Discover Top Posts Tagged with #master key

☆ Hu Tao // Genshin Impact ☆ Resin kit / Master Key ☆ Wonder Festival 2025 [Summer] ¥22,000 ☆ Sculpt Hayato

#hu tao #genshin impact #master key #hayato #garage kit #so cutes.

IDIOSYNCRASY MHA (This is an au so it’s not lore-accurate) GENERATIONS Generations of quirk users: Gen A-1920+ Gen B-1960+ Gen C-1980+

MASTER KEY FOR THE AU!

We will add to this when we need to

Finally writing it all down. If you have any questions or comments send an ask :-)

#master key #lore #idiosyncrasy mha

ALWAYS SMILE!!!

Why would Unicron create the Mini-Cons with a “servility program” if he wanted them to wreak havoc on the Cybertronian race?

Dear Chaos Comprehender,

It is well said that nothing corrupts like power. The ability to bond with a Mini-Con, to instantly earn their loyalty no matter what… that is certainly a corrupting power. Our war could only escalate, following the introduction of such a weapon.

Fortunately, the heroic Redline was able to unlock the Master Key—not only reclaiming the Mini-Con's full power, but also eliminating the servility program. This allowed them to evolve further, becoming truly omnicompetent beings.

#ask vector prime #transformers #maccadam #unicron trilogy #mini cons #unicron #redline #master key #nothingavailable

Top 10 Games I Played in 2024

In 2023 I wrote 72k words about 125 games. In 2024 I wrote 135k words about 145 games. This implies that in 2025 I will write 250k words about 160 games and by 2030 I will write 800k words about 0 games because games cut into my time spent waxing philosophic about interactivity as a concept. Much like jazz, it’s all about the games you don’t play.

My criteria for the top 10 are that it merely needs to be something I either played for the first time this year or experienced in a meaningfully novel way, and that it will inform the way I think about games going forwards. This ordering is chronological starting with games I played earliest in the year, with no ordinal ranking implied or intended.

Honorable mentions: Moonlight Pulse, Animal Well, Astor: Blade of the Monolith, Biomorph, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN, Thread

Zeno Clash II – I played Zeno Clash around release in the early 2010s, back when being on Steam was enough to garner an audience. For some reason I bounced off the sequel. I went back and replayed both of them after loving Clash in 2023, and I’m so glad I did. Games have forgotten how to be punchy, literally and metaphorically. Combat feels good, the writing is charmingly bizarre, and the worldbuilding is still bewildering. I’m in love with this series because it’s the same sort of grimy low-tech magical world as Vexx, and few things are playing in that same space. Fewer still make it feel anywhere near this good to punch a man in the head. Goddamn.

God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla – If Elden Ring DLC can be nominated for GOTY then I can put Dad of War 2 DLC in my Top 10 list. I had very low faith in this DLC. Ragnarok suffered from rushed development and having 50 pounds of shit shoved in a 30 pound bag, and so everything about the lore and gamefeel of a series I care deeply for felt discarded and underutilized. Valhalla shows the spark is still there, just buried. It had the lore callbacks I was craving for all of both Dad of War games. It had the payoffs for Kratos’ emotional arcs and an actual conversation about how it felt to be more godslayer than god, more god than father, and more father than husband. I realize God of War can’t be this all the time. Even this came dangerously close to cribbing notes from Hades directly on telling a story this way. But it’s a light in the darkness or a beautiful sendoff, and I’ll take either.

Chants of Sennarr – At some point I need to actually play a point-and-click adventure game because I keep liking games with those trappings. In either case I loved helping these little guys translate their shit. The last level falls apart a bit, the stealth sections suck, and I could do without the twee fakeout ending but when the game is throwing you to the wolves in a whole new area like your college French teacher greeting you at 7AM with a bonjour followed by several syllables you’ve never heard in your life? Positively unmatched.

Nine Sols – There’s a lot to love about Nine Sols. The eerie taopunk aesthetic of the ruined city. The soundtrack that drips with atmosphere and tension. The compelling story of hubris and redemption, backed up by intensely well written characters. The incest undertones. The variety and complexity of the boss fights. The crisp satisfaction of the parry. The incest overtones. Positively phenomenal game, and it’s rather galling that it got snubbed so completely by every major awards ceremony for the sin of being Taiwanese. If I was ranking these ordinally it’d be far and away #1, and it wouldn’t shock me if I replay it within the year. The final boss was practically a 5 hour postgame DLC by herself, and singlehandedly altered my concept of what video games can do with their combat systems and structure.

Master Key – Almost every 2D Zelda knockoff has sucked. There’s a density and simplicity to their design that a lot of indies overshoot. This is one of the few that surprised me with its mastery of Zelda puzzle design, though the monochrome aesthetic rode the borderline between charming and visually incoherent. Chicory got away with it because the bosses were much simpler and the game was about painting. Despite its quality my favorite part of the game was the actually the picross mode, but a full 7% of players full-cleared it despite being it being 100+ puzzles so I’m not alone. It also taught me why the Link to the Past hookshot makes Link invincible because being knocked out of position while the hook is flying leads to some weird disjoints.

Metal Gear Solid – I could write a book about Metal Gear Solid. I don’t know if I can write two coherent sentences about Metal Gear Solid. I am late to the party on this but the Hideous Kojima is doing things with the concept of interactive media which no one else on the planet is even approaching. It says something about me that one of the series I’m reminded of most strongly is Prototype as that had a lot of the same tone surrounding militarization, similar use of real-world video interspersed with gameplay, and equally dogshit shooting. It also says something about me that I used claymore mines more than Fat Man.

Picross 3D: Round 2 – Allegedly I’ve played this for something like 65 hours over the course of the last few months. That feels low. Like any good puzzle game Picross 3D: Round 2 is engrossing, constantly growing in complexity without feeling unfair, and is genuinely challenging. I got through the first 255 puzzles and felt satisfied, then after the credits another 100 or so puzzles unlocked. I’m still chipping through it, and I’ll be sad when it’s gone.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – Despite my love of shitty soulslikes Fromsoft’s homegrown designs don’t do it for me. Bloodborne at least had interesting things to say about Dark Souls 1 and was a meaningful divergence in design. Sekiro is stranger to me because it wants to pretend it’s asking the same questions as Dark Souls but despite the emphasis on parrying you’re actually rewarded for being viciously proactive. I beat Isshin and I still don’t know what I feel about this game. I don’t know how much of my impression came from playing this after Nine Sols. I don’t know if I would’ve played this if not for Nine Sols. I definitely wouldn’t have played it if not for Steam Family Sharing, that’s for damn sure.

Final Fantasy 1: Dawn of Souls – This GBA remake is older now than the original was when the remake was made. It’s also the only video game society has ever produced. I know of Final Fantasy through playing FFXIII in high school, watching Advent Children at least eight times in high school, and playing Kingdom Hearts in high school, college, post college, and this year. I only beat this game because autoattacks and emulator speedup let me essentially blip past most fights. Despite that, I don’t know if the game would be better without random encounters. It puts in a form of attrition that we don’t really see anymore in games outside of roguelites, and while that may be for good reason it’s an interesting puzzle.

Hyper Light Drifter – This shit should be in the library of congress. The soundtrack is one of the best in the medium, the map design and puzzles are superb, and at worst the combat is functional. Elements like the keys being cumulative collectables still feel ahead of their time, and while it wasn’t the first game to have ranged weapons recharged by your melee attack it feels like the bedrock other games built on top of. What a good game. Play Solar Ash too if you haven’t already.