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I Love Marvel and Star Wars. I Don't Want Them in Kingdom Hearts. Here's Why

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Forewarning: this is essentially a bunch of opinions in an edited stream of consciousness; essentially my cleaned up thoughts about the subject discussed herein. Do with this rant what you will. Also, I know that it's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog...but I guess I just found myself to be less of a blogger than I expected? Whatevs, on to opinions There are a lot of people who play the “Kingdom Hearts” series of video games (in the millions, I believe), an awesomely weird mixture of Disney films and SquareSoft (now Square-Enix) characters and storytelling, and there’s a special feeling (at least to me) that comes from finishing one of the games and getting excited to play the next one. One of the reasons why? New Disney worlds (no, not the amusement park.) No game has exactly the same Disney-themed worlds as another, though there are some games (mainly “Chain of Memories”/”Re:Chain of Memories”, “358/2 Days” and “Coded”/”Re:Coded”) tha
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I Try Explaining (Some of) Silent Hill's Lore

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[ This started as a response on Reddit . It is meant to be a very rough explanation of the events that build up the world of Silent Hill, at least for the Team Silent-developed games.] While the first three "Silent Hill" games are fairly consistent, the fourth one changes things a bit due to the nature of portals to different parts of the game's worlds and the introduction of Walter Sullivan's Ritual story, and then the later western-developed games also add new things (and even retroactively alter story bits of previous games,) so I'll just try to cover the first three games. Firstly, the BASIC LORE, since I'm not going to put everything (might as well play the games and read the official books for that.) I'll also try not to spoil the actual games' events beyond basics: Pre-1600's: the land of Silent Hill before the town's founding is sacred ground for rituals performed by Native Americans Late 1600's: European settlers a
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Feature: "Playing with the Dark: Horror Games and Why They’re Important"

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This piece has been repurposed from my enterprise story assignment submitted in my JMC 201 News Writing and Reporting course at Arizona State University.             Video games have been around for almost six decades, and as such as have evolved to cover multiple different genres, just as books, film, television, music, and other forms of media have. Among the games that feature crime sprees or cooking or go-karts or martial arts, one genre that has captured the interest of a wide audience is “survival horror,” a term popularized by the game “Resident Evil” in 1996. Though not the first horror game, "Resident Evil" brought the genre into mainstream interest. This genre is defined by experiences that force the player to endure terrifying situations, which can vary widely: “Five Nights at Freddy’s” sees the player confined to a security room at night under the assault of animatronic characters, “Alien: Isolation“ pits the player in a decommissioned spac
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Game Review: Alien: Isolation

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This review is based on the PC version of Alien: Isolation , available on Steam. Background Can I just start this off by saying that I love that this game exists ? (yes, I can, it's my review. I'll do whatever I please.) I've been a fan of the Alien film series for years. I own all of the four Alien -titled movies on DVD, and I'm able to appreciate parts of Prometheus and the two Alien vs. Predator films, but my favorite will always be the first: Alien , from 1979. Perfect pacing, a really great plot of events, realistic characters with strong performances from everyone, fantastic visual style and sound design, and the amazing designs by the amazingly talented late H.R. Gigar for the Alien (among other things) make it one of my favorite films of all time. The fact that the first and the last few minutes of the film lack any dialogue really shows a great sense of direction. It's no wonder that so many films since its release have borrowed something from Al
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