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)

Edge of Tommorrow

               Edge of Tomorrow is an action movie that came out in 2014. This film is based on the Japanese novel, All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. This film was directed by Doug Liman and starred Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. This film grossed about $369 million worldwide.

                This movie takes place during a war between humans and aliens. This war starts after aliens called mimics show up and invade Europe. They quickly take over all of Europe and threaten to take over the entire world. However the United Defense Force invents a new, advanced exoskeleton battle suit. The United Defense Force plans to equip a ton of soldiers with this battle suit and invade the beach of France. The head of the United Defense Force orders Major Cage to go with the invasion and cover it for the media. After refusing to do this, Major Cage gets knocked out and wakes up in an army base full of soldiers getting ready for the invasion.

                Somehow the aliens knew that the humans were going to invade and had a large defense waiting for them. The invasion goes terribly for the humans as they just get constantly slaughtered by the powerful aliens. As Cage dies, he kills a large, blue mimic and gets sprayed with the alien’s blood. He then wakes up at the army base just like he had the day before. He tries to tell everyone that the invasion is going to fail but no one believes him. He then relieves the invasion over and over again and every time he dies, he wakes up at the army base again. He eventually meets this girl who tells him that he keeps coming back because he killed an alpha alien and got its blood on him. She also tells him that there is an Omega alien that acts as the alien’s hive mind. She tells him that they have to hunt down this Omega alien and kill it because it is the only way that they can win the war.

                I really enjoyed this movie. The premise that someone could come back from the dead and try their day over again is a really cool idea. I really liked all the comedy aspects of this film as well. The squad that Cage was forced to join was filled with really funny people. Also the captain of the squad was the stereotypical type of captain. He was really weird when he was talking about combat and stuff but also took no nonsense from his squad. He was one of those captains that was hard to take seriously because he was so weird. Another comedic part of this film was the ways that he died. He often would die in kind of funny ways and it was also funny watching him try to convince his squad of what had happened but no one would ever believe him. One thing that I wonder about this movie was how many times did he have to restart his day? Every time you saw him already know that something was going to happen, it meant that he had been there already and failed at it once.

                One thing that I kind of didn’t like about this movie was the ending. I didn’t understand how he got to wake up after the Omega had died. I know that he got covered in the alpha’s blood but that doesn’t explain why he woke up earlier than he had woken up all the other times. Also the only reason that he woke up the other times was because of the Omega so I don’t understand why it happened when the Omega was dead. Also it doesn’t make sense that he went back in time but the Omega was still dead after he woke up. To me this just felt like a cop out way to keep the character alive at the end of the movie to make the audience happy. However I would have rather had him die at the end and had a different ending shot.

(Word Count: 681)

The Interview Controversy

                The Interview is a new movie that stars Seth Rogan and James Franco. I haven’t seen The Interview yet and all I know about the story of it is that Seth Rogan and James Franco are hired by the CIA to assassinate Kim-Jong-Um, the leader of North Korea. However this sparked a lot of controversy throughout the world.

                The North Korean government, for obvious reasons, didn’t like this movie at all. They said that they saw the movie as a threat to them which they said they would not tolerate. A North Korean news agency asked President Obama to have the film pulled. There were some rumors that Sony Pictures made altercations to the film to make it less offensive to the Koreans. It was rumored that they were going to cut a part of the Kim-Jong-Um death scene so it wouldn’t make him as mad.

                The film was set to release on December 16 but was delayed after hackers hacked Sony. This hack stole a lot of Sony’s information about past and future movies. The hackers also threatened to bomb theatres if Sony decided to release the movie. The hackers threatened that their attack would be as bad or worse than 9/11. After these threats were made many movie theatre chains didn’t want to show the movie for fear of the safety of their customers. Sony came out and said that they wouldn’t object if theatres delayed or got rid of their movie. After many large movie chains decided not to show the movie, Sony just cancelled the release of The Interview completely. They said that they had no plans to release it at all including other ways of showing it such as Netflix or home video.

                Many people in America didn’t like Sony’s decision to pull the Interview. Many people saw it as admitting that North Korea had a lot of power over us. Freedom of Expression is a big deal in America and many people didn’t like that this freedom was taken away by terrorists. President Obama even came out and said that he thought Sony should have released the Interview. Even though I agree with what these people are saying I also understand why they decided to not release it. I believe that they didn’t really have a choice. Many of the theatres that were going to show it refused to show it. The release would then have been lowered down to just small theatres. This would have extremely lowered Sony’s revenue from the release. I thought that Sony would just wait until the whole thing dies down and then just do a full, big release of it.

(Word Count: 442)

Divergent

In March of 2014 a new movie series got started out with a movie named Divergent. Divergent was directed by Neil Burger and had an $85 million budget. This movie is based off a book by Veronica Roth which was also titled Divergent.

Divergent is based in a future post-apocalyptic society that is very different from our society today. They population of the future society is split up into five different faction. These factions each had different jobs and different characteristics. The 5 groups were split by the characteristics: selfless, peaceful, honest, brave, and intelligent. When children get to an old enough age they get to choose which faction they want to join. They can choose whatever faction they want but they get to have an aptitude test that tells the kids which faction they would be best fit in.

Divergent is about a girl named Beatrice who is just getting to the age that she has to choose which faction she wants. However when she takes the test, the test tells her three different factions. Beatrice then finds out that some people get multiple factions and their test and that it is called Divergent. She also finds out that it is dangerous being Divergent because the government can’t control them so the government see them as threats. Beatrice then decides to join the brave faction and starts to train with them. She has to train really hard because the people at the bottom of the group get kicked out of the faction and have to live on the streets. She manages to make it into the faction but then discovers that many of the higher ups are corrupt. She also discovers that there is a plot made up by the intelligent to rebel against the government, kill lots of people, and take over control.

When I first watched this movie I had no idea what I was going to go see. As I am not a big reader, I had not even heard of the books. I never saw the trailer for the movie so I had no idea what the movie was about. The only thing that I knew about this movie was that many people were excited to see it. I think that not knowing anything about the movie before seeing it, made the movie even better. I think that if I had been told what the movie was about beforehand I would have gotten my own ideas of what the movie would have looked like. Then I would be kind of disappointed since the movie isn’t exactly like what was in my head. Having no preconceived notations the movie made the whole movie a surprise and a very good one too.

(Word Count: 457)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

                In April of 2014 the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger came out. This movie was called Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This movie was produced by Kevin Feige and had a $170 million dollar budget. This movie was produced by Marvel Studios and was the ninth movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

                The story of this movie takes place a few years after the Avengers took place. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, is working for the agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, Shield’s director, starts to get suspicious of Shield after he is unable to find out information about Project Insight. Project Insight was the plan to launch three airships that would be able to eliminate terrorists. Nick Fury gets attacked by a group of assailants but is able to escape to Roger’s apartment. Fury tells Rogers that Shield is compromised but then gets killed by an assassin called the Winter Soldier. Shield starts to hunt down Rogers but he finds Black Widow and they go to a secret Shield bunker. There they find out that Shield was full of spies from a group named Hydra. They also find out that Shield is planning to kill millions of people who they think might someday be a threat to them. Captain America and Black Widow get Falcon to join them as they work together to take out the three airships that Hydra was launching.

                I enjoyed this movie as much if not more than I did the first one. One thing that I liked about this movie more than the first one was that this movie took place in the modern era. The first movie took place during WWII which was cool but I like the modern theme of the sequel better. Another thing that I liked about this movie was all the references to other Marvel movies. There were many mentions of the other Avengers and of what happened in the Avengers movie. They also brought in other Marvel characters to be a part of the movie. Captain America found Black Widow and she helped him throughout the entire movie. Another character that helps Captain America is Falcon who is a superhero from the Marvel Comic Books.

                One thing that I didn’t really like about this movie was that the story was kind of hard to understand. The first time I watched the movie I had a hard time following the story. I got really confused at the beginning when Nick Fury got attacked. I didn’t even understand where he was going and then next thing I know he is being attacked by a group of police. This really confused me the first time I watched the movie.

(Word Count: 452)