Fallen Plans

As the summer starts, I’m starting to think all the plans I’ve set a couple months are starting to fall through. Right now I’m sort of scrambling with finding something to keep myself occupied with for the next a few months. Unlike last year, I think the internet will benefit from this scrambling.

I was hoping I was going to work for the entire summer. I’ve been in contact with my employer and it seems they don’t know what to do with me or I got it easy (or difficult, depending how you look at it). Now a week into June, I’m making some expensive plans for my YouTube channel and perhaps my new camera. I had everything planned; I was going to end my Life is Strange playthrough and start a summer hiatus, then I would spend the remaining days before I was slated to work to take up a hobby and go to the gym a bit more. At the moment, it seems the hobby and gym might be the largest component in my entire life until I have something to do. I might even seek employment all summer; if there is an employer who will hire me in short notice.

Short term futures right now, I have purchased a new game on Steam. It was on sale called Call To Arms, it appears to be a modern warfare RTS game I might be recording . Along with recording a new game, I’m jumping back into Insurgency and Borderlands 2. For Borderlands 2, I purchased the Collector’s Edition so I have a few DLC packs I can record. Insurgency received an achievement and map update so I’ve decided to record a bunch of compilation of some of these achievements as well as maps I’ve may or may not have played in the past. That should cover a month or so of content online. As for personal content, I will have to really coerce myself to the gym and spend the soon-to-be sunny summer days outside snapping photos and hopefully get into a bit of trouble. I promise I won’t end up in jail or on the evening news, haha!

This is all I have for now for updates and progress. Hopefully I have something to show next week.

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Achievements.

At the time of this post, I’ve been playing a whole lot of Insurgency. Though there are a lot of boosters for the new Day of Infamy mod from the community, I’m staying close to the base game for the fact I spent over 800 hours to get to this very moment. The very moment: “Bodycount X (Co-op) – Kill 100, 000 enemies.”

In many games now, there are accolades for accumulated kills. Like many games, they award in increments. In Insurgency as the X suggests, it’s the tenth one in the line of Bodycount  achievements. As much as I dislike games with an achievement grind, this one I cannot ignore. I want to have it because I’ve spent so much time invested into the game to not complete all the co-op achieves.

I can’t help relating to my predicament to reality. Achievements in life, especially recognized by others, are the hardest to receive. Hardest are for those who seek them rather than doing what they’re doing. When I first starting playing Insurgency, I thought I would give up around hour 250. I’m now coming close to 850 hours and the last couple years feel like nothing. I would say it’s a blur since I’ve been playing the same maps and the same game modes repetitively. I’ve been more or less racking in about an hour or two a day and only recently I’ve been pushing it to gain more kills. Much to my surprise in the past week, I’ve inched closer and closer. Start of 2016, I needed about 20k kills; I’m now almost halfway with a an estimate of a month to finish. After that, I’m not sure if I would play PvP to complete all the achievements.

Much in life, you have to keep doing what you love and your will be rewarded with something meaningful.

Going Through the Motions

The past week felt like a breath of fresh air. Ever since the start of Autumn, I have been really busy with a lot of developments in my personal life. For the most part, I’m sorting out the finer details of adulthood and finally feel committed to improve myself. Still have I not found a place I want to be just yet, but I hope the shotgun of requests will find a way to get me somewhere.

This year with more games on my Steam account, I’m starting to get a lot of game updates around autumn. Though I am more than happy to play through these games. I worry I might be losing steam (Pardon the pun) when it comes to recording new  gameplay for my YouTube channel. Regardless, I will not give up on my channel just yet. For now as more new content, I would like to get into multiplayer co-op matches if I find them. Beyond recording, I’m playing through the new content from Interstellar Marines update 14, though it’s limited. I’m still hooked on playing Star Trek Online and it’s Delta Rising content has left me playing an hour a day exploring the new end game. On the Insurgency front, the new Nightfall DLC looks interesting; at the moment of this post, I’ve taken a peak of it on release. I feel like I could record more if I could somehow get my hands on new games. For the moment, I’ll settle with what I can buy and download. Gaming on a budget has it’s downfalls.

With YouTube and the new stuff, I have lacked in exercise. I promised I would keep exercising but I want to do more then just push ups while I wait for videos to render. I want more than just the usual. I would join gym but at the moment, my finances does not accommodate a gym membership at the moment. Maybe having a running buddy would be even beneficial, if I had a friend who enjoyed exercise. I’ll keep trying to stay fit while the weather gets more forbidding.

For now the new things in my life has to take precedence over the stuff I’ve created the past 10 months. Though the old and new my clash, both from my point of view have a part into my future. The only question is how much and would it be good for me.

Trying new things…not in a dirty way (maybe)

The Steam store has finally gotten the hold on me. There are games at the moment there I want to play and explore; I just spent the rest of my previous Steam card funds on Insurgency. I decided on it on a two fold decision. First was the price, it was 10% off until the end of January so I would spend the entirety of the card. In hindsight, it could backfire wince another game is coming out and I’m absolutely pumped for it. I was attracted to the game for the co-op, I heard it was challenging. When I got the game it was challenging at first; even after a few runs in these maps, I must admit it feels very linear but the computer opponents would be it’s best to shoot back. At times, they’re ridiculous good shots or they are just a cut above the Stormtroopers. When the time is right, those bots are pretty good at keeping heads down or even just slowing down progress. Probably the best AI I’ve seen so far in an FPS, they’re not too smart and not too dumb.

Mentioning a game, I’ve always wanted to play a city building and management simulator. Ever since Simcity moved over to EA’s Origin client, there’s nothing I can find I can get from Steam – until recently when I heard about Banished. After seeing a bunch of pre-release let’s play videos on YouTube, I intensely want to play with it. With only two weeks and two days away from release day, there’s already a lot of videos out for the game. Watching the gameplay does not phase me to play it; I’m more interested in playing it considering it’s a sandbox and it seems like a well made game for one individual from what I hear. From the specs for the game, I think I should rekindle an old project on YouTube.

The last time I did a Let’s Play (technically called a walkthrough, for those who can’t find the noun) was Call of Duty Black Ops. If I can remember correctly, it was on easy too considering the difficulty is fairly steep between medium and hard. I guess it was a test of a format, thus why there’s only one on my channel and that’s all I uploaded. Perhaps when this game comes out, I will get back to doing a “let’s play” of Banished. I guess I should look into downloading the editing suite and recording software. I’ve been out of it so research might be scheduled. It would keep me busy and maybe gain some video editing and production skills, but keeping productive is probably something that sounds more encouraging while I find employment. Yay to being my own intern!

Aside from blogging, I can add making videos on YouTube to the list of things to keep me busy and close to video games. I have about a good couple weeks to get set up and get rolling or chicken out, so that’s something to look into so let me know if you guys want to see me play a sandbox city builder. Until next time, be brave and bold everyone!