One Year Later...

This has been a long year. Twenty-two posts later, here we are. At the beginning of the year, I had no idea that I would write a blog about video games. I would've thought that was a stupid idea. Nevertheless, I had fun doing it, and, despite it being kinda weird, I would do it again.
At the beginning of the year, I was kind of jumping around different games, just explaining the general idea of some of my favorite games that I owned. Sometimes I would throw in a game or two that I disliked, like Dragon Age or something in a game that I didn't like. That part of the year was just trying to get into the swing of things, considering that I had never done it before. Towards the end of third quarter, I started filling my blogs in with League of Legends, doing a kind of champion spotlight for my personal favorites. This was my favorite part about my whole blogging experience. I had a lot of fun retrieving the pictures required for this part. My favorite picture was the first picture on my Blitzcrank review.

Image Courtesy of: Doodle or Die

 At the end of the year, during this quarter, I starting doing the thing I should've done from the beginning. This was reviewing. These posts came easy because I was able to gather a lot of information for each of the two games that I did: Terraria and Minecraft. This was because I had to explain what was available in each game, Terraria having almost too much too completely cover. During the course of the year, I became better at writing. I can write quicker now, which is weird because I thought I could type quickly before. I also realized that for some reason, I swore a lot in my posts at the beginning. Obviously I started cutting out those words because in retrospect, they seemed kind of childish. I still have some kind of slang within my posts, (Slang is slang for slang) just so that it's not monotonous. I have not changed the aesthetic of my blog since the beginning of the year either. I decided that it was a formidable artistic approach to my subject. Just last week I made changes to my "about me" page, because even that seemed a little childish to me as well. I would say that I have matured more as the year went on, but I can't really say that about myself can I? That's something that other people need to decide for me. Anyway, this year, for blogging at least, has been a lot of fun and allowed me to do something that I wouldn't normally do, and that's something that I will be able to remember for a long time.

My Least Favorite Game

Despite mentioning almost everything this game has to offer in my previous post, I'm still going to tell you why this game is not very good, and possible reiterate a few things that I may have said. Minecraft is pretty much the worst game ever for a number of reasons. The first reason is that there is not very many things that you can do within this game. Yes you can get mods for it to make it better, which almost every person does, but there are only a certain amount of things that you can do in the regular version. Since the last time I have ever played it, there was only one way that you could win. This way was finding your way into the End, and defeating a large dragon within it. After this, you obtain a short dialogue from what seems like the creators of the world. That's it. That's all there is to this game. One short little fight, and then it's over. Tell me that's not boring. You can spend a long time preparing for this, which consists of a lot of grinding for items and experience. This process of grinding is in no way, shape, or form fun. It's tedious, and takes up more time than a game like this should. After the battle and dialogue, you're thrown back into the world from where you came with no objective except for building. Building isn't even fun in the normal adventure mode because you have to repeatedly stop and search for more materials. Another reason that Minecraft is the worst game ever, is the graphics. I mean, sure, it may be an artistic statement, but it doesn't mean that it looks good. You can get texture packs that can remedy this, but that shouldn't be a part of a real game. It should appeal to users with the original textures and items. In fact, there is a whole community of people that create texture packs to try and make the game look better. There is one that I use whenever I'm dumb enough to get on this game. It's called Dokucraft and can make the game look quite nice.

Image Courtesy of: Me

Finally, the last reason that makes this game the worst game ever, is the community. It doesn't have the worst community ever, that title was taken by League, but it still consists of a bunch of 8-12 year olds. These kids are only allowed to play this game because their parents fear that real video games will make them "violent". In reality, this game will make them violent and develop a temper because older people that play this game like to take advantage of them and "troll" them. (Trolling is when you single out a person and harass with a series of annoying actions that ultimately cause people to quit the game.) Not only does the community create a bunch of whiny children, it also gives them the opportunity to swear without their parents finding out, causing chats to be constantly overflowing with words that would cause you to audibly gasp. There are many other things that are wrong with this game, including bugs, frame rate, and monsters that explode and ruin your stuff, but I'm not going to get into that. If you come across this game, try it out for yourself. If you like it, cool, but if you don't like it, then welcome to the club.

My Favorite Game

Terraria is my all time favorite game. It came out a long time ago, on the March of 2013. When it came out, a lot of people had trouble accepting it. Everyone saw it and decided that it was a rip off of Minecraft, apparently the best game ever created. It may have some of the same things that Minecraft has, but it's general stuff: mining, fighting off monsters, and building houses. I love Terraria because of the fact that it is more in depth than Minecraft. In Minecraft, there are only five tiers of item sets that you can have: wood, stone, iron, gold, and diamond. Once you reach diamond, the game is basically over. There is not much else that you can do other than build stuff. There isn't even a lasting story to it; it's very minimalistic. While in Terraria, you can progress through the game for five hours, and not even reach the second stage of the "story". This stage is called hardmode. You have access to at least five bosses in the first part, including the Eye of Cthulhu, the Eater of Worlds, the Slime King, the Dungeon Guardian, and the Wall of Flesh. With hardmode, which is unlocked by winning the fight against the Wall of Flesh, your world not only receives a difficult metallic counterpart to the first bosses, it also has multiple bosses added in addition to these terrifyingly powerful bosses. Tons of new items are added to hardmode. New ores are added, allowing you to create more useful items, such as pickaxes, swords, and axes. On your character, you have the decision to outfit your character, you can make them look like a ninja, wizard, or even Link from the Legend of Zelda. Some of this vanity gives you cool effects as well. For example, the wizard hat gives you a trail of sparkles that lights up the surrounding area.

Image Courtesy of: Terraria Wiki

Pre-hardmode there are eight biomes that you can visit. These biomes are as follows: Corruption, Forest, Jungle, Underworld, Snow, Ocean, and Mushroom. In hardmode there are a few more biomes including the Hallow, which has unicorns prancing around with faeries buzzing nearby. There are some events that happen if you have met certain prerequisites. For example, the Goblin Army can invade if you have more than 200 health and you have smashed a shadow orb within the corruption. All in all, there are many things that this game has to offer that make it my favorite. There is even an update that adds a lot of new stuff. If you don't own this game yet, I suggest buying it because it's tons of fun and you can play it for hours.

The Rebirth of Rebirth

Recently I have gone back to playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, and I've had a lot of fun with it. My friend managed to get a run that lets you win without much effort. In Rebirth, you can have certain seeds for runs. This allows you to play the same runs over and over if you wish, and it also allows you to race your friends. You can use this to "cheat" essentially because you can use a strong run over and over again. You can potentially unlock everything the game has to offer with this. When I'm bored, or losing a lot, I just type the seed of my friend's run and we're good. The run that my friend got was insanely strong because you receive the item: Mutant Spider.

Image Courtesy of: TBOI Wiki

 Mutant spider is a special item, which there are only fourteen of in the game. When you receive a special item, it causes the probability of you getting another special item to go down by quite a bit. Mutant Spider is powerful because lets you fire four tears at once, which will naturally push enemies back with four times the amount of potency. Later in the game, you receive Polyphemus, which gives you four additional damage and then doubles your damage afterwards.

Image Courtesy of: The Steam Community

This is also a special item, making the run very lucky. Polyphemus gives you at least eight damage, and that's only if you start the run with zero damage, which is literally impossible. In this case, you do have a lot of damage so you're able to have your damage to increase exponentially. Paired with your Mutant Spider, you have four highly damaging tears. Not only this, but when you kill an enemy with damage left over, your tears travel through the target, dealing damage to enemies behind them. After you get this combination, you obtain a lot of damage output so you can run through the levels quickly and with ease. Throughout the entire run, the game decides that you need more damage, so it keeps giving you things like a pentagram, obviously because this run is satanic. It can be a nice game sometimes. Anyway, towards the end of the game, when you fight mom's heart, you can get the potential to win in one shot. There are levels after the one where you fight mom's heart, but I haven't unlocked them yet. I would like to try and unlock them so that I can play this seed on them, and see what can happen. I have only played this seed against mom's heart, but I plan on getting farther so that I can unlock everything that the game has to offer.

Popping Eardrums Left and Right

Do you ever want to play music so loudly that you can't hear the next day? Do you want to do this to your enemies? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Sona is the champion for you! Sona is a support/mid laner that deals tons of damage in the early game. With her passive, which lets you deal bonus magic damage with your basic attack every three abilities that you use. Each ability has a different affect on what your basic attack does. I don't really like the animations for the classic skin because they look really janky, but I'll use them anyway

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Q passive

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W passive

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E passive

Her Q sends out two projectiles that deal damage to the nearest enemies, prioritizing champions. After the projectiles are shot, the ground underneath Sona gives any ally champion inside of it bonus magic damage on their basic attacks, including herself. This is really good for poke because if you chain it up with your passive, you can deal tons of damage with one basic attack. The passive allows her ultimate to do more damage as well.

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Her W puts a healing aura around herself. This aura sends out two projectiles as well, but they only hit ally champions. any ally champion standing in the aura around her get a shield that blocks physical damage. The more ally champions inside the aura, the longer the shield lasts. The passive allows her basic attack reduce the enemy's damage.

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Her E is all utility. It speeds up any allied champions within the aura for a short duration of time. This is useful for catching up to people, and peeling from the enemy. With the passive, her basic attacks slow the enemy, which is also useful for peeling or catching up to the enemy.

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Her ultimate is very amusing. It allows Sona to send a blast of sound irresistible to dance to. This stuns any enemy or neutral mob it hits. It's very amusing when someone is chasing you, and you just make them dance so that they can't chase you. It's also a very good engage because you stun them for a long enough time that your ADC is ready.

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I have never tried going Sona in the mid lane, but I want to try it today. I usually play her support, and she is really good there. Her passive allows her to poke down the enemy ADC so that they are less inclined to initiate on us. I didn't learn this until the fourth or fifth game that I played. I made a lot of people angry those first couple of games. I couldn't save my ADC on a lot of occasions because of the extra health that they had from me not poking them. If you like dominating your lane, then Sona is a good champ to start out with. She brings damage and utility to the to help you win easily.

Never Die. Like, Ever

The only thing worse than losing lane is losing the game, but those two things usually walk hand in hand. With Tryndamere, this is not true. His damage scales really well because of his passive. He gains bonus critical strike chance with how much fury he has. If you build a lot of critical strike chance, he gets very strong, very quickly.

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His Q allows him to consume his fury to heal himself when he activates it. It has a passive which gives him bonus damage the lower his health is. This is really useful when you have your ult but I'll get into that later.

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His W turns people into chickens. When they are facing you, their damage is reduced by a percentage. When they aren't facing you, or are walking away, it slows their movement speed by a lot. This is useful for chasing people when they are at low health.

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If you look closely at this picture, you can see a chicken underneath Ryze. I don't know why this is, usually it's above their head. Anyway, Tryndamere's E makes him spin toward any direction he has selected. It does damage too because he spins with his sword out. This is a good gap closer because you can combo it with your W to make it really easy to catch up to your enemy.

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His ultimate really defines who he is. It allows him to become invincible for 5 seconds but he can still be targeted and hit by abilities and basic attacks. It's kind of annoying because five seconds is a lot of time in an online game.

Image Courtesy of: League of Legends game info

As you can see, this image is not provided by me. This is because I'm a dumbass and forgot to take a picture. In the picture it says endless rage but the move is actually undying rage. This is because this picture is outdated and Riot found a better name for the move. I find it really funny when someone thinks that they can kill you, but you just pop your ultimate and proceed to kill them. It's also kind of annoying when you're playing Tryndamere and you use your ult. Normal right? Then you get pulled by Blitzcrank into the team. At this time, your ult is already gone and you just get destroyed by the enemy team. Tryndamere also snowballs very easily just by farming. He doesn't need kills to do damage. This is why he's an amazing late game champion, he can also chunk very well. If you're good at csing, then this champion is for you. If you're not, consult this guide.

Wear Sunglasses Because Light Hurts

Sometimes you just need to be annoying. With Lux, it's very easy to stop people in their tracks because she has a lot of crowd control, or cc. Before I talk about her abilities, I need to talk about her passive first. Whenever she hits an enemy with one of her abilities, they get "illuminated". If she hits and illuminated target, she deals extra magic damage.

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Her Q is a snare that lasts for two seconds and goes through the first target. The second target hit only gets half the time of the snare though. If you level this up first, you deal a lot of damage with it. I wouldn't recommend it though.

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Her W gives you a shield similar to Morgana, but it protects you from physical damage rather than magic damage. Another difference from Morgana's shield is that Lux's shield is a skill-shot that can shield as many champions as it touches as well as yourself. This is really useful as a support so that your ADC doesn't die at your feet because there was nothing you can do.

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Her E is the ability you want to max first though, because it deals a large amount of AOE damage. It applies illumination to anything that is hit by it. Anything within the circle is slowed down and it is kind of able to separate you from the enemy team very easily.

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Her ultimate is extremely bad-ass and is a really good reason to play Lux. It is a very long ranged skill-shot that deals a lot of damage on hit with very little notification of the oncoming laser. The long range makes it a very good ult for sniping and is really satisfying when you hit with it.

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One of my favorite things to do with Lux is build Liandry's Torment on her. This item allows abilities to do damage over time when they hit. I like building it because I like imagining that the laser is very hot and it burns the target with it's ultraviolet capabilities. A good combo for Lux is snaring someone with her Q, activating her passive, throwing down her E and R at the same time, and activating the E when the ult shoots. This is a pretty rage inducing combo when you're on the receiving end of it because you can only sit there and watch as your health bar depletes almost instantly. Overall she is a very challenging champion because her abilities happen to all be skill-shots. If you do not want to play risky, I do not suggest playing her in the mid lane. I recommend playing her as a support because that way you don't really have to make plays to win the game. It is also more relaxing because a lot of the time using your abilities don't mean life or death.

Technically Satan

In League, there are two Satans that I know of. These champions are also known as their alter egos: Teemo and Morgana. Teemo is known as Satan because he has so much poke early game, there's almost nothing that you can do to stop it. His Q does buttloads of damage and his E gives his auto attacks poison. Not to mention his ult which turns the map into a minefield of deadly mushrooms.

Image courtest of: The Extremist Moderate
Proof of Satan Teemo

We're here to talk about Morgana though. She's Satan for two reasons. Her tagline is, "Fallen Angel", which is also what Satan did, fell. Her Q, which is really dumb, like I can't express how dumb it is. At max level it snares for 3 seconds. That's a long time for an MMO. It snares long enough that you die before you can walk again. It literally cripples you.

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Morgana'a Dark Binding

 Her passive also gives you bonus spell-vamp so her W is actually a heal move. Her W puts down a circle of "Tormented Soil" that does damage over time withing that circle.

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Morgana's Tormented Soil

Her E is another reason to despise her. It blocks magic damage and effects from enemy champion's abilities. This is what makes her a good support. She can save the ADC from an engage with a quick press of a button. It's really useful for "peel", which is when you run the hell away.

Image courtesy of : ME AGAIN! I figured it out nerds
Morgana's Black Shield

Her ultimate allows her to deal a ton of burst damage. She can only activate it when there are champions nearby. She initiates it and if she keeps enemy champions in a certain radius, she deals more damage and stuns them for a little bit. 

Image courtesy of: Me

One time I was playing her as a support with a Sion ADC. Sion wasn't a meta pick so I was skeptical at the beginning. When we got in the game I leveled up my snare first and made my way to the bot lane. I snared their enemy Teemo, (Not very meta either) and Sion got first blood. That was very surprising. A little while later I snared their support, which was a Lux, and we got her very low. She was at about half health. Sion used his E to scream at her and slow her, she was at a third health after that. Sion then started his Q, which charges up the longer he holds it, he managed to get a full charge with the enemy Lux still in the range. I was sure that the Sion wasn't going to get the kill on Lux so I started walking away because we were really susceptible to a gank from their jungler. I saw the ax   D-D-D-Drop and Lux disappeared. I was very doubtful at the beginning but Sion pulled through and carried the game for us. Overall, Morgana is an awesome champion that is a lot of fun to play. 

"The Time of Man Has Come to an End"

Sometimes you just gotta go fast. With Blitzcrank, it's easy to zoom across the map with terrifying speed. Blitzcrank is also notorious for his pulls as well. He shoots his right hand at his enemies and pulls them to his location. This asshole move is called "Rocket Grab" and is Blitzcrank's Q.

Image courtesy of: Doodle or Die
Blitzcrank pulling an invisible Teemo

This move is so annoying. Sometimes you see Blitz low on health underneath the tower and you're like, "I can take him." So you get close and he just pulls you in like an asshole and he solos you with a sliver of health when you have full health. His W increases his speed so that you can scream in terror when he activates it.

Image courtesy of: Lolpro.com 

His E lets you harness the power of Captain Falcon. This power is punching someone in the face so hard that they get launched into the air. This move allows you to lock someone up for a longer amount of time. It's really annoying. If you chain this with your pull, a champion is going to not be doing anything for a good amount of time. This is especially devastating to champions like Vayne because she relies on burst damage to take down an enemy.

Image Courtesy of: Lolpro.com

His ultimate gives him the power of God. He summons lightening to smite nearby enemies with insane amounts of magic damage. Not only does this ability have tons of base damage, it scales 100% with AP. This gives him another attack to add to his arsenal of insanity. (I know this video is in French)

Image Courtesy of: Lolpro.com

 When I'm playing Blitzcrank support, I usually chain my abilities up like this: WQER. The activation of the W first allows you to catch up with your target and gives you a lot of attack speed. Your Q pulls the champion to your location and your E knocks them into the air, giving you time to pop your ultimate. There are sometimes where I get too excited when I activate my Q that I accidentally use my E. My friends like to laugh at me about that. I have never played Blitzcrank mid lane with full ability power, but I know it's good because he has an evil amount of burst. I don't really plan on playing it mid just because I don't want to, I feel like too many people will get angry with me so I'll just leave it alone.

Crescents are Hard to Dodge Apparently

Sometimes when you feel like you're going to win your lane in League, you usually think these thoughts pre-level six. This is the case when you're laning against a Diana. She has a very distinct post-level six skill set. She has a passive called "Moonsilver Blade" that activates every third basic attack. It adds a little bit of extra magic damage to her basic attacks, and scales really well into the late game. It almost gives the enemy champion a false sense of security because her basic attacks don't do very much damage, but when that third basic attacks rolls around, there's nothing left in her wake.

Image courtesy of: the League of Legends Wiki
Regular Diana Passive

Her Q sends out an energy bolt that looks like a crescent and puts a debuff on an enemy champion or minion that makes it so your ultimate has no cool-down. It is called Crescent Strike.

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Regular Diana "Crescent Strike"

 The funny thing is, this crescent is unlike any other move in League of Legends. No one expects a curving skill-shot. They always manage to run into it. I have laned against one person that was able to dodge, except for the fact that they had just stayed back. Her W summons floating balls around her and give her a shield. If they touch a neutral camp or an enemy, they explode. If all of them explode she is granted a bigger shield. This move is called Pale Cascade.

Image courtesy of: the League of Legends Wiki
Regular Diana "Pale Cascade"

 Her E is and a near instant AOE pull around her that slows any affected creatures. This pull is called Moonfall.

Image courtesy of: Kismet Gaming
Regular Diana "Moonfall"

 Her final skill, Lunar Rush, allows her to dash to anything that isn't an ally. This gets you in range for your Moonfall and Pale Cascade. I usually do my combos along the lines of this: QREWQRF. F being ignite.

Image Courtesy of: Kismet Gaming
Regular Diana "Lunar Rush"

 I was playing against a "poke" champion on one occasion, which is a champion that just sits back and deals damage to you occasionally, He was doing a pretty good job until I got my ultimate. At that point, I was at a quarter health and he was only at half. I hit him with my Q and jumped on him with my ult. At this point he was already at an eighth health or something annoying like that so I pulled him with my E and pressed W, which promptly blew him up. He then rage quit. It's really satisfying to play a champion than can duel easily with the "overpowered" champions. This is why Diana is my favorite champion because no one knows how to counter her. I also have the Lunar Goddess skin for her which makes it better because you shoot flowers at people.

Comment a champion that you want me to play and give reviews like this! I'll do my best to learn them and give you a good way to play them.

Flesh People

Starbound finally got updated! It kinda sucks though, all of my characters got deleted. Whatever, that bird guy wasn't that good anyway, that nerd couldn't even fly, but he was a bird. There are new starting missions that are really cool, like going to the center of the planet you're on to fix your ship. Pretty badass. It takes a long time to find these core fragments. I feel like mineral spawning has been nerfed. One of the first missions require for you to find iron to make an anvil. This takes more than an hour if you don't want to spend the whole time digging straight down. Never have I ever had so much trouble to find ore. Before the update, you could travel the surface of the planet to find all the ore that you could ever need. Now, You have to travel deep into the bowels of a planet to even locate one ore vein. You need two pieces of ore to make one ingot. Let's do some math here. One hour of digging straight down to find one ore vein. Let's just say that each vein holds eight pieces of ore. That's four bars of ore. If an iron anvil takes ten bars of iron to make, it should take you three hours. If you're playing with a friend, it goes by rather quickly as you're making jokes and poking fun. If you play it by yourself, that's three long, painful hours of agonizing spelunking. The core fragments are a walk in the park compared to meager iron. You can find these within fifteen minutes of starting the game, just dig straight down. After you fix your ship, you go to a place called "The Gate". There there are many people that were stranded, just like you. They give you missions that are, for the most part, really easy. There is one that stands out though. There is a monkey man that tells you to create steel armor, and he gives you an oxygen respirator in return. When he gives you this respirator, he tells you about a mining facility that needed help from the outside world, and there was a distress signal emanating from it. Once you go inside, it's dark and there is no power. You go up through the vents and find a lever. You pull it and two flesh creatures fall from the ceiling, promptly scaring the hell out of you (That might've only happened to me). These assholes are strong. They have a ton of health and hit like a small truck. Don't get close to these guys, I recommend ranged weapons. I have died like three times, and it's goddamn annoying to get back to where you originally were.
I'm not going to spoil the rest of this mission for my homies, but I'll leave you with this picture.

Image Courtesy of: The Community of Starbound

 I'll gladly report it more when my friends complete this mission. I'm just going to issue a warning though. Once you die, everything respawns.

What's Your Favorite Aminal? A BEAR?!

So the little girl that I was talking about in a post before is super exploitable. Her passive is pure douchebaggery, you get a stun every four abilities used. When your ultimate does 800+ damage, with a 1200+ damage combo, you just melt your opponents, literally. This makes playing her hilarious, because even if you're underleved you can still lay waste to small civilizations. When you're overleveled, or fed, the combos start to overkill with a very small chance of survival. I think that the regular skin looks just fine, It's really satisfying to be a little girl that has no problem against fully grown men that have mastered the art of the blade. The skins just make it better, like reversed Annie makes the little girl the bear and the bear is dressed in a little girl outfit. The one that I have, Frostfire, makes it so that the little girl shoots blue fire. I think it's pretty cool and different from the regular skin when you're fire is a very different color than you're used to. I was really lucky to get this skin because I mystery gifted myself to obtain it. It makes the bear a giant polar bear with a scarf and hat which I personally think is very funny.

Image courtesy of: League of Legends

Anyway, I like to go to the mid-lane with Annie because she has very good poke and it's fun to carry the game. A recent game that I had was very annoying though. I started out against a Fizz, which is a fish, octopus, sort of guy with a spear. He wasn't even trying to poke me, he was just staying back and farming. I, on the other hand, was trying my best to poke him down to a low health for an easy kill. My jungler ganked me, I couldn't get the kill so I let him have it. The second time though was what made me very angry. I stunned the Fizz with my passive and was burst damaging him, laying down some serious hurt. My jungler comes in and kicks him backwards, I thought that he did this to make it easier for me to secure the kill. That was not the case, he made sushi of that little guy, and took my kill. In chat I asked him why he had done this, I politely informed him that I could have secured the kill very easily. He then asked me what my point was, he obviously doesn't know that a mid-laner is supposed to carry the game if the attack damage carry can't. I just let it slide and made sure not to make anyone angry, because the community is toxic enough as it is. I ended up carrying that game anyway.

"Graphics"

Haha! You thought I was going to post this last Thursday, huh? Guess what? So did I! Whatever, it's always fun when something crosses your mind the day after the due date.

Anyway, I have mentioned many games that I have bought with my Christmas Cash. I have failed to mention, however, the first game that I bought. The Elder Scrolls VI: Skyrim. This game brings back feels man. I remember playing this forever, and only beating the story quest once. I would always get bored of my character and create a new one, doing the sequences over and over again. I have played all types of characters, including: Mage, Cleric (Sword and healing), Two-handed Fighter, Dual Wield swords, an Archer, and a sneaky cat dude. Oh. Did I say all? I meant to say all but one. I have never played the most generic combination, One-handed sword dude with a shield. I find that really weird. Anyhow, I bought this game so that I could try this out. I didn't know if my computer could really handle this game, so I bought it for the future when I upgrade my graphics card. I loaded up the launcher, and it said that my computer could run it at high graphics, boy was I excited. It took a very short time to load into the game, 'cause that's how PCs roll. It looked fine, until I tried to move the mouse. The disappointment settled in then. The frames were really freaking slow. I didn't have a counter, but they had to be as low as ten frames per second. It was disgusting. I tried putting the graphics all the way down. That seemed to help. Everything ran at what looked like a solid twenty five frames per second at that point. Life was good, that is, until I started traversing the landscape. There were no bandits or animals to fight! I had to get really close to the point at which they spawn for them to actually spawn. I thought that the game would be a cool dude about low graphics, only lowering the quality of the aesthetics. I had no idea how much the graphics were going to be lowered, considering the graphics of Skyrim are sooo good (Sarcasm).

Probably the best graphics I've ever seen
Image Courtesy of: The Game Effect

Those rocks though. Regardless, I never thought that lowering them would ruin gameplay. Now when you're an archer, you can't get those MLG snipes across the plain wide fields of Skyrim. You pretty much have to be a sword dude to have any fun. That ruined the idea of catching up on some two year nostalgia. I played for ten minutes before I realized the mobs were spawning right before my eyes. I will return to this game when I have installed the new graphics card and finally finish the main story more than once.

Ew, Convolution

With my Christmas Cash, I got myself another game that I thought I would like. It was an RPG game called Dragon Age: Origins, that gave you a decision. It was awesome at the beginning, your race and class decided what storyline that you would have. I chose a human mage because that's how I roll. When I got in the game I thought that it was going to be a third person fighting game. Boy was I wrong. You pretty much had a free camera and you moved with the mouse. I was like, "Whatever, maybe I just saw my friend play the game very closely and managed the camera very well." I started walking around in the tutorial, trying to get my bearings, and let me tell you, it was cray. I was in a place called The Harrowing, and there were faeries that were like balls of light. Along the way there were two demons that you could talk to, one you fight and obtain a weapon. The other one you had to figure out riddles that it told to you. It's hard to listen to a quiet ass bear telling riddles to you when you're in a Skype call with your friends and they're constantly calling each other "trash" and "bad". They know who they are. I'm just kidding, the words would appear at the top of the screen if you wait enough time, like, a minute. Anyway, I didn't know this on the first riddle, so I closed my eyes and clicked a random button. I don't know to this day if I got it right, but I can infer because my follower was able to turn into a bear. It went from weird to crazy with the snap of my fingers. After you get your bear follower and staff of awesome (That's not really what it is called), you fight a badass looking lava monster.

Badass lava monster
Image courtesy of: Dragon Age Wiki

After you beat this badass lava monster, your bear follower starts saying weird things, something a normal person wouldn't say. You have some dialogue, nothing special just small talk. I said something weird cause I wanted to see what would happen. The bear turned into a human, then turned into a tall, flying demon that told you that fear was the true enemy. After this episode, you go back to your mage's guild. This is where I was not able to follow the story very well. There was no clear path on where I was supposed to go, boy was it frustrating. I had no clue where to go, all I remembered was a quick blurb about a first enchanter or something like that. I wandered around aimlessly, looting random people's stuff from their dressers. I ended up getting a full outfit out of it. What a great game, convoluting the story so much that you can go around and get stuff. I played for, like, fifteen more minutes and then gave up, it was so annoying that I had to quit, I would not recommend this game. I give it three out of ten dragons.

Playing God

I know that I haven't posted for about two weeks, and that's kinda bad, so I'm going to be posting today, Tuesday, and Thursday.

Anyway, for Christmas I got a gift card that I could buy games with. I ended up buying a game called Spore. Not going to lie, one of the funniest games I have ever played. At the beginning of the game you control a small cell. Driven by food, you make this cell either a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore. This stage is a lot of fun, and it takes about five minutes to complete. The next stage is where the craziness comes in. The creature stage is where you grow legs and lungs and become a land animal. You have to befriend or vanquish many other creatures in order to advance to the next stage. That's not the funny part though. Each time you interact with the other creatures, you can gain parts. With these parts, you can modify your creature so that it is easier to interact with the other creatures. You can change your spinal cord so that you look like anything that you want. You can make yourself fatter or thinner, make yourself look like a dinosaur or a shark. The possibilities are endless. I usually try to make my creature look as ridiculous as possible. You can stretch the knees out really far, making the creature run with gigantic strides and just looking really dumb.

Weird ass limbs
Image courtesy of: Youtuber OGJF

This is definitely not all the game has to offer. After the creature stage, you enter the tribal stage, my least favorite stage. It's dumb and very stressful. You have a village where you gather food and erect buildings. While you're collecting, multiple other villages pop up all around the place. The ones that have no opinion of you are easy to deal with. The ones that hate you stress me out because they an come to your village and attack you, so you have to become friends with them quickly. After the worst stage ever comes the second worst stage. It's pretty much exactly the same, but you have to micromanage cities instead of villages. you build houses in these cities that have a specific effect when you place them next to each other. Basically you have to conquer the whole world. After you do, you advance to the space age. The space age is the best stage with many things that you can do. You can colonize different planets, you can terraform them to your liking, and you can establish trade routes with other species. I have yet to win this stage because it's so goddamn long. You have to obtain every single badge to win. There's over one hundred badges to collect, the most I've ever had was forty. With this giant stage, there are many easter eggs. One that I know of is that you can find Earth in the space stage. Over all, this game is a lot of fun and everyone should try to get it.

Into the Stars

I recently found a new game that I have had so much fun with. At the beginning, you can choose between six races: Human, Avian, Apex, Floran, Hylotl, and Glitch.

The six races
Image courtesy of: Starbound Explorer

 I have never picked Human so far because I want to experience all the other races first. You are put in a spaceship that has looks that correspond to your race. You start with only one tool in the ships locker, a matter manipulator. This tool can mine pretty much anything, but there's a catch. It's really freaking slow. The first ten minutes of the game are agonizing because it takes so long to acquire the basic materials to create the basic tools. Once you have the tools you start collecting the materials for cooler and cooler stuff. Coal is very important in this game, because it fuels your ship (So high tech right?). Once your ship is fueled up, you can travel to different planets. Each planet can have a different biome, ranging from snow to desert. Each planet has a tech chest, which contains upgrades that make you able to double jump, dash, etc. A planet has a chance to have a building that corresponds to each race, each one having loot in it. The loot is usually guarded by many people that do significant amounts of damage. When you vanquish those assholes you gain access to basic chest stuff. I said there was loot, but I never said what was in it. I'll tell you what's in it, garbage. It's like getting to the light at the end of the tunnel, except the light is super dim and about to die. You die three times just to clear it, and there's nothing to compensate. The great thing about this game is that it's in beta, and it's still multiplayer compatible. Me and my friend have been playing this pretty much every day since I got it. We play this game quite a lot as I have mentioned, and we still have not made very much progress in it because there is so much to explore. When it gets updated there will be so much more to explore, making it harder to progress. It has the potential to be a very exciting game, and it is already, with tiny updates that increase performance.