The months of October and November are incredibly busy for the game industry. They are the two month window where every developer and publisher rushes to get their latest and greatest out in time for the holidays. That is assuming they didn't delay the game until February of the following year for whatever reason.

As a result, it's also one of the busiest times for media outlets such as Total Gaming Network. It's perhaps even worse for us given that I am just one person trying to do everything and failing miserably at it. I can either spend my week working only on reviews and thus neglect posting any news here. I could spend my week working only on news and thus neglect working on reviews. I could try to find the time to do both but both areas suffer. I could try to strike a balance between news, reviews, and trying to get some Let's Play videos out. I could just say screw it and instead have fun and not do either news or reviews here.

Reviews are honestly quite a bit of work. I must play and at least try to beat the game I'm reviewing. I must remember aspects of the game that I liked and disliked. I must take screenshots appropriate for the review. I must then write the review and assign a score to it that I feel is appropriate. I must then self-edit those reviews and look for any glaring issues that show up, specifically when it comes to spelling, grammar, and just making sure everything makes sense structurally. Video reviews and let's play videos are on a whole added level of work, including recording video, editing it, recording audio narration, encoding, uploading, etc.

When I have obligations to publishers to do a review, those take precedence over other reviews. I believe the last title I actually had an obligation to review was Alien: Isolation. Everything since then was simply done on my own time in order to get some sort of new and original content out there. However, with the new releases still coming, this Tuesday (November 18) is arguably the biggest release day thus far and as such I just can't keep up without becoming completely burnt out.

I wanted to do reviews for games like Lords of the Fallen and Assassin's Creed Unity but they are fairly substantial games. Rushing through them just to get a review out does not benefit anybody. It doesn't benefit me because there may be something important that I gloss over or miss. It doesn't benefit you because it's not exactly an honest representation of the game. Let's face it, when you have to rush through something, your feelings towards that project are going to be more negative than if you took your time with it and did it at your leisure.

I just don't have the time for everything. There are times where I just want to relax and not worry about being critical about a game. I just want to enjoy it and have some mindless fun every once in a while.

And that's why there's no reviews for those (and other) games right now. I did a short review for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare because I had a little bit of free time, the game was short enough that I could play through it at my own pace within a week and still get a review done in a timely fashion. Besides, it's become tradition that I review the new Call of Duty game every year, right?

I will say this though, I did enjoy the time I had spent with Lords of the Fallen. It certainly was not without issues but they have patched the game at least twice since I last played. It gave me a bit of a Dark Souls Lite vibe when I played it. A preliminary score would probably put it around a 3/5 area, but again, I haven't played it since they've patched it.

Assassin's Creed Unity? Well that one I'm still playing for now, at least until Tuesday when I try out games like Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition. The game started out easily sitting at a 2/5 for a score but the more I play it, the more I'm actually enjoying it in spite of all of the glitches bugs and general jank. If I were to score it now, it would probably be a 3/5 but by all accounts I've barely scratched the surface of the game even after a few hours with it.

I honestly feel as though many outlets have scored Unity a bit higher than it has any right to be scored given its present state, however.

Right now, I don't know which new releases I'll have reviews for. There are a couple that I have requests in for but nothing is guaranteed right now. I will simply play everything by ear and if a review is in the cards, you'll see the end result. Perhaps I'll simply do some more "short" reviews and just do a section with the positives, negatives, and a final score without the added top "review" part of the review. I get the feeling that many people don't read the bulk of reviews that are released here or at other outlets and instead go right for the final score and the bullet points if the outlet includes such a section in their game reviews.