Here I'm going to list some of my favorite things that have had a massive impact on my life. They aren't in any particular order, and I'll update this list occasionally.
Up until 2019, I didn't think too critically about the media I enjoyed. I had fun with them of course, but at the end of the day I just saw games & movies as fun distractions & never thought too much about how they were made, or what they had to say. Then one day I saw a video with 2B in it and thought "Wow, this girl is really hot. I should play the game she's from!" Little did I know that this incredibly impulsive decision would change my brain forever.
Nier Automata blew my mind when I played it. I didn't look up anything about the game before I bought it and I was not prepared for how different it was from anything I had experienced before. The story was the most in-depth I had seen in any piece of media, and the gameplay was equally fantastic. I spent many hours simply running around the beautiful ruined world and taking it in. The soundtrack was also stunning: Peaceful Sleep and Become as Gods are a few of my favorites. Nier Automata became all I could think about. Any amount of free time I had was spent playing it, and it consumed my brain so much that after I beat it, I felt empty inside. There was now a desire in me to experience more masterful media like the game I had just played. Ever since then I have grown to appreciate the little things that make art great, and I have been searching for more experiences that make me feel like Nier Automata did. Last year, I got around to playing Nier Replicant, and it's just as amazing as Automata. I would highly recommend both of these games to anyone even slightly interested in them.
Pokemon is something that has been with me for as long as I can remember. According to my mom, the first video game I ever played was Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, and I've been a fan ever since. Growing up I played most of the games, watched the TV show & movies religiously, and talked about it constantly with anyone who would listen. I love exploring the regions and catching lots of different kinds of Pokemon. It's a special kind of RPG that hasn't been replicated by too many other people (though some indie devs have been trying recently... Cassette Beasts in particular looks fun). Most of the spinoffs are also great: they're very fun and cozy in their own ways. In fact, I think Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is better than the past two generations of mainline games!
Although the quality of the main series has nosedived over the past few years, I still really love Pokemon. I playthrough the old games every now & then, and the spinoffs and anime are still great so at least I have those. Pokemon is an unforgettable series that never really leaves you once you get into it.
I feel like this one is almost obligatory for anyone in my generation who grew up playing games. Minecraft really allowed so much more freedom than anything else in my childhood. I spent most of my time playing on the Legacy Console Edition because while I did have a laptop, it was really slow & struggled to play Minecraft at a consistent framerate. Plus it was way easier to play with friends on console. No IP address voodoo, just grab a second controller & your friend can jump right in! I would spend hours messing around by myself & with friends just building whatever came to mind. I also played it a lot with my cousin; we would have sleepovers at her house and play on her Xbox 360 until we couldn't keep our eyes open anymore.
Over time I've played Minecraft less and less. Unlike with Pokemon, this isn't because I think the game has gotten worse: most of the updates have been pretty cool in my opinion. Rather, I think what makes me struggle to play Minecraft now is that I just want different experiences out of my games. Nowadays I like games that have action and strategy, or engaging storylines. I'm not as big into building as I once was, and that's Minecraft's main selling point. So I'm content to just play on my old worlds every now & then to reminisce, and also sometimes build random things on a creative world with a friend. Maybe someday I'll find the spark to really enjoy Minecraft again, but until then I have...
Have you ever found a game or movie that made you think "hell yeah" as soon as you saw it? That was me when I discovered Terraria as a teenager. I was looking for games similar to Minecraft that had more of a focus on combat. I found Terraria on the app store and in the description it said "200+ mobs and 5 bosses!" and I instantly knew this was what I was searching for. I downloaded it using gift card money I had got for Christmas and the rest was history. The Wall of Flesh was the final boss back then; this was the mobile version in 2013 so the game was completely different. Even so, I had a lot of fun with it, and had an even better time with the PS3 version that I got a year later. I was shocked just how much of a difference there was between the two, and it made me want to play even more. The combat was exactly what I was looking for. Bosses have patterns that you have to learn and dodge, and most weapons have their own upsides and downsides rather than just being upgrades of each other. Another reason that I love Terraria so much is it's developers. Every studio says they listen to their community, but the devs at Re-Logic actually mean it. They interact with people all the time and many features in the game were actually community suggestions. They also have a great understanding of what makes Terraria fun; I've never felt that any of the things they changed or added made the game worse.
Terraria is something that just gets better with time for me. This is further enhanced by how easy it is to mod the game. You literally just download tModLoader on Steam and start searching the Workshop. The mods are fantastic and add totally new ways to change your experience. Terraria is my most played game on Steam, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep enjoying it until I can't play games anymore.
Wow, the first thing on this list that isn't a video game! Some of you are probably wondering "what the hell is this guy talking about?" and that's a perfectly valid question. SiIvaGunner is one of those things that's hard to explain to people who don't know about it. It's a YouTube channel that supposedly uploads songs from video games, but they're actually something else. It would probably be easier for you to just learn it yourself: listen to this and you'll see what I mean. Now that you're back, you probably think I'm insane. How could something silly like this have a massive impact on my life? There are a few reasons why. Some of you may have noticed that the video that introduced me to 2B was also uploaded by SiIvaGunner. This channel has led to me discovering all sorts of things that I love today, such as Nier, Touhou, Vinesauce, JoJo, and more. Also, this channel has a very talented community behind it that has made all sorts of cool things. An example is the King for Another Day tournament, where various fictional characters have a music contest to see who would get to control the channel for the day (I was rooting for Missingno, if you're curious). Songs would be uploaded for different characters, and people would vote based on whose music they liked more. This event had a lot put into it: the songs produced for it were amazing, art was drawn for every character and even a few guests, and a website was created where you got to see the characters talking with each other like in a tv show, there were legitmate character arcs that happened and it was insane. All of that done for free, by a group of passionate people. And this was just one event; most of them aren't quite this big, but they all have that same level of talent and love put into them. This channel taught me about what fans can achieve when they work together, and also helped me develop new interests in things I might not have ever found otherwise. I'm really glad I happened to discover it when I was just looking for Kid Icarus Uprising music. Thanks, Grand Dad.
This is a lot more private and personal, so I won't go as in-depth here as I have with the other entries on this list. But my girlfriend has changed me more than anything else I've mentioned. We met a few years ago, and started out as just friends, but eventually developed feelings for each other and started dating. She's changed the way I look at life, and I feel whole and warm with her around. I love spending time with her; doing anything together with her makes it interesting just because she's there. She's very sweet to me, always asking how I'm doing and being genuinely interested in my hobbies. She's also talented with art (even though she won't admit it), and the way she's so ambitious in life encourages me immensely.
Babe, I know you'll be reading this because you were the first person I told about this website, and I'm going to send you the link as soon as I finish typing this paragraph. Thank you so much for being there for me, and cheering me on in everything I do. I love you more than words can describe.