OT: Starcraft II and Elemental

[WraithLord]

Supposedly SC II was released yesterday (probably only in the US). Anyone here got his hands on a copy?- Any first impressions?

And, bonus gossip quesions, any impressions or thoughts on Elemental?

Last, Does anyone know whether a good FTBS is cooking up somewhere. Something in the caliber of MOM, MOO, AOW or Dominions?- Or put in other words - a game that's worth waiting for?

[RadicalTurnip]

I've found that strategy games have plummeted in popularity recently, much to my sadness. Planning on getting SCII tomorrow, so I may come back and tell you then.

Usually, I don't hear about games, my friends do, and then they get me to play them, so...no luck on this front.

[AdmiralZhao]

SCII is alright. The single player campaign is laughably bad, but the MP is enjoyable if you like tight, competitive games. MP plays very fast, and does require a lot of clicking, so I wouldn't recommend it unless your mouse hand is spry and you enjoy learning hotkeys. I also would not give them any points for innovation; this is basically SCI with some slight improvements to units, abilities, and graphics. As usual, the matchmaking service is great and consistently delivers interesting opponents in 1-10 seconds. I also expect great things from the mod community, which should shortly be rolling out a ton of other games built with the starcraft engine.

[LDiCesare]

Elemental is still a beta and lacks decent ai and a user interface to manage units before I could start enjoying the game. Or providing useful feedback about most game mechanics and balance, actually.

[WraithLord]

My hands can no longer stand the punishment of click intensive games. This is all I needed to hear. The day they'll release a TBS starcraft - well that's a worthy fantasy...

Elemental, hopefully would have a soul, the way MOO, MOM and dominions have. I have a bad feeling about that though.

Hehe, and while I'm fantasizing I may hope for dom-III source to be released and dom-IV created as a free source project - or better yet for IW to get bored with their new project and develop the next installment of dominions

[Fluffypaw]

Originally Posted by AdmiralZhao

SCII is alright. The single player campaign is laughably bad, but the MP is enjoyable if you like tight, competitive games. MP plays very fast, and does require a lot of clicking, so I wouldn't recommend it unless your mouse hand is spry and you enjoy learning hotkeys. I also would not give them any points for innovation; this is basically SCI with some slight improvements to units, abilities, and graphics. As usual, the matchmaking service is great and consistently delivers interesting opponents in 1-10 seconds. I also expect great things from the mod community, which should shortly be rolling out a ton of other games built with the starcraft engine.

Sounds like SCII is exactly what I expected from it. More of the same in a bit more polished and revised form.

Would you care to elaborate a bit more on what's bad about the campaign?

Fluffypaw

[Doo]

Elemental is shaping up to be good. The idea's shown so far are good. I especially like the gameplay mechanic of researching "adventure" and then being able to take on more rewarding quests at locations on the map; it sounds cheesy but its a new aspect to turn based strategy.

At this stage the developer admits there is more to do to get it to release quality which is encouraging and positive. Unless they have been doing stuff (balancing ect.,) that is not in the beta then I doubt it will be ready by the current release date. I also believe that they have done work that is not in the beta so fingers crossed.

I don't know what a "F-TBS" is but Sword of the Stars is great, I purchased the complete collection yesterday at half price. I had hoped be able to direct you all to a sale but its apparently ended.... Still its a great TBS with pausable real time battles that are fun to play.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/sotscomcol

*edit* Oh! FANTASY-TBS! Well if you don't believe in aliens then SotS is "fantasy"

[AdmiralZhao]

Well, perhaps I shouldn't be too hard on the campaign. They have some neat levels (a volcanic planet where lava regularly floods the low ground, a high UV planet where conditions change radically between night and day). And it is all very professional; it is not like there are any technical flaws in the missions. But they are not the all our slaughter-fest, macro heavy, total war missions that I know and love from BroodWar. Rather they tend to be fairly simple and easy, and the experience reminds me of playing Plants vs Zombies, i.e. somewhat enjoyable in a brain-dead, time-wasty sort of way.

What really gets me though are the cut scenes. So many cut scenes. So much awful dialog and so many cliches. So many shoulderpads. It's like they can only do so many characters/settings, or perhaps like Warhammer/Warhammer40K; every character type or aspect in one setting (WoW) has to exist in the other setting (Starcraft) whether it makes any sense or not. So we have protoss temples that look like Night Elf temples, and Prince Arthas as Prince whatever of the Dominion, and what is quite literally a dwarf running your upgrade center.

And why is Kerrigan wearing heels and lipstick? And why is she personally fighting on the front lines? Is this really what I fought the Broodwar for? I don't know. I just wish they had done something better/more creative with 10 years and who knows how many million dollars.

[DonCorazon]

I pre-purchased Elemental, despite myself, after finding the Gal Civ game dry, like a mathmetician trying to describe jazz with algebra equations.

I can get Elemental to run on my laptop, but can't see the map so I can't say much about it other than its time to get a new laptop.

[Doo]

My laptop is close to five years old now and runs the Elemental beta. Its sluggish but apparently this will be fixed by the final release.

The game was touted to be playable on the most basic netbook, I hope it lives up to this claim or I will have to buy a new computer...