When you look at characters that would have interesting stories that continue on from StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, I wouldn’t have considered Nova among them. The likes of Zagara or Alarak who played bit parts in the various SC2 expansions could have interesting stories following the Into The Void missions based on LOTV and the epilogue. However, Blizzard got off on the right foot with the first mission pack of Nova Covert Ops. The second mission pack is a bit of a miss, though.
StarCraft II
Best of LAGTV’s When Cheese Fails
I think I’ve mentioned a few times on the blog that I’m a big StarCraft fan. Even if I’m absolutely terrible at the game, I love watching competitive StarCraft and consider the WCS Championship and Homestory Cup appointment viewing. For more regular content, there is the folks over at Life’s A Glitch TV. They have regular content on YouTube and tournaments on Twitch which are almost always entertaining, even if the games they are sent aren’t perfect.
LAGTV has a couple of regular series and today we take a look at some of their best When Cheese Fails matches.
StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops – Mission Pack 1 Impressions: Sniped
While the story of StarCraft II ended with Legacy of the Void and the Into the Void epilogue, Blizzard hasn’t ended the stories it wants to tell in the StarCraft universe. The first return to the Koprulu sector takes place several years after the conclusion of Legacy of the Void. One of the long-lost Blizzard projects was StarCraft: Ghost which was supposed to introduce Nova as the player character. The game was eventually scrapped and Nova was introduced in Wings of Liberty and a StarCraft: Ghost novel.
Many years after Ghost’s cancellation, Nova finally gets her long-awaited solo project. It’s not a shooter but it’s a real-time strategy game in the same way that we’ve come to know from StarCraft II but with an episodic twist.
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Single-Player Review: Homeward Bound
After five years, the story of StarCraft II comes to a conclusion in its second expansion. In the great tradition of the franchise that first launched in 1998, StarCraft II played out in three parts, each focusing on one of StarCraft’s three races. The third and final part of SC2, Legacy of the Void, not only focuses on the Protoss as they try to take back their homeworld but also includes an epilogue to wrap up the series’ story.
The Qualifiers and Invitees for IEM Toronto Are Set
The eight qualifier and four wildcard spots for the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters Season IX event at Fan Expo in Toronto have been set. Over 200 StarCraft II players tried to enter the biggest SC2 tournament in Canada this year but only eight qualified straight through to the group stages.
sOs Crowned 2013 StarCraft 2 World Champion
The beauty of sports is that anyone can win on any given weekend. That saying also extends to eSports. At this weekend’s StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Finals at BlizzCon, Korean Protoss sOs came in as the underdog 12th seed and beat four higher ranked players en route to winning the 2013 StarCraft World Championship.
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eSports Won’t Go Mainstream Anytime Soon
On a whim, I watched part of the recent MLG Winter Championships. I’ve never watched MLG before and never played StarCraft 2 or League of Legends. As such, I was, naturally, completely lost at first. Over the course of the couple of matches that I watched, I was able to grasp the basic concept of the SC2 games was to kill all the opposing units but that was all I was able to grasp.
This made me think of stories and columns I’ve read over the last year or so that speculated that competitive gaming and eSports could break into the mainstream as a sport with sizable interest and possibly make the transition to TV.
While it’s entirely possible that competitive gaming might make it to TV, it’s not going to evolve past the niche audience and break into mainstream consciousness anytime in the near future.
Uncharted 3 and the Future of Triple-A Games Going Free-To-Play
I must admit that I was quite surprised to find out that Uncharted 3’s multiplayer component went free-to-play earlier this week. I couldn’t quite make heads or tails as to why Naughty Dog and Sony Computer Entertainment would release a part of a game for free or who would want to play such a thing.
But when you think about it, giving away a part of the game that isn’t the core component that’s the reason why people by the game on release day actually makes perfect sense. That’s because Naughty Dog’s play isn’t your standard free-to-play model of funding the game using solely the minority of gamers who provide microtransaction revenue.
The Lowdown 