**** Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm **** (Skybuck's Review).

[Skybuck Flying]

Hello Strategy/Sci Players,

Today/now I write my review of Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm.

As you may or may not already know, the first part Starcraft 2 Wings of
Liberty was already very good.

Can/did the sequel live up to it's name ?! You may be wondering...; the
answer is a definete and fully confirming yes ! ;) =D You bet ! ;) =D

I am going to give you my grade for this game straight of the bat: It's a
9.5 out of 10. It gets a 0.5 reduction for the sub-standard intermediate
realtime graphics during the menu scenes, something wrong with that... there
was no lighting.

Other than that... the game is near perfect... I did miss some guns on the
spaceship... and perhaps some other little convenient buttons, like mutate
all units at once or so... but other than that what a marvels game.

I finished the game in 2 days. The first day non stop playing, the second
day a little bit more probably 10 to 16 hours or so... didn't really measure
it. That's pretty long and standard for a game. (For comparision homeworld 2
took 18 hours and 30 mins ;) :))

Anyway... this game Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm has the alure of
Starwars...

When I first played starwars/x-wing and later starwars/tie-fighter I had the
same feeling of amazement and total aweness.... this game has that as
well... it's just so damn good.

The voice acting is terrific... I just saw the ending credits... and to my
great surprise... the female voice is actually done by an actor from
battlestar galactica ! ;) Amazing ! ;)

I won't yet tell you who it is... you ll have to figure that out for
yourself... I didnt even recgonize here voice which is a good thing... I
loved her voice... good one.

I will tell you how I felt after the first day of playing (I did have some
back pain because of a medical condition but I took some 3 minutes rest in
between to continue playing well worth it), so after the first day of
playing... I felt like I had 10 orgasm lol... yup... the game is that
satisfieing... it is totally statisfieing... I was totally relaxed and went
to sleep very well as always but this time a little bit better even... felt
good/nice... very very very very good game ! LOL.

Ofcourse the best part of it is the story ! I SIMPLY LUVE THE STORY ! ;) =D
I kept playing and playing and playing the uncover more of the story. To my
great surprise there is also a lot of evolution talk in it which was kinda
nice and cool... some parts where really far out/whacky/sci-fi/well thought
out... sometimes a little bit hmmmm but ok.... Lots and lots of thought went
into this game that is very sure.

For example I absolutely love the dialog about the strategies and tactics
that the swarm well use as explained by the queen... The dialog is just
fantastic ! I could not wish for more... I had some nice plots/turns and
twists in it... and the queen is surely a nice good old nasty old bitch
which I love lol. She likes to say: "Kill them" a lot ! ;) =D Which I also
love lol.

Lots of vengeance and a little bit of hate in this game but not too much...
it's all very easy going... for me as a company of heroes player... the game
was quite easy... I played on normal.. and the game had a nice pace... I
mostly played it just to uncover the story... not so much for the tactics.

I must admit... as a World War 2 player.. I am very surprised about the
units/tactics in this game... lots or some ? of new units/capabilities it
seems... I haven't played any skirmish yet... so maybe there are new protoss
units as welll.... maybe not I dont know... but the swarm/zerg have
evolved... with all kinds of new active or passive abilities which is
nice... I mostly chose passive abilities because I dont like to
micro-management to much... I want my units to auto-fight... I just place
them where they should be... this is a massive-unit game after all... mostly
ment
to spam spam spam spam loads of units, so not much tactics involved... just
spam spam spam spam.

However I can see that there are some truely tactical abilities in this
game... I kinda loved the tunnelling idea... for movement and attack... and
also the abductor was interesting ;) :) if it were auto-matic it could be an
interesting tactic for real world too lol.

Anyway I can imagine that many people that like this kinda of sci-fi/fantasy
strategy game will have loads of fun online... for me I ll probably stick to
ww2... since fantasy scares me a bit ;) :) too much whacky stuff going on...
maybe I can play it over tunngle that could be fun... I might give it a try
if possible, otherwise I might give skirmish a try... or simply continue
playing other games... the prospect of getting spammed by a 15 year old or
god forbid a 4 year old... is just not very appealing to me... so I ll stay
away from the spam for now maybe ;) :)

I saw in the credits that the music and maybe also sound was recorded in
Skywalker Studios from Lucas Arts which explains a lot... it explains why
the sound is so god damn good... and why the music is so god damn good.

And ofcourse the cinematics are fokking fantastic/insanely good as always...
and also the menus are insanely beautifull as aways... almost a
Blizzard-Trademark you would say ! ;) =D

Blizzard sure knows it thing about graphics... this game can easily be
played on a low end PC... I played it on a GT 520 which is the cheapest DX11
card available... I played on 1920x1200 and set graphics to medium or so...
little bit custom... the game played smooth to my feeling... never really
laggy or anything... there were a few hick ups were the game took a few
seconds to load... one time it almost seemed to freeze but fortunately it
continued... other than that no crashes, no bugs... just super high quality
programming yup.

There is enough new content/story development/characters to be entertaining
to the max, so if you were afraid that it would be more of the same... don't
worry, there is plenty of new stuff and feels like a true sequel/part 2 ! ;)
=D

I also just saw the end and loved that too... every little bit of it ! ;) =D
and especially the end how it signals... that yet another part will follow
and what enemy it will/might be... the battle is not over yet ! ;) =D We
already know because we know there will be 3 parts... :)

This game also has the longest end credits ever lol... and the music was
quite cool/relaxing/high quality it was nice.

And this game also has a first... a premiere lol... it actually has "end
credit controls" which is hilariously funny and cool... why nobody else
thought of that lol ?! ;) =D

You can actually pause, slow down or speed up the end credits... and
especially the speed up makes sense now that I saw how long it was ! LOL.

It really makes me wonder how much money a game like this racks in ?! It
must be many many millions... to pay all those saleries ? or perhaps these
are all company people who also work on world of warcraft to rack in more
money... <- probably that ;) :)

There is one part in the game which deserves to be on a youtube video for
awesome techno-evolution-babble.... I was really impressed by it's logical
reasoning... I might upload it some day ! ;) =D

I will also probably watch some of the cinematics...

There is also some good news for newbies.... part 1 is included with the
game as well ! ;) =D "Wings of Liberty" ! ;) =D I kinda love that intro
too... so I might play it after this message to hear that awesome line once
more: "Ya never know what a man is made of until his freedom is taken away"
or something like that ! LOL ;) =D Love that too... but there is probably a
big battle intro before it or something but anyway... I ll sit through it ;)
:)

Also the end scene of heart of the swarm reminds me of my own lukeskywalker
vs emporer parody... lol a coincidence ?! ;) :) or a sadistic agreement that
this is cool ?! ;) =D Who knows... only thing I know is... I loved it that
too ! ;) =D and then the explosion being the big fart ? lol ok..
It was kinda whacky though... how did regnor survive that explosion ? maybe
in his suit ? well ok ;) :) maybe the queen protected him ? well ok ;) :)

All in all I looovvved the queen and her development and evolution and
sexyness... a joy to play with during the menu/scenes ! ;) =D In game a
little bit less... I wish there was more fury and madness and screaming
maybe and more psionic powers and blasts, but all in all ok not too shabby !
;) =D

The voices of all the aliens pretty cool... I am not sure but I think the
voice of optimus prime was in there too somewhere ?! Pretty cool... I
recgonized that a little bit... I think it s one of the more powerfull
bosses or something.

I also loved the space-fight near the end... cooooolll.... it made me remind
how much I would love a good old space game like that ! ;) =D It did get a
bit boring after a few minutes but fortunately it ended soon... (lack of
diverse units I guess ;) :))

I did have some running around with my army... trying to protect multiple
targets so even at normal difficulty it give me a little bit a run for my
pirate money lol ;) :)

I did loose a few buildings here and there but nothing to bad... the missing
with the beams pushing against each other was probably the only mission
which I felt was kinda lame... because it was the same as in the first part
? But I still enjoyed the tactical mission of it...

Overall the game doesn't feel graphically as polished/finishes as the first
one... during the game itself everything is great... but some cinematics and
realtime cinematics could have been better.... so perhaps it was a bit
rushed here and there... but compared to other games
this is still top notch and way better than anything out there really... so
thumbs up for starcraft 2 heart of the swarm.

With this game you pretty much can't go wrong.

This game is probably for the average gamer... which like average strategy
games with a little touch... and who doesnt want to be playing rage
games/full of frustration and just wants to have a nice time online... or
enjoy a really good single player...

Probably most suited for kids between 12 and 18 years old.

And ofcourse any other true die-hard-star-craft-fan-of-any-age ! ;) =D LOL.

I am not a super-true-die-hard-fan so I will say goodbye for now ! ;) =D

But rest assured... I shall return for PART 3 with a DEFINETE YES YES YES
YES YES YES ! ;) =D

I WILL BE BACK ! :) =D BRING ON THE STARCRAFT 2, PART 3 ! ;) =DDDDDDDDDD

Bye,
Bye,
Star-craft-buck ! ;) =D <- yes I have been strainded too ! ;) =D