Buying Starcraft II

Since I’m almost done with Red Dead Redemption on the PS3, I decided to finally get Starcraft II. Everything went smoothly at first. I logged on to the Blizzard store and picked a version. I decided on the US version since it is less expensive at around P2600 compared to P3600 for the Asian version. I paid and started downloading.

Then I hit a snag: Downloading the Blizzard Downloader was so slow using my Sun Wireless Broadband connection. After finally completing the download, the Blizzard download site won’t recognize the downloader as authorized anymore. I tried it several times with the same result.

I needed a faster connection. So now it looks like my US version savings is going down the drain. Since Globe’s unlimited surfing promo doesn’t work for postpaid, I borrowed Michelle’s phone, sent “SUPERSURF50” to 8888 and tried downloading again. Success! I was able to get the downloader and start the download of the game client.

After a few hours, I hit another snag: Globe SuperSurf “unlimited” surfing stops after you have downloaded 1GB of data. It not just slows your connection, it completely stops you from connecting. Fail! And you can’t even register for another day of SUPERSURF 50 because the previous one has to expire first! Double fail by Globe.

I guess it will be a few days before I can play.

Army of Two

James and I finished Army of Two today. It is a co-op action game about adventures of two mercenaries or private military contractors (PMC) as they prefer to be called, across several years. During this time, they go from being idealistic green soldiers, to gung-ho PMCs, to outlaws who must clear their names.

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Starcraft II Is Out!

Finally, 10 years after the first, Starcraft II is out! How big an event is this? BIG! We’re talking about a game that has sold over 11 million copies, still being played all these years, and is Korea’s national sport. They even declared today an official holiday. Of course, there’s a lot of unofficial and personal holidays elsewhere today.

It is doubtful if it can better the original but time will tell (like maybe 10 years) but it looks great, modern, and fun in its own right. There’s no LAN play which was arguably one of the reasons why the original is so popular. That’s a bummer but we can do without that anachronism as shown by World of Warcraft. Maybe it will even force those ISPs to drastically improve their service.

Looks like I’ll be needing a new gaming computer.

Resident Evil 5

James and I finally finished playing Resident Evil 5. This is the 5th installment of the Resident Evil series but I haven’t actually played any of the previous games. So I started this with a clean expectations and a pretty open mind. Of course, this didn’t help making the storyline any clearer. As I said in my review of Metal Gear Solid 4, there’s something about Japanese story lines that make them convoluted and, sometimes, even incomprehensible.

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