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.

Four Lessons From One Week of Old School Runescape.

What’s going on WordPress, today I want to talk about the week I spent in January playing Old School Runescape. For those of you that don’t know, OSRS is a point and click RPG video game that was extremely popular back when I was in intermediate school. The basis of the game is to level up your character in a variety of different skills that will allow you to interact with harder content further into the game. It is extremely time intensive to grind out those levels and I have a large amount of respect for players who are able to reach level 99. I have a couple of friends who still play the game daily and I was very into chopping down trees back when I was a young adult. So, due to a conversation with a fellow Ultimate Frisbee teammate of mine, I decided to tryout the game again for the sake of fun and nostalgia. After a week of playing I took away four primary insights that can be applied to life in the real world. These four insights are:

• Do Something Always.
• There Are Multiple Ways to Reach Your End Goal.
• Tunnel Vision is a Powerful Tool.
• It is OK to be Mindfully Mindless…Sometimes.

Staying busy

In OSRS there are two primary resources that you are going to be wanting to gather. These two resources are experience and gold. The most efficient way to play the game is to gather both of these simultaneously. This way of playing can be overwhelming to new players because there is a tremendous amount of ways to get one without the other. The variety of activities within Runescape typically leave new players frozen between making a decision on which activity they would like to do. This leads me to my first rhetorical question. Do you know whats better than thinking about the best ways to gain gold and experience at the same time? The answer is actually doing an activity that will allow you to gain gold or experience. I feel like often times in life we get stuck between deciding what it is that we should be doing. The process of deciding what to do often times consumes the precious time that we could be using towards improving a certain aspect of our life. Whether this is making money, working out, or even focusing on alleviating mental stress; It is important to just do something if not anything that will benefit you in the long run.

Multiple paths available

At first, my goal in OSRS was to earn enough gold in-game in order to purchase one month of membership. Think of this like the Hulu spotify deal without commercials. Once I started my grind that was chopping down trees and fishing lobster, I quickly realized that this was a much harder goal than I had originally expected. Therefore, my next and final goal was to try and experience as much of the free-to-play quest lines as possible. That means that rather than focusing on efficiency, I could instead explore the games content. During my grind towards membership I quickly realized that their were a lot of different ways to earn gold and experience. Additionally, I started to understand that time was my most valuable resource. What I failed to understand though, was that whenever I was exploring the game I was also working towards my original goal of obtaining membership. In life there are infinite amounts of opportunities that will potentially lead you towards fulfillment in life. With this in mind, I plan to stray away from the mindset that there is only one way that I can work towards my long-term goals. Instead, I am going to see which paths it is that life presents me and then adapt my short-term goals based on those same options.

Tunnel Vision

In OSRS there are 23 different skills that get exponentially harder and harder to level up as the game progresses. All of the skills contain a multitude of activities that fall within various tiers of difficulty. The highest tier activity for any given skill typically provides the most experience and often times yields the heftiest coin payout. This is why the most common method of leveling up a character is to focus on one skill in particular. This allows you to farm the highest tier resources within the early stages of the game.

” If you’re lucky enough to be good at what you like, become tunnel vision.”

Gary Vaynerchuk

Imagine if Lionel Messi had spent half of the time he spent training for football on learning the culinary arts. He probably would not continue to hold the title of being the best football player in the world. He might still break the top five…but that is besides the point. The point is, the reason why Messi is the best is because he lives a life dedicated to football. This is why focusing on that one thing you love the most can often times lead to the most fulfillment in life. Such as reaching level 99 woodcutting in OSRS because you love chopping down virtual trees.

It is ok to do nothing

Finally, one of the hardest but most rewarding things I found about OSRS was the idea of spending time doing tedious activities for what seemed like an eternity. I constantly found myself questioning why I was playing the game and whether or not I was wasting my day. After the first couple of days I began to find the game play to be relaxing and somewhat a challenge. I found the discovery of new farming methods to be very rewarding and fairly difficult. I also enjoyed just talking in chat with a lot of my friends who have become veterans of the game themselves. Anyways, this experience that I had within OSRS reminded me of an important takeaway that I discovered through working as well. This takeaway is that sometimes you have to allow your brain to wander and rest for the sake of your own well-being. It is ok to do nothing whenever you find yourself overworked. More often than not, your body tends to perform better after longer intervals of rest. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed my time on OSRS but I would not recommend it for the sole reason that the game play can become very addictive. Additionally, please let me know if you have ever played Oldschool Runescape and also what you thought about it in the comments.