Yeah, I'm still playing around in Sword Art Online's universe. It's not going to end anytime soon either, since even after stuff like this there's a new season of the anime that just started airing. (Incidentally, having read the light novels, I'm quite certain the new season will be awesome.)
I've never really cared that much about the various Sword Art Online games, admittedly (Fatal Bullet is not the first one they've created). A lot of single player games that attempt to mimic massively multiplayer games end up with a lot of useless "chat" or "friend list" features that serve no actual purpose, and force the player to deal with threats balanced for a 4 person party... with one actual person and three AI characters that range from stupid to horribly stupid. It would be more understandable if there actually was an option to play with friends, but there usually isn't anything like that.
Which does actually bring me to my first complaint, since Fatal Bullet has indeed lived down to my expectations in that regard. I would love to experiment with different builds more, and try to work with new people and come up with interesting party setups, but it mostly just feels kind of pointless when the only customization the rest of my party can manage is me selecting from a predefined list. The only good thing that can be said for this part is that I knew what I was getting myself into from the beginning, so it softened the blow a bit.
Luckily, it does turn out that there's a really good character customization system built into the game. It's not just a matter of setting height, weight, eye color, or even the more precise options for just about every physical trait imaginable - there's also a system for modifying (okay, mostly just recoloring, but still) a lot of the gear items as well. My character could look quite different from someone else's even if we had the exact same items equipped; that's always a nice option to have.
As for the gameplay itself... It's at least okay. A lot of the reviews I read compared it to Phantasy Star Online 2 (mostly in the context of "you should probably play this instead", to be fair) and I have to say the comparison is quite apt both in good and bad respects. On the negative side, there's a lot of time spent farming and grinding to find the exact gear you actually want to use, and the story doesn't feel especially elaborate or compelling (yet, at least). But, wandering through the wilderness shooting everything that moves does manage to be fun most of the time, and there's enough interest in exploring the various areas and finding secrets to keep me from dropping it. Also this game actually lets the player jump across gaps, unlike PSO.
In the end, I think I have to agree with the reviews that say it's probably not worth it unless one is either an SAO fan, or the game is on sale - ideally both. Anyone that liked PSO or PSO2 should like this as well, but the SAO brand probably doesn't add enough to make it worth playing this instead of those games.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Community Solutions
There was a very nice op-ed in the NYT today about community organizations working together to solve various problems in their communities. It hits a lot of points that I see a lot when we're looking at successful interventions: careful analysis of data and results, focusing on specific goals and methods designed to reach them, and accepting incremental gains and imperfect solutions rather than trying to focus on the one perfect solution that will fix everything if we can actually get it to work.
Which raises an interesting question: Why aren't more people doing this?
Part of the problem is simple awareness. People can't try to use solutions they're not aware of - which is why seeing this sort of article is always a rather nice thing. Some of it is uncertainty. Trying an unfamiliar solution is always a risk, since it's sometimes difficult to to know whether or not it will work better than what one is already doing.
One of the bigger problems, though, is resources. Most places don't have the money to throw at every possible solution in the hopes that one of them will work. Some of them don't have the money they need to address basic services; paying even more than that to help fix the problems that causes is not likely to happen anytime soon. Most liberals, of course, look at that problem and ask why we're not having the government fund programs like this - but, of course, there's a bit of an ongoing debate about whether the government should take things like this on.
Believe it or not, I think the concerns about spending government money on this are partially valid. Part of the reason programs like this work are because they are community driven programs; it's entirely reasonable to worry that a program run by the federal government would not be able to connect with the necessary people in the community. And there's a legitimate desire to make sure the government is spending its money on useful things that makes turning the government into a funding source with almost no control (or oversight) a problematic idea.
In the end, though, I think those problems can be overcome. It would take leadership and an electorate that was willing to trust each other and their government a bit more to even build a system where we could pay for these things without demanding too much control, certainly. But I think that's a more likely possibility than assuming that private charities and donors will step up to cover the cost of these things on a wider scale than we're currently doing.
Which raises an interesting question: Why aren't more people doing this?
Part of the problem is simple awareness. People can't try to use solutions they're not aware of - which is why seeing this sort of article is always a rather nice thing. Some of it is uncertainty. Trying an unfamiliar solution is always a risk, since it's sometimes difficult to to know whether or not it will work better than what one is already doing.
One of the bigger problems, though, is resources. Most places don't have the money to throw at every possible solution in the hopes that one of them will work. Some of them don't have the money they need to address basic services; paying even more than that to help fix the problems that causes is not likely to happen anytime soon. Most liberals, of course, look at that problem and ask why we're not having the government fund programs like this - but, of course, there's a bit of an ongoing debate about whether the government should take things like this on.
Believe it or not, I think the concerns about spending government money on this are partially valid. Part of the reason programs like this work are because they are community driven programs; it's entirely reasonable to worry that a program run by the federal government would not be able to connect with the necessary people in the community. And there's a legitimate desire to make sure the government is spending its money on useful things that makes turning the government into a funding source with almost no control (or oversight) a problematic idea.
In the end, though, I think those problems can be overcome. It would take leadership and an electorate that was willing to trust each other and their government a bit more to even build a system where we could pay for these things without demanding too much control, certainly. But I think that's a more likely possibility than assuming that private charities and donors will step up to cover the cost of these things on a wider scale than we're currently doing.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Apocalyptic Language
One of the common complaints about political discourse is that everything is too extreme, too hostile, and so on. It really isn't surprising that it's quite a bit harder to compromise when both sides regard the other as an existential threat.
The problem is that both sides, even as they're wishing for civility and compromise, seem to have no problem with being uncivil if they're sufficiently provoked. Frankly, hard as it may seem to believe, that's probably even a good thing; asking people not to react strongly regardless of the provocation is neither fair nor helpful. And probably not possible either.
However, if we're deciding that some degree of incivility is acceptable, we do have to come up with some kind of standard for when it's justified, and we have to apply that standard fairly to both sides. A significant part of the current problem is that both sides might as well be determining whether any particular expression is justified or not based on who's engaging in it - everything their side does is acceptable, and everything the other side does is not. Even when someone agrees that their side has done something wrong, the unacceptable things they can find from their own side (assuming they're even looking for them) are the exceptions and the extremists that nobody listens to, whereas the unacceptable things they find from the other side (which they are generally looking for quite closely) are evidence that the other side really is just that vile.
That tribalism both gives people an endless stream of reasons to keep turning the intensity up (since their opponents are constantly being unjustifiably uncivil) and convinces them not to back down themselves (since anything that might be called uncivil on their side is justifiable). Trying to call other people out for not having good standards quickly becomes problematic, since it's basically inevitable that the target of such criticism will seize on any ways in which their attacker has been uncivil and use them in turn to argue that their attacker isn't helping either. Those debates are rarely helpful; it's not easy to analyze every decision and debate point that's being made to determine who's less justified.
In the end, the only solution I see is for everyone to be very careful about their own critical thinking skills, even if that is a bit of an unsatisfying answer given how easy that is to say and how hard it is to do. There are times when apocalyptic language is called for, but we should all be very careful about when and why we do that.
The problem is that both sides, even as they're wishing for civility and compromise, seem to have no problem with being uncivil if they're sufficiently provoked. Frankly, hard as it may seem to believe, that's probably even a good thing; asking people not to react strongly regardless of the provocation is neither fair nor helpful. And probably not possible either.
However, if we're deciding that some degree of incivility is acceptable, we do have to come up with some kind of standard for when it's justified, and we have to apply that standard fairly to both sides. A significant part of the current problem is that both sides might as well be determining whether any particular expression is justified or not based on who's engaging in it - everything their side does is acceptable, and everything the other side does is not. Even when someone agrees that their side has done something wrong, the unacceptable things they can find from their own side (assuming they're even looking for them) are the exceptions and the extremists that nobody listens to, whereas the unacceptable things they find from the other side (which they are generally looking for quite closely) are evidence that the other side really is just that vile.
That tribalism both gives people an endless stream of reasons to keep turning the intensity up (since their opponents are constantly being unjustifiably uncivil) and convinces them not to back down themselves (since anything that might be called uncivil on their side is justifiable). Trying to call other people out for not having good standards quickly becomes problematic, since it's basically inevitable that the target of such criticism will seize on any ways in which their attacker has been uncivil and use them in turn to argue that their attacker isn't helping either. Those debates are rarely helpful; it's not easy to analyze every decision and debate point that's being made to determine who's less justified.
In the end, the only solution I see is for everyone to be very careful about their own critical thinking skills, even if that is a bit of an unsatisfying answer given how easy that is to say and how hard it is to do. There are times when apocalyptic language is called for, but we should all be very careful about when and why we do that.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Detecting Lies
One of the points that's come up in the debate about whether Judge Kavanaugh should be confirmed or not is the question of how well we can or can't tell whether he or Dr. Ford are lying based on their temperaments.
The short answer is no, we can't. Picking apart verifiable facts is an excellent way to catch liars at it; looking for tells in their behavior largely isn't. This article lays out several reasons for that, ranging from the fact that what people look for is quite subjective to the fact that we don't have any good way to check whether our past judgments have been accurate or not. Even those people whose jobs rely on detecting lies aren't always good at being able to tell who's lying without being able to check other facts.
That conclusion goes against what most people believe about lying and spotting liars, at least as far as I know. If nothing else, a lot of the stories we tell ourselves are filled with the wise investigators and clever gamblers who can see right through their fellow people. Even if I'd be willing to agree that some of those people might exist, most of us aren't like that, and I suspect people who are that perceptive are rarer than we'd all prefer.
The conclusion does not, however, go against my personal experience - because I've been caught out by a liar or two in my life, and reflecting on those moments definitely does make me think about how difficult it was to spot them at it. It was incredibly tricky to figure out even after I had reasons to be suspicious and was watching the people in question as carefully as I knew how. And in the end, it still wasn't any kind of insight into what they looked or acted like when they were lying that got them caught - it was the facts about what they were doing versus what they were saying that got me to realize I was still being lied to. So I have no problem agreeing with the various studies that suggest catching liars on temperament alone is an extremely hard thing to do.
The short answer is no, we can't. Picking apart verifiable facts is an excellent way to catch liars at it; looking for tells in their behavior largely isn't. This article lays out several reasons for that, ranging from the fact that what people look for is quite subjective to the fact that we don't have any good way to check whether our past judgments have been accurate or not. Even those people whose jobs rely on detecting lies aren't always good at being able to tell who's lying without being able to check other facts.
That conclusion goes against what most people believe about lying and spotting liars, at least as far as I know. If nothing else, a lot of the stories we tell ourselves are filled with the wise investigators and clever gamblers who can see right through their fellow people. Even if I'd be willing to agree that some of those people might exist, most of us aren't like that, and I suspect people who are that perceptive are rarer than we'd all prefer.
The conclusion does not, however, go against my personal experience - because I've been caught out by a liar or two in my life, and reflecting on those moments definitely does make me think about how difficult it was to spot them at it. It was incredibly tricky to figure out even after I had reasons to be suspicious and was watching the people in question as carefully as I knew how. And in the end, it still wasn't any kind of insight into what they looked or acted like when they were lying that got them caught - it was the facts about what they were doing versus what they were saying that got me to realize I was still being lied to. So I have no problem agreeing with the various studies that suggest catching liars on temperament alone is an extremely hard thing to do.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Game review: Arcade Spirits (Part 1)
So this time I'm actually reviewing a game that's not out for the general public yet. This is possible because I supported the game's creator on Patreon, so I got access to the closed beta test. Yes, this probably means I'm a bit predisposed to like the game, if for no other reason than that I'd hate for something I supported that way to turn out bad.
That's also why this is marked as part 1. I haven't played through the full game yet, and couldn't even if I had devoted more time to trying out the beta given that the full game doesn't exist yet. So there will be another review of this game at some point in the future once I've had the chance to actually play the full version.
Everything I've seen so far is positive, though. Arcade Spirits is a visual novel, set in a fictional alternate reality in which the video game crash in the 80's never happened, which means that gaming and arcades are much more of a mainstream pursuit than they are in the world we actually live in. It's partly romantic comedy and partly a rather serious drama about chasing one's dreams. It also features an alignment system of sorts (which players of some RPG computer games may recognize) - your choices give you points towards a variety of character traits, as well as relationship points with the other characters, and as the story proceeds, that starts to have an impact on how everyone reacts to the main character.
The biggest single point in this game's favor, of course, is Stefan Gagne's writing. He's responsible for writing a lot of the game's story, and I've liked everything he's written ever since I first read one of his stories. The worlds he's built are interesting and amusing by turns, and the characters he puts in them have very realistic strengths and weaknesses - he always avoids giving his characters the idiot ball for no reason, but also doesn't have any boring invincible heroes that I can remember offhand. And the dialogue choices are written in such a way that you can tell what type of person you're going to be, but it's not obvious to the point of parody. That's a common flaw with alignment systems like this game's, but this one avoids it to at least some extent.
One of the other interesting details, though, is the character customization options and how they affect the romantic options. Or rather - how they don't. I haven't actually reached any of those story lines yet, but from what I understand the player is free to romance whoever they like, regardless of what gender they picked for their character. That's not common, and it's kind of refreshing to see it treated as utterly normal and unremarkable.
As for the rest of it, I guess we'll see. Everything I've seen makes me think I'll like this one, though, and I strongly recommend at least giving the demo a look.
That's also why this is marked as part 1. I haven't played through the full game yet, and couldn't even if I had devoted more time to trying out the beta given that the full game doesn't exist yet. So there will be another review of this game at some point in the future once I've had the chance to actually play the full version.
Everything I've seen so far is positive, though. Arcade Spirits is a visual novel, set in a fictional alternate reality in which the video game crash in the 80's never happened, which means that gaming and arcades are much more of a mainstream pursuit than they are in the world we actually live in. It's partly romantic comedy and partly a rather serious drama about chasing one's dreams. It also features an alignment system of sorts (which players of some RPG computer games may recognize) - your choices give you points towards a variety of character traits, as well as relationship points with the other characters, and as the story proceeds, that starts to have an impact on how everyone reacts to the main character.
The biggest single point in this game's favor, of course, is Stefan Gagne's writing. He's responsible for writing a lot of the game's story, and I've liked everything he's written ever since I first read one of his stories. The worlds he's built are interesting and amusing by turns, and the characters he puts in them have very realistic strengths and weaknesses - he always avoids giving his characters the idiot ball for no reason, but also doesn't have any boring invincible heroes that I can remember offhand. And the dialogue choices are written in such a way that you can tell what type of person you're going to be, but it's not obvious to the point of parody. That's a common flaw with alignment systems like this game's, but this one avoids it to at least some extent.
One of the other interesting details, though, is the character customization options and how they affect the romantic options. Or rather - how they don't. I haven't actually reached any of those story lines yet, but from what I understand the player is free to romance whoever they like, regardless of what gender they picked for their character. That's not common, and it's kind of refreshing to see it treated as utterly normal and unremarkable.
As for the rest of it, I guess we'll see. Everything I've seen makes me think I'll like this one, though, and I strongly recommend at least giving the demo a look.
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Game Review: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
One of the problems with this review is that I'd like to open with a concise summary, and phrasing it in a way that doesn't leave an overly negative impression is going to be difficult. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse was fun to play, and I think it was worth what I paid for it, but it did benefit a bit from some low expectations on my part.
The game's main character (Shantae, of course) is a dancer (okay) who is also a half-genie (?) whose primary weapon is whipping enemies with her hair (!?)... and that's not even in the top five most ridiculous things this game comes up with. There are a lot of comedies that would lose me very quickly by being this ridiculously stupid, but this game managed to consistently land on the right side of the line between hilariously stupid and just being stupid. Probably by virtue of sheer audacity; it's pretty much impossible to expect anything serious out of this one.
As a platforming game, it's acceptable. Certainly it's not much of a challenge given that I've been playing games like Celeste recently, but it had enough tricky boss fights and platforming to keep me from getting too bored and managed to avoid being difficult for the wrong reasons (e.g. control issues). The exploration aspects probably would have been a bit more interesting if I hadn't already known where everything was (my introduction to the series was watching other people play it), but there's not much I can do about that at this point, nor is it an actual problem with the game.
In the end, as I mentioned at the beginning - I enjoyed the time I spent playing, and I think I got my money's worth. But there's also nothing here that makes this game exceptional, at least as far as I'm concerned. If you're looking for a quick, not too challenging, and amusingly stupid 2D platformer, it'll do. But if you're looking for something more engaging, this game probably isn't what you're looking for.
Monday, October 1, 2018
League of Legends Worlds 2018
The League of Legends World Championships start today! And unlike some other things that are called the world championships (I'm looking at you, World Series) this is actually a worldwide affair, with teams coming from 14 different regions, some of which represent multiple nations.
My decision about which team to back is pretty strongly based on country loyalty. Which basically means I want the US and Japanese teams to do well and don't want the Chinese and Russian teams to succeed. Then again, it also has something to do with cheering for the underdogs and not wanting some of the people who have always been on top to keep winning - which is why I'd prefer if Korea didn't do great despite generally liking them.
... Of course, I'm not likely to get much of what I want. Japan is doing better than average at an international tournament if they actually manage to win a game, and that's not likely to change this year. The US teams typically just barely fail to accomplish anything useful - which means Cloud 9's victory in the very first game played at Worlds is likely just getting all their fans worked up before we ultimately choke. And the Koreans have never done poorly, ever; only the Chinese teams have managed to take any tournaments off of them and that only recently. I suppose at least the Russians are probably going to lose, so at least I get a little of what I want.
Unfortunately I also don't get to watch in person, since tickets for these events sold out in minutes. I suppose I can hope to find someone selling their tickets (likely at a significant mark-up) but I might have to just watch from home.
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