News in Media
Ms. kim's favorite recent read:
that's not my name
by megan lally
A Review by Kimberly Nazario-Markus
Are you a true crime junkie? Or do you just really like a good mystery? Either way, you'll enjoy this book.
I picked this up at Barnes & Noble one day out of pure curiosity. I like to shop in the YA section (since it's my favorite), but I rarely see interesting mysteries like this. I also just really like the song of the same name by the Ting Tings, so I thought this would be a fun read.
Boy, oh boy... you think you know what you're getting into when you start the book, but you really don't. You don't know anything, really. This was difficult to put down. I would be in the middle of teaching a lesson, and all I could think was, "I wonder what's going to happen next."
The premise of the book is that a young girl in a small, quiet town goes missing. Her boyfriend is suspected of being the murderer. He's on the hunt to find her... but meanwhile, a father is trying to find his daughter. That's all I will reveal.
The story is a wild ride from start to finish. The way it is written feels like you could easily picture it as a movie. Honestly, I hope it becomes a movie. The end will punch you in the face and make you cry.
Overall, I give this a solid 10/10. Highly recommend.
Good pizza, great pizza
By Kimberly Nazario Markus
In my free time, I like to consider myself an iPad Kid. I love sitting on my bed, legs kicking in the air, playing random cute games on my iPad for hours. I have several games downloaded (mostly cat-related), but I recently came across a fabulous game (that was not cat-related). The game? Good Pizza, Great Pizza.
In this game, you are the owner of a pizza shop in a pizza-obsessed world. The shop across the street has beef with you, much like in Bob's Burgers. He tells you that you can't make good pizza. But he's obviously wrong, because you are a skilled Pizza Master.
Throughout the game, you gain money and pass festivals that allow you to buy new toppings and sauces. Every day begins with a news report provided by the Pizza News Network (PNN), where you learn about how your restaurant is doing and other current events in this Pizza World. The news, as well as some guests, can be incredibly hilarious.The most interesting people come to your shop. A vampire, a homeless man, people who speak in riddles, monks, and more. Speaking of riddles, everyone's order is like a puzzle you must solve. For example, they may something like, “Did you know the ancient Egyptians might have worshiped onions? The sphere shape and concentric rings can symbolize eternal youth.” What this means is that the customer wants an onion pizza. Trust me... they get weirder.
The reason I love this game is not just because of its funny riddles and weird customers, but also because the aesthetic is adorable. It is incredibly satisfying to make the pizzas, visually and sound-wise. Speaking of sounds, the people also speak in an adorable way, which I wish I could mimic for you via text (it's impossible... think like meep mep me me me me).
I highly recommend this game. I am obsessed with it and cannot stop playing. I look forward to getting more and more toppings (I really want to unlock garlic). It is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. That's all for today. Good Pizza, Great Pizza.
fortnite updates
By Anders Young & Noah Paz
Fortnite just got updated with a new season, it’s called Chapter 5 Season 1. In it, there is a new map with a train that goes around the map. You can go on it to travel and it has chests on it.
There are all new weapons, and along with that, there is gun modding in the new season for a certain amount for gold. Like adding a scope, adding an extended magazine so the guns can hold more bullets, adding silencers, and a gun grip.
Fortnite Lego was also added and it’s kind of like Minecraft. There isn’t really an end boss but the game still feels very full. There’s crafting weapons, building villages, fighting monsters, exploring caves, and more. You can play with up to 8 people at a time and play with NPCs if you make a village center.
They also added this game mode called Rocket Racing where, basically, you are just racing in these cool race tracks against 11 other people. The car that you drive is a Rocket League-type car which you can edit in your locker. You can rank up and, if you get to gold rank, then you get a free skin. Every time you rank up you get new things for your car to change.
Lastly, Fortnite also added a Garage Band-type game mode called Fortnite Festival. You can purchase songs from the item shop and play them with instruments in this mode and Battle Royale.
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza: recommendation and review
By Audrey Lorenz, reviewer extraordinaire.
Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza (We’ll call it TacoCat) is an awesome game that was introduced to me in the summer of 2022 by my cousin, June, on vacation. It is a wild, hand-slapping party card game. I recommend it for ages 8+, because you need to be able to handle A: Losing and B: Getting your hand slapped. Between 2-8 people can play at a time.
Here are the rules:
There are 8 different types of cards in TacoCat. The Taco card, the Cat card, the Goat card, the Cheese card, and the Pizza card, plus the 3 “special” Narwhal, Gorilla, and Groundhog cards.
Each player has a stack of cards they cannot look at. The players take turns putting down cards in the middle of the table, picture side up. When you put down the first card you say, “Taco”. If the card is a Taco card (meaning it has a picture of a taco on it), then you slap it. The last person to slap the card takes it. You continue this process in the order of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, and when the cards match you slap.
This is trickier than it sounds, especially because some of the cards look alike. If someone says “cat” and you slap a goat card, you have to put it in your pile. The goal of the game is to run out of cards first.
If you don’t want to buy it before you try it, I recommend going to the Sip and Play cafe. They have a wide selection of games, bubble tea and snacks.
shadows of doubt
By Anders Young
Shadows of Doubt is a game where you are a detective and go around a city getting jobs solving murders, arresting someone, taking something, and more. You go to cities that were either already made or randomly generated cities with randomly generated jobs.
You go around asking questions, breaking into places, scanning fingerprints, and more to find information. You get money for doing the jobs and you can buy houses with that money, or get tools to help with jobs.
You are able to get this game on Steam. It is only available on PC. Its original price is $20 and it goes on sale for about $15.99. If you think this game is interesting, you should get it. It’s fun and interesting and, in my opinion, a good game. But make sure to save your game safely; I think you might have to turn it off from the menu and/or main menu or your game save, like some of mine, might break.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie
A Review by Noah Paz and Anders Young
The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie recently came out and here are my opinions on this: I personally think the movie was disappointing, being more of a thriller than a horror movie unlike how it is portrayed in the games and books. Admittedly, I am a big Five Nights at Freddy’s fan, but I won’t let that cloud my opinions on this.
For context, this movie was supposed to come out 8 years ago and it only came out now. That means that 8 years were put into this movie and what came out was like a fever dream. The part where this movie lacks is from the middle to the end. When the animatronics start acting like kids is portrayed in the books and games, but that doesn’t mean that it had to be carried out into the movie. And the ending is so bad. I won’t spoil it but it seemed like it was rushed--which is not what you want to see with a movie that was in production for 8 years.
What was also pretty annoying is that they didn’t do much with the cameras and didn’t have the doors that shut down.
The audience in the movie theater that I went to was really annoying too. This doesn’t have much to do with my rating but I just wanted to include it because I want to get this off my chest. Basically, everyone kept on talking and laughing with parts that didn’t deserve it. They would laugh even if it just went to a shot of someone drinking coffee. They would also gasp for some reason when a animatronic moved on the camera--like why are you surprised?! That’s what the whole game is about!
The movie does have some good parts in it, though. It has some good jumpscares, and it explains some lore to people who just got into the series despite the fact that it’s still probably going to be confusing. It wasn’t all that bad, the storyline wasn’t the worst, there are some pretty good scary-ish scenes, the animatronics in real life look really good, and there are good characters.
The movie is on Peacock for free, so if it sounded good to you, you should watch it. Wouldn't hurt, right?
hello neighbor
A Review by Anders Young
Hello Neighbor is a game in which you need to go to your neighbor's house and see what they have hidden in their basement; however, they don’t want you to be in their house. You need to get in the house, get the things need to unlock the door to the basement, and not let the neighbor get you or they might take some of or all your stuff.
You can’t just go in through the door every single time, though. The neighbor will find where you go in and put bear traps on the ground, cameras, and/or board up where you were trying to enter. You get special abilities by doing some of the challenges in the game, and these can help you beat the game.
The game is on mobile, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. There are other games in the series, which are:
Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek -- a prequel where you play as one of the neighbor's kids and play hide and seek with the neighbor’s other kid in these different areas, and you have to collect toys to beat the level.
Secret Neighbor -- a multiplayer game where you and other people have 15 minutes to go around the neighbor’s house. However, one of the people you play with is the neighbor who can disguise as a kid. The neighbor kidnaps the kids and can have special abilities, but the kids have special abilities too.
Hello Neighbor 2 -- a sequel to the game that came out this year and has multiple DLCs and is available on Gamepass.
Hello Guest -- a game where you work at a theme park and have to get to a certain place in the game to beat it.
Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue -- a VR Hello Neighbor game where you go around the neighbor’s house as different kids in a group.
There are also a lot of alphas and/or betas of Hello Neighbor and Hello Neighbor 2 that you can get on PC. You can find them on the Xbox application on PC and/or on Steam.
book review: the girl who drank the moon
A Review by Audrey Lorenz & Lachlan Koechley-Williams
Do you believe starlight is magic? Do you believe a world of power exists that surpasses even your wildest dreams? Then pick up this book.
Genre: Fantasy
Author: Kelly Barnhill
Age range by common scene media: 10+
The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a fantasy by Kelly Barnhill follows a young girl (Luna) as she grows into her ever-strengthening powers one fateful night when an old witch (Xan) enmagicks her as a child. This book includes fantasy, action, love, an excitable adolescent, dragons, philosophy, and the meaning of family. It is about a town surrounded by a benevolent bog where one can make a living collecting bog-medicines and a dangerous forest where the witch lives. Each year the youngest infant in the village is left in the woods to be sacrificed to the witch, with the belief that the witch would punish them if they didn’t. However, they don’t know that the witch is actually kind and saves the children, feeding them starlight which makes them lucky and happy (but certainly not magical) and gives them to families in the village on the other side of the woods. But when Xan feeds one of the babies moonlight instead of starlight, infusing her with powerful and possibly dangerous magic, she decides to raise the child herself and names her Luna. I can’t give too much away, but Luna’s birth mother goes mad with grief, and uses her own magic to try to find Luna. Here are our reviews!
Audrey’s Review: I highly recommend this book to anyone, because even if you think that fantasy is corny or boring or weird, this book will change your mind with its enchanting plot and descriptive language . I read it first when I was about 10 ½, and loved it. It has great imagery, it is often funny, and it has some deeper themes like the meaning of family, the weight of society, and death . I would give this book a 4 ½ out of five stars, only because it has no sequel!
Lachlan’s Review: Like Audrey I highly recommend this for ten year olds or up. However, any younger is stretching it a little. There are some dry parts in the book but, all-around, this book is a piece of gold. It is hilarious, riveting, and you don’t even have to take this from us! You can have it from numerous reviews from adults and kids:
“Wonderful fantasy that will need parental explanation for independent readers.”
“EXCELLENT fantasy with wonderful life lessons. There is some violence but mostly there is the threat of violence, so it may feel more violent to some readers than to others. The author paints pictures with her words, which read like poetry. If your child is going to read this book independently, have a discussion about this in advance and they will enjoy it EVER so much more. The ending of the book made me feel the way I did at the very end of The Chronicles of Narnia. WONDERFUL!!!”
An unnecessary essay on Quacks of Quedlinburg
A Review by Clark Scheihagen
Introduction
Quacks of Quedlinburg is a very fun board game, not about ducks, but about potions. You are a fake doctor (a.k.a. a quack) selling “remedies“ to townspeople. You buy various ingredients that have different effects, and try not to explode by getting too many explodey-berries. In my opinion, this is the best board game, so let me tell you why.
Setup
Place a cauldron-shaped board in front of each player. Put the potion on the silver plate, the rat token in the wooden bowl, a single ruby in the sack, and a droplet token on space 0. Place the scoreboard in the middle, and the flame in the oil lamp with the number 1 on it. Place an envelope flipped to say 0 in the outlines for each player. Place the stack of fortune teller cards out next to the scoreboard. Put the ingredient books out in the sets of your choice. Finally, place the tokens shown in the bottom left of your cauldron in each player's bag.
The Rules
The turn goes as follows. Move the flame to the next oil lamp (except on the first round). When you reach a lamp which has an image on it, you either put the yellow ingredient book out (round 2), put the purple ingredient book out (round 3), or put one white one chip into each player's bag (round 6). Then, draw a fortune teller card. This should be visible to everyone. The purple card goes into effect immediately, while the blue card goes into effect during or after the round. These cards can have many different effects.
After you look at the fortune teller card, you may start drawing. As you go you draw pieces from the bag and put it as far away from your droplet or last piece as the number says. Repeat this until you decide to stop drawing or you explode by drawing more than 7 in total numbers on your white pieces. These are explodey-berries. They are bad and you do not want them in your cauldron. Exploding comes with a penalty, so it's a good idea to stop drawing before you explode.
After all players have stopped or exploded, you go to the evaluation phase. The first step is to see who went the farthest. They roll the victory die, which provides the bonus shown. In case of a tie, all players that are tied roll. The second phase is to evaluate green, black, and purple pieces. Normally, chips have their effect when they are placed, but these chips only go into effect after the round. The next step is to give out rubies. If a player has their last piece before a space with a ruby on it, they receive a ruby. The next step is to evaluate points. The number on the parchment that is after the last chip you placed is how many points you receive; move your token this many spaces forward on the score board.
The next step is the buying phase. The number on the bubble that is on the first space after your last chip is how many coins you get to buy ingredients. Each ingredient has a determined cost, which is listed below the picture of the chip. You can buy up to 2 ingredients and you can not buy multiple of the same color. The penalty for exploding is that you have to choose between coins and points in the evaluation phase, and you don't get to roll the victory die. The next phase is the ruby exchange phase. You can exchange 2 rubies to move your droplet forward one space or refill your flask, which can be used to place the last chip drawn back in your bag (You can only use this for white chips but you wouldn't want to use it for anything else).
The final step is to calculate the rat tails. Rat tails are a very important part of the game. They come into play on the second round and they are determined by how many rat tails there are between your token and the first place token. This acts like a second droplet, and your starting chip is placed in relation to the rat stone instead of the droplet. There is also a different side of the boards, which has test tubes on it. In this variation of the game, you put a droplet on the leftmost test tube. Whenever you have an opportunity to move your droplet, you can also move your test tube droplet. This can give you various bonuses, like rubies, points, and chips. That's all for the rules, so let's move on to the complicated math. Yay.
The Math Part
In Quacks of Quedlinburg, almost every chip has multiple books that have their own rules and effects. Four of these have 2 different books, each with 2 sets, so in total four sets for four ingredients. The black chip has a side for 2 players and a side for 3-4 players, and the orange chip only has one effect (which is nothing). This can make 2,048 combinations of ingredients. But it goes further. If you're playing on the test tube side, this number rises to 4096. But even that isn't all. We're getting into the very big numbers now. If you take into consideration the possible combinations of the 24 fortune teller cards in the 9 rounds, you have 35672555520 possibilities. That's a big number! This is a big reason why I think this is a really good game. There are tons of variations! I also like the fact that it is based on both luck and strategy, as well as the fact that there are tons of possible strategies that work well. I really recommend this game, and you should definitely buy it if you enjoy board games.
(EDIT: I previously did the math for this wrong, and I ended up with a much lower number.)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
A Review by Anders Young
In this game, you play as a new lawyer who has to defend and accuse people. You search people's houses, talk to the accused and other lawyers, listen to witness speeches, cross-examine, and show evidence. This game can make you feel like a real lawyer.
You can read the death records of people and compare them to what witnesses said to show they were wrong. It is around 50 hours of the game because it has all 3 games. You can play it on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It goes on sale for around $10 on Steam so if you can, you should definitely get it.
Sources:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy Game Review | Common Sense Media.
How long is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy? | HowLongToBeat
WHY THE PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES FRANCHISE DIED
By Clark Scheihagen
Intro
You might be familiar with the Plants Vs. Zombies games. These are a series of games where you create a team of plants to fight against the zombies that are invading your town. They were originally very well received, however recently the creators of these games have been getting a lot of backlash from the community. How and why did this happen? What is the future for this franchise? Look no further for these answers.
The Original
In May of 2009, the original PvZ game was released. It was pretty small at first, however, considering how well it was made, it ended up being groundbreaking for the tower defense franchise. The game consisted of around 50 plants, and 5 worlds, each with their own specific gimmick. There's a lot more about this game that I could say, but there is a lot more to talk about.
Pvz2
Between the release of the original game and the sequel, the Plants Vs. Zombies rights, originally owned by PopCap, were bought by Electronic Arts (or EA). This would eventually prove detrimental to the franchise’s success. Pvz2 was arguably better than the first game, but with one major difference. There were now in-game purchases. There are a select group of plants in the game that can be purchased for $5 each, for a total of $85. This was a fairly minimal thing, as the game was èasily beatable with all the plants that you unlock by completing levels. But EA wasn't done. They wanted more.
Garden Warfare
In 2014, the first Garden Warfare game was released. It was a third-person hero shooter, where you would play as one of the eight characters, and out of those eight characters there were lots of variants that would slightly change the character. For instance, the toxic pea made the normal peashooter do toxic damage overtime in exchange for less base damage. In 2016, Garden Warfare 2 was released, which added three more characters to each side and lots of more variants. The game also had a lot more features than the original Garden Warfare, including a story mode, unlockable characters, and many more game modes. This was probably the most well-received game out of all of them, and it has rarely received any major criticism from the community.
Pvz Heroes
Pvz Heroes was also released in 2016, and this marked the downfall of the Pvz franchise. It was riddled with ads and in-game purchases. Many people also felt the game was just a cash grab by EA targeted to younger audiences, seeing how unbalanced the game really is.
Battle for Neighborville
Battle for Neighborville is the most recent installment in the Garden Warfare series released in 2019. You could even argue that this is not a Garden Warfare game at all! This game follows suit with Garden Warfare 2, adding three more characters to the plants and zombies teams. However, this game entirely removed variants, which was the main complaint. Lots of people were also put off by the visual appearance of the game. It looked very different from the previous game, and many did not like this change. This is what upsets many people about the newer Pvz games, they say that they change the visuals for seemingly no reason.
Pvz3
Pvz3 is the most recent game in the series, and probably the least well-received. This game is somewhat of a strange one, never having been officially released. It has been uploaded in various extremely different beta versions, none of which got good reviews. Many people felt that this game had too many unnecessary visual changes. There were also a lot of complaints about how short the levels were and that there were ads after each one. This game really shows that EA no longer cares about what their older fans think, and are instead trying a “cleaner” design to make the games more appealing to children. However, the games would likely have terrible reviews, causing younger kids to be less inclined to install and play the game. Overall, this game really makes it clear why and how the Pvz franchise died.
Luigi's mansion 3
A Review by Noah Paz
When it comes to the Super Mario games, Mario is the more known brother but let’s take a break from him and talk about his younger underrated brother, Luigi. Surprisingly, people enjoy Luigi more than Mario according to a poll made by attractionsmagazines.com. But let’s stop talking about who is more popular and get straight to the point.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a great game (However, I have never played Luigi’s Mansion 1 and 2 so that's why I don’t talk about it), and it's one of my favorites. Luigi’s Mansion 3 follows the story of a scared brother who loses his more popular and confident brother, Mario, to King Boo. He also loses Princess Peach and some toads. He runs around in this haunted mansion until he finds a magic flashlight and saves a scientist. The scientist gives Luigi a vacuum to suck all the ghosts. After this, you just go through levels to get elevator buttons to get to the top floor and fight King Boo.
This game in my opinion is a 4.5/5. Get this game because you won’t regret it (no promises made)!
