Gone Home Video Game Review

         

        Gone Home is an exploration game that tells the story of a family. It is first person style, and it revolves around one house. The character you play is Katie, who is coming home to an unfamiliar house after a yearlong trip to Europe. No one is home when you arrive, and you have to explore the house to learn what Katie missed while she was gone.

         Gone Home has a different game style compared to traditional games and it contains an unfamiliar story telling method, but it is just as intriguing. While playing you will often find yourself curious to find out more information about the family and excited to find the next clue. It allows the player to become more involved in the story compared to traditional video games where you are not bothered to read any text. When you are going from clue to clue, you find yourself completely immersed in the story and you cannot put the game down. The feeling it relates to is the way you feel when you are reading an enticing book. The story is very well thought out and believable. Through the mixture of old notes, letters and voice messages, the game gives you just the right amount of information to put the story together yourself. The simple graphics and sound, along with the limited character functions allows for a very smooth gameplay experience, where you are never thrown off task.

         The main focus of the story is on Katie’s sister Sam who seems to have the most interesting story of all. However, curiosity for the story of the other family members is not satisfied. They even introduce Katie’s grandfather near the end of the game, but limit the information on him to a mere two artifacts. It would’ve benefitted the overall experience if there were more spin-off stories about other characters. Furthermore, the story seemed very short and you often learn information at a quick rate. If the story were spread out more and extra spin-off stories were added, the overall experience would be much more satisfying.

         Overall, the game is a new way of telling a story, which proved to be very successful as I was interested during the whole game. I would definitely suggest that anyone who is interested in narrative check out this game, as it is a fresh compelling method of story telling. Also any gamer will want to check it out to get a different yet equally satisfying gaming experience.

A&P vs. Araby Comparison Paragraphs

A & P vs. Araby Comparison Paragraphs

Paragraph #1: What new idea or understanding did you encounter through the course of the discussion? What did you learn, or in what way did your perspective change as a result of the discussions?

            During the discussion there were some points that were brought up that opened my mind to more similes and hidden meanings in the two stories. I learned that both stories are driven off the main character’s inability to look beyond the surface of things. Something important  that the discussion brought to my attention, was the fact that both characters were blinded by the theory that obtaining materialistic goods, could bring them spiritualistic feelings. In some cases this may be a possibility, but the way the two boys in each story try to obtain their spiritualistic feelings, is essentially based off of immaturity. I was also able to relate the odd endings of each story to how the boys both mature, and how they realize the mistakes they made regarding their blindness. In conclusion, the discussion was able to spark my analyzing skills, and I was able to make more critical connections in both of the stories.

Paragraph #2: If you had to write an essay comparing Araby and A&P, what would be your specific focus or area of interest? On what grounds would you compare the stories? How would you contrast them?

            If I were to write an essay comparing the two stories A&P and Araby, I would focus specifically on how the characters want to achieve a spiritualistic feeling, and how materialistic goods relate to this feeling. In Araby, the girl’s, and the bizarre poster’s surface blinds the main character and he does not look past the surface. He thinks he can achieve a spiritualistic feeling of being with the girl, by getting her a materialistic good. In A&P Sammy wants the spiritualistic feeling of freedom, and the fact that he thinks he can obtain this by physically hanging out with the girls because he thinks they are attractive. He is blinded by the girl’s appearance and does not look beyond the surface. I would then contrast the ending of the stories talking about how both characters realize their mistakes caused by their blindness. The two characters also react differently to this realization.

Sample Essay

In the two stories A&P and Araby, the two characters want to achieve a spiritualistic feeling, and both characters are blinded by how materialistic goods relate to this feeling. In Araby, the main character wants to get a girl that he thinks is like an angel. In reality the girl is very ordinary and he is blinded by her physical appearance. He thinks that he can obtain the spiritualistic feeling of being with the girl by obtaining a materialistic good at the bizarre. The poster advertising the bizarre also blinds him, as he see eastern people on the board and he assumes the event will be very mystical. These both prove that the main character is blinded by the surface of items, and does not have the maturity to look beyond it. In A&P, Sammy the main character, wants to obtain the spiritualistic feeling of freedom.. He sees the girls as only what their physical appearance is and he wants to hang out with them as he finds one of them to be very attractive. He realizes that if he gets to hang out with the girls, it will give him a reason to quit his job and obtain this feeling of freedom. In the end his plan does not work out, as the girls do not even notice him. In the end his maturity grows as he realizes how dumb his decision was, and he realizes that he was blinded by the physical appearance of the girls. He thinks that the world will be harder from then on in, as he likely not be blinded again, and he wont ever be able to make decisions based on his blindness, meaning that he will make more mature decisions that probable wont be the decisions that he really wants to make. In conclusion, both the character’s blindness causes them to think that they can achieve spiritualistic feelings, from obtaining materialistic goods. They both end up maturing at the end and in Araby he is disgusted with his blindness, and in A&P he realizes the “mature” world he now has to live in is going to be a lot harder.

Comparison Of The Library Of Babel and The Book Of Sand

Ryan Irwin                                                                                                                 September 16, 2013

Comparison Paragraph of The Book Of Sand and The Library Of Babel

            The Book Of Sand and The Library Of Babel are two short stories that both have a common theme of infinity, however, the way the two stories portray this common theme differs. 

          In The Book Of Sand there is a book with an infinite amount of pages, the pages are not in any order, and there is no start or end. In The Library Of Babel there is an infinite library with an infinite amount of books, meaning that every book exists. The “Book Of Sand” exists in a regular world whereas The Library Of Babel takes place in a library that is made up of hexagonal sections of bookshelves that infinitely repeat themselves. In both stories there seems to be a common emotion of madness from the humans that are subject to the “infinity”. In The Book Of Sand the owner of the book goes mad because he cannot get himself to fully believe that the book is truly infinite, despite the fact that the pages seem to come out of nowhere in the book that they hold. In The Library Of Babel the habitants of the library are all subject to madness depending on the way that they live in the library. Some search through the library recklessly looking for the vindications of their lives, and some ponder how the library came to exist and try to understand the fact that the library has always existed, and that it never started and will never end. 

          The main relation between the two stories seems to be the way that humans perceive infinity. The aspect of human madness in each story is a relation to how humans try to perceive infinity in real life; this is because there is no way to make infinity make sense to a human mind. The infinite book, and the infinite library are just different ways to put in perspective the human interactions with infinity.