DotA2 Compendium is back!

YES! It's fucking back!  One of the best things in all of E-Sports is back to accompany one of the best events in all of e-sports!  The International!

I don't care if you love or hate DotA2 or the genre in general, The International is one of the best events in the whole competitive gaming scene just because of all the work that goes into the experience for both players and the spectators.

The Compendium is this cheap digital book that you can buy that outlines all the details of the upcoming tournament and the teams that are playing.  However it does so much more for the consumer that it's hard to believe that this is a thing being pushed in an industry full of companies trying to do nothing but nickle and dime you at every turn.

The book itself has a bunch of interactive features such as choosing your favourite teams or making predictions for the outcomes of the tournament and upon making those predictions you are given a multitude of rewards.

The more that you take part in the event and actually play DotA during the event, the more you are rewarded with all sorts of fancy shit.  What's even better is that not everything has been implemented yet, so as the event draws closer the features will expand even further for no additional cost, thus giving you more value for money out of your digital e-sports almanac.

The reason I say I don't care if you like DotA2 or not is because this is the kind of thing that ALL companies should do for any game that they want to push as a competitive title.  Love or hate Valve, the one thing you can't fault them on right here is fostering a sense of community within DotA2.  People are discussing the game and it's players and are going to be making decisions in the compendium based on these discussions and it's that kind of shit that brings people together and just adds to the enjoyment.

Valve is by no means a perfect company, they do a lot of bullshit and depending on where you stand there's a lot about them to dislike, but in the case of the Compendium they really are leading the way into what E-Sports should be.

The International and the Interactive Compendium

Right, today is the day The International 2013 starts, so let's get hype!

Really thought I just want to spend some time talking about how awesome this tournament actually is.  For those that don't know, The International is a yearly tournament that takes place where 16 of the best teams from around the world come together and kick the shit out of each other until only one remains and takes a massive cash prize.

The cool thing about the cash prize, is that Valve released something called "The Interactive Compendium" which is this virtual book that that gives you all sorts of tournament information, allows you to make predictions and even manage a fantasy DotA team.  The coolest thing about this though, is that Valve had said that a small amount of money spent on compendiums goes towards the prize pool for The International, so after all the sales this thing has had the prize pool is at something absolutely crazy like $2.8 million.

The Compendium even gives back to you, the player because as stretch goals are made you get nice little bonuses.  For example, I bought the compendium with steam credit but after a stretch goal was met I was given an item that I then sold on the marketplace for MORE than the compendiums value.  On top of that I've been given all sorts of other free shit, and the chance to earn even more free shit by simply watching games, although the chance of actually getting something from that is stupid low.

So if you're a fan of DotA, support this thing, it's nice that we have events like this and we should show them some love so they don't just die out.  If you're not a fan of DotA, you could always give it a watch anyway because maybe you'll find that you'd like to give the game a go, it's not like you have anything to lose.

Where is Half Life 3? (Or Episode 3)

I love me some Half Life, but I've got concerns for this series and I'm really hoping Valve proves me wrong on this one.

Half Life 2: Episode 2 was a game released in 2007 to follow up on the events from Episode 1 and Half Life2.  The game was intense as all hell and a shit ton of fun to play and got fans more invested in the Half Life 2 plot and universe with all sorts of crazy shit going on.  But the game ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, and we have barely heard anything about an Episode 3.  It's been so long that people are thinking that Episode 3 won't even be a thing and instead we'll just get a Half Life 3 instead.

Now I've not really been following all the news too closely but after giving a quick skim of the Half Life wiki on news regarding the next game, there has been nothing super concrete and everything seems like a bit of a mystery.

What I'm worried about is that Half Life 3 will go the same way of Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever or Too Human.  These games had huge development times and large amounts of hype, and then when they released they sucked ASS.  I trust Valve to not make a game that's shitty quality wise, but can they really deliver on the 6 years of hype that's been flying around since Episode 2?  Given the amount of time it's been, I don't think they will be able to do it, but I'm crossing my fingers and really hoping that they prove me very, very wrong.

DotA 2

I have a new addiction, and it's called DotA2

This is a game I previously had very little experience with despite owning it for a long long time.  Although the whole thing seemed a bit impenetrable at first and because of that I ended up shelving it for a long long time.

Recently though, I decided to give it another spin with a few buddies.  After a few games of being absolutely destroyed and struggling to figure out whats what, things started to go a lot smoother.  Once you get round all the differences from something like, League of Legends, and you begin to get a feel for how to play, everything becomes a lot clearer. 

When you first fire it up you are SWAMPED with literally hundreds of things that you have to take in all at once.  Of course, not all of these things will sink in over the course of one game, so you will need to take a little while to find your feet.  That said, once you have found your feet DotA2 is a much more satisfying game to play than League.

I'm not saying League is bad with that, but League feels very bare bones.  One of the reasons I think it appeals to so many people is that you don't really have to learn all that much stuff before you can play it with some degree of proficiency.  With League you can switch your brain off and just make things die, which is fine for having fun with, but the depth found it DotA makes it a much more satisfying after a match is finished.

Right now it's still in beta and you need an invite to play it, but if you can get your hands on one, give it a go.  But whatever you do don't give up just because you get destroyed the first few times, it WILL happen, I promise it, but once you do master it a little bit you'll be playing one of the most fun games available at the moment.

Leauge of Legends Vs DotA2

When I'm spending my time lurking around gaming forums, a common topic I see being discussed is which game is better between League of Legends or DotA2.  So I'm going to throw my opinion into the pile, even though it's sort of like spitting in the ocean at this point.

So which game do I think is better?  Well the answer is neither because this whole argument is fucking stupid in the first place, they are two completely different games, offering completely different experiences made by completely different sets of people.  Yes, they are in the same genre so there are some things you can say about similarities in style and game play, but the differences are far too vast between the two titles.

Don't take the fact that I think this argument is stupid to mean I don't like either game.  I like them both and I play both, but I play them for different purposes.  League of Legends I play strictly for the fun times, dicking around with a small group of buddies and just generally having a good time occasionally doing stupid shit.  DotA on the other hand is my serious face game.  I still have fun with it but I feel more motivated to TRY and do well in DotA than I do in League.  That's not me saying League of Legends isn't a competitive game, I just personally don't want to treat it as such.

Now the reason this argument is so stupid is because it's so obvious that League of Legends is trying to attract a completely different kind of person to DotA that if you can't see that you need to be smacked over the head with a piece of wood.  League from day 1 has always been a game that's far more accessible to new players, it's a free game that simplified the game mechanics of beasts like DotA so that everybody could have fun with it.  That's not to say the game is dumbed down per se, but things have been tweaked in the favour of those who know nothing about this genre than the hardcore fans of the old Warcraft 3 mod.

DotA on the other hand is the kind of game you really need to study to be good at.  There is so much depth to this game, and things like buying items and dying carry so much more weight that it's really aimed at the kind of person who wants a deep, challenging game rather than a quick MOBA fix.

To simplify my point further, it's like the difference between chess and checkers.  Neither are bad games, but one blatantly requires more thought, effort and practise than the other to be good at. 

But what I also see a lot of is people from DotA bashing people who play League, and this is also really fucking stupid.  It's not like the DotA scene was particularly huge until recently, but the hardcore DotA fans would love nothing more than all the new League players to just fuck off.  This doesn't make any sense!  Yes, DotA is deeper and more involving, so HELP THEM understand it and get good at it, don't shun them straight off the bat, your community will never improve that way!

Both good games, if your a fan of the genre I'd recommend both!

Note: Comparing these games to RTS games is fucking stupid, don't do it.  Also RTS players need to generally shut up about League and DotA players, because it's not impossible to be good at both genres for fucks sake.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive First Impressions

Before I start talking about this game lets have a BIG FUCKING DISCLAIMER!  I was never really all that good at Counter-Strike: Source and even less skilled at 1.6, so if your looking for someone to give you the ins and outs of this game from a competitive standpoint, I'm not your man!  Also, there are going to be pretty much no pictures in this post because I was having so much fun I forgot to take some, and I'm too lazy to load it back up.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I can finally start talking about CS:GO.  If you're not sure what it is, then you're either too young or you have been living under the rock your whole life.  CS:GO is the newest game in the long standing Counter-Strike series of games, basically the big grand daddy of team based online shooting.

It's actually refreshing to play a realistic style shooting game where my decisions actually fucking matter for once.  Health doesn't regenerate, at all, so if you go and make a stupid move in a fire fight, you're going to be punished for it, HARD.  Also you're limited to what you can take into each round by how much money you have, so in the early rounds or when you are losing, you really have to make careful, planned, intelligent decisions for what guns and gear you are going to buy.  So take all your Call of Duty pre-set load outs and regenerating health and fuck off, this is a real mans game.  I don't hate Call of Duty but the difference in skill required to play this, and to play CoD is astounding, so you best be willing to put in some practice hours in order to get good here.

Before CS:GO came out, I found that I was actually rather bored of CS: Source, I just didn't have the urge to find a mix or play in a public or anything like that, but when I fired up Global Offensive, holy shit was I pumped.  The menus are so sleek looking, the reticule is cool as fuck and best of all, the sound design is top notch.  Seriously, I have never heard guns sound this good in games before, it was giving me a fucking rush just hearing the effects.

The best feature I thought after playing it for about an hour was the match making.  You can very quickly find a casual or competitive game, and on top of that you can even play the much loved Gun Game mode through the matchmaking.  It just speeds everything up and makes the whole thing more accessible to those who don't want to trawl through server lists.  But I'm from a generation where server lists were the only thing around, and Valve made the correct decision not to remove the feature.  Custom games, custom maps and everything else are all still available through the games server list feature, so this game really does feel like a complete package.

Basically, the game is fucking awesome and you should play it.   Sure, there might be debates around the competitive nature of this game that I'm not aware of, but if you're looking for a fresh change of pace from all the Call of Duty and Battlefield type games, then this is for you.