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game review

Blox Fruits, Reviewed by Elliott Whang, 12

A beam of light comes zooming at me faster than I can dodge. I shoot a fireball back at my enemy. And…I die…but, I quickly spring back to life, fuming to get my revenge. This situation has happened to me multiple times. In a video game, of course. The video game I had just died in is called Blox Fruits. You might be thinking, “Why would beams of light and fireballs be going off in a game with fruits?” Well, these fruits are not exactly normal. In fact, these fruits can give the player special powers if eaten by your character in the game. To gain fruits in this game, you can either find them on the map, buy one with real or game currency, or trade fruits with other players. Speaking of other players, every server, which is a group of people in an online world, has random players in it, unless you play with your friends. You can join a game online with your friends and do challenges and quests with each other. You can gain levels by killing non-playing characters, which are generated by the game, therefore completing a quest. Each successful quest gives the player an increase of around 1-2 levels until you reach a maximum level set by the game developers. Playing with friends makes the game more fun and easier than just playing by yourself. It is also more efficient because teamwork can speed up the process of completing quests. The main goal of this game is to get to max level, where you can annihilate people. By gaining levels, you receive stat points that you can put into several different categories. These categories are combat/stamina, health, sword, gun, and fruit. Each stat point gives an increase in damage or health. In addition to leveling up, there are also other side goals, like getting different combat styles, clothes, swords and guns. But why would swords, clothes and guns be in a fruit game? By having swords, guns, and clothes in the game, it allows the players to also focus on getting different items besides just fruits. Clothes, swords and guns all have different rarities just like fruits. Clothes can give stat boosts, while swords, guns, combat styles, and fruits cause damage to opponents. Swords and guns are also added because this game is based off a show, which happens to have swords and guns. This game sounds really complicated, likely because there is too much to cover in a single blog post, so instead you should play it yourself. You can play this game inside a game called Roblox. You can download Roblox for free on an Iphone, PC, IOS, Android, and some Xbox models. If you don’t like the sound of fruit giving you superpowers, there are also many other fun and free games you can play. Stay tuned for my next blog about a game that requires less time and more skill. Are you ready?

Level Up Your Gaming Experience, Lexing Liu, 11

From Metroid, the pixelated action-adventure game, to Minecraft, the freedom-filled sandbox game, there is no limitation to what games you can access. However, there is only limited time and resources to expend, so you must be careful about what games you decide to play. Mario Kart, Pokémon, and Ringfit are all games you can access on the Nintendo Switch, the current most popular console, so we will center around these games. Mario Kart is a deceivingly complex game. I mean, what difficulty can you have driving around a racetrack? If you find yourself in the path of a red shell, what can you do? How can you turn efficiently? There are many tips and tricks to see. To start things off, one thing you may not have noticed while playing in-game is using an item to block another. Sure enough, if you hold down the item button, you can keep the item safely behind your back to defend yourself from a potential attack which would slow you down a lot, especially if your vehicle has slow acceleration. Even the blue shell, which specifically targets the player in first place, can be deflected using a boombox item, although these are hard to come by from the random item generator. There are further reasons this game is more complex than it looks. For one, you can drift. Holding the drift button while turning lets you drift, and you get a temporary speed boost when you release it. The longer you hold the button, the stronger the charge gets, and you just might be able to get the fabled PURPLE DRIFT. These are the two most well-known tips in Mario Kart, but there is a deeper purpose in this game and more tricks lie ahead. Not only can you play this locally with your friends on one console, you can connect across town to play online races (despite slight lag). Alright, if you prefer quest games, Pokémon might be the game for you. Now, this is no Pokémon card game. The characters are the same, but there is PLOT! There are also various battle gyms where you challenge the gym leader and raids where you fight 4v1 against a powerful wild Pokémon. If you play the newly released version, there are power ups, which give your ride Pokémon special powers and there is more challenge with a new villain team out there. There is a Terestal phenomenon where you can change the type of your Pokémon entirely, which gives each battle a twist. The humor and the challenge keeps you with the game, and gives you an entirely new perspective from which you can see the unfolding action. As great as these games are, both have a hefty price tag of sixty dollars. This is often an unfriendly punch towards your wallet, and you may want to hover around the free games, but the free games have more in-game purchases that harm your wallet further than these one-time purchases. Although these games cost a lot, they are easily worth saving up for because of the enjoyment you get from playing them. There are many games to choose from, but there is only enough time and resources for a few of the best games, and these are two of my favorites.