Final Frustration

One of the things I’ve decided to do this year, in light of finally getting a diagnosis and treatment for ADD, is to try things that I’ve always decided just weren’t for me, for one reason or another. It’s an interesting process, reevaluating one’s tastes in light of new information. There are a lot of things that I’ve just written off because I just couldn’t get myself to understand the appeal; it’s natural now to wonder if that lack of interest was legitimately because it’s something I don’t like, or if it’s something that ADD has kept me from being able to focus on enough to enjoy.

Whenever you start something like this, it’s natural to try to tackle the biggest rocks first, so I went for something that’s always been a huge blind spot for me, gaming-wise: Japanese role playing games (JRPGs). More specifically, Final Fantasy games.

I’ve never considered myself a Final Fantasy person, which is the gaming equivalent of saying you don’t like The Beatles. (Side note: I also don’t like The Beatles.) I played the first one on the NES because everyone did, but that was the last one I played through. For starters, I never had either an SNES or an original PlayStation at the time they were first out; I’ve caught up to the former largely through emulation and the Virtual Console, and the latter through whatever discs I could find to run on the PS2 until that eventually got banished to the basement. Even despite that, I could never really see the appeal of wandering around looking for the next dungeon to explore; the games always seemed too difficult with not enough reward to justify the effort.

I did try both Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII when they came out, but I didn’t stick with either for more than a couple of hours apiece. The games were more linear at this point, but the systems were inscrutable to me. It felt like the games were complex for complexity’s sake. Add to that XIII’s first ten hours or so being more or less a glorified tutorial, and I was out.

So since I made up my mind that I’m going on this journey, I decided to do things the right way. I have a Vita now, which removes the issue of the game being too long to monopolize the television for, which is the other main issue with playing these types of games in this stage of my life, what with having a full time job and three kids. To make sure I wasn’t going to pick the wrong game, I refused to let my Isometric co-hosts off the Skype call one night after recording until they agreed on what Final Fantasy game was best for me to play. So I bought Final Fantasy VI and went about figuring out if there was a Final Fantasy person locked inside me or not.

I’ll say this: Final Fantasy VI is a pretty compelling game. I’m only maybe 3 hours in as of when I’m writing this post, but the story is really engaging, and just the small tweak to the battle system to have each character attack according to their speed stat as opposed to each side inputting all their commands at once does add a bit more strategy to the battles, even if it does make them slightly more stressful. I’ve stuck with it and felt myself wanting to come back to it after putting it down, even if the reason for putting it down was that I was stuck at a particularly frustrating part. (The battle with Vargas probably took me an hour to clear that’s not reflected in my overall play time because I kept dying without saving; for whatever reason I couldn’t figure out how to press the buttons for the Blitz command the way that the game expected me to.) It’s early, but I’m liking the game a lot, and I think I could conceivably overcome my perception that I’m not a Final Fantasy person.

That said, playing Final Fantasy VI now has led me to believe that I’ve figured out what’s gotten in the way of me enjoying these types of games: The random encounters.

If you’ve never played a game like this, the general flow of the game is that, unless you’re in an area like a town that’s safe, you move your party around on a map, and every so often the screen freezes randomly, and the game shifts to a battle. It’s kind of like playing musical chairs as a kid; everything’s calm for a while and then the music stops and there’s a mad scramble. This is supposed to represent the danger of the environment; your party is wandering through the wilderness, and every so often, monsters jump out and attack them. The party then defeats the monsters and continues along their path.

Turns out this has been what’s been keeping me from enjoying JRPGs all this time. Here’s the thing: Some of these dungeons are really complex. They often have multiple branches, and it can be very easy to get lost and forget where you’ve been and where you’re going. That’s under normal circumstances. Now imagine that you’re easily distractible to begin with, and now to try to keep track of a complicated dungeon like that while every 30-45 seconds you’re getting interrupted by a battle that can last several minutes, only to be thrown back to the world map to try to remember where you were going before that happened. More than once while playing Final Fantasy VI, I finished a lengthy battle and ended up walking back in the direction I came from, which was both frustrating and then ended up generating even more random battles because I was taking steps that I didn’t need to take. Worse, even while benefitting from the medication to help my focus, there were points where I got so turned around that I was totally lost, and got increasingly frustrated as I got continually attacked while trying to regain my bearings. There’s a point where that stops being fun and starts being irritating, and I think that’s what ultimately made me decide that Final Fantasy wasn’t for me. To a person with ADD, getting lost in an area with frequent random encounters can feel like walking in quicksand.

This got me thinking about the two JRPGs that I can remember enjoying: the Pokemon games and Bravely Default. Both of those games have the same large story, and both have similar turn-based battle systems to the Final Fantasy games. So why was I able to put 30-40 hours into those games and get turned off by other games?

In the case of Pokemon, there are random encounters to a degree, but once you’ve learned how the game works you can plan around them. In Pokemon, when traveling around the overworld, there are two types of battles that can happen: Trainer battles, where you fight against a trainer who has one or more Pokemon; and wild Pokemon encounters, where you fight against a single Pokemon with the goal of either defeating it for experience points or capturing it in a Poke Ball to add to your roster. Trainer battles aren’t random at all; you can see the trainers along the path and it’s clear when they see you that you’re going to battle. Furthermore, once you’ve defeated a trainer on a path he won’t challenge you again, so you can progress safely knowing you won’t be interrupted there. Wild Pokemon battles, on the other hand, only take place in specific areas like tall grass and some dungeons. There’s usually a path to avoid these encounters should you not want to gain XP or catch Pokemon, and even in larger dungeon type areas that do have more traditional random encounters, you can buy Repel items for relatively cheap early on that will stop the random encounters from happening temporarily. So even though Pokemon has these random encounters, being able to avoid them is both possible and encouraged, so I could do that if they were getting in the way.

Bravely Default is even more accommodating in this regard. Not only will it allow you to skip random encounters, there’s actually a setting in preferences to turn them off completely. It does warn you that doing that will end up biting you if you leave them turned off for too long, which is true; you need to battle monsters to gain enough experience to proceed at some point. But even then, the game has options also; you can both turn up the rate of encounters and the game speed, and preset a series of commands for each character to take to facilitate “grinding”, the act of searching for random encounters for a while to earn enough experience points to level up sufficiently to proceed, which can be extremely tedious and boring but ultimately necessary, anathema for some players with ADD. Bravely Default requires just as much grinding as other games in the genre, but these settings make it much less painful; upon hitting a point where I needed to grind, I could just put everything on autopilot and wander around a cave for a while as I watched television, only pausing every so often to replenish health and magic.

What both these games prove is that it really was the random encounters, and not anything else about the JRPG genre, that caused me to give up on Final Fantasy early on. Corroborating this is a game that came out in 2013 called Ni No Kuni, which I was extremely inclined to enjoy. The story and art was done by Studio Ghibli, which is responsible for several of the very few movies that I love, like My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Spirited Away. The battle system played more like an action-RPG than turn based. And yet, the dungeons were so thick with random encounters that it frustrated me in exactly the same way the Final Fantasy games did. So I put it down after a couple of hours and never picked it up again.

Ultimately I’m glad I did this experiment, even though it does prove that there must be something literally wrong with me for not liking Final Fantasy all this time. It’s reassuring to be able to point to a specific mechanic to determine whether I’m going to like a game or not, and know that if I’m in a state where my ADD is under control, I can probably get past that now. I should be sure to say that ADD is different for everyone; what serves as a roadblock for me likely won’t be for everyone with the disorder. After all, hyperfocus is still a factor that can kick in, and it’s hard to predict where that will happen; I’ve heard other people with ADD say that they loved Final Fantasy VI and hyperfocus carried them through, the same way I managed to learn to play Rock Band guitar on Expert difficulty despite my own struggles. That said, I’m hopeful given the popularity of Bravely Default that more designers will look at that particular mechanic and provide a way to work around it for those who do find it a challenge. After all, no one should have to go all their life without getting to ride a Chocobo. That’s no way to live.

When Ratings Get Squirrelly

I took a trip to Newbury Comics with my oldest daughter yesterday. It’s a treat for both of us, and while I don’t really read comics anymore (mainly because I already spend way too much money on video games and something has to give), she loves them, and I’m happy to encourage any of her potential routes toward geekdom that she wants to pursue. There’s a problem, though; it’s incredibly difficult to find comics that I can feel good about giving her without reservation.

This came into stark relief today when we went over to a new rack that this particular store had put in highlighting all their comics that were intended for kids. I’m used to this rack; it’s usually full of My Little Pony, Archie, and Sonic the Hedgehog. There’s nothing wrong with any of those, per se (My Little Pony is a big hit with the younger girls, in fact), but my seven year old is beyond that, for the most part; I bought her a few of the Legend of Zelda manga books and she devoured each of them in an afternoon apiece. It’s been a struggle finding any super hero comics that are appropriate for her; she loves super heroes (DC, primarily), but comics I can give her to read are few and far between. Even the good ones like Superman Family Adventures and Tiny Titans are definitely aimed toward early readers and aren’t challenging for her at all. What I’ve been looking for is a series that’s written at a more mainstream reading level but with content that’s appropriate for someone at her age.

That’s why I was excited when I saw The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 on the rack today. I’ve heard a lot about Squirrel Girl; everything I’ve seen ahead of the series’ launch was funny and well written, and Squirrel Girl’s alter ego, Doreen Green, is starting college to major in computer science, so she seems like a positive role model for my daughter as well. There’s one problem, though: That letter T on the cover.

This is the problem that I run into constantly with comics. Between both Marvel and DC, comics that are rated All Ages are rare. I still remember the first time that I brought my daughter to a comics shop, having not read comics since the mid-90s. I opened up a random Spider Man comic to find depictions of a fairly grisly murder scene, and decided that the T rating wasn’t to be trifled with. Even when I find series that I thought might be OK for her to try, like the new Batgirl, I discover that it broaches subjects like revenge porn in the early issues of the current run. Next to nothing is rated All Ages, though, so the fact that this T comic was in the “Comics for Kids” section was perplexing.

I read through it quickly in the store while she looked at some other things, and confirmed that this issue was OK for her to read. In fact, not only does she defeat Kraven the Hunter, but she ends up doing so not by using her super strength or super speed, but by figuring out what makes him tick and convincing him that he was hunting too weak a foe and should aim higher. I think that’s a pretty great message, that even if you have superpowers, sometimes it’s just being able to think on your feet that can help you save the day. All in all, I think this particular comic is fantastic and I can’t recommend it enough.

The issue is that I keep coming back to the T on the cover. As a parent it’s my job to filter the stuff that my kids see before they see it and decide if they’re ready for it. That doesn’t mean that they can’t see “mature” scenes eventually, but they’re seven and five now. They should be allowed to be kids without understanding what serial killers are for a while longer if I can help it. So what the T on the cover says to me as a parent is, “This issue might be fine, but this series may stray into directions that are more mature eventually, so be on guard.” If this was a movie or a video game, then I could either preview the entirety of it myself or go to a site like Common Sense Media that would help me make a call if I wanted to watch it together.

The thing that makes comics different is that they are episodic, though, and by getting involved in a series, we’re starting a relationship with it. If my daughter likes a series she’s going to want to get every issue that comes out, because that’s kind of the point. So a T rating makes me very hesitant to start that relationship, because it means that we might have to skip issues based on their content, and that’s going to leave me with a very disappointed girl in the comic shop. It’s hard for a kid to understand that she can have this issue but not that one for reasons.

In the case of Squirrel Girl, my public fretting on Twitter eventually led one of my awesome followers to reach out to the writer, who put my fears at ease. But what if that didn’t happen? I’ve had several people reach out to me recommending the new Ms Marvel series, which also looks fantastic, but that’s rated T+. I can reach out to the author of that series on Twitter as well, but I shouldn’t have to do that every time I want to introduce my daughter to a new series, and that shouldn’t be the writers’ responsibility either. Further, if a book is being written for all ages, why not rate it that way so that I can know that there aren’t going to be any subjects that my kids aren’t ready to read about yet?

The problem here, from what I can tell, is that Marvel and DC seem to be using their ratings as marketing and classification and not as a tool for parents to make an informed decision, which is what ratings are supposed to be for in the first place. I want to get my kids more into super hero books because that’s something they’re interested in, which has to be good for the publishers both in the short term (they sell more books) and long term (because they get future customers who are starting younger and then more inclined to buy comics of their own once they have their own money). The way they’re running their ratings, though, it’s hard for me to feel good about introducing new series. So I don’t. And I know a lot of other geek parents who often feel the same way when faced with the same decision in the comic shop.

So, Marvel and DC, help me help you. I’ve got money to spend and I come home with it burning a hole in my pocket every time we leave the comics shop. My kids and I are starving for comics that are for all ages that we can enjoy together. So please rate your comics appropriately so we can read some of them together as a family. You’re turning away potential customers by doing otherwise.

Minus World

Nintendo hosted another one of their Nintendo Direct webcasts this week. In general, I really like the direction they’ve taken by moving to doing these; it’s like a mini-E3 every month or two and we don’t have to wait for a huge event for news on upcoming games. The previous Nintendo Direct actually had me really optimistic about what’s coming out of Nintendo this year. This week’s made me legitimately worried about the health of the company going forward. The reason why is simple: They’re sacrificing the experience in favor of short term cost cutting measures, and that’s the one sure way to hurt Nintendo long term, more than Sega or Sony or iOS ever could.

Before we go in to the current news, it’s important to understand Nintendo’s philosophy over the past couple of years, amid the increasingly loud cries for them to stop being stubborn and port their games over to smartphones. In May, among yet another one of these pleas from investors and the tech press, Iwata said, “Our games such as Mario and Zelda are designed for our game machines so if we transfer them into smartphones as they are, customers won’t be satisfied. If customers aren’t satisfied with the experience, it will decrease the value of our content.” For the record, I don’t disagree with him; I’ve been pretty vocal about saying that porting games to iOS would be the end of Nintendo as we know it. But that particular quote makes the news to come out of this week’s Nintendo Direct extremely perplexing, and frankly worrying.

First of all, Nintendo announced Mario Party 10, with support for Amiibo, as one would expect. I usually wouldn’t pay attention to a Mario Party announcement (good lord, there are ten of these games already?), except that it exposed one giant flaw with the Amiibo implementation. Those figures which are supposed to travel from game to game with you? Apparently, to do so, you need to delete all your data from the first game to make room for the second. Or you could just buy another one, if you want to take the cynical view. This is frustrating, but given that Nintendo has never really been able to articulate what Amiibo are supposed to do in the first place, it just provided one more reason to ignore their existence.

Then there came the announcement of the New 3DS itself, finally slated for release next month. The announcement itself wasn’t all that surprising (the release date and price had already been leaked, after all), but there were two major omissions that were various degrees of concerning.

The first is that the smaller (non-XL) New 3DS wouldn’t be coming to the US at all, despite being released in Europe and Asia. It wouldn’t have been surprising if they’d only made the XL size of the New 3DS; the XL is clearly the more popular model based on the fact that the original 3DS has been discontinued and the 2DS exists. That said, once they did announce it for Japan, it was a reasonable assumption that Nintendo would be selling it everywhere. It should be said that there are legitimate use cases for a non-XL 3DS; plenty of people have small hands, including the kids who are often the primary users of the 3DS. That model is also the only one with interchangeable faceplates, which was a big selling feature of the new model. So by announcing this for Japan months ago, Nintendo left some US consumers with the expectation that they’d be able to buy the smaller model; they were then disappointed to find out that was not the case, especially given that every other region can purchase them.

It goes without saying that there are a lot of factors that go into any business decision. I don’t doubt that Nintendo’s starting to run into a shelf space crunch, especially after their huge Amiibo push, and regions do differ in their sales. The XL is also the predominant seller between the two models in regions where they both launched together. But given that Nintendo is producing the smaller model at all, there were still better ways to handle this than punting on releasing the device entirely in the US. Even if they’d released the smaller model as a limited edition exclusively through their own web store, they at least could have hedged their bets and fulfilled that niche customer base who wanted it. Instead, they left those customers frustrated and confused, which is not ideal when asking them to spend $200 on a slightly updated version of a console they probably already have.

The real kicker, though, is the fact that the New 3DS’s charger is not included with the system. If you already own a 3DS, you can just use the one you already own, of course. If you don’t already own a 3DS (or don’t want to have to choose which of your 3DS units to charge at any given time), you can pay an extra $10 to Nintendo for one. (Oh, and don’t even think about buying a third party one, because that could void your warranty. Because of course it will.) If the chargers were standard micro USB plugs, maybe you could make the argument that everyone has plenty lying around and this is a prudent move. The 3DS charger, however, is proprietary. Even notwithstanding Nintendo’s fear mongering over the warranty, one still needs to buy a specific charger to get power into the 3DS.

It’s hard to put into words how much this offends me as a long time customer of Nintendo’s. This is a cost-cutting measure, pure and simple; there’s no other explanation for it. It’s true that Nintendo’s always cut corners on the hardware to make sure it at least breaks even on cost. This is why both the 3DS (including the new one) and the GamePad on the Wii U still feature resistive touch screens, even though capacitive touch screens have been the standard for years. The original iPhone made clear that capacitive screens were vastly better than resistive when it was released seven years ago, before the 3DS was even a twinkle in Nintendo’s eye. For crying out loud, even LeapFrog’s latest LeapPad has a capacitive screen, and LeapFrog is known for using components that are several years out of date to keep costs down.

This is different, though. As frustrating as the resistive screens are, or the lack of HD was in the Wii, or the last-gen processing power of the Wii U was at launch, you could understand those decisions in the context of when they were made. You get get by fine with a resistive screen, it was still a question of how quickly HD would be adopted in 2006, and developers still haven’t learned how to harness the power of the Xbox One or PS4 to make anything truly next-gen that would makes the Wii U feel old as of yet. A charger, though, is essential to the operation of a handheld gaming platform. You literally cannot operate the system without one. Even though there are undoubtedly plenty of 3DS chargers out in the wild, it’s still unreasonable for Nintendo to not include one in the box.

What this does is cheapen the experience for their customers, and for no good reason other than saving a couple of dollars per unit. Consider the parent who’s buying his daughter her first 3DS; they bring it home, set it up, and then go to look for the charger once the daughter runs the battery dow, only to find there isn’t one, and they have to go back to the store to spend more money. This isn’t a hypothetical situation; as much as plenty of parents grew up playing video games, there are still a good number who don’t, and they generally don’t research a product like this very much. After all, it’s a reasonable assumption that the system would come with everything it needs out of the box. A more common scenario will be people who are trading in their old 3DS to get a new one; most trade ins require the charger, so those people just got $10 less from their trade than they thought they would because now they have to buy a new charger to replace the one they just traded in.

Are either of these scenarios disastrous? No, of course not. $10 isn’t a lot of money when you’re in the position to buy a $200 handheld. It’s not really about the money, per se, but these scenarios are harmful to Nintendo’s reputation because they leave a bad first impression with the customer. It sends the message that Nintendo cares less about providing a great experience than with cutting costs as much as possible, and that’s not the sign of a healthy company. Remember Iwata’s quote above; customer satisfaction should be the most important thing to Nintendo right now. Satisfied customers will stay with them and come on board with their next ridiculous sounding idea because they trust that Nintendo knows what they’re doing in the long run. Making a choice that jeopardizes that for what can’t be more than $2 or $3 per console sold defies explanation.

It’s worth saying that none of these choices is a huge deal on their own, but all of them together are starting to paint a disturbing pattern of how Nintendo intends to act in its post-Wii reality. This is not a company that is intent on delighting their customers, or even really cares about their satisfaction. This is a short sighted company that may be more in survival mode than we realized. None of this changes that Nintendo still makes great games that are worth buying their hardware to play. What the last Nintendo Direct proved, however, is that they’re willing to make sacrifices to the product and to the Nintendo experience in favor of cutting costs here and there. The problem is that Nintendo is heavily dependent on the good will of its customers to stick with them during the bad times; that’s what kept them afloat during the slow start of the Wii U. It’s people with nostalgia for Nintendo and faith in the value that their systems provide that buy them before they ought to, and buy more for their kids to share with them.

So I’m finally worried about Nintendo, because it seems like they’ve lost sight of what’s really important, and their need to appease their investors has eclipsed their instincts to make the best product they can make. This is how Nintendo finally fails, not by taking a chance on a wild new idea, but by showing their customers that the respect that they have for Nintendo isn’t mutual. At the end of the day, the feelings that a lot of Nintendo’s customers have toward the company are often more emotional than rational. When Nintendo becomes just another game company to those customers, that’s the day that Nintendo is in serious jeopardy of turning into the next Sega.

Distracted

“I’d like to make an appointment to get myself evaluated for ADD.”

This is easily one of the hardest phone calls I’ve had to make in a long time, and I never thought I’d actually ever be making it. I’ve always been kind of all over the place, and a constant multitasker, but the thought of actually having ADD never occurred to me. I mean, hell, I was going to school in the 80s and 90s, back when it seemed like everyone was getting diagnosed for ADD, so why now? I’ve gotten by this way for 35 years, so how is it possible that I’ve managed for so long with something like this, and not even known that it was going on?

About two months ago, my wife and I were at the pediatric neurologist with one of the twins. We’d suspected that she might have ADD after her older sister was diagnosed a few months ago, and even though we don’t plan to intervene with medication at this point, it’s still good to know both for us and the school so we can recognize the ADD behavior and not hold it against her. As we sat in the neurologist’s office, though, and listened to him enumerate the behavior that contributed to her diagnosis, it started to dawn on me that I could see a lot of the same types of actions in myself. Add in that I’d just had two daughters diagnosed with ADD within three months, and it led to me starting to examine if it was something I’d been passing on to them.

What’s funny (or maybe sad) is that I’ve joked about having ADD for as long as I can remember. One of the jokes I’ve made at work was that I suffer at times from “externally imposed ADD”, where I don’t have time to finish a task because I’m constantly being interrupted by other tasks that need attention. Even when I recognized my lack of focus, there were a million different explanations for it: Stress (not unheard of with a demanding job and two autistic children), not enough sleep (thank you, 5 AM wake-up), at times I’ve blamed it on my sleep apnea, or just the normal demands of being an adult.

When I started really looking at where I am, though, it’s incredibly obvious how much my lack of attention span is affecting my quality of life. For starters, I can’t remember the last time I read a printed book; I’ve started listening to audiobooks in the car where I’m a captive audience, but even those are only sinking in about half the time. I have to actively think about maintaining eye contact during a conversation, which usually leaves me unable to listen to what’s actually being said. My now infamous “hatred” of movies is probably at least in part that I find the idea of focusing on a screen for two (or, perish the thought, three) hours thoroughly exhausting instead of something to enjoy. I fidget constantly and can’t have a phone conversation without pacing all over the place.

And even when playing video games, which I love and have always loved, I’m finding that even there, where they’re accused of causing ADD or at least catering to it, I’m not enjoying them as much as I used to. Just thinking about how many games we’ve discussed on Isometric that I’ve dismissed with the phrase, “I don’t have the attention span for that” is saddening. I used to spend hours upon hours playing the Civilization games, but I’ve never been able to stick with Civ V long enough for it to grab me, despite it being just as addictive as its predecessors, by my co-hosts’ account. Even the games that I have enjoyed lately are very clearly feeding into my need for constant and frequent payoff: Diablo 3 is basically a virtual slot machine with fireballs when you think about it; any of the roguelike games that I’ve spent time with (Rogue Legacy, FTL, Crypt of the Necrodancer) are short with quick resolution that I can drop out of easily if I get bored; and my recent obsessions with Desert Golfing and Crossy Road fit that same cycle. So I’m enjoying fewer and fewer games because there are a ton of games I should enjoy “in theory” given my tastes, but my attention span cuts that off at the knees when I actually sit down to play them.

But worst of all, this has affected my relationship with my family in ways I’m just starting to comprehend. For as long as my wife and I have been together I’ve forgotten things because of distractions that were important to her and inadvertently sent the message that they aren’t also important to me, even though they *are*, but I can’t keep focus on them through the noise. And even just when spending time together, I fiddle with my phone constantly, refreshing Twitter every fifteen seconds even though I know logically that nothing’s changed (and even if it has it can’t possibly be important); knowing that *something is happening* and needing to know about it is such a powerful distraction that I can’t stop myself even when we’re walking through a store together and she’s just stopped to look at something for half a minute. It keeps me from enjoying my family because there’s always something else stealing my focus.

That’s the worst part of this process: It’s like watching The Sixth Sense and discovering that Bruce Willis was dead all along (sorry, spoiler alert) and then going back and rewatching every scene in that movie to understand what it really meant knowing that. Except it’s not a two hour movie that I spend my time analyzing, but every potential opportunity in my life that ADD had a part in torpedoing, or at least making more difficult. I could have gotten a full scholarship to college if I’d been able to focus on schoolwork instead of doing all my homework in a panic during the period before it was due. I could have been a better worker and be making more money now. I could have been a better father and a more attentive husband. It’s impossible to not start looking at all these moments that led up to where I am today and wonder how many of them could have had a different outcome if I’d known that I had this and were managing it appropriately.

That’s not healthy, of course. I’m extremely lucky to be where I am today, with three awesome kids and a wife who is honestly way more amazing and supportive than I deserve, a stable, well paying job that I enjoy, and a successful podcast. The glass half full perspective is that I’ve achieved everything I have despite the ADD, not that I’ve achieved less than my full potential because of it, and that’s what I try to remind myself when I go to that dark place. That I really should be proud of accomplishing everything I have with one hand tied behind my back, as it were. And I am, truly. But the process of coming to grips with my new reality is not a smooth one, and it involves fighting against the darker voices in my head that call me stupid for taking so long to realize this and do something about it.

The good news, though, is that I *am* doing something about it. Today. I’m accepting my new reality and starting to take steps to manage it. As much as I may regret things I’ve missed out on because of ADD, that stops now. It’s cliché, but I really do feel like today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m excited to not feel like this anymore. I’m excited to be a better husband and father. Knowing what I’ve been able to do up to now, I’m excited to see what I can accomplish with nothing holding me back.

Well, after I recover from my impending devastating Civ V addiction, that is. It’s been a long time coming, after all.

Some Games I Liked in 2014

So it’s that time of year, and it’s been kind of an amazing one, both good and bad. But since it’s December and I’m now, inexplicably, someone with opinions about video games that people are interested in, I decided I might as well do what everyone does this time of year and recap games that came out in 2014 that I enjoyed. This isn’t a Game of the Year list, per se. I’m not ranking them, nor am I judging on any technical or critical merit or anything like that. This is just a list of games, in more or less random order. The only requirements are that the game was released in 2014 and spoke to me in one way or another. So, without further preamble, here are some games I liked. Maybe you’ll like them too.

Desert Golfing

Given that I’m more or less notorious for foisting this game upon the Internet, Desert Golfing seems like as good of a place to start as any. If by some miracle you haven’t seen my tweets or listened to my swooning about it, Desert Golfing is about as minimal of a game experience as you can get. There’s a four color desert landscape with a ball and a hole, and you pull back to launch the former toward the latter. Again and again. And again. And again.

The hook with this game is mainly that it’s simple enough that you can pick it up in two minutes and it has seemingly endless content. One hole will take anywhere from 15 seconds to 15 minutes to complete based on complexity, but there are literally thousands of them; the developer recently released a patch for content beyond hole 3000. It’s also a throwback in that it keeps a running count of your score, and it is what it is; there are no mulligans, or save/restore points, or really any way to restart the game beyond deleting and reinstalling.

I initially wasn’t sure what I thought of this game; when I first talked about it on Isometric I had only gotten through maybe a couple of dozen holes and wasn’t sold on it. I’m creeping up to 2000 and still pick it up from time to time, so I suppose I decided I liked it ok. I ultimately appreciate this game for stripping down to the barest of mechanics and ending up with a fantastically addictive game that’s easy to pick up and put down. It’s not for everyone, surely; if graphics or story or any sort of congratulations from the game are important to you, you’re not going to find them here. The lack of those things, in this instance, is almost refreshing, though, and it’s worth trying, with the caveat that you may lose a couple of consecutive hours here and there in the process.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

I’ve already written a fair amount about this game, so I’ll send you to that post for my full thoughts about Wolfenstein. That’s all to say that I loved this game for my own reasons that are very personal, but your mileage may vary.

As far as my opinion of the game beyond the non-personal aspects, though, I’ll say that I found Wolfenstein very entertaining as a person who doesn’t normally enjoy first person shooters. The developers made what’s now, sadly, a bold choice by scrapping any multiplayer functionality and focusing on making a great single player experience, and it worked for them. In a lot of these types of games, the story is typically an afterthought, but Wolfenstein put forward a compelling story with characters who weren’t just cardboard cutouts holding guns, and did so despite a setting that’s basically the definition of a cliche for this genre. Given that I had zero expectations of this game going in, this was easily one of my biggest surprises of 2014.

This War of Mine

Confession time: I’ve never finished The Last of Us. I put a good chunk of time into that game but it never grabbed me like it did so many others. Maybe the hype had been built up too high by the time I played the remastered version, or maybe the mechanics of the gameplay got in the way of me being able to experience the story fully. Maybe it’s a combination of those things. In any event, I’ve been looking for a game that evokes that reaction I was supposed to have but couldn’t feel from The Last of Us, and I think This War of Mine may be it.

To put it as simply as possible, This War of Mine plays a lot like a Sims game, except that your characters are civilians caught in a besieged city during an unnamed war. (The developers have stated that they took inspiration from the war in Bosnia but the actual location is never divulged.) By day, you tend to your characters’ well being: They need to eat, to sleep, to take advantage of any small comforts you can cobble together, and you need to pay attention to their emotional well being as well. By night, you send out one of your survivors to scavenge for additional supplies.

This is where the game gets interesting, and harrowing. Your survivors are not trained killers; they’re just normal people trying to survive to the next day in the hope that the war will end and normality will resume. So when you break into someone’s house, and there are people still there, you’re left with the decision of how much to take, if anything, and what to do if they confront you. After all, your survivors need food and supplies, but so do these people; can your survivor live with herself if she needs to raid their fridge? What if she needs to defend herself and kills someone, or is wounded and then becomes a burden on the group? Or worse, if she dies, both leaving one less person to help and leaving the group without any supplies from that night’s run? The effect of every decision is harrowing in a way I’ve rarely seen, even in games like Mass Effect where that’s the series’ calling card.

What’s more is that the game provides a tension I’ve never felt even in survival horror games. Even if your survivor is armed, she may only have one or two bullets, or a knife. So the threat of someone with a gun behind every closed door is ever-present and almost overwhelming. The atmosphere in this game is intense, to say the least.

This War of Mine isn’t for everyone. It can be really, really overwhelming emotionally to play, and I usually could only go through a couple of day/night cycles at a time before having to put it down. As far as demonstrating the realities of a civilian in war, though, this game excels brilliantly, and it’s important to play if you think you’re up to it. I can’t recommend it enough.

Super Smash Bros (Wii U)

We play games for a lot of reasons, but we all started (and most of us continue to) because they should be fun. I love being able to play a game and experience something from a different point of view, or learn something new about someone else, or about myself. But sometimes, I just want to put my feet up, grab a controller, and beat the crap out of Mario for a while.

The Wii U version of Super Smash Bros is easily one of the best party games I’ve played in a long, long time. For years, Rock Band was my go-to for that, but after playing 8-player Smash with my Isometric co-hosts over Thanksgiving, Super Smash Bros takes that crown. It’s endlessly fun for players of any skill level; my kids would be happy if the game was just a blooper reel of characters flying into the screen, really. There’s a deeper game there too, if you want it. But if you don’t, you can just mash buttons and still have a great time.

I’m hard on Nintendo a lot, because I know they’re capable of making amazing things and sometimes they get away from what they’re good at. Super Smash Bros for Wii U is Nintendo at the top of their game. It’s lovingly crafted, expertly balanced for all skill levels, and a pure delight. I’ve gone through periods where I regretted buying a Wii U at this time last year, but this game in particular has pushed all those reservations aside.

Revolution 60

Full disclosure: I host a podcast with Brianna Wu, the head of Giant Spacekat, called Isometric. But if you’re reading this you probably know that already.

I first saw Revolution 60 way back at PAX in 2013, after getting to know Bri on app.net. It immediately struck me, even in that really early state, that Bri had something special on her hands, and that held true all the way through to the final release.

Rev60 is a cinematic space adventure with a really unique combat system that plays almost more like a rhythm game than a traditional combat engine. It’s super easy to pick up (and I should know; I was included in the play testing of the early builds and probably played through the tutorial level a hundred times), and really difficult to put down thanks to the fantastic story that unfolds as you traverse the space station. The presentation is phenomenal, as well, from the graphics, to the score, to the full voice acting.

I don’t think it’s any secret that mobile gaming, on the whole, took a turn for the worse in 2014. But Revolution 60 was easily one of the exceptions to that rule. It’s an ambitious game that delivers on its promise, even more so due to the fact that it was a first effort put together by a team of four people. And hell, it’s free to try so you really have no excuse.

Shadow of Mordor

I’ll be honest: For the first two hours that I played Shadow of Mordor, I hated it. I generally don’t like stealth games; I’ve tried multiple Assassin’s Creed games and given up on all of them fairly early on, and I ragequit Dishonored about halfway through. But once I got past the initial difficulty curve, there’s a really good game waiting, and it’s something that I don’t feel like I’ve played before.

This game is open world in the true sense of the word; there are some story missions, but they eventually give way to just hunting down these war chiefs however you want. I initially thought the nemesis system and the fact that the orcs remember how they dispatched you the last time around was a gimmick, too, but I’ll admit that after Krimp the Devourer showed up after I thought I’d killed him for the third time, I had an unexpectedly angry reaction and kind of wanted to make it my life’s mission to wipe him off the face of the Earth. Or of Mordor. Whatever.

So this is a good game. I’ll point out that it’s extremely violent; the way orcs are executed by the dozen is almost casual once you gain enough power, and that may be disturbing to some people. But if you can deal with that, Shadow of Mordor is really compelling in a way I haven’t really seen before. It’s been the game I keep coming back to lately, even though I have other games waiting for me on the PS4.

Shovel Knight

It’s no secret that I have an overwhelming amount of nostalgia for the NES. I didn’t get that system until 1990, after five years of near constant begging. (In retrospect, having kids of my own now, my parents’ conviction was impressive; I would have caved after a year or so of constant asking, probably.) That was also the last non-handheld system I got until I had enough money to buy my own in college (and even that handheld was a Game Gear so that barely counts). So while everyone else had moved on to the SNES and Genesis, and later the PSOne, I was playing through Mega Man 2, Super Mario Bros 3, and Battletoads for the eightieth time, because that was what I had.

So when I tell you that Shovel Knight is up there with the best of the NES classics, I don’t say that lightly. Though it borrows heavily from the classics of that era, mainly Mega Man 2 and Zelda II (with some Super Mario Bros 3 and DuckTales thrown in for good measure), the resulting game is something completely new and fresh, and it takes me right back to sitting in my childhood bedroom, sitting a foot away from my 13” TV. The problem with playing older games sometimes is that they were written in a time when we didn’t know as much about what makes a game convenient for the player. While Shovel Knight isn’t an easy game, it has modern conveniences like frequent checkpoints, as well as a way to disable those things if you want a true old-school experience.

If you grew up in the 80s and played any games at all, you need to check out Shovel Knight to bring yourself back to those days. The developer truly gets what made those games special, and the game oozes enough style and charm to keep you coming back for more even when the going gets tough. Maybe try to track down some Ecto Cooler and put on some New Order for the full experience.

Rollers of the Realm

I like pinball. A lot. I also like RPG mechanics. So this game is basically a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of a game for me. (And I love me some peanut butter cups.)

Rollers of the Realm is a pinball RPG. You acquire a party of different classes of pinballs, and have to clear a series of increasingly difficult enemies across a set of fantasy themed pinball tables; you switch between them by trapping the ball against a flipper. Instead of attacking your character, the enemies attack your flippers; the more damage they take, the more they start to degrade and wear away. If your pinball character falls out, they die and need to be revived by using up mana that you accumulate by hitting targets.

The pinball mechanics are really well executed, and the story is campy but enough to keep you entertained while you’re resting your trigger fingers in between tables. This isn’t the first time this concept has been tried (Pinball Quest on the NES immediately comes to mind), but it’s a rare enough subgenre that Rollers of the Realm really surprised and delighted me as a fan of both pinball and video games, and it’s worth checking out if that describes you also.

Crypt of the Necrodancer

Speaking of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Crypt of the Necrodancer is another game that’s two great tastes that taste great together. I debated whether I should even put this game on the list, given that it’s still in an Early Access state, but I’ve gotten enough enjoyment out of it in its current form that I’d be ok even if it never got another update.

Necrodancer is a rhythm based roguelike dungeon crawler. Each dungeon is randomly generated, and your goal is simply to survive as long as you can before the monsters overwhelm you. The catch is that each level of the dungeon has its own soundtrack, and you can only move along with the beats of the song. This takes what’s become well worn territory and creates something completely fresh and new. When you get into it, you actually start to feel like your character is dancing around the stage rather than moving, and you quickly learn that the game is less about attack and surviving the counterattack, like most of these games, but rather maneuvering around the monsters’ movements to avoid getting hit in the first place.

It’s easy to get jaded after playing games for as long as I have, but Crypt of the Necrodancer really took me by surprise in the best way. Even in this early access stage, there are a ton of little touches that show how much the developer is committing to the concept, like how the shopkeeper in each level gets a vocal part but only when you’re near the shop. You can even import your own music, or plug in a dance pad and use that to control the game if you have one. If you like rhythm games or dungeon crawlers at all (and especially if you like both) you shouldn’t wait for the full version to get into this game.