Lockdown Life: What's Your Happy Music?

This week was the last 'official' week of homeschooling - we would have broken up for the holidays now, if we weren't in lockdown still here in Leicester.  Seb had a couple of days off, but we did 70 days of 'Sebbie School' in total.  Not bad, and I think maybe he's even learnt one or two things.  :-)

Thank goodness he's only 8, I would have had problems teaching him if he was much older!  Though he learns a lot of stuff I never learnt at school, particularly where grammatical rules are concerned.  (The important thing in my book is that you realise what the correct grammar is, not that you know what it's called.  Hmm.)

We would have been heading off to North Essex for our summer holiday today.  Boo!  I wanted to see Sutton Hoo!  (I know that's not in North Essex.)  And visit Colchester Zoo.  And also see my parents...  Ah well.

School mental health activity

There was one activity in the worksheets the school had provided whose results made me laugh a little.  Seb has Aspergers and his view on the world is interesting at times.  He says one day he'll be a video game composer, and he spends a lot of his time humming various songs from games.  And sometimes re-enacting them with his body.  I can't really explain it.  But he often does 'Just Shapes and Beats' with his hands.  It's kind of endearing.

Anyway, the worksheet invited him to write down four songs that made him feel good, and he choose the following:

1. ColBreakz - GoodBye (from 'Geometry Dash')

2. Kenneth Young - Pig Riding (from 'Tearaway')

3. Nitro Fun - Final Boss (from 'Just Shapes and Beats')

4. Rainbowdragoneyes - Creatures ov Deception (from 'Just Shapes and Beats')

Out of those I'd have to say the one that makes me happy is 'Pig Riding'.  Tearaway has the nicest music.  I can't say the dubstep (or whatever it is, ok, I'm old) affects me in quite the same way.  

Seb said the music made him feel 'tingley and happy :-)'.  I'm not sure what game music I'd pick if I had to pick something that made me feel happy.  I don't tend to play the sorts of games that have that sort of music in them.  Maybe this......?

What music from games makes YOU feel 'tingley and happy' inside..?

Lockdown Life: Stampy's Home School!

While the rest of the country is going into the next phase of opening up, Leicester has taken a step back into more severe Lockdown once more.  (Thanks to Covid-19 we've now had 65 days of home schooling, one week to go until the supposed start of the summer holidays...)  To cheer ourselves up, we decided that part of Seb's home schooling this week (he does 'school' every morning) would involve Stampy's Wonder Quest series.

If you have a KS2 kid this really works, since the topics are things they'd be covering at school.  Hooray!

Wonder Quest is an edutainment children's web series from Disney's Maker Studios, created by Stampy (Joseph Garrett).  There are two series of it, which aired in 2015/2016.  It's set in Minecraft, and Stampy is in his usual Stampy Cat form.  Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to go on adventures to stop the evil wizard Heinous and the evil inventor Rama.  It's a fun series to watch!  It has loads of other YouTubers guesting in it, like StaceyPlays, iBallisticSquid, EvanTube and AmyLee, who are all in their usual Minecraft skins.  

It's funny, well made, and educational!  Yes, it really is.  As part of their adventures Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to do science and maths and stuff to solve problems!  Most of the things we had from Seb's school were English and Maths, so it's good to have some fun science to think about too.  It's pretty much at his level as well.  The thing we did yesterday was something he was supposed to learn at school but hadn't because he's been at home.  

As well as the longer story-driven episodes made in Minecraft, there are short more focused educational shows called 'I Wonder', which concentrate on the 'learning bit' of the longer episode.  These are animated rather than being Minecraft-style, so Stampy is like an actual anthropomorphised cat!  Seb's been watching Wonder Quest anyway, because he wants to, but I've taken some of these 'I Wonder' clips and used them in Sebbie School.

We did four topics this week.  

Topic One: Solids, Liquids and Gases

We watched this (though why are they boiling tea in the kettle?!) and then did a sorting activity I found online.  (Basically put the items into the solid/liquid/gas categories.)

Solids, liquids and gases sorting activity

Topic Two: The Solar System

Having watched this, and learnt about the sizes of planets and the order they go in, we wrote our own mnemonic to remember the order.  And completed another printable activity I found online.

Our mnemonic was: My Very Energetic Mermaid Just Swims Under Narwhals.  (At least, at some points that was what it was, it kept changing to even more stupid things...)

The planets in order

And yes, I know he spelt Jupiter "Jwoopita", he did that on purpose because he thought it was funny...

Topic Three: Parts of a Plant

With this one we did a bit of flower dissection, which was fun - I helpfully had an African Violet plant in the kitchen that had come out in lots of flowers.  We also labelled a couple of things I found online, and stuck the bits of dissected plant onto one of them.  

I know he definitely would have been learning about plants if he'd been at school, so at least he hasn't missed out on this vital information regarding anthers, sepals and stamens.  ;-)

Parts of a plant

Topic Four: Water Cycle

I would have loved to try the experiment in this one - perhaps we'll try it if we get a sunny day next week.  For some reason Seb found it oddly difficult to remember the bits of the water cycle.  Perhaps if I make him spin his weather dial thingummy on a regular basis he'll actually remember it...

The water cycle

That's all we've done so far, then.  We might do some more.  I'd highly recommend both Wonder Quest and the accompanying 'I Wonder' shows.

Kids definitely learn better if they like and respect the person teaching them.  Going back to these Wonder Quest shows and seeing that YouTubers like Stampy place value on kids learning stuff is fantastic.  Seb enjoys them and the teaching is clear.  The whole show is really well thought out.  So thanks, Stampy!  Thanks for demonstrating to Seb that learning is important.  Thanks for placing value on educating kids.  I appreciate it.  :-D

Completionist Challenge, update, Detroit: Become Human #BLM

I've still not written about some of the other games I've completed, but this one is particularly 'of the moment' in some of the themes it covers.  I will start by saying I'm a white, middle class, Christian heterosexual girl who thinks the world would be a better place if we were all nicer to each other.  I'm coming to things from a point of ignorance, but nothing I say here is meant to offend.  (Unless you're a racist, then I don't mind if you're offended!)

Detroit: Become Human (PEGI-18), then.  It was free on PS Plus a while back and I kept meaning to play it.  I have played David Cage's other games and I like the format - interactive stories.  His games involve a certain amount of dialogue choice, and also require you to be good at pressing buttons when it tells you to (if you can't remember where triangle/square/circle/X are then you might not enjoy this!).  The games are also pretty harrowing.  I remember being harrowed by Heavy Rain.  I will never forget that bit where you have to crawl through broken glass.  I think the format works because unlike a straight story it gets you involved; you wouldn't think having to press buttons at the right time would do that, but it does.

Markus in "Detroit"

The game has a lot of flowcharts too, so you can see where the story branches, and go back to checkpoints to try and redo and get a different outcome.  I did do this a bit, but some outcomes you have to replay bits that aren't that interesting, so it's more tedious.  I mean, some bits you get to make choices that really affect the game, other times not so much.  

I started this game before the recent upswell in "Black Lives Matter" activity.  By the time I'd finished it, things had happened, and it was really making me think.  I know the comparison between androids/humans and black people/white people isn't really a comparison (androids start off as machines, after all, and black people were never anything other than people).  But the game is written with lots of bits that echo the civil rights movement in America.  

It's not a perfect allegory - I don't know what would be.  I feel justified in accepting that its intentions are right, even if it isn't perfect, due to the presence of Jesse Williams as one of the main characters, Markus.  Jesse Williams is on the board of The Advancement Project.  He's a civil rights activist.  He was executive producer on the 2016 documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.  I like to think he saw this game and thought it might be a worthwhile project.  And if he thought that, I'm not going to start saying it has no meaning because it's a "poor allegory".

I didn't really know about the Jim Crow laws in America.  I can hardly believe that all those laws were in place into the 1960s.  I knew a little about Martin Luther King, but in my ignorance I didn't understand the depth and breadth of those horrible rules and regulations.  The game has little echoes of those laws and the abuse that people faced at the time.  The androids all have to stand in an "android section" on the bus.  At one point an android relates how he was dragged behind a car "for fun".  The androids are generally denigrated and made to do menial jobs.  It doesn't matter if they are injured, because there's always someone else to replace them.  

The game has little bits all over, like discussions about whether androids should be allowed to play professional sport.  This doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of androids, but if it's harking back to guys like Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player to play Major League baseball.  There are more obvious whacks on the head to make sure you don't miss the message.  At one point you get the choice about whether to write "I have a dream" all over the place.  And there's the Underground Railroad - all the androids want to go to Canada.  (Apparently in the early 19th century more than 30,000 black slaves escaped to Canada via the real Underground Railroad.)

The game keeps asking whether you want to try a peaceful approach, with dialogue, or whether you want to riot and start a war.  Particularly interesting in the current atmosphere of civil disobedience.

The use of the gospel song "Hold On Just A Little While Longer" was particularly poignant.  The song is by Cleophus Robinson Jr and is a beautiful, melancholic gospel song.

I find it odd that when the game came out, back in 2018, the controversy was all about child abuse.  (The trailer appeared to show a father hitting his daughter.)  I find it sad that this was the focus, when the game contained so much more that ought to make us think.  It's not like the game was making you be an abusive man and hit your child.  If a game wants to tackle issues like child abuse, or the Black Lives Matter movement, then why not?  Why shouldn't it?  It ought to be possible to talk about anything that's important in real life in a game.  Games can make you think about things more because you're not just watching, you're involved in the story.  This War Of Mine is an excellent example of this.

It seems wrong to go from here to talk about the Completionist Challenge, but I suppose I'll just summarise what I managed to do.  In the end I obtained 83% of the trophies.  I played through completely twice, to see what would happen if I did things differently, and also I did a few replays from checkpoints.  The rarest trophy I had was for spending 20,000 bonus points.  In many ways the trophies that encourage you to play in a way you wouldn't have played otherwise make me uncomfortable and seem a bit jarring, but it did mean I replayed bits more than I might have done otherwise.

Proof that I finished the game!

My rarest trophy...

I'd definitely recommend you play this.  It's well written and well acted.  And it certainly gives you a lot to think about...

That's game 4 out of 10 then!  Only 6 more to write about before I can start browsing those digital game stores again...

Go out there.  Educate yourself.  And be excellent to each other.

YouTuber Review: Northernlion

I thought I'd review another YouTuber we've been watching a bit lately as a family.  His name is Ryan Letourneau, he lives in Vancouver, and his "YouTube Name" is Northernlion.  His channel features some games you might not want smaller kids to watch (such as The Binding of Isaac) but there's plenty of content that's good for the whole family.  He's very relaxing, I could probably listen to him doing anything, maybe even commentating on watching paint dry.  We will probably never find out if this is true.  But hey.

His language has a little blasphemy (if I'm asterisking vowels again there might be some "*h my G*ds"), but on the whole he's clean.  Which makes me happy.  I don't like swearing even if it's just me watching.  Seems unnecessary...

Northernlion has 817K subscribers and he's been YouTubing since 2006.  He's married to another YouTuber, Kate LovelyMomo.  His most watched videos, with 2.2M and 1.6M views respectively, are episode 1 of "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" and episode 1 of "The Binding of Isaac". 

Now as I said earlier, though his presentation may be family friendly, the games he plays are not necessarily family friendly.  So do be careful and think about this when choosing what to watch.  The Binding of Isaac is a 16 rated game for violence and bad language, but that doesn't really give an insight into the generally horrible nature of the thing...

At the moment he's playing Darks Souls II (PEGI-16), Call of Duty: Warzone  (PEGI-18), Super Mega Baseball 3 (PEGI-3), Landlord's Super, Monster Train, Mini Golf Club, The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth+ (PEGI-16) and Geoguessr.  We mainly watch him play Geoguessr, where he chats with his friend Sinvicta whilst playing.  They have played 126 games of Geoguessr against each other..!!  They're not talking about anything in particular, they're just chatting.  :-)

We've watched him play Monster Train too, which is a deck-building game a bit like Slay the Spire.  Dad has started playing this, so I guess it must be fun!  If you like that sort of thing.

We did watch one episode of Landlord's Super, which is one of the most bizarre games I've watched anyone play on YouTube.  Mainly because it's a strange 1980s simulation set in Britain.  Ryan's reading of text written in dialect is pretty hilarious.  But the thing that has been bothering me about it is this phone box.  (Stick with me.)

1980s phonebox?

The KX100 phone box was introduced in 1985 to replace the iconic red phone boxes.  The earliest kiosks had smoked glass and the old "T" logo printed on them, and the door had a coloured moulded plastic panel, bright yellow or bright green for Phonecard variants.  This clearly isn't what we are seeing here.  What we are seeing here is a 1991 revamp of the KX100, with an italicised serif font reading "Telephone" and a red moulded plastic panel and handle.  It seems unlikely that a countryside phone box would have been replaced to a KX100 anyway, I suspect that it would have remained an old style red booth.  So this phone box is WRONG!!!  I'm sure they will correct this terrible error before the game comes out of Early Access.  I certainly hope so!!!!!

Original 1980s phone box and 1991 revamp

Er, hmm, anyway... the inaccuracy of the phone booth used is largely irrelevant here.  You should watch his videos.  He's good.  :-)

Completionist Challenge, update, The Long Dark

It's been a while since my last update on the Completionist Challenge (November, yikes!), but I have gradually been working my way through some old games.  If you didn't know,  I'm trying to finish 10 games I already own before I'm allowed to buy any more.  (It's too easy to succumb to those online sales!)

Stupidly I've picked some vast open worlders that take forever, but hey.  This time I'm not going to talk about those, I'm going to talk about The Long Dark. 

It's had to say whether I have completed The Long Dark, for two reasons.  Reason one is that though I have completed Chapter 3, I haven't totally completed the game because it's not finished (there will be 5 chapters, but 4 and 5 aren't done yet).  Reason two is that the story mode is only one part of the game, with survival mode providing many more hours of tense wilderness adventure.

Finished Chapter 3!

The premise of both story and survival mode is that a weird geomagnetic event happens and your plane falls out of the sky, landing in the Canadian Great White North.  In story mode you have a particular adventure to go on, but in survival you're just basically trying to survive for as long as you can.  (Though there are also challenges you can do - I am nowhere near good enough a survivor to manage those.)

I have completed the first two chapters twice, since by the time Chapter 3 came out Hinterland had redone the first two, so it made sense to do the whole thing again.  It's wasn't exactly a hardship!  The game is immense, suspenseful, terrifying in places.  Beautiful artwork and music.  You can almost feel your toes freezing up as you trudge through the snowy woods and across the frozen lakes, through whiteouts and eerie nights filled with those magical 'northern lights'. It's so well written - I really, really want to find out what happens to Will and Astrid.

Surviving the weather is one thing (getting warm clothes, food, water, and shelter), surviving the wildlife is another thing entirely.  The animals' aggressive behaviour is explained by the weird geomagnetic phenomenon (apparently it has made the wolves angry).  Chapter 3 introduced some HORRIBLE timber wolves that gave me a lot of trouble.  The most annoying bit for me, however, was a set piece thing with a bear, which seemed to be incongruously stuck into the game as a kind of boss fight.

Despite nominally 'completing' the game (in that I completed Chapter 3), I have only managed to get 28% of the original PS trophies and 77% of the Chapter 3 trophies.  If you're interested, the rarest trophy I've managed to get (so far) is this one:

I found a bunch of supply caches, woot!

This is definitely a game I'm going to keep going back to.  Survival is compelling, though you spend most of your time looting, hoping for those cardboard matches, or that elusive crowbar.    I also like watching/listening to people playing the game on YouTube, particularly Accurize2, Meatwagon22 and Paul Soares Jr.  Despite the tension of surviving, most of the game is a slow and relaxing trudge around, looting everything within sight - as such it's a restful thing to listen to whilst working from home!

If you haven't played this, try it!  It's only £8.99 on the PlayStation store at the moment.  An absolute bargain.  :-)

So that's game number 3 out of 10 completed!

Terraria Top Trumps (Easy Mode Starter Deck)

This week Seb decided he wanted to make a Top Trumps set for Terraria.  We'd done one before for Slime Rancher, so this isn't our first foray into the world of Top Trumps.  

Our Terraria Easy Mode starter deck

There have to be either 30 or 32 cards in a proper Top Trumps deck, so we needed to make sure we had that number in our starter deck.  Also, you have to have 5 stats on each card.  We picked "number of drops", "HP", "damage", "defence" and "coins" (that last one is how much money they drop on death).

Then we made a spreadsheet of all the enemies in Terraria Easy Mode (not bosses) and copied the five stats from the Terraria wiki.  This ridiculous use of our time resulted in the following:

Easy Mode enemies in Terraria

Seb went through this list and picked the 32 he wanted (the rest might get to be an expansion deck).  These are highlighted in yellow.  Then he got me to draw out the cards and he coloured them in.  We added a little bit in the middle which said what sort of enemy they were and what biome(s) you found them in, which I kind of colour coded.

We made an image for the backs of the cards, using a picture off of the internet and the Terraria font (which is called Andy), and printed off 32 copies.  After gluing them onto the backs of the cards we started laminating!  Then cutting.  And finally - ta da! - the cards are done.

Top Trumps 1-8

Top Trumps 9-16

Top Trumps 17-24

Top Trumps 25-32

We're pretty happy with them.  And it kept us occupied for a bit.  ;-)

Lockdown Life: Terraria, Geoguessr, Board Game Arena

I have lost inspiration for this blog, in the current weirdness, so perhaps I should just start typing and see what comes out.

For what seems like forever, we have all been living in the house together, getting in each other's way, trying to work from home and homeschool and not commit murder.  Going out for our daily exercise.  Sending Dad to forage for food in the supermarkets, queuing up waiting to be let in (reduced numbers allowed inside due to social distancing).  Yes, this is our UK Covid-19 Lockdown. 

It hasn't been forever, though.  Looking at Seb's schoolbook, he's been off school since 23rd March.  And I've been working at home since 19th March.  Seven and a bit weeks, then.  Hmm.  That seems both a very long time and not such a long time, in the grand scheme of things.  It's just hard when you don't know how long it's going to be like this.  Harder than if you had an end date set for everything going back to "normal".  Or the "new normal", whatever that is.

Dad has been a bit sad because he can't play on his PC whenever he wants to, since I'm using it to work remotely.  He was at home a lot because he's a "house husband" or whatever you call them, though he has been studying to be a teaching assistant.  Before Lockdown he had college a few times a week doing English and Maths, but now he's doing that online.  He's using our old Macbook to do that.  The Macbook is too old to play games... 

Seb has been getting more and more obsessed with Terraria (PEGI-12).  It is all he will talk about.  He plays it on the Playstation, or sings the music, or watches YouTube videos, or plays with his playset and figures.  It's driving us all mad but at least he's happy! 

He's been watching quite a lot of this guy on YouTube - Chippy Gaming:

Dad has bought a new headset, and a new flight joystick (for playing Elite).  And me, well, I've been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons a bit, and grinding my way through Far Cry Primal.  I have managed to finish some games, since my last "Completionist Challenge" post, so I will have to talk about that at some point!

Stuck indoors with each other we've been trying to find ways to keep our sanity, and gaming's a big part of that.  Dad and I are introverts, so we don't necessarily find not going out hard (though you miss stuff when you can't do it, I guess).  Personally I'm finding it hard because I'm not getting any time when I am completely alone.  I need alone time to recharge.

We've found a few things to do online that provide social contact.  Seb has been playing Geoguessr with his grandad.  If you haven't played it, it's a brilliant game.  Basically, you get dropped into Google Streetview and you have to figure out where you are.  You can play against friends.  It can be very hard!  I think we need to learn more flags...

I subscribed to Board Game Arena, which lets you play various board games online, either with friends (if you get them to sign up) or with random online people.  So far my favourite game on there is Kingdomino.  You can also play stuff with someone else in your house, sharing the same computer.  There are some fun games on there, so definitely worth a look if you're into that kind of thing.

Dad has been playing various things with his friends online (things like Vermintide, War Thunder and Overwatch).

Seb's been playing some Minecraft online with a daughter of one of my work colleagues.  He's been rabbiting away with his headset on.  At this stage anything that gives him any kind of social contact is to be welcomed.  She's older than his best friend (who also pops up on the PS4 every so often) and far more sensible.  She is a good influence on him! 

That's pretty much it, then.  I work from home, play games in the evenings, try not to be jealous when other people are playing games when I'm trying to work...  I miss cafes.  I need to snack less.  And exercise more.  And maybe one day this will all be over...

YouTuber Review: iBallisticSquid

The second of my YouTuber reviews - Squid!

We started watching Squid years back when he did lots with Stampy (like the excellent Building Time), but I have to admit we don't watch him so much now.  When he stopped making videos with Stampy, his content started being a bit more mature, but thankfully he seems more family friendly again.  I say thankfully because I enjoy watching his videos!  (Take note - the games he plays might not necessarily be ones you'd want your kids to play, even if his presenting style is ok for kids.  As always, even if the YouTuber doesn't swear and is ok for kids to watch, the game may not be 100% appropriate.  Use your common sense!)

Squid is a British YouTuber and he's 28.  (He's a northerner, according to his Twitter account he lives in Huddersfield.)  His real name is David Spencer.  He became famous playing Minecraft (he was pretty much seen as Stampy's sidekick), but he does less Minecraft these days.  As of 14th March 2020 he has 4.15m subscribers on his "iBallisticSquid' channel and 2,755,934,350 views.  He mainly posts Ark (PEGI-16) videos, though he's started doing a few things with Stampy again, like Overwatch (PEGI-12) and Human Fall Flat (PEGI-3).  Plus a bit of other solo stuff like Pokemon: Sword and Shield (PEGI-7) and Rocket League (PEGI-3).  The Human Fall Flat stuff is totally stupid.  Completely ridiculous.  So fun watching two good friends playing something that makes them laugh so much.  :-D

For a while after he stopped doing videos with Stampy, Stampy kept getting comments about when he was going to do things with Squid again.  This amused me greatly.  Here's an example of Stampy's imaginative responses:

Did you not hear about what happened? @iBallisticSquid and I were building a tree house together so we had a place to hang out and eat souffle. When it was finished we went in to eat the souffle but Squid had forgotten to bring any. We blamed each other and have not talked since.

— Stampy Cat (@stampylongnose) April 18, 2018

So, let me think, what do I know about Squiddy from watching his videos?  Hmm.  He likes cars.  He likes DIY/property development.  And he loves his dogs.  I believe this is the enormous Cujo:

Ark video is rendering, time for a cuddle! 🐶💙 pic.twitter.com/2fBg3WG42o

— Squiddy (@iBallisticSquid) March 3, 2020

There is some mild swearing type language in his more recent videos, depending on your thresholds for that sort of thing, but he's generally fine to watch.  (I'm never sure of the best way of demonstrating what I mean by this - maybe I should asterisk things out?  That always seems daft.  I mean, like "cr*p".  And a bit of blasphemy, like "*h my G*d".  And a bit of "b*gg*r*bg *ff".  Okay, now I'm just asterisking out v*w*ls.)

There are tons of old Minecraft videos on his channel though, so plenty of great stuff to watch if you're a new Minecrafter who missed them the first time round.  Check out Island of Eden, Building Time and Squid's Sky Island Challenge. And these are TOTALLY suitable for younger kids.  :-)

I just found a photo from 2014 of Stampy and Squid and they look so young!  Posting it here, just for the lolz.

View this post on Instagram

It's a Stampy and @instasquiddy selfie! They'll be back on the #GMB sofa after 8!

A post shared by Good Morning Britain (@gmb) on May 25, 2014 at 11:01pm PDT

I do enjoy watching Squid - he's someone I can watch even if I'm not that interested in the game he's playing.  He's just pleasant to listen to.  I used to listen to his and Stampy's Magic Animal Club podcasts sometimes to keep me company whilst working (they're about everything and nothing).

I'd say his older videos are fine for young kids, but his newer ones are probably best for slightly older kids.  Definitely someone to try watching though.  He seems like a nice guy.  :-)

YouTuber Review: PrestonPlayz

We watch YouTube together as a family, but sometimes it's hard to know what to watch.  Some YouTubers are too annoying for grown-ups to watch, some drop swearing in just when you thought they were ok.  (I don't really want to watch videos with unnecessary swearing, and I certainly don't want Seb watching them!)  So, I thought I'd look at some of the people we watch (and a few we don't at the moment) and give them a bit of the ol' review treatment...

First YouTuber to receive this treatment?  Preston.

Preston is an American YouTuber and he's 25 years old (though he looks about 16!).  As of 2nd Feb 2020 has 4.08m subscribers on his "PrestonPlayz" channel and 754,220,348 views.  (He has various other channels, such as TBNRFrags, which has 5.26m subscribers and 1,093,825,401 views, and Preston, which has 11.4m subscribers and  3,684,422,514 views.)  Basically, he's a very successful guy.  He was recommended to me as someone who was a Christian and didn't swear.  And he doesn't.  Which is good.

His PrestonPlayz channel is Minecraft, TBNRFrags has videos of various games like Modern Warfare, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Fortnite, PUBG - shooty things basically.  For the purposes of this 'review', if we can call it that, I'm going to concentrate on his PrestonPlayz channel...

There's a lot of 'pranking', which is usually being mean to his wife.  Clearly it's all scripted, but the relentless mean things he does to Brianna do get a little wearing.  Like blowing up her houses.  Or stealing her diamonds.  Also she gets trapped in prison a lot, and he has to rescue her.  He does things with other family members, too, and friends.  Out of all his videos, I like the base build battles the most, but the scripted things are pretty annoying.

Another thing that bothers me, apart from the pranking and stealing, is the way his wife is presented.  He calls her "my wife" a lot, which is a bit weird.  I can't think of many occasions I refer to my husband as "my husband".  Maybe this is a cultural thing..?!  And some of the things she says are just, well, I find them uncomfortable.  For instance, in "7 Ways to Steal My Wife's DIAMONDS in Minecraft", Brianna says, "I love clothing stores!  I love dressing up pretty!  Preston likes when I dress up pretty!"  Plus there's the way he keeps having to rescue her.  I may be reading too much into this, but I don't like the way their marriage is presented.  I don't think I'm a militant feminist.  But I don't like this being presented to kids as the way things should be.

"Preston likes when I dress up pretty"

As more YouTubers get married and have babies, it seems that we should be mindful of the examples they're setting our kids.  Is their marriage something we can look at and say, "I want my kid to have that one day"?  Stampy and Sqaishey were lovely the other day when they were talking about how they discuss SpaceDen while having cups of tea (and joking that they had to start another 'Den' series because they don't have anything else to talk about!).

There are some other things I find annoying, too.  He puts a lot of adverts into his videos, for things like Deluxe Floop, his clothing line Preston's Stylez, his other channels... I don't mind when people drop a thing at the end, or the beginning even, to say they've got something new to sell, but I don't like having videos constantly interrupted with mini adverts.  Obviously YouTubers have to make a living, but kids are suggestible, and if a TV programme was doing that we'd have something to say about it.

Just dropping in another merch push

I have to admit that even if I didn't have all these criticisms of his videos, I would find him annoying anyway.  I don't like his over enthusiastic style - it irritates me.  Seb, however, finds him very funny and gives him 8/10.  I'm guessing that at 8 years old, Seb is pretty much his target audience.

In conclusion, I don't mind Seb watching him without me (I know there's not going to be any really bad content), but this is not a YouTuber I can watch with him.  He would drive me totally insane quite quickly.  I watched a couple of hours of his videos as research for this, and that was enough to last me a lifetime.

Ramble: kids and gaming (new UKIE campaign "Get Smart About Play")

Aargh I haven't posted for ages, how awful!

Anyway, this article by Keith Stuart that popped up in my news feed today: Putting controls on your kid's gaming is a key part of being a parent.  As more and more gaming parents have kids, you'd hope that they'd be able to think sensibly about what restrictions kids should have, and to show interest in their kids' hobby.  Yes, this is something I've rambled about before.

The article is about how UKIE (the association for UK Interactive Entertainment) have just launched a campaign called "Get Smart About Play".

The key points of this campaign are:

P - Play with your kids.  Understand what they play and why.
L - Learn about family controls.  Visit askaboutgames.com for simple step-by-step guides.
A - Ask what your kids think.  Discuss ground rules before setting restrictions.
Y - You're in charge.  Set restrictions that work for your family.

Play with your kids. Understand what they play and why.

The askaboutgames.com website has some helpful guides for games that kids like to play, like Fifa 20, Fortnite, Roblox (and also some games that I can't imagine many kids are playing, but hey!).  Don't just go with the media furore over why a game is bad.  And a brilliant resource for finding out about whether games are appropriate for your kid (or not) is Common Sense Media.  Often, though, the best way to find out whether a game is appropriate for your child is to play it.

As for playing with your kids, if you like games this shouldn't be a hardship.  If you don't like games then it might be a bit harder!  However, there is probably something out there that you can all enjoy, even if you don't like the idea of "traditional" games.  How about Just Dance?  (It'll give you a workout, too!)   Or one of the Lego games like Lego Star Wars?  These games are totally forgiving, so it doesn't matter if your are rubbish and die all the time. :-)  The askaboutgames.com website has a bunch of family games that might be worth a try.  Then there's Minecraft, which is fantastic co-op, and gives you so many play options (kill monsters or build replicas of the Eiffel Tower, it's entirely up to you!).

The Eiffel Tower in Minecraft!

Generally kids want to play what their friends are playing.  This is bound to lead to some disagreements if you don't agree that their friends are playing age appropriate games.  Being able to demonstrate that you know about their games is vital when it comes to making fair decisions.

Learn about family controls.

This is not a simple thing.  I know with the PlayStation 4 I've struggled to find a balance.  Locking down the PS4 on the basis of Seb's age has lead to games being blocked that I'm willing to let him play.  And often locking things down can lead to online restrictions (and I'm happy for him to do some online things).  Have a look at the askaboutgames.com website and at least set some restrictions.  Lock down those horrifying 18 certificate games.  Stop randoms from contacting your child.  Think about things sensibly and consider your options.

You can look at age ratings for games on the PEGI website.

Ask what your children think.  Discuss ground rules before setting restrictions.

Your kids probably know a lot about being safe online.  (They teach this a lot at school - I'm sure lots of them are far more knowledgeable than grown ups are.)  As with any 'parental rules', if you don't discuss them and why you're implementing restrictions, they're likely to cause a lot of anger and your kid might find ways round things.  Rules you don't have any real reason for are just going to come across as unreasonable and cause friction. 

Nightmare Freddy - yikes!

We had a lot of issues with Seb over Five Nights At Freddy's.  On the surface you might think this is just a jumpscare game, but the lore of the thing is horrifying, and the deeper you get into it the more horrible it all is.  Plenty of child murdering, and proper nightmarish characters.  To begin with I thought it was ok, but the more I thought about it the more it unsettled me.  I've watched a lot of FNAF lore videos by MatPat and kept meaning to write something about it, but the research just seemed endless and I haven't managed it!!  In the end we had to implement a blanket ban with Seb (he's not good at half measures and they confuse him).  FNAF is a tough one since a lot of the stuff around it is clearly marketed towards kids, with plushies and toys, but it's certainly at least a 12 certificate game.

You're in charge.  Set restrictions that work for your family.

Sometimes discussing things with your kids is not going to end well.  If you really don't want them playing Resident Evil 2 but all their friends are playing it, you can see they're going to be unhappy about a ban.  Amusingly, Seb tells his friends off for playing games we've told him aren't appropriate.  (He's a stickler for rules.)  I think all we can do as parents is be as informed as possible, as reasonable as possible, and compromise where we can.  But if you're not happy with something, remember that you are in charge.  You can switch off the wi-fi, if it comes to it.  Sometimes parent choices aren't going to be popular; it's the same with gaming as everything else. 

I am so not looking forward to the teenage years...

Well done to UKIE for starting this campaign, and I hope it helps a lot of parents who worry about this sort of thing.  There are some dangers to playing online.  There are some inappropriate/horrible games out there.  But there are a lot of great, fun, games that give kids chances to work together and opportunities to play that we never had when we were growing up. 

Swings and roundabouts, eh?  Swings and roundabouts...

Completionist Challenge, update, RDR2, Uncharted Lost Legacy...

I decided to up the challenge level of my 'Completionist Challenge'!

I started in August with RDR2, but when I started this I had no clear end point for what I wanted to achieve.  I've decided that I will finish 10 games before I'm allowed to buy any new ones (though I am allowed to play things if I get them for Christmas - if I get Ring Fit Adventure I don't want to wait months until I can play it!).  This is my attempt to try and halt the terrible digital store habit that most of us have these days where we buy lots of games and never finish them.  (Seb's Dad is really bad when it comes to this!)

Anyway, I'm never going to totally 100% every bit of the games I play, particularly when they're games I can't play when Seb's around.  But I'm going for the trophy that says the game is completed and as much of the other stuff as I can do...

Onto RDR2, then.  I completed the Epilogue, and had a bit of a go at Online, and did as many of the additional things as I could face doing, and I ended up playing for 100 hours in total (yikes!).  That's 4 days, 4 hours and 6 minutes, according to the Rockstar Social Club app.

Proof that I completed the game!

The rarest trophy I received was this one, with a completion rate of only 4.2%.  I think this was for collecting all the fish.  I'm not sure people would have been happy if they'd known that having received their vital mission I'd wandered off and done some fishing in a remote lake somewhere.  But then there are some weird quests on here.  Posting fish and dead squirrels in the post is, let's face it, pretty weird.  These games make you do some weird stuff.

My rarest trophy

I have to say I couldn't bring myself to do some of the bad stuff in the game; I was (mostly) a good guy, and I couldn't bring myself to do a 180 and start murdering and robbing everyone just to get a better completion rate!

After the epic 100 hours of roaming the (not so) Wild West I thought I'd do a shorter game, so I turned to Uncharted: Lost Legacy.  This is a mini Uncharted featuring Chloe and Nadine - an all girl lineup!  I probably enjoyed it more than Uncharted 3.  (I still haven't played Uncharted 4, I think that'll be part of my challenge...)  Not as much random stuff to do here.  I never get many trophies with these, partly because I'm rubbish at finding those ridiculous treasures.  But hey.  I did it!  And it only took 8 hours and 45 minutes.  Hooray!

I completed it!

My rarest trophy here wasn't particularly rare, but the game didn't have loads of trophies.  Still, I found all the tokens and obtained the Queen's Ruby, with which I could wander around and find more treasures, if I wanted to...

Claudia Black did a great job with the voice acting, and the story was pretty good.  Uncharted games are always formulaic, after all.  I did find it odd that sometimes you can't do jumps that look achievable (if that's not the right way) and sometimes you can manage ridiculous jumps (because that's the right way to go).  It makes sense, from a linear story pathfinding point of view, but it's irksome!

Those are the two games I've completed so far, then, 2/10.  I'm going to have to find some shorter games to play, because stupidly I've started Assassin's Creed Odyssey.  Ho hum.  I'm also doing the third chapter of The Long Dark, though, so I'll count that.  Otherwise it will take me forever to complete 10 whole games. 

Parenting is hard sometimes.  Really cuts down on your gaming time.  ;-)