Oh geeze, what a crazy past two months.  I moved, I went to Disney World (those who follow me on Twitter got treated a series of photos of Vry & his girlfriend wearing various hats), and then the insane holiday whose name is so feared it begins with the dread letter “X” (except not really. But X-mas is almost X-men, so that makes it the better spelling. WOLVERINE SAYS SO.)  And of course the one year anniversary of the end of the world.  Kind of crazy to think that the world was completely destroyed by the planet Nibiru and a simultaneous massive solar flare only a year ago. How time flies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, even when you don’t push the ‘T’ key. (That’s for you Fallout 3 fans)

As for gaming this year, I haven’t explored a ton of new ground I’m sad to say.  Mostly exploring my two major MMOs (SWTOR and WoW), and then dabbling in a few indie titles and oldies like Game Dev Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.  I suppose I did get my feet wet with some newer titles.  Finally starting to explore more in Skyrim by going around from town to town and completing them instead of doing the main storyline. I finally got to play Bioshock Infinite late this year and absolutely loved it.  That ending.  Oh geeze. I might have to do another post at some point just gushing my love for that ending.  Probably when Burial At Sea – Episode 2 comes out and I’ll just yak about the whole thing.

Of course the other big game that I tackled this year – and still working at it – would be Final Fantasy XIII.  The always controversial title that I went from downright loathing to absolutely being absorbed into the mythology of.  I really need to write more about it.  I keep scolding myself for not keeping up with that.  But I recently got a copy of Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns on pre-order now.  So I imagine you will be seeing more from that.

Finally in gaming news, my girlfriend and I have recently begun our own personal retrospective on the console games of the Zelda franchise.  Starting with the original NES title and currently progressing through Ocarina of Time, I haven’t decided if I’ll share my thoughts on going back through these wonderful games. But hey, if people ask I definitely will.

In some good news for the future of this blog, I received for the holidays a BlackMagicDesign Intensity Pro HD/SD capture card.  This little piece of shiny tech will let me capture video from any of my consoles instead of just stuff on my computer.  Combine this with a new copy of some editing software, and a 1 terabyte hard drive and hopefully I’ll be able to start producing Let’s Play videos that I keep talking about soon.  I actually have the stuff.  Now I just need to do it.

Overall, I must admit that I’ve been stearing towards single player games more lately than my MMOs.  Neither SWTOR or WoW seems to be keeping my attention for any long period of time at the moment.  I have no desire to start from scratch in another MMO, and my Steam Library is now boiling over 100 titles at the moment.  Perhaps it’s time to explore the rest of my library for a bit instead of sinking time into MMOs out of habit.  I want to finish leveling up some professions, but honestly I can do that later.  So you’ll probably being seeing less MMO posts and more “Adventures of Vry in Skyrim” or some other weirdness for a while.  If you come here looking only for weird anecdotes or rants about only specifically MMO content…  I’d say sorry but let’s be honest you’ve been disappointed for a loooong while.

And now for a quick run down of non-video gaming stuff I’ve done this year:

– D&D Next Playtest: Enjoyed it. Ran a Halloween adventure. Might post it. Still need to get used to the whole saves thing.
– Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: I’m a fairly recent convert to the show, but the special was nice. Only seemed to focus on the new show – bad. John Hurt got some awesome lines – good! Answered some questions and gave the show somewhere to go – Good! Pretty much undermined a ton of my favorite characterization bits – bad.
– Comic Books! Pretty much stopped reading them.  Pretty much entirely Scott Lobdell’s fault.
– Cartoons: CARTOON NETWORK. STOP CANCELING SHIT I LOVE. DAMNIT.
– Anime: I just watch stuff on Netflix.  But that’s been pretty fun! That’s about it.  Really.

So here’s to 2014.  One year away from Third Impact.  Let’s make a fun one!