Blizzcon Finals: Frustratingly Good

Howdy doody!

Well, Blizzcon was on the other night and in case you missed it there was some pretty good announcements made! There was also playable versions of the new Diablo 3 expansion, Reaper of Souls and Heroes of the Storm a Blizzard take on League of Legends/DotA and a Hearthstone competition.. but for this post I'm going to focus on the Blizzcon WCS Grand Finals!

Let me start off by saying how good the overall production/competition was at the blizzcon finals. As someone who hasn't been keeping too up to date with the professional Starcraft scene for some time, it sparked that glimmer of enjoyment and threw me from watching it passively into me being an avid watcher and I found myself watching the entire tournament(picking the matches I found most interesting from the two streams available).

I have to give a shout-out to all the host/casters because without their animated commentary, it would have been a much duller affair. The list of casters was rather huge, with the biggest names in the industry there to give their expert analysis - Day[9], Tasteless, Artosis, RotterdaM, Mr Bitter, , Apollo. I also loved the fact that when they weren't casting they were at the analysis desk with good old DJWheat, iNcontroL and ToD giving their thoughts about the matches that were going on. I also have to say that ReDeYe and Chobra did a great job, their hosting has become a welcome mainstay of the WCS competitions in my view.

As has been said before, there was a distinct lack of Zerg players in the finals and as a zerg lover myself I found it easy to get behind the two players who had succeeded where so many had not. Those two also happen to be veritable giants in the race; Woongjin_Soulkey and EG.Jaedong.

It would be easy for me to discount the other amazing players who showcased their skill in an attempt to become the worlds best player of Starcraft 2. Such players as Acer.INnoVation, ST_Bomber, sk_mc, MaruPrime and [A]NaNiwa.. to name but a few. Maybe it was the fact that it kicked off right after an amazing opening ceremony, I found myself enthralled and unable to not pay attention as the first game of the show kicked off and it was a Terran Vs Terran, perhaps one of the most uninteresting matches for me to watch.

There were numerous upsets throughout the tournament, which is always nice! Now I say upsets like that because as with any tournament there are players who are expected to do very well in the competition and those who are not. Technically though there shouldn't be too many players who are at a lower skill cap in the Blizzcon Grand Finals.

However, with that all said.. when the grand finale was kicking off.. one of my Zerg heroes Jaedong had fought his way to the final to play against the Protoss sOs.. something stirred in me that had long been a part of playing Starcraft 2.. an intense feeling of frustration and possibly helplessness, I think it stands as testament to how well SoS was playing and perhaps also stretching the limits of my understanding of the match-up, Protoss Vs Zerg.

Again, I have to say that I don't think the finals were bad at all, the level of skill shown in all the games was unreal and a lot of the time had be gawking at the screen with an unbelieving look pasted on my face. But it left me with a bad taste in my mouth and caused me to immediately switch over to watch something else when it was over.

Ah well.. What was the highlight of Blizzcon for you? Let me know your thoughts!

Ciao for now!

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N00bc0n Postponed!

As the title says, the much anticipated first e-sports event in Ireland has had to be postponed for undisclosed reasons. This was a sad thing to wake up to as I for one was looking forwards to this as a starting point for events in Cork and Ireland on the whole.

The CEO of n00bgaming posted this early in the morning to inform the world of the bad news.

Due to circumstances outside of our control, n00b c0n has had to be Postponed until a later date.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused, and if there was anything we could possibly have done to make this event go ahead next week, you have our assurances that we would have done it. Unfortunately the issues we encountered were outside of our control and have left us with no choice but to reschedule the event. 

It is however, still our intention to help bring eSports to Ireland and we will aim to announce an online event in the next few days with similar players that would have been at n00b c0n, with €1000 prize pool, and are working hard to bring an offline event to Ireland in the near future.

Rest assured, all ticket refunds will be processed tomorrow.

Additionally, we would like to thank everyone who are working hard behind the scenes to make this event possible, and would like to confirm that we do still have the support to run this event in the future.

As I live in Cork myself, it doesn't really affect me that much but with only a week to go till this event was scheduled to take place, quite a lot of people are not best pleased with this move as they had booked hotels, time off work and even flights.

Without more details it's easy to jump to conclusions but really, doing that helps no-one and only really pushes us towards being in a worse state than we are already. I've seen already some talk that this has killed off any aspirations that Ireland has of becoming a new mecca for e-sports, but I don't think so. While I admit that it is a set-back, it's not something that the Irish scene cannot recover from.

There are a lot of dedicated people over here and with dedication and hard work, we can achieve anything.

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My stream and n00bc0n update

Well well well, that was fun! I only wish I had more stuff to give away! I hope everyone who got something got what they wanted!

In other news, the n00bc0n hype is starting to build up! They announced that they have a new sponsor.. none other than Riot Games(the makers of League of Legends for those not in the know). What does this mean for the tournament? Well I guess for anyone who had doubts as to the validity of the tournament it should quash them somewhat. It also means that they now also have a Riot caster for the League matches, none other than RiotQuickshot.

On top of this, I was casually informed the other day that the CEO of n00bgaming would be taking part in an interview on the RedFM radio station. As I expected, the DJ didn't really have a clue what he was asking but Paul sounded passionate about bringing a high level e-sports event to Ireland, which is super good!

My other half has also informed me that I should enter the tournament as a SC2 player instead of going along with a view to blogging about it.. so now I apparently need to learn how to play the game again.. I need to get over my addiction of playing against the AI and kick the ladder anxiety in the butt.. cause if I can't even ladder how could I expect myself to play live?!?!

In completely unrelated news, I have been streaming again for the past week or so and I have really enjoyed it. I really hope that I will be able to continue this when I start back at College on Monday. I also think I need to start to stick to a specific game in order to build a regular viewership.. I am thinking it might have to be Diablo 3 or Path of Exile because quite frankly I suck too much at the other games I have played!

In streaming news, last night I was messing around and found a handy little bot to sit in my chat and be a lovely moderator or something.. it also has some other features.. like it can enable users to request songs and place them in a list. The only problem I found with that is the volume.. it is too loud and it seems to me that the volume controls do nothing.

One thing that I need to do, is to commission some artwork/channel graphics so that my channel and things all fit together and don't seem disjointed as I think it seems now. So if anyone knows someone, point them in my direction and we can jam!

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Game Giveaway!

What's that? Free games you say? I'm there!

Oh, what do you mean they are for people who read the blog and I can't have them? :-( well I guess that's okay, as long as they are going to good homes.


Steam keys

• Bioshock Infinite GONE
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Gift) GONE
• Crysis 2 Maximum Edition GONE
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising GONE

Origin keys

• Dead Space GONE
• Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box GONE
• Medal of Honor GONE
• Mirror's Edge GONE

So yeah! It's exactly what it says on the tin.. 

All I'd like from you is that you follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page! 

Enough of that, tell me how to get a game! Well shoot an email over to mcknublet@gmail.com with the subject "Knublet's Den: Gimmie a Game!" it's first come first serve and one game per person! You need to say which game you would like too!

I will update the list with what's left as and when they go.

Good luck!

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SC2 WCS: Good or Bad?

First off; with a little disclaimer, I had not been consistently watching competitive Starcraft 2 for at least a good few months. I have caught the odd WCS regional matches and ever since that, I thought something was hmm, off about it. Just today I was enjoying watching some games in one of the WCS finals for the first time in a while!

I will say this. For the most part WCS is a very good thing.. at least in it's essence.

Lets look at the positives firstly. In my eyes, having one gigantic 'premier league' tournament is a much better idea than having multiple tournaments all fighting to be the best of the best. As long as that premier league either feeds into those tournaments like some other sports do.. or the gigantic one becomes all encompassing and takes on all of the other ones(which would be sad, because of the history of said tournaments). Whoops, got a bit side-tracked there!

The casters, the whole production crews, the players.. all living up to, or even surpassing the standards that have been set in previous tournaments. When I have seen some of one the whole show appears very polished and amazingly well done.

But if the problem that I have with this tournament has nothing to so with the essential parts of the tournament... What is my problem with it? Why don't I get on with it, why can't I follow it..

My first thought was that it's because of the fact that there are far more names floating around than I remember, but no.. that's not a bad thing.. I have quickly picked up on a few players that I really enjoy watching from this new(not so new, but rather new to me) fold of players.

The next thing was perhaps how awkward it seems sometimes when someone is trying to interview a player and they either ask some completely random questions that nobody needs to know the answers to or completely pointless questions.. but again, I think I can forgive that.. to some degree.

Then I actually realized.. I have absolutely no idea what any of it means. I do get that the Global finals are played at Blizzcon and the person who wins that should be considered the SC2 big daddy boss man.. it's all the regional finals, season finals and points systems in between that I don't really understand - whenever I open up twitch it seems that WCS are streaming a final and it starts to lose any real sort of meaning at least to me.

Maybe(I have no illusions this will happen) they should re-evaluate their system and make it easier to understand for those who don't or can't follow every single broadcast or maybe(Kinda more likely) I should just do some research and try a bit harder to understand the points system and the leagues and finals..

I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on this please either leave a comment on here, tweet me @McKnublet or even throw me out a comment on my Facebook page..

Anyway, Ciao for now! I'm off to bed!

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GTA V: My thoughts

I finally finished the main storyline missions and I have to say, I love the game.. I won't go into what it's about, because well I think most people already know what it is about.. and if you don't, what rock have you been hiding under for the past month! Go get it and play the heck out of it!!

I found the difficulty level to be okay for the most part with me dying stupidly probably at least once in most missions or shamefully losing the target that I had to chase. There was one side mission that I attempted three or four times before I left it and carried on with the story, then went back to it and managed to get it right.. the one where you have to keep the camera on a person in a car that is chasing you. This was difficult for me, I think because my stick skills(aiming) are intensely rubbish!

One thing that really gets me mad is how easy it is for you to die. I don't remember the other GTA games letting you die so easily! Maybe I need to go back and play again just to make sure.. but I'm sure you could survive more in the older ones!

Apart from that one thing, the game is very polished and plays extremely well from start to finish.. I often found myself playing for a lot longer than I intended because the story was pulling me into it and I wanted to see what was next in the game! I guess that is why a lot of people have likened the game to a movie, because it's extremely well written, the script and voice acting is what I would call flawless.

Great game. Next I need to get Xbox live so that I can try out the online version.. I am told it is intense fun..

Let me know what you thought of the game in the handy comments section below!

That's me out, ciao for now amigos!

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n00b c0n - An Irish e-sports extravaganza

For as long as I can remember, the Irish gaming scene has been.. well let's just say that for as long as I have been around here, it's been somewhat lacking. I mean there are a lot of gamers here in Ireland.. I can name four big games studios off the top of my head that have offices here.. but even with all of that, there has been nothing going on here and it's all been very disappointing in that regard.

However! All that is set to change with the upcoming arrival of an eSports event based in Cork, Ireland. When I first heard someone mentioning that this start up called n00bgaming were planning to host an event, I will be the first to admit to being dubious to the nth degree.. but ever since I saw the "poster" on TeamLiquid a fever has been growing in my loins head err..heart?

One of the things that makes it easy to become hyped about this is that Nick "Axslav" Ranish and Alex "Axeltoss" Rodriguez have agreed take the trip over to Ireland from the states to cast the tournament side of this event. This is notable because the pair cast as a duo for Major League Gaming(which is kind of a big deal).

On top of that, there is the announced prize pool.. which is insanely high for a first time event, so I'm told! There will be four different game tournaments each with a different total prize pool. I'll go through them here and let you know what it is! So here goes!!

1. Fifa 13 - €1000
2. Halo 3 - €1000
3. League of Legends - €2000
4. Starcraft 2 - €10,000

Yep, you read that right.. €10,000 euro prize pool for SC2.. for a first time event. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has extremely high hopes that this does well.. and if it does I'm positive there will be many more and the more there are, all the better for the Irish gaming scene and I guess the economy or something like that. They also appear to have some solid backing though with sponsors like Ozone gaming gear, Microsoft and Happauge!.

They have also announced at least one pro sc2 player who is going to turn up and that is Elfi.. I hope some more turn up cause well, it'd be pretty easy money for him if no other pro players go! So come on guys, sign up! Ireland is great and we'd love to have you all over here!

The tournament is set to take place in Cork City itself, and the location is fantastic because it's only a few minutes away from a lot of pubs. It's happening on the 16th and 17th of November at O'Callaghan Properties, Half Moon St, Cork.

This is their post on TeamLiquid. You can also check out the Facebook page here, follow them on Twitter for regular updates.

That's me done, so as usual drop me a comment or three if you have any thoughts or want any more information and I'll do my best to dig it out for you!

Ciao for now!

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Themer by MyColorScreen - a brief review

Hello!

So I figured I would take a time-out from my busy college schedule and write a little bit about this handy little app that I've been using on my phone for the past few days!

It's called Themer and it's currently in Beta stage of testing and it's all about customizing your Android phone.. something that an Android phone has been able to do, pretty much since it's conception. However this was something that was limited to people who knew what they were doing. Now the boffins at MyColorScreen have made it so that even I can change the way my phone looks with just a single click!

As it's in Beta I signed up with my email and got put into a queue to get sent a code.. now this was about a week ago that I signed up and I was in a queue of about 200,000.. it took roughly 3 days for them to get through that gigantic queue and for them to give me a code(which wasn't bad, I thought)!

Once I had the code and entered it into the app, it opens up with the option to browse themes, with three further options - Most popular, Staff picks and Newest. Simply select a theme that you fancy, slap that Apply option and BAM, it downloads and applies automatically.

So far, my favourite themes are below and are the LCD and the Super Mario themes!

If you are interested in taking part in the Themer beta, head over to their website and sign up, or download the app and sign up in there!

That's it from me for now, it's already way later than I hoped it would be when I finished this! :P As always if you have any thoughts you'd like to share, hit the comments button and leave me a note! Cheers!

Ciao for now!

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Induction and more..

Oh hai there!

So yesterday I had my induction at the college.. it went fine.. but as soon as I walked in I was taken aback at how young the class was! They, for the most part have just finished their leaving certificate.. now I'm not sure what age they are when they do that over here since I'm not a native! But I'm guessing 17? Maybe 16??

The day was pretty informative. The first part was mostly just the tutor telling us how to get thrown out and giving us our schedules. After that there was a tour of the college which was okay, apart from the fact that nobody in my group could hear the guide since there was another group in front of us also on the tour.

We then sat around in the canteen for about an hour, we were given a free coffee or tea if we wanted.. so this was a high point in the day for me, cause well, free coffee. We were waiting to be told we could go get our student ID pictures taken... joy. I don't know anyone who has a decent picture for their ID's, though 90% of my sample group is well, me.

My actual course starts tomorrow.. the first lesson is Software Development.. quite intimidating really! Though if you were to ask me face to face I would probably just say that I am excited about it.

Apart from this - the big news that I haven't covered here is that the new expansion was announced a little bit ago for Diablo 3 and it's called Reaper of Souls. In this expansion they will add a new class, the Crusader, they say they were going after some sort of battle-scarred Knight kinda look and tried to give him plenty of ranged options alongside his melee. New story, new monsters, new zones and of course a new level cap.

On top of that there is loot 2.0 as they are calling it.. which is a bit of a loot reset. Then there is the paragon rework that they are implementing, I personally haven't read that much about it but from what I've gathered so far, paragon is going to be account wide and you can distribute the points as you wish? I'll have to have a deeper look at it and report back! Of course the expansion has not been given a release date as of yet and Blizzard has, when questioned about this, given it's usual answer of soon™.

I suppose it would be remiss of me not to mention that Diablo 3 was released for both the X-Box and the PS3 and that it was very well received. A lot of review sites have stated something along the lines of "Blizzard's Return to Consoles is a Smashing Success", I wouldn't know.. cause I won't buy it on console. I own an X-box 360 and have around 6 games.. and I must have spent roughly 20 hours playing it since I bought it like 2 years ago.

On the other hand in less Blizzard but more console related news.. I and several million other gamers are eagerly awaiting the release of GTA V, which so far promises to be a worthy successor to San Andreas, my favorite of the franchise so far. It's release is slated for 17th September, 6 long days away!

That's it from me, Ciao for now pals!

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Back to School

Oh hey!

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic and fun filled, the last week I have barely played any games as I have been changing my life.

Well, that's pretty ambiguous isn't it? why would I want to change your life, I hear you say? I mean, you have it pretty sweet.. you know, playing games and watching people play games all day!

Since you ask, I shall tell you! I decided I wanted to better myself. Or rather, I came to the realization that unless I wanted to work in a call center for the rest of my life I needed to do something about it. So that's what I'm going to do.

As of, I think two weeks ago I signed up to go back to college.. I say go back, but I never went in the first place so I think the real phrase is that I am going back into full time education. I'm going to do networking and web design; with the option a year down the line to stay in that field or swap to game design and development. I have my induction day tomorrow, then the course starts on Thursday I think.. but I will have to double check that!

On top of that, I attended a good friends wedding.. so I had to get a new suit and all the trimmings as my old suit didn't quite fit anymore and not in a good way :(((( the wedding itself was great and saw a few old friends that I haven't seen for a while.

Games wise? Well, let me tell you... The Sims 3 stole at least a week of my life before I decided(well it was strongly suggested by my lovely other half) that I needed to take a break and play a more 'manly' game.. so I booted up X-com: Enemy Unknown. I had forgotten how fun it is! I started a new game and put it on ironman, which means that you can't load any older saves.. if you feck it up, you have to live with it.

Well, I think that's all from me for now.. another update will follow in a couple of days.. after I've had my induction!

Ciao for now!

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The Humble Origin Bundle

Howdy guys!

Today's post is going to touch on something that I'd heard about before, but never actually taken part in till now!

The Humble Bundle.

Now, this site offers weekly games deals, where you pay about as much as you want. For example this weeks bundle includes titles such as Botanicula, McPixel, Thomas was Alone and The Showdown effect.. and if you pay more than the average(for this bundle it's $2.50) you also get Amnesia: The Dark Decent. I believe these bundles usually stick around for a week.

However, this isn't the bundle I wanted to talk about.. they have a special one going on at the moment and they called it the Humble Origin Bundle, where you can pick up a number of EA games for as much or as little as you'd like! If you look at the picture below...

These are the games you can get.. and as the picture states, if you pay more than the average payment so far($4.81 currently), you get Battlefield 3 and the Sims 3 + Starter Pack too! I'm not usually one for actually buying games but this deal is just too good in my opinion! If you were to buy these games separately you would be paying somewhere around $215.00 - and you can pay $1.00 if you like. Though as said, you won't get BF3 and The Sims 3 then.

You get all the game keys on Origin, plus a few of them on Steam too. Though it looks like only the Sims is available on a Mac however. Sorry!

On their site, it also tells us that the deal will be available for another 11 days, so if you haven't got it already.. what are you waiting for?! A cool thing that I saw when I made the purchase, is that you divide the cash up how you want it to be divided! Like, you can say that Humble Bundle get nothing and everything that you pay goes to the charities.. oh yeah, EA stated that all of the money they would get, is going to charities. May be a massive PR stunt by EA, but hell.. it's a damn good one!

The charities they picked are the Human Rights Campaign; Watsi; the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; the American Red Cross; or the American Cancer Society.

According to the website, so far they have sold over 1,215,000 bundles of these games.. with an average purchase of $4.71.. but it also shows the total payments.. which is at $5,847,581 and steadily rising as they sell more bundles. I can only dream of the totals after the 11 days is up! How much do you think it will hit?

That's it from me,

Ciao for now!

p.s. of all the games I bought in this bundle, it pains me to say that I've played The Sims the most.. curse it and it's family, or is that my sim family?

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Well shucks

That's all she wrote. The International 3 is over and done with!

This makes me a little sad.. but on the other hand, wow.. what an amazing Grand Finals, best one I've ever seen(I know, it's the only one I've seen but still).

The Alliance and Na'Vi did not disappoint, the two best teams in the world, at this point in time!

I shouldn't spoil it for you, but I'm going to, so deal with it! If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it then come back and read this post.

So anyway, this tournament helped me find a DotA 2 caster that I really enjoyed listening to, Aaron Chambers, otherwise known as Ayesee - check him out, if you're interested in hearing his awesome voice - In my humble opinion, he should most definitely been casting the finals. It would have made it 10 times better for me.

After I did some research on the guy and looking through his Twitter feed.. I was disgusted by the abuse directed at this man purely because they didn't like his 'radio' voice, for casting a video game. Personally, as you might have guessed I love his voice.. but completely apart from the fact that I think his voice suits commentary.. if you don't like the guy casting, mute him or turn it off. I think it's pretty harsh to hate so much on a guy cause you don't like the way his voice sounds.

But anyway! The guys who cast the games, did a superb job and I don't want to take anything from them because they rocked it out(LDdota and LuminousInverse).

Now though, on to the most important thing..

Called it!

Look, I'll show you!

Boom! This was before the Alliance and Na'Vi played in the Upper Bracket finals. I'm so super proud of myself, I'm thinking maybe a little too proud of myself. It was a guess, though one might say an educated one.

Enough about that now. On to The International 3's grand finals set of games.. just wow, the best DotA I've ever seen played. I really wish I could play as well as any of those guys. The first two games were quick and took them to 1 match a piece.. when I say quick, I mean they were over between 16-20 minutes.. they were so very quick! Most, if not all of the Alliance's games in the tournament prior to this were 45 minutes+.

The third game saw a return of the 45 minute games with the Alliance dominant for the most part, yet falling short in some team fights and the fourth game saw Na'Vi take the first blood and I bet they could actually taste that prize money.. perhaps that's what affected them and that's why at 8 minutes the Alliance team wiped Na'Vi and from then on it snowballed into the Alliance equalling the series 2-2 in a 36 minute battering.

The fifth and final match, well.. I might actually have to re-watch that a few more times and maybe even have a go at commentating it and slapping that on YouTube for y'all to laugh at.

You should just take a moment to congratulate Valve on producing an amazing and successful tournament that by all accounts had over 1 million peak concurrent viewers. That figure is made up from Twitch.tv, Gamefy in China and people who watched via Valves own devices such as the Game Client.

..and then let's congratulate the winners of The International 3: The Alliance.. though to be fair, they have 1.4 million congratulations in the shape of dollah dollah bills yo.

That's me done! Time to have a kip.

Ciao for now!

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Dota 2: The International 3 - Day 3

Well, first of all let's start with clearing something up!

The other day I mentioned that MLG Columbus would not have Starcraft 2 in it's line-up of games.. some speculated that this was due to MLG dropping it.. However it came to light that the reason that it would not be there, is because Red Bull gaming requested a date lock for that weekend from Blizzard before MLG did.

So let's move on to the thing that is dominating the world of E-sports right now.. The International 3, what an amazing load of games that happened last night?! I won't go into great detail as I didn't manage to see all of them.. cause well, I'm old, I was tired and fell asleep while it was playing away on my TV!

I will however talk about the first matches. I won't go into details about who played what heroes, unless it's requested.

First off, we had the team of the tournament so far, unbeaten in the preliminaries and still going strong, team Alliance taking on team DK.. the odds were heavily stacked in favour of the Alliance but on the other hand you have arguably the best carry in the world on the team of DK, in the shape of DK.Burning. Aside from that DK.Super! has been playing really well this tournament.

The first game saw a 1 hour 25 minute match that was as much about posturing and not losing as it was about actually winning. At times it looked like Burning could do the impossible and carry his team to victory and cause Alliance to lose their first set, but the Alliance was too much for them and took the first. Lod[A] leading the board with 12 kills, 2 deaths and 9 assists.

The second game was a 48 minute match that saw Alliance grab a first tower at just over 2 minutes but DK took the first blood and a few uncharacteristic mistakes by the so far unbeaten team Alliance. At times it seemed that the Alliance would overcome these mistakes but in the end DK seemed determined not to lose 2-0 and with that, they took game two. Burning topping the board with 11 kills, 2 deaths and 9 assists.

The third and final game in this epic set saw [A]s4 take first blood around 5 minutes.. the game was a 40 minute long thug snap.. if you're interested in finding out who won or further details of the games themselves then head on over to the Dota 2 YouTube channel, where you can find replays with many languages commentary! Or of course you can watch all of the replays in the DotA 2 game client itself.

Team Liquid after an enourmous run in the losers bracket sadly departed from the Tournament after loosing to the reigning champions Invictus Gaming in one of the last best of 1 matches at the event.

A big story from the happenings last night was a dubious move from Na'Vi - now I'm not saying which set this was or what it decided! The rules say it's allowed, so I guess it's viable. What it is, is that Pudge throws a hook as he's being ported back home by Chen. So if the hook lands, the person hooked gets ported to their opponents base with the Pudge. A lot of people are saying that they don't agree with it. What do you think?

Personally, I guess since it requires the hook to land and for it to be really well timed.. and that it's able to be done in the game and if it's known about but hasn't been fixed then it's just a game mechanic to be used..

In other news, the WCS finals are being played out today and I'll tackle that in another post.

With that though, I'll tip my hat and as always, if you enjoyed the read, subscribe, check out all my other lovely content!

Ciao for now!

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Dota 2: The International 3

Let's just start out by saying.. holee moley!!

G'wan, take a look.. ah you will now won't ye?

http://www.dota2.com/international/home/overview/

For me.. well, I'm impressed. The only other tournaments that I have watched have been Starcraft 2 ones and somehow they didn't seem to be so.. well, huge.

Valve has done a good job I think! The hall looks pretty darn cool and so does the booths the players sit in! The picture below was taken by someone on the DotA 2 team and looks pretty.

All this aside, I was watching the tournament at home. In the luxury of my own little space.. and by all accounts, so were around 1 million other people.

That's right, 1 million peak concurrent viewers.. I had heard quite a few numbers thrown around yesterday for peak concurrent viewers but this is the highest.. and well, I'm astounded. I was shocked by the Starcraft 2 viewer figures when I first started watching but this is on a whole other level.

It really does help that you can watch the tournament games on twitch.tv and in the game client itself!!!!

Then let's talk about the production; there was a small issue in the first match where one of the casters mic's was acting up.. and that was it.. that was the single problem I encountered during the first day of the main event.

Then, this morning while waiting for the games to start again.. the news broke that MLG have, for the moment dropped Starcraft 2 from their Columbus line-up... the current speculation is that it's being replaced.. most likely with World of Tanks.. since they already have League of Legends as their main show.. I think, anyway and I'm not so sure that Riot(who makes League) would take too kindly to DotA 2 being added in to the same show.

For the moment all we can do is sit and wonder.. after all, there still is WCS(The Blizzard run World Championship Series) running along and still pulling in around the same amount of viewer numbers.. though that is a lot smaller than that of The International. But then, the International is a annual event.

It helps that they aren't really in direct competition with each other.. unless you consider this weekend.. where all the WCS finals are on the same weekend as the International.. which I'm not even gonna go into...

Time to get some food, then watch a whole load of DotA 2!

If you've enjoyed reading this, then follow me on Bloglovin and on Twitter @McKnublet - You can also watch me playing games on Twitch.tv and even see some highlights at my YouTube - Click me and subscribe!

Ciao for now!

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Crazy days..

following the Steam Summer Sale!

Oh hello and welcome back fair traveller! Or y'know, you! Sat there in your pj's.. or you even, sat there looking at me when you should be working..

So, I've been pretty absent from Blogger.. as you can tell from the lack of updates.. I have however been quite busy playing games and attempting to produce content for my Twitch.tv and YouTube channels! Another reason that I've not been here, is that I've just got back from a lovely birthday holiday.. my lovely lady took me to Prague for 5 days and it was absolutely fantastic! So.. fingers crossed I will be keeping you updated on here in writing .. and in video on the Twitch/YouTube front about what's going on!

Anyway! Since I talked about the Steam Summer sale in my last post, I wanted to update! I think I managed to survive the rest of the Steam Sale with little to no damage to my Wallet.. I think I ended up buying .. well maybe a couple of games that I never would have without the sale being on!

I bought, or rather.. I left my other half with my steam account and some cash loaded into it... and she bought the following!

RAGE
This is a first-person shooter set in the future - pretty fun game and got a meta score of 79/100. If you've not heard of it or played it, you should give it a go! I'm not usually someone for shooters, but I found it quite good fun!

Borderlands
I don't have much to say about Borderlands really, I'm pretty darn sure you've heard of it! OH! Actually, I freaked out when I heard the title song and I played it on repeat for days for some reason! Anyway, another first-person shooter pretty cartoon-y and fun.

and an awesome little game called

DLC Quest

Whelp, I have even less to say about this.. so I'll just leave this here for you.. a little taster, so to speak!

She did pretty darned well I think! I've enjoyed playing all three of these games .. and I would never have bought them.. maybe I should leave her in charge of my steam wallet more often.. I almost just said wallet then.. but that would never happen. I may be slow, but I'm not stupid.


Anyhoo! Apart from playing those games I've been playing DotA 2 and Diablo 3 much more than I have been playing anything else! Really chomping those levels up on my Barbarian! As you might be able to tell if you had looked over and subscribed to my YouTube and Twitch channels.. when I said it earlier ... ahem..

Right.. with that, I think it's time to bid you all farewell for now!

If you like/subscribe to my channels.. I may give you a present!


Ciao for now!

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Steam Summer Sale and Streaming games

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Well hello there!

First up, it's the start of the Steam Summer Getaway Sale! The first sale I saw on Steam was last Christmas and saw me buy around four games and that was only because I caught it halfway through! Still more than I've ever bought it one go! You can find more information on the sale here! Though it's currently experiencing some heavy load right now so tends to time-out!

Today's deals are as follows and are available for the next 20 hours:

Bioshock - Infinite -50% (€24.99)

Defiance -66% (€10.19)

Hotline Miami -75% (€2.12)

Call of Juarez - Gunslinger -33% (€10.04)

Don't Starve -40% (€8.39)

Left4Dead 2 -75% (€4.99)

Endless Space - Emperor Edition -60% (€10.19)

Scribblenauts - Unlimited -75% (€4.74)

Antichamber -66% (€6.45)

Toki Tori 2+ -34% (€9.23)

That's enough of that for now! I might carry on posting up the days deals, if you're interested that is! I have also heard that Green Man Gaming also has Bioshock Infinite up for half price.. but you can also use their -20% off digital games code for it too!  (GMG20-F202F-UI40F if you're interested!)

---------

So, as you know I started streaming my random playing of video games. It's quite enjoyable! Well, it means I get to play games more often than I was. I'm mostly playing Starcraft 2, DotA 2 and Diablo 3. Though I have streamed X-COM: Enemy Unknown and my first ever attempt at playing the first Bioshock!

Setting up the stream was quite easy, once I kinda knew what all the things meant.. though it looked intimidating to me when I first glanced at it. With a bit of digging and trial and error I found that the program I wanted to use was the one I mentioned in my earlier post, Open Broadcaster Software... after I had already purchased a personal license for X-Split. Major d'oh moment.

I had set up an account on twitch.tv years ago when I tried to stream with my old PC.. and failed terribly, due to it's horrid specs and my absolutely lame internet connection. I think I already gave the link to the post on Team Liquid that gives a pretty darn good explanation on how to set up the broadcaster software and link it to your Twitch account. If not, let me know and I'll dig it out for ya'll!

Or maybe I will do a detailed post on setting up each of the accounts, who knows! If people want it then I'll do it!

Something that I found really cool, is that Twitch allows you to link your YouTube account to it, to allow you to upload footage directly from Twitch to YouTube.. and it's pretty fast! Though, I think there is something up with the YouTubes at the moment and it's not been letting me upload stuff since last night! :'(

I've not really been streaming one game in particular, I guess that's the character hopper in me taking over.. you know, when you make a character on a game, in my case it was World of Warcraft and being unable to stick with it for any length of time.. I've been hopping between SC2, DotA 2 and D3 regularly and not really sticking to one.. which I think I need to do in order to get really good and build a base of viewers or something?

Oh, I also managed to build up the courage to beat off my ladder anxiety and complete the placement matches on the US servers and placed .. silver. Not too bad.. though my intention was to lose the placement matches and then work my way up from the bottom.. but that message got lost somewhere between my brain and my hands.. and I won a couple of the games. Anyway! Here is one of my ladder games for your viewing pleasure!

Recently my Starcraft streaming efforts have been going towards completing the campaign achievements, it's been really fun so far but I can tell it's going to get annoying!

Anyway, that's me done for now!

Ciao for now buddies!

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What up?!

Howdy doody!

Been a wee while since I took some time to write one of these here blog buddies!

So let's have a brief catch up. I had been living in the UK and working for a games company there, now however my other half and I have moved back to Ireland.. I'm currently unemployed and claiming back the money I put into the Irish system during the four years that I was employed here previously!

On the plus side; since we moved back and I got my lovely new PC all set up and we got some slightly better internets..

See! A little bit of an improvement.. and so I've been able to start doing something that I wanted to do for ages! Stream. Yes, that's right! You can watch me play games! How awesome am I, playing games so that you may watch?!

The program I'm currently using to capture the games is called Open Broadcaster Software or Obs. It's relatively easy to set up.. especially if you follow this handy guide there on TeamLiquid. You basically play your game, the program captures it then sends it to a website(Twitch.tv is the one I am on) and then that let's other people watch it!

So what does that mean for my Blog? Well, nothing reaaaally though it should mean that I may start posting more regularly now that I am spending more time at the computer(though most of that will be spent playing games).

I'm also taking a web design course online that also covers blogging and how to make them look nice and shiny. Hopefully you will get to see some changes go on here as I progress through it!

Oh yeah, I did have something else I wanted to say!

[DISCLAIMER] I'm aware that this is old news, but I only just found out about it but you'll have to let me ramble before I get to the point.

With that said, let's go on a fantasy trip! You buy a computer, you then have to pay a monthly fee to connect to the internet, you then also have to pay a monthly fee for say a Netflix account... but then you must also pay google a monthly fee in order to use Chrome to watch movies... in our world that sounds crazy right? And yet.. read on, dear friend..

So let's put this in real terms, what I'm really getting at is X-Box Live Gold. You pay for the console, you then pay a monthly fee for an internet connection, you also then pay a monthly fee for say a Netflix account.. and then you must also pay microsoft a monthly fee .. for what I'm not sure.. but I know that it's brilliant on their part.

I had no idea this kind of skullduggery was going on! Why exactly do you have to pay twice to be able to access things you pay for on something you have already paid for?!

You can follow and watch my live stream at McKnublet or even subscribe and watch some random clips of videos on my YouTube channel. I generally announce on my Facebook and Twitter pages when I'm streaming live. Whoa, linkfest! Sorry!

Anyway, ciao for now! Expect another update in a couple of days! I have a lot I want to talk about - my streaming fun, my Starcraft, Diablo and DotA 2 progression.. and also games I've not yet discussed!

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Starcraft 2: IEM and slow internet

This will be a short one! My PC arrived yesterday! Oh my days! The tower is huge! Much bigger than my old one, that right there tells you that it's better.. cause bigger is better right?! While I'm writing this, it's downloading stuff on my nice and slow interwebs.. joy, it just did 10,001 windows updates. Ok, that may be an overestimation but still.. it was a lot! I love getting a new computer, but then I also hate it very much.

I've downloaded steam and D3.. oh! With the graphics cards I got, they gave me a key to Tomb Raider, so that is also downloaded - going to give that a bit of a play later. They also told me I'd get keys to Bioshock: Infinite and Crysis 3 but they have yet to arrive. I'm excited to see what Crysis looks like! Currently downloading SC2.. C'mon! It takes so long! Now, I know I complain a lot about my internet.. so.. take a look at this! Note: This is without any downloads running.

Apart from that, I watched some of the first day of the Intel Extreme Master's Starcraft 2 tournament. Instead of deciding to use the Wings of Liberty, they decided to go ahead and use Heart of the Swarm(which is released in 7 days!!!). At first, I was quite sad as from the games that I saw played - two Protoss Vs Zerg, the Zerg buddy lost :(

However, there was one hero waiting in the wings of liberty to take up the mantle of ultimate Zerg buddy... LiquidRet. He is part of Team Liquid and has been for a long time! The guy has put a lot of effort into playing HotS and it showed. I won't spoil any results for anyone, but safe to say it was really enjoyable to watch! If you are interested, you should check out the VOD's from today's games!

Time for me to try out some of them games!

Ciao for now!

p.s. I was about to post this and then saw this new blog post by Travis Day about Diablo 3's itemization - very cool read and some promising thoughts in there. Find it here.

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Starcraft 2: HotS and stuff

I figured it was about time I did a bit of a natter about Starcraft.. and I guess it's the perfect time to do it, with Heart of the Swarm being released in 9 days and the beta was closed on the first of March(I think), which was two days ago! Since I've been spending a bit more time checking out twitter, I have seen a lot of pro-gamers tweeting that they don't quite know what to do to fill their time now that they can't play HotS.. I don't have that issue, mainly because I haven't played it for quite a while!

Apart from that though, for those who have been living on another planet, the new HotS trailer was released the other night and here it is!

I am mainly looking forwards to the campaign being playable and to see what has changed in the overall SC2 experience. Heck, I guess part of my time till HotS is released will be spent checking out the features that were implemented into WoL, that I never actually knew about! I'm sooo out of the loop!

The changes I'm talking about are patch 2.0.4, the full patch notes can be found here. The main ones that piqued my interest were the following:

Anyone can now create or join a Clan and participate in private clan chat, post news on Clan affairs, and more. Clan tags are pre-pended to character names of all players who join a Clan.

The very idea of clans is pretty cool and the fact that clan tags automatically pre-pend onto your name just rings out as awesome to me.

Players will soon have the freedom to select any game region to connect to and play.

Global play, wayhay, now I get to test my mettle against those pesky non-foreigners.. who will no doubt destroy me at any and every turn!

The overall AI play experienced has been greatly enhanced.In a custom game, players can now elect for an AI player to follow a specific build order, such as Full Rush, Timing Attack, Straight to Air, and more.AI players will now report key information back to their player allies, such as when they are scouting, attacking, expanding, and retreating.Additional AI improvements, including the ability to issue specific commands to AI partners, will be coming in Heart of the Swarm.

Any updates to the AI is pretty sweet, it got pretty tiresome playing against the AI when all it did were the same tactics and all that happened when you ramped up the difficulty was that it ramped up the speed at which it did the same tactics, really.

In other news, my pc still hasn't arrived yet :(:(:( though it should be delivered sometime tomorrow! Hopefully just before I get home from work.. though it will probably be delivered right before I have to go to work... then I will have to go to work and actively have to not think about my new pc and what I could be doing with it.

I've been playing a bit more Diablo 3 in the past week, I started doing something new.. leveling hardcore characters.. after doing a bit of research I found out that the best way to do this is to level 3-5 at the same time.. so I'm leveling a Witch Doctor, a Barbarian and a Demon Hunter on hardcore.. oh, did I forget to mention that I will be limiting myself by not using the auction house for the duration of leveling.... ohhh and did I also forget to mention that I will be attempting to do this while set to Monster Power 10.

Daunting task! At the moment, it's going pretty easily.. though they are only between levels 7 and 12.. the plan so far is that I will level one of them up 5 levels, then swap to the next and so on. I am allowing myself to trade between the characters however.. which is why I picked the three classes I did, as the Barbarian's main attribute is Strength, the Demon Hunter's is Dexterity and the Witch Doctor's is Intelligence.. so any drops I get, I will be able to use on at least one of my characters!

I'm looking forwards to it, exciting times!

Though, with my new pc I am getting free copies of the new Tomb Raider, Bio-shock: Infinite and Crysis 3.. so I'm not sure whether or not I will be playing those, or trying out some new things on the beast! I can't quite do what I really want to do just yet as my internet connection is still a big pile of tripe.

That's all from me!

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3: Monster Power and stuff

Oh hi there!

So, over the past few months there has been a lot going on in my life that I won't go into here. Needless to say my posting had been infrequent and that's something that I have been addressing! Hooray for me. The outlook is looking quite a lot better than it has for a while, but I can honestly say I am nowhere near saying that all is rosey and perfect. There is still a lot that can be better but I am doing my best to make that happen.

What have I been doing gaming wise? Well, I guess the first thing to mention is that I am getting a new pc. It's getting delivered on Tuesday and I am super excited, more excited than an average 30 something year old should be at getting a new pc. I might post up some specs if you are interested but for the most part I guess its safe to say that it's pretty okay and it will hopefully enable me to get started on a new project related to gaming.

I picked up Diablo 3 again a few nights ago unfortunately it was on a maintenance night so I was unable to play any of the characters that I have worked not very hard on! So I swapped over to the US servers and decided to try a new character.. a female Barbarian. I figured why not, since I already have a level 60 Barb and kinda know and like the play style.. So I started playing and then remembered about something called Monster Power.

What is Monster Power? Well it was introduced back in October 2012 and basically it increases monster health and damage but also increases your magic/gold find and experience gain. I don't think I was in one of my D3 phases at that point and when I got back into it I couldn't figure out how to change it! To the point where(bearing in mind I hadn't read anything about it) I thought that I might have to have completed inferno on the character in order to enable it.

So I had a revelation when I changed over to the US servers for this new character, for some reason I opened up the options while in the game and noticed the option to turn it on! If you're interested, it can be found in the Gameplay section of the options menu. Once ticked, the next time you change the quest that you are on, you'll see that you have a new option - next to the difficulty level. For more information about Monster Power, you should check out the D3 Blog post about it here.

On the level 6 odd Barbarian, when I changed the monster power to level 10, I noticed no real difference in the difficulty. When I next logged on, I tried this on my level 60 Monk(with ok/bad gear), monster power 10 was actually unplayable. The first mob on act 1 inferno had like 200 million hp(ok maybe not that much but it felt like it) and considering my Monk does like 40k crits.. it took like 5 minutes to kill that first mob, though I was never in any danger of dying to it! I think the highest level that it was about playable for me was roughly around Monster Power 3 or 4.

On the other hand, I have a level 26 odd Wizard that I had been meaning to level up.. so I swapped over to it and changed from Act 3 to Act 1, Quest 1 with Monster Power 10.. of course I ploughed through the first load of quests with no troubles.. I've yet to really have any problems with it but I'm still only in the first Act. I intend to write up more about the Wizard in the next couple of days, when I have played him a bit more. I actually quite like the play style of it at the moment.. lots of zappy lazers.. pew pew.

I think that's about all for now.. though keep your eyes peeled for some new content coming pretty soon after Tuesday.

Ciao for now!

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I'm awake!

Don't you just hate it when you wake up from a lovely sleep and all you want is to try and get back to sleep, but your lovely brain just won't shut the hell up?! This exact thing just happened to me. So I was lying here thinking to myself.. what should I do, since I can't sleep? Yep, you guessed it! Real Talk time!

At the moment I'm working evening shifts which means I start work between 3 and 4pm, then finish between 11pm and 12am.. I got home last night at about 12:20 in the AM last night, so we didn't end up getting food till nearly 2am.. because we discovered that what we had in the cupboards for the evening had well, kinda seen better days, if you get me.

While if it were just me, I would have said.. meh and played some game till I fell asleep ... But it isn't just me! There are several other very serious factors that must be taken into account.. like the fact that for some reason I was really REALLY hunger!! And there is my lady to consider, she needed feeding too, as she had been waiting for me to get in so we could eat together, all together now, awww.

So we looked online for places to get food delivered from.. bearing in mind its like 1am on a Monday night... So there are like 2 places open.. a mighty fine kebab shop and Dominos. We end up deciding on the latter and upon visiting their site we find out a couple of things... They are open 24/7. This is a kinda new thing at least in Cambridge... They also have started doing some new fangled thing where they feed a hot dog through the crust..

Holy moly what in the ...

Feed a what dog through the...

A hot dog in the crust of a pizza?!

Whoever thought of that needs to be knighted like yesterday.

So anyway, apart from that glorious discovery, there isn't much else that I wanted to chatter about... Oh, I actually quite enjoyed playing Aliens: Colonial Marines. I guess because I didn't read anything about what it was supposed to be, just put my headphones on and didn't pay much attention to textures and all that and just had a giggle about dying loads!

I found out the other day that another of my friends has been at this blogging lark, so why not check him out! You can find him at http://vikinggamer.wordpress.com or hit up the fancy link to his page over there on the right hand side of this post!

That's me done for the moment, time to try and sleep again!

 Ciao for now!

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Dota 2: Hero of the week

Hey again all!

So I decided after having looked up some other blogs that I perhaps needed to give the ole girl a bit of 'love'. It took me ages, even though all I basically did was change between two templates!

So, the idea behind this post was to go into more depth about one of my favourite Dota 2 heros!

That hero is Jakiro, he is what is known as a intelligence hero which means that he gains more damage for each point of intelligence he has. You can find a ton of information about him on the Dota 2 Wiki, found here.

I don't mind which lane I am in with Jakiro, though I guess going to the top or bottom lane would be best as his first ability is a path of frost which freezes all units it's path for seconds and can lead to a gib.

I should explain a little about the lanes I guess..

The above is the map that you play on, as you can see there are different paths that you can take to the enemy "base". The main paths are commonly known as lanes, people will generally call out which lane they are heading to! The set up is usually that two will go to the top, two to the bottom and one to the middle(though most people just want to go middle so they can prove how tough they are as a solo artist.

But I digress! Jakiro! I guess what I like most about him is that he's a fricken dragon dude!!! With two heads!!!! and one of them shoots fire and like, the other shoots out ice and stuff!!! How totally amazeballs!!

With regards to leveling up his skills(the explanations of which you can find on the Dota 2 Wiki I linked earlier), I tend to go along with something like the following!

Level 1: Liquid Fire
Level 2: Ice Path
Level 3: Liquid Fire
Level 4: Ice Path
Level 5: Liquid Fire
Level 6: Ice Path
Level 7: Liquid Fire
Level 8: Ice Path
Level 9: Macropyre
Level 10: Dual Breath
Level 11: Macropyre
Level 12: Dual Breath
Level 13: Dual Breath
Level 14: Dual Breath
Level 15: Stats (Intelligence)
Level 16: Macropyre
Level 17: Stats (Intelligence)

All the way to level 25, which is the max you can be, if you're interested! Also on that Wiki page is the recommended item buys, which I usually stick to..

The Liquid Fire ability helps you push the creep and the Ice Path helps set up a hero kill. Later in the game when you have a point or two in Macropyre, it's best to fire it off, then Ice Path as that will freeze the enemies in your Macropyre, then throw out a Dual Breath to add insult to injury! 

I have found that this is best used when there are two-five enemy heros all in a line chasing you/someone else. It can easily end up with you getting three plus kills in one fell swoop! 

If you would like to know anything else about play-styles or have any suggestions, let me know! You can ask a question on here or @McKnublet on twitter!

For now though, I'm off to check out Aliens: Colonial Marines(when it's finished downloading..... I hate out internet)!

Ciao for now!

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Steam Market Place, Mike and Dota 2

Hi again!!

I told you I would be back soon! Not a lot has happened in the past couple of days. Though I did discover a couple of things!

Firstly, I found that a good friend of mine has been secretly(perhaps not so secretly) reviewing games on one of the most fabulous forums available: YouTube! You should check out FairlyAngryMike. Links will be provided at the bottom of this post.

Apart from that, I made one other monumental discovery!! Steam market place.. a place where you can sell items that you get in either Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, both of which are available on Steam.. Team Fortress 2 is free to play as is Dota 2(if you get invited), otherwise you can pay for "early access" as the game hasn't technically been released as of yet.

Unfortunately it appears that once you have sold something for cash(note moat things on there are up for the insane price of £0.02), you can't withdraw the money from your steam wallet. If I'm wrong, please do feel free to correct me!! Their handy FAQ can be found here

But hey ho! Back to what I was meant to offer some chatter about! I was invited to play Dota 2 by a friend(thanks Andy!), which meant expanding my field of gaming vision quite exponentially by setting up a steam account.. thankfully its quite straight forwards. So I claimed my "beta" key and installed the game, which took much longer than I'm willing to admit - due to the shabby internet connection we are currently forced to accept in this house :sadface.

I went in having no previous experience of actually playing a Moba, I had seen the UI and knew that you pick a hero out of the multitude of available ones.. and that it was equal teams and that as you kill stuff(enemy heros and things called creeps) you get experience and gold which is spent on buying items to upgrade your hero and his or her abilities.

There are a couple of different game modes to try out, the main one I have played is the best for learners to try out really! It's called a Co-op Bot game, which means you will be teamed with other players against a team of AI controlled opponents.

Another mode is simply you and 4 others Vs 5 other players online.. there is a lot of chatter about how abrasive the community can be should you make a schoolboy error, thankfully I haven't witnessed this. The game can be immensely fun, or incredibly annoying depending on how your team plays and communicates!

I would wholeheartedly recommend that you give it a go, if this type of game interests you at all! If you don't have access, tweet me expressing your interest in getting a key @McKnublet!

That's it for now I think, I might do another one later going into a bit more detail about my favourite Dota 2 Heroes since I didn't really go into too much detail about the game itself in this post!

All that's left is to say, follow @FairlyAngryMike on twitter and check out his YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/FairlyAngryMike for game reviews or you can check out his blog in my Blog List on the right hand side of the page!

Ciao for now!

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I'm baaack

Okay so I know I've had quite some time off from writing here!

There has been a lot going on, obviously! I've been trying to concentrate on work and of course my little free time has been put into playing a few games.

But what have I been playing? Well, that is the question! I finally set up a Steam account - most people I know found it crazy that I didn't have one! I guess I was dubious about the whole thing.. then forgot about it for a long while! I never needed it when I was at Blizzard as I was more than happy logging into WoW for a few hours and massing many hours playing and watching Starcraft 2 and then Diablo 3.

So, my first impressions of Steam is pretty good! The whole reason I set up one, was because I got given a beta invitation for Dota 2. Which is a pretty darn fun game, when you get the hang of it! It's a MOBA - which means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. I'll go into a bit more details about that at another time!

After I had played a few too many hours of Dota 2, the Christmas sale started on Steam.. oh boy, such an incredible amount of savings were to be had! Why hadn't I started up Steam before??

I managed to pick up a couple of games - X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Civilisation V: Gods and Kings expansion, Age of Empires 3, Bioshock 1&2..

I plan to write some sort of reviews for all of them as I play through them but since I bought them I haven't had too much time to sit down and get nitty gritty with all of them! Most of my game-time was spent playing X-Com and Civ 5... purely because I remember playing the first X-Com games and the first Civ games oh so many moons ago!

Then I picked up another game, Ace of Spades - which I didn't think I would be too keen on, since I hadn't played Minecraft.. and this is very much like Minecraft but with guns! You can check out the launch trailer here.

That's me for now I think, promise I will be back soon!

Ciao for now!

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