When you told me that you managed to salvage the twenty video games you had on hand before our marooning, I was a little confused about your priorities, but I’ll admit: I was also relieved. Elated, even. Here we are, the only two survivors of a shipwreck so tragic that I have cried every night since we washed up on this shore, and you managed to guarantee us hours of entertainment to buoy our collective sanity in the years of lonely survival still to come on this godforsaken rock. But then I looked at what the specific games were, and let me just say…
Are you fucking kidding me??
I don’t think you fully understand how incredibly idiotic it was for you to have brought this trough of actual shit out to sea, so let’s run back through why all of these games were particularly terrible selections for a marooning.
P.T.
Okay, so right off the bat, why would you bring a game that is literally called “Playable Teaser” on a two month long cruise, let alone for the shipwreck that followed? Not only is it literally two hours long tops, but the game itself just loops the same hallway over and over. Plus, it’s so scary that I genuinely think that you would start to lose your mind trying to sleep out here, and I don’t want to deal with that. I get that you’re a big Kojima head, but you should have just brought, like, Metal Gear Solid 5 or something.
Webkinz
I’m really confused as to why you have “Webkinz” with you when you don’t have any of the plushies. You know that you can’t set up an account for this game without one of those, right? At least some stuffed animals could have made for some nice pillows to keep us a bit more comfortable in our cave space. Instead we just have an inaccessible browser game from 2005.
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
I’m sure this game is fun and all; it just feels a little questionable that you brought a Ubisoft game that came out right after all of the news broke about how they mistreat their employees. You do strike me as one of those assholes who stans evil corporate CEOs and loves the “genius manipulation” of late-stage capitalism, now that I think about it. I might play it with you once I get bored enough out here, but not without feeling pretty guilty the whole time.
Don’t Starve Together
At first I thought this game might be a good reference point for us to train our survival skills, since we’re in a similar position to the characters in this one, but instead it’s left me feeling more pessimistic than ever about our chances. Our characters have yet to even survive two full days, and each time they die is more horrific than the last. I might play Don’t Starve Together again at some point when I want to start coming to terms with my mortality, but that’s really not the type of gaming experience I want to be confronted by right now.
Fall Guys
I want you to imagine for me that we’re back on the ship, right after we hit that very large and angry sea lion. That young family was just tossed overboard, the crow’s nest just careened into the captain’s quarters, and the crew is shouting at everyone to grab essential survival gear such as hatchets, rations and life vests before loading onto the lifeboats. In what world do you see and hear all of this and think, “I’d better go grab my copy of Fall Guys”? Your actions- and frankly, your very existence- continue to confound and infuriate me. Anyway, we obviously don’t have any internet access, so this game is useless.
Link: The Faces of Evil
At first I got really excited that you had a Zelda game, but then I remembered that this is one of those awful CD-i games, and that you are the worst person I’ve ever met. Why do you even own this? Whatever. Have fun grinding enemies until you collect 100 snowballs for the freaking main story, dipshit.
League of Legends
Sorry, but purely out of principle, there’s no universe in which I start playing League of Legends for any reason. I know I tried to take a bite out of a live crab this morning, but I do still have some standards.
Fashion Dreamer
It would have been very sweet of you to save your little sister’s favorite game if you hadn’t left her unattended near all the passengers who started violently rioting once it was clear that there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. Every time that I look at her chic fashionista avatar in “Fashion Dreamer”, I only see the light fading from her shocked eyes while I held her in my arms, sobbing. Needless to say, I can’t bring myself to play this one. It only got a 62 on Metacritic anyway.
Cooking Mama
When I played this game as a kid, I never imagined that the pixelated pictures of chopped carrots and generic-looking burgers would make me so ravenous. Mama had me cook up some pork chops last night, and I swear I could smell that meat on the pan. I think hunger is making me lose it. Curse you for your unfortunate choice of video games, and fuck you, Cooking Mama.
Spider-Man (PS4)
This game would have been great to have out here if you hadn’t scratched it on a rock while trying to reflect the sun’s light onto the firewood in a poor attempt at fire starting last week. That only works with magnifying glasses, dude. Anyway, now it just replays the Mary Jane stealth mission sequence over and over, which is a massive bummer. I’d truly rather have no game at all than have a Spider-Man game where you can only play as a normal person. Maybe we can just use this disc to flash signals at passing ships or something.
Metroid: Other M
Haghhh… I would have loved it if you had any other Metroid game. ANY OTHER. I was also hoping you would have brought a game with an engaging narrative, but this game’s story is as boring as it is offensive.
In fact, why would you have the only Metroid game where Samus is less of a badass and more of a weak willed, overly emotional stereotype? …Look, I would help you start the long and arduous work of unraveling your internalized misogyny, but it seems more than likely to me that the only women we’ll see for the rest of our lives will be the drowned corpses from the shipwreck that have washed up on our shore, and Zero Suit Samus.
Goat Simulator
Ugh, of course. It’s 2024, and OF COURSE you still think that Goat Simulator is the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. It’s just a poorly rendered goat that can stretch its tongue out really far, dude. Get over it.
Unravel Two
So in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not terribly keen on playing a game about being permanently bound to you in a collaborative effort right now. It’s a poor escape from my daily hell, and, frankly, feels like the continuation of a cruel and ironic joke that the universe is currently playing on only me. You’re so woefully inadequate at this game that it not only shows me how bad you are at teamwork, which is not a surprise, but it also shows me that you’re not good at video games in general, which makes me feel aggressively confused given your apparent obsession with them. I have yet to see a single one of your skills, and I’m starting to believe that you have none, beyond pissing me off and scaring the local wildlife with your terribly out of tune renditions of “Who Let The Dogs Out”, which is, of course, the only song you have downloaded on Spotify.
Five Nights At Freddy’s
Can we all finally just collectively agree as a society that Five Nights At Freddy’s just isn’t that fun or interesting? We get it: Animatronics are scary, cryptic lore is engaging, and Markiplier is funny. I’ll build my skills up to the point that I can beat the 4/20 mode in my sleep given that I have enough time and boredom out here, but I’m not going to pretend like I’m having fun doing it.
Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball
I don’t even need to ask why you have this game. You sicken me.
Kirby Air Ride
When I was a kid, I would always go to my neighbor’s house to play games with him. One of the games he owned was Kirby Air Ride, and he was always super arrogant about how good he was at it. Well, after years of gloating, I finally beat him, and it was the first time that he- and, indeed, my father- respected me. My parents took me out for ice cream that cool May afternoon. The principal congratulated me over the PA system at school the next day. For the first time in my life, I started to feel like there was beauty and love in the world, and it was all thanks to this silly little racing game.
You have taken a lot from me on this island: My sanity, my patience, my faith in humanity… You aren’t taking this. You aren’t tainting my happy memories of Kirby Air Ride and everything it means to me. Unfortunately for both of us, this treasure of a game needs to stay on the shelf.
Hungry, Hungry Hippos
So I’m confused why you picked Hungry, Hungry Hippos over any of the other quality board games you could have grabbed. We had chess, checkers and a freaking DECK OF CARDS right next to this box, and you went for the most mindless, asinine game known to man. I think you just wanted a game that you could possibly win, because it’s clear to me now that your intelligence is far too low to win any game that requires critical thinking.
Goldeneye (N64)
Oh goddammit, I should have known that you were one of those nostalgia hogs who still insist that the original Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 was really great. You probably haven’t even played this game in 25 years, have you? Feel free to boot it up, but don’t come crying to me if you get frustrated over the god awful controls and start bashing the controller against the cave walls. I got enough of that after your Zelda snowball collection-invoked tantrum this morning when you were SUPPOSED to be collecting COCONUTS in the real world.
Babe (PS2)
I’m not going to lecture you about why you own a copy of “Babe” for the PS2, because I feel like you should already understand at this point why I’m deeply angry about that fact. I’m not even going to cuss you out for bringing it on a ship while sailing out to an obscure part of the Pacific Ocean when there are literally HUNDREDS of other games you could have chosen to entertain yourself with. What I AM going to do is ask you why the HELL you would ignore the flare gun lying right next to this game on your couch -don’t try to deny this, I saw the flare literally inches away from this box the morning before that cursed sea lion hit- and grab this game about a stupid pig instead?
What’s that? Oh really, you’re finally getting mad? You’re not angry about starving on an island, the death of your sister, OR the fact that we were shipwrecked by the silliest-looking creature in the entire animal kingdom, but you’re mad at me for insulting a FICTIONAL PIG THAT CAN TALK?? Wow. I’m genuinely speechless. You’ve spent your entire life with all of your emotions and passions entrapped by video games, and most of them aren’t even good. And now I’m cursed to live a life filled with unyielding rage and hate before I die here, with you. Simply incredible. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and kill you now, and then proceed to kill myself.
Halo 2
Wait a minute, you brought HALO 2 out here? How did I miss that? Hell, why didn’t you lead with that!? This is about to be the best decade of our lives, my friend. Now we just need to find a good source of electricity… On a desert island… In the middle of nowhere. Hm.
