Just a quiet Zergly afternoon
The time had to come, and we knew it.
We had to try out the “other” side. The third edge of this triangle. The burrowers, the stalkers, those who would infect and destroy us. The Zerg.
Since our familiarity with them was an approximate value of zero, we chose to go for the AI match, which is a nice feature of the Beta. You can’t do the single player campaign, which is too bad, but it is nice to have a computer-opponent option open when you don’t want to show off to the world how badly you suck at StarCraft.
We set the AI value for “very easy”, which we figured was appropriate. If they’d had a “doesn’t have the dexterity to use a keyboard” option, that would have been an even closer skill match.
The first thing we noticed about our new Zerg nest was that it was ugly.
Scratch that. Fugly.
Black and twisted-looking, with a central hatchery and three larvae hanging around outside it. Oh, and a few drones to get things going. In short, very species-appropriate. The Zerg aren’t supposed to look pretty like the Protoss or functional like the Terrans. They’re biological, driven by needs mere mortals can’t understand. They don’t need form or beauty, just function. Gross, slimy, function.
As we quickly learned, the black crap underneath us was Creep. Aside from sounding like a bad street drug, the stuff was pretty useful, enabling us to move quicker and letting it be known that Zerg ruled the bleak and charred landscape. We had a few options for expanding our Creep zone – we could create Overlords that functioned as supply depots and could excrete the stuff, but only when they weren’t moving. This allowed us to slowly expand our borders.
Our other option was to build a Queen, who could create a small pod that would extend a Creep “zone”, much like the Protoss pylon. That pod could itself build another pod, which could build another….you get the idea. Also like the Protoss, our structures could not be built outside of our Creep control.
All of that seemed fairly straightforward, but it was once we started making buildings that things got weird. Making units made sense. The little larva that spawned from the Hatchery could be “mutated” into whatever we wanted, provided we had the technology available. Simple enough.
But then we tried to build a vespene gas refinery and realized that Zerg buildings aren’t actually built. They’re comprised of the bodies of their drones, bent to a new purpose. We saw tentacles snaking into the ground, hideous sacs being filled and burst, and heard gobs of squishy sounds echoing out of out speakers. Again, makes sense given who we’re dealing with.
The mutation mechanics are interesting, and larva will continually spawn, three at a time, from the Hatchery. Since every unit starts from these little ones, it requires a re-think on how to play as compared to Terrans or Protoss.
Once we had a handle on our new army and the bile in our throats, we set out to see what the Zerg had to offer. We built a few defensive structures, made some Zerglings for fun, and finally settled on a small army of Roaches to go and harry the enemy base. These were great because they moved quickly, did heavy ground damage, and when burrowed regenerated their health incredibly fast.
Since our computer opponent could barely tie his own CPU shoelaces, he wasn’t much of a challenge. We took our Reapers through his base and then burrowed them before the final kill, allowing him time to rebuild while we healed up and built a new and even more disgusting army.
On that note – only use Banelings to attack stuff if you don’t want them around anymore. We sent eighteen of them to attack a rockfall blocking our path, thinking that they must have some ability other than “explode everywhere”, but that’s a resounding no. We lost all of them in about three seconds and didn’t blow up a single damn rock.
Within just a few minutes, we’d made our first round of Brutalisks, just to see how they were. They looked more like a dinosaur/insect hybrid to us, but they got their job done, which was basically to hit stuff really hard. The Roaches we had left in the enemy base were still there, being shot at by a lone Marine and a Hellion, but they were burrowed so they were good to go. Our armies met up, and chaos reigned.
So far, the Zerg have lived up to their original reputation. Playing them is fast and furious, and the possibly of a huge rush early on is a real possibility. About the only complaints we have so far are that the larva are very difficult to see, owing to the fact that everything in your base is pink or green. Getting the right units mutated in the right places can be difficult.
The other small gripe we have has been written about elsewhere, and that’s the Zerg voiceovers. The “we don’t have enough minerals/gas/napkins” voice sounds a lot more like a Terran doing a bad Zerg impression than a bug spawned from the many-fanged mouth of the yawning nether.
In any case, we can’t claim that the Zerg are our first choice. They’ll never be our favorites, but they’re exactly as advertised. Gross.
