Its nerf or nothin'

So yesterday Overwatch got a major patch update that nerfed McCree and Widowmaker, thus making some other characters stronger in a way. It's like a chain reaction. It's great knowing now that Zenyatta can't get one shot body shotted by Widowmaker. I feel like I can really start playing Zenyatta more and not be afraid of that. What a pain that was!

Okay, so check out this info here to understand everything about the patch. The post important thing to note is that McCree's alt-fire damage has been decreased from 70 to 45. This means that he can still annihilate the lighter/medium light heroes in seconds but now he can't melt through tanks like a knife on hot butter anymore. Good news everyone! I really like McCree because I always call him that Clint Eastwood motherfucker but the fact of the matter is that he's one of the best characters in the game still. Every competitive Overwatch team has a McCree it seems. The same could be said of Widowmaker.

And for the changes to Widowmaker I think I'll just quote the pcgamer article. "Widowmaker has also been changed: Her sniper fire base damage has been reduced from 15 to 12, the headshot multiplier bumped from 2 to 2.5, her ultimate charge cost has been increased by ten percent, and players will no longer be able to re-enter sniping mode until after the “exit sniping mode” animation has completed."

Yes, yes, this is a real nerf. But is it something that changes her drastically or the way she will be played? I think not. She will still be used in a lot of the games we play and she can still be an unstoppable killing machine. This is my opinion but its also from personal experience playing the game since the patch. She still feels strong to me but I don't feel like she's overpowered if that makes sense. Basically she was nerfed but people with good aim will still dominate the battlefield. 

So what does this all mean? It means a lot considering the game just came out and no new content has come to the players. Does it mean there's going to be less Widowmakers and McCree's? I don't think so. After playing just a bit since the patch I noticed there were still McCree's and Widowmakers in pretty much every game. I think competitive Overwatch teams are still all going to have them aboard too. However, the patch was much needed and gives us, the player base something to work with as we wait for the ranked mode later this month as well as the new maps and more heroes. This is a great addition to the game and it's good to see that Blizzard is keeping up the good work by keeping the game as balanced as they can. People will always complain that certain heroes are overpowered or too weak but ultimately its the company that decides what is what. Hopefully Blizzard continues to listen to the players and make wise decisions with their balancing. So far I like what I see.

That's it for now. If you want to play with me on Overwatch my battlenet id is Ogspace#1967. Stay happy, and stay gaming.

A call for peace

Lately there has been a lot of shootings and mass deaths. The Orlando shooting at the club was horrific. I'm not usually a political guy at all but on the gun issue I must say that we have to put a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. Nobody should have weapons that can kill fifty people in minutes and injure another fifty. Those among the injured might even die too. This story is pretty much all that everybody is talking about. Even the announcers at E3 talked about it a bit as awkward as that sounds. I think the only logical way to help prevent these senseless acts of rage is to ban assault weapons. If the guy only had a pistol there's no way he would've been able to kill that many people that fast.

So I think they should ban assault weapons. In addition, they should make it harder to gain access to guns-any guns. There should be a more throughout medical evaluation and mental history for all gun owners. Lastly, there should be rigorous gun training classes that are mandatory for all gun owners. Now, I'm no gun expert and I've never even shot a gun before so I'm not sure if they already have these things in motion. But if they do, it seems like they aren't doing a good job of it at all.

I classify myself as a progressive democrat with some socialist leanings so you can sort of expect where I lean on the gun issue and how I feel about the NRA gun lobbyists. They're horrible. They have all this money and power over our government and every time something fucked up like this happens we all talk about banning assault weapons and nothing ever happens. That's because of the NRA gun lobbyists and Republicans but also the Democrats that are protecting the NRA and gun lobbyists too. They're all to blame because they're not doing anything of substantial change. They bring awareness to the issue and we mourn the victims as a national ritual for a short while but ultimately nothing substantial is ever done. This makes me very sad as an American because it shows that our government is run, bought, and sold by these gun tooting NRA lobbyists and they're not showing proper respect for our dead by making it harder for these things to happen again in the future.

I obviously have my own ideas about guns. For me, in a perfect America, there would be no need for guns, either by civilians nor the police. That way nobody could get killed by bullets and stupidity. Basically I want America to be like Japan or Canada-where most semi-automatic weapons are banned. Obviously America isn't that kind of country because mass shootings happen here on the daily and people are fighting for their right to bear arms because of the Second Amendment. Although I don't think we should change the constitution, I do think there are times when the laws need to adjusted to fit the situation as things change over time. This is why I think they need to ban assault weapons. It's like fucking Call of Duty out here. Obviously that's an overstatement but today we live in a world where you can get killed anywhere doing anything. Which leads me to my next point.

The Orlando story will capture the media's attention for weeks, as it should. But on June 12 Christina Grimmie was gunned down when she was signing autographs after a concert. She was a big gamer that I used to see at Fire and Dice but she was also a talented singer that was a finalist on The Voice. What happened to her was tragic. Although I never talked to her or even played her in bracket there's an empty feeling knowing that she's gone. If you're a famous person things like this can happen to you. It's that kind of world we live in. It's a scary place. She will be missed and we will remember her as a whole in the SoCal Smash 4 community.

To wrap things up the greatest thing we can do is come together as a nation, continents, and even world and give peace a chance. It's easier said than done but blaming guns isn't going to fix this issue. The government isn't going to fix this issue either-otherwise they would've done it a long time ago. People and only people are the bringers of peace. Peace is salvation. Give peace a chance.

Lok'tar ogar

So I saw the new Warcraft movie w/ my brother yesterday. And what a great movie it was. The reviews online are saying that its okay or that its bad but I think its pretty good. I would go so far as to say this is the best video game movie ever made. Better than any of those cult fan made films and definitely better than any other gaming stuff Hollywood has produced. Blizzard has outdone themselves with a true masterpiece. That might be going too far calling it a masterpiece but I do think the movie was above average. On a scale of 1-10 I would give it an 8.5, pretty high by my standards. Let's talk about what could've been better, and what was good.

Okay, first of all, the movie had several problems. The biggest one of all is that there's a ton of characters and we don't get to know them, their names (too many nerdy names to remember), and they just get thrown at us without any backstory or much introduction. There's the main orc chieftain named Durotan, head of the Frostwolf clan, Khadgar the young human mage, and there's the human general that I forget his name. Those are the only characters that we really get to know well and care about. There's all these other characters but in the scheme of things they all are minor characters. Everyone else is pretty much a minor role. There's so many characters that none of them really get the airtime that they deserve. Instead they shove as many characters down our throats as possible and for the most part we can't remember their names. So the characters were kind of not thought about or planned out very well.

In addition, the fighting scenes in this movie are very short and anticlimactic. There's a fight at the end after the big battle where the human general takes on the orc warchief. Its the most anticlimactic fight ever. The human guy wins the battle in one sweeping motion. However, the orcs are proud of the human for defeating the warchief in one of their grand rituals so that was super cool how noble the orcs were. Brownie points!

There was this minor love interest thing in the film that just led nowhere. It could've done without it. Basically an orc woman and the human general kind of have a thing but not really a thing, ya know? Like they were close but they never got too close or even kissed. So what was the point? I have no clue.

Anyways, I also thought the movie was too long. Its 2 hours and 3 minutes long-way too long for me. I guess that's standard Hollywood time lengths but they could've cut out so much of the dumb stuff to make the movie shorter and more cohesive. For example, they could've completely skipped the dumb fight w/ Medev's golum that turned out to be super weak anyways. They could've also skipped out most of the lame talking parts. A lot of this movie was just the Alliance peoples talking and the Orc peoples talking about what they were gonna do. I know that's plot and setting up suspense and drama but it got old fast. By the second act I'm tired about hearing what they're going to do. When there's little action the movie gets boring. When the action gets going and peaks that's when things get good. Which leads me to my next point.

The fighting scenes in this movie are phenomenal. The orcs are huge as they should be and they absolutely just annihilate the Alliance soldiers when they first meet them. I was rooting for the orcs the whole way until I realized I was an Alliance guy in World of Warcraft XD. The humans aren't afraid of the orcs even though they are weaker and can get slayed easily. There's some brutal scenes in this movie where Alliance soldiers get their heads crushed, orcs get stabbed through their backs, and Guldan just straight up mass murders tons of people using fel magic. Fel magic is basically demonic magic that Guldan, an orc warlock was using throughout the movie to open the portal to Azeroth. Which brings up my next point.

The story is great. It basically follows everything that happens before World of Warcraft and Warcraft III. So basically if you know the first two games-Orcs and Humans and Beyond the Dark Portal you pretty much know everything that's going to happen in this movie. Basically the orcs are from a different world called Outlands and the humans live in Azeroth. Guldan is able to open up a portal that takes the orcs to Azeroth, where they're supposed to conquer the entire world through war. So Guldan brought all the orc clans together to do this and the Alliance has to find some way to stop the orcs from killing everybody. They rely on Medev, this all powerful mage guardian but it turns out he's been corrupted by the fel magic too. That's where things get interesting because he turns into a demon that looks like Illidan from Warcraft III-way cool! It's pretty entertaining once the ball gets rolling. The whole plot builds up slowly and works its way up to many climaxes. It was quite thrilling.

Another thing I'd like to say is that the weapons and armor looked terrific. It looks straight out of the games that I've played-World of Warcraft in particular. Seeing it all on the big screen took me back to my WoW playing days. The orcs had these massive cool hammers that just crushed the humans. And the humans had the same armor in the games as well as these cool swords. The orcs had wolves that they used for transportation as well as to fight. The humans had gryphons to fly on as well as horses. The orcs threw their horses at them and stuff. It was funny.

Lastly, one of the best parts of the movie was the credits when I heard the World of Warcraft game music playing. Nerd chills man! Go see this movie. Blizzard has really outdone themselves by creating a great movie for their beloved gaming series. This movie makes me want to resubscribe to WoW and start playing everyday even though I don't have the time for it. That's how good it was. I might sound like I'm being paid to talk about how great this movie was but that's just how cool it was. I don't think there will be any video game movies that are going to be better than this unless there's more Warcraft movies. Go check it out at a local theater near you. For the Horde!

I'm with the Maestro

Mozart in the Jungle is a show I think I wrote about but it was a super long time ago. I didn't do a review or anything, I think I just mentioned that I was watching it. So to recap, this is an Amazon Prime exclusive show about the life of Hailey Rutledge, a 26-year old woman living in New York trying to complete her dream of being an oboe player in the New York symphony. The show is based on the book with the same name. I tried reading the beginning of the book and I quickly got bored with it because all the girl does in the book is just keep having sex with all her teachers. Not a surprise in the classically trained conservatory world and it happens all the time in the show too. Thankfully, its not what defines the show like the how the book is. Let's talk about what makes this show great and a bit about season two.

Okay, so obviously the music is good. It's mostly the warhorses. Beethoven's fifth and all that jazz. But the music still sounds good when the musicians play. I don't know if they were really playing the music but it sounds fantastic to my somewhat musically trained ears. In addition, the acting in the show is phenomenal. There is a Mexican actor named Gael Garcia Bernal who just absolutely slays at acting. He plays a weird, musically-possessed conductor that cares deeply for the orchestra but just can't organize or run anything in the non-music world. Hailey becomes her assistant for a while. He's kind of like a real conductor probably. He's that good at acting. He makes you believe its all real. The old white conductor is also great. He does a great job of playing an old conductor who tries to write but turns out to be a washed up hack. The actress who plays Hailey is also great. Although sometimes it feels like you're watching an episode of Girls, I do believe that white girls act like that. Then there are the older musicians in the orchestra. They're all great. There's the hot cellist who turns out to be bi. There's the older oboe teacher for Hailey that turns out to be a bitch to her. There's the druggie percussionist. There's the good boy white bread white guy. There's the white guy violin soloist who's kind of the leader of the orchestra when the conductor isn't around. There's the actress who plays Gloria, who's chairman of the orchestra board. She's exactly what an orchestra leader should be. There are funny moments, dramatic moments, musical moments, and interesting mannerisms that get used throughout season one and two. This is what makes the show so great.

The ending of season 2 was pretty interesting. Basically its the same thing that's happening at my work between the company and our union. The musicians are fighting to get more rights and benefits and the people who run the orchestra aren't having none of it. Meanwhile, on a trip to Mexico Hailey gets into a sorta thing with the Maestro (Bernal) but doesn't tell anybody about it until she's drunk at a orchestra members party. Season two ends on pretty much a cliff hangar. Gloria (chairwoman of the orchestra) says she will resign if they give the musicians what they want and the Maestro says the same thing but it comes to a strange conclusion. I didn't really get it to be honest. Very unclear ending for season two but I think that's just because they want the viewers to wait until season three. And that won't be a while.

I first saw the show a long time ago but I only just finished season two last night. It was worth waiting for the second season and it makes me happy to see that there are great shows about music out there. It would be pretty cool if there was a show similar to this one but about jazz or something. Although I think this show is more classified as a comedy there are dramatic moments in it that you wouldn't find in many comedies. You should check it out on Amazon Prime or online. The show does feel like a luxury to be able to watch it because its only on Prime. It should be on cable TV or something because it would get the attention it deserves as a network show. One of the best music shows I've ever seen. Can't wait for season three. I've been writing a lot about shows it seems. The next post will most likely be about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows movie. I might go see the new Warcraft movie this weekend too. Watch this space.

Real robots and fake Indians

Master of none is this Netflix comedy/drama created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang. The show is about the daily life of Dev (played by Ansari), a 30-year old actor living in New York city. The beginning episodes of this show are so good I would say its amazing-possibly a masterpiece? However, the more you get into it, you realize its not what you thought it was. By this I mean I thought the show was like a straight hilarious comedy. But then they try to throw in this real life drama crap like having a relationship and stuff. Let me tell you about some of my favorite moments from the show.

There's this episode where Dev receives an email from some show people that he auditioned for. He wasn't suppose to get the email but it was somehow forwarded to him. It was just written that way. He finds out they said something super racist. "Lets see if he can curry our favor". Pretty fucking hilarious. Later, the white guy that said the racist comment tries to win over Dev by taking him to a Knicks game. The guy buys Dev some nachos and some young white kid eats some of his nachos. "Did that kid just eat my nachos? What the fuck." Dev tells the kid those are his nachos but apologizes once he realizes the kid was waiting for his absentee father that wasn't going to show up. Also, Busta Rythmes shows up at the game and apparently he's friends w/ the white guy who said the racist comment. Dev talks to Rythmes in private about the comment and Rythmes is all like,"Mmmm nope. Because Indians eat curry? That's some racist shit. You should play the race card." Obviously its more funny once you see the delivery of the vocal lines but that episode was definitely one of the best in terms of the comedic content.

There was another episode where Dev and his Asian friend go out with their dads for dinner. The Asian dude's dad's memories pop up of when he was a kid when the guys ask him what he did in Taiwan. Then it cuts to a super stereotypical scene of him as a kid in Taiwan with his pet chicken. And then his parents say they need some meat for dinner and that they want him to kill the chicken. The kid walks out with a knife and pushes the chickens head down and the scene fades. Great scene. Super racist and stereotypical but funny. Every immigrant has a chicken story like that it seems.

Then there's the episode where Dev sleeps with a married woman. The guy catches them at his house and he's all upset, as he should be. The guy's all like,"why the fuck are you still here!" And Dev's like,"I don't know. You said you were leaving. I thought it might be awkward if we were in the elevator together." True comedic gold with that scene. Also, there's the scene where the guy the woman is married to skips Dev in line at the ice cream shop. He points to a fat guy and says,"I'll have what Chubbs is having." Then he takes a bite out of the ice cream and throws it at the garbage can, yelling,"that's disgusting!" Super funny stuff.

My personal favorite part was when Dev was working on a black virus movie (lol) called the sickening and the virus first was exposed and he was auditioning on his laptop in a coffee shop all like,"Oh my god! The sickening! It's happening! Holy fuckin' shit!" Then this stereotypical big black woman that runs the coffee place says,"I don't know what it is you think you're doing but you can't do it here". There was even a guy who was afraid to leave the coffee shop because of Dev. That was a nice hilarious touch.

Okay, so now you know for sure that the show is super funny. However, at some point around the 6th or 7th episode (there are 10) Dev gets in a relationship with some chick that he used to know back in the day. He met her at some party and at first things don't click because she was still w/ her boyfriend but somehow she gets into it w/ Dev. I'm not into relationships and I don't enjoy watching shows about relationships. Their whole relationship is super cute but its sort of cringe worthy in terms of the acting and the overall characters. I know girls who are like the girl Dev was dating but its not necessarily something I would want to see in a show that I thought was suppose to be funny. I guess what I'm saying is that I wasn't into the lovey dovey stuff. It distracted from what I thought made the show great-the great delivery of the jokes.

I do believe there's going to be a second season for this show but you know w/ these Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming only series it does take them longer to create more seasons than regular TV networks. There is definitely something special about this show. At first when my brother was watching it when he visited I thought the show wasn't my thing. But Ansari is a hilarious and good actor. He isn't quite brilliant but he does know how to deliver the lines well. In this day and age to be a funny actor I think you have to be able to improvise better than reading and memorizing lines. I think Ansari is that type of actor. The modern day actor. He's good at what he does. Also, its good to see a brown guy be able to write and act and do it so well. We need more minorities in the spotlight and media. We're all over the music world but everywhere else we're pretty scarce.

If you like funny shows then you should definitely check this show out. Hopefully season 2 delivers some more great comedic material. Hopefully there is a season 2! I can talk about this show with my friends and quote the lines and we all get it and find it super funny. It's all on Netflix. Go check it out.

Streaming News

Good news everyone! (thumbs up if you get that reference) I finally started streaming like I said I would in earlier posts. I gotta say that it's a tough gig especially getting used to talking while playing. For some people its easier than others I believe. But I think I've got some good content on my page so far. Check out the highlights section on my channel-here 
My channels name url is twitch.tv/megaman1597

Anyways, I'm going to need to work on my delivery, entertainment factor, and a bunch of other stuff but so far I've got a basic overlay, good webcam placement, and my games are being streamed w/o any lag, something I was struggling with for a super long time. Now that I've got the gameplay running smooth as butter all I have to do is turn on the stream and let the magic happen. I'm working on making the magic happen but its tough getting viewers when nobody knows who you are. I post when I'm live on my twitter and on a twitch streamers facebook group but for the most part I get very few viewers. Which has me thinking I need to try out more games and see if I can get more of an audience playing other stuff than the the games I've been playing.

Check out the channel, let me know what you think. Hopefully I can get more viewers soon but at the same time I won't be trippin if it takes a while because I'm still going to be gaming anyways. The only difference is that I'll have my entertainment hat on. I'm taking this seriously and streaming pretty much everyday before work. Who knows, maybe I can make something of this and make a bunch of friends through twitch and stuff. I'm mostly doing this for the social factor as well as for myself because I actually like watching the broadcasts and gameplay, seeing what I did and could've done better in Overwatch, as well as creating highlights. So far the most fun thing has been finding the best plays or moments and making highlights of them. I'm definitely going to be enjoying that more in the future.

Thanks for checking out the channel and remember to send a follow on twitch.

Overwatch Review

     So Overwatch has been out for a week or two and everyone is still on the hype train. No game could've lived up to the hype that this game got but at the same time I believe it to be a great game. Not all people agree with me though. One of my best friends says the game is just "ok" and that its not worth the forty bucks. I totally disagree even though my friend knows way more about fps's (first person shooters) than me. This is the type of game that anyone of any skill level or even age can get into. The game is incredibly intuitive and you learn by playing as you go. The first hour of the game can be daunting because you don't know what all the characters' abilities do as you shoot your way through a massive Blizzard clusterfuck. These clusterfucks are in a lot of Blizzard titles (Heroes of the Storm team fights anyone?, World of Warcraft raids too). However, they are good clean fun!

Ok, so I guess I should tell you a little about the game and what I find so great about it.

First, Overwatch is a title that was created from the ashes of a previous Blizzard game. They were working on a science fiction MMO called Titan, which was set in our world but a bit in the future with robots and stuff (sound familar?). However, Blizzard scrapped the project because they just couldn't find the fun. Hence Overwatch was born! Some of the developers that worked on Titan went to work on the Overwatch team. But Overwatch is a completely different game despite the similarities like the futuristic version of our world and countries and cool looking heroes. This is Blizzard's first fps game and its a first person moba (massive online battle arena) shooter. That's the best way to describe it but its not like a moba like League of Legends where there's creeps and towers. Instead, the moba element comes in the form of 21 unique heroes with abilities that have cool downs. Genji can deflect bullets and climb up walls. Tracer can blink really fast. Zenyatta (the zen robot featured above) can throw out heals and a debuff against enemies. There's guns as well as these abilities. In addition, each character has a special or ultimate (oh god the moba lingo) that they can charge up by dealing damage and it also builds up slowly over time. The game is played with two teams of six players going at it in currently only like two or three modes. There's escort the payload which is stolen directly from Team Fortress 2. It's nothing new or exciting that's for sure. Then there's capture the points and hold them. And then there's the combination of those two objectives. Overwatch is an objective team based shooter so you can't really carry teams as hard as you could in say League of Legends or Dota. Okay, now you know the basics. Let's talk about what makes this game so awesome.

The thing that I like more about Overwatch other than playing it is the spectacle of Overwatch. This game is getting so much press in the gaming community not only by content creators and websites but also by everyday joes that just love the game. You see, Overwatch isn't so much a game as it is an event. Overwatch has spawned cosplays, comics, animated short films, action figures, and all sorts of electronic gadgets with the Overwatch logo on it. It's an extravaganza! I find it really interesting hearing what all the media outlets are saying but I also like hearing regular peoples' opinions too. Personally, I find the gameplay to be fantastic. The game has never lagged for me ever and I've never been dropped from a game because of latency issues either on my part or server side. Simply put, this game runs like a dream. The graphics kinda threw me off at first because I'm not a cell-shade cartoony kind of guy. The game has those bright colors that remind me of Team Fortress 2 but this game is unique from Tf2 because the graphics are way better. Tf2 is an old game after all. But they do look kinda look similar. And that's where the similarities end.

The characters in this game are just cool. Too cool maybe. They all are gonna inspire cosplay outfits and already have for the most part. I'm a big fan of the Zen robot because he's a support healer class hero that can also dish out a lot of dps and get a lot of kills. I also really dig Mercy because she's basically the Medic from Team Fortress 2. I also like D.Va, the mecha waifu girl. I also play Pharah a lot. When I shoot w/ her rocket launcher I feel like I'm back in my Unreal Tournament III days. I used to play Unreal Tournament III online on Xbox360 when the server was still up. Those are only four heroes I like but there are 21 heroes in this game. Because of this the game isn't completely balanced. For instance, Mcree, the Clint Eastwood mother fucker is totally broken at the moment. He has this grenade that can stun people and then he can use his right click (fan the hammer) which shoots a barrage of bullets. Its usually enough to kill dps and supports instantly. If you ever hear him say its high noon you should get the hell away from him. Also, some characters need to be buffed. Like I feel like Mercy's pistol should do more damage. Give me something! Haha, but seriously her pistol sucks.

I can say that this game was definitely worth it. I don't think it will go free to play like my friend says because its Blizzard and they like making people pay. Thankfully, the game doesn't have any trace of pay 2 win. You can buy these loot crates that unlock purely cosmetic items like hero skins, voice lines, and player portraits. But you don't have to pay for them either because you unlock a loot crate each time you level up. And you can level up indefinitely. I read an article the other day about how some guy got up to level 100 already so people are super high up the scale.

I feel like I could say so much about this game but the jist of it is that this game is so much fun. I'm not a fps fan but I did play a lot of Team Fortress 2 to prepare for Overwatch. For a while I wasn't writing the review because I wanted to experience the game to the fullest. I've put in more than 20 hours and although I'm not tired of the game I am a bit fatigued. But that's not gonna stop me from playing it more. It's addicting as heck. Matches are short and queue times are less than ten seconds. Usually your team annihilates the other team or you're the team getting murdered. Close matches do happen but I usually play with a pre-made team w/ friends and we usually own, especially because I main Mercy and Zenyatta and know how to play them fairly well for someone new to the game and didn't get the hundreds of hours of closed beta time.

What does the future hold for Overwatch? Only time will tell. The good news is that ranked competitive mode comes out later this month. I feel like some added game modes and maps will keep the game going strong for years to come. Watch out eSports, here comes Blizzard's shooter. 

Time to go deliver some payloads and capture some points. And repeat.