Tensei

There have been some downright amazing usermade videos recently:

Sounds like someone who hasn't heard yet.

Plenty of reasons: Obscurity. This is the original purpose of Let's Plays, to show certain interesting but obscure games to a wider audience. This is why the earliest Let's Plays were of games like La Mulana, Immortal, Snatcher or Cave Story (before it exploded in popularity), and not stuff that everyone knew such as Final Fantasy or Super Mario World. Furthermore, unless you own literally every console under the sun, including all the region-exclusive versions, chances are you won't have the option to just play a game instead of watching it. Then there's also the fact that certain games just aren't very fun to play, but can be great to watch, which makes them prime LP material (Deadly Premonition, Asura's Wrath, etc.) Finally, sometimes there's just added value to watching a game instead of playing it. There's a (possibly accurate) stereotype that most Starcraft 2 enthousiasts watch the game more than they actually play it, and the reason for that would be that when you have a game with such depth as SC2, it's completely different to watch a professional go at it than actually playing it yourself. Other examples would be games like Dark Souls, Dwarf Fortress, Dota, etc. Sometimes you personally just can't afford to invest the amount of time it requires to become good or at least competent at those kinds of games, and in that case watching someone skilled playing through it can be quite interesting. A related phenomenon would be speedrunning. My favorite example of added value would be The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing. I mean yeah, I could play AC, but that would be nothing like reading this LP. A somewhat recent and unfortunate trend is that the focus has been shifted more towards the Let's Player and their persona, at the behest of the game being shown, since pretty much everyone nowadays feels that it's necessary to have a webcam running.

PCs are slowly creeping up in the living room environment though. The fact that there already is such a thing as dedicated gaming rigs hooked up to a TV (which didn't exist a few years ago), not to mention the near-ubiquitous controller support and things like Steam's Big Picture mode says a lot, and it won't be long before the first PCs specifically designed to hook up to TVs will make their entrance. Also, with regards to console exclusives: My point is that in 1996, something like Super Mario 64 couldn't have had a decent PC port because the analog stick required for precise 3D movement was completely novel, and at that point, unique to the N64. Back then, consoles actually offered something fundamentally different from PCs, but nowadays PCs can do everything consoles do, and more. The reason that there even is such a thing as console exclusives anymore is because of business practice, not because of hardware limitations or anything like that.

But streaming has been a PC thing for ages already, I regularly watch Let's Plays and competitive Dota 2/SC2 matches. That's pretty much my point when it comes to scepticism for modern consoles: none of these features are actually new to me. When Nintendo came up with stuff like the D-pad or the analog stick, it pretty much revolutionized gaming across the board, but the next generation of consoles seems to just be retreading stuff that has already been done before in some form. Now that they're apparently not even going to push the graphical capabilities by a whole lot, I'm having a hard time rationalizing the purchase of a console short of a few exclusive games. And face it, the only reason FF and MGS are PS exclusive is not because of some hardware limitations, but because Sony is throwing money at those devs.

These graphics aren't particularly impressive, so no go for me.

They're still pretty heavily invested in the ongoing development of Dota 2 and to a lesser degree TF2, not to mention whatever unannounced games they still have brewing.

This hero is amazing.

Most hats are player-made though?

I think todays patch should add another PVP server so maybe that'll solve the queue issue somewhat.

This differs by class but as a rule ranged characters have pretty prohibitive cast times on their spells so they can't kite melee classes forever (which they already do anyway). A lot of the melee classes incorporate some form of forward or backward motion into their skills so they're generally a lot more mobile even while attacking. Especially Warriors can just dance around enemies all day.

EME released a pretty great introduction vid that covers just about everything:

F2P is out, and the servers should be up right about now! If you want to play, feel free to join the OCR guild I set up on the Mount Tyrannas server.

I set up an OCR guild on Mount Tyranus to make it easier for people to meet up, just apply for it (it's simply called Overclocked Remix due to capitalization restrictions) and I'll probably recognize you from your forum name. You can apply through "Guilds on Server" in the social menu. Here's some random screenshots I took, I especially like the way deserts look in this game. http://imgur.com/a/QvaUH

Two reasons: not everyone has access to every single console and videogame, or the means to play it. I know that Godhand is an amazing game, but I've never owned it or a PS2. If the game doesn't have a demo version, watching someone else play through it is the best way to get a taste for it, and I've bought dozens of games after watching a stream/let's play. I got Chivalry cause of .The other reason is that some people who do the playthrough add something to it, whether that be entertainment or skill. One of the let's plays I follow right now has a guy doing the new XCOM on Impossible difficulty with Ironman on (not allowed to reload saves), which is not something I'd ever do myself, even though I own the game. Then there's also all kinds of progamers who have started streaming as well.

http://tera.enmasse.com/ I imagine most people have heard of this game before, but since it's going F2P I'd like to draw attention to it. TERA is an originally Korean MMORPG with an emphasis on a fast, combo-based combat system. Almost every single attack in the game has to be targeted (only a few rare spells use a lock-on system), and has to physically connect to count as a hit, which also means that attacks can be avoided by physically moving out of the way or blocking them, rather than through some evasion stat, which is quite unlike other MMOs. It can best be described as something like Monster Hunter or a faster Dark Souls. Other neat features of the game are open-world PVP (i.e. you can become an outlaw and hunt other players in quest zones, rather than having to go to designated battlegrounds), and so-called BAMs (Big-ass monsters), which are that can either be taken on with a party, or by yourself if you're good at reading attacks and dodging. Instances and questing are so-so, but the combat system makes up for a lot. While the adheres to the holy trinity pretty hard, there are plenty of distinctions between the different classes, and even the three melee DPS classes (Slayer, Berserker, Warrior) all play very differently.Graphically the game still holds up very well thanks to UE3, and the aesthetics are quite gorgeous, if occasionally a bit too 'sexy' for my taste. While the F2P starts in february, you can do an unlimited free trial (2 character slots, up to level 28 ), and your characters will carry over into F2P. Also, you can play as a pipesmoking dog/cat/rabbit/panda, so you should absolutely at least give this game a try. I play on Mount Tyrannas, the PVP server.

They also just added All Random as a matchmaking option, but yeah, we're getting there in terms of heroes, only 12 more to go. They made Least Played more restrictive too by preventing you from picking your top 40 rather than your top 20. Other than that it's still missing a tutorial and I assume that they want to set up servers and censor the game for release in China.

http://www.dota2wiki.com/images/1/1e/Troll_kill_12.mp3 Valve sure is skirting that fourth wall with Troll Warlord.

Could be your computer struggling to handle it, I recall having similar issues on my previous PC. Try either turning off other programs while rendering (internet browsers), or bounce some of the more intensive tracks to .wav to reduce the processor load.

Are you on 32-bit Windows? You can't allocate more than 2 gigs to a single program on a 32-bit OS. I don't think it's a problem within FL Studio 10 as I just finished up a project that took up 3.5 gigs of RAM. E: I guess I am using the extended memory thing though, so maybe that is what's causing it. Beats having to upgrade your OS.

Accents accents accents. It's easy enough to copypaste the same beat for an entire track, but you can make it really come alive if you make the fills, crashes and kick drum correspond to the natural accents found in the song. This is even easier to do when you're using a midi controller, but even without one you can just tap along with the song, and your natural sense of rhythm will often fill in the 'correct' patterns for you. Also, listen to songs with live drums and focus specifically on the percussion. A lot of it is very subtle, but it's the little things like ghost notes and hi-hat pattern variations that make it work.

Dark Souls: 4 Kings on a low level run with no shield.

It's important to keep in mind that Valve is a privately owned company. While they still might be in it for the money, this also means that they can afford to do things that don't seem to be directly profitable in the short run, because they have no shareholders looking over their shoulders. A lot of their actions actually mostly go to creating customer goodwill, which is a stark contrast to some of the cutthroat business tactics from other developers. Read the interview with Gabe I linked a few posts back, it actually has a lot of new information. I'm actually really interested in the streaming-based box versions now, if it means being able to stream videogames from my PC to my living room, and playing them there.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming The plot thickens.