SC2 Live Gameplay is Torture

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  • Post category:PC / RTS

I keep torturing myself by watching the live streams of StarCraft 2.  I don’t know why I do it.  Every time I watch them I just want to play the game more.  A couple of us on vent (well, more like 30…) like to watch and comment on the games.  I’ve been tempted to reinstall and play StarCraft Brood Wars since Blizzard lets me download it since I have my cdkey on file with my Bnet account.  The new units look amazing and it’s crazy to watch strategies that I used ten years ago still being used today.  I think playing again will be like riding a bike.

Good source of live streams

Check out the streams if you’re into torturing yourself like I am.  I’m counting down the days until the SC2 frenzy begins.

  • I never have played these types of games. Maybe I will give it a go. Can you have teams that are ranked? I always thought of RTS games as solo/me against one other player.

  • You can play with random teams or arranged teams and you get ranked on the ladder system. Battlenet will try to match you with players around your skill which didn’t always work so well in WC3’s version since people smurfed but may work with this new “intelligent” matching system.

  • You know, ive played a ton of rts games in my years of gaming, I got into the sc2 beta and played a match as the protoss.

    After it was over, I felt very meh about the game, I didnt walk away going “damn that game is awesome”. It just seemed very forgettable, which is odd for me and a blizzard game.

    On the other hand, when I played dawn of war 2, i couldnt get enough of it. Thought they did mix up the rts formula a bit with no base building and point capture.

    Maybe im just disappointed that they havent done anything new or interesting with it, its pretty much the same game with some new units. For a company that makes billions of dollars, I was expecting something….more perhaps.

  • @Wonderwyrm

    I was more meh about DoW2, I love base building, it just feels right for an RTS. However I can agree that SC2, well until I play it, does not look that different from the original. Then again stick with what works, add in some new maps and units, and a shiny coat of paint then call it a day.

    SC2 does not look to have a lot of innovation but people will buy it because of that.

    1.) It is basically the same Star Craft we know and love
    2.) It is a Blizzard game

    Those two reasons should drive sales enough to make up for the lack of innovation.

  • I wan’t SC2 to be just different enough from SC1 to avoid the feeling that I’ve played it 100 times before but as much like the original SC as possible in every other way.

    That is the problem I had with L4D2. It wasn’t a bad game, it was just so much like L4D1 it was meh to me.

  • Looking forward to spending a lot of time on this, I love the blizzards rts games and I am ready for another one. Its only been 10 years? Strange how it feels like another life to me.

  • It’s a couple of years old, but World in Conflict is an awesome RTS game if you don’t favor base building.

  • I received 3 beta keys for SC2 from a previous Blizzcon, I’m just not a big fan of online SC2, I get destroyed. I’m more of an FPS or MMO guy.

  • To all of those who are saying it hasn’t evolved, I can agree with you. On the other hand, its the Starcraft RTS franchise, and to be honest i don’t know if I would want it to change. We look at Red Alert 2 to Red Alert 3 and it flopped, and it changed A LOT. They tried to fix what wasn’t broken and ended up breaking something that worked.

    Another point would be, have you seen the new Editor? Hell that thing is worth the $50-60 to me!

  • Oh man, that editor looks so amazing. And I totally agree with you Sweetix. I don’t want StarCraft to change. The C&C franchise is dying a slow death as they drag it on and change one thing after another. SC works as is and if they update the graphics and put in some new units then I’m happy.

  • Regarding my keys; it was from a previous Blizzcon like I said, me and my two sons, neither of which play SC let alone have any interest in SC2 beta. I paid for them (my kids) to go, so I technically own them =). Besides I figure the goody bag items are part of the return on the ticket price.

    And after seeing the keys go for anywhere between $100 – $300 on eBay its tough to just give them away =(.

  • The editor might be worth the purchase, if your a big modder.

    I forgot about that part.

    And I dont mean change the whole system like red alert did, you can have evolution without changing the fundamentals of the franchise.

    If anyone could do that blizzard could.

  • Be jealous be very jealous! The best part about starcraft 2 is that I can select about 200 zerglings at once and they move as one solid mass.

  • SC1 was fun back in the day. Never played the multiplayer part (I don’t like playing RTS with others, I suck at it as well)

    I would indeed wish SC2 had evolved more. It’s been a decade and all I see is SC1 with new graphics. Maybe it’s a bit too early to start yelling at Blizzard for being a bunch of lazy-asses, but so far it isn’t impressing me or anything.

    While we’re at Blizzard… why does all their newer games (SC2 and D3) cathering to all kinds of systems? I have a monster of a computer and it’s a bit of a shame when I can’t use that power to the fullest in a new game.

  • @Kim, they cater to all systems because they are smart. If they catered to brand new systems such as Crysis, they leave out 95% of the people wanting to play. It’s what makes Blizzard the company they are, they think.

  • It’s not smart in the long run since the true dedicated gamer upgrades their system (or buy an entirely new one) over time. This leads to those truely dedicated gamers to feel like me.

    Catering to all systems is just to get the casuals in. Selling to the casual gamer might work great with an MMO, but it’s not that smart for games like Diablo and Starcraft, which has the interest of those dedicated gamers and not much of the casuals.

    And most modern gaming systems (ca. 4 years older or newer) can run Crysis. If it was really 5% of all gamers, then Crysis would never had the success it got, nor would there be a sequel in the works (and a offshot: Warhead)

  • Keen, if you REALLY are dying to play it there is a single player crack out, no AI yet though so you can only play alone without opponents.

  • I completely agree with Kim. Crysis was known for requiring a beast of a system to run, but was actually very scalable; yeah, it wouldn’t look as good, but it would still run fine on an older system. And now, a few years later? Pretty much anything can run it with the settings turned up.

    Game developers need to always provide options for scalability, particularly with regard to the future. E.g. maybe I can’t play at 1920×1200 with 16x AA right now, but 6 months from now when I upgrade my video card… And what about 5 years from now when 2560×1600 resolution in stereo 3D is the norm? =)

    And to use Blizzard’s own product, Diablo as an example — I would love to go back and play that occasionally, but since they were pretty retarded with the scalability: 640×480 only, 256 color, won’t even run if there is more than one monitor active… Pretty damn short-sighted.

  • Oh, one more rant regarding Diablo: Full-screen only, can’t even run it in a window??? The worst short-sightedness of all, really.

    Anyway, Starcraft 2 will probably not be that big of a PITA to run 10 years from now, but I sure hope it will still run with a minimum of hassle; I’ll probably want to go back and play it again at some point. =)