Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Fun

My 2025 game awards, part six

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Now we’ve come to the part of my awards giving where I’m the most conflicted I’ve ever been. Here is yesterday’s post on Hades II (Supergiant Games), a game that reall yhad me conflicted. I felt really weird that I wasn’t more enthusiastic about the game, but I can only be honest–I prefer the oreginal. The sequel is an excellent game, but there is nothing new in it that blew me away. And, I preferred much of the original to the sequel.

That was hard, but today is even harder. I have had an ongoing schtick in which I bestow an award to  FromSoft game every year, regardless of if they release a game that year or not. In a year in which they launch a game, it’s unheard of that I would not give that game the FromSoft award. Even if I could not play the game or it did not gel with me, it would automatically get the award.

Until this year.

Elden Ring Nightreign dropped this year. It used the assets from Elden Ring, but it was a standalone game. I knew from the trailer that it was not going to be my thing, but I hoped.

Why did I know it was not going to be my thing? Because it included everything I hate in a game. Multi-player, fast-paced, no time to  stop and think, very little story and lore, and RNG for each run (sort of).

What do I love about FromSoft games? The exploration; the slow, deliberate pace; the gorgeous level design; the NPCs; and the feeling of overcoming difficulties. I have no qualms over-leveling if I can and making the boss fights as easy as possible.

I’m split on the boss fights themselves. Yes, the bosses are incredible and memorable, but From has been making them harder and harder over the years. I have known for several games that I will one day be not able to play one of their trademark hard-as-nails action adventure games, and we’re almost there.

I tried to like Nightreign; I really did. I put dozens of hours into it, playing the Recluse (the witch). I lucked out in that the first run I had was with two incredible randos, and we beat the first Night Lord (the big boss at the end of three days that is incredible hard. I mean, this one is the first one, so not as hard, but still).

That gave me a false sense of hope, and I did not come close to victory again for dozens of hours. I was mostly playing with randos because the people in the Discord are all PlayStation people and because I suck so badly, I felt bad playing with–well, anyone beacuse I was the one dragging everyone down. It did not help that the Recluse is the hardest character to play, well, one of them, anyway. The other character I liked (the Revenant) was considered difficult, too. Plus, unlocking her was a pain in the ass as well.


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My 2025 game awards, part five

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I’m back to talk more about my game awards for 2025. In the last post in which I wrote about this topic, I was musing about Hades II (Supergiant Games). I have written several posts about this game because it’s been the most frustrating game I’ve played this year by far. I know many people were blown away by it and think it’s unequivocably better than the first game in all aspects. Those people, not coincidentally, aren’t playing the game for the story or the relationships. I don’t understand that mentality when it comes to this game, but I accept it’s true.

For anyone who is into it for the latter reasons, though, there are plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the sequel. The relationships in the first game took time to develop (arguably, too much time) and I felt  I earned each deepening step. It felt organic (well, as organic as it can be in a video game), and by the end, I was truly touched by how close I felt to two of the NPCs.

The same writer wrote the dialogue for both games. Something must have happened to him between the two games because the way he wrote the women in the sequel was atrocious. I’m just going to put it in plain words. Or, something may not have happened, but he didn’t have the chops to write a female protag, and he relayed way too heavily on aping the charactars from the first game.

One of my favorite NPCS in the sequel (Moros) was very similar to one of my favorite characters in the first game (Thanatos). Except whereas Thanatos was pragmatic about being the god of death, Moros was more conflicted as to his role, especially in relation to his sisters (the Three Fates). He comes off very much as naive and earnest, which is not what you expect from Doom. I like him for it, but I would not have minded a streak of something darker in him.

On the other hand, *sigh* Nemesis. She’s based on Megaera, who is one of my top three favorite NPCs from the first game. Megaera was also the first boss, which made for an interesting dynamic. Plus, her fraught relationship with her two sisters made things complicated and interesting as well. I loved everything about her, and I would have done anything for her.

When we started an intimate relationship, it meant something. In this game, it happened so easily, I was astonished. I was able to give, ah, nectar? I think? And then aphrodisiac? Whatever it was, I was able to give the presents liberally and often. Then, I was able to bed a few NPCs before I even beat the last boss of the downward path.


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My 2025 game awards, part three (b)

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I want to write more about Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) because it’s emblemtic of my gaming year. I bestowed it with an award yesterday, but it is not without its flaws. I have written several posts in which I highlight the positives and the negatives.

It has a mystery baked into it, but it’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, half-baked at best. I figured out what was going on before the denouement, and I was disappointed when it was revealed that I was right. There was no way the mystery was going to be satisfying. I knew that from the start, so I wasn’t very disappointed when it turned out to be true.

One of the biggest issues with the game wsa that there was just too much thrown into the soup. They could have taken out the mystery, the breeding of the animals (to make magical, colorful animals), and several other additions, and the game would have been just as satisfying. There is a point of oversaturation, and I think this game passed it.

Here is a quick list of activities/events/things included in the game: planting, farming, and harvesting; selling items and buying them; nurturing silk worms in order to make silk for clothing (this takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r); making clothing and selling them to Violet; mining for gems, coal, and other minerals; making jewelry and selling it to Parker (and this does not show up, really, until the very end of the game; making hair dyes and otther hair stuff for Eury (also a late game addition); fishing, making several different spells; gathering resources; amassing an amount of items for various townfolk; finding recipes; cooking; meeting with the coven every night; romancing, dating, and getting married (and then divored); figuring out the mystery; and that’s not even everything.

Oh, I forgot to mention the animals. Feeding them, finding their favorite food, and then later down the road, breeding them. As to the last, it was not clear at all how that came about, and I didn’t fully realize I was missing out for dozens of hours. I was not happy with that. At all. That’s one of my small gripes about the game–the tutorializing isn’t great.

I never liked the art style, but I accepted it at some point. I can’t remember the music, and I’m pretty sure I turned it off because I don’t like to listen to constant music as I play. The voice acting was solid, but the dialogue was thin. I have mentioned that when I played the original Hades (Supergiant Games), I still got original dialogue well past the true ending (which meant beating game ten times).

With this game, the repeat started after the first date, which was very early on. I’m not asking that every game has hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue, but I would like to get through at least a quarter of the game without hearing repeat dialogue on the regular.


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The year of being deeply divided (games-wise)

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It’s that time of the year when I give out weird and quirky awards to games that moved me in one way or another. This year, there were several games I played that I was really divided over how I felt about them. Several of the games I will be noting this year are very jagged in how I feel about them.

That said, in this post I want to mention my non-From game of the year from last year, Balatro (Local Thunk). Why? because most of my play time of it was from this year. When I bestowed it my non-From game of the year last year, I had just started playing the game. I did not know how deep it went, really, or how deep into it I would get. I wrote several more posts after that, and I played tons of hours more as well. I nearly got the plat, but the last two achievements are ridiculous.

One of my defining gaming moments of the year came from this game. It was doing all the challenges, which turned out to be such a pain in the ass. When I first tried them, I was fairly early on in my Balatro career, and I failed to do a single one. Each one has a gimmick to it, and when I tried them again, I was much later on and more savvy as to how to actually play the game. I started doing them one after the other, and I knocked most of them down pretty effortlessly.

Until I came to the end. There were two that made me raise my eyebrows. One was Golden Needle in which you only had one hand per round. I htad trouble doing that with the boss The Needle (one hand), so doing it for every hand in a whole run? It seemed impossible.

And it nearly was. But I did it, and I was pretty proud of myself for getting through it. There was a guy in the Balatro channel of the Discord I’m in who started doing the challenges later than I did, but quickly caught up by the time I reached the last few. (There are twenty of them.) The last one, Jokerless, nearly made me lose my mind. The name of it pretty much tells you what the challenge is–beating a run with no jokers.

I tried it using my usually pair/high card strat and did not even come close. I had to look up strats for it, plus the other guy and I discussed it as he reached it, too. He was a straights guy, using it as his usual strat. I don’t do anything straight, but I was desperate enough to try. He gave me some tips, and I continued to chip away at it, pun intended.

It was awful. That’s when all the joy of the game was drained for me. I should have just stopped and put it behind me, but I could not do that. Plus the guy in the Discord and I were egging each other on, and I did not want to let him down. There was something cool about bonding with him over failing this challenge over and over again.

One way to beat this challenge was to do math. I was not going to do that so I had to make sure that I beat each hand by a comfortable margin. I watched a video on how to beat this challenge, and the biggest takeaway was to keep my straights open-ended on both sides (insert mildly risque sex joke here), even if I had the ace in hand. Oh, and of course the straight had to be 10-A for maximum chips. I pruned the deck like I had never pruned before–something I never did.


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Oh, the games I’ve played (this year), part three

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I want to talk more about the games I tried out this year and did not get along with. There have been severeal, I see, as I have been looking over my Steam Replay timeline. Some of them are just the demos, whereas others are games I’ve bought. Oh, here’s the post I did yesterday on some of the games I played this year.

The first one is The First Berserker: Khazan (Neople), a brutal soulslike. I have one word to say to this game: NO.

To expand a bit more, I was sighing within two minutes of playing. I will say, though, get paid, Ben Starr–get your bag! He’s in everything, and he’s the main character (the player character) in this game.

I am so tired of soulslikes glomming onto the brutal difficulty part of From games and thinking that’s all it takes to make a good soulslike. Oooooh let’s make it so you can die in two hits by a scrub! Ooooooh let’s have mob after mob attack you in a way that you can’t see them coming, nor can you separate them. Ooooh let’s make it so that the opening saps your will to live. And then let’s have a mini-boss who will break your back, your spirit, and make the game not fun at all to play.

Oh, and ever since Sekiro, let’s include a parry/deflect that is an integral part of the combat because god forbid a dev dare make a soulslike these days without it. God forbid that the combat be hefty enough on its own so that you don’t have to use the parry/deflect. And god especially forbid that you don’t crank the difficulty up to a billion before I’m even out of the tutorial area.

I don’t blame From for this, but I can’t help feeling a bit bitter. I was already the dregs when it came to From games, and now, I cannot hang with many of the clones. The only way I made it through the base game of Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ) was by maxing out a consumable-forward build and using said consumables to beat every boss from the fourth one on (or fifth?) in their second phase (and they all had second phases after that point). That’s even how I beat the super-hard optional secret boss at the end of the game, plus a drastic change of my build in general. I didn’t feel good about it or proud (well, some pride on the last boss), but I did what I had to do.

I played maybe an hour of The First Berserker: Khazan and quit without hesitation. It was not enjoyable at all, and it was missing the point of Souls games, at least for me. The vast majority of people play the From games for the bosses. I felt no joy in playing the game, and I knew I would have quickly been at that place where I could no longer play the game.

I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve gone from being eager and excited when a soulslike is announced to being disenchanted, jaded, and ‘ugh, no’. It’s almost a revulsion at this point. Take, for example, Nioh 3 (Team Ninja). It was announced at… I want to say The Game Awards, but I’m not sure. It was recent, though; I know that much.

I have earnestly tried to play the first two games and got my ass relentlessly whupped. I was not having any fun, and I eventually gave up on each (for different reasons). I was numb when I saw the trailer for the third game. It did not move me in any way, and if anything, the trailer turned me off of it. I can’t think of the last soulslike that excited me. It’s not that I’ve outgrown the genre, but that it’s grown in a way that does not include me. In other word, it’s dumped me and not vice-versa.

Side note: I don’t have loyalty to any brand, not even FromSoft. Currently, I buy their games on day one or even pre-order them, but I was deeply disappointed by Nightreign and their decision to make The Duskbloods a Switch 2 exclusive. If they eventually bring it to other platforms including PC, I’ll probably buy it–but I won’t be happy about it. PvPvE does nothing for me. I’m sure they’ll do it well, but it’s not my thing at all.

Look, just because I love past From games does not mean that they earn endless grace from me. I mean, they can make whatever games they want. Clealy, they don’t need my approval to do that. But, I don’t have to buy those games if they don’t appeal to me.

I’m curious if they’ll do a sequel to Elden Ring. I can’t imagine they won’t given how successful it was, but I would rather see them move on to something else. no, I don’t want them to return to Dark Souls, either. I would like a game in which the combat was not so emphasized (and hard) and there was more focus on the exploration.

Another game that I was really looking forward to was Date Everything (Sassy Chap Games). It had a very interesting premise in that you receive this pair of glasses that make it possible for you to, ah, date everything (well, not everything, but most things) in your house. And by things, I mean things. The microwave, bed, your diary, washer, dryer, vacuum cleaner, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Erika Ishii is in it, and they play ben-wa balls named Ben-hwa. You can bet I ‘dated’ them as soon as possible. It was pretty damn hot, but also weird, which is a good tagline for the whole game.

Ben Starr is also in this game; as I said, he’s getting PAID. He’s the doors in the game, and he’s one of my favorite characters. I like talking to him, and apparently, he’s 17 doors. I have found maybe five of them?

The dialogue is snappy for the most part, but it just does not gel for me. It’s trying too hard, and I did not vibe with it. All the names are puns, and all the dialogue is written as if for a sassy sit-com. Itt’s well-written, but just not for me. Also, I learned that once you ‘date’ someone (read, bang), that’s it. There are no long-term relationships. Granted, I don’t know how long the person who told me this had played the game, but they seemed to be pretty confident about it.

I did feel it was way too easy to woo a few of the people I banged, including Ben-hwa. I felt like I was enacting a main character fantasy with the support of all the NPCs. I would have liked it to be…I don’t even know what. More authentic? But that’s not the point of the game. I mean, the very premise is weird and wild, so why would the rest of it be grounded in any way?

I played maybe a half-dozen hours of it and never really warmed up to it. Regretfully, I put it away after twice giving it a real shot. I don’t think I’ll be going back to it.

 

 

 

Some of the games I’ve seen this year, part two

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Steam started doing Steam Replay a few years ago in which they break down the games you’ve played in the last year. Every pop media website seems to do some kind of wrap up at this time of year, but this is the only one I care about.

It shows how many games I’ve played this year (51!! With 37 of them being new); how many achievements I’ve gotten; which games I’ve played the most, and so much more. It shows which games I’ve played by the month, and it’s pretty neat.

In the Discord I’m in, we vote on awards in different categories. I had to turn in my ballot two days ago, which is a bit frustrating. I was holding out as long as I could because I wanted my Steam Replay to drop so it could prod my memory as to the games I’ve played this year. The shocker is that–well, I’m not going to talk about the shocker here because I’m going to save it for my silly awards later in the week.

I played Elden Ring in every month this last year except January–and in that month, I played Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin) and Dark Souls III. I always have a FromSoft playthrough on the go, sometimes more than once. I will say, though, that because Elden Ring has a dedicated jump button, it’s hard to go back to the earlier games without one. Each of the previous  games (except Sekiro) make you use an awkward combination of buttons to jump. To make matters worse, it was a different combination of buttons in each game. Like, left stick forward and B in one and I think holding down B and then quickly pressing B again in another.

I think they went back to left stick forward and B for the third Dark Souls game, but I don’t fully remember.

I mainly play Elden Ring these days, but I do dip back into the older games. Recently, I went back to the OG Dark Souls to get Big Hat Logan’s big hat. I rarely do that quest in that game because it’s so long and convoluted, and it costs a shit-ton of souls. Why did I do it recently? Because I hadn’t done it in a while, and I wanted the big hat. Which, ironically, is not the best big hat in the Souls games. That would be the Sage’s Big Hat in the third Souls game–which is the best piece of armor in any game. Period.

Anyway, I went all-in on the magicks while going for Big Hat Logan’s big hat, which made me realize something about pyro that I had not known before. It scales. I mean, That’s not the thing I didn’t know because of course it scales. What I didn’t know was how much. Normally, I pump up my pyro as high as I can get it and just melt shit. Or rather, do large chunks of damage because I never really feel like I’m melting anything.


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Some of the games I’ve seen this year

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I normally play FromSoft games  and a few indies here and  there. I feel like I might play a huge chunk of ten games a year at best? And any year in which a FromSoft game is released (that I actually play, that’s a hint for later), that’s basically all I play other than casual games to change it up. In 2022, I played Elden Ring all year long. My guess is that I might have played one or two other complete games that year. I’m not sure, though, because my memory is completely shot now.

Ha. Yesterday’s post was supposed to be about the games I’ve played  this year, but it really was not. I’m (probably) going to tackled that topic  today and why I don’t usually play that many games a year. Why? Because I tend to get obsessed with one game at a time, plus a casual game on the side.

I’m fascinated by people who hop f rom one game to another because  I can’t  do that. At one point, I was playing Dark Souls III when Geralt showed  up Monster Hunter  World. Trying  to switch between the two games was very hard. That’s on  me, though. It’s hard for me to go  back to some games once I’m done with them.

Side note:  I have wondered if I have ADHD, but I don’t think I do. I have some of the traits, but not the main ones. Also, once I learned that ADHD and autism have several symptoms in common, I leaned more towards being on the  spectrum than  having ADHD.

Here are some games that I tried this year, but did not finish for a variety of reasons.. I will explain why I didn’t finish each one.

The big one is Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games). It sounded right up my alley. Quitting your job and going to a bucolic beach town in order to set up a mobile bookshop. I tried the demo and did not love it, but I decided to give it a go when the game came out.

I got into it more than I did in the demo, but it was so stressful. Why? For several reasons. One, there are very few save slots. This matters because of the next point. There are several side missions/character side quests that are very elaborate/involved/labor intensive. Also, the game does not adequately explain what you need to do for these quests or even the main mission sometimes.

This all matters because I was trying to do everything as I went along because, yes, I was trying to 100% it. That’s on me, obviously. There are so many side quests and different events, it’s hard to keep track of them. Plus, you can only go to one location a a day, which makes the quests rather tedious.


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Oh, the games I have seen (this year)

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In looking back on this year, I have been thinking about the games I’ve played. Yesterday, I wrote a post about how I’m aware of what a weirdo I am, but not how far outside of the norm I am. I can usually understand why normies feel the way they do, but sometimes, it’s just beyond me.

Also, I feel unreasonably hurt when I get something wrong. I mean, I can tell 95% of the time what I should and should not say because I’m constantly watching like a hawk for what I should be saying and doing. The times I slip up are when I say something I think should be acceptable, but isn’t. Or rather, times when I hdon’t even think about what I’m saying because it seems so innocuous to me.

It’s one reason I don’t like being around people for an extended period of time. I am so aware of how weird I am and how I come across if I’m not careful.

Side note: Here are the reasons I’m like this. One, neuroatypical. I did not fully realize this until a few years ago. Before that, I just thought my brain was broken. Now, I know it’s ‘different’ and ‘unique’. To be honest, I still think it’s broken, but am more accepting of it than I was before. Plus, I have always seen the benefits to thinking the way I do as well as the flaws. Granted, I wasn’t as convinced the pluses outweighed the negatives in the past, but at least I was aware there were positives.

The other reason is that I was made my mother’s emotional support person at a young age. I was not allowed to show any negative emotions of my own because only she and my father could have those. My father’s main emotions were contempt, disdain, and anger. My mother’s was depression, guilt, and manipulation. Yes, I know those aren’t technically emotions, but I said what I said.

If I ever showed any negative emotion, I would be beaten down (metaphorically) for it. My father would shout at me whereas my mother would pull a face and either be belligerent or injured depending on how she was feeling. I spent most of my life feeling as if I had to continually tamp down my own emotions because there was no space for them to exist. I still do, quite frankly.

How does this relate to games? Well, I rarely like the games that other people do. I am not going to belabor my bewilderment that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) was such a huge hit because I’ve written several posts about it. I just need to mention it in this context because I truly don’t see what everyone else sees in this game. Especially when it comes to the story.

This is how I feel about most popular media, though. I rarely feel the same way about really popular movies, books, or TV shows that most people do. There’s no reason why it should be any different for games. Even the popular ones that I like such as FromSoft*, I like for different reasons. I’m not in it for the difficult bosses; I see those as the price I have to pay to see the incredible Miyazaki worlds. For now. I have a feeling I won’t be able to play them for much longer.


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Weird, but within the bell curve

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The Geoff Game Awards show was on recently, and I watched it with interest. Not for the awards because they were mostly a foregone conclusion. Not for  the trailers, really, as I wasn’t expecting anything that would interest me. Not for the cringe-inducing banter, either.

You would think that negates  any incentive for watching the show for me, but I like to watch it as if it were a train wreck or a car crash. But, also, just to keep a finger on the pulse of the games industry since it’s one that I actually pparticipate in, unlike movies or TV.

The interesting thing to me this year is the robust debate on the categories of The Game Awards, how  the votes are cast, and if there needs to  be a tweaking of either and/or both. Clair  Obscur won a vast majority of awards it was nominated for as was expected.

Full confession: this was not my top game of the year; it wasn’t even in the top ten. Everyone was raving about the story, which I thought was, ah, pedestrian at best. Ok, it was hot trash. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again.

The debate was mainly about whether it should have been not allowed to be nominated for best indie, best debut indie, and game of the year at the same time. Or rather, whether it should have been allowed to win all three (which it did).

Side note: the vote is such that over a hundred outlets worldwide vote in each category. There is no ranking of the votes; no ascertaining that people acutally played the games; and that’s it. In conrast, for the Golden Joysticks, individuals are chosen as judges for each category. They have to play every game in that category. They have a Zoom meeting to debate the entries, and then they vote.

I watched both shows, and I found the  latter to be much better than the former. More thoughtful and not just defaulting to the big name. I was watching some guys debate the topic and arguing vociferously that Clair Obscur deserved all the love. Everybody in that company absolutely loved it, and so did most journalists in the industry. Well, one person in this particular company did not love it, but he could acknowledge that it’s a very good game..

However. The one award it did not win was the one that is voted on by the general public for best game of the year (or whatever it’s called). That was won byy Wuthering Waves (Kuro Games), which is a mobile game. It’s a free-to-play Chinese action RPG, and it’s very popular. Then again, anything made by Chinese developers is very popular in part because China hungers for games from Chinese people, and there are over a billion Chinese people in the world.


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New year, pop culture, and me

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I’m not a big pop culture person. I quit watching movies several years ago, and I have been sporadic in my book reading. I do ‘listen’ to songs on YouTube (videos), but it’s very now-and-then, and it’s usually something I already knew. TV? Can’t remember the last show I watched with any regularity. Why is that? Well, strap in because I’m about to tell you.

I don’t realized I don’t like movies in general about twenty-five years ago. When I mentioned that to my substitute professor at my grad school, she looked at me as if I had grown another head. She didn’t say anything for several seconds, then blurted out, “That’s like saying you don’t like sandwiches!” in a shocked tone.

I didn’t say it to her, but that didn’t seem weird to me, either. If someone didn’t like two slices/pieces of bread/breadlike substances on the outside and meat, veg, cheese, and whatever on the inside, then that person had just eliminated sandwiches as a whole. Which I could see someone doing. As I said, I had the good sense not to say that out loud, but I was thinking it.

I get why it seems weird that someone doesn’t like movies, but my brother made me see one reason why. When I told him about it, he laughed and said, “Of course you don’t like movies. They aren’t real enough for you.” Which, he’s right. Even realistic movies aren’t real because they can’t be. They have to make cuts and concessions or every movie would be as long as it would take to actually do what’s happpening. Or it would be a David Cage* game, and ain’t nobody got any time for that.

No movie feels real to me. Even the best acted ones, I am well aware that I’m watching a movie. And, I’ll be frank. I don’t want to watch a bunch of white men doing white men things, which cuts out a good chunk of Western movies. If I don’t see a person of color as one of the first six actors, I won’t even consider watching the movie. I don’t care how good it is: if there is not diversity in it, I shall not watch it.

That’s a red herring, though. I don’t have any plans on watching any movies any time soon. There is nothing that appeals to me, not that I’m plugged into the movie circuit. Wait. There is one movie that I have interest in–Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler. That looks interesting to me, but that’s it. The last movie I watched was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which I really likked–until the last monologue by Michelle Yeoh. That completely undermined everything I had previously felt about the movie, though it took some time to sink in. It’s a shame, because I enjoyed the movie tremendously (despite itself) up until that point.


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