cloud 9 blog

i’ve been anticipating and salivating about the release of starcraft 2 for months now and monday night was finally the time i got my hands on the collectors edition! I pre-ordered the collectors edition a few months ago and paid for it as early as possible to make sure i got a copy. I went to BT Games in Tygervalley who had a midnight launch from 10pm – 1am and got there at 10pm and a queue was already formed. Stood in line for the initial “show your receipt and then they process it and put your copy aside.” My copy was right there but they may only release it at midnight, bastards. so just stood around chatted to some guys until midnight and they started to hand out the orders.

got home just after 1am and unpacked the box and put everything in the box to one side and grabbed the game disc and started installing it. after 2 initial patches had to be updated, i was ready to play! i only managed to play the first mission and decided to go sleep and wakeup earlier than to play all night.

all i can say is, WOW! blizzard are yet to disappoint with ANY of their games. starcraft2 is just awesomely put together and the game play is outstanding. the graphics are superb and the detail is phenomenal.

the storyline is pretty much what you expect from starcraft but it is still very well put together. a few old faces, a few new ones and some interesting new allies and enemies. the gameplay has some sort of variety in the missions and makes you want to see what the next one is like as they are fun and enjoyable to play.

what makes starcraft2 different from the first one is that you can research new technologies from the zerg and protoss for you terran units and buildings, upgrade units and buildings and also hire some mercenaries. you also sometimes have to make decisions which affects your relationship with certain people or allies and enemies. you also have an achievement system where you complete certain scenarios in missions and you get achievement points, just like world of warcraft’s. you don’t get to use those points for anything, it’s more of a “i have more points than you, which makes me cooler than you!”

oh oh oh! and another kickass feature blizzard introduced is the realid which you can now add friends who have battle.net account to your friend list across blizzard gaming platforms. this means that my friends who play world of warcraft can chat/talk to me while i play starcraft! how awesome is that?

i’m not doing a detailed detailed review as i do not want to spoil it for the rest.

if starcraft2 impressed me this much, i do not want to think what diablo III is going to be like!

here is what was all in the collectors edition:

• The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
• An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor’s dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War(R) expansion set
• A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director’s commentary, and more
• The official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
• StarCraft comic book issue #0, a prequel to the comic series
• A World of Warcraft(R) mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account
• Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit