This is a late post that may no longer be that relevant, I admit. I was supposed to post this after BlizzConline, but the past two weeks were a blur for me. However, I realized that I still had much to say about the sequel to my 2016 GOTY, so I had to finish writing this. While I have to admit that I’m actually hyped about what Blizzard is doing in Overwatch 2, I’m also quite skeptical about what it’ll do for their newest franchise. (more…)
Since this blog is starved of fresh content, I thought I should just go crazy and write about anything I get my hands on. And I do mean anything. What I planned to be a 1,000 word post became five times as long, which says a lot about the way I write and why I found being prolific rather difficult in the first place. So, here’s a blog post on a game meme I responded to on a whim over a week ago. (more…)
It’s that time of the year, but I haven’t played enough games this year to put up a list of my top ten games for 2019. I’ve been busy with work, commentating for Manila Wrestling Federation, and dealing with life. It hasn’t been the best year for me, but it was also a reflective year. This post continues that theme, letting me look back at the games I enjoyed throughout the outgoing decade that was the 2010s. (more…)
Overwatch is still a fairly important game to me, even if I tend to hurl verbal trash at it these days. I still play it with my friends whenever I can. Competitive play doesn’t really make me as salty as it does other people, but all the big changes it goes through over the years did make me uncomfortable. This planned change is perhaps the biggest one to date and it can change how the game is played, for better and for worse. (more…)
Overwatch is a sinking ship. I start this blog post with that statement as I’ve seen this before with another Blizzard game I used to be obsessed with. StarCraft II peaked in 2012, then floundered in the following years due to numerous issues. I’m seeing the same patterns now with Overwatch, but there’s a lot more going on with this one due to what is both its biggest strength and weakness—its expanding lore. (more…)
Overwatch was my 2016 Game of the Year due to its engaging team gameplay and how it helped me bond with friends. Two and a half years since its release, while it’s still fun to play with others, the gameplay itself has become what many describe as both stale and frustrating (at least from what I’m seeing). This is from the perspective of players who take their competitive rank with some degree of seriousness. (more…)
At the moment, I have a video project queued up regarding deliberate practice and the importance of stakes in competitive video games to incentivize performance improvement. Perhaps I’ll actually finish that video one of these days, but I felt like I should post something about what Overwatch had got me thinking as of this writing. As I delve more into topics related to competitive gaming, I hope to dig deeper into the attitudes and behaviors I’ve been observing first hand in games so far. (more…)
Recently, I’ve been rethinking about my approach to Overwatch. Since late last year, I’ve been a Zarya main as I found her to be my most dependable option. She lets me consistently(?) contribute to my team, whether I’m doing particularly well or not. Constant use of barriers, consistent splash damage, picking off stragglers every now and then, staying alive, and well-placed graviton surges are pretty much the basics to a competent Zarya. (more…)
It seems like coming late with these annual top 10 games lists is now a tradition. Publishing a month late does give me more time and room to meditate on which games really moved me in the previous year, thus coming up with a better video and post to explain my feelings about my picks. With that said, I didn’t play as many games as I could have last year, which explains why I left so many good titles out. Despite that, I feel pretty good about this list of the ten best games of 2016 I got to play. (more…)
In a concerted effort to create more content in the style of video essays that I love watching so much, here is one I made for Overwatch, specifically the new character Sombra. I have to admit that it’s not the most solid of videos I could’ve made as it doesn’t even scratch the surface and may have gotten some things wrong in it. Nonetheless, I do hope it opens the floodgates for more presentations like this in the coming weeks. (more…)
So it has been months since Overwatch officially came out, and I haven’t been playing it as much as I should. But within my limited play time, I’ve only gotten competent with three heroes—D.Va, Soldier 76, and Junkrat. Despite my best efforts, I consciously feel the limits of these characters during gameplay, and those limits are getting worse over time. Perhaps it’s due to lack of practice, but I think that can also be remedied by practicing with more challenging characters like Tracer. (more…)
Everyone wants to hate on the usual suspects like Bastion, but Reinhardt is more consistent as the guy you must hate in Overwatch. I swear he’s getting his dick sucked behind that shield, and that smugness needs to be wiped out from the face of the earth. If ever the shield goes and you’re close, he can stun you with his ultimate, then swing that hammer like he’s slapping a ho with his cock. (more…)
