The Gamer's Eye of Judgement

 This game has a very interesting, uh..."history" that I can see turn to "the legendary indie app" that only had a 1 week popularity lifespan. I can see the popularity in the game, but I could also see that popularity die down faster than some other titles such as Words With Friends and Draw My Thing. I had downloaded, played, and deleted the game within an hour. The gameplay concept isn't really new, but it's an interesting take on it. I used to play a flash game called Helicopter, so I guess having that kind of experience with the exception of "tap to flap", I wasn't all that interested in Flappy Bird. I certainly could see the competition, but for such a simple game I didn't see the game popularity last too long to begin with. Unfortunately the dev decided the overwhelming popularity was too much for him and as of today he pulled the plug on the game...oh well.

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More sleep = more energy!
More energy = more productivity!
More productivity = more money!
More money = more games!

This is what I walked away with when I came across this article explaining the game of life and how you could look at it through the eyes of a gamer. Life is a game This is your strategy guide.

 Being a Steam user certainly has it's downside when it comes to the annual sales. The Summer Sale is probably the one that hit me the hardest as I bought almost $100 worth of games just in the sale alone. The Fall and Winter Sale's were not as damaging but were not without roughly 10+ games bought from those as well.

 This will be the year I start grinding out all those games as efficiently as I can to minimize any more potential loss of money on more games that won't be played for extended periods of time. I've come up with a couple tips to help you get the most out of your Steam backlog.

1. Play the indie titles first! Ones that have just a couple achievements tied to it (less than 10, or up to 15) usually are the ones with roughly 5 hours of gameplay to them. The only exception to this rule are the rogue-likes, which can take anyone 50-100 hours to fully complete if going for all achievements and not just play from beginning to end.

2. Not sure of the average length of a game? HowLongToBeat.com is your friend! This site provides the average length of just about every game in existance based on user feedback. This site also includes the fastest completion, main storyline, and 100% completion times. An excellent source to pick out the shorter games from the long.

3. Game first, achievements after. If you're like me and you absolutely have to get all (or most) the achievements, make that your second priority when it comes to longer games. If you worry about achievements, you'll only be wasting more time on a game when you could be playing something else. A great example of this is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. To play through just the main story could take you roughly 20 hours the first time through...however if you aim for all the achievements during your playthrough expect to spend a good 50+ hours...That's 50 hours you could have spent knocking off another 2 or so games in your backlog!

4. No achievements? No problem, play to enjoy!

 With these points in mind I will most certainly be able to get through roughly half, maybe even most of my backlog by the end of the year, but I won't call that definite for sure. Anything can happen that may potentially turn my attention away from Steam altogether for an unknown amount of time (such as my slightly growing backlog of PS3 games...).

 I own a lot of video games, and by a lot I'm talking over 300, spanning across all generations dating back to the early 80's of Atari and Intellivision. Throughout my life I've talked games with numerous people and during these conversations there's always talk about a big title that they've played and absolutely loved to death that I have not had the chance to buy or try out. I guarantee every single time I'm asked to play the awesome game I always have to bring them down with the excuse "I'd love to play it, but I'm busy with other games at the moment."

 My gaming style is not the most common amongst other gamers, but I like to play a game straight to the end as soon as I start playing it. On rare occasions I could do this with 2 games at a time, but a majority of my time is spent on one game. Of course that one game could take a few days to beat to a few months depending on what my schedule looks like, and how difficult the game itself is. Achievements are also another factor in this as well...I hate to say that I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to 100% a game's achievements, but there's always a few that I'm almost certain not to obtain and so I passively move on to the next game. However in most cases if I have a hunch that I can get a specific achievement, no matter how excruciatingly long of a grind it'll take to get me that achievement, I will spend as long as it takes to get it no matter what.

 A perfect example of this is the achievement to reach level 50 in multiplayer on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. That one achievement took me a good month of grinding games to reach and it was worth the blood and sweat. As a result, I never want to play multiplayer to that extent again...however I regret reading ahead on the achievements for ACIV and finding yet another "level 55" multiplayer achievement. The good news though while reading the comments on the achievement, is that the leveling is not as bad as was in Brotherhood, and with the Wolfpack mode there's really no need to sit in a lobby waiting for other players to join. So in the end maybe this max level achievement won't be as terrible, but still a tiny bit of a grind.

 I know there's a lot of gamers that don't spend countless hours on every game they get their hands on. I know for sure there's at least a couple games that will be played for countless hours, while the rest are only played for a couple hours at a time. Yes, I do know and realize the games you play are absolutely amazing and I would love to play them. I do know I will be most likely playing them from start to finish one way or another, but I've got quite a line of other amazing games that are also on my waiting list to be played that I need to go through as well.

 I had one such discussion with a co-worker trying to get me to buy and play Skyrim. He did nothing but talk nearly everyday about his happenings with the game and what he's been doing and how I should seriously be playing the game because that's all there is to play and no other game matters except Skyrim. I told him the usual "I have other awesome games that I need to play too" and gave him a couple like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and the original Resident Evil trilogy (I've only really played part of the 2nd). He then turns and tells me that I need to play those too, and I just simply rolled my eyes at him since these were only a few of many I still needed to play on top of just Skyrim.

 There is good in some of today's games when it comes to not buying them day 1. A year or so down the line there'll most likely be a special edition of the game that includes all DLC that was released for the game all packed in one and for the same price (if not cheaper) than when it was initially released without any DLC. All in all, buying late is better with the much cheaper price and possible added content.

 Hopefully before I die I will have played all that needs to be played both old and new. With the rise of concern for the future in console gaming I hope to have just a LITTLE bit of a breather to catch up on some older games while I continue to potentially flood my Steam account with more games...

A couple days ago I looked through my YouTube videos and playlists and seemed a little disgusted with how it was all organized based around all the different kinds of videos I upload. I then remembered a couple people I follow that had made their own web pages that basically simplified the traditional YouTube playlists to make it a lot easier to find what you're looking for. So with that inspiration to go by I went ahead and made a new page to link all of my YouTube videos organized by which games I have played and the videos associated with said games. You can check out the link on the right, or by clicking HERE.

I've been having a little bit of a rush in terms of working on my channel again (along with this blog, of course) and thinking up some content ideas to upload and share. There's not much in terms of thinking up an original idea. I've done both a speedrun and a let's play, and that's probably as much of those as I'll do. Maybe down the road I'll do more on speedrunning at the least, and as for let's plays I don't have a proper microphone. I'm also way too shy to speak, so I don't think I would be much entertainment for people in that sense...but I guess you'll never know.

I also had an idea to go through my whole collection of games and beat them all from start to finish. Kind of like a longplay / walkthrough, but just mainly gameplay while skipping cutscenes, optional objectives, etc and keeping any deaths intact. I've also thought up possibly doing post-commentary on a few games if there's a need for explanation on a lot of choices I make during the playthrough but as of now that won't be the case without a mic. This might be what I'll end up doing, but the ideas are still floating around for now.

Point and Click, or Graphic adventure games used to be a pretty major genre in the PC market back in the 90's. LucasArts was the one major company producing such great hits as the Monkey Island and Sam and Max series, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle. These type of games were focused more on the story development and presented gameplay through various puzzles that had to be solved in order to progress the story forward. One would have to use the most of their imagination to get through these type of games.

In recent years this once PC exclusive genre has had a growth in game releases not only on Steam, but also showing light on current gen consoles. Remasters and sequals to past franchises have returned along with new titles such as Back to the Future, The Walking Dead, and Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. A remaster of Day of the Tentacle was in the making before LucasArts was closed by Disney therefore shutting that project down never to be seen by the public.

A newer company, Daedalic Entertainment, has been hard at work continuing the graphic adventure game legacy that LucasArts has left behind. While not affiliated with LucasArts, the games that they produce have that same quality that you would find in a LucasArts game. Some of their games including Edna & Harvey, The Whispered World, and Deponia received various awards such as best story, best youth game, and best soundtrack.

While I can understand these games aren't not the most appealing to most gamers, if your into a rich story, beautiful artwork, and challenging puzzles, point and click adventure games are surely something to look into and enjoy. There are a wide variety to choose from and can be found on almost any platform nowadays.