MBS: April 2026

 What I read, played, and bought over the course of April! 

Honestly, April was quite the month to experience, all things considered, so my backlog really took a hit. Frankly, I’d rather not get into it, but it was just a lot dumb shit happening to me on like a back to back basis, which meant very little time to chill until the very end of the month.

But, April was also my birth month, so at the very least, I got to celebrate my birthday in relatively high spirits despite…well, everything.

This month also brought Tomodachi Life back into my life through Living the Dream, and I may have gotten horrifically obsessed with it. Let’s see how much it affected my backlogs, shall we?

Books I’ve Read

I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t read much in April. I know, I know! I should’ve just jumped from the 800-page book to the 700-page book without building up the dread of it all, but frankly, that sounded awful and I needed to read something else.

For all intents and purposes, my friend group was going to meet for a book club, but April is the last full month of classes, so they barely had the time to read, on top of me experiencing my own personal Horrors, so the book club didn’t really happen. I did get some of This is How You Lose the Time War read, but I didn’t really finish it.

Outside of that, I became horrifically obsessed with rereading an incredibly long fanfiction this month, and that’s like the extent of reading in April for me. It was a re-telling of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but what if it was Dimitri who experienced the horrors instead. That’s about as much as I can explain of the plot without actively spoiling FE3H, so if you’ve suffered through all of the routes of that game, I highly recommend reading “An Eagle Among Lions” by AMX004_Qubeley on AO3. It’s so very good, you can read a million words of FE3H fanfiction, I believe in you.

Upcoming Reading Plans

I’m intending on getting back on track in May for reading. Ideally, I’m gonna finish This is How You Lose the Time War for sure. That will probably take less than a week to do. From there, it’s a toss up of if I want to read Dark Age or start something else new.

I did return to my Libby list toward the end of the month, so I’ve got a couple of books on the docket for possible next reads, but I still have to read a chapter or two of them to know if I want to read them. Most likely, May will be dedicated to Dark Age, if I’m fully honest.

Games I’ve Played

To no one’s surprise, April was a weird month for gaming as well. I didn’t really do much gaming up until the second half of the month, and most of the gaming I did in the second half was Tomodachi Life.

Listen, they cooked with Tomodachi Life. It’s peak. They created the perfect game, a game that is peak straight out of the box, no updates or DLC required. You can make whatever you want. You can terraform your island from the get-go, and terraforming is free. There’s no inventory limit. You can make 70 silly little guys interact with each other in increasingly dumb ways. It’s perfect.

But, I digress; gaming and I didn’t really mesh well this month, so let’s get into what I did get to game.

Console Gaming

Again, with console gaming, all I really played was Metroid Prime 4, and I still have not finished the game. I didn’t really pick it up until toward the end of the month, so I only really put a couple of hours into it. But, May will be my Prime 4 month! I’m gonna try to play it at least every other day so I can get closer to being done with it, and hopefully finish it by the end of the month.

I also desperately want to play a PS3 game, so May will be a PS3 game month as well. I’m still debating between Borderlands and God of War, but considering I’m usually not an FPS gamer, it’s likely gonna be God of War. Also so that I’m not playing two FPS games at the same time; I think that’d make me go insane if that was the case.

I did slightly forget about this, but I also picked up Xenoblade Chronicles this month, so I will be dedicating some time in May to XBC1 as well. Since it’s on Switch, it might be both in the console and handheld gaming categories, depending on what I’m doing in game (e.g. missions versus main storyline). This will likely be my chill game of May, ideally between playing Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life. But then again, this is all contingent on me having any amount of time to play games in May; I don’t think it’s gonna be much different than like March as a standard month. Hopefully.

Handheld Gaming

Shockingly, I did do quite a bit of handheld gaming. The first half of the month was dedicated to checking up on my Animal Crossing: New Leaf island, where I was consistently logging on once every day up until Tomodachi Life released. And then, well, you know what happened there.

Most likely, this is going to be what my handheld gaming will consist of until I get bored of Tomodachi Life or Animal Crossing. And/or, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow may join the mix, but honestly, since modding my 3DS, I highly prefer gaming on there to my phone, so we’ll see what happens. I’m not super far in Aria of Sorrow, so I might just figure out a way to play GBA games on my 3DS and get (a legal copy of) it downloaded on there.

Laptop Gaming

I continue to prove previous versions of me wrong by having my laptop gaming category be the longest category of the month, and frankly, I don’t know what changed to allow this. You could blame it on UNBEATABLE or of the Devil or Rabbit & Steel or Archipelago, but like 3/4 of these are because of my friends who play games on Steam more than console games. Cannot believe this, they’re turning me—me! a dedicated console game collector!—into a PC gamer…smh my head.

Anyway, I bought Super Battle Golf this month to play with my friends. It is such a stupid game, frankly the peak of friendslop gaming. I’m horrifically bad at golf, but at least I can prevent my friends from locking in by sending an orbital laser in their direction (in the game). It almost feels like mini golf, but the world is out to get you.

My brother got me a couple of games on Steam for my birthday this year, including Nine Sols, which I became instantly obsessed with. Nine Sols has a sauce to it in its early game that Hollow Knight lacks, making it an incredible game experience comparatively. And it’s literally all in the parrying mechanic. It’s like Metroid Dread, minus the literal dread.

Any Pick Ups This Month?

Despite the Horrors I experienced this month, I actually had a lot of pickups. Also, pretty much only games this time. It’s like an uneven split between digital and physical.

First up, I picked up Super Battle Golf, like I mentioned above. Since it’s pretty much exclusively a game to play with friends, it’s not going to go on the backlog to finish. My brother got me Nine Sols and Signalis for my birthday, which is incredibly hype of him. Nine Sols was a shock to me because I put it on my wishlist more recently and haven’t really looked into it much, but it also ended up being the object of my attention for a good chunk of the month. Absolute banger of a game. And Signalis will be my first survival horror game that I will be so brave about, and hopefully be able to finish because the story seems really cool. If I can do this, it’ll unlock a whole slew of games I’ve been too scared to attempt, which will be hella sick.

For physical pick ups, I got Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, which are both Switch games. Real ones would know that I had XBC1 on 3DS a while back, but it was such an awful game experience, I had to rent the Switch version at my library just to be certain it was the 3DS that made the game bad and not the game itself. Who would’ve though putting an RPG of such a caliber on such a limited device would be a bad idea?

And yes, the changes in my backlog this month through these purchases is NOT ideal, I don’t like gaining the ability to play so many new games in one go like this because it is very hard to split your very limited time between three games, let alone five.

And it sucks that when you finish one game, there’s always a replacement game to fill the missing slot, and that transition between games (or even books) is always the hardest in backlogging for me. Some part of me wants to sit with that world I left and appreciate it, and I should really listen to that part of me more often. But, ultimately, backlogging is meant to be fun, and that’s something that I have to remind myself frequently. I’m gonna play what I want to play, and it’s going to be impossible to finish the list in it’s entirety in any reasonable amount of time, so I might as well enjoy what I’m doing when I’m doing it, and spend as much time yapping about it as I want.

---

And that’s about it! I feel like I’ve gotten in the habit of not doing anything with my backlog for the majority of the month, only to sprint through a couple books or games at the very end. Not ideal, to say the least. My productivity also took a major hit this month, outside of Substack I struggled to write literally anything. Here’s to hoping May is at least a little better!

How was your April? Did you pick up anything sick this month? Did you also fumble to finish anything, or did you slam through a game/book or two? What was your favorite? Least favorite? Lemme know in the comments below!

May will bring a couple interesting posts I’ve held out on for a while, which is kinda exciting because I’ve had a lot of time to cook on them and they’re really shaping up to be quite fun reads, so stay tuned for that!

And as always, see you next time!

How to Get Into the Ace Attorney Series

 Which games to play first? Which games to avoid until later? What even is the correct play order?

Ever seen the “Almost Christmas means it wasn’t Christmas” posts spring up every Christmas Eve and wonder what the context is? Or maybe, you’ve watched the series’ prices fluctuate on Steam over the last couple of years and wanted to know what it’s all about. Have you ever seen an image of Phoenix and Miles in the courtroom and wondered what series they came from and how to approach it?

Well, then this blog post is just for you!

Shockingly enough, Ace Attorney is a very easy series to get into, moreso now than ever before. If you have a Switch, or PS4, or Steam account, all—and I mean all—of the games are available on those platforms for you to play. And, if you’re looking at Steam, the Trilogy goes on sale for less than $10 quite frequently.

But, what even is the Trilogy? And where do you begin?

What is Ace Attorney?

First, I should probably quickly discuss what Ace Attorney is about for people who aren’t aware. Ace Attorney is a visual novel, point-and-click adventure game series. It stars Phoenix Wright, a fledgling defense attorney starting his career tackling wacky cases and the strange involved parties you meet along the way.

You might be thinking: “Law? Isn’t that boring?” Which, in most cases, is true, but what makes Ace Attorney unique is it’s characters. They’re often wacky people you interact with, and a lot of the time Phoenix’s inner monologue will provide you with sarcastic remarks about the case and the people involved. It’s more of a comedy, contrasting starkly against the heavy topics and themes involving, well, murder cases.

Trial sequences are lead by a judge who often acts as though he knows absolutely nothing about anything; detectives are often bumbling fools who you grow to love; prosecutors seem to have an air of confidence to them, but are just as baffled and distressed by the wacky witnesses as Phoenix is; and Phoenix…well, he thinks he’s the most sane person in the room, which most often just isn’t the case.

A lot of what makes Ace Attorney endearing is characters’ dialogue as well, noted by a common joke debate about ladders vs. stepladders, unnecessary feelings, and cross examining a parrot. If anything, Ace Attorney is as far from “normal court” as it can possibly get, which makes it fun!

Main Series: Ace Attorney 1-6

The core of Ace Attorney is comprised of six main games. These are split by Capcom into two trilogies, but this isn’t necessarily the most ideal way to view Ace Attorney’s main series. Instead, it’s more like Ace Attorney 1-3, Ace Attorney 4, then Ace Attorney 5-6.

You’ll want to start with the first trilogy titled Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. This goes over the first three games in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Ace Attorney: Justice for All, and Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations (or, Ace Attorney 1, 2, and 3 respectively). These games build upon each other, taking notes from previous entries and expands upon them into a convoluted, yet enthralling story. You get to see Phoenix Wright rise to stardom in the Ace Attorney series, defend a myriad of wacky characters, and unravel the truth behind long forgotten cases. These are phenomenal games, and it’s highly recommended to play them in order. 

 

From there, you’ll go onto the second trilogy, or the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy. Except, this is nowhere near a trilogy in the same sense as the original. I would start with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the fourth game in the series, and consider it it’s own standalone game, as it doesn’t really have anything to do with Ace Attorney 5 & 6 except for sharing a few characters. 

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney wasn’t initially planned. The creator of the Ace Attorney games, Shu Takumi, intended to be done with the series after the original trilogy, but it made good money for Capcom, so a fourth game was made. It’s more or less a series reboot, jumping seven years into the future from the end of Trials and Tribulations, creating a new protagonist, a new prosecutor, and essentially a whole new world to explore, with some returning characters from the original series. It is a very enjoyable story, but unfortunately one that doesn’t ever get resolved (for now, please Capcom I’m begging you).

A lot of people view this as a failure on Ace Attorney 4’s fault, especially once they move onto Ace Attorney 5 & 6 which have a more connected plot line, but I think that’s ultimately the problem of calling Ace Attorney 4 the beginning of a new trilogy.

From there, you can continue onto Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, Ace Attorney 5 & 6 respectively. These are generally considered not the greatest entries in the series, if not evident by how incredibly slow they can be. These games build upon each other and have some pretty strong plot lines, but ultimately retcons a lot of the characterizations of the original trilogy and Ace Attorney 4 characters, making it rough to play at times. I think you should still give them a chance since there are some fun cases sprinkled in between, but you might have to shut off the part of your brain that gets mad at mischaracterizations because Ace Attorney 5 & 6 are very good at mischaracterizing your favorite lawyers.

Spin-Offs: Investigations and The Great Ace Attorney

Of course, with a long withstanding series like Ace Attorney, there are bound to be spin-offs as well. In Ace Attorney, there are two spin-off duologies, both of which were stuck in Japan for the longest time and now have releases on Switch, PS4, and Steam.

First up, there is the Ace Attorney Investigations duology. These are games centered around Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor in Ace Attorney 1, where you get to investigate crime scenes as him. It plays vastly different from the mainline series, more focused on investigation sequences over trial sequences. As such, you’ll get to actually walk around crime scenes, talk to relevant people, and use Edgeworth’s “Logic” to deduct what most likely happened during the crime. It’s incredibly funny to play after the original trilogy, getting to see how Edgeworth’s mind works in contrast to Phoenix’s. 

Since it’s a duology, you of course should play Investigations 1 (Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth) before Investigations 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit). The collection title to look out for in this case is Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, which will have both of these titles.

One thing to note about the Investigations games is that it isn’t written by the original creator of Ace Attorney, and as such, the pacing takes a hit. There is a lot of fantastic characterizations of characters like Edgeworth, Gumshoe, and Franziska, and you get to meet some of the most unique characters in Ace Attorney history in these games, so if this ends of being something interesting to you, I highly recommend playing the Investigations duology. Plus, the sequel game gets much more nitty-gritty with the lore of the original trilogy, so if you end up liking the original trilogy and want to know more, Investigations is the game for you.

On the other hand, there is also The Great Ace Attorney (TGAA) duology. TGAA, essentially, takes us back in time to the turn of the 20th century with Phoenix Wright’s ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo. It functions similarly to the mainline series, with investigations and trial sequences alike, traversing around London in 1900. Because of this, it’s also a much more standard Ace Attorney game compared to later entries in the series, where a lot of the magical realism from the series is not as present. Somewhat, mostly. 

 

One thing that TGAA brings to the table is multiple witnesses and a jury system. In the mainline series, there usually are not jurists to decide the guilt of a defendant. That job is solely placed upon the shoulders of the defense attorney. On top of that, you’re only ever given one witness at a time. With multiple witnesses, they can interact with one another, reacting to things the other says and allowing for you to press a witness on their reaction mid-cross examination. Being the most recent Ace Attorney games, and a spin-off at that, TGAA is probably the most unique games in the series, and also a good look at the future of Ace Attorney.

Being a duology, TGAA should also be played in order. Generally, you should start with TGAA 1 (The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures) and follow with TGAA 2 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve). Neither of the original releases of these games made it outside of Japan, so the only real way to play them is through the official collection on Switch, PS4, and Steam (titled The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles).

When to Play the Spin-Offs?

On a technical level, you can play TGAA whenever. Compared to Investigations, it’s a very true example of a “spin-off” in the sense that it’s plot doesn’t hinge on the main series, nor is it super connected to it in any way.

If you want to play TGAA first, frankly you could. The only thing to keep in mind is that TGAA doesn’t share any of the characters from the original series, and there are a couple of fan-bait moments that you’ll miss out on.

On the other hand, Investigations is a little more convoluted as to when you should play it. Chronologically, according to the canon timeline, the events of the Investigations duology happen directly after Ace Attorney 3. However, it released after Ace Attorney 4. There are a couple of moments across the Investigations duology that directly reference events and places in Ace Attorney 4. Even so, I think this is more similar to the fan-bait moments I mentioned in TGAA than being contingent events that will spoil Ace Attorney 4 in any way. The events of Investigations are tied closer to the original trilogy, after all. For that reason, I think it’s best to play Investigations after Ace Attorney 3, rather than 4.

What About the Professor Layton Crossover?

This is the question we are all asking: what about the Professor Layton Crossover? This game hasn’t been re-released yet, if it ever will, so it’s permanently stuck on the 3DS. And since the 3DS EShop is gone, the only way to play the Professor Layton Crossover is via emulation, hacking your 3DS, or buying a physical copy (which is incredibly expensive and can only sky rocket from here without a re-release).

The Professor Layton Crossover (titled Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) is considered non-canon, so it can be played whenever. I think, if it was part of the chronological timeline, it would slot somewhere between Ace Attorney 1 & 2, but for lore reasons, that doesn’t really make sense, hence why it’s considered non-canon.

It is a pretty good game and one that is heavily beloved so I would recommend checking it out eventually, but it isn’t as super important to play, even compared to the spin-offs. I wrote a mini spoiler-free review of the game, so if you wanna know what fans think of the game, check it out here. 

If you have the means to play it, it’s a pretty solid game, but if you don’t, there’s no pressure to play it to complete the series. Likely, if you play it, it might just end up being one of the last games to play in the series.

And as of right now, that’s all of the Ace Attorney games! Like I said, it’s a pretty straightforward series to get into. And sure, we haven’t had a new game since 2017, but there’s a real good chance we might get a new game sometime soon. Capcom announced back in December 2025 that they want to expand some games into core IPs, and Ace Attorney was on that list. Considering we have remakes of all of the games, something that has never been done before, the only direction from here is forward. So, if there’s ever been a good time to get into the series and catch up on the backlog, it’s now!

---

And that’s about it! I may not yap about Ace Attorney nearly as much as I used to, but it forever lives in my head rent free. Even the games I don’t like nearly as much continue to persist in my brain; regardless of how I feel about them, they’re still good games.

Have you played any of the Ace Attorney games? Which were your favorites? Least favorites? Have a favorite case or character? What order would you play it in? Lemme know in the comments below!

Kind of a last minute pull on my part, since I originally had plans to post an essay on how gaming became more than rolling credits today, but I ran out of time. It’s gonna have a lot more research in it than any other post I’ve written, so it needs more time to cook. Also, tomorrow (yes, tomorrow as in 4/30), my April 2026 monthly backlog wrap-up will go live at noon EST, so stay tuned for that!

And as always, see you next time!

SMS: Looking Back at Old Writing

 The passage of time and winging your favorite hobby.

For this month’s Sunday Mini Stackin’ post, I wanted to yap about my older writing and how much my writing has changed, even in the shortest periods of time.

Because of course looking back on the fanfiction you wrote when you were 12 is going to make you cringe, you wrote it when you didn’t really have a good grasp on interesting storytelling or writing conventions.

But looking back on writing I wrote 4 years ago, 2 years, hell even last year, feels like it’s astronomically different from my writing now.

Where even does change happen when you’re writing? Is it really just a matter of practice making perfect? Does it have to do with reading more books? Did my degree help shape it? Or is it innate?

A month ago, a newer friend of mine asked me how I write dialogue. How do you write good dialogue, and how do you make it sound realistic? But the thing is, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t know if my dialogue sounds realistic or good at any given moment. I’m not even sure if my writing in general is “good.” I know it’s better than it was before, but to what extent? How do I really know it’s good, if good writing is more or less subjective?

And I’ll see people write up blogs about their process, instructional videos on how to not suck at writing, tips and tricks of the trade, and like, yeah, these are things I employ, but I’m not really thinking about doing it. I just do it. I don’t know how people can take that step back from their writing and explain their entire process.

Maybe that’s why I never talk about my process. I don’t step back and think about it. I don’t know what I’m doing that’s working. All I’m doing is writing the words that come into my brain, sometimes laugh at my own jokes, or lose my mind when my brain comes up with a plot twist so insane, even I couldn’t predict it happening.

I had this conversation with a closer friend of mine, and honestly, the conclusion I came to was that I don’t prep enough for my writing. I don’t write outlines, I don’t create character sheets, I don’t really even draft out the story arc structure. And that’s like…not good. Not good at all, really. It’s hard to keep track of plot points, locations, and character names when it’s only in my brain.

Like, this is ultimately the cause from a novel draft I’ve been working on for the last six years, where I’ve done so much prep and redrafting to the point that it’s almost draining to work with that old prep work. It is so hard to sort through four plot rewrites and six years of work that I almost want to scrap everything and start fresh, but doing that feels like a disservice to the amount of prep work I’ve already put in. But what’s the point of prep work if I’m constantly prepping, constantly reworking the outlines, and I still can’t figure out how I want the middle of the novel to play out?

I guess it’s there where balance is needed. I can’t not prep at all, or else I confuse myself on the plot and make it horrifically convoluted because I only really understand the main character’s motivations and that’s it, but I also can’t prep so much that I lose the plot in the process either. And sometimes I just want to write the damn thing, and sometimes while I’m writing, I’m planning ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of if I hadn’t just starting writing it.

The issue with all of this is that when I hope to start work as a narrative designer, or writing creatively for a job, I worry that I might not have the structural understanding of writing for a team to help other people understand the mess of my ideas. And like, I’m going to be writing for my friends’ game projects come May, so like, these fears are going to have to be addressed soon. But also, where do I even begin with this? Do I sit down and create a bunch of characters, outlining motives and flaws? Do I start drafting flash fiction pieces of these characters to understand the characters’ mental processes as well? I don’t really know. If I do that, maybe, I can start understanding how to write different voices and different themes, instead of writing in the same voice all of the time. Not like my voice is bad, just not great for working as a narrative designer who needs to understand many types of voices on the fly.

This is essentially what I think of when I look back on my old writing. What led me to writing this? How much prep work did I do before finishing it? And ultimately, would I be able to write in this character’s voice again, even years removed from writing the initial work?

Despite all of this, I can still tell that my writing has improved over the years. One would hope so, given the fact that I did get a degree in writing or something, like you can only hope it wasn’t a complete waste of time, stress, and money, right? Right? I still can look back at writing from just a year ago and feel like my writing process has gotten significantly better. Hell, look at “Turnabout Transposed!” This shit has been my magnum opus for like most of my adult life thus far, and it, too, went through multiple phases of rewriting, is currently in perpetual editing hell, and even still, if you read the first chapters, it’s not nearly comparable to my most recent writing!

It has the bones of the writing voice that I currently have, but it doesn’t have the levity that my current writing voice has. It doesn’t have that desperation that’s so common in my writing. It’s kinda lackluster.

Take the opening lines of the second chapter, for example:

"The ride to the office was tense, unsure. More tense than Miles had ever known it to be between the two of them. There was something Phoenix wanted to say about Miles’ abnormal behavior, though his eyes stayed focused on the road in front of him.

Bated breaths were shared between the two as Miles pulled into a parking spot in front of the building, the way the voice inside his head had informed him of doing: in front of what seemed to be Wright Anything Agency, though its sign clearly stated “Edgeworth & Co. Law Offices.”

Your father is alive, Miles, the voice urged, a sensation Miles wasn’t aware of. I can’t explain why just yet, but he’s leading a revered law office. Don’t be shocked.

That’s not a very easy thing to do. Miles has spent the better part of his life without his father, a feat that seemed impossible when he was young. If this was truly a dream, it’s becoming more and more uncomfortable as time progresses. Though, that’s not unusual for Miles’ dreams.

He stepped out of the car along with Phoenix, the sun beating down on his back as his adrenaline built up. He’d be lying if meeting his dad again after twenty-odd years wasn’t a dream of his. It was always wishful thinking, but the possibility of seeing him now, be it in a dream or not, overwhelmed him.

Truthfully, Miles hadn’t thought of his father in a while. Though, attempting to search his memories for when he last thought of him caused his migraine to bloom through his skull once more. It was infuriating, this pain. Unrelenting and unbothered by Miles’ anguish. Miles slammed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, rubbing at the pain to alleviate it.

It wasn’t helping. His eyes burned, his limbs felt numb, and he could feel hands pressing around his neck. His vision faltered, the sun’s light seeming far too bright. He couldn’t breathe.

“Shit,” someone said beside him as he crumpled to the sidewalk. The cool concrete unrelenting. “Mia! Mr. Edgeworth! Someone! Come down here!”

That was the last thing Miles could hear before the pain took over."

This is really bad. I’ll admit it. It mostly just tells you whats going on without really showing you how Miles is feeling. It tells you that he’s infuriated. It tells you he’s lamenting the death of his father. It tells you that there’s tension between Miles and Phoenix without really justifying it; you just should feel that tension. It tells you Miles is in pain, and as like a last minute thought, decides to show you that pain instead. And the icing on the disaster of a cake is the very final line before a fade-to-black, one of my least favorite writing techniques of all time: “That was the last thing ___ could hear before the world faded.” Like?? Tell me you don’t know how to progress to the next scene without telling me, good LORD.

And this shit is my most popular fic on AO3! As of writing this, 6,752 people have viewed this writing, and 308 people have liked it. Why? Like I’m obviously very grateful for people enjoying my writing, but why did this one have to be the one that took off? Why not any of my other writing that is significantly and objectively better? Is my perception of my own writing worse than it objectively is? And if that’s the case, then how do I know what of my writing is good and what of it is bad?

But, this was written three years ago. What about my writing from last year?

Let’s take a look at the opening sequence of my unpublished short story, “As Long As I’ve Lasted”:

"Winter. I’ve always hated that season. It enjoys its stay for far too long every time the leaves fall from the trees, and it seems to never end. Not until the sun shines for longer than a week. Not until the trees start budding and flowers start blooming.

This winter was the same—long, harsh, and relentless—until something piqued my curiosity. Something found its way back home to me, appearing out of the snow-swept blizzard and carefully stepping onto my front porch. As if I wouldn’t notice. As if I wouldn’t care.

Frankly, she’s always been a bit too nonchalant. I’ve tried desperately to ingrain it in her head that apathy wasn’t a good quality to have. She wouldn’t listen. She never listens.

When the doorbell rang, I rose with my cane in hand. My roommate Cody would probably attempt to answer the door for me, but I saw through the window who it was, and I needed to be the one to answer. She was out of breath when I opened the door, her hand resting on the porch’s railing. Her eyes were wide when she stared up at me, her brows knitted tightly together.

“Hello?” I ventured, prompting an answer. Prompting her to say anything to me.

She bit her lip, worrying the skin between her teeth, and said, “Hi, Mom.” It was the nicest thing she had ever said to me in over 15 years.

The sun had set just moments before. I let her into my house without question. My daughter, exhausted after hours behind the wheel, flopped into the recliner I had left vacant. She was tall and worryingly skinny, with long brown hair billowing past her shoulders that was stringy and forgotten. Her chocolatey brown eyes—the beautiful ones she got from me—looked hazy and distant. Jaw clenched, I urged myself not to complain about her appearance or her posture. She only just got here, after all. I didn’t want to turn her away immediately, but the remarks sat at the tip of my tongue."

Ultimately, the first thing to notice is that I graduated from third-person limited to first-person. You can do a lot of funky inner monologue stuff in third-person limited, which can be a lot of fun, but the inner monologue writing that first-person provides is truly like none other.

Secondly, you can easily realize that my writing is better. It leaves more room for guessing, it’s much more varied in sentence length making it a more enjoyable reading experience, and the character’s voice is much louder and more apparent than the sample from “Turnabout Transposed.” Hell, I feel like I’m even using better word choice and adjectives here!

But again, I think this is the case for my writing. I think it sounds better to me. But, comparably, I have no idea if it sounds good to other people. I don’t know if other people would read this and think that “As Long As I’ve Lasted” is worse than “Turnabout Transposed.” How could I? I can only really work with my own interpretation here, especially when “As Long As I’ve Lasted” is unpublished and has not been read by anyone other than myself, the college professor I wrote this for, and like maybe a couple of literary journal editors. That’s not a lot of people to work with and make a sound decision on whether or not it’s good. I can only work with my own understanding of writing, my own understanding of good storytelling, and hope that translates well.

And I guess that’s another take-away: Storytelling is meant for other people to enjoy, but if you don’t enjoy it yourself, then it loses a lot of the fun behind writing.

At the end of the day, if you don’t view your writing as “good enough,” then the writing process ends up becoming much harder to enjoy.

My inspirations helped me improve my writing. Reading more helped me improve my writing because I could better understand what I like reading in a story. But also, years and years of practice, constantly throwing myself at walls and hoping something sticks, helped me improve my writing as well. And I can try to explain what I liked in my writing and what I don’t like, but at the end of the day, it’s all practice. Most of it doesn’t get read. Most of it probably shouldn’t be read. But, because I wrote it, I got to learn something about myself, my writing process, and my voice.

I’m learning something about myself every time I write. And it might not have words to describe, but I understand it and I can use that to further improve my writing. And I’ll keep improving my writing, either expressively or internally, forever. Ultimately, that is the goal, is it not?

---

And that’s about it! Thanks for reading my inane ramblings about writing, writing tips, and my writing process. Hopefully it explains something as to why I struggle so much on writing about my writing. And also, hopefully going forward, I can write more about my writing process, be it creative, blog writing, or narrative design. Because like, let’s be real: all of those types of writing use vastly different parts of my brain and require different ways of thinking.

What’s your writing process? Do you have any writing tips that really helped shape your writing? Do you have fears about your writing that you can’t voice, and thus don’t know where to begin to fix the issue? Lemme know in the comments below!

This week’s kind of a busy one, yet again. We’ve got this Sunday Mini Stackin’ post which you’re currently reading, then on Wednesday (4/29 at 3 PM EST), I’ve got a new entry in the “How To:” series, this time going over the Ace Attorney series, and following that on Thursday (4/30 at noon EST) is my MBS post for April, so stay tuned for that!

And as always, see you next time!

How UNBEATABLE Perfectly Subverts Expectations

And how it caters to the underlying narrative, answering the question "What is UNBEATABLE?"

To describe UNBEATABLE in one sentence is a herculean task because there is so much that comprises this $30 game that any summary doesn’t seem adequate enough. It’s not only a rhythm game but a visual novel, an adventure game, a puzzle game, a home to the strangest mini games you will ever play—including evil pool, a hellish DDR rip off, a VA-11 Hall-A-esque bartending mini-game, and evil baseball—and one of the saddest, most endearing, well-thought out conclusions to a game I have ever played.

It’s so much more than “music is illegal and you do crimes,” and yet that truly is the best summary you can give without spoiling the entire thing outright.

To be up front, this is going to have massive UNBEATABLE spoilers, so if you haven’t played UNBEATABLE or if this is your first time hearing of the game, please ignore this post and go play it. I’m genuinely not joking, you should play it first. And if you start playing and drop it because it’s “too slow” or you don’t “get what’s going on,” I beg of you to finish it. It isn’t a 30-hour campaign; playing it to the end won’t feel like a waste of time. I promise.

Here’s the Steam link if you’ve made it this far and haven’t played it yet. You should either buy and play it right now or click off this post; I’m warning you!

Alright, now that all of the real gamers are here, let’s get into it. 

Weird Official DS Games

 While the Wii's non-shovelware games were strange and off-putting, the DS' non-shovelware games were borderline insane.

The DS released at an interesting time, where Nintendo started it’s initiative to create games for “everyone” and also a time where game companies were becoming increasingly aware, and increasingly afraid, of mobile gaming becoming a reasonable competitor in the game market.

The funny thing about the DS compared to the Wii is that the DS was a handheld console, and at the time, the expectations for handheld games were low. Anything too crazy or too advanced just wasn’t feasible. While the Wii is known for it’s shovelware games, I’d argue that the DS is the shovelware console, as most of the games for that system were innately simpler than console games because it had to be. The DS couldn’t handle anything too complex.

Yet, at the same time, the DS was were game companies finally hit their stride with balancing handheld releases and how they differ from console releases, without it seeming too different. The DS is home to some of the most innovative games of it’s generation as well—like Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, 999, and The World Ends With You—making it a fascinating console to look back on.

Compared to the Wii with it’s motion controls, the “gimmick” of stylus controls really wasn’t that strange of a control-mechanic, especially with how similar and it is to mouse inputs based on precision. And as far as I’m aware, there weren’t as many games that used stylus-controls in egregious, imposing ways as motion controls were with a lot of Wii games. It just kinda forced developers to work around it, which made for logical implementations most of the time. Some series likely wouldn’t have gotten their start nor notoriety if it weren’t for the DS, like the Cooking Mama and Style Savvy series.

Then again, there’s also just a lot of garbage that released as well. Let’s look into the garbage that was official!

---

Age of Empires: The Age of Kings (2006)

• Idk, something about this is so funny to me; Ah, yes, the DS, the ideal console for normally exclusive PC games to be played on the go. Like, Age of Empires. You can play Age of Empires on the go!! Isn’t that exactly what you’ve always wanted?

• Except not really, because they turned a real-time strategy game into a turn-based one, but the idea is there!

• Conceptually, not that flawed of a game, but there’s a game later in the list that makes this incredibly funnier.

Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles (2008)

• Ah yes, Assassin’s Creed, the game series infamous for quick-time parkour sequences. Surely this would be a good idea for a DS game.

• I love how the reasoning for a lot of DS games existing is simply due to the fact that the DS was so accessible for all ages, so like why shouldn’t I make a spin-off game and release it on DS, even though it can’t be the same as the main series because the DS won’t be able to handle it?

• Watching gameplay footage of this, and like I can see the vision, but in the modern era, this looks like an old AppStore game purchasable for $2.

• But also, man, they really tried to make a 3D action adventure parkour game for the DS, huh? They really tried to do that. There were multiple Assassin’s Creed games for DS, by the way.

DK Jungle Climber (2007)

• I love that Donkey Kong in the title is stylized to DK; it feels like they didn’t really know if the name “Donkey Kong” would sell well. Or maybe they wanted to emphasize the weird era they were in. Either way, it feels very unofficial for an official game.

• The controls and style of the game feel like it should’ve been a Gameboy Advance game, like the sprite art and using the L and R buttons to control Donkey Kong feels like that.

• Which, funnily enough, it is technically a sequel to DK: King of Swing on GBA, so like if isn’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess.

• 8/10 from IGN is a crazy score, though, even for the time. Like let’s be so for real, there were better games that released in 2007. Probably, most likely.

Dynasty Warriors DS: Fighter’s Battle (2007)

• Sorry, a Dynasty Warriors on DS???

• You can imagine why this would be strange right, like it can’t be a hack and slash in the vein of a Warriors game, the 3DS could barely handle that!!!

• First impressions aside, it looks like a deck-builder instead of a full Warriors game, which makes sense in hindsight because a Warriors on DS sounds nightmarish.

• Though, the cards seem to be more like the characters that you use, instead of being actual attacks done through the cards ala Slay the Spire.

• So it’s like a very limited version of a Warriors game with like upwards of fifteen enemies max, and you still can still fight them in real time and gain control of the map to win like in a Warriors game.

• So it’s not a deck-builder at all. It’s just a tiny Warriors game. Huh. I think that might just be more impressive than anything. Or sad, depending on who you ask.

Golden Eye: 007 (2010)

• This is here for the same reasons as to why it was there on the Wii list, except I’d reason that this belongs here even more than on the Wii list.

• Yes, surely putting a co-op multiplayer shooter/adventure game, renowned for it’s couch co-op multiplayer from the N64, on the Nintendo DS, where everyone has their own device and it doesn’t really feel like you’re playing a multiplayer game despite being in the same vicinity, will be a good idea. Surely.

• And like I know those controls are ass, like any FPS on the DS is bound to be kinda ass because there’s only one (1) D-Pad, and the only way to move AND look around is to move with the D-Pad and look with the stylus.

• I guess if me and the boys are all suffering with these controls together, it might be less annoying and just dumb as hell.

Guilty Gear Dust Strikers (2007)

• A handheld fighting game isn’t too strange, but a fighting game on DS specifically? There just doesn’t seem to be enough buttons on the DS for a fighting game, let alone a comfortable enough way to hold it without your hands cramping.

• There’s a reason why Smash 3DS isn’t super popular and there’s like hundreds of copies of it at your local game store.

• It’s up to four fighters, and you can jump between the upper and lower screen to fight, which would’ve been sick as hell as a kid with a DS; any time they did that, it was incredibly cool.

• It’s kind of like a platform fighter, except you can’t really fall to your death, as far as I can tell. And there really isn’t anything interesting about the platforms; they’re just straight lines to jump between.

• So it’s like Smash, but worse. But consider, its one of the first Guilty Gear games to have mini games. Does that redeem it? Ehhh…

• Love that this can be shortened to Guilty Gear DS, they knew what they were doing. Unironically, I kinda want a physical copy of this real bad.

Guitar Hero: On Tour (2008)

• Sorry, I love how they did this game, it seems so unpractical.

• The add-on controls for the GBA slot is genuinely so funny, but strumming with that pick stylus just seems impractical.

• Ohhh, but at least there’s a wrist strap to keep your hand in place!

• Fundamentally, I know this shit makes your hand cramp like a motherfucker, maybe not on the OG DS, but for sure on the DS Lite.

• Regardless of how good of a port it is, it is so funny to me; we would do anything to play console games portably back then, huh?

Mario Party DS (2007)

• They really tried to put multiplayer games on DS and pretend local play was more well known and used. Or maybe it’s just that I was a loser kid who had no friends with a DS, so getting a Mario Party on DS wouldn’t have made sense to me.

• Funny as hell they added Lore to Mario Party for the single player campaign, but also holy shit, it sucks that they locked boards behind Lore.

• Structurally, there’s nothing wrong with this, the boards are unique, and apparently the mini games are fun, which is the Bare Minimum expectation for a Mario Party game.

Marvel Trading Card Game (2007)

• I’m not gonna claim I know jack shit about Marvel, never really been an interest of mine, but this is 100% someone’s favorite childhood game they completely forgot about, y’know? That’s the vibes this gives off.

• The era of Marvel before the movies and getting acquired by Disney is always so fascinating to me, like why did they make a trading card game? I guess that’s just the direction to take when you have a shit ton of characters that all have special abilities.

• Ohhhh, it’s just Magic: the Gathering. Like it’s literally just MTG with Marvel characters. Universes Beyond before Universes Beyond even existed.

• The gameplay of this looks boring as hell, like there aren’t any cool animations or voice lines to make it interesting as a video game, it’s just the card game but worse because you’re playing it alone with no real person to interact with.

Metroid Prime Hunters (2006)

• Since I’m apparently a Metroid reviewer now, I will likely have a review of this up once I finish it (not likely to be soon), but it is truly jank in a way that somehow completely wraps back around to being peak.

• The maps are small and repetitive, making it hard to tell where you’re going, but also somehow perfectly linear so that getting lost is hard. It’s such a strange experience.

• You kinda just go to a planet, traverse it in a straight line (more or less), grab a key item, walk back, have a boss fight, then rinse and repeat for like 5 planets (give or take).

• And the controls are weird on official hardware because you’re moving with the D-Pad, aiming with the touch-screen, and shooting with the L button, forcing your hands to be in a weird crab claw for most of the game. Hand cramping guaranteed if you play for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

• But apparently the multiplayer is fire, so I’ll give it at least that.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)

 

 

• Must I really explain why this is funny to me?

• This feels made for kids who saw their older brother’s play the console version and wanted their own version of the game to play.

• Oh, and it’s just structurally and fundamentally bad, gotcha. Like god awful graphics and shitty gameplay that barely looks functional, gotcha.

• Need for Speed but rated E for Everyone, by the way. That’s because the gameplay looks like this:

 

Pokemon Conquest (2012)

• I will take every opportunity possible to talk about this weird as hell Pokemon game that the Pokemon Company has presumably completely forgotten about.

• This was pitched to me as “Pokemon but Fire Emblem,” but in actuality, it’s more like “Pokemon but Final Fantasy Tactics if Final Fantasy Tactics was about a fascist.”

• They made a real-life historical figure into a video game character, and a Pokemon character at that. Wild as hell. This is some Hamilton bullshittery.

• The devastating part of this is that the gameplay is actually really unique and fun to play, like you get to use up to like six Pokemon at the same time in turn-based strategy, but also uses the type match-ups in Pokemon for added strategy.

• Also if you fumble on a generational level, you lose out on getting new Pokemon added to your team, like the people you fought were so devastated by how ass you were, they’ll decide to just fucking leave. And like, fair.

• I need to see someone Nuzlocke this, it would be really funny.

Pokemon Dash (2004)

• Pokemon Dash has always eluded me as a game collector because I would see it in game shops all the time and simply be baffled as to what it could be.

• Surely it isn’t a racing game but you play as Pikachu, right?

• But now actually looking at the game, and yeah, no, that’s exactly what it is.

• This baffles me in the same way that Sonic R baffles me, like foot-racing as a video game character does not seem appealing to me, and I can’t imagine what the development of that looks like.

• Please, for the love of god, just put the silly characters in karts, it simply won’t be as jank looking or feeling, please.

Populous DS (2008)

• I think this is funny in the sense that it’s a real-time strategy game, when neither Age of Empires or Civilization (two series highly known for their RTS games) couldn’t put an RTS game on DS and opted to make entirely new turn-based strategy games.

• What witchcraft does Populous have that AoE and Civ don’t??

Resident Evil Deadly Silence (2006)

• I love this, I think this is so funny. It’s funny in the same way that RE4 on Wii is funny, in that it just doesn’t make sense.

• I can’t understand how you would control this.

• This is also funny for the fact that RE Requiem was a pioneer of graphics and controls on the 3DS, truly like the peak of what the 3DS can handle, a full fledged RE game on 3DS, and then you look back to see what Capcom was doing with RE on the DS and you like kinda have to wince.

• It’s apparently just a remake of the original Resident Evil game for PS1, but like…why on DS? I know there were other remakes of RE1, but on DS? And not PSP? I guess you could just play the original PS1 RE1 on PSP, but still…

• I guess since it’s just RE1, the controls can’t be too confusing or strange since it originally had to work with the restraints of the PlayStation controller before DualShock, but you’re also working with the DS’ tiny ass screen which would seem rough in my eyes.

• Also, I love M-rated DS game, like of course it is, but the novelty is so funny to me. The DS is so fundamentally a “childhood console” in my mind that the idea that there’s games on it that a kid can’t play is strange as hell to me.

• I’m fairly certain if you were like 18-30 at the time, you just didn’t buy a DS. You probably got a PSP. And if you did, you had RE1 already on there. What is the point of this other than it being a novelty?

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (2008)

• My favorite part about making these lists is finding games I’ve never heard of and adding new things to my backlog, like I’ve never heard of this game but it’s apparently a remake of a PS1 game?

• Also, what’s up with the DS being a PS1 remake machine? Is it literally just because the PSP could just play PS1 games, and they needed something to compete with it? Or is it just circumstance?

• Essentially, it’s a JRPG but instead of cutscenes progressing the plot, there’s musical numbers instead. Takes the concept of Mario 3 being a play and expands upon it tenfold, we love to see it.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (2009)

• The more I look into the DS, the more I realize that it truly was the perfect JRPG console, like why was there so many JRPGs on this single console? Why did so many long withstanding series move to DS or get ports to DS?

• Gonna be honest, I’ve never played a Shin Megami Tensei game in full, but trying to put one of those games on the DS and make it appealing to a broader audience is kinda funny to me.

• Because that’s essentially what this was. It is even somehow more anime-looking than any other SMT game I’ve seen.

• This is also essentially the plot of The World Ends With You, but as an SMT game. Clearly a really popular concept back then, where you get spirited into a game-world type scenario, but also you’re technically still existing in the real world, and thus participating in some kind of weird 4th Wall breaking game.

• Just play TWEWY man.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (2009)

• If Devil Survivor was meant for a broader audience, Strange Journey was meant for the hardcore SMT fans, and I think that’s funny as hell given the cover art alone.

• This cover art is so fucking funny, and then you read the synopsis and realize that it’s a fully batshit insane game. It’s got dungeon explorer aspects on a DS screen, and I know that shit is jank as hell.

• I need to emphasize that I’ve never played a Shin Megami Tensei game, I don’t know what the series is about, but god, what are we doing.

• Sometimes I wonder if devs back then were like actively aware of how small the DS screens were, pre-DSiXL; like that shit was tiny.

• Love that it’s a mainline game though, like show someone this game and ask them what the fuck is Shin Megami Tensei, and I don’t think you’ll ever get a straight answer.

• I love how the synopsis sounds like a historical warfare game, and you look at gameplay, and it’s got all of the demons and anime characters of a typical Atlus game, and like I think that’s so funny.

Shining Force Feather (2009)

• Dude, they were just releasing whatever the hell on the DS.

• “It is the 20th entry in the Shining series” WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SERIES

• That’s all man, I just need to know what the hell Shining Force is and why it persists throughout gaming history when I also like haven’t heard of the series before starting to collect games.

• I love when you see an old game that’s very clearly an anime game but because localizers in America were afraid that marketing it as an “anime” game wouldn’t sell well in the 90s, they created box art to represent how cool and sick as hell the game is in a generic art style, and then further on into the series’ life, you see it become more and more anime.

• Like how the hell is this in the same series as the Genesis’ Shining Force? I may never know, JRPGs take fucking forever to get through. Same series, by the way:

SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS (2006)

• I can’t even be mad at how silly this seems because of how sick it is!!

• I do love it when devs try to make card-game based games on small ass screens, like the Pokemon TCG games on Gameboy, like idk man I can’t see the fucking cards.

• But also this does everything about porting a trading card game to a video game console right, compared to Marvel TCG, like there’s cool card art and animations, and an actual story to follow outside of just a trading card game; they peaked with this one, for sure.

• Also funny as hell that the majority of the section on this game on the Wikipedia page for it is about a game-breaking bug.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008)

• A classic, frankly, when talking about weird ass DS releases.

• I love it whenever a Sonic developer decides that they need to make Sonic “dark,” and have a more “mature” plotline, like it’s Sonic man, you really don’t need to do all of that.

• And it’s so devastatingly funny to me that the creators lost a lot of their music files right before launch, so they had to frantically recreate it from memory. Like nightmarish situation, but resolved in the funniest game soundtracks known to history.

Super Mario 64 DS (2004)

• As one of the major release titles for the DS (if not the major release title), it definitely showcases the DS’ power, acting as the first way to play Mario 64 portably.

• Didn’t say it was a good way to play Mario 64 portably…

Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble! (2005)

• I feel like Viewtiful Joe is one of those series you vaguely hear mention of in like gaming history videos about being incredibly unique and having an estranged release, but like you don’t ever hear people talk about actually playing it or wanting to play it.

• There’s four games in this series, by the way. This is the fourth entry, by the way.

• For all intents and purposes, it looks like an interesting game, but like, to get to this point, you’d have to really be a Viewtiful Joe fan, and I just don’t think those fans exist.

Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (2008)

• Do you ever have a moment when you remember a game you watched your dad play maybe once in your life, and it just kinda sticks in your mind because of the naming convention, only to find out that there were more games released in that series? And like you never looked into it because that thought never crossed your mind? That’s what I’m experiencing right now.

• I don’t even know what Viva Piñata is, outside of it being a game that my dad had on his Xbox 360 digital catalog. I actually don’t even think I’ve seen gameplay of it.

• Oh, it’s a lifesim made by Rare. What. I only have more questions now.

• This almost makes more sense than an Xbox 360 release, because lifesims thrived on DS, but what person bought an Xbox to play lifesims? Like truly, I’m more confused.

Warhammer 40K Squad Commander (2007)

• Dude, they made literally anything portable; who up playing Warhammer 40K on their Nintendo DS?

• Y’know, I don’t know anything about Warhammer 40K and frankly, I don’t care to learn, but it just doesn’t seem like the most ideal game to play on DS.

• Essentially the summary of most of these titles in this post: why is this even on DS in the first place?

You Don’t Know Jack (2011)

• I’ve seen this shit at my local game store, and it’s just so funny to me.

• “Party” “Game” on the Nintendo DS is like structurally such a funny concept to me, but what’s worse is that there’s online multiplayer.

• Like, I feel like the one redeeming factor of Jackbox games in general is that you get to play it with your friends and at least try to make them laugh with the format presented to you. You don’t get that satisfaction if you can’t even see the other person’s reactions.

• What’s worse than that is that there’s a single player. Playing You Don’t Know Jack with people you don’t know is one thing, sitting in your room alone trying to make funny quips to absolutely no one is a level of devastating and depressing that I can’t even fathom.

---

And that’s about it! Nintendo’s seventh generation of gaming will forever be interesting as hell to look back on because of how gimmicky the consoles were, but also how third-party support handled the gimmicks, or even how first-party developers handled it. It’s like truly impressive how many games were released during that generation, and how much of it was slop even at the time.

Did you play any of these games? Which were your favorites? Did you find a new hidden gem amongst this list? Lemme know in the comments below!

Man, we’re finally done with the back-to-back-to-back release nightmare. I’m gonna go into hibernation until my next upload. My next post will be going live on 4/15 at 3 PM EST, which will be a retrospective on UNBEATABLE and it’s diversion of expectations, so stay tuned for that! I’m giving y’all fore-warning: it’s gonna have a lot of spoilers of the plot of UNBEATABLE, so you get two full weeks to buy and play the game (to the end). Writing about how a game masterfully diverts expectations kinda requires spoiling the ending of the game, so I highly recommend checking out the game before reading that post.

And as always, see you next time!