Who on Earth was speculating about the possibility of a game called Medusa, yesterday? It must have been some kind of moron. Blizzard have just announced to an audience of genuinely screaming Koreans that their top-secret game is, indeed, the long-overdue Starcraft II.
There's the graphical improvements you'd expect from a game that'll be 10 years in the coming by the time it's released - there's physics now, so stuff will roll down hills and explode properly. But it was the new units and powers that drew bellows of excitement - and I honestly swear to you that a sizeable minority of the crowd behind me were actually grunting. I'm in an Olympic Stadium full of people who would rip my face off for a chance to play this game. And wonderful, screaming girls.
Dustin Browder, the game's lead designer, forced us to watch a teaser video which was the Terran equivalent of Bruce Wayne putting on his bat-suit, after which we were treated to a ten-minute gameplay demonstration, which focussed mainly on the Protoss troops.
Zealots To Charge Zealots, for instance, will be given a charge ability, which will make them more powerful against ranged attacks. These Zealots, however, will still be susceptible to Terran siege tanks, but in combatting the tanks, the Protoss have developed an enirely new unit.
Immortals To Laugh At Big Weapons, Reapers To Laugh At Immortals The Immortals have a hardened shield, that only activates against powerful attacks, so the siege tanks will hardly damage them at all - whereas the lower-powered attacks of the Terran Reapers - who use a jump attack to get over the disadvantages of lower ground - will hit home much more effectively.
Hello, Phase Prisms Phase prisms are a new Protoss device, acting as a large, powerful shield - which, when used with the warp-in ability, will allow Protoss players to bring in an army anywhere they damn please.
Zerglings To Mutate Into Acid-Filled Little Exploding Bastards Then came the Zerg, with a traditional Zerg Rush (which, surprisingly, didn't fetch a boo from the players, who take a "fair and square" oath), but perhaps they were too entranced by the Colossus which had appeared, mopping up the uncuddly Tribbles with a beam attack. The zerglings responded with a new mutation, which - in effect - caused them to go green, roll around and explode. Nice mutating, Zergs!
Colossus Can't Look Up, You Know The Colossus is strong against ground attacks, and weak against air, so they were ideal fodder to show off the new Protoss Phoenix, which has been given the ability to Overload. This move delivers a beefy wallop so delightfully draining that the Phoenix has to have a little sit down, afterwards - so make sure you hit your target, because if you miss, you'll be a sitting duck-phoenix. The Phoenix also has a warp ray, which seemed to be good for ripping apart marines and barracks.
Mothership To Kill Everything The last new unit we were shows was the Protoss Mothership. So powerful you're only allowed one at a time, the Mothership can set off a Time Bomb - which actually bombs time, causing all enemy units to slow down. This also gave off a chance to show off the delicious physics, as the missiles that had been frozen in mid-air during the bomb fell harmlessly to the ground once the effects wore off. I did wonder why they didn't explde with the impact, but it looked cool in a Matrix way, so I didn't heckle too loudly. Besides, if I'd stood up and said "Browder, your Time Bomb is not realistic and I hate it", I'd be too dead to be writing this now.
The Mothership can also create Black Holes, which is nice, and the Planet Cracker delivers a beefy wallop to anything daft enough to be standing underneath an enemy Mothership. It's the best unit available to the Protoss team, and it'll cost a lot of resources; and once you've got one, you can be sure your opponent will attack the beast.
Browder was at pains to explain that there's long months of balancing ahead - but from the gasps, bellows, screams and grunts from the audience here, the first impressions are pretty damn good. Will it become a new staple of Korean competitive gaming in the same way Warcraft III and Starcraft I have? Will people stubbornly stick to the old version, like the did with Counterstrike? Wil the new units and moves gel together as elegantly as the original game? Hell, this is Blizzard. Zerg Rushing aside, they're the kings of balance - I'm only asking because it seemed like an appropriate kind of way to end this piece.
Video and photos to be uploaded soon, and more stuff to come as it happens...
Although this preview makes it sound considerably better, the vids on Youtube at the moment are a bit like watching paint dry, another RTS consisting of two sides sitting there shooting different coloured lights at each other. Woo.
Having said that, one of the strengths of Starcraft was a fantastic plot and likable characters - if that's resurrected it'll be worth it.
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