The Batlord

Okay, so, a few months ago I got StarCraft 2, and I'm kind of really getting into it, and would like to start a new journal to sort of give myself some kind of motivation to counteract my normal tendencies toward gloriously self-defeating laziness. I'm hoping that documenting my progress in the game (especially the multiplayer aspect), giving my thoughts on the game, gushing over some of the things that I've already discovered, uploading replays to Youtube and posting them here (if I can figure that out), and just in general creating a timeline for my journey into Starcraft 2, will "keep me on track" or some such bull****.

Since this is an introduction to this series, a bit of self-indulgent historifying is in order...

I've been mildly interested in StarCraft 2 for a little while, but it had certainly never dominated my thoughts to much of any extent. Most of my curiosity came from a love of Real-Time Strategy games (if you don't know what that is then you probably don't care, but they're basically games about fighting large scale battles by controlling non-player units). However, due to my introduction to the genre being from Red Alert 2 and other Westwood Studios RTS games -- combined with a lifelong propensity for stubborn, nerd tribalism -- I generally scorned Blizzard's WarCraft and StarCraft games, despite the fact that they seemed to get more love. They just weren't my games, and so they were the enemy (though not nearly so much as Star Trek, for example, due to my history as a rabid Star Wars fanboy).

But that was all in the past, when I was a high school kid, still with a working computer (which I have again, after nearly a decade, thank Kerrigan). Westwood Studios is now defunct and their IPs are the property of mother****ing EA, who is predictably running their franchises into the ground of mediocrity -- so no real point in continuing a rivalry I probably never actually cared about in the first place -- whereas StarCraft has become a phenomenon, with legitimately professional players and tournaments, which are even televised in South Korea, the spiritual home of eSports and StarCraft in particular.

Seriously, South Koreans are crazy about StarCraft. I've seen a video filmed around the time that SC 2 was just about to come out, and there is a giant, electronic billboard, like you'd see in Times Square, advertising the game, and just a minute later, a bus with a SC 2 ad goes zooming by. It was kind of crazy. Not surprisingly their players generally dominate the tournaments...



I was still only vaguely cognizant of StarCraft until sometime around the summer/fall of last year, but that all changed with my discovery of Day[9]. Oh my god how I love this man, this charismatic uber-nerd who reminds me a bit of Joss Whedon, were his hint of smarmy ego not obviously tongue-in-cheek (I love Joss, but he does come across more than a little self-satisfied).

Day[9] is a StarCraft commentator who originally made a name for himself as a pro player in his own right during the days of the original StarCraft, and then transitioned to self-made "Dailies" on Blip.TV, Youtube, and his own Day9.TV.

Each Daily consists of Sean "Day[9]" Plott sitting in front of his computer and giving in-depth analysis of replays from others' online StarCraft games, with a level of expertise which, combined with a heavy dose of humor, has made him one of the biggest figures in the StarCraft community. Often this analysis is directed at an audience already very familiar with the game, but his Newbie Tuesday entries have provided me with some of the most invaluable advice I have ever received in any video game, and Funday Monday adds a delightful dose of irreverent silliness to the mix by Day[9] challenging his viewers to play games while restricted to often outlandish rules -- such as imploring players to never attack -- and then "analyzing" the replays sent to him.

This is a personal fav of mine, as it really just takes the piss with the game, while making it fun and introducing unique challenges one would otherwise never face by playing "normally".



Probably the aspect of Day[9]'s videos that has resonated most with me is his unbridled passion. Sean is often giddy just to be talking about his favorite game, and regularly goes on at length for over an hour, yet I never tire of watching him, despite the fact that I'm so green to the game that I can only take so much away from his lessons.

If you have the time and inclination, then I would highly suggest that you give his Daily #100, "My Life of Starcraft", a watch. It's almost two hours long, but even if you don't care about StarCraft in the least, Day[9] is a masterful storyteller, and the sheer level of passion that he exudes while waxing nostalgic about his entire history as a StarCraft player (and StarCraft itself, since he's been playing since literally day one), occasionally even breaking into tears, is the perfect example of the feeling he transfers to his viewers. You just want to go play ****ing StarCraft after watching a Day[9] video. It would just be wasting everyone's time if you didn't, ya know?



I honestly couldn't tell you how much Day[9] I've watched over the past few months, even before I actually bought the damn game. Just last night, after being unsatisfied with my performance in a multiplayer training mission against an AI opponent, I promptly watched two Dailies dedicated to basic economic mechanics of my chosen race (Zerg), and then shat upon the computer much more convincingly. Got my ass handed to me in the final multiplayer training mission a bit ago, and so I'm in the middle of another Daily to figure out a strategy to fixate on until I can get it to work -- one of his lessons is to just pick a strategy you like, even if it doesn't seem to be working, and just do it, over and over and over again, refining as you go, but only doing that one strategy until you've got it down like clockwork before trying something new. I'm thinking early-Mutalisk harassment. Flying units kick ass.

But enough Day[9] asskissing. He's a new hero of mine, but this thread is about me. Me, me, me! Anyways...

So in closing, I'm hoping to keep this journal going, along with my StarCraft 2 multiplayer career (full disclosure: never even played a single game against a human being yet), as this just seems like a fun world to dive into, and writing about it seems like good motivation. And if I can figure out how to post some replays, and I get good enough to be able to brag like a douche, well then that's just a side benefit.

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The Batlord

I'm still making my way through the SC 2 campaign, which I intend to finish before going into multiplayer, and it's one of the more epic storylines I've ever seen in a game. StarCraft 2 is actually divided into three almost entirely complete games: Wings of Liberty, released in 2010, which contains the Terran (human) campaign; Heart of the Swarm, released in 2013, which contains the Zerg campaign; and Legacy of the Void, released in 2015, which contains the Protoss campaign. All three are basically full, self-contained games, but the last two are expansions to the original.

Why Blizzard would decide to release an entire game in three chunks over a period of five years is probably down to money-grubbing, corporate douchiness, but considering that StarCraft is a series largely built around its multiplayer sub-culture, it's understandable that they would want to stretch interest for as long as possible (though StarCraft 1 and its Brood War expansion remained a popular, professionally competitive game up until the release of the sequel). But I digress...

The basic premise of the series' plot is that originally you have the Terran Confederacy, an oppressive, interstellar empire, which becomes threatened upon the discovery of the highly aggressive Zerg swarm (a race of insectoid abominations, intent on both galactic domination and constant biological evolution). A third faction, the Protoss, are a theocratic, warrior race, bent on the destruction of the Zerg at all costs, even if that means destroying human worlds infected by the Zerg.

StarCraft 1, like 2, consisted of campaigns for all three races, which must each be unlocked in sequence so as to form a narrative (Terran, then Zerg, and finally Protoss). Brood Wars was an expansion/quasi-sequel to the original, which continued the story. The order of the campaigns was switched to Protoss, then Terran, then Zerg, but otherwise followed the same narrative format.

Why the StarCraft 2 campaign shares billing with the character of Kerrigan is because A) she is one of, if not the most important character in the series, who drives much of the plot in StarCraft 1, and takes an even more central role in 2; and B) because she's just so ****ing awesome -- one of my favorite characters in all of video games at this point -- and her storyline is exceptionally compelling, both from a narrative and emotional standpoint, forming what is shaping up to be a sub-plot which borders on being the actual main plot.

In a nutshell, Sarah Kerrigan was originally a special forces, psychic operative of a rebel leader in SC 1, Arcturus Mensk, but was betrayed by him, left to die against a massive Zerg swarm in his secret plot to ruthlessly overthrow the Terran Confederacy and raise himself up as emperor of what would become soon the Terran Dominion.



But rather than killing her, the Zerg captured Kerrigan and through their genetic experiments transformed her into "The Queen of Blades", a mentally-enslaved, hyper-evolved being of tremendous psychic powers, whose oddly hot appearance was somewhere between Borg Queen and Alien Xenomorph. But rather than being a Borg-like automaton, she retained a personality of her own, though it was subverted to the Zerg Overmind (a sort of being existing only in the Zerg hive mind which controlled the Swarm with absolute domination).




She would go on to become the secondary antagonist of the series, fighting her former comrades with seemingly no qualms or remorse, until the eventual destruction of the Overmind in SC 1, after which she seized control of the entire Zerg Swarm in Brood Wars, through a Machiavellian scheme of manipulation of both the Terran and Protoss, becoming its undisputed Queen, controlling them in much the same psychic, hive mind way as her predecessor.

Much of the focus of StarCraft 2's Terran campaign was the "redemption" of Kerrigan by her former love interest, James Raynor, ending with some sci-fi/quasi-fantasy gobbledy**** that somehow restored her to partial-humanity, though leaving her with her psychic connection to the Zerg (and some seriously sexy, chitin dreadlocks).




Enter Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg expansion, which deals with her quest for vengeance against Emperor Arcturus Mensk, the man responsible for her becoming a monster, which is sparked by a Dominion attack resulting in the seeming death of James Raynor.



This is really why I love Kerrigan so much. Her story arc in Heart of the Swarm is all about her attempt to maintain her newly-regained humanity, while again taking command of the Zerg Swarm, her only hope of defeating Mensk and his Terran Dominion. It's easily the most compellying arc of the entire series so far, and while I am only about two-thirds of the way through the campaign, her journey is incredibly engrossing, and the almost Shakespearean tragedy of her inevitable decent into her former self as The Queen of Blades is heartbreaking. It's almost impossible not to root for both her vendetta and her doomed resolution to not lose herself to the Zerg. Kerrigan is pretty much the catalyst for my desire to play Zerg, and I eagerly await the resolution of this campaign.

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The Batlord

Why would I choose the Zerg as my race? Easy answer: cause they're ****in' awesome, that's ****in' why, bitch. But I like to bloviate (as Roxy would say) so I'm just gonna ramble on with the long-winded answer. First, I'll explain why I would choose a single race in the first place, then go into why I'm not going with the other two (Terran and Protoss), and then finish up by bloviating some more on just how awesome the Zerg are and why I would make them my home team.

Why choose a race and play them almost exclusively (in multiplayer, obviously)? As my unknowing mentor, Day[9], would probably say, this is a complex ****ing game, and attempting to master two or more races is going to take away from the amount of time you would spend practicing with only one. Maybe some people can master more than one without sacrificing skill with each, but I am not that person, and neither apparently are most pro players, as they also tend to be associated with one specific race. If it's good enough for FruitSeller, it's good enough for me.

Why not Terran? At first I was going to choose them, as they were the first race I used, and because their units are the only ones that actually look like recognizable military units. Banshees look like they could be in service today, or ten years from now at the latest. Goliaths are futuristic mechs, but they still have a down-to-earth design that could be instituted in perhaps a hundred years. Even sci-fi-as-**** units like uber-mech Thors and space ship Battlecruisers have a familiar quality to them that keeps Terran grounded in a way that none of the other races are.

But even though the humans have two of the absolute most awesome units in the game, the Siege Tank and the Viking (a fighter which can transform into a mech), once I started the Zerg campaign their units just started to feel kind of vanilla. But Siege Tanks and Vikings are still ****ing awesome, and it's not outside the realm of possibility that I might one day change to Terran if I play around with them enough.




But until then, all Terran scum must die.

Why not Protoss? Cause **** Protoss. They have some kind of goofy religion that rules their entire society (their base infantry unit is even called a "Zealot"), and as an atheist, that makes them kinda lame to me. Also, depending on what patch is current (patches are regularly released for the game, and can change everything from unit stats to actual elements of gameplay) Protoss is often accused of being overpowered, which makes them sound like a boring race to invest time in. But what really turns me off to Protoss is that all of their units are just too sleek and shiny and sci-fi/fantasy looking. I want badass, not pretty.




Meh.

So, why Zerg? They're pretty much a combination of Xenomorphs and Arachnids from Starship Troopers, and bring that sweet, sweet sci-fi horror vibe that I love so much. That creature in the pic at the top of this post is called a Hydralisk (awesome ****ing name), and it looks so totally Xeno, while having a design all its own, that it can't help but look amazing.

Another unit of abiding kickassery is the Zergling, the base "infantry" unit of the Swarm, which forms the backbone of the Zerg army. They basically look like a bug crossed with a lizard crossed with a demonic dog. They're the weakest military unit in the game, but they cost the least toward the unit cap (you can only have so many units at one time, and some units cost more points, or "food" toward this unit cap than others), spawn two at a time, and with their incredible speed, can overwhelm just about any ground unit in the game with pure numbers, putting the swarm in... Swarm.




It's kind of hard to like any other unit, no matter how cool their abilities, when you can just send an endless horde of horrifying abominations to devour your enemies alive. But you still have Mutalisks, a hideous cross between a flying insect and a bat, Banelings, think of ticks... that explode, Ultralisks, behemoths from a Godzilla movie, with giant scythes for arms that obliterate all in their wake, etc.



And then there's Creep. Creep is awesome. ****ing awesome. It's basically a moving, organic oil slick on the ground that all Zerg structures must be built upon, but new structures spread the Creep, and there is something called a Creep Tumor -- which looks exactly how it sounds, a giant tumor in the ground -- that also spreads Creep. Structures other than Hatcheries (the Zerg's base structure, from which everything else is built/spawned) must be built on the Creep, but the Creep can be spread anywhere and everywhere, and a good Zerg player firing on all cylinders can cover half the map in minutes.

The Creep is so cool because it makes a Zerg base look like it's been built on some kind of malevolently hostile alien planet, where the very ground is alive and wants to eat you.




Notice how the Creep is moving in that gif. If you don't think that's cool then there's something wrong with you.

So yeah, aside from the fact that Kerrigan, the coolest StarCraft character ****ing ever, is Zerg, all of that **** is why I choose them as my race. I mean, how could you not?

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The Batlord

Been about a million years, but I've been lazy about videogames in general recently, and I've barely played StarCraft 2 except for the odd Legacy of the Void campaign mission (LotV is the Protoss campaign, and I kind of hate Protoss, so it's been slow going), or last night when I got wasted and decided to do an unranked match. Got butt****ed.

But I've played a bit of StarCraft 1 while doing my Youtube channel, so I'm... vaguely familiar with it. Figured I'd take a shot at some multiplayer. Well, as you might expect the online community on Blizzard's official servers is kind of dead, and the servers themselves are desperately in need of basic technical support.

Finally got it working by hooking up to a non-official server that seems to be where all the real action is (at 5am there were over a hundred people online, which is pretty good for a nearly 20-year-old game). So I played my first game just now, and goddamn did I get ****ing stomped. I lasted maybe five minutes against a Protoss player who didn't even let me get my first expansion (extra base) up before descending upon me with the wrath of Tassadar. I felt like a little kid taking a swing at his dad. I guess people still playing Brood War after all this time have a lot more experience than your average SC2 noob, which I was kind of expecting.

Still, it was interesting to experience the original, and I'd love to try again... maybe after at least finishing the Terran campaign, as I really am not at all experienced with even one single faction. And since I can actually record SC1 with a watchable FPS you might even get to see my monumental failures.

Stay tuned... ?

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Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

I'm kind of tempted to try SC2 but the learning curve seems pretty steep and I'm not sure I have any amount of time to really commit to the game at this time, especially with Gears 4 coming out. Tough decision.

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Music Blog / RYM / Last.fm / Qwertyy's Journal of Music Reviews and Other Assorted Ramblings

The Batlord

Yeah, it's not exactly a newbie friendly game. It's fine if you're just playing the campaign (which is awesome, even if the latest expansion was kind of a letdown), but if you have any intention of doing multiplayer then you will get the **** kicked out of you, probably for a good long while until you can get your head and muscle memory around the basics of the game.

Just maintaining your economy at any kind of competitive level takes lots of practice and diligence, and then you have to know when and when not to build units, structures, and upgrades, and then you have to actually learn how to play against human beings who will likely have more experience than you. I've only played four online games and have lost all of them without being able to put up much of a fight. Not to mention there's learning to effectively use the keyboard without having stare at the keys (if you don't know how to use the keyboard you will die like a little bitch online).

So yeah, if you don't have the time and/or inclination to spend weeks learning all of that, and probably months actually getting good at it, then SC2 might not be the game for you. Unless you just want to play the campaigns, which are definitely fun as hell and don't require you to become Douglas MacArthur.

On a lighter note, there are few things more satisfying than building a massive army in an RTS game and coming down on your enemy like the wrath of god.

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The Batlord

To give you an idea of what you'd be in for, this video thoroughly explains the very, very basics of the fundamentals. And it's not nearly as dry as it sounds, as Day9 brings a lot of enthusiasm and offbeat humor to the subject.

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Plankton

I hear ya. I've logged hundreds of hours on C&C. I used to play with my good buddy Jimmy (disc golf dude) where we had everything networked in his home through a couple PC's. We were both really good at it, so most of the battles were pretty epic. This was 15 years ago, and I realize things are quite a bit different now. I still fire up C&C through MagicISO (CD imagaing tool) every now and then, and destroy a few AI army's.

Still, after checking out a couple of the vids you posted, SC looks really similar and I kinda wanna play it now.

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The Batlord

Which C&C? 2016 - 15 = 2001. So... Generals? Red Alert 2? Tiberium Sun? Red Alert 2 was my first RTS and I played that game so much that it's become embedded into my gamer DNA. Would love to have played on a LAN, but I only knew one other person who played and dragging either of our computers to the other's house wasn't really an option.

And StarCraft is definitely more complex than C&C, which is a much more casual friendly series. Each of the three factions plays completely differently, from unit and building types to how you build... everything. So you almost have to learn three games at once if you want to be at all good with more than just one race.

The mechanics are also more subtle and hard to master. For example, in C&C you can queue up units to be built and forget about them until they're done, but in SC, while you can still queue up units, it automatically takes resources for each unit queued even if they're not being built yet, unlike C&C. So it's bad strategy to queue up units since that will be money that is not being used that could go to other things, meaning that you have to be Johnny-on-the-spot with remembering to build units constantly, meaning that you have to constantly shift your attention from the other million things you have to be doing at any one time in order to check on your build times, meaning that you have to hotkey your unit-producing structures to save all the time you would otherwise waste on manually checking them, and then you have to learn how to do all this by instinct.

I'd tell you how satisfying it feels to finally get that **** down, but I'm still hopelessly terrible ATM.

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Plankton

We played Generals mostly. I tried Tiberium, but lost interest in that one pretty quick. RA2 was cool, and from what I can remember there were some custom mods and expansion packs you could get for it with some pretty whacked out units.

SC looks a lot more complicated, but that's probably for the best. C&C was fairly easy to master.

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