The other day I realised how long I’d spent in the Dota-verse. It was during my 50th hour of Dota Underlords, after 100 hours of Artifact and nearly 4000 in Dota 2. There are characters I have spent years with, albeit while treating them more as clusters of abilities than personalities. I’ve seen that world from half a dozen different angles, over the years, between genres and Dota 2’s seasonal events. It means something to me. I’d be very interested if Valve announced they were inviting other developers to make games set in the same universe.

Valve haven’t, but that’s exactly what Riot have announced they’re up to with League Of Legends. I know next to nothing about League and have little desire to explore more of Runeterra, but it’s easy for me to imagine people feeling otherwise.

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The right TFT comps can rise up and dominate your opponents, but there’s one comp that’s dominating the meta at the moment. The “Eggroll” comp is a rather easy comp to build and can be difficult to stop, but there has also a counter build if too many people are competing for the champions needed for Eggroll. We’ve also got a few other comps to try out if you want to experiment with different compositions.

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Terrorists = grief. Headsmen = heads. Politicians = distrust of politicians. Long-distance lorry drivers = plastic bottles full of piss. Every occupation has its byproduct. I’m not overly proud of the tens of thousands of screenshots I generate each year. Yes, some of them are put to good use illustrating articles about tank restoration and U-boat games (see on) but the vast majority end up littering parallel universes (one day a courageous computer scientist will come clean and explain how ‘delete’ actually works). For every pic displayed below, seventy will, I’m ashamed to say, be slyly fly-tipped in worlds where sparrows are venerated and ladder-walking is an Olympic sport. (more…)

Below is a list of 30 things wot av bin stolen or abducted ( things is used in its broadest possible sense). Entries have been stripped of vowels and numbers and had any inter-word spaces repositioned*. For example, if Patty Hearst was present she might appear as PTT YHRST. Shergar would be SHRGR.

*Hyphens are treated as spaces. Apostrophes are ignored.> (more…)

After one bad launch for Red Dead Redemption 2 with its PC debut on Rockstar and Epic’s stores in November, I had thought Rockstar might make the most of the second chance for a smooth launch presented by its belated Steam release last night. They have not. Along with the crashing and performance issues still suffered by all players, the Steam release seems to have even developed new issues. It’s also more clear quite how common the old issues are, now the game is on a store which has user reviews. Oh dear.

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Tis the season / use a brolly / tra la la la / la la la la.

Hello, it’s me, the list goblin, here in this festive first week of December to deliver a big black bin bag of presents to you. And by presents, I mean a single irrevocable inventory of the most disastrous and terrible winters in the videogames of recent history. Yes, there will be cannibalism. Yes, thousands will die of exposure. But from this great compendium of coldness will come knowledge, strength, and, okay, at least one adorable puppy. Here are the 9 harshest winters in videogames. Wrap up.

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I mean, some games aggressively resist your playing them. Peter Jackson s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie is not available to buy on Steam, or Uplay, or any online store you could name. When I sought out a physical copy, it bricked my computer. Putting it down to coincidence, I tried the disc in my laptop, and it bricked that too. Is there no end to the devastation left in the beast s wake?

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There are a metric tonne of portrait mods for Stardew Valley. On Nexus Mods alone, there are 305. DCBurger’s Portrait Mod is the most unique that I’ve seen but by the time I found it in 2018 it had already been removed by its creator. After two years away, DCBurger has returned to upload the original.

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The Game Awards are just around the corner, a week from today on December 12th. The show’s host and producer, Geoff Keighley, is running an Ask Me Anything on Reddit today where he confirms that there are “around 10 new games/projects” being revealed at the show. To his knowledge, none of them have been leaked yet.

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The stylistically low-res game about snapping photos of little birds in your house has landed on itch.io today. Toripon may be tiny but it’s packed in some personality in the form of a bird-based social network where fake folks comment on your lovely bird snaps with eloquent appreciation like “Yaaasss.”

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