Monthly Archives: September 2020

Health

Hyperbaric Monsters

I swear, sometimes it’s like game designers don’t even test their games out to see if they are actually fun. I’ve been playing the newest Mini Monsters (Minimon) game over the last week or so, ever since it came out. I’ve got this great team of Minimon that can beat pretty much any opponent, at least in theory. The problem is that this game has a brutal poisoning condition, which causes your Minimon to lose health outside of battle. Basically every fight ends up with your Minimon being poisoned, which means you’ve got to haul it back to the Minimon centre for healing in a hyperbaric chamber all the dang time. It’s so frustrating.

Like, come on! We have portable hyperbaric chambers within Melbourne. How hard would it be to put one in the game, which lets you heal your Mimimon on the go? You can’t tell me that the game designers tested this thing and thought it was fun. Running between towns after every battle, wasting hours of your time, is not compelling gameplay.

It wasn’t always like this, you know. In the previous games, there used to be items that would heal your poisoned furry friends, but it seems they’ve removed that from this game. The team at Freaky Games said poison healing was a “gimmick” which wouldn’t be reused. That would be fine if it wasn’t a total lie. Every Minimon game has had poison healing items, including the spinoffs.

I don’t understand. Did anyone at Freaky Games even test this product? You can’t tell me they kept running between towns for healing and thought it was totally fine. It’s not fine. It’s boring at best and infuriating at worst.

If I, a regular consumer of the game, can tell that there are these massive issues in the product, then why can’t the company creating it? Don’t they have playtesters? Quality assurance managers or something? Surely somebody could have pointed out that the game is no longer fun without items that can heal the poisoned condition. I feel like I’m going crazy here!

Cars

Observatory Fight

As the fifty space flight engineers made to attack me, I drew my longbow and went for cover, ready for our epic fight. They were trying to stop me from finding the secret to excellent and affordable car repair, but I wasn’t going to let them get in the way.

I went to draw an arrow from my quiver, lightning-quick with my expertly trained reflexes. As my hand touched my waist, however, I realised I’d left my quiver and arrows at home! A metal set square went flying over my head, as I tried to think of how I could possibly win. Without arrows, my bow was useless. I drew my shortsword and leapt over the barrier, then rolled on the ground to avoid more flying lab equipment.

“Tell me where to find the best auto electrician near Hobart!” I screamed, charging through the pack of engineers. Now I was so close to them that they couldn’t throw anything at me, as they would hit their scientific allies.

With a single thrust, I put my shortsword through the giant telescope which my opponents surrounded. It pierced the metal, and suddenly lights in the observatory began to flash red. A voice came over the room. “Telescope has taken critical damage. Self-destructing in five, four, three…”

I was already making a run for it, the engineers stunned by my epic move. I managed to get behind the group as the telescope went up in a giant fireball, exploding. They were thrown back by the force, flying in a wide arc through the air.

When it was over, I walked toward one of the engineers, putting a boot on his chest. “Tell me where I can find the mechanic I seek.”

He coughed, his body broken. “You’re looking in the wrong places,” he said. “What you really seek is wheel repair. Hobart is-” He collapsed, eyes shut.

“Hobart is what? Hobart is what?” I demanded.

But it was too late. He was already unconscious. I grunted and pushed myself up, looking around at the destroyed observatory. They really didn’t want me finding the car repair guru, did they? There was something sinister going on here. If I was going to get to the bottom of this, I’d need some new tools.