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!)

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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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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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Diablo 3: The Monk

As promised, I'm here again! This time with a little look at the class that I have been playing the most in the short spurts I've had at playing D3 recently. Unfortunately, most of my time has been taken up with working and.. being told what to do by she who must be obeyed.. so I'm whipped, what of it?!

I actually have something else on my mind too, I was wondering about the different sites that offer homes to blogs and considering moving across to a different one. I did a brief search and it looks like WordPress is the main competitor for Blogger; in one head to head, here, they say that Blogger is much easier to use and WordPress is much more difficult to get to grips with... so, being the lazy bugger that I am, I think I'll stick to Blogger! Do you have any thoughts? Let me know!

Enough about that claptrap! The Monk! The monk is a melee based class with some funky dunky spells to help them out.. if I had to compare them to a WoW class, I guess it would be the Paladin. They can heal themselves and groups(with an Aura) and dish out a bidda damage and also be quite tanky in multiplayer. Their main attributes are Dexterity and that's about it I guess, though it never hurts to stack the old hit points.

You can run with a couple of different styles with the Monk, you can use one weapon and shield and soak damage and bore packs of mobs to death(much like the WoW Paladin used to), you can dual wield one handers(which I think fits more with the way Monks look) or you can try and lift a mighty two-hander with your scrawny looking Monk fella.. 

I found working my way through the beginning levels to be easy, almost too easy really! Especially with abilities like Breath of Heaven and Serenity. Of course, late Hell things got a bit rougher, but still not too difficult.. even Inferno doesn't hurt too much.

Do I like it? Yah, I really like the play style of the Monk for some reason(probably because it's ez-mode balanced!!!). I guess I am still a sucker for running into a group of mobs and laying the smack down and enjoying the abundance of red mist that sprays around when you kill them all! But where are you at with your Monk?!?! I hear you cry in unison.. well, I'm glad you asked! Currently I'm just starting Act II of Inferno. My last session ended when she rang me and made me die to the first champion pack I encountered in Act II! :(

I have no idea if other people who play monks use the build I do.. I think, if I can remember rightly it's something like this and I really like it. It gives a ton of survivability and puts out a decent amount of damage.  Granted it's nowhere near close to the Witch Doctor's damage.. but who would expect it to be? I'm currently stuck with some alright gear.. working on getting upgrades in the ole inferno...

Time to stop talking and get back to ... watching my pc perform a CHKDSK... joy.

Ciao for now!

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