Just Checking In

Hey guys. It's been a while since I last blogged. Almost two weeks, in fact. Since then I've had a lot that I've wanted to say about quite a lot of things. On top of that, there are still a lot of topics I've been wanting to address with blogs for some months now, that I still haven't found the time to articulate into anything worth posting. Unfortunately, this blog isn't going to clear up any of that immense backlog of ideas and concepts. Instead, it's more of a placeholder - a means of letting you know that I'm still alive, and filling you in on why I've not been able to find the motivation to pick up the virtual pen over the last ten days or so.
 
In fact, let's start with that. I thought that once my essays and assignments were all out of the way, I'd have more free time on my hands to fill this page with a ton of mildly-interesting banter. What I hadn't counted on, however, was the imminence of my end-of-year University exams. I've been spending most of my spare time preparing for the four three-hour exams I have to sit before my academic year officially ends on June 3rd. My first one is on Wednesday, and in spite of how utterly unprepared I feel, I'm also quietly optimistic. When I haven't been re-reading old notes or scribbling down new ones, I've been working with the Student Union cleaning staff and struggling to maintain a somewhat social level of interaction with my girlfriend, who's also finding all her spare time eaten up by exam revision. I haven't even found much time to play video games these last couple of weeks (more on that later, though). So yeah - everybody who's awaiting the next episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII (not many I'll bet), or wants to know exactly why I won't be buying an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription (probably even less of you), you can blame my impending exams.
 
One thing I want to address very briefly is the current state of Giant Bomb. Most users are no doubt aware of the forum drama that's unfolded in the last few days, and have probably experienced a lot more of the fallout than I have from the exterior of all this. For my part I'd like to say that Linkyshinks contributed a hell of a lot to this website, and did a great job of keeping Nintendo followers updated with his regular news threads. I think in situations like this far too much emphasis is placed on recently transpired events, rather than the whole lifespan of a user's profile. I'm not condoning or condemning anybody's behaviour on either side of this incident, but from an objective viewpoint I'd like to think this whole community could agree on one thing - that Linkyshinks provided this community with a lot of worthwhile contributions, and that they will be missed in his absence. 
 
A slightly more pressing problem in my view is the present state of the forums. I'm not going to go into too much depth at this point, for fear of making this the sole point of this blog, but there is far too much irrelevant discussion finding its way onto the Giant Bomb forums of late. A number of users who need not be named are flooding the site with prolific amounts of spam and flamebait, a large amount of it having nothing whatsoever to do with video games. Threads that belong in Off-Topic, or even have no place on the site at all, are clogging up General Discussion and turning it into the kind of wasteland that those of us who've turned off the Off-Topic board are trying to avoid. Often, these threads are allowed to sit open for hours or even days at a time before being addressed by moderators. The Flagging system is grossly ineffective from what I've witnessed, with PM Blasts currently being pretty much the only surefire way to attract a moderator's attention. I'm also not too fond of the emphasis being placed on expecting ordinary users to police the boards, which makes it seem to the average user as though the only present function of moderators is that of thread-locking and wielding the banhammer. As you can probably tell, I have a fair amount I'd like to say on this subject, but I think it's best that we move along. There's always future blogs, after all. As a closing point - this is a website about video games. Not the attractiveness of emo girls, the general personalities of people named Keith, or loss of virginity. Video games. Its creators said as much way back at the site's launch. Let's try to keep it that way: 
    
Speaking of games, I should probably take some time to talk about what I've been playing lately. As I said earlier, I've not had much time to play games over the last couple of weeks due to my revision schedule, but I have managed to squeeze in an hour or two here and there. Most notably May 9th saw me finish the main story missions of Just Cause 2. There's a lot I want to say about this game, including how it stands up next to its predecessor, and how it's the first game I've ever completed on the hardest difficulty setting, but all of that is probably best saved for a future Discovering Gaming Greatness blog. For now, all I think I need to share is that the game was an incredibly fun means of filling the role of "auxiliary game", something to play alongside a more story-driven experience. Weirdly though, since finishing up the main story missions, Just Cause 2's free-roaming Mercenary Mode is pretty much all I've played. It's managed to distract me pretty comprehensively from both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy XIII, at any rate. In other news, a friend has recommended the Broken Sword games to me. I managed to pick up the first two in a double-pack from Amazon, and I look forward to checking out the first in the very near future. If I ever manage to stop playing Just Cause 2, that is. Last, but certainly not least, there's Red Dead Redemption, which is coming out on Friday here in the UK. I've decided to hold off on my purchase until after my exams are over, but I'm really looking forward to getting hold of it and sinking some time into it.
 
Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to Giant Bomb user RagingLion's latest blog post concerning how failure can exist in a game without ruining the sense of immersion. It's an absolutely cracking read and I highly recommend you all check it out right now. I honestly think it's one of the best things I've read in recent memory, and considering I've been exhaustively reading University lecturers' journals these last couple of weeks, I hope that speaks for the quality of RagingLion's work. It's also pretty close thematically to the concept I explored in my last blog concerning the implementation of permanent failure in games, and I think that the overall concept that ties both those blogs together really warrants a little more exploration and discussion. On another note, it might also make up for the lack of worthwhile content in this blog. So yeah, check it out. It's awesome.
 
Looking back over the content of this blog post, it's almost laughable how I've written about pretty much nothing of interest, despite boasting in my opening paragraph about having so much that I want to say. As I said near the start of this blog, my last exam is on June 3rd. Following that I have a four-month summer ahead of me, so I'm sure you can expect a fair amount of content to spill forth from this page over that extended break.  For those of you waiting on Episode Seven of Enduring Final Fantasy VII, it's pretty much ready to be written and I'll try to get it up in about a week's time. To the rest of you, I guess all that remains to be said is that I'll see you when I see you. Thanks for reading, and all the best.
 
 
Dan
 
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Currently playing - Just Cause 2 (X360)