Hello!

Last week I wrote the longest post-academic career piece I've done to date, marking up Episode 18 of the r/civ Battle Royale Mk.II. It clocked in at just south of 8000 words, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it. It might have woken up my dormant desire to write about stuff on the Internet. That was a very focused piece, however, and I would like to stray into more open ended writing.

I've a few projects on my mind. Perhaps most daunting of them, I'd like to do some writing about each of the games I've beaten over the years. I've spent some time trying to exhaustively catalog this list, which I've replicated here and on Backloggery dot com. I'd also like to do more writing about my game of the year candidates of this year and of year's past, something like a top ten games I actually played this year. I seldom wind up playing ten games in the year they were released, and a lot of my votes wind up being for games that sure do look like they are my favorite games of the year but have yet to be played by yours truly. Due to the frankly disgusting amount of games I've accumulated (in meat space and being aged in digital lockers), that will likely not change for a while. Especially considering I'm transitioning into grownup spending habits and lifestyle decisions, focusing on things like life insurance and retirement savings over buying every single Humble Indie Bundle.

Speaking of which, have those things just gotten increasingly stale as time has worn on? I pitched in a hefty amount for the recent Total War Bundle to support the charities involved, and out of admiration for the hundreds if not thousands of hours I have poured into the series over the years. Beyond that, however, I haven't gotten excited about a bundle in a very long time. That storefront is pretty slick, though.

Anyway, what's going on these days? I've settled into a groove of working on about four games at a time, allowing them to rise to the surface as the mood strikes me. I have a corner in my girlfriend's craft room dedicated to old consoles which I think of as a discrete space for the war against the backlog. With that conceit, I am hacking away at these titles:

• Metal Gear Solid (PSN Download): I used to be firmly on the side of Final Fantasy (insert number or word "Tactics" here, depending on the day) here as the best PlayStation game. MGS eclipses them, then kicks them in the dick and laughs at them while they lay collectively on the floor. Except for Tactics, anyway. I'm at the final boss sequence with the Metal Gear itself, and so far my biggest gripes with the game have remained consistent throughout: the loads are a bummer, and the controls are obtuse. Most of my difficulties in taking down Rex stem from my inability to use suite of weapons at my disposal to maximal effect. Practice has gotten me to the point where I can get through the first form losing only one ration. Progress! I think I can polish this off tonight.
• Far Cry 2 (Steam): This was a game I purchased in December 2008, maybe the tenth thing to be added to my Steam account. 250 some odd games later, it occurred to me I should probably try to play and beat a few of them. So here I sit, slogging through a game whose combat's strengths are buried beneath a navigation system I have come to hate. A conceit of the game is that your character is vulnerable, relying on the help of an Underground resistance and a handful of other mercenaries who have set up shop in the fictitious central African nation in which it is set. Forcing the player to get around manually, or via the profoundly limiting quick travel bus system, exposes them further to the host of hostile forces arrayed against them. This leads to "fun" scenarios where a mission, received at the middle of the map, will have branching objectives at the far northeast corner, then take place in the southwest, and conclude with a shootout on a soft timer elsewhere. If you're lucky, a bus will stop near one of these places. Add fast travel and this game becomes half as long. I'm two-thirds through it, and plan to finish. NO plans to revisit it, ever.
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES): It's a very pretty game, and I'm playing it on original hardware and a CRT over S-video so I'm seeing it in the best possible light. Too bad Yoshi is front and center. His little noises were already bad here, and they are insufferable now. Yoshi's Woolly World is sort of on my radar, would be more so if I hadn't just picked up Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Currently at 4-7, just need to sit down and hack away for a few more sessions to put this one to bed.
• Radiant Historia (DS): An Atlus joint, and a damn good one. I made the mistake of putting it down for a bit once, and now I might have done it again. Still fresh enough in my head to come back to it. Currently living in my 3DS. Something like 65 nodes deep, which will only be a meaningful metric to people who have played it.

I'd like very much to play through Rainbow Curse before the end of the year. I don't like it NEARLY as much as Kirby's Epic Yarn, the best Wii game, but on its own terms it is an enjoyable game and I'm looking forward to convincing my girlfriend to man the Kirby so I can play the game with a controller and, you know, look at it on my nice television. I'd also like to play Galak-Z, Dropsy, and Box Boy! at the very least before the year is out. Likely, I'll manage one of them. I like Dropsy's odds. The only point and click games I've beaten thus far have been Gabriel Knight and The Shivah, and it would be cool to see one of these types of games done with the...well, the fucking lunatic looking style of Dropsy. Plus the creator of the game was on Sup Holmes a few months ago, and seems like a stand up guy. Listen to Sup Holmes! It's good!