Starcraft 2 is out, let your CC subscription expire.

[JimRocky]

Like I did.

I just thought I'd throw this out to see what crawled out from it.

[BigBallinStalin]

What's Starcraft?

[safariguy5]

I require more minerals.

[MeDeFe]

You must construct additional Pylons.


Much was expected of Starcraft 2, maybe more than could possibly be done, but even taking that into account, the game disappoints. And it's split into one game and 2 expansion packs, what's up with that kind of shit? Yes, I know, there are 26 or so missions which is more than most campaigns, but it falls short of even reasonable expectations.
The way the missions are strung together is somewhat incoherent and allows for very little clear plot development, especially compared to Starcraft 1 and Brood War. The player's role in the whole thing remains unclear, theoretically you're taking on the role of Jim Raynor, in actuality you're just a bystander who's looking over people's shoulders. In Starcaft 1 you were a mid-level executive, "we're fighting a war, you command this battle". The NPCs took care of the plot, you took care of winning. Things were clear, and that was a large part of the enjoyability of the game. The hodge-podge in Starcraft 2 actually detracts from the gaming experience. Decisions where you (at least in theory) have to weigh morality, loyalty, realpolitik, and strategic considerations against each other, only for your decision to not make one difference for the rest of the game have no place in a RTS game.

At best, Starcraft 2 is an average RTS game, the execution of the ideas is acceptable, the problem is that the developers tried to incorporate too many things that don't go together well. It's obvious they wanted a strong plot, but they also wanted to combine this with letting the player largely choose the order in which they play the missions. The result is that you end up with the plot not making much sense at all, and the missions all browbeating you into employing the one winning strategy of using-the-new-unit-you-just-got-and-following-the-instructions-of-the-NPCs. Confusing and not very challenging at the same time.

[slowreactor]

You must construct additional Pylons.


Much was expected of Starcraft 2, maybe more than could possibly be done, but even taking that into account, the game disappoints. And it's split into one game and 2 expansion packs, what's up with that kind of shit? Yes, I know, there are 26 or so missions which is more than most campaigns, but it falls short of even reasonable expectations.
The way the missions are strung together is somewhat incoherent and allows for very little clear plot development, especially compared to Starcraft 1 and Brood War. The player's role in the whole thing remains unclear, theoretically you're taking on the role of Jim Raynor, in actuality you're just a bystander who's looking over people's shoulders. In Starcaft 1 you were a mid-level executive, "we're fighting a war, you command this battle". The NPCs took care of the plot, you took care of winning. Things were clear, and that was a large part of the enjoyability of the game. The hodge-podge in Starcraft 2 actually detracts from the gaming experience. Decisions where you (at least in theory) have to weigh morality, loyalty, realpolitik, and strategic considerations against each other, only for your decision to not make one difference for the rest of the game have no place in a RTS game.

At best, Starcraft 2 is an average RTS game, the execution of the ideas is acceptable, the problem is that the developers tried to incorporate too many things that don't go together well. It's obvious they wanted a strong plot, but they also wanted to combine this with letting the player largely choose the order in which they play the missions. The result is that you end up with the plot not making much sense at all, and the missions all browbeating you into employing the one winning strategy of using-the-new-unit-you-just-got-and-following-the-instructions-of-the-NPCs. Confusing and not very challenging at the same time.

*WARNING* The following message will be delivered by perhaps one of the biggest SC fanboys on this site, so everyone is welcome to disagree and take my statements as pure opinion. That being said, there are 2 major points I'd like to make regarding your statements:

1) The campaign is not, and was never meant to be, the crutch on which the game relied on to really be a stand-out game. It was merely a new factor in an already-great game, the icing-on-the-cake, as you will. What really carries SC2 (and what carried most of Blizzard's more popular games) is the amazing multiplayer. It includes all the excellent features of the old starcraft, as well as many new additions: A set of intro 1v1 or team games against other new players designed to determine your seeding on the ladder, the ability to make hero-type units & structures, along the lines of WC3, allows popular mods (esp. DotA) to be included on SC2, and endless new possibilities for custom games.

2) IMO, the campaign structure here is much better than the campaign structure in the original. Although eventually all choices lead to the same ending, the fact that you even have choices, on which missions to take first, on which upgrades you want to pursue, on how you want to develop your army over the course of the game, means you're actively participating, rather than just watching, a story. This process also ensures that the story itself becomes that much more immersive, especially for me, since in the original SC I was skipping the mission briefing way too often, missing vital story elements, but here, I wanted to watch everything, to understand everything.
The way that everything was designed in the campaign just screams production value at you. There is just so much detail in everything (you can't tell me you didn't find the "Don't shoot at screen" sign under the TV screen amusing) that it feels that much more real to you. Therefore I must disagree with your opinion of the campaign, as I find it better and more impressive than any other campaign in a strategy game I've seen.

[MeDeFe]

*WARNING* The following message will be delivered by perhaps one of the biggest SC fanboys on this site, so everyone is welcome to disagree and take my statements as pure opinion. That being said, there are 2 major points I'd like to make regarding your statements:

1) The campaign is not, and was never meant to be, the crutch on which the game relied on to really be a stand-out game. It was merely a new factor in an already-great game, the icing-on-the-cake, as you will. What really carries SC2 (and what carried most of Blizzard's more popular games) is the amazing multiplayer. It includes all the excellent features of the old starcraft, as well as many new additions: A set of intro 1v1 or team games against other new players designed to determine your seeding on the ladder, the ability to make hero-type units & structures, along the lines of WC3, allows popular mods (esp. DotA) to be included on SC2, and endless new possibilities for custom games.

Ah, yes, the multiplayer that lacks the one thing that would make it useful: LAN compatibility. Yes, even in these days people come together with their computers to hook them up to a router and play games together. Good luck with that.
Instead the customers are tossed some colourful toys and expected to be happy with them. Yay, I'm ranked #113,545 on the ladder, I'm up 6 positions.* Oooh "hero"-types, how exciting. Surely you're kidding me, including a ladder and extra units as a reason for why the multiplayer mode is great is... stupid. I don't see how they even begin to matter. Maps, mods or other content created by users hasn't been unusual since, roughly, 1980, praising Blizzard for allowing it is like praising your local newspaper for using print instead of script.

2) IMO, the campaign structure here is much better than the campaign structure in the original. Although eventually all choices lead to the same ending, the fact that you even have choices, on which missions to take first, on which upgrades you want to pursue, on how you want to develop your army over the course of the game, means you're actively participating, rather than just watching, a story. This process also ensures that the story itself becomes that much more immersive, especially for me, since in the original SC I was skipping the mission briefing way too often, missing vital story elements, but here, I wanted to watch everything, to understand everything.
The way that everything was designed in the campaign just screams production value at you. There is just so much detail in everything (you can't tell me you didn't find the "Don't shoot at screen" sign under the TV screen amusing) that it feels that much more real to you. Therefore I must disagree with your opinion of the campaign, as I find it better and more impressive than any other campaign in a strategy game I've seen.

"Actively participating", my arse. "We've lost contact with the new colony, we need to investigate urgently", 10 other missions later it's still urgent and not a thing has changed. That's not "active participation", that's shoddy writing, I can tolerate such things in SNES RPGs, but I expect better from the sequel to one of the best RTS games ever. Even with the player wanting to watch and understand everything, there's precious little to watch or understand because of the way the various plotlines are garbled together. The crystal you get from Zeratul is especially bad because what it reveals in 3 missions should, at the least, make Raynor stop and ask himself whether his course of action with the relics line would really "save lives", which purportedly is what it's all about for him, or rather doom the universe. But nooo, on he goes, not a sentence wasted. The story becomes so incoherent that immersion is practically impossible. The different sub-plots just don't go together, it's all loose ends.
You also completely ignored my point from before. You aren't developing your army. You're being given the single best unit for the job at hand, which is an entirely different thing. "Developing" would be you investing credits to have that chief engineer get his hands on the relevant schematics so you can build the units. The upgrades and research are nice enough, granted, but they're nowhere nearly enough to make SC2 a great game, at most they're lumps of sugar to counter the overall bitterness.
The attention to detail was nice, and yes, the note made me smile (especially after what happened to the screen in the bar), but hardly outstanding, I've noticed some independent productions pay every bit as much attention to their details. It's really par for the course, which is why I said that the execution of the ideas is acceptable, but that the ideas themselves don't go together.




*These numbers were extracted from a rectal cavity and have no bearing on reality.

[slowreactor]

Ah, yes, the multiplayer that lacks the one thing that would make it useful: LAN compatibility. Yes, even in these days people come together with their computers to hook them up to a router and play games together. Good luck with that.

The reason that Blizzard took out LAN support was to counteract the massive amounts of pirating that has been happening with computer games, especially the original SC and WC3 (in my school, for example, there are versions of each floating around that can be played directly from a flash drive). You also need to consider that many games nowadays won't even let you play without online access (every game that you get from Steam, for example), and with SC2, you can at least play single-player games, albeit without achievement access, so you really can't take that much away from Blizzard for choosing not to have that service.

Instead the customers are tossed some colourful toys and expected to be happy with them. Yay, I'm ranked #113,545 on the ladder, I'm up 6 positions.* Oooh "hero"-types, how exciting. Surely you're kidding me, including a ladder and extra units as a reason for why the multiplayer mode is great is... stupid. I don't see how they even begin to matter. Maps, mods or other content created by users hasn't been unusual since, roughly, 1980, praising Blizzard for allowing it is like praising your local newspaper for using print instead of script.

I agree that SC2 doesn't really have that much that is original in the world of strategy games, but it's more of the fact it took existing ideas from different strategy games, polished them, and then brought each element out in a great way. Not all games need to be really inventive to be great.

I won't argue against you about the campaign, since you either love it or you hate it. My opinion is just that it expands your experience while playing through it, so that it's not completely linear.

[penguin8r]

What's Starcraft?

Really?

[natty dread]

I have no interest in Starcraft, but I just have to comment on this paragraph.

The reason that Blizzard took out LAN support was to counteract the massive amounts of pirating that has been happening with computer games, especially the original SC and WC3 (in my school, for example, there are versions of each floating around that can be played directly from a flash drive). You also need to consider that many games nowadays won't even let you play without online access (every game that you get from Steam, for example), and with SC2, you can at least play single-player games, albeit without achievement access, so you really can't take that much away from Blizzard for choosing not to have that service.

So you're saying it's acceptable to punish the paying customers in order to combat piratism?

This is just repeating the mistakes of the music industry.

[Leehar]

Oh, I don't really want to stick my head out, but I wander what this game called S*2, sitting on my desktop, that I don't seem to remember buying, is?

[MeDeFe]

[BigBallinStalin]

SOUNDS LUCRATIVE--I MEAN, PROMISING!

[Snorri1234]

Ah, yes, the multiplayer that lacks the one thing that would make it useful: LAN compatibility. Yes, even in these days people come together with their computers to hook them up to a router and play games together. Good luck with that.

Wait...can't play it over lan?


The f*ck?

[MeDeFe]

Ah, yes, the multiplayer that lacks the one thing that would make it useful: LAN compatibility. Yes, even in these days people come together with their computers to hook them up to a router and play games together. Good luck with that.

Wait...can't play it over lan?


The f*ck?

This is correct, you can't play Starcraft 2 over LAN.

[Snorri1234]

Ah, yes, the multiplayer that lacks the one thing that would make it useful: LAN compatibility. Yes, even in these days people come together with their computers to hook them up to a router and play games together. Good luck with that.

Wait...can't play it over lan?


The f*ck?

This is correct, you can't play Starcraft 2 over LAN.

Damn, I was considering buying it because I figured I could play it with my brother and my roommate over a LAN. I guess I could still work around it via the interwebs, but that's pretty silly.

[Snorri1234]

Come to think of it, I could probably just use Hamachi.

[DirtyDishSoap]

Might need to fix the graph a bit...You can view replays, theres a icon that looks like a camera. Cross region - Played w/ a couple dudes in England if that's what you're referring to annnnnd Blizzard held it's first SCII tournament not too long ago.

[edocsil]

What expecting truth or accuracy in the SIB? The storyline is quite good if you don't play the missions at random MeDeFe, it all flows quite nicely. Play each story arc in order and you might be more pleased. Can't blame them for not having LAN support, I never payed for SC1, played plenty of online. This way they can put more time and money into the game, giving me a better product as a result.

[MeDeFe]

"Cross-region" refers to the abomination known as "regional lockout" where you can't use the original and legally bought software you acquired for a lower price overseas on your hardware because you're in the wrong country.

[2dimes]

So, boo capitalists being able to force you to choose between giving the people that made this happen more US&A money?

Or wait longer to dodge them and send your money to other crooks that finally figured out how to clone the disks? In the case of the outright pirate dudes.

Because your use of "legally bought" is grey here. It will say somewhere that it's not for sale for use in your region. Thus not "legally bought".

[MeDeFe]

So, boo capitalists being able to force you to choose between giving the people that made this happen more US&A money?

Or wait longer to dodge them and send your money to other crooks that finally figured out how to clone the disks? In the case of the outright pirate dudes.

Because your use of "legally bought" is grey here. It will say somewhere that it's not for sale for use in your region. Thus not "legally bought".

I see, "capitalism" in your opinion means that the flow of goods and money should be restricted.
If I buy a carpet made in Tunisia, or a couch made in China, or a fridge made in Taiwan, noone tells me that I can't use it in Europe. There's nothing special about software that gives anyone the right to tell me whether I can or can't use that. Your logic is flawed, why you even mention piracy here is beyond me.
The situation is quite straightforward: A person buys an original product overseas, either because it's cheaper or not even available where they live, because of regional lockout the buyer is prevented from using it. That's blatantly counter to the foundations of the capitalism you just accused me of being against. What happened to supply and demand and buyers looking for the best deals? Did that somehow cease being important? I guess since I'm criticising the anti-capitalist praxis of regional lockout I must be a greedy capitalist and you must be a dirty commie for defending it. Oh my, it's enough to make one's head spin.

[natty dread]

If I buy a carpet made in Tunisia, or a couch made in China, or a fridge made in Taiwan, noone tells me that I can't use it in Europe.

Actually, if you buy a fridge in Taiwan, it probably won't work in Europe unless you change the plug...