usually on weekday nights my gf and i will settle down after dinner and put on a tv show that takes little attention to follow while we do other stuff, like she does embroidery and i play video games etc etc. So last night Gossip Girl season five is going and it's like, things are pretty good right now, Blair's about to get married to Prince Louis of Monaco even though she's clearly in love with Chuck still but she can't admit that to herself because of her PTSD and the audience can tell that Louis sucks shit even though nobody else can, meanwhile DAN has also realized that he's in love with Blair which is something I've been saying should happen for the ENTIRE SHOW but they've barely interacted before this season and suddenly became fast friends after years of animosity once the writers realized their character commonalities and insane chemistry, BUT he's gonna just be supportive of her decisions in whatever capacity she needs him because he's acting unselfishly for the first time maybe ever? It's literally the first time I've liked Dan, it's a fucking miracle. EVEN the storyline that is tangentially related to Serena is pretty good right now, even if Serena herself remains an irritating charisma black hole.

All of this is to say that Gossip Girl has never been more riveting, so I was planning to just pop in something breezy to occupy my restless fingers while I enjoyed the soap's rapidly approaching midseason climax, so imagine my surprise when my girlfriend tapped me on the shoulder to say "what's this what's going on," making me realize that i had been sitting at the Kirby's Dream Land Title Screen, bobbing my head back and forth to the music, watching kirby jump around with a smile on my face like a cartoon idiot, enjoying the music coming into my single earbud, for at least a long enough time to miss the fact that Nate's cousin was conspiring to have him assassinated.

This is Kirby's power. It has been here all along. They're so fucking cute dude, and FUN, just a joy to embody and to play at all times. It's infectious. For forty-five minutes I was transported. There's very little like it out there, and possibly nothing better.

Also Lolo's in this game! I had that game for the NES. Played it with my older brother all the time. Love that guy.

Disappointment after disappointment, when will I ever grow up? Every damn game I am underwhelmed, yet I seem to never learn. I will never love an entry in this series again, the magic that I experienced from days long past will never be seen or heard from again. Forever I am chained to this merchandise-pushing bulldozer of a franchise. Why does my childhood keep pestering me? Is it a curse? Why do I bother? Just let it die already.

Being someone whose username looks like it's based on Pokemon and formerly having an Eevee PFP for quite a while on here, it would feel like my take on seemingly the most divisive entry in the series yet will come off as something easily discarded. An open world game that is apparently super buggy and super empty? No way I could love it. It's a despicable game that would probably steal my dog's lunch money if it got the opportunity. I can't believe they would release such a broken game in 2022, etc, etc, yadda yadda. Whatever, you heard it all already.

Lend me your ears though... I loved this game.

As I lie here on my bed and rest myself on my Slowpoke pillow, I think to myself "is this a dream?". Not since the early days of playing on my purple Game Boy Color with my copy of Blue version have I felt this same feeling of grand adventure. The ability to go wherever I please without a completely nothing rival constantly challenging me at every other route, or having someone stop me from going down a certain route because they dropped their contact lens. Even the overworld trainers have grown to finally get some manners, and allow me to walk around freely without being demanded to waste my time fighting their crappy low level Scatterbug that wouldn't even give me a single XP point. Finally, a game that eschews all of that so that I may feel free. Free to experience the world of which I seem to never grow out of.

This is MY adventure.

The best part? This game will only get better for me. I played Violet in pretty much the worst way possible, via portable mode on my Switch. I experienced the worst frame rate drops possible, I experienced the worst pop-in, and despite all the doomer talk on Twitter....I never once experienced a crash or even one of the funny glitches or bugs. (may have helped that I bought it digitally) It turns out you can't trust judging your incoming experience based on what you see on the internet, especially when everyone everywhere can easily record stuff that happens to them in what might be the new best-seller in the entire universe. Personally, that stuff actually endears me more to this game. There's a clip of a Jigglypuff that flew off into space out there somewhere that's actually perfectly in-character, and would've made me laugh my ass off if I had experienced it in my own game. To say that I can't wait to replay this later on either a patched version, on better switch hardware or emulator would be an understatement. I cannot imagine how much I would love this once I experience it at a consistent frame rate.

Despite the tacky school uniform you're saddled with at the beginning, I found the setting very charming. Clothing options suffer thanks to it, but these are probably my favorite set of characters since Black/White. Mela having to move her legs like a robot because of her ridiculous boots is more fun and entertaining than anything Leon and his merchandise-moving Charizard did in the last game, and Arven is someone who I want to fight for to the very end. Don't talk to me or my cybernetic lizard motorcycle son again. The last 5% of this game goes beyond words in how much of a step up it is from Sw/Sh's wet fart of a climax.

They say an image speaks louder than words, but here it is.

Call me a fanboy, call me chopped liver. You could even call me late for dinner, but...I enjoyed myself immensely...and that's all that matters in the end.

It's then that I ask myself again, "is this a dream?"

No, the sky has not fallen.....no cats and dogs are not currently living together.... Pokemon Scarvy is my game of the year. This is reality, and I still can't fucking believe it.

Ten.
Years.

Ten whole years since B/W, and they finally do it again... holy shit.

I refuse to grow up.