Otaku – Page 57 – Robot Claw

2016 in Games

January 26, 2017

Once again, it’s time for the long awaited analysis of my game-buying and playing habits of the past year.

All told the year was slightly down on 2015, and the number of systems I bought games for continued to be small. In total I purchased 65 games for 4 systems, to a total of $1836, or $28/game. Notably, 2016 was the first year since I started keeping records (way back in 1993) that I didn’t buy any new hardware, which meant I was not swayed by Sony and Microsoft releasing iterative updates of both their consoles. While the numbers weren’t much different from 2015, looking back at 2016 as I am now gives me pause for the console gaming future.

Here are the games purchased per system in percentage format:

And the dollars spent per system, again by percentage:

As you can see my gaming was more or less split between the PS4, Vita and 3DS with the Wii U an almost forgotten fourth entry. As far as I can surmise the Wii U may already be a dead console for me, unless the Nintendo Switch is dead-in-the-water and I buy the upcoming Zelda game on Wii U as it’s last hurrah.

Vita sales continued to be strong but I believe they have passed the peak and the system will decline sharply in 2017 (not a risky prediction since it’s already effectively ‘retired’ by Sony). I expect the PS4 will continue to be strong for a while, especially in this house as it’s difficult to resist the allure of deeply discounted games (such as Far Cry Primal for $5), but it remains to be seen how much the 4K updates will eat into the lifetime of my version of the console. The 3DS is a bit of a wild card at the moment; it hardly seems the Switch is a replacement (and Nintendo says it isn’t) but at the same time there’s not a lot on the horizon for it at present. 2017 could be a difficult year for the venerable handheld.

Before I get to my favourites from this past year, a few comments on specific games:

Puzzle And Dragons relaxed it’s hold on me somewhat this year. I still play it every day – as I have for nearly four years! – but it’d best days are behind it and I have little patience for the forced difficulty of some of the more recent dungeons. Mostly my logins these days are 5-10 minute bursts spending stamina in trivial dungeons. I have almost all the gods and many ‘broken’ teams and can beat almost anything the game throws at me. I think the game would benefit from a big round of powercreep to bring the fun back.

Egg, Inc. is a crazy ‘chicken hatching’ game for iOS that has stolen my soul these past two months. It’s the first mobile game in years that I have spent money on, and has the notable honor of being the game that broke P&D’s hold on my in the mobile sphere. It’s little more than a crazy ‘tapper’ (although you can quickly research away the need to tap) but it has a good sense of progression, is generous with rewards and is fiendishly addictive. Highly recommended.

Bubble Bobble for ZX-Spectrum cost me £5 in a UK retro games store and is not included in the above charts due to it’s uniqueness. At present it’s my only Spectrum game (on cassette!) and I can’t play it since I don’t own the machine. Waste of money? You be the judge 🙂

This year to mix things up a bit I’ll list my favourite games from each of the main three systems I played on. In no particular order (well…) they are:

Stranger Of Sword City (Vita)

This is a monstrously long and difficult Wizardry clone that dominated my time for about 150 hours during the late summer. The story, graphics and atmosphere of the game are superb, but what made it really shine was the way it took liberties with the genre (no resurrection spells, permadeath, forced character restarts) in a way that could have been disastrous but instead ended up being revitalizing. Dungeon crawls are popular right now, but too many of them are needlessly complicated with labyrinthine and un-fun dungeons. It takes a careful hand to avoid such pitfalls in design, and the makers of SoSC walked that path well. While I wouldn’t actually recommend this due to it’s difficulty, it was just the right game for me at the time and beating it was very satisfying.

Odin Sphere Leifthrasir (PS4)

Vanillaware took their PS2 classic and ran it through the Dragon’s Crown machine to make it a much better game for PS4. This is quite simply one of the best 2D beat-em-ups I have ever played and I would have loved it even were it not for the fact it happens to be one of the prettiest games I’ve ever played as well. Multiple characters, numerous endings, breathtaking art and wonderful music make this a close contender for my game of the year. In fact I loved it so much I beat every inch of it to get the platinum trophy (which took over 100 hours). Highly recommended.

Monster Hunter Generations (3DS)

Not just the latest installment in my favourite game series of all time – the best version yet. This owned me as all the others have, and I played it like a fiend for months. Easily my game of the year, and I can’t wait for the upcoming sequel due some time this year. You can read about it on next year’s post 😉

More Crafting

December 10, 2016

It’s time for a craft update. While KLS was in Ireland I occupied myself with a bit of making. Three different miniature kits to be precise, and all turned out quite well.

The first was a tiny cardboard dinosaur skeleton that I had picked up in CA earlier this year. I bough a kit by the same maker in Japan years ago but ruined it during assembly so I was very careful this time and it went together without issue.

As you can see it’s very detailed for its size (about 1.5 inches high) if a little flimsy. A tiny bit of glue would perfect this, but I’m too nervous to do it so it shall sit on the shelf forever!

The next kit was a gift from Florence, who has since admitted she chose it because it looked difficult. She wasn’t wrong!

I’d made one like this before and that was hard enough, but look at the micro-folds required here! The level of precision is incredible, and this one also requires glue to assemble. Im not sure I had the correct tools for this, but then I don’t know even what the correct tools would be!

Almost all the pieces in the first photo go into making the tiny three-windowed piece in the lower right of the second!

Anyway I was careful and meticulous and patient and believe I ended up doing quite a good job:

It came with a little display case (which also needed assembly) but I like it better out.

Lastly it was time for (yet!) another Metal Earth kits, this time from their new Doctor Who license.

This was another trial of my patience to be honest, and definitely amongst their more difficult kits. But once made, it’s amazing:

Next on my list: a Gundam. Whether or not that happens before Oz remains to be seen…

Thanks Mr Dever

December 1, 2016

Most of you probably haven’t heard of Joe Dever, even though he was an author of over 50 books that sold more than 10 million copies combined in many languages. As the owner of more than 50 of his books (in several imprints), it was sad to hear that he passed away the other day at the age of 60.

Starting in 1984 Joe Dever was the creator and sole author of the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks that continued for 29 installments and spun off into other gamebook series, novels, computer games, audio books, role-playing games and even a phone-based adventure game. It’s still going strong (more or less) with iOS games, reprints of the books and even a new installment which was released a few months ago. Lone Wolf was every bit as important as the Fighting Fantasy series, and is as much-loved today by it’s legions of fans.

As a 12-year old already caught up in gamebook mania via the Fighting Fantasy series, I ate up the Lone Wolf books when they were first released. Unlike the FF books, they were all set in the same world and told a continuing narrative where you played the same character through each book. You could even use your old character sheet, which was remarkable in those days! The world of Lone Wolf, inhabited by the jedi-like Kai Lords (and more powerful Magnakai) and the evil Daaklords was exotic and dangerous and fascinating and illustrated by the wonderful art of Gary Chalk.

In those days I had no way of knowing when (or if!) a new book in the series would ever come out so it was a real treat when I went to the bookstore and found the latest one. I must have played through at least ten in the series before I grew out of them (as a youth at least). As an adult, when I fell back into gamebooks about a decade ago, it wasn’t long before I’d acquired most of the low-number Lone Wolf books. My collection grew to include a mishmash of USA, UK and Australian imprints and would soon expand to include Dever’s other gamebooks (Combat Command, Grey Star and the Mad-Max Freeway Warrior) as well as Long Wolf novels and the (long sought-after by myself) The Magnamund Companion Lone Wolf Atlas. All of these are now important parts of my collection.

And yet to this day even in my expansive and encyclopedic gamebook collection there are a few books that remain elusive. And many of them are from the Lone Wolf series. I have books 1 through 20 (in some cases, multiple versions of each) and then book 25. This leaves 9 books out there to be one day found, with evocative titles like The Hunger Of Sejanoz and Vampirium. These books had small print runs, are quite rare, and very expensive (hundreds of dollars for some). One day I may own them.

I’ve read every Dever book I own and enjoyed them all. The gamebooks in particular are among the best written, and the quality of the Lone Wolf novels was a great surprise (since my expectations were influenced by the for-kids FF novels). The Lone Wolf books though are the keystones of his legacy, and I’m just one of millions that have enjoyed them now for over thirty years. Apparently Mr Dever was still writing new installments up until he fell ill. Even though those books will never be read, I believe the many works he left behind will keep readers entertained for many years to come.