Soundtrack Thursday 22

I meant for today to be another Retro games day, but then I saw Child of Light in my suggested videos sidebar and heard it was good soundtrack. So we're starting with that today and we'll see where it goes from there.

Going to follow the recommended videos further to Beyond Two Souls. Will be interesting to see if we have anything resembling a theme by the end of the day.

Next up is Tomb Raider, still navigating through the recommended videos of course. This soundtrack should get me to lunch, and we'll go from there.

Assassin's Creed III: Liberation is next up on the list, though I cheated a little by not following the recommended videos. I did however, get the idea from it as ACIII was a suggested video.

While I haven't played it, I hear that Metroid Prime is pretty good. We'll see what it sounds like music-wise. I may not listen to the whole compilation though as it is almost 3 hours long. Depends if it's really good or not I suppose.

It's too bad I already had Mirror's Edge and Transistor in previous soundtrack Thursdays. The point is to listen to new soundtracks, even though I've listened to these multiple times other days of the week since discovering them. I am sad that there aren't more games with female protagonists. Character creation games don't count in this case. Seriously.

In other news:

I have decided to alternate Transistor and Half Life Episode 1 after Dishonored is complete. Which will be soon. I shall post the Dishonored DLC periodically. Just thought I'd mix it up a little. Shauna, Nick and I are playing Neverwinter again. If you play, feel free to add me as a friend/join us. My username is drschwa.

My writing is beginning to stress me out, because I want to write these parts properly. They're going to end up as heaping piles of drivel bits, but if I go in with a different attitude, they will be smaller heaping piles of drivel bits. This summer could be it ladies and gents.

I'm starting a new(ish) job September 1. I have a whole summer of part-time work and video games ahead unless I find something else before then. I will likely apply for volunteer positions in areas of interest and write during that time.

New desk at work for my final few weeks. I was going to keep my old chair, but then I tried out one of the new ones and it has MEMORY FOAM. So I have adopted this new chair and am enjoying it a great deal. I like the window view. I do not like that every single person working in the room has to walk behind me to get to their desks. Visitors also constantly have to walk behind me. It stresses me out.

I found out if I wear my ear buds and drink a carbonated beverage, I can hear fizz inside my head. It sounds like pouring dry sand into water.

I can't remember where I put my damn lactaid again. That stuff is not cheap and I like ice cream too much. Ugh.

This news section has rapidly become more trivial.

Busy Busy Busy

Half Life 1 LP is almost complete (finally). I have very little left to record, just need some time to sit down and be patient with the final chapters. There will probably be rage. I'm not the greatest at FPS. My aim is terrible and these levels get incredibly confusing, so I hope you enjoy my agony.

I have a lot of options for LPs after this, but frankly, I think I'm going to buy some time with some other random videos as I have really been focusing on my writing the past few days, plus I have work and other activities keeping me busy. The main reasons for wanting a little time off is to a) Play games I don't have to worry about LPing, and b) So I can allocate some real time to writing. The one LP I'll probably dabble into at least a little bit in this time will be Half Life 2.

In the near future I still want to do:
Dark Souls
Dishonored
F.E.A.R.
A bunch of other stuff that I referenced in other posts and am too lazy to go and find mainly because I need to go edit a document that I'm putting off because I'm tired.

Co-op:
Hunted: The Demon's Forge
Unreal Tournament 3

Magicka is close to being finished.

Half Life 1...

Turns out quite a few people were interested in seeing the Half Life 1 LP continued/completed. Oops. I got incredibly lazy with that LP's production. It's not because I do not enjoy the game (in fact it's one of my favourites of all time), but I had some issues with recording that required more of my time. Other LPs were much easier and faster to produce, so I naturally took that route since I've been busy since December. I explain what happened a little on the Surface Tensions videos (of which I'm not too proud of as I get very lost, have very low health and ammo, and the chapter ended up being 2 hours and 30 minutes long). The chapter actually would have been longer had I not forgotten to press the record button when I exited out of the menu. So I had to play that section a second time, and therefore knew exactly what was coming for a short period of time.

I recorded more yesterday. Be prepared for an hour long session of video in your future consisting of swears, screaming and breaking triggers (I'm pretty sure someone actually told me about the glitch in question, but I was surprised to encounter it as I had totally forgotten if they had). I actually disturbed some people in my household as voices travel very well through vents. They were mildly concerned that I was screaming and cussing for about an hour, seemingly at nothing, alone, in my bedroom.

Forgetful

It's only going to get worse. I forgot that I said I'd also be looking into playing the Bioshock series as well. This will be another LP series that will appear in 2014.

To finish 2013:
Half Life 1
Penumbra - Overture, Black Plague - with Shauna
Overlord 2 (just need to upload the segments (35 total)

Coming in 2014:
Alice: Madness Returns (will record and maybe put out a couple videos before the new year)
Dark Souls
Bioshock - 1, 2, Infinite
Penumbra: Requiem - with Shauna

Co-op or Multiplayer 2014:
Magicka (will be posted on GameVoyeur's YouTube)
Unreal Tournament 3 - Tentative
Diablo 2 Expansion - Tenative
Age of Empires 3 (I have about 20 games recorded that I played with my brother...I may post a few of those if there's interest)


Is it bad that the lists here are probably going to end up being mostly for me?

Spelling

I shouldn't be bothered by this, but I am. When I change my language from "English (United States)" to "English (United Kingdom)," I expected the text "Eversor Fatalis's blog" to change to "Eversor Fatalis' Blog." Minor change, but it still irks me.

Work on Diablo 2 continues. We'll be recording again some time after the Thanksgiving weekend. In the meantime, I've been extremely slow in encoding material as I haven't felt well enough to sit at a computer for long periods of time and actually use my brain. I've had a nasty bout of the flu and all I was content to do was lie on the couch rekindling an old relationship with the Supernatural series. Let's put it this way, I have never called in to this job before on account of sickness. Also, I am now addicted to Supernatural again.

I have a special Amnesia video planned, but I am unsure of how to proceed as it makes use of a lot of songs and media that I do not own the rights to. I am trying to work it into a humourous review or critique of the game, but if it does not go well I will consider doing something else with the material. Regardless, the LP is now complete. Go watch us be scared!

I have had no motivation to play Half Life for the previously mentioned reasons. Instead I have foolishly started playing Oblivion and Skyrim again. There goes another good chunk of my life.




NOTE: I was really tempted to type: "I expected 'Eversor Fatalis's blog' to change to 'Pip, pip cheerio Eversor Fatalis' Blog mate,' but then I'd have a legion of offended Brits after me. Wait...

Too Many Pigs

Shauna and I finished A Machine for Pigs today. We had mixed feelings of the game, but ultimately we enjoyed playing. It surprisingly didn't match up to Outlast in terms of overall horror, but, it did have one section that I was nearly paralyzed with fear, so I'll give it that. I think it might have been an early instance of a pig man being right behind me with no warning, but I was crippled for about 30-40 minutes playing where I became a shaking mess of garbled words. Stay tuned for part 7 (whenever I catch up in my encoding) to see me almost fall apart completely.

In other news, I am a mad genius without the genius in that I have concocted an new idea for a (hopefully) humourous compilation video. The idea came to me when I put the image of two incredibly creepy ghost children to the theme of Captain Planet. I'll let your imagination run wild for what the rest of the video will be like. I'm not sure of the timeline on that one as I want to get the full LP out first, which requires me to sync audio, make comments, clean up the video as best I can and encode another 4 (ish) hours of gameplay.

Half life has been paused for a moment to create more hard drive space and for when I have a good chunk of time to sit down and play. Expect this LP to be done mid-October. Also, Diablo 2 will be LPed. I have done some tests and the videos have been produced perfectly. The only issue that I may have is balancing audio. Regardless, I will be co-op LPing with two other people.

Lots to Upload

For once. I guess that's what happens when you only have a couple of shifts a week. The frequency of uploads may change when I get a full time job, but for now I just have to worry about flooding people's feeds.

Hit 200 subscribers yesterday, which is a pretty awesome feeling. I make and post videos as a hobby, but I put a lot of effort into it, and the fact that people are actually interested in watching, as small as it is, is a real honour and makes every minute spent playing, recording, editing, encoding and uploading worth it. I've never been interested in making money off of my channel or attracting a huge amount of subscribers, so having a small viewer group is all I could really ask for. As for joining groups or partnerships, I will only do so if it is a group of people I know, have worked with them in the past, and share a lot of the same interests. Anyhow, I want to thank everyone who watches my videos!

On that note, I should be done uploading Outlast by Monday or Tuesday depending on my connection. I have everything encoded and ready to upload, and I've had Billy Joel's "Piano Man" stuck in my head on loop for the last three days because of this LP, but it's done. I was much more freaked out during this game than I was playing Amnesia. As for A Machine for Pigs, I'm not sure what the plan is for that LP. Shauna and I looked at it the day it came out, and there's this strange blue filter on it that wasn't present on any of the trailers or gameplay previews. I wasn't too concerned about it, though I must admit it doesn't look that great. Regardless, I believe we plan on making an LP of that in the future.

Diablo 1 and Half Life 1 will continue to alternate in uploads until they are finished. I expect Diablo 1 to be fully uploaded by the end of next week (unless I take a day or two off to give my network a break) and Half Life 1 will be finished and completely uploaded probably the week after. I still haven't finished Half Life 1, but I will say that there are some incredibly silly moments ahead concerning some soldiers and the ninja assassin fellows.

As for future LPs, I have had requests to play through Diablo 2 and Black Mesa. I will probably leave Black Mesa to just before the New Year as I want a bit of a break after Half Life 1. I don't know how similar the two are, but it would be weird playing essentially the same game back to back. What would be interesting would be to compare the two. As for Diablo 2, I have my reservations about it. I may do this LP as with 1 to 2 other people who have expressed interest in playing. My first worry is that the game will not record well as I've had problems with that in the past. Fraps and the quality of my computer, however, have been improved in the last 5 years. My second issue is that I have had...bad experiences with the game in the past, partially of my doing and I am not eager to repeat that experience. My greatest fear is that there will be conflict of interest and the LP will fall apart, but these people seem like decent fellows, and I'm much more mature than I was 5 years ago.

I also plan on maybe LPing Overlord and Overlord 2, working my way down the list of my favourite games to play. Another few options would be games I have never played before: Miasmata, the Thief series, Bastion, Torchlight, Torchlight 2 and Deus Ex. If there are any other suggestions of games you would like to see me LP, leave a comment here or on my channel and I'll do my best to fulfill those requests. There are very few games I will refuse to record/LP.

Future Recording Plans

Man I watched Iron Man and now I have about 3 parodies of the theme song stuck in my head...

So I thought about recording quite a bit and I've decided that I would like to continue making Let's Plays, starting with finishing Dungeon Siege 2 of course. I will do Broken World and Dungeon Siege 3 before I move on to other series, but I'm not sure what I'd like to do yet. I'm thinking it's between Half Life, Torchlight (Blind) and Diablo 1. I'm leaning mostly towards Torchlight because I haven't done a completely blind LP. I'm not counting Legends of Aranna, Broken World or Dungeon Keeper 1 (another YouTube account) because each one of those was done with a great deal of knowledge of the game beforehand or I had played a bit. All I know about Torchlight is it's a lot like Diablo (which makes sense because it's made by the same people who worked on the first two Diablo games). Regardless, if there are any suggestions on what I should do or which games to look at next, I'm all ears. There's always new ways for me to fail at gaming!

Anyway, recording and video editing can be a lot of work, but I enjoy it and I need an excuse not to do my work at school...I mean...

Graphics Upgrade

I mention it in the video I will be posting, but I have a new graphics card for my encoding computer. The card on the left is the old and the card on the right is the new, so significant size change.

This means that I can now play games on it without shadows flipping out or having pieces of the floor missing. My laptop is getting old, and its really beginning to show. After DS2, Broken World and maybe the Half Life text LP, I will be retiring the laptop from LPs. I just don't think it can handle it anymore. I'll still use the machine until it completely dies, but it has served me well these past five years.

Trolls

I find them hilarious. I have not encountered anyone who has insulted me properly. It disappoints me. Of course I am not looking for people to actively make fun of me, but honestly, if you are going to insult me, comments like "you suck" and "losergamer" only encourage me to mock the poster relentlessly. I will never satisfy a troll by getting angry, so it's funny to watch them try. If you are going to insult me, do it right. Get creative or something. You won't get much out of me otherwise. I don't have feelings to hurt. Not for you.

Besides that, I am totally open to criticism. I can't get any better if I don't have any feedback. If I "suck", at least tell me why (and watch more than a minute of the video or you'll look stupid as hell) and what I could do to be better. This is a lot to ask of YouTube where half the posters are 13 year-old pricks who have nothing better to do than vent their flaccid, teenage frustration on a stranger, but I digress.

Act 2, Chapter 4 will be posted in a few hours. Chapter 5 is still in the making...I have a feeling this is going to be one of the last LPs I do on my laptop. I have a new graphics card for my other computer (Murphy, the Jet Engine), which should arrive Wednesday...ish. I may do Half Life 1 on the computer as a text LP before that happens (for my other YT channel). I plan on just marathoning it when I have a day off.