Watch Stephen Colbert partake in a glorious 10 minute train wreck.

What... what is happening?!

This is either the best thing or the best-est thing Colbert's Late Show has ever done.

Welcome back, Orphan Black!

 My dear clone club, it's been far too long. April 24th it is.

Firewatch Review: Hey there Delilah.

Interactive drama. I've wanted it for so long I'm not sure how to feel now that I've got it. I can't speak for anyone else, but for my taste, it's about time a game was all about understated loneliness. The kind of loneliness your conscious mind never registers. The kind you might take a job out in the middle of nowhere to stop thinking about.

I couldn't have played this game at a better time. As a guy who was just on the receiving end of a text breakup, I could do with a virtual hike alone in the woods. A virtual hike alone in the woods set in a time before cellphones? All the better.

Moving on... you play a man who's had a years long relationship fly into the sh**er and he's taken a job at a Firewatch station to eat up his summer. For the next few months you've got no one but a fellow Firewatcher miles away to keep you sane. Your objectives are boiler plate at first. Stop a couple teens from setting off fireworks, clear trail heads, etc. But don't worry, things get weirder. 

Rich Sommer (the tv guy from Mad Men) nails the nonchalant despair a guy running away from his life would need. He's a delight and I can't wait for more VO work from him. Cissy Jones's Delilah suffers from an introduction that tries too hard. Ever notice when a writer NEEDS you to like someone that everything that comes out of their mouth in the first chapter is forced, unfunny, sarcasm? The first hour She grated on my nerves a bit, but before long she had me chuckling out loud. Their budding romance is the single greatest relationship I've ever seen in a game. That's your $20 right there. If that's the sorta thing that's worth that kind of scratch to you.

It's certainly worth it to me.

This game nnnnnnnnnnAILS sunsets. I mean, my god.

Please go into this game looking for a drama, not a mystery. Though there is one, and it's pretty good, it's not the point. Folks are griping that the end comes out of nowhere. It absolutely does not, it ends precisely when it means to. I cooked up several high-drama thriller plot twists that I'd muse about on my way to the next objective. I'm relived the game never acted on them. It played on my expectations brilliantly and left a lot up for interpretation.

I ended up liking Delilah. I almost got a crush on her. But like a lot of women I've met and was momentarily into... I'm sure she told me a bunch of lies to keep from hurting my feelings. That was my read on the character. Just do me a favor and take some pictures with that camera you find. And stick around for the end of the credits. There's no extra scene or a shocking revelation. There's just a perfect way to end a first person interactive drama.

Make of that what you will and please buy Firewatch. Though looking at steam's top sellers, that doesn't seem to be an issue. They certainly deserve it.

Happy Valentines Day from all your Fallout 4 companions.

Thanks, Jillian Bakos!

I uh... I got nothing today.

Still clacking away at my Xcom 2 review. Here's a preview: "It's goooooooood." Now while I work on getting a little more nuanced with that opinion, here's what Stephen Tobolowsky would look like if he were a Disney Princess.

Thanks PeterBanning!

This fictional ad from NASA seems a smidge dystopian

Where the air is free? Guess we never crack terraforming, huh?  But seriously, these space tourism ads are just the best.

YEAH!

F**k YEAH!

Anyone else wanna high-five an Art Deco statue right now?

What's the most shockng thing about XCOM 2?

It's got a good yarn. The aliens aren't just a paramilitary threat anymore and their motives aren't  resigned to some some throwaway lines at the end of the game about them finding the perfect warrior.

There's a mystery at the heart of XCOM 2 that's way more intricate than Advent simply processing humanity into food. The dialogue can be hammy and the performances don't always hit (Shen sounds pretty sleepy sometimes) but the act of freeing earth takes scientists and engineers. Not just better guns and soldiers. There's some half decent drama to be found hacking away at alien corpses in the lab, surprisingly.

Advent is a puzzle just as much as it is an enemy. In other words, the last thing I thought I'd find compelling about XCOM 2 was it's story.

"Well it's damn good to BE back, sir."

.Apparently rag-tag resistance fighters are also shockingly accomplished interior decorators

 

Ever go back to an old game and strike gold?

Just thought I'd pick up a magazine in Concordia, then bam!

 Damn funny meta-joke staring me in the face. I guess canonically none of the vault hunters ever actually die and how do you actually display plot inconsistencies? Love it. Love everything about this gag.

Digital Chicken Soup Part 2

I'm not a Thrones fan who reads the books, that's a personal failing. I never read as much as I should Still, I don't know why "Hardcore Game of Thrones" is so compulsively listenable. It's an audio history tour of Westeros by Alex Berg... played entirely straight. Like a WWI documentary.

I submit that the histories are all the rough drafts Martin went through before settling on the time period so interesting that I bought 2 months of HBO Now to binge it. Because the history tells a damn good story. No better application of writing = re-writing that I can think of.

Digital Chicken Soup.

I bought Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Jesus, look at that hyphenated number.) last December foolishly hoping it was ported. But it was an unoptimized mess brought to hideous second life. It was rough watching it constantly lurch back and forth between 60-30 fps and I dropped it like a stone.

Fast forward a year and a month and... well I'm having a rough go of it. FF's time traveling claptrap is actually soothing to me now. For lack of a more elegant phrase, I needed something both intense and inoffensive to devour my weekend's waking hours. Something new, without spending any more money. In other words, no reaching for the dusty ol' copy of Requiem for a Dream for Alex. No sir.

But it's a damn good game! The actors are actors dedicated but the script spouts the most laughable drivel I've heard in a looooooong time. But that's a good thing when you want to turn your brain off so hard it's practically meditation. It's also secretly a Pokemon game and I'm all for that at the moment.

 I finally realized in order to appreciate what Square Enix has been up to these past 7 years you have to be at least a little drunk.

Heres the cracked podcast live:

 

So that's what they look like.

Long dark night of the Kraken soul.

...Life, huh? You never seem to be able to stop putting yourself out there. Time to hit the gym harder, I guess.