Birthday and Wii U

     Today is my birthday. I am 26, I was born on September 25th 1989. I had a pretty good day today and am looking forward to my three day weekend.
     In addition, today I finally bought my Wii U. I was trying to buy one used at Gamestop and try to get a deal but the closest Gamestop we went to was shooting a commercial.....so they weren't open to the public. So my brother and I went to next closest Gamestop to us, which was this one at the Northridge mall. It was all good but they didn't have a used Wii U there or the used Wii U bundle that Gamestop is advertising online. It was annoying but I decided if I was going to get it today that I would have to cough up the extra, like 40 bucks to just get it brand new. So I ended up getting the brand new bundle. The guy behind the counter, a young Hispanic guy that seemed really effeminate, asked me if I wanted to get the Super Mario 3D Land bundle or the Mario Kart 8 bundle. I'm not much of a Mario player but I felt like Mario Kart 8 is probably the more fun game that I could enjoy more with my friends, so I ended up going with that one. It set me back quite a bit, it was about $330, pretty pricey but still cheaper than the Xbox1 and the PS4 bundles by almost a 100 bucks. I ended up not having enough cash to get Smash as well but my brother decided to just buy me Smash! He's the greatest older brother in the world, haha. He got it brand new unfortunately because they didn't have it used. I was super excited but the car ride home was a long one as I waited in anticipation for what lies before me.
     When we got home I opened everything up and we figured out what plugs into what within seconds and pretty soon we had the console turned on and configuring. This was the most annoying part, the nonstop updates for everything! They took about 2 to 3 hours, I kind of lost track of time because I took a nap while it was updating. At some point my brother woke me up to say that it was done. But then when I popped in Super Smash Brothers 4 it had to update again to play online. It was terrible! But once I got that out of the way I started playing and enjoying the console.
     Once I started playing Smash on my very own Wii U I realized that this is how I'm going to get better at the game, especially with my Smash Gamecube controller. Today I was played on the Wii U Gamepad but I think its rubbish, I only used it because my Gamecube Adapter for the Wii U didn't come through Amazon yet. I could've played on my 3DS, I'll probably try it out later today when I wake up. My friends are going to come over today and they're going to play using their 3DS's so they'll see what its like using a 3DS for Smash on the Wii U. I did it once for my first tournament and I wouldn't recommend it just because the 3DS directional movement sticks are kind of wonky. Anyways, Smash was amazing. I still have to unlock a ton of the characters and I'm missing key stages like Smashville. I played a bit of team battles and found it way too laggy to play at all. After that I tried 1v1 games and it seemed fine, although there was some slight lag, very slight. It's great to have Smash on a console with great graphics, I was all like,"Sick graphics bro!" when I saw what it looked like on our big TV.
     After that I took a break. Then I played Mario Kart 8. A super fun game, I would say its the most fun racing game I've ever played. I really don't like racing games because I'm terrible at turning at high speeds and breaking but this game is just a great racing game, way better than Gran Torismo or Forza. I can tell this game is going to be fun to play with my friends.
     Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase and I can see myself spending a lot of time playing Smash and Mario Kart. I won't stop working on my guitar playing though, and it will be hard organizing my time and devoting equal amounts of time to music and gaming. I would consider myself a console gamer now as well as a pc gamer. I do it all. Before, I really hardly ever played my Xbox360 or PS3, but I will definitely be playing this next-gen console. On top of all this my little brother sent me my copy of Super Smash Brothers Melee, something we can play on my friends' Gamecube. My birthday weekend will be fun playing games and guitar. Also, we'll probably have a family dinner at a fancy restaurant. I'm looking forward to all of that. After I play more and learn more about the Wii U, I'll probably do some kind of console review and game reviews. Have a good weekend. I know I will. 

My first Smash tournament

     What can I say about my first Super Smash Brothers 4 tournament? It was terrific and I'm definitely going to attend more. The tourney was held at this place called Fire & Dice (F&D), a place here in the valley that does gaming nights like Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and rpg board games. When I went inside the place I noticed that they barely had anything for sale so this is more of a hangout and tournament place more so than a real hobby shop. A real hobby shop is like Game Ogre out here in the Valley. The catch is that to enter for these tournaments its usually about $10 per person so they are making money by just having people show up. The more people the better. Apparently if you win these tournaments you also win like a certain percentage of the pot, something like that.
     I left my house super early and showed up when they first opened the place at 11 am. The only other people there was the guy running the place and a kid with long hair. We started playing some friendlies and I schooled him as Fox against his Sheik. It was fun. Later on more people showed up. A young girl showed up and her Sonic was really good. I played her twice and I just couldn't beat her Sonic, and in our second game she barely beat me as Yoshi. Even later CharlieDaKing showed up and schooled us. His Fox is really good and he's made a name for himself as young player but I saw him get whooped later by the guy who won the tournament, in a Marth (someone who goes under the name Nico) vs Fox battle. That guy Nico actually won the tournament but I didn't see finals because I had to head home for work. I was a little worried that this was going to be a kiddies event but later on more people my age showed up, although me and the owner were still the oldest people that showed up that day! My friend that told me about the place and tourneys was there and it was cool connecting with him, chatting, and getting in a bunch of friendlies matches before the actual tournament play. At some point I got some lunch at Subway. I talked to Zenyou there too, he's a super high tier Mario player, but he was there to hang out rather than compete. If he did compete I think he would destroyed everyone there. There wasn't a lot of people that showed up to this tournament because the night before there was a big tournament and a lot of big players were there, even Larry, this really good Fox player that's ranked pretty high in SoCal. I was told that on Thursdays they usually have like 50 people show up, which is an insane amount because I found the place to be small. SoCal has some of the best Smash players in California, I would say maybe even in the United States, check out the SoCal Smash page on Facebook to learn more about who's on the roster for best players in our area. Anyways, let's talk about the tournament.
     My first match I got placed against a pretty high ranking player (I would say) named Pluto. He was a Captain Falcon main and he just annihilated me. In one of the matches we played I ended up killing myself twice, which was unfortunate. The reason was because I chose Lyatt Station as our stage, I didn't know the stage turns around a little bit, which fucked me up twice. I was a little mad losing like that but let's face it, I didn't stand a chance against this guy on any stage. He read every move I made like a book. He ended up getting 7th place, which isn't too high but isn't bad either. He was really good, especially picking Captain Falcon, a character I don't think of as high tier. I consider him middle tier at best. But I may be wrong.
     My second match was against a Lucario player that went by the name Champion of Light. I think it was his first tournament too. I was weirded out that he played Lucario, a character I consider low tier. As a result, I underestimated him and lost the first round. In the second match I came back with a vengeance and completely wrecked him. Part of why he lost was because he kept charging up energy balls and throwing them at me full blast, and I kept using Fox's reflector against him, hitting him with his own attack. It was pretty awesome. I was really happy that I was able to read him (the reads!) when he did that. When it came to the third match I ended up beating him again just playing my regular Fox style that I would play against my friends. I was really happy that I won and it gave me a lot of confidence for my next and sadly final match.
     My third and last match was against a Wario but I don't think he mained Wario, I think he was just playing him against me to go easy on me. Both of the two matches we played were really close and I was a little upset that I lost, especially because it was super close in the second match. One thing I noticed was that he kept using the motorbike against me, which got kind of annoying. I think it rattled me a bit and got me off guard. Another thing about this whole thing was that I had been there since 11 am and it was around 2 30 pm now so I was really tired, especially because I had gone to sleep at 3 am the night before, and woke up at 9 am just to attend this thing. The F&D facebook page said that signups for the tourney was 11 am so I thought I had to be there but apparently this wasn't the case. Anyways, I think being tired had a factor in losing against that guy's Wario because it was a matchup that I could've won.
     So after that I was out of the tournament. After you lose two matches you're out, which is awesome because usually you'd think if you lost only one match you'd be out. I was happy that I won against someone and that gave me some confidence in my skills. Losing just makes me want to play more, attend more tourneys, and get better at the game in general, not just as a Fox player, but playing other characters as well. Before I headed to the bus stop to head home and get ready for work, I saw the semifinals match. It was CharlieDaKing versus Nico in a Fox vs Marth game. Charlie just got annihilated. There were many tippers in that game. It was crazy seeing someone I thought was super good just get taken down with ease by this random guy that I didn't talk to. The level of skill these guys had was just insane. That Marth player went on to win the tourney.
     Overall it was an amazing experience. I just started playing Smash 4 about five months ago and attending this tournament was so much fun. I enjoyed meeting other people and talking to them. Friendlies was great too because I got some advice by players better than me. In terms of actual tournament game play I think I have to play a lot more and get in a lot more practice to compete at these guys' level. I'm interested in also attending tournaments at other places to get better. One guy told me I'm not going to get better at Smash playing online or against my friends. That the only way to get better was competing in tournaments. He's probably right. I plan on attending more. I look forward to more tourneys in the future.  

Smash Tourney tommorrow

     Planning on going to a Smash 4 tourney tomorrow at this place called Fire and Dice. There's this super good Fox player named Larry that plays there a lot and I'm hoping to see him in action. He'll probably win the tournament if he shows up, apparently he beats the crap outta everyone when he shows up. This is just a local tournament so I'm not expecting complete Smash 4 gods here, just people who like to play for fun, and are competitive with it. Basically people much like myself, although I'll probably be one of the weaker players as I haven't practiced for a while except for the last couple days because of work and guitar practice. I've been putting in a lot of time into my guitar playing lately. I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't focus so much of my guitar time and energy into learning how to play jazz, maybe I can never master jazz unless I know music theory and go to college (something my guitar teacher told me today). I sort of disagree with him because tons of jazz musicians didn't go to college for music, and I'm sure not all of them knew or understood music theory. I have a friend that first told me about these tournaments and I've been meaning to go for like weeks but I've missed them because I've just been lazy. Now, finally, I have everything ready! I have my bus fare and lunch money ready this time, and I'm going to set my alarm for 11 am, time to get up, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, and hop on the bus. The tournament starts at 1. I probably won't even make it past the first opponent but I'm pretty confident in my abilities as a Fox player. Looking forward to meeting new people and having good games. I'll talk about what its like going to a video game tournament in the next post.

Smash 4 Review

     Let me say first of all that this is going to be a biased review. I've always held the Smash games in high regard since I was a little kid. It all started when I began playing Smash64 at a tender age, and then when I got older in high school I was a hardcore Melee player, challenging myself against my younger brother and best friends. I was a Fox main of course, and I still am to this day in Smash 4. Anyways, let's get started with the review.
     Let's talk about what's great about this game first. First, the characters are all here in this game. Everyone from the classic games are here plus some new characters. The ones that stand out in this game are Megaman, Sonic, Ryu, Shulk (my first main character) and Zero Suit Samus because they weren't in previous Smash games. Sheik, Diddy Kong, Luigi, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Fox all stand out because they seem super high-tier, at least in my opinion. The coolest thing about this game is that the characters are all from our favorite well known games. Who would have thought that we would get Ryu from Streetfighter in a Smash game, that's crazy! Which leads me to my second point.
     Smash 4 is getting updates, patches, and new characters added through the Nintendo eShop. Every once in a while the game is patched in some ways, characters get nerfed, and other characters get buffed, changing the game every few months. Although players were dominating tournaments with Diddy Kong not too long, he has been nerfed and become weaker, albeit only a little bit weaker. He's still a beast. Because of the patches and tweaks to the game certain characters become more viable to use in online gameplay and tournaments if you're more of a pro player. Nintendo is doing the fans to this game justice by even giving us the chance to submit our favorite picks for characters that can be added to the game, characters that aren't even necessarily from Nintendo games-people like Shantae, Shovel Knight, and Banjo Kazooie. Thanks Nintendo!
     Now, let's discuss the gameplay mechanics. This can go either way for people. Personally I think the meta and mechanics of this game are solid but Nintendo feels the need to change it every now and then. One thing that is hard to figure out as a beginner is the hit boxes and when characters are invincible for semi-seconds, like when they are rolling around and getting up from the ledge. Honestly I think rolling in this game is terrible and gets old, especially when you're fighting fast characters (Sonic) online in For Glory (ranked matches). A lot of people actually hate how effective rolling is in this game. But at the same time if you roll around too much, a smart player can figure out where you're going to be and punish it, so it goes both ways.
     Now for the bad. The only bad thing I can say about this game and the Nintendo network in general is that it lags-alot. I have great high speed internet through my parents' AT&T U-Verse and I've never had any problems playing any games online on my pc, like ever. But for some reason whenever I play For Glory on my 3DS I always inevitably run into some kind of lag. Sometimes its just a slight lag that I can deal with. Other times the lag is so bad that the game pauses for like 2 minutes straight before returning, or just disconnecting everyone in the game. This is something I think Nintendo has to work on because I've seen people stream Smash 4 on the Wii-U and they've had the same problems. The best way to play Smash has always been to play local in the same room, seems like that's the only way to play this game without having lag. I can't even imagine doing tournaments online in this game because of lag. That's really the only thing I can say that I dislike about this game. Other than that I dislike the 3DS version because the c-stick and directional movement buttons start to get wonky after only 6 months of use in my case.
     Lastly, I'm going to pick up a Wii-U and try this game out on there instead, hopefully with better results. I've become a pretty good Fox player but I only play him and want to learn how to use other characters, mainly Shulk and Zero Suit Samus. I give this game a prodigious 9.5 out of 10. This is one of the greatest games of our time. I can compare it Melee, Final Fantasy 7, and Starcraft II in terms of how great it is, at least to me. It's really that great folks. Pick this game up anyway you can, there's no telling how big or how long this game will last. The community is pretty big online and I'm in some facebook groups that post about tournaments happening every week in SoCal. It's a great community and I'm glad to be apart of it.

A Ditty (Kong)

     Just wanted to do a short little post for fun before I head to bed. I've been having a great work week so far and life has been good. Been waking up earlier, practicing more guitar(jazz!), learning more computer stuff, and listening to lots of great jazz music via YouTube. I haven't been gaming as much, perhaps that's for the best. I want to start playing League of Legends though, I'm inspired to play it because one of my friends loves the game and told me its a great game and that it's even better than Dota 2. I've played League and Dota and I've had a more enjoyable time playing Dota because I feel like the characters are more over powered, which is easier for beginners like me to operate with. But maybe I will like League if I give it another shot. I've only played one character in the game, this cute little guy who rides on top of this white winter creature. He's a pretty cool character, I believe he's a jungler. Anyways, I'll try him out some more when I get the chance. For a while I was really into playing mobas because of Heroes of the Storm, so I was playing League and Dota a lot, unsure which to devote my time to so I tried both.
     In addition, my birthday is coming up next week and I'm planning on getting the Wii-U for myself, mainly just for Super Smash Brothers 4 online. I figure if I'm going to be great at Smash and start going to the locals every chance I get then I've got to play the Wii-U version, and ditch the 3DS version. I've started to dislike the 3DS version because my c-stick and directional buttons in general on my 3DS are kind of worn out now even though I've only owned it for about 6 months, which is wiggity wiggity wack! But at the same time I've played it a lot and played Smash 4 with it. These handheld systems are kind of built to be re-bought in a way. The fact that they remade a new 3DS for bigger hands and an enhanced 3D screen is proof of that. I'm looking forward to getting the Wii-U and Smash 4, and also going out for dinner with my family-maybe something like Gyu-Kaku or Flemings, that would be bomb. It's funny how I didn't even like Nintendo before I got the 3DS and Smash 4. Now I have a Fox shirt and I just ordered a cute Kirby shirt, haha. Hope everyone is having a good work week so far. As for playing my friends in Smash 4 with the Wii-U once I get it, its on like Donkey Kong!

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Review

     I talked briefly about this game in a short post about a year ago but here I'll give it a full glorified review. Call of Duty Advanced Warfare is a military science fiction first person shooter developed by Activision (or Blizzard Activision now). Sledehammer games developed the PC, Xbox1, and Playstation4 versions, while High Moon Studios developed the Xbox360 and Playstation3 versions, and Raven Software developed the game's multiplayer and exo-zombies mode. That's a lot of development! The game came out in November 2014. I got the game as a Christmas present from my older brother. Good gift brah. When the game came out it was sort of loved and hated by the gaming community. Some players loved the great single player campaign, the science fiction laser guns(lazors!), and the great graphics. It was considered a commercial success in gaming. Let's talk about the single player campaign first.
     Sledgehammer employed Kevin Spacey and Troy Baker in lead roles and they really make the single player campaign great. The story follows Jack Mitchell of the United States Marine Corp as he joins Atlas, a private military corporation that sells its services to the highest bidder. Eventually he finds out that what he's getting into is a truly evil corporation lead by Kevin Spacey, and he ends up teaming up with some other peeps to take down the entire corporation. I can say right now that there isn't anything unique or surprising in the entire campaign, but there is some great voice acting by Kevin Spacey especially that makes it feel more like a movie rather than just a video gaming, giving the Call of Duty series that extra edge it desperately needs in a single player campaign. There are a couple things I remember even after playing it a year ago.
     There was this one level where you get to burst inside of Atlas using one of their own sort of Gundam type soldier machines, a giant hulking machine with tons of guns and grenades. Another level that was memorable was when you get to go to outer space to destroy this Atlas satellite. The funny thing is that you get to shoot people with guns in outer space. Don't even ask me how that works. And lastly, there is a great level near the end where you're fighting Atlas baddies in the middle of Atlas' little town-square, and there are tons of those Gundam type machines shooting at you and you have to take out all of them! That's one of them in the picture. So there were some memorable moments in the campaign. It's about as long as every other Call of Duty campaign so you can beat it pretty quickly. Now, let's talk about how this game changed the Call of Duty system.
     This game is unlike every other Call of Duty. It's harder to camp in this game because of the exo-suit and exo-abilities. The exo-suit is like this futuristic suit that soldiers from Atlas wear that improves pretty much everything from jump, speed, and strength. Maybe in 2054 we really would have something like it. For one thing the exo-suit can make you jump up super high into the air, Halo style. You get a double jump as well as a little hover in the air as your jumping. Not only that but you also get exo-abilities in this game too. One allows you to cloak for short time, another gives you a hover in the air, and another one gives you super speed. Because of this stuff you can't really say that this is just another Call of Duty game. It's a Call of Duty game with different mechanics and play style. You can literally cover the entire maps in seconds in this game so it's a much different game when it comes to general Call of Duty standards like camping, spawn killing, and quick scoping. It's harder to do all three of those things in this game because players can really get in your face and just wreck you mercilessly. It's pretty cool how they changed the mechanics in a Call of Duty game but it doesn't 'feel' like Call of Duty if you get what I mean, it feels more like Halo or more appropriately Titanfall. This is good because it gives something new to the community but I don't think the community really took to this game, especially on PC. The PC version is the one that I own. Speaking of which.
      The PC version of this game had many bugs and glitches for me. And it turned out that I wasn't the only one with these problems because the forums had all kinds of questions from other gamers saying they were having problems. I was eventually able to fix most of the bugs and constant crashing by tweaking some options and stuff but it was still annoying to deal with-my computer was fairly new at the time and I had a fairly good graphics card. Another thing that went bad with this game is that the PC version is completely dead online. Nobody plays the game anymore. The only game mode you will be able to find games in is Team Deathmatch. Kind of sad because this is actually a fun game. In addition, the game is full of hackers, at least on PC. I got into a game the other day where a guy was going 99 and 2, and everytime I respawned I would die instantly somehow. So not only is it a dead game but its got some hackers, also I believe that this game doesn't use dedicated servers. With that being said, I never got to enjoy the full potential of this game and try out all the game modes. I didn't even buy the exo-zombies dlc because I figured what's the point when there will be nobody to play with. But it ain't all bad.
      Team Deathmatch is still fun in this game, no doubt. It's fun using the science fiction guns like the lasers and the gravity gun. Let me also mention that this game is also an e-Sport, but I don't know how popular it is, if at all. The single player campaign was one of the best in any Call of Duty and perhaps in any first person shooter I've played. Kevin Spacey's acting really made the story enjoyable, although the story is sort of droll. I have friends on steam that still play the game and when they are on I usually join their games. This game is a big change for the Call of Duty series but I don't see them making more games like Advanced Warfare, it's too much of a change from the camp, spawn killing, and quick scoping of the usual Call of Duty player base. Because I had so many problems with this game I give it a 7 out of 10. It would be an 8 but the PC version is dead and I have nobody to play with. Rip Advanced Warfare.
    

Heroes of the Storm Review

     Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA (massive online battle arena) game released by Blizzard (more like Blizzard Activision now) 2014. I participated in the beta, it was one of the first betas that I've ever participated in, but surely won't be the last. In Heroes players duke it out for glory on a battlefield, complete with Blizzards roster of characters from their triple A titles: Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft. Sounds like a dream come true am I right? Also, this game is a PC exclusive, which is even better for all the PC gamers and PC master-race guys out there. "I'm going to give you the good, the bad, and the nerdy." (Blacknerdcomedy-youtube personality)
     First, the good! This game is fun and fast paced. You don't have to worry about games running 45 minutes to over an hour like how they do in League of Legends, Dota 2, and even Smite. In fact, most Heroes games run anywhere from 15 minutes (or less) to 30 minutes (or more), pretty reasonable for most people. I always like how I can get in a couple games a day and sometimes one game will only be like 10 minutes because we just zerged the enemies base. I used to play a lot of matches but now I just play about 4 or 5 games a day. I've got over 400 games played in my Heroes career. Not too shabby.
     Also, the game is super fun. You don't get to do ranked matches until you get to level 40, which will take a lot of games and experience points, even if you are using the experience boosters, which are bought with real money. So for the beginning into this game you will just be playing Quickmatch games that aren't ranked-seems boring but while you play the game you get the chance to complete quests, which earn you in game gold that can be used to buy more characters. Also, you can't do ranked matches until you own at least 10 characters. It's a little crappy how they do that to new players but its not hard to get.
     In addition, the game just seems to fit like a glove-once you start playing you immediately understand how to play and what's going on. There isn't some steep learning curve like in League because you don't know what certain items do and what not. There aren't even any items in this game! Your experience is also shared as a whole team rather than just your own. Because of this many gamers have accused Heroes to be a game for casuals, and not a competitive game-despite the fact that Blizzard had a competitive E-sports team playing vs each-other at BlizzCon when it was still in beta.
     Also, the game is constantly changing and evolving with every patch, hero, and map patches. There are new characters still coming to Heroes every once in a while as well as new maps, which bring new objective based gameplay. That is an important thing that I just mentioned because this game is team based as well as objective based. You can beat the other team while not focusing objectives but it will be much easier if you follow the rules of the map and play it accordingly. For instance, there's one map where you have to control shrines and once you control both of them you can go to the center of the map and transform into a powerful dragonknight, and destroy the enemy and their towers easily. This game has towers just like in League and Dota, but the towers are much less powerful and play a lesser role. In another map you have to kill these skeletons in these mines and collect skulls from them, and the skulls you collect add up to create a certain strength grave golum that attacks the other team's towers. My personal favorite map is the latest one they added, a Diablo themed map where you have to kill 30 minions and this giant demon attacks your enemies and their base. He's super big and very powerful.
     And now for the bad. There's only like maybe 5 or 6 maps in this game at the moment. They need to add more to give more variety to the players. Then there's the problem once you start doing ranked matches. Once you start doing ranked matches you realize that in every game everybody picks the same characters because they're just generally the best characters in the game. You will pretty much see Kael'Thas in pretty much every game just because of how good he is. Other characters from the roster you will see alot are Jaina, Lili, Kharazim, Leouric, and Valla. After some point you get annoyed at seeing these guys in every game you play. But at the same point people play them because they are high tier characters and perhaps need to be balanced but at the moment are sort of op, especially Kael'Thas. In addition, there are some characters that are less known but that are such a big part of the Blizzard game stories and I wish they would be in this game too. For instance, it would be cool to have the hero class types from Diablo 2 in Heroes like the amazon and the necromancer. Also, it would be cool to have Garrosh Hellscream and King Valerian from World of Warcraft in there as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they did add these sort of heroes in the game down the road. One last thing I have to mention is that sometimes the people you get ranked with in ranked matches are toxic. Sometimes they will troll, stop playing just to spite the team, insult you, and die on purpose. It's not that bad because you can only talk to people on your team only. If you could talk to the enemy team in this game all hell would break loose and it would be a hostile environment (fucking hostile, like the song by Pantera). Also, another thing that could make or break a game is the in game cash shop, where you can buy characters, skins, mounts, and booster packs for more experience. You can buy every character in the game but they are not cheap! It might be free to play but you'll have to work hard in order to unlock stuff without spending cash. Some things like skins and mounts can only be bought with cash.
     Now for the nerdy (touches glasses frame). This game pretty much is a Blizzard fan's dream come true. It was my favorite game for almost a year when it came out in beta. Once it came out for general release afterwards, I found it to be a little stagnant until they started doing updates and adding more characters. The main characters I loved playing were Nova (because she's a cute waifu, but also because she's from Starcraft), Johanna (another waifu with a cool Skrillex haircut), Murky (because he's a cute little guy from Warcraft), Sylvannas (because she was OP when she first came out), and Illidan (demon hunter from Warcraft). These characters aren't necessarily the best or anything but they are super cool and have totally unique abilities that only they can do. What I love about Nova is that she has a cloaking system that activates after she's out of combat for a while, perfect for the sneaky person. Illidan is cool because he basically dashes across the battlefield, using evasion to shield himself from taking damage as he's chasing you down lanes. And Sylvannas just wrecks towers easily, kills creeps like a boss, and takes out camps solo. That's her in the picture, she's a bad-ass undead archer. Basically anyway you want to play, this game has it. This is the Super Smash Brothers of MOBA's. And the best part? It's completely free. Try it out for yourself. This game gets a whooping 9 out of 10. It doesn't reinvent the genre, rather it makes changes to it, giving us a great form of entertainment, engaging team battles, competitive ranked play, and a brand new e-Sport.