#there are many things in blaseball where I care way too much about my personal interpretations

[caligulalotus]

i am volatile. violated. my body was not always my own // the boston garden loves you: a playlist

a playlist about the boston garden, and how it loves its flowers

track list below the cut

that unwanted animal-the amazing devil

“oh, and you rip my ribcage open/and devour what's truly yours/and our screaming joins in unison/i cry out to the lord/'cause if we join our hands in prayer enough/to god, i imagine it all starts to sound like applause”

the spine song-cake bake betty

“and when i have died, will you use my spine/to swing from tree to tree in search of places pleasing to the eye?“

call me pretty-elliotly

“call me yours, i’ll call you mine/tracing flowers down my spine/make me a god/you’re fanged and clawed“

fight for me-aliceband

“i’ll make you cry for me and lie for me/and bleed for me and die for me/but most i'll make you right for me/i'm sure i'm right for you/i'll cover up your eyes and make you work/i'll rob you of your soul and make it worse“

all or nothing-the dream masons

“i’d sooner give it all away than only just give half of me/it’s all or nothing/either i’m worth it or i’m not.”

evelyn-kim tillman, silent films

“and i've seen decay/give way to growth/and make the most of nearly nothing“

i wanna be adored-remastered-the stone roses

“i don't need to sell my soul/he's already in me/i wanna be adored“

body terror song-ajj

“i'm very sorry that you have to have a body/one that will hurt you, and be the subject of so much of your fear/it will betray you, be used against you, then it'll fail on you my dear“

bloody nose-jack conte

“left you there for rot/all my fears are overgrown/will someone burn this grove?”

the horror of our love-ludo

“i want you stuffed into my mouth/hold you down and tear you open/live inside you/love, I'd never hurt you/but I'll grind against your bones until our marrows mix/i will eat you slowly”

strangler fig-the crane wives

“climb me, climb me to the canopy/higher, higher 'til there's nothing left of me/tell me/tell me what you see/desire, desire 'til there's nothing left of me, oh/you’re the culprit/so don't blame me/when I'm gone and you have naught/when you're hollowed out and empty”

envy green-the arcadian wild

“envy green, growin' ivy vines that hold me/up they go, past the collar bones and freckles on my nose/higher, higher 'til the words I tell myself are covered/envy green”

black rose-eliza rickman

“pray, baby, pray/over our sins/and oh, we'll grow our own/don’t let him know/don’t let it show/you reap what you sow/take this black rose”

back to the ground-the crane wives

“little buds make their graves as the warmth inside us fade/but I still don't know shit about letting go/so I know you're not the one/use me up and when you're done/just give me back, give me back to the ground”

big god-florence + the machine

“you need a big god/big enough to fill you up/shower your affection, let it rain on me/pull down the mountain, drag your cities to the sea/shower your affection, let it rain on me/don’t leave me on this white cliff/let it slide down to the, slide down to the sea”

[thehallstara]

Blaseball Fic Recs

I really wasn't planning on doing one of these but then I realized that I had pretty much done half the work already when hen was looking for some so might as well!! I tried to keep this to one per person and also have a wide selection of teams.

Black Hole Oral History Project by waltztangocache - Genuinely there are so many things by hen I wanted to pick (like so much left to recover which you need to read) but this one is just such an excellent use of form that I had to rec it. Pedro Davids conducts interviews in the black hole and it's EXCELLENT.

A face for radio by Impernia - such a fun and fascinating exploration of when the sim broke during the last short circuit and teams were playing double games.

voices on the other line by papouleaf - human socks maybe irm and mx chicago have a conversation and I think about it far too much.

it could be better by oxicleanmoron - simple and sweet, Brock helps bertie with recarcinizing and also I cry.

life's a beach and then you die by h4wkguy - this fic is criminally underrated. Vela Meadows helps Paula Reddick out of the Hellmouth and man does it hurt!

here, beneath my lungs by babytriumphant - again, robbie is one of those people where there are SO MANY fics i could recommend (tatbt is a goddamn classic), and to be frank once you finish this you should check out the rest of the chicago, in brief series because i genuinely could have pulled any one of them for this, but this is one i go back to a lot.

ORPHEUS by nix/moonofpluto/geometea - gd knows i love a good twine and man is this a GOOD ONE. son jenson is coming for your heart along with her own and you will be stunned.

The Crabitat Language, Attunement, Understanding, and Unity, Standard by cylite is one continuous conversation flowing over 24 seasons and it’s such an interesting exploration of different relationships amongst the crabs.

F. All of the Above and albatross by queeneevee - okay i know i said i was sticking to one per person but i truly couldn’t decide between these two by cola for different reasons. F. is one of the smartest and coolest blaseball fics i’ve ever read and albatross shattered me into a million pieces and then rebuilt me back up in 1212 words and you should read them both.

Apotheosis by Silvereye - deification and mytholigization of dead players is something i think about a lot in blaseball and few fics i’ve read explore it more succinctly than this one about Landry.

the valor i have won by marquis - okay, yes i know i keep saying this, but damn blink is another person where i genuinely could have picked SO many fics of theirs for this (cough go read roots) but when it came down to it i had to go with this one. i’ve read it like. at least three times and it’s been like a shot through the heart for each and every one. it’s the story of don mitchell in the seasons leading up to his vaulting and it’s devastating in all the right ways.

the downswing by waveridden - y’all know what i’m about to say– there’s so many fics i could have chosen but ultimately a year on i still love this fic so much and it still informs how i think about blooddrain to this day. SUCH an excellent fic if you can handle the gore.

Letters at the End of the World by athenadykes - pretty much what the title implies. heartbreaking, devastating, perfection.

all in, palms out, by Flavortext - man listen i think about this fic, okay? what a wonderful piece about how knight triumphant’s relationships have changed and shifted leading up to blaseball and it just really gets me.

that which you cannot kill by Lenasai - a twine fic that makes excellent use of the form and made me care about the wyatts, which is no small feat.

The Graveyard Shift. by theclowne - pedro davids being the one unalted go crab left is a fact that kills me and man does this fic ever hammer that fact home in a way that is simultaneously hopeful and devastating.

you are sundae by porcupine (jetset) - man oh man this fic. it’s about all three sundaes (roscoe of the wings, vess of the worms, and tamsie of the pre-history crabs) and it is fascinating and devastating and just stunningly good writing.

Flames To Sun To Shadows by Awesome_Sauce432 - have you ever wanted to learn about the wondrousness that is kaj statter jr? this is THE fic for you. 20k of just genuine fun and delight and incredible character study. 

eloise butterworth breaks the world by cyndakip - sc03 makes another appearance!! again, just a truly intriguing exploration of the bugs that happened that circuit with some delightful characterization to wrap it up.

drift by baliset - okay first i feel like i need to give an honorary shoutout to lucky people because that fic made sob, but continuing the theme of exploration of bugs, this is all about shaquille torres dying during the grand unslam and how that might have gone and man it is just so good.

the many lives of zack sanders by dasyuridae - okay yes this is unfinished and yes i am biased because dasy is my very good friend but you should read it regardless because this is THE zack fic for me i adore her so greatly.

last but not least there’s this quiz by barry. not a fic in the traditional sense but one of my favourite pieces of blaseball fanwork period you have to give it a shot

[everygame]

Blaseball (Web) 

Developed/Published by: The Game Band Released: 20/07/2020 Completed: n/a Completion: Maxed everything in the shop. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Alright, if you’re here there are two options:

You already love Blaseball and just like reading about it.

You have no idea why people are obsessed with Blaseball.

Now, in the grand tradition of my article on Cinco Paus, because it turns out this tumblr shouldn’t just be about me finishing games and then complaining about how they failed me, I present:

Blaseball or: How You Learn To Stop Hating The Fact The Canadian Team Is Called The “Moist Talkers” And Love A Game That’s Usually Sold As A Communal Storytelling Experience (As Wank As That Sounds)

There’s a challenge here. Blaseball, once you’re in, makes you want to immediately gush about the cool things that are happening in the game, to tell the story of it, but unless you’re definitely tuned in to it, I think it can be somewhat alienating. Like here’s what I want to say, right?

That after the Raptors went out of the NBA playoffs I stopped caring (this is not entirely true; I stopped after the Nuggets put the Clippers out because spite/the lols) and was kind of looking for something else to obsess over in a not-too-active fashion. You see, what kind of got me into sports, as much as learning to enjoy the actual games, is the… theorycrafting? I might be using the term wrong. But it’s looking at the schedules and thinking, “ok, if they beat them, then they’re here, but if they get beat, then they might struggle there” or “trading X player for Y would be the best move… will we do it? Can we do it?”

It’s part of the reason why this year’s NBA bubble was such a success--they created a play-in situation for a group of teams on the edge of the playoffs, and then even though I don’t really care about any of the teams involved, there was so much drama, and so many ways for things to go, that you could spend ages just thinking about how X thing had to happen for Y thing to occur and then get excited if it happened or have to recalculate.

So: Blaseball. It is, ostensibly, a game in which you gamble on baseball blaseball games. I mean for the most part, I will be clear with you, that is it. It’s a game where you make bets and use your winnings to increase your ability to make bigger bets. It’s not even a particularly effortful example of this. There’s no clicker mechanics outside of one involving peanuts that turned out not to do anything, and all games are pretty clearly given odds so you can mostly fire and forget.

However. The thing you have to do with blaseball is actually the thing I have to do with a sport: pick a team and care. It’s not a baseball blaseball betting sim. It’s a sport fan experience. I say experience, not sim, because you will not be pretending to be a fan. You will be a fan, and if it’s for a made up team, who cares? 

I think for a lot of people (the kind of nerds who play this kind of game) that’s a novel experience and I think that for people like me (who like sports) there’s an immediate sense that people are being ironic. You know; “blaseball” doesn’t feel that far from saying “sportsball” and I can’t guarantee that a lot of folk aren’t enjoying it… wrong. But then I also feel like people enjoy actual sports wrong so fuck it (I’d just warn you that if you go hard and join the discord--which is kind of necessary--you might find some people… annoying).

So you might think I’ve just described a few things at cross purposes there: I said you’ve got to be a fan for this to work, but then I also said that the NBA bubble succeeded because it made me care about teams I didn’t care about because of theorycrafting. Well, not exactly: what I’m saying is that in this game you’re going to need one (the ability to be a fan) to make the other pop.

I’m lucky here, because I’m Canadian (among other things) immediately and violently defending the one Canadian team in the thing is instant. I don’t need to put any effort in. I’ve never been the kind of guy who could just pick any team because I like the look of them, maybe you are or maybe you’re actually going to have to live in Charleston to want to support the Shoe Thieves, but let me say: if you are not American, the only correct decision is to support the Moist Talkers despite their terrible name (that I have come to terms with.)

Anyway, now I’ve given you the background, let me explain what happened last season to my team.

During a game, an legendary undead pitcher swapped places with our worst pitcher before, in another game, swapping places with a dog who used to be owned by one of our previous players. Then our fans started a campaign to make sure our best pitcher, who was trapped inside a peanut, would be idolised enough that they’d meet the “Monitor” a huge squid god, which most people assumed would kill them. At the end of the season, the squid cracked open our pitcher’s peanut shell, chose not to eat them and as a result saved them from the end of the post-season, where a vengeful peanut god turned all the players trapped in peanut shells (or, uh, who had Peanut in their name) into an evil team who then played the season champions in a RPG battle-style blaseball game (with hit points and everything) and cursed them. Then, at the end of the season blessings were handed out and thanks to having our best pitcher and receiving and absurd four blessings (including one which increased the size of one of our batters and one that gave a player a fishing net) we were suddenly one of the best teams in the league… with the danger that we might actually win the next season and be forced to fight the peanut god.

Now, as I said above, there’s a fair chance that seemed like absolute drivel to you. And even if it is exciting, I think the most important thing to do is to scroll back up and look at the screenshots and remember that the game doesn’t really have any graphics. Blaseball games occur in a tiny window with a diamond graphic, and so it’s a bit like watching just the corner of the screen in a baseball game. It is not particularly entertaining to watch games (although you can learn how to be captivated by it anyway). The game also, despite not being anything, can take up a massive amount of mental real-estate because you’re going to be checking in on it every hour of almost every day even though all you’re doing each time is clicking ten things and checking scores. It’s probably much too much, and it gets worse when you start to engage with the discord, because as a fan you really have to co-ordinate how to vote for blessings to make sure your team is always improving and you’re raising money for a good reason.

Alright, by this point it’s almost sounding like I’m trying to talk you out of getting into it, and I *do* recommend you don’t sicken yourself of it too quickly by checking it all the time. But most importantly I sort of glossed over what the genius aspect of Blaseball is: that being a fan has a weird, roundabout effect on how well your team does, and that reflects the fact that being a sports fan is not passive. When you watch a game you’re somehow putting everything into it even though you can’t affect anything. It’s why you spend all that time theorycrafting. Here, you, as a group, pool the votes you’ve spent all week raising money for and try and make your team what you want it to be. You don’t get to change what’s going on in a game like it’s Twitch Plays Baseball, or something. That wouldn’t be a fan. In Blaseball, instead, what you do is you try and make your dreams real via collective wishing. It’s only the slightest step up from just being a fan of a real team, and it gets to the heart of the communal experience of being a fan.

If I was the NBA, the NFL or very specifically the MLB I would 100% be looking at Blaseball and how to learn from it. I think there’s a crass version of it--imagine fans of teams in the NBA bubble could have voted to like… make sure their team got the nicest hotel rooms, or nicer meals or something--but giving fans a way to boost their team (outside of the brute force of their psychic power in a home game) by, I don’t know, checking into an app or otherwise engaging is a truly interesting (and honestly kind of disturbing, for people who hate the implications for tracking) concept.

Anyway. Try Blaseball! Pick a team, bet based on the odds, invest in snake oil, idol the best pitcher every game you check, but don’t check too much (and invest in the pitcher pendants, once you’re maxed buy votes and join the discord to find out what your team is voting for/get involved in the conversation. That’s it. But it’s pretty cool.

Will I ever play it again? I mean, it still feels a bit rich to say I’m playing this but I’m invested at least until the Moist Talkers win a season. Which could be this season. I’m really interested to see how much The Game Band expand this, too--I can think of a lot of ways that fans/players can be ever more empowered, but I’m interested in how carefully they could destroy the balance, and so many ways this could simply be more entertaining to look at and engage with (I mean the fact that you have to go to external sites for things like future schedules is kind of wack imho.)

Final Thought: There’s a ton of other stuff people like about this game--making up stories about the players, who they are, drawing them--and the nice thing is I don’t give a flying fuck about any of that and I don’t really have to. You can completely ignore the wiki’s fanfiction if you like and just deal with the reality of the game and how you personally react to it. Or you can really get into it and care about it way more than what’s actually happening on the field. I don’t care, I’m not your dad.

Even if I did just spend a long time shouting at you about sports.

[lyntendoswitch]

At the tail end of 2020 I discovered the video content of Tim Rogers who has inspired me to also voice my game opinions in an unnecessarily verbose and personal way. I don’t recommend clicking on the read more, but if you’d like to read a little bit about the best games I played this year, go on ahead.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch 9. A Short Hike 8. Disco Elysium 7. Personal 5 The Royal 6. Persona 3 Dancing In Moonlight 5. Vestaria Saga War of the Scions 4. Ring FIt Adventure 3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2. Hades 1. Animal Crossing New Horizons

2020 found me with an unprecedented amount of free time. I spent most of this year working for the government (a job with a very small brain effort that left me with evenings and weekends free to do whatever the hell). Additionally, I spent most of the year in quarantine with video games as my true, real friend and life companion. Compiling this list gave me more titles than ever to choose from, so I feel better about my list than ever. So here are the best games that I played this year.

Before I get into the top 10 I want to give 4 honourable mentions.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim This is the most recent game I played since making this list. I loved so many things about this game - the soft art style, the harsh music, the convoluted crazy plot. I love the aesthetic of this game and loved the characters - I believe it is rare to have an anime game where none of the characters irritate you. I even loved the combat, although I did not think I would. Something about shooting so very many missiles is so satisfying even when you don’t exactly know what is going on in the screen. The final battle in this game was definitely my favourite moment in this game - it was stressful, it was engaging, it was so extremely fun. The tragedy of this game comes down to personal taste. All time travel stories with complex timelines are bound to fall apart eventually, because no writer can keep all the threads together in a logical sense. 13 sentinels had so many story beats, plot twists, betrayals, and sci-fi tropes crammed into their storyline that I knew halfway through the story that there was no way they would be able to resolve all of it in a fulfilling way. I was, unfortunately, right - the ending explanation for all the chaos is, in my (correct) opinion, extremely lame. However, I certainly had fun on the journey.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses: Ashen Demons DLC I did not place this on my ranking since it is not really fleshed out enough to be considered its own game (unlike in previous years, where I have confidently but the Splatoon 2 Octoling Expansion as a separate title from Splatoon 2). However, this blog is, above all else, a Fire Emblem stan account, and I will not NOT talk about Fire Emblem. I do not care for the Abyss house. I think the characters are too close to being plucked out of the Fire Emblem Fates universe for comfort, and I mean this to be as profound an insult as possible. These characters are gimmicks above all else. I also do not care for the expanded lore that the sewer city brings to Garreg Mach. The idea of a centralized church school army is already so unstable, and to have a population of rat people living under it makes the whole foundation of the world crumble a little. However, the story and gameplay of the Ashen Demons DLC added something that the base game did not, which is challenge. (As an aside, I play on normal mode and am aware that there is challenge available to me if I wish for it.) FE3H offers you so many characters, so many paralogues, so many opportunities for training and stat increases, that eventually plot missions become completely boring. Ashen demons limiting everyone to new and interesting classes, limiting your available units, and preventing any sort of training made the chapters fun again. I found the chapter where you were supposed to outrun a golem before some gates closed fun as hell - it was my favourite part of the entire side story. 

Kentucky: Route Zero I played this game in February, and I remember not liking it at any point. It is confusing, disorienting, and lacked a clear goal. However, it has now been 10 months and I still think about it constantly - both the vignettes presented in it, and the way it made me feel. The Besties podcast made an excellent point about this game when they said that no one who plays this game ever compares it to other games - only books, movies, or paintings. The whole game is so fascinating and sticks with you - the wretched circle of a highway, the horse funeral. My favourite part is the live performance you attend at a run down diner with your party of four as the only audience. It is so quiet and contemplative and melancholy, and the scene is absolutely perfect. Kentucky Route Zero might be my favourite high concept artsy abstract artwork ever.

Blaseball As with everyone, it is difficult to call Blaseball a game. As the website says, it is a cultural event that I am so happy to participate in. I am so happy to have found a piece of media to fill the aching void that left by Homestuck when it ended, then re-opened the wound with their awful post-epilogue novel. I deleted my Twitter account this summer because I was tired of being angry and doomscrolling. And then, after Chris Plante on the Besties told me about Blaseball, I happily remade a Twitter account that only followed the official Blaseball account, the devs, and the numerous RP accounts. The quality of life improvement that having simulated, pleasant, hilarious social media to check every day is indescribable. It helped me cope with a rough life transition. Thank you, Blaseball. My favourite moment of 2020 is the 11pm boss battle of Shoe Thieves vs The Shelled One’s Pods.

And now....... The List.

10. What Remains of Edith Finch The start of 2020 was incredible because games journalism websites were churning out endless top 10 lists for both the end of 2019 as well as the end of the decade. I religiously picked through all of these lists and wrote down a list of 30 best indie games of this past decade that I missed out on for whatever reason. It was my first and last experience with a backlog - previously, I would simply impulse purchase games I really wanted to play, and I would not rest until the game is beaten. Having a backlog of things to try stressed me out endless and it dampened the impact of almost all of these quirky 1-6 hour indie experiences. However, not even the stress of meeting a self-imposed quota could dampen the impact of What Remains of Edith Finch. Exploring this house and playing through its various scenarios was so fascinating and beautiful. For me, the most impactful moment of the game was playing as the little girl who became an owl who became a sea serpent. That was when I realized I was not playing something that I would be thinking about for a very long time.

9. A Short Hike A Short Hike was the very first game I played off my backlog list of Best Indie Games. And boy, is it ever. This game takes 2 hours to finish but is absolutely saturated with heart and the exploration makes those 2 hours feel like you have been on a much longer and more fulfilling journey than you believed possible with so few hours. It is Animal Crossing and Legend of Zelda combined, condensed, and polished into a beautiful pearl. I was so instantly in love with the characters and loved doing the little side quests. I also loved getting totally lost because I wanted to see how far I could swim and ended up on a different part of the island. The most impactful moment of this game is its finale, which I won’t spoil, but it is absolutely incredible.

8. Disco Elysium Many people more eloquent than me have said great things about Disco Elysium, and they are all correct. As someone who loves character building and creating a character to roleplay instead of playing as myself in a game, I have never been more enabled to do just that than Disco Elysium. The mystery was so cool, the mechanics are exactly what I like, the exploration is great. The one drawback of this game is that I literally cannot remember a single song from it. Maybe it had an amazing OST? Every game that is released nowadays has to have an amazing OST. There is so much reading in this game that the music really has to be unintrusive, and so it faded right into the background and out of my memory. I love that you could create your own persona in the game, but that you find your identification later and discover who you were before. Also, I would die for Kim Kitsuragi. The finale of this game also kicks ass - I will not spoil it but there is a moment that is so quiet and intimate that it took my breath away. What an amazing experience.

7. Persona 5: The Royal In 2017, I did something that is not the deciding factor, but definitely contributed to, my being sent to hell after I die. I was in an unhappy relationship and really wanted out, but my boyfriend at the time had a PS4 and I did not, and I really wanted to play Persona 5. As such, when he got the game and I borrowed it, I tried to finish it as quickly as possible so that I could give it back and break up with him. To my dismay, Persona 5 is upwards of 80 hours long, and I was burned out long before it was over. I finished the game with such resentment in my heart that I could not fathom why anyone would like it. As someone who is older, wiser, PS4-er, and in a better mental state, I decided to give P5R a try. Playing the remake at a much slower pace and really contemplating the story and characters made for a totally different and much more pleasant experience. I finally was able to shed my dislike for these characters who held me hostage 3 years ago and really appreciate them. Additionally, the new content they added to the original was SO good. The new music in Mementos makes that whole section bearable!! Akechi’s entirely reworked social link!! Maruki is one of Atlus’s most interesting characters, and the final dungeon was so so so interesting!! I am profoundly sad that I can’t recommend this game to anyone because 120 hours is just prohibitively long. Most impactful moment: when Akechi joins the party and he is like, totally feral, lol

6. Persona 3: Dancing In Moonlight Every once in a while my palms start to itch because it has been entirely too long since I’ve played a rhythm game. This palm itch feeling sunk me deep into Theatrhythm Final Fantasy back in 2017, and this feeling forced me to impulse buy Persona 3 Dance. I am furious that I liked this game so much, because I know it was created simply to extract money from fools like me. The story was so blatant about it! “It’s a dream, ok? We’re all dancing because it’s a dream and none of this matters. Go play a song, idiot.” I’m not even angry at this - I almost respect the hustle. Additionally, it was so wonderful to hang out with the Persona 3 crew again. I did also play Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight, but since I had already spent a hundred and twenty hours with the phantom thieves, there was no feeling of being reunited like with P3D. Also, in my mind palace, I consider P3D to have “actually happened”, and P5D to be the money grab hustle. S.E.E.S. is a cohesive unit. If Mitsuru Kirijo says it is time to dance, then dance we shall. I cannot be made to believe that Ryuji, Futaba, or Makoto will be compelled to dance even in a dream. Finally, having Elizabeth as your velvet room attendant did wonders. If there is a line between being a loveable eccentric and being annoying, Elizabeth tiptoes just around the former, whereas the twins are squarely located in the latter. The remixes in P3D also all kick ass (Burn My Dread Novoiski Mix? Deep Mentality Lotus Juice Mix?? Neither had any right to go as hard as they did), and I loved how they personalized the dance styles to the characters’ personalities. Even if this game was a money grabber, it was still made with love and respect for the series, and I loved playing it.  Most impactful moment: That first king crazy ranking on all night difficulty... god damn

5. Vestaria Saga: War of the Scions I had mentioned earlier that I appreciated the FE3H DLC for adding challenge back into 3 houses, but then I played Vestaria Saga and I realized I simply did not remember what challenge actually was. Vestaria Saga, the game by Fire Emblem’s creator, is the hardest Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played. This game honestly rules - it closes its door to the waifus of modern fire emblem games and is a return to form with political intrigue and smart tactical decisions and well-rounded characters. Every single chapter has these wonderful and deeply stressful plot twists and you always have to scramble to get all of the objectives complete without dying. There is a moment in this game where the main Lord, Zade, scolds princess Athol for being so reckless, how he had to force the army to fight a losing battle to rescue her, and look at how exhausted everyone is. He gestures to his army, and for the first time in a tactical RPG, I felt it. In all the fire emblems I play, my units end up being able to dodge and tank any hits they receive, but in Vestaria Saga finishing a map was a stressful, long, and sweaty process. I loved every second of playing this game - it is so rewarding in its gameplay and so rewarding in its story. Most impactful moment: the kiss!!! And how all of them face consequences immediately afterwards!!! I adore this game.

4. Ring Fit Adventure Ring Fit Adventure is the most fun I’ve ever had with a gimmicky fitness game. This game finally understands that they key to continuing with the game and building good habits is the ability to unlock and equip beautiful athleisure clothing. I actually got gains from Ring Fit Adventure, and I know this because I stopped playing it for a month, came back, and was unable to finish the reps at the difficulty I set for myself. This game make gym stuff so genuinely fun in a way that no one else has been able to do. I also really like the feel of the ring con! I have a few moderate complaints about it (a fitness game will never be perfect, unfortunately): you always start reps on the same side, and if you kill enemies then you don’t get a chance to try the other side at all, the motion sensor on yoga poses is wack, and FUCK the robot baseball minigame game to hell. Despite this, I absolutely adore this game and what it stands for. I may never beat the campaign, but it will always have a place in my heart. Most impactful moment: the first fight with Drageaux

3. Final Fantasy 7 Remake I was so so so curious about the hype surrounding this game that in the month before its release I manically played through the original Final Fantasy 7 so that I would have enough background information to be able to play and enjoy the remake. I was very glad I did. FF7R kicks ass. It is my favourite Final Fantasy game ever, and maybe it will always be so. I take a lot of issue with most FF games because they get too cosmically big and ridiculous and nonsensical by the end and that ruins the immersion of the story for me. Since FF7R only covers the Midgar portion of the original, it is forced to create grounded characters and a grounded, smaller scale story. And it is AMAZING. I loved every single minute of this game. The OST is incredible, and the art in it is absolutely unbelievable. I love how they incorporated random encounter enemies in this more realistic version. Also the dialogue!!! The way these characters banter with each other is so life-like and true to character that it boggles my mind. Even the NPC side conversations - never has a city or town felt so alive and filled with people than in FF7R. The ending of this game filled me with PRIMAL fear for the future, but it is so clear that the team making this game loves the world and its characters so much that I cautiously say I trust them to take the story further in the later remakes. Most impactful moment: Cloud saying “bring it on bitch” to an enemy made me black out laughing

2. Hades I generally stay away from rogue-likes and from real-time combat because for a game-liker I SURE am bad at video games. However, everything Supergiant Games ever makes seems tailor made for me, so when Hades came out of early access I bought it, and then I didn’t stop playing it until 80 hours later when I had unlocked everything ever. This game is SO good. The voice acting and storytelling is phenomenal. They did a spectacular job blending the story with the core gameplay elements. They made dying in a rogue-like fun and rewarding. The music is (as always) transcendent. I cannot say enough good things about Hades. Most impactful moment: a tie between the first time you watch the sunrise after your first successful escape, and the romance social link between Zagreus and Thanatos

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons Of course... Death Stranding may have prophesized the pandemic, but Nintendo created it to sell copies Animal Crossing New Horizons. This game saved all of us. The experience of having so many people I knew playing the same game all the time for the entirety of March and April was so incredible. I have plenty of quips about ACNH with relation to old games in the series (I loathe crafting, I loathe printing out Nook Miles Tickets one by one, and I worry that the sandbox landscaping feel of this game makes me less inclined than ever to actually talk to my villagers), but while they are all valid criticisms, they certainly did not stop me from pouring 350 hours and counting into this game. I have loved slowly, carefully crafting my island into a replica of Garreg Mach. I have loved collecting furniture and making turnip money and completing the museum. There is simply no other game that can be 2020′s game of the year. Most impactful moment: checking your mail and having one of your friends mail you an item that reminded them of you