Featured

The main category of the Daily SPUF, containing all sorts of articles from games like Team Fortress 2, Warframe, PAYDAY 2, Left 4 Dead, League of Legends and more!

Turning the Beat Up with Overwatch’s Lucio

by

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]

Overwatch: Writing on Writing

by

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]

MeeM’s random SPUF article

by

Now, I get that as a medic main I meet a bunch of friends (perhaps more than any other class main) just from playing the game. Indeed, many of them I become really good friends with and we get along great. But, as with most friendships, eventually people drift apart. (And yes, mopey post ahead.) Now my steam friends list is full of people I’ve met from a bunch of different games. From guys I spent hundreds of hours to guys who randomly decided to help me through the first part of that game I got yesterday and spent a… [Continue Reading]

Overwatch’s Soldier 76

by

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]

Overwatch’s Widowmaker

by

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]

TF2 Competitive has a lot to steal…

by

Let’s face it, competitive Team Fortress 2 isn’t nearly as popular as anyone had hoped. Apart from b4nny, who is essentially the god of TF2 and can turn almost any invite team into a winner, most people don’t get many views. All the big leagues, ESEA, ETF2L, UGC, AsiaFortress and so on, get a few thousand views for their big grand finals, which doesn’t sound too bad, except when I tell you that a person being banned from League of Legends and sulking got just as many views, if not more. Despite the competitive community’s enthusiasm, the general populace and… [Continue Reading]

Junkrat – The Overwatch Demoman

by

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]

The League of Legends 6.9 Patch

by

Hey, look! It’s the League of Legends 6.9 patch! Hahaha, 6.9, get it? Sixty Nine? Right? Yeah. Bad joke, I know. But it seems like Riot have taken the fucking around thing and have REALLY messed things up this update. Patch 6.9, also known as the Mid year Mage update and the time that Ziggs destroyed every tower ever, went and shook up the mages, giving some of them some unique boosts, others some unneeded buffs and others some nerfs for no real reason. Unlike the other updates, the Juggernaut and Marksman updates, the Mage update has worked me up… [Continue Reading]

L4D2: The Campaigns Less Traveled

by

Recently my friend aDm soloed my favorite custom campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, Journey to Splash Mountain, on the hardest difficulty without bots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxOsPwy6NM (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… [Continue Reading]

I Attended DreamHack 2016!

by

DreamHack was in Austin this weekend, which means it was a short fifteen minutes away from my house! Due to other obligations, I was only able to attend on Sunday, but I was okay with that because it meant I’d get to see the Grand Finals of my first ever Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. The CS:GO tournament in question was open only to North-American teams, though two Brazilian teams were also in attendance; Luminosity Gaming and Tempo Storm. Friday and Saturday had seen all but 4 teams eliminated in knockout format, and both of the aforementioned were still in circulation,… [Continue Reading]