The Art Instiute of Las Vegas Review: Bad Work = Good Grades

Here is a screen capture of my report card for my last 2.5 years at The Art Institute of Las Vegas:

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: Stock Drop

This is more of an outlook at the Art Institutes as a whole, more specifically, their parent company, the Education Management Corporation (EDMC).  EDMC operates Argosy University, The Art Institutes, Brown Mackie College and South University.  AI schools, in 2011, made up more than half of all students under EDMC.

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: GT (1)

My "GT" (Guided Tour) blogs will be things I hear from admissions officers at the school giving guided tours.  My first blog on AI also talks about a Guided Tour experience.

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: Housing Transportation

I felt the need to post about the transportation to and from student housing.  Student housing about 3.5 miles away from the school.  It can be about a 10 minute drive if one hits mostly red lights along the way or a walk that takes about an hour.

The school has a vehicle that transports students to and from school.  It does this Monday - Friday in the mornings before classes, at lunch hour, and the dinner hour between afternoon & night classes.  Sounds nice.

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: Student Appreciation Day

(I was pretty much offended by the sprinkle of cheese I was given.  This was the first half of my fajita.)

Student Appreciation Day takes place on either the second or third Thursday of every quarter.  To show its appreciation, the faculty serves food to the students for lunch and dinner between classes.  To make time (?) for this, Student Appreciation Day cuts in to class time.  Since I started in 2012, they always:

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: How Did They Get This Far?

Today, in my 300 level class (I don't know why they bother to give the classes rank or structure at the school - I'm just months from graduating and I'm taking a 200 level class, and students can take 400 level classes in their 2nd or 3rd quarters), we were given an assignment to fill out some paperwork for our scripts we are planning on shooting.  I already have taken the Production Management and I already had the paperwork filled out (I thought it was due before class started).  Unfortunately, there were some students who didn't even know where to start.

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: All the Small Things

Today, I went to check out equipment for some homework I needed done.  I was informed there were no more CF(CompactFlash) memory cards.  This means that I have over $4,000 in equipment, but no way to record anything I want to shoot since there was no $30 piece.

The Art Insitute of Las Vegas Review: Policy Changes

On Friday, July 18th, 2014, I attended the first week of Portfolio Preparation.  In this class, one is suppose to have his/her portfolio critiqued and worked on to get ready for graduation (or at least that is what the name of the class makes it sound like).  I would have a more detailed description of what this class is, but the school's course catalog is missing from their website.

The Art Insitute of Las Vegas Review: A Heads Up

I know there are many complaints about this school online, and these series of blogs (with the label "AILV") will not differentiate.  I think it is only fair to have an opposing look at anything that is advertised as a perfect institution. 

The Art Institute of Las Vegas Review: Why I'm Doing This

My name is Sean Corcoran and I am a former (as of 27 Sep 2014) Digital Filmmaking and Video Production student at The Art Institute of Las Vegas.  When I was told I wasn't good enough to graduate after maintaining a 4.0 GPA for the 2.5 years I've attended this school full time, I took a step back to think about some things (they also made a huge change in the film and audio program's graduation process without notifying anyone).  If pretty much all of my work is no good for graduation, then why have I never received less than an 85% on any of my projects?

Lucky Christmas Commentary and Review: BLoafX Reviews

Lucky Christmas Commentary and Review: BLoafX Reviews

One of my Twitter buddies, @TeamSterlo, sent me the movie Lucky Christmas (Hallmark) for me and @InZaneO to watch and review.  We ended up recording us watching the entire movie and I did a "Best Of" of our commentary.



If this video gets over 690 likes, we'll make sure to upload the uncut version of our commentary!

Make sure if you want to watch this "gem" to click on one of the links below!  And let us know if you'd like to see more videos like this!

      

DVD or Amazon Prime!

 

You can even Flattr my blog to support!  Thanks!

Thank You Werid Al for "Word Crimes"

Visit Funny or Die's page to view all of Weird Al's videos in one spot!

I'm willing to bet so many people are so mad at Weird Al for this.

 

 

The only thing that could have made this better was some actual examples thrown in there, but I know he'd probably get sued over that.  I did a search on Youtube and this girl's video was the first to pop up.  She isn't the best, but I won't denounce her for that.  She obviously knows a LITTLE about editing. 

 

I know when I started I sucked (I still do!) but pretty much everyone gets better over time.  I know there are a lot better videos out there than hers, so go find them if you care that much!  Don't hate on her - as Colt Cabana would say, ride the Happy Bus!  Degrading her takes away from you praising someone or something somewhere else (unless you are Demiurge or D3 and you are stealing money from people!).

(She also touches a bit more on just ignorance/stupidity as a whole)

 

The fact that Weird Al in the last decade has used many more of these motion graphic videos than actual videos (or a mix thereof) isn't the greatest.  I think he has an awesome on screen personality and it isn't conveyed when he isn't there!

 

Weird Al's "Word Crimes" video receives a 49 out of 69, mainly due to the fact it's another motion graphics video.  The song I'd be willing to give a 67 out of 69 though!  I just feel there was so much room for more comedy if shot in contrast to "Blurred Lines."

 

 

Also, at 2:19, I always see "Cunnilingus."  Does that make me a bad person?

 

NAO!  Make ur teachurz lern u sum Anglesh!

 

 



Marvel Puzzle Quest Round 2: BLoafX Reviews

Marvel Puzzle Quest Round 2:  BLoafX Reviews

***Update:  On August 3rd, their servers crashed.  About two hours later on the forums, they stated "We are aware of the downed servers."  The servers were down for over 24 hours.  When I logged back in on August 5th, I received 3 gold recruit tokens.  Whoa.  Looks like they are learning a little bit.***

Before I go into this, just take a look at the ego-blasted smug look of one of Marvel Puzzle Quest's newest characters, She-Hulk.

Marvel Puzzle Quest is a very simple, yet intriquing and simple game.  I have spent hours upon hours playing this game.  After a couple months of playing, I created a little review video encouraging people to spend a few bucks on the game.  You can view it here.
 

It's now a few months since that video was made, and my opinon on the game has changed very immensely.  Although the game is still fairly fun and addicting, the actions of its creators/publishers have ruined the game for me and many others.

I set out to create a video to counter my one suggesting people to give some money to the game.  It was pretty interesting how the moment I decided to shoot this was at a timethe weather felt like I did about the game!  You can view the video here.

I didn't hit nearly as many points that I wanted to in the video.  After the hail started, I kind of lost track!  So here is the full list of complaints I have:

1.  No announcements in game.  Clearly, they have the capability to do this with some announcements that they have made, but whenever an update is made, everyone logging in should know about it, not just those who go to the forums.

2.  Nerfing.  Nerfing is when they weaken a character with the intent to make it more fair.  However, is this fair to anyone who spent money on a character that has been nerfed?  I know Spiderman (Classic) was the one that made a lot of people upset.  He is a three star character, meaning that all the upgrades to him costs 1250 HP, which if you were to buy the $20 HP pack, it would cost you $8.70 ..... FOR JUST ONE POWER.  ONE POWER out of THIRTEEN (13) power spots!

This means to make Spiderman max out to full power after receiving one cover, it would take 12 cover packs.  The cost of this buying the $20 packs would be $120 (If you received 3000 HP instead of 2900 HP, it would only cost $100).  If you are rich or overly addicted and bought the $99.99 pack for 20,000 HP, you would pay $75...FOR JUST ONE CHARACTER! 

Not to mention that there are eighteen 3-star characters and four 4-star characters.
Not to mention all of the ISO-8 you need to pump those characters to higher levels.

So, it is pretty understandable for a person to be pretty upset if this character they paid $75 and all of a sudden isn't even half his worth any more.  D3/Demiurge does nothing to make up changes to people who have spent plenty of good money on these characters.

And yup.  True healing.  Go figure that one out and tell me how that works out.

3.  Customer Service.  I mean, does it even exist at Demiurge or D3?  It did at first.  Like I stated in my first video, they were great at first.  Answers usually within the day.  Now, I'm lucky to hear from them within a week.

The pinnacle of trashy customer service occurred in the last weekend of May.   That Friday night, the servers went down and no one could play...for pretty much the whole weekend.  This is capped off by absolutely no response from anyone.  The forums were flooded with complaints.

How would any company just not respond to this?  The servers were down.  Nothing was working.  The new Daken covers were not being passed out.

And how did the developers handle this situation?  They handed out 2,000 ISO-8 and 100 HP.  Essentially nothing. 

Why would anyone give money to the game after this incident?  I can't think of any incident that I have experienced personally that has been so poor in customer service.  It's like they were hoping to just ignore the problem and it would go away!

3a. Customer Service Example

It has gotten to the point where I have given up on trying to explain all of my problems to D3.  Recently, they raised the level caps for all of the characters (to raise more money, no doubt).  This caused all of my characters to get knocked out for 24 hours.

You can read that last sentence again.  I didn't mistype anything.

So I simply took these three screen shots:

(click to enlarge, eh) 

I attached them to an email and stated "Just look at the screen shots" and clicked send.  Their response?  "How many characters were affected?"  Really?  It seemed pretty apparent to my that all of my characters were affected.  I tested out some lower leveled characters to see what would happen, so you can see that the vast range of my characters were affected.

Plus, why is there no concern of the 24 hour death period?

 (Click to enlarge - email from D3 I didn't bother to respond to, lol)

4. IT IS SO BORING

I still play at least one match a day to keep my daily rewards going and somewhat enjoy the game.  It has a Pokemon "Gotta Catch them All!" feel with collecting the covers.  However, I have greatly reduced the amount of hours I put into the game and I surely won't be giving any money to any game based under this model ever again (unless it is a one time fee like many games on Steam are).

The game use to be lots of fun.  There use to be many "themed" PVP events, i.e. Females Only, One Star Only.  Not so much anymore.  Now it's almost the same 'ol battles every time, just with a different featured character.

And they use the same 3 through 9 day events over and over.  If people are paying on a monthly basis, shouldn't they be getting some new events every once in a while?  Not to mention their extreme inability to end events at different times.  Either 9:00 A.M. or 9:00 P.M. for me for the PVPs.  This could work out for those of us in North or South America, but for places around the world that end at extremely odd hours, this sets them at a disadvantage.

5.  Player Vs. Player Opponents

It use to be that you would start off fighting low leveled teams and work your way up.  It is now 12:35 A.M. on July 14th, 2014, and I just played my first match in Heavy Metal.  Iron Man 40 (60), Thor (94), and Black Widow (94)...the most predictable team until I get in the top 25 range when I have to start fighting level 160 3-Stars.  There's no progressing to a higher level - there's essentially two levels of difficulty.

6.  Black Widow (Original)

True Healing made her a lot less useful.  After everyone started complaining about always having to fighting her, winning a cover for her became very rare (for me, anyways).  After they weakened her, she started appearing just as often as the other characters.  People are still using her just as much.

So we are back to square one.

7.  Bugs and Crashes

I'm speaking from complete ignorance here, but how is this game not seemless?  Why are there bugs?  The layout of the game is a simple one, yet it crashes plenty and has bugs often.

I've played a lot of Fallout: New Vegas.  The game has an extremely detailed world with thousands of elements in play.  The game crashes on me every 5-8 hours of game play.

I can completely accept this.  A game that is barely decimals complicated should have no issues, but Marvel Puzzle Quest crashes just about as much as New Vegas does.

Conclusion

If you're still on the fences, just visit their forums here.  Before you spend any money, I highly encourage you to browse the forums and wait for the company to improve their game and their service.  It almost has only been downhill since I started.  Give the game a go though.  It's fun.  Just don't waste your money on it.

And please Flattr me!!

And calm down, I wouldn't sue someone over such a miniscule issue :)  Just caught up in the moment!