(Just to continue my post earlier - I took a photo of my watch.)
Yes, I'm aware my watch is old, the colour is peeling, the strap isn't the original strap, and it's dirty. But hey - it's my watch, and it's been with me a long time.
Waking Up On Time
Despite this, my timezone is still GMT+8. (For those who don't know, Melbourne is now GMT + 10 plus another hour for DST - that means I'm 3 hours off.)
T_T
Keeping Tabs on Travelling
These are my two latest used Metcards. If you don't already know, the prepurchasable tickets in Melbourne are called Metcards.
On the left is a 10 X 2-hour Metcard, and on the right is a 5 x Weekend Daily Metcard.
So - what does this tell you about me and my travelling?
The first most obvious thing - is that I (being the law-abiding, rule following person that I am) am not a fare evader. I pay when I get on - and get my money's worth travelling about the city.
The next thing you notice is there's a lot of 3:00am expiry times. This is because if you validate a 2-hour ticket after 6:00pm - the ticket is valid all the way until 3:00am. So - if you're counting, that's 9 hours of travel on a 2-hour ticket. That means I travel a lot more at night to maximize my travel time. There are caveats though - trains, trams and buses run at lower frequencies at these times (at best, they slow down after 8pm instead of immediately at 6 or 7.)
So what is there to do after 3:00am? I do a lot of things, like carry cartons of Coke home, go to Crown Casino for food, travel to suburbs far away for food... and the list goes on. Most recently, I had to go to the city to have a chat with potential employers, as well as fellow students that may in the future become my colleagues.
As for the others - there's always plenty of other random reasons, maybe I needed to travel a long way to a certain embassy, I was tramming down for some a huge sushi+sashimi lunch at Sushi Ten, or I just wanted to go shopping in the afternoon and planned to cart back loads of heavy groceries before heading back for home.
Weekend Daily passes are an awesome way to save money - a single use will last you the whole day - and since now it works on both Saturdays and Sundays - you can actually go to some places in Zone 2 which closed on Sunday that you couldn't go on a Sunday Saver for cheap.
It's fun to look back at these multiple use tickets - it's like a small log of your travels, your life and plenty of other funny things you do while in uni!
(Note - you might notice I am now posting larger versions of some photos now. Hehehe. As for why, let's just say - because it's something I couldn't do until recently.)
Trying to Get into Honours Year
Break is over, and I'm trying my hardest to be ready for the semester finals I always suck at so that I can get into Honours year. As of such, posts will be rare for the next few months. (Or to put it in cfgt's terms, posts will be whenever I want.)
The Value of a Video Game: Part 2
Now that the tangible is out of the way, let's talk about the game.So what value is there in the game? Since there is so much variety in games nowadays, let's look at the value of three possible portions of a game: single player, local multiplayer and internet multiplayer - and extreme examples of each. 1. Single Player
A lot of good games are single player oriented or have a solid single player element. Without them, a lot of games would get nowhere. It would take too much time to go through everything - so I'm just gonna talk about what I like in single player.
First, there's the story. Some single player games, such as puzzle games like Bejeweled, Lumines and Peggle, are completely lacking in single player storyline. Most of them, however, do - Grand Theft Auto IV, Bioshock, Portal, Tales of Vesperia, and the list goes on. A lot of first person shooters and RPGs are filled with a good story to keep you playing. For some gamers, this is about the only reason to play a video game - a good story.
After the storyline, we have the gameplay - the central element of the game. You can have an excellent story, great graphics, but it doesn't matter if the gameplay just plain annoys you. For turn based RPGs, this usually entails plenty of menus, decision making and strategy. For action games, this usually entails mashing buttons until the enemies drop dead where they stand (while not dropping dead yourself). For platformers, well, there's a lot of jumping. :P
Of course - there's replay value. Some games have insane replay value - racing games are a good example. It's easy to replay most of the game multiple times - and you're expected to do so most of the time. Most other games don't have quite so much - action games tend to extend replay time by unlocking more difficulty levels to keep challenging the player, RPGs on the other hand try to push sidequests and the occasional New Game Plus. While some would claim otherwise, I think FPSes have little replay value in the single player department. Real time strategy would depend on the player and the game. Some people might see the joy in playing through Dawn of War: Soulstorm's campaign with every race, while most people just play it once and go back to multiplayer after that.
Then there is the rather ambiguous and difficult to define satisfaction from completing the game. This satisfaction increased the longer and more difficult the game is - seeing the ending is only part of the utility gained from finishing a video game. There is also the sense of achievement and euphoria - rewards of the past 5 to 60 hours of gameplay.
- to be continued -
Note: This was meant to be longer and include the multiplayer portions, but I've decided to push those to Part 3 in favour of getting Part 2 out to begin with.