Now that Balatro's latest patch fixed the one issue I had with the game - that the final two stake difficulty modifiers were completely antithetical to the game's design - this is effectively now an all-time great video game (and my GOTY so far). Huge kudos to LocalThunk; what he's created here is absolutely amazing. It sounds like he wants to add more to Balatro without bloating the game, which is the right move in my opinion. Based on the exceptionally well-tuned patch changes and how he clearly has his finger on the pulse of the community, I have no doubt in my mind that the game's future is in good hands.

I’ve always liked Super Meat Boy, but never loved it until recently. Being one of the first of the many “masocore” platformers, it’s always maintained relevance since the 2008 prototype. It doesn’t have any major gimmicks, and instead focuses on the games of old. You have a simple goal.

Dr Fetus has kidnapped Bandage Girl. Save Bandage Girl! It’s as simple as it gets. Well, what about the controls? You run, jump, and that’s it. So, where’s the fun? The controls. I firmly believe that Super Meat Boy has the best controls of any platformer released to date. Meat Boy is incredibly fast, while also having a floaty jump. Normally I’d say that this is bad for most games, but Super Meat Boy makes it work. All of the levels are designed with this high speed and floatiness in mind, stretching the controls to the furthest possibility. It’s most noticeable in the much later levels, but even then, this attention to detail is present in earlier levels. It makes the game feel truly limitless, by allowing you to speed through the levels, having an extremely high skill ceiling down to the very frame. It’s a bit unwieldy, but once you master it, it feels like you can do anything. And do everything you shall, because there's a catch. It’s called SUPER for a reason. Super Meat Boy is considered among the hardest platformers, and for good reason. It’s a relentlessly difficult game, doubly so for 100%, but that’s where the beauty of the game lies within. Sure, you may retry a dozen times just to unlock the Dark World level, but by all accounts, the game pushes you to that mastery by rewarding you for overcoming challenges. It wants you to succeed. It’s difficult, but fair, and one of the most rewarding to conquer. The levels all feel distinctive from one another, and each individual one teaches the player a different lesson throughout their short runtimes. The level progression of Super Meat Boy is nothing but incredible. It introduces a gimmick in one level, and each level builds upon it. And then suddenly, another gimmick pops up. And then another, and another, and another, until you’re working with all of the mechanics before you even know it. And then the Dark World version of the level shows how much better you can get with said mechanics. No gimmick feels underutilized, nor unfun and cheap, and no level feels forgettable at all. It emphasizes how strong the whole game’s design is. And if you really want a challenge, you can always go for the Bandages! The bandages of Super Meat Boy force you to master the level to even get a shot at them. Getting them is the easier part. Surviving is harder. If you so much as graze a saw with these babies, you lose the bandage, but succeed and the game proudly announces that you got the bandage. It's a feeling like no other. I had my shit absolutely rocked throughout the entirety of Super Meat Boy 100%. Getting the bandages really made me feel like I accomplished something, both in a metaphorical and literal sense, as unlocking bandages allows you to play as brand new characters.

Akin to The Binding of Isaac, all characters cover a specific niche. Meat Boy is your main man, with all of the levels designed for him first and foremost. The others give you entirely new platforming abilities, but typically have a stipulation, like for example, Commander Video. He gets a short float, but is pretty slow compared to Meat Boy. There's about 10 characters overall, a few of which require a secret code to be inputed. The cool thing about it is that most characters come from other indie games, making Super Meat Boy feel more like a video game which proves how far indie games have come. Even more interestingly, the console and PC versions of the game has different characters within them, each accommodating the difference in the Indie scene on PC and Consoles. The Warp Zones themselves have the same characters, so Commander Video from Bit.Trip, Jill from… Mighty Jill Off, Ogmo from Jumper, the titular character, Flywrench, and The Kid from I Wanna Be The Guy are all here and accounted for. Meanwhile, Gish, Tim, Guy Spelunky, Pink Knight, and The Ninja are console exclusive, while Headcrab, Alien Hominid, Josef, Naija, RunMan, Captain Viridian, and MR. MINECRAFT, are all exclusive to PC. In the end, it doesn't really matter which version you play, but it kind of sucks that we never got some Super Meat Boy Definitive Edition with all of the characters from both versions, but in general, the balance of characters is very solid. While The Kid is among the best characters in the game for the best double jump in the game, he is a lot slower and jumps lower than Meat Boy. And also, in order to even get him, you need to complete the 3 hardest levels in the game, back to back.

This is a perfect transition into talking about the bane of my existence. GOLDEN GOD. Is actually really fun! Super Meat Boy will take you about a weekend to complete, but GOLDEN GOD could take upwards of a month to achieve. I played on-and-off ad nauseam over the course of a year, amd Golden God completely transforms Super Meat Boy as a game. In order to achieve Golden God, you need to
- Clear all 7 Light Worlds, with an A+ Rank
- Clear all 7 Dark Worlds (aka X worlds), harder versions of the Light World, but no A+ ranks are needed
- Obtain all 100 Bandages
- Unlock every Character
- Clear all Warp Zones, sets of 3 bite sized levels with 3 lives per level
- Clear all Glitch levels (technically optional but adds to 100%)
So... yeah, any completionist certainly has their work cut out for them. The Dark Worlds alone nearly broke me, but damn did I pop off when I cleared every one of them. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6 are pretty manageable when it comes to their challenge, but I genuinely contemplated quitting the entire operation at World 4X. I was 100%ing each World at about 1 or 2 per day, but 4X threw off my flow by a lot. It took me about 3 days to fully beat it alone, and 5X only got more and more challenging. 5X is among the most challenging worlds in the entire game. Each level was a challenging contraption made with only the most difficult platforming setpieces in the entire game. But each time I died, the music always brought me coming back for more!

Super Meat Boy’s soundtrack is legendary, no doubt about it. Some of the most Newgrounds esque shit that you can imagine, but it’s some of that good shit nonetheless. Forest Funk was stuck in my head for months once I first conquered Super Meat Boy, Beatus Blues is an incredibly catchy tune. Can O’ Salt is a Minecraft song (described by one of my IRLs), Hell feels grand and imposing, and The Rapture feels like a goddamn military tune. The End is weirdly cinematic but also really good, and CHAPTER MOTHERFUCKING 7!

Chapter 7 is where my 100% streak really died off. I completed 5 levels a DAY at this point. There are no bandages, no warp zones, nothing. Just you, your controller, and Bandage Girl. Yeah, for Chapter 7 alone, you get to play as Bandage Girl. And these levels aren’t among the most difficult in the game, they ARE the most difficult in the game. Don’t let the happy music and overabundance of pink fool you. The Cotton Alley has some of the most pseudo-pixel perfect shit that you can imagine, but once again, it’s HARD but FAIR. I never wanted to ragequit because the game wasn’t unfair. It’s one of the hardest 2D platforming levels ever made, but one of the best. Every single piece of tech that the game taught you comes back for a spectacular finale, and a spectacular finale that is. This all culminates in the HARDEST level I’ve ever beaten. “The Four Letter Word” is IMPOSSIBLE. It’s 1 minute of straight pixel perfect platforming, easily the hardest level in the game, and it was 11 PM. I was in my room alone, with only the bright visuals of the Cotton Alley keeping me awake. But I was determined. And it took over a very long time, but after an hour, I saw Meat Boy. I was at the goal. I made the final jump, and dropped my controller. I was so satisfied, but I knew that was only half the battle. So, I got a good night’s rest, knowing that the following day would be hell.

Or was it? I powered through Cotton Alleys’ Dark World like it was nothing. I was Meat Boy. I felt the heaviness on my heart each time he died, but each victory kept me coming back for more and more. I crushed half of the levels like soda cans. But the remaining few pushed me past my breaking point. And with 4 levels to go, with just me and the game, I received... Golden God??? Welp, that was fun! Yeah, not sure why the achievement unlocked early, but I decided to leave it at that. But as the final completion reward, you unlock the Meat Ninja, who always runs and can teleport through sawblades after pressing X. You can’t use the leaderboards with him, but it’s a solid reward for 100%.

Super Meat Boy is a masterclass of game design, being one of the best platformers ever made. It has over 300 handcrafted levels, all of which test the player’s skills in the best way possible. It’s one of those pick up and play games, where you can play and clear a few levels, or complete the entire game in a sitting. It’s a fun game, to put it simply, and I can’t recommend it enough, now that the XBLA store is shutting down. Rest In Peace, but long live Steam. Welp. What is there to to cover now?

MYSELF. Yeah, I know this is pretty out of scope to cover in a controversial platforming series with a silly cube of meat, but I wanted to talk about another controversial platforming series with a Witch. A dark one, perhaps. Plus, it directly related to me and the near future of zeusdeegoose as a whole, and I’ve done so in the past with my Binding of Isaac reviews. So humor me for a bit, or, if you’ve had your fill, feel free to click off, and I wish you a good day. For many people within my Discord and other related spaces, they knew that I was re-reviewing The Legend of Dark Witch series in it’s entirety; keyword, was, and I have to upsettingly say that said review series is now canceled. Many people don’t know about it, and I think that’s a good thing. It was a series that I used to play in the past, and me and a few friends have heavily criticized over the past few years. We also have a bit of bad blood within said community itself. We were talking about it again and how the developer sucked, practically beating it down as a farce of a franchise, mostly leaving the community stuff out of it as a whole. And while I still agree those remarks about the developer, one discussion got taken pretty far as I took a jab at one of the wiki’s vandals, and that spiraled into one of the members of the server leaving. Initially, I thought it was going to be a lighthearted joke, but it was pretty inappropriate of me and for those involved, I do apologize. I won’t extrapolate anything further at the behest of the people in said chat, as the server that the discussions were held within was a private venue, and I don’t wish to share any links so said server.

Secondly, after said conversation, I realized something huge. I didn’t NEED to re-review the series. I mean, what would I get out of it? Initially, the thought going in was that this would re-introduce people into zeusdeegoose’s past by re-reviewing what got the ball rolling for the long ass review format and to bury the hatchet for the final time, but here’s the thing. I already kind of did that. I had already archived my Wiki reviews on Backloggd, and notwithstanding the occasional bias, my criticisms of each game have still held up. So the newer reviews would just be... lesser. I don’t have the energy nor the time to discuss every stage in Dark Witch 2 again when that would go against the overall message of the review series; that being that The Legend of Dark Witch is a dogshit series, aside from 1 and 2, and I don’t think it’s worth potentially burning some bridges just to prove my point. Me and other friends have already long since moved on, and potentially bringing a lolicon back into the spotlight simply isn’t worth the effort that’d I’d put into it.

Thirdly, I got burnt out. Ladies and Gentlemen, I LOVE tearing apart games I hate, believe me. Super Meat Boy Forever is one of my favorite reviews that I’ve ever made. But I can only say “This game fucking sucks” so many times before getting tired, folks. And that’s just the review side. Imagine playing 8 games back to back, 99% of which are mid, and the 1% are games that I’ve burnt myself out on and already played for hundreds of hours already (not joking, btw). I didn’t hate myself for booting up The Binding of Isaac, because The Binding of Isaac is an actually GOOD video game that I like. Wow! But whenever I boot up any Dark Witch game, I just feel disappointed.

Fourthly, who cares? I could make point after point about why NAN-A and The Legend of Dark Witch suck, but it’s fruitless. The Legend of Dark Witch is far past it’s eShop era where it was actually semi-popular. Hell, I’d bet now that the games don’t even average a sale a day, with the 3DS eShop now gone. Now, only a very small, inactive fanbase remains. Ever since me and others left, it’s a complete GHOST TOWN. Nobody cares about it anymore. I’ve barely heard anyone in my online sphere talk about it, and it remains as a niche franchise, like it should be. People got their balls blown off with 1 and 2, and then almost all of us collectively fucked off afterwards because the games SUCKED and it wasn’t active anymore. Now that the dust has settled, it’d only serve to piss people off who still give a damn about the series anymore. And trust me, they WOULD get pissed. I’ve seen it firsthand. And as funny as it would be, I don't want to act as if I'm some villain or something.

So... yeah. That’s all I got to say on the matter. Sorry to anyone who was expecting the review, and sorry to anyone who was involved in the first incident. It was a flawed idea from the start, and I really don’t have anyone to blame for the reviews except myself. Now, for real this time, I’m burying the hatchet. No more of my valuable time will be spent on a video game franchise made by some jizzer. I may edit this out sooner or later, because truth be told, it’s mostly irrelevant to a game series with a funny meat man, but I just needed to get my thoughts out, off of my chest, and announce that the series is canceled, as disappointing as it may be. Finally, I still have all of my Dark Witch reviews in a Google Doc, so if you'd like to see them, whether that be out of curiosity or otherwise, come on over. ;) Shoot me a DM to @zeusdeegoose, either on Twitter or Discord. They’ll remain forever unfinished, but hey, if people wanted to know how it would've played out, they can come and see. But now, with all that being said, lets just move on to greener fields because I don’t know what else to talk about.

Sooooo... it might be too early, but it may be time to start another review series. I’ve been playing a wider variety of games than ever before. Old games, new games, and even bear games. I’ve had good games and bad games, but it’s true love that we share! So I do have quite a few on my mind that I want to do. Blaster Master Zero, Super Monkey Ball, and Devil May Cry are all on my mind. So, I hope you’re looking out for those because they’re probably coming soon. Blaster Master Zero will probably be first up, as I’ve finished all of them, and then Super Monkey Ball and DMC will follow soon after. Again, there may or may not be a bit of a drought when it comes to reviews thanks to the aforementioned cancellation, so apologies. But, zeusdeegoose always comes back stronger than it was. So please tune in, when it’s ready of course. But in the meantime, I’m going back to the Basement so I can type more reviews. If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate your support, but please go outside. It’s almost Summer now, and the sun is good for your skin and health. Don’t be like me. Or hell, play Super Meat Boy! You wont regret it.

Man, they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

For all this time, I mainly avoided the whole club aspect of this expansion pack thinking that that’s all it really added. Eh, whatever!! Maybe I don’t want my Sim to enjoy group outings with friends. But then you pull yourself back a little bit and you realize that this pack is like the main reason why there’s any LIFE in the LIFE SIMULATION game at all. I was a fool, but now.. Now I am with my tribe. In terms of completionist content for my own sick pleasure, there’s just 1 new skill and 1 new aspiration so that part is whatever. It's the actual gameplay elements that shine the brightest here though.

No, really. Arcade machines, dance floors, foosball tables, bar nights, dance clubs, cafes, civilization itself? All of that was added in this pack and it kinda makes me wonder what on God’s green Earth were Sims doing before it. Watching paint dry? Slowly aging until the sweet release of death between the walls of their solitary home? While it’s still a bit of a pain in the ass, the group mechanic allows you to control multiple Sims at once to get them to actually interact together while out. Activities can be done with several Sims, like they actually like being around each other. Before you would just kinda hope they’d sit together at the dinner table so you could have some semblance of normality in your escapist life, but sometimes that wouldn’t be where the cards fell. My wife would eat dinner on the toilet while I sat alone in the dining room. Well, not anymore!!!

They worked their pussy off creating Windenburg. It’s gotta be one of the best towns in the whole game in terms of aesthetics and things to do. It has a shit ton of empty lots to build off of for the most nasty Sims architects out there. You can visit an old antique house and learn the backstory of a random ghost couple for no reason other than.. they felt like putting it into the game? Like, it sounds stupid but I’m being serious when I say they don’t do stuff like this anymore. I’m sure as I keep reviewing these packs, there will be less and less to talk about because they get more streamlined by release order. The Sims is pretty well known for having genuinely bananas lore and questionably canonical timelines. Stuff like this just reminds me of how charming this series is at its center, even if it doesn’t really feel like it anymore.

For the club feature itself, bro I can’t tell you enough how alive I actually felt putting one together. They give you so many goofy ass options to work with in terms of club requirements and activities. It’s the kind of core dumbassery that I love experimenting with in The Sims, just a breeding ground for chaos to lay waste across your town. As your club grows more powerful, the more perks you can buy like a completely diabolical Fallout: New Vegas build. You short on change, buddy? Get your 8 friends to paint for you without a break, then collect their money. No need for romance when we’re all doing the do. I’m beating up the elderly AND cleaning up the beach at the same time. It's not like they're gonna help with that. The rewards for skill boosting are unbelievably broken in exploitative ways that I will be taking full advantage of. If I want to max a skill in under an hour, I can just buy all the skill boosting perks and then have my friends come over to watch me show off until it's 100% done.

And look, you can bark at me all day long about how this all sounds like it should have been base-game content and yadda yadda, I agree. I get it man, whabby doo, but we don’t live in this utopia that you speak of. Your dreams are just dreams and I am not the CEO of EA. You can't really talk about The Sims without someone booing and throwing tomatoes about DLC and I don't disagree with those criticisms. But, I am the ruler of my own wallet and I say that video games were actually a mistake for mankind. I am the schmuck who bought the expansions so that you don't have to, my brave soldier.

My definitive answer is that this pack is one of the better packs in the entire line-up. Is it the best ever? Naw, there's some fancier dinner plates coming down the line, but people might really enjoy the social aspect of this one and those people can use this information however they will.

Gang, gang.

Years have passed since I’ve played my beloved Hyper Light Drifter. I wanna say I played this in 2016(?), a shrimple 14 year old girl who only knew it from a 20 second twitter clip that was rlly emotionally evocative. Didn’t know one thing about the gameplay, went fuck it we ball mode and played it. It was, back then, one of my favorite games ever, and over the years I began to doubt that. It’s no-dialogue story gimmick, good music, and catchy title were the only bits that stuck with me as years passed. I thought I’d been duped a bit emotionally by some easily marketable ideas, and that I wss some kinda ‘cool games poser’.

Do you know how happy I am to report that I was right in this case? I’ve been right a lot in this way recently- replaying Soul Hackers and Bastion lately showed me that I actually underrated or didn’t fully grasp how good some of these games were, and I’m really glad I hissed away my initial urge to avoid childhood joys out of embarrassment.

Here’s some history I think is an interesting little primer: I like three of the Zelda games. Played most of em. Like 15 of them probably? I genuinely hate all but three: Zelda 1, Minish Cap, and Four Swords (I’m a bit of a Game Boy Bitch it seems. Never had one growing up but I am!). Zelda 1 is like- one of the first games I recall playing. My dad’s parents sold their childhood SNES and it’s games but I did grow up using their old NES for some reason. They amassed a pretty good selection I think given the fact some weird poor kid from the middle of nowhere was making the buying decisions: Zelda 1 and 2, Blades of Steel, NES Golf, Final Fantasy 1, and Mario 2. I played the hell outta Zelda 2 the most I think. It was kinda infuriating! I wanted all the answers!

Later on in life, I really took a liking to Zelda 1. It’s simple, everything’s pretty to the point, and there ain’t many games like Just Zelda 1 made today. Like- you’ll have kinda similar things, right? But then there’ll be an extended segment that makes you go “….Oh. That’s Link To The Past, right.” and it kills the enjoyment I have, genuinely! Just think of LttP- ugh! What a- what a fucking specific and weird and unapproachable dull thing. Link to the Past.

Anyway- what I like in Z1 is it’s specificity and simultaneous lack thereof. Every time I get an item in Zelda 1, I know what it does immediately. If it’s long enough since I’ve upgraded a piece of equipment, I can feel a hankering for the eventual upgrade of it. If I ain’t seen a secret area in a bit, my mind tunes to look for them effectively.

Most importantly, though: the plot (however simple it is in Zelda 1) is a transfer of information. You don’t make a lot of active plot progress until the end of the game in Zelda 1. You have the NES game’s manual to tell you what is happening, and you have whatever story clues are contained in the individual moments. What’s happening here, though, is a structured pattern of plot-by-learning. Not exposition, really. Just other people having info, and the story forming as you’re given more context for how it all concludes. Nothing is ‘happening’, though. However, this is story a type of story I find universally compelling. Especially once you get into the nitty-gritty- who else knows that thing you just learned, and why didn’t they tell you before?

Zelda 1’s story isn’t that interesting, really. Like let’s be honest- I’m not gonna call it the masterclass in simple plot communication. But like…..I certainly remember it more fondly today than anything that happened in Ocarina looking back. Hyper Light Drifter takes the addicting and lovely parts of this structure to the extreme: information is conveyed through pure emotional connection. You see images, hear some tone-setting music, your heart does the rest of the work. You really do not need to hear words, you just need to understand at the base level what is most important in each individual scene.

Heck, it’s even got the hyperfocus on an underground dungeon world!

There’s a tendency to call this game cryptic that I really despise, though. It’s not. There’s this stupid thing where you can get the story of the game by obtaining these tablets that translate everything about the backstory and uh…you don’t need that. I’m the Hyper Light Hypewoman and I’m probably never doing it, honestly! Each part of this game is perfectly communicated. If you think there’s something missing it’s likely not that you misunderstood anything- it’s just That Simple, and your brain expects more.

What happens, as I see it- is incredibly simple. Our main character, THEE Hyper Light Drifter, awakens to find a disease they’ve had for a while worsening. They start blacking out for portions, seeing these visions of a beast killing them and sparking the end of humanity. Usually, at the end of these visions, a scary ass dog appears leading them in different directions. The Drifter trusts this dog for no good reason. Really, they shouldn’t based on the facts: these visions of the future they start getting feature the dog adjacent to themselves drowning within another creature’s maw, and civilization as a whole getting blown the fuck up.

We get context for the creature that will kill us and it’s supercomputer papaw throughout 4 episodic chapters. Universally, people are hurt by it after thinking they could approach it like any other situation. Not even the computer in some cases: just other species of lil peoples that suddenly get possessed by murderous ideology. These people have NO reason to trust others. Neither do you, kinda!

Another driftin’ sick fellow, though, dies shortly after risking life and limb to protect you. This reaffirms the Drifter’s inherent trust in others, and once the time comes, their trust is rewarded. They defeat the beast and escape alive and healthier after the scary ass dogthing leads them to safety. They’ve protected the world, but disabled their method of escape (the supercomputer that controlled the elevator system between the lower world and the surface). They will die, but alone with the dog and no one else now. Not from their painful sickness. It’s not perfect, but it could be considered better. And not to mention, life-affirming: it’s so difficult to trust others. I’ve been burned basically every time I’ve done it. It’s nice to consider this impulse still might not be worthless.

Hyper Light Drifter, overall, is a game about constant trust. It is a game full of secrets, where the artist's touches prompt you and reward you for trusting them. There's a universal Secret Symbol: you see it, you know something's there. Sometimes it's just a room with a key for ya to take. Isn't that nice? A lot of the times you land in a three-screen dungeon leading up to, you guessed it, a key. Sometimes it feels like you're being tricked. Could be a trick, even, honestly. But you always get a lil treat for your efforts. A reward for handing over your trust. There's a lot more about the game's design I think supports this philosophy but like- number one, I'm just gonna be repeating my words for like six more paragraphs if I do that, and number two: you don't want that at all. Like duh. That would blow. Not sure if what's about to follow is better, but like you'd hate it either way so I'll take those odds.

Okay, we already toyed with doing some Tim Rogers self-obsessed storytime bullshit during the Zelda Talk, but like- you either closed this review cuz of that or you’re itching for more. Ya want more? Oh, I got more.

In 2019 I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I have never told my family this, and I didnt tell a single person in my life until 2023. It's like- a fairly well known fact now. In my everyday life, things have gotten harder to manage vis-a-vis that, but y’know, back then it was simple: my inner monologue was hateful towards myself, and I would sometimes say things out loud and immediately recognize I was having a vivid memory-hallucination so strong I forgot where I was. Between then and now, we’ve got one major difference: trust issues. It’s about to get a little heavy so y’know. Trigger warnings and what not. There’s like- usually two or three things people talk about when they say that, so I hope you know to save this tab for later if that hurts right now.

In the years between then and now, I’ve lost every person I trusted for the most part. Most of my childhood friends killed themselves or were killed by their families. One of these particular suicides, which happened in 2017, I walked in on after it had happened. Which was a lot to work with as a teen. There were things I promised them I’d do I never got to, and vice versa. Obviously I dont like- blame any of them. Thats a really unfair thing to do, I think. But it really hurt my ability to trust others. Still, though, I had to actively try to trust people when I could regardless of how much it was hurting me to do so. I've always been a hopeful little soul, and people looked to me constantly for inspiration or to uplift their mood. When you're met with all that, you can't let that crack at all. You have to be this perfect emblem for others, even though it sucks. For a long ass time, I did trust like- one particular person a lot (genuinely!) and that isn’t true any more. You’ll remember when I threw out 2023 earlier? They helped me a lot starting in like- 2022 to help me get past a lot of this shit. We talked nearly every day for like a year. They were kind in the moment when I tried to talk about the symptoms of my schizophrenic disorder which was like- pretty new to me! Hadn't had much of a chance to talk about it before, but now here's someone who knows all the terminology that I'm having to use right now!

So, early 2024 rolls around and I have a crazy schizophrenia hallucination episode. I live alone with no in-person support network at this point. I try to kill myself the same way my old best friend did back in 2017, just in a public park at night instead of a house. At some point shortly after I tell them this, they just never talk to me again. I shouldn’t say never- I still text them sometimes, they might respond with a simple sentence once every month. If I try and ask how they’re doing or if we can talk soon, it’s left on read. If I say “Hey I watched that movie you mentioned.” there’s a one in five chance they say “Cool, that one’s good.”

Needless to say- much of my day now is spent grappling with trust issues. Like most of the day. It’s my fulltime job type shit. caused not exclusively by this new issue. But it's certainly not helping, right? I do not trust any one which, y’know, sucks! That used to be like- easy to do! However stupid it might be, though, if someone asks me to trust them with something I do as asked. Always.

I am a quitter in a lot of ways, and a real self-aware idiot, but let one thing be known: I try the hell outta it when I do that shit. I have crazy trust issues that make me think that every kind act done to me is part of some larger ploy. That they only intend to use and betray my trust later. Every time I’ve ever had the “oh this person’s playing nice they Actually Hate You” alarm ring, I’ve been correct.

But like- it feels stupid to let the Brain Disease Currently Putting Me Down win, right? That’s my Real Fucking Life Vow to the world right there: I will never stop trusting people no matter how hard this shit gets. That’s what the got damn game is about. #HyperLightMentality #AntiHaterLifestyle

I guess the conclusion I want you to draw from all this info is: talk to people in your life, even if it hurts or sucks to do. Ya gotta trust people, I think, maybe. And uh- Hyper Light Drifter is a really great piece on how the power of trust extends beyond logical reason sometimes. Not in a like- sometimes you just gotta have faith bullshit happy ending way. More like- you'll have these self-aware moments where you recognize your trust in something is illogical or really unfair towards yourself, but you live with it regardless. Shouts out Heart Machine, heard they're making a weird spiritual sequel roguelike to this now? Kinda weird, right? I'm super down for whatever that is.

I have no interest in hunting and I do not find it fun. I'm not sure why I even own this game (I might have found it for like 1$ at value village?). This game is of a worse quality than Wii era shovelware but requires a 7.3GB data download in order to be playable. The gameplay consists of running through the most generic pre-made unreal engine terrain you have ever seen to shoot animals, and it controls like garbage. My first 30 seconds into the game I got softlocked because I got stuck in a crack between two rocks and the slope was too deep for my character to walk out of. I'd also like to give a special shout out to this games incredibly diverse character roster (why does it have a character roster??) that consists of 4 white men and 2 white women, all of whom definitely do not look like they'd have an unhealthy obsession with a certain yellow haired, orange faced, formerly presidential individual.

When you become an adult, suddenly all the barriers that guided you are gone, whether the barriers were for good or for ill you're left with a strange feeling where before your choices were provided for you, now stretches a horizon of limitless possibilities. It is not a good nor is it a bad thing, but I'll always remember it as being a scary thing and it took me a while to grapple with where my direction was headed once the realisation set in, and the feelings I had of wanting to go back to when life was simpler. This life experience is everything about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and more, a game which asks questions about the many paths life can take, the choices available to someone, the regret from not taking a choice, and how one can seize their own destiny to move forward from the past, this is easily Takahashi's best work, and the pinnacle of the Xeno-series thus far.

Takahashi forges one of the strongest main casts of characters in a JRPG here, explored thoroughly and meaningfully. One of the biggest merits of the writing of this cast are the frequent discussions everyone has to each other discussing their innermost feelings, insecurities, and doubts. All six members often rarely obscure their problems, and even when they do their counterpart often picks up on any distress immediately and also immediately acts for their friend, it's extremely realistic and heartwarming, ESPECIALLY for a JRPG which normally derives tropes that can be frustratingly obtuse when it comes to social interactions. This step up in character writing is also bolstered by a step up in cutscene direction, the action cutscenes are breathtakingly hype, and when the mood calls for it the lower tempo cutscenes can leave you at the edge of your seat as you watch these kids navigate through the next stage of their lives.

Unfortunately, there has to be some ball dropped when it comes to a Xeno game, and in this case I would say it's the villains, Moebius has a few standout characters in side quests, and like three good characters in the main story, and generally they really just feel like vehicles for the characters to grapple emotional problems around, rather than full characters themselves. It doesn't help that almost every member of Moebius is a sociopathic arrogant manchild, which wears out its welcome pretty quickly. It's very strange to me that they continue to feign arrogance and superiority when by a point in the game our party has killed many of their kind already.

This was the JRPG I didn't know I needed, and I think even if you don't really like the Xeno series, this game is a fantastic entry to the genre as a whole and it feels like a full uncompromised vision of a Monolith Soft game in all its glory, without any of the baggage weighing it down like 2.

This game is indescribably good but I'm gonna try to formulate my opinion anyway.

This game's story and music have been at the back of my mind for almost two years now. There's a very poignant mood throughout the entire game, the stakes are high but there's enough room for hope and the wish for a better future in this war torn world. This is told well in the dialogue between the characters, there are enough heart breaking moments but also a lot of fun banter. But for my money, the story is told through the music which is again, for a Xenoblade game, exceptionally well done. There are your usual toe-tappers, somber woodwind instrumentals, pumped up battle themes. The music is in perfect harmony with the gameplay at and the story and it conveys it all quite well.

Sure there are some downsides. Most of the Möbius bosses are forgettable, I can't remember most of their names because their names are just letters of the alphabet. But I think that's my only gripe. I plan on replaying this game as soon as I've finished the DLC.