Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: A Quick Lok

The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games): A quick(?) look and review

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I have been obsessed with a game for the past three weeks or so. It’s called The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games), and there’s a demo on Steam. Full disclosure: My good friend, Ian, is on the marketing team, which is how I heard of it. It’s a roguelike/lite deck-building ’90s teen-starring game that has ghosts and monsters in it, and it’s lots of fun.

I tried the demo, and I vibed with it immediately. I really dig the nineties aesthetics with the saturated colors. I also like that the teens are very diverse as far as race and ethnicity. Yes, some of them border on stereotypes as characters (the hunky jock that is obsessed about his next meal rather than any big issues; the goth girl who is miserable all the time; the nerdy photographer who is always snapping pics, but I’m fine with that.

The demo hooked me, and I bought it immedaitely. I played run after run as it had that ‘just one more run’ feel to it. Now, three weeks later, I almost have the plat. I just need to find two pieces of evidence, which is frustrating the hell out of me. I’ll get to that in a minute.

The launch trailer, which I have included below, has an appropriate grainy/scratchy VHS feel to it, which is not really what I felt playing the game itself. That’s not a slam on the game, by the way. If anything, it’s a testament to how absorbed I get when I’m playing that I don’t really pay attention to the graphics. Which are great!

Here’s the basic premise. The class of whatever year it is are paryting at the Vexington Hotel their senior year. Three of them stumble into the elevator and go floor by floor, fighting monsters along the way. Then, of course, they meet the big boss up in the penthouse, and that’s the end of the run. One run, if it goes the distance, is about forty-five minutes.

It’s funny. I would say that I’m not a turn-based kind of person. And yet, I played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) and this game. As I said to Ian, I had more fun with this game than with CO:E33. I drive people crazy when I say that one game is more fun than another while also saying that it doesn’t necessarily mean the former is a better game than the latter. Which, I admit, is jerk behavior on my part–but I have to have my fun somehow.


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Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works)–A Quick Look

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I heard tell of a quirky independent  game called Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works (a UK-based developer)) that is set in Japan. There was a demo for it, but I never got around to it. The premise is that a yakuza member is disgraced and has to fake his death. He is responsible (in a way) for a huge sum of money lost, which has cause a loss of face for the matriarch of his yakuza family. The protag is called Michizane Sugawara, also known as The Janitor. His nickname is Michi.

Oh! This is the dev who did Paradise Killer. Oh, man. I wanted to play that game so badly, but it was first-person and highly nausea-inducing. I bore it for a few hours, but I just could not do it, sadly. I really liked the weirdness and the vibe, but I had to throw in the towel.

Back to this game. I have included theannouncement trailer below. You can see that it’s oozing with charm, albeit a twisted charm. I really dug the vibes and the vivid characters. In a world of very bland video games that blend together and become one glob of a game, it’s refreshing to have one that stands out visually.

It’s brightly-colored, unabashedly weird, and has its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. The game is quite clear that it revels in being cheeky, dirty (in the sexual sense), and fast-paced. I love everything about the environments and the audio.

After Michi digraces his family, he cuts off his pinky and then is driven waaaaay outside the city. He is dumped off at a love hotel that is run by a character called Pinky, who is, I realized an hour into the game, an actual pinky. At least the tip of one. The back of her head is a painted nail, and I only have to assume that it’s a sly wink to the fact that disgraced yakuza members cut off their pinky (as Michi did above) as a show of remorse.

Pinky is annoying as hell, but she is meant to be. And she has grown on me already, two hours into the game. She had ran the mascot agency, but the mayor pulled her license after an incident at his daughter’s birthday party in which Pirky did something he did not like. Michi is a smooth talker and is able to convince the mayor that he will be a better owner/manager (and will give the mayor a cut).

After that, it’s off to the races. There was so much to do, I was a bit overwhelmed. I had to recruit mascots, recruit support heroes (who help the mascots if the mascots need it), and had a half-dozen other tasks thrown at me fairly soon thereafter.


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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33–A Quick Look

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At one of the Geoffcons, there was a trailer for a game called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive). Ben Starr (the biggest VA darling at the moment) was narrating a sober story about the Paintress who paints a painting every year during the gommage. Everyone who is a certain age crumbles into dust while she is painting. And every year, an expedition goes out to find a way to stop her. The game is about Expedition 33, and it’s led by Gustave, voiced by Charlie Cox.

The trailer, which I have included below, was stylish, slick, and full of feeling. People were buzzing about it, but weren’t really sure what it was about. The only thing that people were wary about was the combat–not because of the combat because of all the BIG NUMBERS flashing during the combat. Oh, and it was turn-based, which caused a few eyebrows to raise.

If it’s not apparent by the name, it’s done by a French company, a very small company, who are passionate about the game. The main voice actors are Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Kirsty Rider, and Ben Starr. Andy Serkis is in it as well. I have only met the first three so far, and they are excellent. Normally, I would play in the language of the game and have English subtitles, but this time, I decided to have the voices in English to make it easier on me. There is a lot of dialogue, and I don’t want to miss it by reading while I’m trying to explore or doing combat.

We learned more about the game. It was a soulslike that was enamored with Sekiro.

Sigh.

Big sigh.

I think I’ve expounded on my dislike of Sekiro‘s strict adherence to the deflect. If this game was going to be at completely reliant on the parry, there was no point in me trying it. Ian reminded me that not all parries were like Dark Souls, which is true. However, any game that touted its parry and said how much they (the devs) admired Sekiro most certainly would have a difficult parry. That’s Sekiro‘s whole thing.

The game is on Game Pass, and I decided to give it a whirl. Almost everyone who has played it has loved it, and it’s already being talked about as a Game of the Year contender. I liked what I saw, story-wise, but I was still not sure about the combat. There was a story mode which Jennifer English said they put in because she asked for it. It doesn’t make negate the need to parry and dodge, though–it jsut lowers the damage taken, I think.


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look, part five

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And we’re back to the fifth post of A Quick Look at Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions), which I promise will be the last one (probably). When I said in the last post that I had not done the first story mission, I mispoke. I have. I just have not done the story mission that is needed to be done to move onto the story arc that finishes the first act. This is how I play these kinds of games, and I know I’m not the only one.  The games are made to keep you in an endless loop because they want you to stay with their game, obviously. Many execs have said that this was the ideal behind their online multi games–you keep coming back for more.

When I played Monster Hunter World (Capcom), they had a daily quest you could do. It gave you some free stuff, most of it that you could get in-game. Some of the stuff was unique to the daily challenge, but those was few and far between (if I remember correctly). I got sucked into doing it becasue it became a habit/ritual, and I had to consciously walk away from it when I did not want to do it any longer. Otherwise, I would have passively continued to do it, even if I did not really want to do it.

I feel the same with this game. What I mean is that I keep meaning to do the story mission I need to do to end the first act, but then I fall into the rhythm of investigating any foggy area near me until I’m three hours in deep and have forgotten what I planned on doing.

Let me touch on the issue I was having with the standoffs. I think I’ve figured it out. I have the holds toggled off, so in theory, I should not have to hold down the RT while waiting for the enemy to attack in the standoff. But, the game did not tell me that it would take away the prompt to hold RT and then let go to get the death blow. What I figured out was that I just had to wait until the enemy attacked and tap RT. Then I would get the decapitation. And, by the way, the game is incredibly generous with the timing–at least in Medium mode. It slows down the attack so even someone with shitty reflexes like me can get the timing.

As for the attack buttons suddenly not working, well, I figured that out as well. When you switch stances, you have to hit Y to bring up the menu. Then you choose which stance you want (or which ranged you want). Then, you have to hit Y again to close the menu. It was the last bit that I had not remembered (or been told), so the menu was staying open, even though it disappeared from the screen. Once I figured that out, it made much more sense. Before a few days ago, I rarely switched stances during combat so it would not have occurred to me that this was the issue.


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Shadow of the Erdtree–A Quick Look, part two

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I have included the launch trailer below that I haven’t actually seen because I try to stay as spoiler-free as possible going into the game/DLC. Oh, and there will be spoilers throughout the post, just FYI.

I have been consumed by Shadow of the Erdtree, the Elden Ring DLC by FromSoft. I have played it for something like 18 hours already, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface. I’ve been skimming the Discord, only checking out spoilers from people who are not ahead of where I am (as best as I can tell). I feel as if I’ve explored thoroughly, and I’ve still missed several things.

One was simply a case of not going the third way at the three-way road (duh). I had made a mental note to get to it later, but I simply forgot. Also, I haven’t done any of the four dungeons/tombs/catacombs/gaols I’ve found so far. I hate them in the base game, so I assume I’ll hate them in the DLC.

Before I get into it, I have to say that this clash of trying to do a game for the masses and staying true to the hardcore formula is again clashing heads. The reviews for the DLC are mixed on Steam. Some of that is because of performance issues. Some of it is the fanbois crying about not being able to onebro it (because god forbid the games don’t adhere to their specific standards), and some of it is because of complaints of artificial difficulty.

Then, there’s my Discord in which everyone is raving about it. I have said that I’m keeping my mouth shut for the most part with my issues because I don’t want to yuck other people’s yum.

Here’s my radical take: I think it’s incredible; I also am frustrated by things that I was frustrated with in the main game. In other words, it’s more of the same (not in a negative way)–only bigger and even more sprawling.

Side note: It’s interesting how dumping 20 points into Vigor makes such a big difference. I mean, it’s pretty basic and it’s on me that I did not fully realize it earlier, but it’s a huge difference. With 38 Vigor, I could take one or two hits by even scrub enemies, which was not fun. This is how DLCs from previous FromSoft games have been. I was too stubborn back then to respec because I went through the main game with my trash build, damn it! I should be able to do it for the DLC.


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