I can't stand it. I just had too much fun thinking of what to write for my cinquain for English class. A cinquain is a strict, word-limiting poem describing a noun. The first line is the item, the second line is two adjectives describing it, the third line is three gerunds or present participles (-ing words) that describe the item's actions, the forth is a short four word phrase pertaining to the item, and the fifth line is one alternate word for the item that sums it up. Here's mine.
Wii
Interactive Childish
Annoying Gaming Flailing
Do a Barrel Roll
Nintendo
****Update**** 1/18/08
My teacher seemed quite a bit disappointed with my poem. Her response was "...Okay...and I really liked the Wii." I think she misunderstood my position. I love the Wii. I'd choose it over the Xbox 360 any day of the week, even Tuesday. What I was getting at was just the fact that you don't normally see anyone over 30 flailing his or her arms like a lunatic, and then calling that having a good time. I dunno, maybe it only seems immature to me. I don't have a problem doing it, but I'm pretty sure most of the adult world would see it as "childish" like I said. I think my teacher sees the words "childish" and "annoying" as much worse than they actually are. I'm just sayin'...maybe less arm flailing and more sword slashing would be nice, eh Nintendo?
*****Fin****
For my English teacher, if you have found this online through some sort of plagiarism checker, I will identify this as mine. Just ask me.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
Diablo
I know I'm about a decade too late to talk about this 1998 Blizzard game, but I got to playing it again a few days ago, so here we go. I played the game as a kid when it came out, so I have almost as much reverence for it as I do for Dungeon Keeper (the bestest game ev4r). There are several games that I played as a kid that I never really beat without cheating because of my pathetic attention span. Diablo would be one of those. But now, since I'm much more mature and ....what was I talking about?
So, the game is about an adventurer that just gets back from some trip. It's a good thing he/she has returned too, because there are evil critters roamin' free across the church at the edge of town. It's a darned shame too, because the entire town feels that you should go do something about it. Apparently, a group of the townspeople have already tried, but didn't hardly make it past level 2 of the Labyrinth under the church. It's a good thing you are seen as completely capable of doing what half the town (including the weapons smith) couldn't do entirely by yourself. Hey, why not?
You find out through a series of inconspicuously placed tomes (which are lit up like the Eiffel Tower on New Year's in dark tunnels and caves) that the cause of all these critters breaking loose in the church and its labyrinth is some disgruntled employee from hell getting into a fight about rent with his two brothers. I guess the church seemed like a good place to chill for a bit. While this demon fled from his brothers, who got trapped in some soul stones by some other warriors...that didn't care enough to go get this demon, Diablo decided to possess the King's son and restore himself to his former glory in Hell. Another darned shame, because you are questing to post an eviction notice on his door. Way to ruin a guy's day, eh?
So anyways, the game play is pretty straight forward, you get to pick one of three classes at the beginning. I like to think of the different classes as difficulty levels instead of types of characters. The rogue is the easiest to be: just a matter of pointing and clicking the enemies. She's an archer, so you are rarely in any danger from anything. The medium character is the warrior: he's a big guy who thinks that getting up in a monster's face will scare them into not attacking. He can take a beating though, which is good because beating are all over the place. Finally, the sorcerer is your standard magic user in any game: squishy. Being the mage-haters that Blizzard is, he's terrible. Health and armor are completely unnecessary when you can't even survive long enough to cast one of your spells. I usually pick the warrior, because magic and I rarely get along...unless it involves some kind of immolation spell.
I enjoy playing the game, but the storage system is a little lame. There's no rotating items, and your strength has nothing to do with your storage amount. Ultimately, throwing down useful items in town is the best space saver. Just come back to town (via portal) whenever you have a full inventory of magical items that need to be identified by the town elder...who knows everything. Money is scarce in the beginning of the game, but towards the end you have to actually work hard to spend it all. The best part of the game is certainly the ending, however. While I won't spoil how it ends (Diablo 2 does that just fine), I will tell you that this is the first and best example of a game that has a special feature and reward for beating it: you restart the game with all your current stats and equipment. While you might think it is completely lame to have to play the entire game all the way through again, I think it's the funniest thing to run through a level with hordes of skeletons and demons throwing themselves upon you and missing or doing no damage with each hit. You give early bosses a funny look and they practically explode. Because of this game's early exposure to me, I refer to all games that take the retroactive-stat-restart as having "Diablo Syndrome." Thank you, Diablo, for your contribution to my identification of good replay values.
Rating: B
So, the game is about an adventurer that just gets back from some trip. It's a good thing he/she has returned too, because there are evil critters roamin' free across the church at the edge of town. It's a darned shame too, because the entire town feels that you should go do something about it. Apparently, a group of the townspeople have already tried, but didn't hardly make it past level 2 of the Labyrinth under the church. It's a good thing you are seen as completely capable of doing what half the town (including the weapons smith) couldn't do entirely by yourself. Hey, why not?
You find out through a series of inconspicuously placed tomes (which are lit up like the Eiffel Tower on New Year's in dark tunnels and caves) that the cause of all these critters breaking loose in the church and its labyrinth is some disgruntled employee from hell getting into a fight about rent with his two brothers. I guess the church seemed like a good place to chill for a bit. While this demon fled from his brothers, who got trapped in some soul stones by some other warriors...that didn't care enough to go get this demon, Diablo decided to possess the King's son and restore himself to his former glory in Hell. Another darned shame, because you are questing to post an eviction notice on his door. Way to ruin a guy's day, eh?
So anyways, the game play is pretty straight forward, you get to pick one of three classes at the beginning. I like to think of the different classes as difficulty levels instead of types of characters. The rogue is the easiest to be: just a matter of pointing and clicking the enemies. She's an archer, so you are rarely in any danger from anything. The medium character is the warrior: he's a big guy who thinks that getting up in a monster's face will scare them into not attacking. He can take a beating though, which is good because beating are all over the place. Finally, the sorcerer is your standard magic user in any game: squishy. Being the mage-haters that Blizzard is, he's terrible. Health and armor are completely unnecessary when you can't even survive long enough to cast one of your spells. I usually pick the warrior, because magic and I rarely get along...unless it involves some kind of immolation spell.
I enjoy playing the game, but the storage system is a little lame. There's no rotating items, and your strength has nothing to do with your storage amount. Ultimately, throwing down useful items in town is the best space saver. Just come back to town (via portal) whenever you have a full inventory of magical items that need to be identified by the town elder...who knows everything. Money is scarce in the beginning of the game, but towards the end you have to actually work hard to spend it all. The best part of the game is certainly the ending, however. While I won't spoil how it ends (Diablo 2 does that just fine), I will tell you that this is the first and best example of a game that has a special feature and reward for beating it: you restart the game with all your current stats and equipment. While you might think it is completely lame to have to play the entire game all the way through again, I think it's the funniest thing to run through a level with hordes of skeletons and demons throwing themselves upon you and missing or doing no damage with each hit. You give early bosses a funny look and they practically explode. Because of this game's early exposure to me, I refer to all games that take the retroactive-stat-restart as having "Diablo Syndrome." Thank you, Diablo, for your contribution to my identification of good replay values.
Rating: B
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The Wikipedia Game
While it may seem that all I do is play video games and watch anime, I would like to inform you that I also do many other more active things such as breathing, eating, and sleeping. However, my sleeping has been rather lousy as of late, and that takes up a lot of my time, so I decided to Wiki (the action of using wikipedia.org to inform one's self of an area, event, or item with little effort) some methods of falling asleep more quickly. Whenever I use Wikipedia, I can rarely just look at one article. This recognition of my low attention span has now become "The Wikipedia Game."
Step 1: Become curious about something. That's right, you can't start unless you have something you want to know about. Even if it's something that you've looked up already, there are different paths to take this time around. I guarantee it.
Step 2: Satisfy that curiosity with a single, direct article from Wikipedia. It's not hard to get your answers from the great Wiki, so place your faith upon its digital pages, and you will be rewarded with a wealth of knowledge (if you can't find your answer, it doesn't matter. Even if your attention span is better than mine, you'll probably get sidetracked with something way more interesting than the answer to your question anyways).
Step 3: Click on the most interesting link to another Wikipedia article on the site. Whether you choose to finish the current article you're on or not, you need to continue the chain. I would advise sticking slightly to topic at first, but as you get better at the game, click on some entirely unrelated links. *Warning* Do not leave the sanctity of Wikipedia by clicking on the "External Links" section. It's a nasty world out there on the Internets, and I wouldn't want any one of my beloved (four) readers getting viruses that stop them from reading my amazing posts.
Step 4: Get bored. All good things must come to an end. Whether it's your mom calling for dinner, or you are just too tired to continue on, eventually you will stop this easter egg hunt for knowledge. This is where the fun begins (for those of you who just don't like learning).
Step 5: Climb your chain. With me, it's usually 10-15 articles I go through before finishing up. Write down the last one and work your way back to the Wikipedia homepage, writing down all the articles you read along the way.
Step 6: Bask in some glory. Stare at that piece of paper and think about all you learned and read today. Doesn't that just make you feel like someone who is smarter than you are? The best part about it is: you are that smarter person now!
So, as an example, my Wikipedia Game score sheet looks like this: Sleep - Sleep Apnea - Dream - Lucid Dream - Near Death Experience - Out of body experience - meditation - Bahá'í Faith - Monasticism - Christian Monasticism - Heremetic Life - Recluse - Hikikomori - Dysthymia
As you can see, this is quite a list and kept me occupied a good 2 hours. Less expensive and more informative than a video game, yet it's usually only information that won't even show up on Jeopardy. I wouldn't advise this game for parties, but it's fun to try and do the same thing with conversations with people, and it shows them that's you're listening. Go on, give it a whirl!
Step 1: Become curious about something. That's right, you can't start unless you have something you want to know about. Even if it's something that you've looked up already, there are different paths to take this time around. I guarantee it.
Step 2: Satisfy that curiosity with a single, direct article from Wikipedia. It's not hard to get your answers from the great Wiki, so place your faith upon its digital pages, and you will be rewarded with a wealth of knowledge (if you can't find your answer, it doesn't matter. Even if your attention span is better than mine, you'll probably get sidetracked with something way more interesting than the answer to your question anyways).
Step 3: Click on the most interesting link to another Wikipedia article on the site. Whether you choose to finish the current article you're on or not, you need to continue the chain. I would advise sticking slightly to topic at first, but as you get better at the game, click on some entirely unrelated links. *Warning* Do not leave the sanctity of Wikipedia by clicking on the "External Links" section. It's a nasty world out there on the Internets, and I wouldn't want any one of my beloved (four) readers getting viruses that stop them from reading my amazing posts.
Step 4: Get bored. All good things must come to an end. Whether it's your mom calling for dinner, or you are just too tired to continue on, eventually you will stop this easter egg hunt for knowledge. This is where the fun begins (for those of you who just don't like learning).
Step 5: Climb your chain. With me, it's usually 10-15 articles I go through before finishing up. Write down the last one and work your way back to the Wikipedia homepage, writing down all the articles you read along the way.
Step 6: Bask in some glory. Stare at that piece of paper and think about all you learned and read today. Doesn't that just make you feel like someone who is smarter than you are? The best part about it is: you are that smarter person now!
So, as an example, my Wikipedia Game score sheet looks like this: Sleep - Sleep Apnea - Dream - Lucid Dream - Near Death Experience - Out of body experience - meditation - Bahá'í Faith - Monasticism - Christian Monasticism - Heremetic Life - Recluse - Hikikomori - Dysthymia
As you can see, this is quite a list and kept me occupied a good 2 hours. Less expensive and more informative than a video game, yet it's usually only information that won't even show up on Jeopardy. I wouldn't advise this game for parties, but it's fun to try and do the same thing with conversations with people, and it shows them that's you're listening. Go on, give it a whirl!
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