So, first impressions.
Confession first: I was never really into StarCraft – it was released around the time when I was more into console gaming and had forsaken my RTS roots (being Warcrafts 1 & 2, C&C and RA). I was undecided right up until today as to whether or not i’d get StarCraft II – eventually, deciding that if it was a fraction of the quality of WarCraft III/The Frozen Throne i’d love it, I went and picked it up.
As of typing this post, i’m only two missions into the campaign – barely scratched the surface – but i’m already blown away by the sheer quality of this game. Blizzard has always had excellent cinematics, but when I loaded up the campaign and encountered the first in-game-engine cinematic – I was stunned. The graphics are simply amazing. The texture, the detail, the shadows – all absolutely amazing. This was before i’d even played a mission.
I loaded up the first mission (a pretty standard first mission for RTS – you control a squad of guys and you go kick some butt), and was wowed once again – the gameplay to me felt less like WarCraft III and more like Command & Conquer: Red Alert, strangely enough – which is a good thing. More RTS-ey.
Like I said, i’ve only done the first two missions, and one Versus AI against an easy opponent (just because even though I never got into SC, the Protoss always appealed to me and I wanted to check them out) but i’m hooked. For any RTS fans, StarCraft II is easily a must buy. I’ll post in this thread with more impressions once i’ve played through more of the game.
I figure it’s probably Activision’s fault. Blizzard didn’t start dicking with their customers this way until they partnered up.
I really want my new laptop so I can play this amazing looking game. Initially I felt like Prak about the campaign only including the Terrans, but seeing how much work they put into it had me thinking twice. That can only mean the Zerg and Protoss campaigns will be that awesome.
For starters, the campaign is the most polished RTS campaign i’ve ever seen – there are 29 missions (as many as the Terran, Protoss and Zerg campaigns combined in SC1), and more importantly, each mission is fun, and varied. One example that comes to mind is Outbreak, a mission where the Zerg have infested a human colony, but it’s in the early stages so they can only come out by night – they burn up during the day. The mission is on 5 minute long day/night cycles – at night you have to defend your base from wave after wave of Zerg, and during the day you have to venture out and cleanse their breeding grounds. The production values are ridiculously high, too – in between missions you can talk to NPCs, and check out the Hyperion.
When it comes to the omission of LAN, Blizzard always said it was an anti-piracy measure – and given that every copy of WarCraft III / StarCraft i’ve ever seen (or played) has been a pirate copy, i understand why they’re trying to protect their interest. There is nothing stopping 8 people in a LAN party from playing online together – the only difference is the requirement of a net connection – and anyone who is playing SC2 is likely to have broadband.
As for multiplayer itself, i’m pleased as punch with the Challenges that blizz have included – these are 9 solo missions ranked in difficulty from Easy to Hard, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of each race in multiplayer, and providing a way for StarCraft noobs like me to improve.
All in all, the game just feels absolutely complete – and it has hours and hours of replayability thanks to achievements. It is definately worth a purchase.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to play together, since Blizzard did fuck one massive thing up for Australians – putting us in the south-east asia Battle.net region. Our WoW servers are in the US battle.net region – which means that the much touted RealID cross-game chat doesn’t even work for us, because of the seperate regions – and we can’t play games of SC2 against our US friends. It’s very annoying.
I’m sure the campaign is excellent. Blizzard rules the entire universe when it comes to RTS gameplay.
Frankly, I don’t give a crap about what Blizzard claims the lack of LAN support is about. I trust their word on that about as far as I can throw their offices. People always find a way to pirate software, and this game will be no different. The real issue here is privacy. I like mine. Blizzard doesn’t respect that. I don’t want someone logging how many hours I spend playing a game, and not giving me a choice in the matter isn’t just three strikes; it’s a fucking no-hitter.
Also, you’d be amazed at how many gamers I’ve spoken to live in BFE, where no broadband internet is available.
Now, that I agree with. The decisions Blizzard has been making about SC2 only makes me think that they’re fully aware of what the majority of their audience is. Anti-social rejects. Every single thing they do is trying to somehow combat that. Which would be fine, but they’re kinda forcing it on to the rest of us. And that (obviously) wasn’t very well recieved. Because people are used to their privacy on Bnet. Blizzard seem to be quite fond of Facebook and want to make Bnet something like that. But that won’t work anytime soon.
Although, it is kinda hard to think about this sort of thing when I’m having so much fun playing Starcraft II 😀 The campaign is excellent so far.
SCII being a bit more like C&C is definitely a plus.
SCII being a bit more like C&C is definitely a plus.
As far I’ve played you get few missions with Protoss, but it’s not enough to be considered a Protoss campaign, But yes, they’d better make damn good Protoss and Zerg campaigns because Terran (at least to me) was disappointing.
I also enjoyed the Protoss mini-campaign 🙂
But, the story in Starcraft and in Warcraft III made the repetition less annoying. The story in Starcraft II doesn’t get compensation points. The epic story I wanted is in there, but it has more holes than swiss cheese and ends on a fucking cliffhanger. The expansion packs will probably fill the missing pieces but that’s not what I wanted. Both Starcraft and Warcraft III didn’t end on cliffhangers before their individual expansion packs.
In the end of Starcraft, Tassadar sacrifices himself to kill the Overmind and rid the world of the Zerg threat. While Kerrigan is still out there and Mengsk was just setting up his dominion, the ending was satisfying and left room for more stories to be told. Same thing in Warcraft III. All living races combined forces and killed the demons invading earth. Arthas was still around and every other race parted ways. Good ending, leaving room for more stories. That’s how game endings should be!
If Starcraft II combined all three campaigns in 1 game and was less of a whore in online play, then motherfucking A’. As it stands now it’s just a good RTS. Expansion packs are supposed to add to a game, not remove what should have been there in the first place. That’s why it let me down.
Depends on how you look at it. Each mission was different, but most of them were with a time limit – "Do this before the time runs out", "Destroy that before your enemy reaches it". At a time when I got ghosts they were useless because it was simply pointless to waste time and minerals to train them when you’ve got little time to build an army. So yes, there were some great missions, but out of 30 only few were interesting, while others were more like tutorials rather missions.
But, the story in Starcraft and in Warcraft III made the repetition less annoying. The story in Starcraft II doesn’t get compensation points. The epic story I wanted is in there, but it has more holes than swiss cheese and ends on a fucking cliffhanger. The expansion packs will probably fill the missing pieces but that’s not what I wanted. Both Starcraft and Warcraft III didn’t end on cliffhangers before their individual expansion packs.
In the end of Starcraft, Tassadar sacrifices himself to kill the Overmind and rid the world of the Zerg threat. While Kerrigan is still out there and Mengsk was just setting up his dominion, the ending was satisfying and left room for more stories to be told. Same thing in Warcraft III. All living races combined forces and killed the demons invading earth. Arthas was still around and every other race parted ways. Good ending, leaving room for more stories. That’s how game endings should be!
If Starcraft II combined all three campaigns in 1 game and was less of a whore in online play, then motherfucking A’. As it stands now it’s just a good RTS. Expansion packs are supposed to add to a game, not remove what should have been there in the first place. That’s why it let me down.
Aren’t the expansion packs more like the remaining two thirds of the game rather than… expansion packs? You’ll also going to have to pay the full $60 for them (which is already $10 over RRP for PC games), but everybody will still buy them and give Activision even more incentive to continue being dicks.
They’ve said that they’re considered expansion packs, and will be priced as such; I’m guessing the same price as WoW expansions, whatever that is in people’s respective territories.
I still don’t get why people are making a big deal over the lack of Zerg / Protoss campaigns; the new way that they are presenting the campaigns (fully animated interactive cut-scenes between missions) makes sense to follow one character. After finishing the Terran campaign, I can’t wait to play the other campaigns – but in the meantime, there is still so much to do. Multiplayer is a game in and on itself, with its own rules to learn, and to learn new strategies and get better.
I’m happily going to spend hours improving my multiplayer game, and enjoy having another 60 missions to definitely play in the future.
and THEN throw expansion packs?
or are they seriously considering launching both campaign as "expansion packs" WHAT FUCKING TRAVESTY IS THIS?
its like launching warcraft 3 with just the human campaign and then sell us the other’s campaign later on.
im gonna wait to have THE FULL FUCKING GAME in a fucking battlechest edition because blizzard LOVES doing battlechest editions.
In WarCraft III, all of the campaigns were ridiculously short. They weren’t THIRTY MISSIONS EACH, which is what we’re getting with the expansion pack model.
Given the fact that I loved each and every mission included in Wings of Liberty (four of them were Protoss anyway!), it’s ridiculous to say that Blizzard is ripping us off by offering more content. The single player campaign, in one playthrough on normal difficulty, is easily 12 – 14 hours – add in the replayability of achievements and higher difficulties and it is hours of entertainment. Most tier 1 games these days (Call of Duty, et al) have a single player mode that lasts half as long.
Considering Starcraft II came out at PC game prices – which in Australia at least is a good 25% cheaper than console games – it is a fantastic deal, and heaps of value for money.
If the expansions are no more than $30 I won’t mind so much, but if they expect the whole $60 again they will be a total rip-off…but i’ll still buy them. I do agree that this is part of a game, but it’s really solid at least.
I’m willing to look past the fact that the now-evil Activision published it, but even then, apart from the high price, I hate the idea that I’m region-locked to only playing with people from my region by either IP matching or Battle.NET registration info. And if my experience with Maple Story SEA is anything to go by, Asian servers are filled mostly by greifers (who’re most probably teenage schoolboys playing truant and playing from a cybercafe) and would most likely be modded by corrupt GMs. The only people you can rely on are people you personally know in real life who also play the game. And for me, that’s a problem.
In WarCraft III, all of the campaigns were ridiculously short. They weren’t THIRTY MISSIONS EACH, which is what we’re getting with the expansion pack model.
Given the fact that I loved each and every mission included in Wings of Liberty (four of them were Protoss anyway!), it’s ridiculous to say that Blizzard is ripping us off by offering more content. The single player campaign, in one playthrough on normal difficulty, is easily 12 – 14 hours – add in the replayability of achievements and higher difficulties and it is hours of entertainment. Most tier 1 games these days (Call of Duty, et al) have a single player mode that lasts half as long.
Considering Starcraft II came out at PC game prices – which in Australia at least is a good 25% cheaper than console games – it is a fantastic deal, and heaps of value for money.
The length of a game has nothing to do with anything. Portal is only 2-3 hours long, is that a bad game?
Anyway, you missed my point again. I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s got nothing to do with replayability, not price, not Activision being evil, not Blizzard ripping us off. I don’t know if you read my posts but I never mentioned anything about StarCraft II being a rip-off. If anything it’s one of the best values for games out there right now.
Since you mentioned Warcraft III, let’s talk about that a little bit. Remember the campaigns in that one? How every single one featured 1 main protagonist, and yet a campaign for each race was easily included in the final game? And besides, each campaign included about 10 missions and since there’s 4 races that’s 40 total missions, 10 more than SC2. And I wouldn’t call them ridiculously short. They’re more or less the same length as the ones in SC2. Not to mention that a good 20% of the missions in SC2 are just copy-pasted from previous Blizzard RTS’s. So there’s no obvious reason why Starcraft 2 couldn’t have done campaigns for all 3 races as well. Besides a few of the missions in SC2 felt a bit needless and didn’t contribute to the story at all. And speaking of the story that’s what I’m saving most of my gripe for. Overlooking the fact that the story is incomplete, there are some holes that even the "expansion packs" can’t fill.
First of all, since I love complaining about stuff let’s start with Kerrigan. Remember that needy, arrogant bitch who mercilessly murdered every living thing that ever stood in front of her, and took so much pride and enjoyment in it? The one that would still taunt her opponents even when faced against impossible odds (with the very peak of her arrogance being in the briefing before the final mission in Brood War, where she must fight off 3 massive fleets all desperately trying to claim her head, while the majority of her forces are somewhere far away eating space donuts or something)? Remember that one? Well Starcraft 2 apparrently doesn’t, because Kerrigan now has been turned into an "I WILL KEEL YOU" monster with no personality or apparent motivation. Hell, she doesn’t even seem that much into it anymore, and I get the feeling she’s still the murder queen for no better reason than because someone has to be. And the voice actress is not helping.
Jim Raynor is still the cynical badass he used to be, and while he occasionally suffers from the WRPG problem of standing perfectly still when talking and never breaking eye contact (and he isn’t the only suffering from that), overall his character is still solid and one of the few likeable characters in this whole thing, to be honest.
So what else do I have to complain about? I mentioned that some missions feel a bit unnecessary. If there’s a perfect example of this, it’s the colonist missions. Why does a baddass space rebel even bother with helping a bunch of random colonists, which turns out you have to kill anyway afterwards? In the first one of the missions you save a measly 50 colonists! That’s what his crew should be doing! He even admits it himself that he didn’t feel like he made any significant change to the world, considering there are a few billion others who need help anyway. How does it help him overthrow Mengsk, or fight off Kerrigan and the Zerg threat? It doesn’t. It only exists to lengthen gameplay.
I don’t feel like bothering too much with any of the other characters. Tychus might as well not even exist, and I find the fact that he has such a long history with Raynor laughable. Tosh isn’t too bad and his Spectres are pretty awesome, I admit. And he must have been taking ridiculous voice acting lessons from Reddas in FFXII, which is jolly entertaining in its own way. But he doesn’t really have any connection to the story anyway. And you can just choose to betray him in one of the missions near the end if you feel like it. Again, unnecessary. Dr. Hanson is no exception. Just a temporary shoulder for Raynor to cry on in between a few missions. The crew of the ship are a bit more interesting. I liked Swann a lot. He was the only one who actually knew they were in a game and acted accordingly. And Stetman had a nice Ghostbusters/nerdy feel to him that made him likeable.
Massive spoilers ahead in the brackets. Read at your own risk.
So let’s move on to some plot holes shall we? First of all, during the course of the campaign you seek some Xel’Naga artifacts because you want to sell them to some scientists. Fair enough, but why are all of them on your damn ship?! Did Tychus give them some sort of fake and they didn’t notice, so they still paid him? Also why does Kerrigan want them since they can turn her human again, something which last time I checked she was in no hurry to do (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqoYLD5eIQk&feature=related)(if you really want to know what I’m talking about skip to 3:56 of this video). I guess they might explain this, though. Speaking of which, the prophecy Zeratul found says Kerrigan will be the key to stopping the apocalypse caused by the Hybrids. Now since in the last Prophecy mission you are massacred by huge ammounts of Zerg forces, one might reasonably assume that Kerrigan will prevent the Hybrids from taking control of the Swarm. But I get the feeling turning her human again won’t help much with that. Raynor might as well have killer her. Although that brings me to my next point which is she probably never turned human in the first place. I don’t know if anyone actually saw the ending cinematic, but that was NOT human hair. What the fuck? Was Raynor too busy staring at her tits to notice her hair still consisted of tentacles?!
You see how many of these there are? And I can tell you about more, believe me. This isn’t necessarily bad storytelling. It’s just the current generation of gaming’s biggest problem. It’s leaving the player to ponder around in sickening inevitability. I do miss closure to no end. It’s like the game is saying "Right, here’s your dissapointing ending and unresolved plot threads. Go play some multiplayer before we bring the next expansion pack which will also bring you hot, new disappointing endings and even more unresolved plot threads! StarCraft II storyline scheduled to be finished around 2015! Find out what happens next in our upcoming expansion pack!"
StarCraft II was so close to perfection it could practically smell its wet gym socks, but was in such a hurry to go jogging with it that it forgot it wasn’t wearing any shoes.
If that metaphor makes any sense.
where Tycus points his gun at Kerrigan finding time to chat with Raynor (instead of just shooting her) and giving him time to kill him.
Is that what really a friend does to someone who to took the blame for him and goes to jail?
I think you’re wrong about the plot holes though, for reasons i’ll encase in spoiler tags.
I don’t think that the Xel’naga artifacts did turn her human again – or were ever going to. I think that was just a hook that Mengsk the Younger used to get Jim Raynor to keep doing his dirty work, even after he found out who was running the Moebius show.
All we know for sure is that it rips Zerg to shreds. And I think the ending cinematic had Kerrigan with Zerg-hair to deliberately show us that she’s NOT human. Which is important, considering that the next campaign, Heart of the Swarm, is the Zerg campaign – and Kerrigan is taking the player character role (the role Raynor had in Wings of Liberty). You’re right when you say it would be hard for her to control the Swarm as human.
Perhaps the Xel’naga artifact merely removed any mental influence/dominance that the Overmind still had over her, meaning that in Heart of the Swarm she’ll be playing Zerg as ‘good’ guys (That is, only killing Terran Dominion, maybe allied with Raynor’s Raiders).
Either way, one thing Blizzard is VERY careful to do these days (post Burning Crusade) is avoid any sort of plot holes. I doubt very much that with 12 years lead time, they don’t have the entire story planned out from Wings of Liberty all the way through to Prophecy of the Void.
My sister tells me she may be able to pull some strings to get me the game for cheap, w00ts0rdz!
I’ll just play the game to see what all the fuss is about.
Does the game come with a map editor? Single-player skirmish mode?
Extra maps like SC1/BW?
Extra maps like SC1/BW?
Yes to all of the above.
In the last mission, ‘un-zerged’ Kerrigan psychically contact Raynor, encouraging him to fight ‘zerg’ Kerrigan?
Whether it was the Overmind or something else, she definitely wasn’t herself.
In the last mission, ‘un-zerged’ Kerrigan psychically contact Raynor, encouraging him to fight ‘zerg’ Kerrigan?
Whether it was the Overmind or something else, she definitely wasn’t herself.
Perhaps her human side wishes to be saved? (Most likely, I think.)
I played Brood War every night from some time in late 99/early 2000 until some time in 2003, and continued to play it with some regularity into 2005. I got SC2 at the midnight launch and it looks like this trend will be repeating
The campaign mode is amazing. The original SC/BW campaigns bore the hell out of me. SC2’s is like 20 UMS maps and a half dozen regular 1v1c *yawn* games. I got all three achievements for each level and my Kerrigan avatar for beating all of them on Brutal and I still wish there was more.
More importantly, the multiplayer is everything I could have hoped for – similar enough to feel like Starcraft and different enough that I get to re-experience the really fun process of learning it from the ground up. Quick Matches are so efficient. I’ve yet to wait more than 2 minutes for a game, and that’s having played at least 25 of everything but FFAs.
So far toss suits me best, which is really odd as an old school zerg player. But there doesn’t seem to be a single useful mid to late game zerg unit besides hydras unless you’re insanely good at micro. Lings and roaches drop like flies after the first ten minutes of the game, mutas are no longer cost effective with the changes to economy felt in SC2, corrupters are terrible, and brood lords are pointless without a useful flying anti-air unit. Ultras look cooler, but I’m no more convinced of them now than I was in Brood War. I’ve seen a number of pro replays where they were the decisive factor for the other guy. I’ve never once touched an infestor, but I don’t see anyone else using them either. Banelings require too much luck unless you’re a micro god and know exactly what all your enemy has available….
If they brought back devourers, brought back scourge, cut the vespen demand on mutas by 25, or improved roaches in general I could maybe feel confident 1v1ing with zerg again, but for now I only bother with them when Random prescribes it in 3v3s and 4v4s.
Copies of SCII sold in Malaysia apparently comes from the US (has ESRB rating) and yet still use the SEA servers, so I assume it either has something to do with your IP address and/or it’s tied down to your Battle.Net account. Which in this case, collaborating with a friend in the US and creating a US Battle.Net account using the friend’s home address and/or using VPN to change your IP address to a US one should do the trick (the only tradeoff of using a VPN is possible lag, and you probably need to pay for the service. I pay US$9.99 for mine monthly).
Still waiting for SCII to appear in the bargain bin for RM99. Although looking at how things are and what holidays are ahead, It’s most likely only going to happen mid next year. But ah well.
hey, i played starcraft first when warcraft 3 was released.
Waiting for the Battle chest would be a good idea if it gives all three parts of the game immediately, but I dread the price. Given how inflated the price of SC2 discs are, one would think that Activision would keep it up.
WoW is dragged out due to a subscription base. SC2 has no subscription so dragging it out only pisses people off.
If you haven’t played it yet, check out the Custom Gametype Marine Arena.
It is full-on-nuts fun.
Crazy good games. Any one else catch it?
12.7.10
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