It’s amazing how times change and how what was once something I scoffed at, and even slightly feared, has become the very norm that I now enjoy. I am of course talking about Steam, which believe it or not came online September 12th 2003, after nearly a year in beta.
As you may know, I’m a lover of finger buffet gaming, I like to give everything a go if I can. I had never considered myself a lover of Roguelikes but games such as FTL and Rogue Legacy have opened my eyes to the joys and curses of permadeath. So when an email for “A Robot Named Fight” crossed my desk promising Alien abominations, labyrinthine randomised levels and permadeath, this gamer signed up. Let’s whet your appetite before I start talking with a good old fashioned trailer, which is also in the running for best quote of the year for “Face a relentless plague of Meat”…
So what is it? Robot bills itself as the best of Metroidvania and Roguelike games, with the Metroid vibe certainly at the forefront in my opinion. As you can gather from this the late 80’s/early 90’s vibe is alive and well in both visual style and musical styling, with a healthy dose of 90’s sound effects.
How does it play?
For those who are unfamiliar with the term MetroidVania , it’s a cross between Metroid and Castlevania, hence the name. This style of game is generally platform based with a large area 2D world to explore, with area limited by abilities you earn or find in your travels. Your general expectation for games in the MetroidVania Subgenre are tightly controlled levels to force the player to explore for the required abilities. A Robot Named Fight, however, is procedurally generated with each run being unique, yet it still manages to provide that tight experience of progression via exploration in power increase. Permadeath strips you of any upgrades you have earned and puts you back at the start, however any already unlocked abilities that you have previously found can appear any subsequent runs.
Robot also features local coop, with a second player taking control over a robotic sphere that has free reign around the screen but shares its health with player 1’s humanoid avatar. It’s an interesting cooperative choice keeping the core platforming gameplay intact for player 1 but balances that with increased risk with the shared health. It reminds me of the coop mechanics in apidya many years ago.
A Robot Named Fight will launch on Steam on Thursday, September 7th 2017. If you enjoy roguelikes, or even roguelites, then it’s an enjoyable play-through with a good amount of replayability. The press release advises it’s 25% off for it’s first week of release and has it down as $7.49 so in good old UK Quids I’d expect around £5.99.
Alright, so it’s not actually “confirmed” but this clip from Pax West has Randy Pitchford giving a HUGE nudge nudge, wink wink to Borderlands 3.
I mean, am I allowed to use the words Nerdgasm because I’m fairly certain Dan may be about to have one….
Sonic Mania has been billed as a faithful recreation of the earlier Sega Genesis/Mega Drive era Sonic Games. The wife unit considers that era of games to be the best and pretty much anything past that era and a tiny bit of early PS1 games to be dead to her. I personally could think of no harsher critic to throw this poor little game to, someone whose love for that Sonic era is unquenchable. Her cynicism towards new Sonic games was strong, I feared for it.
I nervously supplied the good lady with the PS4 Version and hoped she’d enjoy it.
This week, it appears that the Crash Bandicoot Remaster “N.Sane Trilogy” that was released last Friday, has whomped it’s way to the top of the UK Charts for the PlayStation 4. An impressive feat for essentially a game that was first released in 1996 (Yikes – feeling old) but what makes it that little bit more impressive is that it has also become the biggest single format physical release in 2017 for the PS4, just pipping Horizon Zero Dawn. Add to the fact the N.Sane trilogy also boasts the second biggest overall multi format launch this year in the UK VS Ghost Recon Wildlands, a title that was released across multiple formats against Crash’s one.
What’s my point? Basically, the PS4 and myself have never truly been friends. I watched my wife play through “The Last of Us” and I slogged through FFXV with little enjoyment but generally the PS4 is relegated to Netflix Duty. This isn’t the PS4’s fault, it’s just preference since there hasn’t been anything I REALLY wanted to play on the PS4 that I can’t play on PC. This current wave of nostalgia is putting my wallet in jeopardy.
I bought Crash on release day, something I rarely do with games nowadays, probably because the Steam Sales have trained me to be a complete tightwad. But I’m so glad I did since I’m actually using the PS4. However I noticed this had started a worrying trend, not a week before I’d shelled out for “Wipeout- The Omega Collection” based purely on my love for the PS1 version.
Have the gaming gods been spying on me? Have they discovered my nostalgia based weakness? I fired up my PC and had a quick nosey through my Amazon wishlist…Oh no, I’ve got Micro machines and Sonic Mania on there as well.
Take a look at the SNES Mini that was announced the other day, and how quickly the NES mini became unavailable due to demand massively outstripping the supply. Nostalgia SELLS!
It’s not to say that modern games are no good, quite the contrary some of them are amazing compared to what we had. But those that have grown up with the hobby have fond, if somewhat rose-tinted memories, of these games and we are now the target market due to our disposable income. Nostalgic games are a little bit like 80’s music, a lot of it was absolute trash but the good stuff tends to have survived. Good games get remastered and re-released and tug on those little nostalgia heart strings.
For myself, the PS1 era is when gaming became “acceptable” to the masses, hell the PlayStation even made it cool.
Let’s see if this is a nostalgia wave that will just keep on coming or it’s a bubble waiting to burst…
A dark room holding a Gamers Anonymous meeting
*Stands up and clears throat*
Hi Everyone, my name is Jon and I can never decide on what game I want to play.
*Lots of clapping*
I’m occasionally left in charge of my nephew, or should I say he is left in charge while I provide food and games. Either way, my nephew who is 7 at the time of writing has been recently corrupted into my hobby of playing games. We are still working on mouse usage as a primary control form but hey you cannot win them all.
Anyway I digress, as with many things it’s usually children who show us the way or open up a new way of thinking. You see, he loves to play “cooperative” games and we’ve been playing Portal 2 and Broforce as of late, I’m not complaining as I’m personally sick to death of minecraft, his other gaming vice. Unfortunately for me, he doesn’t appear to have ever learned how to play cooperatively and it sent me down a path of reasoning on when we learn this behaviour.
So what do I mean he doesn’t play cooperatively?
Quite frankly the only way to describe him is as a troll. Yes, I just called my own nephew a troll and he’s damned good at it. During a game of Portal he will deliberately go out of his way to kill me and howl with laughter, never mind the objective, if he can kill me he will. If I were to suggest a competitive game, he’s instantly against it. An example is an early door puzzle requires you to place a ball on a pressure pad, he figured this out himself with no prompting and being the fool that I am thought “hey, maybe he gets this!”. I walk towards said door and suddenly find it closing on my face to howls of laughter from the little blighter. He has even mastered the “Ok, I’ll not do it again” and promptly murders me with the door again. I’m not equipped to defend against such callous deviousness in a coop game!
His Broforce habits are a little more forgivable, since the game is so hectic but he’ll deliberately take the floor out from under you just to rescue another “Bro” or escape on the helicopter at the end of the level without you. It’s going for the glory.
BROOOFFFOORRCE!
Why?
Simply put he has never had to play cooperatively, the behaviour has never been learned either in game or with siblings. I grew up with my brother and I both being somewhat avid gamers, some of my greatest gaming memories come from besting cooperative experiences with him, all the way from Bubble Bobble on the C64, Apidya and Chaos Engine on the Amiga to Future Cop LAPD on the Playstation. I’m writing this after playing a game of “Satellite Reign” with him, working together for a common goal. I can’t think of a single time that we’ve deliberately bated the other in these circumstances.
What’s my point, you cry? It’s that this behaviour still carries on into adult life. I’m going to use Counter-Strike as an example, as it’s one I’m fairly familiar with. Players within CS:GO are put into matches by the matchmaking system based on their rank. This is a measure of how well you do against other players and is a very loose approximation of the Chess ELO ranking system. The idea is that you are pitted against players of a similar skill level and for the most part it does work. The rank system however does bring out some interesting behaviours in some people.
Bad Habits
Firstly, the lone wolf syndrome. The glory hound, who won’t play with their team. In CS:GO this is particularly painful as competitive matches are set 5 vs 5 games. Your lone wolf is likely to run off by themselves hoping to grab a couple of kills to make themselves look good. In reality, your lone wolf is going to run into the enemy team by themselves and get killed for their hubris. They will then blame everyone else for getting killed despite their actions leaving a gap in any defence and taking the game to 5 vs 4.
The Teamkiller, certain game modes on CS:GO have you defuse a bomb which takes a couple of seconds. If the enemy team is all dead, it’s just a time game. Some people will kill a team mate just to get the glory of defusing the bomb. It’s unlikely to throw the round unless the killer is completely stupid, but it instantly breaks any cohesion and creates a bad feeling putting the victim on a tilt. Reason for killing? Glory.
Shut up and make your point
The inability of someone to be able to play cooperatively is in fact a character flaw. Someone who has never learned the value of working as part of a team is not going to be a productive person. My nephew is a 7 year old and you could chalk up his trollish behaviour to being a young boy but what happens if you never outgrow that behaviour? You get people who put themselves first with no thought of others. Sometimes a game is just a game, but I like to think you can get the measure of a person by they way they conduct themselves in a game or other activity.
Who said video games can’t be educational?
Stellaris is a 4x Grand Strategy game where you control your own empire, all the way from the type of species, through to their ethics and policies. The year is 2419 and the Pacifist Hahn-Mur Monarchy find their rather comfortable galaxy about to be come very noisy. This post was originally written pre-Utopia Expansion.
Greetings your Highness. I’ve prepared this report for you to bring you up to speed on the latest galactic situation. As you are aware your Highness the Hahn-Mur people have lived in peace and prosperity under the line of High King Garma I for just over two centuries, our peace-keeping force has been a deterrent to any would be aggressor and we have found like-minded friends in the Uri Council, United Kallagian Confederation and the Democratic Havarigga Party. The Stellar league that we have formed has kept even the most Xenophobic Species in line and protected those species who have come to join us on the galactic stage.
Sadly your highness not everyone has shared our view. In the corner of the galaxy sat the Tezekians, what we would refer to as a fallen empire, they have been on the galactic stage longer than we know but view the younger races such as ourselves with disdain and contempt. When we first encountered them in 2232 although not hostile they wished to be left alone and the space around them to remain Un-colonised. We and the other younger species saw fit to respect this elder species and granted them their wish, for 150 years they have sat quietly in the corner of the galaxy.
It seems a shift had occurred in the Tezekian Empire in late 2410 your highness as by 2411 we received a galaxy wide communique to either accept “Thralldom” or be crushed from existence, the sleeping giant in the corner was sleeping no more. The Tezekian fleet first entered the space of the United Kallagian Confederation, a massive fleet consisting of 145k ships, the combined fleet of the Stellar League was around 138k and the two fleets stared at each other across from the Dellatra System. During this initial clash many lives were lost but the battle was inconclusive, the Tezekians Retreated back to their own space and our fleet wasn’t strong enough to take the fight to them.
Unfortunately this was just the start of our troubles your Highness, in 2413 our instruments detected a massive galaxy wide power surge. At the time we were unaware what this meant, only the dark foreboding that it meant additional problems. Shortly after the surge a strange portal appeared in the Jared System within Centralised Cygan Space. The Cygan people although not allies are considered cordial towards the Hahn-Mur, their own federation although smaller has similar goals of peace. From this portal came massive fleets of what can only be described as “energy ships” who began to purge the life from Cygan planets, the true horror of this act however only recently came to light as these creatures that call themselves “The Unbidden” actually devour the lifeforce of any living creature on the planet.
By 2414, The eastern quadrant of the Cygan empire was being devoured, with the Tezekians hiding behind their borders likely in response to the unbidden’s arrival, the decision was made to move our main fleet to help bolster the Cygan empire. Our old rival the Otaga Kingdom made overtures to ending our own rivalry and sent their fleet to assist in the battle as well.
Our interference was not taken lightly by the Unbidden, more fleets appeared from the portal and this time headed west towards the Havariggan’s in an attempt to stop the Stellar League’s interference.For the next 3 years there are numerous skirmishes with the unbidden but our first Major victory came in 2417. The battle of Tirramore saw the Hahn-Mur fleet isolated against a larger unbidden fleet, the fleet was freshly re-fitted because The Unbidden’s technology relies heavily on the usage of shields so we had retrofitted our fleet with Kinetic weaponry that ignores the majority of their shielding. This has allowed us to destroy any Unbidden fleet of a similar size to our own with minimal losses. The new kinetic fleet destroyed 3 50k Unbidden fleets while losing 20k ships.
It seems that during the battle of Tirramore the Tezekian Reclaimers saw their opportunity while the Hahn-Mur fleet was engaged to push through again into Kallagian Territory. This time they came with a larger fleet against a damaged and fragmented Stellar league.
Your Highness, it is now 2419. The Tezekian’s have taken the Dellatra system and we cannot hold them there, while the unbidden continue to send fleets through the portal, with the help of the other empires we have managed to push them back and hold them into the Jared system where the portal resides. The Unbidden protect the portal with numerous fleets and any attack on it would be almost suicidal. Your people have basked in your lines glory and protection for centuries and we turn to you again your Highness to lead us in this dark time.
The question came up the other day regarding when is it acceptable to play on easy. Let me tell you, It’s always acceptable to play games on easy and I’m going to explain why. The other day I fired up “The Chaos Engine”, the old top down shooter from the Bitmap Brothers, and got my backside thoroughly handed to me. The Chaos Engine doesn’t have a difficulty setting but somehow how 9 year old me and my younger brother beat this game numerous times in our youth. Getting thoroughly trounced by the game in my 30’s was not fun. I’m sure if I kept at it I would be able to get that skill with the game back. Which leads me nicely into my next point.
Time, I don’t have the the time nowadays to devote to a single game to master it. You could argue that a lot of older games have a higher difficulty due to either design or just sheer clunkiness vs what we are used to nowadays. I want to be able to enjoy the experience of the time that I have playing games, not punish myself repeatedly having to repeat the same sections.
Also a moment ago I touched on the experience of games. I recently acquired Ryse:Son of Rome as part of this month’s Humble Monthly Bundle (Good games, great for charity – Get in there). I was already in the middle of finishing my game of Stellaris but wanting to experience what I heard was a good but short game, I dropped it down to easy. I polished it off within a number of hours, only dying at the final boss fight in my opinion due to somewhat cheaty QTE like mechanics. Did it cheapen the experience for me? Not at all because I went for the story.
There was a similar epiphany moment with “The Last of us”. My wife’s gaming CV reads, “Sonic the Hedgehog” for the Mega Drive, “Trolls” for the Amiga and “GTA V” on the Xbox so she enjoys a few games but it’s very rare. She played the absolute hell out of “The last of us”, I have never known her become so engrossed in a game that she didn’t come off until 3am in the morning. The phrase “Oh my god, is that the time? I understand now how you lose track!”
But why did she enjoy it? She started it on Normal but it’s a little demanding in places for someone who doesn’t really identify as a gamer. Knock it down to easy, Auto aiming assist kicks in and voila! A non-gamer enjoying what some would consider a flagship gaming title. The easier difficulty allows our hobby to become more inclusive, to bring in more people is essentially the life blood of a hobby. Thanks to The Last of Us, the wife unit has come into the fold and is currently cutting her teeth on some fantasticly accessible games such as Castle crashers, Broforce, Overcooked and Gang Beasts. She’s even threatened to write about them!
I’m not saying you should play on easy, I’m saying it’s up to you but I don’t think there should be a stigma involved. If you want the challenge, knock yourself out I’m not going to stop you. But playing on easy for me is an exercise in enjoyment and inclusiveness. As I so eloquently put it in Discord the other day – “Gaming for me is like a buffet, a little bit of everything”. I’m patenting that phrase.
nowisgames.com 