Starcraft 2 First Impressions

*Gazes off into the distance* Oh Starcraft….you have eaten me up like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors did just about…everything?

Your sweet, current, graphics. Your movie cutscenes that arent horridly gamerfied. Hell, I don’t even know what that means but it sounded appropriate. Maybe it’s the sludge of sugar I just downed in my iced coffee talking. For the past 3 days Starcraft has been a trending topic on twitter. This is Scary Justin Bieber zone. See: Very Serious. And, for the past 2 nights I’ve played heavy amounts of Starcraft. Starcraft is taking over the world and mine. See: this is awesome.

Atomic Zombie and I first started out playing 2 player vs the computer. In our first game I had to shake off the rust of not playing since beta and Mr Zombie, the rust of the past 10 years. Maybe our problem was choosing Terran out of the gate. Though I’ve always had luck as Terran the Giant bomb guys say that playing Terran is playing “Training Wheels Starcraft” Anyhow…We got beat DOWN. The second game we played was much better. We played this time as Protoss and I was able to get up a managable economy while building a stellar defense. My focus was more on just enough ground units for defense while I build up air superiority with Void Rays, a mother ship, and a handful of Carriers for heavy support. Atomic Zombie in the meantime played a wonderful defensive card moving in his forces behind the 2 ai teams as they ran up my ramp of death where I had built 6 turrets there.  It was destruction like only two bro’s can do based on years of gaming together experience.

It was then I counter attacked and found the zerg base to be mostly undefended. I layed waste to the first computer team. The second team didn’t fare much better but had >3< bases. How they didn’t completely overrun us is beyond me but they didn’t. Oh well..that’s AI for you.

Last night I dived headfirst into the Campaign and I must admit I’m loving every  moment of it.  The game starts off  a little normal  but that first BLAM in your face with a nuclear missle strike was when I was able to do upgrades. Yes, I’m that boring. The first one available to me out of the two researches were Zerg. The other being Protoss.  I choose to have the bunkers with GIANT FUCKING GUNS ON TOP also known as Shrike Turrets.   I cannot describe the chills I had when reading that.  Yes, I turtle. So.fucking.what.  You got a problem? Just try to invade this base SON.  Now, I really don’t remember the campaign mode from SC1 – it’s been since freshman year of college since I ran through it so, I don’t know if there were upgrades like this in place.  It’s pretty badass and unstoppable vs normal AI.  I’m also enjoying the ability, though less so, to upgrade units. I find them to be of less use than just outright buying Merc’s who kick so much fucking ass it’s not even funny. They’re bought in the campaign mode by visiting Graven Hill in the cantina. They’re like merc units from Warcraft 3. They mirror almost every ground unit you gain too.  The list of Merc Units in Starcraft 2 are, in case you were wondering, are War Pigs, Devil Dogs, hammer Securities, Spartan Company, Siege breaks, Hel’s Angels and Dusk Wings.  I found the Spartan company to be of great use as during the campaign I built up a bunch of Goliath’s. I know Atomic Zombie is currently exploding as he reads this because building Robots and taking over a world is his RL fantasy.

I’ll end this long post because I need to save something for our FIRST VIDEO REVIEW O-M-G, but, I’m loving the achievement system.  I’m finding myself wanting to explore the maps  and throttle my victory rushes to make sure I get my achievements. While it’s being an achievement whore that is totally lame, I find that it really exposes the entire gameplay available. Just like how Fallout 3 encouraged you to play THE ENTIRE GAME. It’s not really tossed in for the sake of being tossed in. There are those things available (such as watch 10 TV reports). Blizzard come here, seriously,  you guys just constantly produce High Quality games and I love you for this.

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This is cracking me up

Jason Statham Quest. lol. I love the cats chasing him. I love the RATS chasing him.

I gotta get the music for this and do a andrew kennyquest

From the Vault of Remember this..

NBA JAM on the SNES.

I had it on the Genesis. :p

Live Music Monday

I know this is not really live but SO WHAT. It’s MY PEROGATIVE.

My Perogative / Every little step by Bobby Brown

GBU Game Review for LIMBO (Xbox360-XBLA)

The Good – It’s a side scrolling game, in which you’re a little boy looking for your sister in the woods…..but only in the beginning. What follows are a countless series of puzzles to get through to the end. No two are the same, it gets very challenging, but it’s never impossible. I didn’t even have to look up anything online 😉 It’s somewhat reminicent of Braid, another downloadable game that I freakin’ loved. But that’s where the comparison stops, for the most part, there’s no time bending mechanics here. The graphics look incredible, totally out of the ordinary, there’s no color, it’s all shadows, lights, and out of focus grainy stuff that resembles a really old film. It doesn’t look like a game and it pulls it off perfectly. The atmosphere can be unnerving and creepy, most puzzles involve traps that kill you unexpectedly, so you will jump a lot. It bugged me out a bit here and there. And the ending, I can’t explain, but not since Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Braid where a game’s ending had such a huge emotional effect on me. But LIMBO’s different, the ending will probably affect people in different ways and everybody will have their own interpretation of what happened in the “story”. Air quotes, cuz you are told nothing, the bit I wrote at the start, I only knew cuz that’s what the description said before downloading. This is one awesomely unique game that everyone should try. 10/10
The Bad – As I mentioned, you’ll die a lot. As in many trial and errors. I really don’t think it was all that bad, but I gotta mention it in case it would turn some gamers off.
The Ugly – The numerous ways that the little boy gets killed. Good thing you only ever see a black sillouhette of him, cuz it can be pretty gory.

Halo: Reach 360 Bundle AKA Xbox3seXy

I’m no stranger to really cool collector’s editions of games that I really like, yes, I have the Master Chief helmet from Halo 3(quit laughin at me Jamie), but it don’t fit :-\ Obviously I’m joking, it’s not meant to….we’ll see if my witch doctor has anything to say about that though…..Anyways, I’m not one to jump on any collector’s console bundles, most don’t look that special in my opinion, see-Modern Warfare 2 bundle, and who can afford em either. But this Halo: Reach set just looks downright sexy to me. While I wasn’t too big on the 360’s new look, there’s something about that sleek greyish look on this one that I can’t keep my eyes off. Especially the controllers…..I WANT ONE!! Check out Kotaku or your favorite game blog for more upcoming pics….now excuse me while I pull out my Halo fanboy card that I’ll wear proudly when Reach drops.

*Comes out September 14th at $399

The hardest decision in a gamers life

To buy or not to buy the StarCraft 2 Collectors edition.99$ is A LOT of money. Seriously? 99$? That’s like a WHOLE WEEKS PAY SNORT.
Truly one of the hardest decisions i’m ever going to make. Right next to “having kids”

p.s fuck you for making this hard blizzard.

True Blood Season 3 – the almost halfway point

Being no stranger to the southern vampire debauchery extravaganza, finally, I think season 3 has found it’s footing. I’m not saying I’ve been disappointed so far, just a tad underwhelmed. I’m know what I’m getting when I watch that show, which is why I watch it in the first place. Some sleazy characters, oversexed situations, and some fantasy blood-n-guts that puts a big smile on this horror geek’s face. I love how True Blood is respectful to the major rules of vampire lore while bringing in some cool rules of their own. Unlike another insanely popular vampire franchise, but I ain’t sayin no names :-p

The season started with what I felt was a poop-socket of information. They introduced the new thing that’s been teased since season 1, werewolves. Introduced new characters that have been major so far, such as the vampire king of Mississippi. And they continued things introduced near the end of season 2 that made us say, what? Such as that vampire queen having Eric sell vamp blood, which is blasphemous in the vamp community. Now this is just my own opinion here, but a few times so far this season, after that first episode, I felt things moved a little slow here and there, with the show usually picking up in the 2nd half of each episode. Still entertained, just not being wowed enough. Well, there was the end of that one episode that lit up the internets due to the wildness of it all. Crazy-twisted neck-hate-sex anyone?

Finally, last night’s show made me smile, laugh, and comment at a pretty good clip. Jason’s finally getting his chance to get some detective training, don’t know why but I’m sure it’ll be a big thing by the end of the season. Poor Tara has gotten herself trapped all over again with the new insane brit vampire Franklin. Bill’s motives are a little more clear now, especially with Sookie displaying unknown powers. We’re learning more about the werewolf world. I think we’re being teased with the new girl Jason met, as in she might be something new entirely. A few more odds and ends here and there, but what really had me excited. Some more flashback stuff with Eric. Not only is he one of the coolest cats on the show, but in his younger days, the man was a motherfucking viking! We already knew this of course, but he was due to be king. And vamp king Russell has the crown of his father’s, who was killed, along with the rest of Eric’s family, by a werewolf who was led by said king. Shit. Is. On. Son. I can’t wait to see how things play out.

Live Music Monday!

I present My Morning Jacket – Lay Low – Live Okonokos

To quote a commentor – “Just fucking blast this, wherever you are, right now, you fucking deserve this. You have found the holy grail of music. Lay Low, by My Morning Jacket on Youtube, so just crank up those shitty laptop speakers, your headphones that only work in one ear, or your 7.1 surround system and fucking ROCK OUT. This is as good as rock music gets. ROCK ON.”

Also….$5 goes to the person who can recite the lyrics to this song without looking it up.

Rock Band Party time!!!!

We had a few friends come over this weekend and we ended up playing Beatles Rock Band! I cannot tell you the extreme amount of joy and pleasure I had when they said LETS PLAY.  You know that noise pigs make…I did it.

I’ve been wanting to do 4 player Beatles Rock band for a very long time, obviously, and it was everything I had hoped for. We had 2 guitars, one bass and one regular, drums and vocals. Everyone split duties though I am the only one who didn’t sing.  We eventually made the move to Rock Band 2 but encountered some “sync” issues. If anyone has a TV that has a 120 refresh rate be prepared for some fucking lame issues.I’m not saying we knew what the issue was at first but after much fumbling we did manage to figure out that was the issue. If richie were there I’m sure he would know how to do that.  Something came to me as we were playing how did we look as if we were the TV. I mean..we were all rocking around and moving but I have to wonder if we didn’t look like this while playing it – which is to say “Totally Moronic”

So, what about you? Do you think everyone looks silly while playing Rock Band, or do you get Ace Frehly’d Up and kick some major ass.

Here Comes A New Challenger!

So you thought Jamie complained about gaming a lot.

Welcome to the surreal side of gaming.  I’m one of the biggest elitist dicks to ever grace the Internet.  Until now, I had the common courtesy to shut up and bitch about you in private, but now I’m here to smite you with your own nerdrage.  And believe me, I have an unlimited supply of it: I’m a longtime WoW player.

I will give you columns that take shit post to a new level.  Indeed, my words will burn like the morning after an all you can eat Ghost Pepper quesadilla night.

I’d like to explain the Cambridge Steamer.  It’s like a Cleveland Steamer, but I shit in your brain.  Every time I’m asked to write an article, that’s what you’ll get.  I will shit pure hatred into the brains of my fellow gamers, because I hate you all.  In time, you’ll hate me, too.

Soon after, you’ll learn to love it, and never live without hearing my anger.  I will give you a Cambridge Steamer when asked, and your tears will give me sustenance.

I hate you all,

Surrealcatalyst

43rd Podcast

I roll solo as rich prepares for world domination. The world domination meaning..domination of bunnies! I talk about our absence, games I’ve been playing and some ups and downs. Most notably Mass Effect 2, Lego Harry Potter and the PSP Then what games I’m looking forward to and such.  Put on a 2nd set of socks for the 43podcact.

The Most desired thing by a gamer in the entire world is…

I went into a gamestop to buy Madden 06 (fuck you dont laugh) and was greeted not by some 16 year old, awful, neckbeard type who somehow remembers playing games 17 years ago, but by a girl gamestop employeel! I should have known by the way the other guy employee’s were squirming and then acting all tough by saying silly things like “I beat tekken three on ultra super duper hardmode on day of release”.

As I walked through the store she awkwardly said hello to me and asked the normal question every.single.employee of a mall type store asks “are you looking for anything”. No, dipshit, sometimes I like to fucking walk around.And Certainly when I walk into a store to get one thing it’s certainly not a Gamestop. Anyways, what striked me different about her was that she was thin and…get this…. asian!

!!!!

I KNOW RIGHT. AZN!? A GIRL? OMFGOMFGOMFGOMFGOMFG. At that moment I realized I was looking at virtually every single neckbeard’s dream girl. Let alone the fact she is..a SHE, that alone would be enough to make any neckbeard guy go crazy,she also liked video games! was not overweight! (irony at it’s best) and the most important thing is that she was asian and therefore had a strong possiblity of liking fucking.japanmie.rp.bullshit. I can only imagine something she experiences about 2.5 seconds after meeting a neckbeard. He gazes off into the distance dreaming of sipping Monster Drinks together while watching fucking Anime. Drool starts forming around the chubby cheeks and then he’s snapped back to reality as she asks that fucking awful question….

Anyways…This girl was not particularly cute, or smart or, even…human…but I realized what I was looking at for millions of basement dwelling neckbeards – the more desired thing in the world. A thin asian girl gamer.

I left before 10,000,000 neckbeard white-knights came to her bad humor defense.

Now for the encore..a SEAL yelling like a man

I don’t know if it’s just the internets tracking me or what but when I went to youtube today there was a video for “seal yelling like a man” and…of course I watched it.

Daily LOL – Goat Yelling Like A Man.

Goat Yelling like a Man. This is so hilarious.

Little Big Planet for the PSP – More like BIG LOAD TIMES

I am stuck waiting for easily the longest intro to a game I can remember. It’s Little Big Planet for the PSP. Every time I log in I get this video…

This is real sweet and cute and I like it. But not every single damn time.  There’s also the whole PSP starting up business which does take a small amount of expected time but then this 1 minute 16 seconds fucking long video plays every time. What gives? Everything about this game is great, it fits perfectly for the psp with it’s small-ish maps making for an easy pick up put down type of gameplay. This by the way is how I envision handhelds to be.  More that another day though. But Seriously. what gives? Is this the game with the longest load times ever?  Fat Princess didn’t have this and God of War doesnt.

Excuse me while I go order some food while I wait for this intro video to finish.

Toy Story 3 , The Movie VS The Game

The Movie – So I finally got around to checkin out Toy Story 3 over the weekend and wow. Pixar can simply do no wrong in my eyes, I love all their movies, they just know how to hit the right notes with me. And with their last few flix, they hit some serious emotional notes as well. They tell a hell of a story…the adventure is as big as ever, not a retread, new characters are interesting, the CG is awesome. And there’s a moment, no spoilers, where they made me accept a scenario I never would of thought to in another kids movie. It’s powerful stuff. I checked it out in 3D, which looked cool and all that good stuff, but you’re not missing anything if you don’t. It’s non essential, and good for Pixar for not going gimmicky. There’s no exaggerated coming out the screen stuff, just nice subtle in screen depth. I still wanna see it on an IMAX screen though :-p

The Game – Warning….I may not be fair to it. In total, I might’ve spent 90mins with it….and that’s all I care to do. But Rich, whaddya mean? Didn’t you know most movie tie-in games suck? True…but the various podcasts and such that I listen to made a big deal about it. It’s not horrible, but I don’t think it’s that special either. After seeing the movie, I had the hankering to revisit that world in game form, so I said why not and fired up the 360 version. Graphically, it’s gorgeous, bout as close as current consoles can probably get to looking like the movies. The 1st level is a pretty neat imaginative scenario taken out of the movie. The 2nd level is a bit that leads up to a scene in the movie. The 3rd level is basically Buzz’s video game from the movies. And that’s where I stopped….back to that in a minute. There’s an open world mode, where you’re doing little missions and constantly unlocking stuff to decorate the area. In concept, it’s really good stuff. My issue is the actual gameplay. I know it’s made for the youngins and all that, but dang, some serious tweaking needed to be made. It’s all responsive, no problems there. It just doesn’t feel fun to play. The worst thing I probably went through is the whole jumping platforms bizness. Some parts I just kept dying and it got frustrating. It wasn’t just that, the feel was just ‘off’, I dunno. Maybe I’ll give it another chance, I really wanna like it. It’s ambitious and I wanna see what else it has to offer.

Now the one game I have to give a chance to, is that Lego Harry Potter game. My partner in crime absolutely loves it, critics call it the best Lego game. I’ve also heard that if you never got into those games, like myself, this is the one to try. I’m a total geek for the Potter movies so I just might 😉

When will the Next Gen Console Arrive?

Kotaku beat me to the punch on this piece about when the next gen console will arrive. Not that I’m ever trying to be someone who “breaks” news no no no, that’s for far worse writers than myself. Why wouldnt I turn down the chance to list numerous stats that can go either way depending on how you look at it with various quotes from people who have a higher station in life than myself.  BUT! I wont. That’s not me. And that’s not you. Not do you really give a shit when you read a quote from CFO-BBO-MMO-BO Jeff Zeyzywiski on his new game “death from trees 3 – the next evolution of disaster and destruction”.

That ranted…let me start  with the History of Release for the Consoles. Ha Ha. I’m kidding. I swear this wont be long – but there is a point to it. The XBOX came out in November 2005. (rich was there) The Ps3 came out in Novemeber 2006 (rich was there) as well as the Wii (rich was there because he has a mother fucking time MACHINE). It’s now mid 2010 – shouldn’t we be hearing news of the next gen console? See how fast that was? The point if you can’t tell was me saying that Rich is everywhere. At. All. Fucking. Times.

Next point is the increase in resolutions. The game systems were made with great graphics cards but Resolution has increased even from last year to this year yet we’re almost 5 years beyond the xbox release! Despite that I’ll put it out here right now: No news on a new system for 2 years. There’s a few reasons.

Never-mind I think we’re still looking at 3 with an outside chance of 4 until a new one is even released it’s mostly because I just cant believe that they’ll let 10 years go by. 10 years is a LONG time. I get 10 because Sony has said 10 years is how long they envision the ps3 lasting. I mean really, can you imagine using a video card from 2000 today? Case in point. DIABLO 2 and it’s AMAZING 640×480 RESOLUTION with possibly up to an astounding 800×600 resolution. Seriously? I also cant imagine the meetings of the past few years at the Executives at the Ps3 and xbox division report – we’ve lost 200 million or whatever massive number it is that they did lose. Now that they’re pulling in profits they’re going to want to recoup that and then some with year on year increases. It’s the corporate world they always want +3% increases. It’s fucking weird and unrealistic. Anyways…my rant is over.

What’s the real problem? It’s quite simply the insane success of the Wii comapred against the heavy losses handed to  Sony and Msoft in the beginning years of their systems. The Move and Kinect as everyone who even plays video games on a regluar basis knows is our favorite companies attempting to grab the success of Nintendo. It also gives them this position where they are advancing systems without being an advancement, and keeps them from looking outdated. But we all know that will not happen in this Generation. The reason? The brand awareness (more so) and how hard Nintendo has sold themselves  (less so) as not being the “hardcore” gamer to the average person is a mountain to overcome.  They quite simply wont.  Which brings me to my last point.

Nintendo will be the next one to release a console.  Despite how little the price has dropped Nintendo’s most glaring flaw is their lack of  resolution.  Here’s my insaneo whacked out theory – they’ll release a Wii .5 with the ability to play all the old wii games but you get the resolution. yeah. FUCKING INSANE RIGHT. Hell, with even the most out of date individuals now grabbing HD tv’s, the nintendo looks like utter shit on a HD tv of any size. Anyone can see this.  It’s almost an insult how jagged and awful it is on my 47 inch tv.  Granted I know everyone doesnt have a 47 inch, on a 32 it looks.  There’s not that many who dont have a HD TV of sorts. This almost proves my point of why you shouldn’t wait 10 years to update a console as we all know the Wii is really just the Gamecube.

So when can we look for Nintendo’s Wii 2?  2013.

Leave your shit-talk in the comments. I’m insane – I know.

Will Wonka WTF BOOM

lol. This is just hilarious.

where the hell is this from?

How to quit World of Warcraft

I was thinking this weekend how does one exactly quit World of Warcraft.  So…want to know what I came up with?

Just turn it off.

Or, better yet, read these incredible fucked up stories by people who have so many social problems that something as simple as a video game and interaction with “people” can bring out the absolute worst in them. As jon put it better “Some people are just awful and fucked up.  Wow just gives it a name.”

http://www.wowdetox.com/view.php?number=48790