I recently installed the Mac version of Starcraft II Beta and so far things look pretty good. It's more or less like its predecessor with regards to three races (Terran, Protoss & Zerg) duking it out for intergalactic domination on a 2D battlefield plane with a good amount of reused units. There are however very significant differences such as graphics, music, units, interface and specific racial quirks that further differentiate the races from one another.
The graphics have definitely been turned up a notch as the system requirements greatly increased. Every single unit, building and even environmental obstruction is 3 dimensional. This is a vast difference from Starcraft 1 where the units were 2D slices taken from a 3D model of a unit. Music in SC2 beta is more subtle and I personally prefer it over Starcraft's scores. (See below for Youtube of the Protoss theme.)
They really cranked up the interface. Players can now select an unlimited amount of units, rally units to resources or other units, queue up workers to build multiple buildings, and keep track of idle workers. A good bit of these changes were translated from Warcraft III, which was the game released sometime after Starcraft 1 and years before Starcraft 2 was even announced.
The most notable aspect of Starcraft 2 would be the unique abilities each race received. I am talking about the Terran MULE, Protoss Chrono Boost and Zerg Queen. These changes do not seem to affect the gameplay all that much but if you keep using these abilities frequently at optimal times, the overall result will be drastic and most likely be a deciding factor in a close match. The Terrans have the ability via Command Center to summon a temporary unit (nicknamed MULE) to serve mainly as a resource gatherer that has the ability to gather more mineral/gas per round than the average worker unit. The Protoss Chrono Boost is an ability that a Nexus can use to increase the speed of unit production or upgrade research time by 50% of a selected building for a limited amount of time. Zerg Queen is the new early game unit that can inject extra larvae into a hatchery/lair/hive, heal units and buildings, and take the role of base defender.
I mainly play 2v2 as Protoss with a friend (who plays Zerg) and for the time being we're a little more than 50/50 win-loss ratio sitting somewhere in the Gold League. It's not the greatest achievement but we're still learning the ropes and having fun at the same time. I find it much more stressful than playing World of Warcraft Arenas as there are many things happening at the sametime and the skill cap is a lot higher with hardly any global cool downs to deal with.
That's enough SC2 for now, till next time!
My favourite unit (Void Rays) doing what they do best.
Protoss Theme Music
As mentioned above that I play Protoss and enjoy the music. There's a certain 'epic' feeling to it that I can't explain.
Here's a Youtube video of what I have been hearing for the past 3 days.
