Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Too Long Didn't Read Notes: There is a lot more discussion added after the cliffnotes, if you are interested. -The game itself is not the same as its predecessor. And that is ok; after all, they are not just doing a graphics update here. But, everything outside of the actual game play is completely borked. -Many issues coming up just trying to install/update/troubleshoot the game. Many more than are excusable for any new release. -Limitations on single player play... cmon... really? -Limitations on Multiplayer Play (No LAN). -No unique Screen Names. -Extremely Vague Ladder System. -Can't Kick People from games if you don't want to play with them. -30 second waits for game starting. -Lack of any way to describe special rules before joining a custom game. -IM type interplayer communication. -No Chat Rooms. -Feels lonely despite 1.8 million copies sold. -Restrictions on how many UMS maps can be posted per game key. -Restrictions on file size of UMS maps loaded to the server. -Games listed by popularity. -No way to see special rules for UMS maps. -Hard to start a game for a less popular map. -Hard to make a new map popular. -Need personal information to make friends (aka playing the game). -Very hard to join a game with one particular player that isn't on your friends list. -Game maker needs to assign slots to players in a UMS game. -AFK Game makers holding down UMS games (no way to make the game) -Radical shift in game design according to how damage is calculated. -Combining units instead of introducing new ones. And it's more expensive than other games on the market. Onto the Review: Well, after playing this game I have found that it was not worth the 60 dollar investment. I really should have read up on the reviews before doing so. As a fan boy of Starcraft, I was left incredibly disappointed. Many of my complaints are already mentioned within the numerous reviews posted before my own, but after reading through them I have found that very few of those reviews go into as much depth that would be required to adequately emphasize the faults of the newest addition to the Starcraft Legacy. First I'll state that while I did not have a PC powerful enough to run the beta, I did keep up on this particular title daily through both the official beta forums and various commentaries on YouTube until its official release. At which time I was able to purchase a newer PC and run this game. I'll try to dissect this game for you from beginning to end. I'll be focusing on the multiplayer side of the equation as this is where players will spend the majority of their time in game. First Comes Purchasing the Game Itself: This game comes at a price of 60 USD, 10 USD more than other PC games. Paying 10 dollars more really isn't an issue, but if you are going to charge more for a video game you really need to make sure people do not feel ripped off. Unfortunately, as I proceed through my review, you will notice that Blizzard did not come through. Next, the Installation Process: After you install, you have the usual routine. You need to register the game and make a battlenet account. The thing to understand here is that single player mode will not be available to an unregistered game. This is very unusual for games thus far. It means that if you do not have internet access, you will not be able to play in single player. This will be an issue for some people, but for most people it shouldn't. If you can afford a newer PC, chances are that you will be able to afford internet access. Never the less, this is a form of DRM (Digital Restriction Management). It is in place to prevent illegal copies from being played... In Theory. In reality, a cracked version of the game was introduced hours after the official release. So, all it is doing is providing a roadblock for legitimate players to enjoy the game they bought at a premium compared to other games. In short, you will be paying more for this game than any other but still cannot play single player unless you have internet access. In addition, the released game is not fully updated. After you install, you will need to log onto battlenet to update the game before anything else can happen. This is just sloppy distribution. Don't get me wrong, if you went out and bought a new copy of the original, you would expect there to be a massive update. After all, the game has been out for ~12 years. But, this is a brand new game, it has just been released. Blizzard saw it fit to charge you more than any other PC game while not providing you with the most recent version on its official release date. Believe me; the disregard for the customers does not end there. Issues with the Installation/Update: Many players are reporting that they were having issues just getting the game started. A common bug was one where the consumer needed to enter the computer settings of the game and add a couple lines to let the programming know that there would be a cap on the frame rate the game uses. Apparently, this was causing all kinds of issues including physically melting people's video cards (a vital computer component to any gamer). There are other issues as well that are preventing people from playing the game. Issues like this game not being able to run in compatibility mode. Everyone expects some bugs to be present on release day, it would be ignorant not to. But, this is rather widespread now. When I purchase anything, especially at a premium, I do not expect/want to have to put on my troubleshooting hat. If this is an issue for you, wait until these issues have been resolved before purchasing this title. Customer Support: Now we have our favorite topic, Customer Support. Now that you have purchased your 60-100 USD paper weight you need to get it to work. If you're like me, you do not like trouble shooting this sort of thing yourself. You'll want to speak with someone who has dealt with this issue before. So, you go hunting for the phone number to Blizzards Customer Service (Tech Help) department. This game comes two ways, a hard copy or a digital download. If you have the digital download, you'll need to hunt through Blizzards Web page to find a phone number to reach a representative. Once you finally locate this bit of hidden information you'll find that you'll be lucky to even get in queue. Yes, that many people are having issues. Once you are in queue, the automated message you're listening to has a bad habit of simply dropping your call. Forcing you to start the whole process all over again. Again, I have no issues with paying more than the standard amount for a video game. But, if you're going to charge the customer more... Don't do this to them. If you consider easy access to customer service to be important, you'll want to wait before purchasing this title. Actually Getting to Play Starcraft 2 (single Player): You now have everything set up and ready to go. Now you need to set up your battlenet account (online) before you can play your single player campaign mode. Be careful when you do this. You have one shot at it. Whatever screen name you choose, you are stuck with, permanently. Perhaps there will be a pay service to change your screen name in the future, but not at this time. Anyway, who will pay real money for a game which is designed to siphon even more money out of your wallet to do something that almost every gamer is used to doing for free. You get one battlenet account per purchase. (More on this later) Furthermore, your screen name will no longer be unique. In theory there can be up to 999 other players out there with the exact same screen name as yours. Blizzard did this to allow people to be whatever name they wanted, and not have to sit at their PC toiling over what screen name they would like to use because the others are already taken. On the down side, there still needs to be some sort of way to tell you apart from others. So, after you entered the name you liked blizzard will tack on a gaudy 3 number suffix to your screen name. You have no control over this number. Thank goodness that number is hidden most of the time. Because it is very ugly, and does upset people when they see this numerical suffix added to their name. Way to make the consumer feel special... and unlike just a... number. But, there is a down side to having this number hidden in most of the menus that present your name. The biggest would be... if it's almost always hidden, then what is the point of a unique identifier? When watching a replay, people are still going to ask, "Is that the real Sepheroth? Or just someone with the same name but different hidden numerical identifier" Not only that, but you will need to log into battlenet every month to do so. This is part of a DRM process to insure that you actually bought this game. This is yet another safeguard bypassed in cracked copies. It's just one more level of inconvenience to legitimate consumers. Blizzard has a fantastic reputation for keeping their game servers running, even for very old titles. But, that is not to say that you will always have internet access. Let's say you've been playing a different game for a while, and the urge to play Starcraft bites you while you're out on a trip. Well if that 30 day period since you last logged into battlenet has expired... you can't. Or, you moved to a different apartment/house. Well, the same situation would apply. Or you just forget that you need to log onto battlenet to allow you to play the campaign mode... then you need to figure out the issue. Dealing with Battlenet v2: Ok, back on our trek to multiplayer. You have entered the marvel known as Battlenet v2. If you have experience with previous Blizzard titles, you have an idea of what to expect. You'll expect a ladder system to rank players. You'll expect a method of joining a custom setting game. You'll expect a chat room to meet new people, and possibly get an answer to that urgent question. You'll expect a Use Map Settings type of menu which will allows you to see what other genius players are able to do with the game engine. You'll be expecting to make/add friends to a friend's list. For the most part you will get all of that. But, all of it is executed in the most painful, most non-user-friendly, way possible. As you will see, Battlenet v2 is what is truly dragging this game down into the dirt. It is ironic that this game was held back to allow for the development of battlenet v2. Dealing with Battlenet v2's Ladder System: A ladder system is a method of ranking players among each other. Ladder's come in Seasons. This is to shake things up a bit, erasing previous win/loss points that were used to determine your rank before to give everyone a clean slate for the new season. As a result, you'll expect a couple things to help players determine how they rank. Namely, a constantly updated list. And, you will find this. But, it is done in a strange way. After the initial placement matches, players are placed into a rank. Let's say, that you placed into silver rank. Within silver rank there are multiple leagues. How many leagues? I don't know... but each league is comprised of a grouping of 100 players. Are you getting confused as to how you know where your skills rank among the populace yet? The sad fact of the matter is that there is no list to give you that data. All you will be able to see is the group of 100 people within your rank... and how they match up among each other. As for the other 1.8 million people? Your guess is as good as mine. It kind of defeats the entire purpose of a ladder system. But hey, look how many rank 1's there are! On the bright side, once players get the achievements they want (and have no incentive to bork up the ladder by losing on purpose) the system they have for matching people together is pretty good. Dealing with Battlenet v2's Custom Map System: This is for the guys/gals that have little to no interest in the ladder scene. Here you will find 3v3 and 4v4 maps, in addition to an option where you can test out strategies/train without hurting your ladder score. But, you run into an issue when you make a game. There is no kick option. Meaning if you did not want to play a certain person, there is no way to remove them from the game. Also, once the game is full, it will start automatically... with a 30 second timer before the match starts. Go ahead, sit there for 30 seconds. Watch the clock. I'll wait. Also, if you have experience with other games of this type, you are usually able to type a few words to dictate what type of game you are looking for. People can read this and decide if that is something they are interested in joining or not. You cannot do this in SC2. For new players, having a stipulation where you cannot attack for 15 minutes is common. There is no way of knowing that this was how the maker wanted to play that game until it was too late, and now you're wasting both players time. There is just no excuse for this. It is a very simple function to implement. I'll be the first to admit that I do not know much about computer programming, but even I could put that function together. Furthermore, the original was priced cheaper, and had this utility built in from the start. Dealing with Battlenet v2's Chat System: This is another item that irks me. Instead of having a chat room type of environment, you have an instant message type of environment. By definition, there is a big difference. Instead of joining a chat channel, where your friends like to congregate, you'll need to manage multiple instant messages. Let's imagine, for a moment, a typical situation. You have 20 friends in battlenet. You want to organize some sort of tournament. How do you do that? Well, you need to communicate, organize, and run the event through instant messages with 20 people. Think of doing this with AOL IM without a communal chat room that people can join. Now you see what kind of a pain in the neck it is. In addition, in order to send someone an IM, you need some personal information... 'nuff said there. To Blizzards credit, they will be implementing chat rooms in the future. However, after witnessing the glory that is battlenet v2 first hand... I don't have my hopes up. On the flip side of the coin, Blizzard is asking you to pay more money, for a video game that has less functionality than the original released 12 years ago. To make matters worse, the original reason for this was that it would be complicated to implement. Wait what? Complicated? Then, after months of begging for chat rooms during the beta, the lead developer came out and asked the community if we "REALLY wanted chat rooms". Yeah, that the level of disconnect that Blizzard has with its community nowadays. All in all, you are left with a feeling of loneliness. You know that 1.8 million copies of this have been sold. But you can't talk with anyone. You can't even see anyone else online. Dealing with Battlenet v2's UMS System: Use Map Settings has been a staple of Blizzard RTS since implementation of online functionality. There is a huge wealth of creative talent within the player base. Some use map setting games developed within Blizzard RTS's have shot off to become their own actual games! This adds a great deal of longevity to the game, and also provides the player with a huge variety of things to do within the Starcraft Universe. And to Blizzards credit, the Galaxy editor, used to create these special maps, is phenomenal. Where this falls short... is right where the Galaxy Editor interfaces with Battlenet v2. The only analogy I can think of would be the collapse of the wave function that divides quantum and Newtonian physics. It just breaks down. There is such a wonderful and creative player base, but Blizzard does not want people to store maps on their PC's. Blizzard wants control, with the intent of charging money for extra special maps. To do this, the maps need to be stored server side. We are told that this is to help the map creators insure that only the newest versions of their maps are playable, as they can now manage what is online. In reality, this comes with a restriction on how large maps can be... So, the player base can say so long to those epic 4 MB maps. Not only that, but to prevent a flooding of the servers used to store these maps, players are limited in the number of maps they can upload. That wouldn't be bad if the limit was large, but the limit is small. I believe map creators can only upload 5 maps to battlenet v2. Oh Battlenet v2 is not done messing up this game yet, believe me. It's not even done messing up the UMS part of the game. Let's say you want to play a UMS game. When you first start out, the system is very nice. The games you can choose from are listed in order of popularity. So, you can go and check out the UMS games that people seem to think are quality. However, this quickly becomes very annoying. Eventually you want to play something different. So you start scrolling down the list, then you head to page 2 of the list, than onto page X where you find a game that you think will be really fun! But wait, this map isn't very popular, it's stuck all the way back on page X. Good luck getting anyone to go that far and want to join that map. This same problem happens with newer maps. You just made a map. Now you want people to play it so that you can see what people think. It's all the way at the back of the popularity list. Good luck getting people to play it. You'll need to advertize the crap out of it. Post a video on YouTube, spam making the game. Do you really want to go through all that? Or would you rather just be able to have this work like it did in the original Starcraft? Believe me, Battlenet v2 is truly a downgrade from the original battlenet... and it's more expensive! Dealing with Battlenet v2's Friend List System: Ok, this is where you add friends you meet to a list. It makes communication with them far easier than before, and this is a function that spans across pretty much every game genre. Blizzard took this and used it very well, until now. Starcraft 2 takes the idea of having a friends list to make communication easier, and turned the idea on its head... but not in a good way. Now, using your friends list is mandatory. If you don't, it is almost impossible to join games together. Furthermore, you need to have someone in your friends list before you can send them messages. This would not be a huge problem, if you could meet and talk with people in chat rooms. As it is, right now, you need to add people that you find in game, when your attention is focused on... oh I don't know, playing the game. It's a function that has become dysfunctional at the very base level. Onto Game Mechanics: It is important to realize that this is not the original Starcraft. It has many of the same units, and some of the classic relationships between those units have been preserved. But, the circumstances where this holds true are very rare. It is my opinion that people who state that this game really should be called Starcraft 1.5 are just wrong. This is important to go over as part of any good review because it has a direct effect on game play. Many people are getting a different feel out of the units, than they had with the original. Most do not like it either. Onto Game Mechanics (Damage System): The first thing you need to know is that Blizzard threw out the damage system used in the original. Why they would make such a fundamental change to the game is beyond me. They say that the old system of damage calculation was too complicated. But, I prefer the old system. Over all, it resulted in less squishy units with more of an opportunity for micro. In the original, you would find that all units had a listed damage rating per shot. This was the maximum damage they could possibly perform per shot. The actual damage done was determined by the physical size of target they were shooting/hitting. The important thing to note was that, depending on the size of the target, the actual damage done was decreased by a set %. In the new system, all units have a listed damage rating. This is the minimum amount of damage done per shot. The actual damage done was also determined by what they were shooting. The important thing to note is that, depending on the armor type of the target, the damage done may increase by a set number. Contrary to what people might tell you, these two systems are not equivalent because many of the unit stats have remained constant. Here is a prime example: Let's take a Sieged Tank versus a Marine or Zergling. With the original system, a sieged tank would need to strike a marine or Zergling twice to kill it. This is because the sieged tank's damage was cut by a hefty percentage when targeting smaller units. With the new system, the sieged tanks damage is now increased instead of decreased but the marine or Zergling hit points have remained the same. In Starcraft 2, a Tank will one shot a marine or a Zergling. Combine this with the smarter AI on the tanks (they all don't strike the same target like in the original) it becomes almost impossible to get within the minimum range of the tanks. It also means that armor upgrades effectiveness took a major hit with this new installment. That is not to say that all of the clasic relationships are gone. Anything that was not effected by the % reduction ot the flat increase calculations in either game remains. Things like the relationship between the zealot's and the zergling's attack/armor upgrades remain. However, those relationships are few and far between as most of the units damage was modified within these games by the behind the scenes damage modifiers. This type of unit on unit interaction has been completely destroyed. A new one interaction took its place. You may like it, you may not. Just be aware that your units will feel a lot squishier than in the original. Onto Game Mechanics (Combined Units): Many units no longer make an appearance within Starcraft 2. They did not keep everything from the older game, with additional units. Not for Multiplayer. In single player, you will find that many of the units reappear. So, instead of thinking about Blizzard adding many new units, you can think about it in a different way. Blizzard combined many of the units, to make a new unit with properties of the two they combined. An example of this would be the Hellion. The Vulture and the Firebat are no longer in Multiplayer. In exchange the terran's received the Hellion. It's a Vulture that shoots upgradable jets of flame with the speed of a Vulture but the micro capabilities of a stimpacked Firebat (no more moving shot). Onto Game Mechanics (Macro): The macro side of the equation for all the races got a huge boost. This is probably one of the biggest improvements they made to the game. And outside of Zerg needing an excessive amount of micro to pull off in late game, this was done well. This alone is what is getting this game even one star from me. The general concensus is that Starcraft 2 is more heavily wieghted on the macro side than the original was. For better or worse, I would tend to agree with this statement. In addition, there are many interesting things added with the new engine. You can now select multiple buildings at the same time. You can ralley workers onto mineral patches and they will automatically begin to mine. You can set rally points for all unit producing facilities onto other Units, creating a moving ralley point that is very useful for reinforcements. And the over all pathing has been greatly improved, though many complain about your units clumping together too much. Hey, you need micro somewhere in the game, so that doesnt bother me. Onto Game Mechanics (Micro) As of yet, Micro took a hit. The player base is teasing out some interesting things though. It's sad that the interesting things players are teasing out have to do with units that are already very powerful. I'd like to see more micro opportunities added for units that are at distinct disadvantages in particular unit to unit matchups. Easy to play, hard to master is the mantra with this game. Most of the micro in the original was as a result of trying to overcome the clunky pathing and user interface. Most of those issues are gone now. That being said, most of the micro that has taken its place is just more of the same, with a differant flavor. You're still fighting the pathing of the units, but in this new version you are often fighting to keep from having your units clumped into one big ball. In addition, you will find that the improved graphics is a double edged sword. You'll find it difficult to pick out particular units quickly to micro or micro against. The ball just kinds of blends together into its own mass, and the units to not stand out enough to easily pick them out. Imagine picking out the one ghost in a maximum 200/200 sized army with in the original. You'll have the same issue picking out that ghost with an army half the size in Starcraft 2. In conclusion: -The game itself is not the same as its predecessor. And that is ok; after all, they are not just doing a graphics update here. But, everything outside of the actual game play is completely borked. -Many issues coming up just trying to install/update/troubleshoot the game. Many more than are excusable for any new release. -Limitations on single player play... cmon... really? -Limitations on Multiplayer Play (No LAN). -No unique Screen Names. -Extremely Vague Ladder System. -Can't Kick People from games if you don't want to play with them. -30 second waits for game starting. -Lack of any way to describe special rules before joining a custom game. -IM type interplayer communication. -No Chat Rooms. -Feels lonely despite 1.8 million copies sold. -Restrictions on how many UMS maps can be posted per game key. -Restrictions on file size of UMS maps loaded to the server. -Games listed by popularity. -No way to see special rules for UMS maps. -Hard to start a game for a less popular map. -Hard to make a new map popular. -Need personal information to make friends (aka playing the game). -Very hard to join a game with one particular player that isn't on your friends list. -Game maker needs to assign slots to players in a UMS game. -AFK Game makers holding down UMS games (no way to make the game) -Radical shift in game design according to how damage is calculated. -Combining units instead of introducing new ones. And it's more expensive than other games on the market.