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Horizon: Forbidden West (Review)

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Horizon: Forbidden West is an action-adventure RPG released on the 18th of February 2022. It is the sequel to the acclaimed Horizon: Zero Dawn. Much like its predecessor Forbidden West sees you in control of main character Aloy as she traverses a land ravaged by machines and rogue AI from a terraforming system that was meant to protect the world and save the human race. This sequel sees Aloy travel west into forbidden lands, after the events of the first game, to follow the AI known as Hades, where new machines, bandits and challenges await.

The gameplay for Forbidden West is very similar to that of the first game. You control Aloy and mainly use your bow for combat alongside a couple of other tools. As you progress, you can spend skill points in skill trees that improve things like your skill in combat, stealth, potions, and control over the machines you discover. You can choose to take part in many challenges, such as hunting grounds, cauldrons, contracts for salvagers, and melee combat rings. There are a few differences, though; for example, you get the ability to glide using a holographic paraglider which can help you reach difficult areas of terrain or get you down from high up places. This is quite a good addition as you no longer have to worry all that much about fall damage. The other notable addition is the Pullcaster which allows you to pull down walls and move objects around the environment to help you climb harder to reach places. Of course, you still have the same traps, trip wires, and potions available to you that unlock as you progress through the game. Alongside the main story quest, there are plenty of sidequests that will keep you busy, some longer than others. They really add to the narrative and help you feel more immersed in Aloy’s world.

Graphically there isn’t much difference between Zero Dawn and Forbidden West. However, there are noticeable improvements to environmental locations and character design, and it has been advanced for the PS5 version. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous game, and navigating through the different environments is amazing; it just feels like it’s not really been built on from the last game.

Like the graphics, the voice acting in Zero Dawn was top-notch, and it’s the same in Forbidden West; it’s great to see some characters return and have more of a part to play. I’ve found that some of the side characters have a little more personality though now, some characters felt a bit wooden at times in the first games.

One issue that I have found is that the camera can be a bit fiddly at times, especially when you’re trying to jump to something behind you. It tends to flick from one side to another, and you end up missing the ledge and dropping down, so you have to do the entire thing again. But having said that, there really isn’t anything to complain about in this game. So far, I’m around 12 hours into it, and I’ve been loving every minute–except those damn ledges that I mentioned.

Overall I’m going to give Forbidden West a 9/10; what it lacks in some areas, it more than makes up for in others. If you enjoyed Zero Dawn, then you’ll enjoy Forbidden West. But if you haven’t, I would advise that you go back and play it, as a lot of what is going on in this sequel directly results from actions taken in the first game. I know that I’ll be playing this game for many hours/days/weeks to come, and I look forward to how the story evolves.

Chapters: To Name or Not to Name

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Chapters, some books have them, some don’t, and everyone has an opinion on them, so I asked my fellow writers over on Twitter for their thoughts. Below are some of the responses.

As you can see, the responses varied. Some people like short ones, others long, others don’t care as long as they work with the story being told. Another contentious issue is the naming of chapters. So what are my thoughts?

When it comes to reading, I enjoy a short chapter. It appears to make the book easier to read. I say this because I’m one of those people who likes to put a book down when it reaches the end of a chapter. When I stop in the middle of a chapter, I don’t particularly appreciate going back into a book. It simply makes it more challenging to read. So, because the chapters are short, I can say, “I’ll just read one more,” and it won’t take me long. I’ll probably save it for another time if it’s a long chapter. I’ve seen really long chapters and ones that are only a paragraph or two long in my reading life, but the responses I received from my fellow authors/readers are correct; if it works for the storey, it doesn’t matter how long the chapter is. Of course, some books, such as Terry Pratchett’s novels, do not even have chapters. When I’m reading these, it’s all about finding that logical stopping point in the narrative, like switching to the voice of another character. Some people may find this off-putting, and I understand how they feel; it took me a while to adjust, but it works well in his novels.

When I’m writing, my chapters are pretty short. This isn’t a conscious decision, mind you; it just seems to be the way things turn out. I have, however, written a few long chapters when a scene calls for more detail or fleshing out. However, there are some advantages to this writing style, particularly when it comes to editing. It means I can keep using my “just one more” method and not stop in the middle.

The naming of chapters is also a topic of debate among authors and readers. Some people may interpret chapter titles as a spoiler for what will happen within the chapter, which could ruin their reading experience. I understand this, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ve read many books, and there’s a lot of naming, not naming, and even adding timestamps and other things. It’s never ruined my enjoyment of a book for me, and sometimes I don’t even notice what a chapter is called. I don’t read “Chapter 4” and pay attention to it, so chapter names/titles don’t bother me.

I’ve used a variety of styles in my writing. My first book, Creatures, had numbered chapters, but it was divided into three distinct parts, each of which had a name, but would anyone have read these title pages? I’m not sure. I used numbered chapters again in The Next Stage, but this time I added time and date stamps to show when the action in the scene occurred. This, I believe, not only aids the reader in determining what is happening and when, but also aids me in editing by allowing me to get the timing correct within the storey. Incredibly useful! The only thing that Blindsighted had were chapter numbers. I started naming them, but I gave up halfway through because I saw the names as minor spoilers that, in a way, ruined the mood I was trying to set in the book. However, in my most recent WIP, the second book in the Creatures series, I’m still using “Part 1, Part 2, etc.,” but I’m also naming my chapters. I’m finding it helpful to name them in this case because it helps me remember what happened in each; whether I’ll keep them in the finished manuscript is another question; I haven’t decided yet.

I believe that the debate over chapters will continue as long as books are written, and that the way they are organised may change over time. So whatever method you prefer, stick with it and enjoy writing/reading the way you want.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – 2019 (Review)

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is an action-adventure game that was released in September 2019 for Nintendo Switch, it’s a remake of the 1993 version that was released in 1993 on the Nintendo Gameboy.

This game sees Link washed up on the shore of Koholint Island after his ship is caught in a storm and destroyed. Link soon embarks on a quest to retrieve the eight musical instruments of the Sirens and to awaken the legendary Wind Fish in order for him to leave the island. This remake has updated visuals in a top-down cartoony style that lends it a certain charm. One addition to this game that wasn’t in the original is the ability to create your own dungeons and complete them for rewards.

Link’s Awakening is in a style that will be familiar to fans of the series. You are able to explore an open world and battle through dungeons to gain hearts and gear. Each dungeon has a number of puzzles for you to complete as well as bosses to fight.

I’ve been a fan of the Zelda series of games for most of my life, but somehow I missed the original version of Link’s Awakening on the Gameboy so I went into this game with an open mind with none of the nostalgia that other players might. I’ve always preferred the top-down Zelda games, that’s not to say I don’t enjoy the 3D games like Twilight Princess or Breath of the Wild, but there’s something about the top-down perspective that I love, it dates back to A Link to the Past which, if you follow my blogs, you will know is one of my favourite games of all time. The design of the game is, let’s say, cute, but this cartoon-like style works so well, it’s not a million miles away from the way it looked on the Gameboy (obviously it has more colour), and so takes me back to the older games in a similar way that A Link Between Worlds did.

The gameplay is similar to pretty much every other Zelda game – other than maybe Breath of the Wild ­– in that, you explore the world freely, but mainly have to hop from dungeon to dungeon and defeat bosses while gaining gear to open up other areas of the map and dungeons. Some players might feel like it’s a tired format, but it works, and if it works then where’s the problem? One thing I did enjoy about this game is the references to the Mario games. It ranges from images or objects of characters/enemies, to side-scrolling sections that look like small Mario levels. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it does have a decent story that keeps you playing.

I’m pretty biased as far as Zelda games go, I’ll always play them where I can and generally enjoy them. I say this despite the fact that it did take a little while to finally get into Breath of the Wild and I couldn’t really tell you why. But Link’s Awakening brings the games back to the style of games that I grew up with and will always go back to. This game deserves a 10/10 from me and a definite recommendation.

Back at the Writing Thing

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

With a new year and a new semester of University comes a new desire to write. As much as I wanted to write over the holidays, I just couldn’t get my head into it. I guess a part of me was kinda burned out from the uni assignments, and I just didn’t have it in me to write in my spare time. It was a time for playing a lot of games. The other reason I had a momentary falling out with writing was that I hit a wall with the WIP that I was working on. I didn’t want to just write for the sake of it, and it be trash that I hated and would end up deleting. As much as I wasn’t writing, my mind was still racing with ideas, and surprisingly, most of the ideas that whirled around my brain for the sequel to my first novel, Creatures.

Creatures wasn’t great. It had a lot of flaws. But for a first novel and something that I never thought I’d be able to do, I think it was pretty damn good. The sequel—that I already have around 30,000 words written for—will be much better. My writing has grown so much throughout my novel-writing career, and I have more idea of what I’m doing and why. This past week has been amazingly productive as far as Creatures 2 (tentatively titled Back to School) goes, and I’m now up to around the 48,000 word mark, and I’m loving the story and characters that are being created. The characters and locations in this sequel will be more rounded and complete than in the original; the characters especially will have more depth—and that include characters returning from the first book. I know there were some fans of the original book, despite its issues, and I hope those that read it will come back for the second book in the series—will there be a third? Who knows. We’ll see.

Also, if you’re on the fence about Dying Light 2, check back on Wednesday as my review will be up and it may tip you one way or the other.

Have a good week!

Dying Light 2: Stay Human (Review)

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Dying Light 2: Stay Human is an action horror action role-playing game released in February 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

In this sequel to 2015’s Dying Light takes place 22 years after the Harran incident, which saw the death of every one of its citizens. After this outbreak, the GRE (Global Relief Effort) synthesised a vaccine for the virus, putting an end to the zombie pandemic. However, the GRE continued to experiment with the virus in secret and in 2021, a mutated variant escapes the GRE labs and starts a second pandemic that spreads across the entire world. The previously created vaccine and Antizin are ineffective against this new strain, but it can be held in check by the use of ultraviolet light. The game is set in the year 2036, 15 years after the latest pandemic, where civilisation has dwindled to only a few settlements, with the European city of Villedor being the last known city on Earth. In Dying Light 2, you take control of pilgrim (someone who travels between settlements), Aiden Caldwell, as he traverses the city of Villedor trying to find his sister after they were separated during vaccine trials when they were children.

I’ve wanted a sequel for Dying Light since I played the original back in 2015, and the fact that we’re still waiting for Dead Island 2 means that I have to find something else to fill the hole left by its absence. But how is it? Well, I’m here to tell you…

The gameplay is very similar to the original game in that you traverse the city using your parkour and melee weapon skills. There are a number of different infected that you come across throughout the city, including degenerates, biters, virals, howlers, goons, and bolters, each requiring a different strategy to either avoid or take down. The game employs a double skill tree system that allows you to improve either your combat or parkour skills with new moves and abilities. While you play, you also have use of a sense ability that allows you to see usable objects such as doors, chests and bags, and ziplines, as well as ay enemies that may be in your immediate area; this can come in handy when your scavenging through dark zones (buildings infested with infected) or just hopping roofs for gear and crafting ingredients. Similar to the original game, the day is split between night and day; in this sequel, however, it’s not just the increase of infected that can get you at night; the lack of UV light can also cause you issues. Aiden is infected to a level where if he stays out of UV light for an extended period of time, he will turn. As you explore the city, you can make use of UV lights at settlements or bases, as well as crafting or using items that increase your resistance to the virus. This new addition means that you have to think more about what you’re going to do and when and makes you consider what items you take with you when you head out, and really makes the subtitle of Stay Human make sense.

The story is a pretty standard story; the main character wants to find a loved one, there’s nothing new here as far as that goes, but the way that you go about finding your loved one is up to you. There are a number of points within the game when you can choose which path you take; this can be deciding between helping a character or not or as big as assigning a faction to a recently liberated key position. This sort of choice wasn’t present in the first game, which made it a fairly linear story. I’m all for games where you have choices to make that make a real difference to the way the world treats your character, so this was a big plus for me. With some of the characters and locations, I can’t help but be reminded of the Metro series of games (in a good way, of course), especially the fact that the Peacekeepers, or PKs, control the metro stations and lines.

The voice acting isn’t anything special. When you’ve come from games like the Mass Effect series or The Last of Us, Dying Light 2 doesn’t really give you anything that even compares to these games, but it’s not bad per se; it just seems a little flat at times. This doesn’t really detract from the experience you have playing this game, there’s enough going on that you don’t really notice a few lines of poor dialogue. I would say, however, that it is an improvement on the first game.

Combat, oh the combat. What can I say except smashy smashy. Okay, there are long-range weapons in the game too, but the majority of fighting that you’ll be doing, especially at the start of the game, will be using various melee weapons that you beat or slice things to death with. This, of course, is always fun, but the infected in Dying Light 2 seem harder to fight than those in the original; they seem to be able to move faster and are more agile when it comes to climbing objects after you. There are human enemies as well, and these also think and react to what you do, i.e. they dodge your thrown weapons, and if you keep attacking in the same manner, they will just block you, this again makes you think about your plan of attack more than you did in the previous instalment.

There is a lot to explore in the city of Villedor, from normal buildings to dark zones, settlements and gang hideouts. As you parkour your way across rooftops, you can liberate windmills, water towers and power plants that you can assign to different factions within the city; this will affect how the other factions will treat you; they may allow you safe passage or attack you on sight. The parkour is very much the same as it was previously, but with the skill tree, you can improve aspects such as jump distance and climb speed, which can really come in handy when you’re running away from the infected, let me tell you.

Overall, there is a lot to like about Dying Light 2; yes, it has its flaws, but they are few and far between, and what it lacks in things like voice acting, it more than makes up for in gameplay and combat. This is a big game with a lot to do and see, and it’s well worth every hour that you’ll spend slicing limbs of infected and parkouring across rooftops with a devil-may-care attitude; it gets a shiny 9/10 from me and a hearty recommendation to any lovers of the first game or of this genre in general, it builds on everything you’ve seen so far.

Researching Your Writing

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Research is a big part of writing, but we all do it a different way. I asked my fellow members of the writing community on Twitter how they research and below are some of the responses.

It’s often joked that if someone were to look at an author’s Internet browser history that they come off as a serial killer, and I’m here to say that that isn’t far from the truth. Some of the things that we have to research for our work can, to the outside observer, seem a little, let’s say, dodgy—for example, working out splatter patterns for gunshots or which vein to cut without the person losing too much blood too quickly. But there are also some things that we research that might seem a little odd to others, things that people might not necessarily think about, but when writing, it is something that you want to get correct for accuracy sake.

Our research can take many forms and take us to places that we might not have ordinarily gone, and, like our writing, our research skills will grow and evolve over time. For example, in my first book, Creatures, there is a section where I talk about a certain area and what wildlife would have been present there. Now, I could have looked in certain books for flora and fauna that may exist in the UK, but instead, as is our society at present, my first port of call was to do a web search for it. I’ve been thinking about how we do our research these days, and it got me thinking about how things used to be done. Today, we have a wealth of information at our fingertips. All we have to do is type in what we want to know into Google, and we can pretty much find out anything that we want toꟷwhether that information is correct is an entirely different storyꟷbut we trust it. In years past, we might have had to visit libraries or read through volumes of information to find what we need. It might have taken ten times as long to research a particular subject to a level where you could insert it into your story. If we wanted to know about a location, we might have had to visit it ourselves to know how it’s laid out or how it looks. For example, The Next Stage is set in Washington DC in the US, now, I’ve never been to Washington, so I had no idea where things were in relation to streets or historical landmarks, but I was able to create a path for my characters by touring the city virtually using Google Maps. Again, this made things so much easier as I could walk around the city without leaving my house, and I’ve been told that it’s a pretty accurate representation of the city. Using this method, I was able to revisit the city at the click of a button, so if I wanted to double-check something, it was something that was beyond me. As for skills growing over time, well, that’s a no brainer. Through research, we learn not only about things that we’re looking for but also where to find that information. We learn which websites, books, etc., will give us the information we require, and alongside this, we learn how to use the information that we gather. We learn to translate it and put it into our created worlds. I am better at research after writing three and starting countless other books. I’ve learned what information is of use to me and how to find said information.

It would be easy to write a book and not do any research for it. But in my opinion, it just wouldn’t be as good. Somehow readers know when something isn’t accurate, whether that’s because they have personal experience of the thing you’re writing about or they’ve done the research themselves, and in a way, you owe it to your readers to be as accurate as possible, because these days, it’s easy for anyone to fact check what you write. Of course, there are some genres where research might not be needed. For example, if you’re writing fantasy with worlds that are wholly created by you and don’t follow the logic from the real world, you can pretty much say what you want, and people will go with it. But in some cases, you may still want to do some research. If your story includes battles that involve swords, even if it’s set in a purely fantasy world, you may still want to research different swords and how they are handled. It just lends that little bit more realism to the worlds that you create. I’m sure even in the days when there was no internet, that authors still did a lot of research. There will always be someone that is knowledgeable in the subject that was written about and so will have called the author out if something didn’t add up.

For me, research is a key aspect of being an author. If you’re not great at research and you don’t want to improve your skills in the area, then you will soon fall by the wayside, and people may not enjoy your work as much as they might do if you take that time to properly work out if that calibre of weapon would have made that wound, or if this street joins onto that one. Realism, in some novels, is key to the enjoyment of said novel. And I feel that if you bullshit your readers, they won’t be readers for long. But not only is research good for your writing, but it is also good for you. Through researching subjects for your novels or other works, you learn more about the world that you might not necessarily known before, and this alone will allow you to write about things that you might not have ordinarily done.

In summary, research is good; research is your friend. Research will improve your work and will pull your reader further into the world you have created.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (Review)

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an action-adventure game released in September 2021 for PlayStation 4, Playstation 5 and PC.

In the game, you control Kena, a young spirit guide travelling to a sacred mountain shrine. Throughout the game, she collects little fuzzy spirit companions called Rot, who help her solve puzzles and traverse the environment. In order to be allowed to have safe passage to the shrine, a masked spirit tells her that she must help several trapped spirits throughout the land.

Kena is a game that Alex first noticed and told me about; although I liked the sound of it and couldn’t deny it looked like it would be a good game, I still wasn’t sold on it, but I ended up buying it for Alex at Christmas, and it wasn’t long before we were both well into the game. The design of the game was excellent, the environments were beautiful, and the levels were well designed. Unlike some games in a similar vein, the puzzles weren’t too complicated, and you could tell it was probably designed for the lower age groups of players, but that’s not to say that adults can’t find something to love in it. One thing that I think everyone will love, I know Alex and I do, are the Rots. The Rots are small fuzzy black creatures that follow you around the game and are used to perform certain actions like opening doors or moving objects and within battles performing certain attacks. The little buggers are so cute and lovable, and the fact that you can buy them all sorts of hatsꟷyes, hatsꟷthat don’t do anything of real value, they just make the Rots even cuter. The hats range from elf hats to pumpkin tops, mushrooms and various masks, and they add to the charm of the game.

The gameplay mechanics are quite simple and easy to grasp, so there’s no time spent frustratingly trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Even if you put the game down and come back a few days later, it’s easy to pick back up where you left off. The puzzles aren’t of a high level of difficulty either, and most involve getting your Rots to do something like moving rocks to deflect the magic from your cane or pots to stand on to reach higher levels. But this simplicity isn’t a bad thing; in a way, it’s a breath of fresh air to have a game that’s too overly complicated and makes you want to angrily throw your controller at the screen.

The characters are well crafted, and besides, the high quality of voice acting allows you to be further immersed into a world where you’re surrounded by spirits, good and bad.

The combat at times is a bit clunky and difficult to control; the camera spins around in a way that means you can’t see what’s going on. Although it’s easily rectified, it can be a bit annoying. But with the assistance of your little Rot dudes, the foes can be defeated

There is a lot in this game to love; even I, who isn’t the biggest fan of 3D platformers, which this game is at a base level, enjoyed this game. It’s not a long game, so if you have a couple of decent game sessions, you’ll probably finish it quite quickly, but there is quite a bit to do other than the main story, such as collecting “spirit mail” this is mail that you have to deliver to the home in the town it’s meant for and therefore allowing more spirits to rest. You can also try to find all the flower shrines, cursed chests and Rot hats; this alone will take you a few hours.

I wasn’t sure about this game, to begin with, but I’m glad that I gave it a chance, and although there could have been a little bit more to it, it’s still a fun game and well deserves a rating of 8/10. I would recommend this to anyone, and I’m sure if you’ve got kids, they would love it too.

Addition:

For the trophy hunters out there, most of the trophies are easy to obtain; they’re either from completing sections of the story, collecting all of something, e.g. Rot hats, or performing certain moves or attacks within battles. The one that is the killer is finishing the game on “master” difficulty. Some of the battles are hard when playing it on the normal setting, but on master, they feel almost impossible at times. But, if you keep chipping away at it, you’ll get it done.

I’m Back

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while. Until I decided to write this post, I didn’t realise just how long it had been since I posted. November. Jesus. There are a few reasons behind my lack of posting, though. First off, university. It was around November time when I started to get assignments for my course, and usefully, they all came at once. When they did, I began to get stressed, and everything started to get on top of me. I didn’t feel like I had the time to write either my books or blogs as I wanted to concentrate on my assignments. The other reason was purely that I just didn’t feel like I had anything to post about. I felt that I’d started to go round in circles, and I just didn’t have anything new to say. I’d been posting pretty much nonstop for a year or so, and I just fell out with the whole process. And the fact that I was mainly focused on uni work, I didn’t have any writing or games to post about. But now I’m back. Over the holidays, I’ve finished my uni work, got back into writing, and played some games that I can review, so I feel like I’m in a good place to come back.

In regards to my writing, if you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that before Christmas, I was working on my story, And Then I Killed Her. I was hoping that this would be my next book to release, but when I picked it back up, I just didn’t know where it was going, and rather than just writing whatever and ruining what I’d already written, I decided to put it down and wait until I know what to do with it. I have, though, picked Creatures 2 back up. Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been out taking Athena for her walks, my thoughts have continually come back to this story. I’ve had so many new ideas that I thought it was time to get back into the Creatures universe.

I’ve spent a week or so going through what I’d previously written, and, as I want to do, I changed how it was written (perspective wise); I finished doing this a few days ago and have since been writing new stuff. It’s going well so far. I’m confident that this second novel in the series will vastly improve on the first in writing style and story.

As far as games are concerned, you can expect reviews for Atomicrops, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Twin Mirror. More will be added to the list as 2022 seems to be a pretty decent year for new releases.

That’s it for now. It’s good to be back, and I hope you’ll continue to enjoy my posts.

Have a good week!

A New Way of Writing (For Me)

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Before I start this blog post properly, I just want to say that the presentation that I was anxious about doing last week went really well. I wasn’t as anxious about it as I expected, and when it came time to perform it in front of the rest of the class, I lost any anxiety that I did have. I felt like my delivery was clear, and I even managed to make some eye contact with the group without simply just reading from the script, which for me, is an accomplishment. I’m really happy with how my group did, and even the lecturer said how we met and exceeded her expectations of us after she put us last because “we would be the best”.

Anyway, enough of that, I’m now working on my second assignment, which is the first essay that I’ll have to produce. For the essay, we have to review 10 different texts and present their arguments in a logical way. We had a few different ones to choose from (we could also pick our own), and I chose to go with “Review the arguments about diversity in Star Trek”. I like Star Trek, but I’m not a Trekkie. I’m also aware of some of the diversity that it has been involved with, so it seemed – as Spock would say – the logical choice.

First of all, finding 10 different texts on the subject was harder than it sounded. I kept coming up with the same articles or publications, which was just infuriating. But I did, nevertheless, find them.

The next task (which I’ve just finished) was to read, annotate and make notes on said texts. I’ve not done any annotating since I was at college *cough* 18 years ago, aside from the bits and pieces that I’ve done for the course already, and of course what I’ve done when going over drafts of my own work, although annotating in an academic way is so far removed from that, it doesn’t deserve comparison. Overall I’ve found this stage fairly easy, though. I find that I’m pretty good at pulling out useful information from a given text, so that’s really come in handy when I’ve been highlighting bits and pieces.

Now I’ve done that; I have to see how they all relate to one another. Which ones agree or disagree with each other, what they’re all trying to say, and see which points I want to talk about and expand upon in my essay. This (I hope) will be relatively easy, but I’m comparing it to the next step; writing the damn essay.

From what I’ve learned so far in my foundation year, writing academically is extremely different to the way that I’m used to writing, and that, at the moment, is tripping me up and making me second guess my abilities. I’m used to just writing whatever pops into my head, with no real thought for structure (until going through drafts) or word count. This obviously has to change with academic writing. I’ve got to get my point across in a simple way possible, within the word count, while making it all make sense. It’s going to test my abilities as a writer and probably make me question the way that I’ll write in the future. I’ve already picked up a few different tips that will transfer over to my novel writing.

I have until December 10th to write my essay on the diversity in Star Trek, so I have a little time, but still not much. I’ll have to get cracking, but at the same time, I don’t want to rush it. It’s going to have to be a balance as I want to be able to do other things too.

We’ve really been thrown in at the deep end with this assignment, and I just hope I can swim.

Single Player or Multiplayer?

~ Gareth Ellis ~ Leave a comment

Video games have been around for a long time now and in that time they’ve evolved in many different ways. One noticeable difference is the prevalence of multiplayer modes or just flat out multiplayer games.

Back in the day when multiplayer meant you plugged two controllers into the console or if you were fancy and having a party, you’d have a multi-tap, and I was there for that. There’s something very nostalgic about your 14 inch TV screen being split in half and having to squint to see what was going on on your side. I feel like we’ve lost that now. It’s very rare that you get a game that does local split-screen or even on the same screen as is the case in many sidescrollers, these days they favour online multiplayer and that just doesn’t have the same appeal to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I have and do enjoy the odd online multiplayer. For example I spent years living in World of Warcraft, and even games like The Division and Destiny have good memories for me. But it’s just not the same.

For a start you don’t know most of the players that you play with. I know if you have friends on your given console you can, but in the most part it’s strangers. There’s no longer that thrill of sitting on your bedroom or living room floor, next to your friend and trying to screw up their game by messing with consoles.

Another issue for me is just how toxic online multiplayer can be. There’s always that one git who thinks it’s clever to tell you he “f*cked your mum” or if you if you beat them that they hope you “get cancer and die”, I mean, there’s really no need, is there? I know that this may be a minority of wankers that do this, but it does ruin the experience for those who just want to play the game for fun without being insulted.

I don’t like the way that online multiplayer is also just forced into a game for no reason other than to prolong the life of the game. Like The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto V have it and I don’t see the point. It doesn’t even make sense for it to be there. Plus, if you’re a trophy hunter, these online modes have their own trophies that are part of the main game. So if you don’t want to play online, you’ve got no chance of getting those elusive platinums or 100%. Again this can ruin the experience for some players. This could easily be solved by having them as a separated DLC kind of thing that keeps them away from the main list. But, that’s just me being picky.

Then you have games like Call of Duty. I won’t go into my opinion of these games (let’s just say it’s not favourable); I’ll just say what bugs me about the multiplayer. Now, I’ve not played a CoD game in a while, the last time I did, it still had local multiplayer, and that was fine. My brother and I used to play it together on occasion. But what’s been the same for as long as the games have been about is that they’re weighted towards those that play the game constantly. Because the games are very similar, as soon as a new game comes out, some players are a million times better than everyone else. These players aren’t put into their own groups together so they can piss each other off; no, they’re put with the new or casual players that then get annihilated and then insulted – more than likely, purely because they have a life outside of CoD.

Some games have multiplayer thrown in because the main single-player game is so damn short. For me, it would make more sense to expand the main game rather than duct taping multiplayer onto it like some kind of half-fix. Sometimes, when this is done, it ruins both aspects of play.

As I said at the beginning, I’m not against multiplayer games, but if it’s done wrong or it’s all there is, then I just don’t see the point. For me, it just seems like a money-making exercise so the publisher/developer can sell pointless little loot boxes or kinds for characters that you’ll never see because it’s a first-person game. I’d be far happier if more games had local multiplayer or co-op modes.