Good morning! I am feeling better now, but when I woke up this morning I was in pretty intense pain. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you want to cry, vomit and shit yourself all at once.

Thankfully I only did one of those three things, and the pain eventually went away. In the meantime, my cat Meg was good enough to sit with me while I was writhing in agony in bed. She's pretty good like that, as was our dearly departed Ruby. I am grateful for cats; they have a reputation for being grumpy and aloof, but in my experience, they have always been wonderful companions exactly when you need them the most: when you're sad, ill, in pain or just lonely.

Said pain was the result of a hernia I've had for a little while. Basically I woke up, got up, coughed a bit too hard and said hernia (which I've decided to name Hermann, with two N's) decided that now would be a really good time to provide a simulation of what it would be like to experience the Alien series for real. If you've never experienced the pain of feeling like your insides are about to burst out of your stomach, I do not recommend the experience.

Annoyingly, I can't get the hernia treated right now as I'm literally too much of a fatass. Well, actually, more specifically, as I am right now, the hernia is likely to come back even if they were to treat it, with something approaching 100% likelihood. As such, I need to lose a bit of weight. This is something I've been meaning and wanting to do for ages, but incidents like this morning only go to provide additional motivation to do so.

Those who used to follow my old blog may recall that I had some success a couple of years back with a programme called Slimming World. I lost somewhere in the region of 6 stone last time around, and it was legitimately nice to be the lightest and slimmest I'd been for a long time. I was still a fairly big guy, yes, but it was pleasant to be able to do things like cross my legs, wear jeans, sit in a chair without being uncomfortable and see my penis. Not all at the same time. Although I could have done so if I wanted to.

Anyway, short version is, a combination of medication that gave me an absolutely voracious appetite for the shittiest foods imaginable and some severely trying times in both my personal and professional life meant that I ended up putting most of that weight back on again, which was enormously frustrating and demoralising. Still, on the upside, having done it once, I know that I can do it again because the plan you follow for Slimming World actually works. It's not a miracle or fad diet, it's just a means of encouraging you to think a bit more carefully about what you're eating and drinking.

My wife and I joined a new Slimming World group last week, and tonight is our first weigh-in since starting. Last time around I lost a massive amount in the first week simply due to water retention or something like that, so I'm interested to see if the same happens this time around. Either way, I'm taking positive steps to try and improve myself, so hopefully you'll see further good news in this regard in these posts as time goes on.

Wish me luck!

I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet. I haven't even really thought about it, to be honest.

Christmas always seemed to be pretty straightforward as a kid. Write a letter to Santa that included a list of all the things you really wanted along with the assurance that you had "been good" (even if you were self-conscious of a particular instance of bad behaviour that had occurred relatively recently), get whatever your parents suggested as presents for other people and then sit back and wait for the bounty on Christmas morning.

As an adult, you actually have to think about such things. Not only do you have to contemplate what people might actually want, you also have additional considerations about the things you want. Is there anything you "need" that you can palm off on other people's generosity to save you having to pay anything? Is it "too much" to ask for purely selfish, enjoyable things?

Personally speaking, so far as presents go, I've always preferred fun things. I shan't say that I'm disappointed if I get a nice jumper or something — at least partly because my wife bought me a nice jumper a couple of Christmases ago and was worried I wouldn't like it because it was a "boring present" — but I still, at 37 years of age, prefer something that I can engage with actively… all right, play with.

Consequently, pretty much my entire Amazon wishlist this year consists of video games. In previous years, it would have included some board games too, but since two members of my regular board gaming group have had kids and become boring people who never go out in the process, it's proven impractical to keep adding to my board game collection, and I've even started getting rid of a few.

But video games… well, if you're reading this, of course you know it's my main passion. I'm always on the lookout for games I might like — and specifically games that I might want to write about for MoeGamer at some indefinite point in the future. Christmas is a great opportunity to acquire some stuff that is either still full price, or at the very least priced a bit higher than "impulse purchase" territory. 

Other people, though… that can be a bit challenging. There's a certain aspect of the British national character that kind of prevents people saying directly what they want at any point… and to a certain extent, asking other people what they want, too. I realise this might sound odd given that I've already talked about writing letters to Santa and provided a link to my Amazon wishlist (pretty much the modern-day equivalent), but I know certainly with regard to my immediate family, I never really have a good idea what they want.

My wife is typically indecisive about such things at the best of times, and it never feels quite… "right" to ask my parents and brother what they want. As such, I typically end up getting them something that I believe broadly aligns with their interests in some regard.

I guess that's as good a way as any of handling the whole present-giving thing, and despite me saying that I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet, I know I can almost certainly blast out all the presents I might need within the space of an hour with a simple Amazon session. I just need to actually find the motivation to do that!

Good morning! I'm going to make a proper go of this; looking back over my old blog, I used to really enjoy daily blogging, so I'm going to try and do this as regularly as possible.

I also left a message over there for former followers to migrate here if they're interested… it remains to see if anyone will pay up to help me out in exchange for reading my ramblings, however!

For those who are primarily here for other rewards, all these daily posts will be tagged with "blog" and "oneaday" so you can easily see them; likewise, the monthly $5+ wallpaper rewards are tagged with "wallpaper" so you can quickly and easily access all of them. Here's a handy link to access just the "wallpaper" posts.

So, what to talk about today? Well, I may as well talk a bit about why this is a thing and why I enjoy it, since some of you reading this won't have been around for my original #oneaday project.

The original #oneaday project started in January of 2010. I forget exactly who started the whole thing in the first place, but I became aware of it via Lauren "atheistium" Wainwright on Twitter. Lauren was working in the games journalism business at the time, and was someone whose work I enjoyed. She explained it as a means of getting people to think creatively and flex their writing muscles by writing something — anything — each and every day for a whole year. Even if you didn't think you had anything to write about. The whole point was to get you thinking about the process of writing and expressing yourself. It sounded like fun, so I joined in a little late on January 19, 2010.

A lot of people who were initially involved — including the creator of the tag, as I recall — barely lasted out of the first month, but a small but dedicated crowd of us pushed on, with various people dropping out over the course of the year. A handful of us managed the whole year, and in 2011 I decided to take the lead in another attempt, spawning what I called The One A Day Project.

This was a group effort where I invited people to sponsor us (for charity) in a year of blogging; I relaxed the "rules" somewhat to encourage more people to participate and this made some of the original participants who had dropped out within a few weeks very angry indeed — including, I recall, Matt "Jam_Sponge" Lees, who I thought was a massive wanker for his response at the time and, it turns out, really is a massive wanker — but this was a new year and a new beginning. Besides, if those original participants wanted input, they should have bloody lasted the whole year and played an active part in the community, shouldn't they?

We didn't make a huge amount of money in the process, but we did raise about £175 for Cancer Research UK in the process, so that was better than nothing; far more valuable to me personally was the sense of community the whole experience provided. Everyone involved seems to have gone their separate ways now, which is a bit sad, but I had some enriching experiences along the way.

Most notable among these was my getting to know a pleasant young woman named "Vee", who was both a talented, skilled archer and an actual bona (no pun intended) fide swinger… and very open about it. Vee helped me a huge amount in a very difficult time of my life; in 2010 my first wife and I parted ways and I ended up having to live back at home with my parents. I was in a pit of depression and anxiety, but Vee was a true friend who helped give me hope that things would be okay. She also helped me feel more comfortable and confident in talking about and expressing my sexuality — though I might add we never actually "did" anything. Unless playing Halo Reach and talking in great detail about who she'd fucked recently during co-op missions counts.

I miss Vee.

Anyway, as I've alluded to, blogging daily was helpful to me in more ways than one. It helped me meet new people. It helped me get to know others and to express myself. And during a particularly tough time in my life, it acted as a form of "therapy". It kept me going for 2,541 days in total; not bad considering the original objective was just 365 days.

In 2018, I'm in a somewhat better place in my life, though I wouldn't say I'm out of the woods so far as depression and anxiety is concerned; you never really escape those things, sadly. But hopefully these posts will provide a suitable outlet when needed — and those of you reading them will hopefully enjoy getting to know me a bit better!

Thanks for reading.

Hello Patrons. I'm going to start using this blog here on Patreon a bit more, and you get to join me! Lucky you!

I used to run a "one a day" blog over at https://imnotdoctorwho.moegamer.net but I ended that project for various reasons after 2,541 days of non-stop blogging. It was something I enjoyed, however, and I also found it quite therapeutic to have a place where I could write about whatever I felt like and have a small but reliable audience. So that's what I'm going to start doing here.

It'll provide you people good enough to support my work directly with an opportunity to get to know me a bit better, so please do feel free to comment, ask questions or give me some ideas about what you'd like to see me write about. It doesn't have to be gaming-related — if I happen to mention something in passing you'd like to know more about, let me know!

I don't know if I'm going to write here every day or anything but it'd be nice to get back into that habit. As I say, it was quite therapeutic for me to be able to get the day's stresses off my chest on my old blog — plus it ended up being an interesting record of a somewhat turbulent period in my life that helped make me the person I am today, for better or worse. So I'm going to aim to provide at least a short update every day for a little while and see how things go. I hope you enjoy them!

Since Project Zero is going to be the last Cover Game for the year and from January I'll be adopting the new "as long as it takes" model for titles to explore, I thought I'd take a moment to see if there were any titles I had in mind that people would be particularly interested to explore. This is just to gauge interest, it's not a guarantee I will get straight to these games, but if there's a clear favourite I'll try and prioritise it. You can vote for more than one thing, and I encourage you to do so.

Note that this isn't by any means an exhaustive list of games I'm intending to give the Cover Game treatment, just a selection of those that sprang immediately to mind that I'd like to give some love and attention to sooner rather than later! They are also in no particular order. 🙂

If you have any other suggestions or requests, leave them in the comments and if it's practical to do so (i.e. if I already own them, or if it's practical/affordable to purchase them if not!), I'll put them into consideration.

Hello friends and kind Patrons! (You're all friends really!) It's been a while since a post here, and for that I apologise.

I wanted to post some musings about the overall format of MoeGamer going forward, as I'm pondering making a few minor changes to how I do things. This was partly inspired by the fact that Evenicle took a little longer to cover than I intended, and I'm now deep in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series and keen to make sure I do it justice across all five installments.

I love working on the Cover Game format. My original thinking behind it was to give a game or series that didn't typically get much attention the same treatment that mainstream sites would give a triple-A game: multiple articles over the course of a longer time period, exploring a different facet of the overall experience in each article. I think that's been working well, and thus it will definitely be continuing.

The main thing I'm contemplating is divorcing the Cover Game format from the rigid monthly structure. I do like having a "magazine-style" format with a specific theme for each month, but since I'm not actually restricted by a physical printing or publication schedule as a real magazine would be, there's no real reason to keep to such a rigid format besides appeasing my Asperger's by making things nice and neat. (Except when things like Evenicle happen, everything gets a bit out of whack!)

In other words, what would happen is that a Cover Game feature would take "as long as it takes" rather than forcing me to either squeeze everything from a long game or substantial series into a month — or drag out something smaller over a longer period, for that matter. It can be an interesting challenge to do the latter in particular — I was especially pleased with how much I was able to write about Ne no Kami, for example, since that's quite a short visual novel — but it's not always practical or desirable.

So why am I talking about this now? Well, I was already planning to take December "off" from the Cover Game format as I did last year by doing a new cycle of The MoeGamer Awards, since those were a lot of fun and a good way to wrap up the year during the inevitable disruption to daily life that the holiday season brings. What I'm proposing for now is that rather than trying to rush the rest of Project Zero by the end of October (and that will be a rush if I want to play all five games — I'm only just nearing the end of a playthrough of the second game right now!) I take my time over it, with a loose commitment to having completed all of it in time for the beginning of December and the Awards posts.

Project Zero is a series I'm keen to do justice to with my coverage — both because I like it a lot, and particularly because it's something that I've been specifically requested by one of you good people to explore and write about. But I'm not sure I'll be able to do that to my satisfaction if I try to cram three-and-a-bit more games into the next 13 days. So I'm going to ditch my originally proposed plans to cover Muv-Luv in November (which might have been a bit ambitious anyway!) and take my time over Project Zero, even if that means I end up spilling out of Spoopy October. Oh no.

My proposed changes to the Cover Game format here won't affect the usual daily output on MoeGamer. Regular features such as Waifu Wednesday and various videos will continue — I'd also like to get back to doing video "readings" of past articles, so let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see videos of, be they past Cover Game features or individual articles — but the game- or series- specific features will vary in how much time they encompass in total.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all once again for continuing to support my work on MoeGamer. With the recent news over Facebook fudging its video view statistics, ultimately leading to a lot of writers being put out of work in favour of a "pivot to video" by many news organisations, we're looking at an age where the written word very much has the potential to make something of a resurgence. And while I'm not a daily news site or an attempt to compete directly with the Polygons and the Kotakus of the world — and I have no intention to ever be that — I am proud of my ongoing attempts to bring games and visual novels that don't get much respect from the mainstream press some much-needed attention and appreciation, so it means the world that there are people out there who think my work is worth supporting.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to reach out, either here in the comments, on MoeGamer itself, on Twitter or on Discord. Thanks for reading!

Hi folks! Just wanted to update you on upcoming plans for the site. I'm making reasonable progress through all the Sonic games I wanted to cover this month, but I've still managed to underestimate the amount of time I needed to cover all of them to my satisfaction — I still have quite a few I haven't started playing yet, and I doubt I'm going to squeeze them all into a single week, even with August being five weeks long! This has been a research-heavy month — particularly pieces like the Sonic X-Treme retrospective — and so things have taken a little longer than I anticipated.

Rather than leaving this little project unfinished — and rather than interrupting the usual flow of content, too — what I'm going to do is kick off a new Cover Game in the first full week of September as planned (it'll be Evenicle by AliceSoft/MangaGamer) but also continue to cover the remaining Sonic games without a "deadline" as such until I've got through everything I want to do. That way I can cover all the games I wanted to discuss in my exploration of the series without having to rush the last few articles and not do them justice.

Thanks for your continued support, and I hope you continue to enjoy the articles 🙂

I saw the news today that THQ Nordic has acquired the rights to TimeSplitters and Second Sight, two properties by the ex-Rare devs at Free Radical, and I just had to get something down on "paper".

The exact details of the deal are… well, there aren't any, to be honest, though you can perhaps infer some things from the press release. Interestingly, the press release describes the deal as THQ "acquiring the video game trilogy TimeSplitters" rather than the overall TimeSplitters brand… the smart money here is on an HD remaster, perhaps of the whole trilogy in one pack, and maybe followed up by a brand new game. But, as I say, there's not a lot to say beyond what has already been announced right now.

Instead, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about why I like TimeSplitters so much, and why it's an absolute delight to hear the possibility that we might be seeing its return.

TimeSplitters was one of the earliest PS2 games I had a chance to play, long before I had my own PS2. I was visiting my brother over in the States, and he had a wide selection of interesting-sounding launch games as a result of his work on Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official PlayStation Magazine at the time. As has apparently always been my wont, I gravitated immediately towards the games that were somewhat less well-known or hyped, and so it was I found myself playing through both Shade's Orphen: Scion of Sorcery (which will probably get at least a bit of discussion on MoeGamer at some point in the future) and the original TimeSplitters.

I enjoyed TimeSplitters so much that my brother's neighbour actually came over to complain at the constant sound of gunfire — I forget the circumstances, but for some reason I'd been left home alone at his house, and was filling the time with the PS2 and its games. My brother had a particularly formidable sound system, and anyone who has played TimeSplitters will know that it had some wonderfully meaty-sounding weapons that reverberate right through your walls and floor with the right setup. Turns out they reverberated right through the dividing wall between my brother's house and his neighbour's property. I apologised and got back to it, a bit quieter than before.

TimeSplitters is great to me because it recaptures everything I loved about GoldenEye and Perfect Dark on the N64, without those games' poor frame rate, fuzzy visuals and dodgy character models. It was the perfect example of a game that did not take itself seriously in the slightest — a game that really knew that it was a game.

In fact, the original TimeSplitters drew a bit of flak (no pun intended) for not really having much of a plot and just focusing entirely on the gameplay. These days, I actually think that would be something of a refreshing change, though its two follow-ups had entertainingly silly and enjoyable storylines to follow, too.

For me, though, the real appeal of TimeSplitters was not in its main campaign mode; it was in the wealth of other stuff it offered. Multiplayer battles in which you could incorporate bots drawn from an enormous cast of characters. Challenge modes that had a distinctly "arcadey" feel to them, tasking you with accomplishing specific goals against tight time limits. Hidden bonus games the protagonist could play on his wrist-mounted computer. (Anaconda was always a particular favourite.) And a fully functional (albeit somewhat limited) map editor to create your own stages. There was so much to enjoy in each of these games that they were a near-constant fixture in the multiplayer gaming rotation of my friends and I back when we actually used to visit each other's houses on a semi-regular basis.

I've had a copy of the original TimeSplitters on my shelf for a while and the news has prompted me to immediately order copies of 2 and Future Perfect, which I've been meaning to do for a while. And you can bet your ass if an HD collection — or perhaps even a new game — gets announced, I'll be there day one!

In the meantime, turns out composer Graeme Norgate has all the official soundtracks for the series up on his BandCamp, so I know what I'm listening to this afternoon…

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I deal with a few mental health issues — specifically, a delightful cocktail of Aspergers, depression and anxiety.

This lovely combination of things means that I am particularly susceptible to negativity, and an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere can leave me in a seriously deep funk for quite some time, even going so far as to leave me barely functional for hours at a time. It sucks, but I've learned to "cope" with it over the years — and video games have certainly helped with that.

I mention this because I feel like I'm seeing a particularly large amount of negativity across social media and even blogs of late. Ashley fans claiming they want to "murder" Sakurai for not including her as a playable character in Smash Bros. The never-ending arguments over what GamerGate "is". Ridiculous hot takes over a bad joke in the new Doom trailer. And, of course, the ever-present "unpopular opinion" threads and "Top 5 Worst X of Y" articles that always seem to be doing the rounds.

(Unsure of the original source of this image, sorry; it just drifted across my Twitter feed this morning!)

It's sometimes helpful to express negative emotions, and hell, I've been known to do so on more than one occasion. But it's also good to have a "haven" away from that sort of thing — a place where you can go if you just want to enjoy stuff for a change.

I've always attempted to make MoeGamer that kind of place. My key mission for the site is to "find the good" in even games that were poorly received by press and/or public — and while it's important to acknowledge flaws where they exist, it's even more important to judge something on its own merits. If someone derives some enjoyment, satisfaction or even emotional resonance from something there is value there, even if it's popularly regarded as "bad".

That's why I can promise you there will never be "Worst X of Y" articles on MoeGamer, nor will there be articles berating you for your tastes in games, your political opinions or anything completely arbitrary that isn't any of my business. The most negative thing I've written is "13 Reasons Why the Games Industry Needs to Stop Idolising Anita Sarkeesian", which I feel was important to write, but which unfortunately no-one who really needed to listen to… listened to. (In fact, it got me landed on a "GG Trash" Twitter list from one particularly obnoxious individual, despite me never actively participating in anything GamerGate-related. Said individual got promptly blocked, removing me from his stupid list in the process.)

I don't want to see these things, so I don't wish to inflict them on you either. Consider this a "pledge for positivity" of sorts if you like… and if any of the feelings I describe here are familiar, I encourage you to extract yourself from environments like Twitter and Reddit that just encourage this whole cynical cycle of negativity.

Let's make our little corner of the Internet an actually nice place to hang out.

As I noted last time, the four years I spent at university are among some of my fondest memories, both for the time I spent with friends, and for the gaming I did at that time.

One especially fond memory was picking up a PlayStation 2. I honestly have no idea how I really managed to afford one as a student with zero income, but somehow I did, nonetheless. And while I'd spent some time exploring obscure RPGs in the PS1 era, the PS2 is when I really started getting into interesting and unusual games.

This started right from the moment I actually picked up a PS2. It wasn't that long after launch, as I recall, and most of the high-profile launch titles didn't appeal to me for one reason or another, which may lead you to ask why I decided to pick up a PS2. It's honestly hard to explain; it's just something that happens to me now and then. I decide that I really want something for no discernible reason, and it remains on my mind until I find a way to get it. Capitalism at work, I guess.

Anyway, the game I elected to pick up with my PS2 was a Konami title called Shadow of Memories. I knew absolutely nothing about this whatsoever and hadn't seen any reviews of it — this was also well before the age of smartphones so I couldn't just look it up while I was in the shop gazing longingly at it — but it was immediately striking and sounded interesting, so I chose it as the first PS2 title I would ever own.

I wasn't disappointed. I'd been into story-centric games ever since I'd first started playing Sierra and LucasArts games on Atari ST and PC, and here was a game that was almost entirely story. And it presented a distinct experience to the adventure games I'd previously enjoyed; it was much less puzzle-centric, and much more focused on providing an interactive movie-esque experience with a cool structure and a compelling "time travel" premise. You can read more about it on MoeGamer if you haven't come across it previously; it's a worthy addition to any PS2 collection.

From here, I would continue to explore a variety of weird and wonderful games whenever I had the opportunity (and the money) to grab some. And in my second year, I lived about three minutes away from the local Blockbuster, so I had the opportunity to rent a variety of different titles, too.

I also picked up an Xbox and a Gamecube at various points over the course of those four years. Again, no real idea how I actually managed to afford those, and I don't remember a lot about the circumstances of getting the Xbox, but the Gamecube once again provides a very vivid, fond — and, these days, slightly bittersweet – memory.

Our local gaming store was holding a midnight launch event for the Gamecube, and my friend Tim that I mentioned last time around was a pretty hardcore Nintendo fan at this point, so naturally he wanted one. Several of us went along with him to keep him company, including me; I had no real intention of actually getting a Gamecube that evening, but ended up doing so anyway. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing.

Anyway, the memorable part of that evening was not actually the acquisition of the Gamecubes; it was the drive back. Our friend Sam, who was one of the few people we knew with a car, had graciously agreed to drive us to and from the town centre that night. For some reason, we had more people than would normally fit in his car, too, so one guy was lying across the laps of the other three in the back seat.

Sam needed fuel on the way home, so he stopped at a late-night petrol station, tanked up, paid… and then turned right out of the petrol station to begin the journey home.

Unfortunately what he (and the rest of us) hadn't realised was that said petrol station was on a dual carriageway, so he was supposed to turn left; turning right meant that he was now driving the wrong way down the road. Thankfully, there were no other cars around, so we remained safe and there was no accident.

Well, that's not quite true, there was one car. A police car. Sam was hastily pulled over, and one of the policeman pulled him out, put him in the back of his car, jumped into Sam's car and rather aggressively drove us right back into the petrol station we'd just left. He then hopped back into his own car to go and give Sam and earful while we just sat in quiet bewilderment, somewhat astonished that he had apparently not noticed the four people in the back seats instead of the distinctly more legal three or fewer. Or perhaps Sam's apparent misdemeanour was higher priority.

Sam returned to his car a few minutes later having apparently straightened the situation out. To be fair, the petrol station had no clear signs on its exit indicating that you were going back onto a one-way street, and it was situated shortly after the dual carriageway began, so I can honestly see how it was an easy mistake to make. (I've also since attempted to remember exactly where this happened, since I still live in the same city… and I can't find it!)

Anyway, those are the stories of how I got a PS2 and a Gamecube. Evidently the memory of picking up an Xbox was somewhat less exciting and hasn't stuck with me in quite the same way… but these two proved to be very memorable for very different reasons!