Yesterday, Iwas talking about games that have disappointed me in this year. I’m not mad, just disappointed. Are there any games I’m mad about? I don’t think so. Speaking of disappointing, though. Here’s the next award.
The FromSoft game I really wish I could have played, but I just could not
Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon
Sigh. I don’t like talking about this game because it just hurts. When the trailer dropped at…whatever GamesFest it was (last year summer? I don’t remember), I was stoked–but also worried. I was stoked because it was FromSoft! I have played every one of their newer games (starting from Dark Souls), barring Demon’s Souls. If it ever comes to the PC, I will play that as well.
So, of course, I was going to try it. I had to, right? It looked sick as hell, even though I was not a big mech person. That was an understatement. I did not care for mechs. I didn’t like anything remotelyl sci-fi. I was a fantasy person all the way.
I fired it up and was worried from the start. The controls were not intuitive at all, and I could not understand why there were two different boost buttons (I think it was boost? It’s been a while). I mean, I theoretically understood why as they did different things, but it was not something my brain would accept.
I did ok until I got to the first boss. Then, I failed to that boss so many times. I finally got it, but I wasn’t quite sure how. One thing that really made it hard for me was the fact that deflecting was a key component of the combat (a la Sekiro). That was my least-favorite aspect of that game.
In fact, everything about this game was my least-favorite parts of the FromSoft games. You have to ‘platform’ (with a big, clunky mech!) from place to place, and I could not tell what was safe to platform to and what was not.
I just could not do it. I kept failing to land and would fall out of bounds. If I recall, I didn’t die from it, but lost chunks of health. Maybe in certain areas, I did die immediately. These were fairly simple jumps for people who did not have spatial recognition difficulties, but it was something that I could not ‘git gud’ over.
FromSoft is terrible with accessibility. I have to say it. They don’t include even the rudimentary things that might help. But in this case, I don’t know what they could have done to make the game playable by me.
I gave up soon after that. I did not even make it to the first real boss (the boss I killed was the tutorial boss). It’s a shame because I really wanted to play the game, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Best game for making me feel seen outside the game
Witchy Life Story
I am a weirdo. I know this. I don’t expect to see myself in any games I play so whenever a sop is thrown my way, I am pleasantly surprised. This year, I played a cozy little game called Witchy Life Story (Sundew Studios). I was drawn by the warm hand-painted environments and characters–so bright! So colorful! So charming! The thing I loved the most about it, though, was that I could play as agender. It’s the only game where that is a possibility. As much as I shrug over being called she/her, it was so refreshing not to have any pronouns at all. And it was great that there were characters of all different pronouns.
This is something that people in the majority don’t get. Or, they get it, but in the exact wrong way. Being around people like you is great! The reason I say that normies get it in the wrong way is because they only notice when they perceive they are losing ground.
It’s like when certain gamers complain about HOW GAMES ARE RUINED BECAUSE OF SJW WOKE DIVERSITY WHY CAN’T EVERYONE BE A WHITE GUY LIKE ME?!? bullshit.
They can’t see the irony of them complaining about one out of a hundred characters not being a white dude because of pandering. Or the whole ‘take your politics out of games’ canard. Their outlook is also political, but because it’s considered the mainstream ponit of view or not thought about at all, it’s read (by them) as neutral. Or the way it’s supposed to be. So deliberately doing something different (like making the protag a black woman, for example), is seen as being political or divisive.
(Resists urge to go on a long rant about assumptions of the norm.)
Even in my favorite game of all time (tied with Dark Souls III), Elden Ring, they were clumsy in handling gender. They made the bodies Type A and Type B, which is good. But if you choose A, then you’re addressed as he and if you choose B, you’re addressed as she. Which means even if they didn’t say man and woman, that’s what it meant in the game.
I’m not mad; I’m just disappoointed.
This little game by an indie dev showed that you can have more than just male and female without much difficulty. And your choice of gender doesn’t matter as to what your appearance is. I chose agender and still appeared like a woman (because I wanted my character to look as much like me as possible. So fat, curvy, and long black hair).
It’s a short game with very simple gameplay, but it had so much heart.
The game I was looking forward to the most that fell the flattest
Mineko’s Night Market
Over a year ago, I became aware of a game that was a mix between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. The artwork was extremely cute, and it had cats in it. Lots of cats. It was Mineko’s Night Market by Meowza Games, and it was one of my most anticipated games for this year.
It kept getting delayed, but I was fine with that. I would rather a game be good when it releases than it be endlessly patched because it released too early. I mean, the latter is better than not being patched at all, but still.
I was hyped when the game came out. I found the first few days…interesting. I enjoyed the intro and exploring the town, but I did not enjoy meeting the people. For whatever reason, more than one person (including her father!!) treated Mineko like shit. The asshole boy who lassoes her into doing his gruntwork for example. I wanted to kick him in the shins. And as I said, her father is an absolute asshole. He’s so mean to her. I realize it’s supposed to be affectionate, but it did not come across that way. At all.
On the second or third day, I got to go to the cat sanctuary. There is a painful ‘avoid the Gmen’ puzzle that is really bad. Like, astonishingly bad. And I learned I would have to do this repeatedly throughout the game. That zapped a lot of my enthusiasm for the game.
I made it to Saturday night, which was when the night market happened. That was fun, sort of, but it didn’t really do much for me. And it only happens once a week.
By the second week, I was pretty much done with the game. It seemed so derivative and it didn’t have any new ideas. Obviously, I didn’t get far into the game, but I just couldn’t make myself play any more. I did read Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s review of the game–and it was pretty much how I felt about the game. It’s too bad because I was looking forward to it so much.