We're Back! Now Here's A Warning!

So, things have been quieter than usual you might have noticed. Even with the usual ongoing problems, there has been a sudden dip in output, with few to no articles being released. There are two very simple reasons for that:

As things have gotten back to relative normality - even if it is a frequently disrupted and delayed normality - I was hoping to get back to a bi-daily release of articles. In order to kick-start this, the end of September and early October were to be a mixture of various video game releases which had clustered together. These were to be a variety of genres, but largely a few specific ones I had kept an eye on until late. This led to several day's worth of delays, until most reviews were almost done and they were ready to be posted.

And then Microsoft happened.

Windows 10 is not exactly loved by most people. Actually, it's largely hated for a lot of its less user friendly additions, such as the frequent removal of restore points and the multitude of mega-patches we keep getting. Well, this was one such patch that I got earlier than planned. You can read the full details here, but suffice to say it's a poor addition. Now, while I am not the most tech savvy man on the planet, I do know how to look after a machine. The hard drive had plenty of space left on it, it was frequently defragged, cleaned up and its interior dusted. It was a perfectly serviceable machine. Then this thing hits.

Suddenly the download takes the better part of twelve hours to fulfil, the PC repeatedly black screens, and the few times I do get through to the desktop it brings up a dozen error messages. One of which kept claiming it couldn't find the C drive. So, for the next two days I went about doing everything possible to fix this, and then pinned down the problem to a multitude of errors the patch had created (notably 0x80070003). The problem was that, as it was constantly freezing and pausing mid action, and the desktop itself was a black doom void which would not respond to any command, I could not use the repair tools needed for it. After several failed attempts to restore the machine to previous points, I was forced to effectively perform a factory reset.

The good news is that a fair few documents being worked on were held on a cloud drive, along with a multitude of important bits of information relating to reviews. The bad news was that this wiped out the saves for every game, each right near the end, and several documents close to completion. Oh, and every program I use on a daily basis. So, several weeks of work went right down the drain, because of Microsoft's tendency to be bastards.

We'll be going back to these games soon - and commenting on a few ongoing events - but a few might be shorter than usual in order to speed things up. So, we're back in business, but that business might be a bit shorter than usual until the backlog is dealt with.