The odd tale of Starbound

 To boldly go-

Do you like 'Terraria'? You have to, right? All that high adventure action rendered on a Minecraft-like template but plastered on a 2D background, with a much heavier focus put onto combat and gathering loot and building up your flawless gear. In many ways the game was more like a modded game of Minecraft in the often unhinged way the game handled it's progression and top-tier enemies. But you know what the problem is with Terraria? By it's very nature it had to be lesser than Minecraft, in scale. When we're looking at a 2D world you can't really have endlessly generating landscapes else you'll never get the chance to go home again, exploration would take stupidly long. What you really need is an excuse to visit multiple endlessly generated places that were still limited in scope so that 2D explorations don't grow too tedious. Hmm... maybe you could visit different worlds! And travel around in space! Well heck, this almost sounds like more than just an addendum to Terraria, but a whole new game entirely. And so it was with 'Starbound'.

I first witnessed Starbound when I was big into the Minecraft community as a kid. Between updates there would always be that lull period in interest (much as there is now) wherein people would find themselves 'shopping around', as it were, and seeing what the new hotness around town is. Terraria was a well known alternative to Minecraft, but the space between their updates was even larger than Minecraft's. (Which make sense considering each update bought practically an entire new complete circuit of progression and content) It's not that everyone was out there searching for a Minecraft 'replacement', so to speak, we just wanted something to dull the pain of the wait. Custom games were cool time killers, and Pixel Piracy was fun, but then something truly interesting and exciting showed it's face. A game which sounded ambitious, but oh-so tantalising. A game I already introduced. 'Starbound'. It's that game. That's the one.

Back when I first heard about it the game was very much still in active development, but Minecraft and my own distinct lack of game development understanding obfuscated what that really meant to me. Afterall, Minecraft was being developed all the time, and following along with those updates and teases was super cool, so why shouldn't I approach Starbound with that same enthusiasm? I latched onto the winding news as this game wrote and rewrote what it wanted to be, utterly fascinated with watching the inner workings of what I could only assume were a development team with everything figured out and who were on the ball. As I'm poorly foreshadowing, things weren't quite that straightforward and the game would change significantly in it's blueprinting stage to actualisation, as can be expected from an indie game. But none of that means the Starbound, which ended up releasing into Beta, was any less of a hit across the alternative Minecraft crowd.

I, for one, was smitten with the artstyle which was 2d and pixel focused like the aforementioned Terraria, but much more detailed than that game's direction; with very thin, or simply non-existent, black lines, and more complementary and blending colours and picture elements. The artists could create a palette that would bled from, one location to the other, like brush strokes of water paints. On certain planets, when surrounded by trees, or in the middle of a meteor storm, it really does look like some 32-bit portrait come to life in front of you. (Or rather, it might if not for the character sprites, whom I always felt seemed out-of-place in the Starbound environments) Among my circle of friends we'd taken to calling the thing Terraria 2 for that very reason, it just looked like Terraria, but better in most every way. Better in aesthetics, better in scale, better in enemy variety. (Especially with all the behind-the-scenes talking about randomly generated monster parts) All in all, it was perhaps a little unfair for I and others to place this little game that could on such a high pedestal before release, but a stupid kid gets overly excited sometimes, what are ya gonna do?

In concept the game worked out like this. Starbound would let you create a character from the several different available races in the game, and then set you on a space ship orbiting a random planet. Players would then have to scavenge from the planet, mining and refining ores, cutting down trees, unearthing downed technology. There are upgrade paths, which are a tad more rigid then you'd perhaps expect in a title as open as this, but very little in the game really requires you to min max in order to fight it so you're mostly just preoccupied with doing your own thing like making a base, securing a consistent food supply, seeking out rare dungeons for cool decorative items, or just collecting different instruments so that you can play songs that you feed into the game files. (I did that last one a lot.) The base game really did have that 'game without an objective' thing that Minecraft mastered.

When it came to the public, Starbound was a mismatch of ideas and potential design directions that made it look like a world of potential lied before it. On one hand there was a lot of effort and thought put into this organic exploration gating mechanic wherein certain planets and solar systems would require tools to be built and equipped from resources gathered from proceeding planets that are grouped by 'hazard tiers' and 'planet type'. On the other, this free-from design grated against the progression path that really focused around a really cookie-cutter narrative quest chain that I can't imagine anyone wanted or asked for. (and yet remained the only real reason to get to the endgame loot and tools) Lots of toyed about customisation concepts that would have added to the more free-form gameplay loop, such as ship building (or ship combat, though that was only ever a rough idea and never a actual promised mode) ended up being tested and then ultimately scrapped. What started as Minecraft/Terraria in space, slowly became the skeleton of an open world exploration game stuffed into a single player narrative quest game for seemingly no reason beyond, perhaps, creating a more traditional internal roadmap to project completion. 

After that main game was 'completed', the team adopted the development model that it's 'predecessor's had; picking a project to add to the game from scratch and treating that as the next big addition. And it was fine but, me and others who had played the game from the beginning were waiting for the more basic elements which had been removed or reimagined to materialise in the game. Mechs were okay, but I wanted the Universe to be restructured in that natural tiered system they were talking about. (Although, not in the way that it was originally formatted, because that was admittedly stagnant. I see why it was scrapped.) I wanted to make my custom ship, I wanted ambient bosses. (Okay, the last one is actually a big ask, I'll admit) Ultimately, though, after a two or three updates that ranged from 'pretty cool' to... the bounty hunter update; Starbound would be one of the games caught up in the whole 'Chucklefish bad labour practises' controversy and, presumably following a massive falling out from the team, was left to float in limbo. It's an odd case of a game that is finished, with extra content to boot, but never really felt like it's mission statement was achieved, and whatsmore never had a farewell message from the team. Now it's just a well preserved derelict floating around the cosmos, never to be captained again.

I say all this only to end with a recommendation because honestly; the game still is a lot of fun. Perhaps it lacks that fulfilling conceptual ultimatum that the other leaders of the crafting genre have in spades, but it's also nowhere near as much of a mess as the sum of it's parts would suggest. I've spent hundreds of hours playing Starbound over the years and I consider that free-time gainfully wasted in a title I genuinely enjoyed, and if you're a Terraria, Minecraft or even Stardew Valley fan, you'll get something out of this game too, I promise. Whatsmore, the original vision has been something the community tried to build out themselves through a plethora of complex and incredible modding efforts over the years; but I haven't dived too deeply into that world myself yet. But you know, I am feeling that itch to return to the stars once more. Maybe it's time to start a new adventure, destination star bound. (Actually I'm feeling more like a Terraria playthrough first, but Starbound could easily be next.)

China and playtime

 Xi Jinping has gone too far this time

Oh I've bitten down on my tongue for this matter, on a number of principles that felt good and right at the time. First and foremost being that this isn't a political blog, and I think that the very idea of a 'political blog' sounds like the single worst thing humanely imaginable, just behind the concept of Twitter. Secondly, and this was spurred on my other things that I read, I sort of felt like I didn't really have a voice in this matter, not being a citizen of China myself or knowing anyone from there, so who am I to comment on their social edicts? What flies just well for other parts of the world don't always land well everywhere and I think that's totally fine, I'm happy that we have such different ideas for what makes society tick around the world. (providing, you know, the ideas actually have merit and/or work.) But this has gone beyond the pale, Jinping and his CCP have crossed the Rubicon, and what's more it crossed into the realm of gaming and outside of strictly politics from the inception of the story, thus watch me as I expend far too much effort justifying the most tame take of 2021. China's mandate of limiting gaming time to 3 hours a week sucks. (Gasp! Rabble rabble rabble...)

Now first I want to address the obvious point, in that I'm perhaps being a little alarmist with the way I phrased that, and I am. The mandate limiting the amount of time that people play isn't for all gamers, rather it's for children so that they can be programmed into imposing these limitations on themselves into adulthood. (Suppression works so much smoother with a healthy opening does of indoctrination thrown in) And that is the first thing people like to bring up whenever you offer a raised eyebrow to this forced gaming-time limit; "this is for the good of the youth to ensure that they don't become hooked to gaming that may hurt their grades and swallow up all their free time. It's for the children!" And who are we to say that public health mandates made in another country to fit a demographic you aren't part of is draconian? All good points which I accept, there's over a billion citizens in China and I'm sure their perspective on sweeping social policy is influenced by that unique fact. But here's a related question, should policing the free time of children really be the job of the government? Isn't that what the parents are for? I mean- that's why they became parents right? Because they want to raise this human, rather than watch it be raised for them? If this really is all about helping the children and solely about that, then couldn't the same end be reached with much less invasive and degrading measures, such as creating programs to teach parents how and why they should keep and eye on their children's free-time activities? (Maybe Xi just wants to feel like he's in everybody's living room with them, or something, playing Uncle Discipline.)

But wait, isn't this something of a toothless decree. I mean, how could the CCP feasibly enforce such an ungainly and wide reaching policy short of knocking down every door in the country (Which doesn't seem all that feasible given the population numbers.) Well they've actually solved that, because you see; China already had a pretty good stranglehold on all entertainment that can legally enter the country, and their government has the utmost control over entertainment created within their borders. As such, every Tencent game is fitted with a login feature that requires identifying data in order to play a session, proving the age of who's gaming. (As well as handily allowing the government to keep track of all player's gaming times so that they judge and manipulate social credit scores accordingly. This bracketed stuff is alleged, I feel legally obliged to say) Whatsmore, there's talk that logging into these games are starting to all require a live webcam section to the login so that details can't just be lent out to kids, the player will be clearly visible to... who? Will there be an AI checking ages with facecam footage? Do they have a team dedicated to just this task? Is Xi Jinping himself taking the opportunity to spy on gamers in their most vulnerable state like a creep? Who can say?

Now you might wonder, given that this effectively makes it impossible for any significant playtime to be racked up by young players, how the internal games companies are reacting to the time bans. Well if you wish to take state funded and run industries at their word, and who doesn't, then we can see the results on their profits are largely negligible. Tencent claimed only a measly margin of the money they make is off the back of children, and tossed away potential shortfalls with the carefree abandon of someone who's bills are covered by the government they serve. They're making enough money not to be wound up by these measures, but considering how every company on this diseased, greying, earth is forever in pursuit of all the money; I have to wonder if there are true, unspoken, thoughts bubbling away in the studios. (EA has shown just how profitable catering to children can be, afterall)

But if we're going to come down on real reasons, or rather the best assumptions we can make on the topic regarding the evidence to hand, then things become interesting. Whilst 'protecting the minds of our youth' seems like a noble goal, well- let's just say that nobility hardly makes for believable motivation when we're talking about a government who happily courts human rights violations on the regular. (Or at the least, that would be hugely hypocritical) Instead I think we saw a sliver of the truth leak out in a now infamous state article which attacked video games, tanking stock and spurring Chinese games companies to drastic measures. This article used a very specific term to describe gaming. "Spiritual Opium". A clear reference to the way that the British historically broke and addled the Chinese youth with the opium trade, resulting in several wars. An understandable reason for persisting animosity between China and the West. But what does that mean for the way they view video games? Well I think it's pretty clear, China see it as product of influence from the West that threatens CCP influence. At it's heart this isn't about the mental wellbeing of any children, this is about control. 

Recently this came to a head in my eyes when it was discovered that Chinese censors had made changes to the designs from outside the country in order to curve what they label as 'effeminate' characters. Actually, this push goes beyond gaming and into all cultural influences entering the country, but we have an example from the gaming world too. This is just another piece of evidence, if you needed it, that the CCP are so invested in managing their citizen's lives that they must dictate the very concept of what it is to be 'male' in order to appease some pathetic antiquated stereotype that they deem to be 'moral'. Too much chest showing? That's not manly. Wearing pink? None of that. Long hair? Better cut that down to regulation length now. It's not hard to see the unspoken attack on homosexuality barely hidden under these dictations, alongside the much more predictable disparaging of non-conformity in general. 

These are the sorts of standards that the CCP stands for, archaic and repressive as they sound, and those who buy into their narrative of 'positive social reform' and 'proactive policy establishment' merely need to look beyond the headlines. Again, this isn't a political blog, and so every opinion I share is primarily directed to the way these people view art and gaming, but when it bleeds into the real world like this I can't just ignore it. I think the idea of 'negative effeminacy' really struck a cord with me because I immediately reflected on how policy-makers like this would view a property I supremely love, like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Most every member of the Jojo cast, main or side, are always depicted with lavish extravagance and eye-popping colours, often whilst posing like supermodels. Also, most of them are male. It's a style that often runs hard against the stoic, boring, tough-guy model of the stereotypical 'manly man', and yet I respect that image a lot more than I do of the dull male protagonists of most other anime. A microcosm of this debate, perhaps, but I feel that has a relevant place in this conversation, because I believe that 'masculinity' is in no way limited to something as vapid and ephemeral as how you look and act, but instead is derived from the strength of your character. And besides, what's a cuddly little Pooh-bear like Xi Jinping know about how to be a manly man anyway? His evenings are no doubt spent curled up in a ball under his bed with a comically large terracotta jar inscribed with the title 'Hunny'.

So now we can come back on the whole 3-hour time limit on video gaming and see what it actually represents. It's an identification of gaming, as they have already done before with other forms of art, as an act of expression that runs counter to the goals of the government, however they specifically pan out. (I don't claim to know the inner workings of the Chinese government's hivemind, I can only paint broad strokes.) It's action made to try and exorcize gaming, and other societal influences, from the routines of children in the hopes that they don't pick them up as an adult. And it's an attack on individual freedoms. Now perhaps the Chinese public don't hold 'personal freedoms' to the same standard as the rest of the world, and I don't mind them viewing things that way. They may be utterly happy with the rulings and what it represents. I, however, look upon it all and see a poor policy, established in bad faith, to dubious ends. (Yeah, I have a feeling I'm not going to get approved for that vacation to Shaanxi anytime soon...)

He lives

 In a pineapple under the Sea

I'm trapped in a supposedly lovable hamlet known as 'The Pineapple Under the sea', with my worn-down mouse clicker and underdeveloped child-brain. I'm desperately commanding a weirdly 3D yellow Sponge around a flat world reminiscent of one of my favourite TV shows. Nothing seems to add up, every item elicits the same lazy responses. I can't leave the house. All I want to do is get outside and start living that 'adventure' which the game box promised. What was on that box again? Something like a Krabby-wagon flying out of an explosion. Where were either of those two elements? I'd never quite grow into the biggest lover of point and click adventures, but our relationship together is never quite as frayed as it is now. With the haze of more than twice my life span of perspective, it feels like I struggled for weeks, and being a stupid kid I just might have, but the result was me putting down the game with a huff and never buying a SpongeBob game again. So what I'm trying to say is that me and gaming Spongebob ain't exactly the tightest knit pair.

But switch that up for the TV show baring the same name, and man I am a Sponge freak. (Or rather I was. I stopped watching long enough ago not to remember and yet not long enough ago to still retain any respectability) Steven Hillenburg's cartoon was one of those few shows out there which was fun and silly enough to appeal to me at pretty much any age, and never really slipped and make itself feel dated. And that's despite one of the very first, and most enduring, jokes it tells being based around a famous French marine researcher who wouldn't have been familiar to children when the show started and is still only mildly familiar to me now as a trivia note. But Spongebob didn't care about relevancy or slipping right into the exact scene which was popular to the kids at that age; the show just wanted to tell jokes they thought would be funny. (As it turns out, that is the most evergreen approach to a kid's show. Who'd have thought?)

When Steve Hillenburg died, it was the quite the gut-punch even for people who, by that point, had moved on from the show in their lives, just because the sheer proliferation of the image of Spongebob as an immutable totem of childhoods everywhere had become rigidly implanted. It became a real litmus test, if that were ever even needed, for what generation one was on for how they reacted to the news, those who cared really felt it, those who didn't seemed utterly perplexed why the death of some cartoonist was news. (But then would act aghast and demand reaction when one of their celebrities died. Sorry, I'm not trying to go 'us versus them' on this.) The ultimate culmination of this, to me, being the request from fans to honour Hillenburg through a skit during the Superbowl halftime show, for there was actually a Spongbob song entitled 'Sweet Victory' which depicted the show's own version of the Superbowl halftime. A simply insane suggestion to any of the stodgy jackets who actually ran the Superbowl, but supremely sensible and a well hearted gesture to fans. So do you know what they did? They kicked of the Halftime show with a half second from the beginning of 'Sweet Victory', and then switched to Travis Scott, a more profitable choice, a move which was both supremely disrespectful and largely insulting.  

The reason that I mentioned and went into great detail spelling out that history for you, is because I want you to know (or if you already knew, then to remember and keep readily to mind) the significance of that song. Because it takes some real confidence, for a couple of reasons, for a brand new Spongebob game to crawl out of the wilderness and hit us squarely with that particular song throughout the length of the footage. It adopts the lofty assumption that this is the respectful game to honour Hillenburg's series in the very way that mainstream NBA laughed and scoffed at, alongside just being a song declaring 'victory' before the game has even received a release date. (Premature, sure, but confidant.) All of which has called out of me a more critical eye then I perhaps might have held for a new Spongebob game, as this is something which now has to stand and deliver; for it's own good.

'Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake' is looking to position itself as the long awaited (at least by me) spiritual successor to 'Battle for Bikini Bottom', a game just recently remastered by THQ Nordic. In a move proving that THQ aren't jealously hoarding all of these old IPs just for remastering purposes, they've dedicated themselves a new 3d platformer, in a age so desperately spare on those games, which will take us all over the series' world and confused history. You've seen the trailer, (of if you haven't then you should, it's worth a look) and therefore you've seen how just about every single significant costume-change episode the show has ever pulled has been teased with references or Easter eggs. Already you can tell that this is going to be a game which tries to cover everything a Spongebob fan could want to see, and despite my instinctual trepidation for companies around THQ's size, I'm a little bit buzzed reading about all of it. Not going to lie.

Some of my personal fondest moments in youth were from playing Battle for Bikini Bottom, and it was actually in the wake of falling in love with that game where I first tried to design my own game. Albeit, that was a Boardgame that I was planning out on Microsoft excel and the thing was terrible because I was an idiot kid, but I guess the idea must have stuck because I'm still trying to make games nearing on twenty years later. (Oof, that hurt to write. Almost twenty years. Jeez) And though the Spongebob movie game (referenced at the head of this blog) inexplicably remains the first thing my mind goes to whenever I think 'Spongebob game', my brain is more and ready for that subconscious spot to be supplanted by a sleek modern follow-up which completely shakes up the scene. (So no pressure there, THQ Nordic, you're just working to save my subconscious from itself.)

We've already got something of an event synopsis to base our expectations on: some fortune teller gives Spongebob a wish granting device and sends him off to explore 7 distinct wishworlds in search of, adventure I guess, who cares. It's a nice traditional set-up for a 3d action platformer like this and it lays plenty of opportunity for stark design choices that can make each level stick out with flavour and flair, should potential be reached. In my most charitable estimation, I could see something like this achieving the fun-factor of the Kingdom Hearts 1 world set-ups, where you're jumping into wholly new environments, and even modes of play, between locations. (At the very least I think it would be amazing if THQ could copy Kingdom's Hearts' shifting HUD which changes to match the setting of the area) What has been unmentioned so far in this feature list, which I hope is only absent because it's so obvious that it hardly bares mentioning, are collectibles. We have those right? If this is a Battle for Bikini Bottom successor, there has to be collectibles. (I won't belabour the point, I'm sure THQ know that)

So I'm an optimist, clearly, when it comes to this title despite being given the whole 'no gameplay in the trailer' trick, because I'm just caught up in the whirlwind that promises to be another solid Sponge outing to slowly wash the bad taste of that movie game from my mouth. (Oh and for defenders of the movie game, try and remember that I'm talking about the awful PC version. It can't even be called a port, it's so starkly different.) Between this, the slow revival of the Destroy All Humans series and the upcoming brand new DLC for the Kingdoms of Amalur Remaster, THQ Nordic are really starting to pay off all of these licences that they went around acquiring and it's beautiful to see. All I want now, and this is a desperate plea, do something with that Timesplitters IP you've got in there, come on guys...

Blizzard's done it again!

Mamma Mia

"Blizzard's changed!", is a sentence that the old guard over at that beleaguered and battled video game company desperately want to hear come out of the mouths of their many emboldened detractors over the next few weeks. They're moving to extremes in order to do anything that is performative enough that it'll force their vilification status to automatically reverse so that they can go back to normal society without the looks, the condemnation, and most of all, the silent boycotts. But one has to wonder, and one does, how far Blizzard can really go to save their previous reputation when they really should be focusing on the future. I mean, for the purposes of the performance I know it really helps to be able to point to meaningless actions in the now and go "Here, look! Our company is on the up and up now!" but from where I'm standing it just looks like the more they try and prove themselves with the worthless, the more it just looks like they'll be unwilling to fix the actual bad stuff when it rears it's ugly head. (Because why bother? They've already done the thing, no?)

The big issue they have to turn people around on, and the thing which is looming over them like a guillotine right now, is the perception that the culture over at Blizzard has been deeply sexist and unpleasant for female employees. This has been their open secret which the company-proper did absolutely nothing internally about, even as other bigger companies were facing their own meltdowns due to similar or identical issues. What I'm trying to say is, there really is no way that Blizzard could worm their way out of this by feigning ignorance, and that may be the reason why they sent out Brack to bite the big one from the masses in lieu of the rest of the company. Negligence this pronounced demanded blood and this was their way of living up to the bloodthristy crowds. But does it really solve the heart of the problem? Guess it didn't for Blizzard because they decided to go deeper.

Wait, did I say 'Deeper'? I meant to say 'Dumber'. Twice now I've seen little pop up stories about how, in the wake of everything, Blizzard have decided to remove provocative or in-any-way sexual content from World of Warcraft. Which, and this is crucial, achieves nothing. How does going puritanical on stupid low-res portraits address the rampant misconduct that was occurring in the real world? It almost seems like a backhanded temper tantrum from the employees, as if they're saying "Oh what, we can't sexually harass our colleagues anymore? Harrumph! Well then I guess all sex is outlawed now- you heard them, guys; cover up your Draenei, bare skin is illegal." See, I wasn't exaggerating when I called their effort 'performative' now was I?

Another response to this whole affair is admittedly a little bit bigger and even slightly relevant, but it also achieves a bit of the Streisand effect, which anyone with a working frontal cortex would have known was coming from a mile away, but we're talking about Blizzard here. (I'm not surprised) You see, Jessie McCree from Overwatch is having his name changed. Why? Because that name was derived from the real life Jessie McCree who worked for Blizzard and was a total creep to his fellow workers. Thing is, I didn't even know the character was related to a real guy, and neither did a lot of people, which means that in an attempt to prevent this man from receiving a spotlight he doesn't deserve, they've signal boosted his existence to anyone who's wondering why McCree is now called- wait, what was it- McCloud? Oh for the love of- That's Star Fox's name you morons, come up with your own crap! (Now we just have to wait until Overwatch 2 comes out so the name change can come into effect. 2040 here I come...)

But since we're on the topic of 'Blizzard making amends for wrongdoings' how about we circle back around to the debacle that Blizzard was in just before all of this? You remember, the one where they were accused of censoring free speech during the crackdown of Hong Kong in order protect their own vapid corporate interests? Effectively erasing a crisis which has since spiralled into a leading cause of many human rights violations including false imprisonment, suppression of freedoms and, allegedly, deaths. Yeah, Blizzard just sort of came out and say they stood proud alongside all of that, whilst not just squandering, but actively stepping on and squashing, an opportunity to give a voice to those who needed it. Now one might say "They're a video game company, how is it their job to promote activism?"  However, standing up for the Hong Kong people would have been totally in line with the very many moralistic standards that the company had claimed to represent for years now. In their hostility, they revealed how empty all that grandstanding was.

And the reparation for that was- what again? No I'm being serious, what did Blizzard do in order to make up for spitting in the face of a real-life fight against oppression? Because I could be wrong, but I feel like it was nothing. Oh, I mean they dragged out Brack, back when he was still around, to voice some hollow platitudes from an expired can of party apologies; but what about actual policy changes? Well, like I said, they did nothing, which does mean that they stood by and let gormless Blizzcon attendees rant about Hong Kong on a hot mic for however long they wanted, something so meaningless for everyside involved it's hardly worth mentioning, but aside from that they adopted the age-old, 'if we ignore it, it'll go away'. And luckily for them it did, unfortunately karma kicked in and they got done for housing a bunch of pervs instead.

Yet the performance doesn't stop. (At least, not that quickly it doesn't.) For the latest step in this waltz has involved the newly worked upon, and at the point of this publishing 'released', Diablo 2 Resurrected and how people should approach it. You see, on one hand it's a faithful and gorgeous recreation of what is widely considered the best ARPG ever made and thus an absolutely must-own for Diablo fans. On the otherhand, it's being distributed by Blizzard, so you'd be giving those weirdoes money. As it just so happens, Diablo's director chimed in on the whole affair with the comment "it was defiantly very troubling to hear these types of things." (Ahh, distancing yourself from the company's biggest open secret in the first sentence! Classic. This guy's a pro.) Apparently he also commanded players to "do what they feel is right", but I can't seem to find the conversation that was said in quoted anywhere so I'm going to call that a contested quote. If he did say it, then that's probably the first open and honest way that Blizzard have conducted themselves in the wake of everything, reminding players of the responsibility of their wallets and spending power. If he didn't, then that would be line with the way that the design team covered up the Barbarian's hips for cheap 'we're doing the right thing' points.

Floundering and insincere though it may seem, Blizzard are trying to shift their perception into a company that knows how to behave; they just simply have no idea how to go about doing it. Most of their bizarre censorship attempts can be too easily construed as some puritanical purge in order to bring their content to a standard better fitting the 60 year old suits over at Sony, rather than a serious try to show how much they respect woman in the workplace. What the heck does Diablo II's barbarian's hips have to do with the workplace anyway? It will be interesting to see how many people actually buy these papier-mâché olive branches, and how many more are left scratching their heads in bewilderment at this Spongebob-level display of miscomprehension. Either way, Diablo 2 is still going to sell like pancakes, so who ultimately cares? 

Postal II

Somehow less cringe than Saints Row 3

Games that scrape the very edges of taste are hardly a new invention conjured out of the sky, and before the likes of 'Hatred' and 'Ra-' actually I'm not going to write the name of that second one- (If you don't know it, then be glad I'm sparing you) there existed a very real possibility that a game could challenge the concept of acceptable storytelling and still be somewhat fun. I mean it was rare, I say suddenly remembering the existence of the old classic 'Custer's revenge', the apparently well-meaning 'Active shooter', and the decidedly less well-meaning 'Ethnic Cleansing', but there were a few decent controversial floating around over the years. If you've never heard of a game that was controversial for it's content and not it's quality before, then let me apologise for this being the way you found out. I can imagine you scanning those titles with blood draining from your face as you ask to the heavens "Just who's making these things anyway?" But as I'm trying to establish, it's not all black-hearted garbage tier trash made by people who barely know how to string a line of code together. (Heck, 'Active Shooter' even had multiplayer! Damn, I'm not helping my case...) If there's one game which should be the standard to which all these types of games should aspire to... well at the very least match, it should be Postal.

Or rather Postal II. I've never played Postal 1 in my life and I never really considered it's existence until just the other day when I was researching the series again and noticed it was recently remastered. (It actually looks like a top-down predecessor to 'Hatred', I wonder if that's where those weirdos got their inspiration...) The Postal series is actually a simple premise, it's a game that puts you in the shoes of an irreverent hobo-level version of a Duke Nukem like character called 'The Postal Dude' and places him in a situations to inspire him to go 'Postal'. The controversy would start there, of course, as the term 'going Postal' is derived from some real life instances of US Postal workers having psychotic breaks and proceeding to commit murder, usually several counts of it. But, considering even Terry Pratchett has made a reference to it in one of his projects, I'd hardly call it the worst of the worst in terms of offensive names. It's mostly just an expression now, split from it's ancestral routes.

I always heard of Postal 2 growing up as this game with a sort of legendary reputation, one of those true classics of the age that simply must be played, and therefore one of those games that either turns out to really deserve its idolisation or one who's age has begun to show. I was much too young to be seeking my own games out when the thing first came out, and so I came it to much later with the weight of expectations behind me, and the insistences from various other people that this game was just 'hilarious', and so I approached with quiet the long list of pre-conceived notions already present. And the takeaway? The game is nowhere near as funny as so many out there seem to think, as you could probably have guessed. A lot of it's topics are supremely, intentionally, dated and the quips from the Dude have almost aged as badly as Duke Nukems', except the Dude was always supposed to kind of be that pathetic figure you looked down upon, so it stands the test of time just that tiny bit better than the Duke does.

Yet that isn't to say the game isn't full of funny moments, it's just not in the writing. Speaking much to this game's strength, the absurdity and outrageous nature of the actual gameplay moments in this semi-freeroam living-world simulator are fantastic. I have memories of doing insane things like chasing around drug dealers with nothing but a never ending stream of urine to battle them with, using the actual game mechanic of picking up a cat and sticking it on the end of your gun, barrel up the butt, to act as a silencer, or simply running around a church with a pair of loppers and leaving a covenant full of armless preachers in my wake. (I genuinely have no excuse for how I ended up doing that last one, they just gave me the loppers and that's how things turned out. Don't blame me, blame the violent tools! Unless they only become violent tools because they were placed into my hands... Oh god, the circle logic is drowning me!)

So at this point you might, quiet rightly, be asking something along the lines of "what?", "What the heck?" and "Are you feeling okay, you sort of sound like a psychopath", to which I'd say that you're starting to pick on the dark twisted fun that 'Postal' can be at it's best. Set in the town of Paradise, Arizona; Postal II follows the exploits of goatee-haver 'The Dude' and his dog Champ as they try to make it through a full week of doing chores for his wife. We're talking basic chores, from picking up groceries, to returning library books to- getting Gary Coleman's autograph? (I said these references were dated) The game presents these tasks with the promise; 'you could go through the whole week, and therefore the game, without killing a single person!', which clues you in right-fast that practically none of these tasks are going to go to plan. But even then, you're likely not prepared for how off-the-rails things get.

I'm talking about the sort of events that are The Dude having to go around town and get signatures for a petition, but ending up being insulted and spat-at by most of the people he approaches; so just a simple encounter to test your patience. Or visiting the development studio of Running With Scissors only to be simultaneously assaulted by a wave of protestors who campaign against the violent leanings of the gaming market by enacting violence against the Dude. Or maybe you just want to go to the library, only to be attacked by a mob who set the place on fire and try to murder you. As you go on throughout the game it becomes less and less of a question about whether or not you're violent or a pacifist, as the game presents it, and more of a conundrum along the lines of "Okay I'm actually being attacked here and should probably defend myself." Although you can absolutely over-react to people being mean to you on the street by pissing on them until they vomit and then setting them on fire, it's really up to you. And then there's the notoriously dour ending of Postal 1 which implies that The Dude is deeply schizophrenic, opening up the possibility that maybe every situation is imaginary and The Dude is just a mass murdering psychopath who flips out over imagined sleights. Am I reading too much into this? I might be reading too much.

All that being said, going into a game like this it's important to remember that it came out in 2004, and that means the first-person aiming mechanics are decidedly archaic and, honestly, kind of bad. Although I should say, that's bad by modern standards, if you're used to games from that era then you won't find anything objectional in the pointing and shooting. The healing mechanic is kind of annoying too, which you likely could have deduced from the moment I wrote the words 'healing mechanic.' Yes, this is a living world game with health that doesn't regenerate, because that wouldn't exist as a standardised game mechanic for several years more, and instead you're forced to use healing items like- a crack pipe. (Okay, that's a little funny.) Postal II is certainly dated, in it's presentations, it's mechanics and it's writing, but there's still some special spark of unique charm underlying the whole thing too.

Whilst The Black Eyed Peas might hold up this game as a testament to the worst the world has to offer, (I'm not kidding, this game appears in their video for 'Where is the Love?') I regard it as dumb, but also a fertile springboard for a whole bunch of fun nonsense. Heck, the game garnered such a cult following that it was still receiving fresh content nearly 11 years later and even had the honour of being scapegoated in a real-world mass robbery court case. (I thought only GTA had reached that level of fame.) Of course, it's still a bit of a mess, and I would be no means call this an unmissable classic. Heck, I haven't even finished the game myself (the aforementioned library scene was just so annoying I gave up) so I can't even review the thing. But if you're bored of the mainstream play-it-safe slate of games and want to dip your toe into the other end of the spectrum, the Postal games may just be the titles for you. (Just don't, if you can even find it, play 3. That's a whole other blog's worth of crap.)

It's horrifying- but we need the Elder Brain Dragon in Baldur's Gate III

 Why do I court pain with such glee?

As when it comes to any large scale cultural stable, there's always a route of influence one can follow in order to pit see the evolutionary tract and genesis of modern entertainment or societal trends. Such is the case with the humble 'Role Playing Game' and the heart of Dungeons and Dragons that beats not-so-deep within that chest of theirs. That Tabletop game has remained one of the most well known and enduring pop-culture brands of all time, and unlike many with a history as long as theirs, Wizards of the Coast have endeavoured to forever keep Dungeons and Dragons resplendent with new editions, new content, and even iterations of their classic game system translated to new media. (Some of it is even good! The movies are not an example of that, however. Please stop with the movies.) My connection to Dungeons and Dragons is through the video game tracts, of course, thus I do find myself peeking in on what the original table top has going on for it in order to catch glimpse of things that could, or should, be disseminated to the other branches of DnD. And lately, oh boy have we seen a preview worth talking about.

The latter part of this year has seen plenty of teases from the tabletop side of DnD for quite the exciting reason, a new source book is in development and should be arriving before too long. Sourcebooks are essentially materials worth of DnD lore, be it characters, classes, historical events, or creatures that can serve as lore repositories for the thousands of Dungeon masters across the world as they make their games. Of course, part of the fun of DnD is that the adventure is your own and that anything read in a guidebook is subject to the whims of the DM and their decisions about whether or not it'll stay, but by putting out inspiration-sources every now and then, Wizards can help ensure that most stories still end up around the basic familiar framework that is Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe the game will be set on a homebrew new plane of existence, with brand new characters and world events, but if the creatures and combat are still somewhat based on the DnD source material, it's still their game deep down.

New sourcebooks can be exciting for everyone, a chance for whole new crazy concepts and ideas to help further enrich our imaginations or even, sometimes, to help expand upon our favourite DnD properties. The recent DnD campaign book 'Decent into Avernus', for example, was set within the city of Baldur's Gate, and at least partially touched upon events following those two games and acting as a prequel to the third. (So it's not all about feeding imagination, sometimes we get some cold, hard, lore bits) This coming book is not so story-heavy, however, 'Fizban's Treasure of Dragon' more acts as sort of a reference book which will go into great detail in explaining the many various different types of dragons that can appear within the DnD world, with some old favourites from previous editions of DnD bought back into the canon, and some brand new monstrosities drummed up from the pits for good measure. 

Given the name of the game I'd imagine you don't find it too hard to imagine that Dragons are some of the most sought after creatures whenever it comes to expanding the lore, thus this has been a book of particular interest around the community. And for me, I've always been drawn to the narrative concept of 'dragons' and the typically final, sometime even pathos-heavy, role they serve within the 'hero's journey' archetype. And much more mechanically than that, I really like killing dragons in CRPG games, there's a primal thrill which comes from besting some huge, ageless, timeless beast with a motley crew of misfits that just can't be beat! So I'll admit to being interested in the new dragons, what kind of cool things they have going for them, and so a little preview of a couple aired in Dragon+ really caught my attention. Actually, it was one in particular. The one from the title. The Elder Brain Dragon.

So I probably just put a picture of the thing next to this paragraph. You see that? You've absorbed all what's going on there? Let me explain what you're looking at. So 'Elder Brains' are well known as the last stage in the life cycle for the Mind Flayers. (The lean, tentacle men from DnD that are based on Lovecraft's Cthulu) They are essentially giant brains, usually suspended above a pool of brine and baby illithid tadpoles, that serve as living centres of Mind Flayer cities. For how terrifyingly powerful just one of these brain eating monsters can be, going against an Elder Brain is like squaring up to an entire cities-worth of them, because often-times the hive mind of the Mind Flayer collective is centralised within the Elder Brain's sinewy neuro pathways, and so those blood-chillingly iconic psychic abilities are amplified tenfold from the brain. Now throw that ontop of a dragon and you have the worst thing ever.

You see, one of the only things that mark the weakness of an Elderbrain is the fact that for all of their power, they are immobile. They have to be kept forever suspended above a pool lest they are stranded. Also it's a brain, you typically don't want adventures whacking those with their pointy sticks. Only with the Elder Brian Dragon that is no longer the case. Fused with the being in some unknowable eldritch ritual, the guide describes the union thusly; "The Elder Brain forms a sac on the dragon's back and covers it with membrane and tentacles- it also extends tentacles into the dragon's brain to take control of it's body" So that's... horrible. One of the worst parts of this combination, if any of this is worse than the other parts, is that the dragon's breath now consists of a stream of brine with tadpoles. (significant because Illithid tadpoles are the things which worm into people's brains and begins to turn them into new Mind Flayers) This is an end of campaign boss even for a game based around Dragon Slaying, it's an Avengers level threat, it's the worst of the worst of the worst. And I want it in Baldur's Gate III.

For those who've somehow avoided it, don't worry I won't go into spoilers, but Baldur's Gate III has positioned itself heavily around the lore of Illithids, to the point where the logo is a Mind Flayers face sprawled around the roman numerical three. These tentacle lads are key to the story, their forced tadpole-fuelled metamorphism literally forms the main impetus for the first chapter of the plot and it very much seems like they're destined to be the final boss of whatever grand scheme is in wait for BGIII. But here's the thing, we've already seen Mindflayers in Baldur's Gate. 2 had a couple cities worth of them, and even a one-on-one fight with a an Elder Brain itself, and their species didn't even have a significant stake in that plot. So how will BGIII up-the-ante now that they have centre stage? How about by introducing an Illithid presence so horrifyingly powerful and unstoppable that no one in the Dungeons and Dragons community has ever faced it before? How about- the Elder Brain Dragon!

Of course, mechanically this would be a little weird as Baldur's Gate III has already been in full production for a few years and this Dragon book hasn't yet released but I have to think that Wizards of the Coast have lines of communication with Larian and it would be incredibly cool if the two studios envisioned this monster together. What's more, I'd seriously love to see something so gross envisioned in the cinematic style of BGIII, all grotesque and stomach-churning as it preens with the gaudy grace of a peacock, whilst stomping charred and malformed bones into the ruins of the Elfsong Tavern, all of which is just enough to make our adventurer seriously wonder "Am I really that invested in saving this place? Maybe it's just Baldur's Gate's time to go." (And god knows how much of a sucker I am for boss fights so tough that I tear my hair out) So there's my pitch. Either give us this as a final boss of the main game in BGIII or save it for DLC. (The latter proposition terrifies me, though, because if it's in the main game then Larian have to at least attempt to balance the thing.)

Cult of the Lamb

 Hell is other farmyard animals

Devolver Digital is ever the gushing receptacle for endless onslaughts of some of the best Indie games that you could hope to catch a glimpse of. If you're just looking to play something new and don't know exactly what this is, you just need to sit down for one of their conferences and you'll come away with an entire shopping list's worth of 'to buy' games. That's actually one of the reasons why it can be so hard to cover their E3 and Gamescon presence, so many interesting games with so few details, there's little more perspective I can add other than "Ohh" and "ahh". (Not that I'll stop myself from providing just that when there's a game which really steals my breath away) But then I'll slip up and see something fly past my face and instantly fall in love and then I have to talk about it and that's why we're all here today. But what is it about Cult of the Lamb which made me stop and look it up? Why this game and none of the others? That's actually very simple...

Helluva Boss is the reason why. If you haven't been watching that, Helluva Boss is a adult-oriented animated webseries which is so much better than those collection of tags imply. It's a project of several talented artists from all walks of life coming together to create something outside of the purview of any of the major animation studios and therefore allowed be a bit more 'out there'. Helluva Boss and it's currently unaired sister show 'Hazbin Hotel' both star twisty denizens of Hell and present all kinds of hellish locations, people and skewered moralities under that spotlight. And I love it. Every single frame of it. Every flawed character, every tucked-away background joke, every surprisingly well produced song, the whole package. Thus, as you can imagine, smothering myself with the show has really given me a taste for animated hell; just in time for Cult of the Lamb to waddle up to me and tempt me with it's satanic cartoony wiles.

Wreathed in a art style I'm going to call 'adorably twisted', Cult of the Lamb tells the rather simple tale of a lamb starting a cult. What? What did you expect? Maybe a demonically possessed lamb who strikes out in a wild and strange land to summon an army of devotees in the name of the mysterious quad-armed entity who saved his life? I hope so, 'cause the game's about all that too. But that window dressing is all well and good, what has me up and away so far is the visual design because, as I implied, they struck all the cords I just finished stringing over the past month. Just watching the trailer and seeing these adorable little anthro-animals raise their arms as their eyes roll into the back of their skulls and turn blood red is fantastically hilarious to me. It calls upon that same vein of sweet corrupted comedic absurdity as the Woodland Critters from South Park, I love it.

Another interesting aesthetic direction was taken with the way that the actual gameplay is envisioned, and you ought to know by now how much of a sucker I am for different and unique art directions. Functionally this is very familiar, it's a cartoon-flat angle-down perspective hack and slash with a lot of bright colours and gloriously hideous enemy design. But just with a lot of scroller games this year, there's a mix of art styles that are colliding in a cool way. You see, the actual stage environments are drawn with proper depth to them whilst the characters and foreground objects are purposefully drawn completely flat, as though up against the page of a comic, giving this very subtle effect that makes the foreground items almost look like cutouts placed atop the stage. This is emphasised with long shadows and choice lighting effects that collate together to achieve a style that reminds me, at least, of a stage play production. (Whether that'll come to anything within the actual plot of the game is anyone's guess.)

Core gameplay seems to be your usual affair of slicing and dodge rolling, with a pace to it that I find oddly reminiscent of Moonlighter. (I wonder if this will be one of those games that'll ask you to adopt a 'glass canon' sort of playstyle.) Although if I'm being honest it's the cult building which still has my attention here. Snippets of the trailer show the player cutting down trees and erecting vegetable patches, almost like something you'd expect from Animal Crossing, only in this game the focus of this little town is around a grotesque monstrous idol with weeping black gunk eyes that the villager-animals prostrate themselves before in reverence. And just to bring things back around to the deliciously dark, we see our lamb protagonist brutalising and poisoning some of his own cultists under the tag "Beware of false prophets." It's so charmingly twisted, I just can't help but smile everytime I learn more!

And that is about the high and low of Cult of the Lamb. These indie games don't typically come along with grand promises and speculation vehicles in order to get tongues wagging in perpetuity, they are what they are. Can you tell how much I find that refreshing? I've touched on it but there's just a rolling snow drift of games that promise to be the sky and the moon, banking those promises on ever swelling teams of disassociated programmers or literal blank cheques of development costs. (Looking forward to watching 'The Initiative' and it's AAAA games fall apart spectacularly.) When as a consumer, I get just as much out of spying these little games that do something singular and do it well. Cult of the Lamb is concerned with corrupting the cute and innocent. Great. Rock that.

It goes to show how important it is for a company like Devolver Digital to exist for propping these games up, because they encourage a future for game development that isn't barrelling towards ever more unsustainable ballooning projects. And maybe somewhere along the way we can see a reflection of how wrong Playstation is to shirk these very same developers in favour of their pursuit of gaming 'perfection'. Heck, we've already seen the wear it's starting to have, now that Sony is pushing for £70 games and calling it a justifiable response to the huge development costs that they themselves readily incurred! If only lower budget and smaller games factored into their sales models so that they wouldn't be straining their goodwill with their customers like this... (I'd call that 'food for thought', if I ever believed for a second that such an idea so much as touched a single Sony employee.)

One of the greatest things about the gaming market, in my opinion, is the way that any game, big or small, can find a sizable audience for what it is. Huge and garish budgets don't need to be written on the screen in gilded gold, and nowadays you don't even need a production company, how's that for a welcoming market? (though luck is often a factor that needs to be accounted for, given the sheer number of games that are out there) And sure, I speak with the bias of someone who themselves is contributing to the indie scene, but I like to think what we have puts us well above other entertainment forms like Film and TV for sheer bristling choice. That's the beautiful thing about the gaming market, whether you want to live out a sleepy virtual life managing a town or sacrifice cute animals to a demonic death cult, there's a game out there for every time of the day.

Let's imagine a game

It was still where we energized

A while ago I penned a blog wherein I covered a few of the features that I would like to see present in more games out there, from the little to the big. After which I proposed an blog of what would happen if we smashed some of those concepts together into a game that would, at least by my own standards, be something close to 'the perfect game'. Given time to let it grow, I've settled on the idea and think it's a thought experiment worth having a little fun with and watching what comes of it, as such I implore you to try out the same with any of your own internal 'features that should be in every game' lists. Firstly, however, I want to set myself a few ground rules. This will be an outline of what the game is rather than a specific list of everything which makes it work, because then we'd literally just be writing a game pitch. Also, in order to get the most out of the results I'm going to operate under the guise that we're talking about a game with an infinite budget under an unlimited time constraint. (So we won't have to factor in logistics when just going over what could be.) The limiting factor for me will be in that I want to create a game idea that is coherent and focused, and seeing if I can juggle the ingredients to make that work. Remember; this is an exercise in fantasy, not a blueprint.

So going through my little cherry picked list I note that I've landed on quite a few concepts that don't exactly slide together with ease, however I'm resolved to stick as many of them together as I can. Following this, that would mean that straight away we're looking at this 'perfect game' being an Immersive Sim; a style of game built with player choice intrinsic in it's very soul and baked into the gameplay and level design. I would see this being realised someway similar to Dishonored or the recently released Deathloop; a First person adventure game with systems built to manage a stealth approach and an action one. This would, of course, require that any levels (or active gameplay areas) be designed both with multiple options for entry and with enough spice to entertain a shooter's angle. (verticality, dynamic action stages, varying enemy type) Pushing that a little further, most serious objectives should have multiple paths for dealing with them. (Typically this plays out as multiple ways to kill or subdue a man, but I don't see why you couldn't have something like a ticking bomb that can either be defused or moved from harm's way. Get creative with it.)

That's our basis of the game we're working with here. A first person (to lean into the 'immersive' aspect) mission based action game with stealth and action mechanics for the player to choose between at their leisure, and an emphasis on multiple paths to the same objective. Well the first problem with a story like this would be how Companions would end up in this sort of game because that's something I pushed rather strongly in my blog. Typically these games are all about empowering the player and leaving the power of how a scene plays out largely in their hands. No one wants to mount a stealthy mission only to have some idiot AI companion screw it all up for them, and it's not really realistic to say "Code good stealthing AI", because no such example exists on the market to point to. (That I'm aware of) However, I think I may still have a model for which companions can fit into this game.

Do you remember 'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain'? That was a stealth based action adventure game which included it's very own version of companions in these special characters that you could recruit and call up to accompany you in missions. What made them special is that each of these characters (or 'buddies') wouldn't just follow you around like a lost puppy and attack what you attacked, rather they would add their own benefits to whatever it was you were doing, usually doing so either from afar or at your explicit direction. (As as Quiet sniping enemies from a hill away or D-Dog marking people on your HUD) If we take this concept and export it over to a game genre such as a Sci-Fi futuristic setting, maybe even a Cyberpunk one, you could envision a hacker companion who doesn't 'join you', but instead follows you around by Netrunning and conducts high-level hack jobs for you as you command it. Or maybe a police confidant who could show up in an area with an escort when called in order to draw attention and open up infiltration access to places otherwise highly guarded. Sure, this method of implementing 'companions' makes them feel a bit more like powerups than ride-or-die heroes who stand by you, but I think we can build them up as we greater explore the role of companions.

Expanding on this idea, the idea of companions, will allow us to touch on the Social simulation feature I wanted to bring into this fictional game idea. Persona introduces to us the concept of 'confidants' (or as they're known to the uninitiated: 'friends') who are a group of companions whom the player can get closer to by spending time with them inbetween main quests. Now I don't expect this immersive Sim to be as 'on-the-rails' in narrative as Persona is (those games stringently follow the in-game calendar) but we could still envision opportunities to hang-out with and get to know companion characters at certain points within the critical story, particularly when large plotthreads aren't looming too closely over you so that the player feels like they have time to kill. These substories can play out as scripted little events with some characterisation and conversational choices built into them so that the writers can easily map out a personality, backstory and character arc for each companion. (Maybe a little too easily. Might want to integrate some limited coreplot interaction with the companions too in order to keep things from feeling too monotonous and stale.) The incentive to interact with them, much like in Persona, would be to improve their abilities by reaching relationship milestones, allowing them to more effective in action. (Whilst remaining an optional pursuit because this is an Immersive Sim and 'player choice' must touch everything) Alongside having an effect on their character and changing their ultimate fate in the credits.

Putting a safe house into this concept seems pretty simple, and it is, but I think for the best implementation of such a place we'd have to find a way to make this safehouse somewhere the player wants to return to without being forced to do so. (So no throwing in some lazy 'sleep meter' or restricting saving to 'safehouse only') Luckily with the somewhat tight narrative constraints we've placed around this game, being mission based, it wouldn't be too hard to set the odd objective leading the player back home. Deus Ex Human Revolution did just this and fitted the apartment with enough intractability and detail for it to feel somewhat homely. Were I in charge I'd slightly add upon this, throwing in a stash-box, (if this is the sort of game that would even require that) maybe a TV news channel that reports on events around the game world; ones which touch on the main story but from a wider perspective, subtly detailing the reactionary narrative. Most importantly, however, I'd wind in the companions, by having this safehouse be a Hub from which the the player can interact with them and activate those hang-out sessions I mentioned above. (That way people would have to go home)

The last point I left would be the most abstract to 'plot out' in broad strokes like I have done all the other features. And that's because this is when I spoke about meaningful environmental storytelling that works to impart the heart and emotion of the plot and world. That's hard to nail down before even deciding if this is an open world or what's going on with this fake game. (Immersive Sims are usually made up of expansive open Hub areas that then branch out into highly functional mission worlds, so I'd go for that set-up for this game.) Still, I've managed to conjure up yet another archetype to follow for this aspect too, and it's one of the Thief games. Thief famously tells the story of a character who's kind of a side character in a grand narrative of a world which is happening around him. Character conversations, scarps of notes, and even the places you traverse all tell this underlying progression of the world space with this overarching progression, but not directly related to your motives for most of the series. (It's quite clever in that way) We don't need to go quite that subtle in order to breathe this game world into existence, but the model of a game world which changes in ways you have to pay attention to in order to notice is the ticket. Have ambient conversation shift from meaningless frivolities to worried discourse, increasingly relevant to player actions. Maybe the player Hub will become more rundown and full of graffiti and trash bags as the fortunes of the neighbourhood sour throughout the story. Perhaps people start going out less at night as things become more dangerous, or authority figures start patrolling more often to enact curfews. Heck, maybe the sky just starts turning blood red, Oblivion style, to let you know that something's up and you should probably get on that. There really is a million directions you could take this concept, but whilst we're penning a false outline it'd be best to leave things with these vague guidelines.

All that's left is the Baldur's Gate power creep system, but that's more relevant to sequels anyway. I suppose we can take from that how I'd want some RPG system tied in, but the kettle of worms that suggestion even stirs makes me want to exorcize the thought from my mind immediately. So no dedicated RPG system, but an largely equipment based point mechanic might assist core progression. (Something which makes people feel more powerful without resorting to those flimsy faux-levelling trees that so many games are doing nowdays.) And that would be it: a basic outline for this fake game. It's funny, despite throwing all of these systems together in an outline that I, at least, perceive to be coherent; this still doesn't sound like exactly the building blocks of the 'greatest game ever' to me. (Although were these concepts each bought together in the way I described, that would definitely be a game right up my alley.) It just goes to show how even in broad strokes, painting the balance of what makes a great game isn't exactly simple. You can see how powerful and big personalities can clash in the planning room for some of these massive games out there. (especially as the game we just designed an outline for isn't particularly small itself) Maybe next time I hear about development woes right out of the planning room, I'll think back on this as evidence that even the right ingredients doesn't equal the perfect dish. Or maybe I just haven't picked out all the right ingredients yet! Time to gather more game features I want to see more of!  

What the heck is Star Wars: Hunters?

 That's not a hypothetical. Literally: What is this game?

Oh, what a wonderous and magical time it is to be a Star Wars fan! We're being treated to the greatest game ever made in our subgenre, again, and our near future will be graced with a sequel to the surprisingly solid Jedi: Fallen Order, that is confirmed to be in the works. And what's this? I'm hearing that there is another game which recently got a trailer? Huh? I'm hearing that this isn't even an announcement, but an expansion upon a game that was revealed all the way back in February? That doesn't sound right... I don't know any Star Wars game that was kicking around from back then. Let me look up a little bit about his... hmm, it's called 'Hunters', kay, it's coming 2022, kay, and it's for the Nintendo Switch? Like- only on the Switch? No, wait it's coming to Mobile as we- oh, for the love of the force. Is this more licenced mobile trash which is getting ported to the Switch in order to feign legitimacy? (Damn it, Lucasarts, you were doing so well!)

I admit to being a bit sceptical when I first saw the trailer for 'Star Wars: Hunters' swipe across my holofeed, but that has abated slightly after watching the footage. Now it's replaced my genuine confusion, because I have no idea what this game is. Taking place on a planet that looks exactly like Mos Eisley on Tatooine but I'm assured is not, the trailer is a purely cinematic animated affair showcasing a whole slew of brand new unique characters doing nothing more than trying to kill each other whilst showing off their 'stark personalities'. And the problems, as a Star Wars fan, start there; because I can't even identify what era any of this is meant to be in. You've got a Sith lady and a Wookie warrior, which implies Old Republic stuff. (or maybe 'High Republic', I don't know I haven't read any of it) But then you've got some small dude riding around in a Droideka, which is solidly Clone Wars, and then a Stormtrooper, which is Galactic Civil war. I know that to a non-fan it must sound like I'm picking through straws in search of a needle but I'm just trying to convey how confused and non-informative every inch of this trailer was. (I now know it's meant to be set after episode 6, but that was not made clear from the footage at all)

A problem not at all helped by the fact that there was no Gameplay. Something that is totally groan-worthy when we're talking about a proper console or PC game just kicking off it's marketing cycle, but when we're talking about a mobile game, it's downright suspicious. Too many times have Mobile games been fitted with utterly nonsensical or uninformative marketing material that is simply there to dazzle and lure the curious in. Sure, the danger isn't quite as ever-present when we're talking about a licenced Star Wars product, (Lucasarts aren't going to retexture Lily's Garden and feed that to us) but I still sense a set-up to a bait-and-switch and/or disappointment. At the very least, it contributes to keeping the true nature of this game utterly secret which seems bizarre considering the publisher went so far as to commission a decent quality CGI action-fest to achieve nothing more than what the twenty second title drop did a few months back.

And hanging back on that trailer a bit; it really is only average. Footage like this has but a single purpose achieved through a handful of digestible goals, to spark interest through excitement and wow moments, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, and dropping them in the narrative of the skit so that they aren't pondering how they're learning nothing about the real game. What we ended up with, however, is just an incredibly basic action narrative with no surprises up it's sleeve, no peril to it's sequences, no memorable 'wow' moments to linger with me and no significant creative passion behind it. The most creative element are the character designs which were probably shipped to this trailer studio to work with, they bought nothing but the bare minimum on their end. Compare this with another Star Wars trailer which was doing the exact same thing, (advertising a game through misleading cinematics that absolutely did not represent the gameplay itself) such as The Old Republic teasers, and there really is no comparison. One set of works had a heart inside of it, this one does not.

You might be looking at everything I've said thusfar and rightly point out: Wait a minute, you haven't spoken about the game yet. And you would be exactly right because I would love to focus on the actual building blocks of this title if they were at all clear to me. From the context clues of the trailer, colourful characters, fighting in an arena, working in teams, being broadcast, predictably squaring up on opposite ends of the screen at the end of the footage, one might deduce this is a MOBA. But a MOBA would surely court a cast of legacy and established characters to draw in crowds, not a team of contextually-confused newbies. Additionally, I feel like the Star Wars universe would make a bad fit for a MOBA, but then I suppose I would have felt the same about the Pokémon brand, and we all now know how wrong I would have been there.

But this is the sort of speculation I shouldn't need to be doing, because one of the key tenets of marketing is giving people a clue what it is that they're buying. How can you play upon their expectations and build a fort of false expectations if they have literally no foundation from which to lay the first bricks? Better question, why are companies now days finding it such an affront to tag a genre to their product?  ('The Wayward Realms' say hello) I've scoured the Internet and trying to pin down some idea of what this game is feels like detective work. One source calls it an 'arena game' (which I guess is snippet of a genre if you think about it), the official website says its third person (which is evidenced in the screenshots, but doesn't really explain what the gameplay is shaped up as) and the whole thing is definitely going to be free-to-play; (to make room for MTX) so is this their very own Overwatch-like game? (If not, then Battleborn proved it could very much still be a MOBA)

The team behind this enigma of a game, Zynga, also happen to be the monsters behind that mythical tragedy of game we call 'Farmville', which means that whatever this game ends up being it'll likely also be a vehicle for microtransactions and addictive loops. That first bullet point is at the very least a guarantee, the latter depends on how solid the game itself ends up once it's constructed. Oh, and before you start wondering if their morals as a company might guide them to respect the venerated Star Wars licence they've been granted and make something worthy of it; these guys created a Game of Thrones themed slot machine game... so don't hold your breath. This will be an arena game that slobbers after your wallet, that we know, the only variable is if they'll do enough to earn it. 

Since the EA stranglehold on Star Wars games has loosened, we're going to be getting more trash like this filling up the airwaves between the real marvels of gaming, as anyone with a half profitable-sounding idea is given the thumbs-up go ahead. But to be honest, I'd much rather be in this state of roulette regarding which new Star Wars project is good, then the dry expanse with years of 'Star-Wars-less' pining like we were in when EA held exclusivity. You've got to take the bad with the good, and the suspiciously obscured with the tantalisingly promising. But hey, maybe 'Star Wars: Hunters' is a really cool and unique idea, worthy of existence and opening up unexplored avenues of the Star Wars mythos, and the team have just decided to advertise none of that because their marketing team is actually insane. (Crazier things have happened, but I'm putting my expectations very low for now.)  

Marvel's Spiderman 2

 Talk about getting busy

I'm swinging through the streets of New York, dangling nearly a thousand feet from the ground, swapping web for web  at speeds so rapid that the screen has that blurry effect on the character that we wouldn't all collective realise looks awful until several years from now. This is it, the greatest possible realisation of the webslinging dream, unbound by mission constraints, unafflicted with a non-existent street level, boasting webs that accurately pretend to stick to buildings- the only way this could feasibly be any better would be, oh wait: there it is! The voice of Bruce Campbell admonishing me for what I don't know, but gracing me with his presence all the same. See the many virtues that will forever make the 2004 Spiderman 2 game the greatest Peter Parker simulator known to man. (Although from everything I'm told I guess Marvel's Spiderman is a close second.)

And yet Insomniac games have the gall to try and dethrone my ageless king with their very own Spiderman 2! Such to the extent where, now if I type in 'Spiderman 2 game' into Google, theirs has already clogged up search results. (It won't even be done for another two years, guys, calm down!) I will not hide my utter repugnance at the very suggestion that Spiderman 2 can be bested, but perhaps that throne may be shared and if anyone could whittle away a comfy seat there, it would have to be Insomniac. (Unless they manage to finagle Bruce Campbell to show up in their game as well. Then I'd actually be having a crisis of faith) And they better live up the name they've built for themselves and put something out that's fantastic, because seeing two AAA Marvel games apparently be under development by them at the same time, I have to wonder if everyone knows what they're doing over there.

Marvel's Wolverine and Marvel Spiderman 2? So what- we talking simultaneous development here? My observations have always seen that companies who conflate their development schedules usually do so to the detriment of every single project that they're working on. Heck, look at Assassin's Creed back when they were still deadset on doing yearly releases, forcing them to overlap every game with the next one coming out. Every title started to become monotonous and samey, serious player feedback was so outdated that it became irrelevant when it was addressed and the heart of these games just felt absent, probably due to a lack of passion from overworking, alongside other big issues. Call of Duty slipped into the same pattern, although they were at least smart enough to try and rectify this with various different studios who would attack each game in rotation. But it only worked a little, the yearly schedule still did the series no wonders. So is that what we can expect from Insomniac in the near future?

I seriously hope not, because as I recently said in another blog about The Wolverine game; few companies have risen to the legendary status that Insomniac have managed over pretty much a single console generation. That's the sort of legacy that needs to be protected, the kind of legacy that demands everyone of their AAA games be treated like kings, and given the care, attention (and development space) they need to thrive as the best they can be. Spiderman Miles Morales was already a disappointment due to it's size and scope not really justifying the stupid full price on the tag. (Yes, I know Sony are deadset on convincing us that £70 is the new 'full price', but they can choke on that crap for all I care.) Insomniac have stated how that won't be the case again, but I look at this schedule and I worry. (What's the catch then? There's gotta be a catch!)

As for the game itself; sure I'm crazy excited for it. For all my jests, Marvel's Spiderman for the PS4 did the impossible and took a character who has enough games to choke a whale on and still managed to put out a definitive competitor to the entire subgenre. I mean sure, old hats like me will always rate the classics, Spiderman 2 (original), Web of Shadows and Ultimate Spiderman; but there's no denying the impact that Marvel's Spiderman had. The game looked beautiful, explored an original narrative, went in interesting directions with the character of Peter Parker and revitalised some old villains. And that was just the story stuff it did. The combat, which I actually do have experience with, is Batman Arkham levels of tight and the detail and design of the world is simply flawless. Although that final point would be a lot more impressive if New York wasn't one of those skylines that have been in more games than Nolan North.

Spiderman Miles Morales, on the otherhand, managed to dupe people into buying a half a game at full price, but also succeeded in bringing a hugely successful alternate Spiderman to life with his very own style and life to him. It also inspired a cringe game reviewer to utter a sentence commenting on how his unique animation quirks were "full of the exaggerated swagger of a black teen"; so this game granted us all kinds of entertainment. Spiderman 2 is going to bring both of these protagonists together in a confirmed co-op space which is, and I'm using effortless hyperboles here but I can't help myself, just incredible. Playing with the precision of Spiderman but stretched across two spidermen at the same time? Both with their different levelling trees and stuff? Man- Insomniac must have cancelled all of their holidays if they think they can got the time and space to meet their schedule. But heck, I'm rooting for them!

And none of what I've said so far is to even touch on the most exciting part of the game was saw teased. I mean sure, Kraven the Hunter was obviously narrating the thing; he's a character that a lot of fans simply love but I never really saw the appeal so that's 'whatever news' to me. No, I wanna talk about the big slobbery dude at the end, ducked in the shadows there; because Venom is my spiderman villain/sometimes Anti-hero of choice. He's literally just Spiderman reimagined as a monster with teeth, and who doesn't love an idea like that? He's miles better than ManSpider who- urgh, I hate that I had to google him to remind myself that was definitely his name. (Seriously, if you've never seen ManSpider before: he's a deformed human sized spider in a suit; there, now you don't need to look it up.) The Venom chapters were my favourite parts of Ultimate Spiderman, (both the proper version and the crappy gameboy advanced version which only I in the whole world played) now I get pumped for everyone of best-boi-symbiote's gaming appearances. (And doubly so when my man is being voiced by the legendary Tony Todd- Way to bring the talent, Insomniac!)

Spiderman has never been in better hands (in terms of videogames) than it is today, and given the number of hands that the franchise has gone through that really is a testament to it's current arbiters. Were this calibre of spiderman game coming out back when I was still a kid, I wouldn't have ever looked at another Superhero. However the concerns I have about the project, and Insomniac overworking themselves, still looms over the whole thing like a vulture, and I know just how easily everything can fall apart even from the height of near perfection, and so I can't just put those worries to the side. Still, Insomniac believe in themselves, and maybe that'll be enough to carry them through what's looking to be the most hectic two years of development in the company's history. (I'm excited for the results)