1438: Mario Time!

Finally picked up Super Mario 3D World today with some of our Christmas money. (Andie spent all hers on Lego; I still have some left, which I'm probably going to spend on board games.)

What do you know? It's fantastic, and to be honest I feel a bit sorry for anyone playing through the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One's weak launch lineup in preference to the variety of really great games available for Wii U this Christmas time, with Super Mario 3D World certainly being a candidate for strongest of a strong bunch.

I've played through two "worlds" so far, and already it's shown considerably more invention and creativity than almost any other game I've played in recent memory. Nintendo just gets "fun". The Mario devs know what would be enjoyable and memorable to play, and they implement it in such a way that it manages to be consistently surprising and delightful even as you continue to progress through the levels. Rarely does it become predictable, and rarely does it get so hung up on a single trick that it becomes stale or boring; often, you'll come across an enemy or trap that shows up maybe once or twice and is then never seen again — a far cry from some other games that repeatedly fling the same generic tricks and traps at you over the course of a lengthy adventure.

The thing I particularly like about Super Mario 3D World and its predecessor Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS is how intuitive it is. You'll very rarely be given an explicit tutorial or an insultingly simple level to teach you how things work; rather, you'll immediately be given a new item and it be implemented in such a manner that you can't help but figure out how it works and what it's for straight away. Beautiful game design.

Take the very first level: almost right off the bat, you're given Super Mario 3D World's new power-up, the cat suit. You're not explicitly told how the cat suit works — how you can run up the walls, how you can "pounce" while you're in the air — but the way the first level is designed encourages you to try these things out for yourself. You'll naturally discover how the mechanics work, and it's always pleasing and delightful to do so. The first time I found that wearing the cat suit allowed Mario and friends to climb up the flagpole at the end of the level for an easy gold flag put a genuine smile on my face.

The presentation is immaculate, too. A rock-solid 60fps; some well-designed, clear visuals; a minimal but informative interface; and some really, really great music performed on real instruments — Super Mario 3D World is without a doubt one of the most polished Mario games I've seen in recent memory, though I understand the Super Mario Galaxy games — which I'm yet to play — probably give it a run for its money, albeit in standard definition.

I'm looking forward to playing more, but I flattened the GamePad battery playing earlier. Perhaps I should invest in one of those new high-capacity batteries!

1437: Merry Christmas Again

Well, I hope you all had a nice Christmas with lots of presents and too much to eat and all that jazz. As I said yesterday, Andie and I had a nice quiet Christmas with just the two of us (and the rats) — I'd seen my parents shortly before Christmas, and we're going to go see Andie's family on New Year's Day.

Not a lot else to say, really. There were presents, there was food — Andie's first time preparing Christmas lunch, and it was great — and then there was sitting around doing not very much.

I got a couple of board games as presents, and we tried one of them out. It's called Tsuro: The Game of the Path, and it's a deceptively simple little affair where you take it in turns to lay tiles with lines on them down on the board, then move any pieces that connect to the lines until they can't go any further. The aim is to be the last piece standing, either by causing all the other players to crash into one another, or to fall off the board. There's some sort of mystical Chinese theme about it all, but it really doesn't matter — it's a super-quick, simple but very clever little game that will serve as an excellent "filler" on board game nights, either to start the evening or as a palate-cleanser after something more substantial.

The other game I got was Android: Netrunner, a two-player card game that was originally a Magic: The Gathering style CCG, but which has now been transformed into one of those fashionable LCGs. (For those who don't know the different, CCGs are customisable card games, where you buy a base set and then add to it with blind booster packs and other expansions; LCGs are living card games, where everything you need to play is included in the base box, but there are also regular expansions — unlike CCGs' blind booster packs, though, LCGs' expansions always have the same cards in them so you know what you're getting.

The game itself looks fairly complicated but enjoyable, and I like the cyberpunk/hacking theme — it looks like it'll be an interesting and asymmetrical game for two players. Now I just have to make sure I can get people to play with!

On that note, it's nearly 4am since I accidentally Final Fantasy XIV for a bit, so I'd better go to sleep. Andie and I are going to pop out and perhaps spend some of our Christmas money tomorrow — I've certainly got my eye on Super Mario 3D World for Wii U, and potentially some other things besides.

I hope you had a thoroughly pleasant Christmas and some peaceful time away from the chaos of everyday life. Enjoy it for a bit longer before it all kicks off again!

1436: Merry Christmas

Technically this is my post for the 24th, but it's past midnight so I can probably officially say "merry Christmas" to you all. And possibly again tomorrow.

Andie and I are having a nice quiet Christmas in our own place this year, with no-one having to travel anywhere. It will be nice to have a fairly chilled out day.

One thing we will sort of be missing out on a bit though is the fine art of the "family tradition". Everyone's family doubtless has their own little traditions and routines for Christmas Day, and when you're not spending said day with your family you either have to come up with your own ones, or adopt the ones you've known for the rest of your life by default. (That or attempt to ignore Christmas altogether; I did that a couple of years ago, not entirely through choice, and it was not altogether pleasant.)

The "traditions" Andie and I will be adopting once we get up later this morning will doubtless be a blend of both of our families' typical way of doing things. We've already done the "open one present at midnight" thing that Andie insisted on (a copy of the board game Tsuro — thanks Michelle!) but we will more than likely open presents in the morning, as is Davison family tradition, rather than in the afternoon, as is Capes family tradition. Because come on, presents.

Those who have been following this blog for a while will know that I haven't really had my heart in Christmas for a number of years now. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I have a feeling it's something to do with my own inability to express genuine-seeming excitement or happiness when put in a situation where it's expected. I really hate being put under pressure to "be happy" or "act more excited" because, in my mind, I picture an "excited" thirty-two year old Pete as an overexcited five-year old Pete with everyone laughing and chuckling at how adorable he is to be so excited. I of course know that this is completely stupid and that it's okay to be excited, but that doesn't stop me from feeling really embarrassed at the prospect of being excited and demonstrating anything more than a Fluttershy-style "Yay".

Still, even if I don't really show it at times, I am at least appreciative for a pleasant, enjoyable and peaceful festive season — and I hope all of you reading this are in the process of enjoying the same thing.

Have a thoroughly merry Christmas, everyone, and here's to a happy 2014 when it eventually decides to show its face.

1434: Free Company

The Internet is by turns a strange and wonderful place, filled with all manner of people from fair to foul. Wander inadvertently into the wrong corner of it and you'll find yourself surrounded by some of the very worst people in the world; somewhere else and you'll find people who will go on to become lifelong friends.

Online gaming is somewhat troublesome in this regard at times, particularly for those of us who struggle somewhat in social situations. The prospect of talking to strangers in an online game is, to me, pretty much as frightening as the prospect of walking up to a random stranger in a bar — particularly if voice chat is involved. With text chat, it's somewhat easier since you have more time to consider your responses, but the inability to express your tone of voice can sometimes lead to misunderstandings, and it's still nerve-wracking to, say, ask a favour of someone.

This is something that's held me back a little from fully enjoying some online games, because sooner or later you're going to have to play with people you don't know personally. Your friends won't always be available to play with you, or you might need more help than your friendship groups can provide, or you might be playing a game mode where you're organised into teams. Whatever the reason, it can be anxiety-inducing.

In the case of MMOs, you have to put your virtual life in the hands of strangers quite often, whether it's for running a dungeon, beating a boss or getting a piece of equipment crafted. It's easy to forget that a lot of people playing these games are in a similar situation where they need help from others to progress, and thus it's in their interests to be nice to one another.

There are, of course, exceptions. The team-based e-sports games Dota 2 and League of Legends have notoriously "toxic" (the word that's most commonly bandied about) communities that are somewhat unforgiving of newcomers attempting to learn the game "in the wild," as it were. MMOs, too, have elitist players who are quick to complain at those whom they do not think are playing the game "properly", and players who are impatient with newcomers just trying to have fun and learn how to get through some of the tougher dungeons and fights.

I get it. It's frustrating for these people, who want to play in a particular way, to find themselves having to change their play style to support someone who's perhaps less familiar with a particular challenge. But there's really no excuse for rudeness.

That's me in the big black coat in the background.

I've been extremely lucky with my time in Final Fantasy XIV so far. While most of my runs through dungeons and boss fights have been with friends, the few times I've dared to jump into the Duty Finder alone and be grouped up with strangers have been very pleasant surprises. Pick-up groups (or PUGs, as they're sometimes called) have a rather poor reputation in most MMOs, and indeed in Final Fantasy XIV's case most people seem to have at least one tragically amusing Duty Finder story where they played with someone who was just a colossal dickhead. I'm glad to have escaped that fate to date — but it also makes me extremely nervous about "going solo", as it were: in other words, braving things like the new Duty Roulette system, which picks a random dungeon for you and three other random players to play in exchange for some very generous rewards, and indeed other group-based content I need to complete in order to proceed further in the game.

Which brings me on to my main point: how grateful I am to have a group of regular players whom I enjoy playing with, and whom I like. I'm a member of the "Giant Bomb" Free Company after being invited by someone I know through some combination of 1up, Twitter, The Squadron of Shame and possibly some other places — I forget the exact details — and am very happy that what I originally hoped would transpire when I started playing Final Fantasy XIV — that I'd make some friends with whom I felt comfortable playing — has indeed come to pass.

The interesting thing is that I don't really know anything about the people I'm playing with, so they're basically still "strangers" to me — just strangers I'm somewhat more familiar with. I'm not an active member of the community on the Giant Bomb website, so outside of my friend who originally invited me in the first place, I can't relate any of these in-game names to real names or even usernames.

It sort of doesn't matter, though; when we're online in FFXIV, we're there to play FFXIV. There's the occasional mention of real-life things — usually when someone has to go and make dinner, or go out, or whatever — but for the most part, conversation in the game is about the game. We're all enthusiastic and passionate about the game, and we all enjoy talking about it, whether that's sharing our thoughts on the new content in the latest patch, sharing strategies for clearing dungeons, or collaborating on group projects such as the Free Company house and the various weird and wonderful objects therein.

I'm really very grateful to these people for making my experience with the game so enjoyable and welcoming, and the pleasant feeling of friendship and camaraderie I have with these folks is the main thing that keeps me coming back to the game time after time. Final Fantasy XIV is a great game in its own right, but when played with the right people, it becomes even more enjoyable — even for an old hermit like me.

1433: Search This

In the absence of anything particularly interesting to talk about today, I once again braved the pit that is this blog's search terms to see exactly how people are finding me.

Yesterday's search terms were less than enlightening, consisting of one instance of "your minge smells", one instance of "ayakashi ghost guild hot girls" and twenty-two search terms that the search engines in question didn't pass on to WordPress.

I'm not entirely sure how the first one led someone here, since actually searching the site itself for "your minge smells" reveals that, as I suspected, I have never used that particular combination of words in any of the 1,498 posts I've written on here since July of 2008. I can't think why I would use that particular combination of words on a post here, save for the fact that it's an amusing way to tell someone they have an unpleasantly fragrant vagina. That said, there aren't all that many people I feel comfortable enough with to comment on the scent of their lady-parts, so I don't honestly see myself breaking it out all that often.

As for "ayakashi ghost guild hot girls", I can only assume this was a reference to the time when I briefly tried to understand the Japanese card-battling phenomenon by spending a bit of time with Zynga's take on the genre, the aforementioned Ayakashi Ghost Guild. While noting that most of these card-battling games are full of hot girls in various provocative outfits isn't entirely inaccurate, it's not something I commented on in my original post, nor is it a game that I've returned to or deemed worthy of further discussion since then. So to the person who came here searching for the hot girls of Ayakashi Ghost Guild, I can only apologise and send you on your way. (And if you're after sexy pics of anime girls, believe me, there are a lot better places to look than a mobile card game. Uh, apparently.)

What about those mysterious hidden search terms, though? I kind of want to know what they are now, though there's no real way of finding out as far as I can tell. I do know that for some inexplicable reason the top search term on my blog of all time is "BioShock", a game I didn't like all that much, closely followed by "teaching sucks", a viewpoint I still very much stand by.

But then "monster cock" is pretty high up the list too, so I don't really know what to think any more.

Anyway, I'm getting tired and slightly delirious so I think that's a good place to leave that.

1432: They Don't Look Like That Any More

Hello.

Video games today look like this:

Or this:

Or, indeed, many other things besides.

So why, then, any time some switched-on young advertising executive wants to, for some inexplicable reason, make use of the idea of "video games" to advertise something completely different — like, say, shoes — it ends up looking like this?

I have… quite a few issues with this campaign. First of all, why the hell does it even exist? It sort of looks cool, I guess, but it has nothing to do with Schuh's stock in trade which is, unsurprisingly, shoes. I get the impression that someone just thought "hey! Video games are cool and popular! Let's do something with them to advertise our product!"

Actually, having inadvertently stumbled across the agency that came up with this bizarre marketing effort, it seems that, unless "Isobel" isn't telling us something, that pretty much is all there was to it.

"Schuh's 'Start Xmas' Christmas campaign was inspired by the retro theme of 1st Generation arcade games," Isobel explains. "We won the creative pitch against several other agencies earlier in the year."

Um. Well done? As I say, it looks cool but has absolutely fuck all to do with shoes. The main concept appears to be the word "start", which is a button commonly found on video game controllers and arcade machines, and then they've just gone and run with it. "Start" Xmas. Geddit?

The problem is, though, that as I mentioned at the beginning, video games don't look like that any more, with the exception of some indie games that are deliberately channelling the super-pixelated styles of yore. This style of video game is not something that is massively culturally relevant to the sort of person who would fall for a marketing campaign based around video games — namely, a young and rather stupid person. A young and rather stupid person who likes video games probably plays stuff like Halo, Battlefield, Call of Duty or FIFA — no judgement on older, wiser people who also play those games, naturally — and not Space Invaders.

Ultimately the whole thing comes off as a bit desperate. It caught my eye when I walked past the store earlier today, but it certainly didn't make me want to buy shoes. It did, however, make me want to write this blog post, so well done for that. It also made me feel that the people from "Planarama" behind the campaign haven't actually played a video game ever. Can you name any games that actually say "game on" when you start them — even games from the '80s? I can't.

I guess it's sort of cool that video games have reached a sufficient degree of cultural penetration for a mainstream shop like Schuh to attempt to use them to peddle their wares, but it's also indicative of the fact that the average person in the street likely has very little clue that video games have advanced significantly in the last 30 years — to such a degree that they'd be all but unrecognisable to someone from the '80s.

Still, I guess the super-pixelated art style is a convenient shorthand for "video games" but that doesn't really address the core problem I have with this campaign: it's for a shoe shop's Christmas sale. No amount of pixelated Christmas puddings or aliens in Santa hats will hide the fact that it's a campaign completely irrelevant to the product it's trying to sell, and just, in fact, looks rather foolish.

On the other hand, it compelled me to talk about it and mention Schuh several times, so perhaps it is doing its job after all.

1431: Relics and Rebirth

I must say, I wasn't sure I'd enjoy it, but I'm really having fun with Final Fantasy XIV's endgame content. Part of this is due to the fact the new content update that dropped earlier in the week added a significant amount of stuff to do for people who had hit the level cap, but I'm also enjoying working my way through the stuff that was already there. A lot of it encourages you to try stuff that you might have ignored throughout the rest of the game.

Take the A Relic Reborn quest, for example, which culminates in you getting your class' powerful Relic weapon, which can subsequently be upgraded to a Relic +1, for those who just like to be slightly better than the best.

A Relic Reborn tasks you with a number of different things to do, the first of which is acquiring a specific weapon and melding specific materia to it. (For those less familiar with Final Fantasy, materia are things you can plug into items of equipment to improve their abilities; in Final Fantasy VII they determined what specific spells and other actions your characters could perform, while in XIV they tend to confer bonuses to various stats.)

I had gone through pretty much the whole game without melding any materia to anything. This was partly because I wasn't able to do it myself — in order to meld materia to a piece of equipment you need to have one of the crafting classes up to a high level, and my efforts as a Weaver were stalled by my running out of lightning crystals — and partly because I'd been replacing my equipment reasonably often as I levelled up, and consequently didn't see the value in upgrading an item only to discard it a few levels later.

I was hoping a member of my Free Company might be able to meld the necessary materia to the weapon in question, but no-one had the right skills, so I had to brave random strangers. As someone with social anxiety, the prospect of approaching a random stranger and asking for a favour is, as you might expect, rather nerve-wracking — particularly when you're not quite sure of the etiquette for doing so in this particular community. Should I offer them some (in-game) money? Is it rude to ask them if they want paying? How do I find them in the first place?

As it happened, finding them was a simple matter of wandering into the Ul'Dah marketplace and yelling really loud. Virtually, of course; it's a matter of typing "/shout [message]" rather than literally having to bellow your message into the ether. Just as well, too; if I was using voice chat, there'd be no doubt in anyone's mind that my short-but-pretty female redhead character was being played by a big hairy bloke. Not that I think anyone would care; playing off-gender is pretty common if our Free Company is anything to go by. And occasionally, playing a female character can allow you to flutter your virtual eyelashes and get people who might not otherwise help you out to play with you. (Well, it worked in World of Warcraft; the land of Eorzea appears to be a somewhat more egalitarian and less sexually frustrated society, perhaps due to the fact that the player base is slightly older than that of World of Warcraft.)

Anyway, it took me a matter of seconds to be bombarded with people who wanted to help me. Eventually I picked someone whose name I'd seen in public chat before, and whom I remembered didn't seem to be a jerk. I met up with him at the Goldsmiths' Guild, used the game's convenient "request materia meld" interface to indicate what I needed and offer him suitable compensation — my Free Company brethren had suggested 5,000 gil per meld was a good starting point — and within a matter of moments it was done. We bowed courteously to one another and went about our business.

That wasn't so hard, was it? No, of course it wasn't; as anyone with social anxiety will know, the reality of a particular social situation that gives you cause for unease is rarely as bad as what you build it up to be in your mind. And this is just as true in the online space as it is when you're meeting people in reality — even with online games and virtual worlds' capacity to let you represent yourself in any way you wish.

Anyway, the upshot of all that is that the quest to construct my Relic weapon is now well underway, and a big punch-up with Chimera is in my near future. But that is a story for another day.

1430: Step Into My...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been watching the US incarnation of The Office recently. And I have to say, I'm a big fan — even more so than I liked the UK original, in fact. And I liked the original a lot — the three DVDs that made up the complete UK series in its entirety joined Spaced and Black Books as titles that were in my regular "rotation" for a while — things I'd watch over and over again when I just wanted to zone out and not really do anything.

I watched the first episode of the American The Office mostly out of curiosity. And the first episode disappointed me a lot, as it was little more than a word-for-word recreation of an episode of the original series.

However, clearly the team behind the new American version understood that this wasn't good enough, because by the second episode, there was enough new stuff to distinguish it significantly from the original. And by partway through the first series, it's a completely different show that never looks back.

For my money, it's a better show, too. It still has the same kind of uncomfortable humour as its UK counterpart does, but it carries off better and more consistently. It makes better use of the "docudrama" format, with a lot more in the way of sidelong glances to the camera and otherwise acknowledging that the characters are being filmed going about their business, rather than gradually drifting into a relatively straightforward "comedy drama" format.

Michael Scott, the David Brent equivalent, is a much more sympathetic character, too. At least part of this may be due to the fact that he's not played by Ricky Gervais. I personally have no issue with Ricky Gervais, but it's sometimes difficult not to see him as just Ricky Gervais rather than David Brent. Perhaps it's just because I'm not particularly familiar with Steve Carrell and there's none of the associated baggage that comes with Ricky Gervais — whatever the case, I think Michael Scott works much better as a character than David Brent does, since although he's obnoxious, stupid and utterly, utterly tone-deaf, there are numerous occasions when you will find yourself feeling genuinely bad for him.

The Tim-Dawn equivalent will-they-won't-they romance between Jim and Pam is explored in much greater depth, too. The fact that nothing was ever really quite resolved in the UK version was one of its hallmarks, and indeed so far in the US version, nothing has become particularly "conclusive" as yet, but it's already gone further than it did in the UK version. Their relationship is interesting, depicted — and rather familiar, too.

A real highlight is the supporting characters, though. In the UK Office, I'd be hard-pressed to name many of the supporting characters other than the fantastic Keith, of Scotch egg-eating fame. In the US version, meanwhile, each of the other characters is fleshed out rather nicely; we perhaps only see each of them for a few minutes in most episodes, but we start to get a sense of who they are and what they're all about over time — and each of them has their own little story arc, too, which is nice. The focus is still very much on Michael Scott's troubles as a boss and the relationship between Jim and Pam, but this bit of extra detail just helps to flesh everything out that little bit more.

I'm about into the third season or so now, I think, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes next. There's certainly plenty of it to enjoy!

1429: Call me Farmer Heathcliff

Before we get started, a shout out to the person who found this blog by searching for "are there any games on facebook that arent crap" [sic]. In answer to your question, good sir and/or madam, the answer is "no". Thank you for your time.

Right then, to business.

Tonight we played a game of Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, the expansion to Agricola. Agricola is still not my favourite game in the world, but the expansion does add some interesting new elements to it — and, crucially, multiple ways to do well. By way of example, the top two players out of our four-player game this evening scored 61 and 60, adopting two totally different approaches to one another. (I came third, with 27 points, but at least I didn't come last, which I count as a personal victory.)

My difficult with Agricola is a matter of prioritisation, and of finding an efficient strategy to do the things I want to do. I get that you should spend the early game building a house, the mid-game building up your family and the end-game racking up as many points as possible, but I find it very difficult to determine what are the best possible actions to achieve those things, and on top of that, what the best Occupation and Minor Improvement cards to achieve those things might be. My tablemates are always talking about "synergies" and "combos" but I have real trouble spotting all but the most obvious combinations.

I know that part of the problem is that I just haven't played it enough compared to them. I should get in more practice with my own copy — yes, I own a copy, despite having somewhat mixed feelings about it — or the iOS version. But it's one of those things that when I consider actually sitting down to play it, I start thinking I'd rather do something else instead. Not in the "I'd rather light my own eyeballs on fire" sense; it's just something fairly low down the list of things I feel like doing, somewhere behind "playing Bravely Default", "playing Final Fantasy XIV until 5 in the morning" and "watching several episodes of The Office back-to-back". (Incidentally, The Office — the American incarnation — is something I'd very much like to talk about, but I'll save that for another day.)

On the whole, we had a decent game this evening and I was reasonably pleased with most of my game — right up until the last turn where my lack of contingency plan was brought into stark focus by someone taking the one space that would screw me over almost completely. Consequently, I spent the last turn frantically gathering the food needed for survival rather than racking up points — and even then, I forgot the fuel needed to heat my home and took a two-point hit for having a sick person. Bollocks.

Oh well. Fortunately, I managed to get Yeoman Farmer (take no negative points, except for unused farmyard spaces and Begging cards — of which I had neither) out when things looked like they might go a bit pear-shaped. If I hadn't managed to get that out, my pathetic farm at the end of the game would have had a truly embarrassing score; possibly my worst of all time.

Still, as my tablemates say, it was a training game — it's only the second time we've played with the expansion — and so we all probably have a lot to learn, still.

1428: ...Of the Year

2013 is coming to a close, and with it, most people's thoughts turn to the "best [x] of the year". Gamers this year have a double-dip in the form of also being able to indulge in some "best of the generation" talk, even despite the fact that the PS3/360 generation is clearly far from over. (That said, I anticipate a quick death for the 360; the PS3, which is where all the Japanese developers are, is likely to cling on for a lot longer due to Japanese devs' propensity to continue with old tech rather than immediately embrace the latest and greatest.)

Looking back on the year, it's hard to pick out exactly what, if anything, was my absolute favouritest gaming experience I've had. Thinking about it, I have fond memories of pretty much everything I've played.

My feelings on Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory are well documented, for example, but I also had a lot of fun with Time and Eternity and Tales of Xillia. Final Fantasy XIV also proved to be an immensely pleasant surprise — and with a significant new content update coming tomorrow, I'm looking forward to seeing how that game's going to continue developing over the coming year.

Then there's smaller experiences that I've had, not all of which actually came out this year. Sweet Fuse, which I'm yet to clear all the paths on, was a particular highlight, as was Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, though the latter was left frustratingly unresolved with no word on if or when we'll get an English version of the sequel. 999, too, was absolutely fantastic, and I'm currently really enjoying its sequel Virtue's Last Reward, which is shaping up to be a real mind-bender.

And then there's last minute entries like Bravely Default, which is looking rather marvellous so far. Really looking forward to spending lots of time with that — I'm going to be reviewing it for USgamer in February, but since the game came out over here in Europe well before the North American version, I have the rare opportunity to get a significant head start and play it well ahead of having to review it, rather than being obliged to rush through.

One thing I've been particularly conscious of this year, though, is that a great game is always a great game, regardless of how long ago it came out. There's an immensely frustrating, irritating trend in today's games industry to brand something a "success" or "failure" on nothing but its opening week — but taking just me as an example, I think there are maybe one or two things in the whole year that I've bought in launch week, the rest of which I've purchased down the road when they're either significantly discounted, or when I know I've got time to play them. Does me buying a game well after release not "count" or something? Apparently not, at least in the eyes of the "analysts". Grr. Fuck analysts.

Anyway, I'm getting a bit distracted by Andie having a video call on her phone in the other room — there's no way of doing those quietly. As such, I'm going to sign off for now, and stick my head into a good video game for the remainder of the evening, I think.