Attic Cleanup 15-12-2013

Another week gone! Just a few short ones until this kickass year ends. Kim, from 1001up.com, asked me about two things I thought made this year amazing, and I had no problem coming up with something to say. As for what I said, well…don’t be so nosy.

This week’s image is a bit of a pun, if you know your Hellboy, you’ll get it!

On my end of things, work sucked, but that’s not news to be honest.

I saw Catching Fire on Friday, and I thought it was awesome! I would’ve made a post, but V already said everything I wanted so check out her review!

I didn’t have much time to do stuff during the week, but the weekend was pretty active, and today I got back into learning all the tricks of the trade with Unity 3D Engine 4. I’m working really hard to go through books and tutorials while I finalize the concept for my very own Point & Click Adventure Game. First of all I have to decide if I go for an Urban Fantasy setting, my “specialty” or go for a Science Fiction one, the setting for a series of novels I’m planning on writing in the near future, combining Sci-Fi with Noir elements. Still have to decide, both have their merits! And since I’m posting it here, of course I’d love some opinions on this. So, it’s either “War Journals”, the Sci-Fi Detective story, or “John Morrison – Bloodtrap”, the Urban Fantasy one.

Word of warning, I may disregard your opinion entirely hahaha.

On my gaming side, I finished two 4s this week, Assassin’s Creed IV and Saint’s Row 4. Both really good games, extremely fun, but if I had to pick the winner between them I’d go for AC4, it has the most new ideas and the deeper story and characterization. I have a few issues with some design choices on SR4, but you’ll find out soon once I finished writing the reviews.

On the blogging scene, I read some cool posts this week. V gave her original TV series Fall Lineup a second look, bringing he axe down on a few of them. John Heatz followed the recent Youtube Copyright disaster closely, so check out everything he wrote on the subject, it’s pretty interesting and it’s amazing how game publishers and developers jumped in to protect people against Youtube’s actions. Kim wrote a really fun review for Sanitarium, a point & click adventure game I’ve always stepped away from, but probably should give a shot, as frustrating as it seems to be at some points. Craig, from the same site, wrote about an ambitious IOS FMV game called Contradiction, with plenty of live acting, and while FMV makes me scream “NO!” on principle alone, I admit I am intrigued. Drakulus reviewed Mass Effect 3 and in the coming days I’ll be working on my arguments to start a massive flame…I mean healthy discussion with him about it. Hell, I’ll see if we can podcast it! Wouldn’t that be cool?

On the attic side, we had four posts this week! First up, I gave you all The Seduction of Horror, my little “titillating” piece on Good Horror. Then I finished the week with a couple of reviews for some awesome Point & Clickers, Cognition: An Erica Reed Trilogy, by Phoenix Online Studios; and Gray Matter, from the genius of Jane Jensen. Both earned the highest score I can give here in the Attic for being so damn good. I even had problems uninstalling them, a part of me didn’t want to!

Speaking of which, now you can check out what those review scores mean and how low or how high they can go. I’ve also cleaned up the menu a bit and added a nice contact page. Now you can get in touch with me directly for anything at all!

For this week, if a few things come through, I’ll have some cool things for you. Aside from that, you’ll see my AC4 & SR4 reviews. Keep an eye open on Johnheatz.com for my upcoming pieces, one on Choice in Videogames, and the other on the slightly iffy “Early Access” feature on Steam. I’ll try to have them done this week. I’ve already done the mental writing on them, just need to put them to a Document.

I can’t leave without mentioning how some awesome, amazing and frankly kickass people nominated me for the Blog of the Year 2013 award, and WordPress Family Award and Versatile Blogger. You can check out just how much I adulated by reading “Awesome Bloggers, Awesome Awards!”

For the holidays, I’ll try to have something special planned. I’m already doing some gift scheming, for some really cool people, but I promise to have something else for those fun days! You can expect at least one post recapping the year and giving my thanks and adulation to some of my “best friends I’ve never met”!