Where do I even begin with this game. As a kid (which wasn't that long ago) I played through Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario 64 and once I started playing Odyssey it seemed like it immediately belonged in the same group as those games. This game's ideas are just so fun, imaginative, and expansive that on your first run through, you are likely not going to experience even half of what this game offers.
The main objective of Odyssey is to chase down Peach, like in any other Mario game, but this game has you travelling through different kingdoms that Bowser visits along the way. In each kingdom, you must obtain a certain amount of "Power Moons" that are hidden across the kingdoms and bring them back to your ship to power it up and advance in the game. To complete the game with the minimum moons, you will need 124 moons to get to the Moon and defeat Bowser. You can obtain 539 before you finish the game and the other 327 are unlocked after you beat the game. I have been playing this game for 60+ hours and still need around 200 more moons to get them all. The best part about this game is that getting all the moons isn't some lame chore that you need to do, it's just pure fun to explore and find all these hidden secrets around the map that you had no clue were there the first time you visited. The other part of this game i want to mention is the movement and functions of Cappy. There are so many ways to get around even though the only things you can do are jump, dive, roll, and throw your cap. These four movement options can create combinations of movement like the a triple jump into cap throw to dive onto the cap to give yourself another jump then throw your cap again and dive to it again. There are endless combinations of things you can do and it makes just moving around each kingdom fun in in of itself. Of course you can also "possess" different things with Cappy like a fish, a chain chomp, a dinosaur, etc. Each of the things you can possess has different abilities and you need these abilities to possess in the game and get certain power moons along the way. Most of them aren't even required to beat the game though and thanks to some fun speed running tricks people have found, the minimum captures the game requires to beat it on the 1.0 version is 15 captures, including some that the game forces you to get in the beginning and end of the game. Overall, Super Mario Odyssey is my favorite Mario game of my lifetime by far and rightfully deserves all the praise it gets from review companies like IGN.
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Where do I even begin with this masterpiece. This game is sooooooo huge. The game has been out for not even two months and I easily have over 200 hours sunk into it. I beat the story mode on my third day of playing and then 100% it a couple days afterward and then beat it again on "New Game +" just to see what would happen (sadly nothing happened) and it was a blast. I beat classic mode with all 74 characters (which was a pain in the butt) and that felt like a major accomplishment, and now I'm hosting a tournament with some friends in a couple of days.
This game is the fifth installment of the Smash Brothers series and includes every single character from the first game through the fourth, plus some newcomers. This game is very inviting to newcomers in the series since some of the characters are very easy to play and very very good (like K. Rool). There are also characters that take incredible skill to play at a high level and if a new player tries to play them, then they probably won't do too well (Inkling). Smash Ultimate was in the top ten selling games of 2018 when it came out in DECEMBER of that year, It sold five million copies across all regions and is selling more and more as the hype isn't even over. The game is planning on releasing six more characters in the future, two being Piranha Plant from Mario and Joker from Persona 5 , with four more being revealed later in the future. Smash Ultimate, it seems like, isn't gonna become irrelevant anytime soon and, I think, will become one of the greatest games of all time. As a kid who played Smash Melee and Brawl, this easily has been more fun for me than those two games were for sure. This game is easily a 9/10 and almost a 10/10 if the online services were better and I hope Nintendo takes some time to revamp their online services, because they SUCK. Call of Duty Black Ops 4 is the newest Call of Duty game, as it released on October 12 of 2018. The game has three main game modes, which are: Multiplayer, Zombies, and the newest game mode, Blackout. Multiplayer and Zombies are nothing new, but Blackout is a new battle royale game mode. When you get into the game, you will be in a helicopter with all the other players in the game and you will fly over the map on a random path. Whenever you jump you can glide to where ever on the map you want to. The aim of the game is to be the last one standing and kill everyone else in the game. Enough with explaining, the actual game play of this mode is super super fun. Part of what makes it so fun is the speed of which the games go. Lots of battle royale games take a long time to get through, even if you don't even make it that far, but most games will take like 10 or 15 minutes, which makes the game much less annoying and less of a time commitment. One of the complaints many people have had is the damage of assault rifles (which should be one of the more powerful classes of guns in the game), because it takes about 6 or 7 shots to kill someone, when sub-machine guns only seem to take about 5 shots to kill someone. Most people have a very positive feeling about Blackout so far and they are planning to add a lot more things to it. The other two game modes I have played a lot more than Blackout and my favorite by far is Zombies. Multiplayer is the same old thing from every single Call of Duty, except whenever you get into a game you get to choose between 12 different classes with different special abilities which adds a bit of variety to every game, but it still gets dull. My favorite game mode in Call of Duty since I was a little tiny 10 year old, was zombies, and in this game the zombies mode is super super fun, and the changes they made are alriiiiiiight. They changed the perk system, the health system, and added classes to choose from, which has its ups and downs. They got rid of most of the old perks like jugger-nog, speed cola, and double tap, but added a ton of other perks to choose from. You get to choose the four perks that are on the map, and you can make different classes for different perk loud outs. Instead of increasing your health with jugger-nog, you have a finite amount of health for the whole game which was 150 before it was buffed, and now it is 200, so you can survive about four hits. Overall Black Ops 4 has been super fun over the past two weeks, and I've had a ton of fun playing it with friends and I'm looking forward to the DLC that should be coming out soon. Ima give this one a 8/10.
League of Legends is the number one M.O.B.A. in the world for very good reason, League has been around for almost 9 years now and the player base is still climbing. It is the most popular esports and the 2016 world championships had 43 million unique viewers and the peak concurrent viewer count reached 14.7 million with the winning team (SKT T1) taking home $6.1 million. When you actually get to playing the game then it becomes a different story. In low levels, people really don't take it seriously and if you're trying to climb elo then you run it to many toxic players and people that don't want to try. But once you get out of "elo hell" then you can actually find people who learn the game and can play any of the 134+ champions in the game with more coming every now and again. In the game there are 5 roles that you can play, each having their own strengths and weaknesses which makes it hard to solo carry a team to winning, so that makes teamwork in this game the number one priority. In order to get good at the game you need a lot more than just individual skill and more sharing with the team so that everyone can be strong and you can overpower the enemy team. Overall, League of Legends is a great game to play with friends and have fun with but can also be taken very seriously and can be fun to play competitively at high levels as well. Links: www.lolesports.com/en_US/articles/2016-league-legends-world-championship-numbers
PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds (I will refer to it as PUBG), is easily the most popular PC game out right now and it's still in early access. PUBG has sold more than 10 million copies, with 1.5 million concurrent players. I first played PUBG when my brother showed it to me and let me play some and I instantly loved everything about it. I'm very competitive and battle royale game modes channel that competitive drive and force you to try-hard every single game. Now three months after I bought the game I've sunk 250 hours in it and i'm not gonna stop playing anytime soon. But all 250 hours haven't been tons of fun. The main reason I see criticism for PUBG is that there is too much RNG and it's hard to be a competitive game when there's so much luck involved. I agree wholeheartedly that luck plays too much of a part for it to be competitive but sometimes that's not a bad thing. If it's pure skill then anyone who's new to the game has a chance to win even if they're up against a much better player, but if you're a better player you will most likely win the fight nine out of ten times. My main problem with the game is how reliant you are on where the safe zone is. The safe zone gets smaller and smaller as the game goes on to push people together but towards the late game when the danger zone does an eighth of your health every second, if the new safe zone is on the other side of the person you're fighting then they can hide and you've lost the fight already. And it doesn't help that the blue zone is faster than you so you can't even out run it. Other than this and a few other minor problems I have with the game, I think it's a ton of fun if you love shooters and are very competitive. I give PUBG a 8/10.
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AuthorMy name is Jonathan Eller, and I am 15 years old and I go to Durham School of the Arts as a 10th grader. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Archives
May 2019
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