Sleeping Dogs and The Walking Dead

Last night the achievements page for The Walking Dead on Steam updated and I got all excited. It was 2am and I was considering whether I should stay up and play it or wait til morning. But it didn't matter - the third episode wasn't out yet. Steam, you tease. So I'm sitting here waiting for the next instalment of my favourite episodic-content-based game of the year... hold on, describing it that way doesn't do it justice. Taking the episodes as a whole, The Walking Dead is my second favourite game of the year so far (the highest honour goes to Journey). So when new content of your second favourite game of the year is coming out imminently, you get kinda excited. Not only that, there are yet more episodes to come. Also the TV series starts again in a little over a month. I love The Walking Dead. I should read the comics too.

The word 'game' to describe these episodes seems a bit thin, though. The first one was barely a game, and the second one, seemingly less so. But as an interactive story telling experience, they are unparalleled. You follow the linear path that the author has set out for you, but are given choices along the way. It's a bit like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books you had as a kid. Just having choices there isn't enough though, it's how these choices make you think. Not a single decision you have to make in The Walking Dead is a black or white one. They're all dripping in delicious grey, and most are going to make you feel bad in some way. Particularly the choices where someone's life is at risk. Can't wait to see which morally deprived choices I get to make later today.

While I'm waiting for that, I'll write about what I have been playing recently. And other than hours and hours of League of Legends, it has been Sleeping Dogs. Up until a week before its release, I wasn't particularly interested in this open world third person action adventure game. I saw the star studded cast, and though, eh, famous names do not a good game make. But then suddenly, it was a good game, people were talking about the quality gameplay, the excellent story and the pretty visuals. So I bought it, and I can indeed confirm all of these things, and more.

We spent a bit of time on the Hooked Gamers Podcast talking about Sleeping Dogs, so everything you hear on there applies here. I have played a good few more hours since then, and the game just seems to get better as you go. Having a GTA-style game where the main combat mechanic is melee rather than simply pointing your gun and shooting is very refreshing. Especially when the combat is as good as it is. It is nearly as good as the Batman fighting, and that's saying something. You don't get to stick dudes' heads in spinning fans in Batman though. Which I guess is a good thing and a bad thing - it's kinda nasty.

Having one good game like this per year is pretty awesome. Saints Row the Third last year, Sleeping Dogs this year, and inevitably GTA 5 next year. What's cool is that each of them brings something different to the table too. Saints Row brings the hilarity and ridiculousness that used to be synonymous with GTA. I don't agree with people saying that GTA has gone downhill since it became more serious, I think it's good to have a more mature game in that vein. And now Sleeping Dogs has brought a different style of gameplay to the format, so there's some excellent quality around for open world games at the moment. Let's hope it continues. Good games are good.

Thanks for reading.

What to do in Dota 2 - Part 3

I was scared again. I had managed to score my first Dota 2 victory, but it was only against computer controlled bots. Now I was joining a game against real life humans, who had most likely played a lot more of this game than I had. What if I messed up and they made fun of me? Oh, I remember, I couldn't care less what people on the Internet type in text chat to me. Although one time a guy said my story was cool, and then called me bro. He was nice.

Windrunner was my hero of choice this time. She's a feisty redhead with a bow and arrow with shots that can shackle enemies to each other or to trees, and an ultimate ability which increases the rate at which she fires at a target for a period of time. Within the first five minutes I had gotten my first enemy hero kill, FIRST BLOOD. I got an extra bit of gold and experience for getting the first kill. Either I was getting better, or this hero was good for the way I played.

I was paying more attention to the minimap this time, seeing where the enemy heroes were, and where my allies were. If an enemy hero was all on their own and a few of us were nearby, we could go and kill it, and it was working well. A couple of us got caught out though, and a group of enemy heroes made quick work of us.

"Stop dat feed."

Clearly someone on our team wasn't pleased with us for dying. Feeding is where you needlessly die to enemy heroes, thereby granting them extra gold and experience with no gain for your team. That's bad. Woops.

It was a close game. We were trading kills and towers were getting destroyed on both sides. Some barracks on opposing sides of the map had been destroyed, which meant that "Mega" Creeps had started spawning, which can sometimes even pose a threat to heroes if there's a large enough group of them. The game was nearing an end, probably all it would take was a big hero battle to decide it.

That battle soon came. I didn't feel like my ultimate ability was as powerful as a lot of heroes', who do massive area of effect damage. Mine simply allowed me to focus fire on one hero, which wasn't doing the battle as a whole much good. We lost all of our heroes, and three of theirs were left standing, this meant trouble for our remaining structures. Since most of us had a fairly lengthy respawn timer by that point, the enemies were able to destroy the towers surrounding our Ancient and start attacking it. We all managed to spawn just in time to drive them back with our Ancient barely standing on around 15% health.

While all this was going on, it became apparent that our creeps were making some headway on the other side of the map, unbeknownst to us, and more importantly the enemy. They had managed to destroy the towers surrounding the enemy ancient and were beginning to attack it! And the enemy heroes were either dead or halfway across the map.

Radiant Victory!

We had won the battle, and man was it close. Our team had all assumed defeat, and yet with no help from us, our creeps had won us the game. I was beginning to really enjoy this game now, and couldn't wait to join some more games and try some new heroes out.

Thanks for reading, have a good one.