Colin Spacetwinks is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and criticism, but still probably most known for posting a bunch of shit online. They publish a bunch of their original work over on their itch.io page ranging from things like a collection of their personal tips and tricks to living and working with ADHD to a body horror story about coming to work on your day off. They also wrote that article about Christian Sonic the Hedgehog fandom that Alex shouted out on one of his drumming streams. Thanks, Alex.
What can I say that hasn’t been said? It has been a long, needlessly cruel year, and we the crisis we’re living in isn’t even over yet as I type this. I feel like a character in an unfilmed Paul Verhoeven script, writing about which video games I liked best this year while an ungodly amount of people died this year due to the cruelty and apathy of people in power across the board. While I don’t have the power and influence to be in the place of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, I do find myself feeling an awful lot like Roast Beef Kazenakis from the Achewood strip for September 2nd, 2004.
But something I keep in mind is that while comedy, and art, and yes, games, is not enough--it is still necessary. I cannot defeat a crisis by making jokes about it, and one shouldn’t make the common mistake of thinking truly cutting art can undermine the power of empires and the inertia of state cruelty. All this is true.
While all these will not resolve our problems, we still need them. For relief. For catharsis. For the spirit as much as anything else. I make jokes throughout this year to keep myself going and to help others do the same. It won’t turn the world around the way I want, but it helps lighten the weight.
To be there for each other as people means being there for each other with things that don’t seem as ‘important’, too. To help give each other that mental, spiritual, internal relief so the aches of the world don’t build up so high on us that we can’t possibly climb out from underneath them. I know I’m not the only one who turned to Giant Bomb every now and again this year for that kind of personal relief, to make it easier to smile and refresh the self, keep going, get some energy back to fight for a better world.
So making these lists, writing and talking about the games we loved this year, we shouldn’t get it twisted and think we’re making a massive, material impact.
But we shouldn’t think we aren’t doing anything, either. Even passively, we’re giving each other comfort. Support. Relief and catharsis, as I said.
Excuse my sappiness here for a moment, and let me say: May we continue to give each other that support, that relief, through 2021 and beyond.
Here’s to you, here’s to us, here’s to being there for each other.
11. Umineko When They Cry
In the category of “Best game I played this year and didn’t come anywhere close to finishing”, Umineko comes out at the top. It’s honestly comical at this point how many times I’ve said I want to get back to it and then don’t end up doing so for no end of reasons, some of them out of my control, some of them entirely within it, but I truly do want to get back to Umineko. There are so many wrapped together layers to this murder mystery, so many tangents of themes that all get wrapped back into one tight knit--covering everything from the cycles of abuse to the nature of what is “real” and what is not, of what fiction and imagination mean to us and how it impacts our material reality or how we perceive it, and none of it feels incidental or unnecessary. I’ve only played about a third of the Question arc, and the Question arc is just one half of the game, so there’s still tons for me to cover and find out! Who knows, it might end up back on my 2021 GOTY list too, and further enable my odd hobby of photoshopping old TV title cards to be about the game while I live-tweeted my thoughts on it!
Having played so little, I can’t--or perhaps just don’t want--to go that in depth with it, but it really is a marvelously thoughtful and tense story so far!
10. Road Trip Adventure
Actual driving makes me nervous. Can’t stand it. Put me in the driver seat of a car and my anxiety ramps up like wild. I can’t get a good feel for how much space in the universe I take up, how far away I am from anybody else and how likely I might be to crash into them. Too much to pay attention to in a steel carapace that’s all going at 60 miles-per-hour or more. Not that holding the car in place is any better--I vividly remember when I was learning to drive back in my teens with a stick shift, stalling out on a hill with about three cars behind me, panic climbing inside of my throat at an alarming rate, making it that much harder to focus and get the car back into gear and moving out of the way.
But when I’m not in the driver’s seat, or at least when I’m in a digital driver’s seat, I can find driving so soothing.
One of my favorite things to watch on Giant Bomb has been Alex’s trucking streams, and he himself has talked before about the soothing, almost meditative experience he can get from driving, both in the Truck Simulator games and in real life, going down long stretches of empty California highway and then back again. While I’ll never get the same comfort he does from actually having a wheel in my hands and my foot on a gas pedal, I also find myself relaxed just watching those long hauls, seeing the world go by, listening to some music. Even when the radio is tuned to European death metal pouring through the speakers and into my headphones, I still find myself with a steady heartbeat and a relaxed breath, adrenaline kept firmly in their reserved pockets.
In the last month of 2020, Road Trip Adventure delivered that same easygoing feeling. And it was badly needed after, well. I hardly need to say it, do I?