Medic

Medic, also known as Arkay, a former death god of a small pocket universe, is the chief editor and main writer of the Daily SPUF, producing most of this site's articles and also just randomly writing stuff.

Left 4 Dead – My First Game on Steam

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Left 4 Dead loading screen.

I still vaguely remember buying Left 4 Dead. It was a long time ago. I was on holiday in the UK visiting my family. We were in the town where we used to live when I lived in the UK too, in the town centre, going through a gaming shop of some sort. I picked Left 4 Dead up for £15 and happily took it back to my grandma’s. I wouldn’t be able to replay until I returned home, a week or so later. That was also when I made my Steam account, which is now, what, 8 years old?… [Continue Reading]

And We All Grind Together… Together…

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Is that a ship coming to pick you up? A Tenno ship?

Someone for the love of all that is good and pure, please help me get this fucking song out of my head. Ever since the Tennocon reveal of Fortuna, I have had the song We All Life Together stuck in my head. On loop. And now I’m going to put it in your heads so you can all be stuck as well. Seriously though, as many parodies of the song have already suggested, there will be a LOT of grind in Fortuna. If anything, the Corpus have always been more grindy than the Grineer. They’re obsessed with loot and credits.… [Continue Reading]

Interaction Design and the User Experience

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See this little cunt? This is a Cetus Wisp.

Don’t mind me. Just summarizing what I’ve been learning lately. But I feel a LOT of this could be applied to gaming, so maybe it might interest you as well. Interaction design focuses on how people use and work with devices and other products, such as computers and smartphones, but also how they work with interfaces in general, such as that of smart watches and ATMs, anything with an interface. The context of interaction design is on users, activities and environments, with users focusing on physical, sensory and cognitive capabilities, while environments include not just location, but also the setting,… [Continue Reading]

Dakka and Twin Dakka

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Twin Grakatas

There’s no such thing as too much Dakka. You can never fire too many bullets. Overkill doesn’t exist. Everything must die in a hail of bullets and explosions. And what better weapon to do that with than the Grakata. Yes, the Grakata. The weird, ugly, Ork-like, Grineer-based automatic rifle, spraying bullets at your enemies. Sure there’s only a clip size of about 60, but that’s better than a lot of guns, and a speedy reload means you’ll be shooting again in no time. The heavy Bzzting and Dakkaing are enough to keep most enemies at bay, even if you haven’t… [Continue Reading]

On WordPress

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The current Wordpress text editor.

I like WordPress. WordPress is cool. Well, WordPress.org is cool. WordPress.com, I don’t particularly like, but it definitely does the job. “But wait aren’t they the same thing?” Nope. WordPress.com is a blogging system hosted by WordPress. Think more along the lines of Tumblr. You can blog and do what you want but there’s also a bit of a community feeling about it all. You can browse other people’s WordPress sites and everyone’s website (unless you pay) has the same domain name, generally something like spuf.wordpress.com. That being said, spuf.wordpress.com doesn’t actually exist. I considered making it at some point,… [Continue Reading]

What the Fuck is Warframe’s Lore Anyway? Warframe Lore 2: Lore Harder

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Volt Prime sitting on a bit of dead Sentient

Warframe’s lore is fucked up. It’s insane. No one knows what’s going on, everything is dead or dying or desperate. Everything sucks. And most of this lore comes from little tidbits and past events you may or may not have missed. But what the fuck IS Warframe’s lore anyway? This article should cover most of it. Consider it an updated version of this angry rant. Yeah there’s a story in Warframe. It’s a thing. It’s a weird, confusing, messed up thing. Pretty dark as well. You don’t actually see what’s going on 99% of the time, you’re just sitting on… [Continue Reading]

A Quick Guide to Low Level Mastery

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Members of the clan Tenno of Anarchy

No one really tells you this, but one of the main ways to level up in Warframe is to increase your Mastery Rank, by leveling items – everything from Warframes to Kavats – up to level 30. Mastery Ranks, as much as I’ve complained about them, are a good thing. You get extra space for Standing for Syndicates, the Plains of Eidolon, Simaris and Conclave, you get a loadout slot every few rank ups, you get extra mod space whenever you level a new weapon and you get more space for Void Traces, meaning you can make more relics radiant.… [Continue Reading]

The Awkward Magic of Skyrim

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What does an invisible dragon have to do with all of this? No idea.

I could never get into playing as a mage in Skyrim. I always found it rather awkward and I never got particularly far, mainly because the early parts of Skyrim are actually pretty damn hard for mages. The one mage character I did have had recently swapped from hitting things with pointy sticks and was using a mod to convert dragon souls into perk points. Something about magic in Skyrim has always put me off, especially when I’ve played as mages in other games. The problem with mages is that there’s a lot to maintain. There’s magicka, elemental resistances, cast… [Continue Reading]

WTFrame! Tennocon 2018

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Is that a ship coming to pick you up? A Tenno ship?

What the fuck. What the fuck Warframe, what was that? That was all insane! I decided to stay up until 2am watching the Tennocon Live Stream, which has always proven to be pretty neat. In 2017, Digital Extremes announced the Plains of Eidolon and the Sacrifice. They decided to completely one up that in 2018 with the reveal of not one, not two but three insane things. I’m going to stick the full video here just so you can all see it, because frankly my descriptions probably aren’t doing it justice. So firstly there’s the new expansion for Venus. Named… [Continue Reading]

Platforming: My Arch-Nemesis

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"HELP! I NEED TO JUMP TO THE OTHER CRATE BUT WILL PROBABLY OVERTHINK IT AND FALL OFF!"

When it comes to gaming, my biggest enemy is platforming. Sure, I’ve complained in the past about being unable to aim. Sure, I’ve mentioned that I suck at finesse movement. I’ve complained about all sorts of things, from lack of general skill to my inability to rocket jump. But nothing, nothing bugs me more than traditional platforming. 3D platforming. Actually, 2D platforming too. I fucking suck at one of the most basic of gameplay elements. I always do one of two things. I overshoot or I undershoot. Normally it’s overshooting, I’ll jump or slide or roll too far, overshoot my… [Continue Reading]