Slime and Punishment

Even though my Steam wishlist is chocked full of gaming goodness, I've found myself unable to pull the trigger on any new purchases.  Well, newer than Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 which I wrote about last week.  Until the next big sale I think I will be finding myself spending time revisiting some old familiar games and trying to soldier through CSD2.

Slime
One of those ol' familiars is the fabulously cute Slime Rancher.  It's a game about exploring a world filled with an array of cute little slimes, capturing them, raising them, and then selling their plort byproducts for cash.  If you're like me, you might've walked away from Slime Rancher during its early access days.  Now that it's in full release there are even more adventures to be had with new areas, new slimes, new gadgets, and much, much more.  There are slimes to be captured!

Upon my return I decided to check out the two new areas--the Ancient Ruins and the Glass Desert.  The Ancient Ruins are an almost puzzle-like area filled with some interesting new slimes.  Quantum slimes have the unique ability to project an image of themselves and to teleport.  Their favorite food is the unique fruit, the phase lemon.  Phase lemons can only be obtained by shooting fruit that already exists at the lemon tree.  A fruit for a fruit.  Once you've captured some quantum slimes you want to make sure that you keep them fed and happy.  Unhappy quantum slimes have a tendency to teleport themselves outside of corrals and require some extra wrangling.

My beautiful mosaic tangle largo slimes.

Once you've found the Boom Gordo slime in the Ancient Ruins and satisfied it's desire for chicken consumption, you can unlock the teleporter to the Glass Desert.  On first glance the Glass Desert seems mostly empty.  You'll stumble across a new slime--the dervish slime--and some plants scattered across the large wasteland.  With some careful exploration you can unlock special fountains that can be used to restore oasis like areas across the zone.  In these oasis zones you will find two new species of slimes--the mosaic slime (the prettiest slime!) and the tangle slime.  Be sure to capture a few to take back to the ranch.  There are also some new plants--the silver parsnip and the prickle pear--that grow exclusively in the Glass Desert.  Oh, and be careful because the Glass Desert is subject to periodic fire storms that can cause damage to you but also contain another type of new slime--the fire slime.

My little ranch has grown into a sprawling complex filled with every variety of slimes, plenty of different foods, and a few cute little gadgets.  With the addition of the 7ZEE rewards club there are numerous rewards to work toward--some are cosmetic but others add special items.  I will definitely be spending some time down on the ol' slime ranch.

Punishment
Last week I wrote about the addition of Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 to my library.  It got off to a little bit of a rocky start with a release that wasn't quite finished.  Now, as I have played a little bit more, I am feeling a little conflicted about this newest addition.  I loved the original CSD and was so excited to hear that there was going to be a second iteration of cooking madness.  I'm just not quite sure that CSD2 is living up to the original.

I'm still not completely certain about what the entire purpose of the "cook for hire" challenges are.  It's very obvious that a lot of effort went into designing these numerous unique restaurants and challenges.  I enjoy the fact that there are so many interesting restaurants with cute backstories but why exactly am I playing them?  Sure, you get money and it's a way to build experience, but beyond that...it just doesn't feel as connected to the original premise of creating your restaurant and building it from the ground up.

I haven't spent any time playing in my own restaurant in CSD2--maybe I need to make myself break away from the repetitive C4H challenges, but I just feel really compelled to keep playing them.  along with that there's the whole reward system--to earn the coveted gold medal on each reward requires a perfect day.  Perfect days are easily doable in the first few days in a C4H restaurant but are extremely difficult at levels with more items on the menu and more buzz.  I wish I could say that earning these coveted medals is fun, but often they are a huge chore that requires you to play the same day over and over.  I've been struggling to tell myself that there is really no reason to try to attain a gold on every level.  I wish it was a little bit more fun to go back and earn those golds.

Chubigans, the sole developer has promised to add more features that fans have been asking for.  many of those features--like e-mail and unique daily events--should be added in a large update in October.  I'm hoping that these additions will make CSD2 feel closer to the original.