Wolverine. Despite the wide roster of characters, Wolverine is the only one who’s had not only one, but now 3 films focused on him. And if you look at any of the posters for the non-Wolverine focused X-men movies, chances are Wolverine is prominently displayed regardless.

It’s very fitting then that Jackman’s final film as the character features a amazing performance by him that carries the whole film - while everything around him ranges from awesome to passable.

The plot is solid enough - in the near future, Wolverine is in hiding and trying to make ends meet, until he’s thrown into a chase across the country, looking after a young girl with powers similar to his. It’s simple, but there’s a real sense of urgency to the second act, once the chase begins.

As simple as it is, the plot deals with the persecution and mistreatment of mutants in a better way than many of the other X-men movies have. All the mutants in the film are tortured, experimented on and treated as “things”.

With most of the mutants in the film being children, we’re naturally dawn to sympathising with them - their treatment at the hands of the villains of the film is our main motivation to root for Logan and X-23.

Speaking of which, the villains are fine - just like the rest of the X-men movies, we’re given characters who are villains because of their dislike of mutants. And why do they dislike mutants? Because... the movie needs them to.

We’re told they need to capture X-23 because she’s escaped from their weapon creation programme, and they can afford a whole load of hired mercenaries because they’re a big military organisation I guess?

Really, the villains being who they are is more a requirement of the choreographer than the script writer - but with a choreographer this good, I’m willing to give it a pass.

Choreography is on point throughout, and the action is fast and focused. Each conflict is brutal, bloody and shocking, with Wolverine and X-23 throw themselves into danger like someone with their range and speed would be forced to do.

In extended X-men media, it’s often highlighted that Wolverine is animalistic - this is the first film that portrays that properly, with Wolverine slashing and maiming like a wild animal.

And the fight scenes... my god the fight scenes. This film wouldn’t have survived a lower rating, that I’m sure of. The body count quickly racks up, with lots of nameless military dudes getting hacked, slashed and dispatched. While I might not fully back their excuses for why all these guys are being put in harms way, once the fights start, I quickly stopped caring.

And as should be expected from a cast of this calibre, the performances here are stellar. Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman remain solid as ever - and the supporting cast do a decent job too.

Dafne Keen has a tough job as Laura/X-23, but manages to pull it off as well as I think anyone could. Going from a mute killer to an actual child is a tough sell, and I initially left the theatre thinking her performance was poor.

But the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated the performance for what it was - an attempt to portray a ‘realistic’ childs reaction to the events of the film. She’s tough because she has to be, and slowly comes around to Logan, after seeing what normal society is like. She has a tough time dealing with the horrible situations the movie shows us, because any kid would.

Does this type of portrayal actually work though? Personally, I don’t think they quite managed to pull of what I think they were going for - but I still appreciate that they tried. And by bearing this in mind, I can find her performance much more enjoyable.

So, that’s my thoughts on Logan! I don’t want your take-away of this review to be that I disliked Logan - I actually thoroughly enjoyed it as a portrayal of one of my favourite X-men. Just like the X-men series has often been a vehicle to show us Jackman’s awesome portrayal of Wolverine, this film is another vehicle to show that portrayal.

And compared to the flaming wreckage that is X-3, Logan is a Rolls-Royce.