You know, I’m 51 and I’ve never been to a Disney theme park… My parents’ idea of a “vacation” was to take my sister and I to local attractions, like caves (I saw a lot of those), coal mines, this place that had all these miniature trains… And while I thought they were cool, I thought I was missing out. I’d only gone to the shore once when I was about 10 and my mom was dating this really nice guy who took us there (it didn’t last). Other than that, I never had vacations until after I turned 18 and I don’t know that you’d really call them “vacations” in the traditional sense. And whereas the majority of people have been to Disney at least once in their life, I never have. Now I doubt I’ll ever go because it’s so stupid expensive, but I’d really like to… And I seriously need a vacation. So instead I found the next best thing. I found a new obsession… I found an escape…
I’m not a “gamer” by any means. The only types of games I’m skilled in are Atari 2600 games. I’m completely inept with these new games that require way too much hand/eye coordination. So I usually go for more slow paced games, if you can find them (good luck with that). And I just so happened to find a new one when I downloaded Disney’s Dreamlight Valley…
Warning, there will be spoilers… So stop reading if you don’t want to know how this turns out… Anyway, it starts out that you fall asleep and find yourself in a slummy looking Dreamlight Valley. Only a few villagers remain and they all seem to be suffering from something they call “the forgetting”. All they know is that something bad happened and everyone started to forget everything. This dark force started to flood over the land and these annoying things called night thorns started popping up all over the place. Merlin seems to be the one who remembers some shit, or at least enough to know to tell you that you have special powers and can rid the valley of these night thorns and hopefully help figure out how to restore the valley. So you g o around, fixing up buildings, getting rid of night thorns and doing tasks to help the villagers, plus you earn magic points called Dreamlight for doing certain things and with a certain amount, you can unlock doors to the realms the other villagers escaped to when the forgetting began and bring them back. You also need it to unlock all the areas of the valley as they’re not all open… So you kick ass to get these things accomplished, get some of the characters back to the valley (I’m disappointed, no Robin Hood)… I hadn’t even watched half these movies and Frozen was on my list of “must burn every single copy in existence” movies, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled that I was stuck with asshole characters I didn’t like and others I didn’t know. But they do love to photobomb selfies, hahahaa!
At one point in the game, in order for me, the apparent ruler of the valley, to procure one of the items needed to save the valley, a deal must be struck with the sea witch, Ursula. One of the deals is that Kristoff must forget his love for Anna, which they both agree if it will save the valley and they figure his memories will return. But when they don’t, I have to jump through flaming hoops to help Kristoff get his memories back. Nothing works and I eventually have to gather a million things to enchant Anna’s engagement ring and poof, his memories come back. They’re grateful and I’m feeling bitter… That’s it?! Just, “Thanks, now we can go get it on”?! So many of these characters are paired off and I’m sitting over here doing all this work like I’m everyone’s lackey so they can stand around picking their nose, picking their ass, being all Lovey-dovey… And all I get is “thanks”?! Not even a cool piece of furniture?! Now… about a day before this, I’d listened to the song “Boom, I Fucked Your Boyfriend” by MC Lucious… I was really tired that night, pissed that I was doing all this work and getting nothing in return. And since you need to hang out with the characters to up your friendship levels, I chose Kristoff that night. Every time we passed her, I found myself talking to my Switch, “Hey Anna! ‘Boom! I fucked your boyfriend!”‘” Hahahaa… Which led to me taking these silly pictures… Semi-romantic in feeling, but yet there’s this distance on my part, like I’d just used him and threw him away like an old rag while he’s looking at me adoringly, hahahaa!
So aside from totally dating myself by giving you the link to that song… Good lord, I was listening to that song in, what, my early 20s maybe…? Oh my god… I’m so old *sigh*…
The game does, however, have its downsides… You literally spend the entire time running around like a chicken with your head cut off, doing these “quests” for the characters. things they say they’ll do part of the work (which they never do) and they expect you to do the rest. You don’t get rewarded for it, really, unless you level u your friendship with them, which takes forever! You start to feel frustrated and like the friendship is more than just a little one sided because all they do is take from you and never give… Or at least this is how I was feeling when I found out that the person responsible for all the mess in the valley is someone they call The Forgotten. The Forgotten is actually you, the player, or a part of you that you left behind when you left the valley, anyway… At one point you get to relive The Forgotten’s memories as if they’re your own (which they are, you’ve just forgotten them) and I have to tell you, I could totally relate to the first one… Everyone was asking her to do this for them, do that for them… “Hey, I wanted to make a nice bouquet for Minnie and you pick the best flowers!” Hint hint, make me a bouquet to give my girl… “Hey, I caught these beautiful shrimp and wanted to make us bouillabaisse! How about you get us the rest of the ingredients?” And you knew I was going to have to cook it, too…
I found this very relatable… I was experiencing the same issue in the game, all take and no give. All my money was spent having to build stuff because it was “good for the economy”, according to Scrooge, yet I never saw that mother fucker take a dime from his vault full of money he swims in… All the responsibility was falling on me alone and it was feeling too much like real life, to be honest. I suppose that’s why I could relate to my dark side, The Forgotten, so easily. She got so sick of that shit, had been betrayed by the villagers she thought were her friends growing up and decided to destroy it all. When she realized what she’d done, she left, never to return. That’s you, but the darkness within you that caused the destruction remained. And now that you’re back, she intends to destroy the entire world… You have to save her, change her mind, which you do eventually. It’s a pretty cool game, but the content is pretty fucking dark… I wouldn’t let children play it. Those aren’t the kinds of things I would want them to learn at such an early age. It’s bad enough I had to go through it in real life. I certainly wouldn’t want any children I knew to play this and learn the hard way what life is about….
I’ve had this game about two weeks and already I’ve beaten the main part of the story. Am I bored or just plain insane…? The world may never know…
I do know one thing… Because of this game, I started watching some of their newer movies and so far have watched a few I had yet to see. They’ve all been pretty god so far, but I still have a feeling they’ll all be just as good as the ones I’e watched so far.
Well, dear readers, it’s time for a nap… Aside from the fact that I’ve been staying up way too late playing this game, I’m still not on the right amount of thyroid medication yet. I still get sleepy and take marathon naps. Not a good thing, I assure you, hence the reason I need this little escape to a rather nice place, even if I have to work my ass off in it… Until next time!
and She Said... 