The Update: A Bounty Board of Sorts

The path forward, bumps and scrapes and all.

In my migration from Squarespace to Substack I looked over a lot of older pieces of my writing. But, instead of finding an abundance of errors or stylistic choices I have since grown out of, the thing standing out the most to me was the frequency. It’s literally been years since I have written more than once a month. There are a lot of explanations I could offer, from becoming a parent three times, moving as many times, or a steady proliferation of mental health struggles. But at the end of the day, week, month, year, now more than decade, I find myself sitting in my living room, laying in bed, driving around my city, wondering what happened. And more importantly, asking myself if it is something I can fix. I’ve debated no longer doing this for years. The market shifted, not to sound too much like one of “those” dipshits, but it did! The Ad-Revenue model dried up when click-bait became the norm. Gamergate did a tremendous amount of work discrediting and sowing seeds of distrust into the community. It’s just not profitable to run a gaming vertical anymore (despite Stephen Totilo generating over $100k in subs a year after joining Substack). I dreamt of working at Polygon, at IGN, at Kotaku, at Waypoint. Companies buy up websites, downsize to make their pockets look better, dozens (sometimes whole teams) lose their jobs, and the cycle repeats a few years later. In parallel, the rise of the Influencer barrels down on us, filling the airwaves with a cacophony of douchebags who make more money the more interaction they get. And how do you farm interactions? Saying a lot of stupid shit.

So here I am, running a little independent website. At first it was a dream of having a rolling CV. Something I constantly updated and could easily point to as a reference when applying for jobs. Then, as I watched the paint start to peel, it became a platform for a podcast or two with friends. Then, as friends dropped off it became this anemic little thing. The reason I remained, for a long time, was tied to my unexplainable ability to book cool-ass guests for interviews. My first was Rami fucking Ismail. I still don’t understand how. Since then I’ve spoken to people from Ubisoft, Blizzard, Private Division, Okomotive, and Harebrained Schemes, independent developers Tomas Sala, and Gareth Damian Martin, and Voice Actors Sean Rohani and Connor Forgarty.

In the background, though, the question never went away: Am I done with this? Now I know I can't. It just won't sit well with me. So what do I do?

Keep it personal.

Well here we go then. The paywall on past posts has been removed, I’m working on migrating my interviews into the main podcast feed, and I’m pushing to post more frequently. It’s been too long. I’m not a good writer if I don’t reference my past work, and I recently mused about having to teach myself how to write again. The mission isn’t insignificant for me. So in the interest of digging into what I meant, I’m doing the work.

Preamble done. Let’s get on with it.

Over the last few weeks, as I have been trapped at home with sick or snowed in kids, I’ve tapped on the glass of a few games. Despite the rest of the world seeming to spontaneously burst into flames, 2025 seems to be a pretty solid year for games already.

Lonely Mountain Snow Riders

Every once in a while you come across a blissful little piece of escapist art. Sometimes that escapism is in a world unlike your own, sometimes it comes in the form of power you do not have. For Snow Riders the escape comes in the form of silence and access. I live in the midwest. I don't really have access to skiing, certainly not for twenty five dollars. So when this indie title form the team behind Lonely Mountain Downhill came out on Gamepass, it was an easy ask to give it a shot. What I wasn't expecting was a crispy, chilled out game of deft skill and relaxation.

The game is completely free of soundtrack, another benefit I took advantage of. Throwing on a breakbeat playlist from Monstercat, I carved through the content available in this game in a little less than a week. The character models and world is relatively low poly, but this has afforded the team to make a startlingly beautiful little world, constantly in bokeh, brilliant light playing across the glistening snow. Skiing with friends leaves the mountainside carved up, dozens of trails cut into drifts and slopes. I absolutely ate this game up and cannot wait for them to add additional slopes and playstyles.

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

This is not going to be the only late submission I have this year. There are a bunch of games I just didn’t get to last year. I have reason to believe I will get to at least a few of those. I am almost positive I will dig those games too. Still, though I’m not finished with Indiana Jones yet, I want to say this: If you told me Machine Games, the team known for the Wolfenstein games, would take the Indy license and make a really fucking solid Dishonored game with it, I would have laughed myself ill. It’s not a huge departure from what Machine Games has done in the past, but at the same time it is.

The obvious path for a lot of people making predictions in the early days following the announcement of this game was something like Uncharted. It’s funny we have Uncharted holding the space Indiana Jones probably would have if it had been made 15 years ago. But it wasn’t. And rather than try to find a way to improve on the Uncharted formula, Machine Games stuck to their forte, FPS games, and bet their chips on leaning into stealth. Whaddya know! It fucking rips.

Sleuthing around the Vatican feels like putting on Ezio Auditore’s cloak. Creeping through the halls and down the ancient cobblestone streets is magical. Then you get into a fist fight with a fascist and you are immediately reminded who you are. The sound effects from the movies are here. Loud, banging, slappy punches. Troy Baker’s Indiana impression is incredible, and as you sidestep punches and back talk Mussolini’s Black Shirts Indy continuously talks trash. It’s VERY good. I’m only half way through this, but I can all but guarantee at this point, The Great Circle is going to end up on my top 5 of last year. The puzzles y’all…the secret cave spelunking…it’s fantastic.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

I am not going to spend a lot of time here right now. Mostly on account of the fact I will be spending a tremendous amount of time talking about this game when I finish it. So let me be short and sweet and say this: Somehow Gareth Damian Martin took what quickly became my favorite game of all time, and added so much more depth and interactivity to it. Complexity as well, sure. But earned complexity. Diegetic complexity. Everything makes sense, only this time you have to be a little more careful. It rules. Holy shit it rules. Can not wait to write 15000 words about this in a month.

Marvel Rivals

This one feels a bit rote. It’s really fun. I’m still not sure if it’s because a) hero shooters generally have a steep learning period and Rivals was able to largely avoid it by having a roster full of superheroes everyone knows, or b) a large chunk of the community soured on Overwatch and wanted something else. Regardless of the specific reason, Marvel Rivals is filling a spot Overwatch once filled for me, a spot I wasn’t quite sure was still open. A couple of months in I still really enjoy it, but I am also growing tired of the limited maps and rather formulaic gameplay.

There also seems to have been this windfall of really sweaty players. Nights have gone from being a mix of wins and losses and some nights over .500 to this smattering of absolutely rinsing, getting spawn trapped, and the cycle repeating match after match after match. I’m not sure what the remedy is for this, perhaps it is a SBMM balance issue, but then maybe it's like Call of Duty: if you don’t play everyday you will be overpowered by the people who do. Time will tell.

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

A relatively fun little tower defense game with a third person shooter element. Or, rather, a third person shooter with a tower defense element. I’m honestly not quite sure how to describe this one, mostly on account of neither facets of the game feeling particularly gratifying. This is, at least in part, due to neither of the ways you interact with this game feeling very good. There are a handful of characters to play with and I have only engaged with a few, but the traps you set are frequently inefficient until they aren't. And once you set up a gauntlet no enemy can survive, running around taking potshots feels…well…fine I guess?

There are also enemies who completely ignore blockades, a resource the game already doles out in frustratingly small amounts, making it absolutely necessary to engage with them in combat, but the reactivity and weight of combat, especially with these enemies you HAVE to fight, feels far too light and inconsequential. Oftentimes despite the huge amounts of damage they do to your character. There are pockets of fun here. A few rounds. An hour or so. But any more and you start to feel a bit…dragged on.