Epic Skullgirls SoCal Finals

Maybe you don’t want to watch all 30 rounds, but if you’ve been following along you’ll notice that the backgrounds now have more characters, the winning player now has “Leader” above their health (it gets tricky to measure health when you can have 1 v 3 matches) and that these players are highly skilled.  I’m excited.

Looks like the game is close to finished, although I heard a rumor that the Story Mode will be released (for free) later on, as a separate patch or something.  This could be wrong!  But even if it’s true, I won’t mind.  They also promised more downloadable characters (including males!) later on.  And, if I recall correctly, they also said you can stream your own music while playing, which is great for people like me who are super picky about in-game music.

Once the game is released I’ll be doing a bigger analysis of it, but for now I just have to applaud the team for pulling it all together and making something so compelling in a genre that’s flooded with sequels and spinoffs.  I won’t be surprised if the fighting game community neglects it for being too fun and stylish, but hopefully it finds a big following.

DOTA 2 makes six Ukrainians millionaires

I used to play Defense of the Ancients when WarCraft III was still burgeoning, leveling up my heroes and mostly trying to figure out what to do next, buying items and playing against a static A.I. instead of other players.  With the release of StarCraft 2’s map editor I heard some strong rumblings from the Blizzard community about whether or not it would be able to handle DOTA maps, but I never knew how popular the map had become while I was gone.  Ever since the name ‘DOTA 2’ surfaced — now belonging to Valve instead of Blizzard! — I have been eagerly following it.

So I’ve been watching The International DOTA 2 Championships with some degree of shock.  How can the grand prize for this thing really be $1,000,000 USD?  I know that ‘eSports’ have been growing over the years, but we’re talking about an closed beta of a sequel to a very old WarCraft map, with no sponsorships.

My hat is off to Valve for putting this together and having the balls to steal everything from the original DOTA right in ActivisionBlizzard’s face; and to the Na’Vi team for becoming absurdly wealthy this weekend.

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