Working titles for my review included:

1) "God of Snore" - Reason not used: Taken
2) "God of More" - Reason not used: Could imply the more was positive/good
3) "Teen Angst Simulator" - Reason not used: Everyone was angsty, not just Atreus.

Used Title: "A Series of Unfortunate MacGuffin's"

I bought this game almost entierly out of curiousity, one of my more controversial gaming opinions and reviews is that of the renewed God of War (2018,) which I played because I wanted to get a gauge on the game that defeated Red Dead Redemption 2 come year's end at the Game Awards. In my experience I found GoW to be a mostly bland, monotonous, and unadventerous experience. I didn't get the same buzz or energy others did from the axe-wielding combat, I didn't enjoy the consistent babbling from Mimir and crew, and I certainly did not have a positive takeaway on the MacGuffin nature of the plot. I'd hoped, in playing Ragnarok, that the extremely high acclaim given to the game by critics when review embargo ceased meant that Sony had remdied the issues I had with the previous title. Now, I know that The Game Award should and have zero bearing on my enjoyment of a game, but it's clear that the two frontrunners for the big daddy of them all "Game of the Year Award" will be Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok. Curiosity killled the cat, and maybe it killed me too. What I found almost immediately in Ragnarok was that I'd be getting the exact same takeaways and experiences that I had in the 2018 game.

Starting it off with combat, which is admittably a little less... boring as it was in 2018 but comes with its own grievances. Gone is going 75% of the game with the same weapon, as you start the game with Kratos' famous Blades of Chaos and pick up a third weapon down the line (redacted for spoilers.) This is nice because it gives you a little variation in terms of visual flavor for the majority of the game but this fell completely flat for me as the enemies, from start to finish are pretty much all just "bullet" sponges for lack of a better term. There's a certian flare to the combo weaving of different weapons and taking advantages of status effects, but at the end of the day you'll have to pump so much time and effort into enemies to kill them, that I abandoned trying to make it look snazzy. Basic enemies aren't too bad but once you get into the special/mini-boss fights it gets real samey, real quick. Monotonous combat was a compaint I had in the 2018 release that really took up a lot of my opinion on the game, and unfortunately it's back in Ragnarok. Not only does Kratos' arsenal not feel very different overall, not enough for me rather, but again the enemy variation and recycled encounters greatly holds this game back just as it did in the predecessor. I recently played Bayonetta 3 which had the enemy arsenal/variety to make this work, but in God of War every gameplay sequence in a realm can be boiled down into such: Shimmy through a tight loading screen corridor -> solved light puzzle that requires throwing axe and using some kind of time magic -> fight same three to five enemies that are dropped into area -> shimmy loading screen -> repeat. These enemies change per location but the cyclical nature of fighting them, their spongey health bars, and responding to their same mechanics got reallllly old real quick.

You switch between Atreus and Kratos in Ragnarok for level sequences and unfortunately the combat doesn't feel very fresh in either when you change between. Atreus' gameplay loop is even more restricted than Kratos in the first game and his equivalent of Spartan Rage, while stronger, is just a swap-in move which doesn't even do the Nero-Dante dynamic that every character action game should do in making playable protagonists FEEL fundamentally different so controlling them comes off as fresh. My ultimate qualm with the combat, which is also backlines my qualm with the game itself, is that it doesn't feel fresh enough. The combat feels the same, the Hollywood-board-room-type dialogue feels the exact same, the light unecessary puzzle solving feels the same, the missions/levels feel the exact same. What's new with God of War that's supposed to push this series from Great to Fantastic? I don't know, I can't answer that question because I surely didn't find it. The narrative that is meant to wrap up Kratos' Nordic saga felt bland and broken at times, leaving me to constantly wonder the where's and why's of my actions. I get there is an over-arching narrative at play leading to Ragnarok itself, given the actions of the previous title, but I think the game could have done a much better job sequencing its filler-story content. Missions just felt like they were happening to give characters exposition, rather than move the narrative forward and do so. Final Fantasy X does a great job at this, giving each character their own arc while actually advancing the stakes and story at hand. Wakka, Kimahri, Auron, Tidus, and Yuna all have their character examined and challenged while keeping the focus on stopping Sin. Ragnarok had me wondering why I was taking Freya, Atreus, Sindi, Brok all on their own respective adventures that didn't really add to the sequencing of the game in a manner that made sense. With each of these characters you'll find either Kratos or Atreus running the same combat-puzzle-loading screen gambit in an attempt to achieve something or retrieve an item that is to help them in their final huzzah. Doing this over and over and over just felt... bland. God of War Ragnarok for much of its runtime didn't feel like an epic adventure across one of the cooler pantheons to exist within dated mythos, but like a buddy cop comedy where the entire exposition was to retrieve MacGufffin's.

This game honestly just reminded me of the MCU, specifically speaking the Avengers film franchise. Avengers is a media phenomenon that took the world by storm, utilizing a carefully crafted pattern to set up a plethora of Marvel heroes/villains to have them culminate in an epic cinematic experience sure to take the world by storm, and it did. Marvel/Disney spent the time and monetary effort setting up this big "Huzzah" that had never been seen before in the world of film. Almost everyone I knew that was a casual movie watcher, thus excluding those who I would call "Movie hipsters" like myself, were jumping at the seams to speak on the magnitude of the avengers and its fiscal achievements. People were completely enamored in what was a fairly basic story. How do you react when so many around you are speaking in praise of something that you view so mediocre? Surely the right thing to do is not speak ill on something in the world of media that others hold high, because a film series like the Avengers is entierly subjective when it comes to taste, but it's reasonable to have the discourse with those that investigate your dissent with the series further. Thus is my issue with God of War 2018 and Ragnarok. Almost everyone I know that has played the game(s) has loved them, critics have been raving over Ragnarok as soon as reviews were allowed to come out. I've had to step back from most discourse because I don't want to be "that guy" but this is a review space and this is my review, so I feel alright stating how I feel. God of War is that Avengers to me, it's something that can only be made possible by having a lot of money to make and afford the resources needed to make it "work." They both are spectatcles, never shying away from thrusting intense CG and big moments at the consumer. They both utilize top tier composition, sound design, and voice acting to create a complete experience, free of any hitch. God of War was a completely polished game, I had only one minor bug, and it ran phenomenally on my computer... but can that alone with a mediocre story and samey combat make the game "good" for me? The answer I found, to be no it cannot.

There are some things God of War Ragnarok does well, but in the theme of things being the "same" to me as 2018, they were the same things that the game before it did. Christopher Judge is a great Kratos, matter of fact the entire cast does an amazing job acting out and making their characters mostly believable (shoutout SungWon Cho,) but it's almost... too AAA. The game itself is beautiful, I played performance mode on my PS5 and it truly was a crisp experience, taking full advantage of the graphical prowess of the console and my 4k monitor. The game was eye candy, but to that point I felt myself let down with these amazing vistas because of the soulless gameplay loop I knew I was about to embark upon. Animation was great, again I had that "wow I remember gaming twenty years ago moment" whenever they panned to Kratos' face and you could see his emotion vividly. I also love how they took full advantage of the Norse pantheon, including smaller characters like the Norns, Sigurn, Angrboða, and many more to the bigwigs like Freya, Fenrir, Tyr, and Surtr. I loved seeing/hearing a character speak and opening up their wikipedia page to remind myself about their lore. I used to love doing that in my youth, and God of War Ragnarok was a great reminder of doing that.

Lesser issues I had with the game include one, the assumption that you as the player did all the sidequesting and optional content from the previous game. It was a little confusing when Kratos/Atreus were referencing things they did like "Hey remember when we did this" or explaining to another character of their actions and I'm sitting there completely confused because no... I never did that and I had no clue what they were talking about. Secondly, the camera was just downright poor in most combat and even in cutscenes. There was quite a lot of forced panning that takes away player agency from experiencing what they want in a game. Maybe this is part of appealing to the most common consumer, but it was more offputting to me because I am overall not a fan of being told how to interpret or take away scenes from a narrative experience. I would be trying to walk through a scene or turn to see the entire environment at large to only be met by a slow moving camera and a locked screen.

Ragnarok largely missed the mark for me, really feeling like a DLC/Expansion of the 2018 game without enough variety/change to rectify the previous mistakes for me. There were new vistas and characters, but it felt like the fundamental same experience for me, and I'm glad I didn't wait four years between these two releases. Odds are, fans of the 2018 game will absolutely love Ragnarok, and dissenters will not. I cannot recommend God of War Ragnarok, especially for $70, unless you're set on the experience and getting the most out of its sidequesting and characters.

[Spoiler Free]:
It's quite sad, how a game so innovative ended up becoming so underrated.
Keep in mind that word-to-mouth decides most of the gaming Zeitgeist - play the game and form your own opinion.

Final Fantasy 2 was also an easy target for ridicule: it strayed from the formula, but boasted an especially good story compared to RPGs of its time. Final Fantasy II would introduce a characterization of its main characters and returning side characters for the first time, which would later become the biggest part of its formula.

And that's exactly what Final Fantasy VIII does, it innovates too much after its most successful commercial entry: Final Fantasy VII, which sold over 14 million copies worldwide. Players were disappointed with the lack of consistency in the newer entry, and the many freedoms that the developers took to rejuvenate the franchise.

Squall gets a lot of hate for being cold and sullen, but it's mostly overlooked that most of his infamous "Whatever" moments are thought out and not spoken. There are very few times where Squall really comes off as unreasonably rude. Whatsmore, his iconic catchphrase sprouts from a shoddy localization job. Early in the game, he still lends a hand to people preparing concerts at Balamb Garden, even lending an ear to the hot-dog lady. In hindsight, the player is given dialogue choices for most of Squall's feedback to his surrounding - the player decides how likeable he is. While the main cast is not your usual happy-go-lucky and shallow protagonist typical of the JRPG trope, any sensible human would find at least a few of them relatable to some degree.

The Junction system is a little complicated but the game progressively tutorializes the game's in-depth mechanics throughout the first missions. Later in the game, a Refine system allows you to craft a lot of the needed magic with relatively common items. Bosses in Final Fantasy 8 have mechanics way more in-depth than anything ever seen in previous Final Fantasy games, this is made instantly noticeable as soon as you enter the SEED field exam and face the X-ATM092, which can be defeated, but also avoided as it chases you throughout the island's shore.

This game has a Pocket Monster aspect in which a character can collect weakened monsters using the "Card" battle command. These cards can then be used in a mini-game called "Triple Triad", one of the best mini-games in the series. This original card game contains every monster found in the game, serving both as a bestiary as well as a collectible card game. Extra cards can later be exchanged for usable items, doubling as a mechanic for the main game.

Final Fantasy VIII definitely has the best soundtrack of any Final Fantasy game and some of the best graphics on the Playstation, there are some really seamless transitions between the game world and FMV sequences as well, and the whole game has a massive sense of scale and attention to environmental detail. Its opening "Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec" remains the most impressive FMV I've seen in a game so far.

All in all, Final Fantasy VIII remains one of the most complex and feature-heavy games in the series. Unfortunately, made a victim of its predecessor's success and the retro-revisionism of web 1.0 forums and fansites.

concerning the bones of the game i'm of two minds: signalis avoids puzzle scenarios that end up having me running back and forth wondering what the fuck i'm missing, which is something that tends to interfere with my enjoyment of the older resident evils—though it's also perhaps straightforward to a fault. the puzzles are refreshing in their cleverness, though they will most likely seem a bit too easy to some, and the navigation of each section never even begins to confuse.

my rating is maybe a bit generous, but i don't really care. i'm actually restraining myself, being honest. the presentation and vibes are immaculate. familiar survival horror dosed with traces of BLAME!, nier: automata, blade runner, a little alien 3 (strictly in the bleak feel of its setting), the shining, etc., all steeped in the cosmic horror of otherworldly malevolence plaguing this post-singularity world of ruin. it is by turns coldly alienating and dreamily sapphic. everything feels solid and tactile—this is a game crafted with care, and it feels like it has the integrity of a ps1 or mid '90s pc game with more modern interface and sound design. there's tech everywhere that you want to touch, and it reminded me a lot of alien: isolation in that regard.

signalis is suuuper comfy, and i guess i could be irritated that it never really scared or challenged me, but... again, i don't really care. i just loved being in this haunted sci-fi world.

A solid experience, all in all. Taken in a vaccuum I think there's quite a lot about Endwalker that can be seen as outright superb and completely unparalleled in its execution, especially considering the state of JRPG storytelling since the mid-2010s or so. Still, there's an elephant in the room that I don't think is addressed often enough: Endwalker is so rife with retcons that it ultimately ends up disassembling more or less everything that made Shadowbringers into the unbelievably and unprecedently amazing narrative that it was, and it makes Final Fantasy XIV into a weaker story for it.

One of these retcons and adjustments stands out above all the rest, however. The fanbase's endearment to a particular faction results in a framing and writing shift that portrays them as less of an unambiguous evil and more of an unambiguously sympathetic, benevolent bunch and results in a rare example of cut-and-dry "good vs. evil" conflict being more interesting and satisfying than something that attempts to be complicated, morally gray and devoid of condonement and condemnation alike (due in large part to the fact that Shadowbringers has some particularly unique, interesting and complex things to say about what it means to be "good" and what it means to be "evil"). This is compounded by the fact that those in opposition to this faction are likewise defanged and portrayed as completely good and kind, creating a frustratingly toothless situation where nobody is wrong and as a result Final Fantasy XIV doesn't really seem to stand against anything (particularly bothersome in a story that prides itself on the strength of its political storytelling).

It still has quite a lot to say when removed from its hesitation to boldly posit that you cannot possibly be a good person in any sense if you're guilty of genocide, no matter how noble your intentions in doing so may be... complete with some particularly poignant and weighty commentary on what it means to live with despair and grapple with the inevitability of pain and sorrow in one's life. Even so, I can't ever really shake the feeling that Shadowbringers was building up to a finale that was simply going to be better than what we eventually would get in the form of Endwalker.

With all of this said, and still holding to it all firmly as can be in my heart - this is still a fairly tight wrap-up to ten years' worth of storytelling, with all the emotional payoff you'd expect from such a long and heartfelt story. It was a particularly bittersweet experience for me in particular, as Endwalker is effectively the conclusion to the character arc of the Warrior of Light - who is for me and countless others a character that has been built up over hundreds if not thousands of hours of story content, gameplay, roleplay and gratuitous self-indulgent interpretation of the game's story. I love Final Fantasy XIV, and even with (if not especially because of its flaws) I can't really think of anything more representative of what this game is fundamentally about than Endwalker and what it so sincerely believes in and wants to convey to the player.

As I trekked alone through the game's final zone, knowing that not only my journey would soon come to an end but that, in many ways, so too would the halcyon days of something I'd found a home of sorts in and bonded with my friends over for far, far too many sleepless nights and spastic Discord calls... I didn't really care about inconsistent storytelling, or frustratingly unaddressed and unresolved character arcs, or the fact that the game engine was clearly starting to fall apart, or that they still hadn't fixed Dark Knight's lack of ability to sustain itself in combat, or that Paladin was a shitty pick for a poster boy job but was perfectly representative of my problems with Endwalker as a whole. There was but a single thought in my head, a thought that still echoes whenever I hear the opening notes of Close in the Distance:

I love Final Fantasy so much.

What greatly elevates Silent Hill 2 from its predecessor is that the game is an incredibly heartbreaking experience. While I consider 1 to be a great and revolutionary horror game, 2 is something that is so much more. Silent Hill 2 perfectly combines emotional storytelling and terrifying horror imagery. When I wasn't feeling tense because of the set pieces and sound design, I was feeling overwhelmed by the story of James trying to find Mary. Exploring Silent Hill this time felt more fulfilling and as time went on you learn more about the history of the town. As well as crimes that went on there. The atmosphere of SH2 is also enhanced by the incredible soundtrack. One of the greatest soundtracks I've heard in a video game full stop. That and the sound design were crucial to my fear of areas in the game. The way that you would hear monsters breathing and running towards you, but never actually coming was a brilliant way to fill the players with paranoia.

At the end of the day though Silent Hill 2 is a story about a man processing and grieving over the death of his wife. As James traverses through Silent Hill more and more details about Marys death are revealed to us. James guilt and frustration are manifested in the monsters and residents of Silent Hill. Even the most iconic monster of the series, Pyramid Head, is a manifestation of the sexual frustration of James. As James goes through his nightmare that feels never-ending he learns to come to terms with Marys death. With the ending I got leaving me in a strong feeling of catharsis. I don't think horror games will ever get better than this.

"I can't tell you to remember me, but I can't bear for you to forget me."

as a purely sensory experience i found this sublime in a way that took me back to how it felt seeing and hearing doom for the first time in 1994. my computer could only just barely run it well enough to be playable, but one of the college kids living nextdoor had a high end 486 and he let me play it over there for a little bit. doom made me think of games as spaces in a way far more powerfully than anything before it.

scorn isn't the elegant action masterpiece that doom eternally remains, but it is a vivid ontological crawl through the biomechanical macabre which instills feelings of curious awe, revulsion, and anxiety (when i hear that puzzles are a big focus in a game i get anxious regardless, and this unholy paradise of giger and beksinski had me exceptionally filled with queasy dread). a hideous experience i cherish.

A true work of art that is full of passion, ambition, professionalism, and creativity







Vagrant Story is the miracle of Yasumi Matsuno, his final game and magnum opus. While not without its flaws, Vagrant Story is a true testament to what video games could be when designed with mature audiences in mind. Its storytelling techniques are the absolute best I've ever encountered in the medium. It's beautifully written in an artistic,literary language that was unseen in videogames at the time,intertwined with masterful subtext, never babysitting the audience with meaningless plot expositions. It is a tale full of intricate characters; every piece of dialogue is quotable with an exquisite use of Shakespearean English,thanks to the brilliant translation by Alexender O. Smith,but also masterfully packed and well balanced with just the right amount of characterization and plot significance. Implicit storytelling places it farther than it's counterparts and closer to modernist novels,with how the player is expected to piece together the plot points they're given rather than explaining every single thing. This type of implicated storytelling still hasn't been fully replicated in the videogame landscape,a fact that is enough to represent Matsuno as a gifted writer and a unique auteur in the industry.
It is impossible to talk about Vagrant Story without mentioning it's technical aspects.Matsuno and his team pushes the PS1 hardware to it's absolute limits,without bogging down the experience with low framerate and slowdown issues.Diving into the development history reveals how team struggled to make the game run on a stable framerate with such detailed visuals,and spend 3 whole years to optimize the game with unconventinal techniques for the time, without limiting it's vision.And the result is a game that looks incredible for the hardware, both from a technical and stylistic standpoint.Immense attention to detail in every room,lighting effects,smooth animations,detailed facial expressions and striking designs of every character,monster and location gives the game a unique art direction that uses it's hardware limitations to it's advantage,and still holds up tremendously well.
With how Vagrant Story focuses on it's technical aspects and storytelling,it is easy to assume that gameplay was a second thought of the team,most of the modern games that are considered "cutting edge" doesn't usually offers deep mechanics and solely focuses on their high quality presentation.This is absolutely not true for Vagrant Story.With a mixture of traditional dungeon crawling and action RPG systems,combining menu selections with real-time combat and free movement, it is easy to classify it as an action RPG, however,the menu navigation part is more involved than most turn-based RPGs. With combat requiring the player to take advantage of several weaknesses of the enemies,whether that be the weapon type,body part,elemantal or class weaknesses, every combat encounter requires the player to analyze the enemies extensively before engaging them to decide which tool in their in their varied arsenal they should use, and more importantly, how should they use. Once you adjust your equipment accordingly, engaging the enemy has a whole other set of factors to consider when designing your strategy. The most prominent of these are chain attacks, which are timed button presses you need to do in order to deal damage, not unlike games such as Super Mario RPG. However, like everything about the combat system,these attacks can be deeply customized to have all kinds of different effects other than simply inflicting damage. These can be draining the opponent's MP or HP,inflicting status ailments such as silence or poison, renewing your weapon's damage point by small amounts, etc. These abilities mean that every encounter is like a puzzle with multiple solutions you can choose from. However, the player can't just rely on their reflexes to beat even the most powerful bosses, because the more you use these chain attacks, the more your "risk" bar rises. Risk bar is similar to a stamina bar, your limititation to attack endlessly; however,it is arguably a far more creative use of this concept. As your risk bar increases, the more you get hit and the lower your hit rate gets. This adds another important factor, in a game already dominated by numerous complicated systems, you have to figure out the most optimal way to play in order to conquer the game's challenges. There are a lot more to talk about,such as a crafting system,your weapon's damage point and phantom point,different types of enemies,box puzzles and actual dungeon crawling, etc. But for now, I'll keep it there.

The amount of complexity and density of the systems can be overwhelming for many, but for those who prioritize micromanagement, customization, and experimentation in RPG gameplay systems,it is very rewarding and satisfying to master the intricate gameplay,with subsystems upon subsystems to learn. Every single system complements each other to create an incredibly deep gameplay loop with tons of things to consider. It is easy to say, both in terms of story and gameplay, that Vagrant Story is not the kind of game you can fully comprehend and appreciate in a single playthrough. It is a short yet polished experience, to the point where it shines as one of the brightest gems in videogame history. It is a technical marvel,a work of art with experiential storytelling and direction techniques; a passion project; it is dramatic and theatrical,but not awkward or unnatural; it is mechanically rich and unique; sometimes cumbersome,yet always engaging. It takes a lot from a lot of different genres,while not truly belonging to any of them,and creates its own unique and memorable identity. It is a kind of masterpiece we'll never see anything similar to it ever again

after a lot of people died in sin's attack, yuna dances. this dance is called "the sending", where she makes sure their souls are not staying on this plane, wandering, with envy for the living and then turning into fiends. instead, she sends them to the farplane, where they can live in peace. a lot of cultures around the world have rituals for the dead where you dance to celebrate how great their lives were or to just be a kind of grieving. you see, our bodies express our feelings more than we could ever think they do. when you are anxious you are always shaking your legs, even grinding teeth sometimes. i like to believe that yuna's dance is not only to send those people to better places but also her cope mechanism to deal with everything -- spira's condition, her father's dead, her destiny.

then yuna finds a pair. this blonde boy that appears from nowhere, claims to be from a thousand years old civilization that does not even exists anymore. he is also constantly dancing. he has problems with his father, which calls him a crybaby -- and he is, really. he is constantly expressing his pain through his smile but you know he's not always happy. he just don't want to show his sadness or, as everyone, just don't want to be sad. yuna's not so different, too. and since her has a pair, it's important to say that when you are dancing with someone, at first it may not work -- your pair can be at the wrong tempo, overstepping you etc. when your steps synchronizes and you are connected, though, this is what we call love. not necessarily romantically, of course. yuna have a lot of friends with their own dances, grieving and trying to live their lives as hard as it can be. but, when everyone is together, even dancing with the dead, they can share their insecurities, being open about their problems and, truly, overcoming it. maybe not stopping dancing but dancing towards the truth -- the painfully beautiful truth.

the last time yuna dances, she's not only grieving, but also celebrating.

FF8 is like NIN's The Fragile, an insanely ambitious, huge, sprawling, and extremely different game to the smash mega-hit that preceded it, and not unlike FF7, it was very controversial. Thankfully, both the Fragile and FF8 seem to have gotten their due amount of love in recent years. Squall kind of looks like late 90s Trent Reznor too if you think about it...

Anyway, I am nearly at the finish line, but like FF7, I have hit a point in the game where I know my personal rating isn't going to change, and to me FF8 is a 5-star game as affecting and stunning as FF7. I might do a big writeup on how much I love it once I've actually beaten it, but for now I'll say that the amount of spectacle, visual variety, and really incredible emotional depth has turned me from a Final Fantasy VII fan into a Final Fantasy fan flat out. If IX and X are as good as this, and I have reason to believe they are, then I'm going to give even more of these games 5 stars.

With FF8 I've noticed a lot about the story mentioned by people who are incapable of Having Fun, and perpetuate the STUPID ass "Squall is dead" theory. BOO!! I hate that shit. To be honest though, I don't think the story was any more insane than Final Fantasy 7's, both are extremely grand and operatic narratives that are carried by a deeply human and colorful cast of characters. That is the strength of this series as I've found it: drop characters you want to see win in an insane and twisting plot. I think that's cool!! I want my fantasy game to be over-the-top and larger than life! I live a boring, consistent real life and it sucks ass!!

Suffice it to say, I fucking LOVE this game!!! The junction system is the most fun I've had experimenting with an RPG since Morrowind, figuring out the most interesting ways to break the game or alternatively, make it really challenging. I can see why this one is really divisive but I love this insanely ambitious game even when it is being messy. I don't really give a game a 5 if I think it's "mechanically perfect," because that's stupid. I give a game a 5 if I lay down at night thinking about it, if I'm at work thinking about it, and if I can't help but bring it up in conversation because I am so fixated on it, and FF8 is absolutely a game I can't stop thinking about or excitedly booting up to try new junctions, or play more triple triad.