The Joy of Collecting: Why I Still Buy Physical Media

We live in an age where everything can be found online. There are legal streams for almost every anime on the day of release, e-book distributors for manga in both English and Japanese, and thousands of websites allowing us to easily buy or stream music. Sure, there are a few things here and there that we can’t legally obtain online, but in those cases, we have torrents and other sources to bring us the unlicensed content. There’s nothing stopping us from consuming all of our media online and many already do so. And yet, I still buy tons of physical media. In fact, physical media makes up the bulk of my purchases. It’s not necessary, so why do I still do this in this digital age we live in?

Advertisement

All the Games I Want to Play are Too Long

I think everyone can accept the fact that they have limited time on their hands. This tends to lead to the prioritization of certain hobbies, something everyone does all the time. At the same time, most people have multiple hobbies that they move between, preventing serious boredom with their main hobby by varying things up every once-in-a-while. As should be obvious, anime and its surrounding culture is my main hobby and interest, and most of my free time gets devoted to it. As is normal for people my age, gaming is another hobby of mine, one that I’ve enjoyed ever since I was a young kid. Unfortunately, I’ve run into a major issue over the last few years: almost all the games I want to play are long.

Nier: Automata’s Gorgeous Use of Sound

MAJOR Spoiler Warning for Nier Automata. Usually I wouldn’t do this, but this is an incredible game that everyone should play themselves if possible. Please only read if you’ve beaten the game or don’t care.

Nier:Automata has a lot of things going for it. It has excellent gameplay, great themes, fun characters, and it manages to merge all of those elements well. People might dislike some of those, but one thing everyone agrees on is that it uses sound excellently. Not only is the soundtrack itself one of the best I’ve ever heard in a game — something it shares with the first game — but the actual way the songs are used is excellent as well.

Nier: Automata’s Beautiful and Broken World Without Humans

MAJOR Spoiler Warning for Nier: Automata, including some of its sidequests. Usually I wouldn’t do this, but this is an incredible game that everyone should play themselves if possible. Please only read if you’ve beaten the game or don’t care.

Nier: Automata has an incredible world. It’s a world that’s desolate and abandoned, and yet it contains more signs of being lived in than the world of most games. Nier: Automata manages to nail the feeling of desperation that the game needs in order to work, while also maintaining a strong sense of nature and life. This extends to every bit of the game’s world, from the backstory to the actual in-game actions. Everything in the game contributes to building a specific tone while exploring a few questions about life, and I’d like to explore how it does that.

Why Lady Maria is the Best Boss in Bloodborne

After owning the game for months, and playing it for around 60 hours, I’ve finally managed to beat every boss in Bloodborne. They weren’t all great – Micolash and Witch of Hemwick stand out as particularly awful – but overall it was a game that was full of fun and challenging boss fights. The one that stands above the rest though is Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, featured in The Old Hunters DLC.