Five Games to Cope with the Coming Apocalypse
If the Earth is On fire, might as well have some fun.
Two things are coming this summer in Milwaukee- a record-breaking swarm of thousands of cicadas emerging in a four-year cycle to scream for hours for weeks in July, and the RNC, which is functionally the same thing but with Republicans instead of bugs.
So, you can tell why I am currently looking forward to my summer with a sense of rapidly impending doom.
This sense of impending doom is pretty common right now, especially because it is a rational way to respond to most news. Since I have been turning to video games to help ward of the sense of my mortality since the pandemic, I can attest that art can help a little, sometimes.
Persona 5 Royale
Unpopular opinion, Persona Five Royal (I played the Switch version) is a superhero game. Five ordinary teenagers who suddenly have strange powers, sexy costumes, and secret identities use those things to fight crimes.
Sorry, but I have wasted too much time in a claustrophobic college classroom debating genre to stoop to a further debate. They’re superheroes, a time-worn and occasionally overdone genre do not at me.
I liked all three Persona Games I’ve played so far, but Royal was the one I was dreading having an opinion about online. While I always try to write like the nobody I truly am, I also know that the internet can catapult a random piece of writing to internet fame, and I don’t want to get doxxed by a rabid Persona Five fan mad that I do not respect a Waifu simulator game’s deep lore.
Then I remembered normal people do this thing where they don’t share their every thought online, or even argue it to an imagined audience. Instead, they go outside and do sex or whatever it is people do offline.
At first, I was a little more wary of Persona 5 since it is much more of an escapist power fantasy than the others. I was much more interested in Persona 3’s gloomy emo 2000s vibes, and Persona Four’s slice-of-life exploration of the psyche.
However, I ended up falling hard for Persona Five’s escapism because it seemed to fully understand what I wanted to escape from. Instead of punching a poor person the Persona Five gang fights sexual abusers, money launderers, and all of Congress, I never quite finished the Royal part of Royal with its final ending but I hear you get to defeat your therapist who turned out to have a savior complex so toxic it caused him to grossly overstep his ethics and become god!)
This game gets a ton of hype, so I won’t dwell too long. The good writing, great art, cool music, and slick animations and menus are a dream, the plot is thoughtful and interesting, and it has perfect little recreations of Tokyo.
So if you’re feeling run down by the general *gestures vaguely at everything* of the world, this game can be cathartic. Its glamorization of rebellion and doing what’s right can be empowering and fun, plus the gorgeous cityscapes remind me why I wanted to live downtown so badly, back before street corners held bad memories and buildings became places where I’d seen too much.
Plus blasting the soundtrack while doing my errands now makes me feel like I am leveling up to fight god, and that’s pretty rad.
Fun interactive Engagement Prompt! Which Persona Five character are you? I am a Futaba because people are very willing to overlook the fact that I am a traumatized, autistic shut-in and still date me for my glorious ass and willingness to drop everything to play 6 hours of Mario Kart with you on a Thursday.
Comment your answer below! No wrong answers except for Protag. You are reading a Substack about video games. You are not that cool.
Disco Elysium
I can’t stop writing about this game, perhaps because my thoughts on it change drastically with every playthrough. While at first, this game seems to be about a fuck up whose wacky antics may or may not get everyone killed, in a world basically like ours.
However, after multiple playthroughs and watching a certain video that goes through the creator’s obscure first novel, I have a new take on the game’s meaning.
Which is to say if you are feeling self-pitying and hate the state of the world, just go ahead and play this amazing game. It’s twice as silly and sad as you expect, and it’s easy to engage with even if you don’t normally vibe with video games.
no seriously, go boot up the game and do a communism. You’ll feel better.
If you’ve already played this game enough to not even be surprised it’s on this list, then this next part is for you.
**SPOILERS***
If you have already had a pure, unconstrained blind playthrough and want to get deeper into Disco Elysium, I highly recommend watching this definitive lore video by Jamrock Hobo before you design your next Harry.
Because everything written in Sacred and Terrible Air is canon puts all of the protagonist’s actions throughout the game into something totally new, and frighteningly relatable.
In my first playthrough I never really discovered The Pale, or even The Ex Something. Harrier remained a blank slate trying to start a new life. My second playthrough was when I started to get interested in the world, the lore, and what the hell was up with the intercoms and telephones playing ghostly messages every time I dialed.
However, after learning in Sacred and Terrible Air that Harrier did not have amnesia from drinking, he had it from the hole in the church that leaks pale, the force of complete annihilation in their world, a substance of nothingness that scatters memories like snow and rips minds apart.
The book also makes clear that Harry, who is sensitive to the psychic energy of the world, was shown a vision of the future of his city. Which is unfortunate, since it is doomed to be destroyed by an atom bomb.
This makes all of his actions take on a new significance. Who wouldn’t go on a bender when faced with that kind of news?
After learning this, I realized how many voices in Harry’s head are right. I had assumed that his paranoid doom cop thoughts were just dramatics, however, no. Everything they say is true and makes sense. knowing the world will be destroyed, being a doom cop makes total logical sense.
Who wouldn’t get a little weird if they knew that the only thing holding the world together was DANCE MUSIC?
While Persona encourages a youthful and fun kind of rebellion, Disco looks at what happens when that youthful rebellion gets exhausted by powerlessness. Yet, somehow that only serves to show how, if it’s the end of the world, then your real job is still to love your life, your doomed city, and the fucked up people who grudgingly love you.
Fun Engagement game! Tell me which fucked up Disco Elysium Character you most see yourself in despite desperately wanting not to!
I’ll go first! It’s The Pale Rider! Looking into the void fearlessly, this woman lives entirely in her own head and in memories of the past that are not hers. This is honestly the best metaphor for my anxiety over my future as a writer I have ever seen put to screen! It haunts me! :)
Paradise Killer
First of all, I cannot be held responsible if this game awakens anything in you. Your reactions to it’s distinctly weird, vibrant and horny art direction is your own.
This is a wild game. Set in a surreal and beautiful tropical paradise filled with gods and demons, this game is a vaporwave murder mystery that can somehow both accurately depict how it feels to live in a capitalistic hellscape and make me want to drink a strong cold cocktail on the beach, ignoring it all in favor of sensuous distractions.
What’s cool is that the game interacts directly with that feeling. Sure, it’s an evil world…but can’t you tell why the immortal hotties choose not to face the horrors that enable their existence.
Would you give up immortal paradise just because of mortals, going about their already doomed lives?
Wandering through the impeccable vibes and into the violence…I don’t know that I like the answers I find. This game starts off by introducing you to Lady Love Dies and a low poly world you explore slowly to Lo-fi beats, taking in beautiful views and quirky dialog.. and its horrors ended up sticking with me a long time.
Fun engagement activity four! If you’ve played Paradise killer, which NPC do you wish you weren’t attracted to? Mine is Crimson Acid, the goat-headed chaos bi who lives in the sewers.
The way I would leave my life behind to live in the sewers of dying paradise with her…
Goodbye Volcano High
Fun Fact: This game is actually what inspired the Substack’s name! It’s taken from the break between sad and alite in this song.
Anyway, hope you’re ready to get sad because this game is a downer. It’s the most depressing dinosaur dating game I have played. Seriously, if you want to “have fun” play Raptor Boyfriend instead and spare yourself watching all the characters die.
This is my top pick if you’re a friend of mine who doesn’t play games but is reading this to be supportive. It’s aggressively indie, with a soundtrack influenced by Car Seat Headrest and a plot about wanting your band to make it while your friends are all preparing for college. Physically easy to play, with no points where you can fail to click correctly and stall the story out awkwardly.
It’s also a great one if you’ve already played A Night In The Woods a Dozen times and need somewhere new to put your angst. I’ve seen people call this game “too awkward” and “cringe” to which I say, it’s a game about being queer and in high school. It’s an awkward time.
What I loved about this game was how personal it felt. You could tell that the writers were grappling with the pandemic, with the feeling of obliteration that can come from seeing the climate change before your young eyes, and with the desperate need to create despite it all.
It’s a lovely little game to keep you company when you can’t get motivated to talk to anyone on a Friday night.
Fun Engagement Question: which character were you in your own homo erotic friendship drama? I was a Naomi, even though I desperately wanted to be a Fang. Which let’s face it is so Naomi about me.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Head empty, Earth destroyed. Fuck philosophy, Kirby frolicking through the ruins of humanity will lift anyone’s spirit!
Just like how sometimes I like to imagine no matter what happens to humanity ducks will be relatively unaffected, Kirby and the adorable killer critters he encounters seem unbothered by the fact that they are say, in the abandoned ruins of a funhouse, or having a break in a crumbling shopping mall that is ominously void of people.
FUNGAEMENT TIME: You can feel it, deep within you. The ancient ones from long before memory, calling. You are a god of matter, a dissolver of selfhood and power. A thousand worlds call to you. Your limbs ache to become more, to dissolve into wheels made of the softest yarn, your body once again accepting two dimensions the way it once accepted becoming weightless in a body of water. You are a god of any world, a pink balloon of potential and destruction.
Whose call do you answer?
I would be the yarn Kirby from Kirby’s epic yarn on Wii! Beep Beep motherfuckers.
BONUS: Listen to Car Seat Headrest in Simlish
IDK might help