For all my life, I’ve been a hardcore gamer. Starting my way up from the Sega Genesis and with my first games including Road Rash II, Samurai Shodown, and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, I’ve always held a special place in my heart for video games.

Until recently.

For some odd, un-asked for, and to some, un-godly reason, I just have a hard time getting psyched for a video game these days. And that’s not the sum of it. Even while I’m playing video games, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out on doing something productive, or my attention span can’t be held for very long before I feel like shutting off the system.

But, possibly, as my good friend Garrett Schmahl noted, this all just makes me a better reviewer. Perhaps my new personality towards video games is a gift.

With my extensive knowledge of the production behind video games and their inter-mechanics, the illusion just doesn’t hold over me anymore. Instead of thinking about, “Wow, cool, I can’t believe that just happened!”, I instead think, “So they must have flipped a switch here to make that enemy run across the screen, then shut it off to make it disappear again.” For the record, the most observations (like that) I ever made went to Gears of War.

This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy video games, nor does it mean I feel the entire gaming culture is stupid. Hell, if I thought that, I wouldn’t be tending to a gaming blog, now would I? Instead, I feel as though I like to live by the way Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw views video games: “It’s crap unless it proves itself otherwise.”

For the record, again, I didn’t enjoy Grand Theft Auto IV very much, but absolutely loved Saints Row. Take that as you will.

I do still hold a genuine interest in one genre however: RTS games. And Civilization IV. Any game that allows me to be a conqueror or a general, I’m absolutely in love with.

So, now that I’ve said that, I would like to release my game plan for how Tin Foil Hat is going to run. In the past, I’d write news articles about video game news, but with no solid connection to the gaming industry (meaning other publications would always get to the news first), I’ve decided to stop that. This is my blog (blog, n.: an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page) after all. The blog was always meant to be about my thoughts on video game news, not about me writing articles on video games.

And that’s what I’ll be doing.

If you enjoy my opinions, reviews, previews, and editorials, I’m sure there’s not going to be much of a difference to my current scheme of things. It’s just, for my articles, I’ll be including less news and more of my opinion. If you don’t know what the news I’m talking about is, I’ll always provide a link to the article of which I’m discussing about.

I’m not going to lay out any definite schedule (yet) as to when I’ll be writing reviews or editorials, but I do know I will be guest-writing every Friday for the upcoming gaming blog GamesPortrait. Over there, I’ll be writing a humorous outlook on a certain gaming subject, a fancy editorial, or maybe a review. Basically what I’ll be doing here everyday (it’ll just be over there). Don’t worry, links will be provided.

Hope you like what I’ve got to give. I’m putting my all into my blog now (I’ve got my groove back!) and I hope to hear your opinions and suggestions in the Comments section below.

Note 1: Also, I’ll be linking any game/developer/company names to Giant Bomb, for those readers that want more information pertaining to what I’m talking about.

Note 2: For clariffication and to avoid a public whipping, I enjoyed the story and characters contained in Grand Theft Auto IV, but I enjoy comedic goofiness over solid realism any day.

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