Starcraft 2 came out just a week ago and I can tell I’ll be playing this one for years. I’m a fan of the competitive edge I get from it and all of the great competition is on the Starcraft servers. Online video games are today’s modern-day board games and chess matches. While the game can amp me up real adrenal-like, I like the benign stressors it imposes as opposed to real-life stress (the benefits of hormesis anyone?). Because of the technological might of today’s internet games, you can now be accurately paired-up with people of similar playing ability. So you get just-the-right amount of pressure to give you that potential winning-edge and feel like you’re in control of the in-game momentum. The general ranking system in Starcraft 2 that goes from best to worse: Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper (edit: ok they removed copper): it’s always scary to go up against some diamond player because they’re so confident in their skill that they try the craziest things on you (I got paired with a diamond just now even though I’m not quite there yet):
This guy was trying to play Lucky Hit and wanted to nuke my economy from some distant island with his cloaked ghosts and planetary fortress (a rather unorthodox play). You can see the puzzlement of my marine when he finds no base to be found in the opponent’s main mineral field (unexplored areas are shrouded to each player). Would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those Starcrafty Raven counters. I feel like a million bucks the rest of the day (in real life) to quit the game after a decisive win against a formidable opponent.
Video fast-fowarded a-bit. To see professionals play at normal-speed see spect.us. I especially recommend watching the Korean player “Checkprime” with the crazy-micro or TLO’s recent effective nuke match. Song is flobots-handlebars (quite a political c0mmentary music vid)– something that popped up on my sixtyone playlist. Listening to music while playing — particularly empowering Eminem-like/Linkin-Park nouveau-urban style music really adds a natural flow to the multitasking involved).
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Check out Gametrailer’s HD-review of Starcraft 2 (always engaging reviews):
httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6018AA2CCB7E02AE
If you need a ‘guest pass’ invite I can give you one (it came with my game) which allows you to play the game for free for a few hours.
