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| A Five-year-old Journey. |
Hello and welcome everyone. This month marks the fifth anniversary of AcidGameReviews and I'm celebrating the occasion in the form of a retrospective! I'm not really good with this kind of stuff, but wow, I honestly didn't see myself reviewing and talking about games for five years. It all began with my first-ever review of The Metal Gear Solid: Legacy Collection all the way back on August 5th, 2013!
Believe it or not, the reason I started AcidGameReviews was in hopes of becoming an actual video-game reviewer for sites like IGN, Gamespot, and so on. It sounds pretty dumb now considering the state of games journalism today, but back then I found it as a great way to gain some experience. It was also an exciting time as besides playing games, I got to talk about them as well. The main driving force behind AGR was my love of gaming. I went into detail about this in the "About Me" post but in a nutshell, I knew I had a love for playing video-games ever since I was a kid and reviewing them was tons of fun over the years.
Challenges
I'll also admit that I faced tons of challenges when managing AGR. If you recall back in 2014, I was pumping out tons of content every month that year and it was a time where I was the most active. Looking back, I personally didn't like much of what I reviewed as I was focusing more on quantity than quality. I thought at one point that I would re-do everything, but I soon realized that would've been a dawning task. Eventually, I came to take it as a learning experience. I focused on the areas that needed improvements and over time I managed to evolve for the better. There were times where I was so burnt-out from playing and reviewing games altogether. It reached a point where I was considering closing down the site from sheer exhaustion. A stupid move looking back, as I now take breaks whenever needed to avoid the tedium.
While I do enjoy covering games, it's a hobby that sadly gets taken to the side as I'm often being occupied by my daily life, hence the often month-long "breaks". It's not intentional as most of my time mainly is dedicated to my college studies and social life, so a huge apology is due if there's little to no activity over the past months. I really love talking about games and playing them, but one thing I learned over the past years is that having a healthy social life is key to living better.
Flaws
Obviously, nobody's perfect and I'm no different. My biggest struggle over the years was trying to deliver an objective assessment of a game, free of bias. Unfortunately, I get too attached to the games I'm playing that sometimes I tend to forget some its flaws. It's a huge flaw to have as a reviewer but thankfully I've been more careful over the past months in my reviews by taking down notes of what I didn't like about a game and how to improve it, so I guess that's a good start.
Proud works
I've had a lot of proud works but my proudest one dates back to the beginning of the site's inception with my first review of The Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection. It was special for me because I am a huge fan of the Metal Gear series and it was my first-ever review I published. It may look a bit stilted today, but shows how far I've come in recent years. Another one was last year's retrospective of Final Fantasy VII. Not only it was one of my favorite games of all-time but it was the most time-consuming piece of content I've ever worked on, taking me over a month to play the game, write down notes, research, and compile everything into a single work. It wasn't too much of a hassle as I really love talking about old games and doing retrospectives, even if they consume tons of time.
Future
To be honest, I don't know whats in store for me in the future, but I hope its something good. Looking back, I feel that this is less of a retrospective and more of a self-reflection of what I learned over the past years reviewing games. Honestly, I didn't even think I would last this long considering all the times I felt burnt-out and stressed in life. I still consider myself a small site with a limited following but it's always been my dream to make it big sometime, so that's what I'm excited for the most in the future. I'm sorry for long waits and frequent breaks without any new content or updates, I hope you can understand that life is often intrusive and complicated. Still, amidst that, I'm always doing my best in developing my skills as a video-game reviewer and to provide you some neat content. Thank you for the support and here's to another 5 years!
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