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Xiao Liang

Student service fees increase for SGA

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The Student Government Association has made a resolution to increase student service fees by $75, resulting in a now $200 student service fee.

The fee increase was discussed and approved by the Board of Trustees.

This now allows SGA to have roughly a $500,000 initiative fund to only be used for large-scale initiatives to improve the quality of life on campus.

“This is a major step in the right direction for our student experience,” said Jace Petrowski, president of SGA.

He said that SGA is excited to start projects on campus in the spring when they receive their first round of funding.

Some of the things they will work on include adding lights on the intramural fields, supplementing funding toward esports, adding solar chargers on campus and replacing the equipment in the Clemente Center.

“We can now do all the things we couldn’t have done previously because of how low our student fees were,” Petrowski said.

With this initiative fund increase, the money cannot be used without senate approval.

Petrowski explained that Bino Campanini, the senior vice president of Student Life and Alumni Affairs, would essentially have to present any project Campanini wants to use the money for to the senate.

Petrowski also said that Florida Tech’s student service fee is low compared to other schools such as Nova Southeastern University, whose student service fees are currently $500 a semester.

Another service SGA is working on is a bike station with an outside company. SGA announced during their scheduled meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 6 that the bike rental program is no longer available due to a number of bikes being stolen.

They stated that they are looking into more feasible ways to provide benefits to students.

Extending library hours is another topic of concern that the SGA senate committee is looking into after hearing many complaints from students.

A Giving Tree fundraising event will be hosted by SGA on Friday, Dec. 6 from 3-5 p.m.

Furthermore, a website will be available for donations for the event, which aims to raise funds for the Orlando Toys-For-Tots charity program.

In addition, this year’s Day of Giving will involve all Student Life organizations.

Any club or organization may partake in different challenges that are related to the theme “superpower” in order to raise funds and earn points.

The winners will receive a $200 VISA gift card.

During the senate meeting, Marc Kanneh, a senior from Trinidad and Tobago, was nominated as the new justice of SGA.

Before the nomination, Kanneh gave a speech about his past experience as a justice and ensured that he will support the offices.

“I would say it is challenging to run a government, specifically the judicial branch,” Kanneh said. “There is really no playbook on how to do this, but I hope my past experience as a justice back in 2017 and 2018 will help me support and represent the offices of SGA.”

Street Dance Club wins talent show for the third year in a row

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Street Dance Club dancing on stage as the last performance of the talent show.
FITV // Brett Twery

Florida Tech’s Street Dance Club was spotted not once, but twice on this year’s homecoming talent show podium stage.

Taking home gold in overall performance was the Street Dance Club’s individual performance, but they also came in second place for lip-sync through their partnership with Lambda Chi.

Beating SDC and Lambda Chi in the lip sync competition was Campus Activity Board and Phi Sigma with their satirical piece to songs from Moana, Aladdin and Lizzy McGuire.

They highlighted changes that have occurred since the founding of the university, such as the rebranding.

They also poked fun at landmarks such as the atomic toilet and the Crawford Tower.

On Oct. 24, 11 groups of students and organizations put on a show for their peers, showcasing their talents, performing lip-sync or both.

“I don’t usually come to events like this, but I very much enjoyed it,” said Samir Kazi, a senior. “Everybody is just having fun, and it really brings the homecoming spirit out of us.”

A wide variety of talents were seen throughout the show, such as the exotic performance by the Belly Dance Club, acapella take on The Pina Colada Song from the Players in Harmony and jazzy swing dance brought by the Swing Dance Club.

Alpha Omega Tau and the cheerleading team perform on stage. FITV // Brett Twery

“It’s really interesting to see people you know performing on stage,” said George Rodney, a senior. “You really don’t know what tricks they have hidden up their sleeves when in school, and I’m glad that they can have opportunities like this to express themselves and have fun at the same time.”

Other group performances also stood out as many greek life organizations paired with other clubs or athletic teams to best address the theme of “Bringin’ It Home.”

Some pieces featured “International Love” by Pitbull performed by the women’s swim team and Chi Phi, as well as “Promiscuous Girl” performed by Pi Kappa Alpha and women’s volleyball.

Furthermore, Alpha Tau Omega and the cheerleading team had a mixed musical, ballet and cheerleading along with their lip-syncing performance to hype up the crowd.

Anthony Roberts, a sophomore, said, “I wish that the show was a little longer and more people would participate. It’s really entertaining to watch and I almost can’t get enough of it.”

While the talent show was the sixth event of homecoming week, it allowed students to come out and support each other as well as provide comic relief for some and showcase the talent of others.

A Casual Review – I LOVE YOU COLONEL SANDERS! It’s Finger Licking Good …?

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Official game poster by KFC

While Popeyes and Chick-fil-A were busy battling each other over chicken sandwiches, KFC was silently developing a secret weapon that could win the war.

I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator is a visual novel developed by Psypop and published by KFC.

Like most legendary titles, the game asks its players deep, philosophical questions such as: “What is love? What are the 11 spices? Are ads getting smarter? Why would anyone play this?”

In the story, the player assumes the role of a student who recently got accepted into a prestigious culinary school.

During your time at the school, you’ll meet many colorful and interesting characters, such as corgi professor, a classmate who is a pressure cooker, a rival with a shallow personality and most importantly, Colonel Sanders.

Like most visual novels, the player will encounter dialogue options during the story and have to choose how they react to certain situations.

These dialogue options can have an impact on the ending of the game (yes, there are multiple endings).

While the game itself is only about an hour long, I would highly recommend anyone who wanted to try the game to take multiple breaks in between to prevent themselves from being charmed by Colonel Sanders’ charisma.

Ever since I finished the game in one go, I’ve been having dreams about the silky texture of mashed potato and smooth gravy, the irresistible smell of 11 spices fried chicken and Colonel Sanders’ magnificent, silver white goatee.

Putting the jokes aside, this game is the embodiment of ads getting smarter.

It has many keywords about KFC embedded into its jokes and the game is very self aware of its purpose—to promote and sell fried chicken.

Yet, the game is actually very entertaining because of how ridiculous and odd it is.

The writing of the game can be humorous from time to time, filled with hidden references.

I don’t think this game can be recommended, but it is something that anyone can try when they really don’t have anything to do.

It is a funny meme game, and it is only about an hour long and free on Steam.

This story was not sponsored by KFC.

Florida Tech hosts first esports tournament

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Students standing about in Clemente for the tournament. Crimson // Xiao Liang

Gamers huddled around screens in the darkness of Clemente on Saturday, Sept. 21 at the first ever Florida Tech esport tournament, Super Smash Bros.

“A lot of students have asked about having esports on campus, and our job is to give the students what they want,” said Aaliyah Thomas, the Office of Student Life’s coordinator.

According to Thomas, over 200 students came to the tournament.

Among them were 80 players who signed up to compete against each other in Super Smash Bros Ultimate on Nintendo Switches.

“We decided to do a Smash tournament because it is a very widely known game and a very easy game to get into competitively,” said Erik Olsen, the tournament organizer. “It is also one of the few competitive games that actually encourages people to get together and have fun.”

Although there were only four gaming setups for all the players to use, the tournament went relatively smoothly with few interruptions.

“The flow of the tournament went really well despite the limitations,” Olsen said. “I think that the entire experience would be better and more efficient if we have more people who had experience with being in or running a tournament.”

After nearly three hours of heated but entertaining one-on-one battles, Bryan Portieles, a senior, was able to emerge among the crowd and claim the title of winner, as well as a brand new Nintendo Switch as the prize.

“I had a great time,” Portieles said. “Being able to sit down with anybody and just play with them was a lot of fun, and everybody had a very positive energy going. People were friendly and respectful to each other even if they lost.”

After the tournament ended, a number of students stayed and provided feedback to the tournament staff.

Students playing Super Smash Bros as part of the tournament.

Many stated that they would come back for more, according to Olsen.

“I think introducing the Florida Tech students to this big community is a step in the right direction,” Olsen said.

A Casual Review – GREEDFALL: Exploration, Diplomacy and High Neck Collars

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Official game poster by SpiderGames.

Greedfall is a game that ARPG fans will adore, and it might remind some players of memorable titles such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Developed by Spiders, Greedfall is an action role-playing game set in a 17th century styled world where a new island was discovered for colonization.

In the game, the player plays as De Sardet, a member of the ruling prince’s family who recently got designated as the Legate of the newly established settlement on the island.

They are dealing with the diplomatic relations between different factions on the island.

On the technical level, Greedfall is not very impressive when it comes to graphics; in fact, a lot of copy and pasting of assets and props can be spotted throughout the game.

However, this does not really have a huge impact on the overall atmosphere of the game.

From newly established settlements to uncharted wilds, the art style of the game is quite realistic, while adding hints of fantasy elements to make it look beautiful and interesting.

The game’s sound, music and voice acting are also well done: The clashing of weapons and firing of guns feels impactful but clean, and most characters feel unique and lively during dialogues, providing the players an impressive experience.

What makes Greedfall stand out from most RPG titles released in recent years is probably its quest design.

A good number of modern RPG games had the problem of making cliché stories for in-game quests; they are usually black and white so that the player knows for sure who is good and who is bad, and they are usually one-sided.

In Greedfall, things usually don’t work that way.

The player might think they are going after the bad guy, but the real villain might be on the side, watching from a distance.

There isn’t a clearly defined line for who is good and who is evil; things might be two-sided or even four-sided.

Aside from the way that a quest is designed, the player’s character background also makes the interactions different from other games.

While combat is a major part of the game, the player is supposed to be a diplomat representing a country instead of a mercenary or some random explorer, so forcing your way through is not always the answer.

Personality traits such as charisma and intuition allow the player to have more options during dialogues and help avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

However, that doesn’t mean fighting isn’t fun.

The combat in Greedfall is basic and standard compared to most ARPG titles, and it is not extremely hard to master the game’s combat system.

Like all RPGs, the player gets to invest skill points into the skill tree they prefer, and there are a variety of weapons and abilities for the player to choose from.

The game also has a crafting mechanic, which allows the player to install upgrades on their gear and change the appearance of the equipment.

Aside from that, the player can also craft potions, traps and items that can help them during combat and quests.

Overall, Greedfall is an enjoyable ARPG game with exploration and political management.

While some elements of the game are lacking, Greedfall never gets boring or tedious to play.

A Casual Review – REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES: Souls-like with a unique twist of flavor

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Official game poster by Gunfire Games.

“Remnant: From the Ashes” is a game that focuses on being fun and engaging instead of making everything complicated and irrelevant.

Developed by Gunfire Games, the studio that is best known for its Darksider franchise, “Remnant” is a third-person shooter action game which takes place in the post-apocalyptic Earth.

It is also categorized as a “Souls-like” game by many players and reviewers, meaning it features similar mechanics to FromSoftware’s Souls series, notably the Dark Souls trilogy.

These games are known for their limited check points, dark settings, hidden stories and challenging difficulty.

While “Remnant” certainly took inspiration from the Souls series, it is still very different from most games that fall within the same category.

The player begins on ruined Earth, progressing to three other worlds as they navigate the game.

Each world has its own unique environment and enemies, which makes it very interesting to explore.

Gameplay wise, “Remnant” feels like most third-person shooter games, and the player also gets to use a melee weapon if they prefer.

However, most parts of the game play revolve around shooting.

The world of “Remnant” is procedurally generated when the player starts a new game, so each player’s world can be a little different from one another.

This also means that the players may face different bosses and get different rewards every run.

The difficulty of the game is not too challenging, but hard enough to make it feel exciting and action packed.

There are roughly 120 different enemy types in the game; each have their own strengths and weaknesses, making it important for the player to learn and remember the enemies’ patterns.

Another element that made “Remnant” a thrilling game is its three player co-op.

While it may be entertaining to play a game alone, it gets even better when there are two friends around.

Not only do the players get to progress faster with rewards and loot, but the rewards and loot are also shared among the players and are carried forward to each player’s own game.

In addition, the game adjusts the difficulty level by the number of players in the game, so it will never feel too hard or too easy during a co-op session.

While the game is not that impressive on a technical level, it has a lot of character building customization choices and replay value.

The multiplayer element of the game also works well, which reinforced its replayability.

Facilities prepares for Hurricane Dorian

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Florida Tech Facilities will be installing hurricane shutters Friday afternoon, and all emergency generators will be tested and ready to go, according to Dewey Yeatts, director of facilities management. 

Yeatts also stated that Facilities is working to support dining services during the hurricane, and sand bags are being delivered to buildings that need them. 

A Casual Review – ANNO 1800: A Relaxing and Engaging City Builder

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Official game poster by Ubisoft

After two not so successful Sci-fi themed releases, the Anno series has finally gone back to its roots.

Developed by Blue Byte and published by Ubisoft, Anno 1800 is a real-time strategy city-building game that is taking place during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

In the game, the player assumes the role of a colonial leader of the crown, building up new economies and establishing trades as the game progresses.

What makes Anno unique is perhaps its competitiveness, unlike most city builder games, the player is not alone.

There are other AI or player factions that seek to prosper, and there is only a limited number of islands and resources, which means that the player needs to think and act strategically.

At the beginning of the game, the player starts off in the Old World, which has a similar climate and environment as the majority of Western Europe.

In the Old World, the player needs to expand and industrialize the colony’s economy, as well as managing different classes of people.

Once the colony has developed to a stable economy, the player can then choose to venture into the uncharted seas of the New World.

The New World is vastly different from the Old World, the player will encounter new threats as well as new resources that are needed to fulfill the people’s demands.

The player will be working with the local populations of the New World, exchanging resources in order to become more powerful.

The game has many mechanics that need to be learned by a new player, such as trade routes, naval combat and chain of supplies.

Fortunately enough, the game did provide a campaign mode for new players to learn while having all the fun that the game has to offer.

The overall gameplay experience of Anno 1800 is quite relaxing.

Like most city builders, the players are in control of the pace of the game, even when there are competitive elements present.

A single game session of Anno 1800 can take a very long time to finish.

It will probably remind the players to take a break or get a coffee because they’ve been staring at the screen for too long.

While I believe that the game is very much recommended for people who are looking for a fun and relaxing game to player, I think that Anno 1800 is not a game worth spending $59.99 for.

The game can also be very demanding on the player’s PC and time, which are the things that most college students don’t have at the moment.

A Casual Review – Grim Dawn: The Perfect Game for ARPG Fans

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With the confirmed release of Diablo Immortal later this year, I figured it would be a good time to talk about Grim Dawn, a game that is closer to the classic actionRPG experience.

Official game poster by Crate Entertainment.

Before I get into the gameplay, I think it is a good idea to look at some data and make some comparisons so that I can explain why I think it is “a good ARPG game.”

Developed and published by a rather small independent developer named Crate Entertainment, Grim Dawn is an ARPG game that focuses on loot gathering and character building.

Grim Dawn is often described as a “spiritual successor” of Diablo 2 by many members of its community and critics, which says a lot about the game.

Diablo 3 is a sequel to Diablo 2 developed by Blizzard Entertainment, the company that is known for making highly praised games such as World of Warcraft and Starcraft.

The development of Diablo 3 took the company around 11 years to finish, and only one major and one minor expansion pack have been released ever since it’s initial launch.

The last expansion pack of Diablo 3 was released five years after the initial release, and it bearly had any content.

Crate Entertainment, on the other hand, announced the development of Grim Dawn in 2010 and later revealed that there were only two full-time employees in the company on their kickstart page.

Grim Dawn was eventually released in 2016.

Crate Entertainment has released two major and one minor expansion packs for the game in just three years.

While Diablo 3 is not necessarily a bad game, it is hard to think of a reason why a small company with 13 employees and mostly crowdfunded budget can spend almost half as much time to make a similar, if not better, game than a multi-million dollar company with a huge amount of resources.

There is definitely more information that needs to be looked at when it comes to comparing two similar things.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the gameplay.

Grim Dawn has its own unique style of world design and choice of music.

Like the title suggests, the visuals and soundtracks of the game are grim and often gives the player a sense of dread.

The world is falling apart and people are turning against each other, but there are still exotic locations to visit and cool gears to find.

While elements such as storytelling and character designs are important to a game, I think what makes this type of ARPG fun is the character and class customizations, and Grim Dawn is a very good example of this.

From a gunslinging necromancer to a greatswordwielding mage, Grim Dawn offers its players a huge variety of choices.

In Grim Dawn, the player gets to choose from one of the six bases plus three DLC classes once they reach to level two.

Each class has many different skills for a player to choose from, and the play style within a single class can even vary from the player’s choice.

In addition, the player will get to choose a second class specialization once they reach level 10, and the chosen class will be combined with the first class to become a completely new class.

This means that there are a total of 72 classes for the players to discover and experiment with.

On top of that, when the player get their first devotion point, they will meet the devotion menu, a passive skill system that allows the player to gain additional modifiers and abilities to further customize their character.

It is also worth mentioning that Grim Dawn features replayable content such as endless dungeons, harder difficulties and online co-op up to four players.

To conclude, Grim Dawn is an ARPG game with classic gameplay of the genre and a huge variety of customizations, and it is frequently being updated by the developers.

The game is currently available on PC and Xbox One.

A Horrible Review – Fourth Life considered greatest game in human history

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After seven years of development and crowdfunding, Best Games Studios has finally fulfilled its promise of “creating the game that everyone dreamed of.”

Fourth Life is a massive multiplayer online first-person role-playing action survival sandbox simulation sports shooter real-time strategy battle royale game that has the most innovative game-play mechanics the world has ever seen.

Unlike other game developers, the people at Best Games Studios understand and know what the gaming community wants for their games.

Instead of choosing inferior and obsolete gaming platforms such as PCs and consoles, the developers of Fourth Life wanted everyone to enjoy the game and have made the decision to release exclusively on mobile because “everyone has a phone.”

The processing power and the state of the art hardware of smartphones are capable of handling the otherwise impossible engine that the game runs on for around 30-45 minutes, depending on the player’s preferred phone of choice.

If the player decides to get the Ultimate Deluxe Collector’s edition of Fourth Life for $300, the game will also come with a compact-portable power bank which will extend the possible play time.

Now let us talk about what makes Fourth Life so special: the game-play.

In Fourth Life, the player gets to choose to be whatever they want to be.

The forward-thinking developers of the game have added over 500 gender and sexual orientations for the players to choose from, such as Attack Helicopters, Goats, Pizza and Chairs.

The players are even allowed to customize the look of their character pixel by pixel, which is the true character building that everyone wanted.

After choosing what or who they want to be, the players are thrown into the immersive world of Fourthland, a place where magic and technology coexist and the world is open for the players to explore.

At the very start of the game, the players have to find a purpose for themselves as the game heavily emphasizes on making your own choice, which means that there are no set objectives and no real NPCs to interact with the players.

However, with a small fee of $30 per month, the player is able to access additional features of the game such as crafting and learning magic.

On top of the monthly subscriptions, the players can also purchase in-game currency to participate in what is probably the most exciting and addictive game mode of all time: Loot Roulette.

Unlike the questionable loot boxes that some other game companies have been implementing, the Loot Roulette is a perfectly fair and balanced mode that allows the players to acquire loot by playing the in-game roulette.

Although the win rate and chances of Loot Roulette were not posted by the developers of the game, Best Games Studios has assured players that the roulette is perfectly balanced because it functions just like a real-world roulette.

Aside from the breath-taking Loot Roulette game mode, the game also has a very competitive and advanced battle royale mode.

Unlike most popular battle royal games before the launch of Fourth Life, the battle royale mode of the game has completely removed the element of luck, as this would make the game unfair and not fun to play.

Instead, the players can use the in-game currency they’ve purchased to choose accurately where they’ll be dropping and what kind of loot they will acquire, a truly fair and open battle royale indeed.

Fourth Life is a completely perfect and functional game that will just keep improving by itself.

Even the developers at Best Games Studios have claimed to stop any further development and maintenance of the game shortly after its release because of how perfect it is.

To conclude, I’ll give Fourth Life the highest score and recommendation: 10/10; it’s all right and the only entertainment you will ever need.