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Is Starcraft 2 worth checking out now?

Eyestabber

Arcane
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
I'm playing SC2 right now.

Multiplayer is where the fun is at, IMO. Either "serious" 1v1 or the "casual" co-op. Campaigns are also p. fun, but the story is really, REALLY bad. Just skip all dialogue, kill stuff, buy upgrades and repeat until the end. Bear in mind that MP and Campaign are very, VERY different, so you might wanna play some vs AI before facing human opponents.
 
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Kangaroo Island
Starcraft 1's writing was cheesy and derivative, but it embraced that.

I think the difference is that Blizzard knew what to steal, and understood what they were stealing. Their current writing team have no fucking clue in any sense. It is mystifying that a multi-billion dollar company couldn't hire more capable people, but there you have it.
I said this on the other SC2 thread. The original game wasn't some brilliant piece of Pulitzer Prize winning excellence, but it had maturity (goofy space-rednecks notwithstanding), internal consistency, and a plot that made sense. As far as video game writing goes, especially RTS writing, those things earn it some serious credit.
 

kris

Arcane
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Oct 27, 2004
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8,835
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Lulea, Sweden
Starcraft 1's writing was cheesy and derivative, but it embraced that.

I think the difference is that Blizzard knew what to steal, and understood what they were stealing. Their current writing team have no fucking clue in any sense. It is mystifying that a multi-billion dollar company couldn't hire more capable people, but there you have it.

Both games have the same writers. It is much more likely that praise over the first game got over Metzens head and suddenly he thought he was some genius and needed/wanted to make a mythical super-plot. Instead he just puked out horse-arse.
 
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I have a feeling that Metzen had more people telling him "no" in SC1, Brood War, and WC3. My best guess is that most of those people left the company around maybe one or two years before SC2's release. That would explain why WoL was "okay" right up until Zeratul shows up and goes "hey dude check this out"
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
WoL started sucking the moment you hear the "mother of God" catchphrase.

Both games have the same writers. It is much more likely that praise over the first game got over Metzens head and suddenly he thought he was some genius and needed/wanted to make a mythical super-plot. Instead he just puked out horse-arse.

Are they the same writers? I'm guessing it was more of a collaboration effort and Metzens's bullshit was kept in check by others (Warcraft 3 is when his crap really started to become obvious). And i very much doubt this kind of shit comes from him:



This intro is a perfect example of what i meant when i said Blizzard knew how to be derivative but in a good way. Emulation can be an art in itself and this is a good example.
 
Joined
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8,819
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Starcraft 1's writing was cheesy and derivative, but it embraced that.

I think the difference is that Blizzard knew what to steal, and understood what they were stealing. Their current writing team have no fucking clue in any sense. It is mystifying that a multi-billion dollar company couldn't hire more capable people, but there you have it.
why spend money paying professionals when idiots get praised and sell anyway?
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Starcraft 1's writing was cheesy and derivative, but it embraced that.

I think the difference is that Blizzard knew what to steal, and understood what they were stealing. Their current writing team have no fucking clue in any sense. It is mystifying that a multi-billion dollar company couldn't hire more capable people, but there you have it.

Both games have the same writers. It is much more likely that praise over the first game got over Metzens head and suddenly he thought he was some genius and needed/wanted to make a mythical super-plot. Instead he just puked out horse-arse.

My guess is more that he felt cheesed off that the very nature of WoW prevented him from finishing the story he started in Warcraft 2 and 3, so he brought it over to Starcraft instead. That's why SC2 Kerrigan is suddenly Space Arthas and all the races have to unite against Totally Not Sargeras who used his influence to manipulate Space Undead Zerg into making it possible for him to return.

EDIT: I do want to emphasize, though, that multiplayer Starcraft 2, even against AI, is quite possibly the pinnacle of strategy video games. The only competition it has is its predecessor. SC2 is still going through some growing pains, as opposed to the more mature BW, but I think it's ultimately got more potential - though it will never match BW's success as an esport.
 
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Joined
Mar 18, 2009
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7,307
I went through all 3 campaigns about a month ago. WoL was a second run for me and I think it remains the best campaign. I got increasingly tired with each subsequent campaign and by the end of Protoss campaign I couldn't wait for it to end. Had more fun in skirmish mode but already stopped playing that too after getting Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader on steam sale. Sure, Blizzard went out of their way to make campaigns varied but after a while that actually got tiring and made me long for simple "build a base and go destroy enemy" scenarios. I especially hate missions where I'm forced to rush because there's a timer in these games. Another annoying thing was that rules in campaign are a bit different from skirmish/mp. Campaign-only units and autocasting of abilities which doesn't exist in regular game.
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Drop off from the original??

It's literally the EXACT SAME FUCKING GAME just with better graphixxx and a shit storyline stretched out so they could sell the same game 3 times and make 3 times the $$$.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
Well, it is in the total sum of things. Starcraft had class. Had atmosphere. Had excellent unit design, great sounds (compare the Zergs in the original with the new ones), and so on and so forth. Starcraft 2 is basically Starcraft 1 redux but a lot of the charm of the original was lost. Those aren't irrelevant things when you are going to spend a billion hours on a game (talking about multiplayer of course).

This is why i hated the game when i first bought it. Now i'm just pretending it is some Starcraft clone unrelated to the original and it comes out a lot better in that respect.
 

80s Stallone

Arcane
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The Bunker
In StarCraft, it was obvious that Terrans could only hold themselves against the Zerg and Protoss for reasons of game mechanics. In StarCraft II you fucking assault the core Zerg planet as Terrans! That made me angry.

I guess StarCraft II is okay. But I didn't play it that much.

BTW, I think some of the first StarCraft's story was written by the hack Kevin J. Anderson (some awful Star Wars books and some Dune-raping Dune books). But I dunno. I remember his name being in the manual...
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
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716
Drop off from the original??

It's literally the EXACT SAME FUCKING GAME just with better graphixxx and a shit storyline stretched out so they could sell the same game 3 times and make 3 times the $$$.

I can't tell if this is trolling or not. The mechanics and playstyles of Starcraft 2 are massively different from BW. I can't think of any similarities that aren't superficial.
 
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
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Yeah I'm actually looking forward to HD rerelease of SC1/BW. Original SC in higher res + some UI improvements sounds so much better than SC2 to me.
 

mastroego

Arcane
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Italy
Although there's the Mass Recall mod for SC2 (recreation of SC1).
New (final?) version about to be released.
It was a fine work already, last I tried it.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
56,164
SC1 in the new engine would be great. Better AI and some of the conveniences of SC2 (the ability to select more than 12 units, the counter for harvesting units, and so forth) would be kinda cool.

I'm a bit more weary about an HD version of the original. A lot of ways they can go wrong with that, even graphically (I.E., by adding bloom or making shit blurry). I'm holding to the current installer in case they fuck that up and then proceed to remove the non-HD version from the download section.
 

mastroego

Arcane
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Italy
Seriously, the mod is here, you should check it out.
Just wait a few days, they should release Version 6.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Meh, I think Mass Recall is a lesser alternative to the original. The art direction and 3d models just can't match the 2d stuff

 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
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May 15, 2015
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716
I think the BW rerelease that's rumoured is going to be more of a remaster than anything else. Sprucing up the game so it can run better on modern systems, etc (specifically, IIRC the game doesn't work on any OS X after 10, which has been kind of a huge drag for LAN parties with any of my friends who have Macs.). Might be some UI and AI adjustments, etc, but all in all I suspect it will be more like AoE 2 HD than BG EE (albeit hopefully significantly less buggy than AoE 2 HD).

Really my main desire is a matchmaking system similar to SC2. BW is currently at a state where it can be hard to find matches that aren't a complete curb stomp one way or the other.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
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May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Does MR implement a limit of 12 units selectable at a time? If not, are there plans to do that? Because otherwise it's gonna be ridiculously easy. I mean even moreso. You could already slam through episode 6 (by far the hardest campaign) just by making 3-5 groups of Hydras. Being able to solidify all those groups into one massive deathball would just make it into a joke. Though a joke that would be fun to play, I'll give it that.

This is also my hope for the HD BW or whatever. AoE 1, Total Annihilation, the C&C games, all of these allowed the player to select massive amounts of units at a time. BW's limit of 12 was a conscious design choice, not a concession to technical limitations. Infinite selection might be a highly requested UI feature, but it would completely and utterly break the game. The sheer level of mechanics required to move a deathball across the map without having it implode on itself was what led to BW being more about a series of skirmishes rather than two massive armies clashing in the middle of the map.
 

mastroego

Arcane
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It uses the SC2 engine but some adjustments have been made and it's reported as being harder than the original even at the easiest setting, IIRC.
The rationale is that only reasonably experienced users will get this mod anyway.

Perhaps they'll actually tone it down for V6.
 

mastroego

Arcane
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
10,250
Location
Italy
Mass Recall V6 just released. From the screenshots it looks good.

As I anticipated, they toned down the Easy difficulty setting, as it was too hard.
Normal and Hard should still be harder than the original game.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Anyone been following the major patch coming out soon? Looks pretty cool. I'm excited for the changes. Nice to see that Tankivacs are dead and gone and BW Siege Tanks are back. Cyclone might be a little more useful now but it's still the worst case of expansion-itis I've ever seen. They're really trying hard to do everything they can to make the Hydra useful other than the extremely obvious option of bumping it down to T 1.5, we'll see how that works out. Toss changes are pretty controversial, and there seems to be a lot of divided opinion over whether the new Tempests are game-breaking or utterly useless.
 

MilesBeyond

Cipher
Joined
May 15, 2015
Messages
716
Replaying the LotV campaign. Oh man.

1. The story is truly abysmal. Like holy crap. It feels like a terrible anime.
2. I still hate Alarak. I don't understand the appeal of Alarak. He's a joke. Everything he says is just like "Darkness! Evil! Love is for the weak! There is only power!" It's like if some fourteen-year-old kid decided to splice their Shadow the Hedgehog fanfiction with Starcraft. People say "But he's like the new BW-era Kerrigan!" Nope. I just played Brood War, and I sure as hell don't remember any monologues about "LOL evil is teh coolest!"
3. I also hate Artanis. I have always hated Artanis. From the very beginning of Brood War where it's like "Okay there is no way in HELL I was this goofy-ass drama queen in Episode 3." But here he's even worse. I feel like he's got a speech impediment where he's unable to speak without making a pompous and grandiose speech. All Protoss are like that, I guess. Just Artanis is way, way worse.
4. The story is unintentionally hilarious in the best way. Because Protoss don't have facial expressions they just have the camera do a really quick extreme close-up on Artanis whenever he's surprised or upset about something and it's amazing(ly awful)
5. In spite of all this, they really outdid themselves with the gameplay on this one. This is, by far, the most fun and most challenging campaign I've ever played in an RTS. The second time through the same-y mission objectives didn't bother me at all. The "Destroy 5 Macguffins" thing is really, really good. Why? Because it forces you to get your army outside of your base but prevents you from dedicating much time to destroying the enemy base. It works especially well because they seem to have taught the AI to hit your base hard after your army moves out (or to just hit you regularly enough that it doesn't matter). And the army composition they send at you is usually on point - enough so that you typically can't rely on static d to hold them off for long (unless you micro it, I guess).

See, to me, the greatest irony of LotV is that it actually has some pretty awesome emergent storytelling. The relative difficulty of the campaign combined with the bombastic soundtrack can create some pretty tense and dramatic moments. Then suddenly you're sucked out of it to endure cheesy, hackneyed cutscenes about the Dark God coming back and Oh No.

Also, seriously Blizzard? You introduce a powerful new robotic unit with the expansion, you have a plot point where in the campaign you uncover the Purifier project to gain powerful new robotic technology, and we don't get the new unit? Like, what the hell? This was an amazing opportunity to be like "Yeah here's the Disruptor, go wreck shit" but instead we don't get that at all. I mean you did bring back the Reaver so I'm inclined to forgive you, but for real.

EDIT: I should, however, clarify that the campaign becomes much easier towards the end, and mass Void Rays make several missions quite trivial. I always sub out Void Rays for Arbiters because lol nostalgia, so that ups the challenge a fair bit. Nonetheless, expect the difficulty to decline as you go further along.
 
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