Operation Backlog Completion 2024

Top 5 Games I Played in 2019

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 312019
 

2019 is coming to a close, and I played a lot of excellent games this year.

Things turned out pretty great for my most-anticipated games of the year, too, without a repeat of last year’s disasters.

So it’s time to talk about the best games I played in 2019.

Honorable Mentions

There are three honorable mentions I want to discuss this year. First, God of War (2018). I know it was an honorable mention last year too, but since I completed it in the first week of January, it doesn’t feel like I really played it this year. But regardless of when I played it, it was great.

Next, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I got into the Fire Emblem series for the first time this year, and Three Houses is a fantastic game. It’s also a long game, and although I’ve done one route, I don’t consider my playthrough over yet.

Finally, I had high hopes that Control might make this list, since I was really enjoying it… until I glitched my game so completely, I need to start over from the beginning. Oh. Disheartened by the progress I’d have to repeat, I haven’t done that yet.

Now let’s move on to the top 5 games I played this year.

5. A Hat in Time

Is it possible? Did I actually finally play A Hat in Time after blogging about it incessantly and then leaving it to drown in my backlog? Yes I did!

I finished A Hat in Time today, so you can expect a full review coming sometime next week. I was torn about whether or not it deserved the fifth spot on this list – in fact, I had the entire list written up with Golf Story in this spot before I decided A Hat in Time should be here instead.

When I backed A Hat in Time on Kickstarter, I was hoping for a particular style of 3D platformer, and I got it. Several things changed from those early builds, and I wish we could have seen the dual-timeline story they had planned at one point, but overall I really enjoyed A Hat in Time.

4. Nier

You know what else I didn’t expect to like as much as I did? Nier. That’s partly because I didn’t know much of what to expect at all.

As I explained in my review, while I found Nier to be a sad game, I really liked the cast of characters and it had a lot more humor than I thought it would. I even went for all four endings despite not originally planning to.

The banter between Nier and Weiss is one of the things that pushed it high enough to end up on this list, and I want a grumpy snarky book accompanying me on all of my depressing journeys from now on, thank you.

(I have Automata in progress now, so who knows? It could end up on next year’s list.)

3. Resident Evil 2 (2019)

It’s hard to express how happy I was when I realized the Resident Evil 2 remake was a true survival horror remake of the original just like I’d hoped it would be. Playing the Resident Evil 2 remake filled me with nostalgia, some good (seeing the locked doors in the main hall) and some not-so-good (walking down a hallway where I remembered Lickers killing me repeatedly in the original), and it’s an excellent game in its own right.

(It also left me really excited to see what they do with Resident Evil 3’s remake.)

While it might not be a perfect game, and there are some things I prefer in the original, it’s a fantastic return to survival horror and almost everything I hoped for when the Resident Evil 2 remake was announced.

2. Judgment

I wanted Judgment from the moment it was announced. Now I already want a sequel, even though I’m not sure a sequel’s story could top what they did here. Judgment is phenomenal, and it might have my favorite story of any game I’ve played this year. I loved the characters, the plot, and… well, most of the side content…

Deciding whether Judgment deserved the first or second spot on this list wasn’t easy. I loved it so much, I considered the possibility that it was my favorite game of the year.

But every time I started to lean that way, I remembered the Keihin Gang. Not only was that the worst part of Judgment for me, it’s also probably the one thing keeping it from being my game of the year.

So although Judgment has my favorite game story of the year, I ultimately gave the top spot to the game I enjoyed playing all the way through…

1. Kingdom Hearts III

Of course, it’s Kingdom Hearts III.

Some people found Kingdom Hearts III to be a disappointment, but I didn’t at all. I enjoyed every minute I spent playing it. The story did everything I hoped it would – and even went beyond my wildest hopes in regards to one of my favorite characters – and set up exciting hooks for the next saga, the worlds were huge and fun to explore, and I even had fun with the Gummi Ship for the first time in the series.

More than any other game on this list, even my beloved Judgment, I simply had fun playing Kingdom Hearts III pretty much the entire time from start to finish.

Conclusion

That’s it for 2019. While I played a ton of wonderful games this year, Kingdom Hearts III, Judgment, Resident Evil 2, Nier, and A Hat in Time rose above the rest to be the top games I played in 2019.

What about you? What are the best games you played this year?

2019 Writing Goal Progress

 Writing  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 302019
 

Once again, I set certain writing goals for myself at the start of the year.

Now that 2019 is almost over, it’s time to take a look back at those goals and see how I did.

While I never set specific goals related to publication, since that’s something I don’t have control over outside of self-published stories, 2019 saw the publication of my first pulp fiction story, “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” as part of Airship 27’s Domino Lady Volume 3 collection.

It was also a notable year for me as a game writer, with the release of Parachronism: Order of Chaos (the first game I was ever hired to work on), Two Till Midnight (a horror game I wrote lore and backstory notes for), and Not It (the result of an exciting Halloween visual novel jam).

Those were some good achievements, but what about my writing goals? Let’s take a look at that list from the start of the year…

  • Complete my final edits of A Prince’s Price and send it to a beta reader.
  • Edit The Nightbringer based on feedback I recently received.
  • Edit A Prince’s Price based on the feedback I receive.
  • Once they are completely edited, search for an agent for The Nightbringer and A Prince’s Price.

I met these four goals. Both A Prince’s Price and The Nightbringer have been read and revised, and they’re now in the list of manuscripts I’ve been sending out query letters for. No luck yet, but here’s hoping.

  • Edit The Sunken Sapphire.

This is the first goal I missed. I haven’t touched The Sunken Sapphire since I finished the rough draft last year. I more or less switched it out for a different goal, which we’ll get to next.

  • Create an outline for the revisions of either The Threshing Night or Mage’s Test.

Not only did I create an outline of revisions for one of these novels, I did it for both of them. Then I revised The Threshing Night according to my new outline of revisions (they’re both disasters, but I decided it was the less disastrous of the two). It still needs work, but it’s in a lot better condition than when I started.

So effectively, revising The Threshing Night replaced revising The Sunken Sapphire. I hadn’t intended to go beyond the outline of revisions, but once I started thinking about how to fix it, I wanted to give it a try instead of setting it aside again.

  • Write at least 3 more short stories.

I met and exceeded this goal! I wrote two more pulp fiction stories, to follow this year’s publication of “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” and two new horror stories. I also pulled out an old rough draft of a science fiction story, revised it, and submitted it to an anthology.

Here’s hoping for good news in regards to all of these stories in 2020!

  • Continue to manage my two side websites and get them to a level where they do bring in income.

My side websites did bring in a fraction of what could be considered “income,” but I would consider this goal to be a failure – not just because of the tiny amount of income, but because I stopped consistently managing them. This is something I definitely want to work on next year.

  • Add an additional “event” of some sort to the three book signings I currently participate in.

While I didn’t attend an additional book signing event this year, I did find two more that I could possibly add to my list. I’ll consider this goal partly-completed.

All in all, it was a pretty good year. I didn’t meet every goal, but I did accomplish the major ones. What about you? If you set goals for yourself at the start of the year, how did you do?

Xenosaga HD Plans Failed a Market Analysis

 Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 272019
 

I hate to follow Christmas with bad news, but since we’ve talked about Xenosaga remaster hopes in the past, I wanted to blog about the latest development.

As you might remember, a few years back Bandai Namco producer Katsuhiro Harada asked for fans to show support for a potential Xenosaga HD collection.

A petition was started, and although it didn’t get as much support as it needed, Harada said it was still possible and that he would look for another way.

Unfortunately, his latest update about this was less optimistic. According to Harada, they made progress on plans for potential Xenosaga remasters, but it “failed in a profitable market analysis.” He went on to say it will be difficult for this to resurface.

It seems like we won’t be seeing Xenosaga HD anytime soon…

Do you think a Xenosaga remaster would be unprofitable for Bandai Namco? Will we ever see Xenosaga resurface in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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