New FridgeFriend

A new version of FridgeFriend has been released which includes some major changes!

First is the removal of the Map screen. This screen was originally envisioned to let you mark store locations on your device so that FridgeFriend could notify you when you were close by via geofencing. It was intended to be a hands off operation, so you wouldn't need the app open and could be, for example, driving around in the car and the app would notify you as you passed by a store. Unfortunately, the Google API and Policy changes with the new Android version made this feature much less useful - as you had to have the app open for it to remind you about nearby stores - and with the change in how society functions due to the pandemic, most people are not out and about anymore (and if they are, they usually have decided in advance to go to the store already). As such, the feature rarely saw any use and was not very useful when it did, so it has been dropped. A side effect of this is that FridgeFriend now requires zero permissions.

Instead, a global search screen has been added. Now when searching on this page, Items from any Group will be returned to you, allowing for a higher level birds-eye view over all of the things in your fridge. This way, even if you have items spread out among multiple Groups, you will be able to manage them all here as if they were in one large "super group".

The update has been published and should be rolling out to your device soon!

Stay tuned!

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New pydroid

PYDroid version 22.6.0 has been released.

This officially removes the old deprecated methods, like saved instance support on plain UiViewModels.

This is largely the same release as 22.5.4 just with deprecated methods formally removed, but there is one change that can impact your application's behavior.

The setState function used to take an optional parameter andThen which would run only when the state was actually changed. This behavior has been modified, and the andThen callback will now run after every setState operation, regardless if state actually changes or not.

Stay tuned!

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=========================

More state less bugs

PYDroid 22.5.4 follows quickly on the heels of the last release and brings some changes and some fixes that are pretty important, if I do say so myself.

The first is the removal of the SwipeRefreshLayout.refreshing(Boolean) extension function. This function was originally created to work around a bug in the SwipeRefreshLayout library by posting to the setRefreshing function, but later versions of that library fixed the bug so the extension function is no longer needed.

Another important change is to the setState mechanism on ViewModel and StateModel classes. The setState function used to open its own CoroutineScope which could not be cancelled except by cancelling the entire scope. This API still exists but may become deprecated in the near future in favor of the new APIs, which are extensions with the same signature but on the CoroutineScope object. As this is only a bugfix release, the old functions will stick around for the future, but may be removed in the next minor release.

Please upgrade to 22.5.4 when possible.

Stay tuned!

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=========================

pydroid and state saving

PYDroid has received an update to version 22.5.0! Major changes include new support for the androidx.savedstate module in UiViewModels! This support is optional.

UiViewModel will be deprecating the doOnRestoreState and doOnSaveState hooks. In the future, the UiViewModel class will no longer support instance state saving. For ViewModels wishing to use and write instance state, the new UiSavedStateViewModel class should be used (long names - I know - what is this - Java?). The UiSavedStateViewModel class takes in it's constructor an additional UiSavedState parameter, which is a simple abstraction over the SavedStateHandle class from androidx. You can access the UiSavedState via the restoreSavedState, putSavedState and removeSavedState functions.

Currently the UiSavedStateViewModel class is seperated from the UiViewModel class, but once the saved state migration is complete in a future version, the saved state view model will extend from the normal view model as a base class. Consumer API will not change, but ABI compatibility will not be maintained once this happens.

To facilitate these new ViewModels, a new factory has been created, called SavedStateViewModelFactory. To create simple factories, the new inline functions createViewModelFactory and createSavedStateViewModelFactory can be used to create simple single-value factories so that your custom ViewModels can play nice with Android's ViewModelStore system.

Along with these changes, the UiBundleReader and UiBundleWriter interfaces have been deprecated. For library consumers, this change is largely unimportant - but one thing that will affect consumers is that the UiBundleReader methods have been reduced to just the get(String): T? method. All other methods in the future will be removed. UiView consumer code will be largely unchanged, as long as all reader access is changed to only use get(String): T?.

The UiRender interface has removed support for the distinct function as it did not make any sense in the given context, and has renamed the distinctBy function to mapChanged to better convey how that function is used. The asUiRender extension function has been changed from being an extension on Any to being an extension on UiViewState only, so that random objects cannot be turned into renderers unintentionally.

PYDroid ui has been updated to use these new systems and now lazily initializes all of it's components, which should reduce the start up time cost. An optimization has been made to coroutine scope creation which should avoid a large time penalty during debug mode builds. In the future, support will begin for using UiViews as composable building blocks, but this will not be at least until compose-ui enters an API beta with stability guarantees.

Finally, some functions are exposed to a Java consumer that were intended to be internal to the library only. These functions have since been moved into an Internals class. You should not use these functions as a PYDroid library consumer - if you do, there is no support and functions can be radically changed or removed without warning. Don't use anything labelled internal, if you are able to access it, it is a mistake.

The bintray official release will be going up later today, stay tuned!

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=========================

Monster Hunter and being Prepared

Monster Hunter is a series about being prepared. While not a series for everyone, for those who do enjoy it, it can be one of the single most addicting things they play. The game rewards a player being prepared for any number of situations. Let's explore briefly how being prepared is rewarded in the latest entry of the series, Monster Hunter: Rise.

Note: These are impressions gathered from playing the Switch demo of the game in a multiplayer context. I am a beginner, as you will soon figure out.

Monster Hunter is for the patient gamer. The game almost downright requires that you study and practice before going off on a hunt. Before you hunt, you have to pick a weapon class. Before you pick a weapon class, you need to know how each performs to see what you like and don't like.

Before you can hunt, you need to go into weapon training. You need to pick a weapon and start trying it out - and not just pressing random buttons either. Monster Hunter is a slow game. If you start an attack, you need to already know in your head how you plan to end your attack, and you need to know when you are committed to finishing an attack animation for large damage, and when you need to stop the attack and dodge. To be prepared to train, you need to first read the weapon combos and understand what the "goal" of a weapon combo is.

Take for example, the Charge Blade. The "goal" of this weapon in it's normal usage is to unleash a fully charged Amped Element Discharge attack. In order to do that, you'll need to build charge. In order to do that, you'll need to land the standard sword combo first, which is X, X, X, then follow it up with ZR so that you do not enter the slower Axe mode before you are prepared with charged Vials. But you need to also not push ZR too early, or you will bring up your shield and enter Guard, which is not what you want to do. Once you have charge, you need to store your charge by switching to Sword mode and pressing ZR + A, which will store one set of Vials. Rinse and repeat this until you have two charged sets of Vials, and then you can enter Axe mode and release a fully charged Amped Element Discharge attack.

But when should you release your big attack that you've taken so much time to build up? Not when the monster is moving around obviously. You need to first knock the monster down and make it so that it is stunned for long enough for you to get the fully charged attack off. In order to do that, you need to understand it's weak points and strike them repeatedly.

Now that you are prepared, and have on where to hit the monster and when to use your big attacks, you need to hunt the monster. You can't kill what you can't find.

So you have to prepare to fight by finding clues around the map that can help lead you to the monster. Droppings, skeletons and remains, tracks - all of these are clues that can help build an understanding of what monster you are looking at, and how to find it.

In order to prepare to track the monster, you need to also prepare properly for the excursion. Eating the right food, gathering the right equipment, heck, even being the right class can help you better prepare for the hour long quest ahead.

All of these things stem back to the core gameplay focus - being prepared. The game rewards you for being patient and planning out all you can about your encounters. By being so rehearsed, you will be able to keep up when the game suddenly changes your quest in the middle by throwing in a second monster or a bigger monster, or replacing your quest target with a different monster entirely.

And of course, you need to be prepared to play with other people. Monster Hunter is a lot more fun with friends.

Code someday, stay tuned!

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=========================

Exploring the strategy in Monopoly

This is inspired by a recent conversation I had with my girlfriend, which ended with her stating:

"Why do people like Monopoly so much. All you do is buy a house, what the fuck?"

In this post I wish to explore the sentiment expressed by this reductionist viewpoint to see if, in my own understanding, Monopoly is truly no deeper than rolling dice and buying property. As a slight spoiler before I begin - I believe the game is ultimately deeper than my girlfriend gives it credit for.

Using a standard board, there are a number of different properties on the board that are available for a player to purchase. The board is broken up into 4 sides, which I will call "legs" for reference. Each leg is broken up into a couple of different sections which bear the same colors, which I will call "color groups". Let's break down the spaces that are most valuable, and lay out some general tips for the best games.

The strategy in Monopoly revolves around, ultimately, one very simple question:

"How long will I have to wait to make money if I buy Boardwalk?"

Everything you do should be based around the odds of making the money you've spent back in the lowest number of dice-rolls possible. This also means that there is a method to how much you should build on properties, as well as which properties you should pay money for and which you should avoid.

Control Color Groups

You should always purchase property with the mindset of figuring out how many turns it will take before you have been refunded for your spend. To this end, you must seek to control entire color groups for the most payout. The only time you should find yourself holding a single property outside of a group is when you are strategically holding it to prevent another player from completing a group.

The railroads

The railroads are very valuable for a player to own, but the maximum benefit comes from owning all 4 of the railroads. This is because the rent for a railroad starts at $25 and doubles with each other owned railroad. Because there are various event opportunities in the game which move a player to a railroad directly, and there is one railroad on each leg of the board, the railroads are the most important spaces in the game. You should always look to own all 4 to get the highest payout, owning 1 or 2 is only good when strategically preventing another player from holding the set.

Optimal house count

The optimal number of houses to have is 3 houses on most color groups. The one generally accepted exception to this rule is in the case of the dark-purple color group which is the spaces immediately in front of GO, where it is more optimal to have a hotel. The reason 3 is the optimal number in most cases is due to the cost of a house as compared to the multiplying factor it brings. The first house is always a must, it usually jumps the rent 5x from the empty lot value - Virgina Avenue for example jumps from 12 to 60 dollars on a single house. From there, each additional house brings around 3x in value, so up to 3 houses is generally optimal. Past this point, 4 houses or a hotel cost significantly more without as large of a multiplying factor (to prevent the game from getting overly large rent values). A 4th house usually brings in only an additional $100 dollars, and a hotel usually only an additional $200, despite costing the same as the first three houses. Instead of spending money on the 4th house and the hotel, you should look towards expanding the number of properties you own instead.

Property Priority

The best properties in the game to own are on the third and fourth legs of the board - the orange section with St. James and friends, the red section with Kentucky and friends, and the yellow section with Marvin Gardens and friends. This is because, due to how the dice rolls work, a person is statistically most likely to land on the orange section of the board. Following the orange roll, they would next visit either red or yellow. Quickly capturing and building property here can help you get a commanding lead in the game.

Stopping Group Ownership

It is highly important that you opportunistically purchase properties outside of your currently owned color groups, so that you can avoid other players having total control over a color group.

Go to Jail

In the early game, getting into jail can mean you lose opportunity to purchase other property, so you should always immediately pay the fee to get out so you can roll to claim new property in the early game. Jail is your favorite place in the late game though, because jail is free to stay. You should always take the opportunity to go to jail, because it avoids you needing to move around the board and putting yourself at risk of paying a large amount of rent to another player. While you are in jail you still collect rent, so its a win win! Late game Monopoly strategy can be summarized as: "The best way to win Monopoly is to not play."

Be nice

People are creatures of emotion. While not always a guarantee, if you are nice to another player, they may be nice to you. You should always try to be nice to the other players so that when that critical property goes to auction you can convince them to not challenge you - or you can sweetly whisper away that critical single railroad that you need while you offer them a large sum of money for it. Being nice can often make other players put their guard down and deviate from the optimal strategy, which can in turn allow you to correct mistakes you may have made. Be nice!

---

These are just a small set of essentially robotic strategy that produces the most optimal result. The variety of the game comes from the fact that no situation will play out exactly as this ideal scenario has. People will refuse to give up properties, or give away properties to your opponents. You will find yourself rolling poorly and never claiming full color groups, or you will find that your statistically high property is never landed on. The game is ever changing because of the people involved, and you must always be willing to adapt to your situation at hand. Also, remember not to take things too seriously, don't get frustrated if other players don't seem to be following an optimal strategy. It is, after all, just a board game.

As we can clearly see, Monopoly is at is core much simpler than just buy a house - roll a dice - win a game. In a reductionist viewpoint yes, those are the core steps, but the actual behind the scenes brainwork that goes into deciding where to buy a house, and the slight social manipulation evolve the game into something far deeper. Monopoly may not ultimately be the deepest thought worthy board game out there, but it does at least possess more depth than simply rolling dice and buying houses.

And finally, let me end with this - this is not a conversion attempt. If you dislike Monopoly I am not attempting to change your opinion. Regardless of how I understand the game to be, any perceived depth does not ultimately change whether or not the game is fun to play. If you like it, you like it. If you don't you don't. No amount of strategy discussion will ever seek to change that. I hope that you can assess the game as something which objectively can have depth and strategy, even if subjectively it may not be entertaining.

Code stuff next time. Stay tuned!

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=========================

libs and more

Cachify has been updated to version 0.0.20 to fix a pretty nasty bug related to memory cache storage. This change comes with some major API changes.

The CacheStorage<K, V> interface is now a CacheStorage<T>. A CacheStorage interface now handles just one piece of cached data instead of requiring support for multiple pieces of data.

The entry points at cachify and multiCachify now take a lazy list of CacheStorage implementations instead of requiring you to initialize the CacheStorage at the callsite. This is so that multiCachify implementations do not all accidentally attempt to write to the same cache storage. CacheStorage instances are now separated between Cachify instances. The MultiCachify key function is now suspending so that we can guarantee the mapped backend has only one writer at a time. There is also a strict guarantee that a list of CacheStorage instances will be written to before being read, to make sure that data in the cache is consistently represented. All of these backing storage guarantees are handled by a simple suspending Mutex.

PYDroid has been bumped to version 22.4.4 which brings built in support for the In-App Billing v3 library. The library has a new billing module which handles the heavy lifting, and a reference implementation is built into the PYDroid ui library, and automatically initialized for you when using the ActivityBase class. A default interactive UI is also implemented in the AppSettingsPreferenceFragment class, via a "Donate" list item. The list will be populated out of the box if your IAP items use an id scheme that looks like: <package-name>.iap_{one,three,five,ten}. Currently there is only support for donation style consumable IAPs.

An update has been pushed for FridgeFriend which brings support for moving Items between Groups. You can better organize the stuff in your fridge by breaking large groups of items up into smaller subgroups, and this moving option can better facilitate that.

ZapTorch has gained support for additional button gestures. Double tapping the Volume Up button will cause the flash light to slowly pulse, and pressing one Volume Down followed by a Volume Up will cause a quick strobe effect.

I will formally publish the updates to the store once testing has been completed, probably today or tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

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=========================

pyamsoft apps

In the coming days you may notice that pyamsoft Android applications on the Play Store are being published under a new developer: pyamsoft apps

Rest assured, this is still me.

I had to change the developer account associated with the applications so that I could link a new Google Merchant account. This is because my previous Google merchant account was closed back in 2018 by mistake and I did not realize the impact that would have until much later.

The reason I need to link a new Google Merchant account is so that I can begin experimenting with things like Paid Applications, for example, or in-app purchases. Rest assured, all pyamsoft applications will continue to be open source.

You may notice this change taking effect in the next couple of days.

Stay tuned!

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=========================

My Favorite Games of the Decade

Video games are different things to different people. To some, they are an escape. A chance to explore a world that doesn't exist or live a life so different from your own. A chance to meet new characters and see them grow - to experience change and growth with them at your own pace. A chance to invest yourself into learning something new and perfecting it - a chance to be better than your friends. A chance to explore a medium of something beyond just buttons and lights on a screen. As 2020 puts the bookend on a long year, I would like to do something a little out of the ordinary and look back on some of the best games I had the privilege of experiencing this past decade. I played plenty of games, but these are the ones that left the most lasting impression on me, released between 2011 and 2019.

I will preface this by saying that I have finished all of these games - not 100%, but enough to the point that any main story or main activity is done, and to the point that I consider the game "complete" for me. This will be an unordered list of games of varying genre and target audience, and does not reflect what I believe to be the best games - just simply my favorite ones. I'll try to include release dates and links where appropriate.

 

Warning, I'm not a writer. This is a windy mess of opinions. Language. Spoilers.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

2017 (Played in 2017)

What better way to begin than with a game that single-handedly revolutionized the open-world genre broke the mold on so many expected conventions, both in the open-world genre and it's own game series. I could gush for a while about this game and how it changed the way I see value in video games, but I won't - as plenty of other sources on the Internet have already done so, years before. I could also complain for hours about the many various shortcomings of the game - but again - others have already done this better and faster than I could.

The reason I include this game on my list, is for the feeling of escapism provided by the in-game world. When first presented to you, Breath of the Wild's overworld is massive and daunting. With no concrete requirements, you are thrown paraglider first into a world that no longer cares what you decide to do in it. Beat the final boss in 5 hours or 100 days, it doesn't matter. Complete one dungeon or all dungeons or no dungeons, it makes little difference. Find every tower or find none, so what. This extreme sense of agency, though terrifyingly paralyzing at first, became my favorite thing about the game in my hundreds of hours played. 

Before Breath of the Wild, I used to only play games which featured short bursts of constant action. I didn't care too much for story or world building, since I was much more concerned with having the time to pick up a game and play for 20 or 30 minutes before returning back to those more important things in work and life. The games I played were all about shooting, or fighting, or doing something, and usually featured short matches or sessions that were self contained.

Breath of the Wild threw all of those preconceived notions about what I looked for in a game out the window. I learned to slow down. I learned to appreciate the empty moments in between roaming from landmark to landmark. I began to love the softer, spaced out sounds of the musical selection. The quiet, companion-less, lonely existence in a wide and wild world. The childlike whimsy of discovering something new, or noticing something for the first time. The autonomy of doing whatever I wanted without worrying about expectation or disappointment. Something clicked for me when I played this game, and it has forever changed the way I view the medium.

Persona 5

2016 (Played 2019)

This is certainly not a game that I expected would resonate with me so much.

To begin with, I hate turn based games. I hate JRPGs. Hate them. Click a button, watch some text. A guy does some animation that I've seen a hundred thousand times, only to miss - gah I wish I could just skip all of this useless timewasting bullcrap. Spend hours grinding in a zone I've already completed so that I have the slightest chance of defeating a boss who's name I can't pronounce to save a planet I don't care about to further a story that lost me the second cutscene in. Waste of my time.

Oh how wrong I was.

This game, this beautiful game.

I loved Persona 5. A Japanese, turn based, RPG game that gobbled up 150 hours of my time in 5 weeks and then when it was done spit me out the other end a broken man with a large anime shaped hole in my heart. I amount of enjoyment I got from that feeling of escapism as I lived out my school year as a high school boy in Tokyo cannot be understated. I loved walking around town and talking to people. I loved working at a stupid flower shop or at the convenience store. I loved sitting in my room building lockpicks with my annoying talking cat, and trying my damnedest to eat a comically large hamburger. This game blew me away.

Persona 5 is on this list because never before have I cared so much about the lives of a group of high school kids before. Never before have I been so invested in a group of characters - never before have I felt so welcomed by a video game. The characters mattered to me. They had hopes and dreams, struggles and conflicts, and they captured my attention like games before never did. I needed to play to help them with chores. I needed to play to help them through difficult times in their lives, times of self doubt or fears of not fitting in. I needed to play to help them find their place in the world. I needed to play until I knew that all of the conflicts in their lives would be resolved and done. I was so involved in this virtual life and my role in all of it. It consumed my real life for a solid chunk of time until I had finished the game.

At one point during my play through I debated restarting entirely after romancing the wrong character. I only had one save slot and did not realize I had passed a point of no return until it was too late. It didn't concern me as the thought passed through my head that I had invested a hundred hours into the game by that point, because when my romance opportunity came for the actual character I wanted, I couldn't bear the thought of letting her down. Ultimately, I did not restart the game, so we would never know what it was like to be together. It was a difficult decision, but I think it was the right one to make. I still wonder though if one day I will revisit the game in New Game+ so that we may see each other again, my dear Makoto.

Oh and the music. Oh my god the music in this game.

 

Celeste

2018 (Played 2018)

One of the hardest games I've played, with a deep and thoughtful story hidden behind its brutal platforming. I think the character of Madeline is extremely well done. The game starts easy and ends hard. It is extremely satisfying in its execution and has tight controls and a great fluid pacing to it. The music is a master class in conveying emotions and really puts the bow on this complete package. What a game.

Hidden between the lines of this difficult pixel art platformer though, is the journey of a person attempting to find self acceptance and an ultimate feeling of belonging. You the player are there with her as she struggles with depression and anxiety. You are there as she tries and fails and tries again to climb Celeste mountain, even though everyone is telling her she should just go home. You are there as she battles the literal manifestation of her demons, as she wrestles with her gender identity. You are there as she grows to accept herself for who she is.

If you have ever heard anyone play Celeste, you would think it was the worst game in the world. You would see a player constantly die, over and over again at the exact same spot. You would hear swearing and complaining and the angry mashing of the A button because that has to be the problem. You would wonder why anyone even wants to play this game, let alone why, after so many failures, they would continue to insist on trying.

Celeste is on my list because I believe it is the game this decade that best exemplifies the idea that through struggles there is growth and through growth there is self-actualization. Looking back at my time with this game always makes me feel so good about myself. I think the most important thing about this game is that there are almost no in-game upgrades that change how Madeline plays at the beginning versus the end of the game. Madeline is, even at the end, just Madeline. It is my own accomplishments and achievements as the player that allowed me to complete the game. I did it. I faced the challenge, I got better, I succeeded. Though this mindset begins in the game, it is infectious and quickly pushed its way into the various other facets of my life. It is a mindset I continue to try to adhere to.

The game didn't give me invincibility, or the ability to fly, or faster running, or farther jumping, it only gave me some strawberries and a couple dashes. I pushed those buttons. Nobody was going to hand me that victory. I beat chapter one. I beat chapter seven. 

I got out of bed to beat depression, and the monotony of a life wasted by work. I looked inside myself to think about what mattered to me above all else, and I decided to make a change for the better.

I grew and achieved as a player. I got to the summit. I beat the Core B side. I beat the hotel C side. I struggled for those golden strawberries. I beat the final room of Farewell. I never gave up, even if I needed to take breaks - even if I never achieved everything (looking at you Moonberry).

I looked inside myself. I prioritized my life, I made time for the people that mattered to make the memories that will last. Even when the days were sad, even when the days were tough I never gave up. It's not perfect, it's never going to be perfect, but it's progress. With progress you only move up.

Madeline made it to the summit, but I climbed the mountain.

NieR: Automata

2017 (Played 2019)

The first game to make me emotional about a video game.

I'm not a crier when it comes to games and movies. Some are, that's fine. I'm not.

But this damn game, what a masterpiece. The most beautiful game that I will never. Play. Again. The closing section of the game is burned into my memories. Somewhere between 9S and A2 lying in a pool of each other's blood, 9S maniacally stabbing 2B over and over again since he has fallen in love with her, and 2B sexually straddling 9S's infected body as she chokes him to death. Somewhere in there. Maybe it's next to the part where you fight the CEO of Platinum Games in the coliseum, or stuffed in the back with Weight of the World looping on repeat. Hmmm.

This was the first game that got me to think beyond the game. Beyond just the feeling of entertainment slicing robots. Beyond the characters and how invested I was into desperately trying to have their stories end happily. Beyond the crushing difficulty which stopped me in my progression time and time again. Beyond the game itself as a disc in a box that starts when I turn the console on and ends when I power it off.

NieR: Automata needs at least 3 full play throughs before one can reach "the end", and each of those runs made me step more and more outside of my comfort zone. The first time through as 2B, I just hack and slash and kill enemies, because I'm a sexy robot girl and games are fun and I just want to progress to see what the ending is so I can move on to the next game. Some stuff happens in the story - it doesn't quite add up but eh, it's a sequel so maybe I missed something from the first game, whatever. I beat up some baddies, the game throws a plot twist on me about aliens but I don't really care because I had forgotten about the aliens anyway - I'm killing robots, not aliens remember? Then the game finishes - but not really - and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It lets me know I can play it again, but this time as 9S. Okay, cool.

But instead of the game starting with me in the flight suit shooting down baddies, I'm playing as a little robot. The game gives me this weak, defenseless character and makes me suffer for 5 minutes as I clumsily carry a bucket to my dying brother - not like it matters - he's dead. Here I start to notice that the game isn't quite as shallow as I once thought. Now that I'm here killing these robots again as 9S, and knowing what I know about the end of the game, I begin to disagree with 9S's methods and how he constantly dismisses the growing number of red-flags suggesting that my mission to save the world is not what it seems. The game doesn't care through, because it didn't make me play this second time. I chose to play like this. I killed these robots. They had brothers. They are defenseless and weak. I did this. I am the monster. The game says killing innocent robots didn't matter because it's just a game right? The game calls me out for sexualizing 2B and I feel bad because I think it's right. I'm still having fun, I guess?

Then I play a third time, because after I finished the second run the game plays a game preview trailer-like-thing for NieR: Automata enticing me to play once more. Yeah, the game plays an in game trailer for itself. What. Now it's a run through route C as A2 and things start to really get wacky.

The game changes my active character back and forth. 2B. 9S. A2. 9S. The game slowly unravels. The paint peels off the walls, the curtain is pulled back. This story has happened before. It will always happen again. 9S will discover terrible secrets about his organization and his role in furthering a twisted agenda. 9S will know too much, 2B will kill him, as she is ordered to. 2B will stifle her emotions to prevent herself from grieving over the loss of the only person she has ever emotionally opened up to. A2 will fight, but A2 has been fighting for nothing. The game makes a madman out of 9S. The game kills 2B. I kill innocent defenseless robots. Robots kill robots. I think I'm still having fun, but I want to go back to route A.

There's a fanatical religious robot cult that believes they all will become gods by dying. There's a group of robot children committing mass suicide because they have learned about the concept of fear and, now that they understand it, are not strong enough to confront it. I'm beginning to feel concerned, I'll even accept going back to route B at this point. I frantically begin searching for Wikipedia articles about various philosophers. I read Nietzsche.

The game asks me to kill my robot friend or wipe his memory so that he does not have to go on living knowing that he caused a group of robot children to commit suicide. I kill my friends and my previous comrades because the game tells me I need to in order to get to the end. My character breaks down and cries. His friends are dead. His existence is meaningless. I'm not having fun anymore. I regret everything. I am a broken shell of a person.

The game asks me to basically kill myself as its final boss, defeat 9S as A2, and defeat A2 as 9S - and ultimately the game asks me to kill the game itself by shooting the credits. I am killed by Square Enix and the credits at least 15 times before help arrives. Players who finished the game before me, come to assist me with messages of encouragement. It's not all for nothing. I can do anything I set my mind to. Games are not just meaningless time wasters. Finally I beat the credits. Finally I finish the game. Finally the game asks me to conclude the journey by voluntarily sacrificing my save data to help other players, just as they have helped me.

I sat and debated this for a long time. I wondered out loud about what I had done to get to this point. I recounted the steps on my journey and tried to dissect if there was anything I could have done different - or done better.

I have something like 100 hours in the game.

I click yes.

It asks me to confirm that I want to do this, to sacrifice my own hard work to help a stranger whom I've never met. A person who may never do the same for me. Or a person whom I may meet one day and dislike. Knowing all this, would I still be willing to sacrifice the things I've worked so hard to gain, for the benefit of one person who may never even know I did anything for them? Am I going to go through with this?

I do, of course, because at this point, I'm fully on board with NieR: Automata. I get it, or at least I get what I believe the game is trying to tell me. There is a sweet sense of serenity and completeness as I delete my save file forever. I sit on a special title screen and brood over the concept of humanity and existentialism.

If there's one game you needed to play this decade, I would say this was it.

Honorable Mentions

To the Moon (2011)

Mario Kart 8 (2014)

Counter Strike: Global Offensive (2012)

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016)

At this point I've spent way too much time writing, so I'm going to end it here for now. Software stuff soon, maybe next week.



Stay tuned!

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