Rest In Peace TotalBiscuit: A Tribute

As many people know by now, John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain died a few days ago from bowel cancer that spread to his liver. I’ve been a fan of his for a while and wanted to do a tribute to him, so I’ve made this blog post. His battle with cancer has been well-documented, and he was a very well-known figure in games media, so rather than it being a biography of his life, which many will do, I thought I’d give a brief overview of who he was and then talk about what he meant to me. I’d rather have to do this only once so while I would normally keep these blogs fairly short, this one will naturally be longer.

There are better pictures than this, but this is how I remember
TotalBiscuit - sitting in his office doing the podcast.

The production and access of media has been changing dramatically for as long as I can remember. Around the middle of the previous decade, YouTube came in to prominence as a large platform on which you can upload videos. Once the site started running advertisements on those videos, and the people who make them – content creators – started to be paid, it became possible to make a decent living from making videos on YouTube. This came from advertising revenue initially, and with their fame and exposure, many YouTube stars made money from sponsorship deals as well.

One such person was TotalBiscuit, a games critic who championed consumer rights and choice. He tended to focus on PC gaming with a balanced line-up of reviews of games from major publishers to draw in the views, and indie (smaller) developers to support the practice of developing games. His biggest and longest-running series was WTF Is… ?, which gave TotalBiscuit’s first impressions of a game after playing it for a few to several hours depending on the game. It combined gameplay footage with TotalBiscuit’s massive talent for commentary, and he produced hundreds of videos for the series. He also provided commentary on news and controversies within the games industry, as well as supporting and commentating on the competitive gaming movement now known as E-Sports.

I first became aware of TotalBiscuit in late 2012 when he posted a video of playing the multiplayer mode of XCOM: Enemy Unknown against Angry Joe; another games critic I’d been following for a while by then. It was entertaining, but I didn’t know anything about TotalBiscuit at that point so I took two prominent YouTubers playing the multiplayer mode as a curio to a game that I’m a big fan of – I’d bought and beaten the game by then, and it remains one of my favourite games to this very day.

The video that truly engaged me, that made me realise that TotalBiscuit’s was a voice well worth listening to – and I expect that the same is the case for many people – was This video is no longer available: The Day One Garry’s Incident Incident, posted in October 2013. TotalBiscuit displayed something that became a prominent issue on YouTube over the next few years, where an angry game developer – in this case Wild Games Studios – abused YouTube’s copyright strike system to remove his coverage of their appalling game Day One: Garry’s Incident. TotalBiscuit provided an insightful and useful overview on exactly how this works, what was done and how behaviour like this was used as an attack on games critique and what it would mean for the industry if it were to continue to allow this to happen. Three million people had viewed that video by the time the topic next came up, and that number has grown considerably since then. To put that in perspective, a games critic can, at the top of their expectations, expect roughly a million to a million and a half people to watch their videos if they are popular enough and if the game is big enough; usually the so-called Triple-A releases. Most of TotalBiscuit’s videos were viewed by around half a million people, at the height of his popularity. No small number of course, but the only time I ever see videos viewed more than that are the more popular music videos.

I guess what was most appealing about all this to me was the fact that TotalBiscuit was, or at least appeared to be, talking as himself; a genuine human being. I’d certainly come across some volatile videos before – prior to this I watched a lot of Angry Joe, and the Angry Video Game Nerd – but TotalBiscuit was the first games commentator I’d seen since the days of Bad Influence in the 90s where the reviewer was talking as himself; not a character or a persona invented for Youtube. Not that this makes Angry Joe or the Nerd any less valid in the points they make, you understand, but TotalBiscuit was a lot more relatable for, of all things, using a normal speaking voice.

TB's strong and often caustic opinions made him a controversial
figure. Here's some commentary he did on the Gamergate scandal.

At that point, I became a fan, watching the WFT Is… videos and the less-regular Content Patch; a series commenting on the news in the gaming industry. Interestingly, for the longest time, TotalBiscuit’s content wasn’t relevant to me, as I didn’t own a PC capable of playing the vast majority of the games he covered. Some had console ports, but with the Xbox 360 coming to the end of its generation by then, and not having enough money to justify buying what is now the current generation consoles, he didn’t cover many games I eventually bought. For me it was more about finding out what’s going on in the world in an industry I’m interested in. So I watched all the videos, enjoyed the way he presented himself, even adopted some of his mannerisms (people who know me in person might remember that I often punctuate the flow of my speech with “yes indeed,” and agree with certain things with “and rightly so.”) Often I’d fall asleep listening to some of his videos, not watching them at all, purposefully putting them on any time I wanted a nap! I feel no shame in admitting this since I know from talking to certain people that it is far from uncommon. Later, I enjoyed the Co-Optional podcast as well; I don’t follow Jesse Cox and Dodger but it was always nice to hear some people sitting around talking about video games, and I’d often have it on while I was playing, though the three-hour format made it difficult to listen to all the way through due to time constraints. Of course, when I bought my laptop, which in 2015 was a pretty powerful machine, I was able to download and play some of the games he’d been covering; regular readers will recognise those times when I’ve said my purchases were inspired by TotalBiscuit, and I still have a list of games he covered that I’d like to buy at some point!

Then in late 2014, TotalBiscuit publicly announced that he had cancer. I remember thinking at the time that it was a very brave move. For various reasons, I’ve been a lot more careful what I’ve been saying online than I was when I was younger, and I’m not sure I’d want something like that to be common knowledge. But for someone as popular as TotalBiscuit, he’d never have been able to keep it quiet for long. I thought it was a fantastic act of strength to admit that he’d had the symptoms of his condition for roughly a year before going to the doctors about it, and to advise people to get themselves checked out if they think they have any symptoms to avoid repeating his mistake. But I wasn’t unduly worried at the time. Nobody had used the word ‘terminal’ at that point, and with advances in technology and treatment, cancer isn’t always the death sentence it once was. It’s far from fun, but there was hope.

The cancer went into remission, but later returned, and this time it was terminal. I can’t remember how I felt about that at the time, but I was glad that TotalBiscuit kept WTF is… and the podcast going, and the “I Will Now Talk About…” videos, which had somewhat replaced the content patch, was a welcome addition to his line-up. He talked about the cancer from time to time but never for sympathy, and I truly believe it was never his intention to stop working. He made regular videos for as long as he was able, including one very open interview about living with Stage 4 cancer. (From what I understand, Stage 4 is the point of no return for cancer.) I was particularly impressed with his remark that, while the chemo therapy is a massive drain on him, he would accept the four days every two weeks he had to go through it for the ten reasonably good days in between.

At this point, I would like to mention his TotalBiscuit’s wife Genna, who has supported him throughout all of this. This has happened in many different ways, I’m sure, but the specific example I’m thinking of is with the food, which TotalBiscuit talked about in the interview. Even in spite of horribly aggressive conditions like cancer, your body doesn’t want to be ill, and will try to fight to keep itself healthy – but you have to give it the fuel in order to do that. Unfortunately, when you’re that ill, preparing food for yourself is the last thing you feel like doing.[1] For TotalBiscuit, that fell on Genna. If he was too ill to cook, she would do it. If he threw up the food she’d made because he was ill, she’d prepare something else. If that didn’t work either, she’d try another meal, and she’d keep trying until she found something TotalBiscuit could keep down. He said that once he’d eaten a meal, the difference it made to his energy levels and health was huge. He lived far longer than his original prognosis, and I believe his family were a large part of the reason for that. There’s a lesson in there, I think. So well done, Genna.

While the Co-Optional Podcast kept going, TotalBiscuit’s reviews were becoming less frequent, and early this year when he published the Top 10 Games of 2017 video, I remember thinking he didn’t sound well. And then right at the end of April, there was a post on Reddit where TotalBiscuit told his audience that the conventional treatments were no longer effective, and with few other options, he would be managing his pain as best he could and be retiring as a games critic. He knew he hadn’t got long left; he refused to be drawn into exactly how long since he’d already beaten the odds for people with his condition. It was his intention to keep the podcast and streaming going, and for Genna to take over the channel once he’d gone. I think that was probably the most upsetting part of this whole thing. I can’t imagine what it must have meant for TotalBiscuit that he had to stop doing the job he’d loved for so long because he was physically unable to do it.

I regularly looked at his Twitter feed after that – unfortunately the last month has been very busy for me and I haven’t had time to watch the podcast, and I’ve never seen Twitch (as if I need another video site taking up what little time I do have!) and he did a really good job of keeping people informed on how he was doing. And then, on May 24^th 2018, the messages started to go up showing that TotalBiscuit had died.

I found it an odd sensation of proportion that I should have been more upset by the passing of someone on YouTube that I’d never even had any dialogue with, let alone have occasion to meet, than some people I’ve known in person who have died over the last five years.[2] Surely it should be the other way around? But I guess TotalBiscuit was a regular part of my life for most of the last five years through his videos, and while there are many YouTubers out there who do their own thing which is just as good, if not better, things on YouTube, games media, and even the internet, are never going to be quite the same again. I’m going to miss him, a lot.

Nonetheless I’ll keep my eye on how things develop. I really hope Genna picks up the channel, and that the Co-Optional podcast keeps going. I’ll continue to write my blog – not that I in any way would have stopped because of this, but I would like to think of myself as a voice that’s worth listening to, even if I rarely talk about current games. I’ve seen enough coverage on Youtube to know that people generally like to listen to or read about people talking about video games, and TotalBiscuit was a large part of creating that culture for me. I’ll keep working, and doing what I can to make a living – that’s not easy, in this day and age, but despite my eating habits my body has the capacity to be an active member of society in a way that some people sadly don’t get the chance to do. And I will – and indeed have – get myself checked out if it appears an illness is going into the long term. I’ll continue with my music as long as I am able, in fact last Friday I did a musical tribute to him by ending a short set at an open mic with a rendition of The Parting Glass.

As for TotalBiscuit, I hope he’s out of pain now, and I hope his family know how much he meant to so many people. “Goodnight, and joy be with you all.”

---

[1] Not that I’d know about how chemo therapy makes you feel, but I felt like that the last time I was very ill with the flu, and from what I understand about cancer, it is far worse.

[2] Just to clarify this remark: Most of people I’m referring to were former colleagues, bandmates, people I’d known through a previous long-distance relationship and a family member I hadn’t met in over two decades. I hadn’t seen them for a long time and, while I’ll always remember the time I had with them fondly, in most cases we were far beyond the point where I had a stake in their affairs.

Backlog Beatdown: Handling my Fate with Hand of Fate

I bought Hand of Fate in the summer of 2016. I remembered watching TotalBiscuit’s impression of it the previous year wishing I had a computer powerful enough to play it, then jumped at the opportunity to play it when I bought one. This was probably the reason I bought a Steam Controller as well; I knew a lot of it was an Arkham-like brawler and I didn’t fancy doing that on a laptop keyboard!

This is the best you see of either character.

Hand of Fate is a procedurally-generated Deck Builder/Brawler/Role Playing Game. You are an unnamed adventurer, across the table from The Dealer; a mysterious being of considerable power. The Dealer has a deck of cards that take you through various encounters; these purport to be memories from your adventures. These cards are laid out in a simple shape, some large and some small, some linear and some more open. You move your character onto the cards one at a time and resolve the encounters on there. Sometimes this is a decision, sometimes it’s a game of chance, and a lot of times they’re combat encounters with a variety of monsters. You have to make your way through these encounters, through various ‘levels’ of the dungeon created by the deck, manage your resources along the way and beat the boss at the end of the adventure. You’re supported along the way by equipment cards, and you can manipulate what occurs by building up the equipment and encounter deck at the start of the game. Each run takes between ten minutes and half an hour, promoting a “Just one more go!” mentality.

The combat - simple, but short and functional.

Hand of Fate appears to be a jumbled mess of ideas that shouldn’t work in a game, but it really does. The game is beautifully presented; the graphics are nothing special for the time but the theme and the atmosphere create a fantastic and slightly unnerving experience. The Dealer, in particular, is wonderful character: Primarily an antagonist with a distinct aura of menace about him, but almost friendly in nature; not above congratulating you for a victory, apologising for a harsh card, or laughing at you for a mistake. That you can only see his eyes means his countenance never gives too much away, and Anthony Skordi’s brilliant voice acting brings as much to the character as it needs to – clearly invested in what he’s doing, but no overblown dramatics. The deckbuilding is well-implemented; you can either build the decks yourself or allow the computer to do it for you. This allows for micro-managing and optimisation for those who want to, and rewards you with more cards and items if you do, but doesn’t distract from the game for those who just want to play it. Some questions have been raised about the combat system but the only major flaw for me was that I wasn’t able to control the camera, meaning that I didn’t know what was going on in some situations. Everything else is fine; it’s basic, but you’re rarely in combat for more than a few minutes at a time so it doesn’t outstay its welcome. If anything, it adds to the general effect of not quite being in control of the situation!

If you play pen-and-paper RPGs and have ever wondered
what "True Neutral" looks like, I think The Dealer is it!

Finally, one of the game’s greatest strengths is in its plot. On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be one. You don’t know who the adventurer is, or who the Dealer’s true identity, or the purpose of the game. Without wishing to spoil, the ending, while spectacular, doesn’t address any of this. But this is fine; it allows you to fill in the gaps for yourself, and you can never be so invested in a plot that isn’t there that you feel the need to restart every time you come back to the game after a time, which is usually the reason I rarely see RPGs through to the end. And I’ll happily come back for more later; some additional difficulty levels were patched in post-launch, there’s downloadable content which implies different classes, and a sequel was released not long ago.

Hand of Fate is a game that delivers exactly what I needed when I needed it. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time, and I’m looking forward to returning to it soon!

Backlog Beatdown: Fantasizing about Sweets in Sweet Fantasy. No, really.

Right…

I was actually wondering whether I should bother to blog this one, given the potentially embarrassing subject matter and the fact that it is barely even a game, but if this online tracker of my journey to beat all my games is going to mean anything, I need to be showing the worst of this as well as the best. So yeah. I played, beat and yes, completed Sweet Fantasy. 

This was the first thing to come up on
Google Image Search...

This visual novel was brought to my attention by the Co-Optional Podcast hosted by TotalBiscuit, Dodger and Jesse Cox in the release section they do at the end. I enjoy the show and it is how I hear about a lot of games, and having heard a brief description of Sweet Fantasy I thought I’d give it a go. I’d never had a visual novel game before, so I don’t know if this one was a good one to get started on. It’s about a dryad called Pumpkin, who is hopelessly in love with her mistress, Ms Amethyst, and she’s trying to make a love potion in order to get Amethyst to sleep with her.

So the question is: Is it any good? And the answer is no. The idea is puerile, but it allows an unashamed exploration into a lesbian relationship between a dryad and an elf (I’m assuming Amethyst is an elf; her ears are pointed,) and had potential. But the characters are shallower than a petri dish and it’s not very interesting at all. Pumpkin is dozy and silly, Amethyst is stuck up and arrogant, and this doesn’t vary at all through the ‘plot.’ There are other characters in it, a snail and a mermaid, but they’re all ‘One-shots’ (only appearing in their scene) and don’t contribute much more. The plot is a mixture of a short journey and confused ramblings: you either find what you’re looking for to make the potion or you don’t; it doesn’t go anywhere else. Also the localisation wasn’t very as good; the text could have used an extra pair of eyes to check spellings and grammar. I know that sounds like a minor gripe but if you’re trading on the idea of being a visual novel, we could at least expect some competency in the text!

Your first task is to find these mushrooms...

As for the so-called gameplay, that comes down to a couple of decisions you have to make with regard to how to handle certain plot points. This reminds me more than anything else of the old ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, and I guess fits in with the idea of a visual novel. But there’s no skill involved; no indication of what you’re supposed to be doing, or which choice is the right one. It is guesswork, nothing more; you either get it right or you don’t. The small amount of challenge comes from remembering what the wrong choice was, re-loading the game and choosing the other option. Any game needs to have an enjoyable process and a satisfying outcome, and unless you really like soft porn slideshows, this doesn’t have much of either.

So is there anything good about the game at all? Well, the art is very well drawn, I’ll give it that. Obviously an anime style, but it works. It’s clear that this is where most of the effort went in to development, perhaps to over-compensate for a lack of writing talent. There’s no game-breaking crashes or bugs that I could see, and it was designed competently enough to at least include a ‘skip’ button for parts of the dialogue that you’ve seen before. Very useful when re-playing sections for the better ending! And at least it’s not very long; I’d seen the whole game in roughly 40 minutes.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “But Matt,” you’re thinking, “what did you expect? It should have been obvious what this was; an over-sexualised piece of fan service. How could you have possibly thought this was going to be any good?” Well, in fact, I didn’t. It was a dip into a genre of game that I hadn’t looked at before, and I’d never have known until I tried it. Now that I have, I feel no need to do so again.

Hacking AND slashing with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

I’ve spent the last few weeks playing my way through this game. How did I come to own it? Believe it or not, my thing for the year is to try to finish one game for ever letter of the alphabet. This has resulted in some strange purchases, and some scouting around for games that begin with Q, U, Y and Z. I had a vague memory of watching a TotalBiscuit Youtube video on this one, and bought the game thinking that if it had been awful, I’d have remembered it.

And actually it didn’t turn out too bad in the end. You play as Yaiba Kamikaze, a rogue ninja who is looking for revenge against his rival Ryu Hayabusa who killed him. Yaiba has been brought back to life as a cyborg with a mechanical arm and a ‘cyber-vision’ eye. To get to Hayabusa, he’s got to battle his way through hordes of Zombies of varying types. He’s helped along the way by his navigator, the girl with a massive potential for over-sexualisation Ms Monday, and wound up as he goes along by a smarmy Spaniard called Del Gonzo. It is well presented with a cell-shading style, and while the script is puerile, the voice acting is reasonably well-done. Del Gonzo, in particular, has some fantastic lines and his voice actor delivers them with just the right amount of panache.

The obligatory 'Rage' mode...

The gameplay is solid enough. It’s in the genre commonly known as Spectacle Fighters, which as far as I know means a scrolling beat-em-up with impressive moves. Yaiba can switch between his sword, cyber arm or a flail at any time by pressing the attack button assigned to each one, and can also harvest extra weapons from some of the larger enemies. Each attack has a different function – the sword is quick and best used for glancing blows, the arm does a lot of damage but is slow, and the flail goes around Yaiba and is best used for attacking a group of enemies surrounding you. But combining attacks in a different order can make for some pretty impressive combos. There is a block/counter button, and can be used to great effect but with my usual approach to things I never really got used to using it. There’s a lot of fun to be had in slaughtering your way through a Zombie horde, but some of the fights are actually quite tough and there’s an ‘old-school’ feeling of accomplishment as you get through a fight you’ve been stuck on for a while.

Unfortunately the game is let down by a couple of things that get in the way of you enjoying it. The screen isn’t balanced properly and enemies can be hiding in the sides, attacking from a place that you can’t see them. This isn’t usually a problem because the enemies in the sides of the screen are the least of your problems most of the time, but the fight with Hayabusa is a lot harder than it needs to be because he comes flying at you from where you can’t see him winding up the attack; I won it eventually but more by luck than judgement. According to TotalBiscuit the PC version has a ‘wide-shot’ mode that stops some of this from happening, but rather than have to put a graphical fix in there, why not just get it right in the first place?

Also the game is boss hard. Even on normal difficulty, some of those boss battles are ferocious and the final boss of the game took me nearly three days. I’ll admit to using a wiki to find out what I had to do to beat him, or I’d still be doing it now. Is that cheating? Perhaps, but remember that even though I knew what to do in the final fight, it was a massive effort to make it happen.

All in all though I’ve enjoyed my time with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. It’s not the best game I’ve ever played but it is fun in its own way and I’m glad I didn’t overlook it. The game has more content and added difficulty, but for now it’s time to move on.

Backlog Beatdown: Kicking Ass with One Finger Death Punch

Free from the constraints of No Game New Year, on New Years Day I downloaded One Finger Death Punch from Xbox Live. You may remember early last year, this was one of the games that tempted me away from NGNY. I didn’t go for it at the time, but I was reminded of it when I had a look at TotalBiscuit’s Top 10 games for 2014. He mentions this game in his top 10, and I remembered his WTF is video and wanting to try the game out for myself. Well, why not?

Most people reading this probably know the score, but if not, here’s how the game works: Enemies come running at you. When they get close enough, you press the X button to attack to the left and the A button to attack to the right. There’s absolutely nothing else to it. No movement, no special moves, nothing that involves anything other than pressing X to attack to the left, and A to attack to the right.

Simple? Yes, definitely. But it is so much fun.

Two buttons. This game is brilliant.

There’s a lot to be said for a game that only does one thing but does it very well. Mechanically, it’s

fantastic. As the attack animations happen instantly, timing is essential but there’s no faffing about waiting for a move to wind up. However, if you miss, you’re left vulnerable to attack for about a quarter of a second, which for a game of this speed is a very long time. The player character and enemies are stick men; an odd decision, but it fits the light-hearted nature of the game and keeps the attention where it needs to be: On the action.

Variety is provided by the different ways in which the levels and enemies are organised. Most levels are ‘Mob Levels,’ which simply require you to kill all the enemies. But there are some that require you to do it in a certain amount of time, smash a certain number of items, or do the level in black and white so that you can’t distinguish different enemies and there are even some levels that give you a Light Sword or Knunchaku. Some enemies require more than one hit – from potentially more than one direction – to take down, and others, called ‘Brawlers,’ cuts away from the main stage and requires you to press X and A multiple times in a sequence to beat them. Your character can pick up weapons, which increases your reach or gives you a ranged attack. Outside the levels there is a ‘map’ screen where you can choose what levels you play and activate the skills you acquire in certain levels. These ‘power-ups’ usually involve either being able to use weapons multiple times, or slowing the enemies down in some way. All this content from a game that uses two buttons.

But doesn’t it get old? Well, the whole game takes around 4-5 hours to complete, and you’re probably not going to get through it all in one sitting unless you’re determined to do so. But that’s not the point of this game. It would work very well on a Mobile device because it’s absolutely fine just to pick it up and play. There’s no exposition, no plot, no reason for you to be doing anything other than the fact that you are. The levels are generally over in about a minute, so you can do as much as you like depending on how much time you have. Finally, your score for the level depends on how many times you missed – the fewer, the better – and whether or not you took any damage yourself. You can always replay the levels and aim for a better score, if you’re interested in tackling the game this way.

As for me, I’ve got to the end of the game on the easiest difficulty. While I’ll probably come back to it at some point if I need something to fill half an hour, I will mark this game off as beaten. But if you’ve got £2 to spare, I recommend you check this game out. We could all do with some more games that don’t take themselves too seriously!

No Game New Year part 4: Progress with GTAV, an awful Blood Bowl competition and temptation...

Todays post may come across as a little negative but if it does it's not because of any ill feeling towards the challenge or anything like that, it's just that the balance of things that have happened this week won't necessarily come across too well when written down.

Temptation 1: Dust: Elysian Tail

So this week I had my first real temptation to jack it all in and buy a new game. You see, I've recently become a fan of TotalBiscuit, and in my quest to try and watch every single video the man has ever made (or at least, all of his WTF is... series,) I occasionally come across a game I want to try. This doesn't happen very often as TB is a PC gamer first and foremost, and I don't own a PC that even comes to within a country mile of being powerful enough to run most modern games, but sometimes he covers games that have come out on the Xbox360 as well, and depending on what he's said about the game, sometimes I feel compelled to give it a go.

The video I watched in this case was the one where he covers Dust: Elysian Tail. The game looked really good and I'd love to have a go with it. One of the great things about TotalBiscuit is that he often covers indie games. I love it when reviewers do this because there's tonnes of the things out there and I can't be bothered to trawl through all of them to find one that's any good. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to support indie developers. I think a lot of the time you get Triple-A games that have had huge development teams, massive production companies backing them and a large potential audience, and somewhere between the initial idea for the game and it's fourth or fifth iteration (I'm looking at you, Tony Hawks Pro Skater) they lose sight of what the game was trying to achieve in the first place. So if the indie developers have a small enough gig going on that they can maintain their vision for the game, AND make enough money to support themselves, I'm very happy to support them - if they come up with good games. If they don't, then I don't want to buy them, simple as that, so I'd like to thank TB and anybody else who covers indie games for being a part of the process of sorting out the good games from the bad ones.

By the way, just so we all know, I bought Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on Total Biscuit's recommendation back in November, and Rad Raygun on the Happy Videogame Nerd's recommendation late last summer. I've finished both games so they probably won't come up again in this series. In the spirit of the challenge, I did not buy Dust: Elysian Tail, and I saved myself £9.99 (about $15). But I'll put that on the list of games I might buy next year, and see how it all looks then!

Grand Theft Auto Five

There isn't much I've got to say about this game in the rather major terms of storytelling and game mechanics that I've been talking about up until now, simply because I haven't had that much time with the game so there's not really all that much to say. The plot, as they say, is thickening, and I'm getting a lot more missions now that are conducive to the metaplot of the whole game now rather than 'filler.' It's a great, compelling story, but to be honest I'm at the point now where I'm looking forward to playing another game, and wondering what the next one is going to be. But I'm choosing to be hopeful that my victory over GTAV will be all the more sweeter for all of this.

That being said, there are still some aspects of the game that are fantastic and worth commenting on:

• For the longest time I didn't realise that you could reply to some of the emails that you are sent! I've already commented on how much Michaels issues resonate with me, and seeing the emails between Michael and his daughter Tracey were quite poignant for me because it reminds me that Michael's issues with his family aren't going away just because you're playing a game.
• I did, for the first time in a long time in any game, a bit of exploration that wasn't on the map, by which I mean there's no towns, missions, any reason for me to go there. I was, in fact, on my way to somewhere on the North side of the map (I forget the name of the town) and I tried to see if I could do it by driving an all-terrain vehicle up the mountain range blocking the most direct route. I didn't manage it in the end, but I'm determined to come back at some point and try again on a dirt bike. There's not many games in which I find entertainment by trying to traverse a difficult piece of ground! 
• Having now done several missions in a plane and/or helicopter, I have to say the flight mechanics of this game are superb and the best I've seen in any game in a long time. I don't really play air combat games anymore so this isn't saying much, but given that the controls for them the last time I tried (early 00's, at the latest) were either naff or overly complicated, it's nice to see that they're finally getting it right.

I don't remember playing much multiplayer, but the one time I did, I'm going to have to call out the douchebag who, on the Saving Ryan's Privates level, took it upon himself to climb into a tank, and destroy all the vehicles on the level so that nobody else could use them. Thanks for that, it was re-he-hearly good fun playing with you. Ass.

Blood Bowl

Oh dear Lord I've had a bad run of games this week. I took part in The Aerial Cup, and managed to lose every single game I played. This was partly due to my lack of tactical acumen, partly due to the fact that in any game where you can get screwed by the dice, you WILL get screwed by the dice, but mostly because the other teams were just better than me. Here's how it all went down:

I began by managing my team. The catcher Detlef Doolist went up to Level 3, and I gave him Diving Catch, which allows him to attempt a catch from both his square and all surrounding squares. Given how poorly this can turn out in games of Blood Bowl, I wanted to make sure he had as easy a time of this as possible. I also levelled up my other catcher, Dagonet Hupper, and gave him Sure Feet which allows him to re-roll Go For It rolls.

*Go For It: The last two possible squares of movement for any player are Go For It squares, where the player is expending a little more energy and taking a risk in making the manoeuvre. You have to make and pass a 'go for it' roll, or he will fall flat on his face and the turn will be over. I usually ignore it but twice last competition it was the difference between winning and losing so if I'm going to rely on it, I might as well give them a little something extra!*

Given that I rated my catchers and blitzers but didn't think much of my linemen, I signed a new player: Griswold the Angry. He was a Level 5 beast with Strip Ball (if you push the ball carrier he will drop the ball, whatever else happens) +1 armour and +1 strength, and sure hands. I also sacked Arnul the Beloved, as I had yet to use him and he wasn't doing me much good on the sidelines.

So, on to the games:

• Game 1 vs The gur'klash Murderers (Chaos) We got off to a promising start with my blitzer, Arnulf Ottman, benefitting from training and gaining +1 Strength for the match, but they had a Star Player, Grashnik Blackhoof (I think. My handwriting is bad to the point where even I can't read what I've written...) After a huge fight including several KOs from both sides and my other blitzer, Viscount Lutolf, suffering a  gouged eye, Chaos scored a well-deserved try. In the second half, the team busted through my appallingly leaky defence to score a second try. A good passing play from Arnulf Ottman to Detlef Doolist got the Nihilists a try, but it wasn't enough to save the game. No-Team Nihilists Lose, 1-2.
• Game 2 vs Da Spitgob Dribblerz (Goblins) There were no trys in the first half of the game, partly due to a scrappy set of passes from the goblins, and partly due to my linemen's complete inability to pick up a ball. In the second half, the goblins scored a point right before the end, we didn't manage to respond and Nihilists Lose, 1-0.
• Game 3 vs Noxious Nibblers (Skaven) Unfortunately for us, our training failed and the recently levelled-up Dagonet couldn't play. And if that wasn't bad enough, a pitch invasion knackered most of my team before the starting whistle had blown. The gutter runners got an early point - Christ, the Skaven are fast! We tried for a point near the end of the first half but the blitzer failed his Go For It roll. In the second half, the Skaven scored another easy, slippery try. Serange the Storyteller got in a late point, but it was purely to improve his stats as it was too little too late for his team. Nihilists lose, 2-1. Serange and Jek the Anti levelled up, and Block was given as a skill to both of them as this would in theory sort out a lot of what was going wrong with the dice.

Because of the way the competitions at this level work, we weren't out of the runnings yet, though our sponsors were not going to be happy:

• Playoffs: Noxious Nibblers This game got off to an absolutely appalling start when my throwers shoved a gutter runner into a clear path to the goal! They snuck another one in towards the end due to a mis-placed tackled. After one of my linemen narrowly escaped death, the gutter runners scored again. Enan the Applauder got one in after a huge fight, but with Skaven scoring again in the dying moments, we never had a chance. Nihilists Lose, 4-1.

However, Arne Rolf, one of my throwers, did win Best Passer of the game, so it can't be all that bad, can it? Well, let's hope it gets better for next time...