Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: backlog

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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Moar demos, no problem (part three)

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I’m back to talk more about demos. No, really I am not going to derail myself or get stuck in a footnote. I’m going to stick to demos and why I do and/or don’t love them. (Let’s see how long I keep that promise. My prediction is one paragraph.)

I was talking to Ian about how the Steam Next Fest has blown up into something unrecognizable. There are literally thousands of games in the Fest, and I mean several thousands. I think there are close to/over five thousand; what the fuck is up with that?! That’s way too many games. I blazed through a bunch of them yesterday, installing several on my Steam client. I tried a few, and, well…let’s just say I should have been pickier. The slop, it was slopping. In yesterday’s post, I talked about what I expected from a demo, and I’ll continue that in a bit.

I did the equivalent of going into a store, grabbing everything that’s on sale, and tossing it in my bag. To be fair to me, I did make sure they were in genres I actually played, but that was about it. And because I am very ggenerous towayrds indie devs, I put up with more than I should have.

At the end of the last post, I was talking about the things that really frustrated me in a game. I’ll keep going down that path now. Oh, and these are things that should be in every game. I’m not asking for anything hard, mind. Just things like what the controls are.

Side note: I have a hard time with controls if I’m using K&M because I use the Dvorak system. Most games use QWERTY, and while some switch back automatically, others don’t. Some might let me switch it myself, but others don’t. So I can’t use the Dvorak system at all. I will be fair and say that there is no optimal choice for me because I don’t look at the keyboard as I type, so if the instructions are in Dvorak, I’m lost.

This is one reason I prefer controller to K/M. I will say that I like to use K/M for typing games, of which I played one today. I will talk about it a bit later because it was one game I liked. Mostly.

Here’s the thing. I have different categories and ratings for games, depending on if it’s a triple A game or an indie game*. if I’m paying seventy bucks for a game–well, I’m not going to pay that much for a game, really. I very rarely play triple A games, and I certainly did not pay full price for them.**


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Demoing to my heart’s content, part two

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I’m back to chat more about Steam demos. I’m so pleased that the vast majority of indie games have demos these days. I wrote yesterday about a word game I really liked called Rita (Spork Tank), and I’m back with a few more I played today. And yesterday. There are a few games I didn’t like, but that was because of controls. One was an old game that is highly thought of in the cozy genre, apparently. It controls horribly, and you have to manually save at the lightposts (I think that’s what it was?), which, no. That’s not happening. I am not about a game that makes me lose progress if I don’t manually save because my memory is shite. Also, in this day and age, that’s just silly. Yes, this was a remake/remaster of an older game, and I get that they probably wanted to keep the old-timey feel to it, but progress is a good thing. We don’t have to have terrible controls and manual saving just because we had to have both in the past.

Let’s talk about the first game I really dug. It’s called Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone), and at first, I was trepidatious beacuse it’s first person. I get nauseous from playing first-person games, but for whatever reason, the negative effect from this game is minimal. I think it might be because the game is not very realistic so my brain isn’t mistaking it for real. It has the look of an ald horror game, and I’m expceting it to get creepy.

I didn’t know much about it before I tried the demo except it’s very positively reviewed. And it’s about cooking? Maybe? And there’s a raccoon in it (it’s on their store page). That’s all, but I was eager to try it out because I like cooking games and raccoons are cute. You can fight me on that last fact all you want, but it’s just the truth.

There’s minimal tutorializing, but it wasn’t very hard to figure out what to do. F is for flashlight because it always is in games like this. I do like that I didn’t need batteries for it. I hate having to find batteries for flashlights in games like this, and I will quit immediately if it’s required. Anything where I have to keep an eye on something’s time is a game that will stress me the fuck out.

I don’t play these kinds of games to be stressed, even though many of them have stressful elements. There is a point when I rebel and quit the game altogether.

In the house, there is a note. I studiously ignore it as I explore the house. I know the game wants me to read the note, but it’s not the boss of me!

The main gist of the game is that you have to find recipes, and then you make the recipes. They are very simple and the game mechanics are pretty crude. I’m fine with that except the frying pan because you have to flip the egg and have it land back in the pan. I have zero depth perception so I can’t get it to fall into the pan properly. Fortunately, I can just keep doing it because the pantry has endless supplies.


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Demo(lition) derby and what’s good

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One thing about Summer Game Fest is that it has a ton of different smaller fests in which I can see so many new games. And, if they’re indie games, they will almost always be guaranteed to have demos. I love that about indie games, though I worry that it’s a burden to the indie devs. The bonus to me is that I get to try a whole bunch of games that I might not have paid attention to otherwise.

Do I need more games? Of course not. I have such a big Steam pile of shame, but as is the way with PC gaming, I keep adding more to the pile than I take away (by playing them). It’s too easy when there are so many steep sales. A content creator I once watched pretty regularly said, “If you hesitate to pay 99 cents for a game, you probably don’t want it at all.” I thought about it, and he was right.

Side note: I was talking about my wishlist in the Discord I’m in. I use it as a way just to remember games that catch my eye as I’m watching one of the umpteen fests going on. Look, they rattle of twenty to thirty games in a row and my memory is now shit. I’m not going to remember them past thirty seconds. Plus, wishlisting them helps the devs.

I tend to have a dozen or two demos installed at any one time. Then, they haunt me until I play them. By the way, I’m playing Dark Souls III (FromSoft) once again, and my god, I’m falling in love with it all over again. It was my favorite game before Elden Ring was released, which means it was my favorite for six years. Then, it slipped to being tied with Elden Ring for first. The more I played Elden Ring, though, the more it pulled slightly ahead.

I did a ranking of the From games. I gave Elden Ring a 9.75 (I think?) and Dark Souls III a 9.5. Now, though, I’m enjoying myself tremendously back in Dark Souls III. I found a new way to cheese a boss (from the Reddits), and while it took some time, it was loads of fun. It’s a boss who doesn’t aggro until you walk up to it. I’d known that you could use Pestilent Mist, a top-tier sorcery that eats away at humanity to cheese it. It takes 30 intelligence to use, though, so I don’t usually use it until the DLC at the earliest–or on NG+ and beyond.

What I discovered was that this boss was able to be poisoned. (He’s a giant skeleton, so why he’s  able to be poisoned, who knows?) There’s a pyromancy called Poison Mist (which in this game is purple. In Elden Ring, it’s green). I walked up to the boss and stopped short of the spot where I would prock him. Then, I just blew the mist on him (it’s a breath pyro) twice. I had to do it twice to prock the poison. Then, I would watch as his health was slowly ticked away. Each application took off almost a thousand health points. It took nine applications, which is strange because this boss is supposed to have 15,000 HP. (Added: I figured it out. The numbers were for each hit, and not additive. Meaning the last hit took off nearly a thouusand HP on its own, and the others did waht they did.)


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The next big thing (gamewise)

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In yesterday’s post, I intended to talk about what my next game might be. I veered wildly off into brand loyalty and how I don’t think I’ll be playing FromSoft games for much longer (and why I’m OK with that. Well, not ok, but resigned).

I’ve played several demos, and I immediately uninstalled several. Why? There are a variety of reasons. Some required twitch responses that I did not have. I was really sad about a few of them because I really dug the aesthetics, but I simply could not play the games.

Here are thirngs that will cause me to uninstall a game quickly.

1. Mini-games that make me do QTEs, any kind of ‘fill in the circle’ motion that has to be precise, and anything of that ilk. It seems to be something that more indie games are doing, sadly, much like parrying is king in most triple A action games.

Side note: I don’t know when it happened, but I flinch now whenever I hear the word ‘parry’ as the main combat in any game. I hate the word ‘soulslike’, too, because it usually means the game has taken my least-favorite aspect of From games and glorified them to kingdom come.

I know I have said this over and over again, but I’ll say it one more time. Most devs don’t give a shit about accessibility. Sadly, that includes many of the indie devs, too. I give them more benefit of the doubt–at least, the teams that are small, like 20 employees and under. They simply don’t have the resources to do everything that the bigger companies can do.

However. That doesn’t mean I actually want to play their games.

Side note: I didn’t realize the whole time I was playing The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games) that the game was first-person. I mean, I knew it was, but I did not have the negative reaction I normally have to first-person games. I mentioned it to Ian, and he said that in keeping with the ’90s feel to the game (no bobbing of the head, for example). In thinking of it, it made sense. The only time I got slightly nauseous was when I swung the camera around too quickly–and that was on me.

I cannot tell you how many times I have regretfully turned off a game because the first-person perspective made me sick to my stomach. Sadly, Blue Prince (Dogubomb Studios) was one of those games. Not only was it in first-person, it had a fish-eyed point of view that increase my nausea. The game didn’t have much to fiddle with, sadly. Yes, there was a FOV slider, but it didn’t do much. I played an hour at a time, gritting my teeth as I played. After three hours over two days, I gave  up. I really liked what I played, but I just could not do it.


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Why I don’t do brand loyalty

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I am at a loss as to what game to play next. This happens when I get obsessed with a game. In this case, The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games). I was obsessed with it, and I want to parse what kind of games sink their claws into me. I will break down the games into two different categories: FromSoft games and non-FromSoft games.

FromSoft games are in a league of their own. I have a longstanding rule that I do not preorder games. Except. FromSoft. If they put out a game, I’m buying it (if I can. Still bitter over Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, and now The Duskbloods on The Switch 2). I will say that my faith is a bit shaky with Nightreign and Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon coming out in the last few years and now The Duskbloods.

Side note: I don’t have loyalty to brands. Our relationships are purely transactional. As long as I enjoy/like/get use out of your product, I will buy it. If standards start slipping or I no longer like your product, I will no longer buy it. That’s pretty much it.

It’s the same with FromSoft. Well, not exactly the same. I had a much more emotional connection to the ‘product’, but….

I can feel the games going out of my reach. I have known since the DLC of Dark Souls III that there would be one day I could no longer play the games. My abilities were shit to begin with, and I struggled to complete Dark Souls (my first From game). It took me roughly 150 hours to finish it (with the DLC) for the first time. I had the Prepare to Die edition, which meant it was the whole game. I remember a games journalist casually saying there was no way anyone could take a over a hundred hours to finish the game (sans DLC). He was very much, “No one is different than I am. I am the gold standard for how to play Souls games”, but even so.

I almost quit once, and I did quit for a year another time. I struggled so hard. But I kept going back to it. Ornstein and Smough killed me over a hundred times. Well over. It took me roughly seven hours (one hour a day for seven days) to kill them. Why did I stick with it? I have no idea why.

The funny thing is that they didn’t make me quit; it was the Gaping Dragon, of all bosses. It’s not a particularly difficult boss, but it has a ton of health. It’s a very tedious boss if you don’t have at least a +5 weapon–which I did not. After spending a billion hours chipping away at its health (only a slight exaggeration), I got it down to one or two hits. I stepped back to avoid an attack and–stepped into nothing. There was an abyss I guess I didn’t see, and I died a most ignomious death.

I was furious. I was used to dying–good lord, I was used to dying. I mean, it’s in the name of the edition: Prepare to Die. But not to a fucking hole in the ground. I threw the controller and gave up the game on the spot. A year later, I picked it up again. Why? I’m not quite sure, but I think it had something to do with Scholar of the First Sin coming out.


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A confession about my backlog

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I want to talk more about demos/backlogs/piles of shame, etc. Why? Because I’m stridently ignoring the world around me and because why not? Here is my post from yesterday.

Every person who games, especially on the PC, has a vast backlog. We PC players jokingly call it our Steam pile of shame. I, myself, have hundreds of games I’ve bought on impulse because Steam makes it so easy. There’s always a sale. Currently, there is a Krafton Publisher Sale. I had no idea who the hell they were and took a quick glance at the list. I know two or three of the games, but don’t really have an interest in any of them.

Wholesome Games Direct was a few days ago (a week?) as was NextFest. Wait. That’s still going on now. I would not be surprised if there was a sale of some kind every day. Every time I pop over to Steam, which is once a week or so, there seems to be a sale going on. And, like most PC players, I will pick up any game that catches my eye as long as it’s under five/ten/twenty bucks (my threshhold is ten dollars). Is it on my wishlist? Maybe. Does it have to do with a cat? Probably. Will I buy several of them at the same time? Yep.

A content creator I used to watch said that if you don’t buy a game for a buck during a Steam sale, you probably are never going to buy that game (and should take it off your Wishlist). He was right about that, and yet, I still have about 200 games on my Wishlist.

Let’s be real. I should probably take off at least half those games because I will never buy them. And even if I do buy them, I will not play them. But for whatever reason, I insist on keeping them on my Wishlist. Well, I know why. It’s because I can’t be fucked to go through my list and weed out the games I no longer want.

Back to games I buy on impulse. I am someone who doees not usually buy games when they first come out*. I suppose this ties in with the fact that I’m not brand-loyal. Or with the fact that marketing doesn’t work as well on me as it does on most people. It’s really hard to sell me on something that I don’t want. And I’m prone to not wanting things more so than wanting them, so good luck on changing my mind.


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