jrclem

I work for a small web app development company and we're all pretty addicted to SC2. We play a game at lunch most days if we've got the time, but we're all still quite bad (Top 8 Bronze). Anyway, we were investigating new frameworks the other day, and decided to put together a little web app for the iPad using CodeIgniter & Sencha Touch. It lets you pick your preferred race, and then selecting any of the offensive units from the game will tell you what are the useful counters, eg Charge Zealots > Marauders if you're playing as Protoss.

It's not really polished, but we thought it was a fun way to test out some new technologies we don't normally work with, and maybe some folks that are new to Starcraft will find it helpful. I'd love to hear what people think. You can access it at http://sc2.lbm.co. Fyi, it only works in Webkit browsers, and is best experienced on an iPad.

I'm pretty confident the Court will rule against the state of California.

Although, as Brad mentioned in the recent quick look for Shadows of the Damned, it does seem like developers are really pushing the limits of what type of content gets included in games. Bulletstorm was one I was initially intrigued by, but after playing through the demo and having a 13-year-old writer who must have learned English as a second language incessantly Mad Libs profanity together, I'd seen pretty much all I needed to.

I think the ESRB certainly isn't doing itself any favors in the "we can regulate ourselves" argument by letting something like Duke Nukem Forever slide by with an "M". That game is just a piece of trash, both in content and execution.

L.A. Noire on the other hand - very mature content and quite a bit of fuckin' language, but it's going to be in the running for some Game of the Year awards.

It's been probably 15 years since I built my first PC, so it's tough to remember how intimidating it must have been to get into. I definitely didn't start off by building a machine from scratch, but by replacing parts as I went and getting more comfortable with the various components. Check out some pre-built system reviews on either MaximumPC or Anandtech. I'm sure there are other great review sites out there, but those two come immediately to mind. I would agree with the consensus so far, a system in the neighborhood of $1500 - $1700 would be a great starting point for a platform you will be able to grow with in the future. 
 
I actually have about a 4 year old PC now w/ an Intel Core 2 6600 (2.4Ghz), an nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS, and 2GB of RAM and it is still running everything I throw at it at very satisfactory frame rates. I also recently purchased an HP Envy 17 laptop that I can't speak highly enough of... It's actually a significantly more powerful system than my desktop, but I still find myself playing most games on the desktop.
 
Anyway, I hope you find a system you dig & you really enjoy getting into PC gaming.

Blog post numero uno; mainly just for the quest(s). But if I have to pick a topic, how about playing online coop with people that are drastically higher level than you. It completely ruins the game.

So, I made the mistake the other day of playing Borderlands w/ some buddies of mine that were all level 61. At the time the game started I had a level 52.5 or so Roland. I had been playing off and on over the last few weeks & had made it up to about the midway point of playthrough 2, mostly solo-ing. During this coop session, one of my friends suggested a Crawmerax run...

In about an hour I had become a level 58, but still couldn't even put a dent in the level 62+ minions flying around The Invincible One... And my quest log became immediately flooded with a lot of quests that I wouldn't have ordinarily been assigned until hours later in my game.

And now playing through the campaign / DLC isn't even challenging because I'm so over-leveled... Anyway, long story short, HUGE mistake. That was the opposite of fun.

That's pretty cool that their considering doing this. This is the sort of community involvement that makes me such a huge fan of Valve.

really looking forward to portal 2!