Stuff for This Week!
In an effort to keep myself honest and on track, here’s what’s hopefully the first of many weekly blog posts about the written content I’m working on this week.
Despite the fact that this might look like a sprawling and amazing media empire, I am in fact just one dude frantically writing things for “fun” on two different web sites.
HyperX Cloud Stinger Wireless Review
Early in the week, I’ll have a review of the new-ish Cloud Stinger Wireless going up over on Medium, with a microphone test uploaded here. First impressions: It’s a really nice headset. It brings sound improvements over the wired Cloud Stinger, and it’s priced just right for the market. It’s the first wireless HyperX product that’s made complete sense to me.
That review will also contain a full comparison on the Cloud Stinger Wireless and its wired cousin, and some thoughts on how it matches against the Cloud Flight as well.
Far Cry New Dawn Review
I realize that I’ve promised this 300 times and still haven’t written it, and thus, I have lost all credibility on whether I’ll render an opinion on this almost-3-months-old game. Truly, this is the year of the post-apocalyptic FPS, with New Dawn, Rage 2, Outer Worlds, and Borderlands 3 all hitting the market. New Dawn gets a lot of things right, and then almost falls right on its face at the end.
This one was slow in the making because I finished the game originally on my now-destroyed PS4 Pro, and then pondered playing through the whole thing on Xbox again to get new screenshots…and then I didn’t end up doing that. So it’ll be a little media light. But the article will be up here on my site, probably on Monday.
Some kind of article about the interior lighting in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Instead of playing through New Dawn again, I’ve been frantically consuming Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on multiple platforms. I’ve already written about how many of its systems make it one of the best Dynasty Warriors games I’ve ever played, and sometime this week I’ll be writing about its interior lighting.
When you walk into a cave or a building in AC Odyssey, it not only transitions to a different lighting system that allows your torches to bounce light around in real-time, it also deftly handles HDR transitions between exteriors and interiors, and global light reflection from the sun coming into the cave. Look at this business.
I only know one person I can ramble at about this in real life, and he’ll probably be sick of it by the end of the day tomorrow, so I’m also going to write an article about it because I can. I’m hoping that’ll go up on Medium near the end of the week but that depends on how much technical data I can compile about the lighting system by then.
Look forward to my review of AC Odyssey when I finish it in approximately 2023.
A disclosure blog
Finally, this week I’ll be writing a short note about why I won’t be reviewing Ubisoft’s The Division 2. To sum up for the impatient/curious, a few days after buying the game, I tweeted some nice things about it, and Xbox UK asked me if they could quote me in some future marketing materials. I said yes, and they ended up sending me a blue/gray Xbox One controller as thanks.
This is literally the only time that I’ve ever received a product from a company in the last four years of doing this, and it wasn’t connected to anything I’ve written either here or on Medium. Rather, it was for some text in a single tweet. Microsoft and Ubisoft haven’t asked me to say anything nice about the Division 2 in the future, and they didn’t ask me to promote the controller or even tell you any of this. I’m just doing it in the interest of full disclosure. They approached me simply as a fan, and I had no idea I’d be receiving a controller when I said yes they could quote me. That was a real surprise to get in the mail.
I’ll have some more details about this, and some more of my thoughts on modern marketing in general, and where the line between products/companies and reviewers should be, in the middle of this week.
PSA: I’m just a single dude!
I don’t really consider myself to be anything approaching a professional media outlet, rather, I’m like a frenzied tech-enthusiast blogger.
In spite of having occasionally confused marketing people about this in the past thanks to the magic of Medium’s design and this pro-looking Squarespace template, I have no other staff, no budget aside from spare money from my other job, and no marketing or publishing plan. I’ve 100 percent self-funded all of this and I will continue to do so. And I apologize to those of you that have emailed me at my world bolding email, as I almost never check it and I’m continually sorry for the slow replies.
This is still a part-time/side gig/enthusiast thing for me, but I always strive to be up-front and honest, and conduct myself with the sort of professionalism that I’d want to see if I were a “proper” media outlet. I’m not always good at keeping pace with my ambition for these sites, but it’s been a pleasure so far to do this and I appreciate every one of you who have read this far into this post. Hopefully these posts will keep me a little more honest in the future, and help me to schedule a reasonable amount of content each week instead of my old “WRITE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE EVERY DAY” approach that could sometimes be a burnout headache.
Thanks for stopping by!
I wrote this while also auditioning the HyperX Cloud Stinger Wireless for review. Here is a bad picture from my sub par web cam.
