ELO

The OG Dead Space completely blew my mind back in the day and probably is still the game to frighten me the most, but I tried to replay it—twice—and dropped it because of how much worse the controls felt than what I remembered. The juking necromorphs were much more irritating to dismember on replay. I thought about getting the remake but people say the controls are the same; and regardless, that’s my own issue with the AI, not really the controls…

I don’t normally care for roguelikes but I think I’ve put more hours into Noita than any other—and I’ve never even made it very far at all. I just panic my way through hoping I chose a good way down and don’t have the dumbest wand in existence.

I think the only game I played for the first time during this year was Disco Elysium. And, like many others, I was wowed. I won’t devolve into purple prose or string together a maelstrom of superlatives, so I’ll just say this with possible slight spoilers:

Despite starting and stopping the game after being lambasted by the immediate consequences of my character’s deplorable, ethanol-fueled behavior that hit way too close to home, I finally came back to it with the utmost enthusiasm. Harry’s abject level of rock bottom that hits you over the head as soon as you start the game was so disturbing for me as someone with similar struggles. The helplessness to change your sorry state and to win over your partner’s approval was so affecting. It makes me wonder how many people in the throes of addiction picked this up and put it down immediately from getting too triggered.

There is so much I would love to just go on and on about so I’ll just hit some aspects that really stand out for me. One thing that I loved, so freaking much, was the wondrously imaginative nomenclature. One of the biggest killers for my immersion into a work of fiction is the vapid or lazy naming of the world—which is sadly often. I mean, come on: Revachol, Insulindian isola, Graad… Harry’s rank as “double yefreitor” or all the character paths like “Electrochemistry”… I thought it was all so very inspired. Never mind the incredible inner dialogue of each upgrade character type—Half Light’s biting dialogue is totally savage, Shivers prose of the world, Inland Empire’s unhinged musings… unreal.

I went on much longer than I meant to so I’ll just say the game world is just as inspired. It is enigmatically dystopian to the most agonizing degree. Which honestly felt just as alluring as deeply distressing for all the neat people you come across. And to segue to the last point of the characters/VAs: what a glorious menagerie of souls… I fell in love with some, wrinkled my nose at others, and found myself enraged at a few.

Hard to not write a novel, but what a freaking game.

It isn’t worth it. At least for me at this point. When you are dealing with the ineptitude of the simple-minded masses—which is either bandied at best or they are totally blinded by hatred from vacuuming up disinformation without an iota of effort to fact-check anything—the best hope is face-to-face discourse. But even then you are unlikely to change most peoples’ minds that they have been deluded and taken for a ride—especially the older they are. Which is sad and frankly disturbing. One of the most disgusting things to me is a myopic person who is so intransigent, that they can’t for a moment believe they might be mistaken about something.

From looking at the line I was in voting, it’s no wonder this happened: these simple-minded geriatrics turned out in droves for their dictator.

GOP: Geriatrics for an Orwellian Power

almost choked on my sandwich lmao

Dude, Windhand’s Forest Clouds is so freaking sick. What a vibe—the album art, the track names, and ofc the sound is so awesome. Man, it feels so hyperbolic, but I honestly haven’t had this feeling listening to music in sooo long.

For sure, I dig some death/black metal stuff a bit, but I’ve always been a nu metal plebian that having this convo on reddit would just have die-hard gatekeepers take a dump on me, tbh. I’ve always hated how gatekeepy metal has always been. Thanks for the recs and interesting genre info! All the genre names are so hilariously awesome xD

I’ve been on a non-stop yt metal rabbit hole after googling some of these bands. Thanks for re-awakening the wide world of metal. It’s strange how you go through different types of music throughout your life.