This year's tournament

This year's birthday party tournament ended up going waaaaay differently than I had originally anticipated. I picked a simple game (It was Super Mario War in case any of you guys n gals missed it) that was four players and I thought it would be easy-peasy. The tournaments always take up a lot of time and it's incredibly difficult for us to rearrange the brackets for people that show up in the middle. Usually these issues can be dealt with in a timely fashion but this year they weren't... It ended up taking something absurd like 2 hours just to get the brackets down and they weren't even right at the end. 

Everyone seemed to show up real late this year (Even though I generally compensate by telling people to come 2-3 hours before I actually want them here, a lot of people showed up after the tournament was even supposed to start. I either need to get more timely friends or make the tournaments later in the future... I honestly expected more people to want to join the tournament from the get-go but we had a lower number of entrants than I think we ever have had before? You'd think the simpler and more recognizable the game the more people would want to join, right? Apparently not. 

In any case, the ten matches (THERE WERE JUST SUPPOSED TO BE THREE MATCHES THIS YEAR, EASY-PEASY) from the Super Mario War tournament should be highlighted and up and running on my YouTube channel this Friday (9/30). I'm going to have to either run more tournaments so that I can get a better feel for what's going on and streamline the process, or get people to tell me beforehand if they're going to play or not, so we can do the brackets earlier. Either way, I did have fun, and for the first time I think, ever? I won my own tournament (Even though, y'know, I shouldn't have been in the finals anyway... hahahaha)!

Battlefield 1 Beta

Hey there guys and gals! I know it has been SO long since I last left you guys a message here, but I've finally got something I want to talk to you about!

For those of you that aren't in the know, the Battlefield 1 beta dropped recently and I decided I would be taking a gander at it, much like most of my game-playing brethren. To be honest, I've always been a bigger fan of the Battlefield games than the Call of Duty series. I figured this game, with a new environment, would be excellent for me to try out, and for the most part I'd been quite stoked about finally get to play. Unfortunately after a couple hours with it, I think I've already decided that I won't be snagging this game on release. 

That isn't to say it's a bad game, because it's not, and I'm sure many of you out there are enjoying yourselves with it. The issue I found with it after spending some time with it was that while the game is impressive, what with the destruction and the different weapon and vehicle types, and the sheer number of players... The experience has not been enjoyable. First of all, they don't explain ANYTHING to you. You gotta figure it out as you go, and while that may seem to some of you to be a method of leveling the playing field, it's a bad idea from a game design standpoint. It took me THREE games to figure out how to leave a vehicle I was in because I had already pressed EVERY SINGLE BUTTON. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe I've got to try holding down a button. I also could swear that they added the button prompts in to opening doors and shutters and driving vehicles halfway through the beta. That just seems like poor planning to me, but whatever.

The real issue I've got with it is something that Mack from Worthabuy had pointed out in his video, and that is the simple fact that the people that have been playing longer than you ALL have an unfair advantage against you. You get warbonds, which function as a form of currency for the game periodically as you play and level up, and supposedly you can use these to upgrade your equipment. The game drops hints that you can go to your "customize" screen to do this, but I have as of yet not discovered where this fabled screen is hiding. There's no matchmaking in the beta, and I honestly doubt that there will be any in the full game, so like Titanfall, expect to just be dumped in your first game against someone who has hundreds of hours under their belt. 

I'm not saying that you don't kill people, but beyond the scouts and their rifles, pretty much anyone who has upgraded their guns in any of the other classes (assault, medic, support) will beat you, stuck with the starter guns for your class in a fight. If I get killed by someone in the same class as me, they almost never have the same gun as me. It would be fine to me if there was still some kind of skill left in the game, but on multiple occasions I've unloaded entire clips of BOTH my primary and secondary weapon into an opponent, only to have them clip me in the toe once with an upgraded pistol and drop me instantly. That kind of gameplay... Just isn't fun.
There's also some balancing issues that need to be worked out. If you're not assault and you run into a vehicle, well... Kiss your ass goodbye. I understand that the classes are all supposed to be good at something, but to have absolutely NOTHING in your arsenal useful against an oncoming vehicle seems pretty silly. In a game that's got such neat destructibility features, why is it that we can't pop tires or rip a tread or something of that nature? I highly doubt someone who wasn't specifically prepared to take out tanks in actual wartime scenarios couldn't figure out something to do to help defend themselves.
But yeah, there's another AAA title that I'm just not interested in. 

Request etiquette

As most of you know, or if maybe you don't, I take requests. Recently, there's been a crazy influx of requests for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Marvel vs Capcom 2. For scale, I've currently got 13 requests from the same person, and this is after I've already done at least 8 of that person's requests. That's not the only person giving me requests for these two games, but two people in particular are getting especially indignant about me completing them.
I upload videos to YouTube on a schedule, and in the current schedule, there's really only two days a week that I would put up videos for these two games: Thursdays (for anything) and Saturdays for fighting games/beat-em-ups. Pretty much every Saturday and some Thursdays for the past three months I've been uploading requests. They're not always for these two games, but on every single video, at least two of these requesters have been like "BUT WHERE'S MY VIDEO!?!" One of them even went so far as to threaten to unsub me the other night.
Just think about that. Think about how ridiculous that is. You go onto someone else's channel, and you ask them to do something for you, and then you become absolutely indignant that it hasn't been done quickly enough. I actually had to virtually sit one of them down the other day and explain to them that the only person whose channel they're going to have control over when it comes to content; when it's released and when it's worked on is themselves. That, in and of itself should be intuitive, it should be inherent knowledge. But it is apparently not...
This is not the first time I've dealt with volume when it comes to requests. A friend of my channel, NewUche, he would give me 100 requests at a time for MUGEN. Same thing happened with Spongerific. Yet neither of these people ever got mad that I didn't do EVERY SINGLE REQUEST RIGHT THAT SECOND. I've devoted the last three months' Saturdays and sometimes Thursdays to requests. The fact is, it's my channel, and should I want to upload something of my own choosing, that choice is mine to make, not anyone else's. You can't possibly think that you can guilt me into only providing content for you, when it's my channel. 
Two of the people putting in requests have actually told me things like "You're going to upload my requests on such and such day, at such and such time." However nicely I could reply, the answer was always "no," yet neither of them seem to get it. I honestly never thought I'd be making a blog entry about request etiquette, but this is what we've come to. 
I've currently got two series running on my channel. My Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Let's Play and Unfair-Y Tales. I work on those first during the week, and whatever time I have left, I make content for the remaining days. Those two series are my priority. Having to explain that I'm simply not going to devote ALL the remaining free time I have to playing a game or two that I don't regularly play is just silly. It should never have had to come to this in the first place. 
I just... I want people to know that making content for the masses takes time, it takes effort. You need to understand that that one person that's actually creating the content is the one that's going to decide what the content actually takes the form of. No one else can decide that. 

KickBeat, WHY IS NO ONE PLAYING THIS?!

As most of you know, fighting games are my absolute favorite kind of game. In a close second would be both beat-em-ups and oddly enough, rhythm games. When I first heard of KickBeat, a game that combines both beat-em-up and rhythm into one game, I knew right from the start I was going to absolutely love it. Beyond just the genre-mashup there's actually a really good game under the hood as well!
I've been playing the steam edition and I just finished Mei's story and while I was a little upset by the fact that Lee and Mei have to play the same songs for their stories, this is actually the very first game I have ever played where it actually made sense as to why one character would be doing the exact same things as the other (I say other, but there are actually more playable characters, they just don't have stories ). Beyond that, it's one of the only games I've ever played where the girl isn't just some useless damsel in distress that the man has to save. 

Story spoilers will now ensue, so read on at your own discretion.

You play through Lee's story first, as he's The Chosen One. As TCO makes his way through the stages, you notice one of your fellow monks is following you around the world. By the end of the game, she's been captured and Lee actually trades her imprisonment for his own. Here's where things take a turn that I certainly wasn't expecting. You pick up Mei's story after Lee's imprisonment and you play through exactly what he did as Mei. At first this turned me off, but watching her story cutscenes, for the first time ever, redoing an entire game made sense! Mei is not TCO but she can learn exactly what Lee did during the story if she experiences the same things that he did. That seems like such a silly idea, but it actually WORKS. That's all a development team has to say and it makes sense! Most games just ignore the story altogether and let you play as someone else, which I find to be exceptionally lazy.

During Mei's story, you see how upset she is and has been that no one has ever let her walk the path she wants. The game actually brings up Mei's viewpoint when she was younger during a flashback what most players would assume is the reason for this, that she is a woman, and therefore isn't seen as being capable of what men can do. FOR ONCE, THIS AWFUL STEREOTYPE IS COMPLETELY DISMANTLED, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PLAYER'S EYES. As a woman, she can do everything her male counterpart can do, she just has to be given the chance. Her grandfather lost her mother and didn't want to lose her too, so he was originally very wary about training her. During her story you get to know Mei a little better, and you can see that being feminine isn't a detriment for once, she's totally capable of doing everything Lee could do, heck she's even better at it than he is in some cases.
On top of the regular gameplay, KickBeat: Steam Edition has a really amazing feature wherein you can add ANY song in your computer's library to the game and then play it out. That feature alone should have been enough to warrant a purchase for most people. I grew up playing Stepmania and while I've always thought it would be amazing to make a simfile, me having absolutely no musical talent or insight has made that exceptionally difficult. With KickBeat however, almost all the work is done for me! The game is limitless, as long as you keep acquiring new music. How is that not a good investment, especially considering most people equate the price of a game to how many hours of enjoyment they'll get out of it nowadays?

I five starred every song included with the game on normal, and then I checked the leaderboards.

To my incredible surprise, I am now ranked #1 in the world in two of the game's songs. I'm in the top five score-wise in almost every single song included with the game. Cumulatively I'm sitting in the top 2k of players as well. That tells me two things; that no one is playing the game, and that no one that owns it is completing the game. I can't fathom why. I'm not saying the game is perfect, heck, it has a glitch that crashes it 100% of the time (If you turn button helpers on while they're off mid-song the game will crash when you unpause every time)! But nothing in life is perfect!
My only real gripes with the game so far are the final boss battle (Yes, the game does have boss battles). For some reason, compared to all the other battles, I CANNOT tell when you're about to be attacked. It's the only stage in the game that I NEED the button helpers to be on. The button helpers are designed for controller play, so they really confused me at the beginning, as I've been playing on keyboard this whole time. The other problem is keyboard-related but I've been working on ways around it. On the harder difficulties you often run into red enemies that come in sets of three at a time. Most computers don't accept three arrow key inputs at the same time because they assume you've made a mistake, so I either have to relearn to play the game with WSAD on my left hand or I'll learn to play with two hands in different spots. Maybe I'll pick up a controller, I dunno... 

IN ANY CASE... Why is no one playing this game?!  

#100

Shoot off some confetti streamers or something, I made it to post #100! I'll admit if I didn't have all these requests I probably would have written a new entry a long time ago, but hey, we're here, we made it!
There will be actual content to this post, I swear. First of all, I want to thank everyone who has been sticking around since day one over here, however sparsely the updates have come. Now that that's out of the way, I want to let you guys in on some things!
I think it's out there now, but I've been working on a patreon campaign for quite some time. I actually had a speech lined up, and I grabbed a bunch of footage from my videos over the years that I intended to use, and then, something strange happened. The goals that I was going to use patreon to work towards suddenly started to be completed, most often not even of my own volition. Like this new monitor I'm writing this entry on, Nox bought a new one, and I got this one. It came at the perfect time too, since I needed to use my monitor to fix someone else's tower!
On a separate front of that same war, I've actually been trying to rebrand my channel with new artwork. My artist has been going through a rough patch, so that's on hold for a while. When I'm ready for the rebrand I think my patreon campaign will go live, whenever that happens to be.
100 posts later, I've also received a bit of validation in a rather strange and roundabout way. For those of you that don't know, Unfair-Y Tales was originally envisioned as a way for Liz (and her family) to get to know me and see what makes me the way I am. While neither of those things really happened, I met a friend of mine's mother for the first time the other day, and she told me she felt like she knew me just from watching Unfair-Y Tales. I'm obviously doing something right, now aren't I?!

The problem with video games as 'work'

As I've become more serious about what I do on YouTube and Twitch, I've been dealing with classifying my time with video games. It's been a long time since I've been able to say that I could absolutely lose myself in a video game. While I certainly do miss being able to do that, it hasn't diminished my fun or my love for games. On the other hand, with Twitch and YouTube taking up so much of my days, I can't really say that I play anything "just for fun" anymore. That is a major issue for me right now.
When you have to spend so much time getting footage or sharing a game with the audience, you really don't have that much time just to sit and enjoy an experience yourself. Everything starts to seem like its work instead of just a fun romp through a digital world. The only game I play "for fun" now is SMITE, and when you've got a backlog as big as I do of video games, playing a game that has no major goal to achieve seems like quite a timesink. I could be completing so many other games in the time I've spent sitting on SMITE.
Then again, that's also part of the problem, now isn't it? Not only do I constantly think of what I'm doing as work, I also think of games I might start playing in the future as work. I've been trying to not be so strictly adhered to the schedules I developed for myself to live my life by because... Let's face it, life's not about all the carefully laid plans you've set out. Is it truly living if you never let yourself experience something that hasn't been penciled in? As much as it pains my OCD to say so, I certainly don't think so. 
There's a balance in everything and I've got to find mine! All work and no play makes Okami a dull boy, and it's also pretty certain that I'll burn out if I keep things up like this...

My first day off in two weeks!

For the past two months, I have had to attend a funeral or a wake each and every week and it's been literally driving me crazy. Finally thought all the funerals were over, and then it turns out that my grandma is in the hospital. Come on sky wizard, give me a damn break! I've been so exhausted lately that I actually volunteered to nap at one point! If you know me, you would know that that means I was pretty damn tired.
Anyway, all of that appears to be behind me, so I can finally get back to work. You might have noticed quite a dip in my videos and all that recently, so now that I have hopefully at least one week to myself, I should be able to get back to work on projects that should have been completed a while ago. As of yesterday I was officially two weeks behind on work, and that's not a good place to be when you're trying to get your emotions back under control. 
In any case, Jedi Knight shouldn't have a missing week for my Tuesday Let's Plays (assuming tomorrow goes according to plan, anyway), and I've got a bunch more stuff coming down the pipeline! I'm really sorry that I haven't been giving my audience the attention they deserve, but I'm hoping to change that in the coming days.
Keymailer has been really nice to me lately, so you can definitely expect a few more My Two (S)cents and even the first On the Hunt in the near future! I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to work on things a little quicker, but don't worry, I'm still standing!

More bumps in the road

Well, if you know me, you know it's absolutely impossible for me to get through anything smoothly. I've just now discovered as I sat down to finally work on the first On the Hunt and this month's Okamigakure Plays that the audio codec I had enabled in OBS when I recorded is not compatible with my version of PowerDirector. I'm going to attempt to re-render both videos and see if the new videos are... watchable in the most basic sense of the word. If it's not that good quality-wise, I'm going to forego the audio in the first On The Hunt video and just put an audio track over the video. That was actually my original intention, but I really do like the music in Between Me and the Night, when it exists anyway.
The other video however, since it's an Okamigakure plays video, absolutely needs to have the audio of all of us going nuts while we play, so I definitely will need to re-render the video no matter the consequences. I've actually filmed next month's Okamigakure plays video as well, since I'd been planning to use that game for this month's, but something (seemingly) easier came up. Either way, you guys should be seeing Okamigakure plays either a little later in this week, or next week! 
My new Let's Play on YouTube has begun, and while I have more videos in it ready to go, I have been trying to deal with Okamigakure Plays and On the Hunt so I haven't had a chance to render and upload the videos. You'll definitely see another one by Tuesday, however! 
For those of you that don't know, I've been working on coming up with a Patreon, and while it's not ready yet, a lot of the pieces of the puzzle have been coming together recently and for that I'm actually really proud of myself. There have been very few times in my life that I can say I was confident, but with that starting to be an every day occurrence, I think I'm also finally ready to reach out and ask for help. I'll keep you posted on that. 
The other thing I've been meaning to let you guys know about is Unfair-Y Tales' Season 2 opener, The Laundry King. The actual person The Laundry King, is pretty... well, let's say unreliable. I actually need him to come over and help me film something for the season opener and he's been... unreachable most recently. In any case, he's officially signed on and now he just needs to get his ass over here. You guys know me, nothing goes as planned in my life, so why should YouTube-ing be any different?

Whistle while you work!

Hey there guys and gals! It's been a little while since I last posted here on the blog, but I'd like to catch y'all up on what's been going on on the YouTube/Twitch front!
The first On the Hunt video is well on its way to completion. I have all the footage I need, but now I need to figure out what I'm going to be saying and exactly which footage I'm going to be using. Once that's done I've actually got another giveaway coming, and it'll be tied to a breakdown of the system in Hi-Rez's new game Paladins. There's so much about the inner system of the game that they just haven't explained, it took pretty much a whole day of fiddling around to figure some of the systems out, and I haven't seen too many videos that just sit there and explain things to you. Let's be honest, those are the kind of videos that I'm best at, so why not?
After the longplay that you guys will be seeing this week on Tuesday (heads up, it's The House of the Dead IV  ), I'll be starting a new Let's Play on the YouTubs that I'll be seeing to the end for once! I also went and purchased a composite>HDMI device so even though my laptop is currently out of commission, I should be able to record old school games again via Game Capture HD! This will actually simplify things on a lot of fronts, and it will actually make my console game videos a bit more standardized, since they'll all be recorded the same way. That's actually really great, you guys won't have to worry too much about the wildly differing qualities on my videos if this works out! 
I've also been on a bit of a Skylander spending spree, so you can expect some new Skylander Path Guides videos in the near future as well! I finally snagged a Nightfall, Splat and a Scratch, and that just got the ball rolling on all the figures I've wanted for quite a while. 
Moreso than any of this news, just remember that there's new and exciting things coming to my channels, so stay tuned!