Before I begin, let me say that over the course of my group's messing around with this game last night, we fucked up the name every other sentence. It's Bloodline Champions, by Stunlock Studios. There, that's the only time I'll get it right this entire blog.

So I'd heard a limited amount of buzz for this game before yesterday, seen a couple screens with some interesting art direction, and then I suddenly got a beta key for this thing in my inbox. And so, apparently, had my internet bros-for-life Ryu89 and Analoge. We decided to make an evening of it to see what it was about. A wild King3vbo appeared a couple hours into the proceedings. Herein lies what I've learned about this thing.

-Not a DotA-like/MOBA, stop saying this: Seriously, this seems to be the first conclusion everyone jumps to when they read the word "Champion". Until I saw my beta invite and actually looked at the game's website, I thought so too. There are no creeps, there is no leveling, there's just straight-up arena combat from a top-down perspective, limited, non-customizable skill pool like you'd have in a dungeon crawler, with WASD+mouse controls like you'd encounter in a game like, say, Crimsonland.

-Fast-paced, frenetic combat: Every character class has a decent move speed and at least one movement ability, and it seems like every class (sorry, BLOODLINE) packs in some short crowd-control on a small cooldown, so the combat moves and changes very, VERY quickly. At its best, it's very intense and demands focus and fast reflexes, and feels very fun and engaging. At its worst, it was very easy to completely lose track of what was happening. Several times a round would complete and I would realize that even though King was right behind me in terms of damage done, I did not see him once during the entire fight. Stunlock may want to do something about this.

-The art style is great: I have no idea whether it'll be everyone's cup of tea, but all the bloodlines have a very unique, shamanistic feel to them. Several of the cooler cl-BLOODLINES are downright creepy, like the Igniter and the Glutton. Even the Engineer has a certain janky, tribal charm about him. The in-game graphics sometimes can't do the art direction justice, but the maps and character models have a lot of, well, character.

-Strategy is rewarded: Since there's no leveling, item buying, or any other sort of power progression, skill is the deciding factor in most matches. Which, given the very quick pacing of combat, may be problematic, because there's pretty much zero time available for decision-making. Players need to know what their bloodlines can do and when they should do it ahead of time, and currently the only way to find that out in the beta is to get your ass handed to you a few times. But when you do something clever with your skills and completely outplay somebody, either 1-on-1 or as a team, it feels very good.

-Balance: Since power progression is nonexistent, it's important that Stunlock get their basic level of balance right. It is, of course, only beta still, and I only have one evening of play under my belt, but the balance doesn't quite feel there just yet. Tank classes offer such a high amount of damage and control, even with their huge health pools, that it's pretty silly not to stack tanks and a healer.



-The Ravener: BEST CLASS, I MEAN CHAMP, I MEAN BLOODLINE. Leap over enemies, knock tank away, stun healer, SPIN TO WIN! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Ryu, Analoge, and King may have liked the bloodlines they picked up, but who cares? Screw those guys.

tl;dr: This game sort of surprised me, it was extremely catchy. I have no idea how much I'll revisit it, especially since my crew ended the night with a couple fairly demoralizing defeats, but there you have it. Interesting game, if you have a chance/get a key, give it a shot.

Be it known that on this day, scant hours beyond the Ides of March, I did peruse the inimitable Mr. Sterling's opinion-blog regarding the Thirteenth Fantastic Finale. And be ye warned! I have opinions.

There's a massive caveat for what I'm going to write in this space: I haven't finished this game yet. But I've got enough under my belt so far that I think I can offer some rudimentary opinioneering on how I feel about this game.

First, and also foremost!
I have no idea how I would approach this thing, were it actually my job to write game reviews. If we look at the philosophical purpose of game reviews as simply posting our opinions of a game on the internet and having enough readers to make it on Metacritic, then I know more or less what I would say about it. And I will, after a couple more paragraphs! But if we take the school of thought that a review constitutes an informed recommendation to consumers, then it's a little trickier.

You see, I can't think of something to say about FFXIII that could be summed up as a purchase recommendation from 1-10 on a sliding scale. I can't even say "If you liked Game Z, you'll like this," because there's a good chance here that it isn't the case. The reactions to this game have been pretty sharply divided, and not even with respect to demographic. It isn't 'for' the hardcore Final Fantasy fan, there's a schism there. And it isn't 'for' people who love JRPGs, schisms here also. And it doesn't seem to be universally repulsing people who aren't JRPG/FF fans, my brother being among those who don't usually like 'this sort of thing' but like FFXIII. Hell, I'm not sure there even is a 'this sort of thing'.

In short, what we have is a pretty divisive game. And while I seem to be on the far side of that divide from most people talking about it, I can't say that they're wrong. Practically every point Jim raised in his review struck me as completely legitimate. Do I disagree with him? Well, I like the game. If I don't think everything else he wrote in the review was wrong, I'm not sure 'disagree' is the right word for it. I'm not sure what perspective I'm looking at this game from where Jim and I could say the exact same things about it, right up until we talk about how we feel about it.

For my part, I've definitely enjoyed my time with the game. The story has been revealed very piecemeal, and one thing I actually love is that the story doesn't open with Lightning sitting on the train, monologuing about everything that's happened in the past couple days and the history of the world. Here we're dropping in on established personas, in an established universe, and it makes it feel like they're not performing for a camera. So I don't know why, in the third chapter, they knock it the fuck off and start telling, in excruciating detail, exactly what the fuck the deal is with all these Fal'Cie and l'Cie, OVER AND OVER. For each character. Even when they're talking to themselves. Stop it, it was bad enough the first time. To cut a huge paragraph short, I like parts of what I see, story-wise, but this story could have been handled much, MUCH better, and with more consistency. And I can't believe for a second that Sazh and Vanille were thought up by the same writer.


Snow is that 'Broseph' guy you keep hearing about.

The linearity is completely understandable. Budgetary concerns (a reason for the lack of wide-openness I've heard a lot) aside, there's a growing trend in game design wherein you take what is working only some of the time and get that part the fuck out of your game. In our current topic, towns are a good example. They're very nice when they do what they're supposed to, and can provide a large amount of immersion and diversion. But when they don't work (and as much as I love side-quests and big hub towns, it happens a lot in RPGs), they're really goddamned frustrating; I do not want to cruise the city for half a fucking hour looking for that NPC I missed the first time through so I can continue the story. From a design perspective, if you cut out what isn't core to your narrative, and isn't fun 100% of the time, you have a tighter, more focused game that fires all cylinders, every time. Square-Enix's application of this principle wasn't completely consistent or successful (see my complaints about the story above), but the focused gameplay shows me what they're going for.

Which leads me to what is working for me in this game. Combat is working. COMBAT. Ostensibly, a JRPG should be all about the narrative and the characters, and hitting things with sharp sticks should come second, or maybe even third. That's not happening here: the pictures are very pretty, but the combat so far is making me think an awful lot for merely requiring a couple button presses every few seconds. More articulate voices have written about this, so I'll spare you most of my thoughts on the matter, but one bit of the system stuck out in particular to me: In part of the 3rd chapter (I think?) I was presented with a team makeup that was, well, it wasn't ideal. You see, I had a squad without a single Commando, and I was facing enemies that you practically HAD to stagger to kill. As fast as I could attack, the chain meter would just reset without that Commando holding it in place, and I couldn't get a stagger. Then, suddenly, I had the brilliant idea of [i]waiting[/] to attack. Which worked beautifully. When was the last fucking time I had to decide NOT to attack at every available opportunity in an RPG? For a system that at first glance seems to take me OUT of the action, I seem to be having to pay very careful attention. This seemed to irritate Mr. Sterling. I love it.

Of course, the combat isn't everything, no matter how pretty is. And the flaws in the overall experience are numerous and easy to spot. So I suppose what I'm curious about is what perspective I'm taking on this game that's allowing me to enjoy the hell out of it, where so many others can't. And I don't really have a good answer for that. I'll probably revisit the subject after I've finished the game (as though this wasn't tl;dr enough!), and even if it does go completely south from here, I will finish it. I've played worse games to completion and had fun doing it.

So, I have a problem. It’s called masochism. There are some genres of games that I love. I love playing them, watching them, and everything associated. And I also suck balls at some of these genres. Specifically, fighters. My name is Pangloss, and I have a problem.


AUDIENCE: HEY, PANGLOSS.

So, where to start? I enjoy fighting games, for various reasons. I of course love exhibitions of martial prowess, which is certainly on display here. And being the manly dude that I am, I love the fierce competitive aspect that fighters revolve around. And I love watching excellent players of fighters ply their skills. But I am not among their number. I am not even a “good” player. A brief youtube search reveals that much.

There’s this thing, a difficulty curve to these games. And oh [indeterminate deity of your choice], is it ever steep. SNK, Capcom, et alia all have a rather large-ish volume of fighters, and I love them all. And I am far, far away from achieving anything approaching decency in any of them.

I should explain. Being “good” and/or “bad” at these games depends largely on what sort of level you play at. And on one level, I probably qualify as “not half-bad”. Whenever I pick up a new fighter, I quickly gravitate (within, say, an hour or so of play) to a level of competent mediocrity. Among friends who play only casually, say, when company is over, I generally dominate without much effort, to the point that nobody wants to play with me anymore. They think I’m good at these games.

No, they are dead wrong. I know better. I have seen people who are truly good at these games (who no doubt have other players that can make them feel inadequate). I have been dominated by the third AI opponent in line on the old SNK arcade games. I’ve looked at the FAQs, at the combo lists I’ll never master. I’ve tried network play, teeming as it is with fresh vistas of humiliation. Oh yes, I know where I stand here.

And even though I am aware of my place, I still love fighters. I picked up BlazBlue the week it launched, and I adore it so far. And I’m still not good at it. The pain that is always attendant with network play is still fresh in my mind. As per my usual pattern, I quickly attained level 13 on Live, and hit a streak where everyone was better than me. And the AI can still demolish me when it takes a shine to the notion. Three days before this Monthly Musing theme was announced, I had the message of my status in fighters drilled home once again, when I bravely volunteered to host BlazBlue for 360 FNF. And had the pleasure of my fellow Dtoiders grinding me into the dust. Repeatedly. Sweet Odin, I’d never even SEEN a well-played Carl Clover before.

But I’m committed, now. I’m trying to get better. I’m studying over at Dustloop every other day or so now. It makes my head hurt, but I’m learning, I think. I’m practicing more, and it’s hard to tell whether I’m improving at all, but I, well, I think I’m getting better? I think I’m on my way (dinged level 15 the other day! Woo!), but for now, I’m just going to accept my status in the world.

My name is Pangloss, and I suck at fighting games. And I enjoy it.

So I'm scanning google news and I see this article about a new "University" (not accredited yet) in the Silicon Valley, founded by Ray Kurzweil. This is tangentially game related, I promise. For those of you who don't pay attention to futurist nerd stuff, Kurzweil is one of the main guys predicting the advent of the Technological Singularity (AI that can make itself smarter, tech advances at unimaginable rates, etc) about halfway through this century. And he's starting the Singularity University, with backing from Google and NASA.

Go ahead, make the Robocalypse/Skynet jokes. Especially since Google went ahead and flagged everything ever as malware last week. I mean, come on. Talk about low-hanging comedic fruit. But after some further reading, I'm not especially worried about world-changing progress emerging from this thing. Why? Something about the faculty list seems a bit... off.

What could it be? It's a blue-ribbon panel of Nobel physicists and nanotech/AI professors. Except for the fact that for some reason, Will Wright has been hired as faculty. No, "Will Wright" is not some obscure genius rocket surgeon who shares a name with the game designer. They have hired the guy who made Spore. WHY.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like Will Wright. I'm not a huge fan of his games, but he is a great idea man. But he's not exactly a scientist. So I'm not worried about Singularity U destroying humanity anymore, because hiring a big-name game developer is not how you get substantive research done. This seemed like it had the potential, on first read, to generate some interesting progress, but now it just looks like a $25,000 networking camp for grad students.

And her security detail took my friend's camera and escorted me from the premises. So there aren't any pictures, or anything. She did shred my WoW discs though.

What? You thought it would end like... this?

The above image is dedicated to the awesome Texans who gave me a lift to Cincinnati and laughed at my stupid jokes. You guys are awesome, and also crazy, for driving for almost a full day just to party. To all of you who didn't give me a lift, I love you anyway. Every single person in attendance was completely awesome. I just wanted to say that it was great to finally meet you guys. Getting swag, playing games, and getting drunk was just icing on the cake. I'm sorry, you'll have to continue to do without pictures from the party for a while because I didn't bring a camera and would forget to take pics even if I had. I'm proud to be part of such an awesome community. Take care, you ridiculous bastards, and know that drinks are on me next time.

DISCLAIMER: I am not actually buying any of you drinks without sexual favors being involved.