It's Taxes

I have a tie for today’s challenge. First, if I had to choose a best soundtrack overall, I would go with Persona 4 Golden. The tunes in this game are just super catchy and really get you pumped while playing.

_©2012 Atlus/Aniplex_

It’s important to note that this one is split into two albums if you want the full experience. You need the Persona 4 OST which has the songs from the original game as well as the Persona 4 Golden OST which has the additional songs from the re-release. Sadly they’re only available as import CDs so they’re a little pricey.

In addition to this soundtrack, however, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the soundtrack from Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse. This is one of those soundtracks that’s just made of pure fun and tends to get in your head and not leave.

_©2014 WayForward/Jake Kaufman_

Unfortunately games don’t give us a lot of great couples to choose from. I tried reading some “best video game couples” articles to try and jog my memory, but it was all the same selections, and some of them weren’t even canon, just implied in some cases (like Link & Zelda). So for today’s challenge I’m going to respond with:

The best video game couples are the ones you choose yourself.

In particular, I’m going to call out the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series by BioWare as my favorite games for romance.

[(source)](http://raeslin.tumblr.com/post/54293942240/high-res-figured-id-do-a-lil-something-for)

Yeah, I was one of those dingbats who fell for Garrus. What a great guy.

If you recall from one of last month's posts, I was working on movement algorithms for sprites in Critterbits. I’ve been refining this particular feature, so the functionality has not changed much, but I’ve made it a lot easier to use from the scripting modules. As a refresher, here’s what it looks like in the game using simple linear movement:

Now let’s examine what the elk’s movement looks like in script.

For the award for most annoying character, I’m going to hand it to Anders from Dragon Age II. (Yes, he was in Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening too, but he specifically annoyed me in the second game.) I tried really hard to give all the different team members in DA2 a chance. Even Fenris who’s a bit of a tough nut to crack turns out to have an interesting story if you poke at him enough. Anders, on the other hand just made me want to punch him in the mouth every time he talked. His level of whininess is only rivaled by Anakin in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

_©2011 EA_

I think the writers tried to make Anders a sympathetic and tragic character, but honestly his motivations are so selfish and his lack of remorse so appaling that he’s really just not likeable. Once you put that with his constant whinging, he’s just not fun to have in your party. On one of my playthroughs I tried really hard to befriend him and see if moving through his personal story arc would make him more likeable, but nope it doesn’t help at all.

I guess if there’s anything positive I can say about him, it’s that the same qualities that make him unlikeable that also make him one of the most believable and human characters in the game.

Today’s challenge was particularly vexing for me. I have a hard time self-evaluating, and in particular making claims that I am “most like” one character or another seems a bit presumptuous. So I thought about it from a slightly different angle: while playing a game, was there any one particular character that spoke to me or that I identified with heavily?

After that, I had a clear answer: Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4.

_from_ Persona 4 Arena _©2012 Atlus/Arc System Works_