Warframe is a game that is fun for both new players and for those who have thousands of hours dumped into it. It starts the player off by throwing them directly into combat after they are woken up by the mysterious Lotus, they must then learn quickly to defeat the tutorial enemies. There is very little guidance, allowing the player to become familiar with the rather simple interface and controls very quickly. Beyond the tutorial the player can accept optional quests that further reveal the lore of the story and provide the player with much more powerful gear and abilities. The feeling of pure satisfaction achieved when the player finally has enough resources to build their first new warframe (new character) is quickly shot down when they are met with a 72 hour wait before their warframe is fully built and able to be used. Fortunately, each warframe brings a fresh experience and can be used for hundreds of hours before becoming boring, making the wait worthwhile. New gear is constantly required if the player wants to level up, allowing them to access even more warframes and weapons to build. Gameplay quickly turns into the player grinding missions over and over to obtain resources and build new gear. Surprisingly though it does not become boring, as Warframe has three main factions: the Grineer, Corpus, and Infested, that each have their own goals aside from defeating the Tenno (the player race), that keep the game interesting. Instead of killing the same enemy over and over the three factions each have a wide array of unique enemies to be encountered that keep the game from becoming stale or easy. Aesthetically the game looks great and the music fits right with the tone of it, immersing the player in fast-paced space combat. Overall the game is nearly perfect, especially considering it is a free game with no pay-to-win aspects whatsoever, the only downside to it is the surprise of lengthy build times to experience otherwise amazing content.
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Recently I've been playing a lot of Borderlands 3, it released on September 13 and I've been playing it since. It has been fun to play and it says a lot that I'm still playing it if you account the fact that I usually play video games for at least six hours a day. I beat it two days after it came out but due to the great replay ability I've been able to continue to enjoy it since then. The same day I beat it I immediately started my second playthrough, as the game is designed to truly be beaten after two playthroughs and takes much more time to 100 percent the game. It was definitely worth the money as I paid sixty dollars, which is to be expected of mainstream titles, and already have gotten more than 48 hours of gameplay from it. In terms of recommending it to others it really depends on the person, the Borderlands franchise has a very specific audience and could offend many people, so I'd only recommend it to people who I know aren't bothered by large amounts of political incorrectness. The story was rather predictable and disappointing with lots of cringey jokes and dialogue, but I'm not much of a story person so I don't mind it. In essence, in order to stay true to the Borderlands lore the story had to be predictable though some characters were clearly much less powerful than they should be. There were many missed opportunities for characters to exert their power which could have ended the game much quicker, which came to be kind of frustrating and unrealistic. As for the gameplay it was your typical Borderlands-esque looter shooter style of game in which you kill large amounts of enemies that give you guns to kill bosses throughout the game. The guns are the primary focus of the game, which is why the gameplay is so rewarding, you never know what kind of ridiculous gun you are going to get. Some guns walk on legs and shoot, others explode when reloaded, and some have an unreasonable amount of attachments on them. The feeling when you obtain a powerful gun is quite rewarding the first time, you feel like you just got a gun straight from the end of the game and enemies are no longer a problem. Unfortunately the feeling gets kind of old, especially when you hit the max level and the guns are no longer as important as you have already found the best ones. At that point they just kind of get in the way and a key component to the unique gameplay is lost. There is also a talent tree for each character to create further unique customization and builds, though only a few combinations are actually effective. Overall the gameplay starts off as rather challenging but as soon as you find your first overpowered gun the game becomes extremely easy and the talent tree no longer matters. As for the visuals Borderlands 3 had exactly what you'd expect from a Borderlands game. The half pen and ink half 3D graphics can't really get any better than they were in previous games, but apparently they can become harder to run. Borderlands 3 had unusual problems with frame rate and menus, it was as if it were made as a console game yet from what I heard consoles suffer from the exact same problems. The colors are rather neutral and dull in just about every area as Borderlands usually is, but the overall aesthetic fit well with the new look of the enemies. Even though the dialogue itself was bad, the voice overs were good and every gun I used made a satisfying and realistic sound based on the looks of the gun when shot. The music's presence was rather questionable as normally all there is to hear is gunfire, screams, and explosions, but I do recall instances in which the music unintendedly cut off or faded out in the middle of combat. The menu was horribly optimized and very laggy, often the cursor lagged and selected options would stay selected when moving away from them. Fortunately the menus are only used whenever you level up or obtain a new weapon, so the problem became less of a one over time. There were no typos in the writing, subtitles were available for deaf people and easily legible, but that's about as far as inclusion goes. Little people continued to be an object of comedy and violence as they are in all of the Borderlands games, though they were renamed to "Tinks" to not offend anyone (not sure how well that turned out). The game crashed every once in a while, there were many obvious glitches, some of which I found within my first fifteen minutes of gameplay, and a few dead ends and places to get stuck in. Despite all of its downsides I'd still give Borderlands 3 a 4 out of 5 as it was as a whole a pretty good game. It wasn't as great as Borderlands 2 which is kind of disappointing, but it was satisfactory and even though I gave it a 4 out of 5 I'd still pay full price for it. It just mainly seemed very unfinished yet late to release with many bugs and old references, and brought nothing new and exciting to the table besides your classic Borderlands adventure.
This year in game art design the work has been quite different. First of all we're actually practicing our physical 2D art as well as our digital art skills now. The practice has been quite nice, as I've never really taken the time to actually practice or improve my art skills on paper. Although it does take quite some time to actually practice I think the time put in will pay out in the end, in fact I've already noticed my art improving from what it used to be. Besides the new art practice homework I've noticed that this class now assigns much more homework than it ever used to while work in class has been minimal. I can't say I like the new workflow but I suppose I can get used to it, I just find it strange how little time in class we have to work on our assignments now. To be honest it is only the third week of school so it may just be that our presentations and class discussions make this downtime valid, but I do hope that as the school year goes on we will get to work on the computer more, as currently time is very limited to complete assignments. In all fairness tutoring is available quite often, so if I took advantage of that none of this would really matter but I still thought it was important enough of an issue that I should bring it up in some way. Overall though the amount of work for this class has surprised me, totaling more than all three of my AP classes combined yet coming from a single class and still we're given just enough time to complete each assignment assuming we do it perfectly the first time.
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If I were a Roman soldier looking to have fun in ancient Roman times I would most likely spend a large amount of my time during Ludi (a Roman religious festival in which many games were held) either attending or racing in chariot races, as they were a largely popular part of Roman culture. Unfortunately, Ludi is not all year long and chariot races could be considered more of a sport than a game though that is still what I'd likely spend most of my time doing. In the case of it not being Ludi I would most likely participate in board games from around that time such as Ludus Latrunculorum (Latrones) as it would improve my military tactics while providing to be a fun pastime all the same. It only involves two players and the setup is rather quick so I could play Latrones whenever I wanted to for however long I wanted to. I would likely also play Tafl, as it is quite similar to Latrones in that it is a stategy and war tactics game that would keep my mind sharp with strategies of how to operate when outnumbered by my opponent or how to push the advantage when I outnumber them. As for modern video games, I'd most likely play For Honor as it is a simulation of melee combat and warfare that could sharpen my strategies as a Roman soldier even though the game is set slightly ahead of my time. It would definitely be fun to experience a game like For Honor as a Roman soldier, though unfortunately the technology to produce games like it wouldn't come around until some two thousand years after my time.
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AuthorMy name is Andrew Prichard and the this is my first digital arts class, I look forward to a good year with lots of hard work. Archives
May 2021
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Last updated 5/14/21
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