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Ok, so a lot can happen when playing games. I was just playing Heroes of Newerth (haven’t played this one very much in the past few months) as a reward for doing well on projects and school. But my friend was playing it with me with also 3 other people we didn’t know on our team. But at the end of the game I took a point by “Kill Stealing” a point from a fellow teammate. I didn’t even really do it very intentionally, I was just trying to help.

But when I did it and got the point for myself, my teammate said, “What? Hey *$&& You! You hear me? $&@@ YOU~!” And then I said nothing. But my friend checked the chat log and then made this laugh that was truly intense and borderline the most awesome laugh of all time. This is the laugh that I want to hear if I ever get killed by the Predator (preferably the Alien/Predator Hybrid from AVP).

The laugh moved so many octaves and it inflicted me with both awe, fear and respect that I literally stopped living in this reality for a while.

Honestly, the laugh was a mix of maniacal, playful, and bloodlusted all at the same time. The funny part is, I think he did his laugh in the ALL CHAT area by pressing, “T” on the keyboard. So that means that everyone who was still in the game on our team heard it while they were disconnecting. So the guy who got upset probably heard that while he was logging out of the game. The sounds probably reverberated into his mind and etched sonic imprints upon his psyche for every new neuron that connects or fires within his fragile mind.

-Tyler

Good Juking Example

Juking in Heroes of Newerth is important because it allows you to use your environment to get away from an enemy hero that is chasing you. The basic concept is that you walk in one direction, then wait for the environment to obscure your visibility to your enemy. Then when they can’t see you for a split second, you make a choice. You either choose to change directions or you choose to stay in the current more obvious path. A good juke means that the enemy wasn’t able to anticipate what direction you went in, and you are able to escape. Some skills like being able to leap, or turn invisible can assist in making the perfect juke. But the basic concept of using trees or rocks or elevation to obscure one’s location and moving in a non-intuitive direction can work wonders even if you have a hero that has no special movement abilities.

In this video, Valkyrie is being chased by two enemies. She uses her jump ability as well as the cover of the trees to avoid Pestilence. She also tricks Pestilence to follow her through the trees that are near her team’s tower and he ends up getting creep blocked by a normal little tree creep unit. The problem is that the tower is still firing at him. So he is a juicy target for the Valkyrie. Theretofore the Pestilence was the attacker who was chasing his prey, but a turn of events turned the tables quite so.

Big thanks to Zombies100 for posting this video on YouTube!

Trion Worlds' new MMORPG, Rift, is doomed to fail.

The subject line says it all. This game has zero long term appeal. Rift, in essence, is a re-skinned World of Warcraft with public quests, similar to those first seen in Warhammer Online. The UI, the PvP instances, and the “soul system” all resemble traits WoW has. Even the rogue’s “combo points” and finishing moves are a direct rip off from WoW.

If you’ve visited any video gaming website in the last couple of months, you’ve undoubtedly seen a Rift advertisement boldly claiming “We’re not in Azeroth anymore.” I’ve also seen several television commercials for Rift as well. I’ll give it to Trion Worlds. Their marketing efforts peaked my interest enough to pick up the game. They even got me to initially sign up for the “Founder’s discount” 6 month pricing plan. I figured I might as well invest 6 months into the game since I probably needed a couple of months to reach the level 50 cap. I ended up cancelling that subscription plan today and I doubt I’m the only person doing so before the first “free” 30 days expires.

I’m a level 22 rogue after a week of play and everything I’ve done feels like I’ve done it in WoW already. The rifts that open up randomly and create the opportunity for public quests happen so frequently that I feel like I can’t quest normally without being sucked into fighting rifts from hours on end. Frankly, once people begin to unsubscribe to the game as I predict, rifts will be that much more of a nuisance to the players still playing. If the rifts in the game are ignored, they eventually kill the town NPC’s that give out quests; making leveling more difficult.

Before you Rift faithful try and dismiss my opinion by citing the positive reviews Rift’s received already, understand the point I am making. The game itself is polished. My client never once crashed and I didn’t notice any latency issues. If Rift was released before the original World of Warcraft debuted, it would be an absolute hit. However, that isn’t the case – WoW has been out for over 6 years. Case and point: Warhammer Online received very positive reviews as well and had a “successful” launch, yet Mythic Entertainment ended up having two rounds of layoffs a few months after the release. To date, more than half of Warhammer Online’s original servers have been removed/consolidated.

If you haven’t picked up Rift, don’t bother. You might be logging into an empty server.

-Nauticaboy

NES 1991 Controller and dinosaurs

The controller from 1991 for the NES, has a “dog bone” shape. It looks similar to a Super Nintendo gamepad, but it isn’t flat on the top. It is quite different from the original NES controllers in the USA, because it isn’t box shaped. Also the buttons are (as my friend Brett pointed out) concave instead of convex. So they are very comfortable. The buttons are aligned in a way that is angled, so it is quite ergonomic. The rounded frame of the controller helps to make it easy to grip. And this frame helped me to play, Legendary Wings where It was necessary for me to hold the controller with one hand. I needed the other hand to put my fingers in a position that is more like playing “Tekken” in the arcade. This is where the fingers are in a claw-like position. Using the controller in this way enables someone to quickly use both the index and middle fingers rapidly to destroy targets with precision. Doing it this way also takes some pressure off the right thumb.

Yet I noticed that my left thumb didn’t have a tremendous amount of gamer’s thumb, in spite of the 3.5 hours we spent on Legendary Wings. The edges of the D-pad aren’t as pointed as the original NES controllers, so you don’t pinch as much.

Another thing that I noticed is that the Dog Bone style NES controller is extremely responsive, even to rapid button pressing. I felt like I was able to fire in near turbo-mode without actually having a turbo controller. This felt good, but it would have felt even better if I was able to beat the level 3 boss.

If you like playing Nintendo Entertainment System games, but enjoy the SNES controller more. Then I recommend you get the NES Dog Bone style controller. Just be careful and make sure you purchase an authentic one. Because there are a lot of fakes out there being sold.

You may have noticed from the picture above that there are dinosaurs attacking the controller.

It was a real pleasure to use this style of controller. This is because I recently have been playing games using a SNES controller, so the transition was a good one.

-Tyler