GOTY 2019 - startmenu's Best Things That Weren't Video Games
Sometimes we have to interact with things that are in fact not video games. A horrifying prospect, having a personality beyond media, what will Pokemon fans do. However, you can lessen the stress of straying from one form of media to another by finding some way to tie everything into what you love most. That sounds healthy, right?
This used to be a dodgy move with most video game adjacent media being unwatchable trash fire Uwe Boll movies. However, over the last few years, whether it be video game adaptations going from Dead or Alive to Detective Pikachu or wholly new forms of games adjacent entertainment (esports, streaming etc.) sprouting up, the idea of something being tied to video games without being an actual game is no longer a death sentence for a piece of entertainment. Here are some things that we loved this year that didn’t even require us to hold a controller, but, you know… Didn’t stray too far from the gaming path.
Ollie likes fast things (just not Sonic).
For a week twice a year me, and seemingly everyone else on Twitter, are glued to Twitch to see our favourite games broken apart and completed in just a fraction of their usual playtimes. Without fail Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick raise millions for two worthy charities (the Prevent Cancer Foundation at AGDQ and Médecins Sans Frontières at SGDQ) and cause a surge of interest in one of the most fascinating ways to play games, speedrunning.
It had been that after these events ended speedrunning would fade into subculture-forum-posting-obscurity for the other 50 weeks of the year. Recently, however, as the streaming boom has peaked, speedrunning has become a more constant presence in the gaming zeitgeist. Along with traditional eSports it’s seen as a talent and a skill to be spectated and celebrated.
Coming up to Christmas in 2018 I started watching a classic Mario and modern FPS runs from previous GDQs, by time AGDQ came around in January I watched every run I could live. Turns out having someone explain the most nuanced aspects of something I thought I understood is really enjoyable and even surprisingly meditative as background viewing.
It’s a very good run… I swear.
Since then SGDQ 2019 has come and gone and produced a three-hour speedrun so enjoyable I’ve watched it multiple times (go watch the Co-op All Quests run of Borderlands 2 by Shockwve, Amyrlinn and TheFuncannon, it’s like really good).
With AGDQ 2020 having just passed and VODs going up, all I can do is urge you to get into speedrunning before the next big marathon event. You don’t have to be good at these games. Unlike many other forms of gaming, it’s not about being the best, you just need to be enthusiastic about what these people can do and the secrets these games hold.
Ollie had an existential crisis along with a Twitch chat.
I’d need several books to be able to work through my feelings towards Death Stranding. Outside of thirty hours with MGS5 and a playthrough of P.T. my entire exposure to Metal Gear and KojiPro has been through a decade of osmosis. Because of this lack of exposure Death Stranding was never a must-play title. When reviews came in I knew I wasn’t going to risk €60 for a game that no matter how much I respected, seemed revel in wasting the player’s time and making them miserable.
But as release grew closer, I began to hear more of what this game contained. I knew I had to experience this multimillion-dollar fever dream in some form. I tried watching a playthrough with no commentary but quickly got lost in the mess of BTs, BBs and Beaches, so I turned to Twitch.
Teawrex is a streamer I found through Destiny, compared to many other popular characters in that directory he’s quiet but also very direct, and turns out he also loves Metal Gear. This wound up being perfect for guiding me through the indecipherable, beautiful mess of Death Stranding. No loud shouting over cutscenes (no matter how dumb the dialogue became), calm discussions with chat about attempted themes and regular catchups on just what the hell was going on.
The culmination of this commentary saw a particular line of dialogue break Teawrex, his chat and me. And if I’m honest, I enjoyed that single moment as much as any full playthrough of this game.
I may never understand my feelings towards Death Stranding, but it sure was entertaining to witness a few hundred people have a small breakdown watching it crescendo.
Louise enjoyed some chilled relaxed lofi historical beats.
2019 saw the first dates in the world tour of the Assassin’s Creed Symphony: an eighty-piece orchestra playing the music from Ubisoft’s world, from the 2007 instalment of the Third Crusade, to last year’s Odyssey of Greece during the Peloponnesian War.
October 5th 2019 was the London date on the tour, and I was lucky enough to grab some tickets to the event, as well as drop into the community meet up before the show. It was wonderful to meet with so many of the community who I had talked to online, and then a surprise guest: Michael Antonakos, who portrayed Alexios/Deimos in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
Actually sat down in the event, I was blown away by the music. I’m not the oldest fan of the franchise having joined in around 2014 and the release of Assassin’s Creed Unity - but in those moments it didn’t matter. Each person in the room was united by the music of a long-loved franchise, and each had their favourite. Ezio’s Family from II no doubt had many people in tears, as did The Parting Glass. Both of those tracks sent me misty-eyed, but the theme for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the one which set waterworks in motion; the game is something special to me, the interactions between the Frye Twins one of the many reasons why I just fell in love with the franchise in the first place.
Of course, there are always tracks they had to leave out for the sake of time, but I had to pick a few then Jokes Jokes Jokes and A Leap of Faith would have been strong contenders to add to the line-up.
April 2020 sees the even return to the UK for four more dates, in Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. And while you might not accidentally stumble into Alexios himself, this is an event that any Assassin’s Creed fan would be insane to miss. I am almost certainly going to try and attend the event again.
The gang liked Geralt
Ollie has a short attention span.
Now it’s back in your head again! Ha, and you finally got it out.
That Witcher show was surprisingly good, wasn’t it? It had my two favourite things; a man in tights singing a catchy tune and Henry Cavill cursing in a gruff voice. It’s serial nature even showed me what I was doing wrong every time I took a swing at playing the game. I was overwhelmed trying to dive into such a deep world for hours at a time, so now I just chip away at it on my Switch before I go to sleep every night, like a good book, huh, funny that.
Louise might kill one of us with a sword.
I absolutely loved it! (To the extent I rewatched the series 9 times between Dec 20th and Jan 5th… don’t judge me)The worldbuilding, the fight scenes oh my god I need more now. Also Renfri’s armour - I would wear that everyday if I could!
Why do we have to wait until 2021 for series two?! :(
Issy is coming to terms with his chronic procrastination
While I’ve never played The Witcher games, or read a Witcher book, I have watched the show (putting my film and TV masters to good use) and what I noticed is that it felt unlike many other fantasy TV shows or films. Instead of telling the audience about some prophecy, aiming the characters at it with a big plot trebuchet and letting loose, The Witcher allows Geralt (Henry Cavill) to wander, as I do when playing an RPG.
The first episode has Geralt dealing with a seemingly minor squabble which ends up in a massacre, a love story, and a cryptic prophecy; standard RPG “What the hell? All I was meant to do was tell these NPCs to calm down. Why is half the town dead now?" stuff. Seemingly innocuous sidequests rapidly evolve into larger, more complicated escapades with far-reaching consequences, even Geralt’s simple quest to sleep.
The story of the show revolves around destiny, a force that Queens, Mages, and paupers alike fear. Not Geralt though, not the protagonist. Not unlike me getting sidetracked by every little thing on the way to the main story, he seems to do everything he can do to avoid the main questline, actively going out of his way to avoid progressing the plot by choosing instead to help his friends or chase his lover.
He is told over and over he really has to go do this thing, and instead, we meet him five years later off doing random radiant “Please, Witcher! Kill this monster.” quests. This show helped to assuage the guilt I felt at not stopping the dragon menace in Skyrim, not finding my dad or son in Fallout (man they really need to find a new angle) and doing gang shit instead of story-driven gang shit in GTA: San Andreas, and for that I thank it. It’s a creative show that forgoes the traditional linear narrative in favour of sprinkling the plot throughout lots of character building side quests, like a good RPG.
