Last weekend was the end of the 1,000,000 dollar tournament that marks the official reveal of gameplay for Defense of the Ancients 2, or DotA 2 for short. Valve chose the tournament route to coincide with the large European games convention Gamescom, hosted in Cologne, Germany – a show in which many game developers release post-E3, pre-holiday news for the gaming industry. The tournament, The International DotA 2 Championships, ended Sunday. The entire tournament was streamed from dota2.com and the matches are available afterwards via SD or HD videos, some with commentary, from YouTube. I’ve spent a good deal of my time over the last few days watching these matches and I’m now ready for the Beta. In fact, the more I watch, the more I want to play.
After the jump, I can’t wait to get my hands on DotA 2.
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I’ve been playing a fair bit of Command and Conquer: Generals lately. It actually holds up pretty well! Fast, easy, eminently asymmetrical, and full of personality. The interface isn’t even particularly terrible, even if there isn’t a panel at the bottom of the screen to show me what units I have selected. Part of the re-learning curve in Command and Conquer: Generals involves sending all your Comanche attack choppers directly over a GLA missile bunker because you didn’t know you had them selected.
A year or so ago at a press event, I was talking to one of the guys from EALA, the studio that made Command and Conquer: Generals. He told me that I’d called Red Alert 3 “the worst real time strategy game ever made”. I felt bad at the time, since I didn’t recall that particular bit of vitriol and since EALA is one of my favorite RTS developers. But he was probably right, not just about me writing that but about me meaning it. Red Alert 3 was a frenetic sloppy overbearing stew of poorly implemented backwards ideas from a developer that should have known better. However, I have good news for the developers of Red Alert 3: you’re off the hook.
Read of the Age of Empres Online review here.
