Kry Previews: Starcraft II

Starcraft II's beta FINALLY arrived last week, to a collective sigh of relief. Or perhaps a mass cry of rage at people finding their inboxes empty. Sadly, I have no beta key myself, but the mass influx of information coming from streams and videos has kept me quite sated, and quite ready to post some thoughts about how eager I am to play this game.

First off, let me preface this commentary by saying that I never really played Starcraft. I got into Warcraft III first, and by that time Starcraft was way past its prime. And indeed, when I tried out the campaign last year, it was a very frustrating experience; many of the things I took for granted as standard RTS items had not yet been invented in SC. Also, I tried to play SC the same way as WCIII, which was quite a mistake. The two games are fundamentally different.

But anyway, I got interested in SCII as soon as it was announced as the next strategy game from Blizzard. I've been following it quite rabidly since it was revealed seemingly an eon ago; that only served to psyche myself up and make the wait more unbearable. The game looks absolutely gorgeous now, especially from the HD videos being uploaded on Youtube. Not only are there beautiful visuals, but the system requirements, as always for Blizzard, are surprisingly low for the level of detail.

Not being a big SC player and having no beta access leaves me with little credence to make any commentary on balance, so I'll spare that (also the game being beta, and changes constant, already the first patch has come out at time of writing). One thing to note is that throughout the development process I have always been amused at the tears and rage from the whinier hardcore players over convenience changes like being able to select multiple buildings or having your workers automatically mine. Blizzard's paradigm is that mindless busywork like that should be lessened, and be replaced with other macro mechanics that offer intelligence and strategy in maximizing your economy. How people can be against that completely boggles my mind.

The single player and map editor are not in the beta unfortunately. Whenever Starcraft II comes out, expect a detailed review on the campaign, which Blizzard has hinted at it being quite epic, despite being limited to only one race. The map editor needs no introduction, to those unfamiliar with it, I only need say that the replay value of SCII will multiply tenfold with the creativity of the Blizzard modding community. I'm eager to try it out myself, if I recall correctly editing will be done with a C-based language; I may need to brush up on that!

Hopefully, watching all these videos will help me get ready to play SCII when it comes closer to release. I'm also really hoping that PAX next month will have the beta for me to try out, else I will be a very sad panda. Speaking of which, my journal on the visit to PAX will be next month's entry. It should be very exciting, my first big con since Origins seven years ago.