The Mental Attic

I apologise for the corny and somewhat dramatic title to this article, but the others were much worse. If you’ve kept up to date with the happenings of my YouTube and Twitch channels, you might have noticed there hasn’t been much, if any, activity over the past few months, with only a gameplay demo for a Kickstarter game. There are reasons for that and plans in motion, so stick around and I’ll let you know the details!

There are a couple of reasons I stopped recording videos and broadcasting is twofold. The first reason was that I wasn’t satisfied with my sound specs, wanting to get rid of a lot of the noise in the background, or at least limit it in a way where I would have to disable/enable the mic with a switch to keep it controlled or heavily edit the audio during episode editing. It was annoying and time-consuming and never good enough to be satisfactory.

This has now been worked on and corrected by getting an XLR microphone, audio interface and Pre-Amp/Gate. A bit of bulk, really but giving me much more control over the different levels of audio going out, so that I never have to hear the noise of my regular breathing on the audio track.

#DragonMomoko is a bootleg gunpla company as far as I know, but this is an origjnal #mastergradegundam that isn't in the Bandai line. And it looks so good. Can't wait to build it

A post shared by Kevin Kutlesa (@thelawfulgeek) on Dec 8, 2017 at 4:08am PST

The second reason is that I found myself slightly lost, since I was just another guy on YouTube and Twitch doing the same thing everyone else is. There’s nothing unique about the games I play, or the way I comment on them. So I had to find a bit of meaning in that, in how to move along, and not only that but realise the limits of what I can do instead of trying to imitate others.

It took me a while but I decided what I would do, starting with renaming the channel to The Lawful Geek, to make things much more even. Now let’s go over the plans in detail:

• Gaming: I’m an experienced gamer, and by that I mean I have a few decades of gaming knowledge and memories and rarely put that to use. So that’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna focus on old games, especially those you can’t really find on online retailers or for older consoles. Not only that but also those titles that pass unnoticed, the indie games no one cares for, or the classics of different genres that fall to the bottom of the Steam games list. In this regard, I’ve already a couple of targets to kick things off, one for YouTube and the other for Twitch:
  • YouTube – Nightmare Creatures: I have such memories of this game, from back in those days when PC Magazines had CDs with shareware versions of games. I remember playing the Nightmare Creatures demo so many times, only a couple of levels, and despite my best efforts I could never get a copy of the game. Now I finally have, and so I’ll make sure to bring this classic game back for modern audiences, especially in light of the recent announcement that Nightmare Creatures would be revived, a new game in the series, perhaps a reboot. But best not let anyone forget where it all started.
  • Twitch – Nocturne: Another monster horror game, I can’t even claim to have played Nocturne, but it was as title I’ve been aware of for years, especially considering I’m a massive fan of the now defunct BloodRayne series. Nocturne is the predecessor to this series, and in fact, if not for copyrights issues,  BloodRayne would’ve been Nocturne 2.
• Gunpla: Oh yeah, the robot building will continue but there are caveats. One thing that got out of hand for me was trying to compete with other broadcasters in terms of how much I could do on camera. I wanted to build, paint, mod and everything else, but the truth is I don’t nearly have enough space to even do two of those at the same time. So from now on I’ll just focus on straight builds and assembly, at least for twitch. I might be able to get modding and painting on YouTube but it’s unlikely.

Gonna start broadcasting and recording playthroughs of old games. What better way than two out of print titles? #Nocturne, the predecesor to Bloodrayne, and a game I played as shareware ages ago, #nightmarecreatures

A post shared by Kevin Kutlesa (@thelawfulgeek) on May 31, 2018 at 3:21am PDT

This week I’ll be getting everything ready and recording a few of the games I’ll be creating series for, not just Nightmare Creatures. There are some oldie point & click adventures that deserve just as much love and some Wii and WiiU games even. But you’ll have to wait to know which games I’ll be covering in the future.

As for Gunpla, I have a long list of stuff to build, though I’ll be starting with the Testament Gundam next week!