It’s been a while, blogosphere.

I mean, do you remember me? I used to write things here. However, I haven’t been around in quite some time. For those who are interested in where I’ve been, I’ll keep it short, since this isn’t a personal blog: working 60-hour weeks in a QA position on games that most of you will never play, left said job, started my undergrad (finally) at Concordia University, started testing somewhere else on games you’ll almost DEFINITELY never play, dropping my PSP on the floor and breaking the LCD, writing articles for Everygame, chasing down late reviews for Everygame, and playing many more games without even remotely thinking about what I’d write about them.

But, this leave of absence from my blog (which may have killed its readership—I suppose we’ll see) is about to end (this is entirely unrelated to the fact that I recently got the bill for another year of owning this domain—at least, that’s what I’m telling myself). I’ve been gathering topics that I want to talk about. Instead, though, of talking about the stuff I’ve been playing more (which has been covered to death—a lot of Left 4 Dead, really, and Shadow Complex, and Scribblenauts, Trials HD, Final Fantasy Tactics, and some other stuff that I can’t even now remember) I have decided for the next couple of months to pontificate on some stuff I haven’t heard that much about on the Internet at large lately.

Here are some of the topics I intend to cover:

1 vs. 100, one of my surprise favorite games of the year.

Brickbreaker again. It’ll be short—I promise. But I hit the next “level” of play and quit the game forever. I think you’ll find the “why” entertaining. I hope. Maybe.

Dai Senryaku VII, a game I accidentally found at a pawn shop and bought on a whim, which ended up being proof to me that even in this Internet age, there are titles that I and everyone I know have never even heard of.

Diplomacy (as in, the board game), which I am currently playing by e-mail with some friends.

How do we create fun in losing? This is prompted by a piece that I read a few days ago (I will link it in the piece) about “sprayparks,” those places where kids shoot water at each other. Can there be games where getting shot is as fun as getting shot with water at a water park?

Everygame, again—I’ll go over some stuff that the writers have written that I have dug, and maybe a couple of my own pieces that have intrigued me, as well. Since, you know, we just hit the halfway point in our multi-year endeavour to cover all of those 720 SNES games listed.

I had a couple more ideas but I won’t write them for fear that I’ve already oversold myself here. I was going to put deadlines, even, but I can’t promise I’d even come close, even if I set them very conservatively, but– hello again, world.