An Outsiders View on Bandersnatch

I just can't seem to escape people talking about this thing.  I've not seen it so I wasn't going to make any comment on it but the way people are ranting and raving like it's the second coming of Jesus Christ I feel like, as someone who enjoys the genre this interactive show is clearly based on, want to throw in my two cents.

As a warning, if you haven't experienced it yet and want to do so completely for yourself then warning for maybe some spoilers. 

So if you somehow haven't heard of Black Mirror, it's a show on Netflix that is written by one of my favorite people ever, Charlie Brooker and is a sort of science fiction anthology show that likes to show a sort of potential dark future of technology.  My personal experience with it is limited to clips and snippets of different episodes but what little I have seen of it seems really good and it is on my list of things to watch fully once I find some time to do so.  Black Mirror Bandersnatch is special because it's sort of a choose your own adventure type deal.  Instead of the episode just playing and you just watching, there are certain points in the show where you must pick an option and the events of the episode will change based on the choices that you make.

Now I've not seen what official publications are saying about it but my Twitter and Facebook are going crazy frothing at the mouth about how cool it is because of its interactivity.  This is all well and good and given the shows pedigree I'm sure it's very good but going crazy over it because it's some kind of "new thing" makes you look just a little bit stupid.

You see, games have been doing this for forever.  For example one of my favorite titles on the Super Nintendo, Kamaitachi no Yoru is essentially the same concept as Bandersnatch but its mainly just text and still images.  It's a pretty famous series in Japan and has a whole bunch of sequels on PS2 and other systems

But Kamaitachi 2 is mainly just text with very limited movement and all the characters are just blue silhouettes, you might say, it's NOTHING like Bandersnatch.  Well I have two points to counter you there, imaginary reader.  First, not only is the interactive aspect exactly the same but Bandersnatch's story flow is actually rather limited and looking at nothing but a flow chart of events, it seems a bit shit

There are A LOT of choices on that chart that mean exactly fuck all of nothing, which isn't really good when you're making an interactive experience like this.  Kamaitachi on the other hand, will not only change events but will even change what kind of story your playing.  The base path for that game is a murder mystery but certain choices might turn it into a zombie survival story, an occult horror story, a raunchy comedy or even a sci fi alien invasion. Sure you can't make EVERY choice wildly change events but Bandersnatchs flow chart seems incredibly limited and easy to work out how to reach each ending.

"But that's not fair! This silly Japanese game is just text! this is TELEVISION!"  Well here come point number two because once again, games have been doing this way before Netflix decided to rip it off

Now I'm not a huge fan of Heavy Rain, I think the writing is a bit shit, another blog post for another day, but this is, once again, essentially the same thing.  Not only do you have to make choices that affect the plot but, because it's being delivered as a game, there's even added interactivity in how the scenes themselves go down.  Take the famous scene where the protagonist must cut off his own finger, if it was Bandersnatch you'd have two choices to cut or not cut and the character would do whatever you pick.  In Heavy Rain you not only decide if he does it or not, but you decide HOW he does it.  Saw? Hot poker? Hammer it off? Are you gonna get drunk before hand to try and dull the pain? It's all up to YOU

Now again, I know I'm being mean but I'm not hating on it really.  I don't have a Netflix account and Bandersnatch has legitimately got me trying to force time in my schedule to sign up and experience it, it looks awesome, but praising it as this "new original thing omg so cool!" is just a bit stupid.  Praise it for it's acting, praise it for its writing, praise it for the originality of the plot if it has it, of course, but do keep in mind that games have been doing this for decades before this came along.

And before any smart ass wants to comment, I know Choose your Own Adventure books did it first but if you google "Bandersnatch" all the news is about how they are being sued for ripping them off so I didn't feel like I needed to talk about it.

Anyway I'm off to sign up for netflix, I'll make a post about what I think of the show itself at a later date

Japan is Occassionally Fulll of Shit Too

I spend most of my time gushing about Japan and Japanese games and I wouldn't be surprised if a reader of this blog thought that I'm one of those insufferable weeaboos who can find no wrong with the country.  Quite the opposite actually but a lot of my problems with the country lie outside the world of gaming so I don't touch on them so much.  However I was recently linked an article by a friend of mine telling me about something gaming related that IS bullshit.

Kamaitachi no Yoru is a viual novel game that I have touched upon a few times on this blog.  It's a series of choose your own adventure stories and especially in the first game, finding out who the killer was in the murder mystery was no easy task, you really had to play a sort of detective role and it was awesome.  The series is famous for not only its story telling but its artistic style where the backgrounds are populated by blue silhouettes that represent the characters.

So this article talks about an upcoming remake of the first Kamaitachi no Yoru which despite being already remade out the arse isn't exactly a bad thing it's a certain change they made to the game that has me foaming at the mouth.

LOOK AT THAT SHIT.  The blue silhouettes are being replaced with fucking stupid anime bullshit in a game that had NO PLACE for stupid anime bullshit.  I'm not against this kind of thing usually but in this series it just doesn't belong.  I sort of had a view of these characters being in their mid 30s to early 40s and now they've been replaced by twats that look like they are on winter vacation from their high school.  Stylistic shit aside, the inclusion of this anime crap detracts from the overall story.  It was a lot more tense and even scary at some points BECAUSE it was just blue people on  the screen.  You came up with your own very idea of what these people looked like and they were much more relatable as a result.  I'm not going to give a shit about MC potentially meeting a gruesome death with the killer if it's just an anime guy but I sure as fuck made every decision carefully when I was playing out the whole thing in my head like a mid 90s TV Drama.

I understand why they are doing it though.  The game is made by Chunsoft, a company that has seen a lot of success with its recent line of Zero Escape games

On the flip side, their recent release of Kamaitachi no Yoru on the Vita was met with not so much success but with it being one of their longest running series it's no wonder they want it to appeal to a modern audience and so, just like Zero Escape, we now have yet another VN filled with anime people.

Nothing is sacred

Why Walking Simulators Are Insufferable

A genre that we have touched on this blog previously is the Walking Simulator.  An example of Walking Simulators would be things like Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, Gone Home, Everyone's Gone To the Rapture or Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs

If you've not played any of those games then allow me to describe to you what a walking simulator is.  In a walking simulator, there is very little to no actual game play.  No challenge, nothing trying to stop you achieve your goals and very little in terms of mechanics outside of "use WASD to move and mouse to click".  The idea of this genre is that it's trying to deliver a good story to you by giving you an interactive environment for you to explore and discover the plot for yourself.

Now there's a number of reasons I find these games completely unbearable not only to play, but to hear people talking about.  The big reason that sticks out in my mind is that they aren't even games really.  A game is something that has mechanics, win and fail states, a goal to achieve maybe even some competition, things like that.  These games don't do anything like that, it's sort of like walking through an art gallery but all  the artwork was created by piss-gargling twats who think they are being deep.  "Digital Art" would be a better way to describe these pieces of software rather than video games.  For some reason the fact that they are marketed as video games just sort of upsets me.

Another reason that I hate these games are the people who make them and the people who play them.  Let me just show you a picture of the people who made indie trash heap Gone Home

These people make me sick, that fucking tit on the sofa with his beard, floppy hair and trendy glasses.  Then next to him that woman with that "ooh look at how much better than you" I am look on her face.  I bet she looks down on ACTUAL games and laughs with all her shitty indie friends about how cultured and artistic they are.  Of course I'm being needlessly mean but this is the impression a lot of these developers give off but even worse than poncy developers are the fans of these games.  All of them are insufferable little twats who think that walking simulators are one of the best things to happen to all of gaming.  Criticising a walking simulator will lead to them going on and on and fucking on about how "you just don't get it".  People joke on the Internet about games being "2deep4u" but fans of this genre tend to take that idea a bit too seriously.

However the thing that really gets to me about these games is the fact that it just takes a giant shit on actual talented developers who not only care about making games but giving us great story experiences as well.

Just look at Silent Hill, a game with a story line LEAGUES better than anything these poncy cockrockets have come out with and yet still manages to be an actual game.  Hell, the story is pretty much what this game is famous for but there are still enemies trying to kill you and puzzles for you to wrack your brain over that keep in well within the land of gaming.

Or what about Shadow of the Colossus?! A beautifully crafted game where you have to kill a bunch of mountains in order to selfishly save some dead girl.  However the more you play, the more you start to realize that maybe you aren't the hero of the story but instead some selfish prick taking a bit shit all over nature just because you're a bit lonely.  You start to feel an actual sense of guilt and doubt, as if what you're doing isn't quite right but you push on anyway BECAUSE its a game and you have to reach the end.  Then when you actually get to the end you're left feeling like complete shit BUT despite the effect that the story may have on you, you still had a good GAMING experience.  When you get over the guilt of being a prick you can play time attack and things like that and enjoy the game from a mechanical standpoint rather than an emotional, story based one.

Or hell, what about Kamaitachi No Yoru

This is an old Super Nintendo title that isn't much more than a fucking book on a cartridge.  Yes, a game that consists entirely of TEXT pisses me off significantly less than the walking simulator.  This is because while Kamaitachi is nothing but text, there is a mystery at its core that simply playing the game and picking text paths willy nilly will not give you the answer for.  You have to pay attention to all the details of the story and then even when you figure out who committed the murder you THEN have to figure out how exactly to move through the game in order to get the best ending.  It's like watching an episode of CSI but instead of the criminal being caught at the end you have to re-watch the episode like 4 or 5 times catching every little detail and then YOU have to decide which bits of evidence to use and which people to talk to in order to catch the guy.

These are just three but there are tons of games like this, tons of games making a great effort to marry fine storytelling and gaming mechanics in order to create unique and memorable experiences.  Then these fucking idiots come along, make some shitty story and put it into some shitty interactive environment and then crown themselves the kings and queens of artistic gaming.

Go choke on your Vente Starbucks you insufferable bastards.

You Should Learn Japanese

Do you like Japanese games?  Sure you do but thanks to the wonders of localization teams bringing things over to the west I bet you haven't had much inclination to learn the language of the country they came from, right?  Well that's understandable, learning a new language is hard as balls and you don't really need to bother because most things get western releases anyway.  That said, it may be worth picking up a text book or taking a course because it does come with its advantages.

For me, I chose to study Japanese at university but I was always better at speaking it rather than reading it.  My kanji (the Chinese characters used in Japanese text) is for complete shit so that makes reading things in games kind of difficult at times.  It's only in the last few months that I've bothered to try and improve this and as a result it's been a little easier to play certain titles.  For example, I'm not at a point where I could play games like Mind=Zero or Persona 4: Dancing all Night with not much trouble but certain games like Bloodborne are still tripping me up pretty hard.

This is basically the games objective but I had no idea for ages because I just dismissed this horrible wall of kanji

However we're now at a point where we are hearing a lot more about games being changed from their original text or games having features removed from their original Japanese versions.  Fire Emblem Fates is the big one that comes to mind, which had huge chunks of dialogue changed because of a misunderstanding regarding the interactions of two characters which sparked the dumbest controversy I've ever seen.  Bravely Second has apparently had a bunch of content just flat out removed, mainly the "bad" outcomes from the side quests.  Other more minor things include a breast slider in Xenoblade X and some kind of petting mini game in Fire Emblem or something.  The point is that if you, like me, don't like these kind of changes being made by people who didn't develop the fucking game, then learning Japanese is a good way of giving them the finger because you don't need to play their butchered crap, you can just play the original.

Another good reason to get your head round the language is that while a lot of games do get brought over to the west, there are a pretty good number of good ones that don't.  I'm sure any fan of Japanese games has had that moment where they see something that looks really cool but then get sad because they hear it's not being translated.  Well you won't have to worry about that shit anymore and with things like PS4 having no region locks you're free to play whatever the fuck you want.

Aside from all the gaming stuff, learning another language is just kind of useful in its own right.  Sure, you could argue that there are more "useful" languages to learn but we're not trying to build a career here, we're trying to play some damn games.  Hell, Japanese isn't exactly a dead-end language, learning it for the sake of gaming may be that first step into some kind of successful career, who the fuck knows?!

Either way, if you like video games, especially Japanese ones, getting your head around some Kanji and Grammar seems like a good idea.  Whatever happens after that is just a bonus.

All These VNs on Steam

What the fuck is going on here?!  Since when did Steam get so many goddamn weird visual novels.

Recently I've been noticing this trend of Visual Novels appearing on Steam.  This isn't a bad thing because I've talked about Visual Novels before and good ones can be really fun to play.  However, all the visual novels that seem to get put on Steam are all the fucking same super kawaii dating sim type games that look awful.  It has even reached the point where there is an actual porn game on Steam now but with all the sex scenes taken out.  This doesn't stop people from inserting the original files into the game directory to play the steam version with all the steamy stuff left in.

Granted, I'm judging these without having played any of them but I doubt very fucking much that any of them are any good.  I'm more than willing to give them a go at the very least at some point and if I ever find one with any kind of real quality to it I'll be fucking stunned.  Where are all the GOOD visual novels, huh?!

Where's my PC steam port of Kamaitachi No Yoru?!  This is a REAL visual novel!  None of this fucking stupid kawaii anime girl with huge tits trying to slobber over your dick, this is the real deal.  A really well written murder mystery game that tasks the player at trying to figure out who the killer is for themselves rather than just being strung along by the nose with text boxes.  This game is not only a great read but there is some actual challenge and puzzle solving to be done if you want to get the best ending.  This is double true if you play the original version that doesn't have all that flowchart crap.

I'm all for this increase in VNs on Steam but can we get some actual good ones rather than all this wank material?

Visual Novels: An Understandably Underrated Genre

A few months ago I picked up Kamaitachi no Yoru from a retro game shop.  My wife has been playing the shit out of it with a friend of hers and I've been tagging along for the ride.  During their evenings of playing Sherlock Holmes I couldn't help but feel that the Visual Novel as a genre of gaming is slightly underrated

For those that don't know, a visual novel is the video game version of a "choose your own adventure" book that was popular during my childhood.  The game presents you with a story and at key moments in the plot you are presented with choices and those choices will affect the outcome of the game.

Kamaitachi no Yoru, for example, is a murder mystery game about a group of people who find themselves stuck in a ski resort log cabin with a murderer.  You read the story from the perspective of the main character as he tries to unravel the mystery and stop the killer from taking more victims.  It's an extremely interesting experience because despite it being no more than a picture book on an SNES cart it kind of plays just like a puzzle game with you trying to figure out who the killer is based on the events unfolding around you.  Your decisions in that game may lead you down the right path to the murderer or get everyone killed and with many endings to discover multiple playthroughs are required to get the full story.

Kamaitachi no Yoru is not the only visual novel I've enjoyed though.  There are quite a few and games like 999 and Virtues Last Reward are rated pretty highly for the story and ability to allow someone to get truly lost in a world of mystery.  Even badly translated visual novels such as Lux Pain on the DS still had a strange charm to them that kept me playing and wanting to figure out what was going on even if the writing in the English version was laughably bad.

Since these games only have to focus on one thing, they do it REALLY well.  Sacrificing traditional game play for an immensely well thought out plot and an unforgettable experience.  At this point you may want to call me a hypocrite because I slam games like Gone Home for being "non-games" or "walking simulators", but there's a key difference between Gone Home and a game like Kamaitachi.  You see, in Kamaitachi I'm using my brain to figure out a puzzle of who is going around committing the murders.  I have to take in all the events around me and play detective in order to reach the best ending of the game.  In Gone Home, you walk around a house and read badly written articles about how someone is a lesbian and the amount of brain power involved in that process is exactly 0.

But I understand why Visual Novels aren't as popular as maybe they should be and that's because their reputation has been sullied by the porn game.

You see, whenever I think of visual novel my mind ALWAYS goes straight to Japanese porn games.  Understandably, people don't want to play or be associated with games that involve schoolgirls being fucked or whatever because that shit is kind of weird (for most, some must find it hot or this shit wouldn't sell).  But these porn games are probably in the majority, or at least it seems that way when if you walk around some of the stranger specialist shops in Japan so the Visual Novel kind of has a bad reputation as a result.

What's really strange about this situation is that I gave one of these porn visual novels a try one time (the above one) and it actually told a really touching story about a girl being bullied at school who finds a friend in the main character and together they stand up to their adversaries, win the day and fall in love.  Sure there were some scenes of gratuitous fucking but if you took all that shit out then there's a good story in there and I think it's sort of a shame that it's ruined by these weirdly drawn sex sequences.

So I think everyone should give Kamaitachi no Yoru or any non-porn Visual Novel a try.  You may be pleasantly surprised just how enjoyable they can really be.

Visual Novels! Not Games, Still Fun

I think a lot of gaming enthusiasts are aware of these but I doubt many pay much attention to them since they can just go play proper games instead of spending 5 hours glued to a screen reading.

That said, the whole visual novel thing is something I've been trying to get into for a while now as I've been told there do exist really good ones.  You see, my view on visual novels is a little skewed since all I ever see from the genre on store shelves for the PS3/PSP are stupid, semi dating sim love stories set in high schools.  Either that, or stupid shit like Milky Holmes which looks so insufferably annoying I couldn't bare to sit down and translate the damn thing.

So I've been making careful picks and I'm actually quite impressed with the results I've had so far.  I've played 2 in Japanese and 2 in English and I've enjoyed them enough to be arsed to seek out more.  The two English visual novels that I played were 999 and Lux-Pain both on the DS.  999 is pretty well known for it's quality and Lux-Pain, while having a terrible English translation still had quite an interesting premise.  The two Japanese games that I've had a crack at are Silent Hill: Play Novel and Kamaitachi no Yoru which are both extremely interesting if a little difficult for me sometimes,  Mainly due to lack of Kanji ability

I've also heard good things about Dunamis 15 and Steins Gate which are titles I really want to try.  The problem is that if you want to play the really good ones then quite a good command of the Japanese language is required.

I want to go into more detail about these games in individual posts but the game play across the board is basically the same.  You have a story with choose your own adventure style choices at certain points along with minor puzzling so that you're really not just reading a book on your PSP or DS.

So to anyone who may dismiss the VN because of it's lack of game elements, I'd urge you to give them a try.  The good ones are actually really interesting and I would easily recommend 999 to anyone as it's one of the best ones with an English version.

Watch this space for more detailed articles on individual titles.