#PastebinMonday 03/02/2020 Celeste Causes Depression Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

This Friday, Saturday, Sunday streaming schedule really allows me to get more quality streams done. This is the best decision I could have made. I got a lot more stuff done than I would have otherwise. Here is what I was able to get done:

Friday – ZEXAL practice, did a full run with Hat Guy Konami-kun (40 duels vs the normal 11 so it's about 4x longer, but you get access to all cards so hello, chain burn :D )
Saturday – got rid of outstanding incentives, including two hours of 007: The World is Not Enough for GBC (good luck getting past the stealth level), a Tetris NES 100 lines speedrun, and a full game run of Celeste
Sunday – ZEXAL practice, did a full run with Tori Meadows (for the memes?)

I have five videos to highlight this week. I generally would not have been able to create so much content with my previous schedule. My Twitch channel information lists the exact times I intend to stream. I feel really confident that I could sustain this for the immediate future.

Now, speaking of Celeste, I need to get things off my chest about it. The Steam game was graciously gifted to me a while back and I finally got around to playing it. My final results for the run are in the following Tweet:

https://twitter.com/CardsOfTheHeart/status/1234046594376441856

It looks great. It sounds amazing. I knew this going in having watched GDQ runs of it.

I can't take that in and play the game at the same time.

All I wanted to do was look at and listen to the game. I wanted to go into autopilot to take in the atmosphere that the game was creating, but I had to think about the platforming in order to get through it. The problem is that even after five hours, I was still confusing my jump button(s) with my dash button(s). I didn't feel like I learned a thing in that entire experience. So many things felt like trial and error and I CAN'T STAND trial-and-error gameplay. I was so taken out of the mood by the platforming that I couldn't absorb the narrative and get emotionally attached. Then again, I didn't get emotionally attached to Toy Story 4 after having watched 1 and 2, either, so I must be an apathetic monster.

In the end, I couldn't enjoy anything about Celeste. The best parts of the game were the parts that I couldn't be arsed to pay attention to in the name of getting to see more of the game. Had I paid more attention to the good parts, I would have been further exposed to... the bad parts. Yes, the platforming felt legitimately bad to trek through. The early game taught you how to jump and dash. Somehow, I never retained that information. From then on, nothing else was explained. I was on my own to figure everything else out without any hint as to the possibilities. All it led to was trial-and-error gameplay, the kind of gameplay that always manages to take me completely out of the mood of any game. It did not build any sort of character. It simply revealed it by constantly hammering home the point that I am terrible at platformers.

I learned nothing from the gameplay. I learned nothing from the story. The entire experience felt... empty.

As much as this game has supposedly helped players deal with depression, I feel like had I kept playing into the post-game content, Celeste was going to cause depression to develop within me. I feel like I have enough mental issues as it is.

I wanted to enjoy Celeste so much, enough to play through to get to the summit of Celeste mountain, but I just... couldn't.

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards