Starcraft 2?

Anyone? I've bought it in store right after it was released and my first impression is: Great game. Even my weak notebook can play it and it looks decent even on low quality.

I was disappointed that it only has the Terran campaign but on the other hand the campaign is huuuge plus after each mission there's an in game cutscene.

What's your opinion?

Bought it yesterday as well and first i was disappointed about no Zerg and Protoss campaign too (i love zergs) but then i realized it's actually better this way, cause the campaign is so nice with many missions, details, achievements, upgrades, etc.
I wonder when they will release Heart of the Swarm for the Zerg Campaign but we will see.

The game is really awesome so far, i loved to play StarCraft (especially with broodwar) and this is just super fun. The hard missions are actually pretty hard sometimes lol but i am not a really good RTS gamer anyway. Though i want to collect all the achievements later on.

And i might even enjoy the multiplayer more than the old game (im not a big fan of multiplayer matches except with people i know, and in coop hehe) but achievements push my motivations to game a lot actuall, and there are a lot of multiplayer achievements.

If you want to add me to battle.net, leave me a message with your forum username when adding me

ID: kiyaku <dot> is <at> gmail <dot> com

I tested the closed beta for GamersGlobal.de - and no, I don`t think that I`ll buy it. But I`m looking forward to Mafia II and will be the first in the local game store who`ll buy it

http://www.gamersglobal.de/user-artikel/so-wirkt-starcraft-2-auf-blizzard-neulinge

I saw the beta running before.

How is the online gaming?
Is there a matchmaking, that also take the players skill into account?

What I never liked in multiplayer games was that I had
to play against much better players, wich was just frustrating.

I will probably buy it like all the other Blizzard games.
Not shure when though.

I haven't played online yet but i know they will check your skills to find good opponents, i saw that in a review.

You can also start with a Practice League game which is an easier version of the multiplayer game (time is slower, etc). So that's good for practicing.

Thats good.
I always suggested to have a "noob zone", that takes
down the competition enough to attract multiplayer beginners,
and "block" out good players.

Yeah exactly. And that's what they did so i will do some multiplayer matches as well. I didn't play the StarCraft Mutiplayer cause i always lost in the first 3 minutes hehe. The players just became too good after years and it's hard to find new gamer who were interesting playing an old game.

Read the German review here (from Jörg Langer): http://www.gamersglobal.de/test/starcraft-2
Should be one of the most objective reviews around the internet.

I'm gonna buy it once it's more cheap. I'm only interested in the singeplayer campaign anyway and Blizzard usually is good at this. I still have my doubts though that their concept of a story split in three parts will play out well. You usually cannot do that with a game like Starcraft. You're very limited in terms of mission design an most missions stayed fresh because you get a couple of new units. That totally doesn't work for a design where each faction has around 30 missions as even with additional units it's usually just about killing all enemies, moving certain stuff at certain locations or playing against a timer...

There of course also is the multiplayer part but I don't care about it. I dislike Starcraft'S extreme micro intensive and click spammy gameplay. There also are many things I simply find annoying like putting an extractor on a geyser, aborting it and building it again so you block your enemy. Things like that don't have much to do with "strategy" to my mind but just are annoying clickfests. If you like that it's ok for me but I prefer other games for a competitive multiplayer mode which concentrate more around strategy than around clicking right...

From the article:



Transl: The first 3 missions are totally simple and lacking ideas... etc.

--

Well, the of course they need to be. Strange for him to comment this way.
Its of course designed for beginners.
Wich have to familiarize with the game.
Putting too much additional to the learning the core gameplay
is not a good design regarding the learning curve.

That's a stupid comment.

I didn't play the beta and i loved the first missions (and the upcoming ones).

Its really good they introduce new units and buildings with each mission and not give you all the stuff in the first mission and say "go and try out what they are for, you probably played the beta already".

Also i like the game modes and side quests in each mission. Stealing artifacts before another factions gets to it, harvest minerals from a lava planet but you have to go back on high platforms every few minutes because the lavalevel is increasing, you have to defend your base at night from zerg swarms, and go out at daylight to destroy their infected bases, etc.

I think they did a really good job to add a lot of variation in gameplay for a RTS game.

as someone who throughoutly despises online gaming, i will not buy it.

for a price tag of 60 bucks i only get the terran campaign and for the entire story id have to spend 180 euros and i do not support that thinking since i will never ever play the online mode.

i will eventually get it when they release the complete edition for 60 bucks down the road but until then i am not interested.

I read they won't charge 60 bucks for every addon, it will be cheaper cause it's "just" the story addition, it's not like you could play the multiplayer without the Terrain version.

so what, i pay 120 then...
for 50 bucks i get metroid other M, zelda or donkey kong...

I probably will wait for 2 reasons: First I find RTS games always very addictive. I play way too long and too much. Often the sun raises after a night and I am still playing. So I fear them a lot.

Besides that I agree in terms of expensive pricing. So even when I decide to play it then I will just wait unit it will be in Steam for 15 bucks.

discussions about the prices sound like:

All cars should cost the same. No matter if its a Ferrari, a Toyota or a Dacia.

Because the Mercedes (Starcraft) does not include the
Leather seats, Entertainment center and navigation yet, its overpriced.

It should cost no more than new Dacia with the FM Radio and
the Papermap.

---
Its simply a different real value in gaming terms.
Wining about the missing campaigns is not appropriate.
Also as the Addons will not just hack together some missions,
but put a lot of other features and improvements into it.

Yes i totally have to agree with you.

Just because someone values Game XY more, doesn't mean that StarCraft II is overpriced.

I am actually quite sensitive about a games price and i had to think about getting StarCraft II a lot. But now that i've got it i'm happy with every cent i spent on it cause it actually surprised me with it's quality.

But yes if you don't play a lot of RTS games it's probably not worth buying it yet, but that applies to every genre.

Exactly, why should I buy it for full price if this is not my favourite genre? I can wait until it is cheaper or even longer and I will get all campaigns in one bundle pack.

It would be exactly the other way around when Rage from id will be available. I will probably buy it instantly no matter what price. But this happens rarely to me.

Damnet my collector's edition is still in the mail! 3-day shipping my ass! I'm totally stoked for it though. Star Craft is still the only RTS were I actually sat down and figured out how things work, learned the strategies, tech trees, etc...

I'm pumped mainly for the plot and the crazy cutscenes I loved in the original.

That sucks that you are still waiting for your edition to come

Yeah same for me, i usually don't play RTS games a lot (i loved playing Settlers 2 and Empire Earth (but only for economy reasons, i rarely liked the battles, but i loved building lots of walls lol)) but starcraft has its own special feeling i really enjoy. Well i also loved Warcraft 2 but i don't like the newer ones.

Star Craft was great because it is accessible (sorry for my tense changes lol). It's the only RTS I can really pick up and play without getting frustrated at the fact that I rarely play RTSs. I'm probably going to replay the original Star Craft first. I had my original disks stolen before I could finish them. The Collector's Edition includes the original games preloaded onto a flash drive. Awesomenes!

And I agree the game is a clickfest. Building 50 workers and then micro managing them is a pain, but it's not a game breaker for me. The other RTS series I like a lot if the Dawn of War games. They really streamlined resource management. I have Dawn of War II, but I have yet to play it, from what I've been told resource management was completely removed. I may have to give it a go.

I'm a bit pissed about the region settings, that people from the NA can't play with people from the EU.

I got the NA version (canada) but i asked blizzard to change it to EU, they are doing it now so i can play with my people in Germany, but still i really think they should stop breaking that into regions.

Never played StarCraft 1 online, just in LAN, did they had a region block there too?

I really can't remember, it's been years...

That is pretty lame, but it must be to cut down on lag. I never ever get on European servers or else I lag like a bitch, and that can be disastrous on Peer to Peer networking games like MW2 or AVP.

I don't think they host server, they just provide a master server, don't they? So the connection is just between the players and one of them is host.

And they could just add a tag to the serverlist to show which region the host is using so you can just filter for EU, NA, etc.

After playing Starcraft 2 for a while here a small resume:

-Great Story and Mission in Singleplay.
They are really fun, and offer lots of additional (also
the old) units, compared to the multiplayer.

The Starship/Homebase enviroment between the missions is a grat idea,
and gives it some RPG feeling.

-Multiplayer is great as expected. Also taking some more thought
into getting casual players be able to play it
(wich was not the case for Starcraft 1)

-Bad bad Menusystem.
Somehow they missed to implement a coherent Menusystem into
the game. Its an unstructured mashup. I never know where Im currently in the main menus.
Blizzard did that much better in all other games.
Also the linkup into the Battlenet service is confusing.

Ingame the menu is ok, but not great.

All I know is... it better come today! It would totally blow if I had to wait a week for it! 3-day shipping, right...

Wow. I just found out that Newegg didn't have enough pre-orders left when I placed mine. Fuck Newegg. Seriously. All I got is this stupid $10 dollar gift card.

I guess I'm not getting my collector's edition. Like hell I'm paying $130+ for it, and like hell I'm paying $60 for a PC game!!

Seriously I'm disappointed beyond all reason. I was really looking forward to this.