Since I moved into this apartment and set up my Wii, I’ve only had one game in the console.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

I have been working tirelessly trying to complete all the challenges and unlock all of the characters. For the past couple weeks I had finished unlocking everyone but Wolf O’Donnell. To unlock him, I needed to do one of a few things.
1. Play 450 brawls total.
2. Complete the Subspace Emmisary. Then complete Boss Battles with Fox or Falco.
3. Complete the Subspace Emmisary. Then go back into the SSE and go to a hidden door or something or other.

I wasn’t going back into the Subspace Emmisary. I was done with that and I had no desire to go back in. 450 Brawls is a tall order and I had no idea how many Brawls had been played since I got the game since there is no meter. So I played Boss Battles. and played and played and played. I continued to die at the final boss for about a week because I just wasn’t as successful with Fox or Falco. Well I beat it yesterday with Fox. Then I got the alert a new adversary was approaching. Finally. You are supposed to then defeat the challenger to unlock the character, but I died. So what did I do? I said screw it and played Brawl after Brawl after Brawl until I hit the magic 450 number. In case anyone was curious, I had to play 121 Brawls before I got to unlock Wolf, but I did it. And here’s my proof:

Starcraft 2 was announced by Blizzard Entertainment today.

The first iteration of this game had me so hooked, I blame it as the primary reason I lost my scholarship so early in college. Certainly nothing to be proud of, but you get the idea that I was pretty into this game. Its sequel, ten years later, looks to be just as addicting. New units for all the races, with new abilities and environments. It looks like the game might even be in 3-D. Hard to tell from the screen shots.

Starcraft is what is called an RTS game. That stands for Real Time Strategy. Basically you start with a building and some collector/builder units. You collect minerals and gas and then use those minerals and gas to build buildings and train/build fighting units like Marines, Tanks and Battleships. There are 3 different races to choose from: Terran, a human race; Zerg, a bug-like race, and the Protoss, an advanced alien race. Each race has their own units and abilities. Once you build up your forces, you attack your opponents. Thats where the fun really comes in. Some people really get into the strategy part of the game and use some pretty interesting tactics in their attack patterns. It also forces you to become very familiar with the game’s AI and understand how it will react in different situations. Everyone has their own favorite go-to strategy as well. From the standard zergling rush to early Vulture attack to Tank drop to Carrier assault. There is no end to the challenge of this game.

Hello computer upgrade. Goodbye productivity.

As of this past Friday, January 26th, 2007, I am giving all challengers a three week head start before I install Starcraft on my laptop.

Get your Firebats, Templar, and Hydralisks ready because on February 9th, I’ll be setting that race to random and taking on whatever you guys throw at me. So if your new to the game, you’ve got a headstart and if you’ve played me before then this is your chance to brush up.

See you on Battle.net, my little zerglings.