The Clan of the Cave Bague

Okay, so there seems to be some confusion about the title of this game. Sometimes GOD eater, sometimes GODS. Who knows what it actually is. In game, the team you work with are known as GOD eaters so we’ll go with that one.

Regardless, the premise is simple. You kill ridiculously large monsters with ridiculously large swords and ridiculously large guns. There’s an amount of corpse-scavenging, an amount of crafting and the whole thing is designed for multiplayer. Sounds just like Monster Hunter, you cry. And you’d be right – it’s very like Monster Hunter. But with one important difference (well, two, but I’ll get to that); it doesn’t have the same brutally difficult leaning curve, particularly with regards to the controls. You can, to an extent, get away with flailing wildly at things in the early missions but you’d do well to learn to duck, weave and dodge. The difference is, God Eater Burst has fluid, fast and responsive controls and (in my opinion) Monster Hunter… doesn’t.

I’ve only played through the tutorials and 1st Tier missions, so I’m not hugely far in, but I have gone backhand replayed missions to improve my rank as well as to just try some things out and see what different strategies yield. All in all, I can see myself spending rather a lot of time with this one.

Something has been afoot with nelefa.org recently. I think something nasty got into one of the wordpress scripts. I *think* it’s now fixed, but if anyone notices anything odd, please tweet me on @johnmdow.

This shouldn’t be possible. How can I be addicted to a Harvest Moon game again? They’re all the same (more or less) and yet I’ve been addicted to every single one of them. Rune Factory, though, is a wee bit different. Kinda. Sorta. You’re still put in charge of a farm. You still grow crops, upgrade your house, make friends, get married, raise children and all that other lovely Harvest Moon goodness.

Except they’ve added dungeons. And monsters. And levels. And stats. And more OCD-triggering collectibles than you can shake a stick at. In short: I’m doomed.

So anyway, I’ve played the first four hours and here’s what I’ve achieved. Got some land organised, tidied away some sticks to kick start my woodpile once I get an axe, grown some radishes and potatoes and things. Met most of the people in the town – including one called Sharron. I have designs on Sharron. Oh yes

After doing a fair bit of ploughing and preparing the ground, I was given a pass for the first cavern system (which, incidentally, you can plant crops in and which stay the same season! Handy!). Sadly, I almost got ganked by a monster as soon as I went in, and if your HP falls to zero, you die. Not good. So I ran away. I’ve also done rather a lot of fishing. There’s something deeply relaxing about it.

So – plan B. I’m going to leave the caves alone for the first year, at least until I can afford some decent gear.

Oh! And there’s mining.

And can I just say – thank feck. It’s been a long week, but at least (after an hour or two more) the weekend will be spread wantonly before me. And so many things to do! Now that Harmony is here, we can get on with some Babylon 5 – we have about half of season three to watch. Also planned is a rampage through some more of Dead Island and (hopefully) the start of another play through of Alan Wake – this time on Nightmare difficulty.

I’m very glad it’s nearly the end of January. This month has seen my budgeting system really pushed to the limits after some unexpected drama at Christmas. Getting there, though – slowly but surely.

You’ve perhaps noticed a few more blog postings than usual on here. I seem to have fallen into the same trap as everyone else and allowed facebook to take over my usual ramblings. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but I’m not really happy with it. Facebook itself is a nasty and intrusive goblin of a site and I think the sooner I wean myself off it the better.

Anyhoo – I seem to have wandered off the point. Happy Friday, everyone! I’ll see you on the other side.

So, I’m writing a game for the first time in about a decade and a half. After scurrying around and looking at development platforms, I’ve settled on C++/SDL. Long-timers will remember that all my previous game development was done in C/Allegro, so there’s a wee bit of a learning curve for me.

The ultimate goal is to produce a giant, complicated jRPG but I’ve been out of the loop a lot, so I’m going to start with something simple. Enter Modular Bob.

MB will be a platform game at heart – a Metroidvania stylee thing. For those wondering what the hell I mean by Metroidvania, I mean an action-RPG-platform game involving a lot of backtracking as new abilities become available.

Modular Bob’s particular upgrade path is a little unusual. He’s modular. This means there’ll be many potential upgrades available but not all can be equipped at the same time, and each will have cons as well as pros. For example, Superspringyfeet have the advantage of providing Bob with the ability to jump to higher areas, but also increase his height and slow down his movement.

Currently, all of this exists only in my head. Coding so far has consisted of setting up a dev environment (CodeBlocks under Windows) and working out the SDL initialisation routines, but at least I have a black window to show for my efforts

Also – I’m planning building the thing reasonably resolution independent, so I should be able to get the bugger working on anything that is supported by SDL, including ‘droid devices.

It’s that time of year again! This year has seen much awesomeness pretty much across the board, so without further ado I shall leap right in there.

Books

Well, I kinda lagged behind a little this year and never made my target. So far, my read list is sitting at 45 books, a little under one a week. Given that most of these were dirty great long ones (I’m looking at you, Bruce Trilogy) and I wasted the better part of a month struggling through the terminally dull Carrion Comfort, I don’t think I’ve done too badly. I’ve discovered some new things this year (Wheel of Time, The Passage) and rediscovered some old things (The Gap Series) but two things stand out.

My book of the year has to go to The Passage, by Justin Cronin. Fantastically epic and absorbing, it was also the first book I read this year. An honorary mention has to go to The Dark Tower series. I finally reached the end of this journey earlier in the year, and I have to say it was truly magnificent.

Music

Lots and LOTS of music this year. Again, a few new discoveries and some old rediscoveries. Album of the year is easy though – it goes to Stand Up and Fight by Turisas. These guys are going in all kinds of interesting directions right now. They class themselves as ‘viking metal’, but I think they’re selling themselves short. The music is a fantastic juxtapose of light and shade, with growled vocals balancing choirs and soaring violins countering heavy guitars. Awesome stuff.

Movies

There can be only one. Rubber, the story of a sentient, psychic and murderous… erm… tyre easily provided the most entertaining 80 minutes of the year. Yes, there were a lot of ‘bigger’ films and ‘better’ films, but Rubber is the one that showed something new. Not surprising, really.

Games

Dark Souls (Xbox 360). Not one for the casual gamer, Dark Souls is punishing, brutally difficult and plain downright unfair. But never in a way that feels unfair. A masterpiece.

So there we have it, folks.

So, sitting here while Hurricane Bawbag howls around Dow Folly. The power keeps dropping out and, as I’ve had to work from home due to the extreme weather warning, I’m thankful, for once, that I have an ipad.

So, with the house shaking all round me, what better time to post a quick update on DQ9.

I played through the preamble and found that my little angelic character has been punted to earth as a mortal. She’s dashed around a lot doing good deeds, killed roaming monsters, and cleared a couple of rather lovely dungeons.

Now at level 19, I’ve just clambered back up to my angelic home only to discover all is not well.

This is a lovely little rpg with a great combat system (and particularly good companion ai if you don’t want to micromanage), all the stats in the world, and stupendous writing.

So, it’s been a while since I got my teeth into a lengthy RPG on the DS – largely because I haven’t actually owned a DS for a couple of years. My recent acquisition, however, of a shiny new blue 3DS means that I have a huge backlog of JRPGs to catch up on. It seemed fitting that a Square Enix one was first.

Recently, most of my gaming time has been spent on either the brutal-tastic Dark Souls on the 360 or beta testing The Old Republic on the PC. It’s problematic doing this at the weekend due to both my boys nurturing an unhealthy Skyrim obsession – Matts on the PC and Tristan on the 360. So, handheld gaming is where it’s at.

So, while this is a game diary entry, I have to come clean and say that I’ve done nothing more than stick the cart in the 3DS. I will create a character today, and it will be a little girly called Bague (because it’s tradition, dontcha-know) but it’s likely to be tomorrow before I actually start playing. Here’s to the next hundred or so hours of slime-bashing!

Also (whispers) I should probably confess that this is my first Dragon Quest game!

It’s not very often that I get obsessive about a game – usually about once in a generation. In the n64/ps1 generation it was Ocarina of Time; in the xbox/ps2/gamecube generation it was Final Fantasy X.

It’s been a while since something struck me as being generation defining, but Dark Souls is it. By all accounts, I’ve barely started it, having played for a mere eight hours, but its richness, depth and sheer brutal difficulty has already made its mark.

In terms of difficulty, it reminds me a lot of Williams’ Defender. For the first dozen hours of that game, the accomplished player will have concentrated on learning how to fly the damn ship. Shooting aliens comes later. In Dark Souls, the wise gamer will perfect his fighting techniques. The bosses are tough – really tough – but pale into insignificance next to the almost casually brutal ‘general mobs’ that roam around the areas.

Entering a new area involves being mercilessly beaten to death by a few new enemy types. You spend an obscene amount of time making incremental progress through the area, punctuated by frequent messy deaths. Then you get to the boss. And die. Back to the start. Wash rinse repeat.

But it NEVER gets dull and it NEVER gets frustrating. Every time you die, it’s your own fault and you know EXACTLY what you did to get yourself killed. By the time you’re skilled enough (and I’m talking playing skills here, not Mary-Sue equipment) to handle the boss, you’re flying through that previously ‘impossible’ area with all the destructive grace of a ballet-dancing ninja. And then, when against all odds, you take down that boss without taking a scratch – well, that’s the surge of satisfaction that gaming is all about.

Brutally difficult, horrible punishing, and never unfair. This is easily the game of the generation for me.

So, advocacy done, I’ll let you know where I am. I just *finally* killed the Taurus Demon in the first area (after numerous deaths) by using a combination of plunge attacks and well-time axe-blows to the bollocks. Next up, I have a nasty knight on top of a tower to take care of…

Christine by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Took me a long time to read this, due to various external factors, but it was well worth the record. I think I was about 14 when I read it the first time and the re-reading brought back a while pile of happy (and not so happy) memories. It seems that books have an ability to connect me to my past that nothing else comes close to.

View all my reviews