StarCraft 2 review

[solidsamurai]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/939643-st.../review-142604

I thought the guys opinion on the story was dead on. I might give it a 3/10 for at least attempting a dynamic approach with actual character back and forths, and how it's a change from what story in some games used to be (of course, other games released these days have better story). Obviously, the 3/10 says that it doesn't mean much though. If I were reviewing this, I'd make people aware of how the game has that somewhat open ended approach to it (even though it isn't as open ended as many would like; there's an awful lot of filler). I fell like people haven't harped on this game enough, and if they have, they haven't done so effectively.

Graphics are a 9/10. -1 for not going with the original starcraft thematic.


The guy's opinion on sounds was a bit harsh. 5/10 because the music could have been done a lot better, but it's not horrible, and it's worth listening to at least a few times (it's just not great; it doesn't really suit a game that at it's crux is about pointlessly violent battles with soldiers that get killed ). The voice acting is phoned in, and I agree that even Tychus seems to have trouble conveying certain emotions.


7/10 is a fair score for gameplay. I only really linger on this site because I remain a fan of starcraft as a broader universe and theme - not as a franchise produced by blizzard.

The gameplay, although fun at times, is bland enough that, despite playing it for multiple hours and beating the campaign of WoL, I never really felt the urge to go back into it. Even online play is mostly predictable. I kinda know what the opponent will do when I do a certain thing and it's just not all that fun. When the opponent beats you, it's mostly annoying - it's like, 'yeah, I'm gonna lose so might as well GG'. And sometimes I linger because it fun to leave the opponent with the chore of actually blowing up my base.

I had more fun with starcraft 1, simply because there's more micro to the game, and units have a point. The unit with the least point in brood war is twofold - the firebat and the valkyrie. Both are close range and AoE, but both are pretty cool - one has a friggin flamethrower, and the other is this spaceboat driven by a romanian hottie that friggin' shoots homing rockets designed to perforate in clusters. There's a lot of it in starcraft 2 - the marauder, the MULE, the thor, and the raven. I know I'm only considering terran here, but there's a point to it - the flaws can be pointed out in a single race alone. The race that was intended for the campaign.

The thor is anti-mech, but is big and clumsy. It's really only for dominating late game - there's no unit like that in BW for terran except the battlecruiser. And then there's the battlecruiser. And while it's fun to have two flavours of big unit, it just doesn't fit together in the over all faster gameplay. Maybe if blizzard allowed you to customize load outs and then have an auto search function for players that accepted such load outs from their opponents, maybe... that'd work? At least it'd be innovative and vary itself from the old model + fit in with the slightly more customizable play that goes with campaign mode (campaign mode mostly teaching you how to play, and having each mission just be a different scenario with different end objectives; this is what most RTS games do as a model, except games like Age of Empires 1 tend to end whenever you destroy all of the enemy regardless... anyway).

The marauder is chiefly there to just dominate the ground. It's end all be all. The only thing that stops it is blocking. Protoss players will block you with photon cannons and force fields. Zerg will... um... I haven't actually played zerg... but I guess they just keep building units and then try to trick the opponent with banelings and infestors or whatever.

The MULE pretty much just makes it so much easier to harvest expos of their minerals. If you have 3 ops centers, you can basically just keep summoning MULEs. MULEs encourage the terran all-in strategy, wherein you migrate SCVs and keep trying to block opponent ramps and stuff. This is all fun the first few times, but I bet it gets old after awhile.

The raven is obviously pointless. Besides being a detector. The whole point of terran in BW was that detection was expensive; they needed to tech up and get science vessels, also an expensive unit - meanwhile protoss observers are invisible and cheaper, and zerg detection is bread and butter; simultaneously used as the race's supply. The point being that terran, with their mighty firepower and easy defensive capability, is that they can easily be fooled. This is still quite the same, however the point has yet to be made.

Raven spells include auto-turrets, seeker missile, and point defense drone. All of which are boring! Auto-turrets summon an immovable object. They aren't so great for walling - they're good for summoning a few extra immovable marines that don't move. Did I mention they didn't move? Okay, maybe they do a little extra damage. They aren't really useful. You can summon maybe four of these (or was it six?) and then the raven is out of energy. It 'supplements your army'. Yeah, boring. Seeker missile is a minor splash damage, major damage on single target spell. Good for killing a mid-tier unit, or hurting it to half health. It's pointless. Good for scaring people. But it's boring. And then point defense drone is another army supplement - it feels like yet another buff in an RPG. It defends against ranged attacks, but it can't block all of them (like, if there's too many projectiles flying around). It's boring! Truth is, people only use ravens for detection. At least, that's what I use them for.

The banshee is fun to play with, but can be quite predictable... to use. If your against a group of banshees, the only thing you can do is back up your army with detectors. At least with the wraith, it was more fun using them to hunt down enemy detectors (all of which were air units; similar to warcraft 2, where air was used entirely to detect invisible units and submarines, and harassment; although the ones that could attack were expensive - not to mention, any unit can be made invisible in that game, but anyway) and big flying units such as guardians, carriers and battlecruisers.

Control: The game feels more sluggish than broodwar - and given it's an RTS, that's enough for at least a -1 to gameplay. If they wanted to recreate starcraft, they should've tested that!

Even if it meant including mouse-synch into their long list of toggable settings. -_-


Online has been improved a bit since the release in 2010, and includes simple stuff such as new match modes, better custom game categorization, and a simpler interface (all simple, sensical changes; although I'll admit some of the match ups take forever to search - is it because no one likes comp stomp anymore??? *sigh* anyway...), so I'd give it a 7/10.

Conclusion - 6/10 (above average).

Not great, definitely not perfect. More than just playable and if you're the type of person or you're just starving for an RTS that could be workable into a competitive environment due to marketing and not because the competitive element is any more fun or outstanding compared to other e-sports titles - then by all means, play it dry until you become an SC2 e-sports legend and/or make it big as an e-sports commentator (hay everyone, this is h2-husky hus... ! I'll see my way out).

But hey, at least it's one point higher than 5/10! Remember kids, 5/10 = average, not horrible.

It's all about the experience; although things such as concept might earn points, when a game looks like it might end up with a below 4 rating otherwise.

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My scale

5/10 - It's average. You can buy it, though it probably won't eat away your time (unless you're bored). Always worth a rental, although most things are (when you're bored).
4/10 - It passes and does a little more. It's mediocre though, and definitely not apart from any other game out there. You could rent this, but you might be too busy renting something else.
3/10 - Even this is a passing grade. Meaning it'd be playable, but not necessarily fun. Repeated plays are worth it, but only if it's free. If you buy this, it's worth returning.
2/10 - Your pushing it now, buddy. Don't come any closer! I'll play you once. Even if it's free, I wouldn't continue to play this.
1/10 - Playing this will be painful. No way you'd buy it. This is farmville territory.
0/10 - Um yeah. Horrible. Stuck in alpha, horrible everything.

Above 5/10, you get into what makes the game good and how it compares to everything else that come out superior in a game genre. 5/10 and 6/10 are major gaps. A game truly has to excel to reach the upper echelons - the 8, 9 and 10/10s. Indeed, my rating scale has 3 brackets that a game can ascend in godliness. If 7/10 is peaking towards that level of the above averages, and 6/10 is one step below - it makes you look at my opinion in a better light, no? Well, hopefully, anyway.

[Pr0nogo]

I think the graphics were borderline abysmal. The in-game graphics have horrid compression and many of them feel like they were slopped together at the last second. The pre-rendered cinematics were poorly directed and the writing behind them was stale. You can say that James Cameron's AVATAR was beautiful, but the writing behind it was retarded. I would rate the graphics much lower than 9/10 - even on Ultra, I'm forced to either grit my teeth or close the game.

[Visions of Khas]

Nobody on these forums actually likes StarCraft, do they?

[RetlocLive]

I liked the story...until it was mutilated in Wings of Liberty.

They built the story around the gameplay of the levels which made the storytelling extremely shallow. I don't care that Raynor and company are showen complaining about the dangers of having to mine on a planet that lava rises from time to time, or that the gang must hurry to gather Terrizene canisters before the Protoss seal the gas away... that's all related to the freaking gameplay. Where is the actual world-building?


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[Hawki]

Nobody on these forums actually likes StarCraft, do they?

"Everything's amazing, nobody's happy."

Yeah, I couldn't help but be reminded of that quote. But the discussion's been beaten to death and samurai dredging up a review from 2 years ago is testament to this.

Look on the bright side, HotS is coming soon. Soon we'll have new stuff to complain about.

[solidsamurai]

I think the graphics were borderline abysmal. The in-game graphics have horrid compression and many of them feel like they were slopped together at the last second. The pre-rendered cinematics were poorly directed and the writing behind them was stale. You can say that James Cameron's AVATAR was beautiful, but the writing behind it was retarded. I would rate the graphics much lower than 9/10 - even on Ultra, I'm forced to either grit my teeth or close the game.

Personally, I don't care for graphics in any game, so I'll rate it highly regardless so long as it works and isn't ridiculously slow*. I heard the graphics could burn out a 500 dollar video card though, according to another review. Most likely it's been patched by now though, heh. If not, it'd probably earn a worse rating - not that I have any sources to base my opinions on other than my experience of the game itself.

Also, I'm thinking of giving story a 4/10 - the story doesn't entirely ruin the game for me; just the presiding universe. And it doesn't change the over all 6/10 rating.

I was surprised that the music had the same composer for terran as the original starcraft. That certainly doesn't change my rating though.

*EDIT: TotalBiscuit did a HotS review recently, and while his praise was glowing, he mentioned that WoL on Ultra ran slow, even on high-end systems. Which I didn't know. Ironically, his glowing review makes WoL suck even more. xD

[RetlocLive]

Look on the bright side, HotS is coming soon. Soon we'll have new stuff to complain about.

GREAT YA, I'm gunna enjoy watching HOTS' StrangledByTheRedString romance, that is Raynor x Kerrigan, Metzen wants us so badly to believe exists. Or better yet, how the story is going to end with a Terran/Protoss/Zerg alliance vs the Dark Voice. I! CAN! NOT! WAIT!

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[Visions of Khas]

"Everything's amazing, nobody's happy."

No. Oh god no. WoL could have been so much more. It's just that this horse has been beat so far into the ground. There were good things about the campaign. It just seems like everyone's jumped onto the bandwagon of hate and this cart's been going way too long.

I thought we got this out of our collective system when Gradius posted his own review a while ago. There were things about his review I disagreed with, and I did not voice my opinions as civilly as I should have.

I just wish we could be more constructive about our discontent in WoL, like a fan campaign of the way things could have gone, or should have gone.

[Pr0nogo]

They're a company, and what they say tends to go as far as lore works, so it's natural that we're a little more extreme when it comes to praising or criticising their work.

[Gradius]

I remember the days of olde when people actually had an interest in the SC lore: http://blizzforums.com/forumdisplay....198&order=desc

Most lore forums today are either:
1) Dead
2) Discussing the poor quality of the writing.

Just recently I bitched about how the UED has as much of a right to exist as the Dominion in some other thread, but the same thing is mirrored on the b.net forums as well: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6146797563

They were retconned out of existence as far as the story goes, along with most of Broodwar's plotline. Hence why all anyone cares about in SC2 is Mengsk, despite pretty much every character moving past that in Broodwar.

People are simply not making as many threads about lore theorycrafting. I believe this is what happens when you use retcons and don't pay attention to worldbuilding. People simply lose interest, because there is no sense of verisimilitude anyway. The writers don't care, why should you care? Wish it were different. :[

I just wish we could be more constructive about our discontent in WoL, like a fan campaign of the way things could have gone, or should have gone.

I see everybody suggest something to this effect. "If you think you can do better, then make your own campaign". It has a couple problems:

1) Whatever we make will never be canon. Therefore, nobody is going to care.
2) Whatever we make will never be played by millions of people. When people think of StarCraft, they think of Blizzard's campaign, not ours. What we make is irrelevant.
3) Most importantly, making a campaign is a very time-consuming venture. I've been working on Subjection for a long time now, and I'm only on the 7th mission out of 8, as far as setting up the core gameplay and the cinematics. I have lots of work ahead of me still after that. Terraining, finishing the voice effects, actually doing the voice acting, doing a beta test, fixing countless amounts of quirks, etc. I've written up a huge script (10000 words), and I bet it's all going to have to be redone because I won't be satisfied with how it sounds when you put a voice to it. I've lost track of how many hours I've put into it, more than 40 definitely. And this is just a simple campaign purely for the learning experience. No custom models, simple plot, barebones build & destroy gameplay, no custom music, not too much new data, I literally picked the easiest way to go about it.

Blizzard is one of the wealthiest game studios on the planet. There is nothing anybody could make that would compare to what they have done. Even if such an effort is attempted, there would be virtually zero people working on it (at least from this site) and the project would be abandoned after a week. Even on sc2mapster, the few people there are more interested in making maps that will actually be played by thousands on battle.net. You simply can't ask people to donate countless hours for some stupid fan campaign. Your last bet would be one of you guys hitting the lottery and hiring some real artists, or at least waiting for the marketplace to come out so that there is at least some motivation for people to work on this (money). Even if you succeed in making a 30-mission campaign (a colossal effort), the product will inevitably be an unpolished piece o' crap without real cinematics or the original voice actors. Hell, there's not even really any campaign support yet for SC2. I guess my point is, that whoever tries this....well, good luck. :P

The only realistic thing to do is just submit something to fanfiction.net, which I believe has been done already?