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The Corner of Randomness: What Happened to Punk

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EVO took place a couple weekends ago, and one of the players that was expected to go far was PG Punk. Punk has become a dominating force in the U.S. FGC scene. In particular, he is a dominating force when it comes to Street Fighter V. So what happened to him as of late?

Let’s look back just a bit. Punk was relatively unknown not too long ago. He was just some cocky kid who boasted big claims of greatness. Well, he made good on his claims. He is still pretty cocky, yet highly entertaining to watch on stream. Yet he really has made good on his claim of greatness. He’s won a few tournaments now. Even dethroning a few of the bigger name players.

Then EVO 2017 rolls around. Punk was expected to get pretty deep in the brackets. The Street Fighter V field was loaded with some extremely strong players. I expected him to place somewhere in the Top 10, but I never pegged him to get all the way to grand finals. Well, he proved me wrong.

Punk did indeed make it all the way to grand finals in Street Fighter V. He had to work his way through the losers side of things, but he put on a great show and bested some very strong competition. Ultimately, however, he would fall and take second place. Punk looked absolutely devastated at the awards ceremony. You could see he was fighting back tears. Keep in mind that this was his very first EVO, he is only 18, and he snagged second place. That is no small feat.

Last weekend Defend the North went down. Punk was once again a competitor in the Street Fighter V games. He would once again take second place. The thing I noticed while watching this tournament is that it seems Punk has yet to recover from EVO. He had lost some of that cockiness he had. His facial expressions were more of someone trying to figure out what went wrong. It was a bit heartbreaking to see.

Punk is still young, and his FGC career is only starting. Suffering a defeat at EVO is certainly taking its toll on Punk. Yet, I think he will go a long way in this career if he chooses to stick it out. Punk can’t win them all, but I fully expect to see him win at EVO in the future. Until then, hopefully he can shake off whatever it is that is weighing so heavily on him so he can once again become the cocky kid we’ve grown to know and fear.

The Corner of Randomness: It Worked

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Well, I can say it worked. Taking a guilt free day to just relax, play a few games, and not worry about adulting worked out well. It worked so well in fact, I am doing it again today.

For today, I plan to play more Elder Scrolls Online as I am very much enjoying that game. A bit later, I’ll jump onto some Warframe and probably play that the rest of the day. I downloaded the game on the PS4 to play with some friends. So far, that seems to be the best choice as gaming with friends is way more fun than trying to find groups to game with.

Today also marks the start of Defend the North. It’s no EVO in terms of hype levels. Yet, it’s another fighting game tournament to watch and enjoy. That should be a good time. However, I’ll probably only catch some of it today and try to catch the finals on Sunday. Thank goodness for VODs!

Keri is gone for another week yet. So next week expect a bit more of my shenanigans. The Elder Scrolls Oninline: Morrowind guide is pretty much done and ready for review. I’m missing some of the files, so I’ll get that posted up once she returns from her trip. Spoiler: the guide is a solid 3/5. Hopefully Keri is having a ton of fun and enjoying some well-deserved R&R.

That does it for me. Time to finish this coffee, hit the store for some snacks and weekend food, and then venture off into the virtual game worlds. This one day of guilt freeness is pretty badass!

The Corner of Randomness: Taking a Day to Game

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I’ve been ridiculously busy working on my house with the hopes of getting it ready to be sold in a few months. This has led to very little time for gaming. It sucks because constantly going can really wear a person out after a full week of going nonstop. So, I’ve decided that every Friday will be a recovery kind of day.

Today is the first of the recovery day shenanigans. I recently managed to get a few friends into Elder Scrolls Online. We played for a bit last night, but my crap internet took a beating when a thunderstorm rolled through. Hopefully today will be a bit better and we can all jump into the game together and play for a few hours. This should also help with me in finishing the strategy guide for a possible review next week.

If my internet decides to be a pain, I’ll most likely just jump into some DOOM. Mainly because DOOM sprawled across three monitors is pretty friggin sweet! Or maybe I’ll be smart and start on a game from my backlog of shame. There are just so many options!

I do hope this new day dedicated to chilling will pan out. If nothing else, the sleeping in this morning was totally awesome! Now to fire up the PS4 and go roam around Morrowind!

The Corner of Randomness: Time to EVO!

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Well, EVO is finally upon us. This is essentially the Super Bowl of the fighting game community (FGC). Players of all walks of fighting game backgrounds descend upon Las Vegas to put their skills to the test. There will be upsets. I can guarantee you that there will be pop-offs and tea-bagging galore. Winners will be crowned, money will be won, and bragging rights bestowed upon the best players.

What makes this EVO so special is that there are three pro tours happening. Injustice 2, Tekken 7, and Street Fighter V are all at EVO with premier tour events. While Street Fighter V is still king when it comes to registrants, it’s nice to see Injustice 2 and Tekken 7 getting some love. I do still hope that one day the Street Fighter games will be dethroned as king.

If you get only one day to watch, then Sunday is certainly the day to do so. This is when several games come to an end with their Top 8 runs. While I’d have enjoyed the Injustice 2 finals happening here, they take place on Saturday night. I wonder if Sonic Fox will dominate as he usually does. Then again, the hype level just gets that much more if he comes in second or third.

While I’m busy working on my house, and working on photography classes for the new studio space, I’ll be glued to Twitch.TV as much as I can. Yet, I’ll be sad once Sunday draws to an end. It’s a long wait until Capcom Cup later this year, and an even longer wait until AGDQ rolls around in January. Keri and I might need to form a support group for those of us about to go through streaming hype withdraws.

The Corner of Randomness: Oh So Tired

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I am tired as all hell today. Sadly, this isn’t even by choice. I just couldn’t fall asleep. So today I’ll be running off sheer will……aaaaaaand heaps of coffee. Yet, there is one positive to not being able to fall asleep last night. I got to watch a good amount of SGDQ. Yay?!?!

I knew I’d be up somewhat late as I wanted to catch the Tetris block. Why this was slated for such a late timeslot is way beyond me. Yet, it is what it is and so I figured I’d catch the Tetris runs, particularly the 2-players 1-controller race, and then crash. I’d just have to catch the Zelda runs when they were uploaded to YouTube.

That plan didn’t exactly work out. The Tetris block started way later than it was scheduled for. Still, I watched it in utter amazement as there is no way I could play Tetris: The Grand Master anywhere remotely as good as the runners. After that, the Zelda: A Link to the Past no sword all dungeons run took place. Still wide awake, I watched that as well. While that run was cool, it was more the commentary that made that run totally worth watching.

3AM rolls around and I’ve turned the iPad off. I’m staring at the ceiling. Craziness ensues. I start debating what games I’d speedrun. I start contemplating what categories I’d run on a game such as Super Metroid. Thoughts of grandeur fill my mind. Finally, sleep claims. Thankfully before I started documenting my crazy delusions of trying my hand at speedrunning.

Now here I sit. One cup of coffee already destroyed, and preparing to go make my second cup. I won’t be able to catch the last day of SGDQ 2017 as I’ll be travelling and that makes me sad. Yet, I’m travelling to go check out a new studio space, which means I’ll soon be doing more photography business. Before that all happens, I think I’ll go get more coffee and….oh, wait. What’s that Chrome? Twitch.TV wants me to visit? Right, here I come!

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