Boy am i running out of things to say in these weekly updates. Honeslty, as fun as fats as this summer has been, not a whole lot has happened that i can write about on this blog where all is anonymous. So anyway, here goes this week's bloggage.
Work, my internship at a school earby for kids wiht learning issues, has been very fun. The cool thing today was because the mian teacher i'm wokring wiht was out for the morning i got to teach 8 and 9 year olds basic math. Its something we take for granted until we actually ahve to teach it to a kid who doesnt get it. ITs a great feeling when they do get it, and its why i'm an Education minor and why i wanna do somethin with kids and learning disabilities as my career.
Secondly, i think last week i blogged about something that happened to my car. Now, tit was suggested that i not blog about it, but i feel its enough in the past that i can, with still some degree of anonymity. Basically, the long and short is i was out getting som drving practice wiht my dad on a saturday, we were heading home finally, and i got into an accident. All parties involved were ok, including the other driver and my dad. a few days later, my car was labelled as totalled because i had spun into a fire hydrant and not stomped on the brakes after the collision. Anyway, based on the insurance stuff my family has, we were covered up to a certain point on a replacement. The replacement is a pre-owned, silver 2007 VW JEtta. I love the thing. Runs fairly smoothly, handels great, the color is awesome and yea.
third, got two new transformers in the past week. Drift from the Generations line and Seaspray from the Hunt for the Decpeticons line (the latter is a slight continuation fo the toyline based off the movie from 2010). Seaspray does not feel like a movie-line figure to me. If you want my full nerdy thoughts on the figure, check out the link here: http://zackec2011.blogspot.com/2010/07/extended-impressions-text-revie-02.html
While you're at it, if your head hasnt exploded from the nerdiness, check out the mian page of my transformers blog:zackec2011.blogspot.com
Now As most of you knwo i'm trying to lose wieght again this summer. If i'm lucky i'll be down to 180lbs by august. I still would like to be aroudn 170 by graduation in may though, so thats 8 months for 10 pounds (not inclduign holiday weight and assuming i'm at 180 in august). THe only issue with that is once thigns ramp up wiht senior year psych stuff and dacne alloy, i dont know how often i'll be able to hit the gym and do really intense cardio. We'll see.
Lastly, I'm gonna post a game review right now to end this update. The review is also up on facebook.
Game: Alien Swarm
Price: Free on Steam
Thoughts:
Ok so this is essentially a DMOD or GMOD (whatever those mean) game that the folks at Valve issued via Steam. It seems to be laregely a 4 player co-op online multiplayer, but it has a single player offline mode. So i was doing this earlier, and there's a handy tutorial as you go through the first mission. but the prompts only op up every so often.
Beinng the casual gamer i am, i was expecting a tutorial type mini level where i'd be told most of the controls. i.e. healing squad mates and reloading and such. but this was not the case. you have to go to the pause menu and look at the contorls. This is fine, juts unexpected for me as i'm nto much fo a shooter guy and this is a shooter/action/strategy. Anyway, other than that, my next complaint is the persepctive. You have a 3rd person perspective, but its not right behidn the character you're playing as. Rather, its up in the air a considerable amount. This distracts from the immersion slightly in my experience.
only 2 other complaints is that with my wireless mouse, the looking control seems to be way more sensitive than it should be. On my first play through of mission 1, i accidentally shot one of my squadmates alot because there was a alien swarming him. He died later in the mission. on my second playthrough of mission one (which i still havent completed), i was better wiht not shooting people, but i still ran into an issue, fairly early into the mission. There's one member on yoru team that apparently can never die, otherwise you fail the mission (at least at that stage in the mission) . Apparnetly he is the only guy for a while that can weld dthe doors shut to prevent alien swarms. There is no indication from the game that you need to weld certain doors to prevent alien swarms until he dies. Then, the game tells you. I suppose this should be understood, but for the average joe who goes into the game cold, it is rather annoying to be jarred into "mission failure" like that.
To the Pro points. THough, welding the doors is easy to do and such and it adds an element of strategy to the game. The other pro for this game is that the controls. While the W-S-A-D (to move up (north), down (south) left (west), right (east) respectively) are a bit wonky as they as mainly just strafing controls. THey respond very well, as does the "turn the head" control that the mouse has. they worked best in tandem. But still, the controls can be a bit sensitive if you get caught in a swarm.
The other pluses is that the graphics are visual stunning for a free game. The Aliens acan be a bit suprising as a lot of mission one has murkyness to it. The biggest thing for me wiht a game like this is if its fun and seems infintely playable as a standalone singleplayer. I feel it is, even if i apparently fail right out the gate at getting though the first mission. I had a lot of fun playing it and despite the perspective issue it feels like i can stay to it for hours. The only other game wiht similar strutcutre that i have from Steam is Plain Sight, and that seems more pick up and play. And the Multiplayer on that is kind fo weak.
The long and short: Most of the flaws i point out will be because i'm not one who often plays action/shooters/ stragety games when they blend together that often. sTill, this game was very enjoyable for me. and i will continue to plsy ti when i feel like it. I can see it being up there with Torchlight as a game i play most often on steam.
Plus, its free, as in $0.00 so you really cant go wrong.
Thats probably a one-off thing. I'm considering an unpaid movie reviewer intern position at a site thats an offshoot of tomopop.com where one of my friends posts, but i dont think i can financially afford to see a movie every weekend or whatever.
Thats all for me this week. see you all on the 28th.
--ZAck
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