Friday, October 17, 2008

Tidbits

Almost a month ago, I wrote the last Tidbits piece detailing my intent to change things around on Raptured Reality, start a secondary blog and indirectly apologising for the lack of content posted here. Fast forward to now and nothing has really happened so I hereby give you permission to call me the laziest sod ever.

Or not, but seriously my time management is absolutely pathetic at the moment and I don't even have a job at the moment! I have about 50 hours worth of various TV shows that I would like to watch, I have spent last night, tonight and probably tomorrow night as well catching up on blogs that I read because I have fallen behind with them. I have a few Podcasts to listen to (thankfully I don't listen to Podcasts much, something I may elaborate on in the future) and because I have spent the last few nights catching up with various blogs, I should probably consider dropping into the only forums I frequent for another visit in the near future too. That doesn't include the many things I want to get done gaming wise either and again I reiterate the point, I don't even have employment.

So why am I finding it so hard to manage everything I want to do? Or is it perhaps that I just want to do too much and am suffering an overload as a result? Maybe I'm just one big entertainment whore and try to consume too much while failing to do something productive like write here?

Like many questions I pose here at this blog, I don't know the answer but damn it I want to fix my problem. I want, no, NEED to find some way to manage everything I want to do (which includes writing here) whilst also dedicating enough time to everything so I ultimately continue to enjoy this content, whatever it is, as much as possible. Reading the blogs over the past few nights has naturally inspired writing here and so I find myself half writing articles with the intent to post them later. Here's hoping I can actually do so for a damn change and form a nice writing routine so that this blog isn't just wasted internet space. Anyway tidbits for this week:

October - Is one hectic month for me. Forget the fact that like twenty different games that I want are coming out or that it is that time of year in the gaming world where everything comes out in time for the Christmas holiday period; Oh no, just in birthdays alone is it a hectic month with at least 15 different birthdays for friends and family. Oh and some guy who calls himself Nismo or something also has his birthday in the month too, but no one cares about that one.

Changes - Again, I plan on changing this blog around slightly to make it work better for me as well as hopefully be more appealing to any readers who happen to, well, read it. I have been planning to do it this week actually after catching up with everything internet that I needed to, so hopefully I can actually do so and get under way.

Well Played - The onslaught of games to play that I referred to in the last Tidbits post is continuing for me as I finish games, start new ones and etc. It won't be stopping any time soon either with all the upcoming gaming goodness in the next few weeks, but really I would prefer to have too much to play then nothing at all so it isn't as bad as I probably make it out to be here. Incoming post about everything I have played recently (instead of a post per game like I was originally intending) is on its way.

Online Gaming - Mixed thought overload has been happening in my brain lately with regards to online play. From annoyance of a certain game to the interest of how professional gaming is progressing and everything in between, online gaming has been on my mind a lot lately. I would claim my intent to write about it all here, but lately every time I make a promise for this place I don't keep it so I will keep quiet for now. ;)

---

Seriously though on that last sentence, I really do need to actually do what I say I will rather than not. Anyone know of any time management courses...?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Repair Status

Checking the status of my 360 repair earlier this evening revealed that it has been fixed and shipped back to me. Hopefully that means it arrives by the end of this week. I'm not here to talk about that though, no, instead I am here to talk about something that I have been disappointed in lately. What is that? Myself.

Yep, myself. Not being able to play the 360 has obviously meant that I have had to look elsewhere for my gaming entertainment and since I don't own the other two current consoles, I had to return to the older consoles within my collection. Now in theory, there is nothing wrong with this because there are so many classic fun games that I love out there, that my entertainment should be covered no problem. Yet, strangely enough, I found this hasn't been the case over the past week or so that my 360 has been away and to be honest, I find that to be quite confusing.

On the first day that I returned to the older consoles I was actually looking forward to it. Looking forward to firing up some old games that I love, games like F-Zero GX which I have already discussed here previously and giving them another run. For the first ten minutes or so, it was fun but before long I found myself turning off whatever game I was playing at the time only to swap to another one. Rinse and repeat the process for the rest of the night and instead of having a relaxed night of gaming on my hands I instead just dabbled a little bit here and a little bit there. This continued to happen over the next few nights and the more I realised I wasn't having any fun, the more I felt disappointed with myself which eventually led to me giving up and rewatching the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica instead. Now I could try and figure out why I felt the way I did, but at the end of the day I don't see the point because honestly I just don't know.

What I do know however and something that I find interesting is that the games with fantastic art directions like Metroid Prime, Shadow of the Colossus and Okami were enjoyable and I definitely had fun playing them. Either that suggests that a strong art direction can really make or break a game, or, that I am so used to the current generation of visuals that going back to the games that don't really have a unique art direction was just too hard for my eyes to handle. I am going to go with the former.

Anyway I ended up finishing Metroid Prime for the 29th time, Shadow of the Colossus again and Super Mario Sunshine with every Shine Sprite. That combined with season one of BSG has been my entertainment week. As you can probably tell, I don't know what to think about the way I have felt recently, nor where it comes from or why. What I do know is that the sooner the 360 gets back the better because then, hopefully, my motivation towards gaming returns and everything can go back to normal. Time will tell, then.