July 2021 Channel Update – Every Game is Space Aliens

Hey hey,

How have you been!!! I hope you’re well!! 🙂

Over in west coast NA, we’ve recently had a historic heat wave, and big changes are happening at my IRL workplace too – the whole org moved to a new computer system and you can guess how well this went lol. I’ve been feeling a tad spent cause of all that, but working on the channel has always felt like a nice steady constant! (…for better or worse?????  LOOOL don’tworryiamnotdepressedthisisjustajoke…….!!)

TL;DR

• Finished: ME1, Before Your Eyes
• Ongoing: ME2, Subnautica Below Zero
• Upcoming: Psychonauts 2 & other stuff (see below)

Games Finished Since Last Update

Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition (40 parts): Even over a decade later there are few games as fascinating and lore-rich like Mass Effect. Enjoyed this tons, although if I’m judging it by the remaster’s technical quality, there are probably points that can be improved (ie. stuttering in the mako sections).

Before Your Eyes (1 part): A first-person story that makes use of the player’s blinking (detected by webcam) to advance time. Probably THE most novel narrative experience I’ve had this year despite its short length. I 100% recommend playing it yourself first before looking stuff up and/or watching videos.

I also took a first look at:

Claire de Lune: A first-person puzzler (think Portal) of a father seeking out his daughter after both are stranded on a foreign planet. I can tell it’s an arduous labour of love, although story-wise it could be a hit or miss (there’s some tone dissonance with a very cheery & chatty AI all the while we’re looking for our daughter). I would’ve liked to play this one more though, time permitting.

Death’s Door: An isometric metroidvania with a grim reaper crow working to get back a stolen soul. The combat is not unbearably hard, but also not super forgiving. In the first hour-ish I spent with it, I didn’t get the impression the narrative is a strong focus, although this game reviewed very well for its dungeon crawling & combat.

Progress on Current Stuff

We’re focusing on two completely different games atm but in the end they are really both about space aliens lol. (Last Stop may be too, after I play more…???)

Mass Effect 2 Legendary Edition: Directly continuing from ME1!

Channel management tidbit: For previous long games, I tended to do slower video schedules (e.g. every other day), but this time I’m consciously testing going faster. I feel like this’ll be overall better for channel health.

Subnautica Below Zero: I’m still in the early hours but already feel there are some design philosophy changes deviating from the first Subnautica. It’s still good ol’ underwater exploration, but will have to dig deeper to see how I feel about these differences.

Last Stop: A cinematic experience along the lines of Telltale (much like the devs’ first game Virginia). The QTE and walking around gameplay is not likely to be the highlight, but I am pretty intrigued to see where the story’ll go after the mysteries in the first hour.

Upcoming Stuff

My main focus will likely still be ME2 and Subnautica for the next bit, but there are still a ton of August releases I’m paying attention to:

• 16th – Road 96
• 19th – Twelve Minutes
• 24th – Kena: Bridge of Spirits
• 25th – Psychonauts 2

Psychonauts 2 I’m particularly interested in a full series of (the first was one of the earliest LPs I’ve done!). Everything else I may have to play by ear seeing as how they’re all squished in the second half of the month. Lots of interesting stuff here!

I feel like I want to do a poll sometime too but I’ll have to wrap up pre-existing stuff first. Thanks for your support as always, let me know your thoughts in the comments and take care!

Welonz

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