aabicus – Page 44 – The Daily SPUF

Sharks and Minnows (aka You)

August 18, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Depth, Not TF2, shark!

Unless you play on tc_meridian, TF2 has a depressing absence of sharks. This holds true for the rest of my Steam library as well. Luckily, Depth recently had a free weekend, and I got to fill this void, just like the sharks in that game got to fill themselves up with me. I’ve always had an intense fascination with underwater combat in video games, partly because I’m mildly terrified of water in real life. I dedicated a whole article to what little of it exists in TF2, I can’t resist leaping into bodies of water whenever my gameplay crosses them, and… [Continue Reading]

Featured

On Accuracy

August 16, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments accuracy, Left 4 Dead 2, On Shooters, payday, strategy

Hitscan guns in shooters often have two major qualities that people care about; how much damage they do and how accurate they are. (How quickly they fire is also relevant but in this article I’m focusing on the first two.) Which seems simple enough, because at the end of the day you want to know how fast your guns can kill things. But lots of shooters have been making the question a bit more difficult by introducing accuracy-affecting mechanics. Ways for a player to use positioning, modifications, skills, or game mechanics to manipulate the likelihood of a fired bullet hitting the… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

What the Gun Mettle Contracts Could Mean For Competitive TF2

August 5, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments competitive, dlc, matchmaking

In my recent article about the weapon-dropping mechanic and specifically its affect on Ubercharges, I mentioned that it could be seen as a sign that Valve is attempting to alter the meta of the game, probably for the sake of revitalizing competitive and keeping things fresh. Part of the reason I think this is because a lot of Valve’s recent decisions have been rumored to be competitively-motivated, and ster (also known as Niichts and STAR_) said a lot of interesting things in his July 2nd Twitch broadcast that went on for 8 whole hours. Considering I can’t ask you to go… [Continue Reading]

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The Stupidest Item Ever Added to TF2

August 3, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments cosmetics, Filler, halloween, MvM, stupid

The term “stupidest item ever added to TF2” is obviously one of the more subjective terms one could use to describe a thing. It’s so heavily dependent on personal experience, opinion, and bias that no item could truly just qualify without question as “the stupidest item ever added to TF2”. Which is why you may be surprised that there actually is an item that indisputably qualifies as the stupidest item ever added to TF2, and it’s not the one you’re thinking of. It’s not something overpowered. Overpowered weapons fill a role in TF2 by letting players who equip them perform better and thus… [Continue Reading]

Featured

A Trip to Edge of Reality

July 30, 2015January 2, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments dead, loadout, mourning, non-tf2, real life

Loadout is an amazing game that you should still totally go try out if you haven’t played it already. I’ve written about it twice before, and when I recently moved to Austin one of the secondary reasons was a desire to meet the developers. Edge of Reality is a company that has developed both original games and console ports since 1999, and as a huge fan of their self-published shooter I drove to Edge of Reality’s studio this Tuesday in the hopes of meeting them. I had obtained their address from Google: 6500 River Place Blvd. River Place is a… [Continue Reading]

Featured

How Weapon Dropping Improved My Favorite TF2 Loadout

July 28, 2015 aabicus 1 Comment demoknight, demoman, sticky jumper, strategy

Let’s ignore the Ubercharge bit for a moment. The weapon-dropping mechanic on its own is surprisingly ineffectual considering what everyone started worrying about when they first heard it was going to become a thing. The weapons aren’t that easy to actually pick up, the presence of nothing but sidegrades and the fact that you have to drop a weapon you actually chose to equip means that in the grand scheme of things it’s just a fun new ability that opens up rare moments of awesome, aids in allowing players to try out skins they otherwise don’t own, and causes relatively… [Continue Reading]

Featured

The Addicting Tyranny of Idle Games

July 27, 2015November 14, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, Exploit, Not TF2

It wasn’t until this gif popped up on my Steam Community overview page that I had even heard of the thriving genre of idle games. Games designed to not be played, instead to play in the background while you go about your life. Getting work done, sleeping…in the best examples you don’t even need the game running, it’ll automatically update itself when you next crank it up. This goes beyond games that incorporate being AFK into its design, like the skill-leveling system of EVE Online, or games like Animal Crossing that guilt you with spoiled crops and sad villagers if… [Continue Reading]

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My Left 4 Dead 3 Wishlist

July 26, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments Left 4 Dead 2, Not TF2, opinion, suggestion

There have been many rumors of a possible Left 4 Dead 3 in development, but I’m not going to link to any because I think they’re all druid pocky. I’ll believe there’s a new L4D game when Valve says so, and beyond that you’re just taking the running Half-Life 3 gag and switching franchises. But that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to think of ways I’d love to see Valve evolve the gameplay and come up with ways to improve it in a sequel. I doubt they’d go as balls-out crazy as Payday 2 did in expanding upon its prequel, but there are definitely some… [Continue Reading]

Featured

Why I’m Not Bothered By The New Medigun-Dropping Mechanic

July 22, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, competitive, medic, theory, update

The reaction to the new Gun Mettle Update has been refreshingly positive. Sure, a lot of people think the new skins look stupid and dislike how they’re blatantly ripped from another game, but the day I lose sleep over a cosmetic mini-game is the day I re-evaluate my life. The part of the update that mattered was all those delicious weapon tweaks. Pretty much every commonly-complained about weapon got hit with at least a minor adjustment, and a few new weapons are now seeing use in new and unheard-of ways. Two other points of contention involve what this contract system… [Continue Reading]

Featured

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Payday: The Heist

July 13, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments guide, Not TF2, payday

Okay, you might have known some of these already. But after talking to some of the best players in the community and getting engrossed in Youtube videos of high-level play, I’ve picked up a few little known facts about Payday: The Heist, enough that I felt like putting them in an article. How many of these did you know? ———— 1. You can dominate snipers. But it’s bloody difficult. I’ve searched a lot of profiles of the biggest names in Payday:The Heist and only ever found one guy who did it a single time, and all he could tell me was that it happened in… [Continue Reading]