2017 Early Thanks: Giant Bomb, Games, et al

Giant Bomb

First and foremost, I have to thank the entire staff for providing a lot of entertaining content to occupy my mind in many spurts. I have maintained keeping up with the two podcasts (Bombcast and Beastcast) as each of them provide their own exciting content on a weekly basis. The additions of Ben Pack and Abby Russell definitely added a lot more flavor and mesh in very well with the other Bomb members. I am unable to get through every single content that all the members produce but it’s crazy how productive all of them are in having something for us to look forward to each week. I also love how much passion and love they have for games, for their jobs, and their constant appreciation with the community. Though I have only been around for over five years out of the nine Giant Bomb has existed, the least I can do is show my appreciation through my words here and by being a premium member.

A small personal thanks goes to Brad for taking a minute to go back through the Bombcast e-mail bin to read my e-mail on Bombcast 473 (March 21, 2017). As Jeff was speaking about SNK releases during the e-mail segment, Brad paused for a moment and recalled seeing an e-mail about it and went back to retrieve it. So many thanks Brad to going back to read my e-mail and Jeff for answering and providing his insight on my question!

Games

Man, what a year it has been for video games. There are a number of games that were released earlier this year that I doubt I can get around and yet there are still a number of games forthcoming that I wish I could get around to. I am really interested to see what folks place which games on their year-end GOTY lists. I’m going to have a hard time which games that I can afford to sink time into and have an internal debate to which ones resonated with me more than others. I am sad for a number of games fallen by the wayside because this year is simply ridiculous with the amount of excellent gaming goods at our hands.

In spite of the number of over 50-hour work weeks with barely any breaks (no vacations/lengthy weekends), I have been able to play through a number of games that definitely took up a lot of time one way or another. Any game that I either finish or play enough of its content to make a comprehensive is a major accomplishment in my book, whether it’s the long single player journeys of Gravity Rush 2, NieR:Automata, and Persona 5, to the multiplayer focused games of Guilty Gear Xrd REV2 and Splatoon 2, it’s been awesome that I can get through these games amid of the tremendous amount of stress that work has produced this year. I can’t believe that not only I can squeeze in the time to play, but also still have a newfound appreciation of how much games can provide that escapism that we all need from time to time.

I foolishly wish that the start of 2018 will be slow so that I can try to tackle some of the great games released this year.

MorkkiTH

MorrkiTH is a fellow duder that I originally met way back at the Gamespot forums back in 2005(?) and we along with a few others kept in touch back then by writing timely blog post on how our lives have been and what games we’ve been playing. We lost each other a bit during the period where the GB crew was transitioning over to setting up Giant Bomb. Once I made my way to Giant Bomb, we somehow found each other and kept up communication through PMs with each other ever since. I always like writing over to him and find out how he is going about things over where he resides in Finland. I know he’s doing his best to squeeze in gaming time while raising a family and gone through some tough personal hardships, but lately he seems to be in good spirits. Though I may not meet him directly in person, it’s nice to have a long distance friend to talk with once in awhile.

#GB_P4A

I am giving one personal shout-out to an IRC, where a small group of friends who stuck together after the hurrah of Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Community events fizzled out. It was my icebreaker to befriending a number of folks who competed in a number of those events and though my communication with them have subsided due to my hell-ish work schedule the past year or so but it is cool to see the those guys stick around and talk and do a bunch of stuff amongst themselves. Five years and the #GB_P4A IRC room group still run strong.

GB FGC Discord

I am giving another shout-out to the folks at the Giant Bomb FGC Discord. There’s an awesome amount of folks who are grinding out their FG skills as well as talk about other games and matters as well. The FGC is not limited to a few FGs, but any and all FGs are welcome and folks are more than willing to play with others at it. I sincerely apologize to folks at the Arksys channel for not being much of a match to others in the Guilty Gear weekly tournaments that I entered in. (My FG skills have been down in the dumps this year.) But if there’s anyone at GB who is reading this and want to throwdown with other duders, look no further than the GB FGC Discord. There’s a thread on the forums with a link to access the Discord.