Thirty five fucking hours. That's my approximate time put into MGSV so far. But by God does it feel longer.

Maybe it's because I suck at most of the missions. Or maybe it's because a lot of the missions feel like they repeat. Or maybe it's because everything feels so generic that there is no real feeling of progression or artistry that there was in the previous games.

Whenever Kaz or Ocelot (I honestly can't tell the two apart over radio) guides you through a mission and says the "target" or the "prisoner" my eyes start to roll involuntarily. It's because me and my eyes know that it's because the dialogue has been made generic in the interests of efficiency. The prisoner or the target will not have their name mentioned and will just be referenced in the most fleeting manner.

The MGS games have never been perfect, and one of the common criticisms of the previous titles was that they always felt short, or always left the player wanting more. MGSV almost feels like Hideo Kojima read these criticisms and went "Oh you want more? I'll give you fuckers so much more you won't ever want to play an MGS game ever again!" Or something to that affect. The gripes I have expressed about MGSV both on here and on Twitter wouldn't normally send me into the nark-osphere, but the fact that this entry into the series is so long, and so repetitive, just highlights all of the flaws whilst diluting any positive aspects.

I'm on episode 25. I have read that there are 50 episodes. So, assuming I don't get worse, or the game doesn't get exponentially more difficult, I should be on track to finish the game with about a 70 hour play time logged.

Unacceptable.

​That is more than the entirety of Breaking Bad's entire run. And at no point during Breaking Bad did I think "Oh my God please just fucking finish already!"

So I finally finished my first The Legend Of Zelda game. Whilst on a plane. In the middle of turbulence. I'm a terrible flyer and I was trying to do anything that would take my mind off the inevitable crash that I knew was about to transpire. But after 55 hours of playing I was happy that the adventure was finally over, and the ending was satisfying enough for me to not throw a hissy fit. Even if I was slightly unpleasantly surprised that there was no post-credits sandbox.

Looking back, I have a feeling TLOZ: Breath Of The Wild (BOTW) will not leave as lasting an impression as I thought it might. Considering I was willing to buy my first Nintendo console solely based on the trailers for BOTW, my opinion of it has definitely muddied somewhat. That isn't to say it's a bad game. It's a great game with plenty of great ideas, interesting challenges and gorgeous scenery. But there was definitely something missing from it, although what that "it" is, I'm not entirely sure of.

I knew something was up when I had to take a break from my constant playing of the game. After playing the game fairly steadily from April to June, I then took a month off as I was travelling South East Asia (snort). Once I arrived back home at the end of the month, I had zero urge to play BOTW. No urge to complete any of the side missions, or explore more of the map or finish the main quest to destroy Ganon. I think after having already completed the four boss dungeons, finding all but one of the hidden memories and finding (but not quite yet receiving) the Master Sword, I had a feeling of "yeah, this is close enough, no need to carry on." I didn't think that the game could throw any surprises at me at this point. I would get the Master Sword, face Ganon, save the princess and that would be it. And I was correct, naturally.

In a sandbox-esque game like BOTW you really do need interesting side missions/quests/activities to keep the player from turning off the console and going back to Rocket League. That is something I think BOTW sorely lacks. The NPC's don't do enough to differentiate from one another, and all of their side quests feel so token and lacking in stakes that they're not worth bothering with. If you compared it to some of the side missions in Skyrim, some of which are more interesting than the main quest itself, the side missions in BOTW just fall so, so, so short.

BOTW was a bold, new direction for the Zelda series, and naturally on a first major attempt at something new, not everything is going to be perfect. Nintendo has already confirmed that they're going to be sticking to the sandbox formula for future Zelda games (or at the very least the next one), so hopefully they will be working on fine tuning and improving the areas where BOTW  fell short.

Again, I enjoyed the game immensely, so don't look at this post as some kind of ignorant hate speech. I'm still trying to get through MGS V at the moment, and believe me, I would much rather be starting BOTW for the first time again than going through this overly-verbose nonsense.

 Yeah I know, second crappy title in a row but considering the subject matter, I don't have much choice.

I've been playing a bit more of MGS V: The Phantom Pain and I find it to be a completely perplexing game. Not in terms of the gameplay (stay low to win, run around like a dunce to lose), but in terms of the story, presentation and positioning. I get that it isn't really meant to be a direct sequel to any of the home console titles. You still play as Big Boss from MGS 3: Snake Eater, but the gameplay is different, the genre is (arguably) different, the presentation is different, the voice actors are different and the overall setup and feeling of the whole game is different.

That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it just leaves me with a weird and slightly uncomfortable feeling. Big Boss is a completely different character now. He barely talks (in the 10 or so first hours that I've played that is), and he feels a lot more passive than in Snake Eater. Obviously he's a soldier and he takes orders, but at least before he would make a comment about his orders or give some kind of insight. Now Ocelot or Miller tells you to fuck off back to Afghanistan and Big Boss just does it without saying a word.

It's not just Big Boss, but every character so far that would have been recognisable from Snake Eater. Ocelot looks, sounds and acts completely differently, Major Zero is now an unseen antagonist and the rest of the cast from Snake Eater is nowhere to be seen. And I know this is all probably explained in the handheld entries, or may be explained later in the game, but at this point in time I've got zero context for what is going on.

Whilst I am preferring the gameplay, as well as the gameplay to cutscene ratio, over MGS 4, I can't help but feel that MGS 4 engaged me more, simply by being more linear. With MGS 4, you moved locations, fought different enemies, had to switch up your gameplay style slightly depending on the objective. MGS V meanwhile has me attacking and extracting the same prisoners from the same looking outposts, from the same Afghanistan desert setting using the same goddamned balloon. I'm sure things will probably change later on (based on footage I've previously seen) but it's taking way too long to get there, and the repetition of the current missions is destroying my interest to see the later sections.

Hideo Kojima is a unique and talended game director, without question. But at this point in time I feel like MGS V has been a massive mis-step. In my mind it doesn't capture the essence of the Metal Gear Solid series. If it was presented as a completely new IP I'd probably think better of it. But having it attached to the MGS series just puts it up against too many of my long held expectations, that it is unlikely to leave a lasting, positive impression.

That my sound like massive bias - and it is - but then again, everyone's biased in some shape or form.

Only after starting writing this entry did I realise that the title of it isn't as clever as I initially thought. I was trying to say that MGS V is full of nonsense, but "Phantom Nonsense" implies that there is very little nonsense and that everything actually totally makes sense. And maybe MGS V will make sense by the time I'm through with it, but four hours in it definitely does not.

To be honest, I don't think any game was going to be looked upon favourably considering the last title I played was The Last Of Us. But MGS V seems to have particularly rustled my jimmies for some reason. It's probably because of the intro, as it is the exact opposite of the intro to TLOU. Where as TLOU starts slow, with tension building constantly but clearly so you know what is going, MGS V starts with a gore fest and a million names and organisations being thrown at you within the first 30 seconds. People disappear, reappear, act like ghosts, but then get affected by regular weapons, attack you, attack others and then you escape on horseback whilst a whale made of fire eats a helicopter.

I get that the MGS series has always dabbled in being slightly out there, in the same way the sky kind of dabbles in being a bit blue sometimes, but even for MGS this intro felt like too much. And it didn't get better as the game went on. The game is called MGS V(5) but it's clear that this game is not meant to be played directly after MGS 4: Pony Guns or whatever it was called. To fully understand what is going on you probably need to have played Peace Walker as well as Ground Zeroes, the paid demo. I have played the latter (because I got it for free, fuck paying for a demo) and I still had no clue what was going on. There is a certain appeal in being caught up in a grander story that is bigger than you, but there is a limit, and MGS V is getting precariously close to breaching that limit.

That isn't to say that MGS V is a bad game. I'm enjoying the gameplay so far, and the game has been out long enough that I've already seen plenty of screenshots and clips of some of the cool things you get to do later on. But I just thought it was an interesting comparison to make between two different games. One being a new IP with no backstory to  provide exposition for, and the other being the latest (and most likely last) in a long lineage of classic titles with a story so ridiculous it makes the Fast & Furious franchise look restrained and down to Earth.

Being 27 and miserable, I thought the days of me being absolutely immersed in a game to the point of playing it until 3am were over. And I was right - until I started playing The Last Of Us: Remastered (TLOU).

Just to provide some context, I normally play games waaaaaaaaaaaay after they have already come and gone from the front pages of all of the digital stores. Partially due to a lack of focus on my part but also because I simply cannot afford getting every brand new game that gets released. But I saw TLOU available on the PSN Store for a criminally small amount of money and I'd heard good things about it. Although I took the good things I'd heard about it with collosal amounts of salt as I hadn't enjoyed Naughty Dog's other massive success; the Uncharted series. A mix of not really liking the characters as well as having zero interest in the gameplay that was "heavily inspired" by a bunch of other franchises left me feeling lukewarm about the game as a whole.

That wasn't the case with TLOU. From the start it grabbed me. The presentation of the struggle in the prologue to the initial gun fights awakened a fun feeling I hadn't experienced in a single player campaign in quite some time. All I could think was "Oh shit, I'm going to have some really late nights now." And I did. The classic yearning to just get through one more area or see one more bit of progression of the story led to my eyeballs being very unhappy with me.

There are a million things that I could gush about with this game, but they've all been thoroughly gushed over already. I just want to talk about one or two aspects that really caught attention.

Firstly; the feeling in combat. Now a lot was made about the firefights in the game during the marketing campaign and interviews leading up to launch, but I always thought that was just empty developer speak. Just something to convince players that the game wasn't the same old third person cover shooter that had been made a million times already. But oh my God, were those firefights brutal!

The feeling of ferocity that game puts into the guns and projectiles, and even the melee weapons, is incredible. You don't just sneak up on someone and choke them, you really fuck them up! And when you get shot you actually think "Oh balls! I've been shot!", instead of the usual "Lets see how much of this I can tank before I have to take cover again." The game instills a feeling of desperation and savagery that very few other games can match. It makes every firefight feel like it's potentially your last, and makes you feel like you need to make use of every tool available to you. It's basically Die Hard but in the post apocalypse.

The second aspect I want to gush about that I think sets TLOU apart from most other games is the delivery of the personalities of the protagonists, as well as the story as a whole. The game uses cutscenes, just as many others do, but it also makes use of gameplay and in-game dialogue to get across what our protagonists are like. The off hand comments both characters make as you progress through an area, or look at certain objects gives us great insight into their thoughts and desires.

And one other thing that TLOU does well with the story that a lot of other story focused games fail to do is to keep things clear. At all times you know what is happening, what the character motivations and goals are and why they are doing what they are doing. There are so many games that have a good story going only for events to take a sudden left turn, or for a character to do something completely out of the blue that makes no sense, and it derails the entire experience. Joel and Ellie always stay in character, say the kinds of things they would say and perform actions that their characters would make. They feel like complete and fully realised individuals.

Long story short, I loved this game and it is easily one of my favourite single player experiences. Ever.

Soooooooooooooooooooo I'm doing something a little different this week. I tried my hand at recording a relatively short podcast. As I have probably mentioned in previous blog entries, there is a vast spectrum of things I want to do. I would list them all but it would be quicker for me to simply say I just want to create things.

Having finished DIMB (for the most part) I had some time to think about what I wanted to do next. I definitely want to make another game as my "main" project. But considering DIMB took me something like two years to finish, I'd like to have some intermediate medium that I can contribute to on a more regular basis.

Podcasting seemed like a good place to start. I didn't want to kid myself and say I'd be able to write out, film and edit a video every week, because I won't. Podcasting on the other hand doesn't require as much of a commitment. That isn't to say it's easy, or can be done in a trivial way. Podcasting has challenges of its own and still requires a commitment if you're going to do it regularly. 

So I want to try and do a podcast once a week. Topics are planned to range between game development, gaming news, the industry, and game reviews/discussion. For this weeks test podcast, I talked a bit about developing DIMB, the game To The Moon and a bit about the Nintendo Switch. 

Listen to Game Ramble #1 here: https://soundcloud.com/danny-colclough-253740304/game-ramble-podcast-1-29012017
​

Written text cannot begin to describe the enormity of my failure to keep this website updated. With changing jobs, companies and priorities, it tends to happen. BUT! I have an update, and I want to talk about it.

Back in April I finished the bulk of the gameplay of DIMB. The challenge levels themselves plus the Boss fight plus the in between break rooms were all done. All that was left to do was the intro to the game and the ending. Both took longer to write and confirm than I would have liked. But it turned out that finding time to implement them properly would be an even bigger challenge.

Once I moved from the UK to Spain in June, my time became even more scant. The first two months at the new job I was assisting production of a large mobile game. After the first two months, I started leading production of this large mobile game. I had no life. No time. No energy. I had nothing, as everything I had was being put into my job and this massive mobile game. Eventually, after a particularly dreadful bout of flu, I decided to resign with a heavy heart. Whilst I love the team I worked with, and love the game they will eventually ship, the working situation simply wasn't for me.

In October I started a new job, which is the one I am currently at. I'm still in Spain, and whilst this new position isn't as high pressure as the previous one, it does come with it's own set of difficulties. However, it has afforded me the time to finally finish DIMB.

In truth, there were only a handful of minor issues to fix and things to implement for me to actually call the game complete. This handful of things to do took two days of full time work to resolve. And that's it, the game is done (in my eyes). There are some remaining problems which I will list below, but the game itself can be played from start to finish with no major issues.

• Some of the art isn't top notch due to it being me just editing and recycling the good art we already had
• No real sound design due to lack of sound resources
• Feature set is barren due to running out of time on the project
• Not as much polish and flash has been added as I would have liked

At some point you have to call it a day on whatever it is you're working on. Waiting for it to be perfect will cost you more than releasing it with some flaws. And for perfectionists, releasing it when it is perfect is a day that will never come. I know the shortcomings of this game. But it doesn't matter to me. This is a game I designed, programmed and released. This is the starting point for the next game, and the game after that, and the game after that.

​DIMB isn't a game that will set the world on fire. It was never meant to be that. It was a test for myself. "Can I start making a game, and finish it for once?" Many people start making games, but very, very few ever finish them. I didn't want to keep on being one of those people. I have finished making a game, and it's available to play now at GameJolt!

The most important thing for me is that now, if I'm ever at some lacklustre gaming event, and I have a tag around my neck that says "Danny Colclough, Game Designer" and someone asks the question "So what have you made?"

I finally have an answer.

Hey remember that time I used to update this blog once a week? Good times.

Yes I am still working on DIMB. No, I haven't worked on it a lot lately. This is because in June I got myself a job. It's a producer gig for a large mobile games company, working on pretty awesome games.

However, it did mean I had to move abroad which complicated matters slightly, but I'd wanted to travel more, so this seemed like a good compromise. Adjusting to the more sunny climate has been one of the more pleasant challenges that have come with the job.

The reason I've slowed to a crawl on DIMB development is because I started at the new job just as the studio was going into crunch mode on this latest project. So I've been working crazy hours trying to not only get up to speed with the project, but to also make sure it is finished on time.

All that said, I haven't stopped work on DIMB completely. It seems a shame to abandon it when it's so close to the finish line. For the past 2 weeks or so I have been focusing on the ending.

Although I had a rough idea of what the ending would be like, I never actually sat down to flesh out all of the details. That was job number one. It took longer than I wanted, but I got the dialogue and final moments all confirmed and written up about a week ago.

This week I have started implementation. In these final moments of development on the game I have grown to really hate the way I coded everything. It is so messy. One change reverberates throughout the entire code base and leads to bugs in the most obscure of places. So implementation has been slow going as I try to figure out where I can make the changes and additions without breaking the rest of the game.

And one final problem has come about due to my own laziness. After spending a few weeks away from the game, it's amazing how much you forget about how you made it. So every time I've tried to implement something new, I've had to spend double the time just trying to remember how to do it.

But, progress marches on. The ending is about halfway implemented, and implementation should speed up as I refamiliarise myself with the game.

​Hopefully, the ending will be done and implemented before the end of the month! And then the game will be finished. As in, truly finished.

Ok, so this post is definitely, definitely late. It was due. As in, me being late writing a post was due, not the post itself. I mean, it was, but- nevermind.

So it's been two weeks since my last update, and I've only barely sort of done some work. Real life, as ever, has come to the forefront and taken up the majority of my time and mental energy. But that isn't an OK excuse, and never is. A number of small updates have been made to the game, mostly visually, but it's all moving in the right direction. The risk at this stage of development is getting stuck doing these kinds of small updates for too long instead of focusing on bigger, more important tasks.

The two biggest tasks still remain - implement the new intro, and implement the ending. Progress has sort of been made on both these fronts. The new intro has been sketched out on paper, so I know exactly what needs to go where and at what point. In all honesty, this is probably what I should have done first, rather than write everything out. But I show no signs of learning my lesson as I spent a good chunk of the past weekend writing out the ending, which I was basically happy with. 

Funnily enough I actually felt weird writing the ending. As I've said many times before, this game is not going to be some epic masterpiece meant to capture the hearts of millions. It's a HTML5 mini-game that could probably be finished in a half hour. That said, writing out what the final bits of dialogue and actions would be, I felt a sense of closure and satisfaction I didn't expect. God help me if I ever write something that has actual emotional weight.

A number of small art updates were also made, including the very specific addition of closed doors at the top of ​each level. In the game, as you moved from one level to another, you exited through a door. But when arrived at the new level, there was no door in sight. I felt that showing the door you just walked through would help make the game feel a bit more connected. 

Another small change that I made was making it easier to exit a level after completing it. It's a small change that makes a big difference. On the PC, where I make and test the game, it's easy exiting a level as I have the precision of a mouse cursor to click the exact point I need to. But once I start testing on a mobile device, I am reliant on a fat finger, which is less accurate. And at that point it becomes more difficult to exit the level. Making the exit area slightly larger helps resolve this crucial problem, and makes the game as a whole feel smoother.

My end of April deadline for finishing all code looks like it may be missed at this point. I'm disappointed in myself for letting it happen, but as long as I keep pushing forward, I think I'll get over it.

I can't tell if this weekly post is late, or if it's within the week I was meant to post and I'm just doing it later than usual. It's probably late. Either way, here it is.

​So I've been back in the UK for almost two weeks now and have been busier than expected with completely non-dev related stuff. My new goal/objective is to be done with coding completely by the end of April. With just about three weeks left in the month, that makes for a pretty tight deadline taking into account all of my other responsibilities. But I cannot allow development to continue spiralling on, especially considering this game is not intended for sale or to make money at all.

The biggest thing accomplished this week was two fold - the new introduction and tutorial was written and finalised (but not fully implemented), and new end game graphics were provided and added. So the end game no longer looks like it was design by some flipper handed child with a broken crayon.

The introduction and tutorial proved to be a bigger challenge for me than expected.Trying to get across the basic story, objective, controls and structure in a quick, straightforward manner can be difficult. Making sure the intro isn't too long that people lose interest is the top priority. Teaching the player the controls and the objects, is the second priority. I managed to come up with an intro that I was happy with on paper, and started implementing it. Hopefully I'll be done with it soon so that I know whether or not it works in-game.

Next was all the new art and animations for the end-game sections. Chris, despite now being situated on the other side of the planet, has still been plugging away with new backgrounds and sprites. And all of the new art has been awesome, even with me not being helpful and giving very little idea of what I thought would be needed. 

So, over the next week I hope to get the rest of the intro implemented into the game, and after that will be the ending. The ending still needs to be written, but the finish line is in sight. Almost.