Far Cry 3

                Far Cry 3 came out in 2012 and was the third installment in the Far Cry series. Far Cry is a first person shooter based on a fictional island. Even though they are in the same series, Far Cry 3 has nothing to do with Far Cry 1 or 2. There are none of the same characters and it doesn’t take place in the same setting. Far Cry 2 takes place somewhere in Africa while Far Cry 3 takes place on an island. There is also a Far Cry 4 which takes place somewhere in the Himalayas and also has nothing to do with the previous games.

                In Far Cry 3 you play as a young adult named Jason who is trying to save his friends that got kidnapped by a group of pirates. Jason gets help from the native people who have him follow the “path of the warrior” which gives him the strength and knowledge to get his friends back. They gave him a tattoo that he can add on to later. As the player you get to choose which part of the tattoo to add onto and each part gives you a different skill or a different upgrade. This provides a pretty cool customization feature for your character and lets you play in whatever style you want.

                Other than just running around shooting people there are many other things that you can spend your time doing in this game. One of the big ones is you can go hunt animals. Much of the area you play in is forest and so there are many different animals that you can hunt. You can use the skin of the animals to make or improve your items. These items can help a lot when you play by letting you carry more grenades or more health packs or other things along that line.

                One of my favorite things to do in this game was clearing out all the outposts. There are over thirty different outposts and each of them has 6-10 enemies in it. This may seem like a lot but every outpost is different and clearing them out was fun every time. You can choose any strategy you want to clear them out. You can drive up to it in a car, snipe from a distance, or try and stealth kill everyone. This method is my personal favorite. I always think it’s really fun to try and take out every enemy without alerting the rest of them. It is also really hard sometimes and can take me many different tries before I end up giving up and just killing them all normally. However I think that it is really cool that the game lets you play in whatever style that you want. There are different skills that you can choose for each of the different ways you can play.

                Another one of my favorite things to do in this game is all the different challenges. There are challenges that you can do that have nothing to do with the story and just give you a score and keeps a leaderboard that keeps track of the best score. There are many different kinds of challenges. There is a sniping challenge, a challenge where you can only use handguns, and a challenge where you can only use explosives. My favorite challenge was one where every time you got a kill the gun that you use switches. The challenges each have a certain time limit but you can extend that time by destroying blue barrels.

(Word Choice: 594)

Clash of Clans

                Clash of Clans is a free game that anyone can download onto their phones as long as they have smart phone. This game was released in 2012 and was developed by a game company from Finland called Supercell.

                In Clash of Clans players build a town. You then upgrade the different structures in your town to help defend against attacks. You can also build troops to go attack other players and steal their gold and elixir. The gold and elixir can also be harvested by collectors which can also be upgraded. Gold and elixir are used to upgrade the different buildings in your town. Gold is primarily used for increasing your town’s defenses and for upgrading walls. Elixir is used to build troops and to upgrade them. There is also a third type of resource called dark elixir but it isn’t unlocked until you reach a high enough level. Dark elixir is used to create new types of troops and to build and upgrade heroes.

                Aside from just attacking other players you can also join in a clan with other players. A clan can consist of as many as 50 different players. Members of clans can give each other troops and also talk to each other in a special clan chat. Clans can also face one another in a clan war. A clan was lasts two days. The first day is a preparation day where members can get their towns ready and give each other troops for the war. The next day is when you can actually attack each other. Each member gets to launch two attacks against members of the other teams. Each attack gets judged by how much destruction is caused and given up to three stars.  The team that gets the most amount of stars wins the war.

                Clash of Clans isn’t a completely free game. There is also another resource called gems that you can buy using real world money. Gems are used to speed up every part of the game. They can also be used to buy more of the other resources. Gems can also be collected by completing quests or randomly given out when clearing obstacles. However you don’t really get a lot and the easiest way to get them is by buying them. Many of the newer free games have an aspect of the game that you have to spend real money on. Many people don’t like this because they are all advertised as free games even though you have to spend money to get good at the game. Also in a game like Clash of Clans it can give players an unfair advantage. Many people think that games should be fair and they think that spending money to get an advantage is unfair and shouldn’t be allowed.

(Word Count: 467)

Supreme Commander 2

                Supreme Commander 2 is a game that was released it 2010. This used to be a game that I played all the time. This game was developed by Gas Powered Games and was released by Square Enix. This game was first released to Steam and then later came out for Xbox.

                Supreme Commander 2 is a real-time strategy game. You don’t play as a certain character you just control all the different units on the field. You start out with a lone Command Unit which you can use to build buildings which produce resources. The two resources that all building use are energy and mass. Your Command Unit can also build factories which produce units that you use to fight. You can build three types of factories; land, air, and sea. Each of these factories build different units but all of them can build engineers. Engineers can also build buildings. All three of the factories can be upgraded which unlocks more units. The highest level of engineer can create experimental units which are the most powerful units but take a very long time to build and requires an excess amount of resources. The main goal of the game is to destroy the opponents Command Unit.

                Supreme Commander 2 also has a single player mode where you join one of the three armies and go through missions where each mission you unlock more units but the enemy also gets harder to defeat. I never really liked the campaign in this game however. I don’t really think that this is the type of game that needs to have a single player mode. However I did really like playing the skirmish mode. This is basically a mode where you get to decide every aspect of a battle. You get to decide the map, how many players, and what you have to do to win. You can play against the computer or play against other real players.

                I have always really enjoyed this game. However there is a very steep learning curve. When you first start out you will have no idea what you’re doing. The campaign is very good at teaching you how to play but it can get boring just playing with the very basics. There are also tutorial videos that you can watch but you can’t skip through them and watching all of them takes a very long time. Once you figure out how to play the game gets very fun. Only play this game if you have a lot of patience however. Most games that you play will take over an hour and some will take a lot longer. Building really powerful units can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes if not longer.  You don’t have to play a game all in one sitting if you are playing the computer however. You can save a game and then continue playing later on.

(Word Choice: 485)

Hitman: Absolution

                 Hitman: Absolution is the fifth game in the Hitman game series. This game was released is 2012 and was published by Square Enix. This game takes place shortly after the last game and has the same characters and just continues the story line from the last game.

                In this game you play as an elite assassin that just goes by the name of Agent 47. Agent 47 is part of a group of assassins in a group known as the Agency. In this game the Agency gets a new director who gives out missions that 47 doesn’t agree with. 47 goes rogue against the Agency in an attempt to protect a 14 year old girl named Victoria. 47 later finds out that Victoria is genetically modified by the agency to be a new type of super assassin. 47 has to protect Victoria from the many people that want to kidnap her. He is also trying to take out the people in the Agency that are corrupt.

                Hitman: Absolution is a third-person stealth game. The whole idea of this game is to not get seen by enemies. There are many different ways to do that. You can hide behind objects and then just sneak past them if you want. Or you can find a way to turn off the lights and just walk past the guards. Or you can find an outfit that matches the people around you so you can blend in with them. If you put the right outfit on than everyone will just ignore you unless you get too close. You can also activate Instinct Mode which allows you to see enemies through walls and to see where they are going to walk. This is very helpful because it allows you to see enemies that you didn’t know were there. It also lets you see which places are safe to hide in because you know that the guards won’t walk over there.

                This game is actually pretty hard. There will be sometimes when it seems next to impossible to get past the guards without getting caught. Sometimes it will take many tries to get past a room. There will probably be times when you get so frustrated that you give up trying to do it stealthily and just run past the guards. The game also feels very set up at some points. There will be things that are very obviously set up for you to use them. The guards might happen to just look over the edge of a cliff or there might be a guard right next to a trap that you can lure them into.

(Word Count: 441)

Team Fortress 2

               In 2007 the game Team Fortress 2 got released. This game is a sequel to a mod for the game Quake. It was released as part of a group of games compiled into a box called The Orange Box. Other games in the Orange Box include Half Life 2 and Portal. Team Fortress 2 was developed by Valve and was distributed using Steam.

                Team Fortress 2 is a first-person shooter where players are split into two teams, Red and Blu. The two teams then compete for a principal objective. A few examples of this are capture the flag or capture the points where a team has to capture a point and then defend it while the other team tries to capture the point away from them. My favorite game mode is one where you have to push a payload past the other team’s defenses. You push the payload by standing near it. Team Fortress has a very famous multiplayer map. It is called 2Fort. It is many people’s favorite map (including mine) and is a perfect map for capture the flag.

                One of my favorite things about Team Fortress 2 is the art style. The art style is very cartoony and very stylized. There aren’t many games that look like Team Fortress 2 does. This game was originally going to be a lot more realistic looking but the development team changed it to a more cartoon look. This was a really good change. I think that if they stayed with the realistic look than Team Fortress 2 wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is. The cartoony look and kind of humorous parts of the game makes it a lot more fun to play. This game is still very popular now even though it came out 8 years ago. One of the reasons for this is all the items that you can find and use. These items vary in rarity and usefulness. The game has its own economic system with people trading items all the time. There are even websites that tell you how much it should cost to trade a certain item with someone.

                This game doesn’t really have much of a story to it in game. They make up for this by releasing videos that showcase each of the different characters you can play. These videos are called “Meet the Team”. The videos show the characters backstories or showcase their special abilities. These videos are very funny and entertaining to watch. The developers even took some of the stuff from the videos and added gameplay elements from them.

(Word Count: 432)

Minecraft

Minecraft is one of the most popular games out there. One of the interesting things about Minecraft is that it was first created by only guy. He was a Swedish programmer named Markus Persson who gave himself the nickname Notch. He then founded a company called Mojang which worked on Minecraft. He decided to leave Notch after they got bought out by Microsoft.

                Minecraft is a sandbox game that gives its players the ability to build anything that they want. Minecraft is split into two main game modes, survival and creative. Survival mode is what Minecraft was originally created as. In survival mode, players have to collect resources and build items or shelters using the resources that you collect. The first resource that you want to start collecting is wood. You use wood to build the starting tools that you need to collect other resources. You can build a pickaxe to mine stone and then you can use that stone to build a stronger pickaxe that can mine more materials. One thing that is special about survival mode is that at night monsters come out. If you get too close to one of the monsters they will start attacking you. Some examples of these monsters are zombies, skeletons, or the infamous creeper. Creepers come at you and will explode when they get close. This can destroy anything that you happen to be working on.

                Creative mode is a mode where players get an infinite amount of resources and the ability to fly. Creative mode allows the player to focus on building things and gives players the ability to create very large structures in a relatively short amount of time. Players don’t have a health bar so they can’t be damaged by monsters or falling. In survival mode players have a food bar so they have to eat food constantly but in creative mode players don’t need to worry about that. Another mode that you can play is called adventure mode. Adventure mode is used to play custom maps made by other players. Adventure mode is similar to survival mode but restricts some of the other things players can do which lets them play as the mapmaker intended. Another mode is hardcore mode. Hardcore mode is exactly like survival mode except you can’t respawn. In survival mode if you die you come back at the last bed that you slept in. However in hardcore mode you can’t come back and if you die then your world is deleted.

                Minecraft is a very fun game when you first start it out. There is a very steep learning curve to this game. There is no tutorial so you have to just try and figure things out for yourself. There are many times that will surprise you. The first time you meet a creeper will freak you out. Also your first time finding diamond can be very exciting. However after you play for a little while and figure everything out this game can get kind of boring. You pretty much just do the same thing over and over again. Creative mode can continue to be fun though if you are creative enough to build cool structures.

(Word Count: 534)

New Topic For Blog

                This trimester I decided to change my blog a lot. I got really tired of writing about movies every week. You could probably already tell this by looking at my blog and seeing that the number of blogs I did decreased a lot in the second trimester. I figured that the only way to get me to write more blogs was to write about something else that I like. I decided that a good, fun topic would be games.

                Every blog I wrote about movies felt the same. Even though they were each about different movies, the layout of the blogs were pretty much the same. I got so tired of this and never wanted to write my blogs. I also started running out of movies to write blogs about. I watch a lot of movies but I don’t watch three of them a week. I started having to write about movies I watched a long time ago which made writing the blogs even harder. Remembering the details of the movies was difficult and remembering how I felt about it the first time I watched it was nearly impossible.

                Video games seemed to be an easy jump from movies. They are both forms of entertainment that I enjoy and both fairly easy to write about. I was also able to keep the name of my blog because the person that it’s from has a lot to do with video games as well. I think this new topic will help refresh my blog. The blogs will be better because I’m excited about my topic and will actually like writing about. This will help me actually get all of my blogs done and will hopefully help my AP Lang grade be better. I just hope that I will still enjoy this topic by the end of the trimester.

(Word Count: 308)