Here are two cool features from Starcraft 2…

1) There are these cool structures called Xel Naga towers spread out across the maps…. they look like some kind of portal thing, but what they do is allow you to have a larger range of vision around that tower if you have a unit standing next to it.

2) You can now “hotkey” as many units as you want into one sub-group on the number pad. That’s right, you can select more than 12 units and assign more than 12 units to a hotkey. I had 41 mutalisks hotkeyed to #1 earlier and it was pretty awesome.

I wasn’t much of a Protoss fan in the original Starcraft, but so far it’s possibly my favorite race.  I used to hate how long it took to tech up and how expensive all of the units were, but the Chrono-boost ability of the nexus takes care of that problem.

In the three games that I played, here are some things I’ve noticed….

• The nexus can cast “chrono-boost” which makes the targeted building produce units 50% faster for about 30 20 seconds (they just nerfed it in a patch, it used to be 30 seconds).
• The nexus can produce a Mothership which is very similar to the Arbiter from Starcraft 1. Except it cloaks buildings. (Screenshot below)
• Producing units and teching up feels a lot faster.
• Warp gates (when upgraded) can warp in ground units to any location on the map where a pylon is present.
• The robotics bay can make an awesome giant robot unit that looks like something out of Star Wars

Overall Protoss has a very futuristic feel (even more so than in the original) with a lot of high tech units and cool abilities. The music is pretty awesome too.

I’ve played a few more games with Zerg and here are some of the big things I’ve noticed…

• Creep works differently; it’s sort of self-growing and doesn’t cost minerals
• Hydralisks are now an advanced unit
• You can make a queen from your Hatchery at the start of the game.
• Overlords are no longer detectors.
• You can set two rally points from the Hatchery; one for drones, and one for attacking units. It’s super handy.

Overall, Zerg is still a really fun race to use; it’s still fast paced and about massing tons of units to create a horde of terror. There’s less of a need to create a farm of Hatcheries because the queen can use an ability that causes a hatchery to produce about 6 larva pretty quickly.

So far, the self-growing creep is my favorite feature.  Queens can plant little (and by little I mean 1 square unit) buildings that expand the creep, and then that building can create one more creep expanding building, etc. So each building can grow one more building, effectively allowing the creep to grow out infinitely without having to use any drones.