I recently took a trip to Toronto, Ontario to celebrate my birthday with my twin sister (albeit a bit belatedly).  We saw some of our extended family, went to a Jays game (they lost, unfortunately), and spent some time at the ROM.  None of this is important (well, at least in the context of this blog), since I also spent some time in the Ontario Science Centre, and their special exhibit, Game On 2.0.

In the words of the Science Centre:

[On] Sept. 26, 1969, a radio signal over 1.5 billion light years away struck a circuit that raised the curtain at the Science Centre’s official opening. It was one of the world’s first interactive science museums.  The Science Centre has since welcomed more than 46 million visitors for a range of fascinating experiences in science and technology. It is one of Ontario’s most significant cultural attractions, focused on interactivity and hands-on learning for visitors of all ages.

An exhibition about gaming seems right at home. more »

Sightstone

Here I come again to talk about League of Legends. With the reign of Season 3, many things have changed. I am sure you have found a number of comments for your favourite AP/AD/Top/Jungle/IDoTonsOfDamage build, but I would rather talk about my favourite role and its changes: the Support. It is really a special type of gameplay that requires more skill than one would think of at first glance, and not just anyone can Support, just as not just anyone can Top, Jungle, AD or AP. Why? Because of many things, the main reasons being because of the gold gathering mechanism and the prevalence of the champion’s kit over its AP/AD ratio. This article will focus on the former.

Notable changes have been introduced in the third season. These changes have considerably improved the quality of life of LoL’s Support champions by allowing new possibilities. This has been made possible by changing the default passive gold per second, the addition of self-recharging items like the “Sightstone”, and the Pickpocket mastery. Furthermore, as the gold pot increases for supports, new items have been developed to add more diversity to the builds. more »

You’ve been waiting for it for three years, and now it’s finally here: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm has arrived. Join Sarah Kerrigan on her quest to assume leadership of the various rival broods of the fractured Swarm and exact her revenge on the Dominion.

You also get to win cool stuff from Arqade! The top prize this time is a sweet graphics card, and we have plush toys and peripherals up for grabs as well.

When you ask and answer questions about SCII: HOTS during the first ten days after launch, you’ll start working your way up through the leagues of AnswerSwarm. Anyone who chooses to participate will be featured in the leaderboards.

Go make posts, earn some achievements, and vengeance will be yours!

I recently built a new PC to replace the aging laptop I was using for my day-to-day PC gaming needs. Included with my new video card was a coupon for a free copy of Crysis 3 and a free copy of Bioshock: Infinite. While I’m interested in the new Bioshock game, I can’t say I really had much interest in Crysis as a series before now. Getting it free was awfully motivating, though, so I thought I’d check it out.

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Shopping advice is another one of those topics that we don’t allow on Arqade. We did, once upon a time, and we attracted a couple of “canonical” questions on the topic. In an effort to preserve whatever value they have, as well as allow us to clean them up from the site, I’ve prepared this blog post. Remember, though, that asking shopping advice questions on Arqade is off-topic – the intent of this post is just to give people a pointer to some additional resources when we close questions. more »

Although I joined Steam in 2004, I managed to avoid spending very much money on it in the early years. That all changed in 2009, when the allure of sales finally won me over, and some $2,000 worth of games later, here we are. One of my very earliest purchases on Steam was the X-COM Complete Pack. X-COM was a franchise that had always interested me – I’m a sucker for tactical RPGs and strategic base building games. However, the difficulty, coupled with the somewhat impenetrable interface turned me off, and I still haven’t played a complete game in of any of them. The purchase ended up being the first in a very long line of games that I ended up buying but never quite could get into.

When I first heard that Firaxis was being handed the XCOM license and were making a turn-based strategy game with it, I was elated. I’m a big fan of Firaxis, and I’ve logged nearly 200 hours on Civilization 5 as of this article. I will play pretty much anything if the title starts with “Sid Meier’s.” I pre-ordered this game, and I’ve spent nearly every free moment I’ve had since the release playing the game. After a good chunk of hours invested, I think I’m ready to at least give my impressions of it. I think I’ll probably be sinking a considerable amount of hours into this game, including its higher difficulty levels and other challenging modes in the coming months, so this is by no means a final word.

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Welcome to part 2 of our Follower guide. In this article I will be talking about the spell casting Follower; the mystical Eirena. I recommend this Follower to any melee class in the game as she is very effective with her AOE (Area of Effect) spells when farming and also gives good buffs to the player.

Eirena the Enchantress

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Followers in Diablo 3 are weak when compared to the majestic ones Diablo 2 had, but that does not mean they can’t be made to be useful. You probably know by now that the only customizable things on your Follower are his armor and his skills, two things I have analyzed deeply to come up with a perfect combination.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series where I will be showing you how to make the most out of Kormac, the Templar.

Kormac the Templar

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Happy Birthday Arqade! Today is the second anniversary of Gaming’s graduation from beta, October 6th, 2010. What a busy couple of years it’s been! Let’s take a moment to celebrate the accomplishments of the community and the site over the past year. Put on your party hat, throw a handful of confetti at the nearest unsuspecting co-worker, roommate, family member, pet, houseplant, or whatever else is nearby, and have a slice of cake!

Party Cat is ready to party, are you?

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Patch 1.0.5 has been brewing for some time now, and it recently went into testing mode. As of currently, you can log into the PTR (Public Test Realm) and test out the new patch by following the instructions here.

The patch is going to be adding some pretty neat end-game content to the game that was really fun to do in Diablo 2.

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