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'Infectonator 3: Apocalypse' re-animates Flash gaming, but lacks humanity

By Tanner Kinney Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM. Flash gaming has a significant place in gaming history. Both indie games and mobile games owe a lot of their tropes and gameplay models to older Flash games. Angry Birds was inspired by Crush the Castle, for instance. However, since the slow death of Adobe Flash Player, many of those Flash developers have moved onto creating mobile games or smaller indie titles. Some of the biggest Flash games have even found revivals on the Steam platform, which is a joy to see. Epic Battle Fantasy IV, for example, is a fantastic and relatively successful game that stays true to the Flash originals, but adds enough to make it worth the full release. Similarly, Infectonator 3: Apocalypse keeps the essence of the original games alive, but in this situation, fails to really make itself noteworthy on a legitimate game platform. Flash gameplay is brought back to life, but fails to be infectious Infectonator is a series of Flash games that are the arcade-y equivalent to Plague Inc. The player is tasked to infect the entire world, turning the world population into friendly green zombies. Throughout the game, the player is able to do slight customization to the zombie’s stats, along with unlocking special, unique zombies that range from completely useless to hilariously overpowered. Using these zombie upgrades, the horde must combat humanity adapting to the zombie uprising, with SWAT teams and even an XCOM knock-off fighting back. Infectonator 3: Apocalypse is essentially the Flash original brought to life on Steam, for better and for worse. The gameplay loop is fun, and watching the zombie horde take down progressively larger groups of people is satisfying. However, the game suffers from what I like to call the “Atlus difficulty curve.” Early on, the game is reasonably challenging, and about halfway through the game provides what feels like an unfair challenge. However, by the endgame, the overpowered nature of the unique zombies and support items make the game a complete joke. The zombie horde easily takes down everything the game throws at them, including all the boss enemies who fail to pose a significant challenge. The game seems to be designed for the player to fail at least once before getting a successful run, like a rogue-lite, but doesn’t provide the challenge for that to happen. Overall, the gameplay certainly is nostalgic, and as someone who grew up on ArmorGames Flash games like Infectonator, it brought a smile to my face. Yet, after the halfway point, I realized I was playing just to finish the game, unfazed due to lack of challenge. Infectonator 3 doesn’t have any infectious gameplay that can compete with similarly priced indie rogue-lites like FTL: Faster than Light or Death Road to Canada. Even though it’s fun for a short while, it quickly becomes repetitive. Much like the Adobe Flash Player, it just hasn’t aged well. Pixel-art and chiptune music that is good, but not special Infectonator 3: Apocalypse has a nice art style that, again, is very nostalgic of Flash games. The small sprite work is very well done and well animated, and the large sprite work makes for an interesting contrast, but also looks nice. There’s also some more detailed 2D artwork, but is mostly reserved for the fake news reels, and mostly just recreates some very dated internet memes. The ending to the game is also rendered in that art style which, while it looks nice, doesn’t fit with the rest of the game. The chiptune music is also very nice and nostalgic, and some tunes are even remakes from the original two Infectonators. Yet, no song stands out from the rest of the soundtrack. It all blends together into a nice chiptune soup. It's okay, but doesn’t really have anything worth listening to. Throughout my playthrough, I mostly just had a stream or a YouTube video going on in the background while I half-focused on the game. It’s nice to listen to, but doesn’t do anything more than tickle some nostalgia for a small group of people. Excessive misfirings of comedy and dated references plague the experience Flash games, not bound by copyrights and trademarks, tended to steal a lot of jokes and characters from popular media. Most of the time it was parody, as opposed to blatant theft, and Infectonator was no different. One zombie type was literally a recolored Ronald McDonald, after all. Infectonator 3 seems to not have noticed time progressing since the heyday of Flash games, and makes a number of dated references that are more distracting than funny. The fact that “Justin Beaver” (styled after a young Justin Bieber) is the boss enemy of Canada, as opposed to more relevant pop culture icons, doesn’t make the game seem any fresher. And, of course, there’s also a number of misfirings of comedy. Aside from the dated references, attempts at making relevant jokes tend to just get political. While that’s not a deal breaker and a number of other games make similar political jokes, the ones in Infectonator 3 just seem kind of like pandering to me. Political humor is not a bad thing, but there should be more effort into the jokes than simply copying what was popular on Reddit a year ago. The gameplay itself is not hurt by the lame jokes, but the experience as a whole would be better with fewer of these jokes and reference. As a side note, I don’t remember a single Walking Dead reference in my entire playthrough, even though I unlocked every zombie and completed the whole game. Although, considering how season eight turned out, maybe that’s for the best. Featured Image from GOG

How ‘Fortnite’ became the winner winner, chicken dinner of the Battle Royale genre

Throughout gaming history, there seems to be a trend of the kings of a genre being a second or third major title released in that genre. It’s strange, but there is a bit of a trend. The first-person shooter genre was launched by Wolfenstein 3D, but was popularized by Doom. The real-time strategy genre as we know it now may have started with a game called Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, but came into the popular consciousness with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The Japanese role-playing game was first introduced with Dragon Quest, but would become overshadowed by the more well-known Final Fantasy. Those games, however, were widely single-player genres. Now, the battle royale genre has both the major pioneer in the genre, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), and the real success, Fortnite: Battle Royale.

How 'Fortnite' became the winner winner, chicken dinner of the Battle Royale genre

By Tanner Kinney Throughout gaming history, there seems to be a trend of the kings of a genre being a second or third major title released in that genre. It’s strange, but there is a bit of a trend. The first-person shooter genre was launched by Wolfenstein 3D, but was popularized by Doom. The real-time strategy genre as we know it now may have started with a game called Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, but came into the popular consciousness with Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The Japanese role-playing game was first introduced with Dragon Quest, but would become overshadowed by the more well-known Final Fantasy. Those games, however, were widely single-player genres. Now, the battle royale genre has both the major pioneer in the genre, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), and the real success, Fortnite: Battle Royale. It’s pretty much impossible to escape Fortnite. It’s a free-to-play multiplayer shooter that is available on anything with a screen and a graphics card. Younger kids without access to their parents’ credit cards can now play a shooter like their wealthier friends, and since it can be played on any console (other than Nintendo Switch, for now), most families have access to the game. Hell, it can be played on smartphones, and almost every young adult has one of those (back in my day grumble grumble gurgle roar). Yet, my friends and I all joke about the game, calling it a Pixar game, complaining about the obnoxious young fan base, and watching League of Legends viewer numbers plummet while streamers like Ninja are raking in six-digit viewer numbers and playing with Drake. Yes, that Drake, the rapper Drake, the actually successful celebrity. He’s playing Fortnite with some pleb who was a former Halo pro player. That’s how big Fortnite is.

NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Finals: How some guy named Steve bought an LCS title

It’s been two weeks since the last article, mostly because I unintentionally skipped over the semi-finals matches. So, let me just sum them up here: Echo Fox are memes and Clutch Gaming don’t know how to play around Baron. The two teams that moved onto the final match were Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. For 100 Thieves, it was their freshman split, and they were already fighting for the title. For Team Liquid, they were fighting for their first title victory in their entire history in the LCS, which is as long and storied as TSM and CLG. Former teammates were battling each other for a shot at the LCS banner and Spring Split trophy. It was truly a highly anticipated match-up.

NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Finals: How some guy named Steve bought an LCS title

By Tanner Kinney It’s been two weeks since the last article, mostly because I unintentionally skipped over the semi-finals matches. So, let me just sum them up here: Echo Fox are memes and Clutch Gaming don’t know how to play around Baron. The two teams that moved onto the final match were Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. For 100 Thieves, it was their freshman split, and they were already fighting for the title. For Team Liquid, they were fighting for their first title victory in their entire history in the LCS, which is as long and storied as TSM and CLG. Former teammates were battling each other for a shot at the LCS banner and Spring Split trophy. It was truly a highly anticipated match-up. So, of course, it was over in three games. The entirety of game five between Clutch and 100 Thieves almost lasted as long as the whole series. Life is full of disappointments. Massive, terrible disappointments. Like Clutch Gaming, and the ADC meta, and Zven and Mithy’s botlane duo. So how did this final shake out, and who secured the coveted third place award of almost greatness? Let’s go over the games. Echo Fox and Clutch Gaming both return to form The match between Clutch and Echo Fox was, admittedly, probably going to be a loss for Clutch. Clutch had failed to beat Echo Fox during the regular split and, despite impressive games against TSM and 100 Thieves, still had their record of losing every single scrim against every single team. Echo Fox may had gone mental, but were still the second place team during the regular split. Team Liquid handled them soundly, sure, but that doesn’t make them any worse of a team. If anything, it makes Team Liquid a better team. Yet every time you don’t have faith in Clutch, they pull out some crazy wins. So, for some reason, I had faith in Clutch to win. And then they got smashed in three quick games. Surprise! Admittedly, I didn’t watch much of this series, as I was dealing with other things. Yes yes, I’m the fraud analyst, I get it, please no flame. Anyways, the bits and pieces I did see showed a very poor picture for Clutch Gaming. The whole team got horribly outclassed, but particularly the jungler Lira just got completely outpathed and dumpstered by Dardoch. Even with the numerous bugs and Chronobreaks, Clutch could not find a timeline where they won this series. Echo Fox, on the other hand, re-entered the timeline where they were actually winning games. Some fans wondered where this Echo Fox was during the end of the split. Others wondered different questions:

Pizza Portals? Pie-Tops? Vocaloids? The strange ways technology topped the pizza industry.

Consider the following: you’re out and about, enjoying yourself and having a great time. Perhaps you’re walking through the park or an aquarium or, I dunno, New Jersey. Suddenly, you notice a fellow civilian collapse on the ground, crying out in pain. You run over to them to record the event for your Snapchat story, as does a crowd of people. You realize that, by the loud growling noises, that he’s simply hungry. You smile, because you came prepared. “Do not be alarmed,” you cry out to the people holding their phone cameras up, “I have a solution.” You press the button on your Pizza Hut Pie-Tops, and after some quick taps on you iPhone X, you order your favorite type of pizza for this person. The crowd cheers as the Pizza Hut driver arrives, and you open the pizza box for the hungry man on the ground. At first, he’s overjoyed, but he looks in the box tosses it to the side in disgust. His final words: “Pineapple does not belong on pizza.”

Pizza Portals? Pie-Tops? Vocaloids? The strange ways technology topped the pizza industry.

by Tanner Kinney Consider the following: you’re out and about, enjoying yourself and having a great time. Perhaps you’re walking through the park or an aquarium or, I dunno, New Jersey. Suddenly, you notice a fellow civilian collapse on the ground, crying out in pain. You run over to them to record the event for your Snapchat story, as does a crowd of people. You realize that, by the loud growling noises, that he’s simply hungry. You smile, because you came prepared. “Do not be alarmed,” you cry out to the people holding their phone cameras up, “I have a solution.” You press the button on your Pizza Hut Pie-Tops, and after some quick taps on you iPhone X, you order your favorite type of pizza for this person. The crowd cheers as the Pizza Hut driver arrives, and you open the pizza box for the hungry man on the ground. At first, he’s overjoyed, but he looks in the box tosses it to the side in disgust. His final words: “Pineapple does not belong on pizza.” Now, that’s obviously a fantasy. Most people don’t have the money to afford an iPhone X. But everything else is now entirely possible, thanks to Pizza Hut’s new technological advancement in pizza ordering technology: the Pie-Tops. With these shoes, you can now order pizza with just your shoes and your phone, rather than using only your phone. It seems like one of those advancements that doesn’t add anything, but tries to simplify things. As much as I love technology and technological advancements, I want to know why we are spending time and resources implementing Amazon Dash buttons (which already seem unnecessary) into shoes. But here they are. At the very least, they seem to work, which is better than you can say for some of the dumber ideas.

‘Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom’ is the ultimate sequel that improves on the original in every way

‘Ready Player One’ is a nice-looking, but empty, brainless, and embarrassing movie

Remember Back to the Future? Remember The Iron Giant? Remember Akira? Remember Godzilla? Remember Battletoads? Remember Chucky? Remember The Shining? Remember Marvin the Martian? Remember Atari? Remember Asteroids? Remember King Kong? Remember Jurassic Park? Remember Star Wars? Remember Battlestar Galactica? Remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Remember Halo? Remember Street Fighter? Remember Sonic the Hedgehog? Remember the Sawmovies? Remember Van Halen? Remember the Bee Gees? Remember Overwatch? Yeah, I remember.

'Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom' is the ultimate sequel that improves on the original in every way

By Tanner Kinney Disclaimer: This review is of the PC version and was conducted on a PC with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, i7, 8GBs of RAM. Level-5 released Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch back in 2010 on the PS3, and received a lot of praise from critics. Yet, the game still ended up being relatively divisive. Some people were able to commend the game for its absolutely stunning visuals for the time, fantastic score, and a great story. Others wouldn’t give the game that credit, because even with all of those factors, the gameplay was an absolutely confusing mess that wasn’t that fun. Even for a fan of the first game, it still has gone down in quality upon playing it again due to how not fun the gameplay is. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom manages to keep everything that made the first game amazing, improved on it, then added gameplay that’s fluid, satisfying, and loaded with legitimately fun things to do. This may honestly be one of the best JRPGs of the decade. A big, bright, and beautiful storybook world The art style of Ni No Kuni II matches very closely to the first game, only greatly improved thanks to the power of newer hardware. The game has an incredibly anime-esque style, with a team of artists that formerly worked for Studio Ghibli. The animation of the characters also has a lot of care and effort put into how they move, every part of their model moving smooth like butter. The game also runs very well, even on hardware that’s slightly dated like mine is. Even the random NPC characters look good and animate well, like they truly are apart of this storybook world. It’s hard to really describe how lovely it is without seeing it, but it just is stunning in motion. A particular locale that looks great is the city of Goldpaw, with a style of traditional Chinese architecture mixed with the neon lights of Las Vegas. The soundtrack in the game, just like the first game, is incredible. It’s beautifully orchestrated, with songs flowing into one another as you travel through the massive world. It doesn’t necessarily flow as smoothly and beautifully as the first game, but it’s still amazing. There are also plenty of songs that are great to listen to, even if the dungeon or fight is rough to get through. Particularly, the factory dungeon music is a banger, and the music when fighting the Tainted enemies that are scattered around the map is just fantastic as well. Even though I think the first game had better music, the first game also had you sticking in one location for a long time so even the best songs would get tiring to listen to. That problem isn’t here, thanks entirely to the revamped gameplay. Action-RPG combat taken to a whole new level The first game was some bizarre mix of action-based MMO targeting and auto-attacking like Final Fantasy XII, Pokemon, and turn-based combat. It was a complete mess, that was fun when it worked, but just didn’t work that often. The combat got really fun when Oliver obtained some strong spells on his own, and you could just dash around the battlefield, nuking enemies with blasts of magic. The developers realized this as well, completely changing the combat to make it fully action-based, and it works incredibly well. The combat plays very similarly to the Tales series, particularly Tales of Xillia. The player is given free reign to move, roll, strike, and spell-cast within the combat arena. These combat arenas are also made from the terrain around the party, similar to Tales of Zesteria. Each of the party members plays differently, with different styles of combos and special attacks that can be woven together freely. Some characters may be more fun to play than others, but it comes down to personal preference. The first fight I got into was just shocking, especially compared to the first game. It’s so fluid and just pure fun to play. The gameplay outside of combat has a great loop as well. The game is paced well, especially when compared to the first one, with new locations and dungeons being discovered in short amounts of time. This is opposed to being stuck in the first major city for four or five hours. The party explores through the world map, reaches a new location, sets a waypoint to teleport to freely, and completes their objectives in that area. It matches the new speed given to the combat and the game rarely feels like it drags along. One final aspect that I didn’t think I’d enjoy as much as I did is the kingdom building and management. As you are the young King Evan, you must build your new kingdom up to a greatness that can rival any of the other kingdoms in the world. To do this, the party completes side quests to recruit citizens, use those citizens to build structures, and collect resources to build the kingdom stronger. It’s essentially a small mobile game WITHIN the already incredible main game, and it’s actually very fun and rewarding to build the kingdom up. The story of a king uniting the world The story, even though I still think it’s quite good, is probably the weakest aspect of the game. The first game had a story that felt like something out of a Studio Ghibli film (because it kind of was, basically), and felt fun and whimsical while still having a lot of emotional weight in it. The story sticks with me even now. Ni No Kuni II has a more, well, “average” JRPG story. It’s  a pretty basic “team up with friends to save the world” sort of plot. King Evan’s father is killed, and his kingdom is stolen by a coup from the evil rat advisor. Thanks to the help of a stranger from another world, Evan escapes, and begins his journey to create a country that will unite the world. Along the way, he meets a number of other colorful characters and only destabilizes a couple of foreign powers. It reminded me a lot of classic JRPGs like the ones from Squaresoft’s days. It’s engaging enough to keep you playing, but nothing too special. The real achievement is that the characters are just as good as the first game, possibly even more so. Each character is loaded with personality, even the random citizens that are recruited for the kingdom. The party is also very charismatic and members work well with each other, though some of the later party members don’t gel as well as the first few party members. If you need any more convincing as to how these characters are so amazing: the stranger from another world is the President of the United States, who was teleported to the world of Ni No Kuni. He is trained to use swords and literally shoots a monster in the head to get rid of it. It’s amazing, and no JRPG will have a character that comes close being that cool. Featured image from YouTube

Ex-'StarCraft II' GM Eli Brown re-launches eSports team management website, Guilded

by Tanner Kinney On April 4, 2018, ex-StarCraft GM Eli Brown and his team launch the new beta of their eSports team management website, Guilded. The site was first put into development a year ago, with Brown and his team wanting to create a much easier way to manage all the different happenings within the specific eSports teams. Brown’s goal was to create a program that streamlined the team management experience as, being a former GM himself, he understood that managing a whole bunch of different programs was clunky and not user-friendly. With Guilded, he hoped to provide a solution to these teams. The website contains a number of valuable features for eSports teams and communities. The site allows users to find and create teams, either using accounts created through the site or by linking a Discord account. Users can then apply to join teams or simply follow them for more information about upcoming events. These teams can also create community forums for fans to discuss changes within the game or recent team results. This is designed to help foster a greater sense of community outside of other social media platforms, like Twitter or Reddit. Features within the team environment also got overhauled as well. The team rosters system has been completely changed to allow sorting by specific games. For example, a team like Cloud 9, who is in partnership with Guilded, has teams in a number of different eSports. 

'Ready Player One' is a nice-looking, but empty, brainless, and embarrassing movie

By Tanner Kinney Remember Back to the Future? Remember The Iron Giant? Remember Akira? Remember Godzilla? Remember Battletoads? Remember Chucky? Remember The Shining? Remember Marvin the Martian? Remember Atari? Remember Asteroids? Remember King Kong? Remember Jurassic Park? Remember Star Wars? Remember Battlestar Galactica? Remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Remember Halo? Remember Street Fighter? Remember Sonic the Hedgehog? Remember the Saw movies? Remember Van Halen? Remember the Bee Gees? Remember Overwatch? Yeah, I remember. Remember when Hollywood had interesting and original ideas? Nope! Remember stories about a chosen one saving the world? Ready Player One is a film based on the masterwork of fiction by Ernest Cline, well, Ready Player One. The book is essentially a series of bloated pop culture references revolving around a story so boring and generic it seems like it was procedurally generated, like worlds in Minecraft. The book, however, mostly limited itself to ‘80s pop culture, because that’s what Ernest Cline wanted to write about. Does the movie adaptation escape being an overloaded reference fest? Nope! Well, it sort of does. The references in the movie take a backseat to the story, aside from the story-integrated pop culture references because of course there are those. Instead, the movie subjects the viewer to a narrative so plain that I imagine it orders cheese pizza, vanilla ice cream with no toppings, and watches wholesome family sitcoms like Family Matters. Our hero, Wade Watts, is some guy who has no particularly interesting traits about him, other than being a pop culture buff. He’s hunting for a secret Easter egg, placed in the virtual world of the Oasis by its owner, so he can inherit the company and make a lot of money. It’s like a modern-day Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, if Willy Wonka was Mark Zuckerberg and Charlie Bucket was Plank from Ed, Edd, and Eddy. The generic evil corporation, IOI, is also hunting for the egg so they can gain control of the entire world through the Oasis. Wade Watts and his friends use the power of love and friendship to battle IOI along with a number of movie and video game characters. Wade Watts isn’t necessarily a “chosen one,” but he fills all the same roles as the normal uninteresting main character that somehow saves the world, like Tenchi from Tenchi Muyo. He doesn’t have a harem of girls though, just one girl in Art3mis (yes, that’s her gamer tag). Art3mis, however, also has no real personality and doesn’t do anything that affects the story, other than shooting some dudes. She and Wade also don’t have much in the way of chemistry, somehow having less chemistry than Harrison Ford and Sean Young in Blade Runner. This movie has a narrative that serves its purpose in being a bland, passable love story and hero’s journey. It may have a couple of neat ideas, mostly tied to the idea of the Oasis itself, but none of those ideas are used properly. And of course, even if the writing was better, it’s still loaded with pop culture references. Without spoiling anything, there’s a long section of the movie that’s an extended reference to The Shining. It was like something out of those terrible parody films, like Epic Movie. Also, the ending of the movie had some of the dumbest cop-outs and pseudo-deus ex machina that is just cringe-inducing. Remember acting being better than the movie deserves? Surprisingly, there were a number of good performances put into the movie. Well, any actor that wasn’t Wade Watts or Art3mis put in a good performance, though admittedly they weren’t bad. They were definitely better actors than how the leads of Solo: A Star Wars Story are looking right now. However, aside from the leads, almost everyone else puts in a very good performance. Props given to Lena Waithe for putting in an amazing performance as Aech (pronounced like the letter "H"), who was my favorite character despite some of the dumber lines. Mark Rylance also does a fantastic performance as Halliday, and T.J. Miller continues to put in good vocal performances. I feel bad for every actor in this movie other than T.J. Miller. He was in Yogi Bear and The Emoji Movie, he deserves this. The only really bad acting in the movie was the fight choreography, which looked like the worst parts of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I’m not saying that the cringeworthy pop culture references and embarrassing romance plot are below the actors in this movie (other than T.J. Miller) but I definitely saw them putting their hearts into this movie that’s essentially sad nerd bait, designed for applaud-iences to clap when they see things they recognize, and I felt bad. This movie won’t hurt their careers, of course, but I have a feeling that somewhere down the line, this film won’t be as fondly remembered as its current rating. Or maybe it will, and I’m just an angry hater. Remember visually appealing movies with terrible usage of sound? Another thing that Ready Player One deserves credit for is good visual design. The Oasis looks fantastic, and all of the character models look great, even if they seem extracted from a Final Fantasy game. Not that it’s a bad thing. The movie world is a video game after all. The movie is incredibly appealing to look at. Even the parts outside of the Oasis have a good style, that sort of normal future that’s still got poverty and problems like Robocop, except only one person says the F-word. The fights inside the Oasis are also great to look at, and the car chase at the start of the movie in particular looks fantastic. Unfortunately, the usage of sound in the movie is complete trash. The sound effects in fist fights seem pretty unrealistic, even in the real world, and guns don’t have satisfying sounds to match the satisfying particle effects. The soundtrack is a mix of ‘80s music that’s either too on the nose or used poorly, and John Williams-esque sweeping scores that don’t really match the situations within the movie. The John Williams-esque music at least sounds kinda nice. The worst offense during the movie is that, during the early car chase I mentioned earlier, there’s absolutely no music. When was the last movie that had a car chase without music? It felt uncomfortable, and was just an awkward choice. In an awkward movie with awkward characters, maybe it makes sense. I refuse to believe that. It’s just bad.   Featured image from Road to VR  

NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Quarterfinals: No gods, no kings, only Clutch

The quarterfinals this year were quite historic, for once. Every single team who previously won an LCS split has now been knocked out, leaving an empty banner for either a new team fresh into the split or a team who has been competing for the banner for a while now. How did this happen? Who destroyed this world we knew for so long? Why did TSM not wonnered? Well, let’s just hop straight into talking about the quarterfinals matches

NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Quarterfinals: No gods, no kings, only Clutch

By Tanner Kinney The quarterfinals this year were quite historic, for once. Every single team who previously won an LCS split has now been knocked out, leaving an empty banner for either a new team fresh into the split or a team who has been competing for the banner for a while now. How did this happen? Who destroyed this world we knew for so long? Why did TSM not wonnered? Well, let’s just hop straight into talking about the quarterfinals matches Clown 9 embarrasses themselves for the whole world   Cloud 9 had obviously been slumping for the past few weeks. Their strategies were completely destroyed by the meta shift, particularly with Licorice getting exposed and Sven seemingly returning to his TSM at worlds form (aka, not very good). During the week before their quarterfinals, people were expecting that Cloud 9 would return to the drawing board, and Reapered would give them a strategy to help them beat Team Liquid. After all, as C9 Jensen once said: https://twitter.com/Jensen/status/962477114330046469 Boy, that Tweet didn’t age well at all. Cloud 9 got completely swept and destroyed by Team Liquid. It may not look close, but if you watch the matches, the first two games were incredibly close, and any play could have tipped the game either way. Cloud 9 consistently found early game success, and pulled leads ahead of TL. Yet, at some point in the game, Cloud 9 would just make misplay after misplay. The most embarrassing part of Cloud 9’s play this weekend was their play around Baron buff. This crucial objective, especially on this patch, and Cloud 9 would just start it then stop. They had no pressure on the map to try and take the objective, yet still kept going for it. Then they’d have to stop because Impact had Teleport advantage and could split. Licorice would then blow his Teleport to clear a minion wave, which leads to Team Liquid taking the Baron. This happened too many times to be a simple misplay on Cloud 9’s part: this was a full macroplay disaster. The roster of Cloud 9 also just got outperformed by Team Liquid. The only members of Cloud 9 who actually were playing well were Sneaky and Smoothie—and even then Smoothie wasn’t playing amazingly. Cloud 9’s draft was pretty bad too, giving up the incredibly overpowered Swain TWICE to Impact, and Skarner was given up to Xmithe in all three games. Plus, Licorice ended up picking Fiora, which did absolutely nothing and was utilized horribly. Team Liquid, to their credit, also played very well and exploited every opening C9 gave them, which is how they managed to pull a comeback in all three games. So, now one king has been thrown out of playoffs. At the very least, Cloud 9 will still have the best cosplayer on any professional League team, Twitch Chat’s favorite lesbian dad, Sneaky. https://twitter.com/Sneaky/status/973275009866084353 (And if I linked this before, I’m linking it again. It’s beautiful and must be seen everywhere) Say HakuYES to the Thresh Remember when I said nearly every week that Clutch Gaming was a team to watch? Remember when I said to never count Clutch Gaming out? Remember when I said Clutch Gaming was a better team than Team Solomid earlier in the split? Remember when I said that Clutch Gaming would be going to MSI and representing NA? No? Just the first one? Alright, fair enough. It’s true, I did bet against my boys on Clutch Gaming. Despite being a fan of the team, loving their playstyle and games, and having faith that they could perform in playoffs, I gave TSM a 100% chance of victory during my previous predictions. Could you blame me? Clutch looked like the worst team in playoffs, and TSM was riding high on enough victories to secure their 3rd place seed. On top of that, in the history of LCS playoffs, a 6th seed has never beaten a 3rd seed. There was seemingly no timeline where Clutch would win over TSM. And here we are and I couldn’t be happier. My boys are making their run to finals, and then are gonna disappoint on the international stage like a true North American team. https://twitter.com/CG_Hakuho/status/978055949637177344 TSM won the first game, and pretty handily too. Clutch may have had some good plays, but TSM managed to beat them down relatively quickly. I figure a lot of people called the series there. “GG to TSM, no way Clutch comes back from that crushing loss.” Yet, Clutch kept their mental fortitude, and through an incredibly smart draft in game two, where they not only got a Swain and Lira’s best champion in Skarner, but also picked up Thresh for Hakuho. Hakuho has been incredibly good at hitting skillshots all split. His Morgana has been banned because it seems like he’s scripting those bindings. Thresh is a lot like Morgana in that, once he lands a skillshot, that person he hits doesn’t get to play League of Legends for a while. All he needs to do is land a single hook. He didn’t just land a single hook. Every. Hook. Lands. As someone who still can’t hit Blitzcrank hooks, I was screaming at how many Hakuho was landing on TSM Zven, who ate them like they were delicious candy. After Clutch not only won that game, but pulled it away from an early game lead by TSM, you could visibly see on TSM’s faces that they were mentally falling apart. The TSM atmosphere has been high-stress, as talked about by Bjergsen in an interview, and that seemed to be taking its toll. I made a prediction to my friend that “if TSM loses one game, they will mentally collapse and fall apart.” And that’s what happened. I do not know if it was pride, stupidity, or overconfidence, but TSM did not ban Thresh in game 3 or 4. And guess what? Hakuho picked up Thresh in both games. Hakuho landed every single hook in those games. TSM lost on the back of being outdrafted by Clutch. It was very simple TSM. You ban Thresh. You can’t counter it, obviously, because Zven eats hooks like I eat bags of Ruffles. So you ban it. But you don’t. And you look like boosted bonobos because of it.     And so ends the long standing dynasty of TSM, by the hands of a simple weeb name Hakuho. What a guy he is. We’ll see if he can perform against Aphromoo, but I’m sure he can. Semifinals Predictions Team Liquid v. Echo Fox at 5 pm on Saturday This match, at the start of the season, should’ve been an easy decision for Echo Fox to take the victory. Yet, after the past few weeks, we are in a situation where this match is much closer, possibly even in Team Liquid’s favor. Team Liquid has been tearing it up recently, despite their late season struggles. But Cloud 9, despite getting 3-0’d, still gave Team Liquid a tough time, and Echo Fox is probably a better team than Cloud 9. It’s a tough call, but I’d actually give it to Team Liquid. Echo Fox is using Huni as a crutch, and the rest of the team (aside from Dardoch) has struggled to make a name for themselves. It’s an even easier call if Echo Fox plays Damonte or PapaChau, who didn’t look bad but are definitely worse than their lane opponent on Team Liquid. Clutch Gaming v. 100 Thieves at 3 pm on Sunday Let it be known that Clutch Gaming has ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of winning this game. Clutch upset TSM, that doesn’t mean they are a good enough team to beat 100 Thieves. 100 Thieves have still been on their high, and have been winning and winning and winning. That’s how they got their first place seed. Sure, the bot lane matchup is pretty close, and mid lane might even be favored towards Clutch, but 100 Thieves have amazing macro play. I want to give it to Clutch, but honestly, I doubt 100 Thieves will make the same draft mistakes that TSM did. Yep, Clutch has no chance. At all. Ever. This is not an elaborate ruse to doubt them so they end up winning.  No sir, it is not. Now, onto unrelated patch discussion. MSI will probably be played on patch 8.6 or 8.7. Swain will still be strong, but Zoe is now actually balanced. The new genius strat is buying Guinsoo’s Rageblade on Jhin in the late game, because Jhin can potentially reach up to 2000 attack damage under the right situation. In fact, other champions might be able to use reworked Rageblade as well. There’s a new AP Varus build that uses this Rageblade and can actually nuke people. Veigar, if he can stack up autos before a fight, might also be able to pull it out as a late game item. Conqueror is still pretty strong. I tried it out on Garen and dealt 3000 bonus true damage in an 18 minute game. Imagine it on a champion that is better than Garen, it has to be terrifying. Tank supports are still the best, and the jungle has not changed at all. I have seen a few more Lee Sin’s though. Please, stop playing Lee Sin. So, until next time, practice your Thresh play, stop banning Teemo because I need to troll my duo queue partner when we queue up for normal draft games, and always play the Spider-Man 2 Pizza Theme when you play Fiddlesticks. It increases your damage tenfold. That’s a real fact and not fake. Sources: YouTube, Twitter Images: Twitter, YouTube, Rift Herald

Internet Explained: V A P O R W A V E

By Tanner Kinney The internet is a place filled with many strange things. If this column has covered anything, it’s the bizarre and oddly specific nature of internet obsessions. Some things may start as jokes, fun memes that originate from small communities. Then it spreads, and suddenly people that would never expect to stumble upon something strange end up on some bizarre website. But that’s enough about the forum for weirdos who chew ice, we’re obviously here to talk about vaporwave. First, start up this song, which is the first result when you type “that one vaporwave song” into basically any search engine. It’ll get you into the a e s t h e t i c mood. Now, dear reader, your first question is probably what is vaporwave? Well, that or “why is this so pink?” or “what is the statue head doing there?” or “isn’t this just a Diana Ross song slowed down with some synth put over it?” I’m not going to answer those questions, because I don’t think anyone knows the answer. I do, however, know much about vaporwave. Vaporwave is a music genre that originated in the early 2010’s as an ironic version of chillwave which is a subsection of synthwave which spawned from electronic music. One of the earliest known songs to use the vaporwave name was a song called “Laserdisc Visions” in 2011. This song shares all the hallmarks of vaporwave: chill beats, stanky 80’s synth and midi loops, and parts of the song seemingly getting stuck and jumping back like a scuffed music CD. It’s all very a e s t h e t i c. The video accompanying it also does a good job showing that delicious vaporwave aesthetic. It’s very 80’s, loaded with washed out, neon colors. In most cases, blues and pinks are used, combined with distortions on parts of the image, and use of Japanese text I can’t read, but I’m sure it means something. Actually, I’m not sure anyone making vaporwave with Japanese text can read it either, but it’s a key part of it. Old tech, like bulky computers and ancient Windows/Macintosh logos are also a part of aesthetic. Particularly, the Windows 98 GUI finds itself in a lot of vaporwave aesthetic images. These images are also loaded with dated references to things that would be only found on old internet. I’m not sure why a dolphin is trying to convince me it isn’t a virus, but that’s just suspect.   But that’s just base level vaporwave, and most of that is the publicly known meme side of vaporwave. Vaporwave, however, has deep lore and a number of artists that go beyond the ones already mentioned. My favorite Spotify playlist to listen to is a vaporwave playlist, which consists of artists like James Ferraro, VAPERROR, Black Banshee, Saint Pepsi, death’s dynamic shroud.wmv, 18 Carat Affair, and artists who have a lot of Japanese characters in their names. Even though much vaporwave is best when listened to as a full album from front to back, somehow shuffling all these different artists and music styles blends together into an aesthetic soup that is just addictive. I drink this soup by the gallon straight out of the pot and even though it burns my soul, I keep doing it.     Another staple of vaporwave is using soundbites and imagery from advertisements in the 80’s within the music, or creating a mock of those sort of soundbites. The album v i r t u a l r e s o r t ™ by the group CYBEREALITYライフ is a good example of this, as the lead on that album uses various text-to-speech programs (another very aesthetic thing) to introduce a fake website that’s actually a real website: http://virtualresort.org/. The website, of course, plays that song as well, which is just beautiful. The amount of care and effort put into something that seems like a complete joke is phenomenal and I wish I cared as much about things in my life. Saint Pepsi had a widely popular music video on YouTube that uses “Mac Tonight” from 80’s McDonalds commercials to accompany a song that really is a jam. Now, while Mac Tonight may have a… questionable image nowadays thanks to some little Fasclets on /pol/, the song is just so good, like the whole album. A lot of vaporwave music videos (made by fans of the music more often than the artists themselves) use this kind of grainy VHS footage of old advertising to go with the songs, and it fits together very well with the aesthetic of the music. Particularly, videos that use clips from bizarre Japanese advertisments are my favorites, because Japanese culture is also a part of that vaporwave aesthetic. It may all seem a little strange, but that’s just how it is. I didn’t make it, though I sure wish I had. I’d love to have that tied to my life history, instead of just being a fraud. Of course, all of this is still kind of a meme. Things like Simpsonwave or other pop culture icons with the word “wave” attached on the end seem to stem from vaporwave, even though vaporwave itself is a legitimate genre of music. Synthwave itself has a number of meme songs that aren’t considered vaporwave even though vaporwave is that sort of meme genre. This is just one of those times that the joke is so high quality that I actively want to listen to it. Vaporwave is like the Poe’s Law of music: you can’t tell if it’s satire or genuine until you ask the creator themselves. Then again, does it matter if the music is good? Even Simpsonwave is good despite being a meme. I’d say my particular favorite kind of vaporwave are songs that sample old video game sound effects, particularly Mario’s voice from Super Mario 64. I don’t know why I like it so much. I don’t know why I like any of this so much. I stopped worrying about it long ago. Don’t you understand? It’s all in your head. And that’s about it for vaporwave. Does that explain anything? No, it probably doesn’t. There’s so much about vaporwave and its aesthetic that just seemed to spawn out of nowhere and our collective unconscious just accepts that it’s how life is. Of course vaporwave uses Japanese text and sculpture heads, why not? Even vaporwave itself just seemed to appear one day and had a small group of people latch onto it and spread it out beyond their subculture. Then the normies find it and are no longer normies because they understand vaporwave. Fun fact: I once tried to create a new genre of music that mashed up vaporwave and nightcore. I still have them buried deep in the hard drive of my computer. They’ll never see the light of day again. Trust me, it’s better that way. Sources: YouTube, icechewing.com, virtualresort.org Images: YouTube, Reddit, bandcamp

Internet Explained: V A P O R W A V E

The internet is a place filled with many strange things. If this column has covered anything, it’s the bizarre and oddly specific nature of internet obsessions. Some things may start as jokes, fun memes that originate from small communities. Then it spreads, and suddenly people that would never expect to stumble upon something strange end up on some bizarre website. But that’s enough about the forum for weirdos who chew ice, we’re obviously here to talk about vaporwave. First, start up this song, which is the first result when you type “that one vaporwave song” into basically any search engine. It’ll get you into the a e s t h e t i c mood.

The CovenS4E7: The Alt-right

TRIGGER WARNING: POLITICS WILL BE DISCUSSED

‘Far Cry 5’ is a gorgeous, entertaining, but slightly bumpy romp through the mountainside

Disclaimer: This playthrough is based on the PS4 version of the game. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes.

'Far Cry 5' is a gorgeous, entertaining, but slightly bumpy romp through the mountainside

By Tanner Kinney Disclaimer: This playthrough is based on the PS4 version of the game. This copy of the game was provided by the developer for review purposes. The “Ubisoft open-world” game has become somewhat of a joke among the gaming community. Since the underwhelming Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed: Unity hit the market, Ubisoft began receiving a lot of flak for producing underdeveloped, buggy, and cookie-cutter open world titles. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate didn’t make anyone more hopeful, and Far Cry Primal allegedly re-using the map from Far Cry 4 just looked lazy. However, Ubisoft actually took a lot of these criticisms to heart, and brought what used to be annual franchises back into their game development oven for a bit more cooking. Watch Dogs 2 turned out to be a bit of a sleeper hit, and Assassin’s Creed Origins revived a lot of what people were looking for in that franchise by providing an interesting new location and much improved gameplay. With the release of Far Cry 5, Ubisoft hopes to repair the name of that franchise as well. And despite a somewhat bumpy journey at points, they’ve managed to create one of the most truly open worlds in gaming. This game surpasses all expectations, and creates a Far Cry game that even surpasses the greatness of Far Cry 3. Provide salvation to a troubled county in any way you can possibly imagine Far Cry has always been known for giving the player choice on how to tackle situations. Generally though, the choices have only been “stealth or shoot.” In Far Cry 5, thanks to the additions of some cool new mechanics, the game becomes a pseudo-tactics game that can be played both stealthily and shootily, which are now woven together, rather than picking one or the other. The player, a deputy of Hope County, Montana, is thrown into a battle with a cult that has completely taken over the minds, hearts, and homes of the members of the community. After a failed attempt to capture the cult leader, a charismatic and terrifying Joseph Seed, the player must recapture Hope County from the inside out. The first area is pretty linear, serving as a tutorial for the different game mechanics within the game. Once cleared, the entire map opens up for the player to run around in all of the grand Montana mountain country. Honestly, it was a little daunting being thrown into this unsafe world with nothing but a trusty handgun, but after clearing some missions and getting used to the game, the amount of choice becomes a massive boon. To push back against the cult, the player must clear objectives that are covering the map. These objectives could be clearing out cult outposts, or destroying shrines, or simply helping out civilians that crossed paths with the wrong people. Quests are also given to people who want a more narrative experience. The player is given tasks by the colorful cast of NPCs to do missions that, admittedly, vary in quality. Yet, the player isn’t forced to do one thing. The game is most optimally played just running through the countryside, taking whatever quests and clearing whatever objectives are stumbled upon. There is complete freedom for the player to finish the fight however they want, on their own terms. Freedom doesn’t just come in the variety of objectives to handle. Freedom also comes in how those objectives are tackled. Take a cult outpost for example. The goal is to take out every enemy within. Simple enough, right? Well, just that one simple task can be handled in a number of ways. One way is quietly stealthing through the facility, knocking out every goon like you’re playing as Batman. Another method is to pull out the trusty 12-gauge shotgun and blast those goons into pieces like the Doom Marine. You could also weave in and out of cover, taking smart shots against the enemies with an assault rifle. Or, you could sit back and enjoy a cold beverage as your dog Boomer tears all of the cultists’ throats out. Far Cry 5 provides a toolkit with a huge variety of tools, and players can choose whatever one fits their playstyle. Although, I would experiment with the different methods of play, because certain missions are more easily handled by changing up strategy. That, or just sicking Boomer on the enemies. Boomer is a good boy. An alternative to the AI-controlled and player-commanded guns/fangs for hire is, well, actual, real people. Co-op is a major addition made for Far Cry 5, and it promises that every single mission can be played in co-op. The game is already fun on its own, but the ability to have another person join in an open-world adventure is always a fun thing. Games with co-op are always appreciated. It isn’t all perfect though. The best parts of the game involve wandering and striking down cultists as they are stumbled upon. The cult outposts are the most entertaining objective to handle in the game, even more so than the story missions. The story missions might honestly be one of the worst parts of the game. A lot of them are gimmicky and dull, forcing the player to play a specific way with no other options. It’s understandable that the developers wanted to give those different gameplay styles a chance to shine on their own, but turret sections became rotten years ago and there’s nothing shining about controlling the vehicles in this game. Cars control like bricks on wheels and seem to be able to cross any terrain no matter what. That’s certainly entertaining, but breaks any realistic atmosphere this game tries to build. Boats are essentially cars on water, which is slightly better, but not by much. Planes are absolutely the most frustrating to control. Flying them is easy enough, but when they throw in aerial combat that provides no feedback on landing or taking hits in dogfights where the AI can leave the map boundaries when the player is forced to play in their sandbox, it can become incredibly frustrating. The fact that a necessary story mission for clearing one of the major areas requires aerial combat is even worse, as all these frustrations with flight controls are forced upon the player. It doesn’t overpower the rest of the game, not even close, but it is still frustrating. Shockingly dark narrative with a cast of vibrant personalities The story of freeing an entire county from an insane religious cult is one that concerned me at first. Generally, talking about religion in games leads to commentary as subtle as a sledgehammer that screams when it’s swung. Far Cry 5 manages to tackle the issue without touching any raw nerves. There doesn’t seem to be anything too controversial within the game’s content. That doesn’t stop the narrative from still being dark and chilling. It can be a sharp contrast going from shotgunning a small army to being stuck in a dark, cramped room while watching people being tortured, but that just makes it better. The writing is excellent and makes Joseph and his siblings all both believable leaders while also being terrifying villains. Some are even sympathetic in a way, particularly John Seed during the player’s confrontations with him. It creates an engaging narrative that drives the action, even if the story missions themselves can be like pulling teeth. On top of the writing comes a cast of likeable ally characters and wacky NPCs. The guns/fangs for hire system allows these used-to-be faceless NPCs to come to life, with their thoughts and personalities on display for the player to discover through simply traveling around. The guns for hire aren’t overly chatty though, and rarely did I notice lines of dialogue being repeated over and over again. Quests can also be completed for the guns for hire, allowing the player to really explore the lives of their favorite characters. Side quest givers are also given a surprising amount of personality. A bright spot is a crazy man with a flamethrower named Zip, who seems to be a parody of a popular crazy radio host. His dialogue legitimately creates sensible chuckles and gut-busting laughter. Even though it takes a backseat to gameplay, the writing and characters were given plenty of attention to detail, which helps the game tremendously. Presentation that creates atmosphere thicker than Montana fog Ubisoft, even in their worst games, always nails the detail they give to the worlds they build. Far Cry 5 is no different. The mountains of Montana not only provide a breath of fresh air from the jungles of previous installments, but also allows for more interesting environments and arenas for the player to take down opponents. The environments are beautiful, looking great and running smoothly on PS4. Wrestling with the flight controls is almost worth it to just take in the world. There also weren’t too many instances where I noticed drops in performance, which is great for a console title. Character models are also well animated, though the randomly generated NPCs tend to have stiff Bethesda movements. Lighting also plays a big role into a lot of scenes, and creates a fantastic atmosphere for the darker scenes within the game. Working with the graphics to create atmosphere is the excellent sound design. The general sounds of the game are good, with the shotgun being particularly satisfying to use thanks to a meaty sound that goes with it. The music that plays during firefights and while driving vehicles is very appropriate for the Montana environment, with lots of guitar twang that was unexpected for this type of game, but much appreciated. The real winner, however, is the score that plays during the cutscenes involving the cult leaders. The haunting choral chants turn familiar tunes into something dark and twisted, much like how the cult themselves twisted religion into something that is pure horror. The opening cutscenes of the game were genuinely terrifying because of how effectively the music was used. There may not be any earworm songs, but the tunes worked for the game, and that’s all they needed to do. The only major problem with presentation comes from lack of consistency. The graphics and sound design lead to a more realistic experience. For example, every time the player steps outside of a building during the day, they are blinded by sunshine, which is a touch on realism. Despite that, there are a number of little things that ruin that realism experience, particularly with some undamageable objects. There were also a few minor graphical glitches throughout my time playing, which isn’t unexpected, but it’s jarring when compared to the beauty of the rest of the world Featured Image from Polygon Images from Digital Trends, VG24/7, MMOGa, and PlayStation Universe

NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Week 9: Breaking Ties

There’s a big meme about Riot’s esports department treating EU LCS like second class citizens. Through not giving visas at the proper times, not stepping in to stop really terrible stuff from happening in the participating organization (shoutouts to MoveYourMothers), and then the shenanigans with giving EU LCS best-of-twos, but NA LCS best-of-threes, it’s kind of true. That, along with making more cash money here in the States, is probably why NA tends to import so many EU players. It seems they’ve now overpowered us though, because they’ve infected our beautiful LCS with something people didn’t expect: