Keith's Web Blog RSS Feed en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website StarCraft II http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/13/59b25aa3fa32c308ec5ce743f68e5d37.html right way. StarCraft II looks like it's shaping up to be a massive hit. The graphics are cutting edge as usual. But I'm heavily intrigued by the new units. One in particular looked just insanely awesome. It seems that the Blizzard team, in their constant attempts to appease us otaku fanboys, now are trying to put some of the Transformers/Macross Plus into their games!

What I really like is how Blizzard is able to incorporate more conceptual gameplay that goes beyond simple balanced statistics. For instance, check out this new Protoss unit called the Collosus. It isn't the prettiest thing to look at, but watch how it scales a wall, allowing you to strategically traverse difficult terrain. That idea incorporates the concepts of terrain, physics, graphics and gameplay without really just looking at boring game statistics.

Another element that's great about Blizzard games is that they incorporate a lot of social satire into their games. For instance, for the new Reaper units, there's a few funny lines:

"Reaper troopers are chemically altered to make them even more aggressive.."

"Perhaps unsurprisingly reapers are also enthusiastic users of stimpacks."

The first line is simply the whole notion of the biological experiments that occurred for soldiers in Vietnam with heroine, while there seems to be some unsaid sarcasm directed towards the whole drug use thing.

Either way, I'm looking forward to this game just on the basis of game play.]]> Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:34:24 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/13/59b25aa3fa32c308ec5ce743f68e5d37.html