Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread. And, unfortunately, it’s time for another long-winded prompt. Don’t worry; I’ll keep it relatively short.

Last week, I tried—and almost immediately tired of—Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. This wasn’t really a surprise to me; I loved Assassin’s Creed when I was younger but am fully done with the Ubisoft mold of game design. I went on some mild adventures but didn’t get to really experience what used to be one of the tenets of the series: hanging out with goofy and deeply awkward representations of iconic historical figures. I did kill a shark, which was okay. And I’m not really sad to have missed the Fourth Century BCE equivalent to “Leonardo da Vinci hams it up and then builds your James Bond weapons.” Or that classic chestnut, “Rodrigo Borgia is the agonizingly bad final boss fight and then you descend into the Vatican’s underground spaceship.”

…It is downright criminal that something as insane and unhinged as Assassin’s Creed is so bland. Man, if I was writing video game law, lemme tell you. But I digress.

Lo and behold, a few days later and I start Day of the Tentacle Remastered, featuring the Founding Fathers as depicted by Rocky & Bullwinkle. That’s not even an exaggeration; that’s the exact way these pompous losers are written, voiced, and animated. Thomas Jefferson has the Dudley Do-Right voice. The puzzles are largely about accommodating, circumventing, or exploiting their neuroses. Just like the actual Constitutional Convention. And it’s not the only time this has happened to me in recent days and weeks. Just yesterday I started Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, which tries to recreate real life battles with “hero” units and explained that I was doing prep work for William Wallace in the tutorial. Plus, I can’t forget about the time Mussolini and his stupid hat showed up in Indiana Jones.

Now, thanks to having also beaten Indiana Jones yesterday (and also because I’m juggling like, I dunno, between three and ten games any given day or week or hour or whatever), I’m a bit tired right now. I’m not in the best state to debate the ethics or artistic questions of depicting often problematic or openly monstrous real life figures as wacky sidekicks, advisors, or in Benjamin Franklin’s case, a mostly harmless NPC who just happens to be written like the maniacal villain of a Japanese RPG. Give him a British accent and he could be mistaken for any Xenoblade bad guy. If you’d like to get into the thorny issues inherent to this trope, please do! But my big question for you is what’s your favorite instance of this. What’s the most fun you’ve had with a video game’s depiction of a historical figure?

And, of course, what did you play this weekend? But first, check out Lily Bones’ latest Game News Roundup!