Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!
So I’ve spent the past, I dunno, seven months casually playing Age of Mythology. Around September or October, roughly around when the new Japanese faction came out, I slowly noticed a surprising graphical detail: berry bushes now had a pumpkin overlay. Chickens were still called chickens but were obviously turkeys. Whether I was fighting on the Silk Road or the Sea of Worms or the shallows of the River Nile, the changes were there. It’s a fun detail for fall, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I wanted to use it to think about autumn in gaming.
I love fall. I love the colder weather, the colorful leaves on the trees, the shorter days. Halloween, my favorite month, is in fall. Surprisingly, though, it’s also kind of an inconsistent seasonal state in games. There are levels in racing and fighting games that are set in autumn, there are platformer levels in fall, and most life simulator games (at least those with a seasonal focus) will depict it. But it’s not, like, a dominant video game level type. That’s probably because it’s not tied to an easy mechanical gimmick, like slippery ice or harsh snow. Or maybe it’s because it’s tied to forest levels more easily, and those are already kind of a B-tier gaming biome. Whatever the case, there’s not as much of it as I want. Fortunately, that’s where you come in for today’s prompt: what’s your favorite fall-themed level in…
…Goddamnit, I did this prompt back in 2023, and I didn’t think to check. And that one even has alt text of me worrying that I had done it before. I hate reusing prompts. I have no idea of what all of you expect from me, but Wolfman let himself down. No, we can totally redo the prompt with this oversized image. Screw that old prompt, here’s the new one: what’s your favorite dumb Thanksgiving aesthetic, graphical, or promotional tie-in to a game? Do you like it when live services have their characters dress up as pilgrims? Of course you don’t! You’ve got discerning taste! But what about when there Thanksgiving events? Stupid seasonal overlays? Or, wait, what about the sales!? Oh, the sales! I’m gonna get Enter and Exit the Gungeon for barely anything! And Ape Out is currently on sale at the eShop for TWO GODDAMN DOLLARS, why aren’t you taking advantage of that right now?
While you’re presumably buying the coolest anarchic 1960s jazz murder ape Hotline Miami riff in the world, what did you play this weekend? Had we used the original prompt, I could talk about the bonkers fall course in Kirby Air Riders. But we’re not using it, so I’m not.