Media Blog 2: Quaking it up

A while ago I was introduced to Quake Live, since then it was become one of the few games that I go back to continuously when I am bored and want some fast paced action.

Quake Live is a reinvention of the old Quake 3 Arena, which was originally released for Windows in 1999.  The older graphics can be seen in the picture to the right, but that is no indicated for gameplay.

While the graphics may be lacking, the gameplay is solid.  Unlike a traditional FPS, you do not spawn with a gun, at least not one that can do any damage.  The gun you spawn with can only kill someone if they are already heavily injured.  Instead, you must pick up weapons, ammo, armor, and other powerups and items quickly in order to hold your ground.  Gameplay is fast-paced, and if you stand still for any length of time, you are likely to be shot down before you have a chance to realize what happened.   This fast paced gameplay is one of the things that I like about the game.  It is unlike anything currently seen in popular FPSs like Halo, or Bad Company 2.

For the most part the game is completely free.  There is a subscription service which offers the ability to host your own servers and a few more game modes, but if you just want to play in your free time, the standard version offers plenty of gameplay.
Also due to it's low end graphics, the game runs entirely in your browser, either in windowed mode or fullscreen, allowing you to play on any computer anywhere.

The game grabbed a huge amount of popularity quite quickly, mostly due to the legacy the Quake games have had, before this came out, there were still people playing Quake 3.  And there have been some amazing contests between players who truly know the ins and outs of the game. 
Watching some of these people play is an amazing experience. 
Even without knowing much about the game, you can't help but be impressed.

Media Blog 1: Transformice, Amazingly Addictive

 Transformice is an addictive flash game released in June of 2010, and it has become amazingly popular since.  It went from two servers: a French and single English  to having five: a French, two English, a Russian, and a Brazilian server.


The premise of the game is that you are a mouse, and together with your fellow mice you must gather the cheese and get it to the hole. 


With cheese, you can buy hats to wear to make your mouse more unique, or use it to make custom maps for other mice to play.

               Image courtesy of the Transformice Wiki



Of course there are obstacles, this is where the shaman comes in.  On most maps, the shaman will be responsible to build things to allow the mice to get the cheese and score.
On some maps, it is possible for the mice to get the cheese without the shaman's help, and the shaman can either make it easier, or choose to make it more interesting by adding his own obstacles.

The game itself is largely addictive, and since the introduction of a map editor where users can make their own maps, there is almost always something new to play.

The game features a somewhat realistic physics system, but every now and then it will glitch and the laws of physics will be disregarded, which the players have termed "French Physics".  Oftentimes they make the game much more entertaining, as boards suddenly fly into the air unexpectedly.  Such glitches have given rise to one popular entity known as Anvil God, where many rotating anvils are placed near each other and flail around.

The game is quite simple, but is very addictive and fun, and I'd recommend checking it out, even for a few minutes.  Any questions can be directed to the Transformice Wiki.

Media Introduction: Check out this Title

I was born and raised in Springfield Vermont, which
is about 3 hours, depending on traffic, from Burlington.  It's a small town with not much to do, and I lived out on the backroads, even farther from what little there was to do.  The picture to the right is the view from the backlawn.




This summer was pretty eventful.  I hung out with a lot of friends trying to get in that last bit of time before we all went off to college.  At one point one of my friends wanted to make a movie, and we ended up with a bunch of footage of us fooling around with airsoft guns and playing Brawl on his Wii.

  I love the internet.  It's amazing in all it's forms, from the bad to the worse.  The one downside is that it's very easy to get distracted, especially on Wikipedia.

 I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life at all.