Got some Happy Meals at McDonalds to get a few Thor Love and Thunder toys just for fun. I had a lot of rewards points for using the McDees app, so why not? I had hoped the figures worked a bit like Skylanders on the Happy Meal web site, but I couldn't get the one I got to work. I think the "game" just plays a song tied to the figure anyway. Then I played some actual Skylanders on 360 and then switched to Series S for the usual routine. I skipped out on the Switch that day not wanting to plug it into my TV, which only has two HDMI jacks. But I have Triangle Strategy and more Mario + Rabbids to play there.
2016 sucked for me. Not because a bunch of celebrities bit the dust or our politics got even more polarized, though that didn't help, but for extremely personal reasons I won't go into.
Took a damn year to get the ONE trophy I needed to get Platinum in Arkham Knight (Brutality 101, where Batman performs 15 different moves without stopping or getting hit), but yesterday it finally happened. ... And it was a bit anticlimactic in all honesty.
I'll post New Year's Resolutions tomorrow maybe, but for now I'll just do a quick update blog about what I've been playing.
Full disclosure, I only played six games that came out in 2016, so this isn't really a "Top 6" list. Anyway, here's how I rank the games I played this year:
Oh! Hello there, sorry to have left this place..........again. :|
Welcome to a weird episode of Nerds Without Pants! Due to scheduling issues, this episode was recorded a week before E3 2016, but you are listening to it after that event has taken place. Don’t think about it too hard; time is wibbly-wobbly, as the Doctor would say.
Yeah, that is about it. Downloading it now. more to come.
Boy, 2014 was a rough year to be in this gaming thing, hasn’t it? Disappointing games, crushing release date delays, and more scandal than you can shake a stick at have all detracted from why we are all here. In the current stormy waters it can become easy to lose sight of why video games are so great, as well as the fact that every person behind one of these online avatars is an honest to goodness person that also happens to love this hobby. PixlBit is here as an island of calm and hope in a sea of turmoil, and we can think of no better way to remember why we still love games than by putting together a massive feature that involves our passionate staff and our incredibly talented bloggers. We are gamers. We are writers. And this is why we game.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I don't hate something. Save your shock for later. It might be because this is the extended ending or whatever but I thought it was decent. Well, there were 5 minutes of the worst written shit I'd ever seen - forced and extended exposition with the catalyst that is even worse than the tortured exposition in Bioshock Infinite, because the catalyst is pure fucking bullshit - but my shepherd sacrificing himself for the greater good, and ending a war without violence is exactly what my shepherd would have done. And I fucking cried when Tali put my name on the memorial wall. Fucking cried. I didn't even cry in the walking dead, so they did something right at least.
I've thought a lot about what was the actual catalyst for my ending up a gamer. I did play Pong, my uncle and aunt got one as either a wedding present or a Christmas present from someone and they had it set up on an old black and white TV in the spare room at their first house. It was fun and exciting, for about 15 minutes. And then I'd wander off and either play cards with them or go do outdoorsy stuff. So it definitely wasn't Pong.
It’s been nearly a year since Mass Effect 3 was released, and with it the conclusion of a trilogy that most players had waited 5 long years to see. To say that the ending was controversial would be the understatement of this generation; so incensed were fans at the final moments of Mass Effect 3 that BioWare had to go back to redo the ending, which still did little to please the audience. PixlBit is home to a large number of passionate Mass Effect fans. We’ve said our piece on the trilogy’s end through blogs, articles, and podcasts. Working at a video game website, we keep ourselves plugged in to the gaming community and are well aware of the grievances of the day. But what about the more casual player? I was curious to talk to someone that enjoyed Mass Effect but was completely divorced from the hype train that had been building around this franchise since 2007. How would such a person view the series, the ending, and the fan reaction?
Today Xenoblade Chronicles is available for purchase in the US thanks, in part, to Operation Rainfall. To mark the occasion, a few members of the PixlBit staff began a dialogue concerning the future of the movement and if it’s at all possible that Operation Rainfall could revive the west’s love for the Japanese RPG.
I ask a lot of question, in hope of stumbling upon some answers.
Many Tales fans feared that we would never see Tales of Graces on U.S. soil. It has been three years since the Japanese Wii release and two years since the release of the enhanced PS3 port, Tales of Graces f. Though it looked unlikely, Namco Bandai announced last year that we in the U.S. would officially be getting Tales of Graces f and that we would be getting the best possible version of the game. Tales of Graces f may not be on the radar of many gamers, but people interested in the JRPG genre should definitely look out for this.
Today Jesse Miller posted an article about his view on video games as art. In addition the Hellblock Heroes here at Pixlbit did an excellent Pixltalk podcast episode on the subject. Both sparked a lot of thought and I've spent the last couple hours writing out long obnoxious comments on each thread trying to explain how I feel. I still don't feel like I'm completely done though. This blog here is one that I orginally wrote last year and posted at 1UP.com when I started blogging. I've buttered it up nice, adding things, and made it ready to post up here at Pixlbit. There's a couple older blogs I want to bring over here to Pixlbit in addition to this one because they are very important to me and still relevant regardless of when I posted them. Plus I love Pixlbit and want to share them here with everybody. Before I ramble on more, here is my blog. It explains the time in my life when video games became capable of being more than just a toy to me.