Quarter of a Century

I'd say longevity assumed, I'd be 1/4 through my life, but that can never be known so I'm going to forego all the "you're this much done your life" talk and just celebrate the fact that I have my pointy nails embedded into life for another year. Horray for solar rotations. 

I never posted any LP updates yesterday. Summer LPs will be ramping up soon. I'm excited. I've been posting Dishonored gradually over the last month. Those videos will continue as I prepare to play and record Half Life Episode 1 (already started), the last 2-4 hours of Brigmore Witches (I'm sorry, there's been so much to do lately...but we aren't even close to that yet in the LP so meh), Dark Souls (oh boy), Bioshock 1 and Unreal Tournament 3 co-op. 

Red-eye Retro episodes will go up on an occasional basis. I have tons of videos prepared for it thanks to WC2. I also plan to delve into Spelunker (pun intended), more Space Taxi, Commander Keen 4 and finish the Orc campaign in WC2 (which is a raging, hilarious, tired mess...like I have no idea how I managed to complete this one level). I may not be able to sleep sometimes, but hey, at least we all get silliness and nostalgia out of it.

One other random request concerned Skyrim. I've always been reluctant to play these games because they are so open-ended. If I do any long-term projects (ie not just silly clips) with Skyrim, I shall do the two DLC with the current character I have. I may need verify the cache on that game or something as I swear the number of broken objects and textures has exponentially increased. 

Ah crap I meant to bring the Doge card I got to work. Monday I guess. 

Soundtrack Thursday 20

I've done quite a lot of these now, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that enjoys them. I've collected a lot of good soundtrack music through this.

Might as well start with Watch Dogs as it came out a few days ago. Naturally, the soundtrack is already uploaded. My initial impressions of the game are below. The soundtrack is good. Reminds me a lot of  inFamous Second Son elements in some places.

Next up is Mirror's Edge. Never played the game, but after the soundtrack...I kind of want to. Nice background working music.

inFamous 1 and 2 in the same compilation for the next section. Clocking in at two hours, this should get me to the end of my work day.

So Watch Dogs. I have the PS4 version. It does not feel like a PS4 game. I wasn't super hyped about the game to be honest. My brother on the other hand, was excited, especially when he heard that people from Driver San Francisco were going to be working on the project. He's camping right now with his phys ed class. He might be a little disappointed when he gets back. I played some Watch Dogs last night, and while I've never played Driver SF before (it's on the list because Michael keeps nagging me to play), I doubt the cars in there drove like spazzy boats. I am terrible at driving in video games, and it looks like Watch Dogs will be A LOT of that.

Let's talk about my initial impressions. It's...not as good of a game as they were marketing. I played maybe about an hour of it, and while I started warming up to the controls and interface, I found a lot of elements confusing. They throw a lot of different controls and game mechanics in there. First off, I think it's got too much going on. You have: driving (ugh), third-person shooter elements (which I haven't encountered much of), tons of minigames that you can find and try (that I haven't tried), a side-quest element (a lot like AC where you can intervene in crimes and save people or follow people to get info), a perk element (which is actually laid out quite well), a crafting element (which...I'm a little unsure of), MORE MINIGAMES (which are actually essential to the game's missions such as following a trail of cameras and phones to open doors or get codes), freerunning (which results in some very silly glitches), and probably a lot more that I haven't encountered yet. It's like GTA meets Assassin's Creed meets Last of Us.

Now the game has positives. The perk system is neat, the premise and idea behind the game is brilliant, the traffic lights element (though incredibly broken and I'll elaborate on that) is hilarious, the dialogue is passable (neat that people are having actual conversations on benches etc.), the writing is cliché, but passable, the characters are interesting (though sometimes cliché and act...strange) and the voice acting is fine so far. Then the game has more negatives. The driving element is so bad. I don't know if I'm alone on this, I haven't read many reviews yet, but it's awful. The steering is the issue, and the AI is the issue. At some points they'll all be stopped at an intersection, and every direction has a red light, and the lights will never change (or at least I'm not patient enough to wait). Then if you hack the lights and make them all green, every person at that light will go ball to the walls stomping on the gas and careen into each other. No attempts to evade, just chaos. The cars you drive sway at the slightest touch. The only plus is that the acceleration and braking is realistic and responsive. The AI drivers are pretty terrible too, where they'll just run into random objects for no reason (and then the objects will bounce around like rubber). I spent an entire car chase giggling my face off because I hit nearly every single object on my path and things were bouncing all over the place. This was not on purpose. I can't go anywhere without causing millions of dollars of property damage. Then the god damned flower pots are immovable, indestructible objects. Why?

The graphics do not look next gen. One of the very first scenes you see is a shot of the city, and the buildings were low res, flat objects IN THE FOREGROUND. Two of the main buildings at least were blurry messes. Character models and textures were fine so far (despite the random jittering animations, but that's another issue). I just love that while watching the opening cinematic and these shots all I could think of was "wow, this looks like shit." The graphics are okay generally, but they look like PS3 or even PS2 graphics in a lot of cases. There are also seams everywhere. Huge, glaring, white seams. That and the running animations are taken right out of Assassin's Creed. A little bit lazy there guys.

Interface is a mixed bag. I mentioned the perks are interesting. I got the car stealing and driving ones right off the bat. I also anticipate combat will be a pain in the ass, so I got lower recoil initially. There are so many buttons to remember immediately. It crash-courses you through all the controls at the beginning in the first mission, but by the time I got to driving I forgot half of them. I'm at the point where I can't figure out how to put my gun away, so I'm just running around freaking people out. Or not. People are kind of oblivious sometimes. What really got me was that there were wheels inside wheels for selecting different devices, but then I couldn't figure out what was needed for crafting and what I COULD craft. I'm an hour in and super confused, and usually I pick up on game mechanics fairly quick, even if I am bad at implementing them. Not only that, you'll get a mission to do something like chase and take down a car. I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to run the car off the road or hack something or shoot at them, so I just tried ramming into it and steering in front of it hopefully trying to stop them. If there was instruction on that, I either missed it or it wasn't there, and no mission details are repeated once you start them unless there's some way to access that through your phone...

I talked with Oliver this morning and he said other problems like impossible train tracks, inconsistencies with settings (sleazy biker bars with pretty flowers and friendly waving people outside) and reflections were all messed up. There are other bugs present as well. For instance, after a car chase and I FINALLY broke the dude's car, he jumped out and we played a game of hurdle jumping in a tunnel over barriers. I tried to jump one barrier and locked onto the dude for a take down instead. He was about 2-3 metres away from me. So I'm just swinging in the air and he's getting beaten up THROUGH THE POWER OF MY MIND. Then half his body fell into the barrier.

I will continue to play as I am interested in the characters enough and the game functions well enough to get used to. The game has an obvious lack of testing and tons of logic errors. Too many people working on too many elements without communication is my guess for what happened. That and I assume a good chunk of that massive budget got stuck into marketing instead of testing, graphics upgrades and making unique animations and elements rather than ripping them from other games. A lot of people were hyped, a lot of people bought the game, and I can see why people are upset. This is...pretty much par for the course on a lot of games lately.

GOOD MORNING -Soundtrack Thursday 19

Though really it might as well be good afternoon by the time I post this. It's Hans Zimmer week this week. Thankfully he's got a lot of tracks I can go through, though I'm going to be heading into the more obscure stuff fairly soon.

First up is The Rock. There is no compilation for this movie that I can find on YouTube, so here is a short playlist. I really enjoy the music from this movie, but I doubt I'll ever actually watch it as it's directed by Michael Bay, and I really do not like him. You can definitely tell that the tracks are Hans Zimmer though. There's a lot of PotC elements in there that I can detect.

Crimson Tide - Never even heard of it, but apparently music was composed by Hans Zimmer in it. I can definitely hear it. There's a lot of style overlap in his work that I previously hadn't noticed.

Inception - Because we were bound to listen to it sooner or later. Actually not a bad soundtrack. The movie was a little "meh" but by no means was it bad. This compilation in particular was a little frustrating as there were long periods of no sound (like minutes worth of silence). I'd recommend one of the shorter compilations instead, or individual tracks.

I got sick of the compilation quality so I'm moving right along to Mission Impossible 2.

Update on the car (though it really means nothing to any of you): the axle is broken which means....it's a write-off! OH BOY. Yeah it would cost too much to fix it so...probably going to sell it for parts and go from there.

Red-eye Retro Pilot

Surprise.

I am trying out a new series. I don't have enough space to really give a good intro to it in the description of the video (since I'm not sure how many people actually read the descriptions based on the amount of questions I get which would have been answered if the asker took the time to read it) so I will summarize here.

My idea for this series was to be a collection of my late-night retro gaming. It started when I was having trouble sleeping a few weeks ago and I began recording Space Taxi. I will probably post these very shortly if people are somewhat interested in seeing my tired brain try to tackle Retro games. I decided to make a series out of it when I got Warcraft 2 to work on DOSbox (hence the need for obs and the reason why the cinematics include little snippets of my desktop...and I couldn't edit them out without drastically affecting the video quality, so I let it be).

Anyhow, if you like Retro games, hearing me say silly things (like one mission of WC2 I actually end up falling partially asleep and have no memory of about 5 minutes of gameplay despite the fact that I was playing and talking the entire time), and seeing me get incredibly irate (not angry though...too tired for real anger), then this series is for you! If not, well I'm sure you'll get enjoyment out of trolling me incessantly on YouTube for it. At least you're welcome to try. I always enjoy a giggle.

EDIT: I will take requests for Retro games you want to see me try/play. Otherwise, I will just play whatever I feel like at the time. Cut off date will be 1998, though I will probably focus on dates before then.

Dungeon Siege Forever

YouTube has a relatively new feature where I can look to see which of my playlists are getting the most views. It's kind of an interesting analytic to look at as I can see what videos are the most interesting for people visiting my channel (or videos overall). I've been diving into a lot of analytics at work for various communities, so I guess I got the bug or something. I've always loved numbers, even if I don't know what to do with them.

Anyway, top playlists are (no surprise really): Dungeon Siege 2, Dungeon Siege, Legends of Aranna, Broken World, Dungeon Siege 3, Diablo 1 and Dungeon Keeper 1&2. ("Music" was after Legends of Aranna, but it doesn't count as I am most likely single-handedly responsible for those views).

So consensus is people like Dungeon Siege. I'd say Dungeon Keeper doesn't count, but I made that playlist long after I produced the LP way back in...2009? Man...

So Dishonored continues to go up. I started recording more Brigmore Witches. It was disgusting. I hadn't played in about a month or two so I had no idea how to play any more. As a result, the first 20-30mins are just me faffing about confused and lost. I am on track now and am currently stuck on a fight (which is BAD because my first instinct is to just try to kill everything and I'm trying to go Low Chaos...plus I'm not really...equipped...to fight. I've been going the stealth route...).  Anyway, I'll figure that one out.

Oh and pro tip: Always wear your god damned seatbelt, even if you are in a parking lot.

So the good news first: my brother is graduating high school. Yay. This was his grad (or "prom" as Americans call it) and he was not in the vehicle.

The bad news: Car accident. Not so yay...I wasn't the driver, but I was in the back seat. With no seatbelt at the time because we had stopped and were about to get out before we decided to try and find a closer spot. Poor life choice. Both my father and the truck driver did not see each other. I didn't even see it coming. When it hit, all I could think was trying to catch my phone as it ejected out of my hand.

Some locked bumpers and one punctured tire later I kind of freaked out and plugged in my seatbelt again and realized how dumb that was. Anyway, I hit the seat in front of me, quite gracefully actually for someone wearing glasses and didn't get hurt at all. Point is, if I hadn't been sitting there, I would have hit the dashboard or been launched into the front seat. We were only going 15km/hr. The other guy was probably doing double that, but it was enough. I got lucky, but please WEAR YOUR GOD DAMN SEATBELT. The god damn Batman demands it.

PS - Don't worry my phone didn't brain anyone.

Soundtrack Thursday 18 RETRO

As I mentioned last week, I planned on having a retro games soundtrack Thursday. These are all nostalgic games I never got to play unless I went to a friend's house and convince them to play! Then we'd just make forts and crafts, and play elaborate outdoor games instead. We nearly killed us all in Kelowna when we dug a big hole in the backyard, found the gas line, and proceeded to continue digging around it. We got in trouble for that one naturally.

Three hours of Street Fighter - I'm not sure if I'll listen to all of this as I want to get to other tracks, but it's good background music for work.

Three hours later:

Okayyy Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is up next. One of my favourite all time games. Used to always ask my uncle if I could play this whenever I was at his house.

Okay last track before the internet dies again is Super Mario World. Another game I would always try to convince others to play with me at their house. I was always Luigi, but that's fine. Turns out he's the cool one.

So, Half Life 2 is completely uploaded now. The other Half Life games I have not LPed will be up...sometime...soon...ish.

Meanwhile, Dishonored will begin uploading on Saturday. I will be using the rest of May and beginning of June to get some other projects out of the way and FINALLY do something with the skiing and dodgeball video I've had sitting around for a year. Yes Mini, I am finally going to make the TfaT 2013 Top Ten video. This year I promise I will not take so long.

=)

A Good Place to Be

Where I have a ton of videos available to upload. There is one thing I need to be careful of though, and that is my bandwidth limit. I also don't want to flood people's feeds with videos, so I am trying to space uploads out every two-three days unless something like Outlast Whistleblower pops up (it was requested and I wanted to ensure it went up quickly like the last Outlast game). The LPs I post and the order in which I do it are based off of: requests, personal interest and viewer interest. I still have a small audience (which I actually prefer to be honest), so most of the choices I make in terms of what to record and post are based almost solely on my own interest. This is why Outlast Whistleblower and Half Life 2 have jumped to the top of the list.

So what about my other projects? In case you do not want to read all the details and want the bottom line...

Production order:
Half Life 2 (should be complete before May 15)
Outlast Whistleblower (uploaded and produced on-the-go)
Dishonored (is (mostly) recorded and ready to be posted. Should start showing up May 16/17)
Half Life Episode 1, Episode 2 (beginning - mid June)
Dark Souls - Early Summer

Dishonored is actually not fully recorded. That is...the DLC is not fully recorded. I am waiting until I have all of Half Life 2 posted (which should be VERY soon) and then I will begin the process of uploading that LP. I have a good 30+ segments, so this will give me loads of time to catch up on other projects, organize my drives and play some other games that I will not be recording (ie PS3/PS4 games). Because it's nice to just play a game sometimes and not worry about whether I'm running out of space or how loud I'm speaking in the dead of night. I have a small segment of Brigmore Witches left. I love this game, but other things came up and I ended up leaving that portion for later. I need to return to it quick though, because it's been a LONG time since I last touched it, and I don't want to risk having to relearn all the controls etc.

The Penumbra series really didn't interest me much. I enjoyed playing them enough at the time (though the third one was difficult to get through in terms of engagement) and we DID finish all three games (we would have quit if they were terrible...we have done that in the past *cough cough Haunted Memories*), but they were all just...meh. I was only really tense/scared at one point in Black Plague, and the rest of the gameplay couldn't seem to find a good balance between the elements. Basically it seemed that they were just throwing everything (puzzles, horror, mystery, storytelling etc.) at the wall to see what would stick. I think that's why Amnesia was so much more successful, because they figured out what worked from previous experience. Puzzles were downplayed, horror was accelerated and the environments were a hell of a lot more interesting (ie not just hallways upon hallways leading to hallways with an ice room and a lab thrown in). I like puzzle games, but you need variation or more atmosphere to get them to be engaging. When it's just boxes and jumping, it gets a little old fast. When there was variation, it was difficult to do what you wanted to with the interface provided. Anyhow, this is pretty much at the bottom of my list for getting out on YouTube, even though I have it fully recorded.

Bioshock Infinite is on hold, especially since Shauna's TV is still doing strange things. Outlast Whistleblower has taken priority over this, mainly because we've been looking forward to seeing what the DLC was all about. It is being recorded playing with a computer screen. We will likely return to Bioshock Infinite after this. This is why I have not been editing the last couple of segments from the game (though I REALLY need to get it off my drives like Penumbra).

Half Life Episode 1 is going to be posted after Dishonored. I already started to record it, and will likely finish recording and editing it so it is ready to be uploaded immediately after. My main goal is a more consistent uploading schedule. The game runs fine. It has the same problems as Half Life 2 in recording. Nothing really new there.

Still working on figuring out future collaborative LPs with Voyeur. I will update when we actually figure something out. I had the question of whether I would be "showing myself" and not just being a disembodied voice. I may be working on something like that with Voyeur. If that never comes about, I am not promising anything, but I MIGHT do a single-player LP of either F.E.A.R. or Amnesia: The Dark Descent (with the aims of playing alone on Hard and trying to get the "good" ending) with a reaction cam. Maybe. Possibly. I will decide.

Return of the Shlong Brothers

Quick note to say that Shauna and I have recorded some Outlast: Whistleblower. The first parts will be going up shortly (expect them within the next 24 hours). Join us for the return of your favourite characters like Phil, the security guard, Billy, the moody capsule man and, a crowd favourite, the notorious Shlong Brothers!

EDIT: I have had...an extremely busy day. I will get home at 10 and then I have approx. 2 hours before I either play some games with South Africans or pass out to edit and encode video as well as prepare some things for tomorrow. I need to tack on like...another two or three days to my weekend. Balls.

Soundtrack Thursday Number...17?

I didn't number last week's so I think it's 17. I was debating between Superhero related soundtracks, or Retro Gaming. I decided to go with Superheroes, mostly because I had a couple tracks I've been exploring the last couple of days.

We'll start off with a new release: Amazing Spiderman 2.

It wasn't a bad movie, but it had its issues. Too much plot and too much focus on angsty semi-teen relationships. That said, the relationship was more complex than a lot of movies out there (especially of the superhero genre). Also, the opening scene bothered me (seriously, stop cracking jokes and pull the asshole out of his truck...oh nope, there's 5 more police officers only two days away from retirement gone...okay NOW go and...wait okay save the blueprint guy sure and just let those 10 innocents in the cars get crushed). A few of the tracks really jumped out at me (kind of similar to the first movie where a couple really stood out), but overall a good general soundtrack to listen to.

Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier - I swear I saw a compilation of this on YouTube...oh well, I can't find it so here's a playlist instead. I still think Cap doesn't get enough love in the Marvel universe. Also, Black Widow needs her own movie. Make it happen guys.

Star Spangled Man - Because I couldn't stop humming it the other day.

Batman Arkham Asylum - No one said they had to all be movie soundtracks. That and I make all the rules. Muahaha. The sound quality in this compilation is pretty awful though. It's nice because the tracks are all there, but I'd recommend using it to find the ones you like and look them up elsewhere after.

I can't be the only person contributing to the views on my music playlist, but the 100% female views from Canada say otherwise. Also, there are five Thursdays in this month. SO MANY POSSIBILITIES. I'll do retro gaming next week (and then Hans Zimmer the week after).

No new LP news. Same plan as stated on Monday. I may have some new co-op videos to post soon. I will update if that should happen.

Today Is Monday

The title states the obvious.

Expect to see the rest of Half Life 2 posted this week. I finished recording it yesterday (which includes some of the worst game freezing and desyncing I've encountered...especially since the boats level...freaking boats man) and will be editing it gradually throughout the week.

I will start uploading Dishonored early next week. It's nearly completely produced (haven't finished some of the Brigmore Witches yet), which is great because I can give you guys something to watch on my channel while I get other projects all finished.

Videos that may or may not have been mentioned in LPs recently. That or I just like them.

Wrecking Ball Metal Version - Because it is ten times better than the original song.

Half Life in 60 Seconds - This video is the reason why I scream Gordon Freeman's name every time I hear it in-game.

Half Life 1 in 20 mins and 41 Seconds - My jaw is still dropped a week after watching. I think my jaw may be broken. Perhaps I should look into that.

Not Once Has He Lost a Sword Fight - Not sure what I was expecting, but this surprised me. And made me giggle. I got strange looks from coworkers.

MY BRAND - I have special eyes.

Anyway...

OHI MARK.

A Little Dizzy...and Soundtrack Not Thursday

Yeah, so let me tell you a story about my Thursday.

I woke up yesterday and the room wouldn't stop spinning, so I stayed in bed for about another 10 minutes until I felt like I could actually sit up without falling back over. I had some crazy vertigo, so I decided I should get it checked out at the doctor. I drove myself over there (in hindsight...probably not the best plan) and waited a good hour and a half to see a doctor. And I nearly went insane. There was this fellow who wouldn't stop calling the office over and over and the poor woman at the desk got so frustrated she just left him on hold. And then he stayed on hold. For ten minutes. It beeped constantly. For ten minutes. Add a couple of loud children playing with car keys and nothing to do but listen to crummy country songs about being abducted by aliens (seriously) and you'll understand how I began my murderous rampage.

Okay that didn't happen obviously (the rocket launcher on order was NEVER DELIVERED ALEX), but I got in there, was made to wait longer because there was an emergency (which is fair enough) and was out of there within five minutes after a diagnosis of an inner ear infection. I cannot do anything about an inner ear infection, but wait for it to get better. At least when you hear me complain about my ear hurting in the Half Life 2 videos, we now all know why it was hurting. This should not affect my LPs, but it will take about 2-3 weeks to get fully better. On my way out of the office there was this massive car crash in the intersection...which is like a 50km/hr zone so I have no idea how these people managed to completely total both cars. One had t-boned the other I think. Hopefully both parties are all right, but seriously one of them had to have been going at least 30 over the speed limit. In a residential area.

Like seriously. How am I going to be a bad influence if you're smushing all the corruptible young minds?

I was already extremely late for work at this point, having emailed my coworkers to tell them what was going on. I drove myself to the office (which I'm not really supposed to do with vertigo tee hee) and arrived to find out that I had left all my things at home aside from my phone and wallet. I freaked out for a good couple minutes in the parking lot before I just shrugged and went inside. I quickly ran upstairs to get to a team meeting. I entered through the door and everyone was standing there with glasses of sparkling wine and within seconds I'm handed a glass. Apparently the meeting was to celebrate the launch of one of our communities (which I'm not allowed to talk about quite yet, but I will in a few days). So yeah I was essentially late for a party. I was super happy because I had no lunch with me and suddenly, SANDWICHES. I spent the remainder of the afternoon on a loaner laptop trying to get something useful out of google documents.

And the point to this whole story is that there was no soundtrack Thursday yesterday, so that will be happening today. Yay.

I'm going to make it a Jesper Kyd day.

Assassin's Creed 2 - Actually one of my all-time favourite soundtracks.

Hitman 4: Blood Money - Haven't played the Hitman games. Michael has played a few. Still, I am very familiar with the soundtrack. I used the first track in the compilation to inspire part of a story.

It's cold in here again. Good thing I didn't take my blanket home.

QUICK LUNCH BREAK SONG

AND ANOTHER ONE

Okay. I love Miracle of Sound.

Borderlands 2 - Haven't played this one yet either. I have been told that I should. Just another one to add to the list...

Darksiders 2 - The Literal Trailer for this is probably one of my favourite things ever. Watched an LP of the game and it looked pretty bad. Mesk you would vomit reading the comments on this video.


Not much to tell you about LPs at this point. May be working on another project with Voyeur playing Neverwinter Nights. If that happens, you will see what my face looks like when I play video games. I apologize for all the screens I break in advance.