Our adventures have proceeded apace and we've already found ourselves in possession of three of the four quantum masks. With one more left, our oldest enemy, Dr. Neo Cortex, has chosen to show himself.
Though our power has yet to reach its peak, we must nonetheless confront that would-be tyrant and stop his plans for world domination. Once he's taken care of, surely there will be no twists. No other threats will appear and space-time will be free to mend itself.
Right?
RIGHT!?
I have been writing the Highlights and Disappointments features as annual projects since 2015, and for the past 2 or 3 years I have been grappling with a weakness of the format I’ve chosen: That I have only ever counted full retail releases that have occurred in the year of a given piece. Occasionally, I’ll fudge it with justifications like a new Yakuza or Ace Attorney game hooking me into the rest of the games in the franchise, but I’ve always stuck to that general rule.
And thus, I decided after writing up the pieces last year that I would do something more this time. Often, people who play the sheer volume of games that I do will go back to titles that came out in prior years, but either came out at a bad time or otherwise got lost in the shuffle at the time of release. Or maybe there was an update that added a cool new feature. Hell, maybe it just had a positive impact on us still after the discourse™ had settled down.
I wanted a space to talk about those games, and so I decided to create one. Here’s to the games that I played in 2020, but weren’t released in 2020.
Starting with:
Dr. Cortex and Dr. N Trophy are still ripping space-time apart as they work tirelessly to achieve their plans and enact revenge. With two of the quantum masks accounted for, and two more to acquire before we can mend the rifts, our journey continues.
It's About Time.
It's been some time since we've played some Constructed in Runeterra on stream, so I figured it would be good to dive back and play some of the newer decks that have been making the rounds since we last give it a whirl.
We seem to have picked a good time too. Since new champions have just been released into the wild, people will probably be experimenting with new decks and brews.
For now though, let's return with a new take on an old favorite: Ezreal, courtesy of Mobalytics.
Deck code: CECAOAIEAENR6JBGGQ5ACAQDBEBQCAYUFY3QCAYECEAQEAIDCYZQA
It’s that time once more, for us to reflect on the year and think about how we can do better in the year to come. Obviously, I don’t need to tell anyone reading this that 2020 hasn’t been great, but that doesn’t mean good games didn’t come out. Pickings are slightly slimmer than they would be in a normal year. And yet, what did come out was generally strong on its own merits.
As a reminder, just because a game doesn’t show up on this list doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s possible that either I missed it or that it didn’t leave a strong enough impression on me to talk about. So without further ado, and presented in a random order, my highlights of 2020 are:
I can't think of a more appropriate subtitle for this game than "It's About Time". Discounting the recent remake via the N Sane Trilogy, and the Nitro-Fueled version of Crash Team Racing, the last Crash Bandicoot game to come out was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 for mobile phones in 2010. If we further remove mobile games from the equation, that would be Mind Over Mutant back in 2008.
Either way, it's been over a decade since the orange marsupial has had his time in the limelight. I and many other fans, for the longest time, assumed that the franchise had been fully abandoned by Bobby Kotick and our Activision overlords. While the N Sane Trilogy rekindled the hope of seeing the symbol of our childhood once more, it wasn't until this game was announced back in June that we were able to truly celebrate his triumphant return.
And frankly, I've waited long enough to talk about it on stream.
Obviously, this year has been defined by the outbreak of a deadly disease which keeps many of us quarantined and many more terrified that we're going to kill our loved ones by going to work and contracting something that'll spread to them.
So what better way to deal with our fears than by facing them head on, playing as a contagion aiming to eliminate the human population. That's right: We're playing Plague Inc.: Evolved.
That's right, everyone. We've reached the legendary cliffhanger that took 3 years and an entire console generation to resolve. Even people like me, who didn't play the Halo campaigns growing up, knew about "finishing this fight".
But of course, the journey is more important than the destination. So join us as we try to stop the Covenant from making a terrible mistake.
When it comes to card games, I tend to latch heavily onto Constructed formats, where players can build decks out of a specific pool of cards designated by the format in question. It suits my style better, allowing me to take the time to do research on what the most popular decks are and either netdeck or use them as inspiration to create my own recipes. It brings me a certain joy to analyze the trends and see how decks new and old fair as cards are brought in or removed from legal play.
But any card game player knows that Constructed formats are only one way to engage, the other being Limited formats. Rather than come into a game with a deck build ahead of time, Limited formats require players to improvise and built decks based on what they pick from a random or semi-random selection of cards. Drafting is one of the most common variants, opening a pack, picking one card from it, and passing it to the next player in rotation so that they can make their own pick.
So instead of coming at you with another set of decks to try, this time I thought it might be fun to check out Legends of Runeterra's equivalent of a booster draft, called Expeditions. Let's build our own deck and see how well it holds up.
The race for the Index/Icon has officially begun, as Humanity and the Covenant compete over the fate of the next Halo ring. Both factions understand that the fate of what is likely the entire universe is at stake, but only one of them has full knowledge of the situation.
Let's find out what happens when their champions meet for the first time, real life sickness be damned.
Our fight continues, as the Master Chief and the Arbiter both continue their respective campaigns, each doing what they believe to be best from their perspective. The war between Humanity and the Covenant rages around them.
With a new Halo ring in play, how will both champions of their people react to the efforts of the other.
One of the simple pleasures that has been denied by the Covid-19 pandemic has been that of getting a group of friends together to play a board game. Obviously, there is no proper substitute for in-person play with friends and family. That said, apps like Tabletop Simulator do a good job satisfying that itch as best as can be.
Another potential salve are virtual board games that invoke the feeling of tabletop, while still leveraging the medium to do things that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pull off in a pure tabletop setting. Alongside my old friend Chris, we play one such board game: Armello.
The king has fallen to rot and corruption, and his days are numbered. We can't save him, nor would we want to. Instead, it's time to see who will fill the vacuum of power, ascending to the throne.
After a hard fought campaign against the forces of the Covenant, the Flood that our conflict had unwittingly unleashed, and the mechanical guardians created to genocide all organic life, we managed to escape alongside the Master Chief.
Now, our brief reprieve in the small, scenic town of Little Hope has come to end, and it's time we returned to the frontlines of battle. Earth, and humanity, are once again under attack, and once again the Master Chief stands as a bulwark again the incoming threat.
Welcome to Halo 2.
It is often lamented that the state of the game industry at large tends to crowd out the kind of low-budget, mid-tier platformers that were commonplace in the PlayStation 1 era. For every Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon, there was a Jersey Devil or some other such game that, while not the pinnacle of its genre, was entertaining enough to hold its own in the annals of gaming history.
As it so happens, I was in the mood for one such game when my good friend Chris, of the Marvelous/Dark Duo fame, gave me a copy of Pumpkin Jack. I was intrigued enough by it that I wanted to show it off for a bit on my Wednesday stream.
It's exactly what I was hoping for. Not perfect, but good enough to satisfy the itching I had for a mid-tier platforming game.
Like moths to the flame, Acharky and I return to the horrors of Little Hope to unravel the mysteries at the heart of a town seeped in tragedy and sin. Are we doomed to forever live and relive the haunted past, or can we finally let the dearly departed rest in peace?
We all have our demons. And if we don't confront them, we risk losing ourselves to them.
Though I don't purchase, or even necessarily like, all of their games, I always have my eye on Klei Entertainment. They have a unique affinity for looking at a genre, taking the core aspects of it, and refining it to something that is both extremely approachable and mechanically deep. From the excellent stealth game Mark of the Ninja to the survival-based Don't Starve (Together), and turn-based Invisible Inc, all of them are completely distinct from one another, but they all carved their niches out in their respective genres.
So when I heard they were making a deck-building roguelike... Well, I was intrigued.
Eventually, after so long without streaming any card games, the itch eventually needs to be scratched, at least for someone like me. And there's no better time than now to return to the world of Runeterra, which the latest update providing new cards, champions, and strategies to experiment with.
On top of that, there appears to be a new event on offer with regards to a pop stars in the League of Legends lore that I have absolutely no familiarity with whatsoever. I've sure someone will explain it to me at some point.
As always, the deck lists I play with come courtesy of Mobalytics. The decklist import codes are:
The spooky times are upon us once more, and there's no better time for a big frighten than now. Supermassive Games, creators of both Until Dawn and last year's The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan have taken it upon themselves to release a new chapter in their ongoing series. The Curator has returned with a new story that we are to conduct.
Welcome to Little Hope. Joining me as he did in our last outing at the Man of Medan is my old friend Acharky. The Dark Duo is back, and this time it appears that the mystery is not as cut and dry our seafaring adventure prior.
What can I say? This game has been on my mind a lot lately, and my Wednesday stream seemed to be the perfect excuse to go for another run.
Prince Zagreus is ever eager to break out of his lord father's domain, and I'm ever eager to aid with on the way.
(A warning: As I had beaten the game prior to playing this session, there may be spoilers.)
It is difficult to describe how irrationally excited I was to stream this, not just because it was time for me to finish up my first playthrough of Halo: Combat Evolved. As many of you may know, my job requires me to spend about a week every month acting as the on-call support, meaning that I can't stream on those weeks since I may have to end the stream at any moment.
Recently, we got some hires that log in at around 8-8:30 PM EST, which means that I now have these Sunday nights to myself. And though I can't stream at the usual time, I can start an hour late and still do the thing I love doing on my Sunday nights.
I cannot express how happy I am to no longer have to cancel streams on weeks I'm on-call, but I can absolutely give the Covenant, the Flood, and that evil little robot a thrashing they won't soon forget.
Thumbnail, as always, is from Sam Callahan.
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