aabicus – Page 28 – The Daily SPUF

Roadhog Time

March 9, 2017March 27, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, character, overwatch, roadhog, spuf of legend, tank

As a Lucio main who offclasses Soldier 76, I’m pretty immune to the whole Overwatch concept of “competitive checks and balances”. Both of my mains are stupidly adaptable with self-healing, self-defense, mobility, and easy-to-use firearms rounding out their generalist kits. No matter who I’m fighting on the other team, its rare for any opposing hero choices to really cause me much difficulty beyond forcing me to play passively and maybe preventing me from easily doing my job. And then there’s this mother♥♥♥♥er. Roadhog counters both of my mains so badly that he’s now my tertiary main, for no reason other… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Planetside, too

March 5, 2017March 27, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment GIFs, loadout, medic, melee, planetside 2, shotgun

In the interests of expanding our horizons, Medic and I are doing an exchange where we take turns picking a free-to-play multiplayer game that one of us hasn’t tried. Last week we played Warframe, which Medic wrote about, and this week we were gonna try my old college love, Planetside 2, but then the game didn’t work on Medic’s computer. (Update: It eventually fixed itself, and our co-op adventures will be chronicled in Medic’s upcoming article!) However, this did cause me to reinstall again, and soon I was teleported back to my 2013 dorm room–running through Auraxian landscapes, solo-capping control points and constantly reviving corpses. I don’t… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Helix Jumping – Advanced Soldier 76 Mobility

February 27, 2017March 18, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments mechanics, mobility, movement, overwatch, soldier

As a Lucio main, I enjoy offclassing Soldier 76 because he retains (admittedly far less impressive) mobility and healing-focused abilities, letting me actually kill people while still filling a secondary role doing what I love best. And over time, thanks to my mobility addiction, I’ve found myself comboing the pieces of his kit in unusual ways to make my way around the battlefield. Because of the minor self-knockback on Helix rockets and the way Blizzard coded his sprint, Soldier 76 has the capability to reach some unusual places with what the community has dubbed “helix jumping”. But before we get… [Continue Reading]

Featured

On Fortress Forever’s Huge Pyro Rework

February 25, 2017March 18, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments fortress forever, pyro, rework, team fortress classic, TFC

The Team Fortress Classic Pyro sucks. I don’t care what the person in the comment section of that article says, she has almost no role to serve on the battlefield and does a miraculously bad job of filling her supposed niche of area-of-effect damage. Valve made some big changes to the class when creating Team Fortress 2, but they also tried to stay loyal to Pyro’s afterburn-based roots. For the longest time, Fortress Forever likewise attempted to create a more versatile afterburn Pyro by giving theirs some interesting mobility tools: he could ‘fly’ through the air by firing his flamethrower behind him, and his afterburn… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Paladins Update OB44 Disappoints Playerbase

February 24, 2017March 18, 2017 aabicus 3 Comments complaint, paladins, spuf of legend, update

Last year I reviewed Paladins: Champions of the Realm for our YouTube channel, and while my review was overall positive, I noted that many players were wary of immersing themselves in the new IP because the developers have a bad habit of ruining their older titles in the name of making a cheap buck. Well, as far as I’ve heard from my friends who took the plunge anyway, that day had sadly come. For those who don’t know anything about Paladins, it’s a hero-based shooter with gameplay very reminiscent of Overwatch. Everyone selects a hero and then both teams fight over… [Continue Reading]

Featured

4 More Things I Miss From Saints Row 2

February 15, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, Saints Row, saints row 2, saints row the third

Saints Row 2 is such a good game! I’ve said it before, most Saints Row fans have said it before, but I honestly have never played a better open-world sandbox game, and I recently got Grand Theft Auto V. The city is vibrant, the tone balances gritty gang violence with tongue-in-cheek game-y action, the characters and story are solid and the gameplay is bursting with variety and unbridled freedom. Saints Row the Third does a decent job of carrying this over, I’d give it an 80% in all, and most of the big things it missed were detailed in my last article… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Twitch Plays Pokemon: A Legacy

February 12, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments history, pokemon, reddit, twitch

Who remembers Twitch Plays Pokemon? It was exactly three years ago and one of the first massive online events I remember personally participating in. For those who weren’t there, here’s a quick rundown: on February 12 2014, a new Twitch stream opened up called “Twitch Plays Pokemon” that challenged the viewers to work together to beat the classic Pokemon Red. The game would recognize any commands input into the Twitch chat like “A”, “Up” or “Select” and would execute them in the order they were received. As TV Tropes put it, it was “over 100,000 people fighting over a controller.” And it… [Continue Reading]

Featured

The Respawnables – Mobile App Review

February 11, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 2 Comments first thoughts, mobile, review

Last year I vacationed in Scotland with my family, and it was an awesome trip! I got to see so many amazing sights and take a break from all the routines I’d settled into, but some habits didn’t die easily. I confess I suffered minor withdrawal from not having any Team Fortress 2 to play for three whole weeks, especially when stuck in a hotel room after an exhausting day of hiking the highland countryside. Luckily I found a free-to-play cartoony mobile shooter called The Respawnables, and it scratched that itch until I was back in the states. As that title screen… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Why You Should Make GIFs

February 10, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 2 Comments GIFs, internet, overwatch, reddit, video

It’s fun to watch the internet evolve. Back in the early days the best way for gamers to show each other sick plays was through screenshots or YouTube videos. The problem is that screenshots aren’t terribly good at displaying exciting events like headshots or near escapes, and videos often require the viewer to navigate away from their current social media of choice to go watch the video. I know when I’m surfing reddit I often don’t have the attention span to click a link to YouTube and wait for the video to buffer in order to see the content. So… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements Featured

Lucio Added to Heroes of the Storm!

February 7, 2017March 9, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, lucio, overwatch, support

Lucio is the single most fun I’ve ever had playing a support class in a multiplayer, and now he’s bringing his area-of-effect heals over to Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s mashup MOBA starring characters from all over their various franchises. He’ll be joining Zarya and Tracer as the third hero to represent Overwatch. (Which does bring up the question, will the next immigrant be a Defense hero? My money’s on Torbjörn.) Most of his kit has been preserved, albeit molded to fit the MOBA gameplay. His wallride lets him bypass enemies and avoid stuns, his various healing and sound barriers are still as powerful… [Continue Reading]