Last month, as I’ve mentioned a few times in the past, I finally got back to broadcasting on Twitch on a schedule as well as to recording Let’s Plays. The pilot season is over now and we have a winner, but that’s not what today is about.
In August’s streams I made a fool of myself in Overwatch matches, with the occasional moment of glory. I fought Lovecraftian Metroidvania bosses in Sundered, explored ancient Indian ruins with a couple of badass ladies and even fought the chaotic Rabbids in the Mushroom Kingdom. Continue reading The Lawful Geek Stream – Best of August!
It’s been a while but for a couple of weeks now I’ve returned to Overwatch, been playing and improving my skills every time. The last time I played was months ago and had to quit because the toxicity in the competitive mode got to me. I couldn’t tolerate the level of abuse teammates and opponents levelled upon each other for the most meaningless of reasons. Continue reading Back to Overwatch – I love Quick Play!
As I said a couple of days ago, next week is going to be a week off from content on the site and its various channels, as I need a bit of a holiday to recharge for the next year.
I also said in the past that I don’t do Best Game/Film/Series/Anime/Plushie/Gunpla of the year because I think they’re shortsighted at best.
But with how strange this year has been–there’s a reason Merriam Webster chose “surreal” as the word of the year–I decided it might be a good idea to look back at some of the best moments in the year for myself and the site. So join me in this little trip down memory lane for a very strange year! Continue reading Best of 2016 – The Mental Attic
After 10 matches, ten mostly terrible matches, I made it through the placement stage for the latest season of Overwatch Competitive, with a 3 win, 7 loss record and a 2000-ish rank.
As it tends to happen with Overwatch competitive, you sometimes have amazing matches, where even if you lose, it’s an intense fight from start to finish. And sometimes, you have a team filled with abuse-spewing nincompoops who focus on themselves and not the overall team effort yet find ways of making everything other people’s fault. I know I screw up, a lot, and I can accept that and move on, learning from my mistakes, but I’m continually shocked at how people refuse to accept their parts in a loss, opting for just vitriol to hide the fact. Continue reading Overwatch – Season 3 Placement Matches Done!
It’s December, the end of the year approaches and so many sites will start on their “Best Of” lists. I’m not a fan of them, least of all of Game of the Year nominations and awards. I think they’re short-sighted and often try to quantify games to pick a winner, often just the game with the highest review score, ignoring every other aspect of a game and its impact on the industry.
But with that said, I played more First person shooters in 2016 alone than the last couple of years combined. I don’t play the franchises with the yearly releases, as I need something more to attract me to the games. I often just play a single or a couple of first person shooters every year, those with the plot and elements that keep me playing.
I know I make it sound like I played a good baker’s dozens of first-person shooters, but in truth there were only 4:
DOOM: I played this in the past week, buying it during the latest Steam sale and enjoying it on my new computer. This game is badass and even being new and having shiny graphics, it made me remember the good old days of playing Doom and modified versions of Doom 2 with my friends, just killing demons one super-shotgun blast at a time.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: sure, I may play this game more as a first-person sneaker but it is still a first-person shooter. The only thing that brings it down, as I mentioned in an article a few days ago, is how the story doesn’t seem to go anywhere significant, how it feels incomplete, cut too short at the end of a prologue. But it’s still fun and interesting and I will always love the freedom of approach you have in Deus Ex games.
Overwatch: The only multiplayer-focused first-person shooter I’ve ever enjoyed. This is a fun and fast game, with amazing characters and a wonderful lore to back it all up. And with new maps and characters along with competitive seasons and rewards, it’s going to be a game I keep playing for a long while, particularly using the Green Cyborg Ninja Dude and Reinhardt!
Shadow Warrior 2: One of my latest acquisitions, bought along with DOOM in that Steam sale and a game that once I loaded it for the first time I could not let go until I had cleared the game. And then I restarted it on new game plus in a much higher difficulty level, something I rarely ever do.
Out of those four, I’m tempted to give the best of award to Overwatch, as it’s the game I’ve enjoyed the most over the year, the title I’ve defended to non-believers and one I just like so much that I’m willing to endure the competitive mode, one I’ve called a snake-pit in the past. And let’s not forget this is the game I’ve recorded the most videos for this year.
But to be honest, in the past week it became absolutely clear to me that despite some issues, the game I had the most fun with was Shadow Warrior 2. It has the action, fast paced and against incredible odds. It’s challenging, especially since it’s a hybrid First-person shooter and RPG and you get elite enemies with special properties, resistances and a ton of health. The bosses are great and can kill you.
Lady Deathstroke?
Speaking of, it has a phenomenal death mechanic, like Dark Souls but with one clear difference that I think more games should implement: no loading times. If you die, you instantly respawn and get back into it.
Shadow Warrior 2 has a fantastic sense of humour and makes fun of itself—that and the many dick jokes—which is something it shares with Overwatch but not with the other two games on this list of nominees. It’s great to see Lo Wang just make fun of everyone and everything, with this as my favourite exchange:
Orochi Zilla: “Guards!”
Wang: “I killed all your guards”
Orochi: “All of them?”
Wang: “What can I say? I was on a roll!”
And to prove his…unique sense of humour, he has another exchange with Kamiko, his spiritual companion in this game:
“You’re such a prick!”
“I consider myself more of a Wang!”
But what truly puts the game on the top of the list is the song for the final boss fight. It’s a new theme recorded by Stan Bush, the singer for “The Touch,” the theme song for the 1980s Transformers animated movie.
The song’s name is Warrior and it’s an 80s Rock anthem. The moment I heard the song I knew it, Shadow Warrior 2 was the best first person shooter of the year, for a simple thing, and I’ll say it again: I had the most fun with it.
And in the end, that’s what games are for, to have fun.
But that’s my best first-person shooter of the year, do you have a different one? Let me know in the comments or on social media!
Overwatch, I’ve mentioned in the past, is the first first-person competitive/multiplayer game I’ve truly loved. Between cool characters, awesome mechanics, a fun universe and just being downright addictive, I always come back for a few matches.
But in the past few months, as I was preparing to get a new computer and struggling to do anything about recording and/or streaming, I stopped playing Overwatch altogether, ignoring the second competitive season—not just for this but because at its worst the competitive community is composed of monumental bastards—and even the PTR. Continue reading Overwatch – Back in the Game!
In the past few months I’ve worked harder on the YouTube videos and the effort has paid off somewhat with new subscribers, comments and views on the channel. Still nothing to write home about, but it’s an improvement and one desperately needed. There were times were I wondered why I was still wasting my time don this stuff, and then someone made a nice comment or subscribed and I had a sudden jolt of endorphin for a job well done.
But recently, last week in fact, I came upon a realisation and that is that sometimes recording a game, or continue to record them is not worth the trouble. As much as I love Assassin’s Creed II, no one really cared about that series, and last week I noticed that after 42 episodes, I had only 4 minutes viewed between all of them, and three of those minutes were from an episode months ago. It’s because of this that I’ve decided to move away from this playthrough. It’s proven to be something the audience doesn’t care about, and so to keep pushing on with it is just pointless. Continue reading On Recording & Broadcasting
Today marks the end of the first Overwatch competitive season. I’ve had fun times playing it, and I’ve also had moment where I had to walk away from it. No, it wasn’t salt, it wasn’t bitterness at losing, but we’ll get to that. Continue reading Overwatch Season 1 – Time’s Up!
Last Friday I shared with you the first episode of my new weekly video series, Hearthbrawl, where I go over the week’s Tavern Brawl on Hearthstone, showing you some of the best and worst games I played while completing quests.
But as I worked on that video I realised that it’s not just Hearthstone that has a weekly brawl mechanic with crazy combinations that lead to some fun and chaotic moments. Overwatch has one as well and it’s a mode I’ve been enjoying a lot lately.
So, in my never ending quest to create even more fun content for The Mental Attic’s YouTube channel, I’m starting yet another weekly series, Overbrawl—yeah, my imagination isn’t that good when it comes to creating catchy names, sorry. Much like the Hearthstone series, I’ll play a few matches of the weekly brawl and show you what happened. Continue reading Bring a Gun to a Brawl
