Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Collectors Edition Unboxing

Morning folks,
I did have planned to post up the unboxing for the Assassin's Creed 3 Freedom Edition but I cannot find the photos I took anywhere. So instead I've got next week's unboxing instead, say hello to the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Collectors Edition.

Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Collectors Edition

I love how much effort Blizzard put into their collector editions and this is one of my favourites, as you can see from the picture the box is designed like one of the security doors and opens up like one. The box is high quality cardboard and the scratch marks and dented in to give it that feel like the Zerg have attacked it.

As you can see the top part slips off and everything is slotted in, there is a holding area at the bottom so there is no loose items rattling about to get damaged. Like I said Blizzard go to town on everything they do and nothing feels cheap, it's made to last. So anyway onto what you get inside the box, well first up you get a nice artwork mouse mat (see below) and the soundtrack. Also you get a copy of the game of course, behind the scenes making off disc which for the first time comes on both DVD and Blu-ray. Not many collectors edition have Blu-ray discs for the behind the scene stuff, it's just showing how much the times are changing.

There is also quite a bit of in-game DLC included, most of the Blizzard stuff come with in-game items plus items for their other games as well. So for the Starcraft game you get three exclusive Portraits for your profile (zerg, zerg night elf and zerg pandarian). You also get a new skin for one of the units in the game, the Torrasque Ultralisk which can be seen below.
Looks awesome in the game but anyway that's what you get for Starcraft, for World of Warcraft you get a new in-game pet the Zerg Baneling to follow you around and to join in the pet battles with. For Diablo 3 you get the Queen of Blades wings for you character and a banner with Zerg logos and portraits.

So that's it for the extra DLC items and there is just one more item left to talk about and that is of course the awesome artwork book. Like I keep saying Blizzard go to town and this artwork book is not one of those small A5 paperback books that are only ten pages long. It's A4 hardback and around 140+ pages. Take a look below at the cover and yes the book is grooved so each spine and spike stands out. Every collectors edition so far done by Blizzard comes with one of these amazing artwork books and you can a few hours going through them easily. Check out below of two photos from the book to give you an idea on how nice the artwork is.

Artbook

So that's it folks for this unboxing and I do hope you enjoyed it, hopefully by next week I will find my missing photos and put up the Assassin's Creed 3 unboxing. If not I can also just retake them again but anyway on that note have a good one and I hope you enjoyed this post.
~Iznic

March Boss Fight

Afternoon folks,
Well my boss fight is going...well I'm going to say ok because it was terrible but yesterday was good, anyway I bet you wondering what the title of the post means and what boss fight. I've been treating this month games as a video game boss fight, each release being a new stage in the fight. So phase one was Tomb Raider so I was up against Lara Croft herself, very tough fight thanks to the awesome graphics in the game that make you stop to take in the beautiful scenery. Then lets not forget the collectibles add more time to the game because you just want to go looking for them. A very difficulty phase in this epic boss fight and it went badly for me since I was only 36% completed when Phase Two started.

Phase Two saw Kerrigan joining Lara (Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm), strategy game means long times especially for me since I like to take my time to build my base up before charging in. Of course the story is pretty sweet and plenty of side stuff to do so this phase would be tough since the amount of time it would take to win.

Unfortunately for me lady luck was both on my side and not, Phase Three started several days early since I was not expecting Amazon to deliver God of War last Saturday since they had quoted this Wednesday to me. So now I've got Kratos joining the fight making it 3v1 and the odds are not in my favour, especially with the God of War franchise being known for long ass games with tough boss fights at the end.

But not all is despair folks since I was granted the awesome power up "Day Off" yesterday which allowed me to duke it for five hours with Kerrigan and it ended with me winning. Another game for the completion list finally, been a while since I had clocked a game and I really need to start catching up.

Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm is pretty sweet but I did find it a lot easier compared to Wings of Liberty, not sure if it was me improving my skills since when I played Wings of Liberty that was the first time I've ever tried a Starcraft game. Story was not bad either but it did feel slightly like a filler in some ways since this is the second game in the trilogy, felt like a bit more of the story could be focused on the main story arc instead of the Kerrigan revenge arc. But still I would give the game a solid 8/9 out of the 10 if it was to grade it.

So where does that leave me now? well I'm around 60% done with Tomb Raider and God of War Ascension is sitting sealed by my TV. Going to take some photos when I unpack it for a unboxing blog post since I picked up the collectors edition. Fingers crossed I can take down Lara Croft before the weekend since Phase Four will begin and Gears of War Judgement hits.

Don't worry folks my posts will turn normal again soon and expect two unboxing blog posts in the week, God of War and Starcraft 2 HOTS.
~Iznic

Games, Games and More Games

Good Morning Folks,
I know it's been a while since my last post but last week was nothing short of being chaos for me and what little time I had spare went to playing Tomb Raider and World of Warcraft. Currently sitting on 58% complete according to my save file for Tomb Raider and I got to say it's one of the best games I've played in a long time.

If you not picked up it yet then go buy it right now, this is one of those rare moments where I will recommend this game to everyone. The graphics, gameplay and story just work perfectly, it's like Batman Arkham Asylum meets Uncharted with a tiny bit of Assassin's Creed 3 all blended together to make this game great. I really want to finish it soon so one I've not got too many games on the go and two I really want to write out a review for it, I know shocking right? me writing a review. So I will go into more details about the game when I do the review, soon as I finish first and played some of the multiplayer. Not expecting anything great from that part and not really sure why they put in a multiplayer part.

Anyway other then Tomb Raider I have been doing the new daily quests in World of Warcraft for the Island of Thunder war effort. Phase two unlocked yesterday afternoon to my great annoyance, wanted to play Starcraft more but I had to get the quests out of the way first. As you can guess I did pick up Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm yesterday, so far it's brilliant but trying to get use to playing the Zerg since my play style is usually build a base then make a small powerful army to crush my foe. Zerg is more like making a huge army and swarming the enemy with numbers while their base engulfs the land. Think I'm getting the hang of it so far anyway, will post up a unboxing for it soon since I picked up the collectors edition which is very sweet looking.

So yeah my plans for this week will be those three games, Starcraft, Warcraft and Tomb Raider. God of War Ascension is out on Friday but Amazon won't be delivering mine until Monday-Wednesday due to the fact I picked the free delivery. Seems I have to pay extra to get it on day one, shocking since everyone will post it early to make sure it arrives in time. Shame Amazon was the cheapest for the collectors edition, got it a bargain price of £61 instead of the £80+ marker that it went too later on.

On that note I better go get ready for work since I only wanted to do a quick update for you folks, I promise I will try and get some more posts up soon but you know how it is with all these new games coming out. Hard to stop playing them but I will try my best for you and until then have a good one.
~Iznic

Warcraft and Starcraft

Good Morning,
Last night the official trailer for the new World of Warcraft patch went live, say hello to 5.2 The Thunder King.



Shame I'm not in a guild because I would love to have ago at that raid, the bosses shown look amazing and fun. Got to love the part where the army of trolls march along with the giant dinosaurs, anyway the patch is meant to be huge and adding entire new zone with plenty to do. Think it's hitting next week if I can remember right.

Speaking of Blizzard as well a new trailer went up for the upcoming Starcraft game, Heart of the Swarm. Nicknamed Vengeance it's once again showing hints at the continuing story but this video is a little different, included is a developer talk where they talk about the game and answer questions from fans. Then at the end is a showcase match showing off Heart of the Swarm multi-player between Grubby and Crazymoving two famous pro players. It's a pretty sweet match to watch and gives you an idea of things to come, check out the video below.


Watch live video from Starcraft on TwitchTV 
So plenty to keep you busy with you are a Blizzard fan, to me it's brilliant but I am worried with so much happening at once how am I going to play it all.
~Iznic

More thoughts for the day

Afternoon,
Well I did promise that I would return to finish off my posts for the day, so here I am and ready to write. What I did not get to finish off in my post this morning was the current update for my Two for One challenge. The stats have not been updated since Halo 4 and since then I've completed two more games, first I finally sat down and grinded out the last achievement in Saints Row the Third which I posted about and of course all the DLC was 100% completed. Then shortly after that I finally sat down and finished off my rental Lego Batman 2 for the PS3 which clocked me my first Platinum trophy for the year.

Of course completing these two games now allows me to buy another game, in fact from now on I'm going to call it a credit. Anyway so far for the challenge I've completed six games earning three credits but I did buy Saints Row the Third on the PS3, so I'm down to two right now which is perfect since next week sees Hitman HD Collection and Ni No Kuni launching. I am worried though since at the end of February/March a stupid amount of games will be released, it's like Christmas all over again.

Off the top of my head I know Dynasty Warriors 7 Empire comes out at the end of February, then at the start of March is Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm. Then in the month is Tomb Raider, Company of Heroes 2 (if it gets released since it was made by THQ), Gears of War Judgement, Bioshock Infinite, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, God of War Ascension and probably some others that I cannot remember at this moment in time. So that's what eight games I just named out so I need to clock, oh bugger! sixteen games over the next month. Plus I could do with saving some money since there is a high chance that at the end of the year we could see the new Xbox and PlayStation. I think I'm going to go bang my head against the wall for a little while.

I could go through all the games and be picky with which ones I want, but they keep releasing awesome new trailers. For example I was prepared to wait to pick up the new Gears of War game since there as been no real marketing for it or big shout out about it, then they release this trailer (see below) a couple of days ago and now I want to go to the lock in next month to play it.



The new horde mini beserker looks amazing! and the fact you can now use most weapons with the shield, it's heaven. I love the idea of a version of horde in the single player plus the challenges being thrown, gives it more replay value and the spawn changer was a nice touch. So yeah I'm now excited to play the game and there is no way I'm going to wait for this game.

I would like to say I have a plan but I really don't, every day I swear the industry announces a new game or collectors edition just to tempt me. In fact expect a few more posts over the next few days showing off the different trailers and games, I would put them all into one post but it would be too much awesome for one thing and could end the world. For example check out the cinematic trailer for Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm because that is one amazing trailer!



I'm really looking forward to playing the Zerg and seeing the story span out with the Queen of Blades, multiplayer really does not bother me since it's of my league. I love watching the E-Sport streams and live streams but I couldn't keep up if I tried, maybe if I practised with Skirmish mode and some mates I could attempt it. You never know but for the mean time I will stick to the story, anyway on that note I'm going to end this post for the day and get some gaming on the go. Thanks for spending the time to read this and hopefully you are having a better time manging the amount of games that are coming out.

Until next time have a good one folks!
~Iznic

Another Starcraft 2 Battle Report

Been meaning to post this up since August but the video turned up when I just went on holiday and well I forgot to post it when I got back. Blizzard have put up a third battle report video showing off Heart of the Swarm, the first expansion for Starcraft 2 which everyone is banking on coming out early next year. The videos are great since you get to see most of the new units in action and it's amazing how what should be a win/lose in certain parts can just be overturned in the matter of moments thanks to the new units. Anyway check out Protoss vs Terran in the video below...



If you missed the other two battle reports they can be found on the same youtube channel or check out my past post "Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm".

~Iznic