Filler – The Daily SPUF

How to Turn Star Wars Battlefront II (2005) into a Single-Player Stealth Game

March 19, 2024March 29, 2024 aabicus 0 Comments battlefront, battlefront ii, battlefront ii 2005, custom, Filler, fluff, game mode, star wars, star wars battlefront ii

STAR WARS™: Battlefront Classic Collection just came out on Steam! I’ve mentioned in several places that the original Battlefront II was my very first gaming love, long before I’d ever played Team Fortress 2 or even created a Steam account. I never actually owned it, I played it (and its predecessor) exclusively on my friend’s Xbox, but our neighborhood gang racked up hundreds of hours playing them and they are incredible. Seriously, these two games are 500% worth playing, even if you just go buy the originals, they work perfectly and have tons of cool mods to boot. The gameplay is addicting and… [Continue Reading]

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The 3 Things That Appear in Every D&D Campaign

January 9, 2024December 29, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and dragons, Filler, roleplay, roleplaying

Now, I know that’s a very bold title to start off with. “Come on, aabicus,” I hear you saying, “There have been literally millions of D&D campaigns throughout history, with unfathomable amounts of premises and settings. How can you say for sure that anything has appeared in ALL of them?” Well, this is how. For the rest of this slow-news-day article, I’m gonna lay my case for why these three things (one weapon, one monster, and one treasure) have never failed to appear in any D&D campaign ever played, from one-shots to dungeon crawls to the most unfathomable genres and storylines you… [Continue Reading]

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The 5 Most-Impactful Steam Trades in My Life

July 28, 2023July 16, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments Filler, history, inventory, items, steam, trade, trading, weapons

There’s something kinda nice about having all my years of gaming stored on Steam. For people like me who got into the scene late, I can pretty much track my entire life through my Steam history, traipse through old screenshots and reviews to see what I was into during those phases of my life. But at least personally, the tab with the most nostalgia is somewhat hidden away in a dusty corner of the inventory screen. Expanding the dropbar near “Trade Offers” lets you see an itemized list of everything you’ve ever done to alter your inventory across Steam’s many… [Continue Reading]

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The 5 Best Weapons in D&D 5e (That You Can’t Use)

May 17, 2023May 17, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments d&d, Dungeons & Dragons, dungeons and dragons, Filler, list, npc, roleplay, roleplaying, weapons

D&D 5th Edition simplified the weapon tables to an extreme degree compared to its predecessors. Gone are Exotic Weapon Proficiencies, or most subqualities like “keen” or “masterwork”, and most of the surviving options differ only in damage type or dice. And for the most part, martial NPCs/monsters honor these categories and follow the same rules for their own loadouts. But sometimes they don’t. Occasionally, a certain official monster or villain carries some seriously cool racial weapon with unique stats, and every GM just knows the party’s gonna ask if they can loot it from the corpse and use it themselves.… [Continue Reading]

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Pokemon: Much Ado About Breloom

November 11, 2022May 31, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments breloom, Filler, mushroom, pokemon, shroomish

I’ve written articles about my two favorite Pokémon already, but we humans just can’t resist making Top 3s of everything, can we? While Rotom is still my favorite battle Pokémon, Breloom is usually far easier to find in the games it appears. Its pre-evolution Shroomish is a common sight in early-game grassy routes, with its adorable stubby legs and grumpy face. I can’t look at its unamused little frown without smiling. Breloom (along with Shroomish) is clearly a fungus Pokémon, but I like how much more interesting its design gets than just that. Sure its mushroom hat is awesome, but… [Continue Reading]

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Just Cause 2: Black Market Boom Pack DLC Review

June 20, 2021June 14, 2021 aabicus 0 Comments dlc, Filler, grenades, just cause 2, mobility, review, rockets

The other day I reviewed the Agency Hovercraft DLC from Just Cause 2, despite it being over a decade since it came out. I can’t help it, I really like Just Cause 2 and have been addictively binging my second playthrough. And I just want to talk about the other DLC I purchased, one I’ve been enjoying since I first got the game in 2015. The Black Market Boom pack is one of the two multi-item DLCs, along with the Black Market Aerial Pack. The latter I chose not to buy as I rarely use planes and don’t want to… [Continue Reading]

Now for Something Completely Different

aabicus’ Baseball Career: The Highlights

June 5, 2021June 5, 2021 aabicus 0 Comments baseball, Coaching, Filler, history, looking back, outside, real life, sports

This is not a sports blog and I am (in no way) a baseball fan. But pretty much everyone on reddit got to witness one of the funniest plays in living memory last Thursday: Cubs Shortstop Javy Báez somehow turns a guaranteed third-out into a run scored while also reaching second! He himself scores on the next hit, and those two runs cinch their victory over the Pirates 5-3. Can’t help but feel embarrassed for Pirates’ first baseman, Will Craig. But whereas most can only sympathize with Craig, I can empathize, for I also had some less-than-illustrious moments in my… [Continue Reading]

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What’s New in Planetside 2

May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 aabicus 0 Comments campaign, event, Filler, mission, missions, planetside 2, updates

Every couple years or so I feel the need to boot Planetside 2 back up, just to see what’s changed in Steam’s pre-eminent Spandex in Space Simulator. Last time they added orbital air strikes and the whole construction minigame. This time around, nothing that drastic seems to have newly entered the fray. But there is one very-obvious addition you’ll see the first time you spawn into the map. New Neutral Spaceship! There’s now an orbiting spaceship called Sanctuary. It serves as a hub for all four factions to commingle peacefully before queueing into the active continent to murder each other.… [Continue Reading]

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Just Cause 2: Agency Hovercraft DLC review

May 18, 2021May 16, 2022 aabicus 0 Comments dlc, Filler, just cause 2, review, vehicles, water

Despite loving Just Cause 2 and considering it among my top 3 favorite games, I don’t actually own most of the DLCs for it. Not counting the free ice-cream truck and turreted rickshaw, I only bought the Black Market Boom pack to get my hands on the amazing Air Propulsion Gun. All the stuff in the other DLCs don’t seem to serve any unique purpose, or add anything to the game that isn’t already done by base-game vehicles and weapons. But for no real reason, I recently decided to buy and review the Agency Hovercraft just to test how Avalanche… [Continue Reading]

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Red Crucible Reloaded

October 13, 2020October 7, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, Filler, Red Crucible Reloaded, retrospective, review

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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