For the past two years it has been a struggle to come up with a year-end list of my favorite video games. I used to love making them and I am completely honest when I say that the struggle made me question if the time for my enjoyment of video games simply past.

I have been a paying member of Giant Bomb since the very start and I have been listening to the crew since their early The Hot Spot days. When the whole Giant Bomb thingy started, I got really into the longer videos and often watched them while playing different games. I am a big fan of sports and racing games and those games are almost made to have something on in the background to enjoy.

Two years ago, after a couple of rough months, I started watching Twitch to get the time go by. I started following streamers who played the games I enjoyed and at the start really learned a whole lot about the games I played and started to play them a bit more seriously. I am not going to lie – it added to the experience. The sheer excitement of watching people discovering new things in competitive games was awesome and I got a lot better at the game.

My newfound interest got me away from Giant Bomb. I still listened to the podcasts but the almost everything else I was skipping. I started to play less and less games because you know how it is on Twitch – everything sucks and people who play a different game than the one you are watching are confused. So, I skipped Assassin’s Creed because someone told someone that it wasn’t that good. I skipped Spider-Man, God of War and almost every game that wasn’t the ones I played while watching some of my favorite streamers.

I told a friend this past November that it felt like I just didn’t enjoy games anymore. All the fun was in these couple of games I was playing and watching at the same time. I returned to the different chats and realized how all the drama, all the negativity and all the highly questionable ways these streamers was trying to kick the dirt up to get even more views just made me not enjoy the games. I already knew everything sucked. You know, Twitch chat knows everything.

I unfollowed all the channels except for two and started playing Jade Empire again. It just ignited that flame of fun within me again. I actually played the games and didn’t just have it on as one part of something else I was doing. I went back to a lot of games I missed, and it wasn’t until these last couple of days when a video of one of those streamers I enjoyed watching popped up when I realized how extremely negative and drama driven almost everything is now. I went ahead and popped in to one of the streams I enjoyed and there the chat was fighting over how Fortnite players are lame and that everything about them sucks now.

I turned it on, went ahead and played Fortnite for the first time in months and had a blast. Just as with all those other games I missed during this time.

I don’t want to tell which streamers I followed, but I can assure you that this is about highly respected people and not ones that are truly problematic with a bunch of drama in their streams. Obviously, this was my experience and maybe I’m just weak who fell for all the negativity. However, when I see the console wars raging again and all the comments on different forums and posts, I see so clearly where they come from and it makes me sad. I am not saying that you should stop watching Twitch, all I want to say is that it’s easy to get dragged into all the negativity and video games should be fun. It should be about enjoyment and a good time, not a bunch of drama and hate because you like a certain game.

That’s all. Thanks for reading. <3

(Giant Bomb or any people affiliated with the sites are NOT part of the ones I’m talking about here. I’m very glad I found my way back here.)

Well, think of it as a short musical diary. ”Solen kommer att skina igen” is a project where I recorded everyday happenings from my life and then wrote a short piece of music to it. Everything you hear is created in a couple of hours every day during the last week of April. In the mix, I’ve used samples from effect banks to make a couple of things clearer.

If you know your Swedish and Gorillaz you kind of have guessed already that "Solen kommer skina igen" is pretty inspired by the track "Stop The Dams".

Anyhow, this is a short but pretty personal piece. At the beginning of the week I had no clue about where my life was heading. I was losing my job, my apartment and I knew that I was about to move to a different city. So this was a way for me to get motivation to get through a bunch of crap. Luckily it all ended up pretty good buy the end of the week and as the title for the album says (but in swedish) - The sun will shine again.

You can stream and download everything for free on either on Soundcloud or Bandcamp. And because this is my first own mix I'd love to hear what you think about it and what I could do better.

Cheers!

Okay, maybe not the ultimate test. But testing a new PC with a thursday night jam turned out to be pretty fun. While I was trying to get all my plugins to work I basically learned the Dr Wily theme on keys and then this happened. Now keep in mind that I made it in an hour or so. But if you are like me and love listening to Dr Wilys stage music, than this might not be a complete waste of time.

Link to Soundcloud

Woop!

After years of waiting, Stardew Valley finally got released yesterday. I played 9 hours, in one sitting. This game is everything I wanted it to be (thus far).

There are sooo many small nods to the original Harvest Moon for the SNES that I got taken back to when that game got released 20 years ago. This really is a great game and fans of Harvest Moon (and Animal Crossing) should really try it out.

Here's a fun little image of my farm.

Hey duders,

I don't know if you've watched the news lately but the last couple of days the refugee crisis in Europe got from worst to somehow even worse ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/refugees ). Things might be happening now as leaders and people in different european countrys are getting together to help these poor people. Really heart warming stories of small organizations donating millions have been circulating in the news lately. Organizations are donating a lot of money to help everyone on their way to and around Europe. The Red Cross and Unicef have numbers you can text to donate, but I was thinking if we, as the Giant Bomb community should do a donation together. You know - we do have a great history of donating to important causes so why not try to get something going?

I don't know how it would work but I guess there are solutions to get a community donation going. I've donated through Liverpools fans, but i'd gladly throw in some money in a Duders Donation. If nothing else - if you have the possibility to donate I think now is a great time to do it.

(I also think that if you're of the ideology that we should not help at all - just sit back and be quite now.)

Duders! Hi again. Long time no see.

So, just a quick post to you Madden-fans. Being a EA Access member i checked out Madden this weekend. I watch quite a lot of American Football (as much as a European can in legal way) so I kind of use Madden to get to know the game a little bit better.

Last years game was OK, I remember having fun but after one season was just fine with it. This years game however. There are some improvements that kind of makes me want to play this for a long, long time.

First of these being the almost RPG-like franchise mode. During a match - every player basically gets "quests". These can be like - "get a 20 yard catch", "five perfect catches" or even crazier stuff. All this is pretty well integrated with XP-bars filling in on the pitch right besides the player. It looks awesome and seeing one of your guys having just one more perfect catch before he basically levels up is... AWESOME.

The game itself feels a bit more responsive. Little bit quicker. However just as last year - I ended up selecting crazy plays because I just wanted to skip cutscenes.

Anyway - this might be a great year for Madden!

Back when The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released I shared my thoughts about dragons. I hate dragons. Big nasty creatures that could kill you by simply lay there bellies on you, still they seem to be so keen on standing and taking hits. Anyhow, enough of my dragon hate. You know what game I love? Dragon Age!

I really enjoyed the first Dragon Age and to be honest, I didn't think that the second one was that bad. I mean, it wasn't good. But it was OK. Now, when BioWare announced Dragon Age: Inquisition I only hoped for one thing - scale. I wanted the biggest game ever created with a bunch of stuff to do. After my first 20 hours in the game, I can assure you that it's a big, big game.

The best part is that it's fun to. I'm having a great time running around in The Hinterlands searching for herbs and listening to Casandra making fun of Verrics chest hair. Also, the game doesn't make the threat by the breach an urgent factor, which really invites the player to run arround and explore. It's not like in Mass Effect 3 where you either save the world from ending or you could get in bed with Tali.

Anyway, the game turned out so much better then I thought and I am really happy for it. I might not have the time anymore to play a game for 100 hours, but you know what, for this one, I'll make it happen. Because I want to know what's going on. You know, I encountered darkspawn last night!

What do you duders think thus far? And also - if this is the scope they aiming for for the next Mass Effect game sign me up and take your time. My body is ready!

Back when The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released I shared my thoughts about dragons. I hate dragons. Big nasty creatures that could kill you by simply lay there bellies on you, still they seem to be so keen on standing and taking hits. Anyhow, enough of my dragon hate. You know what game I love? Dragon Age!

I really enjoyed the first Dragon Age and to be honest, I didn't think that the second one was that bad. I mean, it wasn't good. But it was OK. Now, when BioWare announced Dragon Age: Inquisition I only hoped for one thing - scale. I wanted the biggest game ever created with a bunch of stuff to do. After my first 20 hours in the game, I can assure you that it's a big, big game.

The best part is that it's fun to. I'm having a great time running around in The Hinterlands searching for herbs and listening to Casandra making fun of Verrics chest hair. Also, the game doesn't make the threat by the breach an urgent factor, which really invites the player to run arround and explore. It's not like in Mass Effect 3 where you either save the world from ending or you could get in bed with Tali.

Anyway, the game turned out so much better then I thought and I am really happy for it. I might not have the time anymore to play a game for 100 hours, but you know what, for this one, I'll make it happen. Because I want to know what's going on. You know, I encountered darkspawn last night!

What do you duders think thus far? And also - if this is the scope they aiming for for the next Mass Effect game sign me up and take your time. My body is ready!

I've been looking forward for Interstellar for a while now. I'm a huge Nolan fan and the recent trailer really got me pumped for the movie. Being a Nolan fan and also a huge (HUGE!) Mass Effect fan it's hard not to start dreaming about him being involved with the Mass Effect movie that is said to be in works.

I don't know why or what it was that gave me Mass Effect vibes from the first trailer, but these exeeded to a level that wasn't healthy when I saw the ending of the new trailer. My first thought - is... IS THAT A MASS RELAY?! My second though was of course it's not, but wouldn't it be cool if this was Mass Effects "Prometheus". Legendary Pictures own the the rights to Mass Effect, afterall.

Hello duders,

Without further adieu, welcome to Fruitwoody Village...