Hey yo. Thanks for reading this and everything else. I also appreciate everybody who keeps tuning into my website to read up on my Mass Effect Andromeda continuation. I’m getting pretty good traffic so far!
I had a friend point out to me that it’s essentially glorified fan fiction, but I have to disagree with the “glorified” part. It’s smut of the imagination. I worked hard on it, but it’s not winning any writing awards. I’ll be adding part two shortly–stay tuned.
But that isn’t what I’m here to talk about. I have a new video coming out tomorrow–or technically today. It’s a small one and it’s more of an announcement for a larger video to follow. I’ve got about 40 minutes of content so far, but I think you’ll like this smaller 3-minute video first. Some cool stuff may be coming your way.
So be sure to check out my channel tomorrow, which is Monday. Your day is probably going to shit, meaning that a week of hell is ahead, so you may as well waste a few minutes on what I have to announce. I hate that word: announce. Get off your high horse, Gator.
At the time of writing this, which is about 3am on Monday morning. I’m sitting at 199 subscribers. I can’t fucking believe that, and the growth that I’ve seen in just a short month is incredible. I really, really fucking appreciate it. If you’re here from other means, be sure to check out my channel here.
Gator is growing
For posterity, I’d like to keep a record of how things grow on my Youtube channel. I’m going to be starting a page on Story Swamp that’ll show how the growth happened. That way when I’m a fucking Kingpin, I can look back at this page, whiskey in hand, and remember all the souls I had to consume to reach my level of prestige.
This will also be to save my roommate from the constant subscriber updates. I think out of the 150-ish that have subscribed since my final MEA video, he’s been informed of 130 of them individually each time I get the notification. I think he’s going to kill me.
Finally, I’ve been asked by a few subscribers to update more regularly somewhere. I think they mean more videos, but those suckers take like, hours of my life. I love doing them, but I promise you I’m going at a rate that’s fast while also making sure I’m keeping my big belly filled.
So written reviews are what it’s all about. I had announced that I was going to be doing that, I just needed some time to get my fucking life together. I’ll be posting my first review right after this is going up. For those of you who are watching tomorrow’s video and reading this, hell yeah. Good to see you. Check out my review of the Netflix show, Castlevania that’s floating around here on the front page. You’ll also be able to use the “Review” tag on the left. I plan on making one review a week, plus I’ll link to the handful of entertainment websites that I work for.
I’m a really big fan of keeping things all under one roof. I switched to Google Music just so it could be under my Google Play umbrella. I tried to then switch over to Google Books as well, but FUCK Google Books. It’s all about that self-published naughty-girl choking shit on Amazon.
This website is my roof. I’m bringing everything together. Those of you who’ve helped me get this far, I fucking love you. Let’s keep it going.
Alright, so here’s what’s up: I love this fucking blog. It looks good and I get a little bit of a hard-on to see it grow, so I’m keeping the train a’rollin.
The best way that I can keep a steady buzz off of this is through a bi-weekly post about what this fat fuck has been up to.
The Wallow will be that weekly post, goddammit.
A lot of my friends post pictures or Europe or a wedding shower, but I usually avoid long-term commitments like the plague, so don’t expect to read much about my recent trip to Guatemala because it never happened–probably never will.
But what you will read about is what I’ve been soaking my eyes in, whether that’s a game or a show, even just some bullshit at the bar. I go there a lot and usually stay too long.
For the inaugural Wallow, I’m thinking E3 is a good jumping off point. While I’m a card-carrying dork–no doubt, I never really get that pumped about E3. I think it’s a little overdone, and to the people who don’t give a shit about games, it sure gives them a whole bunch of ammunition to say it’s a silly culture. Which, it is. Just look how the people who do care about this shit react.
Even though I consider it a deflating experience, I’m looking forward to quite a bit that was shown at E3. Here’s a list of what I’m looking forward to and why.
A Way Outlooks potentially dope. Prison breaks make for really fun narratives and if the co-op is done well instead of, you press this button when I do too, then we could be in for a treat.
What’s so surprising to me is that nobody did this earlier. Off the top of my head, only a few games have even come close. Kayne and Lynch had a level revolving around a prison break in their first game and I remember enjoying it quite a bit. Yeah, I was one of 16 people on the planet to enjoy the K&L games. Then there was also a mission in Splinter Cell: Double Agent about flying the coop, but I only barely remember it.
It’s funny, both of those are games that I tried to go back and play recently but couldn’t get reinvested in. Kane and Lynch, I’m sorry to say, has aged like dogshit on a Texas sidewalk in July–so, so bad. I still have fond memories of those games, but that’s what they’ll stay; memories.
Similar story with Double Agent, though, it’s not as aged. It’s just got the look of a game that belongs on a Gamecube, and who am I to try to play a PC port? Just didn’t feel right, I guess.
But yeah, A Way Out. It should be really cool to see if they can take true co-op play and make it work in a fast-paced environment. All I can ask is that there’s a story to boot. Little bit of Shawshank Redemption mixed with some Army of Two really doesn’t sound that bad.
Hell, I’ll be extra impressed if a whole bunch of Swedes can do justice to a story that’s based in the American South/Southwest. It’s from the guys that did Brothers, right? The internet won’t shut up about that game, so hopefully, it turns out swell.
Controversy be damned, I can’t wait to see how The Last Night turns out. I have never, ever seen a trailer as atmospheric as that.
Dude, like that’s masterful, in my opinion. You see segments of a journey, a protagonist who’s taking his lickings, all while a world is being established. As far as trailers go, it did exactly what it needed to. Show, but not tell, and even then, only show a little.
The visuals too. The way lighting is used in and around the retro look is eye-widening for sure. It may look to borrow too much from Bladerunner, but if there’s a complaint to have, it’s that something is too much like Bladerunner.
I’m not even touching on that Gamergate shit, by the way. I don’t even think that word should exist. Fuck both sides of that controversy. I’m uneducated, I’m naive, but I’m not interested in learning another bit about that nonsense. I hope the history books will mock this era for letting that grow to the size it did.
Alright, one thing about it: That dude shouldn’t have apologized for words he said three years ago. Regardless of whether he meant those things then and didn’t mean them now, you do not bend like that. Not like that.
Back to the game itself, I want to see some actual gameplay before really biting my tongue and jumping up and down. Great, great, potential, but I’ve been hurt before.
Finally, there’s Wolfenstein II: The NewColossus,which will be in my library on the day of release. I tend not to pre-order–not because I’m some kind of purist, I just don’t see the point, but I’ll buy this one as soon as I see the words, “Available Now” on ol’ Steam.
For those of you who played The New Order, the aesthetic is back in full and that was my favorite part of the 2014 title. Bethesda and Machine Games, they’ve done a great job at making the atmosphere for these games so dreadfully inviting.
It’s seen in the austerity of post-victory Berlin, rising just above the sunken, deteriorating hideout of the resistance. A titanic, continent-connecting bridge, but one only created to make genocide more convenient. The New Order was perfect at setting the stage. It’s sequel looks to show us the plagued heartland of America, and I look forward to seeing how it turns out.
Wolfenstein was never something that appealed to me when I was younger. It’s been around forever, but they made a couple of PS2-era games that always just seemed too dark to me. I don’t mean like pry-your-eyeballs out dark, I mean like visually too dark. I’ve never been into gothic looking shit either, which is why I think these newer games finally brought me into the fold. For the most part, they’ve ditched the castles and moved into office buildings.
Bethesda’s showcase otherwise seemed a bit…redundant to me. All the titles they announced were just things the whole community was aware of. I guess Fallout VR will be cool, but I’ve spent enough time in Boston to not really have a pull to go back. That’s even more true for the northern region of Cyrodill. Stop making Skyrim, sweet Jesus.
Quickly, some other titles that stuck out to me were:
Far Cry 5 — More heartland-gone-wrong. I’m into it.
Crackdown 3 — If it’s more like the first one and nothing like the second one, it can’t fail.
Metro: Exodus — I’ve made it this far and haven’t been disappointed. We’ll see.
You know what’s interesting to me? Rockstar never shows up to these bs expos and usually still ends up with the most-anticipated title. Even though they’re balls deep in trying to win back their GTA V community after their little OpenIV scuffle, everyone will forgive and forget with the next Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer release. And as someone who neither cares nor plays modded GTA V, I’d hope we can get to that step sooner than later.
Anyway, there’s what I thought. There’s more to say but it’s nothing that can’t be found elsewhere. I’m staring down a pile of laundry that needs doing and half the reason I’ve written for so long is to put that off as much as I can. But I reached the end of that rope.
Story Swamp 