The Warframe 5th Anniversary Update is Here!

Do you like Warframe? Do you like free weapons? Do you like Excalibur? Do you like a free skin for Excalibur? Well the 5th Anniversary Update is the update for you! For a limited time only, the Dex Excalibur skin is available to all players who log in over the next few days. All you have to do is get in game and Ordis will send you a lovely inbox message telling you how amazing everything is and how much he and the Lotus love you. Why? Because Warframe is celebrating five years of being a game. The game’s pretty… [Continue Reading]

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Archwing and Dargyns – Motion Sickness on the Plains of Eidolon

Archwing is a funny thing. It has so much potential, yet it’s so awkward to use. It’s all still the same, nothing has changed with Archwings since I last talked about it,  what with Amesha being the best Archwing if you want to ignore everything and Itzal only being second because if its utility, but we’ve got to consider a few more things, especially the fact that Archwings can be used on the Plains of Eidolon. When it comes to Archwing on the Plains, generally called Skywing in-game, it’s… weird. Nauseating almost. The controls are kinda different compared to normal… [Continue Reading]

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Tea Talk: Games and experiences

Some time ago, I talked about how I felt uncomfortable with judging An Aspie Life as a game. Today however, I want to look more into its premise. An Aspie Life is a game where you play as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome. In this game, all the visuals, sound, mechanics and interactions are reflective of what the author, who himself has Asperger’s, goes through on a daily basis. The idea that a game can serve as a documentary of someone’s life is an interesting concept. And certainly, video games are extremely suitable for conveying what a person goes through because… [Continue Reading]

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Picture-To-Word Ratio

You know that thing about how a picture’s worth a thousand words? Attention-spans are short, and scrolling through another 971 words (as of ‘another’) is a bit much. Plus which, my tendency to get on rolls and tangents, once I get going. So. I had a thought. Instead of trying to write a full review for comics I love, I’m gonna focus on a single panel, and spin off from there. (Count: 66 words.) This is from awhile ago, when my main outlet for creative commentary was through Twitter. The comic is 100 Bullets (written by Brian Azzarello, and illustrated by Eduardo… [Continue Reading]

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Prime Access is Too Expensive

I don’t normally have a lot of major complaints about Warframe, but with the current Unvaulting of Frost, Loki and Ember Prime, I feel this needs to be said. Prime Access is way too fucking expensive. As it stands right now, there are four Prime Access packs available. The first three contain a Primed Warframe, a couple of Primed weapons and a handful of Primed Accessories, the accessories only being available from these Prime Access packs. You also get 90 day boosters of some sort and a handful of Platinum to spend on what you want. The last pack contains… [Continue Reading]

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Medical Necessity Dev Diary #7

Happy Saturday everyone! As always, we’ve got exciting things to report on our Medical Necessity progress! The biggest change is that we’ve finally finished the weapon roster, so let’s go over the different guns that will be present for the initial campaign! These six weapons will be wielded by enemies and allies, and can be equipped by the player as healing versions. (Note that we gave the player 2000 extra health in these example GIFs just so we could get lengthy footage of the bots firing) The Sniper rifle is the dedicated long-range weapon. It has a slow firing speed… [Continue Reading]

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Major League Magic Tournament Results!

Thank you to everybody who joined in watching the first ever Major League Magic tournament! Everybody had a lot of fun, and we totally plan on having more tournaments down the line. The Major League Magic team learned a lot of valuable feedback that’ll help them refine their game going forward (they especially liked SilverWolf’s suggestions from the Twitch feed), and Joey and Ben loved their prizes! Ben is the asset director from Medical Necessity you keep reading about in our dev diaries. I had a blast shoutcasting, and a small cadre of the players (mostly JayZ, Pat, Ben, and Joey) shuffled… [Continue Reading]

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Why Medic?

I suppose there are a lot of people that, when they first got into TF2 and saw the Medic class, asked this: Out of the nine classes available, why would anyone go for the one class that can’t kill anything to go healer? The main draw for me to play Medic is probably power. Every other class in the game has the power of death, whether it is with the pinpoint precision, single target elimination of the Sniper, or the mass destruction of the Demoman. Medic has none of those, despite what every single Battle Medic out there says. Medic… [Continue Reading]

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Friday Major League Magic Tournament, With Prizes!

You’ve heard a lot about Medical Necessity in my weekly dev diaries, but it’s not the only game being developed in my college Masters’ course! A large team led by Ahmet Terzioglu has been developing a competitive multiplayer game tentatively called Major League Magic, and at 3pm PST the first Major League Magic tournament will be streaming on Twitch! This is the first public opportunity to see the most ambitious project in our class, don’t miss it! Major League Magic is a 3v3 online brawler where both teams select their spells from over a dozen options and fight for three rounds. These… [Continue Reading]

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Spanish For Snow White

In Spanish, the familiar fairytale princess whose skin is white as snow is called ‘Blancanieves’. You’ve probably seen Disney’s take (1937) on the story – and I’d highly recommend checking out Lotte Reiniger’s shadow-puppet animation Aschenputtel (1922). But tackling fantasy in the flesh is different from animation – where a creative mind like Reiniger’s could fashion magic from stop-motion. Where the vision and high standards of Walt Disney could produce an unprecedented spectacle like their eighty-three minute masterpiece. Pablo Berger’s 2012 film Blancanieves stands on its own – there is literally nothin’ else quite like it. And here is Why. It’s a Spanish… [Continue Reading]

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