2016: The 19 Games I Beat

Every year, NeoGAF has a 52 games challenge, in which you have to beat 52 new games before the start of the next year. There is also a movie and book equivalent, in which you have to read 50 new books and watch 50 new movies. These challenges provide that extra motivation to do/finish the things you already wanted to anyway and can lead you to checking out stuff you otherwise may not have (this is especially true with books).

Once again, I didn't even come close to completing the challenge, beating only one more game than I did in 2015.

Here are the 19 games I beat in 2016:

Police Trainer (Arcade)
The House of the Dead (Arcade)
Oh...Sir! (PC)
Mount Your Friends (PC)
Life is Strange (PC) - April 1
Halo 5: Guardians (Xbox One) - April 16
Devil's Third (Wii U) - April 19
The Lab (HTC Vive) - April 26
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (The Nathan Drake Collection) (PS4) - May 13
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (The Nathan Drake Collection) (PS4) - May 23
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (The Nathan Drake Collection) (PS4) - May 28
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4) - June 9
The Brookhaven Experiment (HTC Vive) - July 18
TrumPiñata (HTC Vive) - July 22
Titanfall (Xbox One) - October 2
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4) - October 10
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (PS4) - October 12
Platinum Demo - Final Fantasy XV (PS4) - November 29
Final Fantasy XV (PS4 Pro) - December 12

We'll see if I fare better in 2017.

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2015

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The Art of Video Games: Advances in Mechanics

"Advances in Mechanics" is a five-screen display that shows how various mechanics in video games have evolved over the years as consoles became more powerful.

The Art of Video Games: PlayStation 3

The Art of Video Games: PlayStation 3
Smithsonian American Art Museum
September 2nd, 2012

Action	Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Target	Flower
Adventure	Heavy Rain
Tactics	Brütal Legend

Road Trip

In December 2011 my brother and I took a road trip for Christmas. First, we drove from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., then from there to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and from there to Kansas to visit our mom. Usually when we take trips I fill up my phone with old Bombcasts, but I've heard most of them at least two or even three times now, so I needed to find something different. I don't listen to any other podcasts and generally don't like to listen to music anymore (unless it's a soundtrack I can associate with some experience I had, like a game or movie), but I wanted something that wouldn't easily be tuned out to make the drives seem shorter. This meant I needed people having conversations, and the only thing that came to mind that would be suitable for both my brother and I was the talk radio stations from the Grand Theft Auto series. So along with Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2009 deliberations (my brother hadn't completed Uncharted 2 when the podcast was first released), I placed Chatterbox FM from Grand Theft Auto III, V-Rock from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (has some good music along with more Lazlow), West Coast Talk Radio from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Integrity 2.0 from Grand Theft Auto IV on to my phone. It didn't take my brother long to realize what we were listening to.

None of the subsequent talk radio stations were as good as Chatterbox FM.

We're about to take another road trip in September after he returns from Afghanistan and I'm trying to figure out what to do next.