Scribblenauts (for Nintendo DS): Original VS Super?

I recently purchased Super Scribblenauts as part of a sale at Toys R Us (buy 2 get 1 free).

I had purchased Scribblenauts last year because of the interesting "sandbox" type gameplay promised, only to find that the controls were utterly lacking for the later levels of gameplay. For those of you who don't know, this is a game where you write/type in nouns and this enormous dictionary generates an object for it. You then use these objects to solve puzzles.

So I purchased Super, after seeing demos and hearing about improvements (at PAX this year), I decided I would get it. I hoped it would not be a disappointment.

Not only did I play through 2 worlds in a matter of a hour's worth of time, all the control issues have gone away! They also upped the sandbox so that you're able to create specifically described objects (with adjectives). If you create a "giant yellow dog" in the first one, you'd only get the dog. But now, you actually get the giant and yellow version! So I whole-heartedly agree with this review I found: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2010/10/super-scribblenauts-fixes-problems-of-original.arshttp://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2010/10/super-scribblenauts-fixes-problems-of-original.ars

So, what are your experiences with Scribblenauts? Any crazy/clever solutions? Sandbox experiments?

Collectible Card Games: Helping the Community with Basic Strategy

The Beginning
For those of you who couldn't tell, I've been playing collectible card games for a long time (sometimes referring to them as "children's card games" thanks to Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged). Back when I was 8 years old in the year 1993; Magic the Gathering came out and it immediately became a popular hit. I had heard all about it but I had no idea how to play. All my friends had cards and I felt left out for a while. It wasn't until later that year or early the next year (around winter~ish time), would I get to go to a mall where they held a card show (not a large one- but it would be the one that changed my life). I bought my first starter deck of Magic cards (well before the advent of "Theme Deck" packaging) at this particular show. It was $9 I think for 60 Ice Age MTG cards. Later that week, I proceeded to teach myself how to play by reading the fine print in the small rule booklet. Most young 8-year-olds wouldn't do any reading, much less learn how to play, what was then, a very difficult game. Since then, I was fascinated by card games.

The Present
Once a week, usually on a Thursday, I go play children's card games at my local anime store (called HammerGirl Anime). There's a larger, more dedicated hobby shop nearby (seriously less than a mile away) called Millennium Games and Hobbies. Millennium is everything you could ever want in a hobby shop. It's big, plenty of play space, plenty of product offerings, cool people and weekly events (daily if you play all the games they hold events for!). However, the one large reason why I don't like playing there- it's because of the player base. The people who go to Millennium are hardcore gamers that fall into the typical demographic of male between the ages of 15 and 30. You'll see some deviation to that, but not much. I don't really play much at Millennium.

Millennium's Environment and Community
Most of the guys who play there, they've been playing strategy games since they were young. So to say that they're hardcore gamers (not necessarily of the video game variety), is quite an understatement. Some of them even participate in the extremely high profile gaming tournaments there. This type of environment breeds intense competition, and even though there are many nice players with great sportsmanship- there are those players who certainly are not great sportsmen. You can't really blame the establishment, because it's a great facility. These type of people are really just a by product of the type of environment they have have come to foster there. Because of the experience and nature of this environment, basic strategy is generally taken for granted. Everyone knows what to do given a set of situations for (relatively) optimal game play decisions. It's a good challenge to play there- but I would never want to play there with random people casually (tournament fee or otherwise).

Hammergirl's Environment
Cut to the Anime store. Currently the big game I play at the Anime store each week is Pokemon: Trading Card Game. It has had a long and changing history (a topic of another essay perhaps- one that I will not write because I am not completely familiar with it), but eventually it came to the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl expansions which made the game good again. The environment here is a little different. A long time ago when it was first started (by a friend of mine), there was one two hour session on Wednesdays. After so many months of running- the word spread and it got much more popular. The store's quarters were much smaller- so it ended up becoming so crowded that they created another session on Thursdays. Why did it fill up? Well, there are college-aged students who play- and run the events each week. But the similarity to Millennium really ends there. There are young children who come to play (as young as 5-years-old), and event some of their parents play too! This environment is much more casual and relaxed- where the attitude to have fun is much more prevalent than winning. We also wouldn't want to se a bad example for the kids, would we?

Hammergirl's Community
The community of Pokemon players is much more diverse, as you tend to see young kids, their parents, girls and boys. But since the atmosphere is more general, the average player tends to have less experience and less knowledge of general "best practices" than those of seasoned gamers who either learn it themselves, or learned from others playing games in the past.

Deck Clinic
These are the general best practices that apply for many collectible card games, but it is not evident to the casual gaming community. I recently have earned a reputation for "Deck Clinics". I stole the phrase from an old column called "Deck Clinic" from my favorite, old (and dead) CCG magazine called Scrye. The purpose of the article was to improve a Magic deck sent in from a reader. So basically what I do is sit down with the "patient" and look through their deck. I try to give advice to improve the deck for the casual player. I'm not the most familiar with the available card base and cannot provide specific card names that would be "perfect" because of that unfamiliarity. However, I have found that it tends to help the patient's deck if you give them general advice and tips/tricks for constructing and playing their decks- it usually ends up being better because their card pool is limited. Kids and college students don't have money, and parents are reluctant to spend money until they have all the card for decks- so I find that general advice is the best.

Basic Collectible Card Game Strategy
There are many general concepts for collectible card game strategies, and even more specific ones for each CCG. But most of these principles will hold true for most CCGs with a direct objective and straight forward play styles.

Card Advantage
The first and most basic thing all CCG players should understand is card advantage. It doesn't necessarily mean that you should have more cards than your opponents- that's not what it means. It means that you are able to have more options at your disposal. This is usually maximized with a combination of card drawing and deck thinning.

Deck Thinning
The more cards that you use to remove cards from your deck during gameplay- the better. Why? The simple answer is statistics. This is good because it will reduce the number of cards in deck. The cards that are taken out of your deck are usually put in hand, played or removed and are typically less powerful cards (as being able to search and remove powerful cards isn't as easy/prevalent in CCGs). This leaves all the good/more powerful cards in your deck. Combine this with Card Drawing to increase the odds of drawing that next card you need to win.

Card Drawing
The more cards you draw- the more options you have because you could draw more resources or useful cards. It also acts as a less directed form of deck thinning. General rule of thumb- card drawing is good.

Resource Acceleration
Whatever mechanisms in the game exist for cost- there might be a way to increase your resources and/or card plays each turn. The usual flow of the game will follow a typical path/number of card plays per turn as the game progressing (depending on play style and card mechanics available). If there is a way to increase the available resources and/or card plays per turn as the game progresses (especially if it deviates from the normal "tempo" of gameplay), that buys you significant advantages against your opponent(s) who cannot match or counter your strategy.

"Tempo"
This is a phrase that I coined myself for describing the state of the typical flow of the game. The general idea, is if you are doing something to maintain a position to have more usable options than your opponent(s) at any given time, you are increasing your tempo. Idle time, unused resources and other similar inefficiencies, lower your tempo. If you are more reactive to your opponent, you tend to have low tempo because you are waiting to use your options against something. If you are proactive (or even pre-emptive) towards your opponent, you have high tempo because you are presumably playing something that either gives you more options and/or increases your position/decreases your opponents' position. If each turn you can play something, that keeps your tempo high- where if you have renewing resources that go unused, that's undesirable wastefulness. The more you apply pressure on your opponent and make them be reactive, you are dictating the tempo of the game ("tempo" can be seen in other games such as chess). This is a controlling factor that isn't easily measurable, but any card player can admit that it is a part of many CCGs.

Card Quality
Each card has specific mechanics that interact with the game state somehow. The more mechanics it interacts with, the more options you'll typically have with it. Examine the mechanic(s), and see how much it affects the game. If it's some obscure card that affects one other card- it's pretty useless unless it's in a deck that abuses a combo. Look for cards that are strictly redundant- cards that are useless because there is a better card that is completely better than it in any way. In which case- only use the better card if possible. Basically the more options, abilities, interactive mechanics a card has, the better quality of card it will be. If it supports one of the above strategies, it is also a decent card. Each card is functionally unique, but can be classified with other cards that provide a similar function. But the more interaction and versatility, the better it is. Use these guidelines to determine which cards are good, and which ones are bad.

Deck Construction
First thing about this, is keep the deck slim and trim. Because the more cards you have, the less focused your strategy is. Just put the cards that are the cream of the crop- and card drawing/deck thinning will work its magic (pun intended!).

The next thing to think about in deck construction is card quality. For most casual players, they will only have their own limited card pool to work with. You must determine which properties of cards are valuable in your deck building strategy (this will change with game and deck play styles). Any cards that are mediocre and/or has limited options for its cost should not be considered if better options exist. Problem with this is that sometimes you must consider some lesser options to be able to give the deck the ability to balance/maintain the other strategies (tempo/card drawing/deck thinning).

Constructed Deck "Synergy"/Troubleshooting Your Own Deck
All of the above strategies to combine to provide something I refer to as "deck synergy". This is the ultimate measure of performance for a deck. How consistently well does it play? You can evaluate for yourself by asking yourself any number of questions about the deck.
- Do you have enough cards to play? Do you have too many cards you can't play?
- Do you have enough resources to play cards at the right time? Do you even get the right cards at the right time?
- Do you notice the deck doesn't do anything early/late in the game?
- Do you always find yourself trying to "keep up" or "catch up" with your opponent?
- Do you see a card (combination) that doesn't work so well or just sticks out like a sore thumb in your deck?
If you answered negatively to any of these questions, you can improve your deck. But remember, there's no such thing as a "perfect deck" because if there was, the game wouldn't be worth playing. You could rectify the problems with your deck with any of the above concepts. It's usually a trade-off to balance all of these strategies. You just have to pick and choose which works best for that deck.

Gaming Night: 4 booster Magic the Gathering draft

Let's break this down into parts to build the understanding foundation first before I go and just dive into the event (for fear of scaring people away who don't understand). If you already know about Magic the Gathering and card games, feel free to skip to the section called "That Night."

What Is Magic The Gathering?
It is a collectible card game that pits players against each other in magical warfare. Each player is essentially a wizard that draw upon mana to summon creatures and cast spells in order to eliminate the other wizards.

Wizards typically draw their mana from resources from nature (gameplay-wise from Land cards) and focus it into a spell from their vast library (represented by your draw deck- actually referred to as a "library" in-game).

Victory conditions vary depending on cards, but the primary method of victory is to reduce all opposing Wizards' life to 0 (each player typically starts with 20 life in most formats). Another victory condition is forcing your opponents to draw cards, but if they have none to draw, they lose. There are many other card-specific win conditions, but we won't discuss them here.

What Makes MTG a Collectible Card Game?
There are easily tens of thousands of different cards available throughout the MTG universe. Why? The game originally came out in 1993, and has slowly been releasing cards between then and now.

For those who are not familiar with card game distribution (up until recently), they are generally released in various packages. Varying sized packages are available, but the generally the most common are called "starters decks" and "booster packs." Typically a starter, nowadays, will have enough cards for you to start playing a game right out of the box (trust me, this was not always how it was), and booster packs are smaller, but more randomized cards used to augment your collection.

The Money Machine
Since its inception, MTG became a great hit. Its popularity spread like wildfire. It became something to play, and with everyone playing it, it was there to stay.

Over the years, sanctioned tournaments popped up and it became apparent that the MTG card distribution system was biased in a way that gave some players (the ones who would spend the most money on cards) the best decks because they could get many of the rarest cards. With that... came the advent of limited formats.

MTG Booster Draft
There are several limited formats, but this article will only focus on booster draft. The standard way a MTG booster draft works is that each player sits around a table with 3 booster packs. When a drafting round starts, everyone opens one pack and takes one card from it and passes the pack to the next player (direction alternates, starting with left/clockwise). Each of the players take one card from each subsequent pack until every card is gone. This is done in hopes to make the best deck with the cards "drafted." This format is called "draft" probably because it is akin to drafting in sports teams. The difference between them is that for Magic, you are drafting the best available card to put into your deck instead of drafting the best available player for the team.

This not only puts a little luck into opening booster packs, but the skill comes in trying to use the cards you draft in innovative/creative combinations to assure victory over your opponents.

That Night
Now that I've explained everything you need to know, I can tell you about my night. I had a few people over. We had 6 players- it would have been better to have 8, but 6 was fine. I had many booster packs and no one could agree on which three packs to open out of the 4 available. So instead, we just did a 4 booster pack draft. The expansions included were Eventide, Shadowmoor, Shards of Alara and Alara Reborn. It was quite an interesting metagame because you wouldn't know what to expect from the later boosters being mostly multi-color (Alara Reborn was opened last). It also kept the playing field balanced because no one was familiar with all four expansions.

My basic strategy was draft anything/everything good earlier on, and then get as much mana-fixing in the last pack. Chances are, and good cards I got weren't going to be used. Even with the added pack, we were still playing with a 40 card minimum deckbuilding limit. My deck turned out decently. I went green/white splash blue, with big beefy creatures.

I gave everyone about 40 minutes to build their decks. We didn't really need all that time. Pairings happened, and we played through the rounds. Here's the reason why 6 people isn't too good- because someone always got paired up and paired down. We each played at least 2-3 rounds (best 2 out of 3) and there was a clear winner. Sadly, it wasn't me, but we all had a fun time. I think I was tied for second. Unfortunately he had to leave and we never got to play against each other. It's all right, because I plan on having another one next time.

Conclusion
I really enjoy draft format because it offers a generally fair playing field. There is definitely an element of luck in any card game when drawing a card, but in draft, your position in relation to other particular drafters, which packs you see first and a whole slew of other factors also matter. All one can do is make the most consistent deck- and so it comes down to deck construction. But in the end, drafting Magic still comes down to being a game of luck between people of similar skill; even then, those with a better understand of Magic and draft strategies will prevail over those that do not.

SC2 BETA In-Depth: The TvT matchup

Introduction
Yesterday while I was in a stressed mood, I decided to play some SC2. I just wanted to wreck something.

First game I played was a PvP, but I contained and then out-macroed him without too much effort. Fun with Colossi. : )

The second game however, was insane. It was a TvT, on a 4 player map, and took 45 minutes before the loser conceded. NOTE: all the information about the opponent is accurate because I ended up watching the replay.

I had chosen Random, so my opponent didn't know what I was.

Build Order
As with all races, the first thing you should do is have your gatherers start mining first. You start off with 6 workers now and that mining time difference is more important than getting your first worker out sooner than your opponent.

I am the red terran in the 7 o'clock position and he was the blue terran in the 8 o'clock position.

First thing I do is gather minerals with SCVs. Then start making an SCV. From SC, I had gotten into a habit of hotkeying (h) everything, so I hotkey my CC to 2-9 and an SCV to 1. Then I rally the CC to a mineral patch to start mining, and make another SCV. I keep up SCV production well into 20-30 SCVs per base, depending on the build, for good saturation. I have yet to use the MULE, but that's because I'd rather have energy for scan. Scan is pretty much the exact equivalent to Scan in SC. The MULE is a way for the Terran player to offset economic differences in production against the other two races (Zerg Queens extra larvaue, and Protoss' Nexus' Chrono Boost).

Around SCV 8 or 9, I use the SCV on h1 to drop a supply depot- I'm going for speed to macro, so no wall-in or anything. Hotkey another SCV to h2. As soon as the supply depot is done, I begin scouting with SCV on h1 and move h2 out to build a Barracks. Then I drop a refinery. I subconsciously send the scout clockwise based on the map structure, and I find him immediately. I do some waypoint evasion (when you shift+right click around their base to keep them chasing you), and I notice that he doesn't have either gas yet and a barracks a little slower than mine.

Crazy Gambit
So, like a crazy guy, I jump back to base (hotkeys for speed), put 3 SCVs on gas, and jump back to his base to start 2 refineries on each of his gas geysers. I only build them up to about 120 HP each so that I can cancel them and get the resources back. I jump back to my base and start a factory ASAP, hotkey Barracks on 3 and make some defensive marines.

The Premonition
He begins to attack my refineries in his base with 1 SCV each. At least it took some time away from his SCV mining time and gas gathering. Before I cancelled them, I noticed a second barracks. I built another barracks myself and began to Tech Lab them both.

Each of the military unit buildings (Barracks, Factory and Starport) has 2 potential add-ons: Tech Lab and Reactor. Reactor allows you to double the production of that building. Tech Lab allows for higher level tech from those buildings. But you cannot have both- so you'll have to choose: faster production of basic units or access to better units. As I've noticed, I feel like it's typically better to go for higher level tech units and research pretty much all of the time- unless you're doing some crazy rush build. This is why I did not get any Reactors.

I amass a small army of Marine+Marauder (the new M&M I guess; so if it included Medivac, would it be called M&M&M?), and a couple of Reapers while getting an Engineering Bay to upgrade them. I put them all in a single control group (I did an experiment with Zerg- and there is no size limit to a control group any more, where I had 300+ units on one hotkey; only possible because of overlords). I left some tanks at home to defend and then I started my second CC at my natural expansion and moved out. I typically use keys 1-2 or 1-4 for military strike groups, depending on the rest. I use the rest to hotkey buildings. With MBS, it becomes easier to manage and distribute production. Just note that buildings with Reactors are somehow treated differently and the unit production is not distributed in the same way.

Armageddon
At this point, my opponent had already gotten 3 Medivacs, 2 tanks and a bunch of marines. He saw my army advancing so he loaded up and flew over to my base to drop 16 marines and 2 tanks in my base.

I believe he made this decision to throw his army at me because of the early pressure that limited his gas- hence he dedicated to medivacs and tanks, and just used marines so he wouldn't have to spend gas.

I had learned from watching pro games that when something like this happens, the worst thing you can do is to retreat. I'm at the front of his base and he would have demolished me whether I retreated or not. So the only option? I have to go into his base and deal as much economic damage as possible.

I'm still macroing units at my base, and since his troops hadn't completely encroached on my production buildings' positions yet- I rally them together to make a final stand. He lingers farther away as I continue to mine. Back at his base, I work my way up his ramp through almost nonexistent defenses and I begin to attack his economy immediately. He sends his SCVs at my army, but they just melt to marauding blasts. I believe I kill each and every one of his SCVs, and destroy his CC and clean up most of his military buildings. I do notice my CC being destroyed and immediately send my SCVs to my natural expansion. I rush to build another barracks and factory while the other SCVs mine. I'm trying to bank as much as possible because his forces still seem like a formidable force. As a double backup plan, I run 2 SCVs to the 1 and 2 o'clock bases and start CCs as soon as he finds and destroys my natural CC.

I clean up his newly created CC and destroyed all of his buildings in his base (last ones being 2 refineries; late to come up, late to go- LOL).

Recovery: me
At this point I'm paranoid. I have scouted almost every other location for a base via flying buildings or a unit in passing- and I haven't seen any other buildings. He clearly had something else because he was not yet eliminated. At the time, he also had a larger army than I did. I had SCVs, a few marauders and a couple of marines. He had at least 10 marines, 2 medivacs, and 2 tanks left. So, as you can see, I was in trouble. I picked one of my two bases to start my new base. I get a barracks down ASAP, and then a bunker and 2 supply depots to wall off. I had built up 8~ish SCVs, so I was fine for recovering economically. The last things I saw were medivacs and marines. So I surround my base with turrets.

Then followed almost the longest silence I had experienced. It must have lasted for at least 10 minutes. We didn't see each other. Nobody made a move. I sensed that he must have had another CC somewhere, so I asked him "Do you have an income?"

Recovery: him
He scoured the map for me with his units. He was at about 18/11 with one floating CC. I managed to escape with it and set it up at the 1 o'clock position for double gas for a while.

He on the other hand, had a smaller bank, not taking in resources, and no SCVs to speak of- with the complicated situation of being at 18/11 (3 medivacs, 2 tanks and 5 marines). How the heck was he going to deal with this?

Painstakingly, he realizes he has no choice and kills off his 3 medivacs- which leaves him plenty to make an SCV. Luckily there was more than enough for a couple of supply depots. He is now making an income. He creates MULEs and gets a second base. After some slight security, he moves his tanks to brood around the entrance to my new base (the 2 o'clock position) and camp there. He has a better economy than me at this point.

Good Morning Breakpeace
I had teched up to dual Starports because I had seen Medivacs and tanks- so clearly a flying assault unit was a logical tech choice. Little did I know, that he did the same thing. However, I was trying to build Banshees, which only attack ground- and he was amassing Vikings.

For those of you who have not heard about the Viking, it is one part Goliath, one part Valkyrie, and one part transformer. Builds from a Starport as the basic air unit that has the ability to ground itself. It can attack air to air, or ground to ground, and so it has the mobility of a Wraith, but the attack power of a marauder (slightly better).

He lands at my gas expansion and destroys it outright. I begin to panic and ramp up production. He immediately flies in and lands about 14 Vikings by my CC. Luckily I have turrets in my base that take care of a few before they land. I manage to save about 7 SCVs (lucky number!) and take care of most of the threat with 2 Banshees and a tank, leaving about 6 enemy Vikings not able to do much. I mop them up with Banshees and marines.

Inspiration
At this point I realize... "Wow, he's throwing away a lot of expensive units." Well, they're cheap air units, but not as cheap as turrets and marines. He goes in for one big strike with another 12 Vikings, but I manage to hold out with 2 Banshees, 2 Vikings and 5 marines. My barracks and factory are burning- but I am able to save them in plenty of time.

Economically speaking, he was far ahead of me. He had a bigger bank, bigger income. What did I have? I had a "cheap spending" plan, and better average APM than him. I made medivacs and marines, and a tank. I successfully defend against another onslaught.

Redemption
My resources begin to wear thin. I know that I have no choice but to mount an offensive. I do not know what I will do, as I feel that he is economically ahead (he actually was by about a factor of 3). His food count was nearly 3 times mine. His resources in the bank were around 2000/2000 to my 150/150. If his macro was slightly better- he would have defeated me effortlessly. Luckily for me, I kept up my macro throughout, and a lesser position was able to overcome because of the enemy player's contentedness.

I had a very small plan, but hopefully it was going to have large impact. Earlier when I had made a Banshee, I sent it out in hopes of glimpses of the enemy. I had found one base. I was not sure if it was the only one- but it was worth a shot in destroying it. I loaded a Medivac up with 6 marines (max capacity was 8- but I wasn't sure why I didn't fill it up). I fly over to his completely undefended economic base and drop the marines behind the mineral lines and start killing.

He had been amassing units in my natural for a while. At this point he throws everything he has at my ramp in a seemingly last ditch effort to clean me up. He has marines and medivacs. My bunker and 2 supply depots hold the ramp for my tank to dish out the heaviest of damage. My bunker barely holds as an SCV repairs it at 10 HP.

After that battle, I have obliterated his only real economic base as his other one is emptying out and another CC he had begun had no saturation. I had an army and he just sent his at me today.

"i concede" he tells me.
"gg"

All I have to say back is "GG"

Conclusion
I'll be the first one to admit right now- I should not have won that game. He should have. But between luck, persistence and mind games- I was able to get him to concede to me. Then I thought about the game and came to a few conclusions.

There are some units we were not able to explore in depth. Each of us were also unfamiliar with upper tech unit abilities. That could have changed the game immensely (Ravens and Ghosts notably).

Next, we didn't see any huge heavy hitters (Battle Cruiser and Thor).

With that aside, assume that Battle Cruiser and Thor is too expensive to be practical early/mid-game or any game that is close. Ravens and Ghosts are support units that can turn the tide of battle, but they are usually not the core of the terran army.

The rest of it- is. I sense that infantry builds will be the strongest in TvT. Tanks are good, but they're not as insanely good as they used to be. They're a bit bigger and a bit slower. The Hellion is fast, but hardly a replacement for Vultures because there aren't any mines, and they're not as cost effective as vultures. Terran mech has Thor for anti-air, but other than that, they must use marines or other air units to assault/defend in the air. That's the weakness of Terran mech, and I predict it won't be used purely. Mech will augment existing forces. M&M is so powerful early game- and there are 5 Starport units to choose from. I forsee both infantry and air builds in TvT (assuming the units remain the same when release comes around).

Final Fantasy XIII: initial review

How I Got It
I did not pre-order this game. Sometimes you can get some cool items as part of your pre-order, most of the time this is not true. So, as my personal past experience has proven to me, if you just look around for highly anticipated games on release day, you can find some really cool deals out there (especially when many retailers will carry the game).

I had seen in the Sunday ad (thanks to my girlfriend Sarah) that Target was having a deal where you purchase the game for PS3 or 360, and you get a $10 giftcard (for free!).

So immediately when I got out of work yesterday (Tuesday March 9), I stopped at the nearby Target and purchased it (and of course before I left the store, I purchased some necessary food items with my newly acquired $10 giftcard).

Opening Scene
Now, I don't have a nice setup or anything, but I ended up watching the opening sequence on my 19 inch CRT TV. I know, it's terrible that I can't use the PS3's graphical powers to the fullest extent, but I'm more about story and gameplay anyway. Besides, there's one benefit to having a CRT anyway (see my video about why one would need a CRT here).

You open up with beautiful flowing cliffs and waterfalls and then "fly" into a city. It almost feels as though you're with the birds. It's a huge difference when compare to FFVII where you would still be able to see adjacent polygons get clipped because of overlapping each other (my friends and I used to called this "polygon fighting" because two adjacent polygons would "fight" to see which one came out visibly on top). Anyway, the range of motion with the characters throughout the intro are very fluid and look humanly natural. This has been evident in games as of late, but it still does not diminish the technical obstacles that need to be overcome to create something as impressive as that (being in the software industry, I have a great appreciation for this sort of thing).

The First 4 Hours: story/plot
I had read a few articles about this game and there are many varying feelings and some general overall gameplay opinions out there.

First I would like to say- the gameplay itself so far seems like a scripted RPG (similar to Uncharted/Uncharted 2). The plot advances very structurally and doesn't lend itself to world roaming. If there is a world to roam, I haven't gotten to it yet. But I sense that there won't be based on what I've read/heard.

The story takes place on Cocoon. The first hour or so you play as an able young woman named Lightning, a tough looking dude named Snow and an optimistic girl called Vanille. We also find out about a girl named Serah, comic relief character Sazh and a punk kid ironically named Hope (Hope, in all honesty, on several occasions in the beginning of the game, needs to grow a pair).

It introduces you to this world where fantasy and hard sci-fi intermingle (something that Final Fantasy VII and VIII fans longed for the franchise to come back to), and reveals the evil entity known only as the fal'Cie. It goes on to explain that there are fates worse than death, and individuals can be marked l'Cie- where the implications are realized immediately upon a certain plot point that I will not reveal.

Needless to say, I am deeply interested and enthralled in the story. I will definitely continue to play it through to see where it goes.

The First 4 Hours: character mechanics
First things first, you typically control only one person in battle, so you don't get the usual strategy of various characters. However, you learn quickly that there are various roles that all the characters can perform (Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Medic, Synergist and Saboteur). Each role has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Each character increases his or her abilities by earning CP (I'm not 100% sure what it stands for, but it's probably Character/Customize Points or something similar). You augment skills, attributes and abilities- but the "track" you can augment is based on the role you wish to enhance.

You can actually upgrade all of your characters this way even though you can only control the "Leader" in battles (typically assigned, but I imagine later you can choose who will be the leader).

I think the coolest customizable options are Paradigms. It's basically a "mindset" for all your characters. For each paradigm you can set the role that each character will play, and usually for a a general overarching strategy. The AI is fairly diligent when you apply a Paradigm, so I'm excited to see how many interesting combinations that people come up with. You can see how the FFXII gambit system provided a lot of insight for a system like this.

The First 4 Hours: combat
FFXIII uses ATB (for those not familiar with it, it stands for Active Time Battle). Essentially it allows you to attack after a time bar fills up. However, in this game, they took it one more level. There are various commands that you can chain together for an entire attack. Attack takes one bar. But if your ATB bar is 3 bars long, you can do a 3-hit attack. But it give the flexibility to the player to attack with various hits and/or abilities by redeeming part of the character's ATB bar. I think it will come in handy when there are more advanced enemies that require chaining spells with attacks.

A new part of combat is the Chain Gauge. Each enemy has one and it increases typically when you hit the enemy more. Once it fills up, the enemy "staggers" and the bar drains. A lot of damage can be dealt to it in that state, and stagger wears off when the bar empties.

The pacing of the "normal" speed of battle is actually very fast and action packed. There's battle that looks like it would have been FMV cut scenes back in FFX, so there's always something pretty to look at. The ATB bar fills up quickly, and if you are the kind of person that likes to optimize, you're going to be in for a treat.

Conclusion
This is a nice start to the Final Fantasy 13 game. I will definitely continue playing it to see how it progresses. I hoped this initial review proved useful/interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Starcraft 2 BETA: my story and initial review

DISCLAIMER: Note, this is a BETA. Any and/or all of the observations made here may or may not be included in the final release. Starcraft and all references herein are owned by Blizzard Entertainment.

How I Came Across a BETA Key

Shortly after Blizzcon '08, I was feeling a little down for reasons related to my personal life (and odds are it had something to do with women too). Luckily for me, I had some awesome friends who went to Blizzcon and they gave me a feel better present.

"Here Nam, this should make you feel better," and he hands me a card and I look at it. It's a card with a BETA key for Starcraft 2. At the time, it made me feel a little bit better, but the reality didn't hit me yet. I would like to thank my friend Zubes for giving it to me. Thanks man.

It was the same when some of my other friends gave me a pre-order copy of SC2 for my birthday... in '08. It's actually been on pre-order for so long that I changed some of my verification information since then.

BETA Starts

I got word from my Starcraft enthusiast brother (7 years younger than me- but stays way more informed on SC happenings than I do) gave me a phone call to notify me that the SC2 BETA was live last week on Wednesday (2/17/2010). Awesome! It was confirmed by my friend who works at Blizzard later that day. That night I pulled out my BETA key card and registered my key and created a new battlenet account.

The tense part was the wait. After you register your key, you had to wait until Blizzard sent you a SC2 code to download the client. I waited 48 hours and finally decided "they'll send it to me whenever they'll send it to me."

Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Not more than 5 days later, I got an email on 2/22/2010 at 8:47pm saying "Congratulations, this is your invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™!" Unfortunately I was out that evening and didn't get the email until about 11:15pm.

At that time, I immediately used the code to download the client. It was over one and a half GB and downloaded at about 1 MB every 3-5 seconds. It took over 2 hours. It was a weeknight and I needed to go to sleep so I could go to work the next day... but I wanted to see if I could play one game before I went to sleep. I started the install, and that took more than an hour- at which point I gave up and went to sleep (it was well past 3am).

I planned to wake up the next morning early so I could go to work early so I could leave work early to go home and play SC2. I told some co-workers about it and they told me that I had "some discipline." I went to work, thought about it all day (except for when I was thinking about my girlfriend of course!), and then drove home.

First Impression: GUI

I logged into the game and found the GUI to be pretty clean and smooth. I actually missed some of the old sound effects because I've played SC for probably a decade now, but the transition between screens is less jarring/sudden.

I feel like the buttons respond as expected. They are stylistically thinner, longer buttons than in the first game, but they work well.

The in-game control pane is very similar to the previous game and intuitive to anyone who has played SC before. The observable menu gives you game options and help. The most useful part for strategizing is actually included in the game menu. It has a chart of each race's tech tree and a list of units all the units (with counter unit strengths and weaknesses). The only thing you seem to be missing is the upgrade/ability list.

The New Battlenet

Don't take my word as the end-all be-all, because I really only briefly looked at it. But the new battlenet system seems really good. Joining a game is a heck of a lot less hassle. Creating a game is easy as 1-click-2-click-3-click (there are a limited number of maps included in the BETA, but I imagine the map pools in the future will change the meta game as they are created and released).

For the BETA, they gave you practice games before they start rating you for "placement." Which I assume they would put in a group/bracket with people your own skill level. I think this is a great system because then you eliminate the gradient in skill level. Let's hope it actually works the way I think it does.

When creating a game in the BETA, I found out that you could wait for a human to join, or add a computer AI. If you added AI, only "Very Easy" difficulty was available. There were several speed settings, but the relevant ones seem to be "Fast" and "Faster". I am unsure of the 1v1 or 2v2 games can be created in the BETA. Once in, you may choose your race (as always), color and a handicap percentage. Everyone starts off at 100%, so I imagine if you choose a lower percentage, you will have more difficulty, however that percentage translates into the game (I did not experiment with it at all). As the game loads, it will show you a map preview with indicated spawn point and you can briefly plan your strategy.

First Game

Before the first game I played, I did not know that I could play a single player game against a computer. So I ended up playing against a human. It was a TvT on a 2 player map. I tried to do an early contain with a bunker contain outside of the enemy's natural expansion. I seemed to hold back the enemy pretty effectively. I applied pressure with Siege Tanks and eventually lost my hold. However, I took that opportunity to expand with a second CC.

After gaining the economic lead, the rest of the match was quite elementary as I just overran the opponent with a variety of units.

After it was over, I figuratively jumped for joy and looked at the statistics. Some of the same statistics from the first game are there, but the most notable addition (to me) was the build order tab. It allows you to compare any two players' build orders with time indicator up through the first few minutes. This will prove greatly important for hardcore strategists, pro players and SC/RTS enthusiasts.

General Gameplay Observations

Things that are similar to the original SC.

The races are the same. Some of the units are the same. There are units and buildings and you try and use it to defeat your opponent.

Things that differ than the original SC.

Instead of depending on just sounds alone, there is a text list that shows up on screen that notifies you of what has just finished (construction, research, unit creation, and other game notifications such as "Nuclear launch detected"). Very, VERY useful.

Many hotkeys have been changed. Some are no longer intuitive, but I understand what they were trying to do. If you get the chance to look through all the hotkeys, you'll notice that they are all mostly on the left side of the keyboard. I think this is done to reduce overall movement across the keyboard for speed and efficiency. Once you learn the hotkeys, I think your play will be better overall.

The F1 key helps you find idle resource gatherers. Other RTS games had this functionality already, but the first SC did not. They finally put it in, and it's useful.

Vespene geysers when depleted no longer yield any gas. This changes the economy of the game quite a bit. Cost of units and buildings have been scaled to be a multiple of 5 because resource gatherers now carry 5 resources (as opposed to 8 in SC) each trip.

"Smart" rally points for resource gatherers have them auto-mine when the rally point is set to a mineral patch or vespene geyser (with appropriate gas structure atop it).

Multiple building select- allows you to hotkey many buildings to one hotkey. You're probably wondering how they curbed the hotkey advantage for certain buildings with certain races? Well, I think their solution will take some getting used to, but the best situation that they could have come up with. If you want to me 5 units, you have to hit the hotkey 5 times. Even if you have 5 buildings selected, you must tap the hotkey 5 times to create 5 units (it does intelligently distribute production to idle buildings).

Cloaked/hidden/burrowed units are no longer detectable. You will not see a distortion where the hidden unit is. It is purely hidden from view without a detecting unit. There are still 2 detectors per race: one static structure and one mobile flying unit (as before).

One of my favorite new mechanics: you can queue up many actions in a unit's waypoint. In the first SC, I wanted to build buildings in a waypoint to queue them up (like scouting/evading patterns) but I could not. Now you can! Make plopping down 5 pylons all at once immensely easier.

Things that I thought were really cool additions.

The game will tell you when it thinks your computer is causing slowdown in the game! It suggests to close unnecessary programs and applications. AWESOME. You will no longer accuse everyone else of latency. It'll just freeze and everyone just waits.

When you're playing a game against a computer AI and you clearly defeat it- it will auto chat "gg" to you to indicate its surrender before you destroy every building!*

* For those of you unfamiliar, GG is an acronym for "Good game" usually messaged at the end of a game to informally signify the end of it. In Korean e-sports, this tradition eventually became the official signal from a player to indicate conceding of the game.

The Races

Luckily for you guys, I enjoy playing as all three races. I believe it helps get a better overall understanding of the game, and eases future strategizing. However, I was only able to play 6 games (3 VS "very easy" computers just to explore the tech tree of each race, and 3 practice games against humans).

I do not believe I can review the differences of each race yet, but give me some time and I should be able to. Let me just say that there are a TON of different units for each race, a TON of different upgrades and a TON of ridiculously crazy abilities.

I sense where this game is trying to take the Starcraft franchise to a place where it is less dependent on macro skill than micro skill. The abilities seem to play more of an important role in this game than before. But macro is still important because the change in economic momentum seems to differ enough that the economics I feel are more sensitive to harassment and tempo. I predict that many will find this game very fun, albeit different than the first one.

Whether it'll be as big as the first SC, no one knows. That's speculation. I decided to leave the decision for years down the line, after they patch it to make it perfect. Until then, it seems as though it's decently balanced enough for the casual player for now. I can't wait until the Koreans get a hold of this and show us how it's really done.

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.

Pokemon Birth, Evolution and Documentation (Case Study: Nidoran)

By: Nam Ngo
Copyright January 2010
(NOTE: This article is food for thought and for entertainment only.)

I recently sat down with my friend Shannon at our local coffee shop- it's become a routine every Saturday- and had our usual random tangent chats. The paths we usually take are related to nerdy/geeky things (of course not limited to that, but that's where they usual go). She and I are fans of Pokemon- not ridiculous crazy fans (well, I'm not- she's played so many more of them that I have!), but fans enough to know what they are, play the card game and familiar with at least the first 150 (or 151!) Pokemon.

Pokemon and Their Birth
Have you noticed that since the first batch of 150 Pokemon there have been a ton more Pokemon? For those of you who have been out of the Pokemon scene for a while, according to the Official Online Pokedex, there are 493 different Pokemon. Yeah. Believe it. There's almost 19 times more Pokemon than letters in the alphabet. And I bet you that there are some little kids out there that must know their Pokemon and probably don't know the entire alphabet yet.

Back in the day, it was simple. "This [Pokemon] evolves into that [Pokemon]" and so forth. Since then, there has been the introduction of baby Pokemon. Pokemon that are found in the wild are considered basic/regular/normal Pokemon. Higher level evolutions are Stage 1 or Stage 2 evolutions of Pokemon (depending on how many evolutions away from the basic one it is). Then there are baby Pokemon. These have been obtained only because of Pokemon breeding.

So my first question is: how do many Pokemon come into existence in the first place if there's a baby evolution form? How do normal Pikachus come into existence? Are female Pikachus pregnant and have a little of other Pikachus? Why are they not born as the baby evolution Pichu?

What about "wild" legendary Pokemon? Many of the legendary birds in the first 150 Pokemon are born from eggs. What put the eggs there in the first place? It's not a mystery to figure out where Mewtwo came from because we all concede that he was a Pokemon created in a laboratory (the motivations for why was to create a living, enhanced replica of Mew- but that's not the topic of this article). Back to the legendary birds, how do the eggs come into existence? It's like the chicken and the egg problem here- except that we suspect our "chicken" eggs started out as an egg of something else and mutated/evolved into the current chicken eggs we know and love today! How did the legendary eggs come into existence in the first place? If there was a previous Pokemon of he same legendary kind, is it still considered legendary? So sure we have theories of evolution in our world- but Pokemon evolution works differently.

Pokemon and Their Evolution
In our world, evolutionary theory basically describes the changes as gradual changes through generations of offspring. Typically it was necessary to mutate/adapt to be able to best survive/use the environment. Why do Pokemon evolve? Some "level up" and become better than they were- in terms of strength, skills and abilities. So that's understandable. Is it because of necessity to survive in the wild or necessity because the people in the Pokemon-world force them to battle each other?

One question on my mind- how did the people in Pokemon know how to evolve certain Pokemon (the ones that required some sort of item, like a stone of some sort to evolve)? What possessed some Pokemon-world person to place a stone next to a Pokemon? I guess as great scientific discoveries occur, I'm sure the initial discovery was probably an accident, but how come all the resulting effects of evolution are inherently considered positive? Why are there not stones that randomly de-evolve types of Pokemon, or make them forget attacks or yield some negative effect? One would usually assume if there's a type of item that grants positive results that something similar could grant negative results as well? It seems to be lacking in the balance between Yin and Yang.

Pokemon and Their Documentation
I recently found out that in the newer Pokemon games that all the Pokemon you capture have a gender. So if you capture a Pikachu- it can be male or female. Okay- awesome. But what of Nidoran? For those even remotely familiar with the original 150 Pokemon, there was Nidoran (male) and Nidoran (female). They each counted separately in the original count of Pokemon (numbers 32 and 29 respectively). However, I feel that the male and female versions of Pokemon shouldn't count as separate Pokemon. No other Pokemon's genders are classified differently as separate Pokemon, so why should Nidoran?

From a game development stand point, I understand that it was probably easier to have different evolutionary paths separated for coding purposes/etc. But in the Pokemon-world, some could argue that there are different physical characteristics- okay. I understand that. But we have lions. Male and female lions have different physical characteristics- and yet they're both lions still. We don't separate the species of male and female lions. Some could also argue that the Nidorans have different evolutionary paths. While this is true, Eevee also has many different evolutionary paths (at least 8 I think!). You don't count male and female Eevees differently. Okay, you're probably wondering about the consistency in which the male evolves to Nidorino and female to Nidorina. I don't have an answer for this- but let me pose this question to you: perhaps it's the male/female version of the same Pokemon that some professor badly classified? Who knows. But I am essentially arguing that the first 150 Pokemon are actually the first 149 Pokemon, and that the total current number of Pokemon is 492 instead of 493.

The things that bother me about this is that the classification system is arbitrary. In the Pokemon-world, you might not be able to answer those questions about Pokemon birth and evolution that I have posed. However, as new Pokemon "discoveries" come along, they should change the classification system. Right now, the almighty Pokedex has the entire library of known Pokemon. How does it sort them? It can sort them by Pokemon name (which has a lot of usability), and by Pokemon number. If sorting by name, it makes sense, but if you want to see the Pokemon evolutions, the name might not be best thing to sort by. Number is almost useless except in the situation of when you want to see the evolution of the Pokemon- except in the case of baby Pokemon. Pikachu evolves into Raichu and have Pokemon numbers 25 and 26. Pichu, the baby evolution of Pikachu, is number 172. With the Pokedex, you can easily see the evolutionary chain- but why is the number so important? It is all but useless (perhaps except to determine when it was "discovered" in relation to other Pokemon). And you can't even scroll through any organization to see all the associated evolutions conveniently- you have to know which Pokemon you want to inspect! This is more of a criticism of the Pokedex user interface design, but you can only look at one Pokemon's details at a time.

I was telling my roommate Rob about this article, and he thinks that there should be a taxonomy of Pokemon organization to more easily organize/view them. I tend to agree. At the end of the day, if you like Pokemon, you're still going to play- but they can really do a lot to improve the organization of Pokemon.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Hello all!

My name is Nam. I'm known as Lukerson59 everywhere else, but let me first explain about the change in screen name!

A long time ago, I used to have a LiveJournal in which I would post about my life. It was pretty personal and it was never what I dreamed it all up to be. I used "Lukerson59" because it was a spin-off from my old AOL screen name. It stuck ever since, but it stopped describing me years ago.

I am a nerdy/geeky software engineer. Despite the fact that I sounded like a shy and quiet guy- I wasn't at all. I used to throw these crazy parties at my HOWZ (the proper name for the house I live in). I was pretty social. I defied the stereotype. Some say that I still do. I graduated college almost 2 years ago. Since then, I've had an immense amount of free time to do more things and have had great discussions about topics at length, new and old, big and small... and everything in between.

I'd like to share some of them with you.