aabicus – Page 11 – The Daily SPUF

Dark Spooky Forest Week: Hunt Showdown

November 4, 2020December 23, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments battle royale, first thoughts, hunt showdown, review

I had been looking forward to Hunt: Showdown for years, since it was first announced as Horrors of the Gilded Age back in 2014. The many comparisons to Left 4 Dead was the first selling point that caught my attention, and the unique 1860’s aesthetic was just gravy. But I didn’t expect how long I’d have to wait. The game labored in development hell for over half a decade, going through a massive rebranding into a pseudo-competitive Battle Royale with a new name that I honestly didn’t like as much as the original. The title Hunt: Showdown tells me almost nothing about the… [Continue Reading]

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Dark Spooky Forest Week: ARK Survival Evolved

November 2, 2020November 2, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments ark survival evolved, dinosaurs, open world, review, survival

I had the worst concievable opening experience with ARK Survival Evolved. I was grumpy at unrelated real-life things, so when my boyfriend created a private server and insisted I give the game a fair shake, I was hypercritical about not being able to instantly figure out how anything worked. How do I build a campfire? Why is it different how you gather wood from trees vs berries from bushes? Why’s it so bloody dark at night that I can’t see a damn thing? This game sucks! Flashforward two years later, and I have what feels like a lifetime of stories… [Continue Reading]

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Dark Spooky Forest Week: Alan Wake

November 1, 2020October 26, 2023 aabicus 0 Comments Alan Wake, retrospective

This is not my first article to mention Alan Wake. (You’re gonna see me say that a lot about the games this week.) It’s one of only two games that I enjoyed enough to finish replaying on the hardest difficulty, and I’ve played a lot of games so that’s really saying something. (Though admittedly I did have developer commentary on). Alan Wake was released in 2010 by Remedy Studios, who are most well-known for the Max Payne series, and if you’ve played them you’ll feel quite at home with Alan Wake’s movement/shooting mechanics. The plot is unashamedly inspired by Stephen… [Continue Reading]

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Welcome to ‘Dark Spooky Forest’ Week!

October 31, 2020June 7, 2021 aabicus 0 Comments dark, forest, retrospective, spooky

Hey all! As described a while back, Medic has left me in charge of the Daily SPUF for a while, which is why you’ve been seeing more articles from me than usual. Last time this happened, I did a “retrospective week” where I discussed old games that weren’t really in the public conscience anymore. This week, I want to do something similar, but with a focus on my personal favorite video game setting: dark and spooky forests. I am a total sucker for dark and spooky forests. Perhaps it was due to growing up in the city, when my dad… [Continue Reading]

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3 Free Programs That Will Turn You Into a Video Editor

October 20, 2020October 22, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments advice, guide, recommendations, video, video editing, videos

I’ve been video-editing for most of my life, and these days I pay the bills making motivational-coaching vids for this YouTube/Instagram channel. And I’m here to tell you that if you have any interest, any predilection whatsoever towards even maybe learning video editing, you should absolutely do so. You know how everyone tells high-schoolers to become programmers? That programming pays well due to being a highly skill-based, in-demand industry with no threat of robots stealing your job? Well, all those perks apply to video-editing too. But where to start, I hear you ask? With these three programs. Pick your favorite video… [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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Hunting Yetis in Overwatch

October 7, 2020October 7, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments Filler, overwatch, retrospective, winter

Yeti Hunting was an old Arcade gamemode Overwatch released back in 2017. It’s now a recurring seasonal event that rolls out every Winter, which would also have been a much more appropriate time of year to write this article, but I don’t have the mental patience to wait that long. It was pretty much the closest Overwatch is ever gonna get to a Versus Saxton Hale gamemode, pitting five hapless Meis against a Winston who can temporarily turn into a ravenous killer Yeti by collecting 4 meats scattered throughout the map. I’m usually not a fan of Overwatch‘s seasonal game modes… [Continue Reading]

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3 Basic Tips Every L4D2 Player Should Know

September 30, 2020October 4, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments advice, l4d2, Left 4 Dead 2, melee, tips, tricks

The other day I took an old L4D2 article and repurposed the topic into a Payday the Heist article. Well today, a Payday article is returning the favor due to a major L4D2 update coming out and bringing a whole host of new players to our favorite zombie shooter! I recently played through the new campaign with three friends, and we managed to beat it on Advanced Difficulty our first try. Despite this, there were a couple of basic mechanics I saw they could have been doing to drastically increase their survivability: Tip #1: Shove More. This is the single… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements The SPUF of Legend

The New Left 4 Dead 2 Update is Awesome

September 27, 2020September 28, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments community, early review, first thoughts, Left 4 Dead 2, update

I had high hopes for the Last Stand update, and by golly it met and exceeded all of them! For those not in the loop, in early September we got our first teaser trailer for a brand new community-created update for Left 4 Dead 2. Since then, we recieved hints and tie-in trailers promising new weapons, new voicelines, new Survival maps, and all sorts of quality-of-life updates. And did it ever deliver on all fronts! I ran through the new campaign, The Last Stand, with three of my college friends and it was a grueling run, definitely a step-up on… [Continue Reading]

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On Payday 3

September 20, 2020September 14, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments Filler, payday, payday 2, payday the heist

Starbreeze’s quarterly report has been published in PDF form, showcasing a PowerPoint discussing the future of the company, its IPs, and (most importantly) the upcoming Payday 3 in very limited detail. Users on the Steam Discussions forum and Payday subreddit have been rampantly hypothesizing how the game’s going to be. Since we don’t have any actual gameplay to discuss, the prevailing question is whether Overkill is going to focus on quality (like in Payday the Heist) or quantity (like in Payday 2) when designing the content that will be in-game on release. The prevailing opinion is that they’ll go for… [Continue Reading]