starcraft 2 Archive

0

Postgame: Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

If there had to be one title to act as the envoy for the video games industry in 2010 it would have to be Starcraft 2.

You’d be hard pressed to find any other game appeals to everyone from the 30 minutes a day casual player all the way up to the professional Korean player making seven figures with an entourage of bodyguards and female groupies.

Yes, you read correctly. Seven figures. Groupies. Entering live tournaments on rock stages on a speedboat.

There’s three audiences that I think should run out and give this game a shot:

  1. Tower defense game junkies (whether it’s on your phone, iPad, computer, or console)
  2. People who already enjoy real time strategy games (How can you like RTS games and not at least give Starcraft 2 a shot? That’s like saying I like action movies, but I refuse to watch Inception.)
  3. Professional Starcraft players. (though I think those don’t really need to read this review)

Starcraft 2 is an interesting game because it’s one that’s physically impossible to play on any current console. It doesn’t mean that the game is that complex, it just means that it’s a genre that’s best controlled with a mouse and keyboard due to the nature of the tasks needed to be done. The game will run on almost any modern computer, Mac or PC alike, so chances are if you own a computer made within the last few years, you can play it.

Read the rest of this entry »

0

Starcraft II Pros Vs. Joes Hilarity

It may be ultimately pointless and/or sadistic, but something about seeing professionals masquerade amongst the hoi polloi and utterly owning the unsuspecting  public in their craft is absolutely enthralling to me.

As part of their Starcraft 2 release coverage last week, TeamLiquid (a professional-level Starcraft community) posted a video of a diamond-level Starcraft 2 player playing through his five mandatory placement matches. Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the terminology – all you have to know that this guy is really good and the reason he’s matched up against these poor victims is because everyone has to go through this process in order to be placed into the correct skill-level league. Kind of like taking a placement test to see if you’re in the gifted kid class or the short bus class.

You’ll see entertaining things such as writing out “LOL” in Auto-Turret placement in the enemy base or spelling out his online handle in the middle of the map using carefully placed units. You will also see ridiculous strategies utilized such as using double offensive Planetary Fortresses.

Basically, it’s a much nerdier equivalent of Jewel doing undercover karaoke. Well, maybe with more embarrassment for the common man.

(You can start the video at 3:10 if you want to skip past the internet gamer humor introduction.)