Heros Of the Storm

I recently read Gameinformers article on Blizzards upcoming MOBA Heros of the Storm and I have to say it looks like a great game that I would enjoy playing. The characters are iconic character from the blizzard universe. This game can be comparable to League of Legends and it looks pretty good even though its only in beta. I think Blizzard is going  in the right direction with this game and it has a lot of potential. I enjoyed League a lot I can see my self playing this game for many hours.

Finishing Something I Started a Long Time Ago

Last week I finally finished something that I started many years ago.. and this is learning how to solve a Rubik's cube. I know it sounds nerdy, but it has always been something that I wanted to learn how to do. Now instead of madly turning the faces of the cube for hours to only get frustrated, I can now solve one in a few minutes. Solving the cube is actually not that hard once you learn all the steps. You pretty much have to start from the bottom and work your way to the top using a few algorithms to get all the sides to line up with the appropriate center piece. While this may seem like no big deal, it is a great way to pass time if you find yourself with nothing better to do. I would recommend that everyone at least try to learn how to solve this classic puzzle that has confused many people for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM

Text Response to Evolve

I recently read Gameinformer's article on the upcoming game Evolve. The article was very interesting and talked about the basics of Turtle Rock's upcoming and what to expect form it. However, what I found most interesting was history of Turtle Rock Studios and how they were the ones that made Left 4 Dead. As many know, Valve is the studio that is given credit for Left 4 Dead, but they didn't make the game. What happened was Valve was very impressed with Turtle Rock at the time and bought the company shortly before Left 4 Dead was released, giving them rights to the game. I found this interesting because most people don't know that Valve didn't actually make the game and it was Turtle Rock who did all the work on it, but most are quick to give credit to Valve for the game. Recently, after an agreement with Valve, Turtle Rock Studios was allowed to reform with most of the original developers. This excites me because Evolve is a game that I am looking forward to and knowing that the creators of Left 4 Dead are the ones that made Evolve makes me that much more excited for the game because I think the Left 4 Dead games were great.

Ultra Rapid Fire

During my time playing League of Legends, Riot has been know to put a lot of updates in to the game and most of which are always not that great, like the splash art update that unintentionally made League go down for a few days. However, Riot recently put Ultra Rapid Fire into the game and it is one of the few updates in a while that is straight up good. The game mode decreases everyone's cool downs by 80% and got rid of mana/energy cost, making everyone able to cast spells fast with no cost. Pretty much almost every champion in this game mode is broken, but it's fun and team fight are so crazy that they end without the player having much of idea as to what just happened. I recommend that anyone playing League try out this game mode because it is only available for this week and then it wont be back until next season. Overall, Riot did a good job this time.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=misAyNLuoQg

Steam's Community Workshop

      Over the years, Valve has been great for giving back to the community of Steam. I think by far the best thing Valve has done is put the Community Workshop into Steam. The Community Workshop is a place where the users of Steam can download and share community made items/mods for the games the support the workshop on Steam. This is great because it gives Steam's community a place to easily share and publish their work for anyone to see and at the same time it allows people to download content to add a little kick to their favorite games. Best of all, the workshop it completely free to use, making it available to anyone who wishes to make  the best of its benefits. Valve even go as far as putting some of the more popular items on the workshop into their games and gives the creator of the item(s) a percentage of the sales for that item. Overall, the workshop is a great addition to Steam and is something any user of Steam should checkout.

Fall of the Empire

     Last week I read  the article called Fall of the Empire by Andrew Reiner in February's issue of Gameinformer. The article summed up how LucasArts slowly fell apart over the last decade due to inner turmoil.

     LucasArts was once very successful studio known for making stellar Star Wars video games over the past thirty years. However, while the studio was looking great from the outside, all hell was breaking loose on the inside causing the quality and the amount of games it was making to diminish. Back in 2004 Jim Ward was appointed as LucasArts' new president and he wasted no time cutting LucasArts' team from 450 people to about 190. Shortly after that is when studio started to fill with havoc. One of the main problems was Ward's leadership style because he wasn't easy to understand come from the film side of things and tried to changed how things worked inside of the studio. Once the team at the studio would reach a milestone Ward would have a "core meeting" to detail the progress the studio was making. These meetings where dreaded by the employees at LucasArts as one employee said they were "The infamous Jim Ward losing his s--- meetings", in which Ward would yell at everyone and say how they should be doing better. The studio's new leadership  wasn't the problem as George Lucas was known for changing core elements of some of the games being developed or not approving some of the concepts for future games. Some of the games that didn't get approved to be made where: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III, Star Wars: Imperial Commando - the sequel to Star Wars: Republic Commando, and Star Wars: Jedi Knight III. The fact that these games didn't get the green light to be made was disappointing to me because I would of easily spent $60 a piece for each of these games on their launch day. Overtime things in the studio grew worse and quality of the games being made began to go down. On top of that, other studios given the right to make a Star Wars game kept getting set back due LucasArts interfering with the games development; Star War: Battlefront III being one of those games. However, Bioware was allowed to develop Star Wars: The old Republic with out any troubles from LucasArts. After a while, Disney bought the rights to Star Wars and shutdown LucasArts, ending their thirty years span of greatness. In the end, LucasArts will be know for the many games they made, however some employees at the studio wished that there was more games like Star Wars: the Old Republic, were they didn't interfere with the games development. It's sad to hear about how a once great studio could come to an end, but one day I hope the studio will be revived, along with some of my favorite games that got canceled with the studio.    

A Great Way to Learn How to Play Guitar

      Back in December I decided to buy Rocksmith 2014 Edition. I wanted to buy the game because I heard a lot of good things about the game and how it can teach anyone how to play the guitar. I started playing the guitar back in eight grade, but I hadn't actually picked up for about two years, so I bought the game so that I could get back into playing the guitar and improve my skills at the same time. Going into the game I already knew most of the basic for playing the guitar, however I was very impressed at how well the game taught the player the basics and adapted to the skill level of the player. The game features several mini-games help hone your technique while at the same time giving that feel of playing an arcade game. There also a wide selection of songs that the game can teach you how to play. The way the game teaches the song is it will play the song and display the notes to play, but the game only shows so many notes based on the players skill level and as the player gets better at the song it will show more notes until the song is "mastered" and the player can play the full song. This game covers everything that is in the song from chords to pinch harmonics and offers videos of how to do the techniques used in the song, if the player is unfamiliar with that technique. Overall,  with Rocksmith's wide selection of songs and tutorials, I have to say this game was way better than any guitar lesson I have ever took. Over the past couple of months I have greatly improved at the guitar and am still learning new things every time I play Rocksmith. So I would have to tell anyone that is thinking to learn how to play the guitar to go buy Rocksmith because they will not regret it once they do.