Here is the second video in my series of FPS games exploration.

It was recorded during my recent 12-Hour Autumn Playathon.

The format is more or less the same as the first, but this time I tried to include a view of my screen, so viewers can see some details of the games I research.

If you haven’t seen the first part, I recommend you watch that too.

I hope you enjoy it and also hope it will encourage you to explore your collection.

I will add a list of games covered very soon.

Having just purchased The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, I looked at the Steam page and found there were 14 hidden achievements. Initially, that seemed really unfair. How was I supposed to reach an achievement if I didn’t know what it was? That’s like playing darts with the lights off and not knowing where the dartboard is.

But then I looked at the Bioshock 2 page and found all the achievements listed and that seemed almost as bad. if I am just going to play a game to reach the achievements, won’t that take away some of the spontaneity of the experience?

So what is the middle ground? I don’t know, but perhaps it is that the achievements are hidden until after the first playthrough. Any achievements gained on the first playthrough are “Gold” or something, although people will just look for them online simply to get the gold star I suppose.

In fact, maybe make it so that it is impossible to get ANY achievements on the first playthrough!

Maybe there could be hints with the second and subsequent playthroughs to help you find the ones you missed.

How do you feel about the display or not of achievements?

Even though I am not a very good player, I love challenging but doable sections in mods. I don’t mind replaying sections again and again if I know I can do it. It might not be pretty or fun to watch if I am livestreaming, but I sure as heck enjoy it.

I’m a collector of FPS games. Well, I was until about 5 years ago and then I stopped. When I moved to Spain from London about 15 years ago, I packed all my collection into boxes and put them into the basement meaning to get them out and display them. Alas, that never happened.

For the last few years I have been meaning to explore the boxes and see what I have and FINALLY I did it yesterday!

Below is the video of the livestream “event” and I certainly enjoyed it, as did the people on the stream.

People often expect me to be an expert of all these old games, but the reality is I haven’t even played 95% of them. In fact, from the list below I have only played 2!

The video last an hour and consists of me taking a game out of the box and briefly talking about it and checking the net for more information.

I’ll do one of these every week or so until I have gone through all my collection. Soon I will have the chat text as part of the video so that should make more sense when I respond to a point raised in the livestream chat.

I hope you enjoy it and also hope it will encourage you to explore your collection.

Back in May, I did a 12-Hour Plaython, where I stream for 12 hours non-stop.

Well, you guessed it, I’m going to do it again!

Starting at 12pm Central European Time on Saturday 19th November 2016, I will be streaming for 12 hours straight – besides the occasional toilet break of course.

Last time, I just played HL games and mods but this time I think I will broaden my horizons!

I am open to any suggestions you have but I can’t guarantee I will play everything suggested, not least because I probably won’t own the game.

This coming weekend, I will be streaming a special “Box opening” event, where I open one of my basement boxes full of games and perhaps we can choose some of those.

I will still play mods if that’s what viewers want.

Last year, I streamed on my Twitch channel but this year it will be on the RTSL YouTube channel, so make sure you have booked marked that page.

Obviously, I’ll be posting on Twitter nearer the time and during the event.

I was lucky enough to be able to give 12 games away last year but I don’t know if I will be able to do it this year. If you have a game you would like to donate, please contact me.

Finally, if you have never watched a stream before and think it sounds stupid to watch another person play a game, please keep an open mind. The chat during the stream is almost as much fun as watching me make an idiot of myself and we generally have a lot of fun.

If you have any questions, please ask.

I hope to see you there.

Unless you have been living under a rock, and that’s not a bad thing in today’s world, you would have seen the recent announcement by the Crowbar Collective that work on Xen is progressing well.

They have released a couple of plan screenshots for you to get excited about.

As soon as they did that, I started to wonder how many people would pay for early access, so that’s what this poll question about.

Players who have the mod version will not be getting the new levels, so if you haven’t bought the game yet, I highly recommend it. In addition, it allows you to play all of the maps released, whereas the mod version doesn’t.

5 stories. Each with a dark secret.

A secret that you have to play to discover.

Are you ready?

The experimental graphic story Fast Detect takes place in the post-apocalyptic Half-Life 2 universe and is shown from the artist’s special point of view.

Play your way through a variety of amazing settings until your reach the Nuclear Missiles.

Explore detailed and beautifully crafted locations with some hidden surprises along the way.

As soon as I heard Game were charging for VR demos, I thought would crazy Half-Life fab boys, like me!, pay for a HL3 demo?

of course, it’s a pretty open question and I want us to discuss the general idea of paying for demos and whether it would backfire for developers.

I should mention that I’m not talking about a HL3 VR release, just a regular format.

Surely to goodness you must wanna read the original BBC article.