Welcome back to the 35th volume of Punished Notes. For this unconventional edition, I’ll start with a brief essay on the elephant in the room, and then go into a bunch of brief, scattered notes on some cool video games.
Despite the waves of anguish and atrocity that lap upon the shores of our newsfeeds, I’ve often found it best to maintain some semblance of optimism. Maybe we can stop this, grow from this, avoid this, learn from this. And while my faith in humanity gets tested on a daily basis, I need to remind myself that my life is largely secure, as are the lives of many of those I care about, and that I need to channel this anger and frustration toward helping those not privileged with such security. At the very least, I need to continue educating myself and others about the conditions and institutions putting such lives in peril in the first place.
When I woke up Wednesday morning to confirmation that Donald Trump had become President of the United States for a second time, in this case winning both the electoral college and the popular vote, I didn’t even bother reaching for scraps of optimism.
I can’t in good faith say I was shocked at the result—that vile, disgusting man won before; of course he could do it again—but part of me heading into this election felt like the American electorate had inched away from Trumpism just enough to deny his return to the Oval Office. And while I certainly have my criticisms of the Democratic party and much of the strategy behind the Harris campaign, I had somehow convinced myself enough voters would understand the dangerous implications of another Trump term. Call me naive, but if you act like the worst is always going to happen, it usually will.
Even amid the fight for a better world in the face of bad news, we all need our escape, and it would be foolish to believe otherwise. Obviously, if you’re reading this, you think my answer would be video games. But which one(s)?
Unfortunately, the answer right now is, well, none of them.
I tried Metaphor: ReFantazio, which narratively may seem like the perfect game to explain this current political moment, but it felt just a little too close to home. I tried playing a little more Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer, but even that felt just a little too mindless and not therapeutic enough. I thought I’d give Banjo-Tooie a shot after its recent addition to Nintendo Switch Online, but it really feels like a clunkier, less engaging version of its excellent predecessor, so it wasn’t even fun enough to be distracting. I tried replaying Donkey Kong Country 2 for the gazillionth time, but even that merely offered a temporary reprieve. Even Game of the Year frontrunner Balatro failed to suck me into its vortex of gambling bliss.
This funk won’t last forever, if it even lasts another few days. I suppose I’m still in the “grief” stage of this post-election period, and while I know the path toward a better future lies not in despair or inaction, it would be unfair (and, honestly, unwise) to deny myself a few moments of sadness, lest the true nature of the fast-approaching evil we see before us fails to fully sink in. Moreover, this funk didn’t even start on November 5; I’ve kind of been feeling this way for the several days leading up to it. Still, I had hoped to find a brief repose in the digital worlds that occupy my mind on a daily basis, but that imaginary sanctuary just didn’t appear.
In a sense, it’s not just normal or understandable that I’ve approached my favorite hobby largely with a feeling of ennui; it’s probably, strangely, good. If anything, it means that I won’t easily lose sight of what matters in this world, and that even flashy Japanese role-playing games, big-budget spy thrillers, and colorful cartoon worlds can’t fully pull me away from that. As long as I can maintain a grasp on reality and all the horrors that come with it, I can do what I can to help.
Thank you for reading this edition of Punished Notes, the first in what feels like eons. It’s been a long year for me to say the least, but I appreciate anyone who spends even a minute reading my work here, as well as the work of every other writer on this site. Now that you’ve had your vegetables, the rest of this blog post will contain lightning round thoughts on various video games I’ve played lately, as well as a thought on a certain New York sports team (no, not THAT one).
In the meantime, however, if you want to feel like doing something in the wake of recent news, try giving some money to organizations already out there doing plenty of good. Here are a handful I support:
National Network of Abortion Funds
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
West Side Campaign Against Hunger
LIGHTNING ROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Just months after writing thousands of words about how lost Call of Duty campaigns feel, I have to say: The Black Ops 6 campaign is surprisingly great. While it has its fair share of expectedly good shootout segments, it also contains some of the more interesting spy thriller missions I’ve played in a first-person game in years. It definitely stumbles in other ways—there’s still plenty of jingoism and anti-Arab racism—but at the very least it has a clear vision to it, one that’s a little more risky and not quite as Ra-Ra pro-America as its predecessors.
- I’m also about 14 hours into Metaphor: ReFantazio, and I’m not 100% sure where I land on it yet. It’s an overall great RPG experience with a compelling story and characters, but I still feel like it has higher gears to reach (and I expect it’ll reach those gears after juuuuuust a few more hours).
- It’s the funniest thing going back-and-forth between playing Metaphor and BO6. One narratively tackles the importance of optimism and storytelling in building a better future socially and politically; the other makes the case that all governments are kind of equally evil and that no one is trustworthy. I get whiplash everytime I go from one game to the other.
- F-Zero Climax recently appeared on Nintendo Switch Online (the game’s first official release in the U.S.), and it’s good! Solid track design and smooth controls make it probably the best F-Zero game on the handheld. Its availability highlights one of the best qualities of NSO: allowing players to try official out-of-market releases that they couldn’t access (legally) before.
- It’s a real shame and an extremely bad sign for the gaming industry at large that the team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was disbanded. Despite what I say just to piss off fellow editor David Silbert, I think it’s a great game, and it stinks that a big company like Ubisoft can’t handle its business well enough to make more projects like it.
- Despite what I said earlier in this Punished Notes, I still feel a little addicted to Balatro. Even after 80+ hours, I still have new challenges to face and new decks to unlock. I don’t think it’ll ever truly leave the rotation.
- I mostly enjoy the weekly Astro Bot speedrun level drops, but more than anything they make me just want more regular Astro Bot levels.
- I tried using a Steam Deck for the first time recently, and you know what? I don’t find it comfortable at all. Maybe it’s because I have wimpy baby hands, but it’s just not nearly as comfortable for me to hold as the Switch.
- For weeks after I completed the main story, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom continued to have a magnetic pull on me. I spent so much time wandering around this version of Hyrule searching for whatever secrets I had missed or completing whatever new side quests had popped up. However anyone feels about it now, I have a feeling Echoes will continue to reverberate in little ways for a long time, even if it’ll never be as big as the other Switch Zelda games.
- I have mixed feelings about the upcoming Yooka-Replaylee, the remaster of 2017’s cromulent 3D platformer Yooka-Laylee. On the one hand, I really like the changes developer Playtonic has made that should enhance the core experience (smoother camera controls, sharper graphics, fast-travel points, more collectibles), but on the other hand, the core game itself just isn’t that interesting. It’s basically a worse version of Banjo-Kazooie, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but also not super exciting, either.
- Last month, my partner and I decided, on a whim, to purchase tickets to Game 5 of the WNBA Finals at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. She and I had recently decided to get really into the W, and the hometown New York Liberty being the best team in the league was a fairly good entry point. For those of you who followed the series, you know what happened: The Liberty ultimately won in overtime in Game 5, but only after some… let’s say questionable officiating. I totally understand fans, players, and even coaches for the Minnesota Lynx feeling like a title was taken from them. Still, I can’t deny that being there and witnessing a championship game in person was the most amazing sports moment I’ve ever seen live. So much about sports these days feels like it’s just about removing credit or complaining that everything feels rigged, but for one night, I just got to feel the joy of it all. Never forget or ignore the joy.
