Archives for March 2015

The weekend is upon us and it’s time to plan out a weekend’s worth of gaming.

I am concluding a long series of trips out of town and I’m taking a 3-day weekend in celebration so there will be plenty of gaming going on in the Buttonmashing household. My gaming cup runneth over. I have been jonesing for some Dota 2, so that will be the first course of gaming. After that, I can finally download Pillars of Eternity, which was one of the first games I ever backed on Kickstarter. I’ve avoided pretty much all the reviews to avoid spoilers, but looking at review scores, I think I’m in for quite a fun ride. I loved Baldur’s Gate back in the day and it looks like Obsidian has knocked it out of the park again. So I’ll be spending a good chunk of my gaming time with Pillars.

And I still have Dragon Age: Inquisition warming on the backburner and I recently re-started my playthrough of Mark of the Ninja. There should be plenty of gaming to go around this fine weekend.

What are you going to play?

There was that moment, one million years ago, when I clicked the PLAY button next to Dota 2 for the first time. It was a cold plunge, having never previously played any sort of MOBA. What followed was not some grand epiphany, some majestic revelation that this is the only game I shall ever need from here on out. In fact, the first match was quite uninspiring. From a list of what seemed like seven thousand heroes I picked Sven. More than anything, I vividly remember being perturbed and just a little confused that his weapon animation didn’t change when I purchased and equipped a new one – “That doesn’t look like the hammer in my inventory…”

At the insistence of James ButtonMasher and Sire Tony ButtonMasher, I played on. With every match, I picked up another nugget of understanding. I dabbled in a few other heroes, got the feel for the different roles. But it wasn’t until I played Bloodseeker that the true ferocity of Dota became clear. He was my ‘Oh, OK. I get it now’ hero. What Bloodseeker set in motion was nearly six months of exclusive Dota play time. I threw myself at this stupid game.

But then I stopped. Contrary to the steady build-up to Bloodseeker, I burnt out pretty quick – Which is a bummer because my Enchantress and Pugna had potential.

Now, after another seven or eight months, I may or may not be warming back up to Dota. Through the whispered enticings of James ButtonMasher, I’ve revisited my dota-dabbling ways. And I suspect that this weekend, this very weekend of 6 March 2015 may witness the beginning of a personal Dota renaissance. Instead of Bloodseeker ushering in the new age, it shall be SLARK! He/it has characteristics that compliment a player who may or may not be looking to jump back into the fray after a period of dormancy: He’s quick, fairly simple to play and can work on his own if need be.

And I love that his only defined role is simply an Escape. Instead of hanging out in the back as a support, which is what I have been doing in all this recent dabbling-ness, I need to stick my neck out as Slark and rattle some cages with a few Pounce + Essence Shift combos. And I need to do it all with a slobbery Australian-ish accent.

What are you playing this weekend?