Call of Cthulhu: My 5 Favorite Under-Used Skills

By far the toughest part of Call of Cthulhu is how few skillpoints it gives you. When every skill uses a percentile and you only get a couple-hundred points to allocate, it’s really difficult to excel at more than a few checks. This naturally leads to the most obviously-useful skills (Spot Hidden, Library Use, Firearms, Stealth) seeing massive use across the playerbase. But today I wanted to talk about some rarer skills that I’ve nonetheless found worth investing in. Many times they can save you skillpoints in other areas, or unlock niche-but-effective playstyles. You certainly can’t pick them all, but at… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Payday 2: On Perk Decks

I wanted to write a quick article about perk decks in Payday 2, because I find them pretty fascinating as a concept. Not the fact that they exist (they’re identical in function to the level-up trees from Payday the Heist) but that they exist in conjunction to the standard character classes, each of which has a ton of random abilities and playstyles with different weapons, equippables, armors, and concealment levels. As someone who loves game design, I’ve spent way more time than I should trying to figure out what criteria Overkill put into deciding when an ability is worthy of a… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The 5 Best Skills in Payday 2

There are enough skills in Payday 2 that you can craft almost any build you want. This is awesome for seasoned players, but new players can be a bit overwhelmed by all the choices available, especially when you’ve only unlocked a few skill points. While there aren’t really any ‘mandatory’ skills since the big rework in 2016, there are still several choices that are almost always worth their points and you won’t be sad you specced into them. Today, we’re covering The 5 Best Skills in Payday 2. (Note that we’re talking loud, there are enough skill points to just… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Being Looked Up To – Leaving the Realms of the Newbie

Everyone starts out as a newbie in a game. You’re flailing around, not quite sure what to do. Very few people manage to get right into a game straight away, and even fewer are genuinely not bad when they start a new game. As you progress through your chosen game, you slowly get better, you climb the ranks, you leave the realm of the newbie and become a more experienced player. For most, leaving the realms of the newbie is a subtle one. You don’t really see it happening. As I played Borderlands 2 for example, I never noticed that… [Continue Reading]

Read more

The state of public TF2 isn’t as bad as I thought

It’s far, far worse. I was messing around with some of the new options Valve has put into the game, and happened upon the option to enable mouse cursor on the scoreboard. I then by chance clicked on a name on the score screen, and realized, as late to the party as I might be, that you can actually see all the statistics of the player you clicked on – kills, deaths, assists, healing, damage, everything. The ability to have access to this information is huge for me, as when the team is doing poorly, I’m in the habit of… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Why I, as a Medic, really really hate Snipers

Really, this should be obvious. And I should start off with being 100% honest that I dislike dying – I just want to heal people and spread Medic-y goodness. So really, any class that kills me is going to get ranted at more than necessary. That is, unless they can protect me and net me lots of assists. Don’t look at me like that, I need to get my violent blood lust somehow, and whenever I draw my syringe gun, you all bitch at me. Plus, people need to put my healing to good use. But nothing irks me more… [Continue Reading]

Read more

Syringes

You remember all those times where I would whine and bitch and moan that I have really awful aim? Remember how I said that I am legitimately bad at TF2 and video games in general? Would you forgive me if I said I may have been lying slightly? Of course you would, you love me. There ARE things I am good at in TF2, but the issue I have is that most of the things I am good at aren’t particularly useful in normal gameplay. The main thing? Syringe gun aim. In the last few weeks, I have had some AMAZING… [Continue Reading]

Read more