Dota 2 First Impressions

I have been playing the Dota 2 beta for the past three days. I can without a doubt, say that Dota is the most fun but challenging game I've played in a while. I've played a lot of League of Legends, and a small amount of Heroes of Neworth, but nothing had really prepared me for it.

The first thing I noticed about Dota was that I was really bad at it. The learning curve from getting from terrible, to slightly not terrible is insane. There was no tutorial stage or anything to help me out, but luckily there's people writing guides and wikis for Dota 2.

While I was installing Dota, I looked around for a few guides online. The most useful resource was an introductory guide titled 'The Task You Are Undertaking.". I found the link to it, along with a lot of other helpful guides, in a Dota 2 general thread on 4chan. I'm really glad I decided to read up on the mechanics of the game before I started playing. The guide gave me a good idea of the gameplay fundamentals like farming, building towards the hero's attributes, and damage types.

However, all the preparation in the world wouldn't have stopped me for feeding like I did. Things like simply selecting my character were frustrating. In my first few games I kept accidentally left clicking on ally heroes and minions leaving my character standing around under the enemy tower. It was moments like that made my allies hate me to their core.

The most daunting obstacle for me is going to be learning all the characters and items. There are an insane amount of heroes each with their own active and passive abilities. Each hero has four unique abilities (and sometimes more) that they can upgrade is a fairly unrestricted order. As of right now, if I happen to run into an enemy hero in the jungle, I am completely clueless as to how fast they can stomp my face into the ground. By the time I usually figure out that they're the enemy team's fed carry, it's usually too late. 

The other mechanic that blind sided me was the shop system. I remember my first game in Heroes of Neworth; I could not navigate the shop system at all. I managed to figure out how to build items through trial and error. I'm still too scared to stray from the recommended items.

I only played a few different characters, specifically Spirit Breaker, Sven, Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor. The  guide warned me about the difficult heroes and listed the easiest heroes for beginners. My favourite here so far as Spirit Breaker and Drow Ranger.

I love Spirit Breaker because I only have to push two buttons to play him. His first ability, Charge of Darkness, allows him to charge on any visible enemy. Once he's targeted the enemy, he bolts across the map moving through any terrain and enemy until he collides and stuns the target. His Ultimate, Nether Strike, slips him into another realm appearing next to an enemy hero. His other two abilities are a passive and an aura. Compared to the other heroes I played, he was both the easiest and the most fun. I would definitely recommend him for a beginner because he's incredibly mobile and still a hard hitter.

Here is a list of Dota 2 guides and the Dota 2 wiki.

Goals and Stuff

I just checked an email about this Journalism course and apparently I have to write a blog post about every lecture. I thought I would simply be even more retrospective and write about my first lecture in JOUR1111. It was what most people would assume the first lecture of an introductory university course would be like. Bruce Redman, our lecturer, introduced himself and explained how the course would run, went over our assessment, answered our questions and tried as best he could to get us excited about journalism. He said a very quotable phrase which I'm sure he's been using for a while, "you are the journalist". I would be lying if I said it motivated me in the slightest but it did remind me that I should probably explain right here what I want to accomplish with this blog.

Journalism to me is simply a way to involve myself in my hobbies and interests and still have a job at the end of the day. I have almost no interest in politics, world news, sports and celebrities but that doesn't mean that I can't be a journalist. I'd much rather read about Pokemon, League of Legends, The Walking Dead or the Dark Knight Rises more than anything else.

So fucking awesome

Most of my days entail playing videogames, watching film and reading, watching and listening to videogame and film news. I check websites, watch reviews, listen to podcasts and have very heated discussions  with friends about geeky things. I have spent the last three days at a friend's new place watching Community while playing Magic: The Gathering because they had no internet and we all had a cold.

Imagine this but with better looking people.

I also like to think I can form sentences pretty well, so I'm essentially trying to combine the two things in the hopes I will actually be content some day.

I'm hoping that this degree will get my metaphorical foot into the metaphorical door of creative industries. If everything goes according to plan in a few years time I'd be writing for a videogame news or a film review website. If not, then I'm probably going to pick up some skills which could be applied to an array of jobs. I'm essentially hoping that journalism will point me in the direction that I want to go. So expect posts about things like how fucking incredible Bioshock Infinite is going to be.