I felt really excited for Resident Evil 8, the follow up to Capcom’s 2017 Resident Evil 7. It’s the first time in a long time that a Resident Evil game has built on the story of its predecessor, and I was curious to see where the story could go. I was also extremely excited, like the rest of the world, to meet Lady Dimitrescu, the 9 foot tall vampire lady that every ad seemed to showcase. I even wrote about her for work. No regrets there.

Sometimes, I like to punish myself with very difficult video games. There’s pleasure in the frustration of dying over and over, only to eventually accomplish whatever goal the game aims for. The repetitiveness of retracing one’s steps is meditative. Rage quitting only builds excitement and determination. But none of that is supposed to happen in games about exploration and discovery. Outer Wilds, Mobius Digital’s 2019 game about space exploration at the end of the universe, advertises itself as a self-paced journey about space and new worlds.

We keep saying it, but it’s a really weird time right now. I’ve been feeling the anxieties of both the pandemic world we live in, and the stress of starting a new job in the midst of said pandemic. It’s a lot of adjustment and I’ve spent many a night lying awake and wondering what time it is, and what time I might finally fall asleep. I’ve washed my hands until they’re raw and sanitized between every class at school. And while I’m excited about so many things in my life right now, I’m also very scared about the world, you know, how things are going.

This is why I played through the entirety of Rare’s 1994 Super Nintendo Entertainment Center (SNES) game, Donkey Kong Country.