[Rant] Why "Cook, serve, delicious" should be mandatory

Imagine this: It's a hot summer's day, you're standing in line at the post office/bank, waiting to pay your bills. The air-conditioning is broken, and all you nice people, who just want to do your civic duty, are boiling and melting within your own skin. You lean sideways, to see how many people are in line before you and count them again. Hm... still 17. It's been 17 for a half hour now. What's the hold up? Once you reach the window, you figure it out. It's the person taking your money!

Has this ever happened to you? There's a person sitting there, staring at the screen to check your data, and then at the keyboard, awkwardly punching one key at a time with one finger of one hand. They do this at a speed which makes it seem as though they have only head stories of these mythical "keyboards" and have never used one for themselves. But! These are people who have years of experience under their respective belts. So how is this possible?

Part of it is probably due to being bored out of your skull, I won't deny that. The second reason, though, it would seem, is that they just can't be bothered to speed up their typing. They're suffering there, in their tiny booth, so why shouldn't you suffer with them?

It is inefficient, annoying and just plain mind-numbing for all parties involved. Here is what I propose: much like welders, various tellers should re-qualify every few months! They would need to be capable of doing quick and precise data entry in a somewhat stressful environment.

This is where Cook, serve, delicious (CSD) comes in. CSD is a brilliantly paced typing game. You are required to enter specific key combinations which correspond to the recipes that the patrons of your restaurant order. Sort of like entering account numbers.... See where I'm going with this. As you progress, the combinations become more complex and there are more impatient people to deal with.... like you would find in a line at the bank. Who ever claims this is a girly, mom-type game that middle aged people play during work hours has obviously never played CSD.

When re-qualifying, a teller would be given a day or two to prepare then when testing comes around, they would need to deal with a three star restaurant at 100% buzz. Buzz determines how often people stop by your restaurant and 100% would make for a constant flow of orders. I picked 3 stars because that is the furthest I've come in the game. It's right at the point where a novice like myself starts clenching her jaw because of the focus and speed required. I believe that for a veteran of keyboard-fu, this should require less effort than it does me.

Gamification has been popular for a while now. Giving anybody who was at least 7 when Pong came out should keep them more interested in the task more than a standard test would. On top of that, some folks have a nasty competitive streak and would just love the opportunity to outshine their coworkers/friends/mum. The game would provide the stress, the scoring and a curve-ball of random combinations, making tellers prepared for anything!

Now imagine a world where your papers and data and money are dealt with quickly and efficiently. Isn't it beautiful?

Until next Thursday!

LaDIY Tasha

P.S: Hey, I'm not picky, it can also be Typing of the dead!

Disclaimer: CSD is property of Vertigo Games, ToD is property of Sega (I think) and all the images from the games are theirs.

[Gpost] Knock-knock and the reality fragments

This is your brain on Knock-knock

If you were to say to a seasoned gamer: "Oh, it's an Ice Pick Lodge game.", that would be all the description they needed. For those of us with far less XP, I will translate what I believe this means: This game will mess with your head in subtle and creepy ways. 

Knock-knock is supposed to be a horror game. I say "supposed to be" because it isn't outright scary. It's subtle, it is what "Zodiac" is to horror movies. You won't scream and jump out of your seat as you might with "Amnesia". You may not even realize it's creeped into your head and set up residence in that part of your brain that would still check for monsters under your bed.

 

You play the Lodger, a wild-eyed self-proclaimed scientist (world-ologist, by his words), observer of nature. His slippers, night shirt and shawl make him look clumsy. His voice is a murmur of a claymation character. You never quite know if he is an insomniac, insane or just unlucky. He mutters to himself (and you) about what happens in the house. He draws you in with his peculiar ritual of checking all the lights in the house: his real house and the dream house.Your mission is to survive until morning. Sounds easy enough. It isn't.

But don't take my word for it. I asked my S.O. to write down his experience with the game, being an experienced gamer and all. So, for the first time, I'm having a guest post! Yay!

Knock-knock is a game I know by reputation. It's by Ice-Pick Lodge, a highly reputable band of lunatics. And that reputation was enough to make me reluctant to play it, because I don't deal well with the dark, or the things your imagination might put into that dark.

Knock-knock is a game about a lunatic. He reveals it immediately, as he rambles to himself about having to check the doors, walking strangely through a deserted house where the furniture fades in gradually as you stay in a room. Sometimes pop-up messages appear with his diary notes. Sometimes you go out of the house and wander through a dark forest where a little girl shows you fragments of reality.
It's eerie. Unsettling. Freaky. At the start, I was nervous what would happen. But nothing happened, so I kept playing. The house became comfortable, the weird shifting of rooms and appearance of furniture becoming routine. There was nothing to fear. 

Due to some weird glitch, my Guests have no heads...

And then the guests arrive.

The guests are strange nightmarish creatures lurking just off the edge of your vision, off the edge of the screen. If they touch you, something happens. What is it? I don't know. Things shift, weirdness appears at the edge of the screen. Just when you've got used to the house, the guests throw you off again. You don't know what touching them does to you, but it feels wrong. So you run.

It's implied that turning on the lights keeps the guests under control. Does it actually? I don't know, but I stumbled through the rooms, turning those lights on. The protagonist mutters about hide-and-seek, so I hid behind furniture, and sometimes the guests went away. There are rules, but it's hard to figure out what they are. And then the big eye appears, staring at you as you try to turn on a light. If you keep going with the light, the eye hurts you. If you don't, you can sort of step through the eye, finding yourself in an endless hallway.

What does it all mean? I don't know. There's a lot of things I didn't know about this game, because it never tells you anything, but you guess at the rules from what happens. Eventually you just want to make it through each night, watching gleefully as a progress screen advances and whimpering as (what you assume is) the health bar goes down every time you touch a guest. You run panickingly through the rooms, trying to avoid the guests as your health bar dips, shrieking as one appears just out of nowhere. And sometimes there are other things, freakish dopplegangers and little babysitters weeping in corners. Can they hurt you? You don't know, so you try, and then you still don't know.

Eventually the game ends as you finish that progress bar. An ending appears. You have no idea what it means, and you're not sure if you won or lost, but it feels satisfying. That's Knock-knock for ya. You have no idea what it's happening, but it feels like you're making progress, and it's so very satisfying.

I loved the art style of this game. It reminded me of old Russian cartoons I watched as a kid. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Ice Pick Lodge is Russian! The game contains some beautiful surrealistic artwork, named "fragments of reality", which you can obtain by facing a small spectral girl or wandering the infinite corridors, which the breaches in the reality fabric lead to. I replayed the game, just so I could collect all of them (the fact that there is a Steam achievement for it has nothing to do with it).

Disclaimer: All artwork is property of Ice Pick Lodge.

Castle Crashers Stole My Pants

from gamerzines.com

As some of you may know, there's a sale on. The big Steam Holiday Sale! (insert dramatic music here) Being the nerd that I am, I've been following it closely and voting twice each day so that I can get my holiday sale badge. Being broke like I am, I could only get Rocketbirds for my bf. I would like to think it's just me being all loving and caring, but I also wanted the achievements for buying and gifting a game. A few days later, the sale in full swing still, a conversation like this happened:

Him: Have you heard of Castle Crashers?

Me: Nope.

Him: I hear it's a good two-person co-op.

Me: I'll look it up.

(2 minutes later)

Me: Holy cr.ab! That's awesome! And the wee knights are so adorable! Look at their little funny hats!

Him: Would you like to give it a try?

Me: OH YES!

And so, on the n-th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four little knights! We were all pumped up and ready to go when the game crashed. Ok. No matter. Try again.

The opening scene was that of our two knights partying middle-ages style in a tavern. Useful note here: Player 1 gets the cooler dance. If you're player 2, you get to dance like a dork. Don't be player 2. When all of a sudden a soldier comes flying in through the door, bloody and then dies. All our fellow knights rush out to see what is happening and of course, I, despite my dorky dancing, run out as well, looking for enemies to slay!

This is the part where I would like to say that it would be great if the cut-scenes could be skipped. After the game crashing about the fourth time, I was sick of looking at the big white rock being stolen from my (shivering and scared) king's throne by a tiny ninja-wizard. The game was first released on Xbox, then on PlayStation 3 and even at the start of the game, it tells you that you'd be better off using a controller, instead of a keyboard.

Once we make our way past the barbarian hoards, we saw what the true, horrific, most heinous problem was: The barbarians were kidnapping our beautiful princesses! The nerve! We, of course, give chase, hunting down the fiends who dare lay their grubby hands on these precious examples of (rather big-eyed) perfection. Over the castle walls, through fields of muck and destruction we put down every barbarian who dares cross paths with us. Me, I get shot in the face by an arrow about every 5 steps, but where I lack in skill and coordination, I make up for with zeal. Fighting a canon goat (I swear, I'm not high, there is a canon goat), the barbarian lair is reached, with our princesses tied to poles and displayed by the arena where we face the final boss of this section. 

And what a boss he is! Masked, gigantic and carrying a gigantic shield. I died! I don't mean I died of fright. I meant my little orange knight got owned by the hulking fur-ball many a time and had to be resuscitated by my bf's green knight. That shows real devotion, ladies and gentlemen: Giving CPR to your fallen comrade in arms, while a horned behemoth is trying to turn you into a waffle. Not only that, but he also chugs some very flammable liquid and gives the deadliest burp of all times, sending himself and you and the other attacking barbarians flying across the arena. 

Though we didn't mean to, we both ended up dying. I was too slow delivering CPR and received a death blow from The Waffler up there. This made the game save our progress. Which was great, really. You know why? Because we had fought this boss three times before, having to go through all his minions again and again and again because right when the bastard is about to kick the proverbial bucket, the game would crash and we would lose any progress. But it doesn't crash like a normal game. Oh no. This one is so much more evil than that: It says your session is cancelled! It doesn't die completely, BSOD, block your computer, freeze your screen. No, it continues running, but all your progress goes up in smoke.

This was just a description and my impressions of the first mission. I loved the game, despite it's infuriating crashes, smashing all manner of buttons, aiming for any sort of effect. It's great fun to play with the option to talk to your team mate too, because it's a much faster way to let them know to "GO ON WITHOUT ME! SAVE THE PRINCESS!!!" So if you're looking for something to giggle at and enjoy in a carefree and very silly manner, then by all means get this game!