Quick Shop Stop!
Here's my first try and the original image just below it. Also for the curious, I'll be putting up more HDR images, and images in general from my trip to Niagara for viewing and purchasing purposes on my Deviantart page: http://rklprints.deviantart.com/ Come take a peek!
There were probably at least two dozen ducks hanging out by the park yesterday, and while they were pretty skittish about me getting too close I was able to make it within few feet of them in order to get a few shots in. There isn't too much colour on these fine fellas but I've been trying to get an HDR image to work and that should really make the colour pop.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Are Kay Elle - Prints is proud to announce that we will be taking part in a gallery opening from September 1st - October 1st. The gallery will be hosted by our good friends at Ocean Life Yoga Therapy, a great personalized yoga centre and art gallery created by the incredibly Talented Hilary Leehane.
The gallery will host many of Are Kay Elle's most popular prints, such as the acclaimed Butterfly series and much of our nature prints.
More information about Ocean Life Yoga Therapy can be found at their website http://oceanlifeyoga.wordpress.com/home/ including class times, prices and location!
In other news, in celebration of a pretty darn good blog score I'm going to be putting in an extra photograph tonight which I was going to save till tomorrow!
Going back to my visit at the Toronto Zoo I captured a few images that I fell in love with, first and foremost are the Seahorses, my favorite aquatic species followed closely by the Turtle and the Oscar fish.
The second image is of the zoo's male hippo, he was not in the mood to have his portrait taken so unfortunately these were the most prolific that I was able to take.
A few words about the Toronto Zoo, if you've never been to the Toronto Zoo you should really go, even if you're in another Country or Province as you read this, it's been open since 1974 and actually still has a few of their original animals, including a male Gorilla, some Emus and a Heron. The Toronto zoo, from what I understand has always been a leader in keeping their animals in habitats they would be in, or as close to, what they would be living in, in the wild. They are the zoo that started it, and they consider themselves an example to other zoos, and you can really see how they have inspired even smaller zoos, such as the one they have in my small town, to try and do the same.
Both images were taken with a Nikon D90.
Macro photography has always been something I really, really enjoy doing, however I'm still a newbie and as such have pretty newbie photography equipment accessories such as my one and one lens for my Nikon D90. It's a 18-105mm lens and if it gets too close to anything it makes the camera freeze up and inable to take any images. So instead of getting the exact image that I want I have to improvise, and this is what I've been able to achieve.
Sorry about the minor amounts of blur on them, but these are actually quite small figures and my camera doesn't like getting that close, so I have to back up as I take the picture than close in on it so fool it into thinking that it's still a fair distance away.
To celebrate the conclusion of the Student Summer Company Program Are Kay Elle - Prints is having a massive sale with Prints at up to 50% off! Come check it all out at www.arekayelle.etsy.com
As everyone who checks my blog is probably well aware I am a massive fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am a minor Angel fan as well, but that mostly happened once I could get my James Marsters fix during season 5.
Since the shows been canceled though my Buffy time has been spent mostly on Fanfic and various other fan creations, however I have recently found the ultimate Buffy fan creation and I wanted to share it with the good folks of my blog.
Curious?
You should be, check out "Buffy Between the Lines" http://www.buffybetweenthelines.com/
It's a wonderful podcast radio drama that takes place between the seasons of the show, it begins between seasons 5 and 6 with Buffy gone and Spike helping the Scooby Gang all summer. So my suggestion would be to update your Buffy knowledge so that you can find out what exactly is going on.
In addition, there will be an upcoming Angel Between the Lines for those of you who want to follow some more escapades of that tall and foreheady vampire wonder ;-)
Anyway, check it out! They are worth a listen! :-)
Something a little different: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice, Now with more pictures!
0 comments Posted by Robyn L. at 7:54 PM
Game History:
Anyway to begin, as the title says I'm reviewing the 2009 Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) Buffy game: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Sacrifice. Now for all of you readers in North America who haven't heard of this game do not be alarmed, this game received a very limited release, only available in the UK from a specific games chain! Thus it's pretty unheard of anywhere in the States or Canada.
It was released in March 2009 and was created by 505 games and written by a Buffy alumni, a writer by the name of Rob Des Hotel. For those curious mr. Hotel wrote episodes from Season 1-2 including: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Puppet Show, The Dark Age, Phases and Killed by death.
Game Synopsis:
Game Synopsis:
- Time line:
- Game Summary: (Spoiler Heavy)
"The Amulet...
It bridges time
It brings two worlds together
It bonds Buffy and Spike."
Two days after the closing of the Hellmouth. Buffy, Giles and Willow have all gathered back at the crater that was Sunnydale having realized that Spike is trapped within a vortex in the Hellmouth portal.During their trip to the ex-Sunnyhell Willow discovers that someone has left the amulet on her spellbook. The scene cuts to Spike standing before a demon discussing where he is, his love and need for Buffy and possible consequences (none of which are detailed at the point) of his "choice."
As this goes the amulet which has somehow found its way to Willow begins to glow vividly and Buffy realizes that Spike is still out there and begins to encourage Willow to use a spell to bring him back. While Willow worries (incredibly briefly) about doing the spell pushing her over the edge back to Dark Willow she does the spell with almost no hesitation.
As the three Scoobies stand looking over the horizon Willows spell is done and Sunnydale suddenly appears whole before them, trees, homes, school, everything.However the spell is not without its price as the amulet shatters into 5 pieces, and they disappear throughout Sunnydale.
If you haven't guessed just yet, the point of the game is now to find the various pieces of the Amulet and put it back together, and to find Spike, as Buffy puts it; "Spike's back. And we're going to find him ... If something came back with Spike, I'll kill it. It's what I do."
Game Review: (Spoiler heavy)
- Length
- Story
This game also loses many points with me because it commits the biggest sin anything can do in my mind in relation to licensed works. The whole point of the game is that, as far as the 'verse is concerned, nothing actually happened. The game ends in such a way that season 5 of Angel would be completely unaffected by this game if it were to have actually happened in the show. I think that authors do this in order to make it so that their works can be considered to be closer to canon, but I say, if you're not canon anyway, why not have a little more fun with it than making sure it all matches up at the end?
Also the games story line reads a bit like mediocre fanfic, while the author was a Buffy writer, he wasn't involved with the show anywhere near the time when Buffy and Spike actually did get together. Though it's obvious he's a fan, his script is full of fights, forgiveness, Buffy love via Spike and some fun Angel/Spike dialogue which is complete with one minor-almost-fight between the two vampires. However the entire thing didn't read much differently than anything that could have been found at the Bloodshedverse, though it would count as a little to unSpuffy for their tastes in all likelihood.
- Gameplay: Controls/Graphics
The controls of this game, the moving and fighting rank from annoyingly frustrating to painfully frustrating, this is because you're playing with a fixed camera location, very similar to the original Resident Evil games. Thus if you are moving from one room to another for example, and you're going left once you hit that other room you may now need to go right to get where you want even if you are still going in the same direction. So if you're like me, and you can't tell one pixel-ly landscape from another you can sometimes end up going back and forth between rooms over and over and over and over by accident.
As well this game espouses one of it's features as being a combination of 1st person and 3rd person game play. The problem with this is that it's really weird to go from 3rd person which you are playing for the majority of the game, to 1st person which they use for major fight scenes. During this time you can not only not use any of your weapons other than your range and one melee out of a possible 20.
In these instances you are now unable to block and your entire control set up is completely changed. Now it's a shoulder button for attacking instead of a Y or X, and God help you if you want to cast anything. In order to cast any spells, most of which are what is going to save you during these fights, you are required to use a combination of buttons as well as using your stylus, which is only going to make you wish you had a third arm.
I can't even count how many times I died simply because I went from a third person screen into a first person one and was immediately faced with multiple enemies all of which were eager to either suck my blood, eat my brain or just kill me violently.On the subject of enemies, each one is the same model depending on type of monster, though the real problem they present is trying to get through them, the best and easiest way to get through the game is using your crossbow.
The crossbow lets you kill the enemies quickly and before they come anywhere near you, this ease comes at a big price later though. Each time you go into a first person part of the game, which is every single time you face a boss, you are required to use only your crossbow, any other range such as grenades, or holy water and stakes.
The best way to beat any of the bosses is to use your range, so if you use them up getting to them you end up unable to beat fights which should be easy otherwise.This means you have two choices for the usual monsters, fight them very slowly, blocking every hit and only going for the openings (you'll run out of potions slowly.) Or you can try running past them, before you run out of range which usually only gets you killed anyway.
Though while death doesn't have much of a consequence in this game, as you are brought back to life at the nearest checkpoint, the slowness of killing each monster, block, hit, repeat x5 will make the entire experience seem much worse.
- Graphics
The cutscenes also work in two ways, there are split screens where it shows two of the main characters in static images with minor dialogue going back and forth about various plot points of the game. The other type is an artistic interpretation of whatever is going on, these are really nice but what hurts it is that the images are shadows or siloutes, there are few to no full faces of the main characters. Though it doesn't really make a huge difference and really I just wish that there had been more of these scenes because they were quite enjoyable.
Two examples of Cutscenes: They are all very much like this, no faces anywhere to be found, can you tell who's in these images?
My only really huge complaint for the game as far as graphics are concerned are with the settings. Mr. Hotel had worked on the show for two years and there are another 6 of show to watch for reference. Of all of the various scenes shown, the school, Buffy's house, the magic box etc, only one of these was correct, and that was of the front of Buffy's home, which was only seen once and you were there for about 15 seconds on the way to the inside of the house.
I'm not asking for perfection in detail, but getting the layout of these locations correct would have been a great improvement, especially considering the majority of the people who are playing this game anyway are only those who are already huge fans and we (yes we) would be the people who notice those sorts of things.
Overall:
Wow, in all honestly I didn't expect this to get this long, originally I was planning on writing down the script and story line for those who could not see it, but it kind of morphed itself into a bigger review.
In all fan-girlish honestly I want to say that the game was good, but it really wasn't very good at all, and the only reason I think I enjoyed it at all was because I am a huge Buffy nerd to begin with. I think that's kind of the way you've got to address this game with a mindset that it's nice to get another piece of the Buffyverse which was actually writen by someone who had officially been involved with canon at some point.
Overall I would agree with the very few review scores I have seen online which gave the game a 55%. 55% because the game is playable, it can be difficult to get through purely due to the control at times, but it is like a fanfiction, take it for what its worth and you can get through it and enjoy it for what it is, a smaller slightly unpolished piece of a much bigger, very enjoyable verse.
I'm not asking for perfection in detail, but getting the layout of these locations correct would have been a great improvement, especially considering the majority of the people who are playing this game anyway are only those who are already huge fans and we (yes we) would be the people who notice those sorts of things.
Overall:
Wow, in all honestly I didn't expect this to get this long, originally I was planning on writing down the script and story line for those who could not see it, but it kind of morphed itself into a bigger review.
In all fan-girlish honestly I want to say that the game was good, but it really wasn't very good at all, and the only reason I think I enjoyed it at all was because I am a huge Buffy nerd to begin with. I think that's kind of the way you've got to address this game with a mindset that it's nice to get another piece of the Buffyverse which was actually writen by someone who had officially been involved with canon at some point.
Overall I would agree with the very few review scores I have seen online which gave the game a 55%. 55% because the game is playable, it can be difficult to get through purely due to the control at times, but it is like a fanfiction, take it for what its worth and you can get through it and enjoy it for what it is, a smaller slightly unpolished piece of a much bigger, very enjoyable verse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
