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Heroes of the Storm: Stitches
At the end of our look at the Support hero Tassadar, I said we would likely look at Muradin next. I lied. Stitches came up in the Heroes of the Storm free-to-play rotation and I learned the meaning of true love. Stitches is a beefy member of the Warrior class, heroes that are typically low damage, high survivability. In many cases, the threat a Warrior poses is not in his or her ability to kill you -- but the fact that they're a nuisance, unkillable things that make a slow push into your territory and you must struggle to stop them. While Stitches does have those qualities, I also like to think of him as something of an offensive Support character. Where most Support characters help your Heroes survive a battle, Stitches helps his allies murder the other team. He picks your enemies apart and holds them still while your assassins go to work.
The Daily Grind: What first drew you to your current game?
My memories of 2004 grow hazier over time -- that was a decade ago, after all -- but I still remember what first drew me to World of Warcraft, and it wasn't a longstanding love of the strategy games. No, what engaged me was the fact that it promised a break from the tedious group-based slogs and aimless wandering that made up the MMO landscape at the time. After playing Final Fantasy XI for two years, the idea of being able to just go out into the world and do things and have actual quests was so intoxicating that it could be legally called a drug. It's been many years since WoW was new and many years since it was my main game, and what keeps me in the game is not what initially attracted me to the game. But I do remember why I bought it in the first place, during a time when it seemed almost impossible to find and was first breaking subscription records. So what about you, dear readers? What first drew you to your current game, even if those attributes aren't the reason you stick around now? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Famous movie scenes recreated using game development tools
The Game Artist forums recently held a competition to determine who could best recreate a scene from a movie in a real-time game environment. The winners were a trio of forum users, going by the names of shadows, in3d, and Alina, who appropriately called themselves "The Replicants." They recreated the the classic Blade Runner scene you see above, and we're sure we don't have to tell you why it's the best of the bunch. Rounding out the rest of the winners were scenes from Hook (Ruffio! Ruffio! Ruf-ee-oh!), X2: X-Men United, I am Legend, and Aliens. You can blast your eyeballs with those entries by clicking here.[Via Fidgit]
Joystiq hands-on: Fishing Master (Wii)
I grew up fishing and still sometimes make it out on to a lake, river, or ocean to try to hook a meal. I attended Camp Fish. I know how to cut a herring so that it rolls in tune with a salmon's appetite. And I've been waiting for a good Wii fishing simulation, an obvious game idea, given the rod-like Remote. Fishing Master is not that simulation.Instead, Fishing Master is a more casual title that glosses over many parts of real fishing technique. Real fish are attracted to different colors of bait depending on the weather conditions, but Fishing Master has seasons and no other weather patterns. Rod position plays the most important role in keeping a fish on, but like most fishing games, Fishing Master uses the reeling-too-hard-or-not-hard-enough-meter to decide if a fish gets away.But I understand these design decisions and still had fun with a recent version of the game. With its projected September U.S. release from the recent Japan-only launch, casual anglers and gamers may be hooked.
