ervilatr nevine hallah

[Lorrine Hatala]

It was a warm autumn day in Kyiv when my documents to move to Canada finally came. Just a few days later, I found out that a tiny human was starting to form in my womb. In December 2021, my husband and I embarked to Montreal.

Each day, my husband would remind me to focus on our daughter. But it was impossible to take my mind and heart away from the news. Even though I was physically far from Ukraine, the pain and rage were extremely present. I would swim in a peaceful pool in Montreal while kids and parents were enjoying the water around me, but tears would fall down my cheeks knowing that my beloved nation was being ravaged.

I felt guilty for not being happy while carrying my daughter. I was absent for her to be present for Ukraine. How happy could I be, seeing the tragedies in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities?

But I knew I couldn't be absent forever. Would my daughter even want to come into this world, feeling her mother's state from the inside? My motherland has deep roots inside me, but my connection to my child is even more profound. So I consciously disconnected myself from the news to remain sane for my daughter.

I know life is full of juxtapositions, but I'd never felt being split between two worlds like this before. A pure newborn was coming through me while death engulfed my country. I was served heaven and hell on one plate.

We welcomed Jasmine into the world in June 2022. I don't know if people who were never parents can understand how a child changes your life, just like I don't think those who haven't seen their country at war can relate to those who go through it.

Surprisingly, witnessing both birth and war has something in common. A person surviving an invasion can't build plans for the future, and neither can a mother. What is important is how you will save your day here and now. Additionally, no one likes mothers talking too much about their kids, the same as nobody wants to hear about our war.

Now, I must figure out how I will present this world to my baby, where kids like her are forced to witness the horrors of war, where Ukrainian warriors are beheaded alive. I don't want my child to grow up in such a reality, though it seems it's the only one. I want to ensure she'd never want to do the same to another human.

I want to show my fellow Ukrainians to Jasmine as an inspiration, a brave nation where each individual holds on no matter what happens. It's unbelievable how they keep finding joy together while doing everything possible to keep Ukraine a free and democratic nation.

So I volunteer in the name of victory over our invaders. I donate money for medicine and ammunition, to foundations that help kids who lost their parents during the war and women who suffered from rape. I try to give a voice to these thoughts through my art. And I share this story in the hope that it will make others think how they can make the world a better place. It's the only way not to lose my mind while I witness such evil.

Vegas 2 features the incredible level design, wonderful visuals, and fascinating blend of team-based tactics and pulse-pounding action that made the previous game such a surprisingly refreshing take on the franchise. Like the best sequels, though, Vegas 2 just does everything a little bit better. It also features the best version of Terrorist Hunt: one of the greatest co-op modes in FPS history.

Each level in TimeSplitters: Future Perfect takes players on a journey through different time periods. While the story only occasionally follows the key rules of time travel, the characters are certainly memorable (and often just plain hilarious). However, the campaign is only half the journey. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect is also packed with optional challenge levels that will test your FPS skills, sometimes to the point of wanting to pull out your hair in frustration.

Serious Sam is a tough-yet-fair FPS designed to keep players pressing down the trigger for as long as possible. The game leans on its roster of enemies, bombastic personality, and head-banging soundtrack to entertain action fans everywhere. Every level feels daunting, which makes every success feel earned. This game comes in two versions: Serious Sam Classic and Serious Sam HD. Aside from the higher graphical fidelity and system requirements, they are essentially the same experience.

Superhot is one part puzzle game, one part FPS, and one part cinematic gunfight simulator. This unique shooter is built around the ability to slow down time by standing still. Taking a moment to survey the situation is the key to victory, but only speed will save you in this impossibly stylish and devilishly difficult game.

I think the best compliment you can pay Wolfenstein 2 is to say that Wolfenstein: The New Order exceeded nearly every expectation possible and not even that game could prepare us for the places this sequel would go.

Halo 2 was an incredible game that changed the console FPS landscape forever, but it was also a game plagued by development issues that led to an unforgivable crunch period, a campaign that fell well short of its potential, and some notable balance problems. Your fond memories of that game are well-deserved, but when it comes down to it, Halo 3 offers a more complete experience.

Many who doubted that Quake 3 could abandon the single-player campaigns of its predecessors and sell itself based solely on the appeal of its multiplayer deathmatch modes were typically silenced the moment they played the game and experienced its exhilarating speed.

The Call of Duty team went for broke with this one and somehow found a way to turn the most intense moments in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault into an entire FPS campaign. Call of Duty challenged every perceived technical limit of its era and boasts level/campaign design that you could argue has never been bested.

Released at a time when multiplayer FPS games were supposed to be as fast as possible, Counter-Strike bucked nearly every genre trend by forcing players to embrace a methodical form of gameplay where just a couple of bullets could determine a game. It was the kind of bold experiment that could only have come from outside the industry, and it was absolutely brilliant.

There are two eras of Call of Duty games, and each of them represents two distinct eras of FPS design. The first era (as represented by the first few Call of Duty games) was more about single-player campaigns and complimentary multiplayer options. The second era of the franchise focused on evolving a style of multiplayer that would turn this series into a global phenomenon.

Well, Call of Duty 4 is the game that bridges those two eras and somehow manages to feature arguably the best single-player campaign in FPS history and some of the best multiplayer in FPS history.

I am, when all's said and done, quite a lazy man. I like naps, usually forget to take the bins out, and frequently put off making dinner until about 9 pm. But I'm a very diligent Helldiver. The propaganda machine back at Super Earth has really had an impact on me, and now I can't help but try my hardest to spread managed democracy throughout the galaxy. Helldivers 2 has made me a bootlicker.

It's very hard to do this very important work, however, when I've only got one ride off the planet, and the pilot doesn't care that there are more bug nests and automaton outposts left standing. Once that shuttle leaves, the mission is over, whether I'm safely inside it or not.

Right after launch, my fellow Helldivers seemed pretty keen to clean up during every mission, smashing the extra objectives and rooting around for caches contained within points of interest. It was glorious victory after glorious victory. But now? Everyone seems to be in a rush to get back to the ship. Maybe there's a birthday party about to kick off and they don't want to miss out on the cake. I get it. Cake is great. But medals are also great, and I want more of them.

Last night, I couldn't find a single PUG willing to 100% a mission. I desperately tried to steer my squad away from the main objective, knowing that as soon as we completed it we'd be hoofing it back to the extraction point. Granted, this is sometimes a very sensible strategy. In one mission, where disconnects left us down to a duo, and death had sapped us of all our respawn reserves, we really should have left sooner, but because we didn't neither of us made it back to the ship. But that's an anomaly in my experience, and most of the time there's been no reason to flee so quickly.

So I'm using my privileged position as a person who writes stupid words on the internet to make a personal plea: please let me get more medals. Some more super credits would be nice, too. I've got my eye on some nifty heavy armour in the shop. How else will I be able to protect the weak, fleshy citizens of Super Earth?

This problem was inevitable when Arrowhead created an evac system where any member of the squad could call the shuttle down, regardless of consensus. Once the shuttle timer begins, there's no going back. If you're lucky, you might have time to strike off one more objective, if it's close, but that also means you're not helping your team defend the landing zone, which feels like a bit of a social faux pas.

I'm not convinced there's an alternative, though. A vote system might sound good in principle, but that just creates more potential problems. One squad member not paying attention, or looking to do a bit of mischief, could screw up the whole mission. Individual extractions wouldn't really work, either. With a single shuttle, players are forced to work together to protect the landing zone, and that singular objective helps ramp up the tension.

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