So recently, for no reason that i can fathom except for my exceptional world of Warcraft play time, i was invited into the SC2 beta, without opting in, awesome? yes. Anyway way, i was playing the game the other day, more then usual, and i was having a sort of unwelcome feeling of familiarity. The thought crossed my mind, that this game could simply have been a expansion in every way, to the original starcraft, and im trying to reason out why that is. Where my expectations of what the game is way off? where the video's that i was seeing leading me astray. I am so struck on why i have these high and lows with the game, and that in itself if kinda awesome.

What i was expecting when playing this game was something innovative and new, at least compared to the original. I was a huge fan of warcraft 2, my father actually, introduced me to the game(ironic cause now my father, although he'd never admit it, see's games as the bane of my somewhat pathetic life but that's besides the point) and i hold that introduction on some sort of super-nostalgic nerd pedestal, as it also was my introduction to fantasy game, books, movies, ect. Don't worry, ill get to SC2 in a bit. NOW, Warcraft 3 was, and at this point still is my favorite rts, i've played it to death, still play it every now and then, love love love that game, story, community, everything, one of my favorite games of all time. It was leaps and leaps and light years beyond the predecessor. The hero element was awesome, the micro management was perfect, creeping was awesome, tech tree's made sense, story, characters, get a fucking checklist and ill check all the boxes off, i love this game. And relating this warcraft 2 to warcraft 3 upgrad, to sc1 and the upgrade that is sc2, you may start to see where my expectations where set, and where a problem might arise.

Starcraft 2 is a glorified expansion.



Now that statement is hard on the game, probably too harsh cause i fucking love the game so far, as it is obviously still in beta mode. Now as per last paragraph, i expected something huge with this game, and rightfully so. It's one of the most anticipate games of...well i hate to say it cause it's a bold statement, but at least for pc gamers, it's probably the most anticipated game of the decade, and foreseeable future(god that sounds 10 times more dumb every time i read it). This is a game, that is supposed to replace sc1, that statement alone is huge. Now i wasn't expecting, at all, that this game was going to be akin to warcraft 3, i wouldn't want that, but i was expecting some sort of change, that changed up the gameplay enough, that i could call this a different game then the first. It is different enough that your first few games are gonna feel slow, and your gonna be say to yourself (if you played the first) "shit im going so slow im good at this, i know it".

Now familiarity is another point of contempt. The game is so close to the first that you inhertially expect the game to play the same...well it does. Entirely. Sure nearly every old unit has seen tweaks and improvements to their sc1 counterparts, and new units join the fray. But the game slips into this odd crack of lack of a nostalgia factor (that is a completely personal statement, and the majority of people i've talked to don't feel this way.), and yet doesn't feel new enough to be a new game it'self. I feel like i should be feeling that urge like "fuck yeah i remember this unit". But can a rts be like that? It's a fucking zergling, its not a cheesy voice actor from c&c, its not some face that you can say "oh hey, yeah, that person/thing". This trails on to another factor, that i only play as zerg. Why? cause i dunno, i just fell into a safe zone with one race that im sorta half competent with. But all the time i've spent with sc1, i thought i'd be super nostalgic for zerg as a whole and as individual units. But that wasn't there.

Now brush all those complaints aside and pretend i never said any of them, because for the majority of the time i've spent in sc2, i fucking love it. It's awesome, and oddly enough, even though i have the game already in my hands, in the form that i well continue to play it when it comes out, i can't wait for everyone to get the game. The community is going to take all these awesome things that i just can't comprehend. Now like i said before, i only play as zerg, but the new units they added, are enough for people to make hundreds of new strategies that im sure blizzard themselves hasn't thought of, and that in itself is the true...beauty of the game. Really. The things people can do to manipulate(within the constraints of the game, glitching/hacking sucks!) the units that blizzard has given players. Now ill be the first to admit i suck at the game, but after getting used to the slight change in mechanics, i was already trying things i didn't think people would do. One example was that overlords now generate creep after getting a upgrade for them. Moving them behind a enemy base i generated a small amount of creep, and took my worm network thing(nydous network? the name escapes me right now sorry) and popped one up on the creep. I sent a mass amount of hydralisks in behind his base, and destroyed his gathering units. It was awesome, exciting, i had a awesome sense of "holy shit man im so smart".

Basically, blizzard give two or three seperate units completely different abilities that separately are ok, but used together, give people who can't think(like myself), a sense of intelligence



Talking specifically about zerg, i really do enjoy the new stuff they have put in. What little changes they have done (im about to contradict myself, but i still feel my former point stands strong) are awesome, and really do bring a small small small new light to the game. They did allot of tweaking on the low-teir units. For example, the zerglings, the bane of some players, one of my favorite due to you can have a tonne on screen, had a huge change to them. That is a new upgrade for them, by purchasing a baneling nest, you can make banelings. These units are super volatile units that suicide-explode on contact with enemies. While they are super weak defensively, offensively, a handful of these, when used correctly(and that is hard to do, trust me) can turn the tide of almost any battle. They become weaker mid game, but gain new life with the burrow ability, they become living land mines, that can protect you from attackers with little effort. Even further to the end-game of a map, you can gain a ability that lets them move while underground, moving land mines can be devastating to a enemy without any invisibility detection, however at this point most units can take a mass of these out rather fast.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough. I can't wait for the game to be opened up to everyone. It's seriously the community, on top of a supremely awesome rts, even if it is to similar to the first, that makes this game just completely awesome to me. If you were on the edge about the game, shut the fuck up and get psyched up, its good...really good.

If you have the beta, and play not-zerg, what are you favorite parts about those races? If you don't have the beta, what are you interested in, i can try to answer them!