 Hi there, my name is James O'Brien. Welcome to my big unorganized MPS vlog. So, I've been about myself. I'm 19, I live in Dublin, and I'm a first year multimedia student at DCU. So what I decided this vlog was going to be about is, what have I been up to in lockdown? How have I sort of been coping? How have I been keeping busy? At the end of the day, even though we all do have our assignments and exams to be studying for, I do often find myself with the question, what to do? There's plenty of stuff to do. Such as, watch a movie, play a game, read a book, play an instrument, practice a sport, binge a series, serve the web, do... nothing. Binge a second series, read two books, buy stuff online, play more Animal Crossing, bake banana bread. Go for a walk on the beach, practice more sports, learn another instrument, watch the entire Lord the Rings extended trilogy again, maybe even study. But most importantly of all, keep in contact, talk to friends, talk to loved ones. Everyone, especially in a time like this where a lot of people are alone, without any idea what to do, just want someone to talk to. That's why I've been able to cope so well with this lockdown. Every week, me and a load of people from my course, we do Zoom drinks. We just chat, play jackpucks. We just have a great time. It's the closest I've been to getting on a campus and just hanging out with people for once. For me, it is the most important thing of the week, in fact. So make sure you do something like that, organize something, make a WhatsApp group, get some people on Zoom. Just start chatting, talk about your day, talk about what you think of the course, ask people questions about themselves. Just communicate, because it really does go a long way. It can be over text, it can be phone call, it can be on the PlayStation. Just once you're communicating with people, it really does help to have people just talk to. Because when we're not able to go out and meet each other, it can be difficult. And make sure to sign up for things. Me, for example, will have signed up for the MPS Society and look at me now, making a vlog, talking to you directly. The viewer, if anyone's viewing this. Another thing I do at MPS, the radio. Now until the end of the semester, every Friday, I get to meet up with a cool group of people. And we just chashed, we play music, we have fun, we play games. And if you'd like to listen to our show, it's called Tom Fulery, it's on Fridays 11am every morning until the end of the semester on the DCUFM Twitch channel. Please, come along, it's great crack, we'll see you there. So what do I do during lockdown when I'm outside of lectures and assignments? Well, gotta be honest, I just watch a lot of films, I play a lot of video games. It's something that makes me happy. And in lockdown, you just really need to find that thing that you can just hop in and just escape from everything at the minute. So I've decided I'm just gonna bombard you guys with recommendations for films and games that have been experiencing over lockdown that have been keeping me busy and I have found great enjoyment in. First up, favourite film of all time, Parasite. Now, I know you're probably groaning at the fact that it's a foreign language film with subtitles. And I understand that. I was the same when I went into the cinema to see it. I had only gone to the cinema to see it because of all the Oscars, of all the praise I'd heard about it, I just wanted to see what it was like. And the fact that I went in blind, it really gave me the most visceral reaction to a movie I've had in years. Now, I don't want to spoil the film because of that fact. I don't want to tell you things about it just because I had sort of benefit of not knowing anything about it going in. But if I was to give you a brief sort of idea about the film, the story is about a poor family and a rich family. And how their lives sort of intertwine when members of the poor family are working at the house of the rich family. Now, I know that sounds very generic. From that description, you probably think you've seen this movie a million times. But when I tell you, it's one of the most well-directed, well-shot and well-written movies I've ever seen. Like, it is unbelievable. It does something I've rarely ever seen pulled off well in a movie, and that is mess with its tone. Because this film, it mutates over time. It goes from being the funniest comedy I have seen in years with really dark humor that is just hilarious, all the way up to the tensest I have ever been in a cinema, curled up in a ball, terrified as to what's about to happen. This movie, it needs to be seen by people. Like, more people need to see it. I've tried convincing people to watch it, but yeah, subtitles and that, it just turns them off. But when I tell you that if you manage to get past the fact that it's a foreign language film with subtitles, you will find one of the most high-quality films you'll probably ever see. Next up, Wally. Now, Wally, honestly, it ties for my favorite film of all time with Parasite. They're very different films, but at the minute, Parasite seems to be my favorite film. But Wally is my favorite Pixar movie of all time, and that is very hard to do. Pixar are the ones that know how to make audiences cry. There's no way around it. You cry the fourth time watching a Pixar movie. It is meant to take you on an emotional, heartwarming, funny, devastating ride. And it does. And you might be wondering, why is Wally my favorite Pixar movie? I'll give you a very simple answer. Because of Wally himself. Wally might be my favorite character in all of cinema. Why, you might ask? He's one of the most expressive characters I've ever seen on a screen, and yet he barely talks. He says like two or three words. He says Wally. He says either. He really doesn't say much, but he is made to be so unbelievably expressive. Despite all this, through the way he acts, his mannerisms, just the general little quirks about him. And the way he just sort of expresses emotion, like with those big eyes and stuff like that. The way he just sort of expresses emotion and somehow makes me convinced in this film's world that a robot can feel love, and you can feel like his emotions. You can see his emotions. It's just crazy. Like, that is really hard to do. Like, when you're stripped of dialogue, you don't have much. So the fact that they can make a character so animated and so full of life, despite not in fact being alive, it's just really, really cool. And it's just really, really impressive. And then this film manages to have, what I still believe, is the greatest romantic story of all time between Wally and Eva. And just takes you on this adventure from a devastated world where he's been all alone for 700 years to him seeking love in outer space. It is just amazing. Just, and it gets across everything, just the expressiveness, the fun, just the life that is in this film, and the heart, and the emotion. And when it manages to do that, the way it just connects you to this one little character and you're with him the whole time and you just, yeah, you want to see him succeed and you see him come up against all these obstacles and he reacts to them in often hilarious, sometimes really upsetting and sad ways. It's just... Yeah, it's just out of this world. And now on to the other thing that has been consuming errors in my life daily for the past couple of weeks. Video games. First up, Hades. Now Hades is made by Supergiant Games, so the guys who made Spastion, which is my favourite game of all time, and their games are known for being beautiful. They're known for having the best art styles, the best soundtracks, the best stories, and also really good gameplay, which is also very important obviously. The goal is well to escape Hades, the underworld, and you play as the Greyos and you have to force your way through all of these dungeons, all the circles of hell basically, to get to the surface. The only catch is it's a roguelike. And what does a roguelike do? If you die, you have to restart the entire thing back from square one. And this is why I normally don't like roguelikes because I keep dying in them. I'm terrible at them. This game, however, it does something that is just amazing. It doesn't leave you at square one. It gives you a little boost as you go along. You gain currency. That means you can level up your character. You get stronger over time. You can get through each level faster, more efficiently. And it's exciting. You see your own progress. The story, it also follows along very closely to your progress and it actually comments on how you're doing. And that's just as engrossing as the gameplay. But the fact that it made roguelikes fun for me again, the fact I can see myself, I reached the last level the other day. I died, I'm back at the beginning, but I feel like I can get there now. I feel like I can beat this game. And that's something I can't say for any other roguelike. So this gets my highest seal of approval. This is the best game I've played all year. Next up, Super Liminal. Now, this is the first-person puzzle game and it has one of the most unique and just downright coolest game mechanics I've ever seen. What is that game mechanic, you might ask? It basically can be summed up in perspective is reality. This game, it takes optical illusions, it takes force perspective and it does downright crazy things with it. Best way I can explain this is probably, you know when you're looking at a building in the distance and it is tiny? You know if you go up to it, it is huge, but where you were in the distance, it is tiny. And you basically can see yourself nearly picking it up. Super Liminal lets you pick it up. You see a huge object in the distance, but if you're far away and it looks tiny to you, you can just pick it up and it's there in front of you, tiny. But if you put it down somewhere where it looks huge in your perspective, it becomes huge. The game messes with these sort of size-changing puzzles and it just, it doesn't have a dull moment in it. It keeps on throwing new mechanics at you, new ideas and just new really brain-breaking puzzles. This game, it just blows my mind whenever I play it. On top of that, it really surprised me with possibly the most impactful ending I've seen in a game, the emotion that it hits you with out of nowhere. This game needs to be played. It has an important message that more people need to see and hear and it tells that message through one of the most amazing puzzle games I have played since Portal. And now onto my final game, Kind Words. Now this, it's a different game. There's not really gameplay per se, but it is the most important game that I have seen all of lockdown and I'll tell you why. All the game is, is writing letters to real people, but it's anonymously. It gives people an outlet to write a short letter about their problems, about stuff they're worried about, their anxiety, their depression and it sends that letter out into the world for other people to see. It's all anonymous, but what people are able to do, which is the important thing, you're able to respond. You can send people positive messages, you can send people advice, you can just brighten people's day who really need it. And that is just the most important thing you can do in lockdown. This is one of those games where you can literally make someone in real life feel better about themselves. Just be able to tell someone to keep their head held high and then everything's gonna be okay. It's a very meaningful, very impactful thing and that's the message I'd like to sort of leave you guys with. It's that, keep in contact, talk to friends, talk to family. You can really just change someone's day for the better and it's all those little moments, all those days of making someone feel slightly better about themselves and that everything's gonna be okay. That are the things that are going to get us through this because we will get through this. Thanks very much for watching. Godspeed.