Blizzard Just Keeps Hooking Me Into Their Games

So the Overwatch Anniversary is going on and I just can't get enough. There literally aren't enough hours in the day to grind level ups and earn loot boxes (levels ups earn you free loot boxes). I finally managed to reach level 300 and in my recently earned loot box I got the Genji dance emote. Nice! In addition to Overwatch I've been spending time playing Heroes of the Storm. After two or three matches of that I usually move on.

I started playing Hearthstone and I'm in that stage where the game is super new to me and I don't get how all the chain combos work. However, I'm also at the stage where I might become a competitive player. The game is fun, fast, simple, and reminds me of Magic the Gathering (the best part of the game imo). I'm not sure if I want to only play it casually or if I'm going to try to become good and play ranked.

If those games weren't enough to take up my free time I recently saw an article on (Kotakuhttp://kotaku.com/its-2017-and-modders-are-still-making-diablo-ii-better-1795609085)  that explains how modders are making Diablo 2 a better game. I used to love Diablo 2 as a middle schooler so when I read the article I was impressed and excited. Sure enough, I dug through my pc gaming boxes and dug out my Diablo 2 discs. I downloaded it and got the mod and tomorrow I'm going to start my first Bowazon (bow/archery amazonian) character in D2 using this awesome mod that adds all this cool stuff and increases the max level cap to 125 (formerly 99).

What I'm getting at is that Blizzard just sucks you into their games. The artwork, game play, lore, story, and patches keep the games exciting and interesting for years to come. Who would think that I would be playing Diablo 2 again when I haven't played it probably since the early 2000's? Its just that great of a game, that's why. Blizzard makes great games. The games create experiences within an entertaining simulated world that makes you want to keep playing. These are the things that science fiction writers would have dreamed of in the middle ages.

I'm still playing a lot of Team Fortress lately. I've been trying to learn how to play the spy class. I've gotten really good at sniping people with the revolver. Sometimes when I can't get in for backstabs I just chill with the team and snipe. I feel like McCree from Overwatch with that revolver. Its definitely the hardest class to play because players are really good and they know how to counter spy super easily. I've been dying a lot. But I keep respawning and going for those backstabs.

Heroes of the Storm's Amazonian Harkens Back to Diablo 2 Days

So in the midst of the exciting Overwatch event I've been finding time in between matches to relax. I relax by playing other games, and Heroes of the Storm has been my go-to moba since 2015 when it was released in early alpha. The game recently got D.Va, Genji, a Protoss probe, and an Amazonian added to the roster. Here I'd like to focus on the Amazonian.

Her name is Cassia, a perfect name for an Amazonian really. Her play-style is pretty aggro (dps) and playing her harkens back to the good ol' days of Diablo 2, when I was just a 7th grader that spent his days after school pvping outside Tristrum. I never actually played a Bowazon (archer amazon) or Javazon (javelin thrower) but I fought against them a lot. They were easily one of the strongest classes in the game. Heroes features a straight Javazon but I wish there was a skin for her where she could change into a Bowazon. Idea you can take right from me Blizzard!

Lets go over her abilities but I'm gonna keep it simple. Her q is a basic javelin throw that splits out and does electric damage. This move is her basic bread and butter for damage and it has a short cool down so you can spam it a lot. Because it doesn't cost much mana its even better. It shoots in a straight line but you have to be good at aiming and actually hit your enemies because if you miss the first javelin toss the lighting doesn't hit anything. My second game I dominated the enemy team primarily because this ability is so strong. If you never miss you'll do so much damage.

Her w is this blinding electric shock (or light) that hits in an area of effect (aoe blast). Once it hits them it blinds them, making them miss all their attacks. Super useful and defensive. This one is a little harder to hit them with because your aiming with the mouse requires more precision the q ability. But once it hits them your safe and all their attacks miss. Nice.

Her e is a charge attack that rushes the enemy and deals damage with super fast javelin attacks. It looks really cool and does really good damage. This is perfect for when your trying to engage, or running away and then trying to re-engage. However, its her most situational ability here. You can't use it all the time on enemies because it leaves you vulnerable to attacks, thus making it easier for you to get double, triple, or quadruple teamed.

She has two ultimates. One is Ball lightning which shoots out this lightning ball that damages enemies. The cooler one is Valkyrie. This ultimate ability summons a valkyrie that rushes to Cassia, pulls and stuns the first enemy hit, and knocks back all enemy heroes in the way. Its great. Perfect for engaging in team fights and also effective when you need to make a run for it.

Yeah, Cassia is pretty cool. The main aspect of her that reminds of Diablo 2 is how aggro she is. She has skills that increases her movement speed while unmounted. Its super effective! She makes me want to replay Diablo 2 to roll an Amazon. Its great to see a Diablo 2 character added to the game because right now it seems like Overwatch is getting a lot of love in Heroes of the Storm. I'm sure Blizzard will have great new ideas for new heroes.

Diablo 2 is love!

Guardians of the Galaxy 2

I saw this movie about a week ago and I thought I'd jot down my thoughts of the film. Obviously a movie like this could never be truly great because its just bubblegum popcorn entertainment. However, I can critique and give an opinion on it. One thing to take note is that the movie made 136 million during its first opening weekend. Alien Covenant only made 36 million on its opening weekend and it was a much better movie. Onto the film...

Guardians 2 doesn't really take off where the first one left off. It's not really a true kind of sequel. Instead, it brings a brand new element to the series. Starlord is actually part god or as they call it in the film, celestial. Starlord (played by Chris Pratt) and the gang (Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Bautista, and Baby Groot) meet Starlord's dad and they end up going to his planet. There Starlord learns that his father is a celestial (god) that formed that entire planet they went to and that Starlord's half god too.

His dad seemed like a pretty cool dude. The movie opens with Starlord's dad driving down a country road with then Starlord's mother in a convertible while she's singing a song. Its the 80s because he had a longhair mullet sort of style going on. It was a good opening. Very memorable even a week later. The rest of the movie not so much.

The basic plot of the movie is that Starlord's dad needs another celestial to power up the planet with a weapon....or something like that. The movie featured a ton of comedy. My favorite part was how Rocket Raccoon made fun of a mini-villain that gave himself the moniker Tazerface. Rocket says,"you call yourself Tazorface!?" He laughs and says,"whats next, buttocks scrotum?" I thought that part was super funny.

You can say that the plot didn't even matter for this movie because its ultimately forgettable. The fact that no more infinity stones were revealed in the movie or in any of the after trailers (there were four) was a bit of a disappointment for me. However, what the movie does do well is remind us that summer is here and that good times are meant to be had. Yeah, its a party movie. Dumb fun, like drinking beers when you're a little kid. I didn't hate it but at the same time its not something that will be talked about for years to come.

It differs from most Marvel, DC, and superhero movies in the sense that its not about action or even having a linear plot. Instead, its about the characters, jokes, and the relationships between them. Its at times funny, awkward, rude, and sometimes even weird. You can tell they were trying to save all the super important lore and story of the Guradians of the Galaxy at bay with this one. 

Alien Coveant

Alien Coveant is a good movie. Not as interesting as Prometheus was but still a fun ride with some great acting by Michael Fassbender. He was the best actor throughout the movie, showcasing a complex android capable of homoerotic scenes. Let's go over the plot-line. Spoilers incoming. 

The story is similar to the original. There's a space colonization ship carrying 2000 humans (in cryostasis) with 15 crew members. The ship gets hit by a random solar flare in space and it messes up the ship. Walter (our good AI, played by Fassbender) wakes them up and has them fix the ship. They realize that they have to go back to cryostasis for 7 years before they reach their colonization planet destination. They hear a human voice through a transmission and they pinpoint where its coming from. Turned out there was a planet capable of sustaining life that they didn't know about (somehow, mysteriously) so the captain decides to go there. You know what happens next.

They land on the planet, walk around and touch a bunch of plants and go in the caves where Elizabeth Shaw was last seen in (the main character from Prometheus). This was the planet where David (our evil ai, also played by Fassbender) was last at in Prometheus. So some crew members get infected by the xenomorph toxin (virus like subsatance) and they get sick. Then the xenomorphs rip them apart and all hell breaks loose.

They're fighting a xenomorph at night when all of a sudden a guy in a hood (with long locks) shoots a flare out into the sky. The xenomorph gets scared and runs off. It turns out to be David. What happens next is the best part of the entire movie. David meets Walter. We find out that David has been genetically engineering xenomorphs and that when he came to the planet he killed all the primitive humans that lived there with the xenomorph virus. Back then it was in an almost infant-like state so it didn't create xenomorphs, we just see a scene of it just killing the inhabitants of this human-like planet.

There's some homoerotic stuff between David and Walter. David kisses Walter at some point. He shows him how to play the recorder and he says,"I'll do the fingering". Kind of funny that they gave an android some sexual elements. There's also a scene where David is trying to kill the female lead role and she asks,"what are you going to do with me"? And he responds,"the same thing I did with her". And then he pushes her on the table, gets on top of her, and then starts to kiss her. What was that implying?

There's a fight between David and Walter. We see Walter about to smash David's head in with a rock but then it ends scene. We don't see Walter kill him so its up to the viewer to make of it what they will. Walter ends up back on the ship with the remaining living crew and they find out an alien infected a guy who got attacked by a face attaching xenomorph. He didn't die but his face was badly burned. Somehow this strain of xenomorph still infects you even if it doesn't kill you. So they have to kill this xenomorph and it turns out to be the standard alien we all know and love. Tall, black, sharp pointy tail, second mouth to feed with. All that jazz.

Our last two living crew members end up shutting it down by releasing it into space. They actually shoot out a giant truck with a spear-like front end and it ends up cutting the xenomorph right through its body, ending the madness.

Then Walter puts the pilot (Tennessee, played by a guy who's shown up in more comedies than science fiction films) into cryostasis. Its the lead actress's turn to go into cryostasis. She's right about to be put to sleep but then at the last second she realizes that something is wrong. What did she realize? Still not too sure about that one. She starts panicking super hard and starts pounding on the class of her chamber. But its too late. Walter puts her to sleep, and then goes to the human embryo compartment. He takes out four xenomorph embryos from his mouth and puts them in there. Good luck with your colonization humans.

The main question is the obvious one. When David was sent out by Weyland corp did he have an objective or did he simply become a crazed android that wanted to evolve the universe and create perfect beings because humans were not that? Another thing to point out that's never been explored before in an Alien movie is that when a xenomorph attacked a crew member David talked to it and said,"calm down, breathe". The xenomorph actually stopped and breathed, talking in its language. Then David said something like,"once you get them to trust you they'll do anything you want for the rest of their life". Boy, so these things can be trained like pets? Mommy, I want one too!

Quite a wild ride of a movie. Everybody pretty much dies and its implied that all 2000 people (in cryostatis) aboard the ship are probably going to get killed by those xenomorph embryos. Who knows, maybe in a another Alien movie we'll see Walter or some other android controlling them like his pets. Like a summoner character in a video game. That would be fun. The blood frenzy was real in this movie too. You should definitely check it out if you haven't seen it!

Overwatch anniversary! (soon)

Hello ladies and gents of the Internet world who read my blog. Its been a good minute since I wrote about Overwatch but now is definitely the time to get back into talking about it. In three days there will be an anniversary event for the game. It's hard to believe the game's been out a year already but time flies when you're having fun so in that sense its understandable.

For a few months I thought that if I wanted to get farther in music I had to put down the mouse and keyboard (gaming in general, even stopped playing smash competitively) but recently I realized that I shouldn't just go cold turkey and stop playing for too long. Gaming provides me fun, excitement, confidence, and stress relief that is different from playing music. Its kind of funny to say this but I need gaming in order to be happier. I'm glad I figured this out sooner rather than later because without gaming I'm a much different person. I take things too seriously sometimes. Get stressed more easily. Things like that. Anyways that's only a portion of what I wanted to talk about here.

Let's talk Overwatch. Last time I posted about it I wrote a piece about the newest hero to the roster, Orisa. Since her release I haven't exactly been able to figure out if she's even a part of the competitive meta. I see her a lot but I also don't see her a lot. She's a great hero for sure but she isn't exactly new or groundbreaking. Needless to say she's still a great tank character. The fact that she can shoot and put up barriers makes her like a D.Va/Rein combination with Zarya's gravaton projectile, the one where she can push you into the gravitational force of the projectile attack.

My actual gameplay experience this competitive season has been pretty hit or miss. Mostly miss. In one day my sr dropped by like 300 points and there's probably noway for me to climb back up for the remainder of this season. However, I've gained something in the time that I was away from gaming. When I returned (the prodigal son has returned!) I realized that sr and rank doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is playing your best and getting better at the game, thus honing your skills and having fun. And in that aspect I've succeeded beyond my wildest imaginations. I'm super good at the game now despite not playing for a while. Something just clicked. Playing other games maybe? I've been playing Quake Champions beta...

I'm at an all time high skill cap for Overwatch and this makes me really happy. Being good is different for various gamers but being good for me (as a healers main) means not dying very often, escaping death traps easily and often, healing the majority of the time, and securing kills, sometimes a lot of them. I've been able to do these things pretty well for my skill level (silver-gold rank). I do plan on getting better and trying to reach platinum eventually.

Last thing I want to discuss is that they teased some new skins for the anniversary event. Check them out on the top of the page. These skins look pretty wacky to me but they are much different from whats already in the game so we gotta give Blizzard credit where is due. Nice job...(slow clap)

So yeah...Overwatch is a year old and there's a lot of stuff planned for next year. There's going to be three more arena (3v3 mode). Poppa Jeff (Jeff Kaplan, Director of Overwatch) has spoken out and said that the first year was all about adding new stuff. Year two will be about supplementing and improving upon what's already there.

Orlando's advice to Blizzard for Overwatch-Just make a summoner hero already!

Phillip K Dick's The Cosmic Puppets

The Cosmic Puppets was the perfect book to get me back into reading science fiction novels. The story itself is very short (130 pages), the writing is simple, and the theme and plot is also quite simplistic. Let's get into it.

The book starts off with a man going on vacation with his wife to his childhood hometown. Once he gets there he realizes that everything is wrong-all wrong. The streets are all named different names, the people are all different, and nobody can remember anything that Ted Barton (the man) remembers about the whole town. He ends up finding out that he actually died in the record books as a kid. So, he ends up going on a mystery tour (magical, in a way) to figure out everything.

He ends up learning all kinds of stuff. There's a kid who can build golems that can get in and out of the barrier between towns. There's these spirits called Wanderers that can float through objects and they're actually people from the old real town. The book has a strong thematic ending that basically resolves with two gods fighting among themselves and the town is just a small picture in a giant universe. Its kind of a metaphysical kind of horror but the beings themselves gives it a science fiction element because they live as part of the Earth as well as space nebula too. 

It's short, simplistic, and straight to the point. Its not the best thing I've read from Dick but it was cool to read one of his short early works. To think this book had horror, fantasy, and science fiction elements and it was written in 1957! That's like way cool man. Although I'm not the biggest fan of horror in science fiction I do think the science fiction element overpowers the horror and it comes out pretty good.

Check this out if you want something short and fun

New Track-Overworld Theme

So I created another new track recently. I think I did a much better on the drum programming with this one and I even did like 7 guitar tracks! Craziness. It sounds a lot better than I thought it would be. My next step is to get better with my drum programming to get more varied beats and eventually fills. This soundclip was created with a video game in mind. Think of like walking around in an rpg (science fiction rpg like Xenoblade Chronicles X) and you're walking around the town or you're just getting into a fight, maybe even a boss fight? I don't know. Enjoy, let me know what you think on Soundcloud or even here.

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/overworld-theme

New Track

I uploaded a new track to my Soundcloud. Its my first track with drums, although its just a repeated drum loop. Its taking me a while to learn Ableton but once I get the hang of it I'll be able to compose great stuff on my own. The track is called chug it! and its a metal groove. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/chug-it