Second Wind

You ask me to stay
But there’s a million reasons to leave
―The Strokes, One Way Trigger

10/19/26

I’ve been obsessed with roguelikes all year.

I’ve flirted with different genres and hyper fixations of course, stuff like MMOs, JRPGs and the occasional competitive shooter. I tend to jump around genres and cravings fast, owing to a million different things. Hell, I still need to sit with my Retroid Pocket 5 and add a million roms I’ll never get around to.

Despite that, I still find time for a great roguelike (or survivor-like). There’s just something great about building out a character, running through increasingly harder levels and narrowly avoiding death each time. Once I did die (usually unceremoniously), I picked up and started all over again. There’s something oddly satisfying about this loop, and I rarely get frustrated after a failed run. Instead, I see each one as an opportunity to get better, learning what methods work or maybe building a little different each time.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has been at the forefront of this past weekend for me, offering some good pick up and play action and a really good offline grind. I’m playing on Switch 2 and it feels like the best console for a game like this, even if it does slow down occasionally during much more hectic moments.

These kinds of games feel like the perfect distillations of what make the medium as whole amazing, taking base concepts such as combat, leveling and even narrative and breaking them down into their barest forms. Yes, there’s an element of grinding and I know that based on my past experiences, it’s not the healthiest way to interact with gaming. Hell, I would even say I was kind of hooked on DRGS this past weekend, feeling that evil and external pull or rush that comes from seeing a virtual number go up.

Examining my own feelings for roguelikes has been fascinating, especially when talking about criticism as a whole. The one defining theme of my own gaming habits throughout 2026 has been choice. I’ve chosen what I’ve wanted to play, usually staying within my lanes and actively choosing to focus on talking about the things I like.

Gaming as a whole has been in a weird spot this year (and the last few for the most part) as the more volatile aspects of working either in development or the press side of the medium has been hostile to say the least, but even the nature of talking about games feels like such a laborious thing.

Case in point: I feel like certain people can’t accept that different audiences will like or seek different things. There are thousands of genres or gameplay experiences that appeal to a wide variety of fanbases, oftentimes reaching mainstream appeal.

I’ve seen a lot of the same arguments, oftentimes some variation of:

How is this popular?

How can anyone like this?

I don’t like this, so it’s bad.

And it feels so reductive to look at something like that. Sure, we all have different opinions and tastes. I just got a little romantic about roguelikes, a genre that has been blowing up even more lately but will always have detractors. That’s fine and it makes sense. I’ve never felt the need to try and correct someone on their own opinions.

I remember when Marathon came out and there was this phenomenon of people dumbfounded at this idea of Bungie developing extraction shooters, making declarative statements about how it was wrong.

Wrong to make a video game? Wrong to develop something unique?

I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that games are an art form and one that deserves to be viewed critically. Of course, this means both the good and bad, but the way I’ve seen many people online speak about them, I think we’re too caught up in looking at them as simply products.

Yeah, I won’t pretend most of the games dominating the conversation aren’t made for the sole intention of draining the wallets of their players, casting the widest possible net and watching the zeros of some CEO’s annual bonus increase. I get that the nature of the industry is ruthless, treating both games and the people around them as numbers.

But I also see them as an art form.

I think we live in an era where players or reviewers (at least some) lack empathy or the ability to see beyond themselves. There’s a whole world out there beyond the glow of a laptop screen (something I keep forgetting too) and reducing the games you don’t like as simply bad feels like we’re going backwards as far as analysis and criticism goes.

And look, I’m not calling anyone out specifically, but I feel like we all need to step back and have much more meaningful conversations. Getting replies on social media telling me some game I like is bad is less effective than telling me why something doesn’t work for you in a thoughtful way.

I’ve taken long breaks from reviewing games and even podcasting, mostly because things feel dire but I also don’t have it in me to be critical.

Life is short.

I wanna touch grass and live it while I can.

Part of me is also in a weird place ever since I got back from my trip.

I was in New York a few weeks back and mentally, I still am. I hadn’t been in over seven years, and was caught up in how much the city has changed. There’s an air of optimism all around, with a tapestry of younger people living their lives and enjoying whatever the city had to offer. I know it’s lame to romanticize everything about New York (and any vacation destination in general) but it felt different being there. It was the first true vacation I had been on in a while too, offering me a much needed reprieve from a particularly busy work season.

Like I said, it’s cliche to think “oh my god New York” but I won’t lie and say things didn’t feel different there. I had that Steve Lacy song in my head seeing whatever landmarks and famous sights and found myself getting romantic about the little things, like a good slice of cheap pizza or simply walking to and from the subway.

Oh and I hit up a lot of comic book shops. I bought so many single issues of stuff, specifically Superman (2023) and kind of went crazy with my other purchases. Seriously, finding stuff like Grant Morrison’s JLA or a random 1961 issue of World’s Finest felt like the craziest end to an unintentional treasure hunt. Stumbling upon a random outdoor flea market and picking up Death of Superman part seven and a random Green Lantern from the late 80s/early 90s was also serendipitous, as was the fact that the guy who sold it to me was Colombian (couldn’t give me a discount though).

As I come back down from the high of the Big Apple, I find myself trying to recreate those feelings again, whether it’s listening to the Strokes on repeat or visiting my own local comic book shops. Yesterday, I decided to hit up our big, local store and found so much cool stuff but it didn’t feel quite the same (it was still cool to find single issues of Mark Waid’s 90s Flash run for a good price though). This isn’t me complaining about things at home or my regular, everyday life. If anything, I think I found out how to unlock that lust for it. I wanna go out more, work out again and experience things. I’m trying to be more social and reach out to friends, especially those who have always been good to me over the years.

However, I still miss New York. I know a lot of this will fade once Grand Theft Auto VI is out next month and the Miami Heat start playing basketball this week. I know I’ll start disparaging all the New York sports teams the second I hear that buzzer go off and I’ll retreat to my insane (and devoted) love for my hometown.

Being back home has me thinking about a lot of routines. I’m back to going to the gym daily and trying to get my health back in order. When it comes to gaming, I still need to hit that right balance of intentionality and frictionlessness. I opted to move my PS5 back to my desk and to use a monitor instead of a TV. Playing games while lying down in bed felt a little counterintuitive, as I associate my bed with activities like handheld gaming, watching TV or reading. I could never really focus on anything and I kept thinking about how much more locked in I was sitting at my desk, intentionally choosing to play a game and even having my iPad on with a video essay playing.

My rotation lately has been Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Splatoon Raiders on Switch 2 and The Division 2 on PS5. Each of these games provide similar experiences, just with different flavors. The latter of the three, The Division 2, is so damn fun. I had been playing the first game a lot since late December but with the sequel getting a new expansion soon, I decided to skip ahead and play through each of the main campaigns.

After a few hours, I’m having lots of fun. The gunplay is vastly improved and I love the structure of the game itself, giving players lots of choice in what to tackle first. Yes, it’s a big Ubisoft open world game, but it’s one that provides an easygoing grind and feels enjoyable even alone. Despite being an online-focused game, I don’t feel hampered by any of the FOMO or seasonal stuff and playing it like I would any other looter shooter makes it a perfect video essay game. There’s a satisfying loop of shooting and looting here and every time I finish one mission, something else on the map is always popping up to entice me with more rewards.

I’ve already spoken at length about DRGS but Splatoon Raiders is something special. I’ve never played any of the other games in the series, as I was intimated at the idea of coming into an online shooter years later than everyone else. Learning that a new game in the series would be an ARPG with loot, I was definitely intrigued.

I’m not crazy far into the game but I am having fun, thanks to the structure of each run. It follows a lot of the same beats as other games in the genre, like upgradable gear and extracting loot from dungeons, just with a decidedly more colorful art style. In a way, it feels like something ripped straight out of the GameCube or Dreamcast era, with its bright aesthetic and simple yet engaging gameplay systems.

As someone who tried playing Phantasy Star Online over the summer and struggled with the GameCube version’s control scheme, this feels like the perfect extension of that. It would be cool to see where the developers go with this idea in the future, maybe expanding into a full-blown MMO? Or maybe crafting their own extraction/roguelike mode with this framework? Regardless, it’s cool to see Nintendo experimenting with different genres and being able to play in smaller sessions on Switch 2 via handheld mode is perfect.

I’ve also been dabbling in some Battlefield 6 for some PvP action, as I don’t wanna burn out too much on Destiny 2’s Crucible mode, but I’ve mostly been sticking to my trio of solo, “offline” grinds (I know Division 2 is an online-only game, but I’m playing alone).

The main thing I’ve caught myself doing is looking to fill the void with a major single-player campaign. I was debating on starting The Witcher 3 Remastered until I realized that it would be a bad idea. I mean, GTAVI is out soon and I’m basically treating TD2’s missions as a proper campaign, so I can hold off a little bit longer.

I still have no plans to podcast for now. I like keeping most of my thoughts confined to a blog or walls of texts I send my friends. I’m enjoying my free time, with my face buried in the pages of Death of Superman or watching the University of Miami almost lose a game in double overtime.

I guess you can say that’s my version of touching grass.