2010 in Review

When all's said and done, 2010 was probably a bit more of an interesting year than I'd have anticipated. When it started, I created a list of things I wanted to achieve before years end (such as get a girlfriend, get a full time job, leave the state - that kind of thing) and wanted to see if I can achieve at least one of those. I'm glad to say that I did.

Let's start with the thing that defined most of the year for me, which was getting a job. Between finishing up University in November and going through the graduation sometime afterwards, was the constant searching for a job. I spent pretty much half the year trying to get some work, had way too much free time than I really wanted.

Job searching would have to be the most painful and depressing experience I've had to go through in the last few months - constantly writing up cover letters and resumes, constantly getting rejection, constantly getting no explained reason as to why I didn't move to the next phase...it came to the point which I had to get some assistance from the local welfare groups, which was the most fucking depressing thing I'd ever have to do. There's nothing I hate more than not only being taught "HEY, THIS IS HOW YOU GET A JOB!", but also waiting in line to submit paperwork to be paid for effectively finding a job.

Things turned around in the middle of the year - I managed to get a spot in a somewhat local council which saw me volunteer as a trainee teacher, which if I had stuck around - would've seen me teach elderly or newer citiziens to learn how to use a computer. I had left because of a job interview attained by one of the people at the council, for a company that specializes in mail insertion and delivery, and it was a full time gig! And thankfully, I had gotten that job!

Getting used to it was probably the hardest thing. Initially, the job was quite a distance away from home, which resulted in a 5am wakeup, leaving home at 6am to make a 7am start, with a 3pm finish. Was a rough few months, in addition to learning how to actually do the job. Then there was leaving all the free time I had accquired, which meant that a few commitments I had prior had to be changed. Though this all got better when the job shifted much closer to home.

As for Level 3, it was a fantastic year. Getting recognized for my Twitter (that'd be DarthHomer), taking part in much live stuff at the various Monash Computer Games Boot Camp's across the year, learning how to create a livestream (and by extension, a live show), and taking part in the 200th episode of the show. Makes the bad stuff associated with it seem like nothing in the long run.

Only real disappointment in this regard was the stopping of the audio podcast. Sure, there are respectable and understandable reasons, but it sucks that something that I've put a tonne of time in has suddenly stopped. And sure, the livestream is awesome and all, but the personal investment is too great to me to not let it pass by easily.

I guess 2010 wasn't that bad of a year after all. Well, the second half was anyway - I can't recall much of the first half. Bring on 2011, I say.

Project CRPG #1 - An Introduction, of sorts...

I have a terrible habit of buying a tonne of games that I never get around to beating. Mostly because of lost interest, but there are cases where I've been pissed off with a game, is virtually unbeatable (for whatever reason) and plenty more reasons I can't quite think of at the moment. Point is, I have a problem. For the most part, I've been doing my best to curb that habit this year - most of the games I've attained I've given a fair go and attempted to beat - with more success than actual failure. But rarely do I go back and attempt to finish a game in anticipation for a soon to be released sequel.

Yeah, this requires a bit of backstory.

For the longest time, I've been wanting to finish the original Dragon Age - even with the announcement (and subsequent release) of the Awakenings expansion and the sequel, it was always something that I had meant to do, but was swamped with other things that I had wanted to play. The same goes with the Witcher - a game that I had really dug, but lost interest in.

And almost with the same time frame, I heard Dragon Age being discussed from the perspective of someone who hadn't played the game before on local podcast "GameTaco", and the subsequent announcement of the Witcher 2 release date triggered something within me. The desire to go back into those worlds and see the ends of their stories.

It was perfect timing too - there weren't very many more console games that I had wanted to play through (except through mostly older stuff like the Sly Trilogy or Prince of Persia Trilogy), and I'd all but lost interest in Fallout: New Vegas (which was taking up all my PC time).

I also guess the other trigger was the story incentive. Both Dragon Age II and Witcher 2 take advantage of cleared saves to tell new events in the story, and I didn't want to go into either sequel completely fresh - I wanted my world and my story to continue. That, and Bioware had done a pretty great job of it in Mass Effect 2.

So the goal was set - I've got until March 2010 to finish the original Dragon Age, and May 2010 to finish off the Witcher. No matter what, I'm going to finish both games, because I know I can. Sure, it'll mean juggling my game review commitments, jobs and other fun stuff, but hey, why not? Plus, I want to write about these things for as long as I can keep it interesting (or find something interesting to talk about.

Thus begins "Project Beat CRPGS Before Sequels Come Out", or "Project CRPG", for short. The name comes from Donald, a co-worker on Level 3, whom had a personal project called "Project RPG", in which he attempted to beat as many RPGs this year as he could. At best, he got quite far into Final Fantasy XIII, which is more than what I can say about myself!

Either way, welcome to a wonderful journey. First stop, revisiting Dragon Age: Origins...