What Have I Been Doing Since Last Year?

Hey guys and gals, sorry it's been a while since my last post, I'm not really sure where the last nine(!) months have gone to be quite honest O_O For those that are interested in my activities during my absence, carry on reading from here, for those that just want to know what I'm planning for AcornVision now that I'm back, skip down to the bottom. Righto, let's begin, I suppose it's best if I start from where I last left off and then go from there... When Call of Duty: Ghosts launched last year, I thought for sure that I'd have a load of content I'd love to talk about but unfortunately, it wasn't all it was hyped up to be and I actually spent a surprisingly small amount of time playing the multiplayer. And as you might already know, if I don't particularly enjoy something, I'm not going to spend a lot of time and effort writing up articles, just for the sake of doing so, that's not how I roll. Granted I could've knocked out other articles on things not Ghost related but at that time it started getting busy at my place of work and so between being tired, a tad (read: really) lazy and not having any ideas I thought were worth pursuing, I kinda just stopped doing anything creative for AcornVision :/

The weeks rolled by, Christmas and New Year came and went (Happy Christmas and Happy New Year btw :P ), still no decent ideas and I'm spending a record amount of time not playing on my PS3, mostly because I'm busy/tired with/from work and other non-gaming related things. It wasn't until spring that I actually had a reason to do something meaningful and creative, 10 points if you can correctly guess what kicked my gears into action [I'll be pleasantly surprised if anyone gets it right]. Here's a clue, it wasn't gaming related... Give up? OK moving on, as you've no doubt heard by now, support for Windows XP ended as of the start of April and with that news, it was time for me to do something that I had thought about for a few years now: Project Build A PC! [PBAP] Yeah yeah, until PBAP I was still using Windows XP and what? That operating system was good and did practically all I needed from a home PC, so I had no need to splash cash and upgrade but alas, all good things must come to an end and with a clear deadline approaching, I figured it was finally time to get PBAP off the ground. It was actually quite an interesting project and I'm sorta tempted to write up an article or two, detailing my progression but we'll see.

I actually spent a good few months working on PBAP, not because the process was overly complicated, I just took my sweet time 'cus you know, I'm lazy - c'mon keep up lol That and also because I spent a lot of time doing research, this was after all my first time putting together a home build, so I had to familiarise myself with stuff that I'd never given a second thought about before. So yeah, that took up most of my spring and the early weeks of summer but I'm happy to report, so far so good, as a matter of fact, this article is currently being typed up on said new PC ^_^ Anyway, what else did I get up to? Hmm, PBAP was probably the most notable thing to mention, I'm still in the same job and that's same old, same old or S.S.D.D. if you'd rather ;) [that's actually a reference some of you might know, leave your answers in the comment section]. I did get some gaming done, mostly just working on my extensive back catalogue, I completed/re-played single player campaigns for a couple really old games and some more recently releases (relatively speaking of course :P). I did make notes whilst playing these games, notes which I'm planning to put together as proper game reviews, I just haven't found the time to do so as of yet.

Up until a few weeks ago, I haven't played much competitive multiplayer this year (some of those games didn't have it anyway) but that changed when I completed one of my more recent titles. It's been pretty fun getting stuck into a new multiplayer, you know, the learning process and then ultimately becoming a better player. In fact, that game and indeed its multiplayer is part of the reason why I've suddenly had a wave of inspiration, intrigued? Well, you'll have to carry on reading to find out what it is, don't worry I'm nearly done now lol As for co-op multiplayer, I've barely played any this year, apart from three titles but unfortunately all three were short lived. The first was Resident Evil 6 (not as bad as some people make it out to be), I had public partners for some missions and I dabbled in the online co-op modes but once I'd beaten each map, I wasn't really compelled to play much more. The second was Borderlands 2, I actually bought that game to play with a friend but said friend decided they didn't really like it, so as a result I ended up playing most of it solo. I did try public matchmaking but sharing loot (or the lack of) was a real issue plus the lag was just too much at times, so I stayed offline instead. The last piece of co-op action I took part in, was the Destiny beta, while there was stuff I could've talked about, I assume anyone who is remotely interested in the game, will have tried it themselves first hand.

And that's about it, not a very entertaining nine months I will admit but then I assume you'd already guessed that from the lack of articles lol It's actually pretty scary how fast 2014 is flying by, I look back on the year and wonder where the bloody hell the time has gone?! Summer is practically done here in the UK and there's already talk of people turning on (or debating whether to) their central heating, trust me, that's actually a thing over here XD But as the weather gets colder and the days become shorter, despite it being slightly depressing that another year is drawing to an end, it does also mean that Christmas is on the horizon and that's my joint second favourite period of the year :) Anyway, now I'm just rambling, what were we talking about again? Oh yeah, so now you're up to speed on that I've been up to since last year. It's time now for me to detail what I plan to do over the next few months and maybe further a field, basically in between PBAP, I actually earned the Platinum trophy for a few games and having earned my most recent one a few days ago, it dawned on me, this is something I'm interested in doing and would probably make for useful reading to some people out there.

So, in the coming weeks I'll be bringing a new segment to AcornVision, titled *imitates a drum roll, badly* Journey To Platinum [JTP], it'll be a series of articles on, you've guessed it, my path towards achieving the platinum trophy for a certain game. OK, so it isn't exactly a unique idea because I've already offered up tips and ideas on how to obtain certain trophies in the past but now with JTP I'll be detailing my progress and method/s for success regarding all the trophies leading upto me earning the platinum. I'll kick the series off talking about my lastest platinum; Tomb Raider, then we'll see how it goes from there. As well as JTP articles regarding the single player, as I mentioned earlier, I've been putting in some hours on the multiplayer side of things, which I believe has a couple worthy talking points, so if you're interested, be on the look out for those. Once I get around to posting my Journey To Platinum articles, you'll find them all on it's own dedicated page, which you can reach via this link (there will also be a more detailed explanation for the JTP series on that page, in case you want a bit more info).

Righto, at the risk of making this article a bit too long (or longer than it already is), I best start wrapping up but just before I sign out, I just want to say that I'm feeling slightly excited about my new found enthusiasm and I hope you all enjoy the content that I'll soon be sharing with you :)