2019 Portfolio
All my written pieces for 2019. See the first post for more details about the Mentonomicon. A mixture of recurring features and brief series again this year, and the eventual restructuring of the round-up Summaries blog as a monthly piece.
Indie Game of the Week
Returning from 2017 and 2018. Each week showcases a new Indie game of a different vintage, from weeks old to years old.
Indie Game of the Week 101: Life is Strange: Before the Storm (DONTNOD, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 102: Battle Chasers: Nightwar (Airship Syndicate, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 103: Tacoma (Fullbright Games, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 104: Neon Prism (Just1337 Studio, 2016)
Indie Game of the Week 105: Strikey Sisters (DYA Games, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 106: Shantae: Half-Genie Hero (WayForward, 2016)
Indie Game of the Week 107: West of Loathing (Asymmetric, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 108: Back to Bed (Bedtime Digital Games, 2014)
Indie Game of the Week 109: Thimbleweed Park (Terrible Toybox, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 110: Rabi-Ribi (CreSpirit, 2016)
Indie Game of the Week 111: Into the Breach (Subset Games, 2018)
Indie Game of the Week 112: Odallus: The Dark Call (JoyMasher, 2015)
Indie Game of the Week 113: Simulacra (Kaigan Games, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 114: Ittle Dew 2 (Ludosity, 2016)
Indie Game of the Week 115: Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope, 2018)
Indie Game of the Week 116: Eschalon: Book II (Basilisk Games, 2010)
Indie Game of the Week 117: Dex (Dreadlocks, 2015)
Indie Game of the Week 118: Chaos on Deponia (Daedalic Entertainment, 2012)
Indie Game of the Week 119: Divide by Sheep (Solidilov/Novikov, 2015)
Indie Game of the Week 120: The Tiny Bang Story (Colibri Games, 2011)
Indie Game of the Week 121: Dandara (Long Hat House, 2018)
Indie Game of the Week 122: The Mooseman (Beletsky/Shvachko, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 123: Figment (Bedtime Digital Games, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 124: Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?! (Daylight Studios, 2017)
Indie Game of the Week 125: Goetia (Sushee, 2016)
Indie Game of the Week 126: Golf Story (Sidebar Games, 2017)
The Bucketlog
A new monthly feature where I tick off long-standing items off my backlog that also functions as my "bucket list" of games: those I intend to play before shuffling off the mortal coil. After a few months I noticed I was picking games from separate, older platforms, which became a recurring theme for the remaining entries: twelve games across twelve different systems.
Bucketlog January: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Grasshopper, 2010, Nintendo Wii)
Bucketlog February: Steins;Gate (Nitroplus/5pb, 2009, Sony PlayStation 3)
Bucketlog March: Okage: Shadow King (Zener Works, 2001, Sony PlayStation 2)
Bucketlog April: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (Capcom, 2013, Nintendo 3DS)
Bucketlog May: Banjo-Tooie (Rare, 2000, Nintendo 64)
Bucketlog June: Mother 3 (Brownie Brown/HAL Laboratory, 2006, Nintendo Game Boy Advance)
Saturday Summaries/Mento's Month
The weekly Saturday Summaries feature was an attempt to put all the week's articles together in a single blog that summarized their content, as well as discussing the games and other media consumed that week. This was eventually shifted to a monthly format called Mento's Month, which simply does the same thing for a whole month's worth of blogging/consuming.
Wiki Project/Mega Archive
Occasional updates on work completed on the Giant Bomb Wiki, usually themed around events or specific consoles. The Mega Archive series, for instance, covers the games of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in chronological order as I work on those wiki pages and dig up information through multiple points of research.
Seeking Warframe & Fortune
At some point this year I started playing a lot of Warframe, the free-to-play third-person shooter from Digital Extremes that sees regular new tweaks and content. Originally a weekly feature, it later become a monthly check-in for the progress and discoveries I've made. My angle is that I'm seeing how far I can get without any ridiculous grinding or paying real money: F2P usually demands one or the other.
May Millennials 2019
The recurring May-long feature this year focused on some CRPGs released in the early '00s.
Welcome to May Millennials 2019! (contents/introduction)
Mento's Alternative to E3 2019
A recurring annual feature where I spend the five days of the E3 event - which includes the three days that the floor is open and the previous two days when the conferences are performed - looking at anything E3-unrelated for the sake of those enervated by the hype and marketing of the expo. In 2019, that meant a deep dive on the many games of Japanese RPG developer Nihon Falcom.
Valk-Tier-Ia Chronicles IV
A feature that attempted to sort the characters of Sega's Valkyria Chronicles IV into tiers, based on my experiences playing as them and - to a lesser extent - their characterization and quirks.
The Secret Lives of Funko Fantasy
A two-part feature that explored how the crossover RPG World of Final Fantasy chose to recontextualize the guest characters taken from various Final Fantasy games, and how they changed backstories to suit the new setting while retaining the core of the character's soul.
Miscellaneous
A selection of one-off blogs.
A Thousand Roads: Modern Adventure Games - A look at the many different types of adventure game that continue to live on, or now exist for the first time, due to the innovations of the Indie market.
Lists
A list of all the games, either already owned or yet to purchase, that I plan to complete this year.
A list of developers that produced games for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and their history with the system. (This goes as far as the Mega Archive wiki rundowns, above.)
