Dota 2 memes

So i've decided to create and upload some video game memes to the blog. This post, in keeping with this mornings post, it's Dota 2!

This week, I have mostly been playing.....

Dota 2. And I'm terrible at it. It induces a rage like no other game, but it's so incredibly fun.

The game has such a huge learning curve, but it's worth it to take the time to read "noob guides", one of the best being Purge's "Welcome to Dota, you suck". It's worth taking the time to read up on heroes and their skills so that you might better understand them. It's worth logging on to the Dota 2 website and playing a fun little mini-game called the "Shopkeepers Quiz" which is actually mentally training you for instinctive crafting in-game & teaching you what various items do, and their costs. It's worth playing the "optional" portion of the tutorials and practicing certain techniques against bots such as last hitting, denying, and ganking (expect a guide to some of the terminology of Dota 2 in an upcoming post).

Why is it worth it you ask? it's worth it when you have games like I did last night. My 18th and greatest game.

In my game last night, within the first 5 minutes, 3 of my 5 teammates quit. We went several kills and towers down very early, which resulted in my 4th and final teammate also quitting. Doesn't sound look a good game huh? It was for me. I came within mere seconds of clinching a win in a game with myself vs 4 Radiant (they had a quit too). 

The game was a Single Draft, which is where you get a choice of three heroes (one of each attribute type, Strength, Agility and Intelligence) instead of being able to choose from any of the games massive selection of vastly differing heroes. I drafted Bloodseeker. I'd never played him before but liked the look so I picked him.

By the end of the game, I felt as though i'd instilled a permanent fear of Bloodseeker and the name chocobojockey87. The image of Bloodseeker will haunt their dreams. I had a massive kill streak, and at times had 3 heroes running from me, just little old me on my own. I played it smart, and unforgiving and the results were incredible. 

I had Broodmother too terrified to show herself whilst in her webbed territory. I had Undying running from me even when he'd transformed in to UberZombie. I had sniper taking potshots and then legging it. And Nyx, I don't even know why Nyx bothered trying.

So you may think "Ah, this is all a load of b*llocks". But the best thing is this - I caught the vast majority of the game on video :)

The quality isn't great, but compromises had to be made regarding file size, even at 360p this video was 4GB.

The game's stats can also be found at http://dotabuff.com/matches/275539415

So, it was a great game, the best form I've ever been on. But I'm still a total noob. I showed this video to a friend who kindly pointed out that had I simply pressed the "Fortify Structures" button in the bottom right corner, I would have most likely won. Frustrating, but still an all round epic game regardless of noob errors. I was too busy harassing the Radiant to be pressing buttons.

Console gaming vs PC gaming

Recently I made the switch from PS3 to PC, and as a result have been enjoying my gaming sessions much much more. I've been thinking about why and I couldn't come up with a concrete answer, so I started thinking about why console gamers hate on PC gamers all the time. Then I started looking at reasons online, some of the points people make are just stupid.

One of the first points I came across was "controller > mouse & keyboard". This made me laugh initially as it's a moot point anyway. I guess the poster hasn't heard of controllers for PC. But lets imagine a crazy and anarchic world where they didn't exist. In my opinion, mouse & keyboard are still superior.

Play a shooter, any shooter with a mouse and keyboard, and you'll immediately discover this. But if that's not enough, how about RTS? try playing a RTS with a controller, have fun pushing a mouse cursor round the screen with your analog sticks. Still not enough? how about RPGs? Good examples of this are Sacred 2/Dungeon Siege 3. You can map your spells to 3 buttons, then hold a different button to toggle to a different spell set of 3 spells on the same buttons. I'd rather just map 6 spells to 6 buttons and avoid any confusion or miscasting. Oh wait, I can, it's called a keyboard. This is the sole reason that MOBAs and MMORPGs do not work on consoles.

"But we can chill on the couch and play on the big TV!" - good for you! I can sit in my nice leather office chair, close enough to my 24" full HD monitor that when taking in to account distance and perspective is bigger than your 42" TV that you're sat 8 feet from. Oh, and I can run an HDMI to my TV from my PC and do the same.

Another arguing point seems to be the "constant" need for upgrades. PC gamers do not need to upgrade their graphics card every year/2 years and so on - they may choose to though, if they absolutely must run everything on max settings in crazy resolutions. Or if they want to get all competitive about their frame rates. Which, on a side note - are superior on PC. I locked my FPS at 30 as an experiment whilst playing Crysis 2, and after playing at 60 FPS for so long I can honestly say that 30 felt like playing in slow motion. It was horrible.

"But my console is cheaper than your PC and does exactly the same thing". Lets face it, no it isn't, and no it doesn't. It might be initially more expensive to build a gaming PC than buy a console, but not by as much as you may think. A brand new console at the start of a generation will set you back £300-£400. Add in a years subscription for your online gaming at £40. Then consider things you'll need like an HDMI cable, and a few of games. You're looking at about £550-£600. Now assuming you have a TV (if you don't, then really consoles are more expensive) this is cheaper than a gaming PC sure. Or is it? When I built my PC I got 3 free games with my graphics card. That immediately knocked about £100 off the cost. Then you have the long-term cost - games. PC games are undeniably cheaper than console games, especially during a Steam sale. I recently built a library of PC games for a fraction of the cost that the same number of games would have cost on console. So we've established that it's not any cheaper to play on a console.

Now lets look at functionality - can a console do the following;

• Capture video on any game with no extra hardware? No
• Be used for other things such as photo & movie editing & digital art? No.
• Be used to write programs yourself? No.
• Allow you to mod your games to either enhance the experience or fix bugs? No.

I could have added more to the list, things like internet browsing, video streaming, LAN gaming and so on. Whilst consoles can technically do these things, they're not very good for it. Ever tried to browse the internet using a PS3 controller? Give me a mouse and keyboard. Video streaming? on an Xbox 360 it's limited to Netflix/Lovefilm and so on. On a PS3 you can find whatever, but it's a chore doing so. Still think consoles and PCs do the same thing?

Another "point" console gamers make is that they get "tonnes" (read: 1, perhaps 2 per year) of "awesome" exclusives. Last time I checked - PC has way more. To name a few - Civ V, Arma 3, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Company of Heroes 2, Rome 2: Total War,  DOTA 2, LoL, add to this list just about every MMORPG ever made, and the vast majority of indie games, plus all the others I missed. Now where are all those exclusives again? Oh, and we get 95% of console games ported too.

Then there's the good old "PC games always need patching" well, last I checked so do console games. Also, PC generally gets "patched" first through the modding community. There is no modding community on consoles. If I had to play Skyrim without mods again I think i'd literally vomit all over myself and burst in to tears.

BioShock Infinite - How I loved and hated it at the same time.

Judging by the reviews I've read, I think perhaps I'm the only person that was somewhat disappointed by BioShock Infinite. Don't get me wrong - it's a great game and better than most, but for me, it just wasn't quite right.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

Right from the beginning of the game, something didn't seem quite right - the Lutece twins. Whilst undeniably well written and imagined characters, they aren't fitting for a "-Shock" title. They were just too chipper and too comedic. I couldn't help but like them and hate them at the same time. Except when they popped up in a "telescope" scene and ruined it, then I just hated them. Well done Irrational, they're good characters, but next time put them in a game more suited to their personalities.

Quantum-Physicists and part-time Jesters, the Lutece twins.

Much like the Luteces, Columbia itself was also an astoundingly well imagined city. Irrational did a stellar job on constructing Columbia and bringing it to life. The concept is of a city floating in the clouds is an absurd one. This is even more bizarre when you could quite believe it's a real city due to the amount of attention paid by the developers. The city is bright, and beautiful and full of wonderful technology. So what's wrong with it? The best way to explain would be to compare it to Rapture. At the beginning of BioShock, when you first enter Rapture and step in to the bathysphere, I was intrigued immediately. The city captured my imagination and I wanted to know what had happened there. I'd even say I was more interested in what had happened, than what was going to happen (although that, it turns out, was equally awesome). Columbia just didn't do that for me, and it didn't have that perfect "everything's gone to shit and you don't know why" hook.

A wonderfully bright and clean city doesn't really scream "dystopia".

Much as Columbia is an inferior setting to Rapture, Zachary Comstock is an inferior antagonist to Andrew Ryan. Comstock seemed apathetic in most of his rants, he seemed lifeless, dull, and boring. Listening to his recordings, I wasn't sure whether he was ranting about something, or just reading some snippet of monologue from a cue-card. Andrew Ryan however, was full of passion, in my opinion Ryan is one of the most emotive video game characters of all time.

Staying with characters here, Booker is inferior to Jack, for one reason - he has a voice. Playing as Booker I felt like I was watching Booker's story unfold, like it was him exploring Columbia. Playing as Jack in BioShock, I felt more connected with the world as Jack didn't have a voice, he had no thoughts, no opinions and he didn't give me helpful hints on what to do. It was me exploring Rapture, and it was me surviving against the hordes of Splicers.

Which leads me nicely on to the enemies. Policemen. Seriously Irrational? Freaking policemen? Is that the best you can do? The Splicers are quite possibly my favourite video game bad guy of all time. Each splicer seemed unique and had unique phrases, which had been expertly acted and captured. Their derangement and depravity instilled fear, and the variety was great - different Splicers could be dealt with in different ways using ammo types and tactics. What do you get in Infinite? Racist (read: stereotypical) policemen, that ALL have guns. The enemies were the biggest disappointment of all. They didn't even use Vigors for crying out loud.

And that too was upsetting. The Vigor & Kit system was no where nearly as well thought out or deep as the Plasmid & Tonic System. There were a handful of Vigors which were of limited use. There were a far greater selection of Plasmids, which made for a far greater variety of gameplay. One of the Vigors even completely substituted the hacking system from BioShock. What was that all about? The hacking system was great!

I also sorely missed the inability to carry health packs, and to scavenge for bits and pieces to make ammunition with, these were great features of BioShock which made it more of a survival game than and action FPS, complete with god damn health regeneration.

It was a great game, and the story was amazing, no disappointments there, but it's clearly been dumbed down for the masses and converted in to another action FPS. Okay, so the Vigors add a slight difference, but not enough to distinguish the gameplay from any FPS in which you can dual-wield.

In short, yes, Infinite is a fantastic FPS, but it just isn't a game worthy of the BioShock title.

Plus - why did they get rid of the Big Daddies?