raycevick

Writer

Spent all of my Tuesday on Taxes.

Whenever sending anything to the Government or Corporations, the "title" I put down varies. If it's a manual prompt, I'll sometimes write "Youtuber" which I'm not a big fan of, but automatic prompts often have "Influencer" which I'm not a big fan of.

Thankfully, I've never had to put that one down, because every automatic prompt has a backup selection.

Writer.

Thing is, I've never felt like a writer.

It is primarily what I do. <...

Recommendations: Now & Then by Adam Freeland

Some years ago, I looked at Spotify playlist that catalogued all the songs it possibly could from the 15+ years of Top Gear aired on Television. Because the BBC have a licensed music library that any of their shows can use without paying anything, tons of music gets utilized over the course of seasons and shows.

One day, I spent hours and hours going through the list, marking down the songs I'd heard probably dozens of times over the period of watching the show, with the intent to liste...

Q&A: April 23rd, 2025

Rocketmushroom Asks
When are you going to release your “Chaser… still the greatest flawless masterpiece years later” and “Ride to Hell Retribution, love it more than Nutella and peanut butter” ?

When I've made a clone who can take that duty over for me.

litl snek Asks
What do you think of Risk of Rain(2)? What about it's soundtrack?

Risk of Rain 2's probably one of the most successful transitions of game transitio...

Recommendations: Clue (1985)

I watched Adolescence.

I'm reading "There Are No Accidents."

I listened and recommended Penelope Trappes' "A Requiem."

All quality but... heavy. You know what's needed? Something light, and fun, but don't let those two words trick you into expecting slop. It's funny how much of discussion I saw of the Barbie Movie was the effort put into it despite the subject matter, 'cause not only does Clue achieve the same surprise in 1985, I'd argue with more quality (and I lik...

Is Final Fantasy Powerful Because It's Cute?

One line I remember from Apex Legends' Loba is "you should smile more" before stomping somebody to death… with a smile on their face. Okay, but seriously, it's a very simple, yet clever reversal of a line that's been condescending woman for generations the instant they have the gall to not beam for longing men, which is very in keeping with Loba as a character.

Thinking about it though, smiling is something that I often find games are terrified of letting any of their charac...

Recommendations: Cairn Demo

Welcome to the latest episode of "Raycevick's friend predict a game he was obviously going to love."

The Game Bakers have very rapidly become one of my favorite developers even though I've only played a Demo of one of their games Haven, and honestly didn't click with it's moment to moment game-play. Yet, I walked away from that game respecting the hell out of it for attempting something with way more than a half-ass effort that games don't ordinarily try.

Cairn's the same thing in...

Recommendations: A Requiem by Penelope Trappes

I've been on a real Modern Metal kick recently, so I forced myself to mix up the albums being added to my rotations to stop this from just being a ceaseless list of House of Protection, Crossfaith, Thornhill, and Memphis May Fire... though don't be surprised if I still shout-out the HOP EP when that's out in a couple months.

In the meantime, this pick is not in the same realm, let alone vein.

I have absolutely no reference point for Penelope's work, all I know is putting this Albu...

Before the Storm

So I've Finally Played…
Life is Strange Before the Storm.

That's probably not what most people were expecting me to first clear off the list after rewriting myself into Oblivion with Rollerdrome, the prequel to Time Travel Lesbian Tragedy Simulator doesn't exactly scream RAYCEVICK like Black Lagoon or Spec Ops does, but t...

Recommendations: Portal: Still Alive

Those who've seen my Orange Box Years Later video might remember this, but weirdly, Portal Still Alive isn't just a straight individual copy of the original game sold separately from Valve's iconic bundle, but a version of the game which had it's own Campaign with 14 original levels.

The strange thing is while these levels are "Advanced Chambers" they aren't made as if you're a Portal veteran familiar wanting to start the volume at eleven, but like Portal's original campaign doesn't exi...

Q&A: March 26th, 2025

And now... back to our bi-weekly programming!

Duncan Gohl Asks
What are some campaigns/narratives from games you played that you wish were better than what was executed? (Mine would be BF3 and both modern MOH games)

Funny enough, I've had a video idea for years that's one big homage to an old Jeremy Clarkson Car Review where, between BF3 and MOH Warfighter I "finally decided once and for all which one is worse."

There's about a m...

EARLY VIDEO: "This Game is Perfection, Please Don't Buy It"

https://youtu.be/O7N6On1Ar2k

I can't remember when I said it... but I know at some point I mentioned wanting to make the Patreon releases of videos the 100% complete finished products. However, I started taking down my notes and...

I don't want to hold it off any longer on y'all, and show this video in its current form,...

Update: March 17th, 2025 - Crisis Averted

I don't mean for this Patreon to become Cyberpunk's Yellow Update tweets, but last night proved to be an... adventure.

TL;DR Listed at Bottom:

Taking a break and practically falling asleep in the evening, I woke up to find the last chunk of my project deleted from top to bottom, well, except for the markers you can see on the top right (blue is what I used to mark down SFX, the final step). 2025-03-17 20:17:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Update: March 9th, 2025

I was hoping make light of the video's "Next Week" release having to be on the last day of the week, but I've unfortunately massively underestimated the workload of this video's final stint, and now not even a technicality can stop my promise from not being kept.

What making this video has taught me is that while I can crawl through the trenches... I'm no Marine. Making a Video Wall based on the game's HUD seemed simple enough, its just adding a Key Layer to my usual process, right?

Recommendations: The Sky, The Earth & All Between by Architects

Well, it seems that Jordan Fish can get me interested in anything.

While plunging further and further into the depths of Metal these last few years, Architects was a band I only saved one or two songs from, none of which coming from their last album that seemed to be the Black Sheep even among fans.

My timing however just happened to coincide with this Album's 2nd Single, Curse, and it earned many, many repeats from me, enough to keep an eye on this album's eventual relea...

Update: March 1st, 2024

Average Pixel was kind of enough last week, during a quite hectic month, to make an animation for my next video! When asking for a Deadline, I said "I'm aiming to be completed by Friday."

Fuck.

Starting with the good, it feels quite strange after what is easily, the most rewritten script I've ever touched, to be at a point where I...

Q&A: February 26th, 2025

Dzera Asks
Is there a genre of games that you personally could never get into?

MMO's are the easiest example. One I'm not sure will ever change due to my general interest in games just not really aligning with what MMO's strive to accomplish.

I'm not interested in grinding characters, or interacting with large groups of people, so I'm a bit like somebody looking for Coke Cola in a Wine Cellar.

That's not to say I won't even look at one, I've trie...

Recommendations: Perfect Dark: Initial Vector by Greg Rucka

You'd never see me recommending on here Perfect Dark Zero on the Xbox 360...

So why is its sequel novel on here?

Because, though it's slop with action-scenes, global stakes, and cowboy one-liners from Johanna Dark... it's good slop!

I recall this from Greg Rucka's work on the comic Lazarus (which I also need to catch up on), the archetype Action Sci-Fi backdrop is given a sense of weight and texture because the people in it... act like people. Instead of brushing off the ev...

"It's Only a Second."

Microsoft were definitely having a laugh when they called their program "OneNote." Dude… I've taken probably one-hundred thousand.

One of those sub-section's I've got adding to the word count over a period of years is called "dialogue." It's not dialogue for anything in particular, it's not even dialogue assigned to a particular character, it's just lines I've heard or thought of that I think "that's a dialogue line."

Whether or not it actually is, that's a bridge to cross when ...

Recommendations: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

Vicarious Visions continue to be one the character actor of video-games.

That group who are never going to be given the notoriety of Naughty Dog, ID Software, or Bungie, nor are they in the position to as a support studio, but never the less, doesn't stop them from showcasing their brilliant ability.

There's faithful remasters out there, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 absolutely deserves to stand alongside them as a benchmark.

Primarily because of its gameplay!...

Q&A: February 12th, 2025

February 12th... technically.

Dzera Asks
Opinion on the current PC optimizations? Games have become a lot more demanding but without the benefit of added fidelity or quality of graphics, since probably like 2021 or 2022. Are the devs lazy or is it because they don't have the time to fully flesh out the game before it releases. Also some of the games releasing currently have Raytracing as a requirement which is just sad... (Indiana Jones for example)...

Recommendations: Creatures of the Late Afternoon by Kid Koala

I'll give credit to the algorithm used by music services like TIDAL and Spotify, they sometimes know my tastes better than me.

I get recommend one song by Kid Koala and I'm like "Who the fuck is this guy? And why am I fucking with this?"

Then I look him up, and see credit on Deltron 3030, and it suddenly doesn't need anymore explanation. I've looped Positive Contact a billion times since I first played Tony Hawk's Underground, and the vibes from that classic will be ...

What People Want to See

I've seen virtually every alternative to Youtube in my lifetime.

Google Video, Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Vidme, Streetfire, Revver, and now its latest iterations, Rumble and Bitchute, and it's the same story every single time.

Good intentions or not, the website gets flooded by people suspended on mainstream platforms, dooming the website to be viewed as little more than a toxicity haven.

One of my family members... wow, I only realize...