Double Tag, Part One

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Day one

There was an arc in Portal 2, where (spoilers!) Wheatley betrayed Chell and chucked her into the bowels of Aperture Science Enrichment Centre along with potato GLaDOS, where we learned of the company’s history, Cave Johnson, Caroline, and hints of GLaDOS’ true nature. But aside for story, there is also something else, an entirely new mechanic for us to play with. The addition of the gels is one of the two new main puzzle elements added to the Portal series, aside from the co-op gameplay. While the Conversion Gel is useful for creating portals and is the MVP for Chell’s… [Continue Reading]

The Wonders of Captura

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This image was made in Captura, using a Rhino Prime.

Warframe is a particularly nice game to look at. It’s bright and shiny, yet even on low settings, it still looks really nice. The game’s actually optimized pretty well too, even when on high settings, because of the way it loads each environment. As the majority of rooms are basically individual tiles, connected with smaller individual tiles, the game unloads each one once you’ve passed through it so it can load the next one. This makes Warframe particularly efficient and allows it to run even when on a toaster of a computer. When you turn everything up to maximum though,… [Continue Reading]

New and Improved Tips for New Warframe Players

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A Blade of Excaliburs

Just under a year ago, I wrote this article about Warframe tips for new players. At the time, I was a newbie, being carried around the star chart by much more skilled players. Now though, I’m a much better player and I actually somewhat know what I’m doing. At the very least, I can give a better idea of what you should be doing. After all, older players have helped me. I should pass the baton and help newer players. Help them with some better tips. Early Choices I used to recommend choosing whatever you want as your starter character,… [Continue Reading]

Left 4 Dead: The Birth of a Genre

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Left 4 Dead was a great game. It had the perfect mix of arcadey action and strategic gameplay to entice shooter fans of every skill level, while also having amazing writing and atmosphere that really sold the survival horror aesthetic. Sure, it wasn’t the first 4-player coop (Yahtzee even griped in his Left 4 Dead 2 review about how commonplace those sorts of games were), but it carved a niche for itself that is so prevalent nowadays that I’d call an entire subsection of Co-op horde shooters “Left 4 Dead clones”. Left 4 Dead famously came into existence when the… [Continue Reading]

Returning to the Kingdom of Loathing

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After watching a video on The West of Loathing, I’m suddenly filled with the desire to play the Kingdom of Loathing again. The humour and deliberately lazy extremely stylized art triggered a strong sense of nostalgia in me, as I remembered the fun moments, hilarious lines, interesting item blurbs, and that one orc camp filled with innuendos. The one thing that I can’t remember, however, is my old login details. So I just said “screw it” and decided to begin anew. I remembered the six choices: two warrior classes, two mage classes and two rogue classes. I was a spell-casty type… [Continue Reading]

On Running Too Quickly

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This is what using my Ignis looks like. Normally I can't see much past all the damn lightning from Volt's SPEED ability.

So the other day, I was testing stupid builds on Volt and seeing how fast I could do low level capture missions. The best I managed was 65 seconds, achieved with a rather basic Speed build, but also requiring a lot of luck. The map I got turned out to be very small so I could get through it super fast. Unfortunately, Warframe is not a great game to speed run because the majority of maps are randomly generated. What I got for the 65 second Capture Mission was not normal, normally you’re looking at about 150-200m to reach the… [Continue Reading]

They Finally Got Me…

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MMORPGs are definitely a genre I’ve steered clear of time and time again. The first time I experienced one was with Runescape, back when I was a kid and the concept was still mind-blowing. But I soon got tired of it and dropped them, for what I presumed to be for good. But while watching a stream of Final Fantasy II by a YouTuber I’m subscribed to, a fan messaged him in the chat asking what he thought of Final Fantasy XIV Online and if he thought it was worth buying. Not only did he say he thought it was… [Continue Reading]

On Gold Weapons

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Humans love to customize things. We want to leave our mark on the items that mean the most to us, and as a warrior culture we especially love to own weapons that have unique, stylized decals. In the programmed world of video games, where one need not worry about firearm maintenance or practicality, the sky is the limit for how many ways we can customize our guns. So why do so many developers immediately go for golden guns? When available (and they seem to be available in almost every game with weapon skins), a golden reskin will almost always have… [Continue Reading]

The (somewhat) Curious Case of Paladins’ Support Classes

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Most of the time, in a class-based game, healers or other support classes do rather pitiful damage relative to their more combat-oriented colleagues. I mean, if you have a guy who only does damage, and another guy who does the same amount of damage but also heals and is similar in terms of bulk and speed, the first guy will really need some kind of very interesting or effective gimmick for him to even be used at all. Aside for that, you will run into a scenario where the support class player went off to do anything but supporting the… [Continue Reading]

A Bow Pretending to be a Rocket Launcher

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All right, this one is a lot less literally a rocket launcher than the one Medic talked about. But since it’s my favorite primary weapon in the entire game, I couldn’t resist writing an article on the Plainsrider Bow with explosive arrows from Payday 2. Long ago I included the Western Pack on a list of DLC I recommend because, since Payday 2 didn’t (and still doesn’t) have any free grenade launchers or poison weapons, the Plainsrider Bow unlocks both playstyles in a single weapon. Firing arrows tipped with dynamite, the Plainsrider has a number of advantages over other explosives.… [Continue Reading]