At BlizzCon, Blizzard presented StarCraft II in two distinct, delicious flavours: single player and multiplayer, with demo stations in the hundreds consistently occupied by BlizzCon attendees. The single player demo allowed for a 20 minute, one versus one match with the option of playing as Terrans vs. Protoss or vice versa. I played a number of games with each race, trying out different tech tree progressions and strategies—somewhat difficult to fully pursue in such a short time (and with rusty skills).
Anyone who has played the original StarCraft will feel right at home, as most, if not all, of the game’s shortcut keys and unit selection methods remain the same. It’s very easy to settle into a game of StarCraft II as the controls and interface are so similar to the first. The game’s HUD has thankfully evolved to add better control over your units and provides helpful information on upgrades, build times, skills and unit attributes.
The early game also feels comfortably similar, as each match started off with a handful of workers and infantry units, with base structures already pre-built. Strategically, things began to deviate from the original shortly after the early game. Obviously, you’ll notice StarCraft II‘s gorgeous graphics and stunning effects right away, all of which ran at a smooth clip on the Intel sponsored PCs, so it won’t feel too familiar.
In the first portion of my impressions, I’ll be focusing on the Terran faction. More »
At this weekend’s BlizzCon, tabletop game specialist Fantasy Flight Games showed the first prototypes for its upcoming StarCraft: The Board Game set. At $US79.95, the six-player board game may seem a tad on the pricey side, but when you consider the set includes 180 plastic play figures, based on 25 unique sculpts from StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War, dozens of cards and tokens, and just tons of other stuff, you can see where the money went.
While the rules are far too complicated to grasp at BlizzCon, the board game, which is scheduled to ship in September, looks like a solid investment for strategic tabletop gaming fans. At the very least, it will give StarCraft diehards who aren’t blessed with the finger speed of professional Korean gamers something to do when the electricity goes out. I know I’m getting a copy for my fallout shelter.
According to Fantasy Flight reps, attendees of GenCon will have an opportunity to get their hands on a copy of the game a bit earlier than the rest of the gaming public. And, yes, a sequel is already planned to include units from StarCraft II.
Further details at the official site. More »
So it looks like McWhertor and I have finally found some cosplay we can agree on. The ever travelling McW snapped this photo a few nights ago at BlizzCon and lo and behold the gal in the costume was the big winner of the whole BlizzCon costume contest kittencaboodle. I can see why she won, it’s really quite impressive.
You can see some of the other contest entrants here and here.
[via Wonderland]
Another set of shaky cam vids of Blizzcon presentations. This time around we get two clips showing art and flythroughs from the newly announced WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Not being a WoW player myself, I just sort of watched the pretty pictures roll by and that was enough for me. But, for you WoW fanatics out there, I’m sure you will be ooh-ing and ahh-ing along with the rest of the crowd.
Fresh from the BlizzCon floor comes this (kinda shaky) video of a presentation on Starcraft 2 outlining the details of multiplayer mode. After a nice look at the back a bald guy’s head the camera man finally manages to focus in on the screen and we get a fairly decent look at how all this is going to play out. Looks pretty cool and the audience sure seems to think so. Especially when it comes to explosions. Everyone loves explosions.
At BlizzCon today, representatives from Blizzard and Legendary Pictures hosted a panel on the upcoming WarCraft film adaptation, giving attendees an update on the film’s progress and addressing fan concerns with a follow-up Q&A session. On hand were Paul Sams and Chris Metzen Blizzard Entertainment and, from Legendary Pictures, CEO Thomas Tull and Chief Creative Officer Jon Jashni. In addition to confirming that the Warcraft movie will be a live action film, with a yet to be determined level of computer generated environments and effects, Jashni told the crowd they’re still working toward a 2009 release date.
Sams, Metzen and Jashni made it a regular point to express their wishes to “not… create another video game movie” but to “create an epic.” And while some fans may have taken pause at Jashni’s reasoning that “we can’t just make a movie for the 9 million World of Warcraft subscribers”, it was clear that all four were passionate about bringing the mythology of Warcraft to the big screen as faithfully as possible.
You may not actually need any of the stuff contained within the BlizzCon goody bag—excepting the hand sanitiser with Blizzard cozy—but I’m sure there are plenty of things in here non-attendees will want. Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to get rid of all this stuff, from the Diablo button to the Colossus magnet to the World of WarCraft XL t-shirt to the Heroes of Azeroth trading card game starter deck to the beta key. Oops, just kidding. That beta key is mine.
Actually, Blizzard doesn’t quite know to which game the beta key applies. Therefore, if it’s for Wrath of the Lich King, it’s all yours, lucky Kotaku reader.
During the StarCraft II Live Demo at BlizzCon 07 today, Blizzard employees Rob Pardo and Dustin Browder walked attendees through the game in a semi-live demo with Browder revealing new unit features and Pardo spending a good portion of his time detailing the game’s single-player campaign. Pardo first walked us through the evolution of the single-player storytelling method from the original Warcraft through the original StarCraft through to Warcraft III, finally showing off portions of these elements in StarCraft II.
