Hello people's. Today I'm going to look at the upcoming game, Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go is a game coming in 2016 for iOS and Android. Because of the nature of the game it's making a lot of dorks like me or anybody really that played Pokemon when they were little very excited and nostalgic. It's doing this for a few reasons. The first is that it's going to be on smartphones which makes it a lot more accessible and convenient than only having it on a device solely for gaming. The next reason is that this game is going to have every Pokemon in it, without trading between games, it's the first game that's done this and it's very cool. The biggest reason is that in this game is location based so you actually have to go places to catch Pokemon, trade, or battle with people.
Another cool part of it is that there's an optional clip that you can buy that looks like a pokeball, it helps you by vibrating when a Pokemon is near so that you don't have to have your phone out all the time. One of the coolest parts about it though it is that having it on you lets other people that play the game know that you play it and then you can go up to them and battle and trade with people you don't even know which is awesome. Depending on how expensive it will be I might buy it if I like the game as much as I think I will. The game having every Pokemon in it is very cool because Pokemon has been around since 1996 and every few years they release new games with a new generation of 100 or so new pokemon. Since this game will have all of them it's going to be attracting fans from all across that 20 year timespan so there's gonna be older fans in their 20's battling and trading with little kids that just got into the series.
The coolest and most exciting aspect of the new game is that it's location based. It will work like this, at any point in time when you're walking around your phone might buzz and say there's a wild Pokemon 56 feet in this direction and once you're near the location all you have to do is use the app to access your camera and you can actually see what Pokemon it is right through the camera as if it was standing there in the real world. Now it's obviously not going to be perfect and most the time it's probably going to be half in a wall or just look like a sticker on the screen but that's still pretty cool. Then once you are near it you can battle it and catch it just like you can in the main games and once you've caught it, it's yours to take wherever you want. If you meet someone with the game on their phone it's easy to just fight their team for fun and then you can trade them for ones that they've caught. It's gonna spark so many cool stories like "yeah I found my favorite Pokemon while I was out with my friends and it was right there by the side of the restaurant parking lot" or "yeah I traded this kid I saw in a subway and gave him is favorite Pokemon he was so happy." This is so exciting for fans of the series because we played this game when we were little kids, for me I was only 8 or 9, and we would have done anything to bring the Pokemon we had caught in the games out into the real world to show people or just have a friend or a pet. I can tell you for a fact that there were a lot of birthday wishes that went something like that. (Guilty as charged). And now years later we can experience something that comes pretty close to that and that is why this game is making people so nostalgic and excited.
So there were some thoughts on the upcoming game Pokemon Go. Bye.
- By Ashton
The Grey Jack Frost
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Colleges
There are many different colleges with different programs for me to choose from. The main things I'm looking at for each college are locations, the programs, the length of the programs, and the tuition. The programs I'm interested in are anything to do with video game development like digital graphics. Because tuition prices are so incredibly high in America I've made a list of colleges in other countries like Germany and Denmark.
Let's start with Denmark. One of the colleges I saw in Denmark had a rather long name called The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It had a program titled Game Art, Design, and Development. The program lasts 2 years and is 6168$ per semester. Another university was titled IT University of Copenhagen. The university had a program simply titled Games that also lasts only 2 years that was 7514$ per semester. I wanted to find programs that lasted longer because I assumed that would mean they had more to teach and would treat it more seriously so I kept looking and found some programs for a college called VIA University College. I would reconsider these colleges only if I found out more about the programs they offered that made me excited or if they created new courses or lengthened the existing ones.
Denmark also has a college called VIA University College with 2 game programs. The 2 programs are Character Animation and Computer Graphic Arts. Both programs last for 3 and a half years and cost 7943$ per semester. If I did end up going to this college I would have to look at both programs more extensively in order to make a choice between them, because even though the price is comparatively low, 7 years would be a long time. I guess if I did end up taking both programs then I would want to get an actual job while I was there in the video game field, that way I could continue studying and still be doing what I want to do.
Next lets look at Universities in Germany. I'm looking at Germany because not only would it be really cool to live there and meet the people and the culture, but also because the tuition prices are not even a fraction of what you have to pay in America. First is the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. The University offers a course in Animation and Game that lasts 3.5 years and has an unbelievable 0$ tuition. Similar to it is the University of Applied Sciences Cologne. It has a program named Digital Games for 3.5 years that is only 249$ per semester. The third college I saw was called Berlin School of Applied Sciences. The program is called Game Design and lasts 3.5 years. A downside as well as an upside is that even though there is a 0$ tuition fee they are only accepting 40 applicants per year. All I can say about that is that hopefully it is a very high class course with a lot to offer, otherwise I might not have a large chance of getting in unless I'd already gotten some training in the area.
While I was looking at colleges in Germany I found one in particular that interested me called the Technical University of Munich. They offered a course called games engineering and what had drawn me so much to it is that the description of the course and the pictures that went along with it was exactly what I had wanted in a college course. The course is very broad in that it isn't confining these games to a single platform like computer gaming or mobile gaming it's looking at all types of games across all platforms, even virtual reality. It also showed that it's a perfect blend of teaching how to create the 2D and 3D art styles of video games and the actual development and coding of them. The course also has a Bachelors as well as a Masters degree available making it last a total of 5 years which is the longest amount of time I've seen for any single program so far. Last but not least all of this comes in at only 127$ per semester which is just incredible.
It's obvious that there are some pretty great colleges in both Denmark and Germany. My two favorite options are still the VIA University College in Denmark and the Technical University of Munich in Germany. The field is still growing so I'm sure that there are going to be more and more opportunities in these countries as well as others and I plan to keep looking at different programs and colleges especially internationally because of the low tuition and amazing experiences I can have there.
- By Ashton
Let's start with Denmark. One of the colleges I saw in Denmark had a rather long name called The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It had a program titled Game Art, Design, and Development. The program lasts 2 years and is 6168$ per semester. Another university was titled IT University of Copenhagen. The university had a program simply titled Games that also lasts only 2 years that was 7514$ per semester. I wanted to find programs that lasted longer because I assumed that would mean they had more to teach and would treat it more seriously so I kept looking and found some programs for a college called VIA University College. I would reconsider these colleges only if I found out more about the programs they offered that made me excited or if they created new courses or lengthened the existing ones.
Denmark also has a college called VIA University College with 2 game programs. The 2 programs are Character Animation and Computer Graphic Arts. Both programs last for 3 and a half years and cost 7943$ per semester. If I did end up going to this college I would have to look at both programs more extensively in order to make a choice between them, because even though the price is comparatively low, 7 years would be a long time. I guess if I did end up taking both programs then I would want to get an actual job while I was there in the video game field, that way I could continue studying and still be doing what I want to do.
Next lets look at Universities in Germany. I'm looking at Germany because not only would it be really cool to live there and meet the people and the culture, but also because the tuition prices are not even a fraction of what you have to pay in America. First is the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. The University offers a course in Animation and Game that lasts 3.5 years and has an unbelievable 0$ tuition. Similar to it is the University of Applied Sciences Cologne. It has a program named Digital Games for 3.5 years that is only 249$ per semester. The third college I saw was called Berlin School of Applied Sciences. The program is called Game Design and lasts 3.5 years. A downside as well as an upside is that even though there is a 0$ tuition fee they are only accepting 40 applicants per year. All I can say about that is that hopefully it is a very high class course with a lot to offer, otherwise I might not have a large chance of getting in unless I'd already gotten some training in the area.
While I was looking at colleges in Germany I found one in particular that interested me called the Technical University of Munich. They offered a course called games engineering and what had drawn me so much to it is that the description of the course and the pictures that went along with it was exactly what I had wanted in a college course. The course is very broad in that it isn't confining these games to a single platform like computer gaming or mobile gaming it's looking at all types of games across all platforms, even virtual reality. It also showed that it's a perfect blend of teaching how to create the 2D and 3D art styles of video games and the actual development and coding of them. The course also has a Bachelors as well as a Masters degree available making it last a total of 5 years which is the longest amount of time I've seen for any single program so far. Last but not least all of this comes in at only 127$ per semester which is just incredible.
It's obvious that there are some pretty great colleges in both Denmark and Germany. My two favorite options are still the VIA University College in Denmark and the Technical University of Munich in Germany. The field is still growing so I'm sure that there are going to be more and more opportunities in these countries as well as others and I plan to keep looking at different programs and colleges especially internationally because of the low tuition and amazing experiences I can have there.
- By Ashton
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Sinister
Hello people's. Today I'm talking about the Sinister movies.
So a few days I saw Sinister 2. I'm a huge fan of the first movie, I love everything about it so I wasn't surprised when this one wasn't quite as good. However the movie was much better than the ratings that it got. The basis of the Sinister movies is that a demon called Bughuul, better known as the boogeyman, will corrupt an innocent child until it creatively murders its family, usually with some art involved. In modern times Bughuul tends to use film as the art so it's often grainy old cameras filming gruesome murders. Urban legends about murders being filmed and titled "snuff films" already exist and are a terrifying concept in itself. Add in a terrifying real life boogeyman and creepy children and it's no wonder that these movies are so disturbing.
(SPOILERS)
Both movies center around families moving into a house where one of these murders took place, both families eventually learn about the supernatural causes behind the murders but always find out too late that their own murders would be triggered as soon as they left that house. In the second movie a deputy from the first has been going around and burning unoccupied houses where these murders took place so that all the chains of child killing family Bughuul has created will be broken. However eventually he discovers that there's already a family living in one.. By far the best part of the second movie were the snuff films. In the original film the most disturbing and iconic snuff film is when a family is hanged simultaneously from a tree in their backyard and in the second movie of the 4 new snuff films, all of them are equally or even more disturbing than that. If you watch this movie without seeing the first than these parts will be an enormous shock.
In my opinion if you took the plot from the original Sinister, replaced the least disturbing snuff films with the ones from Sinister 2, and kept the music from the first, then you would have the best possible Sinister story. What was mainly lacking from the second movie was a creative plot line and while I was seeing the movie I started thinking if I could have come up with a better (scarier) ending. Unlike the original Bughuuls plan for the family being murdered fails and only an abusive father is killed. If I had been writing the movie I would have written it so that the mother died, which audiences would have cared about much more, and then after the threat of Bughuul and the murderous child was over I would have a shock ending. The ending would have been the innocent child taking the opportunity to kill his extremely abusive father without Bughuuls influence, showing that true evil is not necessary for the corruption of innocent humans.
(END SPOILERS)
So there were my thoughts of the Sinister movies. Bye.
- By Ashton
So a few days I saw Sinister 2. I'm a huge fan of the first movie, I love everything about it so I wasn't surprised when this one wasn't quite as good. However the movie was much better than the ratings that it got. The basis of the Sinister movies is that a demon called Bughuul, better known as the boogeyman, will corrupt an innocent child until it creatively murders its family, usually with some art involved. In modern times Bughuul tends to use film as the art so it's often grainy old cameras filming gruesome murders. Urban legends about murders being filmed and titled "snuff films" already exist and are a terrifying concept in itself. Add in a terrifying real life boogeyman and creepy children and it's no wonder that these movies are so disturbing.
(SPOILERS)
Both movies center around families moving into a house where one of these murders took place, both families eventually learn about the supernatural causes behind the murders but always find out too late that their own murders would be triggered as soon as they left that house. In the second movie a deputy from the first has been going around and burning unoccupied houses where these murders took place so that all the chains of child killing family Bughuul has created will be broken. However eventually he discovers that there's already a family living in one.. By far the best part of the second movie were the snuff films. In the original film the most disturbing and iconic snuff film is when a family is hanged simultaneously from a tree in their backyard and in the second movie of the 4 new snuff films, all of them are equally or even more disturbing than that. If you watch this movie without seeing the first than these parts will be an enormous shock.
In my opinion if you took the plot from the original Sinister, replaced the least disturbing snuff films with the ones from Sinister 2, and kept the music from the first, then you would have the best possible Sinister story. What was mainly lacking from the second movie was a creative plot line and while I was seeing the movie I started thinking if I could have come up with a better (scarier) ending. Unlike the original Bughuuls plan for the family being murdered fails and only an abusive father is killed. If I had been writing the movie I would have written it so that the mother died, which audiences would have cared about much more, and then after the threat of Bughuul and the murderous child was over I would have a shock ending. The ending would have been the innocent child taking the opportunity to kill his extremely abusive father without Bughuuls influence, showing that true evil is not necessary for the corruption of innocent humans.
(END SPOILERS)
So there were my thoughts of the Sinister movies. Bye.
- By Ashton
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