ABOUT THE EDITOR:
"Yes, I am asher." -asher
Hi. I'm Asher Candell. I play video games. I watch TV. I don't do much else, but that makes me perfect for the Entertainment 2 page on the Corner Canyon Chronicle. And unlike your favorite gaming news website like IGN or Polygon, I actually have good opinions.
So get ready to be informed, educated, and probably offended. |
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Concerts coming to Utah Concerts are the one place where I have truly had so much fun. Sometimes it's all we really need to relax and have a little break during our busy lives. I absolutely love going to concerts with my friends during the summer, or even with my family members. We can make the best memories by going to concerts once in a while.
Depending on your music taste, there will be so many options of concerts to choose from this year. Music can bring people together and enable us to have the best time possible. Just this December, I was able to go to the TV Girl concert at The Complex downtown. I went with a friend and it was one of the best memories I’ll ever have. Ava Nelson, a sophomore at Corner Canyon, describes her experience with a concert: “My favorite part was the lights matching the beat and the colors matching the album cover.” If you enjoy more folk and acoustic types of music, the Deer Valley Concert Series might be for you. Deseret News explains how artists similar to Gregory Alan Isakov, performing August 29, will be playing in Park City during July and August. At the Delta Center downtown, there are even more artists you may enjoy playing this spring and summer. Country music fans would enjoy Kane Brown, while pop-punk fans would enjoy Blink-182. Pop fans might enjoy Melanie Martinez, performing May 18, AJR, performing July 16-17, or popular artist Olivia Rodrigo, performing July 31. At the Maverik Center, located in West Valley City, there are also many more concerts coming up. Benson Boone will be performing on April 26, just this Friday! If you enjoy the violin, then Lindsey Stirling, a popular violinist, is performing July 15 this year. At the Rice-Eccles Stadium, Luke Combs will be playing June 7-8. While Walker Hayes will be playing at the Sandy Amphitheater August 14. You may know some of these artists, while some you may not. These upcoming concerts show the potential memories you can make with friends or family. Concerts are such a fun place to be, and as US News explains, they’re amazing at reducing stress and improving health. |
The "grand" return of megamind Released in 2010, the movie “Megamind” is the definition of a cult classic. Getting little box office success compared to films like Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind has nonetheless been widely acclaimed by it’s fan base for it’s witty humor, likeable characters, and strong message about what it means to be a hero.
Many people, myself included, really liked the original movie, and I was actually quite excited when I heard a sequel film coming out, “More of what I like? Hell yeah :D!!!”. But alas, as with all good things, like the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Queen of England, they must come to an end. I saw the trailer, it was bad, like, actually the worst piece of media i’ve seen in the last 5 years. It’s as if you took all of the CGI from CW’s “the Flash” and condensed all of it’s badness into a feature length film, in short, it’s hideous. The story line is also looking to be an easy-bake-oven style liar-revealed plotline, with the dastardly “DoOm SyNdIcAtE” being the antagonists, yes, it’s as bland a story as you can get. I'm sure we here at the CCHS Chronicle will eventually get around to a review of the movie and following TV show, but let me start by saying so far, I am remarkably disappointed in Megamind 2. |
Fromsoft games aren't hard, you're just bad FromSoftware is the videogame company behind the Dark Souls franchise and they are known for one thing.
Difficulty. There is a reason why the gaming industry for the last 13 years has (*annoyingly) referred to every difficult game as “the Dark Souls of _____” whether it be Cuphead & shoot em’ ups, Crash Bandicoot & platformers, or even a puzzle game like Baba is You! FromSofts game design focuses on well-tuned combat mechanics as well as an expansive array of enemy variety to always keep you on your toes. The numerous boss fights are long and require careful observation in order to predict and anticipate their attacks. This is a pattern found in all of their hit titles, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro (my favorite), and their most recent, 2023 Game of The Year winner Elden Ring. Many people criticize FromSoft’s difficulty, saying that it’s unfair or that the difficulty curves are too steep for most casual players to actually enjoy. CCHS Senior Adeliene Alger said when asked about her experience with Fromsoft games, “I tried it, utterly b*llshit difficulty, I just like Kirby”. It’s a fair argument, many players are adults with little free time for grinding out a Soulslike, many players have motor issues or disabilities that delay action/reaction time, it’s not unreasonable to want to experience the worlds of Fromsoft without having to deal with the brutal melee of the design? Soulslike games are bold, with thunderous dragons, powerful magic, and splendorous spectacle, but they are much less renowned for their more subtle design. Games like Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Elden Ring all have intentional quirks in their game design that make their games have a soft “easy mode” that isn’t found in the settings menu. They allow for varied difficulty not through a “easy, medium, hard” setting through a menu, but through the gameplay choices the player makes IN GAME. For example, most Soulslike games (Dark Souls 1,2,3, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.) let you bring in a friend to help the difficult bosses and challenges, or allow for cheese subversion tactics like “pinging the boss to death before entering the arena with a bow”, etc. They work to make the player feel more clever for conquering a challenge rather than resigned to an “easy” setting, more like “outmaneuvering a boss” or “conquering a challenge with friends”, a much more satisfying feeling. Now, of course I'm not going to say that these games won't challenge you, they will, but they aren’t an impassable wall of difficulty, only for the hardest of veterans. Sekiro allows for most bosses to be crit from utilizing stealth mechanics, halving the effective length of the fight, magic is designed to be highly damaging to enemies in games like Elden Ring. If you as a player think that FromSoft Games are stupid, or BS, or unfair. I strongly urge you to take a step back and look at the full range of mechanics and options given to you, then win. |
Party video games you've never heard of By Asher Candell
Entertainment 2 Editor Party video games are some of the best ways to have fun with your friends. It’s basically an automated game that is already set up for you that you can walk away from at any point. Everyone’s tried them, whether it be Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, Call of Duty, Halo, Wii Sports and more. But those incredible games aren’t the only ones that you can have fun with at parties. In fact, you might find yourself having more fun with these other games. Boomerang Fu, created by Cranky Watermelon, is a real-time fighting game that was released in 2020. In this game, you and your friends will choose to play as one of a variety of live food items. “My favorite is coffee,” Says Martin Soucy, who recently bought the game. “But Hot Sauce is the goat.” You will then enter an arena where everyone is equipped with a boomerang with one goal: Survive. The person with the most kills or who survives the longest wins the game, and the different maps and power-ups add enough variety to keep you entertained for hours. The game has a high skill ceiling, but can be enjoyed by casual gamers as well. Gang Beasts is weird. It also came out in 2020, published by Boneloaf. In this game, you and your friends will be launched into different arenas where the goal is to punch, kick and headbutt your opponents to knock them out, allowing you to pick them up and toss them off the edge of the map. The vibes and aesthetic of this game is very strange, and the controls can be extremely janky, but that only adds to the fun. “But the best part of the game is all the maps,” Says Lucy Jensen, who has played this game with me on multiple occasions. Whether it takes place on a boat in the middle of shark-infested waters, on top of a flying blimp, or within a burning building, Gang Beasts is sure to be a weird but exciting ride for parties. Ultimate Chicken Horse released in 2017 from Clever Endeavor Studios. In this game, you will play as a selection of farm animals with the goal of reaching the end of a 2D map before the other players. The problem is, the end points of the stages are at the end of a bottomless pit, so players will have to build their way across the map using deadly obstacles the game provides at random, which range from black holes that suck you towards them, fans that blow you around, or spikes and fire that kill you instantly. This game is pure insanity, and can get incredibly tricky to complete if you’re not careful. It’s prone to a lot of trolling, since players can pick where they want to place their obstacles. A Reddit user called it “the best indie game I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.” And those are just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless indie party games to have fun with out there, and since most of them aren’t tied to any big gaming companies, you can buy them on pretty much any platform, including Playstation, Nintendo Switch, PC or XBOX. If you find yourself wishing for more games to play whenever you’re hosting a hangout, be sure to boot up these excellent games. Published 12/3/24 |
What party games to people play?Party games are extremely popular forms of entertainment for all sorts of people, but recently I've been curious: What games to people actually play at parties?
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