You want to see some more Rocket League Rides?

I know I do!!!  One of the most fun things in this game is the endless customization options of how you want to look in game.  I've been changing mine nearly every night.  Here are a few of the latest I've rode onto the battle field with (in style).

Rocket League Initial Review (First Week)

So yeah, Rocket League is addicting.  I mean in the simplest terms everything I’ve been told about this game is correct.  You’re a rocket powered vehicle, you hit a huge metal explosive ball with parts of your car, and you try to angle it into the opponent’s goal in a giant soccer like rink.  The other team is obviously trying to do the same against you.  Simple…. Or is it?

The first thing I noticed was this game is pretty easy to pick up.  I mean right away any gamer should be able to steer a car, press jump, and hit a booster.  I could make some goals against other noobies (surprisingly defending is a lot harder haha).  But as you play you quickly learn there is a lot of neat advanced stuff going on, especially with better players.  There is a whole level of ariel play that separates good players from great ones.  Jumping, boosting in air, and controlling where your car will go is a thing of beauty and takes time to perfect.  Knowing how to defend, clear the ball, and where to position takes experience.  Add them together and you can quickly pick up the game, but can definitely spend a lot of time mastering.

Even once you get the basics and learn more about the game.  The action is fast, quick and fun.  Give up a goal?  On to the next.  Lose a match?  Few minutes later you are in a new one.  Time flies when playing this game, it’s been a while since I’ve played a game where all of a sudden it’s a lot later than I thought and I should be going to bed J.  With 5 minute games paused only slightly for sweet scoring recaps the games are relatively short but just long enough for a good fight.

One feature I’m also enjoying so far is the cars are pretty customizable in appearance.  You have a few out of the gate cars and upgrades and get “free” items unlocked after each match.  Almost every car can be painted 2 colors, each color with a different finish (like glossy, metallic), have decals (like flames), roof toppers, different tires, antenna toppers, and jet streams (the boost stream behind your car has tons of outrageous options like money or bubbles).  I really enjoy theming out my cars depending on my mood and I know my options to do so will only increase as I unlock more choices.  The best part is the cars are mostly preference and only have very slight differences in how they play, so you aren’t underpowered by choosing a car you like or feels good to you.

Lastly, this game has a tangible excitement feel to it you get from a real soccer match.  When minutes go by and it’s hard to score every scoring chance counts.  There can be a lot of drama to getting that score, and when a cheap one gets in or a dumb play costs you, you actually feel it.  I find my feet kicking under my desk when trying to “flip” my car correctly at the ball.  Or me actually leaning towards a shot or a block.  So far Rocket League is a pretty awesome game, I’m looking forward to getting better at it.

Here's a few of my rides I made this week:

Hot Rod

Iced Out

Here is my mish mash of tips and thoughts on early level PvP in Destiny

 

1.       The hold the point games don’t work like they do in other games.  You don’t get a ticking time amount of points just for holding them.  What you get is points when you kill an enemy player, the more flags you have when you get the kill the more points your team gets.  So while its important to cap and get points, its even more important to be careful and not die a lot.

2.       Brings me to my next point.  Stay with your team especially if you are new.  If the enemy is distracted targeting someone else or under fire from somewhere else you can get your shots off and not as easly get shot yourself.  Also if you are the guy getting shot at but you are with a team they are getting free shots.  Its valuable to try and stick with teammates.  Sometimes its ok to go run off by yourself but I’d say it’s a more advanced thing to do once you get much better at the game and even then caution is actually way more important than aggression.

3.       For main weapons as a starter I’d suggest using the fastest firing automatic weapon possible.  The damage is normalized for pvp based on fire rate and impact.  But as a beginner its much easier to hit and make some kills if you can squeeze the trigger and just let the bullets fly as many as possible.  Later once you are good something more powerful and precise is great.  But starting out you can’t afford to miss those shots on that type of gun.

4.       On maps that have vehicles get in and ride!  They can take a lot of punishment, kill pretty easily, and are pretty fun.  My best tip for them is if you are under strong enemy fire hit the boost button and just race on out of there fast.  Recharge your shields then head right back.  Best if you can catch someone out in the open areas.

5.       Crouching takes you off the radar, make sure to crouch, sneak and find good places to hide and watch the radar for your enemies!  This will help out a ton once you get good at looking up there.  Find the places where you are above them and they can’t see you well or you have a nice hallway to defend or others like that, terrain advantage and knowing where you can and can’t go are also very important but just require practicing and play time.  Don’t be afraid to run around on the map and look for these areas.

6.    Get bounties before you go!  Getting bounties from the tower for different things you can accomplish (such as play 5 games) will go a long way to helping you level up, get more skills and abilities, and enjoy your time spent PVPing.

Destiny - First hours brief impression

Gameplay = solid, computer AI seems tough but not impossible.  They don’t just sit there and let you blow them up.  They hide, they dodge, and they fire.  Firing weapons was a challenge for me using xbox 360 controls, so will take me a bit before I don’t feel like a total novice.  So far had 3 different gun types and all were pretty fun.  The shotgun (which I really really really want to like) is the hardest to actually use.  You have to be pretty close range and then when you shoot it the recoil knocks your camera up so high you can’t follow up and do anything lol.  It could just be the crappy low level shotty I have though as well.  I got some other charge electric shot gun which is interesting but I haven’t played with much yet and a few sub machine gun types which end up being what is used when I run out of ammo on the others.

For other attacks you get grenades (which are cool).  My titan has one that disorients so I can run in and destroy stuff for a few seconds without it firing.  One thing that stood out pretty odd in my eyes was melee attacks though.  You damn near one shot anything you hit in melee.  That’s probably ok if you are a warlock with force push, or maybe even a hunter with a knife, but as a titan you are strait punching stuff.  It feels odd to blast away with a gun at a creature taking 3+ shots to kill it when swinging my right hand knocks the thing dead in one shot lol.  I think some sort of explanation to this would have been cool (like your suit is so powerful to create a strong punch).  Actually a few things in the game seem to leave you to your own imagination on how it works, this also is ok since its not important as gameplay but it was a interesting decision.

One of those things is race choice.  You start out the game and class choice is easy enough (they give you plenty of description of the three).  So you get a decent idea what you are picking there.  But Race choice has no bearing on the game (only looks) which is totally fine, but there is no description what any of those things really are.  You can be human, alienish, or robot.  But why?  Maybe they reveal this stuff later but its kind of odd choosing a race and not knowing why you chose it.  Did these alien race guys fight along side humans?  Did these robot things help?  Why these three races banded together to begin with?

Story line has been ok so far.  Lots of questions but I think that’s by design.  I’ve followed it ok though and enjoyed the missions.  Had to fight a few mini boss type guys and the fights were challenging.  Died on one of them which actually was a good thing since I wouldn’t want the game to be too easy.  There were also other real people playing in the area’s im in but the game really gives me no indication why or how.  My boss fights were instanced I think, but the surface areas had others.  Oddly some were quite different level than me (12s and even 20s) so I’m not sure why they were running around in the same zone as me.  I can only guess it spawned some mobs their level I couldn’t see but that too would be odd since I wouldn’t be able to kill those mobs.  I only saw enemies around my level.

Looking forward to more group play and seeing how that goes.  One guy seemed like he was inviting me to join him but I couldn’t quickly figure out how to accept.  By the time I found the menu and invited him to my fireteam or whatever it is he was off somewhere else and I think didn’t accept.  Was cool running through a few quick parts with another player though, felt like I had a little cover at least lol.  Pvp should be fun, can’t wait to try that soon.

Diablo 3 Beta - That Funky Monk-y

So I get the chance to take to the 4th class in Diablo 3 the Monk and I was pleasantly surprised by how fun it was!  First off you get to kick, punch, and crazily attack like a paladin without a sword.  Second off it uses a system similar to the Barbarian in which you gain a spirit metre with certain attacks, while using it with others.  The spirit gaining attacks were fluid and had a special animation for every third hit with special effects.  From snaring, to dizzying there were tons of effects.  The Monk also had options to run dodge and other auras which I didn't use to great effect but I could see how they might be pretty strong later and especially when running a team, not to mention nice utility like a aoe heal!

So that's all great and dandy, but how cool does he look?  Well let me show you.

You want Fist?  Oh we got fist... dipped in lightning

How bout kick?  Yeah eat some of these.



Oh, not enough fist?  Sorry lets let the aoe fly.

And the thing that made the Monk a sweet super fast crazy karate master and my favorite thing that made me love the class was the fact he got a crazy blink charge move.  Flys through enemies and allows him to zing around the map like a crazy bald mad man.  this my friends is the Barbarian equivilent to leap, u need this!

All in all really cool melee class, going to be hard to choose a main with all these great designs.  Demon Hunter up next, and then a recap!



Diablo 3 Beta - Wizard Time!

Heya big Mr. Skeleton King, lil Wizard here has got something for ya.

Diablo 3 Beta test char number 3.  The wizard has been a great and fun class.  Focusing mostly on lightning powers in the low levels it sure has been a lot of fun cracking out burst after burst of pure electric fun.  Of course there are many classic spells below such as magic missle, ice armor and frost nova so don't fear, electric isn't the only way to go.  For that matter it seems there may even be a possibility for a melee wizard option, the class comes with a weapon dmg buff, a great armor/slow buff, and a spell that cuts the air in front of them for weapon dmg.

Melee Wizard?

 Oh, did you want to see some of that Juicy Electric power?  Ok, you got it.

So yeah, the wizard is a total powerhouse of power and a ton of fun to play.  Don't believe me?  Enjoy this last supernova of complete and crushing knock back psychic pwnage.



Diablo 3 Beta - Barbarian first look

So you want to smash some enemies into bits with a in your face, barbarian shouting, fury generating, tough guy twist?  You've come to the right class.  Barbarian brings back all of your favorite feelings from Diablo 2 all rolled into one massive brute.  I found the class a little slow until you got leap, and then it was just so much fun leaping all over the place onto unsuspecting enemies and pummeling them all.  You could esily switch betwen an aoe style of hitting multiple enemies or a more single target approach.  He was beefy, he was berserk, he was a Barbarian.

Fist meet Face - Zombie meet wall

HAMMER TIME!

He leaps through the air with the greatest of ease

Who dat?  Miniboss?  Me smash...

Hey Mr. Skeleton man, you no longer the king sorry.

Diablo 3 - The Witch Doctor Commeth

Day 1 Diablo 3 I head out looking for some action. I create... a Witch Doctor. Here is my take on the class:
--Summons! Witch Doctor has a ton! By level 8 I could depending on spells selected toss out jars of spiders (4 at a time), piles of frogs (in packs of 3), a suicide zombie, 3 undead dogs, a and a bouncing haunting spirit to name a few. Made battleing the minions pretty easy as your crew was easily able to keep the enemies busy whiile you blasted away their lives.

--Cool utility! Witch Doctor has a fear, and a shaman summon that turns your foes into chicken. Also a pile of zombie hands that reaches out and snares enemies too. Later on he gets a confuse and even more goodies but this is what I was able to use so far. I think when you level up high enough you can actually decide whether to be a summoner type or more of a utilty mage type. At my lower levels and limited to only 3 active skills the summoner route was much easier to crush with. All in all I thought this was a super fun class. Really well done for pve and a lot of fun for dungeon crawling action. PvP is not yet enable and as a summon class I'm not sure if he would accel there. But he may far better than I imagine depending on how his utility skills stacked up.

Chilling by a fire of burning bodies, what better way to pass the time?  Oh you got an undead problem around here?  Wait till I head to your Inn and start spamming all my crap.  Well at least they won't try to eat you, unless you make me mad that is.

Boss Time! The skeleton King wasn't too tough with all my minions around. But he was pretty fun to fight. I think my follower got the last hit with his lightning spear, nice job dude.

For your enjoyment, exploding suicide zombie guts... yum.

Diablo 3 Beta - RobWild Returns

I have returned! Due to my penchant for constantly emailing my friends about my game experiences I decided to instead post them here. I am currently playing League of Legends and Diablo 3 Beta (thanks to an amazing friend). The posts that follow this will be the ramblings of my experiences in both games shotgun style just written for those who are interested. Feel free to post a comment or question if you have one and I will reply as I can.

Monster Hunter Tri weapon choice

So I've decided my weapon choice at least to start out as and try to master. It shall be… the Switch Axe! Why?

Well for one I like the dual functionality a lot, really allows for adaptive play and gives me a lot of options so I don't get bored doing the same thing over and over. Two in axe mode you have more mobility and some good move that feel similar to longsword while in sword mode you have some other nice slashing moves that feels like a combo of greatsword slow movement and power with sword and shield slashing. In any case I played around quite a bit last night with it and I'm finally sold. I know in this game you will be able to switch but due to the amount of time I have to dedicate I'd like to just get really good with one style and focus my time and energy on creating equipment to optimize that style. Also for the first time in the demo I finally killed that second boss using switch axe so that was a nice touch.

Monster Hunter Tri Weapons

So there is a new game coming out for the Wii on April 20th that seemed pretty interesting. It's called Monster Hunter Tri and its a online multiplayer game that basically has everyone in a main town hanging out, then partying up in groups of four to hunt epic monsters. I have the demo and its single player but still pretty fun so I'm considering getting the actual game. I have been mulling over which weapons I would like to use so I thought I'd detail some of my findings so far in what I think and which one I might choose to be my main. Keep in mind there are no classes or levels in this game, the only thing that determines how your guy plays is weapons type, and gear. So here's my thoughts on the choices:

Sword/Shield

Animations and looks are very nice. High mobility. Nice options for different types of slashes or shield hits. I actually found this set is pretty fun and dynamic to play but has one massive drawback keeping me from it. It has the lowest damage of any of the weapons (I'm not sure compared to bowguns but all the other melee weapons at least). That means it takes a hell of a long time to kill with it in some cases. Still it has a lot of plusses going for it anyway, just not sure if it can overcome that damage deficit to make me want to use it as my main choice. I'm already a limited time gamer as it is, don't want to prolong that by choosing something that takes me twice as long to kill with.


GreatSword

Animations also nice. Very strong damage hits. Charge up is super strong but takes some real good aim and knowing where monsters will end up to hit with it. I need to test it again as a possible choice for me. Seems fairly basic in you hit, roll, hit, roll so I'm not sure the dynamics will work well for keeping me interested. But you never know. Obvious drawback to this weapon is the super slow swing speed.


Lance

Honestly lance is a great weapon choice that is strong in both offense and defense. However it lacks the ability to roll and maneuver very well when you have the weapon drawn which for me is probably too big of a drawback. It does have a lot of variety in the abilities which is very cool though. Has a nice charge run attack and can block attack as well. Only drawbacks are in combat maneuverability and the fact that visually I'm just not impressed with the way the lance looks. The demo is supposed to have epic versions of the weapons and the lance one sure doesn't seem all that special to me.


Hammer

Hammer probably has two of the most fun specials so far, the charging whirl move and charging ground pound. That being said I'm not super fond of the rest of its normal moves and doing the charge moves too often results in some pretty boring game play. Also something I'm thinking of as I play a little longer with it is I am not really enjoying the smashing part of a hammer as much as the slashing of the other weapons. I was leaning towards using this one but now not so sure.


SwitchAxe

I really haven't gotten enough play time with this yet. The axe is pretty strong and the sword part has a interesting slash move. I might be leaning more towards using this on my next play test and maybe going with it if I like it enough. Nice part is there is extra variety in using it since it is essentially 2 different weapon types you can switch around. I like the look of it a lot, just have to figure out whether I like its switching capability or not. Its basically somewhere in between the greatsword and the long sword.


LongSword

This weapon I like the moves of however the looks of the weapon kind of kill it for me. I'm actually not too fond of the thin long blade look (and I've read this is one of the most popular weapons which is also a turn off for me). It has some fun things and animations fairly decent, probably won't be my choice though.


BowGuns

These are all fun weapons for a short time. Just no interest for me to main any of them. It just doesn't feel like as epic a fight if I'm plinking away at the beasts and managing the different shots plus ammo reloading just isn't what I want right now. I could see these actually being pretty cool just not for me right now.

Starcraft 2 the protoss rolls on

Had a rough week but last few nights got to get into the action more once again. I'm still focusing on protoss and having a blast. Here are some things that stick out in my mind from the past week or so.

--Chrono boost is a huge part of protoss game play, for those that don't know your nexus can cast a spell that causes buildings to build I think 25% faster. So early on you can make probes faster or zealots, then later upgrades or other units. Forgetting to cast this slows down production a lot and remembering to boosts you a lot. I don't use it nearly as much as I should but I'm trying to remember more and more to cast it and its nice.

--I've seen some replays of fast zealots or building a pylon near the enemy base and dropping in warpgate units but I'm just not all that great at it yet. It looks fun though but whenever I think I'll try it I usually opt for something more familiar instead.

--I am growing fond of what I call the Immortal push. That is I build 2 gateways, and just keep producing a mixed army of zealots/stalkers/sentries then two robotics facilities and as soon as 2 immortals come out of those I push to the enemies expansion. Most often they have it up and running but just barely and my superior army owns them. I keep the immortals in the front and use the sentries to either choke off their units if they are up a ramp while i kill their expo for free or split up there army with them. If I dont think forcefield has a good spot to go I cast their defensive shield spell which always helps.

--I haven't done a cannon rush since I tried it a long time ago, I should go for that again sometime soon lol

--If there is one thing I'm not fond of for protoss its the templars. They take FOREVER to get and then by the time you get them are not too powerful for tier 3. In the right hands, I'm sure high templar with psi storm are amazing, but by the time you get them you better damn well know how to use them because they are fragile and have a super small radious on the storm cast. Definately seems like a pros only unit if that. Dark templar on the other hand are even worse. Melee only unit at the very end of the tier tree that has stealth? By this time in the game you actually get them it doesn't matter mostly. Also if you are playing terran they are a complete waste. Might be only useful vs zerg really and that is maybe only once in a blue moon if you can somehow surprise them with them super late.

--I have played a lot more protoss air and I love it. All the units in fact. Some on the forums have said they think Phoenix's suck but actually I like them a lot. They protect my air force and can do some great things to ground units. Did you know they can life up siege tanks? That's huge IMO and allows phoenixs to kill them even. There are lots of uses for the pick up spell and the unit itself is fast. I love void rays when you get a few going, they look great and do massive damage if you can sneak them in and attack somoenes main building, goes down pretty fast. And carriers are always fun if you get that far, just floating along dominating the sky with their little attack ships.

In conclusion for this week I'm really feeling strongly about protoss air and ground, and not liking templars much at all. Protoss is a well rounded race that has a lot of options at its disposal and that makes them fun to play. I should start to revisit the other races again now that I'm getting better at the game.

Starcraft 2 Battle Report 4 Bring on the Protoss

To round out my abilities and further learn the game I've been playing a lot as protoss lately. I must say initially I didn't like the race at all but now I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with them and liking a lot of what they have to offer. I've done some funny things with them as well as had some interesting things another protoss did to me. I still play some Terran as well and will have to revisit Zerg too as I continue to play the beta. I figure what better time than now to try funny strategies and explore all the races, I'm having fun with it So here are some highlights:

--I tried a protoss photon cannon rush and it actually worked. I did a horrible job at it, but I'm not in a high level league or anything so it still worked. Perfected it could have been a lot better. Not nearly unstoppable or even that great later on but fun none the less. I had a network of photon cannons stretching into my enemies base and then started producing out of a gateway I built over there, my main base just had probes and a forge.

--While playing terran a protoss rushed me with zealots and won. He didn't proxy pylon them either, just built them from his main. I admit, I should have walled better and built bunkers but still was interesting what the other guy did (I watched the replay). He built 2 gateways early, saved up his chrono boosts and only used them on the gateways to produce faster zealots (usually protoss use the chrono on the nexus to build more probes). So he ended up with 6 zealots pretty fast while I had only 3 marines and one maurader. Anyway as I said this was not unstoppable and many things could have helped including bunkers, better scouting, better walling off (in this case it was scrap station with a large choke). But still was pretty effective and cool, I may try it sometime.

--I feel protoss ground game is really strong. The thing I am liking most about protoss is that I really feel a transition when I start getting immortals and collossi. Once I get an ample mixed force I feel like there isn't any other ground force that is stronger. I've been beaten by Terran ground using siege tanks and other units so its not unbeatable, but it does feel really strong is all. When I play Terran I mostly feel my bio mass is as good as it gets with some tanks behind it. Anyhow I'm enjoying protoss late game ground and I haven't really even explored their air much (except for observers, next point)

--I love observers as toss. I kind of suck at scouting and checking things throughout the game. This unit makes that 10 times easier. I queue one or two around the map to check expansions and most the time can sit one right in their main and see what they are building. Observers are awesome even though they take a while to build and do cost a lot of gas.

--I'm loving photon cannons too, probably a little too much. Being able to quickly defend or fortify expansions is pretty nice. I've been tossing down cannons near my line, near my choke, and at expansions. Stops small scouting units and some harasses.

That's all for now, hope to explore more protoss air and templars soon.

Nerf the Mighty Marine?

Been playing (and loving) starcraft2 beta, focusing on Terran as my race of choice. They are a fun race and have a lot of different things at their disposal. I’m still very “green” but I’m having a lot of fun. I really need to work on my building design (for chokes) and just buildings in general (when to make more, when to expand, how to make sure I spend all my minerals). I have a decent grasp on early game Terran, pushing with marines/mauraders, and adding in some medivacs/tanks depending on what is going on. However after that my game gets quite a bit more cloudy as the battles wear on, what do I build end game for those ultimate battles? Well now more than ever I need to find some answers to that because they just put out pretty large change patch for the beta and wiped our stats! Here are some highlights on my thoughts on the changes.

--They doubled the build time of the reactor (building upgrade to produce two units at once) and on top of it upped the build time of actual Marines by a few seconds. The net result has been an increase in me building more mauraders and usually having a smaller army than I otherwise would have. Its harder to fend off a rush as well. I play most of my games getting three barracks having two with tech lab and one with reactor but on occasion would get two reactor. To do that now takes a really long time and probably isn’t worth it, also I can’t see it ever being worth it to make a reactor on your first barracks unless you are certain you won’t get attacked, just takes way too long. I think these changes were to stop some cheese marine/scv rush but I never knew how to do that anyway hehe.

--Tech lab gas cost reduced from 50 to 25. This is nice for early game building a tech lab but later on not a big deal. However it does make reaper rush is a little faster now. I may try a strategy where I pump out 4-6 of these then rush. As for now my typical build one of them rush comes out a little faster and that’s pretty nice. Those buildings are then set to build mauraders later.

--Reduced gas cost allows for Vikings and ghosts to be produced a little easier. Not too big of a deal but its still cool. I need to find a much better way to use Vikings though, to me they die way too fast and it doesn’t feel like they pack as much anti air as you would think they should. Being able to land them is cool but slow and micro intensive.

Other notes on some things I tested and matches I played:

--One guy sent a early probe to my base and threw me off hard core. He attacked my scv making my first barracks. The problem was it was at my choke, so after a few seconds I had to take my scv and send him back to my mineral line then replace him with another to continue building. This made it take ages to get my first barracks up. If I attacked him with a scv or 2 he just ran, soon as I tried to build he came back. All the while he was wasting my scv’s time and stopping me from building. It was pretty damn effective. A friend suggested taking another scv and repairing the first, that might work. Other thoughts are taking another scv to attack him. Either way one of his guys basically wastes the time of a few of my workers just to get rid of him.

--Medivacs can airlift Thor’s one at a time haha! I didn’t know if they would be able to pick them up but was messing around and they can. It basically turns them into a giant metal box under the medivac, looks pretty cool!

--Due to the ladder reset I got matched up against some players that were way out of my league last night haha. It was fun though.

Starcraft 2 Battle Report 3

Getting a lot better with Terran now and having a lot of fun with them. Here are some highlights/thoughts of my recent matches:

--In some matches I try to pop out a quick reaper or two for harassment. My micro is not quite up to par on it yet but it can be pretty strong when done right and seems to make the enemy build more base defense then they actually need. Then when I roll in with my big army I have more men than them, this tends to be a nice way to win (at low levels I'm playing at).

--One match I played the zerg had roaches and burrow super fast, they hid them in between our bases. He thought he was going to use the burrow and quick heal of the roaches to take the advantage, and it might have been ok had he gotten the move while burrowed ability. But he didn’t have that yet. In any case he popped out, my army was larger, then he popped back down and up a few times before figuring out that wasn't going to win. In retrospect I could have used a scan to kill them all before moving on to his base, but at the time I just figured I would take out his base before he got mine (plus I had an expansion). That's pretty much what happened, fun game though!

--I love siege tanks, even 1-2 of them in the back of my marines/maurauders seems to make a massive difference in the battle given I drop them to siege mode at the right time. I don't always get them, but I've started using them better when I do get them and its been working out nicely.

--Most my games I go triple rax with either two tech labs (for more mauraders) or two reactors (for more marines) depending on what I see the enemy doing. Then I grab one factory, sometimes upgrade for siege tanks I guess it depends on what is going on, other times just get a star port after and build some medivacs. I will eventually start trying more off the wall builds but this basic strat seems to be pretty successful and a good way to start off to get the hang of Terran.

Starcraft 2 Battle Report 2

I switched to playing Terran for a night and boy did I get romped. The build order and way you produce units seems way different then SC1. I'm still noobing it up quite a bit but I did notice I am significantly weaker with Terran than Zerg right now. Anyway, I like the race a lot though and I think it could be one I'd like to master and make my main anyway despite the early issues. Their units are fun, look good in game, and I like a lot of the options and things they have. Here are some interesting highlights and lessons from the night.

--When you get an orbital command, you probably should spam the special SCV guy it can make, the amount of extra minerals you can get from this is pretty huge especially early on.

--The protoss sentries shield move is pretty sick when used on a choke. In one game I played I had massed my army in my main, they went to my expansion just below it and were able to force field the choke effectively not allowing any of my units down the ramp while they blew up my expansion easily.

--Zerg banelings can blow your marines up fast. I think everyone knew that but I wasn't really prepared for them. Either need some bunkers or better micro to stop it. One match he rolled in with some of those, blew up most all my army, I did eventually defeat him with scv's but then he came in shortly after with mutalisks to finish me off.

--There are a lot of fun off the wall strategies with Terran. I have yet to try them all but I did have some success with one. I walled off my choke with buildings. Made a few marines for defense. Teched strait to starports and build 4 banshees (air to ground) and one Raven (air caster unit). Flew strait to the back of protoss base, used the raven to cast two of its anti air shot towers (they block attacks against my units) as the 4 banshee's took down their nexus. It was pretty sick and I really was super slow doing it so could have been a lot better.

All in all I had fun with them and think I will be playing them more. I am still stronger with zerg but that's not saying much at the moment lol.

Starcraft 2 Battle Report 1

Few interesting notes from my first night of action in SC2 Beta. I played zerg in all my matches this night.


1v1 – 2 wins 1 loss

2v2 – 1 loss

Lost my very first 1v1, I was producing units wayyyyyyyyy slow and basically just got outnumbered. Expanded too early and my build order was fairly crappy.

Then I won the next two. One against a Terran who once I saw that he was expanding I rushed. Beat him with a superior army. He did the age old Terran trick when losing early game of launching his base into the air and sticking it in the corner so I had to wait for air to finish him off. I had overlords at every single mine spot on the map so it wasn't like he'd be able to rebuild anywhere. Eventually we both just laughed about it and said gg.

Third game was zerg vs zerg. I actually lost the initial encounter when I tried to rush him as he expanded. He had more roaches than me. I tried to micro a little bit to focus his down faster but it wasn't enough to over come the unit advantage. Still it was a close fight so he had maybe 3-4 units left in the end, not enough to rush me back since that fight was in his base. I expanded and we both built our armies back. Both of us had roaches/mutalisks and corrupters. I think I had more corrupters than him and when we had a big army clash I was able to win that battle and take the game. In retrospect I should have saved the replay on that one to see what the army sizes were.

Lastly played one 2v2. I really love the group strategy aspect of RTS games. Unfortunately I'm new to SC2 and my partner sucked so we got stomped. We were both zerg vs a protoss/terran team. The cool part about the game was on this 2v2 map there was a choke point in front of the team base where our enemy actually turtled up with cannons and teched. My teammate also seemed to do that only I didn't see him with very many good units lol. The protoss player went MASS void rays which was pretty interesting since they are considered kind of underpowered. With a mass of them though they blew stuff up fast and looked quite awesome doing so. Even my corrupters and muta's were not enough. I think our major downfall though was not sticking together and fighting at the same time, we basically sent our armies in to attack the enemy but his zerglings got there first by themselves and got wiped, then we trickled in the rest of our guys. Wasted a bunch of our units like that, also fought seperately in the next big fight, needed a lot more coordination hehe.

RobWild State of Gaming

I've still been playing champions online all this time and enjoying the game. It has many flaws regarding end game but fortunately it provides many cool things for the early levels in terms of customization of your charactor and abilities. I find that once they reach 27-30 they feel complete, and end game doesn't offer anything I want to strive for. However despite all that I'm still there, grinding away my latest creation with a friend. I'm not sure how much longer the game will last but its been a good game to play anyway and I'm happy I decided to play it.

All that being said, there are some great games coming out on the horizon that I'm sure will pull me away. In a stroke of good luck one such of those games in beta fell into my lap. I got a starcraft 2 beta invite from a friend at work. This is a game my friends and I have been waiting for for a long time. Its great to be able to try it out. As I have only played it once so far in the beta I will try to detail out some things about my games and what I learned as I go here.

Loving Champions Online

Charactor creator is awesome and game play is pretty cool to me. If you enjoyed City of Heroes or City of Villains at all you will like this game I would think. Here's a quick write up I emailed to a friend about how I came up with one of my latest designs, its really cool what you can do with this game.

So first I wanted a certain power set, I decided it was down to darkness, electricity or fire. I had a decent concept for darkness guy, but I took a closer look at the powers and honestly there aren't whole lot in there, so you would definitely have to mix and match more. I liked fire and elec, but elec just had more initial stuff that I was like oh, I want that. So that's how I settled in on elec.

Then I started playing with options. Great thing about the creator is you can just mess around until you hit that "piece" and you're like ok, I like that, I want to design something with that. For Buzz it started out with the fly wings (looked cool and were custom to game stop customers). I found I was having trouble matching a head to it. Didn't want the bug head (only one and eh), non of the animal heads were very good, and I was having trouble making a human head feel right. Then as I was looking at hats I just happened to chance on the skeleton head. I was like hmm, that looks really nice with the hat and actually looks ok with the bug wings (since bugs are kind of boney anyway).

After that I checked hands real fast, found they had a skeleton hand too! I liked that a lot and thought it looked pretty cool. Also at some point had settled in on that trench coat. It looks pretty fitting with the hat and wings and I liked how the skelly hands came out of it. Basically after that matched some nice pants and filled in the details. The feet are actually cyborg feet completely colored white, they didn't have a foot skeleton option unfortunately. Still I liked the feet enough and I think pretty much no one can tell they aren't actual bone feet unless they are looking super closely.

Anyway so I started digging the design of the guy a lot, then I thought damn, how am I gonna make this guy fit with the powers I want to use? I kind of immediately thought of the movie the fly, how he meshed with an insect, except in this case the guy meshes with the insect and one of those electric fly traps, that's how he gets his powers (also how he turns into a skelly I guess lol). Its pretty creative and yeah a little stretch, but I'm liking it.

Champions Online - Man I hope this is improved CoX

So I'm going to pre-order the Champions online game and hope to be able to play open Beta soon. Man this game looks so cool, I LOOOOOVED the character creation of City of Heroes and Villains, nothing in any other game I played has been so great. You really could design the most awesome toons, and when a friend or two and I design together well we get an awesome themed team. So fun to play that way and so fun just to look at the epic powers you could use. In those games you really felt epic, you could wipe HUGE piles of enemies and travel powers made you feel well, powerful.

Anyway there was a lot done right and wrong in City of Villains and Heroes, here's hoping they take the good and improve, and take the bad out. Add some more variety to the pve, and make pvp actually work (if possible lol). I'm looking forward to this game a lot, not sure if I'm crazy like lifetime subscription looking though, but if open beta shows me the improvments I want I could see making this game permenant for me.