Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Video Games

What ten games define me

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There’s a meme going around in Instagram (I saw it on a video, not on Insta itself) about posting an image of you in a book author pose surrounded by the ten games you’ve played that you would tell people if you wanted them to get to know you. It’s emphatically not a list of your ten favorite games, but the ten games that define you. I was intrigued by the idea because I would have thought they were one and the same. The more I thought about it, though, thne more I understood the difference.

I decided to make my own list, and I think there are a few really surprising choices on the list. Several are what you would expect, and then there are a few that are just what they are. I’ll explain that more when I get to them. These are in no particular order. They might be loosely chronological, but maybe not. We’ll see!

1. Ms. Pac-Man (Atari). When I was a teenager, my parents would drag my brother and me to various Taiwanese events that went on for hours. It didn’t help that they NEVER started on time, so that added an hour to the wait.

The events were often at the local uni student union. In the basement was a bowling alley with a few arcade games. One of them was Ms. Pac-Man, and I would play it for hours to pass the thime. It was a comfort game, plus it planted the idea in the back of my brain that the protag of a video game could be a woman. Or at least female-coded. Yes it was just Pac-Man with a bow, but still! It was also a beacon of light during a very dark period of my life, and I will always appreciate it for that.

2. Pitfall! (Activision).  This was the first video game I played. Well, among the first video games I played and my favorite. We had an Atari, and I would play this over and over. This game really scratched the itch that my neurospicy brain has in that playing it over and over again soothed the savage beast within. I have fond memories of playing this with my brother when I was a preteen–one of the only pleasant memories I had as a child.

3. Torchlight (Runic Games). During my twenties and early-to-mid thirties, I only played casual games. I loved them, but I wanted to spread my wings. I asked my new buddy, Ian, what game he would recommend. He thought about it and said I might like a new game called Torchlight. I booted it up, saw that there was a choice of three characters. One of them was a woman who looked vaguely Asian, and the other two were dudes. I immediately chose the woman because that’s always going to appeal to me more. She was the ranged class, which also suited me. and I had a pet cat who took items to town for me, sold them, and brought me back the money.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): my actual official review, part five

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This is it–my true actual official review on Hades II (Supergiant Games). I will not write another post about this game. Ever! This, of course, is not true, but I am going to try my damnedest to make this the last post Here is yesterday’s post in which I mostly ranted about the ending of the game. I will briefly mention it in this post, but not to the same extent.

I’m going to do something wildly different with this review. Why? Because there are three numbers I want to give it, and since it’s my blog,  I’m going to do it. In addition, I’m going to spplit categories in two because that’s just how the game felt to me. It’ll make sense as I go. First up, let’s talk about the caharacters. And, yes, there will be rampant spoilers from now on.

*SPOILERS*

NPCs: I am so spilt on this category. In general, the NPCs in this game are not as good as they were in the last. While I did not love all the NPCs, I did appreciate that several had good stories. (While also noting that some were half-baked. My poor Hypnos.)

I like the Olympians just fine. I don’t like that Athena and Ares don’t show up until after a certain point (I think you have to beat Typhon the first time? Maybe?) They are both still great in this game, but I wish they were available from the start. I grew to really like Poseidon in this game (who was meh in the last), and the rest were fine. Oh, I still love Demeter, in part because Ireally dig her ice abilities.

There are two NPCs whom I really adored–Moros and Icarus. I did not like Narcissus at first, but he really grew on me. Same with Scylla. At first, I jsut wanted to punch her in the face. By the end of the game, I really enjoyed meeting up with her. Some were fine, like Odysseus, Hecate, and Medea. Some were meh such as Circe, and two of them were horrible: Nemesis and Eris.

Overall, I thought the NPCs were weaker in this game than in the first. I give them a 6. If Nemesis and Eris were gone, I would bump it up to a 7.5 or maybe even higher. Yes, they annoyed me that much. I hated them by the end of the game.

Music/environment/vibes: This is perhaps the best part of the game. The vibes are great, the enironments are thriving (mostly), and the music is top notch. I can’t give these elements enough praise. Here, the homage to the first game really shone, and I have to give it high marks. The video below of Scylla and the Sirens is my favorite song, Bewitching Eyes. I really like that several of the songs are some iteration of the Death to Chronos song.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games); my actual official review, part three

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I’m on part three of my actual official review of Hades II (Supergiant Games), and I want to delve a bit deeper into the characters to start the post. Here is yesterday’s post in which I was bitching about how there are no good female characters in the game. Selene, the Moon Goddess, is too fey for me, whereas Artemis’s sprite is way the hell too cutesy. Aphrodite is the same from the last game (which, quite frankly, means I’m meh about her), and the new goddesses are meh as well. Circe is irritating execept for when she gets upset, and that’s about it for the women in the game.

On the men’s side, I really liked the addition of Apollo. He’s sweet and has a beautiful voice. He makes me smile every time I run into him. Odysseus is fine. I wish I could bang him for some no strings-attached sex, but he didn’t seem down for that for some unfathomable reason. He banged every other sorceress and goddess in the game, apparently, so why not me? I wonder if it was simply they ran out of time.

This is one of my puzzlements in general. There are several stories in which they seeded it so that I anticipated more story than actually happened. For example. In the first game (and, yes, I will  have to mention the first game frequently to make a point about this game), the training dummy was a skeleton named Skelly. He was a pompous yet-affable fool, and I got along just fine with him. It was immediately clear that he was a liar, but he was good fun.

In this game, the training dummy is named Schelemeus, and he’s clearly Skelly putting on airs. I just skimmed the IGN description of Schelemeus, and they said that he was promoted. I mean, that’s the story that yopu’re supposed to presume, but I think he’s just lying again. When I meet up with

*SPOILERS*

my father much later in the game, rescue him, and talk to him again, he says he doesn’t have an employee named Schelemeus. This is all played with a straight face, and I can’t quite figure out what Supergiant wanted to do with the character.

In fact, that’s how I feel about the characters in general. For most of them, there was so much more they could have done. There are a few characters who had a very satifactory arc. I’ll list them now. Moros and Icarus. not coincidentally, they are my favorite NPCs in the game. Moros used to be my favorite, but Icky (as I called Icarus) edged him out ever so slightly by the end.

When I returned to The Crossroad, I always visited with people in the same way. First, Dora because she was in my tent where I returned. Next, I skipped past Moros while saying hey (in the real world) because I wanted to save him for last. I went to Eris and gritted my teeth if she had something new to say. I mashed through her dialogue as quickly as possible before hurrying away. If Artemis was around, I’d sing with her a bit.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): my actual official review

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I am pretty much done with Hades II (Supergiant Games). I may do a few more runs to see if I get any more post-true true ending content, but I’m not much fussed if I miss out on a few new lines here and there. That’s so different than how I felt about the first game, dialogue-wise, and it makes me a bit wistful for OG Hades. Here’s the second part of my official review after 100%ing the game. I didn’t get that far into my review, but I wanted to show my work before continuing.

Before I review the game after finishing the true true ending, I want to state up front that I turned God Mode on after beating

*SPOILERS*

Chronos for the first time. Not right after, but when I could not come close to beating Typhon, I decided to give it a try. Then, for the next few days, I turned it off while running the levels and on for the bosses. After a few days of that, I gave in and kept it on. I liked the game so much better once I did that, and my only regret was that I did not tturn it on earlier.

I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) a 7 when I reviewed it. This game is better than that game–or at least I enjoyed my time with it more. I was always going to give this game a better score than that one, but before the true true ending, I think I would have given this game a 7.5. I’m not going to say what I’m giving it now, but you can assume it’s going to be higher than that.

I struggle in talking about this game because my emotions are all over the place about it. In fact, that’s my theme for this year–games that I both really  like and deeply dislike at the same time. I would say that this game falls into that category, but I like more of it than I dislike. However, I can’t help but compare it to the first game, which I liked better.

Let’s talk weapons. There are six weapons with three aspects for each weapon. You start with one aspect for each, with is the Aspect of Melinoë (the main character). It’s the basic moveset and isn’t anything special, but I preferred it in at least one of the weapons. You have to unlock the other two aspects for each weapon in different ways. You don’t know how you’re going to do it, so basically, just keep playing the game with the different weapons and you’ll eventually unlock the other aspects. Then, you have to level them up, and it’s costly. I’ve written about it before that I thought it was too costly.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): thoughts after the true true ending, part two

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I’m back to talk more about Hades II (Supergiant Games), the true true ending, the epilogue, and the one side mission that infuriated me. All of these were things that I did again because of the change to the true ending, although I didn’t know if there would be a change to the latter two. I chose not to read the patch notes because I wanted to be surprised in getting the true true ending. The epilogue and the side mission were items on the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, and they became un-crossed off when I went back to

*SPOILERS*

just before beating Chronos for the frist time.

Side note: I always go back and forth as to whether I can talk about this boss without spoiler tagging. Yes, he is the last boss of the downward path, but “Death to Chronos” is the mantra of the game, and it’s not as if it’s ever a secret that’s the final goal.

Back to the true true ending. Here’s the post I wrote on it yesterday. Now that I’ve had a day to think about it further, I have more thoughts on it. I’m saying this with no snark: Supergiant did the best they could with what they had. What do I mean by that? There was no way they were going to change the ending, obviously. That would have been way too much work and a complete restructure of the after cerdits game. Given that they had to stay with the ending they wrote, this was the best possible way to get there. The true true ending, Imean.

Instead of the out of nowhere feeling that the original true ending gave me (and how dirty they did Melinoë), the path to the true true ending made sense. I could see every step on the way there, and even though I did not like the actual ending, the game got there locially.

The biggest improvement is that Melinoë was the driver of the action as she should have been in the first place. She was the one who made the decision to try to reason with Chronos before eradicating him rather than Zagreus, even though the latter was the one who had to do the actual actions.

It remained her game, rather than suddenly ceding control to her brother. I’m still not over that, by the way. How deeply sexist the original true ending was, I mean. It just goes to show how endemic and deep the patriarchy reigns and that sexism can come from the least-expected places.

I was saying to Ian that it’s hard for me to judge the true true ending because I had experienced the true ending unvarnished. And it was, as I have said repeatedly, hot garbage. I think if I had experienced the true true ending as the only true ending, I would have accepted it as making sense (as a way to end the main game while allowing for continuing on with endless runs) without actually liking it.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): thoughts after the true true ending

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I have gotten the true true ending of Hades II (Supergiant Games) and watched the credits roll (again), and I have many thoughts about it. My first thought is this. Two seemingly opposing things can be simultaneously true. That was running through my head as I bashed out run after run. Why? Because of this. Oh, spoilers, probably, from here on out.

*SPOILERS*

The main premise: the original true ending of the game was hot garbage. I know that’s harsh, but I was expecting so much because of how good the first game was. Dialogue-wise and story-wise. Yes, the story was simple, but it was so emotionally satisfying. In fact, I think it was so solid because it was so simple.

In this game, the dialogue and story were…fine. For most of the game, they were both stridently fine. I liked some of the characters, but not nearly as many as I had in the first game. In fact, I actively hated two of the characters in this game, both of whom I romanced. I will not get into that because I have written so much about them already, but I had a hard time believing the same team wrote this game as the one who wrote the first.

Even aside from these two terrible characters, the dialogue was not as snappy or as engaging. I did not care as much as I did in the first game about most of the characters, and my biggest thought on the story was how were they going to wrap it up in a satisfactory way?

In short, they didn’t. The original true ending was bad. Shockingly bad. I keep saying it was shocking because in the first game, the writing was so good. In this game, the basic premise was Death to Chronos. That was the tagline, and characters greeted each other by saying it. Chronos, Time himself, had taken over the House of Hades, imprisioned everyone in it, set free Typhon, the Father of All Monsters to torment Mount Olympus, and this sets up the epic fight between Melinoë and Chronos.

I was down with all that, but I had a thought niggling in the backk of my mind the whole time–how would they be able to do that (permanently kill Time) and simultaneously make it so the player could continue doing runs? I was willing to trust Supergiant to get it right so I waited to see what they would do to bridge that gap. Even though there was some light questioning along the way (in-game), the basic feeling was that it would all work out somehow.

In the original true ending, and, seriously, spoilers here, Melinoë meets her brother Zag in the dreamworld, gets him to find their father’s weapon, Gigaros (a gigantic spear) and give it to her. She uses it to kill Typhon permanently, uses the essence of Typhon to kill Chronos in her time before meeting up with Zag again and giving him Gigaros to kill Chronos for good in his time.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): a second look

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I’m back to Hades II (Supergiant Games) after the newest patch went live. I held off on playing it in the beta because I did not want to fuck up my save. I did copy it, following the instructions I found, but I was still hesitant because I have tried to do it before to no avail. I booted up the game for the first time in three weeks, I think, and I immediately fell back into the rhythm. I turned the game back to the time before I first beat–oh, spoilers.

*SPOILERS*

Chronos, the main boss on the downward path. That meant I had to beat both the ultimate bosses umpteen times again. Also, two of the items on the Minor List of Fated Prophecies became undone. One made sense because it’s the one that leads to the Epilogue–by the way, I’m glad that I still have my plat. I’ll pprobably do the two Fated Prophecies because I want to see if the epilogue is any different. The other is one I’ve talked about at length how it involved one of my favorite NPC from the first game who was done dirty in this game.

He’s asleep for the entire game, and I did several things to wake up. The way he wakes up and what happens after is just a joke. It’s insulting, really, and it was a crushing disappointment. If I have to do his again, it better not just be to do the exact same thing. There were theories as to why it was the way it was, but I think they just ran out of time. Or it was a placeholder for the real idea and they just could not get it in.

Either way, they had to undo that one as well because the last bit you get is after you see the credits. I’m hoping they improved that mission as well, but I’m skeptical.

I have done half a dozen runs. I was alternating downward path and upward path, but then started focusing on the downward path because if I remember correctly, you have to talk to Zag several times to get the weapon you need in order to do the thing with the upward path boss. And this time, he’s really pushing back on giving you the weapon needed to kill Chronos because he’s unesay about permanently slaying a family member.

You know what? He’s right. He was also right in that what happened to him in the first game was similar to what was happening now. Well, not really, but it was a family dispute. Zag had to do a lot to get out. And, he’s right in that Melinoë was acting like their father. For her to get huffy and self-righteous about the mission was pretty rich given that she was whisked away when she was a baby and never knew her family.


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Carto (Sunhead Games): A Quick Look

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I’ve been playing a bunch of demos in the hopes of finding a hidden gem. One of them is Carto (Sunhead Games). In Googling for the developer, I found out that it’s an indie dev of four people in Taiwan. Very cool! I think I knew they were Taiwanese, but my memory is spotty these days.

I was charmed by the arct style which is hand-drawn and looks like it could be a pop-up card. It’s pastel/water color-y, and some people say it has a delicate paper look to it. I loved the looks of it, and I loved the main conceit.

The basis of the game is that you are Carto, a young girl who is traveling in an airplane with her grandmother when the airplancrashes. She is separated from her grandmother and just starts walking. The main conceit is that there is a map you have to piece together. The edges that connect have to have the same terrain–river to river, forest to forest, beach to beach, etc. When you do it correctly, new events spring up.

I loved the demo and snapped it up when–hey, wait. It was released on October 27, 2020?!? No wonder I had an easy time finding a video walkthrough of it.

I’m shooketh. I thought it was a recent release–as in last month. Huh.

Anyway, I enjoyed the first chapter. The second? Not quite as much because it was short and kind of choppy. Also, the story is frustrating. When I first land on an island, there is a culture there that has the tradition of a child leaving the island and never coming back once they turn fifteen. No one knows why that’s their tradition, but it is.

I know traditions don’t always have a clear root to them, but this felt very video game-y as a premise. I’m not saying it could never happen, but it was so bare bones. In addition, once I went with the young girl on her send-off, that premise was quickly dropped as if it never existed.

This is one of my issues with the game–each chapter feels detached from the one before. Granted, I’m only four chapters in (I think?), but it’s quite a jolt to have a completely different story for each chapter. I think in part because it feels so shallow. I get that the mechanic is the heart of the game, but that has worn thin for me.

Why? Well, I’m going tot get into it in detail, and it feels quite mean to say. This game has so much heart, and it’s clear that a lot of love went into it. I am very impressed that this game was done by so few people. and I don’t want to stomp all over it.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk about story and characters, part four

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Before I continue with my feelings about the story and characters of Hades II (Supergiant Games), I have to note that Supergiant Games released a patch today that apparently explains the context for the ending. It doesn’t change the ending, but it gives background to why the ending is the way it is. You have to go back to before the true ending and replay a bit to get the added context. Once you finish that, you get all your stuff back. And, of course, you’re encouraged to make a save in case anything gets fucked up.

Think about that. They got so much pushback, they added this extra content to explain the true ending that apparently everyone hated. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I have seen a lot of complaints about it in the forums. Plus, I have been complaining about it for several posts.

I don’t think I’m going to play it yet because I don’t want to fuck up my save if it’s not possible to undo it/go back to where I was/etc. In other words, I’m going to make sure the bugs are all worked out before I do it. Plus, this is the first day in which I did not play the game at all. I don’t want to jump back into it. I don’t know how much or how little there is to the part that was patched in, so I don’t know how much time I would have to devote to it.

Instead, I will continue to rant about the story and the characters of the game. Here is my post from yesterday in which I tackled the one true ending. I ended with a shout-out to Logan Cunningham who is brilliant in this as wella as in the last game. He’s been the narrator for every Supergiant Games game, and he’s a gem. From now on, there will be spoilers.

*SPOILERS*

I have to rave about another character in the game. Yes! Let’s start with something very positive. It’s Icarus, whom I took to calling Icky. It was my pet name for him, and I promise that it was endearing. Related, there’s an Artefact called the Daedalus Hammer. You get to choose from three perks, and they’re all pretty good. I usually pick one that gives more attack power or lets me attack further each time. They were in the last game as well.

I did not remember that Daedalus was Icarus’s father in Greek mythology until Icarus brought it up. Then, it came flooding back (I did remember that he flew too close to the sun), and this is one NPC story that was really strong. In this telling, Daedalus has unofficially retired without telling anyone. Read: he disappeared. Icarus took over the family business without telling anyone that his father was gone.

One little touch that I really liked was that once an a while when I chose a Daedalus Hammer perk, I would thank Icarus for it. I find out later that he is always trying to live up to his father’s expectations, and that he never did it when he was his father’s apprentice. One time, he made a mistake (as apprentices do), and his fother exploded at him. Icarus accepted it a just chastisement for his mistake, but I was appalled.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): let’s talk about story and characters, part three

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I have stalled enough. I need to talk about the ending of Hades II (Supergiant Games). Early warning, there will be spoilers from here on out. As always, I will always try to keep the spoilers as vague as possible, but I will have to get prettyt specific in this post.

*SPOILERS*

When I say the ending, I mean the true ending. The one true ending. Sure, you can beat Chronos in one run and be happy with that. However, there is so much more to the game than that. I expected the true ending to be huge because there was so much more game this time around. I was nervous, though, because the whole theme of the game was Death to Chronos. Chronos is time. You can’t stop time, so what was the solution?

As I killed Chronos again and again, I was able to go travel a mystical road to visit my brother, Zagreus, in his bedroom. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s enough to get the gist across.
I had to convince him that I was his sister from the future. I said we needed to find a way to kill our grandfather, Chronos. I could not do it permanently in my time, so he had to do it in his.

Was this weird? Yes. Was it cool? Also yes. Was it fan-service-y? Yes as well. I was fine with all that, to be clear. I didn’t know where it was going because when you think about it, if you kill Time, well, then what do you have left? Zag even asked if that meant Mel wouldn’t be born, and Mel kind of brushed it off.

I did wonder how they were going to sq0uare that circle, but I shrugged it off. I mean, if they were going to go down that road, they had to have a resolution? Right? I will admit, there was doubt in the back of my mind, though. Chronos is Time. If you kill him off permanently, then how can life continue?

Mel and Zag realize that they need Hades’ spear, Gigaros, to kill Chronos and *double spoiler* Typhon, the final boss of the upward path. I’m not  going to get too into who Typhon is except that he’s the Father of all Monsters, and his boss fight is ridiculous–UTTERLY ridiculous. I will save that for my post on gameplay. For the purpose of this, I will say that I can understand why–no, wait. 

I can’t. Because my stance on this is that the game should have been one or the other path, but not both. It was too much, and as a result, I feel that the story and characters suffered.


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