Men of Heart: EVO 2014- Friday

Good evening all! Sorry I'm posting this so late! between waking up late, an impromptu dinner date, and literally being glued to EVO Coverage, it's been quite the busy day! While most Esports fans and coverage these past few days have had all eyes and ears focused on the formidable Dota 2 TI4 coverage, this weekend is also home to the largest fighting game tournament of the year, the 2014 EVO Championship Series.

Every year, thousands of fighting game players and enthusiasts embark of a pilgrimage to fabulous Las Vegas to either compete in or spectate in this Mountain Dew-fueled, heart-racing weekend of round after round of the top level of competitive fighting game play. Featuring Ultra Street Fighter 4, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, and of course Super Smash Bros: Melee (amongst others), EVO is that one special time of year when the rest of the gaming community gets a front row seat to some of the most passionate video game communities in existence.

Men of Heart, I promise.

There's something about watching fighting and playing fighting games that gets the blood racing. Between the blistering pace of the games, (whilst writing this I've seen at least 6 entire rounds cycle through, as opposed to MOBAs where we *may* have been out of champion selection by now) the commentators who practically eat, sleep, and breath fighting games, (most of whom were/are pro players themselves) and the massive cat calls and hollers every time a player lands an unbelievable reversal or combo, it's hard not to be mesmerized by a fighting game tournament. The Super Smash Bros: Melee community alone is notorious for their high energy commentary, and let's face it, when shit like this happens:

it's pretty easy to see how deserving they are. I've already lost track of how many times this weekend I've had to turn down the speakers (or at least pretend I'm watching the World Cup) for the huge amounts of hype these players command.

I myself am no stranger to fighting games, as I've enjoyed more than my fair share of Smash Bros over the year, as well as Soul Caliber and Dead or Alive 2 growing up. Fighting games are not for the weak of heart, as playing online in nearly any popular fighting game these days will teach you. Between the dizzying reflexes and physical skills/timing needed to perfect combos, and the insane amount of 'reading' or predicting your opponents moves and strategies that need to be mastered, being a fighting game pro might as well be a full time job. So if you find yourself getting bored with endless World Cup coverage, or TI4, you'll know where to find me this weekend!

Keep on Combo'n!

-Madjawa

The Pathfinding Jawa I: What is Pathfinder?

Every now and then on the Sandcrawler, us Jawas find ourselves with a lot of downtime. Engines need repairs, code needs compiling, sandstorms, Tuskan's killing our driver, etc. etc. While there's plenty of work we can do while the Sandcrawler is stuck in one area, sometimes we like to relax a little, turn off the droids and computers, and break out a couple of these bad boys and the books.

 

 Tabletops RPGs have been around for decades now, and are one of the many pinnacles of nerd culture. With hundreds of different games from the iconic Dungeons and Dragons to steampunk games, space games, and everything in between, there's a tabletop out there for everyone. I myself had never actually played much in the way of tabletop RPGs until this June, when I discovered a local Pathfinder Society through my city's subreddit. 

For those of you familiar with D&D, Pathfinder follows a modified version of the 3.5 edition rules, and rather then running full campaigns, most adventure modules are in single 4-5 hour sessions. For those of you who got a small headache reading that last sentence, Pathfinder is a fantasy tabletop RPG, complete with Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons, Magic, and all the other zesty high-fantasy shenanigans we've come to know and love. While Dungeons and Dragons typically has campaigns that last anywhere from a few sessions to a few years, Pathfinder (excluding multi-module adventures and adventure paths) usually fit an entire adventure into a single session, which makes it a lot easier for players to come and go as they please/their schedules allow. As a relative newcomer to Pathfinder myself, this weekly segment will serve to highlight some of the more entertaining moments in my character's travels, as well as hopefully a pseudo-guide to other newer players.Without further ado, here's this weeks installment following the adventures of Loth, my Elven Witch!

Week I: Rednecks don't like Witches (#5-22: Scars of the Third Crusade)

Warning: These write-ups contain mild spoilers for certain pathfinder modules, I will always list the module beforehand so read at your own discretion. 

Introducing Loth: A Chaotic Neutral Elven witch who loves nothing more than de-buffing and cursing enemies, then cackling in their faces as they fail all their saves and attack rolls. In Pathfinder, witches make fantastic de-buffers against any enemies that mind-affecting magic works on (too bad that makes me practically useless against undead.) Coming fully equipped with a tattered hat, staff, lots of cackling, and an adorable greensting scorpion familiar, Loth is usually in the back ranks of any combat, and on the lead of any investigative/diplomatic work (he's downright 'charming' one might say.)

This week, Loth ventured out to a hick town out in the sticks accompanied by a standoffish Monk, a bumbling Sorcerer, a Valley-girl-esque Swashbuckler, a run-of-the-mill Ninja, and Kyra, the pre-gen Cleric. Our goal was fairly straightforward: 3 other pathfinders are being framed for murder, we have to go find out what happened, clear up the misunderstanding, and get our men home. We were warned that Pathfinders aren't the most beloved people in this town, and to step lightly to avoid provoking the townsfolk. Without giving too much away about the module itself, suffice to say things did NOT go as intended. The Ninja tried to challenge the locals to a beer-drinking contest only to pass out after a single stein, the Sorcerer blatantly told the townsfolk we were pathfinders in the first 5 minutes, the monk choked out an old lady on a poor intimidation roll, I made a few offhand comments about flaying humans and witchcraft in general, and Kyra got into a theological debate with the town's inquisitor. All in a solid first day on the job.

Things really didn't get much better from there, as my dagger was pickpocketed and used to murder a townsfolk, and the one combat encounter we had ended with our would-be-assassin running away and screaming that WE tried to murder HIM. After all of our bumbling around earlier, our only option at that point was an utterly terrifying trial by combat by the less-than-lovable inquisitor, the sheriff, and our would-be-assassin while we were literally surrounded into a roughly 50 sq. ft area by an enraged mob. As much as we pleaded for them to actually listen to us, our only way out was to kill all three, chase off the mob, jailbreak our allies, and get the hell out. All in all it was a tense adventure, but we all made it out alive so in the long run, it could have gone worse. It turns out bringing a witch and sorcerer to a town on-edge about grisly, possibly demon-involved murders isn't a good idea. Stay tuned next week to see what other shenanigans the Green Mountain Lodge Pathfinder Society gets ourselves into.

-Madjawa

 

First Thoughts: DOTA 2: The International 2014 coverage.

Let me preface this post by saying I have never been a MOBA player. I understand the basics behind League of Legends and Dota 2, and the massive impact they've had on the gaming and esports community. As for this Jawa, however, MOBA's are purely an 'on the outside looking in' affair, and due to the steep learning curves, time investment, and colorful community, there's a good chance it will stay that way for the time being. That being said, nothing excites me more then watching the Esports and streaming communities explode in the last several years, and as a spectator sport, MOBAs deliver.

For all 3 of you who have never heard of Dota 2, or the MOBA genre, the general premise is as follows: 2 teams square off in an arena, with the goal being to capture and destroy the enemies main base. Players choose from a wide cast of heroes with different abilities, synergies, and strategies, and face off for games that typically last anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes. Dota 2, Valve's entry into the MOBA genre, has swept the international gaming community away in the past several years, making it a direct competitor to Riot Games massively popular League of Legends. According to Valve's statistics, there are over 800,000 Dota 2 players across the world as I'm writing this. Overall figures estimate Dota 2's playerbase to be almost 9 million players who have played in the last month alone, let alone less frequent players. While this still pales in comparison to League of Legends' massive community (estimated to be over 65 million players at this point) Dota 2 is easily the 2nd largest MOBA, and even more importantly

The prize pool for this tournament is now the largest in Esports history, with a total of over $10,000,000 in prize money.

 Needless to say, this is a huge moment in gaming history, and as such there's already professional tier coverage for the qualifying rounds going on as I type this over on Twitch. There's even a stream for people new to the game at The Noob Stream (a definite lifesaver for someone who knows next-to-nothing about the game, like myself.) As Esports as a whole continues to grow in popularity and scale, the technology used and the quality of commentary on competitive gaming events continues to skyrocket in a way that I think, given a few more years at most, will match the amount of commercial attention physical sports attract, and given the view counts on the Twitch streams so far, livestreamed Esports are much more then a passing fad.

On to the actual coverage itself: I followed most of day 1 of coverage of The International on the standard Twitch stream, and I have to say that for having no idea what's going on, Dota 2 is a blast to watch. The visual quality of the stream is fairly high, depending on your network speed, and barring some echoing and volume control issues in the first hour or so, the audio is crisp and easy to hear. The commentators are very much into the matchups, and for the most part the camera control follows the action, and while matches usually take the better part of an hour, it's hard to be bored watching the best in the world square off, whilst narrated by some of the most passionate members of the Dota 2 community. Overall, I'm excited to continue watching these streams over the next few days and weeks, and I hope all of you Dota 2 fans out there enjoy the largest tournament of the year!

 -Madjawa

 

The Art of Jawacide: Week I: Madjawa vs the Death Star

Roguelikes: What are they? How did they come to be? Why can't I save? Why the hell does every single missile hit when I have 55% evasion? Welcome to the first weekly gaming segment on the Sandcrawler: The Art of Jawacide Where I'll be discussing and reviewing roguelike games. 

So what exactly is a roguelike? Wikipedia defines it as

"a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by procedural level generation, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics and permanent death, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting."

While there are plenty of classic roguelikes that fall squarely into these parameters, modern roguelikes tend to stray from high fantasy narrative and turn-based combat for the most part, leading to some very interesting games. Over the next several weeks I'm going to review//write about some of the more popular roguelikes out there, as well as some less popular roguelikes worth looking into. So without further ado, let's talk about one of the most popular roguelikes on the market today: FTL!

ーFaster Than Light ー

(alternatively: F**k These Lasers, For the Loss)

Oh FTL, where do I even begin with you? You sick, twisted, time-suck of a game. The general premise of FTL is as follows: You're a spaceship carrying vital Federation intel, and there's a whole herd of pissed rebels who will stop at nothing until you and the information you carry are deader than the Ishumura from Dead Space. Your goal is to bravely flee the oncoming fleet to relay this valuable by hopping from star node to star node, whilst dodging pirates, astroids, rebels, giant alien spiders (they're no joke, you know.) and a whole plethora of other zesty ways to meet your untimely demise, which you will. Again and again and again.

 

A very familiar screen.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love FTL to pieces. It's a brilliant blend of semi-turned based space combat, complete with all kinds of shenanigans such as winning by suffocating the other crew to death, or forcing them to kill each other with mind control, but make no mistakes: This is a hard game. Generally speaking, I am all for hard games, they're a nice change of pace to the copious amounts of modern games that like to hold the player's hands a bit too much.

Classic.

 That being said, there's the sort of hard that tests your skills, and there's the sort of hard that tests your luck. My one major complaint with FTL is that, unfortunately, it falls into the second category. While knowing what you're doing is certainly a huge boon in FTL, there are plenty of times where you honestly don't stand a chance. I don't think I've played another game where, despite having an entirely upgraded ship with the best weapons in game, I still managed to get obliterated... On Easy.

That all being said, FTL is still one of my favorite roguelikes out there, with piles of various ships to unlock, the huge Advanced Edition update, and just enough randomness to stay interesting, I highly recommend it. 8/10, would suicide bomb the Death Star again. 


 Stay tuned next week when we dive into a more obscure roguelike!

-Madjawa

Introductions

Greetings, brave denizens of the internet! (read: the friends I click-baited here) and welcome to The Sandcrawler! I'll be writing about almost everything gaming at some point or another, but for starters I've decided to focus on my main 3 loves; Video gaming, Esports coverage of events, and TCG (trading card games.)

So a bit about me, Madjawa. I've been a gamer most of my life, starting with the original Xbox, as well as PC gaming way back in the day, but I usually play older games due to the limitations of my lovely laptop, so most of the games I mention  here will either be console versions or older games. I've also played TCGs since I was about 6, with the usual progression of Pokemon -> Yu-gi-oh!-> Magic the Gathering. I'm a college-kid-bum with a lot of time on his hands, and a passion for gaming.

So for starters I'll probably write some game reviews, as well as reviews/thoughts on Esports streams, notably the ongoing DOTA2:TI and EVO this upcoming weekend, as well as interesting TCG tidbits. So, dear reader, welcome aboard The Sandcrawler, and enjoy the ride! (also don't sue me for copyright infringement, that would suck. ;-;)

-Madjawa