Burning the midnight oil at noon

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: November 2024

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Silent Hill 2 (2024) (PC) – Exactly what I want to see in a remake: very similar to the source material, but with lots of tweaks and surprises for veterans of the original. The combat is surprisingly fun (SH combat is usually ass) and the new puzzles are (mostly) pretty darn good.

Can’t Revert (PC) – It’s just like PT, except much less frightening. Also, makes flagrant use of the “bad dad” trope that’s so common in horror games. I had a few good laughs with it, though! There’s a let’s play video of it coming some day.

Peglin (PC) – GD Peglin is back for more…

TE Video: Coming Soon (Dec 2024)

Oh, things have gotten wildly out of control on my YouTube channel! Over the last month, I’ve gained over 50 new subscribers, and videos are actually getting likes now!? Only problem is, the watch minutes aren’t adding up too quick. So I guess bots can like and subscribe now?

Also all my videos are on Rumble as well. But that channel’s not doing so well. Which is too bad, because the threshold for monetization is much lower there.

Anyway, here’s what’s coming up next month (for all the bots that care):

The Knight Witch – Part 5 goes live on Dec 2, and there’s a new episode every Monday. This one isn’t gaining much traction by any metric, but I didn’t expect it to. I don’t think many people know it exists. But it’s a really good game, it’s too bad it’s buried under so many other games.

Another Code Recollection – Part 12 goes live on Dec 5, and unlike The Knight Witch, this one will actually wrap up by the end of the year. However, this series is getting even less attention than The Knight Witch, which I find odd because it’s a story-heavy game, and at least in my opinion, those are the best games to watch let’s plays of. Oh well! *shrug*

Mario & Luigi: Brothership – Part 4 will air on Dec 7. While the first episode did pretty okay (50+ views), part 2 is still sitting at zero as of this writing. Ouch. I really thought there may be some draw, as it’s a new game with big name recognition, but I seem to have been mistaken. I’m honestly not even sure if I’m going to finish the game on-camera or not. But I probably will.

A Pop-Tarts Review – I’m planning at least one for December. I won’t tell you what flavour, but I will tell you that I intend on putting it up on the 25th. There will probably actually even be another one before that, but we’ll have to see how motivated I feel over the next couple of weeks.

Crunchy… AND poppy

I posted another Pop-Tarts review video out of nowhere yesterday.

Actually, it’s been sitting in my videos folder since August; I just haven’t had the motivation to take the time to edit it. But then I did!

One of my personal goals for 2024 was to post six Pop-Tarts reviews throughout the year. Not a terribly high bar to clear. However, we’re at the end of November and this is only the second. Either crunch time is here, or I decide that I don’t really care that much about this specific goal. I’ve crushed all the ones I really cared about, so this one, I think, could slide. But I still might try! Stay tuned to find out!

Words and Such

I haven’t really been in the writing mood too much as of late. I know, not a great business model for a blogger, but also… I do this for fun, not for glory.

In an effort to post something, here’s a point-form list of things that I maybe would have written more about in another timeline and that may be of moderate interest. I may still write about some of them at length, but probably not.

I’ve been playing the new Ys game in short bursts since it released a couple weeks ago. As you may know, I’m a big, big fan of the Ys series, and Ys X: Nordics is not disappointing so far. The first few chapters were a bit slow, but it’s taking off now, and I really like the two-member party system. It’s very unique, if a bit limited in options.
Work has been kind of insanely busy lately. Which is a good thing, because it helps to keep me on task. Also, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me how well-respected (and maybe even well-liked) I am within the organization. As someone who’s had low self-esteem for basically his whole life, it’s really quite nice to feel confident and dependable.
I bought a stupidly expensive alarm clock from Nintendo recently, and I don’t regret a penny of it. I never expected such a weird thing could bring me such joy. Will likely do more words about this at some point.
Went to see Venom: The Last Dance recently. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about it or why (I haven’t given it all that much consideration), but I may have been kinda bored for most of the runtime? Definitely the least enjoyable of the trilogy, in my opinion, even though the climax and epilogue were satisfying.
After years of sleeping on the couch with the TV on just about every night, I’ve been sleeping in my bed like a normal-ass person over the last week. I’m not really sleeping much better (still waking up at least once a night), but I am feeling a little more well-rested, and my back is definitely thanking me.
A couple of co-workers have been singing the praises of the roguelike poker game, Balatro, so I decided to give it a whirl on their recommendations. I’m trying my best, but I don’t know if it’s right for me. Even the tutorial felt overwhelming. And here I was thinking that I was getting over my fear of roguelikes.
I was going to put a link to a relevant post in the paragraph above, but it turns out that I never published it. I guess that’s something I probably should do, seems silly to have written out a full 2000-plus-word post that’s just sitting in limbo. Actually, there are at least two of those…
Taking a more proactive role in managing both my eating and exercise regimens throughout the year has done wonders for my health, both physical and mental. It’s been a long road, but I’ve far surpassed my weight loss goal and I’ve been feeling fantastic. It would be nice to have someone, you know, notice, but oh well! External validation is for chumps, anyway.
I went on a short vacation with my family at the end of September. I don’t think I wrote a single word about it, but it was awesome. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was great to simply get away and be somewhere different for a while. And also to have that QT with the people who are closest to me, of course. That’s always good.

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2024

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Visions of Mana (PS5) – Played some more to wrap up the post-game. There are some really cool little additions to the NG+ mode, but I don’t think I really need to play this one again just yet. Maybe in a couple months.

Peglin (PC) – This is the game that doesn’t end, it just goes on and on, my friend…

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch) – Very good game! I really liked how it took pieces from a lot of other Zeldas and glued them all together to make an incredibly unique entry in the series. I wouldn’t say it’s world-shattering or anything, but I definitely look forward to inevitable replays.

The Price of Mastery

This weekend I finally completed the pokédex in PokéDoku. It took me 268 days of play to do so, and you could even shave 20-30 days off there since the dex feature wasn’t even added until I’d already been playing for a while. So that’s not too bad!

Of course, the question now is: what comes next?

Well, more PokéDoku, of course. A couple months back, shinies were added into the game. If you’re not a pokémaniac like me, shinies are pokémon that are a different colour than usual and have a 1/8192 chance of appearing. Or, that’s their odds in the real Pokémon games, anyway. In PokéDoku, there’s a 1% chance of a pokémon being shiny, which is way more likely. Still absurdly rare, but not mind-bogglingly so.

I’ve never really been a shiny hunter in any pokémon game. My very first natural shiny was a Sunkern in Pokémon Soul Silver, which was not terribly exciting. I did try to hunt another one in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire years later, but never found one. I participate in community days in Pokémon Go to take advantage of the boosted shiny odds for the pokémon highlighted on those days, but don’t really put much more effort into it than that.

TE Video: Coming Soon (Nov 2024)

You know the drill by now, yes? Videos go live every Monday and Thursday on both my YouTube and Rumble channels. Feel free to watch them on the platform of your choice, but remember that Rumble is much more likely to pay me.

The Knight Witch (PC) – A new series starting Nov 4, this is a metroidvania that plays like a bullet-hell shooter. It’s got a alright story and a great main character, which should be a good draw. It’s also a hella long series, consisting of a whopping 12 episodes, so it’ll be running until late January.

Another Code Recollection (Switch) – Starts Nov 7. Picking up in the second half of the game, I feel a little bad for benching this one for so long. This is all new content to me, as I’d never played the original release of this half. It’s pretty good, and very much story-based, if that’s what you’re into. This series coincidentally will run until Boxing Day, which is the final Thursday of 2024.

That’s all for November. And for December, too, actually. And 2024! Oh no, how did we get to the end of another year already!?

Inexplicability

I’ve been doing YouTube to incredibly mild success for a long time now, and I never in a million years would have expected that this is what would blow up for me.

A crappy let’s play of a crappy game of an actually pretty good film. Who would have guessed? Is suffering through terrible licensed games the way to make it big these days? I’ll never know, because I’m not going to do that.

Going by the comments, it might be mostly that people are shocked that this game even exists. But that shock has resulted in a nice big boost to my watch time and subs, so I’ll take it! We’re officially on the road to 500 subs and monetization, baby!

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: September 2024

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Peglin (PC) – What more do you want me to say? I guess I could stop listing it in the “Game Over” section, but does a successful run not count as “beating” the game?

FNAF VR: Help Wanted (Quest) – Played this again for the sake of a let’s play. Good times were had, except for the stupid Funtime Foxy levels. Those are the WORST.

FNAF VR: Help Wanted 2 (Quest) – As much as I enjoyed the first game, this is one is scores better. While it doesn’t have any mini-games that are quite as engrossing as the FNAF1-3 recreations, it also doesn’t have any ridiculously difficult mini-games like the stupid Funtime Foxy levels.

TE Video: Coming Soon (Oct 2024)

Spooktober is nearly upon us! To celebrate, I’ve not only got exclusively horror games on deck for the month, but I’ll also be posting three videos a week instead of the usual two! Make sure to keep an eye on your subscription feeds on Saturdays!

Bloody Ink (PC) – [Oct 1, 7, 14, & 21] – This four-part series is the newest offering from Doesn’t Matter Games. The first video is actually of the demo, which is packaged in with the full game and acts as a prologue. It’s all very Doesn’t Matter, but didn’t quite tickle my fancy the way that Lost Alone did.

Who Knocks (PC) – [Oct 3 & 10] – Conversely, this is Doesn’t Matter Games’ first game. Playing them back-to-back really illuminates how the DMG formula hasn’t really changed over time, but it has been refined with a number of quality-of-life improvements. I think this is actually my second-favourite game from DMG.