Concerned-ish

So here I am, scrawling away on my iPod with my head filled with nothing but Miss R and the sounds of The Beatles completely and utterly scared of what tomorrow will bring. OK. Some are scared of the economy, some of the year 2012 and some of their second home allowances going south of the border down Mexico way. Whilst my complaints are somewhat less important than an oil spill in the Gulf, these are legitimate fears. These are further shown by the fact that this is being typed on an iPod with the world’s smallest Bluetooth keyboard at 2am in the dark. The first worry is simple, and you are involved. I signed up to work on Obscure Studios on short notice and I quickly became one of the core parts of keeping the site going. I’m officially listed as the community manager but I do too many things to count. I”m head admin, director of video content and the VP of jelly baby dispersal to name a few. I am pretty involved in the company and a lot of what happens is on my ass at the end of the day.

This leads to the first concern of mine; is the site the best it can possibly be? I don’t mean from a graphics and design point of view or anything. I mean things such as “is this entertaining?” and “is this funny?”. I get stressed about the site so often that over two years, I have probably lost 5 off my life expectancy. We’ve been fucked around by so many third parties that it is ridiculous to even continue talking about them here. They don’t deserve the space here in this rant of mine. I normally like name-dropping on here and I’m not afraid to rant at an organisation, but the people I talk about now are barbaric pieces of shit that don’t deserve my time. Back on track, the problem is waking up one day and realising that you have wasted two years of your life on something that has flopped. This was the biggest problem with previous podcasts that we did as a group. I hated pretty much every episode. I despise the sound of my own voice, some of the jokes are really forced and the subject matter was as about as interesting as wallpaper paste at times. We were new, but we were so goddamn awful that it was a horrible experience for me. Unsurprisingly, no one listened to the podcast and we didn’t give a shit either. It made me feel so enraged and upset that it was a horrible experience for me to feel. We can regulate as much as we want with what is covered and what shows are allowed on the site, but in the end, I am still regulating stuff that I don’t like. I hate myself for it and shut myself away from the outside world and then you just start to question “is this all worth it?”. I’m not paid or anything, so what is the incentive? The fact is that the whole system now relies on me knowing the passwords to the system. So many things have failed on this site that I can’t name them all. The only reason I’m still here is that I know the passwords to everything. Resignation is always an option, but it still isn’t enough to push me away from here. I need pull factors as well as push. So I go to bed at night thinking “what have I accomplished?”. I then reply “nothing”.

This is a real worry I have constantly in my head about things in my life. Am I doing all I can here? Is something like this going to pay off? As director of video content, for example, I control shows that make it on here. But there are some shows in which we have no idea if they will work or not. Everyone wants success, but not everyone deserves it. Do we deserve success? Is this going to be successful? There is only one way to find out… I have many other niggles and things that make my throat close up in pure fear, but I may get onto those another time when I have more actual need to. Plus, it’s late. And I have a big day of sport ahead of me.

Hey! Dan here to tell YOU, yes YOU, about the brand new* campaign for Left 4 Dead 2: “The Passing”!

*Yeah, alright; I know it’s a bit late, but I’ve been playing a lot of Star Trek Online and GTA IV recently. Which goes some way to explain why I’ve only played the new campaign in campaign mode.

Well, it was nice to see Zoey, Francis and Louis in L4D2. But I can’t help but feel as though it was a bit rushed. The way Valve described “The Passing” on their blog seemed to state that you’d find them in the first part and stay with them all the way through, fighting side-by-side. In fact there’s a relatively long intro by Zoey, after which you don’t see anyone else until the very last part.

Okay, sure they DO fight with you on that last bit, but they’re safe on a bridge… At least Francis throws some weapons down to you after a while.

The voices of the original cast (apart from Bill) are there, but the different lines seem to be clipped off by a millisecond when they talk and they barely take a breath at the end of a sentence…

The best part, in my opinion, is the running crescendo moment in the sewers, the water makes you run slower and the zombies just keep coming!

Another nice thing is the “Fallen Survivor”, I’ve only met him twice and on both occasions he dropped a health pack, pills and a molotov; however it may be different at other difficulties. He also seems to have higher health than most common infected and he seems to run away from you (unless its part of a horde). The M60 is nice too, very powerful and its ammunition cannot be replenished, like the Grenade Launcher, which makes it much more balanced than just some ubergun. It can down Tanks, Witches and any other infected in no time at all, heck, at the highest difficulty; it can down a survivor in under 5 shots!

Overall, I think “The Passing” is an “okay” campaign, but it feels a tad rushed. I’d like some more info on the story for it too. I haven’t played it in Versus or Scavenge mode and I can’t wait for the “Mutations”!

*yawn*

*wakes up*

Oh, wait. This isn’t Disgruntled? Where am I? Oh right!

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m technically the new guy in these parts. I’m Jazz (real name is Aaron Fowkes) and I write over at my site “Disgruntled”. Unfortunately, my giant pseudo-intellectual ego cannot be contained in one site so it has seen to spill over here too.

Expect some mini-articles that aren’t long enough to be made into the full articles I have on my site, some crossposts, and maybe even some original content.

If you ever need to contact me, my contact info is over on my website.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy what I have to offer to Concerned-ish.

- Jazz (with some parts “Aaron” thrown in too).

Aaron Fowkes is a freelance writer that writes for Disgruntled, the Ubercharged family, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, Concerned-ish, Fortressbusters and Digimon: Abridged. He also does some voice acting and general acting, but that isn’t really relevant here. His Twitter account is @aaronfowkes