Time for "Dad Games", maybe

 

When people here the term "Dad Game" they may be thinking I'm talking about games about Dads.  You know, shit like The Last of Us or those non-greek God of War games, but that's not what I'm talking about, instead I'm talking about games FOR dads.  Depending on how old you are you may think dad games are things like Power Wash Simulator or some kind of job simulation type thing but in my mind there is no genre that suits the descriptor of "games for dads" better than Grand Strategy 

Before I continue actually, I have address the fact that I have no idea why I associate grand strategy with stuffy dads.  Maybe its because presented almost entirely by maps and dry numbers and also usually about simulating actual history rather than being about anything fictional.  But I've never actually known any dads who fit that bill.  When I was younger my dad wasn't like that, none of my friends dads were like that and none of the dads I know now are like that.  If anything, the one dad I knew in my younger days who was a gamer was playing Tomb Raider and Counterstrike and if you suggested that he play a grand strategy game he might have glassed you.  Despite that, if I close my eyes and imagine "dad game", I imagine a guy aged somewhere between 40-65 sat at a PC playing something like Hearts of Iron or Victoria

 Now that I am a father of two I feel like it may be time for me to revisit the genre.  The only genre of game alongside sports that I have actively avoided up until this point.  Not that I've avoided it as hard as sports, I have at numerous points in my life attempted it.  When I was in high school I had a friend try to get me into Hearts of Iron and I just couldn't figure it out.  The most complicated thing in a similar style I could say that I had any kind of skill was was maybe Civilization Call To Power or a Total War game but Hearts of Iron was way denser and way more complex than any of those games.  Hearts of Iron is the kind of game that makes Civilization look like a babies toy and so I ran away to play more JRPGs.  Later, after moving to Japan, I managed to get my hands on some of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games from KOEI and the gameplay was so complex and the language barrier so high that I put them in a cardbox box and they've been sat in a storeroom for about 10 years at this point.

But then I stumbled on a video from a YouTuber called KBash about Nobunaga's Ambition, the Japanese history version of the previously mentioned Romance games, also made by KOEI.  Watching his gameplay I had no idea what the FUCK was going on at any point but also the way he recants his experience of the series made me want to sit down and give it a proper, concentrated effort.  In his video, he played as the Chosokabe clan and historically, these are the guys that unified the Shikoku region of Japan and that's what he managed to do.  But the game didn't end there, he went on to fuck up the rest of the country, even going as far as killing Oda Nobunaga himself and in his simulated version of history it was the Chosokabe clan that unified the country.  Accurate history simulation that also allows for player input changing the course of events is immensely cool and just the idea made me want to go dust off some games.  I'm also going to assume that games like Hearts of Iron that cover things like World War 2 also allow for things like that.  Accurate to actual history but could allow the player to rewrite events if their knowledge of game mechanics are deep enough

So despite not being in the 40-65 year category just yet I think its time to break out some grand strategy.  Sengoku era Japan interests me far more than the second world war so I think I'm going to start with a Nobunaga game.  I actually got one for free with my PS+ subscription a long time ago.  I remember it blowing my mind because the discount on the store page for that month read "12,000→0" which for a subscription that was costing me 5000 A YEAR is insane value.  Its a pain the ass to have to hook up the system again but these games are 50 quid a pop on Steam so I'm going with the free choice just in case I bounce off again.  

I actually have one other backup game if I end up bouncing off the historical sim called Gemfire

 It's another KOEI thing but instead of being a stuffy historical sim its that style of game as a fantasy strategy game.  If Nobunaga beats my ass yet again then maybe Gemfire will be the gateway drug I need to assume my full dad form.  I also know that Pokemon Conquest exists but you can fuck off with that.  Either way, time to take up my seat in the ivory tower and strat crafting some strategems.  

Fire Emblem Perma Death is Important

 

In the last week or so I've fallen down a sort of rabbit hole of Fire Emblem content on YouTube which has acted as the inpiration for this post and I want to take a moment to discuss one of the franchises sort of controversial mechanics

If you have never played a Fire Emblem game allow me to fill you in on what I'm talking about real quick.  Fire Emblem is a series of strategy RPGs that has been running since the NES with stories focused on warring nations and their armies and such.  Unlike something like Advance Wars though each unit in a Fire Emblem game is its own character with dialogue, story beats, personalities etc. and if they fall in combat they are usually gone for good.  Some Fire Emblem games have methods of reviving dead party members in extremely limited capacity but generally speaking if someone dies in FE, they are gone for good.

What a lot of players have been doing for years and years, then, is to reset a mission as soon as a single character falls and in the case of the later games the perma death has become a toggleable feature that can be turned off entirely so a fallen unit just "retreats" from the battlefield and can be re-deployed again next chapter.  People do this generally for two reasons.  The first being that they have sort of grown attatched to the character either for mechanical or story reasons and the idea of moving on without them fills the player with such dread that they would rather hit reset and tediously do an entire mission over than carry on without them.  The other reason is fear of "softlocking" themselves by losing either a character they feel is proficient or losing too many characters in a single chapter.  They worry that by losing certain characters they will be totally unable to clear the next chapters and thus have to restart at an earlier save or, in the worst case, the entire game.

Well on both fronts this is completely stupid because these games are designed with player loss in mind.

The softlocking thing generally speaking will not happen on a normal play through of a Fire Emblem game almost no matter how many units you lose.  In each game you are given a lord character and if this guy or gal falls then you are met with a game over and are forced to restart the chapter.  If you're losing bad enough on a map to get more than 1 or 2 characters killed, chances are your lord is going right down with them so progressing past a massacre like that is probably not going to happen.  But even if it does, what Fire Emblem has been doing even since the NES is constantly giving you a stream of replacement units that you can use if the worst case scenario happens.  If you play a Fire Emblem with the perma death turned off or you reset upon a death you will generally find your roster to be filled with tons of duplicate classes.  The units you get later are probably not going to be quite as good as ones you get early that you can train for an entire games worth of maps but if you press on through every death, the chance of you making the game unbeatable are EXTREMELY low.  

Just to really hammer the point home here is a video example of how hard it is to softlock a Fire Emblem game in this manner.  The amount of effort this guy has to go through to get a handful of maps to be in an unbeatable state would never happen in normal play (also sub to this guy he's very cool)

The idea that being able to turn off perma death "for new players" in complete nonsense because Fire Emblem has ALWAYS been kind to new players.  All you're really doing is allowing for sloppy strategy in your STRATEGY. WAR. GAME.

But then there's the other more personal reason of become attatched to the cast and not wanting to continue if someone you like bites the dust.  Well I also think you're being silly by resetting or toggling to off because you are sort of undermining the entire point of these games' stories and removing any and all tension from individual story beats.  These games are about war and war is both brutal and unpredictable.  What the perma death does in a Fire Emblem game is really make you feel the weight of what these characters are going through and adds a lot of immersion to you, they player and supposedly master tacticain, as you work as hard as you possibly can to keep all these indviduals safe.

Here's an example

In Fire Emblem 3 Houses there is a mission when you're looking for a kidnapped person inside a spooky basement.  As you're going through the mission a guy on a horse weilding a schythe with a skull mask on turns up and starts threatening to push your shit through your nose if you don't get lost.  His stats are very high for that point in the game and you are supposed to be intimidated by this guy.  If you have the perma death turned off for this mission you are sucking every last part of the tension out of this scene.  If you screw up and get one of your students in range of him, he will just bonk them on the head, they will say "owie zowie see you next mission" and vanish off the map.  Only with the perma death turned on do you get the intended effect of this enemy.  With it on you'll probably want to stay well away from him to stop that scythe from dicing your cute mage waifu into little pieces or cutting your handsome lance boy right down the middle and thus you must also play smarter and be more creative with how you play.  It's the difference between having a story about war and having a story about a paintball match with swords.

I think the best sort of half way point that has been devised by the developers in the pulse system thing found in 3 Houses on the Switch.  In that game your lord character has a power to rewind time a little bit.  What this translates to for the missions is that if something goes wrong, you can pulse and reset a few turns and try to re-jig your strategy to not get someone killed or get a more favorable position.  This allows the player to still make mistakes or try risky strategy but not get punished too hard for it.  Do it too many times and your pulses run out so after that you're up shit creek so the tension is still there but you still have to play smart.  It then goes and ruins it by ALSO having the death on/off toggle but at the very least I have to give it credit for trying a solution more involved than just a lazy on/off switch.  The best thing about the pulse system is that players who were turned off by the perma death but still wanted to be a little brave and play with it turned on now have a title in the series to help them realize that it's not as punishing as they might think, and as a way of gathering new eyes for the series that's a good thing.

But whatever, if you enjoy FE as a reset-fest or you want to play with it turned off, then power to you.  These are single player games either way so just enjoy them your way.  All I'm saying is that I feel you might get a little more of these games if you played with it turned on.  Greater stakes equals to greater satisfaction when you win which equals greater amounts of fun.

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 13

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 10

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 6

Tau and Friends Play Advance Wars Part 4

That One Unbeatable Game

I think anyone who has played video games for a significant amount of time ends up having a game like this.  That one game that sits in your collection that isn't shit by any means but for some reason you just can't bring yourself to beat it.  Every so often you'll go back to it, start a fresh file and have some fun with it but then things start to go wrong and you end up shelving it for another couple of years again.

For me, this game is Kings Bounty: The Legend.  It's a strategy RPG where you have to ride around the world on your horse, building up an army and doing quests.  It plays sort of similarly to Heroes of Might and Magic but instead of building up a town and recruiting monsters that way you have to travel around the game world buying them from limited stockpiles.  This is a game that I always end up playing for a while, and then giving up because I always feel like I'm under powered and destined to fail the challenges ahead.

You ask your friends what their unbeatable game is and I'm sure they'll have at least one, for example I have a friend who attempts Vagrant Story every couple of years only to have it beat him down and then it gets shelved until the next time.  You may not even be bad at the genre that the game is in, it's just that ONE title that gets you every time.

Right now I'm attempting Kings Bounty: The Legend yet again although I'm already lacking in my own confidence to finish it.  Maybe this will be the run!  If you have a game like this then I suggest you go play it right now, go and dust it off and give it another go.  That game will always come off the shelf every few years because you just can't let that bastard win.

What the fuck are you doing Atlus?

One game that has piqued my interest since I first heard about the idea a while ago was Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem. 

I'm a HUGE Shin Megami Tensei fan, it's probably one of my favorite series of games.  For anyone who may not know, SMT is a huge series of monster breeding type games.  The idea is that you have to collect demons and shit and go through dungeons just to give it a very simple explanation.  The main series started as dungeon crawls and it was changed up a little for SMT3 but there's also been a shit ton of spin offs, the most famous of which being Persona.

I'm also a big fan of the Fire Emblem games, a series of strategy RPGs that is famous for it's perma-death of characters, challenging maps, RNG that will fuck you in the ass, memorable characters and great stories.  So of course these two series coming together seems like a fucking great idea.  Then I saw the trailer....

What the fuck is this shit?  It looks nothing like a Fire Emblem and there are only a few little nods to a way an SMT game should be.  It's all anime and moe now with fucking crappy J Pop playing and anime girls being all kawaii n' shit.  Don't get me wrong though, I'm fine with moe, crappy J Pop, fan service anime girls, that shits a little bit of a guilty pleasure of mine but this is not the time and the place for it.  These two series of games are just not all moe and overly anime like this fucking trailer.  Even the Persona series, which comes pretty fucking close, still retains the general feel of an SMT game.

I'm not saying however that this game is going to suck, I just wish it was being marketed as a fucking SMT/Fire Emblem crossover.  It's one of those cases where under a different name I'd be kind of excited but you put this kind of branding on it and it just disappoints me.  That said, information is still a little scarce so maybe as more is revealed by sadness at this trailer will subside but any hype that I had for it is now pretty much dead.

Finally, while I was writing this post I just remembered one game in the SMT series that kind of looks and plays like Fire Emblem anyway.  It's called Majin Tensei.

It's not quite the same but if there is too much moe bullshit for your tastes then this is a good alternative

R.I.P Rick Mayall

Very recently, British comedian Rick Mayall died at the age of 56 and it's bloody sad.

Rick Mayall was probably most recognised for his work on a British comedy TV show called The Young Ones that was originally aired back in 1982.  Due to the shows popularity it continued to be aired after production had stopped in 1984 and as a result I have many a fond memory of watching the show with my family.  It's a great show and I suggest anyone that hasn't seen it to go look it up and I promise you that you will not be disappointed

So the real question here is, why am I writing about a dead British comedian on a gaming blog?  Well if you owned a PS1 around the year 2000 then you may have played this little gem.

The game was basically Worms but with Pigs and it was fun as hell.  The game featured a bunch of funny voice clips from Rick Mayall and after watching The Young Ones that alone was enough to get me to buy the game when it came out (and by that I mean beg my parents for it)

So, let's lighten the mood of this sad event by looking back and enjoying some of the stuff he did once again.  If you don't like watching British comedy for some reason, then at least you can still get your Rick fix through Hogs of War.

If you don't like either of those things then fuck off to Google and find something that he did that might interest you because he was a fucking funny man.

The January Retro Game Hunt

First of all, sorry I've not posted anything in the last couple of days.  On Friday I was busy and on Saturday I was sick with a hangover.  I was planning to make these Game Hunt things a series of videos, except my camera is complete arse so I'm hoping to get a new one, or at least a spare battery very soon.  So for now, here is the stuff I bought in text and picture format.

So just in case you missed it, here was the video with the initial 4 games that I purchased with my FC Dual system.

Except there's been a few more purchases since that video was uploaded, so allow me to share them with you

The first two I'm listing were actually donated to me by a friend, so big shoutouts to him.  First up we have Xevious!

I don't think there is anyone who doesn't know what Xevious is.  Released in 1983, Xevious is one of the big grandaddies of the whole scrolling shooter genre.  Great little game, fun way to kill an hour or so at home.  Sure, there are tons of better shmups than Xevious, but if you're in that retro mood then you can't go wrong with this one.

The second game that was donated to me was an RPG

Drakkhen is a game I know very little about.  In fact, I hadn't even heard of this game until yesterday, and for a mere 250 Yen what do I have to lose really?  From what I have read on the Wikipedia article, it's a port of an Amiga game and it's a 3D RPG where you wander around a big world and do missions for dragons....or something.  When I popped it in there was a cleared file with maxed out guys with the best equipment and I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing so it's the kind of game I'm going to have to sit down with and properly figure out.

Next up is a strange space themed game called Daiva

Sorry about the picture being sideways, no matter how much I fuck with it, it keeps coming up sideways.

Anyway, Daiva is some kind of strategy space thing.  I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing in the 5 minutes I gave to test it out, but it looks like you have to fly around a map and take over all the other planets and destroy all the other enemy ships or something.  I could be totally wrong, yet another game I'm going to have to spend a long afternoon with.

Then there is battle commander.

Yet another one that is just sideways for no reason, fuck my camera.

I have no idea what the fuck this game is aside from being some kind of strategy game.  I fired it up and as soon as I got in game, BAM!, wall of fucking Kanji, so it's on the pile of long afternoon games like Daiva and Drakkhen.  As far as I can tell it's some kind of Gundam game...or it least has giant robots in it and I know fuck all about Gundam so this one is really going to take some time to get going with.

Finally, the best find of the month!

Once again, fuck camera etc.

Chrono Trigger!  Do I really need to say any more than that?  Chrono Trigger for 350 yen (that's £2!).  Popped that sucker in and played it for a few hours, great RPG, absolutely classic.  There was also a file already on there from the previous owner with some really high level characters on it, so it was fun to muck around in that file as well.

So there you have it folks, that's all the retro stuff I got over January.  I'm not really going to have time to do another retro shop which is why this post is coming a little early but next time I hope to get this in video format.

Also let me know if there is anything I should look out for!  I'm hoping to get a PS2 in the next few weeks so I can start buying PS1 games!

(Just as a side note, yes, the price stickers do come off easy, I'm just lazy)

Patapon

You know it saddens me that games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 get all the praise it gets when it's just another bland military shooter, and then games like Patapon barely get any attention at all because it's got cute characters and gameplay that doesn't involve shooting things in the face....

My bitterness aside, Patapon is a game on the PSP that I've been playing recently that is sort of hard to put into one genre.  It's kind of a strategy game, kind of an action game and kind of a rhythm game all at the same time.
So the deal is that you are an drum playing God known to the Patapons as "Almighty", and using your drums you must guide your Patapon army to a place called Earthend so they can go and visit a thing called IT.  The Patapons pilgrimage to see IT is sort of their entire purpose in life, but there is a rival clan called the Zigatons who have their own prophecy that involves stopping you no matter what.

It's a cool plot and considering I've not managed to beat the game yet I'm genuinely curious as to see if the Zigatons were at all justified in trying to wipe me out.

So the game play involves playing drums in rhythm to assign actions to your Patapon army.  For example "Pata pata pata pon" (square square square circle) will make your army move foward on the 2D level.  Other combinations of pata, pon and chaka will do different thinks like attack, defend, charge up etc.  Between levels you are taken to a camp screen where you can change equipment, make new Patapons for your army or play rhythm mini games for bonus items.

It's a simple game but that doesn't meant it's easy because this game will fucking kick your ass sideways if you're not well prepared and cunning in battle.  If you think you can just advance and attack your way through the game you will be wiped out faster than the blink of one of your little dudes eyes.  This thing is hard and requires a great deal of preparation and planning before you can beat the later story missions, but when you do it the feeling of achievement is great.

So if you have a PSP and you have not played this, go fucking do it.  If you can't find this but you can get hold of Patapon 2 or 3, go play them as well.  I've not had much experience with the sequels but they can only get better really.

Castle Master

There is a lot of absolute shite on the Apple App Store.  It's very hard to find something that's actually worth playing so I tend to get very surprised when I do find something good.

The game that took me by surprise this time was Castle Master, a strategy game where you must re-take all your castles that have been overrun with monsters.  It's an incredibly simple game but if you're looking for something to kill for free then this is a good choice.

So, as far as I can figure out this game originally comes from Korea, since there is a Korean language mode in the options menu and there is some very strange translations going on.

I mean there is even a crossed out W on a typed story scroll.  I find it impossible to get annoyed at something THIS blitheringly stupid.

Anyway, the game itself is simple, you have a big map and you have to take all 45 castles.  Everything is in real time and you have a 3D fighting mode for when attacking or defending.  It controls pretty well too with skills being easy to pull off and targeting working rather well.

Once you take a castle you have to defend it, recruit troops and build it up so that you can earn money and take the next one.  When you're not on the map or in combat, you can go into this 3D town exploration thing where you can buy items, upgrade skills and take on quests.

The game play reminds me somewhat of a real time version of Heroes of Might and Magic with the interface and how troop recruitment and buildings work.

So what you're playing is essentially a dumbed down version of those games, but considering its an iPhone app and it's free, you could do a lot worse.  Combat all goes down in real time with up to 300 vs 300 battles and while it's happening you get to get stuck in and help out your army as well.

So if you needed something free to kill some time with while your on a train or waiting for something/someone, give this a spin.  Good free games in the app store are few and far between, so jump on this one.

Tiny Troopers

Whenever I flick through the app store on my iPod touch looking for games, I never actually expecting to find anything good, or even halfway decent, but every now and again I come across something actually pretty fun to play.

This is Tiny Troopers, a game that they were just giving away for free a while ago but now it has a price tag.  I don't know how much it costs in the UK or America but in Japan it's 85 Yen, which is basically nothing so it can't be that expensive.

Now I don't even need to review this game, because you know what this is?

That's right folks, it's fucking Cannon Fodder for the iPhone!  It doesn't feel exactly like this old Amiga gem but it's essentially the same damn thing.  If you don't know what Cannon Fodder is, then go youtube it, or get it on an emulator or something, it's fucking fantastic!

For those that can't be arsed (shame on you) Tiny Troopers tasks you with taking a couple of dudes around a map, gunning down enemy soldiers and fulfilling objectives.  If your troops survive the mission they get stronger and if they die, they are replaced by a new soldier. 

The game also has this "command points" thing, where you can call in extra equipment or hire an extra soldier for that level, it's the games way of trying to make you spend more money, but they give you a load of command points daily and I've never needed any extra.  Also as a nice little bonus feature, the game has a zombie mode, where you play for points until you die.  Shit has leader boards too so if that's your thing rather than mission based gameplay, then there's something for you too!

So check it out, if your looking for something that's actually pretty good for your iPod or iPhone or whatever, this is well worth buying.  For those that don't own an iPod or iPhone or iPhucknuts or whatever, it's also avaliable on Steam!

Now that's some BULLSHIT! #1: Nasty Fog of War discoveries

Well this is a segment I'm going to start periodically on here called "Now that's some BULLSHIT".  What this segment is, is little rants from me about shit that happens in games or whatever that makes you just throw you arms up in the air and call bullshit.  There is lots of instances of this both in and out of gaming, so we're probably going to hit a pretty high number for these one day.

Anyway, the first piece of bullshit I'm going to needlessly get angry about today, is the nasty shit you'll find in fog of war in some strategy games, mainly turn based ones.

What I mean by a nasty fog of war discovery is when your playing something like Advance Wars or Civilisation or something like that, and you're happily uncovering the fog of war when BAM! one of the other assholes on the other team has some kind of superweapon that just wrecks your shit.  This is double bad if the game does that thing of letting the enemy get off a free turn because you blundered into it like a retard.

Now, I'm going to make this clear right now.  If you're playing something like starcraft 2, and you walk into some kind of Protoss deathball (or a big fuck off army of tough shit for all you none SC2 players), that's YOUR goddamn fault.  You didn't scout it well enough and it's your own dumbass that caused you to lose that game.

(Unrelated picture lol)

 No, what I'm talking about is like shit that happened to me today when slogging through R-Type tactics.  I'm scouting safely, making sure I can see whats ahead of me before I go throwing all my ships to the grinder, when I encounter some enemy ships.  I'm dealing with them in a manner that allows me to keep my scout ship safe, when all of a sudden a HUGE FUCKING CHARGE WAVE comes out of the fog and just destroys 2 of my units. 

Whats the point of having a scout unit if it can't effectively scout the HUGE 10 panel ship blasting me from the fog!  Now I'm not saying Fog of War is a bad thing, it adds challenge and depth and shit would be too easy without it, but that right there, is some bullshit! 

Anyone who plays strategy games has had this moment at least once, where there has been some unseeable, unexpected sack of arse waiting 3 like spaces of a map away.  So fuck fog of war sometimes, and double fuck the nasty shit that lurks in it too.  Turning missions into trail and error crap, shit off....