Last weekend, PNC Arts Center played host to a pretty solid performance by AFI & Green Day. My friend, Joe, huge Green Day fan that he is, bought tickets and insisted on my attendance. Who am I to deny a good chance for adventure? My proximity to Joe has really gotten me to enjoy their music, and seeing them put on a great show live has only elevated my appreciation.

Our experience at PNC began with us arriving too early and getting denied parking. So, Joe and I hit a diner off the Garden State Parkway and grabbed some snacks; him a veggie burger, me a French onion soup. French onion soup is delicious and always a staple choice for me at unfamiliar locations; this place had an odd combination of spices… something like thyme and/or cinnamon, made for an odd soup. Anyway, I digress. We returned to the Arts Center and got some quality grass parking. Joe and I played catch for a bit, enjoying a quite idyllic summer August day (and later, a great night for an open air concert). After that, we waited in line, to wait in line, to wait for the concert. It was between all these queues that I noticed PNC has a pretty damn good racket going on with regards to pricing schemes. Wait in line in the hot sun and hear, ‘GET YO ICE COLD BEER HERE! ONLY TWELVE BUCKS!’. I was aghast at the costs, but I guess that’s because I’m the equivalent of a country bumpkin these days. I wound up containing my thirst until we found good lawn seats, and then hitting up a water fountain for the recession special.

So a bit of waiting and socializing with neighbors, and then AFI took the stage at sunset. They started with a bang, choosing Medicate as their lead off single. I heard the opening guitar, smiled to myself, and thought, “This is AFI”. AFI played through a lot of their popular songs from their three major label releases. Despite great quality, it was a startlingly quick act, only 45 minutes or so. Green Day would play for 2.5 hours, since both bands are quite popular I expected a more even split. The light show was mostly for naught as well, the sunlight left any visual presentation completely dampened; they ought to have started an hour later. Oh well.

I was left wondering what to expect from Green Day when the staple ‘drunk bunny’ appeared on stage. A guy in a bunny suit walks around and plays the act of the drunken fool; apparently, this is a regular thing. The act was rather amusing and a good way at keeping people’s attention while they awaited their performance.

And, when Green Day took the stage, boy, what a performance it turned out to be. Green Day effortlessly played through a collection of their newest and oldest hits. Billie Joe Armstrong is one heck of an emcee. Not only was he funny and affable the whole way through (‘Welcome, New Jersey and surrounding areas!’) but he fostered crowd participation at a level I haven’t seen before. Some funny events he set up included having a kid replace him as singer (after booting a less gifted fan), having a woman perform a song in sign language aside him (she got a guitar for her efforts), and various interactions with the audience for better or worse (the funnier people earned themselves stage dives).

Nearing the performance’s close, Green Day opted for two encores. The first of which brought us American Idiot and Green Day’s take of the rock opera, Jesus of Suburbia. The second closed out the night with some slower tracks Wake Me Up When September Ends. Following that, for me, a sleepy night drive home and a lazy Sunday to cap the weekend. Reflecting on my concert experience, I’ve realized that one really must go big or go home. In the future, I will make sure the admission I buy gets me up close and personal with the band. I’d probably extend this to really any sort of ticketed event; save up, make it special and truly memorable. The awesomeness of my first Green Day concert is tempered by the fact that I was placed in the proverbial rafters watching ants play guitar.

I finally made the jump to the smart phone world last month. And what a jump. Going from a barely functional LG Env2 to the Droid X is akin to transitioning from the stone age. The Droid X is not perfect, nor is it a necessity. It is pretty much a really cool toy, with the potential for much useful functionality.

So what makes this phone cool? I enjoy how ownership of this device has made many of my older devices obsolete. I use my Droid X as a music player, GPS, portable entertainment, and camera/camcorder. It affords enough utility that I could feasibly stop using a computer entirely at home (But I won’t). I’m able to check emails, stay in touch over AIM/GChat when out, write notes and interface with my online storage through Dropbox. Part of what makes the Droid X a very strong phone is that it currently offers the largest screen in the industry, which was a major selling point and drove the hype through the roof. The screen, though not the highest resolution (iPhone 4 beats it, I believe) makes the phone a very good e-reader; one of my favorite activities when I have downtime with the phone is reading online manga; it is not a strain on the eyes at all.

My favorite aspect of the phone is almost a novelty, but I will detail it anyway. I love the Swype keyboard. It’s gotta be the coolest way to type I’ve ever seen. The idea is that you draw your word out on a virtual keyboard and an algorithm approximates what your intended word was with pretty great accuracy. It’s not hard at all to master, and I personally have fun making extravagant strokes. It’s something that must be experienced to appreciate. Swype is not unique to Droid X, it’s an Android OS application, but conveniently comes preloaded on the phone.

My perspective on apps is that the advantage still lies with the iPhone. I read time and time again about interesting developments that seem an ocean removed from Android. I notice this most in media apps, however in evaluating utility apps it seems the phones are about on par; it’s all the cool games that seem out of my reach. It’s not something that bothers me too greatly, as I have an SNES emulator installed and can play all of the golden oldies.

There are some other disappointments with the Droid X. The speakers are absolutely anemic, even at max volume I have trouble hearing messages and calls in my pocket. Using the air horn app to annoy your friends? Not gonna happen. The phone gets uncomfortably hot under a heavy load, especially when being used as a GPS and music player for a road trip; I worry incessantly about the phone suffering damage from the temperature it reaches. Lastly, either there’s an incompatibility with my contacts or the Verizon associate who ported my contacts made a mistake, because all my phone contacts ported over are in a sort of sub directory removed from searches. It’s most frustrating that I’m forced to devote time later to fix that mess.

Lastly, the real Droid X wild card is the upcoming push to Android 2.2, supposedly ushering in a new renaissance. The OS is better optimized, running at a significantly better speed under multiple benchmarks. I’ve found the speed on Droid X to be decent, so a boost there would be a pleasant surprise. Flash support is added, but who knows how many Flash apps will actually be useful with a touch screen. The update is promised before the end of summer, and the Droid Classic got it last week (not to mention Android 2.2 has been available now for about three months), so it can’t be too far out.

My verdict is that if you are looking to upgrade and on the Verizon network, Droid X is probably where to go. It’s a great smart phone for first time users; I’m still learning of new techniques and tools, like Google Voice (my next goal on the phone). I’m happy with it, and I don’t see any new phones close on the horizon to make it obsolete. However, I probably wouldn’t explicitly switch to Verizon without considering other options, as each carrier has a flagship smart phone these days and at first glance they look roughly comparable.

Immersion is the third album from the UK-based, electronic rock group Pendulum. It came out May 24; I only found out about it last week, much to my chagrin. For anyone who hasn’t heard Pendulum’s music before, they are well known for two things: danceable up tempo beats and music loud enough to remind one of a powder keg going off. My first exposure to the band was the TF2 Mass AI video set to their 2008 single, “Propane Nightmares”, and I’ve been a fan since.

“Genesis” starts us off, a one minute intro track. I usually don’t go for these and despise their placement in albums, mainly since I listen to albums shuffled most of the time. Genesis has an interesting sound, and I wish it was its own song. Unfortunately, it reaches an orchestral peak and then fades away to lead into the second track, “Salt in the Wounds“, which isn’t very memorable either. At least it’s got some nice hooks that stave it off from total mediocrity.

“Watercolour” is the third track, and the lead single. This is in excellent choice. Sure, it’s got frenetic drumming, a nice beat, and multiple tempo swaps, but what defines Watercolour the most for me is its compelling vocals. It’s one of those ‘Get up and go wild!’ songs that should prove a hit in any dance club or playlist. Here’s the radio edit:

“Set Me on Fire” follows, an interesting piece that shifts style constantly. Myriads of sampled vocals are separated by periods where a cooling note takes priority; the only thing constant on this track is solid drumming. “Crush” is the next track, where sung lyrics return again, and the song closes out with some simple guitaring that could be considered soothing after the miasma of beats prior. “Under the Waves“, which follows the end of Crush, keeps us at a more relaxing speed. The pace is a bit jarred by some odd hooks, that is likely Pendulum trying to make sure we don’t get too comfortable.

Indeed, the loudest track on the album follows, “Immunize“, with vocals from Liam Howlett of The Prodigy. This is a hard song not to go completely nuts to, with a really commanding hook and authoritative vocals. My only beef is that it’s repetitive and long. This song could have stood out as a single if it was a little more interesting. Also, is it wrong to wish that Enter Shikari sounded a little more like this? Just saying.

“The Island” appears next, twinned into two tracks: Dawn and Dusk, and is slated to be the third single. Dawn cools us off after the intensity of Immunize, with reserved vocals and an uplifting hook defining the song. Where order is kept with Dawn, in Dusk we see chaos embodied. This song is just wild and hard to describe. Beats fly everywhere; there is no catching your breath until the song ends. Both tunes keep a high BPM despite their massive differences and are probably the most danceable tracks on the album. I’ll put my vote down for Dawn as my preferred pick, but I’m sure Pendulum’s audience will be polarized on which half of The Island is their favorite. Just don’t get LOST.

“Comprachios” is the tenth track of Immersion. Harsh, distorted vocals and riffs gives this song an industrial feel that is really out of place. Thankfully, it’s the shortest song on the album, and whisks us quickly off to “The Vulture“. Too bad we don’t find much solace here either. Fast-dealt lyrics and harsh instrumentals define this song. It’s not as hostile as Comprachios but still feels odd in relation to the rest of the album.

After these two tracks is Immersion‘s second single, “Witchcraft”. Vocal harmony and Pendulum’s more recognizable beats return in a flashy display. However, it is the requisite melancholy tune of the album, and the fusion of downer lyrics with high tempo riffs is a bit confusing here. It’s still one of the better songs on the album.

“Self Vs Self“, featuring In Flames, is another interesting track that bridges the genre into metal. I like to imagine that this song exists so that Pendulum fans can tell their metalhead friends how edgy they are. Self to Self is actually a good song, but there’s very little of a Pendulum sound here at all. I’m not sure it belongs either.

“The Fountain” is Immersion‘s penultimate track. It keeps a nice up tempo, positive beat to get us flying high again after all the dark material and grave sounds since leaving The Island. This is another danceable tune that should be under consideration for a fourth single. Starring Steve Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and featuring complex, skittering beats, as well as use of sampled voices in time make for a truly unique offering from Pendulum.

Last tune of all, that ends this strange, eventful album is “Encoder“. It’s nice, simple (for Pendulum), and relaxing; it brings vague reminisces of a beach, and ends us with an extended guitar solo and crashing waves.

Immersion is all about going splishy-splash in the sea. Many of its lyrics, instrumentals, and song titles, in addition to its artwork follow an aquatic motif. It’s all about as subtle as being hit in the face with a bag of bricks. Lucky for me, I consider water a fascinating aesthetic, and have been known to jump in the pool. Anyway, Pendulum took what some consider trite subject material and delivered an enjoyable album. A few weak points do not mar the overall presentation.

The Starcraft II Hate Parade continues unabashed as the beta rears its head back to life. Newest on the chopping block is a recent announcement that posting on Blizzard boards will now require your real identity. This is in addition to all of the issues that have plagued this game’s prerelease so far. The controversy surrounding this game and Battle.Net just continues to heat up, as if to parallel the unbearable weather in New Jersey this week.

The community buzz for the Starcraft II beta has once again turned to rage. Many denizens of the internet simply do not wish to share their personal info, a function Blactivizzard fails to understand. RealID is already something many players have been wary of and a big object of complaints as an unnecessary ‘upgrade’ to the new BNet. Forcing it down our throats does no good except to further alienate the user base. It is especially frustrating to see reduced functionality offered to those who do not use it. A RealID friend is able to message others across games and view friends of friends. Steam offers this already without compromising our privacy. That we can’t see the same privileges freely extended on Battle.net is maddening.

An interesting occurrence with this announcement was when Blizzard CM Bashiok attempted to calm the seething masses. In this thread, he gives us his real name, Micah Whipple. What did we do? Shoot the messenger, of course! Pranksters gathered his info and posted information pertaining to the identities of family members, phone number, and even his house on google street view. Now, this isn’t indicative that every person on the Blizzard forums is a frothing at the mouth maniac, but who wants to share their personal information with such an ill-boding precedent. Piss the wrong person off and the same thing could happen to you if you haven’t taken the right steps to protect your personal info.

Another glaring problem with embracing RealID on the boards is the accountability factor. It’s admirable that Blizzard wants to cut down on the trolling and unconstructive posting, but forcing us to use our real names has adverse effects. A google search for your name is going to turn up your Blizzard post history now, and even if you have a quality post record, it’s still undesirable to many who worry about what this says to employers or individuals who dig up your name. Why can’t we be restricted to simply posting on one handle of our choosing and establish a reputation that way? Thinking to yourself that it would be easier just to spoof Battle.Net with a fake name? It will probably come to that, but it’s too bad that most of us locked WoW and all of our old games to BNet accounts already.

This whole mess just stinks of megalomania to me. This company has developed some serious hubris, and thinks that just because they are currently on top of the food chain, they can control and subject their users to their whims far more than what should be acceptable. What I really see here is Blizzard attempting many changes across Battle.Net that the community is just not ready for (if it ever would be), and their sales are going to suffer for that. This massive negative reaction across fan boards is not all show. We do not want to entirely surrender our identities to big brother yet, and for Blizzard to outright ignore that is unforgivable in the eyes of many, including myself.

EDIT: After three days, a 45,000 post complaint thread, and even condemnation from non-gaming media sources, Blizzard has announced the revocation of this change.

Well, as promised, here is my first post that deviates from video games. Hopefully I’ll start cooking more regularly again with an audience!

I love cooking the unusual and sensational, so what better way to start then with a discourse on the KFC Double Down? I found a guideline a few months back on Serious Eats for how to create an at-home version that would blow the mass-produced version out of the water. Since then, I’ve been craving to make them. I never had the opportunity to sample the original sandwich, and have been stuck on the outside looking in until now. The idea sounds awesome, if a bit disgusting when purveyed as fast food. I don’t know how one can go wrong with an extra spicy combo of fried chicken, cheese, and bacon though. So I went with my gut instincts and came up with a dinner that was quite a hit at my Stanley Cup viewing party last week. RIP Flyers, it was a good run.

Making the Double Down is not too arduous of a task for even the most basic of chefs (like me). I’d rate it a pretty easy process, and do plan on making them again. The first step is prepping the chicken. I wound up going with a pack of five breasts; generally one per person should make for sufficient servings. Get all your breasts and a cutting board, or whatever surface strikes your fancy, and get trimming on the fat and tenderloins. You should use the tenderloins to make smaller versions of the sandwiches, a great way to stretch your ingredients. The breasts next get cut in half horizontally, the halves will serve as top and bottom for the sandwich.

Take those breasts and toss them all in a large bowl; now it’s time to apply a marinade. Pour in some buttermilk, enough to cover the breasts, I topped that with pepper, paprika, a grated clove of garlic, and plenty of salt. I left that alone in the fridge for most of a day.

Best consumed cooked!

The actual day of cooking began in earnest on my return from work, and demanded my attention for most of an hour. Before any frying, I grated my cheese and prepared the sauce. I wound up grating an insufficient amount of cheese; don’t be shy with piling it on. The sauce, designed to emulate KFC’s, was a 2/3 mayo, 1/3 ketchup concoction, dashed with garlic salt and hot sauce. It should come out to a pinkish hue.

An insufficient amount of cheese!

Onto the actual frying, the first item up was the bacon. I went with the thick cut variety; generally one and a half strips of bacon is enough for each breast. Save the bacon fat to combine with your frying oil.

Before frying the chicken, bread them with seasoned flour, I splashed mine with salt, pepper, and onion powder. After breading all your chicken, you can make use of the marinade by pouring it in to your extra flour, balling them, and then frying the dough balls! These guys can be dipped in your sauce later and make delicious one-biters.

Sauce side goes on top!

I used a deep pot to fry the goods in, heated up to approximately 375 degrees.  Give each piece of chicken a few minutes, and then remove when they are browned. Once they’re not scalding hot, lay two similar sides together, and adorn each appropriately. One side gets cheese, the other gets sauce; I’d toss the bacon on with the cheese. Affix the two sides together, toss in the oven for a short blast to melt the cheese, and then they are ready to serve after a brief cooling period. They can be eaten sandwich style with a little care, or with a knife and fork, for the classy eaters. They’ve got a nice spicy kick, so be forewarned. I suggest having a cool, highly-carbonated beverage on hand to accompany the dish.

Om nom nom!

The Starcraft II Beta has been chugging along at a frenzied pace, changes rapidly coming and going as the game approaches its July release date. There is no doubt that this game will consume a significant chunk of my life in the coming years, but that doesn’t mean its perfect. In my two months of beta playing, I actually have garnered quite a few complaints about the game’s design that are likely to remain unresolved going into release.

First and foremost, the new Bnet is a lonely, desolate place. The removal of chat channels, or really any sort of social interaction past the friend list, forms a stark contrast to the raucous liveliness of Warcraft 3′s community, unsavory as it may have been at times. I find it hard to believe that Blizzard considered spam so much of an issue that they would slash any social materials outside of the friend list from Starcraft’s infinitely long development. It is confirmed that chat channels won’t make release, and that is just a darn shame. At least we have Facebook integration! What a joke.

What I find most mystifying about Bnet 2.0 is the two name identifier system. This makes it difficult to find your friends and distinguish people from each other, reminding me of the Wii’s reprehensible friend code system. Blizzard says this is so anyone can have the display name they want, but I suspect this is a veiled motive to protect the more innocent users from harassment. At least one can make funny name combinations for trolling the official forums.

The matchmaking of B2.0 is laudable; it’s a great improvement over Warcraft 3′s. The division system is an excellent way to divide the user base up and ensure that the games each player finds are fair. My complaint about divisions is that they are also wastelands, where players chase carrots on a stick against specters. I don’t think I’ve ever played against anyone in my division; if I have, I have no way of knowing besides the taxing process of examining every opponent’s profile. Divisions need to be more personal. A second problem with the matchmaking is that the game currently puts randomly assembled teams against arranged teams, a totally unfair setup. I can only presume that this is a beta oversight and absolutely cannot be intended for release.

The Zerg race’s design is questionable. Though I find the unit composition and each unit’s role fine, there are some glaring omissions. It’s sad that the lurker, a proud unit within the Starcraft heritage, was cut during development. It could certainly fill the role of a cloaked attacker, which the Zerg currently have none of. The Zerg also lack any cliff-walking units as well, a touted new feature that only went to Terran and Protoss. Most frustrating about the Zerg race is the macro mechanic of spawning larvae. It is boring and gives no room for error. The queen must spawn every forty seconds, without fail, or efficiency is permanently lost. Terran and Protoss have more options on how to use their racial abilities, and allow the player to use the ability multiple times if they store up energy. I stopped playing Zerg because of this punishing mechanic. Zerg is just too hard for me to play effectively in its current iteration. A large consensus among the community is that the race just doesn’t seem finished when juxtaposed with Protoss and Terran.

I got extremely vexed by the removal of wireframe casting a couple patches ago. It allowed players to use direct target abilities on other units in a control group. Blizzard removed this because they felt it made the macro mechanics too easy. This is a disappointing reversal of policy from what I’ve seen throughout the game’s development. Nor was casting via portrait ever an option either, two tools I completely expected to be standard issue. The modding community will suffer if these changes are not able to be overridden in the map editor. Starcraft could also benefit from a ‘formation move’ command. Right now it is far too annoying to move a large group of different speed units across the map. My UI complaints strongly parallel the adage of ‘two steps forward, one step backward’, which is where SC2 is almost certainly headed.

The brightness in my eyes towards the Starcraft II experience may have faded just a little bit with my prolonged exposure to the beta. I have realized that this game won’t be perfect, and on top of that, it will cost $60, but by no means is the magic gone. I have found Terran to be the perfect race to settle down with to eventually dominate the ladder. The campaign remains shrouded in mystery but promises a great delivery. Custom maps, larger multiplayer games, and whatever other surprises Blizzard still holds up its sleeve have yet to take the stage. I can only wait with anticipation for July 27th.

Debuting in late 2009, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II sets lofty goals, striving to be the paragon for what every sequel should emulate. That mantra should be keeping what is good about the prior game(s), while overhauling and improving the more lackluster parts. I am happy to say that ACII is mostly a success in that department.

In ACII, we move the setting to Renaissance Italy, and continue the story within a story from the perspective of Ezio Auditore, and are much improved in that department. Not only with the plot, but in delivery as well. ACI was guilty of hosting deluges of dialogue that made me zone out multiple times; we have a bit more effort here. The cutscenes and spoken lines are nicely broken up into smaller pieces with bits of humor and even some emotion added. The plot’s still a little convoluted, and the designer’s decision to end the game with little resolution after introducing aliens is somewhat reprehensible, but overall, I found myself greatly enjoying the story. The inclusion of famous historical characters like Leonardo da Vinci only increased my interest.

What’s most overhauled after story in ACII is the progression element of the game. Where the first Creed was repetitive and boring, going from assassination to assassination without the slightest derivation in formula, our sequel here keeps some mystique to its formula as the game unfolds. I was pleasantly surprised multiple times while playing ACII; I never expected to use Da Vinci’s flying machine or battle on a horse-driven carriage, brief as those scenes were.

Along the line of progression, ACII also includes a money system for improving yourself. Spending money to build your town and equip yourself is addictive, though somewhat superfluous. By mid-game I had so much money that any sort of thriftiness was unneeded. The fun diversions of pickpocketing and looting corpses swiftly became pointless and consequentially avoided. The same fate befell most of the optional side quests. However, I did greatly enjoy the Prince of Persia derived tombs littered throughout the game.

Combat was good in the original, though somewhat easily exploited. That doesn’t change much in ACII, though there are a ton of new options in combat, including disarms and poisons. My sneaking suspicion is that many of these additions are superfluous except to give the animators more excuses for creating gruesome fatalities (Not that I mind). Combat in ACII may be a tad deeper, but it’s still easy, especially with almost unlimited health from medicine. The combat rarely gets boring though, and that’s a credit to the design.

The best feature of ACI was definitely the living, breathing simulacrums of ancient cities in the Holy Land. While Creed the Latter has more beautiful cityscapes to explore, it falls short in execution. Far too much time is spent in Venice, while Forli and Rome have maybe twenty minutes of action each. It really feels like these two areas got passed over in an effort to get the game out on time. Venice takes up half the game, and we never get a break of it (Those damn canals!). Too much time is spent in the same city without a break in this game. ACI’s presentation was far more enjoyable, with being able to break up the time spent in each city very evenly.

I played through ACII on Xbox, avoiding the shackling and controversial DRM on PC, which forces an internet connection to play. I wouldn’t recommend the PC version on that virtue alone. Of course, this will be hypocrisy at its finest when Starcraft II releases, for I’ve been playing the beta with quite a fervor. Blizzard will pose the same restrictions, along with no LAN, and a $60 price tag. But, one can make an exception for Blizzard, right?

Penny Arcade Expo hit the east coast last weekend, in a show not lacking for attendance. The convention had pretty much everything your contemporary nerd can want for. Not to mention the choice of locale of Boston, which despite being an awesome city, I did not get to tour much of; I spent all waking hours at PAX, mostly.

PAX East 2010 was my first con since Origins 2002. This one was a lot, and I mean a lot, more packed. It seems foolish that there was never a gaming con held over here before (and very few nerdy cons in general). Well, with it being the first, perhaps I can forgive the prime error of selling too many tickets. The con was unfortunately oversold and/or the convention hall was too small. I found that out almost immediately on the first day, when I arrived half an hour early to go to the Keynote speech but found myself not even able to wait in line. This problem would rear its ugly head everywhere in the convention.

The de facto standard I found was an hour – hour and half wait for more niche panels (and that was only to get average seating). I didn’t even bother with any of the bigger ones, as much as I would have liked to attend a panel by the Penny Arcade guys. The Exposition Hall had similar waits to try out any new games (Two hour wait for Starcraft 2, at least; good thing I got in beta already!). It was totally ridiculous and frustrating. Thankfully, I eventually found a nice reprieve with the tabletop game section. They had an excellent selection of tabletops, and more importantly, no wait to get them.

I got to try the more mainstream titles Settlers of Catan and Munchkin, both of which are great titles. I’m definitely hungry for more Catan. Seemingly everyone was though, as all the copies of that game were checked out several times for tournaments. A little bit of poor planning by PAX there as well. Betrayal at House on the Hill was a very interesting board game I got a couple tries in on it as well; it’s a nice campy, horror-themed game that generates a ‘haunted house’ board randomly every game to keep it entertaining. One of my travel mates was ecstatic to play this game as it had gone out of print, and I will vouch that it was time well spent. Last, I tried Starcraft: The Board Game. Never again! That game is a complicated mess. I spent an hour trying to figure it out and was happy when it came time to give up.

Speaking of Starcraft, I hung out at the Blizzard/Nvidia section for a lot of the convention (by virtue of waiting in line, of course). I actually won myself a second beta key by playing in a Blizzard promotional 1v1 game. The game was Protoss vs Terran, and I came back from him destroying my main base with a whole lot of stalkers. I took the economy advantage back quickly with a well defended expansion and came in for the kill, ruining my opponent’s day in the process. If people weren’t dubious of my claims of having never played beta before, they certainly were after while I was exhibiting my mastery of hotkeys and build order, although my 60 APM was totally gosu.

PAX East 2010, clusterfuck that it was, was a show with a great amount of potential. I’m glad to hear that the convention has already been announced to reoccur, and in a bigger venue. I’m sure my complaints are well known by the show’s staff, so I’m willing to forgive and forget in expectations of much greater things next year.

Starcraft II’s beta FINALLY arrived last week, to a collective sigh of relief. Or perhaps a mass cry of rage at people finding their inboxes empty. Sadly, I have no beta key myself, but the mass influx of information coming from streams and videos has kept me quite sated, and quite ready to post some thoughts about how eager I am to play this game.

First off, let me preface this commentary by saying that I never really played Starcraft. I got into Warcraft III first, and by that time Starcraft was way past its prime. And indeed, when I tried out the campaign last year, it was a very frustrating experience; many of the things I took for granted as standard RTS items had not yet been invented in SC. Also, I tried to play SC the same way as WCIII, which was quite a mistake. The two games are fundamentally different.

But anyway, I got interested in SCII as soon as it was announced as the next strategy game from Blizzard. I’ve been following it quite rabidly since it was revealed seemingly an eon ago; that only served to psyche myself up and make the wait more unbearable. The game looks absolutely gorgeous now, especially from the HD videos being uploaded on Youtube. Not only are there beautiful visuals, but the system requirements, as always for Blizzard, are surprisingly low for the level of detail.

Not being a big SC player and having no beta access leaves me with little credence to make any commentary on balance, so I’ll spare that (also the game being beta, and changes constant, already the first patch has come out at time of writing). One thing to note is that throughout the development process I have always been amused at the tears and rage from the whinier hardcore players over convenience changes like being able to select multiple buildings or having your workers automatically mine. Blizzard’s paradigm is that mindless busywork like that should be lessened, and be replaced with other macro mechanics that offer intelligence and strategy in maximizing your economy. How people can be against that completely boggles my mind.

The single player and map editor are not in the beta unfortunately. Whenever Starcraft II comes out, expect a detailed review on the campaign, which Blizzard has hinted at it being quite epic, despite being limited to only one race. The map editor needs no introduction, to those unfamiliar with it, I only need say that the replay value of SCII will multiply tenfold with the creativity of the Blizzard modding community. I’m eager to try it out myself, if I recall correctly editing will be done with a C-based language; I may need to brush up on that!

Hopefully, watching all these videos will help me get ready to play SCII when it comes closer to release. I’m also really hoping that PAX next month will have the beta for me to try out, else I will be a very sad panda. Speaking of which, my journal on the visit to PAX will be next month’s entry. It should be very exciting, my first big con since Origins seven years ago.

Estiah is a browser MMO that I spent most of my winter break playing. Unfortunately, my gaming pc was on the fritz, so only the slimmest of pickings were available to me. To put things in perspective, the last time I played one of these games was Utopia some eight or nine years ago. The genre is as addictive as ever.

I was surprised to find information and publicity about Estiah quite scarce. It was created in 2008 by a couple of jaded ex-World of Warcraft players, though it bears little resemblance to WoW. Anyway, the game’s story is a pretty blunt. “You’re in fantasyland, go level up and clear dungeons”, would surmise it quite well; no high marks there, but then again that’s the story and setting of most MMOs these days, so it’s not really a detriment. The story mainly exists to explain why your character must use decks of playing cards (‘charms’) instead of actually using equipment.

Estiah, at its core, is basically a card game with a pervasive element of progression. It’s certainly an interesting fusion of two genres, and what I immediately liked about the game was its unique method of handling character development. You level up through boosting four standard attributes by working various daily jobs or mastering skills. Your attributes determine which types of charms you can use in your deck, and skills are rewarded mainly through battling with charms, but also from non-combat activities. These attributes do not directly affect gameplay at all, only what charms you are able to equip. Two special attributes also exist that determine your health points and the maximum number of cards allowed in your deck (‘spirit’). You get action points every couple of hours, which are the currency for boosting skills in arenas, PvP, or dungeons. There exist three tiers of class specialization so to provide incentive towards reaching the later levels.

Unfortunately, this progression element adds questionable elements to the game as well. What I particularly dislike is the extreme amount of metagaming needed to keep a competitive edge. A player should not need to be playing the system from level one, but that is unfortunately the case in Estiah. This problem is caused from having skills that reward health and spirit exist (at the least, exist that early), which corrupt the whole system by giving unfair advantages to those who exploit the game mechanics. This forces a standard for everyone to keep up that just isn’t fun. Another problem is that it’s necessary to study all the encounters beforehand due to the limited actions awarded per day. This kind of research would not be as significant a pre-requisite if there was a smaller penalty on action points lost for failing encounters. Also, one last concern is that the long leveling time and high degree of specializing mean you might be stuck with something you don’t enjoy. In a free game requiring a significant amount of dedication, that kind of commitment is not too appealing.

So I guess what killed Estiah for me was the massive amount of time I would have had to dedicate to a game that just didn’t seem worth it. However, if you’re the kind of player who thrives on min/maxing and is looking for an extra activity on the side, you may consider giving Estiah a go. I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise. It’s an all or nothing sort of game.