It’s an event that was literally years in the making.  For 12 years, fans have been waiting breathlessly for Blizzard to unleash the next expansion in the StarCraft universe.  In the meantime, the game has become something of an international sensation.  It sold somewhere between 9 and 11 million copies and has become South Korea’s top spectator sport.  Now, with the release of StarCraft II:  Wings of Liberty, old pros and new fans alike have been given a modernized StarCraft with stellar graphics, movie-quality cut scenes that still retains all the quality of the original StarCraft’s game play.

Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to do.

Truth be told, nobody but beta testers knows just how good StarCraft II might be, because the video game press wasn’t given prerelease copies to test.  Apparently, Blizzard and new headmaster Activision know what they’ve got on their hands and just how long people have been waiting for it, so they realize that they don’t need any extra buzz on top of the massive buzz StarCraft II has been generating on its own.  Looks like we’ll all be finding out together if the game is any good!

Among the subjects of the documentary The Hax Life are some professional Korean video game players.  In South Korea, video gamers are the superstars, and no gamers are more respected than those that play the Blizzard real-time strategy game Starcraft.  When it comes to Starcraft, your skill is measured in APM, or actions per minute.  A champion Starcraft player averages 300 APM.  Here’s a pro Starcraft player in action.

Just check out how fast he hits his hot keys and how quickly and precisely he moves the mouse, in flicks and starts.  His accuracy, muscle memory, and speed are just phenomenal.  I wish I could work my keyboard as skillfully as he works his keyboard; how this guy hasn’t completely lost both his hands to RSI and carpal tunnel is beyond me!  I guess his use of training sandbags really helps him.  I may have to give that one a shot myself, I could stand to improve my keyboarding technique.

The last frontier for your game of choice is your smartphone.  You spend hours on Facebook, tending your crops and sending gifts and all that other stuff that people do when playing Zynga’s wildly-popular FarmVille, and then what?  What about your crops when you’re away from your desk, logged out of Facebook, or on vacation?  OH MY GOD YOUR FARM IS GOING TO FAIL, THE BANK WILL REPOSSESS YOUR LIVESTOCK, AND YOU’LL BE A FARMVILLE FAILURE!

Fortunately, your digital farm won’t become part of a factory parcel and you won’t become a sharecropper if you pick up FarmVille for your iPhone.  That’s right, Zynga’s Farmville on iPhone.  Who cares if the thing is improved or not, I’ve got a garden to water and cows to feed!

The best feature of the iPhone FarmVille is that it syncs with the original Facebook FarmVille, so you really will be able to tend your gardens no matter where you might be.  There’s even push notifications regarding problems with crops, so you’ll know when it’s time to water or plow or weed; there will also be iPhone-specific goodies (like Snow Leopard pets), so if you’re a completest, you know what to do.

Remember how, earlier in the week, I mentioned how big the combination of social networking and online gaming was getting, and how some people are finding jobs because of their mad MMORPG skills?  Well, those Facebook games are getting to be serious business, with companies like PopCap and Zynga racking up user numbers in the tens of millions.  In fact, most of the people I know that use Facebook religiously say they’re only there because of the games.  Odds are they’re playing one of these games, the 10 most popular games on Facebook.

People are crazy about these things.  Before I basically turned them all on ignore, I was getting dozens of these game requests per day, usually from the same three or four people.  It was INCREDIBLY annoying.  Sorry guys, I have my games of choice; I have absolutely no desire to play Farmville or join your Mafia or anything like that.  The only reason I haven’t deleted my Facebook account is because of peer pressure.

This is one of the many reasons I wish I had a Nintendo DS.  Not only are they releasing all the classic SNES RPGs on the system, they're also doing things like publishing a portable collection of 100 classics of English and American literature in handy-dandy cartridge form, plus 10 free downloads.  It's an import game, which means it's going to cost differently, but given that the pound is weak now against the dollar, it's a steal at only about $22 American for what amounts to 110 classic novels!

Here's a link to the Amazon.UK page where you can find the collection. 

This is an amazing collection.  All three Bronte sisters, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson… it's a great list of novels that I think everyone should read at least once.  Even the Thomas Hardy books (and I'm not a Thomas Hardy fan in the least).  If you have any kind of commute to deal with, this is a great idea for you to get in a little reading without having to buy an e-book reader.