bigsocrates

It's time for me to evaluate how I did. The answer is...not well. But it's not entirely my fault. More on that later.

1) Control my Spending Grade: D

I still spent WAY too much on games, especially games I did not play. I think I did a bit better than last year (though I didn't total everything up) but it was still bad and I need to do better.

2) Write more interesting blogs Grade: F

I regressed here. I wrote less and it was more formulaic. This one I do have an explanation for (again stay tuned to the end) but I just didn't get it done.

3) Play More Current Year Games Grade: B-

I played almost twice as many current year games in 2022. I could have done better, and I missed some big ones, but here I did improve substantially.

4) Continue with the Marathons. Grade: D

The only reason this isn't an F is that I played 2.5 Xenoblade Chronicles games back to back and I also played both Pokemon games released this year back to back. That's enough to save me from failing but I just didn't do a lot of marathoning this year. That's fine. I enjoy them but I also enjoy variety.

5) Clear out the Cream of my Backlog. Grade: F

I did clear out some backlog games that I wanted to get to but I probably added more than I cleared, and some specific games I set out to clear I didn't. Maybe this is just the nature of backlogs in

6) Finish the unfinished games in my collection. Grade: F-

I now have more unfinished games than I started with. Good work, me!

7) Try every Game Pass game released on Xbox. Grade: F

Yeah. Not even close. Nowhere near close. I thought of giving myself a better grade because I played many of them, but I didn't even get through half.

So what happened? Two big things. The first was that I have a friend who was accused of a horrible crime that forced him to move out of his home. I believe he was innocent, I know the alleged victim said he was innocent, and the charges were eventually dropped, but he moved in with me for 5 months. This radically reduced the amount of time I had to game and write because I had a roommate and while he likes games some, we mostly watched stuff or played multiplayer stuff or just talked. It wasn't a bad experience but it meant that this year was not a normal gaming year for me. The other thing that happened was the UUGPGC. Running that took up a ton of my gaming time because I was trying to complete games for the club.

Both of these were good things. I will never regret giving my friend a place to stay and helping shield him from a racist criminal justice system that tried to capsize his life over false allegations. I really enjoyed the club and the more structured approach to gaming as well as chatting with everyone. Failing these resolutions didn't mean I had a bad year in gaming and the only one I really regret is not reining in my spending more.

Oh well. There's always next this year.

@nuttism: I mean I obviously have terrible judgment. I played Fuse!

As for the $20...you can get a copy cheaper if it's used, I guess, but after shipping the difference is pretty negligible. I really bought the game because not being able to find my copy was bothering me more than I should, but that was probably worth the $20 on its own. It's the 8-10 hours or whatever I put into the game that was the truly terrible judgment, not the cash.

So it's now the end of the year. How did I do?

1) I greatly curtailed my video game spending. Not as much as I should have or could have (especially if you include the $800 PS5 bundle...yipes) but substantially. Giving myself a win on this one.

2) I played more 2021 games in 2021 than 2020 games in 2020. Not quite as much as I would have liked, but more.

3) I played Werewolf: The Apocalpyse -- Earthblood and Balan Wonderland so...uhh...gonna go ahead and take the L on this one.

4) I played the majority of Ratchet & Clank games, I played a lot more Assassin's Creed, and I did some more mini marathons (like all of Psychonauts.) They were fun. I also did other themed marathons that were fun. This was a W.

5) I finished some of these but not all of them. I did NOT finish Inversion. In fact I did not touch my Xbox 360 despite planning to several times. Taking the L.

6) This was a mixed bag. I played a greater number of games on the treadmill but not as much time as I would have liked. A lot of that was due to health issues, though, so I'm going to give myself an incomplete here.

7) I definitely did not play less. This year sucked for me outside of games and I played more video games than ever. Here's hoping for 2022.

Overall I would say that I had some success here and where I was able to follow through on the resolutions it improved my gaming life. Overall the act of making these resolutions and trying to stick to them was positive even if I didn't fulfill every one to my liking.

@billymaysrip: Thanks for the read!

I think the Finnigan Fox looks okay still, but the animation is what kills it for me. I do think that Fox n Forests looks better and it just seems like an odd choice to swap out a good art style for one that isn't an upgrade, especially with that hideous animation. My understanding is that the Amico won't have pixel graphics games and that's why they did it.

For people who are interested, here's what Finnigan Fox looks like. The gameplay starts about 45 seconds in.

Fox N Forests comparison here, with the equivalent area starting at about 4:30.

This is too new fangled and scary for me. How do I get notifications for Giant Bomb goings on mailed to me through the USPS?

Forget notifications on my phone or computer, I want to get a letter every time a Quick Look is posted.

@shagge: I fully agree that VR can be awesome and has a place going forward. AS I said in the beginning of this blog, I was really enjoying PSVR when I was playing it, and I know the hardware and games have gotten way better since then. If it weren't for my hatred of Facebook and the current economic/chip situation I might consider buying a PC VR rig myself.

I think that a lot of VR users act as evangelists and really feel compelled to push the concept, and it backfires. Insisting that VR is the way forward just doesn't do any good for anyone. I think that there's a bit of a bottleneck in that VR is expensive to develop both hardware and software for, but there's a limited market for it, and nobody wants to admit that, but denying it doesn't do anyone any good.

As it is I think VR seems like it was a fad, since there's just not much coverage of it anymore, but I don't think it actually was. It's awesome! But it's something you have to carve out time and space for, and that's naturally going to limit it.

So it seems likely that FF VII Remake is going to remain Sony exclusive for now (they didn't say that but it would be odd to end the show with it if it's also going to be on Xbox) but there WILL be paid DLC, which might be the compromise.

How substantial it is remains to be seen (looks like new character and story but same locations; no information on length yet) but it looks cool.

This game is now half off on both the Xbox and PS4 store. The description now puts its emphasis on the single player campaign, but does list online multiplayer in the features and does not mention that it's only for another month or so. That seems pretty shifty to me. Big thumbs down on that one.

I was kind of upset when Serious Sam 4 was a Stadia exclusive on console because I'd hoped to play it on Xbox or PS4.

This stream has made me no longer upset about that. Woof. Everything about this game looks bad. It's the cringiest game writing I can remember in the last 10 or so years. It's like 2007-2008 level terrible writing, and even bad for that time period, which had some pretty great writing in games like Mass Effect and even COD4.

So, umm, thanks Jeff for making me feel better?

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams had a gimmick where you could shift between the two sisters and it would change the world and the enemies and allow you to pick up different collectibles etc... That was the main mechanic of that game, and it was fun enough, even if it overstayed its welcome a bit.

This game is just that game without the gimmick or interesting level design which...no. I liked Twisted Dreams enough to finish it (7/10 feels about right) and I have zero interest in this game.

Either they were underfunded and rushed this or they lost the designers who actually had ideas, and replaced them with terrible writers trying to make the game "funny." Either way, this game looks like a pale imitation of a Giana Sisters game from 5 years ago, with a lot of annoying stuff layered on top.

This has the smell of a studio killer. Too bad.