Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Have a Nice Death

Hidden disabilities and me, part four

Yesterday, I talked about the medical model, family/cultural dysfunction, and other things related. Today, I want to expand more on this, but also talk about the social model. What is the social model? Well, first, let’s talk about the medical model. Grossly simplified, it looks at the ‘problem’ and comes up with a way to fix it. For example, if someone  has a broken leg, then they would put a cast on it as a way to make it better. Obviously, not everything is that cut and dry, but that’s the basic gist of the medical model. Something is wrong, so we have to find a way to fix it.

There are complications, of course. I mentioned in the last post that there are many biases that influence medical people. Fatphobia is a big one. Also, the fact that the patient is assumed to be a medium-sized white man with no discernible features.

Now. Mental health issues are different because they are not as easy to measure (well….ok. Not the point, Hong. Move on), but treatment follows the same path. Find the problem, say depression, then attempt to fix it. Through medicine or therapy, maybe both.

There has been an explosion of diferent kinds of therapy in the last decade or so. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has become the darling of therapies, and my cynical side says that it’s in a large part because it’s the easiest to dispense/do.

Focusing on changing behavior is much easier than changing ideas, thoughts, trauma, etc. I have always disliked CBT because the premise is that there is something wrong with the person’s behavior/thoughts/ideas and those need to change. Basically, it ignores strucutural/systemic issues and focuses on the individual. Something is bothering you? It’s your fault or you’re perceiving it incorrectly. Racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Handwaved away.

It’s commonly known that people who are depressed are more broadly perceive the world realistically than people who are more optimistic. Therefore, someone telling a depressed person that it’s all in their head will gain no purchase beacuse the depressed person is more likely than not to be correct.

America is a hellscape right now for social justice rights. That’s my perception, and it depresses the hell out of me. Am I wrong? Nope. Therapy can help me find ways to cope with it, but it cannot change the reality that America is going in the wrong direction.

In additon, I had a shitty childhood. I have a very dysfunctional family. You can’t magic that away or pretend it’s not true. I cannot respect any therapist who won’t acknowledge this.


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Have a Nice Death–A Quick Look, part two

Hi. This is part two on my quick look at Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios). Will there be more? Maybe. Here is post one in which I talk about the basics and then wander off as I tend to do.   I just played a few rounds, and–well, let me put it this way. Hades II (Supergiant Games) just came out in Early Access–a shadow drop (on PC), that has me immensely excited. The original game also had an Early Acecss period that lasted nearly two years. I did not jump into the game until it was released from Early Access.

I must admit, I was not instantly enamored with the game. I could see it was well done and nicely crafted. It had great graphics, and I love Greek mythology. But, something about the gameplay wasn’t quite clicking. Again, it wasn’t the game as it was very well made. It was me. Do you want to know why I kept playing? Because of the interactions with the NPCs in the House of Hades and throughout the games. And the relationships between Zagreus (the protagonist) and various NPCs.

There are roughly 300,000 lines of dialogue in the game. I was seeing new dialogue even as I hundo chievo’ed the game. I found things that none of the reviewers mentioned beacuse they did not get that far into the game before reviewing. You have to beat the game something like 10 times to get the true ending.

I nearly didn’t make it to the first time I beat it beacuse the last boss was so hard. I could have used God Mode (makes game easier with each death), but I was too stubborn for that. When I finally beat the last boss for the first time, it felt like beating a FromSoft boss, almost.

Here’s my point. That game grew on me, obviously. The unlocks were meaningful and even though there were only four weapons, each one played significantly different. Especially as the unlocks made each weapon markedly different. The game was very elegantly designed, and one of the few knocks I had about it was that the combat got too hectic at some points. Which is something that many of these games do, including Have a Nice Death. There are so many things flashing on the screen that it’s sometimes impossible to actually focus on the enemy you’re trying to attack.


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Have a Nice Death–A Quick Look

I am looking for a new game, and Ian suggested Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios) on Game Pass. It’s a 2D roguelike-lite (my term for any game that is like Binding of Isaac) in which–wait. First of all, I thought I had played the demo for the game, but it was another game in which there is a cute Death character. And it also reminded me of Death’s Door (Acid Nerve) a bit, but probably just because of the word death in the title.

I just looked up the other game for which I played the demo. It was Death and Taxes (Placeholder Gameworks) in which you decide who lives an ddies. It’s not grim, though. It’s kind of perky and cute. At least, I think that’s what it was supposed to be. It didn’t hit me that way, and I quit after half an hour or so.

Anyway, I really liked the graphics in Have a Nice Death. It’s cute, but not cloying. It feels moody without being oppressive, either. I’ve included a trailer below (still deciding which one to include). Much of the background is in shades of black and white. There are flashes of color in the different attacks and such. Which, actually, is one of the issues I want to discuss later on. In general, the look of the game is one I like and gel with.

I will say that after playing for several hours a few days ago, my game was lost. Whether it was a glitch of the cloud save or me pressing Y to delete the save, I cannot say for sure. If it’s the latter, I would say to make it much clearer that you’re actually deleting a save because I was unpleasantly surprised when I booted up the game the next day and it turned out I had lost all the progress I had made the day before.

Side note, kind of: I have been thinking to buy this on Steam to support the dev. When I found out that I lost my game file, I thought that would have been a good time to buy it on Steam. Instead, I started up again on Game Pass and got back to where I had been in about an hour instead of two or three, and I beat the first big boss for the first time to boot.


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