Starcraft 2: was it as good as all the pre-release the hype?

In this thread im here to offer the pros and cons of Starcraft 2 Campaign only (i havent started with the Multiplayer yet so i cant offer u my opinion). I'll go into a lot of detail with the Negative section cos i think a lot of people would agree with me with that one...

Let's look at the Plus sides of the single player campaign:
1) Entertaining Single Player which (on occasion) offers players a choice between 2 paths.
2) They didnt change much of the mechanics of the game - some newer players would flame this but older players who grew up with SC1 see this as a big plus.
3) Uber Movies - let's be honest nobody does movies like Blizzard...
4) aethetics of the graphics engine - totally revamp textures looks really nice with forced AA and ultra settings...

Ok now let's look at the bad - IN DETAIL:
1) Voice acting: so the voiceover for Raynor and Mengsk were the same but everyone else was different. What do i think of this?: shocking...absolutely deplorable performance. Raynor and Mengsk although the same voice actors did not recieve the same intensity and power of dialogue as in the original SC1. Their voiceovers were not only more corny, but monotonous. As for the voiceover of Zeratul, oh geez...it sounded like he was freaking reading from a piece of paper. Kerrigan's voice work sounded too 'articulate' like Kerrigan went to Harvard University rather than sounding like a dominant queen of the universe.

2) Tassadar's reappearance - Tassadar's reappearance as a ghost was corny. Im not saying they shouldnt have done it...im saying they should have dont it differently. Perhaps as a CGI movie would have had more impact than a cut and paste High Templar unit ingame. Even Tassadar's orignal voice was far deeper and profound in SC1. it was a wiser more slower voice...the voicework in SC2 for Tassadar was like david attenborough doing a documentary about space.

3) End Mission - defending you base??? really is that all they could have come up with??? Where is the challenge to extend outside your base??? Take down zerg bases or structures to weaken the inflow of zerg??? Too much comfort for a last mission if you ask me.

4) Bugs Bugs Bugs galore - lets be honest so many bugs in this game. It took them 4 years and 3 months of beta testing yet they couldnt even get a simple spelling mistake noticed in a few missions i was reading with subtitles turned on. Most people who have high end SLI rigs seem to be getting poorer performance than those with single cards. Graphical corruption in the cutscenes on ultra settings in some rig setups. This is only a few bugs brought up...you should see the bnet forums there's a ton more. Sure you could argue that it's been only 1 week since release but heck THIS IS BLIZZARD...they never had THIS MUCH BUGS before in a single player campaign...and especially not with spelling mistakes in the campaign!!!! i noticed 3 spelling mistakes already !!! Furthermore, i brought up the SLI performance issue with Blizzard at the start of the beta release??? so why didnt they fix it prior to the retail release??? isnt that wat a beta is for???

5) Cliche' and predictable storyline - most of you already know that alot of things in SC2 are cliche but are probably suprised why i'm saying it was predictable. Well im about to tell u a true story...in 1999 i designed a set of custom maps and named it 'Starcraft II: The Aftermath.' In that story i made campaigns about how Tassadar was brought back to life, and how Kerrigan was transofrmed back to a human, about zerg and protoss hybrids, about the coming of the Zel Naga. Funny how 11 years later....Blizzard did almost the exact same storyline i did for my custom map?? It took them 4 years to think of that storyline when i thought of it in 3 months back in 1999 whilst in high school.

6) Lack of strong defining characters - this is one of my biggest criticisms of the game. Not only were the voiceovers WEAK but the person who wrote the dialogue did not offer the characters the chance they needed to shine. Side characters on the Hyperion had little to say about their own personal development during missions and where they came from - compare this to say Mass Effect 1 and 2 which did it brilliantly. Kerrigan was made to look like a weak, dumb overly articulate lady when infact she was supposed to be dominant, smart, cunning and threatening. Remember SC1 fellow fans??? we had the supurb acting of Duke, the cerebrates, dugalle, stukov, tassadar, fenix, artanis, ect etc...so many wonderful characters which had fine voicework, fine scripts, and melded into the stroyline perfectly and which all had a role to play in other's futures. In SC2, we have characters who dont meld into the storyline but rather are elements within it to continue the saga or entertain. There's a big difference.


CONCLUSION: regardless of these issues and even though i think SC1 was a much better game for its time than SC2....i STILL DEEM SC2 to be a great game..dont get me wrong there's a lot of downers in SC2 but i would still buy the next expansion and i would still rank it one of the best RTS followups of all time...THE VERY FACT STANDS THOUGH IT COULD HAVE BEEN WAAAY BETTER....i just cant believe it took them 4 years and millions of dollars and it clearly was not perfect upon release like many of us expected from blizzard

 

1) Didn't have a problem with it...the civilians were a bit poor though.
2) I never was in love with Tassadar like most SC fans are so i didn't mind it.
3) I went with the nydus worms and that involved alot of moving outside my base...on hard it was very epic
4) Luckily had no issues
5) Its a space opera. Its only 1/3 of the story XD, and the ending cinematic brought a tear to my eye.
6) I agree with this all the side characters had little development.

Conclusion: It lived up to my expectations my main disappointment was that if you read the novels before hand alot of things would make alot more sense and I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE EXPANSIONS grrrr.

 

my review

1) well here i agree.the voices are really dull.Zeratul,unfortunately the actor died.but they could bring an actor with a more epic voice.kerrigan?well....like you said "too articulate".
but the worse are the dialogues.theyre not so good like SC1,epic sentences and a unique grammar.

2) here i agree with you

3) at many SC endings,the last mission was defending your base.

4) i dont understand those errors you are talking about

5) the storyline at the begining was very poor.tassadar's return was.....stupid.he's dead PERIOD.
zeratul doesn't need his guidance.and in the dark templar saga,zeratul is a confused and bitter being,who is still trying to know how is going to forgive himself for waht he did with raszagal.and what i saw was nothing like that.i already told on this forum,there is a big plot mistake,when we first see the hybrids and zeratul is surprise and even asking "who have done this?" LOL
he knows who is behind the hybrids (Duran) and what they are.
and this finally "kerrigan human again"...stupid.
she is the b**** of the universe.we need a character like that.

6) in this game,we have new characters (matt horner,tychus findlay,tosh,nova,selendis,valerian,that geek guy,ect....).
matt?even if was not there,it would be the same.such an empty character.
tychus?well i would be fun that raynor have a partner again but tychus is a moron and unloyal amn.so the producers killed (?) him
tosh?i chose Nova so i dont know what he is capable of.and for what i saw,not a strong character.
Nova?she can be a really strong character but for now,we only saw her for short period of time
selendis?protoss characters will be developed at the 3rd game....i hope
valerian?just like Nova
geek guy?stupid and reminds me of WOW (dont know why but it does)
so till now,NO new strong characters,only 2 that can be.

in fact,one thing remind me of WOW:the graphics.

 

4. SLI
SLI requires a fast CPU to be able to unleash its full potential. Unfortunately, the graphics cards can't stretch their legs if there's not enough CPU to go around. Optimizing SC2 for quad-core probably would have alleviated this issue. Alas, since SC2 is only optimized for dual-core, it seems most users with multi-GPU rigs are faced with a CPU bottleneck.

 

I thought it was awesome.

I was never so satisfied as the last cutscene where Raynor finally saved his lady. Been waiting 10 years for that

 

(1) I really enjoyed the diverse voices we heard, but I think it was more the script and some of the lines they were given rather than how they said them. A lot of it sounded like it was from generic cheesy sci-fi movie #284.

(2) Yeah. The Tassadar thing was... well. My reaction was just leaning back in my chair and holding back a roll of the eyes. If he ever physically comes back I'm not going to be too impressed with Blizzard. Same thing if he turns into Yoda. Why they didn't bring back Michael Gough for voicing Tassadar is beyond me though. This new guy sounded very... generic. If that makes any sense.

(3) The last mission is difficult no matter the choice. Taking out the nydus worms means you're always defending against air which is pretty balls to the wall as is. But you need to watch out for your ground defense too because there's still a rampage going down on the ground. Oh yeah. And if you chose to take out the nydus worms, enjoy your air boss along with the constant Kerrigan attacks.

(4) The only bug I've had is the texture on supply depots messing up. Or the overlords missing textures. I've only had each of those happen once, and days apart. All it took was a quick restart of my game. And even then, I barely noticed.

(5) As a whole it might have been, yeah. But there were parts and segments between the start and the invasion of Char that made up for it.

(6) Matt Horner wasn't really that new of a character, considering he was introduced in a novelization of Raynor's previous efforts on Char, a short time after he split from the Dominion, to see what was up with Kerrigan. Swann we managed to hear something about Jim picking him up from... some minor rebellion that Jim caught wind of? I'd have to find that bit of dialogue again. Yeah there wasn't that much about Stettman, and he generally came off as an annoying addition. But he grew on me after that, and is actually one of my favorite characters now after his dialogue in Belly of the Beast. Tychus seemed two dimensional, but there were some qualities that redeemed him. Not exactly the big dumb marine.

 

1) Voice acting - Agreed while it was not atrocious, they could have done much better. I can still remember clearly all the voices from SC1, thats how much they stick with you.

2) Tassadar's reappearance - Watched a video of it, while I think it is AWESOME because Tasadar's sacrifice in SC1 was probably my favorite gaming moment of all time, I agree they could have done a cutscene since thats such a huge moment especially for diehard SC1 protoss fans. It didn't even have to be a long cutscene.

3) End Mission - I agree with this as well, although there wil be more missions for different races I remember both SC1 and BW final missions were tough and involved assaulting and thats how I like it and how it is best.

4) Bugs Bugs Bugs - Yeah for such an old game youd think they could find all the bugs... oh well they will patch important ones.

5) Cliche' and predictable storyline - Now that is amazing... you were pretty smart to write that map back then. And I agree it occured because they used the most obvious story idea, stuff that was very obvious to happen but also fits their storyline as a whole good. The return of the Xel Naga for example has been built up for a long time. Kerrigan however was one I never could have predicted.

6) Lack of strong defining characters - we had the supurb acting of Duke, the cerebrates, dugalle, stukov, tassadar, fenix, artanis - This says it all, I still remember all those guys because they made an IMPACT. I remember Fenix and how crazy it was when he dies, and that was like 3 levels into the Toss campaign.

While SC2 is a great game all of your concerns are very true, and could help make it a better game. The storyline of Starcraft is what makes you remember it, the multiplayer is what makes you play it.

 

1) Yup - Starcraft II had a lot more dialogue… And it had it’s pristine moments like it did on Starcraft/Brood War, but a lot of it was corny/unfitting/scripted.

2) Wish they could keep Tassadar’s old voice – that’s my only gripe with that scene.

3) Maybe it’s because I’m not a uber-gosu player, but I was #*&$^@& my pants the entire 30 minutes trying to killing off the nydus worms and protecting the artifact on Brutal… I’ve restarted the mission COUNTLESS times just to finish the mission trying to cannon fodder the rest of my troops and buildings to keep the artifact at 10% health for the last 30 seconds.

4) Beta was focused on balancing multiplayer dynamics, which I think they did an excellent job balancing for the most part… Blizzard wanted to keep their story tight-lipped, so outside revision for single player was limited.

5) Blizzard always had those feel-good cliché stories… Diablo I/II, Starcraft and Warcraft III ran with that cookie-cutter “We need to band together to beat X – HURRAY we won!” where X = Diablo/Undead/Overmind/Xel’Naga. Like Warcraft III and Starcraft, Starcraft II had a very simple story line for people who are new/returning to the game. It’s easy to follow – nothing too confusing or terribly twisted that would put off new players trying the game… I really didn’t expect anything too spectacular from WoL.

I’m waiting to see what they do with HotS and LotV though… I doubt they turned it into Warcraft in space ending where “Our three races banded together to beat the undead/Archimonde – I mean, the Xel’Naga/the Fallen One!” If they did, I’d be pretty ticked.

6) I agree – I felt the story was lacking and the characters were underdeveloped… If I remember right, you only need to complete about ~17-18 missions to get to Char. If the player wanted to, he could completely skip a good portion of the other story arcs – or manipulate the outcome completely one way or the other. This meant Blizzard had to create separate story arcs that could stand alone, rather than develop one main story.

Blizzard tried to make 5 different stories, but they didn’t link them together well – I kinda felt the Tosh/Dr. Hanson mission to be a bit of a waste. Once you finished those mission-lines, you never saw them again. That’s the problem of choice… They tried and it didn’t work well for the story – I just hope they don’t do that in the expansions. I’d rather be carted around from mission to mission than have the choice of skipping 1/3 of them to jump to the end of the campaign.

 

I strongly disagree that Blizzard has cliche "happy endings". Brood War was extraordinarily depressing.

 

Further, the Frozen Throne ending wasn't exactly a happy ending either.
I already made my own thread about the voice acting, and responded to other htreads about the remaining points, so no use to go into that again. At least not for me.

 

I never said Brood War or Frozen Throne had a happy ending.
The original Starcraft and Warcraft III DID end on a high note, in a very cliche and feel-good way.

Blizzard seems to like to do that for their original game. As such, I didn't expect Blizzard to get into much depth and twist in Wings of Liberty - and I'm quite okay with that, because it wouldn't fit well with new and returning players trying to ease into the game to berate them with crazy plot twists and depressing story. I expect to see more of that from HotS/LotV.

 

I loved the game, still playing it of course, but the voiceacting for at least Tassadar and Zeratul could have been better. I was a Zeratul fanboy in SC1 and his voice was dark and powerful sounding, in this one hes too..plain.

 

I was expecting your choices in the Campaign to have more of an effect on what happened next than it did- but I was probably hoping for too much.

Still, its probably the best campaign I have played, and I really enjoyed it.

 

Should our forum try to revoice starcraft 2?