Game Tip: Risk of Rain

I discovered Risk of Rain on an 8-hour train ride from Salzburg to Hamburg. Like so many other games, it had been lying around in my Humble library for some time, but for the long ride I installed a few games I had always wanted to try and finally got around to play it. I immediately fell in love with the fast-paced and challenging gameplay and the many, many unlockable features and characters, but let me explain what Risk of Rain is about.

In every level of the 2D-game you have to find a teleporter, which takes you to the next one. By killing enemies with every characters 4 individual attacks you gain money, which you can spend on more than 100 different upgrades. At the end of each level, enemies keep spawning for 90 seconds in addition to one boss and when you’ve finished them all you can proceed to the next level. The game is pretty hard and every time you die your score is reset, you lose all your items, your level and money. This may sound frustrating, but once you know how valuable your stuff is you will be much more careful and try to get better and better, because Risk of Rain is very, very motivating. I showed the game to many different people, including some casual gamers and a non-gamer and even they wanted to try again, to improve their technique and get better.

What I like so much about the game is that it is different every time you play it. You always get different items, the levels are slightly different and even after finishing the game it doesn’t get boring. Risk of Rain is full to the brim with cool ideas and ways to personalize your own game experience so that you everyone can enjoy it. I only recently discovered an artifact which made the game more fun than ever for myself and I immediately played it through again. You can also play the game with up to four other people which is even more difficult, but so much fun.

Every time I make a discovery like that I can’t help but wonder how many future favorite games might be hidden in the huge pile of games I have collected through Humble Bundles and Steam Sales.

http://riskofraingame.com/

Birdman – Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014

The golden days of actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) are long gone. Once renowned for his performance as the action hero Birdman he is now old, cynical, mentally unstable and on the verge of bankruptcy, pouring what’s left of his money into a broadway play. Shortly before the premiere, one of the actors has to quit and gets replaced by the crowd-pleaser Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) who is a great actor, but doesn’t go well with Riggan.

Michael Keaton and Edward Norton

The first strong point of Birdman are its actors. I was really impressed and surprised by how well all the roles – the leading as well as the supporting ones – were played and especially liked Emma Stone’s role as Riggan’s daughter Sam. The second strong point is its technical brilliance. Iñárritu worked his magic and made it look the film was made without a single cut, which works really well and gives the whole movie a feeling of fluidity.

I know everyone loves this film, but technical brilliance and performances aside it just didn’t click with me, probably because I couldn’t really relate to the characters. I enjoyed it and I’d probably watch it again in a few years, but it’s not gonna end up on my best-of list.

Whiplash – Damien Chazelle, 2014

Andrew (Miles Teller) is a very ambitious, young drummer and first-year student at a prestigious New York music school. During one of his lone training sessions he is approached by Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) who sees his talent and invites him to play as an alternate in his studio band. Fletcher seems like a nice guy at first, but soon reveals himself as an abusive and manipulative teacher. He demands more and more of Andrew who is all too ready to sacrifice everything else just to meet his expectations.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons

I tried to explain to some friends what’s so great about Whiplash, but it’s not that easy. The story isn’t that great, but it’s really amazing how the film manages to captivate the audience, no matter if they like Jazz or not. It does that with a combination of great camera work, a good choice of music, outstanding sound mixing and of course the two leading actors, whose performances are truly amazing. That all may sound like a typical Oscar-worthy film, but something about it really got to me and I felt the intensity of those images and sounds even hours after leaving the cinema. Technically speaking, Whiplash is a very decent film, but I enjoyed it even more than that and I hope you do too.

Relatos salvajes – Damián Szifron, 2014

This Argentinian anthology film (english title: Wild Tales) features six loosely connected episodes, all of which circle around the same theme: What does it take to turn us from thinking beings into rage-driven animals? In every episode, people experience absurd (or at least, very unlikable) situations that take them to the brink of their civilised lives.

Erica Rivas as Romina

I like Relatos salvajes for its little stories that each relentlessly head towards a spectacular escalation. What I don’t like is the pacing of the whole film. We know what’s going to happen, but it takes its time. It’s like watching an a-little-too-slow-motion video of a pie flying towards somebodies face. However, I was still well entertained for most of the time. The actors all perform well, the dialogues are fun, the camera work is good and some image compositions are really pretty.

TL;DR: A grotesquely funny anthology film about people on the verge of going berserk.

Citizenfour – Laura Poitras, 2014

In 2013, a person got in touch with journalist Laura Poitras, claiming to have informations about illegal spying measures, conducted by the NSA. That person turned out to be Edward Snowden who about six months later met with Poitras and investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong to blow the whistle on his employer. Citizenfour tells the story behind the NSA-scandal from the very beginning down to the present day and also goes into Snowden’s motives.

Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden

The film deals with one of the most pressing topics of our time and I wish everyone would watch it. Although I had heard in detail about the immense power of the NSA before, I was again deeply shocked. Citizenfour is not just about the person Edward Snowden and those first days of the NSA-affair, but also touches topics like how a journalist handles classified information and what an ill-defined legal situation whistleblowers are in. Aside of the topic, the film mostly consists of interviews and text, but gets very tense at some parts.

TL;DR: You should see this film!

7hints

For the better part of 2014, my father and I have been working on our very first iOS release: a little trivia-game, called 7hints. Today we finally got the “ok” from Apple and it should hit the AppStore any minute now.

       

7hints is about guessing a famous person with the help of gender, category and the name-giving 7 hints. The less hints you need, the more stars you get. In the current version, there are 100 cards from all kinds of categories like politics, film, science or art. Another 100 cards will follow soon.

The game is free, so go and try it for yourselves, we hope you like it!

Get the game here