Back in the Saddle

It has been quite some time but I am back with a little more life experience and a new direction for this blog. When I started this blog back in 2008 I was looking to get some experience writing about video games and see where it took me throughout my college career. After I graduated from college I began to volunteer write at GamerGaia.com and this blog became an advertisement for that site.

I have since moved on from GamerGaia and am now the Editor in Chief for VGutopia.com. I have seen some great stuff in the past few weeks from a re surging site and am excited to see where VGutopia goes. However, I don't want this blog to turn into a big advertisement for my site, I want it to be its own thing. A place where I can vent out what I want to say in a less than formal setting.

Will I never link you guys to VGutopia stuff? Of course not, if I have a good opinion piece up or something I'll let you guys know but I would like to leave this as a general place to discuss my thoughts on trying to enter the video game journalism field, playing games as I get older, and anything else that enters my mind (exactly what a blog should be).

So I will begin by talking about how "out of shape" I felt while playing Halo tonight. I was bored around 11 o'clock or so (shortly after the Giants finished kicking the crap out of the Panthers) and decided to pop in a disc and play some Xbox. I mulled over a choice in game and landed on NHL 13 after a bit of deliberation but after destroying the Minnesota Wild 8-0 and then beating the Canadiens 4-3 in OT, I was looking for something different.

So I took another glance at my games and decided I'd give Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary a go. I decided against another roll through the campaign and instead decided to try something I hadn't done in a while; play online multiplayer. I'd been a big Halo online guy years ago but I had basically stopped playing online games (even though I still shell out the cash for Live every month). I quickly realized this was a mistake.

The first match was incredibly brutal, with the other team beating my four man crew 50-9 (I contributed one of those nine kills by the way). I began to wonder if maybe I had lost my touch. The second match turned out to be better with my team winning and me actually pulling out a +3 K/D ratio (usually I'm in the negatives) so that wasn't too bad but it didn't shake off the rusty feeling I had.

Atrophy is a term I only used to describe what happened to my biceps when I stopped working out but now I see its uses in my gaming life. My skills at Halo (and most likely any game online) have severely atrophied over the past few years of almost non-use. I see  this as a problem, especially if I am going to be a video game journalist for a living. How could I possibly have any credibility among my audience if I thoroughly sucked at the games I played?

So I've decided to change my fate and get my online gaming skills back up to snuff. It won't be easy; real life obligations, single-player RPGs, and laziness might get in the way but dammit I am going to try! I'll start with a healthy dose of Halo before moving on to titles like Call of Duty and then maybe I'll venture into the uncharted waters of sports games online but I wouldn't hold my breath on that. I'll keep you all posted and we'll see if I can get my "online legs" back under me.