i've been writing on the internet for a while now, and felt like there should probably be some central hub for some of my best/proudest work. here are some excerpts and here's some more of it.
At Least I Get To Be The Cow - A.V Club Games
Obviously Mario Kart World, and the fact that it allows me to be the cow, isn’t changing the world. I regret to report that it did not come into my life, clear my skin, cure me of my depression, and do away with my woes, let alone course-correct the trajectory of the world. It will not fix climate change, end the pointless wars to come, or curb the resurgence of fascism. That’s up to us, unfortunately. But it does remind me that joy and good, two things that feel scarce these days, can still be found, and are worth sticking around and fighting for. If only so that someone else someday can also experience the bliss of getting to be the cow.
Despelote Review - Digital Trends
Despelote makes me miss home.
If I pull up a Google Maps street view of my old house in the Dominican Republic, I’m met by a stranger. I don’t mean the literal stranger eyeing the camera from the garage, but the place itself. The exterior’s been repainted. The little garden out front has been ripped out. The parking spaces, which were once just aisles of concrete between dirt patches and tufts of grass, have been paved over, and the pathway to the door is no longer. The stoop on which I’d wait for my friends and count ants is gone. Through the barred windows, I see the now vacant sun room where I once spent a summer playing Super Mario 64 on my uncle’s purple Nintendo DS. The sight of my once-home prompts a stinging in my eye.
I've Turned On Battlefield 6's Senseless Destruction - A.V Club Games
On September 2, 2025, Motaz Azaiza broke my heart. The photojournalist, who has been covering the carnage in Gaza, shared a video which he captioned, “The most devastating transition in my life..” The first half of the clip shows the Gaza Strip in July 2023. The city is alive and well with the sights and sounds of pedestrians milling about and vehicles on the motorways. Trees line the streets, and you can hear chatter—even the sound of someone shouting at one point—as well as the distinct honk of car horns. A life here almost seems plain…normal, even.
Though I know what to expect from the jump to September of 2025, a lump nonetheless forms in my throat as the image comes into shape. The facades of most buildings still standing have crumbled. Most everything else is rubble. Shoddy tents pack the street and there are more people here than ever. Only these people are different: They’re the lucky ones. These are the survivors, the ones that have made it through ceaseless bombardments and fought off starvation long enough to lose their homes and wind up here. This city of tents, which stretches miles into the blurred distance of Azaiza’s video, is their new home. This is the kind of ruin that real-world destruction has on innocent lives, and I’m reminded of it every day. It kills me.
Silksong Review - Kotaku
Silksong relishes in a kind of defiance that I admire. Sequels, especially video game sequels, are often bigger than their predecessors, a sin which Silksong is guilty of, but they’re rarely more frictional. And because Silksong zigs where others would zag, it has a personality that I think is rare to come across in sequels, which are so often by-the-numbers. It’s got bite and verve, just like its sharp and commanding protagonist. It’s headstrong, and its architects–Team Cherry itself–feel like a friendly rival I’m in competition with, and that back-and-forth has consistently motivated me to push back and push further. Playing Silksong feels like being in conversation with it, and with every session–with every talk–I regularly felt like I was learning more than I would playing a game perfectly content with playing it safe.
Una Conexion Hispana: On The Absence Of Heroes - A.V Club Games
Over time, a sad but regrettably real shift occurred within me: I stopped considering myself Dominican or Latino. That’s something I’ve never really admitted out loud and it’s an admission that pains me a lot to think about these days, not because of how proudly I embody either these days, but because I let anyone take part of me away. But you can only play so many games about a Joel Miller or Nathan Drake or Booker DeWitt or Niko Bellic or Lara Croft or Cole Phelps before you begin naively thinking you’re the problem, not them. At some point in my early teenage years, I began shying away from conversations about my ethnicity. I’d quietly admit where my family was from while loudly following up with something akin to, “But I’m not a real Dominican.” I started joking with my own mother that I wasn’t Dominican because I was born and raised in America. I think that bothered her more than she’s ever let on and it’s a joke that clearly grew to take on one too many uncomfortable dimensions.
Cairn Review - GameSpot
Aava's a real person, or at least the game treats her as such. It respects her right to be thorny and hold her cards close to her chest. It respects her hurt enough to know that simply getting to the top of this mountain won't provide answers and knock down the walls she's built up. She has her own reasons for being there, independent of me, the player, guiding her up that mountain. And don't we all have those steep hills in our lives we need to climb, even if only to prove something to ourselves? Even if it's foolish or dangerous to do so? Even if you're only going to get hurt by the journey's end? Even if it costs you everything you love? It's a choice she makes, it's one that Cairn respects enough to not undermine, and it's one I felt I owed her to pay off by steering her to the peak. Not to learn why she did it all, but to help her up that proverbial mountain when no one else in her life could. To get her to the other side of whatever she needed to overcome. To aid her in her lengthy, full body, death-defying exorcism.
More And More Games Are Asking A Question Even Philosophers Haven’t Been Able To Answer - GameSpot
Sunset Visitor’s upcoming game Prove You’re Human bears an ominous title. Its debut trailer is just as provocative as its name lets on, and introduces us to Mesa, a seemingly rogue AI who has dreamt of her body and needs irrefutable proof that she is not human. The upcoming title from the developer behind 2024’s critically acclaimed sci-fi narrative 1000xResist purports to address a growing anxiety around the notion of human performance and things that try to pass for us.
Elsewhere, a late-night worker at a gas station must check IDs and reference a database filled with the specific characteristics that make each customer who walks through its doors an individual. A person. As the only clerk on the midnight shift, they are tasked with distinguishing friend from foe, person from nonperson. And when the time comes to defend themself, they are encouraged to blast anything that would harm them or impersonate any real human. At least, that’s the way of the world in the upcoming game Shift at Midnight, which has become a viral hit before it’s even released thanks to a spate of demos and glowing coverage from popular gaming personalities, like Iron Lung director Mark “Markiplier” Fishbach.
I don’t think Prove You’re Human will suddenly become a guns-blazing first-person shooter, nor will Shift at Midnight begin waxing philosophically. Yet despite taking different tacts and centering distinct forms of mimicry, these titles are in conversation and represent the future, both near and far, of a trend I’ve noticed: the sounding of an alarm.