Home » Op-Ed » Much to be Thankful For… – Hailing Frequencies for 11/22/17

Much to be Thankful For… – Hailing Frequencies for 11/22/17

   11/22/2017  Leave a Comment on Much to be Thankful For… – Hailing Frequencies for 11/22/17  Posted in Op-Ed, News, Deals 0 Likes 525 Views
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Yup, I’m Breaking Out This ol’ Chestnut.

Happy Wednesday folks! It’s the day before Thanksgiving here in the US, and before we get to the news, or talk about gaming in general, I wanted to share what I’m thankful for, gaming-wise, this year.

This has been a tumultuous year in many respects. In terms of gaming, it’s been a crazy one indeed. I mean, 6,000 games hit Steam this year, so even space gaming has been swamped. That said, I’m still thankful for Steam, warts and all. I mean it helped usher in a new era of PC gaming when they were disappearing from store shelves a decade ago. I think, without Steam, we’d not have the space game resurgence we’re in the midst of today, but would still be in the dark ages, as it were, so I’m very thankful that Steam — and digital distribution in general — exists.

I’m thankful for hardworking gaming fans who keep older games alive, whether it’s RPGs like Jumpgate or Star Wars Galaxies, sims like Klingon Academy, or even non-space games like Myth II or the Battle for Middle Earth games. This includes emulators like DOSBox, open-source projects like Freespace Open, widescreen and compatibility patches, and so much more. Without folks like these, we’d have a much harder time playing the games we still love, so as one who loves to play older games, my hat is off to all these wonderful people who keep these older games going.

I’m thankful for all the developers we’ve met who are making or have made all these amazing new space games we’ve been playing over the last few years. I know I keep saying it, but I never thought for one moment when I began this blog that we’d have a new space game resurgence, but here we are, and it’s thanks to the developers who realized space games are indeed loved and viable and decided to throw their hats in the ring.

Finally, I’m thankful to you, the folks who read this blog, watch our videos, listen to our podcast, hang out in Discord and so on. This community is one of the true joys of my life, and I am thankful for everyone in it. You folks make every day a delight, and I can’t thank you enough for being a part of this amazing journey.

So as for gaming, I am super excited about one purchase: Parkitect. It’s going into beta soon, so I decided to jump on it before, finally, before the price went up. I played a bit of it last night and MY GOD it’d everything I wanted Planet Coaster to be but wasn’t. It’s not just about building and such, but OPTIMIZING. These guys get what made Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Park great: It wasn’t just building coasters, but making customers happy. To do this you needed to hire a proper staff to maintain the park in all of its facets, have plenty of food, drink and bathroom facilities and so on. Parktect helps you track all of this with an amazing amount of information with each and every guest, such as how happy or hungry they are, what they’ve spent money on, and a visual line of their journey through your park. It’s really amazing. It’s also a bit buggy — my first save game got bugged out after loading some Workshop rides — but hey, early access. I so, SO can’t wait to play more.

I’ve also been playing a lot of DOOM (since it’s the biggest game on my hard drive, and I’d love to regain that space, so I need to finish it), and man is it crazy fun. I also played more of the campaign in Geneshift so I could unlock more stuff and more levels. The fourth level took several retries to get through, but it was so satisfying once I did. Such a great game. Also played more LOGistICAL and Tooth and Tail, both of which are great. Also finally dove into Deadpool, which has a weird combat system, but I don’t care because the writing and voice acting are both SUPERB. Oh, and The Walking Vegetables is a SUPER fun twin-stick shooter roguelike thing, with an AMAZING 80s vibe.

This coming weekend I’m back to making stuff for y’all, so it’ll be Space Pirates and Zombies 2 plus some one-off videos for stuff like War Tech Fighters, Space Rangers HD and whatever else I can throw in there. Plus likely more Doom and Parkitect. I tell y’all, I’m so excited about Parkitect. ;)

Oh, also, don’t forget we’ll be playing Star Wars Galaxies this coming Sunday morning, so feel free to join us if you’d like. :)

Alright folks, lots of news since last time, so we’ll hit the highlights and separate out patches. Here goes:

I hate to admit it, but I don’t have time to go over the abundance of sale stuff going on right now. Steam’s Black Friday sale starts today, so there will be plenty of deals to look for, but GOG and Humble, for example, tried to get some momentum before Steam’s sales with sales of their own. It’s an amazing time for bargain hunters, I tell ya that.

So that’s it folks. To my fellow Americans, have a happy Thanksgiving, and to everyone else, we’ll see you on Sunday for some Star Wars Galaxies. Have a great day everyone!

Author: Brian Rubin

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