Games

Watch Out for the Zerg

The lovely little critters are detailed by Blizzard

By Andrei Dumitrescu, Games Editor

11th of March 2008, 09:38 GMT

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There's no question in anyone's mind that Starcraft II is going to be huge. Even if the original is old, with dated graphics and some outdated gameplay mechanism, it has a huge followers on-line and playing Starcraft is a veritable way of life

in countries like South Korea.

So any news about the sequel is sort of like getting an adrenalin and epinephrine shot at the same time to a seasoned gamer. And that's exactly what Blizzard delivered when they released the Zerg fact sheet for Starcraft II. It read like a good suspense story, I tell you. Here are the spoilers... err, details.

Let's get the classic units that suffer no apparent changes out of the way first. The Drone is still a Drone, harvesting and turning into buildings, but nothing more. The Hydralisk is still the old workhorse for ranged and anti-air attacks. And the Zerling is still fast, still deadly if used correctly and still a pain in the ass for each and every enemy. Also back are the behemoth Ultralisk and the basic air unit, the Mutalisk. It's enough to give returning gamers a sense of familiarity.

And then there's the new stuff that's getting everybody excited. The Overlord gets the ability to drop slime so that the Zerg can build outside their base and it can also disable resource patches. There's the Overseer, an evolved Overlord that can spot cloacked units and has a great sight radius, a very necessary addition to a fast moving army like the Zerg.

On the ground you get to take command of Roaches, ground assault units that can quickly regenerate copious amounts of health when buried and are difficult to take down. Zerlings can become Banelings, a type of rolling bombs that explode on contact. And there's a Nydus Worm unit available, that can tunnel their way anywhere on the map, allowing the Zerg great speed of movement.

In the air there are some pretty interesting changes, too. The Infestor takes the support role that the Queen has in the original game while the new dedicated air-to-air unit is the Corruptor, a unit that turns enemy air units into turrets. The dedicated air-to-ground unit is the Swarm Guardian, which acts pretty much like the old Guardian excepts that it also creates little brood.

The biggest change is that of the Queen. She is now the most important Zerg unit, with many powerful abilities and a high attack rating. As she evolves, she gains destructive new abilities, from spewing toxic clouds to regenerating health for any Zerg building.

I don't know about you, but this certainly sparked my interest in Starcraft II. Stay tuned for more Starcraft related news. And check out the zerging action from Gametrailers:

TAGS:

Starcraft II | Zerg | Queen | RTS | Blizzard

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