I downloaded, played and uninstalled
Modern Warfare 2; that game is broken and no fun. The steam page refers to it as the 'definitive multiplayer experience', guess they never played Team Fortress 2.
I went to an event Thursday night organised by the guys of
PC Gamer UK. I've been reading that magazine since I was a mere standardboy and I play most of my
Team Fortress 2 on their server, so I leapt at the opportunity to play them in person.
I had blast! The room was full of powerful PCs with packed steam profiles and even consoles. As the PCG guys welcomed us, they gestured towards two tables with four/five networked PCs facing each other and the game they were running was none other than
Starcraft II!
I played two rounds of 2v2 - won the first entirely due to a good defence and my aggressive team mate, I was about to play my second game when Tim Edwards (the editor of PC Gamer) sat down and asked who wanted to play. We ended up on the same team, both as Protoss (snooty space elves) vs two Terren (space hicks) players.
I tried the old proxy pylon trick on the first guy very early on (drone teleports in buildings but can do other things while they appear - allowing you to tele in many at once - pylons allow you to build structures around them), planting turrets around the pylon just outside his base. Before he knew what was happening, I had five turrets and a barracks shutting him down and even started building my new base as I was destroying his.
I basically had no army at this point but my team mate kept the other guy at bay and harassed his supply chain - allowing me climb up the tech tree without conflict. This is where I discovered one of Starcraft II's most spectacular new one-at-a-time units - the Protoss mothership; it's a giant, regal flying saucer that glows a cool blue and cloaks my units underneath it, can teleport all my units to it's position and fire a BLACK HOLE that instantly sucks everything not bolted down in it's range into oblivion.
So me and the editor of PC Gamer attacked the poor guy with two massive armies from both sides, cloaked under a mothership each. Once we met in the middle, we finished him off by simultaneously firing both of our black holes in a speculator unlight show of doom. Fantastic!
Starcraft II is an unusual feeling - both new and familiar - it's not the revolution that the original was and I kept wanting to zoom out, but it's the asymmetrical yet balanced game I love and I was amazed by how polished the game is, even in the beta phase. It's also gorgeous - Starcraft II looked like how I
remember the original.
The rest of the night was
TF2 and even some prophunt, had a fun time meeting the guys I'm used to playing online as well as new people and TF2 is even more hilarious in the same room. All nice chaps.
Oh and
GOG.com are having a sale on some
RPGs.