You might think that the price for Starcraft 2 might be a tad uncomfortable for your finances, you will be pleased to hear that you could be enjoying the game for as low as SGD$1.50.
“Only $1.50?! What’s the catch?”
Well, you get to enjoy the game for a full 72 hours. And my guess would be it is counted in real world hours and not in game time.
But that still raises the question, why is Starcraft II relatively pricier compared to other PC games in the market for Asia? The cost of setting up a localized server still does not sit well with few but, yet, the game has gone on to be a commercial success despite the price tag.
Still have not got your Zerg fix yet? The lowered, subscription based plans will kick in come November 18th 2010.
It looks like Amazon was not spot on with it’s release dates as, now, Blizzard has made it official – December 7th 2010 is the day that Deathwing will lay waste to the lands of Azeroth.
Sadly, there will be no Goblin Druid. What a bummer.
Being the 4th expansion in the series, Cataclysm, will require all the previous 3 games in order to play. Thankfully, Battlechest editions exist meaning the first 2 are budget prices while the third, Wrath of the Lich King, is still a full priced product.
My call? Wait till Cataclysm hits before getting all 3.
Once again, Blizzard would be releasing a collector’s edition for this game. In what quantity and considering Singapore, it could be as rare as the Starcraft II edition.
Pardon the poor sizing but the CE comes with:
Behind the scenes DVD
Soundtrack
Art Book
WoW TCG Starter packs
An In-Game Pet
Mousepad
The Game Disc (Of course)
Not really anything to shout about compared to other CE offerings we’ve seen thus far this year, but the CE is by far the cheapest coming in at USD80.
We do hope this piece of news would be able to calm nerves down.
A flight from Germany takes roughly 12 hours, so the package should arrive in Singapore in about half an hour from the point of this post (in an ideal situation).
We are currently monitoring the progress half hourly.
Do remember to follow us @qisahn on Twitter for the fastest updates.
But I’m really caught between 2 games now. I’ve prepared my PC for FFXIV and ready to make full use of the headstart timing only to be thwarted by this:
GIANT. DEATH. ROBOT. PEW PEW.
Civ 5 seems to be taking a more humorous twist this time round and with Singapore offered as a city-state, I wonder to myself how to split 24 hours and play both these awesome games at the same time and not lose my job and social life.
Not a hoax by the way, you can find it on page 44 of the online manual. Thick game manuals, you shall be missed.
Here’s the funniest take on the announcement, just something I found on the local forums:
Country feature:
High upkeep of the country : Your government is world most expensive.
Special building :THE GREAT ERP GANTRY ! (Improve your government profit by 1000%, but only 1% will go to the country)
RAPID POPULATION GROWTH : Your country is opened to foreigners.
99% cheaper military production due to national slavery(NS) .
Leader attributes:
MUST always use the civic dictatorship. Civilians will not get angered no matter what.
Special Unit:
The merlion (Special water unit capable of spiting water at enemy battleship)
Great Artist:
Jerk Noo , +3 culture from sex scandals excitements.
SPECIAL FEATURE:
CAN UPGRADE SINGAPORE FLYER WHEEL TO TURN THE OTHER DIRECTION AT 25 BILLION !
Benefit : Isnt it cool to see it spin the other way HAHA !
And on top of these titles, we still have Darksiders that finally sees a PC port. Rather interested to see how this title fares on the PC considering that the game can be purchased for as low as $39 on the PS3.
An email we sent out earlier to our pre-order customers:
We hope this piece of information will excite you as much as we are!
We have been able to procure confirmed copies of the EU/UK versions of the Collector’s Edition for SGD$100 and we are expecting the title to arrive before release date.
On top of that, we will be able to get UK prepaid cards for the game as well.
As the exchange rate stands, the difference between UK & US subscription prices is a dollar difference in favour of the US in terms of savings.
UK£ 8.99 = 18.57
12.99 U.S. dollars = 17.47
Keeping that in mind, the UK copy of the game is cheaper by SGD$50.
As ideal as an digital download might sound for the US edition for the game, the EU/UK edition right now is showing the stronger benefits.
We do hope that you be able to take advantage of the savings and switch to the EU/UK edition of the game.
It appears that Square would like to make things rather difficult for players around the globe to play together.
According to this piece of news found here, players would be grouped according to their place of residence.
That’s not the worrying part. The portion that SEA players need to pay special attention to would be this piece of text:
Please make sure to purchase the software specifically developed for your registered country of residence or we cannot ensure that you will be able to use it.
So, do we fall under EU & Others or traditionally grouped together with the American version?
Please do note that the copy that we are going to carry for the CE version of the game would be the North American version, thus do take note before pre-ordering.
I will keep you guys updated as more news develops.
I got the chance to take a look at the brand new Civ 5 for a good 70 turns yesterday. And while I was still stuck in a era slightly better than the barbarian horde, I had a pretty good look at what to expect come 21st September – release day, mark it down!
I’ll be brief on my 1 hour preview of the game, it’s pretty scant but this would definitely be a release day buy for me.
Onto the game!
Multiplayer was the option that was released on the day I test drove the game. No one had played it before save for the 5 of us on site.
It’s rather odd playing it over LAN because, well, you could peep at your opponents location and check out what they are doing.
The cool thing is that everyone takes their turn at the same time. And once you have moved all your units, the game completes your turn and everyone waits for the last player to finish up his action.
The game would alert you if you have an action you can perform but it is tucked away in the corner and doesn’t really scream at you for any action. This could be a small problem especially since Civ games are very very long drawn. Unlike Risk when you can slap your friend to hurry him up, your next turn is pretty much as fast as the slowest player..
Which is why I guess I got to play only 70 odd turns, cos I was busy checking out the tech trees in the game and held up the game.
Sorry guys!
Imagine playing the game over the net and then someone has to go AFK. There appears to be no option to allow the AI to take over and autopilot as you take a break
Thankfully, I was told that the option to play the game via email very much still exists and is one feature that I thank the devs for retaining. Push mail anyone?
One major gameplay change that I noticed was that Cities are very much able to hold their own even without being garrisoned by any defenders. Additionally, they are able to snipe units from afar before they are able to launch an attack. I believe that as a city levels up the damage should increase, but a city with no upgrades does a mere 1 hitpoint damage which is pretty laughable.
That pretty much rounds up my preview of Civ V. I hope to be able to get hold of a preview copy to provide some in depth insights on what to expect once the game is out.
Only the best stuff for the most hardcore of gamers.
Imagine having this beast but suffering lag due to bottlenecks at the server end of the game would be a crime! Which is in fact very possible as with most new MMO releases.
An 80GB SSD! 12GB Ram! I didn’t know Windows 7 and the game can put that much to use.
No mention of a monitor in the advertisement.
I guess Kotaku sums it up pretty good. “..you know, you could buy a PS3″
A month back the above mentioned title was the biggest shit the world had ever known and there was a mega huge launch event at Funan Centre. Totally missed it? Where were you all these years?!
Anyway, I was perhaps the only sane person at the event, I had no plans whatsoever to purchase the game. But having the game thrust into my hands (over exaggeration) and deliberating for a good 2 days I finally opened the box and started playing. By then, reviews of the game was all over the net and there was little point in me rushing through the game just to squeeze out my thoughts of the game and chuck it aside.
And a month later, I’ve completed it. Yay!
I’ve got a friend who’s doing a Phd drop all his work and sat in front of the computer screen for 2 straight days just to complete the game.
“Was it fun?” I asked.
“Of course! I’ve been waiting for years for this to happen! Best money I’ve spent in a long time,” was the reply.
Fun, is a relative term. Well, I would say that Starcraft II has opened my eyes to the joy of playing games at your own leisurely pace. I replayed many stages at least twice to earn achievements and on the Hard difficulty to test out my chops. Something I rarely do on my PS3. It’s usually turbo mode and sell.
I would say Blizzard is pretty devious in their story-mode. Talent trees? Multiple story paths? Wow. They really do want the player to play the game at least another time through. Not that it would be a drag, I would have to commend them for being able to craft an experience that is this well paced and continually refreshes the playing experience mission after mission. You never really quite do the same repeated base building, mass troops and wipe the AI action over and over again. There always is a twist to each mission that lends a different flavour. And I LOVE turtle missions, really glad Starcraft II had those. Starship Troopers anyone?
While the gameplay was good, I’d have to put my foot down on the storyline. After interviewing Brian Kindregan, there was a great ball of hype rolling inside of me, and maybe that’s why the ending and it’s story progression fell a bit flat. Perhaps it’s just the space western that I can’t quite subscribe to. I loved Red Dead Redemption so why didn’t this go down well with me? Then again, I didn’t like Firefly – There we have it. I’m just not a fan to the mash-up genre. My preference of Sci-Fi is more Warhammer 40k so I guess Tychus Findlay is more my kind of character. Jim Raynor? Too much of a goody and I felt that the other supporting characters could have been able to show more dimension in the game. Perhaps that tale would be told in the next 2 expansions.
Starcraft II is incredibly phenomenal in the graphics department both in gameplay and cutscenes. Final Fantasy XIII? Pfft, please. I’m pushing it rather far here but the amount of gameplay relative to cutscenes to move the story forward is just about right. But being a piece of graphical beauty does not come without a price. The load times in between missions and for me just to get back into the Hyperion were just horrendous. I would shake my mouse just to make sure my computer didn’t go to sleep. Performance wise everything is just fine in game but I hate to imagine other players having to experience the game on older hardware. Load times were an epic turnoff.
So with single player done, it’s time to jump into multiplayer. I cannot really comment on this aspect as I suck at it. Nerf Protoss! But there is a glaring issue that may have been under the radar, In-game voice chat is pretty bad. I would think that after implementing voice chat into WoW, Blizzard would have taken this opportunity to improve on it but it’s clearly not the case. Pros and the pros-to-be pretty much have this aspect covered with their own Ventrilo servers which is why playing pickup matches are rather challenging and thankfully on a different league compared to organized match-ups. For the moment, I’ll just be sticking to Nexus Wars tyvm.
With the price tag sitting pretty at triple digits at many other places, the average joe in the street might be a tad reluctant. Not to worry, the price is always better if you did some snooping around and I have a hunch that it would be one of the hottest gifted items for Christmas 2010. Do a check before buying gals!
Looks like Blizzard is sticking to their claim and throwing their weight behind an official tournament.
So many Protoss players. Balance please.
The top 16th would be thrown into an online tournament and the top 2 get to go to Blizzcon to face off with the creme de la creme of the Starcraft world. D-Day is September 10th, now get working on your A-Game!
SEA represent! I’m interested to know how high you guys are faring on the ladders!
