Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a safe break (or a sane run, if you were working).
2025 is starting hot, there's a lot of catching up to do. The Stalker 2 video is up next. I've explored most regions of the Zone but still have a few to go. Play time is currently 270+ hours, though a portion of that is the longplay on the Blondefire channel.
There's a tonne to see. Each point of interest is bespoke and tells stories of desperation, murder, despondency, and betrayal. It's fair to state that by the time I'm finished, I'll have seen more than 99.99% of the people who finished the game, let alone those who played it. This is the reason I don't regularly analyse RPG's, folks, I like to explore EVERYTHING and that takes a lot of time.
The Stalker 2 video won't be a deep dive so much as answering the question: was Stalker 2 worth the wait, even in its current condition? Was it? You can probably guess, but there's a lot of nuance to the answer, hence the video.
After Stalker 2, instead of doing an indie preview, I may do a short video on the Dead Man's Promise DLC for Blood West. It's release came when I was neck deep in Stalker 2, so it'll be a nice fun one to follow up the Stalker video. It rated well, so my expectation is high.
Beyond Dead Man's Promise is Marathon 2. I had hoped to get to it last year but longer projects ate up a lot of time. There's also the mystery subject I hinted at last year but which I also didn't have time for. It's gonna be a busy year.
What's Blondie Playin'?
Stalker 2, no surprise. I've had my eye on the new Indiana Jones game but will wait for a sale. $120 AUD is a tad steep, even if the game is solid. And Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is just around the corner. I'm excited for this one, and it may even nudge Marathon 2 down for an earlier video. I loved KCD1 so this'll be a must-play.
New Years Resolutions
If you know me, you know I don't wait for arbitrary dates to do stuff. That said, here's what I'm working towards this year:
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5min/kilometre runs
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Greater food portion control (smaller portions)
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A bowl of broccoli with every lunch and dinner
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Less snacks/better nutritional quality snacks
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Re-integrate weights work into my exercise plan
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Improve sleep quality (get last year's plan back on the rails)
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Produce shorter, quicker videos
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Streamline initial post production setup
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Document useful Davinci Resolve techniques so that I don't have to look them up again every time I use them :P
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Improve writing speed, efficiency, and clarity (vague, I know, but it's involved)
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Relax the grammar and punctation and be more like 'me'
There's more, but we'd be here all day. There's always something to improve.
What are you all hoping to achieve this year? Whatever it is, make a plan, lock in a schedule, and get to it. Today will always be the best day to start. And be kind to yourselves. There are plenty of assholes out there who would love to tear you down, don't do their job for them.
Until next month, parders.
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 ...
