Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Details For StarCraft 2's Zerg

Posted by Soulskill on from the expect-more-at-blizzcon dept.

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."

37 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. I will never forgive the Zerg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    For what they did to Kerrigan.

    1. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by PC+and+Sony+Fanboy · · Score: 4, 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*

    2. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by FuturePastNow · · Score: 4, Funny

      But, can you forgive the Klingons for what they did to your boy?

      --
      Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
    3. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by ArcherB · · Score: 2, 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 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)

      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
    4. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by Bemopolis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Screw Kerrigan — consider what she did to Jennings.

      --
      "I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
    5. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Interestingly, the character was given the name "Kerrigan," because the badass chick from competing RTS Red Alert was named "Tanya"

    6. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by tepples · · 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.

    7. Re:I will never forgive the Zerg by Bedouin+X · · Score: 5, Informative

      (There's a joke in there somewhere)

      Perhaps the fact that the same person voiced both characters?

      --
      Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
  2. Nor will figure skating fans forgive Jeff Gillooly by tepples · · Score: 4, Funny

    For what he did to Kerrigan.

  3. Woah, all of a sudden the Zerg are out?!? by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Funny

    What's the rush??!?!

    --
    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
    1. Re:Woah, all of a sudden the Zerg are out?!? by doyoulikeworms · · Score: 2, Funny

      I know! Can't a guy sit down and enjoy a NR 20 Year game once in a while?

    2. Re:Woah, all of a sudden the Zerg are out?!? by Daengbo · · Score: 2, Informative

      For the humor impaired, Ke ke ke is the romanization of the Korean text laugh. I'd type the real thing, but Slash won't accept it.

      --
      Put identity in the browser.
  4. Linked video... by MooseMuffin · · Score: 4, 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.

    1. Re:Linked video... by Trent05 · · 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.

      --


      --
      The Marines: The few, the proud, the not very bright. - Slashdot tagline 04/21/05
    2. Re:Linked video... by drik00 · · Score: 3, 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

      --
      Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
    3. Re:Linked video... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://www.gametrailers.com/player/39088.html

    4. Re:Linked video... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://www.gametrailers.com/player/39089.html

      Hi-Def video link

    5. Re:Linked video... by PrimalChrome · · 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.

    6. Re:Linked video... by nasch · · Score: 3, 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.

    7. Re:Linked video... by SpazmodeusG · · Score: 2, Informative

      Protoss can build an unlimited number of buildings at the same time using 1 probe and that probe can go back to harvesting whilst the buildings are being built.
      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.

    8. Re:Linked video... by vux984 · · Score: 2, 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.

    9. Re:Linked video... by DuckDodgers · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If the game had little strategy, building a massive force of your best unit was a sure path to victory. But Blizzard designed each unit in the game with at least one effective counter-strategy available.

      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 you can focus your firepower, and making effective use of unit special abilities.

      It's an extremely deep strategy game, far more than a simple "clickfest". If you don't like how fast it is, set the game speed to the slowest possible. Then you can enjoy the depth of strategy without having to click and hotkey at lightning speed.

  5. If I could change the resolution by wonkavader · · Score: 4, 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.

    1. Re:If I could change the resolution by aliquis · · Score: 3, 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.

  6. Video is terrible quality by agristin · · Score: 2, 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.

  7. Oh god find the red dot! by TheTornOne · · Score: 4, Funny

    ***Chirp*** "Nuclear Launch Detected"

  8. What's the rush? by jonaskoelker · · Score: 2, Funny

    6pool

  9. bullcrap by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    excuse me but age of empires and similar games dont have nothing to do with rts. they are basically "Whomever builds the baddest, fastest unit the most and sends them over, wins". there are small variation in tactics you can do, because every unit has an anti unit, but its nothing like starcraft. also the races, faction units are almost all the same, with only 2-3 different in 15 unit selections. they are basically the same.

    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.

    --
    Read radical news here
    1. Re:bullcrap by kv9 · · 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 ^_____^

      --
      Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
    2. Re:bullcrap by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Any game where players' effectiveness is rated by how many actions per second they can perform is a crappy strategy game. Period. Strategy is about thinking, not how fast you can jump the screen around and send your units in 50 different directions.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    3. Re:bullcrap by mikael_j · · Score: 2, 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 like fortify and hold key points in the game world (like towns and bridges that help you control resources). AFAIK 99% of RTS games, including Starcraft, focus way too much on having good hand-eye coordination and not nearly enough on thinking. And no, I don't want turn-based games as a substitute, it's a different genre (and while I find it interesting I prefer real-time combat, but it has to be the kind of real-time where ten minutes isn't enough time to build a shitload of units and rush them from one side of the "world" to the other to crush your enemy's base while hoping your enemy didn't manage to do the same in eight minutes).

      /Mikael

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    4. Re:bullcrap by AioKits · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you liked Total Annihilation, you'll probably like Supreme Commander. Good stuff. Reminds me of TA a lot.

      --
      "Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
    5. Re:bullcrap by Salamande · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sounds like you might want to check out Sins of a Solar Empire.

    6. Re:bullcrap by Sobrique · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Supreme Commander is good, the sequel - Forged Alliance - is better.
      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.

    7. Re:bullcrap by MooseMuffin · · Score: 2, 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.

  10. Video! by brkello · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What was with the video? I mean, play the hardest core music you can find and it is still just some terrans invading a barely formed zerg base. You could have seen the same thing in first Starcraft. Just think they could have come up with something a little more compelling than that.

    --
    Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
  11. Custom AI by chord.wav · · Score: 2, 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.