Like your speedrunning with a European twist? Look no further!

Feeling a touch of the post-AGDQ blues? Thankfully, it's not just North America that is serving up good old-fashioned charitable speedrunning for your viewing pleasure. Until February 23, The European Speedrunner Assembly will be bringing you a 24-hour Twitch stream, showcasing a variety of runs, and a secondary stream, all in the name of good fun and raising money for Save the Childre??n.

ESA has been showing awesome technical gaming feats since 2015, and has gone from strength to strength lately. I had a great time attending the main summer event last year in Malmö, while the winter event (which has been going since last year) is hosted from the beautiful city of Växjö, also in Sweden. After adding the Movember event to its roster at the end of last year, and raising over $120,000 for Save the Children at the summer event in 2018, ESA is building a thriving community, all while helping out some worthwhile cause?s.

So, what catches my eye in the schedule? Here are my top tips for one game a day to check out (and to donate to!) d?uring the w?eek*:

1. Monday, February 18, 13:30, Stream 1 - Resident Evil 2 (2019) run by Distortion2

2. Tuesday, February 19, 11:51, Stream 1 - Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) run by RebelDragon95

3. Wednesday, February 20, 08:00, Stream 2 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt run by triggerino1

4. Thursday, February 21, 04:00, Stream 2 - Final Fantasy X run by Metako

5. Friday, February 22, 04:24, Stream 1 - Kingdom Hearts 3 run by IrregularJinny

6. Saturday, February 23, 13:04, Stream 1 - Cuphead run by kalevan_herra vs. Kirthar vs. TwoCPlus

*All times are listed according to the Pacific Standard Time.

Fancy throwing a donation their way? You can make all of your donations and pledges to Save the Children via ESA through this website.

Header photo credit to Michael Kire

The post E??uropean Speedrunner As??sembly is saving the children once again this week appeared first on Destructoid.

*cough* *sniff*

We’re in full-on germ season right now, with temperatures dropping below zero. All the tea and soup in the world can’t stop the IT guy at work from coughing all over your keyboard, so one bout of illness is almost ?inevitable as the colder seasons roll in.

This is shaping up to be a poor time for my immune system, jumping from a pretty? nasty cold to a stomach bug that is making me feel like I have an acid bath in my guts. Unable to go to the gym because even walking for too long is painful, I’ve chomped through my backlog like never before over the past week, and it got me thinking. Sometimes when you are sick, you can’t even look at a TV or computer screen. Other times, light entertainment really can be the best medicine.

Here are the games I have played when I am (mildly) sick, a??nd why I found them so therapeutic, or why it was a poor choice, as the?? case may be.

A sickly New Year’s Eve with Beyond: Two Souls

Last year’s New Year’s Eve was a uniquely memorable one, because it was the first time I rang in the new year in Germany instead of in the UK. However, I didn’t go out on the town, but instead stayed in my pyjamas feeling very sorry for myself with a monster head cold. I couldn’t breathe out of my nose too well, but the headache had faded away, so I decided to play Beyond: Two Souls – this is before it was a PS Plus gam?e, so I must have decided to spend actual money on?? it in my delirium.

It was a good choice in a way, because all you have to do is respond to prompts on the screen. It doesn’t require as much brainpower as strategy games or the like, so it was perfect for vegging out completely gormless on the sofa. However, the plot gets pretty convoluted, and to be frank, nonsensical at points. So while the gameplay was simple?? enough not to hurt my head, the story did. One positive of the PS4 version, though, is the ability to play the timeline in chronological order, lest timeline hopping while operating at 50% makes your brain melt out of your nose.

Exactly what my DS is for

Lately I&rsquo??;ve noticed that when I am feeling sluggish, I would much rather play games in bed than sat on a couch. It’s comfier, easier to just fall asleep if I feel like it, and I can prop my laptop up and watch YouTube videos at the same time. I’m d??efinitely a person who likes multi-tasking, particularly watching TV while I make some progress on my game of the week.

I’ve been chipping my way through Picross DS levels for years now, and I’m getting close to finishing all the puzzles. The handy hint function will fill in one horizontal and vertical row for you, which usually makes even the hardest puzzles very easy to solve by giving you a starting point. That combined with not f?inding nonogram puzzles particularly hard makes it the perfect challenge, keeping my brain somewhat alive while under the weather without burning me out.

Let’s g??o on an adventure (while staying in our dressin?g gowns)

A recent realisation has been that I love point-and-click (or similar) adventure games when I’m feeling sad or unwell. They usually come bundled with a cheery and/or gripping story??, and the more you play such games, the more you have a feel for what to click on. I’ve also put my pride to one side and started to use guides when I get stuck, which always makes these games go from hard (or sometimes unplayable) to a fun ride.

I spent a couple of days earlier this week while sick with stomach problems playing Oxenfree and To The Moon, and got sucked into both worlds. The multiple endings of Oxenfree and the fun little puzzles in To The Moon kept me preoccupied, and distracted me from my discomfort. For me, it?? is also important that these are relatively short games, as playing something lengthy that trudges along can get quite frustrating when you’re feeling peaky.

Ultimately, being mildly ill is a really good time to clear out your Steam backlog. Particularly when it comes to those small and oft-discounted gems that everyone talks about, but for some reason, you just never got r??ound to.

What games do you play when you are sick? Do you have any memorable moments of playing games during a sick day? Let me know in your comments down below!

The post What games do you play when you’re sick? appeared first on Destructoid.

Spying on people, holding hands and shredding books

Last week, I once again attended the annual PLAY festival in Hamburg, Germany. Alongside workshops and informative talks, the event included an exhibition of recent and unreleased experimental games and installations. As you would expect, propaganda, fascism, and intrusion into the private sphere were topics addressed by many of the games on show, but some were more whimsical and fantastical. As at PLAY17 with the memorable "match as controller" game, games that ??don't use a standard controller were out in full force.

During the event, I popped into the exhibition hall a couple of times to play and observe the games on show. I was delighted to finally play a good chunk of Not Tonight, but since it received a lot of coverage just a few months ago, I will leave it out of this list. Unfortunately, I don't have the space to talk about all of the brilliant games on show, so here are a few highligh??ts.

Baba Is You (Hempuli, beta available, full version release date TBA 2018)

Baba Is You is an adorable yet tough puzzle game that turns the usual structure of the genre on its head. Instead of simply trying to reach a goal, the player can change the rules of the game by pushing around blocks with commands written?? on them. By sandwiching an "is" block between two of the command blocks,?? the rules dictating how to win the level can change drastically: items that would previously kill the player on touch become harmless, the goal can change, and you can even turn into a wall. 

The beta version on display only fea??tured seven levels, but one or two of them were very tricky head-scratchers. I'm really excited to see more difficult levels added onto the test version I tried out, and am looking forward to seeing all of the mind-bending ways of solving levels in the f??inal version.

Do Not Feed the Monkeys! (Fictiorama Studios, release date 24 October 2018)

Do Not Feed the Monkeys gives you the choice to be a creep or to be respectful – but it does make the creep life very tempting. You play as a person struggling to live in an unsustainable economy that keeps the rents high, the food expensive and the wages low (ring any bells?), but who can open the door to a ?more prosperous life by joining the Primate Observation Club. The organisation has ways and means for you to spy on people through hidden cameras that stream straight to your computer. And it is entirely up to you whether you use the information that you glean to help people or to harm them.

I really enjoyed what I played of the game, particularly trying to find this extra information that I could use or abuse to progress the game. I really want to play more of this game at home and dive deeper into the murky underworld portrayed in the narrative. Do Not Feed the Monkeys is made all the more enticing by the fact it won the Most Creative Game?? award at the event.

Symbio (Niubi, not on general release)

Now, onto the winner of the Most Innovative Newcomer award -- a student project that uses hand-holding as part of the control scheme of a two-player platfo?rmer. Before you ask, no,?? I was content to look at the game from afar, because the idea of grabbing a fellow festival-goer by the hand gives me sweaty palms. But I am in love with the idea!

The players sit opposite each other, with a board between them, and control woodland creatures. On?e that can only see in light areas and one that can only see in dark areas. In order to help each other get past parts of the platforming, the players need to stick their hand through a hole in the board and hold hands for a few seconds. It's a tale that goes beyond the usual norms of interaction in co-op games, encouraging players to, quite literally, get close to each other.

The Book Ritual (PC/Mac, Alistair Aitcheson, currently in beta)

After showing the game at EGX in Birmingham, England a couple of months ago, Alistair Aitcheson took his destructive installation, The Book Ritual, all the way to ??Germany. The game itself involves a little book suffering from a big identity crisis. The player uses actual old books to help the animated book get out of its rut, cutting the pages, creating masks out of them, circling words and -- most memorably -- shredding pages.

I was a little troubled at first by the idea of shredding through mounds of books, but when I saw old textbooks in the heap being used at the festival, I minded a little less (as would anyone who knows the pain of buying a textbook o?nly for it to be outdated and unsellable just months later). Since?? part of the theme of the event was creating something new out of destruction, it was perfectly at home in the exhibition hall. And the huge heap of shredded paper looked like it could have made a very comfy alternative to a beanbag chair.

It's cool and a little unexpected that the beta version is available and that you can give the game a go at home if you have a USB-connected shredder. You can also skip past some of the commands to scribble in a book and trick the sensor to think you're shredding a page if you just want to see the story. Just, please...use really old and unsellable books. And maybe The Art of the Deal.

Epistory - Typing Chronicles (PC/Mac, Fishing Cactus, release date 30 March 2016)

Epistory – Typing Chronicles has been out for quite a while, and we even reviewed it here at Destructoid. Yet it had flown under my radar until PLAY18. People around the booth were talking excitedly about past typing games, such as Typing of the Dead; to take that idea and carve a fully-fledged nar?rative out of it is? really intriguing.

I have to admit that I got a lit??tle frustrated with the controls at first, since they were a little counter to my experiences, particularly given the isometric presentation. But it was so much fun switching between the fire and ice typing modes to kill critters and progress the story: as the girl navigates through t?he world, her story appears written in the environment around her. I might have not have got the hang of it at the event itself, but I definitely want to give it a try for myself at home.

Which of these games would you like to give a try for yourself? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post The exciting games and interactive experiences on display at? PLAY18 appeared first on Destructoid.

Larry is back, and as lewd as ever

If you’ve ever played a point-and-click adventure game and thought to yourself, “This is pretty good, but it could do with a few more penis jokes”, you’re in luck. Germany-based dev team Crazy Bunch have taken on the Leisure Suit Larry license and made a good effort in bringing Mr. Laffer kicking, screaming, and stinking of cheap cologne into the 21^st century. It’s not flawless in its technical or narrative execution, but the result i?s pretty entertaining nonetheless, skirting the boundaries of decency while contain??ing plenty of knowing nods to the series’ shady past.

Leisure Suit Larry – Wet Dreams Don't Dry (Mac, Windows [reviewed])
Developer: Crazy Bunch
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment
Released: November 7, 2018
MSRP: $29.99

The infamous sex-mad codger Larry Laffer wakes up in an underground laboratory in 2018, having being held hostage there since the 1980s (rendering Magna Cum Laude non-canonical...hopefully?). Stumbling his way out of captivity and finding himself back in his old pal? Lefty’s dive bar, it’s not long before Larry throws himself balls-first into the new-fangled dating scene.

He swiftly finds the woman of his dreams, Faith. She is a revered figure at Prune -- a clear parody of Apple -- and doesn’t date any old chump in a second-hand suit. To win a date with her, Larry has to prove his worth by courting as many women as possible through the dating app Timber. Before long, the player is solving the problems of men and women scattered around the town o??f New ??Lost Wages, currying their favour so that he can boost his Timber score. In doing so, he discovers just how much the world around him has changed since he emerged from stasis: it is more sex-positive, more LGBT-friendly, and people are obsessed with technology and maintaining an image of perfection.

An interview with the team behind Wet Dreams Don't Dry demonstrates there was a balancing act with how to handle the narrative. The new entry i??n the long-dormant series aims to please older fans while being sensitive to?? the wariness of newcomers and to the ways that attitudes toward dating/sex and relationships have moved past chauvinism. And the game largely gets this balance right – largely.

While Larry is still an insensitive oaf, whose dating ideals originate from the Stone Age, the people he interacts with constantly call him out f??or his idiocy. He is not rewarded for being gross. The character artists and narrative designers went to great lengths t?o make characters of all genders believable and unique – none of them are reduced to mere sexual fodder, but rather, the sexual side to each character is depicted as a healthy extension of their personality.

The game tackled Leisure Suit Larry’s questionable legacy head-on in some parts, including a section where you play as past Larry in all his eight-bit glory. In this chapter, Larry meets a particularly infamous vile misogynist and reflects on just how disgusting his past ??views were. ??Ultimately, the story does not lecture the player and does not try to change Larry into the ultimate enlightened man. But that’s OK because that’s not who Larry is. Instead, we are encouraged to have a giggle at his expense, and appreciate his efforts to change.

The story is eye-wateringly rude throughout, and every attempt to make a hole look like s?omething else is gleefully seized with both hands by the creative team. It’s so over-the-top that you can’t help but smile at it, particularly thanks to the vibrant art style. This iteration of Larry could very well be something you find stashed away in an older relative’s drawers along with some smut magazines, and it has more than earned its Mature rating in the US. Playing it leaves you feeling a little embarrassed and a little dirty but in a sort of...good way?

Where this aspect of the game lets itself down a bit is in the details, but it is hamstrung somewhat by being a relatively brief point-and-click adventure game. At its core, you still have to do quests for women and the reward dangled in front of Larry’s face is sex – though the game makes this less seedy by the wo??man taking control of the situation or the encounter being interrupted.

There is some lazy use of stereotypes, such as a particularly gaudy drag queen character, but again, it is difficult to flesh out all side characters in a fairly short point-and-click adventure game. A visual novel that is three times as long could probably have done a more in-depth job of character exposition, but then it wouldn’t be a Leisure Suit Larry game. On the whole, the developers did a very good job with the source material and the genre, crafting a story that isn’t the most inspire??d but remains fun and contemporary.

I went into this review worrying about?? the narrative being problematic, but I found myself far more troubled by technical aspects of the game. I have to hold my hands up and say I am no point-and-click aficionado, so I got stuck several times. It falls into the same traps as old-school LucasArts point-and-clicks, where you will be clicking on everything and try??ing to combine everything, to no avail.

O??n a handful of the occasions in which I had no idea what to do, I am kicking myself for not understanding the solution right away, but there were a couple of times where the solutions seemed implausible. This type of game will simply not be some people’s cup of tea (specifically people who get frustrated very easily). It could be my cup of tea someday, but I will have to get used to it, like some sort of pungent ale brewed in Lefty's washing machine.

My advice: press the spacebar regularly, as this shows all elements you can click on in a given location. The game is hard enough if you know where everything is, so don’t make it needlessly worse for? yourself.

Wet Dreams Don't Dry runs pretty well ??on low-end hardware, albeit with a few bugs and annoying design features. The map displays where relevant characters are at any given time, but the location of Dick Ryder (ho ho) according to the m?ap was wrong on one important occasion. The inventory UI is quite floaty and prone to disappearing if you nudge your cursor accidentally, so I would advise using a mouse if you are playing on a laptop.

Another minor detail is the shaky localisation work in some parts of the game: there were a handful of spelling errors and a few jokes in the English text that only German audiences are likely to understand. This may have only bugged me because my day job is in ?translation and localisation, but be prepared for a couple of the smaller jokes to go over your head.

One last thing that was a little disappoint?ing was the voice acting and incidental dialogue. Because you have to click on things so often, and Larry draws from a bank of a few sentences when the combination of items you are trying isn’t correct, the repetitive dialogue delivered by Larry’s nasally voice can grow old fast. The original English voice of Larry, Jan Rabson, is back and in fine form in standard dialogue – it is just the reaction dialogue that grates on the nerves.

Most of the supporting characters’ English voice acting was serviceable, but literature student-cum-cam girl Erin’s line delivery alternated between breathy and shrill. A puzzle involving her hedge clippers (yes yes, you can see where that joke is going) involves her shouting at you in ??an ear-splitting fashion whenever you try to take them out of her room. If you’re faffing around trying to solve the puzzle and have no idea how to progress, getting screamed at over and over again is no fun.

Overall, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry is a solid point-and-click adventure with a fresh twist, though it stumbles into many of the standard pitfalls for the genre.?? The story is largely respectable and interesting, while not at the top of the pile. If you’re a big fan of the genre or an old fan of Larry who wants to check in on him, you should absolutely give this game a go as close to release as you can. For everyone else, a fun time lies in wait, provided you can tolerate the infuriating puzzles.

Certainly, if games like Day of the Tentacle and the Harvey and Edna series left you wanting to bash your head against a brick wall, you will need to play through the new Leisure Suit Larry with a guide – for your own protection.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Leisure Suit Larry – Wet Dreams Don’t Dry appeared first on Destructoid.

Routinely forget about your free PS Plus games? You might be in for a frightful surprise...

Happy Halloween, ghoulish readership! As the days draw shorter, the air becomes crisper and the lattes taste spicier, the time for horror and gore is now upon us. No doubt many of us will be spending All Hallows'?? Eve playing a bunch of terrifying games, hoping to crap that not too many Trick or Treaters ring the doorbell so we can scoff all t??he miniature Snickers ourselves. But maybe your game shelves are a little empty? Or you are feeling a little uninspired by recent horror fare?

Never fear – if you’ve been a long-time PS Plus subscriber or even dipped your toe in the pool now and then, there may be a few fun terrors available to you for no extra cash. As far b??ack as 2011, I could find classic horror games that people got (te??chnically) for free through the subscription service, and will still have accessible on their account if they currently have PS Plus. So, what are the highlights?

_{[Note: the availability of these games may vary depending on your region; the list is accurate for the US.]}

Silent Hill – PS Pl??us game in April 2012, playable on PS3/PSP/PS Vita/PSTV

If you want a trip down memory lane, and games à la Potatovision don’t bother you, there would be worse places to start than the original Silent Hill. Following Harry Mason on a quest to find his daughter, who disappears after a car crash, the player stumbles across all manner of strangeness, includ??ing cults, drug rings and symbolic mo?nsters.

It was a project borne from Konami trying to find something for one of its ailing teams to busy themselves with, and wound up being one of the company’s more groundbreaking franchises. Technically speaking, it is pretty wonky in 2018, with highly claustrophobic camera angles that simply come across as frustrating and a level of "moon logic" required to get the best endings. Not to even speak of how ugly and blocky the game will look blown up on ??a larger TV. Perhaps stick to playing this one on a Vita, with your head buried under the bedcovers.

BioShock 2 – PS Plus game in Ja??nuary 2013, playable ?on PS3

The BioShock games find horror in more political roots, behaving largely as a cautionary tale against an out-of-control version of libertarianism and utilitarianism. The result is mutants and experiments, and the people left behind after the collapse of society. While BioShock Infinite is less about horror and more about the machinations of those looking to create a perfect society in Columbia, the original two BioShocks were more about…well, the biological shocks and h?orror.

BioShock 2 builds on the bond the player perhaps developed in the first game with the Little Sisters, having you step into the weighty shoes of a Big Daddy. Part of the frightening nature of BioShock 2 comes from the fact that you are tasked with protect??ing someone so vulnerable. What the Big Daddy suit l?acks in survival horror subtlety, it makes up for in pure firepower and ability to wreak gory, genetically-modified havoc upon foes.

(Psst: the Remastered version? is currently on a heavy discount on Steam, but the reviews are pretty poor, so I would advise?? sticking to the original version.)

Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward – PS Plus game in Apri??l 2013, playable on PS Vita/PSTV

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma ??– PS Plus game in July 2018, playable on PS ?Vita/PSTV

VLR and ZTD are the second and third entries to the Zero Escape series respectively. The general premise of the series is quite similar to Saw: a group of people trapped in a location and given a series of puzzles to complete, with various rules on progression, in order to survive. VLR is heavily based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma and also ideas like colour theory, while ZTD falls over itself to include a whole host of logical and moral problems, such as the Monty Hall Problem and the nature ??of action versus i??naction.

I much, much preferred VLR to ZTD. I felt like the plot to VLR tied itself up in a neat little bow, while ZTD got a bit out of control towards the end. VLR managed to make all of the characters sympathetic, while ZTD had a few poorly fleshed-out yet thoroughly detestable characters. VLR is a pretty game. ZTD looks clearly experimental and eerily similar in design to Deadly Premonition. However, it’s because ZTD tries something new with its full motion presentation (as opposed to the traditional visual novel format), and because it really ramps up the gore on its predecessor, that it earns a place on the?? highlights reel, too.

While it is a little harder to follow what is going on if you haven’t played 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (the first game in the series), the story is not hugely convoluted and a Wikipedia recap, or paying full attention to what is going on in VLR and looking up what you don’t understand,? would suffice. You should definitely not miss out on VLR, and once that’s done, ZTD is wort?h it just for the spectacle.

Catherine – PS Plus ??game in May 2013, playable on PS3

If your idea of horror is commitment to another human being, or succubi, look no further than Atlus’ bizarre puzzle game/thriller Catherine. If you can’t wait for the Full Body PS4 reissue (with additional content) at the beginning of next year, the original game is a fun us??e of a few hours.

The puzzles are fiendishly difficult, so don’t be too proud to dial down the difficulty to Easy or Very Easy on a first playthrough. At the same time, this is not a game you want to play multiple times for the story; it is one of the shallower depictions of both men and women in the dating world that I’ve encountered in recent?? memory, so the plot seems to get less interesting on each successive attempt. But climbing to the top of a tower you’ve wrestled with over the course of 30 spent lives is an incredibly rewarding feeling, particularly when you have an ice witch or a literal butt monster pursuing your every step and trying to catch you out.

Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut – PS Plus game in June 2014, playable on ?PS3

For some people, Halloween is the perfect opportunity to rewatch Shaun of the Dead, hunker down and wait for the incessant knocking on the front door to blow over. Horror and comedy make a surprisingly good pairing, and Deadly Premonition is a good exampl?e of this (whether the comedy aspect was d?eliberate or inadvertent).

Playing as Francis York Morgan, a man who turns up in an oddball suburban town to find a serial killer, the parallels with Twin Peaks could barely be more obvious. It goes for the slightly unreal aura of Twin Peaks, but overshoots and ends up in comedic Sinner’s Sandwich territory. Particularly if you enjoyed D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, are currently trying out The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, or can’t wait for The Good Life, i??t might?? be worth digging this one out. You might not be creeped out by the Shadows, but you might be freaked out by the strange animation.

Resident Evil HD Remaster – PS Plus game in Oct??ober 2016, playable on PS4

While Director’s Cut was available a full five years earlier on PS Plus, the remastered REmake is such an impressive feat of modernisation, and the Lisa?? Trevor storyline is so insp??ired, that this is probably the superior choice. (Say no to tank controls!)

The classic tale of special operatives plonked in a mansio??n and uncovering secret scientific experimentation gone awfully wrong – or supremely well, depending on who you ask – became much more than a relic of the PS1 era with the GameCube remake, and the PS4 version sands off a few of the rough edges. I??t’s incredibly tense, punishing and bloody.

With the appearance of new enemies that are harder to kill and can destroy a playthrough out of nowhere, it might be less daunting to opt for the easier Director’s Cut. But if you want a challenge and genuine fear, go for the newest edition of one of Capcom’s most f??amous games.

Until Dawn – PS Plus game in July 2017, playab?le on PS4

Some people don’t want to be genuinely scared on Halloween, but instead revel in the unbelievable cheese of big-screen horror. Until Dawn knowingly draws from franchises such as Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream?? to retread old ground: a band of du??mb teenagers up to not much good in the woods, who are picked off one by one. As long as the player has the nerves to keep their DualShock 4 steady when prompted, they can determine who dies and who lives, and find out more about how a bunch of relatively spoilt, privileged kids got themselves into such a mess.

Until Dawn relies on an appreciation for the overblown and typical horror tropes, so if you’re more into arthouse horror flicks, this might not be quite your cup of tea. But?? if you’ve ever watched a goofy thriller and just wished you could have stopped that first naïve soul meeting a violent end, or just want to see more of Rami Malek, this might scratch that very particular itch. Itchy, tasty. Oops, wrong game.

Of course, the current spooky PS Plus game, Friday the 13^th – The Game, is available right now, even if y?ou are a newer adopter of PS Plus. ??Additional horror-themed PS Plus games are listed below:

• Resident Evil: Director’s Cut – PS Plus game in September 2011, playable on PS3/PSP/PS Vita/PSTV
• Dead Space 2 – PS Plus game in August 2012, playable on PS3
• Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition – PS Plus game in October 2012, playable on PS3
• Metro: Last Light – PS Plus game in January 2014, playable on PS3
• Outlast – PS Plus game in February 2014, playable on PS4
• Lone Survivor: Director’s Cut – PS Plus game in June 2014, playable on PS3
• Dead Space 3 – PS Plus game in July 2014, playable on PS3
• Zombi – PS Plus game in April 2016, playable on PS4
• Siren: Blood Curse – PS Plus game in June 2016, playable on PS3
• Killing Floor 2 – PS Plus game in June 2017, playable on PS4
• Until Dawn: Rush of Blood – PS Plus game in November 2017, playable in VR only on PS4
• Claire: Extended Cut – PS Plus game in March 2018, playable on PS4/PS Vita/PSTV
• Dead By Daylight: Special Edition – PS Plus game in August 2018, playable on PS4

What are your favourite games to play at Hallow?ee??n from this list?

The post Spooky scary games lurking on PlayStation Plus appeared first on Destructoid.

Tidy!

Warning: contains spoilers for the modern Wolfenstein games and Final Fantasy XV

D??ecent voice acting is one of the crucial building blocks of a good game. It’s why so many people switch the voices to Japanese in JRPGs and the like, because if you’re having to read subtitles for a language you can’t understand, then you can’t really tell?? whether the voice acting is any good or not. And bad voice acting can be so jarring that it pulls you out of the experience entirely.

Hailing from the UK, the myriad accents and dialects on my small island of origin often get less airing in games than the mighty American accent, but they do make a few appearances now and then. Often, they fit particular stereotypes that Brits have played in the media since a time long before games were a primary form of entertainment, some of which are highly entertaining and tongue-in-cheek,? and some that are a little grating.

So, let’s dissect a handful of uses of the British accent in games that run the gamut of thoroughly bad voice acting, chewing the scenery to the point of indigestion and speccy libra??rian types.

The Simply Off-putting

My biggest WTF moment with British accents in games has been the use of a sort of bog-standard, slightly RP accent in Forbidden Siren, the 2001 horror game created by a part of Team Silent. I believe that they deliberately tried to subvert the usual voice-acting expectations of making all the English voices sound like Hollywood actors, perhaps to give it some sort of attachment to Victorian horror (see, I sidestepped the dreaded word), but there is no real reason for it in a game about Japanese mythology. Us Brits are ??used to all English voice acting being Americanised, so rather than being a nice addition, it comes across as a little strange.

It doesn’t help that the voice acting is laughable at parts, and ??the faces of the actors being superimposed on the character models lend it a very otherworldly sensation. Perhaps it was a good choice after all, given that it is a game built to make you feel on-edge and uncomfortable. Except that Tamon the professor sounds like someone doing a dodgy Patrick Stewart impression.

The Ladette

The Last Story finally received a Western release in 2012, built on the hype from the involvement of Final Fantasy stalwarts Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu (get well soon, sir). I was listening to my oft-collaborators Cane and Rinse’s episode on the game, since although I may have finite time to play actual games, thanks to my commute, I have plenty of time to listen to people talk about playing games. While the idea of doing a Med?ieval-looking JRPG with British accents doesn’t strike me as unusual, the choice of making the hard-drinking, rowdy mercenary Syrenne a broad Northern lass is a novel one.

Being from those parts of England myself, we get barely any representation in games – and for the most part, I am fine with that. Not all games are suited to comedy? portrayals of the stereotypical working class, except perhaps the ye-olde fictionalised middle-England games that need a rollicking, drunken bard. Yet it’s quite nice to see wider representation of the huge range in accents on the British isles, particularly since developers on other shores are wont to?? ram them all together to create a posh mulch.

The Brainy Ones

I feel like Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a lot to answer for in popularising the "gentle bookworm type" through the character of Rupert Giles, portrayed masterfully by Anthony Head. I certainly saw streaks of Giles when I was playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood this week and spent some time with Shaun Hastings. As the Assassins’ tactician and covert yogurt-stealer, he is a nice bookend to the group – though I did have to Google whether it was Stephen Merchant doing the voice, as he sounded a little bit too much like Wheatley from Portal 2.

The difference between the wise guardian Giles and slightly annoying older brother Hastings is that the latter (voiced by comedian Danny Wallace) comes across as a little mean-spirited. I mean, Giles could be mildly sarcastic when the Scooby Gang were putting their lives on the line without a care in the world, much like most teenagers do. But Hastings complains a great deal, not missing a beat when it comes to find??ing an excuse to verbally snipe at his colleagues. Then again, we are a nation of passive-aggressive moaners, so it fits the stereotype, really.

The Evil Ones

You didn’t think I would leave out the evil cackling geniuses, did you? Games are absolutely chock full of baddies who’ve been brought up with a silver spoon in their mouth, or at least possess some sort of ambiguous Atlantic lilt to their voice. Think Albert Wesker of Resident Evil, Claudia Wolf of Silent Hill 3 and (spoiler alert!) Ardyn of Final Fantasy XV. Being a destroyer of worlds commands the best education money can buy, which is why even characters brought up?? in a cult in the middle of small-town America, like Claudia, somehow sound like they withstood hours upon hours of Saturday morning elocution lessons.

I have to admit, it is a little boring to see mock received pronunciation always associated with evildoing. From my experience, people who sound like that in real life? spend their time driving their Range Rovers around unspoiled countryside and shooting grouse, not leading a cult to birth a God, or forging a beefed-up version of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. So they’re evil, but not that evil.

The “We're British Too, You Idiot”

Before my many Scottish acquaintances in the gaming journalism world smash down? my doors and give me a beating, it’s worth remembering that the UK is not just the little nation of England. Scotland and Wales have been represented well in video game voice acting, though I can't think of many examples when it comes to Northern Ireland.

I have talked before about my favourite bit of Scottish voice acting: the park advisor in Theme Park World (only in PAL copies). I guess I fall into the category of the easily amused, and found his quips were made all the more entertaining by his brogue. Another notable inclusion of the Scottish accent is Fergus in Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, though the level of?? his presence is determined by whether or not you choose to give an automated l?obotomy to him or to a wet-behind-the-ears college grad.

And when it comes to the Welsh accent, who could forget Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, with Drippy, the loveable sock puppet who guides Oliver on his quest to save his mother? The idea to give such a cuddly c??haracter and his fellow fairies a great big booming Valleys accent was inspired, and nicely dodged using the usual high-pitched imp voices. Tidy!

In conclusion, aside from the odd Cockney accent used to comedic effect and period pieces, Brit voices are often reserved for the ??baddies and the nerds of video games. I can’t speak for all people of British heritage, but I’m quite alright with that. We might be a little typecast, but at least our vocal talen??ts have cornered some part of the market. And video games always need their deviants and geeks, so we aren’t going anywhere.

Is your accent portrayed well in games? Can you think of other cool examples of how the British accent was used and abused in the medium? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post The good, t??he bad and the ugly ??of British voice acting in games appeared first on Destructoid.

Twenty-something office worker spends spare time as fifty-something washed-up police officer with a submachine gun

Contains mild spoilers for Max Payne 3

Not everyone has a “type” when it comes to games genres, but many people do. Games span a wide range of different skillsets an??d combine a variety of other interests, so it should come as no surprise that a lot of games ar?en't for everyone.

But on occasion, trying out games outside of your pre-established tastes can be a rewarding experience. You might even learn that a genre you thought was completely out of your reach is more promising than you ever expected. Even if you don't become a platformer convert after years of rueing the day Crash Bandicoot was born, you might find the one exception in the genre that isn't actually all that bad.

Let's share our experiences of discovering something new – or being broad-minded when it comes to games – in the comments. For me, my life?long nervousness around shooters was challenged this week when I decided to tuck into Max Payne 3.

Max Payne – you strap yourself in and feel the Gs

Shooters have never been my personal bag, simply because it's not a genre I grew up with and I had the impression that they were only for the skilled gamer. FPS games are still very intimidating to me, and I feel like third-person cover shooters are something I'm just about beginning to tolerate. While I have dipped my toe in the cover shooter subgenre before, enjoying games that incorporated aspects of this such as Uncharted and Sleeping Dogs, it's always been a characteristic I've expected to bite me?? in the ass.

I decided to give Max Payne 3 a try after adding it to my PS3 collection in August, largely because of the story. ??Gunfire may not be my jam, but noir and a thoroughly depressing story most certainly is. I'd not played the game's predecessors but knew the backstory, and expected Max to be in pretty bad shape.

It actually turned out to be not as much of a buzzkill as I exp?ected. Max still wisecracks with the best of them, even if he is usually riffing off how everyone in his life has abandoned him or been taken from him. He likes his booze and his pills, but he has a nice redemption arc in the second half, and appears to build a new life in the sun for himself at the end. And in spite of killing hundreds upon hundreds of average ??Joes who are just pawns in a corrupt system, you feel like Max has earned his Caribbean retirement.

What really stood out for me, though, was the shooting – particularly since the story didn't develop some key characters, such as Da Silva, as much as I would have liked. D??isclaimer here: as a newbie to the genre, I played on what should have been the easiest setting combination possible, which was Easy mode with hard enemy lock-on. Hard lock-on actually ended up being a bit of a setback, since the reticle had the awkward habit of fixating on the wrong enemy. But I did have more than a helping hand throughout the entire process.

Learning what counted as good cover and when to pop my head above the parapet was a real thrill. Max Payne 3 also gave me good reason to experiment, since the game on Easy mode drip-fed you ammo and painkillers on multiple deaths to make sure that no area was an insurmountable bar to progression. Shootdodge and bullet time took a bit of getting used to, but as prominent features of the Max Payne series, I felt compelled to use them as much as possible, and towards the end I felt like I'd nailed down the basics. The only li?mits to my shooting were that my TV is far too small to make headshots more than a happy accident.

Overall, my time with Max Payne was a little lacklustre when it came to my initial motivations for pl??aying it – the story. But it actually has more replay value than I anticipated, because I would definitely revisit it for the shoot-outs. Side note: it should be compulsory for all shooters to have a “bomb it all to heck” grenade launcher section right at the end.

A surprise to surpass Metal Gear

Of course, this is not the first time that I've surprised myself with how much I've adapted to a specific genre. I didn't expect Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to be as compelling as it ended up being, in part because I do not do sneaky games very well. But through playing MGSV: TPP and then progressing onto the other games in the series, I learnt that stealth games are something I do get on really well with, as long as there is a little wiggle room as to how you approach situations. I liked that I could be a bit more all-guns-blazing in certain scenarios of TPP, if I was willing to accept a penalty for it. What is not for me is the more rigid requirement of skulking in the shadows that is present in series such as Hitman and Splinter Cell. I'm more of a hybrid-stealth kinda gal.

Likewise, I never knew that hack-and-slash games were something I could get hooked on – and then I played Bayonetta and DmC. On the whole, trying out games I wouldn't usually gravitate towards (VNs, platformer??s and puzzle games) has shown that just because you're not esp??ecially good at a type of game, you can still have a blast sucking at it.

A Croc of shit?

Screenshot from the Widescreen Gaming Forum

This can also go in the opposite direction: games that receive a lot of praise in genres you get excited about can leave you feeling unexpectedly cold. My most prominent example of this is the 1997 PS1 platforming classic, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, which quite a few people consider a cult classic and an unforgettable part of their child??hood. Or so it see??ms to me.

I remember starting Croc up as a wee child, straight off the back of the legendary Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and thinking, “what the Hell is this crap?” Jumps felt laggy and awkward, the game just looked ugly to me, and I didn't find Croc as a protagonist enchanting in?? the slightest. It still sits on my shelf, begging me to give it a fair shake many years ?on, but I haven't been able to motivate myself to put it through the wringer one more time.

In more recent times, I gave Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction a try, after finishing my first Ratchet and Clank game, the PS4 remake. For some reason, moving backwards along the Ratchet and Clank development timeline in this way left me with some real problems with the controls when it came to Tools of Destruction. I was getting my ass handed to me in the opening section, and I couldn't figure out why. Frustration got the better of me and I put it to one side, despite the PS4 version of Ratchet and Clank being one of ?my favourite games that I played this year.

All of this just goes to show that while genre preferences can create good guidelines when it comes to deciding what games to buy, they are no guarantee of hours of fun. Likewise, venturing outsi??de of your usual boundaries can yield plenty of goodies and memorable moments.

What games have you enjoyed, despite being outside of your usual wheelhouse? Have any surefire hits fallen flat with you, despite others enjoying them? Do you play all kinds of genres, or stick to what you know and love? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Which games have you enjoyed, even though they’re “not your type”? appeared first on Destructoid.

Time is running out on my patience with bloated narrative

WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE ZERO ESCAPE SERIES, THE DANGANRONPA SERIES, THE STEINS;GATE SERIES AND CHAOS;CHILD

Last weekend, I finally finished my playthrough of all six endings to 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, as part of the PS4 Nonary Games collection. Hoppin??g backwards and forwards to piece together a coherent story and find out why Junpei and co are trapped in this massive building was riveting, and despite being busy during the week, it still only took me two weekends to check out all dialogue and all possible finales to the story. And I think I feel confident in saying it is one of my favourite puzzle/VN games, surpassing titles such as Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and almost bumping Steins;Gate from the top spot.

I've been considering, as I get started with Virtue's Last Reward, why I was so taken with the story of 999. It seemed refreshing and special to me, unfolding in a way I had rarely experienced with games in both of the genres it straddles. I have heard opinions to the contrary, but I felt that the story was a neat little package, devoid of extra frills and story beats that detracted from the central purpose of dis??covering why they were all there and escaping the building. It was lean. It cut the crap.

Ho?nestly, I feel like a lot of VNs lately could gain from cutting the crap. My very recent experience of trying to slog through Chaos;Child is a stark contrast. And as much as I love Danganronpa, Spike Chunsoft's sister my??stery novel series, I could see some areas where it also fell foul of bombarding me with information that did nothing to endear me to the story.

Organically finding out ??about ch??aracters’ backstories

I feel like games sometimes have an oversharing problem. Especially when you have a cast of thousands (or rather, a cast of a dozen in these mystery gameshow sort of games), providing thorough backgrounds to each charact?er seems like an easy way to build player investment in the action more. But this can be a fallacy. At least, I felt that 999 proved it can be a fallacy.

In 999, you wake up in a room with not very much idea of how you got there and why you are trapped. After escaping, you meet up with a grou?p of eight fellow captors, exchange code names and are very swiftly on your way to work out the labyrinth of doors in the ship you've been trapped in. That's almost it. Sure, your name accidentally gets leaked by a childhood friend who is also trapped in the building, and some of the more story-relevant traits of the characters are revealed, such as one character being able to read Braille. But we go charging into a game of death without knowing much at all about the characters.

You would think that that would be a terrible idea, because without any reason to care for the characters, why would you give a monkey's about the outcome of the game? But actually, it's better not to know in this case. The entire reason the characters give each other code names is to distance themselves from each other and get the job done, rather than trying to find personal grievances that could cause the team to fall apart. All that matters is pairing up to solve puzzles and teamwork, and opening up more might cause infighting, the inability of people to pair up as they have to in order to pass through doors, and nobody escaping the ship. Virtue's Last Reward delves deeper into this idea of teamwork being better than playing selfishly, with its entire basis being the prisoner's dilemma.

OK, so not all VNs have the same basis of being trapped in a room with apparent strangers, you might say. So it makes no sense to apply this theory to other games, right? Well, that depends. It has made me reflect on games I've played in the past, and made me wonder?? what purpose the information divulged at an early stage really served.

I had thought the nurse in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair being depicted early on as an oversexualised klutz might be a ploy to make me let my guard down and not suspect her a?s a potential murderer. It turned out, though, that her homicidal actions were motivated by madness, rather than malice, so did I really need this (quite heavy-handed) character window-dressing? Sure, Lotus in 999 is set up to be a different character to what you would stereotypically expect, but a lot of that is done by visuals or dialogue that pushes forward the core story. It is not conveyed through lengthy asides that just waters down the exper??ience and removes focus from what we're here for.

With my current games bugbear Chaos;Child, there is no similar setup of people being trapped and having to collaborate to escape; there are a series of murders going on, but the characters have more freedom to move?. In typical VN style, it puts a fair amount of effort into setting up the characters and their motivations – possibly less than the average VN, since it is a successor to Chaos;Head. But dozens of hours in, I am struggling to see where that extra information is taking me any time soon. What's more, as I'll discuss below, the rele?ase of information is executed in such a way that it does not give me anyone to root for, which is an even worse crime, in my opinion.

Supplementary character information ha??s to set the right mood

The careful and considered release of informatio??n ??in 999 is implemented to en??dear you to characters just at the right times. Taking the example of Lotus above, you grow to understand her motives and her unique background at times they are ??influential to the plot, and not a moment before. In the run-up to this, she seems quite hostile, and this is used to build up mistrust of that character. But that is completely fine in this context! The Nonary Games determine who lives and who dies, so trust has to be earned. And in a scenario in which you are trapped in a mysterious location with complete strangers, the default has to be mistrust.

The trap I think Danganronpa 2 fell into at times was not following in the fo?otsteps of 999 regarding mistrust. When you wake up on the island, you find out that the fellow captives are your classmates. But you are still meeting them for the first time, since you were kidnapped on your first day of school. You have no particular reason to bond with these people beyond what is necessary to get off the island, so defaulting the focus to building relationships and giving gifts to your “friends” feels tonally off. What's more, the game goes a long way to making all characters seem qu??irky and loveable at the beginning. But the player knows that some of them have to snap and reveal an ugly personality. It's almost the law that a few people in a group reveal themselves as evil or psychopathic in a game where the characters are encourage??d to murder each other ??to escape.

Of course, there is t??he other argument that you need some reason to care about these characters, or you would want the protagonist to methodically pick off all of his acquaintances without a moment to spare. Maybe that is true, and the reason I woul??dn't want that myself is that I default to picking the benevolent options in pretty much any game I play. And when I played Danganronpa 2 a couple of years ago, I simply skipped past all the social networking optional stuff, and the overt kookiness of the characters was not a massive?? sticking point. I just wonder how necessary it all is and whether the fat could have been trimmed a bit.

In contrast, with Chaos;Child, I feel like this extra character exposition was quite poorly handled, instead of just being a bit unnecessary. It is a game that sets you up to hate your own protagonist. Steins;Gate did something similar, with depicting your main character as adopting a secondary mad scientist persona, but he had other, more grounded characters to play off (and besides, I actually preferred the portrayal of the protagonist in Steins;Gate 0, where he drops the evil genius act due to suffering ??from PTSD).

In Chaos;Child, your character is not only an overblown parody of a tech hipster, who hates anyone who flirts with normality, but has pushed away society to the extent that he is living in a caravan in a park by choice. He has rejected his family, for reasons that become more understandable over time. But for a long time, he is shown as a bitter, quite horrible young man who you have no real reason to want to ro?ot for. Even the main game mechanic of manipulating the protagonist's daydreams (it turns out to be a bit more than that, but SPOILERS) just paints him as a more hateful person with twisted thoughts: almost a serial killer in the making. The supporting cast give him nothing to bounce off, either, since they are made up of overblown anime tropes, milquetoast perverts, nagging older sister types or yandere companions. It does get better, but you have a long wait for it to get better – about ten in-game hours.

If you're going to include that much set dressing, please give your players something to hang on to at the very least. The narrati??ve of Chaos;Child almost resists play?er investment, making it a frustrating game to play.

“Toning up” narrative

In conclusion, I think in an era of VN lengths easily hitting 20–30 hours, there needs to be a reminder that the story is king, and character exposit??ion is not automatically a story. It is tempting to believe that fleshing out the characters in full automatically does a service to the story. But if you're not careful, or you flesh them out in a way that makes t?he cast unlikeable, it can do the game a disservice and discourage people from striving on and engaging with the main plot.

I know tha??t if Spike Chunsoft had gone the whole hog with depicting Clover?? in 999 as some sort of peppy high-school cheerleader, I would have dropped the game like a shot. Its subtler approach and focus on each char?acter's unique intelligence – even the purported “stupid” character – made sure focus was never lost on the ultimate reason I was playing the game: to escape the ship and find out why the Nonary Games existed in the first place. It's toned, precise and imparts information just when you need it.

In short, I don't need to know what your characters had for lunch or the colour of their underwear or the cute pe??ts they left behind. But if you do tell me? what they feasted on, make it some sort of café meal where the other characters joined in and had a nice chat about their Scooby gang escapades, rather than a solitary, pointless Pot Noodle while sat on a caravan park.

Have you experienced any bloated video game narrative lately? Do you like plenty of extra information on characters, or do you also think it can detract and distract from the rest of the story? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post How video game n?arratives should keep more information?? behind closed doors appeared first on Destructoid.

Coughs and sneezes spread diseases!

Usually, I'm quite indignant about any suggestion that my commitment to the PlayStation brand could bi??te me full force in the arse. I've grown complacent about the fact that everything I want either 1) comes to the PS4, or 2) is so bare-bones in terms of its technical requirements that my cheap-as-chips elderly laptop can handle it, no probs. And if you were to suggest that I piece together a decent gaming rig and stop being so horribly dependent on Sony, you may as well be asking me to remove someone's appendix.

But indeed, it has come back to haunt me, since I currently have no way of running Two Point Hospital -- yes, my laptop is that craptacular?. The game is a tad more than a ??spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, with key figures such as Gary Carr and Mark Webley invo??lved in both games, and operates on the same principle, but with more finesse. Despite the relatively high price point for a non-AAA game, I was very excited about the release of Two Point Hospital, precisely because Theme Hospital was a milestone in my gaming history.

In fact, it is a cornerstone of my gaming history in so many ways. It was not only instrumental in igniting my interest in games, but it was the first title I ever wrote a proper blog post about. What's more, Bullfrog Productions were the first game production company I considered myself a fan of, starting back with Theme Park but fuelled even further by Theme Hospital. So, what was so special about TH and why did it and its siblings attract me to management sims more than its competitors? Grab a KitKat from a nearby vending machine inexplicably placed in the middle of the floor while I regale you with a bit of the history behind Theme Hospital, my background with the comedic cult classic, and a little bit of information on what follo??wed for Bullfrog Productions.

The release of Theme Hospital

Theme Hospital was first released for the PC in March 1997, with a PlayStation port arriving the following year. As already mentioned, the game was originally developed by Bullfrog Productions, though Krisali??s Software did work on the PS port. While Peter Molyneux came up with the idea alongside James Leach, Molyneux left the bulk of the work to his team while he focused on what would become the critically-acclaimed Dungeon Keeper, which was released just three months after Theme Hospital.

The level of control it gave you in running a well-oiled healthcare moneymaking machine, combined with ?great UI work, was laudable for the era in which it was? launched. You could pore over balance sheets and isolate individual points of financial weakness, if "winging it" wasn't your thing; furthermore, to build a successful hospital, you had to have a knack for complicated fields such as architecture and HR. Building a staff room too far away or messing up a corridor layout could be enough for disgruntled employees to threaten a walk-out or for patients to get lost. Yet all of this was conveyed in an entertaining manner, perfectly striking the balance between micromanagement and good fun.

The characteristic daftness of Bullfr??og Pro??ductions' games, as evident in the highly sarcastic Theme Park (released for a v??ariety of PC and console for??mats starting in 1994), was amplified in Theme Hospital. The production team wisely decided to use made-up diseases instead of going for realism. Bloaty Head disease, and the treatment of popping your afflicted patients with a needle like a helium balloon, was surely one of the most ridiculous ideas ever injected into the traditionally sto??dgy management genre. It ranks up there with deliberately not repair??ing your bouncy castles in Theme Park and waiting for them to explode, ejecting hapless park attendees 20ft into the air. There were a couple of extra perks for pop culture fans, such as Hannibal Lecter be?ing called to see security by the receptionist, who provides a dry dose of wit throughout the game.

This sweet little package of tough-as-nails management sim (just you wait 'til you get to the last hospital, Battenberg) and slapstick wonder earned it high praise on release, getting an 8/10 in Edge and 85% in PC Gamer UK for the PC versions. IGN and Gamespot were both favourable about the PlayStation version, though Gamespot was quite critical of the PC original. If you are inclined to take a trip to the yesteryear of medicine that doesn't involve trepanning, you can pick up Theme Hospital for PC on Origin and on the PS Store as a PS1 Classic (in the US -- it has been re??moved in the EU. Boo hoo.)

Theme Hospital wormed its ??way into my heart, and I refused al??l medication

The question remains as to why Theme Hospital was so near and dear to me that I wrote one of my first ??ever pieces for Skirmish Frogs on the game, followed in?? short order by Theme Park World/Sim Theme Park. It's hardly your universally acceptable Mario or Zelda game that kids stereotypically cut their teeth on and it's not really playground br?agging fodder.

Well, my gaming habits were not influenced by my friends as a child -- I was influenced by m??y aunt. As a young child of probably just five or six, I had farted about with the PS1 controller while my aunt was constructing “Potatoland” in Theme Park, and by the end, I just about understood what was going on. The more complicated management tweaks you could carry out in that game involve??d gaming the fry stand prices and salting them so heavily that all your park visitors would surely make a reappearance in Theme Hospital for hypertension issues. So, when my aunt went out for the day once and my grandma let me fiddle about with her computer, the first thing I did ??was boot up Theme Hospital. Probably into a save file and not a new game.

Readers, it was a disaster.

I was bankrupt within 15 minutes and had ??no idea what had gone on. Theme Hospital from that point in time became the game I enjoyed watching my aun??t play, but for which I would remain resolutely h??ands-off; exactly the same as with Tomb Raider III and Command and Conquer: Red Alert. In a way, it was my first introduction to something analogous to Let's Plays and watching Twitch st??reams -- I got great amusement out of my aunt's reactions and chatting about what was going on on-screen, but I was happy to forgo active participati??on myself.

When the game was being offered for free over a decade and a half later on Origin, of course, I broke thi??s spell and went all in. Battenberg proved too tough a cookie to crack, but I loved all of the preceding l?evels, even if I wasn't naturally gifted at handling a budget.

A few things were no??ticeable on ??my new playthrough of Theme Hospital and beca??me even more apparent when I flirted with the game recently for speedrunning purposes. As a child, I had not really picked up on the biting s??atire it offered on the US model of healthcare. The receptionist chides patients into bringing their chequebooks with them; you get money by experimenting on your patients and boasting more expensive treatment options in your facilities.

Medicine as a service, and one that snatches at your wallet, is something that naïve young Charlotte was not aware of at all. As time has gone on and I've seen the intro to the game a few more times, it makes me sad more than anything. It reminded me of how I have it easy. I still find the cynical commentary in the game sort of funny, but it's just so close to my experience of reality that it has a b?itter aftertaste now.

Another difference from my experience as a very young child is that in the intermediate period, I have played a heck of a lot of The Sims. SimCity is another series I peered at over the shoulder of my aunt, but playing God on such a large scale never fully appealed to me: I wanted to mess with people's lives on a much more personal level. The Sims tapped into that well of benign narcissism and megalomania that is unparalleled in bored teenagers. And the Build tools in both The Sims and The Sims 2 showed up Theme Hospital's clunky room design and lack of control as to where you could place fixtures. Where I once considered myself a staunch follower of Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog's work, Will Wright and Maxis usurped that position in the early 2000s, and The Sims series left Theme Hospital looking a little primitive in its wake.

Bullfrog's demise

Although shinier management sims caught my eye in the early-mid 2000s, I did often check the PC section of Electronics Boutique, HM??V and GAME for a follow-up or anything similar. I could never find anything to my tastes, and not follow??ing gaming news closely as a tween/teenager, I had no clue about what had happened to Bullfrog and Mr Molyneux.

Alas, Peter Molyneux jumped ship from Bullfrog just months after the release of Theme Hospital, an important move without which franchises such as Black and White and Fable may never have materialised. Bullfrog Productions carried on until 2001, making my (controversial) favourite Theme game of the lot, Theme Park World/Sim Theme Park. In my defence, my love of a non-Molyneux Theme game stems from the brilliant voice work done on the PAL version by Lewis MacLeod.

Overall, I am reluctant to revisit Theme Hospital through Two Point Hospital because my experience of the original was so potent. However, on second thoughts, there is a lot about Theme Hospital that left me cold on replaying it as an adult with much more gaming and comedic experience. Through offering a state-of-the-art and polished experience, Two Point Hospital could be just the antidote to the jaded feeling I get when I return to Theme Hospital, a game packed full of g??o?od ideas but which definitely shows every single one of its 21 years.

??I just have to keep my fingers crossed for a console edition or get that baby gaming rig together.

Did you enjoy playing Theme Hospital twenty years ago? Do you have any games you returned to as an adult, only to be slightly disappointed? Are you having fun with Two Point Hospital right now? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post It’s time for my follow-up appointment with Theme Hospital appeared first on Destructoid.

Come back! We miss you!

Digitalisation has left a sizeable footprint on gaming. The number of people who stick to physi??cal releases is dwindling, especially since some games can only be obtained on console/publisher online marketplaces. Some of us still gripe and groan about our godawful download speeds and so still frequent our local games stores, but rows upon rows of blue boxes on games room shelves could become the reserve of the retro gamer before long. And of course, consumers will argue the pros and cons of physical versus digital collecti?ng 'til the cows come home.

But one undeniable risk of the digitalisation of games is that rights could be yanked in an instant, and so games could simply disappear off the marketplace. A publisher cannot wrest a physical copy of your favourite RPG from your hands, but it can make a digital game obsolete in the blink of an eye. Some of these disappearing acts really, really hurt, though perhaps there are a couple of games that we're perhaps all collectively glad to see th??e back of. Here are some of the games that have gone MIA?? from various online stores, making buying them more of a chore or sometimes even impossible.

P.T. (PlayStation 4, 2014)

Of course, how could we start this list with any other game but P.T.? Laden with promise, the game was a teaser demo for what would have been Silent Hills, a frankly epic combination of Hideo Kojima, Silent Hill and Norman Reedus. It had people the internet over quivering in their boots as one of the scariest games out in the early days of the PS4 (besides The Evil Within). It also brought PS4 owners together over the internet, encouraging them to work out its fiendish puzzles together. It was a world apart from the shaky entries to the series that we'd see?n in recent years from Western developers, emphasising claustrophobia and being pursued by a singular evil spirit, while also indulging in series staples such as family discord and squelchy gore.

The conflict between Kojima and Konami reached fever pitch during the development of The Phantom Pain, with Kojima Productions eventually detaching from its parent company and Silent Hills being caught in the crossfire. The cancellation of Silent Hills doomed P.T. to become the stuff of legends – at least among those of us who came a little late to the PS4. The game cannot even be re-downloaded from the store – it is only accessible if you have kept it installed on your console since it was taken down in 2015. It's no wonder, therefore, that consoles with P.T. installed can attract up to $1,000 on the second-hand market.

Too Human (Xbox 360, 2008)

Another casualty of the courts, I first learnt about Xbox 360-exclusive Too Human through listening to a dedicated podcast episode on the game, put together by my occasional collaborators Cane and Rinse. A fascinating tale of poor planning and horrendously long production times, the game has not aged well in comparison with its cohorts, such as Mass Effect; it's still a sh?ame that a slice of gaming history is lost to ??the winds unless you stumble upon a disc on eBay.

All that's left on the Xbox 360 marketplace is a couple of wallpapers, since Silicon Knights decided to take on Epic Games in a row over the use of Unreal Engine. Arguing that it hadn't received enough support in using the engine for developing the game, SK then spectacularly saw itself hit with a countersuit for misusing the engine. Epic won, and forced Silicon Knights to take down all games it had made using Unreal Engi?ne. Ouch.

Too Human disappeared as a digital download in 2013, and Silicon Knights is no more. Luckily, recent releases such as the 2018 version of God of War can give you your fill of Norse mythology and action elements in a much more appetisin??g package.

Baroque (PS2/Wii, rerelease for PS3, 2008)

Imagine the Atlus and From Software development teams having a chinwag down the pub with a few pints of Guinness and plenty of pork scratchings – a game like Baroque would probably be the result. A cruel rogue-like that has you start the game right back from the beginning every time you die, with clunky combat to boot: it's no wonder that Baroque slipped under the radar for many ARPG fans. However, it has become a bit of a cult classic in recent years, as it sees you descend a tower and die over a?nd over again to reveal more secrets on how to progress. The Archangel Gabriel as the deuteragonist and a nice side-order of item management secures the game's status as a curio that deserves to be preserved.

Rising Star Games released it for Wii and PS2 in PAL regions, and put it out on the PS Store as a PS2 Classic for PS3 in 2012; unfortunately, it has since gone AWOL with no explanation. The game was originally released as an (arguably) inferior version for PS1 and Saturn in the late 90??s, and an emulation of this is still available for PS3/PSP on the?? Japanese PS Store.

It's not uncommon for digital support for Atlus releases to be patchy at best in the EU; I seem to recall that the European availability of Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 has been intermittent in some regions (with a terrible German product description that seemed lifted from Google Translate), and Digital Devil Summoner is notably absent. B??ut playing hard to get with Baroque is particularly painful, since PAL PS2 copies can easily fetch £40–50 on the second-hand market. Not an eye-watering amount of cash for serious collectors, but hardly an ?impulse purchase.

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World: The Game (PS3/Xbox 360, 2010)

Movie tie-ins rarely receive a great deal of praise, but "Scott Pilgrim Versus the World's" accompanying beat-em-up seemed to buck this trend. Offering multiplayer action tied closely to the plot of defeating Ramona's evil exes, downloadable characters from the supporting cast and the ability to wield weapons, it was a fun distraction for fans of the comics/film. It also catered pretty well to fans of its old-school competitors, such as the Streets of Rage series.

Perhaps Ubisoft hadn't expected the game to take off as it did, because an expiring licen??ce meant the game disappeared from the Xbox Marketplace and PS Store in 2014. It has only been delisted from the store, so it is still available to those who have bought it previously, but cannot be purchased anew. Sad face.

Abstractism (PC, 2018)

One of these games is not like the others, because not many people will be sad to see the back of Abstractism. While Too Human attracted some scathing reviews, at least it didn't face accusations of infecting your Xbox 360 with a machine?-melting virus.

People who tried out Abstractism found it odd that a platformer priding itself on being bare-bones made their computers sound like a jet engine, and a little bit of digging into the files allegedly revealed a Trojan that could be used to hijack your computer and use it for cryptocurrency mining. Understandably, there was backlash as to how Stea??m could let such a dubious game slip through the net, and the game was pulled in short order.

If it does indeed turn out that the game was up to no good on Steam users' computers, then we won't be missing much: there are plenty of ethereal platformer puzzlers out there for small cha??nge that won't put your personal data or hardware at risk.

Are there any games you're sad about not being able to access anymore? Sweating the disappearance of Wiiware and the like? Anecdotes about P.T.? Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below!

The post Games ??that disappeared from official marketplaces without a tra?ce appeared first on Destructoid.

A nice bouquet of late bloomers

I like to cling onto my consoles for dear life (as shown by my recent PS3 buying guide). I'm a little wary of anything new, I like what I know, and I'm incredibly tight-fisted when it comes to shelling out for new tech; this all means I'd much rather spend my hard-earned cash on games for the consoles I already have, rather than saving up for ??a new one – *ahem* Switch *ahem*.

Often, consoles become targets in their dotage for shovelware, movie tie-ins and pure kids' games, but you can find a handful of unsung heroes and surprising classics at the tail-end of console life cycles, if you dig into gaming history. And yes, this period in the life of a console contains a lot of JRPGs, but it is by no means dominated by the genre. There are even a few titles that you might not have known originally came out on a completely different, dying-out console, or were successfully ported to that console. So, let's che??ck out a few critically acclaimed games that came out on a console that was heading into retirement.

I have not included games that also came out on the console's successor, so no Persona 5 or Breath of the Wild. Sorry!

1. Persona 4 (PlayStation 2), JP: 10 July 2008

Barely a “top 6” list goes by without me mentioning a Persona game, since they seem to somehow tick all the boxes. Persona 4 is definitely a step down in many ways compared to the Golden version that came out for the Vita four years later. But the vanilla version of Persona 4 would still be one of my favourite JRPGs of all time – no, scratch that, one of my favourite games of all?? time – if I did not have access to a Vita.

The game definitely betrays its prior-generation roots, looking very similar to Persona 3 (also a relatively late PS2 release). The UI and character artwork is gorgeous, but the in-game visuals are hardly complex or breathtaking. None of it really matters, since it more than serves its purpose as a solid “one more” JRPG with a n?ice slice-of-life diversion.

You'll never catch me saying anything truly bad about the most recent crop of Persona games, but you do have to wonder whether the game could have pushed the limits a little more, had it come out for the PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, Western demand for new Persona games was relatively muted back then, so it wouldn't have been profitable to push for a current-gen version. Yet the minimal differences between the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions of Persona 5 make me think that a PS3 version of Persona 4, rather than just an emulation, wouldn't have made much of? a difference.

2. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Super Famicom), JP: 1 September 1999/21 J?anuary 2000

Fire Emblem is one of the old guard when it comes to Nintendo series, and enjoyed a great deal of critical acclaim even before it became the more mainstream and widely-known series it is today. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 was released long after the advent of the Nintendo 64, initially on the Nintendo Power rewritable flash cart and the following year on a standard cartridge.

Lauded as a punishing yet worthy entry to the series, Thracia 776 is notable for being one of the last games ever developed for the Super Famicom and for being the last home console game in the Fire Emblem series for another five years. A fan translation has since become available, but to this day, no official Western release has been on the horizon, despite ??Virtual Console re-releases in Japan.

3. Ace Attorney Investigates 2 (DS), JP: 3 February 2011

Another game that never saw the light of day in the US or Europe, Ace Attorney Investigates 2 continues the story of everyone's favourite snooty prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, and a cast of kooky characters, such as the dopey detective Dick Gumshoe. Unfortunately, poor sales of the first Ace Attorney Investigates game doomed its sequel to obscurity outside of Japan, but the sequel has been popular enough there not only to see a DS release in 2011, but also an Android and iOS release in 2017.

Thankfully, the final version of a fan translation was released in 2015, so you can now get your hands on further sleuthing japes if you can't understand Japanese. In hindsight, it's in its favour that Ace Attorney Investigates 2 was a?? late DS release, since the DS is region-free but the 3DS isn't.

4. Rayman (Atari Jaguar), NA: 1 September 1995

The Atari Jaguar was a slightly botched creation prone to hardware failure, particularly if you also used the Jaguar CD; by the time the PlayStation was on the market, it couldn't keep up. This became more evident with the release of Rayman, which was originally planned as? a Jaguar m?ainstay but was later extended to other, shinier consoles.

The sound fidelity of the Jaguar version of Rayman appears to be a common complaint, while the jaunty tunes of the PlayStation version are one of my positive memories of the first-ever outing of the armless adventurer. Unfortunately, the original Rayman was incredibly difficult for a very small child, and I ultimately wish that five-year-old me had had Rayman Legends at their fingertips instead of this slightly cruel ordeal. But it was a solid start to a lovely, whimsical journey that?? is ultimately one of my favourite long-running platforme??r series.

Comparing the sound of the cartridge Jaguar game to that of the CD Sega Saturn version.

5. Resident Evil (Saturn), JP: 25 July 1997

Unlike with the Jaguar version of Rayman, there are a handful of upsides to playing the Saturn version of Resident Evil, as opposed to one of the crisper PlayStation editions. Sure, Chris looks a little more...cuboid in the Saturn v??ersion, but it tried to make up for it w??ith exclusive skins and a battle mode.

There are regular discussions as to which version of the original Resident Evil is the best, and both the DS and Saturn versions are often given a mention: part of a larger tradition of Resident Evil games varying massively and in very pleasing ways from?? port to port.

6. Ninja Gaiden (Sega Master System), EU: 1992

While the Ninja Gaiden series got its start on the NES in 1988, a single NG game was released for a Sega home console four years later, receiving a great deal of praise. Diverging from the story of the original games, it still managed to carve out its own successes through inventing the wall-to-wall jumping mechanic that would be used again in Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox.

By 1992, Sonic 2 was just around the corner, as was the concept of blast processing; the Sega Master System was well on its way to being shoved in a drawer. The Ninja Gaiden release for the SMS ??limped out of production, only ever seeing a release in Europe due to poor demand elsewhere. Despite all of its setbacks, including being restricted to a pretty out-of-date console, it was seen as a highlight of the series' origins.

What are your favourite end-of-life releases for a console? Which console do you particularly miss getting new releases for? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Here are some of the best video games released at the end of a console’s life cycle appeared first on Destructoid.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood might just match MachineGames' vision

Around the time that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was released worldwide (27 October 2017), I remember ??visiting my local hardware store, Saturn. There ??were banners advertising the game running the entire length of the escalators that lead you up to the games section, and I remember finding that very strange. I was also a little taken aback by the cynicism of it all. How could a Wolfenstein game be shouted out, loud and proud, here in stores, when the localisation team had been backed ??into a corner and forced to change its DNA?

Because modern Wolfenstein in Germany, until now, has not been the same Wolfenstein series you would see in Washington, or London, or practically anywhere else in the world. This has solid legal reasoning behind it, but the legal reasoning been contorted to extremes over time. Now, anti-totalitarian messages are purged to avoid accusations of spreading totalitarian propaganda. Due to a number of factors, the strict approach should be relaxed from now on (as reported by us earlier on this week) in favour of? approving games on a case-by-case basis. Because of the current political climate, not only around the world but specifically in Germany, this ch?ange could not come soon enough.

An unrecognisable Wolfenstein

There have been plenty of comparison videos and articles discussing the differences between uncensored Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein as it appears in Germany. The video below is a particularly strong ??example of where the message of The New Colossus has been diluted in favour of playing it safe with the USK (Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle – Germany's ratings aut??hority for g??ames and game trailers). 

This scene is particularly important because it depicts Hitler as a pathetic, decrepit yet still murderous old man. Th??e director (presumably modelled after Leni Riefenstahl, a prominent female producer of filmic ?Nazi propaganda) and those auditioning for the part as Blazkowicz couldn't be more sycophantic to a figurehead who is no longer a mirror image of strong ideology, but instead a limping husk. It's a great depiction of how National Socialism is crumbling over time, and how it always was weak at its core.

This part of the story is unchanged for “The?? Regime” and a bunch of rename?d character models in the German version of The New Colossus, but if you can't apply what's going on to real life as easily, so it becomes less powerful. For me, it's no longer associated with video footage I've seen showing a younger Hitler riling up a crowd, or to Hitler's specific paranoia about Jews as he is pointing a gun at one of the auditioning actors. You get the same sort of game, but the messages are distorted through a filter, and the player doesn't experience everything through ??the horrible nightmare of “World War 2, but the Allies didn't win”. You would think that in Germany, it would be particularly important to see that nightmare unfold?? in full on screen.

Eurogamer also did a video showing some of the changes ??in The New Order, which came a couple of years earlier and was the first Wolfenstein release in Germany. The change spread beyond the localisation team to the art department, with a lot of the imagery being redesigned to obscure its origins. Once you know a bit about the law in Germany and Wolfenstein's past there, you can't really blame anyone involved in producing the game for being cau??tious. It's still a shame?? that they felt the need to go to such lengths.

The legal background as it stood

I have a lot of sympathy for Bethesda and MachineGames here, because getting on the wrong side of the law regarding Nazism and Nazi imagery is no laughing matter: it's a criminal issue. Section 86a of the Cri??minal Code deals specifically with “unconstitutional images”, and while there is no prescriptive list of such images, all of the standard logos associated with National Socialism doubtlessly fall under this category (not just the swastika but also the sig runes, the “Totenkopf” skull design, etc.).

Section 86a Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever:

1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Section 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations?? indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or

2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or ?abroad, ?in the manner indicated in number 1,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

 

But that only covers imagery, not renaming Hitler or removing his moustache. This comes under the broader topic of disseminating propaganda, under section 86 of the Criminal Code. It even has a special sub-category for depictions of Nazism. The consequences of flouting ?this law, e.g. by ignoring a ban, would be severe even for a company as large as Bethesda. Even if Bethesda simply tried to get an uncut version of the games awarded a rating by the USK, the court costs might not make it worth the effort.

Section 86 Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda:

1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a?? party or organization, as to which it has be??en determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party;

2. of an organization, which has been banned, no longer subject to appeal, because it is directed against the constitutional order or against the idea of international understanding, or?? as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a banned organization;

3. of a government, organization or institution outside of the territorial ar?ea of application of this law which is active in pursuing the objectives of one of the parties or organizations indicated in numbers 1 and 2; or

4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

 

As you can see from the statute, there is an exception for artistic expression and criticism. In fact, it is a mighty stretch to describe the Wolfenstein series as disseminating propaganda in the first place. But if you have someone who is heavy-handed in applying the law, and this goes unchallenged, then the letter of the law can be stretched. And this is what happened in the past with Wolfenstein 3D.

id Software went in all guns blazing on releasing Wolfenstein 3D with all of its Nazi imagery in Germany, and were met with hostility. In 1998, it was decreed that the game would be banned. It would be a massive headache to go back to the drawing board and apply censorship methods to a game such as The New Colossus after the fac??t, so MachineGames wisely pre-empted trouble and produced a censored version. Th??e environment simply wasn't there to push for an uncut version.

This is made all the more ludicrous when you look at examples of fiction and film that have seen a release in Germany, are about Nazism and could be seen as taking National Socialism in j??est. A few years ago, the book Er ist wieder da (“Look who's back”) was released, which images Hitler coming back from the ?dead and trying to re-establish his political power in 2014. It has since been made into a movie.?? The film Dead Snow, about Nazi zombies attacking a bunch of young travellers in Norway, is on wide release in Germany. There seemed to be a special level of fear when it came to the interactivity ??of games.

Why it was time to change

The announcement by GAME (the Association of the German Games Industry) that the rules on the depiction of Nazism would be relaxed came after another embarrassing incident at a games festival. As reported on by Ian Boudreau of PCGamesN, Attentat 42 tells the story of people thrown into turmoil by the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia during World War 2?. It won best game at the A MAZE Festival in Berlin, despite not being legal to play in the very country in which it won the award.

The chilling effect of the ??approach to Nazism in games also seemed to have a disproportionate effect on indie devs. Sure, Bethesda is ??a massive company and could possibly have scraped together the change to fight in the courts for uncensored release;? an indie dev doesn't have a cat in hell's chance of securing a release in the event that the game is not awarded a rating or banned, because they simply don't have the tools to fight it. And for gam?es that are purely story-led, as opposed to having a fighting element that can be focused on in lieu of story, prescriptivism can be particularly crippling.

But it wasn't just a specific incident in the games industry that probably precipitated change. The need to fight against neo-Nazism? hadn't gone away in the wake of World War 2 and the fall of Communism in East Germany, but has become more urgent in recent times.

Just a few weeks ago, Beate Zschäpe was sentenced to life in prison after a mammoth five-year court case on the N?ational Socialist Underground: a group of Neo Nazis who murdered small business owners with migrant backgrounds. The case revealed that authorities hadn't done enough to shut down these dangerous groups; police ?officers had initially presumed that other migrants were responsible for the killings, in what many people have argued was institutionalised prejudice.

While old-fashioned and inflammatory right-wing parties such as the NPD (Nationalist Party of Germany) have all but disappeared, more family-friendly, “I'm-not-racist-but” alternatives, such as the aptly-named Alternative for Germany, have won ground, clothing Islamophobia and brutality? in a smarter exterior. AfD currently has representatives in 14 out of 16 of the German federal states, and has representatives in the national and European parliaments.

An AfD local poster, with the slogan, "Our country, our home."

On an anecdotal level, Hamburg, where I live, took in a very large number of Syrian refugees a couple of years ago. The response in my local community was to protest against accommodation being built, lest it ruin the picturesque vi?llage. I was saddened that my neighbours were unabashed “?not-in-my-backyard” folk, but unfortunately, there is a current climate of “fear of the other” the world over that makes privileged people become defensive.

Most countries now are now at a turning point in their politics where they have to take a good look at themselves and the values they wish to uphold. Ga??mes such as Wolfenstein: The New Colossus s??erve to remind us not only what past wars were fought over, but how self-interest that encourages totalitarian regimes to flourish leads only to self-destruction. We need games critical of all ?kinds of extremism, so that we can put the thought processes behind the ??regimes under the microscope. The time was absolutely ripe for Germany to relax its stance.

The only ?problem with this development is that nothing has changed in the German Criminal Code, just the approach of the USK in applying it. Whether concrete change actually manifests, or whether they lapse back into old, cautious habits, remains to be se??en.

The post Wolfenstein II was a completely different game in Germany – here’s how and why things are about to change appeared first on Destructoid.

Races, memes and 304 litres of free ice-cream

(Header photo credit: Michael Kire.)

This summer, I used my vacation days to at??tend the European Speedrunner Assembly Summer 2018, an event held from 21–28? July in Malmö to raise money for Save the Children. On my return to Hamburg, I was feeling a little exhausted, but also thoroughly motivated. I had just spent a week around a bunch of people who pull games apart, using an intense level of attention to detail; were it not for the fact that the people were endlessly friendly and encouraged me to take part in social activities, my attendance could have turned into some sort of extreme crash course on speedrunning. As it happened, I missed a lot of the live action thanks to stuffing my face with Swedish fast food, sunbathing on a shopping mall rooftop and, you know, sleeping, so the first thing I wanted to do when I arrived back in Germany was to put on Twitch and catch up on VODs that I missed.

A combination of sitting in on my new friends' speedruns and watching what I missed made it very difficult to narrow down a list of highlights from the event, but I think I've managed it. I can't recall a single run I watched that I didn't learn something from. In fact, a lot of the entries to my list aren't record-breakers, but were instead entertaining or made me feel a level of admiration for the runner for other reasons. ESA wasn't just a ton of fun, but educated me on games I had no idea about and gave me the tools to start speedrunning properly (no, my very messy run at the event does not count). Due to my day job, I'll probably not be able to go to the bigger US events any time soon, but ESA next year is?? already in my diary – if you fancy a European holiday,? maybe it should be in yours, too.

1. Densha de D: Lightning Stage, Any% Race, Lordmau5 vs Jugachi

I think it's fair to say that ESA is as much about the memes as it is about record-breaking, and Densha de D definite?ly falls into the quality meme game category. In general, maki??ng your marathon runs entertaining is very much worth the effort, because it makes people more inclined to watch your runs live at the event, rather than entertaining themselves elsewhere and watching the VOD later.

So, where to start with Densha de D – it is a mash-up of the Japanese Eurobeat-drenched anime (and manga series) Initial D and ultra-stern Japanese train conducting simulator Densha de Go. The result is some absolutely ludicrous train drifting, very funny glitches and Rick Astley. Lordmau5 and Jugachi both did a great j??ob in explaining the mechanics of this bizarre game and giving the audience a good laugh, largely thanks to their decision to dress for the occasion.

2. Prince of Persia 3D, Any%, epicdudeguy

I was the donation reader for this run, and I must admit I was quite surprised by how well it grabbed my attention. To put it in context, I own a few Prince of Persia games for my collection, but I've never felt much of an urge to actually put them in my console just yet. Somehow I had missed the memo that the top joke game of recent times, Arabian Nights, is partly a rip-off of Prince of Persia 3D. PoP 3D may not involve a harem of? creepily animated ladies gyrating to your character's apparent boredom, but it is broken as heck.

What I particularly liked about sitting in on this run was that epicdudeguy let the humour of the exploits the PoP community has found – simply pressing Alt+?Tab lets the player glitch through walls &ndas??h; speak for itself. He also kept his cool when the shoddy programming meant he struggled to make a certain jump after multiple attempts, while having a little laugh at himself. A lesson for runners everywhere to take hiccups in their stride!

3. Hitman: Blood Money, Silent Assassin, TheKotti

Hitman: Blood Money is a run I was really looking forward to in advance – perhaps the single run I wanted to see. So, it was Murphy's Law that a karaoke b??ar was calling out my name during Kotti's timeslot. I spotted on Twitter that shit had hit the fan, and I wasn't? disappointed with how crazy the run ended up being.

I've watched Blood Money runs several times before, and what makes them so rewatchable is Blood Money's frankly stupid rules on what constitutes a "Silent Assassin" ranking. Dogs and wheelchairs in the game count as witnesses, so you have to dispose of them accordingly if you want the best ranking. If you kill a bunch of people who haven't quite raised the alarm by pushing them over a balcony, it counts as an "accident" and your ranking isn't jeopardised. The result is that a run can look completely chaotic and yet still be absolutely fine. Long live Blood Money!

4. VVVVVV, Any% no telejumping race, tzann vs mohoc vs lennart_underscore

(Note: due to a technical issue, mohoc and tzann's screens are the wrong way round in the recording.)

I knew precisely nothing about VVVVVV before the event, ??and now I want to play this game – though not in a speedrun setting, as I'm nowhere near spatially aware enough for that! The game lent itself especially well to a three-way race, since it's pretty easy to see who's in the lead; this was enhanced by excellent commentary.

Furthermore, the people I was hanging out with at the time were super excited to see all of the punishing platformers, such as Celeste and Boshy, and that enthusiasm was quite infectious. One of the bonuses of coming to a speedrunning event ins??tead of watching it at home is being encouraged to watch things that would otherwise pass you by, thanks to your friends' influence.

5. Super Mario 64, 70 Star Relay Race, Team 360Chrism vs Team Fuzzyness

Good gravy, this was probably the ultimate highlight of the event. Last year, the same game was ran as a simple relay, and it was so popular that outlets such as Kotaku wrote about it. This year, the demand ??to take part was so great that the schedulers went one bigger and better: two teams of 70 speedrunners, plus potential stand-ins, some who had never even touched the game before ESA. 

It was pretty close towards the end,?? ?and 360Chrism and Fuzzyness did a brilliant job supporting their teams throughout. It was a great show, and I was happy to watch it from behind the donation station, instead of taking part and potentially messing up my star.

6. Tetris the Grand Master, Exhibition, Qlex

Tetris played upside down. Just enchanting to watch. Anyone with the ability to play Tetris with that level of automatism des??erves a round of applause, in my book.

This is also the perfect time to point out that the French speedrunning community really pulled together throughout the event, turning up to each other's runs with flags and the occasional baguette. I felt like they did a lot to elevate the mood of t??he event, so shout-outs to the entire French squad!

7. GeoGuessr, Co-op, havrd and janmumrik

This game got the audience shouting and groaning at the screen, but let's be honest: none of us could have done anywhere near as well as these guys did. For the uninitiated, GeoGuessr is a game built around Google Maps, where people use clues in Google Street View to find out where they have been placed on a map. The poor co-op team ended up having to read the Cyrillic alphabet to work out one location in Russia, but thanks to a great deal of practice, they didn't go over time. It was quit?e an unorthodox choice for Stream 1 of a speedrunning event, but it did not disappoint. Stay tuned for the interview at the end!

8. Awful Games, Any%, various

As has become tradition, every speedrunning event needs its terrible games. Aside from Wild Animal Racing and Dog's Life, to name but a few runs devoted to individual shite games, there was an entire complication of surprise shovelware and student game dev attempts for an assortment of runners to speed through. Runner Heinki was even on hand to provide a small amount of commentary on one of his own university projects, which made a brief appearance in the block. Much of speedrunning is painfully precise and runs can be invalidated with one false move, so more relaxed events like these that encourage viewers to have a g??ood giggle at speedrunning are a welcome change of pace.

9. Final Fantasy IX, Any%, Metako

Speedruns of JRPGs have a bit of a Marmite quality to them: some people think they are incredibly dull and a waste of five to ten hours that they could spend doing something else, while it's all that other speedrunners occupy themselves with. While I didn't want to spend hours upon hours in the event space watching one run, when I had other runs to see and people to socialise with, I did sit in on a lot of them for an hour or so. Final Fantasy IX was the one I sat in on the longest (practically the entirety of Part 1), and it made me want to buy the game. I don't think there's much higher praise that a viewer can give to a streamer or runner: that the way the streamer played the game and discussed it made the viewer want to? experience it for themselves??.

I also believe that if you're going to watch any JRPG speedrun, Final Fantasy IX is not a bad one to start with. Sure, there are shorter options (including a Final Fantasy V GBA run at ESA2018), but Final Fantasy IX is the pinnacle of PS1 performance, so it still looks good today. There are also great story beats that make for fun watching. It's definitely better to watch as a speedrun than my beloved Persona, wh??ich often struggles ??to get into speedrunning events.

10. Battletoads, Any% (No Wrong Warp, plus blindfold incentive), The Mexican Runner

The first I heard of this run was the very loud cheers coming from the Stream 1 room when TMR completed the blindfold incentive of his run flawlessly. People were talking about this feat for days afterwards, and it ??really increased excitement for the NES block in th?e early hours of 28 July.

Alongside Tetris The Grand Master, this was one of the more technically impressive runs shown at the event. While runners are there to entertain, they are also there to show off the fruits of their labour after many gruelling hours of practice, so it's great to watch runs where t?hat effort has so clearly paid off.

Honourable mentions

• BK 100% "run"

WE DID IT.
BURGER KING 100%, 16 PLAYERS CO-OP, IN 3:23:18!
Timer started when we left the venue, and stopped when everyone finished eating.
It was a project I had for a few months, and I'm so happy the Frenchies plus other people decided to join me for this thing! #ESASummer18 pic.twitter.com/7QTHKlLvwh

— Baffan (@Baffan) July 25, 2018

OK, this one has a bit of a story behind it. French runner Baffan has previously done a 100% Baten Kaitos run, which is quite legendary because it takes two whole weeks. Admittedly, you can leave the game running some of the time and only play eight-hour days, but your machine has to stay on for the entire fourteen days – as well as the recording equipment, of course. Whenever he was asked why he wasn't doing another 100% BK run at ESA, the answer was: w??ell, the event doesn't last two weeks.

But that didn't stop the French speedrunners, who were always up for a good gag. They decided to do a 100% BK ?run after all...but not quite the one speedrunning fans might have in mind. Instead, sixteen of them hungrily "completed" the entire Burger King meal menu between them, filming their progress and hitting time at just under three and a half hours. Get it on the leaderboards!

• I Wanna Be The Boshy, Rage mode, BBF

BBF is a runner who does things that are so beyond my comprehension, as a person with incredibly poor reaction times, that I felt his run was worth a mention, even though he wasn't too happy with it afterwards. Rage mode of I Wanna Be the Boshy removes a huge amount of the save points, which for a game that is like the schoolyard bully that pushes Super Meat Boy around, is absolutely terrifying.

It didn't quite work out for him on the day – something I strongly ??identified with, because nerves ate at my reaction times? during my own run and caused me to fail a level. It was still an absolutely memorable run; despite having to apply a few cheats to get through the game, he was still playing at such a high level that I was seriously impressed with his skills. And everyone in the audience was rooting for him! There was a real sense of people pulling together and supporting their fellow runners.

I have decided not to link to his run, in case he is still not feeling great about it. I've instead linke?d to his Rage mode speedrun.com leaderboard video, which prom?ises to boggle your mind.

• Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft, Any %, eidgod

This is a run I only saw as a VOD when I got home, because it was on pretty early. I was scrolling through Twitch to find something I missed that I could put on in the background, and decided to watch this and henyK's Bioshock: Infinite run. Both were really interesting, but Tomb Raider III edged it for me because of the nostalgia factor and the fact that the Tomb Raider series lends it??self particularly well to runs. Not only that, but th??e build-up to the donation incentive – Eidgod getting a haircut – had a pretty tense build-up. Some of the incentives were pretty unusual this year, helping to bring in large donations.

• Mafia

Nope, not the PS2 game, but a group party game that has become part of ESA tradi??tion. I was roped into it early on in the week a??nd had a great time my first night and was...completely lost on my second night. It's similar to Werewolf, if you've ever played that, and involves a group of "mafia" and a group of "citizens" trying to figure out who is who and make sure their group wins by staying alive the longest. Of course, the mind games were intense and people were taking it incredibly seriously. Be prepared for Jedi mind tricks.

• Our Lord and saviour, the ice-cream machine

Inside ESA: The Extra Day
ICE CREAM MACHINE IS BACK, I BET YOU'RE ALL JEALOUS HEH pic.twitter.com/qgtf0PaqQX

— Outside ESA Summer 2018 (@InsideESA) July 30, 2018

We got through a record level of free ice-cream and lots of free popcorn, and it was lovely to watch a stream with a snack in hand. I th??ink we were all very glad to hear we'll be returning to the same h??otel for ESA Summer 2019!

Have you been to a speedrunning event before? Were you watching ESA Summer 2018 at home? If so, which were your favourite runs? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Here are my highlights from the European Spee?drunner Assembly appeared first on Destructoid.

IT'S COMING HOME, IT'S COMING HOME, IT'S COMING, FOOTBALL'S COMING HOME

Popular sports games have a reputation for being highly expendable and ending up on the bottom racks of second-hand stores, selling for mere pennies. This is a pretty fair judgment of the genre, since people want the games to reflect new team signings, the current strip/jersey, and perhaps even expect a few additional features to the gameplay (though that's not so important). Heck, FIFA 17 even added a story mode, so it makes even more sense to fling your copy of FIFA 16 in the bin.

But what about football*, American football, etc. games as retro games? Can they still provide an enjoyable experience? Or is it a poundstore pick-up that you'll regret, and that's best left on the shelf to gather dust? A very kind Twitter follower of mine procured me a copy of a sports game that I have very fond memories of – World Cup 98 – and two entire decades later, I decide?d?? to give it a whirl.

Putting aside my nostalgia for the game, sitting down with World Cup 98 still felt like sitting down for a cup of tea, a choccy biscuit and a natter with an old friend. Sure, there were hiccups, but it was still a thoroughly entertaining experience that had me giggling and whooping, and probably had my ?roommate wondering what in tarnation was going on in my room. You might want to have eBay open as you read this, to find a copy of that long-forgotten?? sports game you used to play as a kid. I promise reopening that door to the past won't be a disappointment.

*Football being used to refer to the gentleman's pastime of association football, or "soccer", and not to that strange bastardisation of rugby where the ball gets passed in the wrong di?rection.

Why World Cup 98?

The World Cup 98 game for the PlayStation was a memorable part of my childhood, which even precedes owning my own games consoles. As a very small child, I would spend all my time after school at my grandma's house, hanging out with/annoying my aunt, who's just a few years older than me. My aunt loved playing computer games at the time, ranging from Tomb Raider III on her Windows 98 PC to Theme Park on her PS1. She owned the early model of the PS1 that came with controllers without analog sticks – oh, how my thumbs ached! One of the games we played together – I say played, but half the time I didn't know which direction I should be kicking the ball in – was World Cup 98.

I'd played football games at my grandma's house before: my aunt had a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis across the pond) and a version of World Cup Italia '90 that I believe was part of a multi-game cartridge. But that game played more like my dad's Subbuteo set than a real game of footie, because of its top-down perspective. World Cup 98 felt like the real deal.

While I never developed the same undying love for the Beautiful Game as the rest of my close family, who are dyed-in-the-wool Millers, I've always ap??preciated football computer games.

And around a decade later, I stepped into my aunt's shoes, trying to lose on purpose under strict orders from my dad in a game of FIFA 11. My much younger sister scrabbled around the pitch, taking out my players' ankles with the intense focus of an elite sniper unit, and stacking up the red and yellow cards. Many a game ended in Wimbledon winning 7-1 against Bayern ?Munich, and pocket money was sacrificed in the name of glory and bragging rights.

Potatovision?

An uncanny rendition of Teddy Sheringham

The first question you probably have when I say "I'm playing a footie game for the PS1" is, "Does it look like the players' faces have been rearranged by some otherworldly force". The answer is: sort of, but it's probably not the funniest of the bunch when it comes t??o outdated football games' inability to render faces.

The issue is not that the faces look dodgy, but rather that they look very generic. Teddy Sheringham could be any old bloke nursing a pint and a pie at the local pub next to the stadium, and Alan Shearer is only conspicuous due to his shock of blond hair. It takes you out of the action, because you are placing your trust in the commentators that it is Renaldo booting the ball the length of the pitch,?? and that the dude dribbling up a storm is Zinedine Zidane, yes, honestly, that's him. But in the days of reduced disc space and lower technical capabilities, we had to let our imaginations fill in the blanks.

Taking that into account, the game doesn't do a bad job at all – in fact, if it had done a slightly worse job, the game migh?t have been more of a laugh.

Legends on the pitch

One really nice quality of World Cup 98 is returning to the football players of ??my youth. And in 1998, the England team had some tr?uly memorable squad members.

Graeme Le Saux has since fought for a reduction of homophobia in the sport after receiving some disgusting abuse on the pitch; Gareth Southgate is currently the country's bewaistcoated bae du jour, having risen from defender to England manager; David Beckham is renowned for his tenure as an excellent association football player-cum-Armani underwear model. But it's also tinged with sadness, as Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne has since struggled with alcoholism and has be?en in the headlines ??of the tabloid newspapers for his erratic behaviour.

I struggle to keep up with football nowadays, since I have so many other interests and hobbies on the go. But as a child, I couldn't escape it. Sky Sports would blare out of every TV on a Sunday, and despite my protests, I would be forced to watch it, instead of whichever new episode of The Simpsons was playing on Sky One. Whether I liked it or not, I grew up with these men ?as household names, so returning to a world I was more familiar with was comforting. It was also a pleasant sur??prise to be reminded of footballers I'd completely forgotten about, such as Jürgen Klinsmann on the German national team and Fabien Barthez on the French national team.

Technical difficulties

I love how it looks like the allouette is holding a controller (to my disappointment, he's holding the ball)

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of how the game controls, it is by no means a terrible experience, but it is hampered by the limitations of its day. World Cup 98 does not support analog stick controls, so you can wave goodbye to your thumbs living a pain-free existence, particularly since steering your players around the pitch is a huge chunk of the game. Navigating menus is not exactly intuitive. And while I love a bit of Tubthumping as much as the next guy, I was getting knocked down and getting back up again so often I feared for my blood pressure: the limited space on the PS1 CD meant that the pause menu featured just four songs, two of which were ??a?rrangements of Chumbawamba's one-hit wonder.

It could be due to my disc being scratched, ??but a full World Cup tournament ground to an anticlimactic halt when the semi-final match refused to load. As for other glitches, if an opposing team's player so much as grazed the ball with his foot, the commentators would call out my team member's name twice – either that or Chris Waddle just likes saying "Ince" a lot.

But aside from that, the game was actually quite fun to play. In many ways, it was a purer and more joyful exp??erience than its younger siblings. The most sophisticated move I could figure out from the controls was jumping in t?he air while dribbling the ball, and everything else was limited to tapping or booting the ball. And it felt effortless because it kept things simple.

The inability of the game to render much detail meant that the referee acted like he'd left his glasses at home, and while getting sent off on technicalities/split-second trigger happiness is part and parcel of my modern FIFA experience, I never saw a single red card through several games on World Cup 98. This might be a downside for some, since avoiding fouling is a matter of skill, but it removed some unnecessary frustration for me. I could just enjoy the game, without my poor reaction times completely getting in the way. But your mileage may vary – playing the game versus?? another person, instead of the computer, probably calls for greater policing of dangerous tackles.

Old footie is good footie

So, would I recommend returning to sporting games of yore? If you can get past their primitive technical nature, then absolutely. My time with World Cup 98 was a lovely trip to the past, and about as enjoyable for me as other shoot-at-goal games, such as Disc Jam. Chances are, you ?will stumble across an old favourite at a yard/car boot sale for less than the price of a sandwich. Revisiting your youth doesn't have to be expensive, but it may come with the need? for physio on your thumbs and has a high chance of Tubthumping.

Here's an England v Germany friendly I played in World Cup 98, if you want to take a closer look at the game.

Is there an old sports game that you really enjoy playing? Which kinds of sports games do you play? Who did you support/are you supporting in the World Cup? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post I playe??d a 20-year-old FIFA World Cup ga?me and maybe you should, too appeared first on Destructoid.

WHO has recognised 'Gaming Disorder' as a condition for the first time

A few days ago, in the wake of discussion about how recent hits such as Fortnite may be having an effect on children and young persons, talk turned to how the first gaming addiction treatment centres have sprung up in the UK. The World Health Organisation has al??so recognised "gaming addiction" as a separate disorder for the first time, alongside other more well-known addictions, such as to alcohol or drugs.

The World Health Organisation has not clas?sified "gaming d?isorder" in terms of time spent with games, but rather in terms of the effect it has on the individual's ability to interact with society and keep up with their usual lifestyle. Here are the criteria that they use:

• Impaired control over gaming
• Increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities
• Continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences

To me, this seems so far, so good. These criteria do not seem far removed from how we would des?cribe one of the more "traditional" addictions – inability to stop drinking after two glasses of wine, drinking to the point that you can't take your children to school in the morni?ng, and continuing to get intoxicated every single day until eventually, you lose your job. So, what is the issue?

The issue is the tendency of the non-games media and general discussion to talk about games addiction in terms of time played, in both directions. Standard news outlets gawp at 20 hours a week sat behind a controller or a keyboard, while people who play games may shrug off 30 hours at a com??puter as not a big deal.

Both perspectives are harmful because, as the WHO have emphasised, the issue of games addiction is not about the time spent with games. Of course, a sign of addiction is that games are taking over your life and you are saving no time for friends and family. But it has much more to do with how "your brain is on games", rather than the concrete number of hours.

Games as beneficial for both children and adults

In the discussion of gaming disorder, we mustn't forget that playing games as a hobby comes with a whole host of health ?and cognitive benefits, just like other less maligned hobbies (reading, taking long walks, etc.). There are the obvious ones, such as gaming as a form of stress relief and as a distraction if you're having a bad day. It's no bad thing for people to be a little bit competitive and ambitious, and gaming ac??tively encourages that, since most games' reason to be is to set the player targets to complete.

Enough of my layman assumptions: clever scientists have also found evidence that games can be a force for good (with the evidence collected in this article). They can improve concentration and ability to multi-task, improve visual processing capabilities and have even been shown to reduce crime rates and acts of violence. Games themselves have even been used to treat addictions, in a spectacular about-face for the discussion?? about the link between video games and compulsive behav?iour. So, clearly, there is no need to castigate games or to remove all consoles from your household.

Games addiction as a touchy subject

The idea of games addiction has really struck a nerve with some of the community, and it's not hard to see why. Games do seem to bear the brunt of public criticism, when it comes to pastimes that don't involve putting chemicals into your body or setting out to harm other people. This criticism often comes from people who don't play games very often, so make assumptions without facts or experience at hand. Games have a history of being blamed f?or terrible crimes or for a perceived decrease in morality.

I feel like there are two major reasons why some are very sensitive to the idea of gaming addiction: 1) this history of games as the scapegoat; 2) misinformed ideas about addiction. It's all very well and good focu??sing on 1), but some time needs to be taken thinking about 2), too.

"Addiction", or its cousin "compulsive behaviour", conjure up extreme images of unkempt individuals who can't take care of themselves and hurt everyone around them. That might be the case sometimes, but addictive behaviour is not just restricted to the guy whose life is fallin?g apart because he needs one more hit of his drug of choice. More people?? display addictive behaviours than they probably care to admit.

Smoke ten a day and struggle to quit? You're probably addicted. Eat too much when you're feeling blue? You might be using food compulsively. Have a ritual that you have to do before you leave the house, or you h??ave to g??o back? Check that it's not compulsive behaviour.

It's an issue I've had to face myself recently, as I realised I was using food, unhealthily, as a way to "treat" a mixture of depression, anxiety and OCD-like behaviour. I would tell myself it was fine because it made me feel better, and I didn't care about my appearance or my weight anyway, but I was still ignoring my underlying illness by shoving junk food down my throat until I wanted to be sick. I couldn't open a packet of anything without finishing the whole thing. I would go into a sort of "trance" while eating and lose awareness of my surroundings. It was n??ot good. But I'm doing a bit better now.

So, at least from my experience, addiction is often an abnormal but understandable reaction to outside stress. Research shows that addiction can also be down to genes, and people might therefore be at risk if a family member has engaged in addictive behaviour. But the? panic and negativity we feel when we hear the word "addiction" is perhaps not all that helpful. Because addiction is disruptive and awful, but also painfu??lly ordinary and common.

Addiction-hopping

There are many reasons why it seems a little unfair to focus too heavily on games as a source of addiction. The reason that stands out to me is that addiction is often not a static thing; if there's an underlying reason for the addiction, then an individual may hop from addiction to addiction. 

For me, my compulsive behaviour hasn't just been restricted to food. I remember drinking absolutely disgusting amounts of wine, sat on my own in my room during my final year of university, because the stress was too much?? and I literally wanted to knock myself out. For others,?? quitting smoking might lead a person eating more junk food, an obsessive need for romantic relationships might turn into a sex addiction...the list goes on.

What the recognition of a gaming addiction tells me is that it is not a condition in isolation. People who find themselves knee-deep in a game at 3 a.m., losing sleep because they just have to keep going, might be setting themselves up for a whole host of new unhealthy behaviours. And, in fact, people who use games well into the night might use substances or junk food to stay awake, which only increases? the danger of addiction ho?pping.

Instead of panicking about games addiction or making overwrought claims in either direction, the correct step is to look at the source of the behaviour and the thought patterns behind it, so that any affected person can healthily return to their normal patterns of behaviour. And bear in mind that the solution to not all addictions is to cut out the crutch completely; for many, such as those with a food addiction, that'??s not even possible. 

Addiction as a global issue

Addiction is ultimately an issue that's more about a malfun?ction of the brain than the way i??t expresses itself. By focusing too much on the question of whether games addiction exists or does not exist, given that anything can be a source of compulsive behaviour, we're at risk of ignoring the underlying question of why people become addicts. And if we ignore that question, then it is not just a games disorder that young people might be at risk of developing.

Looking at the issue from the glib perspective of pure numbers is also not helpful at all – in the end, if you play for one hour a week but could not tear yourself away in case of an emergency, there's probably still addiction at play. Some people can pl??ay for 40 hours but just walk away if they feel like it, so they aren't addicted. We should instead think of the issue in terms of how people's brains interact with the reward mechanics of games on a case-by-case basis, which is precisely what the World Health O??rganisation diagnosis criteria seem to support. The experts have it right: the media and discourse just needs to catch up.

The post Game addi??ction is not about the number of ho??urs spent holding a controller appeared first on Destructoid.

Chatting with people who feel the need - the need for speed

Speedrunning is a hobby that requires a lot of patience and a lot of hard work. Playing the same game over and over again sounds like a recipe for bored??om, particularly if the slightest mishap can ruin an otherwise perfectly good run. In spite of all these hurdles, there are plenty?? of people who enjoy improving their times and playing a part in building a supportive community, in which people work together to discover various strategies to run a game as fast as possible.  

With SGDQ and ESA just around the corner, I asked three speedrunners with different interests and levels of involvement in the community about their experiences and their ?various insights into the activity of speedrunning. Overall, what they had to ??say painted the picture of a community that, particularly in Europe, seems to be flourishing year on year.

1) Ellieceraptor

"Ellieceraptor" is a speedrunner who is no stranger to ESA, having run SUPERHOT at the event last year. Now that she has got used to in-person speedrunning tournaments, she's branching out to running one of her favourite games: Diablo II.

It's a long one, but this is a Diablo II world record!

You're running Diablo II at ESA, and you've mentioned to me that that game can be quite addic?tive. What's so thrilling about it?

Diablo II is a fantastic mix of theo?ry, practical application of said theory and skill. Throw in a big? heaping of randomness – both exciting and frustrating – with immense variety, and seven very different classes, and you have a game with nigh-on endless potential for speedrunning. Two runs will never be the same and the rush when all the disparate aspects of the game come together is just exhilarating.

It also helps that the game itself is a masterpiece in how its feedback loop is pace??d and designed. The fact that the game is still relatively popular 18 years after its initial release speaks volumes on this.

You ran SUPERHOT at ESA last year – what ??was that like?

Exciting. Scary. Humbling.

Last year was my first time attending an in-person marathon, and to be allowed on the main stage was a huge milestone for me, both as a speedrunner and as a person. While I am no stranger to participating in online marathons, I was definitely not prepared for the pressure of being on stage in front of the camera and audience. My nerves definitely showed in my run, but I do not regret or feel embarrassed for a moment about doing it! It was also somewhat surreal to have people come up to me to congratulate me and say they liked the run afterward. Overall, an overwhelming and amazing experience!

Do you feel like speedrunning does enough to be inclusive and ??encourage diversity?

More yes than no. From my own experience, all the communities I have ever interacted with have been nothing but welcoming and support?ive of everyone, regardless of gender identity, race, sexual orientation, etc.

With regard to inclusivity, speedrunning is a profoundly community-driven activity and as such,? it will invariably differ between games and communities. There are definitely instances of awful abuse and harassment (some of it having been directed at good friends of mine) and it is very important to acknowledge and address it when it happens.

On the shinier flip side of the coin, speedrunning being so community-centric also makes it a powerful driving force for diversity, acceptance and jolly cooperation, and I b?elieve this far outweighs the more unsavoury side. As for encouragement, it is definitely present and starting to pay off. Ultimately, I am very proud to be a part of the greater community and excited about the future of speedrunning as a passion and shared experience.

What makes a good couch crew for a speedrun?

Friends with game knowledge, good personal chemistry, knowing w??hen to talk and when not to talk, etc.

Or, in the absence of that, DrTChops.

2) Alko

"Alko" has been going to ESA since before it was even called the European Speedrunner Assembly (prior to 2016, it was called the European Speedster Assembly). As one of the old guard, he's perfectly placed to talk to us a little bit more about the history of the event, back when it was just a small group of enthusiasts.

OK, I have to ask you - why did you decide to run Cheetahmen?! Why?!

Haha! Well…actually, Cheetahmen is only part two of three.

Part one happened to be Ooze, which I ran at ESA 16. The story behind that: it’s well known that Action 52 is one of the worst game collections ever published — the Sega version still being much better than the NES version. In 2014, Edenal invited people to his place for a small meetup in February, then dubbed FakESA, which was probably the precursor to what is now ESA Winter. Oasiz was also there and had Action 52 on a Sega flash cart and we played it, e??njoying lots of laughs. I was the only one who noticed that you apparently needed to collect keys to proceed, so on the next day, I managed to be the first kno??wn player to make it to Level Two (and subsequently to Level Three). This sparked my interest.

Fast forward to ESA15, where I played it again and actually managed to get through to the final level and beat the game. Sadly, Chucat had apparently already beaten it during ESA14, so I was only the second known player to do that. But I thought, "I can speedrun this!" So I got myself emulator and ROM and started practicing. With a PSX controller at first, later borrowing a Sega one off bangerra. And I’ve gotta say, I find it fun.

I also tried out most other games on Action 52. Most of them are boring and not really level-based or "speedrunable" as far as I know, but Cheetahmen and another one were. My hope was to put all three into an ESA marathon (but not at the same time). And maybe one day have an Action 52 race with all runnable games.

Although you are indeed European, you're currently living in Japan. What's the speedrunning scene like out there, compare?d to in Europe?

Oof, I have little clue. I accidentally found out about an on-site marathon in Tokyo between Christmas and New Year, which I went to. They showed off some ??nice runs of great games.

Altogether, I felt reminded of the first year of ESA, but I really don’t know if organisations like Ludendi exist, if the runners generally know each other, etc. All I can say is that the Discord of said RTAiJ marathon is ?very quiet, in stark contras??t to the ESA one.

I??f you manage to visit ESA for a few days, what are you most looking forward to doing/seeing?

Meeting great people, collecting lots of hugs, eating kanelbullar, eating Dumle, maybe binge watching an anime in weeb corner, playing Mafia. Yeah, I heard streams exist, but they’re not eve?n secondary to my ESA experience anymore.

3) Zet

"Zet" has been speedrunning puzzle-platformers for quite a while now, and has made appearances at both German and European speedrunning tournaments. He had quite a lot to say about the successes and failures of his public speedrunning attempts – and despite not being too pleased with his Inside run last year, I still thought it was inc?redibly fun to watch.

You're running Mushroom 11 at ESA this year - what made you decide to run ??and submit this game?

Mushroom 11 was one of the few games – if not the only game – that I had seen? before release and became interested in speedrunning. I tho??ught that mastering the unique movement mechanic and achieving an as fast as possible speed with it could be very challenging and fun.

When I finally did play the game, however, I was at first a bit disappointed, because to me the difficulty curve felt too steep too sudden and overall the game lost its pace in the final two chapters. So I put it to one side, a?nd I wasn't sure whether I would still want to run it or not. However, for the last twelve-hour challenge, I spontaneously decided to look at the speedrun for this game, just so I could finally put it to rest. As it turned out, the run could actually be really fun and challenging. The game also fits in thematically with my other speed games.

After my initial 12hc run, I hadn't touched the game for a while again, until ESA Summer 18 submissions opened up. I prefer to submit games that I haven't run at an ESA event before to show something new every time, and it is very cool that ESA is open to submissions for games that you haven't even learnt yet. After the first round of cuts was released in April, my Mushroom 11 submission was still pending (the other game, 140, was unf??ortunately cut), so I knew that ??in order to show a run at ESA, I had to actually learn and get good at the run.

Over the next few weeks, I learnt the run by watching other runners (u??nfortunately, nobody was actively running it at the time) and got better and better at the levels, starting to get more comfortable with the movement mechanic and eventually finding my own skips. The night before the schedule reveal, I had finally beaten the World Record for this game b??y more than two minutes! I am not done with this run though, and I am looking forward to running the game at this year's ESA. I'm very glad I gave it a second chance!

Last year, you ran Inside at ESA. What was that like?

Oh boy – Inside is probably my marathon run I feel most uncomfortable remembering. Just like Mushroom 11, I had submitted Inside before I was able to do the run myself. However, since I am a long-time Limbo runner and the whole community for that game looked forward to running Inside, it seemed obvious I would eventu??ally try myself. I never got as good as I wanted to be and due to university stress before ESA, I could not get nearly as prepared as I wanted to be when showing the run. I had submitted a blindfolded incentive, which I actually only really learnt on-site, and I wasn't sure how much of the game I'd do b??????????????????????????lindfolded.

Inside is a bit unfortunate as a speed game, as its pacing is rather slow and all of the time saves derive from precise movement and a few skips that are very difficult to execute. While I had pulled off most of the skips myself in practice and a run here and there before, I was nowhere consistent with those. I usually try to give good commentary for the game I run, providing not only information about the speed strats but also the game, its developme??????????????????????????nt, and developer in general – while I did have a bit of information, especially on the audio design of the game, I don't think I provided enough to make up for my mediocre gameplay.

The run itself was a mess. I failed at all skips but one, finished with a time around five minutes over estimate and on top of it all, the computer I ran on randomly crashed around five minutes in. I learnt the hard way that you need to invest a lot of time into le?arning the speedrun of the game you?? want to show at a marathon, and this should be something to consider during the submission phase. In the end, it kind of felt like I had let down the community who were looking forward to having the speed game shown at a marathon.

It wasn't all bad, however! I had a nice "wow, that's never happened before" moment, the blindfolded part, all things considered, went alright, and my good pal Yajijy was there for commentary and meme support – that is, he provided me with lots of doggo pillows after I had failed the infamous "one cycle dogs" skip and we took a nice selfie together during an unskippable cutscene - a reference to a similar moment during our Limbo Any% Normal Route race one year prior.

I have since moved away from Inside as a speed game, as it never really clicked with me, but all in all, despite the run being awful, I am grateful I could show it at ESA. I am more content with my The Swapper run I did that same year.

D?o you have any general goals you'd like t??o achieve from speedrunning?

First, of course, there are the small goals of getting better times in my games. One is never content with one's PB. If you're a runner, you know it. The only time you are truly content is when you achieve the absolute best (or known best) possible time in a game, like for example, the people who have gotten the Dragster record. I definitely want to improve my times in at least 140, Limbo and Mushroom 11 for now, but may come back to my other games later, as well. But grinding can be super tiresome and make you burn out fairly soon on a game, so I will have to approach them (especially 140 and Limbo) fresh and once my motivation has come b??ack??, so after a significant amount of time has passed since I last played them.

In a broader sense, there is no "goal" I aim for with my significance as a speedrunner, my Twitch channel or anything like that. I mainly do it for what I think most runners do: as a hobby and spending as much time as possible with games I truly love. I mean, I started speedrunning because I loved the game 140 so much but I had? beaten all of its challenges, unlocked all of the achievements and played through the main game countless times. That's what I would urge aspiring runners to do, by the way: only learn games that you are comfortable playing through over and over and over again. Because once your time ge??ts low enough, you will have to do exactly that to get better.

My channel is rather small and when I get 10+ viewers, this usually means I'm having a very good day. But that's okay – I don't need to stream to bigger audiences of 100 and more viewers, although I wouldn't be opposed to it! I planned to learn more popular speed games some time ago – specifically Majora's Mask – but that never materialised and I have postponed this for an indefinite amount of ti??me, mostly because I enjoy runs o??f smaller games more and feel more comfortable in their environment. 

I think ten years ago I would have thought differently, but I am actually very glad I have a full-time job and can maintain streaming and speedrunning as a hobby, not having to worry about doing it five days a week, six to eight hours a day. Instead, I hope that people who watch my runs will learn something new about the games I play and on top of that get to know me. Whenever I see somebody in my chat say, "Hey, this game looks cool. Oh, it's only five bucks, I'll buy it!", that makes me really happy, and I feel that this is the least I can do to pay back the developer for giving me all these hours of joy. I do believe, however?, that speedrunning can help train your mind and help you cope with feelings of nervousness, especially pulling yourself together when you know problematic situations are coming up.

What I would love, though, is to become a figure associated with the speedrunning community. I h?ad a blast during my hosting shifts at ESA17, and I hope I'll have fun again at the next marathon! I have made many wonderful friends in t?his community and I am truly proud to be a part of it. I also plan to attend – and hopefully have a run at – a GDQ event at some point in the future. I am definitely planning on AGDQ2019, so maybe see you there?

Fingers crossed that I can make it to AGDQ next year, but regardless, I will be at ESA next month! Keep your eyes peeled for further reports on speedrunning as a whole and on my experiences preparing for/taking part in ESA 2018.

The post I interview??ed three speedrun??ners about marathons, friendships, and Action 52 appeared first on Destructoid.

The goalposts have changed, and precious few sales platforms are equipped to deal with it

This week, Valve announced they would permit any game to be hosted on its market-leading platform, Steam, as long as it did not contain i?llegal content and ?is not what can be classified as a "trolling game". This met with praise from people who critici?se what they perceive as any form of censorship, but also with a lot of annoy??ance and anger from people who felt that Valve was washing its hands of its responsibility to reduce hostility on the Steam marketplace. 

A little bit of the background leading up to this decision -- Steam has seen a spate of games recently (and perhaps not so recently, if you count examples such as Shower With Your Dad Simulator and Hatred) that could be said to have no artistic merit and are instead aimed solely at enraging people. It also faced recent controversy after cracking down on games with erotic content, a policy that disproportionately ended up affecting LGBTQA+ and erotic visual novel content. Valve later apologised, looked at its decision to issue take-down notices again, trotted off with its tail between its legs and duly sat down to consider how it was? going to respond to the changing landscape of content people put up for sale on Steam.

I was seeing a lot of ire directed specifically at Valve, and I do believe that they have misstepped in their new policy (which has already displayed potential for confusion). However, I'm not sure it's that helpful to look just at Valve. It seems as though a lot of the potential fixes for Valve's laissez-faire approach are hindered by just how out of touch moderation and classification of games is as a whole. Instead, it feels as though we should be looking into why Valve have reacted the way they did and look to changing the entire system behind approving games for sale. I really look forward to hearing your opinions on Valve's reaction in the comments, since I know mine might not be shared by everyone!

So, why did Valve react the way they did?

I don't feel like Valve reacted maliciously here or with any sort of bias when it comes to person?al politics. Valve, rea?cting as a business who needs to keep hold of as many customers as possible to make money, panicked and tried to do the crowd-pleasing thing of keeping the market as open as possible. And in response to the VN scandal mentioned above, this reaction seems to make sense: revert to free-market principles and let those with the money sort the wheat from the chaff.

But it's this panicked reaction -- or what some people might instead see as giving up entirely -- that is a big problem. Valve doesn't have a monopoly when it comes to selling digital games for PC/Mac/Linux, but it sure holds a massive market share, with figures steadily increasing year on year to 18.6 million users as of January 2018.

Steam gets mentioned in the same breath as Uplay, Origin, GOG, and itch.io, but it seems to have an extra level of fame beyond those platforms, in part due to its vastness and also due to its incentives (trading cards) and branching out to other ventures, such as the Steam Machines and the Steam controller. For a giant in the market to throw its hands up and say it doesn't want to deal with the issue of excessively violent or bullying content sets a precedent, and a potentially dangerous one?? at that.

OK, but why do you care about violence or nasty content on the internet? You can always just not click on a link or walk away from your computer.

Sure, I can, and I have done. But there are people who are more sensitive, whether based on age or due to personal experience, who might not be able to just walk away. There is a separate issue of making sure that sensitive content that might be completely harmless for some people, but deeply upsetting to others, is flagged properly. Yet some content is so egregious that flagging it so that those affected by the issue don't stumble across it doesn't quite get to the heart of the problem with the game (see Active Shooter).

When it comes to age, you might argue that it is the parents' responsibility to watch their sprogs and make sure they're not playing a game stuffed to the gills with gore and profanity. That's true, but this doesn't address the harm that is done. If?? a parent fails in their duty not to hand a violent game to their young child, saying, "oh well, it's the parents' fault" doesn't actually fix anything; the kid is still harmed, and parents of course don't have a right to harm their kids. This is why moderation and classification are important.

And I have, from time to time, accidentally stumbled across something that distressed me greatly. A writer recently wrote a (great) article about how Saya No Uta is an unsung VN that people should give a chance. Unfortunately, against my be??tter judgment and war??nings from the article, I dug deeper, and could not get the thoughts of that game out of my head for a couple of days, I was so disturbed by it.

The games community doesn't really have a duty to protect people like me from their own i??diocy, but people do end up seeing content that really gets under their skin in a bad way all the time for all kinds of reasons, perhaps while looking for something else, or while taken over by morbid curiosity. A measured approach to stopping the most extreme instances of this is a pretty good idea.

OK, so what's the problem with Valve's new approach?

Thankfully, Valve has set some standards for its current approach to moderation -- well, not allowing illegal content on Steam is not really a standard they've set for themselves since they have to comply with that anyway. It's still open to argument as to what counts as a "trolling" game. What if one of the aforementioned school shooter games actually went to gr?eat efforts with its mechanics to resemble an earnest attempt at an FPS game? Does it still count as a ??trolling game?

The real problem with this approach is that many games can pick out certain groups ??for harassment or abuse, but then bury it under a layer of good game design so that it sneaks past the moderators. And while realistically, this will be the case more often for games with abject ho?mophobia, sexism, etc., it can work in all different directions and against all different groups of people.

If I look back at the piece I wrote on the swatting phenomenon a little while back, people do seem a little more impressionable than they did back in the days when the Hot Coffee argument was a big deal, since gaming culture has become more networked and more entrenched in people's personal lives. We literally have a camera into the lives of other gamers, now. While violence and sexual content are absolutely not off the table when it comes to ??games, cooling it a little with the extremism, again, isn't a bad idea.

It's not just that, though -- what counts as illegal? Some games with loot boxes count as ga??mbling and ?are therefore facing prohibition in the Netherlands. Valve has been shockingly lax about this theme in the past, particularly given the popularity of these gam??es with minors and the seriousness of gambling addiction.

It's a pa?per thin moder??ation policy that isn't really going to hold up for very long, as the gaming community starts mercilessly poking holes in it.

How does this link to the classification of games?

All this talk so ??far has been about Valve's moderation policy, which is indeed a set policy -- you can't have mods arbitrarily determining what they find great and what they find disgusting. For one, you only need one mod to go mad with power for chaos to ensue, and two, if anyone starts questioning why their game has been?? taken down, and the reason is entirely down to individual moderator discretion, it's a media shitstorm waiting to happen.

As I've said before, this moderation policy i??s fragile, though it is a policy nonetheless. It is also not a curation approach, where Valve is openly saying it will only allow quality, hand-picked content onto its platf??orm, but rather an approach borne from morality.

If you boil it down, it looks kinda like Valve has created its own classification system for games, albeit not one based on several age categories, but rather one resembling the decision between a game being rated M or AO using the ESRB standards. If a game is rated AO, it is basically unsellable, since it can't be put on the shelves in s?tores and console manufacturers don't su??pport AO games; if Valve deems a game immoral by its own narrow standards, it can't go up on the store. If it is a dig?ital game, given the considerable number of people who turn to Steam for their game downloads, this?? can be the kiss of death. Very similar principle.

This is important because it gives us extra room to look at alternatives for Valve's issue. As? I said, it seems like at best, Valve is in a panic, and at worst, it has given up. Because Steam has not opted to use local game classification standards, unlike console platforms, it can do as it likes when it comes to gatekeeping for its own store.

What it could do is put in place a system similar to ESRB, or wholesale adopt ESRB rules, even if the specific game it is looking at hasn't been run past the board – s??ay, if the game will never appear on consoles and therefore does not have to be looked at by a classification board in order to be waved through by Sony or Nintendo.

The excellent side to the console system of classification is that the permissions step is removed from the people who have an interest in selling as many games as possible (Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo), meaning that the entire process is carried out without bias or economic motivations. That everything is housed within Valve at the mom?ent for Steam (both setting the classification rules and applying them) is not the most ethical policy on the planet.

Well, the good thing about Steam is that you don't have to show ID to buy a game, but OK, I'll bite... let's use game classification standards when deciding what games go up on Steam.

Not so fast, bud. Theoretic??ally, this might be a good idea, but each classification system has its own share of problems. 

There are so many regional classification systems for games that trying to count them makes my head spin, and it's not as simple as harmonising everything. There is a solid reason why we have so many different classification systems, for good or for ill, and that's that regional ideas of "morality" vary drastically from country to country. You're more likely to find guns and blood in an 18-rated game in the US that you are to see a bare breast, but in other regions, the opposite might be true. So trying to come up with a unifie?d standard would be a logistical nightmare that practically nobody would agree to follow.

But, OK, let's say because Valve is based in the US, it piggybacks off ESRB standards; it already shows ESRB ratings if they happen to already be available for the game. As I said before, Westernised standards are more permissive with violence than they are with sexual content, which might be part of the reason why the VN scandal happened in the first place. There has also been some backlash against Agony for its fairly unnuanced and perverted look at a hellscape, which is a console game on general release in the US and Europe, and therefore ??passed muster with both PEGI and ESRB.

But the appetite for games that explore sexuality and allow people who ar??e queer to see representation on screen has grown in recent times, and the classification boards haven't quite caught up with this yet. The idea that sexual?? content might not be to titillate but to educate and to express different lifestyles is a relatively new one.

With the raft of active shooter sims and such, it's worth pointing out that boards have, for a while, taken into consideration not just levels of violence but also the spirit behind such violence. The meandering, also pornographic focus on executions in Manhunt 2 is precisely why that game juddered to a halt with the BBFC in the UK (the BBFC is a non-governmental, independent classification board in the UK that acts parallel to PEGI). But we haven't quite seen violence so gaudy and empty as we do with the recent wave of? "troll" games.

A classification board would also struggle to handle the concept of an "AIDS Simulator" game since it's hard to point a finger at what traditional category its objectionable nature fits into. There's no especially horrific vi??olence, drug use, gambling, fear or sex involved; the problem is its racist undertones and, well, "are you fucking kidding me, this is sick, show some goddamn respect".

So a lot of classification systems need dragging by their hair into the 21st century,?? which sort of explains why Valve has been having so many issues with its moderation policy but paints us into a bit of a corner when it comes to finding a solution for this mess.

itch.io's CEO has spoken on the issue and the consensus seems to be that itch.io's approach strikes an excellent balance, but it is operating on a much smaller scale than Steam. Perhaps it hasn't dealt with a wave of abusive games like Steam has, precisely because it is more developer-oriented than consumer-oriented and because it doesn't get quite the same level of attention as Steam. GOG also became a?n unlikely champion of erotic VNs as a medium, and so I have hope that some platforms can set their own standards and execute them well, refraining from yucking on o??ther people's ??yums. Some platforms, like Steam, struggle and require external help. But I'm not sure the external help is there just yet.

So ultimately, you're saying that when a platform runs into multiple scandals, it should have to follow external standards. Isn't that a bit menacing and infringing on Valve's right to run its own business?

With a lot of businesses, whenever standards are lagging, the inspectors come in, be that health inspection, school inspections or simply someone from head office coming in to check whether a franchise is being run correctly. Since Steam deals with sensitive content,? I find it a little hard to believe that Valve would be left to its ??own devices on this one, especially when some of its direct competitors have bowed deeply to external standards, e.g. the console market.

The best thing for Valve, if it is really struggling to put together a sensible policy, is to apply a policy drafted externally. This could be using its own mods, or it could separate the process entirely by using external mods. While not acting with any form of intent to cause harm, Valve's indecisiveness is a product of a lack of checks and balances. If we can get on top of the issue of games classification, on the whole, being a bit borked, then we will have a suitable set of checks and balances that can be applied at any time – once Valve holds its hands up and admits it has no idea what it'??s doing.

What are your thoughts on Valve's new policy? Do you think Valve got it spot on, or is it going off the rails? What do you think about the idea of Valve abdicating responsibility for approving games to a third party? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Valve’s hands-off approach to moderation is part of a larger problem with game classification appeared first on Destructoid.

Maybe it's time to put that chicken dinner on your LinkedIn profile?

Long gone are the days when playing computer games was seen as the reserve of teenagers or people with less "respectable" hobbies. People from all walks of life enjoy sitting down with their favourite console or indulging in some PC gaming, and explaining to your coworkers that you spent all weekend powering through Far Cry 5 doesn't attract the same lo??o?ks of derision or confusion as it perhaps once did.

What's more, it's widely accepted that a person's hobbies can make them more suited to certain types of employment, through the wonderful world of "transferable skills". While I wouldn't suggest putting your burning passion for League of Legends on your CV for real, it is interesting to think about how our interactive shared hobby hones our various skill sets. So, which talents can you improve or forge for the first time by being a ?gamer? I've selected just a handful of these skills and explained why they are so useful below.

1. Being able to solve puzzles under time pressure

Most games really are just a big puzzle that you have to pick apart and solve, but some games use concrete riddles are part of their gameplay. And it spans all different genres – Ratchet and Clank has its door-opening puzzles where you have to use mirrors to align beams, while Silent Hill and Resident Evil are both famous for building tension through a gruesome mix of monsters and brain-teasers. Some of these puzzles are head-scratchers to match any Sudoku book, and can really improve your critical and logical thinking – as long as you do??n't reach for a guide every time.

The idea for this entire piece actually came from digging back into Catherine yesterday. That is a game where you cannot brute force or cheat your way through puzzles: the blocks are falling fast, and you have to react quickly or die. A lot of jobs call for thinking up solutions with next to no time, and I think a few sessions climbing up the Tower of Babel can actually be good practice for thinking on your feet. And hey, at least if everything falls down around your ears when trying to solve problems in real life, you're not stuck in an otherworld nightmare running away from butt babies or murderous brides, ay?

2. Juggling complicated ethical choices

We all know right from wrong, without having to play games to learn that, right? Well, as many recent games show, morality is more complicated than simply "good" and "bad". Always going the virtuous route can? have unintended consequences, and always playing the nice guy can result in getting trampled on. This can extend into the world of work, where we of course all try to react within the boundaries of what is moral, but sometimes, and in some jobs, difficult decisions  have to be made that can have a significant impact on people's lives, no matter what you choose. 

A whole host of games contain intricate and complex morality systems, but the first group that sprung to mind for me were the original Mass Effect trilogy. There's a reason some people went full Renegade, and it wasn't always to be a bad-ass motherplucker. Sometimes being a little tougher on the exterior can get the job done. The SimCity series and many of the Telltale decision tree games are also a good exercise in striking the balance between utilitarianism and taking care of the interests of individua??l people.

3. Perseverance in the face of overwhelming frustration

The new-ish wave of super-difficult games, in which multiple deaths are welcomed as much as they are expected, is a golden opportunity to develop nerves of steel. Many a time, a program will crash on your office computer over and over again, or a proc??ess won't work no matter what you try, and the end result is that you want to throw your entire workstation out of the nearest window and start a new career as a travelling busker. But if you've had to replay the same level of a game 30 or 40 times within the space of an hour just to get to the end, then it lowers your tension when you hit roadblocks at work.

There are plenty of (super cheap!) games you can try out to deaden your emotional response to stress, but a particularly fun example is Super Meat Boy. If you want to crank the violence up even further, Hotline Miami is a good place to start. Super Hexagon is an extremely infuriating game you can even play on your phone, for toilet-based anger that do??esn't involve a lunchtime chicken vindaloo. 

4. Working to a long-term plan

If your work is project-based, then chances are, you have to work to short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. Being able to plan in advance and not defaulting to doing everything on the fly is crucial, unless you want to get your final payslip handed to you faster than a stapler sets in jelly.

Inventory management comes to the rescue here – if you've played any sort of survival horror game, you will know that rationing resources is something you can't avoid if you want to live. I recently screwed myself over majorly in Resident Evil 4 by eating through shotgun ammo like nobody's business, then realising I had nothing before than a couple of handgun bullets and a knife at my disposal during my first face-off with Chainsaw Man??. Nice going, doofus. The same principle applies to a lot of RPGs: making sure that you have everything you need immediately on your person, and everything you might need two hours later conveniently stowed away, is paramount if you don't want your ass handed back to you in tatters.

5. Nurturing a strong stomach

Some jobs require taking a no-nonsense approach to people are their, well, functions, such as cleaning or nursing. Others ?involve dealing with the slightly grosser aspects of humanity just by being in close proximity with so many people for eight-plus hours a day. Quite a few games deals in the visceral and the slightly squelchy, and playing a few of those will help toughen you up when it comes to relatively boring human behaviour and biology.

One game that I recently heard was incredibly violent and graphic, even for people used to graphic games, is The Darkness II. But really, a lot of horror games can be of assistance here, whether it is Saw: The Video Game, Outlast or a bog-standard Silent Hill classic. Basically anything where you wouldn'?t want to be tu?cking into a plate of spaghetti bolognese while playing.

Which skills do you think you've picked up from playing games? How has playing games helped (or even hindered) your work life (e.g. Diner Dash helped you wait tables)? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post The transferable skills in gaming appeared first on Destructoid.

I think I speak for everyone when I say: knock this shit off

(Photo credit: John B. Snyder)

Three people are looking at federal charges in the US in connection with the death of Andrew Finch, 28, outside of his property after a SWAT team was called to his house. Tyler Barriss, who went under the handle of "SWAuTistic", has already been charged with making the hoax call that led to Finch's house being "swatted". He already has a history of calling in hoax bomb threats to schools an?d a local? TV station, which saw him spend two years in a county jail.

The co-accused, Shane Gaskill and Casey Viner, had an argument over a mere $1.50 bet on a Call of Duty game. Viner decided to enlist Barriss' services to get back at Gaskill, given that Barriss was, at the time, allegedly operating as ??a swatter for hire. This would be bad enough, but Gaskill apparen??tly tricked the pair by giving out his old address, a house which his family had since rented out to another family.

Cue a SWAT team arriving on scene at the Finch household, believing that the occupant had murdered their father, had the rest of their family at gunpoint and was threatening to douse the? entire property in petrol. And?rew Finch was understandably unaware of what was going on and reached for his belt when he was stopped by the police, resulting in an officer shooting him. Andrew Finch was unarmed, and died from his gunshot wound. 

Barriss has now been charged with involuntary manslaughter, a charge the prosecution goes for when there is sufficient evidence of causing death by way of reckless or grossly negligent behaviour. Presumably, Barriss is not facing a murder charge becau??se it is unclear that he intended the death of Finch or whoever he swatted. He is still looking at up to eleven years in prison under Kansas sentencing?? laws.

Viner and Gaskill are looking at similar charges and sentences, given that they facilitated the shooting of Finch but presumably did not intend to kill or severely injure him, or there is probably not enough evidence of such i?ntent. The police officer in qu?estion may also be facing charges for shooting too rashly, but this has not yet been decided.

The case is being looke?d at by tech journalists around the world as an example of how criminal law is responding to new and unusual behaviour involving gaming and streaming: not just because it is a clear-cut case of the worst possible outcome from swatting, but because of the?? utterly senseless and horrifying nature of the circumstances surrounding the death.

What is swatting and when did it start?

Swatting is the practice of calling in a fake bomb threat, assault or other serious crime, prompting an entire police squad to break into someone's residence. It is closely associated with streaming, with malicious viewers getting hold of the streamer's address (usually through doxxing -- finding the address?? through researching social media sites or even illegal methods such as hacking) and ringing in the police so that the incident is caught live on webcam.

Depending on the unit called in, the streamer may be forced to the ground, handcuffed and have guns pointed at thei??r face. Of course, people respond differently to this sort of unexpected stress, which, combined with an officer who is quick to shoot, can end in tragedy.

According to Know Your Meme, the specific term came into use in December 2007, though calling in fake threats to the police with various motives has been around for much longer. If you searc??h YouTube, there are a bunch of videos showing streamers around the world finding themselves suddenly staring down the barrel of an assault rifle; it is by no means a pr?actice confined to the US. For the sake of not glamourising the act or turning it into entertainment, because it really, really, REALLY isn't funny, I won't link to the videos here, but they are readily available on the internet if you're inclined to take a look at swatting in action.

Why do people do it?

Why do people harass other people o??n the internet? It's a question that's been asked ever since the internet became a widespread means of communication. Maybe it's the fact that talking to people online makes you forget that you're dealing with human beings. Maybe if you combine immaturity, lack of empathy and the ability make anything happen at the touch of a button, horrific acts are the natural end result. Motives such as reven??ge and jealousy may also come into play when it is not third-parties who are getting injured or even losing their lives.

There's also the attention factor that is massively magnified compared to the usual hoax 911 threats. Barriss himself has apparently said that he enjoyed evacuating buildings with hoaxes, since it would end up on the news. Everything is caught on camera, so the swatter can see the fruits of their labour in real time. Take that line? of thought and a famous streamer who they perhaps envy because they get a ton of subscribers, or they think are getting attention for all the wrong reasons, and it is instant gratification for the sort of people who are wired to enjoy intensely vengeful acts.

It must become addictive like any other dangerous behaviour. I don't really know how to respond to people who find this practice alluring and cannot help themselves, except f?or to say if they find taking risks intoxicating, they s?hould take those risks with their own health and well-being, and not with the lives of others.

Is swatting itself a criminal offense?

Depending entirely on jurisdiction, there may be analogous offences to swatting, but the law is not quite modern enough to recognise it as its own crime (except in Kansas, where an anti-swatting law has already been passed in response to the case). Wasting police time is universally recognised as some sort of criminal offence, as is any act that recklessly puts life and limb at risk (either as a form of ass??ault or as involuntary manslau??ghter: see above regarding Barriss' charges). 

However, there is a strong case f??or making swatting its own criminal offence. Not only is it an act of harassment and a threat to the safety of the person targeted, but it is an act of humiliation. Swatting is not a private act, meaning that everyone watching the stream may see the target being pushed to the ground or carted off in handcuffs; that may damage their reputation or result in them being taunted for weeks.

It also puts the target in fear of gain?ing a criminal record, which could have all sorts of repercussions for the streamer (not least if streaming is a pastime/second job, and they have a day job that requires a clean criminal record). Hopefully, a small amount of good can come out of the terrible Finch case through swatting becoming its own criminal charge.

I'm so angry right now.

Me too. I can't imagine why anyone would do this to a streamer when they are 100% sure they have the right address, never mind where there is a significant risk of swatting a complete stranger. I've left aside the issue of how police react when a hostage situation is called in, because I don't feel ?like I can comment on the police in the US, as someone who lives in Europe. But I'm sure there will be plenty said about that by people who are more knowledgeable than me in the comments.

It's worth remembering that the proportion of people in the gaming community who commit such atrocities is minute, and a large number of people don't even stoop to mild name-calling. But the practice of swatting is so egregious that it does bring shame on streaming and the gaming community as a whole, particularly when those affected by it are outside of that community. We owe it to ourselves and society as a whole to reflect on how we?? can stop people being absolute pricks on the internet, or at least limit the damage that such pricks can do.

One answer is to report, report, report. The chances are that those who call in hoax crimes to the police don't stop there; they will pick other methods to harass and humiliate people online. And don't just stay quiet because you're not the victim – if you spot someone else being backed into a corner and don't feel like they have the resources to act for themselves, do what you can ??to report it, within the limits of the social media platform where you see the harassment.

Unfortunately, some sites have worse harassment guidelines than others, but if it renders at least one swatter toothless, it's worth it. If the means to report are terrible, give feedback that abuse reporting needs urgent improvement, and hopefully, enough?? voices speaking up at once can turn the tide. 

Also, d??on't be tempted to think that swatting is funny if nobody actually gets hurt, or if the target is some obnoxious internet celebrity who you don't like. The shock of having the police hammer down your door for no reason whatsoever is no?t something that anybody deserves, and by finding amusement in it, you are encouraging the act to happen to others.

I think the big message that we can take away from when "swatting goes wrong" is to be kinder to each other, both off the internet and on. You never know when something completely senseless like this is going to happen, and ev?en the most vitriolic of squabbles are not worth someone losing their life.

So, try to take a step back from your computer screen when you feel anger rising. Even if you would never, ever think of going to the lengths that Viner went to in order to get back at a random username you've argued with, it's still worth walking aw??ay and taking a break when the urge to launch into a tirad??e rises. We've all been there, when we want to sound off at someone online, but is it really worth it?

When?? something like this happens, I don't really see the point in getting angry on the internet anymore. Coming to my hobbies and pastimes from a place of anger is never worth the poor trade-offs, even if they ??aren't as drastic and life-changing as what happened in the Wichita swatting case.

The post Three charged in deadly Call of Dut?y swatting case appeared first on Destructoid.

The PS3 is dead! Long live the PS3!

_{[We ran this in February, but we loved it so much we bumped it again for those who missed it. Enjoy! -Niero]}

The figures are out, and the PlayStation 4 is already close to catching up with the PlayStation 3 when it comes to lifetimes sales. We're reaching peak PS4 time, with huge releases such as Monster Hunter: World and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus coming to the console in the past few months.?? To be frank, we're drowning in good current-gen games, so it's probably time to sell old consoles to buy extra games, send slightly battered models off to the scrap heap, or simply leave them untouched, gathering dust, on the shelf. 

Hold it right there, though! Now is absolutely not the time to be even thinking of getting rid of your PS3. I would even argue that now is the perfect time to buy a PS3, if you missed out on that era of games. There's still life in the old gal yet, and what's more, it's becoming a very cheap console to collect for. I play my PlayStation 3 probably about 60% of the time I'm gaming, while 30% goes on ??my PlayStation 4 and a measly 10% goes on low-res adventure and point-and-click games on my battered old laptop. And I can't sa??y I've got bored yet.

So, why should you rush out and get a second-hand PS3? And? how do you make the PS3 an exciting, useful console in 2018, when you have a PS4 already sitting in your cabinet? Let me discuss why I think the PS3 still has legs, and what to do to fall back ?in love with the console.

Why now?

Right now, we're in that collectors' sweet spot where the PlayStation 3 is distinctly unfashionable. It's not old enough to be attractive to the retro crowd – the PlayStation and even the PlayStation 2 is starting to go that way – while those who want to play the most up-to-date games have tossed it aside. Furthermore, sellers want to get rid of their old PS3 games for something new, and want you to take the games off their hands. And, unless you're going for something quite rare like a Katamari game, they don't tend to want much money for parts?? of their collection.

Since mid-2016, I will often ?bid 3 euros each on a bunch of PS2 and PS3 g?ames on eBay, and see what I win. Very often, PS3 game bidding won't go much above that, and through this practice, I've built a 40-strong PS3 boxed disc collection for the cost of two or three Day One PS4 releases. It's been pretty horrendous for my backlog, but great for those lazy Saturday mornings where I can browse my collection at leisure and pick something out at random to pop in my console.

Furthermore, the PS3 is not THAT outdated that it is a pain to use. It's composite cable and HDMI friendly, meaning it will work without too much hassle on any TV. This is unlike some retro consoles, where having a 4k HDTV will require a lot o?f fiddling and adapters. Also, as I'll talk about below, PS3 games were getting pretty polished and beautiful towards the end of the console life-cycle, so unless you have a top-notch TV (which I most certainly don't), the games will actually look very good, despite being "older" games. There are also a lot of games that are now only playable if you have a PS3, so the console ?is a must if you want access to as many games as possible that were released over the past 12 years.

OK, Deadly Premonition isn't the best example of the PS3's graphical crispness.

Maybe I've convinced you to dig out your old console, or you're ?counting your pennies to pick up a refurbished model. How shou??ld you proceed?

Original PS3 versus Slim versus Super Slim

The PlayStation 3 didn't quite have the massive, systemic problems that early Xbox 360s had, with the "Red Ring of Death". Sure, there was the "Yellow Light of Death" common to origi??nal consoles, but levels of outrage about faulty hardware were somewhat lower. The age of hardware is still something you'll want to factor in when making a purchase.

Original PS3s have the added benefit that they are PS2 backwards compatible (with some exceptions), but this addition was removed, in part because it was expensive, in part because it was an unstable addition to the console. Because these consoles were the first produced, the model you get your hands on is likely t?o be from an early production cycle and so will need more extensive age-related refurbishment to run properly. 

The Slim model has? no PS2 backwards compatibility but has a plethora of advantages: 1) was released more recently, so you're more likely to get one in good nick, and 2) it's much lighter and much more energy-efficient (but still a pretty big bugger, in my opinion).

A photo from Sam Hughes of his ginormous original PS3.

If you want something you can carry around with you, get the Super Slim, but then upgrading the hard drive wi??ll be absolutely necessary if you want to pla?y more than a handful of games. 

[The article previously said that swapping out the hard-drive on non-Slim models was difficult. Apparently this is not the case, and I've been corrected in the comments. Sorry for the misinformation, folks! – CC]

Buying the console

If you're lucky, your local electronics sup?erstore may still be selling off new PS3s cheap. I seem to remember that my local Saturn department store was still selling them a year ago, but a year is a long time in games?.

However, I didn't get mine new - I got my 120GB Slim PS3 in July 2015 from Rebuy, bundled with Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and LittleBigPlanet 2, plus one real DS3 and one crappy third-party controller, for 115 euros in total. Rebuy tells you exactly how close to new the console is, and puts a 18-month warranty on all consoles, regardless of the state they're in. I would advise looking for something similar wherever you live ?– 18 months is a fairly reasonable amount of time for old hardware to last, so I'd be willing?? to eat the cost of buying a new console if it broke after then.

The first thing you should do...

...is upgrade that flippin' hard-drive. Unless you already have a 500GB or higher model, then you can probably manage. If you want to play a lot of chunky digital-only games like Yakuza 5 or, say, lots of JP-only ??downloads from the PS Store, ?you're going to need a large hard-drive.

Get your hands on (ideally, a new) 2.5" hard drive. SATA will do; no need for a more expensive SSD, since performance boost seems to be minimal at best. You can find instructions on how to open up your Slim or Super Slim console to swap out the hard-drive here; the newer the type, th?e less fiddly a job it is.

Be warned! Opening up the Slim is a tricky job, and the screws holding the drive to the mounting bracket are extremely fragile. Make sure you have a very small Phillips head screwdriver to hand, because if you try to batter away at it with a bigger tool, you'll end up st??ripping the screws to shreds.

It goes without saying that doing this v??oids any warranty, but any Sony-specific warranties are useless by this point. Whether you want to void any resale warranties or not is entirely at your own discretion; I upgraded my hard-drive after my resale warranty had lapsed. My P??S3 is a lot noisier and has freezed a couple of times since I upgraded, but again, I'm willing to eat the cost of getting a new PS3 to Frankenstein by this point.

Optimising the PS3 for modern use

So, let's talk about the things you do not need from your PS3 right now, and that's the apps. Speaki??ng from an EU user perspective, Spotify hasn't worked properly the entire time I've had my console. Netflix worked the last time I tested it but runs much smoother and loads quicker on the PS4. I would say that overall, this is not a console you want to use for streaming TV or any other side-ops; this is what your most modern console, laptop, Amazon Fire stick, etc. is for. Delete apps where you can. Of course, some people report using their old consoles as dedicated streaming boxes, but that's not worked out super well for me so ??far.

What you should have to get the most out of your PS3 is a PS Plus subscription, even if you don't go online much. I can say I've never been disappointed with PS Plus service (well, some months are better than others) because I own all the consoles Sony releases games for on this service, except for the PSVR. Very often, pretty impressive games for the PS3 will come out on the service because people aren't buying them in droves anymore, such as the port of Syberia (the less said about the awful port of Syberia II, the better), Darkstalkers Resurrection, Child of Light and, of course, the aforementioned Yakuza 5. Sure, there's a lot of PS3 shovelware pushed out on the service, but you're more likely to stumble across something you really, really like if you have the full breadth o?f consoles served by the online sh?op.

[Note: since this article was first published, Sony has announced that PS P?lus will stop offering PS3 games from March?? 2019 onwards. Enjoy this extra PS Plus perk while you can! – CC]

And it goes without saying?? to hook it up to your TV with a HDMI cable. My console arrived only with composite cables. I don't know about you, but my H?DMI cables seem to reproduce with each other, and the cables are cheap nowadays, so this should be a pretty easy upgrade.

Which PS3 games should I focus on?

There is something there for everybody with the PS3. OK, if you want to play only the most modern fighting games, then you're going to want to eschew older consoles and get good on Tekken 7/Street Fighter V/pick your poison. Same goes for sports ??g??ames, if having an up-to-date roster is important to you. But for almost everyone else, there is something there.  

(Note: this is where you might be yelling, "but what about PS Now?!", given this allows you to stream some PS3 games to your PS4. Well, some regions don't have that service? at all – Germany doesn’t – and not all of us have a great internet connection. So ??that's not a solution for everyone.)

There is a range of PS1 and PS2 Classics that is for the PS3. Aside from the fact that you can still only play Persona 3: FES on a PS2 or a PS3, there are a handful of other Shin Megami Tensei releases available, if JRPGs are your thing. If you want a hard time of it, see if you get far enough to meet Dante in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Aside from this, the entire swathe of Final Fantasy PS1 games are there for the taking on the PS? Store, if you have a PS3.

The same applies for horror fans. Sick of waiting for news on a remake of Resident Evil 2? Why not play the original on your PS3 to tide you over? It's there on the store for dirt cheap, alongside the DualShock version of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 3. If you're not a fan of Crimson Heads and Lisa Trevor, then the former might be for you; if you'r??e missing your old paramour Nemmie Boy, the latter might be your bag.

So it goes on and on. LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2 still hold up remarkably well; I would never say no to a cheap copy of Borderlands on which to play the single-player campaign; if you never played the Arkham games, then this?? is your chance. Whatever your tastes, you can find something to entertain you on a snowy Sunday afternoon. Here are my favourite purchases for my PS3 that are act?ual PS3 games:

• L.A. Noire. Yes, it's since come out remastered, but you can get a much cheaper copy for the PS3. While it may not be 4K, the facial animations and detail is still amazing. There are some games where it's worth getting the remastered version, such as Resident Evil 5 and 6 and the Bioshock collection, and some games where you may as well get the cheaper original. This is one where I would advise that the original is still an excellent game.

• Atelier Rorona. A super relaxing JRPG with inventory management and potion-making components. I used to play this with the sound off while listening to podcasts, as my post-work de-stressing ritual. It comes in a three-pack with Atelier Meruru and Atelier Totori, which was well worth the 12 euros I paid for it. An enhanced version is also available for sale on its own, titled Atelier Rorona Plus.

• Tales of Xillia. OK, this game absolutely whooped my ass and I'm currently stuck in a forest area. It's a grindfest, sure, but the story absolutely had its hooks in me until I came unstuck during a boss battle. Worth it if you want a challenge.

• LittleBigPlanet 2. Surprise, surprise, I have a soft spot for the game that came with my console. But it's timeless platforming, and who can say no to a bit of Stephen Fry?

• XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I'm still pissed that I lost half my team during an ill-fated zombie-fighting mission. Word of advice: don't name your teammates after friends or relatives.

• Steins;Gate. If you don't have a PS Vita and fancy playing Steins;Gate on the couch, get it for your PS3. You won't regret it - it's the best VN ever made, in my opinion.

***

Overall, I think there's value in looking backward??s, as well as looking forwards, when it comes to games. There are many people who can't afford to keep up with modern gaming, and I was one of these people until just a few months ago. Also, unless you spent every waking moment gaming in the past ten years, you're likely to have missed something. If you want a thorough overview of the development of modern gaming, it is completely worth taking a glance back at the previous generation. And what a generation it was.

Do you still have a PS3? What advice would you give to people who want to get into PS3 gaming at this stage? Do you have any similar advice for budding Xbox 360 fans? Let me know in the comments down below!

Want to read some more great stuff from our archives?  This stuff is golden

The post Gettin??g the most out of your PlayStation 3 in 2018 appeared first on Destructoid.

Part 1 of my deep dive into the world of playing games fast

So, speedrunning. We've heard of it, we watch the marathons sometimes??, and we ??might even make a donation to charity in its name. Not much to talk about, right?

I mean, I thought that way for a while, and didn't quite get the fascination. Why play games as quickly as possible when you end up skipping half the story? How is it any different to standard streaming, and surely it represents an inflated sense of competition with no real aim at all? Who cares about wasting time playing through a game from start to f?inish, just to shave mere seconds off your time?

Then I watched AGDQ 2018 and changed my mind pretty much overnight. Within the space of, oh, four months, I w?ent from finding the whole thing a bit silly, to signing up to volunteer at a different speedrunning event and being approved to do my own run. I went so fast I went dizzy.

But this isn't just a story about how I found speedrunning, why speedrunning is great and who you should be paying attention to during the upcoming marathons. This is the first part in a series, where I will be interviewing speedrunners, reporting on the event I'm attending in the summer (the European Speedrunner Assembly) and talking about how people come up with the best strats possible. I hope to jump face-first into speedrunning as much as I can, ev?en as someone?? who has two left feet when it comes to natural gaming prowess.

From casual observer to casual participant

Right, so, settle down children, and let me tell the tale of how I became aware that speedrunning was a big deal. Your nanan Charlotte will only t?alk your ear off with personal st?ories and "back in my day" monologues for one entry to this series, so grit your teeth. Your parents will swing by to pick you up soon. 

I've always been interested in no damage/melee weapon only runs, particularly for Resident Evil. I've watched CarcinogenSDA's commentated videos for quite a long time, because I'm a bit dim and don't realise in the moment that he probably wouldn't upload a video if he failed the run. Because of this, watching him play Resident Evil Remake, knowing there'll be an instant fail if he gets hit even once, kept me on the edge of my seat and great fun t?o watch. Simply "going fast" wasn't attractive to me.

It was when I stumbled upon videos from AGDQ 2018 in January that an interest in speedrunning was kindled. I wish I could say that I became interested in the pursuit because I realised there were a multitude of categories and associated conditions that had to be met, and it was more complex than I ever imagined; that I was tempted by my favourite games getting a look-in; that seeing?? the analytical and technical side of executing glitches was what drew me to it, as an ex-academic. And all those factors definitely contributed.?? But ultimately, what interested me about speedrunning was realising it was bloody hilarious.

Kotti's Arabian Nights speedrun at AGDQ 2018

I've always been a bit put off by traditional streaming/Twitch culture, because it has just felt so inaccessible to me?. Of course, people can and should take their hobbies seriously, but I've felt like I'm treading on people's toes when I get involved in a gaming sub-culture and don't know tons about it right from the start. That I'm opening myself up to embarrassment, or getting shat on from a great height for daring to say the wrong thing.

Seeing that speedrunners can have a laugh at the expense of the games they play, and a laugh at themselves, made the activity instantly more attractive to me. Seeing that there are a plethora of terrible games that get played fast encouraged me to watch less tongue-in-cheek runs, such as those of games I've always loved watching others play, like the Silent Hill series.

aneternalenigma's Silent Hill 4: The Room speedrun at AGDQ 2017

I had the choice this year as to which big gaming event I would attend – I'd promised myself I would go to at least one. Gamescom was on the list for a really long time, but non-writing folk convinced me that standing in line to play a tiny snippet of a beta would bore me to tears. When I found out about the European Speedrunner Assembly, which is held every year in Sweden, I decided it would be ?the perfect opportunity to find out more about a fresh gaming community, without bankrupting myself by shelling out for plane tickets to the States. Being an e-sports reporter never ap?pealed to me too much, but I could really see myself specialising in something like speedrunning. I was hyped.

Cut to me talking more on Discord to seasoned speedrunners and watching more runs, and before long, I didn't just want to observe it. I wanted to give it a go myself. But I was a young'un, who struggled to complete games half the time, never mind do so in a timely manner. So I stuffed down my embarrassment, screwed my eyes shut and stuck my fingers in my ears, submitted a load of rhythm games in the ?blind hope I'd get something onto the B-stream, and then put it out of my mind. It's my top tip for getting anywhere in life – do stuff that absolutely mortifies you, ignore your own impending feelings of doom, and half the time, stuff works itself out anyway. 

Ah, bugger.

Yep, so Destructoid will be reppin' at ESA on Stream Two. Put that reminder on your calendar! I'm also volunteering to read donations, so you might hear my Brian Blessed-esque tones (in accent, not in volume) wishing death to all the animals on Stream O??ne. And who knows – I have a few extra ideas up my sleeve when it comes to Destructoid streaming once or twice at the event, but we'll see?? what I manage while enjoying Sweden.

So, yeah, I guess I'm a speed??runner now?! Well, sort of. But not really. Hence the quotation marks in the title. But these diaries will not only provide you with further information on top speedrunners and how speedrunning events go down, but will also track me trying to learn more games. I'm hoping that in a chapter in the new future, I feel comfortable deleting the sarcastic punctuation.

What's next?

So, to recap, this is ??what you can expect from the Diary? of a "Speedrunner":

1. Interviews with speedrunners

2. Notes on my own? progress with preparin??g for ESA/trying out other speed games

3. A recap of ESA 2018

4. Let's see what other collab ideas I can come up with come on you guys I've got the Football World Cup to gear up for as well don'tcha know

But I don't want to leave you with just a tedious and irrel??evant story of how I got into speedrunning. Here are a few of the speedruns I'm looking at with great interest, with an eye to giving them a go myself.

Lisa: The Painful RPG

Harpa's run at ESA 2017

If you've read some of my other articles on here, you might be aware that I'm enamoured of this game, and want as many people as possible to know about it. It's also a really interesting game to speedrun, because it's hard as nails, involves a lot of moving backwards and forwards between stages, and it's very easy to literally fall off a fucking cliff.

Skullmonkeys

A Skullmonkeys speedrun by Rulas

Again, a personal favourite that I'??d like to transpose from odd little curiosity to an item in my speedrunning attempts roster. Unlikely to actually happen,? since it's a bit of a shonky platformer and the Sno level would have me clawing my eyes out in frustration even if the timer were missing.

Elite Beat Agents

Hey, I was as surprised as you that people speedrun rhythm games. PaRappa the Rapper 2's go-fast route is to never rap bad and skip cutscenes as quickly as possible. That's it. But if I'm allowed to combine my interest in rhythm games with speediness, I'm not going to complain. Here's puchiedarcy filming the DS sc?reen (and, erm?, his crotch) for your viewing delight.

Haunting Ground

Haunting Ground run by thesea4021

I like my Let's Plays like I like my food: Japanese and drenched in blood. I'm a big fan of Capcom and Konami-produced horror games and their demon spawn, and this interest extends to speed games. I feel like Haunting Ground and the Siren series don't get much of screen time at marathons – probably for good reason, but I'm a complete novice, so who knows – so any exposure for these thoroughly creepy games would be more tha??n welcome. Maybe I'll be brave and persistent enough to give them a try someday. Probably way, WAY into the future, since they are not pitched at b??eginners.

Forbidden Siren run by Bonesaw577

Do you enjoy watching or taking part in speedrunning? Do you have a favourite speedrunner or speedrunning game? Is there anything in particular you would like to see covered in the diary (I am 100% open to requests)? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Diary of a ‘speedrunner,’ part 1 appeared first on Destructoid.

Buy me GoldenEye or go to hell

The Simpsons has been on our screens for coming up to 30 years, becoming a cornerstone in comedy timing and how to make quality animated entertainment content. And it's true that there are divides in the fandom: When did the show stop being funny? Season 8? Season 13? Are the Treehouse of Horror episodes the best episodes, or the worst episodes? Was the first season a load of ol??d shite, or was it just a little rough around the edges? What should we do about culturally insensitive storylines written way back in the 1990s? Is Hans Moleman the sexiest m?an alive? 

However, the fanbase is still going strong, with dedicated meme pages popping up all over the shop and syndication continuing into perpetuity. The Simpsons has even had a fair few video games devoted to it, some being rightly regarded as classics, while others are appropriately reviled as the worst of licensed content. (Not The Simpsons Wrestling, though – I have a strange fondness for that game despite its technical flaws, just like Homer's inexplicable love of Sheriff Lobo.)

But, ignoring bona fide Simpsons games, which video games pair well with individual episodes, like a refreshing Duff with a Krusty Burger, or a crab juice with a stick of Khlav Kalash? I gave it a good try with? my list below – which is apparently the first step towards failure.

Putting this list together was actually a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Early Simpsons episodes are more like standard morality tales, which doesn't always map well to video games. Sure, some of the biggest games of the last few years have ethical choices embedded in them, but it's also often combined with violence or other characteristics that don't fit well with a PG-rated show. For example, would I pair "Homer the Vigilante" with Manhunt, just because both involve the lead character getting back at criminals through equally questionable acts? No, it feels like a bit of a stretch. All the more reason for you to pipe up in the comments down below with your own favourite pairings of games and Simpsons episodes!

1. Bart the General (S1 E5), Bully/Canis Canem Edit

I thought I'd open with an early Simpsons episode – yes, I am one of those people who really enjoys the first season of The Simpsons. The animation is worse and the jokes may not land quite as well, but you ??can see the raw materials of something brilliant.

In "Bart the General", Bart leads an army of his fellow students in a water-balloon-based battle against the school bullies. Grandpa Simpson and Herman Hermann, the one-armed gun shop owner, even get in on the deal, both seizing on their army vet knowledge to plan out strategies with Bart. It's an early instance of the time-honoured Simpsons tradition of parodying film, with Full Metal Jacket getting a nod. I??n my opinion, it's one of the more intelligent and deeply amusing Simpsons episodes, subtly lampooning the adult practic??e of war rather than going for instant belly laughs.

Bully came straight to mind when I was thinking about this episode. While Bully is not really a game about war, it is about a troubled teenager fighting against certain factions at his school. There are many parallels between Jimmy and Bart that go beyond this particular episode, but Bart actually fighting back made me realise how much they are cut from the same cloth. If you want the feeling of returning to school again, with no real struggles except the silly fights you pick for pretty spurious reasons, I'd advise watching Bart the General and playing Bully.

2. Bart on the Road (S7 E20), Final Fantasy XV

Full disclosure: Final Fantasy XV gripped me from the start, while other Final Fantasy games have not been able to get their hooks into me that easily. This is because it starts off with that bloo??dy car scene and then the Florence and the Machine music starts playing and you know something bad is going to happen and things aren't going to be this way forever and before you know it, you're howling in anguish into a carton of ice-cream.  

"Bart on the Road" reminds me a lot of those early days in Hammerhead, when things were going a little bit off the rails, but not quite as terribly as they do an hour or so into the game. In this episode, Bart forges a driver's licence and goes on a road trip with his crew to attend the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. They discover that the ??fair has been abandoned and find themselves stuck in the middle of nowhere without a ride.

While the purpose of the road trip in this Simpsons episode is more frivolous – going to an expo versus getting married – and Final Fantasy XV is very rarely about innocent hi-jinks, it kind of ti??ckles me to think of the two alongside each other. Maybe the crown prince's squad had a few of these youthful, purposeless jaunts across Eos before shit got real.

3. Homerpalooza (S7 E24), Tony Hawk's Underground 2

Homerpalooza is another highly memorable and meme-able episode, whether it's Cypress Hill jamming with the London Symphony Orchestra, Peter Frampton's lost inflatable pig or Homer's confused exchange with Billy Corgan. The entire episode is based on the alt-rock scene of the late 1990s, which predates the skater scene of the early-mid 2000s, but is not so fa??r removed from it.

What particularly made me think of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 when watching this episode was ?the plot point of Homer catching cannonballs with his stomach. Homer is renowned for putting his health at risk for stup??id ideas and schemes (see also "King-Size Homer" and "The Homer They Fall"), but it's particularly egregious and to Jackass levels in "Homerpalooza".

It reminded me a lot of the kicking that Phil Margera got in Viva La Bam and in some of the cutscenes in Tony Hawk's Underground 2. Did Phil not tell his son to quit being a dick because it made them money? Because he was spineless? Or because, like Homer, he wanted to be cool and popular? I'm not sure, but while the set pieces in THUG2 have aged very poorly, "Homerpal??ooza" is more of a nostalgia kick for me. Well, as nostalgic as you can be for a scene that was thri??ving when you were barely out of nappies. But hey, I listened to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins as a brooding tween, so that surely counts.

4. You Only Move Twice (S8 E2), GoldenEye 007

This is an obvious one. The main plot of "You Only Move Twice" is about Homer's new boss seeming like a nice chap on the face of it, but he is actually a Bond villain, with Homer of course remaining completely obliv??ious until late in the day. Hank Scorpio is a fan favourite, and for good reason: it's very witty that Homer would escape one megalomaniac boss (Mr Burns) and wind up with another so nice and understanding that he loops back around to being evil too (Scorpio). 

A silly yet great episode deserves a silly yet great game, and the iconic Rare title GoldenEye 007 answers that call. Not only is it a well-liked Bond game, but people sing the praises of its multiplayer and it's listed along Perfect Dark as one of the best FPS games of its era. With less than a year between "You Only Move Twice's" broadcast date and the release of GoldenEye 007 for the N64, you'd be hard pushed to find ?a more perfect pairing. 

5. The Joy of Sect (S9 E13), Far Cry 5

This episode perfectly showcases the difference between the "dumb" characters in The Simpsons and those who are capable of critic??al thinking. When a cult (based on real-life cults, such as Scientology and Heaven's Gate) rolls into town, the populace of Springfield get roped in en masse. While Marge and Lisa very quickly start pushing against the boundaries of what the Movementarians allow them to do, Homer is quite happy to go along with the simple teachings of the group. Marge's escape scene even made me think of what I had read on people trying to traverse the no man's land in front of the Berlin Wall, making an illicit journey from East to West. It's an episode that feels well rese?arched and keeps a good balance between comedy and tragedy.

A recent and notable game about cults is Far Cry 5. Joseph Seed is a more menacing and disturbing character than the Leader, and the Leader is more of a scam artist than a deluded and dangerous man. But the episode and the game paired with each other show both the ridiculous and the serious sides to fanaticism, which is a quite important contrast to take in. Even the funnier approach of this Simpsons episode does a lot to explain how everyday people ca?n be lured into cults, even though most of us insist we would never be so gullible.

6. Trash of the Titans (S9 E22), Democracy 3/SimCity 4

Beyond the fact that the "Garbage Man" song is one of the catchier tunes in the Simpsons repertoire, and U2 (alongside R.E.M.) is my favourite cameo in the series, I love this episode. It's the perfect example of Homer biting off mo?re than he can chew, and of Homer being stubborn on principle. My other favourite instance of Ho??mer being as stubborn as a mule is when he sues Captain McAllister after he gets kicked out of the Frying Dutchman for absolutely gutting the place during an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Homer leaps face-first into his new position as garbage commissioner in "Trash of the Titans", abusing his office and the environment with equal gusto. In the end, the entire town has to be moved, as the original Springfield becomes a literal landfill site. This level of incompetence is hard to achieve by accident, but if you want to appreciate how hard it can be to make good-faith decisions in power, play Democracy 3. My multiple playthroughs of that game have a?lways been incredibly short, because? it can be very difficult to stick to your principles while running a fiscally sound country.

Likewise, the SimCity games (I've listed SimCity 4 as the most recent "good" SimCity game)? back you into a corner a lot when it comes to running a town in a sustainable fashion. Think you can do better than Homer? Try your ??luck with these games, but prepare yourself for how easy it is to slip into unintentional or negligent incompetence. 

Are you a Simpsons fan? Which episodes would you pair with a video game, and why? Have you played Bonestorm or Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Pairing Simpsons episodes with video games appeared first on Destructoid.

Because five straight hours of Peppa Pig can drive any man to the depths of insanity

I'm creeping into my late twenties, which means a lot of the people in my social circles are getting married and deciding to have children. Instead of buying sarcastic t-shirts about how I am very much not about that life right now, while secretly munching through my third packet of Farley's Rusks, I am actually quite stoked to become an auntie figure, or perhaps even a godmother sometime in the future. Kids are ??like library books – fun while they last, but you're glad to hand them back at the en??d. In part because of the smell.

Now, of course, any self-respecting auntie or uncle needs to teach their underlings the ways of the video game. Thankfully, the vast majority of "children's" games are more like fun for all the family, similar to how Harry Potter took off among adult readers. So, ??I've provided you with six suggestions of how to take some of the mind-numbing boredom and frus?tration out of babysitting, and find a way to share your hobby with your miniature chums.

As an aside, there are a couple of games I'm fairly sure will belong on this list, but I haven't played enough of them to feel confident including them. If you've played Yoshi's Woolly World, Kirby's Epic Yarn and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, I'd particularly love to hear your?? thoughts on their suitability in the commen??ts!

1. For the mini mechanics: Ratchet and Clank (PS4)

This entire article is pretty much thanks to Ratchet and Clank. I played it from start to finish last weekend, my face the picture of childish glee from beginning to end. Before then, I'd only ever tried out Ratchet and Clank 3, and felt a bit lost, since the game (quite understandably) presumes?? that you know what's going on and you know what you're doing by the third e??ntry to the series.

The Ratchet and Clank&nbs??p;re-imagining gave? me reason to care for the characters, to squeal in delight whenever Clank did anything remotely cute and to giggle at Captain Qwark's buffoonery. It's about as close as you'll get to a full Pixar experience in a game, and while some of the levels too feel a little off-kilter and the signposting wasn't great in some areas, kids would absolutely love this if they had an adult to guide them through the trickier parts. I can't wait to introduce my cousin to games, and I think I might start off with this.

2. For the crafty kids: Tearaway Unfolded (PS4)

If I were to pick just one MediaMolecule game that would be a blast for kids, it's Tearaway (Unfolded just for the ease of playing it on a bigger screen via the PS4; the original Tearaway is not PSTV compatible in Europe).

The LittleBigPlanet series is one of my favourites, and it has plenty of potential to encourage kids to be creative and already start thinking about level design. However, Tearaway impressed me with how educational it is regarding actions and reactions from manipulating the wind; it also has some intricate puzzle-solving elements that both the kids and the adults will need to collaborate on to get just right. I felt a real sense of wonder as I played through Tearaway Unfolded, and I fe??el like?? it's a unique experience young children shouldn't miss out on.

If you want to follow this up with an entry from the LittleBigPlanet series, my favourite is probably 2.2 is also particularly good for smaller children, since it doesn't have some of the more complicated bells and whistles that 3 has, e.g. other Sack characters.

3. For the nature nerds: Flower (PS3/PS4/Vita/iOS)

If you're in the market for something to calm down your tiny terrors after they've scoffed down too many Jaffa Cakes, then Flower could be your saviour. Using the rotation sensors in the DualShock controller, the player controls a flower petal, swaying th??rough the wind and collecting other? petals, while sitting back and enjoying picturesque scenes of nature. Some kids might find its muted atmosphere extremely boring, but others will be mesmerised by the interactivity, and soothed by how sedate the game is. 

If you're looking for something relaxing and walking sim-like that's a bit more involved, alternatives would be Journey (by the same developers) or The Unfinished Swan for older kids. While more hyperactive, the original De Blob involves methodically decorating buildings in an environment by splodging paint everywhere, which might also distract so??me children who enjoy more repetitive actions.

4. For the curious collectors: Pokémon Crystal (3DS)

Don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to Team Skull and Nebby? You're in good company, my friend. The 2nd generation of Pokémon has always been my favourite: there were just enough creatures out there to catch that proceedings stayed interesting, but the designs were still imaginative. Plus, I felt way more immersed in Johto t?han I ever did in Kanto; being able to convert Apricorns into special Pokéballs is still one of my favourite little quirks in the series.

Luckily, the presence of Pokémon Crystal on the Virtual Console for the 3DS means there's really no reason not to introduce younger siblings, young cousins or young footsoldiers to older varients of Pokémon – back when times were simpler and your worries were confined to Team Rocket. Hey, if you preferred the 1st generation of Pokémon, then this is a judgment-free zone; and Pokémon Yellow&nb?sp;is also available for the 3DS. It's the perfect opportunity to show children that games that l??ook a bit "old" aren't necessarily lame, and can more than stand up to newer, shinier versions. 

5. For the sporty souls: Mario Strikers Charged Football (Wii)

Me and my sister absolutely loved Mario Strikers Charged Football when we got our Wiis, way back in 2007. Yes, I said Wiis, because asking me and my sister to share anything was about as feasible as attempting to go for a casual stroll on the moon. But the one game we had a lot of fun playing together was this heavily simplified football/soccer game. The goal celebrations are cute and fun??ny, the mechanics are dumbed down enough for anyone to join in on the fun, and there are plenty of ways to get a cheap goal or two in the back of the net. Don't torment the little on??es by trying to explain the offside rule – instead get into an astro turf tussle with Bowser and a handful of Shy Guys.

6. For the adventurous rascals: Rayman Legends (pretty much any current-gen/last gen console)

This list would absolutely not be complete without Rayman Legends (which is scheduled to be a PS Plus game next month – nice timing!). I remember playing the first Rayman on PS1 back as a wee lass, and I have to admit that I didn't think that was a very child-friendly game. It was needlessly frustrating in parts, with a bunch of cheap deaths and powers that felt neither intuitive nor particularly helpful. Rayman Legends and its predecessor, Origins, wiped the slate clean and came up with a Rayman game that harks back to old days, while offering something much more accessible than in the mid-90s. While what I have played of Revolution and Hoodlum Havoc did a great job of transporting Rayman to the 3D platforming world, if you want to keep your Rayman 2D and simple, Origins and Legends are your best bet.

Honourable mentions:

• Theme Park World (PS1) – probably the best management sim for kids, it strips back a few layers from the original Theme Park while adding an entertaining mascot. Get a PAL copy if you can, since the voice acting is much better (read: superbly Scottish).
• New Super Mario Bros (Wii) – co-op Super Mario Bros – you can't go far wrong with the classics.
• Kuri Kuri Mix/The Adventures of Cookies and Cream (PS2) – play as two bunnies helping each other to traverse a map under a strict time limit. Single-player is a bit naff, but joining forces with a fellow puzzle fiend makes the game much more interesting.
• Mario Party 8 (Wii) – in my opinion, the best of the Mario Party games I have played. The train level is a blast, especially when the tables get unexpectedly turned on the poor sod in first place.

What are your top tips for games to play when you have younger relatives visiting? If you have kids, which games do you play with them, or what do they enjoy playing among themselves? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Her??e are six games to play with the tiny humans i??n your life appeared first on Destructoid.

Or, how the population of Silent Hill desperately need some parenting classes

The past week in games has been all about strong, imposing men getting in touch with their softer side and nurturing their young – well, and cardboard boxes. Both Kiryu Kazuma in Yakuza 6 and Kratos in God of War may not quite be rocking the dad bod, with milk stains and baby sick down their ratty old t-shirt and heavy bags under their eyes, but they do learn a thing or two about how tough life as a father is. Overall, the impression I've gleaned from promo material for both games – I own neither, since I'm drowning in my backlog as it is – is that the protagonists fall into the massive pile of flawed father figures who are interesting to study but can hardly be reviled. Even if Kratos was an absolute bastard in God of War III.

However, some in-game portrayals of the parent-child relationship (note: I am not limiting myself to biological kin here) are so black-and-white appalling that it's safe to label the dad as a complete failure. Games are not short on blokes who commit felonies against their offspring and violate all paternal moral codes on a regular basis. Frankly, the average video game dad at least tries to look af?ter their youngsters, and that's a damn sight better than what this scum bucket collectively musters when it comes to their kids.

So, who are these terrible fathers? I can think of five who are on my blacklist, and none of them have a shred of decency about them. Except the last entry, who in retrospect is nowhere near as bad as the others. Come on, dudes, it's Sunday – I had to find some space for a little bit of light relief in ??an otherwise sickening ??list.

Warning: as well as containing heavy spoilers for a number of games, this list includes a game that addresses child abuse and suicide. If this is likely to cause you distress, please stop reading here.

***

1. Marty Armstrong, LISA: THE FIRST and LISA: THE PAINFUL

Marty is a thoroughly ugly person, both inside and out. He is the father to the eponymous Lisa and to Brad, who is the deuteragonist in LISA: THE PAINFUL. The events of LISA: THE FIRST, a proto??type RPG maker game developed by Austin Jorgensen (probably my favourite one-man-band developer out there), cover Lisa processing the abuse she experiences at the hands of Marty. 

LISA: THE PAINFUL certainly lives up to its name, with the start screen being a pixellated image of Lisa hanging by a noose. This is not symbolism – it's canon for the series that Lisa was so tormented by the abuse she experienced at the hands of Marty that she committed suicide. LISA: THE PAINFUL addresses many different themes, but one of them is Brad trying to correct his family's mistakes and misdeeds when parenting Buddy, a baby he finds who happens to be the only girl left in society. It's clear that the beatings he suffered while under Marty's roof and bearing witness to Lisa?'s?? suffering broke him, and he is committed to making sure he doesn't fail Buddy because of this terrible past.

The story is deeply upsetting and will probably make you hate Marty more than any fictional character you've ever hated before. Jorgensen himself doesn't give Marty much of a backstory or try to explain why he lashes out, instead just painting him as a revolting slob. And I think rightly so. Since the game is about the ripple effect abuse can have on families, no matter what else is going on in the world at the same?? time, trying to balance Marty's character would only detract from the main theme, which is Brad and Lisa's inte??nse pain and suffering. It doesn't matter why Marty is abusive. All that matters to Brad and Lisa is that he is. 

2. Shiro Miyata, (Forbidden) Siren

Shiro manages to be the most evil c?haracter in a game about a village's water supply turning pe??ople into demented, animated corpses, so...er...that's an achievement, I guess?

Shiro is a doctor at the village hospital, who is having a secret relationship with one of the nurses. When she finds out she is pregnant – which she is very happy about, especially because she thinks her and Shiro are a serious couple – he murders he??r in cold blood and buries the body in woodland. When the siren call occurs that triggers the rise of Shibito, he wakes up in the same woodland, and his ex-girlfriend ("ex" because he's an absolute monster with no soul) has dug herself out of her makeshift grave. 

You might think that's bad enough. Oh, no, my dear reader, it sadly gets much worse. When he finds the Shibito versions of both his ex-girlfriend and her twin sister, who's come back to the village from living in the city to look for her sister, he experiments on their corpses to see how much pain Shibito can endure. He then murders his own twin brother, who is a priest, and dresses up as him for an entire act of the game, with the player being none the wiser. There seem to be a lot of twins in Forbidden Siren&??nbsp;– must be something in the ??water. 

I've counted Shiro as a terrible dad because even though his girlfriend hadn't ev??en given birth yet, she was very much looking forward to their lives together. That compared with his heartless desecration of her body and of their unborn child after her death makes me shudder to think what would have happened if he had become a father. Absolutely for the best that he perished along with th?e village.

3. Adam Shepherd, Silent Hill: Homecoming

A few ground rules with religious death cults, here: don't inflict your death on unwilling participants, and do not drag children into your death cults. I think the Silent Hill series frequently misses the memo on t??his, or rather, sticks its fingers in its ears so hard when the list is being read out tha?t it punctures its eardrums.

While Dahlia Gillespie is probably the most dangerous mother in games, full-stop, Adam Shepherd is an equally hideous creature in many ways. I'm sorry, but if you are the patriarch of a family doomed to sacrifice their firstborn to appease the gods, put something on the end of it. Or if you're under pressure to have children, leave. Go into hiding. Do precisely what Harry Mason did in Silent Hill 3. The cult still caught up with poor old Harry (best dad 10/10), but any??thing is better than being compliant with a wholly immoral order from above. Particularly when it means raising a child for years and years, all in the knowledge they are going to die at your hands one day. Then again, reasoning with people in bona fide cults can be more than a little t??ricky.

Yes, Adam didn't end up going through with the sacrifice, because it second-born died in an accident. But he treated A?lex like dirt his entire childhood, because he was "the chosen one" and he didn't want to ?get too attached to the son he would have to kill. What kind of sick attitude is that? Again – just run away from Shepherd's Glen, and run away from Silent Hill, instead of raising a human being like cattle to be slaughtered.

4. William Birkin, Resident Evil 2

There are a lot of strange family dynamics going on in the Resident Evil universe, and more than a couple of flawed father figures. But most of them reach out to help someone, or think they are doing the right thing, at least, and it comes back to bite their family. None put the wellbeing of their family on the line as much as the Birkins in Resident Evil 2.

Sure, George Trevor installed his family in the Arklay Mountains while he worked on the infamous Spencer mansion, but he didn't know his wife and daughter would wind up being test subjects – it seemed, on the face of it, like any other contractor job. Sure, Jack Baker raised a psychopath son who left his friend in the attic to die, and then brought in from the swamp the girl that? would change his family's entire fate, but?? he was struggling to raise an unruly son, and it's fair to presume what looks like a young girl washed ashore is a young girl washed ashore. Birkin, on the other hand, worked with chemical weapons while raising a young daughter, and valued his research so disproportionately that he injected himself with it once shit hit the fan with Umbrella.

In his mutated form, he lost self-control and wanted t??o spread the G-Virus by implanting an "embryo" in his daughter, Sherry (which is still one of the most disturbing things I have ever heard in games and I am surprised that didn't get taken out or modified in localisation). It's true that once he's a hulking beast, he can't exercise sel??f-control and has lost his moral compass. But he knowingly put himself in the position, putting his daughter in harm's way, because he was too proud to let his research project be seized. A pretty cowardly man, and I would say Claire and Leon acted more like loving parents to Sherry in their few hours of custody than the Birkins ever did.

5. Octodad. Yes, Octodad.

So far, the list has been a harsh indictment of video game dads. So I wanted to showcase how fathers can seem doting and lovely, whil??e something stinks under the surface. Like rotting seafood, perhaps?

The lovable Octodad is an octopus in a suit, who has somehow managed to con the world into thinking he is human. He goes shopping for his family, grills them burgers and reads the kids bedtime stories, all without anybody suspecting a thing. Sure, he's caring and clearly loves his family, ??but if he truly loved them, he would be honest, instead of livin?g a double, deceitful life.

Plus, I bet he's voiding all sorts of terms and conditions in his life insura?nce policy by not telling them he's a FUCKING SQUID. Dooming his family to financial instability on his death – nice one, Octodick.

Dishonourable mentions:

• Heihachi Mishima, Tekken 7: generally, throwing your son into a lava pit is not advised, even if you are trying to strip devil genes out of the genepool.
• Philip Holmes, Beyond: Two Souls: sure, the guy was scared of Jodie's paranormal behaviour, but she was just a child. Dismissing her as evil and abandoning her because of something that wasn't her fault felt pretty cold. Did you choke him out in the test centre? I sure choked him out in the test centre.

Did I miss anyone off the list? Do you think I was too harsh with any of the entrants? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Here are the worst ex??cuses for father?s in video games appeared first on Destructoid.

Report your hardware woes, and see if someone can help you out!

We've all experienced that sickening feeling when we're geared up to dive right into our game of choice, and something goes?? pop. Or boom. Or flashes. Or whimpers. Game??s hardware, unfortunately, doesn't last forever, and repairs or even full replacements can be necessary at times.

Yet we are all busy people, and we can't always get our repairs sorted out straight away. Sometimes problems are more difficult than removing a couple of screws and nipping down to the l?ocal?? hardware store for a cheap replacement part. Sometimes the solution IS that easy, but we're nervous about opening our pride and joy up, or we're just a little bit shit at this sort of thing – nobody gives you a DIY aptitude manual on your 18th birthday, after all. Unless your dad is Ron Swanson. Finally, it might not even be a case of fixing something that's definitively broken, but instead wondering if we're missing a trick when trying to get a specific function to work.

And Destructoid's strength is its community, right? So, why not put that force for good to work and discuss those niggling problems we've pushed to the ba??ck of our mind, or those big repairs that seem to be going nowhere? Let's share our stories and lend each other a hand in the comments section! Who knows – you might? save someone from replacing an entire unit or making a costly false move when trying to get something fixed.

To break the ice, I'll share a few of the ongoing problems I have with my weird menagerie of old-ish games consoles and what I'm trying to find the time to investigate. A lot of it could probably be solved wi??th a cursory Google search, but hey, why not cut your teeth on something easy, commenters? Let's go!

Busted thin PS2 CD drive

I am a bit of an idiot when it comes to buying retro or bordering-on-retro consoles, and sort of presume there are boxes upon boxes of them sitting unopened in a warehouse somewhere. As a result, I presume if they go bang in the night, I can just get myself a replacement – no need to spend money on one in good nick. So, when I realised it was going to be a big hassle to transport my beloved fat PS2 from the UK to Germany, I thought I'd get a?? thin one in "akzeptabler Zustand" (acceptable condition), and use it for modding purposes when I finally got hold of old faithful.

Two problems: my fat PS2 is still very much sat stoically in place in my old bedroom in my parents' house (not collecting dust, because my lovely mum knows her basic console maintenance); "acceptable condition" was quite a generous description. The thin PS2 worked fine for about two months, when suddenly, it went from playing Silent Hill beautifully to refusing to load any CD-bas??ed games. 

Now, this is not actually a deal-breaker for me. I have a PS3 – it sounded like it was about to take off when I ran Vib Ribbon on? it using custom music a couple of weeks ago, but nonetheless, it plays PS1 games. I'm just curious as to how the CD drive could fail but not the DVD drive, and if there would be any way to p?atch it up. I like the idea of trying to get as much longevity out of my consoles as I can, and it would be a neat activity to try to get the CD drive working again. Particularly since the issue of voiding the warranty on a PS2 has long since evaporated.

Help! M??y strange Chinese capt??ure card doesn't work with my PS4!

And it should – ?that was how it was advertised, and apparently other users bought it specifically for their PS4, experiencing no problems.

OK, this thread is fast becoming a sorry tale of why Charlotte is a complete numpty for buying cheap shit, but when I needed to quickly capture some footage from my PSTV and had no money, I bought an Abox, instead of doing the honourable thing and ponying up the cash for an Elgato. I got a 1-to-2 HDMI splitter, connected everything together in a horrendous spaghetti-monster-like cluster of wires, stuck a memory stick into the side of the capture card, prayed to Shuhei Yoshida that nothing would set on fire, and away I went. And it actually worked! The HDCP had been successfully stripped, and some quite lovely 720p footage split into 2GB ??files went onto my memory stick.

In principle, I should have two options with my PS4: either switching off the HDCP on the PS4 itself and then directly connecting it to the capture card, or using the splitter route that works flawlessly with my PSTV and not switching off HDCP. (No??te: it was actually a bit of a miracle that I got the right splitter for my PSTV, so if anyone is having any trouble with this, hit me up for suggestions.) Neither seem to work; I just get a black screen.

If anyone can think of a step I'm missing, or something obvious that I've overlooked, let me know! It's not been a critical problem just yet, because you can record up to?? 60 minutes of footage straight onto your PS4 without the need for a capture card, but it could become a problem if I want to record longer gameplay sessions. Perhaps when I get a memory stick large en??ough to hold all the resulting files.

50 First Dates, but a Pokémon Yellow cartridge

I've told this story before in my lost save files article: my Pokémon Yellow cartridge is extremely forgetful. It will only run for about 10-15 minutes before it resets itself. I always presumed it was a dead battery? But thinking more about the problem and seeing people "abuse" dead game batteries for the purpose of speedrunning Pokémon games, I'm not sure that is the problem – having a dead game? battery just stops you saving; it shouldn't ??restart the game.

If it were a SNES or N64 cartridge, it would be worth just unscrewing it and giving it a thorough clean inside with rubbing alcohol, to see if that makes a? difference. As it goes, Game Boy cartridges are a bit fiddlier. It might just be better to buy a new cartridge or play the game on an emulator, but I don't want to give up on a game I've had for a??t least 17 years. Any pointers?

Countless scratched discs

This is a simple one to bow out on: I have a couple of discs that don't work at all because they are so heavily scratched. Bizarrely enough, a game I bought off eBay – to be fair, for next to nothing – arrived in such a poor condition it won't play at all, and the seller put a packet of Haribo in the case, as if that would make up for everything(?!). Luckily, it was Syberia, and the PS2 Classics version for the PS3 came to PS Plus not long after, so I di??dn't miss out on a pretty decent adventure game.

Back in the UK, disc? resurfacing services seem pretty commonplace at any games shop or library – or, at least they did when I was a child/teenager. In Germany, I have absolutely no idea where to go to get my discs fixed. It just doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. I'?ve heard of the old toothpaste trick, but I'm sceptical. If anyone has any home remedy tips on fixing scratched discs, I'd be happy to hear them, though I doubt anything is a real long-term solution.

If you have any ideas on how to fix my fairly elementary hardware problems, give me a shout in the comments down below! And, most important of all, don't forget to share your own hardware issues and help out your fellow commenters. Happy fixing!

The post The big Destructoid games hardware fixing thread appeared first on Destructoid.

Any last surprises?

Wednesday marked exactly a year since many Persona fans dug through their mailboxes with glee to find the newest instalment in their favourite JRPG series. We'd had quite a wait since the Japanese launch the previous September, and the dribs and drabs, that all but the most seasoned of spoiler avoiders had heard, intensified our thirst to go diving right ??in to the hum-drum of school life?? and the perilous dungeon crawling.

It's actually been quite a while since I played Persona 5, though. I finished the game pretty sharpish upon receiving it – by the end of May, I had reached the end and was ready to move on to something else. My copy has since been passed on to friends, and it sank into the background a little; in fact, I've played Persona 3 more recently than I've played Persona 5. That is not to say that Persona 5 was disappointing or boring, and that I couldn't wait to get rid of it – no, no. But I've had s??ome time and distance to look at the game a little more objectively, and can see where it really shone, and where it fell down in some areas.

So, what's the deal with Persona 5, now that the initial sheen has worn off? In summary, Persona 5 is nowhere near my favourite addition to the franchise, but it's still an absolute gem. So crack open a can of Second Maid while we go through some of the biggest hits and misses in the game.

All-out attack!

One of the best aspects of Persona 5 was the vastness and richness of the environment it took place in. It was refreshing not to play a JRPG that took place in sprawling countryside or in the suburbs, but instead in a varied, living and breathing setting such as Tokyo. Small touches like the use of the subway system and unlocking sections of the map kept you invested in the city and in finding out more about what you could get up to during your time off from school/def??eating Shadows. I was quite sad to say goodbye to the city once I'd completed the game – more so than the characters, if I'm totally honest.

Full disclosure: I had never got very far with a Shin Megami Tensei or Persona game that involves demon negotiation before I started Persona 5. I absolutely did not know what I was missing out on. Having to sweet-talk enemies so that I could have more Personas in my arsenal, which I could of course then combine to create even more cool avatars, was a great touch and really added an extra layer to traditional battles. While I did miss the tarot card systems of yesteryear, that soon became a forgotten memory once I'd got to grips with the new system, which riffed off the original Persona title for the PlayStation.

One of the clear triumphs of the game was the story, specifically the backgrounds of the people my protagonist, "Yuri Mikami" (a portmanteau of Yuri Katsuki and Shinji Mikami), met along the way. As I hinted at earlier – and this is probably one of the most subjective parts of analysing the game – the characters didn't qu??ite get their hooks into me in the same way that those from previous installments did.

However, Futaba's storyline, in particular, was heartbreaking, raw and felt uncomfortably ??relatable for me, while Yusuke and Haru's backstories also felt particularly strong and were not steeped in cliché. I managed to do a complete 180° with my opinion on Makoto, which is a testament to the writers' ability to conduct the emotions of the player. While the Persona game?s may sometimes overshoot in their attempts to be highly intellectual and dig into Jungian psych?ology, they make up for any misfires with heart and bravery in the face of some pretty shocking source material.

Knocked down!

While Persona 5 ultimately deserves a lot of praise, there were some areas where I felt like Atlus was phoning it in a little or they were taking the lazy route, when they could have been a bit more ambitious. Some of these sticking points apply not only to Persona 5 but to multiple entries in the series, which make??s it all the more disappointing.

Let's start big – I didn't like the ending. I didn't like the ending at all! Well, the best ending. This might seem counterintuitive, because the entire point of a "true" ending is to bring the story to a joyous conclusion, with everyone holding hands and sharing a Coke. But this is not the case with a lot of Shin Megami Tensei games. The transition from Persona 2: Innocent Sin to Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is that some characters have forgotten prior traumatic events, and others have been left scarred by the memories of these events. At the end of Persona 3, no matter what you do, the protagonist dies. Persona games don't feel to me as if they should end a?ll tied up in a neat little package. They should give me a warm hug, then shank me in the liver and spit in my face.

At least in the Persona 4 Golden true ending (though personally, I think this should be the true ending), Yu's friends are sad to see him leave; in Persona 5, since you've been living in a city with excellent public tra??nsport links, it's no biggie that you're leaving town to see your folks. It went out with a whimper, rather than a bang.

A big issue that a lot of people have with the Persona games is their questionable (at best) approach to LGBTQ+ characters. This excellent article? goes into some of the background regarding Japanese games and their treatment of transgender and queer characters, and it's clear that tensions will still bleed through into games that are released by Japanese developers. However, Persona 5 takes place in areas of Japan that adhere closer to the ideal of being comfortable in your own skin, and of being proud of ??your own identity: more liberal areas such as Shinjuku and Harajuku.

It would have been the perfect opportunity to have a gay protagonist, or to actually do justice to a Naoto character this time around. Instead, it felt like they chickened out and leant on the leery trope of teenage-girl-in-catsuit-uncomfortable-with-sexuality. I am still pissed that my "Yuri" couldn't date Yusuke. I felt that none of the female suitors really fit to my protagonist. The fact that I couldn't have at least one or two romantic confidants of the same gender felt like an artificial barrier, which I hope they lift if a Persona 6 is on the cards.

I've talked about this in another article, and I'm not sure if this is just me actually getting good at a style of game for once. Stop the presses! Charlotte is actually good at a game for once! But I felt Persona 5's difficulty skewed a little too generous. I played on Normal difficulty, and while Persona 3's normal mode sliced my ass off with a chainsaw, stuck it in a broiler and served it to me for breakfast with a side of eggs and some hash browns, and Persona 4's normal mode was a little bit of a close shave at times, Persona 5 was as comforta??ble as a worn-in ??pair of Doc Martens.

I'm not a difficulty snob by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like the challenge was missing completely from the baseline version of the game. Which was just strange for a Shin Megami Tensei title, since in all SMT titles, death is ?the ultimate frenemy. You?? meet them lots, you know them well, but you make snide comments about them behind their back. Admittedly, I would have been more grouchy if it skewed too hard. And on a New Game Plus route, I will simply have to take the difficulty up a notch.

Not maxed out your Shin Megami Tensei knowledge?

So you ruined two months of your life chasing the JRPG dragon. What should you do next? What's the next step, if you're no longer feeling burnt out on Persona 5&nbs??p;and want to dip your toe in the waters of oth?er slice-of-life magical boy sims?

If Persona 5 was your first introduction to the series, then you got off to a cracking start. While I felt a little salty about the easiness of Persona 5, that makes it the perfect appetiser for someone who might not be so used to the turn-based system (though anyone who's played Pokémon, oddly enough, should get to grips with it pretty fast). Where that individual should go next depends totally on what they're searching for in their next Persona game.

Want to sack it all off and indulge in some pure japes? Get yourself Persona 4: Dancing All Night. It's a thoroughly daft rhythm game that I have somehow developed such a level of admiration for that I submitted a run to a gaming event this summer (and summarily got rejected, 'cos nobody else thinks Kanamin is adorbs). If you're done with JRPGs and want to enjoy some light-hearted, dumb comedy and sweet beats, then by all means try this spin-off before the Persona 3 and Persona 5 versions come out in May.

You'll probably want to play an actual JRPG, though. Right. Well, my favourite game of all time is Persona 3, so of course I would tell you to start there, but I would advise going for the PSP version if you can. This gets rid of some fussy fighting mechanics present in the original version of Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES, which add a layer of artificial difficulty. If you want something that's a shade less dark and a little more muted in its difficulty, go for Golden – that's Persona 4 Golden. Do NOT get the original Persona 4 if you can avoid it, since there are zero benefits to getting the vanilla variant above getting the Golden enhanced edition.

Or, if you want your morale to be crushed to within an inch of its life while also enjoying your serving of teenage angst – much like how apple crumble must always be paired with custard – pick up Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 or Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Both ar?e available as PS2 Classics on the PS3. Don't say I didn't warn you.

What's your current perspective on Persona 5? What did you enjoy, and what were you disappointed by? What would be your recommendations for newcomers to the series? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Looking back at Persona 5, one year later appeared first on Destructoid.

Those looking for an easy, snappy catchphrase better tread carefully in the future

Toy manufacturing companies the world over ha??ve come out this week in support of greater protecti?ons for intellectual property rights. This comes in the wake of several incidents in which vigilante mobs have borrowed slogans from such companies when carrying out their vengeful acts of violence. I spoke with the CFO (Chief Fun Officer) of Haspro Inc., Norton Atoll, from the company's House of Fun in Slough, Berkshire, about the campaign and how his company in particular has been affected.

"The besmirching of our wholesome name is no laughing matter for us," sighed Atoll, bouncing slightly on a space hopper, which all company employees use instead of an office chair. "People think helming a toy company is all fun and games, but when you're faced with a bunch of hoodlums stealing parts of your company's identity to peddle violence, it's time to q?uit joking around. It's not like we're the bloody video game industry, or something."

After taking a few bounces to regain his composure, Atoll elaborated on a particular case that has caused some anguish to his company. "There's some acrobatic, nunchuk-swinging turd yelling around town that Weebles are falling down. Well, for starters, we brought in the best kinetic physicists in the country and built a million-pound laboratory in an underground cave, all for our lovely little Weebles. We have peer-reviewed journals confirming that our Weebles wobble, but they do not, I repeat, do not fall down. Maybe some lesser knock-offs wobble and fall down. Maybe some of them do not wobble nor do they fall do??wn. Maybe a handful of outliers fall down, yet do not wobble beforehand. I cannot ?say. But the falling-wobbling ratio of our Weebles is a golden one that neither magic nor ancient martial arts can interfere with."

"And that's not all, Ms Interview Lady. We pla??n to go after them with no mercy, the only way the corporate world knows how – with a sternly-worded warning from our solicitors, followed by an injunction notice."

This Interviewer Lady thinks the ??shiruk??en is mightier than the court document, but we'll see how this story unfolds in the coming weeks.

The post Toy manufacturers cracking down on copyright?? infringement appeared first on Destructoid.

Quite literally killer abs

There came a time in this girl's life when walking up a flight of stairs felt like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and the back-handed compliment "you don't sweat much for a fat lass" rang far too true. I've been on a massive fitness drive for the past nine months, and through a combination of completely changing my diet and not shying away from the cross-trainer, I've lost a good amount of weig?ht. My next fitness goal is to get proper hench, or at least as hench as a puny five-foot maiden, who throws her neck out opening a jar of soup?, can be.

One of my biggest fitness inspirations alongside Instagram models and stunt women is actually video game characters, since they've shaped my impression of what women's bodies look like since I was five years old. The fantasy of what fitness can mean gives me the strength to go for gold in my real-life workouts, even if I end up in a crumpled heap after my second attempt at a stomach crunch. There are pl??enty of female video game characte??rs I consider strong, bold and brave, who have distinctly average bodies – but there are a few who are more muscular, more agile and more athletic.

So, mix up your protein shake of choice and chug it down, wh?ile I talk about my top five video gam?e athletes of all time. Don’t think – feel. (Aww, come on, Charlotte, spoilers...)

1. Cammy White, the Street Fighter series

...And a cacophony of swear words echoes ??around Casa de Destr??uctoid.

"WORRABOUTCHUNL??I?!?!" they cry, gesturing wildly and miming thighs as thick as a redwood trunk. Sure, but that’s the problem. Chun Li’s gigantic limbs actually scared me a little as a child, and screamed over-sexualisation as a teenager. It felt cartoonish and meant to titillate, ?rather being indicative than a genuinely strong character.

OK, so Cammy plays up the whole sexy soldier look. Sure, she will probably need keyhole surgery to correct that leotard wedgie. But looking at Street Fighter Alpha 3 (less so her cartoonish, out-of-proportion form in Street Fighter V), she was sleek and muscular, with fighting skills honed from her time in the British military. To me, Cammy showed you can be cute, dress snappily and still kick some Zangief arse wh??ere necessary.

2. Asuka Kazama, Tekken series

My affinity with Cammy really only sprouted legs as an adult; I didn't have all that much to do with Street Fighter as a child, beyond being exposed to the characters from other media. However, Tekken was absolutely my jam, particularly Tekken 5. I swapped between Christie (you at the back, shut it), Nina/Anna and Xiaoyu. It wasn't really that hard to rep the ladies in Tekken 5,?? because they could easily ?give the men a run for their money.

It wasn't any of my main characters that really made an impression on my body image, though. Xiaoyu was slighter than I could ever be with my genes, and the Amazonian beauty of Nina was so detached from my reality that? she may as well have had gills. The character I saw the most of myself in was Asuka, a tomboy martial artist from traditional fighting stock. 

I loved that she dressed in gear that she could easily manoeuvre around in, rather than the ridiculous, billowing, thigh-high-slitted dresses that the Williams sisters fought to the death in. She looked like? a fighter, but one in the larval stages, rather than a dyed-in-the-wool fustigator. I had a soft spot for Hwoarang due to my past with taekwondo, and Asuka reminded me very much of myself as a fledgling martial artist, learning the patterns and colliding with my sparring partner so hard that an egg-sized lump sprouted on my shinbone (true story, yo). Asuka is pure muscle tee? goals – always has been, always will be.

3. Faith Connors, Mirror's Edge

One thing I still can't do, over half a year into my fitness journey, is run. That's right – despite going hammer and tong at the cardio, I can't endure more than ten minutes on the treadmill, and even that's a push. It's no longer really a story of being out of breath, but my right foot turns inwards as I walk, which makes running in a straight line extremely difficult, f??rustrating and actually makes me scared I will slip and fall.

So I have the greatest of respect for anyone who is good at parkour/freerunning, not just because they can actually run over long distances, but being able to combine that with acrobatics (surprise, surprise, I have no upper body strength and I'm not very flexible, either). Some of the physical feats you get a sense of in the first person, as Faith Connors in Mirror's Edge, are very impressive, and bring to mind the "skate vid" style parkour clips I occasionally see looped in the gym. Endurance is super important to? increasing your fitness levels, and you have to have pretty fantastic levels of endurance to act as a secret foot courier, dashing around the city.

 4. Jill Valentine, Resident Evil 5

Arguably, backflipping and zipping about all over the place is easier if your state of awareness has been shut down to the bare minimum, so you no longer have any apprehension in your movements. On the other hand, being able to twist and turn like an Olympic gymnast while also having your brain (read: motor skil?ls) hijacked and without breaking your neck is quite the feat.

What's more, by the time Resident Evil 5 rolled around, Jill had survived in perilous landscapes for years, seemingly getting more and more fit as time goes on – compare Weskerbot Jill to the kinda weedy Jill in REmake, with Barry and Richard coming to her rescue wherever possible. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a bit long in the tooth to be making drastic changes to my fitness levels, but then I remember real-life examples when peop??le have turned it around in their thirties and forties. It just requires putting one foot in front of the other; one step at a time. On?e parasite at a time.

5. Chie Satonaka, Persona 4 (Golden)

Now, Chie is never depicted as being a bodybuilder type?, but she is well known for her obsession with kung fu movies and steak. My gal Chie is what I would classify as a fitness weeb, and I identify with that quality the most out of any trait in this list.

I have a bit of an obsessive personality, and Chie has that too. She never shuts up about getting that sweet meat-based protein do?wn her neck, and I love my av?ocado toast. I can tell you that if Yosuke snapped my Wii Fit disc in half, I would break more than his face.

Also, she's your average teenager with no remarkable dress sense or physique. She just loves toughening herself up, and as a diminutive individual who can be quite sh??y, I get that urge completely. Strength comes from within, but it doesn't hurt to have a little physical imposition to back it up.

That's about it for my core list, but he??re are a handful of ho?nourable mentions:

• Lara Croft: of course she became a role model for me, once I'd spent time with older relatives who were playing through the games. I loved her all-round readiness for action, combined with her ability to solve difficult conundrums on the fly. She didn't make the list, though, because her poshness alienated me a little.

• Zoe Payne, SSX3: I loved the characters in SSX3 who were a little rough around the edges, and Zoe was just that. She was proof to younger me that you could be into more aggressive, non-mainstream music and still enjoy your sports – it wasn't just for the jocks and preppy kids. And extreme sports were always the coolest sports, in my teenaged opinion.

• Bayonetta: mad respect for anyone who can fight in heels.

Which video game characters inspire you to be the best version of yourself? Are there any particular characters who remind you of yourself, due to their physical appearance? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Five vid?eo game characters that make me want t??o get fit(ter) appeared first on Destructoid.

The rise of far-right tendencies in gaming is a problem, but the will of the player holds the power, not the games themselves

This week, a piece written by Alfie Bown, author of The PlayStation Dreamworld, was published in The Guardian. The core argument of the piece was that video games inherently, and particularly recently, project far-right tendencies onto players. Through playing the games, players are effectively given an interactiv??e experience of right-wing ideologies, which acts to indoctrinate them and is feeding the swing towards a lack of compassion in the politics of young people nowadays. ??I'd advise you to read it in full, because while it is a bold argument that I don't really agree with, it makes for interesting reading.

So, as I've just said, the argument didn't quite gel with me. I have to start by saying that I absolutely believe there is a problem with right-wing, xenophobic, an??d misogynist tendencies in video games, as there is in many parts of society. Many people are living in a state of fear because the world as it stands is quite a hostile place, which only encourages "every man for himself" thoughts and a disgust for anything labelled as "other." Some people don't even need that existential fear to feel hatred for others. The thing is, I don't feel like it is video games stoking the fires of hostile politics. If anything, I feel like people with those politics project their feelings onto games.

The topic is wa??y too large to cover in a single weekend editorial, but I want to give a few responses to specific points made in Bown's article. Some parts of it seemed to jump the gun a little or be too selective in its examples. The points that stuck out for me as not quite right were the following:

• "Games are ideological constructions which push a set of values on the user."
• "Right-wing ideologies have been overrepresented and dominant throughout the history of video games."
• "Video games put the user to work on an instinctual level, making the gamer feel impulsive agreement with these ideologies."
• "The rationale of gaming is to unite pleasurable impulse with political ideology, a process which renders gamers susceptible to discourses that urge people to follow their instincts while also prescribing what those instincts ought to be."
• "...games can have a concrete ideological effect on us – and make us desire politically charged things on a personal level."

Righ?t – let's get started on unpacking this.

"Games are id?eological constructions which push a set of values on the user."

Games are indeed ideological in nature – not in the sense that games always portray a utopia (in fact, this is rare, or there would be no push for the protagonist to do anything), but in that they portray a certain view of the world that is to some extent or another detached from reality. Aside from?? documentary work and non-fiction, every form of media is portraying a version of the wor??ld that is different from the one we see surrounding us every morning when we wake up.

The idea that doesn't quite work is that games, by their very definition, push their values on the user. Some people might say a game is just a game, and only in very rare cases does it have anything coming close to values. I don't agree – I think every game has some sort of value structure in it, or the ideological world it has built up would collapse. Taking a game as simple as Angry Birds, the values here are "birds are good, pigs are bad, destroy their houses.?" The value structure gives the player a guideline as to what they are supposed to do and what they are not supposed to do: how to win the game, or how to be kicked to the Game Over screen after a few seconds, because they've disobeyed the game's very particular set of laws.

But do all games inherently push these values on the player? I don't think so. Increasingly as of late, games give players incentives to "break" them – to be anarchic and ignore the game's very own set of laws. This might be in pursuit of trophies or to create glitches, or just for the hell of it. An example of this is the genocide run in Undertale: if you go down that horrible path, NPCs will avoid you or implore you to stop what you're doing, but the player is allowed to continue down that murderous path if they wish. Sandbox games such as the Grand Theft Auto seri?es leave the player entirely to their own devices, while incentivisin?g them to behave a certain way only if they want to get to the end of the Story mode – which many people don't really care about as much as exploring the world they're in.

Even in traditional games, where the only way to get any enjoyment out of it is to obey its set of values to the letter, is it really "pushing" them onto the player? The player has a choice to set the controller down and not play the game. The player can follow the values, nod along, and declare to themselves at the end that the entire experience was bullshit. Most importantly to me, the player can see a set of values t??hey disagree with, follow them for the sake of getting to the end, and then see it as an experiment in how they might not behave like themselves in a simulation, when under certain sources of pressure. There is actually real value in exploring different perspectives this way, and it is where games have the power to enrich people's levels of experience, not convert them to fascism.

"Right-wing id?eologies have been over?represented and dominant throughout the history of video games."

These ideologies have definitely been an? unwelcome presence througho??ut games, but have they dominated? I'm not too sure.

Some of the examples Bown gives of this dominance are actually quite baffling, if I'm honest. He lists expelling "aliens" (in the sense that US folk use that word to refer to illegal immigrants) as a right-wing tendency in Space Invaders and XCOM. There are certainly parallels between fear that another species could destroy yours, and fear of the differences between yourself and someone of another ethnicity, but that doesn't mean that a game about the former is automatically making a comment on the latter. The two fears are prompted by a common source, which is the drive to self-preserve and the fear of death. Games about impurities in a species, such as The Last of Us, have this same core. One of the most powerful player instincts that games tap into is the wish not to die, whet?her there is a r?ational threat or not.

But again, it sticks? in my craw to talk about these ideologies being "overrepresented." I don't know if I would say the ideologies being ??overrepresented is dangerous – instead, it is an oversimplified endorsement of these ideologies that is the real danger.

Take Resident Evil. It addresses humanity's downfall due to impurities and m?utations in the human species, which could be said to lean too heavily on eugenics.

This only really becomes a problem when the player is jingoistically encouraged to flamethrower the living heck out of absolutely everything without a pause for breath. Instead, we see comrades die after making it through a tough spell in a previous game. We see people driven by greed finally get their comeuppance. We see people banding together to escape a decaying city. There are so many instances in the Resident Evil series where the people who are infected are humanised, and players are encouraged to empathise with the fallen (Lisa Trevor being the best example of all). Instead of pushing the ideology of "kill the impure" on the player, the games give the player room to explore their own feelings about humanity's downfall. If anything, wanting to avenge individuals such as Lisa Tr?evor because they identify with their struggles gives the player even more motivation to take down Umbrella.

"Vide?o games put the user to work on an instinctual level, making the gamer feel impulsive agreement with these ideologi?es."

What Bown is talking about here, when he talks about acting off instinct, is how the player naturally goes about making their decisions in the game. This texture looks a bit odd? Bash it with a hammer, then. This baddie looks like he could cau??se us a few problems down the line? Shoot him. Shoot him now. By blending this thought process with unsavoury political principles, Bown says that it encourages players to automatically grasp for the right-wing way of thinking, which will then bleed into their everyday life.

Except, I think the ideologies that are portrayed very often don't travel outside of their own specific contexts. To discuss this, I'm going to choose a game that I've been fascinated with recently, which is Haunting Ground, where you play as a college student trapped inside her ancestral home. She has to escape from two bosses who are in rather bad taste during the game??: one is a man with a learning disability wh?o will hug her to death if he catches up with her, while the other is a "shrill harpy"-type character who is driven insane by her own infertility and cuts out the student's reproductive organs if she catches up with her. 

In the game, you have no choice but to run away from these characters. If you don't, it's Game Over, so you flee over and over again. Even though this is buying into the misconception that those with learning disabilities are likely to accidentally hurt you, or that women of a certain age who can't bear/haven't borne children are bound to have a screw loose, because of course they're lacking something that is integral to womanhood. But the vast majority of players will restrict that feeling to this very specific instance of hav?ing to run away from these characters or they will die. They will see it as a depiction of an extreme scenario on a screen, and it won't affect their views of childless/childfree women or those with learning disabilities, because the game backed them into a corner.

I think this is where it's clear that players have more influence over their experience of games than the game itself. If you are impressionable enough to draw the conclusion that the characters in Haunting Ground are bad, therefore people with similar characteristics must be bad, then you're placing dots on a page that were never supposed to be there and then joining them up. Frankly, I have more faith in ??the average gamer that they can isolate experiences to where they experienced them and not let it infect their daily life, and that their agency and the interactivity is precisely what gets them to stop and think about their own reactions to the game and about their subsequent behaviour.

"The rationale of gaming is to unite pleasurable impulse with political ideology, a process which renders gamers susceptible to discourses that urge people to follow their instincts while also prescribing what those instincts ought to be."

I don't think this is the rationale of gaming at all. The rationale of gaming is to create the pleasurable impulse, full-stop, unless we'r??e talking about games that are legi??timate propaganda. Depending on the game in question, political ideology is secondary but still important, or just window-dressing.

People play games to tick off things on a checklist, whether it is a checklist constructed from the game's own list of values, or the player's self-imposed list of values. Whether it's getting a higher score in Puyo Puyo Tetris, getting through Silent Hill 4 as fast as possible, or building a phallus-shaped rollercoaster in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, we have something that motivates us to sit there and play a game – at least the vast majority of people do, since people tend to lean towards having reasons for doing something. The core ingredient of eve??ry game is the rewarding of effort.

More impressionable people will accept any kind of reward, but a lot of people want to feel ??they've done something really worthy and got a huge amount of recognition in return. This is where political ideology comes in. If the player finds the ideology of the game disgusting, they might not want to be rewarded by it, if they are in any way, shape, or form discerning about what they ?play.

What political ideology does is that it provides reasons for the impulse or prescribes it a level of urgency, and the players, in exercising their agency, might find that the political ideology makes them not want?? to seek a reward from it anymore. It's a bit like getting a birthday cake from your enemy – you might be tempted to eat a great big slice if it looks delicious, but it's in the back of your mind that the enemy may have poisoned it.

So, combined with what I said above, the game itself doesn't necessarily prescribe the instincts, and the level of susceptibility to following game-prescribed instincts depends on each individual person. In the vast majority of cases, we have to give the player more credit and trust they won't swallow down every reward dangled before t??hem.

"...game?s can have a?? concrete ideological effect on us – and make us desire politically charged things on a personal level."

?What I want to talk about here is the "on a personal level" part. Do we always play as ourselves when we play a game? Or do we instead step into the shoes of the protagonist, trying to understand their specific motivations and personality traits? I think it's more often the latter than some people think.

A good example for this is James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2. Sure, we might project onto James our own feelings about what we'd do if our spouse went missing in a twisted version of where we once went on holiday together. But mainly, we'd try to understand what James is going through and make James behave consistently with what?? we're being told about his ow??n personal journey...or not, if we don't trust that the game developers have given us James' real story, instead going for a wander around the town to see what extra goodies we can find.

In a way, Bown seems to argue that playing as other characters with their own ideologies is what indoctrinates us into unhealthy ways of thinking. James' own ideas about what a real woman is are certainly not very flattering. But if we are playing as James, and not a version of ourselves that is called James and looks like James, then the player has to do some extra mental graft to transfer their experiences as James into their real life. By pla?ying as the character on screen and not as a version of themselves, it opens the door f??or a level of detachment. Certainly as the game progresses and we see some truly dark sides to James, the player's gut instinct is likely to be, "That's not me. This is the worst of humanity. I am not the worst of humanity."

People generally like to think of themselves as a force for good, unless they have a poor self-image, perhaps for mental health reasons or because of incidents in their past. So seeing a character do bad things on screen probably doesn't encourage most people to think that's a good idea in their real life, but instead to isolate those experiences to being about "other people." This in itself is dangerous, because restricting evil acts to "evil people" doesn't really get to the heart of why people are motivated to do ill. Just look at the Stanford prison experiment or Marina Abranović's "Rhythm 0" to see how average members of the gener?al public can turn on each other given the right conditions. But it does throw a spanner in the works when it comes to Bown's argument that people make things that happen in games about them. It really, really depends both on the game itself and on the individual playing it.

***

In conclusion, Bown's article is a great jumping-off point to talk about the relationship between right-wing ideologies? and games. Really, the topic needs a lot more space than either I or Bown can give to it in a small editorial, but the interactions between people and games are much more complex than a process of simple indoctrination.

My conclusion is that players have agency, and use it constantly when they play a game. Their will determines whether they continue with it or put it down, how they play the game, and how they are influenced it. It can even reach beyond that and make people twist an innocuous game into something evil – I'm looking at you, RollerCoaster Tycoon hedge-maze person. Games are a literal playground, and give people ??the room to try different things out without influence on the outside world. In most cases, it's people who have control over games, not the other way around.

What is your reaction to Alfie Bown's article? What do you think about the co-existence of far-right tendencies and video games/other media? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Players have agency, and they’re not afraid to use it appeared first on Destructoid.

All the best games, in your ears!

Looking for a new Spotify playlist to have on in the background while you work/play games/polish your duelling swords? The writers at Destructoid have a wonderful ??present for you! Don't worry, it's 100% free, with no strings (or teeth, or surprise grenades, or whoopie cushions) attached.

Here is our jumbo games music playlist, with over 10 hours of both licensed and OST tracks from a wide range of different games. That's longer than the theatrical version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or an entire season of The Simpsons, or a full workday! What a treat.

There's a full track listing below, with who requested which track, th?e? game of origin and when the game was released. Some of the writers added the tracks themselves, while I added them to the playlist for other contributors. My personal favourites are in bold. Enjoy, subscribe and share widely on social media!

Openers

1. Calicomp 1.1: Startup, Garoad (Michael Kelly), VA-11 HALL-A (2016)

2. Left Bank Two (Vision on Gallery Theme), Wayne Hill, LittleBigPlanet (2008)

Charlotte Cutts (me!)

3. Rock is Sponge <area 04>, Joujouka, Rez Infinite (2016)

4. Danganronpa!, Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa series (2010–)

5. Get It Together, The Go! Team, LittleBigPlanet (2008)

6. Poor Leno, Royksopp, SSX 3 (2003)

7. Why Can't I Touch It?, The Buzzcocks, Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy (2017)

8. To the Top, Twin Shadow, Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands (2014)

9. Holding Out for a Hero, Bonnie Tyler, Saints Row: the Third (2011) 

10. Rebel Yell, Billy Idol, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)

11. Let Mom Sleep, Hideki Naganuma, Jet Set Radio (2000)

12. Deep Cover, Sun Araw, Hotline Miami (2012)

13. Beyond the Sea (La Mer), Django Reinhardt, Bioshock (2007)

14. (Mucho Mambo) Sway, Shaft, Dancing Stage EuroMix (a European release of Dance Dance Revolution) (2000)

15. You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), Dead or Alive, Lollipop Chainsaw (2012)

16. Love, Disasterpeace, FEZ (2012)

17. Just a Friend, Biz Markie, Saints Row IV (2013)

18. Ellens Gesang III (Ave Maria), Franz Schubert, Hitman: Blood Money (2006)

19. Loopzilla, George Clinton, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)

20. L'Arlesienne Suite No. 1: Prelude, Georges Bizet, Catherine (2011)

21. Under Construction, Jerry Martin, The Sims (2000)

22. Scrubbing for Clues, 2Mello (Matthew Hopkins), 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)

23. Stonecutters, Flying Lotus, Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

24. Burning Desire, Hudson Mohawke, Watch Dogs 2 (2016)

25. Weekender Girl, Hatsune Miku, -Project DIVA- F/f (2012)

26. Young Hearts Run Free, Candi Staton, Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)

27. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped theme, Josh Mance??ll (1998)

28. Opening theme, CrazyGroupTrio (originally Konami Kukeiha Club), Snatcher (1988)

29. Nuclear, Mike Oldfield, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (trailer only) (2015)

30. Dearest Hue (Hue Main Theme),?? Alkis Livathinos (2016) 

31. Planetarium, Squarepusher, LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011)

32. The Birds & The Bees, 2 Bears, LittleBigPlanet 3 (2014)

33. Boy Meats Girl (Intro), Danny Baranowsky, Super Meat Boy (2010)

34. Spider Dance, Toby Fox, Undertale (2015)

35. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Libert?y theme, Harry Gregson-Williams (2001?)

36. My Hands, Leona Lewis, Final Fantasy XIII (2009)

37. Stand By Me, Florence and the Machine, Final Fantasy XV (2016)

38. Still Alive, Lisa Miskovsky, Mirror's Edge (2008)

39. Simsation, Mark Mothersbaugh, The Sims 2 (2004)

40. Tubthumping, Chumbawamba, FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 (1997)

41. Punching in a Dream, The Naked and the Famous, FIFA 12 (2011)

42. Both Sides of the Law (TOMCAT's Theme), 2Mello (Matthew Hopkins), 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)

43. Lead the Way Into the Heart, 2Mello (Matthew Hopkins), 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)

44. Turing's Theme, 2Mello (Matthew Hopkins), 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)

45. Club Stardust, 2Mello (Matthew Hopkins), 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)

46. Celestial Resort – Good Karma Mix, Christa Lee/Lena Kuraine, Celeste (2018)

47. Bonetrousle, Toby Fox, Undertale (2015)

48. Sunrise Whisper, Grant Kirkhope, Viva Piñata (2006)

49. Blue Hector, Peter McConnell, Grim Fandango (1998)

50. Cellular Skies, Thomas Happ, Axiom Verge (2015)

51. The Sigils of Our Name, Damjan Mravunac, The Talos Principle (2014)

52. Epiphany Fields, scntfc, Oxenfree (2016)

53. Pedestrians Crossing, Brenton Kossak, Skullgirls (2012)

54. Outro, Jason Tai, Alice: Madness Returns (2011)

55. Bedtime Story, Isak J Martinsson, Fran Bow (2015)

56. Somnus, Joe Chen/PurpleSchala (originally Yoko Shimomura), Final Fantasy XV (2016)

57. Frog's Theme, PurpleSchala (originally Yasunori Mitsuda), Chrono Trigger (1995)

58. Rasputin, Boney M, Just Dance 3 (2011)

59. Spring (It's a Big World Outside), ConcernedApe, Stardew Valley (2016)

60. New Snow/Klippen efter Fritz Brodin, Frida Johansson/Henrik Oja, Unravel (2016)

61. The Meat Circus, Peter McConnell, Psychonauts (2005)

62. Blackout City, Anamanaguchi, Bit.Trip Runner (2010)

63. Dreams of William, Daughter, Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)

64. Unconditional, The Bravery, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (2005)

65. Punk Rock Girl, The Dead Milkmen, Tony Hawk's Project 8 (2006)

66. Madder, Groove Armada, Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc (2003)

67. Gates of Steiner, PianoDreams (originally Takeshi Abo), Steins;Gate (2009)

68. That's Enough, Hideki Naganuma, Jet Set Radio (2000)

69. Sing Sing Sing, Gene Krupa, L.A. Noire (2011)

70. "Murder", He Says, Dinah Shore, L.A. Noire (2011)

71. Departure, David García Díaz, Rime (2017)

72. The Heart of the Island, David García Díaz, Rime (2017)

73. The Garden, Stafford Bawler, Monument Valley (2014)

74. Ascension, Stafford Bawler, Monument Valley (2014)

75. To Rule with a Heavy Heart, Jim Guthrie/JJ Ipsen, Reigns: Her Majesty (2017)

76. Self-Care, Jim Guthrie/JJ Ipsen, Reigns: Her Majesty (2017)

77. The Light in Us All, Jim Guthrie/JJ Ipsen, Planet Coaster (2016)

78. Breakfast of Champignons, Jim Guthrie/JJ Ipsen, Planet Coaster (2016)

79. The Orb of Dreamers – Cosmic Stretchfog Dub, Daniel Pemberton, LittleBigPlanet 2 (2011)

80. Catherine's Theme, Mikko Tarmia, Soma (2014)

81. The Unassuming Happy Docks, Raison Varner, Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (2013)

82. Arkham City Main Theme, Nick Arundel, Batman: Arkham City (2011)

83. Dancing in the Moonlight, King Harvest, Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy (2017)

84. The Power of Equality, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004)

85. Break on Through (To the Other Side), The Doors, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004)

86. Item Box, Kota Suzuki, Resident Evil 5 (2009)

87. Terror is Reality, Oleksa Losowchuk, Dead Rising 2 (2010)

88. I'm Proud of You, Sam Hulick, Mass Effect 3 (2012)

89. Saferoom, Miwako Chinone, Resident Evil 7 (2017)

90. Silver for Monsters..., Percival/Marcin Przybyłowicz, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

91. Astera Day Theme, Akihiko Narita/Zhenlan Kang, Monster Hunter: World (2018)

92. Quiet's Theme, L'Orchestra Cinematique (originally Ahikiro Honda/Ludvig Forssell/Stefanie Joosten), Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)

93. Busy Earnin', Jungle, Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands (2014)

94. I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire, The Ink Spots, Fallout 4 (2015)

95. Six Pack, Black Flag, Skate (2007)

96. Green Onions, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Skate (2007)

97. Ghost Town, The Specials, Skate 2 (2009)

98. Hold On, I'm Comin', Sam & Dave, Skate 2 (2009)

99. Summertime Clothes, Animal Collective, Skate 3 (2010)

100. Shimmy Shimmy Ya, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Skate 3 (2010)

Joel Peterson

101. The Last of Us, Gustavo Santaolalla, The Last of Us (2013)

Rich Meister

102. The Schemer (Tinker Knight Battle), Jake Kaufman, Shovel Knight (2014)

103. Life Will Change, FamilyJules (originally by Shoji Meguro), Persona 5 (2016)

104. Proto Man, Capcom Sound Team (Bun Bun/Harumi Fujita), Mega Man 3 (1990)

CJ Andriessen

105. Dark Pit's Theme, NateWantsToBattle (originally Motoi Sakuraba), Kid Icarus: Uprising (2012)

Zach Bennett

106. We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me), The Ink Spots, BioShock 2 (2010)

107. Crazy He Calls Me, Billie Holliday, Fallout 3 (2008)

108. The Flame in the Flood, Chuck Ragan, The Flame in the Flood (2016)

109. They Reminisce Over You, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, NBA Street Vol. 2 (2003)

110. Simple and Clean, Utada Hikaru, Kingdom Hearts (2002)

111. Kimosabe, BT, Amplitude (2003)

Peter Glagowski

112. Forest Temple, The Marcus Hedges Trend Orchestra (originally Koji Kondo), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

113. Spirit Temple, The Marcus Hedges Trend Orchestra (originally Koji Kondo), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

114. Promise-Reprise, Akira Yamaoka, Silent Hill 2 (2001)

115. Human After All, Daft Punk, DJ Hero 2 (2010)

116. Galvanize, The Chemical Brothers, DJ Hero 2 (2010)

117. Metal Man, Mykah (originally Takashi Tateishi), Mega Man 2 (1988)

118. Snake Man, Yasuaki Fujita/Haruhi Fujita, Mega Man 3 (1990)

119. Quad Machine, Sonic Clang (originally Sonic Mayhem), Quake 2 (1997)

120. Kill Ratio, Jade Arcade (originally Sonic Mayhem), Quake 2 (1997)

Josh Tolentino

121. Solo Nobre Must Fall, Makeup and Vanity Set, Brigador (2016)

122. There is No Law Here, Makeup and Vanity Set, Brigador (2016)

123. Melt (live version), Hatsune Miku, Hatsune Miku Project Diva F/F2nd (2014)

124. Prelude (Final Fantasy), Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy (1987–)

125. City Ruins (Rays of Light), PurpleSchala (originally Keiichi Okabe/Keigo Hoashi), Nier: Automata (2017)

126. Peaceful Sleep, daigoro789 (originally Keiichi Okabe/Keigo Hoashi), Nier: Automata (2017)

Chris Seto

127. Resort Island: Can You Feel the Sunshine?, Richard Jacques, Sonic R (1997)

128. Escape from the City...For City Escape, Jun Senoue, Sonic Adventure 2 (2001)

129. Armored Armadillo, VG Cover Junkies (originally Setsuo Yamamoto), Mega Man X (1993)

130. Dreaming Youngster, Claris Version, Naofumi Hataya, Nights Into Dreams... (1996)

131. SELECTOR, Tatsutoshi Narita/Shinichi Goto/Fumio Ito, Virtua Fighter 5 (2006)

132. Funky Dealer, Hideki Naganuma, Jet Set Radio Future (2002)

133. Sasquatch Ending 1, Takayuki Iwai/Hideki Okugawa, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994)

134. Morrigan Ending Theme 1, Takayuki Iwai/Hideki Okugawa, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994)

135. Lunatic piano, Seiko Kobuchi/Shinya Okada, Haunting Ground (2005) (a rearrangement of Liebestraum III by Franz Liszt)

136. Last Riccardo, Seiko Kobuchi/Shinya Okada, Haunting Ground (2005)

137. Phoenix Wright - Objection!, Mazakazu Sugimori/Naoto Tanaka, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001)

138. Godot - The Fragrance of Black Coffee, Noriyuki Iwadare, Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations (2004)

139. The Front Hall, Masumi Ueda, Resident Evil 2 (1998)

140. Ada's Theme, Masumi Ueda, Resident Evil 2 (1998)

Salvador G-Rodiles

141. The Silver Will, Wataru Ishibashi, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (2004)

142. The Strongest Enemy, Mieko Ishikawa, Ys: The Oath in Felghana (2005)

143. The Fate of the Fairies, Ryo Takeshita, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC (2006)

144. Tie a link of ARCUS!, Hayato Sonoda/Takahiro Unisuga/Saki Momiyama, Trails of Cold Steel (2013)

145. To Make the End of Digging, Hayato Sonoda, Wataru Ishibash?i/Takahide Murayama, Gurumin (2004)

146. Inevitable Struggle (Super Arrange Version), The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (2004)

Darren Nakamura

147. Modern, Bignic, Zombies/Corporate Lifestyle Simulator (2012)

148. Scream, Bignic, Zombies/Corporate Lifestyle Simulator (2012)

149. 9-Bit Expedition, Lifeformed, Dustforce (2012)

150. Swimming While It Rains, Lifeformed, Dustforce (2012)

151. It's Not Supposed to be Snowing, Lifeformed, Dustforce (2012)

152. A Safe Place to Sleep, Lifeformed, Dustforce (2012)

153. Tifa, Mega Ran, based on Final Fantasy X (2001)

154. Theme of Simon Belmont, Megadriver (originally Konami Kukeiha Club), Super Castlevania IV (1991)

155. Lost Painting, Megadriver (originally Michiru Yamane), Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

Bass

156. Clair de Lune from Suite Bergamasque, Claude Debussy, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017) (also The Evil Within, 2014)

157. Beautiful Lie, Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017) 

158. Le Perv, Carpenter Brut, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015)

159. Beautiful Days Piano, Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)

160. Welcome to Dangan Island! Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)

161. Beautiful Ruin (Summer Salt), Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)

162. Ultra? Despair? Girls?, Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (2014)

163. Class Trial [DAWN], Masafumi Takada, Danganronpa series (2010–)

Stephen Turner

164. Sweet Ginger Green, Pearce-Pickering Barrelhouse Jazz Band, This is the Police (2016)

165. This is the Police (Act 1 Theme), Ben Matthews, This is the Police (2016)

166. The Way Home, The Magic Sword, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015)

167. Here Be Monsters, Ed Harcourt, Silent Hill: Downpour (2012)

Kevin Mersereau

168. Banjo Race, Tommy Tallarico, Earthworm Jim (1994)

169. Resurrections, Lena Kuraine, Celeste (2018)

170. Science is Fun, Aperture Science Psychoacoustic Laboratories (Mike Morasky), Portal 2 (2011)

Chris Moyse

171. Out of Touch, Hall and Oates, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)

Strider Hoang

172. Gotta Catch 'Em All, Powerglove (originally 50.Grind), Pokémon series (1995–)

173. Ducktales (The Moon), Year 200X (originally Hiroshige Tonomura), DuckTales (1989)

174. Gerudo Valley, Entertainment System (originally Koji Kondo), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

175. Prologue, Spark Mandrill, Entertainment System (originally Toshio Kajino/Saori Utsumi), Mega Man X (1993)

176. Doctor Wily Created Rock and Roll, Daniel Tidwell, based on Mega Man 2 (1988)

Patrick Hancock

177. Microwaved, Pitchshifter, Twisted Metal 3 (1998)

178. W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G., Pitchshifter, Twisted Metal 3 (1998)

179. More Human than Human, White Zombie, Twisted Metal 3 (1998)

180. Superbeast, Rob Zombie, Twisted Metal 3 (1998)

181. Paint It, Black, The Rolling Stones, Twisted Metal Black (2001)

182. Humming the Bassline, Hideki Naganuma, Jet Set Radio (2000)

Occams Electric Toothbrush

183. Goodbye Horses, Q Lazzarus, Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) (also in Skate 3 (2010))

Wes Russow

184. Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, Primus, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (1999)

185. Superman, Goldfinger, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (1999)

186. No Cigar, Millencolin, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000)

187. Evil Eye, Fu Manchu, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000)

188. Blitzkrieg Bop, The Ramone, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (2001)

189. 96 Quite Bitter Beings, CKY, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (2001)

190. My Adidas, Run-D.M.C., Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (2002)

191. All My Best Friends are Metalheads, Less Than Jake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (2002)

Charlotte Cutts (April update)

192. Sharp Business, Jukio Kallio, Minit (2018)

193. Forgotten Lullaby (Secret Room), Mudeth, The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth (2016)

194. Wolf, First Aid Kit, Telltale's The Walking Dead: Michonne (2016)

195. O Death, Shakey Graves and Monica Martin, Until Dawn (2015) (alternative version from the Far?go series)

196. Words Drowned By Fireworks, Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy VII (1997)

197. Chun-Li's Theme (CPS-1 version), Yoko Shimomura, Street Fighter II (1991)

198. Gusty Garden Galaxy, Koji Kondo, Super Mario Galaxy (2007)

199. Farewell and Into the Inevitable, Sam Hulick, Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC (2013)

200. Theme of D4, MANYO, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (2014)

201. What You Need, Hideki Naganuma, Sonic Rush (2005)

Charlotte Cutts (Yakuza 6/God of War release update)

202. GET WILD, TM Network, Yakuza 0 (2017)?? (available in-game in the Japanese collector's edition)

203. Call to Arms, Gerard Marino, God of War III (2010)

204. Depths of Hades, Ron Fish, God of War III (2010)

205. Brothers of Blood, Cris Velasco, God of War III (2010)

206. Warrior's Truth, Tyler Bates, God of War: Ascension (2013)

207. Ascension, Tyler Bates, God of War: Ascension (2013)

208. Oath Keeper's Gift, Tyler Bates, God of War: Ascension (2013)

209. Memories of Mother, Bear McCreary, God of War (2018)

210. The Reach of Your Godhood, Bear McCreary, God of War (2018)

211. The Summit, Bear McCreary, God of War (2018)

Charlotte Cutts (May update)

212. Red & Black, Norihiko Hibino, Bayonetta (2009)

213. Ori, Lost in the Storm, Gareth Coker and Aeralie Brighton, Ori and the Blind Forest (2015)

214. Enchanted Forest Pursuit, Christophe Héral, Rayman Legends (2013)

215. Snow Fall, Raffertie, SSX (2012)

216. Let It Die -Acid Rock-, The Game Shop/Kimito/MCD, Let It Die (2016)

217. The Sadness I Carry on My Shoulders, Yūzō Koshiro (performed by Yulia Nechaeva), Shenmue (1999)

218. The Musty Scent of Fresh Pâté, Percival Schuttenbach, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine (2016)

219. And The Earth Did Not Yet Bear a Name, Austin Wintory, Abzû (2016)

220. Magnus Smiles on Suran, Brad Derrick, The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind (2017)

221. Harami Lake, Masami Ueda, Okami (2006)  

Charlotte Cutts (June update)

222. PAIN, HEALTH, Max Payne 3 (2012)

223. Planet Veldin, The Marcus Hedges Trend Orchestra (originally David Bergeaud), Ratchet and Clank (2002)

224. Leonardo's Inventions (Extended), Jesper Kyd, Assassin's Creed II (2009)

225. Our Country Made a Promise, Dan Romer, Far Cry 5 (2018)

226. Serial Tagger, Nathan Johnson, inFAMOUS: Second Son (2014)

227. You Have a Mail, Makoto Tomozawa/Sayaka Fujita/Akari Kaida, Dino Crisis (1999)

228. A love suicide (Theme of Rule of Rose) (1930s Radio Edit), Yutaka Minobe, Rule of Rose (2006)

229. Qakvale, Danny Elfman/Russell Shaw, Fable (2004)

230. Road to Troy, Marios Aristopoulos, Apotheon (2015)

231. A Choice, Jessica Curry, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (2015)

232. Crabby Beach, Soichi Terada, Ape Escape (1999) 

Peter Glagowski (July update)

233. Harvest Dawn, Jeremy Soule, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

234. Wings of Kynareth, Jeremy Soule, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

235. Journey's End, Jeremy Soule, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

Charlotte Cutts (July post-E3 update)

236. Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver, Fallout 76 trailer (14 November 2018)

237. Ready to Die, Andrew W.K., Rage 2 trailer (June 2019)

238. Asylums for the feeling, Silent Poets/Leila Adu, Death Stranding trailer (TBA)

239. Spoiler, Hyper, Cyberpunk 2077 trailer (TBA)

240. Little Sadie, Crooked Still, The Last of Us Part II trailer (TBA)

241. Devil Trigger, Ali Edwards, Devil May Cry 5 trailer (2019)

242. You Keep Coming Alive, Sean Rowe, Twin Mirror trailer (2019)

243. Death With Dignity, Sufjan Stevens, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit trailer (released June 2018)

244. BANG BANG BANG, BIGBANG, Just Dance 2019 announced track (23 October 2018)

245. Strong Culture, Asian Dub Foundation, Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer (TBA)

Charlotte Cutts (August update)

246. Clock Tower, Yoann Laulan, Dead Cells (2018)

247. Primrose, the Dancer, Moisés Nieto (composed by Yasunori Nishiki), Octopath Traveler (2018)

248. La La La, The Make Believes, We Happy Few (2018)

249. Life As a Flower, Vincent Diamante, Flower (2009)

250. In Case of Trouble, Darren Korb, Bastion (2011)

251. Wisdom of Rage, Waveshaper, Furi (2016)

252. Deathmatch, Eirik Suhrke, Spelunky (2008)

253. Dandara's Legacy, Thommaz Kauffmann, Dandara (2018)

254. Forgotten Dreams, David Housden, Q.U.B.E. 2 (2018)

255. Attak, Rustie ft. Danny Brown, The Crew 2 (2018) (also in Watch Dogs 2, 2016)

Encore

256. Pokérap, James D-Train Williams, Pokémon series (OK, it's from the anime, ?but I could??n't leave it out!) (1995–)

257. Calicomp 1.1: Shutdown, Garoad (Michael Kelly), VA-11 HALL-A (2016)

Is there a game, track or artist you'd like to listen to that we haven't included? What are your favourite tracks on the playlist? Let us know in the comments down below! 

The post The Destructoid Jumbo Game Music Playlist! appeared first on Destructoid.