Push-start Downhill

Posted on by shriekinmerc

What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?

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When I was 16-17, I often hung out at my friend’s house after school or practice. The house belonged to the parents of two brothers in the friend group, and they were pretty chill about having their sons’ group of up to eight friends crashing there at all hours of the day and night. I say “pretty” because the stepdad would get pretty pissed when we woke him up late at night with whatever shenanigans we were up to downstairs. The worst was when we didn’t know they were home, which happened once and led to an explosive confrontation. While I was scared there, that moment was topped in the following weeks.

Trying to leave the house quietly around 11 P.M., I realized I was parked right next to the parents’ bedroom. The car I was driving, a Suzuki Samurai, was extremely loud and would be sure to wake the stepdad up. Sleepy myself, I thought up the brilliant idea to roll the 4×4 down the hill, thinking I could jump into the driver’s seat and start it at the bottom of the driveway. 

The driveway was a steep 20-45 degree drop in some parts, stretching out just over 100 yards or so. I rolled the Samurai out of the rocks, onto the paved driveway, and nudged it over the edge of the hill.

It immediately veered towards the house, right under the parents’ bedroom window. 

I sprinted with all my might, in three bounds, and launched into the driver’s seat of the Samurai. I was extremely thankful my dad took them off in the summer in that moment. I jerked the Samurai’s wheel to the right, popped the clutch to start the car, and rolled out in a flash, the car not roaring until I hit the asphalt below. 

The next few months I visited, I walked a little more lightly. And parked a little further away from their bedroom. 

Why aren’t more people problem solvers?

Posted on by shriekinmerc

What’s the most underrated life skill?

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  As I get older, more and more people seem unaware of how to use critical thinking to solve problems in their lives. I don’t mean to denigrate people, and obviously the people I work with are in school and still learning how to problem-solve. However, based on my time in customer service and hospitality, it is ridiculous to be an adult with all the technology and information in the world and still act helpless. 

  This statement has obvious problematic implications, so let me add some caveats: of course, it is okay to ask for help, especially if you need it. My issue comes from people who cannot problem-solve, but then get mad and abusive towards the people who are trying to help them. I see it at the store: some people treat retail workers like dirt for the crime of not using their brains to do basic thinking that would save all of us trouble. 

  I worked at a hotel, and a long-term guest clogged her toilet. The hotel was a  I was 19 or 20 at the time, so I rushed over after she called the front desk asking for a plunger. I had her the plunger, and she told me she didn’t know how to use it. Now, I was a front desk attendant, not maintenance, but I didn’t mind doing stuff outside of my work duties since I was young and dumb. But what did she mean, she didn’t know how to use a plunger? Had she never clogged a toilet before? I did what she asked, but it never made sense to me.

Quick Exercises

Posted on by shriekinmerc

What are five simple exercises to do at home?

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Five simple exercises – 

Push-ups – the unsung hero; work your arms, chest, and core through grounded push-ups. 

Squats – get low, get low – work your legs and can engage the core with proper form

Burpees – similar to the push-up, but with the added stress of getting up and jumping before going back down for another. I like to orient myself and bring my knees to my chest before going down for another.

Toe touches – good for the back; keep your legs straight while stretching your hamstrings. 

Marches – I like to stand in place and bring my knees up as high as I can, while maintaining my balance on my other leg. 

Ark: Survival Evolved – PVE Impressions

Posted on by shriekinmerc

ark1

Much like Halo: Combat Evolved reinvented the first-person shooter, Studio Wildcard looks to reinvent the survival simulator with ARK: Survival Evolved. Although it’s been out for a while on PC, ARK recently came out for Early Access on Xbox One. I don’t normally take part in early access games, getting burned on promises in the past but some good gaming friends of mine assured me it was worth the $30.

What really stands out to me in this game is the blatant mortality of all things living. You need to eat; your pets need to eat; everything shits constantly. I booted into a friend’s server and they had already been playing for quite a few weeks. It was a PVE server, and we were the Super Saiyans — noted for our bare chests. The tropical climate was a little damp what with the rain and all, so I put together a full cloth outfit immediately. I really was feeling the beach bum vibe as I went about punching Dodos back into extinction. Their current base was a bit south off the coast, and the Super Saiyans used various pterodactyls to fly to the island. However, they planned to move soon to occupy an area in front of a cave, deep enough to fit a wall and gates in front of while keeping a good amount of room to house the beasts tamed. I didn’t know much about the leveling, but knew crafting was integral.

I was really psyched about getting my club, but on the chat a fellow Saiyan was stoked about fitting a scope to its rifle. I had to get started somewhere, so I cleared the walled off area clean of all its resources, freeing it up for building. As a reward, my clan was pretty cool and gave me an old simple pistol and some ammo for it. I swear I leveled up by loading it. I set up a trailer of thatch and kept a bed in it, but it didn’t make a save point. I couldn’t go too far in the cave because everything in the cave was strong as fuck and would beat my ass right back out of it. Actually, that’s how I found that the beds in Ark are respawn points. It’d be interesting to see if they had a sleep meter you had to follow. But I guess it’s bad game design to make your players do nothing for hours when they could just be playing. Satisfied with my progress with my trailer and using a mortar and pestle to make some tranquilizer arrows, I logged off for the night.

I got back on the next day and the Saiyans had gone ahead and dwarfed my trailer with a full metal tower. They had gone past sniper rifles and had developed full laboratories, machine fabricators, industrial metal forges. I rode the elevator in the tower up to the top, laughing at my beach bum cave man as he shat on the elevator as he rode up. I checked the skill tree and am shocked that there’s no toilet that you can pipe into the compost bin. It’d be nice to at least get a warning before I shit my pants. I chucked my poop off from the top of the tower, and checked out the fly guys we had. I was admiring our neon green “Secondborn,” because I thought its name was “Stormborn.” I was bummed I didn’t get to ride a lightning dragon, and then we had the residual disappointment that we didn’t have access to Pokémon to train and that we had to settle with T-Rex’s. Secondborn had fulfilled its purpose and the Saiyans all had new flying mounts, so I got to take Secondborn for a spin. Ark’s flying is amazing overall, there’s a real feeling of danger in the swoops and I love the impressive about of control over your flying mount. I lived a sheltered life in my trailer by the tower, and it was humbling and startling to see how vast the island really was beyond the Saiyan’s beach area. The biomes were a lot more varied than I guessed, and my first fly also brought my attention to the massive floating crystals spread out across the island. These held the world “bosses,” per the Saiyans, and activating and then killing them got you some cool loot. Neat.

My crafting tree called for some metal ingots, but I wasn’t getting a good amount of metal from the rocks on the beach. The freedom of movement I had with the flying mount made it easy for me to fly to the mountains where metal was supposedly everywhere. I found one in no time, and went to work on those ore veins. Immediately over-encumbered. It turns out stacks of metal are extremely heavy. I thought I was stuck going back to the base with one load at a time, but Secondborn happened to be 10 times stronger than me. Why would you make resources that you need a ton of so heavy? It made my metal hunt an ordeal, having to transfer the metal off my mount.

This definitely would not have been possible on my own and without the infrastructure the Super Saiyans had built. It made me appreciate the grind Ark offers to get the good stuff, knowing that it took a team of 5 middling in commitment players to get the resources together to build up what we had. I’m interested in playing more this week, and jumping on a PVP server and seeing how players compete with one another. I think it’d be smart to just back off and build up, but I can see players rushing to get some weapons early or planing a trap against a player. I’m psyched to try it out and will post my PVP impressions and my overall recommendation of the game soon!

Mission Statement

Posted on by shriekinmerc

Gaming News Network aims to forge a new direction in video game critiquing. We believe that mainstream journalism in the field of video gaming has become soft on big developers, and has not held them to a consistent standard. If we are successful, we aim to eliminate bias and set a new bar in video game journalism.