Category Archives: Gaming

Homefront (Xbox360/PS3/PC)

Posted on by Arleigh

While most first-person shooter games tend to bore me there are a few which have caught my gaming fancy and continue to play to this day. Usually it’s either the latest game from Microsoft’s Halo franchise or Activision’s Call of Duty series. I tend to have less excitement over upcoming new FPS games and will wait until people who do love them actually give me a thumbs up or thumbs down on a particular title before I try it.

There’s one game which has caught my eye and part of it is due to the interesting story the game will be built around. A speculative fiction the game will revolve around and it’s the occupation of the US by a Greater Korean Republic in the year 2027.

Yes, you read that correctly. The US in this game will be invaded by a unified Korea (with the North in control) after many years of economic downturn has finally collapsed the US economy in addition to the world itself experiencing the first stages of post peak-oil. This setting has a major Red Dawn feel to it and it’s not surprising since the person who came up with the story for Homefront is none other than John Milius himself who wrote and directed the film.

While details on the gameplay looks to keep to the usual FPS gameplay standard the plot and some of the single-player campaign tweaks has made me decide that this game will be something I need to play. This time the player will play an American playing as a guerilla fighter in the Korean-occupied US. Civilians as collateral damage is suppose to play an integral part in how the game unfolds in the single-player campaign.

The multiplayer will include the usual point system earned to buy newer and better gear and weapons. Unlike the two franchises previously mentioned the points earned can also go towards bigger ticket items such as helicopters, tanks and other vehicles.

Here’s to hoping that there’s a fancy swag-edition of this game and that publisher THQ and the game’s developer KAOS Studios get creative with said limited swag-edition.

Song of the Day: Transcending Love (by Michiru Yamane, Takashi Yoshida, Masahiko Kimura, Keiko Fukami)

Posted on by Arleigh

I am what you would call an avid gamer. I’ve been playing video games since I was a wee lad and marveled at the Atari 2600. I moved from that system through the many systems after it to my current one which is my Xbox 360.

I’m an equal opportunity gamer in that I will play any type of game at least once no matter the genre. In the end, the one  genre which I will always gravitate towards and I consider my first gaming love are role-playing games. I especially have a special place in my heart for Japanese role-playing games. It’s music from one of those Japanese role-playing games where I have chosen the latest “song of the day”.

The latest song chosen is from the Konami-published role-playing game series called Suikoden. This particular song comes from the third game in the main series, Suikoden III, and is the opening theme for the game. The song’s title is “Transcending Love” and is one of my favorite piece of game music ever produced. The song even gets a well-animated anime opening sequence which shows characters and events from the  game but doesn’t show too much about who they are and what the plot of the game is all about.

The song is part of a soundtrack which includes several Japanese game music composer that figuring out who was responsible for this particular song would be difficult to do. I’ve decided to just credit all of them for what I consider one of the best game opening themes and music ever composed.

Dragon Age 2

Posted on by Arleigh

In the winter of 2009, BioWare released a new rpg franchise to bookend their massively successful and critically-acclaimed scifi-rpg series Mass Effect. This new franchise was to be fantasy-based and would take the same deep and complex storytelling paired with morality choices that all past BioWare rpgs were well-known for. The game was Dragon Age: Origins and it did quite well that the company quickly began on creating the follow-up.

The game was a success, but not without some gripes from critics and players alike. While overall the game delivered on the experience BioWare promised it had some gameplay and visual failings which kept the game from becoming one of the great ones in 2009. The combat mechanics was not as intuitive as most gamers were used to. It played more like early BioWare games where commands for types of attacks were given but players had no control on how the attack were performed. There was also some major graphical issues in the game even on some high-end gaming pcs which ran the PC version.

Despite these flaws the game did entertain and gain quite a following. It’s no wonder that BioWare is ready to release the sequel, Dragon Age 2, a little over a year since the first game. This sequel will have BioWare addressing the very flaws gamers had with the first game. The combat will be more geared more like an action rpg with a streamlined control system. The company has stated that the look of the game will surpass that of the original now that programmers have had a better look at the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems. The game will also have a storyline which will span 10-years with the player’s character affecting how the world in the game changes depending on actions and decision played throughout.

Like its scifi brethren, Dragon Age 2 will use players’ saved completed games of the first title to tool and alter this sequel for that particular gamer. There’s one major change to the gameplay which may make some players unhappy. A player will not be able to choose their character’s race class. No more dwarf or elf characters. This sequel is strictly a human affair.

Until more videos of actual gameplay come out these CG-animated trailers will have to whet the appetites of rpg gamers everywhere.

Halo: Reach Finale

Posted on by Arleigh

As Lisa marie correctly guessed I have been quite busy with some other  things to continue my level of blog posting these past couple weeks. This has been due to my heavy immersion in something called Halo: Reach. This game is the prequel to the mega-successful and extremely popular Xbox first-person shooter franchise which first came out in 2001. I’ve been with the franchise right from Day One and this latest game pulls me back into the franchise like all its predecessors before it.

Microsoft and Bungie (developers of the franchise) have always been in the forefront when it comes to promoting their latest Halo offering with some of the best tv spots and commercials. This particular one I’ve highlighted and chosen to post just for the fact that it thanks the 100,000-plus or so players who have finished the campaign part of the game and thus seen the aftermath of the game’s protagonist, Noble Six and the rest of his comrades in Noble Team.

The video may not show it but I am one of those hundred of thousands points light. 🙂

Probicus Parley 007

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

007

Angry Baby Steps – When in doubt, move out, and the significance of getting Blink early:

I’ve been playing way too many team matches. I jumped back in to two 1v1s today, a loss and then a win, and it showed. I encountered the same trend in both, and I’d like to talk about it.

In my first 1v1 I was up against Terran. I thought “oh my god reapers”, because that’s what you have to think in 4v4 matches, so I went straight for a forge and three cannons before I even scouted the guy. Stupid, stupid, I know, but I’ve played like 40 team games since my last 1v1.

No reapers, no worries, but I immediately felt the setback. Here I was with two gateways and an expansion at the ready, six stalkers with blink to my name, and I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was up against. I sent in a probe, he died to a bunker at the other guy’s neck. I could have attacked. In the very least I could have sent one stalker on a suicide run to see what he was making. But no, I said screw it, my resources are pouring in now, throw down two more Gateways and start spamming stalkers.

I had about ten stalkers when he hit me, up against a bunch of marines. He won out with a few to spare. My cannons could have taken him, but by then it was too late for me. An expansion lost and two gateways beyond the range of my cannons, I packed up and moved on to the next match.

As it turns out when I had those initial six stalkers he had four marines. He’d scouted me early, he’d seen the cannons going down, he knew he had time to spare. Four barracks went down with reactors attached before he ever started massing units, and if you haven’t noticed yet reactors take a really long time. Those stalkers could have in the least decimated his supply line and given me a fighting chance.

My next opponent was zerg. The ling rush is a more realistic fear (in fact it’s probably the most practical way to scout Toss anyway), and again I started tossing down cannons. He sent a wave, they fell, and he reacted just like the other guy. “I have plenty of time now, I’m going straight for hydras/mutas.”

This guy made the mistake though of throwing down a couple sunken in case I countered his rush with zealots; he assumed that was the only unit I could mass any time soon. Well there I was in the same boat as last time pretty much, this time three gateways but no expansion, no stalkers yet because I went “omg six lings” and threw down like four more cannons. I did have a templar archive.

My (very) late scout saw an expansion going down, and I decided hey, waiting around didn’t work last time, so I started researching Blink immediately and resolved myself to go at it with what I had when the research finished.

Turns out he only had lings and those sunken. Just like the other guy he had taken my cannons (didn’t hurt that I started a bunch more during his attack after all) as a sign that I was just going to sit on my ass and let him build up. Stalkers with blink destroy lings without speed, and well, that was the end of it. I just blinked around his sunkens, took out his tech tree, and held position where I could snipe drones forever without a sunken scratching me. gg

What I took out of this was not that you should try to confuse your enemy, screw that. It’s a roll of the dice whether he falls for it, just one step up from cannon rushing. What I learned was that if you screw up big time early on and know that he knows it, you might as well try to retaliate as soon as possible. Maybe it doesn’t work for the pros, I don’t know, but at least in Gold league I was in back to back situations today where my own mistake could have won me the game.

I’m not recommending putting yourself in positions where your opponent rightly thinks he can easily overrun your base in a couple minutes, but if you find yourself there, don’t get flustered, take immediate advantage of it. There’s no sense waiting around to die, and there’s no harm in attacking with five or six units if the situation demands it.

From the other perspective, if your first assault puts you at a clear advantage over the other guy but doesn’t realistically end the game, don’t just think “oh I can tech up now” and quit making units for two or three minutes. Always maintain at least a token mobile force.

On a final note, in both cases I could not have won without Blink. In the top tiers your opponents should have a mobile force so you might want to reconsider, but if you have reason to believe the guy you’re up against doesn’t, Blink can be the game ender. I really like the idea of getting this upgrade early.

Probicus Parley 006

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

006

This is worth watching even if you don’t play the game. I want to post up a replay I watched about a week ago of an absolutely epic Starcraft 2 match, Toss against Zerg. This might be the most ridiculous SC2 match played to date.

The game pits MasterAsia, one of the top 5 zerg players on the US server, against protoss player TTOne, a pro from Brood War. If I remember correctly this is a 1v1 Quick Match, not a planned encounter. The match lasts a little over an hour and can be downloaded as a replay here:

http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/replays/35406

The four youtube videos that follow condense the game down to about half an hour, with commentary provided by HDstarcraft. You can probably skip the third video without missing much, but definitely watch the final few minutes. The word epic was invented for events such as these.




Probicus Parley 005

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

005

Today I want to moan about random team games. More precisely, I want to rant about placement in random team games: If you enjoy 3v3/4v4 random matches and place Bronze in one of them, try to work your way up while you still aren’t very good.

What am I getting at with this? Well, as arbitrary as random teams seem, you’ll find that they really aren’t all about cheesing. More often than not, one or two good lower league players can carry the other one or two to victory in the face of cannon/zerg/reaver rushing, but only when the other guys at least know the basics. In Bronze random teams, a lot of guys don’t know the basics.

That’s the extent of my actual advice here, but allow me to fill up space and time with some griping:

If you place when you don’t know what you’re doing yet, it’s going to be luck of the draw. I ended up in Bronze 3v3 and Silver 4v4, the latter on the backs of better players. But you’ll find out pretty quick that, the more committed gamers being mostly dedicated to 1v1 and 2v2, the skill level of each league gets knocked down a notch. Gold 3v3 players play like Silver 1v1 players. Silver 3v3 players play like Bronze 1v1 players. Bronze 1v1 players play like a diseased pit of vomit and decay. On average.

The plus side is your opponents are often in the same boat, however where in Silver most players will at least do something, in Bronze winning really is all luck of the draw. When you’re new yourself, it’s not so bad. I played a lot of 3v3 early on and very little 4v4 because I felt like I was really pulling my weight in the former and just being a burden in the latter.

Once I got a little bit better I switched focus to the 4v4 Silver league, and I’ve played a lot of really fun games in it. I left Bronze 3v3 with a decent enough record, 18-13 I think, but it wasn’t enough. I made the mistake of not moving up a league before I was good enough that playing Bronze random team games became horrifically tedious.

I played my first ten 3v3 games in a while today. I won two and lost eight. The two wins were easy as pie and the eight losses made me want to pull my hair out, because they were all completely luck of the draw.

Like I said, in low league team randoms you often end up with one guy pulling all the weight. In Bronze you don’t want to be that guy.

Picture yourself blinking stalkers all over your enemies’ bases, decimating all of their resources and losing next to nothing against big slow end-game units, outrunning and sniping, knowing you’re just a little bit better than everyone else in the game. In silver or higher being the best player in the game should put you in decent position to win, because your team mates at least know the fundamentals. In bronze, being the best doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Consider my first 3v3 loss today. Actually, don’t. I’m just going to whine for a paragraph: I played as described above, I must have killed at least sixty workers and dozens of pylons and supply depots, and I managed to make one guy lose a good 12 BCs without dangerously diminishing my forces. Blinking necromoonyeti is a bad mother fucker. I mined out two expansions, I contained three guys by myself for 25 minutes, I was having a blast rolling over new guys who knew enough to mass units but not much else. I couldn’t actually take any of them out 3v1 (we were on Typhon), I’m not that good yet, but I slowed down their build up, kept their forces low, and prevented any semblance of an attack. And then when my forces finally started to crumble to a colossi and immortal pincer supported by battle cruisers I turned to my team mates to wrap up, or at least stop the counterattack while I popped out another solid batch of stalkers. After all, they hadn’t lost a unit all game. I was expecting a 400/400 slaughterhouse. Yeah, they finally rolled in with four 0/0 battlecruisers, about 100 zerglings without speed, a “nuclear launch detected”, and a “dude where are your stalkers blue”. This after close to HALF AN HOUR OF GAME PLAY.

So I went down in a fury of capslocked venom and spite and thought to myself at least I don’t have to go through that again. Yeah right. A pretty similar if much shorter scenario happened seven more times. Me and two guys who had barely opened the box against three guys who at least knew you could build multiple barracks and gateways.

On top of that, my wins weren’t even fun. They were the same situation in reverse, involving me and another guy rolling into a base with forces that each outnumbered all three of the bunkered down cannon and turret-happy opponents.

I am NOT criticizing brand new players for diving into 3v3s and 4v4s. On the contrary, they’re fun alternatives to learning the fundamentals against a computer. But if you want to keep playing them down the road, get promoted out of random team Bronze league while it’s still fun. This will save you from writing angry musings similar to mine in the future. Avoid a scenario that might make Starcraft 2 temporarily tedious.

Edit: I finally broke the eight game losing streak with a fucking disconnect. We were about 20 seconds from the victory screen and b.net booted everyone in the game. I think I’ll retire for the night before I decide to play a fun round of smash the expensive monitor.

Edit 2: I just logged back in and it apparently counted as a win, bumped me into gold league iowjwqoifjqweoifjwqoifjqowijfowiqfjwoqi wfw

Probicus Parley 004

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

004

Today I want to point out the benefits of communicating during 1v1 matches in which you are clearly outclassed. For every two or three players who ignore you or start thrusting their e-peens wildly, one is going to give you some awfully sound advice. My main point: When a player owns you in a particularly intriguing way, don’t just gg and watch the replay, actually talk to them.

I’ll highlight two personal examples to show you what I mean.

I had thought for a while that watching pro replays was only beneficial to advanced players – that at my level you should just learn from experience. This just isn’t true, but it seemed reasonable enough. I was winning most of my matches and my losses were usually close. I must have been doing something right. It was on those rare occasions where a fellow Bronze or Silver league player would ruthlessly crush me without cheesing that I started to think “these guys obviously didn’t place well, how are they so good already?”

So I started to ask, and sometimes I’d get a serious insightful answer. I found out about Day[9]’s tutorials and some of the other resources I’ve used not through scouring endless forum posts, but by being directed to them by better players in-game.

If you ask for information on forums you’re going to end up with a ton of different links to sort through. If you ask for it from individual players who you know from experience are using the kinds of techniques you want to copy, you’ll end up with a few specific, tested, relevant sources.

And you might fair better than that. When I switched from Terran to Toss as my 1v1 race I took an immediate liking to massing zealots while teching up to void rays. This worked consistently for about four games, and then I lost horrifically to a guy who took the exact same approach. I asked him what I did wrong, and he actually invited me to a 2v2 party. Over the course of the next five games (which lead to my only Platinum placement to date), I learned more about playing Protoss quickly and defending the rush and expanding effectively than I could have ever hoped for.

There are a lot of simple things in Starcraft 2 that you can easily overlook – things that general guides aren’t going to tell you and you might not notice in replays. For example, I had no idea that chrono boost could be used on a Nexus. It’s not a secret, just a false assumption on my part. Because I asked a guy in a 1v1 what I did wrong, I had a second set of eyes to catch stupid mistakes like this and point them out to me.

I’m not advocating zealot to void ray as the best Toss technique, and have had better success since by choosing between void rays and stalkers once I have a feel for what the other guy’s doing. Especially against Terran, building two visible stargates and not using them can trick him into massing a bunch of useless vikings. Of course, I’m not advocating that either, I’m just saying that:

Lots of players are ready and willing to help you. If you ask for advice when your base is burning away beyond repair, you just might get it.

Probicus Parley 003

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

003

Here I’d like to just talk about a great source for helping improve your 1v1 game. I’m sure there are plenty of general Starcraft 2 advice columns and videos, and not nearly enough time to track them all. (I certainly don’t expect many readers of this one. <_<) But if you can only keep up with one, I recommend the daily netcast by Sean Plott aka Day[9].

This guy might come off as slightly goofy at first glance, but you’ll catch on fast that he is both really witty and a bottomless source of solid advice. His entertaining commentary makes the replays he dissects fun to watch, and even if his subject of the day seems a bit too advanced for you it’s a great way to get in to watching top league gameplay without feeling overwhelmed or getting bored by your passive role in the matter. Plus the matches he covers are often normal, standard top league games, whereas a lot of the replays you’ll find on forums have been posted specifically for their exceptionality/creativeness.

Note that his post-Beta dailies begin at number 157. Since changes were made to gameplay between the Beta and the official release (I know roaches at least took a major debuff), this seems like a practical place to start watching. His SC2 coverage begins much farther back though, and if you have the time to dig around I imagine he covers much more basic material.

Probicus Parley 002

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Probicus Parley
A Starcraft 2 Daily

002

I said before I’d try to put the meat of my daily up front. Instead, just read what’s bolded if you’re in a rush.

This morning I played 4 1v1c, a 3v3 win, and a 1v1 loss. The outcome of the last game transitions well into my topic:
Techniques in Bronze league that you should stop using. Specifically:

Small but continuous attacks.
Cannon rushing/surrendering when an opponent successfully cannon rushes.

Approaching the latter first, because it is fresh on my mind and my nerd rage has subsided:

My 1v1 went like this. Toss on Toss, and the guy was at least Gold league because he was fully Favored. I built two gateways and noticed a cannon start to warp in near my extractor. I pulled most of my probes to deal with it, no problem. One more started to warp in, same deal. Three more, and my zealots came out, but I couldn’t handle all three before one finished. At that point I lost a zealot, and with yet another three cannons warping I called him a fag and quit.

It wasn’t until I got to the recap screen that I realized how stupid I was. Check out this build order:
Probe, probe, pylon, probe, probe, probe, forge, probe, probe, pylon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon, photon cannon.
I could have easily had 400 minerals by the time he reached my nexus and a half dozen zealots by the time he reached by gateways. That provides a pretty simple solution. Move to an expansion, take out his defenseless drones, set up a scenario where I have all the time and resources in the world and he has, oh boy oh boy, about twenty photon cannons. Even if he established himself in my old base all turtled up with his cannons, I would hold such a unit advantage that I could render expanding on his part impossible and just mine him out.

So lesson one of the day: Never forget that in early game scenarios your opponent can’t collect resources any faster than you can. I tend to instinctively think “well he’s got at least a gateway and three zealots at this point, even with all these cannons. Any decent player would make at least a basic defense.” No. A gateway and three zealots, that’s 450 minerals – three cannons. There’s no possible way he could support that and still warp in eight inside my main this early on.

If you’re up against a Toss player who feels obligated to cannon rush to win, he’s a) probably not very good in a conventional fight, and b) flat broke. He at best has a single gateway, maybe one zealot. Get enough minerals to expand and let your base fall, taking out his in the process. Don’t try and prevent a cannon rush if you don’t notice it before the first cannon is warping in unless you have ample units. Expand immediately and attack his main with what you’ve got. If he’s a bit more clever at it and starts at your ramp instead of inside your main so your base units can’t get out, it will take him longer to reach you. Tech up so you can transport out.

Some further ideas that I haven’t had a chance to actually employ yet:

The minute you hit his main he’s going to probably warp in every cannon he can right around you and continue to every time he hits 150 minerals. If you have a small force, say three or four zealots, that might be a losing battle. Try to take out his probes first. If they run off, they aren’t mining, so he’s not going to build more cannons. If they run down the ramp, forget about his base and just move your units into a held position so they can never get back up it. (If he has to start building probes from scratch then you should have a nice advantage, and there’s a decent chance he doesn’t even have the 50 minerals for that.) If they just start running around, you’ve got marines, and his cannons aren’t close enough to hit you from behind his minerals, just hold position back there. Only attack his cannons as a last resort; focus on shattering his economy to sub-start game conditions and then just start a new base and wipe him out. You should still have all your workers. When that base finishes it should just feel like a minor setback.

That being said, most higher league players probably know all this, and they have more to lose point-wise from surrendering. Pure cannon rushing should not realistically ever work beyond Bronze/Silver league, so if that’s your strategy, stop.

Secondly, my original intent, small but continuous attacks.

I have won a ton of Bronze league games by rushing early and then just setting my rally point to the heart of the other guy’s base. This works really well in Bronze because the other guy is probably going to just throw every unit he produces straight into the fight. Even if all you manage to do is take out his force and a supply depot or pylon, maybe two or three workers, per push, you’ll win in Bronze. This has backfired for me tremendously against higher league players.

Even if you win the opening assault (which is a lot harder against a pro who’s going to employ chrono boost judiciously/not go for an immediate barracks reactor/etc), the minute that first wave’s dead and they see units marching in by one and two they’re going to just withdraw their guys from the fight for a bit. It only takes a handful of extra units to put a quick stop to it, and then they’ll have an immediate counterattack advantage. I have a lot less to say about this one. Just remember that small but relentless/continuous assaults on an enemy base early on is a good way to get counterattacked and lose. It works really well in Bronze league, but quit doing it.

Aaaand…. right before posting this I decided to play one last 1v1, Toss on Toss. We both went stalker and immortal, both lost all of our probes at one point, but I won because I expanded and he didn’t. I basically treated him exactly how I would treat Very Hard AI, with the exception of having to make some observers at one point. When the match ended I got promoted straight from Bronze to 5th place in a Gold league division. So much for relating to complete noob scenarios. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle now.

And so much for easy wins. :\