Mystery Blogger Award: A Winner is You!

Although the Mystery Blogger Award began over at Okoto Enigma’s beauty blog, the nominations recently made their way over to the gaming sector of WordPress and found its way in my neck of the woods, courtesy of The 3rd Player at 3pstart.com. They cover a lot of retro-gaming goodness and I’ve enjoyed both reading their articles and interacting with them in my own comments section. They love Final Fantasy Tactics and Shin Megami Tensei, so we’re pretty much best friends now.

As for the award itself, let’s talk about it for a hot minute.

Rules:

• Put the award logo/image on your blog. (Mine is up in the “featured image” slot)
• List the rules.
• Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.
• Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.
• You have to nominate 10 – 20 people.
• Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.
• Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny
• Share a link to your best post(s).

So, without further ado…

Three things about myself:

1. I’m probably one of the older games bloggers here on WordPress, at 36. I was born in Baltimore, MD way back in 1981, graduated high school in 1999, and just finished off my third year of college as a grown ass adult. I guess that was more than one thing, so yay freebies!
2. Video games have been a large part of my life since my parents gave me a Nintendo for Christmas in 1985. My home was pretty broken and although my parents never divorced, my mom essentially raised me by herself. As an only child with a busy parent that wanted the absolute best for me, I spent a lot of time alone playing video games. I had trust issues growing up, I was/am an introvert, and began suffering from depression around the 8th grade, so games provided the escapism I needed (and they still do). I even have two game-themed tattoos (both Zelda-related).
3. I feel stuck in the 90’s. I still love the alternative music of the era, like Harvey Danger, Toadies, and various nu-metal bands that somehow find their way onto my Spotify playlist. I still wear flannel and jeans, have a bunch of piercings in my face (three in the bottom lip, two in the right eyebrow, one in the right nostril, stretched earlobes, and one in the top of my left ear), love the SNES, PS1, and Dreamcast to death, and have a soft spot for 90’s high-school films like Can’t Hardly Wait (my high school years were full of relentless bullying, so I lived vicariously through movies).

As for nominations, I’m not sure who has been picked at this point. I follow most of the gaming bloggers here on WordPress, so if you haven’t been picked yet then this song goes out to you! You’re all pretty wonderful in my book. If you don’t feel like making a big to-do on your own blog, just answer down in the comments!

The 3rd Player’s 5 questions:

What is the most memorable scene in a video game you’ve ever played?

The ending (and its accompanied after-credits scene) of SOMA. I won’t spoil anything, but SOMA is definitely the most well-written, mind-fucking sci-fi game I’ve ever played in my life. I can watch Aeris get stabbed by Sephiroth all day, but the ending to SOMA is truly haunting.

Where would you like to visit that you’ve never been to before?

Japan. Japan and Seattle were at the top of my to-visit list and I just got back from a trip to Seattle at the end of December, so naturally, Japan is next. It’s an expensive one, so it’s definitely far off in the distance. I’d just like to go before I die, really.

What inspired you to begin blogging?

I was heavily into World of Warcraft when it first launched and well into the Mists of Pandaria expansion. I’ve played off and on since then, but I subscribed every month until that point. Raiding was my passion, particularly with my Demonology Warlock and Shadow Priest, so around The Burning Crusade expansion, I started blogging about my adventures. Casual writing turned into how-to raid guides, and when I fell out of love with WoW my writing focus shifted away from MMOs and toward the other games I was playing. WoW was really the only PC game I played. I’ve been a console heathen since the NES, so my blog went from heavily trafficked raiding guides to more casual conversations surrounding The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dragon’s Dogma, BioShock, and Dragon Age: Origins.

I’ve been here at Cheap Boss Attack since 2011, but I started blogging via WordPress in 2007 with my old WoW blog Fear.Win (a pun, since both of the classes I played revolved around casting “fear” and damage over time (DoT) spells — thus “fear, DoT, win”).

What is another hobby you take part in regularly aside from gaming?

I used to be a bookworm throughout my decade-long tenure working in call centers, but I no longer read as much as I would like to. I love fantasy, sci-fi, and horror novels, but haven’t read enough of them lately to hold an intelligent conversation about them. My favorite author is Cherie Priest, who writes an incredible steampunk horror series called The Clockwork Century. The first novel in the series, Boneshaker, is my favorite book of all time.

I tend to read graphic novels more than books these days, particularly non-capes stuff from Image. Saga, Low, Paper Girls, Outcast, ALEX + ADA, and Wytches are my current favorites to keep up on.

You can have any one superpower.  What would you have?

Invisibility.

My questions to you fine folks:

1. What is a game or game series that is universally beloved that you just can’t seem to get into, or straight up didn’t like?
2. What is a game that you have a strong adoration for that most people didn’t like?
3. What is your favorite game in your favorite game series? Least favorite in the same series?
4. What are your 5 “deserted island” games, taking into consideration you won’t have internet access?
5. Since Cheap Boss Attack is right in the name here, what is the cheapest boss you’ve ever encountered in a game?

And, finally, my best post:

According to my WordPress traffic statistics, my all-time best post is a Pawn guide I wrote for Dragon’s Dogma entitled “Building a Better Pawn -or- How Not to Suck at Being a Virtual Pimp,” with 65,468 clicks. There weren’t a lot of in-depth guides on the game’s ill-explained Pawn system, so I took it upon myself to write one after investing 300 hours across two 100% playthroughs. Seems like it paid off, since it’s still consistently at the top of my traffic list in 2018.

So thanks again to The 3rd Player for the nomination! I had fun answering questions and it’s always nice to see the WordPress gaming community expanding and interacting with one another.