Hello fellow gamers and welcome to the next installment of Gaming from Across the Pond. I’m not going to try to lie to you about the fact that one thing has MAJORLY taken over my life at the moment, but before I talk about that I want to talk about a bit of news I posted earlier this week.
Some of you may, or may not, know about the FTC’s settlement with Intel. Personally I love it when a huge company starts throwing their weight around and playing unfair, only to have them taken down a peg or two. One of my pet peeves is people who don’t play fair. Though I’m not the head of a multi-million dollar corporation, I can guess it is a pretty much dog eat dog world. What I don’t agree with is using the power your business has to hinder your competitors. Why not use your resources to develop better products that blow your competition out of the water, instead of using bully tactics to control other companies. So with that rant over, it’s a well done from me to the FTC.
Now onto the item that has dominated my entire life for the week, in fact it’s nothing short of a miracle I’m writing this rather than playing the wonder that is StarCraft II. Don’t tell the other half but I have a new number one in my life, and it comes with Battle Cruisers. Unfortunately due to work it took me a while to complete the single player campaign, and I’m chewing at the bit to find out what happens next. I guess that’s the point though, if I was content with the ending I wouldn’t buy the next game, those sneaky people at Blizzard. Now that I have finished the campaign I can get into the real meat and gravy of the game, the multiplayer. For many people that will mean hotkeys and frantic micro management, constant recon and a complex game of rock, paper, scissors, trying to counter your enemy’s forces with your own. Not for me though, no as far as I’m concerned StarCraft II multiplayer meant Turret Defence, Hydra Rancher and Evolves. So far I have dedicated my time to a Turret Defence map and slowly getting closer to get to the end, it’s been amazing. This was always my favourite thing about StarCraft, the user made maps. Endless ideas and fun all from one amazing game, it was brilliant, and given time I think that StarCraft II will be the best of them all. Playing the single player campaign I thought all of the fancy tricks used by Blizzard to make the missions interesting and unique was like a huge interactive catalogue for the modders, I can’t wait. I just hope someone makes SCV football.
On a final note a great feature written by a fellow writer here at Player Affinity is a must read for all Starcraft fans, check it out. So until next week, keep gaming, and remember to feel free to comment on anything I have mentioned in today’s article.
