Playing Blind

About a month ago at our friends' wedding, I was talking with Himo about Dark Souls II which in part got me into thinking again about blind playthroughs; thinking about how I played Dark Souls and watched "Dan Sucks at Dark Souls" over on Extra Credits' "Side Quest" series.  I feel like this idea crops up every so often and with the recent release of the Switch game Octopath Traveler, the concept of  blind playthroughs has gotten my brain churgling once again.

Over the last couple of weeks, especially on the Nintendo Switch subreddit, there cropped up at least every other day a post about the characters in Octopath Traveler, with headlines and links to find out all you could about each of the characters.  Even the most recent demo that was released allowed for up to three hours of gameplay before it cut you off.  I was reading about people trying to play through the demo as fast as possible trying to get to as many of the characters as they could before their three hours was up.  In my opinion, this is no way to effectively play a story driven game, and kind of harkens back to my article about speed-running, or at least the aspects that I do not like about the reasoning why some people speedrun.

And it seems like it is not all about getting as far as you can as fast as you can in the game, but presenting that information first.  This fascination with being the first to reveal information is far from new, especially in the video game industry (because I obviously know what I am talking about in regards to the video game industry), and when it comes to revealing that information about games that have yet to be released, that is something that while I fully recognize, is something that I do not fully understand.  And it most likely predates the first "First!" Youtube comment too.

Maybe it is akin to min-maxing in that the more you know beforehand about a character, or a games mechanics, or the end game, the better your character can be.  The first time this concept really hit me was when I was talking with TheSauce about character building in Diablo II.  He had mentioned needing to restart the game after realizing that he had put skill points in the wrong tree/slot either late in the game on accident or realizing that an early acquired skill now has no purpose for the direction of the build of the character.  The same goes true for leveling up your character in the Dark Souls games.  When you are playing for the first time, trying to figure out what all of the abilities and stats do and how they affect weapon loadouts and armor type may not be figured out until after you have been playing for 10+ hours.  I saw a number of articles about this same practice regarding PvP character builds in The Elder Scrolls Online.  I am going to move on as I feel like I already covered this a bit 1,598 days ago.

So, if you have not been able to tell by now, I like to play games as blindly as possible. Sure I might watch a trailer or read an article about the development of the game, but I will try my darndest to stay away from articles or videos that go into depth with how to better play a game, a character's history, or really anything else that you might normally discover while playing the game on your own.  Sure, with Dark Souls and The Elder Scrolls, I have dived (dove? doven?) into the lore of the world after playing through the game because in both of those worlds, there is some information that is pretty far out there (thanks Kirkbride).  And as recently as Fortnite, I have looked up where to find the treasure maps (after spending a couple of matches looking on my own) in Risky Reels and the Flush Factory, because looking for a map while trying to avoid being killed by other players and the threat of the storm can play havoc with my treasure hunting abilities

But in the end, I guess it really all just boils down to playing the game how you want to play.  If you want to find out all the backstory about all of the characters in Octopath Traveler or determining how each and every one of your souls will be spent in Dark Souls II before even turning the game on, then that is what you are going to do and some Rando on the Internet is not going to change any of that.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

We Read Trash

MIDI Week Singles: "Planet Theme" - The Adventures of Rad Gravity

"Planet Theme" from The Adventures of Rad Gravity on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)

Composer: David Warhol

Album: No Official Release

Developer: Interplay Productions

The Adventures of Rad Gravity is one of the games that I had never heard of before embarking on my listening to #AllTheNESMusic endeavor.  When I saw the title I was really hoping that at least one of the songs (assuming that there would be more than one) would speak to me, so I might have been experiencing a little bit of confirmation bias when I thought that the Planet Theme sounded absurdly exciting enough to be included in our weekly feature.

So if this is your first time listening to this song, let alone music from this game, I implore you to listen until the song repeats at about 1:03.00 because, admittedly, I was about to write the song off during its first 20 seconds, but then at 23ish seconds, something odd happens and it sounds a lot more melodic and a lot less spastic in the way that late 80s early 90s science fiction can sound spastic.  Then after a bit, the song goes right back to its early self, but if you stick around for another 10 seconds after the spaz-meister returns, you will be treated to a third melody!  That's right, there is a C section in this song that is just over a minute long before it repeats.

Now, not having every played The Adventures of Rad Gravity, I cannot say how the planet stages where this music is played operates, but I would like to think that nearly half of the game is spent planet-side, which means that you hear this song more frequently than the other three songs composed for the game.  But what do I know?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  One interesting note, is that David Warhol wrote the music to the Commodore 64 version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance, where as Seiji Toda wrote the music for the NES release.  Maybe I will have to cover Mr. Warhol's take on the City of Phlan.

Speed Running

A few weeks back, I was talking with a couple of friends about speedrunning (speed running?) and my general annoyances about the practice.  Like the good minded people they are, they called me out on it, and to my credit, I did a piss poor job trying to explain why I was annoyed with speed-runners. 

While attempting to explain this, I realized something. 

I was unable to explain why I had not been a fan of speedrunning because my reasoning behind the practice was flawed.  I think.  I have mentioned speed running a bit, lastly on my article about Ultimate NES Remix on the 3DS, but only in a brief and general sense.  And I think what I said there really encapsulates my general mindset towards speed-running.

I personally like to take my time in games.  I like looking around.  In both Breath of the Wild, and Skyrim, I will often avoid fast traveling so that I can see as much of the world as possible.  I want to be able to take in as much of the world that so many artists, designers, creators, programmers, developers put their time and effort into creating.  In games like Gone Home and SOMA, which are often described as walking simulators, you could hypothetically speedrun, but so much of the game is built around experiencing the world and understanding the story.

I think that is something else that makes me unreasonably annoyed is when people speed run story and narrative driven games like Dear Esther or even Morrowind.  However, in the case of Morrowind is where my friend's points very much comes into play.  They said that some of the people who use exploits to speed-run games know these games so much better than the rest of us.  This person speedrunning Morrowind in less time than it takes me to run half a mile, knows more about this games mechanics and some of the items than I found out from my 161 hours of playing.  And then there is the guy who used a semi-recently (three years ago recently) discovered exploit to overload (for lack of a better short definition as to what was really happening) Super Mario World and reached the end credits in 4:49.8.  While I would not say that he beat the game, or completed the game, he did reach the end credits which you could normally only watch by defeating Bowser.

And as Conklederp occasionally says, why should I try to yuck anyone else's yum?  If someone enjoys speed running games, who am I to tell them that they are wrong.  Well, if that person says that the only real way to play a game is to speed-run it, then I might have a legitimate argument with them, unless we are talking about Super Meat Boy or Mutant Mudds, both of which seem like they were designed with speedrunning in mind.

So after coming to this realization with friendly assistance, I believe that my feelings have been downgraded from annoyance, to acceptance, but with the occasional bemusement for specific types of games; looking at you Firewatch and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs speed runners. 

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Do You Hate Me?

First Impressions: Fortnite (NS)

Disclaimer:  This article was written prior to the Season 5 release of Fortnite Battle Royale so any changes to the game, performance issues, my kill count only reflect the amount of time that I put into the final handful of weeks in Season 4.

By now, most of the known gaming world has either played Fortnite, or at least is aware of the Battle Royale style of games that mimic the Japanese novel (and movie) of the same name where a group of people are deposited on an island and are encouraged to kill everyone else using a variety of weapons and be the last one standing.  Fortnite Battle Royale has the added bonus of being able to magically build structures, or parts of structures as a key component to staying alive and taking out your competition.

I on the other hand have a completely different tactic for staying alive.  And that is staying away from people for as long as possible.

There's something very satisfying about being kicked off the bus 30 seconds after the first people jump on their own, then slowly falling towards the island watching the kill feed tick by as other players are picked off one-by-one.  Then when you finally land away from any moving dots on the island, you see that nearly 30 people have already died before you find your first weapon or take your first swing of the pickaxe.  But please do not think that I am trying for a passive no-kill run, I have just found that I tend to live longer (thereby being able to play longer) by avoiding people.

I'll let you guess as to whether or not I was the last one standing.*

I am also not a big fan of building even though I have my control scheme set for building efficiency.  I realize that you are essentially building yourself a fort makes it slightly more difficult for your opponents to hit you, but here is where my warped sense of gaming comes in.  Because one of the key rules in Fortnite is that the map shrinks down every two minutes or so, there is a good chance that the fort/tower you built has not only given away your location, but will soon be in the area that is no longer playable.  And collecting building materials can be so noisy, especially if you're trying to be sneaky.  So you are forced to move into the circle with the rest of the surviving players.  Which is why in the picture above, you see me crouching in a bush.

This tactic ended up not working because no one else came into the house.  So maybe it did work after all?

Most of the time I will only notice other players as they are running across the island, which is then my cue to run in another direction.  Granted there have been a handful of times that I have actively engaged people by shooting at them, but only if I am far enough away and can get away without being killed, or if I find myself in a building with another person, then I will camp out in a bathroom or stairwell with a shotgun trained on the door.

Of all of the available modes of play on the Nintendo Switch version, I usually stick to Solo, but I will occasionally dip into Squads, and very rarely will I play 50 vs. 50, which in my style of play, I have a higher chance of winning as I am less likely to die than people who actively engage in combat.

To date, I have a grand total of 8 kills after having played for about 10 hours.  So 1 kill every hour and fifteen minutes. . .not too bad?  Maybe?

Am I playing the game wrong?  I don't think so, since as part of the games leveling system there are challenges that include goals such as staying alive longer than other squads in Squad Play, or unlocking 6 chests in Snobby Shoals (or whatever that outcropping of four houses along the western coast is called).  Challenges that do not focus on killing are where the majority of my experience points come from.

In the end, I find Fortnite as a fun escape from heavier story driven games like Battle Chasers, Skyrim, and Thimbleweed Park.  I like being able to jump into a handful of games and basically seeing how long I can survive, all in less than 30 minutes.  It is really a fun game, except that I am not taking it as seriously as some people, but for me personally, I think that is the key.  If I felt that I needed to be good at the game and had to jump off the bus in the first five seconds in score some sweet lootz and kill some n00bs, I feel that would take away a lot of what I find fun in the game.

In this game, two teams were fighting it out on the cliff above me.  I did end up dying, but it was to the one person who ended up winning the match, so I felt a bit better.

And hey, Season 5 just started last week (currently in Week 2), which has brought a new map, golf carts, motion controls on the Switch and a new trove of things to earn if I were to throw down the $9.99 for a season's Battle Pass. . .

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Cause We Wanna Live for the Life

*I was not.  I died from a rocket to the general vicinity of my person.

P.S.  I will probably write a First Impressions Part II in the coming weeks, having experienced more of the game than when I first wrote this.

MIDI Week Singles: "The Leviathan" - Dead Space (PC)

"The Leviathan" from Dead Space on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 (2008)

Composer: Jason Graves

Album: Dead Space Original Video Game Soundtrack

Label: E.A.R.S.

Developer: EA Redwood Shores (Visceral Games)

If you have been following our Instagram account recently, you will have noticed that I may have accidentally started playing Dead Space (for the third time?) last week, which seems appropriate as the game turns 10 years old this October. 

What draws me to this song, similar to my decision to use "Welcome to the U.S.G. Ishimura" last December, is that unlike a lot of the hellish soundscape that is the Dead Space soundtrack, I like what melody exists in "The Leviathan."  There is a bit in this song to unpack.  From the introductory chords that introduce the massiveness when Isaac sees the Leviathan in all of its fleshy horribleness for the first time (although in-game it definitely seems like this section was cut off), to what is the highlight of the entire peace starting at around 0:33 seconds.

If you are not one for songs, let alone video game music, that is not melody based, that I can understand your reason for skipping us this week.  However, if you are one who enjoys some great creepy and tense music that puts you in the mindset of going up against some astral horror in the bowels of a ship infested with reanimated corpses of your fiance's friends, then this is probably for you.

I also recently finished killing this beast on my current playthrough, which is probably why it was in my mind to include it today.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Running Just As Fast As We Can

Beta Test: Arena of Valor (NS)

It has now been a few weeks since the Arena of Valor closed beta on the Nintendo Switch started and has since ended.

Before going into the game, what I knew was limited to the fact that it was a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) akin to League of Legends or Dota 2, both of which I have playing only a combined time of about seven hours; 5.5 D2, ~1.5 LoL.  I also put in about 2 hours on the now dead Dead Island: Epidemic, but that was more MOBA-esque than the previous two games.

So that is some context with me going into the Arena of Valor beta the other week.

Not having played a MOBA on a console before, I appreciated the handful of tutorial levels that I felt more orientated me towards the control layout as opposed to how a MOBA is played.  I started off playing a one on one match and the tutorial culminated in the regular five on five, three lane match that is common in this genre.  The very nice thing too, was that all of the tutorial levels were played with and against computer controlled players.  And here is where I feel like what I am about to write is going to get really weird.

I loved the fact that I felt I was able to learn the mechanics of the game while not playing with real people, especially real people who are strangers scrutinizing my every move, misstep, death, and apparent lack of MOBA hardened strategy.  I felt that I could make as many mistakes as needed to get used to how the starter character operated.  I could die as frequently as needed to recognize when to attack, when to retreat, and how to gauge my healing ability versus making a run to try and topple a tower.  However, if there were no other human aspect to this game besides me and Arena of Valor was a single player experience, I would probably play no more of the game than the one hour I put into this beta.

This is obviously not a new found critique of the MOBA genre, but I feel like Arena of Valor works best when played with other people, preferably people you know, or at the very least, for me to play the game with people I know.  Other people may prefer to play with strangers, but being me, if I am going to be playing any game where you are expected to work together as a team, I want that team to be people I already know.  So for the few games that I played against whom I presume to be real people (although from what I read during the beta, most/all early matches were all against computer opponents), I mostly played in the one-on-one single lane match.  This just made more sense to my preferred play style of not having to worry about failing four other ream members, only myself.  However, only playing in one-on-one single lane matches, you lose out on a lot of what makes MOBAs so popular.

But let us get back to Arena of Valor specifically since that is why we are all here.

In short, the beta ran fine for me, except the one queue I waited in that was supposed to last 32 seconds and ran just over 4 minutes; but I came in expecting that from a beta test.  Arena of Valor operated just as I was expecting a MOBA to with a handful of characters that operated as your standard ranged, magic, support, and tank options.  I did not notice much of any performance issues playing in handheld on the Switch, and if there was any skipping, it was minimal enough to make me feel like it was never there in the first place.  If you had told me that this was simply a demo for the game and not a beta test, I would have believed you and concluded that while somewhat fun, I just do not think that this would be the type of game that I would play on a regular basis.  

Sitting Pretty At 15%.  Whatever That Means In Terms Of My Team's 118%.

Unless of course there are other friends out there who want to run some lanes and kick the crap out of people without ever having to actually talk to each other.  But just a word of warning: I might be the weakest link on the team.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Production" - Conflict (NES)

"Production"* from Conflict on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1989)

Composer: Michiharu Hasuya

Album: No Official Release

Developer: Vic Tokai

When I began listening to the music from Conflict, some of it sounded familiar, but not so familiar that I could place it.  Then the music for when the player enters the production screen to build up their army, my ears perked up and summers spent during the early '90s came flooding back.  In short, Conflict is a turn based strategy game akin to Advance Wars.

I borrowed Conflict a lot from Dellaños and I am 94.7% positive that I watched him play it at his place as well as at my parents.  I am pretty sure we played against each other, often with someone wanting to pick the Red Team since they had what we felt were the superior MiGs, which I believe was typically Player 2. 

Realizing that this song is only 14 seconds long was a bit of a surprise, and if anything, shows you that the developers probably did not expect people to be on the production screen for longer than 30 seconds.  Not being the brilliant strategist, I know I spent a lot of time looking at the production screen, trying to determine which units to produce, weighing my options as far as cost, production time, and overall power of the unit.  I probably spent more time on this screen than what might be considered strategic, if only because I would second guess my choices, as well as trying to plan ahead thinking about what better options I could have if I only had more resources.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Everyone Knows All About My Direction


*P.S. I should also mention that "Production" is not the official title of the song.  Since there was no official soundtrack (that I could find) I was likewise unable to find any official track names, so I went with what I found in the manual for the game, which on page 11 talks about the production of units, so that was the title I decided to go with.

Game EXP: Layers of Fear: Legacy (NS)

I realize that I posted a Game EXP article about Layers of Fear less than a year ago, but that was when I played it through Steam, and this time it is my experience playing it on the Nintendo Switch.  For a more comprehensive review of the game, I would recommend you read the article I posted last October, so I am not going to go into explaining gameplay mechanics and expect that you will have either played Layers of Fears already, or you have previously read the aforementioned article.

First off, this version of Layers of Fear is very much the same game that is available on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.  It may be graphically inferior to other releases of the game as far as texture detail or quality of dynamic lighting, but I feel that unless you are doing a side-by-side comparison, playing on the Switch, you will probably not notice if a wall, painting, or wooden doll's body would have looked even better on a PC or PlayStation 4.  And as long as we are talking about gameplay performance, I will admit that I did not notice any recognizable dip in frames per second, but since I do not have a counter on screen, I cannot confirm that the game did not dip from 30 fps to 20 for 4.7 seconds.  And this was from playing predominantly in handheld mode, although I did play a few times in docked, but at the very least, all of the pictures taken here were in handheld.

My biggest concern with playing Layers of Fear on the Switch was how well the system would handle the seamless transitions that made the game the first time around so effective.  After playing for the first hour, all of my fears were alleviated.  Walking down a hall way, hearing the door you just walked through click behind you and turning around to find a blank wall where the door once was, then you hear the sound of a crying child behind you.  As far as I was able to tell, all of the ways that  LoF excelled on my PC during my first playthrough have met all of my expectations on the Switch.

Having now gone through the game twice, I felt that the second time was significantly less frightening than the first time, but I feel like that is to be anticipated since I knew what to expect for the most part.  That being said, the game was still pretty terrifying in a lot of areas.

When I came upon the bedroom, I immediately recalled all of the horribleness that happened here.  By this point in the game, my palms were already a bit sweaty and my brain thought it would be the perfect time to inflict my arms and the back of my neck with goosebumps.  And that is primarily what I was hoping for on my second playthrough, and first on the Switch.  I have yet to go through the Inheritance DLC on the Switch, but I anticipate that it will have similar results.

And something that I apparently did not notice the first time I finished the game, was that "New Game" was replaced by "Finish It."  Now I am really hoping that there will be something different on a second playthrough of the same file.

So congratulations Bloober Team on a great port of a great game, and I am really hoping that Observer is able to see a Switch release, but I have been hoping for that now for nearly a year, so let us just keep at it, shall we?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Where We Can Find Our Path Forward

Monthly Update: July 2018

Are you getting tire of my saying, "Holy crap, it's already [Insert Current Month], because last month just flew by!?"  Because if so, then "sorry," because June kinda just did.  Fly by.  Or at least for me it did.  And also, I'm not sorry.

I also kind of want to semi-apologize because I realize that my last handful of posts were Nintendo (specifically Nintendo Switch) related and when I am mentally looking forward to my next batch of articles and July in general, there is more Nintendo.  And I guess that's just the way things go when your primary video gaming system happens to be the Nintendo Switch.  And if you have been following along, I still have not gotten around to fixing my 3DS (or a semi-integral part of my car for that matter), so even my playable Nintendo gaming systems are dwindling.

But, the last week of June I did manage to pick up a previously coveted NES Classic so I have been fooling around with the 30 games that come on that, and before you ask or wonder, I probably will not be modding the thing as I am just a little too afraid in my abilities to not brick the system.  Maybe I'll just go the route of the Pi and attempt that?  And I realized that it had been a loooooooong time, possibly since Beardsnbourbon was over for a visit that I last played the SNES Classic, but I could be wrong.  Good thing I had played Final Fantasy III so many times that I was somewhat easily able to remember what I was supposed to be doing based on which airship I had and whom I had in my party.  To the Empire with a stop off in Miranda!

But moving away from Nintendo, at least for the time being, I do currently have Steam open, and I do tend to turn on The Elder Scrolls Online, if only to keep my game up-to-date so come the day when my computer decides that it wants to play ESO for more than 10 minutes before crashing, I will be good and patched up.  And as for Steam, I am doing a pretty decent job in not buying anything during their Summer Sale, mainly because the last game I played, not including the Mansions of Madness app that we used last night, was Dark Souls III back on March 5th.  And what I find kind of odd for me, is that while looking through my library of games, I really only get a hankering to play games that I have already played, like Dead Space, or  Morrowind.  Sure there are some games that I would love to play that I cannot get on the Switch like Prey, The Enemy Within, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture,  and Alien: Isolation, but my computer is getting up there in years and cannot handle much above 2011 games, with the few exception mind you.

On the other side of the board, hopefully we can get our D&D group together to finish up that one-off quests that will be going on its second session.  It's been since April when we had two sessions in a month.  Maybe some people felt a little burnt out, or more than likely, Summer kicked in and everybody, ourselves included, started having our weekends filled in with things that did not involve sitting around a table for six to eight hours on a Sunday afternoon.  But we did manage to have some friends over this last Sunday to play (and introduce) Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, which I came to realize that we had not played since Conklederp and I moved into our new house last November.  Eight months is a pretty long time to go without playing one of our favorite board games.

So July 2018, you are here.  Now let us do something about it.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And It's Fine For Some

MIDI Week Singles: "Boss Battle 1" - G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (NES)

"Boss Battle 1" from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1991)

Composer: Nobuyuki Shioda

Album: No Official Release

Developer: KID

If you happen to be in the United States, or are a citizen of this country, then I guess this song applies to however you want it to apply to whatever you want it to apply to.  Because 'murica! and because it is presently our Independence Day!

Not having ever played this game despite having watched a fair amount of the G.I. Joe cartoon as a wee kid, and played the board game quite a bunch, the NES game never seemed to interest me for whatever reason.  So when I came upon the music earlier last week during my #AllTheNESMusic listening, I thought that using for today would be appropriate.  I also thought that as boss music, it works, but at the same time, doesn't(?).  

It works in that, to me, it sounds very much like boss (or at the very least) mini-boss style music.  There is a franticness to the melody that clearly states it is not intended for your basic stage or level, but for fighting a single strong enemy in a single screen.  I do not know how or why I feel this is the case, but that is what it sounds like to me.  However, I feel that it does not quite work in that the melody itself seems kind happy go-lucky, but not in the same insanity way that "Majora's Incarnate Battle" did in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.  But that melody only lasts for about 13 seconds before it goes into a frantic "Get Out of THERE!" section that plays for another 15 seconds before the song repeats.  But I really think that that 13 seconds of where the melody is the strongest is where and why the song holds together, which is why I find it so catchy.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And You Never Need A Guy To Guide You