Currently Browsing: In-Depth
Joel Macklin: Call of Duty 3 vs Battlefield 3 (part deux)
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Written by Joel Macklin, The Eagle Editor
Now that the holiday season is over, the stream of new games being released has come to an end. Now is the time to pick one or two games that are really fun and play yea-long until new and better games can come out again.
Unfortunately, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was a huge letdown that disappointed many. Apart from its creative survival mode and unique perk system, the game flat-out sucks. The campaign, a continuation from COD Modern Warfare 2, was an okay experience but could have been much better with more battles between the war tornUSAandRussia.
The “new” multiplayer is almost exactly like MW2 and not that great. Lots of servers are susceptible to hackers, making many games unfair and less entertaining. The combat is quite different from its predecessors and to gamers like me, very annoying. With newer additions, the quality of COD has gone down, whether you notice it in the graphics or game play.
On the other hand, Battlefield 3 came out strong with its console version of their acclaimed game. The campaign for BF3 is decent with some unique features but, in general, a repeat to the style of COD. Besides the campaign, BF3 has an amazing multiplayer system that has a wide range of maps and non-lethal items to deploy in combat. Sometimes you will be on a huge map that would be the scale of several football fields, while another map could be city fight with limited mobility.
Unlike in COD, you have to work together with your team to complete objectives in any game mode. Having one person who is insanely good at the game no longer has a great impact on actually winning because strategy is now the most important part of the game. On almost all of the maps, there is an assortment of vehicles that anyone can use, ranging from armored cars to fighter jets. Vehicles are designated by the map depending on how effective the vehicle would be in that specific environment.
The final amazing part of Battlefield 3 is the new software that is powered by Frost 2.0. This new engine gives realistic gaming a whole new definition. In most games, the environment is always there and is never impacted by actions of anyone, but in BF3, any player can impact the environment. This includes making bullet holes in walls, blowing up entire walls with tanks, and even making huge craters in the ground with various explosives.
Battlefield 3 is a much better game than Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Previous COD games like Black Ops are still fun and better than BF3 but it’s going to take some remarkable remodeling for the Call of Duty series to stay on the top.
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Currently Browsing: Student News
It’s winter. Try the ice skating option
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Written by Nick Nordquist, The Eagle Staff Writer
When the temperature drops and the snow falls, you know it’s winter time. There are a lot of winter-exclusive activities such as sledding, skiing, snowboarding, and many other options. Many kids, however, prefer to go ice skating. Ice skating gives you an opportunity to hang out with your friends, meet new people, and just have fun all around. Most kids go to the Schenley ice rink at the Schenley Oval, but another popular rink is PPG Place, in Downtown Pittsburgh. Ice skating is a great way to make plans for everyone to meet up, since both of the rinks in the city are in central locations. Both the Downtown and Schenley rinks are outdoor, but there is Ice Castle in Castle Shannon which is just south of the city.IceCastleis a sports complex where they have two indoor rinks, and it’s another very popular ice skating venue. Hockey is an up-and-coming sport inPittsburgh, and a lot of kids are taking interest. Going ice skating gives them a chance to learn to skate, which of course is a very important element in hockey.
Times for the Schenley rink can be found here: http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/parks/schenley_skating_rink.htm
Times for the rink atPPG Placecan be found here:
Times forIceCastlecan be found here:
http://www.icecastlearena.com/public.htm
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Currently Browsing: In-Depth
Jymier Johnson: Skyrim ‘Game of the Year’
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Written by Jymier Johnson, The Eagle Columnist
Skyrim the Elder Scroll was voted best game of 2011. This being voted game of the year with it only being out for a couple of months really gave the creators a lot of publicity. Ever since then, the creators of Skyrim have gotten a lot of offers to work on games such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, and even Call of Duty.
Skyrim the Elders Scroll is based on a fictional world that took place in the medieval age where dragons and goblins can both roam like cats and dogs. Skyrim has also been nominated for 5 Game developed choice awards. The makers of the hit magazine Game Informer also say Skyrim is number one on their list game to play any day. 15 of the 18 people who work for game informer said that Skyrim was their favorite and will be their favorite for years to come. Skyrim was not only nominated for award on the PS3 and X-box, it was also nominated for best game on the PC and Mac.
If you follow games, getting game of the year on consoles and computers is one of the hardest things that can be done, especially with the game being out for only 4 months. The award that Skyrim got nominated for included best Role Playing Game (RPG). This was always Call of Duty’s award but Skyrim came and took it from Activision and Treyarch.
When it comes to Skyrim, you just can’t ask for anymore. Skyrim has everything from cool characters, evil villains, and a bunch of hidden variety of things. I see why Skyrim got game of the year.
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Currently Browsing: Academics
January HS Teacher Feature–Mr.Casilli
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Written by Cathy Pierotti, The Eagle Senior Columnist
Japan is known for their language, art, literature, sculpture, paintings, music, calligraphy, architecture, gardens, pop culture, clothing, and sports but how has Mr. Casilli come to know so much about Japan? Where did he learn to speak such a difficult language, which has three alphabets, and is he really Japanese or is he Italian?
Mr. Casilli has been teaching for eighteen years now, and is currently our Japanese teacher for 9th- 12th graders. He is also the coordinator for the weight training club. After eighteen years of teaching how has Mr. Casilli become so fluent in the language and culture? “When I was in college, I was actually studying business as a duel major, and Japanese was an excellent compliment. Japanese became so cool that I stuck with it.” Mr. Casilli’s first teaching experience was in Toyokowa, Japan and was able to work with kindergarten and adult students.
Now that Mr. Casilli teaches in an I.B. program, the Japanese curriculum can be more difficult, and teaching older students can be difficult as well. “I do have a strong bond with my students, and I am able to get to know the students longer because they are in High School.” Now some students have come into the Japanese program not knowing much, and Mr. Casilli has been able to create a curriculum that accommodates to them. “I try to accommodate the students by trying to make them feel comfortable with a new language. I use new anime, manga, and bring culture into the curriculum to make it exciting for students. The students who have had to no language experience have become the best students because they have false assumptions about a new language.”
Mr. Casilli would love to expand the Japanese program and see other middle schools and high schools advance. Research shows that the younger you are, the more success you can have because you’re exposed to it at an early age. With some schools, the most common languages are Spanish, German, and French, but there is one question that several people have asked, and that is, do Americans lack dialect compared to other citizens in different countries? “Yes and no, depending on the different varieties. Some Americans lack foresight of additional language, and how it is beneficial to their economy.”
After eighteen years of teaching, Mr. Casilli is still learning about the Japanese culture and still tries to expand the curriculum more and more each year. “The traditional I.B. curriculum becomes more advanced, but I have confidence in all of my students.”
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Currently Browsing: Sports
Girls beat Langley 29-24
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Written by Cathy Pierotti, The Eagle Senior Columnist
Last night, the lady eagles beatLangley29-24. The girls were ready, starting slow but ending with a good win.Taylor Smith led the Lady Eagles with 11 points, as the girls ran their record to 5-2 in the city and 6-5 overall.. The ladies will be playing Oliver this Friday so come down and support the team for another good win.
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Currently Browsing: In-Depth
Poetry Corner–What Family–Sabria Mitchell
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Written by Sabria Mitchell, The Eagle Poet
What Family
I’m tired of the fake laughs
I’m tired of painted smiles
I’m tired of acting joyful
Happiness has been gone for miles
We definitely aren’t a family
We definitely aren’t friends
It seems like we’re just enemies
Until the dreadful end
It’s time to part our way
It’s time to stop the tears
No point in even trying
We’ve lost so many years
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Currently Browsing: In-Depth
Leo Johnson: The Arkh Project
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Written by Leo Johnson, The Eagle Editor
Before I get into the point of this article, I’d like to make a disclaimer that I am not really a video game person. Sure, I own The Path, an obscure indie game, and I once spent almost twelve hours straight playing KOTOR – and now I’m undermining myself – but I don’t spend a lot of time playing them normally, and I’m not the one writing the video game articles for this paper.
A common complaint among people like me who play video games is that GLBT (that’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) characters are rarely represented in games. A common complaint among people like a lot of you who play video games is that almost all video game characters are white.
The solution to this – make more video games featuring minorities – has been constantly decried by video game companies that claim that video games like that “wouldn’t sell.” The question comes to mind is, how do they know this if they’ve never tried to sell them? However, at this point I don’t think the most perfect argument in the world would convince them to start including queers, people of color, and queer people of color in their games.
The solution? Go somewhere else for your gaming needs. And that’s what I want to talk about.
There’s a video game that will fulfill these needs. It’s a linear story full action roleplaying game, to use their own description. The main character is African American and genderqueer (someone who doesn’t identify as male or female.) All of the relationships are interracial – and not just white person-with-token-person-of-color, but blacks and East Asians, for instance. There are two white people in the whole game.
Two, and I am rejoicing despite my own race because I think we’ve all had enough of whitewashed, straight, cissexual (this one means identifying as a gender that matches your body – look up gender identities if you’re curious) characters. I think that not just those of us who are people of color – though all of you are definitely important and I can’t claim to understand what you go through – but who see people of color, talk to people of color, deal with people in our lives, should welcome this game and hope for the start of a trend.
The thing is, not everyone thinks that way. The developers are getting hassled by white supremacists who object to the idea of a game that doesn’t focus on them, despite the hundreds of thousands of games that already do. Fundraising is being done, but it’s not being done enough, because it will lost about a hundred thousand dollars to develop a mass market quality game, and they are not a big business.
They’re a bunch of people who love video games – just like you – who want change – just like a lot of you. So I invite you to show your support by donating – just ten dollars will both help, and get you a poster of one of the game’s characters to boot – and by commenting, drawing fanart (art drawn of other people’s characters), telling your friends, posting about it on your facebook, and whatever else you want to do that might help.
Here are two links, to the project’s fundraising page and the project’s tumblr:
http://thearkhproject.tumblr.com/
http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Arkh-Project
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Currently Browsing: Middle School News/Sports
Middle School swimmers continue winning ways
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Written by Robert Pell, The Eagle Reporter
The girls and boys middle school swim teams raced in a tri meet against PCA and Ellis on Wednesday. PCA usually has a quality team with a large amount of members but this year they came up short with only about four boys and four girls. So, their minimal requirement team wasn’t close to Obama but Ellis’s all girl, all private, all dominating team definitely put a fight for our unbeatable girls.
Of course at the meet Grant Rauterkus destroyed the competition but there was someone else at the meet that truly was a super star. A young 6th grader named Reo caught my eye at the meet; mainly because he swam like an 8th grader. He is definitely going to be a part of the long winning future of this team and I will be glad to see him race again.
Though the star Obama swim team won the meet they didn’t actually win anything; because Ellis is a private school they have no affect in public school meets and because PCA’s team was so weak, our coaches told the ref, “ Don’t count this match…. we will swim for times.”
This is one of the many examples of Obama swimming’s high standards and respect, but after the meet one of our swimmers decided to go against these standards and push one of his fellow swimmers into the pool. This source of immaturity is not tolerated on the middle school swim team and afterward caused all of the swimmers to be reprimanded for 20 minutes. Hopefully they learned their lesson.
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