Once upon a time, I saw a preview of a trippy game called The Museum of Simulation Technology. It was a puzzle game where you changed the sizes of things by placing things closer or further away. They were local, and it was in a contest at a local college, but I don't think it won any prizes. I signed up to the newsletter, but everything went quiet. I got my hands on the initial preview game, and wondered if this was still happening. A name change to Superliminal and one Epic Store exclusivity period later, it came out on the other game stores.
I had a gaming fail. You know how I sorta remember that Halloween is coming up a week before, and scramble to play a spooky game in time? That sort of happened again. I didn't know that this game took place on Christmas Eve until I started playing it. The problem? I started playing it the day after Christmas.
No, this game isn't a mispronunciation on "Oregon Trail". Organ Trail is what you get if you cross that with zombies. This was a Flash game made around 2010, then it had a Kickstarter. I got this in a Humble Bundle. Don't be fooled into thinking this "Director's Cut" massively upgrades the visuals. This one looks like the original Oregon Trail from around 1980. This one doesn't have deluxe VGA graphics, but they are sufficient to get the job done. While it has pixel art graphics, it doesn't render in low resolution.
Max Payne 3 was not developed by Remedy, but by a division of Rockstar (the Grand Theft Auto people). Years after closing the book on how he and his family were screwed, Max Payne gets hired as private security for a rich business owner in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Oh, except he had other run-ins before, which some levels flash back to. (Ugh, couldn't we have started from there?)
At last, 343 Industries released Halo 4 in the PC Master Chief Collection. Note that up to this point, Bungie had made all the main entries. By the time they made Reach, they had already bought themselves back from Microsoft. They cited oppressive corporate culture, and went straight into the crushing arms of Activision. (Why oh why did Bungie think Activision would be better?) Microsoft formed 343 Industries to pick up where Bungie left off, and this is the first of the new series.
After doing some spooky games for Halloween, I wondered what games would go well for another part of the year. I realized that the Oregon Trail kinda fits for Thanksgiving, since it's old-timey, and about people moving to a new land. There were several versions, but I had the Oregon Trail Deluxe growing up. Its VGA graphics are more detailed than the original, since it's from about 10 years later. Since the Internet Archive has thousands of DOS-based games, I wondered if they had it. They do!
Halo: Reach is set on a planet named... Reach. Unlike last time around, you resume your role as a cyborg warrior. However, you aren't playing as Master Chief, but as another Spartan, Noble Six. If you paid attention in the other Halo games, you know what Reach is. It was overrun immediately before the first game.
