Well, SC2 is a game that needs no introduction with all the press that it has gathered over the last few months. After all, its predecessor literally jumpstarted the entire progaming scene; expectations are high that SC2 will take Brood War’s place over the next few years. I’ve been replaying the campaign the last few days, trying to pick up most of the achievements (I already stomped through it once during my exam period just to go through the storyline; let’s just say casual difficulty is really, really casual 
).
As is usual for a Blizzard game, SC2 mostly lives up to its hype. The graphics are phenomenal without being overbearing; I can still play the game relatively well on medium settings using a laptop that I got three years ago. The audio is pretty decent as well. All of the sounds are appropriate, given the situation; it’s easy enough to tell what’s going on if you listen intently. Much of the music seems like it was remixed from SC1 too, giving an old nostalgic feel to the game.
What I really liked was the changes to the user interface. The new control groups really help a low-APM player like me. Things like automatically (and intelligently) choosing which building to build a unit from, having unlimited units in one group, casting only one copy of a special ability at a time, and such means that I can focus less on mass-spamming my mouse and keyboard and focus more on overall strategies. Of course, there are things missing that I’d like to see. For example, wouldn’t it be nice if units created from a building were automatically assigned to a chosen control group when they come out? This could be implemented by, say, Ctrl + Right Click on a control group when the buildings are highlighted. Right now this is half-done if you rally the buildings’ troops to a unit; they’ll basically follow that unit if it isn’t dead.
The storyline itself was okay. I didn’t expect much from a RTS game so all of the character development and stuff were pretty much gravy. That said, much of the plot is relatively predictable and cliché; despite giving you a lot of choice in choosing which missions to do first, there isn’t much overall impact in the end. At least there weren’t any inconsistencies that I could see though (e.g. one mission done before another, but some dialogue refers to the latter in the former). I suppose not too many people care about singleplayer SC2 anyway so it’s a moot point…
I haven’t played any league games yet and don’t really intend to; I’m not particularly big on competitive gaming in general. SC2 isn’t exactly balanced for anything above 1 vs 1 anyway (hell, it’s not even balanced for that despite aiming to become the de facto standard for progaming). I’ll stick with trolling the AI and playing custom maps, thanks.
Anyway, there are a few things that I dislike about the game. The lack of chat on the new Battle.net is kind of a step back from the previous iteration; not everyone likes to interact with others on the official community forums. That said, the old Battle.net was pretty blah, so meh… Regionalization of the community is a massive pain in the ass too; is Blizzard seriously telling me that I can’t play with friends in other regions without buying another copy of the game? The world is coming closer together with all of our new communication technology and they pull that kind of crap in the name of providing a better experience for their users. I haven’t seen a justification for such an action that couldn’t be met with a “softer” version of segregation (for example, league matchmaking can be done by region but custom games can allow anyone from anywhere to join; this allows for lower ping in “important” matches and increased versatility when players want it). Sure, it’d be harder to implement but it shouldn’t be impossible for a company with Blizzard’s resources. Oh yeah, a lack of LAN support is lame too (I can deal with regionalization if we had that option). I can definitely see why Blizzard doesn’t want to implement it though, seeing as SC2 is supposed to be focusing on competitive gaming. A look at the company’s actions with KeSPA and you can see that they really want to control a good part of the scene.
That said, SC2 is still a solid game in my eyes (and I’m missing out on the supposed best part of the game – online league play). Time to finish up the campaign achievements, I guess. My fingers are still numb from doing “All In” on brutal versus all of that flying Zerg…
Now that I’ve moved and let my brain cool down, I can finally start working on random projects (and replaying StarCraft II!).
The final was longer than the midterm (though it wasn’t cumulative) and I didn’t think I’d actually finish (I did – although the last couple of pages looked like scribbles). But, well, I pretty much expected it since we were forewarned.
