2012: FleshEatingZipper’s Year In Review

July

Did you know the internet almost ended? Kelly warned us all! Russell also warned us about Savages, a terrible movie with Taylor Kitsch and John Travolta, the latter being a super hero among men. Penny Arcade launched a confusing Kickstarter and I followed it to its ill-fitting conclusion while Newgrounds tried something similar. Kelly played some Minecraft and I interviewed Stephen Cakebread, creator of Geometry Wars, on his time at Bizarre Creations. SOE gave us a shoutout on their PlanetSide 2 videocast, y’all. Kelly applied to be a Frag Doll, but didn’t tell anyone. I asked if I should buy a Nexus 7 and I did anyway. When did hurdles get so sexy? Speaking of sexy, did you know that Buckyballs were banned because people are idiots? Is print dead? Questions?

August

World of Warcraft got the receiving end of a vicious rant by Rob who really just wants a sensible MMO experience. Johnny wanted a decent Olympic experience and NBC’s pro-cable positioning prevented many people from enjoying it. NBC being a bunch of jerks didn’t prevent us from watching the SUV-sized Curiosity rover from landing on Mars and enjoying the hell out of it in full 3D. LOL, definitely LOL. We said goodbye to TeamXbox, a point of origin for many of the FEZ staff and online home for upwards of more than a decade.

September

Apple announced an iPhone 5 announcement, then announced the iPhone 5. I got a tattoo, which was some other kind of experience, yo. I knew Morgan Freeman was alive and well, but others didn’t. We also let you know about You Don’t Know Jack on Facebook before you stopped playing it after a few weeks. Jiro dreamed of sushi and so did we. Kelly cracked open a light bulb and got super high on the new wave of innovations, too bad the Kickstarted guys are going to be toppled by a multinational conglomerate. WUB WUB WUB HALO 4 WUB WUB WUB. We loved Dredd 3D and have a hankering for some Myspace. Oh, wait, that’s kinda weird, isn’t it? You know what’s not weird: getting on our Minecraft server.

October

See what happens when you call a news anchor fat: nothing, really. Maybe she just needs a robot to help her out. Meanwhile, I interviewed the executive producers of the new Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn web series, who seem like a cool pair and we let the sky fall. I **KELLY’ed Kelly and he seemed okay with that, except not really. Russell loved horror flick Sinister and that’s fantastic because we hated that other movie. Cody wants the next Unreal to be a MOBA, an interesting concept. We all fancied XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but I still wish they would make the game of my dreams. We were playing Minecraft and those poor Xbox 360 bastards are still only getting last year’s goods. Some of us upgraded to Windows 8, a scary move. Kelly loved Dishonored, I loved Forza Horizon, giving both perfect scores. George Lucas gave Lucasfilm to Disney for billions of dollars, announcing new Star Wars films, and the ESA did a real good thing for kids, raising $800,000 for charity.

November

Did you watch A Christmas Story this holiday? What about A Christmas Story 2… wait, don’t answer that. The Walking Dead’s third season got going and we were happy to report on it. Remember earlier in the year when Rob got increasingly agitated about Star Wars: The Old Republic? Well, it finally went free to play (f2p, nubs) this month. We played through every last minute of Halo 4, so kindly watch our gameplay or read our review. After fighting the man (Epic Games), Silicon Knights lost a huge lawsuit and was forced to destroy all their copies of Too Human. I already have one and I wouldn’t even play it. Maybe I will. I don’t know. We love Skyfall, Assassin’s Creed 3, and the Japanese, but were pretty disappointed by Microsoft’s tenth-year anniversary for Xbox Live and our nation’s interest in launching Black Friday on Thursday, the day before Friday. Oh, and that Wii U thing came out and people cared less than ever. No one won the huge Powerball lottery, but maybe that’s okay. Kelly dropped his iPhone for an Android phone and despite some shortcomings, he’s taken to it like a champ.

December

I wanted to watch every single Apple TV ad ever made until about a quarter of the way through. I don’t need anymore, thanks. Rob is tired of Christmas music, or really just any music. I wouldn’t play anything around him, just to be safe. He had some thoughts on the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, though, you should give those a read. Spike TV decided that the VGA Awards shouldn’t be a conveyor belt of shit this year and we thank them for that. We thanked Ubisoft for Far Cry 3 as well. The Hobbit sailed under expectations and I still don’t have all my old tweets. Maxis decided that you need an internet connection at all times to play SimCity and that was befuddling. The new Minecraft documentary is really bad, Jack Reacher was aight, and opening your kids’ new Wii U to update the firmware before gifting it was really lame.

And yet, somehow, we all survived The Apocalypse.

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Well, from the staff of FEZ to your hearts, we welcome you to 2013, a year where things are going to be changing all kinds of crazy. If 2012 was the year of FleshEatingZipper, then 2013 is the decade of FleshEatingZipper. That doesn’t make any sense, but it will soon.

Take care!