Monday, November 28, 2011

Dreamhack Winter

NOTE: I actually started writing this at like, 10 on Monday because of the way that the video upload schedule worked out but I didn't finish it until after 12.  Oopsy!

Yet again a Dreamhack tournament.  I love Dreamhack.  I didn't get to catch any games live sadly, and that makes me sad.  I caught the finale first by accident, so I knew what the outcome was going to be.  So I'm just gonna go through and watch at least the finals real quick.

Of course the two finalists are Korean.  Hero from Team Liquid Vs. Puma from Evil Geniuses.  Just in kind of skimming these games, I can see some of the little mistakes that the players made.  Puma especially seems a bit off his game.

In the third game, Puma made some seriously bad mistakes when dealing with the early stalker aggression.  His bunker didn't have any marines in it, he tried to repair and almost lost several SCVs.  Seriously, that third game was brutal for Puma, all of the early aggression that he just couldn't cope with.  That's one thing I don't like about Korean builds.  Some of them can be so early game dependent, compared to the long term macro games that are my favorite to watch.  It's like, the longer the game goes on, the more there is at stake, which makes it that much more exciting.

The early warp gate harass during game 4 was awesome to watch, but yet again it just happened so fast and Puma couldn't come back in any way as far as I could see.

Game 5 was much more in the style that I like.  It ended up being a much bigger, macro focused game.  The VOD did cut off at like, 8 minutes and then restarted at 14, so we missed a lot of the mid game.  At one point it was all infantry, then all the sudden Puma had Medivacs? What.  But yeah, maybe a glitch when they were recording.

I just kind of skimmed game 6.  Saw that it was an all in and just didn't care that much.  The only part that I really liked was when Hero's probe almost held back the army, and then it just got steamrolled.

Game 7 didn't get interesting until minute 13, where Hero had some great force field placement that led to his immortals ripping apart everything Puma had.  There were so many satisfying things that Hero did.  All of the force fields  psi storms and Colossi just made this game great.  I mean really, Psi storms are just awesome.  He landed like, 4 in a row at one point, which just ripped up the whole force that Puma had.  All in all, this game really made the series.  If it would have just been all ins or early game wins, I would have been very disappointed but it ended up being pretty okay.

Monday, November 21, 2011

MLG Providence

Ugh, I haven't had time to watch any games lately, but I found some time and here's what there is.

So looking at the comment last week, I thought I had to do a post about the Idra vs. Nestea matchup.  As a little background, Nestea is pretty much considered to be one of the best, if not the best Zerg players in the world.  Idra is another really great Zerg player.  So when these two played eachother in the semifinals of MLG, it promised to be awesome.  

The first game was very suprising.  The first thing that made the crowd and I get all riled up was when Idra got his lings into Nestea's base. It's always feels great when banelings run straight into a group of workers/marines and just blows all of them up.  Then right at the end, both armies at full supply, they just smack straight into eachother.  At first it looked like Nestea was going to take it but then Idra got upgrades and reinforcements, clenching the first game.  The macro in this game was great, which is why it had such a huge finish.  

The huge armies really made this a great series to watch, seeing giant armies just destroy eachother is wonderful.  There was also many, many baneling strikes from Idra that were just so... there really isn't a good word to explain baneling busts in supply lines, there is only that sound the crowd makes that's kind of like "oooooOOOOOHHHHH! , aaaaaaah....".  

Honestly, I don't know that much about Zerg play.  I'm more of a Protoss fan, so it's a little harder for me to really look into these games, and I spent more time just enjoying them.  Thanks for the recommendation!  Hopefully I'll get to watch some of the Dreamhack games live.  

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Project 1 finished!

Project 1 is finally done! For my project I did a site that talks about and reviews indie video games.  Indie games are very interesting so I think it is important to spread the word as much as possible.  If you've never played an indie game, think about looking at the site and checking out some of the games mentioned.  (Except for the ones on the homepage, those aren't really indie titles for the most part).

Project 1 site!