Shallow Depths

November is a busy month for me this year.  I've been slaving away over NaNoWriMo as well as keeping up with my usual day job and other commitments.  I expect things to pick up again on the blogging front in December -- I have a heap of ideas clawing at the inside of my brain.

For now, here are some links to my Game People discussions from October:

• The Curfew
• Echoshift
• Minecraft

Okay, that's just about enough messing about with things (and possibly losing the few followers I did have). Time to be getting on with things. I haven't said much about my 'reviews' recently. Since my last post about this I have tackled:

• 3D Dot Game Heroes
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Tag Force 4
• Demon's Souls
• Flower, Sun and Rain
• Faceez
  
• Pinball Pulse: the Ancients Beckon
• Shank

I've been learning more about how to approach games (and applications) that aren't my usual thing. I don't mind, because it's a challenge and I might discover something interesting I wouldn't otherwise. But it also means suffering through some things.

3D Dot Game Heroes relies heavily on nostalgia for old Zelda games. Since I haven't played those games it was never likely to work for me. Twilight Princess is the only Zelda game I've played. It was interesting, since it was all so new to me, but didn't make me urgently want to play any other Zelda games, let alone the 2D ones.

I did really like collecting the glowing bugs in Twilight Princess, though. Maybe 3D Dot should have catered to my inner entomologist, then I might have appreciated it more.

Tackling Yu-Gi-Oh! was a scary prospect, and Faceez was even scarier. The less said about Faceez the better, I think.

In the case of Yu-Gi-Oh! you can tell I'm stretching because I resorted to lazy reviewing strategies, like beginning with a quick history of the series and its spin-offs. I'll have improved noticeably when I no longer have to fall back on that sort of thing. I know for a lot of people that's just part of the standard review formula, but it isn't the way I usually operate.

I wasn't planning to write about Flower, Sun and Rain but I was asked and it's an interesting one. It's yet another example for the list of games-Cha-likes-which-a-lot-of-people-hate, but that's okay. It's also a Suda 51 game I actually finished, which makes me feel a lot better. I have an unreasonable amount of guilt about killer7 and No More Heroes. I didn't even make it past the tutorial in killer7 *sigh*. Pretty embarrassing.

I also wasn't planning to review Demon's Souls, but after criticising 3D Dot I felt like giving From Software credit where it's due. The Demon's Souls review took me ages. I re-did the structure completely many times, trying to get the right messages across.

I think that was a useful process, but since then I've also been learning to limit the time I spend writing, not just improving the quality. It's a tricky balance, and I need to be strict with myself. I can't afford to spend that much time on everything.

Making myself write faster has been good for me, I think. Short term the quality suffers, but I think I'm starting to get better at it. Thankfully I also started on this particular challenge while reviewing some shorter download games.

Shank was an interesting prospect. I volunteered to look at it, even though I'm a beat-em-up novice. I enjoyed writing a harsh opening paragraph, maybe a little too much.

I love discovering different approaches to game reviewing.

40 Ounces, 1 Game seems to be inactive, but I approve of the premise:

I’m going to purchase a 40oz bottle of beer, and drink it while playing a computer game that I haven’t played before – and then, the following day, I’ll write about it based on notes taken in a progressively inebriated state.

I feel like it's an idea with potential, at least.  Someone should start up a new site with a similar theme.  Go on, you know you want to.  Preferably someone who knows there should be a space between '40' and 'oz'.  I'm not an experienced enough writer to be a proper Grammar Nazi, but units of measurement bring it out in me. Better yet, why not review games while drinking appropriate drinks from The Drunken Moogle.  I'd read it.

I recently discovered Action Button Dot Net, which uses a stream-of-consciousness approach and takes no shit from anyone.  What I've read so far felt a bit like someone was punching me in the head, which is kind of awesome.

Naturally, I'm very excited about the Five Minutes With... column which recently started up on Gamasutra.  Focus in on five minutes of a game -- sounds great.

Given the huge number of game sites and blogs out there I'm sure there must be others taking a more unusual approach to reviews, but it's hard to find them under the huge pile of formulaic score-based stuff.  There's a place for that too, it just doesn't interest me much personally.

Always interested to hear recommendations.  Less interested to hear whining about how these things aren't really reviews, because I don't care.  Although, I would love another term I could easily use for my own 'review' approach: something that describes writing about a single game in a subjective, flexible way, incorporating amateur analysis and related tangent stories.

My latest review is for Star Ocean: The Last Hope - International (no, I don't really know how I should punctuate multiple levels of subtitles, damn them).  I guess it was about time for something I don't like. And as much as I love roleplaying I've yet to find a JRPG I can really appreciate.

Also, I know I probably shouldn't call these "reviews" exactly, but it's more convenient than trying to explain what they actually are.  This particular example is  more typically review-like than usual for me, but still doesn't cover all the usual checkpoints.

Anyway, Star Ocean... I wrote this in the middle of my phase of experimenting with cliches.  It's actually a bit of a private joke.  I wrote about an overly-troped game and slid in a couple of borrowed phrases like "pales in comparison" and "silver lining".  It will be completely lost on everyone else, but I enjoy keeping myself amused.

I'm a bit weird, in that even when I don't like something I sometimes think it's worth experiencing anyway.  This gets me into trouble.  I tell someone I don't like a certain genre of movie and then get confused when they don't invite me to the cinema.

For all my complaining about this game, I sunk about 40 hours into it.  The only reason I didn't finish it was that the copy I was sent is scratched, and I started getting frequent disc errors.  With a huge time between save points it doesn't take many errors to make it unplayable.

I wasn't sure whether to be relieved or annoyed at those disc errors.  I have big problems with the game, so it's kind of nice to have an excuse to leave it.  At the same time, I had a morbid curiosity to see how much more disturbing it gets.  Not curious enough to actually spend money on disc repair, but still.

There is a lot I didn't go into about the character interactions, and I keep wondering how far they are going to push things.  There is even a slight hint of paedophilia, extending to an accidental kiss.  I don't mention it partly because it makes me look like I can't recognise a non-sexual relationship when I see one.  But even as a friendship it's pretty darn creepy, honestly.

Apparently in the manual they claim she's fifteen to reduce any potential issues.  Yep, I believe them:

I don't care if she's part of a short, alien race.  She looks and acts about five years old at the most.  Also, I wish I didn't just go image hunting... lots of disturbing fan art I now cannot un-see.

This week I review something far less serious -- rhythm platform game  Maestro! Jump in Music.

I wrote about silliness, which is like another world to me right now.  I'm in a serious mood.  It's my birthday on Saturday, and that usually makes me withdrawn.  Getting older is inevitable and not particularly sad, but I associate my birthday with a lot of memories, and often spend it indulging in melancholy.

My review this week is for the browser game Grace's Diary (the game itself is available here).

I was surprised by my reaction to playing Grace's Diary, and came out of it wondering if that's something I could write about.  Then I realised there's no reason I couldn't.  I tell a rather personal story, but I do have a lot of distance from it by now.

Grace's Diary focuses on raising awareness of teen dating violence. That isn't the term I would normally use. Firstly because "dating" sounds very American to my ear, so it feels more like television than something real people actually do.

Also, "violence" conjures rather extreme physical images, and I think Jennifer Ann Group are actually trying to target something broader than that.

My main concern at sharing my own tale of teenage romance was actually that it possibly wasn't extreme enough to link to such a serious cause. But I also thought it was important to broaden that idea of violence and situations we are trying to watch out for.

When I started writing initially I churned out a lot more detail. It was cathartic, but not particularly relevant. I had to be harsh with myself, and cut most of it out. I usually hate culling like that when I've gone to the throuble of writing something, but in this case it was definitely the right decision.

My rambling just diluted what I wanted to say. And in the end, deleting the words and being done with them was rather satisfying.

 My latest review is for Rainblood Town of Death.  It's a cool little game, but explaining that proved more challenging than I expected.

I've been working a lot on my approach to reviewing recently, so I feel a bit mixed about my previous reviews going live.  I notice things I didn't at the time.  Game People are always happy to change things when I ask, but there's a point where I just need to let go and put it down to experience.

I also wrote this before the 'Microcosm Gamer' angle was really pinned down, so that stuff feels a bit tacked on.  Or maybe it's just because those bits are not quite my words.

The phrase "pushed all those buttons for me" really stands out because I have almost certainly never said/written that.  I have fairly extreme reactions to clichés.  My partner reminded me they can be shortcuts to understanding, and I probably don't need to have quite such a violent reaction to them.

I realise avoiding clichés is good writing advice.  But recently I've added in a few deliberately here and there as an experiment.  Just trying to get a bit more perspective on them before I go back to avoiding them.  I guess I have a strange approach to understanding writing.

I am documenting my learning process here, so I can point and laugh at some of the things I am trying to do better.  I'll always be my own worst (best?) critic, and little details really stood out on my Rainblood review.

The first paragraph has Rainblood as two words, for one thing.  That part wasn't mine, but it's still partly my lack of observation letting things slip through.

My own bad habits really bite on the second paragraph.  I begin with genre labelling, which is lazy and I'm training myself out of it.  Game genres are pretty unhelpful anyway.  On this blog I currently have the tags "action", "action-adventure", and "action-rpg".  Which are messy, but damned if I know how to fix them.

Roleplaying game is a particularly fuzzy concept (let alone whatever a "Role Play Game" is).  Maybe if I'd specified roleplaying in the sense of old-school console roleplaying games, like classic Final Fantasy, it would have meant something to someone.  But even that wouldn't be a very promising beginning.

To me, the only vaguely important ideas in that sentence were that it was indie, Chinese, and recently translated.  Indie was edited out at some point without me noticing, and suddenly I'm describing a popular game instead of a popular indie game, which is a pretty big difference.  Popular is a subjective term, but potentially sitting Rainblood next to World of Warcraft makes me a tad uncomfortable.

So, I start off with a fuzzy and slightly misleading sentence.  Good job, Cha.

If I can get past my fixation with that particular sentence there is still a lot here I found interesting.  Particularly what it takes for game violence to retain its emotional impact.  I was only touching on the edge of that topic, but it's a big one.

My latest Game People review is for The Witcher.

I've been intending to say more about The Witcher than just about the sex. A lot of it went into that review, which I really enjoyed writing. It's really more analysis than review, even by my usual standards.

I may just have played too much D&D, but neutrality is actually a personally important concept to me.

What I want to mention briefly is a mistake I made. In that review I use "who" to refer to monsters. I do consider it a mistake, but as errors go it's kind of perfect. After all, it's really the whole point. The scariest monsters are not external to humanity -- they are created from it.

June has been a month of set-up and new beginnings for me.  Here on Personal Gamer I began by deciding to overhaul the comment system, and ended up redecorating the whole place.  I'm still tweaking minor things no one but me will probably ever notice.  I'm glad this tendency of mine only applies to my virtual homes or I'd run through a lot of furniture and trimmings.

Meanwhile, my own game review column is starting up on Game People.  As Microcosm Gamer I'll be looking at how games recreate elements of the real world, and how they inform my life.  A bit wanky arguably, but I happen to enjoy that sort of thing.  I know if I tried to write for a more standard review site I would get bored very quickly.

My first microcosm review is on Nier, and builds somewhat on my initial impressions here.

Having experienced Nier, Heavy Rain and the original Silent Hill recently I've been looking at a lot of game plots about fatherhood.  More specifically, about a father trying to save their child.  And on a basic level they were all the same -- a self-sacrificial struggle at any cost.  I think it's worth noting the unhealthy aspects of this take on what it means to be a parent.

There is more than that going on in Nier though, so it's been interesting to write about.  There is a lot about the game which would normally put me off, but somehow I forgive it.

I'm having a quiet long weekend, and so I've been on a bit of a game binge the last couple of days. This may have been a bad idea, as my shoulder now hates me.

I have another guest review up on Game people, for Endless Ocean 2.

Yes, I really am afraid of the ocean. I quite enjoyed writing about that. Thinking about it now, I suppose I'm interested in the relationship between games and fear. Not so much intentionally scary games, but how elements in games relate to facing fears. Is a virtual world an easier place to deal with things? I suppose Endless Ocean 2 is an example where this applies for me, though I wouldn't say it made me any more likely to seek out ocean experiences in the real world.

I suppose in this case I am using a game to substitute for the real thing, rather than as a transitional stage. I don't think that has to be a terrible thing. And it doesn't mean I couldn't use a game as a stepping stone if I really wanted to overcome a fear. I could argue I successfully used World of Warcraft as a social training ground, though progress there is always ongoing. There is no "quick fix" a lot of the time, and games are only one part of a much larger story.

News today is that I have a guest review of Sleep is Death on Game People. Game People is a site aimed at providing intentionally anecdotal and subjective game reviews from different types of people. So, I fit in there and am intending to write more reviews for them in the future. This will (and has been) impacting my post frequency here, but isn't the death of my blogging by any means.

Sleep is Death was a strange game, and I'm feeling a bit mixed about my review of it. That is perhaps appropriate, since I was also pretty mixed about playing it. I'm very glad not all games require quite so much work from me.

I'm not used to having an editor, so it feels a bit odd reading occasional altered sentences and slightly different emphasis. I can certainly benefit a lot from editorial input, but it will take some getting used to. I have been enjoying myself, though, and it's always nice to get some recognition and be invited to write something.

The thing about a new console is the sudden exposure to a bunch of new games (often just new to me, but never mind). So, I've been working on speed-reviews, for the fun of it.

In alphabetical order...

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3 exclusive)

This is more my partner's interest than mine. I understand Disgaea games are valued for their stories, humour and playing with stereotypes (and the fact that the level cap is 9999). It's not my sort of humour, the stories don't interest me much, and the gameplay is unashamedly repetitive. That said, I am enjoying this more than previous Disgaea games, and turn-based can be good when my brain is tired. Also, there are War Slugs, so that wins points.

Eternal Sonata (also available on XBox 360)


I was attracted to this game purely on concept. The story takes place in a dream sequence that Chopin has on his death bed. It also includes interludes about Chopin's life, the first of which was about his relationship with George Sand, who seems a very interesting woman. Eternal Sonata is a very pretty game, in an anime, non-realistic way. And the music is of course very beautiful. The people and places are all named after musical terms. Beyond that it's probably a fairly standard JRPG, but I'm enjoying it despite the fact that they usually drive me a bit mad (mostly due to linearity and annoying repetitive special attacks).

flOw (Also available on PSP, or as a Flash game here, at least for a couple of creatures)


flOw is a simple game, but it works. I think it's probably much easier to control in the flash version than using SIXAXIS, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun. You are an aquatic micro-organism, and your goal is simply to eat, grow and evolve. It can be quite relaxing to float around "om nom nom"ing away. Though some of the creatures you encounter also include some challenge - things that run away quickly, or fight back etc. It's the sort of game you can either play aggressively and try to reach your goal, or just sit back and enjoy a sort of interactive screen saver. There is no actual death of your organism possible and trickier things can usually be skipped.

Flower (PS3 download exclusive)


I'm a little bit in love with this game, though there is a bit of debate about whether it is actually a game, or perhaps more of a technical demonstration. It probably has to be experienced - screen shots and descriptions don't do it proper justice. Flower is something of a successor to flOw, though you are now a breath of wind in a 3D landscape. Your aim is to pick up flower petals, and you will gradually build up a long trail of them. I think of it a bit like being a nature spirit tasked with making flowers open, though I doubt that was the intention. There is a potential for using this as a relaxation game, and happily whooshing about the landscape. It also takes some interesting turns, but I don't want to spoil it.

Folklore (PS3 exclusive)


This is probably the PS3 game I was most enthusiastic to track down, and was glad I did. In order to solve the mysteries in a small, Irish town it is necessary to travel to the netherworld and recover the memories of the dead. Different realms are based on concepts of the afterlife: the pleasurable faerie realm; a war zone created by modern people who experienced a violent death; the Endless Corridor representing the concept that nothing exists after death; and so on. Combat occurs by capturing, training, and controlling "Folks" (the creatures of these realms). It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works (arguably training folks gets a bit tedious, though I personally enjoy this sort of thing). Using SIXAXIS to suck the souls out of creatures is fun and appropriate, if sometimes hard work.

LittleBigPlanet (PS3 exclusive)


Cute, fun and has a great soundtrack. Things are made even cooler by Stephen Fry's narration. I also appreciate games with good co-op mode. LittleBigPlanet is also surprisingly challenging in places - cute does not equal easy. I found the level creator a bit cumbersome, but the scope of potential creations is huge. You could have a lot of fun with this as an engineering-geek.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (PS3 exclusive)


I don't play racing games often, and probably never would have gone near this if I didn't get it for free. But, occasionally I do enjoy racing around and I guess this is my current-generation replacement for Powerslide. I like my racing games to be fairly unrealistic, and this fits by allowing me to tear through jungles, fall into lava and so on. It has a fun range of vehicles, from big trucks through to motorbikes. And each track has multiple pathways, with the best option varying for the different vehicles. I can't comment on how it compares to any other current racing game, but it's a bit of fun.

Noby Noby Boy (PS3 download exclusive)


It's a $AU7 download, so I would have had to really hate this to feel ripped off. It is extremely strange though. Even stranger than I expected. There is no real goal - just stretch and eat things. It's kind of cute, but again in a very strange way. I'm not sure what more I can say really. I do appreciate the idea of playing around with less goal-orientated games though. It is probably another thing that is better to just play instead of trying to explain it.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3 exclusive)


I am actually a terrible person to review this. Every now and then I get the urge to buy a game with a lot of shooting or other action in it, even though I know my skills in this area are probably not going to be up to the task. That said, so far I'm getting by. After fighting with camera-angles in Tomb Raider that tempt you to risk leaps-of-death this is a rather nice change. And the scenery is pretty. I would probably prefer something with more puzzles and less action, though.

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3 exclusive)


Mixing genres sometimes results in a horrible mess, but I think this successfully pulls off a combination of RPG, RTS and FPS. All of the potential troops have personality. This necessarily means some of them are annoying, but I'll still take that over commanding a bunch of anonymous mooks. The strategy is interesting and the challenge level is good. The setting feels a bit ridiculous (JRPG issues surfacing again), but once you overlook that and run with it it's well worth it.

I go by the name Cha, and I'm a Research Assistant from Melbourne, Australia, who also happens to be passionate about computer games.

I enjoy writing about gaming. In the past I have submitted occasional articles to The Age "Screen Play" blog, most notably my article on gaming online with social anxiety, which won their Your Turn contest for January 2009. My other contributions have been a review of Baroque (Wii), and my thoughts on walkthrough writing.

I would like to write more about gaming. What I am most interested in is the place gaming has in my own life, and the personal stories I have to share. Since I doubt Fairfax wants to be swamped with a lot of personal stories about my life, I created this blog instead.

The first few posts will be edited versions of things I wrote elsewhere over the last couple of years, so if they seem a little out-of-date, that's why. That said, I'm not always interested in keeping up with the latest things -- there are some classics I still intend to experience, and if I end up having thoughts to share about them I won't let their age stop me.