One Prestige Later: favorite maps, load outs, and other random bits

Yes! Another MW2 post! Well, I haven't finished Spirit Tracks yet, so I'm holding off on that for a while. But I have finally prestiged, which is when you hit the level cap (in this case, 70) and decide, "I'm so good, I'll do the rest of the world a favor and reset all my stats and do it all over fresh!"

The Big Post Christmas Post

Christmas is now officially over for me. No more Christmas Eve, Day, or Post events. Just a plain old night at home with my GRE breathing down the back of my neck and the New Years right after it. What did you get for Christmas? And what would you wish you could've gotten for Christmas? I mean, as a gamer, most of your gifts will fit the electronics bill. There are a lot of ideas you could have gotten.

Finals are done, but here comes Christmas

Finals were a big pain in the ass, but as soon as they finish, I now have Christmas to deal with along with my sister.

In the meantime, I've close to Prestiging on MW2 and got myself Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the DS. I'm probably going to make some entries on some hilarious tactics, classes, and moments from the upper echoleons of MW2 and of course, talk about Spirit Tracks and Christmas gift giving.

Happy holidays everyone!

Scarred for Life: Weird Fighting F

Most college campuses are pretty big. And during a long day of classes, you're likely to unwind in a place that will become a regular stop. For me, one of those places is the study lounge, known as the cyber lounge by the regulars. Many of the regulars have laptops, and several of the friends I've made in there play a lot of games. But one day, one of them brings in a Japanese homebrewed fighting game which roughly translates into Weird Fighting F. Good luck finding any other information about it besides that link. As it's Japanese, it'll be hard to find more information as most searches (since I assume you're reading this in English) will turn up zero information.

TF2 is back with the War Update

Brought to you by TF2: The War Update

Team Fortress 2 is about to bring us all back to everyone's favorite class based shooter. Every time they update the game with new weapons for a particular class, the number of players spike as everyone, new and old, come to try the new items that change the fundamental strategies of TF2. When the last Sniper update came by, it gave Snipers the bow which allowed them to play at medium range. The updates that came with the Spy gave us annoying little invisible campers. And of course the Heavy got sandwiches.

Now the new update promises something new that, as usual, gives us all something to talk about. Like the last Sniper/Spy update, we have two classes getting new stuff at the same time. Unlike the Sniper/Spy update, heck, unlike all the other updates, it gives us something to do while they roll out the sneak previews. During the preview time, which typically goes for a week, Demomen and Soliders get points applied to their class' team universal for killing each other while playing. The class that gets the most points gets to brag and an extra fourth weapon to their load out.

I'll be getting back onto TF2 sometime this week to contribute. Will you?

Brutal Legend @ Karen's

Finished a big podcasting project for one of my classes. It's a funny little romp through whatever games we had on hand and the best moments comes from my friend, Karen, as she plays different games with hilarious results.

Here's the first and hopefully not last installment of ___ @ Karen's: Brutal Legend.

Balance Analysis: Arakune

This right here encompasses what you can expect from Arakune in Calamity Trigger. As part of the top three, he was typically 3rd or 2nd in the hypothetical S tiers, somewhere near Nu but definitely below Rachel. When you play Calamity Trigger, fighting against Arakune is a massive pain in the butt. His drive, or special ability, gives certain attacks a unique property that curses your opponent. Once cursed, Arakune can summon underworld insects (lovingly nicknamed bees) by pressing any of his four buttons. Arakune is known to have combos that do 6,000 damage without even needing meter to do supers (as a point of reference, Tager, who has the most health, has 13,000 points of health). His new form in Continuum Shift gives him a much more interesting dimension of strategy besides curse and spam bees.

iListen to something else on my MP3 player

This past week, the folks over at dustloop managed to get their grubby mitts on the clean versions of the new musical themes to the characters on Continuum Shift. This entire week, I've listened to nothing but the character themes to the new characters from the game like Hazama and Tsubaki, with awesome titles like Gluttony Fang and Condemnation Wings. So it just gets me to thinking just how important music can be in a game. Just think about the past months' games like Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed 2. It's easy to take music for granted when you have such important game play elements like multiplayer balance and mission variety. Here are some games and their songs that do such a great job, it's hard to think about the game until the consider their music and sound.

Fight game character spotlight: Hazama

This is Hazama, one of the new playable characters in Blazblue: Continuum Shift. As a new character, his true potential has yet to be discovered, but lots of veterans are counting him out because of his low damage output. While this is true, his attacks look really fast and his drive, Ouroboros, gives him interesting play styles. Ouroboros lets him shoot out chains with spear tips as a projectile, and regardless if it hits the opponent or not, Hazama can slingshot himself forwards and do some pretty trippy stuff. Here's an example of a player in Japan who had discovered some cool tricks with Hazama.