The Queue: Halt, 24601!

You’ve become an ace at doing cardio. Kids smile as you jog past them, dogs happily wag their tails, strangers break into song. You can eat as many baguettes as you want: bread doesn’t make you fat.

Suddenly you pass in front of a shop window, and you see your reflection: you realize that you’re wearing a comedic prisoner outfit. Black-and-white stripes, baggy trousers, and the number 24601 plastered across your chest.

At that moment, the sky darkens with heavy clouds, and dramatic music starts to play. Timpani thunder, brass blares, ceremonious cannonballs. A baritone voice can be heard, loud and clear:

“Halt, 24601!”

Inspector Javert barrels into view, running after you, every step a moral judgment. Now you understand why cardio feels so effortless: the universe has turned you into the ultimate sprinter, because running from Javert is a marathon with no finish line in sight, and the audience always asks for another encore.

This is The Queue, where life can be a musical, but that also means life is a musical.

Being the huge video game music nerd that I am, I could answer this question in 15 different ways. Dancing Mad / Kefka’s Theme are an acceptable pair. I could mention God Shattering Star, Nemesis’ theme from Fire Emblem: Three Houses (also alluded to in the very intro of the game when the aforementioned character jumps in, literally).

But I’m gonna go with another super cool one: Hades’ theme from the game Hades, God of the Dead.

It does something that I absolutely love: the theme evolves as the fight progresses. That by itself shouldn’t be anything special, since plenty of games do that. But here, it absolutely IS special, as I’ll describe.

The Hades fight starts moderately difficult, and the song is slow-paced, sludgly, like it’s building up to something. You learn the patterns, you work on it. And eventually, you kill Hades.

Or so you thought.

He wasn’t really trying, and he makes it clear. But now he gets up, willing to make more of an effort to stop you. Phase two starts, and the music becomes pure metal. Frantic! Intense! Mirroring what’s going on in the game itself, since the boss fight just got truly frenetic.

Then you kill Hades (again). This time, for real! Yay!

…unless you’re really interested in a challenge. Hades is the kind of game where seeing the full story only comes after beating the final boss multiple times. But even after that, you can still keep increasing the difficulty, optionally. And one of its utmost badges of honor is activating the optional “Extreme Measures 4,” which adds a special THIRD PHASE to the Hades fight (the one with an absolutely heartbreaking special attack — no spoilers here).

With Extreme Measures 4 active, after you’ve beaten Hades for the second time, as you’re already used to at this point… he decides he’s going to fight you with his FULL power for the very first time. He gets up again, and phase three begins.

A guitar starts soloing like mad. Another one joins in, and the two wallow together, duel each other, play in unison, do second voices for one another. This is no longer just metal, this is epic beyond words.

Hilariously enough, when I woke up yesterday I browsed my phone for a bit and one of the first things I saw was a rumor that a new Octopath Traveler game was gonna be announced. I was excited. Just an hour or so later, the Nintendo Direct happened and confirmed that announcement.

But other than that, I’m gonna go with the Persona 6 rumors about it featuring dual protagonists, being semi-open world, and having “more fluid” social links (whatever that means). After 3, 4, and 5 (and Metaphor), the formula could definitely use some shaking up, and those rumors, if true, would probably make me happy.

I just looked at three different lists, and… man, there are no games this month that I want!

I guess it was about time for a break, though. There have been so many amazing releases over the past several months. Lets me catch my breath a little, at least!

As long as there are upcoming big game shows, there’s always hope. I feel like games get released as planned more often than they get delayed (though our memory certainly tends to latch onto the latter).

I just hope Persona 4 Rewind Rerun Reprise Revival doesn’t get delayed, man.

*keeps running from Javert*

This has been The Queue. RUN!!!