#340 Good Night Be MOP

This blog post marks the 340th Be MOP blog post and with a heavy heart, I am sad to say this is my last one. After three and a half years of posting content, on what started as World of Warcraft site, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, this site is coming to an end with the end of this week.

I have been thinking about ending Be MOP for quite a while, but to make a long story short I just got burned out. Constantly thinking about the next blog posts, spending hours writing notes, drafts, and editing future posts. Just like my last few months in World of Warcraft, writing blog posts just was not a fun thing to do anymore, and I has not been a fun thing to do for a while.  I know better than to continue on a grind that has lost it’s fun, I used to grind Reputation to exalted in WoW. Life is just too short for that type of work. It is sad to put to rest a 3+ project of my life, but for my final post I would rather look at all the positives this site has done for me.

Because of this site I now have notebooks full of memories in the form of rough drafts of posts of old, from the first few ideas for blog posts back when I was starting out with the idea of a blog in college to fully written posts as recent as this past week.

This blog also gave me a platform and the ability to discuss the crazier, interesting, and more abstract topics of the gaming world. Conversations I would never dreamed of if it was not for the fact that many times I my mind was wandering just before I had to get a start on the next blog post.

This site has also improved and honed my spelling but also my writing skills, teaching me through practice how to properly construct a proper argument on the internet after posts over post stating and defending my personal gaming opinions. A truly valuable skill now a days.

But most importantly of all this blog helped me create, form and develop a voice on the Internet and with that voice, Be MOP inadvertently jump started my Twitter and Twitch page (two medias that I will avidly continue after this site) and gave me the courage to continue And with that voice, I have found my place in multiple online communities, ranging from WoW, blogging, Twitter, and finally Twitch streaming communities.

I might come return back to Be MOP later in my life, maybe if there ever arise a great need to express an opinion or thought that I could not effectively execute in a few Tweets or while I am on air with Twitch. For now it is time for a break. With this final paragraph I would like to thank Be MOP on a whole for helping me with all these great accomplishments and to quote one of the songs from my favorite plays:

“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better But …I have been changed for good.”

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#539 The Charmander Rant

*This is a bit of a tangent from the usual Be MOP posts but this rant has been nesting in the back of my mind for ages and I need to get it off my chest*

There is a running gag on the internet that out of the three generation 1 Pokemon starters that Charmander was the best choice and Buldabuar was the worst pick. When in fact it is quite the opposite.

Two things you need to know before continuing:

Pokemon’s main gameplay strategy is to use type advantages. That is quite literally lesson one of the game and why the three starters are Fire-Water-Grass and not three types that are neither super or not very effective against each other, like Normal, Poison and Electric. That is why you do not go against the Elite Four’s Bruno with Fire or Bug Pokemons.

And way back when, when I was playing Pokemon Red on my Gameboy color, I was one of the Pokemon Trainers that chose bulbasaur as my first starter.

And that is why the few righteous players that picked Bulbasaur were rewarded with the first two gym leaders, Brock and Misty, that were super effective against grass types. People who picked Squirtle were rewarded with only the first gym to be super effective against, while those poor people who picked Charmander got NOTHING.

In the early game there is not as many chances to get the variety of Pokemon types compared to after at the second gym, when you get to Vermilion Gym and the game starts opening up some more.

By the third Gym, electric, the game world was able to stretch it’s arms and show us the other elemental pokemons, like the invaluable Diglett Cave and allowing the game difficulties to plateaued a bit between the three starters.

Despite the all that, bulbasaur being the objectively best choice of starters, he still get the shaft in terms of marketing and promotion and community love.

It is incredibly infuriating.

“oh but Charizard’s a winged DRAGON how cool is that!?” First, everyone knows that Charizard is not a proper dragon type and secondly Charizard could not even use HM02 until Pokemon Yellow, THEY HAD TO PATCH THAT FEATURE IN LATER.

I was giving this particular rant to a college friend of mine, and this response, as I am assured some of you who are a fan of game design might argue; that the Pokemon Team intentionally gave charmander and squirtle a type disadvantage to give a subtle EASY, NORMAL, and HARD mode to the Kanto region.

That argument would have hold water if it was not for the FireRed and LeafGreen revisiting Generation 1 for the GameBoy Advance, and gamefreak gave charmander they obscenely over-powered-against-rock-types and out of place move, Metal Claw. A move that wipes the floor with Brock’s team, rebalancing the first game giving all starters a fair shake at being SUPER EFFECTIVE against the first Pokemon boss, Thus retconning one of Pokemon’’s poor Gen 1 game design.

Can someone please explain to me, even with the argument I made, WHY charmander and charizard still gets so much love on the internet and from the Pokemon Company? Why since everything in the Pokemon’s own game points towards to obviously superior grass type starter pokemon.
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#538 Stretchmo -The right way to F2S

In gaming news that I am talking about a week late:In the lead up to E3 2015 all the companies have released a few minor to medium game related announcements to get everyone to start talking about their product.

One of them are the proposed updates to the XBox One and Windows 10 but because I have neither the console or operating system I have not given it much mid. What I do care about is the 3DS digital download announcement about one of the game series I am currently playing, and which I am calling the next installment of the Nintendo “*mo” series.

I have the first game in the series, Pushmo, as a free download from Club Nintendo. As I said before I have been playing through the game and as I said before it is incredibly cute and incredibly Japanese with a surprising amount of challenging stages. I have been sinking a good amount of time in a simple pushing and pulling platform game and I was debating on picking up the second installment to the game, CrashMo.

It’s a good game that involves manipulating the platforms there’s nothing more to say because that is all there is. But the game polishes that selling point to a mirror shine.

This new game, available now, looks like a proper sequel to the franchise by taking the game and giving it another added level of dimension by not only pushing/pulling the blocks in a stage but stretching the platforms outwards.

What makes this announcement interesting is that this game is that Nintendo incorporated the Free to Play model into the game, or as Nintendo and other companies are starting to call it, Free to Start. What is more impressive is that Nintendo apparently learned their lesson and made made this 3DS F2P/F2S game a bit better.

Currently there the Stretch Mo game is divided into four game modes, “Mallo’s Playtime Plaza”, “Poppy’s Sculpture Square”, “Carlin’s Fortress of Fun”, and “Papa Blox’s NES Expo”. Right now you can download the Welcome Center mode with seven free stages then after that you have the choice to pick what game mode you want to buy or buy the entire bundle for $9.99.

This is a great step forward for Nintendo, because one of my biggest complaints with Pokemon Shuffle, Nintendo’s first Free to Start game, was how the games gives you and is built around a limited amount of turns. Thus the game is skewed to play with the player’s temptation of using the premium currency to find the easy way out of the more difficult stages and progress through the game.

Instead it looks like Nintendo I going to focus more on making their Free to Start games serve more as a indept demo of the game, giving you unlimited playthroughs of a small segment of the game rather than taking an entire game and butchering it to fit into the F2P model.

I am glad to see Nintendo is taking a step in the right direction with their Journey into the F2P/F2S genre, but only time will tell if they are going to stay committed to this path or make another Candy Crush game with their next 3DS IP.
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#537 I Could Have Gamed All Night

I, or rather, my brother built my tower and now all the drivers and crucial non-gaming programs have been downloaded and installed. For the past few days I have done nothing but replay PC games in my spare time. After playing a few games a few choice games at MAX settings and more importantly looking at all the games I play without the fear of being forced to play with terrible framerates.

Now I can play all the games I have bought over the years but squirreled away for a rainy day, games like Saints Row IV, Metal Gear Revengence, Fallout New Vegas, and the Devil May Cry series.

New Computer Games….get it?

With this new computer I can replay some of my favorite AAA games, like BioShock, BioShock Infinite, the Arkham series at full settings to revisit every nook and cranny of the old worlds with all the extra unnecessary environmental detail in full view.

Now I can play famous moddable games like Fallout and Skyrim, by not only playing through the game’s original story mode but add HD mod sets and mods that changes game play or adds more content to the game without worrying about compromising the stability of my laptop.

Skyrim mods that are now FREE by the way

I now have the ability to play any and all recent games like the like the Witcher III, Arkham Knights, Star Citizen, any games that will be announced at this year’s E3 event.

Oh i cant wait for E3

I will admit the thing holding me back was my old laptop but now I feel like I got a second wind on PC gaming, the skybox is the limit with all the games I can play, and I can not wait.

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#536 No Blog Post Today

No blog post today. Too busy gaming to think of, draft, or write a blog post today. Will get back to you guys Friday.

I have been singing a modified version of “A whole new world” and ” I could have danced all night” every time I boot up a game to play

#535 The Baby’s Finally Here

The day has arrived, after five months of saving my Tax refund and penny pinching from my paychecks,  the creation of my new gaming P.C has finally happened. After a day trip to Massachusetts for the closest Microcenter and a longer than expected six hours build time my baby was finally built.

the catalyst that made me realize that I needed to upgrade beyond my old Laptop was that an infograph came out and it showed that my laptop’s graphics card was far below the graphical capabilities of both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Something I would not stand for.

This beauty has a lovely Tb of Hard drive, 8 Gbs of Ram, an i5 Intel Core CPU, housed inside of a Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 motherboard and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 powerhouse to deal with every game I have ever wanted to play for the next five years or so.

It would be an exaggeration that I am beyond excited to play and stream games on an Ultra High graphical settings instead of being forced to play the games I love on a Low or in some cases, Very Low to ensure stable frame rates.and the few games have I have downloaded have been nothing less than glorious.

Because of my purchases I unknowingly qualified for a free copy of Arkham Knights, a game I was quite excited for and eventually going to buy, and the Witcher 3. To celebrate my stumbled upon fortune I decided to power through the Rocksteady Arkham games -on the highest settings of course- in preparation for the final installment of the Arkham Trilogy.

Smile!

I still have to redownload a few key games but I have given a glorious blank slate for my computer, with that I am now choosing to only download the games I want to play instead of the games I was going to play. Even though I upgraded my hardware I still get to keep my PC gaming library I have been building for the past four years BUT now all my games have been given that wonderful ‘definite versions’ polish at no additional cost.

On top of playing all the games I have without the fear of frame drops and overheating the most exciting thing about this whole adventure and blog post was that even after spending a good chunk of change on my new computer I still stayed within my budget, which is a major win for me.

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Disclosure: I am apart of the Streamer Partnership Program for Turbine’s A.R.T.S/MOBA, Infinite Crisis, which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

This blog post was written without approval, consent, or knowledge from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment or any of it’s subsidiaries

#534 Nintendo Marketing Fun

This year’s E3 is just around the corner and that means all the major videogame companies are busy working away, trying their best to make their big gaming presentation and announcement grabs the most attention by the journalists, people attending and those millions tuning in at home or at work.

Just like the Super Bowl  it looks like the latest marketing trend is to post pre-E3 videos and news to build the most hype and attention before the opening of the doors. This week Nintendo released their Pre-E3 video that lightly covers the various digital programs that they will be hosting , special E3 streams and a special gaming tournament that Nintendo have brought back after a 25 year slumber)

WHAT!? A Nintendo tournament, where did I hear that before?

But the announcements of events are not what I want to talk about, all those announcements were discussed literally within the first minute. What I want to focus on is the other two minutes of that video.

The entirely unnecessary mini-skit of Reggi abandoning this presidential seat to do a cheesy training montage by using old Nintendo consoles and props as workout tools is exactly what Nintendo’s main selling point for all their games releases, the idea of marketing the fun in their games.

While Microsoft, Sony, and all the other major gaming companies will be showcasing their big 2015/2106 games with their beautiful cinematics and cutting edge realistic graphics to push the envelope of what it means to be the best of the best in the console world.

Nintendo on the other hand showed off the amount of fun their games can have with their marketing approach.  It shows in Nintendo’s advertisements for their past few games advertisements have either been about showing off the Local Co-Op games (Mario Kart 8 and Smash) or taking pot shots at themselves of their own company’s history.

most companies would not mention their biggest flops, let alone make it a punchline in one of their official videos

Nintendo takes their tone of not being serious very seriously and because of that it is more believable when they claim their games are fun. Somewhere Nintendo a psychology book  about fun and they have studied the art of fun and they have polished it to a mirror shine. The fact that Nintendo focuses on fun over graphics, it becomes a pleasant surprise and treat when a Nintendo game comes out at either 1080p or 720p but locked at 60 frames per second, a task that most XBox One and PlayStation 4 games still can’t do.

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#533 Spare an Extra Buck for Extra Life? 2015

Just like last year, this blog post is going to be a little bit different. Instead of a post that talks about my adventures in a recent video game or my opinions on a recent game story I would instead like to announce my continued participation with the Extra Life Charity organization.

The Extra Life charity is a part of the Children’s Miracle Network and it organize gamers from around the world to get together to what we do best. On November 7th all the Extra Life participants will log on and play video games for 24 hours to raise money for a hospital of their choice.

This will be my second year participating with the organization, last year I was able to hit my fundraising goal and played videogames for the entire day while helping children in need. A pretty nice win for everyone.

Just like last year I am choosing to help the local Boston Children’s Hospital and just like last year I am trying to raise the same amount of funds of $200. As an added incentive, a donation of any amount to my fundraising page will be permanently credited on the list of sponsors on my Twitch channel and within the next six months if we hit the fundraising goal I promise to stream my 24 hour day of play on Twitch as a reward for everyone’s generosity.

I did it last year and I will gladly do it again

If you have been following my adventures through my blog or Twitch stream sessions and if you have even thought of supporting me beyond being an active reader or viewer please consider donating to a this charity in my name as a morally health alternative.

Extra life wants to try to have people sponsor players by the hour but as you can see there is a variety of different options. including a custom amount to donate.

If you would like to donate to this wonderful event, my Extra Life donation account can be found HERE. The site currently accepts all credit cards. This won’t be the last time I mention this event but the sooner I reach my goal of $200 the sooner I can stop asking for donations.

And to any other gamers out there that found themselves interested in this event and want to try their hand as raising money for a local hospital the extra life FAQ and sign up can be found HERE.

Thank you all in advance for your interest and consideration.

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#532 Waiting for my PC

If you have tuned into any of my past streams you might have noticed I have made comments on the graphical status of my gameplay feed. That is because I am currently playing on a very reliable, but still showing her age, four-year old ASUS gaming laptop.

The fact that I play on an outdated computer shows with every stream session I when I keep pushing my CPU to it’s limit for most of the my time on air and as a result my framerate was hitting 20 fps on a good day despite having almost every game played on my Twitch channel had to be cranked down to their lowest possible setting.

For the past year I have manage to able to manage with those limitations to still give a quality stream but I knew the writing was on the wall for this laptop of mine. At the start of the new year I realized that if I wanted to continue streaming I would need a bit of an upgrade, so for the past five months I have been saving up and squirreling away a nice chunk of change to eventually cash out for a custom-built PC tower for my very own.

I was biding my time, waiting for the right time to buy, which was about another month and a half but everything completely changed when this past Sunday, a sudden bout of summer temperatures that graced New Hampshire forced my computer to shut down from overheating, not once, twice, but three times. Twice when I was on Twitch and once more when I was playing a ranked A.R.T.S/MOBA. That was the final straw.

I cleaned out my fan or a bit but if my laptop was having trouble keeping up in the middle of spring, my laptop can not survive a scorcher summer. I have consulted with my younger, more tech savvy brother, for gaming computer build that fits my budget and has everything it needs to play my games at a respectable frame rate on top of meeting all of my streaming needs. If everything goes according to plan both of us will be gathering all the parts at the nearest Micro center and putting everything together on a lazy, but glorious, Sunday afternoon.

It is a statement to say that I am excited for this upcoming Sunday because on top of drastically improving the quality of my Twitch Session I will finally be able to play all the past few year’s AAA games that I have bought during the Steam’s Summer and Winter Sales at 1060p with a stable 60fps that these great games deserved to be play at.

RULES OF NATURE!

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#531 Excited but Concerned about Splatoon

In a rare treat, I was able to tune a live broadcast of the North American Nintendo Direct and watched an half hour stream special about Nintendo’s newest exclusive shooting game, Splatoon.

The stream itself had no big earth shattering game information, the stream went more in depth about the various types of weapons, abilities, and maps in the game. The usefulness of the non-cosmetic clothing shops and the continuous event support post launch. I get the impression it’s following the Team Fortress 2 approach of game play, with style of high action fun that focuses more on the objectives than kills, the game overall looks fun but I still have some concerns that have prevented me from proclaiming that this is a DAY ONE buy for me.

I want it to success but I am not going be blind to the potential problems it faces

I was pleasantly surprised to hear, in detail, about the constant game and community support post launch, and I do not know for sure but from the Direct stream it was heavily implied that future maps that are still in the works would be free DLC for everyone.

The Amiibo support looks cool, with extra bonus levels and challenges with clothing rewards. It would be nice to know if these Amiibos specifically made for this game won’t sell out on the first day, and more importantly if these Amiibo costumes will be offer game breaking gear stats or will it be purely cosmetic?

Also I though that the amiibos were suppose to be move across Nintendo titles. What’s the point of making splatoon’s amiibos if only for one game? I do not get the impression that Nintendo turn Splatoon into a yearly shooting franchise with Splatoon 2 in 2016 or 2017.

With all that being said I am still concern about Splatoon’s multiplayer capabilities, which is the game’s biggest selling point.

Local Co-Op has sadly been ruled out for me with this Wii U game because the game requires player 2-4 to play on the Wii U pro controller, a luxury I can not afford when I still have problems to get enough people for a full four player smash match. With couch Co-Op ruled out the other main appeal is the online support, this is going to be Nintendo’s biggest push into the online gaming world since the Miiverse at the start of the Wii U’s launch. The direct revealed that there will be friendly play, online random matches, and more importantly online ranked games. The thing is ALL of these matchmaking services needs to run perfectly from launch and exactly like PC’s and the other console’s online matchmaking services, it is crucial thing for Splatoon’s initial and long term success.

That’s the big elephant in the room when talking about a new online multiplayer launching, we just have no idea who well the network or the match making system is going to be until it is opened to the public for the ultimate server stress test . Because a game company can send game reviewers advanced copies of their game so they are write about it, game companies can even hold special live stream events to show off the gameplay in real time and if you are lucky enough you can attend a video game convention and get a play a demo build to get a hands on approach on the controls.

But here’s the kicker, as we have seen with SimCity, Diablo III, and Master Chief Collection’s online fiascoes there is no way of knowing how well the Nintendo Network will hold up or how well the ranked system will sort the player base until we see the game launched.

lest we forget

I am not pessimistic about the game, I am just exercising the right amount of concern and reservation for this game’s launch
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Be MOP focuses on the world of videogames with my own reflections about the current news and developments that happens throughout the gaming industry. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays