Final Fantasy XV is a beautiful game. That's a corny way to start off a review, but saying, "a Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers" is a corny way to start a game, so I must respond in kind. I know it had a long and troubled production, and that it came out unfinished, and it rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way. I remember reading forum discussions in 2013 where players would ask, "Do companies think it's right to make us wait ten years for a game?"

Well, if they put stuff out on par with this game, they absolutely fucking can. I'll get on with my life in the meanwhile. I'm a bit more sympathetic to those who played it on release. But I can't really know or care much about how the game was seven years ago, so much as what it was like when I was playing it seven days ago.

It tells the tale of four friends who set out on a journey to obtain a ring and end up fighting a threat that could plunge the world in darkness forevermore (J. R. R. Tolkien should sue). Prince Noctis and his childhood friends-turned-bodyguards are planning to have the best road trip ever before he gets married and saves the world and all that. These lads are a Japanese schoolgirl's wet dream - carelessly handsome, unabashedly silly, and more concerned with the trendiness of their clothes than the gravitas of their destiny.

This is the highlight of Final Fantasy XV - the main cast is a bunch of sheltered dandies who have to come to terms with the greatness that has been thrust upon them. Their personal growth, their earnest moments of brotherhood, and their banter-laden interactions are the heart of the narrative. The hero isn't a po-faced paladin of justice - he's one of the guys. Watching him mature into a true king is quite the journey.

Final Fantasy XV also has one of the most beautifully rendered open worlds I've seen. It caused me to appreciate nature more, because real life looks a lot like Final Fantasy XV. And trust me, you spend about as much time driving in this game as you would in real life. The car, the Regalia, is the fifth main character. If there's one thing I could wish for, it would be that your control over the car wasn't so limited for most of the game. But even with its mostly autopilot navigation, sitting back and admiring the scenery while listening to music from past FF titles was quite the experience.

This open-world design continues for half the game, of which most of your time will be spent doing sidequests. I'm told I generally rush RPGs, but I definitely didn't rush Final Fantasy XV, because there's so much to do - and so much fun to be had doing it. It's enough to put the main story on the backburner, it is, what with all the games-within-a-game it offers. Fishing? Monster hunting? Pinball on steroids? This game has it. And with the game's reward mechanics, plus the promise of interesting conversations with the supporting cast, nearly every sidequest feels worth doing. Even if it's a blatant advertisement for Cup Noodles. Look, they had to get the budget to make this game look so beautiful somewhere, okay?

In an inversion of Final Fantasy XIII, the first half of XV is open-world and laden with sidequests, while the second half is linear. I know 'linearity' is a dirty word to a lot of gamers, but I can't complain about it in either of these games. Once the plot in Final Fantasy XV starts getting funneled towards its conclusion, it also becomes much more focused and much more heartrending. I was almost in tears in this game's campaign as many times as I've been with all the previous games I've played put together. And I commend the game's writing and directing team for being unafraid to commit to the tragedy, something quite a few Final Fantasy stories pull back from at the last moment. For its story alone, Final Fantasy XV is a triumph.

This game also marks a true departure from the Active Time Battle system of past Final Fantasies, something the series has been trying to break away from for over a decade. Finally, the series commits to real-time hack-and-slash combat. There's a wait mode, but it seems to simply be an accessibility option for handicapped players. The combat is a lot of fun. Once you get the hang of the dodge/parry mechanics, and can switch between defense and aggression on the fly, there's a lot of fun to be had, even if the camera sometimes obstructs your view when fighting large enemies.

While I encountered no major bugs during my playthrough, there is no hiding the fact that this is very much a game that spent ten years in development. Final Fantasy XV is hardly consistent, but then again, the Final Fantasy series as a whole isn't consistent. My favourite analogy to make is that if Dragon Quest is AC/DC, Final Fantasy is Guns N' Roses. It's large, unwieldy and all over the place, but if it's a series of very low lows (fuck FF XIII-2), it also has very high highs. Final Fantasy XV is a very high high. If Metal Gear Solid V hadn't come out, on release XV would have been the greatest unfinished game ever made. But it is finished now, with DLC episodes to fill in the blanks and show how adaptable the game engine is to different gameplay styles, and it goes on sale for a fiver. There is no better time to play this game than now.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy XV is a fantastic experience with a lot to do and even more to appreciate. Its emphasis on brotherhood reminded me of my own college clique. I oughta call those guys sometime.

Yes, I played one of those oldfangled car games. Why did I play the car game, you may ask? Well, I saw some footage of Burnout 3: Takedown the other day and thought it looked fun and really wanted to play it! Plus, I'm coming up on my 100th review and wanted to diversify my portfolio, so to speak. (I do not have a real job.) Alas, Burnout 3: Takedown is practically impossible to play today without an emulator, and that'd require sitting at my desk - and I don't wanna play games at my desk for the sake of my back! Also, I suspect someone sprinkled 17 Testosterone pills down my mouth some weeks ago whilst I was sleeping, and thus cars have now become my sole personality trait. I like it when they go fast and the engine makes a noise. Now that I have successfully transitioned into a car guy, I decided to fill the Burnout 3: Takedown-shaped hole in my life by playing the nearest thing I could, which was Burnout Paradise: Remastered on Game Pass.

And it was pretty fun! The core conceit of Burnout being that it's not so much a game for people who love cars as it is for people who love crashing things and wrecking shit is awesome! It's why I sought Burnout 3 out and not fuckiiiin, Need For Speed or Garfield Kart or any of those other more stripped back driving sims. And Burnout Paradise definitely delivers on the promise of mayhem, there's a lot of smart design decisions here that make the action real arcade-y and simple and fun in a super uncomplicated way. I love how "wrecking" your car is such a temporary setback, you just see a sick slow-mo vid of how badly you crashed for a few seconds and then you're back on the road, ready to go! Driving feels super good, you go like fast in this game - "no shit" you're thinking, it's a fucking drivey racey game, but like no man, you can go fuckin fast, there's nary a better feeling in video games than going full speed in Burnout, pumping your whole-ass boost meter and driving down the highway w some 2000's hard rock playing. Except maybe taking out like, 5 other drivers in a row w some 2000's hard rock playing! That shit owns! Road Rage is far and away the best overworld event in this game,

This is one of the most late 2000's games ever made, not just because Jimmy Eat World and Seether are on the OST, but because it did the fashionable thing that every series was doing at the time and took a previously non-open world series, open world! And that's where the problems start. Because you're racing around an open world instead of designated race tracks, you often find yourself driving into oncoming traffic, which makes Race and Marked Man events in particular more annoying than they need to be. Annoying, not hard. They're still extremely easy, but if you ever wreck, it's because you were constantly having to divert your attention between the objective marker at the top of the screen, the minimap in the bottom left to see if you're coming up on any alternative routes and shortcuts, and the fuckin' road in front of you! It's really pace-breaking to wreck so constantly. Once or twice isn't so bad, but in my experience when I wrecked it almost never really felt like my fault, it was because I was looking at the minimap while driving (bc I felt like I had to), then looked up at the road to find I'm speeding directly into a fuckin' pickup truck with no time to react! It really sucks the wind out of fast-paced events that should otherwise be so much fun.

Also it's a testament to how poorly this open world meshes with a driving game when I'm advocating for fast travel, but this game needed fast travel. Overworld events are dotted all over the open world, but said events can only ever end in 1 of 8 specific places in that world. So if you wanna tackle any of the many things moreso in the middle of the map and away from these landmarks (and this is where most of the Road Rage events are) then you've gotta go really out of your way to seek them out. And there's no ping system! You can't mark anything on your map as far as I can tell! Am I missing something? If you wanna seek out a specific event, I'm pretty sure you've just gotta keep stop-starting and checking your map to see if you're going in the right direction! That's the best way I could find! Again, talk about a pacebreaker! This is compounded by the fact that you can't just retry events! If you fail an event - and again, all of them end in only 1 of 8 places, you've gotta drive 20% of the way back across the map just to get the starting point! Huh?

ALSO also this game does not tutorialise things very well at all. I did not know how to start Showtime mode (a fan favourite that I thought was just fine) until the fuckin' DJ announcer guy mentioned it, and I forgot how he explained to do a Barrel Roll and a Top Spin and couldn't find any in-game tutorial to brush up on it, so I just had to look it up!

Burnout Paradise is fundamentally really fun, it's like the Skate to Need For Speed or Forza's Tony Hawk. It's not concerned about realism, it's silly and arcade-y. It encourages you to wreck shit and get hurt and that's dope! But it should be more dope. It keeps getting in its own way with this open world structure, a total noose around its neck. Just let me drive and make people explode! Stop making me navigate and check my map and divert my attention between like 3 different fuckin' things! And also let me play Burnout 3: Takedown you freaks

I went on a hike once, but it was nothing like this. My Father and I were trekking through the Cairngorms in the heart of Scotland. If you haven't seen it, it's a beautiful place. Flowing rivers, glistening lochs, bustling forests, the works. Every way you look, you're encircled by these white-capped hills that lap over eachother like great waves on a distant ocean.

Needless to say, when the time finally came for us to begin our hike -- I was excited. Heart pumping, legs twitching, balls tingling, (they do that when I'm excited) I couldn't wait to challenge these mountains, to duel with them with my own hands and feet. So voracious was my climbing appetite, that by the time I topped my first tableland, I realised I'd left my Dad behind. At first, I was struck with concern -- he had a history of heart complications and a poor sense of direction, it wasn't out of the question he'd get lost, or worse -- perish. Then I remembered all the times he'd forgotten my birthday and cheated on his wives and realised I didn't care. I pressed on, determined to reach the highest point of these mountaintops. My feet became warriors, my Limited Edition Ahegao Yeezys their Spartan helms. My balls were still tingling. I crested over every crevice, I powered through every plateau, I marched across every arch. Needless to say, my progress without my deadbeat Father was incredible. "Soon," I thought, "that summit will submit."

And then the snow fell.

And it kept falling.

And it kept falling until all of the Cairngorms were a sheet of paper. I, a small mark only impressed upon it by the dirt of a fingernail. Beginning to panic, I scoured the area for shelter, and found a small cave overlooking a gentle slope. I nestled my way in and sparked a small fire with some twigs and my trusty M1A1 U.S. Military Flamethrower, which I never leave the house without. I checked the time on my phone -- 14:51. "I really hope it stops snowing soon," I thought.

But it didn't.

It snowed and it snowed and it snowed for what felt like eons. I swore I saw entire families of deer cross the mountains from my left, and come back days later from the right, smaller in number. Or maybe I was just hallucinating. I began to ponder my life and all the things I'd seen, suspecting I was coming to the end of it. I reminisced on the times I'd burnt the midnight oil at my desk as though some kind of infernal engine built for the sole purpose of generating laughs from strangers online. I wondered, was it worth it? I began to ruminate on what had caused this endless blizzard. Some kind of freak weather incident no one could have predicted? Or some kind of cosmic karma, cast down from the heavens as if to show me how futile and trivial my pursuits had been all along? As if even my own mind was turning against me, the one thing I could think of before long, the sole remaining thought I had to distract me from my impending freezing demise...Was that of the look a woman gives you when you kiss her. When you hold her close, press your face up against hers, and then look down at her after you're done, foreheads meeting in a holy union, like what swans do. The look she gives you in return, when she looks back up and her eyes meet yours? There is nothing more beautiful in this life. Nothing more tender. It is the most innocent smile, the purest expression of affection. Nothing in the world can emulate that. I should know, I've tried. I've spent countless hours trying to do it in the mirror. I'm doing it right now.

I look at my phone again. 14:56. "I'm finished", I tell myself. "This is it". I close my eyes, ready to drift off into the chilling embrace of death. And then? Precious memories begin flickering through my mind, like pictures in a film reel. Moments of joy from my childhood, moments of sadness from my adolescence, moments of frustration from my adulthood. All of them roll through my mind at a speed I'm surprised I can even comprehend, but I can...And then...Suddenly...I can feel my fingers again...I can feel my nose running again..."Am I dead?" I wonder. "Is this a near-death experience? Do you get the feeling back just before you die or something?"

But no, soon I realise what's really going on.

Finally, the heroin has kicked in.

The 8 mg's of heroin I'd snorted shortly before the snow began falling and shortly after I'd twisted my ankle a little bit trying to do a Michael-Jackson-Smooth-Criminal lean over the edge of a steep mesa had finally taken effect. I'm fucking back baby. Enough "remembering" and all that pussy shit. I pick up my flamethrower, blast this Nightcore version of "Word Up" by Cameo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5CyOl5dJY) and decide it's time to re-enter society and make this mountain my bitch. Stepping outside, frothing at the mouth like a rabid badger, with a gait not entirely unlike Theresa May's "Dancing Queen" entrance to the 2018 Conservative Party Conference played in 3x speed, I dart around every orifice of the mountain range, the snow that nearly doomed me now a mere triviality. It's as if I don't even know how fast I'm going, nor can I control myself. I have no thoughts of pain or fatigue or cold, all I'm seeing are dazzling lights, rapturous kaleidoscopes firing off before my eyes. At one point, I'm pretty sure I see the entirety of the movie "Get Out" by Jordan Peele, which is a great movie and all -- but as a white guy I feel a bit weird about that, almost like I'm being insensitive somehow. I don't know. I just don't feel like that's the one movie that should be playing in my mind of all people, y'know?

And before I know it, when my senses finally return to me. I'm there. I'm at the summit. My heartbeat seems to have slowed somewhat, my breathing somewhat normal again, save for a heavy pant. The entirety of the majestic Scottish highlands stretches out before. I shake my head in disbelief, "what a rich tapestry...Not everyone gets to appreciate a view like this." And after taking it all in, I know of only one way to celebrate.

Without even touching my own penis, I ejaculate. I ejaculate with the force of 5000 men in what can only be described as a kind of semen spirit bomb. I struggle to find other ways to describe the amount of fluid I dispersed here, so let's just say that if they made cannons that fired PVA glue, it'd be a bit like that. If the local park rangers and hikers thought the snow was thick, "wait until they get a load of this," I smirk. Of course, my logic is flawed. Because I'm far too busy appreciating the view to notice that the sub-zero temperature has frozen my semen solid midway through its descent, and so it's likely to be believed to be typical ice by most casual onlookers, with no one to ever conceive of the incredible cum shower I produced here. Worse still, my penis has frozen solid, and when I reach for it to warm it up, it falls off my body entirely, which I assume is a symptom of hypothermia. I passed out promptly after, and woke up several days later in this chair, writing this review.

All of this is to say, A Short Hike is not a particularly realistic hiking experience. And hey, it doesn't need to be! What it is is a lovely, cosy little game with great visuals, some fun traversal and a very charming personality. A Long Hike next, please!