W.I.P. for April 19th - 25tth now up on YouTube

I'm still working through my audio issues but I was able to upload a video of short snippets of game play of what I've been playing this week.  These are games that don't warrant a whole video to themselves or games I was just messing around in.  Most of these are failed audio tests but I was able to save the video footage to compile a montage of sorts for you.  I'm hoping to have the audio problems fixed so the next video I post will have live commentary.  If I fail at that I don't know what I'll do with myself.

But on a positive note, I did learn a lot more on how to use my editing software.  It was difficult at first to mash up several different videos and find the good parts (or at least something usable).  I got a little better as I went along so much so that I think the next time will go much better.  That's something right?

This might sound crazy but one dream job I've always thought about is editing.  Editing commercials or movies.  I find it fascinating being able to manipulate people's emotions, whether to buy something or to get them to feel a particular emotion.  They say the best music in a motion picture is the ones that sway your emotions but you don't really hear it.  Meaning that the music plays in the movie and the audience gets carried away in an emotion but don't realize that the music is manipulating them.  Now that's power.  If I could ever figure out how to do that for a living I would.  But I think I'll just start with messing around on YouTube.

Failures, trails and space recovery

I haven’t been idle since my last post.  In fact I’ve been very busy.  I’m desperately trying to figure out why I’m having so many problems with the audio on my game captures.  I’ve recorded several videos and they’ve all failed in one way or another.  If not with the audio, than with the video.  I told you.  I don’t know what I’m doing. 

I messed with some things earlier today and captured another video but I haven’t watched it yet to see how things turned out.  I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to end up with a usable video before the end of the week.  My “one video a week” goal might be hard to get this week.  I think I might have to get my baby brother kaiakapero over to help me figure it out.  He got his degree in the technical side of broadcasting and that’s what he does for a living.  I’ve almost ran out of options and tapped out everything I know on how to fix things.  But at least I’m learning about stuff I never knew about.

But since I need to figure out what’s going on, I’ve been playing a bunch of different games for all these test sessions.  I didn’t want to keep playing Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga because I just might end up finishing the game before I figure out what I’m doing.  So I’ve picked other games that I can just mess around in.

One of the things I did to try and test things was open up some trail games that I have on my hard drive and play them.  I’ve played them once before and thought “I might want to buy this” but didn’t do so at the time because I didn’t have the money.  Those games have just been sitting on my hard drive taking up space and I still haven’t bought them yet.  So I decided to give them another go and see if I still like them.  If I did I would keep it and hopefully buy it the next time I have some extra money.  If not, I would delete the game and free up some badly needed space on my hard drive.

I think I played 3 of them.  And deleted them all.  That’s not to say they were bad games, just that I wasn’t as interested in playing them now as I was when I first downloaded the trial version.  Unfortunately none of those test videos were usable for my YouTube channel.  But the good news is that I did some more cleaning up of my hard drive and got back up to 30GB of free space.  I was down to 5GB before I started.  Damn you Games with Gold!

For some reason I seem to think that there is a limit on how large an external drive you can connect to your Xbox360; whether it be a thumb drive or something else.  I want to say the limit is 32GB, but I could be wrong.  Also, I think I heard/read somewhere that there is going to be an update soon to Xbox that will allow for larger external hard drives to be connected to an Xbox360.  I don’t remember where or when I heard/read that so I could be way off with that.  Maybe I dreamed about it.  Who knew that 500GBs (or whatever the slims are) wouldn’t be enough space for someone’s games.  I wonder how long it will take me to max out my hard drive on an Xbox One after I get one.

Phase Two has now begun.

Phase 2 has now begun.  Yep, I'm finally ready to introduce you to phase 2 of my world domination plan.  I mean gaming plan.  World domination is phase 3.

I now have a YouTube channel and I've posted my first video up on the site and you can go watch it and leave nasty comments  Hey, it's the internet, isn't that what people do nowadays.  

It's just an introduction video where I tell a little bit about myself and how I started gaming.  For those of you who already know me it's just a rehash of what you probably already know.  But if anyone new comes along I wanted them to get a sense of who I was.  Hopefully they'll like me anyway.

Getting this intro vid finished and up was a pain in the but.  The first one I captured didn't have the audio.  I tried doing a voice over after the fact but somehow that didn't work out right and got out of sync when I edited it.  The third attempt got the audio and video together but I accidentally had the game audio turned up and the chat audio turned down so you couldn't hear me say anything.  I muted the game audio and did a voice over recording on that vid and you can check out my channel to see how bad a job I did.

I don't have anyone to help me do this, or more importantly tell me what I'm doing wrong.  So it's me fumbling around trying to figure things out on my own.  I'm hoping I get better the more I do this.  I don't think I could get any worse.

I'll be putting up videos for the Xbox 360, PS3 and maybe some PC games.  I'm hoping to get an Xbox One sometime this summer.  I will definitely have one before Star Wars Battlefront comes out even if I have to start selling my internal organs to do so.

You can find my YouTube channel under Pengwenn.  My user name is Pengwenn . . . for everything.  Well, almost everything.  My Xbox, PSN, Steam, YouTube and Twitch (more on that later) user name is Pengwenn.  My twitter name is @PengwennGamer because someone had already taken Pengwenn.  How rude.

Phase One complete (sort of)

I have a two phase plan of what I want my gaming life to be.  I've been window shopping for just the right equipment for phase one and I've finally done something about it.

So I took my tax refund money and bought a laptop and TV this weekend (along with another item which you'll find out about later).  I was able to walk out with the laptop but I had to order the TV.  It should come in on Thursday.  I'm thinking of taking Friday off so I can stay home and play games on the new TV to see if it makes a difference.

While I know I could have probably gotten a better desktop computer for the same price as my laptop it would actually cost more in the end because I would have to buy a new monitor as well.  I'm still using a 17" fat monitor for my current system.  At least with buying a laptop the "monitor" is included.

I ended up getting a Lenovo i7 processor with 8GB RAM + 2GB video memory and 1T hd.  I know there's better laptops out there, but that was the best I could afford.  It's also a touch screen and the screen can flip around too, but I don't think I'll use that function.  I got a 55" Vizio smart TV which I can't wait to get.  I could hook up my laptop to the TV and play PC games on a very big screen.  I can't wait to give it a shot.

It's Windows 8.1 and it's taken some getting use to it.  I'm still having problems trying to find everything I'm looking for but I'm learning.  I didn't have any problems getting it connected to my home network but I had big problems getting it connected to the internet.  I was almost about to give up and call my brother dain to come over and help, but I thought I would give it one more try.  I got everything to work and I was able to get the virus software and Office 365 installed.  I then spent a lot of time remove programs that it came with that I don't want.  You would not believe all the stuff that was one there.

I really wish I could tell you about the other thing that I bought, but unfortunately I want to have a big reveal with that one and I'm not quite ready to say anything on that just yet.  Maybe by this weekend.

Even though I know I didn't get the best or latest stuff I do still feel like I've taken a huge step forward in joining the modern world.  So, I didn't get a 4k TV or a supped up computer.  At least I no longer have to use a computer that can barely run Windows XP (which is no longer supported) or take up to 30 minutes to boot up and start everything.  I'm not late to the game because I've been nostalgic for the good old days of cassette tapes and VHS movies.  I'm late because I haven't had the money to join the 21st century of electronics.  Now if only I had the money to do something about my phone.

More Achievements for me

So I pulled Borderlands 2 out of the tub on Monday and picked up an achievement.  I even played it Tuesday as well, just for fun.  But I wasn’t really in the mood so I didn’t keep it up. 

On Wednesday I decided to pull another game out of the tub and this time I picked Scene It? Box Office Smash!  I was okay with that choice as long as I could find where I put the special controllers for the game.  Yes, I know I could use the standard Xbox controller but those special controllers make it more fun.  It took awhile before I found them and then I figured I should probably get some batteries because who knows how long ago I used them and if the batteries were still good.   Turns out they were.

I had to disconnect my Xbox controller and just use the game controller otherwise it was thinking there were 2 players in the game.  I wasn’t sure if I could navigate the menus with the special controllers but it wasn’t that bad.  I wondered if there was a way to play a regular game with those controllers.  I figure it would have to be a platformer or puzzle type game.  There just isn’t any fine tuning to the movement with those buzzers.

After I got the controller issue figure out, I started a game.  Just a short game; nothing too fancy.  And at the end of the game I got an achievement.  Whoo Hoo!!!  I played another short game and picked up 3 more achievements.  So . . . I played a third game, but sadly I didn’t get any more achievements.  I think I was close to getting one but just missed out on it.

I tired finding an online match but nobody seemed to be playing this game besides me.  Oh well.  I didn’t think I would get those online achievements anyway.

Well, so far I’m 2 for 2 in playing games out of the tub and getting achievements for them.  I’ve picked up almost 100 gamer score in 3 days so getting to 30,000 is very doable.  I’m sitting at 27,662 right now so I only have to get 2,338 more.  I’m sure if I keep this up I might cross 30,000 long before the end of the year.

I figure this success rate isn’t going to last.  I’m going to run in to a game that’s going to take a lot more work to unlock an achievement than what these last two games have done.  Like, I’m on disk 2 for Blue Dragon but I haven’t unlocked an achievement in a very long time.  Maybe that means I’m close, but I really don’t think so.  Most of the achievements in that game seem to be for completing things or maxing things out.  I figure those achievements will pop up closer to the end of the game.

Instead of dipping in to the tub again today I might try playing some Gears of War Judgment.  It’s the free Games with Gold for the first part of April and I downloaded to the game last night.  My Gears of War games are some of my most completed games for achievements.  I’ve got 77%, 93%, 81% and 35% in them (in release order).  Judgment is the lone 35% completion in that group.  I should really try to make that more acceptable since I love the Gears of War franchise, even if I didn’t like how Judgment told its story.  So maybe I’ll stick with that game for awhile and see what achievements I can earn there.

I also added Terraria to my list of Xbox Live Arcade titles.  It was also a Games with Gold freebie.  I had the trail version and played it briefly.  It’s one that I considered buying if/when I had the money and/or time to play it.  At least now I didn’t have to buy it and I can spend my money on other things.  I wonder how easy it is to get achievements in that game.

Watch me pull an achievement out of a hat . . . and other news

Watch me pull an achievement out of a hat.  Well, it’s not actually a hat.  It’s a plastic container with a lid.  And I did pull an achievement out.  Sort of.

I seemed to have lost a lot of my motivation when it comes to prolonged playing of video games.  I like getting on for an hour or so, but then I just start loosing interest and would rather do anything else.  Like watching paint dry or counting the bumps on my popcorn ceiling.  It’s weird for me to feel that way and I’ve been trying to think of something to do to get myself out of this funk.  And I came to a solution.

I printed out a list of all the Xbox 360 games I own, cut them up into little stripes with one name per slip and put them all into a plastic container.  My plan is to pull a game out at least once a week and play in that game until I’ve at least earned an achievement and/or hopefully find renewed interest in playing video games for longer periods of time.  Who knows.  I might find that one game that gets me out of my funk and start playing games for hours on end every night.  At worse I play something until I get an achievement and then put it aside for something else.  At least my gamer score would be going up.  I had a new year's resolution to hit 30,000 last year, but I didn’t make it and I won’t let that happen again.

So after I finished cutting everything up, I shock it around and pulled a game out.  The first one I pulled was Rock Band 2.  At first I was okay with that, but then I realized that I had just played a lot of Rock Band Blitz (and picked up a bunch of achievements – see the sidebar) and wasn’t even remotely in the mood to play another music game.  Plus, I’m not sure if my guitars even work anymore.  I put the game back in the tub and spent the weekend thinking about what an idiot I am.

Today though, I decided to give it another go.  This time I pulled out Borderlands 2.  That’s a game I’ve played and had 165 points in so far.  I stopped playing the game because there’s one side mission that I can’t seem to do fast enough and it was really annoying me, so I quit.  Plus I’m having a hard time with the fact that you can’t carry health vials with you when you get hurt.  I always forget to keep an eye on my health so I die a lot.  I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get another achievement in that game but this time I was going to make the effort to play it and see what happens.

At lunch I put the game in and started to play.  There was a side mission right where I was located so I didn’t have to go far.  It was to Assassinate the Assassins so I jumped in and started playing.  I remembered I had a gun turret as my special and I should try to use that more often to help me fight a lot of enemies while I take cover while my shield recharges my health.  So I threw the turret out for fun while I figured out all the controls again, and after 2 kills (puppy skags, no less) the achievement for getting 100 kills with the turret pops up.  I got 20 gamer score points for that in less than 2 minutes in the game.  I could have quit and done something else (taking a nap before going back to work sounded like a good idea) but I stuck around and completed the mission and turned it in.

It was nice playing that game (even without health vials to use) but I was so rusty with the controls and how to find things in the menus.  I got better by the end of my lunch and I just might try some more missions after work.  I put a tick mark on the slip of paper for Borderlands 2 and put it back in the tub.  This way I’ll know I’ve played it and gotten an achievement if I happen to pull it out again later.

I did include sequels in the tub even if I haven’t played the first game in a series.  Who knows, I might find playing Halo 3 more engaging than playing the first Halo even if I don’t know what’s going on in that world.  I just want to get back in to the habit of playing video games like I use to.

And speaking of playing video games, I’m seriously looking in to getting an Xbox One.  The only problem is I have to get a new TV if I want to play it.  My current TV is a big 32” CRT monstrosity of a TV.  It doesn’t have any HDMI connections, although it does have component video.  The X1 seems to only be an HDMI connection so it won’t do me any good to buy one if I don’t have a TV to play it on.  I’m hoping to take care of the TV part by next weekend.  The X1 might have to come a little later because I have some other plans I’m trying figure out that will definitely put a crimp in my finances. 

Specifically I’m trying to find and buy a new computer.  I would love a laptop, but realized that I could get something cheaper if I got a desktop instead.  I want it to be a gaming PC so that I can get back to gaming on the PC which is something I haven’t done in a VERY long time (X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter anyone?).  Depending on how much I spend for the computer depends on how much I have left over for the X1 system.  Plus there’s other things factoring in to my decision but I can’t divulge those plans just yet.  You’ll just have to stay tuned and see what happens next.

So, I consider my drawing plan to be a success.  I played a game and got an achievement.  It don't know if it is enough to get me out of the funk, but it's a start.  Hopefully I'll re-find that gaming spark and pull myself out of this funk when I pick a game.

Man, I've got a lot of games

I did a count of how many video games I own a while ago and I was a little bit shocked.  These are only console and hand-held systems.  I don't have my PC games counted because my current PC sucks and can't play them.  I'm hoping to fix that sometime in the next couple of weeks.  More to come on that . . . I hope.

My game counts by system are:

Playstation: 60
Playstation 2: 129
Playstation 3: 13
Xbox: 41
Xbox 360: 138
Xbox Arcade: 189
Game Cube: 25
Wii: 11
PSP: 21
SNES: 23
N64: 12
DSLite: 14
GameBoy: 10
GameBoy Color: 6
GameBoy Advance: 44

If you've done the math right, that's 736 total games.  No wonder why I can't finish a game because I've got so many to play.

My latest acquisitions were Dark Souls II, Metal Gear Rising Revenge, Serious Sam Collection, Sacred 3, Blades of Time and Thief.  All for the Xbox 360.  What can say?  Amazon was having a sale.  Most of those were new copies for less than $8 each. 

I guess I should mention that Thief was the free game on PS3 last month.  I downloaded it and played it for awhile but as I was doing so I realized that I would rather play it on the Xbox than on the Playstation.  Don't know why, just felt like it.

Also, I own all the Arcade Serious Sam games but I got the Serious Sam Collection anyway.  I was hoping that the Arcade games would be a separate set of achievements from the retail copy, but that's not the case.  When I put the disk in and started The First Encounter my achievements for the Arcade title came up.  Oh well, at least now I can delete the Arcade games from my system and just play them off of the disk.

And boy do I need to delete them. 

I got down to 0.69 GP left on my Xbox 360 hard drive.  I have a bunch of the Games with Gold free games, even if I own the disk copy.  Why?  Just in case something happens to the disk, or I get robbed again I can still play the game.  I also have a bunch of games installed on my hard drive.  And, of course A LOT of arcade titles.  I've previously moved some of the Arcade titles to a thumb drive for storage but I was still out of room.  Plus there's all those DLC add-ons for all my games.  And some music videos I've downloaded.  Now, you can see why I was running out of space.

I had to do something drastic . . . and soon.  I went through my storage and started deleting things.  Anything I didn't think I would need and/or use anytime soon.  I deleted DLC add-ons for games that I won't play yet because they're sequels and I haven't played the original games yet (I'll just download them again when I do play the game).  I deleted game update files.  I figure those will be re-installed if/when I play that game again.  And I deleted other stuff I didn't really want any more.  I was able to free up just over 30GB of space on my hard drive which allowed me to download the patches (about 2.9GB worth) for Defiance, which allowed me to finally play the game.  Whoo Hoo!

I have wonder if I should get rid of some of my older games and/or systems.  But I just can't do it.  Partly for sentimental reasons but also because I have a hard time giving up on a game once I start it and like it.  I just don't want to leave anything unfinished.  I'm just having a hard time finding the time to play anything. 

I have been playing games, as you can see from my list of recent achievements on the side panel.  I've received all of those within the last week or so.  I think I've made some nice progress in my gamer score . . . even if it's not a whole lot of progress in a single game.  But if I have 736 games to get through I should find time to play games more often.  Sleep is overrated, right?  Man, I've got a lot of games.