#I think that New Horizons was a genuine upgrade from New Leaf

[eepiestmonarch]

Where's that post where someone's is asking about opinions that get you surrounded like this bc I have one

[mimiplaysgames]

And There Are Storms We Cannot Weather (Ch. 2)

Pairing: Terranort x Anti-Aqua Rating: M Word Count: 3, 872

Summary: It’s a simple plan: pull Xehanort’s heart out of Terra’s body. Until she learns the worst.

Read on AO3

A/N: What a way to break out of a hiatus: by going after the hardest WIP I’ve ever worked on. I have to thank @lyssala and @steadyknight, my beta readers, who assured me that this didn’t need as much work as I thought. I’m also just grateful for their excitement over this??? Thank you so much. ;-; ;-; ;-;

~*~*~*~*~

Are You Dead or Are You Sleeping?

Darkness is cool to the touch, a flame that numbs the skin with the breeziness of a damp, early morning. As she travels through the corridor, Aqua lets it coax her anticipation to sleep.

When a portal opens to a new world, she steps onto a precipice. The sudden exposure to sunlight and air is like withstanding a slap to the face. And yet... Feeling the sun again after all these years is the giddy reminder that she’s powerful. She’s free, she can go wherever she pleases. But does it have to blind her? It takes longer than usual for her eyes to adjust.

The grass stalks are as tall as she is. Canopies litter the horizon, and jungles claim the mountains beyond, except for the highest peaks. Near her is a lumpy dirt trail, flattened by people spending years traveling on foot. Now, she only has to determine which direction he took.

Darkness works in a network of shadows, always present and always shifting, stretching to giant proportions before shrinking into the tiniest crook. Shadows mold together. They speak and leave echoes behind. 

Aqua concentrates on tracing them. She starts with the way the wind sways the grass stalks, blending their shadows together, until they brace the footsteps of a stalking panther, hiding in a field of flowers. Pollinating from one flower, a bird takes flight. Now it soars, its grounded shadow passing that of a tree’s.

There he is, stepping over a root deep in a thicket. There he is, with his strange, beating heart, rumbling with the flutter of someone facing the edge of a cliff yet with the steady lull of meditation. He takes up too much space in the cavity behind his left breast, making it hard for her to sense Terra. Once she’s done with him, though, that will cease to be an issue.

“I know where you are,” she whispers, pleased with the way he whips over his shoulder, expecting to see a face behind him when there’s no one. 

But voices prevent her from moving. Footsteps climb uphill - two men - and Aqua billows into the shrubbery, first smoke and then nothing, just the empty space between.

“I don’t expect he’s much of a nice guy.” She recognizes this voice.

“Emperors rarely are. Unless they’re naked.” This one chuckles. 

Riku, Champion of Understanding The Darkness and of Having Enough Of His Own as he claimed on the black shores where he met Aqua, waits for a large, soft man to (casually) catch up. Riku is not tall - barely a couple of inches taller than Aqua - but he stands that way. Professional and confident. He stood that way when he fought against her, and stood the same when she won.

“Is there a story behind that?” Riku asks. She’s so close to him, just a leaf away from his shoulder, but he doesn’t notice her eyes staring up at him. He grins with the subtleness of someone who doesn’t like attention. 

The man scratches his scalp under his small hat, then rubs his fingers onto his sweeping poncho, with sandals to match. He must be a farmer. On his leash is a llama dragging a cart. 

“The sun punished our most wicked emperor.” The farmer takes this restful opportunity to sip water out of a spouted, clay pot. His smile is big and inviting, his stature enormous and big-bellied. He gestures wildly as if telling a story to children. “Set his clothes on fire every time he wore them. Or at least,” he shrugs, “made them feel that way. But the emperor wouldn’t stand down. He ruled naked in his own palace for the rest of his life.” He smiles. “But he always kept feathers in his hair. Man liked to have some class.”

“Don’t they all.” Riku rolls his eyes. “Is your emperor the type that likes to keep his clothes on?”

“Anyone with half a sane mind would.” The farmer laughs, but he doesn’t sound certain. If anything, he’s nervous and excited and naive.

“Can’t wait to find out.” Riku doesn’t sound convinced. 

“You know, I share a name with an emperor.”

“Pacha?”

“The one and only.” Pacha clicks with his tongue and that gets his llama going again. “Best emperor we’ve ever had. Brought down the price of milk. Who wouldn’t think I’m blessed with charm and good luck?”

This finally brings a genuine smirk to Riku’s face.

The men chat as they continue their way, disappearing downhill. It gives Aqua the opening to step out. 

It has to be some sort of escort mission. If a Keybearer is here, then there are wild Heartless roaming around. She’ll have to keep hers hidden. Either way, whatever Riku is doing is not her problem.

She hones in on her destination. Kicks off her feet and glides through the grove. It’s easy to catch up to Xehanort - blend in with the shadows, pass through the trees, speed up, go even faster. Her heart won’t lead her astray. With every yard, she burns with the vigor that darkness had numbed away. She heaves. She’s found him, she’ll pin him down, she’ll take him back. 

By the time she catches sight of his white hair, she snaps. She roars. Just seeing his face is a sharp reminder that no matter what happens, she has to see this through. Calling for her Keyblade, she attacks. 

He barely dodges, landing on his knees. He flashes a toothy grin like he’s baring fangs.

“You’re here,” he announces, and nearby birds scatter. “Never would I have considered myself so fascinating as to be worthy of your graceful presence.”

She scoffs and moves to strike. But he only laughs something hearty, with a boom. He floats backward into the thicket, waving his arm like he’s dismissively tossing a farewell. 

Xehanort hovers in circles behind the trees as though to shake her off. Which is stupid, really, when she could feel where he is.

But that’s what he wants, isn’t it? When she takes a moment to locate him, it leaves her open to attack - from the Guardian. 

It hovers close, blowing humid breath, muscles twitching like it’s in pain. It groans so deeply and so quietly she can only hear it as a whisper. She stabs it with her Keyblade and it lurches backward. She cartwheels away to create more distance, then stills to focus on Xehanort’s whereabouts. 

The process takes too long. The Guardian attempts to grab her. She dives, throwing herself father away. It is relentless, hurling spurple, fiery blasts. Overwhelming her. Not letting her stay still. If she’s ever going to focus, she’ll have to beat it into submission. Knocking her Keyblade into its face feels good.

But her focus has shifted.

Footsteps charge behind her. No time to react. Xehanort tackles her - strong arms around her waist - and throws her onto the ground with a grunt and a blow to the stomach. 

His hair. It’s brown. She’s face to face with plastic blue eyes and a smug, foreign grin. 

She stops breathing. Before she realizes.

“Get off of me!” She knees him in the gut. He winces and grabs his side while she crawls out of his grip and starts to float away.

He growls and grabs her by the ankle, whiplashing her back onto the ground. The Guardian picks her up by the forearms, clasping them together so that she loses her grip on her Keyblade. 

Aqua shrieks and her Heartless hear the call. The ground rumbles, the birds scatter farther as a tidal wave of Shadows slither to and fro in a fury. Help help help help.

The Guardian drops Aqua and disappears. She rubs her scalp to soothe the headache, only to find herself alone. Xehanort has gone, leaving nothing but his warmth on her skin. Straggling onto her feet, Aqua closes her eyes and follows his heart when she hears a courageous yell.

Riku catapults into the sky, a large Keyblade in hand, cutting through her Heartless right down the middle. The most vulnerable. He vanquishes one, its life force pulling and twisting and snapping Aqua in the shoulder before any identifying trace of it vanishes. 

Xehanort left her to face Riku alone.

“You’ve tricked me,” she curses. 

Her Heartless gather into a tornado, defending themselves. She summons energy from a pit deep inside her core - Darkness responds just as quickly as Light - and her heart throbs with the movement of water crackling at the touch of freeze. Sharing a tether with her, the Heartless absorb the same growth, stacking a barrier around their communion. It makes Riku’s strikes as soft as silk. She commands, “Take care of him.” 

She whisks away, deeper into the thicket until it opens up to a valley, riddled with boulders and divided by creeks. Xehanort doesn’t leave a scent but a trail of essence. His heart is beating quite rapidly now. 

Aqua doesn’t have much time until she loses her temporary upgrade, but soon she catches him in the distance, white hair back on center stage. He’s running, but too slow. She glides faster, her Keyblade ready to slam him at full velocity.

Right before she could run him over, he turns and blocks her attack with his Keyblade. They ricochet, a thunder clap booming the instant they touch. She gracefully lands on her feet. He collapses and tumbles onto his back, groaning as his Keyblade dissipates as quickly as it came. He doesn’t bother getting up. 

Good. He’s doing nothing but heaving, one hand on his shoulder as he gazes listlessly at the sky, not acknowledging her as she struts closer.

He chuckles. “Bested by scorn. I didn’t expect I’d live to see the day.”

“Get up.” 

He only lifts himself onto his elbows, fine with settling there. His eyebrow cocks, inviting her to do what she wants. “What sort of fantasy are you plotting?”

She snarls. But she has to take it easy. She can’t harm the body.

Aqua threatens his left breast with the tip of her Keyblade. Normally, this is a forbidden act. Normally.

“One where I’m drowning you,” she says, stalking the lines of his face, patiently anticipating the exact moment where he squirms. 

“How inconvenient.”

He may act unintimidated, what with the way he flicks his wrist as if her words bore him. But there’s still one truth: he ran from her. His eyes snake down her arm to the metal inches away from his skin. She presses the blunt end of her Keyblade under his chin and tilts it back up to face her, the metal digging into his windpipe.

Years of lengthy debates about matters of the heart - how it works, whether it’s born in darkness or in light, its purpose with intense emotion - have agreed on one thing: to touch a heart with a Keyblade is unspoken of. Its effect is irreversible and numerous. Creating new personalities, breaking the mind, erasing the memories, banishing the sense of self, cloning the shadow. The heart will always fight back against an act so unnatural that no Master has even tried to experiment with it.

At least not with Light. Nothing about this Xehanort is natural.

Aqua doesn’t want complications. Just a simple act of plucking his heart out of place and throwing it away to Where It Doesn’t Matter. Where the panthers can eat it. Where Kingdom Hearts can reclaim it. It doesn’t belong in Terra’s body, so it shouldn’t be difficult. Put him to sleep so he doesn’t fight back.

She’ll preserve the body in the same ocean that birthed her anew. The water will restore Terra back to (almost) normal. Darkness has miraculous methods. It gave her the choice to leave, something Light has consistently failed her with. It will keep him safe until he’s ready to talk. Maybe then, they can take something back for themselves when he’s not so different from her anymore.

She’ll have to be gentle.

“I’m taking your heart out,” she hisses. “It’s more than you deserve.”

Xehanort’s eyes carefully lock with hers as a new, knowing, self-satisfied, punchable smile inches its way to his ears.

“Whose heart?”

Her teeth grit against each other, nipping her lip. He’ll regret asking stupid questions. Biting her tongue, she focuses on what’s most important.

The heart is a proud organ. It sings with its own voice, sheet music on display as a record of a person’s hopes for the future, their fears developed by the past. She expects one of them to be silent. 

But it isn’t. 

It’s a mess. 

It’s a mess, a cannibal, a wrestle of two where one drinks breath from the other. When one pushes away, the other pulls it in. One beats and the other follows rhythmically. Words are shared, dreams are rewritten. Muscle and sinew intertwine and blend. There is no point where Xehanort ends and Terra begins. They are two. They are one. And when they both notice she’s reading them, together they shush her. To throw one away is to shred them apart. She’d have to say goodbye. 

So all Aqua does is stare at him. All he enjoys is her hesitance.

A crackle of twigs and the rustling of leaves announce Riku’s stumbling arrival, panting. When he sees them, Keybalde to heart, his eyes snap open. 

“Don’t do that!”

Riku uppercuts, knocking Aqua’s Keyblade away. He steps between them. If he thinks he’s doing the right thing, he’s stupid.

Aqua doesn’t give him the benefit of explaining herself. She can’t even speak - she gasps from his sudden appearance, and hammers away at him by instinct. Riku is quicker, his strikes are harder, a prodigy in every movement. They flurry through attacks, powering each swing with magic but neither of them back down. 

Here her Heartless come, colliding onto the ground and set to wash Riku over. He glances at them - there is that perfect opening. She swings from a direction meant to mislead him. He takes the bait. Landing a blow across his fighting arm, she throws him into a boulder. 

But Xehanort is gone. Again. 

“You made me lose him,” she mutters.

Xehanort has left this world entirely, and worse. He’s nowhere to be found. But how is that possible? She should be able to tell where he’s going, where he’s landing. Maybe he’s too far for her ability. 

“Find him,” she says to three of her Heartless: the hunter, the butcher, and the accused. 

Behind her Riku groans, holding his head. Pacha scurries into view, pushing branches off his face, and helps Riku up.

“Are those monsters going to move?” Pacha quietly asks Riku about the horde near them, waiting for her instructions.

“I don’t know. I’m fine, don’t fuss.”

“Monsters?” Aqua says, turning over her shoulder.

Riku is still shaking on his legs when she approaches, and Pacha holds his arms out in surrender. But she doesn’t attack the farmer. Instead, she pins Riku’s neck between the boulder behind him and her Keyblade, chipping minerals from the surface.

“Is that what you see when you look at me?” she calmly asks Riku. Because Pacha doesn’t know any better. Because Riku doesn’t understand what he fights. “Do you think that’s fair, after everything I’ve been through?”

Riku gapes at her. He has normal eyes, the color of turquoise. He soon wipes that look off his face. “It’s not.” At least he’s respectful. 

“Please don’t hurt him, miss,” Pacha pleads, leaning forward. Attempts to touch her shoulder with assuring intention but he’s lucky he doesn’t make contact. “We have a misunderstanding. He means no harm.”

Pacha is trying to cater to her point of view, his round brown eyes earnest and desperate. His voice is warm like tea, giant chin tense yet unassuming. She hates how terrified he is of her. Golden eyes of a monster. 

“I’ll spare him,” she whispers. “Just for you.” 

With that, she swings a dark blast that sends Riku flying off yards away, knocking him out. Pacha runs after, picking him up in his arms. He glances over his shoulder to see if she would chase them. Do not worry, Pacha, she wouldn’t. She simply doesn’t want to be bothered. 

Her chosen three have not moved from their spot though, twiddling their claws around their antennas. 

“What do you mean you can’t find him?” she asks them. 

Aqua tries again and connects with the expanse between the worlds, but he has disappeared from her radar.

She tries not to panic. She summons a portal, reaching for him among the shadowy tendrils in a network that surveilles everything within deep space. It licks many stars, many worlds, many lights, millions of them, earth and people and animals, in a void that stretches forever. All hearts beat just past the border where none can survive. She goes further, to pockets with no worlds and holes with no stars. The one heart that matters isn’t here, and isn’t anywhere, as if he stopped existing.  

“What kind of magic is this?” Darkness should not be able to cloak him this well. 

So he is nowhere in the Realm of Light or In Between. There’s one more place to check. She leaves the void, coming back to the desert where she found him the first time. Night blankets it now and blankets it empty. 

Digging her claws into the sand, Aqua sinks into black, floating down to a seabed that houses a tipping clocktower, where night doesn’t stop and her thoughts mute. Darkness watches over its own, the same creatures that hungered for her heart before now casually passing by. A Darkside acknowledges her presence with short interest, as though it’s not an intimidating giant but a child. She asks the Realm of Darkness if he’s here. He’s not. 

Aqua swims back up, breathing only when she reaches the desert.

What’s left to do now? Nothing, but wait for him to turn back on again. He’ll have to - whatever magic he’s using can’t last forever.

In this moment of quiet, Aqua crashes into one revelation: she’s tired. She’s never felt that way in the Realm of Darkness. The desire or need to sleep hasn’t occurred to her in years. At first, she avoided it out of fear that she would miss a rare chance of escape. It’s bizarre to measure how heavy her limbs have become, to feel her eyelids wither. She’s weak.

She could always go back to the Realm of Darkness and shake it off, but it’s not a bad weakness. As she walks, she takes note of how her thighs feel sore and like jelly all at once, fatigue settling beside the determination to keep functioning. The moment she rests will be bliss - the thought of it is alluring, as though sleep is a forbidden sweet. She wants a taste. This is what it feels like to be alive. 

Ahead of her is that same cave where she left Terra’s armor. It’s as good a place as any; she’ll be hard-pressed to belong somewhere else. The armor sits in the same spot, covered in dust.

“You’re dirty,” she chastises.

Sitting across from it, she wiggles into the ridges of the rockface, which stab her around the spine, and brings her knees to her chest. Her claws brush against her skin as she hugs herself, frigid. The dirt beneath is rough and stiff on her muscles, but they agree with the rest, sighing something delicious with relief. The stars here are needle pricks in the sky, like they’re farther away. They leave the desert dark, the wind howling and cold. Aqua shares the view with her Heartless, who slither into the cave and fill it up.  

Next to her, the armor sits tall. Terra wasn’t always tall, but the last few years together proved otherwise. 

But Terra was always strong. Training with him was never about beating him through brute force. A fool’s errand, really. It was about outmaneuvering him, outsmarting, outpacing. The best training she could ask for to prepare her for the worst.

Terra won at wrestling, almost unanimously. One knee hooked behind hers, and huge arms wrapped around her back, and one hand pushing her pelvis hard against the ground, and his shoulder to her face, smelling of sweat and yeast and faded sandalwood from the shower early that morning. And heat. His heat on her.

Give it up, he would say. 

Forfeit, he’d continue when she wouldn’t stand down.

Really, Aqua? You’re such a sore loser. 

Maybe that was slightly true. Aqua would press a hand somewhere where his fussed shirt exposed skin - near his neck, or the small of his back - and summon ice, jolting him with the speed of a surprised cat. Still, he’d have the nerve to hold onto her despite the torture, to drag her where he landed, because he despised losing just as much. Because he liked to stay close. Because she liked it, too, and slowly he figured that out.

That’s cheating. Terra’s laugh shivered, as rigid as his voice. 

What Aqua would give to hear that laugh now. She takes her tattered sleeve and wipes a layer of dust off the armor’s visor, gently so she wouldn’t knock it over. 

Terra’s (Xehanort’s) heart, their one and strongest bond, mesh together. Aqua mimics by intertwining her own fingers, red on red like bloody exposed tissue. One by one, she unlaces them, playing images of untangling threads of muscle in her mind over and over, ripping the knots that can’t be undone. When the time comes, Aqua can’t be sure she’ll have the strength to do the same to him. 

She can do it. For his sake. She can’t for his sake. 

One of her Heartless - the youngest and oldest - paws at her lap. Heartless can’t be understood like humans. Part of succumbing means to strip themselves of the experiences that mark them as an individual from all the rest. Reading their hearts usually turn up nothing, but Aqua may get a memory of a long-forgotten occupation. Flashes of what their friends sounded like. Sometimes a face. Never a name. Always a turbulent feeling.

The youngest and the oldest is a six year old, turned a thousand years ago. A blonde girl in a blue dress, looking up with curious eyes. She wants reassurance, alarmed by Aqua’s reminiscence. After all, this girl doesn’t have strong images of her past life to hold onto, so the sudden rush of feelings must be painful in the only way nostalgia could deliver. 

“It’s okay to be alone,” Aqua says, petting the Shadow. “It’s better that way. You get more resilient when you don’t have to rely on anyone.”

When you don’t have to feel disappointed. When you don’t risk betrayal. While Heartless swarm together, they can’t communicate. They don’t understand much except for hunger, until they get distracted and they forget, numbing over and leading a simple life.

It’s so much better than remembering everything, hoping someone would come for her as long as she stayed patient. 

Aqua can spare some time as she leans her head back against the stone, knuckling her skull. The Heartless cradles into her arms.

Aqua has waited for twelve years. One more night doesn’t compare.

A/N: This chapter makes references to Emperor’s New Groove (2000).

[applecherry108]

I say this in complete seriousness and would like legit responses: what the fuck do u even do in animal crossing? I keep thinking I should buy new horizons but like.... I’ve never played any ac games. I don’t get it bc I don’t /know/ what the gameplay even is. My friend once let me run around their acnl town for a couple minutes but it was boring?? My brother in law described it as “It’s a very otaku game in the sense that you have to be really into collecting” which doesn’t clear ANYTHING up.

I’ve been playing botw for like the 7th time lately and it struck me that I’m literally just running around collecting 900 koroks, how much different can animal crossing be? But I don’t.... know anything about it. Everyone just says how great it is without saying WHAT it is... so you make a character and collect stuff and I’m guessing do like fetch/trading quests for your villagers, but is that really it?

It’s like, I wanna try it out but I don’t want to blow $60 on something I may not even enjoy... I wish it had like a demo... I’ve seen people compare it to sims, stardew valley, and Minecraft, but the sims are boring? Outside of making the characters. I’ve never played stardew but it sounds like a pain in the ass (I’ve heard the farming part is directions-less and time consuming), and I’ve never played Minecraft but it also seems....tedious. I understand that I say this as someone currently painstakingly collecting 900 bastards for the /second/ time bc I got bored, but,,, Hyrule?? Is breathtaking??? I love the climbing and exploring and upgrading and all the open world and I think I may have just sold myself on Minecraft lmfao, but I’m asking about animal crossing here. From the very brief time I ran around new leaf, it felt claustrophobic. Like the world was so small...

Idk. Someone pitch new horizons to me please bc I honestly do not understand and don’t want to risk $60 just to find out, but my interest IS genuinely piqued but I need More Information beyond “you collect stuff”...

Also I already love Isabelle but who doesn’t lmfao

[greyliliy]

I am 225 hours into Animal Crossing New Horizons and I have thoughts:

Love the game. *points at hour* Still a given.

The little “pop” sfx in the menu UI is really satisfying and I love that stupid noise. Uggg. The sound design in this game is so great and welcome to listen to.

The rest is sort of related to the Swimming announcement and vaguely negative? So under a cut if you’re interested and skippable if you’re not. XD

Because one the one hand, I’m very happy it’s coming. I’m glad they’re adding in stuff that has been missing from New Leaf. (Keep in mind, I’m not talking about stuff that’s gone because it’s been repurposed. I love Harriet, but you don’t need a hair salon when you can change your hair in a mirror and the work bench made Reese and Cyrus pointless, etc.).

But I’m also in the camp of “That really should have been there on release.” I’m not sure if it wasn’t because the game was already delayed and they didn’t want to push it farther (which is fine) or if they’re trickling in content to keep hype up (less fine).

Because if it’s the first--it’s fine. If someone buys the game a year from now, it’ll feel more “Complete” and they’ll never know it was missing things like the Art Gallery, Red, or Diving.

If it’s the second...I’m a little more frustrated. If they’re going to continue with “New updates for years!” I’d rather it be...genuine new content. New Furniture sets or buildings. That sort of thing. Terraforming is awesome and I appreciate it, but it feels like what should be in a new variation of a game after this many years.

I love the game, but it still feels sort of empty? Like, I definitely noticed the absence of diving in the game before. Or rather, knowing that there was no way to build up to Diving was sad.

Knowing that the next upgrade to Nook’s Cranny isn’t in the game yet is sad. 

Wondering whether or not that two buildings are all we’re getting is frustrating.

I noticed on Reddit there are many threads asking “How can you put that many hours into a game and still call it “incomplete” or “unfinished!?”

And the answer is - the more you play, the more you notice those things aren’t there. You still have fun. You still enjoy it. But when you have your daily routine you think of old ones and wonder what’s missing.

I loved visiting the Town section in New Leaf. It was fun to see what villagers were visiting or to watch the entire strip build up with new shops.

I liked trying to unlock Public Works Projects by talking and being friendly with my villagers.

The ability to terraform and decorate outside in any way I want is amazing, and I am 100% grateful it is there, but it still doesn’t quite fill that void of how hard I had to work to unlock the police station and get Copper or get the Roost in town or work to unlock buildings in town.

I miss those things.

Also, the ability to decorate outside was in Happy Home Designer. If all I wanted to do was decorate, I could just get my copy of Happy Home Designer out.

WHICH GETS ME TO MY LAST PET PEEVE.

Why the heck didn’t New Horizons adopt the Phone Calling system that’s in Pocket Camp.

If I meet a Villager, I should have them in my contact list. I should be able to contact them at any point in time and have them visit my campsite or move in. If I meet Raymond on a friend’s island I should be able to get them. xD

The game gave us so much freedom in everything but it went backwards with this. Pocket Camp and Happy Home Designer gave me too much freedom with Villager choices and who gets to stay and leave.

I miss it in New Horizons. Lol.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #444

Top Ten PlayStation Games I Hope Get PC Releases

And once again I turn my steely eye to the world of gaming. This time though I’m pulling on my blue jumper and talking about PlayStation (because I guess Xbox would have a green one and Nintendo’s would be red? I dunno, I’m making this up as I go). I’ve said in the past that as much as I like Sony and would love a PlayStation, I’ve never actually owned one myself because I always tend to buy an Xbox first. As much as I love the gaming industry, gaming as a past-time, and games themselves as an art-form, I have a rapidly dwindling supply of free time and unfortunately once I factor in trying to see enough films to maintain polite conversation and staring at my phone for hours on end in order to maximise my ennui, I don’t have an awful lot of minutes left in the day to dive into a wide variety of triple-A titles. As such, because I’m used to the Xbox’s way of working, because I tend to prefer its controllers and its whole ecosystem, and because I love several of their franchises (Halo and Fable especially), it’s always Xbox I gravitate towards, and then I just don’t have enough gaming time left over to justify the expense of a second huge console. And let’s get it out of the way – the PlayStation 5 is huge.

As a result, as time has gone on, there is an ever-growing number of PlayStation exclusives that I’ve barely played. In The Olden Days this was less of a problem, as pre-kids (and, heck, pre-everything considering how old the original PlayStation is at this point) I was able to saunter over to a friend’s house and try out games on their console. In this fashion I sampled a good many PS1 and PS2 titles such as Metal Gear Solid, WipeOut, Resident Evil, Time Splitters, Ico, and my absolute favourite, the original PS2 Transformers game. By the time PS3 rolled around this happened more rarely, but I’d argue it was fairly late in the generation when they showed off any games that really interested me (specifically those from Naughty Dog); and with the PS4, I’ve barely played on one at all, more’s the pity. And I really do mean more’s the pity, because this time around there have been loads of games I wanted; they really have had a better generation than Xbox, even if I couldn’t give up my Halo or Gears, to say nothing of the huge collection of backwards compatible games that get played to death by my kids.

That’s why I’m overjoyed that Sony have finally taken a leaf out of Microsoft’s book and are starting to release some of their bigger games on PC. I’ve been largely laptop-only for about a decade now, but it is a very powerful laptop, even if it’s not dedicated gaming hardware, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well it manages to run even quite demanding 3D games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Gears Tactics (I really must try out Flight Simulator sometime soon). The first big Sony exclusives to drop on Steam are Death Stranding (which looks bonkers but not my cup of tea) and the intriguing Horizon: Zero Dawn, which I’d probably really like. But those were never the Sony games that totally floated my boat; no, there are others, and I would absolutely love it if Sony saw fit to unleash them on Steam in the near future. Hey, I’m not picky; you don’t need to day-and-date it. I don’t mind enjoying a “Part I” whilst PS5 gamers are playing the hot new “Part II”. But I increasingly think be-all-and-end-all exclusives are rather old-fashioned, and whilst I get that there should probably be games tied to specific boxes, the services those box-companies provide should be more universal. That’s why I like Microsoft’s Play Anywhere initiative and the mobile game streaming via xCloud. But this is a Sony list, and these are some very, very good Sony games. I assume. By and large, I haven’t played them.

Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018): I love Rocksteady’s Arkham series of Batman games, but I do find them a bit relentlessly dark and miserable with an oh-so-gritty art style. What could be better, then, than a game that seems to play broadly similar but is nice, bright, funny, and sunny? Spider-Man is the perfect hero for that sort of game, and this looks absolutely like everything I’d ever want from a superhero game. I really, really, hope it comes to PC at some point, but I’ll be honest, I doubt it.

The Last of Us (2013): I like a good third-person action-adventure, whether it’s Gears, Tomb Raider, or Jedi: Fallen Order. TLOU looks most up my street, however, for its story, and its seemingly moving depiction of a family unit forming amidst the end of the world. By all accounts it’s a tear-jerker; I’ve tried to steer clear of the plot. Porting it over to PC whilst the well-received sequel is getting an inevitable PS5 upgrade seems like a good idea.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (2015): I’ve very briefly played one of the Uncharteds, but not really; I hear they’re like the Tomb Raider reboot, but better, which seems nice. A rollicking third-person action-adventure with an Indiana Jones spirit? Count me in. With the long-mooted film adaptation finally underway, COVID notwithstanding, it seems like a good time to let PC gamers have a go at the classic saga. I’d add part 4 to the existing trilogy collection before shunting it to Steam.

Shadow of the Colossus (2018): I’ve played Ico a bit so I’m broadly familiar with the tone of these games, but Colossus seems like an even cooler idea. Scaling moving monsters, killing them but feeling guilty, sounds like both a great gameplay mechanic and a moving and evocative theme for a game. Port the recent remake to PC please, Mr. Sony.

Ratchet and Clank (2016): full disclosure: the new PS5 Ratchet game is the only title I’ve seen demoed that really looks next-gen, with its fancy ray-tracing, excessive particle effects, and funky portal-based gameplay. How’s about, then, giving PC gamers a chance to enjoy the relatively-recent remake of the very first game? A bit of cross-promotion works wonders, Sony.

God of War (2018): the old PS3-era God of War games never really appealed, I guess because I’m not always a huge fan of hack-and-slash and they gave off a kind of crazy excessive, almost laddish vibe that I found off-putting (having not played them, I may be being incredibly unfair). The new one, though, sounds like it’s all about being a dad and being sad and remorseful, so count me in.

Wipeout Omega Collection (2017): I’ve always enjoyed arcade racers, but one sub-genre that I don’t think gets enough love is a futuristic racer, especially where you’ve got hover cars (they seemed to be quite popular twenty-odd years ago). I played the original Wipeout on my mate’s OG PlayStation, but I’d love it if us PC gamers could play the whole series. Could it possibly be even better than Star Wars Episode I Racer?

LittleBigPlanet 3 (2014): chances are, if I’d done this list back around the time the first two LittleBigPlanet games were released, they’d have topped the chart. They looked like cool, fun platform games, with a fantastic creative aspect; I bet my kids would love them. With that in mind, I’d be over the moon to see Sackboy take a bow on Steam. I’d have put Dreams on this list, incidentally, except I can’t see myself getting a VR set anytime soon.

The Last Guardian (2016): feels a bit of a cheat having both this and Colossus on the list, but I do want to see what the fuss is about. One of those games infamous for its time in development, it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and I am intrigued. Plus I want to know who dies at the end, the boy or the monster.

Killzone Shadow Fall (2013): gaming cliché has it that Nintendo does cutesy platformers, Microsoft does shooters, and Sony does third-person action-adventures; so whilst I’m well-versed in Halo and Gears, I’ve never sampled PlayStation’s key FPS franchise. Famous for its genuinely wowing showcase when the PS4 was announced, I’m not sure how good Shadow Fall actually is (or any of its predecessors for that matter) but I’d be very interested in finding out. Alternatively, give us one of the Resistance games and let me tear around an alternative Manchester or something.

So, there we are; ten games that I think are probably quite good – or even, y’know, masterpieces – but I’ve not had the chance to really sample them yet. And short of me picking up a PlayStation on the cheap, I don’t know when I really can. I mean, I told myself I’d buy a second-hand PS3 and a copy of TLOU once this current generation was in full swing, but that never happened. So throw me a bone, Sony! I still want to buy your stuff! Just sell it somewhere else! Somewhere I already am! Like Steam! Please?!