Starcraft II Officially Announced

[Spongedaddy]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Can someone explain to me about the 3 game SC 2 concept? Are we looking at expansions to the SP story? Will the next two games introduce new online units that make it a must have for online play? Thanks.

[mudman]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Can someone explain to me about the 3 game SC 2 concept? Are we looking at expansions to the SP story? Will the next two games introduce new online units that make it a must have for online play? Thanks.

Pretty much, new units, more story, just like any other expansion.

[TracerBullet]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

I guess everyone who has it is too busy with it right now judging by the last page and this one.

[mudman]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Any impressions so far? I loved the first one.

I'm about 8 or 9 missions into the single player and love it. Getting to choose which missions to play and choosing how to spend your credits is great. The zerg/protoss research upgrades are great too. Lots of different choices to make between missions which I like a lot.

[bcruise]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

everyone must be busy playing LOL

Or sleeping after playing it all night, like me....LOL!

I can tell I'm going to be playing this for a long, long time. I got it at midnight last night and played until around 6 AM - the hours just flew by.

I played through the first 2 campaign missions before hitting a brick wall on the 3rd one (on hard difficulty, the third toughest of 4 difficulty levels). You'll get a surprise right off on some of the units available to you in campaign, even if you played the multiplayer beta. Some maps utilize resource pickups which is definitely new to Starcraft - you can just walk over them and add them to your stock, in addition to what you're harvesting.

So far I'm just using the units the game gives me, but later on I think you can choose which way you take the tech tree by spending credits you earn by completing main and bonus quests.

The story is told (so far) mostly in a run-down looking bar that fits perfectly with what Raynor's current predicament is. Between missions you can do several things in here, such as watch a TV news broadcast detailing Jim's exploits, listen to music (the zerg song I mentioned earlier for one), upgrade units, etc. The graphics are absolutely amazing in here (well they are everywhere, but here especially) as the story is told.

After trying out campaign for a while, I had a look at something I didn't see coming - the challenges. They're basically pre-set missions that have you trying to complete a goal for a gold, silver, or bronze achievement. If you're going to play Terran online, I would STRONGLY recommend getting familiar with the Opening Gambit challenge - it starts out the same as any multiplayer match would, and focuses on getting your army built up while repelling several waves of enemy attacks. The counter challenges are good too (one for each race) for learning what units are good against other units.

Then I went online, and to my utter shock I was actually able to win some games! I won my first 6 before suffering a defeat, but honestly it was mostly guys who hadn't played beta or much SC before. I also messed around with several funny builds - Mass Thors, to name one Those things just chew through Zerg like nothing! I also tried Ghosts more than I did the entire time I played SC1, for one reason - EMP. DEVASTATING against the Protoss if used correctly

Multiplayer was very stable the whole night I played - I only had one drop, and I think it might have been the other guy's fault. A couple of lag hitches in the early parts of matches as well, but otherwise very, very good.

The only bug I've seen so far was when trying to play vs. the AI, sometimes the game would never load the map list until I quit the game and restarted it.

Well, I'm about to get back into it now.

[USF11]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

So for the Digital D'L I cant buy it till 12PM tonight?

[bcruise]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

So for the Digital D'L I cant buy it till 12PM tonight?

I think the digital copies went live at 9 or 10 this morning - you should be able to buy it now.

[bcruise]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Oh yeah -

We need to get a list of names of who all's playing so we can get some multiplayer games going. If you know a player's character name and code, you can add them as a friend. Just go to "add friend", note your own character code, and go to "add a character friend". From there you can type in someone else's character name and code, and add them to your friends list. Once there, getting games going with your friends is easy - I'm pretty familiar with that from the beta.

My name and code is:

Name: bcruise
Code: 619

I'm going to start a thread in the non-sports online gaming forum, it might be better to take this discussion there.

[Candyman5]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Oh yeah -

We need to get a list of names of who all's playing so we can get some multiplayer games going. If you know a player's character name and code, you can add them as a friend. Just go to "add friend", note your own character code, and go to "add a character friend". From there you can type in someone else's character name and code, and add them to your friends list. Once there, getting games going with your friends is easy - I'm pretty familiar with that from the beta.

My name and code is:

Name: bcruise
Code: 619

I'm going to start a thread in the non-sports online gaming forum, it might be better to take this discussion there.

Name: Justin
Code: 452

[thaima1shu]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

I'm debating whether I should pick this up or not. I'm not great at RTS games, and never played the original Starcraft beyond a couple of campaign missions. But this definitely is intriguing me. Just wondering whether I would be able to have fun with it even if I'm not so good. Hmmm...

One question for you SC vets: is the campaign good? That might be one thing that could get me into it. If the campaign mode is a decent length with a good storyline, that might be interesting enough for me to get it.

[mudman]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

I'm debating whether I should pick this up or not. I'm not great at RTS games, and never played the original Starcraft beyond a couple of campaign missions. But this definitely is intriguing me. Just wondering whether I would be able to have fun with it even if I'm not so good. Hmmm...

One question for you SC vets: is the campaign good? That might be one thing that could get me into it. If the campaign mode is a decent length with a good storyline, that might be interesting enough for me to get it.

I'm through 14 missions of the campaign and it's great. There's a ton to do and all the options between missions is great.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

I'm through 14 missions of the campaign and it's great. There's a ton to do and all the options between missions is great.

How many missions are there?

[mudman]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

How many missions are there?

Somewhere between 25 and 30. I know I've also had to skip some due to the branching the story does based on which missions you choose. I've had to make 2 such decisions so far so that's at least 2 missions that I'll have to go back and replay.

[obie]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

installing the game right now, can't wait!

[USF11]

Re: Starcraft II Officially Announced

Trying to play on a laptop and use the hotkeys with the thumbpad is driving me insane.