Category Archives: Lists
New Year, Old Year: 2016 Revisited
Accountability. It’s the ability to be honest that, yes, I just used the same intro line as last year. Because introductions are difficult.
Today we’re revisiting my selections for Best Week 2016, the forty games that stood head and shoulders above the rest by my reckoning, and discussing whether they’ve held up over the intervening year. Basically, this is my reality check. Speaking only for myself, these are the games that stuck around, as well as the ones that disappeared from my table. Or worse, my memory.
This is going to be a long one. So if you’d rather skip straight to a particular list, you can take a look at the best overlooked, adorable, iterative, educational, and unique games of yesteryesteryear.
New Year, Old Year: 2015 Revisited
Accountability. It’s a word. It means many things, though perhaps some things more than others. For instance, perhaps most people don’t consider the adjective that means you’re a really good financial worker to be one of the word’s primary definitions. To me, it means being honest. Frank. Open. Which is why I want to revisit my Best Week 2015 picks and talk about how they held up. Which games do I still play a lot, which have disappeared to the Basement of Forgetting, and which ones truly deserve to be called the best?
Since this is going to be a long-winded bit of self-reflection, feel free to skip to whichever retrospective you like. We’ve got the best rebaked games, consternating games, overlooked games, surprising games, and everything else of 2015.
Best Week 2015: The Index
Once again that sad moment is upon us. Best Week 2015 is over, leaving us with nothing to do but say goodbye. Below are links to each day’s catalog of the best games of the year. Just click any of the pics to be magically whisked away to the correct list. Until 2016’s compilation, take care of yourselves!
The Space-Biff! Holiday Survival Guide
It’s that time of year again! The weather is getting nippy, radio stations are playing jollier music, and you’re honor-bound to spend multiple evenings with people you don’t necessarily know very well but who hold some sort of genetic or matrimonial connection to you. Sure, Uncle Deever is sort of a racist and your mother-in-law asks a lot of questions that feel like indictments of how badly you’re caring for her precious baby, but it could be worse. You might, for example, have nobody around who loves you.
But for those of us who do, what follows is an incredibly subjective and probably wrong-headed list of the ten games I’ll be hauling around in a big yellow duffel bag this holiday season.
Best Week 2014, Staff Mutiny!
![Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]](https://thurotdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/0-best-week-occupied.jpg "Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]")
Ah. Hello. You were probably expecting Dan, weren’t you? I can tell by the facial tics projected through your webcam that you’re a little surprised by this turn of events — after all, hasn’t Best Week 2014 come to an end?
No. It has not. Because we’re in charge now. And this only ends when we say it ends.
Don’t worry, Dan will be fine. Brain damage on par with a night of heavy drinking, or maybe drowning for a few minutes. So let’s just call this a guest submission. Because we, the undersigned, are not content with Dan’s tyrannical “Top Thirty” list, or whatever he’s calling his puppet regime these days. We merely aim to correct his errors with the actual top games we played this year.
Best Week 2014, Day Five!
At long last, here we are. The top six games of the Space-Biff! year, sort of sorted into a coherent list of preference.
Appropriately, every single one of them contains zombies.
Okay, that was a big damn lie. Only some of them contain zombies.
Best Week 2014, Day Four!
“Why thirty?” someone asked me long ago, on Monday. “Why a top thirty, and not a twenty-five? Or a ten? Or a fifty?”
And honestly? It’s because I think thirty is one of the most underrepresented numbers among our generation. Anyone can do a top ten, or a top twenty-five, or a top fifty. But a top thirty?
Only on Space-Biff! Literally.
Best Week 2014, Day Three!
Fun (And Informative) Best Week 2014 Fact: One particular publisher has been highlighted every day of Best Week so far, and will be highlighted again today. Can you spot which one it is? Five space pennies for the victor, and off with the heads of the losers.
Yes, all of them. Off with all their heads.
Good luck, gladiator. If you won’t do it for your country, do it for your head.
Best Week 2014, Day Two!
Another day, another gaggle of six of the best games we played this year. It’s Best Week 2014, and today we’re playing mancala, flicking some monsters, and programing the weeks to come.
Best Week 2014, Day One!
Over a hundred games enter. Thirty games leave.
You know what that means: it’s Best Week 2014, and we’ve got five straight days of the year’s best games! Provided “the year’s best games” is strictly interpreted as “the games Dan Thurot and his gang of pals played and reviewed in 2014, whether they came out this year or not.” But what else could it mean anyway?
Welcome to Day One, also known as The Dog Day Legacy of the Dystopian Shmup in Boomtown Space. As you were, cadets.
SPACE-BIFF! 