A friend asked me that question a while back. Actually, it was more of the form "why celebrate at all? It's just a blog, not a birthday."
My response: because persistence pays off, and I like to show it off.
Much as I declared at Post 300, blogging is all about being consistent. I've seen countless people begin the practice, only to drop it a few weeks (or days) later. I usually fall into this "temp category." What makes Critically Correct so important to me is that it's one of the few constants in my daily life. Besides waking up, paying bills, and Facebook, my blog is a sure-fire constant that I visit on a daily basis and I think it will be with me for many, many years to come.
Not only does this consistency have a personal meaning, but it extends professionally as well. Given that I spend so much of my time writing creatively, I find it helpful to write daily, and again, Critically Correct is the ideal way to do that. Of course, I tend to sway between creative posts, informative posts, editorial posts, and outright rants, but I would hope that this variety keeps people coming back for more.
Prior to Post 500 I took a full day to run through every post in my blog, right from the beginning in July of 2005. A lot has happened in those two years, but blogging as always been with me. In just two years, I have recorded a fairly reliable journal of my life. Never before have I done this, and the experience of reflecting on my own words years after an event has taken place is something special.
So yes, I will celebrate five-hundred posts, a thousand posts, and many more milestones after that.
I expect to be blogging well past my one-thousandth post, so without further ado, let's get this celebration over with and get back to what I love doing the most.
The Music of My Life
I promised a few posts back that I would share a playlist that I've been clinging onto tightly. Called "Redemption," it is a collection of songs that strongly reflects the general feeling that I get from life right now: busy, tired, stressed, and a bit lonely.
Have you ever become so naturally close to a person that you look to them as if they were family - someone that you can trust and care about in rare ways? Have you then been completely lost and unable to understand yourself after this person begins to potentially leave your life? This is my soundtrack for that feeling. Some songs are simply among my favorite, and others are all-around great songs.
1. Greenwheel - Breathe
2. The Killers - Mr. Brightside
3. Candlebox - Far Behind
4. The Cardigans - My Favorite Game
5. Stone Temple Pilots - Plush
6. Goo Goo Dolls - Iris
7. Temple of the Dog - Hunger Strike
8. Pearl Jam - Black
9. 3 Doors Down - Away From the Sun
10. Lifehouse - Sick Cycle Carousel
11. Blessid Union of Souls - Stone Glass Window
12. Seether - Fine Again
13. Stone Sour - Zzyzx Rd.
Anyone get the general idea of where I'm going with this collection? Feel free to suggest any additions...
Rune Factory Review
I've been saving my review of "Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon" for Post 500. As I hold the Harvest Moon series close to my heart, "Rune Factory" is somewhat of a special game, given that it is the first Harvest Moon since the 1997 original to really hammer-home a great gaming experience. The review is as follows.
It took ten long years of worry, desire, and so-so sequels, but Harvest Moon is back.
In 1997 Natsume developed and published a Super Nintendo title simply called "Harvest Moon," a quasi-farming role-playing game that saw the player turning a run-down farm into a successful business, while at the same time seeking a wife. The game was left largely open-ended in nature, and since 1997, I have been a tremedously huge Harvest Moon fan. Unfortunately, since 1997, things have not been so peachy for me. The original Harvest Moon focused strongly on farming, raising livestock, and aquiring a wife. In expanding gameplay elements through later sequels, much of the "hardcore" farming was dumbed down. I met many of these games with lukewarm reception. "Harvest Moon" for the Game Boy was too limited in scope to hold my attention. "Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life" for the GameCube was too scatterbrained for me to focus. "Friends of Mineral Town" on the GBA was the latest Harvest Moon to hold my attention for any length of time, yet still quickly became boring in time.
And then, "Rune Factory" comes along. Designed for the Nintendo DS, it is the Harvest Moon that I have been waiting for. In many ways, "Rune Factory" is not much different than "A Wonderful Life," in that there are many, many, many non-farming tasks to distract the player throughout the course of a game day. But for the first time since 1997, farming is back in full force. In many ways, farming in "Rune Factory" is similar to the Nintendo 64 and Playstation iterations: the field is strictly defined and crop pattern options can seem limiting at first. But all similarities end there.
Quite simply, "Rune Factory" is Harvest Moon anew. The central character in the game, the player, awakens to find that he has no memory of his past (perhaps a nod to the reborn nature of the game), and is immediately tasked to turning around a run-down farm.
Farming has been refined to high-hell, and this is the best in the series by this regard. Gameplay changes that may seem like blasphemy to fans - the ability to walk over crops, for example - while dramatically altering familiar aspects of the series, these changes also serve to make the game far more accesible and streamlined. For the first time in the series, planting your initial crops or managing a full field of 6561 (81 x 81!) crops always feels managable.
One of the most dramatic changes to the Harvest Moon formula comes with the addition of dungeons. Although simplistic in overall scope and design, the dungeons add an interesting wrinkle to the farming gameplay. By successfully farming, the player can buy better equipment for crawling deepers into the dungeons, and buy advancing into the dungeons, the player can become more powerful, which in turn makes farming easier. It's an addictive cycle that I have not enjoyed since 1997.
Character interaction has expanded and improved, with all ten (10!) potential wives having tastes and personality quirks that make each unique and alter how the player must plan his game day. Side activities, like fishing, digging for minerals, cooking, raising animals (captured monsters in this case, a whole other story...), and finding rare items all remain from previous games, but in a much more polished form than before. Every item in the game can be leveled up, just as the player can, and even traded via Wi-Fi, creating the potential for a very interesting "Rune Factory" trade market.
As a game day lasts a maximum of 24 real-world minutes, and with so much to do per day (water crops, harvest crops, explore caves/dungeons, meet girl interest, trade items, feed animals, recharge and repeat), "Rune Factory" plays out much more in length to a traditional RPG than a traditional Harvest Moon title This makes the game feel more epic in scope and depth, especially when one looks back at how far their farm has come in just one game year.
I admit that I miss traditional livestock, but the addition of being able to capture and raise specialized monsters in place of traditional animals adds yet more depth to an already-deep game. The game integrates touch screen elements only in ways that enhance the game if the player chooses, but they do not necessarily need to be utilized. In the area of beauty, "Rune Factory" loses a tile-based world in favor of a well-drawn, organic world populated with polygonal characters. The graphical look is new to the series, and works well.
"Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon" is quite simply, Harvest Moon completely reborn, and almost every change is for the better. I consider this game a must own, and hopefully, something to look forward to for the next ten years.
The Up and Coming
- MiniBash is this Friday. It will be an awesome experience, I think, since I'm focusing on what I love best: food, friends, and gaming. I expect lots of 4-player Wii and 2-player Guitar Hero to be popular, along with a corn maze as the night moves on.
- I'm only one day into my vacation from Meijer, but that place feels like it's thousands of miles away, and I really am considering life after Meijer, especially before I graduate. The freedom that comes without work stress is amazing. I'm finding lots of time to write, for example.
- I will be redesigning Critically Correct sometime in the near future, but given how busy the next two weeks will be with exams and all, I might take my time with the redesign.
If you've been following my blog for the last couple of years, then you've seen it all: plenty of drama, humor, anger, etc. Begun in the Lacey-era of my life in 2005, I really did not expect to be writing for so long, especially post-Lacey. Of course, my life does not evolve around my past relationships, but what I am today is indeed the culmination of those past experiences and what I've learned since. I write because someone reads.
So to you, my reader, I thank you for sticking around with me. I hope to still be thanking you at one-thousand.
See you at 501.
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