Mazty said:
John Funk said:
Are you really basing a multiplayer game around the AI? Seriously? Go watch some high-level tourney SC2 play and tell me that there's nothing new. The strategies that people come up with using the new units and the new mechanics are often mindblowingly cool.
It's the same price point every blizzard game has had since WC3 not counting WoW, and if you *seriously* believe that the mission design isn't some of the best we've ever seen in an RTS, then I don't know what to tell you. I look at the singleplayer modes in Dawn of War 2, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander... there's absolutely no comparison there whatsoever.
It's a third of a game in the same way that Fellowship of the Ring is a third of a movie. (Or a book). This is such a silly complaint in my mind, all the more so after the game came out and had 16+ hours of brilliant singleplayer mission design.
....Wait what? Just look at the parts I highlighted for you...See the contradictions you make? You are saying that it doesn't matter if the AI is crap, but that it is some of the best mission design seen...Now say you meant literally just that, doesn't it seem a bit absurd to praise mission design, but then to face off against naff AI? =S
Yes some of the mission designs were very well done, encouraging more interaction with the map rather than make base & go smash. But, lets compare it to DoW2. Yes the missions were not as varied, but the storyline wasn't a giant cliché that makes no sense in comparison to the first games, plus the missions required far more battlefield tactics rather than *spam new unit* *charge*. True the difficulty could be increased, but considering the AI n Very Hard cheats, I can't imagine it wouldn't on Brutal.
They could have easily put the other missions in the game and cut some of the junk out. Hell, maybe it would have forced them to make a half decent storyline. It's hard to appreciate a set of missions when 1)the AI is terrible and 2) the story is awful. At £35 (and using the WoW graphics engine no less) I just smell a Blizzard Cash Cow
Mission design and AI aren't the same thing at all. The AI is the way the computer tries to outplay/out-think you. The mission design is how... the missions are designed. Your objectives, how it plays out, what you do, etc. Compare that to DoW2, where it seemed like they were just using the same three or so mission objectives over and over again? Look, don't get me wrong, I really liked DoW2. If we'd been giving stars back then, it'd be an easy four-star game. But their campaigns aren't anywhere near the same level.
The SC2 story was a well-told cheesy space opera, exactly what I've expected from Blizzard since, uh, WC2. Their dialogue has always been cheesy, it's the execution thereof that's usually well done, and in SC2 it's no exception.
At the core of it, though, SC2 isn't meant to be played against the AI. It's meant to be played against other people - competitively, no less. In doing so, Blizzard needed to make sure that A.) the races were as balanced as possible, B.) every race should have an amount of units that was large enough to offer different strategies and yet not so big that it became impossible to try and predict what your opponent was doing, C.) that the races still maintained their unique racial identities in how they played.
Those are the core pillars of SC2, and that's why I suspect that many people who aren't into the idea of e-sports - or who don't take the time to look at SC2 in-depth - see it as little more than a reskin of SC1, which it isn't. If you haven't read the interview I did with Dustin Browder [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_248/7375-A-Master-Craftsman], I highly recommend you do - it might help you understand what they were trying to do.
And frankly, it works. It works admirably well. SC2 isn't just fun to play against other people, it's strikingly fun to watch, even if you don't know your Marines from your Marauders. I was in the press room at BlizzCon, and almost every single person there was enraptured by the SC2 finals being broadcast, even if they didn't know the first thing about StarCraft. In that regard, it's a phenomenal success - and if you're only playing against the AI, that may be why you've been soured on it.
At the end of the day, I spend $60 on games for work often enough that I think I've become a pretty good judge at when a game's content is worth the asking price. Many games aren't. SC2 definitely is.
