Hello friends! It’s true – your ol’ pal Geddy is back from the deep, dark, COVID-ridden trenches. It’s been a while, and I have seriously missed writing.

One of the hardest things for me to do since having a baby has been finding time to do things that require actual thought. Playing a game is easy to slide into the spotty free time I have, but writing about a game and putting thought and consideration into articles has become very challenging. I started a side programming project, and I have yet to finish it because, again, I need brain-power to do so, and at 10:00PM when my time opens up, sitting down and focusing on anything seems like an insurmountable task. I’ve got this pile of half-crafted posts in my Drafts folder, and upon re-reading any of them, they’re all terrible. Straight into the trash!

Lately, I’ve gone off the deep end with my other hobbies, yoyos as I mentioned in my last post, and RC cars has been the other. I even built a basement track in the new house and I’ve spent a ton of time zipping around my cars down there in the evening-time. Here’s my YouTube Channel if you’re interested in seeing any of that.

I’ve always been a hobby guy, and having less time to experiment and try new things, while also being stuck inside so much of the time due to pandemics and weather, has been pretty severely detrimental – but I’m attempting to turn over a new leaf this year. Not as some “New Years Resolution” nonsense, but as an actual, “I want to feel better about things” way. Here’s what I’m come to realize: I feel my best when I have an outlet for thoughts about stuff, since I talk to almost nobody, which means that blogging about gaming or about anything else is something I need to make time for. Ya know?

Anyway, so I’ll be attempting to stick to a loose schedule so that this place feels as good as it once did. In fact, you may have noticed that the theme has changed back to an old one! I found the new theme to be far too sterile and unspecial, and I hated it. This one brings me back to years ago, before everything went pear-shaped.

Now then – enough about my non-problems, let’s talk about some games!

Since moving into our new house back in October, my gaming plans have been derailed. In fact, we moved in to the new place on the exact launch day of Metroid Dread, and so I hadn’t even thought of this legendary release until very recently. It’s the first non-remake 2D Metroid game since 2002! I should have been all over it, but moving back into our own house was more than enough excitement for October. In the meantime, it’s sitting comfy on my chalk-board under “Games to Buy.” Hey, at least I’ll save a few bucks when I finally grab it!

Now aside from that, the crazy thing is, I didn’t have any gaming plans whatsoever. It felt like I was about to take a long break from the hobby, but then one day I got a random itch to play some Super Mario 64, via the Switch bundle. That kept me going for a week or two, and I managed to just about 100% the whole game in 25 hours or so. I hadn’t re-played Super Mario 64 in at least ten years, and it made me smile the whole time. The funny thing is that the levels I barely remembered ended up being my favorites, while the ones I most looked forward to revisiting, I found a little boring. I’m doing a recap write-up of that, though, so stay tuned!

Wanting to maintain theme, I played a good chunk of Super Mario Galaxy 2, yes, on the Wii, since dodgy-as-always Nintendo decided to forget a sequel existed when they released 3D All Stars. My prediction? They will only release Galaxy 2 when I finish it.

Overall, it’s a really enjoyable game to play. I loved the original Super Mario Galaxy, which I only played for the first time last year, and the sequel is fairly true to the same formula, but they fixed a lot of issues. For one, I swear that running around 3D spaces (so, the planets and moons) feels a lot better to control. In fact, the whole game seems to have revamped controls and just generally it feels much easier on the hands. The levels are adorable, masterful creations, on par with every other hand-crafted Mario title, and you just want to keep playing. The dopamine hit every time you get a Star is potent, and clearing levels and finding secrets has that classic Super Mario reward system.

I have yet to finish it, and after reading the next paragraph you’ll probably understand why.

After partying with our favorite Italian plumber, something crazy happened. I started playing a game in a series I’ve always been curious about, but never had the drive to play due to the sheer scale and completion armor. That game of course, is Persona 5. Good lord, Persona 5! I can’t rave enough about how incredible this game is.

Easily the most interesting thing to me is that it combines two things I don’t even like: games with a lot of talking, and turn-based combat. Yet somehow, it’s one of my favorite games of all time. I mean it – I’m only 22 hours in on this journey, and I think about it constantly. The last time a game affected me like this, it was Xenoblade Chronicles, but I’ll save my raving for another post!

Going forward, I’m planning on taking a short break from Persona 5 and finally grabbing Metroid Dread.

There’s also Dying Light 2 on the PS5 which definitely has me intriguied, but at the same time, I’m honestly worried about the state of AAA gaming for the past… uh, decade.. and I’m fearful that it will be a bug-ridden mess like every single other AAA game. There are plenty of other titles that came out last year that I still have yet to try out, and the first priority in that category is Skyward Sword HD – aka the only 3D Zelda game I have never played (well, not more than two hours, which is basically nothing in OG Skyward Sword). I’m particularly excited to play this one because the issues that kept me from pressing onward last time I played it seem to have been mitigated. I mean, just take a look at these play time differences:

That’s about a flat 8 hour difference across the board. That is HUGE for a game like Skyward Sword; personally I’ve found some Zelda titles to be a bit too long, Twilight Princess (still my favorite) and Wind Waker were definitely sufferers of that. That being said, their respective HD remakes also shave anywhere from 8-12 hours off the total completion time, so moving the games along faster is certainly something I can appreciate.

Tangents about gameplay length aside, let’s get some priorities straight, for the sake of my own mental organization:

• Persona 5 (currently playing)
• Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (definitely)
• Metroid Dread (definitely)
• Dying Light 2 (maybe)

You know, seeing such a small list written out feels strange, but one of the perks of this is that if anything more interesting were to surface, there’s some wiggle room in there. Granted, one of those games is rated around 100 hours so we’ll see when we get time for anything else!

Thanks for sticking with me if you’ve made it this far, despite my rambling, and I hope and/or plan to continue posting more frequently going forward!