In the real time strategy genre there are quite a few titles that stand out above the rest. However, on a global scale Blizzard’s StarCraft undoubtedly takes the cake. Their most recent release, StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty is no different with sales numbers to prove it.

While there has been no official word of a release date for the inevitable expansion, Blizzard is giving US StarCraft 2 players a pleasant surprise this morning. The game developer has announced that the United States is now a public test region and will be allowed to participate in patch beta tests. If you’re a World of Warcraft player you’re undoubtedly familiar with the public test realms that give players a sneak peak and what’s to come.

While the public beta test roll out is quite widespread, there are some restrictions in place. According to the FAQ: “players must have an active StarCraft 2 North America game account created before November 11, 2010. The player’s account must not be a guest pass account, suspended, or banned.”

So, who’s pumped for some StarCraft 2 beta testing?

Are you currently a StarCraft II beta tester? If so, prepare for an onslaught of requests from your friends — It was just made known that a number of beta testers will be getting emails from Blizzard that includes some extra StarCraft II beta keys.

This expansion, no matter how subtle it is, is surely to help Blizzard put some extra strain on their new Battle.net system for testing purposes.

Anyone want to send one my way?

via gamequack

With the immense success of the original Nintendo DS, it’s no secret that Nintendo has a DS 2, of sorts, cookin’ up over in their labs. However, with no concrete evidence regarding the device its existence remains speculation.

Today, in a statement to CVG, a developer apparantly working with the console said the following:

“It’s genuinely the best thing I think I’ve ever worked with, I can tell you that it’s got a ’tilt’ function that’s not dissimilar to iPhone, but does a lot more. We know that The Pokemon Company are getting special attention with it.”

So, if developers already have this new motion sensing DS2, it can’t be long until the consumers can get their hands on it, right?

I remember the first time I ever remember encountering bots that were actually fun to play with was in Perfect Dark for the N64. Technology has progressed a lot since then and lets hope Valve has successfully implemented with their AI-controlled bots they are planning to incorporate into Team Fortress 2.

Thankfully, they have given those brave enough to try them out the ability to test them on their own servers. All you need to do is follow the below instructions:

- To add bots to your game, use the console command tf_bot_add. This will drop a random bot onto a random team (assuming there is a free player slot). The tf_bot_add command can also take up to three optional arguments: , , and , in any order. For example, tf_bot_add 10 will add 10 random bots to the game with auto-assigned teams. Typing tf_bot_add pyro blue will add a Pyro to the blue team. Entering tf_bot_add red 5 will add 5 random bots to the red team. The command tf_bot_add red 3 heavyweapons will add three heavies to the red team.

- In order to put specific bots on specific teams (for a bots-vs-humans game, for example), you may want to disable automatic team balancing. To do this, enter mp_autoteambalance 0 followed by mp_teams_unbalance_limit 0.

- To remove a bot, use the console command kick . To remove all of the bots in the game, use the command tf_bot_kick all.

And that’s it. Let us know what you think of these bots in the comments.

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