#but then if the boss is reused FIVE MORE TIMES

[klysanderelias]

It's always funny to me when a big-name youtuber argues vociferously that souls-like games DO have a difficulty setting, it's Playing The Game Right (leveling, build, using summons, etc), and then later on in the same video will have a fifteen minute long section complaining about how certain boss fights completely invalidate certain builds or require you to drastically alter your style of play, and i'm like... I thought you were in FAVOR of this.

And of course they're not, they just don't understand what a difficulty setting IS anymore, and that's completely fair because I think that most DEVELOPERS don't either, but it means that the criticism they make is always couched in a fundamental misunderstanding of the thing they're trying to criticise (and also usually a complete misunderstanding of where the criticism comes from).

And I want to be clear, I've beaten basically every single Dark Souls game, I beat bloodborne, I played shitloads of elden ring and the reason I didn't beat it was because I got bored, and I've done speedruns and soul level 1 runs of dark souls 3. I'm pretty much the dark souls power player that everyone expects would argue AGAINST having difficulty options.

But.

I've been playing thousands of hours of battletech, and the battletech difficulty screen has been the singlehandedly biggest argument I've had change my mind.

In the game, Battletech modifies difficulty per mission by changing the total health of enemies, changing their skills and experience levels, the usual fare of difficulty curves (although damage is never affected, thank god). But having all these granular options can dramatically change the way the game is played without simply affecting health values or hit percentages.

Toggling mech destruction and lethality means that losing a mech in a mission or having a pilot be knocked unconscious removes them permanently. They're killed, destroyed, you need to go get a new one. That's a HUGE change from the base difficulty where having a mech be completely destroyed in combat just removes the weapon components and costs a ton to repair. Likewise, changing the number of parts required to buy or salvage in order to complete a mech DRAMATICALLY changes the game - the maximum amount of parts you can get from a single mech is 3, and usually you only get 1. Needing 3 parts means that if you're lucky, you could see a brand new mech in a mission, blow its head off, and get one for free. Moving that scale up both means that rare or expensive mechs take much much longer to earn, but also that replacing mechs takes much longer (meaning that losses are even more painful).

Like, every single one of these options can dramatically affect how you play the game or change the feel of it to something much more interesting to you as a player - do you want to play a rogue-like game where you have to save and scrounge to get new mechs, and each mech and pilot is a precious resource you have to protect? or do you want to powerscale fast and constantly get new mechs and rare weapons?

And like, having extremely granular options for gameplay isn't for everyone, but then again, there are the owlcat pathfinder CRPGs that do this same thing, but have a base 'easy-normal-hard' sort of slider that automatically selects certain options, and you can adjust them if you want. If you're not interested in going through each slider you can just say 'I'd like normal please' and the game automatically makes all the selections, but you can also stop and say 'hey actually let me turn on permadeath too' and you can do that.

And I think that when people think about difficulty, they think about the most basic 'health and damage adjustments' sliders, and not ANYTHING else that actually have much more of an impact. I will hit this point to my grave that dark souls would massively benefit from difficulty options like turning off instakill effects (like curse or petrification) or removing the harsh penalty of dying when you can't get back to your bloodstain because a) that's often what drive new players off the most, and b) it doesn't fuckin' matter anyway, all you're losing is souls, the only thing it does is make you have to go grind more to make up for it.

And of course, there are always EXTRA challenge runs people come up with - nuzlocke runs of pokemon, soul level 1 runs of dark souls, hell, when I do Battletech I often add additional challenges like 'no intentional destruction of civilian buildings' or 'each mech must be assigned to a pilot and if one of them is sidelined, so is the other'

But challenge runs aren't difficulty settings, and more importantly there's no way to unchallenge run a game. You can decide to make the game harder for yourself, but you can't make the game EASIER. And when people say that you can, they're lying to you. Like yeah, there builds that are very strong in dark souls, and leveling optimally will make the game easier, but if you don't know what optimal leveling looks like, it's pointless. If you have a deep and thorough understanding of the game, and you check the messageboards, and delve through the wiki, and use a couple of exploits, the game will be easy! And if it's still too hard for you after that? Well, go fuck yourself, you just spent hours of your life doing research only to give up on the game anyway.

And the truth is, most people who argue that dark souls shouldn't have a difficulty slider are doing it out of bad faith, because they have a certain amount of ego riding on 'being good at hard game' as a character trait, and making these games more accessible frightens them because what if being good at dark souls isn't actually getting them into heaven

but also because they're somehow afraid that having extra difficulty options in the game will tempt them into choosing them? And then they won't get the 'true experience'?

Gamers are some of the most fragile people in existence that the mere option of reducing difficulty sends them into hysterics.

[pathfinderunlocked]

Healthy Boss Template (CR +3)

Wait, why did a giant health bar just appear in the sky?

Artwork by Jeff_Chee_471 on Reddit.

D&D and Pathfinder have a really unusual idea of what a "boss" is compared to, like, any video game ever made. They often tend to just take an enemy that would be part of a group of normal enemies if you were about six levels higher. When they do something more unique, it still tends to be balanced like that. Tons of offense, not that many hit points, but often extremely hard to hit. Adventure designers often try to make up for this design by making a boss weaker but giving it minions, but that doesn't change the fact that there's really no concept of a creature that's inherently a "boss creature" in this game.

And sometimes that's fine. But sometimes you just want a big chunky fight that's balanced more like how a video game boss is balanced: only a little more damage than other creatures, but way more health, and the ability to recover if you do nasty stuff like stun it. Something that lets the players go all-out using their abilities, and rewards them for doing so, instead of having to spend most of the fight just focusing on not getting attacked, because they know one attack can take them out.

This template isn't a global solution. It'll get old, and if you reuse it too much, players will find strategies that bypass it. That's why I design so many different boss monsters that each work differently. But if you want to convert an existing monster into a boss, this is one way to do so without a lot of effort, and without just giving it the advanced template and several fighter levels to max out its offense.

Some of the options for different abilities are there to deal with different kinds of player strategies, rather than because they're appropriate for different kinds of bosses. If your PCs use vital strike, give it vital negation. If they use combat maneuvers, give it reset stance. If they cast a bunch of spells on the terrain, give it undo. If they rely on hungry pit, give it escape to nowhere. Don't feel bad about using this template specifically to counter them, since the inflated HP and the limited uses of these special abilities mean that the players' strategies will still be useful, they just won't instantly win the fight.

Healthy Boss

Healthy boss is an inherited template that can be applied to any creature.

Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature + 3.

Hit Points: A healthy boss's hit points are three times as high as the base creature's.

Initiative: A healthy boss gains a +10 bonus to its initiative.

Defensive Abilities: A healthy boss can never be surprised, and is not considered flat-footed before it has acted in combat.

Special Abilities: A healthy boss gains 1 of the following special abilities:

Bolstering Cry (Ex) Twice per day as a move action, a healthy boss can grant all allies within 60 ft. a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. When it does so, it also suppresses the following conditions on affected allies other than itself for 1 round: blinded, confused, entangled, fatigued, exhausted, nauseated, paralyzed, shaken, sickened, staggered, stunned. The healthy boss does not need line of effect to these allies, but they must be able to either see or hear it. Second Wind (Ex) Five times per day as a free action at the start of its turn, a healthy boss can gain a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. These temporary hit points last for 10 minutes. It can only use this ability only once per round. Vital Negation (Ex) Once per round, a healthy boss can halve the damage of a single incoming source of damage. It can choose to use this ability after hearing the amount of damage that it would take. This does not require an action.

Additionally, a healthy boss gains 2 of the following other special abilities:

Aura of Recovery (Su) The healthy boss gains a 40-ft. aura. At the end of each of the healthy boss's turns, one of the healthy boss's allies within this aura (including itself) gains a new saving throw against any one ongoing harmful effect that initially allowed for a saving throw. Escape to Nowhere (Su) Once per day, at the end of an enemy's turn, a healthy boss can escape to the ethereal plane, as if using ethereal jaunt. This does not require an action. It remains in the ethereal plane during its next turn. At the start of its second turn after using this ability, the healthy boss returns to the plane it was on, but is staggered during that turn. Legendary Resistance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a saving throw, or when an enemy succeeds on a check against the healthy boss's spell resistance, the healthy boss can expend its legendary resistance to treat the roll as if the healthy boss had succeeded on the saving throw or the enemy had failed on the check against spell resistance. A healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 9 gains a second use of Legendary Resistance per day, and a healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 18 gains a third use of legendary resistance per day. This does not require an action. Reset Concentration (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a concentration check, it can steel its mind against future distractions, gaining a +10 bonus on concentration checks for the next 10 minutes. This does not require an action. Reset Stance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss starts its turn prone or grappled, at the start of its next turn after being successfully subjected to a combat maneuver other than trip or grapple, it can spend a move action to stand up, free itself from any grapples, pick up a single item within its reach, end the effect of a dirty trick maneuver, and move up to its move speed without provoking attacks of opportunity. Upon using this ability, the healthy boss also gains a +5 bonus to its CMD and a +10 bonus to Acrobatics, Climb, Ride, Swim, and Fly checks for the next 10 minutes. Undo (Su) As a standard action, once every 3 rounds, a healthy boss can revert the effects of any number of ongoing or instantaneous magic spells that are affecting itself, other creatures, or the surrounding environment. Each spell effect it attempts to undo must be within 60 ft. of the healthy boss, and must have been applied during the last 10 minutes. Even instantaneous spells can be reverted with Undo, but damage is not reverted. To attempt to undo a spell, a healthy boss makes a caster level check against a DC of 6 + the effect's caster level, using its hit dice as its caster level. If successful, the ongoing spell ends, or the effects of the instantaneous spell are reverted.

[chuuyadelune]

now that i have recovered from the emotional shock of seeing *that* akutagawa scene from chapter 88 animated in HD 4K (i thought i’d have another week to emotionally prepare myself LMAO), i just wanna be a little bit of a nerd and say that i really liked the cinematography/composition this episode.

in particular, i really enjoyed the anime’s decision to draw visual parallels between this fight and previous fights (in particular, the fight against francis, which is important because it is the first time they worked together).

after all, this fight is the culmination of everything they’ve done together. from the combining of their abilities, coming to an understanding with each other, realising the potential of beast-beneath the moonlight-rashoumon… bringing back similar shots that were used in previous fights is SUPER effective at highlighting the parallels and how far they’ve come, in my humble opinion.

here are a few things i noticed:

- first of all, both of them activating their abilities one after another is an explicit nod to S2’s fight;

- the confrontation/conversation in the hallway from S2 (to an extent! they’re on the same sides, which caught my eye);

- akutagawa blowing up the engine room on the ship, and kyouka doing the same during the first fight between him and atsushi (S1);

- and a similar angle being used for black tiger claws / koukko zessou as a nod to the fight in the S3 finale.

the parallels — though maybe less explicit, *are* still there in the manga? like, the entire “structure” of the fight so to speak is very similar to the francis fight in S2 — akutagawa finding atsushi, taking place on a(n air)ship, breaking away from the fight to strategise before confronting the final boss (then, francis, and now, fukuchi) is undeniably a nod to that fight? i love that this is given its due in the anime as well.

another thing about the cinematography this episode i loved was them using the clock as being the indicator of fukuchi’s fuckass space-time sword doing its thing. that was a really nice touch, in my opinion; the cuts in between were jarring and disorienting and really helped put us into sskk’s shoes.

and as for the background design alongside the clock itself — there were a couple of things about them i enjoyed:

- the number of floors / levels of the ship in the back (5, as a nod to the five ways an angel decays, the DOA)

- the blue of the clock is meant to be reminiscent of fukuchi’s sword, i’d argue, with the way both of them pops out of the sunset/orangey-red lighting

- the clock’s design being super ornate and gold plated reminds me a *bit* of a tabernacle (where they keep unused eucharist in a church) — and thus brings up connotations of sacrifice. that white bridge-thing beneath the clock as well reminds me a lot of an altar, too (see the image above the last to see what exactly i’m referring to, because image limit)

okay, yeah, that one might be a bit of a stretch, sure. but its placement as being above them, combined with the two tables/boxes to the left and right of the ship’s bow (which looks very much like a cross, btw) gives it a distinctly religious, altar-kinda feel, i’d argue. and crosses have been used in S4 as symbolism as well!

(tbh, there could even be a bit more imagery i’m missing, because — the angels of the DOA refers specifically to the buddhist conception of an angel. i’m not too familiar with buddhist imagery, but i thought that this was worth pointing out regardless!)

the last thing i want to say is that the red and blue symbolism went CRAZY this episode. i don’t have much else to say because it was super obvious — they even reused the same “black tiger claws” shot from S3, after all — but i do wanna point out that the symbolism even went into the carpets. the fucking carpets.

like, the shift: it’s red when akutagawa’s leading the conversation but changes to blue after atsushi’s suggesting of the submersible as a strategy? i mean, i don’t know if this (or anything i’ve said, to be fair) was intentional or not, but it’s a cool detail anyway!

personally, i enjoyed this episode, the action was great, and all of this too was a really neat addition as well! and now… uh. we wait for the chaos to get worse i suppose !? (laughs nervously)

[devilsurvivor-2-recordbreaker]

There will never be a game such as kingdom hearts 2 ever again.

Like really never.

The original development team that made KH1 and 2 for playstation 2 was disbanded long ago. Now the tram that was revived, specifically by Nomura if I remember correctly, was not put to the task of making all future installments.

Which likely was the reason why the next four or five games were prequels or side-quels, and why Xehanort became the central plot point of the series for so long as I like to think. As well why many of these games were put on handhelds, likely to not strain the team since they were so new. It may also explain the combat systems that were nothing like kh 1 or 2 but in bad ways most of the time. I have the suspicion that it's as well why the following games kept reusing kh1 and kh2 designs either in the style of combat or straight up replaying the games but with new scenarios or in others cases: the chain of memories exscue. Where a game happened to occur in all the same worlds and have all the same characters and all the same music.

Now with KH 3 this team was finally put to the actual task of making a actual ACTUAL kingdom hearts game to... mimicking results. 3 gameplay wise feels like a bad attempt to copy the homework the original kingdom hearts duology had done atleast a decade and more prior and with how many times the new team had been cheating it resulted in a somewhat bad tasting result. Like look at that base game air combo and tell me that it doesn't make you sick.

Story wise both overall and with the individual worlds I would say only Toy Story does it right. Like it sets the bar, it feels like a classic kingdom hearts Story Arc with the whole gang. It's compelling and emotional and woody has a moment where he's a actual threat to the villian wholes been making a mock of us the entire time. It great.

Then there are the two back to back movie montages with Sora, Donald, and Goofy in the background.

San fran Tokyo is a total joke. It's this massive one room world that you never explore because the entire plot line of the world is a repeat of do a mission, go to the save room, go do a thing, go to the save room, repeat until it's over. And then it just hard cuts to the final world like there should have been like two bosses before we reached the Keyblade Graveyard.

Every world after Toy Story feels horrible. Except The Caribbean for most of it. It's also a fun one room worlds you get to travel and the ship gimmic is pretty fun. It even has its own leveling system.

Most of the story feels like jelly and jam and they once again don't allow you play as Riku in a legitimate way but instead as a hollowed put sora with very little move set. And they gave him a stupid hair cut and snapped his keybalde in half in exchange for a car key which I'm still mad about. Fight in the parking lot over it.

So much of the final world feels like the biggest slog. I appreciate the little moments we have with all the villians as we say our final goodbyes as rivals and as enemies. Especially near the end when you fight the Xehanorts. That hurt different.

The original team is dead and in their wake a nobody has been created, as well a shadow. Neither exactly what they originated from. Both in a way a terrible resemblance of what they once were. The shadow has been vanquished as the light has faded and now only the hollow nobody remains. I have no expectations nor actual bars set for four. I just hope the new team gets better at what they do.

As there will never be such a game like kingdom hearts 2 ever again.

[ullerrm]

Time for the self-indulgent personal top ten list!  This is just my favorites from what I played this year, not necessarily 2022 releases.  Game names and specific what/why for each game are past the fold!

TLDR: Heavenly Bodies. Metal: Hellsinger. Blasphemous. Deathloop. Cult of the Lamb. Ghostwire: Tokyo. Horizon: Forbidden West. TUNIC. Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Vampire Survivors.

I’ll probably do a follow-up post with some honorable mentions as well.  (And yes, Elden Ring is on my radar, I just haven’t given it a proper try yet.)

10: Heavenly Bodies (Dec 2021; Steam, Playstation)

WHAT: It's QWOP in space, with goals: Left/right thumbsticks waggle your arms around, LT/RT close or open left/right hands, and bumpers kick your legs. It's broken up into levels, each of which has a list of tasks to accomplish: wrenching on things, managing airlocks, unpacking things from crates, piloting a shuttle, etc.

WHY: Part of it is the usual physical comedy of zero-G and shitty controls, bouncing off walls and flailing and looking for handholds and leverage points. I usually bounce off games that have difficult controls for the sake of difficulty alone (e.g. Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, or Jump King), but it’s made better by adding short achievable goals to accomplish with those controls -- it feels like fun in small doses, instead of just feeling hard. The sound design is great, and it has a really lovely streamlined art style that uses detail sparingly to call out important parts of the environment.

9: Metal: Hellsinger (Sep 2022; Steam, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: A first-person shooter with rhythm and score attack elements. Firing  your guns or doing melee attacks in sync with the beat deals more damage, and earns you more points. Some actions (finishers, etc.) can only be done on-beat.

WHY: The soundtrack sells the game -- If you like metal, here, listen to Mikael Stanne, Tatiana Shmailyuk, and Serj Tankian growl at you while you blow things up. If metal isn't your thing, you might still like it; it's a lot like Bullets Per Minute, but with fixed levels and leaderboards instead of procedurally generated levels. That said, while it’s fantastic, it’s VERY short -- finishing all levels (both main and optional "Torment" side challenges) on the second highest difficulty took five hours.

8: Blasphemous (Sep 2019; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: High-difficulty 2D Metroidvania, with a fixed melee attack and an assortment of spells. Souls-esque “recover your corpse to regain lost XP” on death. Lots of backtracking to get to inaccessible parts of levels once movement tech is unlocked. Extremely awesome but creepy pixel-art style summed up as "Spanish Roman Catholic Guilt: The Game."

WHY: It's beautiful, and challenging but satisfying. The controls are polished, the bosses are hard but telegraphed and fair, and there's a ton of collectibles and other bits to do. ~25 hours for 100% completion.

FYI, if you picked this up after launch and haven't touched it since, consider trying it again with the new DLC, which adds new bosses, NG+ and an alternate True Ending. Also, a sequel is now in development for 2023.

7: Deathloop (Sep 2021; Steam, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: “What if Dishonored had replayable levels and a meta-puzzle?”

Deathloop is first-person "Groundhog Day," but in the 1960s and with more murder. Each day is split into morning/noon/afternoon/evening, and for each time period, you pick one of four locations to go to, each of which has varying content based on time of day and how far you've progressed in the meta-plot. Your goal is to kill eight different people in a single day, and the bulk of the game is planning that out: through trial and error, figure out who is where during the day, and how you can encourage people to be in the same spot at the same time so you can kill several of them in one shot.

WHY: Sure, it reuses the same four areas four times each. But each of them feels fresh, and it’s really fun to figure out the differences in each area over the day -- what doors are open when, who is where, etc. The investigation UX always has a good hint about what to check out next, or where you left off, without spoiling it for you. Like Dishonored, the levels are structured to give good options for both stealth play and going in guns-blazing. Voice acting and audio in general is fantastic.

It had a Souls-esque multiplayer component where other players invade your game as a competing time-looped character, trying to kill you (or at least prevent you from carrying out your murdered), but it didn't really work well. The single player content holds up though.

(FYI, a recent patch ended an epilogue cutscene for the Golden Ending. Catch it on YouTube if you beat the game prior to it being added.)

6: Cult of the Lamb (Jun 2022; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: I’m pretty sure everyone on Tumblr is familiar with this one, even if you haven’t played it. It's a cartoony world inhabited by cute animals and insectoid eldritch gods who slaughter them. As the last living Lamb, you're given immortality by an Ancient Imprisoned God and tasked with creating a cult to gather power, defeat the lesser gods that wiped out your kind, and release your god from its prison. The game alternates between a small community sim (give your worshippers tasks to accomplish, keep them fed and happy, etc.) and a Binding-of-Isaac-like dungeon crawler.

WHY: The dungeon crawling is solidly implemented. The sim part is okay; I wish you weren’t permanently locked into Cult Doctrine choices, especially when they have such large effects on gameplay (e.g. the sim part gets significantly harder/more annoying in the late game if you don’t take Fasting Ritual early on in the game, or Brainwashing late in the game). But, hell, you can brainwash people into eating poop, and that has to count for something.

I spent a lot of time playing this, which is why it’s on the list -- and I’m a sucker for games that attempt to merge or straddle between different genres. However, it’s probably the game I’m most conflicted about on here.  There's about 20 hours of decent game in here, a bit more if you're interested in grinding out all the "get everything unlocked" achievements. It's fun at first but wears out its welcome fast.

5: Ghostwire: Tokyo (Mar 2022; Steam, Playstation)

WHAT: First-person action-adventure with parkour elements. A mysterious fog rolls into Shibuya, turning everyone it touches into spirits and leaving behind only piles of clothes. You play one of the few survivors, now sharing a body with a paranormal investigator, and try to find out what happened and deal with the hostile spirits now running wild around town. 

WHY: On one hand, this is your bog-standard Bethesda action-adventure collect-a-thon: run around a gigantic map, do a ton of sidequests, fight baddies, get bored about 40 hours in and make a beeline for the end of the story. The magic-based combat is novel but not that good; once you unlock a bow, you'll probably do 90% of your combat with that afterwards, and just use fire magic to clean up what’s left once you’re out of arrows.

That said, it mixes in bits of horror, weirdness, and just generally nails a sense of alienation that's rare in this genre of game. The story and mood are outstanding, and manages to carry what is mechanically a somewhat clunky game. (It feels like they made the bulk of the game in 2020, and then spent two years polishing the graphics, which are admittedly outstanding.)

Also, more personally: I love Shibuya, and it was lovely to see so many places recreated fairly faithfully.

4: Horizon: Forbidden West (Feb 2022, Playstation exclusive)

WHAT: Picks up where Horizon: Zero Dawn left off, with Aloy heading west in search of a backup for the GAIA artificial intelligence in the hopes that it might stave off a collapse of Earth's ecosystem. Third-person action-adventure, go hunt gigantic robots with bows and small arms and explore ruins.

WHY: Overall, it's a significant improvement on the first game; in particular, the story is considerably more competently portrayed this time around, even if it's partly spent establishing that Aloy is a gigantic dork that tries to do everything on her own. The combat has some highs and lows. There’s more variety in robots, and you've got a lot more strategic options to use; the formula of "shoot armor plates / weapons off, plink at soft squishy weak spots" still works and is still fun. The lows all come from Guerilla handling the power creep problem by adding a lot more enemy attacks that temporarily stun you -- and there are no I-frames on stuns. Fighting multiple combatants can mean being juggled for 5-6 seconds at a time, which can be profoundly frustrating and heavily encourages drawing off single combatants at a time from a pack to handle in isolation.

There was a lot of blurf in the press about the length of the game; I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do, but there is a lot. If you're the type of player who likes to wander around finding random shit to do, looting everything, and getting around to the plot when you're good and ready? Then, it's got about 100 hours of content, and you'll be dramatically overpowered by the time you finally do the story missions. If you follow the missions more tightly, there's probably about 60 hours of game here, but some of the late-game fights might be frustratingly hard without top-tier gear.

(I usually don’t like to talk about the length of games, but H:FW is one of the main excuses atm for buying a PS5, so there is some bang-for-buck to think about.)

3: TUNIC (Mar 2022; Steam, Switch, Playstation, Xbox)

WHAT: Zelda homage with a low-poly isometric visual style, and some beats from Souls games. Cute fox with sword tries to save the world. 

WHY: The game’s all about discovery and feeling adrift in a world you don’t fully understand. The main gimmick is that as you play, you unlock pieces of the game manual (which looks like an NES game manual from the 80s, complete with some previous owner’s hints/notes in ballpoint pen). However, all the game content and all of the manual is written in a constructed language, so you have to intuit directions and solve puzzles based on context. Often, you've got no idea what to do, and just wander around seeing what you can get access to and where you might find the next item.

Some of the optional puzzles can be extremely obtuse, especially if you're going for the Golden Ending. The final boss on the non-Golden route is impressively hard. Some of the combat in general needs good reflexes. But this was still one of the best games of the year just from the sense of confusion and discovery and just playing with items and areas to find out how they work.

(Also, the descent into the Quarry is probably the creepiest gaming experience I had all year.  Absolute props to the sound designers.)

2: Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Jan 2022; Switch exclusive)

WHAT: It’s a Pokemon game, ffs. You run around and collect them all. Maybe you do some side quests.

WHY: I've been playing this series since you shoved it into the back of a grubby gray Game Boy, and I honestly thought I was done with Pokemon games in general after Sword/Shield. But Arceus honestly managed to breathe a ton of life into what felt like a stale property, enough for me to go full Living Pokedex on it. 

The graphics aren't great, but they get the job done, and the gameplay is surprisingly polished. The need to actually observe Pokemon doing things to fill out the Pokedex was a great idea, even more so than the “capture a Pokemon without fighting it” changes. About my only complaint was the sheer amount of running around needed, up until you get the ability to fly.

The story is a bit predictable but is enough of a fig leaf to keep playing.

1: Vampire Survivors (Dec 2021 EA / Oct 2022 for 1.0; Steam, Xbox, and mobiles)

WHAT: Horde defense. You control a character using only a thumbstick, and they constantly autofire all weapons they have. Dodge and damage waves of enemies, collect XP gems, adding more weapons and upgrades with each level-up. After thirty minutes, death inevitably comes. There are no vampires, and no survival.

WHY: For starting out as a $3 kusoge with reused Castlevania sprites, this has probably been my most revisited and frequently played game this year. Sure, I've probably sunk more hours into H:FW or Destiny 2 -- but VS has been the "put on Youtube and brainfart, throw bibles at enemies, watch numbers go up" game that's delivered the most bang for buck of any game on this list. It's not demanding, it's simple, it's fun, it has ton of little hidden secrets and unlockable bits.

One of the recurring high points of this year has been seeing a new VS patch come out, and know my previous 100% achievements is now 90% or whatever, and that I’m going to put down whatever I’m playing and spend the next three days finding and unlocking all the new things they’ve added.

While it wasn’t the first single-stick shooter, its’s success has basically kickstarted a genre. There's a ton of VS successors now -- Rogue:Genesia, Brotato, Spellbook Demonslayers, etc. -- that suggest that they've actually exposed a still-novel space in gaming to be explored, rather than being just a one-off great game.

Edit: Honorable mentions list!

[darkfeanix]

Guess who finally boarded Deep Space Nine?

After thinking about it for a couple of years and seeing so many gifs and screencaps and discussions on here on Tumblr.com, I finally sat down and watched the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and for funsies I kept a stream-of-conscious record of my reactions while I watched.

Spoilers for the 30 year old series premiere, I guess? Anyway, begin:

Oh wow, Deep Space Nine starts with Borg Picard. Also, is that Sisko? I’m so used to seeing gifs of him with facial hair, I barely recognize him.

I’m guessing that this re-uses footage from TNG. Or did Patrick Stewart make a cameo in this series’ first episode?

Dead wife in the first five minutes? Not even any speaking lines? *heavy sigh* Ah, that classic storytelling.

Oh wow, three year time jump.

Aw, Sisko’s son is adorable.

Ah, those early 2000s visual effects. *deep breath* I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’ fine. I’m not watching this for the visual effects, I’m watching it for the characters.

Ooh, Quark. I’ve heard so much about him but know so little of him. Also, cool that Armin Shimmerman is in a starring role. Only ever seen him as a guest star in other series.

Oh wow, Deep Space Nine sure is a… umm… fixer-upper.

Oooh, there is a Picard cameo. Although I still wonder if the Borg stuff was reused footage. It kind of had the feel of it. But that’s neither here nor there now.

Stuck at 32 C, indoors, in those uniforms. Oof.

I already like Major Kira.

Quark looks like a mob boss and I love that for him. Also, “scheduled to depart tomorrow”? Interesting, that’s not what I’ve heard from Tumblr.

Hi Sir Patrick- I mean, Captain Picard.

Oooh, Sisko doesn’t want to the job? Interesting. I can already tell I’m going to like him, he clearly knows how to be diplomatic when the situation calls for it; I never would have guessed from his interactions with the residents of DS9 that he didn’t want to be there.

Sisko’s little smile when the hologram over the stairs is lifted and Kai Opaka begins walking down them is so cute.

This vision/flashback with Sisko and Jennifer is so sweet, but also bittersweet.

Yup, and that reaction when the vision ended is why it was so bittersweet.

A sacred mission in the first episode. Wow. But is it something that’ll be resolved in the first episode, or is it a season long arc? I guess back on the days of DS9, things were a bit more episodic so I’m guessing it’s just a season opener plot.

Wow, Quark wastes no time at all getting things back up and running.

Hello Dr. Bashir. I’ve heard about you from Tumblr. I already understand. Socially awkward, fancy boy accent, a chronic case of foot-in-the-mouth syndrome. I love him already.

Oh, I adore the dynamic between Sisko and Dax.

GIANT MAGIC SPACE PORTAL! WE’VE GOT A GIANT MAGIC- oh wait, those are just called wormholes in science fiction, aren’t they?

I appreciate that Star Trek has its own kinds of space magic. Can’t let Star Wars have all the fun.

“We should have a smoother ride this time.” … Weird, I thought it looked smoother the first time. I must not have been paying close enough attention.

Oooh! They see different things. Interesting!

Dax’s statement is hilarious considering what Sisko is seeing. Beautiful indeed.

Oh, that wasn’t a very nice thing to do to your guests.

No Sisko, don’t go into the light!

Oooh, so the hourglass holograms are… containers? Or something far more complex?

I love scenes like this, where a person’s memories are used to communicate with them. Especially when it cuts between memories of different characters.

-- “It would take two months.”

“It needs to be tomorrow.” – HAHAHAHA! Oh Major Kira, I love you.

I wonder if all the actors recorded the same lines and then the editors cut between the memory scenes, or if each actor only had the lines shown in the episode.

I’ve forgotten the transporter guy’s name, but the scene with him moving all of Deep Space Nine was really well performed.

“Well, they’ve got to listen to reason, haven’t they?” Oh Bashir, you sweet summer child.

Odo is now on the list of characters I adore.

“Perhaps they will be less hostile to Cardassians than to Humans.” Ha! Hahahaha! They already want to kill Sisko. If Dukat goes in there they’re all gonna die.

Oooh, I love the notion of “part of your existence”. I don’t think they’re going in that direction, as Sisko is trying hard to explain linear existence to them, but I like the idea that all experiences are a part of one’s existence, no matter how far in the past.

Not this non-corporeal being trying to understand physical intimacy. Adorable.

“Then why do you exist here?” Ooooh! What a way to embody what it’s like to experience trauma.

Oooh, so the very act of travelling through the portal is disrupting these beings. Reminds me of the Stargate Atlantis episode where the Stargate was powered by the beings made from the fog, and every time the Stargate powered up, more of those beings would die.

Hahahaha, explaining baseball to non-corporeal beings.

“You value your ignorance of what is to come?” Loved the delivery of this line.

Bashir is incredibly pretty.

Ah, O’Brien. I did know that name.

“What shields?” Oh noooo.

“We cannot give you what you deny yourself.” Again, what a fascinating way of exploring the impact of trauma on someone.

“I never left this ship.” Literal tears in my eyes. Wow.

Avery Brooks absolutely killing it in this scene. What a great performance; so much emotion!

“So if you want a war… I’ll give you one.” Major Kira is… my favourite character? I love her? (But also, speaking of trauma… How many of the people on this show are in need to serious counselling?)

Well, this is quite the season opener.

Bashir with his sleeves rolled up. *heart eyes*

“There’s your wormhole.” Petition to let Major Kira say fuck. I could almost hear the “fucking” in that exclamation.

Sisko is so relieved that there are no casualties. I can feel it coming off the screen.

A handshake with Jean-Luc Picard!

Major Kira/Quark? :O Is that a ship? There… there seems like there might be a teensy bit of chemistry there.

Overall, an excellent first episode. This is the third time I’ve watched an Old Trek series opener: Voyager’s was alright, but didn’t make a huge impression on me and took two attempts to complete; I never even finished TNG’s and haven’t gone back to the series since. But Deep Space Nine? I’m already invested.

[jayextee]

Sonic Frontiers

Just finished a replay of last year's surprisingly-not awful open-world, um, zone Sonic title.

It's good. Not, like, really absolutely legendary good; but what Sonic game is, really? (The first game, and I will fight people who argue, but that's by-the-by; and maybe the topic of a different post some other day)

But seriously, I was the last person to expect Sonic Frontiers to be as good as it is -- even as much as three hours into the game itself, my expectations hadn't changed from the initial reveal; a probably piece of shit that I'm only going to dutifully play as a smoothbrain ardent fan of the series. It took me a while to warm to, but going through the motions and just playing the game eventually took me to the first Titan encounter, and from then-on I think I just 'got' the game.

Ah, the Titan fights. "They carry the whole game" is a criticism I've seen of them and Frontiers in general, and although I'm inclined to agree with the statement in terms of wordage I don't gel with the sentiment at all; it feels way to reductive and suffers a little too much tunnel vision for my liking. I shall elaborate.

3D, or 'modern' Sonic games have an overall rhythm to them; from a scratch start, the Chaos Emeralds are gathered over the course of the story which culminates in a spectacular Super Sonic fight versus the huge beastie of this particular episode. This dynamic denouement is often the payoff to the entire proceedings, the spectacle satisfyingly-closing the adventure and leaving the player's brain soaked in dopamine and goodfeels.

Shame it only happens once per game, at the end. Unless...

And that's the rub, that madman Morio Kishimoto (or somebody involved in the development of Frontiers) took that hypothetical 'what if' and made good on it as the overall structure of the game; at least for four of the five islands (the remaining one, Rhea, being essentially a loredump of sorts). Add to this the question of making progress to that climactic clash somewhat-freeform, a case of players getting to it in their own damn way, and we have what makes Frontiers the game it is.

And to some degree, you really can play the game as you wish. There's the (possibly) intended route of engaging with the various gauntlets to get the memory tokens to advance the plot; interspersed with battles to get portal gears and then excelling at the more-traditional and linear 'cyberspace' levels for the keys to get the aforementioned chaos emeralds. Or, you can sorta just dig stuff up using cyloops on anything vaguely flat. Or, perhaps, you can look for purple coins and go fishing for the tokens to buy your way to progress.

If that last one sounds cheap, it kinda is, but in my opinion it's part of the beauty of the whole thing; you can just amble around the islands as if they were playgrounds to your whims, basically fucking around until you decide it's Plot Time™. Or not. There's so much tucked away in the four main islands that you could let your attention-deficit brain, via controller, take Sonic on whatever miniature flights of fancy catch your eye until perhaps you just stumble into the puzzle (or, sigh, dodgy pinball game) that grants access to that Titan fight spectacle. And thus, more dopamine.

I am, of course, entirely glossing over the game's flaws. I mentioned the pinball; and it's pretty bad, thankfully only has to be played once; but not the too-familiar nature of the cyberspace levels' reused layouts or the tendency for the mini 'gauntlets' in the maps to railroad Sonic to a restrictive 2D plane until it is completed, or how flawed the non-boss combat can be at times. Because I forgive them, and y'know why? The freeform nature of Frontiers has delivered a Sonic game that is so absolutely different to that which has come before, I see it as a bold and audacious experiment that went very right -- even if it could be done better.

Let's hope there's more on the horizon, then. 4/5

[miloscat]

[Review] Warhammer: Vermintide II (PC)

Rats 4 Dead.

My brother and I, always looking for co-op games to play, got this for free in a giveaway. About halfway through the main campaign, he got tired of it so I did the rest solo. He’s much more of a Warhammer Fantasy fan than me so was able to school me through some of the lore, although this setting is much like other Tolkien pastiches like D&D, so the basic premise (and sadly some of the inherent racism) is very recognisable.

But to understand the gameplay experience of this one, all you have to do is look at Left 4 Dead, whose homework Swedish studio Fatshark has been shamelessly copying since 2015 to great effect. It’s a level-based four-player co-op campaign where our heroes have to achieve various objectives while fending off hordes of zombies/ratmen & “barbarians” (it’s ok to kill them because they worship “evil gods”...). In amongst the teeming throngs of fodder are special enemy types, with particular abilities that do heavy damage or incapacitate individual players until they can be assisted by their comrades. This formula all works well here as it did before, as long as the players are sufficiently cooperating.

Added on top of this are systems of leveling up for perks, looting variant weapons, and most importantly differentiating the characters to allow separate playstyles. My brother favoured the dwarf Bardin, a melee-focused character with an explosive projectile. I stuck with Kerillian, the sardonic pan-Celtic elf with an enormous quiver for racking up rapid-fire ranged kills. I was decent at getting headshots and liked her crowd-control daggers for melee. Despite being a four-player game, the devs cleverly built five playable characters, so that nobody would be stuck with their least favourite when choosing a party: there’s always another option. We usually filled out our slots with bots, and when we figured out how to we opted out of Saltzpyre, a tiresome witch-burner type who is always snootily banging on about heretics.

The campaign takes you through various Skaven-infested caves, ruined towns, swamps, etc. in an effort to stop an alliance of Chaos and ratman and their big glowy portal machine. Content updates, both paid and free, have added new mini-campaigns, some of which reuse maps from the first game. The level design tries to keep things interesting and moving forwards, although at times as a first-time player with bots I would get lost and not have much indication of where to go next. These instances are rare though and there’s still things to find tucked away in corners and enemies to fight spawning in.

At least the bots follow you (most of the time). The most frustrating times were when the characters separated, were attacked by special baddies, and suddenly half an hour of progress goes right down the drain as you start the level all over. This is what made me turn the difficulty back down to the lowest setting for the later levels and especially bosses, who can also easily overwhelm you in their small arenas. Good coordination, communication, and focus are required on higher difficulties, which is why I had more fun blasting away on easy.

I just don’t think you’d get the value out of this title at full price unless you’re more invested in replaying levels and unlocking things than I am. It was a decent romp through once, but for me a good part of the experience was the novelty and figuring out what to do in each level. There’s also a whole cosmetic store which seems pointless to me (in the way I played the game), since it’s a first-person game so you the player never see what your character looks like. Anyway, this is a good iteration of the Left 4 Dead gameplay style, a good use of the licence, and has good production values. As long as you can get past the absurd violence of beheading countless half-naked people as their black blood sprays everywhere, you can have a good time.

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 73

Heaven and Hell/42

"Heaven and Hell"

Plot description: Anna recalls her past and Sam and Dean understand why Castiel and Uriel want her dead

Would I Survive the First Five Minutes??: No one died. Yeah.

Is Sam, the first person to call Castiel Cas??? I feel like it's just been me this whole season...feels weird

So, what did Anna do that is so bad that the angels want her dead??

It's weird to see Dean being nice to Ruby...or at least TRYING to be kinda nice to her. He said "thank you," okay??

Pamela. Ma'am...that's sexual harassment.

Hooooooly shit...sorry, what? Anna's an angel?

We about to get a Sam Winchester exorcism training montage? Mmmm, he's refusing.

GOD this girl needs to meet Aziraphale and Crowley. Think she would throw both of them for a loop. Stationed on Earth for 2000 years before ripping her grace out so she fell? Because she had to take it on blind faith that god exists? Because she wanted to feel emotions the way that humans do? She's the perfect adoptee for those two

But also, Dean can understand what she's going through...I wanna hug him

Bet either Cas or Uriel (or both) took Anna's grace

Oh. The "I dragged you out of hell, I can throw you back in" threat was NOT EMPTY

Is.........is Dean...oh. Yeah, that's gonna happen. This is not the angel I've been led to believe Dean would be doing that with in the back of his car, but okay. (Was a better scene than Sam and Ruby, anyway)

I'm sorry. I can't take Dean saying "I guess I just like being a pain in the pooper" seriously. Pretty sure you can say ass on tv.

My blorbos seem to always get told, verbally or through actions, that they can be replaced...

Also, rude that Uriel is keeping her grace

How wonderful (absolutely drenched and dripping in sarcasm), we're torturing a nearly fully nude Ruby.......I don't even like her (but that's the writers' fault) but she doesn't deserve that.

Yeah, Dean's obvious pressure point is Sam...you threaten to kill Sam, Dean's gonna cave IMMEDIATELY

I don't think they should have let Cas get absolutely knocked on his ass this quickly. We're half way through the season he's INTRODUCED. He's not even BEEN in all the episodes, and he's getting his ass handed to him? They could have dragged out the "Cas is INSANELY POWERFUL, NIGH INVINCIBLE" a LITTLE longer (not disappointed in Dean whacking a demon upside the head about it though)

Oh...oh, Anna's FULL angel again, and SHE is nigh invincible. I'm...Dean knowing she's not happy about it :'(

Deeeeeean. I can't imagine what that must feel like. When you look at the total time Dean was in hell, which because time in Hell is even more fucked than Night Vale, you think okay, for 30 out of 40 years, he resisted the torture he was put through. He was in unimaginable pain himself but still refused to put anyone else through that at his hand. 75% is still a passing grade. It's not GREAT, but it's passing...til you remember he didn't think he was getting out. He was going to be there for all eternity for all he knew, and then you realize why it's so hard for him to forgive himself even when anyone else would (and has) told him he should. ANNA, THE ANGEL WHO USED TO BE CASTIEL'S BOSS (and might be again? i dunno), TOLD HIM HE SHOULD FORGIVE HIMSELF, BUT HE JUST WON'T.

"Been On My Mind...": Dean's tryst with an angel has put us at 10 again

"42"

Plot description: Trapped on a spaceship careening toward a boiling sun, the Doctor and Martha have only 42 minutes to save the day

Why do I feel like they reused.......this is the BBC why am I asking why it feels like they reused some of the sets from...either The Satan Pit or The Girl in the Fireplace? If the Doctor and a companion wind up landing the TARDIS on another space ship, of COURSE the interior is going to be reused

I really do like how Doctor who established super early on how far across the universe humans have traveled in the future. It makes explaining why they meet so many humans half a universe away from Earth REALLY easy. No, YOU'RE throwing shade at Supernatural.

I'm not saying they're reusing the plot of The Satan Pit too but I'm not NOT saying they haven't dressed it up slightly differently. A space ship dangerously close to a space thing that could destroy them? And there's a guy on board who went mad and sabotaged it? I mean....it's hardly an original storyline anyway, but it still makes me sad for Martha. She's still going on the same dates the Doctor took Rose on. If the Ood sho up, I'm turning this episode off (that IS and empty threat)

Okay...but honestly, recreational mathematics sounds like a fun class. I would take a recreational mathematics class. If it was just about finding fun patterns in numbers instead of having to just solve for one thing or another? It's kind of why I liked geometry class and none of the other math classes I took in high school

THE "BEE-AT-LZ" I'm dead. OMG Martha, just phone a friend...at home...in your own time to find out who had...YES, THAT'S MY GIRL. Except, maybe you should have called your sister not your mom.

I can't believe they're doing trivia to save the spaceship.

Oh shit. That's the same effects with the eyes Supernatural uses for when angels do some weird shit. Except angels only burn people's eyes out, not completely vaporize people.

So...what exactly has possessed this guy?

It's half trivia, half almost obstacle course? with just a dash of slow -moving slasher-movie villain thrown in for good measure. OH MY GOD IT'S OLMEK'S TEMPLE FROM LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE

DIDN'T THE DOCTOR TELL YOU TO STAY PUT??? Oh, the captains gonna die, like, RIGHT now, huh?

How're you gonna stop Martha from getting jettisoned INTO THIS SUN

Man, this dude is a MAJOR downer.

Ohhhh, 1.) Martha calling her mom to tell her she loves her (but also the sort of betrayal of her mom working with Harold Saxon's people behind Martha's back), and 2.) the gentle forehead kiss the major downer dude gives her when she hangs up...because he knows this was hard and he knows the Doctor isn't gonna save them in time (he's wrong, but he's convinced) and it's one little sign of affection that he knows she needs in this moment, which for all they know is one of their final ones

That's DEFINITELY the same space suit he wore in The Satan Pit.

the SUN IS ALIVE??? (<-if i'd been saying this out loud, i would have made it a quote by one of the Todoroki parents...mostly the one I hate)

I don't know what I want less: everyone but Martha and the Doctor dying or everyone but Martha, the Doctor, and the captain dying so she has to live with the conseque.......well, turns out she's making a sacrifice play, but they're not out of danger yet.

There's something that takes all the bite out of a countdown, and it's called "there are still twelve and half more seasons after this episode"

God, I love that Martha's leaving a trail of broken hearts across all of time and space. Good for her. (I am deliberately ignoring the cause being her unrequited crush on the Doctor. I'm choosing to celebrate Shakespeare writing sonnets about her, and giving this random astronaut someone he can believe in for the first time in a long time)

Episodes Since the Doctor's Last Attempted Genocide: I HAVE LOST COUNT. IS IT 4 NOW? This is part of the drawback of doing this show every other day

[seat-safety-switch]

If you believe the big brains at the automakers, we’re in a chip shortage. This is, of course, obvious horse plop: although it’s nearly twice as expensive as before, I can go down to the corner store and pick up a bag of Tostitos no problem. What we have in fact is a huge oversupply of integrated circuits, but there’s no good way to dig them out of all the old cars, kitchen appliances, microcomputers, and maxicomputers that we throw out every single day.

Usually, these things go to the crusher completely functional. Maybe some part is a little gummed up, or the colour is no longer in style. If we could get someone to scavenge the good parts, then we’d never have to buy any more parts. That is, unless some idiot puts a giant touch-screen tablet on the dashboard of every car, but when would that ever happen?

Take it from me: I’ve been scavenging parts for decades. I’ve seen all those YouTube videos of hard-working factory workers inhaling lungfuls of aerosolized lead, slaving over a hot plate to pry a chip worth half a cent out of a junk board so that it can be cleaned up and reused. And to them I say: where’d you get that hot plate? It looks pretty boss. I have to use an old kitchen spoon, and a lighter. Which is why I usually give up five minutes in, after burning my fingers approximately seventeen times, and just slap a carburetor on it.

Sure, nobody on planet Earth, including myself, knows how a carburetor works. Thing is, I’m not going to run out of them anytime soon, because most people gave up on them a few years ago and threw the entire car out in favour of a Honda or something that can start in the winter. Then that junk car ended up in my backyard, where it offers a bountiful harvest of said parts. All I have to do is soak it in the most dangerous chemicals I can find, and I can kinda-sorta drive to work unless a cop with a functioning sense of smell gets too close to my tailpipe.

All this is to say that if General Motors really wants to get a handle on this chip shortage, they should be paying me to dig through my carb pile. I’m pretty sure a little Keihin slide from a Honda Elite will work really well on a new Silverado. Wait, they’re electric now? Okay, I guess I can throw in some of this rat-chewed wiring, too. It’s the least I can do, to keep the domestic supply chain going.

[tsumune]

more than enough

pairing: gn!reader x suna rintarou

synopsis: suna feels insecure about what he offers in your relationship, and after seeing how excited you get listening to your friend talk about the extravagant things her boyfriend does for her, he decides to try something himself.

tags: angst?? to fluff (just slight angst)

suna comes home from practice to find the house silent. that’s odd, he thinks to himself as he looks for you. his muscles hurt, he’s sore, and a small part of him is irritated that dinner isn’t ready, but all those thoughts are wiped from his head when he turns on the lights in the bedroom and finds you fast asleep, your eyebrows creased together and your nose slightly red as if you had just cried.

“y/n? what’s wrong, are you okay?” suna softly shakes you awake.

“mm.. rin? ah, what time is it?” your first thought when you wake is to look at the clock, and to your horror it’s already 8PM. “oh no, rin i’m so sorry i didn’t make dinner yet. i’ll go make some now-”

“hey no, it’s okay. tell me what’s wrong first, were you crying?”

“it’s not a big deal rin. don’t worry about me, but you need to eat.”

suna’s own eyebrows crease at this. “why are you so intent on getting me to eat?”

you look at him with confusion, as if the answer was obvious. “because your game is coming up soon, rin. you have to keep your body healthy and not worry about other things.”

suna frowns at this. he knows he’s not the most expressive boyfriend, but he cares about you so much and wants you to know you’re not second to the other things in his life, no matter how busy he gets. “just because i have a game coming up doesn’t mean i’ll ignore you. tell me.”

he’s taken aback by the sudden tears filling your eyes, and in a panic his hands quickly wrap around your figure. “i got yelled at by my boss... i don’t want to lose this job, rin.”

“shh, you won’t baby. you’re doing so well, one mistake doesn’t define you.” you calm down as suna continues holding you in his arms and smoothing your hair, and the both of you enjoy some takeout and your favourite movie after you relax. but suna can’t shake the heavy feeling in his chest that you were bottling up your feelings in an effort to not worry him, and the guilt that his first thought when he came home was that you didn’t make dinner. it worries him even more.

days have passed since the night you broke down, but suna still feels a bit tense. he won his game, and in celebration you asked if he wanted to go out with your friends. in truth, he just wanted to make you feel better, but you hadn’t brought up the topic since that night, so he decides going out and forgetting about everything might be a good thing. as the night goes on though, his heart only feels heavier.

“and then, he opened the trunk and there were bouquets of flowers and balloons in there!”

suna watches your eyes light up as your friend talks about the latest dramatic gesture her boyfriend did for her. he used to internally roll his eyes at this and think he was being over the top, but looking at how happy your friend was talking about him and how excited it seemed to make you feel, he wonders if you ever smile that brightly when you tell your friends about him. actually, do you talk to your friends about him at all? does he do anything that warrants a story like this? suna isn’t sure if he can remember. sure, you go out for anniversary dinners, but everyone does that, don’t they? if you don’t go to him for comfort, and he doesn’t plan big surprises for you... what does he do for you?

“rin. rinnie. rintarou!” suna snaps back to attention at your voice combined with the flick to his forehead.

“ow!” you laugh, and that was enough to ease a bit of suna’s worries. he decides he’ll take some (albeit dramatic) inspiration from your friend’s boyfriend, and step up his antics so that he can hear that laugh more often.

“can i open my eyes now?”

“no wait, not yet,” suna drags you a bit farther. “okay, now you can.”

you open your eyes, and to your surprise, your bed is decorated with flowers in the shape of a heart. you can’t stop the laugh that bursts out of you.

“rin, what is this,” you wipe your eyes as you laugh. “since when were you so corny?”

suna feels his heart drop at your comment. he worked hard on this. he thought you would like it, thought it would be something he could do for you. thought it would put him up there on the good boyfriend list next to your friend’s boyfriend.

“rin, why did you use whole flowers with the stems still on? don’t people usually just use the petals? silly guy.” you say cheekily, thinking to tease your boyfriend for his random cute act a bit. you admit it’s a bit odd coming from suna, but it’s endearing in a clumsy way, and you appreciated it. but when you turn around to face him, suna’s head is turned to the ground and he looks unexpectedly serious.

“sorry if you don’t like it. just thought i’d do something different for a change,” he says through gritted teeth before leaving to the living room.

“hey rin, wait!” you try to catch his arm as he goes, but he just shakes you off. “rin? i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to dismiss your work like that. i was just kidding.” instead of responding, suna plants himself facedown on the couch.

you start to worry. “rin? are you okay? can you talk to me about it.” silence. “rin... i talked to you last time. can you talk to me too, please?”

at this, suna turns his head. this time, it’s your turn to be surprised at the uncommon sight of his glossy eyes. “i just wanted to be a good boyfriend... you didn’t come to me last time you were hurt, and then i saw how excited you were when your friend talked about her boyfriend’s stupid surprises... i thought you would be happy if i did more of those things too.”

“oh rin.” you sigh and climb onto the sofa, softly squishing him. your hands cup his face and you stare into his eyes, neither of you moving until suna gives in. “what?”

“you’re more than enough for me, rin.” suna has heard these words countless times before. you’ve said them to him often, and in his heart he knows you’ve always felt this way, but with the recent events and mix of emotions he’s experiencing, he feels like he’s been knocked off his feet and swept away by the undeniable love in them. “you don’t have to do the things you see others do, i love you just the way you are. you don’t have to change yourself for me, rin, you’re already everything i could wish for as is. you’re sweet and attentive and always put me first, i’m aware of that, and you show me you care in the little things, like what you just tried.” suna’s eyes shift to the side in embarrassment at the thought of the flowers still sitting on your shared bed. “i wouldn’t mind if you never did that again, but i also wouldn’t mind if you wanted to try again. and i promise i’ll take you seriously. just use only petals next time,” you playfully pinch your boyfriend on the nose, and this time he laughs with you.

the two of you head back to the room to pick up the flowers and put them in a vase (suna was beet red the whole time), and then lay down on the bed to cuddle. after a while, suna turns to you.

“promise me you’ll talk to me if you ever feel upset again,” you open your mouth and suna already knows what you’re about to say, “i know. i know i’m not the best at it either, but i’ll try harder too. you just really had me worried.”

“i didn’t want to worry you before your game.”

“yeah, and i was worried what it meant that you didn’t want to talk to me. so your plan backfired,” he pouted.

“okay okay,” you laugh with a defeated sigh. “from now on, better communication. pinky promise.”

“what are you, five?” suna scoffs, before connecting your pinkies together. “pinky promise.”

a/n: methinks this could’ve been executed better but i just wanted to write something lol might rewrite/reuse the premise of this idea sometime

[bestworstcase]

What gets me most about Thornmane is that, he's just Cinder? The apparent fire Semblance, the bow swords, it's just. So there without commentary. Like I can imagine a number of reasons this was how his boss fight was built, like there'd initially been a Cinder fight planned that they had to give up on for the story/timeline that had its assets reused, or they just felt like having a spiritual stand in for her would be the best final boss, but narratively...Narratively...

ooh hm while i can see the dots you’re connecting that’s not how i read him at all—if anything he strikes me as perpendicular to cinder. which i’ll come back to in a minute bc first i want to talk about his semblance.

for the amount of narrative weight given to thornmane’s semblance as like, the locus of all his grievances, it’s astoundingly unclear what it is—by my count he’s got five(!) moves in his boss fight that flag as a possible semblance: 1. charged-up forward dash/lunge with trailing afterimages (speed?); 2. ricocheting/homing arrows (telekinesis?); 3. huge AOE arrow barrage where he fires upward and dozens of arrows come down (duplication?), 4. disappearing platforms (telekinesis again if they’re mobile or vanishing stuff?), and 5. his knockoff dark souls boss transform at 50% where he rages out and then vanishes for a bit (invisibility? some sort of berserker second wind thing when his aura is critical?)

now some of these could be explained by throwing “dust” or “experimental tech” at the problem but it occurred to me about…halfway? through the second stage of the fight that there’s a really tidy way to explain all of these things as a semblance, which is that thornmane is sort of a mimic: he takes impressions of his opponent’s semblance and refracts them, makes them his own. so he’s got these afterimages of ruby’s speed, yang’s fire and second wind, blake’s vanishing act, weiss’s projectiles and summoning.

which of course 1. is perfect for a character whose whole MO is exploitative mirroring, 2. makes for a sort of fun potential reading of thornmane and bianca, who can borrow the semblances of her allies, as foils and mirror images of each other, and 3. assuming he has to be fighting someone to tap into their semblance (which again, tracks with how he treats his allies), also fits the bill for being a semblance that doesn’t fit with the ace-ops; a) they will primarily be seeing battle against grimm, not people, and b) you can’t build tactics based on “perfectly complementary powers” with a guy whose semblance is an ever-changing amalgamation of the people you’re fighting. it’s not a weak semblance by any means, but it’s not the right fit for the super-optimized ace-ops.

but back to cinder. nothing about thornmane’s moveset particularly read as cinder-esque to me? (and were her style translated into a platformer i’d envision something more along the lines of nightmare king grimm than… thornmane who can’t even turn around if you flank him half the time; cinder is fast, agile, and explosive far more prominently than she is an archer)—but on the other hand there is, like i said, an interesting perpendicularity in terms of their characters that i’ve been chewing on a bit, in that cinder is viciously power-hungry because she’s been starved for freedom her whole life and the only way she can now conceive of having agency is to take it with brutal and ruthless force, whereas thornmane is to all appearances a man so privileged that the very worst thing that has ever happened to him was being politely denied a job because he wasn’t the best candidate for it, which upset him so much that he, reading between the lines, had a massive falling out with the friend who did make the cut, left atlas to organize a network of “protectors” for the free cities so he could feel powerful, and nursed a grudge for years until he went full terrorist and attempted a coup, all while evidently feeling like the wronged party.

“i had it all! i was in the running for a position in the ace operatives, after years of tireless training… i could have been a hero to the people! i could have been respected and admired for that power! but no. instead he told me ‘i’m afraid there’s no fit for your semblance.’ feh!” vs “you atlas elites are all the same! you think that hoarding power means you’ll have it forever, but it just makes the rest of us hungrier! …and i refuse to starve.” like! in his own words thornmane had everything except the glory of being the best and he’s infuriated that ironwood, in his view, took that glory away from him—and then there’s cinder who had worse than nothing until she killed her abuser and learned that the world would condemn her even for that.

[felikatze]

I played every Ninjago Toggo game

Toggo is a german children‘s TV channel that airs the german dub of Ninjago. On its website, Toggo features select episodes from every season (except season 12, for reasons unknown), and many different browser based games. As such, it‘s the channel that introduced me to the series, and the one I blame for my many sufferings.

I played every Ninjago game on the Toggo website. Here‘s some reviews.

First, though, look at Akita.

The “plots“ for these games, as like, random browser games, is obviously just whatever‘s going on in the season. “Fight your opponent in the tournament of elements“ “rescue nya from nadakhan“ “defeat the nindroids“ yadda yadda. Not riveting stuff, exactly, so I won‘t detail them.

1. Schlangenstämme (Snake Tribes) [Season 1]

Simple matching game. Take the snake images, match them to the correct tribe. This one is kind of a hack, because after 1k points new snakes just appear so fast you can‘t possibly progress.

The art is pretty cool though, even if it‘s probably reused.

2. Chens Labyrinth (Chen‘s Labyrinth) [Season 4]

You navigate a labyrinth as either lloyd or kai to get to zane. it‘s.. suprisingly difficult? I needed a couple of attempts to get past the first level, with five total. Though which levels those five are seems randomized. There‘s spinning blades and guards to dodge, pits to avoid, and even pistons that will push you into pits.

Arrow key controls, and nothing else.

This one reuses soundbytes from the show, which is fun. Like the wilhelm scream when you get hit by a blade. Or a Cole soundbyte when you fall down a pit. You can‘t even play as Cole. Definetly the high light of the game, because I was in hysterics.

Wassup with this Kai design though. Cool hair. The character models in the game look like someone took a picture of actual lego figurines. Ten out of ten.

3. Im Land der Drachen (In the Land of Dragons) [Season 9]

You play as the fire dragon, and you gotta burn down the dragon hunters, and free other dragons for upgrades. The description makes it seem like freeing dragons is your goal, but the high score is entirely dependant on how many enemies you defeat.

Control scheme is kinda wack at first, since the direction of your inputs depends are relative to your character, and the game starts you backwards, for no reason.

It‘s really hard to actually hit stuff with your fire breath. You can upgrade your dragon with the coins you collect from defeated enemies to do more damage and stuff, so if you really wanna go for a highscore, this game can keep you entertained for a bit. Suprisingly fun.

The music choice is really intense though to be playing constantly.

4. Nindroiden-Niederschlag (Nindroid-Beatdown) [Season 3]

Push the arrow key in the direction enemies are coming from to slap em. Don‘t get slapped yourself. That‘s it. You have a timer that fills up whenever you pass a level, and decreases rapidly when you get it.

Once again in hysterics over sound effects because there ARE multiple attack sounds, but they‘re not mapped to one per Ninja, they‘re random. So maybe the same Jay soundbyte plays five times in a row. Or maybe you get three different ones when hitting the same direction three times.

Shoutout to some guy named Kane, who takes up 5 out of 10 top 10 player slots. You‘re truly dedicated.

5. Wettkampf der Elemente (Contest of the Elements) [Season 4]

Beautifully reused assets from Chen‘s Labyrinth. The floor falls behind you, so manouvre your enemy into falling into the abyss first. Kind of dull, kind of difficult. Took me. A feewww attempts to do. I eventually settled on the tactic of “try to make a separate arena from my opponent as fast as possible and then just wait it out till they fall down.“

You face off against Bolobo, Neuro, Karlof, and then Skylor as the final boss. It‘s neat.

Though I was of course an immediate expert at this, because there‘s a Minecraft mini-game just like this. With the falling floor and stuff. I want to play minecraft now, instead of all these, but I‘m in too deep now.

6. Rettung aus Dschinnjago (Rescue from Djinjago) [Season 6]

This one gets points for using the intro music for skybound cuz it‘s swanky. The loop is wayyy to short though.

THERE‘S 22 LEVELS???

props to this one for being the first that‘s like… pretty to look at? And for having 8 directional movement. Similar to Chen‘s Labyrinth, navigate the levels as Jay with the arrow keys and don‘t fall off ledges or get caught in traps n stuff.

Again I like the graphics on this one? It looks good. Full 3D environment. Def a step up from the previous games. But also goddd make the music loop longer if you have one song for TWENTY TWO LEVELS. Yes i did play all twenty two but i did not go for 3 stars in each because collecting all the coins would take forever. Let‘s call it speedrun strats.

Levels get increasingly longer and more complex with all sorts of switches to press to advance, and some memorable sections like an honest to god chase sequence. So this actually took a while to beat, unlike the more „one and done“ games so far. It took like, 20 minutes to actually finish, even though I was ignoring coins

Jay‘s game over quote is “please not crap like this“ which is very polite for the fury with which it‘s shouted. Iconic.

I liked it, even though I turned off the swanky pirate whip after level 4 to listen to my edgy vocaloid instead.

Shoutout to Wu3000, who takes up slots 2-18 on the leaderboard. Man, you tried.

7. Die Kunst des Spinjitzu (The Art of Spinjitzu) [Season 1]

ORGH THIS ONE HAS CUSTOM NARRATION. Like an actual narrator. Reading the small blurb of “once upon a time there was the first spinjitzu master and you have to fight his evil son.“ what.

It‘s kind of funny how it refuses to name garmadon though. He‘s just “the evil brother.“

You get three minigames to pick, which are apparently the three disciplines of the art of spinjitzu. Dexterity, team spirit, and… spinning. Fascinating.

Each discipline has a ninja narrating how it works which is hilarious, because they‘re not like, the actual VAs obviously, just some guy trying to sound young and hip.

First up, dexterity, draw a symbol with your mouse cuz that‘s how you sword good ig. According to off-brand cole, at least. Except the “symbol“ is just one vertical slash. Three times.

With team spirit, you got the four guys tied together with rope, and you just kinda hold right, occasionally stopping to avoid obstacles. That‘s it. The voice acting on this is funny as shit though. I recommend checking it out solely for probably one guy trying to sound young. It‘s really funny.

With the last one, spinning, you press the left and right arrow keys as fast as you can to, well, spin.

After that, you play each one again, this time trying to beat “the evil brother‘s“ score to defeat him. It‘s not specified what said score is, but there is one. Supposedly.

All very one note minigames but worth the experience for that fantastic voice acting alone. I wish this post was a video. If I had a recording software i‘d stream this on youtube.

8. Im Niemandsland (In the Never-Realm) [Season 11]

This one is… an honest to god action rpg? Well, the „action“ is so clunky it may as well be turn based. You navigate either the forest or an ice cave to complete various fetch quests as Lloyd. You get exp from picking up collectibles and from defeating enemies. Your hp is so obscenely high you can eat attacks for breakfast. Or you get obliterated almost instantly. Depends.

There‘s ice samurai and wolves as enemies. The wolves actually made me feel bad, because you can oneshot them with a charged attack, and then they do this really pathetic whimper. Then there‘s “ice giants“ which are rock monsters that make buzzing sounds. You can kite these with your charged attack, which is the most fun i‘ve had over the course of the entire game. This does not say much.

As you do chores for Sorla and Nya, you encounter Akita in her wolf form, at which point the game starts playing episode audio of Lloyd naming her Red. Fun fun. After that, Akita follows you around, which is honestly precious.

Sometimes, when you accept or complete missions, the game has a seizure and crashes. Incredible.

Akita, your dps sucks. And most chores are just „collect wood“ over and over.

There‘s some vague semblance of a story, but not much. Collect wood for the fire! Oh wow, a white wolf! Oh no, Sorla‘s missing, go find her! Now Nya‘s missing, go find her!

My game crashed (again) on the rescue Nya mission, and then when I started again, Nya was there n gave me another rescue Sorla quest. I think these are randomly generated, for the most part.

There‘s entirely too much filler. For every “story“ mission, there were two side missions to complete first. And a story mission only amounts to the same fetch quest with one more box of flavor text. I kept playing for like, fifty minutes, I bet, and at some point i was just too bored.

Two maps, four enemy types, you learn spinjitzu at lv5 and it‘s free iframes and p much instakill for everything with a ridiculously short cooldown, so combat is a joke. Enemies scale with you, so why a level system?

The maps appear to be randomly generated, too, but following a pattern. You start at the bottom, make your way to a central area, and then have three paths to go down. These paths vary in length each time, and the longest typically features whichever objective you‘re after. This means there is  a lot of backtracking if you went down the wrong path. Hooray.

Boooooooring. Novel for like three minutes, but then it‘s just rinse and repeat. Maybe a „one and done“ type deal would‘ve been better.

I played until level seventeen. SEVENTEEN. Story wise, i got up to finding the land bounty, but after that…. Man i just can‘t. This game is so boring. At some point there started being three to four side missions between each main quest, and I was watching video essays on the side. I don‘t know for how long I played this, but it was over an hour. Not even the sunk cost fallacy could bring me to continue further.

Don‘t play this one just enjoy the screenshots of low poly akita.

9. Lloyd gegen Garmadons Motorrad-Gang (Lloyd versus Garmadon‘s Motorbike Gang) [Season 8]

A breath of fresh air after the slog that‘s the last one. Here we got a simple racing game. Press left and right to dodge obstacles such as cars or gang members in an autoscroller highway race track. You win once you catch up to Ultra Violet.

There‘s a couple power ups, such as speed boosts, shields, and a 5 second time reduction for a higher score. Nothing special, three difficulties, and i def zoned out playing.

10. Das Große Rennen (The Big Race) [Season 12]

A season 12 game when the website pretends that prime empire doesn‘t exist? Fun fun.

Here we have a racing game with… actual multiplayer? It has local multiplayer, and random matching. Did I play against actual people??? Did I obliterate some poor kids in the janky lego browser racing game??

The controls are, as expected, janky as hell. You can‘t turn properly and thus keep bumping into walls. Power ups (your typical shell and banana substitutes) are supposedly used by pressing the space bar, but they just kept getting used automatically.

You can unlock different cars based on all the vehicles featured in the season. I think this only changes the appearance and nothing else.

Is this what kids do now that spieleaffe is an endless pit of ads? I miss the good days of spieleaffe….

11. Chens Rückkehr (Chen‘s Return) [Season 4]

This is one of those “press left and right to dodge shit“ games like the bike gang one, except. It‘s zoomed so far in I can‘t actually see the obstacles?? What‘s happening here???

12. Morro greift an (Morro attacks) [Season 5]

It didn‘t load, what can I say. From the small preview video, it appears to be a balancing game though. Morro is attacking the bounty, press left and right so the Ninja don‘t fall off. Y‘kno, identical controls to half the games here.

13. Turnier der Tapferen [Tournament of the Brave] [Season 7/8]

Okay this one is a hot mess and it‘s actually super fun. You move with the arrow keys and use your weapon with the mouse (excellent design, I know). You play in an arena with five other (real, human) players and try to hit each other. Whoever gets most points wins. There‘s traps all over the arena, too.

I got dead last because this was my first time playing, but I did have fun. It‘s havoc. I was suprised to actually have a full party fill up so fast? Gg to the acronix player.

Oh yeah, this game has a full on character select! This is, in the end, just skins, cuz everyone starts with shurikens anyway. You pick up different weapons around the arena, such as swords, or that weird mace that lets you throw potions.

This one slaps actually. I saw one player with my sister‘s name which jumpscared me a lil. What are you doing here. Only my sibling is allowed to have that name.

Again, first one I had a blast playing. Rounds are 80 seconds, so you gotta play super aggressively if you want points. If you see someone play Acronix, Harumi, Ultra Violet, or Machia, you know they‘re good, cuz those characters are unlocked with points.

One time I even came in second!!

14. Kartenduell (Card duel) [Season 1]

This game uses the season 1 subtitle Year of the Snakes, yet has After the Blackout by The Fold, a Season 3 song, as the title theme. WHICH I DO NOT MIND BECAUSE AFTER THE BLACKOUT SLAPS. Okay. Glad we got this over with.

It‘s a rather simple card game. You put four cards from your collection in your deck, each with four attributes. One game is four rounds, where one attribute per round is compared between the card you and your opponent play. The higher attribute wins.

Which attribute gets compared is randomized at the start of a round, but in actuality, it‘s only the order. You always do all four in one game.

Whichever rounds you win gets you your opponent‘s cards. When you lose a round, you lose the card. Except not really. I dunno. Not all that special, except for the music. It‘s tolerable.

15. Rückkehr der Oni (Return of the Oni) [Season 10]

Another suprisinlgy fun one!

It‘s got “cutscenes“, as in, powerpoint style pans over show shots with corresponding audio, which were very silly. Just recapping the season 10 finale, of “oh no the oni are here. Fight them.“

Gameplay is in a circular arena. Oni enter from all sides, and you gotta fight them off. Controls are click for short attack, hold for charged kick. That‘s it. You can only move by attacking. Each attack propels you forward. Charged kicks send you flying. You get wreckt if you get surrounded so movement tech was actually pretty fun? Figuring out how to best manouvre yourself around with attacks n stuff.

There‘s a stamina system to attacks (stamina refills automatically and when you defeat enemies) but I barely noticed it. Additionally, you get a spinjitzu button that also charges when you defeat enemies, but more slowly. It makes you invincible for a bit, instakills all enemies you get in contact with, and lets you move consistently. P busted.

You have 6 lives in form of the Ninja. They all play the same, and when one gets defeated, the next one jumps in till you run out.

Since there‘s actual high score hunters for games like these, I bet they invented some insane niche techs. Congrats to them.

Once all your ninja are down, you get another powerpoint cutscene of them defeating the oni with the tornado of creation, and that‘s it.

P good time actually.

16.  Sumpf-Arena (Swamp-Arena) [Season 7]

Last but not least, we have a PVE game in the style of tournament of the brave. You play as Kai and fight your way through endless waves of snakes in one of two arenas for a highscore.  Control with arrow keys, attack with space bar, yadda yadda.

You can collect time blades as upgrades, but they‘re pretty confusing to use tbh? Just kinda like. Teleports and that‘s it. But weirder. You use them with the control key.

Multiple enemy types from itty bitty snakes to fire spitting machia copies to big axe wielders who kill you in two hits. It‘s decent.

And thus, I conclude my review of every single toggo ninjago game, excluding the one that didn‘t load. As browser games, they‘re all super simple. Some of them were still fun though, even if only for the three minutes they took to beat.

My favorites are definetly Tournament of the Brave, for a fun little PVP experience, and Escape from Djinjago, for having multiple gimmicks that made its stages non-repetitive and made me use my brain to some capacity.

My least favorite is In the Never-Realm, for being the longest and most boring game. Endless slog of repetitive sidequests.

The games for later seasons were definetly more impressive visually, and typically more expansive. This does not automatically make them good, though. Some older ones like Chen‘s Labyrinth were also fun.

And there you have it! Thank you toggo for setting me on the path to write this with the like, 2013 probably? Marathon rerun of the first two seasons. Also curse you. Also, why the hell doesn‘t season 12 exist on the website?

[loathemetc]

Debunking my own Deltarune Theory: The Old Chair

In my time as a Deltarune Theorist (trying to make it sound like this is my job) I’ve made some pretty bunk theories, either based on dumb assumptions, jumping the gun with missing evidence, etc. The worst is probably the one where I didn’t even really give a second thought to the Knight being anyone but Gaster, at this point I believe them to be seperate but y’know. But the one I wanna take time to tear apart is the one on The Old Chair because I’ll be honest it’s just like. A random connection I made in five seconds. With a lot of holes. Let’s look at those holes!

Let’s get the most important thing out of the way:

These are not the same fucking chair.

Like just look at them okay. I don’t know what else to say. They’re obviously different. Black legs instead of blue, square top instead of rounded. And there’s the fact that when Toby wants to show something from Undertale he WILL just reuse the same sprite.

Credit to Spriter’s Resource hi Spriter’s Resource I love you.

So okay. That kind of makes the whole theory bunk but let’s keep talking about it anyways. Another proposed theory I’ve seen is that it’s a chair from the hospital.

It’s... Closer. It’s at a different angle so that’d explain the sprite difference and the lighting difference can just be lighting obviously. And sure, even though most things in the Spamton Sweepstakes very obviously relate to Chapter 3, there’s nothing saying they do exclusively.

Is that conclusive? HELL NO!

And Speaking of things that aren’t conclusive, Seam’s warning about getting caught when the sun goes down isn’t very... Conclusive. What does that mean Seam. Are you just telling us to get home before dinner? Is something bad gonna happen in the dark world at night? What the hell is going on?? [Pretend I put an image of Kris doing the YIIK pose here]

The part where I start theory-ing again:

Heyyy it’s the Spamton banner. We missed you Spamton banner.

So what could Darker than Dark mean, exactly? Well I’d posit something but @snowysobsessions already posited it in this post which you should read right now or else the next paragraph isn’t gonna make sense go on read it do it.

So what it it could get darker than dark? I’d really love to see a secret boss sidequest involve creating a Neo Dark Fountain and then sealing it because you have to go to the Neo Dark World for something. Assuming there’s such thing as a Neo Dark World. I don’t think that’s going to happen at all but I do think it would be: Really Cool.

Here’s another random spitball. What if “What if it could get darker than dark” doesn’t actually refer to something we’re not already aware of? What if it just refers to the Dark Worlds? I mean, they’re already darker than dark, negative photon readings, can’t even see through them, warping reality somehow with how dark they are. What if this question was asked, by or to Gaster, before the infamous Entry No. 17? And the chair is like. I don’t know. A chair in his lab or something. I don’t know! I don’t know.

Let’s talk about the water thing while we’re here too.

I mentioned in an addendum to the chair post that the sound file that plays upon clicking on the chair is water.ogg, essentially the same water noises found in Waterfall’s trash zone in Undertale. But Deltarune has another, similar sound file, that also plays ocean-like noises, a bit more realistic ones, called ocean.ogg. Where does this play?

Upon entering the Dark World for the first time, cutting out just as Kris wakes up.

The fact that the dark fountains are called, well, FOUNTAINS, as well as the apparent relevance of the old song from the sea, it feels like there’s a definite theme of water going on in relation to the dark world. Why? Well... There’s not really enough evidence to say anything definitive.

Oh yeah, that guy.

This guy. Uh. Hm. In the last post I proposed that this could just be Spamton directing us away from things we aren’t meant to see. But honestly I don’t think so. The yellow and pink are on opposite sides from Spamton’s glasses, the same as IMAGE_FRIEND, the weird face from the mansion basement that follows the same filenaming scheme that is otherwise only used for “meta” aspects of the game (The gonermaker sequence, dogcheck, game over, the unused files of someone lost alone and calling for help). The filenames for this pair of eyes don’t give us much to work with, just eyes.png and face.ogg, but face.ogg is very notably not Spamton’s laugh. So I feel like we can rule it being Spamton off the table. 

I know a lot of people have associated it with the TV guy, but I feel like this has to be bigger than just that. King and Queen weren’t built on the “meta” aspects of the game like this thing is. FRIEND and the TV both have big smiles, although FRIEND’s is notably bigger. Wilder. 

With all these meta ties and direct connection to a page mentioning something darker than dark, something darker yet darker, I’m unfortunately only left able to ask “Could it be Gaster?”. Alternatively, someone we haven’t met yet related to Gaster. He did ask two people what they think, after all. But it’s all speculation at this point. Maybe it’s the fucking Knight. I don’t know. I really don’t know!

Last thing hold on.

I’m not gonna bother debunking “the shadow mantle could be the sheet on the chair” cause eh. Shadow mantle. Darker than dark. Sure, why not. It could happen. I’ve seen it proposed that King’s Cape is the shadow mantle and I feel the same about that. Sure. It could happen. I’m not stocking too much in either idea but I also don’t think they’re bad ideas. Could happen.

Actual Conclusion: I definitely think Chairiel Deltarune will appear in Chapter 3 in some capacity, but I definitely don’t think Chairiel Undertale will be the secret boss. And also some other conclusions, I don’t know, you read the post.

[wereallylostnowbois]

Chronos (Why)

Exploring what Chronos is and why he exists to no clear conclusion

Spoilers for Fractured Futures, Rage of Chronos, and Chapter 24

So for those of you who’re unaware Chronos is the primary antagonist and raid boss of the event Fractured Futures, he reappears in Rage of Chronos once more as the primary antagonist of the event. Additionally in the Priconn crossover event the fiend Aether takes on his form. This last one doesn’t hold any kind of lore significance I just thought it was neat.

Anyway, in Fractured Futures Chronos appears to Euden and seems to offer his time traveling abilities to assist Euden in saving Zethia by preventing her from being taken in the first place. This is, as one would expect, a ploy and Chronos is actually just attempting to hunt down and kill Zena. Its revealed in this event that Chronos is actually an amalgamation of the corpses five Greatwyrms from a world where Morsayati won and possessed Euden. 

Now. This makes a lot of sense in the context of these two specific events. Morsayati despises dragons, why wouldn’t he kill a bunch of them and then make an affront to the natural order of things? The questions for me arise with Chapter 24.

In Chapter 24 its revealed that the Bahamut we’ve by now grown familiar with has (or rather had, past tense) a body made from the deceased original Greatwyrms. This struck me as kind of uh, interesting. Y’know, seeing as that’s basically identical to how Chronos was made, except Chronos is made out of the de-powered modern Greatwyrms. Had the Greatwyrms managed to get back their powers from Elysium in this particular world Morsayati could have inadvertently constructed basically the perfect Bahamut vessel. 

Now, I should clarify that I don’t believe this to be Morsayati’s specific intention with creating Chronos. Its basically explicitly stated in Chronos Nyx’s dragon story that he was just constructed as a kind of affront to the natural order. Its just interesting to think about in terms of how Dragalia Lost’s multiverse works that in some world we’ll never hear about some instance of Morsayati may or may not have accidentally concocted the perfect Bahamut vessel. 

Most likely there wasn’t a specific developer intention for these characters to seem connected, but its a cool coincidence if nothing else.

Additional sidenote about Rage of Chronos bc im not making a second post for this:

In Rage of Chronos we don’t get any new lore about him, so there’s not really much to say on that subject, however you’ll remember the name he goes by at the beginning of the event is Malinda. Malinda isn’t a character we ever see in Dragalia, though she is confirmed to exist, but is one of the characters that usually appears alongside Vania. Vania exists in numerous other Cygames mobile games and I have a little mini-theory of sorts that due to the recurrence of Vania and Company with nearly identical backstories throughout these games all occur within the same multiverse. Cygames Extended Universe. Also seeing as Cygames has few qualms about reusing characters between games its likely we’ll see some familiar faces in whatever game they make next, if that offers you any solace about EoS.

[kyle-valenti]

burnout only feels like burning

2.7k / Summary: kyle valenti doesn't have the same quarantine as his friends; an exploration of kyle's trauma during covid as a doctor. (tw depression & other triggers you’d imagine with this subject)

read & comment/ ao3

A little like the virus itself, Kyle’s relationship with his mask begins with worry, annoyance, and then pain. He’s more than happy to have the proper N-95 mask as they begin to get their first case at Roswell General but then a couple more patients trickle in and within a few days his skin is irritated and itching. Maybe it’s the news, maybe it’s the texts from his friends that he’s increasingly missing, but when the Regiment starts spouting off about how COVID is a joke he thinks it might be affecting his nerves too. By week three his former red mark left by the mask has become a permanent feature to his face and by week five it’s not a mark but a bruise instead. Blisters and cracks in his skin litter his hands from over-washing. His feet become so overused the pads of his feet feel numb and bruised and he wears through an entire pair of shoes.

Positivity has fled from his life by week seven and now he’s inside of a survival mode he’s never experienced. He thought after last year he’d be used to anything the world (or universe, rather, given all these aliens) could throw at him. Now what feels foolish, he had believed that there was nothing that could be worse than the previous pain of losing a patient or finding out his father had experimented on people’s lives. 

When he’s out of ventilators and CPAP machines because Albuquerque needs them more and he has to choose whether or not to save the life of an eighty five year old or a thirty two year old he remembers from high school, he breaks.

 Guilt is one thing, grief is another, but the pure rage he feels knowing that Max Evans is out on the town patrolling as some fucking cop and not someone who could heal most of this hospital makes him want to commit actual murder. Maybe trading the blood of an alien on his hands would feel less heart-wrenching. But no. Max had brought back Rosa and had paid the price. Quelling his anger, he went back to work.

 He slept at the hospital most nights in the height of it. Sure the couch was rough, but it was better than the other on-call doctor beds down the hall. Three twelve hour ER shifts of a usual work week doubled to five days of thirteen hour shifts. Soon there’s a week where he pulls double shifts for an entire week when one of his nurses is urgently hospitalized herself. Hospital directors had left them with no PPE except contaminated masks to reuse. Maria, Isobel, and Rosa are in the forefront of a drive to make and donate masks to his hospital after some social media posts that he doesn’t even see until the cloth masks arrive and his medical assistants give him their handwritten note. It makes him smile, but smiling feels so foreign that he almost wants to break from that.

 Visitors are no longer allowed which means Kyle isn’t allowed to use his bedside manner to comfort the family of patients. He has to facetime mothers, spouses, and children and hold the phone over a patient who can’t breathe without machine assistance and pretend that everything is fine and that there’s still hope despite the hypoxia and lack of rising vitals. Ignore that if the patient goes into cardiac arrest more than once, the kindest thing to do given prognosis is to let the patient pass. Resuscitation and DNR (a patient’s begging request to not be resuscitated) becomes a word he uses in his daily work and not simply for intense surgeries.

 Exhaustion isn’t a deep enough adjective to describe the fugue state he goes into. File to file, room to room, ventilator to next… he isn’t surprised when his body starts to wear down. When he no longer feels hunger and instead feels all too hot and dizzy. Telling himself it’s just because of how much he’s exerting his body while covered in layers and layers of protective clothing doesn’t help the fact that he’s starting to have more trouble breathing as he walks the hallways at a fast pace. When he begins to cough, he does what he promised himself he wouldn’t do and drives out post-shift to the desert cabin of Max Evans.

 Part of him is too desperately tired to knock, but when he arrives on the property with the cop car idle and the house dark and at peace for the night, his fury greets him with the embrace of a long-lost friend. Knuckles pound at the wood and Max answers the door with surprise and a general look of defense, and Kyle tries not to immediately punch him in the face at the fact he looks like he had woken up from a comfortable sleep.

 “Heal me.” Kyle manages to spit out.

 “I—what’s wrong?”

 “Beginning stages of respiratory distress, fever, nausea—what do you fucking think?”

 “Kyle—,” Max starts to say, the hesitation deepening, and that does it.

 “No. I have not asked you for anything in all of this, Evans. Anything!” He shouts, voice hoarse. “Not when people got sick, not when they started dying, not even when we started having to let people die on purpose. And you know what? I wasn’t going to even come and ask you now, but I can’t get sick when I’m the one here fucking saving lives out of the two of us and you’re just cruising the streets handing out goddamn traffic tickets.”

 Max’s face isn’t stony like it usually is when Kyle’s yelling at him; this time it’s crushed and guilty but not nearly enough. “What kind of hours you work this week, Evans? A nice 8 to 4? Did you get facetime with Isobel or your mom, maybe binge through a few books and movies after you’re home? Did you sit down and eat a nice dinner and or go over to drink a few beers with Guerin since you can’t get sick? Even get a nice eight hours of sleep in your own bed in your nice quiet home?”

 No response.

 “I am not asking to sequence your DNA like Liz. All I am asking is for you to let me heal people since you don’t want to.”

 A night breeze is all that makes noise for a moment as Kyle catches his breath and glares at Max, who stands quietly but is staring down at his boots before he finally looks up and nods. Max steps forward then, and Kyle sees that his eyes are actually filled with tears. Temper deflating, but still not subsiding entirely, given that not much else is able to be done; Kyle lets Max place a hand on his shoulder and feels the extremely weird feeling spread throughout his body. Something more electric than anything else, which God knew made a lot more sense concerning his powers and how the body operated with electrical nerve impulses, but that is a train of thought better left for another day. He wants to just walk away, and he almost does, but he still mutters a “thank you” before he does so.

When his nurse dies a few days later and he watches as the staff double bag her body to take to the morgue, he escapes to his office and crashes on his couch with sobs. There’s no one here to support him. He can’t go to his mother’s home and collapse into one of her comforting embraces without risking infecting her. He can’t get wasted at the Wild Pony with Maria when it’s closed. He can’t visit Rosa or Arturo at the Crashdown. Keeping his friends and family safe meant keeping them away from him. Keeping them safe meant he needed to stop pushing his head into his hands to try and control the sound of his crying and get back to work at saving the lives around them.

He gets put on leave by the hospital administrator when he’s almost arrested for decking Wyatt Long in the hospital parking lot as the idiot stood outside with a sign rallying Regiment members to make sure the hospital was told it was killing people on purpose for the election. If Jenna hadn’t been the officer on duty he would have been cuffed and put on record, jeopardizing his license, but there was some self-preserving part of him that desperately wished for his practice to be over anyway. He’s not even sure how Jenna handles it, honestly, all he remembers is her dropping him off at his house from her patrol car like she had been nothing but an uber. No matter how angry and adamant he gets, his boss refuses to bend, saying it’s for his own good given the connections the Long’s have in the town and how Kyle has worked almost 74 of the past 76 days.

Alex is the first to visit him, unannounced. When the doorbell rings Kyle is mindlessly pretending to watch some tv show in his living room that’ll distract him from his consuming thoughts about patients, so he doesn’t get up to answer. He checks his silent phone to see if he was forewarned of a visitor but sees nothing. Unsure if it’s his boss or a patient’s family, he forces himself up onto his sore feet and opens the door after grabbing a regular mask off the coffee table. Black face mask on and standing further out from the door on the porch is Alex, the usual gruff hello turned into something soft. “Hey.”

Kyle heaves a sigh. He had wondered when the pity visits would begin. “Hey. You really shouldn’t be around me, you know.”

“I’m clearly a minimum of eight feet away in an open space while masked.” Alex smarts back. “Either way, I’m worried about you.”

Scoffing, he shakes his head. “Don’t fucking worry about me. Worry about getting sick, because if I have to see another person I care about die, I--,”

“Kyle.” the other says too kindly, the sort of pacifying voice Alex reserved for only the most dire situations. “I have no idea what you’re dealing with in specifics, but my experiences do overlap with yours in some places.”

“And?”

Maybe it came out a little too rude, because Alex raises a brow, but then sighs instead. “And I’m just checking in to make sure you know people care about you.”

“Thanks, Manes.” Kyle huffs in return, managing not to roll his eyes because focusing on being blunt and abrasive was so much easier.

“Just be careful.” Alex interjects before Kyle could close the door and turn back to his show. “Dealing with the trauma of what you’re dealing with gets dark very quickly.”

“Because I punched Wyatt Long?” he spits back sarcastically.

“No, because the suicide rates for healthcare professionals are drastically increasing along with the rates of PTSD diagnoses.” Alex says flatly, ever one to be unfazed by sarcasm. “And I’ve lost more active duty members to suicide than I have combat.”

Kyle pauses, caught. Maybe Alex had known he would be, because there isn’t some way he can give a smile and reassuring wave with him like he could his mother or Liz. While Kyle hadn’t actively thought of a plan, he couldn’t pretend he had noticed signs of depression the second he was alone in his house. 

“The quiet is the worst part, right?” Alex says, all but reading his mind. “Not always because of the flashbacks, although those are horrible, but because if things are quiet then--,”

“--people are dying.” Kyle finishes, his voice raspier by the end of the three words. “Yeah, well, mine still are.”

“They’re going to.” Is what felt like a cold response, but somehow gave Kyle the understanding he’s been craving. “They’re going to die and because of your profession you’re going to be able to save some of them. Which will make you think you’re responsible to save all of them and because you’re a good person you’re going to feel guilty in ways that no one will understand for being human and failing to.”

“Failing is all I do lately.” Kyle replies. “Usually the wins feel higher than the losses as a doctor, but with this-- and no one outside of it cares. They go outside and yell about how this is about a fucking election and when it’s not the patients, it’s the hospital pretending they don’t have enough money to buy us proper protection. Or the government saying this will all go away and that it’s just a light cold.”

Alex gives a small nod. “I know. I also know telling you the same advice that you’d give another doctor of trying not to burn out and instead taking a small rest is useless. So I’m just going to drop off these dvd’s and make you report back to me the difference when you’re done.”

Star Trek and Star Wars. Kyle finds a smile tug on his lips. Alex leaves with one on his as well.

When he gives a response to Alex a few days later on how Star Wars is better not more than a few minutes later Deluca is texting him with recommendations on joining her Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch. There’s something sweet about the fact that people have been clearly talking about him, even if definitely borderline creepy with how nosy his circle of friends can be, but he sighs and lets Maria add him to the group chat she has with Rosa and Liz where they review each episode after the fact and even chimes in every now and then. Isobel gets added not long after due to an Instagram story Maria shares and then the group has moved onto Friends after everyone shoots down Liz for suggesting Grey’s Anatomy on behalf of Kyle. Alex is also in there, even if it’s rare he chimes in with an opinion, but once they start Friends his commentary about how much he hates Ross that gets the entire group riled up does tend to make him laugh. Even Kyle agrees with Forest-- whose opinion had been shared by Alex-- that Chandler had all too many queer-coded scenes with Joey.

His mother facetimes him daily, which given how they both don’t exactly go out much starts to become monotonous, until she begins to give in and talk about memories she has of their father. Tidbits she never would have shared with him about their adult life when he was a child or teenager. He in turn facetimes Rosa and shares some of the memories of their father as well, which as much as she tries to pretend she doesn’t want for Arturo’s sake she clearly does with the million questions she asks every single time and the small smile she gives him at the end of their calls.

Liz updates him on her work which is a nice reprieve from everyone’s normalcy and lack of medical jargon sometimes, especially when she gives him inside info on covid vaccine studies not yet published to the general public yet. Everything in him wants this more than anything else in the world right now and he texts her almost every day asking if she’s heard more news even when he knows things take time. She’s a good sport about everything, even when he shares in a very angry rant about Max Evans and how they could have helped so many more people so much more quickly with his DNA-- however selfish that might have been.

When he goes back to work, he feels refreshed, even when it makes things hit like a freight train once more. Lost in a sea of inadequacy, his feelings extend past the pandemic. Even when things return to a level of normalcy and the cases subside he gets alien medical drama thrown in his face once more, and he starts to wonder if he’ll ever recover. If he was wrong to choose this calling. If the fact he can’t help Max or Maria is a sign from above or his father that it’s time to make some career move or change location like his mother and Liz. But, like he tells Michael Guerin. He can’t think he can face his future children and say he walked away from this. Or let people die by quitting, just like Rosa warns. And so he stays and tries to heal both other people and himself.