Have you got Final Fantasy XIII yet ? If you haven’t nows the perfect time to pick up a bargain from Fishpond. At the moment they have a special on both Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
You can pick up either version for only $74.95 AUD !! THATS right and thats with FREE Delivery anywhere in Australia !!
Enter the following redeem code to get the $10 off when you make your order !! CODE : FFXIII
Good news PC gamers! Breach is also coming to the PC, but 6 weeks after it comes to XBLA. Atomic Games have stated that it will only be available via digital distribution, but they have not determined which distributor.
I hope games for windows, that way PC gamers can play against Xbox gamers and the online community will last even longer!
Well, it is Sunday here in the United States, and I have another analytical article for you guys. I say analytical , because these are based heavily in my analysis or the analysis of a group which I then in turn analyze in further depth. Some of you may find them interesting, while others of you don’t really care. Either way, everything you are about to read is based on analysis, true stories, and a bit of fact.
This article is an abridged version of a psychology paper I did for my college class. I got 30 out of 33 possible points because I messed up on the format of my paper (can you believe that he actually took a ruler and docked me points just because my border wasn’t 1 inch by 1 inch?). Enjoy the part that focuses on video games to reduce stress.
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Stress, Health, and Video Games
Stress is the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging. Many people become stressed when they are faced with a problem that they must overcome. Every stress that we face requires a fight or flight path. We can either stand and fight or run and take flight. These choices are based solely on a human desire to survive. The survival tactic is written into our DNA and was mostly prevalent during the times that our life was in constant danger from enemies or other dangers. The problem these days stands on the fact that danger is all around us and we can neither fight it nor flee from it. Since danger is always abundant, even if we don’t notice it, our body is in a constant stressful state. Our bodies interpret our reactions to certain challenges as stressful and flings us into a state of fight or flight, but in our society we are usually unable to do either. The buildup of adrenaline from the fight or flight state is meant to keep us alive, but when we do not use the adrenaline it festers and can be unleashed by accident at inappropriate times which will create even more problems.
The problem lies when we are unable to vent the access adrenaline, this creates health problems that can lead to problems in the future such as a weakened immune system, ulcers, or even cancer*. There are many ways to vent the adrenaline and video games are one of them. Video games have gotten a bad reputation over the years by parents and media who can only see the bad aspects of video games, but video games can actually increase our health and well being with moderate use. If used properly video games can help reduce the stress in our life by three main uses. The first use is by venting our frustrations into the game, the AI within a game can not feel pain and can be killed and yelled at as desired. This use has to be guarded; however, because we must keep in mind at all times that the game isn’t real. Some people seem to be unable to tell the difference between a video game and reality and merge the two together, but that is a totally different topic of discussion. The second use is by temporarily escaping reality. Many people already do this by reading a book, but we can also succeed in escaping all the agonies within life by playing video games, envelop yourself in the game and give your body time to calm down and function properly. By giving your body this time to cool down, it will be healthier in the long run. Remember that escaping reality is only temporary and a firm enough grasp on reality must be maintained in order to return. This is also known as meditating to many cultures, video games are just an extremely good median. The final use is nullification. When you play video games your body creates a different kind of stress that is extremely small. The stress caused by video games can act like a vaccination towards stress of that type. A good example of this is Xbox Live, the kids yelling and screaming at you through their microphones creates a slight stress that you may not even notice. The small amount of stress caused by their yelling will actually reduce the amount of stress you receive when being yelled at in the future.
Don’t be mistaken though, too much gaming is extremely unhealthy. The key to gaming is moderation. Gaming is fun and relaxing but there are other functions of life that must be sought after as well. Don’t let physical health deteriorate, exercise. Exercising doesn’t have to be running every morning and lifting weights, the most basic way to stay physically healthy is by weighing yourself on a weekly basis. If the weight changes one week exercise a bit more to balance it out. Both the reduction of weight and the increase in weight are bad to certain aspects. Working out a lot will indeed increase your weight as muscle mass weighs more than body fat, but if you are not working out a lot then an increase in weight would mean fat is beginning to build up and you should work out more to burn it off. A decrease in weight is also bad. A decrease in weight could mean one of two things, either muscle mass is being lost or the body is deteriorating, both can be fixed by exercising. Don’t forget to eat healthy as well; don’t eat junk food as you play video games. Personally I am not very active, but I don’t eat fattening food either. I usually have a tall glass of grapefruit juice next to me and a cup of oats for a snack while gaming. Finally stay social, online gaming has made this extremely easy to do while gaming but you should still socialize outside of the video game every once in a while. Humans are very social creatures and it is healthy to socialize face to face every once in a while.
*I explained the reasons behind the problems in more depth in my entire paper, but the paper was about 10,000 words long, and I have only pulled out the video game oriented sections in order to cut the entire article down to under 1000 words.
Overview:
Evil is spreading around the town of Emporion, and the Personal Knights, better known as PKs, must defend the city and fight against the mysterious evil that is beginning to grip the continent of Epion. You play Zach, a freshly initiated PK who has a bright future ahead of him, until he delves deeper into the evil that is across the land.
Story:
The story is quite generic when it comes to RPGs, there is an evil in the land and you, a fresh knight is the only hope to destroy the many creatures that wish to do harm to the people of Emporion. The story is driven through various quests that range from killing a certain amount of monsters, to gathering a certain amount of items, by killing monsters. Unfortunately there isn’t any variety among these quests, besides the type of monster to kill or the item you need to retrieve. There is one other type of quest, though this one is simply to find the next person you have to speak with to receive the next step of said quest.
All the quests in the game involve the murdering of monsters in the thousands. The quests are unfortunately very basic and all come from the only town in the game Emporion. Each npc has the potential to award you with a quest. Ironically the game plays the debt card, as the very first quest you receive is to pay back $100,000 to the local bank, though it may be a side quest. Quests are given to you whenever you speak to an npc with a yellow ! above their head, and then if there is a gray ?, the quest is still being done, and a yellow ? means the quest is completed and to retrieve your reward.
Graphics:
The graphics are definitely the high point of the game. Visually everything is amazingly well done and carries with it a bit of an anime flare, though this takes nothing away from the game. The environments that you fight in are all extremely diverse and whether it be forest, swamp, desert, or dungeon they environment is always top notch.
The character models are crisp and are amazingly well designed for an Ipod game. The battle movements of Zach are fluid and allow for no break in the action due to any character issues. Not only that but when in town and you converse with another NPC, a large picture of the person you are speaking with is displayed in the right of the screen.
There is a large variety of the original monsters you see for the first time. They are just as crisp as the character models, however they do start to get repetitious since the further along your journey brings Zach, the more similar the monsters begin to look. A large variety of the monsters are simple palette swaps but even though that may be the case, the enemies still look amazing without any errors.
One of my favorite things in games has always been when the playable character’s appearance changes in accordance to the armor and equipment that is being used. Zach’s pants, gauntlet, top, and weapons all change according to what Zach is currently wearing. This can vary from just a simple color change, to an entire wardrobe change, plus the potential for a different hair color oddly enough.
Audio:
Having a variety of music inside of the game is always a great thing, and Caligo Chaser accomplishes that. There is a different back ground music for each area type, and though some of them are short and repeat, they each compliment their own area. There is no actual voice acting in the game aside from the occasional greeting when conversation with an npc is first initialized.
Gameplay:
This is a classic side scrolling beat em up, with rpg elements mixed in. As you travel to the various maps, you will have a tiny map indicator in the top right and that shows where the enemies are, and where you are. Once the enemies are defeated, you must continue traveling towards the right always to continue fighting until the area is finished.
Once an area is completed you are given a grade depending on how good, or bad, you fought in that area. You are awarded points for less damage taken, combo level reached, style, as well as bonus for specific attacks used. These grades award you with up to three treasure chests at the end of the area with random items and money contained inside. Needless to say the better looking the treasure chest, the better the reward.
These specific attacks that you can use are your dash attack, and gauntlet attack. The dash attack is simple. A double tap on the d-pad in the left or right direction will make Zach dash in that direction, with a press of the attack button will perform the dash attack. While the gauntlet attack is a charged punch which deals heavy damage to your opponents.
In combat, the controls falter and can lead to some combo breaking moments. The d-pad is unresponsive when it comes to the dash attack. Sometimes you will be double tapping multiple times to simply dash once and execute the attack. Other times you will be pushing the gauntlet attack and it will not register, which is a small issue when you are in combat.
The game also includes a variety of different attack skills and passive skills, with various upgrades between them. These skills are quite powerful when used and can devastate your opponents. There is also a combination shop, where Zach can combine various items he has acquired in his battles into stronger equipment or skills themselves. This feature is quite nice and will constantly have you checking what you have in your inventory to see if you should make something in the combination shop.
Overall: Caligo Chaser is a very enjoyable side scrolling fighter, and brings along a few extra features that will have you coming back for more. Except for the lack of intuitive quests and a few unresponsive buttons, Caligo Chaser is one of the best in it’s class for iPhone/iPod Touch RPGs.
I give Caligo Chaser for the iPhone – iPod Touch a scrolling
So you have all had time to play the Splinter Cell: Conviction Demo. Well, below you will see me running through the demo on realistic in under 10 minutes (quite literally running, I tried to do it steathily… but you know… that never lasts). The opening cutscene, the interrogation, the demo, the scientist being threatened, and the ending cinematic and trailer. In my opinion that is way too short of a demo. Below the video you will find my thoughts on the demo and the gameplay mechanics.
Demo Thoughts
The demo was way to short, and required way too much memory for it’s short length. Having to watch the video and interrogation every time I wanted to play got annoying. Yeah, the interrogation is fancy and kinda cool, but it wears off very quickly.
Gameplay Thoughts
There are also many choices you could make towards beating the demo, but once you find the best route you hardly stray from it.
Even on Realistic it isn’t that hard, I messed up twice and i was still have to quickly recover before dieing. I managed to kill everyone before losing that much health.
With the new target system, killing people has become way too easy.
Tools are still completely useless, as you can see i didn’t use any in my runthrough. I could’ve but it would have been more hassle than anything.
I dislike the sensitivity to actions, sometimes you’ll want to do one action with ‘A’ but it will have you do something else.
Killing people is a much bigger focus, easier instant kills and the ability to target up to 3 people for instant kills makes the game way to easy.
On April 6th, we will be releasing a system update over Xbox LIVE for your Xbox 360 that will allow USB flash drives to be used for storing profiles, game saves, demos and more. I’ve been testing this feature out for a few weeks, and I have to say it’s really great. Once you take the system update on April 6th, you’ll be able to connect your USB flash drives to your console and head over to the memory section to configure your new storage device. Once you do that, the system will conduct a one time performance and integrity check to confirm the drive is working properly. You will then be able to configure how much storage to use on the device, up to 16 GB. The remaining space on the flash drive will be accessible by your PC or Mac. USB Hard drives may work, but like flash memory, you’ll only be able to use up to 16GB of space. Since performance on flash based USB storage is usually better, I highly recommend using flash based instead of spinning media like a hard drive…it’s just going to give you a MUCH better experience.
We’ve also enhanced the memory management functions, so you’ll be able to have better control on what you want to copy or move between storage devices.
A couple of points:
You can have 2 devices connected to the console at a time, enabling up to 32GB of simultaneous storage.
The system won’t just configure the device once it is connected to the console. You’ll need to head to the memory area in system settings, select your USB Device, and choose from Configure Now (Format and Configure the Full Device), or Customize (you can choose how much memory you want configured for Xbox360 from the free space on the device.)
While any flash drive can be used, we are partnering with SanDisk to release an Xbox 360 branded USB flash drive in May that comes pre-configured out of the box and ready to go. I’ll provide links to those drives once they’re available. Until then, starting April 6th (when we release the system update) you can pop any flash drive over 1GB into your Xbox 360 and configure it as storage.”
A video was broadcasted today to Xbox Live Subscribers in the U.K. by valve which stated that Left 4 Dead 2‘s DLC “The Passing” will not be ready by March 31st as stated earlier. Instead now the date has been changed to sometime during the “spring” which is much more vague and gives Valve a much wider window to release the DLC.
Not all bad news however was shown in the video. Now there is at least a price tag accompanying it, 560 MSp, or $7.
There was also news of new features being added in, such as a new weapon called the M-60 anti-personnel rifle. This gun is fearsome in firepower, however has no ability to reload, which means when it’s empty, it’s gone. You can also play golf with zombie eyeballs now as there will be a golf club included with the melee weapons with the purchase of this DLC. Not only that, but you may really want to avoid the new type of witch, this one seems to be crying because she was stood up at the altar with her wedding dress on. Plus the addition of a new special infected, described as an initial survivor who became infected that is loaded with molotov cocktails.
Well, it’s good that they provided the pricing, but it is sad news that they are pushing back this DLC. Especially so close to the initial release date they pushed it back. What does everyone think about the fact it comes with a pricetag like this? And are these new features mentioned now pretty interesting when coupled with The Passing?
The Argus Press has reported on an incident that happened today in a Michigan Middle School.
As it turns out there was a student, whose name is being withheld, at Owossa Middle School has been caught having a suspected “Death Note” with two students names written in them, with specific times for their supposed death. The times for the supposed deaths has already passed, and police state that they believe no one was ever in any actual danger.
Rich Collin’s, the principle of the school, stated that a different boy had found the notebook and gave it to a teacher, who then showed it to a school administrator. This school administrator then notified the police and they suspended the owner of the notebook until further notice.
Death Note is an anime where a Death God, or Shinigami, has dropped a notebook where a human named Light Yagami has found it. After his discovering of the Death Note and its powers he proceeds to murder hundreds of people by writing their names in the notebook, and their time of death making them die of a heart attack, or a written cause of death.
I think this is a bit ridiculous. There is literally nothing that could have happened from such a notebook, though they should still sit down and talk with the child and find out what caused him to write those two other student’s names down to die. This is still draconian though, following such cases as a student being suspended and expelled for bringing a metal butter knife in their lunch, or a toy gun two inches long.
Are schools literally going insane with these no-tolerance policies? This isn’t the first case of a death note being seen at an American school either, there have been over five other cases reported over the past three years. Shouldn’t they be finding the reason that these students wrote these names down in such a manner, instead of punishing them further and potentially causing more psychiatric harm? What do you think?
