Education Through Youtube (Part 2)

Making Up For Lost Time

 Most of the people who know me are very much aware that I am passionate about video games, and many of these people also know that I dropped out of a nursing course at University over a decade ago. My year-and-a-bit foray into nursing is the only taste of higher learning that I've had, having finished high school and not really being inspired to do anything afterwards. I knew that I liked to take care of people, and I am from a family of brilliant nurses (and a trained midwife) so it seemed like a sensible thing to do. The thought of actually working in the games industry felt unattainable, like being a rock star or an a-list actor.

 Looking back, I wish I could have drilled it into my teenage self that the cliché of "you can do anything you want, if you try hard enough" has its foundations in reality. Instead, I found myself spending my teens and early twenties doing bar work and retail; both of which have resulted in some great life lessons and friends that I am so proud to have. These jobs never gave me much opportunity to learn, though, and that was why I reached out to "Train2Game"; an open-learning course that turned out to be a bit of a joke. Despite the course's dubious credentials, it allowed me to put together the portfolio you see on this site, as well as giving me the confidence to apply for work in my chosen industry. I was willing to be vice-sub-assistant deputy teaboy, but luckily I was rewarded for my tenacity with a QA role and this crazy ride began.

 Every moment in my professional life since then has been a somewhat scattered ascent up the steep rock-face of "learning on the job". I love my current job, and if there's anyone who's thinking "I can't do <X> for a living", I want to let you know that if you care enough, you'll make it happen. My lack of formal education means relatively little in my current role, as does my growing up without a PC in the house for most of my childhood, as I've learned the role of QA tester over the past 4 and a half years. Despite this, I am constantly tripping myself up with imposter syndrome and the belief that my lack of technical or academic knowledge is going to define my whole career. It's a stupid insecurity, given that the games industry is already full of inspiring characters who have defeated much greater odds to achieve their goals.

 Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I have been lucky enough to pick up some good habits from colleagues and fellow game developers who have shown me that especially in the tech world, nobody is ever finished learning. Books and seminars can be useful, but people go to great lengths to make learning the trade of game development more entertaining. This brings us to the whole point of this blog post (apologies for the introspective opening), the amazing channels that are out there that I feel have helped me to become a better game developer. I want to start with one that I've been following for quite a long time now, and has been a gateway to much wider sources of analysis.

As before, all titles will double as links to the appropriate Patreon pages.

Mark Brown & The Game Maker's Toolkit

 Mark Brown is the first youtube channel I ever supported on Patreon, and this was largely because his Game Maker's Toolkit series was the first instance I had seen of critical analysis on specific gameplay mechanics and themes. Before this, I could see when a game had a problem with its mechanics or level design, but I couldn't ever convey it succinctly. I am not a trained level or mechanics designer, but GMT provided a lens through which to see the core tenets of modern game development and almost overnight, I became better at identifying a game's shortcomings and conveying them to other people. Some might think that this would be useful for a QA tester, and technically it is, but this insight is more useful when giving feedback, as opposed to writing bugs. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to work somewhere that QA feedback is not only acknowledged, but actively encouraged, so I feel like this channel has equipped me well.

 Mark puts a great deal of work into his roughly 10-15 minute pieces, and not only is his voice a calming and well paced guide through the subjects he's discussing, but he also rewards his Patreon backers with a generous amount of "behind the scenes" content, video critiques of the games he's played that month and most valuable of all (to me): his reading list. 

 The GMT reading list is Mark's favourite articles, videos and essays about all sorts of subjects that can conceivably apply to gaming. Every month, he posts some solid gold that has led me to follow some of the video makers I'll mention later. Many of the articles he cherry picks are related to specific game mechanics, some are indie blogs that describe the process of making a game with a small team, there's a small selection of choice interviews with game developers great and small and some are really gratifying deep-dives into classic games from my childhood and teens.

 Whatever your chosen genre or area of expertise, I can almost guarantee you that Mark has made a video to suit your interests. I've never regretted kicking him a few quid for the work he does, and he always seems grateful. His work only continues to improve, and I look forward to the next series he makes.

Recommended Videos:

1. The Last Guardian & The Language Of Games.
2. Boss Keys - A Link to the Past's Dungeon Design.
3. How Games Do Health.

Extra Credits

 The Extra Credits guys have been making educational videos for years now. They started as a channel solely dedicated to helping people understand how games are made and why developers often make choices that seem wrong or ill thought out. At this point, I doubt there's a part of game development that they haven't touched on. They've covered all genres, some more in depth than others, and while some of the lessons they convey may seem obvious, it's a great place to look for a video about getting started on your own game, why some games have stories that work while others fail, and even career advice for someone who wants to break into the industry.

 They've also branched out into teaching history, which was a treat for me. For those looking for the "game design" nuance in there, I'm afraid to say that it's 100% historical storytelling. That being said, a good designer reads fiction & non-fiction, takes trips and brings life experience to their project, so give some cutely drawn history a shot. Episodes are short and concise, with a distinctive and mostly consistent art style.

Recommended Videos:

1. Design Club - Baldur's Gate: Durlag's Tower.
2. Design Club - The Blue Shell.
3. Overwatch & Asymmetric Character Design.

Tommy Thompson's AI & Games

 My countryman Tommy Thompson is a senior lecturer in computer science and researcher in AI. He also develops his own games. His knowledge of the driving forces behind AI makes for a very interesting insight into what makes game non-playable characters (NPCs) compelling to interact with. From the undeniably brilliant (albeit slightly inconsistent) Xenomorph AI in Alien Isolation, to the much lauded "game director" functionality of Left 4 Dead, AI & Games is a thought-provoking and never too technical insight into what makes our games more challenging and creative.

 His breakdowns of classic games known for their AI is the reason I keep coming back to watch his work. He is a prime example of an educator who can take a feature and boil it down to what makes it work and why sometimes it doesn't. Computers aren't as smart as humans...yet.

Recommended Videos:

1. The Perfect Organism - The AI of Alien: Isolation.
2. Resurrection & Reverence: The Return of DOOM.
3. In The Director's Chair: The AI of Left 4 Dead.

Hamish Black's Writing On Games

 Another fellow Scot (as if the name didn't give it away); Hamish Black has been recording a podcast about games for quite a while now, and has been making videos about writing in video games for a couple of years. Sometimes these take the form of critiques of specific games, while other times, they can focus on an aspect of interactive storytelling that Hamish finds especially valuable or troubling.

 As someone who enjoys writing blogs, fiction and interactive fiction, it's no surprise that the topics found on this channel often resonate strongly with me. I've always found Hamish's videos to be quite even-handed, and while I don't always agree with the points he's making, I feel like he always backs up his opinion, so I can at least see where he's coming from. With the game industry's long running "What's More Important: Story vs Mechanics" debate as strongly contested as ever, it's good to know that there's someone who cares enough about interactive narrative to keep putting out consistently solid content, which only seems to be getting better.

Recommended Videos:

1. Wolfenstein: The New Order Is About More Than Defeating the Nazis.
2. How the Meaning of Vanquish (and Spec Ops: The Line) Changed.
3. The Witcher 3 and the Management of Narrative Scale.

Danny O'Dwyer's noclip Documentaries

My first time hearing Danny O' Dwyer was during my phase of listening to the GiantBombCast's ridiculous 3-hour long podcasts. I have since stopped listening to them as who has that sort of time to listen to a podcast every week? I digress. Danny is an extremely competent, well connected player (ho-ho!) in the games industry. His career has allowed him to make friends and interact with people that some might describe as the "rock stars" of modern game development. His channel "noclip" was set up in 2016, and the name refers to a type of video game cheat that allows players to walk through walls. This alludes to his ability to get inside the walls of big game studios to interview the people who make our favourite games.

 His first documentary was a behind-the-scenes of my favourite game of 2016, the great DOOM! He has since gone on to interview Marcin Iwinski of CD Projekt: one of the people behind my favourite game of 2015, The Witcher 3. He has a candid interview process that seems to get the best out of the people he's speaking with. I am really hoping that noclip's success allows Danny to bring the insides of great studios into the light.

Recommended Videos:

1. DOOM Resurrected [Part 1] - To Hell & Back (DOOM Documentary).
2. The Story of Rocket League (Part 1) - How To Build a Rocket.
3. FINAL FANTASY XIV Documentary Part #1 - "One Point O"

 

Double Fine Adventure

Ok, I admit it. I love Tim Schafer to the extent that I have played through and loved most of his games, despite not actually enjoying the format of the typical adventure game. His inimitable writing style and sense of humour have pushed me through Grim Fandango, Monkey Island 1 & 2, as well as causing me to have Broken Age in my Steam list (I'm yet to get around to playing it.)

 I don't really do Kickstarters, but Double Fine's campaign to fund Broken Age was brilliantly marketed, to the extent that they went dramatically over budget. $3million over budget, actually. I may love Tim Schafer but I have no illusions about his slight...inexperience with managing a budget. The "Double Fine Adventure" showcased the process of pitching the idea of Broken Age to the general public, all the way through to release via highs, lows and E3 press conferences. Highlights include when the campaign was so successful that they broke Kickstarter as they broke $1m, sitting down with Peter Chan to look through his old art work and composing with Peter McConnell. With cameos from voice actors like Jack Black and Elijah wood, and interviews with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, this is a must-watch for fans of Double Fine.

 For anyone who's curious about what it's like to develop a game, there's few examples better than 2 Player Productions' coverage of Broken Age's development. 

You can find the first video here.

GDC Talks

 I couldn't talk about using Youtube to learn game design without referencing possibly the greatest resource out there. The huge range of talks and presentations made at the Games Developers Conference (GDC).

 This catalogue of post-mortems, feature breakdowns, new development proposals and groundbreaking new ideas are an invaluable insight into how the best people in the industry are pushing us forward. From game design to AI programming, composing scores to compositing images; this is the place to find what you're looking for. 

 I have put this last, as most casual fans of videogames are less likely to be interested in an hour-long talk about a single feature in their favourite game, but some might. I know that as someone who wants to learn all he can about game development, this is a resource that I dip into regularly. I encourage anyone who's interested to have a look around the youtube vaults. There'll be something there for you.

Recommended Videos:

1. Building Game Mechanics to Elevate Narrative in Oxenfree.
2. Building Beauclair in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine.
3. DOOM: Behind the Music.

 And that's it from me this time! If you made it to the bottom of the page, thank you for reading! I find that doing these blogs is a really good exercise for me, as I learn more about why I enjoy these channels. It also serves to highlight the benefits of thinking back on what you learned from watching a youtube video in your lunch break.

 This is just a select few of my favourite resources. I hope that maybe in the future, I'll be able to add more. For now, these are the highlights.

 Next time I blog, I will have probably celebrated 6 months in Sweden. So far, things are going great and I hope this continues for a long time. Avalanche has been a wonderful experience so far, and Stockholm is treating me well. I'll probably talk a bit about what I've been playing (including some rugby) and maybe throw in some movie or TV chat as well. Thanks again for reading!

Deus Ex - Why doesn't everyone love cyborgs?

Signal Interrupted

 "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided" has been on my radar for a few years now. Square Enix's incredible first foray into the Deus Ex universe with "Human Revolution" scratched the itch that I didn't even know I had until I played it. Ion Storm's "Deus Ex" was a showcase in environmental storytelling, letting the player figure out what had happened or where to go by observing the room they were in, and Human Revolution was an up-rezzed, golden glowing homage to the stealth mechanics and lateral thinking that made the franchise so good to begin with. Despite being marred with some iffy combat mechanics (that didn't bother me because I play Deus Ex all stealthy-like) and some questionable boss-battle design (that did bother me, because I was spec'd for stealth and not combat), the story and setting ensured that I was going to play any sequel to Human Revolution. Oddly enough, one of the minds behind Deus Ex's incredible design; Harvey Smith is presently finishing off Dishonored 2, which is the only other game I can see dethroning DEMD as my game of the year. I guess time will tell.

The aesthetic design of the different environments is incredible.

So with a legacy as strong as Deus Ex's, it became my most anticipated game of this year. Of course between losing my job and desperately scrambling to find something to keep me afloat, my mind was nowhere near playing games for fun. I completely forgot about DEMD until my brother mentioned it in passing, saying he was happy it looked like the game would be living up to expectations. Waiting on money coming through and working a job and a half to keep myself busy, I felt horrendous that I wouldn't be able to justify the purchase of a new game to myself. When the 9+/10 reviews started to roll in, I knew I was likely to crack, and I justified it to myself (and my long-suffering wife) that I really needed to just escape for a while, and while Fallout 4 has new DLC, I needed a more engaging story; the kind of story that DEMD delivers.

The Details Make The Design

 When it comes to world-building, Deus Ex has taken a look at the ways humanity is developing (or regressing, some might say), and is able to craft a cyberpunk dystopia that feels uncomfortably close to an imaginable future. The whole planet has developed from the end of Human Revolution, with humanity divided along the lines of "natural" and "augmented" people, with the naturals persecuting the augmented for a number of reasons, all of which are outlined in a 12 minute intro video that goes over the events of Human Revolution. This backdrop is used expertly to allow players to guide their stoic (some might say "robotic") character through a maze of corporate intrigue, political corruption, brutal law enforcement and as somewhat ill-advised writing labels it; "mechanical apartheid". 

The augmented ghetto known as "Golem" feels like classic Cyberpunk.

The story is great, although it's hard to go into any detail without risk of spoiling it for those who haven't played it yet, or for those who are planning on picking up Human Revolution; a recourse that I whole-heartedly endorse! Instead, I want to cover the commitment to detail and storytelling that the designers decided to showcase through their environments.

I don't think I am the only one who appreciates the incredible design of Deus Ex's spaces. From the cozy corners of your engineer's underground lab & bedroom to the cramped high-rise alleyways of Golem, the level designers have crafted an incredible space to play in. Every space feels useful, and often tells a story. The disparity between the rich and poor is put on show in a way that doesn't feel tired or preachy, despite being a central plot-point. While dialogue also conveys the differences between the poor and the rich, it's the living environments where the player can rake around and get a real feel for who's living in 2029 Prague.

Beautiful interior design with high ceilings, minimalist design and little reading cubby-holes make me think that Deus Ex's level designers must be contract architects.

For example, almost every palacial upmarket penthouse has a PC in it that players can hack into and snoop around in the affairs of major characters, NPC's and sometimes even dead bodies who are lying next to the PC you're reading from. The content you're likely to read can involve child custody battles, apologetic emails from parents to now-dead drug addicts and letters from the corrupt corporate body, extorting people for money and making you feel so bad about stealing someone's credits that you drop all your pilfered beer and spirits so that they can at least get pissed when they find out that the trenchcoated weirdo with the naff-looking sunglasses has robbed them blind and read their emails for a laugh. Of course, while the player might appreciate these little snippets of seemingly useless flavour text, the aesthetic design of the city as a whole serves the classic gaming adage of "show, don't tell" and what a show the city puts on. The "Golem" environment feels like classic Cyberpunk, with dark alleyways, barely lit by flashing neon signs, beggars that hack and cough, rowdy locals and aggressive police officers. Naturally the Cyberpunk setting demands that the locals all have robotic limbs. It's a bleak place, but it's damn cool to visit.

Jensen's base of operations has several departments, most of which have cool high-tech looking goodies like this forensic scanner.

More Time in The Vents Than Newt

As well as the obvious visual appeal of Deus Ex's environmental design, the player agency that has always been at the core of the series is served so well by the diversity and depth that the game provides. Every time I needed to get into somewhere I wasn't meant to be, I found that there were normally three options:

1. Hack your way in.

2. Find a vent and creep in like a robotic John Mclean.

3. SHOOT EVERYTHING

Of course, there are sometimes opportunities to talk around problems, or maybe a case for combining some of all the different techniques, but I found myself crawling around in the vents for what felt like a third of the game. The augmentation skill-tree will often dictate what route you can take, with the hacking, traversal and combat skills all requiring sacrifices to be made in other departments to develop. I made myself a half-decent hacker with springy legs that let me jump up high and that sorted most of the puzzles I'd been dealing with. Of course, choice is the real take-away here and while the combat in DEMD is an improvement from HR, it should be mentioned that you are easily killed if you don't have the super-soldier augmentations installed. For all his spiked arm-blades and guns, Adam Jensen collapses under a hail of gunfire if you've stuck all your points into making him some kind of cross between the Blue Gene supercomputer and a pogo stick.

Every good counter-terrorism unit has a command room with lots of monitors, right?

DEMD isn't without its faults mind you, and the open nature of many of the environments are poorly served by some badly signposted environments, but sometimes a hunt to find the next area can lead you to discovering more of the incredible environments that Eidos Montreal have put in the game. The lip-syncing for voice-over is poor, but I am a culprit of sticking on subtitles and skipping through the very well voice acted lines as soon as I've read them. When compared to games like Mass Effect or Fallout, Deus Ex's writing is so brilliantly done that I never found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place, but the out-of-sync faces and the lego hair that clips through character's clothes is unfortunate and detracts from the performance.

In the end, it's a great game for people who like their story-driven RPGs, and the choice to play through the game as a stealth shooter or just a massive cyberpunk gunfight is an example in branching gameplay that rewards players with unique outcomes depending on how they complete a given task. If you like "doing it your way" then Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is worth your time.

Setting Sail For The Horizon

Where's my head at?

The last month or so has been quite surreal for me. Back in July, I had a job within the games industry, following a path that I'd been able to find and cling to, while learning what I could about game design and production. Today marks the end of a period of constant stress and concern about my financial future as I try to find a job anywhere, from the tippity-top of the UK's game development scene to returning to my old stomping ground of high-street retail and bar work. I've been able to catch a toe-hold at the moment, and at least for the foreseeable future, I don't have to worry about the dole office.

I know that if you come here looking to read about games, this is perhaps a bit heavy and I apologise for that, but I promise that this is relevant. It will come as no surprise to most people reading this (if anyone still is) that my passion for videogames goes beyond a hobby. When my wife Kara convinced me to "go for it" and pursue my dream to become a game developer back in 2011, I threw myself heart & soul into working towards becoming a valuable asset to the kind of studio I'd like to work in, or maybe even start my own one day. I was fortunate enough to scramble my way out of the retail work I'd been doing since high school and got my foot in the door at a games studio. I've never wanted to look back since.

The past few weeks have been the first time I've ever had the feeling of true investment in a job hunt, with the aim being to pursue my career, as opposed to simply making enough to shelter and feed myself. It's simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, as you weigh the pros and cons of working in certain places, all the while desperately hoping to hear back with good news from one of your many applications. I have had what can only be described as "mixed success" and while every rejection has been understandable, it pushes a person's impostor syndrome into overdrive as you attempt to predict what it was that made you fall short. Of course, this is the downside to being so truly invested in a job hunt; every rejection stings a little bit more than if it were for a job that was solely for monetary gain. On the other-hand, the feeling you get when you have positive feedback or an interview that seems to have gone well feels like a small step on the road to success, where success is getting back on course and with any luck, ending up slightly better-off than you were when you fell away.

So yeah, that's a small taste of where my mind's been at this past wee while. I really hope that I have some positive news to share with you guys in the near future, but for now; wish me luck.

Can we talk about games now?

Sure, let's leave my professional videogame chatter aside while I discuss my personal videogame experiences in the last couple of weeks, shall we? In the last post, I mentioned that I had been playing three games; Rainbow Six: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Rogue and Hard West. 

Cowboys + Satan = Hard West

Hard west is a strange game, for sure. I was sold on the concept while listening to (surprise surprise) an episode of an IGN games podcast, likening the gameplay mechanics to X-Com: Enemy Unknown, which was my #1 game of 2012. I had been waiting for it to drop in price, and then a friend was kind enough to purchase it as a birthday gift (thank you, Alice!) so I decided to spin it up and give it a shot.

Damn, this game's story and setting is bleak. It combines the general hostility and mercenary nature of living as a member of an early American settler in the west with the very acute hostility of satan himself. The player controls a character who dies and is resurrected on a mission of vengeance, vowing to destroy the people responsible for the death of...well himself, and his wife too. This grants him a certain set of supernatural powers, while he still does all his killin' at the end of a rifle/shotgun/six shooter. I'm not finished the game yet, but I thought I would give a quick rundown to anyone else who enjoys turn-based isometric strategy games (we really need to find a snappy word for that, don't we?) like X-Com or even Final Fantasy Tactics.

I think that the environment's aesthetic design is absolutely fantastic, with a range of locations that are straight out of the "gritty western playbook". There's saloons, farmsteads, sandy streets with wooden buildings on either side and plenty of cool props like horse troughs and barrels to take cover behind. While there's plenty of cover, the game uses a luck-based system to adjust your simulated dice rolls when attacking and defending yourself. It basically forces you to consider how focused you want to be on certain enemies, requiring you to reposition or hide your wounded characters as you attempt to pick off the stragglers. As enemy players shoot at your characters, their chances to hit will dictate how likely you are to take damage. If you take damage, then your luck will increase to compensate for the fact that you've already taken damage, and vice versa. I don't know why, but a game that openly displays its "luck factor" as a game mechanic has a tendency to make me feel like the outcomes of gunfights can be a bit arbitrary, but then again; nobody said the wild west was a fair place.

If you ever watched "Hang 'em High" and thought "You know what? They should have Clint Eastwood's character be a demon, hell-bent (pun intended) on vengeance!" then give Hard West a shot. (Pun not intended)

Breaking the siege

I love, love, love Rainbow Six Vegas 1 & 2. The last time I was able to properly dedicate myself to a small pool of games was when I was still in my late teens, living at home with my mum and working in a games shop as I tried (and failed) to save enough money to move in with friends in Edinburgh. It was the perfect cross-over of "Not enough money to buy more games" and "No real responsibilities in the evening" that allowed me to really sink my teeth into Rainbow 6 Vegas 1 & 2. I relished the opportunity to punish players who were coming from faster paced games, who weren't cautious, never expected traps and would find themselves running into a hail of gunfire from a concealed source behind a door. I got so good at playing the game that I could bounce an incendiary grenade off two surfaces and get people behind a door, just from listening to their footsteps on the floor above me.

So to come from that level of confidence in my own abilities to "pwn n00bs", I was brought crashing right back down to earth when I started playing Rainbow 6: Siege recently. Holy shit, there are players that know every nook and cranny of every map, and the array of gadgets that you can use and be forced to counter are wide-ranging and difficult to predict. I find myself getting gunned down in embarrassing situations, where I have camped a corner, as is an expected tactic for defenders in a Rainbow 6 game, then stood up to move down the corridor and have my head blown off by a guy who has had me zeroed in all this time. It's humbling, frustrating and it makes me really sad to think that there's no way I'm ever going to have the same amount of time to dedicate to Siege, the same way I did for the Vegas games.

The game itself is great, though. The maps are almost completely dynamic, with well appointed areas for destruction, that I haven't utilised so extensively since Battlefield 2:Bad Company. The gunplay is top-notch, as you might expect from a Tom Clancy game, and the Terrorist Hunt missions are as you probably remember them, although there's now a much heavier emphasis on objectives and multiplayer, but that just seems to be the way the games industry is moving these days. If you can get a crew together to play T-hunt, it's a good team building experience. Be warned however, the people that lurk around the multiplayer arenas are capable and they appear to be unusually well organised. I like to take "Sledge" who tellingly enough, is a burly Scottish guy whose special ability involves putting holes in walls with a giant sledgehammer. While I am capable of quite literally "making an entrance", it's often a case that any entrance I happen to make becomes host to a hailstorm of bullets, sending me sprawling to my death. Maybe I just ought to "get gud".

Going rogue felt like standing still

While I wouldn't go so far as to call myself an "Assassin's Creed Apologist", I remain a fan of the games despite some considerable design choices that leave me feeling burnt out half-way through. I found 3 to be an uphill slog, and Unity's beautiful rendering of Paris wasn't enough to negate the same game mechanics I've been using in the AC franchise for almost a decade now. AC4: Black Flag was a breath of fresh air, largely because it took players out into the sea to explore on a much grander scale, with epic ship battles that I would have paid for on their own.

With these factors in mind, I held off on playing AC: Syndicate (which I've heard lots of good things about) so I could play through Rogue, which seemed to be the red-headed stepchild of the franchise, as it was brought out on "last-gen consoles" while Unity was given the bigger marketing push. By all accounts, Rogue was basically a palette swap with Black Flag, trading the sunny climes of the Caribbean for the frigid waters of the north Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Unfortunately, Black Flag's protagonist Edward Kenway has also been replaced with Shay Patrick Cormack, an ex-assassin who has joined the Templar cause and sets out to restore order to the area by killing off members of his old cell.

It's the stark contrast between the life of a pirate like Kenway and the straight-laced and often unpleasant Cormack that made me pause to consider the differences between one game and the other. While the combat, environments and sailing are much the same as they were before, I found myself having a really hard time getting into the story. This was a shame as the story itself fills in some really interesting gaps in the Assassins vs Templar story, but it's just not enough to make me like Shay. His motives are seemingly coming from a benign place, and I suppose it's fair to say that his change in loyalties in the early game is a good microcosm of the differences between the two factions. Both want peace, but on their own terms and they're both entirely certain that the other is only going to hurt the human race if it gets its way.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the whole "employee at Abstergo entertainment" thing that forms the framework around the story in Rogue, in much the same was as it did during Black Flag. I know it's a super divisive framing mechanic, but as someone who dreams of working in a studio like that (sans the whole murder and genocide angle) I always found it super-cool to wander around Ubisoft Montreal's meta-version of itself. It plays much like the Black Flag meta campaign does, but with less oomph. Dialogue and animation has been replaced with hidden soundbytes, reducing engagement with the story in a way that makes the Abstergo offices seem a little...empty?

Anyway, I did enjoy Rogue for its ability to fill in little bits of story that had fallen away in the main AC plot, but for the most part the game suffers from a weaker central protagonist and modern-day story. The sailing and combat feels the same, and while it was super-fun to get out there on the high seas again, it felt like DLC as opposed to a new game. I'd recommend giving it a shot if you loved Black Flag and just want more of the same, with a little bit of back-story in there too.

That's all for this post, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. As always, any comments or feedback is valuable, but I am mostly writing these to chart my own thoughts.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Pokémon Go to your DOOM!

Where's the gameplay at?

So when I left off last time, I had mentioned that I would talk about Pokémon go for a little while. I have certainly dabbled in it a little bit, and while I have enjoyed little bits of it, I don't have the same pull that a lot of other people seem to be enjoying. For the four people left on earth who might not know, Pokémon Go is a game for your mobile phone where you are basically placed on a google-maps type environment, with varying levels of activity, depending on where you are in real life. As you move around in real-life, your avatar moves around on-screen and you are able to interact with Pokémon as they appear. This interaction is a simple minigame where the player is able to continually swipe up on their phone to throw the ubiquitous "Pokéball" at the creature while it performs a series of canned animations.

Once your prey is caught in its little red and white prison, you have added it to your roster. And that's pretty much it for gameplay, in the early stages at least. There are some RPG mechanics that sadly seem to involve mincing lower level Pokémon to create "candies" that help similar species of Pokémon to evolve into stronger versions of themselves, and there is the option to "battle" at gyms, where the game does a good job of reinforcing the same conditioning that many people get on games like Call of Duty or Halo; namely being put in your place by a 14 year old with a drugs reference in their title. In full disclosure, I only ever fought one guy in a gym, and it was at Livingston train station and the game didn't like it when my train started moving off, leaving me unable to fight further. I won, but I don't think I should have.

I would forgive you for assuming that this is a negative review of Pokémon Go, but I want to state at this point that I am curious to see what's going to happen with the game. I am almost certain that this is basically an open beta, as the distinct lack of fun gameplay that seems to have pushed the main series of Pokémon games into what must be its eighth or ninth generation is conspicuously absent, leaving behind the "gotta catch 'em all" element that seems to have entranced everyone, including my wife. I don't take any issue with the game, and for the most part, stories about it have been regarding how "Pokémon Go helped my autistic child make friends" or "I am a PTSD sufferer who finds it calming to take my children out to go Pokémon hunting" etc. This is all good, and hopefully getting a generation of nerds to go outside and interact socially will be something that prompts more games to encourage players to leave their home. My issues really come down to two things.

1. I live in a little town in West Lothian, with little in the way of Pokéstops or gyms nearby, and I cycle a bike to get to the train station, so I can't have Pokémon go out while I'm travelling.
2. Even with a range of respectable Pokémon in my roster, I don't feel like I can do much with them. There's just no gameplay there.

So with all of these factors considered, I decided to overcome 20 years of snobbery about Pokémon and I picked up "Pokémon Soul Silver" for my 3DS. I am only a couple of hours or so into it at the moment, and I still feel like the game has to "open up". I am at Violet City and just got my first gym badge, but I am worried that I've not balanced my training as my initial choice Pokémon is at least ten levels above the nearest other one. I may have to do some grinding to get my team up to speed. I promise to get back to you guys when I figure out if I was right to write-off one of the world's favourite and most famous gaming franchises of all time, or not.

Ok, so I'm not this far yet, but give me time.

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Speaking of old franchises, I had mentioned last time that I had been thoroughly enjoying my time with this year's reboot of the grandaddy of first-person shooters: id Software's "DOOM". I tell ya what, this game was everything I'd been hoping for, in terms of gameplay, story (what little was there) and tone. Bethesda are presently 2-for-2 in terms of recent shooters, with Machine Games' 2014 "Wolfenstein: The New Order" having a solid single-player campaign that mixes a lot of FPS tropes with modern gameplay mechanics and leaves you satisfied that you've played a real videogame, and not just walked through a shooting gallery. For those who have followed games for a while, you'll know that Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM share a similar origin, both coming from the extremely influential id studio in the early nineties. Oddly enough, both games contain nods to their origins, with specific areas where players are able to step into original environments from their predecessors. The visual juxtaposition of the beautifully rendered modern weapons (which I'll get onto later) and the jagged sprites of the original environments certainly made me smile.

DOOM features these secret areas throughout the game.

Not content to rest on its laurels, DOOM goes above and beyond any expectations I had when I first saw it being demoed at E3 last year. I think this is largely because this is a game that relies on how it feels to really make itself stand out. I touched on the speed and aggression that the game requires of you to succeed, with the player really needing to push forward when they're in trouble, instead of hiding. Enemies are smart and most of them are capable of chasing you anywhere you go, so it's best to turn around, pull out the chainsaw and run right at them, before enjoying the gory animation as you chop demons in half. This is especially enjoyable as the brief respite for the animation stops the player from being injured further. 

DOOM actually reminded me quite a lot of Bioshock Infinite, which is technically a great FPS, but it lacked the immediacy and punch that I feel I wanted from it. The original Bioshock was creepy to the point where it could justifiably be called a "horror" game, but in the case of Infinite, its admittedly fantastic story was so reliant on the environment being open and engaging that it never felt creepy, and the shooting became somewhat monotonous. Of course, this isn't what made me think of Bioshock Infinite, as DOOM has none of these traits, but both games share a similarity with regards to resource gathering. Ammo and health must be scavenged if you're going to survive either game, but where Bioshock Infinite has you literally raking in bins for old apples to restore health, DOOM makes a game of running around the environment mid-gunfight to pick up that vital bit of health or armour as you flee (let's say fighting retreat) from a "Baron Of Hell".

A "Baron Of Hell". These guys take some putting down.

This "micro-gamification" permeates everything that makes DOOM great. At no part of the game are you bored, feeling like you're missing something or ought to break up your exploration. There's always something to do, from the unobtrusive and rewarding puzzles that scatter the environment, to checking off the map-specific challenges: "Perform 5 screw-top glory kills on possessed." The combat related challenges often force you to re-think your approach, trying to get certain enemy types to move with you in a certain direction while you desperately hunt for the right weapon to complete the challenge, or declining to use your area-of-effect weapons for risk of killing an enemy too early to complete the challenge. Combine this constant need to switch-up your strategy with top-notch level design, weapon mechanics and baddie balancing to craft a masterpiece of exciting and gory gunplay, and after all that, what else could you want?

The aesthetic design twists wildly from creepy and demonic (above) to sci-fi futuristic.

If you want a story, it's...ok. It's certainly functional, and to be honest maybe DOOM wouldn't hold up as well if you made the DOOM Marine any more than a mindless gun-toting maniac. The UAC reprises its role as an openly evil corporate entity, with little datapads telling its employees that "unlike the rest of your life, the stuff you do here is important" and openly channeling "argent energy" directly from hell, all while they send research teams to their deaths and perform augmentations on demons to make them...well...it makes for better level bosses, let's leave it at that, shall we? Like I said, looking into the motives of a character in a DOOM game probably won't go very well. DOOM does its best storytelling through its environments, and there's no doubt that the art team must have trawled through some especially disturbing artwork to get the ideas for the settings. From futuristic planet-sized computer cores that are infested with demons, to biblical looking hellscapes and back to scientific martian colonies with clumps of demonic goop and human body parts, you know things aren't going well for the locals. Hiding in a locker isn't going to help you here ("Alien: Isolation" may have conditioned me to always look for a hiding place in a dystopian sci-fi environment) so you best just keep running forward, chainsaw raised and trusty shotgun loaded. You'll have a blast.

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Lastly, I want to talk about Batman vs Superman:Dawn of Justice.

I know, I know. It's "not great", but it's not all that bad either. It pulled back quite a bit from Man Of Steel's reliance on grand-scale sweeping combat to make its points, although there's certainly plenty of OTT fight scenes that will dazzle with special effects. The opening scene features an overlapping story with MoS, with Affleck's Bruce Wayne driving through Metropolis while Superman and Zod fight overhead, bringing down skyscrapers and rubble. It does a good job of juxtaposing the "small man" of Batman, on the ground and trying to help people while the "big guys" fight up in the sky.

Affleck's Bruce Wayne is pretty good, and it has to be; as he carries the movie.

With so much of the movie spoiled for me in trailers (I won't go any further into details), I already knew the major story beats for this film before I watched it. The combination of "knowing what's coming", along with reading the pretty poor reviews made this a "wait until it's on TV" movie for me, and while it might have been nice to see the big action scenes on a cinema screen, I feel like I enjoyed the film more with my expectations tempered slightly. The performances are all pretty good, with Affleck stealing the show for me. Henry Cavill's Clark Kent/Superman (Spoilers, sorry!) is everything I dislike about Superman as he gets outsmarted by everyone that meets him. Jesse Eisenberg is a great villain, for sure. He's just the right amount of slimy, creepy and psychopathic to make Lex Luthor work, and while she's mostly a mystery, Gal Gadot's WonderWoman looks great on screen. I guess we'll see how her Diana Prince turns out in her stand-alone movie which looks frickin' awesome, based on the new trailer from SDCC.

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That's all for this week. If you made it down this far, thank you for reading and hopefully you'll join me next time when I discuss some of the books I've been enjoying lately, due to my recent decision to join Audible, and I might have made some progress with Pokémon Soul Silver. I'm still not sure what will fill the hole left by DOOM, but I am considering giving the multiplayer a shot.

Until then, goodbye and thanks for stopping by!

Brashcast Episode 64: SDCC Trailer Bonanza, plus Star Trek & Beyond!

So this is mostly a tester for my blog to see how easy it is to host a podcast on my new website. Let's have a look-see and make sure it works, yeah? We can do it together, come on now...

Respawn

sunset od

Well it's been a while. I set up a blog a couple of years ago, with the intention of logging my thoughts regarding videogames; from opinion pieces on gaming culture to the discussing the nuances of specific games. That hasn't gone so well, I guess. For a nerd's blog, so far it's all about me and my now wife wandering around northern Italy, searching for gluten-free pizza and hoping to avoid being sunburnt as we are eaten alive by insects.

While these issues are still very relevant to me (the pizza especially), I figured it was time to give my blog a real chance, and even if nobody but me and a random guy who searched for the words "gluten-free pizza" reads it, I like the thought of being able to log my thoughts on an industry that I have followed for a long time as an outsider, and in the last few years have been lucky enough to enjoy from the perspective of a game developer. So I'm sorry my coeliac pizza loving friend, but I hope you like games, 'cos for now I'm all about dem vidjagames. (Stick around though, I'm off to Barcelona and Girona in October).

So as I said, this blog is primarily a journal where I can write down my thoughts on the modern gaming industry. I am an aspiring writer, as well as an aspiring games designer, and I like to think that even if it's not narrative, writing a blog will hopefully help me to keep my writing skills sharp, or at least inspire me to write more for my narrative projects. It will also serve as an outlet for my nerdiness. I am acutely aware that while I have a lot of nerdy friends on social media, there are also a lot of my family and friends who have no interest in videogames, and I worry that my annual E3 outbursts that normally end in me appearing to talk to myself will inevitably alienate people who have no idea who Palmer Luckey is.

ross blog

With all the preamble out of the way, I want to get started by mentioning how good it's been to get a week off. It was my birthday last Tuesday and I also had family visiting from the USA at the end of June / start of July, so I decided to take some time off. While my focus was definitely on seeing my family, some of whom I haven't seen for over half a decade, I was also looking forward to getting some time to focus on my back catalogue, which is ever-growing now that I have converted to PC gaming.

Can I just say that the major advantage to PC gaming isn't "the sensitivity of mouse and keyboard" or "the increased power"; it's the price of games. I will sometimes find myself buying games that I have already completed because they're so damn cheap. I guess this is the pitfall that Steam sales are good at capitalizing on, but I'm honestly shocked at the disparity between digital sales prices for games on Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam or CDkeys.com. Of course, PCs are significantly more expensive as an investment, and they require a certain level of technical know-how...but I digress, that's not an interesting topic.

So approaching this little holiday that I've made for myself, I am looking forward to playing two things most of all.

1. Witcher 3's "Blood and Wine" expansion.
2. Fallout 4's "Far Harbour" expansion.

It turns out that I hardly played any of the Witcher 3, and to be fair, Fallout 4 is easier to leave and come back to, as every month seems to bring new patches that fix significant bugs, and the missions are modular enough that the story thread can be lost and re-found later on. The reason I didn't play any of these games is largely because I have awesome friends who buy games at birthdays, but also because I wanted to give Insomniac Games' "Sunset Overdrive" a shot and it really sucked me in! I ended up spending quite a long time in Sunset city; grinding, bouncing and shooting my way over the rooftops in a game that I never thought I'd play until it came up for Xbox's "Games With Gold" campaign recently, and I decided to try it out. On top of Sunset Overdrive, I also played and finished Campo Santo's beautifully rendered and performed "Firewatch" and a hefty chunk of ID Software's "DOOM". I'm not sure if it's meant to have all block-capitals, but from the time I've spent with it, I think it's earned the right to be presented as a game that is shouting for attention. It's a brash game, with all the heavy-metal angst and album cover artwork that one would expect from the reboot/next iteration of ID's 1993 first-person shooter.

These three games offer a very different range of experiences, although reflecting on some of the similarities between DOOM and Sunset Overdrive have left me wondering if they've both been approached with much the same design tenets that have loaned themselves so well to creating action-packed and knowingly over-the-top gameplay that is capable of leaving players so satisfied with their experience that they can't help but smile as they tear around the environment, guns blazing, as bad guys explode into needlessly, but satisfyingly visceral (and I mean visceral in the literal sense) gibbets.

I didn't expect to like Sunset Overdrive that much, to be honest. I am a big fan of Insomniac's "Ratchet and Clank" series, especially the range of weapons that they tend to offer, but I knew that this was an open-world traversal game, similar to the Crackdown series or perhaps even Spiderman (which turns out to be the next franchise that Insomniac is set to tackle). I have played open world third person superhero games for years, with vivid memories of enjoying swinging around New York's Central Park in Spiderman 2 (but where are the webs connected to?) but I always get turned off by the learning curve and the relatively weak character that you have to start with to make the evolution of your character interesting and engaging. It happened with Crackdown and it worried me about Sunset.

I needn't have worried; Sunset may have a bit of a learning curve when it comes to traversing the environment, but it seems like right from the start, there's something new to shoot, climb on or detonate. As someone who likes to feel challenged, but not overwhelmed, I was a bit nervous at first, with the myriad of ridiculous weapons (that I'm worried Insomniac are developing for real in-house) being a lot of fun to use. There's an automatic slingshot that fires vinyl records like a machine gun, or a weird-lookin' plunger device that allows you to fire exploding teddy bears into the faces of oncoming monsters, who just happen to be humans that have been transformed by drinking too much experimental energy drink. On the topic of the "evil corporation" that makes the energy drink, I can't tell if there's some kind of political commentary going on, mostly due to the game being so ridiculously OTT that it's hard to take it seriously.

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While the weapons and monsters are fun, the game is really set apart by its setting. Sunset City is technically a post-apocalyptic city, controlled by Fizzco, the aforementioned "evil corporation". I've played Fallout, The Last of Us and Mad Max in the last few years, but none of them had a city as vibrant and exciting to traverse as Sunset City. As you learn the techniques that form the backbone of the game, namely grinding on top of the conveniently located cables and figuring out which objects can be bounced on to gain height, you'll find that you can cover great distances at massive speeds without ever touching the ground, making this a city that while enormous, doesn't ever require you to drive a vehicle.

All of this bouncing around is set to a soundtrack that can only be described as "Rockin'" and includes tracks from punk band "The Bronx" who are an alter ego of a favourite band of mine called "Mariachi el Bronx." The mixture of punk and EDM make sure that your head is bopping as you throw your character around the city. This is so profoundly fun, that I found myself unwilling to use the fast-travel system, which is a feature that I use extensively in games such as Skyrim and The Witcher 3; two games where I often play just to immerse myself in the world. When you nail the mechanics of simply getting around, you have done something right!

So during my holiday, I spent a fair bit of time lounging around in my PJs, playing Sunset Overdrive, but when my birthday rolled around I was lucky enough to receive a few gifts from my friends. These gifts were all present on my Steam wishlist, but I still have to hand it to my friends for their good taste. Let's face it, if you're buying someone a game from their wishlist, the first thing you think of is "Ok, which of these looks like something I'd be excited to play?" These games were:

• DOOM
• Firewatch
• Hard West

The more eagle-eyed of you might notice that I haven't mentioned Hard West, but that's largely because I've seen it compared to X-Com:Enemy Unknown, which is a game that ate hours of my time, back in 2012 and has continued to be a fallback game across three separate platforms since then. I am saving it for when I know I can sink my teeth into it. I will undoubtedly be covering it here at some point.

I'll mention DOOM next, as I feel a natural drift from Sunset to DOOM. As I mentioned previously, I think that both games share quite a few similarities in their design philosophy. While I concede that most action games require such staples as "fast pacing", "explosions" and "kick-ass music", these games share a real fraternity on a few different fronts.

The Weapons Rock - I've already covered Sunset's crazy cartoon arsenal that would make Wile E. Coyote's eyes pop a foot out of his head, but DOOM is positioned as the grandson of the formative FPS, meaning they can use the "classic" weapons without having to feel bad about it. You think shotguns, assault rifles and rocket launchers are boring? Well DOOM is able to present them all as familiar companions on a gore-soaked adventure, but they introduce alternate fire modes that make every weapon seem unique and fun to use. This also stops the normal gaming trope of letting the early weapons sit idle in your inventory as you repeatedly wonder why you can't pick up any more ammo for them. I am a good 3 or 4 hours into the game and I still love my trusty shotgun!

AODOOM-INT-SAMPLE-PG-146-600x794

The Enemies Are Gross - Ok, so Sunset has mutated humans that pop when they're shot, often throwing sticky orange goo into the air, causing other mutants to appear. It's pretty gross, and the game's sense of humour is very good at knowingly nodding to it. This does mean that it's "funny-gross" like Tucker & Dale vs Evil, while DOOM goes down the route of "portal to hell, tortured souls and monsters that splinter into meaty chunks of dog food-gross" which I guess can be kinda funny too, although that just puts fuel on the fire of the "videogames desensitise people" argument, I guess.

tucker-vs-dale

No Time To Stop - Unlike many other action games, DOOM's environments are set up in such a way that you cannot stop moving. Enemies will spawn behind you, in areas you thought you just cleared. If you stand still to fight what's ahead of you, there's a real risk of being attacked from behind. Sunset is third-person, which means you're never really caught unawares, but you still need to keep moving to avoid being shot or mauled to death. While this "on or off" approach to gameplay seems somewhat simplistic nowadays, it's actually refreshing to play a pair of games that won't let you relax until you've fought your way clear of your enemies. There's no hunkering down for cover or hiding while your health refills. There is only carnage! DOOM actively encourages getting stuck in at close range with "glory kills" which will reward players with ammo and health drops. The last game I played that had the same approach to "forward, never back" combat was Warhammer 40K's "Space Marine". It was similarly gory and involved chain weapons.

I feel like this is a good place to leave my first blog-post about games, as I've covered two similar but distinct games. In my next post, I'll go on to discuss my experiences with Firewatch, and perhaps offer my opinions on what seems to be causing a lot of hubbub in both gaming and popular culture at the moment: Pokemon Go.

All that and more next time, thank you for reading!

-Roguester