PixlBit

I got a laptop I used for Steam gaming eventually in July of 2012, but I honestly don't even remember if I was gaming in 2012 or just had to get a new laptop, cause I know I played Fez and Hotline Miami in 2013, but it was mostly getting to the Batman Arkham games I'd missed otherwise. 

2012 was also a hell of a year for me in that I graduated college the first time, had like 4 relationships where the average,mean, and mode for every other year in my life has been 0, most of the music on the radio actually matched my tastes pretty well (M83, Passion Pit, and fun! spring to mind as far as the burgeoning alt-pop scene at the time), I landed a really cool PA job at a studio in Dallas and the year was just super-fun and made me feel like my future was bright. 

Then 2013 rolled in, where my PA job was just not hiring me on anymore for freelance work due to a change in the way productions were handled, I put my cat down sometime around my birthday, and the year was pretty much a downward spiral from there until freaking the hell out in grad school and constantly reminding myself I was there because I'd failed in the real world and would probably fail at this next, more difficult step too. I may or may not have knowingly eaten green beef at one point, which meant violently bodily functioning all throughout Thanksgiving and then scrambling to work on a 20-some-odd page research paper I was supposed to use the entire break to write. 

I suppose I did play Arkham Origins and Guacamelee around this time though, and got to 2013's Tomb Raider probably within a year of its release, so let's talk about the games I mentioned anyway. 

I wrote a whole blog about just Fez in 2013, because the game was all about perspective and, well ... I think from the last couple paragraphs you can tell why I appreciated it. I got stuck at one point because the world map was being an asshole and I didn't have the patience to search all these different places, but it was fun and had a much-needed message while it lasted for me. 

It was also adorable, which was also much-needed that year. 

Hotline Miami is one I did not care for. I don't really get the appeal of having to do something exactly right really quickly and mostly dying over and over again. It just wasn't for me. 

Arkham Origins is one I probably liked a lot more than everyone else due to the fact I'd only recently played the other Arkham games. I thought the graphics looked a bit better than in the Rocksteady titles, I loved that you actually went to the bat cave and hat a bat plane and I'm a sucker for a white Christmas setting. Plus, I think most everyone likes the Deathstroke boss fight, so we can all at least agree on that.

Guacamelee I think I had on Steam but actually beat on PS4 when it became available on PS+. This was the start of me always holding out for indie titles to show up on PS+, cause I'd paid $15 on STeam right before the PS+ option came about. It's a good Metroid style game with Mexican artwork and charm and a much different/deeper combat system involving wrestling combos rather than just unloading missiles on everything like I've always done with Ridley. 

Finally, I actually did manage to run Tomb Raider on Normal settings on my ASUS laptop, and it looked AMAZING when I HDMI linked it to my TV ... but of course I had to really be careful about placing the laptop just so it wouldn't overheat and the game definitely shut my computer down once or twice. Still, I managed to find a way to beat it on said laptop, so I guess they optimized it pretty well.