I play most of my games on Xbox, but for whatever reason Xbox didn't do one of these recaps that every other platform put together for 2022. As such, my gaming stats for Steam are nothing to write home about this year, but it provides a good baseline to work from for 2023, as these numbers will go up dramatically. Why? Because I recently purchased a Steam Deck, and it has already become my preferred way to plat most games.
I'll write up a separate post about my experience with the Steam Deck so far, but one thing to note is that all of the games shown in the recap above except one (Icarus) have been played primarily on my Steam Deck.
Of the games listed above, the two I most highly recommend are Signalis and Vampire Survivors. Signalis is an old school survival horror game that harkens back to the original PlayStation days. And Vampire Survivors is a kind of reverse bullet hell game that has to be experienced to be believed. It's incredibly addictive, and if not for Elden Ring, would probably have been my personal game of the year. Trailers for both games are below.
In our last episode of 2022 we look back at our favorite albums, songs, concerts, and more from this past year. See you in 2023!
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Thrash It Out is back, and this special episode is the "listener's choice" for Volume 6! Lucky for us, the choice was Faith No More's incredible 1992 album, Angel Dust.
Ghost wins Favorite Rock Album at American Music Awards
Megadeth nominated for Grammy
Judas Priest inducted in Rock and Roll HoF
Foreigner calling it quits
Winery Dogs new album coming in February
Ear Candy:
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient Number 9 (2022)
Megadeth - The Sick, the Dying, and the Dead (2022)
Six Degrees of Frankie B.
Comin Atcha Live:
Double Vision: The Foreigner Experience
Bonus Track: Black Veil Brides - Savior II
Off the new EP The Mourning, out now.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Thrash It Out is back, and we are going to court! For the sixth episode of volume 6, Antony and I are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Alice in Chains' groundbreaking album, Dirt.
Thrash It Out is back, and we are going to court! For the fifth episode of volume 6, Antony and I are discussing Trivium's excellent 2021 album, In the Court of the Dragon..
Alice in Chains to release box set for 30th anniversary of Dirt
Megadeth releases new single
Spotify launches a concert ticket service
Upcoming album releases
Monsters on the Mountain Festival
Ear Candy:
Cleanbreak - Coming Home (2022)
Animals Reimagined - A Tribute to Pink Floyd (2022)
Six Degrees of Frankie B.
Rockversation - Paul Bielatowicz
Matt recently spoke to the guitarist of the Carl Palmer Band at an event where he and bassist Simon Fitzpatrick played the soundtrack they wrote for the classic silent film Nosferatu. Keep up with all of Paul’s projects at www.paulbielatowicz.com.
Bonus Track: House of Lords - House of the Lord
From upcoming album Saints and Sinners, out in September on Frontiers Music SRL.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Thrash It Out is back! This is our Backstage Pass episode for this volume, where we welcome on a Patreon supporter to discuss an album of their choosing! Antony and I are joined by the amazing Torunn Grønbekk to talk about A Perfect Circle's album Mer de Noms.
Torunn is an incredibly talented artist and writer, and you can check out some of her work at groenbekk.com. You can also keep up with her latest projects by following her on Twitter at twitter.com/gronbekk.
Thrash It Out is back, and we are taking a trip to hair metal heaven! For the third episode of volume 6, Antony and I are discussing Winger's third studio album, 1993's Pull.
Stadium Tour underway with Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison
Ear Candy:
Iconic - Second Skin (2022)
Def Leppard - Diamond Star Halos (2022)
Rockversation - Joey Cassata
Matt spoke with the drummer, actor, writer, and producer about ZO2, the ZRock show, playing with the Eric Martin Band, Star Wars, and more. Follow Joey on Twitter at twitter.com/JoeyCassata.
Bonus Track: - Michael Schenker Group - Emergency
From the new album Universal, out now.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Matt recently spoke with the guitarist, singer, and songwriter about his Take a Chance for Charity initiative, and the first project of that initiative, Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra. You can pre-order Tremonti Sings Sinatra and learn more about Take a Chance for charity at tremontisingssinatra.com.
Bonus Track: Iconic - Fast as You Can
From the upcoming album Second Skin, coming this July from Frontiers Music SRL.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Joel Hoekstra and Michael Sweet’s new project Iconic
The Ratt reunion that almost was
Def Leppard’s new album Diamond Star Halos
Robert Sweet’s Cleanbreak project
Ear Candy:
Aerosmith: Rock in a Hard Place (1982)
The Linda Lindas - Growing Up (2022)
Rockversation: Simon Daniels
Matt recently spoke with the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of Autograph about his musical influences, moving to L.A. in the 80s, his journey to Autograph, the band’s upcoming album, and more.
Note: This interview was recorded prior to the passing of Randy Rand.
Bonus Track: Cleanbreak - Coming Home
From the debut album Coming Home, releasing in August on Frontiers Music SRL.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
2022 has been a pretty chaotic year so far for me. I started a new job in February, and between that and a very busy family life that now includes basketball tournaments every weekend, my free time has been at a minimum.
Lately, Sunday mornings have become the one time of the week where I have a couple hours of "me time," and I have increasingly been using that time for creative self-care, which for me means consuming the kinds of games, stories, movies, shows, and music that provide an immersive experience, somewhere I can escape to for a bit and recharge for the week ahead.
Right now, I'm leaning heavily into games for my Sunday morning escapes, and the two I have been spending the most time with lately are Elden Ring, and Kirby and the Forgotten Lands.
I've chronicled my love for From's Souls games on multiple occasions. My first blogs about Demon's Souls are 11 years old! One of the things I've written about that makes these games special for me is they show you a world and tell you a story, but they also leave a lot of mystery for the reader or player to work out on their own. Elden Ring is From's biggest game yet, and provides more of everything I love about the Souls games, and then some.
But Kirby and the Forgotten Lands is also scratching that creative itch for me, as it also features a world filled with mystery, and plenty of lore and secrets to unravel. It's also adorable, and provides a wonderful contrast to the grim and challenging experience that is Elden Ring.
Both of these games are recharging my creative batteries right now, in a time where writing has been really difficult for me. Spending an hour or two on a Sunday morning with these games has been helping me get through some very busy and somewhat difficult times.
Music Collectibles Extravaganza in Boxboro MA April 8-10 (https://collectiblesextravaganza.com/)
Ear Candy:
Marillion - An Hour Before It’s Dark (2022)
Ghost - Impera (2022)
Six Degrees of Frankie B.
Comin Atcha Live:
Riders on the Storm - Broadbrook Opera House (March 19)
Bonus Track: Ronnie Atkins - I’ve Hurt Myself By Hurting You
From his new studio album, Make It Count, out now on Frontiers Music SRL.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
This episode features a recap and discussion of the second issue of Doom 2099. In this issue, Doom hatches a plan to steal a rare resource called Tritonium from Tiger Wylde, and leverage it against him in an effort to take back Latveria.
Thrash It Out is back, and we are taking a trip to hair metal heaven! For the first episode of volume 6, Antony and I are discussing Ratt's 1984, triple-platinum debut studio album, out of the Cellar.
From the album Guiding Star, out now on Frontiers Music SRL.
Thanks for listening! If you're subscribing on iTunes or Google play, please leave us a review, as it will help spread the word about the show! You can find more news, reviews, and discussion at powerchordspodcast.com. You can also hit us up on twitter at twitter.com/powerchordspod, and email us at powerchordspodcast@gmail.com.
Doom has arrived! This episode features a recap and discussion of the first issue of Doom 2099. In this opening issue, Doctor Doom mysteriously arrives in the year 2099 to find Latveria under the control of Tiger Wylde. His initial attempt to reclaim power does not go well.
Note: I mention in the episode there is a derogatory term used several times in this comic when referring to Romani people. The Romani have been discriminated against based on stereotypes about their culture for hundreds of years, and that particular term is part of that. If you’d like to learn more, nonprofit org Facing History and Ourselves has a great video featuring Dr. Margareta Matache, the Director of the Roma Program at Harvard University: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/we-call-ourselves-roma.
Continuing the origin of Spider-Man 2099! This episode features a recap and discussion of issues two and three of Spider-Man 2099. In these issues, we meet the Thorites, as well as the cyborg bounty hunter Venture, the first foe Miguel has to take on with his newfound powers.
We are officially diving into the futureverse! This episode features a recap and discussion of the first issue of 2099’s flagship series, Spider-Man 2099. In it we are introduced to the first reluctant hero of a new age, Miguel O’Hara.
Almost 11 years ago, I started a blog and podcast called Co-Op Critics, as a place to talk about gaming with my friends. I had recently finished a two-year stint covering games for Comic Book Resources, one of the most popular comics news sites at the time. I stopped writing for CBR because I wanted to focus on my books, but I quickly found that I missed talking about games.
Over the years, Co-Op Critics evolved into its own site, as well as a YouTube channel, featuring hundreds of gameplay videos. My friend Nick Merritt and I created content together and with others. I even had a long-running Minecraft series I did with my son called Co-Op Craft: Family Edition. We had a blast overall, but it was always a passion project that would take a back seat to work and family life.
So, for the past three years, the channel and the site have been pretty dormant.
But Nick and I have made it a goal to bring Co-Op Critics back to life this year, even if we can't post the volume of content we once did. We've launched a brand new let's play series with a brand new game, and you can watch the first episode right in the player below:
You can head over to our YouTube channel to see the second episode now, and all future episodes. You can also check out the huge library of videos we have, featuring all kinds of games, from Roblox to Dark Souls.
If you want to catch up on old episodes of the co-Op Critics podcast, you can find them all here.
Speaking of the Souls series, I will definitely be doing a series on the upcoming Elden Ring, so stay tuned for that.
This special episode of the podcast serves a prologue to the show, and in it I provide some background on how the show came to be, and what listeners can expect. I also interview artist Don Cardenas, who created the cover art and the theme song for the podcast.
I've been clearing out the cobwebs on this blog over the past week or so, getting ready for 2022. I'm not going to make any grand proclamations about my creative goals for this year, with one exception: This year will be about creating things that bring me joy (see my new Twitter banner above, which has a little more whimsy than the old one).
I don't need to go into what an apocalypse the past two years have been, but I will say that I underestimated--by a grand margin--how these past two years would affect my creative output. I had already been struggling to balance work projects and personal projects since making a career change in late 2017. For those that don't know, I had been doing marketing, copywriting, and brand strategy work for years on a part-time basis, but that became my actual full-time job in 2017. For three years, most of my creative bandwidth was spent creating a content library for work, including creating, hosting, and producing an award-winning podcast. I love creating content, and I loved creating it for my job. Even after taking on a new role in 2020, I was still creating a ton of content on a regular basis, for both internal and external purposes.
All of which is to say that my personal creative projects suffered. My one consistent outlet has been podcasting, and even then, my writing/interview podcast took a back seat as I prioritized the two music podcasts I do (Power Chords and Thrash it Out). On the writing front, my book projects were put on the back burner while I spent most of my time writing for work.
But then a couple of really cool things happened in 2021--two projects I had contributed to were published after being in progress for years.
The first was How to Analyze and Review Comics, a collection of articles and essays meant to be a resource for journalists, academics, students, bloggers, and fans. Forrest Helvie had been working on bringing that project to life for more than five years. My chapter in the book was about interviewing creators, something I've done hundreds of times over the years, both as a podcaster, and when I was contributing to Comic Book Resources from 2008-2010. When Forrest started putting that project together, the Secret Identity podcast was still in its prime. I actually had to adjust my bio for the book before it went to print, as Matt and I ended Secret Identity in November of 2017. But being able to contribute to this book was a nice bookend to a time I was completely immersed in the comics industry, and it gave me a sense of closure for that period.
The second project that was published this year was a bucket list item for me. About five years ago, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to contribute to a tabletop roleplaying game (TTTRPG) book. For those that don't know, I have been an rpg fan since I bought the original Dungeons & Dragons red box off of my friend's older brother in elementary school. I've played TTRPGs for a good chunk of my life, and even got my name in the credits of a few books as a playtester. I have always wanted to write for TTRPGs, and twice in the past I had projects almost come to fruition--an intro adventure for a game called Chronicles of Ramlar, and an adventure for Living Kingdoms of Kalamar that never saw the light of day. But file those under "everything happens for a reason," because my first official TTRPG project could not have been a cooler opportunity.
World of Darkness: Ghost Hunters from Onyx Path Publishing is pretty much a dream project for a horror writer and rpg fan like myself. The book is a resource on paranormal investigation that can be used in all of the World of Darkness games (Vampire, Wraith, Mage Werewolf, Changeling).
Not only did I get to help chronicle what the history of ghost hunting is WoD, but I also got to create characters, abilities, equipment, and bits of lore as well. One of the most fun things about this project was sprinkling in Easter eggs from various horror movies and TV shows, which people seemed to really like (yes, I did read the comments).
As I mentioned, this was a bucket list item for me, and I'm hoping to do a lot more in the TTRPG space over the next several years. In fact, there is something I wrote for the Ghost Hunters book that did not make it in, but I may put out through the community content portal on DriveThru RPG, the Storytellers Vault.
Speaking of future plans, let's talk 2022. As I said earlier, I'm not making a bunch of bold declarations at this point, but there are definitely things to expect from me this year.
First off, I'll be starting a new podcast project this month, and it's a return to talking about comics. The podcast is called 2099 Revisited, and in it I'll be taking a look back at the entire run of 2099 comics that Marvel put out in the 90s. Here's the teaser trailer:
You can subscribe to the podcast now wherever you get yours from, and you can check out 2099revisited.com for more info.
I'll still be putting out new episodes of both the Power Chords and Thrash It Out podcasts as well.
On the writing front, you can expect more regular content here, including updates on my solo projects, and the stuff I am working on with my partner in crime, Jolene Haley. We are currently working on wrapping up the Woodsview Murders series, as well as some other projects I'll talk about when the time is right.
I'm also going to be writing some articles about content marketing that I have been kicking around for some time. From building the story of an organization or product, to building a content engine for your business, I want to share some of the things I've done and learned over the past several years. Some of these articles will be going up on LinkedIn as well.
Anyway, that's some of what I have cooking for this year so far. All of these projects are things that bring me joy, and I hope to share some of that joy with you.
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