Mornings

Mornings, completely unavoidable unless you sleep in but with all the things we need to do in our busy lives, we have to endure mornings, except on weekends when there is no work. Thank god for those days! The following events are the worst thing that could happen during the morning and there will be a tip at the end to help you avoid it all.  Now, try to visualise yourself in this situation.

It’s the middle of the night and there’s the glowing clock staring at you, keeping you awake. You try not to look at it and see if that might make the time go faster. After what feels like hours, you look back at the clock. Only a minute has passed.

Then the alarm goes off in the morning when you just get to sleep. You hit the snooze button and fall back asleep. Ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again. You hit the snooze button again and you fall back asleep. Ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again. I’m going to stop right here. What is the point of the snooze button anyway? All it does is delay the inevitability of getting up. Any intelligent person would turn the clock off at the power if he wanted to sleep in.

You eventually get out of bed after being annoyed many times by the alarm clock. You immediately jump back into the warmth of the bed because the temperature is freezing. You slowly get out of bed again and you get used to the cold.

You walk to your bathroom and you go have a shower. Guess what? The hot water is broken! Cold water splashes down on your body and it makes you shiver. Now it is freezing outside and its even more freezing inside the shower. You finish your shower, you dry yourself and you wrap your towel around your waist.

You walk to the mirror of the bathroom, pick up your toothbrush and reach for the toothpaste tube. It is empty. You decide you should probably rinse your mouth out with water instead. You get a cup, you put it under the tap and you turn it on. Unfortunately the water that comes out of the tap is unclean and it has a brownish colour. You turn the tap off and you walk back to your room to get changed.

You open your dresser and find out the only clothes you have to wear for the day are a pair of shorts that barely fit you anymore and a shirt with a huge gaping hole on the back. There is also no jumper available for you to wear. So now you are freezing and there is no way to get warm besides jumping back into bed but you might fall back asleep and become late for what you need to do.

You get changed and you go to the kitchen to get breakfast. You open the pantry and pick out a cereal box. It seems a bit light. You check the contents and find that the box is empty. This was also the last box of cereal you had.

You check the time. You are thirty minutes late to where you need to be. You groan. What a horrible morning you’ve had!

The above might seem horrible and unavoidable but I have some good advice that will prevent these series of events from ever happening. The best possible thing you can do is to not get out of bed until noon. I know this might seem a bit obvious but think about it, the best thing you can do to avoid mornings is to avoid mornings!

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition Review

Resident Evil 4 is a horror third-person shooter game that does things differently compared to the other Resident Evil games.

You play as Leon Kennedy, a survivor of the Raccoon City incident that occurred during the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3. He now works for that government and is sent on a mission of find and rescue the President’s daughter who has been kidnapped by a mysterious cult. There’s a sighting of the President’s daughter in an isolated village in Europe and Leon investigates. While he is there the villagers start attacking him for an unknown reason so Leon has to find the President’s daughter and find out the secret of the village.

There are no zombies this time around. I know what you’re probably thinking. ‘But its a Resident Evil game, the only thing you do is shoot zombies’. Yes, that is true but they have been replaced by something so original (/sarcasm) that it will make you think, ‘Wow, why didn’t I think of that.’ Possessed humans, fully equipped with pitchforks, axes, knifes, other whatnot that has a sharp end and dynamite sticks.

Gone are the absolutely horrible (and somehow awesome) ‘frozen’ camera angles. Instead of the camera pointing at you in some awkward position, the camera is in an over-the-shoulder position which is alright but it seems like its been done, which it has, many times before.

Almost the entire game is an escort mission. I hate escort missions especially if they make the NPC who’s following you a complete idiot. Unfortunately sometimes in this game, your partner does something so stupid that it makes you not want to care about her and just push her into a mob of charging bloodthirsty villagers.

The guns in this game range from pathetic to freaking’ awesome. You start off with a handgun and, if you are like me and chose the easy mode (which I’m pretty sure is Wii exclusive), a shotgun. You eventually get a sniper rifle that is hopeless in a close-up situation, a rocket launcher and a few different types of grenades like the hand and flash grenade.

The enemies are good and bad at the same time. The case for the game says that the enemies work together but I’ve never seen them once perform this feat. The enemies react differently to where you shoot them. Shoot them in the feet and they stumble to the ground. Shoot them in the arm and they drop their weapon. Shoot them in the head and they die, sometimes.

Ammo is everywhere in this game. They are in boxes, the enemies drop it but you can’t buy them from the salesman who looks like one of ‘them’ and will turn on you at any moment. When you run out of ammo, you are screwed. This time you have a knife if you run out of ammo so you aren’t as screwed as you would be if you ran out of ammo in any other Resident Evil game.

The whole game takes some advantage to the Wii’s motion sensing capabilities. You aim using the wiimote, slice the knife by shaking the wiimote and that’s actually it but I don’t blame the lack of the range of motion sensing abilities because that’s really all you can do with it.

In short, this is another Resident Evil game, just revamped with a whole new way to play. I highly suggest buying it and keeping it.

AVGN vs Zero Punctuation

The Angry Video Game Nerd (often shortened to AVGN or The Nerd) is a character created and played by Internet filmmaker James Rolfe. It is also the name of his popular Internet video series.

Zero Punctuation is the name for a series a videos by English born writer Ben Croshaw (commonly known as Yahtzee).

Both of these video series do the same thing, reviewing video games. I am about to break these series down to find out which is superior.

Audience

Both series do review games but they review different types. The AVGN reviews games from twenty years ago and Zero Punctuation reviews the latest games. Since the AVGN reviews games most people around the world grew up with, people can relate to them and enjoy the videos more. A problem with this is that everyone is doing it, ie. The Irate Gamer.

Zero Punctuation reviews new games so it targets another, larger audience of gamers who only like the latest things.

Humour

The AVGN derives his humour from his complete frustration at the horrible games he reviews, so there’s bound to be some level of profanity in his videos. This is a problem because this is the only thing the humour is coming from.

Zero Punctuation uses a variety of jokes so it doesn’t feel like you’re watching the same thing over and over again.

Does it actually review games?

The AVGN does talk about games but not in enough detail. He mainly only talks about the bits that frustrates only himself.

Zero Punctuation also talks about the bad things but it talks about it more as a whole rather than in the AVGN who only talks about little tid-bits of the game.

Both actually don’t ‘review’ the games since they don’t talk about the good parts of the game as well.

Conclusion

The AVGN targets an audience of retro gamers and Zero Punctuation targets gamers who like the latest games.

The AVGN reuses the same jokes over and over again and Zero Punctuation has some variety in its humour.

Both games don’t actually ‘review’ games but Zero Punctuation give more detail than the AVGN.

In conclusion I would recommend Zero Punctuation over the AVGN.

-Shaun McGarry

I hear a rustling in the bushes…

I recently bought Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition and I have to say. The first few hours are freakin’ scary! The enemies are strong and take about 5 bullets to kill or 2 carefully placed headshots!

The girl you eventually find get on your nerves as she constant runs into traps and enemies and if she dies, its game over. Sometimes I just let her die and I just go on my merry way!

The guns range from pathetic to freakin’ sweet! You start off with a handgun and if you are like me and you don’t like RE games when they get too hard, a shotgun on easy. I think the easy mode is a Wii exclusive feature.

There’s a sniper rifle you eventually buy off this random salesman who I think will eventually turn on you. It just seems that way. An expensive rocket launcher which I haven’t been able to have a go at because its, well, expensive!

You eventually get more types of the same gun but better.

I might write a review for this game but just wait until I get further into it…

A highly eventful Sunday

Today a lot of things happened. Here’s a list of what happened:

1. We got a new tv.

Dont mind whats on the tv. I dont know what it is either.

2. I watched the new Indiana Jones movie.

3. I got a new webcam.

New one on the left. Old one on the right.