SPOILERS: On The Witcher 3's Ending

THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT.

So I completed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt over the weekend. What a game. I've no idea what my final playtime was (can you find that somewhere?) but I've not felt so immersed and compelled in a videogame world for some time. CD Projekt Red have created an open world that feels more lived-in, more real, than anything that's come before. Wild Hunt is a new tidal mark for open world games, and my expectations of the genre have been upped forevermore because of it.

But, of the game's multiple endings, I got a really bad one. The worst one, pretty much. I'm going to spoil it all now, so stop reading if you don't want to know.

So Ciri goes into that portal, and faces the white frost. All of a sudden, she's struck by memories of Geralt being stern or inappropriate. And then a white light envelops her and we fade out. Next thing we know, it's a week later. Geralt is on a murderous revenge rampage in the swap, with Ciri apparently dead. He kills the final Crone, finds Ciri's pendant, and collapses, sobbing, to his knees either oblivious to or uncaring about the dozens of ghouls surrounding him.

As an ending, I actually really liked it. The dark tone of the story so far was taken to it's darkest conclusion. What has really peeved me is the way the game has decided to award me the "bad" end. I feel as if The Witcher 3 has punished me for trying to be a rational father figure and man to Ciri, my adoptive daughter.

The way the game chooses your "good" or "bad" ending state hinges on five conversational choices in the final quarter of the game. Here's what I did and why I think the logic for some of these choices kinda sucks:

1. Either tell Ciri "you can't be good at everything", or distract her by instigating a snowball fight.



The nature of The Witcher 3's dialogue system makes some options a little reductive, as was the case here. I thought it was a good idea to teach her a valuable lesson. You can't win at everything, right? Don't we teach that to our children? Choosing that option leads to Geralt and Ciri sharing a drink, a scene that didn't come across as all that awkward or acrimonious at the time. Instead, the "good" choice was to just distract her with a snowball fight. Important life lesson, or short-term distraction: I thought I was making the fatherly choice at the time.

2. Choosing whether to bring Ciri to her father, Emperor Emyhr, or not.

 

From the start of the game, the power and reach of Nilfgaard and Emperor Emyhr is drilled into you. You'd been hired by the Emperor to find Ciri and bring her to him, and it seems absurd to not do so. Ciri deserves a chance to speak to her birth father, to have her own conversation. You also get admonished greatly by Ciri for taking the Emperor's money for completion of your contract. Alright, I can see how that move would offend, but we're constantly reminded of how poor and lowly the witcher trade is. Every few contracts, a customer tries to screw you out of money, and the rewards are hardly generous in the first place. "Money's hard to come by in this trade", Geralt says more than once to his employers - surely Ciri could understand this after a lifetime of tutelage?

 

3. Let Ciri go alone to visit the Lodge, or not.

 

How's this one for logic? Either let you daughter, who you just crossed continents to find, go and meet a group of deeply untrustworthy sorceresses alone, or you accompany her. In what world would and father figure not go with her? The game takes a stance that Ciri has to do everything herself, that Geralt shouldnt be protective of her - but who can blame him (or us)? We've spent dozens of hours to get to Ciri's side, why punish us for not wanting to leave it, to keep her safe? It's not like she is popping to the shops - pretty much every sorceress in this game and the last has been shown to have a deeply selfish streak at best, and a murderous lust for power at worst. Why would you leave Ciri and her power open to abuse?

 

4. Either let Ciri trash Avallach's home, or calm her down.

 

Deliberately trash the home of the guy who your entire plan hinges on, the only guy who knows how to use the maguffin that'll help end the story, a guy whose worst sin so far was being a bit creepy. Or tell Ciri to calm down and avoid her throwing a temper tantrum. The first option is apparently the nice one. Does anyone else think Ciri comes across a little ADHD? Dissuading your daughter from committing criminal damage makes you a bad father, apparently.

 

5. Skjall's grave: visit it, or don't.

 

This is the only choice that I don't really have a problem with. Why would you deny Ciri the opportunity to visit Skjall's grave? You can say "we don't have time", but then Geralt spent fifteen hours playing Gwent and participating in the Epsom derby while his daughter was missing so fuck him, I guess.

 

 

And those are your choices. I felt the consequences of a couple of the decisions weren't logical. Ciri's been raised and reared under Geralt's watchful eye. She's going to be deeply attached to him. I don't understand why a couple of these decisions caused her to die, because she never seems to have anything but love for him. Yeah, she scowls a couple of times when Geralt admonishes her, but that's parenting. You teach your children lessons they don't want to hear at first, but after they take a moment they appreciate the effort you give them.

 

It's not made clear enough what the heck happens in the white frost, either. Ciri steps into it, all of a sudden remembers her father giving her a ticking off in Avallach's lab, and gives up? It seems a huge leap. Even if you make every choice in the "negative" fashion, I still don't buy that those choices would deteriorate Ciri's relationship with Geralt so much that it'd kill her.

 

I dunno, maybe I'm just mad because I'm a terrible father. Like I said, I loved the ending itself - I just feel like the game's logic in getting me there was tenuous. In my mind though, it's still a one-of-a-kind game.



The real genius of No Man's Sky

The guys behind unreleased space exploration game No Man's Sky must be geniuses of marketing. They've already converted it into a cult classic with rabid fans in the thousands.

Coming out at some undetermined date in the future on PS4 and PC, No Man's Sky looked like an ambitious, unique project from the beginning. Developed by Hello Games, a team of just ten employees whose only other finished games are Joe Danger and Joe Danger 2, it involves a truly gigantic open world, covering the span of a galaxy with each and every planet visitable by the player. Sounds awesome, right? Hello Games sure know it - and they know exactly how to market it, too.

Considering the small scale of their team, No Man's Sky is always going to be a game that has to flatter to deceive a little bit. Procedural generation has to fill in the lines of the world where it would be impossible for ten people to build everything themselves. Complex algorithms determining planet structure, life and atmosphere will shape the galaxy. The aim of the player, they say, is to continually upgrade your ship to get to the centre of the universe. Why? We don't know.

"We don't know" would be used often if you asked anyone that has seen the game in action about it. Hello Games have build their marketing campaign on a no-show, no-tell basis. E3's gameplay demo was curt and abrupt at just three minutes, and felt determined to keep a handful of cards clutched tightly out of view. And by doing this, they're playing the community harder than a Ribena-powered teenager plays Joe Danger.

 

 

No Man's Sky already has some of the hallmarks of what we define as a "cult classic". It's a project little-known to those outside the gaming community. It's made by a small team on a modest budget. And it's already picked up a sect of vocal fans that'll spout its praises.

 

No Man's Sky has become the poster boy for a wholly unlikeable type of gamer - the elitist. I am incredibly hyped for this game, but I'm not the only person reserving some excitement until questions are answered. So little about the mechanics and plot of the game has been revealed that we're beginning to get into a Gabbo situation where we don't have any idea what we're hype for.

 

This is causing commenters to accuse the game of being repetitive, pointless or rote. I make some of their concerns valid. The "all planets look the same" argument is clearly an invalid one - the game has a gorgeous pastel vibe to it that makes it spring out of the screen at you - but the questions over why you actually play the game remain unanswered by developers. Luckily, we have an army of pious fanboys ready to answer the call of duty.

 

I've seen No Man's Sky compared to Minecraft, in that it's a sandbox with potential only limited by your imagination. But it's not a comparison that holds true for me, at least from what we know of the game. The scope for player interaction and making the game world your own in Minecraft is huge. The building mechanics allow us to create literally anything we want. No Man's Sky has shown little of the sort so far. Upgrading your ship takes materials, but we haven't been told how that works yet. There's no hint of any sort of construction or crafting on the level of Minecraft yet. Player interaction, too, is uniquely limited. You won't see other players, apparently, but you will see some of the effects other players have had. Wipe out a species in your game, and that one might not feature in another player's. It sounds like an intriguing system but I'm yet to see a reason why it exists beyond just it does. Creature scanning and logging of species in some sort of sci-fi zoology fashion is one confirmed feature, but at the moment all of this is for it's own sake. When it's hand-crafted and hidden out there for you to find, it feels like a reward - Pokemon, for example. With procedural generation, I can't help but feel like you're just throwing yourself into a random number generator and hoping for something unique and worth seeing.

 

To ask what the point is of No Man's Sky is not to lack imagination. You could say it shows the opposite that people see this grand open world and are desperate to discover the depths and intricacies of exploring it. Some gamers are not wanderers, and some gamers do not enjoy self-motivated upgrade hooks.  Hello Games' lack of show and lack of tell is starting to frustrate some, but it's creating a fervour around the game which will only serve it well financially after it releases. I know I can't wait to see what it's all about.

Coast to Coast: The cost of our education policy

The current government is picking up where its predecessors left off - turning our school system into a pointless, punitive mess.

If you don't work in the school system, you might not realise what a monumental year this is for teaching, with huge changes coming in the ways your children are tested, measured, judged and provided for. School quality is to be changed to a measure called Progress 8, wherein a mix of 8 GCSEs are used as a yard stick for quality.

What you also probably won't know is that your kids are going to be punished severely for being unfortunate enough to be living under education secretaries that have no regard for their wellbeing. Variety is no longer encouraged for our children, and in the last decade or so we've seen an erosion of the differing flightpaths that meant anyone with the workrate to succeed stood a great chance.

Labour's push to turn the majority of young people into university education backfired horribly, creating a surge of graduates educated in unspecialised subjects and devaluing the credit undergraduate degrees earned you. Going to university for the sake of it, because you were smart, not necessarily because you had a field you wanted to deepen your expertise in. As a guy that did a three-year law degree purely because I was pretty good at it at A-Level, I can attest to that.

Then came the coalition and a shift towards punishing the young for taking advantage of a system the politicians created. A tripling in university costs, a delegation of responsibility to free schools (disastrous) and academies (why?), and a rhetoric from the wholly unlikeable Michael Gove that your kids have it too easy. Any parent who raises their child with the right amount of dilligence and attention will know that the good modern school puts the children under more pressure than ever before. Constant examinations and targets are set from an early age, and children are taught through blunt repetition to parrot their statistics to any Ofsted officers that might stick their head through the door. There is little learning in schools now, simply training for the next assessment.

The mandatory schooling age has been raised to 18 - a clever way to cut a chunk from unemployment figures - but there is still so much to be done to help those who are unacademic succeed. The new Progress 8 measure places huge weighting on English and Maths, which is fair enough, but Nicky Morgan's plans to make every child take five "core" GCSE's is so ignorant of reality.

Vocational subjects aren't getting less relevant. They're getting more relevant than ever. In a world where so many vocational jobs are being replaced by machinery, we need to give these kids the base knowledge early on, so they can specialise quickly enough to stand a chance. There's thousands of job opporunities for vocationally-minded people in all industries. Graphic designers, construction workers, mechanics and safety operators are always going to be needed, but we aren't letting our children know that these choices are okay to make.

Alternate forms of examination, that have helped unacademic children grab themselves a semblance of societal qualification in this stupid system, are being scrapped. "Too easy", they call the IGCSE in English, a coursework-focused qualification that's being chopped next year. Tell that to the bottom set year 11 children I taught, who cried with happiness when they scraped themselves a C grade by the skin of their teeth. They knew that, with that one letter, the world would judge them as a smarter individual and a better person. They knew that, if they'd gotten two marks less and a D grade, that they'd be forgotten about and left with very few options.

Your children aren't oblivious to their fate, but it's so sad that they can do nothing about the hardships forced upon them by Westminster in the name of performance, nostalgia and ideology.

Kanye West, the world's greatest living rock star

Scoff as much as you like, but the truth is self-evident: Kanye West was right when he called himself the greatest living rock star on the planet.

This grandiose statement of himself, the sort we are not unaccustomed to, came during his controversial headline set at Glastonbury on Saturday night. Social media erupted with anger. HOW DARE HE? screamed thousands of "music fans", he doesn't even play rock music! But the truth is that, in every single possible definition of the word other than he plays music with two guitars, bass and drums, there's not an artist in the world alive that's as rock and roll as Kanye West.

What do you define as "a rock star"? Do you need to play music to be one? If so, why is it we commonly use the term to define things that have nothing to do with rock music, like lifestyle, haircuts or demeanour?

In terms of attitude, Kanye is one of the old breed of rock stars. A brash, can't-be-bothered to engage interviewee who says what he wants to say because he knows you wouldn't have asked to speak to him if you didn't want to hear it. When John Lennon calls The Beatles bigger than Jesus, or the Gallagher brothers direct some sweary tirade towards their peers, we canonise them as leaders of the pack, stars of such clear and present talent that they have simply become aware of their own destiny.

Kanye says what he wants, and gets nothing but mocking from the media. Sure, he's made some inconsiderate proclamations over the years - the Taylor Swift thing, the George Bush thing - but Kanye has always apologised. If you can forgive Lennon for beating his first wife, cheating on his second and disowning his eldest son, you can forgive Kanye for spoiling Taylor's precious moment.

If you want to talk in terms of decadence, Kanye lives the rock star life to the extreme. A world leader in style for a decade, Kanye dresses how he wants and has frequently shaped the face of men's fashion. Remember that leather skirt he wore in the N****s In Paris video? Of course you do: faux leather has made a comeback since, those over-long, loose ASOS shirts and jeans. At a time when white fashion has dived into repeating earlier decades, Kanye dresses like a futuristic hobo and gives no fucks that he looks different.

He's a role model for anyone that doesn't fit in in more ways than just dress sense. From the early stages of his career, West has been separate from the pack. His first album, recorded in the wake of a near-fatal car accident and released without much support, changed the face of hip-hop and brought the iron fortress of 90's gangster rap toppling down. His fourth album, written after the death of his mother (West personally blames himself for her death, following complications from plastic surgery she would never have gotten if not for the West family's newfound fame and fortune) wasn't well received at the time, but it's heartfelt melodies and minimalism once again wiped the slate clean and was the springboard upon which Drake and Kid Cudi gained attention. His fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was named album of the century by Pitchfork. And deservedly so.

West manages to come across as brash, unapologetic, and an unpredictable bomb of energy that thrashes around wildly on stage and shouts at the audience because he knows how big he is. If that isn't rock and roll, what is?

Glastonbury, a secret preserve of the middle-class, is an ageing festival. More musicians aged 70+ performed there this year than ever before, a trend that's been rising since the festival's beginning. Why are we turning Glastonbury into a pale, nostalgia-fuelled blur, blotting out the world with rose-tinted memories of the good ol' days, when we can puncture it with moments of modernity and invention?

You're welcome to believe Kanye West is the worst thing ever. But Kanye West does not take drugs and never glorifies them. Kanye West is a doting father, and married the woman of his dreams. Kanye West has never been convicted of sex with a minor, or of buying child pornography. Kanye West has never ordered a hit on anyone. Kanye West has donated hundreds of thousands to charity. I'm welcome to believe you're desperate to avoid the fact that the world's biggest musical star isn't a white face with a friendly smile. Thank God.

On FIFA's Gender War

The internet's reaction to Women's teams being playable in FIFA 16 has been an indegestible cacophony of hottakes. Please stop.

Let's take a second, firstly, to congratulate EA Sports on a job well done. They haven't just made a historic step for the series, they've done it properly. A whole new set of likenesses and animations have been made for the women's teams, meaning they'll represent their sport as realistically as the male counterparts. With the Women's World Cup currently taking place, there was no better time to make the leap, and you'd have to take a deep dive into the 12-and-under section of Twitter to find someone that thinks their inclusion is a bad thing in of itself.

There's some critics who think things haven't gone far enough, however, and their critiques range from very valid to baffling. Polygon's Owen S. Good points out that, whilst the inclusion of 12 top female teams is great, the feature parity with the men's teams is lacking. No career mode, World Cup or Ultimate Team. All of these features will certainly make their way into the title over the next few years, drip-fed - just as they were in the men's game - but pressure from critics can only push EA to work harder on these features to give us more game for our money next year. It's a win-win.

Where Good, and where I get off this bus, is Anita Sarkeesian's assertion that the women's teams should be mixed with the men's. Whether it's women v men, or women and men in the same XI, I can't support that at all.

I think Anita's own viewpoint, as a gaming critic rather than a sports expert, creates a skewed logic. She argues that as a videogame, FIFA has the artistic licence to be daring and do it first, before the real world. It's the same argument made when The Witcher 3 didn't include many non-white people. "Who cares if it's a Slavic game, made by Slavic people and set in a Slavic land? It's a videogame, if you can put dragons in Poland, you can put black people there too!" It's an argument that is at least viable for The Witcher, but FIFA isn't fantasy. It's a licenced simulation of the real world, and that comes with all the real-world limitations.

First, there's the realistic business dealings that happen before a game is even started to consider. The legal implications of FIFA licencing are colossal. You know how sometimes licenced cars can't be shown damaged in racing games? Imagine that, applied to a contact sport with 22 individuals, two teams and a league all being represented for the masses. It's not a matter of simply waving a wand to set up a friendly match between women and men in FIFA.

I also don't think it's helpful to the feminist cause to allow women v men matches. If you talk to fans of women's football, you'll realise the most common criticisms of the women's game all stem from it being endlessly compared to the elite men's game. Saying that the overwhelming majority of women's professionals aren't as good as male professionals might be true - there are reports of women's national teams being beaten by professional men's U18 sides a-plenty. But it's not the point. The women that play professional football shouldn't have to be compared to the men. They're playing their own sport, in their own leagues. Analysis that focuses a comparison on something entirely outside of the women's game results in absolutely no insight.

Allowing women to play men in FIFA would force this ugly critique into the limelight. Why give creedence to such an invalid argument? Why promote a gender war that cannot possibly advance the quality or reputation of the women's game? There's no way to fairly do it without ignoring the reality which the game explicitly aims to simulate.

You'd be forcing EA to make explicit comparisons in their player statistics too, as anyone that's seen a FIFA team select screen will know. What good would it do to see the women's teams lounging on one-and-a-half stars, mixed in with Real Madrid and Bayern? Segregating them would allow the women's teams their own scale of statistics, where a woman's team can be rated equally highly as Bayern in their own league. This is a better promotion of quality in women's football, and would be a far more encouraging way to get more girls into the sport. Give women their own space to improve on their own merits.

E3 Hottakes: Sony

Like Microsoft, Sony relied on a healthy helping of nostalgia to help raise hype for a new crop of exclusive titles, resulting in an exciting showcase.

I wonder what bookies' odds would've been, if they had any inclination towards videogames, of the following happening last night: FF7 remake, The Last Guardian AND Shenmue III. The existence of all three was confirmed in the space of about half an hour during Sony's show, turning what would've been a solid but unmemorable E3 display into one that will be remarked upon for years. If I tried my hardest to be cynical, I might suggest that it's a bit depressing that the loudest cheer of the night (by far) came in support of a remake. I guess people want this thing more than I thought.

The Last Guardian was the surprise starter, and it's six-year development hoodoo meant that it came as a huge surprise to most in the room, despite loud rumours of an appearance before the show. The game itself has Fumito Ueda's style all over it: grand, mossy architecture in a sparse but vast expanse crumbling as the character and their giant chicken-dog escort traverse it. The gameplay was very rote in the small section they showed, but with a vague 2016 release window I'm sure there's much more to come.

Guerilla Games' new IP, Horizon (the game has a totally unnecessary subtitle that works so well I can't even remember it), was one of my favourite new annoucements. What looks like a post-apocalyptic, open world robot-hunting caveman sim. It looks gorgeous and the story is something different. Go watch the trailer!

Another intriguing highlight was No Man's Sky. A live demo in which Sean Murray picked a totally random planet looks like proof of the game's supposed scale. There are countless planets, he says, that will never be seen by players. I'm still not convinced there's enough to do beyond fly down to a planet at random and look at the scenery, and the lack of even a release window was a brutal cocktease, but it's one I'll be keeping an avid eye on.

Media Molecule then arrived to fuck with everyone's minds. Dreams is the title of their next game. Maybe. I mean, it might be a game. There was a bit where someone was painting something with the PS4's motion controls, but so far this game is about as easy to pin down as a buttered ferret. Seems like there'll be LittleBigPlanet style collaboration and level sharing.

The only other memorable highlight was Uncharted 4, though not for the right reasons. An amusing technical hitch stalled the start of their closing demo, and while the demo itself was solid, the lack of any information or words on the game afterwards was a really sudden and disappointing end considering last year's Sony conference ended in a similar manner.

The other notable let-down was the lack of Project Morpheus. Everybody expected Sony to big up their upcoming VR set - expected to be released before the next E3 rolls around - but they barely mentioned it, simply referring people to showfloor demos. The challenge of demonstrating VR on stage perhaps proved too challenging for Sony - one area at least in which Microsoft has them thoroughly beaten this year.

E3: Bethesda Hottakes

To kick off this year's E3, Bethesda made their conference debut. Turns out they're actually pretty great at the whole thing too. Here's some opinions on what we saw.

The most impressive thing about the presentation as a whole was the lack of filler. Other than the obligatory, humanising intro video, there wasn't any waffling philosophy. Information was delivered thick and fast, and lengthy gameplay videos made up the majority of the show. It's the most exciting way to deliver news to the audience, but it's also great to see them unafraid to show what they've got so far.

DOOM made for a pretty good opener. It's been just about long enough that a reboot could actually make sense, because the source material and gameplay is so well renowned, and it's got enough clout as an industry classic to whet appetites while we waited for Fallout, the obvious closing gambit. The game itself looks... OK. They are definitely focusing on a faster pace. I don't think there were more than ten seconds between gunfights.

The levels looked pretty, but uninspiring. I mean, if you're going to put HELL in your game, you could make it a bit more fantastical than khaki smoke and fleshy-coloured walls. The frenetic gameplay should make multiplayer real good fun, and the stuff they're doing with map editing and level design is a welcome inclusion - level editors kind of disappeared outside of indie racing games, didn't they?

Battlecry was glazed over rather quickly, and it doesn't really come across all that well at the moment. No real information about it was given, outside of  "more news soon". Hopefully it'll get its dues on the showfloor.

In my predictions, I hypothesised we'd get an Elder Scrolls remaster. Bethesda hadn't yet joined the money-printing parade of HD remakes, but they are soon. Dishonored Definitive Edition, oh joy. In fairness, I skipped on it despite some interest when it was first released. The right price might sway me. Dishonored 2's trailer was okay, despite the lack of gameplay. My beyonce tells me the lady in the trailer was in the first game and that it's totally cool that we get to play as her, so there's that. This is pure speculation but the scope of the trailer - tracking the target across the city, breaking into his lair - suggests some sort of open world to me.

I was surprised Bethesda had the balls to bring up Elder Scrolls Online, with the terrible console launch still excluding thousands of players from actually getting Online with it. It went down without much applause. Then came Elder Scrolls Legends, a.k.a. Bethesda gettin' a hunkachunk of dat Hearthstone money. A free-to-play CCC on tablets. The cheap and undescriptive trailer probably indicates they're aware of it.

Aaaaaand finally we got to Fallout. And there was EVEN MORE OF IT than we anticipated. And it looks REALLY GOOD.

The initial trailer didn't really do it for me, but I'm really excited for Fallout 4 now. The show reassured me that Bethesda are making an attempt to evolve the series, not simply making a bigger, prettier version of 3 and New Vegas. There's fully voiced male and female protagonists, an interesting new take on the origin story, and a focus on player customisation not only on weapons and armour but in the gameworld and your hub itself. The fact that they managed to get such rapturous reception whilst showing almost no detail of the plot outside of the game's opening, and very little combat or mission mechanics, shows how impressive these additions looked. It was obvious that we were destined for a 2015 release date the longer the Fallout demo went on. The game just seemed far too finished to suit anything else. November 10th, with a special edition that comes with an actual pip-boy. What a time to be alive.

I'm playing that Fallout Shelter iPad game and it seems pretty neat. I enjoyed the awkward dig at free-to-play mobile games. Shame about the Apple "partnership". Developer quotes flying around on Twitter right now imply some kind of timed exclusivity for both Shelter and ES: Legends.

All in all, that was a great showing. It was meaty, doubling down on a few big games rather than promising the world. The speakers came across as sensible, passionate and understanding of what the audience wants. I think they're definitely going to be welcomed back next time.

E3: Please be fun

This year's E3 has a weird, mysterious vibe about it. Nobody really knows what's going down.

The consoles are completely bedded in now, with the XBO catching up to the PS4 in terms of market share and the Wii U predictably shirking away from the fight after it's head start. There's little on the cards for so many major players in the industry this year, however, that it's beginning to feel like we're being played. Either everyone is hiding something from us, or there really is bugger all coming in the next year. Here's a few logical expectations, based on my twisted, cynical mind.

Sony have several exclusives they've yet to show off. Uncharted 4 and Street Fighter V are almost certainties. Sony Santa Monica have also been incredibly quiet lately, and with a God Of War 3 remaster already confirmed you can bet they're still trying to pummel that horse. Forgive me, I loved the earlier games, but the genre has moved on. Sucker Punch are probably working on a new inFamous game. I wouldn't bet against Tony Hawk showing up, knee-pads and all, to flash his creased-up smile and show off the new Pro Skater on the Sony stage either. Bloodborne DLC probably earned itself a cameo with it's strong exclusive sales.

Square Enix have plenty to show off, but their timed exclusivity deal with Microsoft for Tomb Raider means they'll probably be wearing green rosettes this year. Final Fantasy XV is expected, but don't forget the new Deus Ex game; the last one came and went with unspectacular grace despite critical acclaim. There's also Kingdom Hearts 3, Just Cause and Dragon Quest in the works. I'd expect little of the former, a cinematic trailer of the middle and the latter to pop up in Nintendo's conference as part of their 3DS lineup.

Of all the conferences, I expect Microsoft to play it the most safe. They have their own GoW remaster to show off after leaked footage confirmed alpha testing on it was well underway. If I had to bet on Call of Duty appearing somewhere, I'd put it here. Halo 5 is a given following cryptic CGI trailers being shown on TV for months now. Other surprises could include first-party properties that we haven't seen on the new consoles yet (Crackdown, anyone?).

EA will do their thing with sports and shootin'. There'll be some celebrity trotted out to promote Madden or NBA. Kendrick Lamar, probably. Dragon Age's first DLC took a long time coming, so I would assume they have more in the pipeworks to promise. Bioware don't seem ready to show much of Mass Effect 4 yet, so I'd assume cryptic CGI is the best we'll get. Please fucking give us some Mirror's Edge 2 shit though. PLEASE.

Nintendo's big thing this year is Splatoon. Expect it. Zany live multiplayer gameplay! Young people and adults having fun! There has to be more big Wii U announcements coming though: Mario and Zelda are conspicuous by their absence. The 3DS should have a good year with the redesign's release: Dragon Quest, Xenoblade, Final Fantasy and more could get a whirlwind plug.

The world doesn't just expect Fallout 4 from Bethedsa, they're demanding it with such fervour you'd think they were able to squirt it into existence from their pores. So yeah, it's coming, but there'll be plenty of time devoted to their other big hitter. Elder Scrolls Online launches on consoles a week prior so updates and expansions are going to be pledged. With the main series taking a backseat to Fallout for a couple of years, I'd expect a HD re-release of either Oblivion or Skyrim too - it's surely too easy a cow to milk to not, right? We'll get more DOOM, but whether the world cares any longer is another question.

Ubisoft have Ass Creed. They have Rayman. They have Watch Dogs. They have Just Dance. Sequels to all of these things are more certain than the rising of the tides, the continuation of time or the inevitable heat death of the universe.

I can't wait!

Mandleson doesn't just Labour the point, he missed it completely

Since I last wrote, the unthinkable happened. Months of polling proved unanimously inaccurate as the Tories won a majority government at the expense of Ed Milliband and Labour, who suffered a catastrophic landslide of a defeat.

Reactions in the Labour camp were swift, with Milliband resigning at around midday on Friday, with over a dozen seats yet to declare. It has now gone from swift to utterly chaotic. The leaderless party is at a twenty-year low in terms of influence and popularity. New contenders are already puffing their chests out and making their names known in media appearances - Chuka Ummuna, Liz Kendall, Tristram Hunt and (my personal choice of the current favourites) David Lammy.

Along with the new faces have come the old. Lords and Peers pouring out of the woodwork from all corners to lament the current state of the world around them. Amongst them was Tony Blair's own personal Grand Moff Tarkin, Peter Mandleson. Mandleson declared to Andrew Marr that Labour "had gone back to the 80's", becoming far too left-wing and abandoning the good work he and Blair did in 1997, changing Labour from an outside force into the biggest Labour majority of all time.

Mandleson's claim that Labour needs to lurch back towards the right wing shows a complete lack of understanding of why Labour lost so badly, however. The perception of Ed Milliband being a left-wing radical was absolute nonsense, successfully proliferated by the media despite Milliband himself being part of Mandleson's New Labour treasury in 1997.

The political leanings of a new leader don't matter, because it's the media that make or break them. If David Milliband had won the leadership contest all those years ago, we wouldn't have seen half as much personal nastiness and outright lies told in the press in order to destroy his character and deny him any chance of public popularity as a leader. Labour must pick the right person before the right policies. Milliband was painted as a dweeb, a man who probably wouldn't have been there if not for an old-fashioned leadership system, elected by Old Labour cronies to spite Blair's legacy. The next Labour leader has to cast off the old-new Labour dichotomy, and stand for progressiveness above all. Of the current favourites for the role listed above, only one is a white male - an encouraging sign of the increasing awareness within the party that Labour simply didn't offer a clear alternative to the Tories to win votes this year.

Mandleson's claim that the party needs to dive towards centrist values is incredibly stupid. Typically centrist constituencies, such as those in the Southwest, are usually a straight fight between Tory and Lib Dems. Labour lost the election not just because of their weakness, but because of the Lib Dem's weakness too. If the Lib Dems hadn't lost over 45 seats, there'd be no majority Government. Attempting to turn Labour into Lib Dem v2.0 wouldn't be worth it, because I haven't even gotten to the most important reason Labour did so poorly yet.

SCOTLAND. Everyone is talking about it like their ADHD nephew. "Oh god, she's running wild that one. Poor Aunt Kelso, she's being trodden on left right and centre. God help us if she grows any bigger and more willful. Whatever will we do?" The SNP won 56 of 59 seats in their country. Labour, who have been safe and sound there for decades, are left with one seat North of Hadrian's Wall.

The South continues to misunderstand why Scotland voted in the SNP in such a landslide. The media are keen to push this divide as "a surge in nationalism", a sudden fuck you to the English from a nation that voted to stay sisters with it just a year ago. Don't be misled. The SNP stand for much more than nationalism. They stand for a proper Scottish voice.

Scotland has always been Labour because Scotland are a nation of grinders. The weather is worse, and the culture is different. Grand, historic manual industries like fishing and mining make their economy tick, as opposed to the twinkling financial skyscrapers of London. It's completely logical that they require a different political position to us waxed and shiny Southerners. So why, when the party just lost a shitload of seats there, is Mandleson suggesting that Labour needs to become less appealing to the Scots by looking more like the Tories again?

Scotland didn't vote for the SNP because of nationalism, they voted SNP because the Labour party couldn't deliver a clear message for working-class people. They couldn't promise that they'd stop austerity, the spending and welfare cuts that have hit so many of the poorest so hard. They were in favour of Trident, Britain's needless, expensive nuclear weapons that are docked dangerously on Scottish waters. They couldn't promise action on the EU - not just an in/out referendum, but working with the EU on fishing and production law to make Scotland as productive as possible. Most of all, they couldn't promise that Scotland would be given a culturally representative voice in Westminster.

The SNP offered all of that, and more. Lord Mandleson, with all respect, is wrong. Labour doesn't need to lurch further to the right. It needs to lurch further to the left. Because as Scotland has shown, having an actual alternative that actually fights for your rights in Parliament is much more likely to win votes than having no alternatives to the status quo at all.

30 reasons why you should vote for Rebecca Harris

 

Stuck on the fence on election day? Live in Castle Point? Here's thirty reasons to convince you why the Conservative Party's Rebecca Harris deserves your vote.

1. Rebecca Harris has no opinion on Marmite, "Oh I dunno, I think it's okay on toast. But I'm a mustard girl."
2. Rebecca Harris owns a copy of Queen's greatest hits and has had it in her hi-fi since 2003
3. Rebecca Harris goes to her son's sunday league matches and doesn't cheer because she's embarrassed she'll cheer at the wrong time.
4. Rebecca Harris didn't "get" Blur OR Oasis, but she pretended to like them both anyway.
5. Rebecca Harris always takes her shoes off when she comes into your house, even if she's just dropping a birthday card round.
6. Rebecca Harris apologises for being early to the school parent's evening
7. Rebecca Harris stops you as you go to wash the car, "hold on a second lovely, let me check the forecast before you do that".
8. Rebecca Harris doesn't understand why dogs and cats can't just eat the same food. "It all smells the same, doesn't it?"
9. Rebecca Harris apologises to the rug after tripping over it.
10. Rebecca Harris always refers to supermarket cashiers by their name when she thanks them, unaware that this unnerves them every time.
11. Rebecca Harris replies "thanks, you too" when waiters wish her a pleasant meal.
12. Rebecca Harris doesn't like spiders, but didn't complain when she got a tarantula for her 11th birthday because she thought her dad might just take it outside and kill it.
13. Rebecca Harris' favourite curry is chicken korma.
14. Rebecca Harris shreiks "I'M IN HERE" when someone tries to push open the cubicle in the pub loo, even though it's locked.
15. Rebecca Harris always found Ed Norton more attractive than Brad Pitt in the film Fight Club.
16. Rebecca Harris always orders rum and raisin flavour ice cream in Rossi, then always makes the same joke, "I better not eat this too quickly!"
17. Rebecca Harris hasn't seen Mean Girls, but she always pretends she has whenever people post quotes from it on Twitter.
18. Rebecca Harris doesn't trust e-mail, "how can you prove your message got there if a postman didn't see it?"
19. Rebecca Harris phones in to vote on the X Factor final, but ONLY the final.
20. Rebecca Harris started writing a screenplay about a down-on-her-luck PR agent who falls for a celebrity client, but she never got around to finishing it.
21. Rebecca Harris always wants a coffee at the end of her dinner out, but doesn't order one because her friends want to leave.
22. Rebecca Harris thinks Jack Whitehall is "cute, but a bit overbearing".
23. Rebecca Harris gets stood up, but decides to complete all her planned date activities solo anyway.
24. Rebecca Harris doesn't believe in astrology, but still checks the Mystic Meg column daily for some reason.
25. Rebecca Harris found the plot of Lord Of The Rings "okay I suppose... A little far-fetched."
26. Rebecca Harris hates how many notifications she gets, but doesn't know how you turn them off.
27. Rebecca Harris carries a pack of Rivita biscuits in her bag at all times, "just in case".
28. Rebecca Harris talks to herself as she leaves the house, "okay so I've got my phone, keys, purse... Let's go!"
29. Rebecca Harris thought Picasso was alive before Da Vinci, "but this one is much nicer. Look at the state of the nose on that other one!"
30. Rebecca Harris thought the hair on her default Sims character was a really nice colour, actually.

The peasant's guide to what the fuck is going to happen on Friday

David Cameron and Ed Milliband have spent the last couple of months campaigning for your vote on a completely false premise.

They both made a rather desperate presumption that their party would command an overall majority in the Commons after the general election. They were wrong. As the polls have shown for some time, the Conservatives and Labour Party are almost neck-and-neck, and look set to win just under 35% of the national vote each. For those who aren't quite familiar with our system of Government (and you would be forgiven - it's ridiculously archaic, unwritten and complex), here's a quick lowdown of the basics.

We operate on a "First Past The Post" system. It's the simplest electoral system out there, and has survived so long because the two biggest parties absolutely love it for the advantages it gives them over smaller, marginal parties. In your constituency, the candidate who gets the most votes becomes MP. Votes for any other candidate, or votes for the candidate that wins that exceed the amount needed to win, are completely redundant and count for nothing. WOO! Combine this with political parties altering voting boundaries for their own benefit, and this is why we end up with scenarios such as this:

Think of it as a system of "the winner takes it all" - your constituency could cast 1000 votes for Labour, 1000 votes for UKIP and 1001 for the Conservatives, and the result will be a single Tory MP, even though two out of every three voters in the area didn't want one. It's easy to understand, and keeps minority parties out: this is why the nation voted to keep it in a 2011 referendum, when the BNP extremists were still fashionable and the cowardly Lib Dems had sapped the public's faith in minority parties.

So that's how your MP is elected, but what about the Government? Who becomes Prime Minister is decided in a much more complex fashion.

Our Government is formed from prominent MPs of any party that can command a majority (having more MPs than all the other parties combined) in the House of Commons. Traditionally, having this majority was necessary because if your party cannot outvote all the others, they're going to table a vote of no confidence as soon as they can at the start of the next Parliament and oust you.

In 2010, we saw something different. Neither Labour nor Conservatives won an overall majority (which is about 324 MPs, I think), so they then bargained with the Lib Dems to form a coalition. The two parties formally pledge to work together, vote together on key issues and share Government offices. By adding Lib Dem MPs to Tory MPs, you have over 324 and therefore a majority to govern.

For some reason, the main parties bloody hated coalition Government. Who would've thought political parties would be so opposed to compromise and not getting everything their own way, eh? Ed Milliband has flat out refused to enter coalition with the SNP. The Conservatives have said the same. The Lib Dems, desperate to cling on to the little power they have, are selling themselves as the party of coalition, and have publicly slutted themselves out to every party except the SNP and UKIP.

So if, after the election, the parties CAN'T form a formal coalition, what happens? Do we have another election? Does the country crumble and Downing Street get demolished? Unfortunately not - we have a whole series of uncodified, archaic rules that nobody really knows what to do with in this situation.

It's possible for Governments to operate without a minority on an informal "supply" agreement with other parties. For example, the Tories could do this with the Lib Dems or UKIP. They'd form a minority Tory Government, but would be blackmailed to keep the supporting parties happy through their policies by the threat of a no confidence vote.

We could see a bizzare situation in which the Tories and Lib Dems actually just refuse to leave Downing Street. If there's no majority, and parties cannot form a coalition, the previous Government can basically put it's boots up on the desk and go "well if you lot can't get anything better sorted out, we'll just stay here then". The previous Tory-Lib Dem government would remain in place until the other parties formed some kind of coalition or agreement that was fit for the task. As the Cabinet rules state:

Where an election does not result in an overall majority for a single party, the incumbent government remains in office unless and until the Prime Minister tenders his or her resignation and the Government’s resignation to the Sovereign. An incumbent government is entitled to wait until the new Parliament has met to see if it can command the confidence of the House of Commons, but is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a clear alternative.

So it's possible, depending on election results, that the ConDems could just sit in the cabinet office and watch how things pan out, and leave the pressure on Ed Milliband to try and form a better Government without the support of the Lib Dems or SNP.

A vote of no confidence can be tabled at any time in Parliament. If over half of the House of Commons votes against the current Government, the Prime Minister must immediately ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call another general election. This is why having a majority is so important.

So guys, make sure you vote with all your will on Thursday. God fucking forbid we have to sit through another one of these shitty elections in 2015.

On UKIP and popular perception

The meteoric rise of UKIP, along with the rapid increase in the politics of blame and fear, might have met their match at the worst possible time.

A couple of months ago, it seemed like Nigel Farage was unstoppable. He'd taken part in his first televised debate, on which opinion polls ranked him as at least a close competitor to the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition. Not bad for a party with just two MPs (both Tory defectors). Remember in 2010, when the Lib Dems were heralded as the second coming, the force that would shatter the two-party paradigm? The Lib Dems are a century old. UKIP were polling lower than the BNP five years ago.

It seemed like nothing could stand in UKIP's way. They have taken advantage of the perfect storm that's been brewing for fifteen years: economic uncertainty, disastrous foreign policy and growing divisions between class, race, and cultures. The media gave UKIP every available platform, sensing an opportunity to proliferate fear and danger. These concepts keep the public buying newspapers daily much more effectively than sunshine and happiness, after all. There must have been some intense conversations in the boardrooms of Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem offices, hushed whispers of the threat this new kid on the block was posing to the cosy way of life these three parties (especially the first two) had enjoyed.

Return to the present day, however, and it seems as though UKIP are flagging at the crucial late stage of the election campaign. Outside of the Daily Express, whose owner recently donated £1.3m to the party, the media has deserted UKIP. Paper talk now surrounds the SNP, who the media have realised pose a realer threat to the establishment than Nigel Farage ever did. Farage has gone from ever-present to barely-there, blaming his own health for a drop in personal appearances.

I live in a Conservative semi-marginal seat that's one of UKIP's biggest election targets. In my five minute commute from home to work, I counted over 20 purple signs and billboards. Leaflets and lettering from the party come through my letterbox in an amount greater than all other parties combined. Farage has paid multiple, personal visits to my hometown for photo ops and publicity appearances. The amount of money and effort they have put into winning this seat must be staggering.

And yet, as someone who sees snapshots of local opinion day in, day out on Facebook posts and pages, popular opinion in this most heavily-targeted of constituencies seems to be on the wane.

Support for them hasn't vanished, by all means. There are still the loyal band of followers that have changed their profile pictures to purple propaganda and never fail to "like" each others' comments. While the hardcore support is valuable to parties, helping them maintain a presence by trumpeting propaganda without any money or effort on their part, they alone do not win elections. UKIP need to convince more undecided voters to pledge allegiance, and on the evidence I've seen in my constituency, they have some way to go.

Political debates on a local Facebook group once swayed between rampant nationalism and a feeling that UKIP should at least stand for something new in Parliament. There was a near-unanimous hatred of asylum seekers, immigrants and the EU. It peaked at about April 23rd; St George's Day, the patron saint of England (as well as agricultural workers, Greece, sheep, skin diseases and the Brazilian football team Corinthians). My timeline filled with nationalist "pride" that manifested itself not through a proud love of the English spirit and heritage, but through a nasty disgust for every other culture that had the guts to enjoy a different way of life. Pictures of bacon butties, a beautifully English snack, were given a sinister subtext with the caption "SHARE THIS IF YOU DON'T CARE WHO IT OFFENDS". In true English fashion, the nation celebrated it's own culture by making a wanking gesture two inches from the face of every other.

It makes me profoundly sad, because there's no reason why April 23rd shouldn't be a cause for celebration. England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) is a nation of resilient, world-leading people. We've been through world domination and world wars, and punched light years above our weight in terms of contribution to world culture, sport and economics from the middle ages to present day. There's plenty to love about Britain, yet people insisted on telling foreigners to fuck off instead.

The point where the popular politics of fear and blame began to stumble, in my opinion, came after the two massive humanitarian disasters that have occurred recently. Sorry, one isn't a "humanitarian disaster". It's a "migrant crisis": the catchy name the media coined to turn 30,000 desperate individuals drowning off the shores of Africa in the last year into a palatable political stick with which to beat the population. These poor souls are fleeing for their lives from Syria, Libya and neighbouring countries - countries we, the West, turned to a destabilised wreck through our catastrophic foreign policy. Women and children perished in their thousands in the stormy Med waters, and continue to do so.

The initial reaction was predictable given the incendiary name the media gave the disaster. Comments on Facebook ranged from half-hearted empathy to a few die-hards who seemed actively pleased all of these people were dead. Politicians of all parties used it as a vile attempt to score points. Ed Milliband provided the biggest hypocrisy of the campaign, pinning blame for the deaths on David Cameron's foreign policy when his potential cabinet contains members of the despicable Blair administration whose own foreign policy wreaked havoc on half the globe and started the fire of destabilisation that brought about this mess.

It was as the initial reaction simmered down that rational viewpoints began to emerge, those concerned more with the human cost than the economic and political one. An EU resolution passed in an attempt to save some of the fleeing migrants, and news of this was shared frantically by those few fanatics with the purple profile pictures. "Look at this!" they screamed into their keyboards, "I for one would like to know where they're going to stay!?" another asked rhetorically. They were in for an unpleasant surprise. Comments slowed to a crawl, with the majority expressing solemnity rather than righteous anger, an understanding that sometimes the politics no longer matters. 

UKIP got it's platform and support by convincing us all that the immigrant threat was loud, co-ordinated and intent on taking advantage of our prosperous nation. The pictures of dead children being dragged from Italian beaches that played on our TV screens proved otherwise. The immigrant threat is desperate, panicked and doing whatever they can to cling onto an existence that was already more miserable than anyone able to read this will understand.

Maybe I'm wrong about UKIP in this constituency. Maybe their supporters have just adopted collective radio silence until their political views will be seen as less disrespectful, although that seems unlikely, given how opposed many of them are to the politically correct ideal of being nice to people. By Friday, UKIP could've taken this Parliamentary seat by a landslide (although the latest polls suggest a moderate challenge to the Tory incumbent is about as good as they're going to get).

On the face of it, though, UKIP have been thwarted by the wrath of God himself. Natural disasters have brought concepts such as immigration and asylum - things the English public are told are bad for us daily, but precious few of us have any experience with - a new, humane face. And maybe, if we're lucky, the politics of blame and fear will no longer drive us all.

You Shall Not Season Pass

Batman Arkham Knight's season pass is set to cost over thirty quid. This is a bit silly, isn't it?

This isn't a new occurrence, a revelation or a surprise. It was announced today that the season pass for Batman: Arkham Knight, the fourth game in Warner Bros' series of Batman games, would cost £32.99. This is how games work now, and it's sad that I feel so apathetic about it that I just accept it with a shrug. I feel in the minority though, as all quarters of the internet are still very angry at the increasing amount of piecemealing the average gaming fan has to put up with.

There are some valid arguments for paid DLC. For the player, it can bring extra content, extending a great gaming experience. For the developers, it allows them to make a little extra money from a product they have already produced if that product is deserving of it in quality. For publishers, it's an incentive to avoid trading the game in as soon as you're finished with it. There's been some very good, expensive but worthwhile DLC over the years. Battlefield's premium passes are always excellent value, Bioshock 2 and Infinite had good single-player content added to them, and Bethedsa have produced some of their finest moments in Tamriel and the Wasteland in additional content.

The problems begin when you realise all these arguments are only valid in an ideal world. In reality, DLC has become abusive and witholding for the consumer and is actually reaching the point where it damages the reputation of games. Games that don't deserve DLC get it by the bucketload, and games that do deserve it often don't get content to match the original product's quality.

The very concept of DLC is now being used as a selling point of the game. "Spend 30 pounds more on Arkham Knight!" Warner Bros cry.

"What am I spending the extra 30 pounds on?" Eager fans reply.

"Oh, I don't know yet. Some time trials and more big adventures for the Bat Man™!" Warner Bros bark back to them.

It's not enough to promise "new story missions, new super-villains, legendary skins, new race tracks" as Warner have done, because consumers have been burned before by trusting companies to deliver. This comes on top of the fact that Arkham Knight, despite a June release date, is still  something of an enigma. We've only seen very limited gameplay footage and little is known about the content of the base game. It's not reasonable to expect customers to pay 150% of the RRP with so little to go on, and promising extra skins if you promise to buy it from a shop like a good little boy as soon as possible makes it even more insulting.

Pre-orders were around for an age, but no longer serve the original purpose. There was a time, before the internet, that getting hold of the most popular games on the day of release might have been a challenge without a pre-order. Now the concept has been adapted as another way of piecemealing the product to you, trying to goad you into buying the game their way. Publishers have you locked in their cell, picking bits off a slice of ham and posting them to you under a slit in the door. "You will take it this way, for it is your only option if you want to eat."

The strangest thing about the abuse of DLC to me is how publishers haven't realised that they've made purchasing a game so profoundly confusing at times that it hurts their sales. Arkham Knight has a base game, a Limited Edition, and a newly-announced Premium Edition. Add pre-order bonuses (Arkham Knight's Harley Quinn DLC) and console-specific bonuses (Arkham Knight's PSN-exclusive Scarecrow DLC), and a $200 Collector's Edition (that doesn't contain the season pass content) to the menu and you've managed to dilute a single product so much that I don't know what I'm buying any more. It's genuinely difficult to work out at a glance how I'm meant to actually get all of the game. What about the loyal fans who already pre-ordered the Limited Edition, logically assuming there'd be no more packages announced? Perhaps befuddling the customer actually is their intent, but even I'm not that cynical.

So it comes down to this: if you don't like it, vote with your feet. There are few more panicky and reactionary industries out there than the gaming industry, which is still halfway mired in the stereotypical nerd culture that it so badly wants to escape so it can wreak havoc on the wallets of the world. We've seen recently the power of gaming fans standing tall to speak out against practices they aren't comfortable with. Do it with season passes. Don't buy the games. It sucks for us, yes, but it's the only way they'll learn.

Game of Thrones 503 "High Sparrow" thoughts

An incredibly strong theme and direction make this not just the best episode of Game of Thrones this season, but one of the strongest episodes in recent memory.

NOTE: I haven't read the books. I don't care.

High Sparrow was great. Really great. After season five fired the engine coals up last week, the third episode in the season opened the throttle and gunned it for the cliffs. We spend just enough time with each set of characters to justify their inclusion, and all of them are given poignant moments of decision to ensure their actions will come to affect the fate of the world as a whole. Beautifully written and entertainingly shot, this is probably my favourite episode of Game of Thrones for a long time.

There's one, long, obvious theme that runs through every scene in High Sparrow, tying every subplot and character to one another: identity. So many characters are forced to confront, decide or come to terms with their own notions of self-worth that it almost seems a little on the head or over-the-top at times. Gwendoline Christie steals the episode's early scenes with a fantastic monologue, showing how Brienne of Tarth came to be a knight, and giving her an emotional resonance and depth she hasn't shown before. She's become a very single-minded character recently, a slave to her oath, and this intrusion into her past served to humanise her.

In King's Landing, Cersei and Margery are having a passive-aggressive clash of the titans. Natalie Dormer was a little too pantomime in a scene where Margery plants seeds of doubt about Cersei in Tonmen's mind. It all felt a bit like that scene in Star Wars episode III where Palpatine is telling Anakin about a Sith Lord who learned immortality: we can believe Tonmen is naive, but he'd have to be illogically stupid to not see Lady Tyrell's subtext. Fortunately, Dormer runs away with the honour of the episode's best scene in her next appearance, as she outmaneuvers Cersei in conversation in front of her maidens, reducing her to an embarrassing has-been rather than anyone of power. "Would you like us to get you wine? 11am is a bit early for us." OUCH.

Cersei can sense her loosening grip on influence, and seems to be grasping at any opportunity to exact it. When she has the maester locked up for hypocritical use of brothels, you get the feeling that it was as much of a confidence-booster than anything else, a rare chance to exert power. She then walks amongst the poorest of the city, in a ghetto, and allies herself with a street cleric who - with his bare feet, feeding dozens of the poor and preaching peace and just practices - couldn't bare a more obvious resemblance to Jesus Christ unless he had a beard and halo. Cersei is acting out of character, a sign of her desperation and hunger to cling on to the influence she is losing.

Jon Snow gets a nice tense, centre-stage decision to make this week, and his new position as leader of the Night's Watch hopefully means more of them are coming. Dealing with the fallout of his controversial election win, he's forced to make a couple of big choices that will determine both his own personal fate and the way he is perceived by the men he has been elected to lead. First, he stands by his original rejection of Stannis, choosing his honour over personal revenge. Jon Snow is trying to convince himself that he's no longer a Stark, and that he hasn't been since he took his oath. He then executes a dissident in cold blood, even after he begs for mercy. You sense his internal frustration at his predicament in this scene. His naturally merciful tendencies are already being warped by his responsibility to these men. Had he not won the election, he would only have had his oath to break. Now he's the boss, the rest of the men look to him for leadership and morale, and morale at the wall would perish if their sworn leader abandoned his post for personal conquest.

Snow is just one of three Stark children to cast away their family identity. Arya begins her induction into the society for children-who-must-not-be-named, after casting away the material bonds to her previous life. Sansa returns to Winterfell to marry herself to the Bolton family. She is literally casting off her Stark name in order to claw her way back to influence. "The North remembers" an elderly housekeeper tells her as she returns to her quarters in Winterfell. Sansa, like Arya and Snow, realise deep down that the Stark house runs deeper than purely in name. Their renown throughout the land is too quick to simply dissipate overnight, especially in a world as obsessed with history and standing as Westeros. Political allegiances are quickly broken, but cultural capital fades much slower. Sansa is cashing in her share of the latter for another chance at the former.

Finally, even Tyrion Lannister confronts himself in the final scene, as he cannot bring himself to use a prostitute. Perhaps it's the dark-haired girl's resemblance to the lover he strangled to death, or perhaps he has sunk too low to consider it a worthwhile use of his time. The scene takes a nice twist from out-of-place levity to a genuine moment of character. It makes what might have been an unnecessary scene of comic relief, chucked in at the end as a kind of reward for sitting through such a meaty episode, into yet another memorable turn.

The episode ends with the return of Jorah Mormont, who is the only character in the episode who hasn't overgone a crisis of personality recently. He's hanging around brothels, panting at prostitutes cosplaying as Danerys. He kidnaps Tyrion, which felt a bit disappointing. It seemed like Tyrion's adventures this third season were only really starting to begin. He'd left the confines of his carriage and was let loose to create banter and inspire self-pity in a whole new location. I was quite looking forward to his and Varys' road trip. Two posh, acerbic idiots prancing around a foreign country like Rob Brydon and that other guy doing that BBC Four wine show. I'll always have the idea in my dreams.

Game of Thrones 502 "The House of Black and White" thoughts

After a drab first episode, season five has begun in earnest with the second, raising the stakes far higher than last week ever threatened to.

NOTE: I have not read the books. There will be spoilers. Shut up.

If last week's episode was an epilogue to season four, The House of Black and White is the true season five premiere. The characters are driving onwards to their goals, the cards are placed on the table and by the end of the episode we're left with a whole new set of mysteries to ponder whilst they hang on a cliff's face until next week.

In addition, the direction of this episode is fantastic throughout. Any feelings that Sansa and Littlefinger just happened to be in the same pub as Brienne is a little too serendipitous are quickly forgotten thanks to the tense action that follows. First, the curt exchange in which you feel Brienne's confidence slowly sap away with each word that drips from the cunning mouth of Lord Baelish. The audience is then rewarded for sitting there, chewing on their first, with a short-but-sweet chase sequence. The episode is full of nice packages like this, scenes where the tension is finely poised and then given some satisfying payoff, unlike last week where scenes often petered out. The episode also keeps up the pace with a couple of excellent changes of scene. Tyrion's "what is she gonna do, kill every dwarf in Westeros?" line being almost interrupted by a dwarf's head being slammed down in front of Cersei was a particular highlight.

The titular House refers to Arya's destination. House Stark's youngest makes a welcome return in this episode, and remains the show's most likeable character. Although her story in this episode is predictable - she arrives at her destination, is disappointed, eventually scraps her way to what she wanted - it feels like a microcosm of Arya's life so far. Her total lack of hesitation in her threats to would-be robbers also shows how little she has to lose and how much she has matured, and the ending of the episode leaves us on tenterhooks. Arya gains access to the black and white house, but the audience is left outside for now.

Meanwhile, Danerys continues to fuck up. Coming into a historic city and attempting to institute rapid, immediate change to it's culture and laws is going as terribly as you'd expect. Class tensions spill over into violence, and the newly-freed slaves are beginning to grow willful. Mossador's claim that he killed a man awaiting trial for Dany, his "mother", doesn't exempt him from justice himself. Freedom and justice are part and parcel of one another, she says near the end of the episode. What Dany doesn't understand is that you can't just chuck these concepts at a civilisation that have never had them and expect them to accept it without issues. The woman who Varys would see the future ruler of Westeros, a huge land of varied tribes, houses, peoples, and cultures, cannot see past her own moral compass and belief system to tolerate the values of others. She's beginning to look less like the regal, respect-commanding leader and more like a Ptolemic figure who lives to subjugate others as she sees fit.

Meanwhile, at the wall, Jon Snow continues to disappoint. It looked like he might have purpose for a little while in this episode, that he might find a reason to do something more important to the overarching political future of Westeros. He's been a side show for a long while now, and Stannis' arrival in his life hinted at his potential being used for bigger things. The end of the episode, however, sees Jon thoroughly trapped in his duties. Almost unwillingly, he finds himself elected to lead the Night's Watch after a last-minute hustings' speech from his mate. "Thanks for talking me into four more years of this freezing cold, no-sex bullshit, Samwell", he probably thought. Our only hope is that Jon's style of leadership changes the Night's Watch in a tangible way. No doubt he will have his hands tied with a slew of opponents from within before he can institute any real change, and therefore change his role within the show.

The House of Black and White was good fun, and a much better start to the season than The Wars to Come. It set up plotlines for the weeks ahead, and provided varied scenes with excellent direction. I don't think it was a coincidence, though, that Arya entered the house through the black door at the end. Things are just beginning to bubble as the heat increases.

I beat Bloodborne, so you can too: BOSS TIPS.

I beat Bloodborne this week. It was my first "Souls"-style experience and I loved every minute, but without community help I really would've struggled on the boss fights. Here's some basic tips to help new players. If any of these words helps a single person beat a boss that's been driving them crazy, you're welcome.

NEEDLESS TO SAY: BOSS SPOILERS FOLLOW.

CLERIC BEAST
This motherfucker is probably one of the toughest bosses in the game purely because he's the first, and by this point you're probably still a mewling maggot of a hunter who took 25 minutes to individually pick off every single enemy at the bonfire section.

The biggest problem with the Cleric Beast was, I found, the fact that his tall stature made him difficult to get a handle on. If you get close enough to attack, you can't see his punches coming. I'd reccommend not using lock-on because the camera won't be your friend in this fight. Also, you'll gain 1 insight point purely for meeting him (and losing), which allows you to level up in The Hunter's Dream. If you struggle, get some blood echoes and level up your defenses.

FATHER GASCGOINE
Gazza is probably the game's hardest boss, at least according to the unofficial Reddit poll. He's the first "hunter" enemy you face, and his speed and capacity to interrupt you with gunfire are tricky.

Make sure you grab the Tiny Music Box item from the little girl, Viola, after you climb out of the bottom of the sewer section. Using this item stuns Gazza, and lets you get a good chunk of damage in on him. Don't use it in the first section of the fight - take your time to master parrying him with your gun, you'll need this skill later in the game. Once he reaches half health he turns monstrous, so now's the time to stun him with the Music Box and finish him off with relative ease.

Finally, don't go back and give the red brooch you get from him to Viola. You don't get any reward and if you keep it yourself you get a decent early-game blood gem.



BLOOD-STARVED BEAST
Oh boy, this one is so tough if you go in blind. It's one of the quickest bosses and inflicts slow poison on you very easily. Bring a full stock of antidotes to this fight. There's two things you can do to make BSB easy, though.

Firstly, recruit NPC help. You can find Alfred, a fellow hunter, in Cathedral Ward. He's upstairs in the building with the tomb, where you pull the lever to reveal the stairs down to Old Yharnam. If you're friendly to him, you can summon him by ringing the beckoning bell at the glowing circle at the bottom of the stairs leading to the BSB fight area.

Secondly, the BSB loves Pungent Blood Cocktails. They're fairly pricy early in the game, but it's worth grinding some echoes to give yourself as many as possible. Throw one of these away from you during the fight and it'll act as a distraction, making the beast ignore you entirely for a short time and leaving it open to powerful backstab attacks.

Combine the cocktails with the further damage and distraction Alfred provides and BSB will be easy. I bashed my head against this boss for nearly 15 tries. After discovering these two tricks, I beat him without taking a single hitpoint of damage.

VICAR AMELIA
Personally, this was the hardest boss in the entire game. I just couldn't cope with Amelia's size and her massive number of different attacks. She's very powerful, capable of one-shotting you at your current level, so make sure you level up until you feel like you can cope with taking a blow from her.

Her wavy fur also messes with your depth perception. I often thought I was within range, only to whiff a charge attack completely because her ragged coat makes her appear closer than she is.

She's weak to fire, so bring fire paper to imbue your weapon with flame. Stick close to her, and try and dodge under her arms when she swipes. There's a few frames of invincibility in your dodge move, so don't get disheartened by repeated attempts and use them to try and get a feel for the right time to move and attack. Don't get greedy on the offensive because it's easy for her to catch you out, and if she sits up and starts praying she's about to heal herself - start pummeling her as much as you can to cancel it out. This fight was an endurance battle for me. Just stay patient and you'll eventually come out on top.

WITCH OF HEMWICK
This boss is invisible at the start of the fight, and she makes at least one copy of herself that you have to defeat. Try and ignore the creatures she summons as much as possible, as they'll just summon more if you try and focus on killing them off first.

Stalk the edge of the room and keep an eye out for a glowing red light. Once that appears, make a beeline for it and use a charged R2 backstab on the witch as she fades into view. This will open her up for an R1 visceral attack for great damage.

Don't get caught up fighting summoned minions and this fight won't be too difficult.


SHADOW OF YHARNAM
Speed is of the essence in this fight. Use your fastest weapon (for me it was the one-handed form of Ludwig's Holy Blade), and keep on your toes, constantly weaving and moving to try and draw your three foes into short one-on-one fights.

Duck behind the large headstone in the arena at the start of the fight to hide from the projectile Shadow. The melee Shadows are easily stun-locked with a quick weapon, so pick your moment to attack and take them out. After a set amount of time/damage, the Shadows get new attacks. Watch out for the mage's second form in which huge snakes are summoned that can catch you off guard.

Be prepared to run this fight a few times. Figure out which Shadow you feel is best to pick off first - some prefer to get rid of the mage's irritating fireballs, I preferred to get the in-your-face sword Shadows out of the way so I could focus. Stick to your preferred strategy and keep the tempo of your attacks high.

ROM, THE VACUOUS SPIDER
First of all, ignore the small spiders throughout. Keep on the move, don't use lock-on and don't try and get any more than three or four attacks in before preparing to dodge.

Rom's moveset consists mostly of predictable bellyflops, but he has two things to watch for. If he starts to glow reddish he's about to use a powerful area-of-effect attack, so get some distance between you. The attack that causes most players issues is his missiles. If you see him rear up high when you're far away, pay attention. His icy missiles will hit the ground at the moment his belly hits the ground and not a moment later. If you roll twice to the side at the moment he hits the ground, the missiles will miss you completely.

Other than these two sneaky attacks, he's fairly easy. Make sure you keep your health fully topped up throughout this fight, as it's easy for a spider to finish you off with a cheeky swipe after getting caught with one of Rom's powerful bellyflops.

THE ONE REBORN
This is the most boring boss fight in the game. Get yourself some bolt paper for extra damage and stand at The One's side, by his tiny little spider legs. Here, his big sweeps are easily dodged, and any damage you take from the flailing little legs will be mostly negated by the damage you deal with your own weapon.

The heavy version of Ludwig's finished this boss off in record time for me, and The One is a slow mover so staying clear of his attacks should be easy.

DARKBEAST PAARL
I have to admit, I got quite lucky with this one. I stumbled upon it by accident whilst exploring Yahar'Gul when I had one blood vial to my name, but managed to beat it on the first attempt with a sliver of health remaining.

Paarl is quick, but not exceptionally powerful. He's a lightning-infused beast that doesn't have a massive moveset. You should be getting adept at dodging by now, so keep your cool and dodge underneath him when he swipes at you. Your most powerful weapon should do good damage to Paarl. Maintain concentration and this fight will be relatively routine.

AMYGDALA
Amygdala's head is the weak point, so find which of your favoured weapons has an attack with high vertical reach. Ludwig's two-handed L2 attack worked for me, and I've heard the Cane Whip is effective too.

Amygdala is fairly routine until the last portion of her fight, when she gets a massive boost to her range. Make sure you have a lengthy health bar by this fight, or you'll get taken out very easily. Focus on the head when you can, and manage your distance to her in the second portion of the fight so you don't get caught in medium range where she'll be able to hit you, but not vice-versa.

CELESTIAL EMISSARY
When you walk into the mob of little aliens, pick a long, sweeping weapon such as the hunter's axe. Determine which alien is the real boss, then damage it until it transforms.

Once this happens, run away upstairs, back towards the nightmare portal. The Emissary won't follow you all the way up there, so you're free to hit-and-run until it's dead, or just lob molotovs at it until the remainder of its health bar has gone.

EBRIETAS, DAUGHTER OF THE COSMOS
This applies to most bosses in the game, but more than any other this one: get behind it. Ebrietas hits fast and very hard, and she has a huge variety of attacks. None of them can hit you if you manage to get between her back tentacles, leaving her open to massive damage, especially if you use some bolt paper.

Just keep rolling round to her back if you find yourself face-to-face and she won't be able to hit you. Additionally, your health bar will continuously deplete in the latter stages of this fight, so bring blood vials and keep one eye on it so you don't find yourself caught short.

MICOLASH, HOST OF THE NIGHTMARE
Micolash himself is a pushover. He only has one or two attacks, none of which are powerful, but he will try to confuse you by fleeing into a maze twice. When chasing him, try and keep track of your steps so you don't get disoriented, and when he locks himself up in the second phase of the fight, go upstairs and you'll be able to drop down into his cage. Otherwise, the easiest prey this game has to offer. Be sure to scour his maze after his death, for it contains plenty of valuable booty.

MARTYR LOGARIUS
For the first half of his health bar, try and keep close to him. He's mostly a ranged fighter to begin with, launching powerful missiles at you to zone you out, but his melee attacks are easily dodged or parried. If he stabs a sword into the ground, lock onto it and fire a quicksilver bullet at it to save yourself from an irritating barrage of knives.

In the second half he will buff himself and be immune to parries or interruption, and will become far more aggressive and melee-focused. When this occurs, attack with care and only try to get two or three hits in before dodging away. Use the roof spires to give yourself breathing room if you need it, and be patient in your approach.

MERGO'S WET NURSE
An easy fight if you stay behind her. Mergo's Wet Nurse doesn't have many attacks, and her slashes are predictable. When she attempts to hit you, get round to her back and you'll be safe from attack. Her other notable attack locks her into slow, forward movement. This is pretty much a freebie to get to her vulnerable side and go nuts.

Halfway through the fight, she'll turn the arena dark and summon a clone. Don't try and engage her at this point. Run in circles around the edge of the arena, rolling repeatedly if you see her claws draw near. After a short while this phase will pass and she will revert back to her earlier state.

GEHRMAN, THE FIRST HUNTER
This feels a bit like a final exam. Everything you've learned facing the hunter-type enemies in the game so far has to be applied here. Gehrman isn't particularly tough if you're a strong level (I found him relatively easy at level 99), but like all bosses he takes a run or two to learn his attack patterns.

Luckily, he doesn't have that many different attacks to catch you by surprise. At the start of the fight he wields a scythe and his attacks will suck you in close for more hits, so be patient, try and keep to the middle distance and pick away at his health whenever he telegraphs an attack.

At about 50% health, he'll switch to a sword and blunderbuss. This form is easier than the first: try to stay in his face, and if you're trying to close him down, always dodge towards him if he tries shooting at you.

In his final form he'll have a more powerful gun that, if it hits you, will leave you open to Gehrman's own visceral attack that does huge amounts of damage and will probably one-hit kill any players under level 85. Employ the same strategy: dodge towards him, make sure you're a safe distance away before healing up.

THE MOON PRESENCE
You're on your own.

On Bloodborne's difficulty

The internet loves arguing over whether Bloodborne is easy or hard. Why is this debate keeping us so captivated?

From Software games are now officially mainstream. Last night I saw an advert for Bloodborne during half-time in a Champions League match, and today I read that it has shipped 1m copies worldwide. Impressive numbers for a game that's garnered a reputation for innaccesiblility. Bloodborne was my first proper venture into From Software and their "Souls" franchise, and as I write I'm on the verge of completing it.

A ridiculous volume of talk, once all the review hype had dissipated, has been on the difficulty. Opinion pieces have been written by such luminaries as Susan Arendt fiercely calling out those arguing over the game's challenge, identifying two groups. There are those who believe the true hardcore gamer will find it easy, wearing it as a licence to their own self-defined "real gamer" club. Then there are those who bemoan the difficulty, calling it artificial and pointless. She concludes both to be as bad as one another.

On last week's Giantbomb podcast, Jeff Gerstmann (a skeptic of From's previous work) shared his opinions of the game, having played several hours of it. He almost scoffed at those who heralded it as difficult, and that he didn't really think a game that he boiled down to dodging and hitting enemies when they miss deserved such a reputation.

The more talk that gets about surrounding Bloodborne's difficulty, the less interesting the game appears to the outside world. I've played difficult games in the past, and difficulty can come in many fashions. It can be deliberately arbitrary, brutal and unforgiving, leaving you open to sudden, unforeseen deaths or failures. Call of Duty 4 on veteran difficulty springs to mind; a near-flawless game on regular and hardcore mode, but crank it up to eleven and there are a handful of missions that become near-unplayable without an hour of trial-and-error and a generous helping of luck. Then there are games where the difficulty provides the next goal for players: Guitar Hero, and many character action games. Games such as Devil May Cry give the player a reason to go back for more because of their difficulties. You face a boss on normal mode and it feels a challenge, but then by the time you come back around on hard you've improved. Your dodging reflexes have improved and you know which moves will cause the most efficient damage for the fight.

Bloodborne combines both of these approaches, and gets the balance just right,

It has the punishing, back-in-your-place difficulty spikes of Call of Duty. After finally mastering the early bonfire section of Bloodborne, and feeling like my skills were improving to a point where I could navigate this tricky opening with relative ease, the game then throws two giant lycanthrope enemies between you and progression. Manage to get through them, and you're almost immediately faced with the Cleric Beast, as intimidating a first boss as any game in the world is likely to contain. It keeps you guessing and playing the game on its terms.

There's also an element of the other style in there, where a surprisingly open world environment is kept gated through difficulty and player skill. Theoretically, you could fight your way from Ioesefka's Clinic to Father Gascgoine in a little over ten minutes. The path is right there, fairly linear and easy to navigate were it not for your own skill. In Bloodborne, your own real-life ability levels up over time as much as your in-game avatar levels up their health bar or stamina. Your adeptness with the game (which won't start at the same level for everyone, remember) determines your progress, and that's where Bloodborne really sets itself apart from modern games to me.

There are no level selects, no bridges to the next island barricaded by the army. You could beat the game with an unlevelled character in an hour if you were good enough. Some insane nerds already have. There's no checkpoints, map markers, or even a map. Your own muscle memory, sense of direction and accrued knowledge through your previous mistakes serve as your guide. It's a special experience, and I think that is why I feel so much personal triumph now, as I stand face to face with the final boss, ready to vanquish the nightmare.