I won my first CivIV game via Space Victory yesterday. It’s my second CivIV victory and it was by far the most gratifying. And yet, I still can’t say I mastered anything. I’m flabbergasted by the amount of stuff I still don’t know or overlook.
For example, in my last game, I thought I had the game sealed, but I neglected to keep tabs on the Khmer civilization and its move towards a cultural victory. By the time I realized it, it had the three legendary cities required for the win. Oh well, live and learn.
In somewhat related news, I canceled my pre-order for StarCraft II. I’ve played the beta for a grand total of one time and that wasn’t a very long session either. I’ll either wait for a better deal (not $55) or I’ll just wait for all three games to be released and get the eventual battle chest. I just don’t have any interest in playing it any time soon. I’m content playing Civilization IV for the summer. That or Demon’s Souls.
I’ve chosen From Software’s sleeper hit as my summer game. Ironically, it’s another Atlus publish game — they’ve become my summer game publisher for the past couple of years with the Persona games and now Demon’s Souls. I’ll also have my hands full with Alan Wake and Bayonetta. And those are just games in my possession. I have at least two more that I want to get.
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty has a release date and it’s July 27, 2010. That means I need to get a new PC sooner rather than later. Or maybe not? Who knows? I may just tough it out and play it on my existing rigs. (As you can see, there’s virtually no desire for me to get a new PC at the moment).
I am pondering the notion of a new Wii though; a black Wii to be precise.
Starting May 9, 2010, folks can pick up Wii’s in either superior black or plain white. Both will come bundled with Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort and a Wii Motion Plus. The price will remain the same at $209.99.
And what do both of these news articles have in common? They’re both going to make a lot of money this year.
After trying out the StarCraft II beta briefly last night, I have some thoughts and info I’d like to share.
Blizzard games have always been pretty scalable and I was wondering how my five year old Shuttle PC will fare. Here are the important specs:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB of DDR-400
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
OS: Windows 7 x64 Home Premium
And here’s the configuration I ended up running the game with:
The auto configuration actually pinned my resolution at 1280 x 720 resolution, but I bumped it up since I try to play my PC games at the monitor’s native resolution.
To my surprise, the game ran at a somewhat playable framerate. There were hitches when sudden shifts in on screen unit counts occurred, but other than that I did play a single successful 2 v 2 match.
As I alluded to, I’m was not big on the StarCraft multiplayer so don’t expect any major insights into the game itself aside from “it’s more StarCraft” — at least for now anyway. What I was most impressed with were the first “five practice” matches I was greeted with when I first launched the multiplayer. It’s supposed to help Battle.net gauge my skill level and throw me into the appropriate league. I can’t say how well it works thus far since I’ve just completed a single match, but it seems like a great idea.
The map I played on had rock barriers to discourage rushing and plenty of resource locations to expand to. It was a noob map and I welcomed it. They also fixed the game speed to “normal” which was nice. All in all, I think these kinds of touches will open up StarCraft II to a wider audience than the original ever did.
I hope to play more of StarCraft II, but I don’t when. Although it runs on my current machine, it is nowhere near optimal visual or performance benchmark. I’ve always said I’ll build a new PC for StarCraft II, so I guess I’ll have to look into that before proceeding any further.
I pre-ordered StarCraft II over at BestBuy for both the $5 off and the multiplayer beta key. However, I quickly came to the realization that the multiplayer isn’t what I want out of my StarCraft II.
Most of South Korea may be clamoring for the competitive aspect of Blizzard’s upcoming real-time strategy game, but not me. I look forward to reacquainting myself with Jim Raynor and his wacky adventures. And after watching footage of StarCraft II’s campaign, I’m quite excited to see it continue.
To help with the wait, I’ll be replaying StarCraft and the Brood War expansion very soon for a refresher on the lore.
So why the lack of multiplayer love? I’m not big on competitive RTS multiplayer; more specifically 1-on-1 competitive play. There is team play, but unlike other genres, I found the requirement for competent partners to be way too high with real-time strategy games. Most of my multiplayer RTS games I’ve ever played were big 3 v 3 games and that’s the way I like them. Unfortunately, I was never able to find willing/capable partners to play with over Battle.net
Who knows? Perhaps I can get a regular duo or trio going when StarCraft II finally ships. Or perhaps with Blizzard’s new ranking and matchmaking systems with Battle.net 2.0, I’ll find similarly skilled individuals to team up with.
Blizzard said the beta was starting this month and they weren’t lying. Lucky folks like the Brad Shoemaker over at GiantBomb have already downloaded the client and begun the closed beta testing.
I wasn’t a chosen one. I logged into my Battle.net account and was greeted with my StarCraft: Anthology games and an offer to try World of Warcraft.
No thanks, Blizzard. I just want in the StarCraft II beta.
Update: Add Mafia II, Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne III to the list of delayed games for TakeTwo.
It seems like publishers and developers like to start the week off with disappointing news.
Such as game delays.
TakeTwo’s BioShock 2 was pushed to 2010 which starts November 2009, but don’t expect it this year. It’s definitely a 2010 title. And here’s why:
“.. it was essential to invest the additional time to ensure that this title will deliver what its fans expect and deserve.”
Unlike BioShock 2, Sony’s Heavy Rain was delayed until 2010 for strategic purposes.
“Most publishers today realise that it’s not ideal to release a new IP or a new genre just before Christmas. It’s a very crowded place to be, and certain games need more space to live their life.”
The last piece of game delay news involves StarCraft II. Despite not having an official release date, analysts are expecting Blizzard’s real-time strategy game to be a 2010 title as well. I’m not surprised.
Bethesda tops off today’s delay news with a delay of Fallout 3 downloadable content for the PlayStation 3 which was pushed into September 2009.
Two news articles caught my eye this morning; both StarCraft II related.
The first stated that Blizzard beloved RTS was held up for a year as staff was shifted to the World of Warcraft cash cow.
“One of the reasons that StarCraft II had some delays very early on in development is because a fair amount of the design team went onto World of Warcraft for a year to really help finish that game off,”
They even had a playable build of StarCraft II’s multiplayer for balancing purposes since 2005-2006!
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