Tag: video games

Two unrelated things

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

I’ve been thinking about an Iron Man video game lately. Now, to my knowledge, there’s not one currently in development; my point is there should be, and after the huge success of the Spider-Man and Miles Morales games, I would love to see Insomniac take a whack at it. I’m watching a playthrough of the new Guardians of the Galaxy game (which I don’t currently intend to play) as well and that seems to have captured pretty well what a team-based video game ought to be.

What’s got me excited is the prospect of customizability. Imagine a game where you’re constantly unlocking or finding or inventing (call it what you want) new modes and upgrades and powers for your armor, and then give you the ability to swap those pieces out at will, then skin everything however you like so that you can use whatever classic Iron Man colors you want, from the classic red and gold to the Silver Centurion to the short-lived-but-gorgeous black and gold suit to the Superior Iron Man white suit. Ideally you’d end up with something similar to Ghost of Tsushima where there are tons of reason why you might swap out a suit or a few pieces for a specific purpose. I loved how that game never let you get comfortable with a suit of armor; some would be better for stealth, some were straight-up dueling armors, some were more suited for archery and so on. And if the character is Iron Man, someone who could literally be fighting in dozens of different environments? C’mon.

There has not, to my knowledge, been a really good game yet featuring a character who can fly. The Spider-Man games have come the closest (and yes, I have played the Xbox 360 Iron Man game from 2008) and obviously Spider-Man doesn’t actually fly but they nailed the way he moves. C’mon, y’all, make this game happen so I can play it for a thousand years.

On the way home from my dad’s house this evening it crossed my mind that I’ve been stuck at 42 followers for my YouTube channel for a minute now. I am putting a lot of work into this channel, and (and this is not just me, for the record) it is significantly more difficult to pick up followers on YouTube than any other form of social media I’m aware of, and frankly right now the only strategy I have is “make good content and wait for people to find it,” which … well, that’s certainly not a bad strategy, but what it also isn’t is fast. Ironically, I realized just after getting home that that elusive 43rd follower had found me– and, as it happens, he’d left his followers open, so I could see who he was. Typically YouTubers keep their follow lists private, so most of the time when someone follows you only know because the little number ticks up by one and you don’t get any information about who’s followed you.

And he appears to be a middle-school-aged black kid, which immediately brought up the obvious question of whether he was one of my students. And here’s the fascinating bit– I don’t think he is, but I’m not 100% sure despite the fact that he’s posted a couple of videos where his face is visible. Why am I not sure? Because I don’t really know what most of my current students look like, since they wear masks all the fucking time. Especially given how fast these kids’ faces change at this age, if the video I’m looking at is more than six months or so old it’s entirely possible that he’s one of mine and I just don’t recognize him.

Fucked-up, that.

In which I shill for my YouTube again

On By Luther M. SilerIn video games1 Comment

YouTube channel update: We finished up Kena: Bridge of Spirits yesterday, which was super cool, and today we’re starting Tails of Iron. I’m far enough ahead on my recordings that I might actually beat the game tonight, and if I don’t it’ll be tomorrow; expect 19-20 episodes total out of this one, so about a week and a half or so. I’m up to 42 followers, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things but I figure the numbers are still going up so that’s good. Go subscribe!

I’m still having fun with this, although it’s taking just a bit more of my time than I’d like since I’m getting home so late this year. If I was still on last year’s schedule I don’t think I’d feel like it was such a time sink since I’d have more of my late afternoon/evenings to do stuff with. Like, my schedule most days is get home from work, eat dinner, record for an hour, write a blog post, decompress for half an hour, and then bed. I feel like, y’know, some family time or something might be cool.

(Thinks)

Yeah, that’s what I’ve got for tonight, I think. Nothing significant happened at work today and I haven’t read or watched anything since my last book update, so I am, at least, blessedly drama-free right now. I’m sure now that I’ve said that the entire world will explode.

Okay, I can do this

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I have a day of professional development on Wednesday, so this is how the next couple of weeks are going to go:

  • Two days of work, one of which was today and is therefore done
  • A day at home on Zoom, away from children
  • Two days of work; the second day is payday
  • A weekend
  • Three days of work, one of which is the PSAT and then “Shut up, leave me alone, and finish your missing work”
  • A teacher record day
  • Our four-day Fall Break

That should be manageable, right? I make it through tomorrow and, no matter what happens tomorrow, I don’t have to see any of the kids on Wednesday– not the ones I like or the ones I don’t. Sure.

In other news, I spent the day being smug about having nuked my presence on Facebook while everyone else freaked out about the outage, and … well, everything else is misery and despair, mostly.

Okay, maybe not everything. I like this video game a lot, and it looks like a Pixar movie, so you should go watch me play it:

That’s what I’ve got. Gonna go curl up with a cat and a book.

Taking tonight off

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

We watched Suicide Squad last night, so there is a review of that coming, but I decided today would be the day I finished recording my Dark Souls II Let’s Play– which ran 45 episodes!– for lutherplaysgames.com. That series is currently running and will be ending around the 22nd or the 23rd; for your edification, I’m letting you watch the first episode right here! Aren’t I nice?

Tomorrow, work for school and curling up in a tiny stress ball. It’ll be fun.

In which I don’t know what’s going on

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

It has been one of those days— and, I suspect, this is going to be a pattern that’s not going away anytime soon– where never at any point was I really sure what day it was, or what, if anything, I’m supposed to be doing. I’m going to have an extra child in my house all day tomorrow, and two days after that I have a sleep study, then I’m out of town for three days, and the week after that I have a three-day work thing, then a couple of one-day work things the week after that, and then it’s August and pretty much the second August 1 hits I’m off to the races, because school starts the 11th, I think, and I have stuff to do nearly every day of August before then.

All of this is just to say that I spent today either in the pool, finally framing my wife’s Christmas present, or recording myself playing the vidya games, and other than never being quite sure what day it was, I am perfectly content with how the day went.

I have an enormous amount of stuff I want to accomplish before Child 2 arrives tomorrow; anybody want to take bets on whether I get any of it done?

Blecchhhhh

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Both my wife and I slept like utter shit last night; I think every time one of us drifted off the other one did something, and we both kept each other up all damn night, and as a result we’ve both been just oozing around the house and moaning all day. We have three episodes of Avatar left and God damn it, if I get through all three of them, I’m going to call today a victory and not worry about it. It’s Sunday, I ain’t gotta do nothing I don’t want to.

You, on the other hand, should go watch my stupid vidya gaemz videos instead of reading a post.

Little Nightmares II Let’s Play Pt. 3

On By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I promise I’m not going to get into the habit of doing this a lot, but I figure early on it can’t hurt: we’re up to Day 3 of our Little Nightmares II playthrough, with new episodes being posted at noon EST daily until I’ve beaten the game. You can subscribe to the channel here, and really, you should go do that even if you don’t use YouTube. In fact, especially if you don’t use YouTube, because then my silly vidya gaemz videos won’t even annoy you.

More later, by which I mean “I’m going to start writing the post now, so this isn’t a bluff.”

I’ll write it, and we’ll do it live

On By Luther M. SilerIn video games4 Comments

It’s still processing at this exact second, so there might be a touch of nonsense for a little while, but this is the first thing I’ve done that I think is at least mostly Ready For Prime Time. So feel free to give it a watch and see what you think. The plan is to do a half-hour or so pre-recorded video each day until I’ve beaten the game.