it's mogi

2023 has been a pretty eventful year for growth. The world has opened up and society has gone back to the office (mostly). People on-the-go lost time to play games and stay seated in front of their gaming consoles, but some found alternatives ways of work. There was a content creation boom and saturation, yet here we are still trying to stay relevant. I am blessed to have time to pursue content creation as a hobby again, and this time, I know better on how to tackle this industry. Sticking to the positives, let's take a look back at how 2023 went for mogi! The Revival and Renewal of mogi Like I said, I am not new to the content creation space, but I did experience burn out a few times, thus halted my creative juices. Knowing better know, I took another shot at making content and changed my mindset on the matter. Knowing full well that this is a hobby, I put less pressure on myself and enjoy the process more. Having said this, mogi has shifted from being a content churning machine a...

We have our Mobile Legends: Bang Bang M5 Championship Top 6 teams!! The lower bracket quarter finals and upper bracket finals are a few days away, so let me catch you up to speed with what has been going on in the M5 Knockout Stage. I would say that it has been a pretty competitive knockout stage and there are a lot of moving pieces to keep note of to ensure that you can properly tune in to the games to come. Without further ado, lets talk M5 Series! Starting it off with our upper bracket finalists, Onic ID and AP.Bren, representatives of Indonesia and Philippines respectively. Onic ID showed great dominance in their match perfomances, only having issues with Blacklist International. Being the favorites to win it all, the pressure is on for Onic ID to bring the title back to Indonesia. Adding to this, being called Kairi eSports, Onic ID is trying to break away from the identity that they are more than just their PH import. AP.Bren on the other hand, they are the unexpected underdog fro...

Looking for something new to try with your friends? A tambayan beyond the usual cafes and bars around the Katipunan Area? Check out the Hilltop Gaming Lounge in the One Katipunan Residences Building! A cafe looking to revive the local/couch co-op gaming experience and invigorate the local fighting game scene.  Having checked the place out and spent a few hours in the gaming lounge. Here is my review of Hilltop Gaming Lounge!! DO NOTE: Though this is not a paid ad, I personally know the owner of the gaming lounge. The review will solely be based on my personal experience and will try my best to be impartial with regards to the review. With that being said... let's get to it! Before getting into the nitty gritty of things, let us talk logistics. To get to the actual gaming lounge, you must first enter True Blends Cafe, their partner food and drinks provider, and take the stairs up to the gaming area, the Hilltop Gaming Lounge. The Gaming Lounge is your standard layout with several g...

You're watching a eSports tournament, a team brings out a weird draft and it ends up looking absolutely broken. So you decide to take it to rank, surprise surprise, you take a big fat L. This happens every single time when people see something OP somewhere (Youtube, Tiktok, Twitch).  Why is this the case? Why does something look OP in tournaments, yet bomb during ranked games?  It isn't a simple copy and paste. You have to consider the people doing these meta strats are professionals. These ideas don't just happen on the fly. Professional eSports metas don't directly reflect the ranked game scene because of several factors. Let's dive into the difference between Professional and Ranked Game! Communication  One of the most obvious difference between professional games and ranked games is the communication. Professional players are well-versed in communicating with one another, because teams most likely talked about proper call-outs and communication styles. Communica...

We've all experienced it. We've all experienced the grind it takes to rank up in competitive videogame titles. While some use their ranks as a flex or means to trashtalk newbies, rank plays a big role in motivation to play a game. It is an assumption that the higher the rank, the better chances you have to go pro. Because, logically speaking, the better you are at the game, the better you will do in the professional eSports scene. But... Does rank really matter in the grander scheme of things? Does having a high rank mean you will be a great eSports competitor? The answer may surprise you! YES and NO HAHAHAHA Yep, it is not as straight forward as one might think. There are several factors, aside from rank, that should be considered when deciding to go pro. So, let's talk about it! What does rank indicate? Before we get into why rank does or doesn't matter, let's talk about what rank means. Basically, rank in videogames act like a grading system, the better you play,...

Marvel Snap, a digital collectible card game with the Marvel Intellectual Property (IP). I played it during launched and was not impressed by its gameplay. It initially felt like a digital clone of Smash Up, a popular tabletop deckbuilding game. The gameplay loop is: you mix and match cards to make synergy and take control of locations for points. My early impression of it was clearly negative, because I felt like they used the Marvel IP as a way to suck money out of its fanbase. With its lackluster gameplay and somewhat repetitive gameplay back then, I immediately uninstalled the game. Now, more than a year later, I decided to pick it up again and wow, I was so wrong with my first impression! If it survived a year in a time where competitive game turnovers are rampant, there must be something special about it. How did I end up picking it up again? Like every gaming itch, I was bored and I was looking for a new game to play. I scrolled through Twitch and I saw that the game still had a...

In a time where gacha games are redundant cash grab garbage, there are still gems waiting to be found. Among the newly released titles is Reverse: 1999, a story driven turn based gacha rpg, which boasts great art and an all-star cast of voice actors. Given how loyal people are to their gacha games, will Reverse: 1999 be seen in their radars? Is it worth the effort to put it in the dailies rotation? With how so many promotions and ads pushes this game to the gacha gaming community, does it live up to the hype? Having played the game for awhile now, I may have the answer! Just a moment of your time will do, as I want to share some of my thoughts and opinions on Reverse: 1999. So, join me as I dive into a review of the game! The Story and Art Without spoiling the story too much, you take the role of Vertin, a time keeper (sorry no self inserts here), in a world where time goes backwards, with reasons beyond known in the beginning. Your job is to save society and brave the storm (an anomal...

Let's look back... It was early 2020, news of a virus caused the population to lock themselves at home. Society had to fast track a new ways to circumnavigate unfamiliar territory. Face to face interaction was forbidden. Skype? Zoom? Google meet? Nah. We get on Discord... WIT DA BOISZSZSZ Discord? The communication platform that had it all!  Unlimited minutes on Video and Voice Chat? Done. Screen Share? Done. Access to different servers with one account? Done. Free? Mostly haha It was the gamer's best tool when it came with staying connected with online friends, and it became society's friend too! ( DO NOTE! This is not a paid ad for Discord) Don't get me wrong, the pandemic was a bad time for all of us, some more so. But through the pandemic, we saw the return of some workaholic gaming friends, as the became glued to their home setups. It reignited the passion to game in some corporate slaves and revive old connections. The Discord server became the new speakeasy for w...

Taken from the Dota 2 website. Property of Valve The International 2023 or TI12 group stage has ended and boy it has been a wild ride! The group stage has been a mix of stomps and upsets. Teams playing their hearts out, and some letting their nerves get the better of them. TI12 is rollercoaster of emotions with a side of great action. If you haven't already known, the group stage format for this year's The International is a bit different. It comes in 2 phases. 1st phase, there are 4 group of 5 teams who play a round robin series of Bo2 (Best of 2) matches and the bottom team gets eliminated. Then, the 16 remaining teams will move on to Phase 2 of the group stage. The 2nd phase decides which teams will be starting in the upper or lower bracket during playoffs, and this will be done through a series of Bo3 (Best of 3) matches. With everything that happened in the Group Stage, I was and am prepared to eat my own words. I have a few prediction updates and of course, I have to give...

Here is a list of  my personal mobile gaming dealbreakers or icks (as the zoomers call it) As someone who spends most of their time playing games on my phone, I’ve been bombarded with multiple ads for mobile games. Being pretty susceptible to targeted marketing, I download these games and try them out for myself. Through these unwanted ads, I’ve found hidden gems amidst the ocean of trash mobile games. Sifting through these games, gave me a clearer sense of what I want or don’t want in a game.  So, here are my top 3 icks or red flags when it comes to playing a game! Ads It should be a given, right? I know that ads are a way for free mobile games to earn money, and I respect that. I don’t mind watching ads when there are incentives involved, but there is such as thing as too much.  There are games you can play offline, but can’t, because you have to play it with ads on. Similarly, there are games you’d want to play offline to avoid the spam of ads when playing with an inte...

With the regular season concluded and the playoffs are just around the corner, let’s take a look back at how things turned.  It is worth noting that this is the first MPL season with the Emblem system revamp, so there was a lot of limit testing taking place during these games. Given that the regular season is the bulk of MPL PH tournament format, the meta heading into the playoffs will be very similar. But before we take a deep dive into the meta analysis, here are the standings: Congratulations to Echo and AP.Bren for securing the 1st and 2nd seeds. It has been a grueling season, especially since the top 2 teams will be heading to m5. GG Well Played to Minana Evos and TNC for putting up a good fight. Bounce back next season! Now… Let’s talk meta highlights! Utility Jungling is not Dead! An early prediction, with the removal of the Jungle emblem, was that tank junglers will not have a place in the meta. They assumed the lower damage output will affect the utility junglers’ clear ti...

The Philippines has been known to spend a third of the day looking at their smart phones. With majority of the population needing a smart phone to navigate through their day to day, it is no surprise that mobile gaming is a big hit here. From puzzle games like Candy Crush to competitive MOBAs like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, mobile gaming takes on different shapes and sizes. It is no surprise to see Filipinos of different ages playing on their phones to drown out the noise around them.  We could see how big the mobile gaming industry is here in the country by looking at how much efforts companies are putting into it. We’ve got telecommunications companies competing with each other for the best mobile data plans they could offer, with allotments for mobile games. We have the biggest Mobile Legends eSports scene, and big tech companies are using this as a way to break into the Philippine market. Talk to any Filipino, and they could name at least one popular mobile game.  Aside fr...

Taken from the Dota 2 website. Property of Valve The most awaited Dota 2 tournament starts in a few days!! How will things unfold in the city of Seattle? What stories and moments will this TI be remembered for?  Let's not get ahead of ourselves, and let us look at what the tournament can potentially be! Time for a Pre TI23 Tournament Analysis! An Overview This year has been quite a ride. The world began opening up and teams are now more diverse, with players coming from different regions playing under one banner. There were a lot of firsts and lasts. The DPC system is being retired, Dota 2 received one of the biggest updates its had in years, and let's not forget, no Battle Pass for this TI12. It is sad to see the norm go, but progress must happen. Even the format of The International 2023 is new! TI12 is reborn in Seattle, HQ of Valve, and the event will be a month long! The Teams With the tournament happening in the USA, a country strict with VISA applications, it is no surpr...

The new assassin hero is out!! Nolan a quick poke and burst hero. Armed with short cooldown spells, you go in, deal damage, go out and scout out the next kill.  Currently, there are no set builds for him, because everybody is still limit testing him. Moonton has been pushing him to be a jungler, but I believe his kit is better suited for laning.  Why Laning Nolan? In my opinion, Nolan has a pretty slow clear time, relative to the meta junglers this patch. Even with the jungler talent, Nolan’s clear is pretty below average. As an assassin jungler, he has high burst damage, but lacks the mobility other assassins like Ling, Gusion, Lancelot and Harley have. Some also believe he has a dependence on the purple buff, which he needs to chain his spells properly. This is more or less a skill issue, as I believe you can learn to be more efficient in his spell casting, thus maximizing your energy pool. My overall opinion on Nolan’s jungling capabilities is that he is subpar or half-bake...