The SuperDQP Weekly - January 20, 2025 (2025)

Apropos of nothing, this week’s newsletter is about mental illness and how it impacts my video gaming habits. It’s not gonna be a comfortable read, but it’s my hope that it’ll help you feel comfier in the days, weeks, and years to come.

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Game Rec Goodness

This week’s rec is a pretty basic Nintendo copycat, but for the purposes of this specific newsletter, that’s just fine.

If you’ve got a Donkey Kong Country itch, and you don’t want to wait for Retro Studios to make another one, you should try Kaze and the Wild Masks.

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Kaze lacks some of Donkey Kong’s charisma and originality, but makes up for it with exceptional platformer design. The game knows it’s borrowing from the best and isn’t ashamed of it, and its best levels are just as thrilling and satisfying as Rare and Retro’s greatest.

Like DKC, Kaze will have you white-knuckling your controller, but pumping your fist when you finally clear a tough challenge.

Kaze and the Wild Masks is available on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and Windows PC via Steam. It is Steam Deck verified, and my experience on Steam Deck reflected that.

The intersection between mental health and hobbies

Today is Inauguration Day. There’s a lot I could say about our 47th president, as a queer non-binary writer, but for today’s newsletter, I actually want to talk about something slightly tangential: self-care.

Like many, I struggle with mental illness. I try to be as open about it as possible. Nine times out of ten, that’s a helpful thing to do; it demonstrates solidarity with others who share the same struggles, it helps people be sensitive around me, and it normalizes frank discussions about hard topics.

(The one time out of ten, well… sometimes I just have to endure cruel people and never interact with them again.)

I am clinically depressed. I’m recovering, to be sure, but clinical depression and anxiety have haunted me for a very long time. This, on top of being on the autism spectrum, has meant that even when it comes to something as innocuous as playing a video game, I can find myself paralyzed.

I’ve heard the recommendation that in times of personal crisis, the best media to consume is the media that goes down easy. Binge Parks and Recreation again. Replay Paper Mario. Rewatch hbomberguy’s video essay about Tommy Tallarico. Let the familiar wash over you as your soul recovers from a traumatic event.

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I’m not very good at taking that advice. I like media of consequence. I’ve written a newsletter in the past about playing Signalis smack dab in the middle of a massive weather event and a family tragedy. And while Signalis resonated deeply with me at that time, because of that time, it definitely did not help me get any more sleep.

Sometimes, though, my brain effectively shuts down and just paralyzes me, and I end up not really doing anything at all. And that’s no fun, either.

The old axiom goes that if you do not rest your body, your body will find a time to rest for you, and it will not care much how convenient that time is.

I consider, from personal experience, that the same is true of emotional health. Spend too much time doomscrolling, or in the midst of a low-boil traumatic situation like an abusive relationship or a family tragedy, and it’ll turn you into a zombie. A waking dead, there but not really there, incapable of enjoying even the comfy stuff.

I’ve gotten scarily good at pretending I’m okay when I’m a shambling corpse inside. I’ve been good at that for as long as I can remember.

So how the hell do you even recover from that?

Well, at one of the lower points, it took me a lot of therapy and medication to climb back out, and I’m not sure I’ll ever finish climbing back out.

(I say that as if there’s a mythical “back” to return to. It’s more like continual forward progress. I don’t know. Mental health metaphors are surprisingly hard.)

I’ve been in a stable-ish equilibrium for a little while now, and I’m getting better at recognizing when I’m starting to slip back into that zombie-like state.

Take, for example, right now. This exact moment. Gender-non-conforming people like me are entering a period of insecurity and instability, and for me, it’s taking its toll, and I can tell.

I’ve been trying to summon the inertia to play Mouthwashing, a horror game that’s finishable in an afternoon, for months. My Baldur’s Gate III save remains stuck near the beginning of Act 3. I know I have more endings in Slay the Princess to explore, I just…

There’s no way to end that sentence. There’s some kind of nameless block on doing the things I’m genuinely interested in.

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(If you want a sneak peek at a future newsletter, I’ve been wanting to use my Baldur’s Gate III character’s story as a vector for exploring queerness and self-confidence. I just need to build the momentum to finish the damn game.)

The most I can do is play the easy stuff. Give the Paper Mario 64 randomizer mod another spin, going through the motions of a video game I’ve replayed dozens of times since I was eight years old. Grind side content in Metaphor: ReFantazio that doesn’t have any story significance. Rewatch old video essays, but never make it to the end because nothing holds my attention anymore.

I recently borrowed a digital copy of Tricia Hersey’s manifesto Rest is Resistance from my local library (side note, support your local library), an audiobook about combating systemic exhaustion that’s only something like five hours long, that’s taken me nearly the entire two-week borrowing period to finish. What a cruel, hilarious irony.

But the book makes important points. It’s cliché to say a phrase like “my body is a temple,” but a phrase like that does justice to how sacred our bodies actually are; how important it is to stop and just… exist, in that body. Take some breaths. Take the headphones off and appreciate the ambiance of the environment around you.

I think regularly about The World Ends With You, and the character of Neku: an angsty RPG protagonist to rule them all, who wears headphones everywhere he goes to shut out the world. It’s only at the end that he emphatically takes them off, signaling without an ounce of subtlety that he’s grown to appreciate the world and the people around him.

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Will that heal my current state? I don’t know. But right now, as my body and mind are stopped, part voluntarily and part involuntarily, it’s stuff like that that comes to mind. So maybe now is as good a time as any to rest up for what lies ahead.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, know that you are not alone, and that help is available at any point. Don’t hesitate to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 (TALK), or call 9-8-8 for mental health crises.

LGBTQIA+ youth and adults can also seek confidential help with The Trevor Project’s lifeline at 1-866-488-7386, and can call the transgender-staffed Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860 in the US, or 1-877-330-6366 in Canada.

A necessarily goofy wishlist rec

I’ll be capping off this newsletter, fittingly, with something very dumb.

The Last Exterminator is a modern take on Duke Nukem 3D, complete with a loud logo and a protagonist with her own spin on the “Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride” line. Like Kaze, it is shameless in how much it borrows from its spiritual source material, but when playing it is as fun as it is, who cares?

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The gunplay is fast and satisfying, and with any luck, it’ll find itself sitting comfortably alongside other great throwback shooters like Selaco or Dusk.

(And side note, speaking of games that are gonna pop up in future newsletters, Dusk is great and is gonna feature as the main topic of one of these someday.)

It’s far from the first indie shooter to steal liberally from Duke Nukem, but it’s likely there won’t be casual misogyny or paratextual transphobia this time around. Hopefully. Knocking on wood.

At any rate, the demo was a lot of fun and I look forward to playing the full release.

The Last Exterminator is currently slated for release on Windows PC via Steam. A demo is currently available. Release date TBA.

NOTICE

I will be taking next week off of newsletter duties; the next newsletter will be on February 3. Take care of yourselves in the interim!

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The SuperDQP Weekly - January 20, 2025 (2025)
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