Racial Harmony Day – Because not being dicks to each other is a cause for celebration

Race is not a real thing. It most certainly exist, but not in the physical sense, and is an idea that we have willed into existence while continuing to strengthen racial divisions. And because of that, racial discrimination becomes a real thing, and that is just disgusting. I recently learnt from a doctor friend that the only way to get rid of a bad wart is to cut it off; for a wart as deadly as racial discrimination, we are applying nonsensical ointments such as racial laws and policing hate crime and wish that the wart goes away. That never works.

The term racial harmony needs to be deconstructed and dissected before any proper discussion of this topic can be held. To me, the term is simply ironic. Race is a construct invented for the sole purpose to divide and differentiate in order to assign different social roles and rights to other members of the human race (which is a real thing) based on bogus research studies that are, sadly, still being funded and conducted to this day. Harmony is the opposing force that is supposed to bring people (back) together, and for the most part it is a desirable state of being. Except if you enjoy the chaos brought about by people fighting over stupid ideas, such as racial uniqueness, otherwise we can mostly agree that harmony is a good thing. I like harmony. I do not necessarily care for peace, but I like it for the fact that people in this imaginary harmonious world are smarter and more logical than those in our world. So when we speak of racial harmony, I like to think of it as a world where people do not fight over racial issues. When you choose to employ a candidate over another, you do so because of their gender, class status, their merits or simply the way they look, and never because they are of a certain race. When a man tells you her wife is a dentist, you do not ask whether they are Chinese or Malay, but instead make comments like “so she is a nurse at the dentistry?” Because eliminating racial divide will be the end of all our problems, and therefore racial harmony is of utmost importance and needs to be made into a special day for celebration.

Jokes aside, I do think the intention of having such a day for celebration is good, at least partially, depending on how you view nations and nationalism. It is definitely not pure and sincere in any sense, but good. Despite being ironic how we can celebrate unity in diversity, the end goal is at least unity, a fairness in treatment to all despite being told that we are different. Like most scientific projects that end up being part of military weaponry, good intentions do not always yield merits nor intended results. Perhaps it is out of pure naivety of our socio-political scientists, perhaps it is simply required for the grand plot of the nation building story which has not been updated for 50 years, as we were painfully reminded last year. But again, the intention to try and create equal grounds for everyone is faultless unless you really despise the idea of nations. It has certainly not solved racial discrimination, but I cannot find myself to hate on a program that tells kids to not be assholes to other kids because their skin colour is different or they talk funny or something. On my end I will make sure my kids learn about the very basics of linguistic and accents develop from the language other kids speak at home, and not go down the easy path of telling them people speak differently because they are of another race. I will be quite disgusted if educated university friends, especially those who majored in that major where they do nothing but talk about social problems, if they decide to raise their children as lazily (intellectually) as our parents did. I still immediately assume all the ‘Malay’ people I know are Muslims because of my upbringing, and it annoys me to no end even though I am aware that it is a major misconception.                                                                                                                                                         

And after all that setting up we can finally talk about the Yishun Secondary School incident, where students were apparently told only those that are eligible for JC are going for the Racial Harmony Day celebrations. (The original Mothership.com post later updated that it is not in fact the celebration itself that is practising this discrimination but a half day off to prepare for the celebrations, but nonetheless, still differential treatment in relation to this Racial Harmony Day, thus this discussion still needs to be had.) If anyone has not read the web comic On A Plate on class privilege then I do recommend you read it and tell me whether this discrimination of students by results is a class issue, because I most certainly think it is. The rest of this post will be a very angry rant on the idiocy of flaming discrimination in public schools, so I will preface this by saying two things. First, I believe the intention of the school to be good. Selfish, but good. They want the students who are not doing as well and pulling up the school’s ranking to have half a day more of lessons, because that will most certainly help them get into JC. But I can at least where the school is coming from. Secondly, I do not believe the students’ demands are pure. They just do not want classes. But in this case their selfish reasoning is the one I will side on because our goals align despite having different starting points, like how I will stand with people who are against social welfare because they do not want to pay more taxes despite knowing that they are being assholes.

What is the point of sending children to public schools? For me it is to place them in a harmonious fantasy where you are supposedly judged base on your merits and nothing else, so that when time comes for them to rule the world, they will run their world like how their public school society was like. But alas, the ‘real’ world that everyone speaks badly but does nothing to change it will not be moved by such idealistic wishes. There are two ways to go about it. The first way is the easy way; you let kids know that their teachers are discriminating them based on arbitrary favourism, and are focused to help the good ones get better, all while hiding behind the rhetoric of “I cannot help you if you do not want to help yourselves”. You teach them the rules of that ‘real’ world we so proudly uphold, where being of a certain gender, sexuality, skin colour, language group and/or religion determines whether you serve coffee or receive coffee in a meeting room. The second way is the harder way. You raise the future generation into one that can change our twisted world. You do everything you teach them in the first method, and you make the children think about what they can do for a better future. You force these children who have lived through that fantasy create solutions to turn that fantasy into reality. The worst thing that can happen now is that Yishun Secondary School backs down and lets everybody get the day off for Racial Harmony Day. It certainly solves the problem at hand, but similar to the first method, you simply expose the children to the fault lines of discrimination but do not request a solution out of them. I believe a majority of children at that age would want a day off. What about making them abandon that selfish thought for the sake of equality? I think, give them a chance to vote on it. Give them three options, continue with the current plan, make it a day off for everyone, or let everyone go back to normal curriculum. Inform the children about your concern for the students who are not doing as well in class that you need them to carry on with classes on this day. If there is any hope left for the future, I think the third option will win. And if it does not, I guess we just need to try again when my kids and their generation grows up.

I believe that there was a question I was trying to answer with this post, on the importance of dedicating an entire day to celebrate Racial Harmony Day in public schools. The solution that I have provided above is what I think we can do for now, because you are not going to resolve all the issues with the system in a single day, through a single event. But we can take a step towards that better future. And if the upcoming generation cannot balance the need of their establishment (the school, in this case) for the non-JC eligible students to not have the off and continue with their normal curriculum (I am not saying I agree with the method, but neither do I know how to run schools), and yet ensure that equality is maintained by not discriminating anyone with any arbitrary markers, then they need the idea of harmony beaten into them with as pompous a celebration as possible. So yes, if Yishun Secondary School decides to let everyone off in preparation for Racial Harmony Day together after this backlash, then they need the celebration so very much to hopefully turn them into better adults who will not be dicks to each other.  

I will like to hear someone from that generation provide me a rebuttal with a better solution to this crisis – tell me my ideas are outdated and the future requires solutions that I am unable to think of – that will make me really happy. 

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and False Advertisement

Three games in recent memory come to mind whenever I think of the question, "What exactly represents the worst in video games these days?" The first is Valiant Hearts, a mediocre game loved by fans and critics alike because they are surprised that Ubisoft decided to put out a non-shooty shooty killy killy game and people want them to make more of it instead of their usual stuff. Perhaps the high praises that Valiant Hearts received resulted in Ubisoft giving more support to initiatives like Grow Home and Grow Up, but judged on its own Valiant Hearts is an utter piece of garbage which I have torn apart in an earlier post. The second is No Man's Sky, a game recommended to me on Steam because it is popular. Let's break it down. An ambitious game which people know very little about, that has been recently delayed and is launching at $60 full price, is the top selling Steam game that is at the top of my queue. The damn thing is not even out yet and people are pre-ordering a digital copy of a game that they know shit about. I would love to delve more deeply into criticism but I cannot, because there is no game to criticise nor play, but go ahead pre-order the damn digital copy because they will most certainly run out of those. 

The third game, regrettably, is Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - or as I like to call it, Monster Grinder. There are many problems I have with the mechanics of the game, but I want to focus on the parts of the game that makes it qualify for this 'worst of video gaming' award, and that is false advertising, and how people are putting up with this bullshit year after year. 4 main points I want to go through here. One, the Field Of View. While the previous installment benefited from being on the Wii-U, a home console which means your FOV is the size of your TV, this version puts you on the tiny 3DS which makes everything so hard to spot. I guess it is time to upgrade to the XL. This would not have been such a big problem if the camera controls were a bit better, and you will say, well get the New 3DS then, it has a second thumbstick to control the camera. And thirdly, there is framerate dips and input lag because my system is the oldest of oldest of 3DSs, so I guess getting a New 3DS would make sense... until you realise none of this is actually stated on the box. MH4U is a shameless game that was designed for the New 3DS like Hyrule Warrior Legends, and is clearly not optimised for the normal 3DS, but refuses to state that limitation on the box itself because it fears not being able to sell more copies to people who own normal 3DSs. Nintendo's whole retarded move of calling the New 3DS literally the New Nintendo 3DS, similar to the failure of a name that is the Wii-U, does not exactly inspire people to upgrade their handhelds, nor encourage third party developers to push games on the new console. I will not blame Capcom (and Koei Tecmo in the case of HWL) entirely for Nintendo's failings, and it is just saddening that the optimal marketing strategy amidst failure of the console's marketing is obscuring crucial information that affects gameplay and enjoyment in order to sell games like MH4U and HWL. With Sun and Moon coming out this November, I'm hoping they don't pull the same nonsense here because even thought I will be eventually getting my upgrade to the new 3ds, I hope that friends can continue to play games together on their old systems too.

And this brings us to my fourth point about false advertisement, the focus on multiplayer. Jumping onto the MH4U bandwagon now is bad, because most friends who like the franchise are just waiting for generations to be out and have stopped playing this version for a long time. Monsters are extremely grindy on single player mode, and everyone in the world is telling me the multiplayer is more fun, I would like to point out that this game again, was not advertised as a multiplayer only game. Just admit it, if you need people to play with to make the base game even bearable, then clearly the single player campaigned is not properly scaled and balanced and it should be stated that the single player mode is simply a tag on. And the reason why this is important is that this means in order to get a party of 4 to play, we need 4 New 3DS XLs and 4 copies of this game, that's about $1600 for 4 people to enjoy this game. I recently spent $40 buying 4 copies of Papers, Please for 4 of my friends and made them really happy; so not thanks I will rather buy 160 copies of Papers, Please and make 160 people really happy instead. For what it does, the value proposition just is not enough to justify this game as enjoyable because it costs so god damn much.

Strangely enough, I am enjoying the game but mostly because I am really bored and have nothing else to play. But I am disappointed, perhaps by the hype surrounding it, but more so by the willingness of gaming carrotheads to be chopped by AAA developers, spending more money and blaming their own systems for being not good enough when in actual fact they have been screwed by obfuscation of information, marketing schemes and poor optimisation and design of games. I will probably criticise the game design one day, but as free and bored I am writing is still much of chore.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, MH4U, more like Me Has 4 Unstated problems that border on false advertisement and you should totally read reviews before buying this game that plays like crap on anything but a New 3DS XL. 

80 Days and the 'New' way to read

For a student of the humanities, I really dislike reading. Most of my friends from other faculties will disagree, because I do read a lot, but firstly I don't read enough for what I do, and secondly I don't necessarily enjoy the process. There are three ways that this issue is usually circumvented. First, I will try and read the damn thing, and if the writing is intriguing enough I will read on. If that fails, I will find a video or an audiobook of sorts that reads and summarises the material I wish to read about. Or lastly, I will wait for the book or essay to be presented in a more interesting format, such as the abovementioned video or audiobook. Poorly written books are, in my opinion, the lowest denominator of the written artform. Books that are unable to draw in its readers through its language are unworthy of read, and for that I'd even argue I like my books to be bias and heavily emplotted than treating me like an idiot by being overly expository. Mangas, for instance, is a higher artform than books, using visual images, intentional framing and placement of those frames for visual story telling, that often prioritises dynamic dialogues and character interaction over narrative and commentary. Visual novels and RPGs on the other hand, allows the player to be part of the narrative by giving player's choices to affect the outcomes and endings in the story. Both games and manga creates a stronger bond between the reader and read, providing immersion that I would say even the greatest of written novels are unable to achieve simply because it is so easy to enter this world via the visual representation and in RPGs, actually being part of that world.

80 Days, a choose-your-own adventure game created by Inkle, and writtten by Meg Jayanth and Jon Ingold, is a step forward for the interactive fiction genre for people not so enthusiastic about books like me. As I am writing I am on my third playthrough of the game, and it surprises me because the game is almost entirely text driven and I generally don't like reading as stated above. It may be because of the topic - Journey to the Centre of the Earth remains one of the books I remember fondly from my childhood to this day, and 80 Days is adapted from another of Jules Verne's famous novel - but I think there are things that 80 Days does more that allows for my attention to be held for so long.

The first aspect has to be the 'choose your own adventure' element present within the game, something derived from text-based MUD games in the earlier days and heavily inspired by pen and paper board games like D&D. And because of these choices, players will be exploring new towns and unlocking different story pieces each time they play - if they choose to do so, that is (I did) - and through that allow for multiple read through of the same adventure with very different stories. By taking on the form of a game, 80 days took the best of both world's of books and visual novels and created an unique experience that is neither dull and linear like books would be, nor so focused on character interaction that in is on telling the story and being an adventure piece. As much as I enjoyed the Zero Escape series written by the genius that is Kotaro Uchikoshi, it relied heavily on the characters and mystery to drive its plot, and the tightness in the world building and narrative kept it constantly interesting and enjoyable. 80 Days differs from Zero Escape by having very few memorable characters, (with Passepartout and Fogg being the only ones with any personality) hence sacrificing the chance to use well written dialogues to drive the narrative and plot, and relied solely on exposition - and it did that amazingly. 80 Days also differs from games in general by removing that more 'game-y' part of visual novels and focuses solely on text, instead of environmental story telling elements present in Bioshock and the upcoming We Happy Few, again, falls back on its strong writing to keep the reader enthralled.

Making this post any longer will be an ironic thing to do. Let me just say this, I am not quite sure whether 80 Days is a game, I definitely cannot say it is a good game, but it is an amazing read. I paid $15 for a book, and I read it 3 times. I had my friend read it while I watched and managed to see some new stories from that run too. It is a fantastic book and I do hope more of my future reads can exist in this very format.  

Most likely creating a new blog and importing all my game reviews there, then shutting this one down completely

Had my first argument on the internet for almost a year. Quite boring considering how little internet debaters changed during my break - they are still throwing around the same type of standard arguments, they still refuse to read before replying, and their rhetoric always involved paraphrasing the same nonsensical things they said in a previous post. If there is one takeaway from that experience, it's that you are not going to convince anyone on the internet. If I truly love people who cannot think for themselves and want to save them, I need another platform, I need to command authority and I need to work within the rules and system of this world to make sure people take what I say seriously. And I think that moment is about to come.

And because of that change, I probably shouldn't have an opinion that can be scrutinised by the public eye anymore. I'm still going to do game reviews (like I have been for the past months) and I'd probably express my views in more extreme ways through writing satire posts. So that's the plan for the near future, launching those 2 new blogs under new names and staying out of traditional political commentary until I can do so again. I hope this is not jynxing that wonderful opportunity.

Invisible Inc. and Difficulty Settings in TRPGs

I am not a game designer, so everything in this post will be from a consumer and gamer's standpoint. 

2016 has been a great year so far, from Darkest Dungeon to Stardew Valley to Don't Starve Shipwrecked to The Banner Saga 2, game developers in 2016 has given me hundreds of hours of great experience of fun on games of different genres and playstyles, and made me excited to try out those that I don't usually enjoy, such as Doom 4 (I don't care I am calling it that). Compared to last year, I say we have an equal number of good games, and equal number of quality games so far, but nothing has quite came close to my favourite game of 2015 and 3rd favourite game of all time, Invisible Inc., by Klei Entertainment. 

As with other games that I deeply love, there are too many things to praise about Invisible Inc., albeit in this case more should be said because this game is still not receiving the amount of attention that it should have, so I am just going to touch on one aspect of game design today, namely difficulty settings. Many games these day allow for multiple levels of difficulty settings, and that is wonderful, because it shows that developers understand that difficulty is highly subjective and they want to cater to as wide an audience as possible, and allow hardcores, enthusiasts and completionists to enjoy multiple playthroughs and challenge themselves in games that they wish to experience again in an not-too repetitive setting. It usually comes in 3 stages, easy, normal and unplayable, and I am glad most games are self-aware enough to name the final level 'Insane', 'Lunatic', 'Nightmarish' so on and so for, to tell the player that they may not have a good time doing so.

The biggest issue with difficulty settings, I feel, as I have discovered recently by fiddling around with the different levels in Chroma Squad and The Banner Saga 2, is the issue of scaling. Both games, in my opinion, scales poorly when moved to the higher setting: In the case of Chroma Squad, your characters get knocked out way too easily because the game was designed with the idea of tight and swift battles in mind - both your opponent and your characters have very little HP, and even in the base difficulty characters can get knocked out easily by having 2-3 enemies ganging up on one character - and this works best when they can actually take 2-3 hits because it grants the player a sense of control over the battle. In The Banner Saga, similar things can happen because some characters aren't supposed to take hits, and the increased number of enemies and damage output from the opponent's side is devastating because characters can be downed in 1-2 hits with no way to revive them mid-battle. Chroma Squad has one healer out of 5 characters heals once every 3-5 turns, and Banner Saga has no healers that can give back strength, which is not only your HP but also your attack meter; again, there is no catch up mechanic available to allow for strategic maneuvering through a bad situation, say, being swarmed earlier on, taking a critical hit that downs a character, or missing a crucial hit that resulted in you taking unnecessary damage. In the highest difficulty setting, opponent AI characters are also smarter and will actively go after weaker characters, which would have been amazing in normal difficulty where you have more control over the game, but becomes merely a frustrating hassle in the harder settings where your turns become simply run and shoot an arrow, then run and shoot an arrow.  

As a veteran tactics and strategy RPG player and enthusiast, I think TRPGs and SRPGs become meaningless when that control is removed from the player. There are 3 main issues that are damning to the situation that I feel Invisible Inc. addresses and other games do not. Firstly, continuing from the previous paragraph, is how the strategy is lost when enemies are simply too strong, and you are simply running and gunning the opponent instead of thinking of ways to overcome the situation. Admittedly that can be fun in real time games, like Dark Souls, because being able to parry and dodge is part of the gameplay, and you feel your that your skills (in this case reflexes and quick thinking) are still being tested despite your enemy overpowering you. This is not the case on a grid-based, turn-based TRPG or SRPG because you are just moving your piece as far away as possible and using a range attack, or heal so that you can take an extra hit - this is fine the first or second time around, but it will quickly get old when you are doing it every. single. goddamn. time. The whole point of tactics is the test of one's ability to react to what the board presents to you, and play your best game depending on what the situation is, not repeating the same moves over and over again. 

And this leads to my second point: TRPGs are not puzzle games. In TBS2, I entered a challenge where I had to use an archer to kill an enemy while their HP was low, this was ok in Normal difficulty when AIs were dumber and dealt less damage, but in Hard mode the Archer dies on the opponent's first turn unless I A. Use the Archer to run and hit, which turns into the problem I mentioned earlier, or B. Move another unit to a specific position on the gridmap which does not block the AI from reaching the Archer, but somehow distracts them to attack this other unit instead. This is absolutely unacceptable. This happened before in Fire Emblem Awakening's Lunatic mode too, where units have to move to specific locations to distract other units despite making no tactical sense for the enemy at all, and essentially turns the game into a puzzle game - where upon every loss, you discover a perfect move to be taken to be memorised and repeated ad nauseam until you complete the map. Again, strategy should be reactionary and not formulaic, and if anyone wants to play a puzzle RPG they can go to Professor Layton or whatnot, I am not interested. 

Lastly, is a bad game design practice adopted from a similarly poor way to ramp up difficulty in real time games - hard=more enemies. In a real time shooter this turns that game into a boring horde clearing wave-based shoot out, like I heard what Destiny became at one point. In a war-based TRPG like Advance Wars where you can produce troops and have to make use of map layouts to win battles, this can be actually thematically sound and tactically interesting because you make use of choke points, sacrifice smaller units to set up traps for the enemies and it gives one great pleasure when one overcomes the huge wave on enemies despite having so much lesser troops to move than the enemy. In Fire Emblem the enemy just stands there and wait until you approach them, so they serve nothing more than time wasters. In Banner Saga more enemies mean that the already tiny gridmap is choked full of units and archers become useless because of the sheer difficulty of finding a spot to execute a range attack from, and physically weaker units like mages and thieves just get brutally slaughtered by smart AIs that can and will go after easier targets before taking on your tankier units. 

I wish to point out, however, despite all their flaws Fire Emblem, Chroma Squad and The Banner Saga series are still excellent games in this genre, and I will buy and play their sequels and DLCs without second doubts because the games are so amazing in their normal settings. My argument here is just that there is another game in the same genre that is leagues above these already excellent games.  

And now we finally come to the first part of this post's title, Invisible Inc. and why the game's difficult settings blows my fucking mind. To begin Invisible Inc. has 4 basic difficulty settings, Beginner, Experienced, Expert and Expert Plus, or as I like to call them Fun, Challenging, Exhilarating and Insane. Unlike most TRPGs Invisible Inc. recommends you to start off at their lowest difficulty. The first mode serves as an introduction to most of the game's mechanics, gives you a good number of turn rewinds to help you to learn how to strategise, and the game at this level still provides a good degree of challenge especially when you are not being careful. Invisible Inc.'s easy mode serves not only as a good tutorial but at the same time provides just enough fun and challenge for players who are learning the ropes to still enjoy it. I don't understand why game developers bother making easy modes that are so simple it takes away all the fun and challenge that nobody plays them. If a player is unable to engage the game at its normal difficulty, they probably are picking up the wrong game and should try something else instead, because in good TRPGs/SRPGs that properly scale their difficulty like Invisible Inc. strategy and tactics will evolve and you are forced to think deeper as you progress through the difficulty levels. I think what really works here is Invisible Inc.'s premise and gameplay as a stealth TRPG - hitpoints do not matter since everyone gets taken down or killed in one hit (which always hit, unlike every other game out there), and more enemies just mean that players have to be more careful in planning their moves because they only have so many rewinds if they screw up. In Beginner it is possible to exploit the rewinds to find out more about an unopened room or unexplored area, but with Experienced and Expert dropping rewinds to 3 and 1 respectively, (and an achievement for players to play with 0 rewinds on Expert to further disincentivise rewind exploitation and encourage careful play) players are forced to think more and take their time in making their moves, something which many TRPGs and SRPGs have forgotten about when designing their game. Invisible Inc. remembers that the grids and turn-based elements it is built on, and makes full use of the perks and limitations provided by these two basic elements. On one of my Expert playthroughs, I lost the game because I decided to open a door for no good reason, and this action attracted the attention of a guard whom I could not take down came along and murdered my entire team. Unlike puzzles which forces you to take specific steps, Invisible Inc. stays on the tactical side of the line that separates puzzle games and TRPGs by simply requesting you to not make obvious tactical errors and be careful of your every move.

On top of the 4 difficulties, different aspects of the game are also customisable to allow for even more advanced play, or cater to different type of playthrough like the previously mentioned no rewind run; this again, is a display of understanding and respect for catered experience to different players by giving options to its target audience, and not just pandling to a wider audience, sacrificing artistic vision for the sake of marketing to non-tactics lovers and new players. Other mechanics in the game, such as pulling off risky revivals with hard-to-obtain medical resources, that players need to decide to carry along with them or not because of limited inventory space, and having the option to leave an injured agent behind to rescue them later, or being able to lure large groups of enemies into a trap, or take control of robot enemies to deal with human ones... the list goes on for the tools Invisible Inc. gives the player to deal with tough decisions. It forces you to plan out carefully on the grid because movement is limited and you need maximum awareness of the terrain, and take as long as you need because that's what the turn-based element is for.

In fact, after spending 100 hours on the game, I would say its asking price of $25.50 (with the amazing DLC) is worth it even if you just replay Beginner mode over and over again, because the game's dynamism and challenge is not lost even on its most simple difficulty, and yet it is enjoyable by anyone who is willing to sit down and accept the game's challenge to your mind. If all else fails, rewind. The game is still not everybody - it can get very stressful very early on, I personally took 5 tries to get the hang of Beginner mode - and that is not fun to some people. But upon scaling that steep learning curve, what you will find is a game that is all about thinking and deep strategising that keeps you asking for more. Now try Experienced, Expert, Expert Plus, Endless and Endless Plus, or create your own challenges. As much as I would love to sell this game more, it is not the point of this post and I am going to end the discussion here. But if you are reading this and have not tried it, I do highly recommend it, it is a good introduction to the genre but at the same time also one of the finest of the genre and one of the toughest in the genre. Perhaps I will feel the same way about XCOM 2 when I eventually play it, but for now Invisible Inc. sits comfortably as my favourite game in my favourite genre. 

The Emplotment of Darkest Dungeon - Life, too, is a game of chance

There are few games that have kept me so enthralled like Darkest Dungeon. I will play the game late into the night, and wake up the next morning wanting to do nothing but play Darkest Dungeon. Chroma Squad, Link between worlds are probably the only games that I can remember having the effect on me thus far. I have owned the game for 5 days and sunk 65 hours into it, and I have literally done no work over the past few days, except grinding and figuring out the deep lore and battle mechanics of this wonderful little thing. My obsession caused this great foulness.

I am writing this because I feel many reviewers of this game are missing the point about what kind of game Darkest Dungeon is. Launch up the game and the first line you see before the title screen reads "Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation", and that's what the game is in a nutshell. The game hates you, the RNG is all fucked and the stats, hit rates and damage rolls you see on screen are probably all lies. But that is ok, because that is what Darkest Dungeon is supposed to be. You receive a letter from the Ancestor telling you to clear his hell-infested manor and collect the treasures and heirlooms that remain behind after he was killed by the villagers - and outside the game world, Red Hook Studios is the Ancestor, inviting you to "go to hell" (this is literally the thumbnail of the trailer). You know clearly what you are heading into, and yet in the face of hell you complain it is difficult and unfair? That is really quite strange considering you accepted the invitation from the bloodstained Red Hook and "now, like him, you are a part of this place".

The naming of the game is appropriate too. Some dungeons are dark, others are darker, and in the darkest of dungeons, weakness cannot be tolerated. And this is not only about the weakness of the players' skills - because things will go wrong no matter how well you plan your moves - it is also about the weakness of the heart. Stress is a meter on the heroes that do nothing until you reach a breaking point. What will you do when everything in the game starts going wrong? Will you also become like the characters hitting the 100 stress mark, and start hating on the game for being unfair? Or accept that you are battling the darkest of hellspawns and the evilest of abominations, and it is going to be unfair. Stay FOCUSED, be COURAGEOUS and become POWERFUL, then push on till the tasks' end. This is a game that trains the heart to be brave; and for me, also to accept loss and humiliation and understanding that nothing in the game nor in life will go as well as planned.

Coming out of the Darkest Dungeon, I think it has made me a better person. Strangely enough, I have not rage-quit the game simply because a favourite character dies, or a random crit change chains into a series of unfortunate events. "How quickly the tide turns", exclaims the snarky narrator when a terrible blow lands, and life is like that too isn't it? Life, too, is a game of chance. And my life had been pretty awesome up till this year. Graduating from university this year, I was intending to continue to grad school before everything started falling apart. My father was diagnosed with a disease incurable in the sanitarium and was forced to retire way earlier than he intended to, and suddenly I could not afford going to grad school and not take home any substantial income for the next few years. Job hunting has been excruciatingly hard in this bad economy and things do not seem to be getting any better. I cancelled a total of 4 plans for graduation trips, and while everyone is spending money on celebrations and travels, I spent $25 on this very special game that reminded me that to be alive is a terrible fate in itself. Danger lurks at every corner and things will always go wrong. And when disaster strikes, we try to make the best out of it. I got a game to escape the stress from the outside world, but in turn the game itself stressed me out so much more that made me more determined to make things right in my real life. The task ahead is terrible, and weakness of the heart cannot be tolerated. Rather than sulking and blaming fate to be unfair and cursing the gods who have inflicted this suffering unto my life, I'm going to fight those demons and come out on top. The first step to that victorious end, ironically, is probably to stop playing Darkest Dungeon.

There are more things I want to praise the game about, especially how the cast of heroes seem to be a bunch of social outcasts or demon hunters who are here because it makes sense for them to be here. Thematically, the designers have made such a coherent game inspired by Lovecraftian mythology, and the dark gritty world feels perfectly insane and terrifying. But perhaps that can be left for another day when I have time to analyse why each hero is there in the first place. The backstories you hear from the Ancestor's memories are surprising intriguing and very fitting to the setting. The lore of this game is nothing short of amazing, and I hope I will have time to write about it soon.

Subverting Expectations - Papers, Please, the missing 'Happy Ending' and growing up in Singapore

This post will contain spoilers, obviously.

Papers, Please was on sale recently on Steam, so I decided to fork out $20 and buy it for a few friends. The two people who have tried the game liked it enough to spend about 10 hours each getting all the endings and achievements, and I'm really glad that people can relate to why this is my favourite game ever. 

There is probably an infinitely long list of things I want to praise about the game design and narrative, so I've decided that I will break it down and try to go through it part by part. After recently playing Undertale and being a fan of how that game loves overthrowing the player's pre-conceived notions about rpgs, I want to talk a bit about how Papers also did that but in different ways. 

We all want that good ending in some way or another in gaming. Having grey-area-ed, and downright terrible endings, is definitely nothing new in games. But I honestly cannot think of any game that had given me the experience quite like Papers did. The first ending I got was Ending 20, what I like to call the "Arstotzkan Dog" ending. Growing up in the Nanny State of Singapore, I guess that would have made the most sense. In fact, I think I would have gotten the "Too Honest" ending first if I could figure out how to pass the EZIC documents to the Inspector earlier on (yea it's pretty simple, I was just being dumb). It made sense considering the upbringing, anything wrong pops up hand it over to the Police and let the State handle it. Defiance of the law is generally not a good idea, and not intuitive at all. Together with the added consequences of credits penalty and a sickly, starving family, that seem about the right thing to do. When ending 20 played, I felt proud... for a moment. Until I realise the Inspector and his family was probably just stuck to this brutally mundane job forever, and forced to make decisions that betray the heart day in day out. Ending 20 is not that happy ending I wanted. Next.

Escape to Obristan was my second ending. It is the route that you will absolutely fall in love with Jorji, who hands you his forged passport despite you detaining him (at least I did), in order to repay your kindness from earlier. It is the one route that felt powerful, the player can confiscate passports illegally, in order to stealthily bring his family over to Obristan. You can run alone, but the game sends a man to tell you not to forget your family, and the way this shakes up the gameplay mechanics is really quite special. Jorji forces your first compulsory citation unto you (taking away any chance of a perfect run), and the game teaches you to break the rules that it had set for you; I love it when games do that. Speaking of family, this also feels like the most heartwarming of endings despite it being similarly gritty and painful to go through as there is that moment of fear that the rest of your family will get stopped by the Obristan customs, but all of you get through in the end. But what awaits across the borders is another communist slogan in the same vibe, "Obristan above all". We just escaped from one hell to another. Next.

The final 'big ending' is the EZIC takeover. Looking at how the rest of the endings went I had a feeling that this was going to be bad before it came. Perhaps it is clouded by my own perception that such a resistance led by fanatical violence upon innocent border guards will never work out, but I think the ending speaks for itself. You have helped to bring the resistance to victory. The ending slogan "Glory to New Arstotzka" seem to signify that the supposed change that was to come after the violent takeover was only at the superficial level. How will the next regime rule? There is a Chinese saying that translates roughly to how the effect of medicine will not change if you simply change the water used to boil the concoction without changing the prescription first; this seems to apply perfectly here as EZIC seem to have no new solutions to change the nation. You are still the poor border inspector like the end of Ending 20, and the nation is simply being ran by a new ruling class like in ending 18. Nex... But wait, there's nothing else left.

One side achievement one can attain, and by far the best one in my opinion, is for upgrading one's apartment. The upgrade does virtually nothing for your family except making rent and heat become more expensive as your house gets 'better' without ever showing you any visual representation of an upgrade. But we all want to climb that ladder to the top, a drive that I think is inherent to all humans, and we try whenever possible to make our lives a little less grim even if all we get are bragging rights and nothing substantial. We want to have reasons to convince ourselves life is getting better, perhaps to eliminate any desire to end it in a state of despair. So you keep upgrading the flat from grade-8, to grade-7, 6, 5... and the game stops you right there. "Grade 5 is the best for workers." Oh. I didn't know to be thankful for putting a stop on that fantasy that my in-game family can live in luxury one day, or should I be pissed off that this is different from this apparent 'meritocratic' nation that I live in? I sit down and question the state of meritocracy in Singapore from time to time, how skewed the system is towards people of higher classes, how terrible it is to be a late bloomer and how prejudiced people are by race, gender and place of birth for no apparent reason. In the end, regardless of what kind of meritocracy Singapore claims itself to be, I will be staying in a grade-5 apartment one day till death, and at least Arstotzka is kind enough to say that is because it is the best apartment I can get, while the Singapore government will wag its finger and tell me it is because I didn't perform well enough. And by that they mean my scores at the national examinations at 12 were not amazing enough (despite being in the top 10% of scorers) because the top schools don't need anyone else other than the 1%.

Before I delve any deeper into whine-zone I want to again thank Papers, Please for helping me rethink my life. Growing up as a pessimistic boy and plunging deeper and deeper into the depths of fatalism had helped make the connections I had when playing Papers. The happy ending does not seem to be there, at least not in this life, or not in this world. Perhaps I will need to find my answer in religion, or perhaps I am just looking at the wrong life goals. Or perhaps we will just fade into oblivion after we are dead, and even this sadness is a pointless emotion.