Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: cook serve delicious

I am a permanent contradiction

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A few days ago, I was talking about the games I like and how they reflected the yin and the yang of my being. There’s a new game that has me thinking about where the two categories (hard games and cozy games) intersect. In the last post, I did not mention a series of games that are very near and dear to my heart. It’s the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series by David Galindo, the face behind Vertigo Gaming, Inc. The first one came out in 2012, and it was championed by Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb and Northernlion. Galindo (chubigans on Twitter and what I call him in my head). After Ryan Davis died, chubigans named one of the burgers after him. Chubigans has been quite vocal about his success being in large part because Ryan Davis and Northerlion pushed his game hard.

I was skeptical. A restaurant sim that is nails hard? How would that even work? I play cozy games to relax and I play hard games to stress myself out. Why the fuck would I want to do both at the same time? Is it even possible?

In a word, yes. I started the first game and got quickly addicted. It had romance, funny emails, and making delicious foods. What more could I want? I 100%ed the game (before all the arena stuff was added) and enjoyed it thoroughly. You could play as characters from other indie games for the arena fights, which was a hoot. I played it compulsively, and the tapping out the letters of the ingredients as fast as I could was oddly relaxing.

The second, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! was released in 2017, and I snapped it up immediately. They made several improvements such as streamlining the chores, getting rid of 20 days per star (it was a LOT), and being able to decorate your restaurant. I spent many hours in the restaurant creator and really enjoyed that aspect. I got decorations/equipment as rewards for completing levels and getting stars. The food continued to look incredible and the main gameplay of typing ingredients and getting out the dishes remained satisfying.

On the other hand, I was sad he got rid of the dating, but I understand why. It was very shallow in the first game, and it would have probably been too difficult to expand it properly in the second game. I also didn’t like that there was no big deal when you reached 5 stars. I was expecting there would be, but it simply expanded to 10 stars. That was deflating. Plus, there is no real ending to this game–not that I can remember. There was one to the first game, although it wasn’t anything to write home to, either.


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What I want when I game

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I’m in between games right now. I haven’t played Sekiro in several days, and I haven’t really had the wherewithal to pick up something else. I’ve been dealing with a cold/sinus issues, and it’s really wiped me out. I end up playing solitaire because that’s about what my mind can deal with right now. It’s also what happens after I play a FromSoft game. I get so drained by it, I have no desire to try anything else. I will say, I’m watching footage of the closed alpha for Nioh 2, and it looks really dope. I bailed on the original game halfway through even though I thought it was a good game for two reasons. One, I hated that if you left a level, you had to start it over the next time you went back. My MO if I’m getting my ass kicked by a boss is to go farm up shit (like Elixirs, the healing drinks, which is another issue in itself. I hate farming for healing items or buying them). The easiest way to do that is to go back to an earlier area in order not to have to use heals to get through it. If I did that, though, then I’d have to do the whole level up to the boss I was currently fighting again. Doing that for the last boss I fought was not something I wanted to do at all. I ended up farming on that level using Onmyo Magic for free heals (hey, it’s been ages since I’ve played. That’s the best I can remember) and tapping out when I actually had to use a heal. It wasn’t optimal, but it did work. I resented not being able to choose to go back to an earlier level, though. I really, really, really hope they make that change for Nioh 2. I did notice that they simplified some of the names of the level ups. Onmyo to Magic, for instance. I don’t have an issue with this because while I’m a big fan of obscurity, I’m also a big fan of not wasting souls. Or amrita, as I think it’s called in Nioh. But! There is a rolling cat ball in the Nioh 2 closed alpha demo, so I’m in!

There are two games I have my eye on that are actually in my pile of shame. One is Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope. I have talked about this game before and I’ll talk more about it later because I will be mentioning Papers, Please, the seminal game by Pope. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, which is why I’ll talk about it later. The second game is Unavowed, which is an adventure mystery demon game. It sounds right up my alley, and I am desperately looking for an adventure mystery game I can sink my teeth into. I’ve tried several, and this is made by the highly-respected Wadjet Eye Games. They are revered in the genre, which is part of the problem. I hated the Blackwell series they did, and it’s one of the gold standards of the genre. I had to use a walkthrough to get past the first chapter of whichever game I tried. I think I tried two–I have almost all of them because hope springs eternal and they were cheap and I’m an idiot. My biggest gripe about adventure games is that their logic is not logical. They have certain events you need to do in a certain order, and it’s not intuitive at all. I mean, it probably seemed that way as they were dreaming them up, but in retrospect, they aren’t at all. Maybe if I’ve played a million of them, the logic will be immediately apparent, but it wasn’t as I was playing them. I resorted to using the walkthrough for the rest of the Blackwell game I played. I’m hoping against hope that they’ve upped their game concerning logic, but given how much people swoon over their games, I fear they consider it a feature and not a bug.


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These are a Few of My Favorite Things (Video Games)

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meditate on this
The way of the dragon.

I’m in a video game funk ever since I beat Dark Souls III. I was in one before I got Dark Souls III, and now that it’s over, I’m back in it. I still play Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Afterbirth every day, but it’s more just to scratch that video game itch. Don’t get me wrong–it’s a very good game. However, it’s more a habit by now than anything. I’m not a great Isaac player, but I don’t really have to think about it as I play it. I can zone out as I play, so it’s pretty restful for me. The problem is, Dark Souls has spoiled me for most new games. If they’re Souls-like, they just make me want to play Dark Souls again. There are a couple of Souls-like games that I’m interested in (EITR and Death’s Gambit), but they’re not coming out for the foreseeable future. I’m somewhat interested in Salt and Sanctuary, but not enough to actually buy it. I’ve tried to play some hack and slashes, which I loved before, but I found myself getting bored fairly easily. Path of Exile, which I loved when I played it in beta/early access, Victor Vran, and Grim Dawn. All three should be right up my alley, but I just couldn’t stay interested. I need a game that is engrossing as Souls is, but isn’t Dark Souls. Until that happens, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite games, all of which I’ve finished (or, in the case of Rebirth, got the Real Platinum God achievement. There really is no finishing Rebirth).

  1. Dark Souls, the trilogy. I’ve written ad nauseam about these games, and with good reason. The first Dark Souls is a masterpiece, and I would recommend it in a heartbeat with a caveat: Don’t play it if you’re easily frustrated or if you don’t like dying many, many times. I’ve had people try the game because of my enthusiasm, then confess that they had ragequit the game. They’re always apologetic, but I get it. I really do. I am a huge fan of these games, but I can understand why someone wouldn’t be. The games are often an exercise in futility, and it’s easy to get frustrated and sore while playing these games. I ragequit the first game the first time I played it and didn’t touch it for years afterwards. I don’t remember how I got back into it–probably because the sequel was being announced, and if I wanted to play that, I felt I had to play the original first.

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