Wow, where did 2016 go? It feels like I was just writing a —
Haaaaa…. Just kidding. 2016 has been regarded by many as a kind of rough year, from a personal or historical perspective. It was a perfectly good year for video games, though. Let’s start off with a few obvious picks, then a few not so obvious, some runners up, and finally, in the spirit of 2016, a few complaints.
For those of you who don’t pop by our friend Harbour Master’s site Electron Dance every day, well, you’re missing a lot of brilliant work. Brilliance like The Drake Incident, a video that basically has everything you could ever want, ever.
Sometimes I wonder if we talk about Dark Souls too much around here, then I realize how crazy that is. You can never talk about Dark Souls too much.
I badgered Jay into writing this series. I felt that if anything needed his particular treatment, his uniquely Dobryvian acid humor, it was RimWorld. He’s outdone himself. But then, he always does.
“I did something different with Part Four,” Jay said. “Sort of a tonal shift. The pure humor angle wasn’t working.” What he has done instead is circle back to the point he made in Part One: that the player creates unique internal stories within each game, and that’s what makes RimWorld so memorable. This, the final chapter of Death in Fire, is one of those internal stories.
Anyway, consider yourself warned: the series title is not necessarily ironic in meaning, and if that comes as a surprise then you haven’t been paying attention.
— Steerpike
An escaped sex slave, a one-armed builder, an “herbalist”/sniper, and a cat-lover head into their third week of survival on a forgotten world. Hilarity ensues. Or perhaps blood. Bloody hilarity?
If you’re new to the series or need a refresher, go check out Part 1 or Part 2. Steerpike still owes me a Swedish massage, or at least a bag filled with money and drugs. (I promised him a cookie bouquet and nothing more —S)
If you’re new to Death in Fire, go check out Part 1. Otherwise, welcome back to my band of merry Black Mesa-ians!
So, I suck at RimWorld. Steam tells me I’ve played just over 100 hours now, and I’m personally responsible for the immolation of at least 25 human beings.
Myst, the solitary, quiet adventure game that was packed with so many PCs in the 90s, is a divisive game. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of the series. I was one of those people who bought The Book of Atrus in hardcover. I even played through the sequel, Riven, as a kid, though I can’t say I did it without some help. When I saw that a spiritual successor to this series was put up on Kickstarter, I backed, so that I would be sure to have the game when it released.
I hate to boast, but I have yet to back a total dud on Kickstarter.
Affordable Space Adventures got an honourable mention in my (ridiculously long) Games of 2015 list solely because of what I played with Joel for this episode of Side by Side. Since then I’ve played it through to completion with my girlfriend and a friend, and I can tell you now that it will be on my Games of 2016 list too, but not as an honourable mention this time.
Here’s how this affordable spaceship went down.
Rooting around in a coffee table basket, looking for a notepad, I unearthed this list. I’d forgotten having written it down a little over a month ago. Upon seeing it I remembered, ‘oh, this is that list I wrote down of my 17 favourite PS4 games.’
So…That’s what this is, then.
(Sorry, early adopters. There are no PS VR games here.)
This year I took a trip to PAX West, in Seattle, for a little talk among devs, a little R&R, and a little cosplay. I didn’t travel on a press badge, but I did get a few press invitations that nonetheless intrigued me. The one that interested me the most was an invitation to see a preview of the new Torment game, Tides of Numenera.
Let’s get the disclosures out of the way first: I’m a backer of the game’s Kickstarter campaign, Tap-Repeatedly’s Steerpike was previously involved with the game, and I personally know some people involved with the game, including writer Colin McComb, who I worked with at a previous job! I’m also gonna disclose that one of the reasons I went for the interview was just to catch up with Colin and see what the heck he’d been working on. What I saw of the game was really cool… and you can read about that more below!