Wow, August is down already. This has been the quickest month so far this year. A bit has happened. I had a bit of a health scare early August. That sounds dramatic so I'll explain.
I passed out one night, whacking my forehead on a doorframe which left a neat little cut (now a small scar). What worried us most is that I don't have a history of passing out. Scared the shit out of me if I'm perfectly honest. Really made me think of my family, and then my mind started wandering through the worst possible outcomes which was hard to pull back from. It also left a lingering vertigo which has taken weeks to right, and still isn't completely gone. The event became the catalyst for some lifestyle changes.
I have cut back on processed foods. I've had poor sleep for a long time and so got serious about a proper night's sleep, and this required multiple changes. First, I've dropped stodgy carbs at dinner (think rice, pasta, breads etc) and have cut my dinner portion size back. I now have a strict 10pm bedtime to aid the circadian rhythm, I drink little water at/after dinner to minimise the need to get up during the night, and I have night filters on all electronic devices (including my PC). Yeah, I got pretty serious about it. This is all self-imposed.
What does this mean for the videos? Not a huge amount, really. It does lock out late nights and recording footage after 9pm, but these are easily planned around. Still, I like to make sure you know what the general thrust looks like for transparency.
On the video front, the Abiotic Factor video is currently in production. It'll be a touch over 20 minutes. The reason it took so long to reach this point was over 80 hours of recorded footage while I finished the Early Access content (yep, the game took that long to 'complete'). The script is also twice as large as the regular preview scripts I do, and this was entirely unintentional. There was a lot to say and I wanted to ensure it was all said. Not long until the video drops now.
Blood West is next, and I'm beyond excited to play it! Hyperstrange are working on more balancing updates and I'm almost tempted to hold off until they're done. Almost.
After that I'd like to change things up a little, but we'll see how I feel.
Speak again soon, pardners.
G'day Pardners,
What a cracker year we've had so far. Some huge titles have dropped and we're not even half way through 2025. My backlog for this year alone is already piling up, and Doom: Dark Ages is just around the corner.
The video on Dustborn is in the script outline phase which, thanks to the new level of detail I put into it, is basically the first draft. I'm about 2/3 through and it's coming along quickly. Even though it replaces what would normally be an indie spotlight video, the Dustborn video might be a little longer, maybe 15 minutes. I have 20 hours racked up in this game so I feel I've earned the right to talk about it.
I'm not expecting the Dustborn video to do numbers, no-one cares about the game and the initial furore died out months ago, but it's a great case study and a good test of impartial analysis, or as close to it as one can get. Admittedly, full impartiality is impossible given the subject matter (and that's by design), but I aim to give this game as fair a go as possible.
What's...
The Stalker 2 vidya is live for the early birds. It'll be released to the public 24 hours or so from now.
March was a hell of a month. Despite the silver lining of my birthday on 19th, it was stressful.
First, my workplace has been issuing redundancies for the last 6 months which culminated a bunch of people resigning this month. Morale is at an all-time low and everyone is concerned for their job, more so this month than any other.
Next has been the hassle of getting our house cleaned and ready for inspection to put on the market. Thankfully we got another option recently which means we won't have to do this, but that was still weeks of work and sleepless nights worrying what could go wrong if it somehow fell through.
Third, work has been exceptionally busy this month and has eaten into my YT time.
In short, it's been a confluence of stuff I could have done without and has impacted the Stalker 2 video.
Currently most of the voice work is recorded, but I've also been editing the video as I go, and there's already 50 minutes of footage laid. I estimate that the video will be around 80-90 minutes long. It's not far off ...
