I was in a long distance relationship for over two years and gaming was incredibly useful for keeping in touch with my partner*. But not every game was a good fit, either because of relative game experience or temperament or any number of other things. So here are some of the games which worked and some of the games which didn’t. I’m going to explain them from my point-of-view because I don’t want to presume to know exactly what his experience was!

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Valve have announced the teams getting a direct invite to its Dota 2 competition in the Philippines; the Manila Major [official site].

The Manila Major is the final Valve-sponsored uber tournament for Dota 2 before the massive annual event that is The International. It’s the first year the Majors have taken place and some have worked out better than others but they’ve been a big deal and mark an attempt by Valve to be slightly more hands-on in terms of guiding the development of the pro scene.

So here’s who’s definitely off to the Philippines:

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Big Dota 2 [official site] patches are exciting for me. Even small changes can have huge rippling effects in the butterfly effect ‘em up that is Dota, so big patches rebalancing and reworking and adding loads are… I don’t even know. Looking at the patch notes for Dota 2 v6.87, I have no idea what shape the game will take now. Along with new items, nerfs and buffs, map layout changes, and all that, it gives teams a long-cooldown scan ability? I don’t know, man.

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The Lab is a free, semi-Portal-themed collection of minigames and vignettes from Valve, designed to show of the capabilities of their new VR headset, the Vive. It’s out now, but clearly most of you won’t be able to try it – even if you ordered a Vive, you’re weeks or more away from receiving it. Given this is, in theory, the first new Valve game in quite some time, I thought I’d tell you all about it.

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After a few weeks with the Vive, I’m increasingly concerned that VR isn’t yet ready to support full-fat games; smaller-but-broader experiences yes, but a combination of resolution and performance woes hamstrings big huge things. Those concerns are lessened when it comes to watching stuff though. It’s great for that. Makes a good movie-viewer, does a VR headset, and stuff like TheBlu, wherein you’re a wandering spectator in a wonderland, remains glorious. And so this glimpse of a proposed VR spectator mode for Dota 2 [official site] has me nodding enthusiastically. Yes, this stuff will work. Interactive watching might just be the more likely near-future of this stuff.

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I wasn’t around to cover the previous week’s Steam Top 10 as per usual, so you’ll have to wildly imagine the shape of it yourself. I can take an educated guess if you like: I’m pretty sure Soldner was a shock number one, with Limbo of the Lost and Aliens: Colonial Marines hot on its heels. Strange that they’re completely gone from the latest chart, below, but that’s the fickle nature of the millennial digital consumer for you, innit?

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Hello. I’m going to talk about Valve’s ginormous annual Dota 2 [official site] tournament, The International, for a bit as tickets are going on sale from April 7th and dates for the competition have been announced and so on.

The International 2016/TI/TI6/The Now-Yearly Discussion Of Massive Crowdfunding Via Digital Wizard Hats – whatever you prefer to call it – will be returning to Seattle’s KeyArena from 8-13 August.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Remember how recently Portal 2 [official site] came out? IT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO. Sorry about that. I have a suspicion those magic windows might be having unsuspected effects on time dilation.

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Fans Of Things Not Staying Exactly The Same All The Time will be glad to hear that the latest weekly Steam top ten is quite a changed one from the previous week. A new number one, surprise re-entries and a loosening of Ubisoft’s chokehold on the charts. … [visit site to read more]

Yup, I’m trying to make this a regular thing again. I know you’re very excited about that. Bit late this week as I wasn’t around for the first two days of it, but there is still MUCH TO LEARN from the top-ten best-sellers on Steam last week.

It’s a strong mix of independent and mega-gazillion blockbuster; though the overall shape of the chart isn’t hugely surprising, the number one winnah perhaps is. … [visit site to read more]