Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
Master of Orion 2, The Article About
This article works much better if you’ve read my companion piece for the original game.
Oh sure, I dreamt of Master of Orion, but I dreamt of Master of Orion 2. Maybe it’s because I didn’t quite understand the elegance of the first game’s simpler gameplay, but at times it felt like I was gazing upon massive reservoirs of unfulfilled potential. They could put in multi-player! They could spruce this and that up and various aspects could be pulled from the realm of abstraction! Space battles can look like space battles! Master of Orion 2 arrived less than a year after my original peak with the first game, so it was a bit like wish-fulfillment. Unfortunately, many of the unsung reasons why I loved the original came up missing in the sequel, even if it fulfilled many of the features my mental version had in store.
Master of Orion, The Article About
I used to dream about Master of Orion. It was 1996, I was still a kid, and the idea of building an empire to span the galaxy was foremost in my mind pretty much all the time. A turn-based strategy game, this was for many years my favorite game of all time, but as its sequels arrived and tarnished my opinion of this game, my interest diminished. It came to my attention that whether you believe the first game or the second game is the best in the series is based entirely on which one you were introduced to first. I got into this game first, so it’s obviously better. It’s colorful, reeks thematically of 80s-era sci-fi, and the gameplay keeps relatively simple, sometimes to a fault. When my dad brought this game home for the first time, it kept him up until 5AM. It’s unfortunate that no one has followed up on Master of Orion properly, considering this game (or this kind of game) would be perfect for tablets. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the only article you will ever need to read about Master of Orion.
Game Review: Portal 2
Before it was hip, I was dying to get The Orange Box. Not because I hadn’t played Half-Life 2 (I had, and it is transcendental) but because of a quirky little addition named Portal, a first-person puzzle game assembled quickly by some recently hired college grads. Before people were keen to lies being equated to cake and so forth, a legit few and I were busting through a series of ever-challenging puzzles (in which we were required to think with portals) with the incredibly amusing GLaDOS (some distant relative of SHODAN) narrating our trip. Over three years later, the game has built a cult-like following and Valve thought it was well that we receive a sequel with a lot more content. Yahtzee asked, “is it better than Portal 1?” and replied with “No.” I’m inclined to agree.
Movie Review: The Frighteners (At Request!)
This review is at the special request of my good friend Juan, so if you have some special requests for movie/game/tech reviews, you let us know!
I didn’t get to see The Frighteners growing up. I was twelve when it released and it was an R-rated film, so that was an automatic ‘no way’ from the ‘rents. That’s all beside the point though, I didn’t even know the film existed until a few years later. As a result, I had absolutely no squishy, nostalgic feelings for it when I saw it for the first time just recently. The Frighteners is sorta like that intersecting section of a Venn diagram: it came at the end of our fascination with ghosts-and-haunted-houses (from Ghostbusters to Casper the year before) and was one of Peter Jackson’s early films, long before he was famous for The Lord of The Rings. The problem with this film is simple: I hate ghost-and-haunted-house films.
Movie Review: The Informant!
The quirkiest part of this film is its title. That exclamation mark at the end? Tough sell, considering this film’s near-glacial pace at points. Second quirkiest part of this film? The titular Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon) who really just wants to help the FBI uncover his company’s price-fixing schemes. Well, sorta.
Movie Review: Enter The Void
One doesn’t watch Enter The Void, one experiences Enter The Void. From the incredible camerawork to the special effects or the jarring opening credits, everything melts together into one trippy mold. Casper and his sister Linda are denizens of Tokyo’s seedy underbelly. He’s a drug dealer who wanted enough money to bring her across the ocean, she’s a stripper trying to find an identity for herself. He falls into bad business and gets killed in a disgusting bathroom trying to lose his drugs. That’s only the first half hour.
Life With A Chromebook
Today at I/O 2011, Google finally announced retail plans for Chrome OS, starting with two netbooks (or Chromebooks, as they call them) by Acer and Samsung. Google began to ship Chromebook reference designs, designated the CR-48, to developers and other gawkers around New Years’. Kelly got his Chromebook about a month before I did, but while his sat in a box in the garage for months, I’ve ended up using mine daily for the past three months. So what does one expect coming into Chromebook land? Follow me…
The PlayStation Network Is Still Down. This Is What You Could Be Doing.
As of this writing, the PlayStation Network has been down for almost three weeks. Sony came out and told everyone their junk got hacked into and they’d restore it as soon as they figure out how to turn on their Norton Firewall software (the Geek Squad is taking forever). This means no playing games online, no downloading content, and definitely no sales for those affected game makers who rely on the network to be alive and kicking. That said, we at FEZ have some suggestions as to what to do in the meantime.
Movies Worth A 10 Out Of 10
Let’s talk about perfection for a moment. For one thing, it’s not possible. It just can’t happen. When it comes to reviews, it’s harder to justify a ‘perfect’ score when you have a granular, percentage-based scale than if you used a ten-point or five point scale. That said, while I’ve never given out a 10 review during my time here, these films easily deserve them. They are that close to perfection.
Android Marketplace To Eclipse iOS App Store By Late Summer
It was due to happen eventually, but in a report by market research firm Distimo (or in an exclusive report by TechCrunch) it has been confirmed that the Android Marketplace will eventually surpass the Apple Marketplace in terms of apps by mid-summer. But how much does it really matter?
