Aliens: Colonial Marines

Hey peoples. Today I'm blogging once again about Aliens: Colonial Marines. Here it goes.



Okay people, yes I know I have already done a blog on this but now I actually have the game! So when the game came out two days before valentines day the reviews were bad. Upon hearing this I was pretty sad. Knowing me if I had heard the reviews beforehand I would of bought the game anyway but I'm still sad that they couldn't make the game better than this after ten years. Some of the problems I have had so far is the fact that most of the time the Aliens run on all fours, playing split screen can be very disorienting, and it looks like the story might have a few bugs too but I am still not very far into it.



The story starts off with Dwayne Hicks sending a video to the marines before they left with him still in his bandaged eye and forehead from the end of Aliens saying that all marines should report to LV-426 for cleanup. You are a marine with the last name of Winter. For some strange reason the Sulaco is back over LV-426 and you are investigating it because you lost contact with the first party that went there. The game does address that it is strange why it is there but so far it does not say why or say why the nuke at the end of Aliens did not fully destroy Hadley's Hope as Bishop said it would. On the Sulaco you meet up and form a small band of marines to fight Aliens and Weyland Yutani mercenaries that were on the ship firing at you because you weren't supposed to find out there presence.



The controls are pretty nice for this first person shooter. You hit the L2 button to bring up your motion tracker and you can't shoot while holding it. However if an enemy is dangerously close it will start beeping whether you are holding it or not. The L1 button brings your gun up close to your face so you can look down the sight of the gun. R1 is shoot and R2 is the secondary fire like the grenade launcher on the bottom of the pulse rifle. Triangle let's you manage and switch your weapons, square lets you interact with doors as well as pick things up like ammo and armour, O exits out of menus, and X is jump or select in a menu. The directional pad can bring up your grenades, sidearm, or your flashlight. The joysticks are for moving and looking around. The combat is a lot like situations from Aliens, such as gauntlet runs where you get from one point to another as fast as possible while fighting enemies or last stand moments where you can weld doors shut and set up sentry guns to defend your position. Often I find myself surrounded by unlimited amounts of aliens and facehuggers jumping out everywhere and I know I'm gone. The multiplayer modes are fun too.



So there's some more on Aliens: Colonial Marines. For me I am happily scared while playing this game. I would look at reviews before buying but I am certainly happy and it's gonna be hard to find the willpower to play other games! Bye.

A really cool picture from a old newspaper talking about possibilities for "Alien 2" before Aliens came out.


By Ashton

A day in the life of Ashton

Hey peoples. Today I'm blogging about a day in my life. Here it goes.

So I start out any normal school weekday waking up in drool at 5:50 in the morning. I then take a shower and meditate on thoughts about the universe. (don't we all in the shower?). Next I warm up a microwave breakfast and walk to the bus stop. Finally I arrive at school at 7:10. First I have Social studies and math before strings class. (cello class)

Often my teacher Mr Newberger, Snicker, snicker, quotes " Why are you still playing the Jaws theme song? This is Beethoven!". Afterwards I have reading class and eventually lunch. Lunch is like the break you would hate having to do while having fun but in the middle of school is like a minute of heaven saying "your halfway there!". Luckily since the cooks never fill up the lunch tray I get salad from the salad bar every day. It's unfortunate when I smell burnt food from the long line and I know that they burnt the salad again.

Next is English and Art. Art class is pretty fun and it's nice to draw in my sketchbook whatever I want. Finally seventh period comes with science and I can barely form written sentences on the worksheets full of grammar errors my teacher prints off the Internet. After school I get to my house from the bus at around 3:15, eat an apple, and take a short fifteen minute iPad break. Next I do either laundry or the dishes before going to the gym with my Dad. We are back home at around 6:30 for Moms dinner and after dinner chores. At eight my brother goes to bed and me and my sister retire to the back rooms to read for a hour before bed.

That's a weekday in the life of Ashton. Bye!


By Ashton

HeroClix

Hey peoples. Today I’m blogging on another game my family is getting back into. Here it goes.






Recently my mom has finished my dad’s office in the new part of our house. Or what he would call it, the comic sanctuary. With this new addition to space and room for the geeky memorabilia he has started to play a game called HeroClix again. HeroClix is a game involving miniatures usually based off of Marvel or DC comics. The game is about as old as I am and my Mom and Dad have been playing it for that long until I had to take over Dad’s comic room. When they could play they went to tournaments. Dad so that when they won they could get exclusive figures and mom because she was the reason they won.


One of the reasons I like HeroClix is the simplicity. In other miniatures games you have to buy the fifty dollar figure, figure out that you need another rare hundred dollar rulebook just to find the stats, spend forty-eight hours painting and assembling the thing only to have the tiny little arm snap off, and then make your own play area out of toothpicks and styrofoam peanuts. With heroClix you buy maybe twenty dollars worth of figures, go home and find a rulebook and play map inside the box and all you need is some spare time, a flat surface, and a willing friend.



You assemble a team first with a set point value. So if the point limit is two hundred and you have four fifty point characters then you are good to go. You each start out with your characters on opposite sides of the map. The goal is usually to defeat all of the opposing characters team. As each of your characters take damage the dial in the base turns showing what new stats or super powers your character may have. The powers card that comes with the figures tells you what the powers mean, so if you have a character with dark blue on his speed then you go to the powers card and find out that that’s called bind and the character next to you can’t move away. However I’m not going to bore you with rules and regulations the whole time. Right now Katie me and Alex are beating Dad’s but as the heroes of Gotham City.



There is the wrap on HeroClix. HeroClix is made and developed by Wizkids. Bye!



By Ashton



Fish alien

Minecraft: Pocket Edition

Hey peoples. Today I'm blogging on a iOS game. Here it goes!

The game I'm blogging about is Minecraft: Pocket Edition. Minecraft is a block based building survival game. Minecraft is a game made by Mojang originally for the computer. Due to the enormous popularity of it, bigger and bigger things were added to the game until now with Minecraft for iOS. First you enter a name for your world in Minecraft and a seed. A seed is just any random name or numbers that decides what the blocky terrain in your world is going to look like. Then you decide whether you want to play survival mode or creative mode. Survival mode has night and day, limited health, animals, monsters, and you have to mine, farm, or scavenge for resources in order to build. In creative mode there is flying, and unlimited resources. Then you start the game. In creative mode you can just fly around and build whatever you want from a simple little house to towering statues. Survival is much harder.

In survival you first spawn in you're spawn area which is the block you will spawn on top of if you die. You start out with no resources and the best thing to do is go around punching tree trunks until they break. When one block breaks a miniature block shoots out and lands on the ground. If you go near it it goes in your inventory and you now have one wooden log. After you have at least 3 blocks go out and find a good place for your first house. From your inventory menu hit craft and the option to make wooden planks from your logs should pop up. Make as many as you can and you can now make a crafting table. A crafting table is a block the size of any other but when you touch it shows you a list of all the blocks in the game and what you need to make them. Clicking on the object with the correct resources will make it and add it to your inventory. The craft tab in your inventory only makes you a few things.

Next you need to make a shelter before the monsters come out at night. Just make a three block high wall around you and your crafting table with however much space you think you need. Then make sure they are no blocks outside your house a monster can use as a stepping stone to get over the wall. A monster can only jump one block high though so if there is one block in front of your three block high wall then your fine. You will have to wait out the night before going out so with some of your wood make a door and put it in one of your walls. This way you don't have to destroy the wall every time you need to go out. After night is over most of the monsters die in darkness but beware, two of four can survive the light and dark places all of them can linger. Next make a stick with planks. With the stick and wooden planks you can make a wooden pickax and mine some stone from a nearby mountain. After a while you should have enough stone to make a stone pickax. Now you can mine. Simply make a one by two high indent which is the space your character takes up and go down one block at a time underground. After you reach the edge of your world simply turn around and go the other direction.

With some stone make a furnace used to cook food and make pure ore from ore mixed with stone. Then make a stonecutter to makes things such as bricks and stone steps. If you have coal by now with sticks you can make torches to light up your house at night or make monster dense areas lighter. Then if you have iron yet make shears and get wool from a sheep in order to make a bed. With a bed you can sleep through night and it becomes your new spawn point so if you die you spawn safely inside your house. If you do die find where you died as quickly as possible and everything that was in your inventory will be lying on the ground like a destroyed object. You can pick it up again from the ground instead of losing it. After you have a lot of items make chests to hold extra items. Now you are ready explore the Minecraft world for there is much you have left to discover!



My farm tower built in creative mode with trees and even cactus.



My unfinished house with a plasma TV on the right. Creative mode.



Some more of it built on a land bridge.








My underground fallout home built in creative mode.



My waterpark built in creative mode.



The beach chairs with umbrellas.



The diving board. Seems safe.



The Minecraft home screen.



The clouds.



The sky at night.



Cows, Pigs, a chicken, and a sheep with gray wool.



Sheep.



The awesome terrain in my world.



I accidentally set off a bomb to close to my house that transports part of h*ll here therefore merging inside my house. This is before setting itself on fire further damaging my house. Typical Ashton fail.




My poor house with a broken window.



Inside the h*ll tower.



What's left of my rooftop patio.



My badly damaged garden.



2 kinds of monsters.



My first mine.

That's a wrap. Here's an idea; wouldn't Andrew or Issac love this game? ;) Say hello for me. Bye!


By Ashton