So I'm sitting here drinking a locally brewed Whisky Barrel Brown Ale thinking to myself about how I'm excited for some new games that are coming to PC soon; and just some games I don't have yet that are out already. I figured -Hey I'll write about that so we have something more than WRUP articles. Read more
MOBA. Shooter. Deck Building. Free to Play. Early Access. Not On Steam. If any of these words or phrases scared you away from this game, perhaps you should try it anyway. Yes that means installing the Epic Games launcher to in addition to Origin, Steam, Uplay, and Gog Galaxy. Hell you should do that anyway and start messing around in Unreal 4, its free you fools!
Anyway Paragon is a third person MOBA, much like Smite. Another third person take on the genre that will never die (which I’m personally okay with.) Unlike every other MOBA however, Paragon offers an important sense of verticality in it’s level design, and is much more focused on your aiming skills.
Yes there are still three lanes, jungles, and 5v5 multiplayer matches with leveling and gear, but again the game offers something pretty damn fresh in a few key places. Leveling is still fairly standard. Kill minions, heroes, and the like to earn xp that levels up your hero and your abilities. Gear on the other hand is maybe the most unique thing about Paragon.
Instead of having a store of Gear all players can access, each player brings a unique deck filled with up to 15 cards that represent gear. These cards are what would normally be items in any other Moba. But in order to purchase these cards you’ll not only need gold, but also points in a stat.
The gold you collect during a match is what you spend to buy points in a stat for your character. Those stats are what you use to take cards from deck out on the field.
When you “buy a card” during a match it is taken from your deck and added to your inventory, taking up the use of your stats. The catch is you can only equip up to three cards at a time in a match. However, when you unequip an item to replace it with something better, you are refunded every stat point that was used when you first equipped the item. The result is a strangely well thought out balance between strategically deciding which stats to purchase with gold, and also encouraging players to mix and match cards throughout a game.
That system does also however, bring up some pretty obvious concerns about power levels between players. Since you can buy these cards in random packs and build your own custom decks, this does have the potential to punish newer players for not having the more powerful cards found in a pack.
That significant worry aside, and hopefully players more qualified than me can raise concerns should they arrive, Paragon has been an absolute blast for me these last couple of weeks. When I don’t have the time for a round of Dota, Paragon really does scratch that moba itch for me. While still feeling like a fun action game.If you are not into Mobas but really like Third Person shooters, I’ll be honest and say this still probably won't win you over. But if you’ve always been curious about Mobas and you’re more used to traditional third person action games, this may be a good stepping stone into that genre. If this article didn’t scare you off, I highly recommend giving it a try.
A long time ago, years now in fact I played Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and I found it pretty engaging and also quite beautiful. Ninja Theory, the company behind Enslaved and other games like Devil May Cry and Heavenly Sword have produced Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. I recently finished Hellblade and it made quite an impact on me so I'm here as always to tell you about it in a long winded and probably grammatically incorrect manner. Stick with me to find out my thoughts. Read more
I remember talking very briefly about this in a months old podcast when we mentioned new releases and thinking 'Man that game sounds boring'. I was wrong. Read more
With the International 2017 currently on its final day, I find myself doing what I do every year around this time. I'mplaying Dota 2. I started playing in 2013 and it has slowly become one of my all time favorite games. And when one begins to realize they enjoy a game so much, they want to share that with the world. So here we are. Yet another bad Dota player writing about why he loves this game.
Obviously if you’re already into Dota, this more than likely isn’t going to be a list for you. But if you have no interest in ever trying the game because you hate multiplayer, don’t like Mobas, or any other reason, maybe give this a read anyway and see why someone like me enjoys this incredibly complex game. Hhere are the reasons why you should start playing Dota 2:
Before I get into the history of Mobas and other complex gameplay mechanics, I need to sell you on how Dota is selling itself to you. Well unless you are a compulsive complesionist who needs to be able to own every single item within a game, you will never need to spend a single cent on, or in, Dota 2. Not only is the game free to download, but there is not a single hero behind a paywall. All 112 heroes in the game are free to anyone who installs Dota 2.
When I say actually free, I really do mean it. You cannot buy anything with real world money that will help you in the game. There's no experience boosts, gold boosters, Runes, or any other crap that many Mobas use to leech money out of their player base. The only items in the game you can buy with real money are skins and countless other aesthetic additions that you’ll acquire by playing the game. If they don’t interest you at all, sell what you earn on the Steam Market and save some money on your next game purchase.
No I don’t mean this reason to encourage you to drop out of school and start playing Dota 24/7. But if you enjoy watching eSport events, The International has been the biggest eSports event for many years now and continues to grow. "But Cody" You say, "I don’t care about eSports at all, why shouldn’t I just skip the explanation of this point and just read the next bullet point?" Well reader, it's because the Olympics themselves are starting to care about eSports, and what game is at the top of the addition list? Of course it’s Dota 2. You don’t have to play a game to appreciate watching the best players in the world compete in it. I don’t play Starcraft, but watching professional players play is incredibly exciting and entertaining, and I find Dota 2’s eSports scene to be best of them all.
For those you who already play Dota 2, this pseudonym is already familiar to you. But like I said, this article isn’t for you. So for you newcomers, before I tell you about Icefrog, I need to give a brief history about the Moba genre.
Warcraft 3 (2002)
Long before there was Dota, or League of Legends, or any other Moba, there was Warcraft 3. Developed by Blizzard in 2002 this RTS captured the minds of gamers and modders alike. One such mod for the game was a very detailed and complex 5v5 game mode where two teams chose different heroes to protect towers and bases. These heroes would then level up and gain power over the course of an ~hour long match. If you guessed that the name of this mod was DOTA you would be correct. The author of said mod was Icefrog, and no we’ve never learned his real name.
Obviously this mod became so popular it spawned many actual games trying to recreate what Icefrog had created from the tools within Warcraft 3. For the longest time the best attempt was HON (Heroes of Newerth), until League of Legends came along and invented the term Moba. Before they came up with the very generic genre name of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, games such as League were simply referred to as Dota clones. League omitted many mechanics and rules from Dota such as Creep Blocking, Lane Pulling, Denying, Turn Speed, casting times, and jungle stacking just to name a few. This obviously lowered the barrier for entry to get more players interested initially, but also significantly lowered the skill floor.
So where does Icefrog fit into all this now and why is he a reason to be Playing Dota 2, a Valve game? Well after League’s rise to popularity, Blizzard knew less and less people would be buying Warcraft 3 to play Dota. So they asked Icefrog if he would remake his mod in their new Starcraft engine for free. He declined and instead took an offer from Valve to be brought on as a full time employee and be completely in charge as game director of Dota 2. So not only do you have the founder of the genre at the helm of the game, he is constantly pushing his development team to new limits by creating new Heroes every year and changing the map and game mechanics ever so slightly. This keeps players on their toes, as they learn and then adapt to heroes as tweaks are applied to them. Speaking of players constantly learning...
Dota 2 Beta (2011)
Dota 2 (2017)
I will never be good at Dota. I’m already bad at video games as it is and Dota is by far the hardest video game I’ve ever played. There are so many mechanics and heroes to learn in Dota that even if I played 24/7 I wouldn’t be able to learn everything. Even if I could there’s no way I wouldn't make multiple mistakes in a game. And that's the best thing about Dota. In so many multiplayer games the instant you or one of your team mates does something stupid, everyone turns on them because mistakes are not allowed. In Dota, even the pro eSports players make numerous mistakes every game. (They just make fewer than me :P)
You are always going to be learning how you could have done something different or more efficiently. Heroes you would think fit into one role can do something completely different once you learn what all the items do, and you will always want to try more.
As a gamer, that’s one of my favorite things to do. I love stretching my mental and physical limits. I love bettering my ability to play the game [very slowly] over time and growing as a person because of it.
So yeah, hope to see you in the river soon.
- Thanks to Greywolfe for editing :P
The 1980’s.
No other decade since the 50’s had been so steeped in Futurism.
In the 50’s, that nod toward futurism was all about flying cars and robots. Things that would make life easier. In the fifties, too, this futurism was all about cleanliness. The future portrayed in the fifties generally had a lot of clean, sleek lines. From the Hanna-Barbera domes the Jetsons lived in to the vast robots that occupied more space than a mere human, the future seemed to be bright and generally on the side of the people.
Then, the American Dream was shattered and the nightmare we woke up in was a little bit different. A little bit darker.
But not everything about 80’s futurism was entirely dark. Sure, there were much harsher lines, now. And a much darker tone in terms of corporations ruling everything and yes, there was a lot of fear that the arms race between America and Russia would turn game-ending for everyone, but where the 80’s were grittier, they still had a lot of colour and spark.
And this is about where I introduce Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Read more
Alright so maybe you can tell by my avatar picture at the bottom of this article that I'm a fan of Rocket League. I played - a lot and for quite a while but I eventually stopped because of a few problems that I'll get into below. Read more
So back in May this year I started paying attention to a pretty intriguing new title that was commonly billed as a Cyberpunk Dark Souls. I looked at web sites, I watched trailers and kept an eye on forums and soon beyond a shadow of a doubt I knew that The Surge was for me. Read more
I've been wanting The Surge since I saw it show up on my Steam recommendation page like a month ago. I had no real idea what it was at the time but what I saw looked pretty intriguing. Read more
You guys! If you read any of my Darksiders articles you know I'm into it. You also know I've been hoping for quite a long time that we fans of the series would get a third Darksiders title. Well it looks like that's actually going to happen after all and I'm pretty thrilled by it so far. Read more
