I got an extension on my TED Talk, so I can’t talk about mine as I’m still finalizing it for tonight. Instead, I’m going to talk about someone else’s TED Talk. I watched group member Emma Foley’s TED Talk and thought it was really good! Her quality of voice (pitches, stops, etc) was really good, and I thought that her vocabulary (for example, the freedom of the 40s coming to a “crashing end”) was also very nice. As I’ve noted in comments before, the slides were amazing and seemed very professional. The only negative I have is that she was reading off of something for the majority of the VoiceThread post, so there wasn’t a lot of eye contact. Nonetheless, her TED Talk was incredibly well done and interesting.
Some ideas for the History of a Public Controversy:
-The OJ Simpson trial. We all saw how he handled the gloves, and it’s pretty much quietly acknowledged that most people think he did it- however, he got off without that conviction.
-A more recent example of public controversy could be something from the QAnon movement. We all know how well Trump’s loss in the most recent presidential election was handled by them, and their reaction to the COVID vaccine.
So this is the last passion blog post I’ll be doing for class this semester (however, I will be doing a review when the Diamond and Pearl remakes come out tomorrow. I’m planning on going to the midnight release at GameStop, so come by and say hi if you feel like it!). I figured I would end on a good note and review one of my favorite Switch games, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. My cousin had one of the previous Fire Emblem games on the switch, I think Birthright or Conquest, but honestly the only similarity between those games and this one is the unit and turn mechanics. The game developers did SO much here in terms of plot/lore/stylistic choices, especially with the addition of crests (basically helpful sigils that activate occasionally with entering into different forms of combat, healing, etc). I absolutely went feral for this game in high school. Basically, the premise is that your character or unit (Byleth, but you can rename them whatever) is the child of a famous mercenary and ends up a teacher at this monastery- and you have the choice of heading three different classes, all of whom are led by characters in line to be in major positions of power. You connect with characters inside and outside your faction, and then you end up having to fight against those other characters (and kill them) later on down the road. There’s major character death in this one too, in a couple different forms. This is a game that, at its core, is about the horrors of war, and how no side ever truly wins. Personally I recommend going with the Golden Deer, because their ending is the closest to the true ending, I believe (and I maintain to this day that it’s a crime that the final boss music, God Shattering Star, didn’t get into Smash with the rest of the main songs)- plus I have a soft spot for Claude (I always listen to English VA on this game just for his voice actor, Joe Zieja). As a side note, I’ll be making the images a little bigger this time so that you can read the dialogue. I screenshotted these for a reason. I don’t have a whole lot of screenshots of gameplay this time because I thought the dialogue was more interesting- however here is one of me finally catching the giant fish that I spent maybe two hours attempting to get:
In context, this is not as creepy as it sounds. Just a little weird.
FUN RATING: 4/5. Man, I had such a blast playing this game. It was my first Fire Emblem game and it definitely lives up to the hype that the series gets. There was some grinding to do in terms of leveling up my units- that’s what I always do, because I like smashing everyone down into the dirt. It’s enjoyable for me. But honestly, with some money management and a couple divine pulses (time rewinds) if anything goes wrong, you’ll be just fine. There were so many different options of things to do, from fishing to interacting with characters to dealing with lost items and having teatime, I literally never ran out of things to do. And then they added the DLC, and I sunk even more of my time into this game.
Decent enough strategy, but man does this really give a lot of insight into his character
EASE RATING: 3/5. Fun, but can be challenging at times. If I hadn’t had Lysithea for the Death Knight I think I probably would have spent a lot of time extremely frustrated at this guy’s bonkers defense. The Death Knight got nerfed but in the opposite direction when they made this game. There’s a lot of strategy that goes into gameplay on this one (which is fair because its literally a strategy game). I really enjoy that it shows you the attacking paths where you move characters to certain tiles. I personally play on the normal difficulty without permadeath, but some people really enjoy the looming threat of the permadeath of their units. It takes some of the fun out of it for me and makes it more high-stress, but if that’s what you want to use, it’s there. Nothing is insurmountable if you just look at it from a different angle and try something else, similarly to Rune Factory Four (as discussed last week).
Never change, Claude.
REPLAYABILITY RATING: 5/5. There are so many different plotlines to play through, and the game gives you numerous save slots to use. You’re supposed to go wild. With the addition of New Game Plus, you basically are set up to do multiple playthroughs. There’s some stuff you can’t access in the first playthrough, like dragon sigils (which are basically crests but manufactured) and finishing augmenting the statues in the monastery chapel. That said, it did take me over 100 hours to finish my first playthrough- however, that’s because I wanted to do everything.
OVERALL: This game is near and dear to my heart, and is one of the only games where I have had next to no complaints about anything in the game. They literally did so much well, even down to the little things like being able to pet and feed cats and dogs on the monastery grounds. And there’s cooking, growing, and harvesting vegetables! Another pseudo farming sim, but I’ve never disliked those. The main focus is on the combat, though! As I played through the games, I got really attached to the characters. I absolutely would recommend this game to anyone who asked me about it, and I have gone out of my way to tell people about it before unprompted. This game was so good to me. I liked it so much, in fact, that I’ve been wanting a spine tattoo of some of the crests for several years now. Hopefully this summer I can get it. If the universe didn’t want me to get a sick tattoo, why would it make the designs so cool?
IN-CLASS EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: Ended up switching my topic to monetization of games over time- just to avoid confusion! I was more passionate about this, and that translates to me being able to go into more depth about the subject.
For this, I’m just putting in photos that I plan on using with a link to the original source and a small description.
I’m using this image when talking about Doodle Jump as an example of an older game that didn’t use to have ads when it first came out in 2009, and then started to have advertisements show up- you have to pay to get rid of them. Originally, you would just download the game and play it.
This is the rainbow credit system for the popular first person shooter game Rainbow Six Siege. I’m using this as an example of “pay to win”, because there’s been complaints that this microtransaction is required in order to get different characters, rather than regular gameplay unlocking. I don’t know a whole lot about this game, so I might find a different example, but this is what I have so far. This particular photo is in GBP, but it shows a pretty accurate example of price points- from what I’ve seen, it is approximately 600 credits to unlock a new character or “operator”. Ubisoft has said that it takes 25 hours to unlock one operator, and it is supposed to take 200 hours approximately to unlock them all. That’s a lot of playtime that not everybody has time for.
I’m using popular game Genshin Impact as an example of a gacha game, where the characters and weapons you redeem are randomized. You can get new things using game currency known as Primogems, but according to the players I’ve spoken with it takes a long time to get a substantial amount of them without paying for them. You can get some packs through Twitch if you have Amazon Prime, but other than that they’re kind of difficult to obtain. If you want more pulls for the gacha mechanic, you typically end up having to pay for them- it sucks you in.
I’m using this to round off the photos- this is a photo of Nintendo Online, something you have to purchase in order to have access to specific parts of some games, like trading with other people over the internet in the newer Nintendo Switch Pokémon games, going to other people’s islands in Animal Crossing, and using the GTS in Pokémon Home, the successor to Pokémon Bank (which you actually have to pay more for). What do all these things have in common? They were previously free features of games. Now you have to pay to use them.
It’s not another Pokémon game this time, readers, you’re free for now. This is another video game that originated in Japan, Rune Factory 4, but if I had to pin it down I’d probably put it closer to something like Final Fantasy based off of it being a hack n slash JRPG- but it’s also a farming sim if you want it to be. Crops are entirely optional, though! That said, if you want to make money it’s best to do ’em. If you’re so inclined, you can even romance NPCs, but it’s locked in to your gender option that you pick. Sorry, folks, you can only be straight here. If you’re inclined to put in a little extra work, you can beat the game and choose your visual preference in another game, so long as it’s saved on one of your files. The Rune Factory games have the same creators and idea as Harvest Moon, except you can also go out and fight monsters. I first started playing this in middle school, and I was delighted to see it get a port from the 3DS to the Switch.
Harvesting giant crops
FUN RATING: 4/5. This game has so many different things to do! If you aren’t enjoying one part of gameplay, you can literally just go do something else. I’ve gotten really invested in growing gigantic crops and nurturing my friendships with the townspeople of Selphia, the town that’s the player’s “home base”, so to speak. You can also use any weapon provided you can obtain it through item drops, crafting it, or buying it! The higher level weapons are only available to be crafted, though. There’s a lot of versatility in the options that this game gives you.
Riding monsters! They can assist you in combat.
EASE RATING: 3/5. This is less because of true difficulty during combat, and more of difficulty in obtaining resources/crafting/some storyline progression. The last arc in the main game is locked as a randomly triggered event, so it’s really a tossup when it will show up. This is a complaint that a lot of people have about this game, but personally I remember I only had to wait a few days of playing. Because time is not synced to the actual clock on your system, you can just sleep through the days and check your save data every morning when you wake up (current events show up at your diary on your bedside table, so you only have to take a few steps). As a kid, I had trouble accessing the “spring” area, and it took a couple of months for me to get there, but I think that’s me just not having a lot of access to game walkthroughs. Combat at times can be occasionally difficult, there’s one dungeon with pitfalls that was the main issue. If you hit a wall, you just have to reevaluate your gear or strategy- if you come at the problem from a different angle or just try again with better gear/monster friends to support you, you’ll take care of it. It’s nothing too frustrating.
Dragon best friend :’-)
REPLAYABILITY RATING: 4/5. I’ve replayed this game three times on the 3DS over the years, and I have a fourth playthrough on the Switch. Evidently it’s enjoyable enough be worth doing multiple times. The game, as I previously said, even rewards you for having completed the game with new options. The game itself is incredibly extensive in terms of sheer story volume, and the storyline is incredibly touching. I will admit that in the later parts of the plot I did cry playing. You have three save file slots in your game cartridge, so you can replay the game without deleting your other data- this is super useful and I think is part of what got me to play so many times, just because I knew that I wasn’t losing anything.
OVERALL: This is one of my favorite games of all time, if not the top spot. While a fun and sometimes cute medieval fantasy JRPG (can you tell I like medieval fantasy games?), this game does get pretty dark- there’s a war going on as part of the main plot, and your character is in the thick of it. There’s intrigue, a lot of killing, possession, things are definitely happening. I will warn that there is major character death in this one. The graphics aren’t spectacular, but it’s pretty much typical considering that this game came out for the 3DS rather than the switch- it’s also a little bit just the art style. The game is a little pixelated, which I think adds a little fun to gameplay- the scenery is also very well done!
Link: https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/rainbow-six-siege-six-invitational-event-battle-pass
