Author: aabicus

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Overwatch’s Widowmaker

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I’ve already mentioned that Overwatch did not escape the “if one team has a healer, they win” syndrome, and they are likewise still suffering from ” chronic Sniper-itis”. Even the subreddit has noticed the amount of bloody snipers limping around in the back not being particularly useful or fun to fight against. Which is a shame, because played well Widowmaker can be so much more than a sniper. When not scoped in, her rifle becomes a bullet hose that Soldier 76 would be jealous of. Her E-attack is a poison mine (the only non-Ultimate DoT attack in the game) which serves… [Continue Reading]

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Junkrat – The Overwatch Demoman

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Overwatch has a Sticky Jumper.  I couldn’t believe it when I found out. Junkrat’s playstyle is almost identical to my single most preferred playstyle in TF2. I just spent about two hours on the training map reaching all sorts of insane places with the concussion grenade. I am going to fall in love with this character, I just know it. Now, let be fair; he’s not as mobile as a Sticky Jumper Demoman. For one, he only gets one (recharging) conc grenade so he can’t fly particularly far with each jump, and he can’t chain them. No air pogos, no cross-country flights….but… [Continue Reading]

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Featured The SPUF of Legend 

L4D2: The Campaigns Less Traveled

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Recently my friend aDm soloed my favorite custom campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, Journey to Splash Mountain, on the hardest difficulty without bots. (In particular his amazing run of map 4 was quite cathartic, as we both learned in our personal solo runs that the Splash Mountain ride is undeniably the most difficult portion of the run. I also wish I’d noticed his trick to teleport gas cans to the generator when I’d done the finale.) In the Realism Expert Solo community, its rather rare to find people making use of the large and rich expansion of custom campaigns. Almost everybody sticks to the… [Continue Reading]

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Featured Random Game Announcements 

I Attended DreamHack 2016!

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DreamHack was in Austin this weekend, which means it was a short fifteen minutes away from my house! Due to other obligations, I was only able to attend on Sunday, but I was okay with that because it meant I’d get to see the Grand Finals of my first ever Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. The CS:GO tournament in question was open only to North-American teams, though two Brazilian teams were also in attendance; Luminosity Gaming and Tempo Storm. Friday and Saturday had seen all but 4 teams eliminated in knockout format, and both of the aforementioned were still in circulation,… [Continue Reading]

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Mercy: Overwatch’s Medic

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As Medic just wrote a great article summing up our experiences with the Overwatch open beta, I thought I could get more specific and cover the classes I’ve enjoyed playing. By no means do I consider these extensive guides or anything; these are mostly first looks since I’ve hardly had time to play them. But of course I’m going to start with Mercy. Not only are medics inherently attractive from the perspective of an untrained newbie who wants to help his team, I’ve also got more hours playing Medic in TF2 than any character in video game history. Obviously the… [Continue Reading]

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All aboard! …or not

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As I wrote before, Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday the Heist are very similar games in a number of ways. From the obvious ones like weapon preference, gameplay style, and even the template for the map-specific movie posters, these games are so heavily intertwined they almost feel like they could be part of the same franchise. But of all the unexpected coincidences, there’s one that stands out the most to me because it makes me doubly sad: both have a cancelled cruise ship map. In 2011, Kotaku covered a series of prototype Left 4 Dead 2 posters, made before the devs decided to… [Continue Reading]

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Which classes in TF2 are Specialists and which are Generalists?

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SPUF goes through phases when it comes to things to argue about. Some debates are seasonal like holiday updates, some are deceased like the Gunslinger, and others are eternal like random crits and autobalance. But one that crops up every now and then is the question of Specialists v. Generalists. It’s generally agreed that some classes in TF2 are more specialized than others. Engineer can do a number of things well, but he’s rather pigeon-holed into those categories especially when compared to Scout and Demoman. Where to draw the actual line regarding which classes are “Generalist” engenders much debate, with Soldier being the only one… [Continue Reading]

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Community Announcements Random Game Announcements 

Valve Shuts Down LMAOBox in One Fell Swoop

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VACations everywhere! Today the LMAOBox community woke up to find that pretty much all of them have been banned. Read more here. This giant ban wave has hit platinum level comp snipers, high-tier traders with thousands of dollars in their inventories, and the creators of LMAOBox, though at least one transferred his entire inventory the night before so it appears they had something to do with the leak. MaxBox claiming he sent the debug version to Valve reinforces this, but there’s also evidence that he’s simply trying to take credit for something another user did. The LMAOBox creator has since released… [Continue Reading]

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Hydro Servers are back!

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Valve has added Hydro servers back into Quickplay! You can find them under the new “Alternative” tab, where it shares space with Special Delivery and Player Destruction. tc_hydro has always been the least-loved of the original 6 maps, completely ignored by everybody everywhere, even on console where there are ONLY 6 maps to choose from! Whenever I play (indeed, when I went on and played it today) I found myself turning my brain off and just farming defensive Kritzkrieg Ubers because any serious attempt to end the round is going to be met with frustrating and repetitive failure. I would LOVE if… [Continue Reading]

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The Three Second-Best Payday 2 DLCs

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A while ago, I wrote an article detailing what I consider to be the best Payday 2 DLCs for the money. I’ve updated the article with the times and it still holds up for the budget heister. But DLCs go on sale so many times, that it’s not ludicrous to think that somebody might already own those three, basically the closest things to ‘mandatory’ DLC purchases in the game, but still would like to know what they’ll still get real value out of. So this article is the honorable mentions, DLC that are certainly not required but they at least offer… [Continue Reading]

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