cool!

SCI was always kinda free. You just borrowed someone's discs and installed it on your system - none of the silliness we see nowadays.

SC2 was (and remains) a great game. It's basically Starcraft, but with everything you probably once wished you could have, for example, the ability to select more than 12 units at a time, or the ability to queue commands. The balance remains solid. Map max still exists but is nowhere near the kind of problem it once was. Lag and disconnect issues are much less prevalent.

I'd argue the single player games were much better in SC2 than they were for SC1/BW. Each of the campaigns was top notch.

Where they messed up with SC2 was Activision. Activision created their online front end, and it had a lot of short-sightedness in its design. For example, the traditional grouping mechanism of creating a game and having people join from a list of open games. That was completely gone - there was no game listing. Instead, you just picked a game you wanted to play, and played it. Sounds good, right? Well, the real problem with this is that it made it so only the 10 or so most popular maps ever got played. Why? Because you had to go 53 pages in to find the game you wanted to play, then hope that 1-6 other people also decided to go 53 pages in to play the game. Nope. The reality is that very few people even looked at games that weren't listed on the front page (the top 10).

They've since fixed that, but other, similar (albeit nowhere near as blatant) Activision stupidity still lingers, like the fact that you can't kick someone from a lobby or watch replays as a group (I think they may have fixed that last part, not sure though).

Where SC2 lacks is that it doesn't have a lot of the classic UMS maps. For example, Lurker Defense was a fairly popular UMS map in the early naughties. There's nothing equivalent to it in SC2. There's no real reason it couldn't exist, probably just a matter of map maker churn (some of the realities of SC1 UMS maps may also be getting in the way). OTOH, there are a lot of maps that SC1 never had.

I love the idea of Starcraft Remastered, but I don't think I'll be able to get into it. I just don't think I'll be able to go back to selecting 12 units at a time and all of the other limitations of the original.

5 Foot Step wrote on Apr 19^th, 2017 at 1:44pm:



YES!

It's about the only game I still play.

Some of Strake's criticism is legit. Still, many of the "arcade" spin-offs are great. I like the "Mineralz" ones. You have to survive waves of zerg while upgrading defenses working as a team.

Anyway, it's cool to pick up a random game, enjoy, and be done.

sc 2 campaign sucks shit, WoL may be acceptable, but then it turns into a retarded WOW-like story line with unnecessery twists and a lot of talk about "we stand united my brethren, for aiur, yadayada" not to mention the constant abuse of the phrase "energy signature" in the protoss storyline.

Totally not-thought-out.

I liked the dark and sinister tone of sc1+bw with that "only a flicker of hope remains" undertone.

And the death of DuGalle was pretty "glorious".

Strake wrote on May 16^th, 2017 at 12:52pm:

Strake wrote on May 16^th, 2017 at 12:52pm:


Heh, you just clicked through baldurs gate 1-2 dialogues? Planescape torment must be a literal torment for ya. :S

But to be fair: ye i liked sc2 graphcis, heck i occasionally play Mass Recall mod for ultimate enjoyment: sc1 story but with shiny graphics. Why not combine the best features of those games, right?

company of heros 2 is a lot of fun