Welcome one and all to 2025! I wanted to give a state of the blog (AKA, a state of me) kind of update, as it’s been a while and I’ve had a lot on my mind regarding my gaming and related blog output lately.
First of all, looking back at my meager updates this year, it’s clear that I need to post more. A lot more. While I doubt I’ll ever return to my original plan of multiple updates a week talking in more granular detail about what I’m playing, I’d at least like to post a lot more. Embarrassingly, I’ve actually played several titles which haven’t made it to the blog quite yet. Even my game of year, Helldivers 2, hasn’t shown up yet. Most of those games are longer single players games that I haven’t quite finished yet, though. So, while not really a new one, my first goal is to finish those games and get some thoughts of them posted here. That’ll be my priority in the next couple of months.
Of course, posting a lot more also means playing a lot more. Now, in my defense, of the two big updates I posted in 2024, each covers multiple lengthy games – many of these games I played for tens of hours each, and altogether, I’d guess would be close to 1000 hours. That said, I’m still not satisfied with the amount of games I’ve played. In fact, my backlog has actually grown so large that I had to stop and document it properly, with a massive spreadsheet detailing individual games and priorities, as well as entire series that I want to play through and write about. Seeing it laid out in such a black and white way only reinforces that I need to make more of an effort to do more gaming. So, my second, to play more games in general.
“Expanding My Horizons”
Somewhat coincidentally, I have more motivation to play more. First, I’ve just built myself a new PC, and while I’ve not even migrated to it full time yet, it’s already breathed some life into some of my old favorites and had me planning to make PC gaming more of a priority this year. I’ll likely post a much more detailed article about this build soon – not because there’s anything all that exceptional about it, but I know from past conversations with friends and coworkers, hearing thoughts about how some part decisions, etc. were made can be helpful to others working on new builds. Selfishly, it can also be kind of useful to have my thoughts on my build detailed for future reference.
This might also be my year of the PlayStation. In addition to picking up a PS3 a couple of years ago to assist with replaying the Metal Gear series and some other exclusive titles I missed, as well as diving into PSP emulation with my G Cloud, I just picked up a PlayStation 5. Now, tempting exclusives aside, I had very little interest in a PlayStation 5, but when I saw the 30th Anniversary edition, I kind of fell in love. Unfortunately after months of monitoring retailer sites and eBay, I decided to take the L. You win, scalpers! Still, I’d already sold myself on the idea of getting a PS5, and at around the same time one of my friends ended up picking up a new PlayStation 5 Pro and offered me his old launch PS5. It took a while to get there, but finally resigned to never getting an Anniversary edition, I ended up getting a great deal on his PS5, monstrosity that it is. It should be noted that a lot of PlayStation 5 exclusives have now found their way to PC, but there are still some that haven’t, and a ton of PS4 exclusives (including remasters of older games) that I’d really love to play that haven’t either.
I feel like, between my PC, my Xboxes, and PS3 and PS5, and my G Cloud, there’s not a whole lot I’ll have to skip when attempting to cover game series in the coming years. Speaking of which, I’ve been delaying it for too long, but I’ll be diving into my Metal Gear / Metal Gear Solid retrospective very soon. While I hope to mix it up a bit by playing other games in between Metal Gear titles to avoid burnout, the Metal Gear games will be my next highest priority. I’m really looking forward to diving into the series.
That’s it for now. Happy New Year!