Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: nausea

Blue Prince–A Quick Look, part two

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I want to talk more about Blue Prince (Dogubomb) because it’s still in my mind. I have not played another run. I want to, but every time I think about firing it up, my brain shrieks in protest. In the last post, I gave my quick opinion on it.

One thing I want to point out as a negative to the game is that you can’t save mid-run. You have to do a full run before saving and quitting. I get it from a thematic point of view beacuse each run is a day. And, as I mentioned in the last post, you cannot stay in the house during the night so you have to stay in a tent on the estate grounds. This is a conceit of the game, so it makes thematic sense to say you can’t quit a run during the day.

However. Sometimes, you have to make concessions to gameplay and in this day and age, it’s just not being respectful of tnhe player’s time. Jason Schreir, whom I mentioned in yesterday’s post, mentioned this as his one negative in the video I’ve included below.

I had this problem when I played Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Edmund McMillen). By the time I got good at it, a run would take me well over an hour. When it first came out, you could not save a run. If I remember correctly, he did add it in one of the countless updates. Can you tell that I was not pleased with the endless updates? Binding of Isaac: Rebirth was the game at its best, and I stand by that.

Anyway, I have a feeling that Dogubomb will eventually add the ability to save. You really cannot  be without it in this day and age. Then again, it’s not enough to put people off the game. It’s amazing how this is the indie game of the year so far. It seemingly came out of nowhere like Balatro (LocalThunk).

In the RKG Discord, someone mentioned that he was getting a little tired of the logic and math puzzles. He and his wife had been playing the game all weekend. He said that he would not have continued playing it if his wife hadn’t joined him. He’s not big on roguelites/likes and said he would have liked the game better without that element.

I had a think about it. Do I like the roguelike element? Again, *spoilers* for the game, but I’m only on the fifth day. So, there’s not much there to spoil, but fair warning anyway.

I do because I ilke roguelikes…to a certain extent. It’s very much hit and miss for me. The person in the Discord doesn’t like roguelikes that don’t have permanent upgrades. I get it (especially as I’m perma-stuck in Balatro, apparently), but I do enjoy some of those as long as I can keep making progress. In general, though, I like roguelikes that have permant upgrades.


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The first person blues

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I get motion sickness. A lot. An hour in the car? Motion sickness. Flying? Motion sickness. First person games? Motion sickness.

Side Note (quickest side note ever): When my mom was trying to guilt me into going on a cruise with her (whole family), I brought up motion sickness as one of the issues. Not the main one, but a serious issue. My brother said that a ship is so big, I would not be likely to feel it. I Googled it, of course, and there are people who get motion sick on a cruise ship. It wasn’t a risk I was willing to take, especially since I did not want to go in the first place.

I can play some first person games with a lot of fiddling, but getting there is very uncomfortable. Nausea, a headache that threatens to become a migraine, queasy stomach, etc. If I really want to play a game, I’ll do it, but if I don’t care about the game, it’s easier to give up. Or even if I’m just slightly warm about it. I really liked Firewatch and suffered for half an hour as I delved into the files to fiddle with the FOV. Same with Borderlands, one and two. A little bit of three. Even if there is an FOV slider, it doesn’t always make the game playable.

My biggest regret is that I couldn’t finish What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow. It’s first person, which I didn’t know when I bought it. I had heard so many good things about it that I just gritted my teeth and continued. It was low-level nausea and headache at first, but then I hit the part where I had to fly and the urge to vomit was so strong and the headache was so intense, I violently recoiled. I immediately shut down the game and tweeted my regret that I couldn’t play it before asking for a refund. Sparrow Game tweeted me back saying I could either use the reticule or take it off (don’t recall which) because that helped some people. The thing is, I didn’t even want to open the game again because it had been such an intense reaction. I’m really sad because I’ve heard such amazing things about the game. I *may* try it again, but every time I even think about it, my body negatively reacts.


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End of Sekiro and I can’t play Return of the Obra Dinn

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I’ve been romping through NG+ in Sekiro and not being fazed by much of anything. I two-shot Madame Butterfly and got Genichiro in half a dozen tries. The boss who gave me the hardest time was a mini-boss: Seven Ashina Spears–Shikibu Toshikatsu Yamauchi. It’s always the fucking spear guys that mess with my shit. I died to him seven or eight times, and I can’t imagine having to fight him for both Deathblows. By the way, it’s still one of my irritation about the game. Most of the mini-bosses can be stealth Deathblowed to start the fight, so why bother? In fact…I’ll get to that in a minute. No, I can talk about it now. The toughest boss until the very end game was the True Corrupted Monk. In my first playthrough, I cheesed by doing a stealth Deathblow for her first two pips, then just fought her normally for her third phase. I did that by intentionally dying any time I couldn’t pull off the first or second stealth Deathblow, so I ‘died’ to her more times than I actually count as deaths.

This time, I went in for the first stealth Deathblow, and I didn’t get the big red glowing dot. I let myself be killed so I could try it again. I figured I hadn’t lined it up correctly, so I tried it again. And again. I did it half a dozen times before fighting her first phase, then dying in the second phase. I tried it several more times, and I never got it. I mean, I’m not the greatest with spatial awareness, but it wasn’t *that* hard to get the first Deathblow. I finally looked it up, and it turns out they patched it out. Well then. Good to know. I had to fight the first phase the normal way and then try for the second Deathblow, hoping they didn’t patch that one out as well. I did that, and I got her on the first time I made it to the second phase (which did not have the stealth Deathblow patched out), and I moved on.

So, yeah. I was making it through the game at about a tenth of the time it took me on my first playthrough. I did some farming to get the skills I have yet to acquire, and I managed to get the one that costs 9 skill points which took me a goddamn long time. I would do it by going through an area and killing a boss, which at this point, took me to maybe half a skill point, then I would go to Ashina Castle Antechamber and farm. Or Gun Fort. I would do this until I went past the next skill point and bank it, then I would go to the next area. I accrued a ton of sen in this manner as well, which was really pointless as I have nothing to spend it on except Spirit Emblems. I’ve ended up buying sugars and potions and such because I don’t want to lose the sen, but it’s just luxury at this point.

Side Note: I’ve mentioned that one tip I kept reading about how to survive in Sekiro was to buy coin purses to save your sen. They’re like consumable souls, and you buy them at a 10% markup. You don’t loses the purses upon death, so the rationale is that if you’re, say, going into a boss and know you’ll die a lot, better to have 90% of your sen than none of it. I understand that. I don’t disagree with that. My quibble is with the overemphasize on saving sen. In my first playthrough, I was never hurting for it. Never. If there was something that was a bit more expensive (such as Madame Butterfly’s Phantom Kunai for 3,000 sen, which is a ton at the point in the game when you can buy it), I’d grind for it. My early game grind spot, a stretch of the Hirata Estate, netted me 500 sen in 5 minutes (1,000 with the Mibu Balloon of Wealth), so it wasn’t a big deal.


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