April 2021 Channel Update – Underwater Adventures Begin

Hey all,

Hope you are well! It’s been a really busy month over here. Usually I try to sneak in writing these at my day job (lol) but we are undergoing some big system changes lately so everything has just been insane.

TL;DR

• [Admin] On Disappearing Patreon Comments
• Ongoing: Cyberpunk 2077, Subnautica
• Upcoming: Mass Effect in May?

[Admin] On Disappearing Patreon Comments

Some people have brought up the issue of comments disappearing in the past few posts. I haven’t removed any comments since the inception of this page – if your comment went missing, it wasn’t me! :(

I talked to Patreon support and what’s happening is they have an aggressive spam filter that page creators themselves can’t manage (very Good and Smart system). The solution is to please email guidelines@patreon.com using your Patreon account email address and ask to be taken out of the spam filter. This only needs to be done once and your comments going forward should be approved, as well as previous removed comments restored.

Apologies that this is such an archaic and high-effort way to fix this – I tried my best to do all the admin work but they insist that patrons themselves have to email in :’(

Games Finished Since Last Update

I mainly focused a few first looks to complement starting Subnautica:

Mundaun: A first-person indie horror set in the Swiss Alps using monochromatic, hand-penciled textures, which is great at setting the eerie tone. There are some very culture-specific things and it’s only voiced in Romansh – these might be barriers of entry to some but I personally found it kinda cool and educational.

Paradise Lost: First-person exploration of a young boy investigating an abandoned bunker in Polish nuclear wastelands. The atmosphere is immersive and there’s lots of read to learn about the setting, but the pacing (and walking speed) seem quite slow.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut: From the last poll, I think many of you are already familiar with this! I did a first look anyway since lots of people voted for it :)

So far, it’s an interesting world and a lot of the dialogue is really clever, but TBH the pacing from the first 1-2 hours gave me some concern for a potential full-length series. I can immediately see why this is such a niche game for the average YouTube viewer – it’s very much a slow burn.

Apparently the Final Cut added new quests on top of voice acting (which needs time to play out) too. I think my initial estimate of 30 playtime hours based on the original version way undersold it lol. Long story short - I know a lot of you very passionately vouch for this game, but with all the factors above, it may be a while before I can return to it.

Genesis Noir: Point-and-click adventure of personified cosmic beings getting into a love triangle that results in the Big Bang. Very jazzy, very noir, very stylish. The gameplay can be a bit confusing though –  sometimes I felt like I was clicking on everything as opposed to really solving puzzles.

Progress on Current Stuff

Cyberpunk 2077: Enjoying it lots as usual! Guestimating I’m over 2/3s of the way through judging by how many side quests are left, so this series may wrap up in 1-2 months or so.

Subnautica: It’s here!! Thanks again to everyone who voted for this in the poll. It’s been a joy to explore the unknown oceans so far.

I haven’t recorded an open world survival game before and whew it is mentally demanding. Oftentimes I don’t have to think hard on how to progress in story games, but for Subnautica, I’m finding shorter recording sessions + mentally planning when I’m not playing, or at least not commentating, helps a lot.  Learning new things about how to make better videos everyday!

Upcoming Stuff

The next big thing I have my eye is probably Mass Effect Legendary Edition coming in May (it’ll be pretty tight schedule-wise…. but I’ll figure something out…) I forgot if I’ve talked about it much, but the series is probably one of the first I’ve played as a “proper” PC gamer, and the remaster/remake seems like a great time to bring it on the channel. I sped through a lot of it back then and never read the codex, so this’ll be my first deeper dive of it too!

(I am aware RE8 is coming out in May too but I haven’t played RE7 yet so I’m gonna shelve that for now. Still need some courage (and time) to move into that first-person horror space 🥲)

That’s all I have for now! Feel free to let me know your thoughts/suggestions/questions in the comments. Have a great rest of April!

Welonz