Patreon Newsletter - May 2016 (Patreon)

Hello! Thanks for your support this month. Here's what's been happening in Mark Land.

Post Script

Controllers Control Everything

This was a bit of a crazy project. I knew I wanted to have pictures of all the controllers I talked about, but didn't know how to get nice, consistent footage of everything. So I decided to draw them!

I had to learn how to use the pen tool in Photoshop, and it took a million hours, but I'm happy with them.

The most interesting part to research was the invention of twin stick aiming. We take the controls in Halo and Call of Duty for granted, but there was a time when this stuff just didn't exist. It was fun to play those old PS1 shooters and see how they were making the first, bold, and slightly fiddly steps towards the future.

As a trillion YouTube commenters pointed out, I probably should have talked about keyboard and mouse. Yep, good point. I was mostly thinking about consoles during script development, but then I started gabbing about VR and so that won't hold up in court. Maybe I'll come back to KB&M?

The other thing people mentioned was the Wii U Gamepad and, hey, whaddya know?

A Deep Dive into Star Fox Zero's Controls

I did a whole episode on the Gamepad! This started off as a quick spin-off video but just ballooned into a whole thing, and my second longest episode. So I decided to release it as a main episode.

I made this one rather quickly. I had been playing SF0 for a while but then read, on Wednesday evening, an interview with Miyamoto that really sparked my interest. I then, in the space of four days:

Finished Star Fox Zero, then went back to replay many of the levels and unlock more stages. Planned, wrote, and recorded the script. Captured footage of Sin and Punishment, Kid Icarus, old Star Fox games, Ratchet, Dirt Rally, and more. Hooked everything up in Premiere and figured out how to represent the Gamepad twisting and turning, and then exported and uploaded.

It was crazy, but fun! A good rule of thumb is that my videos take about an hour to edit for every minute of final video. So for a 14 minute video... Sheesh.

Sneak Peek

Still working on Hitman! I wasn't happy about where it was going, and so I'm reworking it. Also looking forward to playing the second elusive target, (happening later today, as of me writing this) as those are important for my analysis.

I've also got a script written for Downwell. Feels nice to have that in the back pocket.

I've also been thinking about this video I want to do on Zelda Dungeon Design, and now my current thinking is I'll do it as a spin-off series of some description. Perhaps a video on each of the main games talking about the dungeons, and then maybe cap off with a typical GMT episode that sums up what I found out.

Mark's Month

So on May 1st I stepped down as editor of Pocket Gamer, and now work the normal job for just three days a week, giving me an extra two for GMT. It's slightly weird, but awesome. Previously I was busting my ass off every weekend to do videos but now I can relax a bit.

I am using the extra time to do more stuff, of course. Alongside two highly intensive videos this month (one required lots of art, and both took lots of time) I did a lot of work on another video and wrote the script for a forth. Plus, did an AMA on Patreon, retooled all my thumbnails, and some other stuff.

Oh, and played video games! Like Uncharted 4! Which I really enjoyed. But I can't help but feel like something was a bit off. And I think it's the pace.

Uncharted 2, the best of the series, has the momentum of a runaway freight train and uses moments of high action (train! tank! hotel collapsing!) and low stakes stuff (village! ice caves! climbing the... big... thing. With Chloe. You know what I mean) that gives the game this absolute page-turning pace.

As soon as you hit combat fatigue, the game slows down. As soon as you get bored, the game speeds up. It's terrific.

Uncharted 4 tries to do something similar, and in certain sections it succeeds. But it largely leans too heavily on the low stakes stuff, and the high stakes stuff is few and far between. There's only one action set piece, and far fewer shootouts than before.

And so while I love those quieter moments - in Drake's house, climbing the clock tower with Sully, driving around Madagascar - the pace slackens in sections. And for an action blockbuster-style game, that's not ideal.

Maybe Naughty Dog reckons that the climbing sections are high intensity? They certainly look it when Drake goes for a handhold and - uh oh! it snapped! - but 4 games in and we know this stuff is just no-friction filler. Props for adding new mechanics like the grappling hook (and another I won't name for spoiler reasons), but it's not enough.

So story wise and graphics and characters etc - terrific. But from a gameplay perspective, it was a little slow. Your mileage definitely may vary.

I also played Overwatch which is fun. I'm still trying all the characters out. Man, the character design is just terrific by the way. So colourful and interesting. I'd kill to see characters like these as heroes in their own games.

I've also started Chrono Trigger. I need to know more about JRPGs and so, here I am. It's fun but I'm already lost. And I can't find my 3DS charger. If you see it please let me know.

Other than that I've been chatting to a big consultancy firm who might want to hire me for a few gigs off the back of my videos which is, obviously, incredibly exciting.

Right, that's me done. Cheers for everything. Remember that you can ask me questions (or give feedback or make requests or call me a dingus) at any time - just comment on a post or make a new one. I see absolutely everything and (try to) answer anything that gets asked.