Spider-Man Is A Very Moving Game

I’ve spent the last week or so, ever since I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, playing Spider-Man: Remastered on the PS5. I’ve already written about it a bit this week, as I rambled and ranted on about how I am finding less joy than ever in what used to be my favorite video game occupation: collectibles and collectible-based challenges. I even wrote about it back in 2018, during my initial run of daily blog posts (and I’m not linking anything that old to a current blog post), but I’ve only ever glossed over my favorite part of the game. I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really talked about what draws me to Spider-Man games and Spider-Man in general. The latter is a bit more complex, though I can probably summarize it by outlining how much of myself I saw in Peter Parker and how much Peter Parker was always present whenever Spider-Man was on the screen or page. That, plus the enormous responsibility placed on this teenager’s shoulders, the grief that overwhelms and informs his early years as a superhero, and the fact that he is almost always fighting an uphill battle no matter what situation he finds himself in. A lot of reasons why I’d identify with this character as a kid and why the stories told through him might resonate with me. When it comes to the games, though, the answer is much more simple.

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Wrapping Up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over the weekend. Took more than one hundred fifty hours of gameplay over the course of two months (with, you know, a three and a half week gap of not playing at all), and I still have tons of quests, Korok seeds, and unexplored areas if I ever want to spend more time in the world before whatever DLC there will be comes out. It feels a little unreal, if I’m being honest, since I wound up doing the last few major portions of the game in a relatively short time. Mostly because I’d accidentally done huge sections of them while wandering around the world in search of shrines or just exploring something that look cool before I got to the part of the game that prompted them. I’ll admit I really struggled to do some of those things when I stumbled across them because it was clear that I wasn’t supposed to be doing them yet (I got the Sage of Spirit as my second sage, because I wanted to see what was inside the permanent thunderstorm and literally just got lucky since my interrupted flight toward said clouds landed me right next to the final shrine of those sky islands), but at least it let me do them when I got there. It was a pretty fun game and I definitely enjoyed it overall, but there was a lot of stuff that just doesn’t really feel like it landed (pun absolutely intended) well.

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I’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 21

It’s been three months since the last one of these, which feels odd given how frequently I’ve been both tired and sad during that time period. I don’t really have a great answer about why it took me this long to write another one (maybe I was too excited about Tears of the Kingdom to think about anything else or maybe I was too tired/sad to think about anything other than how tired/sad I was?), but this past week has been a doozy that has left me emotionally drained and sad in a more manageable way than the past few months so I guess I’m back to writing about The Legend of Zelda rather than what I’m sad about. Which, you know, probably is a good thing since these posts are an effort to shake myself out of my mood and lift my spirits, so it’s definitely progress that I’m trying to do anything positive at all.

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The Legend of Zelda: Barriers to Play Is The Worst Sequel Ever

I haven’t played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in three weeks. Three of the five weeks (as of writing this, anyway) the game has been out. Sure, I got maybe one hundred hours in during those two weeks (though I actually played eighty to nintey of those and the balance is me just leaving my Switch on while doing other stuff), but I’m maybe fifty percent of the way through the game if I’m guessing its depth correctly. My sporadic ability to play the game made it difficult to focus on getting anything specific done (not to mention the executive dysfunction I’ve been struggling with over the last two months), so I wasn’t even playing through things efficiently. I don’t mind a lack of efficiency so much, since I was definitely having a lot of fun building things and driving weird contraptions around, but it does mean that I feel like there’s still so much game to play and that it’ll take another one hundred hours to complete it.

In actuality, I bet I could finish it in fifty if I stopped messing around and focused, but that feels a little beside the point of playing a video game I enjoy as much as every entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise. Regardless, I’m now four days into being done with unpacking and I haven’t touched it yet, despite having the time to play some games. I can definitely chalk some of it up to the newness (to me) factor of Diablo IV and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, both of which feel more compelling and urgent than Tears of the Kingdom does, but that’s really just a drop in the bucket. Most of the bucket is full of a terrible mixture of executive dysfunction and emotional exhaustion. Which is also why Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the easier game of the lot to play right now and why all my thoughts of playing different games involve things that aren’t Tears of the Kingdom or Diablo IV.

The explanation for why it’s difficult to get myself to play Diablo IV is easy. It is a very noisy game. There’s a lot going on. When I’m stressed out or tired (or both), it can be incredibly overwhelming, especially when my old PC audio system had to get thrown out after I started packing it up and discovered some of the cables were a little melted. Listening to something on headphones makes it feel much more immediate and present than listening to it in the environment around me, so I tend to avoid headphones when I’m stressed out and tired, and that’s just with normal music or podcasts, all of which has a lot less sensory input than a game like Diablo IV does. Once I feel less drained and emptied out by life, it will be a lot easier to play Diablo IV and I’ll be able to do it for longer than a few chunks of an hour at a time.

Tears of the Kingdom is a much more complex situation. Part of it is sheer distance in time now, since not only has it been three weeks, but it was an entire apartment ago. Packing, moving, and unpacking separate me from my last experience with the game and the stress of all that colors my perceptions of it. Not to mention that I was gearing up for the game’s release when my friend finally explained why she was ignoring me, or that most of my gameplay happened around an incredibly fun but also incredibly stressful trip to the East Coast to be in my friends’ wedding. There’s a lot of emotional baggage, good and bad and just overwhelming in general, attached to the game in my mind. None of which is the game’s fault, but sense memories and emotional associations are difficult to unravel and counteract. I mean, it’s been more than half my lifetime since I first played Luminous Arc while listening to the first official soundtrack from Scrubs but I still can’t hear most of those songs without remembering myself sitting in my armchair in my bedroom, playing on my DS as I battled through the early levels of the game. I mean, most of them even conjure up images from the game when I just think about the songs, let alone when I am actively listening to them.

The stresses of this year have continued to build upon each other without me ever getting a chance to release the pressure or address any of the issues that either resulted from the stress or that caused the stress in the first place. Right now, as I’m writing this in the middle of June, I’m finally facing a mostly-empty social calendar so I can finally catch my breath and still I can’t seem to escape petty drama, hefty emotional issues, and the growing anxiety around people not responding to my messages when I try to reach out to them (the thing with my friend took one of my oldest anxieties and fed it until it has become difficult to ignore, deny, or cope with right now). I mean, I was invited on a trip in September that I know I shouldn’t go on, but I’m putting off telling the group because that will require emotional energy I don’t have. I know the answer. I know I could techincally afford it but really shouldn’t spend the money. I just don’t want to have to cope with the feeling that I might be letting people down or missing out on another chance to connect with these people.

These are all hurdles I will overcome eventually. There’s just a lot of them right now and I’m so tired I can barely stand, let along start trying to jump or dismantle them. Eventually, I’m sure, I’ll start playing Tears of the Kingdom again and driving around in a weird car will be a ton of fun that doesn’t involve any of the weird emotional associations I’ve made. I’ll slowly break through them all and be able to just enjoy myself without needing to tackle any of the emotions or issues my mind and heart have associated with the game. For now, though, I’ll probably be sticking with something a little less emotionally complex.

Getting Stuck On Visuals in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

I’ve begun to play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor during what limited time I’ve been able to put toward video gaming (which isn’t much between unpacking, settling in to my apartment, recovering from total exhaustion, and my busy day-job). It has been a lot of fun, even if it feels like a weird experience compared to what I remember of the first game. I’m not certain the game itself is any different, but the way I’m experiencing it very much is. I played Fallen Order on my PC the first time, struggling through what felt like odd computer controls as I stubbornly refused to consider playing it on a console. I’d already bought it on the PC, after all. Why should I spend MORE money on it just to make my experience better? Eventually, my protests faded away and I played my two subsequent play-throughs (one full and one partial) on the PS4, though most of that was during my “listen to a podcast while playing a video game so my eyes, ears, and hands were completely occupied at all times” phase, so the experience of the game didn’t really stick with me.

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I Got Back Into Valheim Again

I dipped a toe back into Valheim during my final stream of May for the first time since January at least. It felt nice to get back to the game, especially when I needed to get my mind off my move, even if it came with a few bitter moments of realizing just how much work I had to do to set up a sustainable base in a new world. I wasn’t starting a new character, after all, I was just starting a new world. My main character has a bunch of good, upper-mid-tier gear since I was in the “I have mastered The Plains but not yet fought the boss” portion of the game on my previous server, so even my casual “running around” gear was powerful enough that I would need multiple crafting station upgrades to repair it. I considered starting fresh with basically nothing but my skill levels, just to avoid needing to streamline basic repair abilities, but that was not very appealing after all my time playing the game. Plus, most of my gear needed a bunch of rare materials to be crafted or upgraded, but almost everything (with two notable exception) could be repaired by a 2nd-tier crafting table and I had all the tools I needed to make that.

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Tears of the Kingdom Is A Very Long Game And I’m Having A Great Time

I have now spent every moment I could spare playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom since it came out almost two weeks ago. I’ve got some eighty-ish hours in the game, though between five and ten percent of that is my Switch idling as I dealt with other stuff (such as leaving the game running while folding laundry, packing, or cleaning my kitchen). Still, that’s a pretty significant amount of time over a two week period and I feel like I’m maybe halfway through the game, as far as what I’d consider a “complete” run goes. Which might be inaccurate, since I have no idea how much of the game exists beyond what I’ve already played and can see coming my way through the broad strokes of my current quests. I imagine there are a bunch of things that aren’t quite visible yet, given the changing nature of the world as you work through main quests, but I accounted for that in my estimations.

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My Initial Thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom

This is a reactive piece with as few spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as I can manage. There are probably still some small ones scatted throughout this post, but there aren’t any major ones. There are some non-specific references to some unlocked things, which could count as a spoiler depending on how you define them, but I don’t mention any abilities by name or what main quests give you what. I don’t even mention half the stuff you can get up to, that caught me by surprise when I started the game. Honestly, if you’ve watched all the trailers, then none of this should be a surprise to you and I think I did a good job of riding the line between obscure references that people who have played the game will get and things that are vague enough not to spoil any details for someone who hasn’t played the game. But that’s just my opinion, so maybe bail out now if you want to avoid any influence or references to the game (which feels weird to say since this isn’t going up until a week and a half after the game came out, despite the fact that I’m writing this the Monday after it came out).

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My 1000th Post: Today is the Day Tears of the Kingdom is Released

As this goes up, I am sitting in the parking lot of my local Best Buy. Either in my car or in the folding chair I keep in my trunk near the door. I think my Pro Controller for my switch is dying, since I’m getting a lot of weird input lag and short bursts of unresponsiveness that seems to be getting worse rather than staying the same or getting better, so I’m going to try to get one of the Tears of the Kingdom themed Pro Controllers if this store has any [they did not, but I managed to order one online that will arrive while I’m in New Jersey]. I’m not sure they will, since there is no guarantee that they’ll actually have in-store units of any hardware these days, now that scalpers buy up everything instantly. If I can’t get it today, I will probably wait to see if they ever restock rather than picking up a normal one. After all, I regretted just buying an OLED switch when I wanted one rather than waiting for what I figured was the inevitable upgrade or special edition unit that I just had to buy.

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My (Incredibly Loose) Summer Plans

Now that I’ve finally finalized where and when I’ll be moving next month, I can start to make plans for the rest of the summer. Broad strokes only, of course, since I’m still too far out from any chance to rest to get specific. Gotta pace myself, you know? I don’t want to give myself so much to do that I wind up just exacerbating my current burnout. So I’m mostly focusing on the ways I’ll spend my time in general rather than things tied to specific dates. Which, in my case, means video game plans. After all, there’s a whole lot coming out this summer that I’ve been looking forward to, so it’ll be a good summer for gaming, even if I might want to (eventually) make some plans to get me out of what will hopefully be a much cozier, more comfortable apartment.

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