Review: StarCraft II
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mike1921 said:That's because your whole argument is based on them having DLC. It's hard to not seem light-minded when your arguments are so embarrassingly easy to counter given they are entirely based on assumptions we have no reason to believe.ionveau said:
I never said that it won't have it. But until you can give me some decent proof instead of you just babbling about how they're going to do it and they are evil for it your post is irrelevant.
Wikipedia tells me it's : Defense of the Ancients
a custom scenario for warcraft III
How is this relevant?
At the distance from these units your point of view is normally at, sure.Mazty said:Tessellation low polygon.....? And there goes your credibility.....abija said:
But if you are really going to play the ignorant card, here is a wonderful screen shot from the editor to show how 'amazing' the graphics are:
Now you are saying they look just as good as:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/3233336213_d87839c334_o.jpg
http://evo-gamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/assault_battle.jpg
http://www.vgblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/06/DawnOfWar2SystemSpecs.jpg
The graphics are on-par with the first dawn of war, a six year old game no less, which didn't cost $60. So how about you show me how SC'2s graphics are outstanding and how all the other RTS' barely come close.
Also, do you get it yet that we just DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK about graphics
Convince me these graphics are worse than games that came out 15 years ago, then maybe I'll care.
Well its clear why you love SC2 you never seen how well blizzard used to treat their players.
If you ever played DOTA then you would know that all tournaments where on Garena, if you want to know, right now there is 100,000 people playing DOTA alone on garena.
Thanks to the no lan it will be illegal to host starcraft on garena sure there are alot of people online on Bnet right now but watch those numbers will shrink day by day as people lose their bnet accounts or get hacked.
And again its about freedom, it may seem shady to want Lan but i got the dam game for 60$ so i dont care what you think
No and I don't particularly care. I enjoy the game. I don't give a flying fuck about LAN, and you still have no solid proof of them doing DLCionveau said:mike1921 said:That's because your whole argument is based on them having DLC. It's hard to not seem light-minded when your arguments are so embarrassingly easy to counter given they are entirely based on assumptions we have no reason to believe.ionveau said:
I never said that it won't have it. But until you can give me some decent proof instead of you just babbling about how they're going to do it and they are evil for it your post is irrelevant.
Wikipedia tells me it's : Defense of the Ancients
a custom scenario for warcraft III
How is this relevant?
At the distance from these units your point of view is normally at, sure.Mazty said:Tessellation low polygon.....? And there goes your credibility.....abija said:
But if you are really going to play the ignorant card, here is a wonderful screen shot from the editor to show how 'amazing' the graphics are:
Now you are saying they look just as good as:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/3233336213_d87839c334_o.jpg
http://evo-gamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/assault_battle.jpg
http://www.vgblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/06/DawnOfWar2SystemSpecs.jpg
The graphics are on-par with the first dawn of war, a six year old game no less, which didn't cost $60. So how about you show me how SC'2s graphics are outstanding and how all the other RTS' barely come close.
Also, do you get it yet that we just DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK about graphics
Convince me these graphics are worse than games that came out 15 years ago, then maybe I'll care.
Well its clear why you love SC2 you never seen how well blizzard used to treat their players.
If you ever played DOTA then you would know that all tournaments where on Garena, if you want to know, right now there is 100,000 people playing DOTA alone on garena.
Thanks to the no lan it will be illegal to host starcraft on garena sure there are alot of people online on Bnet right now but watch those numbers will shrink day by day as people lose their bnet accounts or get hacked.
And again its about freedom, it may seem shady to want Lan but i got the dam game for 60$ so i dont care what you think
So I assume those people on garena can't sign up for a battlenet account?
Is getting your account hacked a really common common occurrence or something?
I get what you're saying. But if I were to complain about freedom I'd be complaining about the way battlenet 2.0 doesn't give you the freedom to fucking chat instead of something that only REALLY is a problem for people with no internet. It's like I'm playing on fucking xbox live.
I don't consider graphics to even be a factor when determining the quality of a game as long as they're not incredibly terrible. Like say, 15 years behind. I honestly don't consider a game less worth my money just because of graphics.Mazty said:
I don't think there is a single person here who has standards as high and stupid as yours
I'm so sorryJohn Funk said:
"Dustin Browder said that he is sure that there will also be additional content available via the Battle net."
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,692694/Starcraft-2-DRM-DLC-screenshots-and-trial-version-but-no-co-op/News/
They also added that its not clear whether its going to be free or not, seeing the treatment MW2 got its clear what the answer is
The graphics are excellent.Mazty said:
The in-game cutscenes are the best I have ever seen, bar none.
And the actual gameplay graphics are amazing too.
No low res textures, no blocky models, excellent use of effects like light, smoke, and other shaders to create very distinctive environments.
And the units themselves are pretty much perfect.
They're very distinctive, and if you zoom in, they actually have a surprising amount of detail as well.
In fact, even if you go looking for visual blemishes in the game, you'd be hard pressed to find any at all.
They've managed all this while keeping a distinctive mix of stylised and realistic look and keeping the requirements low to make it accessible.
Also, $60 is unheard of?
Are you kidding me?
EU gamers often get to pay well over $80 for their games.
Stop sitting there with your silver spoon, complaining about how slightly less than average your ambrosia tastes like.
ok i need to make this clear in a way that wont offend anyone hopefully. Ahem the reason the game costs $60 is because it had the ENTIRE multiplayer packge in it as well as the campain and i know other games do this and dont cost as much but think of it this way you pay $60 bucks for the first game but only have to play 20-30 bucks for the expantions in the long run it saves us money. Now if that doesnt end up being the case go ahead and start going nuts again but untill heart of the swarm is released lets just let this thread die.Mazty said:
Oh BTW for the guys who said the stuff about hacking pick up your cell phone and down load an athenticator its free for fucks sakes and ive yet to see anyone get hacked who uses one.
As always people there is no spell check so please dont waste my time complaining about spelling
You need a last generation PC to properly play this game on Ultra and even then it chokes in 4v4 if the fights are done at high food count. Yet you complain they didn't use more demanding tech and more detail on units?Mazty said:
It doesn't need to be compared with 15 year old games, it stands it's ground very well with current ones. Here's again an actual game screenshot you probably missed: http://a.imageshack.us/img844/1382/screenshot2010080802593.jpg
As for the "value for your money" and "60$ game" arguments you spout around: http://www.shacknews.com/docs/press/061302_wc3.x
Snippet from it:
There's plenty of value for your money and on top of the actual game content there's one huge factor: stability. If you like the game you don't need to be affraid that next year you won't have people with whom to play it, or the servers close, or the game massively changes and you won't like it anymore, or they irremediably break balance and forget about the game. SC2 is here to stay for the next decade, so you can invest time to get better at it without worries.
Respectfully, shut up.Mazty said:
Chances are you're falling into one of two categories if you can honestly say this-
1) You don't own the game. You've maybe played it once. You probably don't even realize how demanding the game can get. There's a bevvy of custom maps I fundamentally can't play without getting single digit frames-per-second and thats bearing in mind that I dropped 1000 bucks on a computer last year.
2) You own a fairly powerful rig. In which case, you must be new here. No one seriously buys Blizzard games expecting to be dazzled by graphics. Blizzard isn't trying to be Crysis. They're not trying to push the envelope and make you run graphics cards you can cook dinner on. Blizzard has always done a phenomenal job taking semi-dated graphics and making them look spectacular.
You might not like it. Most of us do. Most of us are not going to with hold 60$ on a game that's more or less guaranteed to get the millage for it's price on the basis that it doesn't look pretty.
As for the game itself?
I love it. Ok, so I can't play certain brands of custom maps and anything larger than 3v3 makes my laptop hiccup. Single Player is fun, and its probably one of the rare cases where I'm actually re-playing the single player campaign because the missions are fun and the difficulty doesn't feel petty in a kind of, "HUR DUR MY UNITS ARE JUST BETTER!" kind of way.
DRM? Darn, the game I wasn't going to share with my friends because I don't want them giving away my CD key again I wont be giving away anyways since its bound to me specifically.
No LAN? Ok, so I'll admit, I don't like it much but B.net 2.0 more or less replaces it seamlessly. With the exception of large-scale LAN parties (supposedly Blizzard is already working on something to fix it, mind you) your basic 20$ router with wireless internet will be able to get you and your buddies playing over B.net on the same internet connection boasting near-LAN pings.
Oh, and yes, you can play offline. The only draw back is that you can't play against other people and your achievements wont get recorded- not horribly dissimilar to other systems.
This is probably the one game I've bought in years that has adequately felt like it was actually 60$ well spent.
I've been reading the argument for a while now and have been laughing my ass off. Let me say this now. Starcraft 2 is good BECAUSE it's a refined version of SC1. In a series that tends to be what devs do. They take an existing formula and refine and improve it.
Also everyone griping about graphics needs to get off their goddamn high horse. I want my games to be accessible. You people talk about gritty? Fine, mod the game yourself and make it that way. I can guarantee that SC2 is going to just look like one giant mess compared to the units that are easy to tell apart in the current game. Isn't that what we want? Graphics that don't hinder gameplay which is what really matters. I don't want ridiculously high end graphics in my RTS. Not everyone has a high end gaming PC. I want to be able to play regardless of my rig.
But I'm sure my argument will be quoted and whined about and blah blah blah. Don't care. If Starcraft 2 bugs you so much then don't buy it. If you did and still hate it then sell it and use the money you get to buy whatever makes you happy. Go for it. You have my permission.
Also everyone griping about graphics needs to get off their goddamn high horse. I want my games to be accessible. You people talk about gritty? Fine, mod the game yourself and make it that way. I can guarantee that SC2 is going to just look like one giant mess compared to the units that are easy to tell apart in the current game. Isn't that what we want? Graphics that don't hinder gameplay which is what really matters. I don't want ridiculously high end graphics in my RTS. Not everyone has a high end gaming PC. I want to be able to play regardless of my rig.
But I'm sure my argument will be quoted and whined about and blah blah blah. Don't care. If Starcraft 2 bugs you so much then don't buy it. If you did and still hate it then sell it and use the money you get to buy whatever makes you happy. Go for it. You have my permission.
Playing against the computer even in skirmishes is a very different breed than playing against actual people online, just saying.Mazty said:
No, it absolutely was intended to be like that. Again, you're assuming SC2 is meant to be a very different kind of game. SC2 is meant to eliminate as much randomness as possible - it's why there's no "provides 80% chance to miss when active" or whatever abilities, because it shouldn't come down to the RNG. Plus, flagging morale just adds another slippery slope element to a game making it hard for someone losing to come back.
It absolutely does provide someone with an advantage - as much as it might provide an advantage in an actual battle, one could argue. Positioning is very important, and that's why things like the speed upgrade for zerglings are so crucial, because it gives you an extremely mobile unit to flank with and force an enemy to react to threats on both sides.
If you're winning fights just based on Excel flowcharts, the enemy doesn't have a good solid mix of units in their force. Just sayin'.
To a point, yes. But again, this comes down to the sort of game SC2 is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a game where at any one time, I can have a reasonably good estimation of what my opponent is up to; there are finite possibilities and it's all how you use them that matters (this is specifically why Dustin Browder said they didn't add all that many more units compared to SC1 because otherwise it got a bit unwieldy). Hard-coding even more systems in the game for the sole purpose of having them in the game to live up to the expectations of some mythical "RTS design continuum" would just belabor the purpose.
Well, here's where we get into a complete difference of opinion. I think that the art style looks great, personally; I think it looks like StarCraft and it looks like the typical Blizzard art style while still popping off the screen and giving every unit a distinct look. It's interesting that you think of child-safe with rounded structures; I tend to think of rounded edges as looking very sleek and future-ish. But it's a bit of a moot point, since that's really how the Terran buildings looked in the first game, so...
You mean, the PC Games Hardware people added that from completely unbased speculation off of one quote about additional content available? Like, I don't know, the patches that Blizzard has been doing for SC1 and Diablo 2 and WC3 for decades now? Or, perhaps he meant the custom maps that are available through B.net?ionveau said:
You're reaching. You're reaching incredibly hard.
The graphics are not excellent in any way, this is why I can run the game at over 60 fps.Denamic said:
The game has fmv's in it that look great.........because it is an fmv.
The pre-mission area on the ship are now fairly average graphics as they are at the same level as games such as Gears of War. However these graphics can be better as the character never controls movement or position thus lighting can be artificially placed onto the models. This is something they stopped doing after the ps2 era. The ingame graphics are dire. There is a reason why the zoom is so limited. Go to the editor and zoom in completely and you'll see what I mean. On top of this the unit detail is very low, again, use the wire mesh in the editor if you can not see that everything is painted low res textures, and lets not forget that the game is only DX9 so the graphics nowadays will be substandard from the beginning.
NB. What games are you comparing this too? StarCraft and Mario World?
Got a core i7 950 with HD5870. After the first 4v4 game that didn't end in the rush phase, I toned down the graphics from ultra to high because it was crawling under 10 fps in big fights.TB_Infidel said:
That's the reason why the models (especially for units with low food count) try to be as low poly as possible.
And btw, do you and Mazty even realize the editor you so eager give examples from is set to LOW video quality?
http://a.imageshack.us/img101/2602/editorv.jpg editor zoomed in with better settings. Yes, very low details indeed.
Gave you a link before how Warcraft 3 had the exact same pricing which you obviously ignored.Mazty said:
Also, short of going for SLI/Crossfire and the ultra expensive last minute CPU's my rig is pretty much top notch.
But hey, keep taking low quality zoomed in pictures of the editor and believing that's how the game looks like...