Heroes of the Storm, the other other aRTS

I was lucky enough to get into the Heroes of the Storm alpha a few weeks ago in mid October. I like Blizzard, sorta. Me and World of Warcraft have a bit of a tumultuous relationship, and despite thinking that Diablo III’s expansion pack saved the whole game from being the worst thing Blizzard has ever put out I haven’t played it since shortly before patch 2.1 came dropped. I love the original Starcraft though, and Warcraft III led me to my obsession for DotA. When Heroes was announced, I was actually pretty skeptical because I know any new game coming out in this genre has two juggernauts to deal with: Dota 2 and League of Legends. You need to do something really different to get peoples attention away from either of these games, and both player bases are very stubborn; Dota 2 because we’re all angry old men who hate League and think no game can top it, and League because people have spent so much time and dumped so much money that they feel they can’t just leave it. I like playing other things occasionally. I was most interested in Heroes because if it could deliver on it’s promise of the average game being 20 minutes long, I would be all over it. Sometimes you wanna play video games but don’t have the hour and a half time slot Dota 2 sometimes asks for.

Hardware: the Realforce 87U “EK Edition”

I like mechanical keyboards. I’m one of those weird people who has more keyboards in their house than they do computers to use them on. I’m actually trying to make space and get rid of a few of them. To make it even worse, my favorite mechanical switch is probably the most expensive to buy: Topre switches. Topre are different from regular mechanical switches in that they’re not really designed to be a mechanism with as many moving parts like the mainstream Cherry mechanical switches are. They also don’t feel like any other mechanical switch out there. Topre have this kinda odd reverence about them because they’re so expensive and kind of hard to find outside of east Asian regions because they’re made solely by a Japanese company, also called Topre (short for Tokyo Press). Topre keyboards start at $200 and can go for well over $300 depending on the model. This is my addiction. Recently I felt like I was running out of desk space using my full-size (also Topre) keyboard so I wanted to buy a tenkeyless, one that doesn’t have a numpad. I’ve been using the Realforce 87U “EK Edition” for a solid two months now and, while having tons of experience using Topre switches, I was hesitant to give up my precious numpad. Turns out Topre has my back with this one and did something very clever with their tenkeyless line so you’ll barely miss it.

Hardware: the Zowie FK1

I’m going to talk about something I’m not entirely confident in talking about, mouse hardware, but I’ve been enjoying my new mouse so much that I feel the need to shout it from the rooftops. I bought a Zowie FK1 after keeping an eye on Zowie mice for a long time in general. I wanted to buy one of their EC1 EVO CL’s because I felt like it had the most familiar shape compared to my old Logitech G400 but they were out of stock for a very long time due to a coating issue. After they announced the FK1 and it’s larger size compared to the original FK, I waited a really long time to order one because they were selling out like hotcakes. My G400 also had a pretty big hiccup in the middle of a Dota match, which wasn’t a good sign. I finally snagged one and can say without a doubt that this mouse is better than my Logitech G400.

I Don’t Think I Like Destiny

I’m going to preface all of this with the note that I am in a pretty exasperated state right now because of this game. Like Titanfall, it was a new FPS franchise from a company with a large and successful history behind it. Bungie, creators of the Halo series, coming out with a new franchise. Even I expected something of quality, even if I didn’t really care about a new FPS on a console. I had no plans of playing it either until my sister came home with the white PS4 bundle. Might as well, right? It’s free for me, no expectations except for “quality”. At this point, however, I can say that I’m glad I got to play it for free because if this game did come out on PC and I did buy it, I think I’d be pissed off.

Marvel Heroes 2015

I’m not a big comic guy. I have some self-contained Batman comics, I have some Alan Moore stuff, some stuff from Vertigo (DC Comic’s off label) and by typing this I’ve just now realized that I actually have more DC stuff than Marvel. I’m pretty sure I’ve got an anthology of Ultimate Spider-Man somewhere but that’s about it. I think comics are pretty stupid actually, but I’ve never been a longtime reader of any of them and maybe just reading Wikipedia’s condensed format of various arcs isn’t the best way to get informed of a comics history. I don’t like how disposable comic book heroes tend to be, dying and coming back to life and all that. That doesn’t mean I don’t hate everything about them though. I’m a nerd, I think shooting lasers out of my hands would be the coolest thing ever so comic book heroes are appealing by that idea alone. This is where Marvel Heroes comes in: it does a really good job of satisfying that feeling and a lot more.

A Day With Titanfall

This weekend, Origin is allowing you to play Titanfall for free for 48 hours. I’m not a big FPS player anymore. I hit my high point of those some time back in the early and mid 2000’s with such games as Counter-Strike 1.6, Day of Defeat and all the Call of Duties up to 4. Since then I’ve been on a pretty hard streak of playing games such as DotA and, in turn, Dota 2 and other games in the aRTS genre plus some other “endless” single player games like Skyrim. This is partly the reason why, despite “gaming” being in the headline of the flippin’ blog, I haven’t talked about it at all. My computer gaming time is pretty confined to multiplayer games without a real end life. I took a break from my usual fare to play Titanfall, a game which I thought was interesting but felt very off when they were showing it around pre-release. However, it’s free to play right now so I have no reason not to try it, even if I’m just confirming my thoughts.