Wednesday 13 March 2013

Starcraft 2 'Heart Of The Swarm' First Impressions


Starcraft 2 is back and this time with an expansion pack named “Heart of the Swarm”. I thought the best thing to cover before we start moving into strategies and tips that you can use in the game is the changes or indeed the first impressions I had.

Of course Starcraft has 2 main parts as you have the story based campaign but most people will be gunning for the larger online multiplayer that has some very diverse game modes.
I will cover the campaign first and as the game has only just launched I will provide more on the multiplayer at a later date. The first thing you notice is just like with Wings of Liberty the new HoTs (Heart of the swarm) is not lacking in content and you get a campaign about the same size.

The price is $40 for the expansion and if your fear is that you will not get a lot of content you can lay them to rest there is plenty here!

In the story you will take control of Kerrigan who is a human but was the former Queen of the Blades. You have been reunited with Jim Raynor who is her long lost love but the game pretty much starts with you getting separated again.

The game is focused on Kerrigan exacting revenge on Arcturus Mengsk for reassembling the swarm. There are 27 missions and they obviously get increasingly more difficult. Little has changed with the actual mechanics of the game except that it does seem easier for beginners to get into.

For instance you will find that workers will auto mine at the start of the game and the base is automatically rallied to the minerals. You also get a counter that shows you how saturated your base is so you don’t have to count manually.

In between missions you have an upgrade system that will allow you to have conversations with your swarm allies which is fun but the main purpose of this is to evolve. You can evolve yourself and your units and you will be able to unlock 3 upgrades for each unit.

You can only pick one at a time however.

As you carry on through the game you will be asked to pick a permanent evolution for each unit and this allows you to make Zerlings grow wings and be able to jump off cliffs or they can gain the ability to spawn instantly with three to an egg instead of two.

Kerrigan has her own evolution tree and she unlocks things like healing, leap strike or items to help base management, you will also be able to swap around your upgrades as you see fit.

So Heart of the swarm looks good on first impressions and has some interesting tweaks.

More on the multiplayer soon…

For a COMPLETE guide to Heart of The Swarm and to DOMINATE Multiplayer head over to Shokz Starcraft 2 Guide…