New Details For StarCraft 2's Zerg 163
Blizzard had a playable demo of StarCraft 2 running at Leipzig, and Kotaku's Michael McWhertor had a chance to sit down and spend some time playing the Zerg. The Zerg weren't available in previous demos; the Protoss and Terran campaigns were showcased earlier. GameSpy took the opportunity to interview two Blizzard employees about what people can expect from the game. Gameplay footage is also available which shows a Terran vs. Zerg battle. Blizzard PR rep Bob Colayco had this to say:
"One thing that's new, as you go through the campaign... you know, normally in RTS games how they start you off with a couple of units and then it's like, 'Okay, two missions later we're going to give you tanks...' One of the things we're looking at doing with StarCraft II's campaign is putting the choice more in the players' hands. So maybe you like dealing more with infantry? You can purchase those upgrades and make your marines and other infantry stronger. Or else you'll save up the credits you get from the missions to get tanks sooner than you normally could."
I will never forgive the Zerg (Score:5, Funny)
For what they did to Kerrigan.
Re:I will never forgive the Zerg (Score:5, Funny)
Those damn zerg. *dreamy siiiiiigh*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Me neither. I mean, what were they thinking, making her so freakin' awesome and all. Now, I can't stop thinking about her, and all other female video game protagonists have lost their appeal.
Those damn zerg. *dreamy siiiiiigh*
Don't forget about the rogue [wikipedia.org] chick in Diablo. Something about her voice makes her blow Kerrigan away. There is no way that Kerrigan could ever compete with that voice.
(There's a joke in there somewhere)
Re:I will never forgive the Zerg (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps the fact that the same person voiced both characters?
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the fact that the same person voiced both characters?
We have a winner.
I would have also accepted, "The voice-over actress's maiden name is 'Talken'!"
Re: (Score:2)
No wonder, I just love the range Sylvanas has and look forward to hearing the rest of her quest voice recordings.
Jonah HEX
Re: (Score:2)
That was Tonya Harding.
Re:I will never forgive the Zerg (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a little slow... please explain this further, what does the name "Kerrigan" have to do with "Tanya"??
Something to do with figure skating [slashdot.org].
Nor will figure skating fans forgive Jeff Gillooly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I will never forgive the Zerg (Score:5, Funny)
But, can you forgive the Klingons for what they did to your boy?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
For what they did to Kerrigan.
Ice skating's a tough world, bitch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll never forgive them for what they did to my barracks -- before it was even built!
Hopefully it'll be fast-paced (Score:1)
Woah, all of a sudden the Zerg are out?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What's the rush? (Score:3, Funny)
6pool
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Is that why in WoW when on alliance, hord's lol = (Score:2)
Kek?
Linked video... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is in lower resolution than the actual original game, and then made worse by crappy encoding. You'd get a better idea for the game by firing up starcraft 1 than trying to watch this.
Re: (Score:1)
I could make things out just well enough to see the Zerg get comprehensively pwned by siege tanks. My advice:
SPAWN MORE ZERGLINGS!
Re:Linked video... (Score:4, Funny)
It always drove me up the wall playing with ppl who INSISTED on being Protoss and INSISTED on playing on a map with pretty much unlimited resources.
Gee whiz, fighting Protoss yet again on a map that completely negates their weakness ($$). How fun.
Hopefully they'll put in a few different balancing stats/players into this one.
Re:Linked video... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're playing Zerg with huge resources, can't you build huge numbers of hydralisks and/or mutalisks and/or guardians, instead of huge numbers of zerglings? I mean, six or eight hatcheries pumping out, say, hydralisks and guardians gets pretty nasty pretty fast. Or heck, Ultralisk rush. It seems to me that it's not so much that Protoss has to spend more money, but that they make fewer, more powerful, more expensive units. But then I'm no champion.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
On maps with lots of resources you might be building several things at once early on. That's several less peons terran and zerg have harvesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah that's true, that gets them going earlier.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If there's useful terrain around, the carrier rush could still be effective since plague doesn't affect shields. Attack with the carriers from beyond hydro range and use a ridge, water, etc to keep the ground units away. OTOH, plague + mutalisks... ouch. I always found though that High Templar are the biggest threat to carriers. Two or three of them can take out pretty much any number of carriers if they're all together.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I was assuming you can get to an expansion or two and have at least two, maybe three geysers. Which it seems is usually the case unless the map is really crowded or has no expansions or something. And by "pumping out guardians" I mean make 10-12 of them and then go on a rampage. Build up gas and spawn Mutes for the next wave while you're on the attack. Obviously you can't make 80 guardians like you can Zerglings.
Re: (Score:2)
The only "unlimited resource" map that Blizzard made was Big Game Hunters, IIRC, and they only released "due to popular demand." All the other unlimited resource maps were user made.
Gee whiz, fighting Protoss yet again on a map that completely negates their weakness ($$). How fun.
Even if you were playing BGH, you still had to expand in order to get resources faster. Protoss was IMO the hardest race to expand due the cost of the nexus (more expensive than a hatchery) and the Terran's siege tank. From my experience, I didn't see any race that had a significant advantage, at least at my level of play.
If
Re:Linked video... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/39088.html [gametrailers.com]
Re:Linked video... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/39089.html
Hi-Def video link
HD Video Link ^^^ (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The ones on the Starcraft 2 webpage use to be of acceptable quality, if it's not there yet it will get there I guess. (Not the reviewers of course, maybe he should had made it private and used Vimeo? =P)
Re:Linked video... (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAGP, but to my understanding, until the game engine (specifically in 3d games) is finalized and tuned and tweaked, the frames per second sucks ass, so its not a surprise the showing the game off in lower res so that it runs smoother. Judging only from WoW, they have a firm understanding on large resolutions, and wide-screen, God bless 'em.
J
Re:Linked video... (Score:4, Interesting)
You're missing something. Blizzard intentionally limited the original Diablo, Starcraft and Diablo II to small (even for the period) resolutions. Why? Not for optimization. To force a 'level playing field'.
I've never understood the obsession with competitive Starcraft. It was a clickfest game with very little overall strategy. Age of Empires II and Myth: the Fallen Lords were more along the lines of games that put the Strategy in RTS.
bullcrap (Score:5, Insightful)
in starcraft you have 3 different races with TOTALLY different units all having totally different abilities.
no unit has a clear anti unit. there are many different units that can stand against and be an anti unit of a particular unit because of their different abilities.
and this makes the game an infinite variation of strategy. there are countless ways to win a matchup. you can go mass production, but if your opponent has good micro (management, meaning using units very effectively individually) and uses very little number of units and their abilities perfectly, you are totally screwed.
no sir, either you dont know zit about strategy, or havent really played starcraft by giving its due.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
no sir, either you dont know zit about strategy, or havent really played starcraft by giving its due.
I know I'll probably get the modstick for this, but if I wanted to play a strategy game I'd go play Total Annihilation, not kekeke zerg rush ^_____^
Re:bullcrap (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Big shift in the gameplay dynamics away from 'simcity, rush nuke' to something a little more reliant on going out and controlling territory. And make experimentals and nukes a bit more 'usable, but not instant victory' which as someone who likes a 'proper' lategame, rather than a 'he who nukes first wins' suits me well.
Re: (Score:2)
the Zerg rush can be defeated.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:bullcrap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like you're looking for turn based strategy games. You can easily take 50 actions in a game of civilization within a single turn, and a turn is simply a unit of gametime. RTS games have multiple turns per second, so if you expect to execute the same complexity of strategy, then yes, you'll have to be able to perform numerous actions per second.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I am not trying
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because someone can beat a better "strategic" player by out clicking them doesn't make the game non-strategic. By your logic, real life war is not strategic because whoever has the most money to fund the war usually wins. I know that this isn't always case (i.e. Vietnam). But it isn't always the case with Starcraft either. Sometimes players can change the tides of the battle with a reaver/siege tank drop on resource gatherers. Strategy comes in even more of a factor for team-based games. Do you
Re: (Score:2)
Just because someone can beat a better "strategic" player by out clicking them doesn't make the game non-strategic.
Actually, it does. I am not saying that there is no element of strategy in Starcraft, but that alone doesn't make it a strategy game. Good matches of Counter-Strike can have an excellent strategic element, but CS is not a strategy game by any stretch of the imagination. Similarly, Starcraft has strategic elements, but because they are given too little weight, it isn't really a strategy game.
By your logic, real life war is not strategic because whoever has the most money to fund the war usually wins.
Actually, real-life war isn't necessarily a strategic thing. There are a lot more factors involved than battlefield st
Re: (Score:2)
Not a big deal though. I think I misinterpreted your post as putting down Starcraft and the people who are good at it. That is a typical attitude on Slashdot and it ticks me off. I t
Re: (Score:2)
there are multitudes of strategies in between micromanaging, macromanaging, and anything in starcraft. please dont make assumptions without information.
Re: (Score:2)
We're really just arguing semantics at this point. The relevant definitions of strategy according to the dictionary are:
1. the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions
2. the art of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal
According to your posts, your definition of real time strategy games are "a game in which you can beat your opponent by strategy alone with no other factors." Unfortunately for your argument, any game that pro
Re: (Score:2)
According to your posts, your definition of real time strategy games are "a game in which you can beat your opponent by strategy alone with no other factors."
Actually, that's not true. It would be closer to saying that an RTS is a game where you can beat your opponent using primarily strategy. In Starcraft, strategy is not the most important factor, therefore, it isn't really a strategy game. I have no problem with the fact that all RTSes require some reflex: the question is, to what extent do they require it? With some RTSes, that's not a huge factor, but with Starcraft, that's your primary skill... and that's why it fails as a strategy game.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right, it isn't a strategy game, it is an RTS game.
/facepalm
I'm sorry, you take any RTS, move it to the competitive level, and it is going to be about the strategy they use and how fast they can click to position their units and micromanage.
While I can't say I've seen many RTSes at the competitive level apart from Starcraft, I've seen a great many at the amateur level, and Starcraft is one of the only ones that favors twitch gameplay over strategy. Thus, I find your statement a bit difficult to swallow. Starcraft doesn't become twitch-based at the competitive level, it's only exhibiting the qualities inherent to the game at all levels of play. I'd wager that if you took a proper RTS, like Sins of a Solar Empire, and played it at a com
Re: (Score:2)
That's why it's called a "Real Time Strategy" Game.
It's different then a "Turn Based Strategy" game. The even call them different names to clear up any confusion.
There is strategy, and like in real life if you can't adapt and out move your opponent, you lose.
Re: (Score:2)
Hallelujah. That's the main flaw about RTS games. By lack of a strategy aspect they focus on micro-management and making you take 100 clicks to do something you should be able to do with half a dozen just to keep you busy. When I think strategy I think being a sort of Napoleon Bonaparte, decide how many units you're gonna take where, how and when, and Europa Universalis succeeded with that respect. But in most other RTS games, you spend most of your time doing things a commander shouldn't have to do, like t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Real wars depend on speed, but RTSes like Starcraft go far beyond "speed". If we fought real wars like people play Starcraft, our great generals would be barking out "Go there! What's the situation? Go there! What's the situation! Attack that guy! No, to the other side of him! No, the other other side! Take cover for God's sake! There's one man out of cover, get him in there! Build a bunker near the enemy! Reinforce that fight! What's the situation on the other side of the battlefield? Base, build another b
Re: (Score:2)
it would be a tactical game if you didnt have resources and production, and ability to change your production and tap more resources. it isnt. its much more strategic than any turn based game.
Re: (Score:2)
excuse me, whomever takes hours to develop a 'strategy' in a turn based game, is a moron, not a good strategy player. in starcraft, you have to see the next 10 to 30 minutes in front of you (duration also varies upon anything that can happen during the game), but also update your entire strategy constantly depending on what happens in that duration. that may cause strategy change for 1 to 4 times on
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Strangely every good Starcraft player I've met seems to have restricted himself (it's always a him, strange huh?) to a handful of proven tactics and apart from that spent most of his time practicing to become really really fast at clicking and ordering his units around, basically what you complained about other games encouraging.
Myself? I'm still looking for a game that's essentially Command & Conquer but that emphasizes long drawn out battles that last for hours and where you actually have to do things
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Except if you watch the pros(as in people making money competing) you will notice they can change strategy, There is no "I Win" strategy in StarCraft. If there was there couldn't be competitions.
BTW, hot keys level the click as fast as you can effects.
I was good, some considered me 'real good' but the pros are in a different league.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:bullcrap (Play company of heroes instead) (Score:2)
Try company of heroes. While it is realtime, clicking fast is not the way to win the game.
It got 3 features I really like:
1: Cover: Hiding behind a wall i a good thing, and units will in general use cover is if it close to their current position and they are fighting. (unit control is squad based, with a squad consisting of up to 6 men).
2: Direction - Some weapons such as machine gun, and anti-tank guns have a limited "field of fire" Which mean that they can only fire in a specific
direction. And to turn the
Re: (Score:2)
Tried any mods?
They give it new life.
I'm partial to the mods that aim to make the game more true to history (e.g. the Egyptian units are basically Greek instead of Pharoic, "barbarians" are more fleshed-out, etc.). Of those, my personal favorite is Europa Barbarorum [europabarbarorum.com]. Practically every aspect of the game is changed. Loads of fun.
Not true at all... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to manage your economy, scout your enemy base locations, scout which units he was building so you could build the appropriate counter units, and then control your army closely for tactical combat, by taking injured units to the back for repairs, drawing enemy forces into geographic bottlenecks so
Re: (Score:2)
". It was a clickfest game with very little overall strategy. "
Clearly you sucked.
No strategy my ass.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sprite-based games were obviously limited to that resolution, because with the technology sprites could not be scaled for arbitrary resolutions.
They didn't have to scale it, they could have simply let you see more onscreen at once. They didn't to keep a level playing field.
Ooh ooh I know this one! (Score:2)
1) Send Overlords to scout for enemy bases.
2) Crank out Zerglings as fast as you can.
3) ???
4) Profit!
Re: (Score:2)
That will make you the top of the noobs list, but won't work against experienced players.
If I could change the resolution (Score:5, Interesting)
If I could change the resolution on good old StarCraft, I'd be very happy.
I don't want a 3d look. It seems to make things harder to see and it's a waste of processor power. I just want to be able to see more of the map on the StarCraft I have.
Howabout making a StarCraft 1.9? Blizzard could do that for almost nothing, compared to this new release, and people like me would mail in the checks to get it.
Re:If I could change the resolution (Score:4, Insightful)
WC III uses 3D as well but since only the almost-from-the-top-view is the only good one everyone use that and it look pretty flat. Sure you can look around some stuff, hide a unit behind a tree or building somewhat and it makes ground units very hard to click on when there are lots of air units on top but I'd say it works well.
It doesn't look as cool as on screenshots from a lower angle and more up close but it works very well for playing the game.
Also I guess it's easier to support more resolutions and aspect ratios and such when it's rendered vs uses animations.
Re: (Score:2)
hide a unit behind a tree or building somewhat and it makes ground units very hard to click on when there are lots of air units on top but I'd say it works well.
You can hit insert or delete to temporarily turn your camera roughly 120 cw or ccw (in its horizontal plane). You can also hit page up and page down to raise or lower your camera. These camera adjustments makes it much harder to hide your units behind your opponent's UI limitations. I suspect Blizzard learned something from watching SC replays ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but turning around are pretty useless to click a hero under other units and it jumps back.
You can change ground angle with the scroll wheel as well but it takes time and time is important while fighing. Also if there are plenty of units and lights and shit like that it doesn't help much anyway, sometimes it's hard to actually SEE the unit.
I don't know how it was in Starcraft, my SC games may be countable on one hand.
But yes, true, I think you could hide things behind refineries in C&C maybe aswell
Re: (Score:2)
They don't want to do that. They're even constraining SC2 to have a limited field of vision where regardless of screen resolution you can't zoom out too much.
Personally, I hate that and want to be able to see everything at once, but they feel that players should be limited in this fashion. I doubt you'd see the original SC updated to allow zoom out for the same reason.
Re: (Score:2)
and people like me would mail in the checks to get it.
Only problem is that you would mail those checks to a Swedish bay affected by global warming :p
Re: (Score:2)
Heck, they could even specifically DISALLOW ranked competetive play for that version ... and then the rest of us who aren't pros can play together at 1920x1200 resolution. :)
Video is terrible quality (Score:3, Funny)
I could see there was a Zerg base and the player was building some Zerg stuff (could barely see what it was). Then some grey blobs came in and pointed some yellow flashing triangles and then the player played poorly, made some Zerg that ate only some of the marines. Then something happend and some tanks came. I couldn't watch anymore because my eyesight was going from trying to focus on the blurry video.
Here it looked like this:
"OOO {iii"
And now you've seen the crummy movie.
Oh god find the red dot! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I've set Thunderbird to use that half-second chirp as a you-got-mail ....
indicator. I still jump whenever it goes off
I never really got that (Score:2)
So you've got an entire corps of ghosts -- super-intelligent, psionic assassins with a mortality rate of probably 50% and 80% when they go out to do nuke spotting... and nobody ever realized that if you are firing nuclear weapons, you don't really *need* laser-precision accuracy? Because they're, you know, nuclear weapons? What's the worst thing that happens, you overshoot the ultralisk by 50 yards and only burn it to ash instead of annihilating it on a subatomic level?
"Smart" bombs, indeed.
This may be a shocker... (Score:2)
... but the Germans used to aim rockets with a map, a coordinate system, and a bit of high school mathematics. I'm guessing that math still works, even on orbital platforms.
I don't think Starcraft2 will have the same appeal (Score:2)
The video looks great (the High Def one that AC linked for us). But I worry about what the content from TFS. The reason that Starcraft didn't give you tanks until a few levels in, was so you could learn just a few new things each level. The first 3 levels of every game as complicated as Starcraft should be learning. Even if you've played dozens of RTS before, including Starcraft, you're still going to have to learn the new units, upgrades, and controls.
It looks like Blizzard is going for the "RPG" element t
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt this is ever a real problem in Warcraft 3 / TFT. Not once did I ever feel the need to replay a level simply so my hero could get more powerful. Unless you intentionally avoid using them they get plenty powerful enough even through casual use. If you actually got stuck as a result of this then I wo
Re: (Score:2)
I only played a few levels of Warcraft III, and don't really know the details of how heroes work. I've played a lot of Battle for Wesnoth, however, and don't really like how characters and gold follow you through the levels. I'm pretty good at Battle for Wesnoth, and can do the campaigns just fine, but I don't like to, for the reasons I mentioned above. It's more of a "piece of mind" thing.
Additionally, the only way that you can beat a game like that without having to redo levels is if the game is too easy
Hmmm... (Score:2)
What, like Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends? Woopie do.
Video! (Score:3, Insightful)
Custom AI (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always wanted to be able to customize the units' AI. Imagine using an interface like Yahoo pipes or Quartz Composer for example, to make the damn ghosts cloak when attacked.
I think it could be very positive for the game, and, it could teach the youngsters a lot about logic an programming.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
SC: Ghost was also being developed by another studio, and SC 2 is in house.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because devouring bugmen swarms, socially advanced aliens with elongated features & psychic weaponry, and space marines / infantry were also sooooo original when Games Workshop did it.