Dan's Blogmas Breakdown

First things first - apologies for falling off the Blogvent wagon this week. It's been an absolutely horrendous week at work, one that left me wanting to just come home and get straight to bed rather than put any effort into writing something (or even play any video games to give myself something to write about). Being as I've broken the chain, I don't see a lot of point in continuing with the Blogvent thing, so I'll be retiring it early. Instead, this brief entry is intended to give a little insight into my planned blogging activity over the festive period. Roll bullet points!

Cloud is ready and raring to go. Me, not so much...

• I'm going to try and get Enduring Final Fantasy VII finished between now and Christmas Day. That may sound crazy, but I have three more episodes planned, three full days between now and then, and hopefully no work on any of those days. Tomorrow should see the release of Episode Thirty-Three, which will cover the time I spent with the game's myriad side quests. Monday's thirty-fourth episode will chronicle my journey through the North Crater, the game's final dungeon, and Tuesday will bring an early Christmas present in the form of Episode Thirty-Five, including the final boss battles and ending sequence. There, now I've laid that all out, there's no way I can possibly live with the embarrassment of failing to deliver, so those three final episodes WILL be coming!

New Festive Avatar is relieved not to be taking part in any Mega-Bloggery this year

• One of my staple blogging traditions since the launch of Giant Bomb back in 2008 has been my Christmas Mega-Blog, a ginormous blog posted in three parts on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and which is invariably likened to a three-course Christmas dinner. This year, however, I won't be writing a Christmas Mega-Blog. This is primarily a selfish decision on my part, because I want to focus more on spending time with my family this Christmas. I have a beautiful niece, a new addition to the family back in October, and I don't want to miss any of her first Christmas because my head is glued to a computer screen for hours trying to assign star ratings to all the Metal Gear games. Similarly, this could possibly be the last Christmas I ever spend with my grandfather, whose health has taken a turn for the worse in recent months. Don't worry though, because there should be plenty of blogging after Christmas...

You're all sick of this, right? Right.

• At the end of the last few years, I've done an End Of Year Awards series of blogs to pay homage to the games I've played throughout the year. This typically involves me inventing ridiculously named and themed awards, then awarding one to every game I've played that year, before narrowing the honours down on New Year's Eve to a final list of ten games that shone brighter than all the others. For this year only, I'm going to shake up the format a little bit. The reason for this is that there hasn't been a huge amount of variety in my gaming habits this year - with eight Metal Gear games and five (soon to be six) Pokémon games featuring on my list of Games I've Played In 2013, following the existing format would make for a pretty dull and repetitive blog series. So instead, what with the end of 2013 officially marking the beginning of a new console generation, I thought I'd take some time to look back at twenty-five games that defined the previous generation of consoles for me. I'll do five games a day starting from December 27th, meaning my final five will be revealed in timely fashion on New Year's Eve.

So that's what you can expect over the next week or so. Be sure to come back tomorrow, when I'll be heaping a favourable helping of scorn and disinterest on Final Fantasy VII's mini-games and side-quests. Until then, thanks for reading guys. Take care and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)