I've been musing about what I actually like in a video games, and as a result I started to compare two of my favorite games: Resident Evil 4 and Skate 2.
What I actually like about these games are so diametrically opposed that I had to default to food analogies to wrap my head around why I love both of them so much.
Resident Evil 4 is Baingan bharta (or your preferred curry) with the spice kicked WAY up paired with three kingfishers. It's an assault on the senses, disorientating, absolutely delicious, and you'll need a little bit of time to recover afterwards.
Skate 2 is kraft macaroni and cheese with a little siracha with some baby carrots. Is it an impressive meal? No, but it's quick and easy, was a go to for me in college, and was something that I probably partook in too much in my early 20s.
Nier: Automata is a pork chop from your neighbor's organic etc. subsistence farm, prepared with butter in a cast-iron pan, modestly seasoned.
It is without a doubt the best pork chop you've ever eaten, offering all the gastronomic pleasures of such a pork chop. As you eat it, however, you are aware that this intensest of pork chop pleasures you are enjoying owes to the origin of the pork chop, you fixate on this idea that it's from your neighbor's farm, with all those (purportedly) ethically tenable qualifiers attached (organic, farm-to-table). In thinking about this you consider whether those addenda make a real philosophical difference regarding the act of slaughtering and eating a pig. A cheap pork chop from Walmart (or wherever) presents the easy answer,* a condemnation of industrial meat--and all that that implies--and industrialized food and agriculture generally, sold at a profit by Walmart (or wherever). But with your neighbor's farm, the moral question comes down solely to the killing and eating of the pig.
_Was this [size=16]best of all pork chops[/size][size=18] really the best if [/size][size=20]its consumption[/size][size=22] involved so much[/size][size=24] **TORTURED HAND-WRINGING?**_[/size]
Served with roasted potatoes and applesauce.
||(Really I am only making this comparison because it is what I ate three or four times during the second or third week of April 2017, playing Nier: Automata at my parents' house.)||
[size=10]*Those more committed to veganism and anti-animal-cruelty may hold that these two meat sources constitute a false dichotomy, which may be arguable but which is not the point here.
Any game plus
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Just kidding I've never even tried it
Tangent: Look at these ancient tweets by BAWLS Creator Hoby Buppert
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@Gaagaagiins I can‘t tell if this man is just a goofy goober or completely unhinged. Reminded me that I used to put burt’s bee's (or any lip balm with methol) around my eyes to help stay awake during class. Not my brightest moment.
Also, talking about being sleepy, FF7 is sleepy time tea with some shortbread. I'm almost done with my first playthrough, any it's been making me super sleepy lately. I've fallen asleep playing it twice in the last week
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a Mai Tai
Xenoblade Chronicles is a Cosmopolitan
Xenosaga is a Gin and Tonic
Xenogears is a dry Martini