Hey there again, E-sports fans! It’s time yet again for another [E-sports dail-E] with Dustin Steiner!
Some crazy news today, so let’s get right down to it!
IGN Pro League
The IGN Professional League, IGN.com’s invititational Starcraft 2 League is rumored to be planning its first physical event with a prize pool of upwards of $600,000 USD. Interestingly, they are also rumored to have signed a few other games to the event. The recent deal to broadcast Heroes of Newerth by the North American Star League would suggest that perhaps it has also been signed to the IPL.
This may not be the best idea for them, as several pros, and even pro-amateurs that I know are rather offended at this cross-branding from the Starcraft centric leagues. Especially since coverage would then likely be split between the two for an even higher viewing rate.
While this hasn’t been officially announced, I’d take an educated guess and say they’ll announce something about it after the current season ends on August 14th.
Cheaters Never Win
Swedish Quake Live pro Pontus “Zhu” Åberg admitted today to using a wall-hack for several months in the online version of Q3 Arena. He’s won several large tournaments and money matches for upwards of $400 dollars. He often would tip the scales even in team games, leading them to victory. For those unfamiliar with what a wall-hack is – it highlights every enemy in a blue aura that you can see through walls, giving you several extra seconds to line up your shots before coming around a corner.
This confession came on the heels of a leak that a investigative video called CSI:QL was being made. In fact, he waited until a hour before the video was expected to go live. To see his confession, go here. The video is embedded below and gives quite the look at just how he won all of those tournaments. Hell, I’m not even a great shooter player, and I could beat people with this cheat.
The video’s well done, huh?
While I do applaud the courage that it takes to apologize for your actions, doing so only when you are backed into a corner is incorrigible. Shouldn’t cheat in the first place, it violates the very premise of brotherhood and sportsmanship that e-sports fosters. Also, id software really needs to add some sort of anti-hacking system, and this just proves it even more so.
Thoughts on the Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 Change list
First of all, if you didn’t see my earlier post on Gamezone about the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 changes, go here. Done? Sure you got all that? Alright then, let’s proceed. To begin, I’d like to address some of the general changes to the game. Every character is receiving a move where the more you press a button during animation, the more hits/damage it does. What, is Capcom trying to prove the popular community catchphrase “If it’s not working, mash harder!!”? This won’t do anything to change people’s minds that the game is just a button mashing fighter, even if they are timed presses. Will still add another element of twitch gameplay to an already very twitchy fighter.
What can I say about the Ryu change other than thank god? He played exactly the same as Akuma except he was slower, did less damage and only had slightly more health to compensate. What’s more, his air super Shinku Hadoken was rather useless, its beam being far too narrow and thus easy to avoid.
I was quite happy with the Spider Man changes (though I should be as he’s my lead character on my Spidey, Dante, Wolverine team). His webbing moving faster gives him a much needed zoning game, and seeing that most of his specials are now cancelable, he’s going to be able to feint a lot better now. I predict him becoming more of a high tier character or at the very least, see more tournament usage as the metagame for Ultimate evolves.
The Tron Bonne nerf is pretty bad, but needed. Her flame assist being invulnerable essentially made calling her out a risk free hit to your opponent interrupting whatever they were doing and leading to a massive combo. The compensation of being able to have three servbots out is somewhat of a consolation prize however as it fixes her largely non-existant zoning game.
Dante’s devil trigger buff is largely needed and will make the super much more used other than as an additional damage buff during x-factor. The ability to triple jump and double air dash will give Dante more maneuverability than any character in the game, including Spider-Man. The improvements combined with his already impressive teleports will make playing keep away against him nearly impossible. This change also makes him a wonderful anchor, being able to perform mixups and catch opponents off guard with x-factor, making some desperate comebacks possible.
There were plenty of other buffs and nerfs that happened, such as Sentinel’s popular health nerf or Trish’s new ability to use her air lightning bolts to hit on the ground opponents, but as I don’t use these characters as much, I’m not quite as versed as I’d like to be on their standard play so I’ll leave their analysis to more learned types.
HYPE Worthy Moments
That’s pretty much all for today, but I’d like to introduce a section of this column today called Hype-Worthy Moments. This will be a video on something e-sports related, likely an extraordinary comeback, or an unusual competitor squaring off against a pro, things of that nature. Sometimes, it will just be a video relating to a popular e-sports game that I think is neat! So, that being said, I present to you the 8 year old Noah at Evo 2011!
Dustin Steiner is Gamezone’s E-sports Correspondent! Follow him on Twitter @SteinerDustin
