In the spirit of competition in E-sports, because there will be a world championship this weekend on 11/9. I will be introducing a game by the name of Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 is a real time strategy (RTS) game released by blizzard, maker of popular games like Warcraft and Diablo, Which I will most likely talk about at a future time. Starcraft 2 is a expansion of the game to Starcraft which was created in 1998. Starcraft in general is one of the most played game in the world, with an extremely huge following in Korea where the original game is still played despite the expansion coming out. The fan base is so large that there are tournaments weekly with some of the best players making over $350,000 per year. These players also belong to teams, which they play under the name of, according to liquidpedia, a page sponsored and updated by a professional team called team Liquid; the currently highest paid team for the year has earnings of $740,000.

There are three factions in Starcraft 2 which a player can choose to play as with each faction specializing in different things. These factions are terran, protoss, and zerg. Terrans are a humanoid faction with superior mechanized troops such as planes and tanks. Protoss are a alien faction with a extremely devout and religious view, they specialize in psionic (psychic) abilities such as shields and special powers. Zergs are an alien faction with an emphasis on swarming the enemy by creating a lot of cheap troops to ultimately overpower your opponent.

The game starts with a small base and five workers which you use to harvest minerals and gas, which you then use to build buildings to unlock the ability to build and upgrade troops. A basic understanding of the game is that once you build your army you can attack each other, more advanced players use special tactics to get ahead such as worker denying (killing workers before they can build troops) or even hit and run tactics. Ultimately the game is a strategy game to put yourself ahead of the opponent. The game can also be played in a team such as 2 v 2, 3 v 3, and 4 v 4. The game play in a team game is almost the same as 1 v 1 except that there is more room for modification and strategies to throw off your opponent.

This game is a little harder to learn to play by using advanced strategies, but once you do I am sure you will like it. The game also has an extremely well built story line and the cinematics are on par if not better than that of movies. Below I will include a tutorial video posted to YouTube by a shout caster of the game, who mind you makes a living just from examining players playing against each other.

ALL COPY RIGHTS GO TO HUSKYSTARCRAFT who created and uploaded these videos.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOoCTp0Mvwk&list=PLA1476C41A02D8E8D&index=9

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D54SvRYhSZs&list=PLA1476C41A02D8E8D&index=8

This times post will be about Puzzles and Dragons, Puzzles and Dragons is a free to play game that originated in Japan in 2012. February for the IOS and in September for the android OS, the first time Puzzles and Dragons came to America shortly after due to the immense popularity and how well received it was in Japan. Puzzles and Dragons had 13 million downloads in the middle of 2013 however currently there has been 20 million worldwide downloads in a period of 1 year.

Puzzles and Dragons is cross between popular titles such as candy crush saga / bejeweled and popular collection games such as Pokémon. In the game you move orbs of 5 colors or hearts to either heal or allow your cards / monsters to attack the enemies. Doing dungeons / stages using stamina upon completion of the dungeon will reward you with gold, experience, and eggs. Eggs are basically the babies of the monsters you kill in the dungeon; if an egg drops you will receive it upon completion of the dungeon. However if you leave or die in the dungeon all the rewards will be lost and you must attempt it again. Cards / Monsters can be leveled and evolved through fusion to make dungeons easier, or to attempt harder dungeons.

Alternatively there is a machine called a gacha (those machines that pop out bubbles that kids frequently spin to get toys / candy, essentially it is a slot machine). If you spend magic stones (the in game currency that you receive for spending real money) you can pull the gacha arm and out pops a rare card; from a random series (the current series in the game include – Japanese gods, norse gods, Chinese gods, ninjas, dragons, angels etc.)

The game is fundamentally different from candy crush saga and bejeweled because while you use stamina to enter dungeons, you can move one orb over the entire play area instead of only once. A play through I recorded of one of the dungeons will be posted below, to show the movement of the orbs and the attacking.

Personally I find this game extremely fun because I like collecting things, and this game is full of cards / monsters that I can collect. The game play is also not stale because they frequently add new content to the game in forms of rare cards or harder dungeons; they also have collaboration events with other mobile games which drop special cards / monsters from that game (recent collaborations include Clash of Clans and Emil Chronicle Online). The game also pulls you in by giving you something to strive for; an example of this would be putting something in the game such as gods that you really like, in my case the Chinese gods are based of zodiacs and one of them is my zodiac so I collected it and leveled it for my team.