Star Craft II
[Why!?]
It's like, in the last decade so much has evolved in the realm of RTS that Starcraft 2 comes along as some titanosaurus... to do what? Make a thunderous noise and then what? People are going to go gaga over it, I mean it is fun.. as time wasting goes.. but nothing has changed, the experience isn't new especially if you haven't managed to put the game down.. or have managed to pick up any of the several dozen great RTS games since the first Starcraft.. it's the same game it always has been.
Frankly the only thing left to see is what they will do with the campaign but I'm not holding my breath. Having to point and click through another campaign, of marginally upgraded game play and graphics.. I've done this before and it might as well stay a part of my long lost, wasted childhood.
Unless I'm mistaken.. you can't even rotate the map? zooming is equally non-existant compared to SupCom...... the world isn't deformable as was the case with command and conquer several editions ago... doesn't seem to have day night cycle.. no environmental concerns or fauna to worry about... same resources with little added to say they've evolved that mechanic.. which I'm guessing at since I didn't see anything new in my match.
As I asked myself and the ether the first I saw trailers for SCII.. what the hell is the point? Couldn't this franchise be making more money by actually trying to innovate... rotating the camera, FPS controls for some units like Ghosts, driving units otherwise to break up the mousing?
Like I wondered nearing the end of the match.. is it that those kinds of things just have no place in SC? or are people, a decade on, still using machines that can't make that kind of stuff happen, at least in a multiplayer sense? Where the game is effectively the same as the originial so that multiplayer will be the same. Very easy to transition to the new game.. same controls, same strategies.. nothing new needed but for slightly better graphics. Where even that's questionable. given the sys reqs and what can be accomplished.. no unit clipping (especially aerial units), glossier/shinnier units and more procedural effects (explosions, building, map layout), pools water, the animation of paritcle, fire and gas plumes/clouds, ambient lighting from the aerial units... actual battles in space without platforms.
Otherwise I'm looking at the collection of minerals.. it saddens me to think that EA's command and conquer at least tried to innovate mineral collection. I'm looking at SCII and wondering immediately why you can't just create nodes at the resource and have them be sent back on rails? It would make collection much faster and allow you to centralize and defend processing. Also it would allow more realistic game play in that you can't have ubiquitous resources just because it was collected. What about processing?! how are you distributing the processed resources for building and unit construction.. but maybe that's just my Rails passion talking. In that in that RTS you have to collect all kinds of resources, refine them, then distribute the refined resources to factories to make finished products.
Star Craft. As in what? stupid playground battles in a sandbox? for ten years only to get a refreshed sandbox. Are people who play this game like House Cats or something?
I wonder.
Rails lacks politics and war, while Star Craft 2 lacks a realistic resource collection, refinement and distribution network. And maps that span planets, in a persistent world/universe.
Simple missions structures become lame once you've completed them.. but Rails with it's randomizer allows you to replay scenarios with a new map which makes everything that much more fun every time. It's always a bit different if not completely different from the last game you played.
I wonder why more entrenched multiplayer games haven't opted for this type of mechanic. Having the same maps is great and all but they are tiny. Instead, if during connection and loading of the map, it was randomised and presented fresh to all the players (to vote to play or not), complete with fog of war.. won't each match end up being unique and interesting.. thrilling even because of that factor of the unknown?
[Why!?]
It's like, in the last decade so much has evolved in the realm of RTS that Starcraft 2 comes along as some titanosaurus... to do what? Make a thunderous noise and then what? People are going to go gaga over it, I mean it is fun.. as time wasting goes.. but nothing has changed, the experience isn't new especially if you haven't managed to put the game down.. or have managed to pick up any of the several dozen great RTS games since the first Starcraft.. it's the same game it always has been.
Frankly the only thing left to see is what they will do with the campaign but I'm not holding my breath. Having to point and click through another campaign, of marginally upgraded game play and graphics.. I've done this before and it might as well stay a part of my long lost, wasted childhood.
Unless I'm mistaken.. you can't even rotate the map? zooming is equally non-existant compared to SupCom...... the world isn't deformable as was the case with command and conquer several editions ago... doesn't seem to have day night cycle.. no environmental concerns or fauna to worry about... same resources with little added to say they've evolved that mechanic.. which I'm guessing at since I didn't see anything new in my match.
As I asked myself and the ether the first I saw trailers for SCII.. what the hell is the point? Couldn't this franchise be making more money by actually trying to innovate... rotating the camera, FPS controls for some units like Ghosts, driving units otherwise to break up the mousing?
Like I wondered nearing the end of the match.. is it that those kinds of things just have no place in SC? or are people, a decade on, still using machines that can't make that kind of stuff happen, at least in a multiplayer sense? Where the game is effectively the same as the originial so that multiplayer will be the same. Very easy to transition to the new game.. same controls, same strategies.. nothing new needed but for slightly better graphics. Where even that's questionable. given the sys reqs and what can be accomplished.. no unit clipping (especially aerial units), glossier/shinnier units and more procedural effects (explosions, building, map layout), pools water, the animation of paritcle, fire and gas plumes/clouds, ambient lighting from the aerial units... actual battles in space without platforms.
Otherwise I'm looking at the collection of minerals.. it saddens me to think that EA's command and conquer at least tried to innovate mineral collection. I'm looking at SCII and wondering immediately why you can't just create nodes at the resource and have them be sent back on rails? It would make collection much faster and allow you to centralize and defend processing. Also it would allow more realistic game play in that you can't have ubiquitous resources just because it was collected. What about processing?! how are you distributing the processed resources for building and unit construction.. but maybe that's just my Rails passion talking. In that in that RTS you have to collect all kinds of resources, refine them, then distribute the refined resources to factories to make finished products.
Star Craft. As in what? stupid playground battles in a sandbox? for ten years only to get a refreshed sandbox. Are people who play this game like House Cats or something?
I wonder.
Rails lacks politics and war, while Star Craft 2 lacks a realistic resource collection, refinement and distribution network. And maps that span planets, in a persistent world/universe.
Simple missions structures become lame once you've completed them.. but Rails with it's randomizer allows you to replay scenarios with a new map which makes everything that much more fun every time. It's always a bit different if not completely different from the last game you played.
I wonder why more entrenched multiplayer games haven't opted for this type of mechanic. Having the same maps is great and all but they are tiny. Instead, if during connection and loading of the map, it was randomised and presented fresh to all the players (to vote to play or not), complete with fog of war.. won't each match end up being unique and interesting.. thrilling even because of that factor of the unknown?