Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!

I initially had a much more complicated prompt about people’s history of writing about games, but that led to two problems: A) not everyone here writes about games beyond this site (which is still not nothing; we write a ton in these comments), and B) I didn’t really want to put in a ton of effort today. I’ve been having some sleep problems over the past few days. Maybe I’ll come back to this in two weeks. So instead, we’re gonna use what I’ve been playing lately—in this case, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition—as inspiration.

A few days ago in Xenoblade, I entered and went through Satorl Marsh. It’s this big, giant swampland; it’s really cool. When it’s night, all the leaves on the trees shimmer a transluscent blue light and the music becomes really beautiful (that’s why it’s not the header image; its most interesting feature is how different it looks). I’ve been going back there a bunch for sidequests and the like, and it’s so pretty. And therein is the prompt: favorite swamp levels in games. Swamps occupy an odd space in the video game biome theme canon: they can be as waterlogged as water levels, as claustrophobic as sewer levels, and as grandiose as forest levels (all of which have been combined with swamps for levels at least once). I imagine they’re pretty contentious, but I like them. Hell, I’m a fan of Blighttown, and that’s a swamp level if ever there was one.

And while you’re answering or not answering that, what have you been playing this weekend?