What truly makes me enamored about Brad and the Lisa trilogy is how it perfectly encapsulates the concept of masculinity and the overall male living experience in it's three-dimensional glory. It's manic. It's miserable. It's hilarious. It's pathetic. It's thinking you're the lyrical subject of Many Men when your life is a lot closer to a Chop Suey. It's having fun with the boys and telling them it's you against the world when in actuality, you're just as lonely with or without them.

Humor goes well with trauma since it alleviates what's read between the lines: No one cares about your bullshit. Complain too much and you're a professional whiner. Tough it out and deal with it. Ask how or say you can't and be called a few funny words that John Backloggd would take me down for paraphrasing. That's normal. Men are conditioned to be emotionally stunted because pre-established rules within society have told us that the world was made for us, by us, when in actuality, those rules only work for a select few and you're just as worthless in your mediocrity as all who came before you.

Inversely, Lisa also says a lot about women and how they are seen as men's Hail Mary shot into a sense of a larger purpose despite barely any of them being present. They're idealized as emotional affirmation, a place to impose your feelings without being judged by another man who is not conditioned to understand you. They also have this funny little hole that's even more idealized than the woman herself, as not only it serves as a vice that is unanimously more well respected among your peers than the other coping mechanisms (Drugs, alcohol, religion, politics), if everything else fails in your life, you can pop a baby out of those that resets the cycle of Nature vs Nurture of the sexes onto your already failing sense of community established by familial relations. If you've failed in everything by this point it's highly unlikely for you to be a good father, but hey, the burden of responsibility lies on your kid's shoulders now, so don't worry about it.

As much as we all want to play tough and wear our manly masks that bounce off all and any trauma, we all have our vices that keeps us unproductive and as miserable as we think we are, and that includes the obsession with the opposite sex. Which is why when there is suddenly an apocalypse that wipes all but a few women, men are suddenly left lost, wishing to upkeep the status quo while at the same time, being too stubborn to admit their rigidness against the evermoving current of change is what makes them stagnant enough to drown.

Thusly it's a clever thought to name the in and out of gameplay steroid "Joy" while at the same time, claiming that it makes you feel nothing, because that's exactly what being an addict means. You're still aimless. You're still chasing the rainbow of lasting happiness while having nothing figured out for a few seconds to forget the ever crushing dread of existing. As much as you try to hide in stoicism, it is physically impossible to feel only one emotion for your lifetime, to not feel like you want to die, approaching misery in the right mindset will help you escape it with much more ease than avoiding it indefinitely.

All coping mechanisms serve to reject change and idealize the death for a cause, and when there is no cause to die for, we are faced with the reality of our own aimlessness. As much as one would like to reject societal norms and live by his ideals, being opposed by stronger, supposedly superior men is the origin of all conflict.

Perhaps it is why the character of Brad Armstrong is so tragic in it's melancholic downfall. His last ditch effort to fix a world and a life that is perhaps too far gone already is compelling to any that can relate. While some take joy in knowing that they are villains in other people's stories, they rarely take responsibility when confronted with the fact that they've done damage to themselves or to the ones they love. He's aware enough to know that he hasn't done the right thing and that he failed to change, despite asking Buddy if he did succeed.

When you take away all the rage, all the funnies, all the muscles, all the fighting spirit, Brad is just a sad little man, broken by the abuse, the survivor's guilt, the abandonment. He's angry at himself for knowing it all could have been avoided, but to stop hating the weaker parts of yourself is to stop being a man. And sometimes the mask of the man you truly are fits you better than taking it off.

Finally finished this and it genuinely blew me away. One of the most ambitious games ever made with a scope that still feels huge decades later. Probably the most deep, unpredictable and utterly insane story I've seen in the medium. It covers any themes they could get past the censors - mental health, organized religion, free will, classism, genocide to name a few. (I don't think the ESRB played past 10 hours.) The presentation is outstanding with dynamic in-engine cutscene direction not over-relying on FMVs. It's a wonderful looking work in general with 2D sprites in dense 3D scifi environments and awesome mech / biblical / eldritch designs. When a lot of other RPGs on the console were using prerendered backgrounds these fully explorable multi-level populated towns seemed magic. The 360 camera made me feel like I was peering into little dioramas. I also enjoy the combat! Fighter style combo inputs either on foot or in giant mechs with complex mechanics and amazing animation.

It's well known that the developers ran out of time and money on the second disc and it becomes apparent with how the storytelling style suddenly changes and it's not nearly as open. This can even be felt in the music with how there isn't nearly enough unique tracks to cover all the different scenes and locations. So Xenogears is categorically unfinished. Disc 1 is really consistent though and by itself is more compelling and fully featured than other entire games. It was one of the longest of its day. If Square had given the team what they needed to complete it as fully envisioned with a Final Fantasy tier budget, it coulda been the best damn RPG ever. Even with those limitations and some frustrating moments, I think Disc 2 really picked up and reeled me back in, and the last hours were peak fiction.

I don't love everything about Xenogears, even the story - it's definitely not flawless and could be brutal to get through at times so I wouldn't usually give a "10/10" BUT I strongly feel that it's a work of art. That rating represents the huge impression it made on me and my respect for the vision and creativity. Anything less wouldn't be right. It continually impressed me for 50 hours and the gameplay remained fun. It's not easily recommendable because of its unintuitive design and sluggish English text speed (you NEED to apply a text speed code). But if you love Chrono Trigger and FF7 you owe it to yourself to try it out... I consider them a holy trinity of sorts.

Coming off the heels of fucking Coin Master in my quest for fetch points is... another game exactly like Coin Master. You can go read my review for that for a more in depth take but I doubt anybody cares because these games are pure mobileshits. Now this one does edge a bit higher than Coin Master in my opinion due to the fact that it seems like there was a lot more care put into it AND there's actual gameplay?? Wow so crazy. Even though the 'actual gameplay' is literally just like. Timing a meter properly.

It's also a bit more 'forgiving' with its gameplay loop, but it also made my phone lag to a noticeable degree. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because you shouldn't even think about playing a game like this if you're not getting fetch points or mistplay minutes or whatever the hell else out of it.