Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem Forever was in the works since 1996. 3D Realms would infamously throw the “when it’s done” line while hopping from one engine to the next. After a conflict with publisher Take Two Interactive, 3D Realms eventually went bankrupt. The project didn’t die – it’s rights were eventually acquired by Gearbox Software and Duke Nukem Forever released in 2011. Surprise, surprise but it was mostly mediocre. And don’t worry – this isn’t the last time we’ll mention the Borderlands developer.

Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft 2 has gone free to play and though that only includes the Wings of Liberty campaign (with Heart of the Swarm free for Wings of Liberty owners), every co-op commander up through level 5 and all units from all games are available in multiplayer.

Even ranked play is free though players must first achieve 10 “First Wins of the Day” in unranked games or against the AI. To celebrate the release, Blizzard decided to take potshots at everyone’s favourite punching bag Electronic Arts and the recent controversy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2. In a series of tweets, Blizzard noted that it took zero hours to unlock the Wings of Liberty campaign and to play as any co-op commander. It also noted that there are zero pay to win mechanics involved.

This is essentially a shot at Star Wars Battlefront 2’s Star Cards which confer significant advantages to players who purchase a hefty number of loot boxes. It also makes light of the fact that 40 hours of Credit grinding was necessary to unlock heroes like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. EA has since revised the Credits required though fans are adamant on the removal of all pay to win mechanics.

Number of pay-to-win mechanics in StarCraft II: 0

Free to Play – Now Live! pic.twitter.com/a02OYUCYZU

— StarCraft (@StarCraft) November 14, 2017

It appears as though Blizzard may be handing out a free copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty to all users registered on Battle.net. DSO Gaming are reporting that Blizzard are apparently adding the full version of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty – so not the Starcraft 2 Starter Edition that has been made available for free before – to users’ accounts. So you might want to log in and see if you received the game. I know I’ve been desperately trying to remember what my Battle.net login was ever since I stumbled upon this news.

Wings of Liberty was the first entry in the Starcraft 2 trilogy, which as a whole is the successor to the original RTS classic. Wings of Liberty went on to sell 1.5 million copies in its first 48 hours on the market, and was on the whole a commercially successful launch for Blizzard- though the game failed to capture the widespread appeal of its predecessor, and is most of all associated with RTSs giving way to MOBAs as the ‘it’ PC gaming genre.

But hey, none of that should matter to you. Starcraft 2 still is impeccably well made, and the campaign is supposed to be awesome, too. And you can’t really argue with the price of ‘free’, can you?

Blizzard may have ended the Starcraft story for the foreseeable future with the recent release of Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void, but it doesn’t look like they are done with the series just yet. According to highly respected Korean site iNews24 (via Kotaku) – and if there is one source we would trust above all others when it comes to Starcraft news, it would be a Korean one, given South Korea’s love for the series – Blizzard are preparing a special kind of treat for longtime fans and players of the series, come September.

Apparently, multiple sources have indicated to iNews24 that Blizzard are preparing a remastered version of the original Starcraft, and that they will be revealing it this September, which is actually next month. Interestingly and excitingly enough, especially for those who found Starcraft 2 to be underwhelming overall compared with the original game, the update seems to be largely cosmetic, too- the game will just be updated to support HD graphics, and a more modern UI, but still retain its gameplay as is, untouched. In other words, this isn’t going to be anything like a remake of the original game in Starcraft 2‘s engine- it’s the classic game we all know and love, just with cleaned up graphics.

The report states that further details on the product will be made available after its reveal, during BlizzCon in November- which sounds reasonable enough to me. Reasonable enough that I can start looking forward to an announcement of the remaster now. I was always more into Age of Empires or Command and Conquer, and never quite managed to get into the original Starcraft at the peak of its popularity- I would love to be given another chance to give the game a go.