Every object in a thrift store tells a story. Each worn out bit of clothing. Each shelf filling tchotchke. Each liner noted novel. They all have history. It's not oft I care for the history though. Marks of time past tend to make things less valuable, poisoned by a memory that isn't ones own. After all, who's gonna buy a shirt with loose threads. I've recently found one such object that certainly changes my mind however.

On a hunt for noteworthy thingamabobs, I found a lovely fabric coated wood box. A little bigger than my palm, the fabric is red, with gold patterns of chinese coins and dragons stitched throughout. A simple fabric loop and plastic tooth holds it shut. Inside, a brass plaque with background inked black. A raised lettering of the brass reveals words written in both Chinese and English. It reads:

I HAVE CLIMBED THE GREAT WALL
This is to certify that Frank 5
did climb the Great Wall on 2006 8 1

Where the name and date are poorly etched into form entry style boxes. The back of the plaque ordained in an engraved, pure black scene of the Great Wall of China. What an absolutely transcendent object of history it is. The Great Wall, in and of itself, an extraordinary feat of human ingenuity and a still standing historical artifact. A wonder held into the annals of time not only through its remaining structure, but also in this innocuous little bit of metal on the other side of the planet from it. And then there is our main character Frank. I know nothing of Frank, but I do know that in august of 2006, he climbed the Great Wall and bought this tourist's trinket. I also know that the engraving placed on the metal gives him the suffix of 5, when that was likely meant to be an S initial. I don't truly know that for certain though. This could be Frank V, of a long lineage of family Franks.

At some point, Frank himself, or someone in control of his possessions, decided to hand off this box to the kind people at Renaissance so that they may find some renewed value in it. That places Frank to have likely lived in Montreal, at least at some point. Maybe Frank lived just across the street from me and I never knew. I could only imagine that this box having been disposed of means that he is no longer with us, but perhaps this thing simply holds a sour story for him and so he sought to rid himself of it.

Not knowing Frank's story, I can't say that I hope he is well, in heaven or earth. Frank could have been the type to beat down on the homeless. Alternatively, he may have been one to provide them food and shelter. He may have been a loving father, or one that fled from his children. A Schrödinger's caitiff; a wavering saint. The truth being that people don't tend to be so polarizing. I hope nothing for Frank except for him to have gotten exactly what he deserved. Thanks for the memory.

My neighbor did not show me this one when I was in fifth grade, or rather, the original game back in the 2000s. I had friends who played it back then, but it never picked up for me; I was a MapleStory kid. Rather, my infatuation with the ancient medieval clicker game started in my post secondary days. The pull was quite simple for me then, and it's what kept me around for a decade: a game I can play without playing.

RuneScape in all its iterations has a reasonable variety of activities to perform across its many skills. You can train combats killing bosses, light logs on fire in a big line, fish (video game fishing!!!), lumberjack, or even give yourself arthritis cleaning inventories of herbs. Being honest, there's a few too many ways this game promotes joint pain for my taste. Beside those less appealing means of progressing though, there's many things to do which require very little attention. You could play by almost exclusively interacting with the game on intervals between 30 seconds and 10 minutes. It brings me to tears just thinking of the majesty of clicking on the mighty gemstone crab and walking off to make food, knowing I'd still be spanking that bad boy upon return. The balance between activities of this class and more interesting active gameplay is unmatched by anything. Make casual progress during off hours or when wanting to unwind, then ramp up the engagement doing raids with the homies. Beautiful gameplay. Gameplay which has done irreparable damage to my psyche.

There's nothing in my life that has made me feel I have ADHD more than this game, to the point where I think it may have even cursed me with the condition by some twisted magic. I say that somewhat jokingly but only because pursuing a proper diagnosis seems a rather tumultuous effort. My ability to focus has been eroded to RuneScapey intervals of time. If a task requires more than 5 minutes of mental fortitude and focus, I will end up spinning around it like professional racoon haired zoomer, halting any trains of thought with a swing back to some light distraction. Nowadays I'll just pop open a social media site, even if for just a second, like I'm looking for solutions in an empty fridge. Sisyphus would not be any happier with a smartphone.

So the game is in the past for me now. I could never recommend it to anyone. In the best case, it's an inoffensive time waster MMO like the rest of 'em. In the worse case, it'll consume every waking moment of your mind. I look forward to a future of occasionally hosting LANs to raid with friends and making progress on an actual ADHD diagnosis. Also, slayer sucks.

A horrific amalgam walks the streets of the financial district. The writhing mass of past and present features beloveds for everyone and anyone. As the busybodies walk by, they make sure to grab something as to not feel left out. Some settle for the first thing in reach protruding from the creature, pecking away at its surface. Others of more precise taste strafe around, hunting for just the right matter of expression. The dedicated will eye out pieces of interest to yoink in the plenty for a little while but many are done getting anywhere near the offensive thing after a fleeting moment. On a rare occasion however, there are those who stop and stare longly with rose eyes. You'd think they were waiting for the thing to recognize them. If it ever did possess the power of vision, its buried face has lost all sight long ago. Suddenly, they reach into the monstrosity and dig. They dig, and dig, and dig, and dig. They pull away at the grime and waste with a clear want in their soul. They may spend hours in that feverish haze, even days. Passersby unphased, continuying their nabbing ways. Eventually, those impassioned ones always realize that whatever it is they are looking for isn't there. Their own failures are not anything of my concern though. I just tried my luck and pulled a full barrel of crude out. It will fetch a fine price on the secondary market.

I've fallen ill. Despite my precautions, the systems of public transit have done me in again. I say that knowing full well I should have worn the mask. My immune system can't be relied on to even lock the door before going out for a walk. So why then do I think for even a moment it'll help me when someone sneezes into the open air twenty train cars away. My hubris now crumpled into a paper ball, and Kobe'd from across the metro station platform.

At least I can revel in the irony of it all. I had left home to pickup nighttime breathing test equipment from a hospital. Now the traveling horrorshow of mucus runs rampant in my nasal cavity. For one week only! See the legendary Phlegmothy do somersaults on an unwitting participants turbinates! One nostril, impregnable as the medieval Theodosians. The other, letting in the sharpest of Alpian air. I can only hope the circus will be in town but a week.

It's nothing short of a miracle that I can sleep at all now. By a miracle of course I mean yet another advent from the advancements of modern medicine. May the pearliest of gates be found in peaceful passing to those who developed the concoction in my generic nighttime flu, cough, and cold relief tablets. My beloved acetaminophen being the star of the cast. Generic as it may be, the stuff knocks me out cold as well as any could. It's almost as though I've been sleeping better on account of the drugs than I otherwise would without illness. If only I wasn't wracked by sickly fatigue, or unwilling to swallow a pill every night to sleep.

Somewhere in the timeframe of the Cambrian explosion was likely when we first got sex hormones. Probably anyway, I don't know for sure I wasn't there. Certainly mammalian life has been going T and E for a few years at least. An interesting tradeoff between the two for our kind. Testosterone provides what could be considered a more traditionally practical set of features for survival, at a cost of increased energy demand. In a modern context though, survival doesn't mean much. What of a greater propensity to generate muscle mass? Are you an olympian or something? Certainly in the world of desk jockeys and soy lattes it isn't useful. So why should it be a surprise that the combination of thigh high socks and The C Programming Language book finds its way into your cart suggestions?

Big T's only good for going bald and building stomach fat. No shade to the big bellied bald bro enjoyers out there though. Perhaps the Seinfeld writers were projecting their own interpretations of beauty. The female body is a work of art. The male body is utilitarian. It's all just marketing anyway.

A decade in the playing, for just a moment in the sun. Borderlands 2 is the telltale slope of a franchise spread too thin. I loved the first game. It is genuinely full of charm and novelty in its silliness and aesthetics. You bounce quickly between the main story and goofy side objectives until the end. I wouldn't call the pacing immaculate, or the comedy well aged, but it generally keeps things interesting throughout its runtime.

Borderlands 2 is more of the first instalment. It features more goofy characters, more sidequests, more maps, more enemies, and MORE GUNS! But I can't help feel that some expression on lessness and moreness could have staved off the boredness. Like really, there might be more guns, but does that matter? All it does is fuel randomness in a gear system already hellbent on randomness. It invites the inevitable stretches of gameplay where you have no adequate weapon and struggle to kill anything. Meanwhile, all the fresh foes, captivating characters, and enticing environments are poorly spaced. Despite the greater quantity of stuff, the density and quality took a dip.

The biggest pain point for me is in side objectives. I'm of the mind that Borderlands is at its best when it's playing out some absurd scenario in a quest. The novel absurdity of bizarre requests and strange characters met in the wasteland. Borderlands 2's side objectives are often plagued with the repetitious and padded. Several of them feel like an exercise in maximizing playtime rather than actual engagement. You could say they are optional but what else is there to Borderlands but its silly side stories? The only reason I play is to experience these writer's room what ifs.

The main plot is extremely fine. The gameplay bounces between a simple power fantasy with instant enemy gibing and a patience test of poor DPS. Probably defensible for being a coop first sort of game, which I may have enjoyed more not-solo. But we can say that of anything couldn't we. The game isn't terrible, but I ultimately grew tired of it about halfway through the main campaign, which is why I put it down for nearly a decade. I came back recently and pushed myself to finish. I don't think it was really worth it. I'll admit some of the DLC was excellent though, but I can't see myself playing any of the many other pre-re-de-sequels.

My neighbor showed it to me when I was in fifth grade or so. I have some very pleasant memories from that time, and some less pleasant ones from more recently. Nexon has certainly done a number to the game over the years, and I've no desire to play it. That is with exception to the versions of it they don't operate.

Private servers of the game are quite popular and there's a fit for everyone from high rate modern iterations of the game to slower ones running something more oldschool. I find myself occasionally relapsing on a particular oldschool server which I will not speak the name of. Progression is meaningful and varied since you don't speed past it all to get stuck in one place forever at the end like the modern game. There's a focus on party quest and general questing viability, which helps break up monotonous grinding. Classes aren't homogeneous and bring unique benefits to group compositions, mind you, in a not so well-balanced fashion.

Despite the massive potential time commitment, I do enjoy playing oldschool MapleStory. There are some very interesting problems plaguing these variants of the game though, most of it stemming from hitpoints. Certain bosses hit very hard and require players to tank damage without any realistic counterplay. That means clearing an HP benchmark to not die instantly. HP can be gained in a number of ways, like simply leveling up, but each class has different amounts they will gain. Ranged attacking classes, such as archers, gain the least. They gain so little in fact that commiting to having enough HP for the absolute endgame would make you lose damage to direct more resources into HP instead. This of course makes them unviable compared to classes that naturally have the tankiness for the endgame. And so enters HP washing! HP washing is a sort of oversight in how a particular Cash Shop item works which effectively allows you to hit the HP cap on any class. The catch is that oldschool private servers will timegate these, and it takes literal years to build up the currency needed.

Oldschool servers will often create alternative systems to get the required HP for bosses, but with limits. Unfortunately, having more than the bare minimum is convenient for HP management and potion costs, so HP washing remains the optimal choice. I don't think the timegating is so problematic though. The real crux of the issue is that when you HP wash, the character you do it on will be anywhere from slightly to completely unusable until you reach a breakpoint midway/late into the process. That makes it harder to level the character up, which finally feeds into the major economic system of these servers: leeching. Leeching is when another player in your party kills things for you to gain experience, a service which is usually paid for. It matters not if your character is weak, in the process of HP washing, or simply a class that doesn't grind very efficiently, you can pay another player to leech you experience! If you need money, the fastest path to cash is usually to make a mage, level it up, then sell leeching services to other players with it. You train a mage to sell leech to buy leech for your mage to sell higher level leech to then buy leech for your other characters. But it doesn't end like that, because eventually you can multiclient and leech the characters yourself. Run six executables of the game, park a bunch of useless HP washing characters in your party, and train them all with your mage! It's rather nauseating.

I hate how multiclienting affects the game's culture as a whole. So many characters are just one of a single person's many that they have online at once. True populations on these servers are probably a third of what's reported. Multiclienting also has enormous ramifications on endgame bossing. People will bring multicliented mules into bosses just to AFK and provide buffs with them or even attack with multiple characters at a time so that reward splits can be larger for each participant. That on top of the fact that class imbalance and the general optimization driven nature of an MMO usually means slots are filled with the best geared out players on the highest damaging classes. It's not to say less optimal runs don't happen, but that the economy of the game will naturally adjust to the optimal behavior as more people do it, which will further push away the suboptimal players from profitability. The server I play on tried to address this in some part by nerfing multi-attacking with a particular class. They ended up having to revert it due to backlash. It's wild.

I'm of the mind that multiclienting ought to be outright banned but that isn't really enforceable. At a minimum, they could easily manage banning it in bosses though. It would promote a healthier ecosystem where newer players are actually desired to fill party roles. They also really ought to nerf leeching. People always speak on how party quests are lacking in players and need to be buffed, but the truth is that leeching is simply too strong. It's unlikely leeching ever gets touched though, nerfing it would have serious ramifications to the accessibility of HP washing. You could, of course, also commit to removing HP washing, but that's the pipe-y-ist of dreams. Maybe the official oldschool MapleStory finally coming from Nexon next year will prove a better home for my next relapse on this game. Chances are slim.

Went in not knowing what to expect and got out not knowing what I got, to some extent. The film has a bizarre quality in its treatment of our titular protagonist. He is all at once an incompetent cousin lover, an incredible fighter, a master deceiver, and an asshole. The story does take place over many years but there's still some sequences that make you seriously doubt the legitimacy of what is being recounted. The Chevalier certainly embodies a walking myth. It all culminates into a depiction that is eventually extremely unfavorable to Barry though. The second act has him portrayed rather straightforwardly as a bane on the existence of those in castle Lyndon. Apparently the book plays out with an unreliable narrator. The story could have used more of that element, maybe.

For me, act two is where the film truly shines. My favorite part of this movie has to be the shots of apathetic castle-rotting behavior from Lady Lyndon. There's a number of wide angle shots that just soak in the ornate scenery of the castle with her moping about in the frame. It makes you wish you were a wealthy baroness caught with a spell of depression caused by your estranged husband. In reading on the cinematography after watching the film, I realize that these shots work so well because they show off the beautiful environments so thoroughly. There was also some rather special considerations made to the lighting of the castle interiors, which likely helped to give them character.

It really is like no other, unfortunately. I went on to watch a couple other period pieces featuring castles in the cast. Amadeus (1984), while a classic that I've enjoyed many times, doesn't really hit those wide angles in the castle interiors like Lyndon does. There's a few moments in opera houses that sell a sort of grandiosity, but it's not often. Pride and Prejudice (2005) on the other hand has very little castle and doesn't give them much of the screenspace when they are in frame. In fairness, I didn't really expect much from it in that department. Truth is I don't know where I'll find more of that lonely château vibe without just typing it into a searchbar. I'll keep watching period pieces until I do though.

Another thing I'll add on Lyndon is I feel the character designs are really sharp. All the bodies on screen have their own visual makeup and really stand out. It helps sell the ornateness in some scenes, each person providing their own flair to the shot composition. I especially love the Lyndon godman, with his clean black attire and funny little curls. Overall, rather unshockingly, the film's a visual marvel from Stanley Kubrick. I couldn't have seen it coming.

The metroidvania. This is the game I wish I played months ago. Hollow Knight a distant memory against the silkness present here. The level of player expression packed into the depth of the combat and movement reaches bedrock solid foundations. That in stark contrast to HK's flimsy surface level facades. All paced so beautifully and yet as long as twenty viewings of Lawrence of Arabia. Spending twice the time in Pharloom than I did in the Hallownest, I can't wait to play more. To do the challenge runs. To marry and play it on my honeymoon. To teach my children. To be on my deathbed and squeeze in just one last 30 hour 100% steelsoul run, only for the lava beastfly to obliterate me, making me swear in struggled breath and pass on in a fit of frustration. A game I must resist playing forever, as to not lose myself in its perfection. May silk be eternal and cherry prosper.

These are a sin from my Amazon purchasing days. I needed better wheels for my rolling desk chair when I moved because what I had before obliterated the floors at my parents'. The faded planks in my room looked like a cat spent a lifetime treating them as a scratch post. I couldn't have that with the floors in my new apartment as I had just had them sanded and finished. I've since mostly had no issues with these new wheels. They roll suspiciously smoothly and haven't left a scratch on anything. I would highly recommend rollerblade style wheels to any sitting enjoyers with rolling chairs.

The real nuisance I've been experiencing as of late with my floors is strange silver streaks. In moments where my head is hung low and I walk about the room, defeated over some trivial matter in my game development efforts, I sometimes find inky lines on the floorboards. These are times that truly test my mental fortitude, threatening to send me spiralling as I try to reconcile my failures as a developer while simultaneously being tested by God with mysterious messes at my feet. I've been cleaning these historyless tracings for many months now. I recently discovered their cause. Turns out my hot new wheels aren't so great after all. The lubricant used in the swivel mechanism was a revelation to me as being powder based. A powder which has a tendency to get onto my floors and then demonstrates the features of a sort of ink. Stepping in it could pick up the chunks on my socks or feet, and then I'd make a canvas of my walking space, drawing lines all over the place.

When I found out about this substance I didn't yet know from where it came, but I did have it down to being something with my chair. I duct taped the entire bottom of the innocent thing, convinced the lubricant was falling out of any one of its many moving parts. After understanding that the wheels were the cause, I spent 6 hours washing my floors, the wheels, and attaching makeshift splash protectors made from paper and tape to the swivels. I can only pray my socks don't still have bits of the lubricant stuck to them. If you choose to get replacement wheels for your chair, I would scrutinize the quality of the lubricant used in them.

Was reminded of the classic oublieur title while stopping by a Jason "FilmCow" Steele stream of Myst IV. I've never played a Myst game but the waves it left on the culture became apparent when a flashback sequence started while evaluating a bit of scenery. Some narrating voice took over while the camera paned and zoomed lightly, amnesically. This wouldn't be the last flashback of the game I'd have in the next 24 hours though.

I really enjoyed Amnesia and am very grateful for having played it recently as opposed to when it was popular. If I had played it in my early teens I wouldn't have dégusted it at all. It's got some wonderfully crunchy storytelling and the atmosphere is just astounding. My memories of the youtubified reactionaries playing it in past times weren't doing that any justice.

Unfortunately though, I still have some bone to pick. The next flashback of the game I'd have was the following day while playing Stardew Valley's island content for the first time. An island covered golden walnuts hidden behind simple puzzles and little explorative elements. It brought back bad memories. You see, Amnesia gives itself the monumental tasks of trying to balance horror atmosphere with on the fly puzzle solving. If one were to spend too long running around trying to find or solve something or another, they would become more familiar with the game space. With that familiarity, the tension erodes; the horror atmosphere would wane. To add to that, an ever decreasing lamp oil supply would make puzzle blockage especially frustrating. It does generally manage this very well by making the puzzles extremely simple. That doesn't stop blocks from being possible though, and my own impressive imperceptiveness caused several to befall me.

It was first the search for some chemical barrel in a cellar full of identical barrels that did me in. I must have run around in circles for an hour thinking I missed some room some place. Truth was that the barrel I sought was simply in a corner I never thought to check. Its features only ever so slightly different from the others with a tap and metal nameplate. The other instance was in the cistern with a bridge held by chain. I figured quite quickly that the chain would need breaking, so I could do some crossing. The scene was rich with rubble and rock, but wherever I tried, I simply couldn't pick anything up. I hopped between all the adjacently available areas to figure something until eventually settling on simply spam jumping past it. The rock I was looking for, turns out, was on the ground a few feet away. It was not in the game-worldly occurring natural debris.

Stardew's nuts have a similar problem in their puzzles but instead of a lamp there is the ever present clock god. It is a game where you constantly fight the stream of time, trying to maximize the moments of a day. When presented a puzzle, it is an immediate threat to your oh so precious hours. To fail even a single time means losing something. I'm of the mind that explorative puzzling and time pressure are a mix as good as eggshells and car battery acid.

Went to see family in Ontario and stopped by here for breakfast on the way. It had been much too long since I had patronized an unchained breakfast establishment. Brought back fond memories of Picasso's. The windows weren't quite as big and the booths not quite as empty but rosey nonetheless and fed just as royally. My eyes were set upon sausage, over easies, jamed slices, home fries, and jointly rolled crepes. I readily devoured it all and then some (an unfinished pancake found its way into the range of my cutlery). As exquisite a meal as one could ever want from such a place, the fries being a highlight. All with a bill plainly nostalgic... or perhaps I'm embellishing the value, but it certainly beats the inflationated franchise feederies.

This one bugs me. I simply couldn't let myself like it as much as I wanted to. The game is phenomenal for a number of reasons. The visuals ooze with the blood and sweat of its creators. Intricate details creeping in every inch of every screen's back and foregrounds. Rich and brooding orchestrations living in the sonic palettes alongside meaty sounds of crawlies and sharpened nail impacts. Combat strikes fluid and tight, with a varietal array of threats to dispatch. Inspired worldbuilding featuring a cast of entertaining bugactors and storied mystery. Had the gameplay been only the last 10% of its run, I may have thought it the greatest of all time.

Unfortunately, I find myself generally exhausted by the experience it offered. It taught me how to hate metroidvanias and the genres ways of incremental unlockery. The trouble in hollow knight for me is that, while slick, the combat is rather simple and lacking in options. The same can be said for the general movement as well. Of course, as the game meanders on, one will acquire new ways to approach problems. Personally though, I only started to find map traversal and combat to be interesting once I had nearly everything unlocked. It's not the mere concept of gametime scaling with an expanding array of options which annoys me, but the pacing and baseline level with which hollow knight operates. Pacing which isn't helped by the typical metroidvania explorative area retreading.

My impression was that everything up to acquiring an iframe dash was tutorializing the actually complete experience. A complete experience which starkly contrasts everything else with incredible fights like Grimm the nightmare. That fight was genuinely stunning. As in, I was initially stunned by difficulty birthed frustration. The truth is that it was the first boss in the game that actually demanded fully digesting the enemy's patterns. The nightmare is an expressive ballet of motion and counter motion against the rest of the games clumsy first time highschool prom dances. Most other bosses can be flung past easily with facetanking abound.

Beyond my takes on the combat, a handful of other small things also wore on me. So small are they that I wouldn't write them here at the risk of sounding petty or wasting my server's precious drive space. So that's my peace on hollow knight. I did enjoy the game to be clear. It simply didn't live to my insurmountable expectations.

I spent a month years ago endlessly playing this on the couch back at my parents'. A time I remember so very dearly. I had a very successful farm and married Penny. I've been meaning to come back to it since there's been plenty of updates. Sitting on my own couch now. The intro had me in tears. For where I'm at, where I'm going, and my family, I am so grateful. Everything's going to change; everything's going to work out. I've been given too much to not make everything of it. I'm going to love this life and I won't let me stop me. Cowardly, ruminating apathy will flee the scene as I take stage. Creation be my passion. Passion be my creation. Never going Joja. This time, I marry Haley.

I got lost. In labyrinthine cycles this text stuffs you. Blinding, wanton, and grazing the schizophrenic; Our fears bumbled in blue and on trims. All that the house'll hold, it holds evasively. Extraordinary read—can't illucidate properly how extraordinary really. 10 stars.

I'm not so sure I follow the hype with this one, or at least the echoes of hype. Ashen forum posters and game journalists would assure you this game is a masterpiece of match 3 design. Perhaps the medium is simply lost on me. Frankly this game is fine. The music is, usually, soothing. The sounds are delightfully aero. The gameplay elements' graphics are equally enjoyably bubbly. But the meat of our presentation and sex breaded sandwich disappoints. It certainly does more than the minimum with its choice selection of accessories, plushies, and flowers. Its little systems of multiplier scaling and power up seeking. Its shattered hearts. It leaves me wanting though, and not at all in the dimensions the game tries to do so with.

I'm no connoisseur of matching, but I certainly wasn't converted here. I will give in that the general silkiness of the gameplay is a spectacle. The UI even features so many quality-of-lifes that it almost defeats its entire purpose. No need to remember anything when your phone always tells you what a girl really wants. Right now it's this bagged goldfish! Discounting the times when it simply refuses to tell you of course. Thankfully MY phone tells me whatever I want whenever I want it to. It's frankly surprising to me that each prospective romance option doesn't have more to her than just a love language preference on shiny orbs to smash together. An actually unique gameplay mechanism by which to explore their personhood. The writing sure makes an effort to distinguish these people. Meanwhile, the gameplay distills them into their various measurements and factoids. Personality driven queries factoidifying themselves with the rest of them immediately after the first time. Perhaps the sequel did something there. Not that I think I'll ever find out. And what kind of cat enjoys romance.

I have a wonderful nostalgia for Bastion. It's soundscape moved me like no game had back when I played it nearly half my life ago. This one brings me back to those floating greener pastures. Not to besmirch the names of Transistor and Pyre, I just haven't gotten to them yet. Hades just beckons me forth with fast, slick, actiony combat. Combat which is so much better than it needed to be.

It understands well the assignment of excellent roguelikes and delivers in mounds. The variety in combat options, builds, rooms, and foes kept things interesting well into my 100th hour. The persistent progress systems are multifaceted and engage directly with the dopamine receptors in your brain craving those morsels of character and story. And what delightful morsels they are. The characters' personalities and designs are full of immaculately placed details. I'd estimate 10 hours of my gameplay being just staring at the portraits in awe.

On the other hand, I'd say the story could have been navigated better. Hades and his son in particular are not permitted a persistent sort of growth in their behavior. Still, commendable is the roguelike whose story doesn't simply revolve around a timeloop and tackles the friction of repeat play experiences head on. My only other gripe with the game is the forced hand which guides heat increases. I could have been more aggressive with my heat levels but there's no reward for doing so. I don't believe the unlocks to have taken too long on account of this or anything; it was an illusory frustration. The game is by all means exactly as close to the sun as it needs to be.

The Canvas Collection white porcelain bowls are not to be trusted. I was washing one of these demons off in the sink and it had the most irritating little dot of a stain on it. Scrubbing at it was futile but my idiotic monkey brain hadn't yet established the failure pattern of my strategy. I pressed onward past the rubicon coming from my faucet with great force, repeating the same motions. Then there was a snap and half of my previously whole bowl fell to the sink. The other half had made visceral contact with my forceful scrubbing hand's thumb. The lord gives his mightiest the toughest of battles. I was bloodied in combat against dishware.

I had been aware of Vylet Pony for awhile when I heard this thing. Sometime last year I went through her discography and would say I enjoy her work. I can't say that for MoM. Enjoy isn't nearly powerful enough a word to describe my feelings for this album. This is mindbending. It's loud, it's frightening, it's evil. I would never have expected this sound from Vylet Pony. The brightly produced edm driven pop of her past releases is mist here. The dark brooding basslines, walls of dissonant tones, and rich instrumentation is oppressive. I kick myself for having left this one on the backburner a few weeks before listening to it in december.

Been awhile since I had one of these. Didn't have them often, didn't like them very much. I feel like there may have been a lack of flavoring in some cases. When there was enough, it was just a weirdly textured sugary drink. I don't care much for the more popular fizzy properties of a carbonated beverage, but soda is a lot more convenient. I write of these artifacts of times past as such because I can't remember the last time I've seen one of the machines. It's just a chilling memory. Maybe it's because I haven't stepped in a dep in years. Maybe it's because people like the texture of tapioca bubbles more.

Has some games but my thoughts are mostly on the platform as a whole. The site is mostly a social grounds with avatar dressup qualities. It has a number of different games to play, most of which are rather straightforward. Fishing, racing, fashion contests, aquarium management, and even an MMORPG. It's quite a buggy site, but somehow I find its clunkyness adds to the charm. It has the feeling of a small project from an impassioned team. Difficult for me to see it as what once was a tour-de-force in online communities of the past. Which brings me to how I came upon this site in more recent times. Going through an old collection of 15 year old shonen jumps, I stumbled into a coupon for the game. Went to try and renew it as a joke when, surprisingly, it worked. Seeing the site in the state it's in now makes it hard to believe they could get advertising in a magazine. It used to have millions of active users.

Even though I didn't engage in the forum communities of old, I can't help but feel like those were better times. Wandering through the site, its forums and its games, I couldn't help but revisit the feelings of wonder I had as a kid online. Newgrounds (which is still great btw), club penguin, maplestory, and whatever else online was everything to me at some time in my life. I don't wish to return to those times just to relive childlike wonder though. What amazes me thinking back is that my experiences with these things was uncharacteristically patient for a child. My mind hadn't yet been rotten by the modern media landscape and social media. All of the online world consolidated to a handful of places with the highest possible dopamine density. I only wish to return to a mind which can savor even the simplest of pleasures in life. My happiness only has room for one browser tab at a time.

It's got some wonderful area and character designs but I didn't really enjoy playing it much. The combat teaches you very quickly to stay away from everything because you can't fight in melee without losing health in the process. The problem is that your ranged options are either an occasional knife throw or weapons that use a limited resource. It then follows that the only weapons worth using are the ones that turn that resource most efficiently into damage. This leads to the only worthwhile weapon being jacks and occasionally a jack in the box or blunderbuss for AOE. There's a good weapon variety in this game and they're all somewhat interesting but I never found myself wanting to use anything else. It all leads to a combat experience where no matter the threat, you're pretty much always doing the same thing. The exception would be bosses, but those were generally a battle of attrition against the very slowly spawning essense. Playing it on hard was a mistake.

On the other side of the gameplay, the platforming leaves a lot to be desired as well. The game controls rather clunkilly, with some markedly stiff jumping. I remember being excited the first time I climbed a ledge in this game exclaiming "UNCHARTED!" not realizing just how slow it was. The rough controls of course don't stop the game from including level sections of pure platforming. It's hardly the worst or anything, but it sure ain't super mario either. I'll also add that the music was very in character for the setting and had me going insane by the end. So not much positive to say I'm afraid, but the experience is favorably short and worthwhile if not just to revel in the aethestics and vibes of it. Just play it on easy.

This game has the richness of mechanics from a golden age 2D Mario title while having substantially more depth therein. Each mechanic offers so many options and it's all so dynamic. This game is a masterwork movement engine. Base game is a fun and tight experience. The B and C sides add some interesting little challenges. The epilogue is mind bending; challenging and longer than the base game. The mechanical richness of that final extra chapter elevates the already insanely tight movement of the game to another plane. The plurality in the mechanics and how they intermingle is nuts. The final screen is nuts. The moon berry is nuts.