Yesterday, my friends and I went to the friendly neighborhood internet cafe and spent the whole afternoon playing CounterStrike and DOTA. It’s been some time since I played any game but I did reasonably well with CounterStrike. On the other hand, I sucked big-time at DOTA. My excuse is my lack of interest in it :P But seriously, I don’t quite understand its appeal. It’s basically just persistently sending your character on a relentless assault along three possible paths. If it’s character development I’m after, I’d rather play Diablo II (or one of the multitudes of MMORPGs available). If it’s strategy I’m after, I’d rather play Starcraft. Now THAT is a strategy game! Had it been available on the computers in the cafe, I’d have insisted on playing it. And I’d have done much better. It’s such a great RTS that I can’t hardly wait for its sequel, Starcraft 2. But for now, Starcraft anyone?
Starcraft II Announced
Hell, it’s about time! Starcraft II has been announced! Jessie sent me a link to Starcraft II. I’ve seen the link before and back then it was just a redirect to the Blizzard website. So I thought it still the same. But NO! Instead there’s now a full website for the next installment of Starcraft. To be sure, the new game will have big shoes to fill. But from how it looks in the website, it looks to be a potentially worthy successor.
Starcraft Revival
The past few weeks, I’ve seen some sort of a Starcraft revival. I learned from Jessie and Joy who work at a development company in Ortigas that they have break-time Starcraft sessions. They invited me to visit and play, so I brought out my dusty copy of Starcraft and started polishing my skills. Then I mentioned to Vinz, old Starcraft sparmate of mine, that I’ve been playing again and soon he had bought a new copy and started playing on Battle.Net and with me. And then Billie, also an old player, sent me this video. Turns out she has also been playing a bit. Finally, while hanging out with some friends at Gweilo’s we caught an episode in Arirang on how to play the game. All these is quite interesting considering Starcraft first came out way back 1998. It’s definitely a classic.