This was the Christmas of A.I. at my house. Pretty much everyone got some kind of thinking machine primed to kill. My youngest son Noah asked for and received from Santa a Hatchimal. This was a little robot creature that literally birthed itself from an egg in our living room. I have to admit to not being especially impressed with the Hatchimal. It makes some goofy noises and scoots around on the floor but overall I’m not too concerned with this thing taking over the planet.

2016 is fucking trash, and continues to be so.

There is a podcast where Mr. Gribs and I are trying to decide if we're going to go hard on this FF, and my counterpart confesses that he doesn't really understand the setting at all. We go into some of that confusion in a comic, actually: are these odd angles and juxtapositions intentional, or are they just a fucking mess, or are they the result of an interminable and troubled development cycle, or what.

Every PAX has things that give it a unique texture; The PAX South Indie Showcase - their version of the PAX 10 - is all tabletop stuff. It's a part of the show I definitely do not miss, and you shouldn't either. Here's a list of your favorite games, circa 2017:

Well, I was doing shit. I still am! But I felt strongly compelled to see the movie before this strip was released, just to head a motherfucker off at the pass. Technically, I could have headed them off elsewhere. That's true. But the pass is a very traditional venue.

I drew your kids as Lookouts.

We watched some Twitch IRL and then immediately - as in, like, a minute later - wrote this comic. What is Twitch IRL? Twitch IRL is not the other channels. That's what I was able to derive from the FAQ. I just play games on there, man; this shit is all new to me. I watched a stream where a silent woman ate soup for about fifteen minutes. There's a channel for it. But apparently if you were there, alone, and you didn't have soup, then you're the Mayor of Trouble Town. I'm still learning how to writhe in public; roll through the Hearthstone stream at 2pm PST to see what kind of hairy plum Josh makes me eat this time.

I would be remiss not to mention that if you purchase your PAX South Tickets by December 18th - this Sunday - said Tickets will be mailed straight to your house. This is a profound convenience, and you can rest in the pillowed softness that is not picking up your tickets at Will Call.

You know what? I think I DO like Final Fantasy XV. Enough to solicit aid from the Internet, which went more or less like a Web "It's Cancer" M.D. search generally does. I'm being uncharitable. In truth, their advice made me a thousand times fucking better at Final Fantasy, which I was playing one hundred percent wrong.

Our merchandise manager Lidija is always trying to get me to wear our stuff on the stream, but I never know what the official policy is on that. I don't mean our official policy, which is apparently "wear it," but the policy in general: is that like wearing a band shirt, if you are, yourself, in that band? But it was super fucking cold in the studio so I wore the Video Games sweatshirt and then I didn't take it off for two days. Its premium fit and maternal warmth made me come to believe it was my own skin, and I was thus loathe to remove it. Sizes for everybody, and there's even a new color. Behold!

You've probably seen the video, but maybe you didn't know it was called Cozmo. In any case this is a Robot from the Anki Drive people and it's possible to get one but you have to buy it in more or less the same way and for more or less the same price as an equivalent weight of cocaine.

Our Gabriel got hooked on The Last Guardian, and whatever its faults it's still something you have to see. I'm glad they waited for the PS4 on it, though even that box is working pretty hard to contain it; this is another place the PS4 Pro is poised to deliver a better experience. If you were wondering how the game could have taken a decade to develop, though, this is why: because they created a living digital animal that behaves more or less like the real thing.

I've just about finished the Last Guardian and I really like it. That's not to say that it isn't occasionally incredibly frustrating. It's such a beautiful game, and so different from anything I've played before that I am more than happy to look past some rough edges. I've played games with AI controlled partners, but I've never seen anything like Trico before. The big dog/griffin that you befriend at the start of the game is your companion throughout and getting him to work with you on these puzzles really does feel like interacting with an actual live animal. Sometimes that's frustrating when you're trying desperately to get him to do what you want, and he just cocks his head and stares at you. when you finally do succeed it feels awesome though. Sometimes the camera gets wonky and sometimes your giant friend just won't do what you want but don't let that keep you from trying Last Guardian. Working with Trico to navigate this insanely beautiful labyrinth is one of the most unique experiences I've had in a game.

I occasionally try to utilize my notoriety to get shit. I feel my alignment shifting when I do, a grinding pressure, a sense that perhaps my momma raised me wrong after all, so I don't try to run game with great frequency. In the context I was raised in it's of a piece with "putting on airs," like literacy. When I attempt to use my Ultimate, I tell you here; as often as not, it doesn't work at all. At PAX West, a few months before the official release of Star Wars: Destiny, I had a chance to drop into a demo during the show and it essentially arrested the natural motion of my thoughts. A steel rod was inserted into a moving bike wheel until every spoke was wrenched out, and then it rolled off into a hedge very slowly and fell over.

And when I say Luigi™ Jump Pin, I'm referring to this one right here:

Today's strip was another that I did live on Twitch. I happened to draw this one on Monday which is when Tycho and Ryan do their new Hearthstone stream. You can watch me do all the sketching and most of the inking in this one: