Note to Readers

Note to all readers: The blog posts here represent my thoughts on gaming, technology, movies and anything else that I decide to write about. They do no directly represent the thoughts of my employer or any other groups that I am affiliated with.

What Should I Play This Weekend?

In an effort to see what everyone else is playing and get some opinions, I want to see what you feel I should be playing this weekend.

For this week, my initial thought is that I should finish up UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves, but I’m also getting Brutal Legend and Ghostbusters from GameFly. Also, I may want to finish up more of Bioshock as I was pretty impressed with it this past weekend. Decisions, decisions … let me know what you think.

What I’ve Played This Week: Bioshock, Topple 2

Here’s a snapshot of what I’ve been playing this week:

Bioshock

I decided to pick up Bioshock for the PS3 in the beginning of 2009 when it went on sale on Amazon’s Video Games Deals of the Day. Prior to buying the game, I played the demo on the PC and messed around with this title a little bit on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year I was swamped with games from Christmas and my birthday. Bioshock got buried under games like Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War and more.

Now, I’ve had some time play through this amazing game. First off, the environment of Bioshock reminds me a lot of what I felt about Dead Space. The atmosphere bringing a gamer, who plays as Jack, deeper into the depths of the underwater city of Rapture.

If there one complaint that I have about this game so far, it is that the controls on the PS3 remote are ridiculously annoying. The game gives you a lot of options for weapons, including a wide range of plasmids and weapons, mapping two fire buttons and two weapon selects is a bit much. I find myself constantly battling against Big Daddy’s only to die by accidentally attempting to throw a box at him with telekinesis.

All together, the game is great. But, my favorite part about the game is the hacking mini-games. Pipe Dreams clone FTW!

Looking forward to seeing what 2k Games does with Bioshock 2.

Topple 2 Plus+

ngmoco:) has been one of my favorite game developers for the iPhone ever since I tried out a handful of their games when I first purchased my iPhone 3GS. They released their Plus+ Network over the summer and recently released Topple 2 for free so iPhone gamers can utilize this network.

Topple 2 is a great puzzler. It challenges gamers to stack blocks of different shapes in order to reach a height goal. The game does get quite challenging in the latter stages. I’m currently in the third world and have been stuck on a certain puzzle for quite some time. However, Topple 2 is a lot of fun for those short breaks and is well worth a download as it is free.

What I’m looking forward to playing next week

Only what will sure be my favorite game of 2009.

What I’ve Played This Week: Midterms Edition

I haven’t had a lot of playing time this week. On Tuesday I had a geology midterm for my Hazards of Earthquakes and Volcanoes class and on Thursday I had a midterm for my Marketing Research class. Both these left me awake late at night for necessary. Anyways here’s what I played with the little time that I had this week:

Left4Dead

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Crash Course, the newest DLC for Left4Dead, from Machinima. After a long absence from L4D, I was very happy to jump back into this new campaign. The feels a lot shorter than most, with only one safe house between the two long stretches of a zombie infested truck yard. Although the length does not hold up to some of the other campaigns, Crash Course still offers the same hectic feel of a zombie apocalypse. However, I found myself wishing for a lengthier level, which Chet Faliszek of Valve said would come in Left 4 Dead 2. I’m still not sure what I’ll do when November 17 rolls around (I may be spending my hard-earned money on another upcoming title that happens to be coming out that day too), but for now I’m happy fighting the virtual zombie infestation with three strangers.

Canabalt

A while back, I wrote a piece for Total Gaming Network about the iPhone becoming my new gaming platform. More and more I find myself justifying a random purchase of $0.99-$2.99 iPhone games. I got my first glimpse of Canabalt was at Voce Communications when we had a friendly competition to see who could get the highest score.

The game has an amazing art-style with a palette of whites, grays and blacks. The simple animation of a man running from rooftop to rooftop, crashing through windows and dodging boxes and bombs works well with the simplicity of the game. In the background, you can see aliens, or other large creatures, terrorizing the cityscape. It’s an addicting, beautiful game, but part of me wants to say that it would be priced better at $1.99. For now, it’s a great time filler for me.

What I’ve Played This Week: Musical Halo

Time for my weekly recap on what I’ve played this week.

Beatles Rock Band

I got The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 from the Best Buy’s buy one PS3 game and get another half off deal that happened a couple weeks ago. I have to say that I am not a huge Beatles fan by any means. Their music just never spoke to me. However, I am a big fan of rhythm games, especially Rock Band and Rock Band 2. The game is great. I’m starting to warm up to their music a little bit. The gameplay is a lot like the previous Rock Band games, allowing gamers to take the shoes of this historic band. The thing that puts this game in a different playing field is the visual representation of the band playing the music. I find myself wanting to watch the videos rather than actually having to play the game.

Halo 3 ODST

Late on Friday, or early I guess on Saturday, I finished the campaign for Halo 3 ODST. Halo 3 ODST actually frustrated me a little bit more than previous versions of the game. I noticed myself longing for having control of Master Chief more than having to hunt down a health pack (even though health packs were not scarce). The open world nature of the game worked; however, I felt that I came into the game with false hopes of an entirely open world shooter, like Far Cry 2. I got to play an extended session of Firefight with my roommate and loved it. I’m sure that when I continue to pour more time in the game, Firefight will be my mode of choice.

GameFly GOTW: Wheelman

I received Wheelman early last week from GameFly. The game is an open world action game starring Vin Diesel. It has some interesting gameplay elements with the vehicle becoming one of the primary weapons that gamers use. It sounds laughable, but Ubisoft does a pretty good job with building this “weapon” and giving gamers a little bit of room to play with it. There are also other third person shooter elements that are added into the game that gives Wheelman more appeal. However, the game gets a little stale. I’m not a big open world gamer, so Wheelman wasn’t really my thing.

Where I Have Been For The Past Three Months

As you can see by the tags, being busy is a slight understatement to what has been going on lately. However, being busy has brought awesome opportunities and learning experiences for me. These past, almost, three months have been a joy ride. I’ve continued my work with Voce Communications. Although my hours have decreased do to me being back in school full-time, I still find that this experience is truly enhancing my education beyond the classrooms that I sit in every Tuesday and Thursday.

School is starting off well. I’m currently taking campaign planning, a few research classes (both marketing and mass communications), intro to advertising, a geology course and new media communications. If there is one class there is really standing out to me, it would be new media communications. I’ve been wanting to get more direction with the Adobe Suite and I feel that this class is going to give me an opportunity to get some good direction on learning the programs.

Gaming-wise, I’ve been having a lot of fun. I was actually able to attend PAX in September, which was a great opportunity to nerd out for a weekend. I met a lot of great people and saw some amazing upcoming games. Do your self a favor right now and stop reading my post to check out Shank. Klei Entertainment has a great side scrolling game on their hands. Actually, now that I think about it a developer from Canada has another great game that I’m looking forward to.

I did finish one of my goals this summer…well the nerdiest goal that I have. My gamerscore reached 10k the day before school started. I’ll hold off for the laughter for a second….*twiddles fingers*…..Honestly, I’ve noticed that I really like gaming over the summer. Like really, really like gaming.

I’m looking to post on a more regular schedule now. Look for more about gaming, public relations and technology posts from me in the future.

Learning About PR at Warped Tour

As I’ve said before I started writing for SomethingPunk a while ago. This past weekend I had the opportunity to cover Warped Tour at San Francisco. Conducting interviews and interacting with PR agencies and publicists gave me an insight in the world of public relations.

My experience began with email outreach with PR professionals. I found that I was more likely to respond to people who personalized their pitches to me. These worked since it felt that it was the beginning of a relationship. I know that in the future I can reach out to these people for additional resources. Big thanks to MSO PR and Jose and Devin with Dance Gavin Dance.

Another thing that I learned is timeliness is key. I understand that there are a lot of high level artists on the tour. However, some type of acknowledgement is necessary with the press.

Finally, management of the tour is hectic and organization is key. Bethany at MSO PR handled it well. She was a huge help with getting me in front of the artists.

Working at an online news site has given me a great amount of help. I have found certain techniques that work out for me and I feel that I can bring those skills back to the workplace.

Lessons of an Intern: Be Proactive

I’m almost at the month point of my internship at Voce Communications and I continue to learn from my research and all the help that I have received from everyone on all the teams that I have been working with. One thing that I learned this week is to be proactive with all my accounts.

My Indecisiveness is Cured by Hunch

I think the best thing about working in at a PR agency is that you are exposed to so many different industries and technologies. Today, while going through some industry news for one of our clients, I stumbled upon Hunch. This decision engine created by Flickr co-founder, Caterina Fake (awesome last name), was just released on Sunday.

Lessons of an Intern: Learn the Tools

Another week and more learning over at Voce. This week I pitched for the first time ever (which was nerve wrecking at the time, but I can go over that in a later post) and continued some other work on all my accounts. However, the biggest lesson that I learned this week is taking some time to learn to use the tech/tools that I encounter in my day-to-day tasks.