this is more than just a review and my own personal journal thing here! mk8d is a big game for me in my life. tldr: fav game i played in 2023 and a game that i will continue to come back to for years. everything is pretty good.

i enjoy this game because of how everything culminates together into my own personal experience. I've tried to get into competitive spaces before. first it was call of duty when i was a teenager hitting nasty 1080s, instaswapping and reload cancelling left and right. then it was halo 3 as my fps tasks matured. some time passed and i moved to trying challenges out for myself, solo. i would attempt to play doom eternal on ultra nightmare for ages and had so much fun with it, despite leaving my most recent attempt on the second to last level because i was afraid of losing my progress. it felt wonderful to be in charge of my own accomplishments when gaming - not at the mercy of what was slowly becoming a generation of gamers that were younger, faster, and ultimately, better than me. i didn't have the same reaction speeds and time to invest playing a single game as some 18 year old on summer break. i had grad school, work, people in my life. after a last effort and reach into entering the competitive smash scene, i felt comfortable hanging up any sort of big investment in such spaces.

but then time trials entered my life. doom eternal all over again. i pick a track, learn some tech, use the meta, and get better at my own pace. i get to look at beautiful levels and race as cute characters while listening to banger after banger after banger. whats this? i'm suddenly a few seconds off wr on a track? another? another????

getting good at this game, for me, could potentially be compared to what i have to imagine it feels like to be a soulsborne gamer. i feel great squeaking out 1.0, 0.1, and even 0.01 seconds on a course. its my own personal sense of gain and reward as i improve my own abilities. seeing my character icon sit on the far right side of the chart showing off my progress is a progression that i haven't felt in other spaces as much as id like.

i love this game! wont get over the double dash slander though. no dino jungle? no dd rainbow road? no mushroom city/bridge??? lame! but they put birdo in so im right back in it.

may - june of 2023 was a memorable time for me. sure, i was playing totk like it was a full time job (i genuinely think one week i played at least 8 hours every day), but i was also struggling with a job that i felt very uncomfortable at. i felt out of place and out of my element which felt even more stressful because i had no other means of support for myself. i not only needed the money but also the experience. work was at its worst due to heightened demand of my services and more events coming and going.

totk kept me going, even if at times i allowed it to be prioritized higher than it perhaps should've been. even though i felt distant and "otherly" when i was working, i could turn on zelda and feel like i was in my element. booting the game up and seeing where id left off felt like a fresh start. each play session would comprise of exploration, combat, puzzle solving, collectibles, side objectives, and admitedly a bit of item duplicating. there was so much to do and focus on. it was the escape i needed during a time in my life when it mattered a lot.

as time as passed and i've seen people slander this title, i begin to recognize that it isn't some masterpeice. it owes a lot to botw and the story/writing at times is pretty lackluster. funny thing about that though is that the 10 year old zach literally couldn't care less. the dynamic of good v. evil/power-wisdom-courage overpowers any "sEcReT sToNe?!" or "DeMoN kInG?!" that there is. it gets it done for me!

its the fact that i would strap in for my 1.5 hour drive from class and play the wind temple boss theme on blast. 30 minute version, mind you.

at times, felt very confused by where the game wanted me to go or explore. by the end, getting one of the not-so-favorable endings, it seemed that every time that I tried to travel off the path, there was nothing to find, but, for all the times that I didn't look elsewhere when I could have, THAT is when there was something significant that could have changed my experience. Citing my lack of experience with puzzle/mystery style games for that I guess? Loved the characters, progression, and multiple choices. Also, games that can be finished in a sitting or two are always welcome

This was my first 2d sonic game and my first sonic game as an adult. I deeply enjoyed the variety in levels, finding branching paths, and putting together the pieces of what a new area entailed with its music, theming, enemies, gimics, and so on. Not having played 2d sonics before, i did have a difficult time using the controls properly, specifically being able to spin dash. Some spikes in difficulty in the final zone were also frustrating, since other areas seemed to be a tad more balanced, but it was 1991 lol. I enjoyed playing this classic and seeing where sonic began. Looking forward to tackling 2 & 3/Knuckles in the next few months.

im crying this is my favorite game.

looking at the entirety of the story since 2018, the way each character has grown, in my opinion, is unparalleled in the gaming space, with narrative twists & developments that consistently had me feeling surprised, but not shaken, eager, but not antsy, and excited, but not overzealous. This was the first game where i felt as though my desires gameplay-wise were shaped in part by what I predicted Kratos would want, whereas, typically in RPGs, I don't care enough to consider what the protagonist may be thinking (outside of the main story beats). The trajectory of the plot all throughout kept me hanging on every moment without making me feel rushed, ultimately culminating in one of the most beautiful, triumphant, and satisfying video game endings I've engaged with.

This is the type of game where you re-do the big combat encounters just to "get it right".

my ONLY complaint about valhalla is that it wasn't longer. I love how it structured the roguelike genre with adding bits of exposition along the way as opposed to sticking it in a log/text file somewhere, as it was a beautiful reward for putting a build together - learning about my favorite game character's experience. With all of the incredible features like seals & mastery goals, it would've been great if the final cutscene arrived just a bit later, but in the grand scheme of things, it is hardly a flaw. I enjoyed the beautiful orchestral score, edited layouts of places we've been before, and interactions between characters.