Wednesday 8 June 2016

"So did this guy die or something?"

And the answer is no, no i did not.

Though i would not blame you for thinking i did.

 So shit, long time right? over half a decade if i'm right. So what happened? Well to cut a long story short google bought blogger, it was a huge rigmarole to get into my account back then and with so many university related things to occupy my time i simply forgot.

 If i am honest the declining quality of Survival Horror games at the time certainly did not help i will admit.

 In the meantime i've been the Admin of a popular .Ning site though this died off when it made a transition to a pay to use service, and while i am active on my twitter @dope_danny (shocking choice of name im sure) and on youtube now and again as https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDeliciousMystery on the whole i have not been an avid participant in my old online haunts -the survival horror community in particular.
 So what reminded me of the place? Well honestly its as simple as Massivelyop writing an article about a 'new blogger initiative' which prompted my reaction of 'didn't youtube vlogging kill those off?' and to be honest for a lot of old blogs i visited it did and in turn this also lead to my abandoning of forum usage too. Still it reminded me of the RCT and all the good times i had, the people i met and even the rare times developer senpais noticed me.

So i decided to see once again if i could reclaim it and was pleased to see google now has a much more streamlined process to do so. Upon logging in i saw there were 172 unmoderated comments, a couple saying i was a complete monster for disliking amnesia as you would expect and far too many enjoying writing which on rereading as an adult i find kind of cringe worthy in places.
At the end however was one from a few weeks ago on my last update for the announcement of The Last of Us simply stating "So did this guy die or something?" which is some theoretically heavy shit.

 It struck a chord with me because -again on the topic of ultra niche circles online- a fair few years ago i discovered a youtube channel about films that at that point was the rare treasure: a guy not trying to be another "angry critic" which was something not easily found back then. His name was Rodger Swan, a teacher who moved to Japan to teach English to high school kids and he had a series called "Swans Japanese Horror review" which was an excellent source of recommendations for 'j-horror' which was at its all time height of popularity in the west at the time. He was informative, concise and entertaining.



 Then one day he stopped uploading videos. People can get bored, people move on, people forget. It happens. However the info below the last video was changed a while after simply stating "Rodger has passed away". I forget his exact age but he was younger then than i am now and mid 20's is no age for anyone to go. I never knew Swan personally but this stuck with me, though i admit the tone is far to serious my dumb 2spooky videogames blog. However seeing something online left without a conclusion is never satisfying is it? So here i am.
 No i am not dead. Is the blog coming back? honestly probably not. I dearly love survival horror but in the age of the "slender em up" where innovation has fallen to the wayside in favour of making the next youtube screamer streamer darling i find myself returning to my old classics time and again yet only viewing new releases with the low expectations of a man about to play what will be either a jump scare corridor crawler like Amnesia or an action game Masquerading as horror like Resident Evil 6 and i dont think anyone wants to see someone be a bitter old shit about how 'horror games were better back in my day' do they? because A: that would just be an exercise in being a massive asshole on my part and B: you never know when someone might make the next revitalising release in the genre, gaming trends can change like the weather after all.

 Honestly i have been considering starting a new blog to accompany The Delicious Mystery Youtube Channel for the times when i have some longwinded topic i would rather write about than vlog about, for the time being however i feel The Raccoon City times has been over for a long time, i just never added "The End" to it. So i would call this a tentative final update and retirement of the blog.
I dont even know if anyone would read this and how could i blame you? but i still felt i needed to cap this off. My time from my teens to my 20's spent in the survival horror community was a time i remember fondly. Websites like Chris' survival horror quest keep on chugging along and i keep reading them. Even if i disappeared from the respective forums long, long ago.

 So thank you. Anyone who ever read this and enjoyed it. I'm happy that in whatever small fashion i could i have entertained you and maybe sometime soon i might get the writing itch again, because my love of videogames is as strong as ever even if my genre of choice has been on the decline in terms of my own tastes in it. So no i am not dead, but i guess The Raccoon City times is.
 Expect maybe one more post to link to a new blog if it should happen and in the meantime thank you very much for reading.