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Showing posts from February, 2019

How We Reached the Apex

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Apex Legends, it's the game everyone and their grandmother is playing these day's it seems. EA and Respawn Entetainment's newest Battle Royale shooter has come to take the world by storm and take on Fortnite while Tetris 99 sits in the background, waiting. Personally I like Apex, play it once a day; I like the emphasis on teamwork, the colorful cast (I'm a Gibraltar main, how about you?), the solid movement mechanics, and the gunplay. Now I won't go into how Apex tapped into a cultural zeitgeist to go at Fortnite's jugular. But I wanna go over how we got to Apex, what lead to it, and how rich Apex's legacy truly is. Now, many people know that Apex is a semi-sequel/spinoff to Titanfall but what some might not know is the legacy goes even further than two bitchin mecha shooters from 2014 and 2016. Indeed Apex inherited a rich legacy from all the way back in 90's. Around that time, the people who would go onto found Respawn, Jason West and Vince Zamp

Halo Reach's Campaign Issues (and How To Fix Them)

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Halo Reach is one of the most divisive entries in the Halo franchise. People either love it with all their heart, seeing it as the pinnacle of the franchise; or hate it with every fiber of their being, seeing it as the beginning of the end for the Halo series. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle, it just has too many problems and while I could rant about how dumb the armor lock ability is and how it ruins the balance of the game I’m more of a lore guy and for me this is where the biggest problem is. The game tells you from the beginning that everyone is gonna die and that the Planet of Reach will be burned to the ground, but it doesn’t go anywhere with it like it should, it’s very scatterbrained. First thing’s first we need a basic recap to the plot, Halo Reach is set in 2552, where humanity is at war with a extra-terrestrial threat called the Covenant, and it is losing. But there are secret weapons helping tip the scales, the Spartan super soldiers, soldiers trained from

Reggie-Fils-Amie and the Art of the Relatable Executive

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 On February 21, 2019, Nintendo of America President Reggie-Fils-Aime announced that he would be stepping down and would be replaced by COO Doug Bowser (yes, Bowser, ya dig?). Reggie served Nintendo since 2003 and became President of NoA in 2006 and was not only the first American in the role but saw Nintendo through it's record high's with the Wii and record lows with the Wii U. His departure has hit many fans hard, which may be astounding, when an exec steps down in most other companies it's usually treated as a "same shit, new day" thing. So what makes Reggie special? What is it about his departure that makes it so heartbreaking compared to other execs? In one statement? Enthusiasm and relatability. When Reggie stepped out for his first E3 in 2004 there was an energy about him, even in his first words "I'm Reggie, I'm about kicking ass, I'm about taking names, and we're about making games."  Reggie's following E3 was spent d