Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: video games

Pop culture and vidya gaemz (part seven)

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I’m still riffing on pop culture. In the last post, I just shit all over several TV shows just because I can. And because I don’t get to do it in real life that often as I don’t like yucking other people’s yums. But I also don’t like being made to feel I have to like what others like. That’s where my contrarian nature comes into play, honestly. The more someone tells me/insists I’m going to like something, the more I resist. Not even on purpose, but my brain just hunkers down. In part it’s because I don’t like being told what to do, yes, but it’s mostly because I know my tasctes the best. I know what I do and don’t like. Other people don’t. It’s that’s real. It’s the same with gifts. Most people cannot buy me somethnig I’ll actually like, especially when I used to  wear earrings. Funnily enough, my mother was able to get it right more often than not–and she’s the only person.

K and Ian are both on the mark, albeit in very different ways. I don’t expect gifts from anyone else, and I prefer not to get them, honestly. Give me money. Money is great! I know that some people don’t like it because it’s not thoughtful, but I’m a grown-ass person. I can buy myself whatever I want/need.

Anyway. Let’s talk about video games. It’s one aspect of pop culture in which I partake. But, I realized a few years ago that I don’t actually like video games in general. I had to go through several popular games that left me cold before I came to this realization. Here’s the thing. I like FromSoft games, and more specifically, the Dark Souls trilogy and Elden Ring, and I like some roguelike/lites, and I like some cozy games.

Here are popular games that I tried and did not like. Skyrim (Bethesda). Well, let me be more precise. I loved the first fifty hours despite how shitty the combat is. Remember, Dark Souls is the first game I played with actual combat (and not just constant clicking). Going from Dark Souls combat to Skyrim combat was a shock, and in not a good way. But I soldiered on despite the other flaws (and there were many) because it was enjoyable.

I want to be fair. I think the reasoon I turned on it was my own damn fault, and I’ll tel you why. I have an obsessive nature, which means I stick with one big game at a time. And  I play it for hours on end, even if I’m getting sick of it. That happens at the end of every From game, and it started to happen with Skyrim around the 50-hour mark. In addition, while I was enjoying the game, there were plenty of things that annoyed me in addition to the bad combat. One, the cumbersome fast travel system. Two, and this is a big one, the ridiculous encumbrance limit. You pick up five potatoes, and you’re over the limit. Add that to the limited fast travel, and it gets annoying fucking fast. I found an unlimited horse mod (so your horse can carry everything for you) and installed that bad boy IMMEDIATELY. Being overburdened is tnot fun. Yeah, maybe it’s realistic, but there are fucking dragons in this game.

No. Body. Likes. Encumbrance. As. A. Game. Mechanism.


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Mental health and video games

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There is a concept in video gaming called comfort gaming. It’s pretty easy to figure out what it means–games that soothe you as you play. Well, not exactly. I mean, it can be that, but it could also just be a game that you can play without thinking. Johnny Chiodini mentions it in their series when they were with Eurogamer, Low Batteries. They call that game they play when feeling down a sadgame.

They emphasize that the game itself does not have to be sad. It’s just a game they gravitate towards when they feel sad. Yesterday, I stumbled over a much more recent video in which they participated with their old workplace (Eurogamer) about how video games helped with mental health issues. I have included that video below.

For me, it’s FromSoft games. For the longest time, it was Dark Souls III. It’s my favorite game of all time, though Elden Ring has essentially moved itself into a tie. Oftentimes, I flummoxe people by saying cheerfully that I know it’s not the best Dark Souls game, but it’s my favorite. By the way, I love being contrary like that. I mean it, though. And interestingly, I’ve had people say it actually is the best Dark Souls game overall.

I guess it’s depends on what you mean by ‘best’. I’m talking specifically of the three Dark Souls games. The first is considered a game-changer, the second is the ignored stepchild, and the third is the greatest hit album. In other words, the first was seen as a breath of fresh air and mind-bending (if you ignored Demon’s Souls) that ultimately ran out of time to be truly great.

The sequel was a disappointment to most people, but I have a fondness for it. It tried to do some things differently in order to differentiate it from the original. Did it work? Not completely. But it tried. And I have to give it credit for that. In addition, if it didn’t have ‘Dark Souls‘ in its name, I think it would have been much better received.

As for the third game, it was the most polished of the three. Plus, it took the best from the first two games and seamlessly blended it together. I’ve called it the ‘best of’ hits album by a group that has been together for twenty years. It has all the hits that the fans love and maybe one or two new originalsongs. Some people think it’s the hardest, which is probably true objectively. But because I had played both of the other games twice in the lead up to the release of this game, it felt like coming home.

I think that’s the reason it’s my favorite, by the way. That and because it’s the first From game I played in real time. Meaning as soon as it was released. Ian bought the season pass for me when it came out, and I got to be in on the discoveries this time around. I hadn’t played either of the previous games until years after they were released. Now, FromSoft games are one of the few I will buy as soon as I can. I know I will at least try to play a From game (I gave up fairly quickly on Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon).


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The year in gaming

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At the end of every year, I do a year in games review before handing out funny awards to games I’ve played over the year. The running gag is that a FromSoft game wins every year for game of the year, even in a year when a From game isn’t released (which isn’t many years).

This year, however, I don’t feel much need for that. Why? One, I did not play many games this year. Not many new games, that is. Two ,the ones I did, for the most part, did not captivate me. There is one glaring exception, but I won’t be talking about that in this post. Probably.

There were games I played that were just continued from last year. Dorfromantik by Toukana Interactive. Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (yes, I know it’s Repentance now and that’s what I’m actuallly playing, but, ugh. I really think the game peaked at Rebirth) by Edmund McMillan, and Cozy Grove by Spry Fox. The last came out with DLC in April which I did not pick up until late October. It’s more of the same with some fairly big bugs (and not the kind you catch with your critter net), and I could have taken or left it. Except for one thing. My absolute favorite character in the whole game came with the DLC. She’s an introverted, anxious, low self-esteem writer/science person who makes origami to soothe herself and I love her. She broke my heart with her story and I just want to wrap her in a comfy duvet and make her tea.

In general, though, it’s just more of the same. My island is stressing me out because you have to constantly feed the different animals, and it shows what they want above their heads. I know you don’t HAVE to feed them, but it’s ugly to have their wants broadcast in that way.

Before I started playing the DLC, I was excited for the announcement of Cozy Grove 2. It’s coming out next year sometime, I think in the first quarter. Is it just going to be more of the same?If so, then I may pass on it. I think I have hit my limit on the game.

To be clear, I love the concept of helping ‘stuck’ bears to the other side. I adore their stories and helping them do the last thing they need to do before moving on. The stories are varied, and one is truly shocking.

I have to say, though, the negatives of the DLC really turned me off. One of them was the persistent bug with the collector’s request to find the piece of the puzzle and finish the puzzle. It’s a take on a puzzle in the original game.

The finst time it came up, I found the puzzle piece, but not the puzzle. I looked in the Discord and it said the puzzle should have been near the puzzle piece like the other puzzle. It wasn’t. I could not find the puzzle anywhere on the island. Anywhere. I went over the island several times. I. Could. Not. Find. It. Anywhere. I satrted the game again. I tried to put it in a save slot and start it from there. It was not to be found.

So. After several days, I decided I’d do the very tedious job of moving everything movable (all the decor) and do a pixel hunt. My absolutely favorite part of adventure games bar none–hunting pixel by pixel for something. That’s obvious sarcasm, if you can’t tell.

I have played this game for nearly a year. I have bought many many things. Many. Placed them around my island. I barely have a square inch of space on my island. So, having to bundle them up and move them around was a pain in the ass. A huge pain. And this was supposed to be fun!


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Running in place

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Ian and  I recently talked about a thing in video games that is annoying. This is in games that are continuous, such as Destiny 2 or any other ‘game as service’ game. There is a thing that when the season ends and a new season begins, all the caps are reset and you basically have to start over again. Not exactly, but it’s close enough. I felt that way with Monster Hunter World. I took it to surprisingly and poured hundreds of hours into it. I really liked it until the Tempered Elder Dragons and quit cold turkey. Then, Iceborne, the DLC came out. I was hyped, but it was only on consoles at first. I want to say just PS4, but I’m too lazy to look it–ok, it’s both PS4 and Xbox One. I had to look it up because that’s my nature. The internet has been a boon, but it’s also been a curse. In the olden days, if I didn’t know something, I just had to deal with it. Now, I can look it up whenever I want. It’s almost a compulsion, but a benign one.

The basic armor you are given in Iceborne is better than anything I had crafted in the entire base game. Same with the base weapon. I know why they did it–because they wanted the newbies to be able to try the new content without having to grind in the base game. Truly, I understand. From a business standpoint, they want as little obstacle to entrance as possible. If newbies had to play hundreds of hours in order to even get to Iceborne, well, then it would be Dark Souls. So I can’t blame Capcom for doing that. However, it was deflating as fuck to get that good shit and realize that my time in the base game was all for naught.

I know that’s not the case. I know that the enjoyment I got from the base game is something in and of itself. But, it still left a sour taste in my mouth and I could never really get into Iceborne. Part of that was because it so much harder than the base game (which was another reason for the better gear), but it was also because it felt like those hundreds of hours I put into the base game were for nothing. N00bs who were playing for the first time had the same equipment as I did, so why even bother? If I had just picked up the game as a whole, I could have cruised through the entire game on easy mode. Again, I realize that the experiences I had with the game wouldn’t have been the same and would probably have been trivialized, but it’s hard not to feel bitter.

It’s the same struggle I have with taiji. My teacher’s teacher is changing things up, especially with the Solo Forms. I’ve explained this before, but we used to do the Long Form by Master Liang. Which I hated. Then, he developed the Medium Form based on movements by Master Choi. He decided the Medium Form was going to be the main form so my teacher put the long form aside and began teaching us the Medium Form. Her teacher also developed the Fast Form, which was based on the Medium Form and she started teaching that to us as well.


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Life is (not) like

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E3 is going on right after Summer Game Fest and so far, I have been less than underwhelmed. On Thursday, I suffered through two hours before finally getting Elden Ring. There was one or two other games that sparked an interest, but for the most part, I got gloomier and gloomier because I started thinking there would be no Elden Ring. Plus, there was just so much filler. So. Much. Filler. Then, there was the Ubi conference and there was nothing there for me. Nothing at all. Granted, Eurogamer didn’t find much to get excited about, either, in part because it was all trash.

Here’s the thing. I came to the realization a few years back that I don’t really like video games. Wait. Let me expand that. I don’t like most of pop culture in general. I never watch movies–well, rarely, which is why I’m still salty about how much I hated Knives Out. My one movie last year and I was excited to see it and it sucked so much–and I rarely watch TV. When I do, it’s reality competition shows with contestants who are nice to each other.

My point is that it’s not specific to vide games–it’s just me. I don’t like most of what other people like and most of the time, I’m fine with it. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult because I don’t want to be the joykiller when other people are squealing over something I could not give two shits about. It could be Game of Thrones or the endless Avengers movies or Gone Girl, either the movie or the book. I’ve long since accepted that I am an outlier, but it wears on me.

Not only is it pop culture, it’s just me in general. I’ve listed it all before, but here are the ways I’m different than everyone else: Not married; not cohabitating; no children; agnostic; the list goes on. I’m a freak and I know it. I was able to realize and accept it for most of pop culture so I don’t know why it took so long to do the same for video games. I think it’s partly because the first game Ian suggested to me, Torchlight, I enjoyed immensely. I adored the protag because she could be Asian if you squinted. Then, he suggested Diablo III and once the disaster of launch day was fixed, it was lots of fun. Then, Borderlands 1 and 2, which I played back-to-back for over a hundred hours–each? Maybe? I dunno. It’s been a hot minute.

Then, it was Dark Souls, Dark Souls II (SotFS), Dark Souls III, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. On the indie side, Cook, Serve, Delicious! (All three), Binding of Isaac (all iterations, I guess, but mostly Rebirth), Spiritfarer, Hades, and Cozy Grove.


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Romance and vidya games

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on paper, a good fit.
Does it tick all the boxes?

Back in the Stone Ages, I waded into the world of online dating. This was before CupidOK became huge, and waaaaay before Bumble. I was and am a cheap gal, so I only used the freebies such as Craigslist and Plenty of Fish. I waded through a lot of responses (see what I did there? Waded? Fish? Never mind), and the results were very much a mixed bag. I mostly posted in Casual Encounters because I was just looking for Netflix and chill at the time, but I did post in the dating section from time to time as well.

Do you know what I remember the most? Dick pics. Lots and lots of dick picks. Even when I specifically said not to send them. By the way, that’s the other thing I remember about that time–dudes don’t read the ads themselves. My ad specifically said that I did not want dick pics or Asian fetishists, and the vast majority of my replies started with, “I looooooove Oriental girls!” I never included a picture in my ads, so it wasn’t even my specific look, but just ‘Oriental girls’ in general. Let me tell you, there is nothing that warms a gal’s heart more than knowing she’s interchangeable with literally millions of other women.

I vividly remember one guy proudly writing that he was a member of the 8-inch club. What’s worse, he included a picture of him having sex with a woman, but don’t worry! He black-barred her eyes, so it made it totally ok. Now, maybe she was fine with him bandying about a picture of her getting fucked, but I highly doubted she even knew. In addition, OW NO! I don’t know why guys are so hung up (pun not intended, but snickered at, anyway) on size. Most women who enjoy copulating with men aren’t size queens, and I think, just as women dress up for other women, men are stuck on dick size because of other men. Someone pointed out years later when I relayed the story that sending a pic of him having sex defeated the purpose of his boast, anyway. Which, true, but also did not need to think about. Thirdly, it’s so easy to lie about dick size. Who’s going to pull out a ruler and measure?

I was looking for women concurrently, but I only ran into women who were in couples and ‘allowed’ to play with a third. I’m not against that situation, but it felt gross to me reading ad after ad from women who made sure to mention their husband/boyfriend and how he was fine with them playing around, but only if they (boyfriend/husband) was present. Again, I’m not against a threesome as I’ve done them in my past, but it just grossed me out that the ‘bi’ part of these women felt so performative or at the behest of someone else.

I found online dating to be mostly a loss for me. I tend towards inertia in general, and communicating with someone online–I could do that indefinitely. Going out and actually meeting them? Not so much. I only had one instance of an in-person meeting working out well, and that was only for a few months, anyway before I got dumped because of my opinion on Pulp Fiction.  Yes, for real, and, no, I’m not going to talk about it because it’s not the point of the post. Yes, I know, that hasn’t stopped me before, but moving right along.

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Breaking out of my comfort zone

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life is sweet; life is good.
A typical street in Gozo.

I’m still recovering from my trip to Malta, and I want to talk more about it while weaving it with my travails in video gaming. Here’s my first post about Malta if you want some background into what I’m going to write here.

As longtime readers know, I have a very troubled relationship with sleep, fraught with tension, misery and pain. It’s slowly getting better over the past few years, and it’s reached the point where I can sleep up to six hours at one time.  I know you’re scratching your head and thinking, “What’s so great about that, Minna? I can do that every night!” Exactly, my friend. It’s something any person *should* be able to do, but let’s quickly recount my sleeping history.

Ever since I was a wee child, I’ve evaded sleep. My mom would put me to bed around eight or nine, and I’d stuff the towel under the door crack and read until midnight or later. Fast-forward to college my first year, and I was sleeping 3 1/2 hours a night. I couldn’t fall asleep until three or four in the morning, and I had a 7:45 a.m. class. Then, I’d go home for vacation and sleep 15 1/2 hours the first day while simultaneously catching a cold. In my twenties, 4 hours was my average. I stretched it to 5 in the next twenty years, and then with the help of taiji, I bumped it up to 6 – 6 1/2 hours.

Malta fucked with all that. I don’t think I slept more than three hours in one stretch, and I was so tired the whole time. Going in the ocean helped, but that only lasted as long as we were on the beach. Once we returned to the retreat center, I’d be hot, miserable, and tired again. There were a few moments of clarity as to how spoiled I am. How well-off Americans are in general, really.

It was interesting because I’m very aware of politics in America and how I’m a triple minority (Taiwanese, bi, female), fast becoming a fourth (old). I’m a person non grata, and I’ve resigned myself to my fate. My standard of living, however, is quite high in comparison to life on Malta. I’m not romanticizing when I say that life is much simpler on the island of Gozo. Well, maybe I am romanticizing it a bit, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that life is slower and a bit more easy-going on the islands than here in the US.

The other strange thing is how quiet it is in Gozo. In the States, there is a low-level hum that is as constant as it is ubiquitous. Even if there’s no other sound, the drone of all our electric shit surrounds us. In Gozo, there is none of that. When the people are quiet, all is quiet. It was one thing I really enjoyed about Malta. Honestly, if I had air, I would have found the quietness to be serene and peaceful.

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Games that stuck with me in 2017

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I started a list of different games in 2017 that meant something to me one way or another. You can read the first part of the list here. I didn’t finish the list because it was getting long, so here are the rest of the games that stood out for me in 2017.

The best game that I wasn’t good enough to finish

Hollow Knight

I loved everything about this game from the minute my little bug-like creature starting smiting people with her trusty rusted nail. She was a big-eyed, rabbit-eared silent protagonist who was weary with the world, but she had a mission, and she was going to do it, damn it. I loved the gentle oppressive gloom that surrounded her, and I loved the gorgeous environments. I played through the second boss, and I loved the game with all my heart. However, there were two things that stopped me from continuing, and while one of them was tweakable (by the devs), one was not.

I suck at platforming. I hate it in the Souls games where it’s really awful, but I also hate it in games in which the platforming is the focus. I can jump from platform to platform if I concentrate hard enough, but I can’t do the jumps AND fight at the same time. In the beginning of the game, the platforming was low-key and manageable. When they started ramping it up, I was quickly out of my depth, and it was no longer enjoyable for me.

The other thing is that the currency received/prices of items ratio was way out of whack. Like Souls games, the XP you get is also the currency.  If you die, you lose it on the spot. If you die again before you make it back to your soul, you lose the souls forever (for example). In this game, you have to fight a shadow version of yourself to get your souls back, which is an added wrinkle. In addition, the amount of souls you get for killing enemies is a pittance compared to how much you have to pay for items is ridiculous. I remember I wanted to buy a key, and it was something like 900 souls. In a Souls game, that would mean killing one or two enemies (that aren’t the standard hollows), but in this game, you get 2 or 3 monies for killing each of the standard enemies. That’s a lot of souls to bank, and it took me a really long time to get that much. Then, the key didn’t even open up the lock I thought it would. How disappointing.

I love this game still. I just wish I could actually play it.

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His Name is Nioh and He Advances in Japan: Part Two

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let's be samurai homies!
Lady Ginchiyo is a bad-ass!

I’ve been playing more Nioh, and I have plenty more to say about it. You can read my initial impressions here. I’m roughly half-way through the game, and the bloom has come somewhat off the rose. To briefly recap, Nioh is a game that has been called a mix between Dark Souls, Ninja Gaiden, and Diablo. You can probably guess that I’m here for the Souls part, and I enjoyed Diablo III as well. This should hit my sweet spot nicely, and it does. Kind of. I’ll get to that in a bit.  Oh, also, there will be mild spoilers, but nothing huge. Just FYI. When we last left off, I was describing the Estus system. Er, Elixirs. You start off with a certain amount, three is the base, and for every five Kodama you find in a region, you get one more base Elixir that will replenish every time you visit your Shrine. I know I said in my Bloodborne posts that a combination of a set number of Blood Vials that replenish at each Lamp in addition to the ones you pick up as you romp through Yharnam would be ideal, and that’s pretty much what we have here. However, as much as I liked it in theory, it doesn’t quite work in execution if you’re as mediocre at the game as I am. Right now, I’m roughly ten levels above what is recommended for the missions, and it’s the minimum I need to feel comfortable. You can store up to 9999 Elixirs, but I haven’t been able to even reach a hundred extra. One thing in BB that I appreciated was that I could buy Blood Vials. Yes, they were expensive as hell by the end of the game, but I wasn’t spending my Souls, er, Blood Echoes, on anything else, so why not? You cannot buy Elixirs in this game (as far as I know), but you can make offerings to the shrine of equipment/items/weapons you don’t want, and you receive Souls, Amrita, in return. In addition, you may be blessed with a gift, often an Elixir.

By the way, I had a terrible thing happen once while I was making my offerings. I do it regularly, especially when I need a few thousand Amrita for my next level. Once, right before a boss, I was making my offerings as quickly as I could. I’ve gotten into a routine of clicking as fast as possible, clearing up as much of my inventory as I can. I like to keep my load to under half of what I’m allowed to carry 500 items, so under 250). One niggling irritation is that if you’re offered a gift, and you can’t carry any more of that item, it gets sent to your storage. That’s not the annoying part. The annoying part is that when you get a gift, you have to click on it. That’s bad enough, but if it’s being sent to storage, a message saying you can’t carry any more and do you want it sent to your storage will pop up, and you have to click on confirm. That’s two more clicks than should be necessary to accept a gift (it should just be automatic), and it’s especially annoying to have to confirm you want it sent to storage. Yes, it’s a small thing, but if I’m doing the process twenty to thirty times, it adds up. Anyway, you use the trigger buttons to go from one category to the next. Weapons, helmets, torso armor, etc. Apparently, I was holding it down plus hitting another button at the same time, so I ‘made an offering’ of all my weapons that weren’t equipped. Because I was doing it as quickly as I could, I said yes before I had realized what I’d done. I can’t tell you how upsetting that was. Not because I use the other weapons, but because some of them are given as rewards for missions. I actually had already done another sub-mission twice because I accidentally offered up the spear that I received as a reward. Now, I had four or five weapons that I could only get from redoing earlier missions. I didn’t really care otherwise because weapons drop like crazy, but I was still mad that this was a thing.

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Diversity and Gaming; Progress is Slow

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back in black.
Come at me, bro. (SR IV)

I read an article about Anita Sarkeesian being harassed at a panel by Gamer Gaters, and it doesn’t surprise me at all. She’s become a lightning rod for all the problems hidden within the gaming community, and she’s dealt with a ton of harassment, much of it vile. She was targeted from the beginning when she announced that she was going to look at games from a feminist perspective because she loved games. That was it. It was enough to get the haters hating her, and someone made a game that allowed the player to beat up Anita. Before she even had one video, the hatred was intense, and it made me wonder why gamers’ egos were so fucking fragile. When her first video came out, I watched it. It wasn’t terrific, but she had a couple good points. I’ve watched a few more, and I’ve had the same conclusion every time. She makes some good points, but she’s overly broad (ha!) in her assessments. Also, she needs work on her presentation.

That said, there are a ton of problems with game and representation. Not just of women, but of any minority. Ian once asked me why I spent an hour customizing my avatar, for Mass Effect, I believe it was, when I can’t see my character as I play. It’s hard to explain why I do it, and I do it for every game when it’s possible. My favorite avatar is from Saints Row IV because she looks like me if you squint and as long as I keep sunglasses on her. I was so in love with her, I took dozens of pictures. Because of her, I liked the game even more than I normally would. Here’s the thing about representation. It does really fucking matter. Whether it’s movies or books or video games, seeing people like me makes a difference. Being invisible in media is a way of society saying, “You don’t matter. I don’t see you, and I don’t care.” It’s hard to explain if you’ve consistently had representation in media how alienating it is not to see yourself anywhere. I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on Netflix, and it would occasionally show an ad for one of its shows. I would say, “It’s white people doing white people thing!” Every fucking ad was predominantly white people. It’s 20 fucking 17, and I will not watch something without people of color in it. It’s really that simple. There is no excuse for it, and it’s just willful at this point.

Back to video games. It’s funny how the assholes bleating about special snowflakes (those of us who want diversity in video games) are the same ones who are upset when, say, Mafia III deals with racism in America. At the last E3 conference, there were three games coming out that I knew would piss off the Gamer Gaters. Gators? Whatever. Far Cry 5, Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The enemy in the first game is far-right Americans; the second is set in Egypt with mostly non-white characters, and the third is set in America in the sixties, and the leading character of the American resistance in a black woman with a big Afro. The minute I heard about the last game, I tweeted:

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