Hey all!
Well, what a weird 2016 that was! Outside of the constant celebrity deaths and crazy political landscape we now find ourselves in (WW3 is looking more and more likely by the day), I had a productive year when it came to games. Whilst not all of my resolutions were successfully completed, I made headway in some and have learned from my mistakes in others, so can proceed with some experience on 2017’s resolutions.
Watch out for those on January 1st, but for now, on with 2016’s results:
Green = Completed
Orange = In progress
Red = Not started
- Complete and Review 52 Games On Caesoose.com – 63 Completed in total
Well, if you check back, I’ve certainly been keeping to this resolution! I have to say, even when everything else in my life starts to fall apart, or time flies by, I will always make sure to keep to this resolution as it gives me a sense of fulfilment. Should you want, you can see a list of every game I completed below (I didn’t review EVERY title I played, so a few titles may be missing a link):
Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX
A Story about my Uncle
Paper Mario 3DS
That Dragon, Cancer
Pneuma, Breath of Life
Super Mario 3D Land
Coffin Dodgers
6180 The Moon
140
Firewatch
Sound Shapes
1010
Unravel
Teslagrad
Captain Toads Treasure Hunter
The Walking Dead Michonne 1
Qube
Tembo the badass Elephant
Downwell
Counterspy
Super Time Force
GTA V
Splatoon
Hyper Light Drifter
The Walking Dead Michonne 2
Enter The Gungeon
Hyrule Warriors Legends
The Walking Dead Michonne 3
Wailing Heights
The Room 3
Table Top Racing
Doom
Lumo
Ryse
Animal Crossing: Party
Cibele
Her Story
Horokum
Call of Duty Black Ops
Mighty No. 9
Pull Box World
Furi
Inside
Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Nidhogg
Mortal Kombat X
Abzu
Call of Duty Black Ops 3
Finn and Jakes Epic quest
Attack on Titan
ReCore
Forza Horizon 3
Pacman CE edition
Unbox
Klang
Aragami
Manual Samuel
The Beginners Guide
Battlefield 1
Titanfall 2
Sunset Overdrive
Dead Rising 4
Stereo Aereo
- Read 24 Books – 24 Read in total
I succeeded! I read the following this year:
Halo: Broken Circle
Halo: New Blood
Halo: Shadow of Content
Making of Volume
Death By Video Games
The Martian
Burma Chronicles
Halo: Initiation
An Astronauts guide to life on earth
The Maze Runner
The Scorch Trials
The Death Cure
Halo: Cryptum
Halo: Primordium
Halo: Silentum
Why Don’t Penguins Feet Freeze?
World War Z
The God Delusion
C# Programming for beginners
Halo: Glasslands
Halo: The Thursday War
Halo: Mortal Dicta
Halo: Smoke and Shadow
Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants and islam screwed my generation
- Watch The Walking Dead – Success!
This has been on my mind for a while now, especially with friends and family constantly telling me how good it was. So at the start of the year I managed to watch all seasons of this fantastic TV show. Having watched the latest (terrible) season, I’m awaiting its return next year.
- Get Teeth Sorted – Nope
Now that I have a bit of savings behind me, and with future ambitions to emigrate to America, I should really get on with getting braces so that I can straighten out my teeth. I’ve been putting this off for far too long, especially with my 30th birthday fat approaching next year.
- Produce 1 Video Article Per Month – Failed
Unfortunately, whilst I began working on this project:
I soon stopped. This was due to myself talking with third parties and asking if they could edit my videos. I also had a few articles prepared, but due to them containing a lot of content relating to interviews with people in the industry (that never got back to me), it all fell over. I’ll start this back up again soon, but for now I can certainly say I failed to produce one video article a month.
- Make A New Game – Failed
Unfortunately, whilst I started work on this new title, it never came to fruition due to time constraints with Twixel’s launch on Steam. I postponed work with the talented artist until after Twixel was released.
- Watch 26 New Films – 32 Watched in total
This was far too easy. You can see a list of what I watched below:
Horns
Spongebob Movie
Mad Max
Indie Gaming Movie
Night Crawler
Kingsman
Spectre
Kickass 2
Ex Machina
Ronin 47
Hercules
The Martian
The Machinist
Insurgent
The Maze Runner
San Andreas
Mockingjay Part 2 (hunger games)
The Amazing Spiderman
Captain america: Civil War
Legend
Blazing Saddles
Fantastic Four
The Secret Life of Pets
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Suicide Squad
Blue Brothers
The Good Dinsaur
Only Yesterday
Finding Dory
Zootopia
The Lobster
- Visit 2 New Countries – Slovakia and Austria
This was fantastic, and was done at the same time as I travelled to Bratislava with my other half. Due to how close Bratislava is to Vienna, we stayed in Bratislava the whole time (which is extremely cheap) and just took a cheap €5 bus to vienna twice. This was a fantastic holiday, and I’m sure it’s not going to be the last. I have plans to visit Norway and many other places before the end of the year.
- Produce 1 Video Review Per Month – Failed
Unfortunately, with Twixel’s Steam release taking up most of my spare time towards the end of the year, I didn’t get as much time to work on massive video projects. With the new year coming up, I’m going to try to start doing more videos, especially ones where I show off a game without a script.
- Visit E3 – Failed
Whilst it’s been my dream to visit the famed conference for years, after speaking with my editor and other writers at VGChartz, I found that if I wanted to attend I’d have to fund the entire trip myself. This, along with the fact lots of companies have pulled out of E3, pushed me into deciding not to attend the awesome games conference. There’s always next year…..
- Visit EGX Birmingham – Done!
I done this and it was great as always! You can see my articles from the conference below:
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/265955/yooka-laylee-is-hitting-the-right-nostalgia-notes/
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/265954/games-to-look-out-for-from-egx-2016-part-1/
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/265956/games-to-look-out-for-from-egx-2016-part-2/
- Visit EGX Rezzed – Done!
The conference was great, and as a result I managed to write the following articles:
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/263901/games-to-watch-out-for-from-egx-rezzed-2016/
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/263900/manual-samuel-hilarious-and-challenging-in-equal-measure/
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/263892/furi-takes-titan-souls-to-its-extreme/
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/263897/bears-cant-drift-oh-yes-they-can/
- Get New Tattoo – Failed
So… I’m becoming a nightmare for not actually making up my mind on what I want. There’s too many designs but so little arm space! Next Year I DEFINITELY WILL!
All in all I feel I’ve done well, especially given that I’ve successfully released my first game on Steam, something that wasn’t on my list of things to do.
Next year I may do what other’s have tried: rather than 1 static new years resolution that can’t change to meet different needs, I do 2-3 resolutions, so should anything come up (like Twixel’s Steam release this year), I can adjust my targets to account for it.
As always, thanks for reading this, and by all means tweet or email me your new years resolutions, it’s always great to find out how others are doing 🙂
-Dan
