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ANIMAL AWESOME: MOUNTAIN GOATS

By: Isaac Bell

Mountain Goats, the absolute G.O.A.T when it comes to animals. (Sorry) Mountain goats, while not as popular as normal goats, are crucial to the food chain. So here are 5 facts about Mountain Goats you might not know.

1.       Mountain Goats were added to Minecraft in part 1 of the Caves and Cliffs update in 2021.

2.       There are 13 breeds of Mountain Goats, including Alpine, Altai, Booted Mountain, Carpathian, Ciociara Grigia, Changra, Irish Mountain, Normal Mountain, Pyrenean, Sempione, Syrian Jabali, Xinjiang, and Yemen Mountain Goat.

3.       Mountain goats are both Folivores and Graminivores, which means they feed mainly on grass and leaves.

4.       Despite their friendly appearance, Mountain Goats are extremely aggressive and territorial, and when they feel threatened, they can use their horns as a weapon.

5.       Mountain Goats are of Least concern when it comes to extinction, but they still are dealing with habitat loss and other issues. You can help them and more at-risk animals by donating to authentic charities.

That is all for animal awesome. I have had a blast making these for the past 2 years, and I will make the most of my last. I do have plans to have other kids continue this series before me, but for now, lets have some fun before it’s over. See Ya!

MADDEN, 2K, AND THE ISSUES OF YEARLY RELEASE GAMES 

Isaac Bell

Every Year, there is a New WWE, NBA, PGA Tour, or Madden. And every year, they always get worse and worse, and we ask why we keep buying these games. And today, I decided to answer these questions, and fully investigate this subject. I don’t really have an intro for this, (unlike Animal Awesome, which you should totally read.) so let’s just get straight into it.

Now Yearly Sports games have been around for a while, with Series like WWE, Madden, PGA tour, and NBA going back to the 80’s and 90’s. Back then the issue was barely there, as they were not yearly releases, and more importantly they have substantial changes from release to release. The real start of the games releasing yearly wasn’t until the early 2000’s, which was when the first major issue began to arise, the games began to blend into one another. The games introduced minor new features every year and updated the rosters, but even so nothing really changed from year to year. Now how do you think companies fix this issue? If you said anything other than shut down online servers and make old games unavailable, you really need to stop giving these billion-dollar companies' credit. Companies have used FOMO for decades at this point.  So, delisting games is nothing new, but with the yearly games it is just so much worse, as when you buy one you really don’t need to buy another for about 5 years.

Another major issue with these yearly release games is Microtransactions. Now obviously these games are bound to have them, I mean some people don’t have the time to unlock stuff and you also have DLC for games. But the real issue for these comes with the money printer modes. My Team, My Faction, Ultimate Team, these modes are money hungry modes where you can either play 200 to get mid cards, or just pay up. Another greedy thing some of these companies do is put exclusive cards behind the mode. For example, WWE 2K24 has made dozens of “Persona” cards that cost over 10/20 bucks worth of V.C, and these cards are always versions of characters that we are dying to get.

One last issue with these yearly release games is time. With only 8-ish months of development time, these games just do not get enough love. I’m using the WWE 2k Games as an example, as this is the series I have the most experience with. The 2K games have always been glitchy. From the broken universe modes to the unplayable online modes, the yearly game formula gives no time to fix these issues, and that is just for the core game-modes. Creation suite is a mess, My GM is boring, Showcase is a chore and not worth playing, and My Rise is just plain boring. The issue is, 2K won’t change. Even if 90% of the community doesn’t play, the 10% who pay and play MyFaction will fund the game for a while, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

So here is how we can save these franchises we all know and love. We need to show our opinions with our wallets. Even if MyFaction funds ½ of the game, the other half is still unfunded. If we do this, maybe, just maybe, we can convince 2K to give us what we want, not what some out of touch C.O.O wants. And so, we end here with a glimmer of hope. Thank you for reading, and until next time, I’m out.

Book Review: The Golden Goblet 

By: Jedrzej Zamarlik 

The Golden Goblet is an interesting book per say. The book was given to me as a mandatory reading book for ALPS class in 6th grade and 

after reading the entire book, I can say it is bad. Like life-scarring, the emotional trauma I have had to endure reading the 16 chapters of this 248-page book. I’m sure you are dying to know why this is sooooooo… 

 No. 1 The Pacing 

 The Golden Goblet is made up of 16 chapters but since this book was made in 1961 every chapter has about 30 pages* which makes reading 3 chapters per week (our assignment) painstakingly boring. Another reason it has bad pacing is because the scenes are like Korean Romcoms, unnecessarily long, the main character called Ranofer will not stop yapping about how he hates his brother and his job and (you get it). Now believe me… I read One Piece, the show with over 1100 chapters so I know bad pacing. But another thing is it is… 

 No. 2 Boringness 

The Golden Goblet is insanely boring, now I know this is very subjective, but the plot is unbearable to read through. Including the bad pacing the plot is just about learning more about his brother is very boring to imagine and read. Now this also connects to… 

No. 3 Confusing Story Development 

During the read through I could not understand anything that was happening and was heavily relying on the Audiobook the second time through to see what was happening. Even after that I could not understand some of the main details which shows bad writing. And to put more salt on the wound it received an award a year after it was released?! For this pile of dookie?!?! 

 Now I know this review may seem a little harsh but I’m telling you, go to the library read the first 50 pages of The Golden Goblet 💀 and you will see. Thank You for listening to me rant about a book. Bye Bye