the discomfort zone got too comfortable so we made the comfort zone discomfortable. samus: meet samus

where super dove uncritically into the power fantasy that metroid II (the game with a literal Genocide Counter in the UI) unmasked and deflated, this feels like it's turning it inward against you personally. Your body, Your likeness, and Your autonomy hijacked; Your celebratory past tense role as (repeated) casual annihilationist to reckon with and cower from

it operates as something of a Super Negative Image Metroid: an inversion right down to the uncomfortable, choking grip of the direction. all that clammy ADAMsplaining, those sequestered zones, the redline urgency; everything's dialed perfectly into the exact same channel with uniform intent. even the woozy alien psychedelia's been spirited away in favour of clinical, detached interiors and astroturfed xerox biomes with some of the most appropriately sterile Oops No Backlight lighting on the GBA

and no, it obviously doesn't accomplish the same things as its predecessors, but it's not attempting to. this is a game about lack of control, and altering the format would be akin to breaking the spinal column that holds it upright. fusion's big successes (the pacing, brevity, tonal and thematic consonance, and delicate curation of tension and challenge) are the result of its structural changes. being shunted around a tiny sarcophagus isn't a flaw, it's the entire premise. duh

even without all that though it's impossible for me not to love a game with nightmare, the Profaned Baja Blast Suit, AQA's sunken banger, shots like this, and those absolutely psychotic ridley screams

quite possibly the best SA-X heavy fusion since the sultry sounds of steely dan

i hate the idea of the "perfect game."

it's true tetris is, mechanically, without meaningful blemish. especially accounting for rerelease after rerelease, it has been polished to a gleaming shine. but it's an unadventurous mindset that decides something's worth on how few flaws you can find with it.

there's a rock-solid elegance to the purity of tetris' easy to learn, hard to master gameflow. but i can't deny that many iterations on it have been even more hypnotizing, if a little more lopsided.

tetris is a beautiful, pristine pearl of gaming history. but i can't help but find more value in the chipped diamond, myself.

As with many players, my introduction to the franchise was through Persona 5. During the pandemic, I played the game, and it quickly became my favorite of all time. It was somewhat amusing because I'm not typically into JRPGs or Japanese culture, but Persona has something truly unique about it. That's why Persona 3 Reload was my most anticipated game of the year, despite being a remake of an older title.

It's nearly impossible to review Persona 3 Reload without comparing it to Persona 5. Since its announcement, Persona 3 Reload seemed like the kind of remake that the Pokémon Company used to do with its older games. And I was right: Persona 3 Reload takes everything developed for Persona 5 and creates a true and good remake.

Persona 3 Reload is a classic Persona game that divides into two parts: your normal life as a student, and a hero's journey to save the world. In the first part, you attend school to study and interact with friends, while in the second part, you face enemies called shadows.

The social aspect of the game is particularly enjoyable. In addition to your duties as a student, you'll need to socialize with various characters from the school and rest of the world. Each character has a unique story, and you'll need to meet them multiple times to complete their storylines. This mechanic is called social links. Compared to Persona 5, I found these stories even more engaging.

The "hero part" is a turn-based RPG. I know that many people don't enjoy games of this style, but Persona games offer dynamic combat. Personally, I'm not usually a fan of turn-based games, but Persona takes the genre to another level.

Despite the game being split into two parts, they converge seamlessly. The interactions you have with friends will make you stronger to face enemies. The game operates on a calendar system, allowing you to decide when to hang out with friends, study, battle against enemies, or improve your social attributes.

The main story of the game starts strong, slows down a bit in the middle, and finishes perfectly. While I still prefer Persona 5's story, it's incredible how Atlus is able to create such incredible characters that are truly charismatic and make you care deeply about them. I enjoyed learning about their lives and backgrounds while also worrying about their futures.

I do think that Persona 3 Reload has some minor issues, such as poorly placed activities in the calendar system. There are moments where you have nothing to do for a few days, followed by days where you're overwhelmed with tasks. This became a problem near the end when I had enough money and maxed out all my social attributes. Additionally, I didn't appreciate how much time it took to start social links with party members, and that it was limited to just the female characters.

Another thing that is truly incredible in this franchise, and it holds true here as well, is the soundtrack. Persona 3 Reload boasts one of the best soundtracks ever in the gaming industry.

It took me 75 hours to finish my first playthrough, and I almost completed everything that could be done.

In conclusion, Persona 3 Reload is one of the best games we've had in recent years, but I still prefer Persona 5. If you enjoy JRPGs or Japanese culture, it's a must-play game. Even if you don't, I recommend giving it a chance, as I promise you won't be disappointed.

I first started playing Hearthstone around the tail end of the Knights Of The Frozen Throne expansion about halfway through 2017, just before Kobolds and Catacombs was released. And man, let me tell ya - Kobolds and Catacombs, certainly balance-wise, was a mess! Warlock was broken as shit! I still have nightmares about Cubelock; Skull of the Man'ari, Bloodreaver Guldan, Voidlord etc. every few months. I picked Hearthstone up because while I'd never played World Of Warcraft (and didn't particularly care for what I'd seen) I liked card games and thought this one looked cool. It had a ton of charm and colour and personality, a sense of style and humour that WoW seemed to be lacking. To this day, this is still one of my favourite things about Hearthstone. It's not hugely self-serious like WoW, not constantly trying to force an unearned sense of grandeur or epicness. This game just has a ton of fun with itself. Recently they had a wild-western themed expansion where Paladin got a card called "Holy Cowboy" who discounts your holy spells. They referenced Leeroy Jenkins and gave him a card. He's one of the most broken cards in history! It's fun!

In 2017 I liked everything about Hearthstone except for playing Hearthstone. Decks stayed broken and oppressive to play against for a long time. Either the balance team were asleep at the wheel for years on end, or they didn't exist. Corridor Creeper, Shudderwock, Call To Arms, Ultimate Infestation, THE CAVERNS BELOW. I can list off so many notoriously diabolical Hearthstone cards that made the game unfun to play for months at a time off my head like that, it's so easy. Beyond this, the game's monetization model, whilst not the most evil thing I've ever seen, was still pretty manipulative, as all monetization models are. Hearthstone was very stingy with handing out rewards of any kind. Card packs were few and far between, and getting the arcane dust needed to make the cards and decks you want practically necessitated shelling out a bit of money for some packs and getting lucky, or waiting a week for your weekly quests. Y'know, all that mobile game shit.

But it's not 2017 anymore, it's 2024, and Hearthstone has just recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and man how things have changed. Maybe you could argue the improvements have come too late, that positive changes being enacted 10 games into a game's lifespan isn't particularly impressive, and I think that'd be fair! But the fact remains the same, Hearthstone has been improved massively, and after years of considering my relationship with this game "complicated", I've finally come to terms with the fact that I just like this game. A lot. In 2024, Hearthstone comes dangerously close to being what I'd call "generous" with its rewards. There's a rewards track that's honestly been a godsend for the game. You're meted out gold fairly frequently now for just playing with the game, you're given extra points towards levelling up on the reward track (which results in gold and free arena runs and other stuff) by completing achievements, which are usually fulfilling fun, silly stipulations based on certain card effects. I just got one for copying a certain amount of minions with Celestial Projectionist, for example. This gave me gold versions of the card for free, and allowed me to trade in my original, non-gold versions for other random rare cards! It's good stuff! It's honestly not that hard to make the decks or cards you want anymore, I haven't felt behoved to spend money on Hearthstone in ages and that's awesome.

Equally as importantly, the balance team are super on top of things nowadays. Things rarely stay broken or oppressive for long. Hotfixes and balance patches are far more regular, and they also buff cards now too instead of just nerfing stuff into the ground. Handbuff Paladin just recently was hideously broken. Now it's reasonable! Now Tempo Demon Hunter is totally ludicrous, the devs have already acknowledged it and hinted at a hotfix! The game is simply more fun to play when you can actually have faith that the balance will be ironed out within a reasonable time if/when ever it gets out of whack.

And with this in mind, I struggle to find much to dislike about Hearthstone nowadays. I think it doesn't get enough credit for its incredible art and theming. Hearthstone card art is so consistently incredible, so colourful and cartoony, yet so detailed and expressive, I could stare at it for days. Baku The Mooneater, Cat Trick, Kobold Librarian. Some of my favourite card art ever! And the soundtrack? Bro. I've probably used the Hearthstone soundtrack more in my videos than any other video game OST. Ballroom Slink from One Night In Karazhan is one of my favourite pieces of video game music ever - so silly and groovy and tonally perfect both for a zany card game, and - as it turns out, my YouTube videos! I love love love the very cosy, baroque feeling Hearthstone's music goes for, it really does capture the feeling of being in a tavern by the fireside, but also kinda...Immersing yourself in other settings, imagining being in the desert for Saviours Of Uldum, or atop a volcano in Blackrock Mountain. I don't think I've ever heard as many guitar slides in any game's music as much as I do in Hearthstone, the peeps on the woodwinds and acoustics in these songs are pros, bro. This is all without mentioning the incredible attention to detail. Every. Single Card. Gets a little bit of flavour text in the Collection Manager, generally, these are actually pretty funny and well-written jokes! And the fact that every playable minion, including ones that aren't cards themselves and are only tokens summoned or generated by them have voiced lines of dialogue for when they're summoned! That's super impressive! I don't think people talk about that enough! I don't think they give enough credit to how good this game feels to control! "How it feels to control? It's a card game lol" your hater-ass is thinking, throwing in a little passive-aggressive "lol" at the end just to piss me off. Fuck you. You can cue up actions in Hearthstone, there's like a buffer of actions that lets you perform about 30 different inputs without card animations or voice lines slowing you down. You can easily cancel a summon if you think twice about it by just pulling it back to your hand. It's super intuitive! It has great game feel!

I guess I still fundamentally disagree with the Hearthstone devs' philosophy on randomness. Hearthstone has been criticised for years for relying too much on randomness. On random card effects, random targets of damage, random cards that can be summoned or generated in any number of ways. Against classes who practically rely on generating random shit like Priest or Mage (both of whom I hardly ever play out of spite) this can just be really frustrating! It's basically impossible to keep track of what cards they have at any time! And you can end up losing to some random bullshit they have that you could never have possibly predicted! The devs maintain that the randomness spices up the game, it keeps it fun and fresh and stops people from falling into predictable play patterns. I get what they're saying, and I'd agree if this wasn't a game that leant so hard into competitive, if there was any more substantial single-player experience where this randomness could go, never to interfere in matches with actual stakes. Hearthstone has had great single-player experiences before like Dungeon Run, which I loved! And it also had Mercenaries, which is...Fine! But I don't think, and have never thought that Hearthstone's reliance on randomness is worth the supposed variety it brings. Okay, yeah it spices things up, but at what cost? Again, if the game didn't lean so heavily towards being for people wanting a high-level, competitive experience, I'd get it! But as it is, this weird championing of random generation and crazy shit just feels totally at odds with what the game is otherwise trying to be.

But y'know, if it weren't for that randomness, I think in 2024 I might consider giving this game 5 stars. It was maybe 3, 3 and a half back in 2017, but it really has come a long way. I was pretty surprised, and to be honest a bit saddened to see this game's average rating sat at 2.9/5 on here. Maybe these reviews were left back in the day? Maybe people were angry about the monetization, or the balance, maybe - like me, they felt kinda dirty about lavishing praise on any game associated with Activision Blizzard. But those first two things have been largely remedied, and closer inspection will show you that Hearthstone's dev team seem to be a diverse and inclusive group of people who were often appauled by the decisions of ActiBlizz. They've made a gorgeous, charming, artful card game that I've found myself going back to many times over the years, and it's a shame that their game is often caught in the crossfire of their overlords' controversies. If you played Hearthstone a long time ago and found yourself frustrated and disheartened by it, I implore you to go back and give it a second look. You might be surprised by what you find.

not too much to say! i like it! i think that this game has some of the best sprite art ever, like all of the main cast look great, the levels look fantastic, the music is also amazing

sonic has a weird philosophical problem in that, what is a sonic game supposed to look like? going fast is when it is at its best, but a 2d platformer needs obstacles. how you do add obstacles without the annoying seemingly random spikes or enemies that feel impossible to avoid? whats the solution? i dont know!

egg rocket zone is the most exciting level but i dont know if its the most FUN one? its conceptually great and the music is great. the boss absolutely SUCKS however, and is significantly harder than the final boss!

oh well!!!! will probably come back to this relatively soon :)

Yes, I played one of those oldfangled car games. Why did I play the car game, you may ask? Well, I saw some footage of Burnout 3: Takedown the other day and thought it looked fun and really wanted to play it! Plus, I'm coming up on my 100th review and wanted to diversify my portfolio, so to speak. (I do not have a real job.) Alas, Burnout 3: Takedown is practically impossible to play today without an emulator, and that'd require sitting at my desk - and I don't wanna play games at my desk for the sake of my back! Also, I suspect someone sprinkled 17 Testosterone pills down my mouth some weeks ago whilst I was sleeping, and thus cars have now become my sole personality trait. I like it when they go fast and the engine makes a noise. Now that I have successfully transitioned into a car guy, I decided to fill the Burnout 3: Takedown-shaped hole in my life by playing the nearest thing I could, which was Burnout Paradise: Remastered on Game Pass.

And it was pretty fun! The core conceit of Burnout being that it's not so much a game for people who love cars as it is for people who love crashing things and wrecking shit is awesome! It's why I sought Burnout 3 out and not fuckiiiin, Need For Speed or Garfield Kart or any of those other more stripped back driving sims. And Burnout Paradise definitely delivers on the promise of mayhem, there's a lot of smart design decisions here that make the action real arcade-y and simple and fun in a super uncomplicated way. I love how "wrecking" your car is such a temporary setback, you just see a sick slow-mo vid of how badly you crashed for a few seconds and then you're back on the road, ready to go! Driving feels super good, you go like fast in this game - "no shit" you're thinking, it's a fucking drivey racey game, but like no man, you can go fuckin fast, there's nary a better feeling in video games than going full speed in Burnout, pumping your whole-ass boost meter and driving down the highway w some 2000's hard rock playing. Except maybe taking out like, 5 other drivers in a row w some 2000's hard rock playing! That shit owns! Road Rage is far and away the best overworld event in this game,

This is one of the most late 2000's games ever made, not just because Jimmy Eat World and Seether are on the OST, but because it did the fashionable thing that every series was doing at the time and took a previously non-open world series, open world! And that's where the problems start. Because you're racing around an open world instead of designated race tracks, you often find yourself driving into oncoming traffic, which makes Race and Marked Man events in particular more annoying than they need to be. Annoying, not hard. They're still extremely easy, but if you ever wreck, it's because you were constantly having to divert your attention between the objective marker at the top of the screen, the minimap in the bottom left to see if you're coming up on any alternative routes and shortcuts, and the fuckin' road in front of you! It's really pace-breaking to wreck so constantly. Once or twice isn't so bad, but in my experience when I wrecked it almost never really felt like my fault, it was because I was looking at the minimap while driving (bc I felt like I had to), then looked up at the road to find I'm speeding directly into a fuckin' pickup truck with no time to react! It really sucks the wind out of fast-paced events that should otherwise be so much fun.

Also it's a testament to how poorly this open world meshes with a driving game when I'm advocating for fast travel, but this game needed fast travel. Overworld events are dotted all over the open world, but said events can only ever end in 1 of 8 specific places in that world. So if you wanna tackle any of the many things moreso in the middle of the map and away from these landmarks (and this is where most of the Road Rage events are) then you've gotta go really out of your way to seek them out. And there's no ping system! You can't mark anything on your map as far as I can tell! Am I missing something? If you wanna seek out a specific event, I'm pretty sure you've just gotta keep stop-starting and checking your map to see if you're going in the right direction! That's the best way I could find! Again, talk about a pacebreaker! This is compounded by the fact that you can't just retry events! If you fail an event - and again, all of them end in only 1 of 8 places, you've gotta drive 20% of the way back across the map just to get the starting point! Huh?

ALSO also this game does not tutorialise things very well at all. I did not know how to start Showtime mode (a fan favourite that I thought was just fine) until the fuckin' DJ announcer guy mentioned it, and I forgot how he explained to do a Barrel Roll and a Top Spin and couldn't find any in-game tutorial to brush up on it, so I just had to look it up!

Burnout Paradise is fundamentally really fun, it's like the Skate to Need For Speed or Forza's Tony Hawk. It's not concerned about realism, it's silly and arcade-y. It encourages you to wreck shit and get hurt and that's dope! But it should be more dope. It keeps getting in its own way with this open world structure, a total noose around its neck. Just let me drive and make people explode! Stop making me navigate and check my map and divert my attention between like 3 different fuckin' things! And also let me play Burnout 3: Takedown you freaks

doom is cool man. heavy metal and blowing up demons with epic gun shooting, chainsaw action, and punching dudes hell yeah

i think this doom works because of the way it incentives aggression; yes there are powerups and healing and shields all over the shop but the most reliable way to stay alive is glory kills, which are the icing on top of the cake. precious i-frames and promised final death for undead demonic freakazoids is what makes glory kills awesome. you obliterate and annihilation and when its at its best it owns. great fun.

i do think that sometimes shooting by itself isnt massively satisfying, in that bullets making contact with the enemy doesnt feel that good? in other shoots you might just get a like, little ticking noise or a vibration or something to acknowledge it, a small visual or audio reward that makes shooting itself satisfying. doom doesnt have that, and maybe thats because landing shots isnt the point of doom, but i still think id have appreciated it. unfortunately most upgrades are also just boring. i dont even know how many praetor suit upgrades i had in the end. i think the only one i really cared about was reducing self immolation damage from grenades which is also an uninteresting upgrade. when i found new weapon drones i'd click randomly on what the upgrade would be because i didnt care all that much. at one point i had 22 weapon upgrade points because i didn't care or need anymore upgrades. i didnt bother with basically any of the rune challenges because they were tedious and gimmicky and the reward was often a rune i didnt care about. as soon as i had the rune that gave me shields on glory kills i was like "yep, satisfied with rune challenges now" and moved on with my life. i wish i could have also like, unequipped some of the weapons i didnt use like the combat shotgun or automatic rifle, because they clogged up my inventory and when scrolling through weapons made it unnecessarily long. i know i could've used the number keys but scrolling is more fun, isn't it? story is basically non-existant and thats fine, i thought samuel haydens voice was cool. didnt give a fuck when vega died and i think thats why doomguy is the best guy in doom.

it was shorter than i expected! dont have too much else to say about it. could've done with a dash thing like in cyberpunk, but i'm told thats in doom eternal, which i would play, except i hear its just worse than this one, and i dont think i liked this one quite enough to want to play it again

all that being said, all my complaints are super minor ones, and the good far outweighs the bad. doom!

Do you like Genshin? Do you like Vtubers? Do you like FEH? Here’s all of that!

So this is the supposedly latest "mainline" game in this franchise. I know Engage is allegedly a game celebrating
the 30th anniversary of FE, but that's even worse. Bold move celebrating the 30th anniversary of FE with a game that doesn't look like FE at all.

FE always looked like anime and followed the latest trends in artstyle etc, but all character designs still had a coherent theme. The medieval europe aesthetic was always a big influence. Even in a horny game like Fates (even the Hoshido desgins were coherent for the aesthetics of the nation). Ignoring the fanservice most designs looked decent (though there were some stinkers like Peri).

But Engage looks like it has no theme at all. It's just "fantasy" and goofy. The character designs are all over the place like they're all from different fantasy gacha games.
These designs seem like a perfect blend of every currrent day anime design trope and it just looks soulless as a result.
This artstyle is by far the worst the series has ever seen, and it makes me appreciate Three Houses, SoV, Path of Radiance etc. all the more. You know what actually bothers me the most, more than just disliking the aesthetics of the designs? All the women I see look like goddamn kids and suffer from same face syndrome. And my god, the 3D models in general look absolutely atrocious. Even the past lords look like shit in this game's style. Engage is certainly more colorful, but that's honestly it. The textures in Engage are another problem, they're mostly not there. The textures on everything are so flat. Everything looks so artificial because of it. FE3H was not a good looking game but I expected more from a game that released nearly 4 years later.

This game looks like a dollar store genshin that collabs with FE, but at least the Genshin characters look coherent for the themes and aesthetics of the nation they come from.
Colgate and friends look like a travelling circus. I remember when some pictures of this game leaked some time ago and people were 100% convinced that this was a chinese bootleg FE gacha, because of course they would.

Well, let's talk about the gameplay. It's FE so the gameplay was bound to be fun. People say that Engage is going back to its roots because the game "focuses more on the
tactical gameplay than the story, lore and characters". While it's true that Engage offers more variety in the tactical side of things, it still falls flat since the game is lacking some kind of balance. Thanks to the rings units are broken from the start. The problem is, to balance against this, you’d need to have absurdly difficult enemy units, who would invalidate all non-ring using characters and they didn't do that. Though, there are units/classes that are broken in general, so clearing maps wasn't really challenging. Engage offers average FE gameplay with some neat battle animation updates. There are some improvements, but also some step backs. But hey, at least we got weapon triangle back, right?
This is by far one of the easiest FE game I've played. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is fun but it's not "more challenging" than the past games in that regard. Also, Engage got new game modes and mechanics that are straight up from FEH and I'm not a fan.

The story...exists. Most FE stories aren't really all that unique but can still be enjoyed as political dramas on surface level for most of the time (I greatly enjoyed PoR, Thracia and 3H)
Engage's plot is the most vanilla, over the top anime story in this franchise and I mean this in a bad way. Yeah, it's even more "anime" than Fates. The story simply does not live up to previous installments in the series writing-wise.
Oh and Emblem heroes don't factor much into the plot at all, even Marth.

Also, I hate the "but FE was always anime!!!" argument. Yeah, no shit. Anime can have different genres, artstyle and a difference in tone and groundedness. Not every modern anime has to look like a generic moe harem isekai. Because you know, even "anime" can be serious. And it's not like the series cannot try to do that these days - see SoV and 3H. Now, I'm not against lighthearted plots in this franchise, but Engage's plot is just a joke that overstays its welcome way too long. It's been a while since I cringed so many times while playing a game.

The cast is also the most forgettable one. None of the characters felt unique or interesting in any way. Everyone here is meant to either be a laugh, a bland stereotype, or combination of the two. So, tiresome one-note gimmicks whose character profile never left the draft drawer but was put into the game anyway. Supports heavily focus on the character's gimmicks, which got annoying very fast. The supports are not engaging in any way. It's quantity over quality. All of them are very short, but I appreciate that they fully voiced all of them.

Honestly, the only reason I played this game is because I love Fire Emblem and wanted to give this game a chance. I enjoy FE gameplay, but even good gameplay can get tedious and boring if I don't care about the rest of the game. After finishing a map, I got rewarded with more over the top anime crap and meh characters. I was just not invested enough because of that and hated my time with it as a result. See, I love plenty of gameplay-focused games. The issue is that Engage isn't structured like a gameplay-focused game, it's structured like a game with a shit story featuring shitty characters. Does it give you a rough outline of a story to then let you play freely with no distraction? No. It's not a dungeon crawler, it's not XCOM, it's a very classic FE game with tons of character introductions and interactions that are wasting your time, they're just bad. I can't just admit the game's writing is so shit that it's better to skip every cutscene and call that "gameplay-focused", it's clearly a failure and not the intended experience. That was the worst experience I had with a FE game.

The only interesting thing about Engage are the past lords but if I want to see them I just play their games, where they look decent and not like...this. They're also not even able to
interact with each other or are all that relevant in the story, so whats the point of this "celebration"? That you'll point at your favorite lords and clap? That's what FEH is for. This game that shoves in generic anime designs, gags, lines, acting, same baby face women, and non fitting outfits and other elements is for me the worst FE game. I hope the next one will be better, because this was very disappointing after FE3H's big success. I understand that Engage is supposed to be a goofy and lighthearted "celebration" of this franchise, but why is it mainline? And why is it done so bad? There are many other and better ways to celebrate this franchise that I came to really love. But not like this. It's nothing more than a soulless cashgrab.

(The game leaked a few days ago, so I had the chance to play it early.)

I went on a hike once, but it was nothing like this. My Father and I were trekking through the Cairngorms in the heart of Scotland. If you haven't seen it, it's a beautiful place. Flowing rivers, glistening lochs, bustling forests, the works. Every way you look, you're encircled by these white-capped hills that lap over eachother like great waves on a distant ocean.

Needless to say, when the time finally came for us to begin our hike -- I was excited. Heart pumping, legs twitching, balls tingling, (they do that when I'm excited) I couldn't wait to challenge these mountains, to duel with them with my own hands and feet. So voracious was my climbing appetite, that by the time I topped my first tableland, I realised I'd left my Dad behind. At first, I was struck with concern -- he had a history of heart complications and a poor sense of direction, it wasn't out of the question he'd get lost, or worse -- perish. Then I remembered all the times he'd forgotten my birthday and cheated on his wives and realised I didn't care. I pressed on, determined to reach the highest point of these mountaintops. My feet became warriors, my Limited Edition Ahegao Yeezys their Spartan helms. My balls were still tingling. I crested over every crevice, I powered through every plateau, I marched across every arch. Needless to say, my progress without my deadbeat Father was incredible. "Soon," I thought, "that summit will submit."

And then the snow fell.

And it kept falling.

And it kept falling until all of the Cairngorms were a sheet of paper. I, a small mark only impressed upon it by the dirt of a fingernail. Beginning to panic, I scoured the area for shelter, and found a small cave overlooking a gentle slope. I nestled my way in and sparked a small fire with some twigs and my trusty M1A1 U.S. Military Flamethrower, which I never leave the house without. I checked the time on my phone -- 14:51. "I really hope it stops snowing soon," I thought.

But it didn't.

It snowed and it snowed and it snowed for what felt like eons. I swore I saw entire families of deer cross the mountains from my left, and come back days later from the right, smaller in number. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. I began to ponder my life and all the things I'd seen, suspecting I was coming to the end of it. I reminisced on the times I'd burnt the midnight oil at my desk as though some kind of infernal engine built for the sole purpose of generating laughs from strangers online. I wondered, was it worth it? I began to ruminate on what had caused this endless blizzard. Some kind of freak weather incident no one could have predicted? Or some kind of cosmic karma, cast down from the heavens as if to show me how futile and trivial my pursuits had been all along? As if even my own mind was turning against me, the one thing I could think of before long, the sole remaining thought I had to distract me from my impending freezing demise...Was that of the look a woman gives you when you kiss her. When you hold her close, press your face up against hers, and then look down at her after you're done, foreheads meeting in a holy union, like what swans do. The look she gives you in return, when she looks back up and her eyes meet yours? There is nothing more beautiful in this life. Nothing more tender. It is the most innocent smile, the purest expression of affection. Nothing in the world can emulate that. I should know, I've tried. I've spent countless hours trying to do it in the mirror. I'm doing it right now.

I look at my phone again. 14:56. "I'm finished", I tell myself. "This is it". I close my eyes, ready to drift off into the chilling embrace of death. And then? Precious memories begin flickering through my mind, like pictures in a film reel. Moments of joy from my childhood, moments of sadness from my adolescence, moments of frustration from my adulthood. All of them roll through my mind at a speed I'm surprised I can even comprehend, but I can...And then...Suddenly...I can feel my fingers again...I can feel my nose running again..."Am I dead?" I wonder. "Is this a near-death experience? Do you get the feeling back just before you die or something?"

But no, soon I realise what's really going on.

Finally, the heroin has kicked in.

The 8 mg's of heroin I'd snorted shortly before the snow began falling and shortly after I'd twisted my ankle a little bit trying to do a Michael-Jackson-Smooth-Criminal lean over the edge of a steep mesa had finally taken effect. I'm fucking back baby. Enough "remembering" and all that pussy shit. I pick up my flamethrower, blast this Nightcore version of "Word Up" by Cameo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5CyOl5dJY) and decide it's time to re-enter society and make this mountain my bitch. Stepping outside, frothing at the mouth like a rabid badger, with a gait not entirely unlike Theresa May's "Dancing Queen" entrance to the 2018 Conservative Party Conference played in 3x speed, I dart around every orifice of the mountain range, the snow that nearly doomed me now a mere triviality. It's as if I don't even know how fast I'm going, nor can I control myself. I have no thoughts of pain or fatigue or cold, all I'm seeing are dazzling lights, rapturous kaleidoscopes firing off before my eyes. At one point, I'm pretty sure I see the entirety of the movie "Get Out" by Jordan Peele, which is a great movie and all -- but as a white guy I feel a bit weird about that, almost like I'm being insensitive somehow. I don't know. I just don't feel like that's the one movie that should be playing in my mind of all people, y'know?

And before I know it, when my senses finally return to me. I'm there. I'm at the summit. My heartbeat seems to have slowed somewhat, my breathing somewhat normal again, save for a heavy pant. The entirety of the majestic Scottish highlands stretches out before. I shake my head in disbelief, "what a rich tapestry...Not everyone gets to appreciate a view like this." And after taking it all in, I know of only one way to celebrate.

Without even touching my own penis, I ejaculate. I ejaculate with the force of 5000 men in what can only be described as a kind of semen spirit bomb. I struggle to find other ways to describe the amount of fluid I dispersed here, so let's just say that if they made cannons that fired PVA glue, it'd be a bit like that. If the local park rangers and hikers thought the snow was thick, "wait until they get a load of this," I smirk. Of course, my logic is flawed. Because I'm far too busy appreciating the view to notice that the sub-zero temperature has frozen my semen solid midway through its descent, and so it's likely to be believed to be typical ice by most casual onlookers, with no one to ever conceive of the incredible cum shower I produced here. Worse still, my penis has frozen solid, and when I reach for it to warm it up, it falls off my body entirely, which I assume is a symptom of hypothermia. I passed out promptly after, and woke up several days later in this chair, writing this review.

All of this is to say, A Short Hike is not a particularly realistic hiking experience. And hey, it doesn't need to be! What it is is a lovely, cosy little game with great visuals, some fun traversal and a very charming personality. A Long Hike next, please!