100th Blog Special!

Holy cow my 100th post! That is insane. I really thought this was going to be a little side project when I first started this blog almost 5 years ago. Just something to do with my then upcoming unemployment. Here I am living a way different life, I live in a different place, am finally finished with school, got married, am pretty well into my career as an HR professional, and have 6 cats! Have my tastes changed over the course of this blog? Yes, I think so. I don't play video games nearly as much as I did a few years ago (apart from this COVID-19 quarantine anyway), so I try to be a bit choosier about which games I spend a lot of time with. I also tend to choose shorter games. I pay more attention to who develops the games than I did at the start as well.

My original intention with this blog was to kind of chronicle my ideas about older games as I replayed them. It was self-aggrandizing. I thought maybe I would get famous, maybe someone would look at this blog and I could moonlight as a critic! That is not the value of something like this blog and I can appreciate that now. These days I view this blog as an exercise in self-expression. I struggled a great deal with expressing myself in my younger years and I was able to learn a lot from keeping a journal in my college/graduate school days. I have learned about how to express my own status from this exercise, but I didn't really learn a language to describe my preferences as well. This blog serves to help me take a step back and try to appreciate materials that I consume.

Do I like how this has developed over the first 100 posts? Yes. Do I have goals for how it will continue to develop? Yes! I want to try to review other things more often as well. I originally thought I might critique food/drink here, but I don't really think my taste buds are up to snuff for that kind of a thing. I do want to write up my thoughts about more TV and movies that I consume since I am consuming more of them these days. It just makes sense as my own media consumption changes that my reviews should too. More books! More socially relevant topics! I'd also like to reach out to some people close to me and ask for their favorite video games as a recommendation for me to try.

What are my current favorites?

Video Game: Psychonauts, Binding of Isaac, Dark Souls 3

Movie: Shaun of the Dead, Spirited Away

TV show: I'm not super sure, maybe The Boondocks or Gravity Falls. Maybe Over the Garden Wall?

Book: Probably the Harry Potter series. American Gods deserves a shout out too

Beer: Mother's Winter Grind, Linenkugel's Summer Shandy

Cat: Tadpole of course

What are your top 5 video game recommendations from my last 100 posts?

Hmmm... In no particular order I would say The Messenger, Chrono Trigger, Nier Automata, God of War (2018), and Hollow Knight. Shout outs to Doom (2016), Super Mario Odyssey, and Cuphead.

Will you break the 4th wall again? Yeah, maybe in another 100 posts unless I decide to change course or discontinue this blog.