This New Bioshock Trailer Seems Off...

Something seems different about this Bioshock trailer....no, it's not the poor quality, or the lack of it being uploaded to youtbe because the upload page keeps giving me a 404.....

See if you can tell the difference:

Oh, that's right I added Guile's music from Streetfighter 2. Man, it really does go with everything, doesn't it?

What is Wrong With the Campaign

Is the SC2 campaign the greatest single player RTS campaign ever created? Yes. Now that that's out of the way, I'm going to tell you what Blizzard could (and should) have done better.

Where are the Open, old-school style missions?

Every single mission in the campaign has some little gimmick it's using to make it different. Trains with possible adjutants aboard, angry Protoss probes closing off gas veins, and crystals that create large death fields only Battlecruisers can handle.

What happened to the standard, here's your base, here's the enemy's base now go fight missions? The ones without that annoying (so friggin annoying) dwarf man giving you the exact unit that will preform best in every single mission right when you need it?

While this is a mainstay of the RTS genre (generally you are denied the upper end of the tech tree until you've beaten missions with only the lower end on a gradually increasing difficulty curve) you get the exact unit you need to win that mission. Example, for "Outbreak" what works best is a crapload of Hellions. The only use in the game I found for Diamondbacks was for stopping Dominion trains, and Wraiths? Ok I guess, but only used on the "Wraith" mission.

This system makes the brilliant and depth-increasing upgrade system seem arbitrary. Why bother upgrading units when you get the unit you're supposed to use on the mission it works best on? Where is the choice in that?

For experienced players who say "fie on you dwarf man I'm making marines because I want to, screw your Siege Tanks" there is plenty of experimentation with strategy, but the game almost discourages it by saying "Here's the exact unit you need to beat this mission, make a million of them and you will win."

The lack of open missions make the campaign seem shorter than it is. The only time you may feel like you need upgrades for your units is the last few missions on Char. After an entire campaign of honing strategy, you only get to really use it on one mission.

I think one way to solve this would be to allow for a "campaign custom game" or something of the sort. I want to play a 1v1 (or 1v2, 1v3+) vs an Insane computer with all my units/upgrades/research available. That would be fun.

The Most Epic Game Ever.

So checking HD's youtube channel, as I do daily, I found this game:




Now, let me tell you. I've watched thousands of replays (from WC3 and SC2) in my day, and this is close to the most epic game I have ever seen. If you want to have a serious nerdgasm, you've got to see this game.

Here are the links to the videos (in order):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Go watch now! Yes, it's long, but trust me. It's worth it.

Starcraft 2 Protoss Strategy

As with most things in starcraft 2 you're going to have to keep a few things in mind when it comes to the differences in starcraft protoss strategy from the original to the new game. There have been so many changes that it's actually quite interesting how much the game has managed to stay so much like the original starcraft and yet be such a great new groundbreaking pleasure to play. But there are some new mechanics and things you're going to have to keep in mind. We won't go into much compare/contrast here because it doesn't matter all that much what used to be, the only thing that matters is now and starcraft protoss strategies start with these things and then continue in part 2 with builds.

First, you'll simply have to make use of chronoboost. It's an interesting ability that draws from your economy to speed the build rate of a structure. You'll have to figure this in to your planning and be very tactical when applying chronoboost in order to win with the protoss. Since protoss buildings build more slowly and have to gather up energy you're going to fall behind if you let a Nexus just sit there and wait for it to hit full strength. You can almost figure in the cost of chronoboost into certain unit builds in order to get them fast enough to counter your opponent for certain must have units and upgrades like the observer and thermal lance.

warpgates are also simply awesome and you really need to get them figured into your builds and strategy. There are five units for protoss that can use the warpgate anywhere there is a power field. This levels the playing field against the much faster zerg units since you can just "warp in" zealots, stalkers, sentries, high templar and dark templar units at strategic locations.

Next come shields. every protoss unit has them and they regenerate much faster than in the original game mechanics. Shields basically work like an extra life bar. As long as your shields are up you're not taking any health loss. If you can figure out how to micro manage your shields on your units you can know when to pull back and let your shield recharge. Really, this is one of the keys in the new version of the game. I like to call it pecking at the foe. You run your units up and blast away for a bit, and then retreat to keep from losing any units. Take out what you can bit by bit without losing much yourself - if at all. It takes great micro to do that, but if you can enter the mid game without having lost anything while at the same time taking down maybe half of your opponents units, you're almost sure to win the match. We'll go into the specific build strategies in part 2.

Starcraft 2 Protoss

There are a lot of changes in starcraft 2 from the original, but most of them have to do with the game engine itself. Sure, there are some changes to the races and units and how everything fits together, but the neat thing is that Blizz managed to completely overhaul an entire game without making it a different game. Which is kind of a hard trick to pull off. Usually when game makers do sequels they fail because the sequel is just not as good a game than the original or is so different it's nothing like the first game, or they fail because the new game is too much like the first game so that not enough has changed to keep it interesting. The starcraft 2 protoss race is a good example of just enough different while remaining mostly the same.

The best way of looking at the way starcraft 2 works is to start with the units themselves. The zealot is pretty different than in the original but the function is the almost exactly the same. The zealot, like all protoss units is powerful by itself. In a straight up fight the zealot can take out 3 to 5 marines or zerglings all by itself, but it's slower than either. As a result the zealot makes a great meat shield for any stage of the game, as well as a good unit for harassment of economies and other functions. And you'll probably end up using them a lot. You will find that in starcraft 2 you'll be in far more need of gas than minerals and you can just blow those extra minerals on more zealots since they are so useful in many different ways.

The sentry is another great protoss unit. They do the same amount of damage as a marine, but include three special abilities tat make any protoss task force much more effective. The force field ability does just what it sounds like. It puts up a block that enemy units cannot penetrate. It doesn't last forever, but it has cool uses like cutting an enemy force in half or blocking them from getting away or even entering battle. The sentry ability reduces incoming ranged damage to your units. They also have hallucination, but that one doesn't get used as much. Hallucination creates a unit that doesn't really exist. You can hallucinate a Colossus to fool your opponent into thinking you are making them even if you haven't.

Stalkers are great as well. They can hit both ground and air units and hit hard. When you add in the blink ability it allows them to move up cliffs in order to escape or attack from flanking positions. Blink also allows you to get away from a zergling rush or siege tank fire into a much more favorable position - the one that doesn't get you killed and let's you wreak havoc on the enemy.

And that's just three of the protoss units in starcraft 2. But they give you a good flavor for the highly technological and very alien feel of the protoss from the original game. In other words, they fell the same, but you play them differently than before. In that way, they are just as good as the original, just in a new game that's even better than the original. 

Zerg Build Order

There are basically two build orders for zerg in starcraft 2 coming out of the beta. There are sure to be a lot more coming in the next few months and years as Blizz continues to tinker with balance, but as of now, these two builds are what you will see from power players. The first one is the one base build, and the other is the fast expand. the fast expand is the most used version since zerglings make such a great unit in the first part of the game. They can give you an advantage that is hard to recover from if you can get enough of them right out of the box.

The one base goes like this: Drone, Drone, Drone - 10 supply -> Overlord, Drone, Drone, Drone - 12 supply -> Spawning pool, Drone, Drone, Extractor, Drone, Drone, Overlord, Spawning pool finished -> Queen

For fast expand you will do: Drone, Drone, Drone - 10 Supply -> Overlord, Drone, Drone, Drone, 14 supply -> Spawning Pool, Drone, Drone -> Extractor, 15 supply -> hatchery at base 1, Drone, Drone, Overlord, 18 supply -> Queen,

You can also go for a 6 pool build but it is rather risky. Instead of worrying about anything else, you spend all of your initial resources and time getting a spawning pool from a single drone - it goes like this: Drone, 200 minerals -> Spawning Pool, Drone, Drone, Spawning pool finished -> Zergling X3.

You are going to get attack units in the form of zerglings faster than anything else and can get into his base and start attacking before he can even get a single building built. But unless you can kill off five or six of his workers your economy may never recover from going short handed with drones yourself.

After the standard openers there are two basic strategies you can use. The first one is Zergling/Mutalisk, and the second is Roach/Hydra. the first type works best with the fast expand opener with a few zerglings and a spine crawler or two to beat off early attacks. Get the speed upgrade for zerglings with your second 100 gas, and use the first 100 on the lair upgrade. Once you're done with those two items spend everything you've got getting the spire upgrade and then past that it all goes into Mutalisk creation. Once you get five or six Mutas you can go to work killing off workers. Make sure you don't get any of them killed while you get more zerglings for a full frontal attack. This strategy devastates your opponents economy and makes it very unlikely they will ever recover while you run up more and more fast zerglings to take out whatever they can manage to build.

The roach/hydra build doesn't rely on a fast expand. Defend your natural base and send some zerglings out for early pressure. Get a nydus worm in a good spot and continue to harass while you build up a good force of roaches and hydras to make the killing blow. Use an Overlord to give you vision of the back side of his base and then just pop out through the worm in a surprise spot and catch them off guard and out of position.

You can always choose to mass just about any unit as Zerg and overwhelm with sheer numbers. The best units to use for this are Mutalisks and Hydralisks, but even zerglings can work if you can get enough of them in the right place at the right time. We don't have the time to go into all of the specific strategies for the zerg in this article, but the two standard openers combined with the two basic following builds will work nicely most of the time.

Starcraft 2 Zerg Gameplay

If you've played starcraft since the original a lot of this isn't going to be big news to you overall. But consider it a review before we get into the new bits in part 2. Since most of the pros tend to hang out in their own secret internet lairs discussing the finer points of macro micro and cheese that means I'm talking to just about 95% of the SC2 population. It's a great game and the zerg are certainly a lot of fun to play. Blizz did a great job with balance right out of the box and throughout the beta, and the end result is fantastic both in single player and on battle.net. So let's get into a little starcraft 2 zerg gameplay discussion so that you'll be ready for those matches once you hit the end of the campaign on your own.

Let's start with the burrow ability. You may be tempted to overlook this one and try to mass units and use other upgrades, but it's very important and you don't want to skip it. As a matter of fact it needs to be pretty high on your build priorities list. This is for two reasons. The first is that it's really easy to lay little ambush traps for your opponent with burrow. Every single zerg ground unit can burrow, including the ultralisk. It's pretty sweet to run a little group of units up to an expansion when you've got him preoccupied with beating off a little zergling harass somewhere else and burrow them and just let them sit there. Later, when he is trying to make a big push you can just pop out your burrowed team and wreck his economy. If you get in trouble - just  burrow and live to fight another time.

The second reason for burrow is another zerg high point; Since every single zerg unit is biological they regenerate health over time. Not very fist, mind you, but still. This health regeneration speeds up when burrowed, so if you are taking a beating you can just burrow everything and go do something else for a few minutes. Which leads us to another point about zerg. Run away. the more of your units you keep alive, burrowed or hidden away somewhere after each scrap, the more likely you are to be able to do what zerg do best, and that's swarm. There's no need to just sacrifice a pack of zerglings just because they are cheap. Use five zerglings over here to kill a few workers and then run away before they get slaughtered. Another five over there, here a few, there a few, if you don't let very many of them get killed you've got thirty in no time - thirty zerglings can take out a whole bunch of stuff - but only if they are alive.

Next, be sure to make good use of your overlords and creep tumors to spread your creep all over the map as you move around. It's cheap and easy and can really give you an advantage. All of your units move faster over the creep, which is one advantage, but another is the ability to see everywhere your creep is. Creep tumors cannot be seen without detection but allow you to see everything around them. using creep tumors to build a "creep highway" takes a bit of extra micro, but it can be worth it in the long run. Just have your overlord crap out some creep as he oozes his way across the map and before you know it there's creep everywhere, and that's good for you, not so good for your opponent.

Starcraft Zerg

My yard has an infestation of spiders. I mean they are everywhere. Park your car for a few hours and there will be three full webs tying it to the ground everywhere. Once I played Starcraft 2 (it's been a long time since the original I played a bit) the zerg kind of remind me of those spiders in the yard. Persistent, amazingly fast and everywhere. Starcraft zerg is an infestation of the map. You overwhelm your opponent with speed and numbers. You swarm and spread almost inevitably. You surround and tear them apart with claws and teeth and goo and poo. Just like those spiders you harass your enemy at every expansion and choke point - you just get everywhere.

In SC2 the zerg have the ability to do something that no other race can do - and that's switch tech very quickly. Which brings even more speed to your builds. You can counter what the other side is doing more rapidly than terran, and certainly faster than the protoss. It's also cheap as far as resources are concerned. You can be sneaky and slimy and make sure your opponent never gets the upper hand.

The zerg also make a lot of use of what can best be described as pooping all over the place. It's pretty nasty, really, but just like a bug. Those spiders leave long sticky threads  all over the yard, apparently most of them at mouth level. Zerg bases rely on the creep, that purple goo on the ground that has to be there in order to build a building. Zerg forces move faster on the creep as well, and you can expand your creep with buildings and the Creep Tumor ability of the Queen. But Overlords can also hover around pooping creep all over the map. By using overlords and creep tumors you can build what is often called a creep highway - a long band of purple poo all over the map to increase the speed of your troops as well as extended vision. Creep tumors require detection to see, but give you the ability to see what's on your creep highway.

While the zerg spent some time at the top of the food chain in the original starcraft, zerg in starcraft 2 are more balanced to the other races than ever before. You're going to have to work at it to win against other races, and against other zerg it can turn into a long match a lot of the time. That balance makes the game a lot of fun, since everyone doesn't just play one race, but the zerg are still lightening fast. You can churn out zerglings and other units and start harassing within a few moments of the start of the match and then keep the pressure up all the way through.

It feels like fighting off the spiders in my yard. You can't find them all, and even if your could they seem to breed by the hundreds. next thing you know there is creep all over the place and hidden enemies to pop out and poop on you no matter where you turn. They are nice and gross too. They explode goo, rain poo and are generally disgusting in every way. If that's your cup of tea, the sick and macabre, the zerg will be a lot of fun to play. If you're more like me, it's kind of nice to beat off an infestation of bugs in less than thirty minutes. Now if only I could get a mech suit for the front yard.

Starcraft 2 Terran - part 2

So by now you've gotten your copy of the game (you have, haven't you)? You've worked through the campaigns and you're ready to hit Bnet with a vengeance and climb the ladders. Before you jump in with both feet there are a few things you need to keep in mind and we're going to cover a couple of those here.

First, is that you're going to need to be able to adjust the build you are working on according to certain things your opponent is doing. So you need to scout well and know how what they are doing and how to counter it effectively. You might not change your whole strategy, since you can get a lot done with almost any terran unit combination, but the upgrades and other things you'll need for those units will certainly change according to what your opponent does during the match.

The most common build you will see for the terran is the bio build. In the bio build you will be going for marines, Marauders and medivacs -  abbreviated as MMM. Support units for the bio build can include Ravens, Vikings and ghosts (especially vs. Protoss). The bio build is very hard to counter because Marauders get a big bonus to damage on armored units as well as slow effects from concussive missiles. Add in the Stimpacks for more dmg and medivacs for healing and this build is really hard to stop. Your opponent will try to counter the marines with roaches, but the marauders will tear them to bits, or the units that aren't armored like zerglings and zealots get slowed and then wiped out by the marines who are being healed. It's just tough to whip a well microed bio force.

The other build is the mech build. Where bio has you building the units that have a person inside a suit, the mech build focuses on Hellions, Tanks and Thor - all of which are mechanical units. That doesn't mean you won't want to use marines and other support units, like ghosts, it just means you'll be more focused on things that roll instead of walk. Early in the beta the bio build was all you would ever see in competitive matches. But a change to build times and unit costs for tanks made the build viable alter on. It takes more time to get a big pile of tanks on the ground than a bio build, but it's a lot of fun. And with a few marines in support it's virtually unstoppable.

In the mech build the Thors will take out any ari units and do splash damage to units like mutalisks that would otherwise wreak havoc in your forces. Stick a bunch of marines in with your tanks and thors and you can just rumble through the map blasting through anything in your path. It will take a while, and part of the problem with this build is that it is slower so you'll have to effectively counter any harasses and attacks while you build up your main force. But if you can get it all built it's virtually unstoppable.

Which brings us back to our original point. Terran strategy for starcraft 2  is very versatile, but you have to keep your forces balanced. There is no single do all end all unit in the terran race. By using your units in combination with other units you can have a force that is very hard to kill and can handle any massing of other units by your opponent. No single unit can get it all done by themselves. Even mech heavy builds will have a bunch of marines and a couple of ghosts running around, and that's why they take so much micro, and are also a ton of fun.

Starcraft 2 Terran Gameplay - part 1

With the coming of Starcraft 2 people are flocking back into what is, in my opinion, the best RTSG (real time strategy game) ever. as a matter of fact, it's kind of like it has no close second place in the category. And even though Starcraft 2 is technically a sequel, and sequels tend to be not as good as the original, that just ain't the case with SC2. It's a fantastic game all around, and perhaps the most welcome set of changes came with the Terran race. They got stronger, they got more versatile, they got awesome. here's a little overview of Starcraft 2 Terran gameplay.

Of course, there is way too much to go into when it comes to any one race, or even any one aspect of playing a game as complex as Starcraft 2 to deal with in a little bitty online article. But we can give you a good overview of what to expect and some of the nifty tricks the pro players are using right out of the box.

The first thing you will need to know is that the terran race is the most versatile in the game. So many of the units can do several different things, but that also leads to its own set of problems when it comes to playing the Terran race effectively. Being versatile means that you're not specialized. Which means that at times you may have to make far more choices about what kind of units you want to use and how you want to use them. that also means that you have more ways of defeating your opponent of another race. It also makes for fantastic mirror matches (terran vs. terran).

So you're going to have to be able to do two things in order to pwn face with the terran. The first thing is that you're going to have to learn how to play very efficiently and with a good set of tactical goals in mind. Since you have a lot of options for how to achieve those goals, that means you'll need to master a number of them. The second thing is that Terran need to be micromanaged a lot. You can't just mass a single unit and have them plow through everything in their path. You have to be able to control a lot of smaller control groups on the micro level, and that takes practice. All of this means that the terran are really easy to learn and really easy to win with, but they are also hard to master. In part 2 we'll go into more specifics about starcraft 2 terran gameplay strategies and tactics.

Starcraft 2 Terran

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the last few months you know that there is a new game in town. It's not just that Starcraft 2 is another RTSG (real time strategy game) or a sequel (although its a GREAT sequel) it sets a new bar for excellence when it comes to gaming period. Say what you want about Blizzard, but they make games that last. And they last because they are wicked good games. In Starcraft 2 Terran got some tweaks and upgrades which have made them the most versatile race to play. And since we're all human, after all, they are a lot of fun.

I mean, unless you're some sort of hippie or religious nut you've probably thought at least once in your life about being some sort of space marine right? Who wouldn't want to hop into some uber mech suit and lay waste to outer space bad guys? Plus, they keep making movies about that kind of thing, so it's not like you've never wanted to do that. The terran race in SC2 is all that and more. You can now live out your little fantasy, and win a lot with the terran.

Now, it goes without saying that versatility has a few problems of its own. Because the Terran in Starcraft 2 has so many options they are also a little bit tougher to play really well. In other words, easiest to learn, hardest to master. They have unique ways to harass economies in unexpected ways. They have a lot of options when it comes to choosing the road to victory - more than the Protoss or the Zerg. You're not boxed in to having to do certain builds and progressions with Terran, but that also means you have to be very strategic in your thinking and gameplay in order to stay on top of things.

Terran have to be controlled more micro than the other races. You have to be a tactical thinker and and pretty good at micro managing your units and strategy in order to perform at the most effective level to win. Protoss have fewer options, which means they can focus more on what the Protoss units do best. With the Terran there are so many choices it can actually be a bit more difficult to narrow down what you need to do in order to counter what your opponent is doing.

With all that being said, the Starcraft 2 terran race is a lot of fun to play in a game that is completely engrossing on almost every level. And it doesn't matter if you're a computer gamer or a console freak. SC2 is just a damn good GAME. Platform doesn't matter, genre doesn't matter. If you like games, you'll love SC2 and a big part of that is that the Terran is so much fun to play. Don't get me wrong, the other races are excellent too, in their own ways. But for me, strapping into the reaper or loading into a hellion or siege tank it satisfies so many of those rather primal urges and fantasies. Living vicariously through metal firepower? Hell yeah!

Terran Marine

With the release of Starcraft 2 the gaming world is all abuzz. I'm a big fan of Blizz games, and I can tell you from first hand experience that there must be a lot of us out there. The day after SC2 hit the shelves there was like nobody on WOW. Random dungeon queues for DPS toons have always been long, but on July 28th you could wait around for hours and fall asleep. I was a big fan of the original Starcraft, but since PvP in most games has never been my thing, I kinda skipped the whole Brood Wars thing.

But SC2 is a breath of fresh air, and a big part of that is because of the upgrades. And I'm not just talking about the graphics of the game, although they are stunning. But the whole thing changed in some subtle ways that bring the feel of the game, especially for the terran race a bit more in line with how the wars should have always felt to me. That's just me, and I'm sure you can find your fair share of those who will flame Blizz for just about everything they do, but SC2 is awesome, and the Terran marine is part of the reason why.

The terran marine is to the Terran race what the zergling is to the Zerg - only better. And one of the keys to the usability of this unit in the game is based on their range. They can hit anything and do so from a good distance. And since all of the new game maps have a nice little choke point at all of the expansion areas, it's cool to be able to flood those chokes with a band of marines and just pwn. The marine makes a great offensive attack unit against almost everything as well as a terrific defender, especially when you load them into a bunker.

But the marine is also the most cost effective unit in the entire game. Not only are they versatile, they are cheap. Not as fast as churning out a crew of zerglings, but far more powerful per unit. If you compare how much damage they can do per how much it costs to build one, you will find that there is not another single unit in the game as good as the marine. Even if you take into account the upgrades, such as stim packs and weapons, they still remain at the top of the heap in raw power per cost.

So when you begin the campaign there is a really good chance that you're going to fall in love with the marine as your go-to unit when playing the terran race. While there are sexier units for Terran, or the other races for that matter, it's still hard to beat a big pack of upgraded terran marine units charging around the map laying waste to your opponent. And if you haven't laid your hands on SC2 yet, it's high time, as a matter of fact you're late!  

Starcraft Secret Mission Part 2

Spoiler Alert! Both part 1 and 2 of this article contain major spoilers for the single player campaign of Starcraft 2.

So once you land on the platform in orbit around Castanar, you get about 5 Marines, 2 Medics and 1 Jim Raynor. You get to use a bunch of abilities in this mission and find ammo for them. You get a bazooka, grenades, a breaching charge, and even a fancy alien “Chrono Field” to slow your enemies (which you will need).

There are also a series of computer terminals that allow your adjutant to hack into the Lab’s mainframe and turn the automated defenses on the Dominion forces, which is always fun.

As you make your way through the lab fighting various and sundry Dominion forces, you discover that Mengsk had been funding a project that was trying to combine Protoss and Zerg DNA. Once you blow the reactor, a hybrid breaks out of its cage and destroys everything. All hell breaks loose and it turns into a race as Dominion forces are fighting you and Zerg and Protoss specimens they had been keeping around.

The whole time this giant, indestructible monstrosity chases you throughout the complex. There’s fallen debris in your way, of course, and Zerg eggs that hatch miniature Ultralisks. Use the bazooka or grenades on the debris and use Chrono Field on the Hybrid when he gets close.

On my first play through on the easiest setting I managed to make it to the dropship with only Jim Raynor left. This is a great mission and should get your heart pumping because the hybrid is fast and can slow all your units down for a short time. At a certain point, you have to decide to just keep running and dodge the enemies in front of you and ignore the Zerglings killing off your friends just so you can make it out alive.

The secret mission adds another unique mission to the already robust and exhilarating Starcraft  single player campaign. If you have not gotten your hands on this game yet, you need to. 

Starcraft 2 Secret Mission part 1

Spoiler alert! If you do not wish to spoil your experience of the Starcraft 2 campaign, then read no further.

In the Secret Mission in Starcraft 2, it is revealed that Mengsk had a top secret science lab conducting very dangerous experiments in a far off corner of the Galaxy. The mission is called Piercing the Shroud. You control Raynor and a small group of Marines and Medics

In order to get access to the Secret Mission in Starcraft 2 you have to start a new campaign. Simply going through the archives to replay a mission won’t work if you’ve already begun your assault on Char. Remember the warning sign that came up and said once you begin your assault on Char there’s no going back? Well they mean it as far as the secret mission is concerned.

I suggest you play the missions on casual so they go faster and easier if you’re just trying to get to the secret mission, or you could try to pick up the achievements you missed on the way, but you’ll need to get to the Media Blitz mission. That’s the one where there’s a parade on Korhal for the fabulous Odin war machine and Tychus starts blowing the place up. Alternatively, if you have a saved game before the invasion of char, you can load it and start from there.

In this mission, there is a Science Facility in the bottom right corner of the map. It’s colored red like the rest of the Dominion forces, but when you mouse over it the building will appear neutral and the tooltip will actually say “Korhal Citizens” on it. When you kill this building “Secret Documents” will drop, and you’ll have to move a unit over it to collect it just like you were collecting Protoss or Zerg research items.

Then, when you finish the Media Blitz mission, your mission selection screen will have a new planet on it called Castanar. It will also say “Secret Mission” on it so you’re not confused.

After the cutscene you will be able to take Raynor and a crack team of Marines and medics to the orbital platform to investigate just what’s going on in that secret lab. As you already know, secret labs are never doing anything good.

Starcraft 2 Guide

There are a lot of guides out there now for Starcraft 2. Because it is a brand new Real Time Strategy game, many people are having trouble competing online. They don’t know what units to build, how many or in what order, and they get consistently slaughtered by people who have been playing Real Time Strategy games for years.

Well, after reviewing several of the guides out there, I will give you the skinny on the pros and cons of each and recommend which one you should spend your money on. In order to really enjoy the game, it helps to have someone more experienced explain what you should be doing and why, and the only way to get that outside of buying a guide is to know someone who is very good at the game and is willing to give you lessons.

Shokz Guide – I was very suspicious of Shokz guide because he claimed to have a complete campaign guide included before the campaign was even available. This guide came out in the beta before anyone outside of Blizzard Entertainment had ever played the campaign.

Shokz guide is really flashy and has fancy video links and a forum in the members area. The guide does a good job teaching specific build orders for Terran, Zerg, and Protoss, but it doesn’t really explain WHY you should be doing the things you’re doing. This would be like in school if your math teacher taught you that 20 divided by 10 was 2, but never taught you how to divide. I think in order for new players to really get better, they’re going to need to know the WHY behind what they’re doing.

T-Dub’s guide had good graphics and is organized very well, but let’s just say that whoever he paid to write it really had no idea what they were talking about. Yes, they watched HD Starcraft and HuskyStarcraft videos and talked about a few good strategies, but one of the strategies in the guide is, get this: “Build a Mothership, 8-9 Colossus and 4-5 Sentries. When the enemy attacks, use the Vortex ability on their army then surround it with Force Fields. When the enemy units come out of the Vortex, have your Colossus positioned around them in a circle and insta-kill their entire army.”

If you’re a new player, this is a TERRIBLE strategy. Do you realize how much gas is required to make that many Colossus, then also tech up to a Mothership? Oh, and Sentries are 100 gas each, too. By then your opponent could have 10 Battlecruisers, which your Colossus can’t even hit.

Also, some of the links to videos in T-Dub’s guide actually link to videos that are only available to people who have purchased Shokz’ Guide.  Not very smooth there, T-Dub.

Gavin Garrett’s Guide, a.k.a. The Ultimate Starcraft 2 Guide, may not be as sexy as those others, but the information in this guide is priceless. I don’t know about you, but when I buy a game guide, I want it to teach me how to get better at the game, not impress me with fancy graphics and videos and have a bunch of filler crap in them.

Gavin’s guide only has strategies that work, but on top of that, it teaches you WHY you should be doing the things you are doing, so that with study and practice, you will know how to adapt to the unpredictable situations you’ll see when playing against real people.

Other guides are paint-by-numbers systems that tell you what counters what, what all the hotkeys are and different build orders. Gavin’s guide does all of that but with theory and expertise behind it so eventually you won’t need the numbers to paint anymore and you’ll even start painting your own original pictures.

For more information about Gavin’s Guide here.

Starcraft Campaign Review part 3

Welcome to our third and final installment of our three part review of the groundbreaking Starcraft 2 Campaign.

If you are new to Starcraft, or new to Real Time Strategy games in general, then you really need to start out on either Casual or Normal difficulty. As a die-hard Starcraft veteran who also played Warcraft 3, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War, Hard difficulty was, well, Hard.

Following on the footsteps of Blizzard’s (and the entire  worlds’) highest grossing game of all time, World of Warcraft,  there are achievements in Starcraft 2 for everything. And now, there are no single player “cheats” you can use to get the achievement since you have to log into Battle.net for the achievements to count.

Because of the achievements the Starcraft 2 campaign will have a lot of replay value for a lot of people. On top of the missions being extremely unique, there are achievements for doing “bonus” objectives on certain difficulties. These achievements also reward the player with portraits they can use on their online Battle.net profiles and are a great way to show off your gaming prowess to your friends.

The story is epic, but the end is such a cliffhanger that you may not feel satisfied by it. That’s probably what Blizzard wants because they want you to purchase the two upcoming expansions featuring the Zerg and Protoss campaigns. I’m not going to tell you the ending, so if that’s what you’re looking for, go play the game!

Because it does a great job combining RPG and RTS elements, has very deep tactical and character choices for the player to make, excels at making each mission unique and memorable, and has a ton of achievements to keep players coming back, the Starcraft 2 campaign is a great leap forward for the single player experience with Real Time Strategy, or any other kind of game. 

Starcraft 2 Campaign Review part 2

This is part 2 of our three part review of the Starcraft 2 Campaign.

Another groundbreaking feature in the Starcraft 2 campaign is the ability for you to upgrade units and buildings and even choose different research paths to augment your forces and increase the tactical depth of the game.

The campaign is mainly controlled from Raynor’s flagship, the Hyperion. On the ship, you can talk to other characters on the Bridge, visit the cantina to pound a few brews, purchase mercenary contracts or even play a mini Galaga-style arcade game, go to the Laboratory to choose your next path of either Protoss or Terran research, or go to the Armory and purchase powerful upgrades for your units.

This brings a level of choice to the game. On a single playthrough, you will not be able to afford all of the mercenaries and all of the upgrades. You will have to choose which units you like to use the most and upgrade only those. This makes the units you build on a mission that much more strategic. Should you go with upgraded Vikings or non-upgraded Goliaths to deal with enemy air? This makes the choice that much more significant, and that much more appealing for gamers.

There are also a few missions in the campaign that force you to choose what to do. This will have an effect on how the stories of certain characters end up. Blizzard has also hinted that the choices you make in this campaign may have effects in the upcoming ones. Since what paths you chose

Mercenaries are a different avenue a commander may take. Mercenaries are basically “super” versions of normal units that are available for an increased cost and in limited amounts. They could, however mean the difference between success or failure on a mission.

More on the Starcraft 2 Campaign in Part 3.

Starcraft 2 Campaign Review

Starcraft 2 Campaign Review

This is the first of a 3 part review of the Starcraft 2 Campaign. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get started right now.

The Starcraft 2 campaign is the greatest campaign ever for a Real Time Strategy game. Game maker Blizzard Entertainment delivers a top-notch RTS experience combined with compelling characters and a storyline that makes you feel almost as if you’re playing an role playing game.

The story follows rebel leader Jim Raynor who was a hero who helped save the universe in the original Starcraft but has been painted as a terrorist by the diabolical Arcturus Mengsk, the dictator of the “Terran Dominion,” which began as a rebel movement against the galaxy’s former corrupt government, the Confedaracy. The Dominion under Mengsk’s rule turned out to be just as, if not even more, corrupt than the Confederacy, which is why Raynor quit following Mengsk and why Mengsk uses the controlled media to mar Raynor’s reputation.

In the beginning of the campaign, you find Raynor at a small bar on a fringe world and fallen on hard times. He is confronted by his old partner in crime Tychus Findley, and it’s not really clear whether Raynor can trust him or not.

The campaign is designed beautifully with compelling cut scenes featuring the best digital animation created to date. The story unfolds through a twisting mire of unique missions that challenge the player to do something new in each one, often adding a new unit to command in the process.

For example, in one mission your objective may be to harvest a special type of gas from a planet while evil and overzealous Protoss are trying to seal the geysers forever, another mission tasks the player with stopping Dominion trains before they reach their destination, and in yet another the player takes control of a single unit that fights alongside friendly computer-controlled forces to assault a massive enemy base.

These are not your run of the mill RTS missions. Perhaps the single best thing the Starcraft 2 campaign accomplishes is making every mission unique.

More on the Starcraft 2 Campaign in Part 2!