The Good and the Bad of Dynamic Queue

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Season 6 in League of Legends has been a complete roller coaster, with a ton of highs and lows, buffs and nerfs, lovetaps and complete reworks. The biggest change though is how you get into a game. Now, there’s two forms of queue – blind pick queue and draft mode queue. Ranked mode uses the draft mode system. Each team gets three bans, then everyone picks a champion, one at a time (kinda) and locks in, then the game starts. Blind pick is kinda as it suggests, everyone just picks the champion they want, and this is used for the… [Continue Reading]

Pharah – Overwatch’s Soldier Wannabe

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During the brief time that I played Overwatch, I tended to drift towards two characters: Pharah and Reinhardt. While I liked Reinhardt for his personality, giant shield and huge mace, I tended to play Pharah because I understood her. She plays very, very similarly to our beloved, overly patriotic Soldier. Like Soldier, Pharah uses a rocket launcher, jumps high into the air and has 200 health. Unlike Soldier, Fareeha Amari did actually get accepted into the military. And there’s a few differences here and there. But she’s essentially the same character, but easier. Much easier. The main ‘thing’ with playing… [Continue Reading]

Overwatch: Genji

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Y’know, that cyborg ninja whose brother Hanzo uses the Huntsman. Jokes aside, Genji seems to be a hero focusing on high mobility, being able to double jump, climb walls and even swiftly move into any direction (which could even count as a far-reaching triple-jump) with his ability Swift Strike. I should probably explain the basics of his attack and his abilities before talking of things like these. Genji’s weapon is a bunch of shuriken, or throwing stars, always firing in either an accurate burst of three or in a fast-firing cone of three, thus allowing him to attack 8 times… [Continue Reading]

A Quick Minecraft Thing

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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]

Turning the Beat Up with Overwatch’s Lucio

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…

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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]