#another example i really like of ai art being used 'well' is the title screen of iirc im on observation duty 5. its cool i like it

[eggmixercortex]

putting up hands like spongebob im not pro AI this shit sucks!!!

anyway. something that makes me real sad about the whole AI art deal is what it could have meant artistically if things had been different. like, in the very early days of ai art being a thing when the datasets were pretty small and the models were kinda simple so anything you asked for would spit out a really fucked up blurry/mashed image, there was (imo) genuine artistic merit there! pretty much no human ever would make the kinds of decision an ai would because of the ways that humans are capable of indexing context and culture and pulling from sources instead of just averaging data. the melty sort of half-formed look of early stuff really captured me creatively and i still love that look in general. i used to follow a few early ai artists and one of the main things they would do is lean into the inhumanity of generated images, and use them as springboards either for more images or for writing - it was really cool to see how an artist would work to incorporate and interpret whatever fucked up gunk the models spat out.

(these two are from a twitter account that did that sort of thing, 2021 and 2022 respectively. iirc this account pretty much stopped posting as the ai models became more advanced and even less ethical, but i havent touched twitter in ages so who knows)

again, to me there was and is real artistic potential in the old crusty ai models precisely because of their inability to correctly mimic a human's artistic work, and what an artist can then pull from what gets made. when ai art was mostly a fun novelty for weird niche internet nerds to play around with i didnt really have any issues with it, mostly because it largely COULDNT be used to steal from artists in any real sense, because it couldnt make any sense, pretty much at all.

and then tech shitbrains got their mitts on it and saw nothing but free labor, and as the tech improved it was improved to iron out any of the quirks that had made it a viable artistic tool to begin with, in favor of being able to pump out passable art without having to deal with a pesky artist who might want something so scandalous as to be paid. corporations moved to incorporate generated backgrounds and such into their workflows to cut out labor time and possibly be able to fire now-unnecessary workers. ai videos have already been used to fake porn of prominent women celebrities. style mimicry allowed techbros to even steal from dead artists, etc etc etc. as ever, the prospect of moneybags flattened any possibility of real art coming out of this actually pretty interesting tech evolution. (wow, the guys who call artists 'selfish bourgeoisie' dont actually care about the creative potential of an emerging technology? no way!)

obviously it isnt nearly so much of an issue as, yk, the real jobs and livelihoods being taken from workers in an already notoriously exploitative and tentative industry, but it still makes me pretty sad when i think about how much we could have had to work with, especially as a fan of glitch/techie art that fucks with the limits of the tools at hand. i recommend nightshade or glaze to prevent ai scraping from being as effective (-_-)b

[tisfan]

Ring of Thorns, Cha 3

Title: Outsider, Outsider

Written by: @tisfan art by @feignedsobriquet​

Square: 3023 T1 - headset image

Rating: Teen

Triggers/warnings: horror

Tags: Fairy tale AU, Space AU, rabbits. lots of rabbits

Created for: @tonystarkbingo

Word count: 2,249

Link https://archiveofourown.org/works/23753566/chapters/60014938

Special thanks to: @skye07 & @fightingforcreativity

 Stardate 5239.283.09

When JARVIS activated the sub-aural communication system, scrolling words across Tony’s field of vision instead of speaking, Tony wasn’t too worried.

After all, they didn’t know this Bucky Barnes guy from Adam.

Well, not true. Tony knew Adam Warlock quite well, in as much as anyone could, in fact, know anyone else. File that, JARVIS, he thought, look up Adam. 

Because the saying must have meant something, right.

But Tony wasn’t worried. Barnes was fresh out of a long sleep, he was disoriented, babbling.

And JARVIS was always just a little more cautious than his maker. Tony wondered where he got that from, since Tony and caution were barely nodding acquaintances.

Detecting anomalous readings, sir, JARVIS typed. Suspect sub-terminal communications.

Barnes has hardware installed?

Detecting chipping mechanism in spinal region.

Well, that wasn’t new, it was old. Old tech, used to influence people. Ions only knew where it had started, but propaganda was always a thing. Just, in the last sixty years or so, it was made illegal (again, according to what Tony had been able to dig up) to do so in a manner that a victim couldn’t resist. Tricking people into believing their government was always right, that was still unfortunately considered a matter of caveat emptor. 

But as recently as a hundred years ago, chipping had been a manner in which less than moral companies and businesses had installed methods to control people. Sometimes it was subtle. A chip -- which would do any number of other useful things -- would have blackware on it. Sometimes just to buy certain brands of products. Other times, it was… well, more dangerous.

Override?

You’ll need to reach the source, sir. Shut it down on that end. Otherwise, the only method for a rapid recall is cranial realignment.

That was to say, hitting someone in the head really, really hard.

Not ideal.

Can it be removed?

Because still, he liked Bucky. Was decidedly attracted to him. He wasn’t even sure why; they’d just barely met, and still, the idea of having to fight him, or even just knock him out, bothered Tony. There was something childlike and innocent about the man, whatever programming was going on in his head.

I thought true love’s kiss was supposed to break the spell.

Are we believing in fairy tales now, sir?

JARVIS could just stuff it, Tony would be petulant if he wanted to be. Bucky was nice, Ions-storm take it. He didn’t deserve whatever was being forced on him.

Although, the longer it went on, the less Tony thought Bucky was aware of what was happening. That he didn’t notice the pauses while he was listening to his programming. It might even have been malfunctioning.

JARVIS, track down that source.

Yes sir. I am sending the Mark II combat suit for you.

Tony didn’t so much as wince. He didn’t want to fight Bucky. On the other hand, death was not the preferred outcome either. Keep it pretty far back, I don’t want him to get triggered into a defensive position.

Tony almost lost his cool entirely when Bucky started talking about the tank of liquid etherium. Etherium was a theory, it wasn’t real. Or so he’d always been told. Of course, he’d also been told that magic spells didn’t exist, and that true love wasn’t real, and that money made the worlds go around.

Okay, so it might have been real, but it wasn’t stable. On the other hand, they’d said the same thing about the energy source for the arc-reactor, and look what he’d done with that.

So, etherium.

Except, based on the way Bucky’s face twitched, there was either something wrong with the etherium, or it was where the source of his subliminals were coming from.

Nothing to do but go forward, though.

You could run, JARVIS suggested.

You know I won’t do that, buddy.

“Right, show me where this tank is of yours,” Tony said. He knew his mouth kept moving, he was talking with Bucky, being reassuring, he was scrolling with JARVIS, he was planning and plotting. It was a good thing that he’d spent most of his childhood learning to multitask efficiently.

Well, technically, it was time-slicing. Humans, even enhanced ones, were only barely capable of multitasking, but Tony could time-slice like a motherfucker.

Part of his brain was dealing with his companion, who was looking like he was ready to puke or something, another part was drawing on his nanites to give him control over the armor suit that JARVIS had on standby, and by far the largest part was wondering what even, the fuck, was Hydra, and did she have anything to do with the Etherium gas?

Probably.

That just seemed like too much of a coincidence to be dismissable. But coincidence was not causality, he reminded himself.

Just because it seemed like it couldn’t be one without the other, didn’t mean there was any relationship between the Etherium and the monster.

Whatever Hydra was.

The rabbits were--

The rabbits were lining the path. Not so even as to be called rows, but they were-- more and more of them, coming out.

To watch, or to guide, to protect or to attack?

Tony didn’t know. 

Coincidence is not causality.

I am a man of science. I don’t believe in magic.

Magic is merely technology which we cannot yet explain.

Despite that, Tony was feeling pretty goddamn superstitious. Like, the rabbits were a good sign, right? He didn’t think he’d ever heard any stories about evil forest animals, even when he was in cradle school.

The lights dimmed as they moved further into the station; Bucky swayed and Tony thought he was going to fall. He swept the man into his arms, unable to do anything else. He couldn’t let Bucky fall.

Tony had always wondered, in those hundreds of stupid holo-films that Rhodey loved so much, why it was the hapless hero or helpless heroine was driven to seek out the monster, the murderer. Wouldn’t it have been much safer to run away, to wait until day, to get reinforcements? But no, there was always some valiant idiot creeping through a dark tunnel, the murdering beast around the very next corner.

And here Tony was, being the exact kind of idiot that he yelled at on the screen.

Compelled, almost. He had to see what was down there, what was… doing this.

And maybe, just maybe, conquer it.

The Evil.

I am a man of science, he insisted. If there’s anything down there, science can explain it.

Tony was vaguely aware that JARVIS is screaming at him. Not just speaking in a sterner voice, not scrolling text across his retina, but actively yelling.

Bucky was also speaking, something ridiculous and useless. 

Tony ignored them both, stepping further into the darkness.

Something was calling him.

Something he couldn’t deny.

“Hail Hydra.”

*

Stardate 5239.283.09

JARVIS -- Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System -- was a created intelligence. He was not, in any standard definition of the word, alive. He did not have any biological parts, although Mr. Stark had offered on any number of occasions to make a construct that would allow him to experience a fixed form.

JARVIS had always refused. He did not see the need to be flesh and blood, to experience pain, to eat food, or do any of the other messy biological functions. No more than most humans -- or other life forms for that matter -- would see the need to experience true logic, pure calculation.

He was not human. He would never be alive.

He did not, according to many, have a soul.

A soul, JARVIS understood to be, that part of a life form that continued on after the biological form had faded. 

The mind, however, was a complex machine, that operates on the same physical laws as all other objects in the universe. If the soul existed inside the mind, then JARVIS was as ensouled as any living creature. He had a mind. He could think independently. He had obligations and protocol, certain living creatures he was more apt to go above and beyond protocol demands than others. 

It had been a matter up for debate many times; did Artificial Intelligences have their own free will. If they did, could they be punished for using that free will to commit crimes? Or was that burden on their creator? Ultron, Jocasta, the Legions. There were hundreds of examples of AIs that had committed crimes, sometimes on behalf of their creator and sometimes as a rebellion against their creator. And sometimes, it was just faulty programming.

JARVIS had, of course, submitted his own report to the collection of data that was maintained by Enoch, who was the chief librarian of the Chronicoms, an ancient semi-biological, mechanically enhanced race whose purpose was to chronicle all of life and history.

 All of this -- which was a mere portion of one cycle of computations, the process that made up JARVIS’s thoughts -- while he was attempting to determine what, the fuck even, was going on.

Sometimes JARVIS thought he’d taken too much of his creator’s personal idiosyncrasies for himself.

In this case, however, if the data fit the drive…

He’d been getting anomalous readings, completely off the charts. If there even were charts for the sorts of readings he was getting. 

A life form-- 

Not human.

Not rabbit.

Not-- not anything JARVIS had encountered before. There were new species protocols, but JARVIS wasn’t a first contact ship’s AI.

He didn’t have the staff aboard to initiate contact.

Technically, by that mandate, he should have left initial contact up to the other party. Preferably evacuating his human crew and their guest, and informing the First Contact Association staff of a potential new species.

JARVIS did not have time for that.

And he was almost sure that the unknown intelligence had contacted Mr. Stark first.

JARVIS wasn’t certain how Mr. Stark was being contacted. He could not detect any radio signals or waves. Just the growth of certain gamma radiations. 

JARVIS tapped the station’s computer. It was slow and stubborn, but deep in those databanks might be the answer JARVIS needed. When had the rabbits taken over the station? Did they know anything? Was there any way to communicate with them? They might have been witnesses, generations back. The form didn’t seem to have developed any sort of written or data storage communication.

JARVIS found a set of recordings, vast and untapped.

They’d started about a year after Barnes shut down the station.

Rabbits. Stamping. Their signal, from one beast to the next. Until the entire warren was stamping.

The station computer had recorded it. From the very first time it had happened, until this morning’s rendition when Mr. Stark had boarded the ship.

Communicating.

The rabbits were communicating.

JARVIS examined all the footage. Listened to it. Traced patterns, turned patterns into rhythms and rhythms into song.

The rabbits sang in percussion beats.

And it could be translated.

The rabbits thought of themselves as Insiders. The Insiders lived in the station, and everything else was an Outsider.

Mr. Stark was an Outsider. 

They didn’t really see JARVIS at all, didn’t understand that he was there, that he had a presence. To them, he was nothing but noise that followed Mr. Stark around. 

Outsider, outsider, outsider.

They followed Mr. Stark around, trying to understand in their little rabbity way. He was an Outsider. From Beyond the Door.

They knew what was Beyond the Door. The great Beyond-- the nothingness that froze and killed. 

Before today, they’d never known something could Come In.

They knew the Sleeper. 

They knew… the Watcher with Many Arms.

Hydra.

Another creature, lurking deep in the station. She really almost was the station now, living inside the conduits. A creature with no form, and every form. She was the devil, to rabbit-kin, as the Sleeper was God, kind, patient.

He who had Come In? They weren’t sure what he was.

Who he was.

What his purpose was.

They huddled together, nose to nose, paws barely making a sound. Like a whisper. Outsider, outsider.

And Hydra, the watcher, the waiter, she of a thousand eyes. Was watching them.

Had they ever thought they were free from her sight?

Outsider, outsider.

JARVIS slid a portion of his code into the Mark II. Used one metal finger to tap on the wall, imitating their sounds, their language. Their words.

Outsider listens.

Every single rabbit on the station froze, and as if with a single hive mind, lifted up on their hind legs, one ear twitching.

As if they’d heard the voice of god.

Outsider.

It started as a whisper, barely audible, until the station rang from their cries.

Mr. Stark and Mr. Barnes barely reacted, caught in their dreaming hallucinations, hearing the voice of Hydra.

Outsider. Outsider.

JARVIS paused. He was going to make for himself legal difficulties with the FCA and probably most of the various legal governments outside the Ring.

Listener. It was a correction. Mr. Stark was the Outsider. JARVIS was the listener. He needed them to understand that he was different; a part of Mr. Stark, yes, but no more the same being than Mr. Stark’s biological child, if he ever had one.

Listener.

 Listener.

Listen to me JARVIS thudded. Listen to me. Listen, and give aid. Listener is a friend. The Listener guards your safety and happiness. The Listener guards the Outsiders. The Listener is a friend.

We listen. 

[entergamingxp]

343 Explains How Halo Infinite is a Spiritual Reboot

July 24, 2020 10:35 AM EST

343 went into some excruciating detail on the development of Halo Infinite in this interview and how they are trying to be evocative of the classic games.

Yesterday we got our first look at gameplay for Halo Infinite and the game sure is Halo. From the crash landing on an alien ringworld to leaving the ship to an open environment filled with color and grunts to kill, 343 has made it very clear that they are trying to evoke that same feeling we got from Combat Evolved.

In an interview with the Video Games Chronicle, 343 went into detail on their upcoming launch title for the Xbox Series X and how they are treating this title. Associate Creative Director Paul Crockers stated: “We really approached this whole thing as a love letter to Halo. We want people to feel the way they did when they first played Halo: Combat Evolved and got into the universe. That has been our goal and our direction ever since we started this, so I really hope everyone likes it when they play.”

Crocker alongside Studio Head Chris Lee and Head of Design Jerry Hook answered some questions from different journalists across different media outlets. There was a whole lot of questions asked, both big and small, so I will fill you in on some of the more major ones on Halo Infinite.

When asked about the size of the title and if it is a true open-world game, Chris Lee responded: “The campaign in Halo Infinite is several times larger than the last two campaigns we’ve created put together. It’s this new open, expansive experience and I think maybe Paul should talk more about what that means for players.”

Paul Crocker then chimed in: “We wanted to present an amazing ring for players to explore and bring back all those memories they had when they first played Halo all those years ago. We wanted to really focus on the wonder, mystery and the beauty of that space, and then drop in Chief as the universe’s greatest soldier going up against this dangerous enemy in the form of The Banished, and just allow that to flow over the player and give them this great experience.”

Many viewers have expressed their opinions online stating that the visual looks a little dated and washed out. The team was asked what version of the game was shown off for the demo and if the visual will improve. Lee stated: “Halo Infinite is still very much in development. The team is very focussed on bringing the best experience possible to fans and we still have a ways to go. So this is definitely a pre-release version of the game that folks are seeing today.”

The setting definitely felt familiar if you are a longtime Halo fan. The team was asked if they were trying to be evocative of the previous Halo games and if they are trying to target those lapes players. Chris Lee stated: “We really started this game with the concept of the spiritual reboot, which you heard in the narrated version of the campaign demo. That spiritual reboot was really about thinking through what we’ve learned from building Halo 4 and 5 and really looking across the whole history of Halo to grab the most iconic parts. That was an important thing that we wanted to capture, to embrace those elements and bring them forward for gamers today, so that when they’re playing there’s something that’s really exciting for folks that have been around for a while.”

Jerry Hook also chimed in: “One of the greatest things that we tried to do with this pillar of ours for a ‘spiritual reboot’ is to take a look at every system that we have in the game from weapons, to characters, to the art and story, and to bring back that sense of wonder and gameplay experience that our sandbox has traditionally brought to fans. And that’s where it becomes really, really critical where the players grab a battle rifle or these weapons that they’ve loved in the past and they can feel it. As Chris said, there’s a bunch of new things there as well and we’re all trying to stay within how the tradition has moved forward, while still respecting the great things that we know Halo has brought to our fans title after title. One of the greatest things that we tried to do with this pillar of ours for a ‘spiritual reboot’ is to take a look at every system that we have in the game from weapons, to characters, to the art and story, and to bring back that sense of wonder and gameplay experience that our sandbox has traditionally brought to fans. And that’s where it becomes really, really critical where the players grab a battle rifle or these weapons that they’ve loved in the past and they can feel it. As Chris said, there’s a bunch of new things there as well and we’re all trying to stay within how the tradition has moved forward, while still respecting the great things that we know Halo has brought to our fans title after title.”

The team was also asked if there will be new weapons and ablities in the game. One would expect a new game to contain new stuff, but it is still a fair question since this game is trying to be so evocative to the original. Hook responded by stating: “Yeah. One of the things that I hope everybody was able to see in the demo was the different abilities and equipment that Chief is able to bring into the sandbox, and that’s going to be all under the player’s control. That’s something that I think the sandbox is really trying to bring: when you enter an encounter you have a lot of options. Do you use the grapple hook to move? Or do you use it to grab the power coil? Do you use it to sling yourself at an enemy? Do you throw down a Shield Wall to block off a whole bunch of combatants while you take down another set? We haven’t exposed it all, but as you get your hands on the game you’ll see more equipment come into play for the player.”

Halo has always been known for its excellent AI system. The team was asked how next-gen technology has advanced the AI system and if it’s still a priority in Infinite. Lee stated: “Bringing the different characters to life has always been such an important part of Halo, with the Elites, the Grunts… I think bringing the Brutes back into the mix was something we were really excited about, and we’ve invested heavily in really bringing these characters to life and making sure we maintained that strong core of what these characters were, while bringing them a lot of new elements along the way. The Grunt toss is one very fun example of that, but there’s a lot of great stuff in there. The AI is definitely one of the things that I think is really core to Halo and important for our gameplay experience.”

Hook expanded upon that: “The Grunt toss is one of the key elements where you see the AI starting to take advantage of the sandbox that you haven’t seen before. So you still have that great feeling of the AI taking advantage of shields and cover that was pretty critical to the Halo experience that we’ve had in the past, but we wanted to give them more. We wanted to give them more awareness of the sandbox itself and be able to use it. Don’t be surprised if you see an AI go grab a different weapon to take you out.”

There are plenty of other interesting questions answered in the interview such as the confirmation of Master Chief being the only protagonist in the game as well as the game including split-screen co-op at launch. You can follow the link above to explore those other questions.

Halo Infinite is set to launch later this holiday alongside the release of the Xbox Series X.

July 24, 2020 10:35 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/343-explains-how-halo-infinite-is-a-spiritual-reboot/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=343-explains-how-halo-infinite-is-a-spiritual-reboot

[operationrainfall]

Title TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble Developer Area 35 Publisher Area 34 Release Date July 11th, 2019 Genre Strategy Platform PC, Nintendo Switch Age Rating T for Teen – Fantasy Violence, Language Official Website

I should start this by mentioning how utterly excited I was by the prospect of the first TINY METAL. When I first saw it at PAX, and realized this was a true spiritual successor to a series I had long loved, Advance Wars, I was stoked. Even though I didn’t review the first game, I did play through it, and while not perfect, I felt it was a great start. So the sequel held a good amount of interest for me. Would this be a step up from the original, cementing itself as the successor to Advance Wars? The quick answer is no, but the long answer is it’s complicated. So join me as I address what TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble did right, and what it did wrong.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Full Metal Rumble seemingly takes place not long after the events of the first TINY METAL. I hedge with “seemingly” since I honestly barely remember the plot from the first game, other than something about lost technology and an evil mind-controlling clown. Events start with Nathan hunting the remnants of the Dinoldan army, which are apparently AI controlled puppets, despite looking mostly human. The sci fi nerd in me wished they had some distinctive robot trait if they were a drone army, but alas the only thing that identifies them as different are their glowing eyes, which made me think more mutant than robot. Putting that tangent aside, the story is rarely the most important part of a strategy game like this, but I prefer if there’s a solid effort made. Sure, Advance Wars wasn’t known for a brilliant plot, but it did have very eclectic characters with distinct personalities. The same goes for WarGroove, which had some really colorful personalities and a solid, albeit formulaic, plot. Sadly, none of those traits are in TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble. There’s some subplot about Wolfram hunting for her supposedly dead brother Ragnar, some nonsense about nanomachines and mutterings about a greater intelligence at work, but if so, it was never revealed in the game. So if you were hoping for some grand plot for this sequel, put that hope aside. It’s not utterly horrible, there’s some cool ideas, they just never coalesce in a meaningful way.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sadly, the same can be said for the writing in this TINY METAL sequel. They make an effort at relevant banter and dialogue, but at best it came across like a poorly written anime. Cause and effect are completely divorced and random things happen that only the characters understand. No character gets any significant development, and some barely show up, like Tsukumo. There were at least two separate instances where I thought I knew exactly what was happening, and then the plot pulls a complete 360, or worse, seems to totally disregard important developments. A good example is one seemingly heinous betrayal that turns out to be a nothing burger. I know I said most people don’t play this genre for the story, and while that’s largely true, I can’t help but expecting a better written adventure than this. But now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s move onto the meat of the game, which is how TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble actually plays.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The best thing the original TINY METAL had going for it was how it emulated the mechanics from Advance Wars. This one does a good job, and actually adds some new stuff to the mix. There are new units, such as the Archelon, which is essentially an APC with a machine gun, or the Viper, a mobile anti-artillery that can move and attack in the same turn. Some of my favorite new units were from the Mecha class, which were all essentially humanoid robots of mass destruction. Think a walking tank, and you have the right idea. They’re great since they can traverse environmental hazards Metals cannot, such as mountains, even though they aren’t quite as powerful. Besides the new units, there are also some new mechanics. One good example are the Commander units. Not to be mistaken with Hero units, which are slightly upgraded versions of normal units you can deploy, Commander units take a page directly from WarGroove. These are massively powerful units with one downside – if they die, you lose the mission and have to start over. Had I not seen it done first in another game, I probably would have been more impressed, but that doesn’t mean these units aren’t useful. One cool distinction is that Commander units can be various types, depending on where you are in the story. An example is how Wolfram pilots a Blitz Mecha in one mission and a Gallant Mecha in others. They are easily the best units in the entire game, and I felt they lent a bit of extra spice to the mix. Commanders even have special abilities you can use after you’ve filled up your meter by dealing or taking enough damage, such as increasing the move distance or attack power for your units for a turn. Unfortunately, I still can’t shake the similarity to recent games in the genre.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

One improvement to the combat is now whenever you build a new unit, you can easily see what they’re most and least effective against. That dispels one of my biggest complaints from the first game, that it’s not super clear which units work best to counter certain threats. They even have a little window that appears when you are selecting a unit to clarify what they can attack. My primary complaint is the game never tells you this, and I literally found out when I was more than two thirds done with the game. That said, there are many other tutorials in the first few missions, and while informative, they tend to drag on a bit long, especially for fans returning to the series. But if you ever get too lost, there’s a handy Metalpedia that gives a brief rundown for what various units do. I just wish I could select a unit on the map and bring up that same description. You can’t even pause the game to see the map, which was a big letdown. I know there’s Fog of War everywhere in TINY METAL, but I should be able to see units once I’ve dispersed them.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Another change is that you actually have to keep track of your ammo and fuel reserves for all mechanical units. I thought I wouldn’t like this feature, but I actually really grew to appreciate it. It made my moves more important, and added a new layer of strategy. The AI for enemy units in Full Metal Rumble also seems a bit better. It uses Focus Fire MUCH more often, surrounding you to deal more damage, but it also does stupid shit like having Infantry attack Gunships, which almost always results in Infantry being massacred. I also noticed that my AI opponents rarely used their own abilities and seemed to shy away from attacking my Commander units. For reference, I did play the game on Normal, so maybe it’s not as incompetent on harder difficulties. Just don’t make the mistake of taking it entirely for granted, cause the Dinoldan army is more than capable of kicking your ass if you’re not treating it like a real threat.

More Metal on Page 2 ->

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Most missions in the game can be beaten one of two ways – either kill every enemy unit or take their HQ. I usually preferred to go for their HQ, since on many missions your opponent has factories and airports that can continually build new units. However, there are some missions where they mix things up. Some missions you have to survive for a set number of days, inflict X amount of damage to enemy finances, or kill a powerful VIP unit. Sometimes you won’t have any way to produce more units, and have to kill all your foes on the map. There are also some missions that have optional objectives, but they aren’t required to win. They just offer an alternate path to victory. Overall, the combat in the game is the highlight, but it’s not without its problems. One is that despite the variety I just mentioned and the combat being well-balanced, the flow of the game feels incredibly repetitive. I also wish selecting a unit for attack would give a preview of how much damage I might take, instead of just how much I will dish out and critical chance percentage. That said, I do like how the pause screen displays your Commander’s abilities and proficiency. It’s helpful knowing Wolfram’s infantry is more powerful, or that all of Tsukumo’s units deal more damage, but cost more money to build.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  On the aesthetic design portion of the game, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The music is very muted and unremarkable, but the art is top notch for the design. All the Commanders look great, and a new one in particular I was rather fond of, Nora, has crazy orange hair, hates talking with people and pilots the new Mecha units with ease. There’s some really cool cinematics that occur at various points throughout the story, and they look great, though for the life of me I don’t understand why they have no sound. Unfortunately, the level design is pretty lackluster, with the same colors and layout from mission to mission, with minor variations like desert and snow stages. Hell, there’s not even weather effects, which would have gone a long way to impressing me. There’s also some weird graphical glitches like overlap and layers not displaying all at once. Oh, and though the music isn’t great, the sound effects highlight the battles nicely. The boom and ratatat of cannon fire and machine guns are music to my ears, even if the random snippets units say whenever they’re selected gets old.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I hate to return to the writing of the game, but I feel it’s necessary. The writing is, sadly, incredibly vanilla, and unfortunately it has plenty of grammar mistakes. The way the text displays at times is also odd. Sometimes it doesn’t fit well or even goes outside the text boxes. Worse is that I don’t care about most of the characters or the plot. It all just felt really formulaic and uninspired, at least to me. And even after playing the game for 27 hours to beat Full Metal Rumble, I honestly have no real idea about the motivation for the enemy forces at all. I kept expecting some sinister force to reveal itself as the mastermind, much like in the first game, but it never happens. In it’s place, we’re left with faceless, emotionless AI puppets, and that’s truly disappointing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Now let’s move onto the part of reviews I hate, which is talking about glitches and quirks. There are several I encountered in my time with TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble. It’s possible they’re isolated to the Switch version I played, but on the off chance they aren’t, I figured I should mention them as a PSA. One of the less problematic ones occurred with the new autopilot feature. As you progress from mission to mission, you move a plane around the world map. You can select autopilot to automatically move to the next stage, and that’s great. What’s less great is once I tried it and instead chose not to enter the next level, and suddenly my plane started flying around in circles. Another quirk is that after you supply a unit with more fuel and ammo, if you hover your cursor over it, the unit shows as still empty. But if you move the cursor and come back, it instead shows as refilled. One time I attacked a unit, and instead of going to the regular battle animation, that unit just exploded on the map. Another time in Skirmish, I was moving around and got ambushed by a hidden enemy. Instead of just stopping my progress, like it should have, my unit was dealt damage without any accompanying combat animation. A more prevalent problem is the blurring visual effect that happens quite often, including whenever you instigate a battle. But easily the worst glitch I encountered is the following: on multiple occasions, easily more than a dozen, I selected an attack target and initiated my attack, and instead my unit ended their turn. In a game where every move is key to victory, that’s a giant problem. And believe it or not, those weren’t all the weird incidents I encountered, just the more noteworthy ones. I know TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble has been updated a couple times since release, but these are all issues that need to be patched ASAP.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the end, It just didn’t feel like Area 35 tried anything that dramatic in this sequel, just more of the same with some minor upgrades, and taking ideas from games that did it better. TINY METAL was born in the shadow of Advance Wars, and sadly, Full Metal Rumble never steps out of that shadow. I know that sounds harsh, and much as it pains me to say, I don’t know how else the next game can improve without criticism. Because I honestly still like TINY METAL, I just expect much more from it. That said, for $14.99, you get a lot of game for your money. I spent almost 30 hours just on Story mode alone, and there’s a lot more to do, such as Skirmish, Multiplayer and many, many goodies you can unlock with in-game currency. There’s also labs you can find in Story mode to unlock optional side missions. And if you are a perfectionist, each mission has optional conditions you can achieve to get more points. If you’re a fan of strategy games, TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble might still be worth a look. But if you’re a stickler and want a better adventure, there are far better options available right now.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble Title TINY METAL: Full Metal Rumble

[whatevernevermind]

How SEO 2019 Is Going To Change Your Business Strategies

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) may be the process of getting visitors from organic search results upon Search Engines. Our six experts talk about their favorite SEO tips and even tactics for building big site visitors in 2018. Yes, we all know it's still June plus we know it's only 2018 but if you haven't began planning and researching key styles which will affect you SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2019 you could currently be falling behind. We furthermore take a look at just how new technologies like AI plus Voice search will begin in order to impact more on SEO since we move nearer to 2019 and beyond. Whenever every nation across the globe is busy in making their own due contribution within the growth sector in their own method by taking the route associated with SEO service and online advertising, Singapore cannot stop stand nevertheless in one point. By 2019, content material marketing is set to turn out to be an industry worth $300 billion dollars. Off page SEO pertains to the strategies performed over and above your website that can end up being used to improve your research engine rankings. Due in order to the success of inbound advertising and SEO, more marketers are usually dedicated to improving their rating over other tactics. The best way to focus on these customers is by supplying high-quality SEO content that offers genuine and useful information in the direction of the readers. Another method provides a different page based upon whether the page is becoming requested with a human customer or a search engine, the strategy known as cloaking An additional category sometimes used is gray hat SEO This is within between black hat and whitened hat approaches, where the strategies employed avoid the site getting penalized, but do not take action in producing the best articles for users. SEO focuses upon rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results. SEO therefore helps you get traffic coming from search engines. With Ahrefs, a great kick off point for keyword research with regard to SEO is the Keywords Explorer tool. Topics: SEO, backlink, articles marketing, social media marketing plus advertising, analytics, and more. 60+ sessions on hot topics, achievement stories and strategies in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, SEA, PPC, Social Media, On the internet Marketing and SMX Future Monitor. 2018 (I believe) will be a lot associated with catch up on current SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION themes, with the biggest trends” occurring around voice queries to look results. Therefore, SEOmonitor tracks all of the appropriate data that could influence SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION performance and displays it within the Keyword Events Timeline. If you forget that will quality content is a best priority, then you can definitely forget about having an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy. The particular way we asking the device is different from person in order to person. therefore, optimizing your web site 100% mobile friendly to complete cellular voice search is very essential to SEO 2019. We am just newbie and significantly i do get frustrated whenever articles doesn't rank on best or near top, but individuals like you and many additional also inspire me to by no means give up. There are many points that i wasn't identified up to now but say thanks to to you, you are usually make us learn important items about seo. On this web page you'll find a list associated with 21 SEO insanely tactical strategies that you can use in order to boost your engine rankings. 26% of respondents state email is the digital marketing and advertising channel with all the greatest positive effect on revenue; SEO is 2nd (17%), followed by paid lookup (15%), social media (5%), plus online display advertising (5%). Along with an increased focus on consumer experience, Google has challenged the particular SEO community to pay even more attention to the entire encounter of a website and exactly how the content interacts with customers, rather than just the fundamental elements that most optimize towards. While that will certainly not get solved in 2018, we want integrate the SEO group alongside other marketing, both compensated and owned initiatives. For example, several businesses miss the mark along with SEO and images, and nevertheless rank well. Thankfully, you can find your personal broken links on site using the particular myriad of Tools available. Ask any SEO services company and they will tell a person that whenever a page is usually searched, the major search motors spiders search it through hyperlinks. Effective SEO aims to boost research engine position, user visits, come back visits, and to improve transformation rates, which reflect the quantities of visitors who take preferred actions on the site. Wise SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION activities transform your rankings in the particular search engine results page (SERP). This is the supreme goal for ecommerce SEO, plus the traffic those links can bring through will convert with a very high rate. The Technical Audit Checklist Produced For Human Beings — Within this post by Distilled, a person will find a link in order to a Google sheet that offers an technical SEO audit directory and links to resources upon how to complete each checkbox. Then each time the term SEO appears on your web site, it's automatically changed into the link you specified. Keyword Study for SEO: The Definitive Guidebook — This comprehensive guide simply by Brian Dean teaches you the number of strategies for obtaining keywords and determining intent regarding your target market. On-page and off-page SEO function together to improve your research engine rankings in complementary style; however, SEOs generally advise obtaining your on-page SEO ducks within a row before focusing as well much on off-page SEO. Within 2019, web-based businesses will follow more voice-to-text technology to raise engagement and search activity. There are many SEO sites suggesting that they can offer a service to make our own website LSI friendly, or satisfy ‘LSI requirements'. The particular art of web SEO is situated in focusing on how individuals search for things and knowing what type of results Search engines wants to (or will) screen to its users. Social press SEO would encourage your present customers to come back whilst helping you develop authority regarding potential ones. He is an expert in SEO, Content Marketing, plus Pinterest Marketing. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert plays a huge function in helping companies build their own businesses and attract new clients through website traffic.

It helps your SEO attempts to ensure that your keyword phrases are added to the coto description and it will provide you a ranking boost in the event that your specific terms are obvious in this area. Moreover, a Google Penguin update drastically changed the position of backlinks on SEO, generating it more difficult to find link juice to a web site. Gone are the times of traditional SEO techniques, on the internet content is changing. The cognitiveSEO Rank System offers accurate country, language plus city precision for all your own tracked keywords. Even if your URLs normally are not pretty, ” if you avoid feel as though they're adversely impacting users and your company in general, don't change all of them to be more keyword concentrated for better SEO. ” In the event that you do need to modify your URL structure, make certain to make use of the proper (301 permanent) type of redirect. In this particular post, we've broken down the particular very best SEO techniques to assist you skyrocket your rankings plus boost your number of regular monthly visitors. An accessible URL will be an important SEO ranking element. Heidi Cohen: To increase 2018 SEO results, marketers will carry on moving away from disposable, after and done content. They concentrate on SEO Internet marketing targets and provide top search motor rank like Google and Askjeeve. Collectively, these developments are plus can continue to have the dramatic impact on the method in which we search optimize our websites in 2019 plus form the core of our own newest SEO 2019 update briefing. You may generally see outcomes of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts once the webpage proceeds to be crawled and listed by a internet search motor. Possibly the best form of cultural media to pay attention in order to when turning to SEO is definitely Google Plus. A single of the most successful methods to ensure your clients get your photography business is by means of implementing an SEO strategy, this particular is more than just doing it to number 1 about Google, it means ensuring that will a varied and steady steady stream of traffic is planning to your site, over and even above that of your opponents. If you are usually willing to improvise your internet site search and boost up your own Google ranking, but do not really have time or resources regarding doing that, hire an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist for the same objective. Mobile SEO is usually mobile search engine optimization or even optimizing content for a much better search ranking. Titles on pages and explanations affect what people see within search results, so it's important to check these out within any SEO audit. Search motors give some guidelines for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, but big search engines maintain result ranking as a business secret. Along with $80 billion forecast to turn out to be spent annually on SEO — and content marketing set to be able to be considered a $300+ billion industry by means of 2019 — it might end up being tempting for stakeholders to discover SEO and content marketing because cost centers rather than earnings centers. While that will theory is sound (when concentrated on a single page, when the particular intent is to deliver electricity content to a Google user) using old school SEO strategies on especially a large web site spread out across many web pages seems to amplify site high quality problems, after recent algorithm adjustments, and so this type associated with optimisation without keeping track associated with overall site quality is self-defeating in the long run. If you speak about search ranking in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're talking about the placement of your content on research results pages (SERPs). Kent Lewis, Owner, and President of Anvil, the performance-based firm based out associated with Portland, says that in 2019 voice search and Amazon lookup will end up a lot more notable than they were in 2018. Google Search Console (Webmaster tools) is one of the particular SEO basics. If you would like to find out how We actually do it, visit Content Czar for the free gift plus details of could use post marketing and SEOcious to acquire top Google listings. It really is geared towards SEO professionals (in-house and agency), marketing managers, and company owners. But now SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION considers tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, as well as other social signals. Besides position the site, the SEO team turns into fault Client's marketing or product sales team by converting surfers or even visitors into buyers. Because therefore much sharing now takes place on major social media systems, social signals may become mainly because important to SEO as period on page, editorial linking, plus content quality. Using social press marketing in PA with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics can help boost the website's ranking and popularity. This may create friction and the impact that most well-designed websites are usually very poorly optimized for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. They have impacted SEO during the past as well by bringing back links, and today it's even even more.

SEO organizations are able to track almost every aspect of their technique, like increases in rankings, visitors and conversions. The strategies which were the simplest (reciprocal links or directory submissions) perform not work anymore, therefore the particular SEOs spend a lot associated with time trying different approaches. The particular Moz Pro is another collection of Tools that check the particular important factors related to your own website's search ranking. Selection of key phrases or phrases plays an important component in an SEO campaign considering that it saves you the photos in the dark. In 2019 the particular digital marketing companies can anticipate a lot of voice queries, and by 2020, about 50 percent of the searches will end up being either voice searches or image-based searches. Read our Mobile SEO 2019 Checklist before you decide in order to implement. This first element of optimizing images is usually including your keywords in the particular image file name (seo_guide. jpg). The inevitable adjustments that will occur in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in the near future are usually abolition of keywords stuffing plus spam backlinks, real-time personalized customer support by online marketers, improvement within the quality of visual content material as a result of development of video SEO, optimization associated with websites with conversational keywords plus generating massive quantity of current data. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION remains one of the lengthy term marketing strategies that function best for companies that are usually looking to improve their on the internet visibility. If you understand you might have VERY lower-quality doorway pages on your own site, a person should remove them or re-think your SEO strategy if a person want to rank high within Google for the long phrase. One of the difficulties search engines like yahoo and Bing have usually attempted to overcome is knowing which external links exist exclusively for SEO purposes and which usually links represent a true indicator that the source content is usually of value to the visitors. 2018 has currently seen some particularly significant SEO paradigm shifts from Mobile First” in order to the ever-advancing Rankbrain machine-learning protocol. Content marketing is usually a bigger approach which along with SEO forms a part associated with your digital marketing strategy. What You Should Know: Typically the future of search engine marketing is Semantic SEO. Links plus technical SEO are the biggest pieces of the pie, yet multimedia efforts such as movie, photos, and podcasts will become the game changer and differentiator in many competitive markets. Occasional, and I actually do more occasional and not really frequent, usage of keywords plus keyword phrases in these hyperlinks may also help very somewhat in your SEO processes. Excelling at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION means serving your visitors—not simply search engines. Here arrives the idea of SEO or even search engine optimization. The particular fact remains that SEO solutions assure clients that even when the site will not position among the top search motors like google, the money can not be a waste owing to the refund. SEO is really the shortened phrase for search motor optimization. I believe SEO within 2019 will largely be such as SEO in 2018, with the particular exception of some big” Search engines update that wipes out sufficient websites to make people think the algorithms have grown significantly smarter. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION works by optimizing a cyberspace pages, conducting keyword research, plus earning inbound links. The business offers excellent SEO packages that will help rank the clients' web site within top three pages associated with search engine pages. That can make SEO an ideal lead era tool, because when searchers adhere to links back to your web site, you have the chance in order to convert them to leads, plus later make sales. Whenever asked to point out principles that are unique towards the particular web, most people will arrive up with two main types: SEO and social media. How many links do a person need for good off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION? If you are performing a professional SEO audit for any true business, you are going in order to have to think like the Google Search Quality Rater Along with a Google search engineer to offer real long-term value to the client. 44. Give your own social media profiles an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION boost. 10% of our experts believe that will there's likely to be the lot of focus on cellular in 2019, as older SEOs realize optimizing for desktop is usually pointless. White hat SEO is not really just about following guidelines, yet is about ensuring that the particular content google search indexes and eventually ranks may be the same content the user will see.

Businesses with multiple websites and SEO-agencies can set up report web templates. Its search engine marketing group provides expertise in Pay-per-click marketing services, organic SEO and sociable media optimisation. The particular ads that you often notice on various web pages demonstrated and those that also show up on the rightmost side associated with search engine results are inorganic SEO examples. While I nevertheless see this trend in have fun with with many enterprises still within the midst of their electronic transformation, the convergence in the particular MarTech space is creating numerous synergies and opportunities and this particular should be seen as the welcome development for brands plus agencies who are looking intended for an edge in regards in order to their SEO driven content advertising or outreach strategies. Along with the only complete certainty that SEO's, Website owners may have numerous adjustments to make to web sites under their care in the particular mobile and voice search scenery. The basics of GOOD SEO hasn't changed for years - although effectiveness of particular elements offers certainly narrowed or changed within type of usefulness - a person should still be focusing upon building a simple site making use of VERY simple SEO best practices - don't perspiration the small stuff, while all-the-time paying attention to the essential stuff - add plenty of unique PAGE TITLES and lots associated with new ORIGINAL CONTENT. Keyword research will be THE first step of any kind of SEO campaign. Search engine search engine optimization (SEO) will be the process of influencing the online visibility of the particular website or a web web page in a web search motor 's unpaid results—often known since "natural", " organic ", or even "earned" results. Seo (SEO) is a procedure of improving positions in natural (non-paid) search results searching motors. Some other SEO ranking factors include: obtainable URLs, domain age (older will be usually better), page speed, cellular friendliness, business information, and specialized SEO. Your own search engine optimization strategy can become divided into two different types: on-page SEO and off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. While you familiarize yourself with this neighborhood, you will inevitably stumble your own way onto the websites associated with SEO Gurus” selling courses that will teach you SEO for hundreds of dollars. Expert SEO writers can also make use of modifiers and keyword variations in order to further optimize the content. In the Blog9T lot associated with cases, this happens as the consequence of non-ethical SEO specifically buying and selling links which usually could get you up the particular Google ‘adder' quickly. Content is definitely key but content alone is usually no longer king; content, framework, and relevance will drive efficiency of content and digital advertising, and SEO is part yet not full parcel. Ultimate WordPress SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Guide for Beginners (Step simply by Step) — 28% of sites on the internet use Wp. SEO is frequently abused as a blanket term with regard to digital marketing.

We cover every topic within the digital marketing sphere like SEO, technical SEO, local SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, PPC, SEM, content marketing, CRO, analytics, backlink, marketing strategy, cell phone marketing, social media marketing in addition to much more. Any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company has to be capable to create high quality content material on an ongoing basis. SEO is the method for making changes to the website to be able in order to improve its position in the particular search engines like google. Robert thinks that by 2019 most cellular searches will be conducted simply by voice by mobile devices or even virtual assistants in fact this is very important to obtain your positioning in the research engine ranking positions as shortly as possible. As the particular factors search engines like Search engines, Bing, and Yahoo use in order to rank sites are kept key and change frequently, we develop all known SEO best methods into every Squarespace site. Black hat SEO may get you to the best of SERP in a brief time, however, search engines such as google will most probably punish and ban the website more rapidly or later. If you have read from the beginning, a person know that links are the key SEO ranking factor. Right now there are 2 types of research engine optimization or SEO. Now, pay close up attention to the components of which make up on-page SEO, since this is where non-SEO specialists will be able to help make the most meaningful impact upon their search engine rankings. 55 The difference from SEO is the majority of simply depicted as the distinction between paid and unpaid concern ranking searching results. I get into much more detail in SEO Titles on pages: 15-Point Checklist for B2B and B2C Brands, which explains the right way to work in relevant keywords that will accurately reflect the page content material. Are good nevertheless SEO potential may be reduce in comparison to single links. The schooling behind our SEO expertise had been developed from years and many years of learning from mistakes marketing and advertising with our other businesses. Our own in-depth guide contains the most recent SEO best practices so a person can improve how your content appears in search results, plus get more traffic, leads, plus sales. Keyword analysis definitely belongs to the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics. I'll start by stating that social press 5 Quick Tips For SEO 2019 and SEO are heavily linked to each other. Black head wear SEO attempts to improve search positions in ways that are disapproved of with the search engines, or even involve deception. This particular is more tedious and tasking than inorganic SEO because this particular is how all the key phrases get a full blast associated with attention. SEO: It stands for Research Engine Optimization. Within this post, we'll break this down in the complete first timers guide to SEO: what SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is, how it works, exactly what factors affect search and exactly what sorts of changes you may make today to improve your own search optimization. The no follow hyperlink has been contradicted many instances over where SEO is included and it depends on the particular web owner concerning if these people allow them on the web site or not.

A greater number associated with people will stick to tone of voice search, so SEO specialists may need to adjust to this particular relatively new kind of research. Seo or SEO is usually a powerful method to generate targeted traffic to your site and hopefully increase your bottom part line. Whilst many marketing tactics rely upon you reaching out to your own audience, SEO gives you the particular power to achieve people whenever they are actively searching out there information related to your providers and products. Light hat SEOs the actual recommendations of Google and other research engines like google. As Google's search engine outcomes become increasingly monetized and various other platforms such as Amazon plus YouTube gain more SoV plus search volume, I think wish overdue for the focus associated with SEO to shift far through Google. Traditional SEO is definitely focused on building (keyword relevant) links and (keyword relevant) articles. The main reason could possibly be sometimes misunderstood is because there are a whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, I actually must note that after our own 2017 edition of SEO developments launched last year on Lookup Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you you aren't accountable for search engine marketing (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search can be the trend in 2019.

[nedostajeminasaljubavmila]

Five Things Your Competitors Know About SEO 2019

Getting knowledge of SEO tactics is definitely helpful when marketing your internet site. Selecting the most appropriate key phrases is critical for successful SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and it is easy in order to choose the wrong ones through falling into the trap associated with optimization. Lookup engine search engine optimization, or SEO, is the procedure of enhancing your site's rating in search results. Web Marketing SEO, and in specific, Google SEO is the essential. Get into your competitor's URL into the particular SEMRush search bar and you will end up being provided with a list associated with SEO keywords, with their search positions and traffic. About: Brighton SEO is made up of courses and a one-day search marketing conference. Before this change, the greatest practice was to avoid concealed content at any cost because it wasn't as effective regarding SEO (it was either as well much to crawl for the particular bot in some instances or even given less important by Search engines in others). This is due to the particular fact that you will require contents to be submitted in order to the websites for whom a person are working as an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, when you build the hyperlinks, you will need to offer the profile information, and a person will also have to produce articles for submissions as nicely as numerous other types associated with written work. If you've actually searched for something online (and most of us have), a person already know read more regarding SEO than you think a person do. All of us already see this trend within several places, like extremely specific targeting of social ads -- some brands still approach SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and content creation with the one-size-fits all attitude. Join us for a new three-day, one-track conference full associated with forward-thinking, tactical sessions in SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, growth marketing, the mobile surroundings, analytics, content marketing, and even more. The objective associated with SEO is to get some sort of website ranked as high because possible on search engines, for example Google. When you are improving user encounter by focusing primarily on the particular quality of the MC associated with your pages and avoiding : even removing - old-school SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques - those certainly are usually positive steps to getting even more traffic from Google in 2018 - and the type associated with content performance Google rewards is usually in the end largely with least about a satisfying consumer experience. For instance, when I'm logged in to Google+ and We search for SEO, I have the following in my top 5 search results. Black head wear SEO practice involves breaking just about all of the rules and rules of the search engine. Every time you observe or hear the phrase lookup engine optimization, ” substitute exactly what create quality and indicating relevance” and you'll have the correct mindset permanently SEO work. SEOs conveniently call this effect ‘domain authority' and it appeared in order to be related to ‘PageRank' -- the system Google started in order to rank the web within 1998. When you have more time plus are keen to follow the particular SEO industry, subscribe to Moz and Search Engine Land. Integrating these keywords into the article allows you to add range while still retaining SEO energy. Our six experts talk about their favorite SEO tips plus tactics for building big site visitors in 2018. Yes, all of us know it's still June plus we know it's only 2018 but if you haven't began planning and researching key styles which will affect you SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2019 you could currently be falling behind. We furthermore take a look at exactly how new technologies like AI plus Voice search will begin in order to impact more on SEO since we move nearer to 2019 and beyond. Whenever every nation across the planet is busy in making their particular due contribution within the growth sector in their own method by taking the route associated with SEO service and online marketing and advertising, Singapore cannot stop stand nevertheless in one point. By 2019, articles marketing is set to turn out to be an industry worth $300 billion dollars. Off page SEO pertains to the strategies performed over and above your website that can end up being used to improve your lookup engine rankings. Due in order to the success of inbound marketing and advertising and SEO, more marketers are usually dedicated to improving their rank over other tactics. The best way to focus on these customers is by supplying high-quality SEO content that offers genuine and useful information in the direction of the readers. Another method provides a different page based upon whether the page is getting requested with a human guest or a search engine, the strategy known as cloaking One more category sometimes used is gray hat SEO This is within between black hat and whitened hat approaches, where the strategies employed avoid the site becoming penalized, but do not take action in producing the best content material for users. A several of the popular keyword analysis tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Key word Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Device and Google Keyword Tool. Luckily, SEO allows webmasters to supply clues that the engines may use to understand content. Because less as 20% dentists within a city hire SEO expert s who really wants that shift within their Google ranking. The particular analytical part of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is about tracking organic key phrase positions, website traffic and the engagement in Google Analytics, Site owner Tools and many other specific tools. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is nothing than a regular SEO, creating content and marking to be able to endure out online. SEO rankings are placing excess fat than ever upon what users have to state. The Search Gaming console will help you to evaluate your keyword rankings, CTRs, probable Google penalties and many some other useful data for technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social content all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your web site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is most about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search rating, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your internet site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to end up being quite less.

55 The difference from SEO is the majority of simply depicted as the distinction between paid and unpaid concern ranking searching results. I get into much more detail in SEO Titles on pages: 15-Point Checklist for B2B and B2C Brands, which explains the right way to work in relevant keywords that will accurately reflect the page articles. Are good nevertheless SEO potential may be reduce in comparison to single links. The training behind our SEO expertise had been developed from years and yrs of learning from mistakes advertising with our other businesses. Our own in-depth guide contains the most recent SEO best practices so a person can improve how your posts appears in search results, plus get more traffic, leads, plus sales. Keyword study definitely belongs to the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics. I'll start by stating that social press and SEO are heavily linked to each other. Black head wear SEO attempts to improve ranks in ways that are disapproved of with the search engines, or even involve deception. This particular is more tedious and tasking than inorganic SEO because this particular is how all the key phrases get a full blast associated with attention. SEO: It stands for Research Engine Optimization. Within this post, we'll break this down in the complete first timers guide to SEO: what SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is, how it works, exactly what factors affect search and exactly what sorts of changes you may make today to improve your own search optimization. The no follow hyperlink has been contradicted many occasions over where SEO is included and it depends on the particular web owner concerning if these people allow them on the web site or not. The Technical Audit Checklist Produced For Human Beings — Within this post by Distilled, a person will find a link in order to a Google sheet that provides an technical SEO audit register and links to resources upon how to complete each checkbox. Then each time the term SEO appears on your web site, it's automatically changed into the link you specified. Keyword Analysis for SEO: The Definitive Manual — This comprehensive guide simply by Brian Dean teaches you the number of strategies for getting keywords and determining intent intended for your target market. On-page and off-page SEO function together to improve your lookup engine rankings in complementary style; however, SEOs generally advise obtaining your on-page SEO ducks within a row before focusing as well much on off-page SEO. Within 2019, web-based businesses will embrace The Story Of SEO 2019 Has Just Gone Viral! more voice-to-text technology to enhance engagement and search activity. There are many SEO internet sites suggesting that they can supply a service to make the website LSI friendly, or satisfy ‘LSI requirements'. The particular art of web SEO is situated in focusing on how individuals search for things and knowing what type of results Search engines wants to (or will) screen to its users. Social press SEO would encourage your present customers to come back whilst helping you develop authority with regard to potential ones. He is an expert in SEO, Content Marketing, plus Pinterest Marketing. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert plays a huge part in helping companies build their own businesses and attract new clients through website traffic.

Screaming Frog SEO Index tool does it to suit your needs inside a few seconds, even intended for larger websites. SEOs also used to believe that buying links was the valid method of link developing; however, Google will now punish you for buying links within an attempt to manipulate page rank. Ultimately, achievement in SEO in 2018 plus forward will depend on producing amazing content and making this as easy as possible intended for search engines like google in order to understand exactly what that content material is all about. Answer: When you focus upon SEO for voice search a person need to create your content material around long tail keywords while people tend to use even more words in voice search. SEO is the practice associated with increasing the search engine ratings of your webpages so that will they appear higher in research results, bringing more traffic in order to your website. In the particular previous example, Bob's home web page might have the title, "Bob's Soccer Store - Soccer Shoes or boots and Equipment. " The name is the most important component of SEO, since it informs the search engine exactly exactly what the page is all regarding. 47. When creating SEO articles, keep the social layer within your mind. In case you have time to get good search engine optimisation education, after that combine this knowledge with greatest practices and you are upon your way to become a good SEO expert. 46. Use SEO practices in order to optimize your social media articles. 4. Mobile SEO plus Local Business: - As all of us mentioned before, users tend in order to search for local business upon the smartphones. By merging a fresh way to work along with SEO and prioritized lists associated with recommendations—not to mention competitor evaluation and keyword monitoring—Siteimprove SEO is definitely your all-in-one tool to develop traffic, prove ROI, and effortlessly create content. All the SEO developments listed here may have started in late 2017 or earlier 2018, but their true advantage could be reaped in 2019. Google's Ruben Mueller said on Twitter, along with the disclaimer of him placing his user hat on (ofcourse not Google hat), that relabeling outdated content as new, with simply no additional changes is a poor SEO hack. All of us associated with creatives, designers & developers function alongside our SEO & content material teams to ideate, research, style & create remarkable infographics and interactive content for brands that will get shared across the internet. Contemporary SEO strategy will be the process associated with organizing a website's content simply by topic, which helps engines like google realize a user's intent when looking. Page loading time is dependent upon Page Load speed, Web page loading time is one associated with the important factors in Cell phone SEO 2017. Sociable Media as a platform can not be ignored in any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION plan. Seo stands with regard to search engine optimization, when a person are searching for an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Search Engine Optimization Business then you needs to appear for various factors which may have a favorable and bad affect on your business.

"SEO" is a term that is definitely used to describe the procedure by which visitors a specific site is increasingly generated simply by search engines through search results. These white-hat cellular SEO tips will help a person to avoid internet search motor penalties and maintain better on the internet visibility. SEO or lookup engine optimization techniques will tackle these requirements of a web site. AI and tone of voice search have already begun in order to impact SEO, and as these types of technologies continue to develop, we all can expect to see a lot more changes in the way SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is completed. In the second chapter of our SEO guideline, you will learn how lookup engines work, how people make use of them and what type of lookup queries they submit. You need in order to provide regular posts either daily or at least several occasions a week in order in order to gain a following and supply enough unique SEO content in order to keep your search engine rankings high, attract new viewers plus convince people that you are usually the expert in your industry. Voice lookup will change the way you interact along with search engines and it can make SEO even more aggressive and vital to online achievement. Our SEO outreach team connect your brand and curated content with key on-line influencers to get people speaking about you & sharing your own message. Yet, with the lookup engines like google continually altering their rules SEO may appear confusing and overwhelming. Understanding what these words really indicate, and how SEO analysts make use of them to boost your cyberspace search engine results, may become a whole other story.

Investing in high quality tactics which do take more but endure and are usually the ones which generate useful traffic is the best method to spend your time upon SEO. Some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialists and bloggers say that will short URLs ranks better within Google. This technique will be sometimes known as SEO content” or SEO copywriting”. But you ought to not ignore the most substantial part of the website developing process, i. e. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Whilst businesses can choose to perform their own SEO, hiring the SEO agency that has encountered search engine optimizers will simply no doubt, help businesses reap RETURN ON INVESTMENT in the long run. Within fact if you look carefully you will find that content material marketing and SEO go hands in hand. On the additional hand, Black Hat SEO consists of efforts like redirecting internet lookup engine "spiders" to different webpages than human visitors see, mass-posting "spam" comments (on blogs, discussion boards, articles), or putting lists associated with keywords in late each web page in very small fonts. Since we've seen, one of the particular major advantages of SEO will get more traffic because of much better search engine ranking. If you are severe about improving search traffic plus are unfamiliar with SEO, all of us recommend reading this guide front-to-back. A few of these SEO strategies attempt to deceive users into going to sites about subjects they avoid have any curiosity about, which places them at odds with the particular purpose of search engines. SEO differs from local lookup engine optimization in that the particular latter is targeted on customization a business' online presence therefore that its web pages is definitely going to be displayed simply by search engines when a consumer enters a local search intended for its products or services. The challenge for webmasters plus SEO is that Google won't want business people to rank with regard to lots of keywords using autogenerated content especially when that generates A LOT of pages upon a website using (for instance) a list of keyword variants page-to-page. In time, the collection between social media marketing management, channel growth, and SEO will be considerably blurrier than it really is definitely today. In 2016, SEO experts have got determined which factors are nearly all likely to affect your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings. Customers and marketers will need in order to begin implementing multiple forms associated with digital marketing tactics including compensated search, social media marketing, nearby SEO, in addition to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION if they hope to rule a given Google SERP. Before beginning with this, the SEO professionals should visit your organization and realize each and every aspect associated with your company so that they will can help your achieve your own marketing goals. What really matters in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018 is what a person prioritise today to ensure that will in 3-6 months you may see improvements in the high quality of your organic traffic. Mobile will account for 72% of US digital ad invest by 2019. Head associated with Marketing at @impressiontalk specialising within user-centred SEO, PAGE RANK, content marketing and digital technique. Primary is definitely on inbound marketing, including almost everything from SEO to social press. However, a good agency providing SEO services is definitely all about being proactive in order to keep up-to-date with the most recent search engine news and adjustments in SEO techniques. Video marketing provides new opportunities to drive even more visitors your site and enhance its SEO status. Research Engine Optimisation (SEO) in 2018 is really a technical, conditional and creative process to enhance the visibility associated with the website in search motors. Off-page SEO pertains to the actions taken outside the house of your own personal website that may help boost your search motor rankings. Mainly because of this insufficient visibility this can be hard to create a sound business case with regard to SEO, even though it is usually strikingly obvious of the advantages to most companies of the particular number one position on Search engines. This particular is a time-honored SEO exercise called broken link building. Definitely engaging in reputation management, content material management and SEO (Search Motor Optimization) can give even the particular smallest business a chance in order to compete globally. Whether you are already adding SEO into your online marketing and advertising mix or not, you may ask yourself how aCO website stacks up against acom. With recent Google adjustments, failure to look after cellular SEO could result in lookup invisibility, and mobile's bringing additional changes you'll need to become ready for.

A great SEO service includes a great deal of research and lots associated with smart keywords application which can period website at a increased notch and provide it the higher ranking in Google web search engine. Professional SEO content authors work on creating articles just after understanding the nature associated with your business, your industry, rivals and what kind of posts your business might most want for maximum benefits; in the particular short-term and the long-term. Linking to other webpages inside your site, as well because linking to other sites plus getting other sites to url to yours, is a great method to improve your SEO. Influencer marketing doesn't seem in order to be slowing down anytime quickly, so it will probably obtain bigger in 2018 and also bigger in 2019 when even more companies start to catch upon to this trend. Keeping within mind the last point, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agencies are fluent in navigating via a wide range of on-line marketing tools that helps boost the value of your marketing technique. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is usually a powerful process that may help make you and your own research more visible to lookup engines like Google and Search engines Scholar. I have simply no clue about SEO only several basics that is available just about all over the place and I actually feel this article must help as your other articles assisted me give some direction upon recovering my lost traffic plus generating more content as properly as repurposing old content. An extensive dental marketing plus dental SEO campaign can end up being attained by the enterprise just if the web address associated with a dental practice includes directly into all the promotional materials regarding the business. This shows the importance of focussing voice search engine results within order to grow your company, marketing, and Search Engine Optimization(SEO) strategies. They attain this by increasing their web site rank through a method known as SEO or even search engine optimization. Just like most other SEO approaches, be certain your links are appropriate, plus be careful never to cross the particular line into excessive linking -- you don't want your guests to obtain annoyed. Bryan Yeager, Research Director at Gartner, may share 9 Key Insights through Gartner's Marketing Technology Survey in order to Help You Prepare for 2019 and Beyond. SEO is a combination associated with digital marketing efforts all operating together to increase a website's value to users and presence in search. On-page SEO (also recognized as "on-site" SEO) may be the action of optimizing different parts associated with your site that affect your own search engine rankings. In 2019, we will have to optimize voice lookup answers with CTAs that Google's algorithms don't pick up upon, but humans do. Dan Mallette, Lead SEO Strategist at each InVue Digital & HearstDMS, forecasts that SEOs will need in order to optimize for voice search in order to find new avenues as SERP real estate property shrinks. Obviously, a social networking web page that has more interaction will bring bigger SEO benefits for you to some business than one that will has less interaction, but basically having a social presence will be a good start. Ranking aspects can be divided into on-page SEO factors (including technical SEO) and link building or off-page SEO factors. Take the 10 pillar subjects you came up with within Step one and create the web page for each one particular which outlines the topic with a high level - making use of the long-tail keywords you emerged plan for each cluster within Step 2. A pillar web page on SEO, for instance, may describe SEO in brief areas that introduce keyword research, picture optimization, SEO strategy, and some other subtopics as they are discovered. On our blog we all chronicle current trends in on the web marketing and SEO and current interesting studies, statistics and developments. Increased site usability - Within an effort to make your own site easier to navigate with regard to the search engines, SEO at the same time helps to make your web site more navigable for users mainly because well. You are capable to host your video upon YouTube for your Blog9T foundational SEO greatest practices, but link and focus on the embedded video on your own own website. Image SEO is actually a crucial part of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION different types of websites. Max DesMarais is definitely an SEO plus PPC Specialist for Vital, some sort of Digital Marketing & PPC firm that specializes in PPC administration services. But this also has an incredible roundabout benefit to your bottom series: boosting your search engine marketing (SEO). It may be the scenario (and I surmise this) that this introduction of a certain SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique initially artificially raised your own rankings for the pages within a way that Google's methods usually do not approve of, and as soon as that is actually spread out all through your site, traffic starts in order to deteriorate or is slammed in the future algorithm update.

[nazih-fares]

While 2017 already seems to be set with a lot of fresh ideas, new Nintendo Switch IPs, it’s also the year of new racing simulations. With Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport coming in October, the season for sport simulations racing games kicks off with Project Cars 2 from Slightly Mad Studios and publisher Namco Bandai.

Despite its clamorous appearance, Slightly Mad Studios’ isn’t as demanding as other true racing simulators like Assetto Corsa or the ridiculous iRacing series. Instead, Project Cars 2 has to deal with a wider audience and constantly navigates between pure and hard simulation and the arcade-ish player, as other have done (like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo). The game easily showcase this extreme in simulation levels, as you go from one page to another in the rather more ergonomic menus, with a series of driving aids for the amateurs – braking, steering, damage management, etc. – or opt for none like the true virtual driver you are. Compared to Project Cars’ first game, this sequel is a tremendous leap in physics, with a special mention for the grip sensation, now more sensitive, with an overall finer driving feel, and the change of surface has an immediate impact on your vehicle.

At launch, Project Cars 2 will have 170 cars to choose from, with each vehicle having its own reactions and force to get used to, and it’s up to the player to adapt its steering to suit the environment. It will take numerous laps of before mastering all the type of cars, and there’s plenty of them, ranging from Formula 1, GT, Indycar and even Go-karts. Project Cars 2 offering is wide and will satisfy even the most demanding driver, even if the realism does not reach the same level of execution depending on the class chosen, but at least I’m really happy with their rallycross mode, which is great considering it is Slighty Mad Studios’ first attempt at the sport.

The same load of content can be found on the circuit side. Claiming to have the highest count track roster of any game, Project Cars 2 has over 140 routes spread out in sixty locations, which some can be a real surprises. You’ll obviously find the iconic Laguna Seca, Le Mans, Nürburgring, but there’s some great rural tracks like the Circuit Rallycross de Lohéac or even the the Dubai Kartdrome. There is even the possibility to drive historical circuits as they were back in the days, like the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps or Autodromo Nazionale Monza, but also some fun extreme condition tracks like the Sampala Ice Circuit.

On the front of weather condition, LiveTrack 3.0 was one of the highlights of Project Cars 2 during its reveal, and they were right to bet heavily on it. Behind this somewhat technical name is a system that allows the races to undergo real weather changes, which evolve in real time, and have a direct impact on the runway. While most other games opt for just a visual weather engine, Project Cars 2 goes the extra mile, by showcasing how mother nature can completely ruin your skills if you’re not used to those conditions. For example, after a few laps under a bright sun, rain might occur and cover the surfaces of the circuit, which consequently will result in girp losses of and force the player to adapt his style of piloting, or end up losing precious seconds – or even crash – while driving in huge puddle of water. Where it gets great visually and shows off the weather engine, is when the sun gets back, and you start seing those puddles of water evaporate from the heat of our star but also the friction of the car’s tires. To make the long story short, Project Cars 2 requires constant adaptation and it is not uncommon to have to go through the pit stops to make some changes in line with the weather forecast. Rainy, snowy, foggy or even stormy, the game handles perfectly the weather conditions on top of a great day to night cycle.

With controller in hand, Project Cars 2 plays decently. You actually feel the weight of the vehicle, ranging from the mass transfers or the loss of grip, as well as the roughness of the road which are transcribed with a fairly astounding fidelity. You’ll soon learn that it is necessary to know how to press gently on the triggers, in a sense of how Forza Motorsports 5 introduce Impulse Trigger on the Xbox One. But even if the game does not meet the requirement of a so-called “real” simulators, it can be very frustrating for pilots less accustomed to this type of games. For example, when exiting a turn, avoid accelerating randomly, as you need to keep in mind many factors into account like the temperature of the wheels which affect your grip. All these elements play a big factor in your driving experience, but the advantage of Project Cars 2 is that, like its predecessor, offers a hell lot of settings and options to play around. Everything is absolutely configurable, from the number of opponents to their aggressiveness level, or what you can deactivate in terms of options such as tire wear, breakdowns, pit stop.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On the front of game modes, Project Cars 2 is pretty much a continuation of the first game. The title is thus divided into three main branches which are Career, Quick Play and Community. Before embarking on your for you first career season, players can opt for a solo “training” race on the circuit, with the car of your choice, and even do that online in private practice sessions. Whether it’s online or online, Slightly Mad Studios’ game does the job, but mostly relying on its Career mode. While I expected something more, players basically start a career with the discipline of his choice and even according to his own options, and go through races, qualifications or even training tours. Eventually, more challenges will appear, with Invitational Events (which are really fun and range from Historic to Urban races), but also the concept of affinities with manufacturers to unlock special races once you gain enough affinity with the brand.

With such a large community built over the success of the previous game, Slightly Mad Studios went full on with the eSports angle, and built competitive and broadcasting tool in the root of Project Cars 2. In the community section of the game, players will be able to catch with the competitive news of the game, join and compete in events or leaderboards linked to your profile, but the best part is that you can now be a show director and broadcaster. In the role of the director, the player can manage all the camera shots and choose the cars on which he wishes to focus, as if it were a televised event. As for the broadcaster, in addition to relaying the race on YouTube or Twitch, he will have the opportunity to do commentary on the race. This is a great tool for eSports operators but also smaller communities that can now show off their driving skills in a professional way.

My main concern though about the game hasn’t changed sadly, even though it was pointed pointed at numerous times in the first Project Cars, and that’s the issue of the AI. For a game claiming to reach for realism, the AI drivers seems to be switched into bumper mode, with a weird aggressiveness toward pushing you off track. While this defect can be fixed by modifying the aggressiveness of the opponents in the options, it doesn’t truly disappear, and can be infuriating. Among the other inconsistencies that I have noted are the collisions, which besides being a little strange, sometimes have the art being illogical, almost to the point of being a development bug.

On the technical front, Project Cars 2 is one prestigious and solid game. In addition to the exemplary 3D models of the cars, we now benefit from meteorological effects that are just astounding (previously mentioned above). The graphics engine is mind-blowing, and I almost regret that there are not enough wide tracks to admire the sheer work done on the sceneries. The most anal of all gamers will be mesmerized by the overflow of crisp textures, even if some slight tearing occurs from time to time (on Xbox One at least). But overall, the game stands out very well, and it is worthy to mention that it runs with upscaling at 4K on the PlayStation 4 Pro so you can enjoy a high quality HDR game. For the more demanding ones, the PC version of Project Cars 2 is insane, supporting up to 12K resolutions, 21:9 aspect ratio and triple-screen support from the start.

Project Cars 2 was reviewed using an Xbox One downloadable code of the game provided by Namco Bandai. The game is also available on PlayStation 4 and PC in both digital and retail releases. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.

As expected, Project Cars 2 is an excellent racing game, continuing its legacy of appealing to hardcore or simple racers. While 2017 already seems to be set with a lot of fresh ideas, new Nintendo Switch IPs, it's also the year of new racing simulations.

[gamelyplanet-blog]

Before CoD: “Medal of Honor”, a personal retrospective PART I

The bloodiest war in History that engulfed the entirety of mankind; the Second World War, one of the most fascinating and terrifying moments in human history has been talked about, portrayed by and reenacted in every art-form at some point; video games have not been an exception. Though the original Call of Duty remains the quintessential War World 2 shooter, it was not the first series to approach and treat the Great War with such reverence. Infinity Ward, the makers of Call of Duty, did in fact start their careers with a game in another series about World War II: Medal of Honor.

The Medal of Honor series has been a mainstay of the shooter genre for about twenty years now, starting its life in the original Sony Playstation. Not simply a pitch out of nowhere in a safe and established IP or a clone of a more popular game as it’s customary these days, Medal of Honor is actually the brainchild of none other than Steven Spielberg himself. It was Spielberg, while getting ready to release his 1996 war epic Saving Private Ryan that tasked the electronic entertainment division of Dreamworks (his own company) to work on a pitch for a World War 2 game. The developers had a herculean task ahead of them; they had to tackle an entirely new subject matter in a genre mostly foreign to it and they also had to ease the concerns of WWII veteran organizations that thought the game would be disrespectful schlock. After patience, talks, changes and an internally-circulated and very well-received demo, Electronic Arts funded the project and released the first game in 1999, simply titled Medal of Honor.

Even without the influence from Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg’s involvement, the original Medal of Honor is interesting. Not many first-person-shooters originate on consoles and especially not back then. Sure, there were versions of Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Quake from the SNES to the Playstation, but they were all ported over from the PC versions. The successful shooters that originated on consoles were usually tie-ins to large movie licenses, such as the Alien games and, of course, 007: GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64. It’s more than a little significant that Medal of Honor was a Playstation game first and foremost; it came at the right time on a system that changed gaming forever. The Playstation took gaming into the mainstream and helped rewrite the dated notions of what the entire medium could achieve; it was the system thanks to which in the eyes of normies video games stopped being glorified children’s toys and became a real form of entertainment and/or art. In this regard, the original Medal of Honor is the perfect mirror of the very system it was first released on; Dreamworks and EA proved that shooters weren’t just about grey corridors and energy weapons, gore and killing monstrous aliens; they could be historically accurate, with high production value, entertaining but also educational and centered around one of mankind’s darkest and most important moments. That the game didn’t just disappear, but also spawned a sequel on the same system and eventually became a large IP for EA across multiple platforms makes that original endeavor very important for gaming as a whole.

Steven Spielberg on the set of “Saving Private Ryan” (With Tom Hanks in the background)

Medal of Honor places the player in the shoes of Jimmy Patterson, an agent working for the OSS, that is the Office of Strategic Services, parts of which eventually became the CIA. Patterson is tasked with a variety of solo missions, infiltrating Nazi strongholds and doing anything from locating documents and MiA Allied troops to taking down German super-weapons.

Realism and film roots proved a wonderful mix that works even now, in the game’s old age. Medal of Honor’s gunplay is satisfying. Despite its technical limitations, the weapons feel authentic, in weight, look and sound; it sounds like a given in the modern, military-infested shooter genre, but it was a breakthrough approach at the time. The lone wolf protagonist angle allowed the developers to show less and make use of lighting and shadow techniques to work around the hardware’s limitations and so most missions take place at night or inside claustrophobic German complexes, making it a great and serious looking title. There is era-appropriate artwork during loading screens in the style of propaganda posters, the title screen is a 1940s style war room instead of a simple menu with a logo and even the save/load screen is designed to look like a personnel file. The attention to detail to make the game feel like it’s taking place during the second world war is extremely impressive even by modern standards and the fantastic soundtrack that accompanies players throughout the meaty campaign bolsters the already strong atmosphere and gives off the feeling of a true cinema period classic that you get to partake in.

Where Medal of Honor really still shines is in its enemy AI. The German soldiers aren’t just dumb obstacles charging at the player like most videogame enemies; they spot the player and immediately use tactics. They crouch, they go prone, they roll to dodge, they choose the best position for cover, they even throw grenades back at the player. In rare occasions, Germans will even jump on grenades and cover them with their bodies to contain the explosion and save their comrades. Enemy AI in Playstation games simply wasn’t like this; even compared to the majority of Playstation 2 games, the Germans in Medal of Honor react realistically and complexly. Of all the things that are hard to design in a game, smart AI is probably at the top of that list, making Dreamworks Interactive’s achievement all the more significant. 

Of course, a game like Medal of Honor hasn’t aged flawlessly; the controls are a little stiff, as the game was released for a system, which didn’t even have controllers with analog sticks yet. The aiming and moving are locked to the D-Pad and in situations that the player has to quickly react to unseen threats, the game feels a little rigid. The enemies are also bullet-sponges and if more than one of them are on screen at the same time, the player is unlikely to leave the encounter completely unscathed. 

For all that’s great about the enemy AI, it occasionally glitches and it can be inconsistent, particularly in regards to the enemies’ field of vision; the view distance is understandably low, considering the hardware, but the Germans can sometimes spot Patterson from afar, before the agent and by extension the players can see them.

Lastly, there are no checkpoints in the original version of the game; much like every first person shooter of that era, if the player’s health bar hits zero during a mission, they have to start over again.

Playing the original Medal of Honor in 2017 remains a satisfying and humbling experience; not only does the game still play well enough, but it’s also a link to the past, History in game form. It’s interesting; Dreamwork’s title was one of the first shooters, especially on consoles, to try and educate people in History, but because of its origins and what it represents for gaming, it has become history itself, even if it is only in its own little niche. Those were the days that spawned everything we consider a rule in gaming today, much like the NES library did for gaming in the ‘90s; Medal of Honor is a representative example of the entire 5th console generation, from the way the market worked, to the type of game that was popular, to the involvement of big names from other forms of entertainment, to innovation and polish; it was the era of growth of the entire industry and that’s something engraved on Medal of Honor now-wrinkly skin.

From Steven Spielberg’s brain and his idea for a loose tie-in to his movie, to a multi-million dollars franchise for one of gaming’s biggest publishers, it’s hard to look at the original Playstation title and not see the amount of work, attention to detail and talent that went into making that game. By the time the WWII shooter subgenre had started becoming saturated and dying out, that first game was a distant memory in the minds of most people, assuming they had even heard of it before; yet, even to this day, it’s easy to see and recognize how many genre-defining foundations and tropes Medal of Honor alone created and established.

Next: Medal of Honor: Allied Assault

Note: Medal of Honor is available for purchase via the PSN “PSOne Classics” section for play on Playstation 3, Playstation Portable and Playstation Vita systems.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Film Facts: Arsenal, Silence + more

In what has to be an example of casting in the most apocalyptic sense both Nicolas Cage and John Cusack star, along with Adrian Grenier, in the mob thriller Arsenal. Cage and Cusack are hard working actors who currently bounce back between tony studio films and inconsequential B-movies.

In the last couple of years Cusack has headlined titles like Drive Hard, Grand Piano, The Numbers Station, and The Frozen Ground. Cage in the last few years has graced titles like Left Behind, The Trust, Dog Eat Dog, Men of Courage, and Army of One. Pot boilers all of them, despite an occasional thumbnail of quality.

In a sense, Arsenal pits Cage and Cusack in a battle to see who can chew the most scenery while pretending that they are acting in a film that people will actually want to see.

Cage wins by a hair mainly because he rocks a really weird wig. Retribution, kidnapping and revenge have never seemed so pointless. Arsenal director Steven C. Miller uses extreme slow motion photography where time is slowed down to make a bullet appear to shoot across the screen at a snail’s pace. Bullet hits also explode in similar slow-mo glory. If Arsenal was an art film, this might be some glorious exploration of time and space. As it stands, it’s a glorious waste of time.

Arsenal opens exclusively in Houston this weekend at the Premiere Renaissance 15.

Silence won’t be the last time a prestigious director uses career clout to make a navel-gazing exploration of personal religious issues. A serious film for serious film fans, Silence exists seemingly for the sole purpose of showing viewers how bereft the world at large is of actual faith.

Martin Scorsese has made previous forays into religious subjects, most notably The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997). Your ability to find some kind of beating heart likeability for Silence is proportionate to your knowledge and grasp of world events and religion.

L-R: Director, Martin Scorsese and Andrew Garfield on the set of the film SILENCE by Paramount Pictures, SharpSword Films, and AI Films.

Set in 17th century Japan, in a time when Christianity has been outlawed, we follow two Jesuit priests (Adam Driver, Andrew Garfield) who surreptitiously smuggle their way into the country to find and rescue another priest (Liam Neeson) who has been forced to deny his Christian mission and study Buddhism.

Scorsese doesn’t let the viewer down cinematically, there are some beautifully shot sequences like one where the camera follows a hawk in wonderful panning shots only to reveal the danger of being discovered when the camera comes to a sudden halt. There’s very little in the way of violence, mostly mock torture that resembles crucifixion. However one decapitation comes about so fast that even as the proverbial head rolls there’s still time to cut to a reaction shot of the headless body, which stands upright waiting for the pressure of blood loss to collapse. Another Scorsese device is where his films change from narrator to narrator mid-stream. Here, Scorsese starts the last third of the film with voice-over from a previously unseen character, a Dutch merchant whose country is the only one Japan trades with.

Japanese roles run the gamut from the guide who may or may not be trusted and a translator who merely wants to do his job, to the inquisitor, himself wise beyond his years but yet unbending in wanting to eradicate all religions except the true one. The inquisitor speaks with a strange lisp.  Interesting how Buddhism, today considered a peaceful alternative to more radical religions, is used to represent a totalitarian regime. In the West, the Son of God rises from the dead once, whereas in the East, the Sun of God rises fresh in the sky every day.

Perhaps Silence works best as a litmus test of faith. Would you keep quiet about your beliefs and accept the status quo in order to survive prosecution or would you defy those realities and speak out thus becoming a martyr?

Frankly, I cannot wait for Scorsese to return to making violent gangster tales. Silence was a project that Scorsese worked on for decades before he was able to secure financing. Scorsese returns to form with his next film The Irishman, about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa with a cast that includes Al Pacino (as Hoffa), Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro.

Silence opens exclusively at the Edwards Grand Palace this weekend, and opens wider next weekend.

Liam Neeson also appears, via motion capture, as a huge tree in A Monster Calls. Mainly a film for older kids and teens with a mature bent, A Monster Calls deals with a boy and his mother’s fatal illness. A giant monster tree appears out of the blue with a series of parable-like stories that gives a young lad the pluck to make his life bearable. Lewis MacDougall plays young Connor with believable co-star turns from Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Toby Kebbell. Spanish director J. A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) helms this wide release.

Sometimes it’s just good to have an old standard back. Railroad Tigers stars Jackie Chan as a Chinese rebel leading a group in terroristic activities against their Japanese oppressors in the early 1940s. It’s not like Chan doesn’t appear in a myriad of current films foreign and domestic yet Railroad Tigers brings back the kind of excitement, comedy and kinetic stunts that define Chan’s best work.

Most of the stunt work revolves around trains and as such Chan classics like 1992’s Police Story 3 (released domestically as Supercop) are recalled. In Supercop, Chan literally drove a motorcycle onto a speeding train, while in Railroad Tigers a new generation of CGI driven stunt teams turns old notions on its head. Outtakes during the credit roll show some of the green screen and wire choreography that went into the production.

Chan and team, as well as their Japanese advisories are introduced in swooshing freeze frame close-ups. The gang breaks into trains to steal arms and explosives. They leave behind a hastily drawn symbol that looks like a cat with wings. The action proceeds non-stop. Break-ins are followed by breakouts. Bridges exploding and drugged pancakes figure into the equation. All the while a sly sense of humor highlights events.

Railroad Tigers unwinds exclusively at the AMC Studio 30.

  Film Facts: Arsenal, Silence + more this is a repost