Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Video Games

I lied. More on why SotE is my GOTY, part five

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I have more to say on Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoft). Yes, I said that yesterday’s post would be the last, but it’s not. Why? Because I started watching RKG’s Retry Dark Souls II/Scholar of the First Sin (the first series they did after starting their own company), which led to me starting my own playthrough. I chose the same starting class they did (knight), and I vowed to follow their path. Which I have, but I quickly remembered that I simply cannot play the game without a ranged option. Yes, they added a bow, but, ah, let’s just say Rory and bows do not get along.

Side note: It’s incredhible that people are still playing this game. When I got to the second bonfire in the Forest of Fallen Giants, there were so many summoning signs! Also, I forgot that you can’t play offline (without a lot of fuss) with this game. Anyway, I summoned Kanye West for

*SPOILERS*

The Last Giant, and that was a lot of fun. Later, I summoned someone for The Pursuer, and I was able to use the ballistas to make quick work of The Pursuer (my summon knew to jump out of the way). Then, in Heide’s Tower of Flame, I summoned a human to do the Old Dragonslayer (I had already killed the dragon along the way), and they died three times before even reaching the boss. I kept running back to summon them without resting first, so by the time we got to the boss, they had all their stuff. They were a sorceror.

This game is pretty generous with NPC summons for boss fights, which is nice, but it’s even nicer to be able to summon humans. More fun, too! I love that there are still people dedicated to this game as with all the other From games.

Back to Elden Ring in general and Shadow of the Erdtree in particular. There were complaints about Elden Ring (and Dark Souls III before it) not being innovative enough. I’m not going to get into that because I’ve written about it before, but my belief is that they were endlessly tweaking their formula and in some games, the tweaks were significant, but not game-changing. Yes, in Bloodborne and Sekiro, they completely changed the combat (notably, my two least-favorite From games), but in Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, and Elden Ring, it was more about polishing and adding things that made life significantly better to an already-existing formula.

It’s tinkering with the engine rather than adding spinning rims. It’s nowhere near as flashy, but it’s much needed.

I have often thought that the more popular FromSoft gets, the less credit they get for what they do. It’s become expected that they will do amazing things. So much so, many people don’t even bat an eye any longer. Or they think that From should be doing more.


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Last post appreciating Shadow of the Erdtree, part four

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I haven’t played Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoft, Elden Ring DLC) in a hot sec, so it’s been great to be able to revisit it. The more I write about it, the more I remember how truly breathtaking it was. Watching Krupa (of RKG) go through it in Lore Masterclass (additional show to their Elden Ring Retry series) makes me want to get back to it. Even though–I’ll get to that later. And, of course,

*SPOILERS*

I think we take for granted somewhat how consistently excellent FromSoft is. I’m not calling out anyone because that’s just the way it goes. It’s human nature to become used to whatever the current situation is.

Side note: This is what happened with my medical crisis, for example. It was so shocking and it was such a miracle that I survived, and I thought about it every day for a year. Every fucking day. It was that big a deal, and I think I can be excused for thinking that. Then, slowly, over time, it became less and less of a big deal. And this is fine! It should be that way because it’s not good for the brain to go around thinking that any one event is A Big Deal all the time. It’s still something that is important to me, obviously, because I would not be here if I had died permanently. But, and I don’t know how to put this delicately, there’s no way to feel it every minute of the day. I’m still going to be angry, upset, or pissed off. Hell, I’m going to be bored or even just waste hours playing Balatro (LocalThunk). Ahem.

Side note redux: I think I’m going to quit Balatro. I just can’t quit playing it, and it’s detrimental to–well, my life. Plus, I’m in the grinding time in which I have to play tons of meaningless games in order to unlock two legendary jokers I don’t yet have. There is only one way to get them, and that’s to open packs of cards. Arcana packs or Spectral packs. At least that’s what the internet has deemed to be the one true way, and there is not a consensus about it.

Here is the deal. You need The Soul card in order to get a Legendary Joker. I did not know this as I was originally playing, and I came across three The Souls cards naturally. Just because it was so different (and immediately special), I chose it. I got three different Legendary Jokers, and now I can’t find the other two for love nor money. I have come across The Soul two or three more times, but it’s only had a dupe.

I looked up for the quickest way to get the Legendary Jokers, and it’s tedious farming. Basically opening up pack upon pack upo,n pack in the vain hope of hitting the .3% chance of getting The Soul. It makes it more irritating when I get a dupe, obviously.

This is not fun. I hate playing the game this way. I don’t have to get these jokers, obviously, but they are suposed to be really good. There’s also one other joker I have not unlocked. It’s a Rare Joker, and you have to get 100,000,000 chips in one hand to unlock it. The only way to do  that is to use the Plasma Deck (for reasons I’m not going to get into here). I haven’t been able to do that, either, because I’m shaky on making the most of that deck.

I’m not as annoyed by that, however, because at least you can math it (if you can math properly). With the Legendary Jokers, it’s all a matter of luck. It’s enraging, honestly, and it’s sucked the fun out of the game for me. As well as having to do the increasingly more difficult stakes with the different decks.


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Why SotE is my GOTY, part three

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In yesterday’s post, I talked about what I liked about Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring DLC, FromSoft, my GOTY), and one thing that I really didn’t like. The latter was how easy it was to fuck up the NPC questlines, which was somewhat my fault, but also the fault of the strength of the game, too. The intricacy of the level design. It spins me around, which is great for grandeur and epicness, buut not great for my sense of direction.

Since I want to talke about the whole DLC, there will be

*SPOILERS*

When I reached Shadow Keep, I was already turned around and disoriented. Because of the ladder I mentioned in the last post, I approached from the back. This is not especially hidden, and I’m sure thatt many people went in the back way.

Shadow Keep is both amazing and frustrating as fuck. The two entrances lead to different floors, though you can get to one of the floors you reach from the front by jumping down to it from one of the floors you reach from the back. This legacy dungeon is so labyrinthian, I was constantly turned around. This is where two of the NPCs are, and I completely missed one of them (Ansbach) in his hidey hole. I found the other one, Redmane Freyja, near the Site of Grace on the seventh floor. She was trying to puzzle something out and said she should talk to Sir Ansbach.

This is where I fucked up. What you’re supposed to do is go back to Ansbach and tell him what Freyja had said. He’ll give you a letter to give to her, but the wikis warn not to give Ansbach the Secret Rite Scroll you find in the keep BEFORE getting the letter to give to Freyja because it might block the progress in her questline. If you do things in the wrong order, you won’t be able to give her the letter–and she just stays stuck in the same place for the rest of the game. You can get her shit at the end of the game, but you can’t finish her questline.

The NPC questlines are off the charts difficult to follow in the DLC. I mean, they’re never easy to follow, but From definitely kicked it up a notch for this DLC. The only NPC questline I did right was Igon’s, and that’s because it’s ok to miss one step in his questline AND he’s literally on the road where you’re going. You can’t miss him the first time, and I will admit that I looked up where to find him later on.


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Shadow of the Erdtree is worthy, part two

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Yesterday, I revealed my actual Game of the Year, and I’m sure it was a huge surprise to exactly no one. Most of the time, I have to make up a game of the year award that I can bestow upon FromSoft because it’s not as if they have a game releasing every year. This year, however, is one of the blessed years in which they released a new game. Well, at least a new DLC. I will admit that it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was definitely released within this year.

I shan’t go into why this year was so difficult for me because I did it in the last post. Suffice to say, I’m ready to throw 2024 away and not think about it any further.

There was such a big brouhaha about Shadow of the Erdtrree being nominated for Game of the Year. It’s funny. Now that FromSoft has entered the mainstream (somewhat), people are beginning to turn on them. It’s the weird thing when an indie band gets popular, then half of their hardcore fans don’t like them any longer. Or accuse them of selling out. That happened to Liz Phair when she released an album that she admitted was meant to be more popular than her previous works. Oh, the gnashing of the teeth by her older fans! Oh, the calls of ‘sellout’. I never got it because that old stuff was still there, and you could still enjoy it. Also, if more people bought her new album and listened to her older stuff, they might like that as well. And even if you didn’t like her new album, why would you be against her trying something different?

This was actually one of the issues with the second Dark Souls game. There were way too many expectations for it, and some of them were diametrically opposite. People wanted it to be like the first game, and yet, they wanted it to iterate as well. They did not like the things that were different–like losing health every time you died until you had half-health. There were ways to mitigate it, but it was pretty brutal in the beginning of the game.

And yet. That was similar to Demon’s Souls, which many people didn’t realize. You only had half-health when you were in soul form, but it was better for world tendency (never mind). This meant that people would jump off a high point in the Nexus after beating a boss and ending up in body form. There was a ring that mitigated that, which you could find in the first area. If you wore the ring, then you were able to have three-quarters health. There was a similar ring in Dark Souls II, so it was clearly a nod to Demon’s Souls.


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My actual game of the year for 2024

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Alright. I have been dilly-dallying long enough. I have stretched out my games of the year in my usual fashion. Yesterday, I talked about two indie games that are on my top five non-From games of all time list, and today, I am finally going to announce my game of the year. As if I need to. I’ll do it, anyway, just in case it needs to be said.

My game of the year (GOTY) for 2024 beyond a shadow of a doubt despite the controversy it stirred up for even being nominated

Shadow of the Erdtree (Elden Ring, DLC, FromSoft)

Man. It’s been quite the year. It flew by, and yet, at the same time, it’s dragged out because of a personal tragedy. When the Shadow of the Erdtree trailer was surprise-released back on February 21st, my personal tragedy started. I was not able to really participate in the joyous celebration on that day or the next, when the real tragedy struck.

By the time the DLC rolled around four months later, I was ready to play it. I was still in pain and sorrow because of what happened four months earlier. I can’t think about that time without tearing up, still, nearly a year later. Even while I was rejoicing about a new Miyazaki world in which to roam, a part of my heart was still quietly breaking. The fact that the name of the DLC included the name of my beloved who is no longer with me made it even more bittersweet.

Before my medical crisis, I had so many plans for Elden Ring. I saw the first real trailer for it at GeoffCon in summer of 2021, and I lost my shit. Another Miyazaki world in which I could wander  endlessly? Yes, please! I had all these grandiose ideas about what I would do in the game. I would have one solo play chaarcter and another for co-op. I was going to get the plat, of course, because apparently, that ws a thing with me now (except Sekiro. Ain’t no way in hell that’s happening).

Then, the medical crisis happened, and all that was wiped from my brain. Once it was established that I was fine, more or less, after what happened to me, all I cared about was that I had another Miyazaki game to play. Any ideas of soloing or playing in a certain way was wiped from my brain. None of that mattered, and it seemed silly that it ever had. I even wrote an article about it for a gaming website, and it really crystalized for me what the From games meant to me.


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What makes a game great (to me)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about my two top five (six) list of games. One is my list of the FromSoft games and the other is my list of my five favorite other games of all time. I have to do it because otherwise my top five fave list would just be From games. I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s not respresentative of my interests over all.

What do I mean by that? I mean that while I adore the From games, I also really like indie games for very different reasons. I’ll be real. I don’t get that deep in my feels while playing From games. Don’t get me wrong. There are feelings there. Liking wanting to bonk this character or that. I kid, but I am also not kidding. There are many tragic stories in the games, and they are involved and in-depth. Layered, even. I have had feelings while experiencing the different NPC questlines, sure, but…

Is this heresy to say? It might be, but I don’t care. I’m just keeping it real.

In playing games, I have not gotten as deep in my feels as I did while playing at least three of the games on my non-From list. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall); Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games); and, Cozy Grove (Spry Fox). They are all special in different ways, but they have a thread that runs through all of them. Death.

I played the three games before my medical crisis (and some Cozy Grove after), and now, they mean so much more since I died (twice!). I have a completely different lens through which I look at life, and these games have stayed with me. I talked about Night in the Woods in yesterday’s post, and today, I want to talk about Spiritfarer.

What can I say about this game? First, it’s made by a dev that I had tried one of their prior games (or both. I can’t quite remember. Sundered and Jotun), and I did not like either. They have a new game that is played by up to 33(!) players at the same time–which is also so much not my jam. Howevwer, when I saw the trailer for Spiritfarer (which I’ll include below), I knew immediately that it was something special. The environments were hand-drawn, rich in color, and just so lovely. The music suited the game, being simultaneously ethereal and haunting,  and the characters were rich and complex.

I will say that I didn’t realize it was actually tagged as a platformer because that’s such a minor aspect of the game, and it’s the part I least-enjoyed. I won’t get into that, but the platforming at the end almost made me quit the game.

Anyway, the main character is a silent protagonist named Stella who is the titular spiritfarer. Her job is to take people to the Everdoor at the end of their lives.  As the player, I had to build up the boat on which I spent a lot of time making things. There’s a lot of plant growing, cooking, and other such activities on the boat.


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Leading up to my GOTY 2024 award

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I’m back for my (probably) last post about my game of the year (GOTY). I say probably because we all know I have the tendency to go off the rails. I have every intention of making this the last post, but who knows what I might think of along the way?

Here’s an interesting thing about my memory since my medical crisis. It’s completely gone. Well, not completely, but it’s a fraction of what it used to be. Before my medical crisis, I had an excellent memory. Now, it’s completely gone. Or rather, it’s very spotty. When I first got out of the hospital, I had such a hard time with names. Granted, I was high as a kite so that probably had more to do with it.

Now, I can remember names. But dates? No. Things that were planned? No. Before my medical crisis, I had no issues remembering which days I had Taiji private lessons, for example. Now, if I’m doing something engrossing before the time, I have to put a sticky on my monitor to remind me. I’ll be real. It’s just if I’m playing a game at the time, and it’s only fairly recently. I have a hunch it’s more to do with me not bothering to remember than me actually forgetting.

I took a quick look at my Steam library, and there are a few games that I had fun with, but nothing really memorable. Many of them are based around cat restaurants, which was a big theme for me this year.

I will say that as is my wont, I mostly play three or four big (big meaning games that truly engross me) games and a half-dozen smaller ones intermittently. I have a few cozy games I play late at night when I just want to relax and unwind.

Here’s the way I do my GOTY. As everyone knows, I am a huge FromSoft fan. Basically, I split things up between From games and non-From games. The latter includes mostly indie games, mostly cozy games, and mostly quirky games that others may or may not have heard of. I have my list of top FromSoft games of all time and a list of my top five favorite non-FromSoft games.

A quick recap of my lists.

My favorite FromSoft games of all time

6. Sekiro
5. Bloodborne
4. Dark Souls
3. Dark Souls II

We need to talk here. I have gotten so much shit ovre this part of my list because I place Sekiro at the bottom. No matter how many carefully I phrase it, people get mad. Most people think either Sekiro and/or Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game with Dark Souls (OG) in the mix as well.


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My (non-From) game of the year, 2024

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My usual schtick for my game of the year is to have two. One From game and one non-From game. I thought this year was going to be different (only the one From game) because other than the obvious, I didn’t really love any other game I played this year. The two I mentioned in yesterday’s post, were enjoyable and worth my time. However, I would not consider either of them even close to game of the year, even if either of them had been released in 2024.

By the way, when I talk about my games of the year, I am talking about the games I played this year, not games that were necessarily released in this year. Hey. It’s my list, and I’ll do whatever I want with it. That means making up silly names for the awards and handing them out almost haphazardly. I wanted to give a shout-out to games i quite enjoyed this year, but that did not make it onto my top tier list.

It’s late, so I’m going to wait until tomorrow for that. For tonight, I’m going to write about one game. I’m calling it…ah…let me think.

The game that I studiously ignored for several months because I knew better, but it really is the indie GOTY

Balatro (LocalThunk)

I was not ready for this game. At all. It released on February 20th, but it didn’t become a part of the collective consciousness until it was released on mobile in late September. Then, everyone was playing it and everyone was talking about it. I didn’t pay much attention because I’m not really into card games. I tried several that just did not grab my attention, and I thought this would be more of the same.

Let’s be real. If you just hear about the game, you’re not going to be impressed. “It’s a poker game, but it’s also a roguelike/roguelite. Oh, you can buy different kinds of cards to supplement your build (stone cards, glass cards, steel cards, etc). And you can level up different hands (one pair, two pair, three of a kind, etc.). In addition, there are different editions of the cards, and there are tarot cards, planetary cards, etc., as well. I  have included the launch trailer below that summarizes the game neatly. Now that I’ve played it, the trailer makes sense. If I had watched it beforehand, I would have been confused and probably not into it.

The look of it is very simple. Yes, there are swirls of colors, but it’s pretty basic. I turn the music off when I play because I like to watch videos as I play games, and the music on repeat bothers my brain.


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My favorite games of 2024, kinda

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Well, we’re coming to the end of the year. This year has gone by so fast. Like a blink of an eye, and it’s been the worst year of my life thus far. I lost my soul in February, and I have not gotten it back again. I keep on keeping on, but I feel empty inside.

I have never been in a less festive mood (even though I’m happy for those who celebrate), but I want to do my weird-ass end-of-the-year game awards, anyway. I want to remind everyone that this is not the best games of the years or anythin close to that. This is my list of games that I enjoyed the most this year. I thought there weren’t many games I played, but when I looked at my Steam library, there were more than I had remembered.

Today, I want to talk about three games that I quite enjoyed–and they all came in the second half of the year (for me). Two are indie games whilst one is Triple A. Let’s talk about them in the order that I played them. None of them are my game of the year, of course. There can only be one in that category, and that will be a post on a later date.

Let’s roll.

Best knock-off Hogwarts game with no awful transphobia clinging to its very marrow

Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive).

This is an indie game made by two guys. That’s impressive given the scope of this game. It’s an RNG roguelite adventure tale set in a wizarding school, and that’s basically the gist of the story. In fact, the story is probably the weakest part of the game as it’s just you’re a novice wizard in your first day of wizarding school, and something is wrong with the school. That’s it. Nothing deeper than that. You have tons of classmates, but they’re just randomized characters. I do like the customization of my character and that I got to unlock clothing and a few pieces of jewelry for different achievements. And I could color my hair whenever I wanted. Although, for whatever reason, I could not make my hair true black–why is this a thing? I have found that to be true in more than one game. Black is more like dark brown.

Anyway, the layout of the rooms is procedurally generated, but there are a limited amount of rooms on each floor. Each room has a secret, but there is only one you can solve per floor (the others aren’t activated). I figured out maybe half on my own and had to look up the rest. Also, by the fifty time, the innovativeness wore off. I’m not complaining about that, by the way, but just noting it.

I really enjoyed learning the different spells and mixing and matching. However, and maybe this is just the way I play games, once I uncovered all the spells, there was one spell I stuck to the most–barrage. Each spell has eight artefacts you can fine that are modifiers for that spell. I used barrage, shield, and ascend roughly 80% of the time. There were some I never used, which I consider a weakness of the game. I get that different people like different builds (it’s like that in FromSoft games), but there are some spells that I completely ignore (unless I need them to solve a puzzle). I’m sad that the flame spell, bombard, just isn’t that viable for me because it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to cast.


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Balatro part three (I can’t quit it)

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Am I making a third post about Balatro (LocalThunk)? Yup. Did I ragequit the game when getting what I considered to be an unfair final boss? Also yup! Did I go back the next day and win the next run? Yup for the third time!

Let’s talk about that loss. Before I do, here is my post from yesterday. For whatever reason, I didn’t actually finish it until just before starting this post–and then I ended it abruptly to write this one. Hey, it’s the holidays so I do what I want! I have to be careful, though, because if I don’t  follow a schedule, I tend to not do the thing at all (in this case, writing posts and writing 2,000 words of fiction/nonfiction a day).

Let’s talk about that loss. There are different bosses you can fight after a small blind round and a big blind round. The bosses all have one negative thing you have to overcome as I mentioned before. I’m not sure if the bosess are restricted to a pool in each round (like most roguelikes), but that’s definitnely the case with the final round. These are very special rounds, and I’m not fond of any of them. But the one that really just took the wind out of my sale was the

*SPOILER WARNING*

Violet Vessel. I keep wanting to call it Violet Assassin, and people online have called it Violent Vessel, which is also funny. The qualifier for this boss is a really big blind–in this case, 3 times the normal amount–which is 100,000. So, in this case, you have to get 300,000. Well, not dollars, but chips. I call it monies. 

I had been cruising along really easily in this run, barely breaking a sweat. Then, I hit the big boss, saw the requirement, and I just deflated. There was no way I was going to make 300,000–my deck was just not good enough for that. I tried, but my heart wasn’t in it. I managed to get 100,000+, but that was cold comfort when I had to get three times that amount.

I cursed and immedaitely quit out of the game. I vented about it in the RKG Discord Balatro channel and thought about not going back. That would actually be for the best because I am too into this game.

I went back, of course, and I won the next game. And now I’ve won a game on the next level. See, white stake is the base level. Red stake is what you get for winning one game. You can only play red stake with a deck that you have won once with. Red stake is that you get no chips for winning the small blind. Therefore, it’s better to skip it and get the reward instead. It’s oftentimes souped up joker at the end of the round (in the shop). Jokers will make and/or break you.


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