Clearing the decks

We’ve been clearing our gaming queue a little over the last week or so – there are some major releases coming up that we anticipate will consume a significant amount of evening playtime, so it’s seemed prudent to try and wrap up anything that’s been lingering in the backlog.

Case in point: The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (or, at least, the first half of it), which we began in September before it was thoroughly derailed by an unexpectedly packed October spooky-games fiesta. We’d made it all the way to the last case, even, just hadn’t picked it back up to get to the conclusion.

As of last night, we did…only to find that they’ve left an astonishing number of dangling threads, even literally introducing another layer of mystery in the final scenes. What about the mysterious thing your best friend apparently was supposed to be doing in England? The list of names? What was up with that William Shamspeare guy who is conspicuously introduced, has an actual character model, and then is never seen or mentioned or even thought of again?

This isn’t usual for Ace Attorney games, which will normally wrap up everything rather neatly within an individual installment; I can only imagine how maddening it must’ve been to finish this back when the first of these games came out and realize you would now have to wait years to know the answers.

It’s “But what about the gas station guy???” all over again.

Anyway. Given this I think I’ll hold off on a more elaborate discussion of the title until we’ve played its sequel, too.

It’s been nice to “drive” the last few evenings while we wrapped up this title, though. Immersing yourself in something is, I think, restorative; you dive right into a thing, letting yourself be wrapped up in it and carried along. All those executive function “muscles” – the ones that constantly tense with little reminders that you need to buy a chicken for dinner tonight, that someone’s birthday is next week, that you need to hire more people – get to relax.

I’d best get on with the day, but for now, please enjoy this kitten, who is very cute.

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