Critical Review Essay

Joshua Hahn-Varona

3/24/15

Ori and the Blind Forest Critical Review

Since its first trailer at E3 2014, Ori and the Blind Forest caught my attention and hundreds of thousands of others. At first, Ori and the Blind Forest was set to release during the fall months of 2014, only to be delayed until December of 2014, then delayed again to its final release date: March 11, 2015. Though it’s not fun seeing highly anticipated games get delayed, it’s often a good thing as it gives developers more time to polish and perfect their games. In this case, Ori and the Blind Forest is perfected. Developed by Moon Studios and funded by Microsoft Studios for Xbox One and PC, Ori and the Blind Forest is a potential candidate for a game of the year for 2015, and it sets a high standard for independently developed, next generation, platforming games both aesthetically and functionally. Some game review companies even calling it “Paradise.”

          Before I go further with this review, I would like to point out that the type of game Ori and the Blind Forest is (a platforming game) is not a type of game that I usually play. I am more of a first-person-shooter, racing and action/fighting kind of gamer. That being said, this review is more of my attempt at trying a new type of game without much previous experience with platforming games other than the typical Super Mario. I figured a new generation of consoles calls for new types of games to be played. Since I am an Xbox One owner, this review reflects the Xbox One version of Ori and the Blind Forest, not the PC version.

          When I look at a new game, a few things that I want to know are: Is the story compelling? Do I get some sort of connection with the characters? Does it look good graphically? Does it sound good in terms of both music and sound effects? Does the game control well? Does the gameplay look familiar at all? After watching the first trailer for Ori and the Blind Forest, all of these questions were a definite yes except for whether or not the game controls well because no one had hands-on experience with the game yet, but I’ll get into that later.

          Ori and the Blind Forest begins in a cut scene of a storm rattling the Spirit Tree accompanied with harmonic music when a leaf from the Spirit Tree fall flies off, which you soon find out is actually the main character, Ori that falls below to the Forest of Nibel. Ori is a lemur-like, light creature created by the Spirit Tree. Eventually, Ori is found by Naru who then adopts Ori as her own and grows a strong bond with Ori, giving you the feeling of a mother/child relationship. The Spirit Tree, however, wants Ori to come back, and calls out to Ori by spreading light throughout the Nibel. Unfortunately, the Spirit Tree’s light angers the antagonist, Kuro the bird because the light harms her and her newly hatched chicks. Because Kuro is angered, she goes and steals the Spirit Tree’s light, only to return to see that the light killed her newborn chicks, leaving only an unhatched egg in her nest that she feels she needs to protect by finding and getting rid of Ori. But because Kuro stole the Spirit Tree’s light, the Forest of Nibel is dying, and Naru later dies because of the lack of food in Nibel. Your job as Ori, is to find and restore the three elements of the forest to bring light back to the Spirit Tree, and life back to the Forest of Nibel, leaving you with a great  story to unfold that is both easy to understand and satisfying when it's  all over.

Immediately after the opening cut scene, you are thrown into the bright and colorful world of Nibel. The colors of the game have a watercolor texture, with an active background and foreground with you in the middle. Though this sounds difficult to look at, the foreground and background have only subtle movements like waving trees from the wind in the background and a few times in the a foreground a creature moves about. This artistic aspect makes the game feel like the world around is alive at all times, giving it a sort of depth that I've hardly ever seen before in games. Though the game does look stunning, sometimes the frame rate drops because too much is happening on screen. For me, this only ever happened three times and didn't matter to me. I can imagine on PC it may happen more often since every PC is different while all Xbox Ones are the same.

When it comes to the audio of Ori and the Blind Forest, it is second to none. I even love the soundtrack so much that I've listened to the whole track three times. From the moment you begin the game, you are hit with a beautiful orchestral soundtrack that interestingly plays in exact sync with the world around you and the scenes you play. For example, one part of the story has you running away from lava, and the music ends exactly when you are supposed to be finished with the escape. The music doesn't cut off or anything. The music and game itself is timed perfectly. Not only is the music beautiful, some tracks (like the lava escape track) can even put you on the edge of your seat.

The functionality of Ori and the Blind Forest is phenomenal. The controls are simple: A to jump or double/triple jump, X to attack, Left Stick to move. Later on in the game, you acquire new skills that incorporates things like being able to bounce off of enemies, projectiles and strategically placed lanterns hung around the game and holding onto and climbing walls. Now, these controls are easy to learn, easy to use, but Ori and the Blind Forest is all about precision and timing by being able to string together all of the skills you have learned to get around the environment and combat enemies. For me, I had no issues with this type of gameplay since being a first-person-shooter type of gamer, I am used to using precision timing to play games. The only problem I had when it came to controls were problems on my end through possible issues with my controller since it’s a custom controller or because I had just messed up. Things like accidentally slamming down into a pit of spikey plants by pushing down on the Left Stick while in the air got me killed a few times in my play through which is probably why Twinfinite said the controls feel “tight.”  Some critics, however, feel that Ori and the Blind Forest is too difficult at times. In IGN’s review of Ori and the Blind Forest, they docked points off of the game’s score because it was “unevenly difficult.” Though the game still got a good review from them, I think the “uneven difficulty” is a good thing. I think a better word for Ori and the Blind Forest is that it is challenging. “Difficult” has a negative connotation to it compared to “challenging.” What makes Ori and the Blind Forest challenging is that, at first, Ori feels frail and you often die quickly by enemies if you don’t react correctly to their attacks. There are also three large escape scenes in the game that give you no checkpoints and each scene leaves no room for error as you escape things like rushing water or lava. This can prove frustrating failing escapes scenes over and over but once you get it right, is very rewarding. Because Ori and the Blind Forest is challenging, you will die a lot, or as the game puts it more kindly, you will “respawn” a lot. The game even counts how many times you respawn in the pause menu. Though I wasn’t able to get the exact number of respawns in my 8 hour play through, I know I respawned well over 500 times.

One thing I wished Ori and the Blind Forest would let me do was go back into the game after I completed it. Because of this, I was not able to get an exact number of respawns that I had and I was also not able to go back and collect all the secret items for Achievements on Xbox Live. But that’s okay with me, now I can play the game over again with secret items in mind while traversing the environment. Ori and the Blind Forest has strong replay-ability because of how good the game is with its stunning visuals and amazing soundtrack.

Though as I stated before, I don't have too much experience with platformers, Ori and the Blind Forest's gameplay is intuitive. One reviewer I read said that "Outside of Bash, there really isn't much new here." but to me, it is very new, very challenging. This game will have you fighting enemies from a distance with your fire ball with the X button while also dodging and bouncing of enemy projectiles with the Y button. It requires a lot of multitasking and quick reactions that I've never seen before in a platformer.

Through the innovation in Moon Studios by a beautiful environment accompanied by amazing music and thoughtful gameplay, Ori and the Blind Forest will go down as a game of the year for 2015 and possibly a top 5 games of all time, giving future independent developers a standard to reach when it comes to platforming games.

"He Took Off His Skin For Me"

Joshua Hahn-Varona

3/17/15

   What people do for love is sometimes strange and twisted. "He Took Off His Skin For Me" is a short film that tells the story of a husband and wife that are deeply in love. The man, to show his affection for his wife, takes off all of his skin.

   Taking off his skin was the ultimate sacrifice to show his love for his wife. The narrator (his wife) explains at first that not much had changed when her husband took off his skin except that now she has to clean the house for a few hours a day and needs to wash their bed sheets every morning.  However, as he later finds out, not having skin on his body lead to losing his job and his friends.
  

Virunga Review

Joshua Hahn-Varona
3/3/15

Virunga

   Virunga was quite interesting to me. The fact that a big corporation can come into a country and cause chaos because they want to exploit oil is both sad and frustrating. There is some good insight on how big corporations work to essentially take over broken lands with money. It makes me wonder what other corporations have done like this that went off the radar from the media. It's a shame that SOCO only sees dollar signs when they look over the land. Not even considering the environmental effects.

Argumentative Essay #1

Joshua Hahn-Varona

2/24/15

3D Printing: Why We Should Be Excited

Over the past decade, 3D printing equipment has started to become more and more available to those who wish to build their own printer to start 3D printing at home. As "What is 3D Printing?" says: "Personal 3D printing or domestic 3D printing is mainly for hobbyists and enthusiast." However, over the last few years, not only has 3D printing become cheaper and more readily available, it has also become better in terms of speed and precision. In this year's CES2015 (a technology convention that showcases new and innovative technology) a new product was revealed that may eventually make at home 3D printing a norm. The XYZprinting: Nobel 1.0 is the newest at home 3D printing technology that the author, Hong Ngo, says himself, "The maker of the Da Vinci today unveiled at CES 2015 its first SLA 3D printer, the Nobel 1.0. It's the first on the market to retail at $1,499, which is significantly less than any other 3D printer of its type." and "XYZPrinting says that the Nobel 1.0's strength is not only its speed but also the quality of the print, capable of delivering print resolution of up to 25 microns. From the demo prints I've seen, the quality was indeed a huge leap forward from those printed by the Da Vinci or any other 3D printers I've reviewed. It was hard to believe that they were 3D-printed objects." Though $1,499 isn't necessarily cheap, eventually, the price of this type of product in particular may drop.  Newer, smaller and cheaper models may also be available in the near future for everyone to use, and benefit from. 3D printing is becoming one of the best technological breakthroughs of our time, and we should be looking forward to what 3D printing has to offer in places like manufacturing, medicine and even in our homes.

However, some say that at home 3D printing is going to make it easy for people to have and assemble undetectable weapons that will be abused by criminals that mass produce weapons in their garage. Because of this, it is believed by some that in home 3D printing is a step in the wrong direction as people will be able to use free files from the internet to 3D print weapons. Though I agree this is a huge concern in regards to public safety, I want to focus on the positive aspects of in home 3D printing. 3D printing is the way of the future, it is changing the world.

As "What Is 3D Printing?" explains, 3D printing has many benefits for the consumer along with benefits on the industrial side of things, and how 3D printing will be in the future. The article also shows an infographic at end which shows the history and possible future of 3D printing, along with its current and possible uses.

In terms of in home 3D printing, many things come to my mind of the extensive uses that a 3D printer has to offer. A cool idea I was thinking of was being able to buy a file for cheap from a place like Amazon to 3D print a missing or broken part to really anything. Need a new door knob? 3D print it for little cost. Are you missing an important part to a Do-It-Yourself project? 3D print it for cheap while you assemble the other parts. The list of possible uses goes on to other things, of course. As stated previously, 3D printers used to be mostly for hobbyists. These hobbyists could use 3D printers for, well, their hobbies like model cars. A recent example for this that I personally witnessed was at the Chicago Auto Show 2015. A man (I don’t think he was sponsored by any car companies as he didn’t have any sort of badge on. Just a suit and tie) was showing a 3D printer that was printing very basic model cars. I didn’t have time to talk to him about what he was doing exactly there, but he did let me take a picture of the machine that was in the process of making another model car along with some of the already made cars on display.

Artists may very well have a use for 3D printing, too. A new product on the market called the 3Doodler is a small pen-like instrument that “writes” in 3D. One end of the pen is fed a plastic, cylindrical material that goes through the pen and comes out on the other side of the pen in a liquid form that cools and hardens quickly to create 3D models that you design on the spot. Some of the already designed and tested creations from the 3Doodler include a working rocket, wall sculptures and a remote controlled plane.  The great thing about this product is that it is already available at Michaels giving access to those interested for $99.

That is not to say that in home 3D printing doesn’t have its risks. When it comes to whether 3D printers are safe for home, things get a little foggy. The problem with in home 3D printing comes when people have the ability to make weapons. Cody Wilson is the creator of the first 3D printed handgun called "The Liberator". Since this gun is made of hard plastic, it is undetectable by metal detectors, which is a huge public safety concern. Interestingly enough, Cody Wilson is an anarchist, he basically designed this weapon to scare governments. Since governments cannot  regulate files on the internet to stop people from downloading them off of the internet, the only way to counter in home 3D printed weapons is to ban the production, sales and possession of the weapons. Sadly, criminals will eventually find a way to break the law, but the benefits of having an in home 3D printer outweighs this set back by a large margin.

3D printing has many uses outside of your own home. In the medical field, 3D printing has been used to make cheap prosthetic limbs. As the article here explained “The e-NABLE team recently visited a leading trauma surgeon, Dr. Albert Chi, to show the surgeon their $50 3D printed plastic hand. Dr. Chi saw the potential for this hand and likely many other types of prosthetics, to change the lives of thousands of people worldwide, who could never afford a commercially made $30,000-$50,000 prosthetic.” Cheap prosthetics will benefit anyone in need because of how cheap and available 3D printed prosthetics will become.  There has also been development in 3D printing human tissue by “biotechnology firms and academia for possible use in tissue engineering applications where organs and body parts are built using inkjet techniques. Layers of living cells are deposited onto a gel medium and slowly built up to form three dimensional structures.”  Even working organs to eliminate the need for organ donors as the infographic mentioned above explained.

Another odd but may very well become quite practical use for 3D printing is construction. Recently in China, a fully 3D printed apartment building was built. The first of its kind. It is a five story villa that is 11,840 square feet that also has decorations inside and out. The article also mentioned how the process of 3D printing this apartment building “process saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, and can decrease production times by between 50 and 70 percent, and labour costs by between 50 and 80 percent.” And “In all, the villa costs around $161,000 to build.” This is astonishing to me, as some houses in our area by themselves cost more than this five story apartment building. This idea of cheap architecture  may sound as if construction workers will lose jobs. However, 3D printing homes does not mean that the house is built by the 3D printer, but rather the parts for the house are made by the printer. Basically, you still need builders to put the building together, but the parts of the building are made by a 3D printer. You can think of it as a life-save LEGO project.

Other uses for 3D printing outside of home can be in manufacturing. 3D printers allow manufacturers to “create prototypes or objects that would be impossible to machine.” This is great for manufacturers because fast, testable prototypes will make both cheap and easy to innovate within a company. This is also good for small business owners who can provide printable designs on the internet, as small excerpt from “U.S. Productivity Growth: An optimistic Perspective” points out. The article also talked about how products will be “endlessly customizable- in form, material and dimension.” and how products will both never be out of stock and “manufacturing will become truly just-in-time.”

While the 3D printing technology we have today is still making progress, it is by no means at any sort of halt. In the next 10 to 20 years, 3D printing may have advanced enough to the point where we are saving lives in the matter of minutes. Along with being able to save money on parts for projects or full blown homes for us, 3D printing will let us imagine and then almost instantly create things to better our lives, letting us create 3D works of art as well as advancing enough to save lives in the medical field with cheap prosthetics and quicker, more efficient manufacturing of products all together.

Research with Ch.3 Templates

Joshua Hahn-Varona
2/10/15

Research with Ch.3 Templates

   Over the past decade, 3D printing equipment has started to become and available to those who wish to build their own printer to start 3D printing at home. As "What Is 3D Printing?" says: "Personal 3D printing or domestic 3D printing is mainly for hobbyists and enthusiast."

    Of course, over the last few years, not only has 3D printing become cheaper, more readily available and it has also become better in terms of speed and precision. In this year's CES2015 (a technology convention that showcases new and inovative technology) a new product was revealed that may eventually make at home 3D printing a norm. The XYZprinting: Nobel 1.0 is the newest at home 3D printing technology that the author of the article, Hong Ngo, says himself, "The maker of the Da Vinci today unveiled at CES 2015 its first SLA 3D printer, the Nobel 1.0. It's the first on the market to retail at $1,499, which is significantly less than any other 3D printer of its type." and "XYZPrinting says that the Nobel 1.0's strength is not only its speed but also the quality of the print, capable of delivering print resolution of up to 25 microns. From the demo prints I've seen, the quality was indeed a huge leap forward from those printed by the Da Vinci or any other 3D printers I've reviewed. It was hard to believe that they were 3D-printed objects." Though $1,499 isn't necessarily cheap, eventually, the price of this type of product in particular may drop.  Newer, smaller and cheaper models may also be avaiable in the near future for everyone to use, and benefit from.

Research with Ch.2 Templates

Joshua Hahn-Varona
2/10/2015

Research with Ch.2 Templates

   On one end of the spectrum of 3D printing, 3D printing will give people the option to 3D print weapons for free from files on the internet. Though I agree this is a huge concern in regards to safety, I want to focus on the positive aspects of at home 3D printing.

   As "What Is 3D Printing?" explains, 3D printing has many benefits for the consumer along with benefits on the industrial side of things, and how 3D printing will be in the future.