Christmas 2011 Update: The Year in Retrospect, Skyward Sword Review and What's to Come Next Year!

And so, after eleven months of highs and lows, the festive season is finally upon us. December, for those who didn't know for whatever rather odd reason, has been and will continue to be the last month of the year ever since the English calendar system was first introduced, and the last month a new year can only mean one thing: a Christmas-related update on this blog. Today, I'll be informing you of what's to come both before the year ends and when 2012 starts, as well as chucking in some dedications in the process. It's been quite a year for gaming, I must say. And by that I mean not a particularly good one, at least for the first three quarters of the year. The 3DS launch was an absolute shambles, with the best games on the system being either ports or remakes of older games for quite some time. Low sales caused a price drop, and while the 3DS has seen a dramatic increase in units sold since the release of titles including Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 (a 400% increase, to be exact) there's no denying that the amount of truly stellar games on the system before the final quarter of the year was slightly booing. This can be said for other platforms as well. The DS, as I've said previously in my review of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, has entered it's days of decline this year, with the most recent and possibly last stellar release being the fourth Professor Layton game. The Wii has seen a few brilliant releases earlier in the year, such as the apparently amazing Xenoblade Chronicles, but again the amount of more than decent titles released before November hit has been few and far between in comparison to previous years. As for other platforms, their quantity of stellar releases has been truly lacking also, with the first truly stellar release of the year here in the UK being Batman: Arkham City, which was luckily followed by a number of other great additions to the PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms as the fourth quarter begun. It's not just lack of games released that made this such a poor year for games, as this year's E3 was pretty awful too. Poor conferences on all three main publishers' part made for one of the worst E3 shows in years, dare I say it even worse than 2009's failed collection of poorly thought out conferences.

Mario Kart 7 is one of the many stellar titles released following up to Christmas. I'm hoping to get my copy in on a certain special day!

It's slightly annoying then, that publishers have finally decided to release all of their games following up to Christmas this year. There has always been a big gaming rush before the year's end for a long time, but never quite on this scale. Because of this, I've decided to compile a short list of my recommendations  of games released this year on Nintendo platforms, a number of which I've added to my Christmas wish list. Expect the likes of Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, and Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call among a number of other stellar titles released this year. What I'm also hoping to have posted before the 25th of this oh-so joyous month is another review, one of a not-so festive game. While Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is a 3DS game based around the core concept of slaughtering baddies in order to build up a combo while fighting off a depleting time limit (totally Christmassy, right?) it's still a title I've hyped up a lot since its announcement last year, and one I haven't really unleashed my opinion of since actually playing through the game. And you can trust me in saying that there's a good reason for this. It'll also be nice to have another 3DS Review posted after a ridiculously long time since my debut one of a certain street fighting launch title, no?

Skyward Sword sure has come a long way since this piece of concept art was first revealed over two years ago, eh? You'll discover my definitive opinion of the finished game very soon!

Also featured in the upcoming reviews machine that I refer to as my brain is what is without a doubt the biggest title I'll ever have the courage to write about thus far. In the event that you're colourblind, you won't be able to read that this review will be of a certain game in the long-running Legend of Zelda series, namely the absolutely incredible Skyward Sword for Wii. You can't expect the review to be up this month, but as a celebratory way to start up another year of writing on this blog I'm hoping for this massive review to become one of the first things I post in the big year that is 2012. Also coming in the new year is my inevitable Top 10 Most Anticipated Games of 2012 feature, marking the third edition of my ramblings about games I'm looking forward to in the next 12 months. Next year is set to be a much bigger year for gaming than the positively dire 2011, what with the poor first three quarters of the year and the frustratingly low E3 conferences we've seen in the last 12 sets of thirty-or-so days. Finally, the last of the posts I have planned for the coming months is a rather large one. For the first time ever in the history of my blog's many ramblings, I'll be discussing the heavy,  controversial topic of my Top 10 Personal Favourite Games of All Time, which will feature multiplatform titles old and new. I personally reckon this would be a great way to start the blog's third year running with a bang, and hopefully it'll spawn some comments or something. We'll see.

And now to close off this rambly Christmas-related update with a dedication. Many moons ago, soon after the big re-design of my blog that still feels like only yesterday at the time of writing this post, I mentioned a rather cool guy called Conorr and his blog. Very similar to mine, he posted a number of great pieces that unfortunately didn't receive quite as much attention as they should have. Conorr has recently started up a brand-spanking new blog under his name, which you can check out right here. You can trust me in saying that the raw journalistic talent of this guy is well and truly superior to mine, if you take a look at the drivel I came out with during my blog's first year. So, in short, give Conorr's new blog the attention it deserves and maybe it'll take off this time. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I'm going to have to conclude this post. Have a very merry, particularly festive holiday and here's to a truly mesmerising new year!