#oneaday Day 865: Earnestness is neither cringe nor cheesy

I've run into a few creative works recently that were evidently put together with a great deal of earnestness, genuine thought and emotion. And people like them! But, more often than not, not without including some sort of "disclaimer".

Said disclaimer is usually some form of admission that "I know this is cheesy, but…" or "yes, this might be cringe, but…" before going on to give a genuine emotional response. For some people, it is seemingly difficult to just give that emotional response without feeling the need to justify it or explain it away.

Well, I'd like to say: own it! If you got hit in the feelings by something, that's okay! If you had an emotional reaction to something that was so strong it reduced you to a sobbing wreck, that's fine! That's good! You have a healthy relationship with your own emotions, and you are not afraid to express them!

I say this as someone who listened to this track from Ace Combat 8 earlier (which I knew the full narrative context of, having beaten the game a couple of days ago) and burst into full-on sobbing at it by the midpoint. Like, I was legitimately crying so hard I had to stop everything else I was doing.

If your immediate response to that is "wow, that's cheesy" or "I can't believe you admitted that", stop. Take a minute. Ponder why you are thinking that. Are you concerned about what other people might think of you if you exhibit some sort of vulnerability? Because that's not something you need to concern yourself with — particularly if you are sitting by yourself.

It's okay to have an emotional response to something. It's okay to have a physiological reaction to that emotional response. You aren't faulty. You aren't broken. You are being human — something it can sometimes feel like we are, in may ways, being discouraged from by the daily algorithmic bombardment from social media.

Sometimes those emotional responses can come from the strangest places — like the funny plane game.

Or perhaps a song developed by a father, based on the near-gibberish his young daughter writes as "stories":

My immediate response to this was just "aw, that's cute and adorable… and surprisingly well-produced for what is essentially a silly joke video". I won't lie, I listened to it multiple times in succession for its pure catchiness.

Then I read the comments to the "Living Room version" of the song (actually just the song with an animation rather than the vertical video of the chap singing). And the emotions hit me, hard.

Y'see, if you haven't listened to the song, the end part features the repeated motif that "everything all fell down, but he picked it up". In the context of the original story and lyrics, it's a silly moment; the main character, the "Little Tall Prince", dropped a cup in the grocery store which caused everything to fall over, so, being a good little prince, he picked it up. Simple, silly, right?

Except human beings have the tendency to ascribe meaning to things where it might not have been the original intent, but it most certainly fits. That video has comment after comment of people expressing the sincere hope that "we can pick it up" — that we can fix the world after "everything all fell down" over the course of the last few years or so.

The world is broken. Peoples' souls are broken. And they want nothing more than to begin the healing process. Little moments like this song give just a glimpse of a world we once knew; one where we could have hope for the future and not find ourselves continually enraged and saddened by the latest stupid, wasteful, obnoxious, tragic, violent, unjust things happening on a daily basis. Hope for the future, through the eyes of a child.

I saw the number of people expressing this sincere hope, completely earnestly, and it hit me right in the heart. I'm not too proud to admit that I shed a few more tears there. And listened to the song a good few more times.

I want to believe that we can pick it up. I want to believe that we can come together in a Song of Wings as one. It is not cringe, embarrassing or cheesy to think such things. Take a moment and have a good cry over something today. I can't guarantee you will necessarily feel better, but you will almost certainly feel some relief at having let out emotions that have probably been pent up within you for a long time.

That's what I felt after putting my own emotions through the wringer over the last couple of days. Sometimes self-care is just about allowing yourself to feel.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 859: Running on empty

My brain feels empty. I think it's at least partly having been on my own for a while, having been ill, having slept for 12 hours last night and just generally… I don't know, feeling a bit eh.

I'm keeping busy each day at work, to be sure, so it's not as if I have nothing to do — and I have some truly excellent games on the go right now, too, so it's not as if I have nothing to entertain me in the evening. But for the last few days in particular, I've just sort of reached the end of the working day, slumped onto the sofa and… eh.

Of course, being aware of this happening is always the first step in doing something about it, so I'm telling myself here and now that once I finish writing this post, I am going to fire up Ace Combat 8 and continue playing it, because I've been having a great time with that game and I am keen to continue doing so. I also think I might book myself a ticket to go see the Street Fighter movie on Friday after work. I enjoyed the experience of going to see the Resident Evil movie, even if the movie itself was just sort of "okay", and the Street Fighter trailer made the movie look like a lot of fun.

My only slight hesitation is that I'm not super-attached to the Street Fighter franchise. I mean, like most nerds of my age, I had a copy of Street Fighter II on SNES and played it to death back then, but since that time I've not really spent a ton of time keeping up with the franchise. I've dipped in and out here and there — notably with IV and 6 — but something in my brain always tells me that out of all the fighting game series out there, Street Fighter is, somehow, the most "boring" of them.

I know this is absolute nonsense, of course. Street Fighter is full of larger-than-life characters, including numerous utterly ridiculous examples. It has just as much sex appeal as something like The King of Fighters (which I've become thoroughly interested in since we've done all the NEOGEO cartridges for Evercade) and as bewilderingly large a cast at this point. Plus I think, despite everything, and despite how I haven't really kept up with the series actively, it still has one of the most iconic casts of any fighting game. And it looks very much like the movie focuses mostly on the core Street Fighter II cast, with the addition of a few favourites from subsequent entries, like Cammy from Super Street Fighter II and Dan from Street Fighter Alpha.

So yeah. I will correct my former statement: after I'm done here, I will first of all book a ticket to go see the Street Fighter movie on Friday evening, including the Nice Seats that were so pleasant last time, and then I will fire up Ace Combat 8 and continue playing it.

See? Sometimes all you need to do to get yourself out of a funk is to confront that funk and then throw a bunch of Shit You Actually Want To Do at it. So that's what I'm bloody well going to go and do right now.

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#oneaday Day 842: Quick catch-up

I forgot to write something on here yesterday! In my defence, I wrote nearly 4,000 words on Ys VIII over on MoeGamer so I think you can probably cut me a bit of slack. I'm still going to take this post to "catch up" though.

I really enjoyed Ys VIII overall. It still feels a bit odd to play an Ys game that is 50+ hours long, but the game didn't drag at any point. It consistently sends you to new and interesting locales, and the story develops in some thoroughly intriguing directions as you progress. I successfully got the "true" ending, which isn't all that difficult to get (you just need more than 198 reputation points, which are easily acquired through just normal gameplay) and everything wrapped up in a most satisfying manner.

After writing my piece on Ys, I went back to the excellent Nighthawks, which is a spectacularly good game. As you might expect, I will be writing a more substantial piece on this once I've finished it, but suffice to say for now that if you have enjoyed any of the relatively recent crop of what I like to call "storytelling RPGs" (Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb), then you will definitely get a kick out of Nighthawks.

I think one of the things that always impresses me the most about a good quality game like this is how it can truly create a sense of a world without having an actual 3D space you can freely wander around. For me, the primarily text-based world of Nighthawks is considerably more compelling than a fully 3D modelled but ultimately bland and personality-free "open world", particularly because of the colourful characters that inhabit that world. It's funny, because this is exactly what the capital-A "Adventure" snobs were talking about in the early days of the medium; if you have a suitably compatible brain, the imagery conjured up by your mind from reading text will always be more vivid than anything even a powerful video card can render. (Of course, the fact that Nighthawks has beautiful art and excellent voice acting also helps a lot.)

Once I've finished Nighthawks, I'm going to play Silent Hill Townfall, which looks like it's going to be thoroughly interesting. I'm oddly excited to play a game with such accurate-looking renditions of a British (well, Scottish) town, and I'm intrigued to see how the game differentiates itself from other Silent Hill games. I didn't love Silent Hill f, although I didn't hate it either; from what I understand, Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different beast anyway, so I'm excited to explore it.

After that, I think it's going to have to be Ace Combat 8. I love Ace Combat, and this new one has been getting excellent reviews. I'm happy about that. The series deserves to do well, and it's nice to have a game like this on modern hardware. I mean, the PS2 Ace Combat games still look surprisingly great, but it's even better to have something in full HD-o-vision.

There we go, all caught up. Now watch me forget to write something later today.

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#oneaday Day 840: The deluge has started

The deluge of amazing games coming out in the latter half of this year has started. I've already noted that I've been playing the excellent Nighthawks from Wadjet Eye Games, and that is very much occupying my immediate attention, but also on my radar for the immediate-ish future are Silent Hill Townfall and Ace Combat 8, both of which seem to be going down well with reviewers so far.

I also still need to finish Ys VIII, which I set aside while I started Nighthawks, but I think I'm going to devote tomorrow to. I was enjoying it a lot, and I think I'm getting near the end, so I would like to finish it properly. Ys VIII is not a recent release, though. It came out ten years ago and has had two sequels since then, both of which I would like to play at some point.

Not only that, but I've been having a steady stream of stuff I preordered months ago finally coming around — just this week I've had Chained Echoes and Trails in the Sky Second Chapter come in, Little Goody Two-Shoes is on the way and I'm sure there are others to look forward to.

Situations like we've got here are why I'm not immediately worried for the crash that the top end of the industry appears to be careening towards. I have enough unplayed (or "want to replay") games on my shelves to last me for many, many years at this point, so if there comes a day where, for one reason or another, I just can't buy any new games? I think I'm probably going to be fine.

It will be a sad day when it's no longer possible to buy boxed copies of games, of course — and I'm sure once Sony successfully pushes for this with their abandonment of discs in 2027, at the very least Microsoft will follow — but I'm well-stocked in my little bunker for such an eventuality. Only question is: will I actually be able to finish all these RPGs before I die? I reckon I can… assuming the world itself lasts that long, of course.

My wife often takes the piss out of me for the number of games I have that are still shrinkwrapped, but I've always bought stuff with this sort of eventuality in mind. I mean, I was hoping it would never actually come to a day where physical media would no longer be a thing — and I guess it still might not, as much can change even in the space of a year — but I've basically been investing in the future enjoyment of my hobby, and in the meantime, I've been wanting to just support the games that I would like to see more of. As frustrating as it is to know that "Day One" sales count for almost more than anything for a lot of developers and publishers, it is, unfortunately, a fact. And while I'm in a position where I'm comfortable enough to be able to support the stuff I like, I'm happy to do so — even if I don't get around to actually playing the games in question until, at times, a year or two (or ten) later.

Anyway, I'm not buying anything else until payday next week. But I will probably be picking up Silent Hill Townfall and Ace Combat 8. I do genuinely want to beat Ys VIII though! Really! I want to write about it and everything!

For this evening, though, Nighthawks is calling, so if you need me, I'll be stalking in the shadows of Cradlebridge.

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