Games That Aged Well

By: Liam Baumgartle

Games are getting better and better by the year and sequels usually cover up the past games, but there are some games that aged like fine wine. Our first game is Halo CE also known as Halo: Combat Evolved. This game was a huge jump to a new type of FPS (First Person Shooter). This game brought split screen to another level with custom games to 1v1 your friends or play capture the flag while all your friends are sitting next to you. This game also introduced insane graphics and although the other games are talked about a lot, no one will ever forget Halo CE. The next game on the list is Black Ops 2; this game was an all around great game that people still play today for the multiplayer and the zombie mode. Black Ops 2 started a huge trend in competitive clans like Faze, Faze came to fame because of Black Ops 2. The last game is CSGO (Counter Strike Global Offensive): this game is what brought clans like Cloud 9 to fame, it also started competitive gaming for prize money with official competitions. This game is still alive today with competitions with big prize pools still going on. So if you are looking for a game that has aged well I would recommend these three games.

The History of Fallout

By: Dane Ganis and Liam Baumgartle

Since the series’ inception on September 30th, 1997, Fallout has been a classic. Fallout has changed a lot since its first title, so in this article Dane and Liam will show you how Fallout has evolved to become what it is today.

The first 2 Fallout games seem like entirely different games compared to today's games; they were barebones, top down survival games with turn based combat. While they may seem outdated by today's game standards, these games laid the foundation for the game series as we know it.

Their fame came on October 28, 2008 when Bethesda acquired Black Isle studios. Their first expedition into the series came with the release of Fallout 3, a game that was amazing for its generation. Fallout 3 starts in a vault in which you were born and had never seen the outside world before. You grow up in the vault and take a test to find out what your job in the vault is, until the day comes where you are let out the vault into a open world of wasteland. Although the land has changed, that is not the only thing that has changed, the people were changed because now they’re either ghouls that are alive and functioning or ghouls that attack you. Then there are raiders that try to get their way through the wasteland and take kindly to vault dwellers such as yourself. This game was so revolutionary because of all the ways you could play the game, you could be a part of many groups like, The Enclave, the Brotherhood of Steel, Talon Company Mercenaries, Brotherhood Outcasts, Vault Dwellers, Raiders, Super Mutants, Reilly's Rangers.

After the hit that was Fallout 3, Bethesda handed the reins to one of Bethesda's sub divisions, Obsidian Entertainment. They were told to build a new Fallout game from the same engine as Fallout 3, and boy did they deliver with the October 19th, 2010 release “Fallout: New Vegas.” This game is one of the best ones in the series according to the community. This game starts in the deserts in Nevada waking up, but not in a vault. At the beginning you’re shot in the head by a guy named Benny, and you wake up in a house. You play as the courier, a lifelong resident of the wasteland who was tasked with delivering a package who in his journey was shot. You start out going to a perk machine to pick your perks then you go to get a gun which you do target practice with and then get to keep. This game has one of the most stunning wastelands in all of Fallout, it takes place in the Mojave Desert with all kinds of mutated creatures along the way. The highlight of the wasteland is New Vegas, the rebuilt city of Las Vegas. This game is commended for its fresh and new approach to Fallout with the reds and yellows of the desert and the mix of neon colors in New Vegas. Along with this, the world feels lived in, with factions like the New California Republic (NCR) essentially trying to reconquer the wasteland and crazies like the Caesar's legion, a group of cannibals trying to survive in the wasteland, this game deserves all the accolades it has received over time.

The next game in the series was Fallout 4, this game, released on November 10th, 2015, which was, in my opinion, one of the best Fallout games ever made. I loved this game; it was my first venture into the Fallout franchise and I’ve been a fan ever since. This game starts with your family and you running from the nukes that started the great war, you take cover in the vault where they say they’re going to decontaminate you but instead they cryogenically freeze you, as well as your wife or husband depending on your gender and your son Shaun. You wake up and see that someone is taking your child and killing your spouse, when you wake up from your cryogenic slumber you go to take vengeance on your wife's killer and find your son. You make your way outside and find you’ve been asleep for nearly 210 years! This game is an amazing way to start your experience in the Fallout franchise, the game is beautiful and the open world has so many nooks and crannies to explore. The world also feels lived in with colonies of wasteland residents trying to survive such as Diamond City or Goodneighbor. The mission selection is enormous with so many fun stories to explore and the main story has so many amazing twists and turns in it it's just amazing. Besides these things the new updated engine makes the game fell tons more realistic and makes gunplay largely better than 3 and New Vegas. I strongly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys large open worlds to explore and have adventures in.

All these games are amazing and aged even better but on November 20, 2018 they made a flop, a big mistake. Todd Howard would never be trusted again after the release of Fallout 76. This games starts in a vault, but not like Fallout 3 where you have a life in it. It starts with you exiting the vault, and this part is good all until you realize, where are the MPCs? Well they don’t exist. No companies, no one to take to. The main story of this is trying to find the vault overseer who you try to find through tapes. This game is also fully multiplayer which is fun for the first two hours, but once you beat one of the hardest monsters that is level 50 and you are level 10 it starts to get boring. The online combat is also broken. Basically you shoot someone to try to initiate combat and if they shoot back they can start to do a lot of damage, a instiation shot only does a little damage to tell the person “hey, wanna fight?” But with this time the person can quickly hop in a suit of power and grab a minigun and just mow you down. Another huge problem is the leveling system. All the enemies are way too easy and you can beat a level 50 deathclaw at level 10!?! Another flaw was the perk system, they should have kept it like Fallout 4 with the pick a perk, instead you have a limited amount of perks in each section and to get more you have to spent a point to upgrade that section but you also have to buy perk card packs which just make the game confusing and makes the game extremely hard solo. And that brings us to the last part: the multiplayer. This may be the only fun thing in 76 because you and up to 3 other friends can explore the open world of a waste land that is somewhat pretty, and you can build bases with your friend anywhere you want on the map.

Borderlands 3

By: Dane Ganis

On March 28th at PAX East 2019, Gearbox Software unveiled a new entry in their coveted looter shooter game series “Borderlands.” They coined the term looter shooter with the 2008 game Borderlands. Personally, I love Borderlands; the original and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time and they have one of the best experiences in games money can buy. So when I saw Borderlands 3 was being released after a 4 year hiatus from the series, I was naturally excited. Anyways, let's get to the gameplay. In every Borderlands game there are 4 launch characters with 2 add-on characters in both Borderlands 2 and Borderlands the pre-sequel, so expect more characters post-launch in Borderlands 3. The 4 launch characters in Borderlands 3 will be:

• Moze, a gunner who is capable of summoning a mech which she can ride in and friends can too.
• Amara, a siren (Someone with telekinetic powers and abilities in Borderlands) who will have a variety of abilities like slamming into the ground from the air, sending a projection of herself that will do damage and phaselock, a returning ability from Borderlands 2.
• Fl4k, the beastmaster who can summon 3 different pets with different specialties that will help him in battle.
• Zane, the operative who can make a clone which will distract enemies and who he can teleport too at the press of a button, make a shield which which when shot through by allies will deal double damage, and a drone which will fire at enemies of Zane’s choosing.

If you haven't already noticed, each character gets 3 abilities instead of the one granted in previous games. I am a huge fan of the Borderlands series and I hope they make this game the best they can.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered

By: Hunter Walcott Coe

Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered came out on November 4th, 2016. Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered is a remastered version of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, a game that came out in 2007. It’s currently out on Xbox 1, PlayStation 4, and PC. Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered was developed by Raven Software and published by Activision.

There are 2 modes in the game, single player and multiplayer. In multiplayer, you can battle other people that are playing the game too, and they are real people. In single player, you play by yourself and just think of it as a campaign mode.

I interviewed 8th grader Hayden Swank and asked him what he likes about the game. He said “I like that it's bringing back an old game and I like the new graphics.” Next, I asked him what his favorite mode is and he said “Multiplayer because I like beating other players.“ Then I asked him what his favorite gun is and he said, “My favorite gun is AK-47 with the red dot sight.”