I was super proud of how well she did for day one, wanted to share I think there is lots of potential here!

Slow Motion Top Off

For those that like to watch slow mo bullets. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcQVrD7RnNI
​

• After you rebuild Lurelin Village, the Village Head will hold a feast in Link's honor. At the feast, the villagers will officially announce that Link has free use of all the establishments in Lurelin Village, including a NEW Lucky Treasure Shop!! Link can open a chest every single day for FREE and receive a special reward. Tweaking with the game's clock, players can exploit this shop and get their hands on infinite treasure, including powerful fushion materials!! You can also give the owner a roasted armored porgy to choose from the remaining two chests!!
  
• You don't ever need a minecart!! Just use a shield by itself on minecart rails to jump from track to track.
  
• With ANY gerudo weapon, any fushion added will double that fushion's attack bonus!! For example the base attack of The Scimitar of the Seven is 28, fuse it with a silver lynel Saber horn who's original attack power added is 55, and it will double it to 110, giving you a high durable sword with an attack of 138 permanently, in any weather or condition!!!
  
• At the Horse God's Spring, Malanya can not only bring your horse back to life, but she can now upgrade your horse's stats to all 5 stars in all categories if you bring her certain meals!! Malanya will also describe the ingredients of these meals in the Malanya dreams you can have at the stables
  
• If you throw a dazzlefruit at any Stal monsters (skeletons) it will defeat them instantly!! *Does not include Stalnox
  
• If you give a horse an Endura Carrot, it will add 3 extra stamina boosts for up to 8 hyas if your horse already has 5!!
  
• You can make your own home with the possibility of having up to 3 rooms each of bow, weapon, or shield stands! There are also rooms with blessing statues, cooking pots, and a room called gallery where you can use one of your photos that you've taken to make into and display a large painting on the wall!!And a stable where you can display a horse of your choice!!
  
• If you have a weapon that is about to break or even if it's been used a little bit, if you place it before a rock octorok, it will suck it in and when it's thrown out, it will be repaired instantly AND give it a white bonus such as critical hit or attack+!! Use that weapon until it's about to break, then place it before a 2nd different octorok and it will become new again with a yellow bonus such as durability or higher attack+!! After using said octorok, mark its location on your map and kill it. Whenever a blood moon occurs, you can go back to said octorok and repair your weapons/roll your stats on it.
  
• If you fuse any mushroom to the weakest of shields, it will disarm and throw into the air, even the strongest enemies, if you face them with it and press A to shield parry when they swipe at you!!
  
• If you fuse a mushroom to a weapon and attack them, it will disarm them AND send them flying through the air as they bounce away!!
  
• If you first make a campfire (using a bundle of wood, adding flint, and striking it with a sword or shooting the wood with a fire fruit) then add a Hylian Pine Cone AND an Oil Jar at the same time, it will make a super powerful updraft that will send you flying high in the air. Alternatively, if you dont have a flame emitter on hand, placing a twig in the center of a Zonai Air Balloon, lighting it on fire, then placing the Hylian Pine Cone and Oil Jar on top will send the Air Balloon zooming into the air with a powerful burst!! When you light a wooden weapon on fire with this combination, it will stay lit, even in the rain!!
  
• Lynel Hoofs break Talus and Frox weak points better than bomb arrows and do considerably more damage.
  
• If you attach a sapphire to any weapon and swipe it, it will cause all materials on trees, walls, or ceilings to fall right to the ground for you!!
  
• You can can earn a FREE extra heart or stamina container (you choose) no shrines required!! Go to coordinates -0556, -1503, 0019 on the outside base of the great plateau where you will see a bomb rock in the wall. Destroy it and it will drain the largest lake on the great plateau leaving a bargain statue at the bottom. Talk to it and complete "A Call From the Depths" side adventure and you'll get a free heart or stamina container!!!
  
• You can fuse pieces of island that have fallen from the sky to any weapon for a quick, powerful fushion!!
  
• If you collect 4 Sage's Wills, take them to a blessing statue and you can strengthen the powers of a sage of your choice. There are 20 total to upgrade them all!!
  
• If you're fighting a Stone Talus and they throw their rock at you, you can recall it and it will stun the talus so you're able to jump on
  
• If you fuse a frozen slab of meat to your shield, you can shield surf on any surface without the meat falling off or being destroyed, even flat surfaces, and surfaces covered in gloom without taking any damage!!
  
• A great but slightly weaker alternative to Sundelions are Sun Pumpkins. Speak to Mayor Reede after completing the Mayoral Election questline in Hateno Village. He'll be standing in a vegetable field on the west side of the village. He wants your help to protect his crops at night from monsters. Agreeing will take you straight to nighttime where there will be a few waves of stal monsters you have to defeat. Just throw a dazzlefruit at each group to instantly kill all stal enemies! After he will give you a few Sun Pumpkins and you'll also then be able to buy them at the Hateno General Store!!
  
• You can grow 1 crop from a list of fruits and vegetables, including Big Hearty Radishes, Hearty Radishes, Endura Carrots, Swift Carrots, Pumpkins, Hylian Tomatoes, Hylian Rice, Tabantha Wheat, Hydromelons, and Wildberries!! Go to the school in Hateno Village between 9 am to 3 pm and complete the 2 side quests the teacher asks you to do, then in the field down the hill to the southwest of the school, an old lady (Uma) will tend a crop of your choice for free!!
  

*In the depths there are 34 yiga schematics you can collect with yiga designed machines!! Also with each yiga schematic, there is a treasure chest with 20 crystallized charges, that's a total of 680 crystallized charges, almost enough for 7 battery upgrades!!

• If you fuse a zonai wing to your shield and do a shield hop, and you can fire slow-motion arrows when jumping from flat ground!!

*If you shoot an arrow with a Muddlebud attached at a Battle Talus, it will aggravate the Talus and throw off ALL enemies that were on board!!
*When fighting a Flux Construct, if you take out a weapon and fuse it with one of the Flux Construct squares, it will cause it to fall apart!! Alternatively using Ultrahand on the head, you can wiggle it until it detaches, also causing it to fall apart!!
*Turn Luminous Stone into gems by feeding them to Dondons, located in the Bronas Forest by Lake Floria and collecting their "poop" (this is one of the best ways of farming rupees in TOTK!!!
*Fuse a Lizalfos Tail to a weapon to make a whip (and use the elemental ones for a magical whip)!!
*Put a beehive on a stick to create a bee wand, which sends bees after enemies and briefly distracts them when you wave it. Alternatively attaching a beehive to an arrow and firing from a Lynel bow with x3 or x5, it will then create 3 or 5 hives respectively that will attack enemies!!

• Whenever you defeat a larger scale monster in the depths such as a Frox, Hinox, or Lynel, when you defeat it you always get 20 crystallized charges that count towards getting another battery upgrade!!
  
• If you're having trouble finding the caves that have Bubbul Frogs in them, find one of the many Cherry Blossom Trees and offer a piece of fruit. Satori the blue horse will appear and blue beams of light will shoot up in the air in the area that you're in, showing you all the caves that have Bubbul Frogs!
  
• You don't need stairs when building your house, just use ascend, it will give you a few extra rooms!!
  

Hi everyone! I am looking to demo a few racquets in a couple weeks and was wondering if a tennis sensor would help in determining which racquet is for me? Based off reviews that people have posted sensors aren't super valuable but are able to track potential spin and speed. My ultimate question is will the sensor be able to track the difference in spin/speed from different racquet models or is it all about the force/motion I'm putting into the swing? It's hard to imagine it could track the difference in string beds let alone poly vs syn. Hopefully anyone with time with a sensor can add some insight. Thanks in advance!

With the release of Across the Spiderverse my thought have gone to the eventual sequel Beyond the Spiderverse. After seeing AtSV I'm not worried about the quality of BtSP. Across was a feast for the eyes and the story had enough surprises and fun writing that left be completely satsified.
Even as I read people talk about mischaracterizations or opinions on how their spider person should have acted I think they did a fine job explaining all the motivations and why everyone is acting the way they did. (the only thing Id consider a flaw is how quickly they made the Gwen/Miles ship sail given there wasn't a lot of actual romantic interest shown in the first to warrant all the pining but after they got through the initial interactions I love their chemistry and was sold, but that's a discussion for a different post).
Everything from the previous two movies has me certain they won't drop the ball with the third and I'm going to love it. Everyone seems to know exactly what they're doing and how to do it.
Thus I go to what Im thinking the final ending of BtSP will be. As I think about it and how the comic movies have evolved I can think of potentially three ends that would result in me considering them to be a perfect trilogy and "Peak Fiction."
​
Ending One: The Standard Affair
One ending I see them do is safe, tried and true Miles wins. The Spot is beaten, dad is saved, and everyone learns that cannon events don't have to happen (I think we're all certain there's going to be more to those that we're going to learn about) and Miguel is sorry for being wrong. Gwen completes her now role as romantic interest and kisses Miles.
The residing theme of Miles is just made different and gets to have his own way against the "establishment" is confirmed and Miles gets both his cakes.
It's a simple, everything turned out well ending that would normally be lack luster in other movies but given what we've seen from the previous two movies I'm positive the creators will be able to take me on the jounrey and lead me to the ending in a way I'm satisfied.
I may not have really liked it if I was just told it but seeing it in action with the artwork and music will elevate standard writing for an above standard movie series.
​
Ending Two: A little Spice
We're still going to get Miles beating up Spot (it's a pretty big given) but as he's dealing with Spot or whatever additional threat that may come during the movie (Looking at you Miles Prowler) Miles CAN'T save his father. As a building or whatever is coming down and Miles watches in slow-mo with painting like backgrounds with intense music suddenly MIGUEL saves dear of old.
Boom, instant redemption for Miguel bring it back that he IS a good guy but was just trying to do what he thought was right with the information he thought he had. Miguel fans rejoice at their precious boy returns to the lime light and maybe together they then beat Spot.
Still a solid Miles-wins ending, but less of an instant I'm-just-gonna-win-because-im-main-character ending.
​
Ending Three: Peak Fiction (in my opinion)
The fight is going down, stacks are high, Spot is a jerk (maybe they save him too), and in the end. When Spot is beaten and the dust settles. Miles loses. He doesn't save dad. Canon events, while not exactly as were originally told to us by Miguel, are actually very much needed and Miles dad dies during the fight trying to save someone.
Heck, Miles has shown he's now willing to tell his parents his identity and maybe he tells his dad everything and why he needs to stay safe and away from everything.
We get the full on Miles crying with dying dad in his arms like all the other holograms and Miles asks him why he ran out and dad says "I aint no quitter and when he sees someone in trouble he rushes to help even knowing he could die."
Like with many Spiderman movies we end with a funeral and Miguel isn't happy about the result but gives some words of comfort to Miles again redeeming him as "not-a-complete-asshole" and it ends with Miles doing that Spiderman thing where he swings into the city swearing to up truth, justice, and all that crap.
I would love this ending. We got a whole movie with Miles repeating the "im gonna do my own thing" and "you can if you have two cakes" lines and this would be completely humbling to Miles.
Harking back to the both movies where they say you can't save everyone but Miles knows you should still try and doesn't regret doing everything he did. Miles isn't a wonder God and sometimes there are things you can't prevent even if you try your best.
It leaves Miles characterized as one of the realist Spidermen closest to his humanity.
I think this ending would solidify the movies as one of the few sets of perfect trilogies movies but again I'd be perfectly satisfied with any of them.
​
End Four: I had no idea!
Or I'm just severely underestimating the makers of these movies and the end goes completely off the rails!
Again, the two movies we've seen so far should have everyone pretty certain that the third will satisfy and they will deliver in a way we will love.
We may all by a pack of psychopaths who want their particular favorite Spiderman to be best and will nitpick why Classic Blorbo didn't immediately support Miles and use his Blorbo beam to do everything perfectly, but I think the creators have earns a lot of good faith.
Beyond the Spiderverse can't come soon enough!!!!!.....but not too soon that the quality dips.....
What do you think?

In the first Penumbra game, Penumbra: Overture, the player had access to three melee weapons:
A Hammer, a Pickaxe and a broom.
The Hammer was a weak starting weapon, the pickaxe was better and the broom was kinda of a joke but it did have more range in exchange for much less damage.
These were removed in Black Plague (And The Bunker, while bringing back combat, decided to omit melee, likely since guns can be easily limited by bullets.) due to how overpowered they were.
I have only played the demo for the Bunker and I never encountered the monster so (at least directly, I did hear noises that could have been it but I hid right away.) I won't bring it up in this post. (But feel free to if you have experience.)
To me, the big problem with Overture melee was two things:

1. Health, If you aren't playing Hard, Philip's Health regenerates relatively quickly, (While on Hard, you can go minutes with it seemingly not increasing but I think it's still there? just super slow and not too useful against the high enemy damage.) so you could be aggressive to take out one enemy then just wait and be ready for the next encounter
2. Lack of enemy types, the main enemy for most of the game was Zombified Dogs, who would get knocked down on every strike, making stun locking easy.

Some people didn't like the moving your mouse to swing feature, I personally did and weirdly there actually is an option to have "normal" melee (Tap mouse to swing) but it's only in the game's files and has to be enabled from there rather than an in-game setting for some reason.
Having health not regenerate, more monster types (and more encounters with multiple monsters at once, if it had combat, trying to melee fight two Amnesia Brutes at once would be nearly impossible. ) and possibly having melee weapons break or giving monster a counter attack of sorts if we try to stunlock them could probably have melee without breaking the game.

You little broccoli hair cut lookin ass. With your slow ass 2010 used shitty golf with loud mufflers. You thought you were cool? Hahahaha. Get pulled over and hopefully you got a fat ticket. Your insurance is going to be even more fucked. You’re lucky I didn’t feel like destroying your tiny kraut shit box with my 2.5 ton pure American 🦅 f-150 death machine. Fuckin hate those morons in shit boxes with loud mufflers breaking traffic laws and speeding. Get fucked.

Style and Narrative

The game looks excellent, from small clutter to massive building fronts. Every street corner is packed with traces of human life ripped apart by the puppet uprising without being stuffed, floating furniture or badly aligned windows are rare, although they do exist here and there. That's completely fine, it happens in every game and often more obviously than here.
Areas are interconnected nicely, although not particularly complex so far. Being able to climb to another level here and there and not dying for jumping off a low roof is good fun.
The hub is not too large, has a lovely atmosphere, and you can see from the stargazer teleport which (additional?) NPCs are in it. Being able to groove with sad tunes is a great design choice. When talking to NPCs however, I have to ask: why can't I talk to them from any direction and why do they take such long pauses between their lines when every other readable prompt disappears two seconds too early?
Favorite NPC confirmed already.
In many aspects, I find the game too derivative of Bloodborne. Blatantly so, to be honest. Stalkers are hunters, puppets are beasts, both appear to be bereft of humanity. Workshops are workshops, Sophia is a firekeeper (with standard greeting!), the petrification disease stands in for a beast plague driving victims mad, the aesthetic and layout of the city is vaguely adjacent to Yharnam--not gothic of course, but bridges and plazas and carriages and boxes are all so strongly reminiscent that I sometimes felt like recognizing Cleric Beast's bridge, Gascoigne's summoning spot or Arianna's alley. Ergo and otherworldly materials will probably develop into an alien influence adjacent to BB's Great Ones and the arcane cosmic.
But don't fret, the original story elements possess some intrigue of their own. Next to the mystery of maddened puppets, it appears we will come across fairy-like influences that explain the origin of Geppetto's automaton vision, which has been wiped from at least two puppets' minds.
The petrification disease could also be interesting. I am not sure if it comes from the puppets yet, maybe an influence of their ergo, but having more cause of chaos than brutal mayhem is always good.
I always love me a good critique of large companies, so the different depictions of how they influence Krat's life on the large and small scale are welcomed. Soulslikes tend to struggle to put meaning behind their copies, but here I can already posit theories, like the struggle representing P's drive to gain a speck of humanity.
Hooray for making the dingy Daedalians blow up, boo for implying that Venigni is going to be a rad wheel-spinning robogrinder instead of the greedy loser he is meant to be. Knowing the genre, he's probably going to end up mad anyways though.
P should be voiced. No reason not to, really. He is a character with development, not a blank slate. FromSoft allowed Sekiro to speak, you don't have to cling to other titles' concepts.

Gameplay

So you don't think I'm *just* salty, here's my Souls Cred (I'm a bit proud of these, fight me): Finished DS1, DS3, BB, Sekiro & Elden Ring, the middle three several times, and recently beat DS3+Ashes at SL1. I gave up on my BL4 and No Beads Runs halfway through because I hate getting one-shot. On my first playthrough, I beat every (and I mean every) ER boss bar five in less than 10 tries. I like these games a lot and would like to believe that I know what I'm talking about.
Let's start with the compliments!
Enemies appear in plentiful sizes and shapes with interesting models and varied move sets. Regular puppets have a fun amount of health and deal dangerous but not overwhelming damage.
P's quickly unlocked weapons are equally versatile, even if they only seem to have two light/heavy attacks each. For the most part, they feel appropriately weighty and I never noticed a swing being too fast or slow. Reassembling weapon parts can be strange because the handle determines the moveset, so a blunt mace head might adopt a rapier's quick stabs. Funny enough to not be off-putting.
P himself moves adequately well. He doesn't slip too easily from the thin catwalks bridging Krat's roofs and turns quickly. Same for the camera, this is the first game in a while where I didn't crank the sensitivity up to 8.
Dogs don't teleport. Good dogs.
I skimmed most of the tutorials because they are just Souls mechanics, but they do a fine job of explaining the basics. Being able to see that you have enough ergo by the number becoming blue is a wonderful idea.
The skills seem to be fairly extensive and might allow for a solid build once you get far enough. They should be unlocked earlier though.
There is a rewarding amount of items strewn throughout the world and even the frequent sawtooth cog drops feel nice. It's cool to have something to trigger traps with from afar!
Dropping ergo in front of the boss room is very kind and a good conclusion when you hand the player infinite homeward bones with the watch.
I like the pulse cell regain through attacking. Could go a bit faster though, you don't have that many to begin with.
I've seen this arrangement somewhere before and I don't know where :(
And now we get to the detailed negatives, much of which comes down to the ever-maligned frame data.
Parrying needs a few more frames. Maybe guard should linger on its own instead of being spammable. Since they basically do not have to recover after a parry, slower weapons get one hit in, then they strike again and hyper armor through anything, even charged heavy attacks. This does not feel good by being unresponsive to player actions. Where's my reward for nailing three perfect parries in a row? And why do I sometimes take damage after I get the SUCCESS vibration and ping? Even red attacks shouldn't knock me down and punish me for perfect parrying.
Perhaps there should also be an indicator like Sekiro's red kanji, whose fading tells you when to act. The red sparks only tell you that a special attack is coming sometime in the next five seconds. Subverting Sekiro's kanji into not being able to *dodge* the red attack is also an odd choice, since you can dodge it with proper spacing. Without mikiri counter or jumps it only leaves parrying, and again, odd choice. The game didn't need this feature, considering...
Dodge has no travel distance and struggles to actually *dodge*. I am fine with limited iframes, but if I can't move out of an enemies range with two dodges, I question why I even have the ability.
Another factor for the insufficient dodge is how little Capacity improves your carry weight. If I want to stay under 29% for a somewhat acceptable dodge, I can't use a club AND armor pieces. The legion arm was thrown right out because of how heavy it is.
Strongly delayed attacks a la Elden Ring are just annoying. Malfunctioning puppets have an actual reason for doing it, but it's not natural. You have to memorize attack patterns instead of reacting to them. Waiting three seconds for an attack to come down in an instant feels weird.
The waiting game makes for a lackluster combination of Bloodborne and Sekiro. There need to be larger windows between attacks for heavy weapons and less recovery after striking back.
The weapon durability system isn't very appealing to me. The game moves too fast for this tactical element, which would work better in something paced like earlier Souls titles. Bouncing off the opponent with everything, including weapon arts, is *bad*. That's not how durability works or should be represented. Just make me deal less damage instead of stealing my turn for surviving until the end of the fight. You also forget about it because the areas are too short for your weapon to degrade noticeably.
Take a closer look at that snout!
The stronger watchmen feel like they have too much health (I was level 30 with a balanced build + rapier at the end). Not a lot too much, but their resistance could be lowered for more enjoyable mini bosses inbetween areas of enemies.
Dummy traps could last about 1.5 seconds less.
Why do you only get rally on chip damage? There is no lore reason like in Bloodborne, and I doubt there could be any that would make sense for it to be restricted to blocked attacks. Enemies (bosses!) should not have access to rally, period.
Enemies feel like they have block or jagged models/boxes that won't let me pass. When P collides with them, they stick instead of sliding past each other, which often meant that I was stuck right in the enemy's weapon arm. This is particularly obnoxious with long-limbed bosses, who will just trap me with their left arm and attack with the right. Because of the long dodge recovery, I can't adjust after this happens either.
Why are there six enemies with what appears to be instant parry next to each other? Give that to one or two in a group, otherwise you'll be ganked (completely fine) and an attempt to strike back after parrying one enemy will be punished.
Watchman Paarl leaves shock traps that sometimes hit you as soon as you get up, making it an unnecessary double punishment. He also has two very fast attacks with barely any windup that are inconsistent with his regular attack speed (and another fast one that winds up for about 2.5 seconds). Since all his strikes are either right-left windup while crouching or standing, they and the grab are difficult to distinguish.
Since all his larger attacks place him right on top of you (slams and Sonic slam), he can just combo any attack from there and hits. The grab often caught me because of our models sticking together when I tried to dodge after such a slam or a shock trap. The grab also reaches too far and has unintuitive windup-followup, which messes with dodge timings too hard for an early enemy.
Speaking of shock traps, the radial burst with random lightning bolts surrounded by a ring of lightning doesn't feel fair. Where am I supposed to dodge with my half-inch frolicking steps? Run startup is too long to flee, what fires first is hard to foresee. And when he decides to do another Paarl burst right after, which doesn't have the appropriate charge before blowing up, you've just eaten three to five attacks without seeing any of them.
I enjoyed my time a lot, some improvements and this'll be great!

PART 1
​
The moment Gray touches my head, static ripples across my skull. I froth at the mouth. Choke. For a little while, I think I’m probably dying, but then I lose all sense of awareness. I’m falling. I’m breaching the atmosphere of my mind and crashing into a dimension outside of myself, outside of everything.
Images flash. They’re like a film reel, playing across my consciousness from every direction. They’re everywhere. Inescapable. It’s as if I’m inhabiting them, as though they were moments in time and everything from sight, sound and smell are collapsing in on one another like a dying star.
Gray calls this ‘disorienting.’
But then, just when I tell myself I want out— that I can’t take it anymore because my disembodied ghost is about to explode… It slows. The whole process hits the brakes. The visual hurricane calms from a category 5 to a 3, and then settles into a 1.
Whew-ie!
Moments float to the surface. Others sink out of sight.
Like a sponge, my mind starts absorbing information– everything from quantum physics to the lyrical discography of Shania Twain. Knowledge becomes trivial. As soon as I want to know something, I reach out and take it.
It’s exhilarating.
But then, something catches my attention. It’s a series of shimmering lights in my lake of thought, gleaming jewels that seem to be drawing me toward them. Somehow, I know that these are why I’ve come here. These are what Gray meant for me to find, the so-called truth that would justify all of the abductions, all of the murders.
So I reach out.
Information bombards me. It carpet-bombs my mind, and in the overwhelming chaos of it all, the entire history of the cosmos is laid bare before me.
I see it. I see everything.
Gray and Teal? Not monsters. An alien species called the Vytar. Their technology eclipses humanity’s, and they’ve existed for billions of years. They’ve done remarkable things in that time, everything from mastering hyperlight travel to creating edible spray cheese. They’ve even charted the entirety of the cosmos.
What I’m saying is they've been busy.
But my revelations don’t stop there. No, they keep coming.
Tragedy.
I see tragedy.
I see it in the Vytar’s search for answers. In their quest to uncover every nook and cranny of the universe, they come across two devastating discoveries. Firstly, they learn that they are alone in the cosmos. Secondly, they discover their species is going extinct.
How?
It happens like this.
Near the edge of space, a Vytar ship discovers life. But it isn’t intelligent. Far from it. This life is microbial, viral, and it infects the explorers. They toss themselves into quarantine. They’re observed, and a shocking discovery is made– this virus?
Not so bad.
In fact, maybe it’s just what they've been looking for.
Soon, Vytarians across the cosmos are lining up to be infected with the virus. Within a century, their entire species are carriers. It jumps between them like the common cold, but they don’t mind. Not at all. Why? Easy. This virus comes with a satisfaction guarantee: biological immortality.
Now there’s a deal.
The trouble is, these Vytar don’t work like humans do. They don’t have sex and make babies and then sleep and then wake up and do it again. No, these Vytar lay eggs. And only certain members of their species lay eggs. And what’s more? They only lay eggs during a specific molting period at the end of their life cycles.
See what I’m getting at?
Biological immortality or laying eggs. Pick one. You can’t have both if you’re the Vytar. But by the time they figure this out, this virus has infected every last colony of their civilization. Unable to reproduce, their population enters freefall. It develops what’s known as an existential crisis, and if there’s one thing civil society hates, it’s dealing with an existential crisis.
Tempers flare.
Emotions run hot.
This brings us to the crux of the Vytarian dilemma. War.
And lots of it.
Worlds erupt into conflict. Galaxies become battlefields, and whole solar systems are laid to ash. If you thought nuclear weapons were bad, then consider what happens when a moon is kicked out of orbit into the surface of a planet. The bloodshed is immeasurable. As the fighting escalates, the stars themselves become weapons. The Vytar discover that if you can just push one toward instability…. Well, boom.
There goes the neighborhood.
These Vytar? Nothing if not creative.
But it’s just this penchant for outside the box problem solving that massacres their species into the low billions. Over a single millenia, the Vytar are swept from an inter-galactic species, to one inhabiting a single world on the edge of space.
Having met their downfall at the hands of their technology, the surviving Vytar turn toward spiritualism. Cults form. Different sects have different beliefs, but one eventually consumes the rest: The Way of the Chosen. The Way promises an end to Vytarian pain.
No more existential crisis.
No more killing.
All the Vytar need to do is open their hearts and minds to a simple three step program:

1. Show a little pride. We’re the only intelligent life in the universe, so start acting like it!
2. Persevere. Immortality is our final test. Keep your chin up!
3. Ascend. Just make it to the heat death of the universe, and you’ll be granted salvation!

Believe it or not, it’s a big hit.
The Vytarians flock to it in droves because it offers what they need– a sense of purpose, and a break from the emotional turmoil that’s consumed them for decades. In a matter of years, The Way becomes the dominant socio-political force across the Vytarian homeworld, bringing the last of the warring factions together.
It’s a beautiful thing.
But what’s the phrase?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Yeah, that’s it.
Not everybody is a fan of how The Chosen conduct business. But The Chosen make it easy for them– all who disavow their belief system are exiled. It’s for the good of the Vytarians, they say. And maybe they’re right. After all, these are a species of aliens that have seen just what disagreements can lead to.
Fire. Fury. Mass graves and floating corpses in the vacuum of space.
No thank you.
That’s a risk they won’t take.
One of these exiled Vytarians is a scientist. He has no name in the shared memory save for ‘The Heretic,’ and he is both the architect of humanity and the genesis of our greatest threat. In his assessment, the Vytarian extinction is an inevitability. He perceives their current peace as fragile, held up by a corrupt theocracy whose foundations could crumble any moment. Once they do, boom. Back to war. Back to genocide.
It won’t be pretty.
Worse still, when the last of the Vytar perish, so too will the last form of complex intelligence. Their species won’t just die– it’ll be forgotten. The universe will become a barren void, an unconscious minefield of drifting cadavers.
That will be their legacy.
But the Heretic, he’s a mover-and-a-shaker. He’s the sort of individual who likes to solve problems, not create them, and so when he thinks of the Vytarian extinction, when he acknowledges it as a slow-motion inevitability, he isn’t giving up. No, he has a plan. It’s not a great plan, mind you. It’s not even a plan with a high-likelihood of success, and nor, for that matter, is it a plan that’s strictly legal.
But it is a plan.
It goes like this: if the Vytarians are dying out, then something must replace them. There must be intelligent life to take their place, to give warmth to this cold cosmos, and remember their legacy. Since no other intelligent life exists in all the universe, that leaves him a single option.
He’ll just have to make some.
And this Heretic? This mover-and-shaker?
Well, he succeeds.
And really, that’s where this nightmare begins.
_________________________________________________________________________
The helicopter touches down in a clearing that shouldn’t exist.
I step out to find a forest that’s broken, smoldering, one that’s cleaved in two with a cloud of cinders in its wake. This isn’t how I remember this place. Not at all. I remember a wooden bridge over a lazy creek, and tall trees that–
“Mitchell!”
Somebody’s calling my name. Running toward me.
My boss.
Lisa’s got her phone pressed to one ear and her other hand is frantically waving at me. All around us are government personnel, fellow men-in-black types looking equal parts panicked and terrified. Nice to know I’m not alone.
“Mitchell,” Lisa says, breathless. “Finally! Follow me.”
We take a stroll down the newest gully in America. Pieces of splintered metal scatter the ground, and here and there I see techs in hazmat suits brushing dust from the debris. Above us, the moon is being shrouded by a gigantic tarp. They’re extending it across the entire crash-site, likely hoping they can get it up before foreign satellites move into position and stick their noses into our business.
“Looks like a warzone out here,” I say, loosening my tie. Is it hot out, or is my anxiety just turning my body into a furnace? Tough to say.
Either way, Lisa’s not paying attention.
“Understood, sir. I’ll keep you posted with any and all updates as soon as we have them.” She hangs up her phone and turns to me. “Sorry, did you say something, Mitchell? Tonight’s been a nightmare.”
I can imagine.
As we make our way toward the UAP, Lisa tells me the government’s been hounding her for details.
What exactly did we shoot down?
Are we going to war?
She says we’ve probably got three hours until the media wakes up, and then we’ll need to start beating the journalists back with sticks. “This is a fucking disaster,” she tells me, and she reaches into her jacket and grabs a flask. “Whisky?”
I shake my head. “Haven’t touched the stuff for years.”
“Suit yourself.”
Bottom’s up.
She wipes her mouth and shoves the flask back into her jacket, taking the sort of breath you take when you’ve hit your limit. “I should’ve kept on as an accountant,” she says. “I’d still be in bed right now.”
The closer we get to the UAP, the easier it is to see through the haze of smoke. The craft is no longer just a smudge in the distance. Now I can make out its general shape. Its general size. It looks big enough to pass for a stadium, and round enough to sell the illusion.
“A flying saucer,” Lisa says, shaking her head. “You’d think these aliens never heard of a bad cliche.”
We get to the edge of the perimeter and flash our badges. Three soldiers let us through.
“Listen,” Lisa tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Before we go inside this thing, I want you to take a few deep breaths, okay? We’ve had a couple incidents already.”
“Incidents?” I ask.
“Sure. One guy pissed his pants. Another was taking photos of this… corpse in a vat, and he throws up all over the inside– of the vat, not the corpse. Whatever. Point is, he completely fucked the lab team trying to get a sample.” She runs a hand through her hair. Chuckles darkly. “Luckily, there are about a dozen other corpses where that came from, but still. The smell was awful.”
Vats. Corpses. My stomach does a front flip and I almost take a page out of the photographer’s playbook. “So this is the real deal,” I mutter, pretending this whole thing doesn’t feel uncomfortably familiar. “Aliens actually exist, huh?”
“Just wait,” Lisa says, stepping into the dark of the ship. “This next part is gonna blow your mind.”
_________________________________________________________________________
The Heretic creates life in his image, using Earth as his petri dish.
His first lifeforms are what you’d call prototypes. Rough drafts. They’re giant reptiles, dinosaurs, and a scattershot of various traits and biology. They’re a means to discover what works and what doesn’t on the path to evolving complex intelligence. He studies them closely. Then he studies them some more.
But what’s the phrase?
Nothing lasts forever.
Yeah, that’s it.
We’ve covered that the Vytarian are an advanced species. We know that they’re no strangers to space, and we’re well aware that their wars wiped out 99% of their population. But what we haven’t covered, is that some toys are still left-over from those wars.
And The Chosen? They possess almost all of them.
One of these is a fleet of surveillance drones, the sort that drift through the cosmos and ping headquarters if they see something suspect. One of these happens to drift by Earth. Can you guess what happens next?
Images of the Heretic’s well, heresy, are transmitted to The Chosen. Minutes later, he gets a collect call from 40 billion light years away.
What is this, the Chosen High Council asks.
Blasphemer, they condemn.
But the Heretic isn’t shocked by this. He knows that according to The Way, the creation of new lifeforms is the exclusive domain of their deity, The Distant One. He knows that what he’s done is criminal. That maybe it’s also considered an affront against all of existence, and that it’s maybe grounds for execution and inviting the wrath of god upon all Vytarians.
Relax, he tells them.
It’s you or us, they say.
I can explain, he tells them.
Don’t bother, they say.
The line goes dead. The Heretic figures he’s got about a handful of weeks before The Chosen arrive to dish out their justice, so he flees to a neighboring star system. While there, he realizes The Chosen were never aiming for him– only his life’s work. A meteor is propelled into the surface of the earth, and the moment it impacts the planet becomes fire. Six trillion lifeforms scream in momentary agony before turning to ash.
The Heretic weeps.
_________________________________________________________________________
Years pass.
Then centuries.
These turn to millenia, and millenia become eons, and the Heretic decides to risk returning to earth. He wants to find closure for the loss of his creation. He wants to pay his respects. But when he arrives, his sorrow becomes hope. Life, it seems, has survived.
More than that, it has thrived.
Yet this life isn’t the same that he set out to create. No, this life is the biological progeny of tiny balls of fur he created to feed his prototypes. They’re what you and I might call mammals. Except some of these mammals are impressive– they have large brains, opposable thumbs, and what’s more, they look a bit like you and I.
They’re humans. Among the first.
The Heretic is fascinated by these humans. He recognizes they possess complex intelligence, sentience, and a strong sense of adaptability. He observes them as they form social groups, watches as they create the ghosts of language.
Yes, he thinks. This is it. These lifeforms will inherit the universe, and in doing so, immortalize the Vytar in their memories.
But a problem remains. The Chosen.
If they discover the earth is teeming with life, then they’ll circle back and finish the job. This time, they won’t pull punches. The planet will become an asteroid field, and all of its life will be red mist upon the floating rocks.
But what to do?
How to keep humanity alive, to shield it from the overwhelming might of the Vytarian military? It seemed impossible. Equations run through the Heretic’s mind, scenarios infest his thoughts and in not a single one can he fathom succeeding. He has but one spacecraft. No weapons to speak of.
And it occurs to him.
Humans are hardy creatures– adaptable. Given time, they will evolve to reach parity with the Vytarians. Then, their superior numbers could compensate for any gaps in technology. But such a plan hinges upon them getting up to speed, ascending to an evolutionary singularity in which their gains become exponential. He cannot afford to wait millions of years when The Chosen could discover him any day.
No, he’ll need to interfere. Spike the gene pool. Rig the results. He’ll need to give humanity more than a push, he’ll need to throw it down the damn stairs if they have any hope of surviving.
But there’s a way.
Yes, there’s always a way.
He devises a solution called Project Runaway.
It starts by creating a new lifeform. It’s aesthetically identical to a human male, but it’s born from the genetic harvest of thousands of his peers. Each strand of his DNA will be carefully selected for, prioritizing the potential for runaway evolution. Then, these strands will be spliced with Vytarian genes. Not much, but enough to access fragments of the shared memory– the Collective Recall. This will allow the man to gain intuitive understanding of billions of years worth of wisdom. It’ll permit him to think faster. Adapt more quickly.
Then, as this man spreads his genes through the population, his progeny will inherit his DNA. They’ll evolve quicker. Think faster. This is how it works.
This is how humanity inherits the universe.
_________________________________________________________________________
“Watch your step,” Lisa says, stepping into the UAP.
I follow her inside. For a moment, I’m blinded by the glare of industrial work-lamps. Then my senses are assaulted by a cacophony of sound and movement. We’ve entered a hive of activity. Crowds of people buzz around us, some in biohazard suits, others in military camo.
Where we are is a large circular chamber, one surrounded by dark corridors leading to other locations of the ship. Right now, teams are taping those entrances up with plastic wrap. Other teams are setting up perimeters, hanging pieces of paper above archways labeled A through Z.
“You alright, Mitchell?”
“What?”
“Are you alright?” Lisa says, and she’s got her arms folded. She’s looking at me like she thinks I’m about to become her newest headache, maybe piss myself all over the deck.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, forcing a smile. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know? Never been in an alien spaceship before.”
“Sure,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “Join the club. We’re heading down corridor D to find somebody named Major Luca– I was talking to her a few seconds before you showed up. She said she’s got something to show me. Something big.”
“Spare me the suspense, Lis. What are we after?”
“From the sounds of it? Bodies.”
“Bodies?” I say. “Like those corpses you mentioned, the ones in vats?”
“Not quite. According to Luca, these bodies aren’t exactly… Well, they’re not human. Probably.” She punches my arm, gives me a cheeky smirk. “Relax, Mitchell. The Major confirmed they’re already dead– nothing to be scared of. Let’s go.”
She leads us down the corridor labeled D, and every step I take is worse than the last.
My heart is flying. It’s pounding a million beats a minute. I put on my best poker face, nodding along as Lisa briefs me on the UAP, but internally I’m having a breakdown. It’s taking everything I have not to hyperventilate. The further we get into the spacecraft, the more I’m wondering how much of my dreams were dreams.
The more I wonder if all I am is just some clone with a badge.
“What did the bodies look like?” I ask, clearing my throat. “Did these aliens have scales, and tails…and sort of look like lizards?”
Lisa laughs. “No idea. Luca didn’t give me much of a description, but I’d bet money they were little green men. It’d go with the whole flying saucer motif, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” I swallow. “Suppose it would.”
She chatters on. This, that, something else. Apparently they’ve got an ironclad alibi to deal with the journalists, something banal enough to keep them far away from the crash site. But I’m too deep in my own thoughts to register what is. I’m too deep remembering all the awful aspects of the dream that wasn’t supposed to be real. I’m remembering him.
The Runaway.
And the more I remember, the more I wish I could forget.
____________________________________________________
The first time the Runway opens his eyes, he’s twenty years old.
He’s laying naked in the jungle, the sun scorching his skin with ultraviolet rays. He sits up. He has no instructions. No guidance. This world is entirely new to him, utterly foreign and in his stomach flutters the first ghosts of adrenaline.
From the outer ring of Saturn, the Heretic watches.
The Runaway rises to his feet. He takes his first shaking, trembling step and stumbles into the grass. He groans. Pain. A new sensation. He gets back up, tries again. It’s harder than it looks, walking when you’ve never done it before, but eventually he gets the picture. For him, it gets easier by the second.
After only an hour, he’s running through the ferns. Climbing trees. And his stomach is screaming.
Food.
He must find food.
But what to eat?
By his third hour alive, the Runaway has learned to forage. By his sixth, he’s consumed enough poisonous berries to floor an elephant, and is writhing on the ground. The poison burns his stomach. It makes his tongue swell and his skin glisten with sweat, but as the seconds become minutes, the agony fades to pain fades to healing.
His body is adapting. His digestive systems are hardening themselves against the poison, and soon, the Runaway rises back to his feet.
Evolution has begun.
As the sun sets, the Runaway collects wild game from crude traps. He has begun subconsciously tapping into the Collective Recall, intuitively teaching himself to skin animals, to make fires, to cook flesh for taste and health.
He is learning.
As the week comes to a close, the Runaway is surrounded. A pack of wolves has been hounding him for days, and now they’ve come to deal with this trespasser upon their territory. They circle him. Their teeth gnash, saliva leaking from their jaws. In their throats is a growl, a threat of death, but the Runaway has learned to handle his fear. Now, it serves him.
His muscles tense. His hands flex in and out of fists, and his eyes follow the beasts as they pad the ground. The large one, he thinks. The large wolf will engage, and the rest will follow. But he doesn’t give it time– he dashes forward, faster than even the wolves can react, and he brings his fist down upon the skull of the largest. The animal is stunned. Dazed. He follows up by grabbing its jaws, and pulling with all of his might.
The other wolves flee. They yelp and they scream as their champion falls to the dirt, dead.
The Runaway dresses himself in its hide.
At the end of the month, the Runaway has evolved to the point he barely needs to eat. Twenty calories a day serve him all that he needs. A handful of berries, and he can operate at peak mental and physical capability. By the close of his second month, he no longer needs to breathe. He fishes hundreds of meters below the surface, fighting off sharks for choice morsels swimming in the deep.
On the anniversary of his birth, the Heretic observes that the Runaway no longer ages. His DNA suffers no damage each time it splits. He has become biologically immortal.
After five years, he transcends humanity. The Runaway is now capable of perceiving individual atoms, and by the sixth year of his life, he can manipulate them. Matter becomes his plaything. The laws of physics become little more than suggestions, and so if he wants to fly, then he does. If he wants to reach into the minds of living creatures, he does that too.
The Runaway has become the most powerful lifeform to ever live. But the Heretic is not concerned.
No, he sees what his creation is. He sees that this anomaly, this Runaway is kind. Empathetic. With each passing year his interest in violence wanes. Before long, the Runaway cuts himself off from humanity altogether, unable to stomach their wonton savagery and thirst for blood. Some have taken to worshiping him. Others, reviling.
To him, they are all the same. Misguided, fearful, and ruled by instincts he has learned to see beyond. These humans may as well be a separate species.
To find respite from this chaos, he meditates. Sometimes he does this at the bottom of the sea. Other times he does this atop high, wind-swept peaks. Anywhere his senses are sufficiently assailed to block out the madness of the world around him.
And it’s while meditating on one of these peaks that the Runaway begins looking to the stars. He wonders if there may be more out there.
Is it possible, he thinks aloud, that there are others like me?
Could I find a companion of my own?
And it’s while he’s pondering these thoughts, while he’s gazing into the deepness of space, that he finds something looking back at him. A lizard. Housed within a strange capsule, floating in the outer rings of a celestial body we know as Saturn.
It is the first time he and his maker lock eyes.
Weeks later, the Runaway’s breached the atmosphere of Earth. A month after that, he’s traversed the solar system and made it to the Heretic’s ship. He’s tapping on the hull. The Heretic welcomes him inside.
“Hello,” the Heretic says, in the ancient tongue of man.
The Runaway peers at him. “Hello…” he says slowly, but it is not in the ancient tongue of man. It is in the low bass of Vytarian. “Your language is… strange… but I believe I can master it. Who are you? Why have you been watching… me?”
The Heretic doesn’t see the point of mincing words. He comes clean about everything– after all, the Runaway is capable of looking into his thoughts. What’s the use of playing coy? He starts with the extinction of the Vytarian people, and ends with humanity’s role as inheritors of the universe, and the Runaway’s role in leading them there.
“Have you any questions?” the Heretic asks.
“Many,” the Runaway tells him. “Above all, why do you fear me?”
“I don’t,” the Heretic says.
“You do. I see it reflected in your thoughts.”
“The fear you see reflected in my thoughts,” the Heretic begins, speaking with careful deliberation, “... it does not belong to me. You are viewing fragments of the Collective Recall, a shared knowledge passed down by my people. You are viewing the beliefs of those of us who remain from the Old War– followers of the Way of the Chosen.”
“These followers,” The Runaway says, his expression twisting with shock and horror. “They think of me as a monster– an abomination!”
“Not exactly,” the Heretic tells him. “Strictly, they do not think of you at all. In order to protect my work, I cut myself off from the Collective sometime ago, so all you’re seeing are faint echoes of their dogma. To them, my work is blasphemy. But yes… I believe that should they learn of you, your vast capabilities would indeed frighten them. They would think you a monster.”
“And to you?” The Runaway asks. “What am I to you?”
The Heretic reaches toward the Runaway, claps his shoulder. He smiles in the human way. “I am a barren lifeform, ravaged by a virus that has stolen the hope of my people. I am unable to achieve my biological imperative. Reproduction is beyond me. You ask me what you are to me? You are my legacy.” He slowly, awkwardly performs the human ritual of embrace, wrapping his arms around the Runaway.
You are my son.
_________________________________________________________________________
I take a breath. It’s brief. Gasping. Gray is standing in front of me, his pupils pulsing, and I’m suddenly aware that his name isn’t Gray it’s Wor. He’s 70 million years old. Not only that, but so is his friend– and his name isn’t Teal, but Kez. They’re both devotees of the Way of the Chosen.
“Did you see?” Wor asks, and he’s no longer using his digital translator. After the thought transference it seems I can understand the Vytarian language, make sense of the various vibrations that previously just seemed like low bass.
“Yes,” I say, leaning forward. “But not everything.” I look up at Wor, and hit him with an accusatory glare. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there? What aren’t you telling me?”
Kez twists his neck to look at us. His pupils are blowing up and shrinking in quick succession– a reaction I now understand to mean I’m pissed. “You have seen enough, human. Prepare for genetic deconstruction and we will be done with this.”
“No!” I exclaim, and I’m surprised to hear my voice rumbling throughout the ship. It’s thunderous. I clear my throat. “No,” I say, and this time my voice is appropriately subdued. Vytarian is apparently a powerful language. “If you want me to jump into a vat and turn into… corpse chili or whatever, then you have to show me it’s worth it.”
The Vytar exchange glances. Wor’s pupils shrink– he’s nervous. Concerned. “To show you more may invite excess unease,” he says. “It was my hope that a brief glance at the history, the origin of everything could provide necessary closure to commence the harvest of your DNA.”
“Look,” I say. “I’ve seen a lot. I know that whatever genetic material you’re grabbing off people is a lot more useful if we’re agreeable. It’s like hunting an animal. Kill it scared, and the meat is tough. It’s a chemical thing– I get that, and I’m telling you that if you show me the rest, I’ll let you do what you need. I’ll play my part.”
“Invalid request,” Kez says. “Such knowledge is beyond your capacity to bear.”
I frown. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Runaway. It’s obvious he’s the source of your fear and this so-called mission to save humanity. Yeah. I might not have all the details, but just looking at your reactions– it’s gotta be. More than that, I can guess you haven’t had much luck dealing with him either.”
Wor and Kez don’t speak a word. Their expressions say everything I need to know.
“The way I figure it,” I continue, getting to my feet and taking a deep breath. “Is that I’m a human too. On some level, I’m like The Runaway, just less… well, terrifying. But maybe there’s something in those visions, something in the Runaway’s actions or his behaviors that only a human could make sense of. Ever think of that? I mean, what if I can help you catch something you’re missing? Isn’t that chance worth taking?”
The Vytar are quiet. They stare at one another for a long while, and their pupils explode in waves of emotion. Kez turns away. He lets out a gruff warble and throws up his arms, cursing Wor and me both.
“What’s his problem?” I ask.
Wor steps forward. He gingerly looks back to his companion, but Kez’s back is turned, hunched over the console in clear disagreement.
“Kez does not wish to harm your mind,” Wor says quietly. “Your story of your sister… this expiring human you call Hope, well, it has moved him. He fears that if I show you the rest of The Runaway’s story it will cause your mind to fracture, shattering your consciousness in such a way that it may not be repaired. There will be no perfect clone. Your sister will find no solace in her dying moments.”
I look at Kez, watch him tap at the console’s controls and I can’t help but feel guilty for judging him so harshly. At the end of the day, he was just looking out for my sister.
But, on the other hand, he also wants to turn me into DNA soup.
“This feels important,” I say to Wor, balling my hands into fists. “If this is really about the fate of humanity, the fate of everything– well, I think Hope would want me to do anything I could to help.” I plaster a weak smile onto my face, trying to hype myself up with fake confidence. “Besides, I can’t imagine it’s that bad, is it?”
Wor places his hands on my temples. Closes his eyes. “You’re right,” he tells me. “You cannot begin to imagine how bad it is.”
MORE

As usual, before a big final, I like to get a little behind the scenes insight. Last time, I got up close and personal with the players, but as a result, a restraining order was issued, so this time, I leveled up and installed some cameras in their hotel rooms. This will give us a first-hand look at their prep for the finals.

Casp-o-vision :

Sunday, June 11th. The clock strikes 6:00AM. Norwegian music begins playing. Casper’s eyes open. “Ahhh Kongesangan,” thinks Casper, “the only choice for brushing one’s teeth”. Casper begins brushing. He is already in the bathroom, where he sleeps standing up to maximize efficiency. He brushes the right side efficiently, and does the best he can on the other. Though these teeth are mainly defensive, they are constantly improving. Casper turns to his coaches, who are sitting in the tub watching him brush. They nod and make fists, the only coaching he has ever received from them. He nods and makes a fist as well. The main coach, whose name he has never learned, hands him a plate of Fårikål, and he begins eating. “Shouldn’t I have eaten this before I brushed my teeth?” he asks, but perhaps the storyteller, like Casper’s team, did not think this through. Still though, Google is very informative. “Boy, I sure do love Oslo,” muses Casper. “And fjords.” Wow, Casper is ready for Roland Garros.

Djokocam :

Sunday June 11th. The clock strikes 6:00AM. Norwegian music begins playing. “Perhaps we should not have been roommates” thinks Novak, as he looks across the room to Casper’s bed. But Casper is not there. Djokovic stretches his impervious to cramps body. He is not in a bed, but gently relaxing on a bed of moss, which grew when he summoned it with warrior one. He eases slowly into chair pose, and a chair appears. Goran quickly sits in it. “Look at my cool new shades!” says Goran. “Very nice, Goran,” says Novak, as he closes his eyes to begin meditating. “You think we can win, Novak?” asks Goran, while swinging his legs excitedly in the chair. “Yes, Goran,” answers Novak. “Can you believe they eat snails here?” asks Goran, while pretending his hand is an airplane. “Yes, Goran,” answers Novak. “Would you ever eat a snail?” asks Goran, while pretending he is an airplane. “Yes, Goran,” answers Novak. “Wow,” says Goran. His friend Novak is so cool.
Casper emerges from the bathroom, and Djokovic heads in. There are crumbs in the sink, and Ruud’s team shake their fists and nod at him as he begins combing his hair. Novak shakes his head. He is ready for Roland Garros.

Men’s Singles Final :

There is something about Casper Ruud’s game that makes it seem like he is not doing anything special. He is ultra-consistent, and he makes the right choices in almost every situation, but his disciplined approach can make a player like Zverev or Rublev seem like they are on another level. Ruud has made two Grand Slam finals already (both last season), but was summarily written off before they began, suffering defeat at the hands of Carlos Alcaraz at the US Open, and Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros. Here again, he is being given very slim chances by most people. When you do everything right (by the book), there is a sense that you become predictable, and the greats of the game have excellent situational awareness. If they can move early to your shots, you’re not going to get many errors from them. It makes this a very uphill battle for him, because Novak Djokovic is a player that is unlikely to be rattled by the classic patterns and approaches to the game, and is one of the most consistent players the tour has ever seen. Once he gets in a rhythm, you’re playing a tennis game set to expert, so Casper will need to elevate his aggression here.
Ruud will thankfully be fresh for the finals, but after watching the Alcaraz demise it’s hard to gauge how long that will last. Him being a bit older does give him a bit more stamina and experience, and he had a fairly quick match against Zverev. He’s also done this before, so I think physically he is ready to go 5 sets. Thinking, though, isn’t it always the cause of our blunders. Zverev looked competitive in parts of their match, but he is not at the top level of the game yet. His ceiling is, but where does his ceiling lurk? Ruud is nearly robotic out there. You know he is going to execute and move the ball well and his defensive skills are solid enough to make his opponent play several shots to win a point. It’s the discipline he has that allows him to do this regardless of the stage and the opponent. Zverev, on the other hand, is very much thinking out there. When he has a setup, it’s very up in the air what he should do. He’s often creating angles and situations that he is only going to play 1-2 of per match, and it leads to errors as he second-guesses and hesitates on shots (especially rough in choosing when and when not to come to net). In truth, he could have wound up deep in the match against Casper, but when Zverev had control or time, he made a lot of unforced errors trying to crack Ruud’s defenses. Despite having a ton of experience on tour, Zverev has not really ironed out his game and since returning from injury, he hasn’t really dealt with a match where he had to play hard every point in order to win. The ability is there, but the repetition of effort is not.
Speaking of repetition of effort, it should be noted what a great adjustment Djokovic made in his semifinal match. He is very frequently a slow starter on clay, but he came out and looked to match Alcaraz’s aggression from the start. It was a very “I’m not going to miss and I want you to know that” approach, and digging in in this manner started to forced Alcaraz to come up with more and more ambitious attempts. They both have a lot of heat on their shots, but Alcaraz is certainly the one swinging harder on the average ball. He started to make errors, but it looked to me like he would wear down Djokovic’s defenses with the onslaught. There have been a number of matches this tournament where the first couple games were furiously played, and eventually one player settled into their role as a defender, or folded up and forced offense until they lost. This didn’t feel like the case here, as both of these players can legitimately expect to hit a high percentage of their shots no matter what style they proceed with. A good example is how a post-cramp, immobile and defeated Alcaraz was able to guide winners off Djokovic’s serve. Not a strategy to win the match, but something that he rarely uses in match-play yet was instantly able to do.
After losing the first set, I still like Alcaraz’s chances. It had become the best type of ATP match, one where the player who is serving doesn’t just automatically win. The great big 3 matchups featured so many breaks and yet those breaks weren’t huge cracks or fails at all, it was just that at the highest level, players can play defense and offense from everywhere on the court. They exchanged breaks late in the 2nd set, and it seemed like Alcaraz’s aggression was finally mentally wearing Djokovic down. Early in the third though, disaster struck in the way that it always seems to when a phenom plays Djokovic at a major. Carlos Alcaraz cramped. Spectacularly. His hand cramped, his calf cramped, and he looked like Medusa slid in his DMs for a moment. Big credit to Djokovic for being bigger than the moment, and coming across the net to express concern and help Alcaraz to his chair. Cramping is something that affects a lot of players on tour, but it was pretty unexpected from Alcaraz. His physical strength is off the charts, and he trains extremely hard. If some combination of nerves and over-exertion really caused this, then it’s a by-product of Djokovic being willing to go toe-to-toe with him right from the start of the match.
There are great nutritionists working on the tour, but once you actually go full-cramp, it is nearly impossible to continue playing tennis. The muscle is in pain, and doesn’t want to fully flex even if you do. In short, you’re fatigued, in pain, and weak. Alcaraz forfeited the game so he could get treatment, but with 2 full sets left against the guy who is leading the GOAT debate currently (and competing against off-tour opponents), you’re pretty much finished. Brave of Alcaraz to finish out the match, and I had some hope that the kid would go full-tank and hydrate to recover for a 4th, but it appeared the damage was irreversible. He stood in on some returns, and while this means that any poor returns leave your court position too shallow to cover both wings of the court, he did show a pretty good ability to utilize this tactic. I’d love to see him do more of this in the future, as the best returners are pretty much hugging the baseline and you need this to win with minimized effort on hardcourt and grass. I’d also add, his deep return position was allowing Djokovic to serve and volley an awful lot, and Novak really was the one scoring off the dropshot in the non-cramp sets so Alcaraz will need to work on some other strategies. A good restful win for Djokovic, and a new wrinkle to the “how high will Alcaraz rise” debate. I don’t think too many people were really expecting cramps (to my knowledge it’s the first time he’s dealt with that on tour), and he had the momentum before they occurred.
One of the best things about majors is how long the players are out there. It allows for so many deviations in strategy and planning. Dumping sets to conserve energy, planning to sprint early then take a set off, and changes in strategy (holding back a bit of pace on serves early or playing frequent dropshots to take your opponents legs) can be really effective. Djokovic got the benefit of an interesting result here. It seemed like his defense was good enough to keep Alcaraz at bay but he wasn’t able to counter-punch. If this was by design, kudos to him and his team for allowing Alcaraz to punch himself out. If it wasn’t, it has at a minimum inspired other players to dig in on defense against Carlos now that they’ve seen the gas tank actually on E, which is tremendous for the tour since we’ve seen a few top guys fold against him already. The names on the trophies are less important than creating an environment where these guys can compete at their freest, because the sport won’t continue to grow unless the product is visibly enticing to the non-tennis public.
Djokovic Ruud should be a great match, the same way Swiatek Muchova was today. Ruud has yet to win a set against Djokovic in his career, but almost every single set has been confined to a single break of serve. That’s largely what I expect here. Ruud is good enough to compete with Djokovic for 75% of the match. Similar to the CA/ND situation that caused the cramps, Ruud is good enough to play Djokovic on even terms, but not really able to get out of trouble once he’s in it. Since Djokovic’s measured approach won’t wear himself out like Alcaraz’s did, this means a long match, with a vaguely assured result. This is good for Ruud for a few reasons. One, he won’t be distracted very often. When you’re going uphill but are a great competitor like Ruud, you don’t get caught up in the “what ifs” of an L or fret changes in the scoreline, you just keep an eye on how you’re doing out there. Trying different approaches, working on the spots you’re losing ground in, and communicating with your box constructively rather than complaining are useful, and keep you in the present moment. That’s a good place to stay for Casper here, because the crowd is very likely to get behind him. Djokovic is a beloved champion, but fans want to see a long match. If Ruud was considered an even contender here, he could almost enter villain territory, as fans would not want to see a great champion dethroned. Since he’s publicly regarded as a plucky underdog, he’ll have plenty of support.
Tennis-wise, the problem here is simple. Djokovic has the best backhand in tennis, and Ruud fights his off. He can create some great angles with it, and hits passes fairly well, but it’s a safe target for Djokovic which means the majority of shots are going to go there. We all saw how devastating a weapon the dropshot and forehand inside-in became for Alcaraz when Tsitsipas attempted to camp in his backhand corner, and I fear that Ruud will have similar issues in this match. This is doubly tricky because Djokovic’s backhand dropshots are much better and much more frequently attempted down the line. Ruud served well against Zverev, but he went out wide from the duece court a lot and Zverev never really punished him for it. Djokovic ropes these shots cross-court very well and he’s good at picking a few spots to up the aggression. If Casper is forced to abandon this serve, it’s a problem because it’s generally the best way to ensure that his second shot is a forehand. He plays well behind the pattern, but great returners (and great teams hello Goran) are likely to notice any significant lean on a particular serve. The odds at -450 indicate that Ruud will be competitive (because basically everyone watching is looking to bet on Djokovic at this point), but this would be the most surprising result that has occurred in tennis in a very long time. I think Ruud wins the same set via steady play and heavy hitting that Khachanov did, but it’s hard to see Djokovic struggling with patterns and opponents that he has already figured out. Djokovic in 4.

Hi all, I have a bunch of games I'm looking to sell. Only accepting Paypal F&F at this time. Free shipping on orders of $50+, otherwise please add $5 for shipping costs. Photos available upon request!

System	Item	Condition	Price
32X	Primal Rage	Loose	$60.00
32X	Sega 32X unit	Loose	$115.00
3DS	3DS XL NES Edition box	Box only	$80.00
3DS	Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy	Loose	$40.00
3DS	Amazing Spiderman	Loose	$12.00
3DS	Amazing Spiderman 2	Loose	$12.00
3DS	Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer	Loose	$13.00
3DS	Bravely Default	CIB	$36.00
3DS	Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past	Loose	$60.00
3DS	Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth	Loose	$48.00
3DS	Fantasy Life	Loose	$50.00
3DS	Final Fantasy Explorers	CIB	$30.00
3DS	Fossil Fighters: Frontier	Loose	$32.00
3DS	Kid Icarus: Uprising	CIB	$80.00
3DS	Kid Icarus: Uprising	Loose	$60.00
3DS	Kirby: Planet Robobot	Loose	$39.00
3DS	Madagascar 3	CIB	$9.00
3DS	Mario Golf: World Tour	Loose	$50.00
3DS	New 3DS XL red (modded with Luma3DS)	Loose	$220.00
3DS	Nintendogs + Cats Golden Retriever and New Friends	Loose	$22.00
3DS	Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity	Loose	$26.00
3DS	Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy	Loose	$150.00
3DS	Senran Kagura: Deep Crimson 2	Loose	$56.00
3DS	Sims 3 (Heavily damaged / punctured case)	Game + case	$14.00
amiibo	Ness amiibo	Loose	$25.00
amiibo	Splatoon amiibo 3-pack (crease along top of cardboard)	NIB	$50.00
Books	Horizon: Zero Dawn Collector's Edition guide	Loose	$120.00
Dreamcast	Dreamcast system (w/ cables, 1 controller, VMU	Complete	$110.00
Dreamcast	Maken X	CIB	$50.00
Dreamcast	Sonic Adventure	CIB	$50.00
DS	Bomberman	Loose	$13.00
DS	Elite Beat Agents	Loose	$15.00
DS	Final Fantasy IV	Loose	$18.00
DS	Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift	Loose	$33.00
DS	Fossil Fighters	Loose	$27.00
DS	Geometry Wars Galaxies	CIB	$9.00
DS	Legendary Starfy	Loose	$15.00
DS	Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga	CIB	$9.00
DS	My Hero Firefighter	CIB	$11.00
DS	Need for Speed: Pro Street	Loose	$9.00
DS	Pac-Man World 3	Loose	$11.00
DS	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	CIB	$7.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	CIB	$13.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	CIB	$15.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	Loose	$11.00
DS	Pokemon Black	Loose	$70.00
DS	Pokemon Diamond case only	Case only	$20.00
DS	Pokemon White	CIB	$85.00
DS	Power Rangers Super Legends	CIB	$12.00
DS	Rhythm Heaven	Loose	$43.00
DS	Rockman ZX (JP)	Loose	$26.00
DS	Spongebob's Atlantis Squarepantis	CIB	$7.00
DS	Yoshi Touch & Go	Loose	$12.00
DS / 3DS	Lego bundle Battles, Indiana Jones, City Undercover, Friends	Loose	$12.00
GB	Pokemon Red (JP)	Loose	$15.00
GBA	Metroid Fusion (label fading, wear on box)	CIB	$100.00
GBA	Pokemon Ruby (heavy wear on box	CIB	$240.00
GBA	Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 box only	Box only	$35.00
GBA	Wolfenstein 3D	Loose	$25.00
GCN	Animal Crossing Memory Card (Some fading)	Loose	$18.00
GCN	Conflict: Desert Storm	Game + case	$11.00
GCN	Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix	Game + case	$23.00
GCN	Finding Nemo	Game + case	$5.00
GCN	Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup (Blockbuster case)	Game + case	$9.00
GCN	Metroid Prime 2: Echoes case w/ Nintendo Power insert	Case only	$20.00
GCN	Nascar: Dirt to Daytona	CIB	$14.00
GCN	NCAA Football 2005	CIB	$14.00
GCN	Resident Evil 0	CIB	$17.00
GCN	Resident Evil 4	CIB	$30.00
GCN	Resident Evil Zero	CIB	$19.00
GCN	Resident Evil Zero	Game + manual	$14.00
GCN	Super Smash Bros Melee (cracked inner ring)	Loose	$45.00
Genesis	6-Pak (label wear)	Loose	$10.00
Genesis	Madden NFL 98	Loose	$9.00
Genesis	RBI Baseball 4 (Damaged art / case)	Game + case	$6.00
Genesis	Road Rash 3 (tear in label)	Loose	$15.00
Genesis	Turrican (label tears)	Loose	$15.00
Genesis	World of Illusion	CIB	$35.00
Genesis	World Series Baseball	Game + case	$6.00
Genesis	WWF Raw	Game + case	$22.00
Genesis	X-Men (faded label)	Loose	$9.00
N64	Banjo Tooie (Not For Resale)	Loose	$150.00
N64	Donkey Kong 64 (JP)	Loose	$12.00
N64	ED64 Plus	NIB	$100.00
N64	Hey You, Pikachu! (JP)	Loose	$7.00
N64	Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask manual (N64)	Manual	$30.00
N64	Mario Kart 64 (Player's Choice)	CIB	$100.00
N64	Mario Party 2 (JP)	Loose	$8.00
N64	Mario Tennis (JP)	Loose	$9.00
NES	Gauntlet	Game + manual	$25.00
NES	T&C Surf Designs	Loose	$8.00
PS1	Bass Landing	CIB	$18.00
PS1	Brave Fencer Musashi	Loose	$55.00
PS1	Coolboarders 3	CIB	$6.00
PS1	Crash Bandicoot Warped	Loose	$6.00
PS1	Destruction Derby Raw	Loose	$11.00
PS1	Final Fantasy IX	Game + case	$16.00
PS1	Final Fantasy Tactics (Greatest Hits)	CIB	$50.00
PS1	Incredible Hulk (No cover art / manual)	Game + case	$11.00
PS1	Loaded	Loose	$10.00
PS1	Mega Man X6	Game + manual	$35.00
PS1	NHL Rock the Rink	CIB	$9.00
PS1	Parasite Eve (no demo disc)	CIB	$75.00
PS1	Resident Evil (longbox)(Cracked case and some art damage)	Game + case	$100.00
PS1	Revolution X (longbox)	CIB	$29.00
PS1	Rugrats: Search for Reptar	CIB	$18.00
PS1	Streak: Hoverboard Racing	CIB	$8.00
PS1	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater	Game + manual	$10.00
PS1	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2	Game + case	$10.00
PS1	Urban Chaos	Loose	$8.00
PS1	WWE Smackdown 2 (No cover art / manual)	Game + case	$10.00
PS1	WWF Attitude	CIB	$10.00
PS1	WWF WrestleMania The Arcade Game	Loose	$13.00
PS2	Another Century's Episode (JP)	CIB	$12.00
PS2	Art of Fighting Anthology (Water damaged art)	CIB	$12.00
PS2	Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2	CIB	$7.00
PS2	Dragon Quest VIII	Game + case	$20.00
PS2	Fight Club	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Fight Night Round 2	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Fight Night Round 3	CIB	$9.00
PS2	Frogger: The Great Quest	CIB	$7.00
PS2	Guitar Hero III	CIB	$13.00
PS2	Guitar Hero: Aerosmith	CIB	$9.00
PS2	King Arthur	CIB	$10.00
PS2	King of Fighters: Maximum Impact	Loose	$10.00
PS2	Medal of Honor European Assault	CIB	$8.00
PS2	Midnight Club (Sharpie on disc)	Game + case	$6.00
PS2	Mortal Kombat: Deception Premium Pack	Game + case	$25.00
PS2	Namco Museum	CIB	$7.00
PS2	NFL Street 2	CIB	$20.00
PS2	Onimusha 3: Demon Siege	Loose	$10.00
PS2	Parappa the Rapper 2	Loose	$40.00
PS2	Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2	CIB	$11.00
PS2	Resident Evil 4	CIB	$15.00
PS2	Resident Evil Outbreak	Game + case	$18.00
PS2	Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2	Loose	$40.00
PS2	Sega Classics Collection	Game + case	$11.00
PS2	Silent Hill 2 (no music CD)	CIB	$120.00
PS2	Silent Hill 2 manual (Crease on top right corner)	Manual	$30.00
PS2	Silent Hill 3	CIB	$150.00
PS2	SSX	CIB	$8.00
PS2	Star Wars Racer: Revenge	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Tekken 4 GH	CIB	$11.00
PS2	Tekken Tag Tournament	Loose	$6.00
PS2	The Great Escape	CIB	$10.00
PS2	The Thing	Loose	$22.00
PS2	Thrillville	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Thrillville	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Thunderstrike: Operation Phoenix	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4	Game + case	$7.00
PS2	Tony Hawk's Underground 2	CIB	$17.00
PS2	WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Amazing Spiderman 2	Loose	$18.00
PS3	Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel Overkill Edition	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Batman Arkham Origins	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Binary Domain	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Borderlands 2	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Burnout Paradise	CIB	$8.00
PS3	Call of Duty Ghosts	CIB	$5.00
PS3	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2	Game + case	$5.00
PS3	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Dark Sector	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Darkness	CIB	$16.00
PS3	Dirt 3	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Disney Sing It Family Hits	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition	Game + case	$14.00
PS3	Earth Defense Force 2025	Loose	$14.00
PS3	Fallout 3 GOTY	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Final Fantasy X / X-2 Collector's Edition (coffee stains on book)	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Grand Slam Tennis 2	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Hitman Absolution	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Lair	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Madden NFL 17	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain Day One Edition	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Minecraft	Game + case	$11.00
PS3	MLB 13: The Show	CIB	$5.00
PS3	Mortal Kombat	Game + case	$9.00
PS3	Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja: Storm 2	CIB	$7.00
PS3	NBA 2K16	CIB	$9.00
PS3	NCAA Football 12	CIB	$8.00
PS3	NCAA Football 12	CIB	$8.00
PS3	NCAA Football 13 (Water damaged art and manual)	CIB	$22.00
PS3	NCAA Football 14 (wavy art, minor disc art damage)	CIB	$125.00
PS3	Persona 4 Arena (Wavy cover art)	CIB	$16.00
PS3	Persona 5	Game + case	$14.00
PS3	PS Move navigation controller	NIB	$35.00
PS3	Remember Me	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Resident Evil 5	Game + case	$5.00
PS3	Rocksmith 2014	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Sega Rally Revo	CIB	$14.00
PS3	Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Skate 2	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Skate 3	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Skyrim: Legendary Edition	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Soulcalibur IV	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Street Fighter IV (water damaged art)	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Tekken 6	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Tekken Hybrid	CIB	$32.00
PS3	Tekken Tag Tournament 2	CIB	$17.00
PS3	Top Spin 4	CIB	$14.00
PS3	Two Worlds II (Water damaged art)	CIB	$8.00
PS3	UFC 2009 Undisputed	Loose	$5.00
PS3	UFC 2010 Undisputed	CIB	$8.00
PS3	Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3	CIB	$19.00
PS3	Ultra Street Fighter IV	Game + case	$25.00
PS3	Ultra Street Fighter IV	CIB	$27.00
PS3	Uncharted 3	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Vampire Resurrection (JP)	CIB	$58.00
PS3	Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine	CIB	$19.00
PS3	Watchmen: The End is Night The Complete Experience	CIB	$36.00
PS3	Wolfenstein	Game + case	$12.00
PS3	WWE 2K16	CIB	$13.00
PS4	Abzu	Game + case	$13.00
PS4	Borderlands: The Handsome Collection	Game + case	$6.00
PS4	Dragon Ball Xenoverse	CIB	$10.00
PS4	God of War	CIB	$13.00
PS4	Horizon Forbidden West Launch Edition	CIB	$28.00
PS4	Lego Dimensions	CIB	$29.00
PS4	Minecraft	Game + case	$16.00
PS4	Paper Beast Collector's Edition	NIB	$62.00
PS4	Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville	CIB	$9.00
PS4	Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville	CIB	$9.00
PS4	Ratchet and Clank	Game + case	$9.00
PS4	Risk of Rain 2	CIB	$12.00
PS4	Rocket League: Collector's Edition	CIB	$13.00
PS4	West of Dead: Path of the Crow	NIB	$28.00
PS5	Life is Strange: True Colors	CIB	$15.00
PSP	ATV Offroad Fury Pro	CIB	$7.00
PSP	Bad Boys	Game + case	$8.00
PSP	Burnout Legends	Loose	$7.00
PSP	God of War: Ghost of Sparta	Loose	$41.00
PSP	Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition	Loose	$20.00
PSP	Midnight Club: LA Remix	Loose	$17.00
PSP	Need for Speed Rivals	Loose	$11.00
PSP	Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0 (clear piece set in slightly)	Loose	$12.00
PSP	Need for Speed: Pro Street (water damaged art)	Game + case	$8.00
PSP	Pimp My Ride	Loose	$8.00
PSP	Sonic Rivals	Loose	$12.00
PSP	Star Wars Battlefront II	Loose	$10.00
PSP	Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (Clear shell)	Loose	$15.00
SNES	Brain Lord	Loose	$50.00
SNES	Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers	Loose	$14.00
SNES	Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers	Loose	$14.00
SNES	Robocop vs The Terminator	Loose	$23.00
SNES	TMNT IV: Turtles in Time	Loose	$45.00
SNES	Top Gear	Loose	$11.00
Switch	Fitness Boxing 2	NIB	$30.00
Switch	Pokemon Shining Pearl	CIB	$30.00
Switch	Super Mario 3D All-Stars	CIB	$80.00
Switch	Yo-Kai Watch 4++ (JP)	CIB	$50.00
Vita	Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Lego Batman 2	Loose	$9.00
Vita	Litte Big Planet	Loose	$20.00
Vita	Need for Speed Most Wanted	Loose	$16.00
Vita	Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Soul Sacrifice	Loose	$15.00
Wii	007 Quantum of Solace	CIB	$5.00
Wii	Alice in Wonderland	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure	CIB	$14.00
Wii	Disney Sing It Family Hits	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Dokapon Kingdom	Loose	$60.00
Wii	Family Game Night 4	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Freddi Fish: Kelp Seed Mystery	CIB	$11.00
Wii	Gold classic controller	Loose	$40.00
Wii	Guitar Hero 5	Game + case	$16.00
Wii	Guitar Hero Aerosmith	CIB	$9.00
Wii	Hot Wheels: Track Attack	CIB	$7.00
Wii	Just Dance Kids	CIB	$6.00
Wii	Just Dance Summer Party	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Karaoke Revolution	CIB	$8.00
Wii	My Ballet Studio	Game + case	$8.00
Wii	My Sims Racing	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution	CIB	$8.00
Wii	NBA Jam	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Nights Journey of Dreams (back art punctured)	Game + case	$8.00
Wii	No More Heroes 2	CIB	$23.00
Wii	Resident Evil : The Umbrella Chronicles	CIB	$14.00
Wii	Tony Hawk Ride	Game + case	$10.00
Wii	Tony Hawk: Shred	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Wii Play Motion	Game + case	$19.00
Wii	You Don't Know Jack	CIB	$9.00
Wii	Zelda Wii Remote (no battery cover)	Loose	$40.00
Wii U	Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD (Nintendo Selects)	CIB	$60.00
Wii U	Tekken Tag Tournament 2	Loose	$38.00
Xbox	Battlestar Galactica	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Buffy The Vampire Slayer	Game + case	$17.00
Xbox	Burnout 2: Point of Impact	CIB	$11.00
Xbox	Crime Life	Game + case	$11.00
Xbox	Destroy All Humans!	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Enclave	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Gun	CIB	$8.00
Xbox	Half-Life 2	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox	House of the Dead III	Loose	$13.00
Xbox	Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb	CIB	$15.00
Xbox	Midway Arcade Treasures	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Minority Report	CIB	$7.00
Xbox	Mortal Kombat: Deception Kollector's Edition: Baraka Version	CIB	$48.00
Xbox	Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks	CIB	$28.00
Xbox	Namco Museum	CIB	$7.00
Xbox	Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones	CIB	$6.00
Xbox	Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy	CIB	$11.00
Xbox	Spiderman	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Spiderman 2	CIB	$12.00
Xbox	Star Trek: Shattered Universe	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars Jedi Starfighter	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Star Wars Jedi Starfighter	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Star Wars Starfighter Special Edition	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars: The Clone Wars	CIB	$7.00
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Immolator's twin brother.
Description: "Completely cold hearted. You became one with the storm. You'll torture anyone that dares to come by you, tear by tear."
Type: Backliner.
Pros: -Increased defense. -Increased recoil control. -Increased hipfire accuracy. (additional pros: Reduced effect from Morales. Immune to bleeding.)
Cons: -Decreased movement speed. -Decreased heavy swing rate. -Unable to climb up ledges. (additional cons: Decreased light swing rate. Increased reload time. Longer shoves. Decreased aim time.)
Perk ability: "Howl of the storm" Main ability: -When pressing F, the player will throw a special snowball -Landing a hit with this will slow down the target. -Takes a tiny precentage of the perk procentage. -Capable of hitting multiple enemies. Alt ability: -When holding F, the player will charge up their throw, making it much more deadly. -Landing a hit will cause the enemy to freeze on the spot, unable to move. Not only this, but they have decreased defense due to their body and the ice being intergrated together. -Capable of hitting multiple enemies as well, just much more unlikely. -The ice has it's own healthpool, just slightly lower than the targeted enemy. This means that if you dont do exactly enough damage to kill the enemy, then they break free from the ice. (Also imagine if they body shattered into pieces when killed)
Mastery desc: (up for debate).

Foreword: This is going to be an in-depth opinion based on my 6 hours of playtime with the demo, and having beaten it twice, once with a motivity (strength) build, and once with a dexterity (technique) build. I ended up finishing the demo at level 30 in each case, with a +2 weapon. I don’t usually make long reviews like these, but I tried out the demo and felt compelled because I feel that this has the makings of a great souls-like, but falls short because it’s unsure of what to do with all the different mechanical elements it has and is unable to weave them together into a compelling combat rhythm.
My overall impressions are that the game has great potential, with a lot of neat ideas inspired by or reminiscent of the Souls games, but the elements here need more polish or a few changes to how they are implemented because they do not gel well together currently.
Starting with the great and the good:
The performance is very well optimized. On my Laptop (RTX 3060, 12th Gen i7-12700H), I was getting a very stable capped 75 fps at 1080p best rendering settings. (Could have pushed higher with some setting adjustments but I usually play Souls games which are capped at 60 fps and I was too lazy to overclock or anything like that). There were minimal graphical glitches, and I only really experienced pop in 3 times throughout my two playthroughs.
The atmosphere is pretty good, with the rain and “Victorian” cyberpunk aesthetic, and the bodies and bloodshed sell the feeling of a world gone awry.
The level design, especially the main level after you reach the Hotel is well designed and I like the enemy and trap placement, shortcuts, and use of verticality. I found myself looping back quite a bit, and mentally mapping out the locations as I did, and for a souls-like, that’s a wonderful thing to aim for in my opinion.
The enemy variety is decent, from the basic goons and dogs to the patrol officer mini-boss, enemies generally feel distinct and have different timings, ranges and hyper-armor to get used to.
It’s rather unfortunate then, that in my opinion, the combat system is not well tuned to get immersed in the atmosphere, level and enemy design. My negatives with this demo have mostly been with some aspects of the combat system.
Starting on the player side, the player has all of these mechanical elements to be considered when engaging in combat:
- The player has a “rally” mechanic on blocked hits, where you can regain almost all of your lost health back by attacking enemies after blocking attacks, similar to Bloodborne’s rally mechanic.
- The player has a perfect deflect “timed block” mechanic where if you time your block at the moment the enemy’s attack lands, you take no damage, similar to Sekiro’s deflect mechanic.
- The player has a dash step for a dodge when locked on, and a roll when not locked onto anything, again similar to Bloodborne.
- The player has a light attack, a heavy attack, a charged heavy attack, and usually the Fable Blade Art attack for their offensive options
- The player usually also has the Fable Handle Art for their defensive options
- The player has a Legion arm that can do a variety of things depending on your load out and is a tactical option to also be considered.
- Besides these actions, the player must manage health, stamina, the Fable Art blue slots, Legion bar for the Legion arm, and weapon durability
In these mechanical elements, my personal biggest gripe is that the dash step and the dodge roll feel very clunky, do not cover enough distance, and are generally not that useful in general combat or in boss fights. The dash step doesn’t usually get you far enough away from the boss’s attack to avoid damage, and seems to have such low i-frames that you cannot dodge into attacks with long lasting hitboxes reliably to avoid them either. The only real use I found for these is to reposition yourself around a boss, and that also only when you are far enough away to not get stuck in between the boss’s limbs. This made dodging seem worthless to even attempt in most cases, and I found a lot more success in trying to block and deflect instead.
This brings me to my second issue, and that is Bloodborne’s rally mechanic doesn’t really work neatly with a game that allows you to block, especially with weapons that can negate a lot of damage. On my strength playthrough, I found it a lot easier to block enemy attacks and then just hit them when they were in their recovery’s to regain the health, while on my dexterity playthrough, given that the rapier had terrible guard negation, I just fished for backstabs, or charged into enemies to stun lock them with light attacks and avoid being hit in the first place. In either case, the combat, for the general mobs, encouraged button mashing more than any tactical play.
Guarding on smaller nimbler weapons doesn’t seem like a great idea because you take a lot more damage and don’t heal back as much, which combined with the clunky dash, encourages you to rush a lot more into single enemies and light attack them to death before they can do much to you; while on larger weapons, guarding is too efficient, and given the higher stun potential, also encourages you to rally for all your health back after guarding to make sure that you don’t get chunked for too much un-rally-able damage given the slower startups. In either case, you are motivated to not be precise in your gameplay.
My suggestion to make this work better is to rework the rallying system to rally your health back on perfect deflects rather than on hitting enemies, and to improve the default evasive options (dash step and dodge roll) in their distance and i-frames. This introduces more options to be considered when playing tactically and rewards precise play. The question when making defensive plays becomes “do I avoid this hit by dashing, or try to deflect it head on to regen some health?”, instead of “I’ll try to deflect it, but if it doesn’t happen, I’ll block it and try to regen as much on my next offensive play”. In line with this suggestion, rallying should not only work for damage that you took while blocking, but rather for all damage, with the amount of health that can be rallied being set to the last instance of when you took damage (this discourages holding the block and just waiting for the enemy to finish a 3 hit combo for example, since the amount of health you can regen would decrease to what your health was when you got hit the third time).
The perfect deflect as it stands, is not well integrated into the flow of combat. It’s more of a neat bonus for when you blocked perfectly rather than a thing to try to master, except for the red attacks that enemies can do, or for when you are on low enough health that blocking instead of doing a perfect deflect will mean your death.
Speaking of well-integrated, the weapon durability system felt like a chore and actively detracted from the combat experience. For level exploration, this mechanic is entirely useless, since all it amounted to was consciously making sure my sword was durable enough after I cleared a group of enemies. In boss fights, all it resulted in was moving away from the boss and repairing my weapon instead of engaging with the rhythm of the fight. It’s just another thing to manage that forces you to take a break in between the fight for whatever reason.
This should be done away entirely in my opinion, but if the Devs do not want to, they should look for ways to incorporate it into the rest of the combat rhythm and loop. A neat idea could be giving the player a timed damage bonus, like 15 seconds or so at the instant their weapon is repaired to max durability. This now adds more tactical options to be considered when engaging in offensive plays/ capitalising on openings- “should I use this opening to heal, regen my weapon to max to get a damage bonus for the next opening, or attack and lower my weapon’s durability even further, making it more difficult to get this damage bonus whenever I try to repair my weapon next time” and encourages players out of the simple dodge and light attack playstyle that most souls-likes encourage.
Moving a bit into the enemy side, the 2 main elements of enemy design that require specific responses from the player are the red attacks for when they are doing an unblockable, and the groggy state, where they can be knocked down for a critical attack if you land a fully charged heavy attack.
The red attacks are well done for the most part, although it’s very apparent that these are just regular attacks that the enemy has that now just happens to be a red attack. I’d rather there be specific attacks that enemies and bosses do that are red attacks and nothing else, so you are not punished for not following your typical response on seeing an attack be unblockable when the exact same animation was blockable for an earlier attack. This is admittedly, a minor gripe and I understand that this is likely because of time and resource constraints, and so don’t mind it too much.
As for the groggy state, I really liked the idea of enemies being worn down and then being susceptible to a knock down and critical using a charged heavy. It’s also executed well enough in my opinion, as I never felt that my charged heavy was too slow to not get it in time. The state lasts long enough, and all my charged heavies were fast enough that with precise play, the mechanic was executable. My only gripe with it seems to be that when this groggy state occurs is unpredictable. It seems to happen around the half way mark for a mini-boss/boss’s health, but seems dependent on how often you’ve hit or deflected them, and with what. I think. I don’t know, because the game never tells you what causes the enemy to be groggy, or shows a groggy meter. I’m not entirely sure why this is. If the grogginess is tied to a hidden meter that fills up when you perform certain actions like hitting the enemy or perfectly deflecting, I’d rather that such a meter be made visible so it’s clear how close you are to getting the opportunity to do a critical, or at the very least, weapon blade parts have a grogginess rating to compare how much grogginess they cause in a hit.
One of the final elements of combat design that I want to focus on are the supporting elements for the combat system, namely the blade and handle weapon assembly system, the quartz p-organ “latent ability” skill tree with perk system, and the healing system.
The weapon assembly system is a neat concept, allowing you to mix and match weapon blades and their base damage and blade fable art, with the handle’s scaling bonus and it’s handle fable art. I have a few gripes with the execution though:
Outside of a specific blade fable art, or weight limitations, you’d just always pick the blade with the greatest base damage. On my dexterity (technique) playthrough, the rapier was not that good for boss fights in my experience, since your guard absorption was terrible and the tactic I used for the first boss was just moving back or out of the way of anything I wasn’t confident in perfectly deflecting. But having learnt of the weapon assembly system from my strength (motivity) playthrough, the second I got the item that allowed for me to assemble my own weapons (unlocked after the 2nd boss), I chucked my greatsword blade onto my rapier’s handle. And now I had an unstoppable weapon for use, having the greatsword blade’s reach, high base damage, and high guard absorption, with the rapier handle’s dexterity (technique) scaling bonus and quick move set. The game does try to combat this by giving things that have a high base damage extra weight and costing more stamina to swing around, and I think some weight-swing calculations too (i.e. the heavier your weapon, the slower you do the moveset), but it hardly mattered. At the end of the game, I could do a light attack chain consisting of 9 attacks with my rapier before my stamina was completely depleted. I could do 6 with the greatsword blade on the rapier handle, and before my rapier could do it’s 9 attacks.
Now I get that this is the Devs’ way to encourage different weapon combinations, but in my experience, this is going to result in a lot of people just using the highest base damage and/or guard negation blade on the handle that gives them their desired move set and scaling most inline with their character. This will hurt the build variety unless the skill tree with perk system and the fable arts can provide enough varied options that suit different combinations of the blade and handle.
I’m not entirely sure on how to combat this, especially since we aren’t shown the full extent of the perk system and the skill trees, so this is something that the Devs will have to think about on their own if they plan to do anything with it.
On a slight tangent, speaking briefly about the fable arts themselves, I did not find the majority of them to be very useful and so didn’t really use them all that much. They don’t seem to do a lot more damage than light or heavy attacks, and the defensive options either also require strict timing, or are no more useful than a perfect deflect.
As for the latent ability + perk skill tree system, we do not know the full extent of the available choices in this system or the amount of choices we’ll be given and so it’s difficult to review it, but one which definitely perked my interest was knowing that extra dodge rolls were an unlockable perk. I am not a fan of this direction. Personally, The i-frames of your dodge/dash, and the distance that it covers, like the frames of your perfect deflect, are fundamentals that the combat is built on, and should ideally be a well balanced and play tested unchangeable provided by the Devs, as opposed to an unlockable skill that players have to choose to grind for. This reminds me a lot of Dark Souls 2, tying the number of i-frames in the roll to a stat, and it was hated there as well. The other perks seem pretty decent, with things like getting more currency, or getting some Legion Ammo on killing things, or taking less damage while discharged/ in the middle of dodging are all varied, interesting and worth getting, and so the limited number of quartz and thus unlockables could make for compelling design and playstyle customization, provided that the fundamentals (dodging, perfect deflects, fable arts, etc. are all well-tuned by default design wise).
Speaking of the healing system, I like it for the most part, having finite healing but being able to regen one health potion by attacking enemies is well thought out, even if it is a bit clunky. If I could make any adjustment to this, it would simply be letting us regen health potions constantly when attacking, and capping the number of health potions as the game already does. I prefer this mostly because there is no explanation in game for why when we are discharged, we can regen precisely one health potion by attacking enemies and no more. What’s ideally wanted, just personally, is consistency or an explanation. The discharged state could also be made compelling gameplay wise, as the perk system alludes to, by having perks that lower your damage when you’re discharged. Other perks likes this could make for a compelling gameplay where you are constantly teetering between having one health potion and being discharged, and it would be interesting to see.
A final note on some animation clunkiness. The combat clearly seems to be built with a focus on deflecting more than just dodging, but your character does not have any way to cancel a stagger into a block like Sekiro does. This is relevant because some enemies in the game have attacks which if you get hit by, stagger you long enough to be hit by the follow up in the combo, with no opportunity to deflect, guard, or dash away. This is also true for when an enemy deflects you when you are using certain handles, most notably the rapier handle. This makes you get punished twice for making a single mistake, and that feels unfun to play with, and so you’d want to have a way for the character to either cancel their stagger early, or space out enemy attacks long enough that you can respond to the next hit in the combo.
Moving out of the combat discussion, I have 2 quick addendums which don’t quite fit in other sections imo:
1) The AI needs improvement for the 2nd boss and for other humanoid bosses that the Devs may intend to release in the game. This boss is too vulnerable to circling and back stabs, and the strategy is also relatively risk free.
2) The UI and menus feels very convoluted and need streamlining