[mxlm]

Yeah, so I take back my praise of the matchmaking system. I'm starting to ****ing hate it. So. ****ing. Tired. Of fighting silver/gold mother****ers. I'm bronze, you goat****ers, give me opponents I have a non-trivial chance of beating.

Sure, it felt kind of good when I totally obliterated that gold guy's army. Too bad it happened after he'd kept me hemmed in at my original base until all the minerals ran out and I had no resources to replace my losses while he, well, did. And hey, it was kinda nice when I took out the siege tanks and marines dropped on my workers in a different game, but it cost me almost all my guys and he repeated the maneuver a minute or two later.

It's not bad

I enjoyed pretty much every moment of the campaign, including most every bit of dialogue. The news casts? Were very funny. Bear that in mind when I say that the writing is pretty bad. You're going to spend a decade and untold millions on your game and you aren't going to hire competent writers?

[Ransom]

It's not bad, just leave your preconceptions at the door and enjoy it for what it is, not for what you think it should be.

The only hype I bought into was the standards set by the first Starcraft. I played part of the original campaign shortly after completing SC2, and it's remarkable how much more entertaining its story is. The dialogue is snappier, the acting is less wooden, the sequence of events is actually compelling. The sequel doesn't have any of that charisma.

It's such a common dismissal to say that if someone didn't enjoy a thing it's somehow their fault. I'm glad you could look past the game's flaws, but that doesn't mean they aren't there or that they shouldn't be discussed.

[Turambar]

It's just like the end of Battlestar.  There's actually a perfectly good explanation.

Spoiler:

Q is there, ****ing with everyone for lulz

[General Battuta]

I think Batt and a lot of others are buying into the hype a little too much and were expecting Peter Jackson or Steven Spielberg, and instead they got Roger Corman with a lot of Michael Bay thrown in and they wanna ***** about it.  It's not bad, just leave your preconceptions at the door and enjoy it for what it is, not for what you think it should be.

This makes no sense because the only standard I have was that it be as good as the first one.

How is that hype? How can it be a disappointment built from hype if I don't even ask for any improvement, just parity?

And I'll say it again, within the context of the universe that SC2 takes place in, it's acceptable for there to be "magic" technology.  "Any technology sufficiently advanced would appear as magic." and all that.  The McGuffins in SC2 work because they do, the Terrans are advanced enough that they recognize it as a technological marvel, but it might as well be magic for all the understanding they have of it.  The Protoss are a million years ahead of the Terrans and the Xel'Naga are probably a billion years beyond them, and you expect the Terrans who are 1.001 billion years behind a piece of tech to be able to explain it away?  They're doing REAL good to even know how to turn the thing on.

And I'll say it again: how is this kind of meandering bull**** fetch quest plot, like something out of low-level WoW, excusable when original Starcraft was so much better?

Never mind the thousand other things wrong with the writing.

[Liberator]

Original Starcraft was a story in 3 acts, presented at one time.  This is only Act 1, there are 2 more to go, of course things aren't going make sense yet.  You are missing 2/3 of the story.

[General Battuta]

Original Starcraft was a story in 3 acts, presented at one time.  This is only Act 1, there are 2 more to go, of course things aren't going make sense yet.  You are missing 2/3 of the story.

No. Wrong. I am comparing Wings of Liberty directly to the Starcraft 1 Terran campaign, and it still doesn't hold up.

Here's a critique on RockPapershotgun of exactly why the game's writing sucks so much, focusing on the character of Tosh.

As I moaned last week, while I’m entirely digging the game design otherwise, I’m finding StarCraft II’s writing a bit of a chore. At times it seems like it was generated by a machine, or perhaps a horse with a Dictaphone. It can be tricky to demonstrate why I have this distaste for the game’s oft-insipid dialogue and characterisation, outside of quoting the flat, tired lines over and over. So I’m going to try and do it through a character study instead: a breakdown of why I’m not satisfied with the approach the game has taken to its chattiest denizens.

Let’s talk about Gabriel Tosh: spooky Rastafarian psychic soldier dude. That he’s so appropriately called “Tosh” – well, maybe someone was paying attention after all.

I luled.

Don't worry about the race commentary, I don't really care about that.

EDIT: okay it does talk pretty heavily about race and gender, those aren't really things I cared about in terms of the sucky writing. Hopefully we can forestall another endless discussion on those topics.

My point is just that the game's writing, characters and story all suck, and each element of that trinity is full of holes the size of my mutalisk blob in last night's two-hour game.

[Dark RevenantX]

Admit it, you've seen worse.

Anyway, it's still more-or-less fun even if it is more of a lower quality.  Seriously though, Battuta, you should rewrite the SC2 script to follow the same general plotline but be much better written.  It would be a nice read.

[General Battuta]

Admit it, you've seen worse.

Anyway, it's still more-or-less fun even if it is more of a lower quality.  Seriously though, Battuta, you should rewrite the SC2 script to follow the same general plotline but be much better written.  It would be a nice read.

Okay!

The first line would be "Howdy, folks. I'm Jim Raynor, marshal in these HRNGH UNGHLE SPLAT"

Although I did like SC1 Raynor so maybe...feh!

[NGTM-1R]

I'm actually not that impressed with the gameplay, mainly because things seem to explode much more rapidly and engagement ranges seem to be much shorter. It's only at the extreme ends of the scale that units seem to be as durable as they were in SC1, and I have my doubts about the Marines actually being so.

This leads to a problem. In SC1's singleplayer, you could solve problems with relatively small numbers of powerful units if you were careful, and the game even encouraged it at times when it carefully overlapped defenses to render smaller units unable to make much of a difference. In SC2's singleplayer, it seems to have been purpose-designed to force a mobbing approach on you, typically using very low-end units. I end up solving all my problems in SC2 with a mixed group of Marauders, Medics, and Marines that's between twenty and thirty-five strong.

I don't even consider Siege Tanks. I might build a couple for base defense but their shortened range makes them offensively unattractive. Vikings are near-useless offensively because they get subjected to both air and ground defenses, so maybe I call down a merc wing for base defense, but typically not. Banshees do come  into play in small numbers because they can cloak. Ghosts and nukes are actually boring to use this game, which is a pretty shocking difference compared to the fun I had nuking my way to the Overmind in SC1.

[General Battuta]

Maybe it's a function of the more distant camera/enhanced screen resolution? (The range difference I mean.)

[NGTM-1R]

Maybe it's a function of the more distant camera/enhanced screen resolution? (The range difference I mean.)

Doubt it. Either that or they made the units larger as well. Siege tanks could shoot offscreen in SC1 and were slightly smaller. Marines were smaller and could reach slighty further as well.

[General Battuta]

I gotta admit the siege tank range change did really weird me out.  Maybe they were rebalanced to take the new elevation system into account?

[IceFire]

Siege tanks do less damage by default but they say that the range is actually much increased over SC1.  The screen resolution has a big deal with why this has a different feel.

Units seem to die just as fast as they used to.  WarCraft 3 is where everything stays alive for ages

For Terran I find a mix of Marine, Marauder, Medivac and Thors are a good ground force.  Or a mix of Marines and Medivac with Banshees works well too.  I love Banshees... they cloak and hit very hard.

[Droid803]

Stuff does die a lot faster.
Someone did a graph and the DPS of most units increased (especially when factoring in bonus damage), while the HP stayed pretty much the same.

Buildings, for instance, die MUCH faster. You can raid command centers extremely fast with stuff like Hydralisks and Stimmed Marauders, whereas taking out those buildings used to take...quite a while.

[General Battuta]

That could be due to increased game speed. I really like the pace of combat in MP.

[mxlm]

This leads to a problem. In SC1's singleplayer, you could solve problems with relatively small numbers of powerful units if you were careful, and the game even encouraged it at times when it carefully overlapped defenses to render smaller units unable to make much of a difference. In SC2's singleplayer, it seems to have been purpose-designed to force a mobbing approach on you, typically using very low-end units. I end up solving all my problems in SC2 with a mixed group of Marauders, Medics, and Marines that's between twenty and thirty-five strong.

What difficulty are you playing on?

[General Battuta]

This leads to a problem. In SC1's singleplayer, you could solve problems with relatively small numbers of powerful units if you were careful, and the game even encouraged it at times when it carefully overlapped defenses to render smaller units unable to make much of a difference. In SC2's singleplayer, it seems to have been purpose-designed to force a mobbing approach on you, typically using very low-end units. I end up solving all my problems in SC2 with a mixed group of Marauders, Medics, and Marines that's between twenty and thirty-five strong.

What difficulty are you playing on?

I did my first playthrough on Hard, and with the exception of missions custom-tailored for the introduction of a new unit, never really used anything other than a bio ball.

[NGTM-1R]

What difficulty are you playing on?

I started on Easy, got bored after the Mar Sara missions, upped it to Hard. The only units that I found big uses for outside of their intro missions were Banshees and Battlecruisers. Goliaths were occasionally of use as first-wave shocktroopers for the infantry swarm, but it was rare to hit defenses heavy enough to justify that. The Vikings weren't even good during their intro mission unless I gave a damn about saving the colonies, which I admittedly did, but the heavy lifting base assaults for that mission were still handled by the Marine/Marauder/Medic swarm. The mission that introduced Wraiths, the Odin mission? Yeah. Didn't even use the Wraiths. Don't think I ever built one in the entire campaign. Thors likewise. Goliaths were more cost-effective and less prone to lolfail as they were naturally redundant; kill one Thor and that's it, kill one Goliath and there are still three others shooting you up. But again, infantry swarm was more cost-effective and redundant yet.

[Liberator]

That was mildly irritating, the terran army seems to have shifted geared from heavy armor with infantry support to "Hey!  I've got 30 Marines and 6 medics, let's go kill the enemy base!"

[General Battuta]

That was mildly irritating, the terran army seems to have shifted geared from heavy armor with infantry support to "Hey!  I've got 30 Marines and 6 medics, let's go kill the enemy base!"

Tell me about it. It's even worse in multi. Eight Marines and four Marauders with a couple Medivacs to carry them around can drop and wipe out a Protoss base faster than the equivalent number of siege tanks.

Bio builds have really benefited in SC2, and I haven't seen many classic terran mech builds. Though the Thor is hilarious and semi-useful, and can be a great drop unit (you can tuck it under a dropship to form the mighty THORSHIP)