Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty4
I'm not enough of a PC gamer to intelligently comment on the alleged downward spiral of it as a whole, and I don't know enough sales stats to contest that.
But I have to disagree with SC2 being a simple graphical update with a new story.
I haven't even touched multiplayer yet, but it feels like a whole new game to me in campaign mode. New units freshen and old ones with new abilities freshen up the action, but the three utterly unique races still have a great balance between them to make for exciting and diverse matchups.
The campaign is also easily the most inspired and enjoyable I've ever played in an RTS, both in terms of unique missions and storytelling. Every single unit and every single ability of those units is put to the test as the missions unfold, with a great balance between heavy army-versus-army encounters, quick snatch-and-run escapades, and micro-heavy commando strikes. The between-mission breaks are also great; moving about the Hyperion and engaging in conversations with the crew gives Raynor and his supporting cast much more depth than SC1 or other RTS games give their characters.
I've waited years for SC2 to come out, and I'm wholly satisfied with the result even without the doubtlessly amazing multiplayer. I'd be interested to hear what exactly makes this a poor installment in your eyes?
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Firstly, what makes it poor is the fact I can compare it against the original when that original game came out, as I was around then, and the 20 years I have played computer games never having owned a console.
For there to be a 12 year gap for just this, and then to have Blizzard rip-off it PC gaming fans by releasing each race campaign as a separate full price game, and on top of that, not offering network play is overall totally disgusting. If you think getting the equivalent of the first Starcraft, that cost $50, for $150 is reasonable then more fool you!
Gamers have become their own worse enemies too. Go to Metacritic and check any PC game that is 5+ years old and look at the use reviews. Assuming it's a good game, you'll see scores between 7 and 9 with very very few 10's and hardly anything below 7. Now look at a game like SC2 on Metacritic, you have a load of people saying they like it and therefore automatically give it a 10, and a bunch of people that have complaints and feel they have to score it zero to make the average more reasonable! This shows you the 'dumbing down' and 'fanboyism' we now have in this multiformat market.
By stating what you do about SC2, you are in effecting dissing what SC1 had. because many see SC1 as so brilliant, SC2 could only ever be just a graphic upgrade and a different story, but could never be 'better'. SC1 on Metacritic has 700+ user reviews and yet has an average of 8.8. This is honest. SC2 has, on around 100 user reviews, a score of 9.8. SC2 is not worth 1.0 point more than SC1, it just that we had honest gamers all those years ago, that had a brain in their head that games forced you to use instead of today's gamers that only like games where there hand is held the whole way through!