Underneath my yellow skin

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Another Crab’s Treasure–A Quick Look, part three

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I have talked in the last two posts about Another Crab’s Treasure by Aggro Crab. I’ve been calling it a sekiro-lite rather than a soulslike, but now I want to call it Secrabo. Someone in the RKG Discord called it Crabiro, which I will also accept.

First, I have been doing my gun run after doing an area the old-fashioned way. This has gone off the rails beacuse there are two ways to go at a certain point, and because I was able to kill the boss that you’re just supposed to run from (in The Sands Between, which by the way, is very on the nose. In Elden Ring, you are traversing The Lands Between) in my gun run, I was able to explore The Sands Between at my leisure. Except for the really fucking irritating sand worms that break any shell if they pop up and hit you. Yes, they are buried in the sand and only pop up when you walk over them. There’s a way to tell where they are, but it’s not easy to focus on them and shoot them when they sudderly pop up in that manner.

Which, you might say, well that’s part of using the gun. Yes and no. It’s indicative of how slavishly the devs are hewing to the From games in certain ways (there is a similar type worm in the first Dark Souls), but then ups the ante by making it so they hit incredibly hard.

Side note: Using the gun has made me see the flaws even more clearly. It’s hard to tell when you’re locked on and when you’re not, which is very important on the gun run. Obviously, if you’re not locked on, then the gun is useless. But, man, the camera makes things so fucking hard. I’m glad I turned off fall damage at least. No way I would have made it through the platforming hell of the last two areas without it.

Here’s the honest truth for me and this game. The combat is just not good enough. It’s loose and janky, and it’s hard to see what you are hitting when you’re constantly clipping through the environments.

Aggro Crab has incorporated the ‘let’s throw a ton of enemies in the area to artificially increase the diffculty’. And, yes, that includes snipers, which frustrates the fuck out of me. The seahorses shoot gunk at you that knocks you backwards–which often means off the ledges.

I ran into a field boss on my real playthrough that made me just roll my eyes. He wasn’t hard, per se, but he was annoying. There is a status effect called gunk that if your meter fills it, ah, not really sure, but I think it slows you down dramatically and drains your health–slowly. And there are swamps of it, which, I mean.


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Another Crab’s Treasure–A Quick Look, part two

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I have been playing more Another Crab’s Treasure (Aggro Crab) and talking about it in the RKG Discord. Here is part one in which I did a very brief overview of the game (plus some random ranting).

Spoiler, kinda? This is about accessibility, and one way Aggro Crab made it easier was they added a gun. Yes, a gun. It one-shot kills everything (and is a shell, which is weird. I don’t know what happens when it breaks. It’s very hardy. Maybe you have to ask for another), and I have started a new playtrhough with it–a gun run.

In roughly an hour, I have gotten to where I am in my main playthrough. Which has taken me four or five hours. Or more. Probably more.  I will say a sizable chunk of that timme was me not knowing what to do next because I simply do not think in the same way as the game devs. That’s when I gave in and finally looked it up. It really annoyed me, and I made a promise to myself that if I keep playing the game, I’ll nrot wait so long to look shit up.

I want to say upfront that it’s a solid game. It’s bright and colorful, and the humor is on point. I appreciate what they were going for and I love that they went whole hog (crab?) for what they envisioned. I much rather have a game that sticks to its gun (heh) than one that is all over the map. This game knows what it wants to be, and it’s very confident in tone/approach.

That being said (and you knew this was coming), there is just something missing. I’ve been chatting about it with a few other people in the RKG Discord, and I’m relieved that I’m not the outlier when it comes to my frustrations with the combat. Here’s the thing. FromSoft is almost pristine when it comes to the combat. There are jokes about hitboxes (which are valid) and about the camera (also valid), but the response is tight.

Where many soulslikes fall flat is that they are too squishy on the responses. In a hard game with brutal combat, you have to have thatt shit on lock. A few that had spongy responses: The Lords of the Fallen (the new one); Steelrising; The Lords of the Fallen (the OG one). And I may be one of the few, but Lies of P had weird response times. It’s actually something that From does itself that is irritating–varies the response time so that you have to just memorize the attacks–which I cannot do. Skill Up mentioned this in his Stellar Blade review that one thing he liked about the game was that there were no delayed attacks by the enemies so the parrying was easier.


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Another Crab’s Treasure–A Quick Look

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Soulslikes is a category that has exploded in the last decade, for better and for worse. I love the Dark Souls trilorgy and Elden Ring, but I have not found many of the soulslikes to be anywhere near as good. Salt and Sanctuary (Ska Studios) was decent, and I actually finished it. But it was very slavish in its adherence to the Souls formula, I would almost call it a clone. I have tried so many of the other soulslikes, and there is not another than I enjoyed very much or finished. (Yes, I’ll get to that in a second, don’t you worry.) Many of them take the wrong lessons from the FromSoft games–including the fact that the game has to be hard as nails.

There have been things to like about most of them, but equally things to not like about them as well. Clunky combat, esoteric lore, no explanation about how to do anything, etc. Many of them are done by indie devs, so I’m a bit more forgiving because it’s usually a handful of people workin on the game. I don’t expect as much as I would from a AAA company, for example.

Before I really get into it, let me say I’m going to do a quick(ish) look at Another Crab’s Treasure by Aggro Crab. I played and finished their first game, Going Under, which is a delightful roguelike that centers on Jackie, a beleagured intern at a games dev company who finds out that the job is more than making copies and answering the phone.

The site is set upon a hellmouth of sorts that calls forth demons and such. Jackie has to go down (go under, as it were) to take care of the problem. It was clear from that game that the devs admired FromSoft, though it wasn’t explicitly stated or seen.

Remember I said that I hadn’t finished any other soulslike? I haven’t, but I have finished a sekirolite (which is what I’m terming games that are all about the parry/deflect rather than lump them into the soulslike category). That game would be Lies of P (Round8 Studio/NEOWIZ), and the combat definitely styled itself after Sekiro.

I did not enjoy that game’s combat. At all. Starting with the fourth boss of that game, I beat every boss in the same way. For the first health bar (and there was nearly always two. Which, ugh), I just whittled away until I got to the second stage. I used the spirit summon liberally and made sure I had the cube set to revive them as many times as possible.


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Something old, something new

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I need a new game. Again. I say this every time I finish a game, but it’s true. I’ve given up on the Imposter Mode in Going Under (Aggro Crab) because it’s not fun at all. I tried it a few times in the past week and it just aggravated me every time. I’m not quite at the point of uninstalling it, but I’m close. I really want to plat it, but I haven’t even made it to the third boss yet. I will admit that not being able to win at the Imposter Mode has dampened my enthusiasm for the game in general. That’s not entirely fair, but it’s my honest feeling. I know I don’t have to do the plat and I got a good forty hours out of it, but the grind for plat, the one-off bosses, and the Imposter Mode have really left a bad taste in my mouth.

I decided to try Nuclear Throne by Vlambeer again to see if I was any better at it. It was the first roguelike I had played, which was diving into the deep end. It took me hundreds of hours just to make it to The Throne, let’s not talk about how long it took to actually beat The Throne. This time, I reached The Throne in less than ten runs and then promptly died when it barfed its rads all over me. I knew it was going to do it, but then it didn’t, but then it did. It was instantly deflating. I haven’t made it back yet and I’ve played probably thirty-plus more runs.

Robot is my main with Crystal my backup. The rest of them I could take or leave with Horror being more on the leave side. I think my mouse setup is not helping, but I’m still not good at this game. I had an amazing build the time I got to The Throne, but I haven’t been able to replicate it since. This game really depends on twitch reactions, which I do not have, and heavy RNG. If I get dropped into a mob, there is no chance I’m going to survive.

I think the game is really good, but the ramp-up is too high. I doubt I’ll be playing much more of it because the ceiling is still there.

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Going full Mulan Rogue

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I need to stop playing Going Under (Aggro Crab) because I’m really starting to hate it. I’ve finished with the main game and have wrung every ounce of content out of it. And more. So why am I still playing? I’ll tell you why and there are spoilers now. There is a mode of the game called Imposter Mode that is not run in any of the main dungeons. It’s accessed from Jackie’s pod (home) and it’s by jumping through her mirror. She had met the imposter earlier in one of the dungeons in the second half of the game (apparently random?) and I ‘defeated’ her in that dungeon. I put defeated in quotes because of course she was coming back and of course it was going to be in her own mode.

I’ve explained before why I don’t like this mode or the big boss fights in the main game, but I’ll briefly recap. In the main game, you go into a dungeon and there are three floors before the boss floor. You pick up skills and other perks along the way. From the beginning, you can equip one ‘mentor’ (coworker) and one skill. The best mentor by far is Swomp who gives the twin benefits of him stealing an item for you in every store and starting each floor with allies. Oh, there are also Swomp Cubes with better items, but they break more easily, which is not usually a trade I want to make. Although, in Imposter Mode, I am all about more damage. The bigger benefit, however, is that there’s a Swomp’s Chill Zone every second level of the dungeon. Sometimes it doesn’t show up and I’m not sure why, but it’s supposed to be there. If you chill with Swomp, then you regain all your lost health. You can do this once on the floor, though apparently in early access, you could do it multiple times. I think once is fair.

Randy, the CEO, would have been the best mentor because he gives you his credit card and you can charge the items you need to it. Except. One, there’s a limit to how much you can charge, and two, you have to drag around a ball and chain of debt with you that grows larger the more money you owe. It hinders your movement which is so key in this game. Also, his other benefits are meh at best. Well, he does let you take his sweet whip out for a drive at the start of the dungeon until you beat it up enough for it to explode, which is maybe a floor or two. I really like how they make the benefits match up with the narrative, by the way.


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How far under do I want to go?

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Side Note (yes, a side note before I even start the post): My computer went bonkers last night and I was worried that the motherboard had fried itself. I restarted it like ten times and the last time it took and the lappy is now seemingly fine. I say seemingly because it came out of the blue and could possibly do so again. Anyway, I immediately thought of my Cozy Grove file and how devastated I’d be if it got corrupted. The rest of my games? Didn’t care so much. Dark Souls III, I could just start another game. Going Under? I’m pretty much done with it–more on that in a bit. But Cozy Grove? Being on day nearly 90 of real-time days? That would have made me cry. I had been thinking about backing it up and I really should do it. Will I? Normally, I’d say probably not, but I just might this time.

Speaking of Cozy Grove (and, no, the post is not about that game), I have met the last of the spirit bears (17 in total) and she’s very interesting.

*Spoilers*

Dalia Cosgrove, a revolutionary who realized the futility of the revolution. She’s burned out and she’s carrying what looks like a white blob with eyes in her head. No idea what is it, but Ian suggested maybe another spirit–which makes sense. Anyway, she’s intriguing because the rest of the spirit bears, when you meet them, they wave their arms in the air (well, ok, just lift them, but it feels like waving) and the area around them turns to color. When I met her, she didn’t do that and her area remained uncolored. The next time I talked to her and did something for her, she did it, so I don’t know if it was a bug the first time? Or were they making a point? I have a hunch it’s the latter and Dalia is really interesting me right now. She gave me a revolution flag that I put in front of the ‘living vessel’ bear’s area from the cult I was cajoled into joining (long story) and stood in front of it wearing my revolutionary armor.

*Unspoilered*

Let’s talk Going Under. I reviewed it here after playing it for several hours. I noted that there wasn’t much to do gameplay-wise and I was wrong. I also noted that it was amusing that it was called a Souls-like when it wasn’t that hard and I was–half-right and half-wrong. I’m going to talk about the structure of the game, which necessitates spoiling quite a bit. Just so you know that from here on out be spoilers for Going Under.


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Going Under: a send-up of start-ups that is satisfying

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About a month ago, I tried the demo for Going Under by Aggro Crab in a desperate attempt to find a game to tide me over until Elden Ring–FromSoft, of course. At that time, I didn’t know I was filling the time until Elden Ring (ER from now on) came out because it was before the Summer Games Fest, but I wanted something new to sink my teeth into so I decided to dive into my Pile of Shame and see if there was anything I wanted to play. Or rather, I installed a bunch of demos and tried out a bunch of games. Going Under was one of them and I wrote a brief write-up of it here. Then, Ian offered it to me out of his Humble Bundle and I accepted because it had something to it and why not? It’s a roguelike-lite that has that one more run feel to it. RNG both giveth and it taketh away as well.

The premise is that you are Jacqueline Fiasco, an intern at Fizzle Beverages.  You think you’re going to be learn about marketing and such, but you are so very wrong. When you meet Marv, the Project Manager (PM), he’s full of empty slogans and toxic enthusiasm. Not that enthusiasm in and of itself is toxic, but when it’s used to cover terrible and inhumane business practices, that’s when it becomes toxic. He immediately nicknames you Jackie and then tells you that you have to go kill goblins. He wraps it up in verbiage, but that’s the bottom line.

I have to say that they got the environment perfectly. Or rather, they were able to evoke the feeling of a start-up perfectly. There’s a giant tunnel slide that you can take to get from the second floor down to the first. There’s a cafe with a man named Swomp (yes, Swomp and not Swamp) who seems like a sleaze at first, but then turns out to be a pretty decent guy. There’s Tippi, the financial officer, who is trying to rein in the CEO while the company is hemorrhaging money. There’s Kara, the computer gal who hates computers. She has an adorable doxie, Eclaire, who is more than just a cute face. There’s a side mission of taking her for a walk through the dungeons (reaching the third floor of any dungeon) which means she’s tethered to your waist and slows you down dramatically as you fight with the Joblins.

Quick note: I really enjoy the biting satire of the game. In addition to the names of the dungeons–which, by the way, are other companies. So Fizzle Beverage is literally built on the grounds of other companies–the whole tone of the game is spot-on as a spoof with bite. I had said in my original quick review that the combat felt off to me. Part of the issue was that the framerate was locked at 30 fps (why is any game locked on the PC???) and once I changed that to 60, the game felt better.


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Hodge, podge, and a little bit of dodge

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Still on that Cozy Grove (Spry Fox)/Binding of Isaac: Repentance (Edmund McMillen) tip on the daily. Every morning, I do the loop in Cozy Grove and it goes like this. First, I gather all the resources that are available. Flowers, minerals, nuts, and fruits. Then, I feed all the animals/imps that need feeding. After that, I go to the spirits who need help and do their quests. While I’m doing their quests, I have my divining rod on hand so I can divine as I tromp across my island. I also dig up any resources that are around–onions, sweet taters, taters, etc. Once all that is done, I go to Mr. Kit (and Mr. Kat, the mouse on top of his, a fox, head) to sell my goods. If I overpacked my backpack while gathering resources, I go to him to sell off the flowers. Man, you can make a pretty penny by selling all the flowers.

Once I’m done selling, I turn to buying. First, haircuts. I remember when I first tried a new haircut and realized I couldn’t get my old one back unless it went on sale, I was crushed. Now, I switch it up on the daily and it’s so much fun.

Side Note: It’s interesting looking back on the first few weeks and recalling how stressed I got when I didn’t have enough money to buy something or ingredient to make something–specifically cocoa beans.  There was no way to get except to buy one a day from Mr. Kit and…several at a time from Pandam once a week. And the former was only after you expanded his store–which wasn’t cheap. Everything was scarce and I felt as if I would never be able to make certain items, such as the Bon Bons.

Fast-forward over a month later and now, I rarely have to worry about resources. Money is not an issue at all. Cocoa beans? I have them laying around my tent just gathering dust. I will say, it was still sticker shock when I had to buy a 50,000 old coins item for the mayor today, but I had it on hand. I dropped it like it was no big thing.

The biggest surprise is how much I’ve grown to care about the spirit  bears. They each have a story and most of them are heart-wrenching. I want to help each and every one of them, even though I know that means I’m bringing them closer to their release. They each have a distinct personality and I can find something to love about each of them. There’s Charlotte, the embittered ranger who used to be a Spirit Scout like me. There’s Allison, the pig bear and baker who likes to use, um, unusual ingredients in her creation. There’s my dear, sweet Arjun (ram bear) who has Alzheimer and only wants to be with his beloved wife, Lily. There’s Flamey, my campfire who does so many things for me. There’s Mr. Kit, the tall and silent fox merchant with Mr. Kat, the mouse, sitting on his head. There’s Pandam, the poor red panda wandering salesman who is cursed and miserable.


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