Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na Vi s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. THIS WEEK, however, she will be picking through the mango-infested lands of patch 6.84>

Tis patch time in Dota 2 land the patch notes for 6.84 hit yesterday and we’re at that point where the subreddit is now a forest of theorycrafting and the test client is merely a vessel for flinging out “lol icefrog pls fix” video material.

“But Pip,” you might say. “Surely it is to you we will turn to make sense of this world where Alchemist must provide Aghamin’s Scepters like some kind of mystical Pez dispenser, you who will guide us through the ramifications of the multiward stackathon and the difference between a walrus punch and a walrus kick.”

Well, sort of. But I think SRS ANALYSIS BSNS will only really bear fruit (mangoes obv) after the patch has settled in and had the broken bits tweaked or removed. Heck, some of the new items might not even make it through the process.

Instead I’m currently more interested in a smidge of “oooh, would you take a look at that” from my own point of view on the new items combined with “lol icefrog pls fix” video material.

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Tweets from developers dumping details are a bit like bubble gum wrapper trivia facts, aren’t they? You won’t be fascinated and enthralled, you won’t learn the deepest secrets of the darkest beings, but you might raise your eyebrows a little, but approvingly, and at the back of your mouth grind out an approving throaty vocalisation like “Mmh!” or “Hhhoh!” or “Hmm!” or “Hrmmm!”

Now we’ve chewed the Cyberbazooka Joe gum of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] in that trailer, it’s trivia time, with wrapfacts on dedicated servers, field of view, and other touchy issues.

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Though rarely doing much with the rights to the old PC games which once made EA’s name, they do at least have this pleasant habit of occasionally making some retro delight free for a week or two. This time, it’s Ultima VIII Gold Edition, the Richard Garriot-designed roleplaying game from towards the twilight of the Origin years. … [visit site to read more]

This took rather longer than we thought. But after five entries, and two weeks, I’ve come to my conclusions. You can read the whole saga here, if you’ve not yet caught up, as I chronicle my experience of replaying Deus Ex – a game I’ve always maintained is the Best Game Ever – fifteen years later. Was I wrong? Is it even possible for me to be wrong? Read on.

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Being fairly clueless about console platformers for most of my life, I had been awfully surprised to discover Capcom made a long series of So Solid Crew platformers. (That’s a joke about PC isolationism and> early noughties English pop culture. You don’t get gags that rich every day.) After Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune left Capcom, he, well, decided to make more Mega Man, crowdfunding Mega Man ‘em up Mighty No. 9 [official site] to the tune of almost $4 million.

Now it has a release date, though a bit later than its once-planned spring launch: September 15th.

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I should say right off the bat that I haven’t ever played Fire Emblem, which seems to be the first thing off anyone’s lips whenever Telepath Tactics is mentioned. If you want to know if Telepath Tactics is anything like as good as Fire Emblem may or may not be, please ask someone who has played Fire Emblem, which isn’t me. I haven’t played Fire Emblem. Is it good? Yeah, why’s that? But how does… oh, sorry, you were waiting for me to tell you about Telepath Tactics, weren’t you? That I can do.

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Last year Arma 3 [official site] was in the process of getting AT-ATs, thanks to a Star Wars-themed mod. The mod was eventually abandoned by its creator, McRuppertle, but he’s uploaded footage from the first in-game test for people to peer at:

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Vectorpark s games have consistently been utterly beautiful and charming little toys, sumptuously animated and delightful to explore. Metamorphabet [official site] is yet another stunning success from the one-man team Patrick Smith, creating the most delightful alphabet-teaching game you could hope for. Here’s wot I think:>

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I was as surprised as anyone to see a whole new Shadowrun campaign on Steam this morning. So surprised, in fact, that I had to do some catching up to understand what exactly I was looking at.Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown is the game we once knew as Shadowrun Online. The fact that its campaign of XCOM-like tactical combat can be enjoyed by a single player presumably made the “Online” part of the title unnecessarily offputting. Remember when “Online” was a promise rather than a threat?

Chronicles has emerged from Early Access and is ready to welcome new Runners. Perhaps the trailer will tempt you.

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It wasn t possible for me to get into exactly why Broken Age Act 2 s [official site] story is quite such a betrayal of the first half s potential in my review. It s all major spoilers. So, with that in mind, the following article contains plot spoilers up to the very end of Act 2.>

While Broken Age Act 2 is a let-down in many ways, not least the dreadful puzzles, for me the complete abandoning of what had seemed so special in the first half is what sucked the most. I’ve explored why.

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