StarCraft II Beta Report

[MadCast: PoisonTaco]

Last night I got into the Starcraft II beta, and after playing all night and all morning I thought I'd make a writeup and go into details into the game and battle net.

First thing to get out of the way is that Starcraft II feels the same as the original did. At first glance, it is just Starcraft with better graphics. Now the graphics look good, very good especially when compared to its twelve-year-old counter part. But while the visuals look great, they aren't going to strain your computer. When you zoom in closely the game looks a little ugly but when looking overhead, Starcraft II can be pretty. The graphics themselves are okay, but what really impressed me were the animations. Oh and you're not stuck in perpetual 800x600, and there's widescreen support. Generally what you'd expect from a game in 2010.

The core gameplay is untouched, don't expect any innovations in the RTS genre. It's almost the same game as it was twelve years ago. However many of the rules have changed. Load up a game, pick your favourite race out of the Terran, Protoss and Zerg and you'll immediately find out that Starcraft II is very different. There's new units and new buildings to learn and while each race still has the features that makes them unique as well as even more mechanics to further diversify them. I'll get on race specifics later. There's new strategies, new combinations, new build orders to learn. But if you've played the original Starcraft, even just a little bit, you'll soon feel right at home again once you've gotten accustomed to everything that's new. The feature that I like most is being able to select more than twelve units at a time.

Like the original Starcraft, SCII is played on battle.net. Not much of bnet is available in the beta, but I like what I have seen. The ladder system is back, and I'll explain how it works later. You've got an option to form a party and go into 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 ranked games, however the beta is limited to 1v1 and 2v2 matchmaking so far. There's a complete ladder system where you can see who's the best of the best and custom games to join when you don't feel like being too competitive. There's a practice league for newbies to play in, where games play at normal speed instead of fastest, and maps are made to prevent early rushes. Another feature I liked was how maps are stored on bnet servers, so if someone is hosting a game but you don't have the map you can simply hit a button, download it and join. Also there's a section for replays. Bnet saves replays of all your matches. You can choose to save them from the server and onto your computer.

When you first sign into bnet.
- You are put into a practice league. Ten unranked matches for you to get used to the game. Maps are made so that it's impossible to have early rushes and you play against other newbies. This is optional and you can immediately skip out.

- Once you're done the practice league or skip it altogether, you're put into ten placement games. These are ranked matches, and I believe how well you do in these games determines which bracket you're put in. Not sure how it works out, but when you're done you move on to the ladder.

- Apparently I'm ranked 14th in the 44th Silver Bracket on the ladder. I don't know how I got into the 44th Bracket but I think it's based on how I did in my first ten matches. It's a small bracket of about 50 people you're ranked against. Once I get more information on how the ladder works I'll post it.

Now my likes and dislikes.
The Good:
- Love the new graphics. The game looks great without the visuals getting in the way of the core gameplay. Units can still stack on top of each other, and the buildings are still placed on a grid.

- I can't believe how well this game runs when it's only in a beta. I'm running the game on ultra high flawlessly, with no hiccups even with a lot of units on the screen. There isn't much lag, if at all, when I get into games and matchmaking is fast and so far very reliable. I haven't been put into too many games where I'm clearly outmatched.

- Really digging the background music. It's subtle, but there and fits the mood for each race perfectly.

- Some of the new units and play mechanics for the races are really awesome. Just trying out each new unit and learning how to use them is a lot of fun.

The Bad:

- Some of my favourite units from Starcraft have been removed. I know it's necessary as for each new unit that's put into the game, there needs to be at least one removed, I still miss some of my old favourites like the Firebat, Wraith, Goliath, Dragoons and etc.

- I dislike parts of the rearranged tech trees. You need additional buildings to access more units and I feel that some of the techs are spread out too much. However this applies to all the races, so I guess it's balanced in a way.

- I'm a little confused as to how the ladder system works on bnet but I'm sure this can be cleared up with some poking around on Blizzard's site and forums.

In short, Starcraft II is awesome. Even with much of the game blocked off from me in the beta, I'm having a blast just jumping in with all three races available to me and doing some 1v1 and 2v2 matches. But when the final game comes out complete with the rest of the battle.net features, singleplayer, achievements and the map editor this is going to be one hell of a game. It's going to be accessible enough for newcomers to join in and have fun as well as being balanced and popular enough to be really competitive.

[MadCast: Eternia]

Dragoons, Goliaths, etc.
Were removed for being 'generic I can do everything' units. Thus making it easier to hard counter everything for balance purposes.