Cold without a Sweater

Since I'll be away as of tomorrow, I figured I'd write my weekly post here. I should have brought that blanket with me. I'm a giant wimp and I'm cold without a sweater.

So first off, I apologize for this year's lack of video. I have been extremely busy with some things going on in my life right now. Work, health and some big events are taking up most of my time and the majority of my gaming has been on consoles and the 3DS, which I normally don't record. I am hoping that by the end of April I'll have some time to sort out a few of my projects, which include LPs, writing, that RPG I'm attempting, helping Mesk with some of his work, and helping Delta out with the LAG website when I can.

Dead Space 2 is likely not going to be finished at this rate. I pretty much screwed myself over for the final boss and it's nearly impossible on Zealot difficulty with the resources I have. I can either sink time into it until I finish...which will likely be a significant amount of my time at this rate, lower the difficulty, or revert to a previous save and respec. That or quit, but I think I'd be mad at myself if I just gave up.

Shauna and I finished recording SOMA two nights ago. We have a surprisingly long review for it despite how dull we thought the game was. It had so much potential, but was executed so poorly. We talk about it for a good 40 minutes so I'll just leave the details to that. I expect this to get posted sometime after Murdered and Evil Within.

Current projects I'm ACTUALLY actively working (mostly editing not recording): Murdered Soul Suspect, Gauntlet (I found about 3 hours of footage I haven't edited yet), Saints Row 4, Dead Space 2 and Evil Within.

Temporarily shelved projects: Testament of Sherlock, F.E.A.R. 3, Guild Wars 1, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Planet Alcatraz

"Infinitely" shelved projects: Bioshock Infinite (it so broke yo)

On reserve: Myst, Riven, Myst 3, completed Saints Row 4 video

Writing: Amy got back to me with edits. It's not as bad as I thought it would be and she brings up a lot of good points. I told her to ignore most of the grammar stuff for now since it'll likely all change. Coupled with the bit of feedback Mesk gave me, I'll be able to change up some things.

RPG: I have a lot of the areas and ideal battle system planned. I have compiled a lot of potential music to use as well.

In my searches (and since I won't be around for a soundtrack Thursday), please enjoy some of the material I've been obsessively listening to:

Comprachicos
The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place
Hold Your Colour
Spanish Sahara
Django Unchained
A Thousand Faces
Watercolour
End of An Empire
I Will Follow You into the Dark
Alright Still
Transistor
Metallica

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. 

Wat...

Today I have some tracks that I've already featured before...but it was a long time ago so I'm counting it.

Suckerpunch - Still one of my favourite movie soundtracks.
Guardians of the Galaxy - The version I had in my playlist got entirely muted because of one song. So here's a version with just that song muted. Crap I'm going to have the Pina Colada song stuck in my head.

Speaking of videos with copyright claims. I uploaded the exact same footage twice (one video is private and includes both LOTR and Incredibles from Extra Life while the other is split in two) and only got a copyright claim on one. The one that got the claim on it is the longer, private video. Wat. Whatever, no one's going to watch that version, but what did it claim you might ask? A 32 second clip of a song that was playing in the distant background that came from Fallout 4. Wat.

Wat.

Life is Strange Episode 4 - The track mixing in this version is pretty awful, but the quality otherwise is pretty good. I also love all the butthurt about the endings. People are upset that it wasn't a "happy" ending. While I like my happy endings sometimes, I don't want everything to be that way. Both endings had sadness in them, and in both instances Max learns/accepts something. If it had been perfect and wonderful I feel like that would have been a slap in the face and made the entire experience worthless. Tell me a good story and I'll take any ending.
Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring - Got to love a classic.
The Last Goodbye - Billy Boyd - Was a suggested video on LOTR FOTR.
Game of Thrones - Since Shauna and I have been watching it.


Played more SOMA with Shauna. I'm sad to say it's lost most of it's tension and horror due to a changing tone, but I don't mind the story and the atmosphere. It's a little heavy-handed with the symbolism and psychology, which makes it somewhat tiring. They seem to be dragging out one fairly simple theme out over the entire game. Whenever the monsters actually do show up, it is mildly frightening, but I don't get the terror that I had during the original Amnesia or Outlast. I'm not sure if that's what they were going for or not. It's like Amnesia (duh), mixed with Bioshock, mixed with Alien Isolation, mixed with Penumbra (also duh but kind of unfortunate).

I think the problem with it is everyone in this game is just so damn cheerful no matter what happens. There's no sense of isolation or loneliness. We had that at the beginning of the game when we didn't have a friend in our pocket, but now that we have her, it's like...well we aren't exactly alone are we? Even when we find out what happened to the world and our protagonist, there's no sense of urgency or self-preservation. There's just a little bit of a mystery of what's going on. I don't know. I don't hate the game, but it's certainly not anything mind-blowing. Maybe we'll be surprised.

Either way, well talk more about SOMA when we actually finish the game. I'm probably going to be pushing SOMA to the top of the list of our co-op LPS.

SOMA - Because it's a somewhat recent release.
Murdered: Soul Suspect - CAT.
Evil Within - I actually look forward to editing this. It's so awful.
Sherlock - This is the "I don't feel like editing anything else" project.
Bioshock Infinite - I should really just scrap this. The recordings are so messed up.

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.

Zero Uploads

Hey, just wanted to write a post saying I'm still around and planning on resuming uploads soon. Checked the YouTube page today and realized I haven't uploaded anything since like...September 20. It's October 5 now. I completely forgot over the last week or so. Let me tell you what's been going on as far as I can remember.

Let's see...I quit my part time job. It was kind of a no-brainer as I only have one day off a week. I'm tired. I've been borderline sick for a week and a half cause I'm not resting enough to let my body recover. While I've enjoyed working there for the most part, I don't think that environment is for me. You have to work many hours to even have a chance at promotion, and even then you are competing with many other people across the city for those positions. At the same time, more hours aren't available as they'd rather just hire more part-timers and avoid full-timers whenever possible...probably for budget reasons. That or I'm just so used to other types of work that union work just baffles me. Regardless, I have some good stories from my three and a half months there. One of my favourites was the dude that walked up beside me, poked me on the shoulder and asked "are you real?" I told him "yeah," so he smiled and said "okay cool" and just wandered away. Took me about a minute to process that one.

Other than that bit of news, I've been working on some personal stuff, been sick, been recording and, oh yes, had to go to court as a witness. Oliver and I witnessed a bad car accident a couple months ago coming back from the new Mad Max movie. Dude decided to plead "not guilty" to reckless driving at first, but after the first hour and talking to the witnesses (i.e. me, Oliver and some other dude), he changed his plea to "guilty" and we could all go home. I get trying to get a better deal, but when you're going fast enough to nearly light your tires on fire and literally the only thing that saved you from rolling over and killing yourselves was a lamp post, I'd say that there was some speed involved. Either way, the guy is lucky to be alive. He was about one foot away from getting seriously hurt or killed. Anyhow, it was significantly better than my last visit to court as a witness. We'll leave it at that.

Started recording Planet Alcatraz. Yeah. It's...I...um...potatoes. Yes. Everything is potatoes and bad voice acting. It's really quite amazing. I am so confused. Meanwhile Mesk is just giggling in the background. Other than that, Shauna and I are starting SOMA today. I'll let you know how that goes. It's been a long time since we've played a genuinely scary game (for the right reasons), so this should be interesting.