Underneath my yellow skin

Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone): A Quick Look, part two

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I firished Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone) today. Once I was done with it, I went back and 100%ed it. I did look up where a few ingredients were and one recipe, but other than that, it was pretty easy. I was able to get most of the achievements while playing the game, which is how I ilke to do it. I don’t like having to grind for a meaningless achievement. (Looking at you, FromSoft and the ten hours it took for me to get that certain achievement in DS III, and that was a short amount time compared to many others).

The achievements in this game were for the most part reasonable. There was one that was kinda ridiculous, but, fortunately, it was fairly easy to do. Just tedious. I get why it was included (thematically appropriate), but it didn’t add anything to the experience.

Here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked about how much I liked the game and mentioned a few minor frustrations I had with it. I have much more to say about it, starting with my puzzlement that it’s repeatedly been called creepy.

Honestly, I don’t get it. I have seen it said over and over again that this is a creepy game, and it simply is not. It just isn’t. This is the hill I will die on with this game. I don’t see even a whiff of creepiness/scariness. Am I the one who is wrong? Probably. Or rather, I’m probably in the minority as I usually am. I will say that I’m starting to feel a tad bit gaslit about this because I don’t see it at all.

Normally, I can at least get a glimpse of why people feel the way they do, but I don’t see it at all in this game. I see cute. I see cozy. I see crunchy pixel graphics. I see charming. I see, yes, creatures. I do NOT see creepy. I do wonder if I’m being punked. Is this  kind of a long con where everyone is in on it?

Setting that aside with difficulty, the game kept me engaged until the very end. Without any spoilers, I felt like it was giving me a big hug, and I smiled a genuine smile of warmth and appreciation as the credits rolled.

The story was simple and sincere. I was wondering if there was going to be a twist, and there wasn’t. Not really, anyway. I’m going to put a spoiler tag on this, but it’s not really a spoiler. I’d rather be safe than sorry, though. I tend to err on the side of being spoiler tag heavy.

In the Discord I’m in, there’s an ongoing debate about spoiler tags and when they should be used. My thing is that it doesn’t hurt to slap a spoiler tag on something, so why not? There are times, though, that it looks we’re writing confidential FBI docs.

*SPOILERS*


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Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone): A Quick Look

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I have been moaning about the glut of mediocre games on Steam in the last–well, several months if not years. Steam Next Fest has become a drag. I’m not saying there aren’t good games in the Steam Next Fest; I am saying that it’s really hard to find that gem. That’s why I depend on groups likke Wholesome Games to give me a heads up on what’s new in cozy gaming. In this case, they had a trailer for a game called Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone). I have included it down below. I don’t usually go for the crunchy pixel look, but there was something endearing about this one. I don’t know what it is, but I was drawn in.

Then, I found out it was a cooking game, and I was sold. I didn’t even need to know the story or anything else. Me cooking for different animals*? Hell yeah! There was a demo, so of course, I installed it. I didn’t have much of an idea what to expect, so I went in with an open mind. I did love the fact that the game had an eighties feel to it. It’s in first person, but for whatever reason, my nausea remained at a very low level. It’s manageable, and I only had to take a break once.

I can’t overstate how charming the game is. And how it leads you gently from point to point. For the most part, I had no problem figuring out what I was supposed to do. Only once did I get stuck, and it was a glitch in the system. Meaning, it was a fault of the game–not anything I’d done.

By the way, my biggest complaint–and it’s not even that big–is just a bunch of small QOL issues. Such as it doesn’t constantly save, and you can’t auto-save. Which means that you can lose a small bit of gameplay. Like, a minute or so. It’s not great, but I’m also not too pressed about it.

Another small complaint–the frying pan mechanic is really frustrating. You have to cook a piece of food on one side for a few seconds before flipping it to cook the other side. Much like you have to do in real life, yes, but you have to flip it at a certain angle that is counterintuitive to me. And if you don’t do it just right, then it falls out of the pan and into the fire. And you have to cook it again. As someone who has awful dexterity in my fingers, this is agony to me. And it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay experience.

I sympathize with devs who want to include mundane activities, especially in a cozy cooking game, but–by the way. This has been called a creepy-looking cozy cooking simulator. I may be missing something, but it’s not creepy at all. I mean, there’s


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Dark Souls III: when FromSoft gets silly

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If people know Dark Souls, they think of it being a grimdark fantasy game that is relentlessly punishing. It’s hard AF, and all the bosses will destroy you. That’s the Cliff Notes version of how most people who don’t know From games well think about Dark Souls.

I’m not dissing people for that, by the way. They’re not wrong. The games are grim, dark, and utterly depressing at times. There’s a sense of nihilism* to them that can be disconcerting–even to me. I can see the hopeful spark in them–if I squint. But the darkness is pretty unrelenting. Here is my post from yesterday in which I waxed poetic about my love for the game.

That’s why the absolutely silly parts of the games are a blessing. Today, I was running through

*SPOILER*

the Grand Archives, which is a late game area because it’s a great farming area. I did it so many times in the past. You can clear around seventy K in one run through, which is a nice chunk of change. The thing is, there are these arms and hands that spring out of the books, and they can curse you if they touch you. They are everywhere!

The only way you can protect yourself from the hands/arms (and they’re a weird shade of purply-pink) is to dip your head in wax. Yeah, you read that right. There are pools of wax in strategic places in the archives, and there’s a prompt that says something like, “Dip your head in.” Did it say why? Of course not. Did it say what it would do? Nope! You were just supposed to trust that it was something you had to do because the game told you to.

Now, I will say that FromSoft rarely outright tells the player to do something detrimental (I want to say never, but there might be  a case or two) , but I wanted to know why I was dipping my head in wax and making myself look like a candle. And to make matters worse, I lost my big hat in the process.  Not literally as I still had the attributes, but it didn’t appear to be on my head any longer.

The enemies had the same waxy appearance (at least, the humanoid-looking ones), which made it even sillier. As you may guess, they are extremely weak to fire. My Chaos Bed Vestiges literally melted them. This will never not amuse me, by the way. Being a human candle, i mean. Especially as someone with a fondness for pyros. It just makes me laugh inwardly because it’s so goofy! But it’s presented so seriously, which makes it even more hilarious.


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Birdigo; A Quick Review

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Birdigo (John August, Corey Martin) is my casual/cozy word game that I am currently playing. It’s a word game that is a combination of Scrabble and Balatro (Local Thunk). You are a bird and you have to score words to make the filgght to each stop on a route. There are different conditions for each route, and you have to finish one to unlock the next.

There are feathers that modify something for the whole run. Like, you get ten flaps per each X you play. Flaps are points. There is also a power stat, and you multiple the two. I never know exactly how many points I’ll be getting per hand, which makes things very interesting.

This game very much has that “Just one more run” feel to it. Not quite as much as Balatro did, but that’s a good thing. I got so lost in that game; it really felt like an addiction that I just couldn’t quit. I lost actual days to the challenges, and at one point, I was so focused on finishing the Orange Stakes on the Plasma Deck, I had lost all the joy of playing the game. It’s supposedly the easiest deck, but it was the hardest one for me. I just could not get the hang of it, and there was a point where I was actively hating the game. That’s when I walked away from the game.

This is one of my issues (and probably partly because of me being neuroatypical): When I get into something, I get obsessed with it. It’s all I can think of, and I cannot let it go. It can be a good thing, such as with my martial arts. It allows me to focus on, say, the Double Fan Form until I taught the whole thing to myself. It took a year, yes, but I kept at it through the tough times. I don’t know why I didn’t quit–well, yes I do. It’s sheer stubbornness, really. I’m not competitive with other people, but I’m very competitive with myself.

I challenge myself to be the best, however, and sometimes, I’m too hard on myself. That’s because I’m Asian; that’s how we do. It’s also because I had parents who didn’t say much of anything nice about me or to me. Yes, that was partly an Asian thing, but it was also dysfunction. One thing I say to people is just because something is cultural, it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. What I mean by that is that every culture has its negative aspects, and I used to bristle when people tried to hold up Asians as the model minority because it’s just another way of not seeing us as individuals.

How the hell did I get here from where I was? I’m not sure, but whatever.

Back to the game! Oh, I see how I got there.

Anyway.


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Dark Souls III love is flourishing, part two

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I’m going to talk more about Dark Souls III (FromSoft) and how I’m absolutely in love with it again. But first, I want to share a video I found. I have posted it down below. I found the Elden Ring one first, and it just warmed my heart. These videos are so adorable, and they really just make me smile. It’s the little (tiny) things in life sometimes. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about one of my hardest bosses in the game. Today, I will be talking about another really hard boss.

*SPOILER*

I did an optional area today, including a bullshit boss that has the worst hitbox in the world. It’s called the Ancient Wyvern, and when you first encounter it, you do potato damage on it. There’s a message on the ground that says somethnig about a plunging attack. It’s a dev message, and it’s supposed to be a clue as to what you need to do. I don’t remember if I figured this out myself or not, but here’s what you have to do.

You have to race up the level as the Ancienty Wyvern chases you, breathing fire on you. There are enemies along the way, and you have to get to the top of the castle so you can–wait. We’ll get there in a minute. You can access this area roughly halfway through the game. In typical From faashion, it’s really hard to find this esoteric and obsucre area.

Shall I tell you how? Sure, why not. So. There’s an area with a bunch of dragons sitting, looking at a castle in the distance/on the horizon. First time, I saw it and thought , “Hm. I’ll get there eventually.” Because if you can see it, you can go there. At least in the Souls games.

Did I figure out how to get there on my own? Nope! I had to look it up and read the forums with one eye (trying not to see other spoilers). You have to go to another completely optional area, beat an optional boss, kill an enemy, and pick it up down the road. With this gesture, you then go to the area with the sitting dragons again. You do the gesture and get whisked away to the far-off castle.

Which is hard as hell.

Seriously. You don’t want to go there too early. It’s really hard. And the hardest boss in the base game is there. Optional, integral to the story, and so damn hard. It’s another one that I had to summon for in my first playthrough, and they are still so hard now .It’s the Nameless King* and the bird he rode in on. Who is called the King of the Storm. That’s the name bar you see when you first go into the boss arena.


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When you pick a fight with the Devil….

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You better be stronger than Hell.

I love that phrase so much. I want to make it my life mantra, but it doesn’t really make sense in and of itself. There is a lot of explaining I’d have to do if I went around saying it all the time. I’m going to include the trailer below once again because I like it that much.

I want to get a shirt with it emblazoned across in the Dark Souls III font (not sure that’s allowed). I would wear the hell out of that, pun not intended, but still funny. I was talking yesterday about the bosses that arre considered more difficult and how I found one of them (Dancer of the Boreal Valley) easy.

Today, I faced one of the four bosses who completely owned me the first time around. Back them, I was still of the mindset that I had to solo all the bosses or I was not a true Souls player*. I tried so hard, but this boss just had my number. It wasn’t just one boss–it was two. Hey, look at that. Double bosses are harder than single bosses. Um, spoiler warning for a ten-year old game.

*SPOILER WARNING*

This was not an optional boss, and it was the boss I had to beat in order to get my beloved late-game sword. It’s called Lorian’s Greatsword. Take a guess who you have to kill to get it. If you said Loriaan, you are half right! It’s Prince Lorian in the first half, and then his sickly and frail brother, Prince Lothric, climbs on his back and hits you with holy magic that takes away nearly my whole health bar. Granted, I only have 20…Vitality? They always change the name of the stats from game to game. No. It’s also Vigor. They didn’t change that one, which makes it worse. They change some , but not the others. Dark Souls III stats: Vigor, Attunement, Endurance, Vitality, Strength, Dex, Intelligence, Faith, and Luck. Elden Ring stats: Vigor, Mind, Endurance, Strength, Dex, Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane.

I looked up the cheese for this boss. There was one I had not heard of and hadn’t tried. I’ve done the Pestilent Mist cheese, and this cheese was similar. Take care of Lorian as quickly as you can. For the last hit, though, you have to be at the foot of the carpeted stairs that lead up to Lothric. You can’t be on the steps–you have to be as close as you can be without touching them. Then, you have to watch the cut scene. If you do it correctly, Lorian and Lothric will be in front of you, motionless (with Lothric on Lorian’s back).

The Pestilent Mist cheese is to spam the sorcery, Pestilent Mist. It’s a cloud that eats away at any human’s humanity (including the caster). So, yes, you have to make sure you cast it away from you. Then, just watch Lothric’s health melts away.

Oh, here’s the thing. In the second stage, you have to kill Lothric, not Lorian. You can kill Lorian if you wish, but when you do, Lothric will bring him back to life. So, you have to hit this tiny target on Lorian’s back, and it has a very janky hitbox.


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Demos? Demons? Definitely! Part seven

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I have one more post about demos and video games in general in me, and then I’m going to move on. Probably. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about this, that, and the other thing. One thing I was talking about is how my love for Dark Souls III (FromSoft) has flared up once again. I just played and took a glance at my playtime. It’s roughly eighteen hours, and I’m about two-thirds through the base game. The first time I played the game, it took me roughly seventy hours to beat the base game. That’s with all the hidden/optional areas. It’s still longer than most people, but…I’m actually guessing it probably took me longer. Closer to a hundred hours, maybe.

At that time, I still held to the toxic notion that you had to solo the bosses. I managed to do most of the bosses solo, but four of them I just could not (I did them later solo). Now that I’ve done all that, I have no compunction about summoning, and there are NPCs for several of the bosses. At least the ones you have to fight. The hardest boss (who is optional) does not have an NPC summon, unfortunately. And while I can sometimes get a human summon, it’s not a guarantee (and it’s more often not than that I can).

It’s funny which bosses I have trouble with and which  I don’t. The Dancer of the Boreal Valley is considered one of the harder bosses in the game, and I’ve never had trouble with her. She’s very susceptible to fire in the face as it turns out, and because my Attunement is higher this time than ever, in this run, I demolished her faster than I ever had before. I did see if there were any humans to summon, but since I did her on the first try, I’m not sure they would have shown up, anyway. There’s a special thing you have to do to prock her, and then you’re locked in the boss room with her.

I can usually get her on the first or second try, and I did it this time with such ease. It took less thatn a minute because my Chaos Bed Vestiges (best pyro in the game according to me) just melted her–literally. I read afterwards that Gnaw (swarms of flies that chew on the victim until they prock bleed) will do the same. I have Dorhy’s Gnawing , which is the souped up version. It takes 25 Faith to use it, which I just got.

One thing I don’t like about this game is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to level up. the secodn game of the series is probably the one in which it’s easiest to level. It’s not bad in Elden Ring as well. I’m back to smiling my way through Dark Souls III. It has been fairly smooth this time, even when I solo a boss (like I did with Dancer).


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Demos demos demos, part six

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I have more to say about demos, apparently. It falls under the saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” When I used to play casual games, I loved that there was a demo for every game. I said that I wanted hardcore devs to do the same. Well, now they are, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong. I like being able to try out a game before buying it. And it’s been great for me tossing out shit games to begin with. I can’t help but feel, though, that some devs focus too much on the demo and not evough on their game. I get why, mind, but it’s–how do I put this? I would rather they focused on making a good game and no demo than a half-assed game with a demo. That sounds meaner than I intend it to, but I’m tired of shitty games.

This is when something good (Steam Next Fest) becomes something bad (thousands of slop games to wade through). I don’t remember the last time I was actually happy or excited for a Next Fest.

Part of the problem is that Steam always has sales and fests. I can’t remember the last time I visited and there wasn’t any kind of sale. I’ve become numb to it, really. When someone in the Discord says there’s a Steam sale, I mentally shrug my shoulders and move on with my life. I may check it out or I may not, but I definitely am not excited about it . Even if it’s a game that I’m anticipating, my reaction is still muted.

This is the downside to having so many games available and at my fingertips 24/7. When there is so much in the buffet, nothing is appealing. Plus, whatever I choose has me questioning if maybe I wouldn’t prefer something else. In the last post, I ranted about the Steam Next Fest, and I mentioned a few demos I actually enjoyed. The thing is, most of those come from fests or the Discord I’m in (as I also mentioned yesterday). Very few if any of them came from the Steam Next Fest.

It’s getting to the point where I’m just stridently ignoring all the salse and fests on Steam. I may go and look at a desultory five or ten games, but there’s no eager anticipation in my heart. The game I’m most excited about from the demo is  Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone). I heard about it…I’m not sure where. Maybe at the Wholesome Games Direct? They have a trailer of the demo, so it’s probably them.

I was skeptical because it’s first-person and it has that crunchy pixel art that is not my jam. But the premise intrigued me (make food for various creatures in a ‘creepy cozy-looking simulator’ as the description on Steam says). I have not seen anything creepy about it yet, but it’s certainly atmospheric.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the first-person perspective didn’t bother me very much, and I think it’s because the graphics are not at all realistic (and not meant to be), so my brain wasn’t freaked out thinking whatever happening was real.


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Steam Next Fest? NEXT! (Demos, part five)

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Ok. This is it. I’m going to talk more about what I want in a game and what I don’t. And how I am having trouble finding the former as I’m wading through the slop that contains the latter. The thing is, I am part of the problem. If I’m buying an indie game, I’m pretty relaxed as to what I expect from said game. Actually, in general, I’m pretty chill. That way, I’m pleasantly surprised if a game turns out to be good.

Is that a good attitude? Probably not. Am I going to change it? Nope. Here is my post from yesterday in which I mostly talked about how terrible most soulslikes are. Why? Because it’s related to the topic at hand; I swear.

The topic is how once something goes big, there are a million wannabes, and most of them are not nearly as good as the original. I mentioned Stardew Valley (Concerned Ape) yesterday, and today I want to talk about Balatro (LocalThunk).

When it first came out, I stayed far away from it because I knew that it might be the kind of game that I would obsess over. When I finally gave in, I was so right to be wary of it. It has that ‘just one more run’ feel to it and that intangible something that kept me playing. For hours. Upon hours. Upon multiple hours. And got obsessed with it in a very unhealthy way. I got what I consider my personal plat for it*, and it was my life for a couple of months.

It’s such a simple game, and it looks very basic. Aesthetically, there’s not much to it. It’s competent. That’s the way I would describe it. I hadf to turn off the music because it was tickling my brain in a weird and not welcome way. The music wasn’t bad, I hasten to add; it just wasn’t something I wanted to listen to for hours on end. Plus, I watch videos as I game, so I usually don’t like music in my games. (FromSoft games are the exception.)

Balatro went from the little game that could to one of those games that define a genre. I have seen so many balatrolikes, and I will say that most of them are not as good as the original. Which is a theme that continues with games i love and their imitators.

I don’t mind that games try to copy something successful, but I do mind that they often are way too slavish to the source material to be enjoyable. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn’t necessarily make for interesting or fun gameplay.


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Demos on my mind, part four

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Let’s talk more about demos. I have tried several more, and I do think the fun of plowing through a half-dozen demos has considerably dimmed. I’m still looking for that hidden gem, but there is just SO much slop. I think I have found one decent game for every twenty crappy games I see. I was talking yesterday about things that seem to be missing from so many games, and I want to continue that in this post.

One thing that I’ve noticed is how many copycat games there are. This is to be expected and it’s not just limited to games, of course. Anything that becomes popular gets hundreds of others trying to copy what made them popular. The problem is that most of the copies if not all of them fail to get to the heart of what made the original special.

I will use FromSoft as an example because they fit the brief perfectly. When they first came out with Demon’s Souls, there were more naysayers than supporters. In that time, games very very much hand-holdy and making sure that the player felt overpowered and unable to die. In fact, dying was made pretty toothless with the ability to respond without any negative effect becoming the standard.

FromSoft (especially Miyazaki) came along and said, “Nah, fuck that shit, yo.” Not those words in particular, but the sentiment. Demon’s Souls was hard and gave no quarter. I have not played it, but I have seen others play it. It’s hard and grueling as you would expect from a From game. More to the point, it does not coddle the player.

You could say the same for Dark Souls, which I have played.  Several times. Both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls grew to be cult favorites, and Miyazaki was pressured to porting the latter to PC. It was awful. A really terrible port. It’s only because of a mod called dsfix that anyone could play it on the PC at something resembling ok. Because of that, I did not have to experience the Blighttown slowdown (it ran at literally 2 fps for some people).

Fast-forward to 2021 when FromSoft released the biggest game of the year, Elden Ring. It became a huge commercial hit, and it’s what made them cross the rubricon (heh) from niche to mainstream. In the time between Demon’s Souls and Elden Ring, their success has spawned countless soulslikes. A few have been good, while the vast majority have been serivecable, bad, or horrid.

This is the way it goes when something hit sthe cultural conscienceness. There are a bunch of lemmings in any industry (and shareholders desperate to jump on the latest trend–see the debacle of the live service nonsense of the last year), and they will milk the shit out of a trend until there is nothing left but a limp, lifeless husk. In the first few years after Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, there were no copies, obviously. Then the first Lords of the Fallen (Deck13 and CI Games) came out in 2014, and it was the first Souls clone (at least of any notability).


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