Review: StarCraft II

Richard Allen

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Mar 16, 2010
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ark123 said:
Richard Allen said:
Blue_vision said:
Zhukov said:
Question for those who have bought it:

Is it worth getting if I have no interest in multiplayer and kinda-sorta enjoyed the original?
Another question like this:

Is it worth getting it if you'll like the story campaign and are kind of interested in the multiplayer, but know that you're going to be terrible at it? I'm assuming that plenty of multiplayer... players are veterans from the original starcraft; is it possible to get into multiplayer, maybe after going through the story, and not getting the shit kicked out of you to the point of frustration?
Depending on how bad you are you will probably loose all 5 of your placement matches and maybe a few more while it gets a feel for how good you are. Unless you are the worst player on earth the match making system will eventually find a good set of people for you to play with at or near your level. They had to detune it a bit during beta because every single match became a fight for your life match which was pretty intense during a marathon session. Now it will give you a good mix of easy matches, hard matches that you probably can't win (but are very good to watch the replays and learn from), and some that take every ounce of attention and skill you got but make you love the win all that much more. There is a 7 hour free trial with every game, if you can pick up one and do a marathon session of multi-player, and see how you feel at the end. I'm sure you it will find some good opponents for you.
If you play through the campaign and do the challenges I personally guarantee you will not lose all 5 placement matches.
More then likely not but during beta (smaller pool and I would guess a more difficult pool) I had a buddy lose his first 8 matches, he's pretty bad though. My only point was that if that is the case and you really are that bad don't give up. The match making system will find a good level of play for you.
 

JaredXE

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Apr 1, 2009
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"Playing all of StarCraft II after paying only 60 bucks feels like you are wearing a ski-mask and ripping off Blizzard at gunpoint. It's that good."


But it's not all of Starcraft II....I'm confused. Did Blizzard package all three stories at the last minute?
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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I didn't think the story was very good. I'll explain

1) It's LOADED with tropes.
From your standards "Why won't you die!" to "You haven't seen the last of me!" type bullshit lines we hear over and over and over.

2) It's got a lot of fluff
In the review he mentions how the missions work, one person gives you a mission and it's all sort of related to their story arc. The thing is, I don't fucking care about Tosh or my science officer. They're poorly developed I have little reason to feel emotion for them. Not to mention, their missions simply culminate to "Uh... Let's do this now!" There is little relation to their past missions storywise and while I found the MAIN story arc to be good, the side characters take up like 4/5ths of the game. That's WAY too much.

3) The story is just glued together
To me it just feels like a mission select screen with a bunch of cut scenes in between. The cut scenes often have little relation to what happened in the previous mission, and often just seem like they're there because they can be. There is no flow to the story. The narrative is jerky and seems entirely patched together. If I could summarize SC2 very briefly I would just say it's "Stuff happening".

That's about all I can summarize it as. Oh this character wants me to do this now for some random and contrived reason, alright.

4) Where am I?
What are the zerg and protoss doing while I'm just floating around in my ship? Why is Raynor so happy to just fuck around on various planets while the zerg gain ground every minute and Mengsk destroys earth? And lastly - this is a problem I find with a lot of anime as well - I want a sense of space.

Where the fuck am I? Where are the planets I'm going to? How long does it take to get there? What am I orbiting? How close are the Zerg and Protoss? What are they doing right now? What is mengsk up to? When I'm on a mission, why does it appear NOTHING else happens? The Zerg do not move, the Protoss do not give a shit and Mengsk is just chilling out.

IMO the story could be told WAY better.
 

Alar

The Stormbringer
Dec 1, 2009
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Eruanno said:
I bought StarCraft 2 on launch day. I CAN'T STOP PLAYING.

Also, I want Heart of the Swarm. Now. Pretty please.
Yes, yessity yes. I've been working on grabbing up achievements and playing it on hard mode for a couple of days now. As much as I enjoyed being able to take my time and build up bigger forces on Normal mode, Hard mode is much more of a challenge, and is very rewarding.

As for Heart of the Swarm, I hope they post a release date at BlizzCon.
 

Sillyiggy

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Jun 12, 2008
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Virgil said:
I'm on the last mission now, and expect to finish the campaign tonight. So far it's excellent, though from the storyline I've been able to get so far it really seems like Blizzard is setting up for a World of StarCraft kind of game after the trilogy is over.

Honestly, I don't think the multiplayer can hold up to how great the variety of the campaign was, or at least not until people get used to the scripting system and create some maps that have more complexity than simply "kill the other player" arena matches. After the success of Defense of the Ancients, I would have thought that Blizzard would have released with a bit more game variety in the multiplayer.
It may be a long time coming. Blizzard's publishing system and popularity engine are likely to keep the same 50 "kill the other player" arena marches up for years. Unless you plan on 'parties' with friends to play custom maps you aren't going to be enjoying any creative content for a while.

The issue is Blizzard has decided to control everything this round, and what made the original live so long in custom content was the very fact that so little was controlled. Personally I am going to play through my friends single player campaign at her house then wait for the necessary changes to BNet 2.0 / Blizzard philosophy to take place before I make a purchase.

LAN support isn't a must (to me but it is to others, anyway) but it is a good example of their totalitarian approach with the sequel and how it is hurting the long-term success of the game.
 

Aptspire

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Mar 13, 2008
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This game lives up so much to its reputation. I'm glad Greg noticed that as well :D
 

robinhood36

Burnt Bacon Bits
Apr 13, 2009
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I love how people are complaining about no lan and having only part 1 of 3 for the story.

Would you have enjoyed the story more if it was 26 missions split between all 3 races? I sure wouldn't and I still enjoy the original game/expac. I loved getting all of the terrans story for this game, it felt very well done. Even if there was some cliche, it was very familiar and still different with a new spin on the game.

No Lan is such a laughable argument. Why do you want a feature that was available because internet was garbage 12 years ago? That is the only reason there was lan. You have BNET now. I had 5 people over at my house with a 3mbit internet service and no one lagged at all (4vsAI, one played league)

I love stories in games. Before this I played DoW2 and Chaos rising, I love the story there. The idea you can upgrade and load out different squads. This game is pretty close to that idea. The idea you get monies and spend monies on upgrades.
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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robinhood36 said:
I love how people are complaining about no lan and having only part 1 of 3 for the story.

Would you have enjoyed the story more if it was 26 missions split between all 3 races? I sure wouldn't and I still enjoy the original game/expac. I loved getting all of the terrans story for this game, it felt very well done. Even if there was some cliche, it was very familiar and still different with a new spin on the game.

No Lan is such a laughable argument. Why do you want a feature that was available because internet was garbage 12 years ago? That is the only reason there was lan. You have BNET now. I had 5 people over at my house with a 3mbit internet service and no one lagged at all (4vsAI, one played league)

I love stories in games. Before this I played DoW2 and Chaos rising, I love the story there. The idea you can upgrade and load out different squads. This game is pretty close to that idea. The idea you get monies and spend monies on upgrades.
Then what are we to do for the 500 man tournaments which take place in rented out arenas where there is no internet connection without LAN?

Sure you and a handful of friends can play on B-Net, but for the tournament scene no LAN is a death sentence.
 

robinhood36

Burnt Bacon Bits
Apr 13, 2009
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AC10 said:
robinhood36 said:
Then what are we to do for the 500 man tournaments which take place in rented out arenas where there is no internet connection without LAN?

Sure you and a handful of friends can play on B-Net, but for the tournament scene no LAN is a death sentence.
Move the locale, get your internets from somewhere. The tourney needs to evolve just as the game has now.
 

Catalyst6

Dapper Fellow
Apr 21, 2010
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paketep said:
kingcom said:
Huh, your denying yourself so much pleasure but whatever you say.
Nope. Blizzard is denying me and many others that pleasure.
Oh please. Yes, there are *limited* applications for LAN support, but everyone's just being pissy because they can't pirate the game. That's pretty much why Battle.net is getting so much flak as well. It's no different than Steam, and I don't see people up at arms about them...
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
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Captain Placeholder said:
I think John Funk stated it quite planely on Page 2. The entire story is a basic B-movie type stuff. And quite frankly I do not care. I love playing/watching a B-movie every now and again! If I wanted a game with story I would go play Dragon Age or Mass Effect. Also to me Gameplay > Story. I mean the game could have a shit story yet awesome gameplay. A great example of this is Bayonetta, excellent gameplay yet the story was confusing, stupid and just shitty IMO. I am sure people will dispute that, but still I am just trying to make a point.

StarCrafts story has always been a B-Movie, just enjoy it and do not pick at it :D
I love B-Movies as well, but I watch those for a laugh and some cheesy fun. SC2 presents itself as DEAD. FUCKING. SERIOUS. It want's you to bask in the glow of it's story and character development, it WANTS you to invest in the story.

There are volumes of starcraft novels out there, there is a comic book planned, this is beyond "it's kind of corny and I can forgive it" because it's not supposed to BE like that. I wouldn't even call it B-Movie fare, the production value of this game is through the roof and it obviously uses A-List voice actors.

I can't treat SC2 like a B-movie and I can't forgive it for it's faults.
 

Keava

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Mar 1, 2010
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robinhood36 said:
I love how people are complaining about no lan and having only part 1 of 3 for the story.

Would you have enjoyed the story more if it was 26 missions split between all 3 races? I sure wouldn't and I still enjoy the original game/expac. I loved getting all of the terrans story for this game, it felt very well done. Even if there was some cliche, it was very familiar and still different with a new spin on the game.
Yes i would. I felt the campaign was too long and only reason to draw it so much is so it added 1 unit / mission. Most of them had no actual relevance and could be compressed into much shorter story, up-keeping the integrity and actual dynamics.
I felt the campaign was a bit too much of a stretch and the plot was so ridiculous that i forced myself to finish it.

Even more so. After playing through Wings of Liberty i am not at all interested in playing the follow-ups. For me it's yet another game where Blizzard went too trigger happy on recreating the universe. Same thing happened with Warcraft when WC3 was so different from WC2 and WoW took the retconning of lore even further.

Apart from competitive multiplayer i find the game overly generic, the AI is very poor, the story is not intriguing, the gameplay is unchanged from SC1. For singleplayer experience i'd rather replay the original with expansion pack.
 

Funkiest Monkey

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Jul 10, 2010
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I want this so much. Unfortunately, my shitty computer couldn't run it.

So I guess I'll have to wait until I get a more powerful Laptop later in the year!
 

Tortoiseloz

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Oct 20, 2009
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I bought the special edition (Yeah!! Awesome stuff!!) and special or not that game is awesome I got addicted in 5 minutes!
 

Emergent System

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Feb 27, 2010
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As someone who got the game on release day and have been playing it every day since, I can say that this is one of the best games I've played in many years, and definitely the best RTS I've played in as long as I can remember.

The campaign is extremely well put together, the missions are varied, and everything about it is friendly to new players. If this was the first RTS you played it would be your best possible choice.

On the other hand, Blizzard have made several very strange choices for this game. (Unless all you want to do on battle.net is play melee) battle.net v2.0 is an enormous leap backwards. I don't even mean things like no LAN support or how you need to go online to get your achievements, etc

No, I mean things like how they have completely destroyed the custom maps community. Here is a very tiny representation of the dismay our european forums are currently in:
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/169348414
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/169348640
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/169528451
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/169346958
Sorry to be slightly off-topic, but I'm not sure I understand what it is most people want changed about the current custom game system... You can already upload you own maps with their own names/ descriptions. Just trying to fix my ignorance.
The system is fundamentally broken. Let me explain with a website...Youtube, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Imagine they just removed the search bar, removed the rating system and made anyone be able to upload a video and claim ownership of it. Not only this, they would only put the following videos on the front page:

Justin Bieber - Baby ft. Ludacris
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
Charlie bit my finger - again !
Evolution of Dance
Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA
Pitbull - I know you want me
Shakira - Waka Waka
Hahaha
Miley Cyrus- 7 Things
Lady Gaga-Just Dance

If you notice, those videos are the most viewed on youtube. Because they are on the front page and they are the most viewed, even more people would add to their view count, cementing their spot on the front page. Now imagine that in order to get to the video that you want, you have to click a "show more" button below these videos that would bring you a list of another ten videos, but there's a problem.

The second page of those videos are 11th, 12th, 13th...etc in terms of view count. Now imagine you're looking for "Harvard Study on Anti-Biotics". Can you imagine the amount of unbelievable stupidity you would have to wade through?

This is what Blizzard, in essence, is doing.
That's just a small example. This is truly bizzare since by far and large the main reason WC3 remaines popular to this day is because of its custom map system (and the user-friendly map editor).

In addition, it lacks many features fundamental to an online game, like chat channels, and Blizzard's only response to this has been that they'll add it sometime in the future.

[SPOILER WARNING:]
On a more trivial note, with the game they have significantly retconned enormous amounts of Starcraft lore and changed the personalities and motivations of many characters, and the only real way to get any information on alot of what happens in the game is to read the books they've published. That wouldn't be too bad, if it wasn't for that several very important events in Wings of Liberty alone are utterly incomprehensible to someone who hasn't read said books. At some point Mengks's son just shows up and gives you half his father's fleet without any explanation beyond "i dont like my father lol" - and unless you watched practically every single one of the news broadcasts you wouldn't even know who the guy was at that point.

The focus of the narrative has also changed from space opera to an extremely clichè and uninteresting personal love/revenge story - lead by Jim Raynor, GENERIC WHITE MALE ACTION HERO NUMBER#9001.

These (in my mind) significant flaws aside, Starcraft 2 is one of the best games to have been released in a very long time.