It's impossible to predict what games give you comfort in what ways. I thought I almost died this week, and on the other side of that, I can't help but think of my time with Bravely Default.

I devoured this game at a time where it felt like my life was ending. My 3DS activity log showed that I played it in chunks averaging 8+ hours a session. To say that I thoroughly replaced reality with this game is an understatement.

I needed to find meaning and beauty in the world, and in Bravely Default, I found enough to tide me over. The repetitive nature of filling out the bestiary, maxing out every job class, even the repetitive nature of the game itself. When it reused bosses, I didn't blink an eye. I dutifully went through the long way of beating this game without a single critical thought, of any of the ways that I could have cleverly ended the game sooner. I needed that structure. I needed to not think about the freeform mess of reality around it.

When you need to find beauty in something, you do. I think Bravely Default still has one of the best soundtracks of all time. When I first heard the theme of the Land of Radiant Flowers, I almost cried. Obviously I was in a vulnerable state of mind, and now I don't think its one of the strongest tracks in the game. But I think about that experience a lot.

There were jokes I laughed at in this game that are objectively lame. I took screenshots on MiiVerse to save for posterity (lol) that I failed to remember the significance of within a month.

But that has to speak to something in the strengths of this game that I could use it as the refuge I needed it to be.

I remember very little about what it was like to play this game, because for a long time I needed to forget everything about that period of my life. Including this game. But like the experience I was trying to avoid, Bravely Default became a part of me. I still say "grgrgrgr" in real life the way Edea does. I have had Victory's Chime as my default ringtone for over a decade at this point and forget where it came from.

I'd like to think that was a form of healing. That I used that vulnerability to slot in the potential for something beautiful when I was at a low point full of pain. Maybe Bravely Default was a vapid thing to latch onto, but it was harmless. And at that time, as evaluated by my future current self, it was exactly what I needed. Or, now it has to be what I needed. Because I still got so much beauty out of it.

On its own merits, Bravely Default is an S-tier soundtrack on a mediocre game. Solidly B-rank, hard to recommend playing much more than recommending listening to the soundtrack.

But maybe the real lesson I needed to learn, or the lesson I taught myself through Bravely Default, was finding how to love something imperfect when it felt like the world would not love an imperfect me.

Having not played the original when I was a kid, I did everything possible to get as close to the child-like experience:

Step 1 - Remove all four of your wisdom teeth

Step 2 - Take painkillers before reverting to baby-state and sleep for 24 hours

Step 3 - After baby-state hibernation is complete, awaken as a young disgruntled adolescent who lays on the couch for days on end while playing Mario RPG and eating copious amounts of jello and pudding

Step 4 - Add in watching some Sopranos and some more painkillers and realize the connections between the New Jersey mob and the Super Mario RPG gang - Mario is obviously Tony leading the gang but still has some issues, Mallow is Christopher who comes along early and immediately you're like ah this fucking guy c'mon bro but then he comes in clutch a few times, Geno is Silvio the right hand man, Bowser is the combo of Paulie and Big Pussy with the fat guy enforcer aesthetic, and Peach is the smokin' hot therapist as evidenced by her first special move being called 'Therapy.' The Smithy gang are a combo of Tony's own family and his fears of losing his kingdom - put a pair of glasses on Exor's sword or Smithy and tell me that's not Uncle Junior in the flesh.

Step 5 - Write this dumbass review and boot up Paper Mario

SERIOUSLY
QUIT TRYING
TO HANDLE MY STYLE

unless you’re a lady
then you’re cordially invited
to HAVE A GIANT SLICE OF MY STYLE

[This is from the elk vault, a fully finished review that i never posted. Written back in february. I thought better release it before the leakers get it, u know what im saying? pls enjoy.]

I’ve given this game so many chances. When i was playing hollow knight i was thinking “damn its so good when i play a critically acclaimed game and it lives up to the hype.” Well why don’t I go back in time and dunk myself in a pool of cat bones for jinxing it so hard? I have been playing this game since 2019. I started when I was in high school and now it’s been so long that it’s become creepy for me to play this. Nothing in this game was cut, they threw all the shit they wanted in there with no regard for anything. With every second that goes by I dislike the game more. Which sucks for the game because it's 100 billion hours long. The game overall just feels like it’s only working because all the parts are stuck together with sticky tack and rubber bands. Your character controls soooo shittily. So crap. The way you maneuver around is so unnatural and weird and bad. It feels like I’m controlling a car in the shape of an anime boy with 3 kilograms of hair. Some parts you can only progress by using the detective vision to see which of the 3 little steps you have to press x on to jump. Or rather activate the jump cutscene and to teleport you onto the next platform. There is nothing in this game that feels smooth or natural except the turn based combat, which is pretty fun and stylish but oh my god it gets so old. I’m sick of it. The same song every time and usually in dungeons you fight a pool of like 4 or 5 enemies total. Once u figure out their weaknesses you use the same moves with the same animations on the same dudes and u stun em and u ask for their money or do the big all out attack animation again.

“Oh elk u hate turn based combat”

No I don’t, assface… Chrono trigger is fun. Like a dragon is fun. This is a cool system with some cool stuff I admit. But the enemies u fight r lame. The dungeons are boring too. They try to do a little baby stealth thing and tell u to ohh maybe sneak around but the stealth is soooooo dogcrap-diabetes tier that you can stand in front of a guy and he won't see you. You hide on a corner and wait for him to pass and go. If you wanna get rid of him you gotta fight 4 of these guys you already fought. You hit em with the attack they’re weak to, wait 35 minutes for the outro animation where ann does a strip show for the camera and u can continue with the game. Gameplay? MOSTLY BAD.

Story? Don’t get me started. This is anime. And not good anime like 1 punch man. This is crap anime like that stuff YOU watch. (sorry elksters I don’t mean to insinuate that you have bad taste in anime. I'm sorry! -editorial) I legit was considering fully dropping the game by the beach cutscene. And they still keep the -san, -chan, whatever stuff in the english dub. So they're saying hey john chan do you want to go eat at that restaurant? And it's weird cause it's in english but they've got the chan stuff. Whatever. U know what? I don’t care. I just remembered how much I don’t care about the story. It’s bad and that’s all you need to know. I just want to go home. So i’m gonna write a couple dozen more paragraphs on why I hate every one of the characters and you can like the review and we can leave, okay? Does that sound good to you? Good. That’s good. Hang in there pal.


Ryuji. My buddy. My homie. You’re alright. You’re safe from my wrath. You were the only one I could stand. Morgana. Shut the fuck up and stop being so mean to Ryuji. Stop following me into the bathroom. You’re not a cat, you're a dude that looks like a cat. It’s creepy. Ann. You’re also sort of chill but your voice is annoying. Stop inviting me to your modeling things. Yusuke. You’re kind of funny but I wouldn’t want to be friends with you in real life. You’re an anime stereotype. If you were a real person I would request a restraining order. You’re like the Pierce Hawthorne of the group. No offense. Pierce was my favourite. Well, actually Troy is my favourite but Ryuji is Troy. Kawakami. Get the fuck out of my dm’s before I demolish you. Creepy bitch. Grown ass woman hitting me up at night calling me master. Restraining order on this chick too. Reporter chick, same as above. Mishima. Same as above but just the ‘get out of my dms’ part. Maybe not a restraining order, maybe I’d just block his number and avoid him at school. Makoto. Anyone ever told you it’s not cool to come to a group of friends and say “let me join you or else I'm telling the teacher you’re excluding me” ? and then you come in and be mean to Ryuji. If we’re letting you in, I know you won’t stop being a total nerd loser but at least don’t be mean to Ryuji. Futaba. Wahhh my mom my mom wahhh get over it and get over it NOW. I don’t care, stop crying about it and go take a shower. Shut up about being a gamer and push your glasses up; they look like they're about to fall. And stop being mean to Ryuji. Iwai. Hiiii how are you hahahahhaha gosh Iwai you’re so cool. Can you tell me what THIS gun does? Oh my goshhhh you’re so freaking smart hahahhaa loll. Haru. You are fine. I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling life. Good luck on those plants. But you are rich and I’m still the one buying all the guns and shit for the phantom thieves. It’s like Clark Kent buying the justice league a space station on a daily bugle reporter budget with Bruce Wayne right there. Akechi, why do you talk like that? Your voice is weird. You talk like one of those “boyfriend comforts you after a nightmare” ASMR audios. Not that I would know.

The music is great at least and the hud stuff is unique and cool. I love the subway system. The whole first palace was really fun and actually pretty hype. It’s a unique setup having to go to school and balance life and secret dream dungeon stuff, even if it was really shittily done. I hope a competent developer takes over that idea and we get, like, a shazam game where you have to go to school and at any time during any cutscene or whatever you can press a button to say shazam and turn into captain marvel and get arrested and game over. Wouldn’t that be sick?

What else? Oh whatever, I’m done. This game sucks, the story sucks, and you have one friend who you can stand while random older chicks spam your dms all the time while you’re trying to do pull ups in the attic. Well, I guess it is pretty accurate to my high school experience in that way.

Paper Mario Sticker Star was a landmark experience in my relationship with video games.

At one point in time, Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door was my favorite game. I didn’t know what a JRPG was, and from how I heard people talk at school, thought it had something to do with the war in Iraq. I hadn’t played Chrono Trigger yet. But anything with Mario on it passed my parents' arbitrary content filtration, so Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door remained a unique game that pressed multiple buttons I liked. The art style spoke to me as an aspiring vector graphic artist. There was strategy, there was story, with enough player engagement and metatextual dressing to sell me on turn-based combat. It was funny, it was cute, with just enough depth to help me graduate from the simplicity of the Mario platformers I was used to.

Super Paper Mario was fine. I knew it was a different genre before it came out, which offset my disappointment somewhat, enough that I never said out loud, “this art style is lame.” My Smash Bros. friend thought it was hilarious, so I liked it, too. I got my sister to play it, in an attempt to convince myself to love it. It didn’t work, but Super Paper Mario became the first game she ever finished. I was happy for her. So I never said out loud, “this game should have been better.” But I felt it.

Sticker Star came out during a long period when I didn’t play video games. I didn’t get to it for years. By the time it was $10 on clearance, there were other games I liked. Maybe Xenoblade Chronicles or Fire Emblem Awakening were my new favorite games. But now Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door had ~nostalgia~ status, before I knew what that word meant, much less what it meant for me.

I played all of Sticker Star. I finished it. I remembered and remember nothing about it. I felt nothing. Or thought I felt nothing. Until I saw empty achievement podiums in the post-game inviting me to do a bunch of pointless grindy bullshit to check off some checklists.

My first reaction was “oh, more content! More Paper Mario!” until my brain processed what the game was asking of me. Find all the trinkets? Win a lottery 50 times? Collect 10,000 coins?

I said out loud, “Why would anyone do that?”

Then a profound realization washed over me. I did not like this game. I did not enjoy any of my time with this game. I had finished this entire game precisely because of my remembered love for a different game with the same name. A love that had at once been unexamined, treasured, and rendered featureless and sourceless with time.

I stared at the achievement markers, not yet knowing what an achievement was, and felt an inscrutable feeling of dread and betrayal. This game was bad. But beyond the game being bad, Sticker Star was also behaving as if it were unaware it was bad. Smash Bros. had checklists, but they unlocked new stages, new characters. Those checklists were crude interfaces for unlocking fun surprises. This was just… homework.

But why would Nintendo give me homework? Why would Mario give me homework? And why would a real life human do that homework if they weren’t getting graded or paid? I quietly saved the game, returned it to its case, and closed my 3DS, more pensive and alone feeling than I was expecting to feel that day. I told no one about this experience. I told no one I had even played the game. My Smash Bros. friend was gone and married at that point, anyway.

I’d watched people at school play bad flash games, so I knew bad games existed. But they seemed to poke fun at themselves, aware of their own disposability. This was the first time my childish, uncritical brain was forced to confront the reality that bad games could come from Brands™ made by Adults. Because the more I stewed on why the idea of those achievements felt like homework, the more I realized the entire experience of playing the game felt like homework. Stripped of context, stripped of story, the basic actions of the game were straight unfun to play. But that meant the presentation hadn’t made the game fun, it had only been a distraction from the neutral hell of paying money to do homework for zero learning or recognition.

I don’t want to oversell Sticker Star’s importance in my developing critical facilities, but it is the clearest turning point of my self-awareness with a game before several of my behaviors changed. I stopped getting excited for games before their release. I stopped visiting IGN - they’d given this game an 8.3! I stopped saying a game was among my favorites if I couldn’t remember why. I actually finished Xenoblade Chronicles. That ending suuuuucked, and the game stopped being in my top 10.

There’s a good chance many of these changes would have come about as side-effects of growing up. But maturity and wisdom are not guaranteed with age. New ‘bad’ Paper Mario games keep coming out, and I see its “fan” base go through phases of evangelical rage and disappointment with every release. Fans who never learned the lessons that Sticker Star offered, that fans should sprout up around products, and not that products will be made for fans.

I have no rage for Sticker Star. I successfully recognized that Sticker Star did not deserve to tap into the well of emotions that had been drilled by the Thousand Year Door. With that realization, the bubble of nostalgia around the Thousand Year Door popped, its warm glow confined to its own identity instead of allowed to exist as an emotionally ethereal entity that could bless and inhabit other games. With that skill obtained, other nostalgia bubbles began to deflate over the years until none remained. It was a melancholic mental transformation, but with it came a confidence that the games I liked were Actually Good instead of emotional echoes of a previous self.

The Paper Mario series effectively taught me how the commodification of game series changes its identity. I’m tempted to say “and robs it of its soul,” but the new bad Paper Mario games have a different soul. A beige-colored soul. A market-tested soul that sets sales records, with legs enough that whatever Paper Mario came out on the Switch can probably tap into nostalgia people have for Sticker Star. (A concept that belongs in my personal version of hell.)

It’s only fitting that Mario, who introduced me to platforming, racing, and JRPGs, would also be the one to teach me about the dystopian rot of corporate game production.

I am not grateful.

Oh, he's just like me!

Content warning for discussions of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

I've been putting off writing this review for a while, because I think this is one of the most beautiful pieces of art ever created. More than any film, more than any song, and certainly more than any other video game. We all have some piece of media that feels wholly personal to us — if you haven't found yours yet, you will eventually — and Disco Elysium is mine. Nothing else has made me feel so seen, so understood; it's a very, very powerful feeling when you discover that you're not as alone as you thought you were. This is review #100, so fuck it. Let's do this.

My closest personal friends know about my struggles with alcoholism. Some of them are on Backloggd, but most of them aren’t, so this is going to be the first time a lot of you who only know me from here are going to hear about this. Some of the roughest years of my life kicked off in 2016. I’d grown up in an abusive household (surely a story for another time), and 2016 was the year that I turned 18. I worked as much as I could, neglected school as much as I was able to, moved out, and never looked back. It fucking sucked. It sucked slightly less than staying at home and having to deal with my father getting shitfaced and threatening to kill me every night, but it sucked.

In Canada, the legal drinking age is 19. We’ve got access to the stuff two years earlier than you Americans do. What that meant for me, with my big beard and sunken eyes and deep voice, was that nobody at the local liquor stores had been carding me since the eleventh grade. The laws have changed since then, and everyone now has to present ID regardless of how old they look — I had a fake in case they asked, anyway — but no cashier ever looked twice at me. So I had easy, consistent access to alcohol, and I gradually gained a dependence on the stuff. Well, I say “gradually”, but it was pretty fast. No pipeline for me, of having a drink before dinner turning into a couple, then a couple more; I drank as much as I could because it made me feel stupid, and then it made me fall asleep, and that was a pattern that felt better than dealing with my shriveling bank account and my constant desire to curl up and quietly die.

One day, probably about a year or two later — I know a lot of people mark the exact day they decided to start being sober, but I was going through my life in a complete fucking blur — I realized that I needed to either stop drinking, or it would kill me. I don’t know what triggered that thought, but I didn’t really care. I’d die, so what? Yeah, the thought was scary, but my life was shit. It’d be like getting upset over losing a quarter in the couch cushions. Oh, well.

Then, another thought hit me: you’re turning into your father.

That one got me.

Spite is a powerful motivator.

Disco Elysium came to me at a time where I was starting to settle into a sober groove. No more drinking, even though I still wanted it. If you’ve never dealt with substance abuse like that, imagine a big plate of your favorite food, constantly in front of you, and you’re not allowed to take a bite. Everyone else is always talking about how delicious it is, and how much they love it, and then they get weird when you try explaining that you can’t have any. People start talking about you behind your back, about how you’re “the guy who says he can’t have any”. Other people will actively bait you into trying some. They’ll tease you, call you a pussy, mock you for your boundaries. It’s shit. It’s fucking shit and it never goes away. I digress.

With time, it gets a little easier. You recognize the kinds of things that’ll set you off, that’ll make you want it. You learn to avoid them, you learn to cope with them. You make little deals with yourself, like how I swapped from booze to weed; the world’s no fun to take on completely sober, is my rationale. It’s the leaf or the sauce, and one of them is a whole lot fucking worse for me than the other.

The detective is in a very similar boat. He’s a man so subsumed by his addictions that he’s lost every part of him that isn’t defined by the substances he takes. His memory of who he is, what he believes, who he loves; it’s all gone, washed away beneath a tide of liquor and pills and powders and research chemicals. Ostensibly, the goal of the game is to solve a murder, but the real mystery is in uncovering who the detective is — was, perhaps — before he drowned every part of himself in drugs. If there’s nothing that can be remembered, it must be uncovered. If there’s nothing to be uncovered, it must be invented. Harry DuBois, Raphael Ambrosius Costeau, Tequila Sunset, the Icebreaker; who is he, really? Some of these? All of them? None?

As you play, the detective is constantly challenged to give in to his vices. It’s easy to take drugs. Beneficial, even! But everything in Revachol can be the catalyst for change, much as it can all be an excuse to keep things going as they are. The detective can begin the long, slow, arduous road to sobriety, doubtlessly inspired by his partner and friend Kim Kitsuragi.

Kim is one of the best characters ever written. He is everything the detective is not. He can control his urges. He’s got himself in order. What he sees in the detective does not impress him…initially. The detective, for all of his faults, has kept one thing true about himself; he is a damn good detective. Kim sees this. He latches onto it, and doesn’t let go. In the darkest times, in the hardest times, he reminds the detective that he is a damn good detective. The detective needs someone like Kim to ground him, and Kim needs someone like the detective to bring the case to a close. Getting Kim to trust you might be the greatest sense of achievement you will ever feel in a game. To be a constant fuck-up who eventually stops fucking up is a triumph, and Disco Elysium captures the feeling perfectly.

It’s no secret that Robert Kurvitz, the lead writer of the game, has struggled with substance abuse in the past. He once mentioned in an interview that he believed everyone else on the development team had, too. This is the kind of story that can only be written at this level of depth and nuance by people who truly understand what it’s like to find themselves at rock bottom and claw their way back up. It’s masterful. I’ve shed a lot of tears over Disco Elysium, and I know there are going to be a whole lot more to come.

I’m about five years dry, I think. My sense of time is all fucked up. It’s gotten easier to stay away, but not much.

Disco Elysium is still my favorite game.

Pirate it. ZA/UM got stolen from its creators by Estonian businessmen.

I hate that I don't like this game. I wish I did. For the first thirty or so hours, I did. But then I finished it, and I thought about it, and I realized that I don't like Persona 5. Some things here are excellent, and some things here are atrocious, and they all blend together into something that's only ever able to peak at the heights of "okay".

The writing is my biggest problem, with the way the game handles its characters being the strongest flaw. The trauma these people face is treated as a punchline at their expense far too often. It's not an uncommon opinion that Ann gets it the worst of the lot; she's a survivor of sexual assault at the hands of a powerful teacher, and the game constantly takes time out to make her own party members leer at her and make her uncomfortable. Yusuke's "nude model" scene is talked about a lot, but it really isn't that bad, especially compared to later instances — one scene forces her and every other woman in the party into swimsuits to seduce a keycard out of some old rich lecher, and it's played as a joke until the guy grabs Ann, threatens her, and then turns into a big shadow monster who you kill and take the keycard from regardless, making the whole seduction plan pointless. Ryuji and Joker will try to stare up her skirt when she lays down on a couch, gawk at her thighs when she gets caught in the rain, and peer down her top when she's fanning herself in the desert. Ryuji may just be a dumbass who Ann can easily rebuke, but Joker is the leader of the group, and unquestionably holds power over her and the other Phantom Thieves. He doesn't treat any of the other characters this way, and he keeps doing it in cutscenes that you have no control over. Regardless of how the player treats Ann, your character won't stop creeping on her as soon as you give up control. It's weird. It's really fucking weird. Speaking of Ryuji, it's just as tasteless to have a character who was physically abused by that same teacher to the point of broken bones and ostracization be the butt of so many jokes where the punchline is him getting the shit kicked out of him. He's rewarded for both getting the track team back together in his confidant route and for saving every single member of the Phantom Thieves from a sinking ship with the exact same thing: the people he's going out of his way to protect punching him senseless until he's left in a crumpled, bruised, moaning heap on the ground. Ha ha. It's also implied in a scene that comes completely out of nowhere that he gets molested by two gay men in Shinjuku. All of this is played for laughs. It should be obvious to anyone reading this or playing the game for themselves that none of this is funny. It's fucking horrific. It's made worse that someone (or several someones) on the ATLUS writing team think that any of this is funny. I've heard that the localization team begged to be allowed to make script changes to address these issues, and were refused; whether or not this is true, the script that's here is the one that we've got, and the few changes made don't fix these core problems with the writing.

I'm still kind of confused to see all of the "I hate JRPGs!" crowd (your Dunkeys, your Yahtzee Croshaws) circle the wagons around this game and talk about how Persona 5 broke the mold. Mechanically, it's Pokemon. There's nothing wrong with Pokemon. Pokemon can be fun. But the core combat loop is "fish for the enemy's weakness, use the element that they're weak to, win the encounter". It's every single-player Pokemon game. Sometimes, if the fight goes long enough, you can cast a debuff, or maybe even a party-wide buff if you're really feeling brave. Bosses and mini-bosses are completely immune to status effects like shock or sleep, so any foe that you can't kill on the first turn of combat boils down to a DPS race where you either have enough damage and healing to outlast them, or you don't. This is in stark contrast to other entries in the Shin Megami Tensei series where bosses can have mechanically interesting gimmicks or one-off skillsets with unholy good synergies, rather than just being walls of health and damage; the closest thing you get to a boss that challenges your conception of the mechanics in Persona 5 are Okumura and his waves of robots that need to be killed within one turn of each other, which are in a fight so ridiculously easy to brute force by just having enough AOE damage that it barely even qualifies as a challenge. Futaba's later support skills make the game completely trivial, with her Ultimate Support constantly being cast to full heal, buff, and revive every member of the party. I tried to kill myself on a boss by enabling rush mode and walking away, and it still took six and a half minutes before Joker actually went down and I got kicked to the death screen. The guns — while certainly a unique addition — are borderline useless in most encounters, serving only as a middling damage dump (or as a status applier, which only works on trash enemies that are more easily killed by hitting their weak element anyway) and are utterly outclassed by Persona elemental skills. Many Personas can even deal Gun-type damage, giving you almost no reason to ever use the actual guns.

I've seen it said that this game hates women. My gut instinct thinks that's an exaggeration, but it's unquestionable that the writing handles them like shit. Every female confidant in this game leads as smoothly as a car crash into a sexual relationship, with four (!!!) of them being adults pursuing our underage protagonist. There's not a single woman in this game that you can just be friends with without needing to turn down their advances or dodge making your own, first. The men, conversely, do not have this problem, as the only gay men in this game are the sexual predators who assault Ryuji. Lala Escargot, the owner of the Crossroads bar, is the only character who is both a) not a walking punchline and b) queer. The game never actually confirms if she's a drag queen or if she's transgender, but she's at the very least gender non-conforming. That's it. Nobody else. I realize that this may come off as me pounding my fists on the table and demanding token representation, but the way that the female confidants are treated is already token. Every single woman in Joker's life desires him sexually, because this is a shounen harem game masquerading as a serious adult thriller that explores serious adult themes. It's juvenile. The game likes to talk big about rebellion and putting down the system, man, but it's remarkably intolerant of anyone whose inclusion in any mainstream anime would attract death threats for being "too woke". The writing in Persona 5 doesn't put down the system, it is the system. It should not come as a surprise that a series that's based the past three games around the trappings of Jungian psychology is this achingly stupid when it comes to how it handles social issues.

It is endlessly frustrating that ATLUS has accrued as much money and prestige as they have — Joker got into fucking Smash Bros. — and this is still the best that they can do with all of it. Outright bad writing and middling RPG mechanics that feel like they've hardly evolved since 2006. What's left? The UI and the music? Both are great, but there's not a chance they can carry a game that insists on being this long. What missed potential. It's a shame I waited this long to get a chance to play it. I wish I hadn't bothered.