Pop Culture Journalism Class Blog

By: Anthony Jamison

As an avid gamer, I have played almost every sports franchise ever created. There have been few games that have captured the spirit of their respective sport, but none have done so diligently as MLB: The Show franchise. Without a shadow of doubt, MLB: The Show is the only baseball franchise to year after year hit a home run with each installment. And MLB 12: The Show raised the bar even higher.

If you wanted to reenact Brad Pitt’s “Moneyball” role as Oakland A’s General Manager, Billie Bean, without all the stress of actually being a real life MLB General Manager, here is your opportunity. You have total control of everything — from trading superstars, hiring coaches, to changing the price of hot dogs.

In addition to concession-control, you can also have the ability to give a Michael Bay visual style presentation, minus all of the explosions.  For instance, if you play at Yankees Stadium in New York, each game there starts off with a camera shot of Monument Park (open-air museum in Yankees Stadium, honoring Yankee greats). Every time a Yankee pitcher strikes out someone in the game, you hear the Yankee’s signature strike out music.

Little features like that make MLB 12: The Show unbelievable. There have been plenty of times where people have walked into my living room thinking I was watching an actual baseball game on TV.

If you want to experience the trinity of being the owner, coach, and player then I suggest you go out and snatch this game up right away.

BY DONOVAN HALL

“Final Fantasy XIII-2” has finally dropped and gamers everywhere finally have a reason to give praise to the role playing game powerhouse, Final Fantasy, once again.
After “Final Fantasy XIII” was released in 2010 fans of the popular series began losing hope that the games would stay true to their original game play. The series are known for their grand and elaborate worlds where players are able to explore freely and make decisions that control their destiny.
However, “Final Fantasy XIII” was the complete opposite. Despite the breathtaking graphics, amazing movie like cut scenes and a likable story, the game was rather boring. It was very linear and riddled with cut scenes. The structure of the game gave it the feeling of an animated movie that the watcher had no control over.
The game play went sort of like this: You run down a long, but pretty, hallway until you get

to a cut scene. This triggers a boss fight of some sort. After you’ve defeated that boss there is another cut scene, which the led to more running. Not very “Final Fantasy” at all.
The game did receive positive feedback, but it was mainly trashed because of the closed ended world and the linear story. Long time fans of the series were also disappointed. Andrew Littleton, a senior studying Economics, has been playing the games since he was a kid.
“I felt like I had absolutely no control over the game or my characters. It was like playing a really pretty but terribly boring movie that I made no decisions in,” Littleton said.
So when the sequel was released, fans began to wonder; will it be sweet redemption or another piece of beautiful looking crap? Thankfully for fans the game came out smelling as beautiful as it looked.
The game play is very reminiscent of the older games in the series. With more freedom to explore the world and make critical decisions, it seems that the fate of the characters have been placed back in the rightful hands of the game player. The game is much more open ended than the last one, bringing back the element that made this series so popular.

“Final Fantasy XIII-2” also features the amazing cinematography and breathtaking visuals that players loved in the prequel. Combining these factors with a newly developed fighting system, an even more amazing story and the beloved ability to choose what you want to do make this game quite the success. In a way, the sequel is everything that the prequel should have been.
It seems the games makers really took all of the feedback to heart, and in return, have produced a sequel that is worthy of bringing this series back to its former glory.