Genshin Impact – The Bad

No game in the world is perfect, and Genshin Impact definitely isn’t. And oh boy does it have a lot of problems. The Gacha It’s not about the rates, nor the pity system, nor the IRL cost per pull. It’s the fact that gacha exists in the game. Academic research has shown that lootboxes are linked to gambling problems, in adults and adolescents. And gacha is equivalent with lootboxes since both have the players spend currency for a chance to acquire something rare and/or powerful. And in Genshin Impact, you pull for characters and weapons, which is vital for gameplay.… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Genshin Impact – The Good

There are many things that Genshin Impact does right. After all, there has to be a reason why the mobile version managed to hit one billion dollars in earnings within six months. These are my own personal reasons as to why I like this game so much. Gameplay The gameplay is a third-person hack-and-slash affair. Each character has a normal attack, a charged attack, an Elemental Skill (an offensive/utility ability on cooldown), and an Elemental Burst (an ult basically, requires energy generated from Elemental Skill to charge up). A team of four is active during regular gameplay, with one on-field… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Genshin Impact – The Introduction

Genshin Impact, from miHoYo Co., Ltd., is an open-world action role-playing game, playable on PC, mobile, and PS4. It launched with a bang on September 28, 2020 and it is taking way too much of my time since last November. Before I discuss the merits and problems with the game however, I suppose it’s best if I introduce the game itself first to serve as a foundation for future articles. Story You and your twin (one male, one female, you get to chose which one you want to be) are cross-dimensional travelers. While you were about to leave Teyvat, a… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Terraforming and Landscaping

As I play Minecraft more and more, I become pickier and pickier at where I set up my base. If the locale doesn’t look interesting enough, I’ll be moving somewhere else. Even if it means dragging cows and sheep over a thousand blocks, which I normally have to do since I ended up staying in the mountains most of the time. And after I find a place that I like, I modify the area so that it looks better. I start off by cleaning up the area. Generally, I’ll have a temporary base set up first since I need a… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Three Thousand And One Posts

If memory serves, the first post I’ve came across from here was aabicus’s post on the Half-Zatoichi. Back then, I hadn’t enrolled in university. I remember reading an article a day on the bus to school. 3000 posts and 8 years later, we’ve reached 3001 posts on this site. This is largely thanks to Medic, who I believe is responsible for around 60% of all published posts. Writers come and go, the site changed from blog.spuf.info to spuf.org, Steam Powered User Forums, the forum that this blog is born from, has been shut down. A YouTube channel, The SPUF of… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Gundam Battle: Gunpla Warfare, and gacha in general

I love mechs. And my most favourite media franchise is Gundam. However, there really aren’t many games for the franchise out there on PC. As in, not many that I like. The bulk of them are strategy games, and the only strategy I know is “whack enemy with big stick”. When GBGW was first announced, I was quite excited for it. A Gundam game where I get to customize my own Mobile Suit and beat up other Mobile Suits? It’s like a dream come true. I wasn’t exactly pleased to find out that it’s a mobile game, but it doesn’t… [Continue Reading]

Read more

An attempt at Art

Break Arts II is a beautiful game. There are moments in the race where everything blurred together into a whirlwind of colours, but throughout the game, the game looks stunning. Break Arts II is rather unusual for a mech game. While most mech games are either RTS games or action games, Break Arts II is a racing game. Imagine being able to build a race car from scratch, just that your “car” is a bipedal robot and you have the option to shoot your enemies to ruin their lead. That is Break Arts II in a nutshell. And speaking of… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The Feeling of Weight

I am a big fan of mecha. The holy grail of video games for me is a mecha game where I get to customize my own mech, which I can then pilot to pummel things that are my size or larger. And the keyword here is pummel. I am not looking to shoot something in my giant death machine with limbs, I am looking to clobber something with said limbs. However, there is always a niggling thought at the back of my mind whenever I’m thinking about a mech game: Is this a mecha game, or is it just a… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Daemon X Machina

The first I heard of this game, it was in Nintendo’s E3 2018 trailer. Just a little thing about me, but I like mechs as much as Medic likes dragons, and I always want a new mech action game. I mean, Into The Breach is nice, but I don’t want to play a mech game as a commander in an RTS. Piloting the giant machines is the fun part. I was extremely excited for the game until I realized it was, at the time, a Switch exclusive. So I just moved on until yesterday when I saw it on sale… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Some thoughts on the Caves and Cliffs Update announcement, Part 3

I thought this will only be a two-parter, boy was I wrong. Over the last two articles, I went through lush caves, mountains, and the new underground caves and structures. Basically, the main subject of the Caves and Cliffs Update. Now, I’ll be talking about the other things that are being added into this update. Bundles are a way to get 64 of any assorted items into a single inventory space. And honestly, this is amazing for projects when you have a lot of items you need to use, but you only need a couple of each item. What’s also… [Continue Reading]

Read more