eRonin

We've been getting pretty good deals lately! Splatoon is just AU$59 at a large electronics store (https://www.jbhifi.com.au/games-consoles/platforms/wii-u/splatoon/657694/) including tax! That's US$47. (Splatoon would normally retail for AU$79, JB Hi-Fi goes nuts on new releases sometimes) edit: Oh wait, didn't notice you are also Australian. But hey if you're on the lookout for good deals on Splatoon, look no further!

I haven't been playing a lot of HotS lately (got into LotV beta + going to Smash Bros tournaments) but yes I'm level 40! I'd be totally keen to have a Thumbs team going. Will give that Three Moves Ahead a listen. I've never actually listened to this podcast yet.

I've never come across Dixie haters on a gaming forum until now. Wow, I don't know how to take this.

Party matchmaking (not local) is being added to the game in August. Kinda bleh but I can wait.

So I had a great time playing Splatoon yesterday (didn't have time to write up my thoughts). I honestly feel like the weapons are reasonably well-balanced; they are just better suited to different tasks. It seems a lot of people think the Splat Charger is useless in a close confrontation, but you actually don't need to charge it up to fire; you can release at any time, making it perhaps more flexible than the other guns. The rapid-fire guns are best for taking out enemies, and the roller is best for covering a lot of ground with paint quickly. I gravitated towards the normal splattergun, since I couldn't make good use of the shield special of the jnr version. I much preferred the oil rig map to the other since it was larger and had a lot more back and forth with retaking zones. The smaller map often felt like you were just fighting in one central area all the time, so it got a bit boring faster. Still, it was good that they included two very different maps. One misconception I am seeing a lot is that people think you can only super-jump from the spawn point. You can in fact super-jump at any point in the game. I found myself cleaning up one area, then super-jumping to an ally to help them with that area, then move on to another area. Movement seems to be absolutely crucial in this game since it's all about controlling zones. I only managed to play about an hour and a half, but I'm definitely looking forward to more!

So who's gonna be playing in the Splatoon test fire? I'll be playing only a bit in the first hour since I need to go out, but hopefully in the 2nd hour I'll be able to stay the whole time. So excited! First time I'll be playing Splatoon.

One of the FCBD comics was set after Secret Wars, and Kamala is in it, so no I don't think she's being killed off. I'm actually not at all sure how Secret Wars will play out since the outcome seems to be "just like 616, but with Miles in it".

Well, the FCBD comics are free to customers. Comic shops count on buying them and giving them away in the hope that those customers will buy something else in the shop. Take that however way you will. In other news, Secret Wars started today. Marvel events have largely been extremely lacklustre, but Jonathan Hickman has been playing into this event for the past 5 years or so and the payoff is amazing. Esad Ribic on the art is also fantastic, I've been a big fan of his ever since I read his Thor series.

For a time, Blizzard was floating the idea of having paid mods in the StarCraft 2 arcade. But given how poorly the arcade was initially received, they went completely the other way and made everything in the arcade free-to-play (no longer requiring a purchase of SC2 to play). The arcade scene has stagnated however, since nothing really interesting is being made for it. The engine is a little too unwieldy for things like third-person shooters, though that hasn't stopped people from making a bunch. Recently all of the WarCraft 3 assets were added to map editor, so WC3 mods have started cropping up. Heroes of the Storm was initially supposed to be an in-house developed mod for SC2 (possibly a paid mod), but Blizzard decided to release that as a stand-alone game with the same free-to-play model as League of Legends.

Okay, first thing: that remix of Jake (I think it's Jake, please don't hurt me) at the end killed me and I almost fell down my apartment stairs in the dark as it started playing. And now for my comment: when Jake and Danielle were mentioning multiplayer Nintendo games, I was a little surprised that Pokemon didn't come up. I know that Pokemon technically isn't a first-party Nintendo game, but to me Pokemon has always been closely associated with Nintendo, and moreover it has always been associated with connectivity and a multiplayer element. This is especially pertinent when discussing a competitive element to Nintendo games, because until very recently, Pokemon is the only Nintendo game to have officially sponsored major international tournaments (the recent major Smash Bros tournaments had official Nintendo sponsorship). The Pokemon Video Game Championships (VGC) started several years ago and holds tournaments at the regional, national and worldwide levels. It is a rather established tournament scene with a serious meta-game, and takes a lot of dedication to develop a strong team. Not just in terms of breeding Pokemon with good stats, but having a well-balanced team that can seriously deal with the top threats of the current metagame. Alongside the VGC, there have been a few official online tournaments (that I have played in; I have not played in VGC because I am not committed enough to travel for it), so anyone can join, but it is still taken quite seriously since it seems most casual Pokemon players don't touch the multiplayer aspect at all. Anyway, I've played a few of the Wizard Jam games, and they have been thoroughly enjoyable! I love how zany the games are given the titles. I have zero know-how of how to make a game, but at least my photo got into I Like the Hair, so there's my contribution.

My laptop runs this very sluggishly (i7-3610QM + AMD 7670M). I can barely hit any pizzas, but it's still great though! Very nice to see you put more than one kind of pizza in this.

Ah damn, I played through it all without realising that you can do something with the points you can collect. Time for another playthrough! (later)

Oh my god my heart. But I managed to do it on the third try! But seriously though my heart.

Oh I just played through the game again and read everything. It all actually makes sense now. I apologise for jumping the gun earlier.

Oh man the animations look really great!

Just played through the game! I liked the music and the art assets a lot. To be honest though, I ended up skipping a bit of the opening, so I wasn't sure why there were some pizzas I didn't shoot. I ended up with 60 points. I *think* that's the highest possible, unless secretly I was supposed to shoot all those other pizzas.

Haha, had a double team-wipe last night. First time this ever happened to me in any Lords Management. Fortunately we were quite ahead so despite the enemy team respawning faster, we still won the game.

Nah Isabelle is the best, no arguments there. But playing with Captain Falcon outfit using Blue Falcon on Mute City and Big Blue just feels right

So I finally played some Hero League and I had a pretty good time. If you're level 30 and have 10+ heroes, I think it's much better than playing quickmatch. I'm close to level 40 now so I have been toying with the idea of making a team. Are there others here who are level 40 or close to it?

Finally bought Super Mario 3D World. Pretty excited to fire it up!

K I uploaded a photo! Let me know if you want a higher res version of it or something. Looking forward to this!

I've only been playing co-op (Usually when playing with someone new) or quick match, and the quality of those games varies a lot. I haven't played Hero League yet, but from what I hear from my friend, people there take the game very seriously and there is a lot more strategy involved. Unfortunately you do have to play quite a lot before you can reach Hero League, but that ensures that only experienced and serious players are playing it.

And tegan's spiral into insanity continues.

I'm a guy who usually favours playing out the game's mechanics rather than paying attention to the story or lore. (e.g. my favourite games are Tetris, StarCraft and a lot of Nintendo games). I do enjoy some lore when they are given to you in bite-size pieces, like Bioware games' codexes or Metroid Prime's scans. I played TERA online for a while, however, and I could not tell you anything about the story or why anybody is doing anything, besides for EXP and quest rewards. Also it just so happens that TERA online has pretty good mechanics for its gameplay.

Ohh man I had the most fun game the other day where the enemy core was down to 4% health. I was playing Zeratul and while my friends went into a team fight, I rushed ahead while cloaked and started attacking the core. We won and my friends were all, huuuuh what happened??