Games

When I say game, I'm really talking about my favorite game Star Craft because it is the game. I often play on battle.net, and you can find me under the name of _Hyde_ among others. But I'll also talk about Brood War, which is an expansion of Star Craft, all made by Blizzard.

My pet peeve on bnet is people asking if I'm a girl or something like that. First of all, my bnet IDs are very gender neutral or male-sounding because I notice discrimination against girls. I've actually witnessed a poor soul who admitted to being a girl and get kicked out of a game! Second of all, who cares if I'm a girl? Man, I can kick most of guys' ass.

There are essentially two kinds of games you can play with Star Craft. You can play against computers or against humans. Playing against computers doesn't take any genius on your part, and you can use the same tactics over and over again.

If you're on a map with a choke point, guard the choke and pump out mass units. Since I tended to be a Toss player, I have to say if you can afford it, go for quick mass carrier. This requires that you build one pylon near the choke, then a forge near the pylon just completed while pumping out probes to ensure that your mineral gathering process becomes more efficient. I notice that some people make TWO pylons and then go for forge, and I tell you that's stupid because you don't need to have TWO pylons, and in the early game, every mineral counts!

If you're playing against humans, never ever do this unless your opponent is really dumb or a newbie. First of all, if your opponent is any good, he'll bypass all defensive mechanism at the choke point and go straight for your economy, in which case you lost the game. The key in the winning the early game is to have more units than the opponent and making sure that if you're playing a team game, your teammates and you cooperate carefully and scout all the time to ensure that you know what your enemy is doing, so you can counter. If you can't do this, you're doomed to lose.

Playing against humans is more fun, IMHO, because you can't use one tactic over and over again. With computers, you can use the same tactic over and over again and still win. Unfortunately (or fortunately), human beings tended to be a bit smarter than that.

And here comes my little rant.

I hate zerg players who do 4-pool rush. It's stupid and defeats the point of RTS. It doesn't even prove that you're a better player than the other non-zerg player or a zerg player who did not rush. It merely proves that you can't win any other way. And what I hate even more than this is people who enter a game, knowing that it's no early rush game and rush anyway! Arrgh. If you don't like the rule, make your own game with your own rules!

As for Brood War, I think it's a good expansion. It does not significantly alter the basic strategy of Star Craft, but it adds enough new units to give each race some edgy and makes people think of new strategies to utilize new units.

For example, in Star Craft, Toss and Zerg could regenerate or heal themselves. However, marines and firebats of Terran could not. It puts Terran at disadvantage compared to Toss and Zerg. Therefore, a new unit called medics are made to counter that disadvantage. Medics would follow marines and firebats around and heal them among other functions they perform. You see why I think Brood War is great? ^_^

For those of you who haven't played Star Craft or Brood War, you're missing out life's few pleasures. If you like strategy games, do try it. You won't regret it.

All Starcraft/Brood War pictures, names, trade mark, etc. are the properties of Blizzard. I'm merely using the name to show my interest in the game, and I do not plan to make any money off of using the names, etc.