It has been three months now of playing video games and posting my game play footage to YouTube. I have definitely had my ups and downs whilst doing it, but overall have enjoyed the experience. I am surprised in a lot of ways that I am still persistent in recording and editing and doing all the things that go into video creation, and in fact in many ways am more into it now than I was three months ago.
This past Monday, I went to my computer after work with the intention of recording the latest few episodes of my The Witcher playthrough. I tend to bulk record a few episodes at a time for my non-Minecraft games and Witcher was next up. But I didn’t, instead I went and did some recording for Craft the World instead. I didn’t because, well, I don’t like the game that much, I don’t enjoy playing it almost at all. Sure, the series has traditionally done the worst of my 4 videos, even worse than the 15 year old Zeus game, but that doesn’t actually bother me that much. I knew it wasn’t going to be that much of a draw going into it.
Going into the game. I did want to play off the release of Witcher 3 by playing through Witcher 1 and Witcher 2 and then going directly into Witcher 3. But honestly, I don’t like the first one so much that I do kind of wonder how 2 even got made.
There’s a lot bad about the game like the re-use of models so much that they don’t even bother changing the clothes of characters when they change the names. I can excuse this even though the game isn’t old enough for that to really be an excuse, but it was the first game from Projekt CD Red. But the things that actually bother me is stuff like the fact that it literally feels like every female in the game’s main purpose is to have sex with the main character, many times I accidentally stumble into yet another sex scene without even realizing that is where the conversation is going. Maybe it is a translation thing but I feel like I should know where it is headed if that is the result. There is a quest board… which I don’t even care for in MMOs. And many of the quests revolve around kill quests (blech) and various weird mini-games. I only ever have played the mini-games when I am forced into them by the story. There are three main offenders… The Poker Dice (read Yahtzee), fist fighting (which seems to be in every single inn), and the let’s get drunk. I actually feel the time where I had to get drunk and go off and fight was somewhat interesting, but only good once and every time they force you to drink, it feels somehow forced. “I will only tell you the info if you drink with me!!!” Really? How bout I just give you alcohol and you tell me what I wanna know. Wait, why isn’t that an option? You see that theme in all the mini-games too… “I will only tell you the info if you play poker dice with me!!!” Uhh, how bout we pretend I just lost, I pay you some money and you spill the info?
To be fair, there are some cool things about the game too. I like the discovery involved in the alchemy tho I still don’t entirely understand how it works, it’s kind of cool, and it’s kind of cool that you need to learn skills to advance that (even if it isn’t clear). There is also some interesting story going on. But overall, I just haven’t liked it. I think there has been more than one occasion where I have said that I have no idea what I’m doing has anything to do with the ultimate storyline and sometimes I don’t even know why I’m doing what I’m doing other than… quest.
And so I have just today made the decision to make today’s episode of The Witcher the last episode, at least for awhile. I may come back to it later. I do kind of want to go through the game as a whole at some point, but right now I feel the need for a break with it. After all, maybe the entire storyline is really good and will make the rest of the game’s issues feel silly. But for now, I’m not having fun, so it is out.
I will say that the decision to discontinue the season had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that today’s episode is the 25th episode of the series. When I was recording it, I didn’t even realize it was going to be the 25th episode as I made no mention of it at all. It’s just kind of that time in my recording. Tomorrow will bring the 25th episode of Minecraft (a fact I knew full well going into it). And I think Zeus is going to be hitting 25 in two episodes. I do feel like 25 episodes might become a standard minimum for me though. I like the number, it basically is equivalent to one season of TV programming (which usally has between 18 and 22 episodes these days). And I like the idea of giving a game a full on shot before I give up on it. 24 episodes at 20 minutes a piece is about 8 hours of gameplay and I think that is a good amount of time to give a game before I decide that I don’t like it.
So what will happen for Witcher’s normal Thursday/Sunday time slots? In short, I don’t know. I am pretty sure at the very least, I will move Craft the World from Wednesday to Thursday. And there is a good chance I move Minecraft into either the Wednesday or Sunday spot. I may actually do a near complete re-work of the schedule to be honest. I am hesitant of penning in Minecraft more than 2 times a week for sure, I have liked the flexibility putting up “bonus” episodes has given me. Which would leave me with a hole in the lineup. I might fill that hole by extending Craft the World to three times a week… Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. If I did that it would probably be Minecraft on Monday & Friday and Zeus on Wednesday & Saturday. This would be a pretty big shift for me. So I have some decisions to make over the next couple of days.
Looking forward. I do expect that either Zeus or Craft the World will finish up their first seasons in the next couple of weeks. I do have some ideas for what to replace them with though I am open to suggestions. I do feel the need to take a break before I continue on with both of those games, though I love both of them and definitely will be continuing them both in the future. I just feel I need to keep it fresh to keep it interesting for me.