So Much for Regular Entries

     My intention, upon starting this blog, was to keep track of what I was playing in order to offer my perspective in approaching my backlog as well as my thoughts and feelings about the games I was playing. It started off well enough, I beat Assassin's Creed in four week's time, then sprinted through Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Then I started Dishonored, and the whole "play a game from start to finish" thing fell by the wayside.

My issues with Dishonored are numerous, but are fairly simple. There is no reason to care about the story, the killing of the empress, the kidnapping of her young daughter and empress to be, the sullying of our (Corvo's) sterling reputation without so much as an attempt at a defense.

The pacing is off, with each trip to Dunwall broken up like a chapter with end of mission statistics, and the allies of Corvo in his fight to restore his honor, find the girl and restore order to the world, are wholly dislikeable.

Gameplay is satisfying, inventive and sufficiently brutal, but the "moral choice" aspect limits things.

If you want to go in guns blazing, yes, the ability to kill enemies in unique fashion is remarkable with the powers given to Corvo, but in terms of a stealth approach, they are largely wasted. Teleporting is the most useful power, while possession and freeze time are limited to knocking patrols out or avoiding them entirely.

I still feel like I should reserve judgment for when I have completed more than the first two or three missions, but it is so hard when things are so frustrating.

From there, I started Deadly Premonition.

Cult anything achieves cult status for a reason. It is either an overlooked masterpiece, a quirky and flawed offering, or something so awful you can't help but marvel at how bad it is. Like a train wreck.

Deadly Premonition falls somewhere between quirky/flawed and awful.

I tried, oh how I tried, to slog through the repetitive missions, meandering story, psychotically quirky characters and mismatched sound direction.

It didn't last long and I made the wise choice to move to something more palatable, Red Dead Redemption.

I posted a single update about RDR, raving about my love for every facet of the game, and then I stopped updating. I found it more difficult to find things to discuss week after week regarding a single playthrough.

Then I presented, and apparently abandoned, the notion of broadening my view to include new releases, impending releases, nostalgia gaming, opinions on gaming news, etc.

I never posted anything like that, and now here I am. Offering a retrospective of the blog that once was.

Now that I'm here, I might as well try to give you something you can enjoy or chew on, or ignore entirely if that is your prerogative.

We'll see...