632146K~P

decided to install counter-strike 2. don't even know if i'll play it considering the cs playerbase is a top 3 most toxic community i've ever interacted with and i am a very large baby but even if i do try it i can only imagine it's gonna go like overwatch 2 did
(start it up, be like "oh yeah! forgot how fun this game is!" and then spend every moment of the next 8 - 24 hours of playtime in complete misery before one day i just don't load it up again)

i just really fucking miss the few times where i was enjoying csgo because it's such an incredibly fun game when you're playing with a team that both wants to win and isn't gonna be a dickhead about it if things go south. one of my favorite online gaming memories ever is when me and a team of 4 other randoms came back from being 0 - 15 and ended with a tied game. the confidence we built up over those rounds, the support we had for each other, the growing belief we had that we could do this... i miss it so much. no other game has scratched that itch the same way

yesterday i did something i haven't done in over 10 years

i set a new personal best on an f-zero x track 🤠

it's a simple truth: cutscenes are way better when they can make you laugh at any moment

replaying tales of berseria on my own has me realizing that at no point in either of my previous playthroughs did i understand the battle system. like at all. usually i'm just playing tales games as a quasi-button masher because, well, normal and moderate difficulties don't really ask much more of you than that

but like, now that i'm really paying attention to how i'm playing and what all the battle mechanics do:

• i am having a fucking blast
• i'm hitting 70+ hit combos on my own (would've been more but i killed the boss)
• battles flow better
• even hard mode is easy right now (but i'm also at the very start of the game still so that will likely change. but also i'm in ng+ with 2x exp, so who knows)

i'm sooooo excited to unlock higher difficulties. and this also has me soooooooo excited to return to tales of vesperia and try that on a higher difficulty too