Far Cry 3

On December 4^th, 2012 the third installment of the triple A franchise “Far Cry” was released in North America. The game depicts the story of a group of young adults being captured and sold into slavery while on vacation on an island known as “Rook Island” The secondary antagonist Vaas is one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever looked at. In the game he’s a synclinal villain that your character builds and incredible hatred for as he kills your loved ones and attempts to kill you multiple times through torture. The strange thing about it is that as you see more and more of him you start to like him. I’m not sure why you do, or what causes you to but you do build up a liking for him throughout the game. Perhaps it’s his insanity or his extremely well voiced dialog and metaphors he makes. Vaas is the definition of insanity “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” and he even admits it during one of the cut scenes, he says that exact like to you, but it angers him while he says it because he’s attempted to kill you several times before and hasn’t succeed.  Vaas makes the game, constantly in-game you find yourself wanting to get into trouble with him just to hear him speak to you, so when you finally do get into trouble its extremely refreshing. Further more, Vaas’s voice actor looks identical to him in-game, this means Ubisoft (The game developer) was able to make some incredible live action videos promoting the game. He does a phenomenal job acting in the live action films that make you want to purchase the game, and with cameos from McLovin from Superbad it ads a comedic element to an otherwise serious issue.  

Youtube.com/Machinima

If/Then Moments

Writing stories and making use of If/Then moments has been very interesting to say the least. I’ve always looked at that story telling format from a distance and never actually thought of what it would be like to try something like that or the amount of time and planning it would take to do it. After having written several stories now using if/then moments I can safely say: It’s not easy. I think the most difficult part of writing an if/then story is trying to make the choices that the user has made rewarding as well as making multiple storylines off of the same idea. To make the users choices rewarding it essentially requires you to come up with an entirely different chain of events that differs from the other option. If you weren’t to make them completely different then what’s the point? No ones going to care to choose whether Timmy eats a bagel or a banana for breakfast if it doesn’t effect the rest of the story, its simply a trivial decision that the user won’t care for because it’s not rewarding. The issue is not only making the experience rewarding for the user but it’s also difficult to work in options for the user. It requires extensive planning to write in effective choices for the user. Choices that are relatable to their outcome and not just haphazardly put in.  To summarize the entire experience I did enjoy it and I took it a few steps further. I made my own interactive adventure using Halo:Reach in the form of a Machinima entitled “Halo: Reach Star Fox Adventure” (A parody of Star Fox 64) The interactive video took a ton of work, which allowed me to appreciate the true effort that must go into making interactive stories that utilize if/then moments.

Halo Reah: Star Fox Adventure

Xbox Live

 To Microsoft,

It’s time you and I had a sit down and had a nice long talk. I’ve been subscribed to your services for over 7 years now, paying around $50 +each year for them. That means I’ve spent over $350 alone just to use the online capabilities of my Xbox. Don’t you think that’s enough money to at least hear what I’ve got to suggest? Your competitor – Sony, they have a free online service for their PS3 and I understand that it doesn’t have the abilities that Xbox Live does and it’s loaded with exploits and isn’t always running, I get that – but what I don’t get is why they’re “Hub” or “Dashboard” isn’t loaded up with advertisements like ours is? We pay you each month for a premium service, a service that shouldn’t force-feed us advertisements each time we turn on our Xbox. I understand that the advertisements generate revenue that is used to pay for the serve fees of Xbox Live, but charging us monthly and showing us ads? Well that’s just plain greedy. Now if you really must show us the ads/sponsors at least don’t make them take up 75% of the dashboard. What you guys have done with the dashboard design is great, however the tabs that we actually use the most are completely hidden. The game I want to play’s button is reduced to a little tiny square hidden in the top left hand corner while an advertisement triple it’s size is blasted front in center. Switch them! We shouldn’t be paying monthly to look at advertisements, that doesn’t make sense. Now if Xbox Live was a free service, I would be completely fine with Ads, but it’s not – it’s a paid subscription that should give it’s users premium features. 

http://sticktwiddlers.com/

Netflix's impact on Canadians

Dear Netflix,

As a Canadian, it’s very disappointing to find a very limited selection of movies on your service while our counterpart – The United States has a plethora of options to choose from. Here and Canada were forced to choose from dated, B – List movies with a handful of good ones, while in America they get to choose from everything, making Netflix’s service great. Now this wouldn’t bother me so much if your impact weren’t as strong as it is. You see, because of your convenience you’ve practically destroyed movie rental stores, making it more and more difficult to watch the movies I want to watch. See, without being able to watch movies that I want to see with your service, or not being able to rent them – I have two options, buy the actual movie or download it online. Selecting a movie to watch once on a Saturday night shouldn’t cost someone $30 - $40; witch would leave only one option – to download it. Seeing as I support the whole movie making business, I do not want to download it, and I won’t. The problem is not everyone would share these same morals, meaning Netflix is almost forcing people without proper access to download movies online. This not only harms the film industry, but it means fewer sales for you guys to. I understand that many production companies don’t want their movies to be able to be streamed to Canada for various reasons, but please try and find a way to let us watch our favorite movies, you’ve taken that privilege from us and we want it back. 

geekbeat.tv

The Gaming Industry is poisoned, and it’s our fault.

Over the past few years the gaming industry has undergone massive transformation. We’ve been enabled to play online with people all over the world whenever we want, we’ve seen pixels turn to realistic looking figures and we’ve seen some of the most compelling stories while living in the shoes of the main character. However, if you were to ask a gamer what their favorite game is, chances are you’ll get something retro or at least old, like a N64 Game or something for PS2. Why is that? Were games better back then, is the gaming industry bad now? Well the answer to both of those questions are no. The reason we think old games are so good is because we had nothing to compare them too and we just fail to remember the bad things about them. Back then we didn’t think that any of the stuff were doing now would be possible, so it didn’t bother us when something is left out, rather we would just shrug and not care. However now our standards have been cranked so high that no game will completely satisfy us. No matter what game comes out, there is thousands of people ready to pick it apart and launch angry letters and messages at the game makers. People are literally doing this for fun now, they launch strikes based on the smallest of things just for the sake of hoping on the band wagon. This is poison to games, because when people who actually have legitimate strategies and tips for the game makers of what we want, their ideas are thrown aside because of the wave of idiocy that 95% of the mail is. It’s a true shame that we won’t be able to help game developers because in fact, we won’t let ourselves. There are so many things we could help them with, but then again – are there or are we just being to picky too? 

ZeldaDungeon.Net