Guess That Hero!

My friends and I have this weekly thing with DotA 2 in which we guess which hero Valve will add to the roster next. If you've never played DotA or Defense of the Ancients before, well it's not quite like any other game. After all, it was one of the first of it's kind. Although there are many of it, none can match the unqiue playstyle of the game. I'm sure most people have heard of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth, and with those the coining of the phrase MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Originally and sometimes these games are still called "DotA-likes" in which I'd have to agree. Many games have entered the new genre, but still none can stand up to the elegance and diversity that DotA offers, and even more shockingly, this game was a mod of Warcraft III and based from something similar to another mod from Starcraft. It's garnished millions of players and a cult following and even to today, the original DotA mod is still being played fiercely.

As a matter of fact, DotA is so popular that it's hosted thousands of tournaments with the most recent and biggest one being The International tournament with a grand prize of one million dollars. Although DotA2 is technically still in closed beta, it's still hugely popular and widely played across the world. Although it's popular, that doesn't mean it's newb friendly. As a matter of fact, most players get turned off from the game because it can be difficult to learn (if you don't have a teacher or a brain) and the DotA community can be... hostile at times. What I mean by hostile is generally being rude, blaming their faults on others, and much more yet you learn to deal with it. I would say it's a fifty-fifty chance you'll come across a helpful player or a hurtful one, but as I said before, try not to let that turn you away from the game. The real difficulty with the game is trying to choose which hero will be your favorite and with one-hundred and ten to choose from (personally I'm the best with SandKing). Every hero plays differently, each have unique spells and abilities and each their own personality. If you've never played a Valve game, then you wouldn't know just how amazing they are with giving characters in games amazing personalities with top notch voiceacting. They've even given alliance and rivalry lines to heroes as well and lets not forget the long list of so horrible puns they're actually funny.

Although DotA2 is in a closed beta currently, they're working incredbly hard on getting it ready for release and even more impressive, they're making it completely free to play with an item shop on the side. Of course this item shop is specifically for visual changes, there aren't any items that would buff characters that would make a team have an unfair advantage. It's strictly to change the looks of your favorite heroes.

You can sign up for the closed beta and hope to fecieve a beta key or wait till Valve finalizes the release either the end of the year or earily next year. Although this post is over, the goodies aren't. I've added a few wallpapers below that are DotA2 releated. Enjoy!

Screenshots! Featuring Dark Souls

 Hey all, here's a few screenshots from my play through of Dark Souls. You can use them for background purposes, I may even edit them into wallpapers later. I also tried not showing any that are spoilers either, although the first one is a boss. Enjoy!

The Fall of Ingnofort

I've heard stories of how bad a game of Dwarf Fortress can turn out to be, but I've never expected it to begin so soon. The dwarven city of Ingnofort was recently abandoned and it's strength was broken, but not without a fight. It was autumn of the year 129, the quiet wilderness has left the fortress to build it's wealth to grand proportions. Single thieves and child snatchers would be spotted every so often, but each time they were routed out of the land. The metals, jewels and goods were increasing at an incredible rate as were the amount of citizens. It reached a high point of one hundred and twenty-four denizens. Sadly, they were all unprepared for that faithful day.

Spotted on the south-west was a small invasion force of goblins, the watchdogs had such keen eyes. The military was training while the alert went off, yet we soon realized there were too many. The dogs rushed in to attack, but were immediately slain. The hunters which were out killing game were fleeing back to the entrance while firing bolts at the goblins. Two of them were killed, but the rest of the fleet still gave chase. The hunters made it inside as the goblins ignored them to slaughter the food animals in the pasture. The militia gathered before the stone traps set at the entrance waiting for the impending rush of swords. The first goblins came in and were decimated by the stone traps, blood covered the walls. The next wave arrived and most were slain, but they were too strong for the militia. Deciding to risk their lives, they lead the goblins away from their home into the fields to buy time for the other dwarves to reinforce the entrance. All looked to be lost for the warriors.

An elven trade caravan arrived and dawned their eyes on the continuing fight. They immediately joined forces and helped slay the goblins. Many good dwarves died that day, including their legendary mason Ingod. The goblins were driven back, but knowingly would return. The dwarven militia were defeated, with three killed and five wounded, they were taken to the hospital wing for surgery and healing. Some dwarven children were also caught in the battle killing three. Two of the hunters helping the militia also suffered severe wound, insuring they could never use a crossbow again. Each dwarf was trying to help, each doing a job to ensure the fortress's survival, but they didn't succeed...

Many fell depressed and became miserable, the stocks of booze almost came to a halt, tensions between dwarves rose as fistfights broke out. No one could do their jobs since that battle. Many withdrew into their rooms and died from starvation or thirst. The warriors in the hospital wing died from their injuries and seemed to haunt the halls of the fortress. No one moved the bodies of the dead to the tombs, but then again there were no coffins to place them in. Production halted, they were seemingly waiting for their own demise.

During the summer of the following year, the dwarves have each calmed themselves and were getting back to doing the labor again. There were still few that were too depressed to work, but the others kept the fort running. Then... spotted from the south-west once again was a massive army of goblins and trolls seemingly coming back for vengeance. During this exact time, the dwarves broke into a cavern below the fortress filled with gems, ores, and all types of precious minerals. It was the largest underground cavern they've seen and was extremely expansive. The goblins rushed the entrance, the trolls attacked and maimed anything on the ground above. Any dwarf outside the fortress was murdered quickly. The goblins stormed inside, a river of death ran through the entrance. Blood spattered the walls like paint and ran down the central stairs to the dining room. Bodies lay in the halls and rooms, the workshops were empty. Each dwarf was in the dining room all huddling in a corner fearing for their lives as the goblins approached. Almost all were slaughtered and when the goblins finally left, the dwarves were so traumatized that they began killing each other or went into seclusion into their rooms. This was the end of Ingnofort, they were strong enough to drive off two goblin invasions, but couldn't survive the emotional toll of doing such.

That one just a single play through of Dwarf Fortress and as said, the fun is in the loosing. I can't wait to start another fortress with my next dwarven settlement and see what happens next time.

Dwarven Escapades

I've recently gotten into a little game called Dwarf Fortress and let me tell you, it is not easy. The fun of this game ironically is loosing. Sound strange? Unlike other games, your dwarven kingdom can last as long as you can keep it alive and sane.There's so much to explain about this game that it would take me the longest time to write it all out. I'm not even sure if I'm doing everything right, but it's fun as hell. There's so much variation and crazy events in this game that piratically anything can happen. For instance, something just happened recently that I didn't understand what was going on. My masonic dwarf was creating stone coffers in the masonry when he suddenly went into a "fey mood". He took control of the masons workshop and started working on an invention of sorts. I was worried, wondering if he became possessed or became upset. After a while in game he created a new invention. It was just a golden floodgate. After that he became a legendary mason which I greatly appreciate.

There's so much to this game, so much depth, so many little details you need to keep track of. If it wasn't for a genius quick start guide I'm sure I would have completely failed or wouldn't have even tried to play. The difficulty is in the micro tasking, thankfully you can assign tasks and such while the game is paused and you get used to checking on everything and making sure everything is fine and dandy. At some point your fortress will become a well oiled machine with a job for everyone and happiness to spread. I'm still new to this game, but with all of the dynamic things that can happen, such as immigrants, cave ins, wild animal attacks, planned attacks from enemies, dwarven emotions, trade caravans, and all kinds of other crap that can happen. So far nothing too strange has happened to me and this guide is doing me well, but I'm not in deep enough to have experienced this game completely. If you're interested in this game at all, don't think twice about it since it's free! The download link will be posted below along with the quick start guide that you'll undoubtedly need. I'll tell more about my tales in other times but for now I have a dwarven fortress to manage.

Game Download

Quickstart Guide

Fun With Modding!

In my personal experiences with modding, I know it can be quite frustrating. I'm not even talking about the actual modding aspect of creating something from scratch or re-texturing things although that in itself is more difficult that adding mods to a game. Sometimes though it's easy to get frustrated with adding mods to a game. Take for instance Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. I've recently gotten into adding mods to the game, which is quite easy thanks to a handy little mod manager. Trying to get all of them working properly is a nightmare at times as well.

Don't be discouraged though, a monkey could add mods to a game, it's simple! For instance, yesterday I spent half of my day compiling the best textures into one huge texture mod. I got the biggest, best looking textures all together and it came to be 5 gigabytes of data. Holy crap. The thing is it looks BEAUTIFUL. Here are some screenshots of my modded Skyrim.

Although there are times where you get something unexpected when you mod a game... like this.

Don't worry everyone, he's alright. He's be excavated and is out chopping wood and working for Belethor again. Also, this is just one part of the game that most everyone is quite familiar with. This is all in and around the city of Whiterun. Such a beautiful city in my mind, still doesn't beat Solitude though. Since recently I've packed up my stuff and moved to Solitude. So all in all, modding isn't a scary thing to do and it can greatly increase the fun of any game. I'm looking forward to what wonderful things people will make with the Torchlight 2 modding tools that should come out pretty soon. Maybe later today or tomorrow I'll post a few more Skyrim screenshots that one of my friends took, if he lets me of course, but for now I'm going to get back to the land of Skyrim.

It's Been A While

So, today was my birthday and now I feel way too old. That's not the point though. I've slowed down with this blog but promise to resume posting more and more often. I ran into a tough spot and just plain haven't had time to update or post to the blog. Here's a quick update of some games I've been playing.

The most exciting thing that I've been doing is playing Hawken. Now before I say anything, there is a contract about not talking about anything in game, so sadly I can't tell anyone anything. Thankfully I can say I had a ton of fun playing the alpha and I can't wait for the beta to come around. I've always liked the whole Mech game genre like Armored Core and Front Mission. Anything to do with robots with machine guns and rockets gets my approval. Future Cop LAPD was awesomely fun when playing against a friend, or even co-op and this might be why I've been playing Supreme Commander a lot lately.

I recently bought Torchlight 2 and have been having a blast with it. As underwhelming of a release that Diablo 3 was, Torchlight 2 seems to do everything right and generally better. I have to say I truly missed putting my points into my stats like I should be able to do. Especially if I want a unique build. Though it has four classes, they're so varied with expansive skill trees that it doesn't matter. I've played as all the classes but the Berserker so far and they're all quite interesting. One thing that sets the game back a bit is the horrible time I've had trying to join games hosted by my friends. More often than not I'd get connection errors. They've apparently fixed this, but I've also had problems with crashing (which I eventually found out was due to anti aliasing being enabled) that I've sorted the problem to, but is a temporary fix. Hopefully there will be a patch in due time, till then it's a simple and reliable fix. I haven't beaten the game since I'm playing on elite difficulty and am waiting for friends to join in on the fun with me (since were soooo close in level now). Since I started my game with them I feel like I need to finish it with them.

I've been playing other games as well, but I'll mention them later and talk about much more later in the weekend. I'd also like to start on the topic of Dota 2 which I've gotten 300+ hours into already and still I feel like a new player. Anywho it's time I take my leave. It's getting late and I've got a bit of gaming to do before I rest.

Garage Sale Games

I'm quite exhausted after today. My town, which may be a whole five hundred elderly people, were hosting their annual garage and yard sales today. Out of the usual strange nicknacks and hordes of furniture, I did find a few video games laying around. A regular Sega with a couple of mainstay games like Double Dragon Battle Toads, Sonic, Sonic 2 and a few other titles that escape my mind at the moment. If I had the money and knew it worked, I'd purchase it, but alas, I left only to come back to an empty table and a shrunken heart. It actually shames me to say that most of my older consoles, such as my Sega, Nintendo and Nintendo 64 have gotten lost over the years. I wasn't able to save the games either, no matter how dearly I loved them. One of my goals in life is to reunite with my lost collection, re-apply all the time and love I put into those games and restore my unity with them. Of course this will take many, many years, but is a long time goal. I did however find an almost perfect condition copy of Driver for the Playstation. I've played that game a lot with my father since he's quite the car guy. His love for cars got me into racing games actually. I found a unique beauty from each crafted machine and being able to drive my dream car in a race. I only wish I would have found more games in my lost collection, but at least I'm one step closer now. I didn't have much time to actually check each sale, but I was surprised that some of the older people have these games to put out.

I apologize for the short post, but fear not, tomorrow I'll be talking about a surprise game that has been very popular through the years, although I haven't gotten into it until about five months ago. Till then, I am one tired gamer who still finds time to game everyday.