Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. This springs to mind at first instance because it does actually keep a count of how many people you have murdered during your adventures. At the moment of writing, I have slaughtered 949 people, 358 animals and 12 bunnies. 880 of those were sneak attacks, I’m not about to let you know you are about to die am I?

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The tough silent type, Adam Jensen is the best there is in the killing department. Security bots can be a pain to take down but all those poor Spec Ops soldiers stood no chance against a snipe or Typhoon ordnance in the face.

Shogun 2: Total War and Civilization V. I bundled these two together because to be perfectly honest the kill count here is in the thousands and if you are a warlord like me then reaching the millions. Entire clans and civilisations got wiped off the face of the Earth; I did not like those Christian heretics on our sacred lands so they were first on my list. And no Happy New Years for Gandhi either, I dropped a nuke on Delhi.

Borderlands. Skaag down! At one point there were so many Skaags and other alien life forms that I actually ran out of ammunition, on all of the guns I was carrying.  And believe me when I say I was carrying enough ammunition to destroy the population of Slough. If you are a Brit, you will understand why I chose this town in my example.

Resident Evil 5. Those blasted Lickers, good grief. You would think multiple shogun wounds to the cranium would do the trick but oh nooooo they just keep coming. Dagger fights against such things can be a bit, life threatening.

StarCraft 2. For the Swarm, everyone must die. Kerrigan doesn’t let anybody live, that would just be very unswarm like. Protoss Zealots for dinner or maybe Terran stew?

Left4Dead 2. Zombies, more zombies and yes you guessed it more zombies. I particularly hate Tanks and Chargers. For the ultimate killing spree, I suggest the Helms Deep map in Survival mode. As you approach the halfway mark, it gets ridiculous. Screams of “WHERE THE HELL IS GANDALF” happens very frequently.

Mass Effect 1 and 2. For the past two weeks, I have been going through these back to back. I would say the Husks are definitely the ones I loved killing; insanely annoying at critical moments. Upon reflection, I saved the galaxy from the Reapers but the number of people I had to kill to get there was borderline genocide. I also shot some civilians as well, such as that scientist I forgot the name. Kill and move on.

And finally…

Portal 2. I add this because I killed myself on many occasions. Too much testing is bad for one’s health. But there is always cake.

P.S: Can I just say that the only reason the Mayan calendar stops towards the end of 2012 is not that they predicted the end of world. It is most likely they either ran out of room in their calendar and couldn’t be bothered to chisel another stone tablet, or the guy responsible for compiling the calendar was too lazy to keep going and went to make a cup of tea.

The main thing is that the gift portrait that came with the BlizzCon pass is now active and available to select on the rewards page, the PanTerran Marine, paying homage to the new Panda class in Mists of Pandaria for World of Warcraft. All I need now is a matching bamboo stim pack upgrade and we will be ready to go.

A full list of patch notes are given here:

Anaheim Convention Center

If there’s one thing that Americans do best (apart from massive food portions which I love) it would be hosting conventions. To say The Anaheim Convention Center was big is an understatement. After conquering the jetlag and collecting our pass and swag bag the night before, we started day one of BlizzCon. Where to begin! You are greeted with three huge sections representing the three Blizzard games being showcased; World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3. Each section had hundreds of PCs with the latest expansion packs installed for you to try, with Diablo 3 being a hands-on beta version. Not only that, but you also got to play on some rather nice hardware, such as the Razer headset, keyboard and mouse set for StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 gear as well from SteelSeries. There were many other sections as well for competitions; World of Warcraft PvE matches and the highly anticipated GSL finals for StarCraft 2, where players from South Korea flew all the way to Los Angeles to participate. If you weren’t into any of that, there is plenty to do such as the artists stage where real art was being drawn and auctioned off on the day, and many upon many talks about game lore or developer discussions on game mechanics.

The amount of thought and effort that went to the event was simply amazing, with everything looking fantastic. I particularly loved the giant statues that were dotted around the convention center. My favourites were the rather menacing but seductive Kerrigan from StarCraft 2 and the mighty Tyrael from Diablo 3. StarCraft 2 dominated day one for us, with many matches being played out by some of the very top eSports players.

Starcraft 2 GSL and BlizzCon Invitational Finals

The Global Star League, or better known as GSL, is the most famous StarCraft 2 league in the world. Normally held in South Korea, the GSL finals were for the first time coming over to Stateside and to BlizzCon along with our favourite commentators such as Day 9 and Tasteless. It was just by sheer luck that the one time I wanted to go to BlizzCon was the year the GSL was happening there. Also on the cards was the BlizzCon Invitationals, whereby some of the very top players were invited to play to be the BlizzCon champion. The players that stood out for me include GamaniaSen as Zerg, a great guy and he even signed my StarCraft 2 game, with Dignitas.Select as Terran. But there are three players in particular that had the audience screaming and gasping at every turn as the night unfolded. For the GSL finals, it was IMMVP as Terran (or MVP for short) vs SlayerSMMA also as Terran (also known as MMA). Looking at the match statistics for both, MVP comes out on top by a mile and based on this I thought he would win. But MMA caused a massive upset for the favourite, with the last game going down to the wire and MMA coming out on top to take the GSL crown.

The last game was… ridiculously insane. The amount of Ghosts/nukes deployed was too many to count, the shouts of OH MY GOD and NOOOOO!! from the crowd created such a cacophony that even the WoW players had to stop and look. MMA played a superb game and his last play was mind blowingly good. He was basically playing how MVP SHOULD have played, but didn’t. A great win thoroughly deserved, edge of the seat stuff.

The second final was the BlizzCon Invitationals involving IMMVP again vs NesTea as Zerg. NesTea is the King of Zerg; the best Zerg player in the world by far. His macro skills are inhuman and the same can be said for his micro. MVP on the other hand wants to redeem himself from the GSL upset and again be recognised as the best Terran player. If you think the GSL finals was amazing, then this match up was unbelievable. More so in terms of NesTea’s tactics; at one point he had over 100 Banelings at his disposal with a double digit count for Broodlords. Again, the last game went right down the wire with neither player wanting to commit to the final assault. The key things that slowly swung the tide was a) MVP doing mass medic marine drops into NesTea’s bases which caused a lot of harassment and track back, b) the ridiculous amount of Ghosts and nukes produced by MVP wiping out NesTea’s crazy Hive base count and c) NesTea’s indecisiveness at certain times and mistakes such as Nydus tunnel placement.

To be fair to NesTea, it was an impossible situation to be in; both players had so much arsenal that if they were destroyed in one rash move then it would take too long to reproduce again. Having said that, he had more income than MVP by a factor of a hundred so he would have had the upper hand in that respect. Either way, NesTea committed his Zerg Baneling deathball and then his Broodlords were crushed by MVP’s defences. Tactically, MVP played a superb game and had the right mix of units at the right time. The Broodlords from NesTea were a mistake without being accompanied by other units and the lack of scouting meant he could not see the Ghosts early on. But Ghosts against Hive tech is just not balanced at all in my opinion but you cannot take anything away from MVP as the winner. If he played like that in the GSL finals it may have been a different story.

I have some videos I need to edit from the GSL finals so I will upload that shortly. Suffice it to say, it was awesome to be there.

I heart Heart Of The Swarm

The new upcoming StarCraft 2 expansion, henceforth known as HOTS, was exciting to play. New units for all three factions and additional abilities for some units. The most notable for Terran players is The Shredder; an AOE unit (Area of Effect) for mass radiation damage within a certain radius  But personally I feel the key units here are with the Zerg and Protoss. The Zerg have the Viper which has an Abduct ability to drag enemy units into harm or friendlies to safety. I have seen this in action and it can drag a Collossus, even with the sheer size of the latter. I am assuming that it can also drag a Siege Tank even in Siege mode ala Phoenix for Protoss. Coupled with the Swarm Host which can produce an instant swarm of units and it can be an interesting mix. Burrowed Ultralisks is also a welcomed plus, I for one am looking forward to this.

This leads me onto Protoss. They have more flying units now but the one that rings alarm bells is The Oracle. It can halt mining production, unit production and spy enemy buildings to see what tech is currently being researched. Basically, it will know everything in advance and stop your macro and economy in the process. A very dangerous unit in my opinion and one to watch out for in multiplayer games. Mark my words, it’s going to be a pain in the ass unless you have ample air defence.

The HOTS campaign itself will take place after Wings of Liberty and reveal the true nature of Kerrigan after the events in WoL. As a Zerg player, I am dying to see this plot play out. Additionally for fan boys everywhere, Nova will play a part in the proceedings as she is ordered to hunt down Kerrigan. What will Jimmy do? Can he truly love a Zerg Queen? Or will he be eaten by Banelings in his sleep!?! All will be revealed with this instalment which has no release date, hurry up Blizzard.

Day two was Diablo 3 day

Last but not least, we have Diablo 3. I only had a quick multiplayer game but it was enough to get a real taste of what is in store. I played a Mage class which has some powerful spells, but I feel the cool down time for some of them was a bit long… especially when you are being axed to death constantly. I was using the ice spell a lot to freeze opponents in their place to make my escape. Clothies always were a bit soft for close combat so distance is necessary if you can get said distance. One of the warrior classes have the ability to chain you to bring you closer, so that yes you can get axed to death. Nice.

In terms of story, it’s all about Tyrael and the full plot is a little sketchy at the moment. Blizzard do not want to reveal too much about this are building the anticipation; again there is no release date and “it will be done when it is done”. The waiting is absolutely killing us.

In between playing and watching and listening. I got some great game posters and had them signed by the developers for each and the Battlenet staff. I waited two hours in the queue but it was well worth it. It was all too easy to drop money at BlizzCon but the swag bag contents were pretty good even if you didn’t want to spend. My Mini Tyrael statue sits proudly on my desk.

Closing ceremony

The Foo Fighters did a live concert to close out a a thoroughly enjoyable two days of gaming heaven. If I could go every year I would, but being a Brit it would be a costly exercise. I am just glad that I was able to go at least once to one of the greatest gaming conventions the world has ever seen. As a side note, Diablo 3 will be free to all World of Warcraft annual subscribers (yes I know, what about us StarCraft 2 folk). My BlizzCon 2011 flickr set can be found here.

“Apparently, the game’s menu screens aren’t framerate-limited. This means that when there’s nothing else going on, your graphics hardware renders the bejeezus out of those screens…”

As the post says, you need to add the following lines to your variables.txt file in Documents\StarCraft II\variables.txt:

• frameratecapglue=30
• frameratecap=60

It will cap your framerate to around 60fps. To show you just how bad this issue is, I used FRAPS to show the framerate before and after the file edit:

I don’t know whether this is operating system specific, but I do know that other menus such as Lab Upgrades causes the same issues. I had a friend FRAPS his game and he was experiencing the same crazy numbers as I was.

I run the game using the Ultra graphics setting across the board at 1920 x 1200 resolution; you may get different framerates for your system but no doubt the problem will occur regardless. Whether it affects Macs or not remains to be seen. My gaming system is as follows for your reference:

• Intel Core2 Extreme 9650 quad core CPU
• 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX graphics cards, SLi capable
• 4GB DDR2 RAM
• 1TB hard disk space
• Windows 7 OS

Blizzard has just released a new StarCraft II patch, version 1.0.1. Unfortunately it does not mention any fixes for graphical issues. Hopefully they will pick up on this soon.

So what’s been going on in the world of game and tech etc. during this time? What I should have done was do a post for each of these but here is a very condensed version! In no particular order…

Starcraft 2 – Beta
I did a post about this on the Girlygeekdom blog, but to summarise… it is smokingly hot and I’m not talking about the summer heartwave we are getting in the UK. It is due to be released on 23rd July. I’ll try not to disappear when this arrives, and also promise to step outside once in awhile.

Apple iPad
Great for some, mediocre for others. Your lifestyle dictates whether this is a good match for you or not. Personally speaking, there isn’t much room for this slab in my life. I need a full OS, I need power, I need an open platform and I need to run existing applications I currently have. Also regardless of what Steve Jobs said in his keynote speech, this for me is not going to replace a netbook. And it’s too damn heavy.

E3
I personally prefer the Tokyo Game Show than E3, but this year I think the event has been very interesting. Microsoft announces Kinetic, Sony with their 3Dness, and Nintendo with their new 3DS portable console. Out of the three industry heavyweights, Nintendo outshines the rest. I’m buying the 3DS without a doubt; Kingdom Hearts, Zelda, Kirby, Final Fantasy, Kid Icarus the list goes on. And NO 3D GLASSES REQUIRED!

Sci-Fi London
A great event every year, I couldn’t go to the entire event because of fencing commitments. However, I did go to the Anime All-Nighter; 10 hours of anime movies back to back starting at midnight (with the odd RedBull/toilet break inbetween). I absolutely loved it, it’s like a pub lock-in but in a cinema. The best anime was Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks. I cannot tell you the sheer awesomeness of seeing this on the big screen; if you love Rin, Lancer et al then you must watch this. Unfortunately for some, it was the last anime shown that morning and the majority of the audience were fast asleep. I made sure I was completely awake for it.

iPhone 4
To grip or not to grip, that is the question. Either way, I am getting the HTC Desire running Android in a few weeks. At least people who are experiencing death grip woes get a free bumper case, offer valid until 30th September.

World Cup 2010
The tech angle for this is that I will never, ever, forgive ITV for their “transmission error”: showing a Hyundai ad JUST AS GERRARD SCORES THE FIRST GOAL FOR ENGLAND. Insert rage sentence here.

IT Crowd – Series 4
Our beloved geek series is back on Channel 4. Join Moss, Roy and Jen as they embark on more ridiculous IT shenanigans with utmost hilarity. Street Countdown!

My birthday
I got insanely drunk and played LAN games; apparently I can headshot quite well while inebriated. Everything else is a blur; I think we spent an hour trying to blow up the airbed at 4am. I highly recommend Danzka vodka with Mountain Dew.

Final Fantasy XIII
I completed it! You either love it or hate it, I personally liked it a lot. The battle system is to die for, yes the game is mostly on rails but the game does get going after awhile. There are some insanely difficuly bosses to beat, namely Proud Clad and Gigantuar if you find him on Gran Pulse. I’m just happy that I saw the ending after clocking in around 70 hours of gameplay. Also, I hate Barthandelus.

And finally…

Inception
I saw this movie when it was released on Friday. I have sat here for awhile thinking of how to review it and in summary, I just can’t. It’s such an amazing experience, that any words uttered on this page would not do it enough justice. Not to mention it’s rather difficult to describe, my mind was blown. If you think Memento was a mind masher, try this on for size… only Nolan can produce something like this on the big screen and succeed. A plot peppered full of twists and turns, stunts galore, and a great protagonist supported by a wonderful cast; these are the makings of a movie that will pull you in. I also love the music score by Hans Zimmer, it fits in with the film sequences perfectly.