Review: steamommunity.com

 Since 2012, I’ve participated in the Steam community with over 4 million people who are involved, with about 1 million gamers playing at any given time. From the early to 2000s, Steam has provided thousands of free games and over 10,000 for-pay games that range from $1 to $50. Steam has a system that allows you to preview demo games for free so you can decide if you want to buy the game after you’ve tried it.

Steam has a variety of ways to connect with other gamers within the online community. Steam has a community market where anyone can sell items to other gamers. The market includes a way to search items that you want, ranging from in-game weapons to in-game hats. For any game you like, Steam has gear you can buy it in the market.

There are other aspects to the Steam community. Trading is another way to engage inside the community. By sending a trade request to someone, you can exchange online possessions to gain weapons and accessories. Offering deals is a fun way to interact within the community. There are forums for every game to discuss strategies or to learn more about the game.

While some people like to discuss strategy and games on the forum, I’d rather play. Anytime you want to play with your friends on steam, you can just message them and ask. I usually make new friends while playing with my old friends.

So, if you enjoy gaming, being in an online community with others, buying and trading items, and trying out new games, than Steam is the place for you!

Book Review: the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley, is set in 1950 during a British summer. Flavia de Luce eavesdrops on her father quarreling with a friend, and she wakes up to find this friend lifeless among her garden cucumbers. Extremely smart and interested in chemistry, she tries to solve the mystery and almost gets victimized by the elusive murderer.

Review: Spring Allergy Season 2014

The buds were starting to bloom and the grass was starting to green, and I knew it was that time of year again. First it started with a stuffy, clogged nose. Next my eyes start itching as if mosquitoes had bitten me all around my eyes. The headache comes next — from not-that-bad to increasingly worse. Next my skin starts drying out. Ultimately, I spend allergy season feeling exhausted.

Spring 2014 allergies have been pretty bad. I learned that this season was tough because the extremely cold winter delayed the trees from blossoming. When the trees finally did bloom, this overlapped with the grasses and flowers blooming. Scientists call this the pollen vortex.

The cold winter was preceded by a general warming trend, known as climate change. Warmer temperatures and increases in carbon dioxide combined with an increase in precipitation make for worse spring allergies. I’m one of 7 million children and my parents are part of the 18 million adults in the US who suffer from allergies. Given the nature of climate change, we’ll just have to get used to it.

When spring comes, everything in me wants to rush outside and play hoops. Unfortunately, pollens act like millions of defenders stuffing my shots right in my face.

Online Game Review: CSGO Lounge Online Betting & Trading

If you’re serious about CSGO, you might want to explore the CSGO Lounge. There you’ll meet other people with the same interests as you. The main object if the Lounge is to trade the decorative coverings for weapons which are called skins. Having weapon skins gives you a kind of status when you’re playing the game. While the skins don’t help in how you play the game, they can help motivate you because you won’t want to lose a weapon for which you’ve bought a skin. Even though you keep the weapon skin, that weapon remains in the game even if you die in the game. Holding onto your skins helps you stay extra motivated. The skin gives you a kind of status symbol in the game.

On the CSGO Lounge you can also bet. You can bet for skins, keys to open crates to get more skins, and on teams that are playing. Skins have different values in a range of styles and colors. Blue are the most common and gold is the most rare. What makes the betting extra fun is that you cannot predict who will win.

For CSGO players, it’s fun to have a betting and trading center to interact with other players.

Counter Strike Global Offensive (CSGO): How to Improve your Game

Counter Strike Global Offensive (CSGO) is a first person shooter multiplayer strategic game, which you can play in different modes. The most common mode to play is multiplayer through Wi-Fi access. However you can play offline without Wi-Fi in which you play against a bot. This article will help you improve your playing in multiplayer mode.

The objective of the game is to keep the terrorists from planting the bomb or to disable the bomb if you manage to fail the terrorists from plantr side of the equation you have to plant the bomb and prevent the counter-terrorists from defusing the bomb.

Improving your aim…

The best way to improve your aim in this game is to practice with bots, playing Death Match, Watching YouTube videos on how to help your aim and strategy, and another thing that is helpful is to download aiming maps that have targets.

Practicing your aiming skills playing against bots can help you because you can set the bots difficulty level to different settings so if your are just starting you can play with easier “fake” opponents.

Another way to practice your aiming skills is to watch YouTube videos on how to improve your gaming skills. Many of the videos will direct you to Death Match, which is playing against other people with unlimited ammo and lives. The videos will also give you tips and tricks to help your gaming skills. You can take those skills and practice them on Death Match.

Aiming maps are another alternative to Death Match and bots to help your game because the maps are designed to test your limits and to see how good you are at aiming.

Improving your strategy comes with time and experience. Even if you watch all the You Tube videos, you’ll still have to practice the techniques to improve your level of play.

I started off playing with bots. Then I started to watch You Tube videos on everything related to CSGO. After that, I played Death Match to improve my aiming skills. I’ve also put in a lot of time practicing by playing the game. I’ve worked at my CSGO skills for some 300 hours to date.

 

Review: Twitch.tv

Twitch.tv is a video streaming platform for gamers. It’s like a gaming Netflix without the fees.

I’ve participated on Twitch.tv for the past two years, and I’m one of 45 million monthly viewers now. Twitch started as a beta in 2011 and has the fourth largest amount of viewers on the Internet just behind Netflix, Google, and Apple.

People go to Twitch for a variety of reasons. Some go on Twitch to watch people broadcasting their own live gameplay. Most people watch for entertainment and to connect with a community of gamers.

The  most minimum level of participation on Twitch is watching the streamer play or commentate a game he is playing or spectating. The next level up is chatting with the streamer (person broadcasting) or people in the streamer’s stream. One of the main points of this site is to be social with people who also enjoy the same games as you. You can also learn gaming skills by talking with others or even just watching the stream.

Twitch is a user generated content site. Twitch provides the platform, but individuals create their own accounts, attract their own followers, and market their broadcasts on social media. Broadcasters earn money once they get a sizeable following.

Twitch does put ads on the site, but the broadcasters get to chose when commercials air. In addition, Twitch allows individual streamers to collect subscription money and donations from viewers through Paypal.

Each broadcaster attracts his/her own viewers as Twitch uses a crowdsourcing model.  With millions of viewers donating even 1 dollar each, their donations can accumulate to a lot of money. Twitch also awards subscribers (subs) with emoticons that give them a certain status as well as a symbol next to their name showing that they are a subscriber of that broadcaster.

Twitch is a great way to access a social network that many gamers have never experienced before with an open policy to everyone.

Game Review: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Are you tired of games like Call Of Duty where there is no strategy and all you do is run and shoot? You should consider buying Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS-GO). This game is not only fun, but it is a First Person Shooter (FPS) game where each player has to make a decision to defend or attack a bomb site. The game objective for CS-GO depends on what team you are on. The two teams you can chose in CS-GO are terrorists and counter-terrorists. If you are on the terrorist team, your objective is to plant the bomb that is given to you at the start of the game and decide what bomb site you should go to. Another choice for the terrorists is to kill all members of the counter-terrorist team before the time runs out. If you are a counter-terrorist, your main goal is to prevent the terrorist team from planting the bomb. If they plant the bomb, your new mission is to defuse the bomb without dying while protecting your teammates if they are defusing the bomb.

There are three levels of play. The first one I advise for beginners is casual. Casual is a gamemode where you play for fun and practice, not like the next two levels which are more serious. The second level is competitive, which is for more serious players looking for a rank and committed to putting in a lot of time. The third and final level of gameplay offers some options like ESEA, Starseries, and Faceit. There are a few other ones, but these are the mostly played by professionals. The third level is more intense because people play for money. In a game there are 30 rounds, but you need to win 16 rounds to win. Each round takes about 2-5 minutes.

Once you are in the second level, the more wins you get without being defeated, the higher rank you get. The rank system has 18 different ranks, starting from Silver One, the lowest rank, to Global Elite, the highest rank.

I have been playing CS-GO for approximately 250 hours, which has taken me about 5 months. I co-founded a ten man team, and my name is Tea With Milk And Honey; the name of our team is OverPowered Tea ( OP_T ). Our team is divided into 2 teams: A team and B team. We play by practicing with each other on one of my friend’s servers.

This is a very team oriented game. Not only do you need to practice strategies to win, but you also share your (in-game) money. Remember, your money is not your money; it is your TEAM’S money. Your team needs to spend your money efficiently to buy weapons in order to take out the enemy team, and the more rounds you win the more money you get.

The harder it is to kill someone with a weapon, the more money you earn for a kill. The most money granted is getting a kill with a knife because it’s much harder to get a kill with a knife than with a more sophisticated gun.

 

Review : ‘We’re Alive’ Radio Drama Podcast

If you’re someone who likes zombie apocalypse or dystopian books, and you want to listen to an exciting story through a podcast, you should check out We’re Alive. A new episode comes out every week, unless the program announces otherwise. Each episode is 20-30 minutes long. So far there are 42 chapters, and each chapter has three episodes. I started out at chapter 1, and I caught up in a month. You can take your time if you start from the beginning. You should start from the beginning or the story won’t make any sense at all.

We’re Alive is set in Los Angeles in a near-dystopia when the zombie apocalypse starts. At the beginning of the podcast, the main character is Michael Cross, but later on in the story there are multiple perspectives offered by a variety of characters. These characters find each other at the first safe haven, the Tower.

Michael is an Army Reserve soldier, who had just gotten back from a combat mission in Afghanistan and was attending college when the zombies struck. To survive, people band together and created safe havens to outlast and outsmart the zombies in the zombie apocalypse.

The podcast has really nice flow. I’m thinking of downloading the whole series again, to save it so I can listen to this again in the future — but hopefully not during a zombie outbreak. The podcast has high quality actors and sound effects, which rival movies and TV shows.

Review Superlux HD-681 EVO Headset for New Gamers

 

I’ve got my eyes on this new headset for Christmas. For about $40 you can make your gaming experience better. I’m hoping to get a new headset for Christmas because I’m in a headset crisis for online gaming, especially for my new favorite game “Counter Strike Global Offensive” (Cs Go). This article will convince you to get your favorite gamer a new headset for Christmas, and this Superlux version is also affordable.

The Superlux HD-681 EVO headset is a great Christmas present for gamers and listeners alike. This is a quality gift because this headset is highly rated on Amazon and other review websites. People praise that the Superlux HD-681 EVO headset has very clear and natural sound. One Amazon reviewer also said that  “it’s insanely comfortable” because it has soft velour earpads and it is adjustable.

I’ve experienced both Logitech and Sony Dynamic Stereo headphones, but both of these broke very easily. At this point, the Sony only works in my left ear, and I can’t hear anything in a game because the voices are centered on one ear and the sound is not balanced out. I can’t tell if someone is coming from the left or right, and this makes it hard to play effectively. The Logitech’s mic is messed up, which means I can’t communicate to other players. Instead, I have to rely on my internal computer mic, which has horrible audio and picks up every sound.

Broken headsets is a big problem for gamers, and finding the best headset is a challenge. The audio or mic seem to break easily. Finding durable headset can be expensive, but the Superlux seems like a good deal.

It’s hard to find good headphones that don’t hurt your wallet while pleasing your ears.

Movie Review (spoiler alert): The Lone Ranger

The movie starts on the incomplete Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, in a train heading toward the closest train station. Meet Butch Cavendish, imprisoned in a jail cart at the back of the train with Tonto. Cavendish is a famous Indian killer, but the Americans had made a treaty with the Comanche, and Cavendish is charged with violating the treaty.

The Lone Ranger is a passenger in the train cart closest to the jail, on his way to visit his brother, who is sheriff of the town and a Ranger. The Lone Ranger, whose name is John Reid, first encounters some religious people on the train. They ask him to sing a hymn, and he holds up a book and says, “I have my own religion.” It is a book of law and government. The law is Reid’s religion, but over the course of the movie he loses faith in the law when he sees that people in authority over the laws are corrupt. Later, he becomes an outlaw to protest government corruption and try and right the wrongs the mayor has created.

The problems start when the Lone Ranger arrives in the town. The prisoner, Butch Cavendish, instead of facing court, runs away. The Lone Ranger sets out to capture Cavendish. Tonto joins with Reid to capture Cavendish. The adventures Tonto and Reid go on to catch Cavendish are thrilling. For example, John and Tonto get captured, at one point, by the Comanche. Because Tonto had been exiled from the Comanche and because Reid was a white man, the Comanche captured the men and buried them in the sand, with just their heads sticking out. They expected Reid and Tonto to die, but the “spirit horse” pulls up Reid, and then Reid pulls up Tonto.

Throughout the movie, the railroad is still being built. When the railroad reaches the silver mine, Reid gets captured after he’s caught holding the mayor at gunpoint. Only Reid and Tonto know that the mayor is corrupt . He let Cavendish go because Butch is his brother, and they both are greedy. They want to make money from the silver mine.

At one point, all the Comanche attack, and the U.S. Calvary arrive with artillery on the train. There is a massive fight, and all the Comanche are dead or hiding. The Lone Ranger and Tonto get away, after fighting against the corrupt mayor and the calvary helping him. Reid and Tonto also rob a bank and find explosives. They decide to blow up a bridge, so the mayor would have to rebuild and so the brothers could not transport their silver.

The best part of the movie was at the end. The mayor is getting congratulated for finishing the railroad, Tonto gets into the train with all the silver from the silver mine (3 carts full). He takes the silver, so he can destroy it. A long shoot-out scene follows, between two trains. At the end, the mayor jumps onto the silver cart and pushes Tonto off. The mayor winds up falling into the river and dying because the bridge is blown up.

I liked how thrilling and suspenseful the movie was, but I also liked the message. Anyone can make the greater choice of right or wrong.