Hello, and welcome to Planned All Along, a fabulous Web series where I review video games! ...Huh? It's a blog? Eh, it's gonna work anyway.
Okay, the fact is that I would have preferred to make a Web Series, one that I would have created with a big storyline. All this is much easier to do in a video, as it doesn't seem that great when it's just written. The reader doesn't get the direct feeling from the reviewer, because the reviewer is not seen reacting. But I'll have to do with that, because I don't have a camera, and while I do write pretty good stories, it's pointless to put them in a blog that does not center on literary creativity. Maybe my acting alents wouldn't have been good enough. And of course, starting a blog to review video games isn't exactly a fresh idea; I'm not the first one who doesn't have a camera and has to find a way around that problem. Then again, starting a review web series on video games isn't new either, what with the James Rolfes, Noah Antwilers, Justin Carmichaels and Chris Boreses - Okay, bad example for that last one - out there.
It's because I felt like making a video game review blog with a twist. I would review games, because that's the main purpose of a REVIEW BLOG, but here's the twist: I put a huge emphasis on the story of the game. I still go through every aspect of the game, from the controls to the difficulty level, but I put an emphasis on the story that is being unraveled before the player's eyes. Storytelling as become such an important element of modern video gaming that it's inevitable, a game with a bad story can lose a lot of points in some reviews. More and more, video game franchises become fandoms, and those fandoms attach a lot of importance to the canon (term referring to all the elements that compose the franchise's story). The canon is mostly created by the stories of all the games put together, plus the additional non-video game works that tie in with the video game series. A story has to be created carefully to avoid plot holes, and it must accomodate to what the fans know and love of the franchise it's coming from. As a result, a story is planned early in the game's development and then the game is put together around that story. That's why the story is "planned all along", and that's why I named my review show - er, blog - "Planned All Along". For bonus points, it becomes PAA when abbreviated.
For a moment, I thought about calling it "Plotted All Along", because it would have been a funny title, and it would have served the same purpose (as a story can also be called a plot. Duh!). In the comments, tell me if you prefer Plotted All Along or Planned All Along.
Now, what will I review in particular?
I'm a Nintendo Nerd. All the consoles I've ever owned were Nintendo consoles: The NES, the Super NES, the Game Boy Advance SP, the Nintendo DS, and a year and a half ago, I got a Wii. However, I sold most of my NES and SNES games. I still have my Game Boy Advance games, but I hardly play them. I still have all my DS games, but again, I don't play them much anymore. That doesn't mean I won't review any of them in the future. However, the Wii takes the biggest part of my gaming life, with nearly 20 Wii games and a little over 10 games bought on the Virtual Console and Wiiware.
Guess that covers it for the first blog post. Thank you for reading, and come back for the next episod- er, message on Planned All Along!
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