Where the hell did September go, you guys? Like a legendary stealth operative, the month seems to have crept past me while I was busy doing other things (mainly playing too much Metal Gear Solid V, in case you couldn't tell from the awkwardly-shoehorned-in simile). That, in turn, means that there are only four days remaining until the official start of Backlogtober 2015. For those of you who may have missed my previous blog entry, that's the groan-inducing moniker I've given to my upcoming effort to blast as many games as possible off my Pile of Shame in the month of October. While I'm still in the process of finalising which games I'll be attempting to play and finish for the event, I thought it might be cool to let you in on some of my preparatory thought processes.

Over the last couple of days, I've mainly been focusing on something I'll refer to as 'the cull'. The cull is a preliminary stage of the Backlogtober process, in which I go through all the games on my Pile of Shame and ask myself, "truthfully, am I ever likely to play this?". For most games, the answer will be a resounding "hell yeah!", or at the very least a hopeful "one day, eventually". However, there's bound to be a handful of games where the answer is "probably (or maybe even definitely) not". The few games that don't make the grade will be excised from my collection and removed from my Pile of Shame permanently - hence the name 'the cull'. It's a much tougher process than you might expect, given my propensity for hoarding collecting video games and my reluctance to admit defeat with some of these titles, but letting some of these titles go has definitely been a cathartic experience.

Below is a list of all the games that have fallen victim to the cull so far, as well as some of my reasons for choosing to cut my ties with them:

Aliens Versus Predator Classic 2000

We all have those games, don't me? The ones that sit gathering dust in our Steam library, that we have no idea when or why we bought them. Well I've got a few, but I think Aliens Versus Predator is the biggest offender. I have no investment or interest in the AvP franchise, I prefer not to play first-person shooters on PC if I can help it (at the risk of being burned at the stake for heresy, I don't get on well with mouse and keyboard controls in shooters), and to top it all off I've got no idea when I bought the game. My best guess is that this was a drunken post-pub purchase, since I don't remember ever buying it, although it's been in my Steam library for as long as I can remember. At any rate, I've got no interest in playing it, so I feel comfortable hiding it from my list of Steam games.

Gran Turismo 3, 4 and 5

I've played a lot of Gran Turismo over the years, having been a fan since the series' debut outing on the original PlayStation way back in 1998. My love for the series reached its zenith back in 2005 with the release of the fourth instalment, a huge game that drained several tens of hours of my life, but which I never made it to the end of. I've long been kidding myself that I'll make it to 100% completion in all the Gran Turismo games one day, but I think it's time to face facts and admit that's never going to happen. I've decided to keep GT6 around, being as it's the most recent game in the series and thus the one I'm most likely to return to, but all previous entries in the series are officially off my Pile of Shame.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

I own a lot of point-and-click adventure games that I've never played. There's a simple explanation as to why - up until a few years back I'd never played one before, and was determined to try and fill this notable hole in my gaming knowledge. Consequently, I bought a bevy of point-and-click titles from Steam and GOG - everything from Monkey Island and Broken Sword to Sam & Max - in a bid to educate myself. However, there are a couple of games that I acquired during that mad rush that have proven to be surplus to requirements as time has gone on. These two Indiana Jones titles are the most obvious offenders in this respect. While I'm sure they're fine adventure games, I can't see that they offer anything new or different from some of the other titles I own. That, plus a lack of investment in the licence, means I'm content to part ways with Indy for now.

ModNation Racers

So here's a little history lesson for y'all. Do you remember the infamous PlayStation Network hacking scandal that took place in the spring of 2011? And how all PSN account holders were given a choice of free games to download by way of apology from Sony? Well, I didn't own a PS3 at the time, only a PSP, where the pickings were rather slim. I ended up opting for the PSP versions of two established PS3 titles - LittleBigPlanet and ModNation Racers. I played through LittleBigPlanet that summer and had a decent amount of fun with it. As for ModNation, well... It never really grabbed me. The customisation was decent, particularly for the kart drivers, and I was impressed by the level of online functionality present in what was essentially a PSP port. However, the focus on user generated content meant that a lot of the game's original presentation fell flat, lacking any identity of its own. I lost interest a couple of hours in and couldn't bring myself to keep playing, and honestly, I'm not sure I'd ever return to it. Finally, the fact it was redeemed for free means I feel a lot less guilty about casting it aside. Sorry, ModNation Racers, but we won't be racing together again.

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

At first glance, this is a bit of a weird one to have on here. I played through a significant chunk of the single-player portion of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on my PSP at the start of this year, and fell in love with the series' challenging combat and quirky (and admittedly sometimes downright backward) game design. Why, then, am I writing off MH3U, a game I would most likely really enjoy? The truth is, I feel like it's something of a redundant entry. I already cut my teeth on Freedom Unite and loved it, and I own a copy of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, which is a much more exciting prospect given its advancements in gameplay and more robust (and probably more active) online features. Sandwiched between these two, it feels like there's no place for MH3U in my library, and that's why I've decided to let it go.

Red Faction II

Here's another game that a little bit of backstory is probably necessary for. Way back in 2002 or 2003, I played through the first Red Faction on PlayStation 2. Even though I wasn't big on shooters back then, I was blown away by the depth and variety of weapons and the incredible GeoMod tech that felt like a real 'next-gen' step up from the PS1. I was aware of the existence of a sequel, but never got around to playing it at the time. Years later I acquired Red Faction II on Steam for a couple of quid, booted it up and... Yeesh. I'm not sure if it's rose-tinted nostalgia on my part or if the game has just aged poorly, but the opening hour or so of RFII felt nothing like my fond memories of the original. Since then I've been debating whether to give it another shot, but I know from that first experience that even if I do, I'm not going to enjoy it. It's time to bid farewell to the red planet on this one.

The Binding of Isaac

When I picked up The Binding of Isaac around the time of its release in 2011, I thought I was onto a winner. The combination of Zelda-style dungeon crawling, dual-joystick-inspired combat and the promise of no two playthroughs being the same lured me in and convinced me to spend a good few hours with it. However, I quickly tired of the steep difficulty curve and the fact that all too often my progress was dictated by dice-rolls rather than skill or strategy, and put it down without ever making it to the 'final boss'. I've been back to it a couple of times since, but each time I've come away from it feeling the same. This seems like a good time to admit that The Binding of Isaac just isn't for me, and cast it into the basement with all the poop and demons.

Unlimited SaGa

I don't think I've ever been burned as badly by a game as I was by Unlimited SaGa. After seeing it in action at the PlayStation Experience 2003 in London, I requested a copy for my next birthday and my parents obliged, going to extraordinary lengths to track down a copy of a game with what must have been a very limited print run. My giddy excitement soon turned to disappointment as I came to realise the game was nothing like what I'd expected it to be, with an absolute minimum of player agency thanks to its tabletop-style exploration and slot reel-governed battle system. To this day it sits on my shelf, taunting me for daring to hope for more. Until today. Today, I hold my head high and declare that I will never, ever play Unlimited SaGa again. And boy, does it feel good to say that.

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That's eleven games cut from my Pile of Shame, before Backlogtober has even officially begun. That brings the total down from 197 games to 186 - a negligible dent in the impenetrable fortress my Pile of Shame has become, but as they say, every little helps. If anybody wishes to recommend any other games from my backlog that I maybe shouldn't bother with, or if you'd like to leap to the defence of any of the games listed above, leave me a shout in the comments below. I'll be posting another one of these on Wednesday, which I'm considering 'Day 0' of Backlogtober, when I'll outline all the games I intend to play through next month. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)

Fellow duders of Giant Bomb, my name is Dan Kempster, and I have a problem.

Pretty much as long as I've been on this site, I've used it to keep track of my 'Pile of Shame', the proverbial stack of unfinished video games that I've acquired and, for various reasons, never seen through to completion. Through discipline and hard graft, I managed to start whittling down that pile, taking games off it one at a time and avoiding adding to it wherever possible. At its lowest, I'd brought it down to about seventy games - a huge achievement from the initial total of around one-hundred and twenty. But, over the last couple of years, that Pile of Shame has started to rise once again. Not only is it growing, but it seems to be growing exponentially, to the point where it's larger than it's ever been before.

How have I managed to get myself into this mess? Well, I can think of a few factors:

• Increased hours at work and more time spent on other endeavours and passions (music, writing, reading, socialising) means I don't play anywhere near as much as I used to.
• I am typically a slow, methodical player who likes to spend time exploring and seeking out additional content, which means it takes me longer to finish games than the average player.
• I consider myself an enthusiast and collector when it comes to video games, which means I'm curious to discover old experiences I may have missed out on, and also reluctant to cut ties with games even if I'm unlikely to ever play or finish them.
• Being a late adopter of current-generation hardware (we're now two years into the new console generation and I still haven't decided which one I'll be opting for) means I instead opt to pick up more games on previous-generation systems for less.
• Improved digital delivery of games on home consoles, coupled with regular sales and special offers, means picking up interesting-looking games at reasonable prices is the easiest it's ever been.
• Steam. I shouldn't have to say any more than that for you to know what I mean.

All of the reasons above can essentially be condensed to form one 'super-reason' - I acquire games far more frequently than I'm able to finish them. The result is a Pile of Shame which, at the time of writing, stands at 196 titles. No, that isn't a typo - I own one-hundred and ninety-six games that I'm still yet to finish. It's so large that I've had to split it across two separate lists here on Giant Bomb (which you can find here and here, if you're interested in seeing just how shameful this pile really is). That is a lot of video games, and (through no one's fault but my own, I admit) the number just keeps rising month on month. If I don't do something about this soon, I'm going to hit the dreaded milestone of two-hundred unfinished games, a figure that even I'm prepared to concede is far too high.

That's why I've decided to turn this October into 'Backlogtober', a month in which I attempt to clear as many games as possible from my unwieldy Pile of Shame. Alongside this, I plan to post short daily blogs throughout the month (a feat I haven't successfully attempted since way back in 2012 with my 'A Month in Skyrim' blog series), briefly chronicling my thoughts on each game as I play through them.

All the particulars - the specific games, the running schedule, the degree to which I'll be pushing my luck - are still yet to be finalised. Some time next week, as we approach the event itself, I'll post a more detailed blog with all of that stuff listed. Until then, I have a list of nearly two-hundred games to peruse, categorise and whittle down in order to find the likeliest candidates. It'll be a bit like X Factor boot camp, but with dusty old video game boxes instead of vapid youngsters with delusions of grandeur. If you'd like to help me with this process, feel free to check out my Pile of Shame (linked a couple of paragraphs above this one) and throw some recommendations my way in the comments section below. Similarly, if you're keen to clear some of your own unwieldy backlog this autumn, let me know and maybe we can make this 'Backlogtober' thing into a proper initiative. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS3)

Hey folks. Once again, it's been a little while since I threw anything up in this space. I wish I had a decent excuse for that, but I don't. Mainly I've been avoiding my blog for Kingdom Hearts-related reasons (which I'll get to in due course), but there's also the fact that nothing I've played lately seems to have elicited a response from me that's been worthy of exploring in a written form. Looking back over the last eight or nine weeks (has it really been that long since I last wrote something here?), my list of games played features titles like Final Fantasy IV, God of War III, and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. I've enjoyed all of those games to varying degrees, but I haven't come away from any of them feeling like I have anything worthwhile to say about the experience. Arguably the closest I've come to that is with the racing game GRID, a game that zig-zagged back and forth between excellent and excruciating so frequently that the experience might be best com. When the game you find yourself wanting to write about most is a seven-year-old racing game, it's probably best not to contribute to the blogosphere at all.

Regarding the Kingdom Hearts/Keyblade Chronicles stuff, I absolutely still intend to write that series. Just... not right now. I've tried to go back to the first game a few times in the last couple of months, in order to get the series underway, but I just can't bring myself to sit through the game for what would be the third time in a six-month period. I've tried to write the first entry purely from memory, but I'm worried that in doing so I'm missing details, or even mis-representing the game altogether. The series is going to be a huge undertaking, so if I'm going to do it, I want to make sure I do it right, and at the moment I don't think I can. My plan for the time being is to put the Keyblade Chronicles on hold and play some other stuff, and then come back to it towards the end of this year, or maybe even in early 2016. Apologies to those of you who've been waiting on the series to start - I hope it proves to be worth the wait I'm imposing on you all.

With all that said, I can finally move on to the reason I'm writing this in the first place - the next generation of video game consoles. Or, to put it more accurately, the current generation of video game consoles - specifically Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. It's a slip of the tongue that's probably born from not owning either machine. I'm traditionally a late adopter of new hardware, mainly because it allows time for any kinks in the hardware to be ironed out, and for the libraries of games to expand to a reasonable level. However, I've decided that when next month's pay-day rolls around, I'll be dropping some of my overtime earnings on a shiny new current-gen consoles. Now that both the PS4 and XONE seem to be getting there in terms of their established libaries, and with titles like Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV and Just Cause 3 on the way, it's finally feeling like a good time for me to make the generational leap.

There's just one teeny, tiny problem - I can't for the life of me decide which console to opt for.

I've been to-ing and fro-ing between the PS4 and XONE for the last few months, with neither really showing any demonstrable advantages or disadvantages over the other. So I thought I'd put together this little blog, to try and rationalise my thought process and maybe get some feedback from the awesome folks here at Giant Bomb. Below are the main points I'm taking into consideration while trying to make my decision.

Most Of My Interests Are Multi-Platform

This is the main thing to account for, and to be honest it's probably the biggest cause of my indecision as well. The vast majority of franchises that I play and follow - Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed - are readily available across both consoles. Even now, most of the games I buy could be bought on either X360 or PS3, with small price differences (and occasionally franchise continuity) being the decisive factor. This means that both consoles are equally viable from a library standpoint. What about first-party exclusives? Well, I'm just getting to those...

I'm Invested In Exclusives For Both Consoles

Last generation I owned both an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3 (the former initially, with the latter following a few years later). The generation before that, I owned both a PlayStation 2 and an original Xbox (the former adopted in 2002, the latter in 2006). As a result, I have a historical investment in first-party exclusives from both Sony and Microsoft that date back two generations. This means that, whichever way I go, I'm going to miss out on some of the games I want to play - choosing an Xbox One means no The Last Guardian or Ratchet & Clank, and opting for the PlayStation 4 means skipping Halo 5 and Rare Replay. Given my history, it's likely I'll end up getting both consoles eventually, but I'm still trying to decide which machine's exclusives I'd end up missing more in the short term. On balance, I'd say the PS4 has the exclusives that I'm most keen to get stuck into sooner rather than later, but there really isn't a whole lot in it.

I Won't Be Playing Much Online Multiplayer

I know online multiplayer can make or break the console decision for some people, and rightly so. For those who play a lot of multiplayer games with friends, their mates' choice of console will likely determine which side the coin comes down on - after all, what's the point in buying an XONE if all your buddies have PS4s? Thankfully, this is something I've never really had to consider when buying consoles in the past, simply because I've never been heavily into online multiplayer gaming. If the two machines were going head-to-head on these terms then I think the Xbox One would win out, purely because of the possibility for co-operative play with one friend who's set to get an XONE in October. That being said, it makes up such a small percentage of my overall gaming time that I'm not sure it's a decisive factor.

Price Difference Isn't A Big Deal To Me

...mainly because, having done a bit of shopping around, there really isn't that much of a price difference here in the UK any more. A cursory glance at Amazon puts the 1TB models of both the PS4 and the XONE at £309.99 and £319.00 respectively. That's less than a tenner's difference, and when I'm dropping over £300 on a piece of tech, that's a margin that I'm happy to overlook. It's a weird situation to be in, as someone whose initial console last gen was practically dictated by price point (there was a good £100 difference between the X360 and PS3 back in 2008, and I didn't have anywhere near the amount of disposable income that I do now).

I Just Want To Play Some Video Games

Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are marketed as powerful multimedia entertainment systems. They invite their users to stream, share and download music, TV shows, movies, YouTube clips and all manner of other media. Call me old-fashioned, but that's not why I buy these machines - I buy them to play video games. As a result, all of those bells and whistles that both consoles come with aren't factors I feel I need to consider when choosing one over the other.

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So, fellow duders of Giant Bomb, I put the question to you - which current-generation console did you (or would you) opt for, and for what reasons? There are a lot of great folks here whose thoughts and opinions I trust, and I'm confident that the responses I get will go beyond the incendiary one-upmanship of fanboyism and provide me with some helpful information that might help me reach a decision.

Whichever side of the fence I end up coming down on, I won't be taking the plunge until the start of October. I have a fair amount of gaming plans that should keep me occupied until then. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain launches next week, and after some deliberation I've decided to pick it up for the PlayStation 3. I'd contemplated waiting and getting it with my eventual choice of current-gen console, but the lure of having every single canonical Metal Gear game on a single console was too great to resist. Alongside that, I've launched a Pokémon Alpha Sapphire Egglocke - a variation on the Nuzlocke challenge that entails swapping every captured Pokémon for a mystery egg donated by a friend. If you're curious about the format, I'm uploading periodic video updates for the Egglocke which can be found here.

I'm not sure when I'll be writing my next blog post here. I don't want to commit to a schedule that I can't keep. I'm hoping that The Phantom Pain will evoke some kind of response from me that'll be enough to trigger some meaningful writing, but I make no promises. Until next time, thanks very much for reading, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)

Hey folks. Almost two months back, I teased the start of a brand new blog series called The Keyblade Chronicles. It's supposed to be an analysis of the Kingdom Hearts series from the perspective of a player who used to enjoy the games, but hopped off the bandwagon quite a while ago - an attempt to experience and understand the overarching series storyline, a la Metal Gear May Madness, combined with the 'close reading'-style gameplay and narrative analysis of Enduring Final Fantasy VII. I've been excited to embark on what promised to be a mammoth journey through the series, getting reacquainted with Sora, Donald and Goofy, and maybe even finding out what the hell is actually going on with all the Nobodies and Organizations and Xeha-whatsits. It looked like it was all going to be a ton of fun.

Since that announcement some eight weeks ago, it would appear to any outside readers that I've gone dark on the project. In fact, that's about as far from the truth as you could get. In the last eight weeks I've drafted no fewer than four attempts at the first 'proper' instalment of the Keyblade Chronicles, centred around the Final Mix version of the original Kingdom Hearts. Each time I've felt like I've got off to a good start, but things have then either escalated to the point where I can't contain everything I want to say in a single blog, or devolved to the point where what I am writing just isn't interesting to read. In other words, it's a real fucking struggle to write. This morning I highlighted every single one of the roughly four-thousand words in my latest draft (note to self - four-thousand words is far too long for any blog post, much less an unfinished one) and deleted them. Then, I started writing this instead.

With each successive failed draft, I've started to get closer to what I think the real issue is with the series - the scope. Putting it simply, one blog post is not enough space to talk about every aspect and nuance of a thirty-hour RPG. Trying to squeeze everything I want to say about the story, characters, worlds, gameplay and side content of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix into a single entry results in either a bloated blog post that nobody wants to read, or a vague disjointed blog post that nobody will enjoy reading. Either way, the end result is going to be something that I'm not happy with.

What is likely the best solution for this problem only dawned on me this morning as I wiped the slate clean yet again. What the Keyblade Chronicles needs to be is not a blog-per-game series like Metal Gear Madness was, but a much more broken down series where each blog entry covers a few hours of gameplay in detail, like Enduring Final Fantasy VII was. In retrospect it's something that maybe should have been obvious, given how well Enduring FFVII worked and how rushed and stunted MG Madness ended up being (it probably goes without saying at this point that I don't exactly consider the latter to be my finest contribution to the Giant Bomb blogosphere).

So I have a potential solution, but that in turn throws up another problem. If I want to analyse the games in greater detail, in the same way that I did with Enduring FFVII, it stands to reason that I should be writing the blogs as I play through the games, while all the minutiae of each play session are still fresh in my mind and thus easier to write about. However, I've already played a significant amount of the whole series at this point, having beaten the first game, completed both stories in Re:Chain of Memories, and made it halfway through Kingdom Hearts II (incidentally, I'd already beaten the original Kingdom Hearts twice when I started this blog project, which was a big part of the reason why I originally opted for the blog-per-game approach). That means if I want to give this series another shot, with this whole new approach, I'm going to have to play those games all over again.

Which brings us to the predicament I now find myself in. Do I negate all my progress through the series so far and start over, so that I have a better chance of delivering the blog series I really want to? Do I keep playing through the games at my current pace and try to persevere through the immense struggle that writing these blogs has turned into? Or do I simply drop the blog project altogether and move onto something else? It's a tough choice, and one I'm going to have to think about the implications of, particularly given the hours of wasted time I've already invested in both those scrapped drafts and the games themselves. I'm really torn, because I really want this series to happen and to be the best that it possibly can, but although I've enjoyed the games so far, I don't know how I'd feel about having to play them a second time (especially Re:Chain of Memories).

So that's why I'm writing this blog, to keep you all informed of what's happening with the Keyblade Chronicles and to try and suss out where we go from here. I'd appreciate feedback from you guys too - I've said several times over that I write these things as much for you as I do for myself, so I want to take into account what you all think when I make my decision about where to go from here. That way, whichever path I choose, hopefully it'll be the one we all want to be on. Thanks for reading, folks. I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix (PS3)

It's funny how, even with a Pile of Shame so large it spreads over two lists, I still find ways to avoid it in favour of revisiting games I've played before. The most recent example of this trend is Final Fantasy XIII, a game I haven't touched since its original release five years ago. I've been toying with the idea of going back to the game for a while now, but the deal was sealed while reading fellow duder @grantheaslip's 'Revisiting FFXIII' series (which I recommend checking out if you haven't already, as it's a fantastic dissection of the game that serves to highlight a lot of the its often-overlooked qualities). Last weekend, when looking for something new to play after finishing Far Cry Classic, I turned away from my Pile of Shame, grabbed the game off my shelf on impulse, and popped the disc into my 360.

I think it's fair to say I was worried about going back to Final Fantasy XIII for a second go around. While I enjoyed the game back in 2010, it's far from my favourite entry in the series, and I was worried the passage of time might have dated its positive aspects, making the more unfavourable parts of the game seem even worse. So far, at least, that's not proving to be the case. I hit the start of Chapter 10 this morning (which is roughly just past the game's halfway point, from what I can recall), and up to this point I've been having a lot of fun playing the game and watching the story unfold. If anything I'd say I'm enjoying the game a bit more this time around, since I'm not constantly referring to the in-game datalog to bust all its crazy jargon. Turns out those opening few chapters are a lot more tolerable when you don't have to keep stopping to complete the required reading on terms like fal'Cie and l'Cie.

But that's not what's prompted me to write this blog. The catalyst for this particular entry instead pertains to, of all things, politics.

This week in the UK, we held our general election. I won't bore anyone with too many details, since this is a video game website and I'm sure a lot of people come to places like Giant Bomb to get away from that sort of thing. I'm not here to talk about the results of election day - more specifically I want to look at the run-up to it, and the election campaigns mounted by some of this country's political parties in an attempt to garner support leading up to the polling day on Thursday. What does any of this have to do with Final Fantasy XIII? Don't worry, I'm getting there.

The last eighteen months or so have seen a lot of focus (some might say a disproportionate amount) on the UK's immigration policies, and the stances of all the major political parties with regards to this issue. It's been held up as one of the most important issues in a lot of pre-election build up, it's featured prominently in the parties' manifestos, and with one or two exceptions, it's being portrayed in an incredibly negative light. There's an undercurrent of demonisation of immigrants running through British politics at the moment, and it's evident in things like the Conservatives' ill-advised 'go-home van' initiative, not to mention the rise in popularity of parties with strong anti-immigration policies like UKIP.

And it's not just the party political broadcasts that are doing this. It's an attitude that seems to have crept into all kinds of media over the last year or two, stealthily worming its way into news broadcasts and onto tabloid front pages, and from there into the hearts and minds of the nation's people. Every day the British public assaulted with negative rhetoric about those not native to our shores. That rhetoric in turn shapes the thoughts of the public in some pretty troubling ways. I play darts with people who spout nonsensical phrases like "Britain is full". I work alongside folks who say pretty terrible things amongst themselves about minority groups on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, these are (by and large) good people. We just live in an environment where political and media rhetoric has made these viewpoints the norm through scapegoating and scaremongering.

If I'm on the verge of losing you then don't worry, because I'm finally getting to the point where this all ties back into video games.

My time spent with Final Fantasy XIII over the last week has demonstrated that the worlds of Cocoon and Pulse aren't that ideologically removed from our own. In fact, Cocoon is a pretty convincing allegory for the UK - it's a sheltered "island" community with a largely prosperous citizenship, ruled over by a seemingly benevolent force in the Sanctum and its fal'Cie, which takes care of their social welfare in return for hard work and obedience. However, there's also an ever-present fear of the "outsider" that pervades Cocoon life - the perceived threat of Pulse, and the demonisation of its inhabitants (and its l'Cie in particular), all despite the lack of any concrete evidence of that threat existing. When the Pulse Vestige near Bodhum is revealed to house a Pulse fal'Cie, it and everyone who comes into contact with it are 'Purged'. Everything of Pulsian origin (and everything tainted by it) is rounded up, and sent back to where it came from. Starting to sound familiar?

This state of latent xenophobia is maintained and perpetuated not only by the Sanctum government, but by the media as well. Throughout the entire game, news broadcasts are shown that paint the Pulse l'Cie you're playing as somehow dangerous, even sub-human. The effects of this propaganda manifest at their strongest in the game's seventh chapter, in the city of Palumpolum, where Snow and Hope are beset by a militant mob of Cocoon citizens. Not long after this they, along with Lightning and Fang, are tracked and assaulted by the anti-Pulse task force PSICOM. It's a little more heavy-handed and violent than the 'go-home van' approach, but the principle is still pretty much the same.

Final Fantasy as a series is no stranger to treading this kind of allegorical ground. Final Fantasy X in particular stands up as a pretty scathing observation of organised religion, from what I can remember, with its corrupt maesters, overbearing Yevoners and giant whale demon literally named Sin. Final Fantasy XIII isn't quite as on-the-nose with its social commentary, but it's undeniably there. It's pretty clumsy and heavy-handed, but that's true of most of Final Fantasy XIII's plot, and I love the game in spite of that. The further through the game I get, the more I think I love its underlying themes and message, too.

What makes this second playthrough of Final Fantasy XIII even more interesting to me is the way its narrative is told from the perspective of these outsiders, these "evil" Pulse l'Cie who once felt at home in this land and are now being castigated for no other reason than their supposed difference and "otherness". Yet we as players are exposed to the explicitly human side of these characters, their hopes, fears and dreams, and their individual reasons for fighting onward and not giving in to the government-and-media-driven machine that wants to purge them from Cocoon. Final Fantasy XIII portrays its demonised minority not as ethereal boogeymen, as the Sanctum and Cocoon media would, but as human beings. It's a refreshing narrative stance that not only highlights the common ground between the l'Cie and their aggressors, but also exposes the Sanctum's bigoted propaganda for what it is. The fact it sheds a little bit of light on a real world issue that matters to me in the process only serves to extend the impact it's had on me this time around.

It's been five years since I last played through Final Fantasy XIII. Consequently, my memories of its ending are pretty hazy. I've just hit the tenth of its thirteen chapters, but I believe the remaining sections of the game continue to reinforce this theme of "we're not so different, you and I", particularly when the gang hit Gran Pulse in Chapter 11. I also seem to remember it heading down the "the Sanctum is corrupt and influenced by the machinations of evil, uber-powerful fal'Cie" route, but that's probably a real-world political allegory best left for another blog altogether. I'm really excited at the prospect of seeing the rest of this adventure through in the coming weeks, and I hope it continues to be an enriching and insightful journey through a fantastical world that might not be too far removed from our own after all. Thanks for reading guys, take care and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Final Fantasy XIII (X360)

In my last blog, I teased some ideas for what my next serial blog project ('bloject'?) for Giant Bomb might be. For a while it was looking like the Diary of a Monster Hunter idea was going ahead (and it may yet still, running concurrently with this project, as I'm really keen to get stuck into MH4U while it still has a large active community). I toyed with the idea of leaping into Blue Dragon or Wild ARMs for a new Enduring... series. But judging by the comments left on my last blog, this is the teased feature that was most in demand. This is the new project I've decided to commit to. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

The Story So Far...

It's the winter of 2002. A fresh-faced young boy steps into his local video game emporium. His hands are buried deep in his jeans pockets, fists clenched around paper notes that constitute his game allowance for the remainder of the year. Experience has directed him towards the bargain bins filled with second-hand games, his eyes darting over cheaper titles that will ensure his money goes as far as possible. As he flicks through the stacks of preowned titles, something catches his eye - a distant shimmering on one of the display shelves. He glances up from the bin, bringing the shimmer into focus. It's the holographic cover art of a brand new PlayStation 2 release - Kingdom Hearts.

The boy's eyes wander from the intriguing Tetsuya Nomura artwork adorning the game's case to the iconography above its title. On one side, the fluid script of the Disney logo. On the other, the angular Squaresoft emblem. Both are clear indicators of quality to the boy's mind - the former stirs up memories of classic childhood films, and the latter connotes the gaming pedigree of Final Fantasy. Suddenly the bargain bin no longer matters. The boy pulls one hand out of his pocket and places it on the shiny new box. He's not entirely sure how, but he knows an incredible adventure is about to begin...

So began my relationship with Kingdom Hearts, a series of video games that has intrigued and perplexed me for well over a decade now. I guess the most logical place to start this new series is to outline that relationship in slightly more detail for the uninitiated.

As I've written above, I stumbled upon Kingdom Hearts rather by accident in the winter of 2002. It was a time in my life when I enjoyed playing video games, but wasn't yet following the industry and development process of specific games, probably due to not having a home internet connection at the time. Consequently, I had no knowledge that Kingdom Hearts was even in development. I had my reservations back then about the viability of the seemingly incongruous Disney/Squaresoft crossover, but I put those aside in favour of my established faith in Square. Having recently come off the back of the fantastic Final Fantasy X, I was confident that Kingdom Hearts would be able to transcend its unusual premise and deliver a great game.

It's been twelve years since then, so I can't be absolutely certain, but I think it took me about six or seven weeks to make it to the very end of Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I won't go into too much detail here (otherwise I'd have a lot less to say in my next blog), but I enjoyed pretty much every second of that time, and by the end (which teased a clear sequel) I was thrilled at having discovered this new series that I could follow as it continued upon the still pretty new PlayStation 2. It was around this time I started following games journalism online, and I found myself keeping my ear pressed to the ground for signs of the approach of the inevitable next instalment in the Kingdom Hearts series.

When that announcement finally came, it broke my heart. The next game in the series, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, was to be a Game Boy Advance exclusive. This put me in a conflicted position. On the one hand, I wanted to play the new Kingdom Hearts game, but on the other, I had precious little allowance to spend on games, and my ignorant young mind thought shiny new full-3D PS2 releases a much higher priority over 2D handheld titles. My ignorance ultimately won out, and I decided to skip Chain of Memories for the time being. At some point on this hazy timeline, Square (who'd become Square Enix by this point) announced Kingdom Hearts II, a full-fledged 3D sequel for the PS2 that would pick the story back up where Chain of Memories left off.

When Kingdom Hearts II released in 2006, I was working a part-time job, and thus able to afford to buy games off my own back. I'd tried to track down a copy of Chain of Memories in order to bridge the gap, but to no avail - the Nintendo DS had all but forced the GBA market out of the bricks-and-mortar stores, and I still harboured a yokel-like distrust of online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon. In a last-ditch attempt to bring myself up to speed with the series' happenings, I digested a plot summary of Chain of Memories on GameFAQs. It was pretty shoddily written and fan-fiction-esque from what I can recall, but it served its purpose and told me what Sora (and Riku) had been up to in the game I'd missed out on.

I played Kingdom Hearts II shortly after release, and while I remember enjoying the improved gameplay mechanics a ton, I also recall not being totally enamoured of the story it told. I'm not sure if it was the fact I'd hurriedly caught up with a badly-written version of the story so far, or rather a symptom of my growing distaste for Japanese RPGs in general at the time. I think part of it may also have been down to the incorporation of the Disney elements, which seemed a little less faithful to their source material this time around. By the time I reached the end of Kingdom Hearts II, I felt like the series had reached a reasonably satisfying conclusion, and I was content to cut my ties with it and move on to other things.

It appears I missed out on quite a bit while I was out of the crazy Kingdom Hearts loop. I briefly thought about getting back in with the announcement of a 3D remake of Chain of Memories for PS2 (dubbed Re:Chain of Memories) in 2008, but that plan was scuppered by its lack of a European release. I was aware of the release of 2009's confusingly-named 358/2 Days on DS, and consciously chose not to play it - the Roxas prologue of Kingdom Hearts II never really grabbed me, and I had little desire to return to the series from that character's perspective after a three-year hiatus. 2010's PSP-only Birth by Sleep stirred similar feelings within me, and also re-ignited my frustration with the series' tendency to platform-hop - at this point the franchise consisted of five different games across four different platforms, making following the overarching story of the series even more of a logistical nightmare to follow (although I did own all four of those platforms at this point, so I guess I was raging vicariously on behalf of those who didn't). I ended up distancing myself so far from the series that 2011's Re:Coded on DS and 2012's Dream Drop Distance on 3DS flew completely under my radar, releasing completely unbeknownst to me.

2013 was the year that my interest in the Kingdom Hearts franchise resurfaced, for two primary reasons. The first was the official announcement of Kingdom Hearts III at E3 that year. I don't know if it's the psychological effect of a definite roman numeral at the end of that name, but from the moment I heard about that announcement, I knew I wanted to play it. Of course, there's one small problem with that - I have absolutely no idea what's been going on in the series since the end of Kingdom Hearts II, and my memory of all the games I did actually play through is hazy at best. If only there were an easy way of playing through all the games in the series up to now...

That brings me nicely on to the second thing that turned me back onto the series - the release of the confusingly named Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, an HD collection of the series' opening chapters on the PlayStation 3, in late 2013. The prospect of replaying a slightly prettier version of the original game, plus finally being able to see the events of Chain of Memories for myself, was enough to get me to trop the incredibly modest £20 on it. Unfortunately the packaged-in version of 358/2 Days wasn't playable, but instead a 'cut-scene movie', so I decided to pick up a cheap second-hand copy of the DS game to play through. 2014 saw the release of another HD collection (HD 2.5 ReMIX) that brought together Kingdom Hearts II, Birth by Sleep, and a 'cut-scene movie' of Re:Coded, making almost the entire franchise available to play and witness on a single console. Needless to say, I snapped that up too, along with a playable DS copy of Re:Coded. I purchased the final piece of the puzzle, a copy of Dream Drop Distance, in early 2015.

So that's my history with Kingdom Hearts, right up to the current state of play - I'm a man with seven lengthy games to play through across two different platforms, all with a view to finally putting myself in a position where I might be able to understand the narrative of the upcoming eighth game. Will I succeed? Will I falter? Will I manage to comprehend any of the overarching plot? You know, those questions (and the answers to them) might just make for a pretty interesting blog series...

The Premise

This is where this project comes in. The Keyblade Chronicles will be my attempt to keep a record of my time spent with the Kingdom Hearts series over the coming months. Think of it like my own little 'Jiminy's Journal', a written account of my journey through the many worlds of Kingdom Hearts as I attempt to decipher its mysteries and wrap my head around its labyrinthine narrative. By the end of this series, I hope to have a fuller appreciation for the series as a whole, a better grasp on its plot, and hopefully be in an optimal position to jump straight into Kingdom Hearts III when it releases.

Entries for this series are probably going to be reasonably spaced out, as these games are lengthy, and I'm playing them on the side rather than dedicating big chunks of time to them. I'd say to expect one every couple of months or so. After finishing each game, I'll come to Giant Bomb and write up an entry detailing my thoughts on several different aspects of it - the gameplay, the aesthetics, the characters, the story (both on its own and as a piece of the whole), the chosen Disney worlds incorporated, and other such things. Like the games themselves, these blogs are likely to be pretty long - probably akin to this Final Fantasy XIII retrospective from 2010, and with a likely pretty similar stucture too. At the end of each blog I plan to summarise my thoughts on the game in question as a whole, and at the end of the series I may even go back and try to rank the series through some largely arbitrary quantifiers. Assuming I get that far, that is. I guess we'll see.

This should be fun to chronicle, irrespective of whether or not I ultimately enjoy my time with these games (although I'm pretty sure I will). I'm excited to revisit the couple of games I have played, and intrigued to see where the series goes beyond them. It's going to be a pretty long journey, but I'm excited to be embarking on it, and I hope you all are too.

The Games

The Keyblade Chronicles will be a series in a minimum of seven parts, with each part dedicated to a single game in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. As the series progresses, I'll come back to this blog now and then to update my progress and link to the latest chapter below. These are the games this series will be covering, in the order I'll be covering them in:

1. Kingdom Hearts Final Mix

The game that started it all. I've played the original PlayStation 2 release of Kingdom Hearts a good three or four times, but this series marks my first time through the Final Mix version included as part of the Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX collection. It established the series' core tenets, with its blend of real-time action combat, exploration of several Disney-inspired worlds, and an overarching story centred on themes of friendship and strength of heart. I have incredibly fond memories of this title, and I'm looking forward to discovering the differences present in this Final Mix version.

2. Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Originally a Game Boy Advance release from 2004, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was reworked in full 3D in the Kingdom Hearts II engine and released as Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories in America in 2008. That version of the game saw its first European release as part of the Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX collection in 2013, and that's the version of the game that I'll be playing. Swapping out the real-time action combat in favour of a card-based system, Re:Chain of Memories bridges the narrative gap between the original Kingdom Hearts and its bona fide sequel, Kingdom Hearts II. Having never played any version of this game before, I'm curious to see how it plays and how its story unfolds.

3. Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix

The 'true' sequel to the first Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II picks up about a year after the events of Re:Chain of Memories and continues the story of Sora's battle with the Heartless. Renowned for its myriad gameplay improvements, Kingdom Hearts II is also considered by some (myself included) to be the point where the series started to become a little too bloated, complex and platform-hoppy to keep following. I've only ever played Kingdom Hearts II once, way back when it released in 2006, so revisiting it after all this time is going to be an interesting experience. I'll be playing the Final Mix version included in the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX collection for PS3.

4. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Released for the Nintendo DS in 2009, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is an interquel that runs from just before the end of the original Kingdom Hearts right up to the very beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. It tells the more detailed story of Roxas, the playable character from the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II, and gives greater insight into the machinations of the mysterious Organisation XIII encountered by Sora in Re:Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II. Given the version of the game included with the Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX collection is only a cut-scene movie, I'll be playing the game first and then watching the movie afterwards to get the full experience. I've never played this one before, and I'm curious to see how the series' trademark gameplay translates to the comparatively limited handheld DS hardware.

5. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Final Mix

Originally released for the PSP in 2010, I'll be playing the Final Mix version of Birth by Sleep included in the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX collection for this project. Another game in the series that I'm yet to touch in any way, my understanding is that it's a prequel set ten years prior to the events of the original Kingdom Hearts, and centres on three young apprentice keyblade wielders named Ventus, Terra and Aqua. I've done next to no research into this game beyond that, so I'm not really sure what to expect from its story or mechanics.

6. Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded

Originally released only in Japan for mobile platforms in 2008 under the title Kingdom Hearts: Coded, this game saw a global release on the DS in 2011 with the Re:Coded moniker. Again, my current knowledge of the game is sketchy at best, but I believe it's set after the events of Kingdom Hearts II and involves a digital recreation of Sora travelling through a digitized version of Jiminy Cricket's journal. Much like 358/2 Days, Re:Coded was included in the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX collection as a cut-scene movie, so I plan to play the DS game and then watch the cut-scenes to get a better understanding of both the gameplay mechanics and the story.

7. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

The most recent addition to the series, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance is a 3DS exclusive released in 2012 and is the only game in the franchise not available as part of either of the HD ReMIX collections released for PS3. I've done my absolute best to avoid looking too deeply into the game's premise in order to avoid spoilers, but my understanding is that it bridges the gap between Kingdom Hearts II and the inevitable release of Kingdom Hearts III, following Sora and Riku as they go through some kind of keyblade master training. Much praised for its FlowMotion mechanics that streamline both exploration and combat, I'm really excited to find out how this one plays, but I know that's a long way off at the moment.

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So there you have it - that's what the Keyblade Chronicles will be. I realise I've rambled on far too long, but I think that's just a symptom of how excited I am to get this feature up and running. I've already beaten the first game (spoiler alert), and I'm hoping to complete the write-up for it next weekend, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Until then, thanks very much for reading. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Far Cry Classic (X360)

It's been a little while, hasn't it?

I haven't had much of a presence on Giant Bomb over the last couple of months. I've been incredibly busy with real-life stuff, most of it work-related. Those of you who've been following me for a while will be aware that I work at a doctors' practice, dispensing prescription drugs to patients, and to that end I've been devoting a significant proportion of my free time since December studying a course specific to the field. I finally reached the end of that course over the Easter weekend, meaning that assuming I've managed to pass all the assignments, I'm about to become a fully-qualified dispenser. It also means that a whole ton of free time has opened back up to me, freeing me up to return to the Giant Bomb blogosphere on what will hopefully be a more frequent basis.

That's not to say I haven't been playing video games in the down-time. I've just had to adjust my usual gaming habits somewhat to fit it in around all the reading and assignments I've had to do these past five months or so. My go-to game for breaking up my pretty intense study sessions through the 'crunch period' over the last month or so has been Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on my PSP. I've owned the game for about five years and tentatively dipped my toes in its deep waters once or twice, but never properly taken the plunge for fear of never resurfacing. The release of Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and the coverage it got on the site prompted me to finally take a serious stab at playing the game, and once I got past the steep initial learning curve, I found a lot to like in the game. The fact each hunt typically took me between fifteen and thirty minutes, including preparation, made it a perfect game to fit into my study breaks. I decided to finish with the game after beating the Tigrex, since achieving that feels like a logical end-point for the single-player "story" (insofar as the game has one). I've since invested in a copy of MH4U and a New 3DS to play it on, and I'm hoping to get cracking on that some time soon (more on that shortly).

When I've managed to sit down in front of a larger screen, usually late in the evenings, I've been working my way through a couple of other games. I beat Alpha Protocol back in late February/early March, and found it to be a pretty polarising experience. I really liked the concept's fusion of spy thriller fiction with some traditional RPG elements, which made for a 'James Bond-meets-Mass Effect' feel that kept me gripped right the way through its surprisingly short campaign. I appreciated the implementation of the moral choice stuff as well, although I wasn't quite as blown away by it as others seem to have been - maybe you need to invest in multiple playthroughs to get a proper feel for just how much that stuff can branch? I went from enjoying the combat in the game's opening stages to really hating it by the end - the shooting was serviceable and the combat skills I went with were both helpful and fun to use, but the late-game stages feature some really bullet-spongy bosses that are no fun to fight. I specced my Agent Thorton heavily into assault rifles and combat durability, but I still had a lot of trouble with combat situations in the game's back end, and found myself longing for some potential diplomatic alternatives to getting shot up over and over again. I'm glad I played it, although I'm not sure I'd want to do so a second time. If nothing else, it's got me interested in revisiting the Mass Effect series in the near future.

More recently I played through Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, a Steam gift from Giant Bomb moderator and all round awesome duder @Sparky_Buzzsaw. Man, what a fantastic experience that was. I played through the game over five nights at a rate of an episode a night, and each night I had to force myself not to jump straight into the next episode. It ticks a lot of the same boxes that its spiritual predecessor, The Walking Dead, did for me, throwing a cast of incredibly well-written characters into an interesting scenario and putting the player in the shoes of someone whose moral choices influence future events, but never explicitly dictate them. Although I'd never read any of the Fables comics on which the game is based, I found the characters instantly likeable and relatable, particularly the protagonist Bigby Wolf. It's certainly not heavy on action (I think it features even less actual gameplay than what I can remember of The Walking Dead), but as an interactive narrative it easily ranks on a par with Telltale's previous project. It's got me hoping for a second season, and itching to finally get stuck into The Walking Dead: Season Two.

The fourth and final game that's been keeping me occupied of late is Kingdom Hearts, specifically the Final Mix version of the game included in the HD 1.5 ReMIX collection on PS3. I've long been a fan of the original Kingdom Hearts, but have never really became invested in the franchise as a whole due to its myriad spin-offs, impenetrable overarching plot and constant platform-hopping. The recent release of the two HD ReMIX collections has served to finally make the bulk of the series' labyrinthine storyline available on a single machine, and that prospect has been enough to draw me back in to give the wider Kingdom Hearts universe another chance. This HD remaster of the original game is still as charming as it was back in 2002, and the mechanical improvements such as right stick camera control and implementation of the Reaction Command system make it a much more comfortable game to play by modern standards. I put just over fifty hours into a pretty comprehensive playthrough back in January and February, and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with it. The next stop on my Kingdom Hearts journey is Re:Chain of Memories, the 3D remake of 2004's Game Boy Advance release Chain of Memories. It's a pretty weird stylistic shift due to its card-based combat system, but I'm having fun with it so far.

So now that I'm back and able to commit to a more regular blogging schedule once again, I've been thinking about ways to breathe new life into this dusty, neglected blog archive. In years gone by I used to have a bit of a reputation for serial blogging, off the back of projects such as last year's Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge (a let's play of the Pokémon Red remake using nicknames, capture limitations and permadeath to create an emergent narrative based on the playthrough), 2013's Metal Gear May Madness (a Metal Gear series retrospective, initially conceived as a ridiculous attempt to play through the entire franchise in a month), 2012's A Month in Skyrim (a thirty-day creative writing project inspired by my time playing the most recent Elder Scrolls game), and my 'blognum opus' Enduring Final Fantasy VII (a four-year project which forced me to look back on my favourite Final Fantasy game through more critical eyes to determine if it's still worth playing all these years later). With all of that in my back catalogue, a brand new series seems like the most logical way to come back to this blog. I've been toying with possible ideas and have narrowed it down to the following ideas. I should probably stress that none of these working titles are set in stone. Here goes:

• Diary of a Monster Hunter - I'm keen to get into Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and the series' world and gameplay systems seem pretty well geared towards creating an emergent narrative. I guess this series would be somewhere between A Month in Skyrim and Enduring FFVII in terms of style, combining a creative interpretation of my progress through the game with a more analytical look at the myriad gameplay systems holding it together.
• Enduring <Insert JRPG Here> - I own a lot of JRPGs that I've never finished, or even played in some cases. A quick look at my Pile of Shame reveals titles including Wild Arms, Grandia, Suikoden, Dragon Quest VIII, Unlimited SaGa, Blue Dragon, Ni no Kuni, Tactics Ogre - the list is seemingly endless. A new Enduring... series would be a pretty neat incentive to get stuck into one of these games and see what makes it tick, with the added benefit of none of my opinions being clouded by nostalgia.
• The Keyblade Chronicles - As I said above, I've recently set out on a quest to play through every main series Kingdom Hearts game. It's a journey that's set to take place over seven different titles across two distinct platforms, and will almost certainly take a long-ass time. Documenting that quest in a similar fashion to the Metal Gear Madness challenge could be pretty interesting, although by its nature it would mean pretty infrequent updates.

If any of the above options sounds like something you'd be interested in reading (or conversely, if one of those proposals sounds like the worst thing ever to you), please shout about it in the comments below. I write these things as much for you guys as I do for myself, and I'm keen to know what you most want to see coming out of this space now that I have time to devote to it again.

So there you have it - a pretty comprehensive update on what I've been doing, what I've been playing, and what I'm thinking of bringing to this blog in the near future. Boy, it's good to be back without the weight of a millstone around my neck. Anyways, I think I've rambled on for long enough at this point. Thanks very much for reading guys, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories (PS3)

It's been a long time since I got caught up in a skateboarding game. The last one I became completely absorbed in was probably Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, for a couple of big reasons. First, it was the first game in the series to mark a radical change in design philosophy. Gone were the two-minute runs and compact, linear level designs of its predecessors. In their place were much more open environments in which to skate, and a completely reformed challenge system that allowed players to explore levels and tackle goals at their own pace instead of constantly racing against that 120-second timer. This design change was supported by a lot of minor refinements to the series' controls and mechanics, resulting in the 'flow' of the gameplay (for lack of a better word) coming as close to perfect as it had ever been and allowing players to rack up higher scores than ever before with relative ease.

The other major reason why I think THPS4 affected me so profoundly is that it arrived on the scene at a time when real-life skateboarding was beginning to experience a surge in popularity in and around my hometown. Classmates would bring skateboarding magazines and catalogues into school and look through them during morning break, while the older kids would take their boards to the streets after school (to the upset of pretty much everyone in town). Though it might be difficult to believe now, I got swept up in this subculture movement too. I had an awesome pair of DC shoes and a rather shitty board (probably shouldn't have spent all my allowance on the shoes, in retrospect), and I would skate up and down my road trying to nail various ollies, flips and shuv-its with my friends. When I couldn't skate outside, I would end up skating indoors thanks to THPS4. As a result, I ended up playing it a lot more than I probably would have done otherwise, and it became the franchise's magnum opus for me.

So that gives some insight as to why I hold Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 in such high regard. I've played skateboarding games since, but none of them have gripped me in the same way. I played quite a bit of Underground when it came out, and the PS2 version of American Wasteland a few years later, both of which were perfectly competent board-'em-ups, but neither really held the same charm for me as the series' fourth instalment. Truth be told, nothing came anywhere near close to it, until I played Skate last month.

I put about ten days into Skate, and in that time I managed to see what I imagine to be most of its core content - being as the game doesn't have a bona fide Career mode and no end credits, it's difficult to say. I managed to get on the cover of both Thrasher and the Skateboard Mag, tore shit up at the X Games, and met a host of professional skaters along the way (most of whom I then whooped in games of S.K.A.T.E.). After all of that, I actually had to force myself to stop playing and move onto something else, and it took pretty much every ounce of my willpower not to make that 'something else' Skate 2. I genuinely enjoyed it that much.

So how has Skate managed to dethrone Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and claim the title of my favourite skateboarding game ever? Well, paradoxically, it's done it by being at once completely different and oddly similar to the Birdman's fourth outing. I'll start by pointing out the differences, since they're more immediately apparent. The most obvious is without a doubt the game's control system, which moves tricks away from the controller's face buttons and maps them onto the right stick. Moving the stick in different patterns and directions results in different tricks, tweaks and variations. This 'flick-it' control scheme took a lot of getting used to for me, and while it's far from flawless, it did ultimately feel like a better and more natural way of doing things than mashing combinations into the D-pad while holding down a face button. The fact it was a whole new learning experience, something the Tony Hawk series hadn't really been for me since the very first game, made landing every trick and nailing every line feel incredibly rewarding.

Skate also eschews the traditional level-based model of the Tony Hawk games in favour of a single, fully-open city for the player to explore. This brings with it an increased emphasis on exploration, encouraging the player to free-ride through the city of San Vanelona at their own pace and discover the best places to skate off their own back. It's a fantastic design choice that makes things feel a little more 'emergent' (sorry to bust out a marketing buzzword), especially when coupled with the game's video challenges that let you dictate which locations you want to attempt them in. There's a slight down-side to this, namely the loss of the sense of progress that a steady stream of unlocks brings, but Skate makes up for the lack of environmental progression by including unlockable 'zones' within the city that can't be skated until you move far enough through the career.

Weirdly, it's within these fundamental differences in design that Skate strikes parallels with THPS4 - because it successfully revitalises its genre through the changes it makes. The go-anywhere open-world design of San Vanelona reminds me of the feeling I got when I explored THPS4's larger levels for the first time, looking for spots to rack up points and seeking out challenge-givers hidden in the nooks and crannies of the gameworld. I was initially dubious about the 'flick-it' control scheme, but spending so much time with it has left me seriously doubting whether I'd ever be able to go back to the button-mashy combos of Tony Hawk. Skate innovates in meaningful ways, and those innovations improve the game. That's why I see a lot of what I loved about THPS4 in Skate, even though the two games play completely differently.

But above all this, there's one thing Skate does that the Tony Hawk series, for all its failed attempts, has never achieved - it manages to feel like real skating. Some people probably think I'm referring to the game's 'flick-it' controls, which are intended to approximate skaters' foot movements, but that's not what I'm getting at here. What I'm referring to is the fundamental 'flow' of the gameplay (there's that horrible abstract concept again). Remember how I talked about the 'flow' of THPS4 earlier, and said it was geared towards stringing together crazy combos to rack up massive points? It was certainly fun, but it never felt like real skateboarding - more an arcade-friendly approximation.

By contrast, Skate's 'flow' captures the ethos of real-life skateboarding. It drops you into this huge open city and lets you decide where to skate. When you do find a spot, the game's happy to let you tackle it however you see fit. It doesn't force lines on you, but encourages you to find them for yourself. When you do find a line you like the look of, chances are your first couple of attempts will be pitiful. You may fail and bail, many times over. But with repeated attempts, patience and diligence, your hard work will pay off and you'll come away with an amazing photo or some sick footage. That's what skateboarding is really all about, and it's what Skate's all about too.

At the top of this blog, I said that a big factor in why I loved Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 so much was that it came along at the right time. It supported the wave of popularity that skateboarding was riding at the time, supplemented it, and found a place in my heart in the process. Now, over a decade later, Skate has actually managed to do the complete opposite. It's managed to stir the still waters around me and generate a wave all of its own, a wave that I've started to ride with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. I never thought a video game would get me back on a skateboard for the first time in ten years, but Skate has done just that.

If you've stuck with the blog for this long, then thanks for reading. I appreciate it's a little on the long side and probably a bit rambly in spots. Truth is, this entry has gone through a number of drafts and taken me about five weeks to write, so hopefully the gestation period has been worth it and I haven't completely missed the original point I wanted to make. My next entry shouldn't take this long - it's likely to be about my time with the Final Mix edition of the original Kingdom Hearts, which I've just finished playing today. I'll soon be looking for something new to play - if you want to, feel free to check out my ever-growing Pile of Shame (now in two parts!) and recommend something to me. Once again, thanks very much for reading, take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix (PS3)

It's 2015. A new year, a new start, a chance to cast off the shackles of the previous year and embrace new possibilities and opportunities. It's an invitation to try and make changes in our lives for the better, that we might make this new year better than the last one.

It's apparently also the perfect time to play bad video games.

I'm not sure what possessed me to kick off the New Year by playing through Tomb Raider: Chronicles. It's almost universally regarded as the worst of Lara Croft's first five outings and my own personal least-favourite (with good reason, as I've come to learn first-hand over the last week or so). Admittedly, I'd never beaten it up to now, but the same is true of every other game currently sitting on my Pile of Shame - a backlog so large I've had to split it across two separate Giant Bomb lists, lest I lose the ability to effectively alter it. Why this game over the other one hundred and sixty-seven contenders? Other than "why not?", I cannot think of a single argument that makes sense.

I've covered my history with the Tomb Raider franchise several times in old blog entries, so I'll spare you another rebranding of the finer details here. Suffice it to say I grew up playing the CORE-developed games on the original PlayStation and have a pretty strong affinity for them as a result, even with the benefit of hindsight revealing that they're not as great as I once believed. There's something to be said for the way the games awaken latent muscle memory within my fingers, nailing every precarious jump as if I never stopped playing. It's why, fifteen years on from their release, I can comfortably return to old Tomb Raider games. I can even enjoy them (my time spent with The Last Revelation in 2011 is a testament to that).

I did not enjoy Tomb Raider: Chronicles.

It's hard to know where to start explaining why. Under any other circumstances, I would cite its length as a problem. Chronicles clocked in at seven hours for me. That's according to the in-game clock, mind, which doesn't factor in any of the time I spent dying due to electrified floors or poorly-judged leaps of faith over bottomless chasms. Include those frustrating additions and my time with the game probably gets closer to between ten and twelve hours. Speaking entirely from personal experience, that's pretty damn slight for a Tomb Raider game. Ordinarily I'd call the game out for its brevity, but if anything, Chronicles is mercifully short - its abridged running time serves as a welcome release for some of its more glaring issues.

Issues like severe tonal schizophrenia. Chronicles is made up of four distinct scenarios, each consisting of a handful of levels, and the game's tone shifts so wildly between these scenarios that the whole thing ends up feeling like a disjointed mess. Of these scenarios, the first and third have some merit. The first sees Lara gallivanting around Rome in search of the Philosopher's Stone. It's easily the most Tomb Raider-ish of the scenarios, with old villains making cameos and a healthy mix of combat, exploration and puzzle-solving making up the bulk of the action. The third puts the player in the shoes of a younger Lara, and it plays rather differently - because Lara doesn't have her trademark dual pistols, there's no combat to be had in this scenario, making parts of it play more like a survival horror game than a traditional Tomb Raider title. Thankfully, it complements this novel approach with the best environmental puzzles in the game, making it more of a success than a failure.

That leaves scenarios two and four. The second takes place on a Russian submarine, which severely limits the potential for puzzles, reducing most of the levels to finding keys to open locked doors in order to keep moving through the sub. This is frustrating, but it's the fourth and final scenario that takes the cake. It sees Lara infiltrating a New York skyscraper to steal an artefact, using a combination of stealth and high-tech gadgetry. Thinking about it, I can kind of see why the developers might have thought this would be a good idea. Chronicles came out in 2000, when Metal Gear Solid was the game to beat and everyone was after a slice of the stealth action pie. Never mind the fact it's completely out of the series' comfort zone. Never mind that stealth mechanics are almost completely unworkable in our game engine. Never mind that it's completely out of character for Lara to break into a corporate headquarters to steal treasure because of a personal vendetta. Nope, let's get as many goons in mech armour dual-wielding laser guns as we can in here, and we'll worry about the consequences later.

The consequences, as it turns out, aren't just detrimental to the narrative. They're also fundamentally game-breaking. I don't know if it's because the Tomb Raider game engine wasn't built to handle so much bastardisation of its usual coding, but for whatever reason, Chronicles' final level is glitched to fuck. I saved my game about ten minutes from the end, and died shortly thereafter. When I reloaded the game, it put me right back to the start of the level, and to add insult to injury, rendered Lara completely invisible. Thankfully I was playing on a PS3 with a dedicated internal memory card, and I had a back-up save that I could fall back on. Back in 2000, when memory card space was severely limited and a lot of games were starting to take up multiple blocks on a card, people didn't have the luxury of keeping several saves. This bug genuinely could have fucked up a player's entire progress through the game ten minutes from its end. Hell, it probably did. How the fuck does something like that get marked as 'known shippable'?

Even if I could overlook these problems, being the long-time fan of the series that I am, I'd find it difficult to get past the sheer laziness and lack of heart with which the whole package was put together. Things like the inventory screen being ripped straight out of the previous game, with nothing being done to tone down its 'Egyptian' feel, making it feel ridiculously out of place. Or the fact that the villain models in the first scenario seem to have been lifted directly from the first Tomb Raider game without being smartened up. It's even harder to believe this game was preceded by The Last Revelation, a game notable for its level of care and attention to detail. Quite how the development team at CORE could go from that to this in the space of a year is almost mystifying.

Tomb Raider: Chronicles is the unnecessary sequel to your favourite film. It is the last album by your favourite band before they cut ties with their old record label. It is the bastard child of contractual obligation and series annualization, a husk of its much-loved predecessors with no discernible heart or soul. To experience it is almost wholly joyless, because the rare flickers of greatness only serve to remind you of what might have been, amplifying the impact of the formulaic remainder in the process.

...but hey, at least it's better than Angel of Darkness, right?

Thanks for reading guys. I'll try to play something a bit better next (suggestions based on the aforementioned Pile of Shame are always welcome). A Happy New Year to y'all. I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)

So here we are, at the dénouement of my End of 2014 Awards. Today’s fifth and final part sees me hand out my last two awards to games that defined this past year for me. If you’ve missed any of the preceding eight awards, you can find them by following these helpful, handy-dandy links to Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.

Before I give out these last two gongs, I’d like to take a moment to honourably mention some Honourable Mentions that didn’t quite make the cut for various reasons.

Forza Motorsport 4 – There’s no denying that Forza 4 is a fantastic racing game. It’s got a ton of cars to collect and a ton of events to race through, to the point where completing the game’s ten-season World Tour mode left me with only 6% overall completion of the game’s event list. Unfortunately I put the game down at that point and haven’t been back to it since, due to its pitifully small roster of tracks. Note to Turn 10 – if you’re going to populate your game with hundreds of cars and over a thousand races, it might be worth including more than two-dozen locations to race in. Y’know, for diversity’s sake.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Oh man, this game. On paper, it should be my favourite game in the whole damn series. Mechanically it’s got the most fluid and responsive exploration and combat I’ve seen in the franchise to date. It also tells a much more introspective story about Ezio (one of my favourite protagonists of the 360/PS3/Wii generation), revisiting the characters and world of the original Assassin’s Creed while also giving you a whole new city to explore in Constantinople. Yet in spite of all this, Revelations fell pretty flat for me. I think it’s a combination of really disliking the present-day portion of the game, and just being burned out on the franchise as a whole. I’ll definitely be taking a reasonably lengthy break before I come back to check out Assassin’s Creed III.

Heavy Rain – Now this is a weird one. I remember really liking the majority of Heavy Rain, in spite of its obvious flaws. By all accounts, it probably should have been honoured in these awards for its entertaining story and the way the whole experience is driven by player choice. Yet, when the time came to sit down and actually think about these awards, I found myself brushing it to one side almost immediately. What kept me from presenting it with a proper award, you ask? Honestly, it’s probably the way Jayden (far and away my favourite character throughout my playthrough) died abruptly and without any kind of fanfare or acknowledgement in the game’s closing moments. That left such a sour taste in my mouth that, although I remember the game fondly as a whole, I came away from it having enjoyed it significantly less than I might have done otherwise.

Nothing as It Seems Award for Subverting Player Expectations

Papers, Please (PC – Lucas Pope – 2013)

I went into Papers, Please knowing that it was an 8-bit border control simulator and not much else. That lack of preparatory knowledge meant I went into the game without any real expectations. Now, I know what you’re thinking – how can a game I started playing with no expectations win an award for subverting my expectations? The answer is simple – almost the entire time I was playing Papers, Please, it kept throwing expectations at me, only to knock them down a couple of in-game days later.

In my first Papers, Please ‘session’ (for lack of a better word to describe the bevy of prematurely-ended playthroughs I experienced), I became acquainted with the order of EZIC, an anti-establishment organisation trying to bring down Arstotzka from within. “Aha!” I thought, “This must be what the game wants me to do – to get involved with these rebels and bring down the corrupt, evil Arstotzkan government.” So I let their agents through the border and received a big bundle of cash in return. I fed and clothed my cold, malnourished family, and bought a bigger apartment in another sector. What I hadn’t counted on was the omniscient vigilance of the government I was helping to bring down. They clocked I was spending a lot more than I was earning, and arrested me. Game over.

The next time I played the game, I figured that it would be best not to get involved with EZIC. I dismissed their agents and ignored their kick-backs for fear of being implicated in some terrorist action in the future. About ten days into my new job, an inspector arrived enquiring about EZIC, and whether anyone had tried to pass through the checkpoint. Being the good Arstotzkan citizen that I was, I obediently handed over all the EZIC paraphernalia that their informant had given to me a few days previously. For my loyal actions, I was arrested and implicated in EZIC’s activities due to possessing those items. Game over.

It was only after a few of these sessions of the game setting up my expectations only to knock them back down that I realised what it was the game actually wanted me to do. In my next (and most recent) session with Papers, Please, I opted to simply do my job. No getting involved with organisations, no deals with corrupt guards or overbearing superiors, I just focused on reading those immigration documents. I let through those who met the criteria, and turned away those who didn’t. I sacrificed my personal stake in the events that were unfolding and became the soulless archetype of the model border control officer. And do you know what? As soon as I started doing that, I managed to see through my thirty days of service and beat the game with comparative ease.

And the craziest thing is, Papers, Please probably still hasn’t finished subverting my expectations. The game has twenty endings, of which I’ve only seen four. Should I ever return to it (and I suspect I might, at some point in the future), there’s still a wealth of content left unexplored. Content that I’m once again going to have to go against what I think the game expects of me in order to find and experience. Not bad for a game I didn’t expect anything from, eh?

Sweet Morphine Award for Most Addictive Game

Pokémon. All of them. (Various – Game Freak – Various)

Let’s be honest here. You all knew that Pokémon was going to feature on this list somewhere in some form. The only element of doubt in anybody’s mind was probably regarding which game I’d choose to honour above the others. Would I recognise Pokémon Y’s incredible longevity now that my in-game clock has passed the 800-hour mark? Would I praise Pokémon Colosseum for delivering a 3D Pokémon adventure that deviates from the series’ standards in some really interesting ways? Would I acknowledge Pokémon White 2 for finally delivering on the promise shown by its underwhelming predecessor? Ultimately it was impossible for me to choose between them. That’s why I’m jointly presenting this award to all of the Pokémon games I’ve played this year, for keeping me thoroughly captivated and invested in a world that, by all rights, I should have lost interest in a long time ago.

So how has the Pokémon franchise maintained its iron-fist grip on me throughout 2014? I have a couple of theories. First up, I became interested in competitive battling at the start of this year. Playing through the entire series in 2013 left me with a much greater appreciation of the games’ mechanics and the nuances of the battle system, to the point where I wanted to explore that side of the game in greater detail. I started to learn about EVs and IVs, about Natures and the competitive value of some moves that I’d previously considered useless. All this culminated in me starting to train and build my own competitive Pokémon team, which I put through its paces in a league devised my myself and my friends, coming second in the league tournament and winning the knockout cup. Even now this aspect of the series has a firm hold on me, and I’ve just finished training an all-Dark-type team to participate in the next season of the friendly league we set up. It kicks off on January 2^nd, and I cannot wait for it to begin.

The other big thing that has kept Pokémon at the forefront of my gaming habits this year is my discovery of the Nuzlocke format. For the uninitiated, a Nuzlocke is a playthrough of a Pokemon game under a self-imposed set of rules intended to make the game more challenging. The only two core rules are that you can only try to catch the first Pokémon you meet in each area, and that if a Pokémon faints, it is dead and can no longer be used. I first tried out this combination of limiting captures and permadeath with Pokémon FireRed, an adventure that I documented in blog form right here on Giant Bomb throughout the spring of 2014. While I didn’t win the Nuzlocke, I had an absolute blast with the game, and resolved to take part in more Nuzlockes and Nuzlocke variants in the future. Thus far my experience with the format has grown to include an ‘Egglocke’ of Pokémon X (in which every caught Pokémon was swapped for an unhatched egg donated by my league-buddies) and a currently-in-progress ‘Randomizer Nuzlocke’ of the original Pokémon Red (in which Pokémon locations are randomized to create a much less predictable playthrough). The Nuzlocke format has certainly breathed new life into old adventures, and I suspect that the Red Randomizer won’t be my last.

2015 is now just a few days away, and with it comes the promise of yet more time spent in the wonderful world of Pokémon. I’m slowly working my way through my copy of the series’ latest release, Pokémon Omega Ruby, in which I’ve just earned the fifth gym badge, and the Red Randomizer is still ongoing at the time of writing. My plan is to try and turn down my Pokémon activity once those two things are complete, and redirect my focus back onto my Pile of Shame (which has recently reached an embarrassing height of 170 titles). But when I’m dealing with a series as addictive as Pokémon, I can’t make any promises.

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So that’s it for this year. Ten awards, ten games (sort of), and the conclusion of a fun look back on the year that was. I hope that 2015 is a great year for all of you, both in front of your consoles and away from them. I’ve been Dan Kempster, and these have been my End of 2014 Awards. Thanks for reading, take care, and I’ll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)