Max Davis's blog

  This preview was made with only my experience playing it on the floor of evo and before the home alpha lab. 2XKO or Project L has recently been playable at the world's largest fighting game tournament Evolution 2024, and I have played the demo more than a few times. I played the first version that was playable last year at Evolution 2023 and at this year's Evolution event, the game has been further polished and has an expanded roster compared to when it was first playable. The game is shaping up well for the first at-home test in the middle of August, and the Demo was a good preview for the fighting experience.  New ways to fight 2XKO is a team fighting game that focuses on competitive play and two-person teams versus other two-person teams. While the game is playable as a single-person team controlling two characters, the demos at Evolution did not feature it, so I can not speak on its quality. I played the demo roughly seven or eight times, and I played most of the cast on...

No spoilers  When Hades 2 was originally announced at the Game Awards in 2022, I was only tangentially interested in playing it. Its version of isometric rogue-like action was not my cup of tea back in 2022 but its versions of Greek gods and mythology interested me. I grew up reading the Percy Jackson books and during that time learned to love the mythology and conflicts made by having younger heroes clash with mythical gods and monsters.  I was heavily reminded of this when I first booted up the original Hades this year to play one of 2020’s best games. Most people I had spoken to loved the game and my experience echoed many of those I had heard. Hades is a great mash of well-designed systems, that interweave interesting replayable combat design and great storytelling. Hades was the first roguelike that I had spent a lot of time playing and it remains the favorite game I have beaten this year for sure.  The week after I had beaten Hades, Hades 2 appeared like a miracle. ...

  Here is a clip I made about my local fighting game community featuring interviews from multiple tournament organizers and players.  All music is attributed to Daisuke Ishawatari and Arc System works. Reunion- Guilty Gear Xrd Daisuke Ishawatari 06:28 - 09:57 Starry Story-Guilty Gear Xrd Daisuke Ishawatari 02:49 - 06:21 Just do It - Guilty Gear Xrd Daisuke Ishawatari 00:00 - 02:45 Huge thanks to Joey Ramirez, Katie Knippenberg, Troy Marsh, and Westley Huebner for their interviews. Thanks to Free Play Denton and Fx Games for letting me record on the premises.

The Ride of a Lifetime is a self-written biography about and by Robert Iger. Robert Iger was the CEO of Disney while he was writing it and had been working in the media industry for 40 years. The book tells the tale of his journey to and as Disney CEO and what lessons he learned in the industry that led him to that point.  The book has been on my backlog of books I have wanted to read for a long time but it has become even more important as Iger enters his second tenure as CEO of the Walt Disney Company. As the current company goes through its ups and downs, it is interesting to read the origin of how current Disney thinks about the creative process, from the man at the top. The book describes Iger's ideas about being a creative CEO and how he believes in one thing over anything: innovate or die.  The book starts with Iger dealing with the most recent crisis to the book's writing. In 2016 two crises happened in Orlando as Iger was in China for the opening of the first Chinese ...

This clip is a short news clip I made for class during the spring 2023 semester.