The Cake is a Lie: Jumping into Portal after 10 Years

Seven years ago, I spent a lot of time immersed in the scientific experiments of Aperture Labs in Portal 2. I enjoyed my introduction to Valve's Portal universe so much that I still drink my coffee out of an Aperture mug, but due to modern consoles not having the game that started it all, I had never played the first Portal. Given my recent penchant for puzzle games (Gorogoa, Opus Magnum, and my own game that I'm building) and my discovery that so many amazing old games are on Steam, I thought it was about time that I finally jumped into what is generally considered to be one of the greatest puzzle games (and games in general) of all time. Could the original still hold up after all these years and my previous exposure to the much more refined sequel?

Learning to be an (al)Chemist Again with Opus Magnum

In what seems like a previous life, I was a chemist. I loved all of the wonderful theory behind chemistry, and I especially loved teaching that theory to others. As for the whole doing experiments in a lab part, I often found myself indifferent to the whole painstakingly accurate mess and quickly learned in grad school and the real job world that I'd rather be the one telling people what experiments to do than actually doing them.

The Never-ending Joy of Stardew Valley

Despite my rough and tough city ways, I am actually a farmer at heart. I spent the first four years of my life on my grandparents' orange farm and often helped with picking/packaging during the busy winter orange season. Sure I never managed to actually succeed at anything remotely agriculture related on my own.  Every grow your own potato experiment in school and ill-advised basil plant purchase in adulthood met an untimely end, but dammit I know it has just been in my genes this whole time waiting to be unleashed. Thanks to Stardew Valley on the Nintendo Switch, at least my digital self can live out its true life's calling and make my kinfolk proud.

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

After last weekend's cheerful jaunt in India with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, I decided to switch things up with the acclaimed first-person shooter Wolfenstein. Set in an alternate reality 1960s where the nazis won World War II and have taken over the United States, Wolfenstein has you once again in the shoes of the OG Captain B.J. Blazkowicz as you travel throughout the states trying to spark a revolution to take back control of the country.  There is a lot happening here, so instead of attempting to somehow present a coherent article about repeatedly punching nazis in the face, I've broken things down into a series of questions and answers about my time with the game.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy – A Perfect Weekend Adventure

The Uncharted series is without a doubt one of my favorite video game collections of all time. It consistently blurred the line between video games and cinema, reaching its pinnacle with one of the best games ever, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which managed to basically allow you to recreate a big budget action movie from the comfort of your couch and turned single player gaming into a spectator event. Despite its stellar history, our favorite thieves have been showing some signs of age recently, as the rebooted Tomb Raider has completely lapped it from an adventuring/shoot-em up perspective and now owns that formula. But the first entry of this generation of consoles, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, proved that this series still has the most heart, and the trademark Naughty Dog storytelling and beautiful graphics sucked me in for one of my favorite experiences of 2016.

Photos from my Trip to Skyrim

Thanks to a delightfully lazy snow-filled week here in Charleston, I finally had the time to hunker down and beat Skyrim on Switch (well, as much as you can beat Skyrim proper along with the Dragonborn and Dawnguard expansions). In approximately 50 hours of gameplay, I "accomplished" a lot. I killed 20+ dragons, was cheered on by orphans after taking out their evil headmaster, avenged my beloved horse, became the head wizard at a magic college, accidentally killed my companion with a stray magic spell and had to reload 20+ times, bought a house, married a local girl who only noticed me because she needed a mammoth tusk, adopted a street urchin, shot several thousand fireballs from my left hand, became a werewolf, killed a whole lot of vampires, and saved the world of Skyrim 10 times or so.

My Year in Gaming: 2017

Ask pretty much anyone who plays games, and they will tell you that 2017 was one of the greatest years in gaming ever (see also 1997 and 2007. Apparently 7 is good each decade.). One of the most enjoyable consoles ever debuted in the Nintendo Switch, Indie games started making their way into the mainstream, and an astonishing number of AAA titles delivered on their incredible promise (sorry Mass Effect: Andromeda). Let’s be honest. We desperately needed games to be this outstanding and distracting this year as the world sort of turned into a giant dumpster fire. But that’s ok, because when this world got terrible, you could always escape to Hyrule, Pelican Town, or the Mushroom Kingdom.