StarCraft II review round-up

I was chatting to one of my mates who loves his SC and he had some interesting points.

1. 20 years and $100 million and all they could come up with is a DX 9 game??? So your new GTX460 means nothing for this game.
2. No LAN support and you must be online even for single player.
3. Only one campaign for single for single player on one race.
4. Online competitive play lasts about 6-7 minutes between top ranks.

Some interesting points he made. To be fair I was never into SC in any big way, but these kind of comments would make me think twice about spending R500+ for a PC game.
 
DenSweeP said:
I was chatting to one of my mates who loves his SC and he had some interesting points.

1. 20 years and $100 million and all they could come up with is a DX 9 game??? So your new GTX460 means nothing for this game.
2. No LAN support and you must be online even for single player.
3. Only one campaign for single for single player on one race.
4. Online competitive play lasts about 6-7 minutes between top ranks.

Some interesting points he made. To be fair I was never into SC in any big way, but these kind of comments would make me think twice about spending R500+ for a PC game.
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have to agree.

plus it's exactly like the first game, only innovations, if you can call them that, is the inclusion of few more modern gameplay aspects.

other than that. the game really ain't "all that"
 
DenSweeP said:
I was chatting to one of my mates who loves his SC and he had some interesting points.

1. 20 years and $100 million and all they could come up with is a DX 9 game??? So your new GTX460 means nothing for this game.
2. No LAN support and you must be online even for single player.
3. Only one campaign for single for single player on one race.
4. Online competitive play lasts about 6-7 minutes between top ranks.

Some interesting points he made. To be fair I was never into SC in any big way, but these kind of comments would make me think twice about spending R500+ for a PC game.
Click to expand...

1. True, but this was to be expected, the game was in development long before DX 11.
2. True, no LAN unless you are playing at high competitive levels with a tournament edition. You can play single player offline.
3. Semi-true. The included campaign definitely has a strong focus on the Terrans and happens largely from that perspective, but you don't only play with the Terrans.
4. Some, but not the majority.

I would at least get a guest pass and try it for the 7 hours/14 days.
 
Blackhand said:
1. True, but this was to be expected, the game was in development long before DX 11.
2. True, no LAN unless you are playing at high competitive levels with a tournament edition. You can play single player offline.
3. Semi-true. The included campaign definitely has a strong focus on the Terrans and happens largely from that perspective, but you don't only play with the Terrans.
4. Some, but not the majority.

I would at least get a guest pass and try it for the 7 hours/14 days.
Click to expand...

Reasonable argument. Thanks!
 
1. 20 years and $100 million and all they could come up with is a DX 9 game??? So your new GTX460 means nothing for this game.
Click to expand...
Blizzard games have never been about the graphics.

They always striven to perfect gameplay, while retaining a unique, timeless art style to their graphics. When Diablo 2 came out, gamers all laughed at Blizzard saying that Diablo 2 will fail because it didn't use '3D', yet reviews scored the game in the 90's pluses. Starcraft 1 (with all its 'terrible' 640x480 graphics), is still one of the most played games ever.

The other reason is, accessibility; now more people can play SC2 without the need to buy ridiculous monster PC's.

Blizzard have proven that gameplay > graphics any day. However, anyone saying that this looks crap, needs glasses. Though, still images don't do justice to the graphics.

2. No LAN support and you must be online even for single player.
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Here is a recent games list that don't support LAN:
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Heroes of Newerth (Very successful DOTA clone)
Command and Conquer 4

They're all 'big' names in multiplayer gaming. It's just where gaming is heading these days.

LANs are dying. Go look at the Rage 2010 thread on MyBB. They are discussing how much HDD space they should take, not which games they want to play. The good old day of LANing is long gone, now its all just a leach fest.

Not all is lost, SC2 supports P2P which means no need for dedicated servers and game data will be sent over your LAN if your buddy is sitting next to you. All you now require for your LAN, is an ADSL router with 4 port switch (or iburst attached to a switch) to connect to BNet and you're all set to have those nostalgic 4 player LANs with lots of chips and coke till 4am.

I honestly think people are blowing the whole no (offline) LAN thing out of proportion.

3. Only one campaign for single for single player on one race.
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Well, I doubt they be able to cram LotR trilogy into 2.5 hours ;)

Regardless, is this really such a bad thing? If you wanted to play entire Starcraft, you had to buy Starcraft 1 + Broodwars. Diablo 2 + Lord of Destruction, Warcraft 2 + Beyond the Dark portal, World of Warcraft + The Burning Crusade + Wrath of the Lich King.

The thing is, no matter what Blizzard does, there will always be someone who complains. One person will complain that the story was too short, while another will complain that they took 1 game and split it into 3 (@ x3 the price for 3x the game).

I don't care that I had to pay 3x to watch 9 hours of LotR, because it was worth the entertainment value.

Online competitive play lasts about 6-7 minutes between top ranks.
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Gosu ;)

So far I'm loving Starcraft 2 and its been well received all around the world. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has a love of Blizzard games and an internet connection.
 
Another well thought out and presented counter argument. Thanks.

One other gripe and this is on many new releases, but again just the way times change I suppose, the freaking price. R500+ is a bit steep for this.

Please note I'm merely playing devils' advocate. I don't actually have anything against the game personally, I would just hope people see that there are some faults.
 
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