Tomb Raider: The Prologue

How to Clean a Razer Mechanical Keyboard

Expanding my gaming genres

So if you have come here from my YouTube channel you might know that I have just finished a series on a game called Outlast. To be perfectly honest I'v never played a "Run and Hide" before, to be really honest the only gaming genres Iv been interested in the past have been role-players eg; Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Fallout 3. and some FPS like Halo, Quake, GTA. I really love the Universe you get with a fantasy gaming and the problem with that when I'm looking for a new game to play is that I find my self too invested in the universes I'm already in (especially with the  elder scrolls series). One of the biggest reason I wanted to start a gaming channel on YouTube (apart from the reasons I'v spoken about in other posts previously) is that I wanted to expand my gaming knowledge, and I wanted to share the adventure with others. Which is why I went left field off the bat with Outlast. From hacking, slashing and shooting too literally the total opposite running and hiding. I found this to be a massive eye opener mainly cos at the start I didn't think I'd enjoy the fact I couldn't kill Chris Walker (aka Pig Man as I like to call him) I had to keep running and hiding and he kept becoming an recurring issue with my progress through the game. But what I felt when he (spoilers!!) was beaten to death by a ghostly entity and then exploded from the inside out in front of my very eyes was overwhelmingly satisfying! The game on a hole was an interesting learning curve for me as far as trusting game developers to engage and satisfy my love for fantasy gaming. 

I got told about Outlast by a friend at Uni and I wasn't convinced for a second that I was going to enjoy it. But I checked out the previews got the ratings even watched some game play on YouTube and after doing the research I decided that "yeah I probably would enjoy playing this game" and lets face I have wasted $17.50 on worse things lol. But Outlast was no waste of money.

As apart of my self betterment with my gaming experience goes I have decided to hit as many different genres as possible with my channel, vowing of coarse to not upload heaps of random/boring FPS, or sniper shot footage (not that there is anything wrong with that lol).

My next YouTube project is the 2013 release of Tomb Raider, Now I loved Tomb Raider as a kid I played the first two but was pulled into a more social gaming seen when I got my first Xbox! so I was really interested to see how the developers of the new Tomb Raider have bought it back to life. So far I'm loving it! Without giving too much away again its a totally different gaming platform to what I'm used to and I'm really glad that I broke free from my comfort zone.

My advise to anyone out there who feels like they can empathize with my feeling of being stuck in a gaming rut, 

-1: Pick a game:

Don't try and compare it to stuff you'v played in the past just pick something totally new a different. If your having trouble with this take to social media (Facebook status: "Anyone know of some cool games I should check out?" See what happens.

-2: Do your research!

When you have picked the game do some research, look for reviews or a lets play series and dip your toe in the water first. With the price of some tittles these days there's nothing worse then spending all that money and getting a crappy game with crap in game graphics and no story line! not to mention this will probably just drive you further in to you "gaming rut".

-3: Don't be afraid to try something new:

Pick a genre you have never done before! even if its just because the female protagonist has a nice ass! that's as good excuse as any and you might be surprised with what you find. I mean if you only expectation of the game is staring at Lara Croft's booty all day and you find your self enjoying the game as well the WINNING!!

And finely don't force it, if the game you have picked just isn't for you then that's fine, lend it to a friend, sell it back to a Game Traders or something and try again!

I hope my words have inspired you to take the plunge into a new world of exploration remember a game is an adventure not a destination.

Happy gaming!!!

ESO Video Clip Korn - Freak on a Leash Mash up

Outlast Walk Through Part 4

OutLast Walk Through Part 3

Part 3 of my Outlast walk through! Creepy stuff

A Surprise Success (it's the little things that count)

So just a little back story..
I dropped out of a public school at the end of year ten, I was fifteen and had been talked into an apprenticeship in commercial cookery. The prospect of earning money at such a young age was extremely enticing, especially when I wasn't doing so great at school. I started to fall behind like some young boys do, I got distracted whether it was girls, computer games, pot, I was just a typical suburban teen. After I noticed that I had fell behind, I started to get less and less interested in school work, the more I fell behind the harder it got and the less I cared. feeling slightly failed by the public school system I saw the apprenticeship as a way out, a way out where I wasn't 'quitting' I was moving on, taking a positive step for my future. The fact of the matter was that I wasn't going to succeed at school as a fourteen year old boy, I wasn't in the right sate of mind. Ten years later I have done some pretty awesome things and feel very accomplished, even lacking a good education I managed to purchase a house a few months after my eighteenth birthday, I have lived in the United Kingdom and traveled western Europe, I have won awards with my cooking and I now live in Adelaide city with my lovely girl friend.

At the end of last year I looked back and the last ten or so years and thought to my self "If this is what I can achieve with a drop out education, in a career I'm not passionate about, what would I be capable of if I applied myself to something I really love doing?.. if I challenged my self mentally not just physically?.. What could I do with a university degree?'' So after talking it over with my girl friend and gathering the support of my close friends and family I enrolled in university and got a casual part time job doing breakfast at a local pub.

Six months later I am just finishing my first semester in a preparatory program (alternative pathway program) at the University of Adelaide and have taken the first big step to achieving my dream! I want more than anything to get involved in computer game development, whether its programming, graphic design, even story boarding.. Its something I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember, I just never thought I'd ever be able to achieve it. The people that made computer games to me were like other peoples music icons or movie stars, they were the veiled heroes of my childhood. I remember playing the Legend of Zelda (it wasn't the first game I ever played) but I distinctly remember I was about six and was thinking to my self "how?!... how is this possible?.. how am I controlling the image on the screen!? what process did the person who built this game follow? where did they start? how did they put it in this cartridge so I could plug it into my TV and play it?" The whole thing was very fascinating and I just remember having this thought for so long. I'm now on my way to finding out! Admittedly I never chased this fascination up, I never dove any deeper in the industry than simply just playing the games I loved, it was enough for me like a Nirvana fan listening to every song over and over again wishing they could play guitar like Kurt Cobain and having no idea where to start!

So anyone who was involved in my discussion about the steam box and the survey about PC vs console gaming might be interested in my grades and feed back on that course.. Well this is what has inspired this blog post, I want this to be my feel good story, my fuck you to those public school teachers who never saw my potential, who told me I'd never amount to anything. My over all grades for my first semester of university are:

ICT: 93.7% High Distinction
UNI CULTURE: 92.3% High Distinction
BIOLOGY/PHYSICS: 76% Distinction
MATH: 74.74% Credit

And all I want to do now, is better and better! These grades might not look like much to some of you but to me its the best I'v ever done at anything! and after being convinced that I was never going to excel at anything academically these grades have shown me that anything is possible and that I can make my dream a reality, as long as I take control and push my self to success! This post isn't me trying to brag about my grades or anything like that, my hope for this post is that someone out there that feels like they have it tough at school or feels like they aren't suited to a class room environment reads this and finds some level of inspiration in it. Because if that's how you feel the likelihood is you probably aren't in the right state of mind for a class room environment, spread your wings find something constructive to do while you figure out what it is that your good at. I would never have been able to do so well at uni if I hadn't dropped out of school to become a chef, the things I have learnt as a chef; dedication, time management, organisation, adaptation, all these things I was never going to learn at school, and to be honest I had a lot of growing up to do first!

So let that be a lesson to all of you out there.... the only person that's in your way of success is you! don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The sooner you realize that you're the only person who can change your life, the sooner you can start to succeed!

I would just like to thank my friends and family for the support that they have given me, it has been invaluable. Especially from my Mum and my girlfriend!

OutLast Walk Through Part 1

Part one of my OutLast walk through! tell me what you think? what can I improve on?

ESO Dark Elf Tanky DPS Build

My First YouTube video Check out my Tanky(ish) sorc

My Digital Portfolio Assignment in Conclusion (results and more)!!

So here I am at the end of my assignment, I didn’t quite get the response I wanted but for now that’s ok.

First of all I would like to thank everyone that was involved. I came shy of my goal of 50 survey participants, only achieving a total of 16, And not many people posted on my blog (probably my fault mainly because I forgot to open it to the public at the start, silly me!)

When I was given the chance to make a “digital portfolio” I was very excited. Something I’ve always wanted to do is gaming journalism, start my own YouTube channel or start a blog for gaming reviews, stuff like that. I never knew where to start or how to get involved. I decided for my major ICT assignment that I would break through some of the things that were stopping me from starting my own blog. The set up was the easy part, I told my lecturer that I wanted to do a survey and she advised me that Google Drive was a really simple tool and it was free!

After setting up my Google account I realized just how many thing I was already using were run by Google. So I dove right in!  My online presence isn’t just my Facebook page anymore, now I have a YouTube account/channel ((https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNgcTOwIU_OegSsmMVDX6Yw)only just started) I have a G+ account, (https://plus.goog le.com/u/0/) I have a blog on blogger (as you know), I’m using Gmail exclusively (www.gmail.com) and Google drive as my cloud (www.drive.google.com). After I set all this up my first blog post was to run the survey (at the time that was all I was going to use my blog for) so I set the survey up and linked it to my blog.  Next all I needed was traffic!

As I said the easy part was setting it up, the hard part was what do I do now? I had no idea how to promote a blog so the first thing I did was hit Facebook. I realized that I didn’t have the target audience I needed in my friends list so I started looking for gaming Facebook pages and slapping my blog link on the ones that would let me. I got about 50 people come to the blog and about 8 people did the survey, no one commented, this just wasn’t good enough!! So then I hit the oracle of online knowledge and “how to” videos… (www.youtube.com)!

I watched a few videos on “How to promote your blog” and got a few ideas. I then decided that I need to find some people that already had my target audience and promote my blog with them. This proved useful and is a tactic I will probably continue to use, by making sure I never over spammed and showing an interest in the other Vlogger/Bloggers content I invited the author and there audience to take part in my survey/blog. All was going well but I started to realize that this wasn’t going to be an easy thing to accomplish. 

During this process I played around with Google+ and added my Twitter and Facebook feeds to it, from then on everything I commented on (e.g. YouTube videos and other blogs) I had the opportunity to share it on my Google+ page which then shared it to my friends and circles and hopefully to their friends and circles. I didn’t want to overdo it, I didn’t want to over spam it with my close friends so I needed to find another way. 

I then made an RSS feed and used Wise Stamp (http://www.wisestamp.com/) to stamp all my emails with my blog, for those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about basically at the bottom of all my emails there’s a link to my blog and a preview of my last Blog post. This has come in handy mainly with meeting people and making contacts in the gaming world rather than getting traffic on my blog. Over all I have a long way to go with getting sustainable traffic and long term readers but hope to get there one day.

The last thing I am adding to my digital portfolio is a YouTube video (http://youtu.be/93d5Rt15YHk). As I said earlier for a long time now I have wanted to start my own blog and YouTube channel so I thought this would be a great thing to take onto the end of my assignment. The video is about 7mins long and is a clip of me playing Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) talking about my character build. It’s very informal, I basically just did it so I could get the hang of uploading to my channel. I used a program called “Fraps Screen Recorder” (http://www.fraps.com/) which I found out about through one of my favorite YouTube gaming channels. It’s very easy to use and you can set frame rate and audio in put everything perfect for YouTube uploads. I plan to use my YouTube channel to promote my blog and vice versa buy using then in conjunction with each other I should be able to start a pretty solid community.

In conclusion this assignment consists of a number of programs and services that I wasn't fully familiar with or had never used before:

1.       Blogger: http://pcvsconsolediscussionbydrdlokdsp4rtn.blogspot.com.au/

2.       Google plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109130754327516430675/about

3.       Google drive: https://drive.google.com

4.       My google drive survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vMm8-5RXHEwW210fOJWVUpAfhjJKRgcnUWh8FBure9c/viewform?usp=send_form

5.       YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrdlokdSp4rtn
      -This is the video voice over I did as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93d5Rt15YHk 

6.       Fraps: http://www.fraps.com/

7.       Wise Stamp: http://www.wisestamp.com

8.       Over all internet research in general
9.    Windows Movie Maker

And Now the Moment We've All Been Waiting For!

The results:

This is a link to my hard data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmuCVUk-uUi2dEpDNUI3RnowT0FhU0x0MEpnNkpNQ2c&usp=sharing

This is a link to my averaged and graphed data:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vMm8-5RXHEwW210fOJWVUpAfhjJKRgcnUWh8FBure9c/viewanalytics

·         Most people surveyed were born between 1980 and 2000.

·         -73% were male, 13% female and 2% Transgender

·        - All were stated they were Gamers with only 13% saying kind of

·        -Most started gaming before the age of ten

·         -47% game over 20 hours a week

·         -20% Xbox, 7%PlayStation, 27% PC, 27% other

And as you can see by the comments in the blog and on the survey there is a very mixed reaction to the steam console and how it will affect the industry as we know it. (All of the following comments have been copied and pasted straight from the survey results in the link listed above, and have not been edited or changed in any way).

It's probably too late and too alternative. Certainly not mainstream enough to pick up in any real capacity. Expect a sad, Zune style death. 

Holy Shit I need one.. Also would be an serious game changer in the console/PC industry, Good on steam for developing it. 

A possible future game changer (once it is advertised more) Would certainly be competition for the PC gaming industry 

i don't think it will sway many PC users but i can see it peaking interest from console gamer's. . Making PC gaming more accessible and customisation easier for the gamer is a great idea and with the brand power of Steam behind it I'm intrigued. 

I'm excited to see the steam box. I think the steam box will have a hard time trying to sell to true pc gamers, but I hope it will bridge the gap Its a product without a market. PC gamers are not looking for a simplified platform and console gamers already have these simplified platforms. 

It was only a matter of time. 

Steam is a horrible form of energy production and transportation. Gas is the future. #Gasbox4life420bro 

It's a bridge to gap console players to PC, and make PCs more accessible away from a desk. It's not a replacement of either, it's a midway point 

Yes I believe that the steam console is going the change the future for consoles it just seems better in every way 

It is the missing link in gaming evolution! It would be a huge competition within both the PC and the console realms. I want one! 

I think its a good idea. No complants. 

Its good 

the Pc will

Over all I am very happy with the response and hope to build on this more and more throughout my gaming/university career. Once again I like to thank everyone who got involved and encourage people to subscribe and like, I will changing a few things about my blog after my assignment has been marked so stick around. please comment/share if you like my content so far and wish to see more also I don't mind if you drop a link to promote your (related) work here.

DrdlokdSp4rtn