so i just finished the campaign on hard- i'll share my thoughts below. needless to say, SPOILERS, bros.

@mrpandaman:I've been watching a ton of pro games lately, and while I still feel the ling/bane micro in the opens dictates a lot of what happens, I do have to say, you make a great point about the infestor nerf making muta's way more viable. Watching the MLG, Sen vs Vibe, it almost reminded me more of a classic brood war type ZvZ, which I loved with Muta/Ling... if you don't make mistakes with your banelings at the start. It is definitely better. Also, anyone seen the PvP lately? As a zerg player, PvP is incredibly fun to watch these days. Those MC vs Hero games were awesome!

@zeel: Yeah PvP is really fun to watch since Protoss do have the most varied openings in my opinion. I just saw that MC vs Hero match too and that DT opener from both of them was nailbiting. The only thing I have to say about Protoss though is I don't like how strong voidrays are especially in their composition with colossus. And then against Zerg, there's almost no way to beat skytoss.

@fredchuckdave: I actually found the final mission on brutal disappointlingy easy. I was just kinda running around killing shit with kerrigan, corpser roaches, and I forget which hydras for a while. The BC attack on raynor and Odin weren't problems at all for my clump. As long as you have decent creep spread getting attacked isn't a huge deal. After a while I thought "I wonder what would happen if I replaced all those dead hydras and roaches(probably about 100 supply, maybe a little less) with Torrasque ultras...well...I did that and steamrolled the rest of the mission. 2 Bonus objectives and the main base left, hardly had to replenish.

As for the story...yeah..it's dumb, I didn't expect it not to be. It was dumb in WoL, it will still be dumb in LotV. I just wish they would let Kerrigan be evil instead of some messiah in disguise.

@yi_orange: It all depends on the build you choose more or less. Also if you expand within the first 2 minutes (immediately attack with starting units/wild mutation) it makes the AI much more aggressive for the rest of the map which is why it was so fun for me. But ultimately it's more along the lines of don't use twin drones/instant overlords/automated extractors or impalers/lurkers; additionally try to not make Kerrigan herself into as much of a powerhouse, though she's going to be quite useful no matter what you do.

It's not like All In where you have to use one of a few different builds to succeed; you can do all sorts of stuff to make it more challenging and interesting and still have a chance; though if you do "trigger" the AI early get ready for an extensive brawl and close to nonstop macro/micro until the Odin's dead.

I'm going through Brutal again with as weird a build as possible and it is quite a bit more challenging; it's really neat that you can't just screw yourself over and the game is balanced for dozens of different possible setups.

I have managed to gather some of this game's essence, and I believe that once I have accumulated an adequate amount, I will feel very satisfied with this expansion pack in a time of DLC.

Seriously though, I'm enjoying the single player quite a bit. I wasn't expecting them to change it up as much as they did. I'm also enjoying the unranked multiplayer matchmaking. I can play without memorizing build orders and find my own way. Hell, I've even won a few.

@baldgye: tbh I had a more difficult time listening to Tricia Helfer in this game and not going "oh that's Tricia Helfer". After her work on the Mass Effect series it really detracts me from the character. She's had waaaayyyyyy too much exposure lately in the industry and I'm kinda burned out. I honestly thought the original actress who did the VA work was much better and was far less monotone in her delivery.

This game is depressing me because while I seem to have higher apm than most I lose against (150-200), my tactics are awful, I keep forgetting about the higher end Zerg units, especially the newer ones. Feels like APM is more generous in this expansion as well.

When was the last time you played before HOTS? I think they adjusted how they calculate APM last year. EPM may be more effective for judging relative speed with others.

And yeah, everyone's still getting used to the game. Hang in there. :)

@sooty: APM doesn't matter as much as playing smart and knowing what units to use to counter the opposition; it mattered more in WC3 since you didn't have as many units and had more abilities to use etc.

Gotten about halfway through the campaign and I gotta say while the production is all there and the missions are all good this franchise sure has lost all of it's style. Thinking about it I can't help but speculate that the big problem is the character focus. Looking back at Starcraft and the things I loved about the campaign in that game all of it was action and events. Most of the cinematics involved completely anonymous people but it was still freaking cool, sorta like the intro cinematic in this game.

Sometime in 2011, I never really played 1v1 but 2v2 a lot, I am noticing that 2v2 is kind of boring (imo) because it's just rush rush rush most of the time. I'm experiencing way less of that in 1v1, I'm gonna stick at it!

Plus I am playing Zerg which is really complicated for me because I am totally not used to managing queens and such, I used to play Protoss and just phone it in with warpgates, EZ.

I still forget that Zerg needs lair/hive upgrades and don't really understand the difference between roach and hydralisks, aside from one hitting air and one not!

@mrpandaman: I dunno, did you see life effectively use roach/hydra/corruptor with viper pull support to own voids? I think skytoss might be weakening as the metagame keeps evolving :) Time will tell.

Finally finished the campaign and have to say overall I liked Kerrigan's journey for the most part. The only thing I wished would have happened was

I wish that there would have a been a decision to choose to stay as human Kerrigan for longer. By this I mean not getting into the Pit on Zeruss and becoming primal Kerrigan. At least until a certain point in the game where you would be forced to become the Queen of Blades again. Her transformation back into being the Queen of Blades happened too fast for me and the whole "there's something dark inside of me" really only plays out in one cutscene.

I did like that she wasn't just a full on killer like the old Queen of Blades and used "vision" to get what she wanted.

Makes me excited for the Protoss campaign but it also doesn't help I love me some psychic aliens.

Just finished up the first planet after the introductory planet, loving it thus far. As always, Blizzard's technical artdirection is effictive and more awesome than the sum of its parts - they really know how to chose their battles to get great looking and great running games. Great mission design, albeit I'm a bit flustered that there aren't any achievements for *hard* difficulty, at least thus far.

Achievements gave me reason to play the singleplayer missions on hard again. Shame that they've given up on that. Feels like some kind of focus group/data mining statistic kinda thing. Lame.

Gunning to be through with it before Bioshock Infinite is released. I really want to be part of its release *thing*.

There actually are Hard achievements and there's even special Mastery achievements which are extra hard.

The mastery achievements aren't insane tough but take a bit of trial and error to do. Don't think I'll push as hard for achievements this time even though I have all but 2 of the story achievements.

How exactly do I unearth these hard and mastery achievements? All I see is 3 achievements per mission, and I've run several missions on hard, to see if I get a seperate set of achievements for it. No luck thus far. Is it just in later mission? Or how do I unearth these fine 'chievos?