Alright Giant Bomb, it’s that time of year. The time when we all sit down and collectively ponder what is our Game of the Year. My game is Fire Emblem Awakening from earlier this year since I just bought a 3DS this month. The game encapsulates to me all that we love from Persona 4. Hilariously marvelous yet dumb writing from our ex-patriots living in Japan (Konichiwa 8-4!). It manages to be difficult without being punishing and your characters mortality brings weight to every decision you make. Now I don’t have any history with this series. The revolutions and evolution are oblivious to me. From this vantage point, I can say without a doubt that Fire Emblem Awakening is the most engaging and fun game I've played all year. Not only that but this trend that Fire Emblem is responsible partially for popularizing of adding a heredity mechanic to the RPG aspects of the game is by far the most intriguing trend in games for 2013.

This is all well and good but I didn't come here to pulverize this game with praise. I came to propose a question: What would Fire Emblem Awakening be like with a hexagonal map? Before we examine this, let me talk about the difference between diagonal and hexagonal maps in strategy games. In a square grid the distance linking the center of each cell is only constant with half of it’s neighbors, while in a hexagonal grid, the hex cells are constant with all six of its immediate neighbors at any given time. This restriction of diagonal movement is undesirable for games of logistics. The one disadvantage of a hex map as opposed to diagonal map is of course the lack of a true east and west cardinal movement, but this is unimportant to Fire Emblem so the point is in itself superfluous.

Now how would a hex map change the game? Fire Emblem restricts movement diagonally but allows ranged heroes(archers and mages) to attack diagonally. Now when you talk about strategy games, the old adage is that all the best ones are ‘easy to pick-up and difficult to master’, ie chess. Allowing the player’s the ability to accomplish this attack in this way undermines ‘difficult to master’ adage. Now my argument I’m going to put forward is that all the best strategy games are secretly about logistics. Whether you look at the best strategy video games like DOTA2 or Civilization V, the resources are what dictate your strategies. Each move you don’t make is potentially a move the opponent is making to obtain more resources than you. As such your positioning and movement in these games is everything.

When a knight or piece of the environment obstructs the enemies movement to move diagonally, an archer or mage has a free diagonal hit on the opponent. This makes it too easy to defend your range characters movement, allowing you generally to move forward on a map uncontested sometimes. Now the reasons for implementing the diagonal map originally is clear, it’s less work for the programmer. We’re talking about the difference of six possible directions to move versus four. Now being new to this series but not new to this genre, I would like to see Fire Emblem move to a hexagonal map. It not only hampers the combat, I would argue the diagonal map hampers the role-playing aspect of the game. Since characters who fight next to each other gain an assortment of attack and defense bonuses, but more importantly their relationships strengthen while doing so, the hex map is clearly superior. At any given time half of your potential neighbors are not gaining the needed relationships with their comrades(and potential lovers) in this diagonal map.

What do you think Giant Bomb?

Fables is not noir. Nor is the game positioned as a sequel to the comic for that matter. It has a style, it also has panache but in no way does it resemble Chandler novel. If anything, Fables is Pulp, set in a pre-Giuliani NYC, the comic and the game have you following Bigby (The Big Bad Wolf) as he solves mysteries but for the most part. You’ll notice when reading the comic, that Bill Willingham rewards the readers who have a knowledge of the actual stories of the Fables in question in the mysteries and also play with those expectations. Whenever a murder of a woman comes up Bluebeard is instantly suspected in the game and comic because of his history with his wives for instance. The Farm (animal) Fables all give Bigby endless shit and he is ‘by law’ not allowed to visit the farm because he was so terrible in the pre-amnesty days. The great thing about the comic too for fans is that the creators are hinting in the series of a grand finale to coincide with The Wolf Among Us, teasing the death of Snow White and Bigby.

As far as this first episode of Wolf Among Us goes, there’s nothing separating it from the comic, more so than The Walking Dead. These stories are perfectly constructed for that universe. They also fit the format of the game much more. For instance: Bigby is quite the strong silent type and from listening to the designers, silence was more popular choice in The Walking Dead than they anticipated. The problem was, the game wasn't written well for silent answers mostly because Lee was not the sort of person to let things stew. Bigby is the complete opposite, and the options feel vastly improved this go around. He as a character is much better at being an asshole because go figure, he’s sort of a prick in the same way that Steve Jobs came off as one in life. It's a bullheaded childishness that seems to be bread out of a superiority complex that has the rest of the cast gravitate towards the big lug.

This first episode rewarded readers of the comic big time. You see at the end that Snow White has lost her head. Wolf Among Us being a prequel puts this plot point in the question. Snow White is I would argue along with Bigby, one of the two main characters in the entire comic. Now Bluebeard has been mentioned as a suspect. His fable story being that he lobbed off the head of his wife. It’s unlikely to me that he did anything since this would complicate his role in the comic later. My main suspect would be Ichabod Crane, he’s also a Fable who has headlessness as a key point in their story. He was also within close proximity of both crimes. The ending of his true story is also left ambiguous, leaving Telltale to fill in much of the leftovers much like they did with the Woodcarver.

Not mentioned, but there’s also Princess Langwidere who is regent of the Land of Ev from the Wizard of Oz series. Princess Ozma is an integral character in Fables comics and it wouldn't surprise me if Langwidere in The Wolf Among Us. He whole shtick is that she's a Gibson girl who changes her heads as much as she changes her clothes, with a head for every day of the week, a collector if you would. The fact that the cut was magically done and very precise makes me think that there’s some tomfoolery going on with that aspect of the mystery. The fact that she didn't keep the heads if she did do it puts this in question but I still like the idea of a head collector in Fable-town.

You have any theories Giantbomb?

@granderojo & Steam

Fanservice as I define it: the pursuit or ambition of cultural heterogenization by means of homogenization. In a world where television is driven by capital, Breaking Bad serves as a beacon of fanservice. Anyone who uses twitter and follows creators of popular works should know, it is readily apparent that they pay attention to the internet now. If you don’t believe me look at these graphs. Whether or not you believe IMDB is an accurate polling population, the rise in ratings correlate accurately to the years in which social media took off. For most fans of the show, the most common word associated with the finale was “perfect”. When you look at the rise of the #TeamWalt and #TeamJesse whether or not these were organic grassroots movements by fans or well-orchestrated marketing maneuvers by AMC and Gilligan, the effect that they had on the show was evident. Breaking Bad became less about character development, and instead about writing to an audience. The most troubling aspect of the usage of the hashtags is that it highlights how, at their least offensive they simplify otherwise complex characters to petty punditry. At their most offensive they lead to hateful attacks to the most redeeming qualities of the show, it’s cast.

Drug culture is uniquely local in nature, and Gilligan failed to make Albuquerque a place like David Simon did with Baltimore. Instead of embracing the local culture, Gilligan tried to dominate it. This persists across most television that is made in America. He created these characters, and so did the cast, that were more than their surroundings. You could take Breaking Bad, change the location, and it would effectively be the same show. The use of Latin culture in Breaking Bad for instance, while it’s a constant in the series is superficial at best. The scene of Mexican chemists being dominated by high school dropout in cooking meth tells you about as much as you need to know about how much Gilligan cares about Latin culture. Don’t confuse what I say, there’s nothing racist or racially motivated about that decision. Instead, Latin culture a prop to be used, an excuse to deliver a satisfying development of Jesse Pinkman’s character. Aaron Paul admits himself, Jesse was a throwaway character until it became clear to Gilligan that fans liked his character.

This isn't to say that I hate Breaking Bad. I am, at the end of the day, a fan myself. Seeing a show embrace the exponential decay of each and every main character falling into chaos was simply beautiful because it was a new gimmick. As fans we have to ask ourselves, is this healthy? It’s clear that if creators are cognizant of what social media perceive about their shows, that creating endings that offend the least amount of people is in their best interest. The Aaron Paul example is not a new one, shows often highlight minor characters after it’s become clear that they’re popular. What is different is the mechanisms & speed at which creators have to become cognizant of these sea-changes and their willingness to react. I guess ending with the least offensive, as close to a fairy-tale finale possible is fruitful. The ending by it’s nature, is what most critics and fans will obsess over if they still bother talking about your show. I can’t help but think ending the finale in the kitchen and leaving the rest of the story unresolved, while unpopular, would have been the healthier note for the show to end on.

@granderojo

When I first played Middle Manager of Justice on my aging off-contract now defunct iPhone 3G I liked it on a rather superficial level. Not having seen all the systems having only spent a lot of time in the early aughts importing and loving weird restaurant management rhythm games alongside playing lots of sims on the PCs, I was picking up what Double Fine was putting down. That iPhone ended up dying before I could get past the opening stages of the game. Fast forward to the Android release, I believe I downloaded it before there were even reviews on the Play store up.

When I first devoted time to playing, I devoted large chunks of time and bought the coin & superium doubler because I wanted to support Double Fine but not ruin my progression by buying too much. It became apparent to me that how I normally play games, isn't how the average mobile user does or should quite frankly. When I shortened my play sessions from one hour to 15 minute chunks, the grind when away and I found the game’s rhythm. Playing for long periods of time results in a warm phone, a lot of waiting and not a lot of decision making which is why you come to a simulation game. As Sid Meier said, simulation games at their core are about giving the player a set of decisions to make. Strip decision making from the simulation and you have a big pile of steaming crap. I still think the rhythm or routine the game creates is not as good as past efforts by the studio with Costume Quest but Double Fine embraced the delectation that arises from the novelty of monotony.

Monotony is often maligned in games, hell in any media routine by it’s nature is a constant source of ridicule. While it can be used for evil, so to speak, monotony can also be interesting. When I was contemplating why shifting from long play sessions to chunks with Middle Manager worked so well, I was hearkened back to my experience with Papers Please. Once a day, I would fire up Papers Please, and devote one run to that day. I was too exhausted after each session to continue with more. When you look at how many people don’t complete games. Developers are constantly commenting at the staggering number of users who don’t complete games. I think this can often be attributed to the fact that games often times take too long to start. Middle Manager gives players routine set of goals with a reasonable set of decision making opportunities to complete those goals and that’s it. Whether this system was by design or not, it's application to a mobile game makes a lot of sense. Not only do games take too long to start but they also expect to much extended periods of time from most player, which on mobile especially most users don't have.

It’s funny that a game that by it’s nature of being free-to-play sets out to waste the time of the majority of it’s users, also happens to waste the least amount of time in the decision making process. That’s something a great deal of pay-to-play games don’t accomplish. The game isn't without faults. Middle Manager suffers from some path-finding bugs usually to do with beds, which don’t affect the game, actually they speed it up the training process by a few seconds so I didn't mind. A few graphical pop-in bugs in combat which again, didn't affect gameplay so it was fine. One bug that is affecting the gameplay has to do with the boss battles. There seems to be an error that occurs where bosses, both Beastfly and wanted-poster gangsters will instantly kill my entire team despite having full health and the villains never actually performing an attack. It doesn't always happen to the gangsters, but it has kept me from beating the Beastfly despite a fully upgraded team(to the coefficient of my progression). The fact that it’s a fluid platform makes me think these bugs will be fixed. These minor annoyances aside, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I've never played a mobile free-to-play that I've enjoyed but Double Fine exceeded my expectations as they often do.

@Twitter & Steam

Wrestling has always been a spectators sport I associated with the brands Busch and towards the end of when I stopped watching(the height of the attitude era) I associated it with a brand like Colt 45 Malt Liquor. As I come back to wrestling I notice one thing: Wrestling has changed, or at least the WWE has. Starting at RAW before Summerslam, the two faces featured are far more gentrified than their heroes of yore. Daniel Bryan and CM Punk could be faces of Dogfish Head & Pabst Blue Ribbon. This isn’t to say that WWE has cleaned up it’s act, but it seems to have grown up. I thought long and hard why they’d do this. Why would a company such as this make the face of their company a beefed up Sam Beam look-alike that you could see walking into a Third Wave Coffee shop to read some Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot? For the same reason CM Punk is coming out in an American Apparel fleece hoodie.

It makes perfect sense. The sort of people going to WWE events generally live in and around metropolitan areas. They know if they promote wrestlers that the ‘city-slickers’ will genuinely love, then they will cheer and boo when they want them to. It’s been a blast to watch this all unfold. As soon as I got done watching Daniel Bryan on RAW two Tuesdays ago, he evoked the same passion I once got rooting for the soft-spoken majesty that is Brian Wilson as a Giants fan with the effectual attitude of Mick Foley. Whenever Daniel Bryan’s talking I’m smiling, and whenever Cena opens his mouth it comes off as Clint Eastwood chair moment. So while Cena is on vacation after elbow elbow surgery for 6 months we can finally have our halftime in America and enjoy a few months of great wrestling.

It seems I jumped on just as the WWE stopped pandering to middle-America and children, and they've captured people like me. As long as the crowds stay interesting and the characters continue to be good, I'm going to continue to watch. What’s the Giant Bomb community’s reaction to current events in the WWE and what is your take on my take of your sport? As a burgeoning fan, I'd like to know what the seasoned vets think.

@granderojo

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” ~ Adam Smith

This is all you could ask for of a coming-of-age story. Gone Home tells the story of a family. Looking back at games, we’ve had a few coming-of-age stories in the peripherally of main plots. Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 with Grunt used this trope, albeit superficially. This trope being nothing new to games, but told in Gone Home in a way & treated with a sort of a respect of no other games have. As you make your way through your families haunting empty house, you learn more about your family and yourself. You learn about Sam’s burgeoning relationship with her best friend Lonnie, seeing it evolve into something more meaningful. You learn of your Dad’s failed career as a writer, your mother's successful career as a park ranger and inevitably the tragicomedy of their relationship. You also learn about how your relationship intersects with your family, and what they think of you.

Much of it goes untold being that you are the passive observer in this story. But what is told is fun, haunting, and utterly genuine. As refreshing as it was to see these themes covered with the gravitas that they deserve, there were moments when I rolled my eyes. Those moments being when your sister, narrating her letter to you, played with my own expectations of where they were going with the story & when less dark at each turn. Those moments were quite sincere, and accentuated the moments when they did go dark with the story. Much of what makes the story work isn't what was said, but what went unsaid. Starting from a place of ignorance, and leaving in a hazy climax, you're left to fill in many of the gaps.

This makes the game unspoilable. Not to say that the story is telegraphed, which it isn't. I earnestly believe you could have told me everything about Gone Home before I had played it, and it wouldn’t have diminished my experience. It’s accurate to say that it’s impossible to spoil the mood one way or another. Sam’s story takes center stage, a story that if I had children I would want them to experience. As well as it was told, I found my interest centered more around the relationship between Terry, your father and your mother, Janice. I honestly think it stands up more as a piece of storytelling than the main plot. That unraveling story of husband and wife, accompanied by the punk-stylings of Heavens to Betsy & Bratmobile juxtaposed to Chris Remo’s soundtrack is where the game really shines to me.

What did you think about the game?

@granderojo

Headphones blaring I’ve Seen Footage by Death Grips. I’m all out of explosives, plenty of ammo in my guns but the corridors are too tight for me to safely take care of the horde on my tail. I think to myself, “If only I can find the teleporter?! Please just give me room to safely shoot behind me.” I turn into a corridor, run to the end of the hallway which, to my dismay, is blocked. I turn around hugging the wall and the wave of pure hate hugs the other wall as I successfully turn around & continue from where I came. Narrowly weaving in and out of dozens of zombies successfully without taking any damage. I see that there's only one possible exit, or so I thought. I run straight for the door down a narrow hall and see the grey tile floor which up to that point signified a teleporter room. This time it was an office and with nearly dozens of these things pouring into the entrance with no exit I’m engulfed. I throw my hands up from the keyboard in agony as I see my protagonist torn limb by limb.

I have been waiting for a game to teach me how to deal with fear all my life, by any means. While I hold a great propensity for wanting to be terrified, often times coping with it for me is physically exhausting. Teleglitch may be that game. It being a rogue-like that lifts the controls of Hotline Miami & places them in a setting which reminds me of Hull Zero Three set to a visual & audio aesthetic akin to Quake II. Teleglitch also happens to be a difficult game, which is what I really wanted to talk about here. Many gamers have a narrow view of what constitutes ‘difficult’.

Generally, when describing our own experiences we say a game was difficult, when in reality all it required was patience and a base level of competency of mechanics which at the time we lacked. This is understandable. That isn’t what makes good games that happen to be difficult stand-out, these are the ingredients. So often these two ingredients hold a duopoly over the conversation. It's how a difficult game prepares its ingredients to me which makes it special. Often times working off the players expectations, or breaking up the difficulty with segments of relief or euphoria. When people talk about Dark Souls they fall into this trap of only talking about it's ingredients in the difficulty, but overlooking the beauty in how it's ingredients were prepared. How the theme was entirely constructed to serve the design, to the subtle ways the enemies play off your expectations. On their own, these ingredients are nothing special, but when properly prepared they can make something which is truly unique & make what is generally thought of as bad design, good.

When I started Teleglitch I found myself someone quite adept at it’s mechanics. Having completed Hotline Miami multiple times, going for the A+ on every level. On top of that I’m someone who takes my time learning it’s specific systems with nearly 20 hours played so far. This is the proficiency & patience I talked about previously, something which the game requires. Neither of these things are what makes it’s difficulty special. What makes it special is that despite the investment, instead of feeling like an expert at the game, I now feel like I’m merely surviving. And that feels so good.

This is because the game does such a wonderful job in first capturing the stillness in exploring the unknown and then transitioning to the breakneck adrenaline rush of running for your life. There are points when it is not viable to be patient. Instead quick action is required. There are also points when you are just overwhelmed by odds out of your favor, which makes the successful chases so euphoric when have just enough time to get away. At this point in time, no matter how proficient I become at the systems, I’ll never not be immobilized due to fear from having an enemy with a gun surprise me. That’s incredible. What grabbed me with Hotline Miami was how well it captured it’s aesthetic that it was going for. Oddly enough, Teleglitch does this equally well with the similar mechanics but in a completely different setting.

@granderojo

I have not completed Tomb Raider. Seven hours into the game and it hasn’t compelled me to play more than an hour a night. Originally I thought this had to do with poor writing from Susan O’Connor & Vicky Arnold but it’s more complicated. Their writing may be poor it may not, what I do believe is that the overall theme of the game doesn’t match the gameplay or design. When you’re trying to break your protagonist both physically & emotionally ala Robinson Crusoe, it’s probably not wise to include this theme around a third person shooter. Lara’s never in any real danger. Games need a fail state that do justice to the theme.

Now that I’ve beaten up on the game, where does the theme match the design? That would be in the exploration if anywhere. This element of the game receives unanimous praise from everyone I talked to. Now let’s dissect why this works. Is it the incentives? Well no, the incentives for the rewards for exploration are quite bad. You don’t particularly need the salvage or XP, and the loot with historical significance are not all that interesting. What’s interesting that I’ve found is the overall act of going through the island matched the theme of ‘Robison Crusoe-ing’ Lara up. Crystal Dynamics accomplished this by creating interesting environments and allowing you to traverse it at your own pace. This design is inherently more valuable in reinforcing the theme established by O’Connor with the story, and overcomes it’s poor incentives through it’s thematic consistency.

Now let’s get to Miasmata. What lessons should Crystal Dynamics take from Miasmata to better match their theme with Tomb Raider 2? Miasmata is a game that has the most well designed exploration I’ve seen in a game yet. From it’s cartography mechanic, and through having a landscape worth exploring it gives the player a world worth exploring. That coupled with an acerbic set of incentives, some clear to the player early on and others that present themselves later as it’s being stalked by a monster. You might think that these are a lot of systems, and they are but that’s the entirety of them. When compared to Tomb Raider, in aggregate it’s a fraction of the size of Tomb Raider’s systems and world. Without talking to IonFX or Crystal Dynamics, it’s obvious that it took far less development time by the former than the latter to work on what I’ve talked about here.

Now, why does Miasmata’s mechanics suit the theme both these games share? To answer this question I think we need to contrast why Uncharted’s third person shooting works well for it’s story. For one it’s a much more authored & shorter experience. This plays well off of it’s Raider’s of the Lost Ark story. One of the largest complaints people have had with The Last of Us was this exact sentiment. It’s too long. It’s quite possible that third person shooters fall apart under the weight of the length of a seven plus hour game. Continued, the need for regenerating health, which is something you need in these sorts of games, hurts the thematic consistency of telling a story about struggle. In order to truly struggle you need a fail state that allows you to truly fail.

Two of my favourite adventure novels on surviving in a hostile environment that come to mind are River of Doubt by Candice Millard and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Both stories are unsurprisingly similar, and drive home how important failure is to this sort of theme. In River of Doubt, you’re following a biographical portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's quest to map the Amazon river. Many events happen along the way to lead Roosevelt to contemplate suicide at one point. The novel climaxes when he fails to reach his desired goal and succumbs to malaria. That scene in River of Doubt very similar to this scene in Into the Wild. Christopher McCandless fails to store moose meat for winter. All the while, he’s contrasting these happenings to failures previous in his life just like Roosevelt.

Miasmata doesn’t use failure in quite this way but it does use failure effectively. If you’re running too fast down a hill for instance you fall and injure yourself. This leads me to a train of thought that games generally should take more inspiration from books than film if they're going to be the longer more personal experiences. Games also require interaction much like a novel does but not film. Another way to put Miasmata's success is that it's quite economical with it's mechanics. Much like a good novel with it's prose. By stripping away what doesn’t work and highlighting what does work it leads to more desired outcomes.

@granderojo

2013 has been an exceptional year for song & dance. We've seen the resurgence of disco, but overall it was a year brimming with optimism(at least in the media we consume). It's almost as if media creators are all conglomerating with insidious enthusiasm to let us forget about all the crap going on outside our windows. I wonder who started this trend, couldn't be this guy. :D! Here are my top 15 summer jams in order from first to last.

1. Daft Punk - Lose Yourself To Dance (Feat. Pharrell Williams)

Disco is one of those weird things. Usually reserved for the butt of a joke, like your Dad's friend that still wore his 80's gear & jammed to his disco from his convertible. Daft Punk really changed that for me. Lose Yourself to Dance nostalgic for an era which I did not live, but it's uniquely a jam that I can relate with at this current time in my life. Refreshing, potent, and the most fun. All these themes I will revisit. Daft Punk nailed it the most with this one.

2. Shlohmo - Later

Rythem & Blues? Blues and rythem. Shlohmo is not an act known for doing R&B, they're not know for anything other really than very wonky, chill & frankly experimental electronic music. Later is just brimming with atmosphere & texture, but stays chill despite all the trap hi hats buzzing along.

3. Daft Punk - Get Lucky (Feat. Pharrell Williams)

Daft Punk killed it this year. Enough that it earned two slots.

4. Eleanor Friedberger - When I Knew

Eleanor Friedberger truly is Stevie Nicks clone that crawled out of a vat, which sole purpose seems to entertain. From the way which she warbles out her lines to the rythem, to the overall vibe, When I Knew is the most pure embellishment of summer.

5. Ondatrópica - Tiene Sabor, Tiene Sazón

This fat Disco Fuentes track comes from the 40+ group Ondatrópica. A cumbia band, I really could have chosen any track from the album as the jam which features at one point an 80 year old latin man rapping which actually works quite well.

6. Awkwafina - NYC Bitche$

It's fun to be angry. And NYC Bitche$ exhibits how extremely enjoyable it is to hear a tart bitch deliver her lines so well. And she does.

7. Wakin on a Pretty Day - Kurt Vile

Kurt Vile is sort of a more optimistic younger version of John Cale and the lead track on his new album really encapsulates this well. It's the sort of song you want to listen to after you've been surfing all day, cathartic but refreshing.

8. Ciara - Body Party

Without a doubt the sexiest jam of the summer. Someone's got to fill in for Rhianna while she's too busy getting pissed in Barbados, and it certainly isn't going to be Miley or Selena. Body Party is just one of those tracks that is just wins by brute force of energy and production. The track makes me nostalgic for the days when we still all had cable & put on 106 & Park as background noise while we rolled blunts.

9. JEFF the Brotherhood - Melting Place

Alright I know what you're thinking. Garage rock/metal? Sure, but this track just smells of high school & cheap beer. If those aren't things you associate with summer, you're missing out.

10. Classixx - Holding On

Dropping right before Random Access Memories, Classixx clearly ended up riding off the wave of people yearning for disco in their lives with Hanging Gardens. There's not much else to say about this one other than, "let's dance".

11. Caitlin Rose - I Was Cruel

Let's talk about country music. I am absolutely bonkers for Gram Parsons which is of an era where there was country music that blurred the lines between country, blues & psychedelic music. Caitlin Rose isn't that, but she's something earthy & different from what you commonly associate with country music today.

12. Savages - She Will

Savages really is the best musical effort to come out of England in 2013. Joy Division-esque in their delivery, I was first introduced to them when they opened for British Sea Power on some BBC recording of their show somewhere. Post-punk really isn't that joyful when you look at it too closely but Savages, especially with She Will find a way to do so. Even while getting some pretty grody shit off their chests the process.

13. DJ Snake - Bird Machine feat. Alesia

I'm not familiar with a lot of DJ Snake's work, but this track is background noise at it's best. Just put this on in the background & don't think too much about what's transpiring.

14. Mikal Cronin - Shout It Out

Shout It Out is just incredibly poignant, which is often a feeling associated with summer towards it's end & while this list is starting to wind down I thought I'd send off with a track worthy of that feeling.

15. A New Leaf - Seth Boyer

This is the perfect track to conclude on. It's the most beautiful tribute to the most summer jam-esque game of summer, Animal Crossing. A New Leaf just frolicks along and encapsulates the idle bliss that is both the twilight of dusk & Animal Crossing itself. It's the perfect send off to this list.

@granderojo

It's hard on days like this to chin up. Pain is one of those things, that unlike sweetness, leaves a lasting scar that stays with you. It's hard to remember the happy times because they leave no scars. We learn so little from peace, but that isn't how Ryan was. Ryan left us with a presence that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. For nearly two decades Ryan has made me laugh on almost a daily bases. Through his acerbic cutting wit he shaped those around him to better themselves, and taught his audience peace of mind through comedy. He conquered my heart, and for that I will always be haunted by his smile.

Thank you Ryan. We loved you.