Triond

Okay, so its not a game or anything, I just wanted guys know about it. Its a website where I post some stories/random articles that I come up with and random pictures I've drawn/put together. If you're up for it, go check it out. There should be a link to my page to the right with some of my stories or something. Click on it, give me feedback on some of the stuff, or if you like any of it, feel free to hit the "like" button. Its got some interesting stuff in it :D Well, that's about it, until next game, byee~~

Edit:
Oh yeah, by the way, if you just go to the website and are looking for my stuff, I should be under the pen name Katana, so if you decide to make an account there or something, don't be shy to friend me up..that sounded weird actually, just add me as a friend lol

Day Z

This is actually an online zombie survival mod created for Arma II. To install it, you must download Arma II and Arma II:Operation Arrowhead. Then you have to start up both games at least once (just get to the main menu screen in each game is fine. After that, you download a program called "Six Launcher". This lets you run the mods. After everything is downloaded/installed, you start up Six Launcher and find the Day Z mod. You have to install that and download all of the updates, it does not take very long, unless you have poor internet connection, the download time might be longer if you do. Once all that is done, just click a server and hit "launch". The game should start up with the mod on it.

You spawn at a random spot with not much on you, just a flashlight, some painkillers, and a few other items in your back pack. There are weapons and all kinds of supplies all throughout the map that you want to go and find to stay alive. There is no punching in this game or slugging someone with your flashlight, so at first, you are pretty much helpless until you find some weapons. Weapons and supplies can be found mainly in buildings. You have to be careful though because buildings mean villages which means a lot of zombies. In the game you also have needs, you have to eat and drink to stay alive. Animals can be found and killed for their meat, and there are soda cans and water bottles you can find for a drink (I suggest finding a water bottle, as far as I know, those are the only things able to be refilled). Not only that, if you get hurt and are bleeding, you can actually bleed to death so bandages, pain killers, and blood packs from hospitals come in handy. If you are not the type to handle deaths too well, I don't suggest you download this because you are going to die. A LOT. If not from a zombie, then from starvation, dehydration, blood loss, or even a fellow human. Yes, will most likely be other people playing on the server and a lot of them kill other humans. The game sort of went from zombie survival to just plain kill or be killed. They then loot the dead bodies (yours or a dead zombies) and go off in search of something else to kill and loot. So, unless you are on with friends, I suggest you don't try to make other friends because most will end up shooting you down. Not only is there equipment, there are also cars and buses you might come upon and can actually drive so with a group of friends, this can be really fun, just make sure you have some spare gas for the car.

So, your basic zombie survival, this one has a bigger touch on reality than others though. If you can handle the deaths and enjoy just playing, I highly suggest playing this. It is loads of fun when you are playing with friends and run around in groups, protecting each other or sometimes backstabbing each other.

Beat Hazard

This is a game for the PC. You play as a battle ship in space defeating the invaders, sort of like the old arcade game alien invaders, except they come in waves to the beat of the music. You can link your music from your computer and put them into the games. Depending on how fast the beat of the music is how fast the enemy come in and how many. You can play single player or multiplayer, multiplayer you both have to have the same songs to play them. As you clear songs, you level up and as you level, you can add buffs to help you out at the start of the game so you don't start out with nothing. This can be a fun way to pass the time while you listen to your favorite songs.

Assassins creed

This game is becoming very popular among teens and up. You play as a wanted man named Desmond and go into his past to play as his ancestors and learn about his history as an assassin. Each different game has many different endings and you play through to find out more about yourself and past self. The game play is very smooth and fairly easy to catch on to. You have to go through and complete the different quests and assassinate different people using a variety of strategies you pick up along the way from allies you meet.

Pokemon

I'm sure you are all familiar with this game. Pokemon is a game with powerful creatures running around that you can capture and train to defeat other trainers. The goal is to increase their level to become the strongest in the game and defeat the best of the best (the elite 4) and your rival. There are many different versions, 5 currently and I'm sure with their high popularity, there will be much more to come. One of my favorites is the second version, and more specifically the remake of the second version and my favorite type of pokemon is dragon :)

Harvest Moon

This has been one of my and my sisters oldest favorites. You play as a farmer in a new town with nothing but a house, a barn, and some land for crops. You have to work hard to produce crops and healthy animal products to sell and support a good farm. As you play, you interact with the other villagers and gain their friendships. you can also find your soul mate within the village and get married. Originally, in the first games you could only play as a male, not long after a female character became available to play. There have been many versions of the game in many different villages with many different people. It is a very addictive game that kept me entertained for a long time.

Kid Icarus Uprising

This is a new game that recently came out for the nintendo 3ds. Unlike the other games I recommended, this is not one I would suggest you play. You play as an angel trying to defeat the evil Medusa and her minions along the way. The game would not be bad if it weren't for the game play. It is difficult to move the character and look in different directions and attack at the same time (which is required in the game if you wish to live). The game comes with a stand you can set the 3ds on so that you can have your hands available to attack and what not and not have to hold the device which, I think, defeats the purpose of a hand held device. Again, if it wasn't so hard to play, it would be a decent game, but due to the difficulty, the rating for the game has decreased greatly.

Aion

This is a typical mmorpg game that I used to play a lot. It is for the pc and is very much like world of warcraft, but without the pay as it recently became free to play. You can customize your characters looks and skills. You go through the game defeating monsters and completing quests to level up. It requires patience for a lot of the leveling can take a while and a lot of monster killing. You can buy new gear and equipment and even pets to accompany you.

Moonbase Alpha

This is a free game on steam for the pc. It is not too advance and the game play is not too great, but it can be pretty entertaining when played with friends. You play as an astronaut who has landed on the moon and is setting up a base there. You find there is a leak in the oxygen tanks and have to use your tools and robots to fix the leaks. What I have found more amusing is the text to speech usage. In the game, you can enable text to speech which when you type in chat, a voice tries to pronounce what you typed in a Stephen Hawkings computerized voice. Just joining games with friends and spamming the chat has provided a lot of entertainment for me. It has managed to kill a few hours so if you are bored and just feel like goofing off, this can be a good game for you.

Killing floor

This is another popular zombie game for the pc, well the zombies in this game are actually called mutants, but its the same basic concept as zombies. This is slightly different from left 4 dead because there is no destination point. The point is just to survive. The mutants come in waves, more and more come as the waves pass. You can play alone or online. As you play, you level up different skills depending on the weapon you use and as you level, you can begin playing on harder difficulties. When you reach the final wave, you have to face the boss. This is a huge mutant with a machine gun as an arm and many other scary qualities. He is also a huge powerhouse, can deal a lot of damage, turn himself invisible, and can slowly heal himself over time which can be a pain to defeat. This can provide a lot of entertainment when played with friends.

Left 4 Dead

This is one of the many zombie apocalypse games out there. There are many different places you can play at, hospitals, schools, etc. It is a big multiplayer game with a few different characters to play from. You spawn in a building watching a helicopter fly away and zombies begin to advance towards you, as in you are "left for dead". You receive a radio signal from the copter saying they will double back and are given a location to meet up, but the challenge is getting there alive. You have to fend off the many zombies that are coming after you as you and your team advances towards the rescue point.

Skyrim

This is a new game from the Elder Scrolls. You play as the chosen one called the "dragon born" which gives you the power to shout commands learned by the dragons, each shout giving a different power. You can customize your characters looks and skills as you like. This game is basically a huge sandbox game where you can do as you please. You can do anything from playing along the plot and completing the quests to attacking everything in site and becoming the best thief/assassin in the game. It is available for pc, ps3, and xbox. If bought for the pc, there are many different mods you can download for the game to change it up and personalize it even more.

Little Big Planet

This is a very fun family game. You play as a sack person running through levels with your friends trying to complete each one. As you go, there are accessories that you can collect and equip to personalize your person. This game is a lot of fun when playing with friends. After you complete the levels, you can play online and customize your own levels that others can play on too.

ICO

I am still in progress of finishing this game. You are a child born as a demon. The village deems you dangerous and tries to offer you as a sacrifice by placing you in a cage within a huge castle and leaving you to die. You break free of the cage and have to find a way to escape. As you play, you find another caged person who you find out is a princess who is sought after by a bunch of shadow demons. You must now bring her along and protect her from the shadow demons that try to kidnap her. There is a sequel to ICO called Shadow of the Colossus. In the near future there will be a second sequel to ICO as well.

Amnesia

If you are looking for a crazy scary game, then this is the game for you. It is for the pc. I actually have yet to see this game to the end. You start out in a room with no knowledge as to how you got there, but a note from your former self. Before you got amnesia you wrote a note to yourself to help guide you out. Something happened that ended with you giving yourself amnesia because the memories were too painful to keep. You go through the game trying to recall your memories and escape the mysterious dungeon/house. You are terrified and cannot stay in the dark too long or you will lose your sanity. As you play, you find there is a monster roaming the place and attacks when he find you and all you can do is run. If you look at the monster or even while you are running, your sanity goes down and your sight gets all blurry. If you stay in the light too long or keep your lantern lit too long, the monster is more likely to find you, but you cannot stay in the dark or else you can die from insanity so you must be able to use both in equal amounts. Depending on your actions, the ending can change and a number of people that are trapped with you can be saved if you play right, but you can also escape alone with you as the only survivor.

Portal 2

Due to the success of Portal, they decided to make a sequel. Originally in portal, you ended on the outside of the facility, free to leave, but the ending was changed to the character being dragged back into the lab by one of the computers former minions. You awake in a bedroom to a mans voice telling you to awake for nerve testing, but not long after you fall asleep and don't awaken again for ~9 years until a lesser computer (Wheatley) comes knocking on your door. He helps you as you go, trying to help you find a way back to the outside. The only way out is through the main computers room that you shut down in the previous game. As you are about to leave, she re-awakens and, with a clear grudge against you, returns you to continue testing. Wheatley appears once in a while throughout the tests trying to help you find a way out of her control and eventually brings you to her control room. When you arrive, Wheatley convinces you to put him in power instead of her and then he will help you escape so you do as he says. Unfortunately, these circumstances always end the same way and Wheatley goes mad with power. He puts you back into the testing chambers with the former head computer and you and her must now work together to defeat Wheatley.
This game also added in a multiplayer so that you can solve test chambers with friends, and even added a couple new levels after the multiplayer was finished. Now it is adding even more where you play as the test creator and can make your own tests that other people can solve. This game can provide endless entertainment for you and your friends. Portal and Portal 2 were both a huge hit with its fans and many are hoping for a Portal 3, but I am not sure if this will be.

Okami

This is my favorite game, it is for the ps2 and recently the wii. It is based off of Japanese mythology, but all of the gods are in the form of animals. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu, who is in the form of a white wolf. You are sealed within stone and are released by a spirit when a dark evil has covered the earth to help restore balance. As you play, you must defeat different bosses and learn the divine powers of the other gods then eventually find your way back to the heavens. The graphics are not amazing, but are meant to be an old style form of Japanese ink art. The fighting style is also incredibly smooth and easy to use.

Team Fortress 2

This is a fairly old game like the previously mentioned counterstrike, but can still be a lot of fun. There are many different game modes and classes you can choose to play as. The most popular game mode is similar to a capture the flag style. You must infiltrate the enemy base, retrieve their intel, and bring it back to your base. There are many different classes to play as, pyro (fire based), engineer (builder), medic (healer), heavy (machine gun/tank), etc. Within the last few years, this game became free to play on steam so the number of players has increased dramatically as as well. For some reason, what this game is most known for is the accessories you can find. There are many different hats and gear you can acquire just by playing that give different buffs to the characters. This helped create many other mods for other games to add in hats and skins.

Portal

The original game of Portal was a computer game available with the purchase of the "orange box" (a box you could buy which had 3 games in it, Portal, Half life, and Team Fortress) originally for the pc and xbox. Portal starts the main character, Chell, off in a small room from which you awaken from a long sleep. You are not aware as to how you got there. A voice projects giving you information on your purpose little by little. In all, you are brought there as a test subject to complete different tests created by a group of scientists in an organization called "Aperature". The head computer gives you a portal gun which fires 2 portals, a orange and a blue one. When you fire both onto a wall, you can go in one and come out the other. You use this device to complete tests that get progressively harder as you go. As you complete more and more tests, you begin to become suspicious as to what the computer has in store for you after she has finished with the testing. You learn you must find a way to defeat the head computer and escape the lab to freedom.
This game was not thought to be as huge of a hit as it was and because of its success, the creators decided to create a sequel.

League of Legends

League of Legends is a game I just recently got into. It is a free game created by a company called 'Riot' you can find at their website. The genre is called MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), the game play is similar to that of Dota where the perspective is a third person overview and you use the mouse and number buttons to move your character and make them fight.

You create an account and use a username in game. You can add other people user names to your friends list to play with them. In this game, there are many different 'champions' you can choose to play from, some are free to play and some you can unlock with riot points or influence points. Each week there are different champions available to play so if you are thinking about unlocking a champion and have never played it before, wait until it is free to play and give it a try then. If you like it then buy it. I talked about riot points and influence points earlier. They are the games form of currency, riot points you can purchase with real money to unlock champions, buy different skins for them, purchase runes to give your character an extra advantage, etc. Influence points are basically the same, except these build up the more games you play so you don't have to use real money. The only downside to influence points is that it cannot buy all of the items riot points can, like skins.

There are different versions you can play with a different numbers of people on each team. 1v1, 3v3, and 5v5 are the most common, but you can start a custom game and play how you like. There are two different game versions you can play. One I have yet to try out is called 'Dominion mode' so I don't know much about it. The main one that I play is 'Classic mode'. This can be played with the teams as real people or bots (you can also play with friends if you create a custom game and invite people off of your friends list). There is a 'nexus' in each teams base that the players must protect. The goal is to get into the other teams base and destroy their nexus. The nexus helps you out by providing minions that spawn every so often to fight for your team. Along the way you must destroy turrets and defeat the other teams minions to have any chance of entering their base.

As you fight, the game keeps track of your kills, deaths, and assists. For each kill or destroyed turret your team gets, you receive gold. In each spawn there is a merchant that sells weapons, armor, and consumable items that can increase your characters speed, defense, and attack. This helps get more kills so make sure to go back and buy items regularly. When you die, you have to wait a time limit before re-spawning at your base. As the game goes on, the longer the game hold out, the longer the re-spawn time is.

Games can take anywhere between 20 or so minutes to over an hour so be prepared for a long game when starting one. If you leave while in a game or are standing still for too long, the game will register you as afk (away from keyboard) and kick you from the game. You have to be careful of this, League doesn't take kindly to people who go afk and if you get kicked too many times the game will start to ban you from playing. It can even freeze your account and you wont be able to sign on any more so make sure you have enough time to see your game through till the end. Over all, League of Legends can be entertaining for hours and is a fun way to kill a few hours. It can be very frustrating if you die or don't win a lot.

Minecraft

Game number 2 is another old game that is still very popular among many people, it is called Minecraft. Minecraft is not a game you can purchase on Steam by the way. You have to go to the Minecraft website, make an account, and purchase the game. It used to be $20 when it was still in beta, but it came out of beta not long ago, in 2011 and the price went up ~$10, give or take a few.

This is a 3 dimensional world made up of 1x1 blocks. This game can be multiplayer or single-player. In multiplayer, you can join other people on someone elses server or your own that you host and try to survive either by helping each other or attacking each other. You can do pretty much whatever you want. You use your hand to destroy and pick up blocks, then place them as you like or you can craft them to make tools to help you mine stone or ore. There are animals in the game that you can find that give different drops when killed. You can find pigs which drop pork, chickens which drop feathers and raw chicken, cows which drop leather and beef, and sheep that drop wool. You can also make sheers and sheer the sheep which gives you more wool than it would killing them. All of those mobs are passive and will only run if you try to attack them. There are also wolves which you can tame to follow you and keep as a pet, but if you attack it before taming it, it will attack you. At night, you have to be careful and stay indoors or near light because monsters spawn and will try to attack you.Some different servers have different plugins and so different features can be found on different servers. There are some that put you in creative mode. You are invincible and you have all the materials in the game, this type is mainly for flaunting your creativity and building whatever you want. Most servers are set to survival, where you have a life bar and a hunger bar. If you get hurt, your health bar decreases and if you die, you drop all of your items you have on you and are teleported to spawn or where you last slept in a bed. If you do not eat food, your hunger bar will decrease and if it is at zero, your health bar will start to decrease. If you have full hunger, than you will slowly regenerate health.There is a single player where you can choose between survival and creative so that you can play on your own world without other players. I know a few people that have their own servers, mostly set to creative. I love to build large structures or make sculptures when I play on them.

I will add some photos to try to help you get a better picture.

Counter-Strike: Source

The first game I wanted to share is a steam game that I play regularly, almost every day. It is called Counter-Strike: Source. This game is fairly old; it has been around for a good number of years now, but it is still a lot of fun. It is an online, first person shooter with your two typical teams, pretty much good and bad. You have your terrorists (T's) and your counter terrorists (CT's).

On original servers there would be two spawn points on either side of the maps, one for the CT's and one for the T's. The objective is to either kill everyone on the other team or complete a task. The task differs depending on the map. Some maps require the T's to plant a bomb, only one terrorist on the team will receive the bomb. They must guard it from any CT's who have the option to purchase a kit to defuse the bomb or do it manually which takes longer. If the bomb is not defused in time, the round ends and the terrorists are declared the winners. The other type of map is a rescue. This is where the terrorists have 4 hostages and the counter terrorists must sneak into the terrorists spawn point, find the hostages, and bring them back to their spawn and the round will end and the counter terrorists are declared the winners. These are just the basic, original types of servers.

There are many other types of servers with different plugins that the owners of the servers add on to make the server more interesting or give players a change in game play. Some examples of different servers are: mini-games, zombie escape, gun game, bunny hopping, and surf. There are many other different types of servers, some that require a certain skill to be able to be played well, like one of the servers I mentioned before: bunny hopping, or surf.

It is an online game, so the majority, if not all of the people playing, you will not know. It is not scary though, it just gives you the opportunity to meet different people from around the world that have a similar interest as you. There are some bad servers I have seen and would never go back to, but the servers that I play on, most of the people are very nice and respect one another. If you are a gamer and are looking for a classic game to play that is loads of fun, you may want to give this game a try.

Steam?

Okay so this isn't a post on games really, but I just wanted to go into further detail as to what I mentioned in my first post: Steam. As I said before, it is a platform for which I play games on my PC. You download it for free off the website; http://store.steampowered.com/. It has a store of games that you can purchase and it keeps all of the games you bought saved together in its library for easy access instead of going through the trouble of finding the icon on your desktop. It has sales for different games going on that change about once a week or so which gives people the chance to buy a game they want at a lower price than what it normally is. There are a number of free games too for people with no money to spend. It connects with the internet and you can play online with friends, or just random people and make friends. It is a great way for meeting new people all around the world and it has a friends list that you can add them to if you want to play with them again. The friends list also has an instant messaging system so you can message each other, or you can use the chat option to talk to one another. There is a lot more you can do with Steam, but this is just a brief overview of what it can do and I will explain more about it as I begin to review games.

Hello!

My name is Sara Langborgh. This is my first blog ever and I am creating it for my class on computers in college. I am a huge gamer so I figured that would be the best topic to use for my first blog site. Most of my blogs will be game reviews of games I have played or games I currently play. I mainly play online on the PC and use a platform for gaming called Steam so most of my games will be sold on Steam. So I hope you enjoy my thoughts on the games I have played and feel free to shout out your own thoughts on them.