By: Vivian S

During this time of social distancing, many things have changed and new services have gained notice and importance. One new company that has become well-known is Zoom.

Zoom is an app/website that can be used for video conferencing, which has become much more important now that nearly all meetings have to be held from home using a computer. While all of us are social distancing, many people have turned to Zoom to continue holding classes, seminars, and meetings.

You might notice that Highland Park Senior High is not one of those places using Zoom, and Self Service does not even allow you to download Zoom, so you may not have used Zoom yet.

As Zoom grew more popular, misuse of the app grew as well. People took to intruding into the meetings of others, and messing with the meeting. Some people even posted passwords to the meetings online so that more people would join in. These disruptions have been termed “Zoom-bombing” and they are probably the reason that SPPS is not using Zoom.

Zoom-bombing has become so popular and well-known that there is a Wikipedia page about it, which I was not expecting to find during my research.

Zoom has responded to these mass-disruptions and has been working to further secure meetings. On their website, you can find a list of tips of how to secure you meetings.

It seems like many video conferencing apps have been struggling under the weight of all the new users using video conferencing, and while Zoom is one of the most popular, other apps are also experiencing problems and are working to address them.

While more and more security issues are being fixed, we all just have to be aware of any possible security risks (such as a meeting being public – allowing someone uninvited to enter, or a password being shared on the internet) and take steps to minimize those risks with the services these apps are offering and improving.

If you want to hold a Zoom meeting, please read the security guide they provide here: https://zoom.us/docs/doc/Securing%20Your%20Zoom%20Meetings.pdf.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Review 

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is a fighting game, for the Nintendo Switch, based around popular and well known characters across Nintendo and other games.

Now, today, the game is even more popular than before with more characters added to it. At the start, it only had eight playable characters, but now has 72 playable characters and is still growing. Super Smash Bros Ultimate is the 5th title of the Smash series. 

The main game mode “Fight” is what most people play online where it is multiplayer with other people that also play Super Smash Bros Ultimate. In “Fight” game mode it can involve up to eight players, or computer programmed players (CP’s), to fight each other.

The fighters in Smash Bros Ultimate need to be balanced for competitive players and causal players. Nintendo has learned over time to make these fighters balanced so they won’t be unfair. Most characters are hard to master and takes time to learn how to play them effectively. This is very crucial for the game’s success.

For more information, please visit: www.denofgeek.com/us/games/super-smash-bros/241515/super-smash-bros-nintendo-history

I’d like to talk about an app that has taught me, and other kids, about the world we live in and how our society works in real life. The app is called Simcity Build It.

In this app, you can start on a blank land. With each level you increase your population. To do that, you have to build their homes. To do that, you also have to collect the materials for building the homes.

When you get to a certain level you have to provide safety (police, fire people, etc.) and health care. If you don’t have the money to build the fire stations, police stations, water pumping stations, sewage disposals and government buildings your population will go down, and people will abandon their homes.

This game has taught me and many others how cities work. 

Many of my friends play this game as well. I asked them questions so I could see how much they have invested in this game, and how much they have learned from this game. I also asked them about how their cities are doing.

The first person I interviewed was my good friend Ella Ramirez. When I asked how much time she had invested she said, “Two hours a day.” She also mentioned how she has been on the app for 5 months in total.

I also asked her things she has learned about the game and she said, “When not enough is provided for the people they get upset and leave.” She also added, “The bigger the city the more the pollution, and the quality of the city goes down.”

A more personal question I asked was “How was your city doing?” and she said “It’s doing really well. I’m really happy with the way it is functioning. I’m also really happy with the design it is in at the moment. It is formatted into different sections of areas of more calmness and more business giving the Sims different options based on the building they are living in. They are also arranged based on the height, the taller and fancier buildings are in the more busy area while the smaller and more tranquil buildings are in the calmer area.”

That concludes my interview with Ella Ramirez.

I also asked my teacher Mrs. Kallestad, about the game and what she thinks about students using the game.

When I asked her about her opinions, it seemed like she was very curious about it. She was curious about how the cities work and also seemed to be very interested in the people behind the game and how they managed their cities.

She was also very interested about the names of people’s cities, as some are not appropriate for kids.

Another topic that Mrs. Kallestad was sort of heated up on was the fact that a big city was equal to a successful city, another player and I were telling her that that was the whole point.

That concludes my interview with Mrs. Kallestad. 

Overall, most people seem to be interested in the game but have very different opinions because Mrs. Kallestad doesn’t seem to like the game very much. This is probably because it distracts her students, but Ella, as a player, sees the game in a different perspective in an educational point of view.

RPG Maker MV is a game making software that allows you to make a game from a template that has already been set down for you. Inside the software there is some more software for making animations. These animations can range from attacking, healing, and cut-scenes, or maybe blending it all together.

This app features scaling which makes it so you can make animations larger or smaller even if you have already completed the animation set.

Overall, this is a great start for animation for games. I would use it for many other things mainly because I haven’t had a chance to experience that part, and I don’t know what other easier softwares are out there.

Link’s Awakening, is yet another remake of a Zelda game, since Nintendo isn’t in the business of producing anything original. Originally released on the Game Boy, sometime in the 90’s, it was one of the first Zelda games ever, meaning that it is in turn, one of the most influential.

The remake of this game came out last year, and I got it for Christmas. The Legend of Zelda franchise is my favorite game franchise of all time, so I was excited to play this for the first time. But, I can firmly say that after playing it for just a few hours, this is a forgettable entry in the Zelda series.

Link’s Awakening should be a fun game, and for the most part it is, but it never really captivated me like other Zelda titles have. For starters, it’s a lot more linear, up to the point where once you leave every dungeon a talking owl just tells you where the next one is. It’s still up to you to find out where they are and how to get there, and that’s my main problem with this game.

There is absolutely no sense of direction. After every dungeon, it’s implied that you need to go back to areas you couldn’t before with whatever item you got, but the map is so big, it’s hard to figure out where you are supposed to go. Also, there’s a bunch of forced side quests in between that make you travel across the map several times over for no real reason. This gets confusing very quickly, and even though it takes the mystery out of it, I would just look up a guide.

One thing this game has going for it is its looks. It has a toy style of artwork that makes everyone in the game look like, well, a toy. The top down perspective of the game makes you feel like you are in a plastic diorama moving characters around.

The game plays well enough, like most top down Zelda games. The sword swinging animation is satisfying enough, and once you get Roc’s feather, which lets you jump and battle in 3D, the combat really shines. But like most things in the game, it has an underlying flaw. 

To use almost any item in the game that is not the sword or the dash boots, you have to select it to one of two item spots. This was understandable in the original game, because the Gameboy had a lot less buttons than the Switch does, but now that we have so many buttons, why should we be limited to using two items at a time? I wasted a lot of time switching items in the menu because of this.

So yeah, those are my thoughts on Link’s Awakening. Did I like it? Yeah, it was fun enough, but I have a hard time recommending it to anyone who is not a diehard Zelda fan or a 12-year-old. I mean that seriously, my little brother loved this game. It was one of the only Switch games he’s ever beaten before me.

My final rating for this game is 7/10.