Dan's Blogvent Calendar - December 1st

...Man, I need to stop falling off the blogging bandwagon.

A new episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII should have been written three weeks ago. It wasn't, and I apologise for that. It's one of many potential blogs that have fallen by the wayside in recent times, partly due to being busy, but primarily due to a severe case of 'I can't be bothered'. Somewhere along the line, blogging started feeling like hard work, and I do enough of that in the average week to feel like not wanting to do any more come the weekend. It's a pitiful state of affairs, because I used to love coming to this space, to my own little corner of the internet, to wax lyrical about what I'd been playing. The fact that the act of blogging has stopped being fun upsets me a little.

In an attempt to break yet another blogging drought, far too many of which have hindered my Giant Bomb activity this year, I'm going to try and write a little something every day from now until Christmas Eve. These won't be long blogs, probably a paragraph or two at most, but this exercise is less about quantity and more about getting myself writing regularly again, a habit I seem only too ready to break of late. Think of this as an advent calendar in blog form, a daily door you can open in the run-up to Christmas and sample the delights that lie behind it. Those delights probably won't be especially delightful most days, and for that I apologise in advance. I hate to sound selfish, but this is genuinely more for me than it is for you.

I continue to play games, even if I'm not writing about them - that much is at least constant. For today's entry, I'll quickly recap what I have been playing since I finished Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker just short of a month ago:

• The Pokémon series continues to hold a vice-like grip upon my gaming habits. I thought I was done with Pokémon Y weeks ago, but I find myself continuing to return to it every few days, if only to facilitate my friend Duncan's training with a convenient trade, or to breed a hitherto un-obtained pre-evolution to fill out my Pokédex a little more. Last month I made my way through Pokémon Platinum, and I have just set out on a journey through Pokémon White. At this point I'm pretty sure I won't be able to declare myself officially 'done' with the series until I beat that, and Pokémon White 2, and transfer everything into Pokémon Y using the upcoming Pokémon Bank service. It's genuinely frightening how much of a hold this series has on me right now, but I've had a lot of fun with all the Pokémon games I've played this year, and I expect that to continue through this final month of 2013.
• I downloaded A Link Between Worlds on its release last week. I haven't put anywhere near as much time into it as I'd have liked to (for reasons outlined clearly in the previous bullet point), but what I have played has been top notch. I've just recovered the three pendants in Hyrule and am about to hunt down the Master Sword in the Lost Woods. Progress is slow, but I'm confident I'll see the end of this one by the end of the year.
• In the interest of keeping up with my tradition of playing an Assassin's Creed title every year, I've also just started played AC: Revelations. I haven't delved far into the game, only making it past the first couple of missions in Sequence 2, but I've already got that comfortable, familiar feeling from playing through its opening chapters. Ezio Auditore is one of my favourite characters from this generation, and I look forward to spending more time with him and finding out how his story arc ends.

I think that'll do for now. It's late, I have work in the morning, and I could do with a bit of sleep as I've been somewhat deprived of it all week. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain enough interest in this endeavour to throw another one of these up tomorrow. It most likely won't be game-related, and will probably be shorter than this, but hey, something's better than nothing, right? Take it easy guys, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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