aabicus – Page 46 – The Daily SPUF

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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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The Scotsman’s New Skullcutter

July 11, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments balance, comparison, demoman, update, weapon

On Smissmas 2014 Valve made my dream come true. The Scotsman’s Skullcutter became elevated from the dregs of poorly-optimized demoknights and Trolldemos to one of the best melee weapons for Demomen who treat their melee weapon like an emergency weapon instead of an intergral part of their loadout. Is it overpowered? Maybe. That’s a hard statement to make, what with the state of Demoman’s melee at the moment. The Ullapool Caber and Half-Zatoichi are pretty kickass weapons that fill the same role after all. And while the Skullcutter lacks the crippling downsides inherent in those two weapons, it also doesn’t bring anything new… [Continue Reading]

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The Light Machine Gun Plight

July 10, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments balance, gun, Not TF2, On Shooters, payday, weapon balance

LMGs have always been a misunderstood and under-appreciated weapon genre in first-person shooters. Whereas mechanically they fill an obvious role in the sniper rifle>assault rifle>machine gun progression tree, in practice they’re often left off the list entirely or locked into specialist roles due to lack of developer support. Mechanically, LMGs focuses on spewing huge magazines of high-damage bullets very inaccurately. In theory its wielder assumes a suppressive fire role, ensuring that somebody is still firing while all the more-accurate teammates are reloading. Unfortunately its often the case that devs shoulder the LMG with a whole host of downsides; I can… [Continue Reading]

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The New Eureka Effect

July 6, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments engineer, strategy, weapon, weapon balance

Edit: Written before the new update, because Valve won’t let me write about the Eureka Effect without immediately changing the weapon. I remember being awe-inspired by the rebalances of the Eureka Effect. You can teleport directly to your exit now! No more waiting for your idiot teammates to stop hogging your teleporters, now you can take your battlefield transportation into your own hands! Then I basically tried to play with the Eureka like I would the stock wrench and quickly got bored like I always do. The real kicker didn’t come until a friend let me know that it works… [Continue Reading]