Today, Mediatonic showed off one of the levels for Val guysupcoming fourth season. The new stage, “Skyline Stumble”, looks quite nice with its gravity-based hijinks and flange buffers with beans – but it instilled in me an intrusive, motionless thought: Man, we really were do it a while, right?
Last August, Val guys took the world by storm. Thanks to a streamer-based marketing campaign and a month as one of the ‘free’ PS Plus titles – where it’s grown the most downloaded PS Plus game ever, by the way. Everyone seemed to be talking about it Val guys, and with good reason. Val guys served as a bubbling distraction during a moment where it felt pretty good to be conquered by bubbling distraction.
Val guys is still here, and I’m now less sold on its power than a bubbling distraction.
As bad as it is now, the covid-19 landscape last summer was very different Val guys came out. On August 4, 2020, the official release date of the game, the moving average of New York hovered at less than a tenth of what it is today. It remained so for the rest of August and much of September, before hitting above 1,000 again on 1 October 2020. The pandemic, of course, never subsided, but for a solid two months one could see the other side.
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It is not so easy to feel that way today.
In New York City, where I live and where Kotaku based, we are in the predicament of a huge second wave of the pandemic. By most measures, despite a steady rise in vaccinations it is worse than the first wave that initially plagued our city last spring. According to the New York Times covid-19 track cutter, New York State currently averages more than 7,000 cases of covid-19 per day, many of which are reported from the five districts. Six weeks ago, in mid-January, it was 16,000, higher than it was last year. You can get the number up to different types of variables – including a raised test device and fewer restrictions – but you can not waver out how amazing it is. A large part of the rest of the country is facing similar devastating situations. You have no doubt read the status quo that more than half a million Americans have died from the coronavirus, a figure we never encountered during this time. the leaders should not allow time to live off.)
There is also the less discussed but no less important mental health tax on the public. In August, I met a few people who, in every way, are thriving in the new work-from-home framework. They appreciated the loneliness, the lack of daily pressure like commuting, and were not exactly social butterflies anyway. In addition, in New York – and in other parts of the country – it is considered relatively safe to gather in small groups outdoors, at parks and cafes and restaurants that follow the guidelines for social distance. Compared to the oppressive, sub-freezing temperatures of recent months, one could actually endure sitting at a picnic table for hours on end. It was no substitute for the ‘Before Times’, but it certainly helped.
Today, I do not know a single person who can reasonably say that they are in a better place in terms of mental health compared to where they were at the beginning of this thing. You wake up. You move to the couch. You move to the dining room table. Every day is the same, and it comes to a breaking point. I felt it. I bet you have too. We are all more irritated, more anxious, more depressed – just as done with it.
It’s not just in your head. For a recent feature in The atlantic ocean, special projects editor Ellen Cushing spoke to a range of mental health professionals. Everyone has outlined the ways in which extensive locking up legally changes the functioning of our brain. Long periods of sadness, stress, boredom and depression can affect the psyche erosively, adversely.
I certainly did not wake up today and think Val guys, of all fucking things, it would be the thing to start this line of thinking. I did not consider it Val guys to be the ruler to whom I would measure how damn long we have been stuck in a criminal mismanaged pandemic. Maybe it was the result of hearing it irresistible catchy theme music, which for my standstill last summer functioned as a de facto theme song. But man, we’re really been doing this for a while. March 20, 2020, New York implemented its first global shelter-in-place order – which will take place in a year to the day.
At least we get seven new Val guys levels soon.
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