starcraft 2

[Amon Amarth]

[quote]Eye candy? There is no change at all to textures, models, effects, or anything typically associated with that term. The increased FOV is a functional difference and makes only one significant change: allowing more time to be spent controlling units and core gameplay mechanics by greatly reducing the need to manipulate the camera. With a multi-mon FOV such as the one I posted above, I could build an entire base without moving the camera a single time if I wanted. That is simply not possible with the single-screen, restricted FOV.

I, too, play a number of older games. In fact the screenshots are from BFME2, which is certainly not a new game. Zero Hour is an even older RTS I still play, and now I play that in surround as well. Extremely low camera angles is something that I strongly dislike in RTS games. Thus I've attempted to modify/correct the issue wherever I can.

But that's probably why you will never see that feature in SC2. Being such a competitive game that it is (at least internationally). Any feature that would give a player that much more situation awareness will not be included. Guess they might come up with a way to enable it for single player games but then they will constantly have to watch for ppl hacking it to be used in multiplayer match.

So, then why not just add a Fog of War filter for the side monitors? That way, if people are genuinely worried about having an advantage with two extra monitors, the ones on the side will simply be frozen in the Fog of War for multi-player mode.

It may be an under utilization of what Eyefinity can do, however it still does give that panoramic experience.

My two cents...

[GeneralAdmission]

Did you play the first game? I'm a diehard romantic at heart ;-P and I have been dying for the resolution of the story for the last 12 years so that was my main draw for SC2, I'm in it more for the story than the game mechanic. Got to give Blizzard credit for creating a storyline that I still care about after 12 years.

Yes. Played and finished the original. While I remember the story was good, I don't remember any details about how it ended. I'm sure I would find the SC2 story interesting, but if that is my only interest in the game I'll wait until I can pick up all three parts together for the price of a movie ticket. ;)

[Hydralisk_X]

You guys can complain about the triple wide thing all day... but personally I think you're all missing out if you don't play it for that reason alone. No use in trying to change the mind of people at this point. I've played nonstop since getting the game and already going through a 2nd time on the campaign as well as tearing up the ladder (diamond division today, woot!).

[slagg]

The campaign isnt very long then?

[Wiz33]

The campaign isnt very long then?

There are 29 mission in the single player mode. you'll only do 26 of them in a run through (decision tree), Save your game before making the hard decision and then you can try the other 3 later for different outcome. There are also some hidden/optional objectives that may make replaying a mission worthwhile (or look for some online guide to make sure you clear those hidden objective. I would say you can easily get 25 hours+ from the single player mode.

[Hydralisk_X]

The campaign isnt very long then?

When i said nonstop, I meant nonstop :O

I've played a good 40 hours since the game came out. Hey classes haven't started and I'm not doing anything else.

The '8 hour achievement' is just for mission time on normal mode. There's stuff to do in between missions that take a bit of time as well as the fact that brutal takes much (much) longer than normal.

[slagg]

Thats not too bad, especialy as its mostly about the multiplayer.

Loads of people I know bought it. I realy don't like those games though. I think its all the micro management and base building that pisses me off.

[sn0w]

hello all

my first post :P

i can confirm that starcraft doesnt work eyefinity in widescreen mode

but

put the screens in portrait mode and it works a charm...

its not as good as full wide screen... but heck its better than playing on one screen!

give it a go..

its pretty awesome

[Anprionsa]

Okay, so I was able to play Starcraft 2 just yesterday at a friends house. I stayed there pretty much until I beat the game. So I have a few comments.

Let me mention that I played the original StarCraft a lot! I replayed the campaign missions regularly and loved playing via LAN with my friends. I rarely played via Battle.net

First off, I believe most of the reviews you see on websites now are going to be highly biased for a higher score. In my opinion none of them are correct when they gave it a 10 (like 40% of all reviews). I do like the direction that it went with some of the missions and things, but I just can't justify the look of the game (only 3 CGI movies, less than what I thought everyone was going on about). The game just doesn't look like a year 2010 game, it just doesn't. No doubt that isn't the reason that the game will be bought, but it is (and should be) on the list of things the reviewers look at. And if that was it, I might be inclined to give it even a 9.5. But it isn't all. I found myself just wanting to get to the next cut scene or something, even though some of the new missions types were nice.

The story line was... ok. I thought I had seen it all before in either Halo or Mass Effect.

***SPOILER***

I mean... another alien race that comes back from the dead to annihilate the other races of the galaxy? Seriously? It is probably just major coincidence that this game mirrors Mass Effect in that regard. But, I can't seem to really accept that I had seen that before. Now granted there are some twists to this, but that is the gist of it. Just think Mass Effect RTS.

***END***

Gameplay was, in essence, Brood War with a few new additions. I was impressed by the Upgrades and Research options, but those aren't new in any new game nowadays and are thought to be standard. However, what I did like were some of the interesting missions, and I'm sure some of you will like them. The other missions, some of them anyway, became forgettable and tedious and I found myself wanting the cheat code "there is no cow level" (BTW, this code no longer exists).

Battle.net 2.0 is where the real split between most of us would be. I don't really play like that, and like most, will be waiting to play on some private server goodness (when I buy the game of course). I got blasted on some websites for mentioning no LAN supports was a minus for me, but I have friends with Laptops who would love to come play it with me, either on my own server or via LAN. And I am aware of certain countries where using battle.net would be slower with a higher ping than by just adding LAN support (and is it really that hard? really? it doesn't take much to add).

With just those things I can't give it a 10. It was just OK. Not perfect by a long shot. And I am quite dismayed that there are so many biased reviews who overlook the obvious flaws in the game to give it a 10, when it should get an 8.5-9.0... maybe.

[Wiz33]

Okay, so I was able to play Starcraft 2 just yesterday at a friends house. I stayed there pretty much until I beat the game. So I have a few comments.

Let me mention that I played the original StarCraft a lot! I replayed the campaign missions regularly and loved playing via LAN with my friends. I rarely played via Battle.net

First off, I believe most of the reviews you see on websites now are going to be highly biased for a higher score. In my opinion none of them are correct when they gave it a 10 (like 40% of all reviews). I do like the direction that it went with some of the missions and things, but I just can't justify the look of the game (only 3 CGI movies, less than what I thought everyone was going on about). The game just doesn't look like a year 2010 game, it just doesn't. No doubt that isn't the reason that the game will be bought, but it is (and should be) on the list of things the reviewers look at. And if that was it, I might be inclined to give it even a 9.5. But it isn't all. I found myself just wanting to get to the next cut scene or something, even though some of the new missions types were nice.


The story line was... ok. I thought I had seen it all before in either Halo or Mass Effect.

***SPOILER***

I mean... another alien race that comes back from the dead to annihilate the other races of the galaxy? Seriously? It is probably just major coincidence that this game mirrors Mass Effect in that regard. But, I can't seem to really accept that I had seen that before. Now granted there are some twists to this, but that is the gist of it. Just think Mass Effect RTS.

***END***

Gameplay was, in essence, Brood War with a few new additions. I was impressed by the Upgrades and Research options, but those aren't new in any new game nowadays and are thought to be standard. However, what I did like were some of the interesting missions, and I'm sure some of you will like them. The other missions, some of them anyway, became forgettable and tedious and I found myself wanting the cheat code "there is no cow level" (BTW, this code no longer exists).

Battle.net 2.0 is where the real split between most of us would be. I don't really play like that, and like most, will be waiting to play on some private server goodness (when I buy the game of course). I got blasted on some websites for mentioning no LAN supports was a minus for me, but I have friends with Laptops who would love to come play it with me, either on my own server or via LAN. And I am aware of certain countries where using battle.net would be slower with a higher ping than by just adding LAN support (and is it really that hard? really? it doesn't take much to add).

With just those things I can't give it a 10. It was just OK. Not perfect by a long shot. And I am quite dismayed that there are so many biased reviews who overlook the obvious flaws in the game to give it a 10, when it should get an 8.5-9.0... maybe.

I don't think it deserve a 10 either but a 9-9.5 is fair. According to Blizzard, there is over an hour of high quality cutscene and movies. That's not bad at all. As far as the visual goes, Have you zoom in to see the detail? There are tons of detail on every unit not to mention the maps. I found it compares well to the latest RTS like Dawn of War 2 and such.

The only bad point to me is the slow unit introductions. You get only one new unit each mission for a good while and that unit will play a key role in that mission. It makes it seems kinda like a giant tutorial for the first 10-12 missions. There is also the fact that some of the units you learned to use in the single player game can not be use in MP, not even vs AI. That seems a waste. I know it's all about balance in MP but it would be nice to have access to those unit when you play against the AI. It's like you get into a certain play style and then have it yank from you in MP and you have to learn to use the new units.

Other than that, I like the game. I wish they would have adopt some of the newer innovation of resource gathering and supply management just to reduce the amount of micro-management but then it may not feel like StarCraft. I'm taking it slow on this game (one mission a day at most) since I know it will be a long wait for part 2. Although I was told to expect part 2 before we see Diablo 3. I think the release schedule will be something like this: SC2.1 1st half of 2010, D3 2nd half of 2010, SC2.2 1st half of 2011 and D3 expansion 2nd half of 2011.

[GeneralAdmission]

Nice write-up, koawinter. I value the opinions of my fellow gamers far more than reviewers. In fact I stopped by the Metacritic page for SC2 the other day and immediately thought the grading upwardly-slanted. I know from experience that reviewers who are so enamored of a game often leave out or casually dismiss most/all negatives in their fiesta of praise. Right now MC shows eleven perfect scores. Really? Eleven? Methinks Blizzard is getting some official fanboy love.

[Hydralisk_X]

There's *only* 3 CG movies because they don't want to pack the game on 5 dvd's (unless you want low quality). Seriously, it came on 1 dvd and that's fine by me. They don't want to pull a Lost Odyssey and do a ton of CG on 4 dvd's. Not to mention digital distribution would be hell.

I never cared about reviewer ratings anyway. I pretty much guessed a 95 average (it's sitting at 94 right now on metacritic) regardless of what the game actually was like.

Clearly I didn't play thousands of hours of SC1 / Warcraft 3 for the campaign, but this one definitely took the cake in terms of RTS campaigns for me. Beating every mission on brutal and getting every achievement was actually not a chore for me and enjoyable / reasonably challenging for a single player endeavor. The plot is woefully incomplete right now and I wasn't a huge fan of the overall plot in the campaign.

As far as playing with friends on LAN... all of my roommates (I have 3 roommates) play on b.net with me as well as a ton of friends who come over to play. No LAN has not hindered us at all. B.net 2.0 itself is missing several KEY features that they *promised* will be patched in LATER (wth does later mean). That's my biggest gripe.

Competitive multiplayer is a mixed bag. The different divisions are great for casuals but the overall ladder is muddled since eveyrone is split between thousands of divisions. Personally I made Diamond 1v1 and 2v2, so you could claim that I'm in the top divisions on the ladder. I was also active on the warcraft 3 ladder and held a top spot in 2v2. I'm not sure which one I prefer more. SC2's ladder system is definitely less *stressful* with the bonus pool and nice *everyone gets a bone* setup with only 100 people in each division.

[yogibbear]

As far as playing with friends on LAN... all of my roommates (I have 3 roommates) play on b.net with me as well as a ton of friends who come over to play. No LAN has not hindered us at all. B.net 2.0 itself is missing several KEY features that they *promised* will be patched in LATER (wth does later mean). That's my biggest gripe.

Which may work for you as you live in America. Not every country around the world has a battle.net server located in a ping friendly nearby country (let alone in their country). For example Australia.... :evil:

[Hydralisk_X]

[quote]As far as playing with friends on LAN... all of my roommates (I have 3 roommates) play on b.net with me as well as a ton of friends who come over to play. No LAN has not hindered us at all. B.net 2.0 itself is missing several KEY features that they *promised* will be patched in LATER (wth does later mean). That's my biggest gripe.

Which may work for you as you live in America. Not every country around the world has a battle.net server located in a ping friendly nearby country (let alone in their country). For example Australia.... :evil:
Then that's a much larger issue than not having LAN; because regardless of LAN or not the most important MP play will still be on battle.net. I heard that SEA in general sucks for SC2 and that's why they're unlocking that region.

They claim that LAN will be added at a later date with a check to b.net for authentication every now and then. Don't know how long that will take.

[DaFox]

Then that's a much larger issue than not having LAN; because regardless of LAN or not the most important MP play will still be on battle.net. I heard that SEA in general sucks for SC2 and that's why they're unlocking that region.

They claim that LAN will be added at a later date with a check to b.net for authentication every now and then. Don't know how long that will take.

There are tons of related issues, Battle.net is really the key issue for me and almost everyone else.

The game it self is great, GREAT. Too bad about Battle.net though, I guess thats what happens when you bring someone in formerly of Xbox Live and Popcap to work on a serious part of a serious PC game.

At some point I'll work up the nerve to ask Dustin Browder about Surround in SC2, even if its just for singleplayer etc.

[GeneralAdmission]

I guess thats what happens when you bring someone in formerly of Xbox Live and Popcap to work on a serious part of a serious PC game.

Huh? Did the lead b.net designer come from that background? I know Xbox Live is the pinnacle of online awesome, but what Popcap product features any significant online mp component?

[DaFox]

Huh? Did the lead b.net designer come from that background? I know Xbox Live is the pinnacle of online awesome, but what Popcap product features any significant online mp component?

He was in charge of bringing Popcap games to other platforms (like 360, iPhone etc)

He comes from a marketing backround, moved into a General Management position over on Xbox Live and then to a VP position on Game Platforms at popcap, and then onto Project Director of Battle.net 2.0.

Edit: Greg Canessa

Another negative to go along with the discussion about the SEA servers before is the region system is just horrible. Here's an example... Lets say that I move from North America to Korea, It's temporary for like a year and a half. Which version of the game do I buy? If I got the American one I would be forced to play on NA servers with 400+ ping.

If I got the Korean one I could not have english what so ever[citation-needed] and when I move back to NA I could only exclusively use my account on Korean servers with my Korean game client (which also happens to be censored for some stupid reason[1].)

Cranky doesn't mind, as it stops people from buying a regional copy with a lower price. I believe that this is MUCH better than banning people, but christ this is frakking stupid, 100% lose-lose as a consumer.

I would like to make a little list of negatives about this game, care to help?

Lack of AR support above 1.6
Price
Lack of LAN support
Lack of Chat rooms
Lack of Cross Region Play

[Aix]

I was able to load up SC2 in Eyefinity portrait mode, but the game doesn't detect my bezel compensation.

It's...interesting in portrait Eyefinity, but I find the bezels are much more intrusive to the play experience due to the nature of RTS games. It's neat, but it takes away from the overall polish of the game.

[whismerhill]

I want Kerrigan and her post transformation english voice with effects ...
starcraft without it is like a driver without a car .. it's just incomplete in my opinion

as good as the starcraft 2 content is... , it just feels incomplete & frustrating to me to only have a terran campaign

sidenote: if anyone noted the starcraft 1 expansion dropped the nice effects on her voice...


PS: sorry if I stumble in the middle of other discussions but I just felt like voicing my opinion