Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
by Xing on Jul.30, 2010, under News, Reviews
Starcraft II
After a decade of waiting, I arrived at our local Wal-Mart at around 11:30 to pick up my copy of Starcraft II. I wandered into the electronics department to scope out the nerd gathering and see if I could sneak a copy of it without having to join in some type of geek conglomerate waiting on the game to go on sale. No such luck, about 5 or so people already there before me. So after waiting in line with about 15 other Starcraft fans; at 12:01 AM on July 27th I brought home my very own copy of the Starcraft II Collector’s Edition.
Not being sure if the beta client would just patch up to retail; I had uninstalled it earlier the day. So I went ahead and went through the retail disk installation. Kind of glad I did as the installer gave a nice recap of the story from the original Starcraft and briefly touched on Brood Wars to get you ready for the campaign that I would soon be undertaking.
I had put many of hours into the beta and was itching for some multi-player but ultimately decided to go ahead and start my Starcraft II experience with the campaign first. Greeted with Blizzard’s quality CG cinematic, my personal little SC2 launch party had started. It drops you into the story pretty quick, while there’s some very beginner tutorials available from the main screen, the game doesn’t force you to go through the normal RTS, “this is how you drag your mouse over units” type of garbage. The first few missions were simple enough, just getting your feet wet and setting the stage for the rest of the game.
Once I finished the first couple missions and was greeted with the mission “staging” area I guess I’ll call it; it became apparent this wasn’t an ordinary RTS single player campaign. Blizzard had crafted something unique and different here. They really nailed how to deliver a compelling story in an interactive way in Starcraft II. While keeping the gameplay true to RTS. The story also seems a lot more focused which I assume was the point of releasing the campaigns as 3 seperate games (and of course more $$$). While Terran is my least favorite of the Starcraft races, I still felt completely absorbed into the story of Jim Raynor and his fight against the Dominion which I credit to the storytelling.
The stories core is pretty simple and a little cliché at times but it’s still very enjoyable. It’s the delivery and presentation that makes it work so well I think. The campaign is not terribly long, maybe 10 hours or so on my first playthrough on Normal difficulty (including the “secret mission”). The achievements in the game are actually sort of compelling which is a nice change from normal Xbox/WoW achievements. It’s not so much appealing for me to collect them for the sake of it, but they’re almost like little challenges like beating a mission on Hard in a restricted time frame. It makes me say, “hmm, I bet I can do that.” This gives the game some re-playability outside of just the multi-player.
There is also a “Challenge” mode in the game which is sort of interesting. It basically gives you a handful of units to use, some situations or units to fight and tested you on your method of successfully dealing with various situations. Almost like a training mode for the crap you’ll run into in multi-player. Of course there’s also the multi-player itself which will be an ongoing discussion here on Orboro.net so not going to get into that right now.
Overall I expected Starcraft II’s single player campaign to be “good”, but what I got was something pretty “amazing”. Thank you Blizzard.
Awesome video of EVO 2010
by Xing on Jul.15, 2010, under Competitive
Seen this today and had to post it. Makes me want to go even more next year.
Yoshinori Ono to announce new Capcom game at Comic-Con
by Xing on Jul.14, 2010, under Competitive, News
Mr. Ono mentioned that he had a big announcement “bigger than SSF4″ at EVO this year and said that he would be making the announcement at Comic-Con in a few weeks. The higher ups at Capcom wouldn’t let him spill the beans at EVO.
Yoshinori Ono dropped a hint on his official Twitter account with this picture though:
This has stirred up quite a few theories as to what game it could possibly be. Seems to have a 360, PS3 and PC keyboard all placed in the picture and that’s obviously Ryu’s face. Everything from Street Fighter vs. Tekken, Darkstalkers, Capcom vs. SNK3, Street Fighter 5 or maybe just a DLC or SSF4 for PC being announced. No one is quite sure. Capcom seems to love generated hype though and seems to be doing a good job of it.
According to what he said about it at EVO it’s due out in about a year which will put it very close to their other huge release, Marvel vs Capcom 3 and seems too early for a full blown Street Fighter 5. I guess we’ll find out at Comic-Con!
Daigo Umehara remains EVO champion 2010
by Xing on Jul.12, 2010, under Competitive
Definitely feeling the decision staying up till 1:30 in the morning EST to watch the EVO finals. After the surprise elimination of Justin Wong on Saturday, there was a new level of hype surrounding the 2010 EVO finals. The action didn’t disapoint either. Between the excellent matches and skill shown and the new players on the scene this year, it’s no wonder the Evolution tourmanent is the pinnacle of fighting game competition.
New players making a big splash this year was Gamerbee (Adon) and Vangief (Zangief) both of which are subsequently the players that eliminated J Wong from the top 8 this year. After a grueling set of matches between the top 8, Daigo “the Beast” Umehara stands as the reigning champion of EVO 2010 against Ricky Ortiz who came in second place.
The whole results list is below:
Justin Wong eliminated from EVO 2010 top 8
by Xing on Jul.11, 2010, under Competitive
Got home late last night but got to catch the last hour or so of the EVO 2010 semi-finals on livestream. Saw the loss of Justin Wong to a pad Zangief player and then an Adon player in loser’s bracket to get thrown out of the tournament. Was pretty shocking but it shows that the “standard” tier lists aren’t all that matters. While most tournament players stick to the staple characters and their comfort zone, there are some new players this year representing another side of Super Street Fighter 4 and I hope that let’s people know that if you put the time in with a character and bring some confidence you can really go far without following the popular trends. Of course this may just be wishful thinking and in reality, and there will be a million new Adon players on Live tomorrow. Guess we’ll see.
Blizzard backs down on the Real ID forum changes
by Xing on Jul.09, 2010, under MMORPG, News
So after 2000+ post threads on the issue of Blizzard using people’s first and last names on their optional forums caused massive controversy, Blizzard announced today that they screwed up and will not use peoples first and last names on the forums afterall. They’re still going through with some other enhancements but it looks as if old fashioned opinions and service boycotting (through accounts cancellations) won the day for those strongly opposed to it.
Probably for the best.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1
EVO 2010 starting at noon EST
by Xing on Jul.09, 2010, under News
Looking forward to watching the EVO 2010 live stream that starts today. Maybe next year I’ll get to go and get my ass kicked at Street Fighter IV. Can watch the live stream here:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance; two birds with one stone
by Xing on Jul.08, 2010, under Reviews
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
I’ve completed both Marvel Ultimate Alliance games now for a while and had quite my fill of spandex and special power button spamming. For this review I decided to talk about both games in one post. For one, they’re too similar to really need two posts and for two, it’s efficient! So let’s get to it.
Graphics
Both games look pretty good. UA2 did look like it had a little more polish on the graphics. Like there was some additional post processing effects or something going on. Both games were pretty simple graphically but looked good enough for an action/rpg’ish style game. That’s to be expected I suppose as developers get better at optimizing for a given console. Neither game are really out to set a new bar in graphics but it’s good enough.
Sound
Honestly, there’s the standard fair of web slinging noises and wolverine claws. The voice over work is decent on some characters while a little painful on others. Music wasn’t particularly memorable.
Story
Well, I actually kind of liked the first game’s story more. Maybe it was better characters as the villains or something, I’m not really sure. Both games are pretty simple for the story and neither are great. The second game also seemed much more linear while the first one seemed like it had more side quests and things to go do. The second game however added some decision making points throughout which affect the story slightly.
Gameplay
The gameplay of the Ultimate Alliance series is pretty much exactly the same. You’re a little super hero on the screen fighting swarms of bad guys and bosses. They drop in tons of Marvel characters in both games so if you like comics, one of your favorite characters are bound to show up somewhere in the game. My biggest beef with the gameplay and the same issue every one of my friends had when playing multi player in both games was it’s very hard to keep track of where your character is on the screen. There’s just so many characters and things flying all over the place the screen is so busy it gets a little disorientating.
The multi-player is pretty fun regardless and while both games are pretty short, it’s a decent co-op series to dump 6-8 hours into a piece.
Conclusion
Fun little games, if you can pick them up on the cheap and/or want a fun co-op game, go for it. Paying $60 though for such a short game with simple gameplay and not great storytelling, probably not in the cards.
Real name to be used on Battle.net forums
by Xing on Jul.07, 2010, under News
Battle.net
So Blizzard dropped quite the bombshell yesterday regarding it’s upcoming change in policy on how Real ID will be used on the official forums. Basically once they launch the new forums, any posts you make will display with your real first and last name on the thread.
Of course this stirred up quite the shit storm on the forums about privacy issues, how it’s illegal in some countries (I’m not making this up) and many other ad hominem rhetoric. There are some thoughts to be considered about potential employers Google searching for you and possibly discriminating against you for being a World of Warcraft player, possible racial discrimination based on ethnic names, women being harassed by creepy people, etc. While I don’t disagree these are legitimate issues, people seem to be missing or more likely the case; simply ignoring the fact that it’s completely optional to participate in the WoW forums and it is not required as part of the gaming experience. They’ve already confirmed parents can disable posting with parental controls and it’s not retroactive to old posts which would be the two major issues causing any type of breach of trust in privacy in my own beliefs. From here it’s just a matter of choosing whether to participate in Battle.net’s forums knowing your name will appear.
Now I don’t doubt that some people will not post on the forums anymore because of the above legitimate concerns but that’s their choice. Blizzard is being up front about their intentions and while some people enjoy their ability to troll the WoW forums while being anonymous, it’s not a god given right to be able to do so.
Red Dead Redemption
by Xing on Jun.21, 2010, under Reviews
Read Dead Redemption
Anyone that has read some of my previous posts knows I’m a cheap ass and it’s not easy for me to come to terms with paying full price for new games. It’s just too much damn money for something that usually doesn’t last very long. The reviews and hype this game was getting though convinced me to bite the bullet and buy it. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew it was a Rockstar game so I assumed GTA the Western from the YouTube videos and comments I’ve read. In the end I found I was only partially correct.
Graphics
The look of the game is pretty stunning. I thought I was used to what the current generation consoles looked like and what they were capable of but somehow Rockstar really outdid themselves making a beautiful game that somehow runs great on the 360′s limited hardware a mile ahead of what other games are doing. While some people complained that the game’s landscape gets a little repetitive and I can see where they’d reach that conclusion, I didn’t really get tired of it. I guess it was just the atmosphere that it generated for me. I felt like a gritty ass cowboy fighting my way through the old West. Rockstar really delivered here.
Sound
The sound in the game is also amazing. The ambient Western score playing in the background of the game really added the finishing touches on an already gripping atmosphere in the game through the visuals. I thought they really nailed it but then on my way into Mexico an original lyrical song started playing and it blew me away. The sound and music really sets it apart as something on another level. It’s one of the few games I actually had to get the soundtrack to after I finished the game.
Controls
The dreaded aiming 3rd person shooter style Xbox game was going through my head while I was standing in the checkout line at Best Buy struggling with handing over $60. However the game eased my pain a little with it’s auto targeting mechanics and Fallout 3 V.A.T.S. style bullet time mechanic. While making the game a little extra easy at times, the aiming system did make it at least enjoyable to me. Not to mention you can pull off some pretty crazy gun fight antics with the Deadeye system. Other than the aiming, it’s pretty standard fair for controls. The horse riding controls seemed interesting enough although there is a good bit of riding around in the game, the awesome visuals and soundtrack make it bearable to do so much traveling.
Story
With the visuals, sound and controls all coming together well to make an excellent experience, the heart of Read Dead Redemption lies in it’s absolutely great storytelling. Great writing and voice over work created a compelling story of a old gritty cowboy coming to the end of his era and fighting for redemption (there’s a point to the name of the game) with his life and his family. The story of this game raises the bar for other games in the future and it’s delivery and quality is going to be talked about for quite a while.
Multi-player
I didn’t really worry about the multi-player until I finished the single player story. Mostly because I couldn’t stop playing it. I did get a bit of time with it though once I finished the story. Multi-player has a couple different modes. The first is a open ended almost mini-MMORPG mode where you can level up to earn better guns/horses and work with (or against) other group’s posse’s to take out gang hideouts and complete mini-objectives in the RDR world. Hilariously your starting character at level 1 doesn’t even get a horse, he rides around a donkey with the expected sounds that should be associated with such donkey intact. The more traditional 3rd person shooter modes exist also such as team deathmatch shootouts and the like. All of these taking place in the Read Dead Redemption setting with the Western style behind them make for a pretty good time. This gives the game some solid value after the completion of the story mode.
Conclusion
Most of my game adventures are played over the course of a few weeks once I decide to commit and finish a game. 20 hours of Read Dead Redemption took place for me in about 4 days. That says something, at least to me; about the quality of this game. As a complete package, Read Dead Redemption is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in the last 10 years. Between the mini-games, solid story, and value added mutli-player; it’s going to be hard to dethrone this as game of the year. Unfortunately for RDR; Starcraft 2 is releasing this year also else there would probably be no competition for it. Regardless RDR is an experience no gamer should miss. My original impression would be a GTA Western, when I said I was partially correct – it does bring a lot of mechanics and feel from GTA but with a level of storytelling and atmosphere that sets it apart and in my opinion makes it superior in every way. Also the ending isn’t quite when you expect it to be. It’s not over till the credits roll.
