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sparky_buzzsaw

Where the air smells like root beer.

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SparkyB's 2023 End of the Year Extravaganza

Well well well. It's been a minute, you sexy thing, you. How you doin'? You ready to get your mental guts churned by my sweet, sweet word lovin'? You'd better be, because I'm Sparky_Buzzsaw and you're about to cram a whole bunch of me into your brain cavity.

While Giant Bomb's community-focused side of things is slowly atrophying, I still have a lot of love for this place and the many, many friends I've made here. So here you go, what very well might be one of the last blog blasts from me here, so let's make it a good one. DJ! Give me an intro!

2023 sure was a weird year personally. I wound up with the beetus (honestly, it was a long time coming) but that led to me dropping nearly fifty pounds and now my blood sugar levels and all the other essentials are back in the normal range, so... maybe it was a blessing in disguise? I continue to peck out stories elsehwere, with nearly 900k published words this year, though a lot of it was experimenting with pen names and new genres, so there wasn't a lot of traction. That's all good, though. Forward progress is forward progress, and when it comes to being an indie writer, having a back catalogue is a good thing.

Now, gaming-wise, if you follow me at all, you know I hardly ever buy games in the year they come out, so my end-of-year lists are weird, weird things filled with games from yesteryear. This list will be no different. The most impactful purchase of my year is the new Steam Deck OLED, which was a huge splurge for me but very much worth it. The new screen is fantastic. The little extra room doesn't seem like it would make a huge difference but it really does. Being legally blind and being able to have a screen as close as I need it to be is a godsend, and it continues to be my favorite console thing of all time.

Now let's get to rambling about games, TV shows, and hot sauces, shall we? We shall.

Sparky_Buzzsaw's GOTY 2023

Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

This one probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. Trails in the Sky Second Chapter is one of my favorite RPGs of all time, with one of the best protagonists and a fantastic combat system I still rant and rave about. I love that stupid game. But somehow Trails of Cold Steel manages to nearly rival that game's loftiest heights, sticking to what makes the series work while introducing a fantastic Persona-esque link system with your comrades and side characters, and it somehow managed to survive almost the entirety of 2023 as the game that I loved the most, even if I played it all the way back in January.

Let's get this straight - Reen Schwarzer is no Estelle Bright. The main character is the series' weakest point, a bland, vanilla do-gooder whose personality is hinged upon a dark hidden power that's never really explored in any sort of interesting way, at least in this first game (no spoilers for the last two games in the series, please, I'm still playing through them). There's nothing about him that makes him relatable or human. He's the teacher's pet you kinda wish you could get away with bullying in school. He's the kiss-ass at work who always gets employee of the month. He is Japanese RPG Man, and ugh, he is awful.

But!

A turn-based RPG lives and dies in my mind on two things - the stories the game tells and the characters that make the world a living place. Cold Steel absolutely fucking owns TITS (seriously, that's the acronym, and God bless you for it, Japan) in that regard. Now, there's some serious grossness with the youth of some of the potential love interest characters, because uggggggh fucking JRPGs, but when it comes to character development and personalities, this is one of the most lovable casts of characters I've seen in a JRPG. Every one of them is given the time and love to develop into a fully-fledged character, with enough flavor at the beginning to help you differentiate who you want to focus on straight from the start. It's smart development.

Even the characters who aren't directly involved with you whacking monsters are fantastic. Sure, some of this stuff is wild anime nonsense - there's a famed general who rides around on the battlefield STANDING ON A TANK for fuck's sake - but I can't imagine trying to juggle a cast like this so successfully. It's crammed with quirky people I fell in love with by the game's end.

I liked the game's political intrigue too but be warned - that's a factor that takes a severe downturn by the end of the second game. The complexities of the political infighting largely fall away in favor of nonsensical character intrigue, which as I understand it might have been the result of budgetary issues and thinking there might not be a third game. I'm probably butchering that information but it's clear that the second game does not conclude in a manner that the first game and a half were leading up to, and the third game is so severe a disappointment so far that I haven't wanted to go back to it since June. It drops the entire main cast save for Reen in favor of new students, but it doesn't have the narrative legs to stand by its new cast. Instead, it keeps dropping the characters you wish would hang around from the old crew into a never-ending deluge of cameo roles and it makes me wonder the entire time why the new crew is necessary. They're barely given any time in favor of nostalgia, and if you know me, you know how much I hate nostalgia in modern media. We're drowning in that shit. It's the death of creativity and it kills my love for this series.

That doesn't change the fact that the first Trails of Cold Steel is some kind of magic. It's full of heart and charm and meaty RPG goodness. It scratches (at least temporarily) an political RPG itch while also giving me all the best Persona vibes in its link system. And best of all, it's simply a smart step forward into the realm of 3D RPGs from Trails in the Sky. Highly, highly recommended from me.

And one last thing I'll gush about - any time this song played, I stopped for a moment to listen. It's a gorgeous piece of music, and it's the single most memorable track of the year for me.

The Sauce Boss Returns!

Old El Paso Zesty Ranch Sauce

Usually this award is reserved for the best hot sauce I tried all year, but the only new-to-me hot sauces I tried this year were Cholula Tequila and Lime and Bravado Spice Co.'s Jalapeno and Green Apple. Don't get me wrong, both of those are good and really shine on pork or chicken, but they just aren't good enough to warrant praising them over my other culinary sauce discoveries this year.

This came down to Old El Paso's Zesty Ranch sauce and Taco Bell's Creamy Chipotle sauce. Both of these might strike you as odd choices, especially if you're a food snob, but Taco Bell's hot sauces have always been versatile, especially given the price (try dabbing some on a burger in the last couple minutes before it's done grilling) and its creamy sauces are one of the best bangs for your buck on the shelves. But Old El Paso's Creamy Ranch gets the nod from me. It gives tacos, burritos, tostadas, and nachos something extra, and you can use it as a pretty good dip, though I'd recommend adding it to something like regular ranch, as the bottles are pretty small. In a year that saw me having to switch to no-sodium tostada shells and wheat tortillas, anything new and flavorful helped save my appetite and this was a hgue part of that.

Best Surprise

Jagged Alliance 3

If you're not familiar with the franchise, Jagged Alliance has something of a history of disappointing its fans. Instead of creating decent turn-based tactical RPGs like its earliest iterations, for two decades, fans of the series had to sit through countless twatwaffles' ideas on how to recreate the series as eerything from an action stealth game with superpowers to a fucking dreadful live service game. It's one of the longest-running "what the fuck are you thinking, just give us a good version of the game we like" trainwrecks in gaming franchise history, right up there with the likes of Duke Nukem and Fable's later ill-advised changes to the formula.

Jagged Alliance 3 rectifies that in astonishingly good form.

Other people, namely ArbitraryWater's excellent recent GOTY blog, will tell you in smarter words than I can come up with why JA3's jokes and stereotypes are problematic, and I'm not here to disagree with that. Had that not been a facotr, this probably would have been a serious contender for GOTY for me. It's juvenile writing, but oh my GOD, the gameplay in JA3 is so good, and brings back everything great about JA2 (and maybe more importantly, the fan-made games that immediately followed).

Hireable mercenaries? Check. Creatable custom character with loads of perks? Check. Turn-based combat? Check. Grid-like map overworld structure? Check. Everything that has been missing is here, and it plays just the way you'd want a turn-based squad game to play in 2023.

It's not perfect. There's a central plot point about midway through the game that sends armies against you that seem to be unbeatable unless you've prepared and left your mercs in a special area, and that, frankly made me put the game aside for weeks on end. It is a stupidly jarring move to allow you to set up for such a thing and then have the contests be unwinnable. There's also some jank, like mercenaries I know should be hirable but aren't and some quests that can't be resolved if you do things in a wrong way. It could also use a broader variety of weapon types, but this and most of its problems are thankfully well addressed by the game's support of mods, which includes one of its smartest decisions. See, the game by default doesn't show you the hit percentages, which is something you'll get used to after a handful of missions, but the earliest maps are full of obstacles that look like you should be able to fire through them or you'll think you'll have an enemy flanked but really don't. With mods, you can turn back on those hit percentages. The devs even say, look, this isn't the way we intended for you to play, but we fully support you playing the game how you want to. And that's a really cool thing.

Plus, being able to mod the game and put the Expendables in there is pretty damn funny.

Best Job Simulator

Hardspace: Shipbreaker

Speaking of games where the devs clearly say "this isn't the way we intended the game to be played, but here you go," Hardspace Shipbreaker became one of my favorite games of the year when I finally got tired of having to play the game in shifts and turned that off. It leaves Hardspace as something of a Zen-like experience as you slowly dismantle ships and toss the pieces into the requisite space bins. It's an immensely soothing experience, and even when shit goes wrong - which it almost always does for me and my blind butt - you can generally still salvage a win out of the day.

The treadmill of upgrading your equipment is solid but I wouldn't have minded more to it, especially in terms of passie upgrades and abilities. There could also stand to be more of just about everything, as you'll cycle through the ships you can take apart very rapidly and after a while everything starts to look the same internally. This is all stuff that's not a dealbreaker, just something I'd love to see blown out in a future sequel.

This is very much a "put on a podcast, audiobook, or music" game and I love it for that. But it also includes a plot of sorts, played out through radio dialogues that are largely brief and inobtrusive, though the pro-union plot is perhaps a bit heavy-handed. Please don't take that to mean that I don't support unions or anything like that. It's not a political comment. But if you play the game, you'll understand. The anti-union boss is painted in such broad strokes as to be almost a clown, to the detriment of the game. There's just no nuance to it. There isn't supposed to be, I guess, but it's laid on way too thick.

I'm also not overly fond of the music. I think by now we need a serious moratorium on space truckin' cowboy music in sci-fi games, and this continues that trend. But it's easy enough to just turn off and listen to your own thing so it's a very minor quibble.

Best Fightin' Game

Street Fighter VI

Before I get into SFVI, let's talk Mortal Kombat.

I really love the actual fighting aspects in Mortal Kombat 1, especially the faster movement of the characters and moves, but it's a blatantly money-hungry game from top to bottom and suffers a lot from it. The Kameo system too is an annoyance - either give us a big Tekkn Tag Tournament/UMK3-esque game and throw balancing to the wind or focus on the characters available in the roster, but don't half ass it. And that roster is... yeesh. It's a sausage party and I guess Sonya and Cassie weren't invited. I'm as crushes as I'm sure the hentai music video crowd is, but it does feel like the roster is seriously lacking in mainstays. The plot is fine and resets the universe to a less chaotic time where allegiances are clearer and you're not having to refer toa flowchart to know who's dead, undead, or living. I like the early character work, especially with Kung Lao and Johnny Cage, but the story as a whole definitely feels rushed, particularly in its last act, which could have used a few more chapters to really play with its unique "getting the band together" idea. It felt like a project that had a great writer who then had to leave halfway through and his thirteen-year-old fanboy son took over, smashing his favorite characters together. I don't know. Stories about the game's development are weird, and it's hard to piece together what's true and what isn't, especially since video game journalism has become so reliant on following personalities rather than a website.

Ahem.

But the clear-cut fighting game winner for me this year is far and away Street Fighter VI. For starters, the smart introductory combat systems are a blessing for a guy like me who's all thumbs with this kind of game. I felt comfortable with my abilities against the CPU without feeling like I was greatly cheesing the game. And when I took the training wheels off, the friendly in-game guides in the World Tour mode did a wonderful job of teaching me mechanics I wasn't sure about.

It also feels fantastic. I have no particularly strong feelings about the cast, save that the new additions feel inconsequential, but unlike Mortal Kombat 1, pretty much all the characters you'd want to see are here. The create-a-character is delightfully weird, and I love that you can cobble together styles and special moves. That's a really cool feature.

The menus are a mess, and the hub stuff is interesting but largely impractical. That said, the World Tour mode is the best thing to happen to Street Fighter since SFII, and it is a BLAST. It's so gleefully stupid in its plot and characters and it knows it. It never once takes itself too seriously, though I wouldn't have minded more character development or some sort of coherency to its world design. The late-game difficulty is also a head-scratcher, leaving you more reliant on healing items you've earned throughout the game than actual skill because holy shit it gets tough. But it is a thoroughly enjoyable time, and most importantly, it lets me beat up mimes and golden statue men to my Grinchy heart's content.

Best "Real" Survival Game

Grounded

Don't play Grounded the way I did. Solo, the devs give you enough options to turn it into a playable game, but I insisted on not using those and trying to tough it out. That was dumb and I eventually gave up on it. But it's a game I fully intend on returning to in 2024, this time creating a custom game and giving it a real go.

But my solo experience aside, this is a remarkably well-made game that rewards exploration and out-of-the-box thinking. I think like most every survival game you can get yourself into trouble pushing too hard and too fast, and I have little quibbling issues with its base-building, the least mechanically fun aspect of the game. But it is undeniably a top-tier survival game in its moment-to-moment fun, fluid controls, and charming personality.

The Diet Survival Game You Never Heard Of And Which I Love Dearly

Dysmantle

Holy crap, Dysmantle is my Zen.

It's an isometric/top-down survival game without meters and easygoing combat that I deeply, deeply love for its simplicity. The focus is on environmental destructibility, breaking objects to make new tools and upgrades that will allow you to break even more objects and make even more tools. All this, while exploring a surprisingly big world and unraveling a mystery of just what happened to everybody in it.

Like with Street Fighter VI, it in no way takes itself seriously. The plot is light and mostly told over very short radio broadcasts and pop-up comments from the main character. This is not exactly a Richard Matheson novel brought to life. But the gameplay treadmill of unlocking new items and upgrades is so freaking good I don't care about the plot. Other than some late-game slow-down when its high-end resources require time to process, this is a game that shoves resources at you and tells you to have fun, and God bless it for it.

It could probably use a little more variety in all its aspects, particularly its environments. You'll see the same objects and same interiors so often that the destruction starts to feel stale midway through, and the enemy types are severely limited but the combat, again, is not the focus here. It's a really great game and stupid amounts of fun.

Good Vibes Award

Two-Point Campus

I love a good Sims-like builder and Two Point Campus definitely scratched that itch for me in 2023. For starters, unlike Two Point Hospital, it's fairly accessible, though admittedly some of its font work and UI is still a little on the small side. That was the biggest barrier to entry in the first game, and I know I'm not alone in that, especially given the poor contrast of font colors, which thankfully has been rectified here.

The game itself is pretty basic and fun. You're basically taking care of the needs of teachers and students alike, while carefully monitoring your expenses and average grades. Building rooms is a breeze, as is adding objects and moving around your professors. The menus are sharply done, that never sacrifice functionality for form (ahem, looking at you, Street Fighter VI).

It's easy to lose hours to the simple gameplay loop. The soundtrack is endearing and unobtrusive, though I do wish the music, school announcements, and radio DJs didn't repeat as often as they do. Those radio DJs are, generally, pretty delightful though and fit the tone of the game perfectly.

I don't really have any great in-depth analysis on this one. It's simply a good time and a good vibe, and for a game like this, that's more than enough.

The "No, Wait, It's Actually Good" Award

Harvestella

Listen, Harvestella is an impossible sell. With Rune Factory and Stardew out there, it makes zero sense to play this game because both of those do what Harvestella does so much better. It's like being offered up a plain cheese sandwich on Wonderbread when there's a Philly cheesesteak and a lobster roll on the same platter.

The combat is utter shit. It is bafflingly bad. There's no weight to hits - at all - just numbers rising up to indicate you've hit something. You have a limited number of combos and spells and abilities, none of which ever feel good. Grinding makes every combat encounter a cinch, and there's little challenge tot the entirety of the game. The job system is the best part about the combat but honestly it doesn't matter. Every class feels like garbage, just with slightly different skills.

Similarly, the crop raising part of the game is overly simplified to the point of feeling incomplete. You've got a tiny narrow strip of land on which you can plant or build machines that help streamline the process and net you more money by stuffing a crate full of stuff that gets sold automatically at the end of the day, like pretty much every other farm game in existence. There is nothing new here. At all. You have played all of this before.

But goddamn it, I love Harvestella.

A huge part of that is the shockingly good overarching plot. Once every season, a deadly fog rolls over the land and drives people indoors. Your character is basically trying to figure out how he both survived that mist and what causes that. It's a pretty basic setup but the game goes to some really crazy places, things and settings I won't spoil here but which make a deep exploration of the game completely worth it to me. It becomes something of a haunting experience, with some truly horrific implications in its latter half that left me eager to see the ending.

But man, is all that couched in one of the worst farming games I've ever played. I hope there's a Harvestella 2, but if there is, it needs a lot more time in the cooker because a second game with this kind of uninspired and frankly lazy gameplay is going to doom the series. That said, if you're willing to look past its faults (and I know that's not likely), there IS something truly special here. At the very least, this is me on my digital knees, begging you to check out the OST. It's stunning.

The Disgaea Award for the Best Disgaea Game of the Year

Disgaea 7

I like Disgaea 7 a ton, mechanically. I think it's the most streamlined the systems have ever been, mostly to its favor. It's the most forgiving and easiest to understand too, though this I think isn't to its favor. For example, shortening the Item World is a smart idea - no one has time for a hundred levels of those damn things. But by stripping items and Innocents of their abilities, it leaves very little purpose to the whole of the Item World itself, so why would I even bother with that?

It's also fairly grimy in its DLC decisions, making characters that would have been a playable part of the game in previous iterations instead wildly overpriced DLC. This is the way of the world, I guess, but it's pretty shitty nonetheless.

But I guess the most troubling part of Disgaea 7 is that it just doesn't have much of a soul. The characters, like 6, are mostly immediately forgettable and follow similar characteristics of previous games' heroes to a boring degree. It doesn't feel like anyone was invested into the story. It's not a bad game - in fact, if you like SRPGs, I highly recommend it for the mechanics alone. It's that good. But I wish as much care had been poured into giving it heart and charm as much as the mechanics.

Best Thing That Shockingly Didn't Suck

Twisted Metal TV Show

I loved this dorky take on Twisted Metal. It throws logic and sensibility out the window and aims for sheer fun every minute of its runtime. The focus is not on its car combat but on its characters, and at first, that seems like a bizarre choice but it works. Oh my God, does it work. Sweet Tooth is sheer perfection, Thomas Haden Church eats up every scene he's in, and Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz play off each other delightfully well. It crackles with life and vitality and it cracked me up to no end ("Harold! Did you do this?"). If you love the sort of silly hourlongs Syfy used to make jammed together with surprisingly witty writing, watch this show. It is fantastic.

Jello!

And the rest!

Here are the games I played this year worth mentioning for one reason or another but which didn't really fit into any special awards category. Give them a look!

Spider-Man/Miles Morales - Great games, gorgeously crafted, but bizarrely bereft of actual fun things to do. The lack of a rogues gallery left them feeling more like collectathons than an actual open-world game, which is a bizarre choice for a character with such a wide cast of enemeis. But if you like beating on a sea of endless goons broken up every five or six hours by a simplistic boss fight, these are the games for you. Also, FUCK the Mary-Jane stealth aspects, and what the serious FUCK were they thinking bringing that back for Spider-Man 2? The thing people most complain about and you tout it as being even better? The fuck is wrong with you, game devs?

Arcade Paradise - Another job sim type game that does some really fun things with the idea of owning your own laundromat and arcade by making the arcade games playable. Unforutnately, those are wildly hit and miss, and veer mostly towards the misses, but it's still such a great concept that I definitely recommend giving this at least a look.

Darkside Detective - Adorable bite-sized case files, simple point-and-click adventure gameplay, and a silly pixel aesthetic, what wasn't I going to like about these games? I do think the second game loses something in the way it recycles characters from the first, but both are still remarkably solid adventure games.

Necromunda: Hired Gun - A fascinating, fun idea hindered by a lot of jank, and I mean a lot. The levels needed a lot more polish, and upon revisiting them for future quests, you are sometimes so badly outnumbered and underpowered that the game stops being fun and becomes more of an exercise in trying to find ways of cheesing it. But if you like Shadow Warrior 2, give this one a look. It's the closest thing I can compare it to. Neat idea, generally fun, but goddamn, did it need more time in the oven.

Trails of Cold Steel 2 - A good game, and with some crackling good emotional moments in its first few hours, but overall it's dragged down by a final third that feels frustratingly over the top, unsatisfyingly inconclusive, and nonsensically twisty. Listen up, writers. Twists do not by themselves make your writing better. In fact, it can make it seem like you're farting ideas out instead of putting them to paper. This is a prime example of that. It's a good game, at least overall, but man, that last third was a huge let-down.

At least you can romance your hot-as-balls teacher though. That's something.

* * *

Okay, folks, I think that's going to do it for me for the year. I hope the site sees another year. I hope we get the community features we've been needing for a long, long time. I hope for Demi Rose and Abigail Ratchford to realize their undying love for me. But most of all, I hope you have an amazing 2024, full of health, wealth, and good times. Let's get together this time next year and have a digital beer together, huh?

Until then!

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SparkyB's Marvel Snap favorite decks

I think by now it's safe to say Marvel Snap is going to be one of my most obsessed-over games of the year. I'm not usually into deck builders or lane-based games, but for whatever reason, I'm both wildly entertained and actually pretty okay at Snappin'. I think it's mostly that you can build and play a viable deck from the get-go throughout the game's highest tiers that really appeals to me. Sure, you can buy the season pass and get another card, but at no point do you have to pay to win.

With that said, I should note before we get into my favorite decks that I did pony up for the Black Panther season pass, both because BP + Odin is a killer combo, but also because by that point, I put so many hours into the game that I wanted to support the devs. I've also put collector points into buying Green Goblin and a couple other characters, but I don't think you can actually pay real money for collector points. I could be wrong about that but you get them slowly through seasonal unlocks, so there's no need to buy them anyways.

I've organized these lists into my deck, and in parentheses, I'll note some suggested variations I've used on certain characters. As with any game of this nature, what you're really looking for is natural synergies, or at least a balance of abilities. I don't like destroyer or decks with a lot of movers, because those are largely the same decks over and over again with only minor variations. Instead, I like quirkier decks built to deal with a variety of situations, but these do have their weaknesses and are NOT guaranteed to make you some stud player. Even more important than your deck is anticipating what your opponent is going to play and where. That's most the fun of Snap for me. I have a collector level of 900, and the highest I've ranked in a season is 58 (so close to sixty it hurt).

And keep in mind too that how you want to play is generally going to do okay for you. If you're like me, you'll accumulate a lot of losses before you find a rhythm, but even that is fun.

Deck One - The All Arounder

Sunspot

Nightcrawler

Forge (Okoye)

Armor

Lizard

Ironheart

Mr. Fantastic

Rhino

Iron Man (Spider-Woman, White Tiger, and if you have Wong, definitely swap IM out for him here)

Black Panther (See above, also maybe consider Thing if you need power earlier)

Hulk

Odin

My All-Arounder deck is consistently my best performer. It's an odd deck - you very rarely see Forge or Mr. Fantastic being used by players above level 30 or so. There's a reason I keep Mr. Fantastic in the mix, though, and it's the same reason you'll see Nightcrawler in just about every deck I build. Sometimes you will get a location where you can't play cards, and both are great for that situation. I can't tell you the number of victories I've eked out thanks to Mr. Fantastic throwing a simple couple points into a location the other player can't reach.

Now Forge is kind of a personal preference for this deck simply because it's a guaranteed boost to characters I already know I'm going to play, whereas with Okoye, it's kind of debatable whether or not I'll actually use the boost she can give me. Rhino is in the mix to counter bad locations, and is also super handy against certain cards like Storm, although that's such a rarity I wouldn't put him in your deck for that sole reason. It's also sometimes fun just to be a nice guy and bust another player out of a situation like "You can only play one card here!" locations where they've already placed a card. Could you take advantage of that situation? Of course. Could you also play Rhino there and surprise them? Yes. I'm out to have fun here, not win every game.

On the flip side of that, Armor being in there is GREAT to lay down on a destroyer deck. Plus, it helps protect Sunspot, who's great to have around in any deck if you need to fill a chink with a few points, or have a deck with an obvious blank spot in power (a lot of mine eschew four-power cards, as this deck does).

The big three you're hoping for in this deck, and ones you'll want to put into the same location if you can, are Ironheart, Black Panther, and Odin. Black Panther + Odin gives you a ton of power., as Odin will double any On Reveal cards in that location, and Black Panther doubles his own power with his On Reveal ability There are decks that will have more potential power, but when you're throwing Ironheart into that mix, especially after she's already boosted your other characters once, it gives your other lanes a nice potential boost in power too, and can spell the easy victory for you more times than not.

The big problem with the deck is Iron Man and Fantastic, even if I praised Fantastic above. Odin doesn't double ongoing effects, but I like having Iron Man in the mix if I can't draw an Odin or if I'm going up against some super deck with, say, Wong (who I don't have) and Odin or a Moon Girl/Devil Dinosaur deck. If you have Wong, get him in this deck immediately, as you should with any deck centered around Odin and On Reveal cards. Wong will double all On Reveal abilities at that location, which DOUBLES Odin's effects. It's OP as hell.

Deck Two - I'm Feeling Like a Dick Deck

Elektra

Iceman

Nightcrawler

Lizard

Green Goblin (Scorpion, Cosmo, Punisher, Captain America)

Ironheart

Rhino

Thing

Black Panther (Shang-Chi, Polaris, Killmonger - if you go Killmonger, maybe swap out Lizard for Power)

Spider-Woman

Hulk

This deck is a nice blend of potential power with a lot of cards that'll harass and annoy your opponent. That said, it's a deck that mid-tier opponents are going to see coming a mile away.

The goal here is much the same as that first deck, but this time, you want to align Odin with Ironheart and Black Panther. Note that I didn't say Spider-Woman. She's your ace for another lane, along with that Green Goblin. Green switches sides and gives your opponent a nasty -3 card that can royally screw up their plans - if they don't drop an Odin on it later. What I like to do is play possum with one lane, filling it with Iceman, Nightcrawler adn either Elektra if they've got a one-power card in the open or Lizard if they don't. Then, when your opponent has a couple cards in that lane to secure it, drop that Green on them and quickly fill up the rest of your spots. If you can slide Spider-Woman in there, even better. That'll slap a big -7 on their cards in that lane, and while your power will be weak, hopefully you'll have that Ironheart/Odin combo to help boost your numbers.

That's a lot of what-ifs for a deck, and that's the biggest problem with this one. Still, when it works, it's a joy. I've included variations for Black Panther and Gren since those cards are relatively rare in the early game.

Odin Rex

Sunspot

Nightcrawler

Angela

Okoye

Armor

Ironheart

Nakia (Captain America, Punisher)

Moon Girl

Iron Man (Spider-Woman, Black Panther, any)

White Tiger

Devil Dinosaur

Odin

This is a great cover-your-bases deck with two core combos, not something I use a lot in my deck. These combos are Ironheart/White Tiger/Odin and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. If you can hit either one of those combos, you're gravy.

The early game, you want to focus on Sunspot or Okoye, Nakia, and Ironheart to bolster your numbers. If you have Sunspot and Amror, great, don't worry too much about using your two power cards. Sunspot will dominate a lane long enough for you to bust out one of those two combos above, which is when your real strategy will emerge. Moon Girl doubles the cards in your hand, which in turn bolsters Devil Dinosaur's numbers. And if she can get TWO Devil Dinosaur's, that's a rough hand to beat for your opponent. Meanwhile, you've got Odin, White Tiger, and Ironheart in the wings if that combo isn't available.

Iron Man is pretty dispensable in this deck, and it's the one I change the most, sometimes going with Cap, sometimes Punisher, sometimes Black Panther or Spider-Woman. I like Nakia in there for this one because you're having to rely on a lot of lower tier cards and they need that boost, but you do you, she's pretty disposable too.

The problem with this deck isn't actually your opponent, but bad locations. There are a number of locations that will limit the number of cards in your hand, and that wrecks the Moon Girl/Devil Dinosaur combination, as well as limiting your options with Odin. So, time and a place with this one.

And that's it!

Share your own favorite decks below. Anything I'm doing wrong, write it out in a nice, long reply, go get a glass of water, drink it, and then come back and delete that shit or unplug your keyboard and throw it out the window because I don't care. I'm not into min-maxing games or trying to have the uber-decks. I like decks that I want to have fun with, and these are fun.

Toodles!

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The slow see ya later

EDIT: Ah, I can't quit you, Giant Bomb. You're like my toe fungus. I can try to leave you behind, but we both know I'm stuck with you for life.

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Disgaea 6, and why it's both great and mediocre

Get on the funk pants, because it's time to groove to the sweet music my words are going to make in your brain. No. No, Gertrude, I said FUNK pants. Goddamn it, that's going to burn into my retinas forever and ever.

Disgaea 6! I planned on writing a big fun series on it the same way I did Disgaea 4 (and maybe other Disgaea games? I don't remember. Look, I've been on this site a minute and I forget the billion words I've written here). I was going to go chapter by chapter and write a blog for each, same as I did back then, except... I don't want to. The story is bad. And I don't just mean silly bad, like other Disgaea games. I mean, this game actively forgets what the hell it is, and swirls the drain so often on the same plot notes that writing about it makes me yawn. That could also be the cough medicine I confused for my diet Coke.

But I wouldn't be doing my due diligence on the site if your resident Disgaea nutbar didn't give Disgaea 6 some kind of write-up, because it's not a bad game. In fact, it's very good - if you're new to the series. But if you're a fan, well... let's get to that in a mnute. For now... DJ! Is your music machine still hooked up? Great! Play me some funk pants-worthy music!

Nope, Gertrude, it's still FUNK pants. FUNK. Oh sweet Jesus, someone get her off the table.

If you're new to the series, Disgaea 6 is pretty great!

For a new player coming into this series, Disgaea 6 is a fine jumping-off point. It doesn't have the depth or the character of 5 (or the reduced price when it comes up on sale, for that matter). But it is a completely accessible, new-player-friendly package that gives you the basics of a Disgaea game.

So if you are new, what is Disgaea? Well, it's a turn-based isometric strategy RPG, not entirely dissimilar in its combat to something like Final Fantasy Tactics, which might be a bad comparison, considering the last time we saw a FFT game, the mortgage crisis was about to teabag the country and fart in our faces for dessert. Some of you were probably still learning to use the potty while wondering why daddy and mommy were making voodoo dolls of the people in charge and trying to convince Cthulhu to take anyone guilty into the sweet annihilating embrace of its maw.

Disgaea is very hard to describe, because there are roughly a thousand mechanics at play, but at its core, it's a very simple RPG system. You bring out a squad of up to ten characters onto a grid-centric level, then take turns using attacks and special abilities like any other tradtional turn-based RPG to clear those maps of bad guys. Your characters level up and learn new abilities. When you're not battling through chapters of a very basic story, you muck about in a home base with things like buying new equipment and accepting new quests. Those "quests" are smaller, bite sized goals you can knock out along the way and earn some nice bonuses, like the game's various currencies or new abilities or even new classes.

You can, for all intents and purposes, create as many characters as you like, then if you want to give those characters new roles, you can "reincarnate" them into a new form. New to Disgaea 6 are a bunch of fresh new bonuses for reincarnating, adding a lot of fun to creating a mix of characters. You start from level one, but you're more powerful and you keep pushing forward.

In that way, Disgaea has always appealed to me. You can always make forward progress with enough blunt force. Can't beat a level? Replay an older one a few times and your characters may be overpowered enough to blow right through the one giving you trouble. You can also do things like level up your equipment by traveling into what's called the Item World, which is essentially hundreds of randomly generated levels you can blow through to level up a weapon or armor piece's stats.

Those are pretty much the basics. The appeal of the story up until this game has been the weirdness of it. You're playing denizens of hell, or a silly anime version of it, anyways. Disgaea characters tend to be morally loose, but generally aim towards doing the right thing. Disgaea 6 unfortunately ditches a lot of the weirdness in favor of a ho-hum story about a zombie seeking to stop the reign of terror caused by Gods of Destruction, an enemy so overused in this game you'll start to get bored by about the thousandth time you've killed one. Fortunately, all the story elements can be easily skipped, leaving the gooey gaming goodness that is a mainstay in the franchise.

That said, there are some problems, especially mechanically. For some bizarre reason, NISA decided to go a different route than the perfectly fine 2D-esque art from the PS3/PS4 era of Disgaea games and go instead for a chibi-look during combat and cutscenes that reminds me of the worst of the PS1 and DS era of chibi-everything RPGs. It's cool they're trying something new, but it is, frankly, a bad decision and a severe downgrade that also appears to come at the cost of many lost class types and special attacks. The stripped-down nature of Disgaea 6 shouldn't affect you if you're new to the series, but if you're not...

But if you're not, what the fuck happened to everything?

Okay, this section assumes you've got some experience with the series, or else I'd be here all week trying to explain the mechanics I'm about to grump about.

First off, here's some positives. Disgaea 6 is all about streamlining. I wasn't sure I was going to like the option to autoplay and autorepeat levels, but honestly, it takes a lot of the tedium out of the post-game and lets me grind while I'm working out or cooking. That's cool as hell. I'm also a huge fan of the reincarnation system, which essentially dilutes down the Chara World stuff that allowed you to give your characters new abilities into a more accessible system. Sharing experience between characters on a map regardless of if they've died or not is also great for power leveling a whole group of weaker characters, incentivizing me to use more of them this game than I would normally.

I like the Juice Bar in theory. This is a new mechanic that allows you to boost your stats (or juice them, get it?), your class levels (regardless of your current class), or your weapon masteries. It's a neat idea bogged down by the weight of another currency, and one with something of an obtuse nature. The karma and juice bar currencies are unnecessary, and with the juice bar, it's particularly egregious since you're also using the game's currency HL. That's right - you have to have two currencies to buy one thing. And the question is, why? What about the juice bar currency is fun? What does it add to the game except more irritation?

And that question, unfortunately, extends to the graphical "upgrade" I mentioned earlier. The chibi-style adds nothing to Disgaea 6, and winds up tanking my Switch if I leave the animations on. By the way, do yourself a favor and turn the visual settings to the middle, because the Switch clearly can't handle PS3-ish graphics for whatever reason - and right now, the game is exclusive. I have zero doubt it will be ported to PC, and that's the version I'd wait for if you do end up playing it. But I question why you would, especially with so much gone.

Gone are lifted attacks, the playful, silly, and mostly unnecessary abilities you could use when carrying several of your characters. Gone is monster fusing, and for that matter, half the monster classes. Gone are half the abilities, leaving a bare-bones yawn-fest of basics that, again, can't get too splashy because Nintendo powered their console with a fucking potato. Gone are the intricacies of the geo panel system, leaving the Item World feeling barren and boring. Gone too is the Item World piracy which... yeah, okay, I never really understood that aspect in the first place and it deserved to go, but it's still another in a laundry list of mechanics gone MIA.

Gone too, and this is the worst cut of all, is the charm and personality. I don't claim to like Disgaea for the story. In fact, after I play through each one the first time, I generally hammer that skip button like I do the like and subscribe button on every Demi Rose Youtube video. But this story is particularly bad in that there's no heart left. The hell trappings are gutted almost to an entirety, save for one overlord character written to an anime-trope T. The story is slavishly devoted to regurgitating plot ideas it JUST told you, circling through character stories every three or four chapters on the nose while also recycling their particular environments. I'm taking a guess here, but I doubt this is due to development time and more to do with the console they were unlucky enough to hitch their financial wagon to. A few more systems on top of what the Switch has to chug through, and I'm sure there would be smoke coming from its pores.

As it stands, I just can't see recommending this over Disgaea 5. D5 might not offer the same power leveling and character customization options, but it's much more of a complete package. Disgaea 6 feels like what it is, a half-cooked half-measure of a game that does just enough to sell itself as a strategy RPG but never quite lives up to being better than its predecessors.

I'm disappointed in Disgea 6 then, even as I'm having a ball power leveling and trying to get to that level 999,999,999 cap. It's a strange game because I genuinely do like it. It gets the gameplay right, and it makes the hook far more accessible by giving you tons of options to overpower your characters. But for whatever the reason, NISA opted to chop everything down to the bone, forgetting that those arteries connect to the game's heart. That's a damn shame.

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Sparky's 2020 Prodigiously Girthy Awards Pageant

Oh hey there. Are you tired? Because you've been Ghostrunnin' through my mind.

Motherfuckers, it is time. Time to get yourself a Yoo-hoo and a frozen burrito. Time to unbuckle that belt and lay back on your favorite filthy anime full-body pillow. Hold your breath, make a wish, count to three, then come with me to a world of puerile imagination. I'm gonna take your mind out the same way I did your mom - treat it to a nice dinner, some scintillating conversation, then kiss its cheek in a gentle farewell of gentlemanliness before getting called back to do unspeakably horrible things together on a bed of your childhood toys. I've got Ninja Turtles in places you don't want to imagine.

It's awards time.

DJ. Play my music (if the YouTube embedding feature is fixed this year).

Bangin' "Hot Sauce" of the Year

I have hot sauce in quotation there for a reason. This year's bangin' hot sauce is definitely more of a sauce than hot, so much so I almost disqualified it on account of it being more like barbeque sauce - maybe because that's what its makers are better known for. That said, it's the best thing I've been putting on burritos, tacos, and potatoes all year, so this year's hot sauce award goes to...

Stubbs Green Chile Sauce!

There's practically no heat here, so if that's what your'e after, you're going to want to accompany Stubbs with a little extra kick, be it through peppers or extra hot sauce on the side. But for my money this year, there's been no better sauce than this one. It's a little sweet and damned flavorful, unlike most green sauces out there. It's also pretty easily available, which has been a big bonus this year in particular. It also mixes extremely well in chili, soups, and cheese sauces. I've really liked it in mac and cheese and as a dipping sauce for chicken strips.

The Questionably Best Game I Played in 2020

Rage 2 probably wouldn't have made my top ten in another year. It would have been close, but I think the underwhelming story would have knocked it clear.

That said, I haven't played a lot of games this year. According to my 2020 list here on Giant Bomb, I barely played over ten, which sounds right. There isn't enough quality games on there to even make a top five for the year, let alone a top ten. Rage 2, then, by default, wins simply because it's probably the least problematic game I played all year. Valhalla is fun, but too buggy at the moment to recommend. Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry will have its own special award later. Ark was a pleasant surprise but ground my PC to a screaming halt every time I played.

My only real problem with Rage 2 was the save system, which felt archaic and broken right from the start. The story is also bland, with some cliched characters and less zaniness than you'd expect given the way the game was marketed. But overall it's a completely solid open world game, with all the side activities you'd expect in such a thing. It's a time waster, a pleasant one that never aspires to be anything more than that. And this year, that was enough.

The Best Album of 2020

For the first time I can remember, I'm allowing a tie here because it's a dogfight. Sorry's 925 came out so early in the year, with most of its singles debuting in 2019, that I almost forgot it was released this year. It's smart, pulpy rock, sort of a dreamier, less produced version of Garbage that I freaking love. There's an uncomfortable haze to their videos too, a sleepy uneasiness that appeals to the writer in me. Starstruck and Right Round the Clock are straight up terrific songs, and if you like them, check out the rest of the album.

But then there's the 800 lb. gorilla of July Talk's Pray for It. It lacks the snappy hits and highs of their self-titled debut and Touch, but I honestly think this may sneakily be their best album to date. It's a slow, introspective, full-bodied thing, quietly vulnerable, shy, and smarter in its writing than the previous two albums. I had to listen to it a couple times before I realized how much I liked it.

The Game I'm Stunned I Really Liked Despite the Mountain of Shitty Jokes

I went into Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry expecting to come out of it punching myself in the face for playing it. I am an unapologetic fan of the first two games of the series, and like most of the others in the series proper at a distance right up until the series went 3D. This is, thankfully, more of a nod to the original two games with some smart updates. Deaths don't matter, for example, and the puzzles make much more sense. There are still some occasional hunting and pecking problems, particularly with a ring in a fountain that escaped me for the better part of an hour. But this is, strangely, one of the better straight-up point and click adventure games I've played since The BUTT 2. I won't spoil anything, but it's willing to get weird in a way that's really refreshing.

That said, it is problematic, and anyone going into it should know there are some jokes in terrible taste, particularly when it comes to trans people. The sequel also falls into the trap of including more puzzles for the sake of padding out its length, and includes a labyrinth sequence that makes its claims about the number of environments in the game highly suspect. The second game also unfortunately makes the decision to ditch its "hold the spacebar and see the hotspots" mechanic in the areas when you'd need it most, like a portion of the game where you're using a telescope to seek out the clues about where your lost love has gone.

These games have problems, then. But if you can work through the ill-advised portions of its humor, then you'll find a completely solid pair of adventures.

Sparky's Movie of the Year (and It Actually Came Out in 2020 Too!)

I wasn't expecting an Andy Samberg vehicle to knock my socks off, and that's unfair. After all, I really like him in a lot of things, particularly Hot Rod and Brooklyn Nine Nine. But Palm Springs is one of the smartest comedies I've watched in a long, long time, since maybe I Love You, Man.

The basic plot, which is a reimagining of Groundhog Day with a much more grounded romantic sensibility to it, is heightened by sharp dialogue and a bleak existentialism shattered by Cristin Milioti's brilliant character. Seriously, despite the absurdity of the "why" of her character getting sucked into Samberg's problems, her character is one of the best female leads of a comedy, full stop. How she fixes their situation by the end of the movie is terrific. A lead actually using their brains rather than some schmaltzy romantic deus ex machina is a fantastic take on things.

I didn't watch many movies this year, but of the ones that I did, this and Shazam were real delights.

TV Show of the Year

Letterkenny sometimes suffers from its own recycled jokes and lack of character changes, particularly when it comes to its Goth meth guys and the hockey broskies, but overall it's a sharp-witted show with a core of central characters that I really love. It doesn't hurt that the low-budget and small-stakes storylines allow the focus to remain on the back-and-forth mile-a-minute jokes, which again are best delivered by its core four characters. It's a show best taken in small doses, but a couple episodes here and there and it's one of the best comedies on TV.

Also, a special mention to Stumptown and High Fidelity, gone far too soon.

(Shoutout to @sweep who shared that last song on Twitter)

Book of the Year

I've talked before about my love for Emily St. John Mandel's brilliant Station Eleven, which somehow took the apocalypse by plague and crafted it into a beautiful character study of hope and farewells. It's without a doubt one of my favorite books of all time, and this year's Glass Hotel cements Mandel's place as a writer of simple, beautiful prose and characters so real you want to grab them and hug them.

This is another character study, this time of a young woman caught up with an investor running a Ponzi scheme in 2008-09 and the characters they touch upon along the way. It is, in its own way, more haunting than Station Eleven, in that these people are more ethereal. Every person in Station Eleven mattered, while in the Glass Hotel, every person is simply part of the machinery of the world. Vincent - the young woman at the center of the story - is a brilliant protagonist who feels as real as you or me.

There are a lot of interesting parallels to Station Eleven, as this is, in fact, a parallel world to that one, with several characters getting a moment from that novel in this one. But that's almost unnecessary. This is a book all its own, one of people searching for connections even as they skim across the shallowness of their lives. It is stunningly good.

Hon. mentions include S.A. Cosby's Blacktop Wasteland, a gritty, fast-paced crime novel; Robert Brockway's Unnoticeables, a trilogy of sharply comedic horror novels and David Wong's Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick, which is a futuristic comedy actioner.

Entertainers and Website of the Year

Giant Bomb has been killing it this year. I've been tuning into more content than ever before. Trucking. Drumming. I've even been enjoying the hell out of some Nancy Drew. We needed distractions and they were provided plentifully.

And the Giant Bomb crew proper aren't the only ones who deserve credit here. The forums have been a quiet, calming place this year (at least from the outside - I'm sure the mods have been working overtime). GB Infinite is still the place to come and spend a few minutes chatting when I'm not working. The community is still, impossibly, one of the best on the Internet. This year, that's not just hyperbole, but the truth. I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming in 2021, starting with the GOTY awards. Much love to everyone on the site. You're all the best.

And that's it!

I know it's brief this year. I'm drained. You know why and it doesn't need to be said here. We have a lot to hope for in 2021, a lot of rebuilding to do, and a lot of sweat, blood, and tears yet to be shed. So let's do it, and make this the year of the comeback.

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Merry Christmas

Yeah. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Or just a "have a nice Friday," if you prefer. Raise a glass or a bottle or a can of whatever you got. Here's to a moment of peace and friendship. We made it through the fire. Fuck 2020, bring on 2021. Love to you all.

From your pal, my pal, everybody's pal,

Cam

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The 2019 Sparky Game Festivus Extravaganza

Hello, and welcome to the Sparky Buzzsaw Blog of Yearly Bullshittery.

It's pretty typical at the start of these things for everyone, myself included, to say, "Ugh, that sure was a year, huh? Well, video games." We don't like to get into the specifics of why the year sucked. We don't want that kind of confrontation. Well, motherfuckers, dig out that tin of popcorn you got for Christmas. Because if you're one of those people out there bending the world over a barrel, I'm not about to go out like some punk without giving you a pair of middle fingers.

2019 sucked.

No, that's not big enough. Let me try again.

2019 sucked shit out of a tin shit can with a shit straw.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that better. Let's print it, boys and girls.

Listen. We are now fully immersed into a slimy reality Jacuzzi full of fear, intolerance, and ignorance. On every possible side, be it political, religious, philosphical, or moral, we aren't just shouting at the other side. We're warming up the barbeque next to that Jacuzzi and preparing to roast the flesh of those who disagree with us. And that isn't just the people on the opposite side of whatever made-up aisle we believe we're on, because social media or a news corporation tells us we are. We're going after our friends, our allies, anyone who doesn't slide easily into the same beliefs and values that we hold.

We can't live like that. We aren't living like that.

We are consumed now by anger, by apathy, by fear that if we speak out we're just going to be shouted down by an amorphous, constantly shifting "them." All this fire, all this shouting, all this anger is creating wild pendulum swings driven by fearmongers and sycophants who will say or do anything to feed upon the prejudices of their audience or their followers. We are now living in a world where paranoia has begun to build a hateful symbol of oppression and greed in the wall between the United States and Mexico. It has allowed for the entrenchment of values that will lead to one of the most ill-planned, ill-reasoned political and economic shifts in Brexit. It has led to the left, right, and center all feeling hopeless and enraged, two of the most dangerous feelings to have. It has led to fervent racism disguised as patriotism. It has led to idealists chopping off their fingers for the supposed sake of the hand. All this, and more.

And another election cycle is at our U.S. doorsteps. 2020 does not look to be a pleasant year.

But as individuals, we can try.

We can try to engage in discourse, not shouting. We can try to educate ourselves. We can try to work through the emotions that have derailed the world for the last four years. We can lead by example. We can open our doors, welcome neighbors, give not just money, but our time and hearts to those who need. We can try to raise all ships, not just our own leaky vessels. Is it going to suck? Yeah. Extremes are always going to be extremes. There will be no changing some people. But you also cannot stop a fire by feeding it logs and gasoline. Well... unless you're getting out in front and doing a prescribed burn, but that just completely wrecks the metaphor. Look, you get the point. The answer to everything cannot be us lashing out, or shouting at someone. Put simply, quit feeding the trolls, and they'll eventually starve.

Just... aim to be better. That's all. That's what I want to try to do in 2020.

Anyways. You're not here for a morality lesson. You're here to discuss the travesty and censorship of Tifa's boobs in 2020. You're here to listen to me talk a good game about hot sauce. You're here for mothafuckin' video games. So let's have some of that, huh? DJ! Play me some goddamn 2019 bangers!

EDIT - Uh... I seem to have broken the blog by inserting videos, so pretend I've got some great music going on in the background. Wheels on the bus go round and round! Round and round!

Buzzsaw is ready... to discuss his game of the year.

It's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

"But Sparky," you say with a sneer, puffing on your pipe and flicking a bit of lint off your shoulder, "that's not a game from 2019."

Well... duh, Mr. Snootypants. I very rarely play enough games from a current year to fill out these lists, so I generally make it fair game to include games from previous years. After all, they're not any worse for being older, and hey, it might inspire someone to go back and play something.

Odyssey consumed my free time for nearly a month and a half. Sure, I played a few little things in that time, but by and large, I was stuck in Kassandra's universe, stabbing the everloving poo out of some equally stabby mercenaries and cult leaders. This is a huge game, and while saying it's full of stuff to see and do would be a lie - a great big portion of the land feels empty and unnecessary - it's full of enough to have kept me happily occupied for the largest chunk of this year. I love the new RPG mechanics, equipment, and the combat systems. This refresh of the series has made me extraordinarily happy, and I've been thinking about revisiting it since I played it, a bit of a rare feeling from AAA games for me these days.

But what about my favorite game from this year?

Life is Strange 2 came awfully damn close to being my GOTY this year. I'm a huge fan of the previous Life is Strange games, and will regularly feature them on my top games not just from this generation, but of all time. Life is Strange 2 doesn't quite hit their highs, but it's still a phenomenal story-driven adventure game. And with its theme of brotherhood, survival, and enduring racism, it’s both poignant and timely.

If you're the sort who maybe lays in bed with a bottle of Jurgens thinking about the border wall while humming America the Beautiful, this might not be the game for you. It deals with racists in several chapters, and it's never coy about the horrors of these cankerous butthole blisters. The Diaz brothers' escape to Mexico is filled with tense, ugly moments reflecting on our current political clime, and those are among the game's best scenes, aside from the touching personal one-on-one conversations between the Diaz brothers and a couple other individuals.

The game does have some serious faults. The entire third episode is a huge misfire, and the game as a whole often sacrifices its best relationships in favor of telling much broader stories. Life is Strange has always been at its best when it boils down to personal moments. Life is Strange 2 has a few of these scenes, and they're generally excellent. But it often tries to ensconce its characters in scenarios that they frankly don't need. It could have been a brilliant story of two sons of an immigrant runaways on the run trying to look out for each other and the dangers that entails, and instead devolves frequently into cartoonish moments painting redundant pictures of a sickened America.

It's also unfortunately not helped by a lead actor deadset on one whiny voice for the whole of the game. Considering the voice acting of the leads in the previous games was one of its best draws due to its breathless overeagerness and hamminess, this misses the mark by a mile.

All that said, it's still a remarkably good game, and head and shoulders above most of what else is out there, save for its own predecessors. It's a must for fans of the series and anyone looking for a better-than-average story in games.

The return of the hot sauce of the year award because no one asked for it

I'm a gentleman of refined taste, and by "refined taste," I mean I like everything I eat to taste like fire and death. But this year's favored hot sauce isn't actually a super hot one - it's Cholula's Sweet Habanero. I've only just started trying it over the last month or so, and I'm a big fan. Sweeter hot sauces can be kind of hit or miss, especially if they don't blend with the hotter elements well, but this is a nice blend of both, and tastes great on chicken and pork in particular.

The tablet game of the year

Believe the hype on Grindstone. It's the most addictive puzzler I've played for a long time, and it's made with such a general high quality that it's hard not to fall in love. That it doesn't have any microtransactions is a bonus. You're basically chaining like-colored pieces on a grid to kill enough mobs to open a door. It's a simple format made slowly more complex by introducing gameplay elements at a drip, giving the player plenty of levels to work through. It does have some technical issues - the game frequently crashed on me when I left the game's hub bar where you buy health and new skills. But that's a very minor quibble, and the game is damn near perfect otherwise.

Big shout-out to Neo Cab too, which puts a fun twist on the "fighting future corporate overlords" trope by telling a simple story of a woman trying to make ends meet in a world set on leaving her behind... or so it seems. It's a neat game, and I like the emotion meter in theory, even if it sometimes feels a bit like babysitting. It's a game I definitely want to revisit and finish at some point. I love a game based around conversations, and that's almost entirely what this is.

The "I watched very little relevant to 2019" award

I find myself watching less and less TV and movies these days, but I did get a chance to watch the first season of Daybreak and didn't hate it. It's a show I sometimes have conflicting feelings about, often all within the space of just a few minutes. It intersperses moments of great fun and smart writing - the RZA-narrated episode is a highlight - with really dumb moment to moment choices. For example, it does that winking thing where it says, "Oh gee, don't you just hate it when a story ends on a cliffhanger?" and then ends on a cliffhanger. Listen, creators, being self-aware doesn't excuse you from making shitty plot decisions.

That said, it's generally a blast. I love that it's so willing to play with its own premise in order to tell a better story, and generally completely ignores logistical problems of a post-apocalyptic world in favor of its goofy characters and premises. I am looking forward to seeing more of this world.

2019's biggest disappointment that will somehow still wind up being in my GOTY list

Boy. Borderlands 3. I'm not sure where to begin with this one. Randy Pitchford seemed determined the entire year to down bottle after bottle of prune juice and just keep shitting down his pants legs, but with the announcement of Borderlands 3, I still hoped this game could be the sequel I wanted to one of my favorite games of all time.

It came out. I played it. And I deleted it.

That's kind of a big deal to me. I must have put over 200 hours into various versions of BL2. Borderlands 3, with its fantasatic gameplay and plethora of guns, should have been a lock for me to play well into 2020, at least. But at every turn, Gearbox seemed intent on wasting every bit of creative ingenuity that Tales from the Borderlands set up. Entire characters have just disappeared from the game's lore. The ending of Tales has vanished (though the death of a character is still canon, a choice I didn't think they'd actually go with). Someone at Gearbox sure seems intent on making sure Handsome Jack's name is in everything Borderlands from here until eternity. One of the best characters in the series, Rhys, has become a joke whose big plotline is that he's... obsessed with his mustache. No joke.

I'm not going to get into specific spoiler territory, but the game follows the beats of 2 almost slavishly, a decision no doubt made after the failure of Battleborn. There's a wild lack of creativity, of heart, and it makes playing the game actively dull. Ice-T's character is the sole standout in a sea of blandness, and the new teenage character is unforgivably awful and cliched in every possible way.

Bad decisions now also extend to the UI, which is so tiny it's impossible for me to read. The new guns and skill trees are okay, but Gearbox has already gotten out there and said they don't plan on DLC characters, which means Fiona and Sasha's absence isn't going to be remedied, a decision that fucking sucks, as they were among my top choices of characters of this generation. There was a lot of anger over the voice actor situation, but honestly from a fan perspective, I didn't mind the new voice actors.

Borderlands 3 doesn't suck. If it did, it would be easy to write off. But as it stands, the best-in-class gameplay is mired in such yawn-inducing shit that it's hard to recommend. As it stands, it's my firm chocie for my most disappointing game of the year.

Best surprise of the year

Horace is one hell of an unassuming game. On the surface, this appears to be another hellish platformer with the tried and true "spin a room upside down" mechanic. And really, that is what the gameplay entails, so if that turns you off, you might want to avoid it. But stick with me here, because Horace is also a terrific story of a robot and his beloved human family, full of loving references, clever jokes, and bizarre plot shifts I absolutely love. This would have been a top game of the generation if it was a simple, pure adventure game. I'm almost certain of that. The gameplay isn't terrible by any means, just overly difficult at launch (but has since been patched to be easier). And that difficulty gated the best part of the game - the vibrant story.

Give Horace a go. Please. It deserves more love and praise, and I promise you, there's a beating heart here unlike anything else that came out this year.

Best book I read this year

Alma Katsu's The Hunger takes the Donner Party expedition and turns it into a supernatural tale of horror I wasn't expecting to affect me as much as it did. It's also a pleasant head-hopper of a horror novel, something I've been itching for. There's a fine grit hidden underneath the unassuming early conversations between the party members, and waiting for the powder keg to eventually go off is just as much fun as the horror elements. Give it a read if you like horror or alternate history blended with genre fiction.

And that's going to do it for me!

Thanks for reading. Hope your 2020 is full of peace and prosperity. Don't let the world beat you down. Find a bit of happiness day to day. Have as many pina coladas as you can. High fives, cool person.

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On Being Ugly

Hey there! My name's Cameron Lowe, and I'm about to throw myself under a bus. This is me:

Ugh, I know, right? Jeez, what a loser.
Ugh, I know, right? Jeez, what a loser.

Right! I'm four hundred pounds. Sometimes it's a lot less depending on the year I'm having, sometimes it's more, but it usually winds up being around that mark. I used to be six foot even, now I'm five eight. I have glasses thicker than just about anyone you'll ever meet, and I can't use contacts or get eye surgery due to the unique nature of my severe astigmatism and eye problems, leaving me a really handsome motherfucker, especially combined with my Mr. Potatohead face.

Let's go over some things you're not seeing in this picture. FIrst, you can kinda tell that my head is tilted forward. That's due to ankylosing spondylitis, a disease that has left my back with an unnatural curve. Not only does it help make me even fuglier, but I get the joy of living my life permanently staring at chest level, which leaves me, already the fattest hunchback of Notre Dame you've ever met, looking like even more of a creeper.

Also on top of that head is a knob of bone and flesh, a leftover from skull surgery as an infant. There's a half-foot long scar running down my head, hidden by my one and only good feature - my hair (and yes, it's all natural - rawr). I have scale-like crusting all along the insides of my legs due to a pelvic injury I suffered about a year and a half ago. My toenails are regularly not clipped because I can't reach them, and there sure as hell isn't much going on below the belt. Sorry, long-time fans. I hate to disappoint you on that end.

I was bullied about all this and more for years. Not easygoing teasing either. I mean, full-on me sitting naked in a locker room crying with a fractured rib from the beating I just took from bullies because I couldn't fight back kind of bullying. Me screaming for help from other guys when I was getting the shit kicked out of me the next week kind of bullying. The kind of bullying that maybe sends you into a lifelong spiral of near-depression and a self-loathing I'll never recover from. That kind of bullying.

Yeah. I don't much like myself. And that's just for the physical reasons.

Why bring all this up? Why the holy hell would I make myself a target like this?

Well... because I want people to be better. And because of this:

No Caption Provided

Now look. I completely agree Cate Blanchett is a stunningly talented woman and incredibly beautiful. But calling out her husband like this is frankly an astonishingly petty move, especially from someone from whom I'd expect anything but comments like this. It's vindictive. It's a low blow. If this guy looks like a statistics teacher, what do I look like? What does any person considered to be ugly look like?

There are a lot of reasons to dislike a person. You want to dislike me because I'm an asshole, buddy, I agree with you a thousand percent. But this guy has done literally nothing to deserve this. Maybe he's a great guy. Maybe he's the nicest dude on the planet. Maybe he's just someone Cate Blanchett enjoys spending her days with, and her him. Or maybe they don't need a reason at all to be in love and married. Maybe that's their life, and maybe the surface-level bullshit you're judging him on doesn't actually matter.

This bugs me. This really bugs me. I've been single now for ten years. Ten freaking years. I've had a few dates here and there but that's about it. And why? It's not because women perceive me as ugly. There are loads of fantastic women out there who judge a man based on his character and strength, not his looks, and I greatly look forward to falling deeply, stupidly in love with one of them someday. I'm single because, quite honestly, I don't see myself in any good light. Part of that is personal - I am a bundle of stunted human emotions wrapped up in a bunch of life failures - but at least half of that is from the way I've perceived myself since the earliest days of my bullying. I am an ugly man. And while I can't really go back and give myself the confidence I need to even approach a normal relationship, I can at least try to stand up for a stranger (even if he'll never read this or care). And I can say this - we can be better than this.

Thanks for reading.

72 Comments

Lockdowning the E3 prediction game

It's that most magical time of the year. No, it's not your bimonthly call from your STD doctor giving you an all-clear. No, it's not the birthday you'll spend alone smashing discounted storebought cake into your mouth because it's the only thing left that gives you feeling on a day that means absolutely nothing to you anymore. No, it's not new underwear day, although hey, it could be both - treat yourself. Personally, I rock Fruit of the Loom Big Man Premium boxer briefs, the Cadlilac of swaddling asses.

It's something far more spectacular, magnificent, splendiferous than that. It's E3 in a week, mothafuckas!

DJ! Play me some sweet jams to set the mood! Somethin' rockin, somethin' kickass! Play me that goddamn George Michaels shit Gerry Rafferty business because Deadpool already did the George Michaels joke!

PREDICTIONS!

I have 'em. You have 'em. Let's talk 'em.

First, Giant Bomb E3 hero of folklore and myth @marino has made a super handy Google Doc showing you - yes, you - what times you can expect all the E3 conferences big and small, no matter what time zone you live in. How he comes up with this voodoo, I have no clue. I suspect he spends the months up to E3 bathing in the blood of ritualistically slaughtered chupacabras as the beginnings to some sort of spell, but that has not been confirmed at this time. Check out his swelling, pleasing, so-big-you-won't-be-able-to-comprehend it document here and come away one satisfied customer. I know I did. Rowr.

EA

EA's taken some of the fun out of their conference by announcing their scheduled lineup. That sounds boring on paper, but think about it this way, fellow Americans - no more tearing our nose hair out of sheer boredom when soccer, arguably the world's worst sport behind baby lawn darts, is discussed. Here's their schedule.

In any case, nothing here seems too surprising. With them making some power moves with the Sims lately, that seems like it has the most potential to see a major announcement during the stream, but I doubt we're likely to see a new Sims game. I think they're getting out ahead for a reason, and we're very likely to see EA stay strictly to this lineup.

Microsoft

Microsoft announced fourteen exclusives would be showing up at their conference this year. That's a big coup, especially since Playstation's fucking off and not doing an ill-advised fifty-eight theater walking tour for ten minute promos of its upcoming games. Seriously, Sony, making video games people walk? What the fuckity fuck?

This is, in my mind, the conference to watch. I'm going to guess Microsoft casually announces the working name of Xbox Deuce Point Five or whatever numbering convention thye've randomly picked this time, but doesn't show the hardware. I'm also going to guess that with their continued push towards backwards-compatibility across multiple systems, all games announced will be available for both the current Xbox One and its successor the Xbox 6969YOLO420BlazIt.

Please, Phil Spencer, make a Sparky's dream come true and name your machine that.

Right. Games! Fable 4. That's it. That's all they have to announce. And it'd better be a goddamn proper Fable game, or... or... or... I won't really care. Seriously, there was one great game, one good one, and those happened so long ago all I can rally remember fondly is the cool waypointing system. But this is, potentially, the next Xbox's selling point. It would be a huge tentpole for them this year with no Sony conference and most everyone else in a holding pattern until the new consoles.

We're going to see something from Halo Infinite, but I doubt it's still more than a tease. It seems like Halo Everything on PC will be the focus for the franchise, and that's perfectly great. Reach was awesome, and I will still continue to brag I'm the world's best Warthog driver when there is absolutely no empirical evidence to suggest I'm even the 1,000,000 best. That's 'millionth" to those of you who passed third grade math so your principal could afford a brand new leather chair on which he is very definitely not sitting and looking at fucked-up porn while talking to your mother about your bad behavior.

We're also likely to see some Outer Worlds DLC exclusivity and maybe a tease of whatever inXile and Obsidian have coming down the pipe. Outer Worlds will continue to give me hazy, pleasant feelings in my mental underpants.

Gears will make an obvious appearance. There will probably be overly muscled bros and brosettes broing. Wow, wild prediction.

What else, what else? Indies. Indies are a hugely safe bet for exclusives. Geometry Wars, maybe. A Playdead platformer experience. I'm gonna throw out a wild card and say Stardew Valley 2. That'd be a cool announcement.

Bethesda

Bethesda will be, first and foremost, focused on disposing of its shit-stained sheets. I thought they might gloss over Fallout 76, but they just had Todd Howard out in the wild saying gamers who play it now would be pleasantly surprised. Unless they turned Fallout 76 into a unicorn and rainbow simulator, I really don't think he's on the mark with this statement, and it feels like a pre-emptory probe to set up a DLC announcement. Fuuuuuuck. That said, though, I fully expect them to say on stage there will be another traditional Fallout game in the future and to stay tuned, because no one likes having to sleep in poo-crusted beds.

Doom Eternal and Youngblood will continue to be things. I like those franchises well enough but can't really get too excited over what are likely asset regurgitations for a bit of quick cash before the new cycle of consoles. That said, I genuinely hope they're spectacular. Hell, I hope every game ever is spectacular, for that matter.

Starfield should be the highlight of their conference, with at least an explanation of what it is, if not a major demo. I think the time is right for them to launch a new RPG in 2020, something probably early on PCs with a new console launch whenever those happen and the house of Howard is confident they won't break the machines ala Playstation 3.

Will there be anything else? Blades, probably. A new Fallout Shelter seemed likely last year, but now I gott imagine they're gun shy about the franchise.

Devolver Digital

Chaos. They will bring chaos.

PC Gaming, Brought to You By Sponsors!

There will be sponsors, and sponsors, and sponsors, and oh yeah, I think this is where THQ Nordic has said they have two unannounced games, and I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped a third. What these are, I'm not sure, but they've been out saying Dead Island 2 is still alive and I will hold to my tiny sliver of hope (not a euphemism, though it is accurate) one of the games is that. I want to hope the other is a new Saints Row, because I haven't joined the elite and thumb my nose at 3 while drinking my mimosas out of a proper wine glass and not a poorly washed out jug. Wildcard third game? Timesplitters.

I'm also thinking we see some smaller indie projects announced here, which is probably a given. I'm just not too sure as to what we'll see, actually. That new Undertale thing? Maybe that's leading to a new game announcement. Oh, right, we might see that Baldur's Gate announcement here too. That would be rad. This is also where I'm betting we'll see the next DLC character for Mortal Kombat get announced.

Ubisoft

It seems like Ubi's getting out and announcing stuff ahead of time, which leads me to wonder what they'll actually announce that's new. Watch Dogs 3 would be awesome and seems like a no-brainer given that Assassins Creed is taking the year off. I'm betting we also have a big, bombastic dance game, because that was a terrific way to open that show last year. Honestly, I almost wish Ubi opened the conferences, because that would set the mood the entire week.

I don't know. Of all these companies, I like Ubisoft more and more. Odyssey was awesome. I'm really looking forward to whatever Division 2 holds for me (and we're probably going to see some DLC for that announced). I just want some good ol' Ubi enthusiasm. New games or not, just make me happy, Ubisoft. You seem really good at that.

Kinda Funny

Greg will bathe in wing sauce. Oh, that's not an E3 prediction. Tha'ts just going to happen.

Square Enix

Hmm. Square's hard to read anymore because whatever seems to be the smart move for them, they obstinately choose to run in the opposite direction until they crack their head on a slow-moving bus. We'll probably see some FFVII Remake gameplay (ugh), that Avengers RPG will likely be loaded with lootboxes and moneymaking schemes (double up, ugh ugh), and I very much hope we see another new RPG from them. Dying Light 2 is scheduled to be published by them so I suspect it will consume a big chunk of their conference (hooray!).

I'm going to make one wild-card prediction here and say that Square partners with Nintendo to drop a new Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on Switch. Now seems like a great time for one of those. Then again, it's Square, so if they did announce it, it'll probably be a DOTA-inspired action game instead of a traditional tactics RPG.

Nintendo

Nintendo could go in a lot of different directions here, but I think they'll keep the major announcements to a minimum and instead focus on what they've already announced. I gotta imagine Mario Maker, Ultimate Alliance 3, and Fire Emblem will dominate it. There will also probably be a large focus on indie games, but I doubt we're going to see anything major be announced as far as, say, SNES ports. Of all the predictions on here I've made, that's the one I'd love to be proven wrong on most.

And that's it! What are your predictions? Got any pie-in-the-sky wished-for games coming out of E3? Anything you want to see more of that's already been announced? Hit me up, and prepare your body, your mind, and your soul for a lockdown.

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Don't pre-order games. Also I pre-ordered a game. Here's why.

It's easy to buy into a game's hype. After all, publishers pay employees quite a bit of money to make you so anxious to play a game you'll line up for hours outside a Game Crazy at your local mall, your bag of Naugles tacos in hand while you talk about whether or not Seal could beat up all the Boyz II Men. Which he totally could, b-dubs.

Fuck, I'm old.

The point is, someone's always trying to sell you something like it's their job, right? Because it is. How impressionable you are to this is really only your concern. Hey, you want to get swept up and buy four hundred cans of Mountain Dew's new squid-flavored hypercaffeinated energy drink, it's your money. But it's no real surprise or news that pre-ordering games these days is kind of a silly thing to do. The reasons for this are numerous and have been done to death on these forums and elsewhere, but here's a quick recap - 1) game reviews are still relevant and can save you money if you're willing to wait, and 2) pre-ordering games will lead to butt cancer. I heard that on Facebook so it has to be true.

I haven't pre-ordered a thing since... oh, hell, Fallout 4, maybe? I'm not immune to pre-order hype, but as I grow older, I've begun detaching myself from a lot of the excitement of games in general and have found myself more and more capable of waiting for stuff to go on a deep discount. Having a limited income has helped with this self-control, but it really just boils down to nothing coming out in a good long while that's really stirred up my soul in the way big franchises like Final Fantasy or the aforementioned Fallout used to do. There are tons of great games that've come out in the last few years, but none of them have really spoken to me personally. And that's okay! Saves me money, at the very least.

So here's an oddity for you, then. At the beginning of this month, I decided to punch the pre-order button on a game you might think is an odd decision, considering I didn't particularly love its predecessor. That game is Far Cry New Dawn. Note that there are no spoilers ahead for Far Cry 5, but I do have to talk around some things.

I know. Of all the games to buy before reviews have come out, why the hell would I pick New Dawn? The answer to that isn't as simple as hype. I played Far Cry 5 to completion and did most every side-quest. I wasn't in love with the game. I thought the cult and the ending were intriguing ideas that unfortunately weren't very well fleshed out in ways believable to that universe, leaving me with questions as to just what the hell the plot leaders might have been thinking or doing or planning towards. I don't mean that in a "I have to know more!" sort of way. It was half-assed writing in an otherwise perfectly vanilla update to the Far Cry 3 formula. The Montana setting was fun, especially as I'm from the area, but it wasn't really a selling point for me.

But.

Curiosity killed the cat, and it slaughtered my wallet. I have to know if Ubisoft is capable of making good on any of the more intriguing aspects of that game. I am intrigued by the idea of games exploring spiritual mysticism that isn't a part of some existentialist or nihilisitic viewpoint, and what Far Cry 5 was going for is fairly unique at least in terms of games in that regard. Although it didn't earn its ending, I wholly respect the sheer magnitude of what it was trying to aim for. Maybe that's because I'm deeply in love with the similar ending to the underrated movie Miracle Mile, but I don't think so. Far Cry 5 was so close to greatness that I kind of have to see where New Dawn goes to, if just as a consumer-historian sort of way. And I realize how bizarre that sounds considering how many people across the globe will be covering New Dawn for themselves and how easy that coverage will be to access, but there's still some part of me that hopes, even in some very tiny way, that New Dawn makes good on at least some of the premises from Far Cry 5. It also really doesn't hurt that I love the open-world gameplay from these games, but that's pretty much secondary to knowing how the second chapter to this story will end.

So there you go. It's not a game I expect to hold close to my heart, and I've read some review recaps. I know what I'm in for. I'm okay with that.

So have you pre-ordered any games for an unusual reason? What are your biggest pre-order regrets?

36 Comments