I’m Terrible at StarCraft II

I eventually made it home last night, and managed to grab the entire 1.68 GB Starcraft II in under an hour.

I logged in, put in my authenticator code, hopped into the super easy practice 1v1 ladder, and was shown exactly how SC:II works, and that I am awful at it.

I will say that I was proud of myself for surviving the first zerg rush thrown at me, but after that it was pretty much all down hill, I won’t be able to play tonight, but maybe i’ll assemble what’s left of my pride and give it another try tomorrow night.

StarCraft II

So, My Beta E-mail is sitting in my Inbox as we speak, but I’m not at my computer, so I can’t go through and install it, I can’t even log in and see it, because I have an Authenticator on my account.

I some months ago, I can’t remember exactly when, and well I’d rather not remember when,  my WoW account was hacked, twice. The first time was easy, keylogger grabbed my password, logged in, grabbed all my stuff and sold it, I actually logged in while they were doing it, and stopped them midway by changing my password. It then turned out that they had the password to my E-mail as well, and hacked me a second time, after I had gotten all my gear back, of course.

But, in no time I will have my chance to download and get stomped by people online. Soon.

World of Warcraft – The Waiting Game.

So, I’ve been trying to play a lot more MMO’s lately, But it seems like more and more often I play an MMO for a while, then go back to WoW. The real issue is that, no one else plays other MMO’s, like, no one. I tell stories about how great Aion is, or how i love the area quests in Warhammer, but everyone else is playing WoW.

So I end up playing as well.

The problem with that, is that I’ve never been a huge Raiding fan, so I’ve really taken out the 5-man content and now i just wait. I’m not even sure what I’m waiting for, Cataclysm maybe?

It just feels like i’m beating my head against the wall, If anyone read this I would ask for suggestions, but honestly, the closest thing to a competitor for my time at this point is WonderKing, the “This is totally not Maple Story” game (which is really fun actually).

Update and Mass Effect 2

So, I seem to be really bad at updating, and considering the amount of time I spent in front of a computer it’s absolutely amazing that I don’t overblog.

So I’ve had some really intense game ADD lately, moving from Borderlands to AC:2 to Darksiders, and playing a ton of WoW and Star Trek: Online in between.

But if there is any one company that has the cure for my multi-game fever, it’s Bioware.

Mass Effect 2 is interesting in that it really tests the limits of what a company can do to a sequel and keep it’s core audience. It should first be noted, that from a strictly design perspective, Mass effect 2 is a better game in pretty much every front. No game is without it’s design stumbles, ME2 included, but the game is borderline design ballet.

That having been said, I find myself in a rough situation, I liked pretty much everything in the first Mass Effect, so to see things go wasn’t as much of a relief as it was for the majority of gaming press, armor customization is cool, but the lack of an inventory means I don’t get the little rush that comes with getting a new gun, and trying to decide if it’s better than my old one.  Not having the Mako means I don’t need to spend 45 minnutes to get across the map to get something that doesn’t really matter, but the system now implemented eliminates a lot of exploring.

It also breaks a habit in a lot of Role playing games, Stats.  I honestly don’t really know what my stats are in the game, I don’t need to manage them, and I only have 4-6 skills per character to pump advancement points into. I was really worried about this at first, I mean, I played D&D 3.5 I’m pretty sure there was a stat for how well you handled your stats in that game. But the system here lends itself more to story telling than micro managing, and more to actually playing a role than tying to munchkin an edge via stats (look up “munchkin” if you don’t know what I’m talking about, interesting concept design wise and great Steve Jackson game).

So the question Mass Effect 2 asks is: Can you make a story based, role playing game, that doesn’t have a focus on stat building?

The answer, though many won’t admit it, is a resounding yes, despite the lack of numbers, I feel in control of the story and who Shepherd is, which should really be the criteria of an RPG.

So, go play Mass effect 2, much like bacon it’s good for you.