Google’s Latest Easter Egg Is Starcraft

Go to Google and type Zerg Rush
and let the fun begin.
Close enough to what a zerg rush looks like, to be relevant to an actual Zerg rush on Starcraft and Brood wars. I don’t know about Starcraft II’s Zerg Rushes though. Haven’t played since the game first came out and I lost 5 online 1v1 games in a row on newb level.

Starcraft II Review

Starcraft II Review

Ten or so years ago, Blizzard put put out Starcraft. The game was so well designed so well built, that some countries actually held tournaments playing as the Zerg, Terran and ProtossĀ  species/races. The game in some Asian countries was more popular than the Olympics.

After ten years of dormancy, it has come back to challenge us again.

Here is my first day with Starcraft II (I wrap it up with a full review)

Bought My Startcraft II today.
Got my starcraft II today on Twitpic
Install took a while but nothing major. Just felt like forever. but what the heck is 5-10 minutes when I have been waiting ten years.
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After install was a download of a patch.
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Then came the video we all saw in the teaser. Seemed there wasn’t a lady talking in the teaser. so… listen closely you might hear something you haven’t heard.
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Oh, video card crashed at the end. It’s okay I have another :-)
On first Install of the game, the cenematics, Really good. This is what I have been waiting for. The cigar is back ( the thing that seemed to have the best detail in SCI).
The Blizzard people really know how to do CGI.
Reynor here on Twitpic
That little ps2/ record player thing with the Hologram . Cool effect.
Starcraft II hologram on Twitpic
Difficulty selection for Starcraft II
Share photos on twitter with Twitpic
Casual Normal Hard Brutal
I selected Casual. Come on. I’m learning.

Huge selection for hotkeys.
Starcraft II hotkeys on Twitpic
I can’t imagine I memorized that many keys with the first Starcraft.
Menu Selection for Starcraft II
Starcraft II options. on Twitpic
Video Resolution didn’t go as high as I wanted. Seemed to be a bit of an anti-aliasing issue going on. Kind of wavy. No lag or nothing just an occasional wave in the video and some broken lines.
After finishing the first mission you go back to bar.
Starcraft II sitting in bar between missions. on Twitpic
They put plenty of items for you to click on and get curious about. I looked at everything. because I want to know all of it.
End of third mission in the game.
starcraft II end mission 3 on Twitpic
it took me 20 minutes to do that. and I had it set on the lowest difficulty.
On board a battle cruiser.
Onboard a battle cruiser starcraft II on Twitpic
Your bar from the first is now a Battle cruiser. Back Starcraft I, we just called them “BC” gotta type fast mid game.
You can click a lot of stuff there also. You learn a few things that way. It’s not like the first diablo where people just babbled random useless stuff and then the same stuff all the time. They actually change their phrases after each mission.
if you click around enough, you learn tricks about the game, study abilities that you can’t have unless you learn them by clicking stuff and buy better weapons.
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That guy sounds just like Chris Pirillo. He has plenty of videos on youtube. Just type his name. you will see. Kinda looks like him also.

FYI His Name is “Steadman”

Now all of the media is presented. Sorry I didn’t want to install fraps… I’m on strike. So my pics are via cam on my cell.

Time for the Review

Game play

At first I was upset because the buildings didn’t lay out in straight lines like they did before in the first Starcraft. I kept getting my SCV stuck between buildings. That is of course until I found the button that allows me to sink the supply depot underground. After seven missions i haven’t seen if that prevents attacks on them. I am sure a Zerg can attack it… Right ? All of the old buildings look the same, just you get a better look at them now. They seem to do all of the same stuff and the costs and upgrades are still the same. There are a few additions to equipment and to units. I don’t want to ruin to much. Just there is something that looks like a flying vulcher. That thing has some awesome artillery. Turret Lasers :-D !!!! Fire bats are bigger, but still have low range ground attack weapons only. but they can be upgraded pretty good.

You know, I don’t think I want to ruin it for you . So I will not go into it. Kinda hard to talk about Starcraft ii and not same the names of the units. They are all listed on Blizzard’s site with Starcraft unit name next to it. But you just don’t know what it all means till you play. So I don’t want to ruin the surprise for when you buy your copy of Starcraft II.
This game is a 100% must buy for any person who enjoyed Starcraft or Starcraft Brood Wars. They reference so much. The familiarity is there.
If you are a console gamer who has never played a PC game, a game that was created for pc and played on pc only, you will not get the fun in watching the videos. The videos are all very important. This is not a RUSH-RUSH-RUSH-RUSH-complete the game kind of game. This game is not for the console kiddies.
Online play, I think they scrapped the idea of the chatroom. How can you talk smack and get your butt handed to you after? There is a forum option and a community option, but the community option just sends you to Starcraft II website.

I didn’t dig much into the online play at all. I just want to finish teh game first and get the hotkeys memorized before I do all that.

Ladder matches are back.
Everyone is huge Muscular except the women and the scientists.
Jim looks different and voice sounds different. Many return roles. Different voices but similar. could be the same people, it has been ten years and all.

Also they removed the community. I find it hard to make a challenge when you can’t talk crap. So here is the community of Starcraft II Clans.

Scoring for Starcraft II

Scoring is on a 1-10 scale. 10 being best and 1 is sucky.

Resolution 9

Cinematic 10

Game play 10

Audio 10

If you want to understand a pc gamer and how we are a breed apart.

Starcraft II Release Today

Today is the long awaited day for Blizzard fans. Ten years we hoped. For ten years we lost hope. but today, Starcraft II is released. July 27 2010, we get our second edition of Starcraft.
I will be skipping lunch at work today to locate a place to purchase this game. I will be knocking down console kiddies to get my hands on the strategy game of all strategy games.
I will be protoss I will be terran. I will be zerg.
:-)

Bnet will take a beating today. I will wait for the servers to level out. Battle.Net goofed it last time. So lets see what happens this time, now that everyone is broadband and battle net is on a larger server.

Starcraft II Updates

Raynor Here

Finally the release of Starcraft is just around the corner.
July 27th 2010.
Looks like I will have to dig up some old accounts of mine and put this on.
I will make the challenge a month after I get the game. until then, I will be re-learning
gonna be funny seeing a vet of the game 12 years later battling newbs.
do you have an edge because you already have some cool tricks? or do you risk excessive loss because you think slower and more methodical?

7/27/2010 We will see

If you are an ex Starcraft gamer from the oldschool, post your gamer tag. Maybe we can meet online and battle a few.

Sorry all, no LAN play this time. This means no local competitions. Korea is going to be upset, especially if everyone has to creat an account to be in the competitions. They played SCI like it was baseball in New York.

Is Starcraft II The Goliath We Have Expected?

If you remember being in the chatrooms like “starcraft newbies’ or ladder challenges back before bnet split to show regions, you then know just how popular Starcraft was. We all know that what is popular will stay popular as long as people can still see how popular it really is. so we can assume that by splitting us up into so many groups it did make the place not feel as full as it once was. We can hope that Blizzard figured this out.

The greatest event was being nailed with a mass zergling and hydra attack, and being prepared with bunkered behind supply depots backed by a buttload of marines and siege tanks to just own and wipe down the zergs, and having cloaked wraiths to hit the overlords and that big fat crab thing.

I used to play with a name that was fun to kill with and win with. The name was Mass200ScvOwnsU. Really that was hard to do because by default scvs run away. I wonder if they will allow us to make the names they allowed in the beginning using symbols like $^& and “-. Will they have chatrooms again ? The chatrooms made it so you could run lip and make challenges. You didn’t have to chat, sometimes we just spent the whole day jumping into the best bandwidthed available games.

Will the game have the features we loved? Will we have to buy massive processors and ram?

I think we will not have to power it much, so all sorts of people can play this game.

Will we have a monthly fee? I don’t play wow. simply because i hate the idea of pay to maintain, maintain because you paid so much, pay more because you played and invested so much time and money and don’t want to lose players . The redundant cycle of stupid uselessness.

We used to beg for this and Blizzard kept hinting it would never happen. Ten years later and it just might happen soon.

The game that was top seller for three years, the number one played game for two years, the game i played religiously for three years straight, is coming. I am older now. Will i still play?

Damn straight, just hope there is no team speak. I don’t want to hear a bunch of kids screaming at each other and everyone how they they are going to hack or report them for cheating.