Starcraft 2: Races (Zerg)

Zerg

 

Zerg is one of the three playable races in Starcraft. This is a fictional alien race that evolves through mutation rather than technology. Zerg units are not very strong but they are quick to produce and cheap as well. This makes them able to reproduce a large army after a fight as taken place. This allows people to overcome their enemies by outnumbering them.

A size comparison between a marine on the left and an ultralisk on the right.

The worker unit for the Zerg is called the drone. It is able to morph into buildings or mine minerals and gas.Overlords are flying units that help increase your supply which allows a greater army size and they are useful for scouting or carrying units with upgrades. Zerglings which are small melee units that are useful in surrounding enemies and can only attack ground. They are very cheap to produce only costing 50 minerals and come in a pair. The next unit is the roach which are ranged units that deal decent damage and have a lot of health as well but can only attack ground. The queen is able to do a variety of things such as produce extra larvae which is essential in producing units and it can attack both air and ground. Banelings are units that zerglings can morph into and they explode on impact dealing an area of damage on ground units. The next set of units are tier 2 and require the hatchery to be morphed into a lair. The hydralisk is a powerful ranged unit specializing in taking down air units. The infestor is a unit that can cast spells like fungal growth and infest which takes control of an enemy unit for a certain amount of time but it cannot attack. The mutalisk is an air unit that are not very powerful without a large amount but it can attack both ground and air and their attacks hit more than one unit. The next set of units are tier 3 and require the lair to be morphed into a hive. Ultralisks are powerful melee units that deal splash damage and have a lot of health but can only attack ground units. With the Greater Spire upgrade, Brood lords can be morphed from mutalisks which spawn a broodling every time it attacks.

Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty: Introduction

Starcraft 2 box art

 Starcraft 2 is a sequel to Starcraft 1 which was one of the most sold video games for the PC released in 1998. This game is an RTS which stands for real time strategy. It is often declared as the best RTS known for it's worldwide popularity especially in Korea and United States. Starcraft 2 features 3 races which were from Starcraft 1: Protoss, Terran and Zerg. Protoss is the most technologically advanced race run by humanoids. Terran is the race that are probably the closest to human beings and is known for their mobility as some of their buildings are able to lift off and move as well. Zerg is a fictional alien race known as the swarm as they are able to produce a sizable army very quickly. Starcraft 1 and 2 are known for being able to balance 3 races that are completely different from each other which is very rare in an RTS game.

The Tech Tree for Zerg

   The main point of this game is to create buildings which create attacking units and overcome the enemy. The two main points that will help you succeed is macro and micro. Macro is the ability to create units effectively and quickly and micro is the ability to control your units to maximize damage. In order to create buildings you need minerals and gas which are the resources in the game. Minerals and gas can be obtained through worker units such as probes for Protoss, SCVs for Terran and drones for Zerg. The resources are available for use once they are brought back to the main building (Nexus for Protoss, Command Center for Terran and Hatchery for Zerg). In order to get more advanced units, you must follow a specific tech path until you reach that unit. Unlike other real time strategy games, even the basic units will have some purpose through the entire game rather than just being useful in the beginning.

This game could be played with a variety of different modes like 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4 and free for all. The storyline continues where Starcraft 1 left off which you are able to play in campaign mode. You can either practice with computers or play with other people on Battle.net which is a free service when you buy the game. To ensure you are playing with other people on your level, you are required to play 5 placement matches which decide which tier you belong in. The tiers from lowest to highest are bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond and masters.

DotA: Strategies

DotA is a game that requires a lot of planning and strategics in order to defeat the other team. The strategies I will explain will be competitive at the public(pub) level, not professional. In games where you can pick your heroes, it's best to pick heroes that compliment each other. For instance, you'll want a decent amount of stunners and support so that you can be effective in team fights and one or two carries to aid in the late game. Some starting items that most people use are Ancient Tango of Essifation or Healing Salve which are good items because they are relatively cheap and effective at healing, magic stick if you lane against a hero that constantly uses spells, Animal Courier so you can bring items to your hero without running back to base or magic bottle if you're good at rune hunting and constantly use mana. There is always one lane where a hero will solo which grants them more experience points and in pub games this lane is usually middle. The other two lanes top and bottom will usually contain two heroes on each lane but some times they are split into one and three to obtain the first kill granting more gold and experience. A major part of this game is getting gold and experience points effectively because you can spend gold to get items and experience points help you level up. A method to get gold faster is to "last hit" which means you're the final person to attack the creep which gives you 38-50 gold rather than none. Over time, this will give you a definite advantage if you are good at last hitting. Since this is a team game, it is crucial that you communicate with your team when you want to commence attacks. Usually communication is the factor that determines whether you win or lose.

The Map of DotA (Red is Sentinel, Green is Scourge)

If you are a beginner to this game, you may want to pick one hero and practice it until you are decent because it's not easy to learn every hero. There are many online guides to every hero so make sure you read them as this helps you decide what items to get and make full use of your skills. You will also want to join games that include the game mode -em which stands for easy mode as this gives you more gold every second so if you aren't good at last hitting, you will still be somewhat competitive. Although this game is pretty old, there are still a lot of beginners so you won't always be playing with people way better than you. This game requires a lot of practice and has a very steep learning curve but it can be very enjoyable when you're decent at it.
The full list of items can be found here: http://www.dotastrategy.com/item.html

DotA: Heroes

The most amazing feature about DotA is the amount of heroes, 103 to be exact. Heroes are divided by their primary attributes, which are Strength, Agility and Intelligence. Each of these attributes have a special purpose and usually dictate the role of the hero. Intelligence heroes are specialized in spells and usually support the team. Agility heroes are good for carrying the team which is essential in the late game. Strength heroes generally have more health and most of the strength heroes can either play as support or carry. Heroes can be leveled up to a maximum of level twenty-five by gaining experience points. Every hero has four abilities which divide into three normal skills and one ultimate skill. Normal skills can be leveled up to four times: first level at hero level one, second level at level three, third level at level five and fourth level at level seven. Ultimate abilities can be leveled up three times: level one at hero level six, level two at level 11 and level three at level sixteen. Abilities can either be active or passive which I'll explain. Active abilities are abilities that can be used when the user decides to such as Laguna blade which does damage when used. Passive abilities are abilities that give some sort of enhancement permanently such as Trueshot Aura which gives bonus damage to all range units within an area. After an ability is used, usually there is a time limit before you can use the ability again which is called a "cooldown". Some abilities also use mana which is like health points but decrease after a skill is used. In depth information about each hero can be found at http://www.playdota.com/heroes

DotA: Summary

Current loading screen for DotA

     I'm going to take a short break from Forza 3 and talk about some other games i spend time playing. DotA is one of my favorite games on the computer and I've spent countless hours playing it. This is a popular game map within the game Warcraft 3. There are many other "clones" of it such as HoN(Heroes of Newerth) or LoL(League of Legends) which is free to play. The downside of being embedded into Warcraft 3 is that the graphics are kind of dated and there's no way to update the graphics. But to me, graphics are no where near as important as gameplay. The goal of this game is to destroy the enemy's ancient which is a heavily guarded structure while protecting your own ancient as well. It supports a maximum of ten players (five versus five) and each player is given a hero which are supported by AI (Artificial Intelligence) units.

An in-game screenshot

     The two teams start off on opposite ends of the map; bottom left for Sentinel and top right for Scourge. There are 103 unique heroes to choose from, each one with 4 abilities that can be obtained through leveling. Leveling is done by either killing AI units or other heroes and the higher the level, the stronger the hero. Gold is the currency in this game used to buy items to enhance your hero and it is also obtained by killing AI units and heroes. Teamwork is crucial in this game as it is almost impossible to win alone. This game is a lot more fun if you play with people you know because random people on your team may not always cooperate with you. There are three lanes that lead to each others ancient, commonly referred to as: Top, Middle, Bottom. This is the path the AI units take and where the battle takes place. There are many types of game modes which affect the scenario such as -ap which allows everyone to choose their hero and -ar which gives everyone a random hero. This game is not easy to learn if you haven't played Warcraft 3 at all but some heroes are easier than others to make beginners more competitive. I'm not particularly good at this game but I still enjoy playing it and will probably do so for a long time.

Forza 3: Progress Part II

This will be the second installment of my progress on Forza 3 and I will be discussing season 2 and 3.

1994 Nissan 300zx Twin Turbo

  Season 2 is not much different from season one since the cars you use will range from D to C class. Cars like the Pontiac Trans Am and Nissan 300zx are in this class. These cars are still relatively easy to handle without any assists making it easy to earn more money. A lot of the cars from the 90's era are in D class which was one of my favorite automotive eras making this season pretty enjoyable. Just like season 1, the reward cars you gain from leveling up were enough to get by without spending any money. I decided to save up my money to purchase cars later on when I actually need to. In order to complete this season, you have to complete five races in C class every weekend in the game calendar. During the weekdays, you choose 1 out of 3 races to complete. Unfortunately, I didn't have any C class cars for the races so I had to buy one. The car I chose was a 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STI which still wasn't competitive enough even at medium difficulty. I chose upgrades like weight reduction to improve the handling making the car easier to drive. On top of that, this car was all wheel drive which lowers the chances of losing traction which helped me greatly. Overall, season two was very enjoyable but I still wanted to drive faster cars.

2007 Chevrolet Corvette Z06

Season 3 is when things started getting very interesting. B and A class cars are used in this season which includes most of the high end nameplates like Ferrari and Lamborghini. You start off in B class and even though most of the high end cars in A class, I wasn't complaining. This is because B class already felt like a big leap from C class and I knew this would take practice to get used to these cars. Although I could have easily won with all the assists on, I was motivated to race with assists off because of the bonus money you earn. After doing a few career races in B class, I was ready to race in the first A class race in the championship. There was one problem though, I didn't have any cars in A class. I wanted to buy Ferrari F430 but unfortunately, it was way out of my budget. In the end I purchased a Chevrolet Corvette C6 Z06 which was inexpensive and the stats were decent too. The car was surprisingly easy to handle, probably because I've practiced throttle control which is essential for maintaining traction. I didn't have to spend money on upgrades either because this car is very competitive even in stock form. Season 3 was a big difference from season 2 but changes are always welcomed as they help me develop my skills with powerful cars.