Recent reviews by Kono

Pros:
- Ranked Matchmaking is solid
- Haven't encountered many hackers (I play Double AK/DMG rank right now)
- In-Game Voicechat works great, and is a must for good competitive teamwork
- Graphics are solid, decent upgrade from Source
- Cosmetic items are pretty neat

Cons:
- Random bugs here and there (Currently, there's a big bug when spectating in ranked where you can't change player perspective.)
- Hackers do exist, many suspicious wall hackers
- Lesser maps are not popular, in competitive there is a larger range of skill in maps like Office, Italy, etc.
- Competitive ranking should be split for Defuse Maps and Hostage Maps
- Can't change any settings when queued for games
- Game settings are not saved to the cloud, need to redo all your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ settings when going from PC to PC.

Beat this around the time it was first released, so this review is not relative for those seeking advice pertaining to the DLCs.

Dragon Age, where to begin. This game brought me those feels you get when you actually care about the characters in your party. The small talk between the characters is hilarious, as long as you have the dwarf, Oghren. The dialogue that sticks out for me is when I was wandering around a small town, probably looking for hints of Darkspawn or the like, Oghren decided to talk about how he enjoys "polishing his weapon" and giving it a little grease with a dry rag.

The game itself follows a relatively generic premise, the idea of "evil orcish hordes" invading common lands with a small collective of the world's select heroes tasked to defeat the evil army and destroy the antagonist at the helm of it all. That said, that is only the premise. The deeper you get into the game, the more you will enjoy it as it is exemplary in showing how the player can feel like he is actually playing a role in the story, with interesting side characters to boot.

The gameplay was decent, I had played the game on Normal so the entire experience was relatively easy, having chosen the Mage class as my main character. It can be tedious to have to fight the same looking darkspawn over and over, but there is more out there.

I think a key point for games like this is: you need to immerse yourself in the game. Treat yourself as if you are the protagonist, listen to your companions and look forward to creating the story yourself.

The adventure from the WC3 DOTA 1 to Heroes of Newerth to DOTA 2 was an interesting trek. I stopped playing DOTA 1 around the time Batrider was added, stopped playing HoN when Midas was added, and am still playing DOTA 2 to this day.

I recall in DOTA 1 when everyone used wc3banlist with auto refreshing slots and autobanning over 100ms players. People never warded, sentries were hardly used and everyone was pretty bad overall. It was a ♥♥♥♥ load of fun however, particularily because so many people I knew were engrossed in DOTA and played nothing else. (Except CS 1.6) Techies remote mining Roshan, feeding your carries with gold (WC3 share gold feature), Phantom Assassin's evasion made her basically invisible minus her shadow... the list goes on.

Heroes of Newerth was a title that I hadn't heard of until my friend mentioned it and I got to use his BETA account, shortly after it was launched for $20. Amazing, all the DOTA heroes and items, but with a few new additions every so often. The graphics were much better than DOTA 1 and everything sounded badass. (Portal Key sound is still engrained in my mind.) The problem was that it eventually went F2P with "freemium" features like paid heroes to compete with League of Legends and the DOTA 2 official "open beta" launch.

Now we have DOTA 2. Crisp graphics, Valve supremacy, Gaben. Cosmetic only purchasables, very functional UI, solid framerates on any mid-range gaming PC, Valve supremacy, Gaben. I'm just listing the stuff I like. Mirana, smoothness of heroes turning (Suck it, League), Active Items (Suck it again, League), and Valve supremacy. Gaben.

Gabe up writing this review because I'm at work and a bunch of customers are here.

When I first heard about this game, I was curious about the style of gameplay it offered so I placed it on my wishlist. Now having played it for roughly 3-4 hours, I can say with confidence that this is the first time I've had an experience with a game where the entire playthrough was entertaining for reasons entirely not associated with playing games.

You have a narrator. This guy has a pleasant english accent and routinely comments on what you are doing and the choices you make. The start of the game essentially boils down to a choice of two doors, those of which expand into more choices. The goal of the game is to basically experience each ending with comedic verbose from the narrator.

At first, I thought there were limited endings to the game, but as I played on, the narrator would create new dialogue and become more adverse to your choices. (It's entertaining to constantly frustrate the narrator and select the wrong choices.) I don't want to add any major spoilers, but several endings in the game lead to an entirely different playthrough the next time you restart in the office.

I'm glad I had to motivation to play this game as I usually don't jump onto obscure genres like this, but this was an amazing experience that made me feel like I was being toyed with from beginning to end. (If there is an end.)