editorial

I have just realised that I forgot the obligatory games of 2010 preamble… so yeah. This is about a game which came out last year that made an impact on me, not the best or the worst of the year but I liked it. This is the penultimate one of these so soon I should be back with some more in the moment posts, in the mean time if you want to check out my current reviews or articles go here, here or indeed here.

Games can encapsulate a mood; they can heighten a feeling, and sometimes even lighten the load. Some titles achieve this emotional resonance from their narrative content, others simply come at the right time capitalise on events in our lives, for better or worse (as Braid recently did for me). It is a dynamic that can be both painful or therapeutic, throwing in to relief an issue or allowing an outlet for raw emotions when there is no way to confront an issue directly. For me it was Vanquish that came at just the right moment to vent some very primitive emotions. And as thoughtless a game as it can be, it was just what I needed.

Beautifully Vanquish offers and standard definition HUD, also perfectly timed for this point my life.

Sat alone in my tiny apartment I was, simply, angry; at myself, at my life and my situation. I couldn’t decide if it was my fault, the worlds fault, the years fault, all I knew was that somewhere in me there was a rage with no escape. My anger sat beneath the surface of my smiling facade as I taught children and went out socialising, only occasionally escaping in at very drunk moments.

I had pre-ordered Vanquish months in advance of its release on the promise of another Platinum Games twist on an established genre and director Shinji Mikami’s involvement (the man behind beloved Resident Evil), little did I know how much I was going to need its cathartic action by the time I collected on my order, and how susceptible I would be to it.

Furious, fast paced action punctuated by mindless bravado filled cut scenes and (deliberate?) bizarre translation. Vanquish immediately drew from me a happiness that harkened back to movies like Starship Troopers.

This particular level is one of my favorites, fighting off attackers from a train as it circles around a tunnel.

As I struggled to decide how deliberate the genius of the game was, I realised I was transferring the anger inside me on to the hundreds of enemies that swarmed the world. Robotic opponents that balanced perfectly my ability to blow them to pieces with a range of satisfying weapons against a difficulty that challenged just enough to make me feel accomplished without a sense of being patronised.

It wasn’t just the gunplay that had me wowed. Vanquish’s core mechanic of fast paced movement, which saw me speeding around on rocket powered knee pads from one cover point to the next, did an equally amazing job of drawing the negativity from me. Typically such cover focused third person action games employ a plodding stilted advance, limping from one area of (relative) safety to the next, hiding as energy slowly recovers before repeating the same process again. Duck, fire, duck, fire, crawl forward, it frustrates and gives a sense of impotence in the face of the odds. Vanquish sheds this, forcing me to leap from one cover points to the next, dodging bullets as I go. In truth the system is ultimately the same, with a defensive posture still necessary to recover energy and boosters fuel, but speed and movement makes this defence as engaging and satisfying as offence, far more similar to the 2D games of old than a modern shooter.

AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!.... AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vanquish drew my frustration and anger from me as played. The game became a storm drain for my emotions, running off all the excess that had for so long bubbled under the surface. Harmlessly dissipating all of the darker thoughts I had been having. There was no down time, no question of thought or brooding as I sped from one piece of low cover to the next and switched between ever more satisfying weapons to take down robot hoards. Pure unadulterated stress relief that, in my case, was perfectly timed.

I am sure that soon ‘DoFuss’s games of 2010’ will draw to a close but until then I have another one of these prefaces to write explaining exactly what is going on. It maybe late, but having finally put the emotional turmoil of last year behind me I was gripped by a need to revisit it in gaming form and recall the titles that had an impact. No, they may not be the best games (but they could be, as in this post) but they are the games that affected my year beyond being simple distractions.

Some games are wonderfully addictive. Complex or simple when a game has that right mix of ‘I get it’, ‘just a bit more’ and ‘damn I was so close’, they can be very hard to put down. Introducing Game Dev Story, the fascinating and addictive game development simulation game, which (and this is important later) I played on my iPhone.

Welcome to the tiny world of Game Dev Story.

It is such a simple concept it is amazing that Game Dev Story was the first to do it. Creating a game with the same addictive hook as Roller Coaster Tycoon but skinning the whole experience with videogame production, it provided an instant hook for thousands of life-long gamers who believe that they could do better (which for the record they probably couldn’t). Adding to this the cute little characters in their isometric office, a range of controllable and random variables, and a scoring systems that sees your creations rated by magazine critics, gave Game Dev Story all the elements required to keep me totally enthralled.

With a simple menus leading the action, helped no end by the touch interface of Apple’s short cut to your wallet, it was hard to play Game Dev Story for less than every second I possibly could. That was until reality struck. With the best will in the world, using an iPhone as anything other than a phone will see the battery dead long before is optimal. This is especially true of games that place a high demand on the little machine demanding pretty graphics or (as is the case in Game Dev Story) with a lot of number crunching quietly taxing the processor.

Studios grow in size as you put out more and more games, until eventually you can make your build console.

Yes, you may well be screaming the obvious solution at me ‘if you need your phone don’t play the stupid game, Alex’, but anyone familiar with this kind of game will tell you it isn’t that simple because I was addicted. Given the choice of playing for thirty minutes on my commute or being out of power, I would chose my half hour fix every time. And while most games would allow me to play and leave me a little power to reach the end of the day Game Dev Story drained the battery faster than I believed possible.

I do not exaggerate when I say that after waking at eight one morning my phone was dead by ten because of Game Dev Story. Between my addiction driving me to play on my journey to work and my phone’s crappy battery, I became disconnected from the world until I got home that night at eleven o’clock. Now it’s not that anything especially important happened this day, but try forgetting your phone one day and see how naked you feel.

Hiring new talent can be vital to a studio's success.

The loss of my phone made edgy and irritable because of what I might be missing and I felt a sense of dependence that made me uneasy. Truly it startled me and so I began making a conscious effort only to play Game Dev Story at home.

Strangely, having to control my addiction broke me of the habit. Rather than just being able to dip in at anytime, the necessary restrictions I had to place on my time made it feel like a bind rather than a treat. Despite perfect the Game Dev Story was my inability to steal illicit moments with it drowned the pleasure of it.

Much like my time with Limbo where having to review it on a short time schedule ruined my enjoyment, finding restrictions that were antipathetic to the dip-in-when-you-are-bored design of Game Dev Story broke the magic. It is still incredible, but I just don’t have the nerve (or perhaps the self control) to put it on my new phone. I still recommend it, but stay well clear if you ever want to receive a call.

Welcome once again to my ever more untimely, not-sure-when-its-going-to-end, series of posts about my games of 2010. These are not the best games of last year, or even the most notable, they are the games that made an impact on me during an emotional period of my life and that will forever be linked with those memories.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 on PSP was the follow up to Sega’s 2007 Valkyria Chronicles. Blending turn-based strategy with real time combat the original certainly stood apart from its competition, but it was the sketched comic book style that made headlines. Moving to the PSP saw much of visual flare needing to be muted (with in-engine cut scenes needing to be replaced by comic book stills) but the game play remained intact with only a few concessions being made to the smaller devices limited memory.

The new awful teen stars.

If I had a complaint about Valkyria Chronicles’s series it would be the too overly- verbose saccharine anime. Unfortunately for me the series is now dependent on this, with the brand carried on an anime series and a selection of ill-clad toys. This dependence on pandering to the male anime fan will probably stop the franchise ever revisiting its more serious faux WW2 topics but does at least ensure continued titles in this unique series.Valkyria Chronicles 2 would have rubbed salt into this anime reality. Setting itself a military academy that is essentially a typical Japanese pulp fiction high school with love triangles, childish drama, the shy one, the studious one, the cool one… you get the idea. Thankfully however my Japanese was nowhere near good enough to follow the reams of text that made up the story, sparing me from hours of frustrating reading I would have felt compelled to do and just letting me jump straight into the action.

I actually received my PSP (as a Christmas present, thank you Miki) for the express purpose of playing Valkyria Chronicles 2 and quickly discovered that even without the story (or maybe because of no story) my expectations were exceeded. With just the missions to hook me I sank in hours daily on my commutes. Maps made up of several small areas (rather than the original’s single large maps) lead to new grab and dash attacks that changed up the tactics in a number of interesting ways. The academy setting also acted here as an excuse to reuse many of these small areas as training grounds, which did bore at times, but at least each new visit introduced new elements.

Areas were smaller, but some iconic landmarks returned.

Revisiting the familiar areas did allow me to practice the newly introduced character customisation with it’s branching skill trees. Where the first game saw whole classes and weapons being upgraded on mass, Valkyria 2 saw each squad member able to specialise within their class. This meant while at the start of play only four unit types were available by the end there could be upwards of sixteen slightly different designations, all with the option of slightly tailored weapons.

I must have put over thirty hours in before it, and my PSP, were stolen. (Yes, I am sure some regular readers were wondering when I would get to my overly depressing point). One day I went drinking with a bag stuffed full of sentimental items and had it nicked from under my nose (well table in truth but close enough). The theft itself was a blow, with the loss of some treasured possessions, but the gaming implication is what I am remembering here. I was so close to the end of the game I knew I would probably never return to it.

Most notable among the new classes were a hammer class for breaking armour.

The revelation that I didn’t really want to go through it all again left me questioning of how much I had really enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles 2. If I liked it as much as I thought surely playing through again would be a pleasure not a chore. I contemplated this and found that while it was fun, my real pleasure was derived from the satisfaction of progress. Climbing a mountain is fun, but not if just before you reach the peak you are sent back to the bottom. Experiencing the same obstacles again would not result in the same challenge, or satisfaction. Now I simply can’t return to challenges I have already conquered, so despite a desire to see the peak, the climb is not longer worth it. But at least soon I will have a new mountain in the soon-to-be-released Valkyria Chronicles 3, which looks like it may even have a good story.

It was a funny (first adjective that sprang to mind, there are better ones) year for games and I. As I focused on my impending return to the UK, and changes in my life I found my relationship, my hobby became increasingly affected by my life outside. Oscillating wildly between an escape and a chore I found myself increasingly playing in binges. Sporadic, intense, time would be spent with a controller in my hand followed by either intense periods of writing or going out drinking. Often I played games out of necessity for an article, unwilling (or unable) to really enjoy them, where other times they worked like and emotional aesthetic, numbing my feelings of loneliness and pain. Neither was a good reason to indulge, and the backlash was (for a while) a resentment of gaming and writing (hence this sites inactivity, hell even this post is nearly a month late).

Settled back in the UK (with half a foot and heart in Japan thanks to recent events there) I find myself once again enjoying games, time fillers that they are in my bored unemployed existence. But the last nine months was not a fun time in gaming for me so when asked about my games of 2010, for one of the sites I contribute too, I struggled. I had played a good number of the years most talked about titles, both big and small, but the mood I played them in coloured thinking. Looking back I was able to judge which games were good technically and, to an extent, emotionally gauge them by the fact that maybe they lightened my disposition (at least for a moment) but the passion was lacking.

Far from beautiful or outstanding, Kane and Lynch 2 was gifted the halo effect by virtue of me playing it early in 2011, rather than in 2010.

Already 2011 has yielded experiences I found more enjoyable than all of last year’s offerings, simply through the mood I played in. Games I have revisited, Assassins Creed 2, Kane and Lynch 2 (and even a few games that weren’t sequels) have seen my opinion of them soar as my mood colours my play time.

My point is, I couldn’t with good conscious write an honest game of the year lists this year because nothing captured my imagination, or perhaps more accurately my mind was unable to be captured in the last twelve months. If you look at my ‘top five’ that was posted on Play Devil you will see the games I listed, Metroid Other M, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Mass Effect 2, Alan Wake and Enslaved, and if you read the blurb my opinions are far more clinical than my usual prose. It was not that I didn’t like these games, but my life coloured them. They became forgettable diversions rather than the escape into other worlds they had been in previous, easier, times.

Don't get me wrong, I loved Enslaved, but at another time it would have been raised even higher in my estimations.

Now I do feel I should sum up my opinion of some of 2010 best games here on DoFuss, albeit three months late. It is (supposedly) a gaming blog after all, and if I can’t even muster an opinion on something as broad as ‘game of the year’ then I should probably be thinking about changing the sites direction. But rather than reiterating the dry sentiments expressed about the five games in the Play Devil article I thought I would just write a few paragraphs, placed in context of my of my year, about some of the other games and gaming experiences that did something to lighten the load when I needed it most.

Through out the rest of March and some of April I will be posting a number of short articles about these things that just made my life easier or affected me in some way beyond their quality as a game. Be they simply so fun they lifted me at a time I needed it or they gave me new focus and goals, these reflections are all about the games that really impacted me emotionally this last year and that I am thankful for, in no particular order.