It is December 31st and that means it’s time for a top ten list! I took a stroll back through 2012 and came up with my 10 favorite Penny Arcade strips from the last year.
We had a very serious love affair with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The highlight for me was my character’s class story. I feel like the story and choices in SW:TOR really put the RP into MMORPG. That role playing got me into a bit of trouble with my wife but I couldn’t help it. Even my Jedi Consular could not resist flirting with a beautiful Twi’lek.
This really felt like the year of the Kickstarter. Some incredibly high profile designers used the service to bankroll new games. Of course you also had a lot of characters like John Videogames here with wild and ambiguous ideas begging for millions.
Not much to say about this one. I just really love the gag and the drawing of Gabe in the last panel.
I love Hero Academy but waiting for your friend to make their move is brutal. When you have time and you want to play, you can’t imagine what bullshit your friends are up to and why they can’t put in a couple turns. Again this is one of my favorite third panel drawings of the year.
This was a joke we came up with when we heard they were sending Angry Birds to space for the next game. I know it’s a simple gag but for some reason it still cracks me up.
“I’m going on the Internet, to find people who agree with me” is still something we say around the office.
This was easily our most controversial comic of the year. We got quite a bit of hate mail over this one but I still love it. Tycho and I both felt like the uproar over the Mass Effect ending was ridiculous and poking a group of people who are already mad is always fun.
This was probably our most linked strip of the year. I saw this comic everywhere I went for a while and 9 times out of 10 they had removed the Penny Arcade URL. I even saw it with different avatars in place of Gabe’s face and attributed to different people. I think it’s fair to say this one “went viral”.
Sometimes we make strips that Tycho and I call “dense”. We use the term to mean that we’ve tried to pack as many jokes into a strip as possible. I feel like this is our best strip of the year in terms of getting a joke in every single panel.
I know it’s not a LOL strip but I still love this one. For me it’s a record of a very powerful Dad moment. It may not be funny but it’s true and it’s my favorite comic from 2012.
So that’s my list. Chirp me a Tweet and tell me what your favorites are.
-Gabe out
