And here they are, my top 3 games from 2021. Keep in mind that the usual disclaimer applies: I’m just one guy, I mostly play PC games with an occasional flirtation with Playstation, and I’m an old man.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2021 Part 4: The Best Stuff”
Thanks to everyone who stopped in for the stream. I’m really enjoying these. We’ll be streaming again tonight at 7pm Eastern (click here for local time) on the RamblePak64 channel. I hope you’ll drop in and join the fun.
And here is the VOD from last week:
For the record, I played through this section this week. And sure enough, the entire Harley Quinn sequence is there.Fun fact: According to Steam I last played the game on Dec 15, 2015. This playthrough started on Dec 17 2021. Like Chris, I have no memory of this section, but I must have played through it back in 2015 and then flushed it down the memory hole. It’s interesting that we both forgot this part.
Also, I guess Blackgate Prison keeps a psychoanalyst on call at all times, even at 2AM on Christmas Eve, just in case any nutters get dropped off and we decide to analyze them in the middle of the night for fun?
And I also guess that Harley Quinn wasn’t slowly turned by the joker after months of manipulation. Apparently she fell for him during a ten minute conversation? Okay then.
And while we’re bitching and moaning about things: This Bane fight SUCKS. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Origins #4: Grate Move!”
Like I’ve belabored already, I didn’t get to play a lot of stuff this year. My general impression is that this year is a lot like 2014, which was a generally “meh” year that didn’t have a lot of standout titles. Or maybe there were some great games and I missed them because I was distracted. Or maybe the games I played were great, but I couldn’t really get into them because I wasn’t feeling my best.
Ugh. Enough introspection. Whatever. I didn’t get excited about a lot of games in 2021, but I did manage to have a good time with a few. Here are the first four:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2021 Part 3: The Good Stuff”
Before I talk about my games of 2021, I want to circle back and talk about a couple of older games. I spent a lot of time with them this year, and I didn’t get around to writing about them at the time.
Let’s start with…
I think I spent about a month with the title, although I can’t be sure. I didn’t write about it at the time, and my post-hospital memories are a bit of a blur.
The campaign scenarios were mostly an exercise in frustration and tedium. Each map would be built around a single concept or disease. One map teaches you the importance of keeping people warm in a cold climate. Another teaches the importance of keeping the place cool and clean in a warm climate. Then you get one near a ski resort where you need to deal with lots of broken bones. Each scenario takes a few hours. So it ends up feeling like the whole game is one excruciatingly long tutorial, where 20 minutes of learning are stretched out over 40 hours of gameplay. Then to keep it challenging, the designers make your buildings small and inconveniently shaped.You can’t change the footprint of your buildings. You only get to decide how the interior space is divided up.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2021 Part 2: The Disappointment”
These streams I’m doing with Chris are turning out to be a lot of fun. We’ll be streaming again tonight at this time on the RamblePak64 channel. I hope you’ll drop in and say “hi”. We even have a bit of a drinking game going on:
I’m sure more will be added as we progress through the game. And speaking of cutscene incompetence…
This is a problem in a lot of games, but I find it particularly galling when it comes to Batman. His superpower is observation and preparedness, so a cutscene where someone gets the drop on him is a cutscene where he’s out of character.
This doesn’t mean Batman can’t ever suffer setbacks, of course. It’s just that the author needs to take care to preserve his character and not have him blundering from one trap to the next like your typical videogame protagonist. The first Arkham game – written by Paul Dini – handled this really well. Then the game developers thought they didn’t need Dini’s help and tried to write the stories themselves. As a result, Batman gets increasingly incompetent as the games go on.
For example, last week we fought Copperhead:
Let’s try to Paul Dini-ify this initial encounter with Copperhead. We can’t change the outcome of the battle, but let’s see if we can’t give Batman a little more agency.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Origins #3: Clowning in Cutscenes”
And here is the last Diecast of 2021. We even managed to clear the mailbag, so we can start next year fresh. Other content will continue as normal, but the Diecast is on hiatus until January 10th. Merry Christmas everyone!
Link (YouTube) |
This was not a great year for me. My health took a turn for the worse in May, and things sort of spiraled out of control from there. Eventually there was some surgery that went poorly, some drugs with bad side effects, some complications, and a small but permanent downgrade to my quality of life. And then just to keep things interesting, my wife was injured this August, right when she had a ton of stuff to do at work and I needed a lot of help at home.
I turned 50 this year, and I felt every bit of it.
My wife is back on her feet now and I’ve adjusted to my new condition, but still. What a year. I had several months where I didn’t really play much in the way of games, or I played familiar low-stress “comfort-food” style games. I’m pretty sure my Factorio series was cut short by the hospitalization. I seem to remember I had more posts planned, although I can’t remember the details now.
So this was a weird year. Normally I look over the industry and try to find a trend or theme to tie the year together, but I spent most of 2021 looking inward and not paying attention to the news. Did I miss anything important? Did Half-Life 3 finally come out? Did Rockstar announce GTA VI yet? Did a new MMO displace World of Warcraft? Did EA finish rehabilitating Anthem? What’s going on? What was the big story this year? I wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t know about any of that, but I do know I’m cold all the time and I suspect my blood pressure medicine is to blame.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2021 Part 1: I Need a Medkit”
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T w e n t y S i d e d
