Hey folks. After the relentless tide of backlog-based bloggery that was October, I elected to play it a little quieter through November. There were a few external factors that limited my time for both game-playing and blog-writing, the most obvious one being my attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo this year (which I'll cover in more detail a little later in this blog). That's not to say my November was a game-free one, mind - I still found time for a decent amount of grabbin'-and-stabbin', shootin'-and-lootin', catchin'-and-hatchin' good-times throughout the last five weeks or so. I'll try and cover each of the games I've been spending time with as best I can below, beginning with...

Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh: Victorian London Edition...

Assassin's Creed Syndicate is the most fun I've had with an Assassin's Creed game since Assassin's Creed II. Bear in mind that's coming from someone who's yet to touch anything else post-Revelations, and that while I recognise Brotherhood is the best-playing game in the Ezio arc, nothing has yet come close to the magical feeling of exploring Venice and Florence and witnessing Ezio grow from a reckless teenager into a mature young man. Despite a blatantly 'gamey' feel, with its plethora of different collectibles and regimentally structured gang warfare mechanics, I ended up really warming to this latest offering from Ubisoft. No mean feat, considering my lacklustre experience with Revelations last year very nearly put me off the franchise for good.

I don't know how much of my enjoyment of Syndicate was derived from its setting, but there was something undeniably comforting about the familiarity of London, even in its Victorian regalia. Traversing streets that I know, and seeing landmarks that I recognise, helped the world to come alive for me. I appreciated the story too, which fused the typical Assassins-versus-Templars mythos with a "small boy/girl in the big city" pretext, all complemented by some ridiculous-yet-fantastic cameos. It felt like a Dickens novel in video game form, with its exaggerated characters inhabiting a rendition of London so vivid that you can practically smell the horses and feel the coal-ash on your skin. The cities have always been characters in their own right in these games, and I think London is the best example of that I've yet seen from the franchise.

Speaking of characters, I think Syndicate may well have my favourite protagonist from the series since Ezio (something of a moot point when you consider I'm yet to play any of the games that came out after the end of Ezio's arc). I'm not talking about Jacob Frye, the reckless, cocksure idiot who ticks just about every box on the list of Generic Protagonist Specifications, but rather his twin sister, Evie. I found myself playing as her for the bulk of my time with Syndicate, and wound up really enjoying her character. She's the perfect foil to her dolt of a brother - intelligent, considering and cautious, while still being determined, funny, and likeable in her own right. Part of me was impressed her character was handled so well in a series that up until now has been dominated by male protagonists, although that same part of me was annoyed that she was shoehorned into a romantic relationship with one of the other characters, seemingly just for the sake of it. I was also disappointed that I couldn't use her in any of the game's main assassination missions, all of which are assigned to Jacob.

On the subject of the multiple protagonists thing, I'm also retrospectively perturbed that the game didn't handle that design choice better. I say retrospectively because I didn't realise it bothered me until the game's final story mission, which flicks control back and forth between Jacob and Evie as they both play different roles within the framework of a single mission. This is the only mission in the entire game that does this, and it left me wondering why the folks at Ubisoft didn't consider using this trick in other places. At the very least it could have made for some much more memorable assassination missions - imagine if the game had you orchestrate some kind of distraction as Evie to give Jacob a better approach to his target, or vice versa. More of that stuff might have gone a long way towards better establishing the dynamic between the Frye twins too, which in turn might have heightened the impact of the final mission and...

...sorry, I got a little carried away there.

I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I'm glad I jumped into it straight away and didn't relegate it to the bottom of my seemingly ever-growing list of Assassin's Creed games to beat. As I said above, there's no getting around how systematic the gameplay feels at times, particularly in those situations where it feels like all you're doing is busywork for the sake of making numbers go up. But the setting, the characters and the improved mechanics go a long way towards making all those things a little easier for me to forgive. Maybe I'm not quite as done with the Assassin's Creed franchise as I thought I was.

Not So Lost In The Wasteland...

I'm not feeling Fallout 4 the way I'd hoped I would. There are a multitude of reasons why - a measure of open-world fatigue instigated by powering through Assassin's Creed Syndicate, mixed with a dash of general video game burnout post-Backlogtober, and served up with a side order of disappointment that the game ultimately doesn't feel like much of a step forward for the established Bethesda formula. That last one's probably the biggest factor, and one I can't really put down to fatigue since it's been well over three years since I spent any significant amount of time with a Bethesda game. Skyrim felt like a big leap forward from Oblivion in all the right ways, with its Radiant AI systems, more streamlined character development that didn't sacrifice the potential for role-playing and specialised character builds, and a ton of tweaks and refinements to the core gameplay systems that made the whole thing more fun to play. Next to that leap forward, Fallout 4 feels a lot like more Fallout 3 with some Minecraft sprinkled on top.

I recognise that sells the obvious improvements made in Fallout 4 short, but I think my viewpoint stems from the existence of Fallout: New Vegas. That game, developed "off-site" by Obsidian Entertainment, took everything I found enjoyable in Fallout 3 and kicked it up a few notches. The writing was a lot better, and quest structures were more varied and entertaining. The world felt more lived-in, while at the same time offering a better sense of progression by 'gating' the difficulty of its open world rather than scaling to match the player. Choices felt like they had consequences, and the game's various factions felt truly at odds with each other in a way that impacted the gameplay experience beyond just giving the player a ton of different quest-lines to follow. I preferred its approach to character development and inventory management as well - playing in Hardcore mode was a tough but thrilling experience. Put simply, New Vegas was already the Skyrim to Fallout 3's Oblivion, which meant Fallout 4 needed to do something spectacular to make its mark on me.

So far, Fallout 4 feels like it reneges almost all of New Vegas' improvements (the one exception being the faction stuff, which does actually feel pretty satisfying and seems like it's going to come to a head where I'll have to come down definitively on one side or another eventually). The writing is lacklustre, and hampered by the new inclusion of a voiced protagonist that severely limits available possibilities in conversation. The levelling system seems like a logical progression of Skyrim's streamlining, but in practice it ends up feeling a little too loose and scatter-shot. The quest design so far has been formulaic and underwhelming, largely consisting of fetch quests and area-clearing, and the bottlecap payouts received for completing them don't feel much like rewards since there's very little incentive to spend them on anything. I could go on, or I could direct you to fellow duder-blogger ArbitraryWater's blog about the game, which is more comprehensive and on-the-nose than I could ever hope to be.

I don't wish to appear too down on Fallout 4, because in spite of all my gripes and complaints I'm still enjoying the game. The shooting is a marked improvement over both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, which makes the combat more fun to engage with and VATS less of a necessity. I really like the weapon and armour crafting systems, and I admire Bethesda for coming up with such an inspired way of turning all the junk that populates the Commonwealth into valuable resources. There's also the sense of exploration and discovery, which (clichéd though it may be) nobody else does as well as Bethesda - much like Skyrim, some of my most memorable moments in Fallout 4 so far have come from turning off all my quest markers and following a new road or dirt-track to see where it leads. Ultimately, I think my current hour count says all that needs to be said about my experience with Fallout 4 - forty hours as of the time of writing. A figure that is both far too much time to spend with a game one doesn't like, and also far too little time to spend with a brand new Bethesda game. Part of me is already thinking that dropping all the exploration and main-lining the main quest might not be such a bad idea after all.

Gotta Catch 'Em All... Again...

It dawned on me last week, on the one-year anniversary of its release, that I'm still yet to complete a playthrough of Pokémon Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire. Given my undeniable obsession with the franchise through most of 2013 and 2014, I'm not entirely sure how this happened. The most likely explanation is that these third-generation remakes are set in my least-favourite part of the known Pokémon world, the water-drenched region of Hoenn. It's a region that's complicated to navigate and far too over-reliant on Water-type HMs, especially towards the end of its story. It doesn't help that, much like Ruby and Sapphire felt mechanically stunted next following Gold and Silver, so too does ORAS feel like a step back from some of the advances made in X and Y - the loss of a customisable player character was a particularly tough pill for me to swallow on my first attempts at playing the game.

Since last November I've made many efforts to push through the most recent additions to the core Pokémon franchise. Most of those haven't made it beyond the second gym in Omega Ruby, as I either got distracted by other titles or just wasn't feeling the early stages of the game. It wasn't until back in August, when I started an Egglocke playthrough of Alpha Sapphire, that things finally started to fall into place for me. It was something I was planning to do anyway, having previously embarked on a similar project through Pokémon X last year. But as I pressed on through Hoenn, trying to stick to regular updates for those following my Egglocke, something changed. I began enjoying the game, and grew ever more eager to experience what was going to happen in each new city and on every new route. I've been gradually working my way through the game, limiting myself to two or three play sessions per week, and I'm now incredibly close to battling the eighth gym leader, with the Elite Four not far behind.

But that's not all. After recent developments on the Alpha Sapphire side of things led me to realise that I'm perilously close to finishing my fun side-project before my serious playthrough, I jumped back into Omega Ruby (which was always supposed to be my 'main' game) and set about playing through the game properly. Progress has been slow but steady - since restarting my save file on November 28th (the one-year anniversary of ORAS's release here in the UK) I've won two badges and made it as far as Slateport City. If I can maintain that methodical pace, I reckon I'll have Omega Ruby wrapped up by the end of this year, with the Alpha Sapphire Egglocke coming to a conclusion not long after that.

As for my opinions on the game itself, they've definitely turned around since this time last year. I'm not sure if these remakes feature better signposting than the Game Boy Advance originals, but I feel like I have a much better handle on where I'm going in ORAS than I ever did in Emerald, especially in the water routes that dominate the eastern portion of the map. It's definitely a bigger game than X and Y were, but it's also a more cohesive one - everything feels like it belongs, something that wasn't always the case in Kalos due to the 'greatest hits'-esque roster of native Pokémon and the relative dearth of new additions for the sixth generation. ORAS has more stuff to do as well, what with the return of Pokémon Contests and the promise of much more substantial post-game content awaiting me after I beat the Elite Four. All of that, plus the inclusion of new forms and Mega Evolutions, has been enough to convince me to finally ditch my near 900 hours spent in Y and migrate my entire roster of Pokémon over into Omega Ruby when I'm done. I'm going to miss my little custom-created player character, but I think I've made my peace with that now.

A final note under this header for anyone curious about the Alpha Sapphire Egglocke - I've been recording my progress through Let's Play-style video updates, focusing on hatching the eggs and taking on the gym leaders of Hoenn. I've embedded a complete playlist below, should anyone wish to check that out. A word of warning - as I don't own a 3DS with capture technology, I've had to opt for the ol' 'point-a-camera-at-the-screen' technique. Go in with low expectations, and the production values shouldn't be too bothersome.

It's Game Of The Year Season...

As we approach the end of 2015, it's once again time to start thinking about handing out some awards to the video games that have defined the last twelve months for me. In past years I've gone all-out for Game of the Year, throwing together various blog-stravaganzas under the unimaginative umbrella heading 'My End of Year Awards'. That's something I scaled back on the last two years, as there simply wasn't enough variety in what I played to justify any kind of extended awards ceremony - I mean, did every individual Pokémon game I played in 2013 really need its own unique award? I took everything back to basics, wrote a few words acknowledging my top ten games of the year, and left it at that.

My initial plan for this year was to go down the same route, keep the awards down to a smattering of titles and offer recognition only to the cream of the crop. But when I really think about it, that doesn't sound like anywhere near as much fun. I enjoyed putting together those all-encompassing feature-length blog posts, because it encouraged me to look back over the year as a whole and acknowledge everything I'd played. After giving the list of games I've played this year a once-over to make sure there isn't too much over-representation for any one franchise (thankfully there isn't), I've decided to return to the old format this year and make My End of 2015 Awards a multi-part bonanza in which everything gets a nod before the very best are singled out. I'm so excited to write it all that I've already started planning everything out, so be sure to keep an eye out between Christmas and New Year for the finished product.

Some Other Stuff That Won't Fit Into Neat Categories...

Bear with me guys, this jumbo-blog ("jumblog"?) is almost over. There's just a couple more loose ends that need tying up before I sign off.

In my last blog post, from all the way back at the end of October, I had said I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Having already laid out the vast majority of my plan beforehand (a kids' book about a boy who takes on the properties of anything he eats), I started writing in earnest on November 1st. My initial enthusiasm began to wane, however, as I started becoming obsessed with word counts and less invested on what really mattered - namely the act of writing. Just under halfway through the month, with around 14,000 words under my belt, I just... stopped. I was sat at my desk, hammering away at my keyboard, when I caught myself thinking, "Y'know, I'd much rather be writing something else. Something I'm passionate about and something I believe in, not some hastily-drafted project dreamed up with the sole intention of being NaNoWriMo fodder." So I closed the document, opened another, and haven't looked back since.

A lot of people would probably call this an abject failure, and from a NaNoWriMo standpoint I'd say they're right. However, what the experience did achieve was more important to me than a rushed manuscript of inconsistent quality. That other document I opened? It was the work-in-progress draft of something called The Hawker, a novel I've been working on for ages, but haven't been able to bring myself to pick up since I hit a bout of writer's block last year. In the last two weeks I've managed to add some 10,000 words to the manuscript, dug myself out of the narrative hole I was in when I'd put it down, and approached the whole project with a renewed sense of vitality. NaNoWriMo may have objectively been a failure, but the real aim of the whole endeavour was always to get me back into writing fiction so I could return to my serious projects with the energy and enthusiasm they need and deserve. In that respect, for me personally, it's been a greater success than I'd ever hoped for.

The last thing I want to say here is that I realise 2015 has been a very poor year for me, blog-wise. Looking back over my archived blogs, I've written just twenty entries so far this year (twenty-one if we're including this one). That number becomes even more shameful when you consider that thirteen of those entries, approximately two thirds of my entire blogging output this year, were written as part of the month-long Backlogtober initiative. That's not for want of trying, mind - I did try to kick-start a new serial blog project in the form of The Keyblade Chronicles, but that turned out to be dead on arrival as I struggled to find the right format and approach for it (I maintain that The Keyblade Chronicles will eventually happen, but I need a break from the series before I re-approach it). Ultimately, I'm not happy with the lack of blog content I produced this year, especially when you consider the number and variety of titles I've played over the course of 2015.

I'm going to try and redress that balance in 2016. I want to try and bring you guys more thoughtful pieces of content, like my Final Fantasy XIII blog from earlier this year, on a more frequent basis. I want to commit to regular, serialised content like A Month in Skyrim, or Enduring Final Fantasy VII. At some point I'd like to revisit the format of last year's Fire Red Nuzlocke Challenge and try to do something even greater and more ambitious with it. I don't want this blog, this little corner of the internet that I've spent over seven years cultivating and caring for, to wither away and die. I realise this is something that only I can change, and the onus is on me to stick to the words I've written above, but I think that my experiences through Backlogtober and NaNoWriMo this year have taught me that with passion and dedication, it's definitely possible.

I think that about does it for this blog. As always, thanks so much to all of you who read these things, and an extra-special thanks to those of you who've endured right through this ridiculously unwieldy entry and made it to the end. I'm still kind of flabbergasted that anybody reads these things, and I know I've said it before, but it does mean a huge amount to know I'm not just pushing these things out into a vacuum. I'm not sure if there'll be any more substantial blog outbursts from me between now and My End of 2015 Awards, mainly because I'll be dividing my writing time between planning all that late-year awesomeness and maintaining the re-discovered momentum of The Hawker. Until whenever the next post ends up being, I'll see you around the site. Take it easy, duders, and a pre-emptive, just-in-case 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Holidays' to each and every one of you.

Dan

---

Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)