In recent times, we feel so much pressure to finish games as quickly as possible, whether it's due to internal pressure or the looming, impending release of the Next Big Game in a packed and relentless release schedule. Amid that tidal wave of new games, it’s important to remember that it’s solely your own choice on when and how to engage with them.

I’m told that the idea of constantly moving between places is a very “American” concept. Whereas my family in the Philippines is accustomed to staying in the same family home for generations, I’ve been moving from one new space to another — twice in the past year, in fact. It is a stressful ordeal every time, but around the time of my most recent move, I happened to be playing Unpacking from developer Witch Beam. What resulted from playing the puzzle game was an enlightening recontextualization of how interacting with my personal physical space affects my mental space — and I loosened my anxiety over building a complete, “perfect” home.

The presidency is a monolithic concept in U.S. culture for pretty obvious reasons — as the leader of the nation, anything they do or say is instantly influential and important. As a result, the president of the United States is often reflected back in our popular culture. Once the president is involved in a story, you know shit’s about to get serious. Any piece of fiction is sure to represent a heightened reality to some degree, but this is always a telltale sign that some irreversible threshold has been crossed.

The sequel, The Legend of Korra, did far more than just continue The Last Airbender’s story — the series showed how society, with the tools that Aang and his Team Avatar had left behind, transformed after that shift. In the world of Avatar, the invention of metalbending, introduced as a level-up by Airbender character Toph Beifong, but in full effect after the 70-year time jump in the sequel series The Legend of Korra, is the best example of how political ideologies and the spiritual nature of bending were naturally intertwined.

Every time the black bars letterboxed the screen during Red Dead Redemption 2, I knew that the “video game” portion of this experience was on hold. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that Rockstar (and the game’s writers) were plopping a movie in front of me instead. It is relatively obvious that Rockstar’s recent games are meant to invoke the feelings of familiar films, but reading and hearing the thoughts from my peers had me realize that many of us—the Housers included—simply have it wrong when analyzing this game’s relationship with the Western film genre.

Daredevil season 3 will obviously not solve any of our real-life problems—but it demonstrates that something as fantastical as the MCU can be very powerful by recalling realistic imagery and sentiments. In a society where people are fearful to live their regular lives under the threat of violence, however real or false that threat may be, and with bad actors exploiting that very fear, we need a fantasy like Daredevil. Season 3 is all about how he earned the famous moniker “the Man Without Fear.”

(Content Warning: suicide, depression, anxiety) There was something so uniquely terrifying, yet profound about my playthrough of Night in the Woods. It felt uniquely suited to my mindstate by the time I played through it, at a level where booting up the game sometimes felt like a stressful and daunting task, as it inadvertently had me confront some of my inner thoughts and life experiences.