Posts Tagged ‘StarCraft II’

StarCraft II: Lost Viking

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

For anyone not accustomed to side-scrolling shooters – very plausible given that SC2 is a real-time strategy game – the Lost Viking achievements may be one of the most annoying to obtain (at least as far as the campaign goes). However, given a bit of effort, it is far from impossible for even the most casual gamer. Here are a few general tips…

Power-ups

  • Plasma vs. side missiles – Though the plasmas will take down bosses much quicker than the rockets, it is hard to use them elsewhere in the scenario. In general, the latter is much more user-friendly; the former is for those who have great skill in aiming while maneuvering through enemy fire.
  • Drones – These little guys are amazing; they help take down opposing units and also sacrifice themselves should you take a hit, acting as an extra life. Two of these should be gotten as soon as possible (wait for the power-ups to morph if need be).
  • Bombs – Bombs are literally the PANIC! button in this minigame and there is no shortage of them after having finished upgrading the ship’s weaponry and obtaining the drones. They should be used whenever you’re in a “crap, I’m screwed”-spot (typically during the Zerg and Terran bosses).

Levels

  • The Protoss level is pretty straightforward; there aren’t too many things worth mentioning about it. One interesting thing to note is that you can “farm” the interceptors that the boss throws out for points; this can actually get you past the 500k point barrier without having to fight Terra-Tron for a 3rd time.
  • For the Zerg, it is best not to move around a lot as you take down the scourges. By staying motionless, the enemy “firing” pattern is much less chaotic. Of course, moving as little as possible is a general rule in most shooters so… As for the boss here, the main thing to watch out for is the tentacles; the stockpile of bombs will come in useful here though they aren’t completely necessary.
  • Terra-Tron is by far the biggest threat in the third level, with lasers, bullets, and even a homing saw at its disposal. The laser can be avoided by being at the opposite side of the screen from where Terra-Tron starts firing; the saw isn’t too hard to dodge, at least on its own. The hail of bullets on the other hand is quite annoying given the clunky, imprecise controls. Again, the bomb stockpile will serve quite nicely here.

Controls

One interesting thing to note is that spamming the spacebar continuously is much more effective than keeping it held down. This gets rather tiring and distracting so, me being me, I wrote a quick AutoHotkey script to automate this process.

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Activated := 0
 
Loop {
	If (Activated) {
		Send {Space}
		Sleep, 50
	}
}
 
$Space::
	Activated := !Activated

Press the spacebar once and the ship will fire continuously at maximum speed without any further direction. It makes it much easier to focus on dodging fire and using bombs when necessary. :P

Anyway, Happy Hallowe’en!

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StarCraft II

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

Well, SC2 is a game that needs no introduction with all the press that it has gathered over the last few months. After all, its predecessor literally jumpstarted the entire progaming scene; expectations are high that SC2 will take Brood War’s place over the next few years. I’ve been replaying the campaign the last few days, trying to pick up most of the achievements (I already stomped through it once during my exam period just to go through the storyline; let’s just say casual difficulty is really, really casual :P ).

As is usual for a Blizzard game, SC2 mostly lives up to its hype. The graphics are phenomenal without being overbearing; I can still play the game relatively well on medium settings using a laptop that I got three years ago. The audio is pretty decent as well. All of the sounds are appropriate, given the situation; it’s easy enough to tell what’s going on if you listen intently. Much of the music seems like it was remixed from SC1 too, giving an old nostalgic feel to the game.

What I really liked was the changes to the user interface. The new control groups really help a low-APM player like me. :P Things like automatically (and intelligently) choosing which building to build a unit from, having unlimited units in one group, casting only one copy of a special ability at a time, and such means that I can focus less on mass-spamming my mouse and keyboard and focus more on overall strategies. Of course, there are things missing that I’d like to see. For example, wouldn’t it be nice if units created from a building were automatically assigned to a chosen control group when they come out? This could be implemented by, say, Ctrl + Right Click on a control group when the buildings are highlighted. Right now this is half-done if you rally the buildings’ troops to a unit; they’ll basically follow that unit if it isn’t dead.

The storyline itself was okay. I didn’t expect much from a RTS game so all of the character development and stuff were pretty much gravy. That said, much of the plot is relatively predictable and cliché; despite giving you a lot of choice in choosing which missions to do first, there isn’t much overall impact in the end. At least there weren’t any inconsistencies that I could see though (e.g. one mission done before another, but some dialogue refers to the latter in the former). I suppose not too many people care about singleplayer SC2 anyway so it’s a moot point…

I haven’t played any league games yet and don’t really intend to; I’m not particularly big on competitive gaming in general. SC2 isn’t exactly balanced for anything above 1 vs 1 anyway (hell, it’s not even balanced for that despite aiming to become the de facto standard for progaming). I’ll stick with trolling the AI and playing custom maps, thanks. :P

Anyway, there are a few things that I dislike about the game. The lack of chat on the new Battle.net is kind of a step back from the previous iteration; not everyone likes to interact with others on the official community forums. That said, the old Battle.net was pretty blah, so meh… Regionalization of the community is a massive pain in the ass too; is Blizzard seriously telling me that I can’t play with friends in other regions without buying another copy of the game? The world is coming closer together with all of our new communication technology and they pull that kind of crap in the name of providing a better experience for their users. I haven’t seen a justification for such an action that couldn’t be met with a “softer” version of segregation (for example, league matchmaking can be done by region but custom games can allow anyone from anywhere to join; this allows for lower ping in “important” matches and increased versatility when players want it). Sure, it’d be harder to implement but it shouldn’t be impossible for a company with Blizzard’s resources. Oh yeah, a lack of LAN support is lame too (I can deal with regionalization if we had that option). I can definitely see why Blizzard doesn’t want to implement it though, seeing as SC2 is supposed to be focusing on competitive gaming. A look at the company’s actions with KeSPA and you can see that they really want to control a good part of the scene.

That said, SC2 is still a solid game in my eyes (and I’m missing out on the supposed best part of the game – online league play). Time to finish up the campaign achievements, I guess. My fingers are still numb from doing “All In” on brutal versus all of that flying Zerg… :P

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It’s a Blizzard!

Friday, July 9th, 2010

…or in this case, more like a shitstorm. Blizzard’s intention of rolling out their Real ID system made its way around the internet in a surprisingly swift manner. And the general feedback is negative, even after taking into account the vocal minority phenomenon. Not surprising.

Recent advancements in areas such as social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) has gradually chipped away at the notion of anonymity over the web. People are taking to the idea of revealing more of themselves to others using such tools. This is by no means a bad thing; the internet has shifted towards being a more interactive, real-time medium. The way we disseminate news and other information has changed drastically.

Blizzard’s reason for rolling out the system was to foster a better community, one that was devoid of spammers and trolls. They’re likely the only gaming company that has the clout to do so, with millions of subscribers on their flagship game. Of course, being that World of Warcraft is subscription-based, they already have the information needed for Real ID (i.e. first/last name). That’s scary. (Of course, one wonders how many kids have their parent’s name on record instead. :P )

Will it stop trolling on the forums? Perhaps. It will also turn off a lot of people who are genuinely interested in distancing their online personality from their offline one. One of the reasons why content creation on the internet is so popular is that people do not necessarily have to attribute the content to themselves. This allows for more truthful communication; words do not necessarily have to be sugar-coated to please a certain group of members. If I recall correctly, 4chan was based on this principle, having unfiltered and often heated discussions between people. Would people be willing to talk about sensitive issues such as gay marriage, wars, etc. if their real-life reputation was on the line? My guess is that for most, no.

One major reason that I dislike the idea of Real ID is that gamers do not require that kind of intimacy. Hell, even in my extremely close-knit gaming circle, pretty much everyone calls me by one of my nicknames. In some cases we actually want to distance ourselves from our true identity; what’s the point of playing RPGs if we’re not actually role-playing the characters? Besides, games are sometimes used as a way to escape into a virtual world.

Anyway, let’s be honest. Blizzard really wants to use such a system so that it can align itself with social media. If it can tap into Facebook’s social graph where people reveal all sorts of things about themselves, it can tailor new features to such demographics. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing (read: better products) but it does suggest other ulterior motives. I personally don’t need a web where my own information can be easily used against me (and I’m saying this while being currently enrolled in a marketing class! :P ).

Here’s a few more articles/blogs/sites/whatever of interest:

On another note, the StarCraft 2 beta is back out again. I’m just going to wait for the game to be released, but it’s still interesting to watch my friends pounce on it and rip it apart once again. :P Must…feed…SC…addiction, yes?

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