Opinion

Max Morton 1

I’ve been playing Prison Architect on the XBone for a while now and I suddenly have a problem.  I’d like you to meet Max Morton.  As you can see in the stats above, Max is a bad boy.  Max is an asshole.  He’s been in my prison for 33 days now and he’s unlike any other prisoner I’ve had in my 300+ hours playing.  If you notice, he is now sentenced to 890 years in prison.  Here’s another look as to why:

Max Morton 2

This list is big and it’s full of murders.  In one day, Max killed 14 of my staff, mostly guards.  It was a slaughter and I was powerless to prevent it.  He is permanently in solitary confinement now, but he is so strong that he can break down the door when he gets really mad.  I have an armed guard posted in the solitary block.  Max is never happy.  He gets spun up and goes on murderous rampages.  I built a death row facility just so I could kill him, but the game doesn’t work that way.  It seems that I am forever doomed to life with Max in my prison.

“Try leniency!”, I hear you exclaim.  Yeah, I’m not falling for that again.  I have tried that with him a few times now, but the result is always the same – dead staff and inmates as he goes off on a tirade because he’s not near enough to a phone or something.  He’s been quiet for 3 days now, which is UNHEARD of.  I’m just waiting for this ticking time bomb to explode again.  I may have to build a new solitary block just for him.

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Pikachu crying

This is likely going to get me kicked out of some gaming circles and secret societies, but I have a confession to make.  I have never played a minute of a Pokemon game.  Not the original Gameboy games, not Nintendo DS, not the new mobile game.  Not. One. Minute.  I have never seen the show, either.

I don’t have anything against the odd little creatures, though.  I actually have a few of the games in my collection and I fully intend to play them, it’s just never been very high on my list.  I was in high school when they exploded into popularity here in the US and video games had fallen off my radar a bit at that time.

For those of you really into Pokemon, which game should I start with?  I have just about all of the pre-DS games on my GCW Zero.

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Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a must-read for any fan of video games.  It is chock-full of video game and pop culture references from the 80’s and is a brilliant story.  I don’t want to give away too much of it, but this is set in a not-too-distant future dystopia.  Life is grim for many and to escape, everyone logs into a computer with VR and lives in a virtual world.  Kids go to school here, people work and interact.  The creator of this world hid a series of easter eggs that are a part of an epic quest.  The winner gets the ultimate prize – ownership of the company that controls this online world.  Unless a player can complete the quest, control is handed over to the company executives, which have bad plans.

I don’t care of you’re not much of a reader.  If you like video games, you need to get this book.  I think I read this one in under a week and had a few sleepless nights because of it.  I read it so fast, in fact, that I need to go back and re-read it because I didn’t retain a lot of it.  Steven Spielberg is making a movie based on this book, and I’m excited to see it.  But please, read this book before you do!

 

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Mugshot

In the gaming community, I am what is known as an achievement whore.  This sounds worse than it is.  This just means that I like to collect as many achievements as I can in each game.

Every developer for the XBox 360 and XBone is required, by Microsoft, to put achievements in their games.  Steam also has achievements now, but I don’t think developers are required to have them as not all games do.

What are they?  Things of great joy!  Many gamers will say that they are a waste of time, but I see them as little guides from the developers to help you find parts of the game that you might not otherwise.  The achievements themselves are just little badges that pop up on your screen when you complete certain criteria.  Each achievement has a score attached to it.  As you play more games and get more achievements, your “gamer score” goes up.  It’s kind of a status thing for all to see.

Some achievements also have new accessories and gear for your avatar.  This was a bigger deal in XBox 360 and isn’t used near as much in XBone.  I thought it was cool when I unlocked a Portal hat for my little toon to wear after unlocking a big achievement in the game.

There’s a third-party website, www.trueachievements.com, which let you create an account for free and compare yourself to other achievement whores.  They put some weight on the achievements as well and make the more challenging achievements worth more points.  So yeah, call me what you will, but I love my achievements.

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