Control (2019) Review

When I bought Control back in 2019, I told myself I wouldn’t release a review until I’d completed the game. This wasn’t an unusual stance for me, as why would I review a game I hadn’t finished? However, 3½ years later and after countless attempts to revive my playthrough after taking multi-month breaks, I’m giving up. According to the Wiki I’m on story mission 7 of 10, and that’s where I’m calling it. Sorry. I want to add a large caveat that my complaints with this game are extremely subjective. Most of my friends enjoyed it, and you’ll probably like… [Continue Reading]

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D&D 5e: The Troubles With Monk

Hi all! While the Daily SPUF is a video gaming blog through and through, we do occasionally cover other types of games. This includes card games and board games and even tabletop RPGs. I’ve occasionally covered Call of Cthulhu, but I’ve actually been playing Dungeons & Dragons for over a decade, starting with 3rd edition in 2009. So I got the idea to write some articles giving advice for newer players. And then I started with a guide to my favorite class, druid. Well, that druid guide turned into three different articles…then eight…and now there are fifteen. So apparently I won’t… [Continue Reading]

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The Arise Quadrology: A Retrospective

On December 31st 2020, Adobe Flash offically died, taking with it a huge catalogue of ancient in-browser games. The sheer volume of animations, websites, comics, and other Flash-based media that disappeared that day is impossible to overstate. While there are countless titles I could have written this memorial article about, for some reason I decided to eulogize the worst quadrology of flash games ever made. Back in the early 2000s my brother and I regularly duoed escape-the-room games as it was a particularly good genre for paired-play. Every time one of you solved a puzzle/found another inventory item, they could… [Continue Reading]

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The Platform (2021)

So I just watched a Spanish psychological horror film called The Platform on Netflix. It was an unveiled critique about capitalism and the terrible acts our society spurs people to do on every level of it. Highly recommend, it was a great watch that left me and my friends discussing it for a long time afterwards. (If you don’t want to be spoiled, you should go watch the movie before reading any further.) But this article isn’t actually about that, it’s about this: In this video, the YouTuber gives six “solutions” to being imprisoned in the Hole that are absolutely… [Continue Reading]

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7 Things I Miss From Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 is definitely one of my favorite games of all time, at least in the top 3. It’s the perfect mix of mobility, environmental destruction, and cheesy B-grade voice-acting. It makes you feel like you’re starring in a very explosive action movie. I have hundreds of hours in the single-player and multiplayer modes combined. I keep finding myself coming back despite having less and less available to do in my save file. So finally, during the last Steam Winter sale, I finally bought the complete Just Cause 3 collection for only $4 so I could see where the… [Continue Reading]

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Cyberpunk 2077: First Impressions

Cyberpunk 2077 has had a…polarizing release, to say the least. We were all pretty much expecting that, given that all the pieces were there for a very tumultuous recipe. Massive overbearing hype, multiple lengthy production delays, a widely-trusted developer hoping to meet lofty expectations, and a suspicious lack of actual gameplay in the trailers. But even I was surprised by the extreme variance in incoming early reviews. Some people (myself included) reported pristine performance, others were experiencing barely-playable messes. Certain aspects of the game were incredible, often genre-forwarding improvements to the formula. Whereas other core fundamentals were lacking or downright antithetical… [Continue Reading]

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Red Crucible Reloaded

Red Crucible Reloaded is, for all intents and purposes, an archetypical modern military shooter, and I don’t mean that in a good way. It has the bare minimum in every category to qualify as a multiplayer FPS, with almost nothing to give it any sort of identity beyond that. I first became aware of the game thanks to my brother, as its predecessor Red Crucible 2 was the first-ever online game he got really addicted to. So for me personally, my main motivation for playing was to spend time with him doing something he enjoys. The main perk for him… [Continue Reading]

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Why Operation Scarlet Spear is Bad

From my point of view, Operation Scarlet Spear isn’t very good. I’m not going to claim that it’s the worst thing ever, because that’s not true at all. But there are a number of problems that need to be talked about. And rather than getting all angry about everything, I’m going to go through each of these problems one by one. Like I said before though, I’m not going to mention bugs. Bugs can be fixed. There are fundamental flaws with this event though, and those can’t be fixed. The Lore is all wrong Firstly, the lore is all wrong.… [Continue Reading]

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On Blizzard and Hong Kong

I’m conflicted. On one hand, I really like Overwatch. It’s literally one of only two games I play nowadays (along with Borderlands 3), and it’s the current torchbearer of the “cartoony team-based arena shooter” genre that I’ve steadfastly followed ever since Team Fortress 2 got me into multiplayer gaming. I don’t want to give up Overwatch, and since there’s no subscription fee like World of Warcraft there’s nothing I could really cancel beyond uninstalling. But I can’t sit by and do nothing after seeing Blizzard supporting the Chinese government’s tyrannical attempts to overthrow Hong Kong’s government. [BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls… [Continue Reading]

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1000 Pearls for a Captura Scene – The Most Boring Grind Ever

I’m going to be honest, the gimmick has worn thin, the fun has faded from the Dog Days event. It’s a really fun little game mode when you’re playing for the main advertized rewards, but when you realise just how much you need to play for the rewards that Nakak is hiding, well, it’s just… not fun. At all. You see, there’s only one map. There’s the same old set of enemies. Nothing changes from round to round apart from other players, if you have them. Sure, you can be somewhat creative with Aero Vantage and set mods (I did… [Continue Reading]

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