A Quick Minecraft Thing

Hi everyone, Phovos here. I’ve recently gotten back into playing Minecraft. I normally play in multiplayer servers, but I’ve been messing around with the Custom Map type, which allows you to create all sorts of craziness. This video is taken from a freshly created world and I thought you’d all like to see it. Of course, being a freshly made world, a lot of it is being generated on the fly. On my cheap laptop, it’s somewhat laggy, but a half-decent computer could probably run this world no problem. This world is pretty weird, even when we ignore the vast… [Continue Reading]

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L4D2: The Campaigns Less Traveled

Recently my friend aDm soloed my favorite custom campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, Journey to Splash Mountain, on the hardest difficulty without bots. (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 the… [Continue Reading]

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Phovos reviews Overwatch – Getting into our heads!

Hi, Phovos here! And guess what? We’re finally playing Overwatch! After failing to get into every single beta so far, we’ve been playing the Open Beta that lasts until May 9th. Overwatch is a ton of fun. The characters look cool, the maps are amazing, there’s free loot and it’s overall a blast to play. Very chaotic right now, because of the influx of players who don’t know what they’re doing, but still awesome. The maps are the best part of Overwatch, they’re really nice, good-looking maps, even with their long lines of sight and large amounts of choke points.… [Continue Reading]

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First Experiences playing Payday: The Heist

One of aabicus’s favourite games is Payday: The Heist. He’s been pestering me for a while to get it and play it, and finally, one month later, in a spur of the moment thing, I find myself abruptly thrown into my first heist. While aabicus is streaming. Cue me asking lots of questions. But really, apart from asking what’s going on, Payday: The Heist is a lot, lot simpler than the sequel. All you do is choose weapons, a bag, a perk and some cosmetic stuff. Then you start the game and go on a big heist. Our first heist… [Continue Reading]

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On the molasses-like progress of League of Legends lore

Hi everyone! Today, I’ll be talking about the lore of League of Legends. Around the time of the Shurima update, the League of Legends was abruptly removed from the lore of League of Legends. At the time, Riot’s Lore team said that the League and the Institute of War were holding them back creatively, as they had to give each champion reasons to be there. They promised that, with the League gone, they’d be able to expand into new territories, improve their writing and be able to come out with more content. At the same time, the Lore team removed… [Continue Reading]

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On Medics and Machines

Hi everyone, Phovos here. Today, I’d like to discuss Mann VS Machine. If you ever played Mann VS Machine before the Two Cities update, you might remember how bad playing Medic was. Medics were essentially useless, which was a stark opposite to normal gameplay. The only vaguely effective loadout relied on getting Kritzkrieg Ubers as fast as possible, but even then, people would prefer another Heavy or Demoman instead. Thankfully, the Two Cities update made it so Medics were actually useful again. The ability to reanimate people and bring them back to life speeds up otherwise quite slow gameplay, and… [Continue Reading]

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An English Major’s Guide to Computer Care

Get a load of that amazing video. I just got off the phone with Steven Spielberg and have been informed my Oscar is in the mail. I really don’t have anyone to blame but myself for the state of my poor desktop, though. When the thunderstorm-induced powerout caused unknown damage to my video driver, my surge-protected power strip proved insufficient protection. But even in less hostile environments, my adventures turning my old Windows 7 laptop into a usable piece of hardware again have taught me a lot of things about how to care for your equipment from a position of relative ignorance… [Continue Reading]

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Not so Rawr – Dragon: The Game Review

Hiya, Phovos here, and today, I have a word of warning for you all. The other day, I got a refund on a game. Actually, to be precise, I allowed a gift to be refunded by the person who bought the game for me. I’ve never felt the need to do that before, but I felt that poor SilverWolf had been ripped off of a good €17 worth of money. He could have bought Pohatu, Master of Stone, for that amount and both he and I would have had fun. The game in question was Dragon: The Game. With a… [Continue Reading]

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Rawr! – Dragonflight Review

Aabicus, being the awesome person he is, got me Dragonflight for my birthday. It’s a game that’s been sitting on my wishlist for a while, and, like the other dragon game on my wishlist, has been in Early Access for a while. Being the grateful content creator that I am, I decided to review the game. Dragonflight is a game in which you fly a wyvern (a two-wings, two-legs dragon) around and destroy things. The story is your standard stop-the-bad-guy-from-being-freed nonsense, where you steal the bones of an evil dragon before the enemy does. A bit like National Treasure but… [Continue Reading]

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Regenerating Health – The Concheror, Cozy Camper, and Amputator

Today I want to go over a trio of related weapons that were all affected by a change made to the Medic’s base regen during the Tough Break Update. As you can see, the description to the Concheror claims “+4 hp regenerated per second” but what actually happens is that you start regenerating at 1 hp and that number gradually increases to 4 the longer you go without taking damage. The Cozy Camper and the Amputator are identical, except that the Amputator stops at 3. I thought I’d talk about what this means for each weapon, because it’s interesting to… [Continue Reading]

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