Spec Ops takes place in a sandstorm-ravaged Dubai, occupied by a rogue U.S. ![]() Spec Ops ventures to counter two ideas,“violence is necessary” and “Killing is Harmless,” through a medium that seems to accept these ideas as fact, but, through the player’s role as “both audient and participatory,” is predisposed to countering them as well. Throughout Spec Ops, the player is forced to question their role in the horrific events that play out before them, as they serve as Walker’s puppet master, putting their puppet in place to enact horrible war crimes executed by the game. Along the way, Walker and the player commit atrocities based on unclear motives and a burning desire to discover more about the twisted world they finds themselves in. The player explores these issues by taking control of Captain Martin Walker, and both watches and participates as he changes from a calm, composed Delta Force operative to beaten and broken man. For this reason and many others, the game has been hailed as one of the most powerful examples in the medium of critique and exploration of difficult ideas and ethical issues. Using these well-established stories as a foundation, the game begins its critique of Western conceptions of violence. The team at Yager was fully aware of the genre’s history when they began work on Spec Ops, and, in an uncommon decision for a genre generally filled with mindless action titles, decided to base their game on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic reimagining, Apocalypse Now. The genre is full of blockbuster titles that glorify the American military and fetishize violence, such as the enormously popular yet critically despised Call of Duty franchise. Spec Ops is a military shooter, a genre defined by gameplay centered around shooting a grossly unrealistic number of enemies. So opens Yager Development’s 2012 video game, Spec Ops – The Line, a production that has received great critical acclaim and sparked discussion in the emerging academia surrounding video games. It is subtle, and easily missed, but long before the narrative suggests that anything is out of the ordinary, this twist makes you feel uneasy, makes you think that you aren’t about to become the hero in your own, seven-hour action story, and maybe, the villain is you. The camera then snaps up to the second helicopter, which you now realize is yours. But, the helicopter abruptly explodes into fiery wreck, and spirals down towards the sand-covered ground below. Jumping into the action, you prepare to man the side-mounted minigun in your helicopter. The camera follows it, and another helicopter comes into view. The game’s title screen becomes the game itself, and a helicopter roars past. You grip your controller, and press start. ![]() Jimi Hendrix’s distorted rendition of “ The Star Spangled Banner” plays far in the distance three symbols of American and capitalist ideals warped in one way or another. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, looms over the skyline as an inverted, tattered US flag flaps idly to the side. You begin overlooking a city ravaged by horrible sandstorms, standing in ruins of its former glory. ![]() It, like all games, is best experienced on your own. If you plan to play it at any point, I would highly recommend avoiding this essay. Spoiler Content: This post contains MASSIVE, GAME RUINING spoilers for Spec Ops – The Line. To kill for entertainment is harmless.” – Spec Ops – The Line
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![]() Design your boat to battle tempestuous winds, monstrous waves, and deadly sea creatures. Your boat is your key companion on this journey, carefully craft your own custom sailing vessel to take on the treacherous waters, traversing from one island to the next. You must set sail when resources become scarce. Scavenge the islands’ untamed terrain for resources that you can use to craft a full range of tools and weapons to hunt wildlife and upgrade your boat. Head towards the horizon, advancing across the islands, each with their own diverse wildlife, landscapes and challenges to face. Unravel the mystery behind them all and you may find more than just your way home.Įmbark on a personal journey and discover the history of the idyllic Forbidden Islands each holding the key to a mystery and unexpected revelations. Whilst exploring further islands and the scattered ruins across their lands, secrets of the past and glimpses of the future are revealed. Craft tools and weapons to hunt and defend yourself against nature itself with its wild and fantastical creatures. With no boat, no food or tools, just the will and skill to survive, uncover this beautiful island’s rich resources. While she faces familiar obstacles in the forms of waves and teeth and claws, a long-forgotten story will soon unfold itself before her, pushing her to reconsider the ideals she’s held her entire life. Thrown from your boat, at the mercy of the turbulent waters, you are tossed on to the shores of the Forbidden Islands, a mysterious paradise. In this unexpected journey Kara’s beliefs and abilities will be challenged like never before. Shipwrecked alone on an uncharted island, explore, adapt and navigate the land and perilous seas to stay alive.Īs Kara, you are a warrior, caught at sea in a fierce storm, adrift from your tribe. ![]() The Forbidden Islands are Calling, Unlock their Secrets ![]() You collect power from other players when they land on spaces you've already saved and when you pass "Go." When the last location has been saved and all the villains are defeated, the Super Hero with the most power is the winner! The traditional Chance and Community Chest cards are now S.H.I.E.L.D. The Monopoly: Marvel Avengers Edition game is about collecting power instead of money, and using your power to save different locations from evil villains. Monopoly name and character, as well as each of the distinctive elements of the board and playing pieces are trademarks of Hasbro for its property trading game and game equipment. The Hasbro Gaming and Monopoly names and logos, the distinctive design of the gameboard, the four corner squares, the Mr. Reactivate your character's unique superpower card every time you pass "Go." One hero will prove to be the most powerful of all! Each detailed token features an iconic Super Hero pose. Who will you choose? Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, or Hawkeye will move you around the board as you try to collect power and defeat villains. This Monopoly: Marvel Avengers Edition game comes with 6 tokens, each one representing a different Marvel Avengers Super Hero character. missions to become Earth's mightiest hero. Monopoly, the world's favorite family gaming brand, teams up with Marvel Avengers in this action-packed gaming experience! Save the Marvel Universe from Super Villains in this Monopoly: Marvel Avengers Edition game in which you complete S.H.I.E.L.D. ![]() The time-stretching engine is based on state-of-the-art psychoacoustic models and signal processing theory. ELASTIQUE PRO is based on a completely new approach to time-stretching, making stretching artifacts obsolete and thus providing sharp transients and crystal clear vocals without phasing artifacts. ELASTIQUE PRO offers stable timing, inter-channel phase coherence and sample accurate stretching. All three of them are able to run in realtime.ĮLASTIQUE PRO is a general purpose time-stretching engine that offers unmatched quality and easily fulfills the high quality demands of professional productions and broadcast applications. Zplane's ELASTIQUE family offers three different time-stretching (aka time-scaling, master tempo or key lock) and pitch shifting (aka pitch scaling or key lock) engines, optimized for different use cases: ELASTIQUE PRO, ELASTIQUE EFFICIENT, and ELASTIQUE TUNE. Zplane's AUFTAKT beat tracking SDK seamlessly integrates with BARBEATQ, but the algorithm can also be provided with beat information from a different source such as a fixed beat grid.īARBEATQ is an offline process which means it requires the complete audio file as input and outputs the cue point sequence result only after the file has been processed in its entirety. With beat information the results are on a higher level and always beat and bar synchronized and thus more useful for musical and DJ application. ![]() Without beat information there will be many more cue points and corresponding regions with varying timing precision. It analyzes the content of a music signal and outputs a sequence of time stamps identifying the most prominent changes in the audio. BARBEATQ furthermore compares the regions between the cue points and groups the most similar regions.īARBEATQ can be used in two different modes: Without and with extra beat information. Possibility to set multiple correction points for improved tracking.īARBEATQ provides automatic cue point detection.Ability to track time signature and time signature changes.Highly improved tempo detection and beat tracking ability.AUFTAKT v4 has improved detection rates by more than 30% across all genres, and even more than 40% on complex jazz music compared to its previous versions.ĪUFTAKT is able to track tempo variations and changes as well as time signature changes. The network has been trained with various music ranging from western pop music to classical and even ethnical music as well as single loops and guitars in order to broaden the range of trackable music stlyes. Other than previous implementations AUFTAKT v4 relies on deep neural networks and state of the art statistical models to take beat tracking to a new level. ID-Tags) and several other areas of application. Tempo and beat location information are useful for playlist generation, beat matched mixing, for automatic generation of high-level meta data information (e.g. Furthermore, the location of the beats is detected (beat grid). Show more Show lessĪUFTAKT is an automatic BPM (beats per minute) detection recognizing the tempo of any audio input signal. The second snipped again contains the same performances but with the second performance automatically aligned to the first. The first snippet contains the original two performances, each in one audio channel. ![]() This example demonstrates the alignment of two classical string quartet performances. The following synthesis step then applies the high quality élastique Pro time stretching to the one of the signals resulting of perfectly synchronized signals. After calculating the similarity in the four different domains between the two audio files, the relative tempo changes over time are extracted by finding the most likely solution given the similarity measure. Vice versa, different performances of the same piece of music might not be very similar in the Timbre-domain. This allows very flexible uses: while the pitches might differ between the lead vocal and the backing vocal line, they can be very similar with respect to loudness envelope and note onset times. They are objects, yes, but familiar ones with deep stories and meaning attached. ![]() Years of worship lifted to God, holy prayers in ordinary and festival time echo throughout the empty walls of beautiful containers housing the everyday living of life and faith until their lives were torn apart. These emblems of faith lived out hold the history and ancestry of a chosen people. These totems represent a rich faith tradition and a history of rising above they represent a calling upon these people of God. Not only does he release the captives to rebuild their temple, but he releases to them the items taken from the temple during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. King Cyrus’ actions reveal a similar calling: to let the oppressed go free. It speaks to me of a continual calling on my life to seek justice and encourage the oppressed. My totem reminds me of summers spent as a traveling Spanish language interpreter serving with mission teams in beautiful Baja California, Mexico. I was loved into who I am today, and yet, there is still a piece of me that feels incomplete if I’m not remembering that my bloodline runs part Mexican, and I love that about myself. I was adopted by the greatest parents ever, on August 24, 1983, 2 months, and 2 days after I was born. My totem serves as a link to my biological Latina heritage. Cut squares of abalone shell and round glass beads descend to a simple, silver crucifix, and hangs from the rearview mirror in my car. It’s a rosary made by the Mixtec tribe of Vicente Guerrero, Baja California, Mexico. Merriam-Webster defines “totem” as something that serves as an emblem or revered symbol.” All these Sheshbazzar brought up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem. 9 And this was the inventory: gold basins, thirty silver basins, one thousand knives, twenty-nine 10 gold bowls, thirty other silver bowls, four hundred ten other vessels, one thousand 11 the total of the gold and silver vessels was five thousand four hundred. 8 King Cyrus of Persia had them released into the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. ![]() 7 King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. 6 All their neighbors aided them with silver vessels, with gold, with goods, with animals, and with valuable gifts, besides all that was freely offered. 5 The heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites-everyone whose spirit God had stirred-got ready to go up and rebuild the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. ![]() Euphoria is every show, not just every high school show, but every style of show. Levinson seems to think that just containing shocking acts gives the show a backbone.Įuphoria’s desire for excess and everything may be what makes it what it is, but if you pay attention you will start to notice the cracks. But just because it can be controversial, it doesn’t mean that the subjects it attempts to shed light on are treated well. Levinson and company seem to think they are exposing a raw truth for the first time, that Euphoria is paving new ground in its daring. It’s not the first high school show to embrace insanity, but it seems to be the first that thinks itself above the format it’s clearly based on. ![]() That’s what makes it interesting, but it’s also what makes it weak. But it also has the insanity and plentiful subject matters of Rivderdale and Glee, as well as the attempts at honesty and empathy of Sex Education.Įuphoria wants to be everything all the time. The outrageous plotlines and high octane drama aligns it with the likes of Degrassi or even Secret Life of an American Teenager. But where Euphoria falls in this genre is confusing. The show’s very title- Euphoria-is an argument against embracing joy, that even when things are good it will be fleeting.Įuphoria is just the latest addition to television’s pantheon of shows about high schoolers. Series writer and creator Sam Levinson has seemingly taken this to the extreme. Your characters need conflict and loss to propel the narrative. In writing there is a lesson you learn early on: you have to be a little cruel to your characters. Their deeply personal struggles and defined character archetypes are what keep people watching, as viewers sit on the edge of their seats and wait for any of them to experience just one thing that goes right in their lives. The names Rue, Jules, Kat, Cassie, Nate, and Maddie are cemented in the heads of the young people who obsessively watch the show. But despite its stylistic progress, the show is leaving its plot and characters behind. The neon-colorful lights and flipping camera of Season 1 have been replaced by golden spotlights, a grainy filter, and viewing its characters as portraiture. In Season 2, Euphoria wants to develop its style. Swinging cameras, spotlights, fourth wall breaks, a collage of characters and emotions colliding together as Labrinth’s score brings it all together (admittedly, the score and music direction are Euphoria’s best aspects by far). You cannot change that without asking for a different show entirely. Any argument against its tendency for excess is fundamentally flawed. In the end, that’s the show’s artistic goal and its greatest claim to quality. But could it be called…good?Įuphoria is sold on its style. HBO’s Euphoria could be called all of these things. A daring look at the inner lives of teenagers. A showcase of some of the best young up and coming actors. However, it’s worth specifying that these are not straight ports of those old mini-games. The unlocks by themselves are just okay, but as pieces of a whole, it provides a lot to strive for and play with.Ĭomplementing the core experience are 12 party games, all pulled from earlier titles. More cosmetics to dress up the monkeys are the most prevalent unlocks, but a few modes are found here, usually offering up a steeper challenge or, if you want, adding a jump button. A variety of other unlockables are present too, all earned by accumulating in-game currency. ![]() The characters are cosmetic, but it’s incredibly amusing to see Sonic and Tails roll around collecting rings instead of bananas. That extends to the unlockable characters, which include Sonic, Tails, Kazuma Kiryu (from Yakuza), and Beat (from Jet Set Radio) and many more as paid DLC. The friendliness and leniency is felt throughout, earnestly feeling like a celebration of Monkey Ball’s early days. You can even mark difficult levels as completed and move on. Helper mode lets you slow down time and shows an optimal route through the stage. It has a lot of assist options baked in as well. It’s hard for the game to truly evoke the nostalgia I have for the GameCube games, but this clearly feels better than any Monkey Ball game I’ve played since the first two even if it’s not identical to how the GameCube games felt. The challenge ramps up fast, but the levels are generally all clever and fun to play. The centerpiece is the dozens and dozens of ball-rolling stages spread across a world-based story mode as well as challenge modes based on Monkey Ball 1 and 2’s stages. Banana Mania is a celebration of the series’ best games that, for better or worse, changes things enough to possibly turn off those desiring a true return to form, but is largely a great game with a lot of depth and variety. It bakes in a lot of the content from Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, and Deluxe, but this is not a straightforward remake. ![]() The 2019 Switch release of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD was a lukewarm step in the right direction, but the latest release, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, is a much more confident return to form. The GameCube originals were beloved when they came out, but from there, the magic and charm was lost along the way, reaching a sad nadir with Super Monkey Ball 3D. Super Monkey Ball is a series that has a checkered history. ![]() The software then automatically applies the correct output LUT after the colorspace conversion is complete. Moreover, you can also set a specific camera manufacturer’s color model as your target colorspace, so there’s no compromise on dynamic range. Then, the software takes care of the rest by properly handling the colorspace conversion. Image credit: HedgeĪll you have to do is choose between an SDR (Rec.709) or an HDR workflow (PQ or HLG). Hence, users don’t need to worry about diving into the technicalities of colorspaces, gamuts, and gamma curves. With this new panel, the software takes the original, bulky RAW footage and automatically converts it into a more manageable format (such as ProRes or DNx). The latest version of EditReady introduces a new Color Conversion Panel that aims at improving efficiency and automating color management workflows, while still providing manual control and full flexibility if needed. Image credit: Hedge EditReady 22.2: new Color Conversion Panel These also include EditReady, a transcoding tool that is now receiving an update fully focused on preserving the look of your original footage, while providing more editable files. The company offers a series of tools to make life in post easier. Here’s where Hedge’s mission of automating and simplifying modern post-production workflows comes in. This is especially true when working with mixed footage from multiple camera brands. However, today’s jungle of different color gamuts and gamma curves can cause quite a few headaches to post-production professionals. The world of high-resolution RAW and HDR video is making us experience true-to-life images like never before. ![]() EditReady 22.2 now comes with a new color conversion panel, improved precision, and added support for Sony Uncompressed RAW and X-OCN formats. Hedge has recently introduced an update for their transcoding software with a focus on simplifying color management workflows. ![]() Market: The league would certainly like to see McDavid go to a big market where he’ll get more attention. On the other hand, we also don’t want him going to a total disaster he’s going to be a fun player to watch, and it would be nice for him to have at least a little bit of talent to play with early on. Besides, McDavid should quickly emerge as an MVP candidate - if he goes to a team that’s already stacked, the rest of the league would be screwed. Obviously, the league’s better teams should expect to make the playoffs and skip the lottery, so there’s not much point getting our hopes up for McDavid landing on a team that’s sitting in first place. ![]() So whose number should we want to see come up? And maybe more importantly, who should we be collectively rooting against?Ĭurrent team quality: This works in a couple of ways. After all, we can fight about that right now!Īll 14 non-playoff teams will have a shot at the first overall pick in a lottery that’s heavily weighted toward the worst teams, with the odds starting at 20 percent for the last-place team and dropping to as low as 1 percent. Every team that misses the postseason has at least a shot at the top pick, and since it’s far too early for anyone to have clinched a playoff spot, that means every team in the league technically still has a shot at winning the McDavid lottery. 1īut today, let’s forget about who will get McDavid, since we won’t actually know that for several months. As the first sure-thing franchise player the league has welcomed since Sidney Crosby, McDavid has earned plenty of attention toward the bottom of the standings, and that will only intensify as the season goes on. One of the running themes of the season has been the eventual destination of Connor McDavid. ![]() “All of Me Wants All of You,” Sufjan StevensĪt its core, Carrie & Lowell is Sufjan Stevens’s narrative on his mother (who suffered from mental illnesses and died in 2012), placed within the context of his childhood. ![]() As you look over the great landscape beneath you and ponder life’s meaning, let Chassagne echo your contemplation as she screams, “Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small.”ģ. It’s a perfect track for those moments on your camping trip when you’ve reached the peak of the hike. Culled from 2010’s Grammy-winning The Suburbs, the song combines a spiraling synth riff with a washed-out disco homage that makes Regine Chassagne’s voice almost unrecognizable. “Sprawl II,” with its balance of a bold musical ensemble and equally bold lyrical statement, is a classic Arcade Fire song. “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” Arcade Fire ![]() Finn Andrews’s keening voice delivers an emotional wallop as he sings, “There’s no way out of this old world, even if you tried.” Don’t take it too literally if you’re lost in the woods, though.Ģ. The song is an introspective anthem accentuated by bluesy melodies. Everyone is gathered around the crackling fire, softly lit and breathing in that sweet woodsy smell. In that spirit, here are eight songs for your next summer camping escapade, whether it’s a Bear Grylls-esque adventure or just round of PBRs in your backyard tent.Īs the title suggests, “Sit Down by the Fire” is best enjoyed at night as your jam-packed camping day winds to an end. And even though nature has its own soundtrack of birdsongs, flowing rivers and rustling winds, sometimes it helps to add some of your tunes to the mix. That’s right, summer means camping season. Today marks the first day of summer, and summer is the time when normal city dwellers suddenly become avid outdoors folk. |