I hated 2021. There, that's the post. 2021 was a huge amount of turmoil in the world, politics seeping into every single corner of every single thing that ever was a thing, entertainment had its ups and downs, COVID has messed up lifestyles, including my own despite vaccines and all, while mental health was on the decline in a number of ways. There were a few positives, and I tend to argue with people who say 2021 was better than 2020 because so many of their reasons were personal instead of, you know, in a broader scope. But let's see what's been going on.
Blog: First of all, I haven't really been updating the blog nearly as much. The biggest issue has been Doom Musings, but at this point I'm going to hang up bi-monthly stuff from now on. Maybe I'll make a musing tomorrow on New Years. However, you may have noticed that I haven't made any posts regarding RPG or ROM hack look-backs. So it really does seem that there wasn't much in actual writing work. I did have moments of writer's block at several moments, which of course led to the musings being mostly soundtrack rankings instead of the usual bunch of stuff. But perhaps the main reason why I haven't really been doing stuff on this blog will come right now.
Doomwiki: So yes, I've been sensationally active on Doomwiki. Sensationally active. Secret-hunting was my forte and I really wanted to document descriptions for each secret for every WAD I could find. This took up more or less the last four months or so of work and was one of the primary reasons why I haven't been active in other departments.
Real-life: While I kept a nice tutoring position up until summer break, I also took an auxiliary online course that ended up furthering an application to becoming a full-time teacher. Wahoo! Though this of course meant that I have less time to work on other things, as I'm in a classroom on weekdays. Still, I primarily use my computer to do all the planning of fun lessons, and during those times I will probably get involved with some stuff on the side.
Music: There's been some fantastic metal stuff I've been listening to these days. Volumes releasing an album on my birthday was excellent, with a good vocal combination and all, though I wouldn't consider it my favorite album of 2021. Two albums really peaked my interest, those being Whitechapel's Kin and Erra's self-titled, both have excellent qualities, with Erra continuing to refine their sound while keeping their vocalist and Whitechapel further evolving into a more melodic band with excellent cleans. I have to express my glee at how wondrous these guys have done their music.
What I've been watching: Pretty Cure, and LOTS of it. I'm up to Suite Pretty Cure now, and I've been analyzing every character and really am dedicating a good amount of time to this stuff. Yeah, I'm really planning to probably even put some rankings of things there too, just cause there's surprisingly not a lot of it. I really enjoy the All Stars movies more than anything, due to the Avengers-like meetups and all. But hey, gotta get through it all eventually.
ROM hacks: Gaia was the last one for last year, so what did we have this year? Well, we had eight! Grass Jewel 2, Dark Rising: Order Destroyed, Sweet, Mega Power, Nameless, Adventure Yellow Chapter, Scorching Scarlet, and Vega. There was certainly quite a lot of variety, but I think, on the overall course of things, Nameless is the clear winner. The funny thing is it was still in development with a brand new episode as I played, but it was worth it, and my walkthrough sure as heck went incredibly well with what I had experienced. I have Polka Aqua 1 under my belt, which I haven't touched much since September this year, but I'll resume it eventually.
RPGs: only 14, how bad was that. Most of it is continuing the CRPGs with Wizardry and Might & Magic, and I really flummoxed my way through the entire Wizardry set. I also reviewed the original Pokemon games, Spectrobes, and my pick for the best this year, Final Fantasy X, a fantastic example of storytelling, interesting characters, sidequests, and it wasn't really that difficult on the whole. Oh, and I also finished a game called Vandal Hearts this year, but I didn't get the chance to review it. It'll come though. As well as I shall continue the gaming at some point. But that leads me to this...
Platformer: This year I did myself a favor and explored a different game genre in depth, the platformer. All your Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, Castlevania, Metroid, Tiny Toon Adventures, Spyro, Crash, Valis, all of these franchises I explored, plus many other games. I managed to somehow ECLIPSE the number of RPG reviews by platformer reviews, finally ending at 170. There were tons of favorites here, with a number of non-favorites, but overall this was something I enjoyed doing. Maybe I'll do more platformers at some point and talk about them on this blog, or maybe I won't. I still want this to be primarily Doom/RPG/ROM hacks though. Favorite platformer: Lode Runner Online
Next year I swear I will return to my roots and get all those unfinished businesses done, as well as create more content when I can. Happy new year 2022.
