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The Spotlight – 14

Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. Sure it’s a few days late, but I’ve been miserably sick, so this is the best I could do. For the month of April, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.

South of Midnight

South of Midnight feels like somewhat of a throwback to the single-player action games of yesteryear — things that one might find on the PS2 or in the early stages of the Xbox 360. I say that with a lot of reverence, even if those games were in some cases, deeply flawed, and South of Midnight is no different.

South of Midnight is a third-person action game that sees you battling your way through a Gothic fantasy inspired American Deep South. You play as Hazel, a young woman who is in search of her mother who was stuck in their home as it was swept away by a flood. One thing leads to another, and you gain magical powers that allow you to cleanse the areas you come across of the overwhelming negative emotions that have corrupted them. The game explains this a lot better than I am, but the idea is that the people in this world have experienced some pretty nasty stuff in their lives and more often than not, responded to it in an equally nasty fashion. That guilt and despair literally poisons the areas, and Hazel has to do some pretty unremarkable and repetitive combat in order to cleanse it.

To hearken back to my comparison to the era of PS2 games, South of Midnight is extremely repetitive. Outside of a handful of boss fights, you only fight about five or six different types of enemies throughout the 12 hour duration of the game. These fights take place in very obviously indicated arenas, and you have to do a set amount of them before you can cleanse the area and move onto the next area, all to do it over again there.

South of Midnight isn’t a bad game by any metric, it’s just an extremely mediocre one that happens to look very nice. The story is pretty interesting even if the ending doesn’t stick the landing, and for as repetitive as the combat is, it’s still serviceable. I wouldn’t pay full price of South of Midnight, but I fully endorse giving it shot when it’s on sale or if you have Xbox Game Pass.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

I have never been a huge fan of the Bethesda RPG for a litany of reasons, but I’ve always respected them from a distance. The short version is that I find them unforgivably buggy, filled with more unremarkable quests than good ones, and generally have bad combat. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has not changed my opinion of these games, but I am still having fun playing it anyway.

Considering the gameplay side of Bethesda RPGs has always been a sore spot for me, I tend to resort to using console commands pretty quickly in order to be able to power through that shit and see the breadth of the world-building and storytelling without worrying about soul gems or Nuka-Cola or whatever. Oblivion Remastered might be the fastest I’ve ever broken that seal, primarily so I could break out of the prison cell you start in and go beat the hell out of that guy across from you that talks shit to you when you first start the game. This has led to me becoming the god of gods in Tamriel.

I can punch a hole through a bear, I can leap over mountains, and I know all the spells. This is a much better way to play these games. Don’t need to worry about shitty level-scaling when you can fire death beams out of your fingertips.

I’m sure this is all horrific to hear about from the purists out there who get off on picking digital flowers in order to craft potions or whatever, but I don’t give a shit. As far as I’m concerned, I am playing the definitive version of this beloved RPG and having a fucking stellar time doing so. Even if all of the dungeons and caves are filled with jack shit, even if all of the NPCs look like high-definition nightmares, even if the world is suspiciously empty save for the same fucking broken down fort that’s been copied and pasted a hundred times, and even if there are an embarrassing amount of loading screens, I’m finally seeing what all the fuss is about. I do wish it ran better though.

Crime Scene Cleaner

I’ve talked about Crime Scene Cleaner before, so I won’t belabor the point here. It recently came out on Game Pass, giving me the perfect excuse for playing it again. I can’t speak to the PC version, but the console version is highly compromised and buggy in a way that might impede progress. I had to repeat the final mission 2 times because objectives would just vanish or I could no longer interact with anything. I still managed to finish it and had fun doing so, but this version is rough.

Half Sword

Now this is what I’m fucking talking about. Half Sword is a physics driven medieval fighting game that’s easily the most gruesome thing I’ve played. Sure it looks hysterical with its bumbling characters tripping over one another and getting their weapons stuck between their legs, but when you land a good hit, you feel that impact. Blunt weapons discombobulate your opponents and leave hideous bruises, while the blades cleave off body parts with shocking ease. Describing and recommending this game feels borderline psychotic, but damn, it’s really fun and extremely satisfying.

Technically this is just the demo that I’m talking about, as it’s freely available on their Steam page. It’s expected to launch into early access eventually, which I can promise you I will be buying into the moment I can. I think you should try it and fool around a bit with the demo to see if it’s something you’d enjoy or if I’m just a weirdo.

Nextlander

I lamented the departure of the original Giant Bomb crew when that whole thing went down a few years back, and it left me feeling pretty cold on the whole concept of video game coverage. I’ve never really jived with a lot of the modern offerings out there, so I kind of had no place to go even if I wanted to participate in that stuff again. There was a certain charm and earnestness to the coverage from Giant Bomb, and I really appreciated how they produced and presented their video content. Early Giant Bomb was effectively how I wanted The Bonus World to be, but that never panned out for a whole host of reasons.

This is all set dressing for me to sing the praises of Nextlander. Nextlander is the continuation of the Giant Bomb I loved, run by the people who made Giant Bomb what it was — well, most of them at least.

When it comes to games coverage and entertainment, I always endorse the idea that you follow people over publications, or in this case, organizations. That’s what I’m doing with Nextlander. I trust these people’s opinions on games and their critical eye’s, as well as enjoy their sense of humor. It was a no-brainer supporting them on Patreon and I wholly recommend that if you, like me, are off-put by the over-the-top Twitch overlays, YouTube thumbnails and Tik Tok clips of people freaking out over video games, I suggest checking out Nextlander. Nextlander is like the retirement home of video game coverage, and I’m loving it.

News

Bethesda and Zenimax union authorize a strike

The mesmerizingly stupid saga of tariffs and the Nintendo Switch 2

Mario Kart World is 80 damn dollars

Shenmue is the most influential game ever according to a terrible BAFTA community poll

Nintendo has learned nothing from their Joy-Con debacle

Nintendo Welcome Tour is another example of Nintendo trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible

Tariffs threaten tabletop industry, because of course they do

Baldurs Gate 3: Act Two Expansion looks incredible

Ubisoft argues that you never owned that copy of The Crew and they were totally fine to yank it from personal libraries

Another brilliant move from Nintendo, charging $90 for the complete version of an 8-year old game

Sony hikes console prices in certain territories

Ubisoft does something cool for a change and releases open source tool to help devs tailor games for colorblind players

Steam tool reveals how much money you’ve spent on their platform

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of May with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 13

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Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. For the month of March, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I really enjoy the act of playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but I’m finding its scale and progression to be daunting and overwhelming. The good news is that the ninja stuff in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely on point. They’ve seemingly nailed the power fantasy of being a dope, back-flipping, katana-swinging, kunai-hurling ninja with a kick ass grappling hook. It also looks absolutely stunning, save for some of the modeled clay faces that some of the NPCs have.

Where it kind of falls apart for me, however, is the lame progression system, the stupid loot, and the imposing size of the whole game. The progression is weird because you have to upgrade your tier of available unlocks before you can spend skill points, which means you have to seek out certain side activities in the world in order to actually make your character more capable. It’s an extra road block that felt unnecessary. That pairs well with the classic Ubisoft loot problem where you’re just inundated with marginally better items that clog up your inventory.

But the game itself is just so fucking big. I’ve spent like 6 hours with the game so far and only now have killed one of eleven targets. It paints a pretty laborious picture of what my gameplay experience is going to be like for the next fifty hours. It isn’t helped by the milquetoast story that could be much better if it didn’t need to be stretched out over the entirety of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ bloated runtime.

I want to play more of it because it’s a lot of fun, but I already feel my will to boot it up starting to dwindle. It also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of other things out there I could be playing instead.

Split Fiction

My biggest complaint with Split Fiction is that I haven’t played nearly as much of it as I want to. The reason for that is because Split Fiction is a much more mechanically demanding experience than its predecessor, It Takes Two, so my partner has been more sparing about when they’re willing to play.

But when we do jump back into the game, we’re having an absolute blast. The constant change in mechanics keeps things fresh and interesting, and the generous respawn mechanics and frequent checkpoints make failure far less punishing than other games we’ve attempted.

I really like Split Fiction and very much want to be playing it more.

Cities: Skylines I&II

I enjoy the Cities: Skylines games a whole lot, or more specifically, I like the first one a lot and wish the second one actually worked well enough for me to devote more play time to. But there’s still a lot of joy in starting a city up and then eventually abandoning it because I fucked up the traffic pattern at the very beginning and fixing it is more daunting of a task than just scuttling the city and starting anew. I’ve basically created and abandoned about 6 cities this month alone.

While Waiting

While Waiting is a game about life and the many times we find ourselves waiting to do things in it. It’s also a truly strange point-and-click adventure game where you can do a bunch of weird stuff while waiting, if you’re quick enough and smart enough. I have been neither of those things, so a lot of these bonus objectives are lost on me. So the experience hasn’t been overly exciting, but it is a nifty little way to kill some time.

The Simpsons

I am now twenty-three seasons into The Simpsons. I’m not sure when it exactly happened, but at some point this went from a show I was engaging with to pure background noise. Sure there will be an occasional goof or even an entire episode that’s really funny, but by and large the show feels kind of soulless.

I don’t know that I’d even call it “bad” at this point though, which is weird because all I’ve ever heard about these seasons were awful things. Twenty-three seasons in, and all I can really say is that The Simpsons got boring. Despite increasingly zany story lines, a glut of guest stars, and the much anticipated shift to HD, none of it really made the case for why the show needed to keep going.

Personally, it’s hard to maintain interest in a show that’s been going for so long and refuses to make any significant changes. Knowing from the start of every episode that nothing I’m going to experience in the next 20 minutes actually matters really sours the experience after so many seasons. You would think after this many seasons and the worsening reception that someone would have suggested the groundbreaking concept of something actually changing.

It’s especially maddening considering that these episodes have run alongside the heyday of Futurama, a show that leaned into having evolving story lines and eventually ended (until it didn’t) on such a wonderful note. Hell, at least let the characters update their wardrobe so they don’t look so out of place in comparison to every other character that strolls into Springfield.

I’m ranting. I’ll continue to watch The Simpsons and get mad about it. It’s just that I really like the old run of the show, and wish that it would either do something fresh for a change, or just end. I don’t know that anyone out there is still holding onto the purity of The Simpsons formula anymore, so why not shake it up a little? Please.

News

Activision uses terrible AI art to promote a Guitar Hero game that might not even exist

A candle still burns for Scalebound

Acclaim is born again for some reason

No release date in sight for Cities: Skylines 2 console ports

Jackbox games to come to televisions in free-to-play app

Next Xbox targets 2027, handheld device on track for this year

Skate gets microtransactions before it actually comes out

CWA builds an industry-wide union

Game Informer rises from the ashes

Ark expansion trailer is full on AI garbage

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of April with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 12

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It’s the one year anniversary of the Spotlight! Time really is — something, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like I’ve been running this feature for a year. The Spotlight has really helped make running The Bonus World feel manageable. So happy first birthday, Spotlight.

From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, here’s what I’m shining the Spotlight on for the month of February, 2025.

Path to Menzoberranzan

I’m probably going to mention this every month, but I’ve been working with a team that’s making a huge Baldur’s Gate 3 mod. It’s a whole new campaign set in the city of coin, Athkatla. The project is highly ambitious, boasting all new companions, a new set of worlds to explore, full voice acting and more.

I’ve been lucky enough to be brought on as a writer and have actually completed my first quest for the project, which is super exciting. The whole team is filled with super talented and passionate people who are happily volunteering their time and effort to make this project come to life.

You can follow the development on social media or on YouTube. There’s also a Discord to join if that’s more your thing. Check it out!

Sniper Elite: Resistance

Sniper Elite: Resistance is another one of those games. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel or do anything that you haven’t seen before in the series. It’s just another tried and true entry in a long running series of Nazi-sniping simulators for you and a friend.

Aside from level design, I really don’t think anything has changed since Sniper Elite 5, which is usually a pretty damming thing to say about a sequel or spinoff, but I have never once come to the Sniper Elite series for anything beyond shooting the bad guys. If you’re coming to Sniper Elite: Resistance for innovations in gameplay, you’ll be very disappointed. But if you just want to play a competent stealth-action game with a buddy, then you can’t go wrong with Sniper Elite: Resistance.

Clone Hero & the PDP Riffmaster

When I really think about it, the whole Guitar Hero and Rock Band milieu are responsible for some of my favorite gaming experiences ever. It’s why Clone Hero has become one of my most played games over the past few years, save for 2024 where my treasured Guitar Hero III, Les Paul guitar finally kicked the bucket. Luckily, the PDP Riffmaster was birthed into existence, allowing those of us stuck in the glory days of rhythm gaming a chance at another encore.

I love Clone Hero, this is already known. So what about this fancy new PDP Riffmaster guitar? While it’s nice to have a modern plastic guitar, I’ve found that the PDP Riffmaster is not my preferred type of rhythm game guitar. I feel like there are two main camps of plastic guitars: the Rock Band style ones with the mushy strum bar and buttons flush with the neck, and the Guitar Hero styled ones that have a clicky strum bar, and raised buttons off of the neck. I really like the latter, but the PDP Riffmaster is the former, so there’s an inherent difficulty in adjusting for me.

I often find myself overshooting buttons or mashing more than I need at any given time because there’s no tactile break between them. This issue only compounds on itself when you play harder songs. Also, I can’t tell if it’s me or not, but I swear that sometimes this thing isn’t reading my upward strokes (heh) properly, leading me to miss basic rhythm riffs that I can play on tempo in real life. I shouldn’t be missing as many notes as I am.

It might have something to do with the fact that, despite it saying on the box that it’s for the Xbox and PC, the PDP Riffmaster does not natively connect to the PC. It’s truly wild that I had to download a piece of third-party software just to connect this thing to my computer.

Lastly, while this isn’t a major issue, the PDP Riffmaster is very eager to tell you about how it folds in half for easy storage, which is a great idea on paper. The guitar folds at the neck, which is longer than the body itself, thus creating an impossible to store shaped object you now have to contend with. I can’t sit it up cause it’ll be resting on the headstock and will teeter over. I can’t lay it on its back because now the fret buttons are there. And I can’t lay it on the front because there’s a fucking whammy bar there. It’s easier to store when not folded, which defeats the purpose of it being foldable at all!

I like rhythm games enough to put up with the PDP Riffmaster. It’s not a terrible device, but it just has enough pain points that I don’t think I could recommend it to someone who didn’t already prefer the Rock Band style of guitar. I will continue to use it, complaining about it the whole time.

Update: As of publishing this, Gibson just announced a Les Paul-styled guitar. So that’s unfortunate timing for me.

Balatro

I get it now. I finally get it. Balatro shadow-dropped onto GamePass recently prompting me to give it a fair shake, and I fucking understand now. I don’t gamble, nor do I like card games, be they physical or digital. But man, Balatro has broken through and really made me a believer.

There’s some weird dopamine high that kicks in when you play a simple pair and get a x200 multiplier to your points because you’ve built such behemoth of a deck. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a game appeal to my desire to watch the numbers get bigger quite like Balatro has, save for maybe some idle games. But this? This? This is a fantastic game that is all I want to be playing at any given moment.

Avowed

Avowed is perfectly fine. It’s a very pretty looking game with incredibly fun combat and fun exploration, that’s completely mired by a story I feel like I already know the ending to. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Hell, I know I’m being too harsh. But I just haven’t felt compelled to return to Avowed since I’ve started it, and I really can’t put my finger on why that is.

Like I said, Avowed is excellent by most metrics, but it just hasn’t gotten its claws into me yet. So I think I’ll give it a few more hours and see where I’m at with it then.

The Simpsons

I’m well into the fourteenth season of The Simpsons, and I’m actually quite surprised at how long it took before the cracks actually started to show. In my mind, The Simpsons began their steep decline around season 11, but that isn’t the case. The episodes are a lot more uneven in quality than they were in previous seasons, but it’s still a good watch at this point.

It does feel like a storm is slowly rolling in, however. I know this is going to get rough, but I don’t know if the decline is gradual enough that I won’t realize until it’s too late that I’m in the decline, or if it’ll be painfully obvious. The far-fetched and overly contrived plot lines and frequent celebrity cameos are ramping up in an unwelcome way, but I think what’s really bugging me is Homer Simpson, himself.

Homer isn’t a character. Sure, he likes to drink, works at a power plant, and is generally an ignoramus, but outside of that he really isn’t anything, is he? Homer seems to just take on the worst position in every episode. He’s always the asshole who has to learn the lesson. Sometimes it’s handled well and Homer isn’t too abrasive, but often times he’s just the worst human being in the world. He’s Facebook incarnate, chock-full of the worst takes and opinions you’ll ever see.

If The Simpsons ever starts to redeem itself still remains to be seen, but I’m fairly certain this is going to get worse before it gets better. I’m going to do my best to stick this out. Wish me luck.

News

Nintendo Ditches Vouchers and Gold Points

Noted Asshole, Bobby Kotick, Alleges All Bad Press was Fake

Workers Tell Bobby Kotick to Suck a Fat One

Unity Slashes Jobs via a 5am Email

ESA Screams into the Trump Void About Tariffs

Warner Bros. Closes Monolith & More, Cancels Wonder Woman

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of March with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 11

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The Spotlight is usually a monthly summary that encapsulates some of the more notable media experiences I’ve had over the past thirty days, but I took last month off to focus on Game of the Year stuff. I was certain that I would have more stuff to write about here, but I must have really not done very much in the past 2 months.

From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, it all has a place in the Spotlight.

Games

Paper Mario

Having recently gained access to the Nintendo Switch Online’s even more premium Expansion Pass-thing that comes with N64 and Gameboy Advance games, I’ve slowly been working my way through some of the games from my youth. The one that really resonated with me was Paper Mario, a game I often rented but never owned. I think this game is great, even if it’s a little rough around the edges in places. It’s charming, it’s decently paced, and the combat is a lot of fun even if I know it gets better in the sequel.

TCG Card Shop Simulator

Man, TCG Card Shop Simulator really sunk its teeth into me over the past few months to the extent that it even managed to crack my game of the year list. It’s rough, it’s repetitive, but it has this very manageable and satisfying gameplay loop that’s perfect for melting the hours away. Since December, the updates have slowed a bit and so has my engagement with it, but the moment something new gets added, I’ll be back.

Dead Island 2

Dead Island 2 isn’t a very good game. It’s not bad either. It’s fine. But it does have some pretty satisfying melee combat and the ability to experience said melee combat with a friend. That’s been the only reason a buddy of mine and I keep returning to this unremarkable game filled with unlikable characters. There’s just something about hacking and slashing our way through the zombie apocalypse with a friend that brings me such joy.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I never really got the opportunity to talk extensively about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, nor will I use this venue to do so, but I do want to sing its praises for a moment. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a fantastic experience that seemingly came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting too much when it was announced several years ago, but I am pleased to say that this game is truly phenomenal. It takes all the things I enjoyed about the modern Hitman games, added some really satisfying melee combat, and encouraged me to beat the hell out of dimwitted fascists. It’s excellent!

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

I started Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth recently and was pretty charmed by the characters and the writing, which added a lot of clarity to why it was so lauded last year by critics. My only issue is that I’ve played for a few hours already and have barely done anything. I know a lot of people like the pacing and stories of these games, but sometimes I just want to get to the good parts without having to sit through three hours of well-made backstory. Like, I haven’t even gotten to the main part of the game yet. I’m three hours in and I’ve yet to complete the prologue. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is arguably the most engaged I’ve ever been with a Yakuza game, but man, it takes its sweet time to get going.

Watch List

The Simpsons

Every year or so I make the vain attempt to get back into watching The Simpsons. The golden era of The Simpsons still remains as some of my favorite television, ever, but I always fall off around the same time. Once the teenage seasons roll around, the show starts to lose its soul a bit, focusing more on trying to keep up with its satirical contemporaries, like South Park, while cramming as many celebrity cameos into an episode as possible. I want to experience this dip for myself and see how bad it really gets. But I also want to see what’s on the other side of that because I hear good things about the modern Simpsons that I’m really curious about.

Whether this pans out how I hope or not remains to be seen, but at the very least, I can always watch those same ten seasons over and over and still be entertained.

Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead

Speaking of 90’s television, there’s a new Beavis and Butthead and it’s kind of decent. I mean, the main caveat being that you thought the show was funny back in the day. If you hated it then, you’re definitely not going to enjoy it now. But it’s still a fun show to dip into when I want to turn my brain off and see some of the dumbest entertainment ever. It’s weird seeing Beavis and Butthead riff over viral videos and weird influencer shit, but it quickly feels natural. Although not even their commentary is enough to overpower my desire to not watch some of these videos.

Disenchantment

I can’t believe it took me so long to get into Disenchantment. I remember trying this show out when it first launched, but eventually fell off of it because I was expecting the fantasy version of Futurama and got something else. It’s not a perfect show by any stretch, but it’s still very funny and well written. It felt like a big, dumb, D&D campaign where the story kind of made sense, but the adventure and goofily-voiced NPCs were the main draw. I like Disenchantment now, and I like that it ended and wrapped up its story.

Mario Party Party

Whenever I want to kill 4 hours of my life, I turn to the classic Giant Bomb archives and watch three grown men grouse their way through every mainline Mario Party game for 50 turns, while a fourth grown man eggs them, gleefully singing the praises of the franchise the whole way. Some videos are better than others, but for my money, the live one they did at a PAX was the best.

Listening Party

I-E-A-I-A-I-O – System of a Down

Alleviate – Moving Mountains

Most of what Dankmus Produced

The Rest

Path to Menzoberranzan

So this is a cool thing I’m working on. Last month I joined the team that’s working on a full new campaign for Baldur’s Gate 3 as a writer. It’s been a ton of work and has eaten up a lot of my time, but it’s been a blast. Seeing the project come together has been really inspiring and I can’t wait for it to come together in 2030, when I assume it will be finished.

It probably won’t take that long, but you can follow the development on social media or on YouTube. There’s also a Discord to join if that’s more your thing. Check it out!

News

An Article About the Mod I’m Working on!

The Switch 2

McDonald’s is Trying to Kill You with a $20 Jug of McRib Sauce

Developer Behind Mediocre Game Says DEI, Cause of Course They Do

A New Guitar Hero Controller is Coming out for the Wii, and Not for the PC for Some Reason

Celeste Dev’s Next Game is Cancelled

Some Madman Installed Every WoW Add-On They Could

Googly Eyes Bandit Keeps Swapping Out Switch Games for Silly Craft Pieces

DnD-Themed Pinball Machine has a Wild Voice Cast

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of February with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Top 10

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With all of the other lists behind us, we find ourselves here at the top ten games of 2024. In a year jam-packed with critically acclaimed games, I kind of found myself struggling to find games that resonated with me for large chunks of the year. For example, this was kind of a huge year for JRPGs, which is a genre of game I don’t really enjoy that much. So a lot of the biggest titles from this year are notably absent from this list.

But with that little caveat out of the way, I present to you the top ten games that I played this year.

10 – House Flipper 2

House Flipper 2 is a great example of not messing with success. Built with the same ethos in mind as its predecessor, House Flipper 2 puts a bunch of properties that are in varying states of disrepair in front of you, and tasks you with fixing them up. It’s a simple premise that sounds unremarkable because it is, but I find these kinds of games really calming. Games like this are a great way to occupy my hands while I watch TV or listen to a podcast, and House Flipper 2 is among the best in the biz in that regard.

9 – TCG Card Shop Simulator

Piggy-backing on what I said about House Flipper 2, TCG Card Shop Simulator was a real surprise for me in terms of games I would enjoy. After a miserable few years working in retail, I would never have thought playing a game about running a shop would click with me in the way TCG Card Shop Simulator has. Hell, I don’t even like card games, but selling booster packs to the same 7 ugly character models is actually kind of fun. It also helps that this game presents an idealized version of the world where no one is toxic and shitty. Some people do come in with stink lines around them though, so that is realistic.

It’s unfinished. It’s janky as hell. It’s one of my favorite experiences from this year, and I’m really excited to see this one evolve over time.

8 – Dungeons of Hinterberg

I think the best word to describe Dungeons of Hinterberg would be ‘uneven’. It’s a game that has some pretty glaring mechanical flaws, but makes up for them with clever puzzles and charming characters. I said it back in July, but had this solely been a puzzle game with a heavy focus on social interactions, and not have any combat in it whatsoever, I would have enjoyed it much more. Still, it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year.

7 – Thank Goodness You’re Here

Thank Goodness You’re Here is more of an interactive cartoon than a video game. It’s delightfully weird and hilarious, but you don’t really do anything besides walk around and hit the interact button on people and objects. The story and jokes are the only things that Thank Goodness You’re Here can really hang its hat on, and if they aren’t your jam then there’s nothing here for you. Luckily, I found this game hilarious and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end.

6 – Minishoot’ Adventures

I wasn’t expecting a mashup of top-down Zelda games and shoot-em-ups to be such a compelling combination, but y’all, do not sleep on the terribly named Minishoot’ Adventures. With tons of exploration, navigation-based puzzles, and some pretty excellent shooter mechanics, Minishoot’ Adventures is the video game equivalent of discovering that chocolate and peanut butter go great together.

5 – Animal Well

I’ve already spoken about how much I loved Animal Well, both earlier in the year and earlier this week, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see it on the top 10. I can’t think of many games I’ve ever played that were as shrouded in mystery as this one is. Every screen — every pixel of this game is deliberately placed to feed into a broader puzzle. Layer by layer you start to peel back this digital onion until you find that at the center, you still have no idea what’s happening.

I mean that in the best way too. I think Animal Well being an enigma is its greatest strength and not a shortcoming. It’s also a really good puzzle-platformer at its core, but what that platformer is in service of is what’s so amazing about Animal Well. It’s opaque and obtuse, but playing Animal Well for the first time was an unforgettable experience.

4 – Chants of Sennaar

Speaking of unforgettable experiences, Chants of Sennaar is one that I won’t ever forget for multiple reasons. Both Animal Well and Chants of Sennaar occupy a similar place of being wonderful “multiplayer” games that my partner and I enjoyed. But we both agree that Chants of Sennaar was the better experience from top to bottom. While it did technically come out last year, we only played it for the first time in 2024.

But for those few days it took us to blitz through the entirety of Chants of Sennaar, it was the only thing we could talk about. I never knew that the act of translating languages could be so engaging, but it is. I really hope another game like this is in development somewhere, because it’s a concept that’s so good that it shouldn’t be limited to one game ever.

3 – The Rise of the Golden Idol

At the end of this block of puzzle-game excellence is The Rise of the Golden Idol, one of the best puzzlers I’ve ever played. It’s a game that’s solely about observing your environment and making logical conclusions based of the information gathered in that, and previous levels.

It boasts remarkably engaging story whose twists and turns are even more impressive because you yourself are uncovering them. Understanding the motives of characters and what their mere presence in a scene implies are some of the most rewarding feelings of puzzle solving I experienced this year, and possibly ever.

2 – Astro Bot

Astro Bot is an incredible 3D platformer that’s either packed with nostalgic delights or filthy with advertisements, depending on who you are. I can understand the viewpoint of the latter, but I err on the side of the former in this regard. Astro Bot is a tremendously fun and positive experience that celebrates the long and storied history of the PlayStation brand.

But it’s more than just a nostalgia trip — it’s a really good platformer at its core that is constantly throwing new things at you, both in terms of mechanics and level design. Divorced from the PlayStation branding, Astro Bot would certainly lose a lot of its charm, but the core gameplay is solid enough that it could support just about any theme you throw at it. It’s truly remarkable and a must have for any PlayStation 5 owner.

1 – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

There might be a bit of recency bias going on here, but I really do think that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would have been my favorite game this year regardless of when it came out.

Holy cow, this game came out of nowhere for me and blew me away. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes the best parts of immersive-sim games, like Dishonored, and mushes it together with the excellent active stealth you’d see in the modern Hitman games to make something truly amazing.

Every aspect of this game shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but it came together so perfectly. A large part of it has to be thanks to the phenomenal Harrison Ford impression that Troy Baker does, which once again, was a pretty dicey proposition on paper. But he disappears into the role and truly embodies the role, making it feel like I’m watching a long lost Indiana Jones movie. Which by the way, this is probably the best Indy story since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But everyone is doing an excellent job portraying their roles in this game. The lead villain, Emmerich Voss, is perfectly portrayed as this slimy, miserable Nazi with the most punch-able face you’ve ever seen. Regardless of which character you’re talking about, everyone is putting in an excellent performance, all of which help to elevate this game.

And what of the game itself? That’s really good too! Machine Games is unsurprisingly adept at making the act punching fascists in the face feel as good as you’d imagine. The sound work is incredible, really emphasizing each hit with a heavy ‘thunk’ noise. Between solid melee combat and the versatility of Indy’s whip, whether it be used as a grappling hook or a cool way to choke fascists out, you have a surprising amount of variety in how you approach each encounter.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t a perfect game, but it was the best thing that I played this year.

So that’s it. That was the Game of the Year. I hope you enjoyed it. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

I’ll be taking some time off, but I’ll catch you all at the end of January. Happy New Year, everybody.

Game of the Year 2024 – Most Disappointing

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Today’s category is tricky because I think people tend to conflate the concept of being disappointing with being bad, and that’s not what this list is about. There are bad elements in these games, some of which are more subjective than others, but none of these games are bad.

These are the games I played this year that I felt were uninspired and under-delivered.

Honorable Mention – Dragon’s Dogma II

I knew there was a strong possibility that Dragon’s Dogma II and I wouldn’t get along as swimmingly as I had hoped before it released, but I wanted to give it a fair shake anyway. I really tried to like this game, but it’s just too hardcore of an experience for me. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad game. Plenty of people love their video games to be both punishing and obtuse, and Dragon’s Dogma II is the epitome of both. I was disappointed with Dragon’s Dogma II, but it was a long shot to begin with.

The Plucky Squire

I wrote a whole thing about The Plucky Squire back in September about how utterly infuriating this whole game was. It was glitchy mess that constantly interrupted your progression to slowly pan around the map towards your obvious objectives or force you to listen as characters exposited at you for a while. As a game, it genuinely had no faith in the person playing it as evidenced by its over-tutorialization and hand holding.

Despite all of my issues with the game, I still powered through and made it to the final boss fight. It was there that The Plucky Squire fell apart in the middle of said final boss fight and crashed. Since then, I have not been able to load my game back up and finish it. I could simply restart the entire chapter of the game and be done with it, but my experience so far has left a terrible taste in my mouth. I don’t think I’ll be returning to this one.

Star Wars: Outlaws

Star Wars: Outlaws isn’t a bad game — it’s just a boring one. In my 8 or so hours playing it, I had already begun to feel like I had identified the game’s loop and decided I already had my fill. It didn’t help that the game itself just didn’t play great. There were multiple instances of my character mantling something or using a ladder when I didn’t want them to, which isn’t great for when you’re trying to avoid being seen by the only Storm Troopers in the galaxy who can actually hit a target. Mechanically, Star Wars: Outlaws is uninspired and repetitive even when it’s working well.

But even if it was more mechanically interesting, the story (from what I experienced) was just this boilerplate Star Wars narrative that wasn’t engaging at all. I didn’t hate the main character, but I didn’t feel any affinity for them either. The main story line is a real confusing one too, focusing on your character building up a team to execute a big heist. That on its own is whatever, but when every mission feels like an underwhelming heist as is, you eventually lose confidence in the game’s ability to make that big finale compelling.

While the game has been patched a lot since I last played it, I think there are core issues with it that can’t simply be patched out. From the jump Star Wars: Outlaws feels like its doing its best Star Wars impression while offering nothing particularly new or interesting. Maybe it gets better after fifteen hours or something, but I just don’t care enough to return to it. Star Wars: Outlaws is underwhelming but fine.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I felt so strongly about this wet fart of a game that I wrote a damn article about it — that’s how much of an impression it left. To summarize my feelings about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I first need to contextualize some things: First, I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of Dragon Age as a series. I’ve never hated it or anything, I’ve just never felt anything about this franchise. Secondly, I’ve played the Mass Effect series, and for the most part am a fan of it. I consider those games to (mostly) be pretty well written and compelling.

While Dragon Age: The Veilguard has some decent story lines and a couple of compelling characters, I think from top-to-bottom, that game is devoid of any soul. It is the paint-by-numbers version of an RPG. Nothing you do or say matters because you will be the hero, and nothing is going to derail that inevitability. Dialogue options feel less like making choices, and more like picking the tone of a predetermined line. The combat is flashy but gets incredibly repetitive after you fight the same recycled enemies throughout duration of the game, and even the few boss fights you encounter don’t do much to keep things fresh.

I didn’t even have particularly high hopes for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I knew these weren’t games I had ever enjoyed, but the combat looked fun enough for me to try getting onboard. For the first few hours I was really enjoying my time with the game. I liked the characters I had met and was curious about their lives. The world seemed cool even if the lore was a little dense and hard to follow as someone without any background with the franchise. But I was really ready to engage with this game as a whole, but it just consistently showed me how paper-thin of an experience it was.

There were rarely gray areas in the narrative. Dragon Age made it very clear that it wasn’t interested in challenging anyone with divisive storytelling, ensuring that just about every conflict would eventually be wrapped up nicely and neatly with a little bow on top. There are moments when the writing is genuinely compelling, but rarely does The Veilguard have the confidence in both itself and the player to let these moments breathe. By and large, most stories seem to wrap up a bit too nicely, usually allowing everyone to get the closure they desired.

But at the end of the day, I still beat the damn thing because it was fun to play. The gameplay loop was decent, the set-pieces were nice, and the environments were cool to wander in, even if there was rarely a reason to poke around for secrets. I feel like some people will really enjoy their time with this game, while others, like myself, will just be completely underwhelmed by it.

That’s day three of Game of the Year behind us. Come back tomorrow for the final top ten list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Better Together

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I still find myself romanticizing those long, all-night gaming sessions my friends and I would have when we were younger, despite knowing that by 9:30 in the evening I’m ready for bed. Paired with the absolute nightmare of scheduling anything with anyone as adults doesn’t leave the door open for a lot of memorable online gaming sessions anymore. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve completely abandoned the concept of multiplayer gaming.

Multiplayer games have, for the most part, been redefined in my household. My partner is my main multiplayer buddy now, which has opened the door for me to introduce them to all sorts of new gaming experiences they’ve never had. Between traditional multiplayer games and games we’ve turned into a multiplayer experience, here are some titles that we’ve enjoyed playing together this year… for the most part.

Honorable Mention – WarioWare: Move It!

My partner has a large soft spot for minigames whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. So introducing them to the mysterious world of microgames was kind of a revelation for them. We had an absolute blast with WarioWare: Move It! and its rapid fire motion-based microgames, blitzing our way through the entirety of the game in a handful of play sessions.

It’s a fun game to play together because of how absurdly it makes you behave. It also is a game that reminded me just how inaccurate the Switch’s motion controls are, but that was part of the fun for us.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

This fucking game. Look, my partner loves Mario Party, so we’ve played a lot of Super Mario Party Jamboree. In the context of being a Mario Party game, this is probably the best one I’ve ever played, but that’s not a terribly high bar to clear.

Jamboree is kind of a return to the Mario Party games I remember playing on the Nintendo 64, solely because of how demoralizingly brutal it can be. You’ve got all the star-stealing bullshitery of the past series entries in here, but it’s coupled with the titular Jamboree mechanic which can really blow games out of whack. You have the ability to snag up an NPC on the board, who will follow you around and benefit you with their unique power, such as adding to your dice rolls or getting you cheaper prices at the shops, for example. But more importantly, they double whatever event space you land on.

With your buddy there, you can buy 2 items at a shop, you can buy 2 stars at a time, landing on blue or red spaces doubles the amount of coins given and taken away, and you even have to suffer Bowser’s bullshit twice should you land on his spot. It also allows you to visit the ghost twice, meaning you get multiple chances at stealing things from other players. The Jamboree buddy has the ability to completely break games, launch a player into a commanding lead while burying another in an inescapable pit. So it’s the perfect mechanic for this series.

It’s a nice looking game and the minigames are of a better quality than I remember them ever being, but once again, not a high bar. Jamboree, like every other entry I’ve played, has a nasty habit of piling on certain players while endlessly rewarding others. Sometimes the random stuff works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn’t. But in spite of all of that, my partner and I have a great time when playing these games together. Super Mario Party Jamboree has been responsible for a lot of laughs in my home, and that alone earns it a spot on this list.

Animal Well

I had only played Animal Well for about a half hour before my partner saw its hauntingly beautiful art style and decided to ride shotgun for the whole experience. We managed to turn this mysterious puzzle-platformer into a cooperative experience, with me manning the controls and them managing the notes and tackling the more esoteric puzzle solving.

It was so nice to have a co-pilot in this experience because their presence made it so that I could focus more on the runs and jumps I had to nail, and less on the stuff hidden in the background and periphery of each screen. Animal Well is dense with information if you’re actively scanning for that kind of stuff, and my partner is just better at catching those things than I am.

Sure, there were discrepancies between their level of participation versus mine, but Animal Well is enough of a gorgeous enigma that they didn’t seem too bothered with the idea of having to watch me wander around the map and find a fucking egg or something. It was a wonderful adventure we got to embark on together, even if there were a lot of points where we were just wandering aimlessly in the hopes something new would reveal itself.

Chants of Sennaar

Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game that sees your character traversing a massive city-sized tower that’s comprised of different cultures with different values, priorities, and most importantly, different languages. Ascending to the top of the city requires you to pass through the various levels, where you’ll need to learn the languages within in order to find any success.

I pulled that description from a Spotlight article I wrote back in May of this year. I don’t want to sound too hyperbolic here, but Chants of Sennaar might be the best multiplayer experience I’ve ever had, and it isn’t even close.

Armed with a notebook and a controller, my partner and I set off to decode some languages. A few hours later and we were having full on discussions about the intentions and viewpoints of cultures and how those things would influence their language with one another and with other tribes. But we had to talk about those things because they were super important to succeeding in the game.

The overarching story in Chants of Sennaar involves a prophecy that each culture in the game seems to interpret and value very differently. Those cultural differences manifested themselves through their languages, wherein a culture might have a deep lexicon for words about the arts and entertainment whereas the next one might not have as many because they value science instead. Applying a decoded language to the prophecy would reveal why one culture interpreted it in a way that was so different from how another, and understand their outlooks on life. We began to understand how their societies were fundamentally different through their linguistic differences.

I cannot say enough nice things about Chants of Sennaar and I hope they make a sequel or just another game exactly like this. My only wish is that they cut out every single one of the bad stealth sections that did nothing but kill the momentum. Chants of Sennaar is the best multiplayer experience my partner and I have had this year, and possibly ever. We still talk about this game and wish we could experience for the first time again.

That’s day two of Game of the Year done and dusted. There won’t be a new list until Thursday because I want to enjoy the holiday. Happy holidays everyone. Also, maybe consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Golden Oldies

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I can think of no better way to kick off The Bonus World’s Game of the Year extravaganza than by talking about games that explicitly did not release this calendar year. I’ve played a lot of stuff this year and not all of it came out in 2024, let alone this century, so I’d like to highlight some of them here.

Aside from the Honorable Mention below, this list is in no particular order. All of these games are excellent, and some of them will even get their due elsewhere.

Honorable Mention – Chants of Sennaar

I am 100% certain that you will be hearing me talk about Chants of Sennaar in some other list this year, so I won’t harp on it too much right now. This is an incredible puzzle game focused on decoding and translating languages. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played and I cannot recommend it enough.

The Case of the Golden Idol

2024 was the year that I truly fell in love with puzzle-solving games, and The Case of the Golden Idol is one of the main reasons why. It is a game about deductive reasoning that requires you to really take in your environment, identifying who and what is in each scene along with the context of those elements.

What really clicked with me in hindsight is how The Case of the Golden Idol was both presented and played. It’s a unique spin on traditional point-and-click adventure games that I described in more detail back in the October Spotlight:

It isn’t clear who or what you play as in The Case of the Golden Idol, but you inhabit some sort of third party spectator who arrives at the moment of, or shortly after a grizzly murder has taken place. Through a point-and-click interface, you explore each heinous tableau, rooting around pockets, cupboards, and trashcans for pieces of information that can steer you towards identifying who people are, who was present, and what motives existed. At the end of each level you input your assumptions into a Mad-Libs-styled notepad, filling out the story with its key figures, items and whatever other relevant information is needed.

I don’t want to spoil anything because the story is kind of the whole game, so you’ll have to forgive the vague platitudes. But trust me when I say that The Case of the Golden Idol is a remarkable puzzler in the same vein as another beloved deduction-based game, The Return of the Obra Din. Maybe keep a notebook handy though, you’ll probably need it.

Super Mario World

It only took me three decades, but on some idle Tuesday in March I finally whipped Bowser’s ass on my own instead of relying on my older sister to do it for me. I genuinely forgot how much of this game we would skip on a regular basis, usually opting for the Star Road route directly to Bowser’s soon-to-be graveside. I think I put it quite eloquently when I said:

I stomped all of his children’s collective asses and then stomped his too. It was the first time I had ever personally beaten Super Mario World, and it was absolutely worth the 3 or 4 hours it took. Playing it on the Switch was a nice bonus too because I was able to make use of save states and the rewind feature a few times. Put an asterisk next to my accomplishment if you need to, but I could not care less. I beat Super Mario World and killed Bowser and his whole family. I am a hero.

Mamma-mia, this game is a masterpiece.

Baldur’s Gate 3

They said it couldn’t be done. They said there was no way he could find a way to give Baldur’s Gate 3 some sort of award a year after it was released. Not only did this absolute gem of a game win last year’s GOTY (spoilers I guess?), but apparently I honored it back in 2020 when it was still in early access. Who knew?

But that’s how fantastic this game is. I still think about it fondly, months after finally uninstalling it, freeing up the 6 petabytes worth of data it occupied. I’ve said my piece about this game over and over again, and I’ve also lauded it as the game that finally made me like CRPGs, which in retrospect isn’t really true.

Since being swept up in its splendor and eventually moving on, I’ve tried other games of its ilk. I think I’ve come to the realization that I still don’t like this genre of game. I don’t have the patience for any of these games. I don’t want to drink the right potions, or spec out my characters to make a cohesive team composition, or attempt to set up some wild chain reaction of events I know isn’t going to work because I planned it. I just don’t enjoy that stuff.

But in Baldur’s Gate 3 and only in Baldur’s Gate 3, I fucking love doing that stuff. I see people creaming their jeans over Path of Exile, Pillars of Eternity and the Divinity games, and I’m real happy for them, but I just want to play this game with these characters, and this story with its writing, and not engage with this genre in any other form until its inevitable sequel.

Whether it’s a lack of patience or general lack of brain power, I do not enjoy these kinds of games — EXCEPT for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is one of the best video games of all time.

That’s day one of Game of the Year in the books. Come back tomorrow for another list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

An Introduction to Game of the Year 2024

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Tis the season to once again rank video games. 2024 has been a weird year for me personally, but for The Bonus World, it represented a pivot point and total reassessment of how this project fit into my life. It’s been transformative, honestly, allowing me to focus my energy on monthly updates via the Spotlight features rather than push content for the sake of content. Which in turn allowed me the freedom to let my thoughts marinate a bit more instead of worrying so much about arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines for everything.

Self reflection is great and all, but that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to talk about how The Bonus World is handling Game of the Year in 2024. I’m going to be publishing superlative lists, (think best multiplayer, etc.) for a few days, ultimately leading up to a final top 10 list. I’ve always preferred this “all-in” format but found it hard to commit to because of how much more work it turns out to be, but that’s not an issue at the moment, so here we are!

This stuff is going to hit in the last week of December, so while you’re waiting for the end of the month to see how 2024 shook out, why not check out last year’s list? You can also get a taste of how this will go by checking out the multiple installments we did for 2020, including both my top 10 and bottom 5 lists. You can also peruse our new, monthly feature, The Spotlight, to maybe glean how 2024’s GOTY will shake out.

The Spotlight – 10

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The Spotlight is a monthly summary that encapsulates some of the more notable media experiences I’ve had over the past thirty days. From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, it all has a place in the Spotlight.

It’s another light month, unfortunately. But now that we’re in December, work can begin on Game of the Year stuff. So that’s exciting.

For the month of November, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Dragon Age : The Veilguard

I wrote a whole thing about Dragon Age: The Veilguard that you can read right here, but the short version is that I felt the whole game was really underwhelming. It’s a game that plays it too safely and ultimately fails to establish any real identity of its own.

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Sadly, I’ve only played a handful of levels of The Rise of the Golden Idol, not because I don’t think it’s excellent, but because I want to be able to dedicate my full attention to it and haven’t found that opportunity. For the uninitiated, the Golden Idol games play pretty much identically, and involve you peering into a moment in time, collecting and deciphering clues and then ultimately putting it all together in a cohesive way.

It’s a game about deduction and paying extremely close attention to every clue, no matter how benign they may seem at first. I’ve been playing it on the Xbox, which has been a more fiddly experience than I was hoping for, but I knew what I was getting myself into when buying a game like this on a console. If you’re unsure about if you’d like The Rise of the Golden Idol, its predecessor, The Case of the Golden Idol, is available on Gamepass right now. Like I said, they play identically, so you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s your thing or not.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

I’ve never known any games that were as hateful as the Mario Party series, but that has not stopped my partner and I from playing a truly upsetting amount of the latest entry in the series, Super Mario Party Jamboree. In something of a return to form, Jamboree reminds me a lot of the Nintendo 64 entries in the series, primarily because they’re the only ones I’ve played before, and this one is filled with just as much, if not more, horeshit than ever before.

I assume we all know how this nightmare is played, with the dice, the board, the bad mini-games, the complete random bullshit? Jamboree takes this classic formula and adds a fun new wrinkle in the form of “Jamboree Buddies,” which is a feature you cannot turn off and is completely game breaking unless you’re me and have the luck of someone who’s spent their whole life breaking mirrors and walking under ladders.

See, sometimes some asshole like Waluigi will plop his ass on the board somewhere and wait for someone to come and talk to him. Should you do that, you then compete with everyone else for a chance to have him tag along with you for a few turns. You play his terrible mini-game, and whoever wins gets the “honor” of having him in their retinue. These buddies all have abilities that can either give you better rolls, better prices on items, extra coins and whatnot, but more importantly they act as a second player for you to control. So if you go to a shop to buy an item, you can now buy two. You buy a star, now you can buy two. You land on a Bowser spot, well that’s two beat downs for you. It can make the whole game get out of control really quick and I wish you could toggle this feature off.

The only thing pulling me through these games is my love for my partner, and the fact that I get to play as Monty Mole, the best character in the whole thing.

Watch List

Clone High

Look man, in 2002 or whatever, Clone High was the peak of comedy among my friends and I. Here in 2024 though, it hasn’t aged particularly well. The original series still has its charms despite some questionable subject matter and the fact that the entire licensed soundtrack of indie rock of the era has been ripped out and replaced by way worse music, so that’s something.

In stark contrast is the new continuation of the series that continues the story. It’s really bad. It has none of the aforementioned charm and seems to not understand what made the original run so entertaining in the first place.

Ultimately I think Clone High should have remained a relic of its time, forever leaving us wondering about how its cliffhanger ending could have been resolved.

Upload

What if Facebook owned the afterlife? That’s the core conceit of Upload, a show that sometimes gets a little too real for me to laugh at. Without going too much into story specifics, Upload touches on a lot of topics that I worry will eventually stop being in the realm of science fiction within my lifetime. Questions about who actually owns your digital consciousness when you die are the ones that particularly make me uncomfortable. It’s also a pretty good show too, so you should watch it.

Listening Party

Booster Seat – Spacey Jane

Less Than – Nine Inch Nails

The Remedy – Abandoned Pools

The Rest

Rough Month

For a variety of reasons, November has been a particularly challenging month that hasn’t afforded me a ton a free game time. Hell, even if I had that time, I don’t know that I’ve had the stomach to actually start a new game or get invested in something. I am so tired these days.

News

Nintendo Switch Online Services to be Discontinued in China

Inside the fall of GAME

McDonald’s is Trying to Kill You with a $20 Jug of McRib Sauce

Valve Discusses Half-Life 2 Episode 3 and More!

There’s a New DK Rap and it’s Fine

Man Throws Baby Against Wall In Anger While Playing NBA 2K, Charged With Two Felonies

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of January with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.