games, unctions

catch-up

hiya. been real in my gourd about life since i last posted here. a lot has happened. spaces i was interacting with had to be distanced, conversations i was having became more difficult, and the things i turned to for relief had to shift as a result. my birthday was may 28th (yay), so i took some of the birthday eshop funds i received and purchased donkey kong: tropical freeze per the recommendation of everyone on earth (it should still be on sale for like $40, if you're looking for a great 2d platformer). i returned to death stranding, an open-world game about reconnecting communities after calamity (or.. that's what i'm led to believe this is), and have found a deep interest in riichi mahjong through nintendo's recently released 51 worldwide clubhouse games. i'd also be remiss if i didn't mention that the new pokémon sword/shield dlc allows you to catch dunsparce and heracross, so.. there's that.

death stranding update

in 2011, my then-girlfriend went to study abroad in london for two semesters (8 long months) and while that first week was devastating (i bought a bearded dragon with her the week before she left, an appropriately hornéd reptile, to be my partner in the interim), i eventually found solace in the expansive (if blasé to the genre) skyrim. i lost countless hours (i refuse to count them..) to wandering the nordic tundra, collecting herbs and sneaking in sewer systems as a slippery lizard man. the next year of my life was a blur, every event in my real-life punctuated and remembered by the progress points of my bevy of avatars. i also drank a ton of aloe juice during this time.

death stranding has settled into my life in a similar manner. i'm unemployed, save a few on-going tutoring gigs, and california is heading into another lock-down (at least, i hope it is given the rising numbers), so i remain at home. i put majora's mask on hold because of how dreary the game gets in the final dungeon/post-game, something i don't need any more of right now. i was also playing saga: scarlet grace ambitions at the behest of my good friend bryan, but even with the compelling battle mechanics, the game's dry story and flat overworld couldn't hold my attention in the way i needed it to.

death stranding gives me space and it gives me peace. there are times of minimal stress (“bt's” for example), but they are brief, and as the game progresses i am better equipped to deal with any given obstacle. if i want the challenge, it's there waiting for me. if i want to deliver 300 kilograms of sleeping pills to an elderly gentleman living in the mountains, i can do that. if i just want to pave roads for other players, i can do that. if i feel particularly spicy, i can infiltrate an enemy camp and bind em all up and allow for the online masses to ransack their bases—while it lacks the satisfaction of metal gear solid 5, stuffing folks into lockers and trucks that are hurtling into distant valleys, it'll do.

i don't know where i'm at in the game (hour 25, chapter 3), and i'm in no hurry to beat it. i'm not sure that i have heard of many beating this game, now that i think of it. i dig the weird stuff, i like the terrain, and i'm a big fan of the power skeleton upgrade—i like feeling like a miniature metal gear.

majora's mask update

whittling my way through majora still. forgot how most of my enjoyment of this game is not in the major story chunks (getting through the four temples, fighting majora, etc.) so much as the side quests. i can't think of another game whose sidequests matter as much in the long-run. part of that has to do with how so many of these sidequests bleed into others via mask-collection; in order to start some quests, you need masks from previous ones. some of the best quests require bushels of these different masks (all with their own special, often eccentric abilities) to meet their end. but one other thing that's fantastic is that, while it may seem that the quests are vehicles to get masks and other goodies for your avatar's progression, i'm finding that i enjoy the interactions with the non-player characters themselves more often than the new gameplay features i earn with the masks.

the three masks that you make consistent use of are the ones that alter your species (deku, goron, zora), and each one is obtained through a sort of trauma. the deku through link's apparent irrational fear of the stone-spitting mandragoras; the goron and the zora through the deaths of a warrior and rockstar, respectively, seeking to aid their tribes in this three-day “groundhog day” horror. i'm fuzzy on how the game ends, how it ties up the world's distortion over the three-day period of time (you couldn't possibly beat every temple and side-quest in the limited time they give you, even if time were slowed down). but, if i remember correctly, the game rewinds all the way to the beginning with the evil averted to begin with. what happens, then, to the spirits that aided you along the way? i imagine they are restored, bodily—differently than how you are told to sooth their spirit in-game with the song of healing.

this reminds me of a book series i returned to in the last few years, “the time quintet” by madeleine l'engle (“a wrinkle in time” being the first book, and most recognizable). in the second book, “a wind in the door,” the same cast of murray's from the first are thrust into yet another dangerous mission to defeat the echthroi (greek for “enemy”, a sometimes physical embodiment of evil in the series) at a molecular level within themselves and others. in the process of defeating these harmful spirits they have to relearn lessons from their previous exploits in the first book because they don't remember the events of the first book. when i learned this in the book, i was immediately distressed: this family that had gone through cosmic trials to restore balance to their home and galaxy did not remember the trials or valuable lessons that they had encountered—only glimmers, or faint shadows of what they once knew stuck with them. in the third book “a swiftly tilting planet,” a couple of the family members have to travel through time to right the course of history—evil had crept in to alter the fate of the earth. and just as in “wind in the door,” they were unaware of their previous exploits in great detail. again i was frustrated. as a kid, i only enjoyed the books marginally—there were more bombastic things to read with a greater sense of continuation, “harry potter,” “redwall,” “lord of the rings,” etc.

only in my mid-twenties did i understand what l'engle was trying to do with her “soft-resets.” although the cast may not remember the events that occurred, that does not mean that they did not happen—these experiences still exist within the greater fabric of time. existence as it is couldn't exist without the characters learning to summon this courage through galactic challenges they had faced. this might sound weird, let me unfold this tesseract:

you are struggling to apply for jobs because you lack the confidence to believe that you have what it takes to do X, Y, and Z respectively. you know this about yourself, and it holds you back. in this universe, this is the echthroi, the IT, telling you that you are not enough, that you are flawed or broken. perhaps you are out for a stroll by the creek in your idyllic east-coast country setting, when a frog tells you that it requires your help. you see, his homeworld has been devastated by evil forces, and he believes only you can help him. so you go, you see new lands, new peoples, learn new things about yourself, and in defeating this evil force you have learned to be confident in yourself. the evil is lifted! you are returned to your homeworld, swearing to never forget the memories you made. you wake up, by the creek, and see a couple of frogs swimming in the shallow pools and think to yourself what a wonderful evening it is. you go home, open your laptop and see that job application you'd left open. for some reason, you feel a swell in your chest and for the first time you are able to fill the app out and submit it within a reasonable 30 minutes. you remember nothing of your interdimensional journey, the friends you made along the way, or even what you learned, but somewhere, deep inside, you have been shifted—the evil is lifted, and your self-confidence grows seemingly for the first time within you.

this is what i believe l'engle is getting at. that there is wonder in the world, if only we would seize it. that every moment could be book-ended with some strange and fantastic journey within ourselves to discover ourselves. and who are we to say otherwise? if there is such a thing?

majora's mask is not necessarily getting at this. but i can't help but think that darmani and mikau (the goron and zora who died to give way to your own journey) have in some way undergone their own spiritual transformation so that when link would eventually save termina and move on, they would be able to return to their spaces unaffected, but hopefully with some new understanding of the world they didn't have prior.

i'd like to finish the game at some point soon, so i'll find out if they actually do return to the mortal coil, but until then.. these have been “thoughts” by “me.”

on mazes and majora's mask

i'm in a weird space where i'm having a hard time sticking with anything games-related. there's no science to it, but i'm sure it has to do with the restlessness that comes with unemployment and living in a city that refuses to believe the very real threat of a pandemic. because of that, i'm doing what i did to try and get the blood flowing with my reading, which suffered similarly towards the beginning of this hullabaloo—i'm returning to old favorites that will remind me, “yes, indeed, you did enjoy this thing.”

so i'm playing majora's mask and kero blaster, two games i've enjoyed in years past and have meant to return to with the debut of their newer iterations (majora's mask's remaster on the 3ds and kero blaster's port to the switch, which.. is really just a big improvement for me since i'm not wild about action games on the pc). kero blaster for another post, today i'm going to talk about majora's mask for a bit.

i'm thoroughly enjoying the game, it's gorgeous on the 3ds—i've never seen better pinks and purples in a video game, grezzo does the lord's work here in remastering such a choppy grungy game. this morning i breezed through the forest temple, cleansing it of the dark forces within, restoring the ph balance of the poison ponds, and stopped the monkey-roast. it was great. the princess informed me of the butler's wish to see me, so he could bestow upon me this incredible, puckered gift. but before that, i had to chase him through a maze, which got me thinking: would a 3d platformer based around navigating mazes be any fun?

the butler's maze is similar to dampé's graveyard maze in ocarina for those who remember. it's time, and you try to follow as quickly as you can as the butler/dampé floats away from you, just far enough that if they were to turn a corner you would lose sight of them and have to guesstimate based on the sound their floating makes which direction they headed in. doors close behind you as you travel, to keep you on your toes. there weren't whole alternate paths (plenty of dead-ends), but there were different ways to traverse within larger spaces inside the maze (taking a bigger jump across the chasm to a smaller log for a bigger rupee, etc.). it isn't a typical singular-row-looking labyrinth; there are rooms and chasms, a river, some other features like that. i enjoyed th