aabicus – Page 36 – The Daily SPUF

Why Killing Floor 2 Isn’t Actually a Beta

May 26, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments beta, criticism, killing floor

I’ve been avoiding writing this article on Killing Floor 2, because I’ve already made it quite clear that I’m disappointed in the game and its developers. There’s not much to be gained from just ragging on something over and over, and I’m only giving them further undeserved attention. But since I made a video on their Versus mode, I needed a tie-in article, and I figured I’d cover probably my biggest gripe with the game: Tripwire marketing it as an “open beta.” A beta is an unfinished version of a product that the developers are working on completing, and I’ll grant that… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

Butting Heads in the Apocalypse

May 25, 2016July 15, 2018 aabicus 0 Comments competitive, health, Left 4 Dead 2

I’ve always loved watching competitive eSports. There’s nothing more electrifying than watching the absolute top players of a community murdering each other with insane reflexes, top-tier strats and telepathic teamwork, all with a pair of announcers following you along for the ride. But for the first time, I’ve found a competitive mode that really bears serious analysis just because of how creative the community had to get to even translate the base game into something eSport-worthy. I’m talking about Valve’s greatest asymmetrical shooter, Left 4 Dead 2. (A short crash course for people unfamiliar with L4D2 versus: Each map on a campaign, one… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Your Mileage Mei Vary

May 24, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments overwatch, pyro

After the 500th time getting frozen and dispatched like freezer-burnt meat, I finally went to play Mei myself, convinced that I could just channel my W+M1 skills and start wrecking the enemy team as easily as the Meis seem to always do in the closed beta. Long story short, that didn’t work out. Mei is not nearly as easy to play as she acts. Her liquid nitrogen gun seems to behave somehow like the flamethrower in TF2 when it comes to particles, meaning there’s an invisible sweet spot you need to keep trained on your target if you want to freeze… [Continue Reading]

Random Game Announcements The SPUF of Legend

Overwatch comes out today!

May 23, 2016September 20, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments balance, overwatch, release

Get hyped, Overwatch comes out in just a few hours! Imma buy it the second it comes out because I promised myself I’d never preorder again after the colossal disappointment that was Killing Floor 2, but if you’re hoping to score the Noir Widowmaker skin, you have a very brief window of time to obtain it right now. And this is a game to get in on the ground level, because I have a feeling this one’s gonna stick around for a long time. It took most of the good stuff from Team Fortress 2 and added things that make… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Turning the Beat Up with Overwatch’s Lucio

May 18, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments healing, lucio, overwatch, scout, support

The previous four classes I’ve described are all derivative of tried-and-true playstyles from other games. Mercy is a Medic, Junkrat is a grenadier, Widowmaker is a sniper, and Soldier 76 is every rifleman ever. But while he’s not nearly as easy to pin down, Lúcio quickly became one of my favorite classes to play because I can’t think of a single shooter with somebody like him. He feels like a support unit out of a real-time strategy, to be perfectly honest. With his boombox loudspeaker thing, he can either passively heal all the teammates around him (including himself, completely subverting No Self… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Overwatch: Writing on Writing

May 17, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, overwatch, writing

Jigglypuff requested that I backup my claim that the writing in Overwatch is bad. “Also you say noone in Overwatch is well written, could you provide any examples of why? Because a character being a trope or common archetype does not automatically = poorly done.” He’s right about archetypes as a concept. Committing to a baseline that’s familiar to the audience is a tried-and-true method that every writer uses, and when establishing brand new fictional worlds without pre-existing lore (such as Overwatch) they’re the best way to give the players something to initially latch onto. If they can understand part of… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Overwatch’s Soldier 76

May 15, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments overwatch

Blizzard knows exactly what they’re doing by making Soldier 76 the tutorial character. Much like Striker from Final Combat, he’s unashamedly added to appeal to fans of traditional military shooters, what with his gun being a hybrid assault rifle/rocket launcher and his unique mobility trick being the bog-standard sprint. But personally I’m completely okay with that because he was the first non-Mercy class I played simply because I understood him within seconds of controlling the character. He’s probably the best starter character possible for new players of any FPS skill level, and once you get the hang of him you’ll… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Overwatch’s Widowmaker

May 14, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, overwatch, sniper, widowmaker

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]

Featured

Junkrat – The Overwatch Demoman

May 12, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments demoman, overwatch

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]

Featured The SPUF of Legend

L4D2: The Campaigns Less Traveled

May 10, 2016 aabicus 0 Comments Left 4 Dead 2, non-tf2, Not TF2, solo

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]