YOU HAVE BEEN VISITED BY THE MONTHLY BLOGGER DEVIN, LIKE THIS POST TO LIVE FOR ONE MORE MONTH.
Did anything even happen in February? It's a short month at the best of times, but I really feel like I just didn't do anything. Well I did do less than usual since I went away for a week in the middle, and to prepare for that I had to do extra video stuff on either side of that week, WHICH means that I wasn't working on the world's greatest video game much this month :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(:( :( :(:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( v v v v:( :( :(:( :( :( :( :( :( v :( :( :( :( :( :(ctrl+v ctrlandalsopressv - hopefully this is enough sadness to represent the blow to the world's morale this news will surely bring.
My current task is to go through all the battle maps and update them, because after some extensive testing I decided that many of them are too 'open', i.e. not enough obstacles to work around. Playing in open space limits your options, and pretty much forces you to just move the party around in a big block, but uneven terrain spices things up a fair bit.
I've been doing a Wargroove abridged campaign of late, and that game has it's maps full of obstacles AND has low movement ranges, and while I find it annoying, I do concede that at the obstacles part at least adds to the 'puzzle'-like nature of each turn's combat. Also Wargroove sucks compared to Ice Emblem so those guys are gonna be in trouble reeeeeaaallll 'soooooon' (TrAdEmArKeD).
On my youtube channel (pronounced, 'shay-nell'), I have just continued by two main series, despite having every intention to finish them. Neither really presented any kind of conclusion through the gameplay, so I've just trundled along with some new conceits to justify more campaign. Also Three Kingdoms Total War was delayed, so now I need to stall for time a bit more. One of them needs to end soon so I can get on and do a Frostpunk series instead, because a) I want to and b) I have too many subs, need to a violent change in direction to shake a few off.
By the way, I was talking about Wings of Eden, and Recs Romanum there, for any of you reading this in the future in order to chronicle the rising fall of the Offy D Corporation.
That reminds me, I haven't actually talked about how the channel is doing in ages. Or have I? I don't remember, but anyway, I'm currently very close to the not-really-a-milestone of 24K subs! Which is close to the more satisfying milestone of 25K subs! Which was my sub goal for last year, and has been demoted to sub goal for this year! Even with my near-negligible growth rate, I should actually reach it this year.
It's possible I'll be aided by the Three Kingdoms release, however given that acquiring early access to TW products requires navigating a complex plutocratic political system within their community management team, promises that I will get said early access are worth very little. 'Tis simply not a realm of yes-no answers, or any forms of communication whatsoever really. I get constant communications from CMs of OTHER game developers, asking me to play games not well suited to the channel, so hopefully I'm not just giving off bad vibes.
That also reminds me, I've recently had several offers to do sponsorships for those suddenly omnipresent VPN companies. Probably should have agreed, but I'm too scared of losing my precious integrity (valued at over £10 don't you know?), EVEN THOUGH it's the future now and it doesn't really entail any integrity loss whatsoever. It's nice to be considered large enough that a company would even bother offer a sponsorship, so that's nice!
Will have to sell out one day. The trend of the channel making less and less money has only continued over these last few months, with revenue falling to [pick a prime number less than 7] currency units a day - as ever, I remain afloat because of patreon, and because of all the VO I've done for Kings and Generals, which itself is now like the number 1 history channel of all time ever or something. My voice still sounds horrible on their channel on account of some unknown error in the audio mastering process that's going on, causing my voice to sound robotic at times, stripped of samples, or range, or something or other. Sounds okay on really big speakers for some reason, but on my headphones and PC speakers it's too tragic for me to bear. As it stands, I think I'm the only one annoyed by this, and I believe the plan is to leave it as it is, so rip my BEAUTIFUL voice.
Also also I was thinking of actually going whole hog and writing a script for them. Not really sure about what, but I was inspired by the discovery of my old 'history of science' essays from university, which I thought were pretty good. If K&G want to publish a video about the history of the cosmological constant, or the differences between Chinese and Middle Eastern Alchemy, I am, for some reason, your man!
ANYWAY, so err, yeah, the news from the Offy D Corp is that I'm coasting along, eagerly awaiting the chance to do something. I was thinking the other day that my actual channel goal is to get the point where I don't need patrons, as then I would feel 'free' to do what I want with it, and try out new things much more. When will that happen? At the current growth rate, something like 30-40 years. Let's keep pushing bois!
And now to rant about something ever so slightly different; it's time for...
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WHAT I PLAYED THIS MONTH
Mass Effect Andromeda - the game that killed Mass Effect, which I must say, is WAY better than I expected. Funnily enough, I'd say that all of the really bad animations and weird writing that it's infamous for are heavily concentrated in the first couple of hours, aka the worst possible place. Once you're beyond the first hub and first planet, it turns into something extremely similar to old mass effect, like a mass effect 1.5 with dragon age inquisition's game design used for the open world sections. You're still mainly just doing world-savey stuff and then chatting with the crew about it, then going on missions for said crew.
So it's really just fine, although that said, the overall disappointment over the entire plot and premise of the game is hard to surmount. While the game is technically set in another galaxy, and promised to be about exploring it in some way, in reality it is just Mass Effect 1.5 and nothing more. The galaxy is already inhabited by two humanoid, english-speaking alien races for starters. For seconders, it's ALREADY INHABITED BY THE MILKY WAY RACES ALSO, which really shocked me - you are in the final wave of colonists, and those who went ahead of you already did all the exploring and swashbuckling. Basically the backstory of the game that you hear about from NPCs is more interesting than the game itself - that old chestnut.
Curiously, I thought the game might end up being about the fact that the milky way races are effectively colonising planets that belong to the main native Andromeda race, who are currently too weak to stop you as a result of plot shizzle, and have generally fallen from grace. The whole set up seems like it's going to be an almost too obvious comment on colonisation, and a criticism of the idea that the milky way races thought they could just take over Andromeda as well. But actually the natives, while sometimes skeptical of your presence, seem to think you (humans in particular) are pretty damn sexy, and welcome you in. Maybe it will eventually change course, but really it's about being friends with the natives (while literally killing those resisting your not-an-invasion-it's-just-non-consentual-colonisation-where-we-have-lots-of-guns-and-biotics-and-military-spaceships, with the plot excuse that they only resist you because they're racist or something).
Just feels like this whole story would have gotten a load of flak in the modern age, but perhaps everyone was so outraged by the low quality of the opening, they never saw the vast and generally descent game that lay beyond. It's possible it was meant to be interpreted more as a pro-immigration message, and so avoided any progressive scorn. But I'm teleporting into the natives, headbutting them, and cutting them in half with an energy sword, so I don't really know about that.
I also played a bit of GTA 3, for some reason. Playing the nice, broken PC port, in which the main menu won't load unless you keep alt-tabing in and out of the game, and the guns all shoot up and right of the aiming crosshair by more than enough to always miss the targets you're aiming at until you realise this. I can't really remember why I wanted to replay this ancient work, but it is still pretty fun I think! The driving is good, the plot's just a no-effort excuse for antics, and you have a bit of freedom about how to complete the missions. Truly a revolutionary game of its era, that aged badly but still works if you stop constantly thinking about how GTA 5 does all the same things much better.
AND THAT'S WHAT I PLAYED THIS MONTH
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By the way, I went into steam recently and started categorising my games in order to establish a formal backlog.
Not toooo bad right, but it's growing faster than it's shrinking since so much of my gaming time is spend recording footage for the channel. The unofficial backlog are older games that I never really played, or ones I think I'd like to play again (which is where GTA 3 came from).
But that's only the steam backlog! I have a PS4 backlog, including the legendary Bloodborne, and a GOG backlog, including various abridged strategy candidates and NLP candidates like Sunless Sea. Will I ever actually play them? Statistically, no!
Okay that's the end of this blog. Basically nothing at all happened in my life, which was largely my goal anyway, so all is well. Might move house later in the year, that'll give me something to write about at least. Well, keep it up out there you dirty memers!
