Level 3

Two days short of two years ago, Avert Your Eyes started off with the same vague ramblings that most sites like this do. I'd never planned on updating with any amount of frequency. In fact, I'll let you all in on a little secret - the only reason AYE updates on Thursdays is that, after a few weeks, I realized all my posts had been on Thursdays and decided it was a fine enough day to update. This week we're taking a look back at the past year, which henceforth shall be known as "The Year With Many Missed Updates".

I ended up writing about the Darwinia demo a mere two weeks after voicing my concerns about Steam. Strange, that - as less than a year later, Darwinia is being distributed through that vile service. That said, it's still great to see such an amazing game finally get some of the spotlight time it deserves. Hopefully it'll get some attention in the independents portion the next time I "cover" the GDC.

I suppose 2005 was a year for firsts as, at the very least, it saw me try my hand at "playing" a creepy visual novel. Another first? Me not liking a space-based game. Another? The complete awesomeness of the Spore video. The year also saw the first time I actually received a rebuttal of sorts from a disgruntled team member. By the way, sorry to say it Nexuiz folks, but your game hasn't gotten any better. I'll be over here playing Warsow while you're working on it. Last, but not least, you can't mention firsts without mentioning NERO.

Before I wrap this up, I'm going to give credit where credit is due and mention some of my favorite games that saw their first releases during AYE's last "season". Some of them I've already mentioned above, such as Darwinia and NERO. Other favorites of mine include Glest, GalaxyMage, and a handful of abstract shooters that finally made their way over to Linux.

Thanks to everybody who's stuck around and kept reading the site through all the missed posts, I'm going to try to make that happen less during the next "season". Although I did complain a little bit, it's been a great 12 months for the scene - let's hope it keeps up the momentum.