Monthly Update: December, 2024

 

Well, it's the end of the year and now it's time to look back and reflect on all of the choices we've made over the last 336 days.  Look back at all of the games we didn't play, all of the TV shows left unstreamed, all of the movies left to decay in derelict theatres under the oppressive weight of eons of accumulated dust and refuse from civilizations long since past as we speed headlong towards the oblivion of nothingness.  You know, Monday, December 2, 2024.

Because it happened less than a month ago, I'm just still flabbergasted at the number of people who anecdotally didn't know that the Affordable Care Act and "Obamacare" were the same thing.  Or think that somehow tariffs will be the solution to a well-funded government and "more money in my pocket."  Or that somehow PET will be the economic savior in his literal cheaply gilded world.  Or that there are people who genuinely voted because they're afraid that a non-cis person is going to burn down the world.  Or that somehow Drumpf wasn't really going to use Project 2025 as his transition team's playbook.  Racists, homophobes, bigots, etc who hide behind religion and the hope for less expensive groceries are among the worst and we are not a safe space for you; your intolerance and fear does not mean I have to be tolerant of your racist, homophobic, and bigotted beliefs.  No, I will not debate you, so piss off.

I'm sure there's more I can say on the matter, but for now, we'll poorly move over to our usual topic of badly written video game talking.

And yes, this is a crutch I will purposefully lean on until I become a better writer, so buckle up Hornsby, it's gonna be a long ride.

I feel like November was kind of broken up into two parts.  The first third of the month there were a handful of articles for games I received through Keymailer, and the back two-thirds was "full" of games that I've had for a while and either just started playing of finally wrote about.  So really just five games by the look of things, which really isn't too bad when you consider that our site is only an unpaid side gig that I like to maintain in my spare time.

Part of the reason for the falloff in Keymailer games was that maintaining a constant flow of traffic to either/our YouTube channel or Instagram channel is not something that I view as integral to how we operate here.  Sure, I post articles here multiple times a week, but because Blogger is a free blogging site, it's not counted towards "coverage."  For YouTube and Instagram, you need a hidden number of views on average per day to maintain an "accredited" status.  Our Instagram posts are reliant on our weekly articles and we don't do a whole lot of Reels because those take time to gather footage and edit into something that people are going to watch for more than five seconds before swiping up for the next thing.  The same goes for YouTube in that I see the analytics for the gameplay videos and they pale in comparison to all of the MIDI Week Singles videos that I post and only a few of those actually break the 100+ views mark.  And not every video can be a 0:14 second Owl Bear Growl that's gotten 62,427 views over the last seven years.  And then there are the few videos I've made that I thought would be hilarious or well thought out and well edited (based on my lack of self-taught editing skillz) and are sitting at sub-10 views.  Ah well.

This is not meant to be a pity party that I'm throwing for myself.  I've already decided that I'm not going to specifically create content for those sweet-sweet likes and reposts, I'm going to create content at my own pace and for content that I want to create.  Does there need to be a playthrough for Classic Marathon?  Probably not, but it's a game that I've wanted to play for some time, and I figured that filming it and putting it up on YouTube doesn't take much more of my time than I'm already spending on YouTube.  And it's not like those videos are going to be beautifully edited playthroughs worthy of any kind of praise, it's just me playing without any kind of video or separate audio commentary, and there's already a well-established channel for that.

All of that being said, I do have a handful of more games I received from Keymailer that will be going up in the next couple of weeks, one that I'm super excited about for Friday and the other is a short horror-esque walking-sim.  This reminds me, that I've got to put together a short trailer for Instagram in the next day or two.

And now that that blabbering's over with, The Squire seems to be enjoying various video games over the last couple of weeks.  He's been frequently as Babbit in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which he says is his "favorite favorite favorite game."  But he's also been able to finish at least two levels in BIT.TRIP Runner, Donkey Kong Country, and Hatch Tales.  We've also been recently playing Castle Crashers which he'll play a couple of levels, but more often than not, he likes to watch some of the character animations before exiting out to the main menu to select a new character (a rather cumbersome process that should've been streamlined 16-years ago.  I'm also coming to terms with how he plays retro games on their respective Switch apps and will spam the rewind feature to beat some of the levels in the Super Mario games.  He still gets frustrated playing a few games, but that's just an excuse to talk through our feelings and why we play games in the first place.  But hey, he's enjoying games when we play together, and that's kind of the point.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

That's When I and We Will Sing Again

Monthly Update: May 2016

Happy May everyone!

Now let's talk about shit that went down in April, because we've already gone over this.

April consisted of playing Dark Souls.  Like, a lot of Dark Souls.  When last I talked about it earlier in April, I had 23 hours with my current character Bjorn and presently I'm at 57 hours and at level 71.  Since then, I've managed to kill the Capra Demon, Gaping Dragon (who's had probably the best boss intro in recent years; spoilers), Chaos Witch Quelaag, the Hydra of Darkroot Basin, Pinwheel, the Iron Golem, and now I'm starting to explore Anor Londo.  I still haven't figured out ranged archery though, and at this point, I'm too afraid to start.  Or something like that.  If I have enough time, I'll hopefully finish the game this month, or at least make it near enough to the end to call it finished (not talking beating all the bosses or getting to New Game +6).

In D&D news, our group finished Lost Mine of Phandelver, which I will fully (mostly?) cover in Friday's article, so stay tuned for that if you're at all interested.  We might be playing in a couple of weeks too as all of our summer schedules seemed to be filling up (or already so), which means we might be starting this quest that I wrote last year, The Taking of the Dawn.  It's obviously not a licensed product and it's not up on DMsGuild.com either as I believe that I have too much material that was not included in the SRD. . .or wait. . .maybe I can?  I'll have to further look into that.  And doesn't that artwork (that I "borrowed" from somewhere on the Internets) look pretty similar to this screen from Dark Souls III?  The quest just needs a little tweaking before we start.  Ah, if only more time existed within time itself.

In mobile gaming, I've been playing/interacting with Nintendo's Miitomo and raking in as many Miitomo coins as I possibly can (averaging about 15 a day) so that I can "buy" games in Nintendo's eShop.  So far I've acquired WarioWare: Touched and Nintendo Picross: The Lengend of Zelda: Twilight Princess all for the low-low price of $0 + personal time.  I'll probably put out an article about one or both of those games as I am fully enjoying both the games and their relative freeness.  I'm also delving bit-by-bit into Fantasy Life, although I'm currently having an issue with a pirate ship, but I'm convinced that I maybe just missed something somewhere.

In other geeky-pop-culture relatedness, Game of Thrones season 6 just aired episode 2 and whoo-wee was it a doozey.  No spoilers here, but I will say that something happened that I was really hoping wouldn't happen.  Some things are happening that I thought should have happened in the previous season, and some things are happening differently than the books because it's a TV show and a different medium and they have to happen that way.  But, so far I am enjoying this new season and being more-or-less completely in the dark about the story after A Dance with Dragons.  Hmmm, I just realized that there was no Daenerys' storyline in last night's episode.  And Conklederp and I are eagerly awaiting the second half of Vikings season 4.

Alright, that's all I can think of to blab at y'all this morning, which is about to turn into this afternoon in about 10 minutes.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Nothing's Stopping You

Youtube Series: Monster Factory

A few weeks back, our friend. . . we'll call them KingLouie, suggested that we watch a show on Youtube called Monster Factory, with the premise being that these two guys (brothers?) try to take the in-game character creation to its strangest limits.  To be honest, I was a little skeptical about watching a video with anyone trying to make the ugliest character possible, but it's a bit more/different than that.  And like you, reading my words about this half-hour show probably won't have the intended effect.  In the end, I want you to watch it.  Maybe even showing pictures like the following won't generate the amount of interest that both Conklederp and I now have in this show:

But because this is a blogging site and not a vlogging one, I will briefly use my words, occasionally hyperlinked to make your lives a little bit easier and mine a little more interesting.

Monster Factory is a show on Polygon's Youbube channel, and on an average, about 2/3rds of the show is these two gentlemen creating their character.  They don't typically start with a plan in mind, just testing out the limits of the character creation, and in the case of Mass Effect 2 above, using console commands to greatly exaggerate the look of the main character.  The rest of the time is spent in the game and having the characters interact/play as their created persona. 

Another interesting aspect of this show, is how the game parts look when they're not operating correctly.  Take Shepards face above.  Bioware created the entire eyeball, not just the visible part not covered by the eyelids.  

Perhaps it's an odd comparison to make, but listening to these guys talk reminds me a lot of Click and Clack from Car Talk.  What they're saying isn't always funny, but coupled with their laughs (which are infectious) and the frequently uttered "why would you let me do this!?" makes the show pretty hilarious.  It's actually caused me on occasion to grip my side out of pain from laughing and not being able to take in enough air to breathe regularly. 

Some of the episodes, such as Fallout 4 do give away some story spoilers, but that's only if you haven't played the game and don't want to know anything about any aspect of the story.  Also, their Dark Souls 2 video gives about as much of a spoiler in the Dark Souls universe as you can expect.  And, since they're not actually in the market of creating walkthroughs or LetsPlays, other than what is witnessed through game play, they do a pretty good job about avoiding spoilers overall.  I should probably also add that having played the game does add to the enjoyment of the video, it is not necessary, but it just means that you'll know what's going on.  Sort of.

Basically, if you have half-an-hour to kill, if you like video games, and if you don't mind two guys talking and laughing at their own creations, then you might want to give Monster Factory a try.  It's a lot funnier than I make it sound and it really is one of those things that it's funnier when you actually watch it, preferably with other people who might find it humorous as well.  Or just by yourself.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Afraid Of Myself

P.S.  The first video that Conklederp and I saw was their "Boy-Mayor of Second Life."  It's not a bad place to start, never having played Second Life, although I do know of its existence.

P.P.S.  

Oh Jesus God Man NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I also wanted to share this screenshot from their second episode, using The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which I found to be amusing, just not as legitimately laugh out loud hilarious as some of their videos that we had previously watched.