Event Horizon. The trailers made it seem like just another 90s sci-fi horror flick trying to ride the Alien high, but it ended up being such a good movie with a tight script, beautiful set design, actually smart characters, and great acting.

The chemistry between Kevin Costner and William Hurt was so perfect. This is one of those hidden gems that I like to recommend people to surprise them with just how good it is.

They doing beanie babies yet? I have a vintage Beanis the Hog that I’m hoping will pay off the mortgage on my retirement cardboard box.

I kinda like it. Stalin looks kinda sad and disappointed, as if he’s looking into post-war Europe and seeing that all hope of revolution is being extinguished.

It’s probably the exact face he would make if he got to listen in on the French Communist Party meetings at the time.

There have been some newer CRPGs that do this. Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera were part of a revival of the genre that used pre-rendered backgrounds to great effect. There is also a mod for Pillars of Eternity 1 that enhances the pre-rendered backgrounds too as the originals are starting to show their age a bit because of the compression they used.

Disco Elysium also takes a lot of inspiration from the genre, including the gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds.

I can’t recommend all 4 games highly enough. Disco Elysium may be the clear winner, but Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera are very good games too. Pillars in particular has some very wonderful characters in both games that have since gone on to live rent free in my head alongside greats like Garrus and Kreia. Which if you’re familiar with Obsidian and Chris Avellone’s work he wrote two characters in Pillars 1 specifically, Durance and Grieving Mother that are absolutely amazing and deeply compelling characters.

Bit of a rant, but I love these games and would highly recommend them to anyone who likes narrative heavy RPGs. Although Pillars 1 & 2 have some really crunchy combat they also have story modes that make it easy if you’re more into the narrative than combat.

Just pump out children and send them into the fields. You can send them to school if they manage to survive past 16!

I’ve been playing a game called Wayfinder recently and been having a blast. The game has been on a long journey, it started out as a MMO-lite dungeon crawling action RPG, but the publisher, Digital Extremes of Warframe fame, pulled out as the publisher and left the devs Airship Syndicate high and dry. So Airship Syndicate went back to the drawing board and dropped all the MMO aspects and just released the game as a offline action RPG that can do up to three player co-op via P2P so no servers involved. The developers, Airship Syndicate, are refugees from Vigil and a lot of the team that made Darksiders 1 & 2. They made the LoL Ruined King game, Battle Chasers, and Darksiders 3.

Also since they dropped the MMO aspects there are no microtransactions! You can unlock everything by just playing the game, which is filled with all sorts of cosmetics and things to unlock. They have a supporter pack up that they did in partnership with Critical Role if you feel like throwing some extra support at the devs, but that’s the only MTX other than an old founder pack that you can’t buy anymore. But since they dropped the MMO aspect game is totally offline now you can use a save editor to get all the founders pack stuff if you want.

I’ve been quite hooked so far. The art style is wonderful, this glitzy neon drenched steampunk-ish fantasy that takes some obvious inspiration from LoL/Arcane and WoW but really has its own flair that makes it distinct.

Combat is pretty straightforward third-person action RPG. There are big outdoor zones with lots of little secrets and puzzles to find, but most of the game is running randomized dungeons or killing bosses. The dungeons have a surprising amount of secrets in them so you’re rewarded for looking around and exploring instead of just plowing through and ignoring everything. You choose from characters with 4 abilities and a pretty wide range of weapons with their own ability. There are lots of stats customization which makes it play a lot more RPG than you’d think at first the more things you unlock.

Story is pretty good. Good voice acting with funny and serious side quests and NPCs that aren’t just pop culture references really give it some heart and soul. Some clichés, but little to no action/horror movie logic where characters act like idiots for no reason.

It’s got a lot of legs if you like the combat and enjoy collecting new cosmetics and gear. Personally I love games like this when I’m listening to podcasts or audiobooks.

It’s not without its issues. It plays on Steam Deck, but is pretty choppy ant times and I sometimes get frame rate drops on PC, but my rig is starting to show its age. I’ve heard the PS5 version has more performance issues, but I play on PC so I can’t confirm. The occasional bug crops up, but I haven’t run across anything game breaking. At worst I’ve had to come back to a quest later, but usually a reload fixes things.

Anyways that’s a big rambly pitch for my surprise favorite game this year. I haven’t given much thought to TGA yet, but I am super excited for Monster Hunter Wilds next year.