Don't Call It a Comeback
By danielkempster 3 Comments
Hey there folks. It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you're all doing well, staying safe, and getting vaccinated if and when you're able. For anyone reading this who might be interested, I am, for the most part, pretty good. While a lot of things going on in my life are much the same, there have been a few changes since my last blog post. Perhaps the biggest development is that I'm now engaged. Two months ago I proposed to my girlfriend of five years, she said yes, and we are now busily planning our wedding for next year. April also marked my ninth anniversary in my job at the local doctors' surgery, and while the ongoing effects of the pandemic continue to make my work life incredibly stressful and demanding, I thankfully haven't lost anybody close to me as a result of Covid-19 (though my heart goes out to anyone reading this who has). Unfortunately, I am currently staring down the imminent loss of one of my closest colleagues from these past nine years to breast cancer. It is therefore both a time of exciting new beginnings and bitterly cruel, heartbreaking endings.
The same could be said of the state of this site, I suppose. I've started and abandoned multiple drafts of this blog recently, but the main factor in getting me to finally break my silence has been the news of Vinny, Brad and Alex departing the site last month. I'm not going to dwell on it too much here, since others have already waxed lyrical on the subject in ways that far surpass anything I could write myself. It's no secret that I spend a lot less time on this site now than I did ten, five, or even two years ago, but the fact remains that those three guys have been responsible for some of my favourite video game-related entertainment during their tenure here. I am deeply sad to see them go, but I wish them all the very best with their future endeavours, whatever they may be.
What I will say is that nothing better engenders an assessment of one's perspective than sudden and unexpected upheaval. I'm not too proud to admit that on the announcement of those staff departures and the dissolution of Giant Bomb East, there was a part of me that worried for the future of this site. A part of me that worried enough to decide it was finally time to pull my finger out and archive all my old blog posts just in case the unthinkable ever happens and the Giant Bomb servers get switched off for good. It's taken me about three weeks of methodical cataloguing, but I now have back-ups of all four hundred and twenty-two of the blog posts I've written since this site formally launched in July 2008. And boy, has it been one heck of a journey.
Going back over all those old blog posts has been like opening a time capsule and being transported back to different points in my past. I've skimmed over some entries, and taken time to thoroughly read others. I've been reminded of opinions that I used to hold but would strongly disagree with now, I've rediscovered experiences that I'd all but forgotten I had, and remembered people who haven't crossed my mind in years. Like some bizarre out-of-body experience, I've witnessed myself grow and mature over the course of thirteen years and nearly seven hundred thousand words, one blog post and one game at a time. Rediscovering things about myself through this archiving process has been eye-opening, to say the least. These blogs aren't just about video games; they're just as much about the space between the video games. They're the closest thing I have to a journal, a window into my own past and a roadmap from my former self to the person I am today.
More acutely than ever, I feel like I'm standing at a crossroads in my life. The ongoing effects of the pandemic, the realities of planning (and paying for) a wedding, and the imminent passing of my long-term colleague and close friend all serve as reminders that life is both incredibly precious and astoundingly short. While I realise that thirty-one years of age is still a pretty young age, I'm becoming more aware that I don't have quite as much time ahead of me as my brain (which is hard-wired to the notion that I'm still seventeen) would like me to believe. I will have some big decisions to make in the not-too-distant future, ones which will have far reaching consequences in pretty much every aspect of my life. It's my hope that years from now I'll be able to look back on these blog posts and trace the ripples that those decisions make. As for whether or not they're the right decisions, that's for the future to know and for me to find out.
I realise there hasn't been any real discussion of video games here, so as a reward for those of you who've made it through to the end of my little existential crisis, here's a summary of everything I've played so far this year:
Games I Have Played In 2021 (To Date):
 | I turned to Fallout 4 at the end of 2020 for some mindless open-world shoot-and-loot action, and actually ended up seeing the story all the way through to its conclusion, something I didn't manage during my first playthrough when I bounced off it about a month after release. I still consider it to be the weakest Bethesda game I've ever played (no, I haven't touched Fallout 76), and it has me worried for whatever Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI end up becoming, but for a couple of weeks at the end of 2020 and into the start of 2021, Fallout 4 helped me to switch off my brain after long, stressful days at work just by getting lost in its gameplay loop for a couple of hours. |
 | Hoo boy, I loved this thing. I spent about three weeks total with Dishonored, and I'm pretty sure the first week of that was spent replaying that first proper mission with the High Overseer about half a dozen times just to work out what playstyle I had the most fun with. I absolutely adored the worldbuilding in this too - the city of Dunwall is right up there with the likes of Rapture for me as far as fictional video game settings go. I'm keen to check out more of Arkane's output off the back of this, and have the sequel and 2017's Prey reboot installed and ready to go when the mood eventually takes me. |
 | Sucker Punch's PS4 debut ended up reminding me a lot of Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man, not just because of the superhuman protagonist, but because of the strong case both games make for creating open-world adventures with a more limited scope. Second Son's rendition of Seattle is comparable to Spider-Man's New York in that both are smaller in scale than most open worlds, and consequently are much more densely packed with stuff to do. It doesn't hurt that the traversal in this game is a ton of fun too. Unfortunately I didn't much care for the story or its characters, but as a superhero sandbox, Second Son delivers. |
 | February saw me returning to Dark Souls: Remastered on PS4 for my second playthrough, having beaten the game once before on the 360 in 2018. This time I spec'd my character more towards magic than melee, and followed in Matthewmatosis' footsteps by watching his excellent commentary playthrough as I played. As a result I was able to see things I missed completely on my first playthrough, such as the Great Hollow and Ash Lake, not to mention all of the DLC content included in the Remastered version. The experience felt much more complete as a result, and cemented Dark Souls' place as one of my favourite contemporary RPGs. |
 | Having played through the first three Uncharted games twice over in the last three years, I'd been long overdue a sit-down with the fourth instalment. This is certainly more Uncharted, and undeniably the best Uncharted, but for some reason it didn't quite hit me in the same way as the second game did. Maybe it's a bit of series fatigue creeping in after playing through the first three games back-to-back for last year's Community Endurance Run. Or perhaps it's because I opted to play on Crushing and ended up running into some very frustrating walls in the form of late-game combat challenges. |
 | Something I haven't mentioned up to this point is that the vast majority of the games I've played so far this year have been selected at random using the Backloggery website's Fortune Cookie feature. When Half-Life 2 came out of the cookie in mid-March, I was more than a decade removed from my last playthrough of it and very eager to find out whether it still holds up. Turns out the answer to that question is a resounding "yes", in spite of some dated-looking textures and the all-round inferior port job of The Orange Box's PS3 release. Half-Life 2's campaign is wonderfully varied and perfectly paced, and those are qualities that simply don't become outdated. |
 | One of the few games that wasn't selected by the Backloggery's Fortune Cookie, I ended up jumping into Overcooked! off the back of playing the sequel in online co-op with my friend Matt (more on that a little further down). The first game definitely feels more like a proof-of-concept than a full-on game, though it has a great deal of spit-and-sawdust indie charm in its rudimentary (and often poorly-punctuated) text-box cutscenes. Playing solo is also definitely not the way to play these games, since the absence of a second player removes a lot of the chaotic collaborative fun that defines the experience. |
 | 8. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty It blows my mind to look back on some of 2001's seminal video game releases and realise they came out twenty God-damn years ago. Metal Gear Solid 2 blows it more than most though, and that's down to both the incredible attention to detail in its presentation, and the batshit crazy meta-narrative that ends up getting eerily close to predicting our current dystopian reality. I found it pretty hard to play in spots, but I'm honestly not sure how much of that is attributable to its dated mechanics and how much was down to the knock-off PS3 controller I had to play it with. |
 | Hyper Light Drifter is comparable to Fallout 4 in that it became my "zone-out" game for the duration of my play time, but whereas Fallout 4 zoned me out with its hypnotically repetitive gameplay loop, Hyper Light Drifter felt more akin to practising transcendent meditation in pursuit of Nirvana. Aesthetically this game is incredible, from its gorgeous pixel art down to its text-free UI and menu screens. I also found it incredibly stimulating from a literary perspective, with its wordless narrative inviting players to interpret both the history of this calamitous world and the motivations of its eponymous protagonist. |
 | 10. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee New 'n' Tasty! Another game that wasn't picked by the Fortune Cookie, I decided to revisit Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! in preparation for the impending launch of Soulstorm. As with Dark Souls, I opted to follow a walkthrough for my second journey through Rupture Farms, albeit only to locate all of the game's secret areas (I tackled the challenges inside those areas without assistance). I think it's hard to deny that this is the definitive way to play Abe's Oddysee in 2021, but I also can't help but feel this reimagining loses some of the original's nascent charm through its more polished presentation. I'm planning to get to Soulstorm real soon. |
 | As promised, here's where the sequel to Overcooked! comes in. My buddy Matt and I have been cooking up a cooperative storm on our journey through the Onion Kingdom. Mechanically Overcooked! 2 feels like the logical next step from its tech-demo-ish predecessor, incorporating new mechanics including the game-changing, time-saving ability to throw raw ingredients across the kitchen. Since completing the main campaign in late April, Matt and I have been working our way through the huge array of available DLC, all of which seems to meaningfully build on the base game with new recipes and mechanics to get to grips with. |
 | Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where the last two months of my gaming life has been spent - revisiting what is undeniably my favourite video game of all time. My most recent playthrough was my most comprehensive one yet as I pursued the Platinum Trophy in the PS4 version, and with good reason - I have a new FFVII-themed creative project in the works, something akin to my old Enduring Final Fantasy VII blog series, but with more visual flair and a renewed willingness to dive as deep as possible on Squaresoft's flagship PS1 JRPG. More details will follow in the coming weeks... |
I think that's going to do it for this entry. I'll be back soon, hopefully with a little less to say and a little more reason to say it. Until then, please all take care and stay safe, and I'll see you around.
Daniel