[MOVIE] Spirited Away

By : z3lover

Spirited Away - 10/10


Dear god, if Disney could make animated films that were even half as good as this one. Don't get me wrong; films like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are absolutely amazing...but Spirited Away is a masterpiece. It has wonderful and interesting characters, a great story and superb animation, not to mention a sumptuous soundtrack to go with it all. To anyone who is yet to see this movie, you have to watch it. It's one of those films you just have to see before you die.

I've only seen it twice, ten years apart, but it's just as good as I remember it being the first time. There are some great comic moments in this film, made all the more special because it's not a comedy.

The story starts with the main character, a 10 year old girl named Chihiro, and her family moving to a new house. On the way they get lost and come across what they think is an abandoned amusement park, when in fact they've come across something else entirely. I won't spoil what happens next, but the title of the film (if you know anything about Japanese culture) should provide a bit of a clue.

There is a copious amount of imagery in this film drawing on many different fairy tail stereotypes and using them in an entirely fresh and interesting manner, and there are also a few pointed portions that take aim squarely at environmental pollution, though they never get in the way of anything and they are subtly handled, but apparent nonetheless. For me this added to the critical integrity of the film all the more.

As with all animated work from Japan, there is vicious argumentation about whether the dub or sub is better. Quite frankly I think it has one of the best dubs going around. And any fans of Skyrim out there might recognise the voice of one of the main characters as well. Overall this is one of the best films of the last decade and it's wonderful to come back to it after so long a time.

This movie is a must watch.
Tag : ,

[TV SHOW] Must Watch TV shows

By : z3lover

If you are a tv show addict, you would appreciate this blog post. TV shows are quite addictive and story arcs are quite amazing. Unfortunately a huge number of bad quality tv shows might scare many people off, but there are some hidden gems that every one should watch atleast once. The general rule I follow mostly is to watch the pilot episode, if I like the theme and  story of show, I keep watching a few episode on trial basis.
Most of the American shows follow a typical format. 24 episodes per season, with story progressing VERY slowly and about 18-20 "filler" episodes. I find these filler episodes extremely boring because they mostly have same cliched story and contain VERY little of the main story. So I mostly prefer shows with low episode count. With all that being said lets start our list.

(Ranking is in no particular order, as I would recommend all of these shows)

Dollhouse:

Dollhouse explores some really interesting philosophical ideas about what it means to be a person. The idea is that after Echo has her mind wiped, she becomes a blank slate, and no one thinks of her as a person. But over time, wiping doesn't return her to blank slate mode, and she develops her own personality from the ground up. The question becomes "Is Echo a person, and if so, when did she become one?" Personalities are crafted, and sometimes a pre-existing personality is augmented. It had me wondering what actually defines the person. Is it the body, the mental state, the exact combination of both? If a personality is transferred to a new body, does it have the same rights it had in its original host? What if it never had a host, and was only designed as an imprint for a doll?

Anyways, philosophy aside, its an amazing shows with an awesome intro song. Only has 2 seasons with like 10 episodes each, although it ended abruptly, still had me satisfied near the end.

Sherlock (2013) : 

Simply put, one of the best shows going on right now. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, mystery and just pure fun. Imo the best adaptation of Sherlock Holmes ever. You just need to watch first few minutes of this show and you will be hooked for life, its THAT good. Just forget everything you know about sherlock when watching this and you will have tons of fun.

Has 3 seasons so far with each seasons having only 3 episodes. My only complaint is it ends too quickly.

Game of Thrones:

Ah, the infamous Game of thrones. A show so widely popular and so controversial that it lost majority of its fans over 3 years of its run. The show is so emotionally brutal, it will leave scars in your heart for months. This show will change your perception about tv shows, and you will claim it to be the most beautiful thing you ever saw in your life. Just avoid googling anything about it because there are ALOT of spoilers which will ruin your watching experience. As the show is based on "A song of ice and fire" novel series, there are thousands of spoilers out there.

3 seasons are available, each season with 10 episodes. This show has yet a long way to go, so you might give novels a chance, they are equally brilliant.

OZ

HBO show that is centered around the life inside a maximum security penitentiary. It is extremely dark in the realistic kind of way. The character arcs are astounding and flawless.

6 seasons and ended.

LOST

50% of people love it, 50% of people hate it. Half of the people that hate it enjoyed the first two seasons, and then at that point proceeded to hate it. It is a show that was entirely written before they started showing it, so all of the shots and dialogue and everything else has its exact place. The show is an enigma. There are tons of puzzles wrapped inside of it that take acute observation to pick up on, which some people enjoy. There are also hidden riddles underlying in the show that you don't need to find and answer to enjoy the show, but they add to it if you wanted to. It's another sic-fi show that goes down the rabbit hole over time, so it will start slow. 

This is the show that will occupy your mind for weeks until you finish it and you will LOVE every moment of it.
Has 6 seasons with most seasons having 24 episodes. (Yes even the filler episodes are good) Its already ended so you wont have to wait for new seasons.

The Newsroom

HBO show that takes place in, well, a newsroom, as in all of the behind-the-scenes of a national news station. All of the events are real events that happened in America, but a few years ago so it can properly build different things up. If you don't live in America, the events won't mean as much to you and therefore will break the immersion, but the writing is still great enough to watch.

You will either like it or hate it, there's no guarantee so give it a try and see how it goes. 2 seasons so far.

The Walking Dead

Another amazing show. based in zombie apocalypse setting. I absolutely enjoyed the first 2 seasons but for some reasons, I started hating it after that. So I dont know wheter to recommend it or not, but I should say its worth watching for first 2 seasons and "Daryl Dixon" ..

FIREFLY:

Argued by many to be the best tv show ever created in existence. Yes the fans loved it that much. Unfortunately it was cancelled in its first seasons (you can google the issues why it was cancelled) . the show is amazing, the characters were amazing, setting was amazing, and comedy was classic. It was supposed to be the perfect show.

Has only one seasons with a full length movie "Serenity" wrapping up the series. Its my MOST favourite TV show of all time.






Thats it for this blog post. There are still tons of other shows in my list which I will add in next few blog posts.
Tag : ,

The Butcher's in Business

By : z3lover
                                       The infamous Pudge ladies and gentleman. According to the statistics, the most played hero in dota 2 ( arguably also in dota1 though we dont have reliable stats for that). Pudge is played in every skill pool, Competitive tier, Elite tier, Normal tier and in Potato tiers.

This guide is NOT for:

  • People trying to play this hero for the first time. There are hundreds of guides on steam/playdota other sites that will teach you the basics spells/descriptions etc much better than I could. Also this will not teach you how to hook. There are better guides with gifs and videos for that purpose.
  • People above 4000 MMR , you probably know all of this stuff below so why bother reading it again?  
So this guide will focus on those players who are already quite experienced in playing pudge but still lack the finishing touches required for perfection.  So its more like a collection of tips rather than an actual guide, highlighting the common mistakes. So lets get started.



Laning:

                Even though pudge needs solo mid lane, he not a good laner. He is a melee hero, with no lane control, no way to harass ranged enemy, zero armor, pathetic movespeed. So remember this, pudge is NOT supposed to win lane by any means. He is redeemed only by the fact that IF he somehow manages to hook the enemy he can easily kill him.
Lot of regen+stout shield will allow you to take enough creeps in lane for a quick bottle. After that its all upto the runes and ganking. If you are a Dendi fan and want to follow his build, he usually starts with 2 salves+1 guantlet of STR. Get early last hits+denies, take a lot of beating in the process. Get back > drop gauntlets on ground and use salve, when salve ends pick up gauntlets and go for some more lasthits. It should go without saying that you should ALWAYS LOOK FOR HOOK OPPORTUNITY.

Midgame:

        Mid-game is where pudge shines the most. 360 pure dmg (equivalent of 450 mgc dmg if you want to compare) Hook damage is devastating and almost no one can survive a full pudge combo at this point. Keep ganking and creating room for your carry, make good use of smoke+tps scroll. Don't be a cheap bastard, buy tps.
Aim for some utility items at this point. Force staff and Blink are good choices.
Tranq Boots instead of Hood of defiance. Tranq cost you 525 extra gold (You already buy brown boots in either case, so total cost for tranq is just 525) and Hood costs 2125. Tranq 10hp/sec regen and hood 8hp/sec.  Tranq gives much needed armor while hood gives a somewhat redundant mgc resistance (pudge already gets resistance from Flesh heap on top of normal 25% mgc resistance. So the actual mgc resistance that hood gives you is NOT 30%, its alot less than that) In short, get Tranqs+bottle+stout+Force staff and you are set for the lategame.

Lategame:

      This is the moment where most of the pudge players fail. You may have raped enemies whole game but if you fail to transition into lategame there is no point in getting all those kills. This is the time where you should hook carefully. DO NOT GO ALONE. Stay with team try to disable enemy carry with your ulti and hope for the best. There are no definite tips to give here, stick with your carry (who hopefully farmed decently whole game) and be a meat shield for him.

General Gameplay:

  • Get armor on pudge. ALOT OF ARMOR. Armor scales with hp, as pudge already gets alot of hp from Flesh heap, he benefits ALOT more from armor than any other hero. Every armor point adds an additional 6% of your maximum HP to your EHP. Consider a pudge with 1000 hp and 0 armor. To kill it one needs to deal at least 1000 damage to it. If we give pudge 10 armor, he gets 37.5% reduction, so it will take 1600dmg to kill him. You can say that pudge now has "600" extra hp. This "1600" hp called EFFECTIVE HEALTH POINTS (EHP in short). 
  • Tranquils boots are the BEST boots for pudge. They give good armor, imba hp regen to heal up after ganks, awesome movespeed but most of all, they are cheap as dirt. You can always sell them for Travels later in game.
  • Always click hook ON TOP of enemy heroes. Many people just select hook and click in general direction of the enemy. The problem with this appreach is that if you miscalculate the range, the hook will fall short and you will miss by inches. By clicking on top of enemy, pudge will not throw hook until he walk in range to make sure the hook reaches where you clicked.
  • A good way to land your combo is to select hook > Click on enemy hero>When hook is lanuched, immediately select Ulti and use it on hero before the hook connect> press rot button. Now sit back and watch how hook connects+pudge uses ulti immediately and stats the rots autometically. Benefit of this method is you keep your mouse on a single place, you immediately use dismember to less time for enemy to react. The downside of this method is that after the Chen+pudge fountain hook fix, this method causes problems if there is fog of war between enemy and you (e.g when you hook a hero through lot of trees. There is a delay when hero reaches pudge. So its better to just hook then manually dismember him when he reaches you)
  • Pudge dont need alot of items during midgame. Buy the wards and smoke, the extra vision+smoke will ensure that you keep getting kills, that 150 gold investment on obs gives good profit . DO NOT BEG your teammates.
  • When its lategame, use Dismember on enemy carry who used bkb instead of that poor Crystal Maiden.
  • DO NOT MAKE DAGON. If you already made dagon DO NOT KILL WITH IT. Use hook or rot to finsh off heroes. The reason is that Dagon range is larger than flesh heap range. You miss out on soo many flesh heap stacks with dagon thats its not even funny. Remember flesh heap range is 450 (its half the range of lvl 1 hook. Yes its VERY LOW range)
  • Your mid enemy is QOP, OD, Quas+Wex invoker, Bristleback or Slark ? Go passive mode. Killing these heroes is hard so just try to get last hits+denies but focus on staying alive and keep your hp high.
  • Lvl 1,2,3 Rot doesnt disable Salve. So when you are rot+chasing enemies early game and they prefer running instead of man fighting you, you can safely use salve.
  • Having problem hooking an enemy who keeps moving? Wait until one of your creep is low hp. This is the moment when he will stay still and try to lasthit it. That's your moment. 
  • NEVER HOOK TIDEHUNTER IN LATEGAME. Its always funny watching a Tide getting hooked and landing a 5 man Ravage on enemies. His kraken shell will always ensure he is able to land his ulti.
  • Try to enjoy playing him.

I will add to this guide, if i come up with something else.

- Copyright © DOTA 2 cosmetics - Date A Live - Powered by Blogger - Designed by Johanes Djogan -