If you've seen my Backloggery or have followed my writing for any length of time, you know I play a lot of video games. You might also know how fond I am of breaking games down and analyzing the heck out of them—to me, that's often just as enjoyable as gaming itself. I have gut reactions and strong opinions about the games I play, just like anybody else, but I like to understand where they come from; self-awareness and thoughtful examination are a powerful combination that helps separate fact from opinion when it comes time to tell someone that Donkey Kong Country 2 is nowhere near as good as the original. Furthermore, giving ample thought to my feelings about a game prepares me for the "you're an idiot because DKC2 is amazing and your face is stupid" speech I might get in response.

When I analyze a game, I like to look at what impact each individual element has on the greater whole. A game can have an outstanding soundtrack or an abysmal storyline, but they alone do not constitute the entire game. Graphics, music, controls, gameplay, etc. all work together as a team to create a complete package; no aspect of a game exists in a vacuum. Examining how each aspect of a game contributes to or detracts from the overall game experience has been invaluable in distinguishing between which games are legitimately good or bad, and which games I simply do or don't like.

Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon is perhaps the best example I have of a good game that I simply don't enjoy. As a tactical strategy RPG, it's very solid: it has well-designed challenges, a fair amount of customizability, interesting locations, plenty of secrets to find, a variety of unit types for you and your enemies, and a decent plot that drives the story. I have no qualms with the controls or the music or the graphics. It's a good game. I couldn't stand playing it. I'm a completionist and a perfectionist: between losing half my army in every battle to sloppy tactics and passing up half of the one-chance-only items in the game because I'd burned most of my money on reviving my team, I had a hard time liking the game. I felt the rift between how I was playing and how I wanted to play continuing to grow, with no way to close it but to restart and try again from scratch—and if it was heartbreaking to replay a single battle after pouring everything into it and losing, imagine how I felt about the prospect of replaying every battle, with no guarantee that the results would be any better.

On the flip side, there's Light People on Fire. I reviewed this game for a "Flash Flood" column on GameCola about games for terrible people. The graphics consist primarily of stick figures and fireball special effects right out of Microsoft Paint. The gameplay consists of lighting people on fire. It takes about two or three attempts to master, and about two or three minutes for the game to become utterly repetitious and pointless. But the concept of a stick-figure tree creeping around town and bursting into flames at will, combined with the abrupt musical transition from tranquility to heavy metal when the blaze begins, is hilarious to me, if only for a few minutes. Light People on Fire is not a very good game, yet I enjoyed it enough to rate it a 3/5, which is better than what I've given to half the Zelda games I've played. That doesn't mean the game is better than Ocarina of Time; it just means I like it more.

I know; I'm an idiot because OoT is amazing and my face is stupid.

But I understand myself well enough to know that Zelda really isn't my style, so saying I like some slapdash Flash game better than THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME isn't really a criticism; it's a statement of preference. A statement of poor taste, perhaps, but an honest one. If anything, I'm mellower and more objective about games and series that aren't my style; there's less for this perfectionist to nitpick when it's clear that addressing the "flaws" would change the game into something it never had the potential nor intention to be.

Understanding the intent of the developers and the time and place where the game was made are also important. Kirby's Adventure lets you easily and regularly absorb the abilities of the enemies you meet; is it the developers' fault that the game is so difficult and boring if you aren't taking advantage of those powers? Frogger for the Atari 2600 doesn't look like the latest Call of Duty; does that mean it has bad graphics? A little perspective goes a long way in rendering a fair judgment of a game.

Ultimately, perspective is what it's all about for me: understanding myself as a gamer, trying to understand the mindset of the developers, and looking at the game as a whole package. Is the game fun? Why, that's just scratching the surface.

To answer the question posed at the end of my previous post: Yes, I can expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different approaches to recording videos. But not when it's almost 5:00 in the morning and I haven't slept yet.

It's a new day (technically the same day; I only wrote the post about 13 hours ago), I'm well-rested, I've spent the day relaxing, and I'm in better spirits now. Watching what my wife and I recorded last night, it's almost a totally different video than I remember. Sometimes—and I should know this by now—the best thing to cure a case of nagging self-doubt is to walk away from whatever's causing it for a little while.

All's well again.

My wife told me a story about a study that was performed where one group of artists was told to produce one work of art in a certain time frame, and another group was told to produce as many works as possible in the same time frame. The result was a bunch of stressed-out artists in the first group with gorgeous art and a bunch of contented artists in the second group with a broad range of successes and failures. I've been thinking about this story lately as I've been recording videos at a faster rate than usual.

In the last month, I've recorded more footage for YouTube than I have in the last year: a full playthrough of the Game Boy Color adaptation of Crystalis, the first third of my next Mega Man 7 video, and two hours now of an impromptu playthrough of Mega Pony. At the same time, I've released more material of dubious entertainment value in the last month than ever before. It's been both refreshing and disheartening to crank out new videos at the speed the rest of the Internet does.

My original plan for Crystalis was to play it on The END DAY as is my yearly custom, but to livestream it and post it to the GameCola YouTube channel. After extensive research and testing, I determined that my current setup was unsuitable for livestreaming, so I fell back on my usual method of recording video footage and adding retrospective commentary. Having learned from my Space Quest 0 playthrough that was supposed to last a weekend and turned into a few months, I made a commitment to myself to record each video's commentary in a single take, unless I said something so catastrophically stupid that only a re-take could salvage it.

For the most part, I was able to keep my vow, though one or two videos required a couple takes or a few breaks while I came up with anything to say. Overall, I think everything turned out fine, but I don't have the sense of satisfaction that I had after completing Space Quest 0 or Deja Vu before that. There are funny moments, and I think I bring up some interesting points every now and again, but the gameplay is neither hilarious nor impressive enough to be all that interesting on its own. It's really the commentary that drives my Crystalis videos, and there are large swaths of it that I'd re-record in a heartbeat. Overall, I think the video series is entertaining enough, but as the only full playthrough of this version currently available on YouTube, I think the viewing community deserves better.

Speeding through Crystalis allowed me to get back to Mega Man 7 before too much time had passed, however. It took me more than a year to release the teaser trailer for the video series, so I've been trying my hardest to get at least one new video per month to my fans—because it's my favorite video game series and because my viewers have come to expect a certainly level of quality from the gameplay and commentary, it takes me a long time to get my Mega Man videos to a point where I'm satisfied with them.

I was on fire with the commentary after Crystalis wrapped up; it normally takes me about one hour to generate and perfect one minute of commentary, and I'm usually only good for an hour or two before recording fatigue sets in, but I breezed through the first 3-1/2 minutes in a single sitting. Since then, it's been almost impossible to get back to it—I can think of things to say for the section I'm in, but nothing feels even remotely interesting. It doesn't help that I feel like I need to deliver extra-perfect commentary to make up for rushing through Crystalis, another one of my all-time favorite games (the NES version, at least), which didn't receive the recording attention I would've given it if I weren't so far behind on MM7.

Then, on a whim, I started recording Mega Pony with my wife. The short version is that one of my fellow GameCola staff members alerted me to the existence of a Mega Man / My Little Pony crossover fangame, and when my wife learned about it as well, she got excited and begged me to play it for her, as platformers are not her strong suit. About 30 seconds into the game, we both decided this would be too good a recording opportunity to pass up, so I set things up to record my first-ever honest-to-goodness blind "Let's Play" video. Both of us are tremendously pleased with the result—the commentary is frequently informative and funny, and some of the gameplay is downright hysterical.

We sat down to record Part 2 tonight, and neither one of us is feeling all that great about it. Sure, I beat several stages, but I also died repeatedly in the same few spots. Sure, we both made a few funnies, but most of what I remember about the commentary is me trying to form a deep thought about one of the other Mega Man games I've played, getting so distracted by my thought process that I fell into a spike pit, and my wife groaning about how I died again. The shame is that this is supposed to be a live, blind playthrough, so any editing or re-recording would defeat the whole purpose of the video.

Crystalis, Mega Man 7, and Mega Pony represent three different kinds of recording styles, and it's odd for me to be bouncing between them. I feel like an artist who was assigned to both groups at once from my wife's story, and because I can't focus on succeeding at one or the other, I'm failing at both. I'm probably being too harsh on myself, as is my tendency when it comes to creative projects, but then it's easier to accept rejection if it turns out my self-criticism isn't unfounded after all.

I've said many times before that my videos don't need to be perfect; they just need to be entertaining. With all the recording I've done in the last month, it's hard to tell anymore what qualifies as entertaining. I'm deliberating over every word for Mega Man 7 and spouting whatever comes to mind for everything else; can I really expect to keep a sense of perspective when I'm yo-yoing between two radically different approaches?

For the record, if I ever say anything that sounds hurtful, offensive, or especially closed-minded, please call me out on it, because I probably don't intend for it to sound that way. I've got strong opinions about a few things—I'll rag on movies and video games that annoy me, and I'll speak my piece about processes and organizations that I feel don't work well—but when it comes to individuals, the last thing I want is to inflict verbal harm. It tears me up inside to walk away from a conversation on bad terms with the other party, and it's that much worse if whatever relationship I have with the person comes to an end because of something I've said.

We are humans—we make mistakes and we make decisions that others don't always approve of; we believe things and support things that others might disagree with. Please don't mistake my criticism of something you've done or something you think as an affront to your whole person. Likewise, please don't write me off because of one thing I've failed to express clearly, thoughtfully, or kindly.

I thrive on constructive criticism; let me know if I ever sound like I'm out of line. Otherwise, I can't explain myself if you're misinterpreting me, and you can't knock some sense into me if I'm being perfectly clear and utterly wrong. I value an open dialogue, no matter how differently we may view things or how upset we may be with each other, because you and I are so much more than the sum of the things we don't see eye-to-eye about.

I don't generally follow politics, but I do get out to vote whenever possible. "Why bother?" you ask. "It's not like your vote makes a difference." No, you're right—the chances that my single vote means anything other than bupkis are slim to none. That's because I don't choose our elected officials. We do. I forfeit my right to complain about my country's government if I don't vote, just like I forfeit the right to complain about not winning the lottery if I don't buy a ticket. The odds that it'll make any difference are against me, but the point isn't to beat the odds—if you do, that's only a bonus. The point is to play the game.

My wife and I go out to vote together. We don't always vote alike—I'm sure our votes have effectively canceled each other out on occasion—but on the way over to our polling place, we discuss the people we are (and are definitely not) voting for. Sometimes, one of us sways the other to change his or her vote. More often, our choices remain the same, but we have a worthwhile conversation that helps us to better understand the ups and downs of these candidates as well as each other's thought processes. Not everyone can have a civil discussion of the subject, but my wife and I give enough consideration to the candidates we support to explain where we're coming from before any fur starts flying. We already understand each other's personal viewpoints on "the issues"; choosing a candidate is mostly a matter of weighing the personal and professional choices and identities of the individuals on the ballot and deciding which person would best represent us.

Why doesn't my individual vote matter? Because too much of the country assumes there are only two choices, and certain states act like there's only one. If I'm not siding with the obvious winner or tipping the balance to the left or right when it's too close to call, I'm throwing away my vote. But I throw away the democratic process in favor of an endless tug-of-war when I let the rest of the country essentially flip a coin to decide who my leaders will be. How much do I really care about myself or this country if I don't cast my lot with whomever truly represents my best interests? How much do the nation's problems really matter to me if I've got a half-dozen people on the ballot who have solutions, and I only consider listening to one or two of them? Forget about the piddly little drop in the bucket that is my single vote; my integrity, patriotism, and freethinking individualism are at stake here!

I take responsibility for my votes. I sit down to research all the candidates before an election. All the candidates—Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Independent; even the ones with ridiculous names like the Go To Bed Or Else Your Mother Will Run For President To Make It Against The Law To Stay Up Late party. It doesn't matter if I think I won't like what a candidate has to say. Political affiliation is only a label, and you can't trust a label to tell you what an individual is like.

The trouble is, some candidates don't make it easy for people who care about more than their party affiliation to find out anything about them. If I miss all your pep rallies and debates and newspaper coverage, where can I turn for information about you? The Internet. If you are truly serious about getting elected, the least you can do is get your tech-savvy nephew to spend five minutes throwing together a free website for your campaign. Facebook or Twitter? Even better. Project Vote Smart? Fab. I cannot tell you how many candidates I've given up on because I couldn't find anything about them, from every party, for President all the way down to Board of Education.

At the time I'm writing this, doing a search for my name on Google yields this website as the first result, my Twitter account right after that, a YouTube tribute video one of my fans made for me, the wrong Nathaniel Hoover's Facebook page, my article contribution page for GameCola, my LinkedIn profile, some other dude's LinkedIn profile, Exfanding Your Horizons, and a news article about my demise in Jacksonville, FL last year. All of this is on the first page of search results, and that's without throwing on any additional terms to narrow down which Nathaniel Hoover we're talking about.

Meanwhile, I'm trolling the archives of a local newspaper for even a passing mention of this person who's on the ballot. If you don't recognize the value of a basic Internet presence, then it makes me wonder how in-touch with our tech-driven society you really are. If you see the value but can't be bothered to establish a basic Internet presence, then I wonder how much you really care about getting elected. If you see the value but don't know how to establish a basic Internet presence, then I wonder how suitable you are to lead if you give up on anything you can't do by yourself. I'm not even asking for a whiz-bang multimedia extravaganza; a 1997 GeoCities page with your picture and a list of three things you care about would be fine!

In the end, I vote for the person I feel is best qualified for the job, regardless of whom the media and my own political party are putting in the spotlight. If that's a waste of a vote, then it's a waste of a vote. But I'd rather waste my vote trying to do right by myself and my country than sit at home and wait for an election that's worth voting in.

October was awesome. Creative juices were flowing, I had the time and energy to be seriously productive, and I'm pleased with how everything turned out. I predicted diversity in my work, but I found a surprising amount of focus with the same few themes (and a little diversity for good measure).

This Blog:

I like what I wrote. Big, beefy, analytical posts about video games and some stories that are refreshingly different for this blog. When was the last time I wrote about food and didn't complain about something, anyhow?

- Retrospective: September 2013
- Why I Play Terrible Games, Part 1
- Why I Play Terrible Games, Part 2
- Heard an Encouraging Word
- Absence Makes the Player Go Wander!
- The Joy of an Apple

GameCola:

A fair amount of time but not a lot of effort went into my contributions to gaming website GameCola.net—which is not to say that I was lazy, but rather that I was having too much fun for any of it to feel like work. A solid podcast, bad fanfiction, and one of the shortest and (hopefully) funniest posts I've released in a long time made for an enjoyable month.

News:
- Fabricated News: Indie Developer Making New Game Without Kickstarter Funding

Podcasts:
- GC Podcast #66: Podcasting Outside the Mainstream
- [NSFW] Hacks'n'Slash #4: Metroid High School

YouTube:

Yeah, don't ever complain about me taking too long to make videos again. When I put aside everything else and commit to recording one continuous take (or a couple smaller takes in the event of a technological or verbal calamity), I can crank out new videos as quickly as anybody else. Though my Mega Man 7 recording went on hold, I spent some quality time with the oft-ignored remake of one of my all-time favorite games, releasing most of what appears to be the first full playthrough of this game on the entire Internet. Considering the cult following of the original and the fact that the remake has been around for well over a decade, this is positively shocking to me. Minimal editing and little or no re-recording means both the gameplay and the commentary aren't as polished as my usual fare, but it's been an interesting experiment to try my hand at a more conventional Let's Play. In addition to this massive amount of new footage, one of the last pieces of the Mega Man marathon my buddy and I played in 2012 made its way to YouTube, and it's one I've been looking forward to.

GCDotNet:
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 1: Dragonia Seized Them and Hurled
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 2: Stom-ping on My Pride
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 3: (Queen's) Stone, Cold, Cave Key
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 4: Ice Bridges Are All the Rage
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 5: Uncomfortably Numb
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 6: Goa 'Round in Circles
- Crystalis (GBC) - Part 7: So Joss Whedon, George R.R. Martin, and Steven Moffat Walk Into Shyron...

DashJumpTV:
- Megathon 2012: Mega Man 9 (Wii) - Part II

The Backloggery:

So I caved and took advantage of a Good Old Games super-sale to pick up one adventure game I'd been meaning to try. Otherwise, serious progress in the battle against an excessive backlog of unplayed and unfinished video games! For the first time in a long time, I found myself alternating between brand-new games and ones I'd already beaten but never got around to 100%ing. Incidentally, "100%ing" is a term that works better in spoken language than in writing.

New:
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers  (PC)

Started:
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!  (PC)
- Tomb Raider II  (PC)

Beat:
- EarthBound Zero  (NES)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!  (PC)

Completed:
- EarthBound Zero  (NES)
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!  (PC)
- Mega Man X7  (PS2)
- Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter  (PC)

New prediction for next time: The rest of my Crystalis videos and the next installment of Mega Man 7; more adventure games, the start of a new RPG, and the completion of a couple more old games; a resurgence of GameCola contributions; a bit of a slowdown in posting on this blog; and almost being ready to release my Mega Man (PC) FAQ. Hopefully that's not too ambitious...