Finally, That's Over With

Can you spot Ryu?

I find it odd that I have a sense of relief, at least greater relief than normal, now that I am more or less completely done with Game of the Year stuff.  Yeah, I'll probably still do a "Games That Weren't My Games" post since there are plenty of worthy titles that could bear that, but I don't have to do that right away by any means.  What makes it odd, I should say is that, rather than just being glad that I had so much to talk about this time around, I find that I'm just happy that I don't have to do the GotY posts any longer.  At least, not until next year, and I can honestly wait for that with no real issues.  For the last couple of days, I dreamed to be at this point where I didn't have to put down three games on a post and go on and on about why I loved them this much which was, by some measure, less and more than the games above and under it in some form.

Really, I think the thing that started to bug me is that I started feeling like it was coming off as a little self-centered.  I mean, I know it wasn't, or at least no more than any other post on this, an opinion blog about my personal feelings on things, but it was just a different feel.  I'm being silly, I realize, and perhaps I was just manifesting feelings of creative closure by projecting something else.  Since I knew every night for six days in a row exactly what I was going to write about which, in a way, was exactly like what I wrote the previous night and would be what I wrote the next night, it left little to the imagination.  It should've been perfect in that respect - I didn't have to worry about finding some news piece or picking out something that was significant enough during the day to speak on.  Yet, writing the same thing for, basically, a week straight got a little old fast I admit.

There's also a good chance that I've just written too much in the previous week and change.  Beyond my posts here, I spent the bulk of a night writing the rough draft of the prologue of the short story I've mentioned that I'm working on (nine pages typed much like these posts, but in OpenOffice Writer) and I've had a few other things that required a lot of writing here and there.  My nights have been more writing than not which is different and obviously a little taxing on me.  Not that I mind it in so many ways, of course, but strain is strain no matter what and it gets to be a little much.  Which is a sentiment that is defeated entirely by my spending three paragraphs talking about it.

My goal was to relax a bit tonight.  Of course, my definition of 'relax' seems a bit off, as it included writing this, doing another rather intensive writing thing elsewhere and playing the newly-downloaded Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus on my Vita.  It was provided free to Playstation Plus members and I've been itching to play it again, having not touched it since its initial incarnation on the Original XBox where I eventually conquered it with much struggling.  The game took me ten hours to download - ten, t-e-n, one-zero, TEN - and that was without the rather strange download pause-limbo that my games generally encounter during the overnight download when it's going to take a while.  Ten straight hours of downloading for 2.3 gigs of game and ten minutes into playing it, I had already considered deleting it.  Of course, I was playing the Ninja Challenges like a dummy and not the base game, which was a dumb thing to do.

Fifteen minutes into the story, the game re-introduced me to a move that I forgot completely about and that would have made my attempts at the challenges much much easier.  Which reinforces why it was a very dumb idea to go after them first.  So, in other words, playing the story is the right move and I've been enjoying it a lot even though I'm just in the second chapter.  I'm honestly surprised at how damn smoothly it plays, but by that same token, it -is- a rather old game.  When Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus 2 drops, if it's just as smooth, then that'll be something to truly admire and wow at, and for some reason, I actually have faith in Tecmo-KOEI's ability to do just that.  As for when I'll pick it up, well....that remains to be seen.  We'll see just how much I like this first one after playing it some more and getting in to the 'hard' parts.