Humble Choice: December 2021

The end of the work-year is so close I can practically taste it. Just this week to go and then four weeks of relative freedom. Eeeeeeee!

Exciting.¹

As for my feelings on the December 2021 Humble Choice bundle though. Eh. I think I can best describe my feelings coming into this post with a bit of an analogy. You know the difference in the feelings you have between waking up on a workday vs. waking up on a day off? This feels like waking up on a workday. I know I have to do it. And I will. But… five more minutes? No? *sigh* OK then.

Here we go. As always, I’ll attempt to rank the games in order of preference, starting with my most preferred and ending with my least preferred. Where I own a game already, I will pretend for the purposes of this list that I don’t.

My Picks for December 2021’s Humble Choice

There was a time when I was quite into the prospect of picking up Maneater. It launched to PC as an Epic Game Store exclusive though, so ended up having to wait a year — and then the Tripwire CEO caused a stir by coming out in support of the Texas Abortion law change, including the $10k ‘bounty’ on dobbing people in. So off my list this thing went.

Although perhaps in a lesson the Activision Blizzard Board should really crib some notes from, 53 hours after the tweet was made, the CEO lost his position. It wasn’t a perfect outcome, Gibson (the ex-CEO) still holds a significant stake in the company and its hard to know whether he has truly born any consequences as a result of this or whether with the public satisfied he still controls things from the shadows.

It was enough to stop me from purchasing the game in any event. But as part of a Humble Choice bundle? Well… OK.

If Fling to the Finish had been local-only MP, it would’ve received the italics treatment. But the fact it allows for online play saved it from that treatment.

At the other end of the scale — only Maneater warranted bolding. And… as noted in the blurb for it above, this isn’t without some controversy and reservation. They’re not the only one on this list though with some concerns. The Mordhau devs once famously said they were considering a client-side toggle to prevent the display of other ethnicities. Ultimately, they decided not to. But it was considered seriously enough that it came up in an interview with seemingly no understanding of why this even might’ve been a problem.

🎶 So this year for Christmas, Humble gave to me- 12 mediocre titles and a side of controver-seeeey. 🎶

*sigh*

I guess it’s hard to be too surprised. Christmas the last two years running haven’t exactly been top-notch either. Last year. The year before — and incidentally, the launch of Humble Choice. I gave my thoughts on the change and was a lot more positive back then about the format than I think I am now. It’s been a while since we’ve seen something like Shadow of the Tomb Raider included too.

Maybe my New Year resolution should be to, if not outright cancel this thing, then at least be a lot more ready and willing to hit the ‘Pause’ button than I have been to date. Despite my general dissatisfaction for a while now, I’ve only actually done it a few times!

1. I do however apologise if you’re a frontline worker or otherwise in a role that doesn’t get this sort of end of year break. I shan’t go on about it any longer. ;)