State of the Game: Humble Edition

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The line up this week has been mostly the same stuff I’ve been talking about lately, however I did try out some of the other games that came in the last Humble Bundle I picked up, which included Shadow Warrior. I haven’t actually touched that game since I wrote up the beginning of my play through for it, but I intend to get through that game rather quickly, so be on the look out for more on that later. The other games that came in the bundle that I touched on this week were Outlast, Super Splatters, Mirror Moon EP and La-Mulana. I also played more ESO, Titanfall and League of Legends.

In League, I’ve just been playing Ultra Rapid Fire exclusively. I have continuously had great games with Hecarim, but other champions are hit or miss, and Hecarim gets banned out quite often. The game mode is only running for one more day, so after that I plan to do some more practicing and then getting back into Ranked play. There’s still plenty of season left and I still want to get the hell out of Bronze. Speaking of this season, I’ve also been keeping up with the pro scene: The Spring Split is just about finished up, with Cloud 9 winning their semi-final series yesterday, and TSM picking up the win today. They are set to face each other next weekend to be crowned the king of spring, though there’s still the Summer Split to go. I have no doubt both of these teams will head to Worlds again, but who knows if they manage to make it very far from that point (they haven’t in previous years, but maybe it’s NA’s time).

Titanfall is more of the same, though with ranks earned you do start to open up some better options for building your solider/titan. This tends to elevate your game a bit, along with practice, of course. I’m rank 15 or so at this point and steadily climbing, I’ve had some pretty good games here and there. I’ve found the most success running around with the smart pistol and the rocket launcher, but there are times when sniping has been fun as well. Overall, great game and I’d recommend it to those looking for a lobby shooter that isn’t CoD/Battlefield.

In ESO, I’ve been prepping my new Nightblade for action. As I mentioned previously, I joined the guild Obsidian, and we’ve started new Daggerfall faction Nightblades to do some PvPing with. Level 10 is the minimum for PvP, and as it stands now I think there’s only a couple members who are there now, I know I still need a couple of levels to hit that mark. I’ve found that I enjoy running the bow, and I’ve started to put points into the syphoning tree just to have more ranged DPS, a little cc and a self heal. I’ve been cruising through though, it’s only been a handful of hours that I’ve put into the new toon.

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He still looks like a noob, but has been effective so far. Here’s a couple other landscape shots for good measure:

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Most of the other games in the humble bundle were sort of “meh.” Mirror Moon EP is one of those first person exploration games, aka a “walking simulator.” I guess there’s some puzzling aspects, but all I managed to do was walk around in circles before saying “no thank you” to more. If you like games like Proteus, then you’ll probably dig this one. I did not. The same goes for La-Mulana, though it’s more of a platformer, maybe even a Metroidvania. Just really ugly, with clunky controls and I just couldn’t be bothered with it. So both of those games are on card-farm status before being deleted.

I spent more time with Super Splatters, which is a physics based puzzle game. Basically you’re a blob of “juice” who can perform various stunts to bring your body into contact with mines. The mines will explode when enough juice has touched them, and you must clear all of them from each level before progressing. It amounts to the same sort of game play as say Angry Birds, just delivered in a different way. I enjoy it as a stupid little time waster, but it’s nothing to really write home about.

Now despite also being a Metroidvania, UnEpic ended up being a game I can get behind. The whole story revolves around your main character playing D&D with friends, taking a bio break and being transported into a D&D world. The dungeon the game takes place in seems to be rather large, and there are a number of interesting mechanics in play. It has platforming elements, tons of weapons (spells too, though I haven’t figured out any at this point), differing enemies, voice acting and most importantly, gamepad support. Platformers don’t feel right with keyboard and mouse. Overall though, it’s a pretty straightforward and simplistic game, but I still enjoyed the time spent with it. He’s a screen so you get a general feel for the game:

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The last game I spent a chunk of time with was Outlast. I mentioned this in my State of the Tweet column, and I haven’t played it since, because holy hell it’s a legitimately scary game. Jump scares galore. I didn’t manage to get any screen shots of the scary stuff, but you can feel the tension in this picture:

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Nothing like night vision on the camera as your only field of view. This was only 5 minutes into the game, as it basically starts throwing nerve-wracking shit at you from the get-go. I will play more of this because of my love for the horror genre, I just don’t think it will be at 3 am in the dark with headphones again.

That’s all I have for this week. Til next time.

#stateofthegame #roundup

State of the Tweet

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I’m starting a new feature/column (whatever you want to call it) here on the site, for weeks like this one, where I spent more time playing video games or doing real life stuff and didn’t post anything for a few days. I always have something to say, but sometimes it’s not enough to put into a post. I suppose if I made a post every time I had a small thought, I’d have more posts written, but it’s my preference to write a bit more each time I’m going to post something (or there needs to be some pretty pictures to break things up). Twitter is the king of short posts, limiting you to 140 characters, and so there are periods of time that I don’t post as much here on the site, but I’m still usually tweeting. As such, there are times when I’ll throw out tidbits about what I’m doing, share something entertaining, or just get into debates of opinion on various topics on Twitter, and the blog will stagnate. I’m sure you’ve seen posts in the past where I have embedded something that I previously posted on Twitter, and this post will be no different, though it will be focusing on that completely, as a round-up of sorts, as to what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. I guess this also gives me a space to vent smaller ideas without devoting a whole post to them. Let’s notate now that this feature won’t be a weekly event, it won’t have any set publish time. I’m reserving this column for weeks like this one only, so if you notice I haven’t done any posts for a while, rest assured there will be updates like this coming. So let’s get on with it, shall we?

I’ve been playing a shitload of Ultra Rapid Fire mode in League. It’s so much fun playing extremely broken champions. Anyone can feel like the hero of the game, and not any one champ is broken — they all are. I’ve played Hecarim mostly, and as you can see above, I’ve had some success. There’s a couple other games that went like that, but I have lost with him once, and lost many times with other champions. The tanky/bursty champions seem to work the best, but I’ve seen some carries wreck faces as well.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned Psychostick on this blog before, but they’re a “humorcore” band that I’ve enjoyed for a few years now. Humorcore would best be described as metal music laced with jokes and humorous lyrics. It had been a few years since their last album came out, and they recently had a crowdfunding campaign to create this album, which is actually not as good as some of their previous work. I was kind of disappointed with the album as a whole, however there are some gems on it, this song in particular.

I was on a metal kick that day, and ended up on MetalSucks (see link on sidebar) and went down the YouTube rabbit hole. I was never a huge fan of the show friends, but if you were alive in the 90’s you’d have to try pretty damn hard to avoid knowing the show, it’s theme song, or the names of most of the actors involved. Hearing this metal version of the theme song cracked me up.

I hadn’t mentioned it to this point, but you may have noticed the new button-link on my sidebar. I added it in last night, and now’s as good a time as any to let you know about that addition, and what it is. Scree, of The Cynic Dialogues, formed this guild called Obsidian in anticipation of the release of Crowfall. He wrote a whole series on his blog about it, and I have since joined up. To get some practice in and to coordinate our tactics, he’s decided that we should play some ESO PvP in the meantime. Luckily, I just started playing ESO. I did have to roll a new Nightblade in the process, but this time of a different faction. I’m also rolling with the bow this time around, but will add in some dual wielding after hitting level 15. More on this as it develops.

It’s almost May, and that means the NBI 2015 is going to be starting soon. I have already volunteered my services that I provided last year, and we’re hoping to have another great turn out this year. More on this will be talked about in the near future.

I bit the bullet on one of the recent Humble Bundles, and Outlast was one of the games included. I technically already owned it, but it was via Playstation Plus and I believe it was for PS4, so I haven’t ever actually played the game. I tried it out the other night and it really is fucking creepy. More jump scares in short periods of time than I’ve seen in a long time. Wish I would have played this sooner, it would have been included in my list of favorite horror games.

Also part of the bundle, the remake of Shadow Warrior was a game that flew under my radar completely. I was a fan of the original Duke Nukem games from way back in the 90’s, but that was about the only thing I ever played that 3D Realms made. I do remember seeing the original Shadow Warrior back in the late 90’s, but I never actually played it. Missed the news about the remake, but when I saw this I knew I had to have it. Such a good looking game, the mechanics, the story, the humor, it’s right up my alley. As I mentioned in the tweet, I’m going to write about my playthrough of the game, will probably be a multi-part series. Look for the first part of that shortly.

That’s it for this edition. Let me know what you think about this post idea, and if you’d like to see more like it in the future.

#stateofthetweet #gaming #roundup