yikes…

Look how the time flies, or so the saying goes. And it definitely… well, goes.

Once again I’ve shirked my duties of keeping up with this blog. The last post was in December of 2022 for goodness sakes!

But here we are. So let’s get to it.

2023 was a crazy good year for me in terms of gaming. Finishing up titles like Mass Effect 3, Klonoa, Radiant Historia, Trails in the Sky & Trails from Zero, Suikoden II, Shenmue, and BioShock to name a few. Playing random games that, much to my surprise, really stood out to me like R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. And so much more. Oh and, Suikoden II? Yeah. It only became my #1 favorite JRPG of all time… so… you know.. no big deal or anything. Seriously, I loved everything about it. Can that HD remaster please come out soon, Konami?… please???

With the start of 2024, I’ve managed to already finish up two titles: Spider-man: Miles Morales (PS5) and Kowloon’s Curse: Lost Report – Definitive Edition (Steam Deck), the former being an excellent sequel to Insomniac’s incredible first outing on the PS4, and the latter being another surprise hit for me that left me in awe of its mysterious depth, tantalizing lore, and surprisingly impacted by its obscure-yet-effective storytelling.

*The developer, after listening to the retrospective I put up (on Kowloon’s Curse), responded with the following, “Just finished listening, that was great! Something about the way you described the game made even me think “I’d really like that play that”, if that makes sense. Thank you for taking the time to record this!” That was very encouraging feedback!

Furthermore, in terms of growth of the podcast, it seems the overall listener base has increased, a new 5 star rating was given (by an anonymous listener), and my podcast is now showing up in the search engine on Apple Podcasts when you type in “The Gaming” which is a big step from where I first started. In other words, the podcast isn’t buried anymore and it finally feels like all the work, energy, and passion over these last several years is paying off. ***Don’t get me wrong – it’s always been, in part, for my sake to serve as a means to share my voice on the hobby we all love – but there’s still an aspect to content creation that says, “Man, I hope people want to hear and interact with me on this”, too.

I’ll throw this in here before I sign out (who knows when I’ll be back, heh) but I spent about 6 or so hours this past Friday attempting to put together and publish a personally long-anticipated idea I’d had — an episode entirely dedicated to sharing my top favorite video game songs wherein I’d provide brief-yet-concise information before playing each track (in full) including the song title, album, and composer. I completed the episode, was wholly satisfied with the end result post-editing, and hit publish. And then…. the episode disappeared. I was exasperated to say the least. I couldn’t figure out why it had happened and I couldn’t deal with the reality that all those hours had amounted to nothing, ESPECIALLY because I had finished it (it was published??? What in the world happened??). So I spent another hour or so piecing and ordering the episode back together (it was a huge painstaking process), hit publish, and all seemed fine until it wasn’t. The episode disappeared AGAIN. —- Long story short, I received notification emails after the fact that my episode had violated content restriction due to me sharing full audio tracks of 16 songs. I had no idea this was not allowed.

So that was that. And then, determined to not let the days efforts go to waste, I decided to record my next collection episode – focusing on the manageable 10-game Xbox collection. The problem, though, was that the result was a rushed, unsatisfactory episode that held numerous issues (editing problems, sound issues, and the content itself being lacking compared to what I WANTED it to end up being). I published, then unpublished, then published the episode several times over before deciding to leave it up. It achieved about 8 listens over several days but upon re-listening a few times, I ultimately decided to unpublish and scrap my work in favor of trying again another day.

So here we are. I’m currently playing Mass Effect: Andromeda, rapidly approaching the 20 hour mark, and having a very good time with it. Is it the original Trilogy level of good? Not quite. But unlike the majority of voices, I’d have to say I don’t think it ever had to be. It still feels and plays, in large part, like Mass Effect. I still care about this world. The lore, aliens, and goings-ons is all fascinating. The gameplay is fun. The OST, art design, and tone still feels true to the originals. So yeah. It’s good and I’m set on finishing it out. Oh, and Paragon Lost was a decent, fun side story that definitely made me care about/respect (in hindsight) James Vega’s character a heck of a lot more than I did when I played 3. And that ending! Dude. What the heck. I did not see that coming. It hit hard. Waaaay harder than I would have ever thought it would (or could for that matter).

Still reading/playing Witch on the Holy Night on the side as well – currently at about chapter 3 and it’s been a super cozy, sometimes eerie, and low-key very tense read. Overall very enjoyable. Now just to find the time to get back to Extra and Samurai Remnant to continue the Fate series binge I’ve been on ever since finishing Fate/Zero!

But that’s all for now. Lots of gaming to do. Need to get back to The Adventure of Dai (that episode where Popp finally (and in dramatic fashion) discovers he represents Courage was hands-down, flat-out incredible. Goodness I love this show. And yeah, so much more amazing content to continue consuming. A Game in the Life by Jordan Rudek finally arrived!!! Several chapters in and it’s fanTASTIC as I knew it would be.

Okay. Okay. For real. That’s all for now!

– Daniel