Sports Drama

Not much to update, so I'd skip this entry if you're not into Sports, follow football, or play starcraft 2.

Football

Anyway, an awesome last day for football in the Premier League! I watched the QPR vs Man City, and the scenes at the end were unbelievable. What an incredible rollercoaster ride for Man City fans, and fantastic drama for neutrals like me watching. Hollywood could not have come up with a better script. Within a space of 5 minutes at the end of the game, Man city was on the verge of losing the championship, but then to scored 2 goals in quick succession to win was amazing. Let's hope the next season will be just as exhilarating!

I support Tottenham Hotspurs, and we came forth in the league, which means for now we are qualified to the Champions League! Woohoo! But it could be taken away if Chelsea wins the finals... Boooooo!. Therefore it's no surprise that I'll be supporting Bayern Munich in the final. :p

In fact lots to watch this weekend coming. Championship play off finals, Champions League finals, MLG Spring Arena Starcraft 2 tournament, GSL Finals. I don't know what's up with the 19th of May, but it seems to be the best day for tournaments to be scheduled!

Gaming

Speaking of starcraft 2, i've actually been playing alot more recently, with my friends in team games and 1v1 ladder. In the team games we're actually doing ok against the players that we have been up against. There have been times we have hit a wall and do not know what to do. My friends love to play very early aggression, which means that our mid/final game can suffer. Still loads of fun.

For the 1v1s I just played enough to get my 10 wins so I can get the new portrait on my profile. So I'm pleased with that. I seem to play very well against other Zerg players, but suffer against other Protoss players. I keep losing to 4 gates, which is actually very obvious that it's coming, just that my build collapses when I play.

I'm wondering why it is so stressful playing 1v1s, I don't know why I don't just play and not care about losing. There is actually a known condition amongst the SC2 community and have labelled it ladder anxiety. People are actually scared to hit the find match button! It's weird, cause I find it can be difficult too. It's normally a 'Fuck it, let's just do it' sort of attitude that ends up getting me going. And once the countdown starts there's no going back. It's partly because it's hard. It's very challenging, and watching VODs and streams is so much more relaxing than playing it. :p

Source: http://fuckyeahstarcraft.tumblr.com

As amongst my friends we've only recently gotten heavily into SC2, and one friend in particular mentioned that he has lost all his 1v1 games so far. But when he looks back on the replay he notices that he could have stayed in the game and win. It's a crazy feeling that is quite underappreciated compared to watching vs actually playing. When you're watching you get to see everything and know exactly what each player is doing. Compared to playing you're in the dark mostly unless you scout heavily. When you have large engagements and trading armies and lost most of your units, you feel as though you've lost, when in fact you're doing ok and just trading. I had quite an epic game before against a protoss, but in the end I left because I couldn't muster the strength to continue, when I could have tried.

I criticise professional players that leave games early, but there I am doing it too. You develop certain game sense that you feel that once it gets to the situation you know it's difficult to come back into the game, you collapse and give in. I'll try not to quit so early in the next games I played. Sometimes you just know though that it's over.

Incidentaly in regards to gaming Diablo 3 has just been released. And currently many people are trying to log in but can't because the servers are full. Craziness! Gaming has gotten extremely popular in the past decade it's incredible. I will probably buy the game at a later date, considering I have exams soon and that there are errors, bugs and over populution. I'd rather wait for all of that to be sorted out first, so my gaming experience will be more enjoyable.

Wow... I wrote more that I anticipated. I guess I'm quite passionate about Starcraft 2 at the moment. Loads of fun!

Zerg Rush!

A quick one today. Google has some crazy little easter eggs when you type certain words into their search engine.

'Do a Barrel Roll' try it and see...

And today they have a new one. Type in 'Zerg Rush' into google and see what happens. Given that I am a starcraft fan, this is amazing to me. Small little google 'o's come rushing in from all angles to destroy your search results, and you have to click on them to kill them before they destroy everything on screen.

I believe it's impossible to beat this, as you just get overwhelmed, I love that there is an APM counter in the corner to show how fast you are, much like how in starcraft in how they determine if you play fast or not.

Very similar feeling in an actual game of starcraft where you're just overwelmed with zerglings. Hence Zerg rush. As a Zerg player, this is obviously so awesome to me, even I sometimes zerg rush my opponents as a legitimate strategy, which does work on occasions.

Google has always been a fan of gaming, and eSports has definitely grown. If Google is helping promote starcraft in providing a fun little game, but also educational in familarising the world with a popular starcraft term, it can only be a good thing. Dispite your privacy disputes, I still love you Google! GG indeed!

Passion of eSports

I just want to talk about eSports. I love it. I would be doing a great injustice in just providing a brief description as to what eSports is. Just Essentially eSports is electronic sports, comprising of competitive play of video games. Now just by describing it like that it sounds silly and sad. There's definiting more to it than that. I mean is it as silly as scrabble, and chess tournaments. I mean chess is an olympic sport, so eSports can be considered a type of sport as well. I suppose you don't require to have that much physical exertion, but there is defintiely a mental capacity, test of dexterity and hand eye cordination. Regardless if you're just pressing buttons, it does require speed and reflexes in reading the game.

The video game population is obviously massive, but it's not all competitive gaming. Also you will have to seperate the community in terms of genre, such as fighting, first person shooters or real time strategy. Yet even though they're serperated by game genre they are collectly still together as part of the large community.

My first experience with competitive gaming is Streetfighter. And seeing crowds around arcades, having mini competition. I was only a small child, but I was just there watching. I love my streetfighter like any other gamer, it's great pick up and play as well in providing a lot of depth for the competitive scene. For me I only need to know a few special moves and a basic combo and you're well on your way to start competiting with the casual gamers too. Later on in the dawn of the internet watching some clips of some games of higher skill level and you can appreciate the skill involved. The Diago vs Justin Wong is the eptime of that the eSports environment is like.

Every tiny input is deliberate by the player, I mean when I play there's a bit of button mashing, or at times I end having to input the command moves to special moves a few times before it will take effect.. These guys can do it quickly and effectively. Regardless you normally have to play the games to appreciate what is going on. Fighting games are quite good in that you can see exactly what is going on at it's most basic level. Two characters on screen fighting each other to the death, with lots of flashy moves, simple for the casual viewer.

What I have gotten into, in the past year is a game called Starcraft 2. This is a real time strategy game, in the likes of Command & Conquer, Age of Empires etc. However the difference being that Starcraft 2, provides a very in depth game, that is also a great for specatators. The games can really vary, the worse type of game normally is when both players are slow to build and are not agressive until they reach a large army size, but even then it's a slow burn, because you know eventually they'll have to do battle, so it can be interesting to see how the battle that decides it turns out.

It's like real time chess, but you start off with a pawns, and you have to mine resources to pay for better units, and the board is large terrain, with high and low grounds, chokes points and open spaces.

Well saying all this MLG happened this weekend and a Korean Terran called MKP AKA Marine King Prime, beat a Zerg player DRG, Dong Rae Gue in the finals. It was a great series showing high skill of play. Even though MKP won quite convincly it was still amazing to watch. What increased my viewing experience, was watching it with my friends.

I had shown a lot of enthusiasm amongst my friends that it increased their curiousity, so now I somehow got them into it too. So on Saturday night we went round our mates house and watched a few games together. It was quite a laugh, then for championship Sunday, we watched the stream whilst on mumble chat. Then we actually played some SC2 inbetween games. It was a lot of fun.

Definitely getting back into the game again, after taking abit of time off from the game due to other commitments as well as GF at the time, studying, Skyrim and Mass Effect 3, of which I will talk about at some point. The pro gaming scene, really puts some inspiration into the playing the game again. A friend got the starter edition, which is free, but you're limited to playing Terran and only allow limited maps in multiplayer.  still it's great to have the option and we had a blast. Played quite a few 2v2 games we forgot about MLG was going on. He's now thinking of buying the full version.  hehe.

Having not played it in a while, it's pretty good feeling again. I still remember quite abit and was always staying active which was great. I remember the quick roach build, it's mainly used for rushes, but I use them to be safe. Although one game I decided to rush with them, and we pretty much won the game from there. My friends are not great, but it's a lot of fun and laughs.

I've been off racing as Terran, until my friends get a bit better, also I think it'll be good to get decent as Terran as they're strong in team games, at least I think so. The ability to be able to wall off and be strong in the early game is very important when I believe a lot of team games are rushed. However my friend seems to struggle with Protoss so I'm going to give Protoss a go to see where he's going wrong.

I also really enjoy watching the replays afterwards, seeing how the other people play decisions they make etc, it's very well implemented by Blizzard the game makers, all they have to do now is be able to sync replays so a party can view it at the same time. I will probably record a replay at some point with mini commentary. It would be to show the rest of my mates and see what they are missing out on, and who knows maybe I'll get them interested too.