I played some HARDCORE GAMES that are only meant for the HARDCORE GAMERS out there! Get outta here NOOBZ! 

Da un paio di anni a questa parte i giochi dalla difficoltà elevata come ad esempio Dark Souls si sono insediati nei cuori e nelle console degli Hardcore Gamer che cercano una sfida più alta da affrontare.

Per accontentare questi giocatori, il 19 gennaio 2016 su Steam è stato rilasciato Darkest Dungeon che dopo un anno di Early Access ha finalmente liberato i suoi orrori al pubblico. Il gioco dallo stile vagamente Lovecraftiano ci spingerà tra le braccia di creature agghiaccianti che inabitano le lande corrotte che circondano il Darkest Dungeon tra incredibili tesori e perdite irreversibili. Il gioco si aspetta molto da noi e da come riusciamo a cavarcela nelle situazioni più difficili. Le quest falliranno miserabilmente con la morte dei nostri eroi e quando essi muoiono, rimangono morti. Un nostro antenato avido di conoscenza e affascinato dall'occulto scopre che nelle profondità del suo antico maniero si cela un portale verso un altro mondo che,secondo le sue ricerche, lo avrebbe portato a un immenso potere ma tutto ciò che trovò furono orrori indescrivibili e creature maligne capaci di distruggere la mente di un uomo solo alla vista di esse. Passato a miglior vita il nostro antenato ha lasciato a noi tutti i suoi averi, o meglio, ciò che ne rimane e toccherà a noi salvare queste terre corrotte dalle mostruosità del Darkest Dungeon e chiuderne le porte per sempre. Per poter riuscire in questo intento avremo bisogno di uomini e donne caparbi e volenterosi di affrontare le creature che affliggono queste terre.

Di giorno in giorno grazie al nostro curatore della tenuta di famiglia potremo reclutare eroi con caratteristiche e abilità peculiari per ognuno di loro. Dalle classi di supporto come le Vestal capaci di curare i propri alleati e stordire i nemici con attacchi sacri o la Arbalest prode arciera e medica di battaglia oppure classi da danno puro come il Bounty Hunter capace di tremendi attacchi critici o il Leper resistente guerriero armato di spadone da esecuzione. Ogni eroe è unico in quanto oltre alla classe ogni personaggio porta con se delle quirks ovvero delle particolarità nella sua personalità che potranno essere aggiunte grazie ai viaggi tra i dungeon, o rimosse grazie al manicomio che si trova al villaggio della tenuta, base delle nostre operazioni. Le quirks possono essere sia positive che negative ma dovremo essere capaci di sfruttare al massimo entrambi i tipi per poter sopravvivere. Nel villaggio della tenuta, avremo anche la possibilità di potenziare l'equipaggiamento e le abilità dei nostri eroi per renderli capaci di sopravvivere a quest più complesse ma anche permettergli di scaricare lo stress accumulato durante i viaggi nei dungeon tramite la preghiera alla chiesa o l'alcol alla taverna.

La peculiarità principale di Darkest Dungeon infatti è lo Stress; I nostri eroi affronteranno mostruosità indescrivibili e ciò farà vacillare la loro sanità mentale al punto da mettere alla prova la loro risoluzione che potrà finire con l'eroe che mosterà la sua virtù che gli conferirà status positivi o rimarranno afflitti dagli orrori, guadagnando status negativi. Le quattro regioni che circondano il Darkest Dungeon celano diverse insidie e mostruosità che i nostri eroi dovranno affrontare in modo diverso per poterle superare con il minimo delle perdite. Durante il nostro cammino nei dungeon troveremo delle Curio, oggetti con cui potremo interagire a volte sfruttando gli oggetti comprati durante la preparazione per la spedizione che potrebbero cambiare le quirks dei personaggi, farci ottenere grandi ricchezze e equipaggiamenti o celare insidiose trappole. Sono zone pericolose, ma nessuna di esse è pericolosa come lo stesso Darkest Dungeon, talmente difficile che semmai vorremo ritirarci dalla quest, uno dei nostri personaggi dovrà rimanere indietro e sacrificarsi per permettere la fuga dei suoi compagni.

Conlcusioni: Ho tenuto d'occhio Darkest Dungeon sin dai primi giorni dell' early access e acquistandolo poco prima del release globale. Ormai ho consumato oltre un centinaio di ore di gioco e posso dire che la metà di queste è andata bruciata per la perdita di quei valorosi eroi che sono stati annicchiliti dagli orrori del Darkest Dungeon. Non ero pronto a una sfida ardua a tal punto e probabilmente tutt'ora non lo sono ma del resto la longevità del gioco si basa proprio su questo saper sfruttare al massimo ciò che abbiamo guadagnato con le vittorie risicate e le ritirate per poter sopravvivere e combattere un altro giorno. Vuole che siamo pronti a rischiare tutto per la vittoria ma vuole anche che siamo abbastanza saggi da sapere quando una battaglia è troppo ardua per noi.

Un gioco che non stanca mai e che è capace di mettere alla prova la volontà anche del più ferrato stratega e del più valoroso guerriero. Ovviamente non è un gioco adatto a tutti e ancor meno a chi si perde d'animo alla prima avversità ma del resto chi si può considerare pronto agli orrori lovecraftiani che il gioco ci propone?

Voto: 9/10

Check out @JayPlaysThings first post for +10!! "Embracing Easy: Difficulty Levels and Player Choice"

Here’s a badly kept secret about me: I’m actually pretty bad at video games. Depending on the genre and game itself, I can sometimes be deemed average, and sometimes I…really can’t. Correspondingly, where I get the choice, I usually play on easy difficulty levels, with the occasional normal thrown in there. This is the best choice for me, since I personally prefer to play games for the story, and…

About that Angry Birds infographic

Over the past two years I’ve delivered a general “introduction to the videogame industry” lecture to undergrads as part of a more general Media programme. In each of these I’ve used Angry Birds as a case study in the specific types of design choices that go into a ‘casual’ mobile game. Whether you personally like the game or not, understanding the technological platform and its user-base is…

First off, the main blog post I found was off FemHype found here. No I didn't search it out; my friend reblogged a quote from it that I screencapped for the purpose of this post. In the blog post they talk about a couple other posts talking about wanting to experience Skyrim and Fallout and Dragon Age without the need for violence. One person was asking "Why can’t I use magic to explore a beautiful world? Why can’t I just wander this post-apocalyptic wasteland and try to help survivors access clean water and develop agriculture?" I'm assuming they were talking about Skyrim and Fallout as they were mentioned right before. Maybe Dragon Age too but I don't have much experience with the Dragon Age world so I can't rightly say. Anyways, the reason you can't in those games would be because those games universes have been around since the '90s. Fallout 1 was released in '97 though is considered a spiritual successor to a game titled Wasteland which came out in '88. Elder Scrolls first reared it's ugly head in '94 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena. What I'm saying with this is that the environments in these two games have been long established for almost 20 years (over that in Skyrim's case).

In the case of the Elder Scrolls games, while you aren't on Earth (the planet is called Nirn) the fell the devs were going for is sort of fantasy-level middle-ages, as if that wasn't extremely obvious off the get-go. Do you know what happened in the middle ages? All sorts of violence and injustice. Wars all over the place between kingdoms. It was kill or be killed out there. Now I can't talk about any of the games in the series that much beyond Skyrim as I haven't put as many hours into them as that game (hello multiple 200+ hour playthroughs), but in Skyrim I see them as mostly trying to emulate the British Isles/Central Europe in the feel of the relations of the races. But again, it was kill or be killed over there. You had safety within the city limits but on the road you are on your own. With that I think they do a wonderful job capturing that with the random bandit encounters when you are traveling. So yes, there is a lot of violence in this game but it's been there for so long that taking it out will just fuck with everyting, and with the feel they are trying to achieve there is very little that will be pulling it away.

With Fallout the devs have done the same thing. In fact, it plays a hell of a lot like the Elder Scrolls games. Kill or be killed. In the cities you are generally safe, and when traveling you will have random raider/mutie/animal encounters. In the games the scarcity of the resourses (mainly water I'm assuming) has led people to do what people do best. Decide how to attack the situation. And the games have a brilliant way of depicting it. There are the diplomatic people. The ones that don't want to hurt anyone. They decide that the best way to survive is to band together and live off the safety of numbers. From this you see settlements like Rivot City or Megaton in FO3 or Goodsprings and Freeside in New Vegas. Then you have the people who choose to survive by sucking the life out of others. You get the raider settlements like Paradise Falls (FO3) and while I'm going to lump Caesar's Legion in this one, there can be arguments made about him doing what he thinks is right, while I moraly disagree with it. But again, without the violence you would have a completely different game. A different atmosphere, a different story, a different everything.

Now I'm starting to ramble so I'll get back to it. I guess I'll attack the idea of "casual gaming" now. Gamers like to label women as casual gaming types and then call casual games girl games or whatever they want. As a cis male I don't know if I have much authority on this matter, however, I have been gaming just about my whole life starting when my parents got me a Nintendo 64 and I intend on keeping this streak up to the point where I plan on making my living making games for people. From what I've seen in my brief time gaming, there are tons of girl gamers out there who play these so-called, causual games. There are also tons who play "regular games" In the same sense that there are tons of guy gamers who do the same for each. To each their own.

I, personally, don't understand why it's such an insult to be called a casual, just like I don't see being called a girl to be much of an insult. However, I'd also like to state here that the FemHype blog post linked this other blog post which talks about causal gaming too. They mention The Sims, Minecraft, and Animal Crossing specifically to talk about how people take these games very seriously. People getting multiple copies of ACNL to make the perfect town, ALL the mod and video content for Minecraft, people paying to progress faster in Bejewled, and the sheer number of mods for Sims and how, because of this these games shouldn't be considered casual. I see a "casual game" as one that doesn't force you to do anything. One where there is no path to follow, no end-game (though Minecraft technically has one now). It is extremely easy to pick up, put down, and all that. That's what makes a game casual. However, the three games listed above, aren't the same as Bejewled because Bejewled has nothing going on. There is no story, no quests, nothing. It is simply a match-three puzzle game. The other three are sandbox games. There is a skeleton of a story, but in the end you get to make it your own.

Unlike FemHype and Evalilith, I believe that the addition of violence isn't what elivates a game from casual to hardcore, or whatever the middle-ground is. Violence contributes merely to the game mechanic, not the classification. Nor do I believe that violence in a game makes it masculine or feminine. It just makes it violent or non-violent. And on that note, I don't really have much else to say regarding that point. That's just my stance. (Going to just go with Skyrim here) Sure, to the general public, running up to a bear and beating it to death with a mace could be seen as masculine, but what about a character who chooses to play as an archer? The general, societal, consensus is that femininity tends to also include some sorts of curves and a sense of being soft (see "feminine"). Bows are that way, they are quiet, efficient, and your character doesn't have to be a big, burly, bear of a person to use it. Wouldn't that make the bow more feminine? It accomplishes the same goal as the sword-bearer and can be in the same game, yet even though the violence is there it's a masculine game. Call it what you will, but I just don't think that violence is inherently masculine.

I don't know about anyone else, but that's just the way I feel about the whole deal. And I chose the games I did because those are the ones that were mentioned in the sources. I do, though, find it curious that the people criticizing violent games for being masculine didn't use games that force you to be male, and rather used games where you could be either male or fem-based.

From Ian:

This post is part of the #25ReasonsToSpiritSiege series. Click that link for a summary!

So I got up on a soapbox in my last post, and for scheduling reasons I had to start this one right after it (and am posting it a day late), so since I had such a great time I decided to just stay on up there! Anyway, let’s get to it.

When confronted with the statistic that 48% of people who play video games are women, many people with an interest in maintaining the status quo (where by “the status quo” I mean: inadequate representations of women and minorities, marketing that targets white men to the exclusion of others, etc.) will debate it by claiming that women tend to play “casual” games whereas most people who play “hardcore” games are men; therefore, it makes sense for game companies to continue to pander to them.

But where is the line between “casual” and “hardcore?” Because these terms don’t have actual definitions*, defenders of the status quo can draw the line wherever they want so as to exclude as many people as possible who aren’t like them. Spirit Siege—as a game that’s “hardcore” in its stragetic depth and its suitability for cutthroat competition and obsessive optimization but with all the trappings of a “casual” game like cuteness, simplicity and brevity—helps reveal this dichotomy for the fabrication it is. You should support it to put another chink in the wall that that dichotomy puts between “us” and “them”, whichever side you think you might fall on.

In the next post I’ll probably get off the soapbox, at least for a little while. Meanwhile, here’s the Kickstarter link, as always.