Preemptive Retaliation

Come join me in my attempt to quantify my media experiences. As I was compiling the books and games I experienced through this year I found a general theme peeking through – one of exhaustion and boredom, of doing something for the sake of doing it, rather than not. That might just be down to Winter, but hey ho ‘This is water’ and all that.

Anyway, here’s the best of the year GAMES edition;

We’ll go straight to the top with Hollow Knight: Silksong. I’ve written on this before, and again, and again – and I can’t get around the fact that this game did leave a bitter taste in my mouth. It was hard and uncomfortable, but gorgeous and when it really came together it came together in spades. The combat and action was so incredibly tight that I was moving as fast as I could think, and every challenge that was thrown against me I was able to overcome through time, patience, and perseverance. This was tough as, due to life, I have less and less time to play games, and using that time to play a game that beats the shit out of me is a hard pill to swallow – but some of the victories were gratifying and illuminating in every way you want a videogame to be. I still stick with my original review – it is stunning in more ways than visual, it is engrossing, endearing, enriching, and enbrilliant. I would still recommend playing other games.

It seems as though everyone is in love with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and it is very deserved. The game is incredible in every way, but what sang for me was the story. It sets up so much intrigue in its opening sequence, and that intrigue is built upon so slowly with each passing beat. Things that don’t make sense – the crazy world, for one – become completely natural and accepted, and the game uses this complacency to plunge a knife right into you and really fucking twist it. This game devastated me on multiple occasions, and as its story unravelled I found myself empathising with each character, wanting to do their side quests just to know more about them rather than just for mechanical reasons. The combat was nice and crunchy, and I really loved learning the parry patterns to get the most out of the game. The only problem for me in this game was… well, me. I have trouble synergising in videogames and this one had a lot of it, so I looked up some optimised strategies and builds and… the combat became too easy. It was a cake walk, and so became an obstacle in completing the story. And, on top of that, there was so much in the game to explore and see, that I wanted to see it all before I finished. So I burned myself out searching for more content and having to deal with a combat system that I had inadvertently made tedious. Still, the story has left a lasting impression on me, and I think on it at least once a week – death, and grieving, and how we use art to help ourselves. Chef’s kiss, what a game.

Since completing The Last of Us Part 2 I find that I’m brought back into discussions about the game more often than I thought. Every once in a while my algorithm puts a video or essay my way about this game, and I get to think about it all over again. I enjoyed it much more than I did Part 1 – it was more focussed, and I felt the moment to moment action was a lot more diverse. My favourite part of it was discussing it with a friend, and going through each area and each moment as I came across it. The stories within also reinforced what was going on in the game and its themes, and I honestly think it’s a masterpiece. A great movie-game, where I play the exciting parts and get to experience the story as it unfolds.

Another Metroidvania snuck its way in here with Blasphemous. This was a delightful obsession I found myself tumbling into for a week or two. The art is stunning to behold, with a very un-self-conscious lean into the brutality of Catholicism and its art. The areas were rich with detail, the bosses were distractingly well imagined and animated. I loved the build up of skills so when it came to defeating the final boss I was a powerhouse in my own right. It wasn’t as tight as I would’ve likened it to be, with a lot more wiggle room and floatyness to the character, but it fit well with the style. My main gripe with it would be the ending – I like Metroidvanias to have multiple endings, multiple challenges that reward exploration, but in this case I was locked into the “bad” ending so early on that there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t a choice, per se, but more me following the natural progression of the game. The second game has tempted me a few times, but I don’t know why I haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet. Maybe that early game lock-out annoys me more than I realise.

This year was the year I got back into VR, having purchased a Quest 3. There’s so much I love about this medium of games, because when it’s right you can get so lost in the experience. There are so many games I loved to play and replay (how is Half-life: Alyx still this incredible, unsurpassed, after ten years?), but one of my highlights was playing Dungeons of Eternity with Mike. For one thing, the game is just fun. The different weapons feel varied enough to try out, the enemies are interesting enough to keep you going – but mostly it was the hijinks. When I played with Mike there was rarely a session where I wasn’t doubling over laughing. In VR there’s an extra level of interaction that makes hanging out with friends head and shoulders better than discord. So whilst this game is good, it doesn’t hold a candle to the others that are on this list – but boy did I have fun, pure unadulterated fun. And isn’t that what playing videogames are all about?

So those are my loose top five games, but what else did I consume and diligently record with thoughts? The only other thing is BOOKS though maybe I should be doing these with films too?

I think I’m just a sucker for Sally Rooney. Intermezzo is flawed in so many ways, but it hits incredibly hard when it wants to. There’s something about the way she gets into the heads of men that is both comforting and terrifying. When reading there were so many times as character would think something, and I would be completely shocked at how many times I have thought that before. It is (again, comfortingly, and also annoyingly) exactly what I want to achieve with my writing. I feel this way, do you feel this way too? So many times in this book I was reminded and reassured that I am not alone. My relationships are also messy and overblown in my mind, my shame is often self created and self sustained. There are places where it falls flat, or doesn’t quite deliver what I want it to, but it made me feel seen – and that’s something I’ll hold onto.

So, This Is How You Lose the Time War came at pretty much the perfect time in my life. It is a whirlwind of a novel, that picks you up, throws you around and lobs you somewhere new and strange and beautiful. I read this when I was still in the beginning stages of reading and running Heart: The City Beneath, and it actually taught me a lot about showing off the vibe of something, rather than the details. I don’t need to over-explain every aspect of a character, I can just give the emotion behind them, something that their imagination can hold onto and build around. I think it’s true that no book looks the same in everyone’s head, but for this one it rings so true – everything Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone wrote is unique in my head, it’s my story as much as it is theirs, but man what a story they put in there.

So I was torn in picking my next book, because for all intents and purposes it should be Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. It’s smart! It’s beautiful! It tells a unique and interesting story in a unique and interesting way! The characters are interesting and complex! But did I enjoy it? Yes! Now that I type this out I feel silly for thinking otherwise. I did enjoy it. I enjoyed working my way through the house and learning it like Piranesi, of coming up with my own ideas of what was going on. I think I mentioned elsewhere on this blog that I was sure it was a COVID book, despite being in the process of being written well before it. The intimate rediscovery of your own home, of finding nooks and crannies that you never noticed before. Reminded me a lot of COVID.

The book I was going to counter with in the beginning of that unthought rant was Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, which I thoroughly enjoyed but didn’t get much substance from. Is this book snobbery? Maybe, but I read so few books a year that I’m a bit reluctant to read one purely for entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, this is a smart book (and it painstakingly explains how smart it is, over and over) but in the end it’s a popcorn movie. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s entertaining. And I like books like that, but I don’t like giving them top spots over books that have taught me something, or given me an interesting perspective, and not just something I liked. Ah. Maybe that is book snobbery.

The final book to round off this top five is going to have to be So You Want to Be a Game Master by Justin Alexander. This year I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about, writing on, planning, and running a roleplaying game. 2025 is when most of my Heart campaign ran, and a few weeks later I started running Mythic Bastionland. As it turns out, I really like running RPG games! I’m terrible at learning the rules, but I’m constantly surprised and whipped up in excitement when the story goes somewhere new or different. This book is the most prominent in a series of things I’ve read that have given me great advice on how to be a better GM/DM/Referee/Whatever. It has a positive outlook that I resonate with. My players want to do something – I should let them do it, or give them the opportunity to do it, but it’s my job to interpret interesting consequences. I think it’s a shame I listened to this as an audiobook instead of reading it, as I reckon my own copy would be underlined and annotated to hell.

Do I have any Other Media? Do RPG games count? Ok, fuck yeah they do.

Like I said, I ran Heart: The City Beneath and started Mythic Bastionland this year. My Heart game is something I will hold very dear in my memory, I think. My first experience running something. My friends were incredibly supportive throughout the campaign, my ideas were received well or dashed to bits by their actions, and together we found a consistent thread that we could follow, to pull and tug until we reached a conclusion. Our final session had almost no dice rolling, just description of what each character did, with the only input from me coming from an attempt to add flavour or twists to what was happening – and even then, a lot of that was just me clarifying what I was imagining, trying to ensure what was in my mind matched theirs. An extremely satisfying ending. I would like to delve back into Heart again one day, explore another cranny of the world, feel the effects of what happened in this campaign and the consequences for everyone else.

Mythic Bastionland is a different beast entirely. Monday is my usual game night, and for Heart I would come home and sit until early Tuesday morning sitting at my notebook, planning the next section, percolating ideas and recapping the events of what just happened. For MB, I’m doing much, much less of that. Instead I’m coming home and thinking of two or three hooks to start the next session with, brainstorming a few characters and voices, and that’s it – I’ll find out what happens in the next session. There’s a freedom here, that I can explore the world alongside my friends, that we can discover together what is going on and what stories will emerge. Still, I can’t help but feel a bit… I don’t know, lazy? I’m not doing as much prep, I’m not spending as much time giving my players a well crafted experience. But then again it’s still so much fun, and so interesting to play.

I’m still trying to figure out what type of game master I am. I don’t want to railroad people, I know that (I purchased a campaign book for Heart, and when it arrived I was immediately turned off by it – I loved the art and the story and the ideas, but I balked at the thought of guiding players through it, of taking them on a predetermined adventure – BUT, then again, isn’t every Myth in MB a predetermined adventure? I don’t know), but leaving everything up to chance is taking away too much control. Maybe I should venture out. I should find other people to run games for, I should have a bit of confidence in myself and spread my wings. Maybe yes. I want to end this segment with a joke of ‘haha, no’ but then again, I should really try that. Tom and Mike are good friends of mine, but wouldn’t it be useful to branch out and try different things? Or maybe try the same games, and have different experiences with different people?

The only other thing to report back on is my writing, which has been a tricky subject this year. I wrote more short stories which was nice, and submitted a few of them to different magazines. Nothing was picked up but I’m happy enough with their quality. However, all of that is completely overshadowed by the redraft of my novel. I finished the first draft on the 11th Feb and picked it up again two months after, I’m sure. I thought I would get it battered out by June, then August, then October, and here we are at the beginning of a new year and I’m barely halfway through it. Soon it will be longer redrafting the book than it was writing it, which is reflected in my notes. I have a green notebook where I started jotting down my ideas and planning out the chapters, and the notes of the redraft are just as extensive as the planning.

The delay is two-fold – first of which is that there are about three chapters that either need adding or I completely forgot to write them in the first draft, which is annoying in its own way. I had one chapter begin with a strong opening paragraph, and then just end. Thanks past me. Adding these chapters in is a lot of effort, as I have to inject these ideas into an existing story without compromising what has already been said or repeating myself.

The second is the subject matter. The book is supposed to be about imposter syndrome, but I’ve told it through the lens of an Artificial Intelligence. The whole idea was me working through my feelings of feeling like a terrible writer/person and being a fraud amongst everyone else. I wanted to break that down through the lens of someone who has a legitimate reason to feel like they are a fraud – so I conjured up a human-like AI that creates art. The thing is, the more I write the more I feel like I’m trying to justify generative-AI as an art form. Which is at odds with how I feel about it. And, mostly, I’m not too concerned with gen-AI.

If the story I’m writing is from the perspective of an AI construct who feels their art isn’t valid because it’s technically generative AI, and the lesson is that their art is valid because all art is valid, is that me saying that generative AI, in its current state, is acceptable?

Maybe. It’s something I’ve been working on and thinking through when writing this novel – and rewriting, and re-thinking, and the result is a bit of a mess. I think that by the time I’m done with the second draft I’ll have to completely rewrite it for the third draft, which will be its own special kind of hell.

So I don’t know. I did a lot of writing this year. In a year of 365 days I have written for 360 of them. My novel isn’t as shitty as I thought it was earlier this year, but then again it isn’t as good as I hope it would be. There’s a lot of it that is good – there are a lot of ideas that I love, and pieces of writing that I feel come from somewhere deep inside me – but there’s a lot of confusion.

I kind of spiralled at the end there, but there’s my 2025. Onto 2026 then, with all its games and books and creations and worries.