This is an entry about video games on a blog that has historically been pretty intensely focused on the subject--but it will also contain some thoughts on what's been happening in my life over the past year. I have made a habit of making my life entirely
video games on many occasions over this year. It could certainly be argued that my slavish devotion to these games is a touch misguided and it's inarguable that there's a host of more productive things on which I could spend my time. However, none of these intrusive thoughts have legitimately made me consider interrupting my breakneck pace of playing and completing games this year. I don't regret that. What I
regret is that I haven't been writing about it over the past month. I told myself I would take some time off and come back with more thoughtful and well-written content.
It remains to be seen whether or not I will turn this blog into something substantial. I updated it every single day for over a year and I think some good things came out of that exercise--but what is it I'm really looking for? Is it an audience? If that's the case, I'll have to write more interesting articles that could potentially appeal to a wider audience and then discover a way to get them seen.
For now, though, I need to do something I've been planning on doing for several months. I've played and finished a lot of games this year, some of which were a part of something I called the Backlog Eradication Marathon, an effort to revisit games previously abandoned and to finish them for good. In some cases, this took a
more effort and time that I'd previously imagined. It might sound silly to consider a video game hard work, but in some cases it felt like it was! Some of these games I may not have bothered to complete under normal circumstances, but with the way my life has been over this past year, it felt good to pursue some sort of personal challenge and to chronicle my efforts. I felt pretty strongly that to analyze a game critically, I had to complete it first. Maybe this is short sighted, particularly for games that are essentially long stretches of the same kind of content for the majority of the game. At the same time, though, it felt pretty good to finally conquer these games I'd left sitting on the shelf for
in some cases. Without further ado, here's the list:
It's always been a practice of mine to list expansions as entirely new games on
. In most cases, I feel it works. There might be some niche expansions that definitely would not count as new games in their own right, but I can't think of many cases that I've listed where that's true, at the very least.
may have only added another chapter to the game's content, but it was a very long one, and not unlike the addition of
. In both cases, there were a number of pretty substantial additions that warranted listing them separately.
At the beginning of the year, I was unemployed and never left my house. I was in a pretty bad spot, all things told, both depressed and hopeless about my place in life. I won't say that the course of this year has been a meteoric rise for me, but it's at least pretty apparent that things have improved. At the time, though, I found solace in video games--and for the first time in quite awhile, I'd found someone I could socialize with in at least one way. I started playing some co-op games with a friend of mine (an old coworker, in fact) after I became interested in an action RPG in the vein of
. I remembered that my friend had been a huge fan of the genre so I messaged him on Steam about it. We started playing
a lot. After we got a little burned out on that (we really did play it a
), we started looking for something else to play.
was something we'd actually played briefly several years ago while we were still coworkers. I remembered liking it and I can't actually remember why we stopped playing it back then. Honestly, it might have been because we started playing
, we both still craved some action RPG gameplay.
seemed like a perfect fit, even though it is a tad dated by today's standards. Still, we both enjoyed the game, and got quite a bit of playtime from it, despite some technical difficulties with Tunngle, a virtual LAN program we were using to play it cooperatively. After we were finally finished with that, I started racking my brains on what other cooperative games we could play. This was further complicated by the fact that I was hopelessly broke. We had to rely on games that we both already owned or could be obtained for free.
It was my suggestion that we try to jump even further into the past and play a game for the SNES--a classic action RPG that for some reason I'd never managed to complete. I enjoyed the game alone for the most part, and in fact I'd made quite a bit of progress in single player--but it just wasn't the same as playing with a partner, as I quickly came to find out. The game has flaws, yes, but it was still a
blast to play cooperatively. I'm actually pretty surprised that story-driven, co-op RPGs like
aren't more common. It's a pretty damn successful formula. I'm glad that we were able to get through what is a very seminal release in the SNES catalog.
I can't honestly say I had nearly as favorable an impression of the second game of the series. SquareSoft elected to try something different with their sophomore effort, and although increasing basic attributes by performing actions tied to those attributes is a great idea in theory, in practice it was painfully tedious. If a few numbers had been tuned, it might have been a really streamlined and fun system. Leveling up magic in particular was a time consuming and often completely unnecessary process, in retrospect. I want the 34 hours this game took from me back--although I'm still happy to say I've finished almost every main series Final Fantasy now.
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| Completed 3/15 |
At this point, I was still laboring under the assumption that I was embarking on a massive
Final Fantasy marathon. I thought dipping into a spin-off title might be a good idea, especially since I was planning on tackling a friend's copy of
Bravely Default soon, a game that served as this title's spiritual successor. I think
The 4 Heroes of Light is a good game, but it was also frequently quite tedious and annoyingly difficult. I'm surprised it only took me two weeks to finish. It felt like far longer, but I had nothing else better to do all day. . .
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| Completed 3/19 |
I had moved on to
Bravely Default, but for some reason I wasn't feeling it. I decided to start clearing out my backlog more. My thought process was that a
Kirby title would be quick and painless! Surprisingly,
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror ended up being the longest and most convoluted
Kirby game I'd ever played. It's structured more like a
Castlevania or
Metroid title than any
Kirby I'd ever played. However, it's quite good and probably one of my favorites, even though it was frustrating to constantly get lost in the game's labyrinthine environments. This game will always remind me of
House because I watched it constantly while playing. There are many games with which I've established similar strange connections.
Tales of Symphonia reminds me of death metal, for instance!
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| Completed 3/23 |
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| Completed 3/26 |
"Maybe I'll just have a
Kirby marathon instead of a
Final Fantasy one?" This was my next thought, because I'd already become burned out on
Final Fantasy. I didn't enjoy
Mass Attack as much as
Amazing Mirror or in fact pretty much any other
Kirby title I've played. I wouldn't say it was a bad game, per se, but it didn't feel much like
Kirby at the end of the day. There's no copying of powers, and most of the gameplay is built around pushing tons of little Kirbies around to complete various puzzles. Combat boils down to throwing 20 Kirbies at things. It was interesting, but not my favorite.
Okay, never mind about the
Kirby thing, I thought. Let's do a
Dragon Quest marathon! I've just finished the first two
Final Fantasies, so it should be no big deal to do the same thing with
Dragon Quest, right? After all,
Dragon Quest literally only took me 9 hours to finish and it was quite easy, all things told. There was some minor grinding, but other than that, I got through it without incident. I liked it! It was simple and refreshing.
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| Completed 4/3 |
As with the first two
Final Fantasy titles, I attempted to play the definitive versions of
Dragon Quest and
Dragon Quest II. Thanks to the thriving ROM hacking community, a fan translation exists of the
Dragon Quest I + II SNES compilation.
Dragon Quest II layers on the complexity by allowing the player to field a party of three individual characters, all of which have their own attributes and spells. Battle mechanics remain mostly the same, but the biggest change by far was the actual world map, which positively dwarfs the first title in size. I had to consult a map on GameFAQs frequently to have any hope of finding my way--and I still got lost quite often. I still have trouble believing a game from the NES area could be so dizzyingly massive. It made the worlds of any of the early Final Fantasy games pale in comparison. I did quite enjoy the game, as it was notably longer, more complex, and more difficult than its predecessor.
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| Completed 4/7 |
Predictably, my
Dragon Quest marathon halted right there--although not necessarily because I wasn't ready to move on. A good friend of mine purchased me a copy of the
Diablo III expansion because I was
still unemployed and he's a really nice guy. I burned through it in just a day or two with my trusty witch doctor and enjoyed it. I'm a fan of pretty much any game in the genre, but
Diablo style games tend not to have a lot of longevity with me. In the case of
Reaper of Souls, it had less sticking power than
Path of Exile, so it wasn't long before I moved on.
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| Completed 4/23 |
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| Completed 6/11 |
Super Robot Wars J was a revelation to me because I had no idea it existed until I stumbled across a fan translation in my internet travels one day. I'm a huge fan of
Super Robot Wars Original Generations (both games) on GBA. They are still the only games in the series to have official North American localizations--so when I found out a more traditional title existed from that era that I could actually play in English, I was overjoyed! I ended up loving it, even though the only anime characters from the game I recognized were from
Full Metal Panic. I became a tad obsessed with the game during this time and started watching several of the anime featured in the game--and this is a little strange, because I'd never been a big anime fan. I watched a lot, but I still haven't finished a single one of those series aside from the original
Full Metal Panic.
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| Completed 6/20 |
Hey, why not do a
Super Robot Wars marathon?! Marathons always work out for me, right?! This game took me longer to complete than probably any other game I've played this year, due to a number of factors. I
finally started at a job in April (I'm still working there, thankfully) and found myself with significantly less free time than usual. Beyond that, however,
Alpha Gaiden is just a tremendously
long game--and not a particularly easy one, either. I never had a pilot/robot in
Alpha Gaiden that seemed as devastatingly powerful as some of my units from
Super Robot Wars J. I was also tasked with taking control of many more units than I was accustomed to and missions frequently took over an hour to complete--all 43 of them. To top it all off, I was even less familiar with the many mecha anime on display, although
Alpha Gaiden did include characters from
Gundam Wing, one of the few anime I've watched to completion. I still think it's a great game, but it was glacially paced and quite tough! I was sick of
Super Robot Wars by the time I was done. I wouldn't mind jumping back into it now, but my options are sadly quite limited.
Although
Alpha Gaiden was a hellishly time consuming project for me, I was glad that I'd finally managed to complete it. I'd started it a couple of years before and abandoned it. I got the idea at that point to start a
marathon (yeah. . .) of games from my backlog. I knew that playing multiple games from the same series back to back frequently did not work for me. I did it for
Super Robot Wars and became incredibly sick of the series (although now I look back on them fondly) so I decided instead to jump around in my backlog and take them out one by one. The only catch was that I had to play only
one game at a time.
Lunar 2 is a classic RPG that I'm really surprised I never finished before this year. I have nothing but good things to say about it. It's reasonably challenging, fun, charming, and a relatively short play, much like its predecessor.
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| Completed 6/25 |
At this point, I figured I might as well try to clear out my PlayStation backlog completely. I didn't have many left and it seemed like a fun thing to do.
Vandal Hearts is an indescribably ugly game to look at, but it has sharp tactical RPG gameplay and a fun class-branching system. It is the shortest game I played this year other than the original
Dragon Quest, clocking in at only around 14 hours. It is extremely fast-paced for a strategy RPG, not unlike games from the
Disgaea series--but without the endless level grind. I've briefly played the sequel to
Vandal Hearts and I'm sad to say it's completely broken and unplayable! I've heard decent things about
Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment on the other hand, so I might attempt to give that a try one day. I feel pretty safe in saying there are a number of games on my list that have a higher priority. After all, I still have a decently sized backlog to clear out.
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| Completed 7/2 |
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is
Vagrant Story, built from a hodgepodge of mechanics and beautiful artwork. I feel like I had to do an extreme amount of studying to get my mind around
Vagrant Story's unique gameplay and combat system--but I can say I definitely like it. It was very challenging and if I'm being honest the plot was almost completely incomprehensible to me. The dialogue was extremely well written and the art direction was fantastic albeit marred by the PlayStation's primitive hardware. I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time absolutely lost while playing
Vagrant Story. I'm sure an individual with a better sense of direction would have been able to complete
Vagrant Story in less than 20 hours, but I ended up clocking in at around 24. I've never been great at navigating 3D games, especially when it comes to games with as mazelike a structure as
Vagrant Story.
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| Completed 7/6 |
Next on the list is
Tales of Destiny, a game I'm shocked only took me four days to finish. It felt like an eternity. I
did pick up on a file that was already in progress, but the structure of the latter half of the game was built around a series of painfully tedious mazes chock full of that most beloved of mechanics--random encounters. The battle system was really the game's only redeeming factor, because the plot and characters certainly weren't going to save it. It's definitely not my favorite
Tales title, but I'm still glad I finished it. My original plan was to move on to
Tales of Eternia, but I wasn't yet ready to tackle another
Tales game after what
ToD put me through. I have plans to play through more of the
Tales series, but I know full well how well my plans usually work out.
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| Completed 7/16 |
It was at this point that I broke my rule of not playing any games on the side. It was for a good reason though, because I started playing games with my co-op partner again. I decided that it was okay to play one single player game when he wasn't available--and one co-op game when he was. I continued this process for awhile. He purchased
Borderlands 2 for me during a sale, because even though I'd been working for some time, I was pouring all of my cash into paying off debts and frankly, surviving. I also wasn't making commission yet, so my funds were decidedly limited. I'm not a huge fan of shooters, but
Borderlands 2's plentiful RPG elements and fun cooperative gameplay were enough to salvage the game for me. I'd played through the original game with another friend when I was living in Austin, Texas in 2012.
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| Completed 7/23 |
I saved what I felt would be the longest and most complex title left on the PlayStation for last in my Backlog Eradication Marathon. It turned out that I was correct about the game's length, but it was a much shorter and more focused game than
Front Mission 4, a game I finished in 2012 after having owned it for four years.
Front Mission 3 took me around 35 hours to finish, whereas the fourth game in the series took me at least 20 hours more than that. I really do enjoy the
Front Mission series, particularly when it comes to assembling and upgrading your mechs (called
wanzers in the series) for combat. The only games in the series I have left to complete are
Front Mission 2 and 5, both of which have never been officially released in English.
FM5 has a complete English fan translation available, but
FM2 is only partially translated. These are both games I plan to play someday.
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| Completed 8/6 |
Divinity: Original Sin was probably the first game I bought with my own money the entire year. I still wasn't completely comfortable financially, but I was able to set aside from cash to buy the game at my co-op partner's suggestion. It ended up being a great investment that for which we both got about 70 hours of playtime. It felt weird to play a very story-driven CRPG cooperatively, but in the end it totally worked for me. It's definitely a great game and deserves all the praise it's been getting this year. It blends many of the best elements of classic Western RPGs like
Baldur's Gate with turn-based tactical combat more along the lines of
XCOM. My only real disappointment with
Divinity is that there aren't more games like it. It feel as if my co-op partner and I have completely run out of games to play together. I might have to start playing shooters at this rate.
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| Completed 8/11 |
I'd been playing
Dissidia 012 since I finished
Front Mission 3, only taking breaks from it to play
Divinity when my co-op partner was available. Since I'd cleared out my PlayStation backlog completely, I decided to move onto the PSP, a platform I hadn't touched in a couple of years. The PSP is an oft forgotten system that nonetheless features a handful of really great games. Both
Dissidia titles definitely rank up there as some of the best games on the system. I decided to start with
Dissidia 012 because I wanted to play something with more action since I'd just played a string of mostly slow turn-based games. As it turned out,
Dissidia 012 has a ton of content to unlock and conquer, some of which was
fiendishly difficult. It took me much longer than I'd anticipated, much like
Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden a couple months beforehand. I only managed to finish it as quickly as I did because I poured every once of my free time into it. Honestly, I could have considered the game completed without finishing the Confessions of the Creator campaign, but just playing through the classic mode really seemed like a copout.
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| Completed 8/15 |
Way back in June, I'd finally cobbled together the funds to purchase a new smartphone to replace my long out of service iPhone 4. I'd decided to try out Android this time around and purchased the then brand new HTC One M8, which plunged me into the wonderful world of Android emulation, allowing me to play retro games on my lunch breaks at work. I started with DeSmUme, a terrific Nintendo DS emulator--and immediately began plucking away at
Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem on hard mode. This might have been a mistake, since it drastically increased the amount of time required to complete the game. Each of my play sessions was only 30 to 45 minutes long. I eventually grew frustrated with how slowly I was making my way through the game so I set aside an evening to press through the latter half of the game so I could move on. I love the
Fire Emblem series, but
New Mystery and
Shadow Dragon are among the weaker entries, despite their standing as enhanced remakes.
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| Completed 8/22 |
Okay, so I'd had my dose of action in
Dissidia 012, so why not play another tactical RPG? I'd already finished two this year (V
andal Hearts and
Front Mission 3) so one more shouldn't have been an issue.
Gungnir is an interesting game, but a very difficult and flawed one. There were many times where I felt skeptical I'd actually be able to finish it, but I somehow persevered.
Gungnir's developer Sting is known for incorporating a lot of oddball mechanics in their games so I shouldn't have expected a vanilla strategy RPG in the first place--but I don't feel
Gungnir is one of their more successful experiments. I liked games like
Riviera, Knights in the Nightmare, and
Yggdra Union better than this one. I wasn't particularly fond of how the enemy seemed to be given all the advantages in terms of unit movement and taking actions.
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| Completed 9/7 |
Next on the list was yet another strategy RPG--but in this case it was a remake of a game with which I was already
very familiar.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is an excellent remake of a game that was already very good. The PSP version corrected what was probably the PS1 version's biggest flaw--its poor translation. Unfortunately, I was rather burned out on strategy RPGs by this point, and my decision to embark on what was a very completionist playthrough of
War of the Lions left me with a rather poorer reaction to the game that I might have otherwise had. I did enough grinding to unlock the PSP version exclusive Dark Knight class, which made the rest of the game an absolute joke to blaze through.
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| Completed 9/20 |
I closed out my PSP backlog with--again--what I thought would be the longest and most complex title. In this case,
Dissidia 012 was still the most time consuming PSP game I played this year, but
Innocent Sin ended up being a close second at roughly 50 hours. Although it wasn't as long as
Persona 3 or
4, it did clock in at around 50 hours or so, at least double that of the original
SMT: Persona title. I liked
Innocent Sin a lot, despite some decidedly weird plot elements involving nazis and Hitler. I really enjoy how these early
Persona titles allow the player to field a five character party and I'm puzzled as to why future entries abandoned that concept. Fortunately, the recently released
Persona Q brings this feature back, although not
Persona 2's excellent combo system, unfortunately.
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| Completed 9/25 |
I was on a full on
Persona mood at this point (I'm still in this mood) and decided to tackle
Persona 4 Arena, a title I'd known about for some time but never had the funds to purchase. I'm not great at fighting games, but this one featured a fun, although overly easy single player campaign. The pacing is very weird since the game's plot is delivered in a visual novel style only occasionally broken up by traditional fighting game matches. The plot itself is interesting, since it features characters from both
Persona 3 and
Persona 4 a short time after
Persona 4's ending. This means characters like Akihiko and Mitsuru have aged two years since the ending of
Persona 3. The way these characters have changed is a little strange, but it's fun to see what Atlus/Arc System Works came up with.
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| Completed 10/1 |
I'd been putting off finishing
Torchlight II for the longest time. When I first started playing the game, I was convinced by my friend to play it in Elite difficulty. After reaching Act 3 on my berserker, I hit a brick wall and was unable to progress. Soon afterward, my video card died and I found myself unemployed and therefore unable to play
the game. Once I finally did buy myself a new card, I set my sights on finally finishing up the game--only to find that it was nearly impossible to do so alone. My co-op partner and I had run out of other games to play, so I begged him to help me get through it. This is definitely not my favorite action RPG, but it's a solid game into which I'd already pumped a lot of my time.
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| Completed 10/3 |
As it turns out, I started
Persona 4 Arena just shortly before
Ultimax was set to release. I hadn't known about it beforehand, but I was pretty eager to give it a try since the rest of the
Persona 3 cast was set to show up. Junpei, Yukari, and Ken all underwent pretty drastic changes in their character designs over the course of two years. I was a little disappointed with what they did with Junpei--he'd evidently become a baseball coach and now wielded a bat as a weapon--but Yukari's new role as a TV superhero was a funny and interesting touch.I enjoyed this one a lot too, although the gameplay was largely the same. The campaign was structured in such a way that the player could experience the story while switching from character to character, which cut down on the repetition inherent to the first game quite a bit.
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| Completed 10/13 |
I was finally making some money and doing the responsible thing by buying video games. I felt a little bad about it because I still had a massive backlog to get through, but I kept seeing these games that were coming out that I just
had to have. I enjoyed this game a lot too (much like the original
Theatrhythm) but I was still disappointed in the wasted potential of the "combat system." Playing and completing the songs (all of which originated from the
Final Fantasy series and related titles) would result in your characters gaining experience and new abilities. Most of this was little more than meaningless background content that seldom had an effect on your performance in the game. Regardless of your party's makeup, completing songs accurately would result in success. I just feel Square-Enix could have done a lot more with the format. This marked my 30th completed game, which I'd decided was my goal for the year. Of course, with two and a half months left to go in the year, that left the possibility of hitting 35. . .
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| Completed 10/21 |
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is the second game I played entirely on my phone. I started playing it right after I finished
New Mystery of the Emblem, so yeah, it definitely took me awhile. RPGs definitely take some time when you only play them in 45 minute sessions, as it turns out.
Lufia II is a great game that dramatically eclipses its predecessor in quality. Although I'm not generally a fan of puzzles as a general rule,
Lufia II's wide variety of fiendishly difficult puzzles were genuinely interesting and fun. I'd be lying if I said I didn't consult GameFAQs on a few occasions when I was stuck, though. I got stuck a lot. . .
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| Completed 10/30 |
Because I'd already hit my goal of 30 games, I felt like it wouldn't be a big deal to start playing an MMO. I'd been meaning to try out
Final Fantasy XIV for some time and when I saw it was on sale on Steam for only $10, I decided to take advantage of that. I wanted to take my time and experience what the game had to offer. Even so, it only took me about a month to hit the level cap of 50 on my trusty dragoon. I really enjoyed all the callbacks to classic
Final Fantasy and enjoyed the music, the atmosphere, and the game's beautiful graphics. The combat is a little slow-paced compared to other MMOs I've played, but it's something one grows accustomed to after some time. The fact that many melee abilities require some kind of positioning requirement goes a long way toward making things interesting and bosses typically feature an array of interesting mechanics. As with every other MMO I've played, I lost interest just about as soon as I hit level 50. I'd be interesting in trying out different classes at some point in the future, but I'll probably wait until the expansion,
Heavensward comes out before I do so.
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| Completed 11/2 |
Once I received my first commission check after getting full status at work, I found myself overjoyed at the options I saw before me. I bought a Wii U and
Bayonetta 2, proceeding to devour the game within days. It was quite challenging, but extremely fun, even if I don't particularly care for Bayonetta's new look. I briefly considered the possibility of playing the game again on a higher difficulty, but these thoughts were quickly dismissed when I found out that the game's alternate character Jeanne was not altogether very different from Bayonetta herself--and of course the fact that I still had a lot of games left in my backlog. The Wii U also came with
New Super Mario Bros. U, which I expected to complete in a timely fashion as well--but that has so far proven not to be the case. It's now the end of the year and nowhere close to being completed. Onward to 2015 for that one, I say.
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| Completed 11/21 |
I'd already decided that my Backlog Eradication Marathon was on indefinite hiatus, so I figured I'd go ahead and try out the new
World of Warcraft expansion,
Warlords of Draenor. I had little to no expectations of it, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by it!
Warlords of Draenor is almost completely self contained and features no real interaction with the game's older content. This design decision results in a game that feels very fresh and new--no small feat considering the base game is ten years old now and the level cap was just raised to 100. Questing through the orc homeworld of Draenor was great fun. Maintaining and upgrading my garrison was even more fun--but just like with
FFXIV, I lost interest soon after I hit the level cap. I may have played for longer if I'd had some other folks to play with, but they jumped ship to play more
Diablo 3 around that time. Radelle, the blood elf paladin, is going into retirement for now, but she may well return in the future.
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| Completed 12/16 |
Finally, the last game I completed this year was
Breath of Fire II, third of the games I played and finished entirely on my phone. As per usual, I finished the latter parts of the game while at home. Somehow, I doubt there'll be an RPG I finish entirely at work, but I could definitely see a shorter game of another genre working in 30-45 minute sessions. It's actually a little depressing to learn that I've only finished one game in a month's time, but 35 is a nice number to end on for the year and still a vast increase from my previous high of 22 in 2012.
Breath of Fire II ended up being
way more trouble to finish than I'd imagined. It was generally a breeze until the final dungeon, which was like hitting a massive implacable brick wall. Only after hours of grinding was I capable of making my way through it. I'm left with somewhat of a mixed impression of this game because many of the game's most fun mechanics were introduced near the end of the game--and then for a significant chunk of the final dungeon you don't have access to them. It stinks of bad planning to me, but I still think my impression of this particular version of the game was overall positive. I played the fan translation, which vastly improves on the original NA localization's clumsy script.
The only conclusion I can draw from this whole exercise is that I really enjoy video games and writing about them. I've been told by at least one friend that I'm insane for "forcing" myself to play through so many games I might not have otherwise completed--and it's true I may not have necessarily enjoyed every second of it, but it does fill me with a tremendous sense of accomplishment every time I finish one of these games. Even if I don't love every single one of these games, I really enjoy having perspective on them and being able to write about them objectively. Will I play nearly this many games next year? Will I finally get through my backlog? Probably not. But I will continue to investigate new things I can do for this blog, even if no one but myself reads it. It's a really fun thing to do!
