Week Two Blog

ABOUT THE READING

In the introductory note I found it interesting that “THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS” was first translated into French. I think it is neat to see how stories tell a story themselves when you learn about the history of where they came from. I also like how the story was told nightly by Wezir’s daughter which was left unfinished nightly because of the practice of a King who had the habit of killing his wives after the first night. This story in particular is not one that I have read before but it seems like it would be a good read. In the introduction I found it interesting that the messenger prayed and kissed the ground before the King. It is such a different era to see such respect for leaders in such a manor.

ABOUT THE GAMES

I have been trying my best to beat Prince of Persia, as of the time of this blog post I have not been able to beat the part that I am at. I am stuck in this part where I am near a cliff and have to beat about 8 guys or so to move on. I am not sure why this part is so hard but it took me more than ten tries to beat the last part that was similarly difficult. I had the girl with me for the last part and it took me a long time to figure out that I needed to kite the entire time to spread the guys out so they were not all on top of me at the same time. This time it is harder to kite because I am at a cliff and am not sure what strategy to use to get them off me without falling off of the cliff or being pummeled by them all at the same time. I think it is interesting that even the way you get past things in the game involves a time dimension to the game in that your timing has to be right on to move forward.

Week One Blog

ABOUT ME

My name is Israel Soentpet and I am studying for my AAOT .  I want to major in psychology premed in hopes of becoming a psychiatrist some day.  As far as where I am coming from as a gamer, I am a lot more casual as I used to be.  I have spent as much as 4 and a half years playing a single game to as little as maybe 15 min in a week.  Some of the interests that I have had were games such as Dark Age of Camelot, where I have 10 level 50 characters.  I try not to get too involved with the games these days as they can become an addiction.  Most of the time the games I now play are games that I can get in and out of without too much worry of being sucked in.  Leveling a character and maxing the characters statistics is just more involved then I want to get right now.   One of the reasons for taking this class was basically to explore games in a different way and maybe even find a few never played before.

ABOUT THE READING

In the chapter “The Unbearable Lightness of Games," I had never really paid much attention to games as being art.  I had always just seen games at face value, mostly just for their entertainment purposes.  When I stop and think about it in that light though, I can see the many aspects of why it would be considered art.  I mean the graphics alone on any newer game are unimaginable.  I remember playing pong on the Atari and how it was the greatest thing since sliced cheese, but the games and their graphics today with the story lines and all really do take some skill as an artist. 

ABOUT THE GAMES

I really enjoyed getting to know the game The Prince of Persia, the controls are a little difficult especially when trying to climb back and forth from wall to wall.  I really liked the way that the game seemed to be a cross between Tomb Raider and The Matrix.  The game is interesting in that it has the time element, one that I have not seen a lot of in my gaming experience.  Grand Theft Auto IV was alright, it is not as much fun as the other unless I mindlessly wonder about doing crazy stuff.  I really did not have as much of an interest in the story of this game then I did in the other one.  I never really got into the whole robbing and being a thug sort of games.  It is interesting the things that are said on the TV and radio in this game, it doesn’t sound like things a child should hear that is for sure.