Alright readers, here we go! Tournament time.

Starcraft II is upon us, and good gravy is it ever delicious. So, before we have a huge skill gap develop between people who have played it for 20,000 hours and those who have played it for 3, its’ time to meet one another in glorious combat.

The Astringent Gaming Journal presents: The Astringent Gaming Starcraft II Open!

The tournament will start on Wednesday, August 4th. Registration is due NO LATER THAN Monday, August 2nd. You have all day on Monday, but the first minute of Tuesday will be considered LATE.

To enter, send an email to originofbob@astringentgaming.com, with the following information:

• Subject must contain the words “Starcraft II”
• Your real name
• Your name in Starcraft II
• Your shirt size

The top four finishers will receive totally sweet T-shirts commemorating the event. I will post a picture here as soon as the design is finalized. You may also achieve mild fame, because many of the matches will end up posted on my YouTube channel, TAGJStarcraft2. All matches that get posted on YouTube will be getting commentary tracks done by me! Woo. (If someone out there can help me set up a UStream or something for future tournaments, please get in touch with me.)

I, OriginOfBob, will also be adding you as a friend in Starcraft II. I would like to be a spectator in as many matches as possible, but if I can’t, at least one player is required to email me the replay, or the match will be considered void and both players will be disqualified. I will be getting in touch with all players through their Starcraft II accounts and/or email addresses regarding the scheduling of matches. It will be your responsibility to make sure the match gets played. If a match time is agreed upon, any player who is a no-show will be disqualified after 30 minutes of absence.

We will be using only official Blizzard maps. They are as follows:

• Agria Valley
• Crossfire
• Xel’Naga Caverns
• Nightmare
• Terminus
• Lost Temple (only as a tiebreaker)

All matches will be best of three, with the exception of the finals, which will be best of five. To determine which map is played first, players will take turns voting against a map, until one is left. The loser of the first round picks the second map. If it comes to a third round, the map will be Lost Temple.

The final two players will use a separate map list to be announced later on.

So start emailing me! I don’t care how well I know you already, you must send me an email to be considered an entrant. Absolutely everyone is invited to compete, and the more the merrier! Don’t forget to follow the above instructions for sending your email, and please don’t be late.

Alright people, let’s start fighting over shirts!

This has kind of been a secret-side project of mine that I’ve been working on for quite a while. While it may not be OMFGNinja’s, it’s still a good series of videos for starters, or if there are a few techniques that people may not have thought of for the veteran Spy players.

Engineer Excerpt:

For Part 1, click here.

Think of these posts as “editor’s choice” if you will; I’m not going to give these games any sort of rating, but I’m going to recommend that you at least give them a try. At the end of each of these posts, I’ll leave a link to the developer site and a download link (or just a normal url if the game is flash).

Right then! Let’s get to it!

“Freeware/Flash Game of the Week #1″ shall be Nexiuz; that’s pronounced “Nexus” for all of you non-Z people.

This game has been out for quite a while now; I only found out about it by accident while browsing the Downloads section of the Apple website… and I’m glad I did!

Nexuiz definitely lives by its slogan; “Simple, Fast, Intense and Completely Free!” It’s a freeware cross-OS (compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux), FPS. There’s an abundance of modes to choose from; CTF, Deathmatch, Race, Elimination…. There’s even a nice Portal mock-up in the single-player mode somewhere… But who plays an FPS just to play single-player, especially one that’s cross-OS?

The graphics are nothing outstanding, but are a good few levels beyond most freeware games. Nexiuz was created using the Darkspaces engine. Think “OpenGL + Quake 1 + Quake 3″. The game moves at an incredibly fast pace, which takes a little getting used to, but that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who’s familiar with Team Fortress Classic or Counter Strike: Source.

There are a surprising amount of servers, so it’s not like you ever play alone. Single-player is just there as “training”. Expect to get slaughtered for the first hour or two if you just decide to jump right into multiplayer.

It’s difficult to find anything wrong with the game, but if you’re looking for the nitpicky stuff, then I suppose I can find at least 3.

As far as I know, there’s no melee. You have all of these other cool guns and other ammunition, even a grappling hook on some levels, but the most basic form of offense doesn’t seem to be present. Voice chat isn’t present, which is understandable, seeing as how this game is freeware. Given the game moves so fast, you can’t stop to type a strategy to teammates without dying at least twice.

The last thing that I suppose I could complain about is that each map takes forever to load, unless you already have them installed. That said, be sure to get the map pack in addition to the game. I think it contains 35 maps, and it’s not too hard to install.

The game is a little huge for a freeware game; I think it was an 888mb download. Then again, I also downloaded the .dmg version for Mac. (It’s as if you were to download an .iso file for Windows.) Nexuiz is definitely worth the download. I’d probably buy it if it actually cost money, but it doesn’t, so you should download it right now and come play with me. Just join a server and look for “_______ has been fragged by [TAGJ] Eden Wirefly”.

Nexuiz Official Site: http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/

As much as I hate Gamestop (and Fox), I really hope everyone will go reserve the game right now so we can play together! Beta keys are limited, though I have no idea just how limited. Be safe–get to Gamestop right now!

Add me to your friends list: Origin.mjollnir. Please comment, and don’t forget that we have a Starcraft II forum where we can share replays, discuss balance, and set up events!