Assassin's Creed III The Redemption Review

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I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the finale of this little trilogy. It did a lot of things right that the first two missed out on. Right off the bat they started you off on the Aquila doing the most fun thing from Assassin's Creed III: naval battles. They even threw in a nice connection to Assassin's Creed IV, with Connor telling Faulkner a little about his grandfather. I kind of wish that the naval battle had lasted longer, but we have a plot to move along.

Speaking of plot, I liked it alot more than the first two DLCs. We finally get to see King George for an extended period of time, experience the direct effects he is having on the American people. Before now I had to trust that other characters were telling me the truth about how bad Washington was. Now I get to hear him make a stirring speech and see starving people in the streets.

You also get to explore the King's new pyramid, which gave the game a feel much more similar to Assassin's Creed II.

I really liked that door, in case you couldn't tell.

They also managed to find a way to make the little side-quests found throughout the city worthwhile. In order for there to be enough civil unrest in the city for the rebellion to succeed I had to do things like beat up heralds, assassinate officers, and break cannons.

As with the previous two entries in the trilogy, you get a new spirit animal power. This time it is the power of the bear, which allows you to smash the ground and deal tons of damage to those around you. Of course, it takes away a good chunk of your own health as well, so use wisely. They also got clever and created situations that could only be solved by combining the different spirit powers in order to progress.

Time for some pet peeves.
I didn't really think about it until now, but it was very lazy of them to just reverse the bluecoats/redcoats roles. Once they gained independence you'd think that the American Army would get nicer uniforms, and the people rebelling against King Washington wouldn't just have a bunch of British uniforms. In fact I can't think of a worse thing for them to war. But hey, the developers couldn't be bothered to make new character models.
There was a scene where Connor's voice sounded weird, as if the mic they were using to record the lines was having issues. Seriously, this is a AAA game, don't they have nice equipment?
Ubisoft's credits strike again! I spent a couple of hours actually playing the DLC, and then I sat through over 20 minutes of credits. Ridiculous.
They ended with a long cutscene that connected the story to the real world, and it looked worse than the in-game footage. Seriously, I think they made this in 480p or something.

This DLC is definitely worth its $8 price tag. If you haven't played the other two, that is fine, they have a nice cutscene at the beginning telling you what is going on (and honestly you didn't miss much.) I wish that the other two had been similarly priced, but oh well.

Iron Man 3 Review

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I think the movie industry intentionally releases awesome movies at the end of semesters. The Avengers, The Hobbit, and now Iron Man 3. I can already tell you that at the end of fall semester I'll be watching the second Hobbit movie.

The Iron Man series is my favorite of the Marvel heroes' individual series, and I am happy to say that Iron Man 3 is the best of them.
In my opinion the snappy dialogue is what sets Iron Man apart, and the first two movies suffered because the lines were kind of hard to understand, but the third one was crystal-clear. There was also the problem that none of the other characters could keep up with Tony Stark's snarkiness, but this time there was one. And the kicker was that he was just some kid that Stark ran into. It got so good that I started referring to the kid as "Stark's Muse."
There was a really good piece of meta-humor where they make a deprecating remark about theater actors that I found hilarious.
I was laughing so much during this movie that there were quite a few times that I was the only one in the theater laughing. Yeah, I was that guy.

As for action and explosions, there was plenty of that, but you can go see any old action movie for that. Speaking of which, all of the previews that I saw before the movie looked exactly the same, and I had to wonder what kind of culture we've created. Then I got over it and enjoyed the movie.

I don't want to talk about more because there are tons of things I could spoil.

Everyone should go see this movie as soon as they can, it is great!

Dreams: At a Fancy Restaurant

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This dream probably represents two things I know about myself: my ignorance when it comes to certain social situations, and the fact that I get hungry easily.

So the dream starts out with +Kaelyn Olson and I going to a fancy restaurant for a date. We take a look at the menu and of course I have no idea what any of this stuff is, so I'm just shooting in the dark. When the food arrives (which doesn't take nearly as long as it would in real life) I still have no idea what it is, so I ask the waiter how I'm supposed to eat it. I'm about as clueless as Cuzco.

I think we know who is wearing the pants in this relationship.

I notice that I'm getting some strange looks from the other diners, but I try to ignore them and enjoy myself. Kaelyn and I talk and eat for a while, and then I became aware of the fact that my shoulders and back were pretty cold. I look down and see that I am shirtless. No wonder I'm getting funny looks. I wake up briefly and pull the covers up around myself (I was actually cold in real life) and go back to sleep.

Now that I have my shirt back on everything seems to be going fine. After we finish we go to some awards ceremony that's going on. We show up late, and try to find some seats. Before we can however +Liv Klemek runs up to us yelling about how she just won an Oscar!

We were really excited about this.

Liv told us that there was a buffet downstairs, so we all rushed down and got in line. Apparently Oscar winners still have to wait their turn. I think my parents were there as well. I was just about to dig into my big plate of food when my roommate's alarm went off and woke me up.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go eat breakfast.

Dreams: Unique New York

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I had at least three distinct dreams; one had to do with a big space battle, another had UAVs and social justice, but I remember the third one best. +Ryan Rampersad will enjoy it.

So +Sam Ebertz and I were in New York City, just kind of wandering around. We eventually ended up in this alley that slowly turned into more of a tunnel. We came across a chamber with junk and spare electronic parts scattered around. Kind of reminds me of the garbage city from the movie Labyrinth.

As we were looking around the room Paul Miller came in behind us and told us that he had been living in this underground area hiding from the world for almost a year. He didn't seem to mind that we had found, and he even let me take a few pictures of him and Sam posing together and moving boxes around (why I wanted pictures of them moving boxes I have no idea).

Something like this.

When he expressed concern that he didn't have a USB cord for the camera I reassured him that my laptop has a card reader. When I whipped out my Chromebook he pursed his lips but didn't say anything.

As Sam and I were leaving (Sam hadn't said a word throughout the whole dream) we passed a vaguely familiar-looking homeless guy with long black hair, but I didn't get a good look at his face. Wonder who that could have been.

And if you didn't understand most of that, don't worry; it had to do with a very specific set of inside jokes that my mind conjured up just for this one dream.

Dreams: Everybody is in My Room

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I tend to have rather odd dreams, and I love telling people about them. It had never occurred to me that I could post them on here as well. Plus this way if I start to forget details I can just come back and read it. I'll be writing up some of the best dreams I had in my childhood, but this one is from last night.

So I am in my dorm room, but the room is a bit different from real life; it is about twice as big as it should be (for those of you who know the layout of my dorm, imagine knocking out the wall between my room and Liv and Katie's room) and Declan (my roommate) had recently moved everything around. The beds were opposite each other, both lofted. My desk was still where it should have been, and the closets were up against the same wall the door is on.

It seems that my dream took place during finals week, because Declan was all packed up. Then my family showed up to help me pack my stuff, but I didn't want to pack all of my stuff yet. I have no idea how I got them to go away, but eventually they did. Then I went to bed.

When I woke up (still in the dream) I got out of my bed and immediately went over to my desk to check my tablet for messages. Then I turned around and realized there were two other people in my room with me. I did a comical "whoa!" and accidentally threw my tablet up in the air. Luckily I caught it. The two other people turned out to be Ashleigh and Tess, two girls who lived on my floor last year. They had apparently been waiting for me to wake up for quite a while, and they were busy eating doritos. I was mad at them for making a big mess on my floor, so I made them sweep it up.

I needed to change into my clothes, so apparently Ashleigh and Tess ceased to exist for a while. However, my room now had a couple of doors and they both had windows on them. And there were people outside who wouldn't stop looking into my room. At first this made me hesitate to change, but then I realized they were all guys so I mooned them.

After I changed a bunch of people were in my room, and they were all eating things and making a mess. I think they were all athletes. No matter what I did I couldn't get them to leave. I vaguely remember that I wanted to go and do something elsewhere, but I couldn't because there were a bunch of people in my room.

Then I woke up.

Assassin's Creed III The Betrayal Review

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Oddly boring title page.

The Betrayal is the second episode of three in Assassin Creed III's alternate timeline where Washington finds a Piece of Eden, gets corrupted, and declares himself King.

Unlike the main game, these episodes do very little to try to be open-world, which makes them much shorter, but they also stay much more focused. I appreciate that, but when there is nothing but story that story needs to be good. Don't get me wrong, the premise is interesting from an intellectual perspective, but I didn't really connect with any of the characters I was interacting with. I guess the fact that I know that none of this really happened (even within the historical fiction context of the original game) doesn't help me to care about them.

This blacksmith was the most interesting person I met, and I only had one conversation with him.

As with the first episode, you gain a new power that pretty much breaks the game. This time it is the power of the eagle, which allows you to fly short distances and assassinate people from afar. Unlike the first episode, there isn't really a mechanic that acts to counter your new power, so you are basically unstoppable.

There was a pretty cool boss battle against Washington where you have to figure out when to use your two powers in order to get around his defences.

Unfortunately the game is still pretty buggy, and for me it manifested itself by not triggering the final cutscene when I finished, so I had to go back and fight the last battle again.

If you are really interested in seeing what things would be like if Washington had seized power, you can pick this up for $10, but it isn't an essential buy by any means.

EDIT: you can now read my review of The Redemption DLC.

Plug: Amazon Prime

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Many people don't realize it, but Amazon Prime is probably the best subscription deal on the internet. I discovered it through their six month trial for students, and I am hooked. Not only do you get free two-day shipping on most items, but you also basically get Netflix for cheaper. This year I used it to watch all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 and all five seasons of Stargate Atlantis (which alone is worth way more than the $40 a year that it costs me.)
Prime also has another advantage over Netflix; Netflix has to wait until an entire season of ongoing shows has come out before they have it. I'm pretty sure that this is because they follow the DVD release schedule. Amazon Prime, on the other hand, usually has episodes available the day after they air. The only catch is that it usually costs $2-$3 for each new episode. For a show like Doctor Who I am definitely willing to pay that much to watch each episode as they come out.

Thanks Amazon, for replacing my TV channels and DVD collection all at once.

Bioshock Infinite Review

Note: this blog has been migrated to Medium, with the articles here available to preserve permalinks Please see this post at https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/bioshock-infinite-review-69f141bef571

Holy cow, I haven't gotten this sucked into a game since Half-Life 2! And Half-Life 2 resulted in my mother banning me from video games for two weeks. My mother isn't at college with me, so my productivity went down the drain. Bioshock Infinite came out at 11:00 on Monday evening (Central Time) and I finished it 38 hours later at 1:00 Wednesday afternoon. 

During that time I spent 13 hours in the game.

That's one-third of my time.

That's more time than I spent sleeping.

I have no self-control.

Not only did I spend a ton of my time in the game, but even when I had to leave it I was thinking about it; I couldn't get it out of my head!

So let's get into the stuff that you probably want to know about the game. It's a first-person shooter, single-player, linear, and story-based. Infinite takes the best things of the first two Bioshock games and puts them together into one game. Much like Bioshock 2, you have both your weapon and a special power (called a vigor) equipped at once, so you don't have to switch between them. Vigors are pretty much the same thing as plasmids were in the previous games, just with a different name. Unlike the previous games you can only carry two weapons at once, but ammunition is more abundant. An addition that I really appreciated was the fact that melee was assigned its own button and you didn't have to have a specific weapon equipped for it. The other addition to gameplay that they made was the skylanes. They add a lot of movement and verticality to the maps, and they are a ton of fun. Nothing quite as satisfying as zipping around, dropping down on an unsuspecting enemy and knocking them off of the city. They get a long time to wave goodbye.

Of course you're not going to pay $60 for 13 hours of fun gameplay; if you just want fun FPS gameplay you're probably playing Team Fortress 2 right now. The story, atmosphere, and characters are the real heart of Bioshock. You play as Booker DeWitt, a man with a colored past that he would rather forget. A US Cavalry veteran and former Pinkerton who is sent to the flying city of Columbia to retrieve Elizabeth. "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt."

This couldn't possibly be a trap.

 When I first heard about Bioshock Infinite's setting, I thought it was just going to be the City of Rapture in the sky; Columbia is so much more than that. There are two things that give it a huge advantage over Rapture: Rapture's society had already collapsed, so pretty much all of the storytelling was done through audio recordings. Columbia is populated, and is in the middle of a revolution when you show up; this allows for much richer storytelling. It also doesn't hurt that the city itself is a joy to behold. I would just spend a while walking around and looking at whatever was around because it was all so gorgeous.

No, you can't kill the children. You monster.

This cake isn't a lie.

Another huge difference between Rapture and Columbia is the ideology behind them. rapture was founded by a crazy guy who wanted governments and religions and morality to stop telling him what to do. Columbia was founded by a crazy guy who worships the founding fathers and wants to purge the sinful world below. And of course the girl you have to rescue is the key to his plan.

That brings me to Elizabeth. If you are worried about the game being an extended escort mission, you can relax. Elizabeth can't be harmed in combat, and she comes in very handy. While fighting she will often find items that you need. If you are low on health, she'll often toss you a medkit; if you're burning through a bunch of clips she'll toss you some ammunition for whatever gun you're using. She can also bring certain items into our world from parallel universes, and you get to choose which ones will benefit you the most.

She's also the most emotionally engaging video game character that I can remember encountering. Even though there isn't any player choice, I legitimately felt guilty when she got mad at Booker for lying to her, and I rushed through a few levels after she was captured because I was desperate to rescue her.

The whole alternate-realities thing is more than just a convenient gameplay tool, it pops up quite a bit in the storyline. For example, the technology that keeps the city floating has to do with quantum entanglement or some such fiddle-faddle. It starts getting pretty crazy about halfway through, which is one of the reasons that I was so engaged; I wanted to find out how it would all get resolved.

On a related note you should all buy the game and finish it as quickly as you can because I want someone who I can talk to about the ending of the game. None of my friends have finished the game yet, and it is driving me crazy.

Issues of racism and classism come up quite a bit throughout the course of the game (that's the whole reason the rebellion is happening after all) and from a modern perspective we can all agree that having separate bathrooms is wrong. So I don't feel the need to go into it.

Random screenshots time!

Somebody watches Doctor Who.

If you want to see all of my screenshots you can head over to my Steam profile. They have a nice spoiler tag now so it will warn you about any screenshots that might give away important things.

Instead of giving games a 1-10 score I like to give them a reasonable price point. Bioshock Infinite is definitely worth $60, even though it isn't very long. When I finished I felt extremely satisfied with the game, I wasn't longing for the story to continue or anything. The awesome story, Elizabeth, and gameplay are the huge selling points of this awesome title.

GO BUY THE GAME ALREADY.

There are a few DLCs planned, and I have purchased the season pass because I have faith that they will be worth it.

EDIT: you can now read my review of the Burial at Sea DLC.

First They Came...

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Google Reader is one of my favorite products from Google, but it is one of their lesser-known ones. It is a feed reader, which means that whenever certain sites post new content it tells me and in many cases it presents the entire content of the post right there. This means that I don't have to go and individually visit every webcomic, blog, podcast, and news site that I like to read. I just keep Google Reader open and when there are unread articles I open them right there. Pretty powerful, huh? I know that many of you visit this blog when you see me posting about a new article on Google+ or Facebook; but that method becomes pretty bad if you are trying to follow many blogs.

One of the blogs that I read is the Official Google Blog. About two years ago they started "spring cleaning," which means retiring old products that nobody uses anymore. I followed this news with interest, and while a few interesting products got taken down (Google Wave) I had used almost none of them (Google Desktop and Related Pages were the exceptions, but I didn't use them extensively.) But today I saw another post with the spring cleaning title, and as I read through it my blood ran cold.

Google Reader is retiring on July 1st 2013.

After I finished swearing at my monitor and sending a distressed email to +Ryan Rampersad (who is also an avid feed reader) I calmed down enough to think about it.
I can understand that not that many people use Google Reader, because most people don't know what an RSS feed is.
However, Reader had enough users to warrant a switch to the almost-flat design that graces most Google pages. Compare it to Google Code's homepage, which looks like a webpage from over five years ago.
Does maintaining Reader really take that much work? Can't Google just keep it as it is for minimal cost?

I guess I know how Martin Niemöller felt when he wrote these words:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Okay, so this isn't nearly as serious, but still. Somebody tell Google that Reader is a wonderful, easy-to-use tool that many people love!
I guess we all know that the only thing to do is to find an alternative feed reader. I'll take a look around, see what's out there. If anyone has suggestions, shoot me an email.

Mass Effect 3 Citadel Review

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https://medium.com/@ianrbuck/mass-effect-3-citadel-review-57e83b7a908a

Unfortunately Origin doesn't have a built-in screenshot function, so I don't have any pretty pictures to show you.

This DLC was definitely aimed at Mass Effect veterans, those of us who have played through since the first game and have a history with each character. Bioware specifically wrote it to be one final hoorah with your favorite crewmates. Just watch the trailer, you'll see what I mean.

There are two main parts to this DLC; the first is the mission where somebody is trying to kill you and you have to get the crew together to take them down. Since my Shepard is already at level cap, it wasn't really a challenge. The real appeal was getting to hear my crew members bantering the whole time. Even when there was a major plot twist and I was expecting them to get serious, they just took it in stride and even made fun of the new situation. I love my crew. Some crew members got more time in the spotlight than others, but everyone had at least a few good lines. Even crew members who aren't part of your combat squads (Cortez, Traynor, and of course Joker) got a few good moments.

The second part is just hanging out in your new apartment. You get to throw a party and invite whoever you want to. I of course invited everybody, and we had a wild good time. Tali is hilarious when she gets wasted. I loved every minute of that party.
Even after the party is over there is a new area of the citadel for you to check out. There is a casino, an arcade, and a combat simulator that you can use; you can also meet up with a few of your crew members and hang out with them. Garrus is terrible at hitting on chicks.

I enjoyed it more than any of the other DLCs in the franchise, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who is a Mass Effect fan. $15 is a very reasonable price for the great time you'll have.

In case you were wondering if you should get any of the other DLCs in the series, here is a quick recap:
Mass Effect: there are no DLCs for the original game.

Mass Effect 2: if you are on PC you have to go to social.bioware.com to buy the DLCs

• Obviously you should get all of the free ones, especially Zaeed and Kasumi. They are cool characters.
• If you are willing to pay anything for any of the DLCs, the Shadow Broker is the first one you should get. It was awesome; you're tracking down the Shadow Broker and you get to hang out with Liara again. $10.
• Arrival was pretty cool too, and it's scope is huge. It also has ramifications at the beginning of Mass Effect 3. $7.
• Overlord was alright; it had an interesting moral quandary but it's not an essential buy. $7.
• The rest are alternate costume packs for your crew or weapon packs. If you're into that kind of thing you can get them. I didn't.

Mass Effect 3: you can buy the DLCs through Origin, which is a much better solution than Bioware's website

• Again, get the free ones.
• Get Citadel. Just do it. $15. You can afford that.
• Leviathan was really interesting, and it gave us some insight to the origins of the Reapers. I liked it. $10.
• Omega was a fun romp through everyone's favorite seedy space station. You get to work side-by-side with Aria, but you can't take any of your crew members with you. I had a good time with it, but again it isn't essential. At $15 you might want to skip it, depending on how much you enjoy talking to Aria.
• From Ashes adds a Prothean crew member to your squad. It was one of those day-one DLCs that everyone was pissed about, and I didn't get it. $10.
• There are a bunch of multiplayer weapon packs and stuff. If that kind of thing matters to you, go ahead and buy some.

A New Era of Journalism

As anyone who will listen to me for more than five seconds knows, I have a podcast. Inspired by +Ryan Rampersad and +Matthew Petschl's show At The Nexus +Ian Decker and I hatched the idea to start a weekly video game show. And so Eight Bit was born.

We recorded our first episode almost exactly six months ago, and so far we haven't missed a week. We've also managed to have guests on the show for most of the episodes. All of the guests to date have been friends of ours, and we usually brought them on to review games that neither of us had played.

Imagine our surprise when we get this email:

Hi! I was told I should get in touch with you about potentially talking about our new project, Net Gain: Corporate Espionage.
If you'd like to check up on it, you can see our popular Kickstarter here: http://kck.st/ZK6OR3

Thank you!

~John Gosling

 My initial reaction was "There is no way this is real. No way a real developer heard about us. Did one of our listeners tell them about us? No way."
But lo, the Kickstarter looks legitimate, and his email address is in the @levelzerogames.com domain. They even have a few games that they have already made! So I had to come to terms with the fact that a real Indy developer wanted to be on our show. Now how did he hear about us?

I started snooping around the Kickstarter page, and after determining that the game sounds worth it, I backed it. Then I looked at the list of other backers. One profile picture jumped out at me. +Chris Thompson was one of the backers! Chris is one of the hosts of Control Structure, the Computer Science-themed show on the network.

Long story short, Chris had contacted John about being on Control Structure, and John found out about our show. Since ours is the gaming show he wants to be on our show to talk about the game, and he will also be on Control Structure to talk about some other topic.

I am super excited about this opportunity, and I am still a little flabbergasted that it just fell into our lap the way it did. John is scheduled to appear on our show on March 17th, so look for that episode on the website right after St. Patrick's Day.