Um. Oops. Months, they just go by like that. You mean to make some blog posts, but it doesn't happen, and then you haven't posted for a month and... well, maybe I've just got no strong opinions on anything anymore. At least not enough that I feel the need to share them with the internet.
Or maybe it's that I just haven't got time to blog anymore. Like, every spare minute I get is put into making tiny margins of progress in games that I'm playing (currently Pokémon SoulSilver, MegaMan 10, and Final Fantasy XII), and even then I'm generally getting in maybe an hour an a half a day. I mean, it's not like I'm off doing less important things, it just really doesn't work well with RPGs. Two of which I am playing now.
Things work well enough for MegaMan 10, because I can hop in and finish a couple levels (and/or suffer a multitude of horrible deaths, each more horrible than the last!) in only a little time. And it's great because MM10 is exactly the kind of MegaMan experience I want. 9 was a critical darling, but it was just too hard for an old-timer like myself who couldn't afford the time to master the game's tricks and challenges. But 10 offers an easy mode, which is a Godsend, because I actually got to see the entire game! Even normal difficulty isn't too bad this time around, but it's definitely got some teeth. The challenge mode is even better, offering mini-stages that are simple to blast through, but quite often complete mosters when it comes to winning unscathed and unlocking those precious golden crowns.
I suppose Pokémon SoulSilver gets a pass because it's portable and I can at the very least sink my lunch hours into it, but it's such a fantastic nostalgia trip that I want to keep going! Just until Feraligatr gains another level, okay? I need to fill that bar!
But now, Final Fantasy XII is a different beast. And what a beast! I spent my first seven or so hours with the game just seeing how far I could go in the deserts around Rabanastre before Vaan was far outclassed by the local fauna and murdered. Of course, being able to run around in circles to refill MP makes it a lot easier, if a bit of a slower experience. Beats venturing an hour into the wilds, getting killed and losing all of your progess, I guess. but anyway! Vaan sucks. I never put him in my party.
I can't stand that I won't finish this game before Christmas at the pace I'm going. It's humongous! And you can bet there's no way that I'm not going to be hunting down each and every mark, no matter how impossibly hard they are. I just smoked the Croakadile way earlier than I was supposed to by summoing Belias (my sole Esper, I am not very far), and spamming hi-potions to keep him alive. Of course, once Corakadile used his "Crokadile double it's level!" move, Belias was torn apart, but I managed to whittle it down enough with Vaan, Ashe and Penelo that when they kicked the bucket (very quickly), the rest of my team was able to finish it off. It was a very proud moment.
So yeah. I just want to curl up in bed with pack of Red Bull and play FFXII until I cannot play anymore. Alas, work and romance call. And as much as I would like a short break, neither can be ignored, for I desire neither to be fired or a lousy boyfriend. That guy in the God of War 3 commercial makes it look so easy. Anyway, blogging is a waste of precious video game time, so I've gotta scoot. There's a Wyvern Lord cruising for a bruising, and I aim to be the one to give it to him. See ya next month!
Well February was one big write-off. One article, yes, but so far this year has been shit for the website. Anyway.
The winter Olympics are over for another year. Thank God. I don't know what it is, but why do people care so much? Super-patriots and regular sportsfans aside, of course. I've never really paid attention before, but this year I've seen many a person who doesn't give two shits about sports any other day of the year go ga-ga over every event in these games, and it puzzles me. Mostly because I've been getting flack for not caring. I thought I'd made my feelings clear many weeks ago. I mean, if there's one sport you do have an actual interest in, sure I get it, but being brought to tears over a victory/loss in a sport you wouldn't have even ever known existed if it weren't for the Olypmics? I'm calling poseur on that shit there.
But then again I suppose that's what the hype train is all about. Now all I'd like to know is whatever happened to Haiti? That was a media blitz that actually mattered.
Oh, and I am happy that Canada won gold in men's hockey. At the end of the day, that's all that really matters in the winter games. It's our Goddamn sport. I don't know how it is that years go by where we don't place first.
I've spent a lot of time stumbling my way through games in the Silent Hill series. While I have spent at least a little time with each, I've only finished three of them though, the first, third, fourth. Oh, and Silent Hill: Play Novel which is a bit of an oddity because it was entirely in Japanese and I don't really count it because I just mashed the A button and selected random options until the text ran itself through. In any case, the original Silent Hill and SH4: The Room had always been my clear-cut favourites. SH4 was never a big fan-favourite, but I loved the story and gimmicks enough to look past the lousy controls and awful combat.
The original game I'll always love because it birthed a franchise that has kept me captivated to this day, even though the actual gameplay in the series ranges from sketchy to mostly awful. While you always had a particular destination, the game gave you more or less free run of the town, with tons of little secrets to find all over the place. I think SH2 and Silent Hill: Origins were similar, and maybe even Silent Hill: Homecoming, but I've literally played less than two hours of each of those. I also liked that while the gameplay was still fairly sketchy, it was still serviceable, especially once you acquired the hammer, which basically makes Harry unstoppable if used correctly.
Also, Harry was awesome. Far and away my favourite character of the series. He was just a normal dude on a vacation gone wrong. No trite world-saving stuff here. Just a man on a mission to find his daughter. And who couldn't sympathize with that? And he huffed an puffed if you made him run for too long. I totally understand that. Maybe he wasn't the most strongly-developed character, but I still resent Konami and SH3 a little for what they did to Harry. Plus he's got mad mixing skillz.
Given the last couple paragraphs, you might imagine my glee at hearing that Konami would be remaking the first game, a situation I'd been dreaming of for years now. What you might not have expected is my added glee upon learning that Tomm Hulett would be leading the project (he's awesome guys. Go chat with him on Talking Time). Also the fact that it would be a re-imagining rather than a remake made the situation a little more interesting. On that note, you know this were gonna get crazy.
Okay. Looking back, I only published three articles last year. Ouch. All-time low there. Well, four, technically, but I've only gotten to putting up the article version of the 23 Days of Materialism 09, even though it was written and posted in it's entirety last year. So that one could go either way. The worst part is that I had planned to write twice as many, but they take so long to research and write that it's really hard to put aside the time to actually do them.
So what I'm thinking here, is that maybe from now on I need to concentrate on writing shorter, more focused pieces. I used to be really proud of my word counts, but in complete honesty, a really embarassing portion of those huge counts are padding. I'm like a JRPG developer, adding in a bunch of extra fluff to justify that "70 hours of gameplay!" bullet point on the box.
...
You know what I mean. So yeah. So my new year's resolution (which I just came up with this morning) is to write at least 10 articles this year. Not that anyone reads them or anything. Which begs the question of why I even bother. Well, hits are decent right now, but last year's have taken quite a dip from 2008's numbers, which is a bit different from the comic, which peaked in 07 and is spiraling downwards as we put up more and more filler each week.
On an interesting note, the highest concentration of hits for this site come from Facebook users.
So yeah. I'm hoping that 2010 will be a good year for my websites. Of course, that's what I hoped last January and then things just went to Hell. It doesn't bode well that my first post of the year is thirteen days in, either. Oh well. Fingers crossed!