TRENTON McNULTY

ARTICLES

Writing Blogs

During my tenure at UWaterloo's Writing Centre (2019), it was my job to offer thoughtful writing advice to my fellow undergraduate students in the form of blog posts.

Naturally, I ignored that prompt and wrote instead about sentient punctuation and a psychological nature reserve. So it goes.

Media Reviews

In high school I worked for Reviewed By Teenagers, a now-dead website which offered a #teenage perspective on video games and other forms of popular media. I wrote a grand total of 46 articles, each around 1000 words.

They are all horrible. 

They do, however, show...

  1. The dramatic love affair between me and my thesaurus
  2. The rapid evolution of my writing ability over a single year (from practically unreadable to only mostly bad)
  3. My early love of storytelling, especially interactive media
  4. Consistent dedication to a task which merited me basically nothing (while it was paid work, I think the going rate was 1.5 cents a word)

Here are a few articles that are either funny or make something approaching a coherent argument.

Reviewed By Teenagers •

The Nature of Interactive Storytelling – Why Telltale Succeeded Where Quantic Dream Failed

In recent years, the once dead genre of interactive adventure games has made its return, maybe not to mainstream success, but to popularity nonetheless. After its long decline in the late 90s and early 2000s, the genre had to evolve: incorporating the ideas and casual-oriented mechanics of their competitors. Be it Machinarium, the later Monkey Island titles, or Tim Schafer’s kickstarter-funded “Broken Age
Reviewed By Teenagers •

Adventures in Teen Girl Literature – Ranking John Green’s Solo Novels

Round about a year ago, I kept seeing this one book popping up: an arguably larger book with a blue cover, and two clouds sprawled across the front. Generally, as a pseudo-hipster trained by the neckbeards of Reddit, I’ve become conditioned to hate anything that’s popular. And I did for a long time. I’d like to say I’m now beyond it, but really, the only reason I ever considered reading said book was due to the sparkling recommendation of a friend I’m inclined to think has a head on her shoulder
Reviewed By Teenagers •

Adventures in League of Legends – A Noobs Tale

I first heard of League of Legends all the way back in 2011 – a time when it wasn’t exactly at the height of its popularity. As such, all my friends were obsessively mocking this fellow named Rafay for never shutting up about it. Consequently, that same group of people now play the game excessively, which goes to show how much we knew. Sorry, Rafay. Being ahead of the curve doesn’t amount to much these days outside of being called a hipster.

While I’ve tried and succeeded all too long in my pur
Reviewed By Teenagers •

One Last Forever: Why The HIMYM Ending Was The Last Thing Anyone Wanted

One Last Forever: Why The HIMYM Ending Was The Last Thing Anyone Wanted

“You’re totally in our gang now. And once you’re in, you’re in for life.”

It’s been one week since the ending of How I Met Your Mother took to countless television screens across the world. After nine years of watching, waiting, anticipating the end – it finally came. The time for Ted to meet the girl with the yellow umbrella – the titular Mother. Only in the wake of its conclusion, the reaction hasn’t been entirely positi

To give you a sense of my interests as a person, here's a complete list of articles/reviews penned during this ungodly period of my life.

Video Games

    • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (And Why It's Bad)
    • Destiny: The Next Halo?
    • Interactive Storytelling (Telltale VS Quantic Dream) 
    • South Park: The Stick of Truth
    • The Last of Us
    • The Last of Us: Left Behind 
    • Top 10 Anticipated Games of 2014 
    • Telltale's The Walking Dead Video Game
    • Telltale's The Walking Dead: 400 Days
    • Adventures in League of Legends 
    • Best Xbox 360 Exclusives 
    • Best PS3 Exclusives 
    • The Wolf Among Us 
    • Grand Theft Auto V 
    • Saints Row IV
    • Payday 2
    • Top 10 Modern Sci-fi Games
    • Halo 4 
    • Bioshock Infinite

Movies and Television

    • Game of Thrones (Season 4, Seasons 1-3)
    • How I Met Your Mother (Ending, Top 10 Episodes, 200th Episode Review, The Broken Code)
    • Her 
    • Guardians of the Galaxy
    • Doctor Who (Time of the Doctor, Day of the Doctor, Series 7)
    • The Walking Dead TV Show (Too Far Gone, Infected)
    • Toy Story of Terror
    • Breaking Bad (Felina, Blood Money)
    • Legend of Korra (Book 2 Premiere, Book 1 Blu Ray)
    • Futurama (Series Finale)
    • Top 5 TV Dramas of 2013
    • Whose Line Is It Anyway?
    • Under the Dome
    • Firefly

Misc

    • John Green Novels (Adventures in Teen Girl Literature)
    • Superbowl Commercials (2014)
    • Best of CES 2014