Monthly Link Round-up (February 2012)

Wait, it's March 7th already? How time flies when your school is in the middle of a vicious strike vote, and your home city is descending into complete and utter anarchy. But hey, might as well make the best of things. With links to reviews I've done off site and news about what kind of changes are coming to Backlog Journey.

• I was a bit busy this month on New Gamer Nation. I started with a review of Unstoppable Gorg, which was a neat tower defence with a brilliant Plan 9 From Outer Space aesthetic,complete with home made cutscenes. Then I took a bloody detour into Shank 2, which was a decent game that improved on the original mechanically, but diminished in features. After that I popped in to check out Crusader Kings II, the latest Grand Strategy release for Paradox. It's a good start for beginners, and my personal favourite out of all the Europas and Victorias. Next was Pineapple Smash Crew, a good looking but shallow retro game, followed by intriguing space sim Evochron Mercenary and finally a review of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action, which is not really all that much like Jagged Alliance, but I still found it a lot of fun.
• In other off site news, I'm talking with some of the people at Aged Gamer to apply and begin contributing a weekly column on my favourite nerdy genre ever: old computer RPGs. This would extend to reviews, but also stuff like mod guides, retrospectives, deeper analysis, editorials and other fun stuff. Sort of like what I want to do on Backlog Journey, but very narrowly focused on one genre to keep things from being too cluttered here. Wish me luck!
• As for the site redesign coming up, I'm hoping to get working on it full time while school is on hold for pension fights. It won't look too much different; the plan is to just clean up the side bar, adjust the widths, fix the mobile site, change how images are handled and pretty things up a bit. The bigger changes are going to be editorial as in I'm trying to make things a little more loose. Instead of fixating myself on my current obsession with beating games, I'm going to start doing all kinds of stuff to keep up a higher rate of new and interesting posts. 
• If you're only here for the bundle reviews (and I know many of you are), I've got your back. Those will keep happening, including reviews of Bundle in a Box, Indie Face Kick, the St. Patrick's Day Indie Royale and whatever else releases in the mean time.
• There's lots of other cool things I want to add to the site (better comments system, streaming, gameplay videos, podcast maybe?), but right now it's a bit out of my price range to go for. I may wind up applying for Google Ads in the near future. I don't like intrusive obnoxious ads, but some low key text ads would really help. And, of course, any money would be poured right back into the site. So it's not all bad.
• It's a bit of a posting lull right now, but once I fully get this prep work stuff out of the way, we'll get right back to the backlog blogging you know and love. Keep checking up on the various pages scattered around Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus for the latest updates from me.