I had an interesting time over the holidays, and I was going to write a highly personal post about it that I decided not to finish. 2015 was an interesting year for games in general, so I’d like to focus on that first.
AAA where?
Personally, I did a whole lot of not playing AAA games this year. The GOTY contenders I keep seeing mentioned by big publications are Witcher 3, Bloodborne, and Undertale, and I haven’t played any of them (and I only own the last one). Other big releases I ignored include Splatoon, MGS 5, The Order: 1886, Batman Arkham Knight, and Star Wars Battlefront. I did pick up Dragon Quest Heroes, and we played Fallout 4 for our Game of the Month(s) for November/December. Xenoblade Chronicles X is probably the only other $60 release I devoted a lot of time to, so I didn’t miss all of the big games, just most of them.
Part of this is because I played quite a lot of portable games this year, some of which weren’t even released this year. Radiant Historia, Breath of Fire 3 (which I still haven’t beaten), LBX, Puzzle and Dragons Z, and Majora’s Mask all saw playtime this year. Another reason is definitely the Game of the month, which saw me play some things I definitely would not have tried. Secrets of Grindea is probably a game I would have picked up after it came out, but I’m not sure I would have ever acquired Tron 2.0 or Hatoful Boyfriend on my own. A third factor is the MMO Factor, I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy 14, and poked my head into a few other games too (Marvel Heroes, Wildstar, Star Wars: The Old Republic).
Posting
My posting remained pretty sporadic. I did Blaugust, and wrote a bunch of posts for that while on the plane to Seattle for PAX Prime. Outside of Blaugust, I still haven’t quite gotten it through my head that not everything I write needs to be a well-researched article, or a guide I put a bunch of work into, or a short novel. I have 2,942 screenshots of Evoland 2 that I intended to use in a post at some point (I still might). Just figuring out where to start on that kept me from saying much about it here at all.
I’m still trying to figure out what exactly I’m saying whenever I hit publish. I’m kind of just throwing my words out and seeing where they stick. I tend to like it if someone finds what I’m writing helpful, but I realize that won’t always be the case and it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Just getting thoughts on screen is helpful to me personally, and sometimes that’s what matters.
