Tekken makes me angry.

I know it shouldn’t, but it does. Xbox Live is free this weekend so I’ve been playing online against other people. According to my match record, I win only 38.72% of my matches. Even though thats a losing record, it might sound like a lot since I’ve only been playing the game for four days. However, I’ve only been playing unranked games so the competition will step up once I do start playing ranked matches. It’s just so frustrating losing because I really am working hard on this. I have been spending a lot of time watching videos and working on combos. I’m probably going to buy a joystick in the next week too. The ultimate goal is to dominate the Korean arcade scene under the player ID “The Waygook.”

I’ve started playing Tekken.

So my buddy B-Wang got me a copy of Tekken 6 yesterday and I decided that I’m going to get good at it. This might sound like something that I just decided, but I actually have been thinking about this for quite a while. I’m not too to the fighting genre. I was really into Street Fighter 3 and I wqqs getting into 4 before I left for Korea, but I never got to spend much time on it. One of the reasons is that Korean arcades never have it. In all the arcades in Incheon, there was only one place that ran Street Fighter 4 and it was a bootleg setup using an xbox 360, two joystick controllers and a makeshift arcade box. I’m not sure why it isn’t big since the rest of the world plays Street Fighter, but Korea really is Tekken country. There are tournaments on tv along with Starcraft and every arcade has one or more machines fully equipped with card readers that save your stats. However, whenever I decided to hop on, some other dude would come on and challenge me and beat the shit out of me, so I never got the time to practice. Now that I have it on console, I’ll be able to start working on upping my game until I eventually return to Korea. Currently, I’m practicing with Kuma since I think it’s funny to play with a big bear. I’m also thinking that I’ll be using Hworang as an alternate because I like his play style and he’s a Korean Tae Kwon Do master. Anyway, it’s going to be while until I’m any good. Tekken is pretty different than Street Fighter. There’s a lot more juggling and combos go on forever too. I’m even a little tempted to buy a subscription for Xbox Live just so I can practice against other people.

Long story short, I’m geeking out again.

Possible mottos for when I become a professional gamer:

• I live my life one mouse click at a time.
• I'm always 54 key strokes away from victory.
• I can beat you faster than a Zerg rush.
• I'll sign your mousepad.
• The Kobe of keyboards
• GAME OVER [I've also considered getting this tattooed on my knuckles]
• You might as well just alt+F4.

The World Cyber Games

So the World Cyber Games finished yesterday. I only attended day 2, but I followed a lot of the matches in the tournaments. A lot of the events turned out the way I thought they would, like America winning Guitar Hero. However, there were a few major surprises, like Jae Dong losing to flash in the Starcraft semi-finals and China not even taking a medal in Warcraft III.

There aren’t any surprises in what e-sports athletes look like, though.

I tried the Starcraft 2 beta.

Terra PC at the Arts Center in Incheon now has the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty beta and I got to play it for a bit yesterday.  It was a little tough playing since the game was in Korean.  If you didn't know, Blizzard didn't make a language option for the first Starcraft, so they play the game in English.  It's funny since a few of my kids know random English words like "supply depot" and "barracks" because of the game.  Anyway, it was really tough playing the game because of it.  I didn't get to try out all the units for each race since I couldn't figure out which structures I needed to make them.  Even when I did figure out how to make them, I couldn't figure out where all their upgrades were and that sort of shit.  I had fun playing against bots anyway.  It's actually funny since they're programmed to say, "GG" when they've pretty much lost the game.  I only played 4 quick games and I didn't understand any of the text, but here's a few things that I noticed while playing:

• The game looks really great.  I can understand a lot of people saying they don't like the three dimensions, but yea, it still looks great if you like it or not.  The terrain looks a little like Warcraft 3, but a lot better.
• Some units are entirely missing from the first one.
• With the graphics upgrade, the units were given whole new looks.  One issue though, was that some of the units looked entirely different, like the Terran SCV's.
• I feel like the gameplay is a little slower.  This might just be because the game wasn't running at its fastest and I didn't know how to change it in the options setting.
• Vespene gas is a lot more crucial.  There were two geysers at each starting base on all the maps I played.
• The Terran supply depot can retract underground.  It's going to make walling a whole lot easier for them.
• Cliffs can now be jumped by some units.
• Zerg buildings release some units after they're destroyed, a lot like those treasure chests that had beetles or some shit in them in Diablo 2.  I'm not sure if this is an upgrade.
• Now there's an idle probe/drone/SVC button, which makes it a whole lot easier to keep track of them.
• The Terran structures have new attachments you can put on them, even the barracks.

Anyway, I'll probably try and go back later this week so I can sit and have more time with the game.  You'll probably be seeing me in the top 10 of the Asia ladders when the game drops.

Korean PC games are racist.

With PC gaming tournaments being broadcasted on TV at every hour and a PC gaming room on every block, it's hard to not notice how huge e-gaming is here in Korea.  The Korean government is currently trying to curb gaming addiction, since it's such a widespread problem.  Luckily, I won't have to deal with being addicted SINCE THEY WON'T LET ME PLAY BECAUSE I'M NOT KOREAN.  This is an issue I ran into while trying to play Dragon Ball Online last week.  I just keep ending up at an error screen like this one:

Basically, to make an account, you need the Korean equivalent to a social security number, which I assume is for age verification purposes.  That's not the problem though, since I have one of these since I'm a registered foreigner.  The problem is that it requires you to enter your name in Hangul, which leads to a different error then the one above where it tells me that my name doesn't match my number.

I wouldn't really mind this if it was only for Dragon Ball Online, but it's impossible for a foreigner to play over half the PC games in Korea.  This is because one company runs the services for a number of games.  For example, to play Dragon Ball Online, I'm not having the problem making a Dragon Ball account, but with NetMarble.  So since I can't make a NetMarble account, I'm unable to play all the games they offer, including the popular first-person shooter Sudden Attack.  It's also really weird that in Korea, Counter-Strike (you're a straight n00b if you don't know about this shit) is run by Nexon, the company that produced Maplestory.  It basically leaves only games that run off of a CD available for foreigners in Korea, like Starcraft, but most of these are readily available in America anyway.

It's not like I really want to play games that much, and I could always get someone I know to make an account for me using their information, but this shit blows.  Every time I walk through the PC bang, I see some crazy ass shit going on someone's screen and it sucks to know that they don't want me playing it.