Category: Games

10 tips to save you from dying in DOTA2

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

DOTA 2 has been around for less than a year, but the gaming community has been fast adopting to this game. This community is mostly made of people who have been playing League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth … and also the successful predecessor DOTA. What this means, that sometimes this community can be unforgiving for newbies.

There is a reason for that as well … when you die unnecessarily, the enemy hero gains money and experience

I have not seen a Pub game wherein the newbie does not get flamed for unnecessarily dying and feeding the opposition. To survive this onslaught, you just need to follow these steps … and people will stop calling you a n00b!

Tips to increase your survival

  1. Always carry a Tango at the start. That will help you stay in the lanes longer.
  2. Do NOT auto-attack. It’s tempting to do so … yes I know … even I used to do this. But it works out better if you don’t. When you auto-attack, you end up pushing the creep wave towards the enemy tower making ganks and one-on-ones all the more difficult. As it is, the only thing that matters is getting last hits. If you can get 100+ last hits in a game, you should be good.
  3. Keep a tab on the mini-map. You can tell by looking at the mini-map where are the other enemy heroes. Tracking them is useful since this can help you avoid possible ganks on you.
  4. Before you commit to any fight, ask yourself this question – Can I survive, are my team mates around to push/defend if I die?
  5. Farm happily, but stay away of towers. Some of the best farmers out there do not farm if they do not see the enemy heroes on the mini-map.
  6. Know your hero’s build. All the hero’s are meant to be used in a certain way. Practice with them before hand to know the best way to use them.
  7. To stay longer in a lane, learn how to use a courier to fetch items for you.
  8. Do not initiate a fight wherein you are going against multiple enemies. If your lane partner is not around, stay back and focus on getting last hits.
  9. If you are running low on health and do not have a courier at your disposal, go back to the base. The loss in XP for not being around action is lesser than the loss in XP when you die.
  10. If you are saving up gold for a particular item, remember that most items are made up of composite items. These composite items can be seen in your Quick Buy panel (Shift + Click on the item for this). If you know you are going to die, then just go ahead and buy as many composites as possible. That way at least the money is put to good use.
  11. (Bonus) Relics are good, but if you cannot farm, then getting intermediate items work better. Consider Power Treads for their versatility.

Practice on these tips and you should be safe enough!!

DOTA 2

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

For Warcraft fans (the Strategy game, not the MMORPG), the game is a hallmark for many things. Among them being the origin for multiple different genres of games – including World of Warcraft and DOTA 2. DOTA 2 is the sequel of the most popular Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) mod of the game Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. What started off as a difficult last scenario in the campaign, has now ended up being a whole new game itself.

The Real Time Strategy (RTS) game was soon converted into a Multiplayer Team Sport, where 2 teams of 5 players each battled in an arena for the destruction of each other home cities.

Fundamentally, the concept sounds simple and it’s often that the simple thing becomes so popular. But think again, this simplistic goal of destroying the opponents capital becomes more complex when you have a wide array of characters to choose from, and an even wider array of weapons to wield. Let’s not get into that so early in this post shall we? Perhaps a different post is required for this …eh?

Each battle lasts for around 30-40 minutes and is the perfect mix for multi-player sessions across the world. Currently the game is in beta stage and at any point in time you will find at least 200,000 … if you are lucky enough then your application for getting a beta invite might even be accepted.

As I say this I have 10 invites for the game lying with me!! The first 10 comments asking for an invite get them!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

So, why does Hollywood and the entire gaming industries pit the aliens versus the human race? So if an intelligent race found signs of life on Earth, would it’s first reaction be to kill it or to move towards its annihilation? What would you do? Would you not first study it? Find a means of communicating and then communicate?

But no, the basic premise of almost all games is that the aliens have invaded, have superior firepower if not fierce claws (and sometimes both!!). The humans have to rally back and kick some alien ass. XCOM is no different.

If you are a fan of this game, stop reading this post here itself, I am not going to go ga-ga over this sorry excuse of a 12GB install game. And so shouldn’t you!! If you do remember the previous versions of XCOM and its expansions, then that’s pretty much that is there to this current game … with some pretty graphics.

The basic story is this, the aliens have attacked and are not leaving any prisoners. You are in charge of a high profile team made by technicians, scientists and soldiers across the world. The major countries are funding your outfit, and that means protecting each of these countries against alien invasions, figuring out the alien’s technology and building your own superweapons. Your soldiers gain powers and experience as they kill more aliens.

xcom-mapThe game play has improved a bit and most of the tactical game is fun to play, but it does get a bit monotonous towards the end. You end up moving one turn and then going into Overwatch for each of your units. If you have not played any of its predecessors, then do give this a whirl (just the demo will suffice).

Fallen Enchantress

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

What happens when you mix a Strategy Game like Civilization with a Real Time Strategy game like Rise of Nations?

Easy enough, you get a game such as Rome: Total War.

What happens when you take that mix and add a little bit of Role Playing Game to it?

Cat got your tongue?

Well that’s precisely what Stardock Entertainment did. It’s a heady mix where a lot of things can go wrong. But done right, it can be very entertaining.

In the past we have seen a mixture of classic genres … there was Warcraft 3 with a mix of RPG and RTS (the expansion of Warcraft 3, Frozen Throne went on to give the folks at Blizzard a killer idea of what would go on to make the successful MMORPG seriers – World of Warcraft). Enough talking about Blizzard … for now. We are here for Stardock and yes, the Fallen Enchantress.

In 2010, Stardock had released a game on similar lines – Elemental: War of Magic … and it was plagued with glitches, bugs and bad gameplay. So much so that, Stardock has offered this game as a compensation to the people who had bought the earlier game (tis’ a bit late, but it’s the thought that counts!).

The game took some time figuring out. In fact, I think I suck at Civ-type games (because I generally do not follow the optimal scheme of things). However, I do enjoy the grind, loot and crawl of RPGs. So most of the time I ended up soloing with my sovereign. The game is pretty enjoyable, but the player really really needs to strike a balance between gallivanting on adventures and lore and managing a kingdom.

IMO, that’s the key to playing the entire game. For those of you interested in purchasing the game, its available on Steam for USD 40. A good way to waste a Sunday!

Torchlight 2

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I had started playing Torchlight back in 2010, when Blizzard was sitting mum about Diablo III. During those days, there was a huge gap in the RPG space … a gap that needed to be filled with different Diablo clones. A gap which was completely satisfied by Torchlight.

So with the impending delay in the release of Diablo III (as always with Blizzard and their releases), I was glad for the release of Torchlight 2.

Unlike it’s predecessor, Torchlight 2 is not only restricted to the city of Torchlight and the many dungeons underneath. It’s not your classic dungeon crawl, but instead it features an open world, where the adventurer can stumble upon other random dungeons for additional loot.

estherian enclave

Torchlight 2 takes off right where Torchlight stopped. The plot picks up from the pace and throws you, the adventurer right in the middle of the story. The Alchemist (supposedly one of the heroes from the earlier series), has been infected by the ember and is trying to end all sources of ember in order to stop his infection. Our job is to stop the Alchemist and his nefarious plans.

The good part about Torchlight 2 is that the game play which we all loved has been retained. The awesome part is that the classes have been streamlined into four different classes – the melee Berserker who relies on Dexterity as a main stat, the melee Engineer who relies on Strength as a main stat, the ranged Outlander who relies on Dexterity as a main stat and the ranged Embermage who relies on Focus as the main stat. I am using the term main stat only loosely here, since all the different stats have different uses for all 4 classes.

berserker critical
A berserker scores a crit

What I liked about the classes, is that all four have distinctly different game playing styles. The trees and skill differences are also so distinct that it sets each variation apart.

That apart, the game can be played solo, on a lan or on the internet. All you need is a login with Runic Games. I have not really tried my hand with multi-player on this one yet, since I always (ALWAYS) like to finish the game first on solo and then go for the different variations.

Believe me, right now I am having much more fun than grinding/farming the different Acts in Diablo III. That’s a huge plus!!

War of the MMOs

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

More than seven years back Blizzard launched the World of Warcraft. What initially started off as a small campaign within the Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne game, suddenly shadowed the entire Warcraft RTS series … Blizzard had struck on a gold mine with the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), a game which would later on be synonymous with the entire category … World of Warcraft took the real world by storm, and at its zenith it was known to have more than 12 million monthly subscribers.

Yes, the bad part about this was that there is a monthly subscription to play the game, and more than 12 million people were gladly willing to part ways with their 15 USD per month to fight the forces of evil and defend the lands of Azeroth.

Over the period of years, the game put on several features and became easier to play … this attracted a lot of new users (including me!), but it also detracted a lot of the previous loyal following that the game had. After 3 successful patches (Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm), the game’s growth in popularity suddenly started sputtering. After over a year’s launch of Cataclysm, the game subscriptions started dipping … now at a figure of 9 million users (that’s a drop of 25% in users folks!), the people at Blizzard are getting worried about the launch of their next patch … Mists of Pandaria.

With this drop in users, there came in a distinct need for other MMOs, something which would stave gamers’ need for playing online games. Thus followed a slew of MMORPGs … Guild Wars (I and II), Rift, Dungeons and Dragons, Vanguard, Star Wars, Torchlight 2 … the list seems to go on.

I have seen quite a few of them and though most of the games differ slightly in game play with World of Warcraft, I think almost every one of those games have borrowed elements from the game. Mounts, factions, guilds, dungeons … these are the things that the good folks at Blizzard had already thought of … to make a WoW Clone goes ahead and fuels WoW’s popularity … in the end, the only game which ends up winning this War of MMOs, is WoW … not because of only being the first successful MMO, but also it has become the de facto genre defining game.

All the other MMOs that I have seen copy from WoW. If a new MMO were to be launched which would be drastically different from WoW, I wonder what would happen to its popularity? Or perhaps, thats what the hush-hush secret Project Titan is intended to do.