I built my frist PC this year. “No, that’s not right.” Arthur helped me build my first PC this year. “Mmm, closer, but still not right.” Arthur built my first PC for me this year. “Ah yes. Perfect.”

Arthur built my first PC for me this year. It’s big and it sits on a desk next to my Akuma action figure and all the stuff on it looks really pretty. It has memory in it, a mouse, a keyboard… pretty much everything! I can play games on it, too. In fact, it’s what they call a “gaming PC.” Pretty cool, right?

My Steamy Year

Devil Daggers/Super Hexagon/Superflight

Life is all about balancing out your uppers and your downers. A good rule of thumb for me is two bumps, one hit, repeat. It may differ for some people, but physiologically everyone is basically the same, so it doesn’t matter.

First Bump: Devil Daggers

Imagine if you could play Geometry Wars but it was rendered in first person but also in a hellish void painted with Quake textures. Sounds pretty fuckin’ righteous, right? Devil Daggers is that. Twitchy, run based, score chasing, edge of your seat, demon-blasting action. Sounds…familiar, in some way.

Second Bump: Super Hexagon

This one is all about the tune-age, dude-age. Speedy, crunchy chiptune music set on top of a pretty simple gameplay frame where you move left or right to avoid walls as the music picks up and the camera spins to the rhythm. A wise man once told me “you can get something done well, you can get something done fast, or you can get something done cheap, but you can’t have all three.” Super Hexagon is good, quick, cheap bump. So that man is dumb and wrong now.

First Hit: Superflight

The game procedurally generates big blocky, rocky chunks of terrain while you float around the physics, fly really close to stuff, and just kinda…go, you know? It just feels good in your hands. Sometimes it really is that easy.

SUPERHOT/SUPERHOT VR

I think SUPERHOT is the smartest, coolest, hippest shit going. It kind of breaks my brain. These developers put so much thought into how the player interacts with the game in their reality that even if I could figure out what the fuck to say here, I shouldn’t. I think you should play this game.

SUPERHOT VR is its own separate thing that mostly ditches the main game’s more mindfucky meta-interactive elements and focuses on the fun as hell run-based gameplay part. You will look like a goddamn moron playing it in front of people, but you will feel like John Wick from The Matrix while you’re under the hood.

Redout

Redout asks the question “what if Wipeout was downresed and streamlined?” and dares to answer that question by being that video game. Smooth, slick, low-poly chrome with techno pumping and good-looking particle effects.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

This was probably the last Rockstar game I really got into. The novelty wore off the Grand Theft Auto franchise fairly fast for me and Red Dead Redemption hit me like a warm, wet fart. Not a cool, funny one that smells bad and makes me laugh, but like how most people would react to a warm, wet fart.

While the GTA formula has been hashed and rehashed and re-rehashed so many times by not only Rockstar, but also an entire generation of developers and studios, Rockstar will always have Vice City. Vice City is one of my favorite worlds to inhabit. It’s riddled with crime, drenched in neon, and Tom Sizemore is there. It feels over the top in a way that comes back around to be actually good. It’s grimy, jagged, loud and violent. I find the hallmark of good media is when every character is a selfish piece of shit. GTA: Vice City is filled to the brim with dirtbags, voiced by a cast of motherfucking ringers in the field of low rent crime fiction. A return to Vice City feels like the only thing at this point that would get me back into a Rockstar game. Everything else they’ve done just feels less than to me.

Astroneer

2019’s earliest DOOM of the Year contender. I found this early access game during my second bout with No Man’s Sky and it absolutely ate that game’s lunch. I decided to nuke my Astroneer save file so that I could go in fresh for the 1.0 update in December, only for it to get pushed back to February. Can’t wait to fall for this one all over again next year.

Faith

Faith is a game that reveals itself very organically. It’s a game that is patient with you if you are patient with it. The story slowly unwinds as you saunter around a Commodorian 64ian landscape while chunky, grimy synth chimes ring out. Faith sets a goddamn mood. From its campy ass voice modulation to its most excellent game over screen, Faith does so much with so little. I am in love with this game.

Dead End Road

This is another lovely little bite of simple, effective design. Dead End Road is such an immediate game. After its unsettling, obtuse opening, Dead End Road pushes you, tells you to run and reminds you not to blink. Its core concept is “get the fuck out of here.” It feels like everything from the psychological terror to the objectives in the road to the economy is left to a dice roll. These two ideas merge in a way that might sound frustrating but feels thrilling. It seems to position itself as a game that maybe can’t be beat, but its core concepts are executed so effectively that I can’t help but keep playing and keep wondering about where the road leads. I am in love with this game.

Her Story

A twisty, turny evidence room simulator that asks the question "is this really a video game?" You watch interrogation videos and let a lady tell her story. It's barely interactive but incredibly captivating and well worth its short runtime.

The Beginner’s Guide

There's a lot to unpack in this game about creators and their relationship with their work, their fans, and their fans' relationship with their work. It deserves another playthrough from me after I play a shitload of other games that I've been meaning to play.