Starcraft 2?
 

Anyone buy it? Its getting some bad reviews over stuff they left out. It looks like you can only play the Terrans in SP.
They limited the ability to correspond to other players when you play online.

Is there a skirmish mode?

I did not get it but I thin k they are planning on adding two expansions to stretch the money train out. Each expansion is suppose to have a new campaign for the other races each.

By the way way did you see the bad reviews for it on the forum?All the reviews on meta critic are mid to upper 90s.

In their ever so slight defense, it's 30 missions in the single player mode, just like the original starcraft. They're just all Terran instead of ten of each.

Where are you seeing bad reviews?

As already stated, we've known for a while it was going to be a trilogy and you could only play the Terrans in SP.

It is Blizzard. The game is going to be awesome.

In read some people reporting it has taken them about an hour a mission for SP campaign on normal ai level and they were experienced players on RTS and old starcraft so that could bode well for SP.

I havent dug too deep. It was on the Yahoo web site. I guess take that with a grain of salt.
But it raised some questions. I was wondering what the guys on here thought.

For multiplayer there really isn't a RTS that compares. I'm not very interested in starcraft multiplayer, but as far as gameplay goes it's impressive. The ladder system is well done and they do a good job of easing you into it and getting you matched against people at your skill level. You'll play 5 placement matches against other people doing the same thing and your performance (which goes beyond just winning and losing) determines where you're placed at first.

Cross region play is getting a sort of fix soon, but in typical blizzard fashion they're going to milk every penny they can from people. If you want to play in multiple regions you're going to have to buy multiple copies. The "fix" will be that people outside the US will be able to choose which region they play in when they create their account. However, you can only play in one region per account.

So far the single player missions are fun and there's quite a bit of variety. The story is solid enough. I've never felt story writing was Blizzard's strength and there's some annoyances with the story so far (I'm about halfway through). It's still good enough to keep you interested.

I still say if you're a starcraft fan or a RTS fan this is a must buy. You're looking at roughly 25 hours of single player gameplay if you have it on the proper difficulty for your skill level and the multiplayer is worth checking out if you've never tried multiplayer starcraft.

Meh. I am not going to waste my time on a micro-heavy game like SC2. I'm biding my time until RUSE comes out. I've played the RUSE beta and a recent free weekend and I think it's going to be the best RTS I've ever played.

Installing now. Just came in the mail.

If you didn't like the original, you won't like this.

Otherwise it's all goodness :).

If anyone wants a guest pass key here's one:

K4RWY8-HVXR-D4Z6BV-HX4P-DXMGJ7

Please let everyone else know you claimed this.

dola, good for 7 hours of game time or 14 days from activation (whichever comes first).

Two more:

C4ZPC6-CN6Y-ZTR2EH-FCYB-9EV728
J7HNZ4-GRTW-6EKEC4-22M4-EY4GFG

Son got the game as well. Each game comes with two codes. Saving one for a guy at work.

I'm picking it up on the way home from work tomorrow. I loved the original.

Ganked this one. Looks like the other two are taken as well.

And thanks for posting 'em.

I loved the original as well and so far I love this one. I'm only six missions through though.

I don't know who the nay-sayers are, but frankly this is amazing. They fixed the time wasting of the old battle.net matchmaking system and put one in place that gets you the game you want without sifting through a few thousand worthless links.

The single player is fracking awesome! Oh and its not JUST terran only, there are scenarios/missions where you play as Zeratul of the Protoss as well.

Multiplayer is fantastic. its not quite as micro-managing as the original while still being quite intense.


LOVE this game. 99 out of 100 from me. I ding it a point because my machine JUST barely runs it well =)

Its been a long 12 years but my god its worth it.

When you guys say "the original", are you talking about the one from way back when, that I used to play on my Tandy back when Slick Willy was in his first term?

If so, and this is like that, I may have to get this.

Original == Starcraft (circa 1995 or so) and Broodwar (the expansion to Starcraft circa 1998)

I won't buy it until they add LAN capability. That's the only reason I play is to play LAN with friends.

Heh, guess you are not buying it then. You're prerogative.

I'm amazed lan is this much of an issue. Not directed straightly at you Crimson, this is a concern I've been hearing from a lot of people. You can't just get all your friends to connect through battle.net? I understand this being a problem when broadband/home routers were not widely available, but still?

Ah ha, never played Broodwar. Played the hell out of the original, though. Great fun. I may have to look into picking this one up.

Does it support IPX? I need it to support IPX.

Well that's a given, if it's not IPX how am I supposed to use Kali to play it over IP ;).

The dumbest move they've made is the lack of game lobbies. There were some great mods even in beta and without lobbies you're really only going to be able to play these games with people on your friends list.

Considering the popularity of Dota in WC3 I don't know what the hell they're thinking on that one.

The more I play this game the more it's sucking me in, strictly single player thus far. The ghost map was great. There are varied gameplay mechanics during campaign mode that keeps things interesting. You aren't just grinding out maps to get to the cut scenes. Even has some basic choice based branches that lead to different available units and what I am assuming is a slightly different story(haven't gone down both paths for once choice though to compare).

Going to finish up single player then look seriously at MP. Wish I didn't suck so much since as great as the single player campaign is, it looks like multi is where it's at. Looks like they put a lot of thought into poor saps like me(tutorials, lessons, placement matches), so I'll put it through it's paces.

I played through the first 3 missions tonight. While the missions were you standard RTS type missions, I love how they are handling things between the missions. That little bit of flavor adds a lot for me. I am very pleased with the game so far.

Great game so far. I'm enjoying MP more than SP though. The guy at work didn't want my last guest pass. Here's the code:

VDWMXD-VB4T-JKXJ96-P4ZE-JRP7ZC

Thankfully this is one of those games in which I have absolutely no interest, since I absolutely suck at RTS games. So thus it's one game I don't have to worry about sucking up a ton of my free time. :D

Having said that, the people I know who are playing it universally say it's great.

Finished the single player campaign and I was rather disappointed in it. As I said above the mission variety is very nice for a RTS. There's a small handful of missions that I thought were boring and felt like filler content, but overall they were solid.

The story, on the other hand, was a big letdown for me. I wasn't expecting anything amazing, but I was expecting something better than this.

Not too spoilerish, but I don't want to give anything at all away.

No sale for me. I'd like to be able to play LAN at home with my wife and son. In order to do that now, I'd have to buy 3 copies of the game.

Sixty bucks is too expensive for that sort of thing, and if they're seriously considering making it subscription based (there are rumors that it could happen, and with the battle.net integration it would be very easy to implement), then there's no way in hell I'll ever play it.

I agree Raynor being a boring lead(can't imagine that's a spoiler), was the same in SC1 and is still now. But I thought the storyline gathered steam as the game went on. It wasn't mind blowing, but at the beginning I thought it was basically a giant disappointing cliche. About midway through it started gathering some steam and held my attention to the end. I thought the cut scenes got much better as the game went on.

Just finished it a few minutes ago.

No comment yet on the awesome soundtrack? I love chilling to Sweet Home Alabama after each mission. :)

This won't happen because as soon as they do it they destroy the very thing that makes this game so popular, the ability to play anyone anywhere for free.

As soon as they required payment they destroy their own cash cow.

I have fond memories of many late nights spent playing multiplayer LAN Starcraft when I was back in highschool, but I think I've outgrown RTS games. Dawn of War held my interest for a time, but my tastes have swung towards the hybrid RTS/strategy games.

Since everyone I know that's interested in Starcraft 2 bought it I'm offering up my 2 guest passes here if anyone is interested.

I'll send them to the first 2 people that PM me.

Caved and bought it. Couple more hours to go on the digital download.

How does the guest pass work?

You enter the code into your battle.net account and it activates a trial download for 14 days or 7 hours of gameplay.

So I'm 4 games into multi, going through the practice matches which really do work out great. So far everyone is lame like me. I'm a very soft 3-1

1: Tried to rush out early before realizing they put boulders in map to prevent that. Annoyed him by killing SCVs with Reapers early on, but in the long run he built up better cash flow and just sent wave after wave, couldn't keep up.
2: Guy quit .5 seconds into game, shouldn't even count, but it does.
3: I expanded into middle of the map early on. Opponent saw it, attacked, I fended off. But I think he was freaked out I expanded early and he quit. Didn't have much military, he should of kept up pressure.
4: Guy didn't know how to detect cloak. Destroyed him with cloaked banshees and a couple battlecruiser yamatoing his Motherships. Vikings were bringing up the rear for air defense, but I didn't need them much.

So early on I'm happy with Multi, very fun. I still think I suck, none of the wins were strong.

Anyone still playing this?

I just installed this on my new rig a couple weeks ago and I'm already addicted. I'm completely horrible and haven't ventured into MP beyond a couple of practice league matches but I think the gameplay is pretty wicked and seems to be incredibly well-balanced.

Yeah, still am. Played all 50 practice games. Am 5-10 games past that, very different. If you are very new at MP(which I was with this game), check Husky and Joshy replays on youtube. Helps get your mind in the right place.

MP in this game has me sucked in and putting off what I thought was a day 1 purchase with Civ5.

I'm still playing - trying to balance it with NCAA, NBA 2k11, and Civ 5 primarily.

The Significant Other is not happy w/ my time spent playing SC2 and Civ5. I've been playing a lot of MP lately with friends. We all used to play together with the original SC in High School, so it has been super fun to jump back into it.

How much time are we talking about?

Anyone still playing? :)

I have the two guest passes still with me if anyone wants them.

Also, I'm glad that us SouthEast Asian players can connect to North American servers as well.

Haven't in a couple months, but the thought of it is still tickling the back of my brain. All the Steam games have back burnered it.

I'm strictly playing a 3v3 league right now. I am not good at all. It's fun to share the misery of losing with two other random guys. :)

I still play every so often. Too many other things stealing my time away from the computer these days.