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.