Love Is Strange

On the week of Valentine’s Day, I started to play the new prequel to Life Is Strange. I was completely blown away at what they’ve done with the old characters while introducing new characters.

As someone who played the first game, there are a bunch of references. While I know what happens in the first game, I did my best to think about this as the “first” game in the series. I’m not completely done but it is so far really entertaining. There are a lot twists and lots of moments where it’s fun and sad. Life Is Strange played with my heart but Before The Storm really feels like a heartbreaking game.

Chloe and Max are probably the two characters in any video game yet that reflects how I perceive the concept of love. It’s a difficult subject to grasp and no one would every get it right, but we all understand it in out own way. What it means to us and what it matters to be with and without.

The game feels so much shorter than the first but I can’t wait to finish the 3rd episode and wait for the bonus episode.

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New Game – Prison Architect

This week, I’m going to get back into recording gameplay for my YouTube Channel. It has been a very long time since I recorded anything, I figured out why. Stardew Valley was the last game I played on the channel and as I watched, it was getting fairly monotonous. I’m going to break away from Stardew Valley for awhile and focus on a new game. “New” does not mean recent; in this case, I’m taking a game I’ve had in my library that I haven’t played and I bought many moons ago in a Steam sale far far away.

Awhile ago I had bought myself a few games; Stranded Deep, Call To Arms, and Prison Architect. As per the title of this blog post, I’m going to start working on these sandbox games since I’ve had them in my library for the longest time. I’ve already recorded and edited a few episodes and it feels much more fun than the last few episodes of Stardew Valley I’ve put together. Reason behind going with Prison Architect was because the developer recently announced they were done with this game and any upcoming patches would just address major bugs. That was probably a couple months ago, which by now should be fairly stable and playable.

I think after I get a good chunk of Prison Architect completed, I’ll start on the next one and then maybe consider revisiting Stardew Valley. For the time being I think I’ll stop and enjoy what I have accomplished. Much like I did with Defiance, the MMORPG, I’m going to leave this one as is until I feel I can play it in it’s entirety.

Gaming Achievements

Don’t know about you guys out there, but I feel a bit off every time Steam tells me I’ve  completed an achievement. I always open up the in-game overlay to see what I did to deserve a pop-up like that. Usually achievements fall under after completing part of a the game or the whole, then there are achievements which are very mundane. Some games are sensible with the achievements but there are are some that can be sinning against the purpose of achievements.

To me, a sensible achievements is story completions. It makes sense especially if you created a game that’s hours long. Another sensible one is when you collect an amount of objects. Makes sense to put a good achievement on a tedious task. If the game has some complex stuff in it, it’s even cooler if there is an achievement for it like saving someone from explosion damage or being able to react to a certain way. However there are a few achievements I don’t want to see even though I might have achieved these on my own account and accord.

I like a good achievements for a repetitive task. However a repetitive achievement for a repetitive task is overboard. As much as I can kill 100 bots, I don’t want to kill a million bots for an achievement. At that point, you’re just playing to kill and not necessarily enjoying the killing bots. This goes the same with FPS games which does the same thing but with a different weapon. I’ve played games which want the player to kill  a thousand with one weapon and a thousand with another. It’s a nice way to push players to try these guns and grenades, but there is no point aside from forcing players to play with weapons the developer is lazy to balance or the player does not which to play with for the duration.

Mystery achievements, as much as they are surprising they sometimes don’t provide any contextual information for their completions. Whether in the icon or description, they can be fairly vague. Most games I’ve encountered have been mysterious but able to convey a point where they want us to do. For most of the time, some of you developers have to give the player some sort of clue.

Then there are games I’m not even sure they’re really games anymore with over a hundred achievements. I have a game in my library which has over 500 achievements. Most of the are hidden since Steam has the courtesy to hide the massive list. I don’t think I have the patience for 500 achievements! Early on I had Team Fortress 2 as the only game with achievements. Looking at it now, it has a lot of achievements that look intense. I did achieve the “Pyromancer” achievements but it was an undertaking. To spent years on a game to complete the list of achievements is as agonizing as spending years in an institution. Which gets me into downloadable content achievements!

This generation of gamers seem to support DLC to games. Nothing wrong with that since some of them are like expansion packs of the past. Most of them would hardly count as an expansion pack, but I digress. I don’t like achievements related to DLC’s, especially on Steam since the service clumps all the game’s achievements. Which means you can’t “perfect” a game on Steam without buying their DLC content. Which sort of supports the argument of games are incomplete until all the DLC’s are released which sounds a cash grab.

Achievements should be an enhancement and not the objective for enjoying the game. I honestly hope more games can do less in achievements.

Life is…Strange. Ohhhhhhhh!

I thought it would merit a blog post in itself since I’ve played the entire episodic narrative, Life is Strange. After a long 6 months since I bought episodes 1-5 on Steam, recently I finally put aside some time from work to play. All this time avoiding spoilers I can put in a review down without ruining any plot lines and there are a bunch of plot lines.

Developed by DONTNOD and published by Square Enix, you play as Maxine Caulfield who has travelled to Oregon to attend Blackwell Academy in hopes of being a photographer. Within the first month of settling in, you have premonitions of a tornado. You have 5 days to prevent it happening. Along the way of trying to save the seaside town of Arcadia Bay, you make friends both old and new.

You play in the third person in a narrative where each episode is a day until the end. As you play choices from the previous episodes can effect the story and how it will culminate. The art for the game does exude something resembling of water colours which exemplifies focus on the story while delivering a detailed (but not too detailed) atmosphere. The entire game is littered with story devices which opens the player to character development outside of Max’s journal. If you are an empathic gamer, you will find yourself thinking about these little bits of information as you interact with other characters and help make decisions throughout the game. The voice acting in itself is very professional and does feel very natural and fluid with each choice. The character animation is nothing impressive, there are parts where characters would just talk and wouldn’t necessarily interact with each other. Felt more like talking heads on the news than a theatrical performance. Definitely something work improving is the motion capture to let these characters interact with the space around than standing there and have it be consistent. Max’s time travelling provides a good plot device to allow the player to change their answer if they think their choice is undesirable considering most choices aren’t described fully. Usually the game will give your an explicit choice of actions or a vague noun like “Nathan” or “Joyce” and hope that choice is what you are thinking it would be what is summed in a few words. It makes a logical choice to have the choices concise but a bit more description would be helpful. Then again the time travelling ability really solves all that.

Thematically, the game is about choices. Choices everywhere and if you aren’t tainted by spoilers, these choices are interesting because they carry weight through the game and changes up what you can say and do. The developers seemed to explore the idea of choice in terms of a social sense with moral implications. Choices which challenge vices and virtues, needs and wants, truth and the perception of truth; the does give some good examples of philosophical dilemmas which defines our humanity. Who said video games can’t teach your anything?

If you haven’t decided to get Life is Strange yet and you want to play it, I would recommend getting all the episodes in one package. For the value of a movie ticket and popcorn (like 25 dollars-ish),  you get about 22 hours of content (That’s on my count, experience may vary). As much as the first episode is thorough in giving you a preview of things to come, the main attraction is a story which a game can only deliver. There are some faults in quality such as some bugs and some dialogue which fell flat because of the animation. It’s a good play with achievements which can be completed (for you perfectionists out there). In the end after I made all the choices and comparing similarities with my personal life, the title is indeed exclaims a truth. Life is strange, so very strange.

Airsoft – On Ethics And Values

Here I am again, reading and watching news footage of kids and teen getting in trouble with airsoft replicas and anti-gun folks up in arms about criminalizing guns and everything guns. Around the same time, I finally returned to play a day of airsoft and realizing the game sits between its values. I witnessed this first hand. Some people  I might put as those players who take it up as a game and some groups of people take it as a hobby; however there is some consensus on the rules of the game.

Honesty is a heavy value in airsoft. In games I’ve played, there have been instances where players don’t call their hits. As much as the players endorse people to call your hits when shot, I’ve seen some people who don’t receive this message properly. My local arena always says during their safety briefing, “Airsoft is a game of honour. Call your hits.” Which brings me to my next point, integrity.

Integrity is self reflection after the situation and able to act the same wherever they go. Meaning you are the same person with the same view at work as you would be at home. Airsofters I’ve played with have a range of integrity, which is interesting. Some people like to talk honestly and play like a foul player while some do play an honest game. When calling hits, whether you raise your hand up or not, you did indeed were shot. You are admitting a fault, you were shot! If you take hundreds of BB’s to the face and complain about another player not calling hits, you might want to check your values. Airsoft is still a game, you can always respawn and try again.

Along with receiving, sending someone BB’s is much more a demonstration of personal values in terms of respect, responsibility and fairness. Respect to the respect and obedience to field rules, I admit I may have a few times came to breaking rules. At my local field, they have a strict no vaulting rule. Vaulting meaning jumping up, over and through obstacles. I may have in my own 6 month stint have jumped over a few low windows. Respect can also be seen from player to player in terms of being fair to other players the opportunity to show mercy. The field I got to don’t have range rules, in theory you can shoot someone point blank. However I’ve seen a varying degree in restraints. As many players have shot me point blank, there have been players who asked to surrender or just swapped to melee. Respect for personal equipment; leave it where it lays or return it to the front desk. Which leads into responsibility for yourself and fellow players. Helping other ensure all equipment is still on them and helping the game marshal recover lost equipment. I poorly displayed my values of responsibility for losing a pistol magazine which I have to now replace. As well as breaking a feed lip from my spare magazine, I am not a prime example of responsibility; however I do admit my faults as a player, that’s self respect and integrity. Lastly most players I’ve seen is fairness when it comes with over shooting. Most players I’ve seen have restraint and good trigger discipline to not shoot a downed player walking away to respawn. It’s a value heavily for me since I’m usually the one being shot first.

The local field does have one value they highly enforce, safety. Personal safety on the field since plastic BB’s fly at 380 feet per second. They endorse full seal eye protection at the minimum, but full face protection is recommended. Last weekend, I was humble to my mesh mask since the games got into a team on team with 40 players on each side. I did get shot in the face a good dozen times, my face would look like pepperoni pizza without the face mask. Then their “no duff” calls, used when safety has been violated where the game must stop to assess the situation. As recommended if the googles fog up, get off the field and deal with it in the safe zone and if it’s serious, call a “no duff” to let everyone know some happened. Recently with news of someone getting shot in the eye with a replica gun, they were cracking down on safety much harder with checking fire selectors, barrel covers and heavily enforcing their “no dry fire” rules within the safe zone.

Airsoft as a game does have a lot to teach in values in ethics for those who choose to learn them. Airsoft as a political stance robs a generation of risk and pushing them closer to playing indoors, not learning anything but to play the game in front of them.

 

 

Product/Service?

As gamer, I have seen this interesting trend with a lot of publishers recently. Recently being a relative term because I’ve seen it in MMORPG’s and now in AAA publishers. Since I was about 14 years old, I’ve been going in and out of MMORPG’s. Most of these games usually have a client service, either a client maintained by the developer or a client server provided by a publisher. As I’ve seen recently this is spilling into games that do not necessarily be massively multiplayer.

To name a few services out there are some that have years of service with players; services such as Battle.net, Steam, and the defunct Gamespy. In the early 2010’s, we’ve seen new services setting up with EA and Ubisoft, Origin and Uplay respectively. Three months into 2016, I’m now seeing the master plan for this client service with Origin and Uplay; if not, services like them. As a long time user of Steam, there are are their differences with this client service.

The way I see it, Steam is a platform for publishers to reach out to a potential demographic for their game. With their features like Greenlight to support independent publishers, their early access and free to play listings have grown immensely. Compared to Origin and Uplay as of the moment contains the games their developers have created. There is no cross pollination; no games beside EA games on Origin, no games beside Ubisoft games on Uplay. Their properties are highly popular on the mainstream with Battlefield and Assassin’s Creed to name a couple, there is no incentive use of the service. While Steam has the opportunity to explore and group players together as a social network and if this is true, then likely the last remnant of a 90’s social network!

What is more interesting now is triple-A publishers are experimenting with client services. Specifically using the service as a DRM gate, the “always online” trend. As much as I’m all about fairness for online games especially in multiplayer games; in singleplayer games like Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed, you spend most of the time by yourself with no interaction from the online system. The only exception is just for small systems like achievements, rewards and (I would guess) DRM. Fairness for achievements and integrity to keep players to play a genuine copy of the game are honest motives for having games always online, however I am concerned for the offline brother and sisters who play games on dodgy connections. Where does it get to the point where being always online does hinder and alienate the target audience?

More interestingly as I ponder the future for these amazing titles as they embrace having multiplayer features, when does the product become a service? Publisher-only clients really gain an income from having microtransactions, the in-game items or rentals. The only problem I see is most of these titles are leaning towards a heavy price on a game and microtransactions post-purchase. The problem I see is the mainstream demographic and titles usually push for better sequels which usually includes and iteration of a more integrated client. I wouldn’t know for sure but as more and more games to seem to be priced at premium while churning out gimmicks like pre-order content and DLC. Especially with recent games, games seem to have fallen into the “Day 1 patch” curse where broken games are being updated upon release. It really begs the question if that 60 dollars is worth the the extra money and the fact you have to stay online with a chance of paying DLC to keep up with everyone else.

For Future Fallout

In my hiatus, Bethesda announced Fallout 4 and providing a bit of gameplay in their E3 demo. While most of the world has seen the video thousands times over and speculating over every pixel, I just saw the reveal in past Saturday. Though the next game shows a lot of progress between New Vegas and now, there is always some room for improvement. From what I’ve seen, the next Fallout has taken the best of the modding community for Fallout 3 and put them into the this game. Most obvious is construction settlements and weapon modifications. Though weapon modifications was touched on in New Vegas, settlements however were seen in Fallout 3 as a mod. Regardless, the next instalment to the series will feature the universe we have seen and probably more. However as I said, there is always some room for improvement.

Vehicles

There were some scenes in the presentation which saws the player in a vertibird as well as views of a zeppelin over post-apocalyptic Boston. Though aerial combat would be a nice addition to the game, I would like to see a fleshed out vehicle system. My suggestion would be the ability to build and salvage vehicles. Either building from shells and hulks in the wasteland or melting scrap into components to build the entire vehicles. Even with that, the vehicles would require a fuel source. With it’s limitations, it would benefit the player into travelling the world. Though the fast travel system in the last two games would turn vehicles obsolete, but how cool will it be to cruise around in style?

Weapons and Power Armour

From the presentation, one thing I was impressed was customizable weapons. Rather than swapping parts, you build from a set of modifications. Each weapon a shotgun, a machine gun and an assault rifle. This from my point of view opens the player to play by their rules. They can be as hard hitting, quick drawing, lead slinging as they want. In the Fallout universe, we have ballistic weapons as well as energy weapons. In the last couple games, the energy weapons did have an advantage over ballistics; slight if not nothing. I think projectile weapons should get deeper if not for all the weapons. Right down to the triggers, barrel, springs and capacitors. Being module is great, but having an intricate gunsmithing system can nitpick each stat.

This goes the same with Power Armour. In the past, Power Armour was something most desired. It had the most resistance to the damage but it would be heavy too. I think in the future, modifying power armour would be impressive. Make it lighter, denser, have special capabilities; it would make the armour more versatile in the end. Especially modifying it down to the pieces; rather than helmet and suit, maybe including the shoulders and appendages.

Settlements

Within the presentation, you can build within certain parameters; I would assume from the presentation, on foundations of older buildings. Though it’s a step in the right direction, it would be more free if the player allowed the ability to create their house and settlement anywhere. Though this is a new feature to the universe, I am like many expecting to explore it. They have included tools to make these settlements something we would be willing to fight and defend. It would be tough to imagine something I have little experience in, but it would great if the game blurred the feature into the world. They tried to blurred the lines in allowing NPC and traders interact with these settlements, however it would expand further. I’m talking about factions trying to take your towns over or trying to subvert your authority through espionage or by use of violence (like raids as seen on the demo). Perhaps the authoritative factions are choices you can pick as the law enforcers of your settlements? Maybe even setting laws in towns and allowing NPCs to develop into these roles like a simulator?

Farfetched as these ideas are, we all can hope Fallout 4 will outdo its predecessor and improve on developing its universe. Doing bigger and better but even then, there is always room for improvement.

Open To Play

So here’s what’s going on for the end of the month on my YouTube channel.

With my Cities: Skylines gameplay, I think I’m getting close to finishing most of the game. There are unlockable building that require me to do a few things which I will try my best to get some of them. I want to aim for hard finish at the end of May so likely I might get 2 or 3 “monuments” before we finish as well as a cramped cities with suburbs dotting the edges. At the moment, it would be satisfying to finish the game once I’ve filled out the city. Perhaps one day I could revisit and try out mods or asset from the Steam workshop. For now I want to to be done by the end of May.

Recently I’ve been cleaning out my Steam wishlist and I’ve shortened the list to under 30 game at the moment, only 2 of those games to me are ones I would like to play. Newly added to the list is Elite: Dangerous, an indie successor to the retro classic space shooter funded by Kickstarter. Second being a sandbox survival and building game called Empyrion. Either are pretty good game and I want to go back to some indie games; preferably in the FPS, sandbox or survival genres. At the moment, I’m short on funds so this summer (thus a hiatus off WordPress and YouTube) I will be away working nonstop until early August. After that I’m planning on getting one game. Okay I’m going to be an addict and say I want two but I want to get at most two games year unless it’s free or gifted to me.

Now the start of my return from work, I am not sure what to do. At first I wanted to play the new game I would buy but I also have a bit of a backlog of games I would like to have a gameplay series. Here’s a few ideas I’ve been working with since I started playing since last year:

• Replay Skyrim (Arrows to the knees, why not?)
• Replay Fallout New Vegas (Knee capping because why not?)
• Play Space Engineers regardless how immersion breaking the survival is at the moment
• Elite: Dangerous for the cool factor

Yeah, it’s a short list but at the moment this is all the ideas I have for the near future.

As for Pulsar: Lost Colony and Interstellar Marines, I will try and inject some gameplay here and there. As I am writing this, there isn’t much going on with both games so in Pulsar: Lost Colony, I might want to try and find the last ship on our kill card until pre-beta comes out. As for Interstellar Marines, same situation. There hasn’t been a lot of update and no new maps have been released so it’s a choice of playing for co-op or playing single player in a very expansive map with aimbot-y AI hunting me down in the dark. Definitely if I die, it wouldn’t make good content; unless it’s a death montage. Definitely the end of this month if I have time, I’ll publish something beside Cities: Skylines to round of all the videos before my first hiatus.

I guess that is it for updates on my channel. As for my blog, I’m trying to write some creative ideas and setting them to publish during the summer until I return. So far I have two of the 7-8 weeks covered. So 6 more articles and I’m in the clear. I have to admit, I’m not a very forward thinking person so having even this might foresight is unprecedented. I like to wait and see, but with my job and this summer coming up it’s about pre-planning and making commitments stick. Even if they are voluntary commitments like this humble blog, I don’t let it go until it’s over.

Until next time and next week, let’s all prepare for an excellent summer!

Re: Your First (Videogame) Love

Response to aander14’s blog post here.

For me, I had bunch of small moments that fell in the right place. For me when I started playing video game, I wasn’t much of an enthusiast. My parents were fairly strict and (Dare I say) somewhat backwards when it comes to new technology. Here’s the list of firsts that got me into playing video games.

The first time I ever met the digital world was probably in school when I was a kid. That’s when schools started to teach kids about graphic design and how to draw stuff on computers. The first computer I remember using was a Macintosh, I’m talking the years before the iMac went on the market and every school in my district pretty much had something from the late 80’s. Most distinctive piece of software was the paint program for it where you use dynamite to “blow up” your creations. Later as each classroom got it’s own computer, the district went forward with getting PC’s. Before the Apple computers were phased out of the computer lab, I remember playing Battle Chess or a variant of it. Until my parents finally got an SNES, this so happens to be the first exposure to video games in my entire life.

Then I got the SNES, or Super Nintendo for those who are a tad young and asking “what’s a SNES?” Remember how my parents were so strict on me playing video games? They were probably the epitome of tiger parents before the term even came around as “tiger parenting”. So essentially when they got me the SNES, they thought I was too young to have it and too young to do anything besides go to school and get good grades. My sibling on the other hand turned the argument around and got us the SNES. First game we got was Super Mario All Stars and at the time even with my parents putting money to this game console, the would hardly let us play it until we were done our homework or we had nothing else to do. After awhile, our library to include Super Mario World and Gladius II which was given to use by relatives. Later on in grade school, I met other people who owned the Playstation and the N64. At the time, the PS had GTA but I never touched it until a buddy of mine at the time got it and told me to try it. I mostly stayed on their N64 and my SNES. First exposure with platformers aside, I got into cinematic cutscenes and gun play of Perfect Dark. I got deep into the singleplayer and enjoyed the split screen, big head cheat fun of of PD.

The same buddy that got Perfect Dark got Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and they let me play it. That was when everything just click. I liked sandbox, violence and open world games. Even to this day, these are the tenets of video games I like especially when it’s not overly exaggerated and just allows some escape from reality. As I got older, my parents seemed to relax a little and got me the Game Boy Advance and some games for it. For the most part, I stuck to Mario Kart for the GBA and Pokemon Red. By this time I was coming up to my teen years and I was fairly entertained through cartoon violence. So Mario and friends later got boring to me, lacking the things I want in games. I laid fairly dormant with my GBA until I was around 13 when I finally got my first PC.

Growing up in lower middle class, my parents couldn’t afford what I wanted in a PC so I got something a bit low brow. More attuned to a workstation than a gaming rig, I got this 512 MB with 40 GB computer running the last Intel Pentium ever created. This was my gateway to the world. To top it off my parents let the world wide web into the house with DSL and that’s when everything starting to ramp up for myself when I played the many games I soon to find to be everywhere. Firs it started with browser games that are precursors to Facebook games. Then I got a collection of pirated games from my sibling when they moved away for university; but mostly I remember Mechwarrior 3. By this time, my life starting to go downhill. In my child-like mind, the world didn’t seem as beautiful and carefree. As I entered high school, I already accumulated a lot of time into my first MMO, Kal Online which was a Korean MMO taken place in Korean lore. I got as far as I could in the game but in the end at level 25-ish, I gave up after feeling the grind of the game. Of course I moved on; Silkroad Online, WarRock, and Cabal comes to mind. Perhaps there a dozens I’ve played and forgotten. After my first PC finally gave, I got a new PC and continued playing. First on the roster if memory serves was NavyField which was a Korean MMO naval arena. Of course the game has been updated many times over the years; when I remembered it, the game only had 4 nations (US, GB, Germany and Japan). This second PC lasted me a good while and I even tried to go off gaming to pursue increasing my grades. With all my efforts and looking back on it, it was indeed a futile effort and regardless of any scientific study; it didn’t change my grades, I was still the below average student since grade school. Fondest memory was the closest time I went into Major League Gaming; yes that’s right, I was close to MLG material at the ripe age of 15/16. At the time, I was playing America’s Army with a clan I was in trying to get a team together into MLG. In short, the power went out and I lost my shot at a small pot of cash at a small growing gaming tournament league. I believe the cash prize was about $14-18 grand USD per person. In it’s finality of it continuing to this day, my parents view of video games is damning. Video games is a form of entertainment and not a business you can get into, so they say. Yet I could’ve been the coolest kid in high school since I won $14 000.

By now, it was about 8 years ago where I finally found a job and made some money to get myself a custom gaming PC. This is where everything went to hell in a hand basket and yet opened me to the world of video games on an addictive level. When I got my current rig, I went to town on my bank account and bought games. I spent it as wisely as I could starting with putting it into games I can play on Steam. I bought the Orange Box which as Team Fortress 2, Half Life 2 series and Portal for a cheap price. I went back to my roots somewhat and got GTA IV, I even stuck around cyberspace to explore the free games it has to offer. Before my 8800 GT GPU died and my hard drive in need a refurbishment, I think I played about the same amount of games I had played in the past over a span of 4-5 years. Which brings us to the last 3 years and now.

Now, I’m stuck to sharing games with others. I like aspects of co-op games and sandboxes. I’m stuck to my old ways where I play games I like. If my play time in Star Trek Online isn’t proof of my past, I don’t know what would prove where I was in the past 3 years. Moving forward, I want to break away from my parents opinions on video games. I want to making a small inkling in playing video games. If I can’t, at least I want to do is share my love for video games to the world at large.

Transition

This year will be unlike the few years I have been on the blog. Though I will be still writing, I am pushing to organize everything a little bit. Therefore some changes will happen.

The Schedule. Stuff IRL

First off, I will not be changing my blogging schedule. Yup. Once a week every week until the summer. I cannot forecast the summer because of new developments in my life. With that being said, I have been employed which is a relief. However the most I can say is financially, I am still having trouble. By trouble, I mean I need a steady income. As of now I’m out of the red, but still trying to hold on the ground I’ve gained from the past couple years of spamming my resume out.

Secondly as of late 2014, I’ve moved away from reviewing video games. That’s just because rather than posting a review, my reviews are now in video form. On my gaming channel on YouTube, I’ve decided to play the games I like and share it to the world. Along with these games, I am looking into getting new games to review and even play through its entirety. So anything directly to gaming will go straight to my YouTube channel; my thoughts, opinions and views will be here.

Community Comments!

Over the past few years, I’ve have been timidly contributing to the WordPress blogging community by commenting on other blogs. Most of the time I realized I would post a wall of words on other people’s posts. To me I like my thoughts to be thorough which usually doesn’t result in a concise comment. So as I am now in the fourth year of my blog, it’s time that instead of building walls (of words), I start posting them here. Out of my schedule, these posts should not count towards my actual blog posts. There are some amazing bloggers out there who post some amazing content to make me think and contribute to their blog. It is only fair that I show you guys how I’m showing you readers how I’m contributing back to a community who has read my grief.

What about summer?

So one of my employers require me to be away for the summer. I am not quite sure how I am going to continually forward posts since I don’t think where I’m going will have a connection or access to my laptop or home computer. If WordPress allows, I will have some posts lined up for the summer until I return. YouTube is another matter. Since I don’t think YouTube requires me to be on to publish in real-time, my channel might go on hiatus. The same can be said for my blog if I can’t find some way to post ahead of time but only publish on specific dates. From what it looks like, the hiatus will be about 2 months long. In internet time, that’s a really long time.

2015 will be a very busy year for me. For my profession life and my hobbies I’ve created over the past few years. I would like to thank you guys for joining me from the start. If you guys just joined, I hope you guys keep coming back.

Until next time, let’s make 2015 happen!