I'm not the biggest metroidvania fan, I normally get burned out playing them, but this maintained my attention the whole way through, can't believe I'm giving a game published by a YouTuber a four and a half star rating, and the last section is really damn intense! I'm not going to give any spoilers since I believe it's best if people walk in blind! The puzzles are largely straightforward if you stand still and think about them, but they can have some severe difficulty spikes in certain portions. The only negative aspects I can think of are that the ladder can be awkward to climb at times, and the spikes are difficult to see when doing platform jumping with the bubble! The jumping felt fluid and smooth and the world's colours and animal designs were fantastic. the game rewards discoverability with cool items to progress the map, The boss battles were enjoyable and some were even creepy! This is my favourite game of the year so far, which I was not expecting to say when I started playing it. It makes me want to play other greats of the genre, which is the highest compliment I can give it.

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!

I usually can't deal with these more narrative, story-driven games that are very low on gameplay and very high on slowly walking back-and-forth in a straight line and just talking to people, but I was pleasantly surprised by Night in the Woods. It still does have a lot of that and falls into a lot of the same trappings as a lot of similar games that have lost my attention, but I feel it also does more to mix things up and keep things interesting.

The characters (with the only real exception being the protagonist) are all interesting and likeable and make you really wanna hang out with them, and the less fleshed-out NPCs are often at least funny or charming in a way, or expand on the world around you in a way that makes you want to talk to them and see everything. I was surprised at how much genuine lore and background there was to the location of Possum Springs, and how in-depth you can go in its history and politics by engaging with the optional content.

The game looks gorgeous, with so many vibrant and colourful locations and a ton of varied setpiece moments it'll show you before it's over, and it's often throwing silly but novel little minigames at you to keep you on your toes, almost always well-explained - or at least immediately obvious enough to you that you should never hit a roadblock or find your progress halted. It also has an impressive soundtrack for such a comparatively small game, able to evoke nostalgia and comfort in the same way an Animal Crossing game would, and still be super foreboding and ominous when it needs to be.

I could have done without the dream sequences, none of which are gonna make any sense until you get to the end of the game - by which point you've probably forgotten all of them and which are absolutely the embodiment of the good ol' "walk around the place slowly in a straight line" problem, and I found the handling of some of the game's themes (in particular, mental health) to be pretty botched in contrast to how well it deals with nostalgia and growing up, or...Not growing up. At the very least, whilst I don't feel it gets across Mae's whole mental health issues very well, nor does it justify her more questionable actions particularly well, I at least don't feel it was offensive at all.

Night in the Woods crumbles under its own weight a bit. Its ending is pretty shaky and some of its messaging is obtuse, but I found its charm, uniqueness and the genuine intrigue its main story presents before it falls flat helped me get through it pretty easily, and I really don't regret playing it at all, even as someone who usually can't stand the kind of game it is.

My favourite character was Gregg :)