I played throughout the beta and loved it. Loving it even more now that it’s live.
It seems like the leagues are finally starting to settle down a bit. I went 4-1 in my placement matches and was pretty disgusted to get “silver” out of this.
The first day or two the silver matches were absolutely insane. I’d play one guy who was “favored” over me and find him with no army, still stacking photon cannons in his original base (hint: this is useless) as my 100 food army rolled in and crushed him. The next game I’d be the “favored” one and my opponent would be significantly better than me. A game that sticks out is a dude just completely dismantling my terran game - he rushes 2 zealot, I’m blocked in. He comes back with more but I’ve got tanks. He controls the mid completely with surprise DTs; I’m really behind on detection. Just as I’m getting detection up (and I did kill a few DT) he rolls in with 8 Immortal with plenty of zealot and stalker support. I gave him a hearty “gg” as they rolled through my tank lines. Dude kept me from expanding even once.
I’m in on the game for tommorow, if it is also at 9 eastern. I won’t be able to get home before that time.
The first few missions are linear, but once you reach the Hyperion Battle Crusier, you will have 2 - 4 missions to choose from. Completing a mission gives you a few benefits.
New Units become available at the start of the mission, and you will see what unit you receive before you begin. You can use this to your advantage. For example, if you play better with siege tanks, you could do the mission that grants them before doing harder missions later.
Credits are awarded for completing the main mission objectives, and can be used to upgrade your available units and buildings, as well as hire mercenaries, which are available in the missions with a new building. Each unit has 2 upgrade options, and they are permanent once you get them. For example, the classic Stim Packs for Marines are now an upgrade, so you don’t need to research them in every mission. Mercenaries are “air dropped” as soon as you call them, so you don’t have to wait while they are trained.
Research Points are also available in each mission as a bonus objective. Usually, you have to destroy certain targets or hunt down hidden items to earn these points. They are based on the other 2 races, and allow other enhancements for your units and buildings.
Both of the upgrade options are in addition to the standard upgrades available from the Engineering Bay and Armory during the mission. There are many options to choose from, and you can’t get all of them, so you have to pick the upgrades that suit your gameplay. I maxed out my siege tanks as soon as possible because I enjoy using them, and I skipped the upgrades for the 3 “light” armored vehicles, because I find them mostly useless.
Oh, and I forgot to add… You don’t bring units with you to new missions. Each one starts out “fresh,” usually with a small base and a couple basic units. within 30-60 seconds, you will get 3-4 of your new unit for the mission by air drop, just in time to accomplish a scripted event in the game.
I have not played Dawn of War, so I don’t know how it compares to that.
The dialog is a bit drab, but there are some good characters and clever lines.
[spoiler]I really liked Nova. I chose to help her in the Ghost/Spectre mission because she was upfront about her loyalty, as opposed to Tosh who was shifty and questionable. Both characters were nicely done. I’m glad they included Nova, seeing as she got the shaft with Starcraft: Ghost. I’m excited to see her later in the campaign. There was just enough of foreshadowing there to suggest that she might be one of the good guys, but I really don’t know yet.
I’m pretty excited to see how New Gettysburg plays into the storyline. Pre-infested Kerrigan was my favorite character in the original games, and that mission was the most memorable. I’m stoked to see her again, and see the battle in a cutscene later in the game (at least, I think that is what we will see.)[/spoiler]
Am quite enjoying this so far, but I have never really played online (eh, except once, when I got thoroughly trounced). I tend to play a pretty defensive game in single player, bunkering up and keeping a fellow around to repair my bunkers, massing a bunch of whatever looks good behind them and trying to do an end-run around my enemy’s defenses. I tried this once in multiplayer and was bzorched by zerg before I even built a bunker.
I don’t suppose any of you can give me multiplayer pointers?
Wow people complaining about the single player campaign are hard to please. The voice acting is fine and the story (so far) is really good for an RTS. The missions themselves are varied and interesting and a lot more complex then the standard build base/build army/destroy that Starcraft was all about.
I agree with you, the missions and the overall story are great. Each mission is unique with its own style, and the difficulty selections let you control the intensity needed to win. I could handle Hard, but I toned it down to Normal so I could enjoy the action a bit more. The game scripting must be pretty sophisticated too, because on many missions, things came down to the wire. On the train mission, 6000 resource gathering race, and the beat-the-zerg-to-the-artifact levels, I just barely managed to win, and it was an exciting finish for all 3.
As for the story, lets just say I won’t mind if the other two games also cost $70. I’ll buy them.
Ninja, I get what you are saying about defense. Multiplayer is all about being fast, aggressive and efficient. Both strategies work in the campaign levels or against a computer AI, but multiplayer is a totally different game.
I hear the challenge modes are better suited to getting you ready for Multi-player than the single player, which really is a different ball of wax.
Turtling is a valid strategy in multi-player, but it takes skill to balance with expanding and countering well.
I really like the single player so far. The missions are varied and interesting, the bits between them are also a lot of fun. I do get where some of the comments above are coming from though. I too would have preferred a more subtle, serious approach to the story. The news broadcast, for example, comes off as pure comedy, too blunt really to illicit more than a chuckle or two. It’s still fine, it’s just that I would have preferred a more interesting, and subtle approach to showing us the insidious nature of propaganda and information control of a totalitarian regime. As someone said above, it feels like a missed opportunity to make the world seem more real.
For the multi-player SDMB game, let’s keep it 9:00pm Eastern today (Friday the 30th) then. Hopefully we can get enough people for a 2 vs 2 game.
Yeah, multiplayer is an entirely different kettle of fish. Defensive play works so well in the campaign because resources are rarely a great issue, but if you dig in to any single place too heavily in multiplayer, the opponent isn’t very likely to obligingly impale themselves on your defenses and more probably will pen you in, control the entire map’s worth of income, and either flood or starve you to death.
However, the matchmaking in the game is very very good and after a week or two for the leagues to shake out, you can probably get some decent games in no matter your skill level. Also, the tutorial, the Challenges (some of which are quite clever) and the AI skirmish all manage to teach useful things. Even the campaign tends to script missions around certain units or aspects of gameplay and teach focused lessons that way.
As for the campaign itself, I’m quite impressed. I think people are remembering SC1 more rosily than it deserves. I thought the SC1 campaign was pretty dull, with most of the missions being quite generically forgettable and only barely linked into the story that the briefing chatter was trying to convey. SC2’s story is much more tightly integrated with what the player is tasked to do, and the scripting is significantly more detailed, along with each mission having its own unique take on the game. Few are just ‘build base, destroy all enemies’, especially with the bonus objectives and optional achievements added in.
[spoiler]Up front about her lack of loyalty, you mean. I went with Tosh, who, while he didn’t lay out all his motives on the table, was entirely vindicated in his offers, that his enterprises were lucrative and easy and would serve your aims as well as his. I valued an already-established crew member over helping out someone who said outright she’d remain your enemy.
However, having played out the other mission from the bridge computer, I have to admit that they did a really good job of making both choices entirely reasonable without contradicting each other. The colonist choice was much the same way…playing one mission and knowing the context in it completely changes the tone of the ending of its alternate choice. Also, the cutscene of Nova finishing her job is pretty excellent [/spoiler]
I said in my posts that it is the writing that has disappointed me, not the gameplay or the mission designs. I agree that the missions themselves are a lot of fun, and the gameplay and story are far more tightly integrated this time around. These are all good things.
But I’m not exaggerating when I say that SC1’s writing was and remains the best in RTS history, and some of the best writing in all of video games. And it ain’t rose-tinted glasses either - I just replayed all of SC1 last week to get myself properly psyched for SC2. The dialogue, character development, and voice acting were just as just as good as I remembered. It’s not literature by any means, but it’s extremely well executed pulp sci-fi.
And in that regard, SC2 has (at least so far) has been very disappointing. The writing is the epitome of telling rather than showing, with long stretches of exposition interspersed with cliche lines and pseudo-witticisms ripped straight out of the Star Wars prequels. Instead of allowing Raynor’s bitterness to reveal itself through Clotworthy’s performance or naturalistic dialogue, we get awkward, expository monologues retelling the plot of SC1 to characters that should already know it all (Ariel Hanson, Matt Horner, the Rastafarian Ghost/Pirate dude).
I’m hopeful that it’ll get better, as the stuff with Tychus has been uniformly excellent, but so far, SC2’s writing is undeniably a big step down in quality from SC1.
I feel obliged to buy StarCraft 2, because I still keep going back to StarCraft.
That said, I dunno when I’ll find the time to actually play it. I’m sure I can get through the single player campaign, eventually…
This thread gives me hope, I still think in terms of LAN parties (which I am not going to be able to swing until my daughter is in college.) Hopefully, y’all will beb kicking my ass before long.
Vent server is up. Feel free to log in. I might or might not be on for the next 15 minutes or so, therefore feel free to talk amongst yourselves. See you guys in a little bit.
If not, that’s ok. You’ll just have to type really fast
I’d recommend logging on to ventrillo anyway, this way you can at least hear us/your team.
BTW I’m Kinthalis on Steam as well, in case anyone wants ot add me to their friend’s list. And in case you didn’t know there is a nicely sized SDMB group on steam as well which you can join. We usually have lots of games going on several times a week.
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