The "Thing" About DotA 2

I has been a while since I had played DotA, and ever since Valve had helped make a more balanced and stable DotA, we now have Dota 2. I know there are some of you out there that may argue League of Legends or Heroes of Newerth are much better titles compared to the late comer which is Dota 2. But undeniably, the two different versions which are from the original modders of DoTA would be League of Legends and Dota 2, League of Legends which was worked on by game designer Guinsoo and Dota 2 whose game designer was IceFrog.

Videos regarding how DotA started :
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (Big thanks to Machinima)

I never really played any of the other variances, and to be honest, I never played the mod that started it all, Aeon of Strife, which was a modded map for the original Starcraft (was really popular back then, still is now too apparently). I only started playing because it was very popular in my school back in the day. And being not as knowledgeable in games and all this kind of stuff, I thought that DotA was a stand alone game, and not a modded map for Warcraft 3, which made my entering of the genre a bit shaky. And also, back in the day, I never really played DotA to a competitive level, not to the level at which I play Starcraft II. I had only started playing this, which I thought was a dying game genre (in my school maybe, but certainly not dying anytime soon) as they had released the new Dota 2. And after watching a few videos on the game, I suddenly wanted to play it again. Long story made short, now I am playing it quite often with my sister, my brother and a few of my cousins and friends.

(Above) The DotA for Warcraft III which was what made the genre explode and has been popular ever since.

Now to get to the before mentioned "THING" about DotA, or now Dota 2 since I am experiencing all of these while playing it is how unforgiving players can be in game. For those of you who don't know, DotA is a game where 5 players on each team (meaning a total of 10, math people!!) duke it out to see which team is better. And in game, since I had been playing alone a lot, you get matched up with random people. And again for those of you who don't know, DotA has a very, and I mean VERY steep learning curve when compared to other competitive games like Counter Strike, or Starcraft. This makes starters, or people who are getting back into the genre (people like myself) have a really hard time with not the enemy team, OH NO NO NO, not them but your own teammates. This was just one (okay, maybe more) experience, but sometimes I get worried that one bad experience maybe ruin it for someone who wants to start playing and enjoy the genre, or even become a fan of these kind of games.

(Above) It's when your team plays like that, especially with your friends, you guys will have a lot of fun!

"Experienced" players can be very unforgiving to new players who want to try out the game. And by saying quote experinced unquote, yes, Sheldon, that was sarcasm. They bash you non-stop in game for that one death, or that one time you didn't help with a push, and you suffer throughout the entire game. However, these players forget that they play a role in teaching and helping starters. For me, Starcraft is very easy to learn, build this, build that, make workers, make an army, and then, send them to battle. That's pretty easy to do. However, DotA has a large pool stuff to do, stuff to learn and not to mention the reflexes that players need to have that might change a gank, into a full team wipe. I recently played a game, which was also why I posted this so that any of you readers who want to try out DotA know a little of what to expect. My hero got killed once because of my carelessness. And instead of forming a strategy, or telling me to do something, the player whose hero was in the same lane as me started swearing. And he continued this throughout the entire game.

And you might say, "Oh, you're so touchy~" Think about it this way, your team is losing, you're getting killed a lot, and of course you get more frustrated, then you have these "teammates" of yours who at the same time make it harder for you to concentrate is a whole recipe for disaster. And add in the fact that your teammates over extend a lot (over extend means biting off more than you can chew, or in DotA terms 1 hero versus 5, and you're not even fed) you know very well you're going to lose the game.

(Above) If you're that Undying and you think you can take on all 3 heroes, that would be over extending.

(Above) So true!!! Hahahaha!!!

If you play DotA, or Dota 2, make it easy for starters, give good strategical advice if possible and don't swear or blame other people in-game. DotA is a team game, you play a role too, not only your allies. Dota 2 does include a way or reporting people for abusing the chat and also a way of commending people for being friendly or teaching you how to play. It is a nice way to keep bad players off the game, but of course it has its flaws.




Farid
(Wow, my first ever rant post!)

The Pokemon Y (and X) Update!

This update has been out for quite a while now actually, and this was due to the fact that saving in Lumiose City would cause the game to fail to load when turning the game on again. The reason for this might be that the city is so huge, loading the textures and models might be too much for the console to handle. However, Game Freak has released an update which apparently has fixed this problem, and no I am not going to sacrifice my game knowing that the possibility of the game failing to load was there. This problem however, I did not face thankfully and mostly due to the fact I that I always save in Pokemon Centers. It kind of been a habit I had that started ever since they added the Poke Ball symbol in the Pokemon Center, between the entrance and the Nurse. 

here

here

and here XD

The nurse who will say please come again. I mean that just like saying you’re hoping the trainer whose Pokemon he has brought to the Center to be healed, are going to get beaten up, or exhausted, again, and be brought there! EVIL!

Well, aside from a little side tracked there, it’s nice to see that they dealt with the problem at hand as quickly as they could. And before the update they showed the locations where the game would fail to load if you saved there. However, if I can safely say myself, the game loads fine in any other area of the game where you choose to save.  Be it in the forest which you will later come across or even in the Victory Road as well as the halls where you will battle the Elite Four! 

The topic at hand

And no, this is not just a post about the bug fix patch. It’s also an update on my current whereabouts in the Pokemon World! After finishing the gym, most of my work has been exploring the places I missed out for hidden items and stuff like that as well as the hard and painful task of completing the Pokedex. While a majority of my time was breeding the evolved caught Pokemon, I had also the pleasure of leveling up Pokemon, by just battling in the Victory Road. 

I had also found out that now it is beneficial to add more friends to your game (well of course it is good to have friends, well in terms of the game). There is a thing called the Friend Safari which for each friend you will be able to catch 2 Pokemon of one common type, like grass or water. I had the luck of getting an Ivysaur as one of the grass Pokemon I could catch. This was, it is quite easier to catch some of the Pokemon before you can transfer the Pokemon you have caught from your old game to the new X and Y. Till then, and have a nice day~

Farid

The Zaku II, The Completion!!!

Yes, at last I have completed my SD Zaku II model, and with which I am utterly satisfied with the outcome of, well, pretty much the whole thing. At first I was a bit doubtful about how the colours would work together, and also, with this one having a lot more complications with the backpack and a few other parts.

Part 1
Part 2

Part 3 (This post XD)

(Above) After initially looking at the sample, I tried my best to get the same colour as shown, but then the blue turned out to look a little too bright for the build itself.

(Above) Cried while looking and doing this as the part just looks horrible after all that thinner and having to crave out the very, very thin lines in which I would have to panel line later.

Well after much sanding and repainting and asking about what the best colour combination would be, I had finally got the right colour to make the back pack look at the very least acceptable to me. But some people might find it absolutely horrible.

(Above) It looks something like that, not too bad, but hopefully I will not make such mistakes again.

It has been a while since I have built SD models before, so long in fact that I forget how much of a joy building one can be. Although they are not full sized models, just having a smaller bite sized I would like to call them, models do give you about the same amount of satisfaction the normal HG or even MG models can. This is however an older model, and the parts do lack the articulation and detail of the newer SD models. Some of the newer ones have leg parts with 2 articulation points, and given the size of the SD model, that is pretty cool. This model is some what one of the much newer SD kits which have a fully movable arm and hand articulation, which although is quite a challenge to paint, since you have to paint the parts which are on the inside and then glue them together and then paint that part as well. Reading through some of the Gunpla Hobby Magazines, I realised that they make those parts removable, like joints which can be removed from the arm and shoulder to be painted and then fitted back in to look seamless. Well, on to the finished model!

(Above) As you can see in the pictures above you, I have put quite a large amount of decals for an SD model in my opinion. It is my first time using water slide decals and I find them quite a joy to put on the model. They are however extremely delicate and can tear very easily. But thankfully none of the decals I had put on tore and gave me any trouble. The gold detailing was something I considered completely skipping since I'm not at all planning to open up the top piece and allow people to see them, but looking back at the samples they were some I just had to add to the model.The tubes on the face of the model and around the waist was also quite a challenge to complete. The tube were originally light green if you have read the previous post, and apparently the easiest method of having the grey sections done were to fully paint the entire thing Medium Grey and then apply the grey inside. After that all that's left is a little cleaning up. The reason why that method was most easy, was mainly because how very easy it was to remove the grey paint which overflowed out by simply lightly sanding them out and then touching them up with model Medium Grey. A Top coat was applied to the model, and to my surprise, the top coat also smooths out the brush strokes which I have tried so hard to make as hard to see as possible. 

The colour mixtures used :

The eye : Tamiya Enamel Paint Red (1 part)

               Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat White (4 parts)

The light brown on the majority of the parts : Tamiya Enamel Paint Medium Grey

The brown on the body areas : Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat Brown (3 parts)

                                               Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat Green (1 part)

                                               Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat Black (1 part)

                                               Tamiya Enamel Paint Medium Grey (2 parts)

                                               Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat White (5 parts)

The black on the feet and the chest armour : Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat Black (3 parts)

                                                                   Tamiya Enamel Paint Medium Grey (1 part)

                                                                   Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat White (1 part)

The back pack : Tamiya Enamel Paint Medium Grey (2 parts)

                          Tamiya Enamel Paint Desert Yellow (3 part)

                          Tamiya Enamel Paint Flat White (1 part)

The joints and inner parts : Tamiya Enamel Paint Dark Grey

(Above) The top coat used, I highly recommend this, but when applying it on the model, apply a very thin layer by spraying from about 30 centimeters away from the model.

And as usual, no stickers were used in the making of this model! Hahaha, and to you reader, have a nice day~

Farid

The Dead Space Franchise...

I’ve been playing and catching up on a lot of games recently, some of them being Metro : Last Light, Bioshock Infinite, Crysis 3 and the latest one being Dead Space 3. I know Dead Space 3 had been out for quite a while now already, but the main reason I’ve been holding out of it is I wanted nice and calm games to play, you know, not a game that keeps you on your toes throughout the whole game. Yeah, call me a scaredy-cat or stuff like that, but that has always been the thing with all 3 Dead Space games. I had just recently played through the 3^rd game, not sure if I would like to finish it. I have a reason for that, hear me out. If there’s 1 thing I find so dominant in all 3 games, its “Isaac do this”, “Isaac do that” and while I do understand it’s for the good of all the people, or in the first game, mostly you since all of your team die in the end (spoiler alert, but you guys must have played the first one already…) and in the second game it’s to have you and your girlfriend (or girlfriend to be later on) escape while destroying the marker, but at the very least, a little help would be nice (though that would defeat the whole purpose of a survival horror game).

(Above) Yup, it says right there on the top left, Dead Space...

I’m not proud of it, and don’t judge me for it, but the Dead Space franchise are one of the few games that I play on the lowest difficult. Yeah, laugh at me, but with the game making me all tense and stuff, I wouldn’t want the lack of ammunition or med kits to add to that tension. Which is also my next point being that you can barely do anything without ammo. In other games, like Metro : Last Light, you can survive without ammo, although barely, or in Bioshock Infinite, you have your trusty melee weapon if ammo gets low, as well as the fact that Elizabeth will throw you stuff when you need it. In Dead Space, if you run out of ammo, good luck going through those corridors and pathways without taking out the Necromorphs and just running to the next location. It also helps less that there are locations or areas which you have to go through in the game that require you to take out all the enemies. Yeah, good luck with that, without ammo, stomp em’ right? Wrong, you would die simple as that, and you’d have to play a few stages back just you stock up properly so that the same thing would not happen again.

(Above) You start off in the first game, kind of like this, lousy armour, I mean nothing "wrong" could happen in a ship sending a warning beacon out, right? And also the fact that you're not greeted by any of the crew in the beginning is not at all "suspicious".

Let’s just say this is not the game to play on your first run through in the hardest difficulty, no matter how good you are at shooters, because it will punish you, severely.

(Above) Hahaha! No bullets, no AMMO, then you have THAT, ahahahaha!!

(Above) THAT and your "overly-attached" (she's dead and still doesn't stop talking to you, that counts, right?) girlfriend!

However, I enjoyed (yeah… how do you enjoy something that scares you and keeps you tense throughout the whole thing… hmmm…) the first 2 games, some of the best games I had played for this genre, but the third game seems to differ a lot from the other two. While some of the changes are welcome, the third has a different, hmmm, feel to it. Though the enemies’ limbs do take more shots to amputate (yeap, one of the main strategies of this game if you don’t know is strategic amputation), and the rapid firing weapon given as a preset weapon is useless, it doesn’t make the game more terrifying than the first two. The complete change of environment is not something which I liked too much, and this might be the reason for it being less “scary”.

(Above) Yeah, most of my cousins stopped playing after this part, apparently not having a weapon is scary, hahahaha, yeah....

Now it might seem that I completely hate the franchise, I don’t, here are some plus points for these three games.  It was one of the best games of that genre, it really is that scary. The weapon customization, puzzles were also something quite new to this genre of games. And when I say puzzles, they’re not the kind like find the code of stuff like that. Nope, here’s the situation, we make an enemy go after you, you can’t kill him, good luck, oh yeah, there’s this liquid nitrogen thing. And it’s stuff like that which will make your heart pump and try to escape while holding that “enemy” off. And this is also present in the other two sequels. While the puzzles are easy, in the sense of figuring out, they are not too easy in the sense of execution. But one of the best points in game is the overall experience is, it is scary, and being a survival horror game, that’s the important part. The gameplay is smooth, if not, it’s hard enough already (while you can’t jump in the game, you don’t really need to). 

(Above) When you enter a ship, and you see this, what do you do? Well, according to this game, JUST WALK IN! And the crew are ever so concerned about you that all of them, yes, you heard me, ALL of them come to you and give you a warm welcome!

(Above) "Oh, the welcoming community!"

For the third game the weapon customisation and the fact that all the weapons share the same type of ammunition would be a big plus point. Plus you could have 2 weapons in 1 which make switching out weapons less of pain (even more when a horde of these monsters charge at you). But 1 thing I did not enjoy is that the 2 integrated weapons share the same cool down. For example, I like having a machinegun on top with a shotgun on the bottom, weak rapid fire top, powerful slow fire bottom. But once I fire the bottom weapon, it’s a noticeably long wait before being able to fire the top rapid fire weapon.

(Above) The crafting looks something like that, its much easier than you think, but upgrading the weapons are now more limited.

(Above) Though in the first game the suit doesn't look that cool, the sequels' available suits look much more promising!

To give my personal reason why I started out playing Dead Space, at first it was the cool suit your engineer Isaac would be wearing. I know, pretty dumb reason, but it was something that pulled me into playing the game. However, after playing a little, it was just, fun in a way. And that is all, if you like jump scares and horror games, consider Dead Space, it’s a shooter, and one of the best of its kind.

Farid

Pokemon Y, It's Finished!

In advance, I would like to say that I wanted to post a continuous chain of my work in progress of my SD Zaku II, however, I had recently just finished playing Pokemon Y, and although there may be slight differences in the 2 versions X and Y, I just had to say how awesome the game was and a few things you might want to know if you are still thinking of buying it as a Pokemon fan or just starting to want to get into the franchise as a whole.

First of all, the game is as awesome as the trailers and the hype surrounding the game before release was, if not maybe even better. This would be the first Pokemon game to transition into a full 3-dimensional world and the change was well accepted and I didn't really find the look too completely different. If you had played all the previous games before this the change should come naturally.

(Above) The simply marvelous looking 3D battles take you will have the joy of experiencing throughout the game!!

For a game, I feel the biggest points that should be focused on would be the gameplay. However, for a Pokemon game, you can't change the gameplay around too much or you'll risk losing the hardcore fans, those who have played all games of the franchise. But for this game, instead of changing the main core style of gameplay, instead they added more depth to it, refined it. They made bonding with your Pokemon, and also the Pokemon's affection for you make a change in the way you battle, how long your Pokemon last in battle and so on. This is one of the best changes they have made to the game, and I think most fans would love this added feature. If you don't really understand what I'm saying, I not going to explain too much more because that would spoil the game, but it has to do with the new feature Pokemon-Amie!

Other than that the added directions in which you can move might be a little weird at first, but it will become natural. A few other changes to the gameplay would be horde encounters, sky battles and the way experience is shared among your Pokemon.

For horde encounters, the game just puts your lead Pokemon against a horde of 5 wild Pokemon. You encounter these in basically anywhere you can meet Pokemon in the wild. The levels of these Pokemon are significantly lower than the level of meeting a single wild Pokemon, and the battle tend to last a lot longer than usual. You also get to see your Pokemon get ganged up on and beaten. You don't always get all the same Pokemon in a horde, like when I faced a horde of 3 male Nidoran and 2 female Nidoran. These battle can get annoying so just be sure to have an attack which can damage multiple targets.

Sky battles are basically the same as normal battles, the only difference being that you only battle with flying Pokemon or Pokemon with the ability levitate. And these are the only types of battles you can decline from a trainer.

The way experience is shared in battle are one of the changes I don't really hate but also, well, it fine I guess. When you switch out a Pokemon to another, those 2 gain the same full amount of experience instead of the half in previous games and the EXP share now spread a percentage of the total experience to all your Pokemon in your party. And also, catching a wild Pokemon will grant you experience points (about time they make Poke Balls to catch fainted Pokemon though).

Also, another change is the method at which you move your character around. You now have 4 choices, walking, running, roller skating and riding a bicycle. These don't really affect the game much. Using the circle pad will have your character using roller skates and the D-pad will have your character walk or run if you are holding down the B button. The bicycle, you still have to select, basic stuff...

(Above) Some of the new Pokemon are just adorable, plus the fact you can personally feed them! (spoiler)

Other than that, it's a Pokemon game, so don't expect much from the story, but I did find this one a lot more interesting, a deeper story other than the fact that there is a wacky team, with a wacky outfit, set out for world domination/destruction or whatever and you have to stop them, and of course the legendary Pokemon is involved.

This is not really a review but more of a personal description of what I faced in the game. The 3D visuals are extremely appealing if I had not made that very clear, and all the nice cell-shaded models to make it look anime-ish. Another selling point would be that you can finally customise your character, though it is quite limited compared to the vast amount of customisation options available in the games today. Long story short, this is the best Pokemon game so far, as it should be with each passing generations. A lot of new mini games and features have been added to train your Pokemon to be the best there ever was, and also refinement to other features like planting berries. It highly recommended to Pokemon fans, those who have stayed with the franchise throughout the years and also to those who want to try out Pokemon for the first time!!

And for those still wondering about the work in progress of the SD Zaku II, there it is! And have a nice day~

Farid