I am spending as much time as I possibly can playing StarCraft II and at times it doesn’t do it justice and it isn’t enough time. I really want to play a hell of a lot more of SCII but time is something I currently lacking. Looking at the upcoming Diablo III it looks insane, a fantastic game to play soon. I’m just happy that they might not be releasing it until 2011 since that will give me enough time to finish and enjoy all the multiplayer games of SCII, not including the challenges and the custom games. Now with all the time they have made an amazing game with SCII I’m expecting that they won’t be disappointing with Diablo III either.

I think I have had StarCraft on my mind 24/7 for the past week or so and I’m not even getting enough time to play all that I want. I’m seriously not getting enough but this stop motion photography depicting Lego StarCraft is fantastic. Terrans vs. The Protoss, its pretty much just like the game, except for less fire power. Just seeing this video makes me think about taking a week off and turning into a StarCraft Hermit. I love well executed stop motion photography because I know it takes a lot of time and skill to make it flow smoothly and realistically.

I got a few hours of campaign gaming with StarCraft 2, not as much as I would like but enough to be familiar with the Terrans. So I decided to jump into the multiplayer Unranked league, 1v1, which means a practice game against another human player. You get about 50 unranked games before going into ranked games, now I tried reading up as much as possible but in reality nothing prepared me for a multiplayer game.

In very few words:

I got my ass handed to me in 17 minutes and 24 seconds.

I wasn’t expecting to be taken out like that. My opponent was a newbie as well, he had the Protoss and he came in strong, I sent in some troops to scout and I blew up a few things along the way. I felt good about myself, but seems like he was building up his big troops and saving them up to send them out. I wasn’t aware about all that, I was just blissfully happy building up my assists so I can build as many troops I want. So I was hoarding supplies instead following a strategy to destroy the enemy. It is a very erie feeling watching your troops get massacred by huge machines and your based being destroyed and you can’t do anything about it.

Tips:

• Build more then one base, and move it to another location
• Try to get an army together quick
• Pay attention to your stats
• Get a little bit more practice with the A.I. before jumping in
• Famliliarize yourself with your type, in my case the Terrans, before jumping in, I wasn’t full aware of the all the types of troops they had, so I was a bit slow and choosing what to build for attaching purposes
• Next time I build more defensive structures

I was so excited to download the game that I have been waiting all day to come home and click download. I tried predownloading the game, but I got an error stating that it was too early and I can only download from the 27th, so as soon I got home and went to the Battle.net portal to proceed with the download. Made the payment, clicked all the buttons, filled all the information, and proceeded to purchase. One thing though, I did this all through my VPN, so that it appears I was making the purchase from a US location, I don’t know if that made a difference but I didn’t want any hiccups telling me that the game hasn’t been released in my country yet.

Now it begins, at first it said 3 days but after about 20 minutes, it flew through the list and I got to the download stage. Whats great is that my machine already counted what I had predownloaded a while back so I only had 1 GB left to download, and it wouldn’t be too much longer. I’m going to go through the installer and hopefully I can be playing by the end of the night, I’m not sure when but I want to free myself to play this game fully without any stops, it may not be anytime in the next few days, but Ramadan is around the corner, meaning I get off work early so more gaming time. 6.28 GB of 6.99 GB!

One more day, just one more day for the game fo the decade. If this trailer is any indication, the Terran campaign promises to be one hell of a ride. Now the first release is will be the online gaming as well as the Terran Campaign story, the next to releases will be the Zerg and Protoss story lines. This just couldn’t get any better!

But you just can’t play it right at this moment, its genius that they are letting people download the game now, and then purchase an activation code on the 27th of July at 10:00 am Pacific Standard Time. You need to make sure that you have a BattleNet account with Blizzard to be ready for the purchase, just go through the process of registration to get over all the possible hiccups before D-Day. At last the day is getting closer for the release of one of the most anticipated games of the decade. Blizzard/Activision have spent over $100 Million dollars developing this game and Battle.net for the best possible gaming experience, and they are expecting to make a profit of at least $500 Million to a $1 Billion from this game, and it looks like that they are going to make it.

Link: Kotaku

“You have been called upon to serve, you will be trained…and you will become the best we can make of you. You will be the protectors of Earth and all her colonies.” – Dr. Catherine Halsey, Halo: The Fall of Reach

Just as the new Halo is coming out they are introducing the new McFarlene line of toy models. These are members of the Nobel Team, matching players from the story line in the game. Some match the players from the game and some match the multiplayer players. Sometimes I wish the different looks would result with different characteristics for the players, but usually in Halo that doesn’t matter. These figures are really cool and to be released around September, just around the release of the game. I’m just hoping to see cooler looking models at a later period.

Link: Kotaku

With the coming release of StarCraft II there is a lot of buzz going around and people playing StarCraft the original game to catch up to the previous strategy and units. I for one just plan on playing it on my PC first for practice then moving on to the online gaming, but Korea takes this very differently. It’s called E-sports, there are leagues and thousands of Starcraft players, there are tournaments with a huge fan base, with government entities ruling these tournaments. Even Korean Air painted two of their 747 with StarCraft across the planes, I don’t even know how they worked that out with Blizzard. They have training camps for Starcraft just like football or basketball camps, where kids are trained to play harder, faster and smarter. They train to increase their APM or Actions Per Minute, I can’t believe how fast some of these guys are moving their fingers in complex actions, I can’t do that messing around on a keyboard! Some of these players have fan clubs, they are in teams, some of them make a huge amount of money. I just hope that whatever server I play that I don’t play against any of these guys, I would be annihilated.

Link: Kotaku

I never really thought of the AT-AT as a lovable house pet, more like a walking fortress with enough firepower to blow a city away. Now Patrick Bovin created this creative and funny video called AT-AT Day Afternoon, the life of a pet AT-AT. I just love the idea of a pet AT-AT.

This game is going to be a lot of the original Halo and something new to the game play. Now seeing the video trailer made me jump, there is going to be a SPACESHIP! I just can’t believe there is going to be a spaceship, thats going to be cool. Combat in outer space in the form of dog fighting it going to be another level of fun and madness. I just can’t wait for the game in September, they have really worked nonstop to perfect the game and from all the write ups and beta game reviews it looks like its going to be that way for sure. Watching the trailer below will get your blood pumping, it just can’t get any better.

Link: GeekTyrant