Disaster in Japan

                For this blog entry, I’m going to talk about the disaster that happened in Japan on March, 11, 2011. It started with an earthquake that was approximately on a scale of 8.9 that lasted for 20 seconds. To make things worse, there was a tsunami that left the entire village under water.

                This disaster is a great impact in today’s world, and if you see videos, you can see how japan suffered from an earthquake that was very strong and then from a tsunami which finished many lives. It is said that approximately over a thousand people are killed and probably counting. After a horrible earthquake, the tsunami came and that’s when disaster struck.

                When the tsunami came, it destroyed millions of houses and it moved cars and boats as if they were just toys. Many Japanese people weren’t able to leave their house and get to higher ground to be saved so in return, their life was taken away by the water. Many Japanese people (but not all) were on the top of high buildings watching their house and probably family and friends being killed and swiped away by the tsunami. Now people in Japan are trying to survive with the very little food they have because of the huge wave that took away and destroyed the food they had.

                After both these terrible events, other problems have occurred. The first problem was that there were more than 300 aftershocks throughout Japan. Another thing that happened was that the nuclear power plant that Japan has, one of the huge barrels exploded so there is a possible nuclear gas/leak that can affect the people and kill them. In recent news, they stated that there was another earthquake after all the terrible stuff that happened and now Japanese people are predicting that there will be a tsunami. Hopefully the people are starting to evacuate and get to higher ground to be safe and so no more lives will be taken away.

                The United States are helping Japan to recover from the disaster by sending crates of food and supplies so that they can stay alive. A company that I saw who are helping Japan is the famous Apple Inc. If you go to their website, you will see a tab where you can donate money to help Japan after what happened. To the people, this shows that apple is a company who cares about what is happening around the world and more people will probably buy their products because of their hospitality. I hope Japan recovers and that no one else gets killed for whatever is to come.

First Strike review

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be talking about the release of the new DLC (downloadable content) pack for the Call of duty Black Ops game, First Strike. In this pack, they gave the gamer four new online maps and one new zombie map.

                One map which they released is called Berlin Wall. This map is divided into one half and the other half as if it was the Americans vs. the Germans. Treyarch made that you could cross to the other side three ways, two of the ways are on each side of the map, and the other one is in the middle. They also made an area of the map that if you stand in it, some turrets will start shooting at you which will kill you. I thought this map was pretty good and I kill a certain amount of players in this map.

                Another map they released is called Discovery. This map doesn’t really have a current location/setting. But my guess is that it is sort of the setting of one of the missions you play in the campaign which you are Reznov (a Russian) and are playing in the year 1945, and the setting is similar to Discovery. In Discovery, Treyarch added a new detail which is that there are some bridges that you can blow up and the floor actually falls and breaks. I thought this was very realistic and it gives a certain taste to the map.

                Another map they released is called Stadium. This map is set in a hockey stadium except you can get on the ice. There is nothing cool about this map and is pretty much the same as the maps that were released when Black Ops came out. In my opinion, this map was horrible and you can die so much.

                The last online map they made is called Kowloon. This map is set in one of the missions of the campaign called Numbers. You fight against players on roof tops in what looks like a Chinese town. I didn’t like this map that much because it was very big and I get lost many times, so the other team always kills me. But one thing I liked that Treyarch put in was that you can use a zip line to get from one place to another very quickly. Although this is cool and effective, you have a greater chance of being shot. In my opinion, this map can have its good sides and its bad sides. I will have to keep on playing in it to get my full opinion about the map.

                The best part of this map pack is the new zombie map they put into the game. The map is called Ascension and is set in a soviet Russian space station. Treyarch added many new weapons and designs that made this zombie map so fun and enjoyable. One main thing they added was new weapons. They added a weapon called the Gersh Device which is a black hole that sucks in the zombies. I thought this was an awesome weapon as well as a hilarious one too. Just seeing the zombie walking backwards into the black hole is so funny. Another new weapon they added was the Matroushka Dolls which are like those dolls which you take half of its body out and another smaller one is inside and you keep on removing the dolls until you get to a tiny one. In the game, when you pop out one of the dolls, the player throws the dolls and the dolls will explode. Like there are several, there are several explosions. This weapon I didn’t not like because it isn’t good to kill zombies. One detail they added in this new map is something called landers. There is only one lander but you can use it from three different locations. When you use it, you go up in the air and then land in an area in which you started the game in. This saves you when you are crowded by zombies and there is no escape by foot. Another detail Treyarch added was color. When I say color, I mean that when you start the game, you start on a lander and land in a room (which is the same room in which you land when you use a lander). When you land, you see that everything is in black and white. When I saw videos of this on YouTube, I thought that persons TV had color problems. But if you turn on the power in the game, everything gets colorful. When I saw this, I thought it was something so cool and I never had thought about something like that. All these things combined made this zombie map so fun and cool.

                After reading this blog entry, I hope I encouraged people to buy the First Strike map pack and try out the new online maps and the new zombie map. I really recommend this DLC and I hope Treyarch will create more DLC packs with better online maps and better zombie maps.

Call of Duty zombies

                For this blog entry, I’m going to be writing about the game mode in the Call of Duty series which is zombies. When Treyarch created World at War (Call of Duty 5), they made all the things you would normally see in a call of duty, campaign, multiplayer etc. Then, Treyarch wanted to take the Call of Duty game to the next level and they added zombies.

                When zombies came out in World at War, Treyarch put one zombie map only just to see if the gamer liked it. Turns out that everyone, including me, loved the new zombie game mode. Treyarch herd this satisfaction and decided to create another zombie map with more things to do and more areas to explore. When that map was released, gamers played it immediately and loved it. Treyarch then decided to make ANOTHER zombie map which the gamer could explore even more areas and could actually go outside of the house they started in. Although this map was the biggest one of all and had slight changes, it was my least favorite. After the third zombie map being released for a while, Treyarch created the last zombie map in World at War which was the best zombie map out of the other three. The reason is because the map was big but not as big as the 3^rd map. Also, there was a lot of space to run around and escape the zombies. Another thing they added was the pack a punch machine which would upgrade the player’s weapon so that it would be more powerful and kill the zombies.

                While Treyarch developed the new maps, they also developed new weapons. The new weapon that I liked the most was the wonderwuffen (wonderful weapon in German). This gun released an electric blast that would kill up to 20 zombies with one bullet. This helped a lot because it was easier to escape if you were trapped in a corner with a million zombies on top of you, than to use a pistol. Another good weapon that I liked was the ray gun. Although this gun was already invented in the first zombie map, it is still one of my favorite weapons. This gun would deliver a laser blast which at the beginning rounds, it would kill with one shot. Once you get to the high rounds, the ray gun will take two, three, or four shots to kill them. But this weapon still helps to kill the zombies and survive as long as possible.

                I thought this game mode that Treyarch made was very fun and creative and it’s something to do if you’re bored of playing team death match online. Hopefully Treyarch will keep on making this zombie mode for the games to come.