In This Issue...
Dragon Age Inquisition Review New for 2015 Interview with "Brotacular13" Partner Channel Spotlight Tazer News
Tazer News... Last month we ran the Tazer Advent Calendar, which was a huge success with over 15 games to given away and a special custom YouTube Banner for one lucky person, we felt more like Santa then even before! Once again we'd like to say a huge Thank You to all the companies who donated games for the giveaway, without them we would not be able to give away so many games (Full list of companies can be found on the Advent Calendar Page on the Website). Next Year, we hope to start giving away not just games, but gaming gear too, but that is going to take a lot of work during the next 12 months. Tazer has many planned goals for 2015, which you can find out about by reading the
"New for 2015" section after the Dragon Age Review in this Magazine. December also marked a momentous occasion for Tazer. Our Gaming channel hit over 200+ Subscribers and our network hit over 100+ Partners and 250,000 total network views. This for us is an astounding achievement that proves to us that we're doing SOMETHING right. It's also a clear message to all of you out there to NEVER GIVE UP! You may have bad days when you feel like it's never going to happen but as long as you stick at it you will achieve your goals in the end. I do also have to mention that the staff maybe changing a little in 2015. Fariko Epic or Chris as some of you may know him has decided to work on his own channel, so will no longer be making videos for Tazer. We wish him all the luck in the world with his endeavours! Korpah, as far as I am aware is still recovering from a car accident he was in and for the foreseeable future he will not be making anymore videos. We send him our best wishes and hope he gets better soon!
Hello Tazer Fans! Long time no see! Welcome to the Dragon Age Inquisition (if you have not yet signed up you can pick up a form at your local recruitment centre). As an intro to this I will point out that I'm a sucker for side missions and there's a lot of them in this game, so many in fact that I still have to complete it. But it is fun as hell, with a few drawbacks. Because the game is so big I will make this in a few categories as seen below, this is just so I can stay on topic and not stray too far.
Story If you're not familiar with the history of Ferelden and Orlais, when magic was being frequently used people noticed that with that power corruption was not far behind. And in order to keep the mages in line, the order of the templar's was created. Should a mage ever resort to blood magic or be corrupted by a daemon then templar's would hunt
them down and kill them. This has caused a lot of tension in the world as many mages want to be free and the templar's would rather kill all of them in order to keep the threat of daemons away permanently. Both of these are controlled by the Chantry, their church if you will. In order to make the war between them stop the Chantry calls for a gathering, mages and templar's travel from across the world to meet up and then unseen hand blows them all apart. Yes literally. All the leaders from all factions are dead and the war between templar's and mages spirals out of control. The only survivor is you, left with a green glowing mark in the palm of your hand, you can close the fade rifts that the explosion opened all over the world. With a few soldiers and mages by your side you take up the mantle (or more accurately are talked into) of the newly reinstated Inquisition. The story follows you as you try to restore order to the world by uniting the
world under Inquisition.
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What makes this so fun I think is how the story alters depending on what friends and enemies you make in the world. One of the biggest one is the way your main enemy NPC appears. If you choose to ally with the mages the templar's will become your main enemy force, and the other way around. This causes you to have to develop your character in different ways even if you play the same character type twice in a row. Fighting mages and templar's need two different skills and thinking after all. Not to mention there are a million side missions that will have a similar effect but on a smaller scale, like unlocking one area might cause you to wait for others and so on.
To add to this let me tell you about the war table for a bit. Here is where you unlock new areas and send your agents to do special tasks, like spying, gathering research materials and more. And this at first glance is fine, sending some one on a mission will take a few minutes or an hour as you start, this is fine. But at where I'm at some of them can take up to and over 20 hours, that’s a bit insane. Some of them get done if you close the game and open it again but it's just a ridiculous amount of time for me to go around killing random stuff. Luckily there's a lot of things to be killed and a lot more stuff to explore, not to mention gathering ingredients for crafting. I also have to add that I could have been further down the main story by now, but I'm a sucker for side missions and can't leave them uncompleted as it messes
with my imaginary ADHD and I just have to complete all I can in an area before moving on. While we are on it, let's talk about the sides for a while. Not only do you find collectibles but also a wide variety of missions once you have unlocked a new area beside the main mission. Everything from gathering Minerals for research, or to upgrade your keep. Some of them you will have to do, as every time you use the war table to do story related tasks you need "power" in order to do it. The power symbolizes the amount of combined wealth, influence and military power the current Inquisition have. As you will have need of a certain amount to get in to courts (most boring mission ever FYI) take your armies through other people's lands and so on. Some of them can be done indefinitely, like the mineral gathering, so I would suggest to concentrate on the others just to get things moving forward (it took me a while to realize they were on a loop and I was getting nowhere, I
do have a insane amount of power though). As the story goes on you will gather more followers, some of them can follow you in the classic four man team that you walk around with. Even characters that can't fight with you can be interacted with and sometimes give better quests, or just more of the side ones, and if you are like me, and the story matters, then talking to them all is a must, don’t know how many hours are taken away from just
conversations in this game. But as they are optional it should not matter much for those of you that just want to click them away. But I do find it interesting to listen and to learn as its helps me to immerse myself in the story and development of the characters.
Characters You can play as either a Elven, Human, Dwarf or a Qunary. As most people are
familiar in one way or other with the first 3 I will simply say they the Qunary is a highly religious race of giants with horns on their heads. They are mainly warriors but have mages as well. They don’t follow the religion of the other races and are considered powerful but not much more is known about them as they rarely seek alliances or trade with others. As a class you can play as the warrior, Rouge and the Mage, all of them have different skills and there's plenty of skills to make sure that should you play warrior for 6 characters no one of them have to be alike. Lots of different skills to be used, some of them have to be unlocked as the story progresses and you finds trainers to teach them to you. As I mentioned before you're not the only character in the game and many of
the NPC's can be talked to above the ones that can follow you around on missions, sometimes you gain some obscure piece of information on the person in question, something like a new mission and even more rarely you get some interesting information about an enemy or someone else. And I like to talk to them, I have to say. Add to this there are a few other familiar faces, like Cassandra, Varric, Alistair and even Hawk. The last one being the main character in Dragon Age 2. Not only is it fun for me to see these characters again and follow as their personalities as they grow, but they also give a fair introduction to them even for the new players. And it really adds to the immersive feel of the story line. But be prepared to talk, there's a lot of it even
if you only want to do the necessary parts, you will still need to talk a lot.
Maps The maps in this game are pretty big to be fair. And with virtually no loading time between them. The only times I see it lagging a bit is when I entered an area with a high dragon as the game was loading it, but it was a split second and then I was back on track again. The way the map work's is you have a big main map with points of interest dotted over it. By clicking on one of these you will travel the map you selected and kill everything (that’s what I do). As the story goes forward you will unlock new missions that might take you back to an older map by unlocking a previously blocked area, such as having a unit of soldiers remove the rocks from a cave in
allowing you to pass through. These things are done on the War table I mentioned earlier, and I like how they did it. If you find a point of interest, be it a cave in or a polluted desert, if you mark it by putting down one of the Inquisitions flags it will be marked on the map of the War table and next time you are there you can send soldiers to clear roads, build new bridges or simply sanitize an area well enough for you and your party to keep pressing on. Not only will the different maps give you different challenges as they should as in difference in enemy units to the animals that lives there. But it will also give you access to new crafting materials you can collect (if you have the time) or plants to help you with your potions, salves and poisons. It's worth exploring especially if you want that little edge in combat and as a
mage I can tell you I love the regenerating potions, they are the best. A regenerating potion and a barrier makes me almost invulnerable for a time, and should I take some damage when my barrier goes down the regenerating potion will take care of it. I love my mage. Combine that with the Guard ability from an accompanying warrior and your set for life. But this is a bit of topic I notice (so much for making it into
segments). You will have to take note of quarries and logging sites as well on the map as these will help you to grow your fort and reinforce new areas of it. Be it a new Chantry building or a bigger plantation, you will need the material for it.
Gameplay As I stated before, the only time when I see the game lagging a bit is when facing the big dragons, that one second before the battle starts, but then it sorts itself
out and I'm golden again. There are a few small things however that slightly tick me off. 1) When you press new game, or Continue from the main menu the loading time is a bit on the long side before the game starts, but after that the times are a bit more human. Even though the maps are big I still don’t want to spend that much time in the loading menus. They give you stuff to read, but still. 2) As I play on the PC but I use a controller, the pressing of the green "A" button picks things up, but if your that millimetre off target you will instead be jumping on the spot. And this is not a big issue I give them that, but I hate it, and it happens so often. See a plant, or some loot, try to take it, and jump up and down on top of it instead. The worst time this happened was while I was picking up (or so I intended) some material at the edge of a cliff, but duly jumped over the edge instead to my early doom. Hate it! 3 Controlling your party members are not as good as it was in the previous games. Before you could tell them to
use different skills at different times, like use Blizzard (a big area of effect spell) when there are 3-5 enemies clunked together. Or use this high damage arrow on the strongest enemy in sight. Stuff like that made it very easy to set up the A.I. of your party members so you did not have to micromanage them all the time. It was a huge help, and did not limit itself to attacks, but went for utilities as well such as potions. In Inquisition they have the skills and they don’t use them. Meaning that they will either not use an ability, they will use it, or they will use it slightly more often. This is such a bad system that you will do one of two things. First micromanage every single second of every encounter, or just fuck all and leave them to their own fate. I do the latter and only take control if I want a special attack made (which I could have programmed in the previous games) and
it works pretty well, but this system leaves a lot to be wished for. 4) Horses‌.well horses is a stretch let's call them mounts as there are more than just your simple horses. You can summon a mount to ride on and indeed it makes you move a bit faster, but you will end up dismounting every 3 seconds anyway to fight an enemy or to pick up some bloody plant that you just thought you needed, that it's pointless to use it in the first place. MAYBE if I could pick up items or maybe even do some basic fighting from horseback (that would be awesome) but as it is it's just a waste of time in most cases. The only thing cool is to find them all as some are a bit scary and cool looking, like the Bog Unicorn with a sword through its head as a horn.
Crafting I decided to have this a separate segment as it’s the biggest cause of my delay in completing this game. Before I go on you don’t have to use this system, as you will find a lot of good gear on the way, but I like to customize and add more power to my already powerful weaponry and armour. First off you need to gather a lot of material, some harder than others to find, but after you have made an item, let's take the mages staff for example. You can add more upgrades to it even after its completed, by exchanging the staff head, the grip or the bottom blade, adding even more power and effects to it. Even adding some powerful runes can make it to a completely different weapon then the original. And this is where my ADHD kicks in, depending on the material used not only do you get different properties', but also different appearances, as colour for example. And having the top red and the bottom of the staff green or blue makes my eyes twitch and I will spend countless hours on finding the materials I need to make it matching colours with the best buffs I can get. Say what you want I don’t want to go around looking like a fucking rain bow, it's just not going to happen. Same goes for armours and helmets. making an armour, be it light medium or
heavy, will give you the same options of materials and colours. Add in that one can, with some amours, add parts like with the weapons, for example adding a new set of boots or armoured gloves to the set, making it better (and still keeping in a unified colour mind you). You can craft your own runes here as well, after finding the blueprints for them in the wild. Some materials for this can be found in merchants while others need to be obtained by exploring or the mindless killing of as many enemies you can lay your staff on. All in all this is a great game, and I have experienced very few issues with it so far. But if you pick up the title make sure you have time, the game is long and if you do all the missions you will have to spend many hours in this. I have a total of 55+ hours, I think, and I still have a long way to go. As a last note there is a multiplayer option in this game but I have as of yet not been able to play it, but I have heard both good and bad things about it, so if you have played it please let us know on our Facebook page and maybe we can share a game between us. Until next time, Happy Gaming People.
By Kim Gustafsson
We have many plans for the future of the Tazer Brand, but before I go over what we are planning for next year, I'd like to take a look over the past year to show you exactly how much can be achieved in a year. Starting in December 2013, we had our very first Advent Calendar Giveaway. We gave away 3 games over the space of a month, and this was very well received. The games themselves came from a cheap humble bundle that we picked up just before Christmas. The reason I mention this is because we have just recently completed this year's Advent Calendar where we gave away 16 games and a custom YouTube Banner. The games included big name titles such as Five Nights at Freddy's and Doorkickers. Next Year we hope to up our game once more, giving away not only a ton more games, but also gaming gear too. Talking of Christmas, we also have plans to create a Christmas In-Game Pantomime for next year, something
that'll take a lot of work but I'm sure (if we can pull it off) will be very rewarding. Obviously,
the most prolific change this year has been the new Tazer - Gaming
Network, which I'm happy to say has been a huge success. We currently have over 100 partners in the network, and we turn over some 35,000 views every single month. Next year we have huge goals for the network. We hope to hit 500-1000 subscribers on the Network Channel. We hope to hit 250-400 Partners in the network and bring in over 1 Million Views every month! Aside from views and subscribers, we also have a number of new ideas for future benefits to partners. Such as; Tazer Sponsorships, Partner Run Tazer Channels, Discounts on Gaming Gear and Recording Equipment and hopefully the start of our "Graphics for Everyone Scheme", which involves having our own Graphics Team who can provide free graphics to all of our partners. This is a
big goal, but one we think is achievable. We saw the starts of our team this year with the addition of Gully Graphics to our staff. In terms of our gaming channel and vlog channel, well the vlog channel has now changed to the IRL and Podcast Channel, which although now doesn't have a weekly video schedule we are now doing the podcasts regularly on a monthly basis and will hopefully add vlog videos as and when things crop up, like gaming events etc. The gaming channel is going to remain very much the same, except we will be trying some new series. We have just start a Minecraft series and a Fun Series called Taze-Tacular Games with Brotacular13 that we are really excited about. We are also hoping to do some glitch, Easter egg and tip videos in the future but not sure when they will start. As for the rest of the series, we hope to see Korpah back on his feet and raring to go with the Tazer Plays Series, but for that we will have to wait a little. Aside from that, why not let us know what YOU want to see by visiting our website (www.TazerCG.com) and suggest a game or series via the "Suggest a Game" page. Overall our plans for Tazer are to make it bigger and better, always with community at the heart of everything
we do. We know how hard it was when we first started and want to help those who are in that position now. So here's to a great 2015, I hope that you can follow us on our journey TO TOTAL AND ULTIMATE WORLD DOMINATION....wait....sorry I meant to becoming the best we can...ahem! Thank You for Reading!
Our Interview with... Brotacular13!
Real Name: Nicholas Skafidas Age: 16 Channel Name: Brotacular13 Started YouTube?: For Brotacular March 5th 2012 but for my old channel called “Baskettball1234” I started February 10th 2012. What made you want to start a YouTube Channel? I wanted to make a youtube channel because I saw a youtuber named 1800PwnTime make these funny Man vs. Skyrim Videos and I thought it was the funniest and coolest thing in the world so I grabbed my camera and went to my friend’s house and we recorded a video of us doing our own Man vs.
Skyrim and I made the channel Baskettball1234. After doing Baskettball1234 for a while I moved on from it and created a channel called, “Brotacular13” and decided to pursue that one. And throughout my journey with Brotacular13 I have run into many obstacles such as losing internet, being bullied about my channel being terrible. And a lot of people ask me why do I stay with this channel? And a lot of times I tell them it’s because I love doing what I am doing and that is true. But the other reason that I do it and I don’t mention this often is because my dad passed away in 2009 and he was someone who loved making videos and had always wanted to become something great and I thought I would make him proud by carrying on his dream with me and this youtube channel. What do you hope to Achieve? Honestly I hope to achieve my ultimate goal of making youtube a full time career. Even though I am only 16 I haven’t found anything in the outside world as fun and as rewarding then youtube and I hope to reach 1,000 Subscribers before I graduate because if I do then I am going to pursue my dream and focus more on youtube then just going to college for some boring career that I won’t be happy with. Do you have any "Real Life" Plans for the Future?
Depends on what you mean by “Real Life” I suppose. To me “Real Life” can be anything if you put your heart into it and for me that would be youtube. I have already spent 2 or more years of my life into it so why stop here? Who is your Favourite YouTuber apart from Tazer of Course? LOL Hahaha. Well I would have to say my inspiration came from 1800PwnTime but I suppose while I was doing youtube I looked up to Pewdiepie when I was growing up. Do you think you aspire to be like them or do you try and be your own person? I think in the beginning everyone aspires to be like someone they have seen and as they grow and become bigger they come up with their own thing and learn to branch off and become their own person and I would say the same for myself. Where do you see yourself in 10 Years? Hopefully doing what I am currently doing right now. I don’t want to be just another person in this world. I want to become someone known that makes people laugh and also someone who can give back to the community. What are your 3 Favourite Games? This is a hard one… I do love assassin’s creed, I also love Halo, and I suppose I
love the Walking Dead game on PC that I have been playing for my channel. PC Master Race or Console? I really, really loved console for a long time but after doing youtube and receiving my own personally designed Tower I learned to love PC more because it’s so customizable unlike a console that is only built one way and can’t be changed. Although don’t get me wrong I do love a good game on Xbox! Partner Question: - How did you and Tazer Meet? I met Tazer when me and him were invited to work for another network and we basically hit it off and when he told me he was making a network I decided to come aboard and help out with the growing of this network. Partner Question: - How did you come up with your Channel Name? It’s a funny story actually. It started when I asked my friend in middle school if he had an idea for an Xbox user name I could use. Now do keep in mind when I asked this the whole putting the word “Bro” in front of everything was trending at the time. So he came up with some stupid names like “MinieMuffin24” and stuff like that until he came up with the name Brotacular and I fell in love with it. And a lot of people can guess where the 13 came
from and it came from me being 13 at the time. If you could have any free piece of gaming gear like Headset, camera, mic etc. what would you have? I would really love a new camera but I am pretty happy with my GoPro I have now. I think if I could have anything it would be a new desk and more space for recording because right now I am cramped on space! What piece of advice would you give to all of our partners who are new to YouTube? The best advice I can give to you guys is just stay with it. No matter how small you are or how small you feel right now you have to stay positive with everything you are doing right now. I believe that everything that happens to you in life is a test and you can either pass or fail that test and if your dream is to grow on youtube then work hard and make that dream become a reality. I’m not saying it will be easy because it’s not. The people who get life handed to them on a silver platter are the ones who don’t appreciate what they have. It’s the people like us who work hard for what we that learn to appreciate and love what they are doing. And that’s why I am never going to stop youtube and that’s why you shouldn’t ether.
Were you told you were getting paid for this? Because you're not...I have a gummy bear you can have though, will that do? I think I will have to talk to my lawyer about this… actually give me the gummy bear and we are even…
What is up guys and welcome back to another Channel Spotlight that features one lucky Youtube Partner from the Tazer Gaming Network. This month’s featured channel goes by the name of UnitedGamers. UnitedGamers has been doing Youtube since September 13th 2014 and currently has 2,877 total video views and 82 Subscribers. The channel features 6 different staff members, Dan, Matt, Casey, Martin, Dean, and Ike! These are the people who create many different types of videos varying from daily Vlogs to Gaming Commentaries on this channel. While checking out the channel I watched their featured trailer labelled: “What is UnitedGamers”. And while watching I learned that this Youtube channel loves to feature the game that everyone knows and loves called Minecraft. But this is not the only game that the channel features. They play many of the classic games we all know and love such as Five nights at Freddy’s, Grand Theft Auto V, and so much more! Some things I think that could use improving on the UnitedGamers channel is having a regular posting time for each
member of the channel for a certain day of the week. The reason I suggest this is because viewers like to know when videos come out on others channels! UnitedGamers also has a website which can be found in the about page of their Youtube Channel. The website features many different things such as Polls, Blogs, and their very own Forum! After checking out the channel I believe that this is a very good channel that has the potential to grow and become better as time progresses which is why I would like to personally congratulate UnitedGamers for receiving this month’s spotlight here at the Tazer Gaming Network. Anyways guys that is going to wrap up this month’s spotlight here at the Tazer Gaming Network remember to Subscribe and become a partner with the Tazer Gaming Network to have your channel featured in the monthly magazine and don’t forget to check out Brotacular13’s series of Tazer Reviews to get a chance to have your channel reviewed in a video on the network. From all of us here at the Network we wish you a good rest of your month! ~Brotacular13