I played Apex at launch for a handful of weeks, throughout "Season 0" and into the beginning of Season 1, and ever since then I had this itch in the back of my mind to go back to it because it's very fun and I really enjoy the cast of characters they've built. Finally, upon adding the goth trans mommy I decided that this character is laser targeted at me, specifically, and I had to jump back in. I played for a few days and had fun despite being terrible at it. And then one day I didn't play but I still felt this itch as I was getting ready for bed that night that maybe I should pop on real quick to check the dailies and that was when I knew I had to uninstall. It's just not how I want to engage with games - even ones that I really enjoy playing! I don't want to be thinking about daily quests and weeklies and what tier of the battle pass I'm at vs. what tier/rewards I want to get to. I've got enough Brain Problems going on, I don't need a video game to take advantage of me and make me feel worse. So, despite how much I do genuinely enjoy the movement and the gunplay and even the whole battle royale mode, I have to quit playing this because I can't stand the way the bits around the edge make me feel. Maybe if I were playing this with friends instead of solo and it had a more social element to it then I'd be willing to go back and play more. But I guess until then, I'm done with this game? Kind of a disappointing and depressing way to quit a game but I gotta do what's best for myself, y'know?

Catalyst is a 10/10 character tho, love her to death.

Yeah, I don't know about this one. Part of it is definitely feel burnt out on this specific type of game after powering through TR 2013 and Rise (2015) one after another but also... this game has some horrid vibes to it.

It's like they want to recognize the missteps of the previous two games (and the whole franchise before that) but also they're just doing the exact same things. Lara is still a white savior parachuting into a place to save the poor defenseless locals. And she's still doing it by destroying ruins, setting fire to things, and stealing artifacts. How can you criticize the antagonists for doing that shit when your solution is "Well I need to go and do it before they do because it's okay when I do it." What sort of mental gymnastics must Lara be doing to justify this? And the thing is, the game seems wholly uninterested in actually digging in to that.

There's the scene after a huge flood hits the village they're in where Lara is talking about how she needs to go save everyone and how she's the only one who can do it and Jonah gets up in her face about it. How does she know that? How can she just leave this place without helping people who are literally dying right in front of her? Why is it her responsibility to go save everyone? And it seemed like the game was going somewhere with it, maybe Lara might actually have to reckon with the consequences of her actions. And then about 90 seconds later Jonah basically says "Actually, you know what, you're right Lara, you do need to go save everyone." Truly the writers want to have their cake and eat it too.

And in some truly "we don't actually understand what is problematic or insensitive about this" shit, Lara can just dress up in tradition indigenous garb in order to get, like, xp bonuses or whatever. Lara, honey, stick to the tank tops and khakis.

The other big(ish) problem I'm having is that the visuals are very cluttered. It's the amazon rainforest, so of course they, but then it's so hard to parse things, especially in the fast action platforming sequences. I've already had multiple deaths because I couldn't see the spikes or whatever deathtrap I needed to quickly dodge out of the way of.

The slight changes they made to the UI and menus all feel worse. Navigating any of it is just slightly more annoying that, when combined with Everything Else about this game, it's just too much to put up with.

Also, you're really gonna introduce Abigaile Ortiz and try to convince me that that woman is straight? fuck outta here

And it just doesn't run great on my old pos computer. Which shouldn't be too much of surprise but the other two ran well enough that it wasn't an issue so I was feeling hopeful about this one.

Maybe some day I'll come back to this but I can't imagine it would be for anything beyond "no thoughts, head empty, open world collectables" type game.