Duck and Cover

Ok, so i opted in for the Starcraft beta about a year and a half ago. I have been and still am a pretty avid starcraft player, at school buddies of mine play a match or two. So i said to myself i cant miss the beta opt in. I HAVE to get it. Well, the beta started and i have recieved no email thus far. So I downloaded it from a friend and made it so i can play against AI.
Anyways, since it is a beta, i cant give an in depth review of the game as i would have wanted to, but i can slightly review the beta gameplay.
I have only been able to play against AI because it isnt exactly a legit copy of the beta. But it preforms great. The zerg are squishier and Protoss more awesome technologically, while the terran have pretty much stayed the same when it comes to feel.
I just want to point out, the first thing i noticed when i loaded the game was the awesome music. It was very starcrafty and i love it. The first soundtrack was amazing and loved listening to it at high volume compared to the regualr game volume (sometimes it would bite me in the ass because i wouldn't be paying attention and would thus get raped by zerglings). Well, SC2 music from this point is amazing and does in fact improve upon the old and renews it with a modern Blizzard-like tone (compared to their newer games(ex.WoW, and even warcraft 3, which is still a lot newer)). It does use some of the same basic beats and rhythms as the first SC, which is a triple positive because it was already genious.
im glad they didnt entirely remake it.
Anyways, I played the zerg the most and i have to say... there are a LOT of things to do while playing a round with them. Queen's eggs. making sure no one is idling, you just have to do things right like the first one but more. And the zergs are squishier.
My favorite race is the Protoss, though i do miss how the animations for the old zealots were. They changed them for SC2 so they are a lot slower (visually) but i think they still basically do the same thing, other than the lack of the ability to run fast all the time, instead there is an ability to charge at the enemy which uses up energy of the zealot.
I dont want to give away too much about the gameplay, so over all its a great game. Im probably going to buy it when it comes out.

Hah, I signed up 6 months ago and got my beta invite a month ago.

Single player can not compare to multiplayer, so dont even bother.

Yeah the music is great.
It's a worthy sequel, I'd put it as that.

I'd say that the game is more sophisticated from the macro aspect than the first one, your hands are constantly full.

A major improvement for me at least is the fact that you can select more than 12 units, unlike in the first one (up to 200 actually or so, I think),

your right, singleplayer does not not compare to multiplayer matches.

and yea. something in the hundreds of units you can control at once.

What are system reqs like?

what? when did they do a beta?

Psychoul wrote:your right, singleplayer does not not compare to multiplayer matches.

and yea. something in the hundreds of units you can control at once.

Well, you can only have 200 population. So at best you have 200 probes or 200 marines. Or maybe not in costum games.

S4ur0n27 wrote:what? when did they do a beta?

It's going on right now, isn't it?

How the hell did you guys get in and not me? Can you still do that thing where you can play single player without a beta key, I would have thought they blocked that somehow by now?

No, you cannot play the single player without the beta key since the cracked version is only for the multiplayer AI.

Also, Snake, do Zerglings now count for one psi each, as opposed to 1/2 which they were in SC1?

I rarely play with Zerg but yes I think so. I will have to check though!

yeah how did you guys get in?

Didn't, there is a cracked AI version out there.

You guys pretty much suck at answering questions.

I don't know about the reqs dog since I just got a new PC.
However, google directed me to:

Blizzard wrote:The minimum system requirements for the StarCraft II Beta are as follows:

PC Minimum Requirements:
• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024x768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

Those are pretty slim reqs. Nice to know that even older computers should be able to handle it.

It's pretty and seemingly sticks to its roots, which was a pleasant surprise. Never actually liked SC though, nor did I really enjoy the beta, so I may be missing out on some subtle nuances available only to diehard koreans. That said, it gets an A-OK from me.

Frater Perdurabo wrote:No, you cannot play the single player without the beta key since the cracked version is only for the multiplayer AI.

Also, Snake, do Zerglings now count for one psi each, as opposed to 1/2 which they were in SC1?

A bit late but zerglings count for 0,5 each. You get two from an egg and that counts as one.

Good music is a plus in a game, but from what i am reading, this game might have the annoyances that CnC4 has. I am really loathing the online always part of PC games of late.

What annoyances do you refer too?