Late to the Party Retrospective - The Results

We’re now on Part 3 of our retrospective on Season 1 of Late to the Party. In today’s post I thought I’d take a look back at some of the entries in the Late to the Party series that were notable for one reason or another.




Call of Duty: Ghosts
The first entry in Late to the Party proved foundational, in that the structure, pacing, and tone of this piece would be closely followed by most of the other Late to the Party commentaries. I didn’t plan out the format this first commentary ahead of time—it just sort of came together as I wrote about the game.

Halo 5: Guardians
The most significant break from the format established by Call of Duty: Ghosts was the very next entry in Late to the Party. This was the result of my disappointment with two particular parts of Halo 5, namely the story and the lack of couch co-op, and I was so dismayed by these two flaws that I dedicated the majority of the commentary to discussing them.

The Order: 1886
Screenshots made their debut in this post. Going from all text commentaries to a mix of text and images was a major change to the visual appearance of the commentaries, and also allowed the reader to see the game as I saw it, if only in single images. I would have included videos as well, but Blogger was not working the way I wanted, so their appearance would have to wait for a later commentary.

Watch Dogs
Gameplay videos made their first appearance here with a single video I embedded into the Watch Dogs commentary as a test. The solution to the video problems I was having with the earlier commentaries was to upload the videos to Youtube and then embed them into their respective posts.

Star Wars: Battlefront
This was the first of my commentaries on games I only messed around with and didn’t finish or play extensively. Keeping this commentary on the shorter side felt like the right thing to do, as I couldn’t give an strong opinion or a detailed discussion on a game I hadn’t thoroughly experienced.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
With Call of Duty games being structured around replayable missions, they are among the few games wherein I can try to choreograph gameplay clips, as I know what will happen in each mission and I can replay missions until I get the footage I want. Advanced Warfare’s commentary was the first to feature these sorts of premeditated gameplay clips.

Gone Home
The first downloadable game in Season 1 of Late to the Party was also the most notable instance of my feeling strangely guilty for not liking a game more than I did. While I did generally appreciate Gone Home, the knowledge that the game had won multiple game of the year awards back when it came out had me feeling like I was supposed to praise it more.

Batman: Arkham Knight
At over 3,000 words, this was the longest commentary of Season 1. This was a great game and I had a lot to say about it.

Driveclub
This was another short one, but it did feature the first piece of cover art that I had created myself. Most of the time I rely on a Google Image search for covert art, so it was nice to have a commentary in which all the media within it was created by me. Also, this was the first commentary whose entire media (other than the cover art) was made up of gameplay clips

Ratchet and Clank
More than any other, I think my love for a game most clearly came out in this commentary. Whether or not the reader agrees with that statement is up to them, but when I wrote this one I was in a really good mood.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Normally I want the reader to read a commentary in its entirety, but this was the one case where I suggested they stop and just play the game. The less the player knows about this game before starting, the better.

Diablo 3
The final installment of Season 1 was easily the most difficult one to write due to other circumstances going on in my life while writing it. At the same time, it was also an achievement, as I got it written and published before my self-imposed deadline. Hopefully no other commentaries will be written under similar circumstances, but now I know I can do it if necessary.