Gamers are no strangers to the apocalypse. They’ve unloaded countless rounds of ammo into the undead horde and hacked off more limbs with chainsaws than they could count – but The Last of Us is different. Sony and Naughty Dog’s latest title isn’t interested in scaring you with hordes of infected and cheap thrills. Instead, it chooses to tell a tale of loss and heartbreak, of desperation and survival.  It is beautifully balanced and paced, and one of this generation’s definitive must-have games.

It would be easy, at least upon first glimpse, to simply dismiss The Last of Us as Uncharted with Zombies, but it’s far from it. Yes, Naughty Dog’s latest does take on the apocalypse but it’s far from just another entry in the overcrowded genre. In the world of The Last of Us, the infection that causes the downfall of humanity is fungal based and anyone who breathes in infected spores starts turning, and it’s the same fate for those who get bit or scratched. Naughty Dog does a great job at making the outbreak and its resulting effects on both humans and the world around them feel very organic. You’ll encounter enemies at different stages of the infection, and it’s interesting to see the just how the disease starts to take effect.

Developed by: Naughty Dog
Published by: Sony
Genre: Action/Survival
Platform:PS3
What works: Great emotional depth | Survival mechanics | Brilliantly paced|Amazing prodution values
What doesn’t work: Very rare camera issues
5 out of 5 stars

At the heart of The Last of Us is the relationship between the game’s two main characters, Joel and Ellie. We’re introduced first to Joel, who lived a pretty normal life before the start of the infection, where he watched his own daughter die at the hands of non-infected humans.  Now twenty-years later, Joel has survived, but he’s much more rugged and much slower to trust. It isn’t long before Joel and his partner Tess are charged with escorting Ellie to a group of militia rebels named the Firefies in exchange for guns and that’s where The Last of Us begins proper.  Much of the emotional drama of The Last of Us centers around the growing relationship of Joel and Ellie, as he tries to protect her like the daughter he couldn’t.

The world of The Last of Us is vastly different from the one you know. Following the outbreak, humanity setup smaller camps that are mostly safe from the virus and those who have been infected. These cities and camps brim with life and personality, interacting with other survivors and exploring the ruins is a major part of the fun here, as there’s a ton to discover even though this is a mostly linear affair. Outside of those camps though, the world is far different. The virus spreads wild and the infected prey on survivors.  To survive you’ll have to move about carefully and scavenge when you can to find anything that can help you.

That’s probably where The Last of Us becomes most memorable, whereas most zombie-esque games hit you with huge numbers of enemies, The Last of Us gives you smaller numbers but a much bigger challenge. I’ve played through seas of the undead before in games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising, but The Last of Us is the last time I felt sheer terror running through the undead.  If you walk into a room of the infected and try to take them on without being prepared, you’re likely to face a grisly death. There are multiple types of enemies like the newly infected runners to the Clickers, who have been infected for a while and as a result have lost their sight but have incredible hearing. To be successful in The Last of Us, you’re going to survey your surroundings and plan your attack.

Take a section earlier in the game where you enter a broken down skyscraper with two Cickers and about four Runners. You’re encouraged to take different approaches to each confrontation, so I sneaked around and began to strangle the Runners from behind. Everything went well until I accidentally alerted one of the Runners and had to pull out my trusty lead pipe and begin to fight my way out. I thought I was out of it until I was attacked from behind by a Clicker, who are very hard to push off and take out unless you have a shiv – which I didn’t have. Ammo, health and resources are hard to come by in The Last of Us, and you’ll have to search everywhere to find items you can combine to make things you’ll need. Tape and scissors for example will give you the ability to make a shiv.

When the credits rolled on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series, I felt similar to the way I did when I leave a Theater after a Hollywood blockbuster, but after The Last of Us, I felt like I should just go outside and enjoy humanity for a while. There is a message to The Last of Us, but the game never feels preachy; instead, it’s a brilliantly paced and emotional story that will grip you beat by beat. The score is also top notch and mixes well with the game’s crescendo moments as it does in the more lighthearted ones. The quality voice acting makes every beat of the character’s journey feel incredibly more emotional and even more life-like.

If Uncharted is Naughty Dog’s big budget, summer movie franchise, The Last of Us is their labor of love they get to make simply because they want to. Though it does have a few camera issues (read, very few), there’s more than enough to make The Last of Us one of this generation’s premiere titles. It’s remarkably paced and even more tense and fun to play. Simply put, if you own a PS3, there’s no reason to not own this game.

Editors Note: This review is based off of a pre-release copy of The Last of Us that Blast Magazine received from the publisher. We played through the entire single player game and hid from a lot of Clickers. Since the multiplayer portion of the game was unavailable pre-release, it was not included in this review. Look for a seperate review when it goes live.

The Wii Fit Trainer, one of the instructors in the Wii Fit games, was unveiled as a new playable character in Nintendo’s upcoming Super Smash Bros. title. Project director Masahiro Sakurai showed off her moves during Nintendo’s E3 media showcase and told the audience that her moves “are quite healthy for her”. She will have yoga attacks, special poses, and other exercise techniques in her moveset. Wii Fit Trainer joins Animal Crossing Villager and Mega Man who will also make their playable debut.

The new Super Smash Bros. game is in development for Wii U and 3DS and is slated for release in 2014.

Square Enix’s MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is coming to PlayStation 3 and PC on August 27 this year, but it will also be out for PlayStation 4.  According to Square Enix, you will be able to “smoothly transition” your character from the PS3  version of the game to your PS4 version upon release.

“The heart of everything we’re working towards is enabling players and their friends to experience their own rich Final Fantasy adventure,” said Naoki Yoshida, producer and director. ”The deeply integrated social capabilities of the PS4 will make it a natural home for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. The team and I are thrilled to continue our adventure on the next generation gaming platform, and we hope that you’ll join us!”

Nintendo has announced four games shown on its Nintendo Direct broadcast that you can demo at Best Buy stores this week. Demos for Mario Kart 8, Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD will be playable Wednesday June 12 and Saturday June 15. Head to Best Buy‘s website to find out the store nearest you.

Revealed during an E3 Nintendo Direct segment, Super Smash Bros. is the next installment in the series currently in development for Wii U and 3DS. The teaser trailer showed Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, Fox, Pit, DK, Pikachu, and introduced the Animal Crossing villager joining the fray. The Villager is seem fighting with his tools like the shovel and using balloons to recover. Mega Man is also confirmed to be a new playable character and will use robot powers he used in the Mega Man games in combat.

The game will feature cel-shaded graphics on the 3DS but 3D-rendered visuals on Wii U. No word on how or if cross-play features will work.

The game is coming out in 2014.

Super Mario 3D World is coming to Wii U this December, Nintendo announced during its E3 Nintendo Direct presentation.

The game’s trailer showcased Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach as playable characters in worlds that resembled Super Mario 3D Land. A new bell item was also introduced that lets characters transform wear a cat suit to climb up walls and scratch enemies.

Super Mario 3D World is due for release in December.

Mario Kart 8 is the next installment in the Mario Kart series coming to Wii U. The game will bring back hang-gliding features, online features, and introduce hover crafts. The game even shifts gravity and perspective by having players ride on walls and other vertical surfaces.

Mario Kart 8 will launch Spring 2013.

Nintendo revealed that Pokémon X and Pokémon Y will feature the new Fairy-type Pokémon. The series hasn’t released a new type since 2000 with the release of Pokémon Gold and Silver. Previously revealed Eevee-evoltution Sylveon, Jigglypuff, Gardevoir, are a few of the confirmed Fairy-type Pokémon. Their attacks are super-effective against Dragon-type.

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y will launch October 12 this year.

If you are a child of the 1980s or an enthusiast of camp, you may recall the movie Breakin’. Breakin’ told the story of a classically trained jazz dancer who fell in with some street (or break) dancers. She soon found herself immersed in the hip-hop world and impressed with the self-taught dancers’ ability and determination. The movie placed in juxtaposition the snobby practices of the classical dance world and the cool, underground scene of break-dancers. Since movie-dom loves an underdog, you can guess which group of dancers we were meant to root for (and who ultimately prevailed).

Breakin’ was a low-budget hit. It had wit, verve, and exhilarating dance scenes, and it kept coming to mind while watching Beat Girl, a British independent film in which Heather, a piano prodigy bound for Julliard, is introduced to the world of electronic dance music and seeks to become a DJ. Instead of coaxing Mozart and Prokovfiev from the ivories in airy concert halls, she is increasingly drawn to mixing beats in sweaty, glitzy night clubs.

British Indy “Beat Girl”

Beat Girl is cute, but cute is what you tell a girl she is when you are not that interested in her. It’s a well-crafted movie, with solid actors and decent production value for an indy, but it only scratches the surface. We are constantly told that Heather, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Claire Danes, loves piano and loves being a DJ, but we never really see it. There are passing glimpses of her at the piano and the turntables, but I never felt drawn into either world.

When we are introduced to the world of break dancing in Breakin’, we truly feel sucked in, as if we are being initiated as well. Not so much with Beat Girl, where we seem to be kept at arm’s length. I think part of the problem might be the amount of characters Beat Girl takes on. There’s Heather of course. But there’s also her estranged father and her best friends (an aspiring fashion design duo) and her piano instructor and her brother, who is also into DJing but in hock to dangerous thugs. Finally, there is her mentor and love interest in the electronic music scene Beat Girl is Heather’s story, but that is diluted by the numerous sub-plots. Indeed, the sub-plot with the brother and his involvement with a gangster is compelling, but just as the danger builds it quickly dissolves in a strange and dissatisfying way.  There are of course multiple characters in Breakin,’ but their stories intertwine and all move fluidly in the same direction. Beat Girl’s sub plots feel forced and artificially tied to each other.

I don’t mean to be overly harsh with this movie. It’s nicely made, and there is a lot of talent involved. The director is competent, and I could easily see Beat Girl as a stepping stone to some stronger work. Judging it in isolation, however, it feels hesitant, as if it was content to be standard and neat, rather than going all the way to produce the kind of edgy, indy film the description promised.

Sony’s next console will release worldwide this holiday season for $399. When will you be picking yours up?

He went on to say that your PlayStation Plus membership (along with its free game perks) will carry over to PlayStation 4, but will now be required to play multiplayer games online.

Square Enix today revealed a teaser trailer for their latest entry in the Kingdom Hearts series. More details to come.

Tetsuya Nomura revealed a sneak peek at Final Fantasy XV, the next installment of the Final Fantasy series. Originally titled FF: Versus XIII, the game is in development and will release on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3.

Announced at Sony’s E3 press conference, The Order: 1886 is a new IP for PlayStation 4 being developed by Ready at Dawn. The trailer showed two protagonists fighting off supernatural monsters in a cyber punk setting. Stay tuned for more news as it develops.

Back when it was announced a few months ago, all we saw of the new PlayStation 4 was its new 6 Axis Controller. At E3, Sony finally showed us what it looks like. Will it fit in nicely in your living room?

Sony announced at its E3 conference that Telltale’s episodic game The Walking Dead is heading to PlayStation Vita. Additionally, a new episode titled 400 Days will also be coming to the handheld. This episode follows four new characters whose stories intertwine with each other.

A Walking Dead PlayStation Vita bundle will also be available this summer and will come with every episode of the series along with the new episode.

Ubisoft announced Rabbids Invasion, an interactive TV show to air on Nickelodeon. The game will feature episodes that you can interact with using Xbox One features. Yell at the TV, move around, and you’ll affect what happens on-screen, play mini-games, and solve puzzles.

Ubisoft today announced The Crew, an new IP which combines the interactivity of an MMO with racing mechanics. Developed by Ivory Tower, the game will feature drop-in, drop-out gameplay, plenty of vehicles to choose from, and upgrades to unlock. Players can play the game’s 20-hour campaign spanning cities throughout the United States either alone or with a crew of friends.

The Crew will feature racing cop-op racing missions and stunt trials, which when completed, reward you with cash, prizes, and additional ways to customize your vehicle.

Ubisoft’s The Crew will release for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this fall.

Ubisoft today announced a follow-up to its Rocksmith series that is coming this October. Rocksmith 2014 Edition will introduce new gameplay and learning modes including Session Mode that lets you add musicians as you learn to play guitar.

You’ve seen Microsoft show off its new console’s potential, and now Wal-Mart has started accepting pre-orders for the Xbox One releasing this November. $499 will get you the Xbox One Day One Edition, which comes with the console, one “limited edition” controller, and a Kinect sensor all with free shipping. Pre-orders for PlayStation 4 are “soon to follow”. Whether this means Wal-Mart will update its website following Sony’s press conference today is still unclear.

Are you impressed with the Xbox One so far–so much that you’ll pre-order it right now?

During this year’s EA press conference at E3, EA teased a new title in the fan favorite but long dormant Star Wars: Battlefront series. The crowd went nuts — we know absolutely nothing else about the title. Besides the short teaser video, which showed a battle on Hoth, EA didn’t even mention the title, it’s development or any specifics.

A new Battlefront game has been rumored for a long time, but with Disney’s recent purchase of the Star Wars brand, few thought the game would be announced this quick.

Stick with Blast for more information on Battlefront and every title from E3.

It’s been rumored for quite some time, and even outed earlier this week via some E3 that were spotted early, but Plants VS Zombies: Garden Warfare is official.

The third-person action game takes the world created by the famous tower defense game allows players to work together and take on wave after wave of zombies.

The game will hit Xbox One first, then Xbox 360.

PopCap then teased Peggle 2.

After years of waiting, we finally got our first look at TitanFall, Respawn’s first game. It’ll be exclusive to Xbox One in Spring of 2014.

Also. It has giant robots.

Microsoft has confirmed that the Xbox One will launch this November for $499. Start saving up.

So hey, Microsoft announced that they’re bringing Halo to Xbox One. Not exactly unexpected, but hey, at least we know that it’s coming next year.

What’s interesting is that the title is simply looking like Halo — and not Halo 5.

As we reported last year, Dead Rising 3 is real and takes place in California, featuring a mechanic as he takes on the zombie horde.

The gameplay featured a slew of new tech including a much wider, more realistic world and the ability to create new weapons similar to the mechanic found in Dead Rising 2. The game is a true open world experience, as the demo should the lead character getting into a car and driving over highways and an entire town to get past the zombies.

The game will also use smart glass. The on stage demo showed that you’ll be able to use Smart Glass to call in an airstrike.

The game will be available this Holiday season.

Microsoft has announced that with the launch of Xbox One, the publisher will be ditching Microsoft points and using actual real world money.

Save your pennies, not your points.

Microsoft has unveiled Project Spark, an interesting project which lets players create their own world and then create an enitr game around it.

The development team showed off how the game uses technology like Kinect and Smart Glass to allow players unique freedom to create the look, objects and behavior of their world.

Nice moves Rock Man.

Insomniac Games’ head honcho Ted Price has unveiled Sunset Overdrive, a new franchise in development no for the Xbox One. Price created said the game is a “stylized open world shooter.” He also said that the game will constantly change and feel new thanks to Microsoft’s cloud technology.

Excuse my french but Shit Yeah.

Microsoft has confirmed long standing rumors that Killer Instinct will be getting a revamp and will be released only for Xbox One later this year.

Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi announced during Xbox’s E3 press conference today that Xbox Live Gold Members would start receiving two free games each month starting next month. Subscribers can expect Assassin’s Creed II and Halo 3 available to download for free in July.

Currently, Fable 3 is also free, but no word if this promotion started a few weeks earlier than announced.

Ryse, the long in development Spartan fighter from Crytek studios was shown for Xbox One during today’s Microsoft E3 2013 press briefing. The game has changed from a Kinect featured title to a traditional controller based game.

The gameplay shown featured the player controlling an entire army of spartan soldiers, as well as sections of controlling one.

Yes, you can Sparta kick dudes.

Microsoft kicked off E3 2013 with a bang this morning by showing off the first gameplay footage of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain will be coming to Xbox One later this year.

The game looks to take place in Afganistan and you’re probably not going to understand it.

Stay with Blast for more information.

Dany (Emilia Clarke) walks into the crowd of people she has just freed.

1. It needs to tie up loose ends.

2. It needs to create buzz and intrigue: excitement that packs such a punch that it can sustain fans over the ten month wait.

3. It cannot be boring.

The problem with the penultimate episodes on this show is that it sets the finale up for certain failure. Characters spending an hour just talking is always going to seem lackluster after a massacre.

I hoped this time it would be different.

We were left in such a tightly packed ball of suspense after last Sunday’s episode—so much so that people were still talking about it yesterday—so how do you sustain that level of momentum and, more interestingly, can they top it?

They didn’t. Out of my three bullet points, here’s my tally:

1. It did tie up loose. It tied up loose ends I didn’t know existed.

2. It didn’t create buzz but it did allow us to see where the storyline was going.

3. I was mildly bored around forty minutes in.

So they didn’t really achieve the making of an outstanding finale that would help carry us through the Thrones dry spell (except for you non-book readers, here’s a really good chance to catch up.)

Despite the disappointment the episode was still held afloat by three major points:

1. The increased likeability and interest in a well-known character.

This may seem frivolous to many but the interest that Davos piqued in the finale (better late than never I suppose) was fascinating to behold. Not only was he charismatic but he also struck up a highly interesting concept as I mentioned above: is he the most honorable man in Westeros? And does that explain why so many people find his character to be lacking?

Sure people such as Ned and Robb were loved but they were loved more so after they died and once they became a martyr. While they were living they were interesting and we rooted for them but we cared more for the other Starks or the shady and corrupt Lannisters.

Davos, like Robb and Ned, is pure hearted in his need to support the man who he claims saved him, but also cannot help find himself straying from Stannis’s ruling. Not out of contempt, but out of his own good will. He sees himself in Gendry. Both lowborn, both from the same poverty-sacked city and both have been warped into believing the promises of a beautiful woman.

But now Davos is worn down. He’s been imprisoned by the man he called a friend, has lost a son due to his faith in said man, and is watching as Stannis plans to murder Gendry to ensure the rising of his nobility—all on the hunch of what Melisandre can see in the fire.

Davos goes to Gendry to release him. He had told him earlier that his son died following him, after having promising a better life. So now he asks Gendry to follow him and for Davos this is some form of repentance. He has been given a second chance to listen to his gut and as he sets Gendry in the right direction he says he’s doing it because it’s right and because he’s a slow learner.

2. Imagery

Again, it may seem inconsequential but this noticeably played a big part in this week’s finale. Imagery has always been a talking point within the show but more so for the scenery, for the landscapes we’re graced with due to the show’s determination to create the most authentic atmosphere that they can. It’s rare though for Thrones to impress from a directorial standpoint and this episode did just that.

With Stannis’s camp there was the shot of Stannis taking centerfield as Melisandre and Davos flanking his sides, offering their wisdom which spoke of a devil and angel relationship, both whispering their take.

There’s the beautiful shot of Jaime finally returning to Cersei, not as the man she remembers. Cersei who is often looked upon as hardened and cruel. The way the shot is staged she is considerably softened as we’re getting a look at her alone—something that’s rare on this show as we’re often getting others’ viewpoints of her rather than her in her quieter moments. Here she’s looking at her children’s toys and in a smart costume move, isn’t wearing one of her typical armored dresses.

She’s vulnerable.

Jaime walks in and sees her and despite the ick factor of their love there is undeniable nobility to their forbidden love that is both obvious and troublesome.

3. The talks of monsters

As we’re introduced to the episode as we see men of Walder Frey’s army marching a decapitated Robb with his direwolf’s head mounted on his body, it’s very easy to think that Tywin is an evil man.

When we later see an unhinged and reckless Arya scheming her way into stabbing a man to death out of fury it’s easy for us to think good for her. Look at her go, finally getting her revenge.

Why?

Tywin later tells Tyrion that what are the lives of a dozen men in return for the end of the war? What is the difference between men dying on the battlefield opposed to men dying while eating dinner. In his mind, Tywin has lowered the body count and shortened the time of the war. In his mind he’s done something noble.

While Arya has killed men out vengeance. There was no strategy, no need, just her blind rage that guided her hand. And while it serves as showing us that Arya is no longer some feisty little girl but a potential killer, it also makes us wonder why it’s okay for us to cheer at her vengeance but boo at Tywin’s plays at war?

Tyrion at the very beginning is called a monster by Joffery and Tyrion warns him that if that’s the case Joffery must speak softer to him then because monsters aren’t those kings want to mess with, considering kings have been dropping like flies lately.

Joffery is sent away and again we’re left with questions. Obviously we don’t see Tyrion as a monster, especially considering in the world of Westeros he’s perceived as such due to his dwarfism. However, can we see him turning into the monster that everyone predicts? Will he, like Arya, be sold one too many blows and have nothing left but his need to avenge, his need to survive? What does it do to a human to be stripped to nothing more than basic survival instincts?

It also delivers us the haunting scene between Tyrion and Tywin where the former is dubious of Tywin’s true intentions. He believes Robb’s death was to benefit himself, rather than the family and he demands to know when Tywin has ever done something just to benefit the family.

And Tywin tells him in a momentarily lapse of control that letting Tyrion live was one such act. When Tyrion was born Tywin wanted to walk him into the sea and let him drown but he didn’t because he held the Lannister name. Is Tywin a monster for his words and not his actions? It’s hard not to see him as that as we watch Tyrion’s disbelieving face.

Is Theon still a monster for killing those two boys after being tortured into losing his manhood by a human who personifies sadism? Is Arya a murderer for killing that man? Is the Hound a hero for saving her from the rest?

Are Robb and his camp martyrs or idiots? Is Sansa still viewed as that materialistic little girl or have people seen her for the broken young woman she’s become. Is Dany the liberator or the conqueror? Is Joffery a product of nature or nurture?

This is what makes Thrones so fascinating because it plays with the perceptions we’ve had of fantasy heroes and villains that we’ve all held since we first read Lord of the Rings where there is the defined side for the good and the light and a side for the shadows. We don’t know who’s on what side, who trails the middle line and who might end up at the series end to be dead or alive.

This episode, despite being thought-provoking for the over analytical, tied everything up. We saw Bran interact with Sam before Sam headed to Castle Black and Bran headed beyond the wall (in a shot I might add that showed Bran looking very kingly…I swear he’s a pawn in this story that will move further up the ranks just as Jojen predicted). Ygritte got to shoot Jon with arrows as a final goodbye before he too found himself back home at Castle Black.

Davos is kept alive because he promises he can provide an army for Stannis to march North with, with Melisandre’s blessing saying that Davos will play a key part in the upcoming war.

Arya is off with the Hound, Sansa is stuck, Jaime has returned home and Tyrion is more lost in what he’s called home than ever before.

It was far from the best finale it could have been and it left some to be desired, but it served its purpose in telling us what has ended and what will continue next spring. Maybe next year they’ll succeed in creating a compelling finale.

Until then…

Read the books! Catch up! And come back ready for what craziness is bound to happen in the show’s fourth season.

I’m already counting down the days. 

So you’re finally the mayor of your own village, but realize the title doesn’t come with a fancy salary. As is the case with every Animal Crossing game, your days in New Leaf will be spent figuring out ways to make enough bells to afford the finer things in life—not to mention, ditch your tent and afford a house. Not only will you have Public Works to fund, but you’ll also have several house loans to pay off and furniture to buy. So what’s a New Leaf mayor to do? Here are some tips on ways to make fast bells and make your financial problems disappear.

Paying off your first loan

You’re new in town and everyone has high hopes for you as their new mayor, but there’s one problem—you live in a tent. Before you practice your mayoral duties or visit your tropical island, you’ll need to pay off Tom Nook’s initial loan of 10,000 bells. This number may seem like a lot considering you have nothing on you, but it’s not difficult to pay it off in a few hours.

What you should do right away is pick all the trees in your town and sell them for bells. Native fruits cost 100 bells each, but depending on how many trees you have, that’s about 3,000 bells right there. Don’t forget that you’ll also find one perfect fruit on one of your trees. Perfect fruit look different in shape or color and sell for 600 bells each. Instead of selling it, plant it to produce a perfect fruit tree for even more quick cash later on. Trees take 3 days to regrow fruit after you pick them and 4 days to fully mature once you bury a fruit in the ground.

If you’re lucky, Nookling Junction will have a fishing rod or a bug catching net for slae. At this point, your best bet is to hope for a fishing rod and head to the beach to catch some pricey fish. You may even catch a shark, which will instantly pay off your initial loan. If no fishing rod is available, you’ll need to catch bugs for profit. It’ll take longer than fishing, but you should have enough money in no time.

Paying everything off

Once you’ve paid off your initial loan, you’ll realize that your house is super cramped could use some expansion. As usual, you’ll need to continually pay off even more loans for your home to get bigger and better. Your next loan will total 39,800, then 98,000, followed by 198,000, and finally 298,000 for an upstairs room. And even then you’ll have the option to add four additional rooms and expand them even further. That’s 19 loans totaling over 7 million bells. Sounds like a lot, huh? Well, here’s how you can pay all this off in less than a month and still have bells to splurge on clothes and furniture.

Bell Bloom ordinance

Once you pay off your initial loan, you can head to your Town Hall office to enact ordinance to make the town run to your liking. Since you’re looking to make plenty of bells quickly, select the Bell Bloom Ordinance to hike up the price of things by 20%. Sure, items will cost more, but the bugs and fish you’ll sell will net you an even prettier penny.

The island

Your island will be available two days after you pay off your initial loan of 10,000 bells. You can travel to your island however many times you want during a day for 1,000 bells a trip. The island not only gives you mini-games and an always-summer climate, but it’s also a haven for making bells.

Tropical theft

All the expensive fish and bugs come out in the evening after 7 pm, so don’t travel to the island earlier than this unless you want to play mini-games and steal fruit from the many trees you’ll see. Anything you take with you during a mini-game (flowers, bugs, fruit) stays with you after the mini-game finishes, and you can then take these items with you home and sell them for a profit. Non-native fruit sells for 500 bells a pop, and tropical fruit like bananas and coconuts sell for 200 bells each. Plus, you don’t have to wait for trees to regrow as mini-games will always provide you with trees ripe for the picking.

Fishing for shark

After 7 pm, you have two options when it comes to making bells. You can always cast your line and hope to catch expensive tropical fish or even rare sharks that sell for 15,000 bells each, but this method can take a long time. Plus, because fish appear as shadows in the ocean, you won’t always know what you’re going to get. There’s a chance you might not tap the button in time when a fish bites as well.

Beetle hunting

Instead, what you should do is prepare your island for beetles, which only come out at night and will spawn constantly every few seconds. First, chop down every tree on your island and leave two palm trees on opposite ends and one regular tree in the middle. This will make It easier to sneak up on beetles without scaring them and will also provide you with enough trees for them to spawn on. Then, all you need to do is borrow a net and walk around until you see a beetle hanging on a tree. The easier thing about catching beetles compared to fish is that you can see which ones you want to catch and which ones aren’t worth much to you.

Dynastid beetles will be the more common ones, but only sell for 1,350, so if you see them hanging on a tree, run into them to scare them away. In fact, scare away anything you don’t plan on catching. The island can only contain 4-5 insects at a time, so each time you scare an insect you don’t want like a hermit crab or a wharf roach, it’ll make room for a prized beetle to appear. You can’t scare butterflies away, so either catch them or enter and exit the hut to load a fresh batch of insects.

The beetles you’re after include the Atlas Beetle (8,000), Elephant Beetle (8,000), Cyclommatus (8,000), Rainbow Stag (10,000), Hercules Beetle (12,000), and the rare Golden Stag (12,000). If you catch bugs after 11 pm, you’ll also run into the Giant Beetle (10,000). Note, these are their prices before adding the 20% increase the Bell Bloom Ordinance bestows you with. Remember to hold your net and approach them slowly, leaving one space between you and the tree before releasing the button and catching them.

Your nightly routine should involve heading to the island, catching enough bugs to fill your souvenir box, and then heading back home to sell them at Re-Tail before they close at 11. If they’re closed after you come back, you can store your bugs in your house and sell them the next day. Repeat this process and you’ll be making a million bells in just a few hours. Within a few weeks you’ll be able to pay off all your loans and afford any Public Works project you want.

Chump change

Every day, a money rock will randomly appear in your town and generate  bells after being hit with a shovel. You can repeatedly hit the rock for increasing amounts of money, but you only have a limited amount of time before it stops giving you bells with each hit. You’ll experience knock-back with each hit, so it’s a good idea to dig some holes behind your character to keep you in place while you’re hitting. Another way to make quick cash comes after building the Dream Suite. Each time you update your town’s data and upload it to the servers, Luna will give you 5,000 bells, so it’s not a bad idea to take a nap every day. Lastly, fossils you’ve already sold to museums can also be sold for high prices, and since you get 4 fossils in your town each day, you’re bound to run into ones your museum already has.

So there you have it. The real solution to anyone’s loan troubles involves catching beetles. If only real-life loans were that simple. Tell us how you’ll be spending your first days in your new town and be sure to check out our Animal Crossing: New Leaf review. Your new town awaits!

The definitive Animal Crossing experience

Creating personal experiences is one of the main focal points in the Animal Crossing series. Each previous title has had you move into a village full of animals and live your life among them, running errands, furnishing your home, and discovering what each new day brings. Its sandbox-oriented format means you can spend each day doing whatever you want, whether it is befriending your neighbors, designing clothes to wear, or fishing for sea bass. Animal Crossing: New Leaf continues with this same format but offers so many more tools to play with and even more ways to create your own unique and individual memories.

The core aspect of the Animal Crossing games still remains intact, so you can expect to play a game that develops at your own pace. As soon as you start playing, you’ll move into your new town and be forced to live in a tent until you can afford a house. This is one of the initial challenges the game throws your way that lets you tackle it however you want. You can sell the fruit you pick off your trees, the fish you catch, or the furniture your villagers give to you for completing tasks for them. Regardless of how you do things in your village, you’ll always feel in charge of your own decisions.

To add to this sense of power, New Leaf makes you the mayor of your own village, giving you additional options on how to spend your day but also more ways to customize your experience. You can beautify your town by adding benches, lamp posts, and many other public works projects and choose whether to add optional buildings like a café or a police station. You can also enlist ordinances that affect how your residents live their lives. Want your villagers to wake up early or sleep late to match your own real-life schedule? Done. These simple additions not only make the game feel more robust, but they let you tailor it to match your playing style.

Being on a handheld means your town is accessible at any time and any place. We managed to spend over 100 hours within our first three weeks in our town of Sputato simply because it was too easy to open up our 3DS with the intention of playing for a few minutes but ending up playing for hours instead. The game’s clock runs parallel to yours, so you’ll find that shops close at certain times and some villagers sleep later than others. Everything in the game takes time to complete, so you’ll need to wait real-life hours and days for things to be built, deliveries to be made, or fruits to grow. Holidays are also celebrated in the game, so you’ll have plenty of reasons to check up on your town each day to see what’s new.

While the game is a great relaxing single-player experience, its robust online features makes all your efforts even more rewarding since you can easily share your designs and creations with others. You can visit your friends’ towns as long as you have their friend code, but to make communication easier, New Leaf introduces a chat feature that lets you send messages to friends simply playing the game. You can’t voice chat, but this instant messaging system is something all 3DS games should implement as it makes communicating with your friends a breeze. Hosting or visiting other towns is a seamless experience and you won’t run into delays even if you have three other friends over.

Additionally, New Leaf also introduces a new way to visit someone’s town via its Dream Suite feature, which uploads your town’s data to the servers and lets others visit yours at any time. This lets you share your town with people all over the world you may not know without worrying about friend codes or whether they will step on your flowers or chop down your trees. What’s more, the 3DS’s StreetPass feature also allows you to send over a saved model of your house to someone else’s game, giving them a peek into your home and letting players purchase furniture you have. These added features give the game a sense of community and give you more reason to be proud of the town you’re building.

New Leaf also features competitive mini-games you can play with players online at your town’s island paradise. These aren’t anything to rave about, but provide a release from the game’s mellower sandbox gameplay. Players are pit against each other in timed games like digging for fossils, popping balloons, or catching specific fish. You’re rewarded with medals that you can use to purchase items with, so not only do get a distraction from your daily musings as a mayor but they also serve a purpose if you’re looking to purchase special furniture you can only get on the island.

A game like Animal Crossing: New Leaf can take over a year to fully explore, and even after you’ve met every special holiday visitor or completed all of your town’s upgrades, you’ll still want to come back for more. Playing it daily is its own reward as you’ll discover new furniture, conversations, and things you might have overlooked even months into your game. New Leaf isn’t a game that can be beaten, but instead is a game you’ll want to take your time with and enjoy. After all, you never know what memories your new town will bring.

A download code was provided to us by Nintendo for the purpose of this review. We spent a total of 112 hours in the span of about 3 weeks playing the game. You can also visit our town of Sputato and see how it’s doing by entering our Dream Address 5900-2007-1102.

With Sony’s PS4 announcement in February and Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement last month, the once cold console war has begun to heat up! However, despite gamers’ anticipation for this holiday season, both press conferences left something to be desired. While Sony showcased games, neglecting the actual look of the PS4, Microsoft went the other way, demonstrating nearly everything the Xbox One could do aside from play games. Microsoft’s press conference also came with a few, downright confusing strings attached. So, being the gracious podcasters we are, we flop, face-first, into the pool of perplexing mystery that is the Xbox One.

This episode includes:

• A mostly improvised game of Select Difficulty
• A literal butt-ton of 8Bit Proof EXCLUSIVE Xbox One information courtesy of our mysterious special guest and Microsoft insider.
• Our level-headed analysis of the Xbox One’s most controversial details.
• A game bringing us up to date with all the happenings within geek culture since our last episode.
• The easiest contest of all time to win a free digital copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360.

Remember, if you’ve got something to say, don’t be shy!  Give us an earful on our Facebook Page! Tell us where to cram it on Twitter @8BitProof. Or just send us some good old fashioned hate mail at 8bitproof@gmail.com.

(WARNING:  Explicit language, NSFW)

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The Superhero entertainment genre has been around for a long time now but since its humble beginnings in comic books it has come to dominate the movie business and has been taken on by all sorts of creative newer industries as a dominant theme; Betfair Casino online and their Superhero slot machine games are just one emerging angle on the market.

Broadly speaking, the Superhero stems from a human desire for justice and this is personified by the likes of Batman and Superman, both appearing in the DC Comics of the 30s. It seemed at first that DC Comics had something of a monopoly over the movie superhero with Superman and Batman first to be turned into film, but in recent years Marvel Comics has turned out to be the bigger player due to the likes of Iron Man, The X-Men and The Avengers.

All of these characters were written with many hidden depths and potential subplots which directors now exploit to superb degree. Where the initial Superman films may have been very theatrical, the modern Batman films are gritty to the extreme, dealing with strong philosophical concepts and challenging our very conceptions of good and evil. The Superheroes are exhibited with their full backstories on display and villains like the Joker became far more sinister for it. 2008s ‘The Dark Knight’ must be a contender for greatest Superhero movie of all time for these reasons.

Maybe The Dark Knight was the best of all time, but Iron Man must go down as one of the most entertaining and watchable.

This goes some way to explaining why Iron Man is one of the most popular Superhero slots at Betfair Casino online. The Superhero theme seems to provide a great moving narrative to any slot type game. Iron Man was perfectly played by Robert Downey Junior – he was urbane, powerful and yet hugely fallible which made his character particularly engaging. It also appealed to tech fans with recognisable glimpses of our potential technological future. The themed bonus games on this ‘casino slot’ seem enthralling.

The Fantastic Four is another Superhero movie now spanning the multimedia platform. This Marvel creation is also now available at Betfair Casino online in the form of a casino slot type game. Here you can take on the Silver Surfer and Galactos just like in the movie but for cash stakes.

Via: Safe Choice Security

The starving artist is a long living stereotype. But starving artists with degrees? BFAs, even? In a world where even a Bachelor’s Degree can be perceived as bare minimum on a job application, is it worth it to pay for a degree in performance?

Despite the fact that I ended up landing in the Visual and Media Arts Department at Emerson College, and spent lots of time in the Performing Arts department for my music focus, I felt more secure with this career choice than if I had decided to focus on, say, Theater Studies. I don’t think I would have been able to go to school for Theater Studies. I don’t think I would have had the support to go to Emerson College for Theater Studies. Because college was a hefty investment–my sister and I were attending at the same time, my mother is an art teacher, the list goes on–and I read lots of data to see just how stark the job market would be for these degrees. Keep in mind that I began my college degree in 2005, before The Great Recession. I had switched my focus from Broadcast Journalism to Media Production. I kept up my writing. Sometimes I wish I had narrowed my focus, but at others times I am glad that I dappled in as many aspects as I could. The goal was this:

• Get a degree that matches a decent amount of job postings at the time
• Get a degree where I can learn new skills that I didn’t already have
• Still feel inspired and invested by my studies

Of course, by the time I started my internships in 2007, many of the jobs I had seen out there suddenly turned into internships, or multiple jobs put together. Oh, this company was looking for a video editor? Well, now they want a video editor/graphic designer/developer, because they want to save money. You studied post production/graphic design/computer science, right? Tough.

I felt slightly disheartened at seeing friends with accounting internships or computer science, making money from their internships, while most creative fields only offered course credit–if that. One day, as we were waiting for a recording session to start, an engineer told me of how he thought it wasn’t fair that studio interns were unpaid. He lamented that, basically, studios get away with it because it’s a ‘cool job’,so everyone wants in. Supply and demand.

To go a step further, some entry level jobs in the arts are now glorified internships, offering stipends or food compensation instead of pay. With the lopsided supply and demand in the arts field, the lack of funding for arts and arts education, and the insane bridge between pay in the entertainment industry (Glassdoor cites a production assistant at MTV Networks in New York City receiving $13 an hour, while a Senior Producer received $10,000 a month), not to mention the climbing costs of tuition…are these degrees worth it? And if I’m concerned with technical or marketing roles in the arts, what about performing arts themselves?

In 2011, US News & World Report, listed 24% of majors at Berklee College of Music graduating with degrees in Composition, and 17% as performance majors. These were two of the top three majors for that year. The current CollegeProwler rating for jobs and Alumni success for Berklee College has a 61.1% approval. In a few of my interviews with Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan of Karmin, theymentioned their training at Berklee when discussing their success. However, it’s not everyday that one gets famous on the internet. Or is it?

Doe Paoro is an act out of Brooklyn, New York. I first received a press release about her music in the Fall of 2011. I listened to ‘Can’t Leave You’, and wanted to learn more. The song, and accompanying music video, were beautifully done. Turns out Sonia Kreitzer, vocalist, had been performing for a while. She had then gone East, and ended up studying Tibetan Opera in the process. This is an excerpt from my interview with her in January 2012:

“I was just inspired by how much you can accomplish via the web. I posted this song to see if anyone wanted to work on it with me,” she’d said, about ‘Can’t Leave You’. “I called my friend, Uri, to see if he wanted to work on it…We thought we should get someone to mix it.

This led to getting in touch with Lasse Mårtén, producer, and inquiring about rates. Eventually an agent wrote back. The Youtube video of Doe Paoro’s solo performance of “Can’t Leave You”had caught their attention. He wrote back personally, said he loved it and would work on it.”

Doe Paoro was named an ‘Artist to Watch’ by Stereogum shortly after that interview. She is now an associate act with Peter Morén, has new material on the way, and collaborations with Justin Vernon and Mårtén, to name a few.

But she, unlike Karmin, never formally studied music. She studied painting, actually. I recently told her about this article and asked her views on being a performance major.

“I never studied music professionally,” she said. “While I’m sure I could ‘have better technique’, I’ve always been content with coming to music from a completely intuitive point of view. I know a few musicians who have come out of the conservatory system and their approach to music is too heady for me to feel anything.”

She continued by adding, “I was once in a co-writing session with a guy who had studied music at school. We were writing a pre chorus and I suggested we move the song towards a certain chord and he said we couldn’t do that because it didn’t make sense for the song to go there. I sort of pressed him on it and asked him why that wouldn’t make sense…he started freaking out that my idea was totally counter-intuitive to how songs are supposed to go. I almost fell out my chair laughing. I didn’t realize there were rules to writing songs.”

Even at a school as prestigious as NYU, the largest percentage of majors, according to CollegeBoard, is Visual and Performing Arts, at 22%. Of course, the Tisch School of Arts is highly competitive, and has Alumni such as Debra Messing, Raúl Esparza, and Alec Baldwin.

Yet the US Department of Labor lists the outlook for performance oriented jobs between 2010 and 2020 to be between 4 and 18 percent (less for actors, more for dancers). Most of these were listed as ‘about as fast as average’. Yet a quick search for jobs with the keyword ‘musician’ on indeed yields about 1,200 jobs, most in the salary range of $20,000+, while a job search for keywords such as ‘science’, ‘food’, and ‘health’ yield between 300,000 to 800,000 hits. Of course, more low paying jobs than not. Yet I am sure, for most reading this, these statistics were expected.

Are we to say, then, that our culture is throwing in the towel of feeding the arts? Just last week I went to see the Boston Pops and was elated at how wonderful the performance was. I was shocked to see some of the generous donations in the program, especially at some of the anonymous donations at the top of the list. It’s a strange loop, or so it seems. Make more money by not being an artist. Therefore are a huge portion of donations given to the arts not by artists?

I set up a poll on my blog. What I wanted to know was this: How has your training fortified your experience as a performer? The majority, 33.33%, listed themselves as ‘I studied while in college or university and perform professionally. It helped me with my career.’ Then, 16.67% listed themselves as one of the following: ‘I took private lessons or trained on my own time and perform professionally. It helped me with my career’; ‘I learned on my own and perform professionally or as part of my career’; or ‘other’. Last, 8.33% listed themselves as either ‘I studied while in college or university and wish I had studied something else as a backup’, or ‘I took private lessons or trained on my own time and have kept it as a hobby’.

Steph Barrak of Boston, who is a musician and an Analyst at Bain & Company, replied. She said, “I have zero professional training. For the most part, I’ve gotten by just fine, but there are times in my music career where that knowledge would be helpful. For example, I could write sheet music myself instead of paying someone else to do it. Or I could land gigs as a session guitarist or a cover artist if I only knew how to read music or understand chord structure and variation. But all of that stuff is secondary to my main goal – writing songs. I’ve been writing and performing my own songs for years without any problems– in fact, I sometimes wonder if any formal training would’ve changed my writing style, and I’m not sure that it would’ve been for the better.” She explained that music has a highly technical factor to it. “An A chord is an A chord and there’s no way you’d know that unless you learned it…music education is definitely necessary.”

I, too, wish I had studied music theory in high school. I wish I had joined the jazz band. By the time I was in college, I joined Mike Mangini’s drum lab at Berklee, knowing that I would be the most challenged student in the class. When I spoke to professors in the department, though, they were more than understanding. They knew that most students in that class had been playing since they were children, and had private lessons. Me? I didn’t get to play formally until I was fifteen. I played my first show six months later, barely ready. I joined the pep band, and other bands, having lost whatever sight reading skill I had garnered playing the piano as a kid. I had started to teach myself before a friend had really shown me how to drum, and picked up some poor technique along the way.

An interesting interaction occurred one day while I sat in the percussion department at Berklee. A student told a professor that he wasn’t sure if he should study performance or business. The professor then said, “do you know how to play the drums?”. The student answered “yes”. The conclusion was then for him to study business, or something that he didn’t already know how to do.

I admit I was perplexed when I would see students at Emerson who were studying acting, but already had agent representation, been on television, or in a steady stream of commercials. I also knew a student at Berklee who began playing with musicians from bands such as The Doors and U2, having not yet graduated. I wondered if he really needed a degree to tell him that he could do this for a living, since he already had such great gigs.

Of course everyone has a different path and, regardless, we all should learn valuable information from our college experience. However, upon wondering about the usefulness of a performance degree in the age of terrible student loans and Youtube fame, I also thought about the many avenues one could go down in the arts, professionally, aside from performance.

I was offered a job at a studio in my last few weeks of college. I would have had to work another job on top of it, due to the low pay, but wanted to make it work. The catch? I still had two weeks of school, and was certainly not going to drop everything when I was that close to completing my degree. The studio couldn’t wait, and the opportunity was lost. It took me six more months to get my first full time role. In the meantime, I wrote and worked as a substitute teacher. One day, as I filled in for a music class, I was asked about music careers. Specifically, what if you’d like to work with music professionally? Are there options, aside from performance?

I was laid off twice in the past year, having barely even started the job the second time this occurred, so I’ve been trying to network a whole lot. And then I started to receive questions from college students. These questions were similar to the one that had been asked in the music class I had filled in for. What can I study, aside from performance?

I hadn’t been aware of some of the music career options out there when I graduated high school. Music technology, licensing, marketing, administration, the list continues. Of course there is music education, which my sister followed through with, and those roles are becoming few and far between, too.

I started a blog over a year ago, to keep up with my writing and work with musicians. After the question of music careers was before me again, I mixed things up. Being in such a career heavy mode (trying to get a new job), and seeing so many people around me struggle, young and old, I decided to change my blog to one that focuses on music careers. Essentially, how many people can I profile, who work in music (and sound, seeing as these tend to overlap)? Not only to see how many different types of career paths there are, but to see how each person got there. For instance, I recently interviewed Brandon Gilliard, a talented bassist who has been a session musician since graduating from Anderson University with a BA in Music in 2005, and now tours with Janelle Monáe. His performance studies undoubtedly came in handy for his career. At the same time, I had interviewed Creed Bratton, who you may know as the actor from The Office. His musical background and career path was vastly different. Go down another path, and I spoke to my friend, an opera singer at New England Conservatory, about her job prospects and training. Each individual has their own take on it, and their own approach. And so, with this question of music careers and the value of a performance degree, I hope to put faces and stories to the many job titles out there.

Yes, I do think it’s tough out there for jobs in the arts. I can’t speak for performance majors, because I wasn’t one, but I like to think that the arts community is evolving with technology and skill just as every other field. I certainly hope this opens more doors for those who feel their heart belongs there. There’s the saying (and Onion article) of “follow your passion…on nights and weekends for the rest of your life”, basically because it won’t get you a day job. Isn’t it odd that we are such a celebrity and entertainment obsessed culture, yet the arts slip by? Do you think it will ever change?

Farah Joan Fard is a writer, media producer, and drummer. She started her blog,LaParadiddle, to  continue writing about musicians, but changed its focus after experiencing layoffs and receiving questions about careers in the arts. She now profiles different professions in the music industry, including sound, in hopes of bringing these stories to others for discussion. She has written for various sites and online magazines, focusing on music, and her non-writing work has mainly been in audio and media production. She enjoys sci-fi, dinosaurs, baked goods, hiking, performing, and naming that tune.

You can follow her other work, or say hello, via Twitter.