As I sit here with bloodshot eyes and a sore body, knowing I still have one more overnight shift left to do before my work week is over, mulling over ideas in an attempt to fulfill my self-imposed status quo of writing about games everyday, I catch myself from nodding off right before my head falls on the keyboard, wondering if I’m going to come up with a great article idea in the scant minutes I have left before I must get ready for my job…

As I catch a glimpse of myself in the darkened reflection of my phone checking the time, I’m having ever so slight reservations such a thing is going to happen

Fair enough, I think to myself. I can still give 100% of myself in this moment, even if the 100% I have left to give is from a place of diminished turmoil.

100% is quite relative, mind you.

So within that notion, here is the first entry into the Exhaustion Chronicles, involving the video games I didn’t play this week. Starting several days ago, and then taking place over the next several days, I got myself trapped into some kind of otherworldly install purgatory of a self-inflicted nature. This happening would obviously come to pass as an unfortunately telling omen for the week to come, as I remember uninstalling Avowed at some point, so I could make room for the remastered version of Oblivion. This was of course, almost immediately superseded by another sabotaging effort of my own doing, by then deleting Oblivion soon after, having reminding myself I had yet not even put a single minute into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Once the title was downloaded, however, and realizing how little time I had left after all of the dry rigmarole involved with dealing with so many big install times, as the clock ticked away the precious minutes I had left to me, I then proceeded to listlessly stare at the thumbnail of Expedition 33 on my series X dashboard with broken hopes and dreams as I looked at the clock drained and paralyzed. Everyone says it’s GOTY material, so that game and me…it’s gotta happen.

Someday…

My run-through of the remaster of System Shock is still on hold, in spite of my intense enjoyment of the title, and one I was able to derive some real cracker jack writeups from. Seems like quite the thiccccccccc experience to push through quickly, however, akin to shotgunning a jar of peanut butter. Not sure when that’s getting done, but the core memories of the title remain lodged in my brain, like a sliver in the back of my mind, always present, reminding me of the pain from the encounter, and the abandonment that followed there after.

I’m in the exact same head space too, my guy. I get you….

Still have not done the followup in finishing my playthrough of to a T, which is maybe the most absurdist of the bunch, as I’m fairly certain the game is only a few hours long. As charming and off the wall as the title to be, and how one could likely binge it faster than watching an extended edition of a Lord of the Rings film, it remains distant to me due to the weariness.

How I imagine I’ll look, rolling up to work after finishing writing this article

Started Blue Prince, a roguelike indie puzzler, that I’ve read rave reviews about. I started it cause I thought it would be a softball title to get some easy minutes logged, with which I could then easily flip into an article, and boy was I deeply wrong about that. Though the game does have that endearing wealth of mysticism and obscure intrigue the likes of which Myst possessed oh so long ago, it is also similarly as obtuse, as I was unable to make heads or tails of progressing very far in it’s cryptic environment So, having only played it for a scant couple of hours before passing out while playing it, and the fact that one is mostly walking around staring at objects in-between puzzle solving, my insights in providing detailed accounts of my time with the title would most certainly be akin to: 10/10 walking, would walk again.


Pictured: The main character of the Blue Prince, being an absolute himbo, as he confusingly stares at a static paper map of a building that has a constantly shifting interior design, wondering why he can’t find his fat head way around the premises

I suppose in inverting my logic with Blue Prince, in trying to play an “easy” game that should have then generated an effortless article, I started Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a soulsike from Chinese developer Leenzee, with the notion that maybe if I played a really difficult game, I would find a wellspring of content and an intense experience with which to inspirationally scribe upon.

…*Sigh*…

Being a soulslike, much of the games combat system and general mystique is shrouded in mystery, so while I have “done things” in the game, including beaten the first boss, my mind remains so fried, I can’t even remember that guys name off the top of my head [Google be damned]. He sure was a boss who did things. The encounter felt stern…stern but fair, and helped to ingratiate me with the parrying system involved. I like the cut of this one’s jib…I just wonder how much time I’ll be able to spend admiring said jib, present circumstances considered and accounted for, if dead tired conditions continue to subsist unabated.

Incredibly cut jibs with this Wuchang, let me tell you.

Listened to more of the OST from Rift of the Necrodancer, to help remind me of the perverse shame involved with my near complete abandonment of playing the title. Such a sadness.


An absolute plague upon my house for giving up on this vibrantly groovy example of this fantastically funkalicious phantasmagoria

Stared at a screenshot of one of my deaths from Elden Ring: Nightreign, just to feel alive.

The horror…


…the horror…

…and within the boundless fields of waking terror, only the nightmares find fertile soil with which to grow…

-Pashford