Star Blog #56

Gonna talk about Starcraft 2 (duh)....and Starhawk Private Beta! Yeah for variety lol

First of all - my SC2 LAN is this Saturday - can't wait. Gonna be a blast! I'm still getting used to my new giant 27" display. I also had to give up using my Razer Copperhead mouse and am now slumming it with a MS mouse which is taking some getting used to and definetly has a different feel. But the game is playing buttery smooth and looks amazing.

I got into the Starhawk Private Beta by way of a couple of buddies (Thanks DJKatasroph3 and Biznass!)...and the game is pretty freak'n sweet! First of all I loved Warhawk - it was one of my favorite clan games and one of my favorite games to solo in. Usually if a game is enjoyable in both those scenarios it will quickly be propelled to one of my favorites :) From what I've read and seen on sites like IGN there is no NDA so I can talk freely about the game.

Starhawk is a lot like Warhawk - if enjoyed Warhawk I think you will enjoy Starhawk as well. However; it does have some massive changes.

First of alll the infantry combat is way better than in Warhawk. Warhawk was fun because of the vehichles, the turrets and the sniping, the landmines etc. but the actual infantry combat was a little lacking - it kind of played almost like a Lego game. Starhawk's infantry combat is a lot closer to some of the more refined TPS (like a fast Gears of War minus the cover, or even more like Red Faction Guerriela). I'm thankful for that for as much fun as rolling around in the vehichles is - I still find I spend a lot of time running around being a ground troop.

Second the Warhawks (just called Hawks in this one) are now mechs. You can run around on the ground in a giant mech, shooting and stomping things or you can transform into a Warhawk and go dog fighting!

Third - the biggest change of all is that Starhawk is a third person vehichlular combat game.....and a Tower Defence game or RTS. Basically you collect this stuff called Rift which you get from killing enemies, destroying enemy structures, being around your base near this thing that gives off Rift etc. And with Rift you can then make all kinds of structures. You can build and place walls, auto turrets, manual lazer turret death beam things, sniper towers, garages, Hawk pads, jet pack buildings etc. Your team can have 32 of these structures on the map....you can put them basically anywhere. Early on it is very popular to fortify your flag with walls and turrets and sniper towers etc. but as you gain more map control you can move your buildings up (you can reclaim buildings - esentially destroy them - and then build a new different (or same) building in a different location).

It is a really fun twitst and really lends itself to some innovative play. I'm sure a well organized team with some different "build orders" could really be cool. Obviously the problem in public games is that anyone can build anything.....and anyone on your team can "reclaim" what you've built. So you probably aren't going to get the best builds every game in the public games :) but from what I played it was still realy good. I mean building a garage to spawn Razerbacks (aka Warthogs - nice little nod to Halo) is never really going to be a detriment to your team but obviously some really well thought out builds and building placements can change how the battle is played out.

Here is a video (not me) of someone playing the beta so you can try and wrap your head around some of this stuff.

 and here is a clip where at the beginning a guy calls a building down on a mech to kill it lol