We're back in time for the holidays
I still play games.
Hello! Thanks for bearing with me. I had some health issues this semester (everything is great now) and, honestly, teaching is a lot. I’ll have to work on that - I enjoy writing this and I don’t particularly want to pause it for semesters at a time… again… but for now I will say it’s a lot. You know what else is a lot? Baldur’s Gate 3!!!
Yes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a lot. I finished it. I almost wrote that I defeated it but I did not. I did neither maybe. I hung out and we went along. I spent years waiting for a game to arrive and scratch that Dragon Age: Origins itch, and here we are.
If you somehow haven’t played Baldur’s Gate 3 and any of this sounds remotely appealing to you, I have to strongly urge you consider playing the game. At this point I have missed the train a little. It’s very good. It’s very popular. It embraced romance (or was very horny, depending on your perspective). Many of the people involved in making it appear to be lovely. So, not much for me to add there, I suppose. I did at one point consider a Forgotten Realms diary as I played the game. But I was too busy playing the game. I recommend it.
It’s a very pleasantly accessible game, too - except for the monstrous time commitment which, if you’re enjoying it, won’t matter too much. For me it mainly meant I still haven’t played Jedi Survivor. In Act Three the fights got pretty brutal and it started to feel a little like an expensive high fantasy version of Titan Souls, as I bounced from death to death wondering if I needed to recalibrate my approach, my team, something. Chances are that would have paid off. But honestly in the end I just switched to the story-focused mode and finished the game. And the battles were STILL FUN.
It’s a ludicrously good game. The biggest technical issues I had were one weird crash RIGHT at the end (after many many hours of gameplay on my rickety old RX 480) and my adventuring friends’ constant, persisting, unrelenting attempts to shag me. My self-confidence probably needed this game in my early 20s. Even that was endearing though. You know something has gone well with a game when you look forward to just hanging out in the magical campsite rest area that your team is carrying around in a pocket somewhere.
As we enter the holiday season, I am tweaking things a bit. My holiday habits have changed: it used to be that I would plan mammoth gaming sessions only to eat lots of chocolate and see friends instead, and feel guilty. These days, as a parent, I actually have stuff to do for the holidays. Can you believe it? But don’t worry. I’m still playing American Truck Simulator.
The big thing, actually, is that I’m working my way through Alan Wake 2. I don’t have much to say about it yet except that it’s very good and super interesting and if you liked either the first Alan Wake or Control you should really play this game, though it is quite different to both. On top of that, I have to prepare for the next iteration of my course “History and Video Games”, being taught at Centre in our intensive January term. I’m going to make everyone learn to use Gamemaker in two days and we’re going from there. I’ll write about that soon, and will probably talk specifically about why I’m going with Gamemaker (hint: read this). Wish me luck.
Bob Whitaker made some very nice content on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, take a look here. He also interviewed Jon-Paul Dyson from the Strong National Museum of Play about Atari 50.
Happy holidays everyone. If you celebrate Hannukah you’ve already gotten things going. Eat much and be merry, and take care of yourselves all. You may hear from me before then, but let’s not take each other for granted.