Storm The Castle

A tumble-blog mostly devoted to nerding out in a way that is socially unacceptable to most. Also for when I'm too lazy to do any legitimate blogging. Expect stupid AMVs and bad fanfiction. And silly rants. (:

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Just Build: A Fortnite Player's Guide To Squad Mode

Just Build: A Fortnite Player’s Guide To Squad Mode

*This post is satire. That should be obvious, but you can never be too careful on the internet. If you’d like to read a real guide, check out our quick Battle Royale book here on Amazon.

Welcome to Fortnite:  Battle Royale. This isn’t the game of your childhood, where shots hit their mark, weapon switching makes sense, and skill is rewarded. No, this is a dark hole where FPS dreams go to die,…

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Try Again, Boogie Board

Try Again, Boogie Board

Stationary obsession is a fickle mistress. People lured by the siren song of stationary are usually nice, reasonable, frugal people who can nonetheless be found in the torpid aisles of the local Office Depot, spending a significant portion of their meager paychecks on office supplies. What was parodied in Office Space is the reality for many, and I have sometimes found myself in the midst of a…

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Why I Wanted To Hate Breath Of The Wild

Why I Wanted To Hate Breath Of The Wild

Few hearts, no map, and farm tools for weaponry. What could go wrong? For the past few weeks, most of my friends have been alive with a frenzy few recent games have rivaled. They’ve regaled each other with tales of hidden challenges, unbreakable weapons, and countless discoveries in Nintendo’s most recent iteration of the beloved Zelda franchise. Perfect reviews for Breath of the Wild abounded on…

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Faeria Captures Both My Attention And My Heart

Faeria Captures Both My Attention And My Heart

This is an update of an article initially written for Play Faeria, which can be found here.  I can’t call myself a card game veteran, but I’m not new to the genre, either. As a teenager, a group of guys I went to school with convinced me to play Yugioh, and in spite of the inherent nerdiness, I fell in love with the art style and the gameplay. Eventually I outgrew Yugioh, choosing instead to…

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So You Want to White Mage

So You Want to White Mage

You’ve read Welcome to FFXIV Raid. You’ve agonized, debated, and checked out as many self-help books as your library will allow you. The Novice Hall challenges are finally beneath you, you put up a ‘FREE POETICS’ party for Second, Final Coil, and Alex, and you’re ready to make a decision. You want to heal. You take the burden of every mechanical failure onto your back, laugh at vulnerability…

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Welcome to FFXIV Raid, You Suck

Welcome to FFXIV Raid, You Suck

*This post is satire, based on Purge’s  original ‘Welcome to Dota, You Suck’ guide. The Task You Are Undertaking Welcome to Final Fantasy XIV. Moogles are no longer cute, chocobos are simply fantasy cars, and the gritty reality of playing a healer is far removed from the clean, sparkling healing spells they cast. This isn’t the Final Fantasy of your childhood. This is Final Fantasy Purgatory, a…

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Pokken Tournament Review

When I was growing up, the concept of Pokemon directly interacting was never far from my mind. As I played through the often grindy aspects of the original games, I would imagine my Pokemon whirling through the air, charging thunderbolts, and moving about in a dynamic battle as they often did in the TV show. My 8-year-old mind could not quite grasp the hardware limitations that made my imagined…

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Gears of Change: Two Weeks Later

Gears of Change: Two Weeks Later

Following a stale catch-up patch and a poorly received raid tier, Final Fantasy: Heavensward released patch 3.2, Gears of Change. This patch introduced new raid content, story quests, dungeons, crafts, and a tutorial system for new players among other things. But is Gears of Change enjoyable enough to breathe life into a wounded community? Alexander Midas: This newest raid tier eschews Alex:…

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Terraria 3DS Port: Does It Fall Flat?

Terraria 3DS Port: Does It Fall Flat?

    Photo Credit: Nintendo Enthusiast When I was little, I had three shelves of meticulously crafted Lego sets in my room. I spent hours tucked away in a little corner, lost in a fictional world of my own creation. As testament to my introverted nature, I used to get annoyed when neighborhood friends would come over to play, since I just wanted to be left to my fantasy. Not much has changed in my…

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Do MMOs Need Parsers?

Do MMOs Need Parsers?

The other night in a low level dungeon roulette, I had a DPS player pulling very low numbers attempt to tell me how to heal. The tank, clearly new, was losing aggro to me, and this guy seemed to think it was my fault. In what I’m sure he thought was my best interest, the guy gave me unsolicited (and wrong) advice about my class. I didn’t say anything to him, but I wondered— if his appallingly low…

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2 Month Steam Controller Review

2 Month Steam Controller Review

    I got a Steam controller all the way back in December, almost two months ago now. I’d been meaning to write down my thoughts on it, but for some reason I couldn’t quite decide how I felt about the whole thing. This might be indicative of the controller as a whole, because after two months, I’m still ambivalent about it. Is it genius, awkward, or somewhere in between? I’m still trying to…

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Should We Lower Raid DPS Checks?

Should We Lower Raid DPS Checks?

In my last post, Was Alexander Savage Too Hard, I focused mainly on the mechanics that made this raid tier so difficult. We’ve often seen mechanics rehashed between raids, but lots of different things go into tuning a raid tier’s difficulty, including healer checks, tank checks, and DPS checks. When Alex Savage was first released, there was a lot of controversy about the very tight DPS checks,…

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Was Alexander Savage Too Hard?

Was Alexander Savage Too Hard?

Incoming gigantic nerd rant. While I haven’t devoted much attention to it here on my blog, Final Fantasy 14 has been a pretty big hobby of of mine for several years running now. While it’s not my first MMO, Final Fantasy has brought one thing into my gaming experience that’s pretty new for me: Raiding. Raiding isn’t something that I initially planned on doing, nor was it something I knew anything…

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Slime Rancher Ropes My Heart

Slime Rancher Ropes My Heart

There are occasions when, on a Friday night with nothing else to do, I find myself wantonly spending money on steam. My mileage varies a lot with this habit, but last Friday I stumbled on a game so saccharine yet entertaining, that I was actually quite pleased with how I spent my twenty dollars. That game was Slime Rancher— a sandbox game a la Viva Pinata— which allows you to capture, combine,…

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Under Construction

  Those of you who still read my blog may have noticed that the tagline has disappeared. Although my original tagline (writing, music, and the courage to create) is very much still a part of my life, I find that it doesn’t reflect the direction that this blog is headed. I’m hoping to find a one that better suits the content that I post here. So in the meantime, watch for my ill-fated attempt to…

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Rey Renounces Tradition, but Isn't a Mary Sue

This is a rant that’s been stewing inside of me for awhile in various forms, particularly with how popular strong female characters are in film and literature right now. It started with poor...

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Pokemon Vectors

Created by Jay Matson