Tag: controversy | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: controversy

Welcome to the (Boyfriend) Dungeon

Posted on January 10, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

One game I forgot I played in 2021 was Boyfriend Dungeon by Kitfox Games. It came out in late August and I played it in a couple of days. The dating sim was great and the fighting part was adequate. I never warmed up to the latter, but it was fine. I wrote a quick impression of it after I played an hour or so as well as a full review and critique after I finished the game. I gave it an award at the end of the year, and I considered it all said and done. I knew there was going to be DLC, and I was pretty sure a character I met in the original game was going to be in the DLC (and I was right).

I found out that it had come out with little fanfare on August 17, 2022–nearly a year after the original game had been released. To recap, thee was a controversy over the inital release because the marketing for the game (come to the ‘dunj’ and fight the mons with your weps, that you can also date!), which was perky and upbeat, did not gel with the very real and disturbing issue of (*spoiler*) stalking that is a mainstay of the game.

To be clear, the majority of the game is bright, colorful, sexy, and jovial in tone (though many of the characters are depressed and have issues). But there is one character who is a complete asshole–racist against weapons, obsessive, and just horrific in nature. I hated him. I wrote about how I refused to do any of his content. I still haven’t because I hate him so much. And he still showed up in the DLC and was the major asshole he had been in the main game.

It’s weird, though, because *MASSIVE SPOILER* he was the main antagonist of the vanilla game and, as I remember it, I defeated him (and the uber-weapon he created) at the end of it. So, having him in the DLC being his normal dickish self was weird. It made me wonder about the purported timeline of the game/DLC.

But, as I wrote before, I hate that the controversy pretty much tanked the game. I thought Kitfox Games dealt with it well, but there was no winning. People wanted the ability to block the stalking content, and there really is no way to do that as it’s integral to the story.

Being a minority sucks in part because you desperately crave representation. Then, when you get a little bit of it, you want more. For example. In the game, I chose they/them pronouns, but I would have preferred not to use any at all. In addition, I would have liked more body diversity as only one guy–Jonah, the Axe, was allowed to be chunky. The rest were all slim or just hard-bodied/fit.

5 things I hate about the Soulsborne series

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

looks pretty benign to me. — Oh, Bed of Chaos. It’s never good to see you.

Anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows I am a huge FromSoft fangrrl. I always return to the Souls games, and I am still finding new things in them. However, that is not to say that I think they’re perfect games and will brook no criticism of them. There are several fanbois who are exactly like that and will explain why each flaw is actually brilliance on the part of Miyazaki, but that’s not me. There are more than a few things about the games that annoy me, and a few that I downright hate. Some span all the games and some are only game specific, and I’ll note which it is during each point. They’re not in any particular order, and I will comment on my degree of hate as I talk about each one. With that said, here we go.

1. The whole second half of the original game. I recently played Dark Souls Remastered, partly with my NG++ character who had just beaten Biggie & Small. I thought about what I wanted to do, and I heaved a small sigh. Basically, there are four big bosses you have to beat after Biggie & Small before the last boss, and whenever I think about going into the four different areas, I just don’t want to do it. The first half of the game is near perfection, but the second half, hooooooooo boy. The first time I played it, the second half of the game made me hate the game in general. After I finished, I thought I was done with it and would never touch it again. Oh, how wrong I was, but it’s partly because of how much I loathed the second half of the game.

Miyazaki himself has commented on how the second half was rushed and was not nearly as good as the first half (paraphrased). He apologized for one of the areas, Lost Izalith, and a more fully realized version of it is in Dark Souls III (though not with the same name, though there is an area within the area that has the exact same name as an area in the first game, Demon Ruins). I’ve said before, but my measure of hatred for the area is such that even though I’m a completionist and will do Blighttown (the area in the first game most people agree is the worst) the normal way when I play the original game, I skip the lava/dino butt area of Lost Izalith with nary a qualm. To me, that is the worst area of the game, well, one of them, and I don’t care if I never see it again. Indeed, I will be thrilled if I never do.

I also hate the Crystal Cave and it’s fucking invisible paths because fucking invisible paths! Need I say more? I also have a terrible sense of spatial recognition, so that doesn’t help. Plus, yes, I know, falling snow helps delineate the way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t sharp turns between the falling flakes. I fell that way once. I hate this area because it feels hard just to be hard. Yes, Dark Souls is a difficult game. Fuck the try-hards who bleat that it’s not difficult–just challenging. It is hard for those of us who are strictly mediocre players.