My Top 5 Favorite Video Games of All-time.

Hello WordPress, today I want to talk about playing video games growing up. In case you haven’t heard, Borderlands 3 came out this weekend and its a large part of the reason why I did not post on this blog last week. I’ve been playing that game a lot in my free time and now I want to talk about some other nostalgic titles that I have placed within my top 5.

• Super Mario Odyssey
• Rocket League
• Gladius
• Star Wars Battlefront 2
• Sly Cooper

Super Mario Odyssey

First off, lets talk about Super Mario Odyssey. This game is so incredibly easy for me to talk about because I still play it to this day. It’s less of a nostalgia factor and more so the aesthetic beauty of the 3D Mario game itself. The game is similar to other Mario titles in the since that you are trying to save Peach from the fiery giant turtle named Bowser. I have always loved the vast amount of imagination that can be found within the Nintendo Universe. Surely enough, their is no shortage of such imagination within Super Mario Odyssey. There are a variety of planets that can be visited and each stage and world is created with pure creativity and cultural appreciation. Super Mario Odyssey knows how to place me into a sublime feeling of wonderment that makes me want to come back over and over and over again.

Rocket League

Now, Rocket League is the first competitive game that made me feel like I genuinely needed to practice to keep up with my friends. I truly feel like some of my friends are apex gamers and they are extremely quick learners. I specifically remember practicing aerials and then jumping into a friendly game and getting straight dunked on…on repeat. Whenever I asked my friends how they flew through the air so effortlessly they told me that they just practice a lot. I have two friends that currently play for collegiate teams and two friends that are ranked grand champion. Unfortunately, I never quite caught up to their level but I am significantly better than most people that I talk to and that feeds my gamer ego a little more than when I got dunked on daily. I still play Rocket League weekly and I don’t plan on putting it down anytime soon.

Gladius

This pick is almost exclusively nostalgic. The basis of Gladius is to recruit a variety gladiators to your gladiator school and conquer the arenas. Gladius is a turn-based strategy game that came out on Xbox, Gamecube, and Playstation 2 in 2003. I played this game with my dad and he absolutely loved it. There was so much to do and so many different options for recruiting gladiators. Every gladiator could be customized and had certain experience levels. It was my first introduction into team building and I think about how fantastic it would be to get a remake on the daily.

Star Wars Battlefront 2

Talk about great games that can be played locally. I think that my friends and I put more hours into this title than any other game I have ever played. This game is an action shooter that places you straight into the middle of a battle on one of the many planets that populate the Star Wars Universe. My favorite mode is called “Hero Assault” I think, and it allows you to play as some of the Jedi and heroes from the movie trilogy. I loved to jump around as Yoda while my friends were playing a hero with a gun because it just seemed unfair to fight without a lightsaber at that point. One more aspect of Star Wars Battlefront 2 that sets it apart from the rest of video games is its interactive space battles. There are game modes that allow you to fight your friends in space by either invading their ship or destroying their fleet. All in all, I have many fond memories of playing this wonderful game with my friends and getting way to heated whenever I would lose.

Sly Cooper

Finally, the source of my all-time favorite character, Sly Cooper. The second game, Sly Cooper 2 Band Of Thieves, was probably my favorite game from the series and I remember specific story mode missions that give me chills just thinking about them. I also remember a mode where you could play mini-games against your friends that would provide us with hours of entertainment. The characters were well created and the stages were crafted with creativity and a sense of stealth that helped make the series so great to play. Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful time pursuing anything that fascinates you. Mindfulness. Empathy. Creativity.

Deconstructing Self-Improvement.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Polish Before You Shine.

Hello WordPress, today I want to talk about why I think that the term self-improvement is over saturated. A thought crossed my mind today about creative collaboration. It stems out of a twitter post I saw that showed a picture of some writers from The Simpsons collaborating with each other over fast food and soft drinks. Now, if you were to take away the context of all these people being writers from the Simpsons– you would almost feel sorry for them. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were writing for a major TV show, they would seem like they were quite mundane or rather ordinary. My point is, is that any one of these people could have been doing something else, but instead they decided to create one of the most popular cartoons over burgers and soda. This is a task that would have been much much harder for any single writer to accomplish on their own.

Strength Lies Within the Numbers.

There are tasks in this world that are simply easier to accomplish with more than one person. For example, take a look at the stock market. It doesn’t matter if you are the Houdini of picking stocks if you don’t have the capital to invest. That is the exact reason why these investment firms are combining their capital together in order to invest into a larger payout based on the gross percentage of profit earned among all of the people who shared their capital.

If that example doesn’t work for you, try this one. Imagine that you are Dwayne The Rock Johnson and you really want to fight and defeat a Silverback Gorilla in an all out brawl. There are no weapons involved and you would be fighting the gorilla in an open field. It would be naive to think that you could simply approach the gorilla in a 1v1 head on match-up because the gorilla is simply stronger. But… if there were lets say 5 Dwayne The Rock Johnsons, it would be a different scenario. It would still be a close drawn out battle but I am confident that the squadron of “Rocks” would be able to conquer the king of the jungle.

In conclusion, there is strength within numbers and that is a relatively valid cliche. It is easy to go at things alone if you are a self-motivator like me, but it is smarter to go at it with friends, family and partners of every sort. Even a true adventurer like Link from the Legend of Zelda series needs a companion. Even if that companion is an annoying orb of light that talks and provides you with sub-par guidance throughout the entire game.

“It is dangerous to go alone! Take this.”

Old Man who gives Link a sword.

Shared-Improvement.

All in all, self-improvement comes second nature to those who show self-care. The real fulfilling nature of chasing your dreams lies within the idea of chasing those dreams together. To share your experience with others in order to reach towards something that is mutually beneficial to everyone is the greatest opportunity we have as humans. We are stronger together but the times drift us apart. This is a call to action for those who understand what it means to enhance the world around us. When times get tough and we fall short of our goals– we need to remember this. Everybody brings something brilliant to the table, everybody can create and everybody is unique. Learn together, create together, share together and most importantly– learn from one another.

Mindfulness. Empathy. Creativity.

What I Am Grateful For.

Life is great and I am grateful. Every step I take brings me closer towards my ambitions and this is what I take comfort in…

“All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life–collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

Grateful For Those Around Me.

No feeling, other than love, trumps that of receiving genuine interest. I am blessed and grateful to have people in my life who are genuinely interested in establishing a connection. My family loves me, my girlfriend supports me, and my friends inspire me. I often times isolate myself whenever I want to work on something and this sometimes serves as an obstacle in my relationships. My closest relationships understand this and for that I am especially grateful.

The only reason I mention these things is because I have seen people sacrifice parts of themselves in order to spend more time satisfying others. It is important in my life that I have plenty of time to chase my dreams and learn things about myself. People are more than their resume, more than their appearance, more than their possessions and especially more than their personality. There are certain experiences that people encounter that simply can not be shared adequately. Although, one experience that people can share is the wonderful experience of the present…and for this I am grateful.

Grateful For My Situation

Time is fleeting only if you choose not to pay attention. Whenever I take a step back from worrying I realize how truly privileged I am. Surely, I can find something to complain about, but today I chose to acknowledge all of the wonderful things that make my life what it is. The universe has a wonderful way of reminding me that life truly is what I make of it. I can choose to be complacent but instead I crave fulfillment.

“If my plan is to sit around waiting for another such unadulterated and impassioned creative visitation, I may be waiting for a very long time. So I don’t sit around waiting to write until my genius decides to pay me a visit. If anything, I have come to believe that my genius spends a lot of time waiting around for me–waiting to see if i’m truly serious about this line of work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert

…And for this I am grateful.

Storyboarding an Idea for a Novel.

How I Started planning

Notoriously known for jumping straight into projects, I have decided to take an unfamiliar approach this time. I decided that I wanted to plot out the events, setting and significance of an idea I had for a novel. Ironically, I did not originally have an idea for a novel but I did engage in an impulsive attempt to generate an idea for a novel. So nevertheless, I grabbed my dry-erase markers, my journal, my sketchbook and my two homemade whiteboards and then I got to brainstorming.

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Jotting down the structure

The first thing that I started thinking about was the setting. I started writing down every place that I thought would serve as a good environment for the plot. In the past I would have just jumped straight into the plot (the what is happening) and then implement a setting as I go. I now realize that for me this process is naive. I wanted to have a concrete understanding of what kind of world it was that I would be writing within. I came up with ideas ranging from The Gulf Coast, all the way up to a frontier space station. After eliminating an endless amount of places I finally found a place that I took comfort in. I chose a setting that I am well acquainted with because I decided that it would be easier to write within. I thought that if I was to truly delve into the details of my novel setting, I would need somewhere that I am connected to.

Background

Upon finding a setting that I was confident in, I then decided to work towards building an idea of what kind of life the characters would be living in. I started jotting down possible time periods, economics, demographics, technologies and ecological characteristics. I wanted to get a feel of what kind of external pressures I can work with to develop the most interesting plot. A setting that will interest a reader.

The Main Character

Now that I had a when and a where, I began creating a who. In comparison to the setting, I chose to make the main character someone I could relate to. Someone that reflected my core values and even some of my own personality traits. In contrast, I did not want to make myself the main character in fear that it would skew an interesting plot line. After I got a gist of who the character was, I started brainstorming names that I felt will be both catchy and reflective of the setting that I previously constructed.

The Backbone to My Plot

Finally, the plot is the hardest part of planning and requires the most time constructing. I realized that I would not be able to design the plot in a whole day. So, instead I designed a broad plot that directs me in the direction that I would like to take my writing.

The Final Rundown

All in all, the result of yesterday’s session is an adventure story. The idea takes place in a rural swamp (potentially Louisiana/East Texas) during the mid 1800’s. The main character’s name is Willy LeFleur and he lives in a rural town placed at the entrance of the swamp with his sister Wiley LeFleur, mother and a father who is a contract fisherman.

The father left for a contract fishing trip down by the coast and has not returned in months. Willy’s mother, sister and he are struggling to survive due to the lack of income. One day a steamboat rolls into the dock of Willy’s hometown. An old man who owns the boat takes a keen interest in Willy upon initial introduction. Later that day, Willy returns home from a day of fishing in the swamp to find the old man and his mother chatting in the house. The old man tells the mother that he would like to purchase Willy to help fish, clean and circumnavigate the swamp for an expedition to the nearby coast. Willy is not interested in leaving with the old man until his sister explains to him that the family will not survive without the money. Willy decides that he wants to help his family on his own accord, only to find out that his mother has agreed to the conditions without Willy’s consent.

Willy is concerned about the conditions because he only knows half of the way to the coast because that is as far as his dad has ever taken him. Willy ends up successfully navigating the swamp for the expedition after conquering a large variety of obstacles placed along the way.

Upon returning home from the expedition, Willy finds that his family’s house has been reclaimed by Mother Nature. The house has been abandoned and a majority of the things within the house have been either stolen or ruined by the environment. Willy is left with a lot of questions about what has happened and where his family has gone.

“Let me know what you all think, what you all suggest and what you find interesting. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day.”

Cole Lamkins