2013 NFL Week 11 Predictions

Here are my Week 11 picks for the 2013 NFL Regular Season.

Winners are indicated in BOLD lettering

Thursday Game
Indianapolis @ Tennessee

Sunday Early Games
NY Jets @ Buffalo
Baltimore @ Chicago
Cleveland @ Cincinnati
Oakland @ Houston
Arizona @ Jacksonville
Washington @ Philadelphia
Detroit @ Pittsburgh
Atlanta @ Tampa Bay

Sunday Afternoon Games
San Diego @ Miami
San Francisco @ New Orleans
Green Bay @ NY Giants
Minnesota @ Seattle

Sunday Night Game
Kansas City @ Denver

Monday Night Game
New England @ Carolina

2013 NFL Week 10 Predictions

After a solid week of picks in Week 9, I'm back at it for my Week 10 Predictions of the 2013 NFL season. This past week had some drama, which is nice after what has been a lackluster season thus far. Hopefully the quality of play picks up even moreso than it did last week, so here's my picks for this week.

Winners are indicated in BOLD lettering

Thursday Night Game
Washington @ Minnesota

Sunday Early Games
Cincinnati @ Baltimore
Seattle @ Atlanta
Detroit @ Chicago
Philadelphia @ Green Bay
Jacksonville @ Tennessee
St. Louis @ Indianapolis
Oakland @ NY Giants
Buffalo @ Pittsburgh

Sunday Afternoon Games
Carolina @ San Francisco
Houston @ Arizona
Denver @ San Diego

Sunday Night Game
Dallas @ New Orleans

Monday Night Game
Miami @ Tampa Bay

Sonic Lost World (Wii U) Review

Sonic the Hedgehog used to be a gaming icon. During the Genesis days, the Blue Hedgehog once competed with Mario as gaming’s #1 icon. Over the course of his history, his allure faded, due to the quality of his games, and his rough transition into the third dimension. Unlike Mario, Sonic didn’t have great success right off the bat in the 3D space. Going on adventures, getting clones and many horrible friends, Sonic’s had it rough until recently. On the momentum of Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, Sonic Lost World hopes to return Sonic to that high point after a long fall. But the question is, if Sonic falls again, how far will he fall this time?

Lost World begins with Sonic and Tails chasing Dr. Eggman, who has captured some critters whom he hopes to turn into Badniks. While trying to save some critters, Sonic and Tails are sent crash-landing on Lost Hex for a brand new adventure. The game has a lot of flash, running at 60 frames per second, a great art style and a good soundtrack; ultimately, this is where the universal praise for Sonic Lost World stops. Lost World starts innocently enough, but gives players a plethora of new mechanics if you’re a veteran, including a run button, a new lock-on attack system and parkour system. The run button allows Sonic to have more precise platforming moments which have been sorely missing from more recent Sonic games. As a consequence of this, Sonic, even while running, is significantly slowed down. This isn’t a bad thing, as it allows players to control Sonic more precisely, even during those high octane moments. Sonic’s lock-on system is by far the difference from past games, and worse for it. In certain moments, you can lock onto and attack multiple enemies at once by holding the attack button. The problem here is that the system is entirely dependent on how far Sonic is away from enemies, and given how the level design lays out these enemies, you will frequently not target all enemies that you wish to target, resulting in your momentum stopping, forcing you to re-attack remaining enemies or scramble to get back on level footing. It’s frustrating considering that a few bosses require this mechanic to work properly, and can too often lead to the in-game time running out, resulting in a death.

Speaking of death, the parkour system featured is half dead. Its’ implementation in the 3D space is a joke, offering nothing more than climbing up a wall or two per level in order to progress. While there are some sections of levels that allow you to move forward by running on walls, these are few and far between, and seem like afterthoughts and in some cases realizations from the developers that the section they designed for them were too hard to finish. It represents an overall problem with the game, that the levels aren’t designed around the game’s mechanics, but vice versa instead. Another issue is that some of the levels aren’t designed with the game’s mechanics in mind at all, but instead shamelessly ripping off better Nintendo platformers Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns. These homages are poor substitutes, taking ideas from them and implementing them in rushed, overly long, poorly paced levels that will cause you many deaths and baffling moments about how they design their physics engine. The pacing of these levels, in other words, how levels are presented, in a Level-Boss-Level-Boss format, two of each occurring per world. This formula gets old quick and doesn’t deviate from it until the game is done, when afterwards you get access to the Hidden World, which feels like nothing more than a few levels that never even left the beta stage.

The more I played Lost World, the more I ended up hating it. It devolves into a formula is repetitious, frustrating and plain un-fun, which haunted many of the past 3D Sonic games. The inconsistencies in its controls, mechanics and level design are not something to be admired, but abhorred. While Sonic the Hedgehog from 2006/07 was a horrible game from beginning to end, Lost World started bright and hopeful, and ended up a terrible mess. The cycle from its’ unveiling to its release mirrors the game, and in that sense, a new Sonic Cycle is born.

Score: 2.5 out of 10
+ Excellent Soundtrack
+ CG graphical magic
+The game runs extremely smooth
- Inconsistent Homing Ability
- Level Design not built around the mechanics
- The epitome of what a rushed game is

2013 NFL Week 9 Predictions

Another week, another set of predictions.

Predictions are indicated in BOLD

Thursday Game
Cincinnati at Miami

Sunday Early Games
Atlanta at Carolina
Kansas City at Buffalo
Minnesota at Dallas
Tennessee at St. Louis
New Orleans at NY Jets
San Diego at Washington

Sunday Afternoon Games
Philadelphia at Oakland
Tampa Bay at Seattle
Baltimore at Cleveland
Pittsburgh at New England

Sunday Night Game
Indianapolis at Houston

Monday Night Game
Chicago at Green Bay

2013 NFL Week 8 Predictions

Another week has come and gone, and yet the NFL keeps on ticking. So do I, apparently. Here are my picks for this week in the NFL.

Thursday Night Game
Carolina @ Tampa Bay

Sunday Early Games
Dallas @ Detroit
Cleveland @ Kansas City
Miami @ New England
Buffalo @ New Orleans
NY Giants @ Philadelphia
San Francisco @ Jacksonville

Sunday Afternoon Games
Washington @ Denver
NY Jets @ Cincinnati
Pittsburgh @ Oakland
Atlanta @ Arizona

Sunday Night Game
Green Bay @ Minnesota

Monday Night Football
Seattle @ St. Louis

2013 NFL Week 7 Predictions

Another week, another set of predictions made early. This week has 1 great game, a few okay games, but the rest are games I wouldn't want to watch if I were blind, and since I'm obviously typing this, I'm not. It's not a pretty week for the NFL, and it's not a good season in general so far.

Thursday Night Game
Seattle @ Arizona

Sunday Early Games
Tampa Bay @ Atlanta
Chicago @ Washington
Dallas @ Philadelphia
New England @ NY Jets
Buffalo @ Miami
San Diego @ Jacksonville
St. Louis @ Carolina
Cincinnati @ Detroit

Sunday Afternoon Games
San Francisco @ Tennessee
Houston @ Kansas City
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh
Cleveland @ Green Bay

Sunday Night Game
Denver @ Indianapolis

Monday Night Game
Minnesota @ NY Giants

2013 NFL Week 6 Predictions

Hello again. Due to me being busy, I've decided to make my predictions earlier in the week so I can provide a more consistent schedule. While I may dislike making predictions on Tuesday and Wednesday, I feel it must be done going forward to maintain updates. With that in mind, here we go.

Thursday Game
NY Giants @ Chicago

Sunday Early Games
Carolina @ Minnesota
Green Bay @ Baltimore
Cincinnati @ Buffalo
Detroit @ Cleveland
Oakland @ Kansas City
Pittsburgh @ NY Jets
Philadelphia @ Tampa Bay
St. Louis @ Houston

Sunday Late Games
Jacksonville @ Denver
Tennessee @ Seattle
Arizona @ San Francisco
New Orleans @ New England

Sunday Night Game
Washington @ Dallas

Monday Night Game
Indianapolis @ San Diego

2013 NFL Week 4 Predictions

After a 2 week hiatus, I'm back with my weekly NFL picks. I'm sorry about missing the last two weeks, but I've been fighting medical issues as well as some personal issues. But nothing is stopping me this week, so here are my picks. I hope that I can return to my regular prediction schedule this time. And don't worry about last night's game, I'm writing this a couple of hours beforehand.

Thursday Game
San Francisco at St. Louis

Sunday Early Games
Baltimore at Buffalo
Arizona at Tampa Bay
Pittsburgh at Minnesota
NY Giants at Kansas City
Indianapolis at Jacksonville
Seattle at Houston
Cincinnati at Cleveland
Chicago at Detroit

Sunday Late Games
NY Jets at Tennessee
Washington at Oakland
Philadelphia at Denver
Dallas at San Diego

Sunday Night Game
New England at Atlanta

Monday Night Football
Miami at New Orleans

2013 NFL Season Week 1 Predictions

Welcome back everyone! I know it's been a while, but it was a bad summer for me. Some people, while I didn't know them, that have had an effect on my life, passed away this summer. It's hard to forget someone you remember so fondly. I hope we all try to interact with many people as we can before all of us pass on, so no one will ever truly be forgotten, and live on in peoples' hearts. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here for one reason, FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS!

The NFL returns tomorrow (okay, it technically returned Thursday, but no one counts that as the true opening of the season now, do they?), so it'd be a good time for me to make my NFL predictions this week for every game on the calendar. While I did miss Thursday's game, I will take it as a loss for sportsmanship purposes. Now, let's get to it.

*- Winners Denoted in BOLD
*- From Week 2 onward, I will only refer to teams by their City name with the exception of the Jets and Giants

Thursday, September 5
Baltimore Ravens @ Denver Broncos - No Pick

Sunday, September 8 - Early Games
New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills
Seattle Seahawks @ Carolina Panthers
Cincinnati Bengals @ Chicago Bears
Miami Dolphins @ Cleveland Browns
Minnesota Vikings @ Detroit Lions
Oakland Raiders @ Indianapolis Colts
Kansas City Chiefs @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Atlanta Falcons @ New Orleans Saints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New York Jets
Tennessee Titans @ Pittsburgh Steelers

Sunday, September 8 - Afternoon Games
Green Bay Packers @ San Francisco 49ers
Arizona Cardinals @ St. Louis Rams

Sunday, September 8 - Sunday Night Football
New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys

Monday, September 9 - Monday Night Football
Philadelphia Eagles @ Washington Redskins
Houston Texans @ San Diego Chargers

Enjoy the return of Football everyone!

Animal Crossing New Leaf Review

The newest title in Nintendo’s daily village simulation series is here in the form of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS. The game, while similar to its predecessors introduces a lot of new features to give the series a much needed shot in the arm, even though its’ not quite as strong a dose as it needs to be to completely modernize the franchise. But through and through, New Leaf offers something old and new players alike to enjoy.

The main difference between this and previous entries is that the first player to start a game in a town is the new mayor for your town. This allows you to customize your town with various projects such as where bridges are built, what to build/upgrade, and giving Mr. Resetti his job back. You’re also allowed to change how you play the game, like if your town is up late at night, wealthy or beautiful. It’s a much welcome change of pace, especially to those of us who would like to play Animal Crossing after a long day of work, but can’t do anything because shops are closed and neighbors are asleep. Giving the player control of what to build livens up the pace of the game to make it feel more alive. While it can get frustrating sometimes to wait for new projects to arise, when they do, it’s exciting to have something new to look forward to in the game, and makes you want to earn bells faster to accommodate those new arrivals.

Speaking of bells, you’ll need a lot of them to complete these projects in a timely manner, but the game accommodates this by providing you even more ways to earn bells. The famous money rock now produces an extra bag for you to earn, a second shop allows you to sell various items to your neighbors more easily, you can earn 5,000 bells a day by updating your town through the dream suite, and last but not least, is the return of the island, which can earn you upwards of 100,000 bells per visit. Keep in mind that you will have to unlock this privilege however. In addition to spending bells on projects for your town, in tradition you can upgrade your house beyond what is necessary. You can build up to a total of six rooms and expand each room three times. This will be very time consuming since you can only do a single house upgrade per day and the maximum upgrades will cost nearly 600,000 bells a piece. Another new feature here is being able to upgrade the outside of your house, including your fence, mailbox, door, roof, siding, etc. These also count as house upgrades so they do get in the way of your standard upgrades on a day to day basis, but cost significantly less to do.

Another significant change here is special visitors, whereas in games prior you could have up to two special visitors per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. This has changed to a meager one per day, but in addition to that, they no longer appear in a set order with the exception of Joan, who still appears only on Sunday mornings. This gives players more time to talk to a special visitor, but it does slow the game down a bit, which is a theme for this game. A problem that arises from this is that while a visitor may only appear once per week as always, they are less likely to appear since only one of them can appear per day. In order to remedy most of these situations is the ability to visit other players’ towns, either locally or via the internet. This can help you get a fortune read from Katrina or a piece of artwork from Redd’s Gallery, or help you sell turnips at Re-Tail, a new shop, for ridiculous profit. While you don’t have an in-game friend code like previous iterations, you can register a few best friends via your in-game menu to see when they come online, which helps you coordinate playing with friends.

You can also play with random players online on the Island, which features several island tours for you to play. They take no more than 10 minutes each, in which you earn medals, which you can trade in for various goods at the island shop. This is a good way to play with people on the island so your personal island isn’t messed with by people you don’t know. Unfortunately, that’s where the changes to online end. The process is still painstakingly slow, taking up to a minute to enter and leave a town once it tells you that you’re connected. It’s frustrating that Nintendo can’t speed up this process after three iterations having online connectivity.

There is a more passive way to visit peoples’ towns this time in the form of the Dream Suite, an unlockable shop that allows players to enter the dream versions of towns. Unfortunately you can’t bring back any items with you, nor does anything you do affect the town you visit. It’s ultimately a nice way to get ideas about your own town and potentially get new designs, if the town owner allows it. By uploading your own town, you get bells daily as well. Along your every day chores is your inventory system, which, while being slightly revamped, is still the weakest part of the game and the most damaging. While you can now stack fruit, it doesn’t do so automatically. This goes the same for money, which isn’t automatically put into your Bells pocket. In addition to this, the game has more equipment items in the form of a megaphone, which allows you to call out for villagers walking around, and a wetsuit, which allows you to swim in the ocean and dive for sea creatures. While these are nice features, they complicate the problem with item management. Each piece of equipment takes up an inventory slot, and you will constantly have to juggle your inventory to make space for the items you want or need to carry. It’s tedious and honestly shocking that this hasn’t been remedied in some way over the course of the series’ history.

Animal Crossing New Leaf feels like the first true sequel in the series’ history. While previous entries have added new elements, they never really felt engaging enough to say ‘this is brand new’ to anyone. It’s definitely a lot more enjoyable than previous games, and at the time of this review being written, there’s still a handful of things I haven’t gotten to try out, including the game’s Street Pass functionality, as well a couple of the game’s stores, which will surely add more time to any players’ 3DS. While it may not be the end all be all the series needed, it’s definitely a much needed shot in the arm to get people excited about it again.

Score: 9/10
+ Lots of new things to do this time around
+ There are a lot more ways to earn money
+ A lot of nice, notable little touches that give this a bit of extra charm
- Inventory Management is an even bigger problem this time around
- Getting Project Recommendations is random and a chore
- Visiting/Inviting people is still a tedious process