Buh?

I completely forgot it was Thursday today, so I'll postpone soundtrack day to tomorrow. I blame a poor sleep. I woke up at like 430am cause I was too hot, then I threw off the covers and it was too cold like ten minutes later, so I put the covers back on again and then had to throw them off a few mins later etc. Eventually found a happy medium and then my abdomen started complaining because of something I ate or w/e. Anyway when I finally dragged myself out of be I noticed the window was wide open next to me.

So since I fail, here's the song I haven't been able to stop listening to the last couple of days. Also, I think my mind is tissue paper because it ripped in half after this.

I feel like I should at least give you an update, so over the past week I've mostly been working on clearing out the Saints Row 4 stuff. I found an old Thief 1 test recording from...who knows when taking up 13GB of my hard drive so I processed that and uploaded it to the unreleased folder. I made the decision to take all the Guild Wars 1 footage I have and just process it into unedited footage (i.e. not pair it down into a clip show like SR4) as we are unlikely to continue it at the moment and if we did pick it up again we'd likely start over. That way I clear up space. I have two Dead Space videos uploaded, but unreleased and am considering that series finished. I will likely still lower the difficulty just to officially finish it, but I'm mostly moving on now.

I'll likely just marathon a good 4-5 hours to finish the Murdered series so I can move my focus to Evil Within for the co-op series. I'm continuing to record VTM with Shauna today actually. I need to bring my external to her house though since she's running out of hard drive space.

As for writing I've actually been mostly focused on that lately. I'm still re-editing Mesk's Ret Tech document and working on the RPG as well as WMRR. My productivity has been drastically reduced due to a struggle with motivation and mood issues. I'm slowly crawling my way out of that, but for now, business as usual. Looking forward to when I get my poop in a group and release the stock pile of videos I have built up over the past couple months. It's been pretty sparse due to laziness lately. Sorry 'bout that.

I'll also have to take time in the near future to tell you all the tale about my boss, his inherited Italian Apartment and the saga of the squatters. I swear to god he has the best stories.

Recommendations

Shauna said she has music requests/suggestions today, but she's still sleeping I think. Mesk mentioned that I never use the soundtracks he sends me (mostly cause they all go to my home computer and I'm on a work one), so I'm going to start with some of his suggestions.

Aldnoah Zero - I'm trying to decide what this reminds me of. It's almost Cirque-ish at the beginning. I can only assume this is Cirque turned into anime based off music alone.

Fate/Zero - A slightly shorter one, but another one of Mesk's recommendations.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - Six hours and forty minutes?! Okay then. I may listen to this for awhile then switch. I wasn't expecting such a long mix...

Shauna arrived.

Allods Online - Not a bad soundtrack and yet another game I haven't heard of before. There's a lot I need to look into.

Comic con is coming (not this weekend, but the weekend after). Sarah will be busy that weekend (and is thankfully not hurt or dead holy shit that car accident...so much for the car named "Lucky"), so I'll be attending the con with Oliver, Shauna, Jay and Hayley. As always, if anyone who reads this is attending, I'll be around, likely all four days.

Continued more Planet Alcatraz. I think I'll need to take periodic breaks from that game, because the poor English translation is very confusing. I hit a dead end in the game cause I picked too many of the wrong dialogue options...which isn't hard to do as some of them sound like they have the same tone and context, but I restarted from an old save. I'm glad I did because things got a hell of a lot more hilarious because of it. I still don't really understand what happened.

I think I may start Shadow of Mordor or Myst IV when I have a bit of time. Murdered is now half-finished in terms of editing. Still working away on Gauntlet and I will start releasing the Saints Row 4 footage fairly soon.

600 Page Epic

Sent some of my writing to two people last night and nearly puked from anxiety. I promised that I'd give them regular updates, so I guess this is going to be a priority for awhile. My rewrites of the first bit are a lot better than what was there before, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's any good still. I like what I've written for the most part, but I'm a terrible judge of what other people are interested in so I have no idea how it will go over. I don't take myself too seriously, so that has probably spilled out a lot into my writing (and I'm aware of how much silly made its way in there). In the end, the writing is mostly for me and for fun (and to get this damn story out of my head), but it's still nerve-wracking.

Also Kristy mentioned that my first draft is a little...long. It'll be closing in on 600 typed pages when it's done, but I think it's because I like to add a lot of small details into my work. I'll need to pair down and go broader, but I have no idea how I'm going to do that yet. Gives me hope that people write these massive fantasy and science fiction novels, so my friends might actually be interested in reading. Either way, I guess now that I think about it, that's probably why it's taken me so long to get this segment done. There's still two more parts to write...and I have a lot of it in my head. Hopefully it won't take another 10 years to write. 

Speaking of which, I never gave the update on Kathleen, who raised all the money she needed for her editor. She's going to be self-publishing that book, so I'll let you all know when it's on the market. She is an incredibly talented and intelligent writer and storyteller, so I'm excited for her to get this story out. In other news, Amy sent me her material and it's been fun to see how much she has improved with her writing, even over the last year. And she's having fun with it, which is the point in my opinion. 

Anyway this should all be going on the other blog which is mostly abandoned, but not forgotten. 

Soundtrack Thursday!

Far Cry 4 - Suggested by Shauna. I've only played the co-op in Far Cry, which was so buggy, rushed and hilarious. Apparently it doesn't do the game justice. Michael has played 3 and 4. All I've really seen of 4 is Michael getting accosted by a honey badger.  

Guess it's an Ubisoft day. Somewhere Shauna is squealing with glee. Somewhere else, Mesk is puking rainbows. I'm stuck in the middle giggling about this. Excuse the quality. I was playing this on the PS3, saw that thing going somewhere it shouldn't be, so I picked up my camera and then something...unexpected happened. You can always hear my thought process in my voice/noises I make: curiosity to confusion to disbelief to tired acceptance. I've been sighing like that all too much lately.

Assassin's Creed Revelations - I actually did like this ending quite a bit. As much as Ezio's story was dragged out because of his popularity, at least they made a decent ending for him. I still plan on playing AC 4 and 5 because I actually own them, but I need some time to sit down and do that. I really do love the soundtrack from the second game (and it's uh...sequels? Expansions? bah). 

Rayman - Cause...I have no idea. I needed something a little more random/upbeat for 4pm in the afternoon. I'm not sick and doped up on meds this time I swear. Did I even post that? I should at least put it in unreleased if nowhere else. Oh, I did! 

Dead Space 2 is ALMOST complete. I'm a little bit stuck and angry with the final boss. If the death animation didn't take so long it would probably be much better but NO I have to watch myself get ripped apart for 8 seconds every single time. Everything, but chapter 15 going up in the next couple days here. 

I keep thinking we're almost done SOMA and it continues to drag on.

Evil Within and Murdered continue to be edited. Evil Within is going to be a masterpiece of awful, but I was recently shown a full review of Ultima 9 and I have to say that tops even EW. I was actually personally offended by Ultima 9 and I haven't even played any of the games. 

Fire Emblem will be continued after I've finished up with Dead Space 2. 

Porcelain Arms

I've managed to catch a rather nasty head cold. I was coughing so hard that I believe it aggravated another problem I have, so I'm in varying amounts of discomfort. The good news is I have now caught up on a number of things as I've had the time to do so...that is when I'm not working from home, sleeping or waking up in the middle of the night thinking one of my arms turned into a ceramic object.

I'm not joking. Whatever they put in nighttime neocitran is some interesting stuff because I woke up last night and had the most lethargic freakout when I thought that my arm and hand had turned bright white and transformed into porcelain. Just the one though cause I remember taking my pulse in that arm just to make sure it wasn't actually pottery. At some point logic or sleepiness won and I passed out again until morning. I may forego the neocitran tonight.

Murdered Soul Suspect Episodes 1 and 2 are now uploaded. I am well into the next two segments of it. I managed to power through 4+ hours of Gauntlet and now have 3 more episodes ready to upload. Right now I'm trying to remember where I stuck all the Evil Within stuff and whether or not I still need to transfer the Evil Within off the old laptop. Either way, I'm out of space for Myst 3, which is probably good because I shouldn't be recording that with half a brain and when I'm coughing every 5 seconds. How annoying.

Um, yeah so Gauntlet episodes coming soon and...more Murdered. I had some other plans, but I'm still having trouble remembering what's what so, I'll give another update when I'm feeling better.

One More Marathon Week

Not that I made it through last week's marathon in one piece. I crashed pretty hard over the weekend. Not sure what I had, but it basically sucked every ounce of energy I had. I literally spent one entire day reading and watching movies/tv. On that note, Kingsmen wasn't half-bad, though it ended on a...uh...super classy note. Then I went and watched some Rick and Morty so I suppose there was a theme to the evening.

Shauna will be happy to hear that I finished Summer Knight too so there's that.

I will have regular work hours, 9-5 (more or less) weekdays now, which means my schedule will be more consistent and I won't come home every day feeling like I got hit by three trucks, died and had to crawl my way out of hell, racing five demons back to my body for another go at this "life" thing. That's the theory anyway. Chances are I'll just end up buried in the mountain of writing and video work I need to catch up on. So we're switching from crawling to digging more or less.

Anyhow, uploads have continued. Recording continues. I should like...do a full update or something so there's some kind of illusion that business continues as usual. Complete with a load of giggling and screaming internally.

Currently recording:
-SOMA
-Planet Alcatraz
-Gauntlet
-Dead Space 2 (thinking of finishing this on Saturday if I have the drive space)
-Testament of Sherlock Holmes

Currently editing:
-Testament of Sherlock Holmes
-Murdered: Soul Suspect
-Gauntlet
-Bioshock Infinite (hahahaha the never-ending project)
-Evil Within (might get Mesk to cast over some of these segments or "key" segments)
-Some....special, unexpected footage intended for a new trailer (it's a surprise)
-Dungeon Siege (cause I keep forgetting I have this)

Recently finished:
-Awesome Possum (about 4 more episodes to go up)
-Tera footage (likely more to come in the future)
-Saint's Row 3 - all uploaded to LAG (but not all released yet)

So at least something is happening.

I have some initial thoughts on SOMA (we're about 3-4 hours in), but I may save those for another post as this one is already pretty long. In short, it's good, it's a lot like Amnesia games only...less terrifying and more sci-fi world-buildy computer apocalypse like. Yeah. The graphics are pretty neat and you can faff about with tons of physics objects (which have GREAT potential for silliness...but Shauna's keeping my SCIENCE in check, no worries).

Life is Strange Episode 5 next week. I'm not ready.

I Forgot a Title

I just realized I had an opportunity to do a soundtrack Thursday today...and totally didn't think of it. Oh well. Here, have a Life is Strange Episode 1 Soundtrack. It is very mellow.

Yeah so about Life is Strange. I think I will be LPing the rest of the episodes when they come out. This will be a slow LP as the next episode will be released in March. I've had enough positive feedback to continue however. It's interesting how many mixed reviews I have received about it. Seems as though the general consensus is: love the main character, like the character development, dislike the cliched (and unrealistic dialogue) and there was nothing that was really HATED. My opinion?

Character development: good
Voice acting: Some good, some awful
Dialogue and Writing: Some good, some awful, some unrealistic
Interactions between characters: Mostly believable if not a little cliche, but some motivations and actions really confused me. I couldn't understand the reasoning behind Max not contacting her best friend for five years for instance...
Setting: A little bland, but the characters are the focus
Style: Meh. Don't love, don't hate. I like the little details. I like the small funny bits. Some of the models and art looked...weird to me, but other parts were quite beautiful. I loved Chloe's design. Max has this perpetual look of exhaustion about her, which is fine because she's a stressed out student.
Mechanics: Kind of hilarious at times, especially when I couldn't get the football part right and the girl kept getting smoked in the head. Again, a little cliche with the time control.
Music and sound: Suits the game. I enjoyed the soundtrack. Hopefully that won't result in copyright issues on YouTube.
Additional notes: All the boys in the game all seem either creepy, scary or high. The exception is the teacher (who is like built up to be the best human being ever in Max's eyes) and the principal who just wants money. Also I think I have an irrational hatred of Brooke. She was kind of an asshole. I expected so much more from you Brooke.

I am interested in continuing this myself. I want to know what the consequences of my actions will be, and how much it changes the story (I plan to play through again without recording and try different options).

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age will be finished by the weekend. Sanitarium should start next week. I plan on finishing the recording of Dead Space this weekend. Mesk and I will finish Hunted shortly. Shauna and I will continue Murdered: Soul Suspect (of which I actually think we're almost done). And Alien Isolation continues to clog up my drives as I slowly sift through the CONFIRMED 34 crashes that we experienced during the series.