The problem with going into a Let's Play "Blind"

First of all, I just want to get it out there that I don't mean I go into let's plays for the first time blindfolded. I am ashamed to admit it took me many years to figure out what that term meant in regards to Let's Plays... If you didn't know (I can't possibly be the only one that has not known!), if you go into a Let's Play blind, it just means you haven't had any experience with the game prior to that playthrough. You're not looking at a guide, there's no specific goal in mind, you just want to play the game. This is the way that I go into 99% of the Let's Plays that I do on Twitch and YouTube, and sometimes it ends up biting me in the ass. 

For the first time, I actually booted up Swordbreaker: The Game before I started filming the Let's Play and I've unfortunately learned that this game is one of the ones where you're really not supposed to win. At least... not on your first try. You're supposed to try every single thing you can, starting over from the beginning pretty often. This means that a typical Let's Play scenario is not going to play out as I had originally planned. My new plan is to record a few runs, but I will not be adding commentary to them. There is a lot of text and in order to make sure I don't sully the experience with one of my gaming pet peeves (If you didn't know, I absolutely HATE IT when a let's player reads all the text aloud), it's better I just don't have commentary. That being said, expect at least one run of the game uploaded before I move on over to the next game on my Let's Play list. 

In addition, the playing "blind" method has another drawback... Sometimes I end up being trapped in a game that I honestly don't like. The way I am, if I start a task I feel duty-bound to complete it, so getting through something like Vanquish ended up turning into an absolutely abysmal slog. That game played NOTHING like I had anticipated. I can do all this amazingly cool shit, but they want me to be hiding behind a chest high wall for 99% of the game. LAME. 

I've actually mentioned before that I have just about the next 20 let's plays planned but you know what? Let's see how excited we can get people for the next FIVE. Also, since I'm going into these blind, please let me know if any of the others play anything like Swordbreaker because... That's good information to know. I will probably at least from now on do what I did for Swordbreaker with other games I'll be playing on the channel, so I'll have a jist of what the let's plays will end up being.  

The Next 5 (Planned) Let's Plays:

1. Swordbreaker: The Game
2. Tekken 7's Story
3. T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger (which I have written a blog about before)
4. Super Amazing Wagon Adventure (I KNOW this plays like Swordbreaker)
5. Giants: Citizen Kabuto

REQUESTS PART 2

Apparently I have exceed the limit for characters or something in my other requests list post... So I'm going to be adding the new ones to this one. I might also have to move some of the old lists' requests to this post once they are completed, depending on whether or not they can be saved... 

BUT LET'S CONTINUE!

• Axel & Shiva Survival from Ploxou youtuber
• Sharon Arcade Mode in Fighting EX Layer from toto1996
• Indivisible gameplay from Katie
• Katana Zero gameplay from Katie
• Sanix the Edgehog Gameplay from theoxfordcomma
• Horizon Zero Dawn Let's Play from theoxfordcomma [I have streamed this on Twitch -- but here are all the highlights on YouTube]
  
  
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• Days Gone Let's Play from GrimJak [I have streamed this on Twitch, but I will continue to add the highlights here as they get uploaded to YouTube]
  
  
  
  
  
• MUGEN Movelist for Zvitor's Wolverine from Iskid live forever

• MUGEN Movelist for Astonishing Cyclops from Iskid live forever

• Megaman (Balance), Ryu (Projectile), Morrigan (Balance) Arcade Mode in MvC2 from toto1996
• Ape Out Let's Play from GrimJak
• Resident Evil 1 (Wii Remake) Let's Play from toto1996
• Pokken Tournament Gameplay from toto1996 
• Felicia (C1 - Rolling Buckler), Zero (C1 - Ryuenjin), Ammy (C1 - Cold Star) [UMvC3] from Ips Kitty
• Hamtaro Ham Ham Heartbreak [I do not own this game currently] stream from oxfordcommasplice
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance stream from Jokerblader
• Biomutant stream from GrimJak
• Felicia (C5 - Cat Spike), Zero (C5 - Shippuga), Ammy (C5 - Bloom) with ALL English voice [UMvC3] from Ips Kitty

Battle Stadium D.O.N. Tournament

Well, I certainly didn't expect to only be using the blog to post tournament rules, but that's what it's turned into. This is the first tournament I polled you guys about, and you chose Battle Stadium D.O.N.! I think I might run another poll about what the September tournament will be sometime after we're done with this one. Anyway, here we go with the rules:

BASICS

• D.O.N. works best when all four slots are filled, so we'll do our best to make sure each match has 4 combatants - free for all
• Best 2/3 matches, two advance from each match (The first two players to be ranked top 2 in a match advance)
• Mirror matches are ALLOWED (Hell, all four of you could be the same character if you wanted)
• NO banned characters

BANNED STAGES

• Forest of Death (死の森) 
• Giant Jack (ジャイアント·ジャック)

STAGES THAT CHANGE DURING GAMEPLAY (NOT banned)

• West City (西の都) - Look both ways before you cross the street
• Planet Namek (ナメック星) - Standing platforms change heights
• Konoha (木ノ葉の里) - Hazard area can be opened up

If you want to tune in, we'll be streaming the tournament LIVE on Twitch, hopefully starting at 2 PM on Saturday, March 23rd. By March 29th (the Friday after the tournament), all the tournament matches should be up and viewable on my YouTube channel, just in case you missed out on the stream. C'mon and join us!

Lethal League Tournament

September 22nd is our next tournament, and this time around it's LETHAL LEAGUE! I plan on having a singles and a doubles tournament, but we'll see how many people actually want to play... I feel like since this isn't a fighting game more people will be willing to join, but we shall see~

Tournament Rules

Free for All (Singles)

• Stocks: 7
• Ball Tagging: On
• Timer: 10 Minutes
• Minimum Ball Speed: 8
• Regular Ball

Team Battle (Doubles)

• Stocks: 10
• Ball Tagging: On
• Timer: 10 Minutes
• Minimum Ball Speed: 8
• Regular Ball

Very important note: ALL characters are selectable, even Doombox. In order to select Doombox, you must select characters in this order: Sonata>Raptor>Switch>Candyman>Raptor>Dice>Latch. If done correctly, your selected character icon will become the "?" and you'll get Doombox when the match starts! 

I'm looking forward to smacking some balls around with all the attendees! Come join us on my Twitch channel on Saturday for what I hope will be a GREAT time!

The #GreatNerfWar

Hey there guys n gals! I've got information on something a lil' bit different for y'all this time around. If you've been keeping up with my second YouTube channel, I've been posting a lot of Blaster Unboxings and Reviews and you might be wondering why. Well, the answer to that is that I'm trying to familiarize myself with all the weapons that will be available in my arsenal to myself and all the other participants at The #GreatNerfWar! 

I've been talking about it a lil' bit here and there, but we've decided on a date, August 19th, and so far it looks like we'll have at least 12 participants. I think that's pretty good for a first time event, don't you think? We intend to record in some way, shape or form, so there will definitely be at least SOME kind of footage available to you. I expect to have all my unboxings done by then and then we'll just jump into the fun. There will be some familiar faces out there on the field, but probably also a bunch of new people you've never seen before on either of my channels! I'm really excited for this to go down! We're looking at six different gametypes for our little war just to spruce things up, rather than just straight sudden death elimination

• Elimination (3-7)
• 3 lives, 7 second count back in
• If hit, count out loud 7 Mississippi with your gun raised in the air (You can look for ammo/reload as long as you continue counting aloud)
• Yell "CLEAR" when your time is up and you're coming back in
• Victory Condition: One team remaining OR last man standing (if FFA)

• Carpe Testiculum
• Get all of your opponent's balls into your team's bucket
• Two ball buckets, one in either team's base are filled with the same number of balls
• When in possession of a ball, it MUST remain in your hand(s), you CANNOT fire any blasters while holding the ball
• You can block enemy fire and tap enemy players with the ball to take them out however
• When hit, you must return to your team's spawn (infinite respawn)
• If holding a ball and hit, you must leave the ball EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE and then head back to your spawn
• Victory Condition: All the balls in one goal/More balls in one goal if game is called early

• Shooting Gallery
• Uses X Shot Cans
• Each can in a six stack is worth one point
• Fully assembled standing cans worth one point, two points if you can get them to break apart
• Will have a limited number of shots per player (lower number if played on teams)
• Victory Condition: Highest Point Total

• Team Freeze Tag
• Freeze opponents by shooting them
• Unfreeze teammates by physical touch
• Conga line rule is in effect, if you're touching someone while they are (re)frozen you are also frozen
• Victory Condition: Freeze enemy team

• Blob
• Every time you shoot another player, they join your blob (do your best to move as one)
• Free for All (NO TEAMS INITIALLY)
• Victory Condition: Consume all other players

• VIP
• Protect your team's VIP from the enemy team (VIPs have a crown to set them apart)
• VIP only allowed to carry Barrel Breaker TK-3 (3 shot revolver, but you must reset the barrel manually) - CANNOT RELOAD/CANNOT UPGRADE
• Shoot enemy team to knock them out, Non-VIPs have infinite respawn, but MUST travel back to spawn if hit
• Victory Condition: TAKE OUT THE ENEMY VIP

And that's all I've got for now on The #GreatNerfWar. After I'm done editing footage and other such stuff from it, I'm going to set about re-releasing Unfair-Y Tales Season 2 on my second channel. I'm thinking about finally releasing my patreon as well after that, but we'll see. It's actually for the most part complete, I just wanted to re-do all my art and branding and that never came about... 

It's update time again!

I totally apologize for not utilizing my blog all that often. I've even started to post semi-regularly over on tumblr (though admittedly, it's just reposts from my vlog channel on YouTube). 

Speaking of my second channel, instead of just reuploading Unfair-Y Tales there I took the channel in a bit of a new direction in preparation for the #GreatNerfWar that's looming on the horizon (DATE TBD). I've begun Unboxing and Reviewing Dart Blasters on that channel! If that's what you're into, feel free to come on over and hang out! I've got one uploading as I write this entry and I've got one more to do, unless I can snag myself a Zuru X Shot Turbo Advance. That's realistically the only other blaster I want to get my hands on at the moment. Maybe that will change in time. I also have a strong feeling that most people are gonna be like "Yeah, you can keep my blasters" after the war and I'm gonna have a buttload of blasters at the end that I never intended to buy for myself hahahaha. 

Anyway, now that you know what's been going down on my second channel, let's talk about my main channel! The let's play I've been working on most recently has been Dragonball FighterZ, but hopefully I'm nearing the end of that. After that's done I'll be moving on to the next Let's Play, which actually happens to be a request, and it's Psychonauts from my buddy Tethrinblaze. Many many people over the years have told me that I NEED to play Psychonauts, but I'm finally getting around to it now. I sincerely hope I have a better time with that than I have so far with DBFZ's Story Mode. The arcs have just been altogether too long for a fighting game and it's honestly made the game into a boring slog. On top of that the final arc has you stuck with just Android 16 + Android 18 for hours and hours and that honestly ruined any desire I had to play. In addition to the next Let's Play, I fully intend to work on more MUGEN Movelists (Spoiler alert, the final Capcom character I'll be doing is Gene from God Hand!), and I want to finish off my Why I love Titanfall 2 series. I still have enough footage for probably 2-3 more videos, and I'm planning on doing a bit of a giveaway during the last video, so stay tuned for that! I'll be putting a bit more work into finishing off older series (I plan on completing the rest of my Hardcore runs in Battleborn, now that I have another crew to play with) and then I'm going to make sure that I start some new ones up. I know I say this a lot, but I'd also really enjoy getting to jump into some more of the games I've gotten from keymailer. I might even get to jump on some more My Two (S)cents and/or On The Hunt videos!

Speaking of games from Keymailer... I've been playing a lot of ShellShock Live on my Twitch Channel lately and that's left an AWFUL taste in my mouth. It's the only game on Steam I've left a negative review for. I just can't recommend any game where the only way to win the campaign is purely by luck (Which as everyone knows, would be just about a Sisyphean task for me, I'm no Domino, I assure you). I started something tonight that I have been debating on doing for a while and I intend to continue. I've started a personal quest to platinum all of the Skylanders games! Inbetween full Let's Plays I figure it'd be great to take a break and just jump back into something that I know I'm going to enjoy (however frustrating it might end up being). Right now I have two trophies left to obtain before the platinum in the first game, Spyro's Adventure. I have to buy ALL the upgrades for one Skylander (I'm using my Series 2 Double Trouble for this, as I apparently had never upgraded him), and then I've got to defeat the final boss without switching Skylanders. I suspect that's going to take many many many tries but I'm DEFINITELY gonna do it. As most of you know the next Let's Play I've got planned for Twitch is Gundam 0079: Rise from the Ashes on the Dreamcast. I had previously streamed the game one time. This drew the biggest crowd I'd ever had on my channel simultaneously and then the power went out in my house. I haven't played since, but in that one night of playing I finally understood how the game works (It's quite different gameplay wise from the VS series or even Zeonic Front -- a game that I absolutely adore, by the way). I think that would be a great thing for me to finish off, both from a gameplay and audience standpoint. And then once I've beaten that I'll do my best to platinum Skylanders: Giants, which is most likely the most difficult Skylanders game of them all! If you want to tune in to either of those, I stream on Tuesdays and Thursdays @ 8 PM, and then I pick one day over the weekend to stream as well. You'll always know when I'm about to stream (or if I'm taking the day off!) if you follow me on Twitter!

So yeah, that's what's going on on my various channels! I hope that I've got content coming that people continue enjoying to watch, because I don't really see myself stopping any time soon!

March 24th Justice League vs Street Fighter Tournament

Hey there guys n gals! Been a while since I posted on the blog, but here's the rundown for the rules of the upcoming Okamigakure hosted tournament, which will be held on Saturday, March 24th!

Tournament Rules

• Options: 100% Life, Time Limit of 99, Normal Game Speed
• Sets: For the first time we're going to be doing sets instead of just regular matches, best 3 out of 5 (as it is possible when you get a good combo going to pretty much full-combo somebody in JLvsSF and there is no way to change the number of rounds in a match). 
• Character Selections: For the purpose of this tournament, only ONE character will be banned, and that is Parallax. 
• Changing Characters: You ARE allowed to change characters both during and between sets. You CANNOT quit a match to change your character however.  
• Specialty Controllers: I will be running the game off the computer that we are NOT streaming on as well so we should be able to test and see what other controllers work in case people want to bring their own. I know that all wired 360 controllers work in MUGEN, but the others will probably need to be tested. This being said, players WILL be allowed to customize their buttons before each of their sets, as I suspect people will be using different controllers to suit their needs. 

Giveaway/Contest

If you saw the original post/invite on our Facebook page (WHY AREN'T YOU FOLLOWING THERE ANYWAY, HUH?!) or the announcement video on my YouTube channel, you'd know that in addition to the winner receiving a prize, there is also a chance for anyone watching/participating to win a prize as well (believe me, I have tons of things to give out). The contest/giveaway works like this: If you can guess after the first round of matches which characters will be CHOSEN (not what character wins or the players that make it to the finals) in the final match, you have a chance to win a prize! For those in attendance of the tournament, you'll have your pick between a poster/pack or comic book/pack OR a code from my giveaway codelist. If you're out there watching the stream from Twitch (It will be under the category Retro, since JLvsSF is homebrew and there's no category for it) you'll be eligible for one item from the giveaway codelist. 

Now, the cool thing about this tournament is that for the first time, the audience chose it! I might put up another poll for all of the March tournaments in the future and let you guys decide on them, because that was actually kind of cool, hahaha. The other super cool part about this is that the game is F2P, so if any of the participants would like to get a feel for the characters they're more than welcome to download the game before the tournament from Zvitor's homepage or the GameJolt page. Even though the GameJolt page says the current version is 1.0, I'm pretty sure both versions will get you 1.01 which is what we will be playing for the tournament.


P.S. I'm currently going through controllers to see which will work and which will not in case someone wants to bring a stick. I'll be compiling a list of the controllers that will work down here in case of specialty controllers.

• All wired PlayStation 1 and 2 controllers (with adapters - I have multiple)
• All wired Xbox 360 Controllers
• All wireless Xbox 360 Controllers (Own a 360 Wireless Adapter)
• Wireless Dualshock 4 (with 8bitdo Wireless USB adapter - Only one device at a time)
• Wii U Pro Controller (with 8bitdo Wireless USB - Only one device at a time)
• Wireless DualShock 3 (with 8bitdo Wireless USB - Only one device at a time)
• All wired PlayStation 3 controllers (with MayFlash Universal Adapter Ultimate - Only one device at a time)

If you wish to play a non-regular pad, I own a generic Arcade Fighter PS3 stick, the PS3 Versus Fighting Pad and a PS2 Street Fighter 15th Anniversary Chun-Li controller. If you want to bring your own, you're more than welcome to!