Chowda | Cheerful Ghost

This is a free to play DOTA style game that I find wildly

http://competitive.na.leagueoflegends.com/sites/default/files/upload/wallpaper/wallpaper_team20kat_1280x1024.jpg

This is a free to play DOTA style game that I find wildly fun and addictive! Gamers who enjoy online competitive play will probably enjoy this title quite a bit.

There are two resource systems in the game: Riot Points (RP) and Influence Points (IP). You obtain IP from playing games while you buy RP from the store. Either resource can be used to buy champions and runes. But if you want to buy a skin for your beloved champs you can only use RP.

The graphics and animations are very good and gameplay is generally smooth. My biggest complaint with this game is the community. You should either turn chat off or be ready to be trolled consistently by one of the worst communities I've ever seen. You've been warned!

jdodson Admin wrote on 03/09/2012 at 04:04am

Cool. Can you get this off Steam or from the developers site only? I didn't know this is free to play.

I sort of expect any DoTA clone to be rife with douche-bags. DoTA was, for sure. I know because I dared play it as a lowly noob-cock mortal....

Chowda Post Author wrote on 03/09/2012 at 05:46am

Pretty sure this is only available from Riot. I'm used to the elite being arrogant braggarts, but I have been blindsided by these apathetic verbally abusive middle schoolers. The amount of trash talking far exceeds the typical CS/HALO/ bullshit I'm used to dealing with. I'm not bitter...

jdodson Admin wrote on 03/09/2012 at 03:22pm

Lol. I think the online douchery in certain game communities is a bit over the top. Then again as long as they all congregate to one or two games that I don't play.... ;)

vdogmr25 wrote on 03/09/2012 at 08:12pm

I play this one too. It's a blast, especially when you can get a few guys you know to play with ya. It matches you with players that team up, as well, so if you have a group of five, you're almost guaranteed to play another team of five. That's when the games can get really heated.

Chowda Post Author wrote on 03/10/2012 at 03:42am

Yeah after you get some games under your belt the matchmaking system is pretty good. However, if you're a group of 5 you get matched to other groups of 5 regardless of ranking. So those can be pretty lopsided sometimes, unless you're playing ranked of course.

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Diablo III: Beta Review

Graphics & Art:

From the first few minutes in you can tell that Diablo 3 is a Blizzard game. It's beautiful and well blended as you have come to expect from their games. I really enjoy the color palette and ambiance that has been created. I read initial complaints that it "isn't dark enough for the Diablo IP", but I am quite happy with it. Graphics are really only a small part of the game but I doubt anyone will be disappointed with the look and feel of the world.

One thing that I can't get past is the environment depth. It screams of Titan Quest - the altitude of cliffs, the depth of chasms. I really enjoyed the effect in Titan Quest and I'm glad to see it again.

jdodson Admin wrote on 02/23/2012 at 02:09am

Kind of makes sense that Blizz gets some cues from other popular games. I agree with you on the art it does look really good.

If we are going to spend a zillion hours in a game, it does make sense to be able to see whats going on. I loved Doom 3 but it was a smidge too dark. Then again, when I played it with the lights off it was fine.

Chowda Post Author wrote on 02/23/2012 at 09:58pm

Hmm, I never thought about playing it in the dark. You can always adjust the gamma to your personal taste, but I think the default is more than reasonable.

jdodson Admin wrote on 02/24/2012 at 05:48am

Good to know. Can't wait to try it.

Tungsten wrote on 03/03/2012 at 12:50am

I got into the beta, downloaded it, but the launcher is bugged and now it won't let me play... so sad...

jdodson Admin wrote on 03/03/2012 at 05:37am

Dude, that sucks!

Tungsten wrote on 03/06/2012 at 03:42am

Hey, I might have found a fix, its redownloading a couple files right now. Fingers crossed.

jdodson Admin wrote on 03/06/2012 at 03:46am

Awesome. Really excited about this one.

Tungsten wrote on 03/06/2012 at 03:58am

FAIL

Tungsten wrote on 03/06/2012 at 04:16am

Delete random files until it starts working FTW

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I was so excited to get in to Diablo 3! I rushed character

I was so excited to get in to Diablo 3! I rushed character creation so I could start playing right away. Something I noticed very early was how easy it was. It was so easy that I actually lost interest in making new characters for a while. I wrote the difficulty off to being scaled down for testing purposes, but I don't think that's the case. To prove my point I had a co-worker watch as I stood in the middle of three cold enchanted zombies and let them beat on me. Keeping my cursor over my health we noticed I was actually regenrating life faster than they were damaging me. Lame.

Well the other day I found that lots of other beta players agree with me on the lowered difficulty. Blizzard in turn responded with a video about the difficulty in D3. I have attached it for your viewing pleasure. I sure hope it lives up to their foreboding! I want to play in a Diablo world that difficult!

Yes, I have been invited to the beta. I was one of the lucky

Yes, I have been invited to the beta. I was one of the lucky 100,000 in the last round of invites. I have played through all available content on a few characters now and haven't taken the time to level everyone up to max level.

I was a pretty hardcore player of Diablo 2 online. My best friend and I always played the ladder and even hardcore mode. We would spend so much time after a ladder reset trying to be in the top 10. Saying I have some emotional attachment to the Diablo IP would be an understatement.

I've decided to split my D3 beta impressions into a bunch of focused mini-posts to mitigate my scattered thoughts. So feel free to comment and ask questions, I'll do my best to answer them!

During the Steam Christmas sale I decided that picking up

During the Steam Christmas sale I decided that picking up Dungeon Defenders for really cheap was probably a good investment. This is my first tower defense game and I am very pleasantly surprised! I thought I would share my thoughts on the game after spending way to much time playing it already.

Graphics - The art style is very stylized. Though it looks a little childish with the oversized proportions and funny dances, it performs very well. Even with several hundred monsters and towers firing as fast as they can, I have yet to encounter screen lag. The color palette is aesthetically pleasing and I can honestly say I have no problems with the art direction.

Gameplay - I personally enjoy online play over local single player. I have only played online and mostly with friends. You can have up to four players cooperating on a map at any time. I find talking to them in ventrilo or mumble to be a huge help. Discussing strategy with voice is much faster when you're on a tight time-limit. Leveling up to the maximum level (74) isn't very hard. Difficulty levels are what makes this game shine. Along with my friends we try the hardest maps and challenges on the hardest difficulty. This has kept us busy for weeks!

If you enjoy multiplayer coop strategy I would highly recommend this cheap game for you and your friends.

Chowda14

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