StarCraft 2

[ZorakMantis::LOB::]

Anyone playing? My ID is "Aldaris.executor" - post your ID if you are playing! :)

Gamestop (perhaps others too) include a beta key with pre-orders. If you liked the first one you'd probably enjoy it. The gameplay is classic StarCraft style and not WarCraft 3 style with heroes etc.

[]LoL[Harm]

The heroes and leveling thing in WC3 kinda sucked when you were playing co-op, cause in truth you were still playing against your own buddy cause there were only limited bad guys to level your hero up on and limited treasures and stuffs.

[Muscat]

I think the campaign is the best thing about those games. I tried the beta but player vs player don't give any new interest.

[Ninjahedge]

Harm, there WERE games that would dump more baddies and more stuff on you the more players that were in game (I think Badlands did that).

Made it much more fun. That also made the chances that you got what YOU needed much higher (when drops are random, doubling the goodies increases your chances of getting something you can use, not like Plate Mail for a thief)

[Muscat]

Who is playing Starcraft II ?

Best cinematic ever like always.
Best design presentation, mechanic and transition between missions ever in a RTS. :D
In the campaign you play with the type of units and modifications you have unlocked previously in the transition lab, hangar, bar, etc
New units and unit skills not available in PVP mode are there at the start and other added during the campaign.
The missions can be very easy and other very hard even if you are in normal difficulty. The game need to be played at least with shaders, shadows at medium and the 3d unit portrait enabled or the game seems flat during the mission. With all the other video options at low the game looks great enough and you can play it in a core 2 duo 1.8 Mhz and a Gt6600 without any big lag at 1024x768.

So far the missions are not bad, the experience is not as great as Company of Heroes but well it is different and well made.

[Ninjahedge]

$60 for a PC game?

What are they smoking?

[Saboteur]

Same thing as everyone else, apparently.

[Ninjahedge]

CURSE YOU DRAGON AGE!!!!!!

They started this. Now PC games are just as expensive as Console? Or has Console gone up to $70?

[Muscat]

Completed the game yesterday.
Nice game but a bit short.
What I don't like is the music. It is a space game with music similar to the '70-80 old **** (not the good). A space game need some kind of new experimental space music not some kind of cheap soundtracks or existing old crap. The game need a dam powerful PC to really enjoy all the new stuff mostly all the different unit 3d characters portrait and full physic and shaders.
The last map is kinda hard mostly impossible to do at normal difficulty.
What I like is the difference between race, crazy unit skills you can unlock or new modified units which can be launched exactly like in Warhammer. (oups!) The way the game is polished between each battle and the navigation during the campaign.
The medic is kinda fun and useful for the Terran campaign.
Ok it is not a review. I don't have the time for that but GG :D

[ZorakMantis::LOB::]

I am enjoying the campaign. The missions are much more varied than only the RTS build-base-eliminate-enemy scenarios.


$60 for a PC game?

What are they smoking?
Even at $60 I think you would be hard pressed to find better entertainment value than StarCraft 2, assuming you like StarCraft of course :)

Solid single player, great multiplayer, highly customizable and moddable... If one likes StarCraft then this game alone could keep one occupied for the next few years. Blizzard (as far as I know) is not playing the release-lots-of-little-DLCs game. There will two expansion packs but they will be proper expansion packs in size and priced as such.

Now granted, of course I would rather pay less than more, but to be fair I think that PC games with high replayability/multiplayer/mods are still one of the best values around even if they have gone up in price in the last few years.

[]LoL[Harm]

Wasn't Warcraft 3 $60 when it was released?

I don't think $60 for a Blizzard game is a new thing.

But I could be wrong. But one of the funniest things is that we somehow don't think PC Games should hold true to inflation. We paid $50 for a game 6 years ago, and we act like we've been wounded when the price finally starts increasing :).

You would actually think that PC games would be more expensive than console games, since PC games require a higher level of beta testing and bug fixes due to the variable platform. :)

[Ninjahedge]

Harm, they have actually been going up at a scale not concurrent with inflation.

Inflation has been marginal, maybe 2% per year. Games used to be $29.99 back in, say, 1994. 1.02^14 = 1.319

$30 x 1.319 = $39.58.

They bounced up a few times in indirect proportion to the general rate of inflation and never came back down again (like the Tech Bubble).

$50 is still relatively new, this $60 crap is just to start paralleling Consoles, which charge $10 more just for licensing.....

As for WCIII, I believe that was still $40. That was a LONG time a go!!!!! I think that it was more expensive than its compeditors at the time, but it wasn't $60!!!! :eek:

[]LoL[Harm]

I found it, Warcraft III was originally $29.99. The average inflation rate since 2002 (when WCIII was released) has been approximately 2.44%, per year.

So taking that, a game that cost $30 in 2002 due to inflation alone should cost around $36. So they've definitely upped the cost of games well over inflation rate.

However beyond inflation there are other factors that go into the price of the game (cost of living, amount of employees required to create a game like SCII and of course, quality, you build a name up like Blizzard has and you have a basis for playing in to the old adage of "you pay for what you get").

But if you break it down and say that you'll play the game for 10 hours before ditching it forever, you're paying $6/hour for entertainment, and that is a pretty damn cheap form of entertainment. And the likelihood you only spend 10 hours playing Starcraft II is pretty conservative.

I don't know, it's of course a perspective difference, but I'd be willing to pay $80 for quality games. I mean no one balks at the $160+ they've dumped for WoW and it's expansions, let alone the $180/year they spend playing it. And of course breaking that down to cost per hour for entertainment and with just averaging 10/hours a week of WoW time and you've got 65 cents/hour entertainment! Given you play a year.

It just seems like the same sticker shock people have when they talk about the price of an operating system without taking in the big picture. If $299 is too much to pay for an OS, then how could you ever justify buying a computer to run one in the first place? :)

[Ninjahedge]

I don't know, it's of course a perspective difference, but I'd be willing to pay $80 for quality games. I mean no one balks at the $160+ they've dumped for WoW and it's expansions, let alone the $180/year they spend playing it. And of course breaking that down to cost per hour for entertainment and with just averaging 10/hours a week of WoW time and you've got 65 cents/hour entertainment! Given you play a year.


No-one?

Me. I do! I am one that grew up on Ultima! I played through all the recent adventure games, especially the ones that have gone FP (First Person). I loved Oblivion and Morrowind, and love playing games like Fallout and Borderlands (not necessarily strait FPS's).

The price they charge for those, the gall they have to charge for the original pack and THEN charge per month is OBNOXIOUS! The $15/mo (or less in bulk) and the possibility of addiction has kept me far and away from those games.

As for the 6$ per hour, lets stay away from that. There have been library books that have cost me $0 that have given me days of entertainment for free, and still do. Add to that the comparison to games or packs like the Orange Box, which has to be the absolute best bang bang bang for the buck and a half I have ever purchased.

Between the great, albeit short, portal, to the HL2 episodes, to the ubiquitious and never-ending TF2, I have logged in well over 250 hours on that for $50. I would have no problem, in an EYEBLINK, for going for another pack just like it.

But this $60 for one game. Not even a real "get into it" game, but a top down RTS..... I can't say that I will not love the game, but I will love it when its price comes down a bit.

ESPECIALLY when they are saying that there will be 2 more coming. I think I ill wait for that "all in one" pack that I have been burned on several times already (Warhammer?).

As for an OS... When I spend $700 or less for the entire machine, an OS coming in at $300 is a bit off-putting. Especially when it really can't DO much by itself. The OS should never try to do much more than make everything run well on a system. They can, and they DO, charge for just about everything else you put on it anyway (office?) and you are more likely to GET those programs if you use their OS to start with. (not like you really have much choice... Linux is still not the easiest thing to mess with).

I am not disagreeing with you outright Harm, it is just my opinion. I would LOVE to get everything for free, but I know that is just not happening. I just see that the goals are shifting. The game prices and addons are starting to feel more and more like a Verizon plan or PPV on cable than something we actually get more for the money for.

I fear that EA will lead the way for us paying for different backgrounds and background music in the near future, let alone 2 or 3 lousy additional maps (Gears of War anyone? How about R6LV?).

This is not a diatribe calling for mass protest of the games, but $60 for a single RTS game (where hak copies are harder to use simply because of system servers and the HUGE MP crowd wanting to play), is just too rich for my blood.

[Ash]

Ninj run steam, comp back up

[ZorakMantis::LOB::]

Not even a real "get into it" game, but a top down RTS.....
Each to their own :)

[]LoL[Harm]

The story in Starcraft I is what got me hooked on it as a game. The MP was a side product. Same with WC3, the story, although a very simple concept had great scenes that played out like a mini-movie, one I really liked watching. Here's one of em: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qznXHO6bJYc

And I agree the Orange Box rocked. But like Grand Theft Auto 4, I dropped $60 on it. And I played it over 60 hours. $1/hour of entertainment, very cheap. And I expect I'll spend that much time on SC2 as well if not more. And it really is a cost vs benefit analysis that each person needs to do before they throw their money down on anything they buy, not just video games.

[Ninjahedge]

Ninj run steam, comp back up

And I am down for another few weeks until we get into the new house (closing, twice delayed, should be on Tuesday. Then we need to refinish the floors (remove carpeting and sand that 100 year old hardwood) before moving in).

I will probably be ready to rumble after Labor Day... :(

[Ninjahedge]

Each to their own :)

Do not get me wrong, After playing dozens of RTS's including TA, Machines, WCII, WCIII, SC + all its expansions, WH40K, CoH and others, I am looking forward to this, but for myself and a lot of others, it is harder to get completely immersed in a game where you are not one of the ones running around in it.

>shrug<

[ZorakMantis::LOB::]

Do not get me wrong, After playing dozens of RTS's including TA, Machines, WCII, WCIII, SC + all its expansions, WH40K, CoH and others, I am looking forward to this, but for myself and a lot of others, it is harder to get completely immersed in a game where you are not one of the ones running around in it.

>shrug<
That I can understand :)

I think for that same reason my all time favorite single-player RTS was Battlezone II. It was special in that it was an RTS (you built bases and units) but actually played as a commander on the ground. I wish they would pick up the franchise again.

[Ninjahedge]

It would be interesting if they had one that would truly utilize dual-screens, They have been around long enough, I don't know why they have not made a FP screen and a "command" screen.....