Tag: video games

In which I am inconsistent

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Do you know what I did when I got home from work today?

Well, okay, I ate a pile of Arby’s. But after that?

Yeah, I fired up fucking Elden Ring again. I only played for a few minutes, but there was this one minibus I hadn’t killed yet, and … well, I wanted to, so I did. I am currently trying to decide whether I want to go ahead and dive into New Game + or hold off in hopes of being properly leveled for the inevitable DLC, which hasn’t been announced and probably won’t be released for months yet. I think the answer is probably “dive into New Game+,” except for … everything I said yesterday, which is all still true even if I’m apparently too dumb to act like it.

Today went well, I suppose; there are 31 days of school left as of right now, and I’m being observed tomorrow. I should probably figure out what I’m having the kids actually do during said observed lesson. I’ve never actually done an observed lesson by the seat of my pants, though, and if there was ever a time to do that just for the hell of it, the last month of my boss’ time in the building is probably it. He’s not going to give me a bad observation. He’s just not. I know this, which allows me a certain amount of freedom. That, and the fact that even if he did give me a poor evaluation I don’t think it would actually matter to anyone.

(I’m not going to do that. I’ll come up with something. We’ll see what it is, though.)

Let’s see, anything else? I wrote a post about the Expanse series a month or so ago, and while looking for books to compare the Expanse to, I commented that I’d never read any of Iain M. Banks’ Culture books. That wasn’t 100% true, as it turns out; I have owned the first book, Consider Phlebas, for long enough that my single, aborted attempt to read it doesn’t show up on Goodreads anywhere. I decided to take another shot at it and finished it the other day. The good news: I can’t figure out why I put it down all those years ago; the bad news: that doesn’t mean I thought it was especially good. I’ve heard that Phlebas is among the weaker Culture novels if not the weakest, so I might go ahead and try the second book anyway. Anybody out there have any observations to make? If I didn’t like the first Culture book, should I continue on anyway?

A Genuinely Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: I finally beat ELDEN RING

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video games1 Comment

I finally– FINALLY— managed to put Elden Ring to bed just now, after a completely ridiculous 122 hours of gameplay over roughly a month and a half (the game came out on February 25) of my actual life. I’m not doing the math to figure out how many hours a day that represents; I can tell you I did actually take a couple of days off here and there, but not many.

Here’s the review: this is easily one of the best games I’ve ever played, and I’m probably never touching it again. Now, there are plenty of other games I’ve put more than 120 hours into– there are other Fromsoft games I’ve put more than 122 hours into (Sekiro and Dark Souls III, definitely, and while they aren’t Fromsoft, Nioh and Nioh 2 as well) but those have all been on multiple playthroughs. Even something like Skyrim, which is legendary for the amount of content it contains, wasn’t close to 122 hours on my first playthrough. 122 hours is twice the length of a really big game, and I am one hundred percent certain that there is a ton of stuff left to do in this game that I left on the table– even if it’s just as simple as the fact that I was playing a strength build and so I went basically the entire game without casting a spell. I’m sure I missed dungeons. I probably missed entire quest lines scattered here and there, and who knows what other little landmarks or interesting bits of content I just never noticed.

It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t play video games just how big this game is, and how– much as I predicted, about 90 hours ago– that kind of scope ends up actually being detrimental to the game. Because, okay, this was my first playthrough, and subsequent playthroughs won’t need to be nearly as long, because 1) I really won’t feel the need to do every single thing that I can possibly do on a second playthrough and 2) Since I know the general layout of the world and the basic path for exploration I won’t need to do as much fiddlefarting around as I did on the first playthrough, where there were big stretches where I didn’t really know what to do next so I just sort of wandered around until I stumbled over something. So I’m not in for another 120 hours, but even 50-60 for a second playthrough of something I’ve done before is just a big investment of time. That’s literally multiple days of playtime. Like, I loved it, it’s delicious, but if I eat any more I’m gonna throw up, and that’s not what I want.

I am uploading the final batch of episodes now; episodes 88 and 89 will go live today, so that’s 22 more episodes, meaning that the last episode will air on the 21st, since I don’t intend to bump up the release speed at all. I need to decide what I’m doing with the channel now; I’m closing in on a year that I’ve been doing this (I started in June of 2021) and I was really hoping that this series would goose my follower count a bit. I started the series with 116 followers on YouTube. I currently have, after 88 episodes of what at least to me seems like quality content about the hottest game on the market, have … 116 followers. I think a year of an hour of content every single day— I didn’t miss a single deadline once I started– is probably enough to determine whether I’m 1) going to blow up or 2) want to blow up on YouTube as a platform. I think the first answer is no; I had heard all kinds of stories about how follower counts pick up a lot once you get your 100th follower and your first video with 500 views; I’ve done both and they haven’t. The second … I’m tired, y’all. Video games and reading are my two big leisure activities and I effectively converted one of them into a job over the last year and I’m really not sure I want to keep doing it. I’m going to take those eleven days and play a game or two and not record at all, just to see if I feel differently about it, and we’ll see if I pick things back up in a couple of weeks (I could always just finish that year out and make it official) or if I decide to walk away from the channel for a while. I mean, I could always just record stuff when I want to, or cut down on the recorded episodes and do more livestreams or something. There are avenues in between “keep doing exactly what I’m doing” and “completely shut down.”

Elden Ring, 35 hours in, and the channel

On By Luther M. SilerIn video games1 Comment

First, the I’m-maybe-a-third-of-the-way-through review: Elden Ring is phenomenal, a towering achievement that has all sorts of interesting things to say about its predecessors from FromSoft and the notion of “open world” gaming to boot; this is one of the best games I’ve ever played on any console, and if my opinion ends up changing on that front it will be because ultimately there ended up being too much of it and it got overwhelming.

What’s killing me is I’ve got the next two games for the channel on deck already, and they’re both also huge, and I recorded episode forty-seven tonight for Elden Ring and … yeah, I’m maybe a third of the way through. Maybe. This is going to dominate my channel for two months, easy, unless I increase the number of episodes per day that I’m airing, and even then I could see it going two months. Three episodes a day for 60 days is 180 episodes. That’s not unimaginable. And I’m regularly crushing my typical 30-minute limit because breaking every half hour just doesn’t make sense the way the game is structured– there are no missions, like there usually are in an open-world game, so there’s not a situation where you can go do something and it takes 20 minutes and it’s discrete. There’s always a tower in the distance or a cave to explore or a new boss that’s killed me five times in this episode and I’m pretty damn sure I can kill the motherfucker with one more try, and it leads to longer episodes. The cool factor is off the charts. I’ve already used the word overwhelming once; it’s absolutely the right word.

What’s a real pain in the ass is feeling like I’ve got to record it all. I started the channel last June, so we’re at about 9 months now, give or take, and I’ve been rock-solid about not missing episodes that entire time; at least two a day, with occasional but rare 8:00 episodes as well. I’ve got 115 subscribers; I was led to believe by the Internet that subscriber counts would start rising more drastically once I hit 100, and so far that hasn’t happened, and … I may be getting tired of waiting. I mean, the chance that this was going to lead to any kind of money was slim to begin with (it is worth pointing out that that 115 followers puts me in the top 5% of YouTubers globally) and the channel definitely has some fans, but having to spend an hour a night or more locked in my office playing video games and occasionally dealing with tech or editing hiccups which takes even longer is kinda getting old. I think I remember what the boy looks like; he comes in occasionally to ask for money.

I dunno. This could just be the tired talking, but I’m starting to feel like the work/fun balance in this whole thing is starting to tilt too much toward work, and I might need to reevaluate some things. I’ll finish this series out, so it’ll be a minute, but I need to think.

(I uploaded four episodes while I was writing this, by the way.)

Seeking an artist

On By Luther M. SilerIn art, video games8 Comments

Pictured to the right here is the current logo I’m using for my YouTube channel. I like the basic idea of it; it looks enough like me that anyone who knows me recognizes it instantly, I actually own that shirt, and he’s playing video games.

That said, the look on his face is … off, and it’s really obviously a Bitmoji; the style of those things, even if you don’t recognize the particular pose the image is in, is instantly recognizable.

I know some artists, but I’m not sure any of them are appropriate for what I’m looking for: I want to redo the logo image for my channel, and I want something that is reminiscent of this, and in a cartoony style (that’s where everyone I know falls down; none of them are what I’d ever describe as “cartoony”) but I want something that is unique and looks like me without obviously being from some specific site on the internet that is reproducible by anyone who can find the proper settings.

If you know anyone, please let them know, or if you feel like you are such an artist, drop me an email with pricing and a portfolio link. We can talk details then. To be clear, this is to be a planned gig; I have a budget in mind and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable amount, but we’ll see.

My eyes are bleeding but that’s fine

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I have recorded nine episodes so far, and I’ve done some offscreen screwing around during my– heh– “breaks” from playing, and I’m having a Goddamn blast so far. I spent a good chunk of last night as a spitting, rage mess because my microphone abruptly decided to shit the Goddamn bed on me, and the workaround that I finally came up with so that I could actually get started recording wasn’t nearly of the quality I wanted.

I replaced the mic first thing this morning, and we are rolling now. It’s 6:40, and I’m hoping to get another four or five episodes in at least before I go to bed. Staying up late to keep playing is absolutely on the table. We’ll see what happens. I’d love to be twenty episodes in by the end of the weekend but I have a fair amount of stuff from my stupid actual life that needs to get done tomorrow, including more grading than I really want to think about, so we’ll see how it goes.

I also owe somebody a book review, which will be written tomorrow. Teaser:

Short version: read these.

In which I’ll see y’all later

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I think I said this a couple of days ago- I do not remember the last time I was this excited about anything, and I fully expect this game to eat my life for a month. I will probably post a character creation video on the channel at 8:00 and then full coverage starts tomorrow. If you need me, call my wife.

Love y’all. ELDEN RIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG

In which I’m almost there

On By Luther M. SilerIn life, video gamesLeave a comment

I have been an utter wreck for the last few days. Monday was spent in a nameless bad mood, to the point where I actually took a brain pill in the middle of the day, which is something that I generally don’t do; I almost always use the emergency pills for nights when I can’t shut my brain off and need to sleep. I was out of work yesterday and today, yesterday with something vile and digestive, with shooting pains in my stomach, and today with a massive headache. I’m out of sick days for the year, so the next three months are gonna be interesting. I’ve gotten roughly an extra day and a half worth of sleep in the last 48 hours and feel fine right now, so I’m going in tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.

(I’ve missed a ton of work in 2022. This is the first two days I’ve had to take off because something was wrong with me, however.)

Anyway, Elden Ring comes out on Friday, and while I don’t know it’ll help my mental health any it’ll certainly fill the hours. Next week will be that horror of horrors, a five-day work week, something that sounds nearly insurmountable the way the last two months have gone. The following week ends the quarter and features a teacher record day, and then the two weeks following are full weeks, but then we have Spring Break. I want to try to make it that far without missing any days, or at least without missing any days under circumstances I can control.

Meanwhile, the world is slowly catching on fire again, in any number of ways and any number of places, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about any of it, so I might as well burn my hours on video games. I said on Twitter earlier today that I can’t remember the last time I was looking forward to anything as much as I was looking forward to getting home from work on Friday and getting to play this game, and that remains true; the closest I can think of is Avengers: Endgame, and while we don’t all know how that ended up, enough of you do that you’ll understand why I don’t care to repeat the experience.

Tomorrow, though, I’m gonna teach somebody math for a while. I’m going to get through tomorrow, and I’m going to get through Friday. One day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time; three months from now, I may be done teaching. We’ll see what happens. One way or another, the time is going to pass.

(You really really ought to follow me on YouTube. Even if you’re not a video game person, my current project, What Remains of Edith Finch, has been … really interesting so far in a way that sidesteps a lot of what people who don’t play video games don’t like about them. If that makes any sense. Anyway, go subscribe.)

Super Social Saturday

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I had family in town today— my favorite aunt, along with her oldest son and his wife were in town from Michigan and California, respectively, and they went and picked my dad up and came over here for the day. It was a lot of fun but I am well and truly worn out from just being a human for several hours. I’m trying to beat Dandara just so I can put it to bed and figure out what I’m doing with the YouTube channel (wanna be subscriber #115? Sure you do!) in the days between this final episode going live on Monday and Elden Ring coming out on the25th, and right now I’m kinda clueless. I do know that my hands hurt because my current strategy for this utter bullshit final boss involves lots of button-mashing.

This is all a lengthy way of saying this is going to be all the blogging I have brain for today. Any cells I have left in another hour or so will be devoted to finding a couple more jobs to apply to. One of the ones I sent in an application for today has a salary range of $125-185,000, so I am denying myself nothing; if I think I’m even vaguely interested in the job, I’m applying. Not like I have anything to lose.

(There is an interesting phenomenon going on here, where I’m looking at jobs with high salaries and immediately feeling like I can’t possibly be qualified for them, and fuck that. I’ve met businesspeople. They’re people. I can be people too. Fuck it. I want a six-figure job. Give me one. I’m not letting my own bullshit hold me back here.)