Favourite Things of 2010

Every year since about 2005, I've made a list of my Favourite Things from the previous year. They can be anything. Movies, Games, TV Shows, Songs, cupcakes, scented candles shaped like dongs, what have you. If it happened to be one of my favourite things of that year, it got featured with a light writeup.

I of course distinguish between "Favourite" and "Best". I don't think the two are synonyms. When I say "Favourite", I'm not necessarily saying it was the biggest achievement in the history of ever. I'm saying that even though I know not everyone will like it, that it might even be a deeply flawed example, for whatever reason I admired or appreciated it.

I Choose You, Nanking Massacre!

Once in a while I get someone asking me how I can dislike the new Pokeyman designs so much. One reason would be the simple fact that many of them are just fucking ugly and superfluous. Another good reason would be that at least one design in this children's game made by a profit-seeking entity is based on a national tragedy that killed the loved ones of some of this game's target demographic. (Scroll down to the bottom.) And just to add insult to injury, it's exactly 9'11 inches tall and looks like it's made up of airplane wreckage.

Save Me Some Sugar

I recently went on a spending splurge of Microsoft Points, the online currency for downloadable content and indie games on Xbox Live. All in all, I ended up with The Sacrifice dlc for Left 4 Dead 2, the Defiant Map Pack for Halo: Reach, Beyond Good & Evil HD, Braid and a couple of trinkets for my avatars. Not only that, but I finally got a PSX emulator working, which is good news because not only is my disc for Final Fantasy Tactics on its last legs, but I can't even find my third disc to FFVII. All for the price of one $40 gift card at Future Shop.

If you think this all sounds incredibly selfish during a time when Japan, the people who practically birthed the modern video game industry are still toiling under the aftermath of a quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown, well... yeah, it is, a little. That said, I did donate to the Red Cross for this recently. I owe no other landmass more for two decades of entertainment and escapism, and while I don't want to get into specifics, I can tell you the donation was more than $40.

Moving on:

Bio-hazardous

EDIT: And now it looks like they put SecuROM in the game without telling anyone. Namely, people for whom that sort of thing is a huge turnoff(like say, anyone who had the misfortune of buying Bioshock for the PC). People kind of like to know beforehand if you're going to include incompetent Digital Rights Management software that seriously fucks with your operating system in the name of fighting "piracy".

Although that's probably more EA than Bioware, still.

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Dragon Age 2 came out. I've already had three people tell me, unprovoked, that it's unplayable dreck. Unsurprisingly, major game websites are lapping it up anyway. On Metacritic, however, the highest user review score was given by, wait for it...

A Bioware employee. But he didn't mention the part where he WORKS FOR THE COMPANY HE'S SUPPOSEDLY GIVING AN IMPARTIAL REVIEW FOR. And it reads like the phoniest of press-releases.

Circling The Drain

I'm having a bit of a philosophical crisis. I know that sounds pathetic. I know that with all of the billions of legitimate problems the world is facing right now(especially in Libya), my feelings are inconsequential. But I honestly haven't felt this shitty since I was going through puberty. I'm not happy, and I haven't been for a long time.

Halo Reach: Appendum

The following is a list of thoughts I had surrounding Halo: Reach, and its developer. Mostly stuff I felt did not belong in the review proper. Little things. Big things. Most of them are needlessly stupid problems that would have been inexcusably easy to fix or remove, but which for some reason no one working at Bungie could be bothered to.