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PewDiePie, 94 million YouTube subscribers strong, was once just another insanely popular yet innocuous gamer and content creator. Now he’s found himself a key player in a culture war and is one of the most dangerous men in America. To your average normie browsing on the internet this would sound completely absurd and something that came out of a PewDiePie fan-fiction, but interestingly enough it’s all true. In this journey we will come to learn that with great popularity comes great responsibility…or else.

“Death to All Jews” Controversy

PewDiePie begins 2017 off with a bang with a silly Fiverr reaction stunt. He paid a couple of weird Abo-looking dudes from Fiverr (a site where you pay people $5 to do anything) and then pretended to react to it. You must admit the marketing genius on PewDiePie’s behalf. Spending $5 on this silly Fiverr stunt resulted in a massive amount of media attention. But what kind of media attention?

PewDiePie thinks 'Death to all Jews' is a joke. Are you laughing yet? Arwa Mahdawi
Scary mixed lady implies gamer funnyman PewDiePie wants death to all Jews

Eh…there’s really no such thing as bad press anyways. Nobody of healthy spirit or sober mind would comb through the headlines and believe that PewDiePie was seriously trying to cause harm to Jewish community. Now PewDiePie would become talk of the internet thanks to the spotlight given to him by the media. Make no mistake – this was a huge boost to PewDiePie’s popularity.

PewDiePie reacts to "Death to All Jews" sign
Shock and awe

The Gamer Word

On the faithful day of September 10th, 2017, PewDiePie played PUBG, died, and unleashed the gamer word on the world.

What’s the big deal? He didn’t say anything that I wouldn’t say if I stubbed my toe or spilled some water. All this showed me was that Pewdiepie was a guy I could relate to. Not just that – but Pewdiepie would dutifully suffer a media onslaught for merely being one of us “dudes”. What difference does it make if a guy says a bad word on a personal stream? It’s just a word, you fucking babies.

Our Guy

Over these events (and some others I’m glossing over), PewDiePie has become a darling of gamers all over the internet. The media will try to have you believe his fans are right-wing, but the fact is that these people are just his fans are they come from all walks of life. Now that PewDiePie has grown to the peak of popularity and appears to be off the media’s leash (evident by their attacks on him and his audience), he has become the Neo in our Matrix (and the journals are the Agents).

PewDiePie Performing the Heil Hitler
The Famous Salute PewDiePie Doesn’t Actually Use in his Videos

Race Against T-Series

I barely care enough about T-Series to even write about them. It’s some weird YouTube Bollywood conglomerate. Apparently it’s important to them to be the most subscribed channel on YouTube. Frankly I’m not impressed because with India’s population of 1.35 billion, you could easily hit that goal by renting a few billboards on a few busy streets. To me it’s sad that with the potential backing of a 1.35 billion population or their enormous financing budget, that they struggle to compete with your average Joe PewDiePie. This race represented the strength and creativity individual versus the corporation. It’s an inspiring story of a single man taking on the establishment. The establishment is not only a manifestation of this Indian media conglomerate, but also a manifestation of the entire media empire seeking to destroy PewDiePie.

(((Think Inside the Box)))

PewDiePie Media Pileon

We gamers do not need to think too hard about things. We have journalists, some even who’ve gone to Harvard, to think for us.

All that we can conclude after these series of events that PewDiePie has grown to be an icon for not just gamers but for those who care about pushing our culture in a less corporate direction. When PewDiePie comes out and does something silly yet controversial: he shows us that his heart is in it and that he’s in it for the laughs. What the journalist media on the other hand is that they’re only in it for the sensationalism and social brownie points. That’s where lays the great irony of our media. They want to create an outrage yet simultaneously claim to be virtuous. Who would’ve even known that Pewdiepie said the gamer word if the media didn’t have a meltdown about it? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to ignore it if the media were truly concerned about people of color feeling uncomfortable by the use of the N-word? I’d attribute it to a lack of self-awareness, but that would be lack of self-awareness on my part, because we know the journalism industry is designed this way.

For Some Reason Mason Sands Doesn't Like PewDiePie
This Gamer from Harvard Wants You to Know Your Duty to Helping Create a Wholesome Youtube Community – What’s his deal? Does he think Pewdiepie was calling him the gamer word?

Dominions 5 Review

Dominions 5 is a pretty fucking awesome game. It’s way better than you could possibly expect from an indie TBS. There is too much to praise about it. Gameplay is tits. Here are the features that stood out to me…

Features Galore

  • Many monsters (3000+) and many many (300+) special abilities.
  • Over 80 different nations to choose from, varying from Marignon with paladins, witch hunters and inquisitors to under water nations like the Lovecraft inspired R’lyeh.
  • Three Eras to play in, Early era is most magic and the late era is more technologically advanced with good steel weapons and armors.
  • Design your Pretender God and how his dominion influences provinces.
  • Design your Pretender’s blessing will affect his sacred units.
  • Multiplayer with simultaneous turns (up to 32 players).
  • Network or Play by E-Mail for multiplayer.
  • AI opponents for single- or multiplayer game.
  • Random maps with cave, mountain passes, rivers, bridges and snow when it’s cold.
  • An extensive magic system with over 900 spells.
  • Blood magic, power your rituals with human sacrifices.
  • Global rituals that affect the entire world.
  • More than 400 magic items.
  • Unique magic artifacts that all players compete for, once forged no one else can make it.
  • Mercenaries are bought on a global market.
  • Scouts, Assassins, Spies, Seducers, Corruptors, Werewolves, Illusionists and more can be sneaking in your provinces.
  • Claim the thrones of Ascension to gain special powers and eventually win the game.
  • Permanent battle afflictions.
  • Easy to Mod (2d graphics)
  • Playable on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Graphics (or lack of)

The list of features seems pretty enticing, right? Well not so fast traveler – before we go on, I must warn you the graphics are pretty shitty. The sprites representing the units are so small that you can literally count the pixels. If you’re able to put aside graphics and appreciate deep strategic gameplay- you will find a lot of enjoyment with this game.

Dominions 5 has bad graphics.
I wasn’t kidding! Sprites representing units are so small that you can literally count the pixels. Despite there only being only 1 frame of animation, the game exudes charm

Despite the minimalistic graphics – I’m always drawn into the world Dominions presents. Every time you start up or exit the game presents a slow pan around one the game’s environments in the background as you gaze upon the main menu. Aided by the fantastic, epic-sounding music fit for a movie soundtrack, this game always presents a thick atmosphere and sense of adventure.

Dominions 5 has good random background generation.
A couple of examples of the inviting winter backgrounds. There are also winter, astral, forest, grassland, swamp, and underwater backgrounds as well. The random backgrounds ties into the random nature of the game. This game relies on a large amount of random elements to create a unique play experience every time.

Warriors of the Faith

Dominions 5 is massive so the best way to describe it without getting too verbose is that it’s Risk with magic. You pick an age, pick a nation design an aspiring God (called a ‘Pretender’), pick or generate a map, build an army, collect gems, research magic, seize thrones, conquer your enemies, and become God. When you engage with enemies on the map, you will be taken to a battle visualization reminiscent of old Total War games. A match go could go anywhere from two dozen turns to 200+ turns due to the dynamic nature of the game. This game’s amount of content is so enormous because they built upon the previous games with each sequel rather than starting from scratch.

Dominions 5 has big maps.
Most of the time you will be looking at a map to command your troops and build your empire.

Glancing on the game’s map is daunting at first. There are a lot of icons but not a lot of information. To make things even more intimidating is a general lack of intuition in the control layout. For example, it might take someone a couple minutes to figure out that if your unit is capable of sneaking (which many are), your unit will not attack unless you manually tell them to by holding ‘Shift’ when giving the Move order. If you select multiple commanders at once, your selection is saved when you click on the commanders later. Occasionally players will forget to unselect previously selected commanders and end up giving an unintended order without realizing. Nuances such as these add up to create what many players would consider to be a confusing play experience.

Dominions 5 frustrates some people.
Another satisfied review from your typical gamer

Not Your Grandma’s TBS

The way I see it; you cannot have a game with great depth without it seeming at least a little bit complicated on the surface. Observe the user review posted above. It’s difficult for me to speculate, but I suspect the individual was suffering from brain damage. Starting the game is as simple as clicking “Dominions 5” on Steam. If you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t like to read the manual or play a tutorial: Great! Then just play the game and learn through trial and error like I did. DasTactic has some great YouTube videos that will teach you how to play in about 30 minutes. A little patience will yield great rewards such as insanely huge battles or fun random events that occur turn to turn.

Dominions 5 has cool random events.
Lucky me – the circus has come to town! Random events in this game will range from great disasters (your lab randomly exploding and taking out your magic treasury) to greatly fortuitous events such as stumbling upon a fortune, strong magic item, or a unique hero specific to your nation.

Your experience in this game will be dictated by thousands of dice-rolls conducted under the hood each turn. These dice rolls will determine for example: the results of your battles, good luck events, bad luck events, and if a patrolling squad finds spies or not. Nearly every aspect of this game is determined by some element of luck, but that does not mean that strategy isn’t the determining factor. In this game’s battles you will not have direct control over the battle so must win by properly preparing your armies and giving much forethought to the tactics you dictate to your units.

300 Vanarus Vikings are led in their assault by my Pretender, Odin, versus the 1400 Undead Sceleria

More Battles Than Varg can Shake his Stick At

Once on the battlefield, your units have a mind of their own. They will follow the orders you gave them on the map screen to the best of their ability while simultaneously acting in their own interest when necessary. This creates battle replays that are very entertaining to watch because you literally watch your strategy unfold before your eyes as you watch helplessly. This is also very stressful because you are unable to do anything if things start to deviate from the plan. Of course if things all go to plan you’ll find yourself with a sense of satisfaction you can’t find in any other game. Every unit in this game can experience and power. Commanders even have wide variety of equipment slots which means this game is also a deeper RPG than most RPG’s.

Our Armies Clash in the Middle while my Priests Banish the Undead from Afar

Larger battles in the game will feature thousands of units. Different nations present a very large unit variety and interesting battle counters. If you observe the battle in my screenshot above, you’ll notice my priests obliterating the Undead army with pillars of light. In another battle my mages are fighting underwater merman by utilizing water-breathing amulets. Playing in a multiplayer match with 12 other nations will inevitably lead to a series of unique and interesting battles requiring you to constantly think about your tactics and strategies short-term and long-term. Given Domionions 5 is FFA-oriented and there is no diplomatic victory; everything in this game really boils down to the battles.

Despite being vastly outnumbers, the 300 Vanarus Vikings stood strong against Sceleria

When all is said and done, Dominions 5 is game that in many ways limited by your own imagination. My review doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what this game has to offer. If you really wanted to, you could get 25 friends together and play the most insanely huge and fantastical strategy game you’ve played in your life. It just comes down to if you have the time. I find myself still playing this game a year and a half after it’s release, and I have no plans of stopping.

Dominions 5 Store Page on Steam

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