Date of the "up" variety. (Patreon)

Hey guys! Unfortunately I don't have a big, fun update for you, just a quick one to let you know what's going on since things are very unpredictable right now.

My original plan was to work on nothing but my Super Mario Odyssey review until it was done, but something pretty interesting happened. During November, the month with more games coming to Switch than you could ever hope for, suddenly everyone in the world decided to start throwing review copies at me. Okay, well not everyone, but a good few.

First Bethesda offered to send me a copy of Doom, and that's extra cool because previously I couldn't get through to them and I've heard they can be pretty stingy with their review copies. I took the challenge and I'm proud to say I did the review in its entirety in only a few days. It was a crazy challenge, but BOOYAH I made it happen. And I'm glad I did, too, because it ended up performing way better than I ever could have hoped! It saw almost 100k views in the first 24 hours, and it did drop considerably after that, but if anything that just reaffirms the importance of getting reviews out the exact day the review embargo lifts and everyone else is publishing their reviews too. We saw the same kind of great performance for both Sonic Mania and Paper Mario Color Splash.

For this reason, I concluded that since my Mario review was already so late, being a little later wasn't going to make a big difference, since it will mostly be seen by my fans anyway. And that's why when I was offered a copy of Rime just as I was finishing up my Doom review...I said yes again! And I also blasted through that one; it's already uploaded, and I wish I could show it to my $10+ patrons early, but that would be breaking the embargo. You'll see it on the 13th though.

Oh, but the story doesn't end there. I came out of my studio after shooting my Rime review, and you'll never guess who I got an email from. It was from Bethesda again. And man, if a few years ago you told me that one day the idea of yet another free game would make my stomach sink a little, I would have laughed in your face. But when I got offered a copy of Skyrim, yeah, I was obviously quite pleased, and I'm still pleased...but there was a tiny part of me that was crying out in exasperation.

So now I guess I'm doing a review of Skyrim! This does push the Mario review even further, but progress was going really well on Mario and I don't think there are any other games I'm into reviewing even if I get offers, so once I get Skyrim done the very next video should be Mario. And really I'd say I'm exceptionally lucky right now; Rime was a pretty short game, so that made it easy and quick to review. Then Doom and Skyrim are both games I've played quite a lot, so digging super deep into them just isn't required to see how the Switch version functions. Skyrim in particular just wouldn't be possible to review without giving it tons and tons of time if, you know, I hadn't already given it tons and tons of time a few years ago. In fact I've already played this version enough that I think I'll start on the script once I'm done with this post. Fortunately Bethesda gave me a little more time with this one than they did with Doom; I've got until the morning of the 16th to have the review up. Considering the pace I've been keeping that shouldn't be a problem, though I gotta tell ya, WOOF. I complain a lot about being tired, but these rapid-fire reviews are taking a lot out of me. At least today was mostly about playing. It's always nice during those short little times where playing a game is the only work I need to do. It's like working and relaxing at the same time.

So thanks so much for your patience with the Mario review, I know a lot of you are really looking forward to it. In the end I think these other reviews were just really important for the channel. As I've said many times reviews can often take way too much time to make compared to how much they earn in ad revenue, but I'm working hard to build up relationships with publishers and establish myself as a reviewer. So hopefully in the future when I've got more time overall to give to the channel I can review all the best stuff as it comes out! I'm already feeling pretty darn awesome about this last month. I mean, Nintendo gave me free copies of two games, and now Bethesda! It's looking better and better all the time, isn't it? :)

Well look at that, this ended up being quite a bit longer than I expected. I'm quite the wind bag! One last thing though, my Mario review is turning out to be pretty long. My rough estimate at the moment is 40 minutes, and I can't seem to decide whether or not it would be a good idea to split it into two parts. Two parts might make it easier for people to swallow, but I've also seen people say they'd rather watch things all at once no matter how long they are, and with Youtube even the longest video in the world can be paused and returned to later. And with two parts that means releasing them at different times, which might bother people who don't want to wait...but then, 40 minutes is just a really long video! Since I'm mostly making it for my fans I'm leaning toward just doing one video, but I still need to make the final call. Let me know what you prefer in the poll I've included here. I can't guarantee that the results will affect what I ultimately decide, but it's always nice to get your feedback.

That's it for now! Many thanks to any new patrons since last time! See ya!