Attempts at Gaming 2023.

A lot of games came out this year and I played almost none of them. But i played some, or at least attempted to. I'm not talking about the 10,000 Blue Glow episodes i so graciously blessed you all with this year and many years prior, I'm talking about real gaming. The kind you are not invited to. Real gaming is for me and me alone, and doesn't involve any wretched expectation of entertaining people with the same 4 complaints about every game and the same napalm burning a hole in my gut from too many spicy Wendy's chickens. I like games better when i don't have to keep making that joke, even though it's not a joke. 

So here are some scattered recollections of games i attempted to play this year. Some of them i even succeeded at playing. Most of them didn't come out this year. 


Vampire Survivors




I barely have anything to say about this game because it barely qualifies as a game, but I'm pretty sure i played 900 hours of it. All you do is move around and survive but the different combinations of items add a lot of strategy to it and the metric fuck ton of unlockable characters are just plain cool.

Also, I'm pretty sure this game is like 1 dollar. You have no excuse not to play it unless your excuse is that you don't want to. I respect that. But i'm telling you it's really good, or at least highly addictive. Same thing, really. 

Deus Ex




Somebody mentioned this around me so i had to reinstall it, the meme is true. I have long believed this to be one of the best games ever made based on having played through it on the PS2 back in the day. But I've always heard the PS2 version is in fact significantly trimmed down from the original PC version. So have i truly played it? This question has eaten at me long enough so i decided to play through it on my laptop. 

This is where the problems began, and they mostly have to do with my console-baby brain not being able to grasp mouse and keyboard controls for a game this complex. Doom i can handle. WASD and shoot is simple enough. But in a game that's about 90 percent stealth (at least the way i play it) I don't have enough joints in my hands to pull off the inhuman contortion required to both move and hold down the crouch key, which is X. 

Not to mention that in order to press the menu key or the rifle scope key i have to either stop and move my left hand across the entire keyboard, or take my right hand off the mouse. This might not sound like an issue to those of you with the muscle memory to do it quickly but i still have remember what I'm doing and process the information slowly like an old person trying to work a tv remote.

I can't get a controller to work either. Steam says right on the game page controller supported. But it's a fucking lie. I'm sure i have to install joy to key and set it all up myself or something asinine like that, which sounds like a pain in the ass, so I'm playing it mouse and keyboard style like you PC freaks swear is the way God intended, and I'm getting used to it. But i died twice on the first mission from not being able to crouch reliably. 

Do not tell me i can change the controls, i don't care. I'd rather adapt to what's in front of me than fuck around in a menu doing the developer's job for them. That's also why i won't turn up the brightness despite the entire game taking place at night and the main character wearing sunglasses the whole time. His vision is augmented but mine ain't, i can't see shit. I wasted 7 flairs and died going for a night swim. 

None of that matters though. It's still one of the best games ever created. Despite my brain-difficulties i was fully immersed in no time just like in the old days. This game is still more engrossing than any modern take on the genre. It hasn't aged a day, except for the graphics and the janky combat. Whatever, it's a perfect game and I'm going to enjoy the Hell out of playing through it again, alone, quietly, away from all of you, hunched over my computer in the dark like a year 2000 PC gamer freak, like God intended. 

Pikmin 4




I bought this fucker on day one and it's just about the only game series I'll still do that for. Pikmin rules and Pikmin rule. I love those lil' fuckers, and something about being a tiny spaceman in a big happy garden is pure magic and whimsy. Every Pikmin game is perfect and this one is no exception.

I only got as far as the kitchen level though, because i wanted to get footage of that part and then my capture card died. So my Pikmin Journey, which was my only source of happiness in this universe, had to be put on hold until i can get a new one.

If you're thinking that's a stupid reason to stop playing a game I enjoy, I agree. But once i put it down i got distracted and now it's been a few months. Stuff like that tends to happen when one must shoulder the tremendous weight of greatness every day. Things get put aside for a while, more pressing responsibilities take over. 

That's the whole reason i need the tranquil joy of Pikmin in the first place, to center me, and momentarily ease my many burdens. I'll probably pick it up again sometime in the next year, if I'm not too busy walking through Hell or something. 

Final Fantasy 3




This game lives forever in the shadow of the other Final Fantasy 3, probably because that one has a guy named Shadow. Nobody ever talks about this one, but that changes now, cause I've been playing it, and now i'm gonna talk about it, briefly, and then talk about other games. 

I'm not playing the pixel remaster that came out more recently, but the DS remake that i found out i apparently have had on steam all this time. One difference in this version is that the characters are given names, like actual characters. I guess they were just nameless little onion knights in the original. In this one they talk to each other like characters so i have no idea what that dialogue could possibly be otherwise.

One thing i appreciate about this one is that it wastes absolutely no time. You get an airship within the first half hour of the game and get into a fine little exp-grinding and town-visiting loop early on. I still had to play the intro 3 times though, because i kept forgetting to save and this game likes to randomly be hard as a motherfucker. 

This one is all about the job system. I've heard there's a meta party build that makes things much easier and i will absolutely be looking that up, because I'm old, I'm hurt, I'm tired, and I'm playing as a bunch of children. 

This is one of the only 2 Final Fantasy games I've never played (the other one is 2, the real 2, not 4) and I'm digging it so far. It's got one of the best map themes ever. 

Breath of Fire




I've been playing this bastard on my switch, partly because i just wanna play more old school RPGs, but mostly to get some actual use out of the SNES collection i pay 5 bucks a month for on there. There's some masterpieces on there, but this is one of the few that i haven't already beaten 10 times as a child.

I'm not far enough into it for the story to be anything special. In fact i still only have one party member and it feels like I've been playing forever. This is one of the grindiest games I've played in a while. I get my ass kicked by the boss, grind forever, get my ass kicked again, go back to grinding.

The only major flaw so far is it has some of the assiest menus i have ever seen in my fucking life. I dread looking at them because it's a chore to do anything. Compare this to any Final Fantasy from the same era and you'll gain a whole new appreciation for that series, based on its clean, concise menu design alone.

The interface here is BUSTED. Nothing is organized, everything is a vague hieroglyph leading to a sub-menu's sub-menu. It's fucking disgusting, a hideous clusterfuck, and it nearly makes the entire game feel archaic and unplayable.

Despite this, i like the game. It's got some charm to it. The graphics are nice, the music is good, the battle screen is fun. I play it for like 10 minutes in bed most nights and it's a gay old time. Just fine and dandy.

Max Payne




Back in the day I got Max Payne 2 on X-Box and it kicked so much ass i played through it in one day. Maybe that means the game was too short, but i was satisfied enough not to be pissed off about it so it must have been pretty good. Never played the first one, until now.

I actually wanted to play Alan Wake 2, but then i thought i should play Alan Wake 1 first, but then i remembered that two years ago i started playing control and loved it but forgot to keep playing it, so finally i just said fuck it and resolved to play every game these guys ever made, starting with Max Payne the first. If they made any other games before that, don't tell me about it, i have enough on my plate. 

First of all this is one of those PC games that is very much meant to be played with mouse and keyboard. The PS4 version does not succeed very well at all in adapting itself to twin joysticks. The aiming is so sensitive it's basically impossible to accurately shoot anyone, so just spamming the bullet time button and firing wildly is the only strategy that works here. But even worse than that, much worse, is actually trying to get Max From place to place. 

Max simply does not move in a straight line. Ever. You might think you're holding the joystick in one direction, but to Max this is a mere suggestion, he goes where the fuck he wants, and in all honesty he's probably an accurate depiction of what the amount of pills he takes would do to a person's ability to function. Moving around in Katamari is more reliable. 

This becomes a serious problem because, for some reason, the maniacs who made this decided to put platforming in this game. If you have to get from one rooftop to another, or god forbid, make any kind of small leap anywhere, get used to the loading screen. Checkpoints are just far enough apart to be obnoxious, and of course, the in-game cutscenes can't be skipped. 

At least the comic book style cutscenes can be skipped but those you actually want to see, at least the first time, not so much after your 17th death from a very precise train jump the game doesn't quite make clear to you. I know these comic panel sequences are a staple of the series, but so far, i don't really care for the story. 

I'm about halfway through the game and i legit have no fucking clue what Max is even doing. Every cutscene is just people rattling off a bunch of Italian sounding names. "Goopicelli told me to find bottonucci over at Luigi Pastrami's place, but now I'm a marked man by New York's finest and the entire Poopadilly family." What the fuck is even going on in this game?

I get that Max's Family got killed, that's the only part i understand. But i don't know by who, or if Max knows either. I guess he's looking for who did it, starting with every Italian in the phone book. If you couldn't tell Max used to be a cop, his talent for profiling should clue you in. 

The worst part of the game so far is a dream sequence, which I'm sure is supposed to be scary and cool and might have even been playable in the original version, but on console it sucks dick. First you navigate a stupid maze with Max's crying baby and wailing wife in the background. Everything in the maze looks the same so you'll be running around in there for 20 minutes minimum while the screaming and crying just loops. It makes Baby Mario in Yoshi's Island sound like some relaxing Andre 3000 flute music. 

But then you get to the platforming. The platforming that is also a maze. In the dark. With joystick controls that as i've already pointed out are slippery as fuck. Max controls like he's wearing one ice skate, one roller skate, and has his pants on backward. Inching along this miserable, narrow platform, figuring out where to jump, actually landing those jumps, and navigating to the end has to be done as slowly and cautiously as possible or you WILL fall. You WILL go careening off into a black void of death, you WILL stare at a loading screen, and you WILL start over at the fucking maze again. Max's nightmare is my nightmare. 



Pictured: me walking through Hell. 

Well okay that's all i can think of for now. I'm sure i played other games here and there, but life is too painful to remember too much of it at once. I'm sure 2024 will bring all kinds of wacky new gamer stuff for me to complain about. Smell ya later, nerds.