Mother's Day: Celebrating the mothers of gaming
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by Eli Sokeland When considering video games, the last thing comes to mind is cardboard. Usually in the gaming industry, there are constantly weird gimmicks enticing people to buy products. This is typically an advancement in technology, but Nintendo follows their own path. The company decided to go back in time by introducing the revolutionary Nintendo Labo. The Labo is a set of cardboard kits that contains a physical game and sheets of cardboard for the players to make creative toys. There are two kits: the variety kit (which was used for this review) priced at $70 and the robot kit priced at $80. Both of these prices are quite hefty, especially since each costs more than a brand new game. In the variety kit, five total projects are packaged with the game. These include the RC car, fishing pole, piano, house, and motorcycle. The other kit only includes the robot outfit. This is rather odd because the variety kit contains more to do yet costs less than the other kit. The first major concern with the game was that the cardboard would fall apart during the setup of each piece. Despite this anxiety, each piece of cardboard actually felt pretty high quality. However, this was only the the initial impression of the material. In order to make the projects, players must essentially punch out the cardboard from the sheets in the box and fold along specific lines on the backside of the material. Nintendo also added to confusion that players had to fold certain lines in specific directions at specific times during the setup. Luckily, the game makes up for this confusion with the technical side of the product. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOKXYbCKN6E[/embed] The Switch still plays a major role throughout the entire game, including building each project. For the tutorials, the Switch acts as an interactive step-by-step guide. This is extremely helpful for players to look closely at how folds should go and it also prevents people from losing the instructions. Evan Fischer, Byte reviewer, gives his impressions, “My experience with the Nintendo Labo may have been limited to the piano set, but the overall sense of building and playing came through. The idea of creating one’s toys to play with them has been hugely successful with toys such as Lego and Transformers, but unlike these toys Labo falls flat in a few places. The first issue is the amount of time it takes to build, the piano set alone took nearly three hours to complete with three people working on it at the same time which is long enough to make the excitement of building it wear off. Another nitpick is the lack of real creativity going into it. To create the project, the instructions must be followed exactly.” Even though each toy does feel like putting Ikea furniture together, they feel pretty sturdy. There are multiple cardboard locks in place to prevent the overall structures from just sliding around. It felt like Nintendo spent a long time looking at the cardboard and putting thought into each toy. Regarding the actual gameplay of Labo, I was actually surprised. While the game might look like it has incredibly simple mini games for each project, they are deeper than expected. For example, the RC car looked the most basic, but it allowed the user to use the right joy-con as an infrared camera. Overall, the piano had the most depth and gameplay for players to experiment with. The game mentions these “secret knobs” that change the overall sound of all the keys to weird noises, such as cat sounds. Also, players could record their own music on the piano. Nintendo did an excellent job at creating a great baseline of cardboard sets for the players to create unique experiences with. To top it off, Nintendo included a programming mode that allows users to create their own custom cardboard creations. While I have yet to master this mode, I could see the endless hours people could spend creating new Labo toys. The last mode of the game is a discovery mode. This essentially teaches the player how each one of the cardboard sets work, based off of the technology in the joy-cons. While this may not be really helpful for experienced users, this could primarily teach children about technology. Phil Akin, Byte reviewer, gave his impressions of the Labo, “Sure, Nintendo pitched it as a concept for ‘kids and kids at heart’ but the variety pack itself costs $70, and the robot kit costs a separate $80. I don’t know many kids with the money to buy it themselves. And the price tag is enough to make parents hesitant on it. Not to mention it’s highly unlikely that anyone below the age of ten can put together the kits on their own. It seems to be geared towards families, and not really kids, at least in the cardboard aspect. In the end though, Labo is still fun.”
In this episode of Input 2, Dylan, Tyler, and Alexander jump into the world of Montana and discuss how Far Cry 5 explores cults in America.
By Tanner Kinney It’s been two weeks since the last article, mostly because I unintentionally skipped over the semi-finals matches. So, let me just sum them up here: Echo Fox are memes and Clutch Gaming don’t know how to play around Baron. The two teams that moved onto the final match were Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. For 100 Thieves, it was their freshman split, and they were already fighting for the title. For Team Liquid, they were fighting for their first title victory in their entire history in the LCS, which is as long and storied as TSM and CLG. Former teammates were battling each other for a shot at the LCS banner and Spring Split trophy. It was truly a highly anticipated match-up. So, of course, it was over in three games. The entirety of game five between Clutch and 100 Thieves almost lasted as long as the whole series. Life is full of disappointments. Massive, terrible disappointments. Like Clutch Gaming, and the ADC meta, and Zven and Mithy’s botlane duo. So how did this final shake out, and who secured the coveted third place award of almost greatness? Let’s go over the games.
On this week's episode of How It's Played we are discussing "Ready Player One." The movie, VR, Nintendo, technology in general, and the future of gaming will be talked about on this week's episode of How It's Played.
[embed]https://soundcloud.com/user-519363288/how-its-played-s1e2-ready-player-one[/embed] On this week's episode of How It's Played we are discussing "Ready Player One." The movie, VR, Nintendo, technology in general, and the future of gaming will be talked about on this week's episode of How It's Played. Hosted by: Eli Sokeland, Matthew Yapp, Tyler Wheatley Edited by: Eli Sokeland Graphic by: Daley Wilhelm
By Tanner Kinney Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM. Level-5 released Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch back in 2010 on the PS3, and received a lot of praise from critics. Yet, the game still ended up being relatively divisive. Some people were able to commend the game for its absolutely stunning visuals for the time, fantastic score, and a great story. Others wouldn’t give the game that credit, because even with all of those factors, the gameplay was an absolutely confusing mess that wasn’t that fun. Even for a fan of the first game, it still has gone down in quality upon playing it again due to how not fun the gameplay is. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom manages to keep everything that made the first game amazing, improved on it, then added gameplay that’s fluid, satisfying, and loaded with legitimately fun things to do. This may honestly be one of the best JRPGs of the decade.
By Daley Wilhelm Last fall, Wolfenstein did it’s utmost to capitalize on the current culture by featuring a social media campaign fueled by unadulterated violence against Nazis—what Wolfenstein has always been about. Of course, that made the alt-right and all their Neo-Nazi leanings pretty upset. Punching Nazis is "morally wrong," after all. This spring, the much anticipated fifth installment of the Far Cry franchise left behind it’s exotic settings for something a little more domestic, something worryingly familiar: your all-American cult. The box art says it all with a tableau of the Eden’s Gate cult posed like the Last Supper—Jesus’ stand-in is the enigmatic Father, his apostles his zealous, gun-toting family.
by Tanner Kinney On April 4, 2018, ex-StarCraft GM Eli Brown and his team launch the new beta of their eSports team management website, Guilded. The site was first put into development a year ago, with Brown and his team wanting to create a much easier way to manage all the different happenings within the specific eSports teams. Brown’s goal was to create a program that streamlined the team management experience as, being a former GM himself, he understood that managing a whole bunch of different programs was clunky and not user-friendly. With Guilded, he hoped to provide a solution to these teams. The website contains a number of valuable features for eSports teams and communities. The site allows users to find and create teams, either using accounts created through the site or by linking a Discord account. Users can then apply to join teams or simply follow them for more information about upcoming events. These teams can also create community forums for fans to discuss changes within the game or recent team results. This is designed to help foster a greater sense of community outside of other social media platforms, like Twitter or Reddit. Features within the team environment also got overhauled as well. The team rosters system has been completely changed to allow sorting by specific games. For example, a team like Cloud 9, who is in partnership with Guilded, has teams in a number of different eSports.
The quarterfinals this year were quite historic, for once. Every single team who previously won an LCS split has now been knocked out, leaving an empty banner for either a new team fresh into the split or a team who has been competing for the banner for a while now. How did this happen? Who destroyed this world we knew for so long? Why did TSM not wonnered? Well, let’s just hop straight into talking about the quarterfinals matches
By Tanner Kinney The quarterfinals this year were quite historic, for once. Every single team who previously won an LCS split has now been knocked out, leaving an empty banner for either a new team fresh into the split or a team who has been competing for the banner for a while now. How did this happen? Who destroyed this world we knew for so long? Why did TSM not wonnered? Well, let’s just hop straight into talking about the quarterfinals matches
Welcome to Byte's new and improved How It's Played. On this week's episode we will be discussing the world of indie games and the game that got everyone in the horror genre talking, Doki Doki Literature Club. Stay tuned to find out our thoughts on this and more.
[embed]https://soundcloud.com/user-519363288/how-its-played-s1e1-indie-games-doki-doki-literature-club[/embed] Welcome to Byte's new and improved How It's Played. On this week's episode we will be discussing the world of indie games and the game that got everyone in the horror genre talking, Doki Doki Literature Club. Stay tuned to find out our thoughts on this and more. Hosted by: Eli Sokeland, Matthew Yapp, Phil Akin Edited by: Eli Sokeland Graphic by: Daley Wilhelm
This week on Pop Tabs Matt, Daley, and Dylan discuss Jake Paul’s gun violence documentary, Frances McDormand’s speech at the Oscars advocating for inclusion riders, and Trump’s recent comments on the dangers of violent video games.
By Tanner Kinney Disclaimer: This playthrough is based on the PS4 version of the game. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes. The “Ubisoft open-world” game has become somewhat of a joke among the gaming community. Since the underwhelming Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed: Unity hit the market, Ubisoft began receiving a lot of flak for producing underdeveloped, buggy, and cookie-cutter open world titles. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate didn’t make anyone more hopeful, and Far Cry Primal allegedly re-using the map from Far Cry 4 just looked lazy. However, Ubisoft actually took a lot of these criticisms to heart, and brought what used to be annual franchises back into their game development oven for a bit more cooking. Watch Dogs 2 turned out to be a bit of a sleeper hit, and Assassin’s Creed Origins revived a lot of what people were looking for in that franchise by providing an interesting new location and much improved gameplay. With the release of Far Cry 5, Ubisoft hopes to repair the name of that franchise as well. And despite a somewhat bumpy journey at points, they’ve managed to create one of the most truly open worlds in gaming. This game surpasses all expectations, and creates a Far Cry game that even surpasses the greatness of Far Cry 3.
There’s a big meme about Riot’s esports department treating EU LCS like second class citizens. Through not giving visas at the proper times, not stepping in to stop really terrible stuff from happening in the participating organization (shoutouts to MoveYourMothers), and then the shenanigans with giving EU LCS best-of-twos, but NA LCS best-of-threes, it’s kind of true. That, along with making more cash money here in the States, is probably why NA tends to import so many EU players. It seems they’ve now overpowered us though, because they’ve infected our beautiful LCS with something people didn’t expect:
By Tanner Kinney There’s a big meme about Riot’s esports department treating EU LCS like second class citizens. Through not giving visas at the proper times, not stepping in to stop really terrible stuff from happening in the participating organization (shoutouts to MoveYourMothers), and then the shenanigans with giving EU LCS best-of-twos, but NA LCS best-of-threes, it’s kind of true. That, along with making more cash money here in the States, is probably why NA tends to import so many EU players. It seems they’ve now overpowered us though, because they’ve infected our beautiful LCS with something people didn’t expect: EU loves ties (Riot’s reasoning for giving them best-of-twos), so now NA gets to love ties as much as they do. This past week, we had five additional tiebreaker games, all of them deciding seeding for playoffs. The results of these games will shock you! Well, they shocked me at least.
by Evan Hatfield of the Ball State Daily News The Kirby series has been pretty reliable for Nintendo in the past few years in terms of quality games. Kirby Triple Deluxe was a fun (if somewhat bland) addition to the series, while Kirby Planet Robobot added some nice new twists to a familiar formula. Kirby Star Allies is more like Planet Robobot than Triple Deluxe. Its new take on cooperative multiplayer leads to fun times for everybody involved and the new possibilities that come from being able to make friends with enemies are genuinely exciting. Even so, the game would be even better if it were a lot longer (and a bit harder) than it is, especially considering the $60 price tag on it.