Develop!

     Alright, so it's vary rare that I am to do a post that's this personal, but I thought you would all be interested (I'm probably wrong). As many of you know, or at least should know by now, I am an avid gamer. I love video games, they're such an amazing medium with literally endless possibilities. People have been saying stuff like "one day, movies in the theater will be interactive" for years, but I think it's already here, and it has been for a while. Video games allow someone to enter a story and interact in their own way while still getting the story! That's awesome!

     So other than that, why am I telling you this? Well, here's why. When it comes to thinking about careers, I've always been a little bit... meh. I only had a general idea of what I wanted to do. I enjoy creating things like stories, art, music, all that stuff. But it hit me one day, that I could literally make a career out of making one of the things I love the most: video games!

     So currently, that's where I'd like to go, into the gaming industry. Be it design, coding, whatever! That's where I'd like to be. But this isn't some sappy "look at my life" journal entry here, this is actually a project. I'd like to develop a game sometime very soon. Something very simple, but still very cool. 

     So I have entered the stages of game design. I do not know how long it will take me, I just know that it will take me a while (what am I even saying). Now, I don't know much about game design, but I can tell you this: I'm pretty sure the first stage is conceptualization. And, as an added bonus, I already know what I'm going to make. It's a little something called Twixt.

      No, not the Francis Ford Coppola horror flick that came out last year, the board game! ...still not ringing any bells? Alright, I'll explain. My family has been in possession of Twixt since before I was born. It's an old board game with a simply goal: build a wall to the other side of the board before your opponent. Sounds easy, right? Well, Twixt is actually incredibly deep, and the strategy that goes into it is really amazing, once you see it. Let me show you what it's like.

     That is the Twixt board, a large grid of dots, kinda like that game where you try to make as many squares as possible (I don't know if it has a name). Each player has pegs and bridges that they place down on the board when it's their turn. You start anywhere on the board. On your turn, you place down a peg, if you can connect it to another peg, then you place a bridge down between them. The first one to link their colored line to the other via bridge wins. Now, take a look at what gameplay is like.

     As you can see, you can't connect pegs just up/down and left/right. The bridges are too long. You have to go diagonally to connect the bridges, so it isn't a straight shot game. It's really really deep and really fun.

     I don't know how long it will take me to develop this, and I don't know what my level of success will be, but I do promise you that I will do it. So I guess ChuckBlog is currently doubling as a dev blog for Twixt. Or, I guess it'll need a new name... I dunno, Twixt2? Trixt? Charles's Twixt.

     I dunno.

Poetry on Poet Trees (what?)

     Now, avid readers of Chuck Blog will probably be scratching their heads and thinking, "Poetry? What is happening? What is becoming of this world? Why must the good die young?!" These are all good questions: and I can probably answer the first one. Myself, being an aspiring young writer/computer engineer love to, well, write. That's why I keep up with this blog, it's a great place for me to write. Well, High School has started, and along with it comes mountains and mountains of homework. Keeping in mind my love of writing, insert into your mind that one of my favorite things to write is poetry. I think poetry is awesome, and writing it not only enhances one's ability and tests the mind, I also find it really really fun. So, without further ado, I present to you Homework, by Charles Painter.

"A long day of work, and more after that.
I’m dirty and groggy, my hair in a mat.
I return to my home, prepare to retire,
But my teachers, it seems, already conspired,
To take up my time, my rest now to shirk.
My afternoon now, taken up by homework!

First comes the English, long papers I dread.
Writing them, researching, I’d rather be dead.
The worksheets go on for infinity and more.
But really it’s grammar I truly deplore.

Latin then strikes, ruthless and craving.
Tedious work, the amount is dismaying.
Learning new words and writing them too,
Translating, contemplating, it is all, eww.

But all of this pales in compare to the king.
The destructor of all, the crusher of dreams.
It towers above, it’s evil is sickening.
Waves of malignancy, constantly emitting.

Math stands too tall, the cream of the crop.
On all my spare time, it threatens to stomp.
Problems and problems and problems galore,
The more I’m assigned, the more I abhor.

But, to tell the truth, it isn’t that bad.
Homework actually, doesn’t make me that mad.
Or the amounts, the problems for later,
Nor translating, grammar, or researching papers.
I suppose, being young, it always seems cruel,
And although, believe me, twill’ never be cool.
It doesn’t take long to get it all done.
Even if it’s not exactly quite 'fun'."

 This work is copyrighted material, any use without proper accreditation will be dealt with to the full extent of the law.

And there you have it, my poem on homework. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't; well, that's okay too. You don't have to, but taking the time to read it and perhaps leaving a brief critique in the comments would be appreciated. So there you have it!

Game Review! SLENDER

     Some games are just plain hard to review. It's hard to hold up these games to a scale, and measure them, because they were not meant to fit a scale, but to be their own thing. There are lots of games like that. You could call Minecraft a game like that. No goal, just what you make it.

     Keeping that in mind, let's jump to a brief tangent. Most of the internet-savvy out there are familiar with the memes of the internet. Viral jokes that are passed all around, they show the interests of a culture spawned on a new frontier. So we all know what I'm going to talk about now. The Slenderman is a mythological creature created for a photoshop contest. He appears as a tall man wearing a suit with incredibly long limbs and no face. According to the legends, the Slenderman picks a victim and stalks him/her until he kills them or they kill themselves. He quickly gained web-wide fame and became the subject of many a creepypasta (short horror stories circulated around the internet). That was about four years ago, and the Slenderman is still going strong. So strong, in fact, that developer Parsec Games made a game about him. Enter: SLENDER.

     From the outside, SLENDER looks like the most basic game. In fact, there doesn't appear to be anything special at all. Don't let that discourage you. Slender is the scariest video game I've ever played, and some would say in existence. What makes the game so scary? Let's dive right in.

     When you boot up Slender, you find yourself in the middle of the woods with nothing but a flashlight. The game then tells you to collect 8 pages. Simple enough, right? What a first time player doesn't know (unless he's researched the game) is that the Slenderman is chasing you. From the moment you collect your first page, the Slenderman is hot on your trail. Stop for too long and he'll catch you. In fact, even time you turn around, he's there. You may not be able to see him at first, but after 2 or 3 pages, you know he's there. If you turn around, you might see him. DO NOT LOOK AT THE SLENDERMAN. This will result in game over. It's best for you to just sprint away. Part of what's scary is, you never see him move. If you turn around and he's there, he'll just stand there. He won't give chase until you can't see him. Another thing that ratchets up the horror is the sound of this game. Unlike games such as Resident Evil or Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where you can hear monsters crawling around in air vents or right behind the wall, the Slenderman makes no noise at all. You don't hear him chasing you, or breathing, you hear nothing but yourself; and what the game throws in there. Each time you get a page something is added to the background. Your heartbeat, a dissonant chord, static, Giygas style music, it's all there, tormenting you. Each tree limb, stick, far off object becomes the Slenderman to you, and it's all your imagination.

     To tell the truth I absolutely despise horror. I hate scary movies, scary books, and for the most part scary games, and I've played a host of scary games but this one takes the cake. The sheer amount of disturbia caused by this game is too much for most people to handle, and I doubt I'll get too much sleep tonight. All that said, SLENDER is... well, great. If I were to rate this game using a measuring stick entitled "How scary you are" then it would get a perfect 10, maybe a 10.1. However, like a mentioned earlier, it's hard to seriously review a game like this so I have to seriously say:

     I have no idea what to rate this game.

     It accomplishes what it wants to perfectly, but looking at it from a game point of view, it seems... I just don't know. I'm not even sure if this is a game, it's more of an experience. So, like my good friends at Toonami did, I give SLENDER a

??? out of 10

     SLENDER is free, and available for Mac and PC. One last word of advice: DO NOT PLAY ALONE. Just... don't do it, man.

A Quick Video Skit

     Well I'm back from Alaska (and you never even noticed)! And, I've resumed my vacation part of my vacation. However, there is a slight hitch: summer reading. Usually, I enjoy reading, and I got to read a really cool book called Ender's Game too this summer, but with every good book comes a really bad book. Enter: A Brief History of Medicine. This book is the most boring novel I have ever read. This makes my Science Textbook sound like The Hunger Games! Anyway, I decided to make a tiny little skit about it, so please enjoy. Please.



So there you have it! So, if you enjoy my videos, liking, commenting, and subscribing would be really cool (wow, I sound like a stereotypical you tuber now), and I'll see you next post!

100th POST SPECTACULAR EXTRAVAGANZA!

     Well, here we go, 100 posts on ChuckBlog.  This blog has transformed from a tiny little experiment to a full out blog that people may actually read and gets about 100 hits per day. Again, I'd like to say thank you to all the readers who check up on this blog from time to time, ready my reviews and rants, and such. You guys are my favorites. So, what would a 100th post spectacular be without a flashback? Are you ready? Because  here comes:

CHUCKBLOG RETROSPECTIVE
     January 8th, 2010. I, a younger Charles, am sitting at home with some family members trying to pick out a movie to watch. Our library is semi-extensive but doesn't offer anything that's not a chick flick or action movie (you can tell a lot about my household from that statement). Since most of my relatives are female, Julie and Julia is picked from our selection, and sets in motion a sequence of events that would shape ChuckBlog.

     I hardly remember the plot of the movie, but what I can recall is that one of the protagonists (I suppose Julie) starts a blog about cooking. On this blog she posts cooking recipes and such, and eventually becomes an internet superstar with people all over the world salivating over her photos of recipes (more or less). After the movie was finished my family suddenly has an idea: "We could start a blog too!"

     Suddenly everyone's for the idea of starting a blog, including me, so they all hop on over to the internet and look up Blogger, knowing some friends who use it. Sure enough, they start a blog. "Jenny's Girls: To Eat and Look Like Nana." It's a weight-loss journal blog where they discuss eating healthy, jogging, gyms, and... oh it makes me bored just thinking about it. Now, Jenny's Girls is no place for a boy like me, no no no, and the blog fever has slapped me in the face as well, so I ask my mom "Hey, maybe I could do this whole blog thing too?" Her immediate answer is "no." It takes some time, but I eventually work my magic and convince her to let me set up a blog on her account, under the condition that she pre-reads everything I post. Trying to find a name for my blog is hard, considering most of them are taken. Charles's Blog: TAKEN. Blog of Charles: TAKEN. ChuckBlog: TAKEN (just wait). Finally, I decide to name the site ChuckBlog and instead of using "chuckblog.blogspot.com" I create my own url: "chucktalksonline.blogspot.com." It's a little obscure and long, but maybe it'll work.

     My first post is entitled "Welcome!" and to this day is one of my greatest shames. Looking back on my posts and how poorly written and crude they are, I feel a bit embarrassed, but to preserve the history of the site, they shall be there forever. The post is very sarcastic, try-hard funny, and stupid. I'm pretty sure when you say "Ahh, whaling rivalries, sweet, restraining order inducing whaling rivalries" you're on the wrong track. After that post, I abandoned ChuckBlog, or more accurately forgot about it. The blog fever was cured instantly by other mediums of entertainment, and ChuckBlog was lost. It would be four months till the next post. The next post was basically me just testing out colors and embedding videos. It was a better post than the last one, but still not great.

     Eventually, more and more posts continued to pop up, and by the end of the year, I had 21 posts under my belt. Not bad, for a little blog that had only about 150 views. Within this time frame of my first year, I had a 20th Post Spectacular, that had a recap of all my posts up to that point. I felt so proud then, I could never imagine getting 10,000 hits or having 100 posts then, it was out of the question crazy.

     It was then that year 2 of ChuckBlog started, and that's when things really got on a roll. In all, there were 65 posts that year, many of them reviews of games, Zelda news (for the 25th anniversary), and my personal thoughts and quibbles. By now, a few people were following ChuckBlog, about 4 if I remember correctly. I just kept posting and posting. I started a YouTube Channel, posted some more, went to eighth grade, posted some more, my blog was the coolest thing I'd ever done on the internet.

     And that leads me up to right now, 99 posts later from "Welcome!" I hope you enjoyed that history lesson, now it's time for the real fun.

THE TOP 10 POSTS OF ALL TIME (currently)
If you ever kept tabs on the "Sellin' Like Hotcakes" tab to the left of the blog, you'd see my top 5 posts of all time. Well, it's time now for me to show you the five runner ups as well, so let's take a big look at my top 10 viewed posts!

10. The Return of Toonami?
When I wrote this post, I was as excited as a little schoolgirl. Toonami, my favorite TV block from my childhood was gaining support, and the internet was on fire about it. I wrote this post to qualm any rumors and give the straight facts, and it would be followed by the "Update: Toonami Returns" post. I can see why this one has so many views.

9. End of an Era (R.I.P. BIONICLE)
BIONICLE was a pillar of my childhood, something I was into more than almost anything else. BIONICLE was constant through my childhood, through the good and bad, it was always there. Not only were the toys versatile, but the story was epic, layered in it's own deep lore and mythology. When BIONICLE was cancelled, I wrote this post to express my sadness. It wasn't always at this spot, it's accumulated views over a long time.

8. Lego Minecraft
Well, when you post about something popular, it'll probably get it's fair share of views. I thought Lego Minecraft was pretty cool when I first saw it, and a blog post would be appropriate since it fit the blog so well. Not too much to this post, just a little bit of gaming news.

7. Well, There Goes my Flatscreen. (Top 10 Wii!)
Looking back on the Wii, I had more fun with that thing than almost any other console (except the PS2, that thing is sacred). I wrote down my top 10 Wii games here, and looking back, I would change a few things, maybe omit and add some, but it's a pretty solid list, and I can understand how it got a good bit of views. For a while, it was number 3 on my top 10, but sank down to seven after some more posts rose to power.

6. Welcome Back! (Sorry!)
There are some times in life where you just go "why?" You ask, "How on earth is this the case?" and you never get an answer. This post was meant to be an apology for me not posting in a while, and a way to kick off the blog again. In fact, half of what that post says isn't even applicable any more! There are no more random pictures, and no more CYBER 3 FORUMS, and yet somehow it ranks #6 on my top ten viewed posts of all time. I don't even know why. I don't even know why.

5. 20th Post Spectacular!
I mentioned my 20th post spectacular over in the retrospective, and although it's a cool post, I don't see how it's part of the top 5. You'd think people would read the stuff that isn't just about this blog, but I guess not. Either way, it's in my top 5 currently, and will probably stay for a while.

4. Movie Review! (Shrek 4)
When a movie's released two years ago, and it's still number 4 on your top 10 most viewed posts, something's going on. I guess a whole bunch of people are still watching Shrek 4, but I have no idea why, or why they need a review for it. This was only my... fourth post, I believe, and ironically enough, it's number 4 on here. The review is actually okay, for my first one. It's certainly better that my Sorcerer's Apprentice review, which was written on a DSi.

3. Raw, Unfiltered Anticipation
ChuckBlog did a lot to celebrate the release of Skyward Sword. This post was written a few days before the game came out in order to release some tension and impatience. I was SO excited about this game it's not even funny, and it lived up to everything I expected it too. This post is kind of funny for me to read, seeing as how all of that anticipation has dissipated into nothingness.

2. Hero Factory 4.0?
Leave it to HERO FACTORY, the bane of my existence, to get me a ton of views (it doesn't any more, considering the sets have come out). Here's the thing, whenever you can scoop up some dirt on unreleased LEGO products, people will search for it. I remember searching for next year's BIONICLE sets on Google all the time, and often being amazed at what I found. During Hero Factory 3.0, people would search for 4.0, and so they found this page. That's why it has so many views.

1. Favorite Disney Characters
"Well, I guess I have to have at least one cheesy post per year..." ~Charles  Painter
How on earth did this post gain 1st place on here? No idea. My stats tell me it comes from people searching for "Chernabog" (who's on the list), and the thing has already gotten 222 views this month alone. Honestly, this post wasn't supposed to be much, but I'm glad that Jose and Chernabog got their moments in the spotlight.

Now come the time to dig a little deeper and show you some posts you never even saw! That's right, THE UNPOSTED POSTS!!!

THE POSTS THAT NEVER SAW THE LIGHT OF DAY
Posts that were never published include titles such as A Red Marker, Calvin and Hobbes, Pandora, BOA (Bands of America), 240? What Happened to One?, How Bored You Be, Radio Show, Moral of the Story, Game Review: Star Fox 64 3D, Official Zelda Timeline, Bit.Trip (ChuckBlog Platinum Award), and (Untitled Post). And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for, you get to read what's completed of my Star Fox 64 3D review!

"I usually don't wait this long to post a review on a video game, but I've been busy. And also, I'm home sick right now and I have nothing else to do. So, ON TO THE REVIEW! It's been a while since I've reviewed a video game, and that's because my purchasing of video gmaes has gone down because my supply of money has also gone down. But, I kept a piggy bank just for Star Fox 64 3D (and I have one for Skyward Sword too) and accumulated enough to get it. So let's take a look. A book look! The 3DS has been remaking some major games recently, the most noticible being Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, and Super Street Fighter IV. Star Fox is one of the best entries in this category, not only because of the new graphic design, but of the overall work and pollish put into it. Let's take a look at what makes it so great.

1. REVAMPED AND 3D GRAPHICS

Like any and all 3DS games, it includes the amazing 3D graphics which make it look awesome. Star Fox 64 fits perfectly with this 3D and looks beautiful when played. That's also because of the entirely redone graphics. All of the characters, enemies, and especially the stages (especially especially the water on any given stage) look phenominal, and I would enjoy watching this game be played.

2. CONTROLS

Now, as we all know, the 3DS's cirle pad and the 64's analog stick are simiar, but they function in different ways. Realizing this, Nintendo released two "versions" of Star Fox 64 3D on the cartridge. One is the classic 64 version which presents "the original challenge of Star Fox 64" (meaning it was designed for analog). The other is the 3DS version, which was made for the circle pad, AND motion controls."

So there you go, my unposted posts. Now it's time for another very special occasion, honoring the members of ChuckBlog!

CHUCKBLOG MEMBERS
From humble beginnings, ChuckBlog has had a few members. Now, I proudly have 10 members online, allow me to honor each one of them.

TMcSpanks12
Price
Jedi Black Guy and also Double O Stefan
timothyrussom
Greyson Hammock
Biljana Karapetroska
simon goffin
Donovan Wesner
Drew Pinckard
and ginger, who was there from the start

I send a very special thank you to all you guys for following me this far. I decided you needed a little recognition.

IN CLOSING
So that's all I have for my 100th post spectacular. I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night and say "Dang! Forgot to put this!" but who cares? Thanks for 100 great posts, and stay tuned.