Feb 27

Learning on the job, photography edition

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Williams High midfielder Carina Navarro (21) kicks the ball out of bounds in front of Colusa High forward Samantha Espindola (1) during the RedHawks 3-2 victory Saturday in the Northern Section Division III championship game.

 

I covered the Northern Section Division III girls soccer championship game between host Colusa High and visiting Williams High on Saturday. Last year the same two teams played in the section championship game and it was one of the first assignments I had after starting work at Tri-County Newspapers. The game on Saturday was the third championship game in the three years between the teams and the RedHawks won each game in the trilogy. The previous two meetings were decided by a penalty shootout but this year the Colusa rallied from a 1-0 halftime deficit with three second-half goals to win in regulation 3-2.

Working at a small newspaper means I am my own reporter and photographer. I put myself as close to the action as I can get so I can take photos, notes and accurate statistics. The paper publishes twice a week so I don’t have to worry about turning around a story in 30 minutes on deadline but sometimes I feel like my photography and note taking suffers.

The sun was playing peek-a-boo with the light cloud cover all game which made me work extra hard with my camera settings. I was pleasantly surprised by how well so many of the my photos turned out and I was able to put a large gallery online.

Last week was my one year anniversary at Tri-County Newspapers and essentially doubled as my year one anniversary taking photos. Before I took this job my experience with photography was limited. I shot video for about two years for my previous job at The Record in Stockton but I’d never used a DSLR before. I use a hand-me-down Nikon D200 with a beat up old Nikon 180mm f/2.8 ED lens for outdoor sports. My second lens, which I use for indoor sports is a second-hand Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 DX.

I’m still a noob but I feel like I learn something new almost every time I take the camera out. On Saturday, I posted myself at the southwest corner of the field and neglected to move around until late in the second half. My thinking at the time was to stay at one end of the field because both teams are in our coverage area so I’d get an equal number of shots for both teams on offense and defense. When I started going through my photos I realized I didn’t have many photos of the forwards on the right side of the field because I didn’t switch sides. I chose my position because the sun was behind me but in retrospect I probably should have moved around a bit more. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue because only one or two photos would be used in the paper but when putting up a photo gallery it’s nice to have some variety.

Lately I’ve been trying to improve my photo editing skills. I use Photoshop CS3 to adjust levels and do minor color correction. I’m not completely confident I’m doing everything properly but I’m gradually getting better as I read up on how to do things and gain more experience. I don’t have anyone at work with photography skills who I can learn from so I’m pretty much self-taught which is how I learned to build websites, and shoot and edit video.

During the past year I’ve come to enjoy taking photos more than any aspect of my job. I still enjoy writing and I love video — although I don’t have much in the way of video equipment anymore — but photography, especially sports photography, is what I look forward to the most when I head off to work.

 

Feb 10

House cleaning post No. 235,124,616

It’s been a while since I refreshed the look of my website, or added anything new to it. My resume needs updating, I have a bunch of work to add to my portfolio and I have a few projects I want to begin working on here on this site. There’s a good chance I’ll end up breaking WordPress while I get started working on the facelift so check back in a few days if everything looks like crap.

Here’s a sample of what I’m working on at the moment.

Maxwell High guard Jacob Newman (20) lets go of a floater over teammate Tyler Swanson (32), and Hayfork High's Donald Ferguson (23) and Zak Munk (15) during the Panthers' 87-65 win Feb. 18 in Maxwell.

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Photo by Kirk Barron

Jan 06

Yo, these games were pretty rad (part three)

This rounds out the 2011 releases which I played through to completion or, in some cases, more than 50 hours. I wasn’t able to put together a top 10 list – I only played enough of nine new games in 2011 – but this was a good year to be a video game fan. I bought Battlefield 3, Gears of War 3 and Dead Space 2 this year and haven’t had a chance to spend more than an hour or two in any of them. I also need to play Saints Row: The Third, Batman: Arkham City and all the other games everyone is raving about.

I wrote about the first three games on Tuesday and followed up with three more yesterday and here are the final three.

Dirt 3

Fuck gymkhana.

I kind of wanted to leave it at that but, other than gymkhana, I dug Dirt 3. I found myself playing the trailblazer races the most. I like the long meandering tracks. The Nordschleife of Nürburgring is probably my favorite race track to drive in games – I’ve never driven the real thing but some day I’d like to – and the trailblazer races have that same kind of feel but on a dirt road.

I don’t mind that gymkhana is in the game but I don’t like that its mashed into the single player part. Every gymkhana event I’ve played I play as little as possible. I want to race and I kind of resent that I have to do even one gymkhana event, it just isn’t fun. If you disagree with me you can go suffocate yourself in a Monster Energy Drink branded pillow. I’m kidding, but gymkhana does suck.

Dirt 3 is at its best when you’re hauling balls down the dirt roads around the long version of the Michigan track. The inside the car view is a must for this game if only for driving through puddles. This game isn’t Forza 4 when it comes to realism but it’s still realistic feeling enough even though sometimes the car does feel like it’s locking into an imaginary grove even with all the assists turned off.

It’s been a while since I played two racing games in the same year. Before this year the newest racing game I have is Forza 2. Before that it was probably a Gran Turismo 2.

I have a few minor quibbles about the game. It pisses me off that if I don’t do as well as I’d like and hit restart after finishing a race I don’t get experience but if I hit continue to return to the menu I get the experience. All that does is makes me waste time in loading screens and menus before reselecting the event and racing again. I probably shouldn’t pick on Dirt 3, I think Forza 4 does the same thing so maybe they can’t figure out a way to do it. Whatever the reason, it’s annoying.

Did I mention the music and menus are terrible? Now that I really think about it, and yes I’m writing this stream of consciousness-style because I really am just thinking about this, the only thing I like about this game is the actual racing. I wish Codemasters would tone down the Mountain Dew-infused extreme sports schtick for this game.

Portal 2

I did the same thing with Portal 2 that I did with the original. I played it once, set it down and have no desire to touch it again. The game is perfectly enjoyable because it is challenging and makes you feel clever. The story is a great follow up to the first and garners a fair share of belly-jigglers along the way. Maybe the reason I don’t want to play the Portal games again is I know I’ll feel stupid when I get to a puzzle I already solved but can’t remember the solution.

Out of all the games I played this year this is the hardest one to write about because I don’t share the same love for it as I probably should. I like it well enough but it’s not the type of game I normally fall in love with. I really enjoyed the co-op but one time was enough for me.

I enjoyed the subterranean sections of the game and thought the Wheatley wackiness was well done. The gels were fun to play with. Who doesn’t like to speed off a ramp, bounce off a wall and fly through a hole? The controls felt like Portal and it’s still fun to endlessly free-fall.

Renegade Ops

I played through Renegade Ops twice. Once because I was having fun and it seemed like a moderately humorous game I could play with my friends and then a second time when during the very last part of the very last mission of my first play-through the game froze and destroyed the save.

Playing through a second time wasn’t too bad because the game is actually a challenging, well-designed dual joystick shooter with an over the top sense of humor. The first level got a little old and not all of the characters were worth playing but my friend and I powered through.

As I think back about Renegade Ops now, I can’t remember anything about it other than the mechanics of the shooting. I know there was that Inferno guy who was this game’s Makarov and there was a betrayal jammed in there somewhere but, other than the first few levels, I can’t remember what the hell I did in that game.

The fact that I remember liking the game a lot and can’t remember much about it baffles me. I only bought this game because of the Just Cause 2 connection and it fulfilled its end of the purchase. I’m happy with spending the money on it even if it was forgettable. Some day I might even hop back into it if the mood strikes.

Jan 05

Yo, these games were pretty rad (part two)

Yesterday I wrote about three of the games I played in 2011. Today I’ll cover Skyrim, Trenched and Rage. Next on my list of games to write about are Portal 2, Dirt 3 and Renegade Ops.

Skyrim

Morrowind came out the summer after I graduate from high school. I finally had a computer that could play games and no parents to tell me to go to bed at a reasonable hour. It was the first game of its kind that I tried to get into. Up until that point my role playing game experience was limited to console Japanese RPGs. I remember thinking I was going to stay up all night for a week playing this game I’d heard so much about but Morrowind didn’t hook me like I thought it would, I enjoyed it but at some point I killed somebody who was supposed to give me a quest and I couldn’t figure out where to go next. It didn’t help that I went to Chico State and my innocent young eyes were drawn to the fairer sex more than a computer game.

When Oblivion came out I couldn’t play it on my computer, which at this point was four years old and not up to the challenge, and I was in the middle of finishing up two degrees and working a job and an internship at the same time. I tried playing Oblivion on my brother’s Xbox during my summer break but only managed to play a few hours.

Despite my previous failures to get into the Elder Scrolls series Skryim piqued my interested for one reason. Dragons. I love dragons and if Bethesda allowed me to marry one in-game I would. What’s not to love about giant, demonic, fire-spouting (or frost-flinging) dinosaurs flying all over the place? Skryim turned out to be everything I wanted in a fantasy game and after spending 50 hours in the game I don’t see my time in Tamriel ending anytime soon. Consider me a convert.

I spent the first 40 hours of my time in the game running around doing random side quests and playing around with the crafting system. I avoided most of the big faction quests because my character, Sigmünd, was a Nord dragon-puncher mage who has little patience for dickheads. Every guild or faction I came across seemed like it was full of jerks so I went around by myself killing bad dudes. Eventually I finished the main quest, which didn’t take very long, and then the holidays happened and I haven’t had a chance to spend much time in any video games.

Despite not touching Skyrim in almost two weeks I find myself daydreaming about what skill tree I want to focus on next. I think I’m going to go with a weapon now because using my fists is getting in the way of leveling my character up more. Maybe I’ll restart my armor fabrication and enchanting business but this time go down the alchemy rabbit hole to create those super-enchantments.

The worst thing about this game is I never know what I want to do next and whatever I decide I want to do usually never gets done. I never thought I had attention deficit disorder but Skyrim makes me think I should get checked out. I started writing things down that I wanted to come back to and explore but I stopped doing that after the list exceeded the length of the page.

Trenched (Iron Brigade)

The single player in this game is alright. The multiplayer is awesome. It’s one of the best four-player co-op games I’ve played. I haven’t picked it back up since the Iron Brigade update came out but I still intend to once I play through the pile of newer games sitting in front of my television.

Trenched is the first downloadable game on Xbox Live to catch my attention like a retail game. I know there were some great games before – Super Meat Boy springs to mind – but none made me want to dump as many hours as I did into Trenched.

It’s the first game in years that made me put on a headset and actually interact with the strangers on my team. The Volcano level never got tiresome to me because it can be played so many different ways. Sometimes I’d run around upgrading everyone’s turrets, sometimes I’d go all artillery cannons. At some point it became less about winning and losing and more about finding one or two people to play with for a few hours. It was even fun when a new player entered a game frustrated at not being able to get the Medal of Honor achievement and helping them earn it while showing them a few tricks.

I think I have every wave of the Volcano mission memorized and I had every weapon and trench unlocked before the update. Double Fine did a great job of making all the different chassis fun to play. I even had fun playing a support class which is rare for me.

The art style is worth mentioning too. The cartoony look and manly, manly men added whimsy to the ridiculous plot. It’s too bad the Iron Brigade update came out when it did because too many newer games have my time locked away. I really want to play the new survival mode.

Rage

Rage goes down as my biggest disappointment of 2011.

The characters and environments manage to look colorful and bright without seeming out of place in the post-apocalyptic world. The shooting feels right and the weapons system reminds me of Bioshock because of the different ammo types – which is a good thing.

Even the story has a lot of potential until about five hours in when the lack of depth starts to show through the gorgeous outer shell. Even without a great story I was having fun with the game until I got to the second disc and not only did the story disappear but the world began to feel claustrophobic.

I spent a lot of time camping when I was little and one summer we discovered we could go fishing for squirrels by tying a peanut to the fishing line and casting near one of those furry buggers. They’d snatch it and run until you flipped the bail, jerking the peanut from their mouth. Eventually we’d feel bad (but not too bad, we didn’t hurt any squirrels) and let them have the peanut because they earned it.

Rage does the same thing only at the end there’s no damn peanut. Just a bunch of enemies you know nothing about and an awesome weapon you get to use for one lousy, unsatisfying mission before the story just ends. The different ammo types, weapons and gadgets you can craft suggest there are multiple ways to kill enemies but it never played out that way for me. I ended up using the same three or four weapons most of the game – perhaps because I stopped caring and just wanted to finish. I kept waiting for something cool to happen but all I got was a bunch of snazzy looking people telling me to go fetch crap out of bandit hideouts.

I’m actually looking forward to a sequel because what little plot there was did set up a foundation for what could be a really cool story. The problem is I spent $60 and 20 hours playing what is basically a prologue.

Somebody should tell id Software nobody likes a tease.

Jan 04

Yo, these games were pretty rad (part one)

I don’t have a top 10 list of games this year – mostly because I didn’t get a chance to play every game I wanted to – but I do want to organize my thoughts and opinions and the best way to do that is to write them down.

Today I’ll write about Bastion, Forza 4 and Modern Warfare 3. Tomorrow I’ll write about Skryim, Trenched and Rage. Thursday I’ll close out with Portal 2, Renegade Ops and Dirt 3. I might write up another blog post after that with some thoughts on Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3 and Dead Space 2, three games I own but haven’t had a chance to finish yet.

So here is part one of my ruminations about the games I played in 2011.

Bastion

I’m really glad I heard about Bastion. Most of my friends don’t follow video games as closely as I do and Bastion never appeared on their radar. On the surface it’s difficult to explain what makes this game so great, even watching gameplay videos before release didn’t do the game justice. I bought Bastion because I have a sense of obligation to support companies I feel are doing things the right way even if I’m not particularly interested in the product. Boy-howdy am I glad I did.

I lost track of how many times I got goosebumps playing this game. It’s been a few months since I last visited the Bastion and the thing that stands out in my mind is the tone of the game. It’s melancholy and beautiful. There aren’t many games that take that tone and none that I know of which capture it so powerfully.

When Bastion first came out on the Xbox 360 my little brother, who is 11 years younger than me, was spending the week at my house. He ended up playing the game three or four times during his stay and I watched him play it for hours and hours. Despite knowing exactly what went on in the game, when I finally sat down and played it through on my own I was blown away. I didn’t anticipate how much fun the actual game was.

If everything sucked about Bastion except the story it would still be worth buying. If everything sucked except the gameplay it would still be worth buying. Hell, even if the story and gameplay sucked the incredible art in the game is worth paying for. Oh, one more thing, if Bastion was a static screen with just the music playing I’d still buy it.

I’m sure the game has flaws but I can’t remember any.

I haven’t had a chance to jump back into Bastion to check out the Stranger’s Dream DLC because I know if I do I’ll just do a new game plus and I don’t have the time yet.

I wish Supergiant Games released a $150 legendary edition of the game with more art, music and love because I’d gladly pay it.

Forza 4

I like sports games and racing games. I don’t buy them very often, maybe one or two a year, but this year Forza 4 was the game that grabbed my attention. The last Forza game I played was Forza 2, which I got for free at some point, so the arguments about how similar the games are don’t matter to me so much. I definitely got my value for this game.

When it comes to racing games I prefer the simulation style. I don’t need a story or any fancy gimmicks, I like the pure gameplay of racing. Dodging oncoming traffic or using boosts is fine but I’m the kind of guy who turns off most assists and uses the inside car view.

There was one moment in the game that made me realize why I like this game so much. I was driving my 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona HEMI on the Fujimi Kaido track and had a flashback to driving in the mountains of Northern California. For a few moments I forgot I was in a game. I’ve spent a lot of time driving on winding mountain roads to go camping and snowboarding in my life and taking corner after corner, changing elevation and pulling off a flawless pass was a driving fantasy come true.

My older brother and I built two gaming chairs out of the front seats of his dead 1971 VW Bug during my Christmas vacation and that experience, combined with how many hours I’ve sunk into driving in circles lately, has me seriously considering buying a steering wheel and making a racing rig. It’s too bad those wheels cost so much.

Modern Warfare 3

I get it, it’s not cool to like Modern Warfare 3 unless you’re a bro or 12-year-old racist yet somehow I still enjoy the hell out of this game.

I will concede that the single player isn’t worth $60 so anyone who doesn’t plan on spending some time in multiplayer or co-op shouldn’t bother paying full price for this game. But to denigrate this game for its lack of a strong single player is like criticizing a Civilization for not having a good story. While correct, it’s irrelevant.

For some reason I feel compelled to defend this game because I’ve played more of it than I did the first two Modern Warfare games and I didn’t play Black Ops. I didn’t reach the level cap in the first one, I prestige once in the second and I hit level 80 fairly quickly in this edition.

The weapons have been tweaked significantly, the maps are smaller and better designed, and the changes to load-out options are great. The fundamental gameplay is pretty much the same but the strategy and how you play the game is surprisingly different because of the subtle changes.

MW3 is more paintball than war sim but that’s why I prefer it to Battlefield 3. Eventually I’d like to spend more time with BF3 but it’s much more of a time commitment. I like being able to hop online and play two or three games in a half hour and then jump off. It’s perfect for a quick gaming session before work or while waiting for something. I don’t even mind that I’m playing with some obnoxious people because I never hear them. Every online community is full of idiots and trolls but there are easy ways to mitigate their impact on the game. The Modern Warfare series suffers no worse than anywhere else people can hide their identity.

I didn’t mind the single player game either. I played through it once on veteran and had fun. It is mostly a combat puzzle where the goal is to find the right series of cover to advance past endlessly re-spawning waves. Not great, but I’ve played worse. I think this game was designed to be played on veteran because the vehicle sequences always seemed to appear just when the ground fighting was getting tedious. I can see where it might seem like a lot if you were blasting through the levels no problem but having a respite from the psychic, one-shot snipers kept me going.

Jun 21

My first television writing gig

Last night I got a call from my editor telling me he saw one of my stories read nearly word-for-word on the 6 p.m. KHSL Action News 12 broadcast. It’s not uncommon for televisions to grep items from newspapers but usually they at least add a little television flair to it or reword it so it’s not an outright quote.

Here’s my story, and here’s the video from the CBS affiliate’s website.

Just in case that video disappears for whatever reason, here’s a transcript of what the reporter Ross Field starts his segment off with.

“The accolades keep rolling in for Maxwell High graduates Steven Perry and Tyler Wells, this time the recognition coming from Sports Illustrated.

The Panther duo appears in the latest issue on page 26 in the “Faces in the Crowd” section.

“Faces in the Crowd” is a regular series in Sports Illustrated which highlights several amateur athletes from around the world who did something noteworthy.

Well, Wells won the section MVP and Perry was the subject of several national sports articles after throwing 4 consecutive no hitters to tie a state record during the season.”

Field went on to touch on a few topics we already covered in the Sun-Herald about the records the two set and their friendship but at least they actually talked to Perry and Wells and the rest of the report wasn’t word for word.

I’ve worked at newspapers long enough to know this happens all the time. A few years back I shot a video in Stockton that a Sacramento television station ripped and ran without crediting me. I don’t remember which station did it, but The Record’s management contacted the station and worked something out with them.

I should probably start sending bills out to people who use my shit, which isn’t even that good, and are too lazy do write their own report. This wasn’t some crazy scoop, and it’s not like the video I took in Stockton where I was the only person to have that shot, it’s a run of the mill story that I wrote with a few phone calls in an hour or two. I’m lazy but I’m not so lazy I have to rip somebody else off without giving them credit.

Maybe it’s just the nature of the news game. Every reporter has several examples of when other outlets ripped them off. Most just pass it off as something that’s always happened and will never change. I don’t expect or necessarily want it to stop, it’s nice when something you create reaches a much wider audience but at least credit who you’re quoting.

For an industry with roots in keeping a transparent government, the media as a whole does a pretty shitty job of being transparent itself. It’s not just a television news thing. Give credit where credit is due and fess up when you fuck up. It’s pretty simple.

Oct 25

More about the football project

For the last few weeks I’ve spent most of my online time working on CorningUnionFootball.com so I’ve neglected my blog here.

The feedback on the football site is overwhelming. I began tracking statistics on the website using Google Analytics since Sept. 20 and as of Oct. 25 the site has 894 unique visitors and 4,247 page views.

To put that in perspective, Corning has 7,220 people and the high school has just under 1,000 students.

The Facebook page has 140 fans so far but I haven’t had much success on Twitter. I haven’t met a single person in Corning who has a Twitter account so I’m not too worried about that. I mostly use Twitter to post scores and my followers are newspaper reporters and the CIF and NSCIF official twitter pages.

Corning didn’t have DSL or cable internet access until 2004 so I’m not surprised Twitter hasn’t been very useful. A lot of the people I’ve talked to either don’t know what Twitter is or never use it. I’ve had some success with Facebook and that has a lot to do with the ubiquity of that site with young people. Everyone uses it.

The players, their parents and the school have embraced the website. Eder and I showed a trailer to his documentary and showed a brief commercial for the website at the school’s bonfire rally on Thursday. We had t-shirts and sweatshirts made with, “corningfootball.com” on the back so people in the stands can see the URL while we are on the sideline.

During the live blog from the game Friday I had 28 readers and 181 replays. The game was in Yreka, a three hour drive north of Corning, and I had parents and teachers who couldn’t make the trip following along.

One of the players on the team was injured in the first half and was down on the field, after being hit in the lower back by a helmet, for about 5 minutes. I posted about the injury during the live blog and his mother was following along and posted a comment immediately after I mentioned the injury. I was able to update her on her son’s injury (he will be very sore but he’s OK) during halftime and several other parents joined in the conversation.

Another thing I enjoy about the live blog is it helps me write the story after the game. I can go back and read it to help get the order of events correct and saves me a lot of time.

Every week the site’s readership has grown. I’m starting to get comments on a regular basis, both on the website and in person. Teachers and parents have stopped me after the game and at the store to thank me.

I have to say, this is probably the most rewarding project I’ve worked on even though I’m not getting paid and I’m covering my expenses out of my own pocket.

It’s a little different than doing something for a newspaper because I have more access to the team than most reporters. I’ve ridden the bus with the team to two of its games, which was fun because I was able to talk with the players and coach in a setting reporters almost never get to see.

When I get a new job and move out of the area, I will definitely miss doing this.

Oct 06

Corning homecoming brings back memories

This week is Corning Union High School‘s football homecoming, the biggest event of the year in this town. There’s a huge build up with weeks of flower parties and a week of float building culminating with a parade on Friday and then the game. When I was in high school the football team was really good – from 1995 to 2002 Corning played in the section championship game seven times, winning three.

Last year Corning passed West Valley and Lassen in enrollment to become the 10th largest school in the section, which moved the Cardinals from Division II to Division I. Corning responded by going 8-3 and making the playoffs and this year the team is 4-1 and looks like it should make the playoffs for the second year in a row. With an enrollment of 1,002 in 2009, and the next smallest school in Division I being Oroville at 1,247, the Cardinals will have a hard time consistently beating schools like Shasta (1,648) and Foothill (1,484).

However, Corning’s coaches have always scheduled tough preseason games against larger schools because many of Corning’s traditional rivals are small schools such as Orland and Gridley from when the school’s enrollment was smaller and the Cardinals competed in the same league as those two teams. Corning has always compensated for playing those teams by scheduling schools such as Enterprise (1,340) and Pleasant Valley (1,978) in the preseason. Heck, Pleasant Valley had a quarterback who graduated in 2002, the same year I did, who went 0-4 against Corning. His name is Aaron Rodgers.

Times have changed a bit and its harder for Corning to consistently compete against those teams. It’s not impossible for a smaller school to be a section title contender in Division I, Lassen is one of the best teams in the section despite having an enrollment of 915. But now the Grizzlies get to steamroll Division II until the other medium size school powers; Sutter (706), Central Valley (926) and West Valley (907) catch up again.

After Corning played Shasta two weeks ago and lost 63-7, it’s obvious the Cardinals won’t be much of a factor in the Division I playoffs but winning the Northern Athletic League title is entirely within its reach. The NAL is full of equally matched teams. Central Valley (4-1), West Valley (3-2) and Corning (4-1) each have a great shot at winning the league and Yreka (3-2) and Anderson (2-3) aren’t exactly pushovers either.

Both Central Valley and West Valley beat Division I Enterprise (2-3), which is having a slightly down year but is always dangerous, and lost to very strong teams. Central Valley’s one loss was a 49-0 blowout to Lassen and West Valley lost 33-14 to Shasta and 13-0 to Fortuna out of the North Coast Section. Corning has beaten the worst three teams in Division I, Las Plumas, Red Bluff and Oroville, and lost to one of the best teams in Division I, Shasta. Just by looking at opponents its really hard to decipher who the favorite is going into league. All three teams have lost badly to very good teams and easily beaten very bad teams.

This brings me to homecoming. Corning hosts West Valley which should be a great game and will give a pretty good idea of how the league will go. The winner of this game should be the favorite to win league as long as injuries don’t bite. Corning played its last three games without two of its stars, running back/defensive back Cameron Nye and tight end/defensive end Tyler Price. Both were aiming to return for homecoming, though Nye will likely be playing with a cast protecting his left thumb and Price may be limited with his shoulder injury. The game should be close as quarterback Ryan Holland (434 rushing yards and 5 touchdowns) and running back J.D. Whited (481 rushing yards and 6 touchdowns) have played very well in expanded roles after the injuries. If Nye and Price can stay healthy Corning might just have the edge it needs to win league.

The Cardinals have been tough to run against but have struggled defending the pass. Orland and Oroville both have exploited Corning’s secondary for long touchdowns by passing to their fastest players. Neither West Valley nor Central Valley pass much but if those teams can get the ball in the air it could be trouble for the Cardinals. Nye should help with that if he is cleared to play by his doctor.

Tomorrow I will head out to practice and talk with a few of the players and coach John Studer and write up a full preview on www.corningunionfootball.com and then Friday I’ll be on the sideline doing another live blog like the one I did in Oroville. The Cover it Live app for the iPhone is awesome. It is going to change how the media covers high school sports. I was able to do a play-by-play while posting photos and video from the sideline.

It was easy, and the response from people who couldn’t make the trip but were able to follow the game live was encouraging. Friday is a home game but there are enough former players living out of the area that I think it will still do very well.

Sep 28

Halo: Reach – one more reason prequels suck

Let me rephrase that; One more reason why I don’t like prequels.

Halo: Reach is actually a very good game. It plays like the previous Halo games even with the addition of sprinting, jet packs and other load out options. But like most of the other Halo games, the story stumbles in places where it could be great.

The game looks amazing. So many crazy lighting effects and little details.

The appeal of Reach isn’t the suspense of what will happen to the planet. I’ve played through every Halo, even Halo Wars, so I knew the gist of what went down on Reach before I played the game. I haven’t read any of the books so I don’t know what else is added to the lore in those, but I knew Master Chief was the only Spartan to make it off the planet alive.

Obviously Bungie faced a tough challenge to come up with a compelling story when most players already knew the main characters can’t survive. It’s such common knowledge that I probably don’t need to put a spoiler warning on this review. Though, to be safe, some of what I am going to write about from here on out might count as minor spoilers.

The campaign on Legendary is tough, very tough.

I thought Bungie did a good job, for the most part, in creating a story that was engaging. But I was disappointed in a few things. The first and biggest thing that bothered me about Reach is the lack of an introduction to Master Chief (SPOILER? There isn’t a mention of him during the main story but there is an easter egg that shows him briefly near the end of the game). Here is a game that tells of the fall of Reach and launches you directly into the storyline of Halo: Combat Evolved yet there’s no mention of any Spartan getting off the planet alive. Well, there’s not really any mention of the Spartans in general. Just Noble Team and the shit they went through. I hoped the story would provide some back story about the Spartans and what they were doing on Reach. Instead, the game made it seem like the planet was basically just a research outpost and not much more.

Another small issue I had with the story was how some of the other members of Noble Team were killed off. Some made sense but others seemed like they ran out of ideas. For instance, one member of your team dies by getting shot through a hole in the roof by a sniper on a Phantom floating overhead – moments after an intense firefight where the same Spartan was shot in the head hundreds of times to no ill effect. It didn’t add anything to the story the way they died, it was just like they had come to a spot in the story where the writers felt somebody should die, so, bang, bullet to the head.

Even this Elite took more than one sniper bullet to the dome to kill.

I’m not sure if I’m confused because I hadn’t played the previous Halo games recently but this game raised a lot of questions. More questions than it answered. If Bungie was trying to get people to replay the series in chronological order, congrats, because I think I need to go back and do that to see if some of this stuff doesn’t make sense because I forgot parts of the story or if it doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t actually make sense.

Reach is another highly polished product from Bungie and I’m glad I bought it but, like Halo Wars, the story just misses me. I don’t mean to compare Reach’s story to the nonexistent story of Halo Wars, but I don’t think either provides much background to the story which is what I look for in a prequel. I wanted Wars to tell me about the first encounter with the Covenant, it didn’t. I wanted Reach to tell me how Master Chief was the only Spartan – the only member of an army of badass super soldiers – to escape that planet alive. Instead the story ignores everything that went on in the battle for Reach except what happened to this one small group of Spartans who, though they did play an important roll, were just a small part of a big war.

Never use a shotgun on an outdoor level, especially on Legendary.

I’ve had similar gripes about the previous Halo games. Often the story seems to only exist to get the player to the next area. Ultimately this is OK because, like the previous Halo games, each of those sections is damn fun to play.

Usually my first play-through of a game is on the Normal difficulty setting. I like playing the game and following the story without losing momentum when I get stuck on a particularly difficult section. I’ve beat the three main Halo games on Legendary but I always do so on my second play through. I’m glad I did that with Reach because Legendary is just as ridiculous, and rewarding, as in the past.

You know, like when out of nowhere a Banshee dives down from way up in the sky and splatter you.

You have to be a video game god to play Halo on Legendary alone and still follow the story. I can play on Legendary and get through most areas fairly easily but on every level there’s a section or two that increases the difficulty and it takes me 20 deaths to figure out a way through. Usually, by the time I’m done with that section I can’t remember where in the story I am.

The last Halo game I played online for any amount of time was Halo 2. I still haven’t popped into matchmaking yet and I’m not really sure if I’m going to. I played multiplayer a bit in the Beta but I found it frustrating. It seemed like everyone was using the jetpack and if I got close to them they’d just jetpack in the air and shoot me in the head while I pumped bullets futility into their feet. I don’t know if that’s still the case but as I get older and more apathetic about my gaming habits I find online play to be less fun. Taking the time to master the skills you need to not get destroyed every five seconds takes more time than I feel like investing.

It only took me about 6 hours to beat the game on Normal and I’m finding I can get through a level in about an hour on Legendary so I don’t know if I’d recommend buying this game if you only want to play through the campaign once. It might be better as a rental. However, there are enough extras such as Firefight, Matchmaking and Forge as well as the appeal of actually beating the game a second time on Legendary to make it worth buying if you’re a fan of the other Halo games.

I can be very cynical when it comes to critiquing games and movies so I still enjoyed Reach as much as the other games in the series.

Sep 24

Corning football game preview

Today I went over to the high school and talked to some of the players and the coach and wrote up a preview of tomorrow’s game. I won’t be able to go to the game because I’m going down to Stockton for a friend’s birthday party but Eder will be tweeting from the game and shooting video. I’ll probably take a break from the party to post an update on the game after it’s over. I haven’t showed Eder how to use the site yet so hopefully we’ll go over that next week so he can handle update duties if I’m out of town.

Shasta is pretty darn good so Corning will have to play very well to win. They have a shot but they can’t make as many mistakes as they have the first three games.

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