StarCraft 2

A little more Madden, and a lot more Starcraft… after a lot of matches against the AI today I decided to skip the remaining 43 practice league games, and jump right into my placement matches. It was a good thing to do… though my placement matches went sort of funny. I mentioned in my previous post that I had some reservations about taking my game online. I think I have a closet fear of losing, I know I don’t really care if I win or lose these things, I just want to be competitive, and have fun thats why the stress and anxiousness of playing these matches sort of surprised me, and made me really uncomfortable. Anyway, I’m really glad I played these games for a couple reasons that I’ll get to into in a bit.

First match I got roflstomped by a Protoss Cannon rush by a platinum player… nothing quite like a series of pylons and cannons creeping in from the fog of war outside your nexus. Game was over in 5 minutes, I felt shame. And was anxious, I was getting into it. Like really worked up. I’m generally a pretty tranquil guy, I don’t really like getting worked up like that. But, the lesson learned was pylon spread, and scouting, including my own starting area.

Second match was a win for me! I did everything I wanted to do in the match, I was working with a scout, something I had been struggling with, and neglecting, I stuck to my plan, and even worked in a little trickery of my own by planting a pylon inside my opponent’s wall-in that went undetected. I still got anxious and worked up, but this felt good.

My third match was literally 8 seconds long, I had just long enough to get my probes mining before my opponent quit. It appears from his profile that, this was his first and only 1v1 though, he has played a few 2v2′s.

The forth match was also sort of weird, because I thought I was going to lose, I was still sticking to my plan, but I was playing a zerg opponent, and the game I was playing was mostly neglecting using stalkers at all. It occurs to me now that this was a terrible idea to begin with because I clearly need ~something~ to shoot down overlords scouting my base, anyway… the player sent in a 6 zergling rush that I really didn’t have much defense for I managed to get a couple zealots out to start hitting them back and I sent my probes after him but the minute that first attack was defeated he quit. I was in bad shape too, I was down to 8 probes total at 5minute mark. I’m not sure why he quit but I lucked out thats for sure. The funny part though is that at this point, I was pretty calm, even in a very bad situation.

My final placement match was on a map I had never played, never liked the look of scrap station, against the first polite player I played in the lot. I lost, but it was pretty easy to identify why that was. I dropped my second pylon way early. My opponent didn’t, and instead got his second gateway well before I did. 6 zealot rush in my front door when I only had 2 out, probes couldn’t save me, and so it was game over. Checking the profile the opponent was a gold level player, with 24 matches under his belt, and I reckon they learned the same lesson I did in their early matches. Best part about this match, is my placement was done, and all that anxiety that I was experiencing was gone and I was able to focus on what was going on in the matches.

Feeling pretty good about myself with a 3-2 record (despite the fact that 2 of those wins were against people quitting inexplicably) I hopped into my first match in the Silver league (rated a lowly 82) (not at the bottom yay!), it was against a gold level zerg. Learning my lesson from the last match with the zerg that I needed something in the air, I decided to do a little something involving a star gate and some void rays, it was on a larger map, so I ended up doing my scouting like I’ve been trying to train myself to do even though it was effecting my macro some, including allowing myself to get supply blocked which meant I ended up having to do some probe defense on a couple zergling harass before I had any units out. I had setup my star gate at a proxy pylon closer to the opponent base with my original scout probe, something I had seen in some of the videos I had been watching while I was too nervous to be playing my own matches. this worked out really well for me, because it was never scouted. I fended off a subsequent push with a handful of zealots, and began my counter attack just in time for my void ray to be coming out. My opponent had no air defenses at all, so I was able to simply leave the ray in there after taking out the queen, and fall back to defend against the forthcoming base swap attempt. I WON! And again, I was pretty calm throughout the match.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that if you’re nervous about taking your Starcraft game online, the best advice I can give is get over it. It’s not worth all the thought you’re putting into it if you’re anything like me. Don’t get me wrong, be prepared, play some matches with the AI watch some videos online for some guidance. But seriously, you’ll be glad you did, I had a great day with StarCraft 2 today, and I’ll probably get some in again tomorrow.

Currently: 6-2 Silver League (rank: 46)

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll remember that I had some concerns about the holiday season line up this year. Since then, both The Last Guardian (at no surprise to me), and Crysis 2 have been pushed back to 2011. So to recap (loosely) what is still coming that I’m at least moderately interested in.

We’ve got the hardware battle to think about, the girlfriend has been sold on Kinect, and specifically Dance Central, so that’ll be around, but to be honest, I may not be able to play that game due to pride constraints. I think move is interesting, I could play some of that, however… I have no interest in the launch titles at this point, on top of that, like all new tech, it’s going to take a while (I’d say almost a year), for developers to be able to deal with the hardware, while Move has an advantage here because one could assume that Wii developers have some experience here and would be able to get a head start on the learning curve, the disheartening part is that most of the good games on the Wii were made by Nintendo, I think the only exception is going to be Red Steel, a game I felt was limited only by the technical short comings of the Wii hardware. When this team makes a game for the Move I’ll pay attention, and perhaps some credit to Team Ninja for the upcoming work with “The Other M”.

Consoles

We’ve got the EA sports 11 line up, Football and Hockey are going to be bought for certain, that’s great because the franchise modes there can be a huge time sink if I can get into them. A few no brainers, Gran Turismo 5, Fallout: New Vegas, RockBand 3 (I still play RockBand or Guitar Hero a couple times a week). Vanquish won me over with the media bust about a month ago, and while I assumed I was going to pass on the upcoming Call of Duty offering, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist when the time comes. The upcoming Spiderman game has some potential, but I’ve got major concerns, that I’ll share in a focused post in the near future. Little Big Planet 2 will make an appearance. Maybe Max Payne 3 if it does actually make it out this year (I assume this one will be the next to be pushed into next year).

A couple Wii games worth thinking about, but it’s hard for me to get excited for a Wii game at this point, Metroid: The Other M, and Kirby Epic Yarn are on that list.

PC

Civ 5 should be a good time, and I’ll try Final Fantasy XIV when it comes out. Truthfully I’ll probably end up with fallout for PC in the end.

It sounds like a lot of games to play, but when I think of last year’s holiday season, there were games every week starting in September that were must buys, and then a couple more in the months that were compelling enough to consider buying. This is going to be a slow holiday for the hobbyist gamer like me. The kind of gamer who really gets into the single player of an experience and then moves on.

StarCraft 2

My history with Starcraft 1 was limited, I played most, if not all of the campaign, I played some multi-player with friends, but not really on battle.net. So my excitement for this title was really nostalgia based, and as such I came in with the same fears I had about fighting games in general, which is, that it was fun because playing games like this with friends is fun… I’ve played many of the action-RTS games that have come out of over the years, and they’re all fine an good, but I was really looking forward to a traditional RTS game like a Starcraft game commited to be true to its pedigree.

The story picks up 4 years after the events of brood wars, with the redneck Jim Raynor commanding his group of revolutionaries, the terribly named “Raynor’s Raiders”. Who are pitting their forces against the evil dictator Mensk, and the Dominion. The Tarren on Tarren (humans in the lore of Starcraft) action doesn’t last long before the Zerg and the Queen of Blades (formerly Kerrigan), show up, and not long after that before the protoss make an appearance and the love triangle from my youth continues, with a touch of internal struggle. We’re presented with Blizzard quality (that is to say very well done) cut scenes between every mission, and as a huge surprise to me to me, also between every mission you’re also given the opportunity to navigate a hub world of sorts where you can interact with the members of Raynor’s crew, upgrade your units/structures, purchase mercenaries to bolster your team in the missions (more on that later). It’s played out like a point and click adventure game, where you’re given some insight to the characters motivations as well as the situation that they find themselves in. I wasn’t expecting this at all, and while it’s not exactly brilliance, it did give the story some substance that is generally lacking in the RTS genre. That said however, I wasn’t totally sucked into the story, and I didn’t really get attached to the characters in any sense despite Blizzard’s strong efforts. There are some choices that effect the missions you end up going on and your crew structure, but to me they felt mostly insignificant. So again, an okay story in general, but excellent for the genre.

The single player campaign was crafted with extreme care. Every mission seems to introduce a different type of challenge, be it strategy, or environmentally based. For example, there was a mission where all of the minerals on the map are at a lower altitude, the trick is every few minutes those low areas are flooded with lava, so while gathering your minerals and applying pressure to your enemy you need to be aware of the timer. It’s really an exercise in managing your troops, making sure you get everything to high ground. I don’t want to go too spoiler on this since it’s most of the fun, suffice to say that this sort of variety persists through the twenty-some-odd missions. You do get some choice as to which mission you take when, there are often 2 available at any one time, and because of the rewards it has some impact on how the subsequent missions can be played out. Blizzard also opted to remove the bulk of the base building from most missions, by dropping you into a pretty established starting point. I can see how that would read as a positive to a lot of people, but that, plus the fact that new units are constantly being introduced it really takes a lot of the trial and error strategy out of the missions. Sadly you can tell what you have to do by the new units you have and the structures you’re provided. This is where the achievements add quite a bit of depth and replayability to the experience, even for a guy (namingly me) who doesn’t normally buy into the achievement thing. I think it was different in this case because reading the achievements makes you think “hmm… I wonder how I’d pull that off”, which introduces a whole bit of strategy and problem solving that I love. The down side of not being involved in the strategic elements of building your base, is that it really leaves you  ill-equipped to deal with the competition you’ll be facing on Battle.net. They added some RPG-like elements in the campaign by being able to  earn points by completing objectives that you can use to research zerg or protoss technology. Every five points you get to pick one of two new skills or units (choosing one locks out the other) that you can use through the campaign. Unfortunately you’ll be leaving these upgrades and units (and even some that aren’t upgrades) behind when you go online.

Thankfully, to help bridge the gap you also get 9 “challenges” that are intended to teach you some of the finer points. “Walling in” to fend off a rush, unit counters (which units are most effective against which), micromanaging your units, and using your hot keys and so on. They’re fairly effective at their purpose, but really to get ready to go online, you’ll need to spend some time in matches versus the AI getting used to establishing a base. To be completely frank, the matches against the AI is where the game has been most fun for me so far (despite the fact that my strategy, and ability fall apart at the 10-12 minute mark).

The best screenshot I could muster from my online experience so far

The Battle.net UI here is great, all the information you want is at your finger tips it’s super easy to group up with friends and getting into matches has been quick and easy. I haven’t spent a ton of time in online matches, but I did play a few, against players who apparently didn’t spend as much time battling with the AI or doing the challenges, so I haven’t really felt challenged in the practice league yet, but it’s still be fun and you do get a bit of a rush when you do get into an encounter even if you do feel like you have the stronger army, despite being able to identify flaws in my attack, and my execution. I don’t know if thats a credit to my research skills, or if the game has taught me more than I’m giving it credit for.

When it’s all said and done though, I’ve been playing this game with almost every minute of spare time I’ve had since it came out. Gamers looking for a traditional realtime strategy game, especially those looking to get online are going to find A LOT to love about this game, the quality of this title, the attention detail and the glossy shine of typical Blizzard polish is on full display. Some may be disappointed by the lack of innovation, but I think it provides enough newness to usher Starcraft into a new generation of player, and satisfy the seasoned veterans at the same time. If you’re looking for purely a one player experience, or for something ‘new’ I don’t think this game is the one for you, but if you’re the kind of person who can get into completing every objective in the game, this could keep you busy for a while.