A little over a year ago, I was introduced to something that would come to change my life, probably for the worse. At first, I thought it was something innocent and fun, however, it turned sour and harmful very fast. You might be wondering now what this addiction could possibly be. Is it alcohol? Is it vaping? Is it hard drugs? No. It’s Stardew Valley. Now Stardew Valley is a simple 2D game that is a fun and chill game to play where you can farm, forge, mine, fish, befriend villagers, and other calm and relaxing activities, but Progen, how could this chill and relaxing game ruin your life? I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. for some god-forsaken reason, I can not stop playing that stupid game no matter how hard I try it’s physically impossible i am just addicted to the small dopamine I get for completing the quest or when doing another task in the game. I really need to stop because my grades are slipping because of that game along with my mental health.
When I wrote my first blog post about Elden Ring I was about 25% through the game with about 20ish hours on record. Now, 2 or so weeks later, I have 106 hours and I’m almost done with my first playthrough. If I thought that Elden Ring was the peak of gaming at the time, I was wrong, because the mid to end game was getting ready to completely blow me away. The end game of Elden Ring is so fun. There is literally no other game that can feel so fresh even over a hundred hours into this game. Every single boss and area is a fresh and enjoyable challenge. Not only that, but the variety of builds that are possible in Elden Ring is insane. When I first picked up Dark Souls 3 I was bewildered by the variety of builds that I could run, but Elden ring is on another level. Elden Ring gives the players full creative control to switch their build at any time after a certain point, which was also a feature in Dark Souls 3. However, I have never respecked in my multiple playthroughs because it’s simply too short to want to switch builds mid-game so most players just try new builds on their next playthrough. However, the sheer size of Elden Ring almost encourages players to use this feature as switching builds to keep the playthrough fresh even to the end.
Photo Credit: nme.com
The end-game of Elden Ring is honestly my favorite part of the game. Before I got there, there were hundreds of posts all over the internet of people complaining about how unbalanced the late game portion is. I honestly have no idea what these people are talking about. It’s probably because most players don’t level vigor and just get one-shotted by literally every enemy past the Plateau. The Endgame is most definitely very difficult, but the game gives the players all the tools necessary to handle the Endgame. I mean even souls veterans who are well aware of how broken some builds can be are complaining about the difficulty of the endgame and speculating that it wasn’t playtested. I don’t believe that for one second. The increasing challenge of Elden Ring through to the end is exactly what drives me to keep coming back day after day for hours. Being slapped by every boss over and over again, learning their move set, and finally beating them after 10+ is literally the point of a Fromsoftware game. I seriously don’t understand this anti-difficulty sentiment in the Elden Ring community, not only does the game give you all the tools necessary to beat these enemies, but every other Souls or Fromsoftware game is insanely hard. I mean if you look at the Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 DLC or the Sekiro Endgame, these are some of the most difficult bosses in the gaming period. These games have always been about overcoming what seems to be an insurmountable challenge. The point of these games is to die over and over again because these enemies are truly more powerful than you are but through trial and error, eventually, you will beat them and that adrenaline is absolutely unbeatable in gaming. Because Elden Ring is so big, the difficulty had to spike, it had to keep going up so that players had the challenge to overcome. I hate to be that classic Souls series troll, but if you find yourself complaining about the endgame difficulty, git gud shitter.
As many long-time readers are aware I wrote a blog a while back ranking how I felt the people in journalism would perform in our class smash tourney, this ranking list was quite controversial and amongst the class has labeled me as some not to good things. But as it turns out I am relatively good at reading how people will perform.
E.H.
N.J.
A.K.
C.C.
H.L.
Z.D.
S.H.
B.M.
E.S.
The list above was the previous list below is the actual ranking
N.J.
C.C.
Z.D.
H.L.
E.H.
F.A.
E.S.
B.M.
A.K.
I’d like to point out that I was not perfectly accurate but it was pretty damn close for a majority of the people in the tourney (S.H. didn’t play). For starters, I put C.C. under N.J. and that was true Z.D. beat H.L. which I will admit was wrong but I didn’t expect H.L. to lose. E.S. was accidentally given a bypass of the first game by me so B.M. didn’t get to play but I think they would have lost. F.A. was a wildcard in my last ranking and he lost his first match so not much to say there. E.H. was a bit weird because he was the person that owned the switch and he was the expected winner, I think he would have won if he picked his main not duck hunt. Overall I think that most everyone had fun and would play again.
If you know me personally, you know that as a masochist, FromSoftware(Souls-Like) games are literally my favorite types of games. Bloodborne, Sekiro, Dark Souls 3, and Dark Souls 1 are all four out of my top five games. However, FromSoftware and Bandai Namco just released their newest title, Elden Ring. Which had been in the works since before Sekiro was released in 2019. It is now 2022, three years later, and Elden Ring is finally here. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever played. From minor detail to major detail this game is as close to perfect as anyone can get. (I play this on PC so I am aware of and have experienced the frame stutter when in fights, but they’re already fixing it and it really doesn’t take away from the experience at all).
Photo Credit: TechRadar
First of all, this game is absolutely gorgeous. Elden Ring is hands down the most artistically and graphically impressive game I’ve ever played. Sure there are a lot of games with technically better or more realistic graphics but, the care and detail put into making this world is absolutely unparalleled. As an open-world game, I was expecting it to be a little lazy with lots of walking around between one interesting location to the next like most large open-world games. I was wrong. This world is jam-packed with detail, easter eggs, items, side quests, characters, hidden levels, the list goes on. And every single one is great with immense detail, no enemy, no boss, no area feels unfinished. Every nook and cranny is filled with fun things to do. It is the single best open-world game I’ve ever played. And as a souls game, it is easily the best. It brings back my favorite part of Dark Souls one which is semi non-linear progression. Instead of only being able to go to one level and being stuck there if you’re under-leveled or skilled, you have the option to go do something else and explore the lush and lore-rich world that surrounds you.
Photo Credit: IGN
Secondly, Elden Ring takes everything good about the other games and packs them all into one. Weapon arts from DS3? Check. You can even change your weapon art on the fly. Powerstancing from DS2? Check. I am currently power-stancing two greatswords. A separate jump button from Sekiro? Check! 83 bosses??? CHECK. This game is jam-packed with content, it is everything FromSoftware learned from all the time they’ve been making games. And just like the masterpiece that is Bloodborne, it is a completely separate game from Dark Souls in every way. It doesn’t matter that the combat is technically similar, the environment, the feeling of playing Elden Ring, the satisfaction is all just on a different level from their previous games. It is a culmination of all of their previous masterpieces. If there’s any game that defines the spirit and the artistic value of gaming, especially RPGs and Open World games, it’s Elden Ring. I adore this game.
Plus it has the two best NPC’s ever in gaming, Pot man and Wolfman. Buy it right now
There are many things in this world that can be done to waste time and have little to no value. Personally, my favorite one to do is video games, because of the need to learn how to play the games that I play it takes a while sometimes to get my grip and actually learn how to play the game and be good at it. For example, one game that for a while I had a lot of fun playing was Apex Legends (a battle royale). I primarily played Apex because I enjoyed the mechanics and it was a game that many of my friends played at the time that I was engulfed in it. But shockingly I actually have played more time in a game called Valorant, yes I have played a game more than my 131 hours in Apex. That game that falls under my extreme amount of hours is Valorant boasting 156.5 hours of playtime. Even with all the large amount of hours in the game, I’m still not very great at it but it’s fun and I like to play it with friends making it an enjoyable activity. Though it is enjoyable it is a pretty solid waste of time in the grand scheme of things. I could be drawing or doing schoolwork while it was wasting my time relaxing. But Id suggests gaming to anyone anyways because of the laughs and the hype that you get when you do well in-game.
As someone who has over 5,000 total hours on video games and absolutely no survival experience, I figured it would be fun to take my favorite games and which of them I think I could survive in.
Dark Souls 3: Being my favorite game of all time, I figured I would start with good ol’ Dark Souls. If you’re not a masochist, and you don’t know what Dark Souls is, it’s a fantasy game that’s generally regarded as one of the most difficult video game franchises. And as a masochist who has now beat the game countless times, I can confidently say that there is no way that I would even be able to kill a single enemy. I mean, the first hard enemy you fight is a giant crystal lizard dog that would beat me into a pulp before I could even lift my sword.
Image credit: Dark Souls III Wiki
Hollow Knight: There is absolutely no way I’ll die in Hollow Knight. I mean everything in that world is literal bugs. If I can’t beat a couple of bugs, I don’t know what I’m doing in life.
Image Credit: hollowknight.com
Portal 1 & 2: As someone who considers themselves a pretty solid puzzle solver, I can confidently say that I can beat both portal games. Not only am I a decent puzzle solver, but Glados stands absolutely no chance against these hands. I mean all of her wires are always exposed. Ever heard of unplugging their wires? I mean if Chell can beat both games without thinking of that obvious loophole, then I can easily find my way through the Aperture Science Labs.
Recently there have been some games that have been released or partially released to those who pre-ordered them. Some of the primary games in this category are Call of Duty Vanguard and Battlefield 2042. There are some other games that have come out recently but these are the big two in my personal opinion.
(these are in no particular order of how much I like the game)
First off is Call of Duty Vanguard, this game is a classic Cod (Cod is call of duty for short) it has the basic ideas that show up in most Cods. These characteristics include similar game modes and attachment addons. Gamemodes are as follows Free for all, team deathmatch, capture point, and search and destroy. I look at most Cods as of recently is the Developers just gave the previous game a new coat of paint and called it good, making it not one of my top choices for games.
Image Credit: Forbes
The next game I want to talk about is Battlefield 2042. Battlefield is a first-person shooter or fps for short like Cod but it has its own unique quirks and game modes. To start Battlefield has 3 primary game modes, one is called conquest, in this game mode, you and your team are tasked with controlling as many points on the map as possible while the enemy has the exact same goal making it a fight to the death over point control. The second is called Breakthrough, in this game mode, you and your team have to take points in a consecutive order making your way through the map, because of the points needing to be taken in a certain order it creates more of a centered combat area as opposed to Conquest where it’s just everyone running around. The final game mode is called Hazard zone and it is quite the new idea for the Battlefield franchise. In Hazard zone, you and your team of four are dropped somewhere on the map and are tasked with collecting data drives and extracting via a helicopter to earn in-game currency. Overall Battlefield is built to withstand the abuse that players with put it through because of this it is not made once a year like Call of Duty making the Battlefield games feel more polished.
Suddenly, the reminiscence of me as a little kid playing an old game on the iPad bumped into my mind in the middle of the calculus class.
Can’t remember exactly when, it was around the time the first iPad just came out, the smart touch-screen tablet.
The game is about the players are able to control a ninja character, and the ninja is keep climbing up on the wall. Right, there are two walls, and the ninja is able to jump between these walls. The goal is to climb as high as possible while avoiding evil squirrels, dive-bombing birds, enemy ninjas, throwing stars, exploding bombs and more.
Can’t remember the name at all. Asked my friends, they knew and played this game also, but they don’t the name either.
Even did some research online, finally, found the name “NinJump.” And I entered this name into the search box in the app store on my phone, but it shows no results. Okay, I guess they probably took this game off, for whatever reason. Let me just keep it in my past memory.
Rainbow Six Siege is a first person tactical shooter developed in 2012. It grew quickly, and within the first year, it had a thriving professional esports scene. Now, in 2019, there are dozens of teams, close to 50 if you count challenger league. There are tournaments that have prize pools topping one million dollars. So as the Siege Invitational 2020 looms on the horizon, with the Japan Major in the forefront, some big changes are coming to the North American team rosters. The biggest surprise is that Evil Geniuses, who in 2018 competed against Penta (Now G2) in the Invitational Grand Finals, lost both their captain (Canadian) and their coach (Gotcha) in the same week, picking up Modigga in place of their former leader. This in turn balanced many of the other NA teams, giving SSG a boost by swapping Chala with Canadian, as well as giving Team Solo Mid the confidence to win Dreamhack Montreal with their new coach, Gotcha. There were a few other swaps, such as Jarvis from DZ and Hyper from Rise Nation. With all of these balances and swaps among the NA teams (with the exceptions of Rogue and Reciprocity), Season X is sure to be an interesting one, with some big upsets along the way. Be looking out for Dark Zero, TSM, and SSG, as all are neck and neck in the standings for a spot in Japan. Also, a quick note on the EU side of things, G2, GiFU, and Penta all seem to be uniting in the goal to bring down the champions of the Raleigh Major, the Russian giants of Empire. With TSM and Empire Esports already having secured spots at the invitational in February, the Siege community awaits a barn burner in Japan, which takes place on November 9th of this year.
1.2 billion people identify as gamers. Currently, 700 million people are playing right now. 46% are female and the rest male. Females tend to like games such as word games, puzzles, dress-up, and ones where you care for pets, while males tend to like ones about action, racing, and sports.
Even if you only play Angry Birds, you’re a gamer – just a casual one.
World of Warcraft is arguably one of the biggest digital games ever made, so big it created its own worldwide subculture. Gaming is a career. The highest earning gamer earns 1.5 million dollars a year. Video games have created memes in T.V., movies, stand up comedy. In Germany, there’s a T.V. channel dedicated to games, and in Korea there are two cable T.V. stations committed to games.
Movies have been made based on games, like Warcraft. Celebrities like Robin Williams have advocated for gaming and love to play. There’s even a memorial for him. Van Diesel, the late Paul Walker, and Cameron Diaz all play and have talked about it. The financial impact of gaming is that the music in games reaches huge audiences, like the Wow theme song.
There have also been bad effects of video games like anti-socialism, in which gaming has changed the way people live and interact.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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