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The History of Sabotage Studio

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SABOTAGE STUDIO Sam Sennett, 2024 Sabotage Studio is a very interesting indie team in terms of how they operate. Everything about the atmosphere their team creates is seen through almost anything they do. Sabotage is a studio that is not fazed by trends or what other people think is the correct course of action. Once they have a goal, they are unwavering in making sure that whatever they create comes out in exactly the way they want it to. It really seems like just a group of friends doing what they want, and the result of these interactions is how we've gotten two truly fantastic indie games from those - The Messenger, and Sea of Stars. Thierry Boulanger was a fan of video games ever since he was four and growing up with the NES, and games like Mega Man 2, Metroid, and Zelda. One of his favorites was Ninja Gaiden 2, as he was captivated by the music, challenging gameplay, and story. He wanted to pursue a career in video games since that moment. After some experimenting with other ...
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The History of Naughty Dog

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NAUGHTY DOG Sam Sennett, 2024 When PlayStation and/or Sony come up in the discussion of video games, Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, or The Last of Us are bound to come up. All of these are franchises started and cultivated by Naughty Dog. Naughty Dog is a developer that is widely known for pushing boundaries in any way they can when it comes to video games. Ever since the PS1, all of their games have had a massive impact on the industry, earning rave scores across the board, and sold millions of copies throughout their lifetime. Naughty Dog is and has been one of my favorite developers to engage with for the last decade of my life, and I have always been interested in learning the philosophies of this wild developer.  Naughty Dog started off as simply two teenagers wanting to express their love of games and programming, the two teenagers being Andy Gavin, and Jason Rubin. They made multiple games just by themselves, such as Ski Crazed, Dream Zone, and Keef the Theif, a...
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Video Game Music Composition

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MUSIC COMPOSER Sam Sennett, 2024 For almost two decades, I've known that I wanted to get into the business of making music for video games. Even though there was a brief moment in time where I wanted to be an animator, video game composition, and video game music were always things that I held very near and dear to my identity today. Playing Super Mario Galaxy as a 6 year old at the time was so eye opening for me. It was the first game that I played that had an orchestrated soundtrack. There was something so grand about it that even as a kid back then, transformed my idea of what music in video games could mean. It could tell stories entirely on its own. It doesn't have to be simply catchy beeps and boops that I feel is what is associated with video game music by most of the general populous. Music composer I feel is one of the most overlooked jobs in the video game industry, and I would love nothing more than to be the guy that makes a soundtrack that impacts somebody in the s...
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The Finals Review

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  THE FINALS   (PS5, XBX/S, PC) Embark Studios, 2023 PvP FPS, Rated T I've never really been into first person shooters. It has always seemed to me like it is way too competitive to get into with fanbases way too toxic to even pretend to let newbies try out the game properly. With a few exceptions, I've always just preferred to watch other more skilled people play them. However, when I saw that Embark Studios, a team made up of former EA DICE employees who developed games like Battlefield, and one of my personal favorite series Mirrors Edge were making a competitive shooter based on Crackdown-inspired environmental destruction, I couldn't help but at least put this on my radar. After getting together a group of friends from Eastern Illinois to enthusiastically play this with me, I can conclude that The Finals was a great place for me to start playing these sorts of competitive shooters. Pre-release trailer for The Finals Story Setup Story:  There isn't too much of a sto...
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Persona 3 Reload Review

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  PERSONA 3 RELOAD   (PS4/5, XBO/X/S, PC) Atlus/SEGA, 2024 RPG/Life Sim, Rated M I'm not typically a fan of turn-based RPGs. I can't play Pokémon, and I can't play the old-school Final Fantasy games. I have never jived with the gameplay of standing in one spot, going through menus to attack, and then standing and taking attacks that enemies dish out without any ability to avoid it (disregarding stat manipulation). I've always been more of an action guy. I'm also never typically been a fan of anime. Though nowadays, I'm finding more anime that I enjoy, the idea and style of anime never used to appeal to me. So when all of my friends were telling me about this ANIME TURN-BASED RPG series called Persona, I thought I was going to hate it. One day, I tried out Persona 4 Golden for the first time and immediately fell in love. The atmosphere, the style, the characters, the gameplay immediately clicked for me, and from that day onwards, I became a Persona fan.  I ended ...
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