The Professional Gamer - January 3, 2014

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Happy New Year fellow geeks! Did everyone have a good haul of presents?  I did, and have finally had some time to enjoy things a bit. I can sum up my recent gaming in one word: Pokemon.  Read on for the full store.

Watching:

One of the Christmas gifts that ZeldaQueen received was the complete Avatar: The Last Airbender, animated series.  The show is still really great and very much binge inducing.  ZeldaQueen and I have already watch most of the first two seasons, and we've only had the DVDs since Christmas.  At this rate, we'll be finished with the series before the year is two weeks old.

Playing:

Roughly two years after its initial release, I finally have a Nintendo 3DS.  Which also means, I finally have a new Pokemon game.  My exposure to Pokemon has actually been somewhat limited.  I had Pokemon Blue when it originally came out, and I played it all the way through.  I didn't play another Pokemon game until Black/White, came out.  I played a little bit of it, but quickly lost interest with all of the side quests and such just left me feeling annoyed and overwhelmed.  Pokemon Y has really brought the game back to the basics in terms of the gameplay.  At the same time, they have updated the graphics and animation in a smart and intuitive way.  The game is really polished and fun.  I'll post a full review when I get a bit further through the game.

Reading:

I just finished reading The Gospel According to Tolkien.  I think the book made some interesting arguments about the Christian themes in Tolkien's works.  Moreover, reading a book about Christian theology has made me interested in delving deeper and reading work by Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine; however, I'm not sure if I have the fortitude to get through such a heavy book with the typically short periods that I have to devote to reading.  I think I will have a look and add some things to my reading list. For now, I'm going to start reading The Audacity of Hops and Zealot. 

That's all for this week.  Join me again next Friday for another weekly update of the Professional Gamer.

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Jim Arthurs

B.Sc. - Geological Engineering, Ph.D. - Geology, P.E. - Civil Engineering. Retaining Wall Designer. Lover of Nintendo, Graphic Novels, and RPGs. Gardener, Homebrewer, and television viewer.

The Past Returns

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All the way back in the year 2003 I took a sociology class. In this class we were assigned a paper where we had to write about how a class of people is viewed in society. I, being the person I am, wanted video games to be my research material. The paper was written, submitted and graded (got an A on it by the way), and then lost, or so I thought. I was rather sad about this as I also met my wife in the class I wrote this paper in. Well recently, when doing some clean up of old hard drives, I found the original paper. So here I give you, the readers of The Gameslave, my sociology paper titled "Woman's Role in Entertainment: Does Time Matter".
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DayZ goes Live

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Fans of the popular Arma2 mod DayZ will be thrilled to hear that Day Z is officially geting its own game. Bohemia has been the green light on Steam to start selling a stand alone version of the popular game. The game is now available for $29.99 in an early access format. What does early access mean exactly? The simplest way to say it is that the game is in alpha. For thise that may not know, most early adopters find games in a nearly finished beta form where they are tweaking minor gameply elements. Alpha gameplay typically means there are major bugs in the game still and it requires a lot of testing before release. The advantage though is you get to really see the game evolve during it's development.

If you are ready to dive in then head to the DayZ Steam page and make your purchase.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Review

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Keeping a game series going can be difficult. You have to keep the core game intact while adding new elements that change how some things are done. You have to turn the world on its head without placing the player in an unfamiliar environment. It is a very fine line that must be walked when adding a new entry, and seeing how Assassin's Creed is now on it's sixth game, they are going to have to work for that something new. Were Pirate's that something new that they needed to keep it fresh and interesting? That is what I am hoping to detail in the review.
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