technician - january 11, 2011
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Red Hat to stay on Centennial CampusTRANSCRIPT
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Field almost full for February doughnut run.
Chelsey FrancisNews Editor
Registration for the seventh annual Krispy Kreme Challenge is still open, but spots are filling up.
The Krispy Kreme Challenge is op-erated by students and benefits the N.C. Children’s Hospital. The race began in 2004, with 12 participants. By 2009, that number had grown to 5,500. The Raleigh Police Department has set the maximum number of par-ticipants at 7,500 for the 2011 race.
As of Sunday afternoon, 5,335 run-ners had registered on the Krispy Kreme Challenge website, according to Rebekah Jewell, the Krispy Kreme Challenge public relations co-chair and a senior in biological sciences.
The Krispy Kreme Challenge will be held Feb. 5, beginning at the Bell Tower. Participants will run 2 miles to the Krispy Kreme store on Peace Street and eat a dozen doughnuts. Af-terward, the runners are to run the 2
miles back to the Bell Tower. The time limit for the challenge is one hour.
Registrants can participate as chal-lengers, casual runners or supporters. According to the Krispy Kreme Chal-lenge website, a challenger attempts to complete the challenge, including eat-ing the doughnuts, in less than 1 hour. A casual runner can try to complete the entire challenge, but it is not re-quired. Supporters do not participate in the race, but do get a Krispy Kreme Challenge T-shirt.
According to Jewell, in 2010 the Krispy Kreme Challenge raised $55,000 for the N.C. Children’s Hos-pital.
“We hope to raise more money this year than we did last year,” Jewell said.
The Krispy Kreme Challenge 2011 has three student co-chairs: Sudeep Sunthanker, a senior in biomedical engineering; Rachel Turner, a senior in animal science and John Yanik, a senior in biomedical engineering.
According to Jewell, the co-chairs of the event are chosen in the spring.
“They immediately start planning for the next year’s race. In the fall, people interested in helping to plan
the Krispy Kreme Challenge meet, sign up for committees and start
Successful software company announces it will headquarter in Wake County.
Brooke WalligDeputy News Editor
Donning a red fedora for the occa-sion, Governor Bev Perdue announced Monday homegrown “upstart”’ com-pany Red Hat will build its corporate headquarters somewhere in Wake County - and maintain its presence on Centennial Campus.
According to Perdue, the company brought innovative technology to light a decade ago. On the strength of a multimillion-dollar incentive package, the company will keep its headquarters in Wake County rather than moving to one of three other competing states.
“When this upstart little company came to us 10 years ago, they had a vision of where the future was going,” Perdue said. “They are successful and will continue to be successful, and they could have gone anywhere they wanted. It is a great day in Raleigh.”
Red Hat, a leading company in open source technology, currently resides in about 188,000 square feet on Centennial Campus and has ini-tiated extensive partnerships within the University, according to College of Engineering Vice Chancellor Den-nis Kekas.
“We are very pleased to have [Red Hat] at N.C. State. They have been a very positive factor for growth on Centennial Campus,” said Kekas. “They are currently involved in many focused projects on campus, including researching how to make open soft-ware more secure, updating the com-puter science curriculum and funding the Institute for Next Generation IT Systems - as well as the OSCAR lab.”
According to Kekas, Red Hat has grown considerably since its initial days, and it will likely expand beyond the University’s capacity.
“When they started off, they only took up a couple floors in one build-ing. Now, they are using 188,000 square feet of office space, employ be-tween 650 and 700 people on campus and [are] still expanding,” Kekas said. “Even if their new headquarters is no longer on campus, this will still be an opportunity to grow our partnership with Red Hat. At some point they will be too big for the campus, but there is certainly room now.”
According to Perdue, the company typically grows at least 20 percent annually, and it will create approxi-mately 540 new jobs when the new headquarters opens.
Package Helps Tempt Red Hat to Stay
Though there is no determined loca-
tion for the new corporate headquar-ters, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said North Carolina was chosen over other national competitors because of Red Hat’s extensive University part-nerships and an $18 million incentive package to be paid out by the state.
Despite vocal concerns regarding the sizable package, Perdue said she stands by the amount.
“Contrary to what the world would
like, it is necessary to offer compa-nies like Red Hat incentive packages in order to be competitive, and these economic times these companies have to look for the best deal they can get,” Perdue said. “North Carolina offers great economic incentives as well as great quality of life, and our workforce makes this the best place in America to do business. Decisions were made for all the right reasons.”
Red Hat Chief Executive Jim White-hurst confirmed the importance of such incentives, citing it as the main reason North Carolina was chosen over other major potential locations, including Texas, Georgia, and Mas-sachusetts.
“Even in the best of times you have to make important decisions based on economics,” Whitehurst said. “We have enjoyed a great 10-year partner-
ship with North Carolina, but with-out the direct economic incentives we would not have been able to stay.”
The only question now, according to Chancellor Randy Woodson, is where the headquarters will be built.
“It is great to hear that Red Hat is staying in Wake County and on cam-pus. The University has had a strong
Red Hat to stay on Centennial Campus
Alex SAnchez/TechniciAnBefore announcing Red Hat's decision to stay and expand in North Carolina, Gov. Bev Perdue smiles while wearing a red hat. The expansion will create 540 jobs and the state will grant Red Hat $18 million in incentives.
insidetechnician
viewpoint 4features 5classifieds 7sports 8
Pack travels to Chestnut HillSeepage8.
‘Mass Effect 2’ making way for final sequelSeepage5.
Red Hat continuedpage2
Krispy Kreme Challenge still seeking hungry runners
luiS zApATA/TechniciAn Archive phOTOAlong Peace Street, Rob Barton, a senior in accounting, hands doughnuts to runners as they go by during the sixth annual Krispy Kreme Challenge. Volunteers lined the street with tables stacked with Krispy Kreme boxes for racers to get so they could complete eating the dozen doughnuts for the race. Barton said he enjoyed "seeing the interesting people and outfits come by."
KRispy continuedpage2
relationship with Red Hat since the beginning when it got its start with the ex-pertise of scientists and en-gineers from N.C. State,” said Woodson. “It would be great to keep a major, publicly-traded company in the long term.”
According to Marc Hoit, vice chancellor of the Of-fice of Information Tech-nology, should Red Hat decide to keep its corporate
headquarters on campus it would further foster a uniquely beneficial relation-ship between the corpora-tion and the University.
“We are glad to hear they are staying, and we’d clearly like them to stay on campus. The promise of Centennial Campus is the interactions we build between the stu-dents and the companies - as both an opportunity for research and training,” Hoit said. “This is a futur-istic concept that is even better than what Research Triangle Park provides.”
Page 2 Technicianpage 2 • Tuesday, january 11, 2011
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Red HaTcontinued from page 1
planning for the race in the following February,” Jewell said.
“There are three commit-tees – campus integration, logistics and public rela-tions, - as well as a sponsor-ship task force and a chief fi-nancial officer,” Jewell said. “Given the chaos involved in the race and the exponential growth in participation over the seven years of the race, a great deal of planning is involved.”
Yanik has been involved in the Krispy Kreme Chal-lenge since his freshman year.
“I started as a committee member, worked my way up to a committee co-chair and was eventually fortunate enough to become a co-chair of the entire event,” Yanik said.
The three co-chairs over-see the organization of the event, according to Sun-thankar.
“This year, I along with the other two co-chairs dealt with the overall organiza-tion of the race including acquiring T-shirts, liaising with the website company, ascertaining sponsorships and dealing with the press,” Sunthankar said.
According to Sunthankar,
although the race only lasts a few hours, the planning takes much longer.
“The actual product of the Krispy Kreme Challenge takes place over the span of about two to three hours on race day, but the planning and hours of work put into this process are far greater,” Sunthankar said.
There are more than 40 members involved in plan-ning the race and the co-chairs utilize the services of six different corporations in planning the event, accord-ing to Yanik.
“On average, the co-chairs probably spend 15 to 20 hours a week working on different aspects of the race and we anticipate that this will increase in the weeks to come,” Yanik said. “We do enjoy the work, however and are glad that our efforts can go to support such a worthy cause.”
Sunthankar said the being a co-chair has caused him to develop a passion and love for the race.
“And finally, when we are able to hand the N.C. Chil-dren’s Hospital our annual donation, every ounce of energy put into the race is made worthwhile knowing that our effort benefits such a worthy cause,” Sunthan-kar said.
KRIspycontinued from page 1
THROugH TIm’s lens
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Phillip Epperly, senior in zoology, goes over the receipt for the seven books he just bought at the Bookstore on Monday. Epperly was careful to just buy the books he knew he would need. “I’m not done yet,” he said. The Bookstore doesn’t
allow backpacks on the sales floor, so the pile starts to overflow during peak traffic.
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Viewpoint TECHNICIANPAGE 4 • TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2011
323 Witherspoon Student Center, NCSU Campus Box 7318, Raleigh, NC 27695
Editorial 515.2411Advertising 515.2029Fax 515.5133Online technicianonline.com
Technician (USPS 455-050) is the official student newspaper of N.C. State University and is published every Monday through Friday throughout the academic year from August through May except during holidays and examination periods. Opinions expressed in the columns, cartoons, photo illustrations and letters that appear on Technician’s pages are the views of the individual writers and cartoonists. As a public forum for student expression, the students determine the content of the publication without prior review. To receive permission for reproduction, please write the editor. Subscription cost is $100 per year. A single copy is free to all students, faculty, staff and visitors to campus. Additional copies are $0.25 each. Printed by The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Copyright 2008 by North Carolina State Student Media. All rights reserved.
Editor-in-ChiefAmanda Wilkins
Managing EditorBiko Tushinde
News EditorChelsey Francis
Features Editor Laura Wilkinson
Sports EditorTaylor Barbour
Viewpoint [email protected]
Design EditorTaylor Cashdan
Photo EditorSarah Tudor
Advertising ManagerAndrea Mason
{ }OUR VIEW
The first time Techni-cian covered the newly constructed Harrelson
Hall, the article introduced the new classroom building as “not only strikingly attractive,” but “extremely functional.” At the time of its construction, the building cost $2 million to construct and doubled the classroom space on campus.
But since that initial glowing review, it has become the butt of many jokes, has helped the University win “ugly campus” awards and prompted students to boast about the uncomfort-able arrangements of the class-rooms well after their gradua-tion.
Students have also abused
the building since its concep-tion, sparking a bit of nos-talgia. In the ‘60s, students would steal grocery carts from the local market and ride down the building’s interior ramp. During the 1983 bon-fire on the Brickyard after the NCAA Championship, stu-dents ripped the doors off the building and threw them in the flames.
Harrelson Hall has outlived its function. It isn’t as large as the math department’s new building -- SAS Hall -- and lacks the comfort of spaceous,
new classrooms and easy-to-travel halls. The ramps are not handicap-friendly and the confusing interior isn’t even 8-a.m.-friendly. A hodge-podge of classes and offices shuffle in and out of the build-ing, but it fails to provide any accommodating space to any one department.
The demolition of Harrelson Hall marks a new stage in N.C. State’s history and will change the face of the University after it is done. Although students may miss its spaceship-shaped facade on the Brickyard, a new
building would be more wel-come. The University should learn from its fifty-year-old mistake and make the new building even more “function-al” and “attractive.”
If construction for the new Talley Student Center stays on track, in 2014 the N.C. State community will proudly roll Harrelson Hall off campus and look for a new edition to sparse old Central Campus. Although the new building will surely cost more than $2 million now, in the long run, N.C. State can put Harrelson Hall in its past and move forward with more architectural integrity.
The unsigned editorial is the opinion of the members of Technician’s editorial board, excluding the news department, and is the
responsibility of the editor-in-chief.
Harrelson, you’ve got to rollTHE FACTS:The Board of Trustees approved a plan to destroy Harrelson Hall. The plan states the demolition is slated for 2014 after Talley Student Center is completely renovated. A new building is planned to fill the space.
OUR OPINION:All of students’ bashing has paid off with the demolition and the necessity has been proven by science. Harrelson will be missed, but it will also be a fond farewell. Having a new building on Central Campus will be refreshing.
Changed opinions
It has been about six years since I wrote an opinion piece for Technician. I had
to take some time off from school and am just now coming back to finish what I started.
I mention this because I learned some things in my
time away from academia that are relevant to what appears on
the Viewpoints page. You can continue to read without fear that I am going to begin lec-turing you on what you don’t appreciate or how things were back in my day.
What I have noticed is that the first time around I was unknowingly sheltered here. My opinions and I were safer here than they have been in the “outside world.” It is pos-sible that some or most of you realize how free you are in this community, but if not then take a moment and just assume that what I am telling you is true.
I do not mean to say that the world away from college is not a place where opin-ions exist. It just appears to me that away from here they are harder things, stones that people throw or chip the edges off so that they may slash this one broken, dangerous idea towards whatever threatens them.
Embrace the freedom to change how you feel about the world. That is the freedom
that I missed most about this place. Fundamentally, every-one at a school accepts that they do not know everything and that seems to put everyone in a place where they are will-ing to learn and be malleable. I cannot wait to start listening to the people around me again, eager to see how my worldview and my opinions are going to change again.
“Out there” every talking head and pundit on every ma-jor news channel seems to be saying first and foremost, “I know everything about what-ever it is I’m talking about.” Every election cycle is another partisan set of politicians mak-ing it clear that there is nothing left for them to learn. If only these institutions were more like your time here. If only there were groups of people the country or even the world over more likely to incorporate new information into their opin-ions and thank whoever was willing to engage in friendly, honest debate.
I’m happy to be back at N.C. State and I am nearly giddy at the prospect of finding out what else I have to learn. There are so many smart, thoughtful people walking this campus and each one has a viewpoint.
Send Ben your thoughts on viewpoints to [email protected].
Ben KraudelColumnist
New year, new advice
Staci here: your excited, brand new advice col-umnist. You may be
asking yourself, “who is this girl? Why should I ask her questions about love, life, school, fashion, work, etc.?”
To answer t h a t I ’ d have to say I’ve been there.
Cliched, but true. I went to N.C. State for
my undergraduate degree in psychology and then proceeded to attend gradu-ate school, also at the Univer-sity, for a year. Af-ter about a month I realized gradu-ate school was not where I wanted to be and vowed never to go back to school.
I then worked full-time for a few years trying out ev-ery possible dream of mine, such as wedding planning, working backstage for a the-atre company and working in education, before realiz-ing what I wanted most was to be back at college.
Not exactly go back to school but work on a col-lege campus. Whenever I would come back to NCSU after graduation, there was
always a sense of excitement and energy on campus that — even though I wasn’t in school — I could appreciate and be a part of. So with this realiza-tion, I am now back at NCSU working on a graduate degree in higher education adminis-tration.
Along with trying to find the perfect career, I have fought with friends, made new friends, started new relation-ships, broke up with someone, been dumped, gotten a job, lost a job, traveled and in general, just lived my life.
These cre-dentials still may not give me the right to tel l you what to do, but I love to help people. This will give me an oppor-
tunity to show that I am a great listener and I want to help solve people’s problems.
I also recognize the fact that I don’t know everything, but no one does. If you send me a question and I don’t know the answer to, I promise I’ll do my best to find the answer for you. I’m not afraid to say I don’t know and ask someone who does.
I also want to get other’s opinions on your issues. Even if I do feel like I know what I’m talking about, you can get an-other point of view as well.
In order for this to work, I need you all to send me questions. I also ask that you give me some details. Simply saying, “my boy-friend cheated on me, what should I do?” doesn’t ex-plain the situation. There’s definitely more to the story than that.
I won’t put your entire story in the paper, but the more information I know, the better advice I can give. If there’s anything you ab-solutely don’t want to be published, just tell me in the e-mail.
You know you have ques-tions and I have the answers or at least I know someone who does. So get on your computer right now and e-mail me at [email protected]. I’m in graduate school to help students, let me start with you.
“To answer that
I’d have to say
I’ve been there.
Cliched, but true.”
StaciThorntonAdvice Columnist
Let it snow.
Benjamin Kraudel, junior in psychology
BY CAMILAH JENNINGS.
“How do you feel about being back at school?”
{ }IN YOUR WORDS
“I feel like when we first got here. It would have been better to have a couple days off to transition into class.”
Kendal Hauck,freshman, psychology
“I’m nervous and excited together. But mostly nervous.”
David McAllister,sophmore, math education
“I like staying busy and I like being productive, so its been alright.”
Meghan Jonesfreshman, management
“I’m really happy to be back on campus. I really missed it, but classes are classes.”
Nikki Swangosophmore, management
FeaturesTechnician Tuesday, january 11, 2011 • Page 5
In the American market, it can often be hard for certain game genres to find an audi-ence. While first-person shoot-ers and fighting games have no trouble developing a strong following, games that focus on puzzles and story more than action are often left by the way-side of the mainstream gaming market.
As a result, some genres are left with small followings and few releases outside of Japan, the prime example of which is the visual novel. Focused almost entirely on story and dialogue with fewer gameplay elements, the genre has had little success in the states, with very few games being translat-ed and even less people playing them. The only truly success-ful example of the genre in the United States is the Ace Attor-ney series.
This is a shame, because 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a visual novel game and is arguably the best game to come out for the Nintendo DS in 2010.
Featuring a branching sto-ryline and “escape the room” puzzles, 999 tells the story of college student Junpei and eight other individuals. The nine people awake with a numbered bracelet on their wrists and the information that they’ve been kidnapped to take part in an experiment called the Nonary Game. As a group, they have only nine hours to find their way to a door marked with the number nine and escape the ship.
The catch is that the group must periodically split up into smaller groups and go through other doors numbered one through eight, which is where the puzzle-solving aspect comes in. The groups are lim-ited by the ways their num-
bered bracelets match up, so the player character will have to consider which characters he will be teamed up with before he chooses a door.
With the numerous forks in the road presented, the player will only be able to see a frac-tion of the game’s numerous puzzle rooms the first time and the variety of the challenges presented adds an incentive for multiple playthroughs. Each challenge is unique and fun to solve, whether it involves a door that needs to be unlocked by playing a piano or finding the missing pieces of a medical mannequin.
More importantly, even dur-ing the puzzle sections, the sto-ry continues to develop. Differ-ent items found in each room can trigger conversations with Junpei’s traveling companions, allowing the player to find out more about the individuals on board and why they have been selected to take part in the Nonary Game.
This gets back to the main thrust of the game, which is a fantastic mystery story that is constantly growing more in-tense as the hours pass. 999 is a game that will drag players well into the early hours of the morning, leaving them always wanting to know what is going to happen next.
The complexity of the story signif icantly increases the game’s replay value, as it isn’t possible to get all the answers the first time through. The game features six different endings, half of which end with the player’s demise. Even in the paths that lead to bad endings, however, more of the plot is revealed to the player and they can then use the information they have gathered to move closer to the true ending which each new playthrough.
The thought of playing so much of the game over just to get new information may sound tedious, but the devel-opers have made the process as simple as possible. The game
features a fast-forward option that allows players to speed past text they’ve already read, stop-ping when new information is on-screen. Also, choices the player has already made will be grayed out, insuring that they will know what they haven’t done yet.
Further, the game’s true end-ing really is worth the effort. It provides an amazing twist that not only brings the story to a satisfying conclusion, but manages to give significance to all of the other endings.
Overall, 999 is a game that
puts all of its emphasis on delivering a stellar story and in this regard, it is an absolute triumph, rival-ing Heavy Rain for best of 2010. This is backed up by a strong puzzle element and everything mixes to make a truly grand, high-ly-replayable DS experience. Any gamer willing to take a chance on a genre not often favored on this side of the world owes it to themselves to play one of the best DS games released so far.
After receiving a deluge of “Game of the Year” awards, Bioware’s flagship charts course for third installment with new DLC and lots of promises.
Phillip LinStaff Writer
This time last year, fans were highly anticipating the release of developer BioWare’s second installment in the critically acclaimed Mass Effect series. The sequel, titled Mass Effect 2, has since become one of the most lauded games of the year 2010. The game won numerous awards at the end of the year from game journalists and other media outlets including multiple “Game of the Year” or “Best Xbox 360 GOTY” awards f rom X-Play, GameTrai l-ers, IGN, Spike Video Game Awards, Giant Bomb and IGN Australia.
In a gaming industry where game titles are often lacking in the story department, Bio-Ware has become known for building their titles around well-written epic narra-tives. Gaming channels and websites X-Play, IGN and GameTrailers awarded Mass Effect 2 with “Best Story” or ”Best Writing” for 2010.
Built around the top-notch story writing in the series is also the continued improve-ment of the game play. Much of BioWare’s continued success
stems from the studio’s willing-ness to listen to their fans and Mass Effect players have noted improvements made to the se-quel based on their critiques. In the current gaming mar-ket, players often feel cheated by game publishers who have developers withhold certain content from the game, only to be later released as purchasable downloadable content (DLC) for an additional profit. Re-views for such DLC are often negative, with most players feeling the content is insignifi-cant as a stand-alone package.
Having already demonstrat-ed that games can feature im-pressive sweeping narratives, BioWare has helped prove that downloadable content can be worth the extra cost. The DLC so far for Mass Effect 2, released throughout the year in 2010, has proven to be both substantial and made with the same quality and care as the full game.
The first round of DLC was acquirable in the form of a Mass Effect 2 specific portal called the Cerberus Network,
which offered multiple free DLC pack-a g e s . T h e Cerberus Network it-self came free for those who purchased Mass Ef fect 2 new from retailers and
players who bought the game used had to purchase the DLC service for an additional cost. Afterwards, BioWare released three more full DLC packages, which were met with positive
reviews.At the beginning of the New
Year, BioWare announced that they would be temporarily shutting down the daily news updates that the Cerberus Net-work had been providing since last January. The network will resume briefly for a few weeks in 2011 to prepare for launch of Mass Effect 3, which was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards on Dec. 11, 2010. In typical Mass Effect fashion,
players will be able to import their saved game character and data from previous games into the sequel.
The last DLC released in 2010, titled “Lair of the Shad-ow Broker,” was nominated for “Best DLC” at the VGAs and was the first DLC to present a storyline that will link directly into Mass Effect 3. More add-on content for Mass Effect 2 will be released before the launch of the last game in the Mass Effect
trilogy and as before, the final DLC will continue to bridge the gap between the second and third games.
Speculations for Mass Effect 3 have been rampant since its an-nouncement. The bar has been raised since the first game, but the second game left the player at the forefront of an unre-solved war. The excitement for the trilogy’s end is higher than ever with the promised third and final act being the pinna-
cle climatic space battle of the series. The announced game add-ons from BioWare will al-low fans to continue their ex-perience in Mass Effect 2 and provide some insight into how the story will progress and link to the final chapter. Until then, the promised DLC in 2011 will help ease the pain of waiting for the day when Mass Effect 3 is finally released.
Photo courtesy of BiowareMass Effect 3 was announced on December 11, 2010 at the Spike Video Game Awards via a short teaser trailer depicting an earth under assault. The game is scheduled for a November 2011 release and will conclude Commander Shepherd's storyline.
‘Mass Effect 2’ making way for final sequel
During the second half of December, many video game publishers are loath to release new titles because holiday dollars are already spent and game of the year awards have already been decided. A few companies, however, brave this frigid market and release some stellar games. Here are two from this season’s crop.
Holiday break games you might have missed
Features& enTerTainmenTarTs
Story By Jordan alsaqa | photoS courteSy of TellTale and aksys Games
In recent years, Telltale Games has gained a reputation for producing some of the best adventure games on the mar-ket in addition to proving that episodic gaming can be done right. Titles such as Tales of Monkey Island and the Sam and Max series have shown the company’s ability to develop new games that stay true to the spirit of the source material.
With the release of the first episode of Back to the Future: The Game, Telltale Games has continued to impress, creat-ing a title that does justice to the beloved trilogy of films. In returning to the Back to the Future universe, Telltale has focused solely on providing a worthy continuation of the narrative.
The game’s story, which once again has Marty McFly traveling through time in Hill Valley, was written in conjunc-tion with Bob Gale, one of the creators of the original series. As a result, the dialogue and interactions of the characters all feel pitch-perfect, as do the callbacks to the films. The story itself is also strong, providing a satisfying first chapter for the
new series.Also helping the presenta-
tion is the performance of the voice actors. Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as Doc Brown and easily recaptures the char-acter’s spirit. As for Marty, newcomer AJ LaCascio steps in for Michael J. Fox and plays the role perfectly. He manages to hit all the familiar notes of Fox’s performance while also making the character his own.
The only aspect of the pre-sentation that may be a letdown to some is the visuals. The cartoon style is charming, but may feel a bit underwhelming at times, especially with the poorly done lip-synching.
In regards to gameplay, the first episode of Back to the Fu-ture: The Game is not going to be the most challenging and at times feels more like a tutorial for newcomers to the genre. Fans of the film series are not going to be bothered by this, though.
Instead of challenge, Telltale has focused on crafting a love letter to the trilogy‘s fans, one that promises to get better as further episodes are released. For anyone who fondly remem-bers the twin fire trails of the DeLorean, there is no reason to not download this game immediately.
“The network will
resume briefly
for a few weeks
in 2011.”
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Chun software/aksys games
Back to the Future: The Game – Episode 1Telltale games
Back to the Future: The Game — Episode 1 takes place after the events of the third film in the classic trilogy. Developer Telltale Games is releasing each of the remaining four episodes of the game, monthly, in an episodic style the company has perfected with the Monkey Island and Sam and Max series.
9 hours, 9 people 9 doors is a unique style of interactive entertainment that has more in common with a novel than a standard video game. There are plenty of puzzles to solve and decisions to make, however, which tailor the experience to the individual player.
CommENTAry
Features Technicianpage 6 • Tuesday, january 11, 2011
Taylor CashdanDesign Editor
When you’ve seen as many movies as I have you get to recognize trends and patterns that occur within films. Often times these trends and simi-larities turn into cliffhanger endings which become trilo-gies or movie series. When it takes two, three or even four sequels to end a series, in my opinion, the story line and its characters become redundant and more often than not these sequels flop when they hit the box office. But on the rare oc-casion the opposite happens, directors like Paul Weitz get to walk away with their heads held high.
We first met the Byrnes and Focker families in 2000 when they stormed the box office charts, reeling in $28.6 mil-lion for their premier weekend of Meet the Parents ; not bad for another family comedy that attempted to add flare to the industry by recruiting the col-lective talent of Blythe Danner, Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller and Teri Polo. The sequel, Meet the Fockers, introduced audiences to the more liberal and hippy-like Focker family. Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) brings the Byrnes family to meet his parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Steisand.
Six years after its prede-cessor, the third entry in the blockbuster trilogy, Little Fo-ckers, hit theaters on December 22, earning a whopping $26.3 million opening weekend and claiming the number one spot for its first two weeks of release. Recruiting the assistance of the adorable Colin Baiocchi and Daisy Tahan, who play little Henry and Samantha Focker, Weitz stepped up his game and
brought this comedic trilogy to a close.
Jack Byrnes, who has a minor heart attack and defibrillates himself with some stray wires, is looking for a new “head of the family” to make sure that the Byrnes’ blood stays strong when his time comes. Robert De Niro, playing his typical mafia godfather-esque role, appoints Greg for the position, but not without his typical pry-ing and snooping. After a series of tongue and cheek scenes and the imagined image of De Niro naked, Weitz plays on the re-sponsibilities that come with the new grandfather role that Jack is introduced to.
A character, though, that I felt had no business being in a family-friendly comedy was Kevin Rawley, played by Owen Wilson. His position as “guy with a crush on his best friend’s girl” is taken to new extremes in Little Fockers. Wilson’s role and that of Jessica
Alba (who plays Andi Gar-cia, the medical representa-tive) were a waste of screen time. The point of the film was to introduce Samantha and Henry, not to reinvent the term sleazy.
Little Fockers does an excellent job, however, of showing audiences the fas-cinating interactions be-tween newly bonded fami-lies. Even when the heads of their families clash, the Fockers and Byrnes come together for the sake of the children. It is a heartwarm-ing film wrapped in a series of effective comedic sce-narios that leave the viewer wondering if the families’ differences will ever be resolved. In a world of un-inspired comedies, Fockers maintains its momentum by focusing on characters that you actually care about, even after the laughter has subsided.
Elizabeth AyscueStaff Writer
From the first ten minutes of Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, you know how it is go-ing to end.
However, the end isn’t what is important in this psychologi-cal thriller. It’s the exploration of the protagonist’s harrowing spiral into madness that is the real focus of the film.
Despite arriving in theaters nationwide on December 17, Black Swan topped many crit-ics’ Top 10 of 2010 lists of films. It has also been awarded a Best of 2010 award by the American Film Institute. The film has been nominated for 4 Golden Globe awards and is receiving huge amounts of Oscar buzz, namely for Natalie Portman’s performance as the troubled protagonist, Nina. Already Portman has won 12 critic awards for the role.
The plot is simple enough – Nina, a dancer with a New York City ballet company, has been cast in the coveted role of the Swan Queen in the new production of Swan Lake. However, the role requires her to also dance the part of the Black Swan, the seductive and cunning doppelganger of the Swan Queen. Nina, played with perfection by a doe-eyed and timid Portman, is spot-on casting for the role of the good and pure Swan Queen. But the Black Swan role gives her more trouble as Nina’s dancing is all about technique and perfec-tion rather than passion and sensuality.
While Nina struggles to find her inner Black Swan, she be-friends Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer at the company, who is everything Nina is not.
She’s an energetic, fun-loving and passionate dancer. Lily rep-resents more of the traits of the Black Swan and as such, Nina becomes a bit obsessed with her. Lily brings some much-needed comic relief through-out this dark film and Kunis’s sensual performance perfectly complements Portman’s.
The other major player in this dark dance is the company’s di-rector, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) who tries to motivate Nina into exploring the darker parts of herself to prepare for her Black Swan role. Thomas is ruthless with his direction of Nina and it ultimately leads her to be consumed by the role, rather than just embracing it temporarily.
Even though the basic plot is simple, the minute details are not. Nina, driven by her desire to be perfect to please both her director and over-bearing mother (Barbara Hershey), begins to hallucinate about seeing a dark, mysterious ver-sion of herself (which she often confuses with Lily). Aronofsky plays with this idea of doppel-gangers throughout the film
with Nina and Lily, as the two look similar but have opposite personalities.
Many critics have mentioned the graphic nature of the film, but I did not found it gory at all. Any fans of the horror genre can stomach this. The disturbing nature of the film comes from the unreliability of its protagonist. As the film is told through Nina’s perspec-tive, the audience never has a clear view of what is really go-ing on. Nina’s hallucinations are presented as events in the film and it’s only later that Nina (and the audience) realize something strange happened. Because of this, there are a lot of twists and surprises that you definitely won’t see coming.
Aronofsky has a gift with tak-ing the ordinary and distorting it to the point that it is unset-tling. He takes the beautiful art of ballet and explores its dark-est recesses. Against the back-drop of a posh ballet company, a young woman loses her mind. This startling juxtaposition is why Black Swan is such a beau-tiful, mesmerizing event.
Little Fockersparamount pictures
The little things count in new ‘Focker’ film
Photos Courtesy of Paramount PiCtures
‘Black Swan’ haunts and mesmerizes
Photo Courtesy of fox searChlight PiCtures
Black SwanFox searchlight pictures
Features& enTerTainmenTarTs
CommentaryCommentary
Sports
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Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis
FOR RELEASE JANUARY 11, 2011
ACROSS1 17-Across in the
neck5 Adventurous
10 Domesticated14 Chase on stage15 Cat-__-tails16 Wicked17 See 1-Across18 Passé keyboard
key20 Bigger photo:
Abbr.21 Extremely, in
Essex22 Horror maven
Craven23 Follower of Mary25 Sphere27 Was beaten by29 Midday energizer34 K-635 Stroll37 Vowel before
omicron38 Bounty rival39 Angle irons
graphicallyrepresented byfour sets of blacksquares in thisgrid, and by letterformationsstarting in thefour longestanswers
41 Picket linecrosser
42 Garden site43 Actor Neeson44 Finishes the road45 Got sick again48 Like some quaint
lamps50 Fair grade51 German GM
subsidiary52 Workshop sprite55 Crete-born “View
of Toledo” painter59 Texas ranch
initials62 “I’m afraid this
will sound funny”64 Dublin’s land65 Red Muppet66 Trace67 Future atty.’s
hurdle68 Boatload69 Preminger et al.70 Eyelid problem
DOWN1 Lounging jacket
wearer’s smoke,maybe
2 Verve3 Video game
difficulty setting4 Bronze relative5 Pasadena arena6 Andean ancient7 Letter
addressees8 Masseuse’s
challenge9 Cowardly
10 Business cardabbr.
11 Speak bluntly12 Cats’ quarry13 Benevolent
lodgeful19 Ancient strings21 NYC subway line
named for twoboroughs
24 Farmers’publication?
26 Brushcomponent
27 Hyped-up feeling28 Say “bo’s’n,” say29 Scottish pattern30 Gumbo pod31 Names on it are
off-limits totelemarketers
32 Big name invideo games
33 Big name in beer36 Up to the task40 Wet ones, so to
speak46 Banana discard47 Have as a
customer49 Stock mkt. debut52 Makeup
accentuatesthem
53 Recline lazily54 Do a slow burn56 Trot or canter57 Litter’s littlest58 Kellogg’s toaster
brand60 Donkey’s protest61 Ballet leap63 Sad64 Ernie of the
PGA, to whomthis puzzle couldbe dedicated
Monday’s Puzzle Solved
By Don Gagliardo 1/11/11
(c)2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 1/11/11
1/12/11
Sudoku By The Mepham Group
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© 2011 The Mepham Group. Distributed by Tribune Media Services. All rights reserved.
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Solution to Wednesday’s puzzleComplete the grid so each row, column and 3-by-3 box (in bold borders)contains everydigit 1 to 9. For strategies on how to solveSudoku, visitwww.sudoku.org.uk.
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better and more improved than this year’s. The entire secondary is composed of only sophomores or freshmen who will continue to get better.
You can’t replace a Nate Irving, his combination of talent and instincts are very rare and he will go down as one of the best defensive players State has had in the past 20 years. But Terrell Man-ning and Audie Cole will only improve on there already terrific seasons this year, while an influx of younger linebackers and transfer players will be able to adequately fill the gap.
Offensively, Andrew Wallace, Camden Wertz, Zach Allen and R.J. Mattes are all just sopho-mores and have an entire season under their belts. Couple that with the injection of five star prospect Robert Crisp and O’Brien now has the type of offensive line that made him famous at Boston College. It’s also one that should be able to easily dominate any defensive front it sees.
The receiver position will be the biggest drop off with the loss of Owen Spencer, Jarvis Williams and Darrell Davis. All three of those players were the top targets this season. But their departure of-fers the opportunity for many other receivers such as Steven Howard, Jay Smith and T.J. Graham to step up and see if they can turn the glimpses of greatness they’ve shown over the last few seasons into steady contributors.
Even if the passing game struggles, the emer-gence of James Washington and Mustafa Greene means that he running game has the ability to carry the offensive load if necessary.
Then there is Russell. He may be the one player who could vault this team next season but his next move is still up in the air. He may stay or leave, but either way the quarterback position will be manned by someone who understands the offense and is more than likely capable of moving the ball. Mike Glennon was rated one of the top-3 quarterback recruits in the nation for a reason; he just hasn’t had a chance to show it.
I’m not saying the football team will jolt into national attention playing for the BCS title year after year, but I do believe that from here on out O’Brien won’t accept sub-.500 records. State has the players, talent and ability to compete for the ACC title next year and the next few years after that.
Past that, who knows? But a Champs Sports Bowl title is not the peak—there will be much more to come.
FOOTBALLcontinued from page 7
KEVIN COOK/TECHNICIAN FILE PHOTORedshirt sophomore linebacker, Terrell Manning, waves a “Wolfpack” flag after N.C. State’s 23-7 victory over the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando Florida on Dec. 28, 2010. Manning was responsible for four tackles.
stepped up in her absence. “We had a lot of differ-
ent people step up,” Harper s a id . “I obviously don’t like Marissa sitting on the bench that long with two fouls but a lot of different players stepped up. Amber had a nice game and Kody played well.”
T he women’s te a m seemed to follow the trend the men’s team set Satur-day against Wake Forest as it dominated the Deacons down low. Leading that charge was Burke and ju-nior Bonae Holston. The two forwards helped to lead the charge down low as State outscored the Deacons 36-20 in the paint, while out rebounding them 41-30.
The Pack took a 36-25
lead into the half. White then took control of the game early in the second half scoring a quick four of the team’s six points to stretch the Pack’s lead to 42-29. From there it was all
N.C. State, as the Deacons never got the def icit back dow n i nto single digits.
With just six minutes remaining in the game t h e P a c k stretched its lead to 20 points when senior for-wa rd Br it-
tany Strachan drained a three from the corner, basically driving the nail in the coffin for the Deacons and securing the Pack’s first ACC win of the season.
against considerably lesser competition.
In State’s four mar-quee out-of-conference games against Wisconsin, Georgetown, Syracuse and Arizona, the team ran into extended cold streaks, ulti-mately leading to a loss each time. The Wolfpack will be
seeking its first 2-0 conference start since the 2003-04 season.
Although State’s talent can rival any team in the ACC, ju-nior swingman C.J. Williams said the team is beginning to play more like a cohesive unit.
“We are playing together as a team”, Williams said. “We have so much talent that sometimes we think individually we can do it but when we play as a team it definitely works for us.”
MENScontinued from page 8
WOMEN’Scontinued from page 8
“It is important to
take it one game
at a time and
focus on the little
things you
need to do.”freshman forward Kody Burke
COUNTDOWN• 18 days until the men’s basketball team takes on
UNC at Chapel Hill
INSIDE• Page 7: A continuation of the column on
the football team’s future. SportsTECHNICIANPAGE 8 • TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2011
Findley hires assistantNew head coach Kelly Findley hired his first assistant coach as he added David Costa to his staff. Costa followed Findley to State as he had worked under Findley at Butler since 2006. Costa was a former soccer player at UNC-Charlotte, playing four seasons there, while helping to lead them to the Conference USA Championship game in his senior season.
SOURCE: N. C. STATE ATHLETICS
Leslie named ACC Rookie of the WeekFor the third time this season freshman forward C.J. Leslie was named ACC Rookie of the Week. This is the second straight week Leslie won the award and was due to his performance during the Elon and Wake game. During those two games Leslie averaged 19 points and 7.5 rebounds per game, with the Pack winning both games.
SOURCE: N. C. STATE ATHLETICS
ATHLETIC SCHEDULEJanuary 2011
Su M T W Th F Sa
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
MEN’S BASKETBALL STANDINGS
School Conf. Overall
Duke 2-0 15-0
BC 2-0 12-4
NCSU 1-0 1-0
UNC 1-0 11-4
UC 1-1 12-4
VT 1-1 10-4
FSU 1-1 11-5
UVA 1-1 10-6
GT 0-1 7-7
WF 0-1 7-9
Miami 0-2 11-5
UM 0-2 10-5
SOURCE: N.C. STATE ATHLETICS
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Pack dismantles Deacs, 80-59White’s 22 points helps lead to team first ACC victory.
Taylor BarbourSports Editor
After losing its first game in ACC play to Clemson by only two points, the N.C. State women’s basketball team, 9-7 (1-1 in ACC), needed a big win against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, 9-8 (0-1 in ACC) and it got just what it needed as it easily defeated the Dea-cons 80-59 Monday night in Reynold’s Coliseum.
“I am proud of our kids. I thought we were poised on the offensive end and thought that was one of our better defensive per-formances as of late,” coach Kellie Harper said. “We showed some toughness and that is an area we have been working on in practice.
“Wake Forest is always a tough matchup for us so I am really proud of our kids coming out and playing hard today.”
After the tough loss to the Tigers, freshman for-ward Kody Burke believed a renewed focus on the finer points of the game is what led to the teams blow out victory.
“It is important to take it one game at a time and fo-cus on the little things you need to do because in the end the little things are what count and what allows you to win games,” Burke said.
Redshirt senior point guard Amber White led the way for the Pack leading all scorers on both teams with
22 points. Most of White’s points game inside the paint as she was able to drive into the lane with ease throughout the game.
White said her performance was due to her regaining her confidence.
“I didn’t like my performance last game against Clemson,” White said. “I didn’t shot par-ticularly well and just getting my confidence back and find-ing a consistent shot was key tonight.”
Turnovers played a huge part in the game as the Pack capital-ized Wake’s sloppy play scor-
ing 20 points off of 19 Deacon turnovers.
“That [capitalizing on turn-overs] is something I don’t think we have been great at all season,” Harper said. “So us being able to capitalize on other people’s turnovers and mistakes is a huge plus for us. “
We have talked about taking advantage of our opponent’s mistakes quite a bit and we did that tonight.”
The Wolfpack was plagued by early turnovers and missed the first six three-point shots it took, but White and freshman forward Kody Burke got the
Pack on track. Burke started off in the first half with nine points and three rebounds for State, which led all play-ers. She finished the game with 15 points.
Usually active sophomore forward Marissa Kastanek, struggled with foul trouble, leading her to play only two minutes in the first half. But the Pack was able to cope with her loss and other play-ers such as Burke and fresh-man guard Devin Griffin
COMMENTARY
This is just the beginning
From my seat in the student section of the Citrus Bowl, I had a perfect view of Russell Wilson and company cele-brating the crushing defeat of
West Virginia and a Champs Sports Bowl tit le. It was a fitting way for a group of sen iors , w h ic h h ad been through some rough times, to go out.
There were trying times in the beginning of the Tom O’Brien era in Ra-leigh. In his first three seasons he failed to ever have a winning record, finishing 5-7, 6-7, and 5-7.
But then came 2010. a 9-4 campaign, tying for the sec-ond most wins by a State foot-ball team in school history, a Champs Sports Bowl title and a beat down of the hated Tar Heels. A team predicted to fin-ish near the bottom of the ACC in the preseason by almost ev-ery media outlet came out and finished with a 9-4 campaign, tying for the second most wins by a State football team in school history, a Champs Sports Bowl title and a beat down of the hated Tar Heels.
Some people say that it could just be a simple fluke of a sea-son, a one-and-done year for the Pack where all of the stars, moons and planets aligned per-fectly, giving fans a glimmer of hope before a demoralizing drought of wins.
I am not one of these peo-ple. Maybe I just haven’t been around long enough to experi-ence the gut-wrenching roller-coaster ride that is N.C. State athletics, but I believe this is just the beginning of good times for the football program.
In the first three years of the O’Brien era extraneous fac-tors led to disappointing sea-sons, factors that not even Bill Belichick or Vince Lombardi themselves could have fixed.
In those first three years, State was unusually decimated by injuries in all three seasons. Rarely in any of those 37 games were the starting lineups from a week before the same head-ing into the next game. Inju-ries happen to every team, and good teams learn to just plug in another player, but couple that with a new coach install-ing a tough-to-grasp defensive system and constantly rotating a set of offensive skill players, means your going to struggle.
However, once the injury bug was squashed and the players began to understand the sys-tem, the team flourished. That is what we saw this season. The unit’s turnaround from last year to this year is miracu-lous. Last season, the defense was giving up 31.2 points per game, including four games in which it gave up more than 40 points. This year the defense only allowed 21.3 points per game 29th best in the NCAA.
But this turnaround wasn’t just a stroke of luck. Instead, it’s just the beginning of what’s to come. O’Brien and defensive coordinator Mike Archer have developed a recruiting base where they are getting their kind of players built for the defensive system and are not forced to have to play them as soon as they get here. There is now time for the players to learn and understand the de-fense instead of being thrown out into the game like sacrifi-cial lambs.
There’s reason to believe that next year’s defense will be even
TaylorBarbourSports Editor
FOOTBALL continued page 7
MEN’S BASKETBALL
Wolfpack set for Boston CollegeState looking for first 2-0 ACC start since 2003-04 season.
Tucker FrazierDeputy Sports Editor
With one conference victory al-ready under its belt, the N.C. State men’s basketball team hits the road for a showdown with Boston College (12-4, 2-0 ACC) at 9 p.m. tonight.
Coach Sidney Lowe and Co. will be looking to build off the momentum from Saturday’s 90-69 win against Wake Forest, where the team out-rebounded the Deacons 47-22 and scored 46 points in the paint against the preseason favorite to finish last in the ACC. However, things may not be as smooth sailing against a much more formidable Boston Col-lege team. The Eagles own a pair of conference victories over Maryland and Georgia Tech, and will be look-ing to claim the top spot in the ACC with a win over State.
Senior Tracy Smith’s return to the hardwood following an 11-game layoff due to knee surgery has been a blessing for the young Wolfpack team. The power forward has pro-vided stability in the frontcourt, av-eraging 18 points on 21-35 shooting in three games since his return. Lowe said Smith’s presence in the lineup is invaluable to an underclassmen-heavy roster.
“It makes a great difference. He’s our main guy inside that we go to and our guys are very comfortable having him in there,” Lowe said. “He can settle us down. When things are getting a little rattled we can always call a set to get the ball in his hands.”
Along with the reemergence of Smith, freshman C.J. Leslie appears as though he is developing into the type of impact player many Wolf-pack fans had such high hopes for entering the season. Leslie, the reign-ing ACC Rookie of the Week, has posted two straight 19-point games and is currently sixth in the ACC in rebounding. Smith said the team is
continuing to build chemistry and learn from each game.
“We continue to get better. The young guys continue to learn and we have to help them as seniors,’”Smith said, “They follow our footsteps and we’re teaching them.”
While the temperature has been
frigid over the holidays, State’s offense has been anything but. In four games over the break, the Wolfpack (11-4, 1-0 ACC) has won by an average margin of 22.3 points. But those wins have come
MENS continued page 7
WOMENS continued page 7
MATT MOORE/TECHNICIAN ARCHIVE PHOTOTracy Smith tries to dribble past Carolina’s Ed Davis during the second half of State’s 77-63 loss. Smith had six rebounds and scored 20 points during the game on Jan. 26 2010.
TodayWOMEN’S BASKETBALL VS. WAKE FORESTReynolds Coliseum, 7 p.m.
TuesdayMEN’S BASKETBALL AT BOSTON COLLEGEChesnut Hill, Mass., 9 p.m.
FridayTRACK AT VIRGINIA TECH INVITATIONALBlacksburg, Va., All Day
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL AT NORTH CAROLINAChapel Hill, N.C., 7 p.m.
GYMNASTICS VS. OKLAHOMAReynolds Coliseum, N.C., 7 p.m.
WRESLTING AT VMILexington, Va., 7:30 p.m.
SaturdayTRACK AT VIRGINIA TECH INVITATIONALBlacksburg, Va., All Day
MEN’S TENNIS VS. DAVIDSONJ.W. Isenhour Facility 10 a.m.
MEN’S BASKETBALL AT FLORIDA STATETallahassee, Fla., 4 p.m.
ALEX SANCHEZ/TECHNICIANSophomore guard Marissa Kastanek reaches past Wake Forest defenders during the game at Reynolds Coliseum Monday. Kastanek finished the night with 6 points and 2 rebounds in the 80-59 Wolfpack win.