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Quarter 4 2014 Notes

by infinitespark

Nothing Noteworthy – Just Work While nothing significantly terrible happened to me and my family over the year, we did not do anything noteworthy to really mention as a highlight of the year. My parents continue to work at their grocery store business, where they continue to struggle to break even week after week. (There was a terrible incident at their business on 30 October where a group of t...

Nothing Noteworthy – Just Work

While nothing significantly terrible happened to me and my family over the year, we did not do anything noteworthy to really mention as a highlight of the year. My parents continue to work at their grocery store business, where they continue to struggle to break even week after week. (There was a terrible incident at their business on 30 October where a group of teenagers rushed into their store and stole goods, with one teen giving my mother a swollen black eye. That was probably the lowlight of the year for the family.) My parents are still at work as I finally get a bit of a break from my job. I have tons of respect for them to keep at what they’re doing and while I am glad to give them the financial support needed to keep it running, I am frustrated that unless something breaks through, I hate to say that they’ll still be working for quite some time.

I finally reached to the time of the year that I can finally receive some significant time off away from work. I can never seem to find any time outside of Christmas/New Years where I can take consecutive days away from work without having to worry about the work not being done during my absence. Before then, work continues to be tough. I don’t think I’ll need to say more about it. Nothing terrible, but nothing terribly fun either.

GOTY 2014 List

I’m honestly surprised the reaction my GOTY list has gotten since I published it a few days ago. I expected the kudos from some of the GB_P4A group, but didn’t expect to see additional praise from other GB folks and even received a few new follows from them. Looking back, I still see some off word usage and many grammatical mistakes, so it would have been best if it was still in the oven a bit longer for peer review. I’m glad folks still liked it despite the insane length of each game’s summaries on my list.

Those that read through my list probably noticed that I sounded pretty harsh on the games on the lower end of my list, and a simple quick one to two paragraph summary was not going to be enough for me to truly express what I felt about on those games. So I went ahead and decided to expand my scope in hopes that I capture reasons why I liked the game enough to make the list, but also express any frustrations that I thought held certain games back. There was the perfect game that got motivated me to write the list as I did, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. It was a game where I liked well enough that I wanted to include in my top ten list, yet had issues that I wanted to express to say why I didn’t have as much fun with it compared to P4A in 2012.

Again, thanks for the kudos on my list.

Giant Bomb Presence

I haven’t been as invested in Giant Bomb as I was years before. Work has been the main culprit, but I’ll also include my insistence that I’d rather spend my available time diving into my hobbies, whether it’s frantically progressing and finishing a video game, listening to music, or reading manga (where I have a growing backlog of manga to read as well). I tried my best to keep up with what’s going on in Giant Bomb, but I’m finding it harder and harder to do so. I barely dug into any Giant Bomb materials, mostly settling on reading articles and shorter videos. I’m currently debating to let my gold subscription lapse as I have not been consumed much Giant Bomb content in the past two years, plus to save a bit of cash too.

I’ll do my best to keep with the goings-on in this site and continue to post anything that I wish to share on the site. The quarterly blogs help me dispose thoughts out, the GOTY list will always be an annual GB staple, and I’ll try to get my dormant “The Longest Grind” blog series running again if possible.

Q4 Gaming

Let’s just say I rushed down in getting a number of games done in the final months of this year to squeeze in and evaluate for my GOTY list. As I stated, it felt at times that I was doing this as a chore instead of having fun with it. That has to change somehow. I also need to settle down on buying/adding so many games.

Q4 Subtractions (Period: 9; 2014 Total: 22)

  • Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl – 12 October
  • Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call – 31 October
  • SteamWorld Dig – 8 November
  • Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd – 22 November
  • Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – 28 November
  • Picross e5 – 9 December
  • Bayonetta 2 – 14 December
  • Guilty Gear Xrd –SIGN- - 28 December
  • Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth – 30 December

Q4 Additions (Period: 22; 2014 Total: 56)

  • Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale [eShop sale]
  • Bayonetta 2
  • Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut [PSN+ free game]
  • Dengenki Bunko Fighting Climax
  • Far Cry 4 [Best Buy sale]
  • Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster [Gamestop sale]
  • Guilty Gear Xrd –SIGN-
  • Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd
  • The King of Fighters 1998 Ultimate Match [XBL sale]
  • The King of Fighters 2002 Ultimate Match [XBL sale]
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds [Best Buy sale]
  • Magical Beat [PSN sale]
  • Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth
  • Picross e5
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World [PSN sale]
  • SteamWorld Dig [PSN+ free game]
  • Suikoden
  • Suikoden II
  • Super Smash Brothers Wii U
  • Tales of Xillia 2 [Gamestop sale]
  • Tears to Tiara II: Heir to the Overlord
  • Valiant Hearts: The Great War [PSN sale]
  • Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise [XBL Gold free game]

Q4 Music

I suppose the best thing I did outside of playing some awesome games is visit a number of record stores in/around the Philadelphia, PA area. There were places that I can definitely recommend over the other.

BEST: Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, NJ.

VERY GOOD: Long in the Tooth in Philadelphia, PA; Siren Records in Doylestown, PA.

DECENT: Repo Records in Philadelphia, PA.

DON’T BOTHER: AKA Music in Philadelphia, PA; Positively Records in Levittown, PA.

I planned on posting a Youtube playlist taking a track from 2014 music albums I really liked, but instead I’ll settle on a list.

  • Alvvays – S/T
  • Ben Frost – AURORA
  • Cloud Nothings – Here and Nowhere Else
  • Cymbols Eat Guitar - Lose
  • Ex Hex – Rips
  • Grouper - Ruins
  • Hundred Waters – The Moon Rang Like a Bell
  • Jennifer Castle – Pink City
  • Lucinda Williams – Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
  • Owen Pallett – In Conflict
  • Perfume Genius – Too Bright
  • Run the Jewels – RTJ2
  • Spoon – They Want My Soul
  • Swans – To Be Kind
  • Tune-Yards – Nikki Nack
  • Wild Beasts – Present Tense
  • White Lung – Deep Fantasy
  • YOB – Clearing the Path to Ascend

Manga

Some manga I enjoyed this year.

FINISHED

  • In Clothes Called Fat (single volume)

IN PROGRESS

  • Citrus #1 (TBD total volumes)
  • Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer #1-#2 (ten volumes total)
  • Prophecy #1 (three volumes total)
  • Whispered Words #1-#2 (three volumes total)
  • Witchcraft Works #1-#2 (eight volumes?)

Goals/Hopes/Notes for 2015

The biggest hope I have going into 2015 is that I pray my workload and schedule for next year isn’t as chaotic as it was this year. I’ll do my best to refrain from working extra hours over the weekday and going to the office on the weekends, but if shit hits the fan, I don’t have anyone else to help mitigate the workload.

My next hope is to go to an event in 2015. I had fun attending a number of music concerts, Otakon, and Summer Jam in 2013. This year, I only went to one music concert, and it was not as great as I hoped it would be. I’d love to go back to Otakon this year, as it’ll be the final year the event will be held in Baltimore, MD before it moves further south to Washington, DC the following year. I’d also love to attend a fighting game tournament in the city again if possible. It’ll be tough to find the time to attend the events around my busy work schedule, but I’ll take anything in 2015.

In the gaming front, I really want to take it a bit easier and play games more on my own pace without having to rush to finish a game for evaluation and such. I got plenty of games from years past that I still want to play. Too many games accumulated over the past several years that I want to tackle and complete. I don’t where what games I want to prioritize, but hopefully I can knock out a few older games in 2015. I don’t want to be caught up in a rush as I was the past two years (2013 and 2014) in beating current games to evaluate for GOTY stuff, especially toward the end of the year. Tagging along with that thought, if I do not finish many 2015 games, I’ll do a focused unranked list where I’ll promote a few games that captured my attention.

On the console front, I got Valiant Hearts earlier in the month on a PSN sale that I hear is a fairly short game that I’m interested in playing as my first game in the new year. After that, I’ll just have to see what game I feel like tackling by then. I expect my time on the consoles to be at a premium again, so hopefully the games I do play on the consoles are worth my time. I’ll have more time on the handheld front and will be debating on the next JRPG to play after I finished Persona Q today.

Lastly, I’ll probably fail on this front, but I want to spend less on gaming this year for numerous reasons. Particularly I don’t want to spend as much I did and would like to focus a good chunk of 2015 knocking out older games. I also want to do a better job on the music album front as well. I spent too much money on vinyl records the past couple of years. We’ll see if these goals are met or not.

Personal Thanks

It’s been a tough year, so I’m glad there are folks that are lending their time to listen/read whatever stuff I put up and continuing to keep me in their company. I don’t think highly of myself and don’t have interesting material to share with anyone. So this is my personal thanks to the folks who don’t mind me around. Thanks guys. I’ll still be around, checking in, playing with you guys whenever I have the chance to, and having some sort of discussion over something. I hope all of you guys had a good 2014 and will have a better year in 2015.

The GB_P4A Crew!

  • Brodehouse
  • TheFakePsychic
  • Gravitypenguin
  • IrrelevantJohn
  • LiquidRob
  • MakeMeMad
  • Servantey

The Skype Crew!

  • Bloo561
  • Kuutochi
  • Mace
  • MikeFightNight

The Recent/New Followers!

  • GrantHeaslip
  • MajorMitch
  • Slag