User blog:Jacked Maverick/Most Wanted: My Final Blog Post

I’ll be honest, so much time has passed that I forgot how to make reviews. So I apologize in advance if something seems off if you’ve been a lifelong subscriber.

Most Wanted. It’s all been building up to this. Years of being obsessed with Choices’ two predecessors. The journey of seeing Pixelberry’s evolution since 2013. The very first book Pixelberry made for their current and (as of now) only ongoing product.

(I know Storyloom “exists” but to be honest I have no idea what this thing is)

I literally have not touched this app all year. Not since December of 2021 for that Laws of Attraction review. Making this the first summer I have not read Endless Summer for a tradition. I’m just sad how everything turned out. It was bittersweet revisiting a book I first read in 2016 and was a sign of things to come when I got even more into this app. It makes sense that I should make this the last Choices book I would ever reread. Full circle. A nice homage.

Most Wanted is a 2016 crime-drama book written by the studio Pixelberry. At the time it was the one of the first three books that came with the app when it launched in August 2016. Along with it was a unique genre. The Freshman brought romance and The Crown & The Flame had a fantastical middle earth inspired story. Three diverse stories, each great in their own way. Most Wanted was grounded in realism. It took us to that infamous West Coast city and put us into the fray of all the madness.

We had to think about how to progress the story and solve the case. Other stories were basically auto scrollers where you could fast tap for diamonds.

=The Leads=

This is the first and currently only book to have a dual lead (that I know of). Both Dave & Sam were excellently written to have realistic goals that made sense they would pair up. Sam actually has a connection to the main antagonist while Dave would do anything to protect the city he loves so much.

Aside from their motivations, the thing I enjoyed the most was they were not lovers. Modern Choices would have made their dynamic forced. But here in their first (of three) books, they stayed completely professional. Them not having romance options may have been detrimental in its success, but this is a quality over quantity type of thing.

These two unlikely pairs gave new meaning to “opposites attract”. Sam & Dave had great chemistry and gave the other character development. Sam taught Dave it was okay to go beyond orders as long as it doesn’t get out of hand and Dave taught Sam to not go into an establishment with guns blazing.

=Los Angeles= Los Angeles. L.A. The Angels. The West Coast New York. The Less Good Burbank. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a magical place. This place sets the tone for the entire story.

You could argue the main character of Most Wanted was not Dave. Nor was it Sam, Tull, or even Hayley. The main character was Los Angeles. To understand this glamor obsessed world and the underworld you’d have to understand Los Angeles. Both in the book and real life, L.A. builds people. It creates demons. It turns good men bad & bad men good.

It made Hayley a superstar being born out of nothingness. It made Dave experience the horrors of the world at such a young age that it made him more persuaded to join the LAPD.

Even if you don’t live in California, having Sam felt like an audience surrogate when she experienced this city for the first time. From her unconventional ways of getting the job done to seeing how liberal the beach was.

This book would not have worked if it was any other city in the U.S. San Francisco is too tonally different and New York is never sunny.

=Legacy= This was truly one of the best things the Pixelberry studio made. Definitely in the top ten. Too bad they peaked in their early years. If they kept this sort of writing, the momentum would have been that of a juggernaut. I get it, quality doesn’t exactly translate into finance. There’s nothing I could have done as I was just one person versus the silent majority. I haven’t played Crimes of Passion, nor have I seen ANYTHING from it, but I hear it's a great homage to the origins of the studio fit with Most Wanted roots.

Here I am, six years after playing Most Wanted first in August 2016. It was an exhausting over half a decade, but I’m happy to have gone full circle for myself.

=Goodbye= As I said before, I am DONE with Pixelberry as a whole. Whenever I wrote any of my previous reviews I at least felt something. Regardless if it was something positive or a variation of apathy, I at least cared. I felt the passion to write. Now, I feel nothing at all. Writing this felt more like a chore. I’d rather have washed the dishes or cleaned my room. Hell, even write any other of my actual passionate projects.

What else, what else…

I wish you all a happy holiday! Let’s make 2023 a good year. I know it’s generic, but I don’t have more I can say that I haven’t said at length before.

“Blah, blah dead horse. Blah, blah fallen from grace.”

The original subtitle was going to be “My Final Review”, but after giving it more thought… even if the aforementioned events happen (the events that I said would make me more open to write more), I’m too burned out. There are so many times you can review something from the same studio. I know I usually include pictures in my reviews, but source editing has changed so much that I can't figure out how to do that. Frankly I do not care enough to look it up. I'm sorry, guys. I'm just done.

Having said that, I love all of you. The fandom. This wiki’s regulars. My Berrypickers. When I have my own YouTube channel making video essays (not Choices related) I’d still call my subscribers my Berrypickers. I want to thank all of you for the last six years. You guys made me love to write. Love to analyze. To be part of a community.

Follow me on Twitter on “@DoubleDashDown” and Discord on “Jacked Maverick #8575”.