Eric’s Opinion of Heavy Rain
Posted by Eric Reichert
Shake your body.
Posted by Eric Reichert
This semester I am not talking kickboxing. I was planing on taking weight training but it was a bit later in the day then I wanted to stay so I dropped. For a year now I had been taking kickboxing as a workout class. I didn’t do all that much to improve my eating and the fact that it was only an hour and a half two days a week didn’t get me in the best shape but it was better then nothing. In the last few months sense my last kickboxing class I have continued along my normal way of eating and living. I am almost enteirly sure I have set myself back to zero in terms of my fitness level. I have not started to gain any significant amount of weight but I can see it coming any day now so It’s time to take drastic action.
The first step is similar to one I’ve taken before. When I was the size of a blimp I cut myself off from soda and moved to diet soda. Now I am cutting it off entirely. Diet soda has almost no calories in it but it’s not any good for you. Artificial sugar is less fatty then corn syrup but it’s terrible for you and I need to get back to water. Even though I drank soda I used to only have one or two a day but now I’m drinking so many I’m not sure how many I’ve had today. So I’m just going to stop. I also need to work on my eating habits more but cutting soda is a great first step.
I never would have thought that I could have lost the weight that I have over the past few years but lately I just keep hovering around the same area. I need to move forward and the easiest choice to make is cutting out the soda all together. I really need to get myself a treadmill because I always seem to have all this energy that I want to work off at night when it’s to late to go for a jog or bike ride.
Eric’s Opinion of Uncharted 2
Posted by Eric Reichert
Eric’s Opinion of Bioshock 2
Posted by Eric Reichert
Can’t play the games I want to.
Posted by Eric Reichert
When I first thought up the idea that I wanted to do a weekly video about video games I was not really sure where to go with it. I remember Aion had just hit its Beta so I thought doing a video of it would be interesting. I enjoyed it so I figured I would keep doing them although I wasn’t sure how I was going to cover a new game every week but I decided to try. Thanks to my two game subscription to Gamefly finding games is not as problematic as I thought other then finding footage for games that I play on a console. I already have the next six or seven weeks of games planed out. Things might change but I have a line up of games that I am sure I will be able to keep making videos for some time before I have to get inventive.
The problem that I now face is two fold but stem from the fact that I only a little over week with any given game before I have to send it back. On the one hand, if I enjoy a game I rent I still have to send it back to get a new one for an upcoming video. The other problem is that I because I have such a short time I have to focus in on that weeks game and don’t have much time to play anything else. Obviously as I have no job and only go to college two days a week I have a lot of free time but even then I have a hard time breaking away from the games I need to play so I can play the ones I want to play.
Sometimes I’m just not in the mood to play games for long periods of time. Occasionally a game will come along like Mass Effect 2 or Modern Warfare 2 that will just suck me in and force me to play as much as I can in any one session but that is rare. A game has to really connect on a lot of levels to hold my attention for that long. As much as a lazy nerd as I am I have a hard time sitting still for prolonged periods of time. That is how I can tell if I am really enjoying a game or movie. If I can hold still though it then I must be enjoying it.
Eric’s Opinion of MAG
Posted by Eric Reichert
Playing Games Like a Girl
Posted by Eric Reichert
Oh my God! Mass Effect 2!
This weeks video is going to be about Mass Effect 2 but I wanted to talk about one specific thing that has come up in my playing. For Mass Effect 2 I played though as a female. Part of that decision was because I played though the first game as a female and imported my save into this game. I didn’t put much thought into the choice but I wanted to see the effects of all the decision that I had made in the first game.
One of the things that really stands out about the difference between the male and female main character is that I feel the female has a much better voice actor. It’s the same women that does the voice of Naomi in Metal Gear and a bunch of other games. That is not to say that the guy playing the male version is a bad actor. I just feel that the female one is better.
Another moment struck me when playing that was very similar to the first. I was on a mission where I had to infiltrate a group of mercenaries. When my female Commander Shepherd walk up to sign up with the mercenaries the guy tells her that the stripper are the next door over. I was then given the option to punch him in the face.
I just love that for some reason. It’s a tiny little moment that you can’t experience if you play the male character and one that stands out because I don’t have men say things like that in my day to day as I have myself penis.
Eric’s Opinion of Metal Gear Solid 4
Posted by Eric Reichert
The art of story telling.
Posted by Eric Reichert
I have been playing though Metal Gear Solid 4 this past week because it’s next up in my line up of videos I am making and am enjoying it. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to pick one of the defining characteristics of MGS4 I would tell you it’s the story. Years ago the Metal Gear Solid series was an innovator in the stealth action genre but MGS 4 didn’t do much to stray from the path has set for it’s self. That is not to say it’s not a great stealth action game. I would just argue that games like Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed have done more to advance the genre.
Metal Gear Solid has always been a great bench mark for where video games story telling is going and where it’s headed. With MGS4 Hideo Kojima is trying to wrap up this large story that spans multiple games over twenty years. It’s an experiment in video game story telling trying to determine how games as a medium and a fledgling art form progress from here. With MGS 4 they try and pack so much story into it that even the most knowledgeable Metal Gear fans can get a little lost.
Obviously some of that is the voice of Hideo Kojima and the way that the Japanese tend to tell stories in games but I think that there are a few mistakes that they can improve upon. One of the major things that I have problems with in all my works of fiction is the idea that you can’t lead the audience by the hand. There is a subtly to story telling that most writers struggle with every day.
As much as you want to tell the audience everything when you get to your reveal, some times too much information is just hard to grasp. I remember watching the commentary for the new Star Trek flix and they talked about Kirk and Spoke Prime’s mind meld scene. When they explained everything the audience felt confused but when they cut Spoke’s voice in and out so you can’t here everything you pay more attention to what is said.
On the other hand I think that writing for a movie and a game are different animals. Mirror’s Edge was written to the great story driven that would have work well as a movie but as a game I didn’t care about the evil authoritarian government kidnapping my sister.
That is why I think that MGS 4 is one of the better examples of where games are heading. I care about what is happening to the characters. I just think that if some of the dialog were tightened up that the story would have more impact at some times. That is not to say that they game does not have its moments but I know it could be better.
There are certainly games that screw it up worse. As much as I loved Modern Warfare 2, the story fell apart several times. A lot of that was mostly do to the fact that they went a bit too subtle. They were mostly just trying to get to the next epic battle with little regard for story.
Eric’s Opinion of Star Trek Online
Posted by Eric Reichert