Gets into a mall irl ready to spend dosh. Opens game while waiting in a long line at the register. Game puts a dungeon right there. Game asks a dollar for a key to enter said dungeon. Closes eyes. Upon opening sees childhood friend.

"You're finally awake, you hit your head pretty hard. GPS games? Dungeons inside shopping malls? Microtransactions? What are you on about, c'mon let's play the tanks game on the Sega" (he means on the Terminator 2, we just called every console "sega" as toddlers).

Oh sons and daughters of Belka, luckily the roaring of jet engines hasn't made me so dense to not spy through your deceptions. Perhaps getting soldier ace isn't such an exciting objective for it's not associated with a platinum trophy(?), believe me I too am not a proponent of war just like them playstation 4 exclusives (pet your son now with 16 times the detail™), but I'm not one for turning the other cheek either. They say those who survive a long time on the battlefield start to think they're invincible - maybe my visions are dreamer-like or borderline schizophrenic? Whatever the case, let's make the skies tremble once more as we issue ragnarök.

I remember, and it seems like a distant memory... a young Serbian boy with no money to speak of, circa mid 2000s, playing the shittiest free mmos imaginable. Too stupid to know right from wrong, but enchanted by these seemingly vast worlds full of heroes like himself... The moment my starry eyes got a taste of sand as I destroyed the somewhat rare daggers while trying to upgrade them. A smooth-brained move perhaps, never did I figure I needed a safety net - this assurance that my weapons wouldn't break, a pricey item obtainable from auction houses... So we sat, my similarly unlucky comrades in arms and I, at the center of the pvp arena, like homeless crackheads when a slightly lower leveled ranger waltzed in and properly one tapped us into the beyond realm. It was a funny sight and our jaws dropped when this Legolas showed us his weapon - it wasn't the stuff of legends mind you, more of a shepherd's hunting bow used to ward off stray wolves, but the +15 enchantment on it made it hit like an m4. This ally of mine, inspired by this wayward seafood player, took it upon himself to upgrade his weapon as well; using super secret strats from farest reaches of the nets, this madman got his magic staff to +12, all raw no protections. There were tricks you see, unspoken of, if you stood at a particular spot in the arena, the right pixel, at the right time (very early in the morning while the server isn't as congested) you would defy the world's laws and get favor from Fortuna herself. Even as a young dumbfuck I couldn't fully believe it myself, the comrade clamored I try it out, I couldn't... So yours truly did the only natural responsible thing and let his friend do it instead; an assurance of my own that I could at least blame someone else if it fails. Like two peas in a pod we were, he'd never scram with my stuff... A recipe for disaster you may think, but a day later my daggers came back, imbued with a red aura. Never have my hands held such a powerful arm till then, and yet... they were only +10. My companion dared not test the threads of fate further, to lose a weapon so menacing and then have to bear the bad news...

Of course current knowledge and experience makes you realize the past wasn't as mystical as you believed, but it's still fun to reminisce! How we could be so dumb and gullible, at least games in the future would get better and not feature any of the same scumfuck mechanics!

Point & clicks are some of the first games I've played and always give me this comfy, nostalgic feeling; sometimes I just chill eating or drinking something with a walkthrough open because never in a million years would I be beating most of these games otherwise. At times I dare try to figure stuff out on my own and get to experience some of the absolute biggest bullshittery ever conceived, and I'd say searching (or possibly grinding) for different colored gemstones that randomly spawn across areas in order to guess a randomly generated puzzle ranks pretty high in that department.

A trully special few months where the wrath baby silithid hive could collectively gather to reminisce about them olden days and how "they don't make em like they used to"; WotLK is one of them weirdo expansions where virtually every class feels good to play, so obviously it's a massive trash heap (people play moonkin for the bullying experience not the fem blood elf dk stroking their beaks telling them what a good job they did). Naturally, like a really old dog Blizzie had to take it behind the shed to put it down, WoW token feeling like the dad that left for cigs a long time ago only to come back to use their child as an ashtray. Can't wait for the inevitable CataClassic SWEEP, the one and only savior to herald the REBIRTH of the mmo genre from its ashes (friendship ended with ally now goblingirl erp is my best friend).

Back at it again only with a more negative take, not that Star Rail got worse but its issues feel more cock abusive. The drip feed of content in live service stuff always annoyed me, a couple of months just for a few hours of story; "just go play something else" only really works if I enjoy the core gameplay. If coming back for the story yeahhhhhh might as well just youtube that shit, less of a hassle. The turn based combat here gets mind-numbing, everything takes too long even in autoplay with max speed. I've complained to a friend about this, misremembering if it really was this bad and got a simple "just play something else in the background while it autoplays", confirming my suspicion that everyone willingly playing this day in day out is engaging in some secret ring of cuckoldry while the youtube story watchers and booru researchers are sharing intimate times with their partners.

But even playing it for the first time this one felt that the combat here was a necessary evil and was more latched onto the world and characters. I've mentioned that the world felt more alive with its attention to detail in the side stuff, but the way you explore it makes me wanna make out with a shotgun. So moronic that you just teleport everywhere, making me wonder if this is the video game adaptation of the classic movie Jumper that so many of us have been clamoring for. Every sidequest you just zoom around - talk - zoom - combat that you can autoplay - cutscene maybe - zoom again for the ending convo. Just running around would've probably been tedious, but I've felt like I finished quests just for engaging with the map, surely there can be some kind of middle ground? For anyone vacuum-headed enough not to notice the issue and utter the classic "just don't use it" retort, I have to applaud you for making it this far (not talking about this jumbled mess of words). The world believability takes another big hit, of course, in its handling of dailies, with the same old man NPC asking you to get his same walking stick and shove it in his same pooper three days in a row, which promptly convinced me never to do them again (Groundhog Day was fun on first watch).

Heavens forbid something happens to these characters, I like them still (bastard OG Honkai doomers have no power here). Though will probably follow their ventures on YT from now on, gaming too hard can take toll on the neck area (careful doing headtilts in the future fellow gamers).

There was a Naughty Dog employee who had a funny concept of Daxter racing the loading bar between every zone, this person got properly sacked from his job after pitching such an idiotic idea (source: trust me bro); Jak and Daxter doesn't care about wasting the players' time with trivial things such as loading screens, when it throws in a cutscene it goes "it's ok you can skip" unlike its contemporary Ratchet & Clank, except you're not going to because they're charming as hell revealing snippets of this mystical world. The music is somewhere in the background quietly jamming, doing its thing so it doesn't overshadow the main dish; the game never explains this but Jak is an acrobat master with flips and rolls that would make the Souls protagonists blush (especially the adaptability fool), Daxter seems like a gimmick that would get annoying quick but gives some funny lines and helpful advice every time you're stuck. The whole time I kept waiting for the catch, that one moment that's kinda shit so I can dog on the game but it never came, it's just ~5 hours of pure platforming fun that refuses to overstay its welcome. Play the pc port (yes, look it up) and enjoy one of PS2's finest outings in its definitive form.