25. Opening our list of the Top 25 Playstation 4 Single Player Games is Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin When it comes to the hardcore gamers, FromSoftware’s third person action-RPG takes you to a grotesque universe filled with ugly beasts and unforgiving difficulty spikes. But this isn’t just your ordinary Dark Souls II game, it’s the enhanced 64-bit version that offers high quality textures and added features.
With this version, changes are all over the game. Safe zones are no longer safe, enemy placement has been reshuffled, and a new NPC invader will change the way you play. It’s a massive shift to the things we know about the original version and boy it's brutal. But just like any Souls game, hard work really pays off and once you kill that annoying boss fight, the emotional reward pays off. It receives a PlayScore of 8.92 https://72strokes.com/gambling-outside-your-intentions/ 24. Nioh If there’s another game trying to be on par with the Souls series, it’s the Japanese adventure of a Western Warrior. Embark on a dark fantasy trip to the land of the Rising Sun in a quest for vengeance. Step into the sandals of William Adams as he fights demented mythical creatures of Japan. Just like its inspiration, it’s a third-person action-RPG with the focus of dodging and careful timing. Since it’s a Samurai game, stances are important. To eliminate the vile horrors of Japan, use the correct stances to deal out immense damage. It’s story may be a subject for criticism, but it was lauded for its atmospheric take on a horrific Sengoku Era Japan. It receives a PlayScore of 8.92 23. Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition When it comes to the ideal CRPG’s, it has to be Larian Studios’ game. Create your own story as you set forth in a land of peril and magic. This enhanced edition offers refined visuals, a whole new storyline and more content for the would-be adventurers seeking for a classic challenge. How would you manage your character in terms of stat and skill building? There’s so many things to consider in the land of Divinity and so many things to do. Even the NPC’s are fully-voiced! The depth of its RPG system makes it one of the best single player games ever made. And it has a PlayScore of 8.94 22. Dishonored 2 After the fateful events of the first game, return to the murderous shoes of Corvo Attano as he finds himself under a new threat. For the first time in the series, her daughter Emily also takes the limelight. After being usurped by an otherworldly threat, join the two assassins in a quest for vengeance. Be it by blood, or by manipulation. Just like the previous game, players get to choose their own approach to its first person stealth gameplay. Do you kill the target or do you want to spare him? Are you gonna go for a speed-run where you don’t get to kill anyone? It’s open-ended stealth elements make the original so appealing to hardcore fps fans. And this sequel doesn’t disappoint. It has a PlayScore of 8.95 21. Night In The Woods Powered by a fantastic narrative and deep exploration, this Indie game from Alec Holowka takes you to an existential journey of self-discovery and maturity. Follow Mae as she drops out of high school and return to her hometown to find a change in atmosphere. In side-scrolling fashion, Hang out with her friends, her boyfriend or family. Learn about the mysteries of this newfound change and dive into its fantastic writing coupled with a beautiful soundtrack. How you choose to end the game is all up to you. This receives a PlayScore of 8.95 20. Ratchet & Clank Sony Entertainment’s iconic duo takes you to a reimagined take on the classic action-puzzler. Follow Ratchet, a lombax with a knack for machinery and adventure. Join him as he goes with his sidekick, Clank, a robot designed to help Ratchet solve puzzles and get into tight places. Together they team up to take down enemies and roam around its futuristic world with style. Praised for its brilliant puzzle design and cool weapon variations, watch Ratchet and Clank use creative gameplay elements to solve puzzles and complete tasks. Aside from that, it’s also a direct tie-in to their animated film. It didn’t get much praise compared to the actual game, but it adds more information to the game’s main story. It has a PlayScore of 8.96 19. Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- Although it’s a fighting game, Guilty Gear’s single-player experience is an integral factor to the game’s story mode. Arc System Works returns with their mastercrafted cel-shaded 3D visuals and fluid animations. Revelator adds new faces such as Johnny, Jack-O, Guilty Gear’s D.Va, Kum Haehyun and more. Aside from that, it’s totally noob-friendly. With an expansive tutorial system and the introduction of Stylish Mode, new players can feel every whirlwind of slashes in every direction. Hitting combos after combos with ease. Since 1998, this fighting game has stood the test of time. It has a PlayScore of 8.98 18. Shovel Knight When it comes to side-scrolling platforming adventures, it’s Yacht Club’s adorable indie game. Follow the adventures of a brave Knight as he musters his strength to save the love of his life from an enchantress. Inside the castle, dig your way through numerous obstacles and horrendous enemies all in classic 8-bit fashion. It was praised for its memorable characters, excellent gameplay and a sweet kick for nostalgia fans. Specter of Torment and Plague of Shadows boasts hours and hours of platforming adventures for the fans of the game. It receives a PlayScore of 8.99 17. The Talos Principle Devolver Digital is known for their games with a totally absurd premise. From psychedelic murder, to badass military men. This time, embrace the machinations of philosophical science fiction. Waking up in an island filled with ancient ruins and technological advancements, make your way through various places by solving the game’s complex puzzles.
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You and I have talked about parental controls. Those kinds of things, so we have to be. We as parents may never be as savvy as our kids. This generation and the generation just proceeding have been raised with all manner of technology that we don't have very much familiarity with and I know that I use my computer kind of by rote because I've memorized certain things to do. I do not have any kind of intrinsic draw or feeling about my technology that I use every day, whereas, my belief is, my daughter sees it as, my 20 year old daughter sees it as an extension of herself. - [Voiceover] Absolutely check this website
- [Voiceover] So it's just really kind of frightening and I just think that what's helpful is when we're all aware and educated, when we think about these things. - [Voiceover] Absolutely, so let's take a quick look at culture and technology changes. There's the Beatles on the left with one slot machine, all four of them dropping a coin in and the other children on the right, who as we both observed, will sometimes be sitting in the same room texting each other. Let me make sure I didn't skip a slide. I did not, so let's see if, oops, this slide is not there. We're gonna talk about the slide that, for some reason, didn't get in there. - [Voiceover] Well, one of the things about gaming that I read in the research is that the actual average age of a gamer who games a lot is 34, which really surprised me. And the average number of years adult gamers have been playing computer or video games is 12. And then the number of households in the U.S. that play video games is 67%, so that's almost 70% of the families in the United States play video games. So I thought that was really interesting. In 2010 the average gamer spent eight hours a week playing video games and about 60% were male and about 40% were female, so I just thought that those were some really interesting statistics and I also ran across a research article and there was a doctor from Harvard, Michael Rich, and he talks about a national study published in Psychological Science in 2009 that reported that 12% of boys and 8% of girls who play video games exhibit pathological patterns of play and fit the DSM category of addiction. The study also showed that pathological gamers are twice as likely to have ADHD or ADD, and he said, Dr. Rich said, "Rarely do I see pathological video game "playing in a child who doesn't have "an underlying issue, such as anxiety, depression, "oppositional defiant disorder, ADD or who falls "within the autism spectrum," which really kind of surprised me and he goes on to say that for kids who are on the spectrum of autism, they have difficulty reading clues from the environment, like facial expressions and things like that, so video games actually simplify those signals and make the outcomes much more predictable. So video games have a much more controlled and limited vocabulary of symbols to learn, symbols that don't rely on human expression and human faces and body language are the hardest things for kids on the autism spectrum to learn to read. In fact, skill building video games can actually be positive for these kids. There are actually a lot of wonderful apps and games that are specifically designed to help kids on the autism spectrum. And I don't want to go into a lot of information about it because we're really not doing a webinar on marijuana right now. But marijuana is really the number one problem right now. And as far as if we have kids that have a concurrent mental health disorder, it's definitely conduct disorder. That's our second and then the one right behind that is generally attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with or without hyperactivity and the second drug of choice is alcohol because alcohol is still enormously prevalent and it's really easy to get, so that's what kinda cracks me up too is when they talk about legalizing marijuana is that we're taking steps to make sure that kids can't get their hands on it because you have to be 21 in order to, well, that's bunk. All you have to do is look at our current legal drugs, which are alcohol and tobacco and most of our kids smoke too, that's not their presenting problem. Generally, you're not gonna get into as much trouble with tobacco products as you are with other drugs or alcohol and so I didn't list that although that really should have gone on the list.
- [Voiceover] Tobacco. - [Voiceover] Tobacco, yeah, so anyway It's just really interesting the difference in opinion and attitude and approach around the whole marijuana issue, so anyway, lest we digress, let's chat a little bit about gamers and the internet. - [Voiceover] Thank you, that was so useful. I think we could spend and hour talking about what you keep noticing walking in the door. I appreciate that, Denise. Funny little poster on the left that I found on the internet that I'm a gamer, not because I don't have a life, but because I choose to have many, that just scares me. Because I know people who are on the verge of mental illness or who are already mentally ill or who are, and by mental illness I mean anything from depression all the way up to schizophrenia, If that's their habit of choice and are more and more isolated, I am really scared about what's going on in their basements. On the other hand, I see absolutely nothing wrong with the picture on the right given appropriate boundaries. If we could get parents to do that, to spend a Sunday morning in their jammies playing a video game with their son, that would be awesome! They would probably have improved relations and all kinds of better family style. But what do you hear about instead? - [Voiceover] It's interesting, this is Denise E. It's interesting because the gamers that we have at Quest that really do spend a lot of time playing video games, really it's much more of an isolative activity, it's not usually an activity that the whole family is engaging in, especially when they spend hours and hours doing it and the research says that people that spend so many hours gaming have increased desensitization and so their tolerance increases, just like it does with drugs and alcohol. One of the scariest things that I've ever read about gaming is the couple in Korea who allowed their infant, their live infant to die from neglect, because they were too busy caring for an avatar infant in a video game. - [Voiceover] True story. - [Voiceover] It's really scary to me about how the internet world takes over people's brains. There's a journal called Nature and they did a study and they actually found that excessive gaming releases dopamine similar to what's observed after IV injection of stimulant drugs like amphetamines. So it's another area where we need to be really very careful about how much time we allow our children to spend playing video games. When we work with families at Quest, we work with parents about setting up consequences for negative behavior, boundaries around activities, we encourage people to only have their computers in an open area of the house. - [Voiceover] Or grandparents. They have a much higher rate of gambling. I think acculturation, what's accepted, the amount of time that parents have and that's probably the last bit of preaching that I wanna do today is there are numerous studies that will point out that having dinner together around the table once a week has a greater prevention rate for later on teenager and adult manifestation of drug, alcohol and other addictive behaviors than almost anything else. Just sitting around the table and having dinner together at least once a week. And I think this is the reverse of what that research is talking about.
When the parenting and the socialization and the love and the attention is lacking, they're gonna go looking for love in all the wrong places. So the last one, well the second to the last one, they usually play card games for money and the gambling activity that their most likely to have done in the past year is wager on sports. The number of children who are in the family, in my opinion, where sports is a significant social and recreational activity, if parents just knew to look for the signs and symptoms of their child wagering with their friends, with them, with others, turning into a compulsive gambling problem, that's it, that's the preventive message is know what the signs and symptoms are. The last piece that I wanna give you on the Oregon Youth and Parent Study is that adolescents have more naive attitudes towards gambling than their parents. And that has a lot to do with brain development as Denise E. has already pointed out, however, relatively high proportions of parents, regardless of whether or not they gamble, believe that gambling is a harmless activity. Let me just kinda emphasize that. If the parents believe that gambling is a harmless activity, that is gonna have an influence on what the child thinks. And that youth who gamble are unlikely to have problems with school and that youth gambling is not associated with alcohol or drug use. And we know differently, we know that these poor parents are uninformed and ignorant or they're naive, or they're in denial, or they're avoiding the truth. So education and prevention is gonna play a big role in changing that. - [Voiceover] Right and this is Denise E. and the article from Psychiatry Journal also pointed out it is so much easier for parents to see the signs and symptoms of a child using drugs or alcohol than it is for them to see the signs of a child who has difficulty with gambling, which offers fewer opportunities or less opportunity for parents to intervene when those issues are present, so they have to educate themselves on if your child is lying to them about where their money is going, borrows money and doesn't ever pay it back, starts stealing out of mom or dad's wallet, their little brother's piggy bank, those kinds of things. You have to know kind of what to look for so I think it's very helpful of parents who educate themselves. - [Voiceover] A little education goes a long way. I would like our next polling question to come up, question number four. Of what they actually are... oops, sorry, one more technical difficulty, do not drop your stuff on the floor while you're talking. Let's go ahead and broadcast the results now. - [Voiceover] Wow, that's actually pretty close. Marijuana is definitely the number one issue and it is more and more prevalent with Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana. The message that adolescents are getting now is that marijuana is harmless, that it's a medicine, using that as an excuse, use. A lot of kids talk about how they can't wait to get a medical marijuana card because they've all heard how easy it is. Any sort of soft tissue complaint and you can get a medical marijuana card. The unfortunate piece in all of this is that what the research shows is that marijuana is just so detrimental to kids' brains. We finally made it here and we are starting off in Senado Square. We're going to be exploring the area on foot and taking you along. Because this was a former Portuguese settlement all of the signs are in Portuguese and in Chinese. One of the first things I noticed about Macau are the very Portuguese tiles that they have and these black and white mosaic tiles can be found in Brazil and also in Portugal, so let's look at them. We're now here at the most distinct landmark in all of Macau - it is the Saint Paul ruins.
Here I am taking refuge in the shade. I'm melting like a Popsicle. I can't believe people are actually jogging in this weather. Insanity! Right now we're just walking up Fortaleza do Monte which is a fortress on top of a hill overlooking the city Casinoslots New Zealand. And it is super hot and it is super steep and we're sweating. Here we're taking aim at one of the biggest casinos. Here we've got our canon and a ball inside ready to blast. Which one are we blasting? That is the Grand Lisboa. The long climb up here was definitely worth it. Now we get some great views of the casinos and apartments below. Well, I've been to Macau one time before but this is your first time, so first impressions. First impressions, it reminds me a little bit of Las Vegas of course because of all of the casinos but it also has a bit of a Brazilian and a Portuguese flavor. It reminds me a lot of my visits to Rio and the food is great so I'm liking it so far. It is so ridiculously hot and humid outside. We've been literally subsisting off of these pearl milk teas. Another one, what do you mean? Another one. Refreshing. Today we're on a quest for Macanese food. We love to eat and we're always excited to try new things. Background music playing. So this little treat over here is called and it is a popular Portuguese pastry made with eggs. And I'm going to have my first bite. It's kind of Macanese food egg tart. Chinese and Portuguese inspired. How is it? It's nice and sweet and the egg is really fluffy. Almost like a souffle. What do got there? A piece of meat. Is it good? It's like bacon. So time for our second treat of the day. And we found a quiet little back alley away from some of the busy main pedestrian areas. And we've got some almond cakes here. These are also a Macanese specialty. Oh yeah, those are real good. They remind me of Christmas shortbread cookies that you have for the winter holidays. That sounds tasty. Melt in the mouth. Let's look at those again. Yum. Background music playing. So we're here at a local eatery just down a backstreet in Macau and we're here to try a pork chop bun and we've also been given a black soy milk drink, so we'll see what that is all about. Okay, first I'm trying soy milk in my whole life. Mmmm is it sweet? This is sweet, yeah. Does it have a kind of a rich flavor? I don't know. You try it. Yeah, it definitely tastes like sweetened soy milk. A little bit similar to almond milk as well. I can also taste the black bean a little bit too. Background music playing. Time to try this famous pork chop bun here in Macau. Mmmmmm. That's really nice. Is it? It's a soft warm bun fresh out of the oven. I think it may have some butter. And the pork is just so flavorful. Save some for me. No. So it's starting to get really hot outside so we treated ourselves to a nice little pearl tea. Um, I think the origins of this are actually Taiwanese but it's really popular here in Macau, so we're adding it to the video. Background music playing. We got so bored staying in China that we decided to change things up. Now we're in Venice, Italy. Actually we just crossed the street from our hotel in Macau and now we're visiting the Venetian. So we're still in China. Background music playing. So even if you're not a huge gambler there is still plenty to do in Cotai Central here in Macau. There are so many hotels that you can visit and every hotel usually has a unique show that they put on. Here at the Venetian you can ride the Gondola and just feel like you're in Italy for an afternoon. Then the hotel we were staying at was having some kind of Shrek parade which you missed out on. I did miss it but Sam loved it. Oh wow, yes! There is just lots of shows and different performances that you can attend in the evenings. So plenty to do aside from gambling. Coming early in the morning was a really good idea. We basically almost have this whole place to ourselves. People nowadays seem to be busier than they have ever been in the past. This may be due to the fact that people need more money now than before and thus have to work more, or it may just be because if the way that time has evolved communities. Whatever the case may be, it seems that the chaos of the modern world does not allow for many people to get the education that they want. That is where online undergraduate programs come in. A huge number of services for students are also available, for example, Robot Don text checker. They can provide an education when it otherwise seems impossible to get.
The best part about online degrees is how laid back the scheduling for them is. While you may still have deadlines to abide by with an online degree program, you may not have to do homework on a day to day basis. You can set aside time in your existing schedule to get your education, and that can be day or night. All you need is access to the computer and a few minutes of your time and dedication to get a degree online. Even the busiest person out there can get an education when he or she needs one. Online undergraduate programs are more affordable than other degree programs, and they are easier to go through because there is no commuting. You can save time getting to campus and fuel driving there just by going to school online. Your degree program itself is going to be more affordable because of the lack of overhead on the web, so you will have plenty of money left over to save for your future. You can maintain a job when you work online because the education is on the internet, and you can even raise a family in the process. It is easy to get help in class when you’re in an online degree program because you can contact other students directly on the web. Since the scheduling is so flexible with these programs, most people find it easy to see other students online 24/7. I once had a tutoring session with the TA for a course at 3 am because we both happened to be online at the time. That is the beauty of the web though. It practically destroys the concept of time as you go through your degree program. The semesters for online degree programs are setup interestingly. Some of them go through the standard Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters, but others will focus on one class for an entire month to get it over with. Then they will move on to another course. This may offer a better learning environment for you, depending on how your brain functions. Sometimes it is nice just to focus on one or two courses for a short period of time. That ensures you absorb as much information as possible. You can look into different degrees and see what’s right for you. If you want to be one of the movers and shakers of the world, you need to think about going through one of them online undergraduate programs available to you. There are all kinds of programs on the web, and more of them are developing at all times. Courses that you may not have ever thought could be on the web are now available there every single year. Do some research about the programs and schools available to you and see what you may be able to do with your education. The internet could be your portal for your future career. There are many sources of online college rankings that you can look into before you explore a college to go to. For the most part, higher ranked schools will charge more money for their services, but as a result, you will be able to get a better education. The competition in high ranked schools is intense, but if you remain focused throughout school, you should have no trouble getting into the program of your dreams. Rather than signing up for a school blindly, consider some of the following sources of information to use in researching the perfect institute for you.
You can find most online college rankings readily available on the internet. In some cases, these rankings come from students that have actually attended the school and wish to extend more information for other people about how good their education was. You can read over reviews from these students to see what the pros and cons of each school are, and that may help you form a wise decision about the place you want to go. Rather than testing a school for yourself, you can look to other people’s experiences to guide you in the right direction. You can find online college rankings on some college directory sites. There you may be able to search for a school by state or by degree until you find a list of the ones that you could potentially go to. From there, you can explore the rankings the site has setup to see which schools they are promoting the most. You do have to be careful about using certain directories though because in some cases, the schools will actually pay for high rankings on sites they want to advertise through. Make sure you get your information from a trustworthy source. You may be able to look to the US government for a list of online college rankings. Oftentimes the government will rate schools based on the education they provide students, and that information can give you an idea of what the top schools are in the country. You might even be able to check into magazines online and in stores because sometimes they have top ten or top twenty lists for you to explore. These are not quite as reliable, but they are still options to consider. You will inevitably form your own college rankings as you go through school. You may like one university because of the immense amount of degree programs it has to offer. Then you may like another because it is affordable. You have to keep all of those factors in mind when selecting a school to attend because that is the only way you can make a decision you will be happy with. Do not be afraid to change schools if you think one may be better than the other, as long as you do so for the right reasons. When you’re working oon the web, transferring to other schools takes no time at all. In the end, you will have to decide how pertinent online college rankings will be to your overall decision. If you want to go to a school with low rankings because it is cheap or quick to get through, that is your prerogative. These ratings just give you an idea of which schools are supposedly “the best” in the country. Your version of the best may be different than someone else’s though. Getting a degree online is a wise decision on all levels, and it is not hard to do. Take a look at the different colleges you have to choose from, and pick one that you think will work out for you. When it comes to getting an education, some people shy away from the idea because they do not want to take the time to go through an entire degree program. While it may take several years to complete a bachelor’s degree or beyond, a simple associate’s degree takes no time at all. With the advances of modern technology, you can now get your associate’s degree right on the web, making the process faster and easier than ever.
With online associate degree programs, you can set the pace for your education. Most classes will offer most or all of the course material at once, so you can get through it as fast as you want to. You will have to abide by certain due dates in certain classes, but for the most part, you can blitz through online programs with a bit of dedication. You can always read over the course schedule and syllabus to see if certain classes will be adjustable like this, or you can ask the professor. Nevertheless, you should at least find a few courses that you can take in no time at all. The average online associate degree programs take two years to complete, but that all depends on how many hours of class you take in a semester and what kind of degree you want to get. You may be able to go through your schooling in a year and then you will be able to move onto your career. An associate’s degree is enough to get you into most entry level positions in any career field, and then you can work your way up from there. You could also move onto other degrees at a later date if you want to. Perhaps the best quality of online associate degree programs is their convenience. You do not have to move to another location to get an education, and you don’t have to find a job that will fit with your class schedule. You can conduct your life the way you need to and still manage to get a degree in the end. As long as you have a couple years to devote to your education, you could significantly change the amount of money you make at your job. Then if you want to move on to a bachelor’s degree program, you will at least have a way to make more money while you go to school. Associate’s degrees help build the fascination for other degree programs. In other words, getting a degree like this may inspire you to push yourself even further in college. You will take courses that give you enough of a view of a certain career program to make you want to be involved with it further. This is not always the case, but for the most part, getting an associate’s degree online should inspire you to pursue higher education in the future. With the array of online associate’s degrees available nowadays, you should have no issues finding something that you would want to be a part of. Whether you dream of working in the medical field or you want to work in the retail industry, there are degree programs out there for you. Consider moving on to other degrees if they suit your learning desires, and you should be able to get involved with a good career. You can get in and out of college quickly with a degree program like this on your hands. |
AuthorGeorge Evans is a teacher at High school, Literature tutor, translator and just a good father of 2 girls. George uses for his writings Robot Don essay checker. In his free time, George likes to visit new places, read interesting literature and play with his children. Archives
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