Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Aldowyns Musings is BACK! With Let's Plays and Robots!

So... I've been busy. Taking college courses in high school isn't a walk in the park, you know! And I've also been working on a certain awesome extracurricular activity - robots! More on that later.

Anyways, it's going to calm down in a bit soon. AP Tests are in 2-3 weeks, and the Nationals FIRST Robotics Competition is next week (Wednesday-Saturday). With all of that wrapping up, and summer coming up, I figured I might have time to get back to this. Plus I had a really awesome idea that I'm amazed I hadn't though of before - shouldn't be too hard, or take too much time, and I'm sure anybody who enjoys this site will enjoy that!

That idea was doing a Let's Play. For those of you who don't know, a Let's Play is where someone plays through an entire game, commenting on it. Sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're serious. Mine will be more on the serious side, with some humor thrown in there (my kind of humor). Oh, I haven't said what game I'm doing, have I? I'll give you a second, make a guess.

Made your guess? It wouldn't really have been that hard, you know! I'm doing Mass Effect! After that, I'll go through Mass Effect 2, and by that time ME3 will be just about out (I'll try to finish ME2 a week or so ahead of the release. It depends...), and I'll do that. At some point (this summer) I'll probably start doing some others, like Dragon Age 2 (Not Origins. It would make a really bad LP, the combat's too slow. And the game itself is too long.) I wouldn't mind doing some more retro ones, like KotOR, and maybe some space sims. That at least would be unique, since no one plays those any more... If you guys have any requests, ask and I'll tell you if I have it or can get it easily, and I might do it. Otherwise, you'll have to get it for me yourself. (Ha. I would be greatly impressed if someone did that!)

Back on the ME LP. I'll be playing Infiltrator, Renegade, probably Hardcore difficulty. (Not that Insanity is too hard, but it would take too long for an LP. Watching someone die several times in a row is kind of boring. Unless you like to watch someone suffer.) I'll do every main quest in ME1 and ME2, but only the interesting/plot important side quests.

I'm going to attempt to begin recording this weekend and begin posting next week, (planning on a MWF, 15 minute episode schedule, btw) but that may fall through. If it doesn't work out, it will be at least a week later, more likely two. It won't be that spiffy, (planning on just having the raw recording with the commentary spliced over it, and possibly the theme at the beginning)

P.S. Oh, shoot. I'm going to post it on Youtube, I think. If I was just doing it for here, there's other video hosts I could use, but I'm hoping for this to be like a synergistic kind of thing. The blog helps the LP, and the LP helps the blog. Hard to have an independent video LP anywhere but Youtube.


I'm also going to try to get back to doing the stuff I was doing before. DAII review, commentary, etc. in a couple weeks, and I'm planning on doing previews/commentary on the new information on ME3 (obviously) and Skyrim. (Those both look awesome, btw.) Any other games as I get (and play) them, obviously (Orange Box, Black Ops, Starcraft II. Hoping to get all of those soon. Portal 2 is making a case as well. Dang, I need a job >.>)


In other, not video-game related but still awesome, news, is robots. For those of you who don't follow my Twitter (@aldowyn), I'm on a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition Team. FIRST is an organization devoted to the promotion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, mostly through the organization of these competitions, from Jr. FLL (First Lego League) for younger grade-schoolers, to the "varsity" FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition). Anyway, long story short, we went to a couple of regional competitions, sucked at the first, did awesome at the second (easily the best rookie team there, and a couple of awards to prove it), and are going to Nationals next week. So, that's awesome. Before I forget, there's a Youtube video for the team, mostly as an inspirational/recruitment video, but in any case it's pretty awesome. Check it out here.