Successful Practise and Principles: What Am I Doing As A Multimedia Practitioner?

We were recently asked by Jools to blog about what we are doing as Multimedia Practitioners in our free time and how it contributes  to our course if it does. So yeah, here is a list of things I'm currently doing in my free time (or trying to get done) anyways:

My Phoenix Wrong work:

At the moment, I've been working on my Phoenix Wrong series, and I currently have uploaded the 12th video to Youtube recently and working on the 13th. Due to recent problems though, I had to take all my videos off Youtube bar my university ones (which I will explain in another blog), and now I'm going to upload them to Newgrounds which only uses Flash formats, which meant converting all my videos to .flv in order to upload them. I'm also currently trying to figure how to make a Phoenix Wrong video in Flash as I am not very well experienced with it, hence it's proving to be quite a taxing problem for me. 

The reason this contributes to my course is because it's all centered around using animation to produce these videos, and also audio/visual production as I was using the animated gifs from the games to produce spoof videos. I also based my Interactive Narratives project from Narratives around the original series that my videos parody, and thus used the same gif sprites to produce the Interactive Narrative project. This also can contribute to the Games Design area of Multimedia quite easily too.

Anime Studio:

Anime Studio is a 2D animation program, which is very similar to Macromedia Flash, albeit being much, much more cheaper but unfortunately more limited in some areas as a result. I've always been keen on learning how to use the program as I was attracted to the interface of it and also it's features, price and what it is capable of.  I will feature a blog on it soon all about Anime Studio and my experiences with it anyways. At the moment, I'm currently still learning how to use it, as I don't have a massive amount of free time due to studying Japanese as a supplementary course alongside Multimedia. Again, this contributes to Multimedia due to being centered around animation and such, and it also contributes to the games design area as well. 

Vue 6:

Vue 6 is a 3D modelling and animation program which is pretty similar to programs like 3DS Max, Maya and Blender. It is actually designed to work alongside them as when you first load it up, it will ask you on what 3D modelling program you have experience with or still currently use, and it will thus customise it's interface, shortcuts and so on to try and replicate the chosen program. I'm only using the evaluation version of the program at the moment, but I will be purchasing it in the future anyways. It was used in production of the Pirates of the Carribean films too actually, so it's got a pretty impressive background, and current reviews of it says, it works like a dream alongside Maya. Again this contributes to the Animation and Games Design sides of Multimedia, due to being centered around 3D modelling and animation.

Reading Manga, Drawing Manga Style and Watching Anime:

I've been reading manga, and watching anime for a good few years now, so I am very familiar with the artistic style used for them, as well as picking bits of Japanese from watching anime. These can help contribute to the games design area of Multimedia particularly character concept design as they can be used as inspiration and guidance for developing new characters. I also am trying to learn to draw in the manga style as much as possible, but I need to get back to doing it as I have't drawn anything for months. I don't believe my drawing skills are that great at it yet, I can replicate existing characters from various manga fairly well, but I struggle to come up with my own characters, as well draw on a smaller scale and draw more polished, and detailed characters. It's something I definitely need as much practise with as possible, but I'm currently finding it difficult to find time for it as I've got so much going on in life inside and outside of university. 

Studying Japanese:

I am currently studying Japanese as a supplementary couse alongside Multimedia, and it may not have any direct influence on my course, but I'm focusing on it's future prospects for me due to learning it. Once I am fluent in it, I am planning to move to Japan eventually (its a life long dream!), and work as a games designer for one of the bigger games companies such as Nintendo, Capcom or Sega one day, thus this course and learning Japanese will both be vital for this. The idea is to work for a games company here, and eventually work my way up to bigger companies hopefully via experience and skills gained, with me eventually upgrading to the gaming mecca that is Japan. 

Macromedia Flash and 3DS Max:

I don't think these programs needs introducing to be honest as they are pretty well known, but I'm currently trying to learn as much as  I can on how to use them at the moment. This course does require us to be familiar with them in order to build our projects and such, hence as well as wanting to learn how to use them, it's a necessary requirements too. Again, these contribute to the animation and games design areas of Multimedia, but can contribute to other areas too I imagine.

GameMaker:

Gamemaker is a program developed by YoyoGames to enable people of all ages to build 2D games, using a simple interface (there is an advanced one too available), but you can also build 3D games if you upgrade to the Professional version of it. I tried to learn it in the past, but had to leave it due to lack fo free time, and I also went to a workshop on it during Gamecity last year in order to refresh my memory on it. I do want to learn how to use it, but I need to find time for it like everything else. It contributes to the Games Design area of Multimedia anyways. 

Twinity, IMVU and World of Warcraft:

I am currently researching online games for my Identities module, and had to produce a 4 week diary (minimum) of my character's adventures in the game I chose. I decided to try Twinity due to a recommendation from a friend, and hence as you can see in my earlier blog posts, I've been recording a diary of my experiences on it. I'm also keen on using IMVU and playing through World of Warcraft too, both which I will eventually produce diaries for too. All these games contribute to the Identities module of the 1st year of this course, but they help to contribute to Games Design in general as well. 

Stop Motion/Pixilation:

I'm currently trying to develop ideas for a new Pixilation/Stop Motion video to contribute to my portfolio for Identities as well as for personal reasons, and hence this contributes to the Animation area of Multimedia as well as Audio/Visual Production I suppose.

I think this is the entire list of everything I'm currently doing in my free time as a Multimedia Practitioner anyway, I cannot think of anything else that I'm doing.

A Couple of Amazing and Random Videos I Found

I was just browsing Youtube out of boredome, and I found a couple of pretty awesome videos on there that I just have to show!
This first one, is a live action parody of Star Wars, starring the video owner's cat and a chew toy with a lightsaber... It's a lot better than it sounds, trust me! XD

I was pretty impressed with the actual editing and creativity of this video. Making the chew toy bounce around like some real life, beanie version of Yoda was a pretty cool idea as it looks like it's bouncing around all over the place like Yoda did when he fought the Chancellor I think it was? As you also saw, he added a mini, hand made lightsaber onto the toy and then got the cat to play with it to make it look like a fight between the mai characters from Star Wars. The way he synched the sound effects from Star Wars was also very impressive, as they work prefectly with the timing of the "Jedi Mouse's" jumping.

And now this one is just PLAIN AMAZING! It's pretty unsurprising that the Japanese did this anyways, but basically it's a chimpanzee riding a segway! Now how awesome is that?^^ Have a gander for yourselves neways, and be amazed:

This one was just a random video I wanted to incldue for it's awesomeness, hilarity and randomness XD.

Some More Avatar Goodness: Face Your Manga and Simpsons Avatar Maker

As you probably can guess from the title of this blog, I got my hands on two pretty neat avatar creating websites. I found them whilst looking for an online game that I knew, I somehow ended up finding them after looking for the game, but I can't remember how now XD. Anyways, I explored these two sites, and to my delight, I was able to create some fairly decent new avatars, but only 2D still ones I'm afraid.
As you can see on the left, these are the results of some quick experimentation on the two websites I looked at. The one on the far left is from a website called "Face Your Manga" and as the name suggests, it allows you to create manga style avatars of yourself. Like I did with Twinity, I decided to create an avatar that is a digital representation of my ideal appearance as well as my personality. Upon experimentation with the fairly decent amount of options available, I created that beauty of an avatar you see up there. Even though it is meant to be a digital representation of me, I can't help but get the feeling it bears a very similar resemblance to the main antagonist of a video game series that I love a lot, and also produce my own spoofs of...

See what I mean? This is Phoenix Wright, the main hero from the game series of the same name. With some slight adjustments here and there, I could end up with a avatar bearing an extreme resemlance to the pointy haired antagonist on the left! In fact, I'm going to do that right now!




-Couple minutes later...-

TAAA DAAAA! Here is my avatar based rendition of Phoenix Wright!^^ I'm quite chuffed with the results actually, it does look a fair bit like him to be honest :P. Here is the link to the website by the way:
Face Your Manga



Anyways moving on, the second website I used was the "Simpsons Avatar Creator" on the official website for "The Simpsons Movie". The link to it is:
Simpsons Movie Site Avatar Maker

On the website as the name suggests, you can create an avatar of yourself as a Simpsons character! On the left here, I have the Simpsons equivalents of myself and one of my friends. To think of it, the avatar for me on the left looks quite familiar, but I don't know why...The avtar maker is pretty good though, unlike the other site which charges you (well its only £1.30ish I suppose) for extra services for your avatar, this one has similar features for it at no extra cost. The previous site does let you save your avatar to your computer though for free which is good, but on this one, you can print it out, make it into DVD box art and embed it with animation into a blog or Myspace profile or whatever as I'll try to show below.


And that's it from me really, you can feel free to check out the websites though and let me know what you think of them as well as showing me what characters you end up developing :P. Peace out, Krazy Kakashi.

My Favourite Music - An Insight Into My Musical Taste

I'm extremely passionate about music, and I cannot live with in my life especially in the majority of situations. One of my improvements after the 10 minute review I had was to post more personal blogs about my self on here so that everyone can get a clearer impression of who I am as a Multimedia practionier, hence in this blog, I'm going to mention what my favourite songs are of all time. 

Starting with the songs I definitely cannot live without:

1. Eric Prydz - Pjanoo
2. Mika - Happy Ending
3.  Koyashu Takehito - Hyakuman Kai no Juuchi
4. Britney Spears - Stronger
5. Crush 40 - What I'm Made Of (Metal Overload)
6. Derek and The Dominoes - Layla
7. Hazel Fernandes - Number One
8. Leah - Calling
9. Ikimono Gakari - Blue Bird
10. Yasuharu Takahashi - Reverse Situation/Hero (Naruto Shippudden)
11. Lostprophets - 4Am Forever/ Can't Catch Tomorrow
12. Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal/Earth Song
13. Muse - Knights of Cydonia
14. Nickelback - Savin' Me/ If Everyone Cared 
15. Chad Kroeger - Hero
16. Santana ft Rob Thompson - Smooth
17. Santana ft Chad Kroeger - Into the Night
18. Nightwish - Last Of The Wilds/Moondance
19. Within Temptation - Memories
20. Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit
21. Iron Maiden - No More Lies/ Blood Brothers (Orchestral Remix)
22. The Offspring - Dammit I Changed Again/ Gotta Get Away/ Cant Repeat/ The Kids Arent Alright
23. Phoenix Wright/Cadenza - Pursuit -  Cornered Remix
24. Pink - Who Knew
25. Spice Girls - Viva Forever (Dont judge me, this is one of the songs I grew up with!)
26. Texas - Summer Son/Black Eyed Boy
27. The Rasmus - Guilty / No Fear
28. Ana Johnsson - We Are
29. Vic Mignogna - Brothers (Full Metal Alchemist)
30. Akeboshi - Wind (Naruto)

Yeah I have a feeling I know what you are thinking..."WTF?!!" But yeah, this is my ultimate list of music that I love, I know it's a hell of a lot of songs, but that's me for you. I have had an extremely varied taste in music since I first moved here, as I was introduced  to music properly and hence I experimented with the majority of genres at least, and  thus found a lot of songs that I feel very passionately about, and that have helped me to get through the tougher situations in life. Most of the mentioned songs at least have helped me to keep myself motivated and strong throughout my life regardless of what happened, as at the end of the day, I had these songs to revitalise my spirit after any emotional beatings that I took. If you were to sum up my personality through music alone, this is a pretty good indiciation of what it would be like. 

I've always been passionate about music from day one, and to this day it only seems to become more important for me now. The music I've listened to certainly has had it's role in shaping me into the person I am today as well as continuing to motivate me further.  I am definitely happy with my current tastes in music at the moment, and this is the one I will choose to remain with until the end of time, as I've never felt so comfortable about the music I listen to until now. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask me anyways. 

An Exceptionally Good Disaster...

I've been playing a fair few new games lately, but there's a few that I have played which have caused some very unexpected reactions to them that I thought I should mention.  I'll do a blog for each game anyways.

Firstly, there is the truly epic, hilario

us, and brilliant (I could go on) Disaster: Day of Crisis  for Nintendo Wii.  The best way I would describe this game is like a video game crossover of 24 with The Day After Tomorrow. The game is all about an ex marine soldier who has been r

ecruited to fight a newly formed

 terrorist group made up of his fellow comrades from his final mission as a marine. But here's the catch, they were as good as dead back then, as he saw the helicopter carrying said people crash after being hit b

y a flaming boulder during a volcanic eruption. To make matter

s worse, they have kidnapped a Professor of Seisomology along with his grandaughter w

ho is the younger sister of his own best mate that died in

 front of him during his final marine mission. And the real icing on the cake is that the terrorists have somehow taken control of the weather itself, and thus managed to cause natural disasters left right and centre all over the city including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and so on...And you thought you had it bad!

Basically, as well as battling terrorists, the main cha

racter Ray also has to deal with the very worst of Mother Nature's wrath, thus leading to one hell of a situation for him and then some. The game is an actio

n adventure type, focused solely on survival of course, and it plays like

 a 3rd person shooter with platforming elements and first person shooting sections. It's a lot like games like Jet Force Gemini, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil for instanc

e. As your character makes his way through the continually weather ravaged city, he will avoid to avoid all the consqeunces of the disasters including explosions, falling buildings, cars crashing and flooding whilst having to fight members from the terrorist group and rescue people who are in dan

ger. 

I actually loved the concept of the game from first hearing about it, and I wasn't disappointed upon playing it! I'm a big fan of more unique, individual games, and I saw this going for £15 in the GAME sale, so I had to buy it. The game is amazing to play and watch though, the most 

amazing part is how the city is contiunally being destroyed around you and how the increasing amount of damage actually affects your progess and so on. For example, I was trying to reach someone in distress nearby who was quite high up but there was no way of reaching them due to immense amounts of building

 damage and rubble nearby. All of a sudden though, a b

us comes crashing down along with a dumpster (somehow due  to the earthquake, which is the theme of the second level as well as the first), and due to the way they landed, 

they created a makeshift ramp up to the person in distress which really impressed me for it's sheer creativity and ingenousity. 

Although this game has similarities to other gam

es out there, it still is very unique and it has turned out better than the magazines have said to be honest. Ray has a Stamina bar as well as a Health bar, which depletes gradually over time but  quicker if you're fighting terrorists, sprinting, lifting something and so o

n. You can replenish your Stamina bar like your Life bar, but if it goes down to zero, your Health will suffer instead and you will due if that reaches zero too. As well as those two bars, Ray has a Lungs/Oxygen meter, which is affected by smoke in an area. If there is smoke present, Ray will choke and his lungs will become polluted rapidly which is shown by the meter. You will have to sprint through the area to make it out alive, and once you are in the clear, you can exhale the smoke whilst breathing in oxygen to recover. You can hold down the Z but

ton to speed the process up, and if you press it again at the right time, he w

ill slap his cheeks (0_0) and gain bonus points. 

As well as the standard combat and movement abilities found in other games, Ray can also call out to people to see if anyone needs help nearby and thus find t

hem. Once you choose to rescue them, the rescue process initiates, and depending on the situation, you will be required to do something specific such as treating wounds, carrying someone to safe spot, reaching your hand out for them to grab, give them CPR and so on. I love this part, as I find saving people in this game quite a rewarding and pleasing experience, in cont

rast to killing them in various games. 

As you can see in the screenshot above, Ray is currently trying to resuscitate an unconscious person. In that situation, you would have to push down with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to try

and recreate the real life coutnerpart of this. That added amount of interactivity is definitely perfect for this sort of game, 

and I thinkthis is why the game was chosen to be developed on the Wii, or even f

ormed in the first place.

The ultimate highlight of this game though is the natural disasters in it. The way that vario

us buildings come crashing down, 

or vehicles that come flying past and so on, is just a breathtak

ing and exhilarating surprise. Your just walking along

waiting to see what the game has in store for you, then all of a sudden...BAM!!! a building collapses right in front of you.

If that wasn't bad enough, during certain moments in the game, you will be chased by a chain reaction of events

caused by a natural disaster such as the upper floor of the building your in collapsing due to an earthquake,

or a series of explosions due to a fire, or even a raging flood. You have to wave the Wii Remote and Nunchuck 

up and down like mad to outrun these chain reactions otherwise you go bye bye.

One final thing I want to mention about with the game is the bonus missions you get for cleared levels. When you back

to a level you have beaten, you get extra objectives to fu

lfil on this turn round, and the one for the first level

had me in stitches. The mission was to collect these campaign f

lags that were scattered around the level  

but the funny part was the message you got through the Wii Remote speaker when you collected one.

You suddenly had this jive talking, funky 70's style voice s

houting praise at you like 

"Smooth Brother!" and "Funking Fresh!". I don't know what me laugh more, the sheer randomness of the

whole thing, or the voice itself!  

I've included some more screenshots of the game below for your vie

wing pleasure anyways.

Yep, that's how big the food is in the game. You can eat

 food that you find to recover Stamina and Life, but since when did burgers and cola cartons become bigger than a human's head?!

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 5

Today was a very busy day for me actually. Recalling the events from the last session, I decided to head out to where the christmas tree was once again and this time manage to get a screenshot of it. Luck was on my side today as I immediately went to the Brandenburg Tor and saw the tree in it's whole behemoth glory.

The screenshot doesn't do the tree enough justice unfortunately, you have to be there yourself to truly see how bewildering the height of the tree is, it is phenomenal. Something like this could easily make as a famous landmark to be honest. Moving on anyways, I decided to take more screenshots of the surrounding area as promised, which can be seen below. As I was admiring the scenery, another player suddenly appeared alongside me and said hello to me. Unfortunately for him, I was too distracted by the fact the guy HAD NO CHEST... I had to look at him twice as he was stood there as a floating head and arms above a pair of legs. I figured something must have gone wrong with the rendering but it didn't stop me finding it pretty funny though :P. The guy seemed like an alright person but then I discovered soon how rude he actually was. He asked me where I come from and then I asked him and he said Berlin. Whilst continuing the conversation onwards on Berlin itself, he interrupted me to say he does not like my language or something? 0_0... And then says he cannot understand me before disappearing off to wherever he went, leaving me standing there quite bemused. I would like to mention what my reaction was, but I feat it may be a tad too rude for the innocent eyes reading this...







After the other player's sudden disappearance, I decided to explore the area and see what there was for me to discover. After lots of random running around, I found a pretty neat feature which grabbed my attention as soon as it appeared.



As you can see in the screenshot above, I found a digital reaction of the fabled Sword in the Stone from the King Arthur mythologies. I was quite impressed to find it in this game, but it did make me wonder why it was in Berlin though? Examining the sword caused a blue door icon to appear which means it can be used to teleport to a specific location like the billboards, hence I decided to have a look to see where this would take me. I wasn't really expecting to go to Camelot though, although that would be an awesome touch regardless :P.



After being teleported by the sword, this is where I ended up which wasn't Camelot unfortunately but it'll do. I wasn't sure where I was, and just like where I was just now, it was deserted of all digital life (apart from plants and trees of course), and after running around the area, I noticed quite a few massive cranes which could mean the construction of a new building, which is an interesting touch to see in a game :P.


After seeing this area, I decided to call it a day for now anyway. On the next visit though, I'm gonna have a more in depth look around the Tutorial Area as I still haven't explored there properly and also I will visit the Real Estate office to find out about getting my own property. So yeah, in a dodgy and extremely pun of Toy Story...To Twinity and Beyond!

Sorry, that was bad.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 4

With my 4th day with Twinity, I have to say it was my best experience on it so far, which I will explain why in a minute. As soon as I logged in today, I was alerted that I had received a message from someone called Lars who turned out to be one of the staff of Twinity. Lars had contacted me to tell me he had read my blog on Day 3 of Twinity and he offered to take me to see the tree as it turns out it was still there! This was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, especially as I felt I had come across very angsty in the blog, which was a conseqeuence of all the personal problems I'm having at the moment. I actually panicked a little, but upon conversation with Lars, it turned out he actually liked my blog a lot mainly because it was so objectionable.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I'm in the midst of my conversation with Lars but this was later on after my computer crashed. Before I logged back on and took this screenshot, I was shown the route to the christmas tree, which really embrassingly was accesible via using the sign BEHIND me to teleport there...yep -_-' Somehow, I managed to miss that... But anyways, the christmas tree was an amazing sight to see, it literally was gigantic as depicted in the advertisements for it, and Lars told me the tree itself stands at around 50 feet tall! The sight of the tree was definitely worth the effort and journey to reach, that was my highlight of today's adventure. Lars gave me a quick description of the area, including the German market stalls (just like the ones in Market Square in Nottingham at the moment!^^) and the British Embassy. Unfortunately though, whilst Lars was giving me a talk about the area, my game suddenly crashed without warning on me and I was forced to restart my computer, thus losing all the screenshots that I had built up in my image editor , which was extremely frustrating.

I really appreciate the time and effort Lars went into to help me out today though as well as his patience with dealing with me as well, and I would just like to say a big thanks to him and I would recommend seeking him out if you have any troubles in the game yourselves.

After logging back in and talking to Lars again, I went off back to Brandenburg Tor to see if I could retake my screenshots of the area including the tree, but unfortunately I think something went wrong then. When I arrived there, the tree was now a silhouette instead which was an odd sight, I'm not sure if it was due to the sun setting at the time or the rendering of the tree messing up. Hence due to that, I'm going back to area on my next visit which will be very soon and make sure I do get some screenshots of the tree as I would love to show it off ...I mean let everyone see how awesome the tree is. I took a quick screenshot of the stalls though, which can be viewed below:

I will include more screenshots of the area with my next visit definitely, but for now I'm done with today's session and I'll see you after my next visit to Twinity!

My Interactive Narrative Project: Objection!

I just realised that I still haven't posted up a blog with a link to my interactive narrative project on deviantART which is pretty shocking actually. Anyways, here is the link to my project:
http://krazykakashi234.deviantart.com/art/Objection-106115621

This is version is nowhere near as complete as the version I had throughout my head whilst I was working on it, hence I'm planning on creating a more complex, detailed and interactive version of this project as part of my porfolio for the Identities module. Please don't judge this too harshly, as I did try my best to get as much as I could done with it and if I only had more time, I could have created something better but Im still proud of what I managed to achieve regardless.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 3

With the 3rd day, things started to look up for me. I didn't have much time to spend on the game today, due to being busy but a couple of pretty interesting things happened anyway though. When I loaded up the game, I found that someone has requested a friendship with me which surprised me, as I haven't done much in the game so far. The person's name was Josie and I decided to accept the request and see what happens. I haven't spoken to her yet, but I will send a message to her on my next visit to Twinity. It was a pleasant surprise to have made a friend already, and I hope to do make a fair few more on this game as I spend more time on it in the future.

After the friend request was sorted, I decided to have a quick look around Berlin City Centre. This is where I discovered something pretty useful, all thanks to a fair bit of curiosity.

If you look in the screenshot above, my character is standing in front of some of the previous mentioned billboards. As well as being able to embed websites into them, I learned that billboards have another more useful and efficient feature. There are certain billboards in the City Centre (as well as other main areas I imagine), where pictures of the various landmarks and tourist hotspots that you can visit are embedded in them. They are not there just for show though, if you click one of these billboards, it will teleport you to the area represented in their respective image. I found this out after clicking on the billboard with the Musuem on and suddenly being whisked away to the Musuem area. This was definitely a great discovery as it makes it easier than going into the main menu and finding the area you wanting to teleport to there, and I think the less significant areas that you cannot teleport to usually also appear on the billboards.

I'm afraid I really didn't cover much in today's post, but I will spend more time with the game in each session and thus have more to talk about in the diary. The original plan was to continue looking for the christmas tree at Brandenburg Gate, but I didn't have the time or motivation to do it unfortunately. Actually, if you look at the left billboard in the screenshot, there is the advert for the christmas tree that I saw, but you cannot use it to teleport due to some technical problems. One thing I would like to mention before I finish for today though is that when I logged in, I noticed a couple of people having a conversation but it happened to be in German which was an odd but definitely intriguing experience. I was so used to seeing everything and talking in English, that I forgot that there would be players native to Germany and similar countries playing this as well and also talking in German to each other, especially seeing as the game was built in and based on Germany itself. If only I had studied German from past Key Stage 3 level, I might have stood a chance of communication with some German players, but alas I am reaping the consequences of not taking German all those years ago. Now if only I could find a game based in Japan (preferably with romanized subtitles or no kanji if thats even possible), things would certainly become very incredible and fun for me =].

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 2

With my 2nd day on Twinity, I was pleasantly surprised with the sudden and friendly welcome I received from nearby players as soon as I logged into the game. The first person who welcomed me was called Simone, and upon further conversation with her, I discovered she was actually a member of the support staff. Although, running into a member of staff was quite beneficial for me as I was able to ask her for some help I needed, including my difficulties with the camera controls. The camera is pretty horrendous in this to be honest, if you turn around for instance, it will swing around immediately and this can get very confusing and nauseating if end up turning a lot at once. I tried zooming the camera out to reduce the problem, but it still kept doing it, which was pretty annoying. I decided to ignore it and continue in the end, although the movement controls do still annoy me a fair bit at the moment. You can only move around with the keyboard, the mouse cannot be used to move around by the looks of it which is annoying, as I hate playing games with a lack of mouse based movement.

On a brighter note, whilst I was chatted to Simone, I discovered the game was completely German based, hence explaining why there is a digital recreation of Berlin in the game. She also told me about websites being embedded into billboards which can be seen in the screenshot below. I found this quite impressive especially seeing as you can embed any website you want in your own apartment as well by the use of blank photo frames in the game. Although to be honest, with the freedom to embed "any" website you want, this feature could easily be abused by the naughtier variety of players out there :P.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I managed to get into conversation with 2 other players as well, as they greeted me whilst I was talking to Simone. They did not say very much though, but one of them was new to the game like me so I assumed they were taking some time to familiarise themselves with the interface and controls.

Whilst I was waiting for the game to load the Welcome Area earlier, I noticed an advert on the loading screen, which mentioned the display of a gigantic christmas tree at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin City. This immediately grabbed my attention and I decided to set off on a hunt to find where the tree is, which I ultimately regretted. You know when they say the game is digital recreation of Berlin city...they aren't exaggerating! I teleported to the centre of Berlin city, and assumed I'd be able to find this tree in no time. Within minutes of arriving there, I was just as lost as the next guy. Due to the camera still being a nuisance and the limited movement controls, I wasn't up for running around especially considering how huge the city actually was!
I immediately went back to the Welcome Area and asked Simone for the best route there in roder to make my life a hell of a lot easier.

After speaking with Simone, I learned I could teleport to where the tree was located directly, which pleased me a lot but it wouldn't last long... Ironically, I wasn't sure why but you could not teleport there for the time being due to some technical problems, which really annoyed me. I dont mean to rant, but why go to all the effort of creating a magnificient, eye teasingly good chritmas tree for curious people to hunt and discover if you cannot even teleport to the location for the duration of the time the tree is up? It was only up until the 5th so I a few days left to go find it, buy my search eventually become very uneventful and disappointing.

Simone told me I could reach the Brandenburg Gate area by walking from the Musuem area, so I thought I'd give it shot and see what happened. I teleported to the Musuem area, only to get a kick of deja vu. As this is is a digital recreation of a city, the Musuem area alone was fairly huge which intimidated me a lot, and it did not help I forgot to ask Simone what direction I should walk in when at the Musuem, which was a very "clever" move. Seeing as I have no knowledge of the geography of Berlin at all, and that my patience and enthusiasm were fading, I decided to give up on finding the tree, as I could end up going in circles or going a considerable distance in the wrong direction even.

My impressions of the game actually have become fairly negative now due to my experiences today, but I'm nowhere near creating a final impression of it. There is still a fair amount of things to do in the game, and seeing as I'm new to this game as well as a complete greenhorn to online games, I've decided to ride this wave along and see where it takes me. Who knows after all, I may actually end up enjoying my experience after all in the future...I am interested in the fact that you can buy your own apartment and customise it to how you see fit, so that is something I will definitely look at in the the future.