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So Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm just came out.


Opinions of Dakka Dakka? (Ill reply tomorrow)

It's terrible.

Can you offer further input other than it is terrible, Blizzard is a hack, and Metzen should quit?

No.
It's just terrible.
Been playing it for 4 hours and that's my judgement.
Good game though.

I'm enjoying it so far. The multiplayer aspect of the game isn't that big a deal for me, but the single player side I'm enjoying.

Just like Wings of Liberty, I don't like the need to connect to the internet to do anything, but that largely seems to be the way things are going now a days, so not much you can do about it.

It should be arriving today. (never using amazon again)

I marathon'd it and got through it in one day.

"Meh"

It's a definite step down from Wings of Liberty, that's for sure. None of the missions are really all that bad, but all of them with maybe 1-2 exceptions feel to "small" for the events that are going on in the story. In WoL many of the battles felt big, and there was definite pressure on you to perform. These ones are like, "Max Roaches, 1-A to victory"

The writing is as cheesy as ever and the characters are the same paper thin 2d standees they always are in blizzard games, but nowhere near as charming. Blizzard is usually pretty good at making their paper thing standees sort of enjoyable stereotypes and getting you invested in them. The issue is the game doesn't have one sympathetic, likeable or otherwise engaging character. Kerrigan is a wholly detestable idiot surrounded by a bunch of chattering monsters (literally!), it lacks any sense of humanity to get you invested in the events. The whole thing felt like it was being directed by two different fanfic writers that had completely opposite ideas about why Kerrigan is "OMG THE BEST CHARECTOR EVER", and it doesn't work at all. They also fall into a lot of the "How not to write a female character" traps.

All-in-All, I'd give it a C+. The cinematics are neat, the missions are decent and playing with the different evolutions are fun. However I probably would have enjoyed my time more going directly to multi-player and getting to use my new Protoss shinies. I'm still looking forward to the Protoss Expansion, and suspect they'll be an easier subject matter to make engaging.

I never understood the complaint the game was too easy. WoL was the same exact way.


Overall I enjoyed the game. I found it a lot of fun.

I saved myself the money and just watched all the cinematics on Youtube... Cause honestly well done cinematics is all I really have in interest in from Blizzard these days. Say what you want about them, but damn they can make a cinematic

 Galdos wrote:
I never understood the complaint the game was too easy. WoL was the same exact way.


Overall I enjoyed the game. I found it a lot of fun.

I wouldn't really say WoL was more challenging per se, but it felt "Bigger". You'd have to defend sometimes or would run close to time limits. The final defending mission killed enough of your stuff that you felt like you were in danger of being overwhelming. It felt like sometimes you had to be in more than one place at time. Mind you none of these have to do with any real difficulty, just a sense of the scale of events. This was literally just "1-A on the minimap: You Win!"

Honestly that was a smaller problem than having to spend all that time Kerrigan. Look I can get do a villain protagonist but at least do something to make them remotely interesting. Seriously, I would have taken anyone over Angry McDuncecap.

 LordofHats wrote:
I saved myself the money and just watched all the cinematics on Youtube... Cause honestly well done cinematics is all I really have in interest in from Blizzard these days. Say what you want about them, but damn they can make a cinematic

Yes, they can.

It's a pity that they can't write anything decent for more than ninety seconds of animation though.

 Amaya wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I saved myself the money and just watched all the cinematics on Youtube... Cause honestly well done cinematics is all I really have in interest in from Blizzard these days. Say what you want about them, but damn they can make a cinematic

Yes, they can.

It's a pity that they can't write anything decent for more than ninety seconds of animation though.

Spoiler:

Starcraft and Warcraft both seem to be rapidly decreasing in quality. I'll admit that neither had amazing settings or stories in the first place...but its as if they can't really develop any concepts on their own and are reliant on outside sources for any inspiration at all.

And then theres Diablo 3.

Yeah, but even Diablo III had good cinematics. Honestly, I keep expecting there to be an announcement of a full CGI movie by Blizzard (EDIT: Oh or Blur Studios. Mmmmm. Blur.). The story would be shallow and pedantic but the visuals would probably more than warrant the ticket price.

All of their games have had pretty good cinematics.

I don't know what part of their company produces them, but for the love of god, get those people to make a Warhammer movie or series. It would be glorious.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, but even Diablo III had good cinematics. Honestly, I keep expecting there to be an announcement of a full CGI movie by Blizzard (EDIT: Oh or Blur Studios. Mmmmm. Blur.). The story would be shallow and pedantic but the visuals would probably more than warrant the ticket price.

Yeah, I know way too many people who have thrown money down for the CE of games of nothing more than the Blur trailer for the game. They would definitely make an epic movie.

 LordofHats wrote:
shallow and pedantic

I only think of the following clip when anybody uses that phrase now.

Is it wrong to ask someone to buy me Hots? In return I will get a players autograph of your choice from MLG and mail it to you.

 Nafarious wrote:
Is it wrong to ask someone to buy me Hots? In return I will get a players autograph of your choice from MLG and mail it to you.

Get a job grouch.

 Amaya wrote:
All of their games have had pretty good cinematics.

I don't know what part of their company produces them, but for the love of god, get those people to make a Warhammer movie or series. It would be glorious.

Ehh, idk about glorious. But it would look damned pretty.

waiting to maybe get a second hand copy from someone (or use their battlenet account temporarily)

Not that I dont enjoy me some starcraft, but i'll just blow through single player in a day or two and never touch it again more than likely

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, but even Diablo III had good cinematics. Honestly, I keep expecting there to be an announcement of a full CGI movie by Blizzard (EDIT: Oh or Blur Studios. Mmmmm. Blur.). The story would be shallow and pedantic but the visuals would probably more than warrant the ticket price.

Good looking cinematics, the actual content of them was pretty crap. And diablo looked really dumb(how did they mess that one up in the first place?)

God a movie by them would look amazing.

Sarah Kerrigan arrives irl. Looks kinda weird imo.

 Amaya wrote:
Sarah Kerrigan arrives irl. Looks kinda weird imo.

I think that's a pretty well done costume, but the coloring seems horribly off and way to bright for Kerrigan's Queen of Blade set up. But maybe they were adding some personal touch. Still gonna give them props. That looks like it took a lot of time to make and set up.

I always give props for trying so hard.

But I NEVER like these things because they never look correct. Usually I just prefer they wear a shirt showing their support

I brought it for the wow pet... no idea how it actually plays.

I suppose I should load it up at some point, I have the CE for the main game as well, never left the box. Do'h.

Im playing through the campaign atm (im never a good multiplayer person) and it seems ok. To me it seems to be playing out almost exactly like the beginning of the zerg campaign from the original Brood War, i.e Kerrigan having to reclaim control of her broods then proceeds to go about betraying everybody she knows and killing billions for no real reason.
Im surprised at this because I thought we would be seeing a different angle on her character, now she just seems like a more depressed and weak willed queen of blades. Im not particularly surprised at the "thinness" of the "characters", what do you expect with a zerg based campaign?

On an unrelated note I get annoyed every time I see the SCII Zeratul, his voice actor in SCI was absolutely fantastic (the same with Tasadar as well).

 Amaya wrote:
Sarah Kerrigan arrives irl. Looks kinda weird imo.

She looks cold. And not very Queen of Blades like. Not getting HOTS, Dawn of War One does a better job, even if it's cinematic bits aren't as good.

For me blizzard died after warcraft 3.
I didnt like WoW, and SC2 and diablo 3 were terrible in my opinion.
In WoL and HotS, Jimmy and Zeratul are so lame compared to who they were in SC1

I really liked how WoW picked up on the story right after Frozen Throne instead of delaying any continuation on the events of WC3 until the first expansion pack. Not seeing Arthas again for several years was a really good idea as well.

lol. I almost lost my gak when reading that