Tag Archives: goals

Personal Goals – Couch to 5k

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This is a sort of follow on of my post from 2019, Personal Goals and Single-Use Plastic. Looking back at that one, I have continued to build on my use of sustainable products and could probably do a new post about those. Also considering the things I talked about wanting to do in the future, I have achieved some of those too. Not least in finally building myself an arcade machine as a substantial hardware project.

As I wrote about in that previous blog, I still set myself goals every year, and have a reasonable success rate. They are personal though and not all ones I’d choose to share. For 2021 though, I decided to do something meaningful about those vague health ones. I decided to try the Couch to 5k programme. This got a particular boost when I realised that if I used the NHS provided app, I could choose to have Jo Whiley as my running buddy.

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I originally started back in January, unfortunately I was only 4 runs in when I got sick with Labyrinthitis. After that it was a long time before I was even comfortable walking about again. I picked it back up in May, but I went almost back to the beginning and restarted with the second run in the programme.

The programme itself is fairly straight-forward. Running 3 times a week for 9 weeks, building on your progress. The first week is a series of 1 minute runs with 3 minute walking breaks. By the last week you’re running for a solid 30 minutes covering approximately 5k

Today saw me complete the programme, and I am pretty proud of that.

I still don’t actually like running, but I do like how I feel afterwards. I shall continue, aiming to just maintain running for 30 minutes 3 times a week.

2018 in Games

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As I did this at the start of 2017, I thought I’d do a similar post for 2018. I’ll take a quick look back at 2017, followed by 10 games I’d like to play during 2018 (a mixture of old ones from the Backlog and some newer releases), and then end with a list of games announced for 2018 that I’m looking forward to (or at least interested in).

2017 Round-up

I am delighted with how much gaming progress I made in 2017, managing to complete 36 games. These included 6 of the 9 I originally planned to play for the year. Of those that I didn’t finish:

  1. Gears of War 4 – Xbox One
    I’ve carried this one forward to play in 2018. Simply because I’ll be playing it with my buddy in co-op, and we’ve got a play through of Halo 2 on the go that we need to finish first!
  2. Riven – PC
    I did mention this on the blog, but I had some absolute nightmares trying to get this to run without frequent crashes, and ultimately gave up. I did play through RealMYST during 2017 though, and I’ve put Myst 3 onto my list for 2018.
  3. Banjo-Tooie – Xbox One Rare Replay (N64)
    I retired this in the end because I just wasn’t enjoying it. I still believe Banjo Kazooie is a great game, but the sequel, not so much.

I have found the website “How Long to Beat” to be very helpful in focusing on what I want to play, and used it through the year to keep track of my progress. My Profile is here and I like how it shows what I’m currently playing, what I’ve completed already, and my custom tab is set to show the 2018 goal list that I’ll breakdown below.

10 Games I hope to play during 2018

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  1. Gears of War 4 – Xbox One (rolled over from 2017)

    As above, this is my one carry over from last year’s list, and is next in line once my buddy and I finish Halo 2.

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  2. StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void – PC

    I really enjoyed playing through Heart of the Swarm last year, and have been meaning to get round to this for a while. I think if I do beat this one, I might pick up the remaster of the original StarCraft to play.

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  3. Skies of Arcadia Legends – Game Cube / Wii

    As I mentioned in my Japanese RPG post last year, this is one I’ve always fancied. Putting it on this list means I will most likely get round to giving it a go! (Won’t be ruling out giving up before the end though, we’ll see)

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  4. Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy – PS4

    I think this is the third time I’ve bought this game, and still never played it. 2018 will be the year!

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  5. Super Metroid – SNES / Wii

    A testament to how much I’ve been enjoying Axiom Verge, I intend to finally give this game a proper go. Although I do still need to finish off Axiom Verge first…

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  6. Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus – PS4

    Wolfenstein: The New Order was one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve played in a long time, and have been looking forward to this sequel for a while. Fortunately a copy turned up for Christmas this year, so I’ve got this on the ready-to-play pile.

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  7. Myst 3: Exile – PC

    Working my way through all the Myst games has always been on the agenda, but got derailed last year thanks to the difficulties I had getting Riven to work properly. Hopefully as I play more the modern releases, I’ll leave those issues behind me, and I’ll be able to play Myst 3 without issue.

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  8. Broken Sword 5: The Serpents Curse – Vita

    I loved the first two Broken Sword games, but haven’t played any since. Middling reviews of 3 and 4 meant they largely passed me by, but I have heard good things about number 5. The Vita version was free with PS Plus recently, and feels like a good way to play it.

     

  9. The Last Express – PC

    A classic adventure game I’ve heard great things about but never got round to playing. I grabbed it on Steam a while back, and am looking forward to giving it a go. It’s also set on a train, which is a nice bonus.

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  10. Quantum Break – Xbox One

    This seems to have received mixed reviews, but I am intrigued enough by the premise to be looking forward to seeing for myself. As with Wolfenstein 2 above, I also received this for Christmas so we’re good to go.

Releases I’m looking forward to…

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  1. The Inpatient – PSVR

    This new horror game from Supermassive Games really has me interested. It’s another VR title set in the Until Dawn universe. I have really enjoyed the first two Until Dawn games, and Rush of Blood is one of the best games I’ve played in VR. I’m very keen to see what they do with this one.

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  2. Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition – PS4

    Although I think this is getting a new retail release, it’s a bit of a cheat me putting this on here since I think I’ll be getting the main ‘Arcade Edition’ content as a free patch for my original retail copy. (It’s possible the retail one might include DLC characters that I won’t get, but I literally only use Ken anyway…) I’m mostly interested to see if this patch finally redeems the utter shambles of the original release or not.

     

  3. Vampyr – PS4

    I don’t really know much about this, other than it’s from the people who created Life is Strange, one of the best games I played last year. That game was so good that I was always going to be interested in whatever they did next.

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  4. Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – PS4

    Still plenty of time for Capcom to stuff this right up, but on paper it currently looks amazing. A collection of twelve 2D Street Fighter games from the original side scroller up to Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Online play is being included for Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. If they avoid any major blunders, I anticipate getting a lot of hours out of this one!

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  5. Wolf Among Us Season 2 – Xbox One

    The original game is still one of the best Telltale Games, and I’m eager for more story in the Fables universe. They really, really, really need to give the engine an overhaul/replacement though.

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  6. Metro Exodus – PS4

    A bit cautious about this one. Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light are both outstanding (as evidenced by their appearance in my Top 5 Horror Games list). However, as I mentioned on that previous post, Exodus seems to be moving towards that bane of modern gaming (no not loot boxes, the other one), an open world environment. I’m hoping I’ll be proven wrong, but a big part of what made the first two games so good was their focused gameplay and claustrophobic environments.