3. S2j

The player S2j is a special one to me, he is my 2nd favorite player ever and my first favorite Captain Falcon player ever. His first name is Johnny, which most of his close friends refer to him as, and his tag "s2j" stand for "smoke 2 joints". I've always wanted to ask him if that is a reference to the song by Sublime, but I guess we might never know for sure. If you haven't heard that song by Sublime I strongly recommend it. So what to say about s2j, well first off he is definitely the fan favorite no matter who he plays it seems. Captain Falcon being considered on the lower end of the high tier players, everyone likes to cheer for the underdog to win. Even without that though, Captain Falcon is by far one of the most explosive and flashy characters in the game and all of his moves look cool. He is also extremely fast, maybe even the fastest in melee, and watching him move all over the stage is mesmerizing. As someone who plays the game and knows how hard it is to do some of the high level movements like wavedashing, dash dancing, and wavelanding its very fun to watch someone do it so cleanly. S2j and Mang0 are also really close friends and there play styles are also very similar. S2j has a very fast and unpredictable play style which can either give him a insane advantage or crushing disadvantage. He holds a special part in my heart because he is actually the reason I decided I wanted to play Captain Falcon as my main character. Watching him actually made me want to play the game the way he did, because what he did looked so much fun. Most people would want to pick one of the very high tier characters and get really good at them, but I think you should never play someone just because they are good. You need to have fun with what you are doing if you ever expect to have any kind of drive to get better. Being bored and winning is probably one of the most pointless things anyone could do.  

2. Armada

Armada is the number 1 player in the entire world for the game Super Smash Bros Melee. He dual mains Fox and Peach and had a very very successful 2015 tournament year. Armada won well over $100k in tournament prize money this year, which if you are familiar to smash tournaments you know you have to win a ton to make anything close to that. Armada is from Sweden and even though the competitive scene over there isn't as great as it is over here he does well for himself. He actually has been one of the biggest advocates for Melee's competitive growth throughout all of the years. I have even heard rumors of a documentary coming out detailing Armadas life with Melee. Armada's play style with either of his characters is simply an insane punish game. He won't do any of the unpredictable crazy things that Mang0 does, but everything he does is ludicrously efficient. In a game like Super Smash Bros it is very difficult to do the perfect thing at the perfect time all the time. Armada is an example of someone who can do that, he has some sort of sense in him to be able to do the exact right thing at the exact right time. There are other players that have shown they have potential to do something like Armada has done, but anyone has yet to rise up and overcome him. Although, there is another player from Sweden named Leffen who was also ranked number top 5 in the world and had a chance at the rank 1 title, but unfortunately something happened with his Visa when coming to The Big House 5 in Michigan and the Us government wouldn't let him in the country. Armada's future unlike Mang0s is looking extremely promising. In almost every tournament he entered and played in he placed in the top 8. As long as players like Leffen and Mang0 don't figure out how to beat the way he plays he will be alright. Although he did come 2nd in the last major tournament of the 2015 year, there should be no reason for anyone to overlook him as not the favorite to win every tournament.

1. The Goat

Joseph "Mang0" Marquez is known as one of the best super smash brothers melee players of all time. On top of that, he is also personally my favorite player to ever play the game as well. Mang0 is the player in Melee that I think everyone really really wants to be. He isn't one of the really smart players that knows all the frame data and percentage timing and what not. He is a player that has so much experience through out the years with the game that he has a sense of what he knows will or wont work. A lot of players rely on knowing exactly what times to do things and having a game plan from the start. Mang0 doesn't do any of that, he goes into games almost completely blind and just finds his way around how the opponent is playing. He is always so unpredictable and fast with his movements, and his punishes are always harsh and long that the other player won't get to do anything for a solid 10 seconds. He has nicknames of The Goat(Greatest Of All Time), The kid, the nonsleeper of thee, and so on. He is also probably one of the most winningest players through out its competitive history as well. Lately Mang0 has been kind of in a slump, but that is to be expected with the progression of the game and the players of it. Mang0 plays on team Cloud 9 and gets to play this game for a living and travel the country going from tournament to tournament. He's also known as being a very large gambling advocate and a very large fan of alcohol. Especially the 40 oz. Although he may seem like a good for nothing video game player, Mang0 actually has a child with his girlfriend and is doing pretty well for himself at this point in life. The future for Mang0 is a very tough thing to distinguish. He is a very "spotty" kind of player, is he shows up to a tournament and is playing well there is almost no one in the world that will be able to stop him. Though, he can get in a weird mindset or for whatever reason not be playing at his 100% normal rate. But, as Mang0 has said before, you gotta be a gambling man to vote on the kid.

Transition

Twitch.tv is a video game streaming website. People stream themselves playing games while a live audience can "chat" with the player. The website has evolved so much over time that the audience can now contribute to these peoples finances. Making it so many people can now make a living just by playing games that they like. Some time ago people started doing other things on there streams such as painting, sculpting, glassblowing, and a bunch of other cool non-gaming things. Twitch, seeing that this category could potentially be a big part of there website, decided to bring more attention to the category. They decided to run a stream for every single episode of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. This decision quickly became a massive success, the stream averaged about 45,000 viewers at all times. It brought a huge wave of people into the creative category and gave a lot of these streamers chances for there channels to grow. The only problem is after the marathon ended the viewers for the creative category significantly dropped and tons of people wanted the Bob Ross stream to continue. So Twitch decided to re run all the episodes, but this time only do it on Mondays. So every Monday there is a 24 hour stream of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. I kind of find it funny that all these people really want to watch him paint. I personally watched a substantial amount of the original marathon and can say that he is a god. The things that man can do with a couple different sized paint brush and a knife is incredible. I also personally love when he cleans off his brush and drys it by hitting it across this pole like thing and says, "and just hit the Devil out of it" with this creepy Bob Ross giggle and smile. I also liked the random clips of him and his weird ass animals that he always had, that guy was just incredible. The only thing different that I would do if I was Twitch was instead of pocketing the money like the greedy business monkeys they are they could donate it to a charity or something like that. But business will be business.

Can't get enough

I know over the past few weeks I have been pretty hyped about this game Super Smash Bros. Melee. And why wouldn't I be? The game is literally built around people being hyped about it, at least the competitive scene is. That is just what I am trying to do as well, I want to be able to get into the competitive scene and try to make a name for myself. I haven't been to any tournaments and I have never played anyone that takes the game as serious as me but I am hoping to change that in the next couple weeks. My birthday is on November 15th and I decided that for a little present to myself I was going to go to a tournament on the 14th. There aren't many big tournaments around this area except for The Big House (which has already happened earlier in October I believe) and The Michigan Arcadian. The Arcadian for this year has over 200 entries and is going to be held at the University of Michigan. Now, the tournament is designed for the non top tier to play, so that means there aren't going to be some of the best players in the world there. But at the same time there will still be competition. With over 200 entries one can only assume that there is going to be some good players right? I myself don't really know how I stack up against any of these players, I think that I can hold my own, but at the same time I know the possibility of just getting 4 stocked every game. This is a big step for anyone though wanting to make a name for themselves in this community. If you are familiar with the game I am a Captain Falcon player. I think he is one of the more versatile characters, obviously he isn't top tier but I think that he is one of the few characters that is capable of winning a tournament. Just starting in the last couple days I have had myself on a training regimen so that I can try to get my movement and combos as fluid as possible. In my opinion, half the game is just being able to put your character in the right spot at the right time. Practicing movement like I have been doing is hopefully going to elevate my game just a little more so I can try to get a somewhat decent placing at this tournament. This tournament isn't for another 11 days but even now I can feel the pressure and anxiety I would get when I was about to step foot onto the court for a basketball game. The excitement is real.

/endrant

One major part that I think has fallen off of the face of video games is the immersion that they once used to give to people. Maybe that's because I have grown so accustom to the amazing graphics and story that most video games have now a days, but to me it feels all developers care about anymore is pushing out big titles. Can you really blame them either? The video game community will bitch and moan about how they want so much more from a game. Yet the second a developer releases a game that didn't have any of the things the community wanted in it everyone still buys it. Even on top of that the community will still complain about how much the game sucks and all that. Well if you know the developer wasn't going to be adding these things you wanted to the game, why did you still buy it? That is literally telling these companies "I don't like what you did here, but I will give you money anyway" and in return they can say to themselves, "hey everyone, lets basically make the same game over and over with different titles and story lines and we will make millions!" The sad part about it is they aren't wrong because that is exactly what is going on with the video game market now-a-days. I've recently been playing a game near and dear to my heart The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You may be thinking, "but wait, that says elder scrolls and that's not Skyrim what gives". Well, I will put this simply, Oblivion is the game Skyrim wishes it could be. This game came out in 2006 and was easily one of my favorite childhood memories. Even to this day the experiences and game play I have with this game is like none other and its 9 years old. My mind is officially boggled by the fact that with this current technology that we possess that we can't even make a better game then one from 9 years ago. Don't get me wrong Skyrim was no push over it was a pretty fun game, but it was basically a "revamp" of Oblivion, and still can't stand toe to toe with it. As much as I was saying that the gaming community in general is shit, I wasn't just referring to the consumers. The producers also play a substantially big role in this problem as well.

Toxicity

The video game community is so shit. Honestly, one of the worst groups of people you could probably ever associate yourself with. The only thing I wonder if its only this way in the US or if its global. I feel that not every person in the gaming community is terrible, but the ratio from good to bad is way off. The community is extremely toxic. People will go out of there way just to make sure you have a terrible time trying to do something you enjoy. How messed up is that. A person will spend hours of there life trying to figure out how to manipulate a certain thing in a game so that when you play it they can use it there advantage to always win against you. An example of this is in a game called DayZ. DayZ has so many cheaters in it because they all use these things called scripts that will allow them to teleport wherever they want, kill someone whenever they want, etc. These scripts aren't just handed out either, well after they are figured out they are basically, but a person had to sit down and figure out the coding process to actually get that to work. Not only that, he has to figure out how to make it work while trying to dodge the anti-cheat software that most games have now a days. On top of that, instead of blaming the person that is doing this thing the players will start criticizing the game/company. What kind of logical sense does that even make? Not to start a huge thing here, but that is just like blaming the gun and not the person firing the gun. Why does the community do this? My theory is that people who have the time to do all this must actually need make people angry. They need to hear that person rage and quit and get super upset over what he is doing. Why he needs this I have no idea, it must some kind of like fetish thing or something. Over the years of this happening to, you can see the toll it has taken on all gaming communities. Now whenever someone is decent at a game and doing better than someone else it obviously makes him a "hacker". Anyone that seems to have any sort of skill in a game and isn't a professional gamer just turns into a hacker. And its incredibly sad to see these great community figures that try to help the video game scene grow and they have to tell these people to try and join the community when its so toxic. No one wants to willingly join a community that is so incredibly annoying and just plain bad.

The Nation

Last week I talked about the now almost 14 year old game we know and love called Super Smash Brothers Melee. There was a tournament called The Big House 5 held in Dearborn, Mi sometimes recently that I also talked about last week. Well, this week I was honored to actually be able to go to one of these Melee tournaments and not just watch a stream of it. Now let it be known, compared to TBH5 this tournament was basically nothing. It was held at MSU and had about 20 or so player actually in the tournament. Among those players was the guy that actually ran TBH5, he is known as Juggleguy. To me it was pretty crazy actually being able to see him and person and see him actually playing the game. The room that it was held in was kind of like a lecture room with 3 big projectors up front, and 4 long tables that stretched from the wall to wall of the room. Each one of these tables had 3 of those old school box TVs that seem to have no use in the real world today, and either a Gamecube, a Nintendo 64, or a Wii u. I wasn't actually in the tournament I just decided to take the trek down there to check it out because I always wanted to go see what a melee tournament was like. Let me tell you one thing about these tournaments, no matter how many people are there it will get loud. The people in the Melee community are so passionate and so into this game, that when something cool happens in a game the only thing that seems right to do at the time is to yell. Even if you don't really know exactly whats going on in this game, it feels like you just get swept in all the emotion and can't help but joining in on the yelling. Another thing to keep in mind if going to one of these tournaments, is that there will be very few females. Now I am not trying to be sexist in anyway, but it just seems that all throughout the video competitive scene in general, it is very male dominated. Anyway, this tournament was actually a lot of fun to attend even though I wasn't playing. Watching the intensity in peoples faces and the way they can manipulate the characters they play and how they handle the controller is breathtaking. If you have ever played this amazing game we refer to as Melee, I highly, HIGHLY encourage you on watching some high level players play the game. The mix of nostalgia and amazement of the game in front of you will be worth it I promise you.

Old and New

This week/weekend was and will be jam PACKED full of amazing games. First over the weekend The Big House 5 tournament took place in Dearborn, Michigan. Sadly I was a little to late when it came to getting tickets and I was not able to go. The Big House 5 was one of the biggest Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments of the year, it even had more entries than APEX 2015. The tournament had 2 streams available for it but the one the majority of people watched was the VGbootcamp stream.(http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp) The person who ended up winning the tournament was a Swedish player named Armada. Armada is very known for his peach but opted to play his fox most of the final rounds it seemed because he was going up against a puff(jiggly puff) player named Hungrybox. Both Armada and Hungrybox are well known very skilled professional players, but they also might be some of the most hated players as well. It was kind of easy to tell this because when these 2 were playing the crowd (which was about 99% US) was having a hard awkward time figuring out who to cheer for. I feel they eventually gave up and just cheered whenever good plays were being made. It was kind of upsetting watching a swede taking home the first place trophy at an american tournament, but its hard to be mad at him because you could tell Armada was outplaying ever single person there. If you are interested in learning about all the past players and how melee became apart of the competitive gaming scene I will leave a link below that explains everything about the history of melee. Now with whats coming up with week is going to be very, very hit or miss. They are releasing OPEN BETA for the new Star Wars Battlefront being made by EA. Now, yes Star Wars Battlefront could potentially be an amazing game with hours and hours of gameplay to be had and yada yada yada. BUT, let us not forget that this game is being made by EA. If you don't understand why this is a problem, go play any game that was made by this company after Battlefield Bad Company 2. This company is known for taking some of the most anticipated games titles and putting the ol' "EA twist" on it and ruining the entire thing for everyone. Streams of the CLOSED BETA are out there showing off the gameplay and from what I have seen and heard from others is that it won't be another one of those "EA ruiners". Maybe this could be the game where EA makes a turning point for there company and starts making good games, I don't know. What I do know is that if EA does ruin this game, they will have a lot of nostalgic grown ups pretty pissed off with them. 

The Smash Brothers Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX9hbbA-WP4

Butterflies

My week has been primarily dominated by 2 games this week, so I thought it would be best if I talk about both of them. The first game that I want to talk about is called Archeage. Archeage is a Korean based MMORPG that focuses on its diverse way to create a player based economy and mixing it with open world pvp (player vs player combat). I played this game the day it launched in the US and I couldn’t believe how packed all 10 servers were. I had to leave my computer on for a day and half with archeage open just to wait for the 2k+ que I was in. The first couple weeks I was only able to play for about 3 hours. Once the people started thinning out I was able to just log in whenever I wanted and play. I was fascinated by all the different mechanics that the game brought. The game made you feel free and not like you were just progressing to get better and better. You were doing things fun and helpful to not only yourself but others too. It wasn’t just the grindy kill this then kill that and level up it gave you a feeling of accomplishment. Not many games do that anymore in people I feel. The accomplishment feeling also ties in with this next game called Rivals of Aether. This game is basically a 8bit remake of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Yes, it has slightly different mechanics but the core of both the games are very similar. Right now in the game there are only 6 different characters you can play. They all possess different abilities that revolve around the 4 elements Wind, Earth, Fire, and Water. The game sounds pretty cheesy when you put it that way, but just shut up and play it. Videos really don’t do this game justice, you only get to understand how amazing it is once you play it. After you find what character you like to play and you start learning how to actually control said character is so fun. Winning matches in this game give you the most rewarding feeling. It’s just a 1 on 1 deathmatch, you vs him. It comes right down to who is the better player right then and there. And I don’t know what it is about winning but that rewarding feeling you get just makes you want to play more and more and progress and to just keep winning. I think that is the reason why people play video games in the first place right? That rewarding feeling you get from a win, oh it’s so good.

Its Inevitable

I'm standing on top of one of the biggest mountains in the lands. The cool breeze runs past my skin bring with it a fresh scent from who knows where. As I look over the land below I see a monster attacking other people. Quickly I spring into action to go help the people below slay this monster. As I am running up to this monster I can see its huge hands and ginormous body. With this almost frost like aura emitting from him. I join the other players and we release our assault onto this beast and end up defeating it! What a glorious battle it was!

This is what Video Games portray themselves as. An epic experience between player and AI with amazing visuals, graphics, and immersive game play that will keep you craving for me. Video games do in fact do this for a lot of people. There have been people playing World of Warcraft since the Vanilla days and are still enjoying the game. That's not how I am with video games though. I love MMORPG's I think they offer some of the most intense and rewarding game play experiences across all other genres. But MMORPG's are meant to be played for a very long amount of time, and with my attention span it is very difficult to play games to there full potential when you essentially are getting bored of the game. Think about that concept for a second, getting BORED of a video game. Video games are essentially, in my opinion, an escape from actual reality to virtual reality, right? Can we all agree on that statement? Cool. Anyway, back to the getting bored part, how insane is it that people can get bored of video games? I mean seriously, they are made just for people to enjoy them. So, if we can use simple logic and math here for a second, if a person is bored of our actual reality and then gets bored of whatever game he is playing (virtual reality), we are essentially bored of 2 DIFFERENT realities. We are a species who has become educated enough to even make these mini simulations of virtual reality, and then we get bored of them. Am I really the only one that thinks this concept is crazy? What happens when mankind becomes complex enough to make virtual realities that we can actually mistake as our real reality? Well that is a completely different conversation about science and math and yada yada yada. Video games man, they really are something aren’t they.

Not Good, But Not Bad

Hello everyone, to start off I would like to apologize for not streaming like I claimed I was going too. I actually ran into a problem that basically makes it so I am not able to stream from my Home. It has to do with how my stream reacts with the streaming services servers or something along those lines. Anyways I would like to apologize for that and I will keep you updated if I find some way to get my stream going. Now, this past week I didn't really play a wide variety of games. I mostly stuck with Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, H1Z1, and Trackmania. If you haven't heard of Trackmania I am going to automatically assume you have absolutely zero insight into the gaming world. Trackmania is a community driven racing game with a fairly popular European competitive scene. Basically what happens in the game is you race others from around the world on tracks built by people from the community of the game. I think they have a weekly rotation of about 10-15 different tracks that servers usually rotate between. Another new thing I tried out is CEVO for Counter Strike. CEVO is a free game finder I guess is what you could call it. You download the CEVO program and you can use it to connect to higher level Counter Strike games with other players around the world. People usually use it for casual games with random people, but it can also be used as a competitive Scrimmage program or even for tournaments. Other than those 2 new game I tried out, the past week was kinda of a boring gaming week for me. Which is kind of a shame to think that I had a boring week playing video games. Alright, maybe I use the word “boring” a little too literally here. Obviously I was not BORED playing games, I love playing games and I can always have a fun time doing it. What I mean by “boring” is that it wasn’t really spectacular in any way. Nothing happened that was incredibly memorable in some way to me or anything like that. And don’t get me wrong that is completely ok in my book. You can’t really go around playing video games expecting every single day to have some amazing moment that knocks your socks off and tickles your jimmies you know? That just kind of makes gaming sound more of a chore than something you do to relax. And if you are a person that thinks gaming should be like that, I think you should find a new hobby.

Hi! Hello! Greetings! Intro Time!

Hi and thanks for taking the time to look at my blog. Throughout my time of me posting in this blog I will be talking about my experiences with video games. Mostly I will be talking about what I am playing and what happened in those games etc., but I also like to go off on little rants if you will so those will more than likely be splashed in here and there. A little background about myself, My name's Brad, I am 18 years old, I just started my first year of college, I am an avid skateboarder, snowboarder, and video game player. I have 1 older brother, 1 cat, 1 dog, and like 3 goldfish (most useless pet ever IMO). Uhm, yeah that's basically it about me, I will try my hardest to keep this blog as interesting as possible through text because although I do know how to post pictures I think blogs are best when the text if more interesting than the pictures in it. I will also be trying to stream my gameplay experiences LIVE on Twitch. If you don’t know what Twitch is it’s a great Live Streaming website for thousands of people to stream themselves not only playing video games but doing other cool things like Glass Blowing, Painting, etc. Games you can expect to see me play are H1z1, Dota 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive, and I will also try my best to get to any of the triple A releases as well as the smaller games that are released weekly on steam. Also, with the streaming thing still fresh in everyone's head, you aren’t just limited to watching me play the game, you can also chat with me and the other people that are tuned into my stream in the chatbox. I will leave links below this to all of these programs and websites that I have been telling you about. You can expect my streams to come online most likely Wednesday - Saturday around 3 - 5pm EST. They will run for a random amount of time because I am admittedly a very bi-polar video game player. I can be having a blast and then 1 thing I don’t like happens and the fun plummets and then I either go skateboard or switch games. Well with all this information I hope you feel compelled to check back in the next couple weeks and see how everything is going. Thanks for READING!

My stream - Twitch.tv/Soopahee

Steam - http://store.steampowered.com/

Some of my favorite Streamers -

Twitch.tv/lirik

Twitch.tv/summit1g

Twitch.tv/mang0

Twitch.tv/arteezy