Right now I have 200 achievements points, have won 50 games solo as random, 50 games 2v2 as random and working on getting more achievements with the other races. I’m really on the fence on my favorite race, I play a lot of Terran but recently went back to Protoss mostly due to the strength of a proxy gateway rush. So long as I can manage building/teching while harassing with Gateways at their door it works.

Every race has its strength and weaknesses. Zerg, as always, has the versatility to mass produce at a rapid pace and being able to switch techs on the fly; but expanding is key in surviving as a Zerg player. Mass production and outproducing your opponent is really important. Right now my weakness playing as Zerg is a mid-to-late transition. Early game with Zerg is pretty straightforward; either speedlings or mass roaches. Then you either choose hydras or mutas. That’s about all you see. Sooner or later brood lords is ideal as their siege, but it’s so late game that most games end in that point.

Protoss is seeing a lot of proxy gateways with a zealot rush, transitioning to stalkers and immortals. The key to a good proxy gateway rush is to make sure you manage your economy and tech quickly to stalkers. Zealots hit a wall without range backup – especially if you’re trying it against a Terran that has managed to wall off, or come close to walling off. Adding a degree of difficulty to the entire rush is harassing with your probe once your two gateways are building. It’s amazing how far back an opponent can be set with just some good harassment with a probe.

I played a lot of my games as Terran, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to win now that I’m Rank 2 in Gold League in a packed division. I’ve played several Platinum players as Terran and it’s all about the early game rush. Terran marines are obviously weak against 6 zerglings or 1 zealot. Your benefit is being able to wall off, but medivac drops, warp ins and even Nydus is the quick way around it. But still to me Terran is very versatile since almost every game you end up building at least one barracks, one factory and one starport. You can switch techs fairly quickly, but to maintain any reasonable Terran production you always end up quadrupling up on a building, if not more. There are games where I’ve sported three tech barracks and two reactor barracks (allows you to produce two marines at a time) just to maintain usage of my economy.

The opening 5-6 minutes is key to every Starcraft2 game. There are just so many opening strategies people can use – I like comparing it to a Chess game. Either you’re on the defensive or the offensive in the first few minutes. You may not always win with a rush and sometimes it’s better to counter the rush and attack. Such a fine balance between micro’ing and macro’ing, the game is quite different than Warcraft III which I spent several years playing.

I did play the original Starcraft but not very competitively and not as intense as I have even these last couple of months in the beta of SC2. I’ll probably start keeping a log of my favorite games every few days from now until the beta break and then post my feedback and feelings on the game.

Sorry that the post is sort of all over the place, just found some time in between work and play to drop some words on the game.

I did have a great game tonight where I did a proxy gateway rush on a zerg player that countered it nearly to perfection. The early game went back and forth and he was able to keep an overlord in my base to monitor what I was doing. Once I realized my initial rush was failing I switched over to a cybernetics core to get stalkers and threw down a robotics for immortals. He continued to harrass me with speedlings straight to my mineral line, so some delicate micro’ing with my probes, zealots and stalkers allowed me to survive. He teched to mass hydras (which was expected at that point of the game) so I got out one colossus to counter. We had a couple more fights before I managed to break into his base. He switched to mutas, but it was a little too late. It’s a great 30+ minute game of going back and forth against a great player.

I’ll see about recording the replay and tossing it up on Vimeo. It’s a great watch!

Anyways, more updates with just random thoughts on SC2, strategy talk, unit talk, counters, etc.

Someone needs to make that into a t-shirt.

• Never have I been so intrigued and immersed into a game where I’m doing controller motions to tie a knot into another man’s tie, while talking about catching a serial killer.

The things that most of the reviews were critical about weren’t even the things that affected my judgment on the game.  What the game really just lacked was memorable characters and a memorable storyline.  I mentioned in a previous post that the whole “us against the world” theme was just bad.  And even at the end of the game you sit there and wonder what really just happened.  I mean the ending really didn’t reflect what the main characters went through the entire game.  For those that watch American Idol, as Simon Cowell always says, it just “lacked that moment”.  There wasn’t anything to make you open your eyes and say, WOW; there were not plot twists or turns that really made an impact.  Everything was very vanilla and I’d even argue that the game’s storyline is really flat throughout.  The first two hours are probably the most exciting, and the last two hours are probably a tidbit less.  The rest of the 40 or so odd hours are pretty unrevealing, semi-dramatic and well, plain.

You play through the game just waiting for that sudden moment that we’ve all come to expect and love in any Final Fantasy game.  I just feel like it never gets there.  When you beat the game, the ending is such a letdown you sit there and really ask yourself “is that it?”  That’s what Square Enix has been working on for almost half a decade?  Yes the game is absolutely gorgeous and probably has the best soundtrack ever, but it’s so full of lettuce and tomatoes you have to wonder where the meat went.

Truth be told, I have still logged a good 10 hours since post game.  The post-game play is pretty enjoyable for those that have grinded through MMOs.  It’s just a ton of missions and I wouldn’t mind working my way to collecting the platinum trophy achievement.  It’s a lot of fighting and a lot of grinding, but the mobs that are available to you are interesting and really difficult.  Sitting there developing a strategy and trying endless possibilities of party group and paradigm combinations makes the post-game entertaining to me.  I can see why the majority wouldn’t think so, but so far it’s been OK for me.  It’s by far the first Final Fantasy game I kept playing after I had beaten it, so I guess that deserves some sort of credit.  But on the flipside of that, I can continue playing it because I don’t seem to be missing anything.  The plot was just that bleak to me.  I can run around Gran Pulse for hours fighting mobs and riding on chocobos and it’s the same enjoyment I got playing through the actual game.

The characters are just a bust to me.  None are forgettable, but none are unforgettable, if that makes any sense.  Unlike most other JRPGs I’ve recently played, I won’t forget any of Final Fantasy XIII’s cast members and their voices but it’s probably out of annoyance than appreciation.  If you were to pay me $1,000.00 to spout out the cast of Lost Odyssey I’d probably fail to do so.  But there’s just no character you want to fall in love with.  It seems like their philosophy of trying to build up each character’s story and how they were brought together for this mission fell apart by spreading itself too thin.  They dabble on each character line, some are confusingly so, but you never end up wanting to cheer them on or go to the next section of the map to see what happens next.  Final Fantasy X had so much mystery and intrigue to it; I had an awfully hard time to put my controller down.  Same goes for VII, VIII and even IX.  Hell, even X-2.  XIII wasn’t difficult to stop playing and take a long break.  You just knew what was going to happen next.
The lack of a strong villain was disappointing too.  They didn’t do a good enough job with the other possibilities and the cameo appearances and quick deaths of each semi-villain were disappointing.  And I’ll reiterate one more time; the crystarium system sucks.  Worst of any Final Fantasy game ever.  Even upgrading weapon’s becomes linear and a huge farming task.

So what are the positives to the game?  At the end of the day, it’s still fun.  It’s the first game in a very long time that I managed to sit down, play through and beat in any sort of reasonable time.  The fighting was fun and in absence of a great story, it kept my interest in seeing what battle would be next and how I would manage to five-star it.  The Paradigm System is above and beyond the most fun I’ve ever had in battles, especially since you get so used to just spamming the OK button over and over in previous games.  The challenge and constant seeing of the Game Over screen made Final Fantasy XIII different in that aspect.  It wasn’t as easy as previous games and knowing that you couldn’t quite power level yourself for farm, the strategy involved in doing it right made it nice.

As I mentioned before, the graphics are of course peerless and the soundtrack is my favorite so far.  But unfortunately that’s about it for me.  Final Fantasy XIII is an interesting combination of a strictly linear JRPG with a substandard storyline and characters.  When the game does switch over to free-roaming Gran Pulse, it’s still somewhat limited due to the fact that you can’t beat half the mobs or missions, even if your peak out.  You need that final level of the crystarium unlocked to really stand a reasonable and non-frustrating chance to win.  So when the game does open it, it’s a false sense of ”fun” so to say; you spend a couple of hours exploring and attempting missions until you finally hit a wall and just want to progress onto the rest of the story.  But Gran Pulse is fun when you return after the game, if it’s your cup of tea.

Overall I have to say I’m disappointed in the game.  It ranks somewhere in the middle of the pile for me out of all Final Fantasies.  I like where the series is heading graphically and even gameplay-wise, but I really wish they’d revisit what made their other titles so strong and lovable.  I would most definitely recommend a play-through by anybody; JRPG fan or not.  It’s worth experiencing, much like the movie Avatar in IMAX 3D.  It’s a testament to the direction that gaming is heading.  And hell, to those that didn’t grow up playing the classic Final Fantasy games this one may be all that much better to you.  Here’s to hoping the next chapter in the Final Fantasy XIII series is a better one.

I’ll be jumping back to Starcraft II when I return from Orlando, Florida.  I’ll post some in-depth stuff on it, by popular demand.