the Andrew Bailey

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Katie's new room

Gone Home

Gone Home is a walking simulator from about 10 years ago, as was the style at the time. You play as Katie, a young woman who just returned to her family's house in (presumably rural) Oregon. It's past 1 AM, and storming. There's a note from your sister, Sam, imploring you to not investigate where she is. Mom and dad are off on a vacation of their own. There's no one home. You're left alone to explore this sprawling mansion by yourself.

Einstein, Doc, and Marty chilling in the Delorean.

Back to the Future

I've watched Back to the Future once or twice, and I thought it was an OK movie. I didn't think there was much to it, and the whole thing would be prevented with some very obvious safeguards. Of course, it's hard to not notice that it's been a cult classic for a long time. It's the only reason that the Delorean Motor Company is known outside of niche groups. Too bad their cars weren't as popular as those movies, and went out of business years earlier.

Shot of a warthog crashing through a wall

Red vs. Blue

Soon after the Master Chief Collection came to Steam, I bought it. As I played through it, I made sure to document myself becoming a Halo fan. In so doing, I decided to dig into Halo machinima. I've encountered and even watched entire series of machinima before, but I never got into Red vs. Blue, the series that made machinima a big thing. Now that I've watched it all (or most of it), Red vs. Blue is the silliest series of anything that I've ever come across.

Screenshot of Puzzle Agent, where Nelson is standing in a hotel lobby.

Puzzle Agent

Puzzle Agent is another one of those Telltale games that I've had in my Steam library for years. Well, it and its sequel, Puzzle Agent 2. They're so similar that the second one is functionally an expansion of the first, so I'm doing them both here.

Screenshot of Hector in a park with some delinquents having a rave.

Hector: Badge of Carnage

I've had this knocking around since I bought that Humble Bundle with all the Telltale games. Unlike most (all?) of the others, this one wasn't connected to any franchise I heard of. In retrospect, I should have expected this to be a nice film noir story, but it quickly became too absurd and comedic to qualify.

Screenshot of Papers, Please, showing a multitude of documents and a man with killer sideburns

Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a bureaucrat simulator where you man a border checkpoint in a fictional totalitarian country during the late cold war. Gameplay mostly involves examining people's passports and other entry documents and calling 'gotcha' on them. Otherwise, you let them through if you can't find anything or you're lazy.

Screenshot of World of Goo 2, showing two sprayers fueling an airship.

World of Goo 2

World of Goo 2 is another sequel to a game that I don't think needed one. However, given the amount of time since the original, I'll let this one slide. I haven't played through the original for several years, so any references to it are from my own memory, and may not be accurate.