Parkour!

If you like being active and love exploring new things, I suggest you check out Ronnie Shalvis.

He is a parkour artist looking to help people getting into the sport of free running.

Parkour (also known as "l'art du déplacement", the art of movement) is the art and sport of using objects of the environment to your advantage in movement. Instead of walking around something, go under it or climb above it.

With obesity and laziness now becoming a big problem in the modern world, it may be a good and fun idea to get into parkour.

Most parkour videos on YouTube show professional parkour athletes pulling off sick flips off walls and jumping from building to building. You might think "Oh cool I'll go jump from the 5th floor across to the next building and I'll be great at it.", that takes years of practice to learn. Ronnie is teaching the basics.

Check out his YouTube here.
Check out his Blog here.

He may be inspired by Assassin's Creed to make videos but he isn't stupid, and knows what he is doing.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check Ronnie out!

Moonbase Alpha Review

G'day guys, today I am doing a review on a free space simulator released on PC by NASA.

Moonbase Alpha icon

Moonbase Alpha was released on Steam in July of 2010. The aim of the game is to restart your Moon colony's life support system within a certain time limit after a meteorite impact crippled the colony.

In this game you can have up to six players in multiplayer (you and five friends), or if unfortunately you have no friends, you can play solo (which makes the game a lot more difficult). Luckily if you're new to the game you can disable the timer and take as long as you want. No one will die and there is no way to fail the game.

Another amazingly amusing feature is the chat system. Being a PC game you can press [Enter] and type a message to everyone in the game. In the options you can check a chat option called "enable text to speech" which makes everything said in chat read by a voice synthesiser on the computer.

If anyone knows Moonbase Alpha, you know what's coming up

For a demonstration of the game and chat system, watch this video on YouTube. Not recommended for young viewers. Credit to motdef for making a great video!

motdef's most famous line, "aeiou"

The best part about this game is its price. It's free. All of this. For free. NASA, you are amazing.

Please, if you can spare 4GB of hard drive space and some humour and time, check out this game. You will not regret it.

Note 1: Unless I know you PERSONALLY I will NOT add you on Steam.

Note 2: For a free game, it's pretty graphically detailed. I recommend turning down your graphics level if you do not have a high end system.

Note 3: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU aeiou.

The Hardest Game Ever!

So over the weekend (being a bored teenager) I was surfing the web for fun games.
I came across a game called "Hexagon" on Newgrounds.

This game is hectic and difficult. I have only ever beaten it once, and that took me HOURS. Multiple friends have also tried and failed, while one managed to conquer the game as well.

A really difficult and annoying section of the game

The aim is to dodge incoming lines using the arrow keys while playing as an arrow. There are six levels, fittingly named "dot", "line", "triangle", "square", "pentagon" and "hexagon".

Level Pentagon. This person was close to finishing the game!

Although this game is addicting and fun, the music is annoying (just a personal preference, I don't like electronic) and the game may give someone motion sickness (or even a photosensitive epileptic seizure, if you're that sensitive to lights and movement).

If you do go to play this game, try to beat my record of 69 seconds. The best I have seen is 240 seconds, but whoever done that is a damn god.

Good luck and have fun!

Slender Review

Today I am going to review one of the most popular indie games released to date called "Slender".

Slender Title Screen/Logo

Slender is a small game based off of the "Unity" engine, created by a small company called Parsec Productions.

Slender is a psychological survival horror game released in June 2012. It is based on a paranormal mythological legend Slender Man.
The game begins with the player in a dark forest at night equiped only with a flashlight. The character must be extremely unfit because you can run for only 10 seconds or so before slowing down. In the entire map there are 10 distinct landmarks including vehicles, buildings, trees, concrete tunnel, fuel tanks and brick walls, only bound by a chainlink fence. These are the only boundary in the map and the player is free to travel in any direction, but it is recommended to follow the dirt paths as there are no Heads-up Display elements such as a map to help you navigate.

The worst place to bump into Slender Man,
the bathroom with no toilets

The objective of the game is to collect 8 distinct pages found on the landmarks. These spawn at random and not all landmarks contain the pages. On each of these pages are drawings or notes concerning the Slender Man, who pursues you throughout the game.

The Eight Pages

The Slender Man is the only enemy in the game. He follows you everywhere. As you collect more pages, the closer he gets and the more he randomly teleports and spawns. If you look at him for too long, he "takes" you, and you lose the game. If he gets too close, he also "takes" you. The screen starts to become distorted as he starts to "take" you. If he manages to "take" you, his slender, pale, white face appears on the screen. By the way, I say "take" because once he catches you, who knows where he takes you or does to you.

**KINDA SPOILERS**
Once you manage to collect all eight pages, the game doesn't end straight away. You can try to run from Slender Man but your efforts are futile. He will always catch you.
When you return to the menu, you unlock two new modes. "Day Time" mode, and "20 Dollar" mode. Day time mode is exactly what it says, it's a daytime version. $20 mode is also in daytime, but every time you see Slender the song "Gimme $20" plays, giving a comedic effect. Unfortunately from version 0.9.7, it has been removed for copyrighted material.

20 Dollar Meme

Also in version 0.9.7, if you have previously beaten the gmae you will unlock two new light sources. A glowstick with infinite light and short range, or a crank lantern with a large range but has to be cranked to replenish the light. The player can also now pause the game, except when you're about to be "taken" by Slender Man, so you can't quit in response to fear.

**END OF SPOILERS**

Many mods and other games have been based off of Slender, including a game called "Slender Man's Shadow" which has several different maps. Check the game out here.

Thank you for reading guys, and make sure you download the full game from here. Congratulations to Mark J. Hadley for creating such a successful game, and good luck with Slender and any projects you may start soon. Go show support to Mark by subscribing to his offical YouTube account!

Some amazing fan-made cover art!



A List of Movies You Should Check Out

In case you have been living under a rock for the past 7 years, you should go check out the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman Series.
In 2005 Batman Begins was released, starring Christian Bale (as Bruce Wayne), Sir Michael Caine (as Alfred), Liam Neeson (as Ducard/Ra's Al Ghul), Gary Oldman (as Commissioner Jim Gordon) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox). The movie was rated on average 73/100 (product of Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes). Personally I give the movie a 90/100. It has plenty of action, and then the action scenes aren't "*punch* *flash* *flash* *enemy unconscious*". It has a lineup of some awesome actors (C'mon, mostly it's Liam Neeson, he trained Obi-Wan and Darth Vader from Star Wars, he's also Zeus and Aslan so he's a God in TWO religions, he also punches wolves and is an assassin. WHO WOULDN'T WANT HIM IN AN ACTION MOVIE?) and the conversation sequences are superb, although the romance between Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne) and Katie Holmes (Rachel Dawes) seemed generic and lacked chemistry.

Batman Begins Cover Art

The Dark Knight, released in 2008 is a sequel to Batman Begins. Most of the old actors return, except Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. Heath Ledger (RIP) is the Joker and Aaron Eckhart is Harvey Dent/Two Face. The same awesome action scenes (now twice as good) return, with more explosions and fights than Batman Begins. Controversies are introduced and may be confusing to younger viewers. Critics gave this movie excellent scores, with an 84/100 average from Rotten Tomatoes and 82/100 from Metacritics, giving a product average of 83.

Fun fact: Heath Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month to formulate the character's posture, voice and personality and recorded it in a diary.

Sad fact: After the filming of The Dark Knight was completed, Ledger died of a prescription drug overdose. This was reported as "accidental" but personally, I think it was intentional.

 

The Dark Knight Cover Art



The Expendables 2 released just this year, is one of the most action-packed movies I have ever seen. Starring more of Hollywood's biggest badasses compared to The Expendables (2010), this is the ultimate action film. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger all take major parts in this movie. There is just so much awesome in this movie,  that you should just check it out for yourself. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic give a combined average score of 58/100, and CinemaScore reports the average grade moviegoers scored was an "A-" on an "A+ to F scale". The Expendables (2010) scored a B+.

The Expendables 2 Cast

Thanks for reading guys, and make sure you check out these movies!



RIP Heath Ledger



Max Payne 3 Game Review

After nine very long and prosperous years, Rockstar finally released a third instalment to their Max Payne series.
Max Payne in June 2001. A marvel of its time, scoring near-perfect scores with the critics. Winning tons of awards. A great plot, great graphical detail of its time and never before seen gameplay features.
Max Payne 2 in October 2003. A practical story add-on to the first, only scoring lower than the first because of its short length. More countless awards, and the same marvellous plot-telling device; the Comic Strip.
Finally earlier this year, Max Payne 3. A completely redefined game. The same basic mechanics, but is completely different from the first two. Amazing graphical detail. Excellent story. Even more bad-ass shoot-dodge moments. "Grind" challenges which don't feel like "grinds" at all, because the game is just so replayable.
Out of 20 big-name critic companies, only THREE were silly enough to score below 80% (or 8/10, or 4/5...). Personally the game scores a 9.9 out of 10 with me. The only reason why it wasn't 10, was because of the graphics options on PC. No matter how good your graphics card is, you can't choose all options to maximum, unless you have a high amount of VRAM (2 Gigabytes or more).
For example. My Radeon 4890 could easily run the game on maximum settings (with AA and AF activated from the CCC rather than in-game). I still had to sacrifice some settings to bypass the "memory limit" that is in place. Why Rockstar?
Now onto gameplay elements.
Enemies are challenging, even on easy. Health bottles are scarce. Shoot-dodge time only seems to recharge with kills. Friendly AI is useless (aren't they all?). Golden gun upgrades are cool, but you should have an option to turn them on or off. This makes for a challenging game which might sound a little teeny bit flawed in theory, but plays amazingly well. To get the full story, I suggest you play through the first two games first. You can download them as Xbox Classics on Xbox LIVE for 800msp each (estimated).
Recommendations for improvement.
More health pills on easy difficulty for new players (my first playthrough was on easy, second on hard, for the record...), more shoot-dodge time for all difficulties, 10% more enemies, less cinematics.
Now you may notice there is no multiplayer segment. The reason for that is; all multiplayers are the same for shooter games. You run around, shoot sh*t up. I will never review multiplayer.
Thank you for reading guys. Here is a gameplay trailer  to finish it off.

A Message to Viewers!

Hello, viewers!
I don't know how you guys found my small, barely active blog.. but I appreciate you took the time to stop by. Since I have more time to be active for a while, I would like to post more to this blog. If anybody has any ideas, just drop a comment in the comment section. I might post a Windows 8 Consumer Review if I have the time. Oh yeah by the way, Microsoft released the Consumer Review Edition of Windows 8 a little while ago. Go pick up a copy while you can. Just make sure you partition 30GB of hard drive space for a Windows install, because I know some people may not like the new "Metro" Start menu.
Thanks for reading guys, and have a nice day!


Fanmade Boxart by Randy Dorney (Deviantart)