Please Don’t ‘Main’ Heroes In Overwatch!

overwatch

‘Main’ing, as in, “I main Fizz in League of Legends” is a term from MOBAs, so players can let people know what character they are going to be, and for MOBAs it makes sense.  The maps never change that much, and since you can’t swap characters mid-round it lets the other players know to either drop out and find another team or to pick one of their other characters in a different class.  Not to mention they probably only want to invest their real money on only a couple of heroes.

With Overwatch‘s group of crazy heroes players have started to bring the same approach, but the problem is that it doesn’t work.  Since the maps and situations do change you need to branch out and use the entire roster to the best of your ability.  Last night my brother and I were playing and we got the payload within a couple of feet of where it needed to go, but the other team’s defense got impenetrable because they changed up their characters, so we in turn needed to change ours.

I changed from Lúcio to Mercy so that instead of doing some healing to the whole team I could keep just one person alive to keep the payload moving, and my brother changed from Reinhardt to Zarya to give himself a little more movement and offensive capability, so that the opposing team just didn’t set up shop in front of his shield.  The result?  We got that payload to move those last few feet in the last few seconds.  If we hadn’t changed we probably would have lost.

That is because with Overwatch it is best not to think of the characters as heroes that need to be mastered, but instead as load-outs to be swapped when the need arises.  I needed to switch to Mercy because she is the beam heal not the area heal.  It is no different then in Battlefield to swap out the long range rifle for the short range SMG for that final push.  If I had been stubborn and just decided that I was going to ‘main’ Lúcio we probably wouldn’t have been able to keep someone on the payload, and we probably would have lost (it was my brother’s idea to have me switch by the way), but over and over I will hear the words, ‘I main so and so’.  Please don’t.  Use the character who’s kit best serves the current situation.  If the situation changes, change your hero too.

They Are Remaking The Wrong Elder Scrolls Game(s)!

skyrim

Eurogamer claims to have discovered Bethesda’s big announcement for E3, a remastered The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  Which while Skyrim is great, that is not the game they should be remastering.  Firstly, it has sold well over 20 Million copies, so it is a game everyone has played, and since it was the latest one to come out, everyone has played it recently.  Secondly, even the crappiest of PC’s can now play this game with the updated texture pack, so it still looks pretty good.  Thirdly, and most importantly, it is not the remaster that I want.  I want a remastered version of TES III: Morrowind.

Morrowind was the game that made me an RPG gamer.  The game was wide open and I could do whatever I wanted, and the areas were extremely varied, but the best part was the loot.  I could have what seemed like endless armor combinations and thousands of weapons.  There was all sorts of random stuff.  It was mind blowing.  Not to mention you could fly!  There never was, nor has there been anything like it.  If there was ever a game that deserved the old spit and polish, Morrowind was it.

Though I understand what Bethesda is doing.  Skyrim is their most successful game of all time, so any way to get it in to even more gamers’ hands is a win for them.  Plus they can port it over to the new mod interface that Fallout 4 just launched.  Giving console gamers totally new experiences.  It just a shame that we get a ‘new’ version of a game that just came out, and not a classic that deserves to be revisited.  Heck while they are at it why not do TES I and II?  That could be fun as well, but I guess instead we are going to get a game we all have.

Want A Voltron Clip Without Any Voltron? Sure You Do!

Netflix is gearing up for the launch of their new Voltron show on June 10th, so they are releasing tons of clips and media.  I thought it would be fun to show you the clip with the least amount of context.  It looks like a good guy with a glowing hand is fighting a bad guy with a giant robotic hand, so that is fun.  Why they are doing this, or what the glowing square on the cart is I guess will have to wait.  For now, commence with the punching!

The World Hates You So We Are Getting A New ‘It’!

Stephen-Kings-It

Hey you know that movie that made everyone hate clowns? In fact it still makes you feel a bit ‘off’ just to look the picture of the ‘fun guy’ above.  Well guess what? After years of debate it looks like the reboot of ‘It’ is moving forward.  That’s right, so just when kids were starting to feel alright about clowns again they went and cast Bill Skarsgård as the new creepy makeuped menace.  Here is a pic of the fella:

bill-skarsgard

Yeah just imagine that mug with wild red hair and fangs whispering, “you’re next”.  That is just good old family fun right there.  I think you should let your kids watch it early and often.  I know I watched it behind my parents back a few times and I am completely normal.  Right? Anyway, I am sure ‘It’ will all be super terrifying until you learn that Pennywise the clown is just a spider in the sewers that can be killed with a slingshot.  Oh I am sorry, did I spoil a movie and a book from forever ago?  Look, I am just trying to put the kids’ minds at ease here.  They should be scared of giant sewer spiders and not scared of clowns.  Look for the new ‘It’ to be filming soon and for it not to live up to the original.

AMD Is In Trouble!

AMD-Full-hd-Wallpaper

Yesterday AMD had their big Computex product announcement, and it was not great.  Last month NVIDIA launched two amazing video cards: The GeForce GTX 1080 which blows every other video card out of the water, and the GeForce GTX 1070 which for under $400 is as fast or faster than anything in their pervious generation.  It was an amazing month for NVIDIA, so what was AMD’s response? A card that has the same speed as their cards from two generations ago.  Sure it will be cheap, starting at $200, but that doesn’t instill a lot of confidence that their new architecture has a lot of head room.

Then on their processer side they announced that their long awaited follow up to the ageing FX line exists.  They even held one up, but it will not be out for awhile.  This is just days after Intel announced their new faster and more efficient chips.  It is great that their new chips will have tons of cache and now do hyper-threading, but I would like to know when I can buy one and about how much they will set me back.  Not that at some point in the future that a chip may come out.

Then to top it all off there are rumors that all the video card guys want to jump ship to Intel because AMD’s upper management doesn’t care about the graphics division.  My take on that is that AMD is just out of money and time, so they can’t care.  Especially when the new card is so slow the only way they can sell it is to sell it cheap.

All of this displeases me greatly.  I have loved both AMD processors and ATi Radeon graphics cards from way back.  Heck I put their kit in my latest rig, so to see them struggling to get product out the door is hard to watch.  Intel and NVIDIA need competition to keep innovating, and AMD was that competition.  If AMD falls I am not sure who will or even could take their place.  Not to mention fans like me will be more than a little sad to see them go.