Hello again, Giant Bomb blog readers. It seems like I try to update this thing monthly now, even though I've been meaning to write something for a little bit. Some stuff been happening outside of my life besides video games, and I kinda wanted to talk a little bit about that before talking about games. I turn 17 in a week from when I'm writing this (meaning my birthday is on the 26th). And that seems really crazy to me. I mean, 17 is kinda the golden age for me. I get to buy M rated games by myself and see R rated movies in a movie theater. I'm getting my "official" driver's licence in February, so hopefully I'll have a car by then to get a job, so I can earn money and buy stuff on my own, have enough money to go on dates regularly, help pay the bills and whatnot. Thinking about it now, in one sense, I'm kind of afraid to grow up. I kinda have the least productive life ever right now and I wish it would stay that way, but I know it can't. That's just not how life works. But I'm also really excited. Soon I can have my own source of income and have the potential to do more with my life. And that's awesome. Even if it does potentially kill my free time.

I also have to think about college, and that's another struggle in of itself, but I suppose I have more time to think about that stuff. Life after high school is a scary thing to think about, especially with me. No work experience with no outstanding extra curricular activity to put on my application, and my girlfriend is in a higher grade than I am so I won't be able to see her (in person) that often after this school year ends. We've been together for more than a year and thought of seeing her go already hurts.

I guess there's a silver lining to all of this, and it's that I found something productive that I really have grown to love, and that's writing. This school year my counselors have decided to put me in Journalism, and honestly that's a subject that I haven't really been interested since freshman year, I've kinda shifted towards trying out computer classes since then. But there's something about getting information from research and interviewing and organizing all these facts into one smart, well-written piece that I really love. Having the freedom to write about pretty much anything I want to write about, as long as it's well written, is awesome to me and it's something I want to keep doing while I'm still at high school. I don't know if I want to make that a career or anything, but it's just fun to do. And I guess I'm alright at it too, since my teacher recommended I write some articles for the school paper (which first year journalism students normally don't do) and whenever I hand something in, it's full of compliments.

I recently wrote a review for The Walking Dead for that class and I posted it on here not too long ago. Check it out if you want to read it. (Keep in mind that it's written with the context of the school paper in mind, so a lot of the facts about the game itself is generalized and doesn't go into much detail.)

Journalism class naturally led me to reading things that I wouldn't read otherwise. I actually starting paying attention to news and articles and the way they are written. And some things I learned are this: Patrick Klepek was a great choice to be in charge of news of Giant Bomb, Kotaku is, for the most part, full of garbage, and the quality work shown at Polygon is pretty much what games journalism should strive for. Those guys know their stuff and I'm so surprised at how well written it their articles are. (Though some of their articles sometimes seem pretentious.) Oh, and I've been looking at CNN on the side, mostly because we get quizzed on current events stuff in journalism. All the reading kinda makes me want a tablet, too, and I bet loading Giant Bomb videos would be much faster on that as opposed to this outdated laptop...but I guess that's a conversation for another time.

ANYWAY, that's enough ranting about my personal transitional period. On to GAMES!

Sly Cooper

I bought the Sly Cooper collection a few weeks back, and I've been playing some of it here and there. It is awesome. The platforming is really well done, and the setup for the villains are really charming, along with the character models for them. The only things that I don't like are the missions that play like mini-games, because the platforming is so fun that I really don't want to play the game for anything else but that. And they're a little clunky. Also the voices of your side-kicks are really annoying, but I guess I was able to put up with with Daxter in those Jak and Daxter games so I should be able to put up with these. But I'm only speaking for the first game in the series here, mind you, and I think I might be about half-way through. It's my first time playing through these games and I'm excited about what comes next.

Psychonauts

I've also been playing a little more Psychonauts. I just because the Napoleon level, and yeah, that game is still great. I wish the platforming and combat felt a little more tight, though. But other than that it's great. Still funny.

Arkham City

Finished Arkham City and played the Harley Quinn DLC. It's great game, everything about the way it plays is still very fun to me, though I don't care too much about the story at this point. I'm very interested to see where the series goes next, though. Still weird that those Cat Woman sequences were locked behind a season pass when it was released.

Mass Effect 3

I played a lot of Mass Effect 3 today. The conclusion I came to, about 11 hours in? It's okay. The mission where you cure the Genophage is great, and the game has some really great things about it that make me want to keep playing. But in some ways it also feels half-finished. Like the fact you cannot engage in full conversation with the majority of your squad in any given time. What the hell? The scene that made me stop playing was when my Shepard got with Liara. Again. See, my Shepard has been loyal and I've been with Liara for two damn games, and yet the "romantic" scene on the Citadel didn't address any past events or anything. It just seemed so generic and badly written, to a point where I kept saying to myself "Wait, that's it? That's all they wrote? Seriously? What? Why didn't they talk about....what?" So yeah. That was disappointing. But I guess I should save a full judgement for when I actually finish it.

Anyway, that's about all for games. I'm going to hit that "Post Blog" button after I proof read this and add pictures or whatever and then watch some more Giant Bomb content - they have been absolutely killing it with the Premium stuff this week. It's been awesome. Until next time guys, thanks a lot for reading.