Hello every one I'm still trying to decide on the next thing I want to do whether that be a game review or the first anime review. In the mean time I wanted to take a moment to share a more serious post with you all.
Recently my History/Psychology Teacher Mr.Schroeder's son Jack was diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes. Diabetes is hard on everyone involved but to make matters worse Jack has already been dealing with Autism. Mr. Schroeder is a great father but with a new born baby and Jack's current problems he needs some more help, so he started a fundraiser to get him a trained diabetes service alert dog.
So I implore you to please consider donating to the fundraiser here
http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/diabetic-alert-dog-for-jack-schroeder/78344
Friday, August 9, 2013
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Call of Duty: Hate/hypocrisy
Call of duty has become quite the juggernaut over the course of the last console generation. While its popularity grew so did the amount of people who grew to dislike it. While every game broke sales records one after another, the comments about the game grew harsher and harsher. The community seemingly grew to hate the game yet buy every installment. Let me clarify I am by no means a fanboy of Call of duty, but however I am against the unnecessary hate the game receives. Based on the domino effect of hatred that's been brewing everywhere.
So firstly some of the main arguments I've heard against the game are completely conflicting. The arguments are as followed "the game never changes it's always the same" and "the game has gotten so much worse since CoD ____". Now Neither argument is correct and neither has any merit.
So firstly to negate argument number 1. The people who say the game never changes would probably argue the CoD 4 is better than CoD BO2. A completely hypocritical stance on the matter at hand. If the game never changed than how can one possibly be better than the other? Simple answer actually it can't by their own logic the two games are different, with one being marginally better than the other.
Argument 2 is a little more difficult to counter because it really comes down to a matter of opinion. Opinions can be changed but can not be wrong. Now if you go strictly by facts however every game has improved over the last whether significantly or not, it has.Whether the improvements where engine related or gameplay related there is always an improvement I can go through a list as to what each game did better over the last but again its all a matter of opinion.
As a last note I have another thing that I plan to go in depth on in my next mini discussion so i'll keep it short. That is the fact that the games gotten a reputation for having a bad community. Many people make jokes and bash the game based on the community. While I can't really defend a community that makes death threats against the very developers of the game they play, I can say that the community shouldn't reflect upon the game as much as it does. The game itself hasn't changed just the people.
So firstly some of the main arguments I've heard against the game are completely conflicting. The arguments are as followed "the game never changes it's always the same" and "the game has gotten so much worse since CoD ____". Now Neither argument is correct and neither has any merit.
So firstly to negate argument number 1. The people who say the game never changes would probably argue the CoD 4 is better than CoD BO2. A completely hypocritical stance on the matter at hand. If the game never changed than how can one possibly be better than the other? Simple answer actually it can't by their own logic the two games are different, with one being marginally better than the other.
Argument 2 is a little more difficult to counter because it really comes down to a matter of opinion. Opinions can be changed but can not be wrong. Now if you go strictly by facts however every game has improved over the last whether significantly or not, it has.Whether the improvements where engine related or gameplay related there is always an improvement I can go through a list as to what each game did better over the last but again its all a matter of opinion.
As a last note I have another thing that I plan to go in depth on in my next mini discussion so i'll keep it short. That is the fact that the games gotten a reputation for having a bad community. Many people make jokes and bash the game based on the community. While I can't really defend a community that makes death threats against the very developers of the game they play, I can say that the community shouldn't reflect upon the game as much as it does. The game itself hasn't changed just the people.
Friday, August 2, 2013
An Essay on Introversion
I wrote this essay back while I was still going to college, we had to write about our personality types, specifically about Introversion and Extroversion. I generally don't like to write or talk about myself but I feel like this essay came out to be way deeper than just me or some assignment and I wanted to share it with everyone. Perhaps open some minds to a new perspective so to speak.
Introvert, a word usually associated with someone who appears to be antisocial, but is that necessarily the truth? To those unfamiliar to modern technology they view playing Video games and being on the computer as signs of being anti-social. Those who share these habits, they know its not nearly as antisocial as it would seem. For through the computer and Xbox I have met many people who I would more than likely have never met else wise. Some of the people who I’ve met have become very close friends despite never having met them in person. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t met in person that allowed us to become such good friends.
Of course I wasn't always lucky enough to have such good friends. When I look back at my early years I had very few friends. Even worse than not having friends I was bullied. The teachers wouldn't do much of anything and most of what they would do made things worse. Perhaps it was a Defense mechanism but I pretty much stopped caring about other people I focused on myself and school work. I always played Video games at home but it wasn't until High-school(7th grade in the Highschool anyway) that I got a Xbox 360 and learned about online gaming.
I never really thought about the social aspect of it, as a gamer I loved online gaming though. I added the few friends I had on it and played Halo 3. It was like that that I would meet many of my online friends just playing and having fun. Of course I also had started having friends and changing my personality to be more laid back. After a few months of playing I met my friend Zen/Jarrod I’ve known him since January of my 7th grade year. and despite never having met in person to this day were as close of friends as we would be if we did meet. Same for my friend ‘General’ (we didn’t know his name for 2 years and his online name went through variations of General_______) When he went away to Bootcamp we cared as if he were family and missed him the whole time he was gone. That's just my two closest friends online I’ve befriended many people , more than in person.
Though back to my closest online friends ‘General’ and Zen, ‘General’ lives outside of Chicago and Zen is in Arizona. I would never have met them without the internet, more specifically the Xbox. So I find it hard to believe that most of the time someone like myself is viewed as anti social by conventional thought. In a way I view my way of being social as much more social than conventional socialization. I’ve met people in different Cities,States, even countries whereas people through Socially acceptable socialization meet others in their general area.
So while it’s true that I spend my days at home rather than out and about. Though while I am physically alone i’m not truly alone. That said while someone may view me as being antisocial it is far from the case. I’m enjoying hanging out with friends despite not leaving my house. While I do have introvert type social preferences by no means does that mean i can’t or don’t speak with others. Perhaps I’m not an isolated case and that what if others have a similar experience to my own, and are wrongly labeled anti social or introverted?
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Halo 4
So i'm going to try a bullet point style review for this one I'd love to know which one is preferred.
Story: Halo 4 picks up 4 years after the events of Halo 3 with Master chief being awoken to counter act the attacking forces(The covenant again because why create new enemies when you can just rehash the old ones).During this fight it becomes apparent that the ship is being pulled into the planet Requiem. The Game primarily follows Master Chief as he attempts to find a way off of the forerunner planet Requiem and save His A.I. companion Cortana from Rampancy a deterioration in A.I. active for 7+ years.
Gameplay: The Gameplay is most easily described as a hybrid between Halo 3 and Halo Reach. It takes a lot of the movement speed and Gun balance from Halo 3 but Incorporates the Armor abilities and Sprint from Halo reach(I personally Hate Reach and could do without any of its trash from now on). The game generally runs smooth but in split screen begins to have massive frame rate drops. a new Vehicle "The mantis"(or as I call it Metal gear) was introduced into Halo 4 as an all around vehicle capable of handling both ground infantry and of armored Vehicles. Halo 4 also Introduced Spartan ops a mini side story introducing new episodes weekly and adding onto the story.
Graphics: Halo 4 is undeniably one of the best looking Xbox 360 games. It most definitely pushed the limits of the console. However that isn't necessarily a good thing. I mentioned before how there's incredible frame rate drops in split screen play. That Happens because while the console can handle loading 1 Halo 4 when it has to duplicate loading it 2,3,4 times it just can't handle it.
What they did well: They did a much better job handling weapon balance with Halo 4, every weapon does its job as intended. Spartan ops was really well done and added a fair bit of depth to the story at hand. They've also done a decent job of taking community feed back and community made maps into consideration and even incorporating some of these ideas and maps into the game.
What could have been better: 4 things
Vehicular balance: The vehicles in the game are either incredibly under powered or overpowered with no middle ground. There are many anti-vehicle weapons but they mostly drop at random which leads to point 2...
Ordinance drops: Ordinance drops are essentially like Call of duty's Kill streaks except more random. This can be annoying as the opposing team may all be in vehicles but you get ordinance that just doesn't help the situation.
Matchmaking: Halo 3 late in its life cycle developed a matchmaking system called 'Trueskill'(I personally preferred an entirely random system). What it does is take your gameplay statistics and matches you with others who have similar Stats. This was meant to match players of equal skill with each other. Needless to say with how many people play the game it doesn't work, like at all. Now what it does is essentially check to see if you win and puts you with others who win, unfortunately it doesn't seemingly check to see how good that player did.
So say Player 'A'(I like to consider myself player 'A') wins and does really well and scores 49/50 points for his team Player 'B'(player 'B' is that one dude who turns on his Xbox but is probably doing heroine or something) may have been awol or just plain bad but gotten a win anyhow thanks to player 'A's efforts. Now player 'A' will end up facing someone else like him but his team may be facing people much better than them creating a really uneven match.
This as you may be able to tell from the length is my biggest pet peeve in the game, It usually punishes players for winning so it's almost better to throw a match.
Spartan ops: I mentioned earlier how Spartan ops was good. However the thing about those episodes was they stopped after a few months leaving the game recycling old reruns. Just like Cartoon Network and Tom and Jerry, if there were only Ten episodes. So while they were good and fun to play the fact they just abruptly end so soon after starting is something that could have been done better.
Overall : 8/10
So that's it for the bullet point style tell me which one you prefer better, however you feel like doing so.
 |
| Released:November 16 2012 Platform:Xbox 360 |
Gameplay: The Gameplay is most easily described as a hybrid between Halo 3 and Halo Reach. It takes a lot of the movement speed and Gun balance from Halo 3 but Incorporates the Armor abilities and Sprint from Halo reach(I personally Hate Reach and could do without any of its trash from now on). The game generally runs smooth but in split screen begins to have massive frame rate drops. a new Vehicle "The mantis"(or as I call it Metal gear) was introduced into Halo 4 as an all around vehicle capable of handling both ground infantry and of armored Vehicles. Halo 4 also Introduced Spartan ops a mini side story introducing new episodes weekly and adding onto the story.
Graphics: Halo 4 is undeniably one of the best looking Xbox 360 games. It most definitely pushed the limits of the console. However that isn't necessarily a good thing. I mentioned before how there's incredible frame rate drops in split screen play. That Happens because while the console can handle loading 1 Halo 4 when it has to duplicate loading it 2,3,4 times it just can't handle it.
What they did well: They did a much better job handling weapon balance with Halo 4, every weapon does its job as intended. Spartan ops was really well done and added a fair bit of depth to the story at hand. They've also done a decent job of taking community feed back and community made maps into consideration and even incorporating some of these ideas and maps into the game.
What could have been better: 4 things
Vehicular balance: The vehicles in the game are either incredibly under powered or overpowered with no middle ground. There are many anti-vehicle weapons but they mostly drop at random which leads to point 2...
Ordinance drops: Ordinance drops are essentially like Call of duty's Kill streaks except more random. This can be annoying as the opposing team may all be in vehicles but you get ordinance that just doesn't help the situation.
Matchmaking: Halo 3 late in its life cycle developed a matchmaking system called 'Trueskill'(I personally preferred an entirely random system). What it does is take your gameplay statistics and matches you with others who have similar Stats. This was meant to match players of equal skill with each other. Needless to say with how many people play the game it doesn't work, like at all. Now what it does is essentially check to see if you win and puts you with others who win, unfortunately it doesn't seemingly check to see how good that player did.
So say Player 'A'(I like to consider myself player 'A') wins and does really well and scores 49/50 points for his team Player 'B'(player 'B' is that one dude who turns on his Xbox but is probably doing heroine or something) may have been awol or just plain bad but gotten a win anyhow thanks to player 'A's efforts. Now player 'A' will end up facing someone else like him but his team may be facing people much better than them creating a really uneven match.
This as you may be able to tell from the length is my biggest pet peeve in the game, It usually punishes players for winning so it's almost better to throw a match.
Spartan ops: I mentioned earlier how Spartan ops was good. However the thing about those episodes was they stopped after a few months leaving the game recycling old reruns. Just like Cartoon Network and Tom and Jerry, if there were only Ten episodes. So while they were good and fun to play the fact they just abruptly end so soon after starting is something that could have been done better.
Overall : 8/10
So that's it for the bullet point style tell me which one you prefer better, however you feel like doing so.
Saints row the Third
This is an odd one to start with but I'm just replaying it because I recently re-bought it from the humble bundle, Which is a really awesome Charity, and I really recommend that any friend of mine that has a decent computer check it out I'll be sure to link it at the end of the review.
Saints row the Third was released November 15th 2011 here in the states. It focused much more on the series' over the top wackiness than its predecessors. The Games opening generally sets the tone of the overall pace of the game, that is over the top with no real reason, with a bank robbery from the now World famous Third street saints main members(How the saints gained so much between 2 and 3 is never really explained). The robbery goes bad and they end up in jail after a mass shoot out with police forces and members of an unknown gang from atop the bank vault being carried by a helicopter. That's where we meet our new antagonists the Leaders of the Gang "The Morningstar" which is part of a group called the Syndicate(Incredibly original right?) from there we end up in the new city of Steel port.
Now moving on from the introductory story I'm not going to tell the full story because this is a review not a walkthrough. The gameplay mechanics have changed since the second game not necessarily for better or worse, its a give and take from saints row 2 we have flashier melee mini cut scenes and the ability to Hi-jack a car by jumping through the window(apparently your character is part of the X-men now), but we lose the different fighting styles and environmental weapons from the 2nd game(No more throwing random trash bags at pedestrians :( ) . Same could be said about the games customization. The Character customization is improved but the Vehicular and gang customization are either the same or worse( I can be Doctor Manhattan, nudity and all if I want, but god forbid I get a pimped out Garbage truck). The amount of weapon choice is cut way back as well with only 2-3 things in each category. That said the weapons that are their are incredibly powerful, combined with the fact you character is as damage resistant as superman(No seriously the sequel coming out soon actually focuses on this), makes the game incredibly easy even on harder difficulties.
Now I've only focused on the negative aspect of the changes so far, the game is actually pretty damn fun. Kind of like old school GTA San Andreas. The game is an open world sand box so judging it primarily on the weak story and difficulty might be too harsh. It is this sand box that makes it worth it, the side missions are usually pretty fun but still lacking in difficulty. You can do basically anything you want roaming around from Tasering some random guy who looked at you wrong to driving a Vehicle that picks people up and shoots them out of a cannon, its all there(or not to forget to mention the infamous Dildobat of ultimate power). The game also does Co-op much better than its predecessor, by getting rid of the competitive multiplayer aspect and focusing on solely Co-op they've managed to do that quite well, whereas in Saints row 2 you could only free roam with friends now you can play through the story and side missions as well.
But does the good outweigh the bad? In my opinion no, because once you beat the game the sand box is great but pointless, with out a diving motivation there's not a single reason to come back. Like I said earlier the Story isn't particularly good and crazy short (less than 4 hours is 30+ % complete and that's with messing around included). So in short the games a fun thrill ride while it lasts but ends far to quickly.
6.5/10
So that's my first review I may experiment with the format a little in the next one but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
Also here's the link to the Humble bundle I mentioned up top https://www.humblebundle.com/ Any donations there go to the American Red cross and Child's play.
Saints row the Third was released November 15th 2011 here in the states. It focused much more on the series' over the top wackiness than its predecessors. The Games opening generally sets the tone of the overall pace of the game, that is over the top with no real reason, with a bank robbery from the now World famous Third street saints main members(How the saints gained so much between 2 and 3 is never really explained). The robbery goes bad and they end up in jail after a mass shoot out with police forces and members of an unknown gang from atop the bank vault being carried by a helicopter. That's where we meet our new antagonists the Leaders of the Gang "The Morningstar" which is part of a group called the Syndicate(Incredibly original right?) from there we end up in the new city of Steel port.
Now moving on from the introductory story I'm not going to tell the full story because this is a review not a walkthrough. The gameplay mechanics have changed since the second game not necessarily for better or worse, its a give and take from saints row 2 we have flashier melee mini cut scenes and the ability to Hi-jack a car by jumping through the window(apparently your character is part of the X-men now), but we lose the different fighting styles and environmental weapons from the 2nd game(No more throwing random trash bags at pedestrians :( ) . Same could be said about the games customization. The Character customization is improved but the Vehicular and gang customization are either the same or worse( I can be Doctor Manhattan, nudity and all if I want, but god forbid I get a pimped out Garbage truck). The amount of weapon choice is cut way back as well with only 2-3 things in each category. That said the weapons that are their are incredibly powerful, combined with the fact you character is as damage resistant as superman(No seriously the sequel coming out soon actually focuses on this), makes the game incredibly easy even on harder difficulties.
Now I've only focused on the negative aspect of the changes so far, the game is actually pretty damn fun. Kind of like old school GTA San Andreas. The game is an open world sand box so judging it primarily on the weak story and difficulty might be too harsh. It is this sand box that makes it worth it, the side missions are usually pretty fun but still lacking in difficulty. You can do basically anything you want roaming around from Tasering some random guy who looked at you wrong to driving a Vehicle that picks people up and shoots them out of a cannon, its all there(or not to forget to mention the infamous Dildobat of ultimate power). The game also does Co-op much better than its predecessor, by getting rid of the competitive multiplayer aspect and focusing on solely Co-op they've managed to do that quite well, whereas in Saints row 2 you could only free roam with friends now you can play through the story and side missions as well.
But does the good outweigh the bad? In my opinion no, because once you beat the game the sand box is great but pointless, with out a diving motivation there's not a single reason to come back. Like I said earlier the Story isn't particularly good and crazy short (less than 4 hours is 30+ % complete and that's with messing around included). So in short the games a fun thrill ride while it lasts but ends far to quickly.
6.5/10
So that's my first review I may experiment with the format a little in the next one but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
Also here's the link to the Humble bundle I mentioned up top https://www.humblebundle.com/ Any donations there go to the American Red cross and Child's play.
Welcome Friends,Romans,Countrymen...
Hello Friends,Family, and whoever else may end up reading this. I've been putting this off for far too long,but today I'm officially starting my personal Blog. This blog will mostly be me finding different things of interest for me to write about to keep my writing skills up. Some of you may know I've recently rekindled my interest in writing and although I would love to make a living out of it, it just isn't something I can see happening overnight. So I'll write as a hobby and someday maybe it'll pay off.
Now as for the contents of this blog I will probably be writing reviews of various things Games, Anime, Movies, ect. At the moment I have a massive back catalog of aforementioned things that I'll be retrospectively covering. In the future however I plan to write reviews fairly quickly after I purchase/watch said things.
I occasionally write short stories, usually pertaining to my friends and inside jokes but if I think they're good enough for a general audience I'll share them. . I don't have any current plans for my reviews but I will begin shortly now. I also don't know how often I'll update this, I'm going to try to update 2-3 times a week but stuff happens and I'm a major procrastinator so hopefully I can keep a normal schedule of updates.I'm fairly new at this so the content may improve over time so bear with me and thanks in advance. If you have any suggestions or criticisms in the future please feel free to tell me I'm going to strive to keep improving.
Now as for the contents of this blog I will probably be writing reviews of various things Games, Anime, Movies, ect. At the moment I have a massive back catalog of aforementioned things that I'll be retrospectively covering. In the future however I plan to write reviews fairly quickly after I purchase/watch said things.
I occasionally write short stories, usually pertaining to my friends and inside jokes but if I think they're good enough for a general audience I'll share them. . I don't have any current plans for my reviews but I will begin shortly now. I also don't know how often I'll update this, I'm going to try to update 2-3 times a week but stuff happens and I'm a major procrastinator so hopefully I can keep a normal schedule of updates.I'm fairly new at this so the content may improve over time so bear with me and thanks in advance. If you have any suggestions or criticisms in the future please feel free to tell me I'm going to strive to keep improving.
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