Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: freedom

I want indie games to continue flying towards the sun

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In the last few months, I have played several indie games that have left a mark on me. For good and bad reasons in not-so-equal measures. I want to talk about two of them because they have thrilled and frustrated me while playing them, but I appreciate both of them for reaching for the sun. I will probably compare them as I did a bit in the last post because they both have pretty big things that annoy the fuck out of me.

They are, of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive) and Promise Mascot Agency (Kaizen Game Works). The reason I compare them is because they are both made by indie devs and the games weren’t expected to be hits. One was and one wasn’t. While I’m not going to delve into that very much, I do find it very interesting.

I wrote obsessively about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as I played it because I could not stop playing it. I was not enjoying it as I played, but I could not stop. I hated the combat, and I found the story to be, to put it kindly, hot trash. It looked gorgeous, yes, but the levels were terrible as I constantly got lost, and I was often worn-out at the end of a session. In the beginning, I could only play an hour at a time before tapping out. That lengthened later on, but it took some time to get to that point.

I was the odd person out. Everyone else was gushing about how great the game was whereas I was definitely underwhelmed. I don’t know why I kept playing it, but I could not stop. I ended up finishing the game, and I gave it a solid 7, and I stand by that. You can go back and read the dozen posts I wrote about it if you really want to know how I feel about the game.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t going to be my game of the year. Still isn’t.

The other game, I’m still playing. It’s the Promise Mascot Agency, and today is the first day since I started playing it that I probably won’t play it. When I think of playing it, I have a small internal sigh.

I’m also playing Dark Souls Remastered in order to get Big Hat Logan’s big hat. I rarely get it because his quest is so involved and takes 180,000 souls (yes, I looked it up). You have to save him in Sen’s Fortress, then find him at Firelink Shrine. I think you may have to buy all his spells here in order to get him to move, or maybe it’s event-dependent. At any rate, at some point, he moves to The Duke’s Archives, and he’s locked up. You have to get captured by Seath, get thrown in jail, go down to get the key to get out, and then make it to the second The Duke Archive’s bonfire.

Then, you have to get the key to free BHL, and then go back to where he’s locked up. I hate The Duke’s Archives, and it’s been a while since I’ve done it. I also don’t have much health because I’m running an intelligence build, which means I’m very squishy. Then, you have to talk to BHL in The Duke’s Archives and buy all his spells. I am up to this point of his quest and thought I could just trigger the next step by buying all his spells, but, no. I have to beat Seath first.

Back to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Promise Mascot Agency. With both of them, the more I play, the more my interest wanes. It’s slow and barely noticeable with PMA, but it’s still there. It hit me in the face when the game introduced a new mechanic and instead of me being delighted by it, I felt weighted down and burdened.

This is my point. Finally. With both of these games, they throw so many things at you. Everything but the kitchen sink. Some of them work, and some of them don’t. In PMA in particular, I think they could have cut half the mini-games/side quests, and the game would not have suffered for it. In fact, I think it might have been better because then each mini-game/side quest would actually mean something. Now, as I mentioned in the last post, many of them feel very fetch-quest-y.

If it were up to me., I would cut out the crane game, much of the driving or at least make it decent from the beginning, and the goddamn fucking artificial timer. I must say, including the artificial time pressure slashes at least one whole point from the game, if not more. This is the one I can’t get over and the one that makkes me sigh when I think about booting up the game.

Honestly, it feels so shitty and ill-conceived. The game devs created a world I really wanted to explore, but just when I got into the groove of it–I had to go find an ATM and send money to keep my yakuza mother from being killed. If I don’t, she dies and I get kicked back to my previous save. The consequence of this is that I’m constantly saving, and I do micro-saves after picking up anything important or doing a bunch of chores.

In addition, if the screen is fairly dark red (the indication that mother is about to be killed), I abandoned the meticulous exploring I’m doing in order to find an ATM or a phone booth so I can fast-travel back to the hotel where there’s an ATM. I try to note the important things I’ve missed, but because of my horrendous lack of direction and the fact that the map doesn’t note the side quests I need to do, I can’t find them again.

I just thought of something I could do. I could mark the map where there’s a cluster of activity. I can place one waypoint on the map at a time, which feels very limited. I hate having to pass by a bunch of stuff, especially the ones that give me truck upgrades.

I honestly don’t understand why it’s there. As I said, I can imagine the devs wanted to give the game a sense of urgency, but that’s at odds with how much there is to explore. I think the game would be much better without it, and it’s the one big reason I’m not enjoying the game. It’s hard to get into the flow of things knowing that every five or ten minutes, I’ll have to stop and find an ATM. I absolutely hate it and wish there was a way to disable it. Hm. Nope. There’s no mod to disable having to send money. I didn’t think there would be, but I looked it up just in case.

I don’t normally like mods, but I hate this mechanic so much, I would seriously consider a mod if there was one. I cannot emphasize enough how much it hampers my enjoyment to have to stop every ten minutes to send money. The game is not immersive in the first place because it’s so wacky, but when I’m in the groove, I can feel like I’m flowing.

Until I have to send the damn money.

Here’s the thing, though. With both the games, if I had the choice between taking them as is and not having them at all, I would instantly choose the former. Both of them are quite frustrating to me for different reasons, but they are also both games I’m very glad I’ve played. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is more streamline and mainstream-friendly, whereas Promise Mascot Agency is much more niche and downright weird. It’s not for everyone, and that’s ok!

I have played a half-dozen indie games in the last few months, and while I did not get on with all of them, I appreciated each one for the fresh new take it had. They have all stood out in my mind for different reasons, and I am pleased by the state of indie games right now.

More on that tomorrow.

Letting it all go

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For the first fifty years of my life (everything other than this year, in other words), I was an anxious person. Taiji helped mitigate it somewhat, but it was still always there.

I come by it honestly. My mom is a highly-anxious person, and when I try to address it with her, she has a million reasons why it’s a reasonable reaction to what’s going on. Eventually, I give up and she thinks she’s won the conversation/discussion/debate. In reality, I just lose steam and can’t be bothered to keep going. Not when I know it won’t make a difference in the end.

I once read about how ruminating/griping doesn’t help because you aren’t doing anything practical about the problem, but you feel as if you are. That really made sense in terms of my mother. She spends a half hour rattling on about a problem (most often having to do with my father), but doesn’t come to any conclusion. And does it again. And again. Then thanks me for listening. As if I have a choice.

It drives me mad that she says she shouldn’t talk to me about my father, then does it, anyway. The last time she was here, I flat-out told her not to say she shouldn’t talk about it because we both knew she would. At one point recently, she had the gall to say that it was my duty as her kid to listen to her bitch about her marriage. And she’s a psychologist!

She shut up about that quickly when I pointed out that this was back-ass-wards from what should actually happen. The parents were supposed to be the ones who take care of the kids, worrying about them and making sure they’re OK, not vice-versa. It’s tricky because I imagine in a healthy family, of course you’re going to worry about your parents as they age.

But that’s because you worry about someone you love. If you don’t love that person, it’s much harder to worry about them except in the general sense. Like, I mean, I wish everyone well and don’t wish anyone harm in the global sense.

But, you cannot make someone love, care, or respect someone if they don’t. My mother wrote a wrought email to my brother and me (while they were last here) about how in Taiwanese culture, you’re supposed to respect your elders. Therefore, we should love and respect our father more. I told her you can’t make someone love or respect some more than they already do. I could grit my teeth and fake it, yes, but that’s just an illusion.

It doesn’t matter, though. It’s all for show. She wants my father to feel as if he’s love and respected–it doesn’t matter if it’s real. For example, when they and my brother’s family went on a cruise, she had my brother buy the tickets and tell my father he had paid for them–even though she gave my brother the money. My brother told me that she later told my father she had paid for them, which defeated the purpose.

She claims she can’t lie to him because he can always tell. Then why even try? Many times, her problems are of her own making, and then she just compounds them.


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Holidays in a weird and wild world

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Note: I don’t celebrate holidays. I feel the need to get the way before I go on my screed. 

Thanksgiving is coming up and it could not come at a worst time in terms of Covid cases soaring in America. In my state, you cannot gather with another household at all now because our cases peaked at 7,500 cases in one day. I don’t think the strictures have gone far enough even though I understand why the governor had to walk the tightrope. I really didn’t like the press conference, however, because it was definitely targeted at the yahoos who refuse to wear a mask because ‘MURIKA FUCK YA!

To wit, he praised everyone for doing so much and emphasized how hard it was and how unfair it was. I don’t disagree with the latter, but I am not at all down with the former. So many people have flouted the rules and/or don’t think Covid is an actual thing. Then, he went on to emphasize that this four week restriction was going most definitely going to only be a month because the vaccine will certainly be ready to go by then.

I mean, what. But that wasn’t the worst of it. He ended by saying he knew that come April, we would be sitting in that Twins stadium maybe without a mask, sitting with your brother-in-law having a hot dog and a beer. There is so many things wrong with this statement. One, the fact that he was so positive about the timeline. It’s one thing to say something like ‘with the information we have, it’s likely’ or something similar. But he phrased it in a way that made it inevitable, which I think is a recipe for disaster. I know he wants to keep people’s spirits up, but that isn’t the way to do it.

Secondly, the whole situation is aimed specifically at a certain type of person. I’ll just be clear–the Covid deniers. That’s not something I would do even in the Before Times, and it make it very clear that the press conference was not for me. It was for the recalcitrant assholes who whine about freeeeeedum and personal choice. Mostly Republicans, but not all of them. There’s a thread in Ask A Manager’s weekend post about Thanksgiving and whether or not to travel for it. Most people came down on the side of not traveling, especially as many states have come out with no mixing households mandates.

There were more than a few people, however, who disagreed. They were thoughtful about it and said that it was up to each individual (or family) to assess their risks and be careful when comingling households. They pointed out how devastating the lockdowns/restrictions have been to the mental health of people. They were right about the latter part, but so very wrong about the former. It’s part of why we are where we are right now–the emphasis on individual choice.

My parents bring up Covid every time they call. They say that cases have to be down, right? They can’t understand why the numbers keep going up. Their country, Taiwan, has been the platonic ideal of how you should deal with a pandemic. I’ve had to tell them over and over again that the things that worked in Taiwan wouldn’t work in America for a variety of reasons, but the biggest one is because  individual freedom/choice has become fetishized in this nation.


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