Video Games

mockup of a wikipedia article, zoomed in on picture and caption. picture features a kitten sitting with its paws on a controller. Caption reads a gamer partaking in an act of intellectual stimulation, known as gaming

What I'm Playing

Sonic Adventure, Developed by Sonic Team, Published by SEGA, Dreamcast, 1999.

Sega Dreamcast CD case cover for Sonic Adventure

I am starting one of my triannual playthroughs of Sonic Adventure, the first game I ever beat. It's janky and wonky, and a little awkward, but it's one of my absolute favorites. I was a big-time Sonic kid in the early-to-late 2000s, and even got into making terrible fan art. For better or worse, I nuked that old DeviantArt account a decade ago.

In any case, I always enjoy playing through this game. It's usually pretty easy and breezy, something I can blitz through in an afternoon.

Grandia, Developed by Game Arts, Published in the U.S. by Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation, 1999.

Grandia is a JRPG, originally made for the Sega Saturn. I discovered it through Hazel's YouTube video about Cozy Anime RPGs. Cute setting, fun writing, cheesy voice acting, and a neat implementation of an active time battle system. I am not accustomed to JRPGs, but it has been a great blend of challenging and approachable.

animated gif from game, featuring characters sharing a meal at a dinner table

Update 2025-09-23: I fell off playing until recently. I am about 17 hours in, and I have zero clue as to how far I am. I know I will eventually hit a disc change, but I am avoiding online guides so I can experience this thing organically.

It has also been a great game for my emulation handheld. I have an Anbernic RG35XXSP (a mouthful, I know), which is basically a chonkier GameBoy Advance SP with a 4:3 screen. I'll probably write a little review for this thing sooner or later.

Update 2025-11-07: I am about 21 hours in, and hit the disc change. It took a while to figure out how to best handle disc changes on the emulator, but now we should be good to go. No idea how much more game there is left, but I've enjoyed plucking away at it!

Update 2026-01-27: I picked Grandia back up for the first time in a couple months. Thankfully, It's simple and straight-forward enough that you can come back to it after a couple months without losing a beat. Apparently, it's a ~45 to 50 hour game, so I'm a ways away from finishing it. But, my emulator handheld is handling 2-disc games way better after an update, so I don't have to jump through hoops! Here's hoping I can squirrel away some more time for it.

Finished/Dropped

Cyberpunk 2077, Developed by CD Projekt Red, Published by Warner Brother Entertainment, Xbox Series X, 2022 (PS4 and Xbox One versions released in 2020)

I am somewhere between one-third and one-half of the way through Cyberpunk 2077, and my feelings on the game have sine-waved quite a lot. I find the setting and social commentary really interesting, but CDPR's UX and controller layout always has this veneer of jank that I struggle with until I settle into it.

Additionally, I am starting to reach a point where odd glitches and annoying level/encounter design is starting to irk me. I had to put the game down for the night last night, after getting stuck in the level geometry on try #3 of a tricky section. Wack.

On the whole, however, I think I am mostly enjoying my time with it. I find the main narrative thrust, that of a main character losing himself and choosing to either fight it or embrace it, pretty compelling. Its commentary on technocracy and corpratocracy is also poignant, and feels like the extremes that the writing team came up with in 2020 are closer to reality in 2025 than I would like. But I find some catharsis in throwing a wrench into the game's world system in part because of that familiarity.

I finished the game after more-or-less completing two playthroughs. I've got a first draft of a review underway.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Developed by Sandfall Interactive, published by Kepler Interactive. PC, 2025.

Short clip from Expedition 33 Male lead character Gustav catches a flower petal in his hand while female character Maelle walks up behind him.

Where do I even start? I saw the hype boil over post-release and got curious. I had not been keeping up with new releases, but discovered it was available on Game Pass. I was absolutely blown away by the prologue and early sections, and after discovering the game ran decently on Linux, I hopped off the Xbox to buy the game on Steam.

The dev team knocked this game out of the park. Excellent story, a great implementation of old school JRPG mechanics with some modern creature comforts, an excellent soundtrack by a composor that the devs discovered on SoundCloud, and an altogether great experience.

Update 2025-11-07: I dropped this game a few months ago and haven't really picked it back up. I do know enough of the plot to know what's coming. It's very philosophical and unmistakably French in how it handles its own existentialism. Very Camus/Foucault-coded, if that meaans anything.

Final Fantasy XV, Developed and Published by Square Enix, 2016.

I tried (and quickly dropped) FFXV a couple weeks ago. The setting is kind of neat, but neither the gameplay nor characters got their hooks in me in the opening chapters. I hoped to get more out of the game than I did, but alas.

I may give it another try later in the winter, when I get an extended break from work.

Kingdom Come, Deliverance, Developed by Warhorse Studios, Published by Deep Silver, 2018.

cover art of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, depicting character kneeling behind the hilt of a sword

Tentatively, I am dropping KCD. I really wish I were more into it than I am. The setting is fantastic, and it appears to be well-written and well-executed. Thirteen-year-old me would have definitely lost a few months to it. However, there are some pervasive bugs, mostly nagging rather than game breaking, but it can be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts game.

More than anything, I can't jive with the combat. If you've ever played Chivalry or Mount & Blade, it's a similar system whereby you use mouse movements to direct the sword, giving you the ability to feint, block, dodge and parry. There's plenty of depth to the system for someone sufficiently motivated to sink their teeth into.

However, that someone is not me. I just find it supremely frustrating, and I cannot budget the time needed to get good at it. Again, I'd have probably spent many, many evenings on it in middle school if it existed then, and I would have probably gotten proficient at it. But I'm too old for this. I even downloaded a save file that gives you significantly boosted stats and late-game gear, but I still found myself unable to handle tough opponents. And as far as I can tell, there isn't really any other way to alter the game to make it easier.

It's also one of those games where the difficulty is one of the key selling points for its biggest fans, and basically every conversation about easing the combat difficulty is met with demands to keep practicing and that you'll eventually get there.

That's why I never bothered with the Dark Souls series, either. I don't play games to beat my head into a wall.

The next best thing would be seeking out mods that de-fang the difficulty. I may look into that sometime. Just for the sake of exploring the setting, charting the characters' journeys, and seeing the story to its conclusion.