Rust

Well this weekend after my League of legends binge I decided to look for another game to fill my very short attention span. I vaguely remembered a long time back a lot of hype surrounding a game called Rust. I didn’t really remember much about it, but I decided to Google it and see what it was and if it was still around. Lo and behold it was and I quickly downloaded the tech demo. So was it any fun? Keep reading to find out.

                If Man v. Wild was turned into a video game minus the dangerous elements with packs of half naked bloodthirsty men with rocks chasing after you, Rust would be it. The premise of rust is that a unknown event has occurred that has turned the world into shambles. Your start off as a naked man, armed only with your trusty rock, a few torches, bandages, and a few pieces of wood. Your only goal is to survive using these tools to gather materials and create better tools that can lead you to creating shelter and finding food. But you are always at danger, with hordes of radiated animals just waiting to kill you at a moment’s notice. And if that wasn’t bad enough, you have to deal with other players who can either help you survive or shoot you in the face and put u back 2 hours of work.

                If you’re familiar with Minecraft, Rust shares many traits. With its intricate crafting system that is akin to Minecraft, a veteran of the game will immediately feel at home. But unlike minecraft, Rust is more of a simulator, with death always close to your, be it a wild animal or hunger, you will find yourself dying many times in the first few hours of your adventure. But don’t get discouraged, as death is merely a setback.

                Funnily enough, the one major flaw of Rust is also the one major benefit, this being the player base. While many players are nice enough to leave new players alone as they have nothing of value to get, many will disregard that and shoot anyone they see on sight. This makes it frustrating for new players to just spawn in and die within seconds of spawning in.

                Rust is a unique game that sets itself apart from others like it. If you’re looking for a fun survival simulator, I would recommend checking it out.

League of Legends

This week I decided to go and look for a new game to play. It was my surprise when I noticed an ad for the popular game league of legends on the side of my screen. It looked interesting enough, so I decided to click on it. As I am writing this I have already put in at least 10 hours in this fun game. But what makes it so fun? Read more to find out.

                League of legends is a MOBA game, and is the world’s most popular MOBA style game. For those of you who don’t know, a MOBA is a style of game that has you in a 3^rd person view, always above the character you’re controlling. League follows through with this system and perfects it with its 130+ champions to pick from. Each champion that is available to you is unique, with every one of them having their own special skills and abilities. Each champion has 4 abilities, 3 regular ones and one final super powerful ability that defines that specific champion. Examples of this include cannon balls falling from the sky and a giant death rocket. This allows for good variation among different players and play styles.  

                League of legends is based on a F2P system, where a player can earn champions through playing games and spending their points on them, or by buying them with cash. Everything that you can unlock in the game can be bought with the in game money except for skins, which only alter how the champion you’re playing as looks and some of your ability animations. This allows for a dedicated player who enjoys playing a lot to be rewarded and not feel at a major disadvantage to those who decided to spend real money on the game.

                Each week the game gets a balance patch that fixes up bugs and makes any champions that seem too good less strong. This helps to keep the game fresh and fun. Along with this update, the game offers up a selection of 8 randomly chosen champions that anybody can play for free that week. This allows for new players to get a good feel for what they like to play.

                League of legends is a great game with endless amount of enjoyment. With its varied champions and overall uniqueness, League of legends is a game I will be playing for a long time to come.

Banished

Banished is a strategy game based on building and maintaining a steady population while continuing to have your village grow and prosper. With influences from SimCity both on the strategy genre and on gaming in general, has immensely helped to create this game. Banished is the latest in that line, elaborating on the intricate, small-scale design of recent games like Tropico and creating something unique in the process of creating your very own settlement.

 Banished is a series of small goals that can be played in a never ending loop. Every game starts in the spring, and before winter hits, you need to get enough firewood, gather a decent supply of food, and build some houses to keep your citizens from freezing to death. Just getting enough food is tough, because you rarely have enough time or free land to get a proper set of crops growing. Instead, you'll be chopping down as many trees as you can before getting a fishery going in a nearby lake or river. Then you hunker down and hope nobody dies. Banished also has a number of natural disasters that could strike your settlement. They serve as a kind of random "boss fight" in the sense that they will often test one aspect of your infrastructure. Diseases test the health of your population, fires test your city planning, and tornadoes test your ability to rapidly rebuild before winter comes again.

 If you're reading this, it's safe to say you have a computer or cell phone. But what if you didn't? What if you were forced out of your home as you know it, to live in the wilderness? How do you think you'd survive? Banished asks those questions, opening with a dozen or so outcasts looking to create a new life in the wilderness. It's a humble setup, but the game is masterfully constructed with dozens of interlocking mechanics to make the start the perfect foundation for an emergent prosperous new settlement where ever, with whatever you can imagine.

Team Fortress 2

Lately I’ve been looking for a game to fill the first person shooter void that call of duty just hasn’t been filling as of late.  In my search I happened to stumble upon a game known as Team Fortress 2. Not only has this game passed my expectations, it has succeeded it in almost every way and become one of my top 10 games of all time

Team fortress 2 is a different game compared to other first person shooters such as COD and Battlefield. Instead of picking you guns and changing your equipment, you can choose between 9 different classes that each have their own special talent. Each class plays radically different, and each is good for its own special situation. Have a lot of enemy players that like to group up? The Pyro can do the job easily burning his enemies down with his flamethrower. Playing on a map with long viewpoints and chokeholds? Snipers the best pick for racking up some headshots. This is where the game exceeds the most, with the different classes proving to be fun and challenging in their own special way.

One of the other features that separate’s this game from other shooters is the weapons and maps. Most first person shooters have a somewhat limited selection of guns and maps, but this is where tf2 really shines. Since the game is developed on steam (The Facebook of the gaming community), people from all around the world can put forth their ideas for new guns and maps.  Talented animators can then put time and effort into making those guns and maps come true, and if the ideas are original and good enough, the game developers will put those items in the game. This is beneficial because it bands the gaming community and the game creators together more, and makes it a better experience for everyone.  This also keeps the game fresh, with new guns and maps constantly being added to keep the game modern and up to date. They also do special events around holidays and events that turn tf2 into an almost completely different game for that time.

It turns out looking for a new game to play proved to be quite beneficial, with Team Fortress 2 becoming one of my favorite games I’ve played yet. If you want to get out of the mainstream rut of COD and Battlefield, Tf2 is the perfect game to start with. 

Gamestop

For anybody who has played games even somewhat regularly, they know of a little store called GameStop. For those of you who don’t know, GameStop is a store where you can buy and sell video games. This may sound like a great idea for any non gamers or people just starting to play. But for anyone who has even a slight clue on what’s going on, GameStop isn’t the end all be all for games. So should you just cash in your games for quick and easy money or is it worth your time to set up craigslist articles and wait for more money.

                The premise of GameStop is simple. Anytime you complete a game or get bored with it, you take it on down to your nearest GameStop and sell it quick and easy for a fair price. Or at least that’s what they want you to think. What really happens is almost a rip off. Now I know that the company needs to make money but really, 8 dollars for a game that came out only 2 months ago is absurd. Now I know that you’re thinking, “Oh but since they buy it for cheap they must sell it for cheap too right?” Wrong. They not only undercut you, but they also put it on shelves for a price higher than most of us feel right paying for it.

                Now unlike driving down to you’re nearest GameStop to dump off any unwanted games, another way you could get a good deal is putting them up on craigslist. Craigslist is a website where you can post ads for buying or selling things in your city or town.  This works especially well for games, as it achieves a happy medium for both the buyers and sellers. The sellers end up getting more cash than just selling it straight to GameStop, while the buyers get a better deal buying straight from you rather then GameStop.

                So in the end it’s really up to you. If you’re looking to just dump some games off real quick and get some extra spending money, go ahead and sell them to GameStop. But if you were looking into a more long term investment, spending time to go and set up a craigslist ad will prove more beneficial for you and your buyer in the long run, and will keep your pockets full and your buyer happy.

                                    

Is 3d worth the extra money?

So we've all gone to the movies and have seen that that for only a few dollars more, you could go see your movie in 3D. But is it worth it just to watch a few things pop out of you or should you save those 5 dollars and just catch another movie with the money you saved.

                3D as we know and love it is the visual wizardry of having objects or debris popping right out in our face for our entertainment. It was most popular in the early 2000’s with almost every movie coming out at that time being in 3D and boasting how great it was. I myself like 3D to some extent, but never enough to justify paying the extra amount.  The way I saw it is that while you might enjoy the movie a little bit more, the 3D really detracts from the other points of the movie, and could leave you dazzled but clueless to what’s really going on.  But the worst part of the whole experience is those damn glasses. Now these days the glasses are made of a hard plastic, almost like a pair of sunglasses, back in the day your standard issue 3D glasses were made of cheap cardboard and little red and blue pieces of plastic. they wouldn't stick on your face no matter how you put them on; they were uncomfortable and distracted me more than the movie itself.

                Now 3D isn’t all that bad, with the added visual element that it brings to table can improve a movie greatly, but only very specific movies. A good example of this being that new 300 movie that I actually shelled out the extra cash to go see it in 3d.  I talked to a few of my friends who didn’t see it in 3D and they said that it would have improved the visuals and thus, improved the movie.

                So is it worth the extra cash to go and see movies in 3D. My verdict is maybe. Like I said it really depends on the movie with films with very vivid and colorful graphics such as the 300 movies working best with 3D, but other more serious films such as the last few harry potters having 3D being more of a negative impact to it. So the next time you are at the movie theaters, put some though into it before you pay the extra to see it in 3D.

Divergent review

So this weekend I decided to go out and catch another movie. I decided to go see Divergent as I read the book awhile back and wanted to see if the movie was true to the book.  Unfortunately the movie did not meet my expectations in the long run, and proved to be a disappointment for me in the end with it cutting many parts in the book and slowing many scenes down to almost a stop.

Divergent is a movie akin to the hunger games with a strong female lead in the main role. The plot is that society is split into 5 different factions, with each of them being different and consisting of people with the same personalities (Bravery, intelligence).  The film starts with our main character that is known as Beatrice. She lives in the faction abnegation that runs the government. But every year, the government gathers all of the 16 year olds together to determine what faction they best fit in with. But Beatrice has aspects of each of the factions shown in her test, and she is labeled as divergent. This is very dangerous for her as divergent means she can think on her own and poses a threat to the government. With this in mind, she quickly chooses to join the faction known as dauntless and starts her training; with the fact of her being divergent nestled deep in her mind.  She begins to start her training to join her faction, when she meets four, her main love interest. As their relationship begins to form,

Divergent was a book I quite enjoyed, with its new take on a dystopian society proving to being interesting and kept me reading from cover to cover. But unfortunately, the book puts the movie to shame with its slow nature and boring characters doing nothing for it. The age difference between the two leads was also a letdown, albeit a creepy one, with our heroine looking young enough but having our main love interest four being 24 leaving an almost 8 year time gap. The visuals were good and portrayed the book and the setting well, but they couldn’t help the movies slow nature and overall boring feeling it brings to the table. My suggesting is that if you wanted to see a movie with a strong female lead akin the hunger games, check this one out if you want, but any readers of the book will be disappointed and wanting their money back.