U.A.'s review of ... Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Hello everyone,

Today I wanted to review the movie Olympus Has Fallen (2013) directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman.


Summary:
"Disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) finds himself trapped inside the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack; using his inside knowledge, Banning works with national security to rescue the President from his kidnappers."

My attention was drawn to Olympus Has Fallen by it´s action packed trailer. Although I feared the trailer was nothing less than the movie summed up in 150 seconds, which seems more and more the case with trailers nowadays, I still wanted to see it. You see, a combination of Gerard Butler (who became an all-time  favorite of mine after seeing him in 300), Aaron Eckhart (Two-Face) and Morgan Freeman is just too good to pass up. So I sat down with snacks and drinks within my grap and gave myself over to the experience.


Butler and Eckhart are introduced to the screen almost immediately after the opening, alongside Ashley Judd as the First Lady. I have to admit I don't really care for her so I was quite glad to see it only took her a couple of minutes to exit the movie. Besides, it's not like she had a place beside Butler or Eckhart in this adrenaline filled shoot 'em up.


I was surprised to see the terrorist party being portrayed by North Koreans instead of the Middle Eastern standard we have grown accustomed to ever since 9/11. Although I appreciate the change of pace, the implications the movie makes almost scare me. Fuqua depicted the Koreans as a serious threat to (American) national security. No doubt based on the rising threat and tention between the U.S. and North Korea over the past year. And if the Koreans can occupy the center of political power in the world, then where does it end? So while watching all these Americans get slaughtered I sometimes felt like I was watching a propaganda piece and I was being indoctrinated.

After the very impressive taking of the White House, which takes up a good portion of the first hour into the movie, Mike Banning gets put into play and that is where America strikes back. Of course his background gets brought up by fellow actors so he's validated in his role as the protagonist with loads of experience and the know-how to deal with situations just like these.
President Asher on the other end, spends most of his time cuffed to a pole and has to rely on dialogue with his hostage takers to leave his mark on the film. This dialogue, however, leaves much to be desired since it consists mostly of Rick Yune, in his role as Kang, killing and torturing other hostages while making President Asher watch. All the while he grunts and tries to convince his colleagues to just give up the sought after information.

Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) forms the third party as he is put in charge as acting president. We follow him in his struggle to negiotate with Kang and his fellow countrymen. At the same time he has to deal with politicians who would like nothing else but to give into the demands and the military who would just charge in blindly.

The main complaint heard from viewers is that Freeman suffers from a lack of screentime and viable dialogue to work with. This leaves him unable to elevate this movie from it's current average rating. And I agree with this complaint since I have a lot of respect for Morgan Freeman as an actor, but he just couldn't impress me with his acting this time. This is very rare and I don't fault him any for it.

The body of Olympus Has Fallen is of course made up of all the action it brings forth and in this regard it certainly does not disappoint. Most of the time you'll spend watching gunfights, explosions and in general people dying. The action sequences look visually attractive and especially the one-to-one combat scenes between Banning and the Koreans are well choreographed. I appreciate the humor Gerard Butler brings to spice up all the killing. Although the setting of the movie colors his humor darker than normal (the interrogation of the two Koreans for example).

To conclude I would have to recommend you see this movie for it's strong points, the action. Don't go in expecting much of the story or the dialogue; you went to see an action packed movie and not The Shawshank Redemption. If you adjust your expectations you will not be disappointed.

As always your comments are most appreciated. Feel free to disagree with me, but please state why so myself and other people can respond. I want to thank you all for reading and I will see you ... next time. Take care.

U.A.

U.A. presents Hitman: Absolution and the uploading schedule.

Hello everyone,

Following the recent additions to my Let's Play repetoire I wanted to introduce you to another newcomer, Hitman: Absolution. The game was officially released on November 20th 2012 and developed by IO Interactive. I bought and played the game then, since I was eagerly anticipating it's release. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, even if it was on Normal mode.

I still feel like I could get a lot of enjoyment out of this game and I wanted to share this with you. To add to the excitement I have decided that I will play the game on "Professional: Hard" difficulty. Further more, I will not go in guns blazing but rather go with the stealthy approach. If you have ever seen me play you will know that I'm not a very stealthy person at all. So I'm hoping to provide a few laughs at my expense and also give myself a challenge. All in all I hope this will be a Let's Play that is exciting and enjoyable to watch.

Another element I have added to my YouTube channel is the uploading schedule that I composed. You can find it under the About-section on my channel. The schedule is subject to change (I have always wanted to say that, haha) since I might add any LP's to it at any given time. It is also possible that a currently featured LP finishes which leaves it's spot empty on the roster. Currently the uploading schedule looks like:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday: The Walking Dead

Thursday: Hitman: Absolution

Friday: I Am Alive

Saturday: Far Cry 3

Sunday:

As you can see in the roster, Hitman: Absolution is scheduled for Thursday. This means Episode 1, the first episode of that LP, will be uploaded tomorrow. I will not spoil too much yet; all I can say is that the episode is titled "It's NOT prostate cancer" so you're in for a treat. And I do hope you will watch it when it goes live.

I want to thank you all for reading and I will see you ... next time. Take care.

U.A.

UPDATE:
As promised, here is the first episode from the Hitman: Absolution LP. Enjoy!

The start of a new series ...

Hello everyone,

I'm happy to announce that I will be starting two new LP's alongside the currently going Far Cry 3 series. The currently ongoing Steam Summersale allowed me to get a lot of good games for little money. This means you will see me branching out LP wise, since I will be maintaining more than one series. By doing this I'm hoping to add variety to my channel and as a result provide more entertainment.

Because I now have three ongoing LP's, I'm planning to create episodes of roughly 30 minutes for each series and releasing one or two episodes a week per series. I'm not pinning myself to any number, because I might increase the number of LP's even more depending on the amount of games the Steam Summersale yields (the counter is already at eight games so far).

So without further ado I present to you the two new series. I hope you enjoy them.

The Walking Dead by Telltale Games

I Am Alive by Ubisoft Shanghai

U.A.

U.A.'s opinion on ... the Art of creating Let's Plays

Hello everyone,

I have recently started producing gameplay videos with my commentary added to them. This activity is commonly known as creating a Let's Play (LP) video. People record their gameplay and themselves commenting on this playthrough of any given game.
Before I started making videos I thought it would be an easy thing to do and I wanted to give it a try myself. It took me two weeks to realize that making good Let's Play videos (with an emphasis on good) is really a profession on it's own.

I started by purchasing Fraps which took care of the video aspect of the production. It records your gameplay and has the option to record the ingame audio and your microphone input as well. The only downside to the latter is that it records the ingame audio and your commentary to one track. This means you are not able to change their levels individually. That is why I downloaded a free program called Audacity, which comes highly recommended by other people and now also by me. You record your commentary in Audacity and can alter it in any possible way afterwards using that same program. You finally export it as a .wav file which you can then import into your editing program.

I choose to work with Sony Vegas Pro for my videos. I have worked with Adobe Premiere before, but Sony Vegas Pro came so highly recommended (like Audacity) that I was swayed in that direction. I have not regretted it for a single moment. It is user friendly, does everything you need it to do and there are loads of (video)tutorials out there if you need it. I have used a couple of those tutorials myself and they are of great help. The only downside to either Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Pro are their hefty pricetags. Although I prefer to work with legitimate sources for my work I can certainly understand fellow LPers who prefer different ways of attaining these particular programs. "Although I can not officially condone it, Your Honor".

The above outlines the recording part of the entire process, but before you get to recording you have to consider your hardware. You need a microphone to record your voice, a computer that can handle the game and record at the same time while still keeping the footage nice and smooth and is also suited for editing (harddrive space and rendering power). - I choose to use one computer for all of this. This does not mean it's a requirement. You could have one desktop to record and another to edit. - The microphone component of this process kept me busy and guessing for the better part of two weeks. I started out with the microphone on a cheap headset just to get  acquinted with the recording and more important commenting and playing at the same time. You don't realize it until you actually do it; playing and still providing your audience with intelligible commentary takes effort and practise to get good at. Enfin, I had already made up my mind that, if I liked doing Let's Plays, I would purchase a serious microphone. And so I did by purchasing the Blue Microphones Snowball.

I practised and recorded a lot with the Snowball, but in the end there was too much background noise for my purposes and I could not get the sound quality anywhere near the bar I had set for myself. There was still too much echo and bass in the audio which made it sound like I was in my room talking into a microphone instead of being present in the game I was commenting on (which is the effect I was aiming for). That's why I started using the Samson C01U microphone; it picks up less background noise than the Snowball. However, my problems with the echo and bass did not seem to be solved since I still sounded too far away, which meant back to the drawing board.

By then I started looking at other LP videos to compare them and see what I was missing. You will quickly see the huge quality differences between them and that was when it hit me: you do not just record yourself talking and playing a video game. There is actually an entire production behind it.

Having to edit the gameplay and then pasting the commentary under it is only the obvious part of the labor involved. Making it sound good and enjoyable to watch for your viewers is an entirely different matter. I have spent hours and hours experimenting with different microphones and their settings, effects in Audacity and watching tutorials on audio engineering and in the end the sound quality still only came up to what you can hear in my latest video Far Cry 3 - Snake Bite. If you compare it to the first video I ever uploaded The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Part 1 you can hear the immense difference in clarity, but it's still nowhere near the sparkling audio you hear while watching for example Markiplier or ReformistTM. Although a big part of that are their incredible voices which unfortunately cannot be emulated.

- Compare the video of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Part 1, my first ever uploaded video, to my latest video Far Cry 3 - Snake Bite down below and pay attention to the audio quality.

You will notice in the Van Helsing video that the volume is too high, there is too much bass and border line nasal. The Far Cry 3 video however has none of that, but still lacks presence. Which is something I'm still working on. -

After the sudden realization that I had quite some work ahead of me something positive happened: I reached out to a fellow LPer (YouTube user) via private message and within a couple of hours I received a response. Not only that, the response was a detailed message with tips and tricks. I was flabbergasted by this helpful feedback as you only have to glimpse any comment section on YouTube and you will understand why my expectations were low. But OdinVodans was the LPer who restored my faith in humanity, so do make sure to check him out. He deserves it.

As for the tips and instructions OdinVodans gave me; I have yet to try them out and that strikes at the heart of this article. You are never done learning and improving when it comes to creating LP videos. I strive to raise the bar for myself when it comes to my content and this will be a process that is going to take me years to get good at. But I'm hoping that the interaction with my fellow LPers will be as positive as the first one and make the learning process go that much faster.

In closing I would like to mention a Facebook page that I will be keeping my eye on under the name The Lets Play Community. LPers go there and promote themselves and each other and give out advice. I'm hoping it will grow out into a healthy community where every member can benefit. So do make sure to check it out. For now, I want to thank you all for reading and I will see you... next time. Take care.

U.A.

U.A. and the Time Machine

Hello everyone,

Recently I have been playing a lot of old RPG's like Dragon Age: Origins and Jade Empire. I enjoyed playing them so much that I wanted to record my playthrough and make an entire Let's Play series out of it. That is why I have decided to create a section called UncivilAquarius and the Time Machine. This will consist of me taking old RPG's like the ones mentioned above and playing through them. I want to emphasize that I will be taking my time with these games, so if you enjoy these kinds of slow paced games with good story and dialogue then you're in for a treat.

You might wonder why I'm picking these old games and playing them and that's where I have to lay an inconvenient truth on you. I have played them close to their launch date, but stopped playing them about an hour in because I lost interest. And yes, I realize that is as close to blasphemy as it gets. But you can hopefully sympathize with me, because the games are slowpaced and take some time to get into. These kind of games need to grow on you and you eventually learn to appreciate them. That is where I am now and that's why I want to create a Let's Play series that focuses on the quality that good RPG's can bring to the game genre. So do look forward to long episodes with interesting story and dialogue mixed with all kinds of combat (depending on the game; for example Dragon Age: Origins versus The Witcher 2).

My intention is to take you, the viewer, with me as we journey with our characters through the different kind of stories. I will be focusing on story and the other characters who play a part in it. Crafting if present will be fully explored as will the game world. And don't worry if slow-paced Let's Plays are not your thing. I need diversity in my games like any other person so you will have plenty of other content to look forward to on my channel.

I intend to record and upload the first content in this series this week so do keep an eye out for it. To conclude, I hope you will have as much fun watching as I undoubtedly will have recording. Thank you all for reading and I will see you all ... next time. Take care.

U.A.

UPDATE:

I have created a Pilot for a possible series on Dragon Age: Origins. Do check it out and let me know if it's worth creating a Let's Play for this title.

U.A.'s opinion on ... The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Hello everyone,

Today I wanted to share my views with you on a game that you have no doubt heard of and maybe even played. It's the latest title in the Elder Scrolls series, namely The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I have put around 400 hours into the game, so the time seemed right to put some of my thoughts down on paper. I want to focus on Skyrim and it's fan created Mods and thereby differentiating this write up from the thousands of others out there, even though I realize that specific theme has undoubtedly been written about before.

I want to emphasize that the "U.A.'s opinion on ... " articles are not reviews, but merely me discussing different subjects that are on my mind. This gives me the freedom to skip certain requirements you would have for a review like in this case summarizing the game's basics like story and mechanics.

Skyrim is a prime example of a sandbox game (feel free to argue with me on this) as you can do almost anything you want, how you want to do it and be 400 hours in like me and still have not finished playing. Although I have to say I'm probably on my 50th character and I'd still be lowballing it. I keep restarting the game with the perfect idea of how I'm going to build my character, but a few hours later I'm back at the starting point with yet another enthusiastic idea. I think that is a sign of a great game; it seems like you could play the game forever. However sometimes it does feel like I'm never making any progress, but that is my own fault for not sticking with one character. It has been around 2,5 years since Skyrim was launched and in that stretch of time I have put in around 400 hours. I think this really speaks for the longetivity of the game which is definately a selling point of Skyrim; I keep going back to the game with fresh ideas and goals.

Since it's launch 3 DLC's have been released; Hearthfire, Dawnguard and Dragonborn. In all the time spent on Skyrim I have only finished the main storyline and not even touched the ones in Dawnguard and Dragonborn. I have not even built my own house yet! Which is something I definately want to do, but I never seem to get to it. Every time my mind wanders to the subject of Skyrim I tell myself: "I'm going to sit down this weekend and really get to it. Finish the storylines and get that house you wanted". But when I do get ingame it takes less than 10 minutes for me to have totally forgotten about my intention. Although this might be telling you more about me then about Skyrim.

You can imagine that, after all that time spent in Skyrim, certain things started to bug me. Like the fact that, while being in a conversation with an NPC, your character would not even face the person they were talking to and just stare into the distance. I'm a big fan (and nitpick) of immersion and roleplaying so this really annoyed me along with other things like great swords 'floating' on your back because of the lack of a scabbard (solved with the "Greatsword sheaths and scabbards" Mod).

I started with small adjustments through Mods to solve the things that negated my immersion, but it didn't take long for me to get hooked on adding Mods. I had to put in a lot of effort because not all Mods are compatible and using the wrong combinations could crash the game. Imagine having 100 Mods and the game crashing because a couple of them are incompatible... puzzle time indeed. So yes, I did have to reinstall Skyrim a couple of times before I got the right combination of Mods. I ended up with 114 of them and the result was a world you can see in my The Elder Scrolls V: The Skyrim Experiment series: as realistic as you can possible get, because I have to eat, drink and sleep. Keep myself warm and prevent myself from freezing to death. The food can even spoil and drinking river water can give you diseases (so get your water from a fountain or buy it in an inn). I did use a Mod to slow down time to 25% of the normal game speed to give myself the time to deal with all these new challenges.

Some people might find the realistic approach I took unappealing and I can certainly imagine that. But what I´m trying to show people unfamiliar with the Mods is that you can change the vanilla Skyrim world to anything you would like to see. There are so many changes available and the best part is that it is all user created via the Creation Kit. So if you can think of it then it´s out there.
To give you an example: while reading the A Song of Ice and Fire serie I desperately wanted to see my Skyrim world changed into the world of Westeros and voila! a Game of Thrones Adaptation was created by Kualan. Not only will you be fighting Others but you can even ride your mount and visit the Wall. Guards will no longer walk around in Empire outfits, but will be wearing armor with the colors of House Lannister. And you will no longer be accompanied by Ralof when you start the game, but by Ser Rodrik (with his own appearance of course).

 Meet Stannis Baratheon and Lady Melisandre.

Describing this specific overhaul is nothing but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Just perform a Google search for Skyrim and Nexus Mods (and Steam Workshop) and prepare to be overwhelmed. The official statistics on Nexus Mods tell us that there are 31,317 files and 315.89 million downloads for Skyrim alone. This means that aside from the official content created by Bethesda Softworks the additional content is next to infinite thanks to fans all around the globe. And it's not just content that is created; there are also Mods being released by fans that change (I like to think 'perfect') the pillars of the game like the textures, the lighting, the combat mechanics and even the weather.

In closing I would like to suggest that, if you're new to Skyrim, you do play the game at first without any mods. Mainly because you will appreciate the Mods all the more once you are familiar with the vanilla game. You will see what's so great about the game, but also come to the realization that there are minor flaws which Mods are the solution to. Using Mods can't hurt since you can always reinstall. So my recommendation would be to go nuts on the Modding; you never know with what kind of greatness you end up with.

Thank you for reading and I'll see you... next time.

U.A.


The Skyrim Experiment Complete Mod List

The Elder Scrolls V: The Skyrim Experiment playlist

U.A.'s review of ... the Samsung Galaxy S2

Hello everyone,

I have been using the Samsung Galaxy S2 since April of 2012 and thought it would be good to share my experience. I realize the S5 is on it's way, but aside from the S2 I'm hoping to give an insight into the Galaxy as a serie as well. Also, because of the previously mentioned reason the S2 might drop in price even more than it already has over the last 2 years. Therefor making it an attractive phone for people who want to upgrade to a smart phone without having to make a big investment. For these main reasons I believe a review of the S2 still has benefit for other people.

Performance:

The phone has enough memory to process anything you're doing at an amazing speed. Having multiple tasks running should slower the system down, but to this date I have never noticed anything of the sort. I also like to watch movies on the phone and never had so much as a hick up while playing. An even stronger argument to support the stability of this phone is the fact that I had my phone running for 6 months straight without so much as a reboot. I did not notice any decrease in performance and the only reason I choose to restart was because the lockpad was bugging out and not displaying the 'key maze' properly anymore.

The S2 as a media device:
This is where the Galaxy really shines. I use the phone daily to watch things on YouTube, watch my TV shows, movies and listen to music. Needless to say the phone has a lot to live up to when it's being used that many hours a day. The sizable display of 480 x 800 pixels is perfect when it comes to watching your shows during work breaks as I do and is even acceptable if you want to watch a movie while traveling a long distance.

Vacations are something everyone goes on and forms the perfect challenge for a phone. I was able to put the S2 to the test on my vacation. If you're anything like me you'll dread the days without access to your shows, movies and of course a 24/7 internet connection. I happened to go on vacation to Portugal while living in The Netherlands. This ment being far away from home with no reliable source of internet nor access to my shows or movies. I had 16 GB of space on my SD card and 16 GB of internal space available and I managed to cram it chock full of Smallville, Lee Evans and Eddie Izzard (aside from my 5 GB of music which is my default setting for any phone I use, hehe). I ended up having to charge my phone every day, which is not unusual for any kind of smart phone, but I did get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

The negative:
Nothing can truly be 100% positive or amazing. Anything in life has a downside and the S2 doesn't deviate from that format. I do have to admit it's a small point of criticism, but I didn't want to leave it out.

When you search the internet for most experienced problems with an S2 you will eventually end up with a problem related to the USB port. I've had such a problem as well; my S2 wouldn't connect to my PC via USB anymore. Windows (any version) would say it didn't recognize the device and just plain ignore it. This resulted in me not being able to move music and videos around, not even with Samsung Kies. I ended up submitting a support ticket on the Samsung website (which I normally stay clear of, because you end up with automated responses anyway) out of sheer desperation. Samsung (or rather their tech support) did not fail to live up to my low expectations as I got the reply to try it with Samsung Kies (even though I had written them that I had already tried that) and gave me the advice to visit one of their shops to ask for help.

In the end I used a different USB cable to see what would happen and voila! The problem was somehow solved. To this day I have no clue why my old USB cable suddenly gave out (as it still seems to charge and the connection isn't unstable at all), but all I know I can now access my phone again. And that is all that matters.

To support the above I have to mention that my girlfriend had to return her S2 to the store for repairs 3 weeks after purchase. Those problems were USB related like with mine, but in her case the phone would not even charge. I believe the repairform said the USB port was deformed or shorted out even though she did nothing strange to it. Although the latter must be the most used sentence by any customer ever.

Conclusion:
I did make sure to check the reviews on the later Galaxy models, the S3 and S4. I also happen to have family who use those models and their experience has been nothing but positive so far. So if you're looking for a reliable phone that is affordable and gives you plenty of options, then the Samsung Galaxy S2 is an option you definately want to keep in mind. The Galaxy as a series actually sells itself because most of the user experiences are so positive (comparable to the iPhone). I have grown very fond of my Galaxy and needless to say I will be staying with the series when my phone subscription ends in April of 2014. I intend to upgrade to the latest Galaxy model available at that time.

Specifications:

Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II, released in April of 2011.

Size:
125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm (4.93 x 2.60 x 0.33 in)
Display: 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches

Weight:
116 g

Memory:
Card slot: microSD, up to 32 GB
Internal: 16/32 GB storage, 1 GB RAM

Camera:
8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash

Video:
Yes, 1080p@30fps

For the full feature list check out:
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9100_galaxy_s_ii-3621.php

U.A.