GameCola

They say that all good things must come to an end, but no one ever said that all good things must have a good ending. Sometimes, game developers hold this close to their hearts and offer an abysmal, awkward, or just plain atrocious ending to your favorite games. To put so many hours into a great title only to have it all fall off a cliff can be hard on the gamer. Like McKayla Maroney, sometimes we put in hours of hard work only to feel like we fell on our face at the final hour. This month, we ask the staff: Which game you’ve played has the worst or most disappointing ending? And there are spoilers ahead, naturally!

A lot of you may remember Cookie Clicker, a game where you click a cookie to make a cookie and then buy upgrades to make more cookies. A lot of people thought it was pointless because the entire game is just a number going up. Commodore Clicker is a bit cooler: You click “Render (x number) pixels” and then it actually renders part of the Commodore 64 start screen.

The story I played through hit close to home. It wasn’t fun, but it was a good read. It felt excellent that someone else understood, and that the story got better! In fact, it’s really well handled, and I enjoyed reading the depiction of depression from the game! It’s an awful trope that people use mental illness and overcoming it as inspiration fodder, and Depression Quest doesn’t do that! The story is not happy, but it’s very important and very well handled, and I would recommend it to anyone.

You’ve seen the awards, now listen to the podcast! It only happens once a year, so don’t miss out! Join the podcast crew and not one—but TWO—very special guest stars as they talk about the games that won in the 2014 GameCola Videogame Awards! And, that’s not all.

This is it! The big day! All of GameCola’s big awards for 2014 are right here, so why are you bothering to read this?! Get to reading!

Aha! Here we are again! It seems like it was only a year ago that I was handling the GameCola Videogame Awards for the very first time. Things went a bit more smoothly this time around, and I have to thank the staff for that! Come on, let’s all stand up and give them a round of applause. Are you standing? I’m standing. Commence the clapping! OK, I think that’s enough clapping. You can sit down now.

If doing something two years in a row makes it an annual tradition, then GameCola’s second annual HoHoHoliday LIVEcast Extravaganza has arrived on YouTube! As with anything I report on, it’s been there for a while already. Alex Jedraszczak, Anna Bryniarski, Diana Gray, Joseph Martin, and Matt Jonas spend nearly five continuous hours talking about (possibly) holiday-related videogames as Matt plays them, interacting with an invisible chatroom, and digressing into silliness like it’s their job (which it is). Have a look-see!

Many videogame news outlets are giving out their Super Bowl XLIX predictions this year using the state of the art Madden technology (which is to say, last year’s games with slightly improved graphics and updated stats). But here at GameCola, I was given a $2 stipend to produce some accurate results. Naturally, I fired up my copy of Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES and set up a CPU vs. CPU match to predict the results. It seems that the 1990 versions of the Seahawks and the Patriots are pretty evenly matched!

“Fantasy football” sounds like it should be a sports game or a fantasy life sim. In reality, it’s more like a tabletop RPG than anything else. What a deceptive game title!

The good news is that Fright doesn’t have a deceptive title. It’s a horror game, designed to frighten you. It’s also an FMV adventure game, and I’m sold on it.

So, people have been talking about Starr Mazer for a bit now, and it’s finally out on Kickstarter. I’ve been doing a lot of Kickstarter previews here on the ol’ G-Coles lately, though, so I figured I’d talk a bit more about some other things this game brings up. For those who haven’t seen it (and, those who just want to watch it again), I’ll leave the trailer here and you can get back to the article when you’re done. ...

Just off the trailer, I saved up a lot of money doing chores to buy the base game and the Late Night expansion. And when I first played it, I really, really, didn’t like it. What I was expecting from a game that looked fast -paced and full of features was slow, complicated (to me at the time), and requiring a lot of time making Sims, loading, buying stuff for your house, finding a job, and all of that stuff before you could get into the game. Keep in mind, this was a time when I didn’t know of games like Sid Meier’s Civilization or games that go even deeper like Crusader Kings. So…I uninstalled the game and left the discs to just sit my desk drawer. ...

If you’re a die-hard (or, even die-soft) fan of Five Nights at Freddy’s, it should have come to your attention about the speculative rumors of a third installment on the way. This has been confirmed on the developer’s main website through shady artwork and watermarks placed on images on the site. Now, this is all well and good that they would add a third installment to the series. After all, the series itself has been a blockbuster since the bite of ’87. But, the question now arises: what new features can we come to expect? ...

I’ve been following the development of this game on Tumblr for a while, and just yesterday it went up on Kickstarter—already having raised $1,200 of their $8,000 goal in just the day it took me to post this! If they keep that up, they’ll be funded before the week is over. A copy of the game is only $10, but if you don’t have the cash, you can always vote for them on Steam Greenlight or follow them on Twitter. No game can be successful without support, so it’s probably a good idea to do those things even if you do pay. So, what are you waiting for?! Go spread the word about Steel Assault!

... Samus Aran is totally a transgirl, how could we possibly have missed it? To start, she’s huge and supposed to be built like a brick house as illustrated above! While short transgirls tend to exist that’s not to say they cannot be tall, and in fact many transwomen are usually really tall with regards to cis women. As well, the amount of muscle she has and her weight also lean toward her being trans, as that’s especially common among transwomen who transition later in life. Between all of that, there’s also the fact that this is a science fiction universe, and it’s not so far-fetched that transness could be detected early and Samus could have been given the proper chemicals, hormones, and body reconstruction to ensure she developed through childhood as feminine as possible! There’s all sorts of ways for Samus to be trans, and it’s really not that outlandish anyway! ...

Their Kickstarter campaign is looking for the pretty modest sum of $6,000, and it’s already a quarter of the way there. If you don’t have $10 to give so you can get the game when it’s completed (you can pledge less, but who doesn’t want the game?!), you can always vote for them on Steam Greenlight…or follow them on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter! It’s a pretty cool game, so show your support!