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Starcraft II's first three missions, plus Battle.net woes


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Gallery: We take you through a the first three missions in the new Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty campaign. But it's not all roses...

After the long wait, it's out. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty now has a new home on our hard drive, and we've been delving into the campaign. All for the review, of course...

We've played the first three missions, and taken extensive screenshots to show off the new game. It really does look great, and even though we would have liked to have seen proper anti-aliasing, it's still very, very pretty. But our final verdict's a long way off - there's a lot of game to ingest!

That said, the game's launch has not been perfect. Upon install we had to wait for a zero-day patch to upload and install, and then we got into the game. Our play online last night was fine, and we really like the Battle.net and Facebook integration a lot more than we expected, but this morning it looks like Battle.net's already down for maintenance.

This shows off the one issue of reliance on this kind of setup - as of new, we can't play multiplayer, our achievements aren't being tracked, and we can't even look at the scoring screens following a match versus the AI.

But it's early days yet. Keep an eye out for our full verdict in the next issue of Atomic, onsale the 11th of August.

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18 Comments

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thedirtymex Jul 28, 2010 10:42 AM	Did anyone notice in one of those first missions. In a little rock shelf there was a super marine from Warhammer? You click on it and the unit name was super marine or something similar. It roars, turns then jumps off the cliff
alexdtree Jul 28, 2010 11:20 AM	does starcraft have a screen shot folder like wow or do you have to manually save each one?
Mordecai Jul 28, 2010 12:15 PM	"our achievements aren't being" Aren't being what? friendly? committed to your relationship? filled with sweet sweet toffee?
Ashlar Jul 28, 2010 12:35 PM	Achievements appeared to be working for me... -A-
Hawkeye Jul 28, 2010 1:29 PM	They aren't being anything right now!
Mudg3 Jul 28, 2010 2:41 PM	Anyone notice the night elf in the bar?
Tythais Jul 28, 2010 5:19 PM	Trying to force anti-aliasing... god Catalyst Control Centre is a piece of shit
CK Jul 28, 2010 7:18 PM	You get your missions in a bar? That's AWESOME! Shoot some Zerg, have some beer, shoot more Zerg, drinks morz beerz, shootz morz zergggggg. Getting my copy tomorrow for sure.
riya1234 Jul 28, 2010 7:29 PM	Send your good taste to celebration by delivering our mouthwatering cakes to Bangalore and exotic flowers to Bangalore and leave a cherished memory with them. For details, visit http://www.bangaloreonlineflorists.com/flowers_online.asp.
R4nd0M Jul 28, 2010 9:17 PM	I played a good chunk of the campaign yesterday on a trial key provided by a mate. Great fun. It makes me sad to say that purchasing SC2 from Battle.net didn't go so smoothly. Repeated attempts to purchase it resulted in me being charged twice and not having the game attached to my account. Had to ring up support and have a friendly American chap assist me in purchasing the US version over the phone (which requires the US client, another 7GB download), offer to email me when he gets the South-East Asia keys and switch my account over to that, and assure me that the $170 debited from my account will auto-refund in a week or so. All in all not a great experience. At least I've got a direct contact in case the money isn't refunded in a short period. Game is great though
Splatterchops Jul 29, 2010 7:08 PM	R4ndOM...sorry to hear that, very bad for business. Thanks for the warning. That's not for me.
nicknet Jul 29, 2010 10:48 PM	R4ndOM's experience is another reason I only buy retail or from Steam. Sad to hear about the patch (i thought those days were gone) - is it required to play campaign or just online?
sirtrancealot Jul 30, 2010 9:31 AM	Come on not like the Zero-Day patch was that bad, a whole 25mb? I've been more annoyed with the Battle.net drop-outs when i'm mid game, and you get the usual "waiting for players", but otherwise EPIC! i'm in <3
somemadcaaant Jul 30, 2010 12:08 PM	The game is masterful, I would say quite a bit easier and more forgiving then the original with all the options I like in C&C thrown in. I still play the original at work lol. Played several multiplayer games and have won every time thus far, I found that ppl will tend to leave if their starting game is shot just like at lans playing the original lol. If any1 wants a decent challenge my nick is SMC ;)
Tythais Jul 30, 2010 2:50 PM	I bought online, it cleared and downloaded straight away and quickly, was playing it within 3 hrs... perfect system for me
magstheblue Aug 2, 2010 3:51 PM	really disappointed with the SP. having played through SCBW about 10 times over the years, i really love the story. Finshed the hard campaign on the weekend and dont think im going to ever play the campaign again. this one is rubbish imo and i dont like the direction. its like C&C, play it through, go meh, and leave it at that. multiplayer is solid though and ive been playing for months loving it.
Kastoli Aug 3, 2010 11:41 AM	I'm not sure if Blizzard intended it to work this way, and i'm sure if they didn't, it will be patched out sooner or later... but after logging into the game with a battle.net account you gain offline access to all single player features. It doesn't matter if that battle.net account has a full version of the game, or is only on the 7 hour trial. So i've found myself with: two complete play-throughs of the campaign, all challenges completed, at least 20 hours of offline vs. AI and the 7 hours of online play... all without spending a cent. Don't get me wrong, I still intend to actually purchase the game -- albeit at this point, only for the multilayer -- but it seems to me, for all the trouble they've had with the DRM, it doesn't work terribly well.
ciphone Aug 3, 2010 3:52 PM	I am bad boy...Hello!everyone!iphone is so expensive.so I like (www.efox-shop.com/index.php/cPath/5_35/) Ciphone d^_^bIt is very interesting.I want to introduce ( www.efox-shop.com/)efox-shop to you.

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