StarCraft 2 Review: Multiplayer

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StarCraft 2 Review

Games backed by a rampaging hype machine disappoint so often. Does Blizzard's latest live up to expectations?

Part two of the review is up.

In order to do justice to StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty in a review the story and storytelling have to be discussed. I won't go into the details of the story, but for those who are averse to any kind of spoiler out there here's the quick, absolutely spoiler-free version.
 
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awesome game, very time consuming. At least you get value for money.
 
Most South Africans are likely to buy the game at retail since the client is a chunky download at around 7.1GB. This excludes the amount you'd have to upload since Blizzard use their own torrent-based downloader.
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I just hve to point this out !! I see a lot of this from Blizzard , they used their own torrent based downloader! You do the exact same thing will WOW and its updates you can enable peer 2 peer sharing to get the download of new patches. So not all torrent are illegal! Plus by having the same thing shared across many users you put less strain on the hosting of a site for downloads. Once it is out there people can download from each other even though the hosting site might go down! Glad to see such big companies like Blizzard are seeing something positive and a pratical use for torrents. Next one to wait for is Diablo 3!!! I wonder how many other companies might start to embrace patching using a torrent system?
 
Well, I have not played games for a long time. I played StarCraft the original when it came out.
but now that I use a Mac I have not bothered with games.
however with this one I have heard that it does well on a mac on a pc.
what interests me most is how well one can play in SA with the current internet infrastructure (in particular 384 lines)

Phillip Gibb
http://synapticlight.com/
 
Not sure how to quantify 10 years worth of waiting. Lots happens in a decade...

Had a few hassles (on July 27) getting the game up and running. I also suffered from the now well-documented-graphics card-overheating problem. Thankfully nothing that opening the side of my PC case didn't fix.

As far as the game play goes, I enjoyed the single player campaign, loved the storyline and the spectacular visuals. Am about to jump back into the fray and try again on "hard"... :)
 
Awesome game.

I'm not much of a gamer and this really is the first game I've played since C&C 3 - Tiberian Sun - which, incidentally, was also awesome!

Unfortunately my laptop is a bit dated and the nVidia 7300 Go is having a hard time when I have many units on the screen (everything set at low).

I'm getting a new laptop next week though (Lenovo Y560P) which boasts an ATI 5730 1 Gb discrete card which is said to handle the game beautifully. CAN'T WAIT. I've put playing on hold till then because I feel I'm doing the game an injustice by playing with everything at low.

Will still be doing some multiplayer though - oh, and the multiplayer works fine on my 384 line with AfriHost uncapped account.;)
 
Once you've added someone as a RealID friend that person can see the names of all your other RealID friends, as well as easily dispatch RealID invitations to them. This is useful at the dawn of the service when your friends are adding one another in dribs and drabs so you can check out their friends lists to see if they've added someone you haven't yet.

Eventually, however, this could become a privacy concern.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are already such concerns, particularly among the female player base of Blizzard's games.
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You dont HAVE to add someone as a real ID friend,
you can just add them using their nicknames and character codes, then they cant see your real name and friends list etc if you are concerned about privacy
 
I must say, while playing the SP and noticing the small things between missions when you have interactive options, Blizzard has shown they did use the time to give that little extra. We've all complained that they should stop delaying the release, but I think we must be glad they did use the time they've been buying themselves.

I expected more rendered cinematics though, but that which they have delivered thus far makes me smile. I am enjoying the storyline too, it's quite engaging and having unlocks in a RTS makes for a nice twist imo. It gives you goals to play hard for etc.

MP gets a little boring after you've beaten quite a few AI, but it sure gets interesting all over again once you jump into the leagues and ladders of ranked matches :)

Worth the pricey tag, but like most of us, I would have liked all three campaigns to have that same price tag as one release, and not tree :P

If this is what Blizzard did for SC2, I can't wait for Diablo III :D
 
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I had a lot of hassles reistering the game on Battlenet. Initially my account was set to US and though the game registered online, it wouldn't work online as it is the EU version. Well, mails to support in US then EU eventually sorted the issue and I played some on Sunday.
So this does feel like the old Starcraft to me with a heavy patch. Glossier, unit, hitpoint and upgrade changes but much the same. I loved it then and still do now but can't really fathom how this took so long.
I have thus far played only as terran but see many hours of enjoyment ahead.
 
For those following the thread, the second part of the review is up and linked to in the OP.
 
What all reviews seem to miss is the fact that you do get to play a couple of Protoss missions in single player as well. This is definitely not a third of a game, seeing that the original starcraft had about so many missions in total! I enjoyed the campaign SC2 a lot more than the first one.

O - and a biggie - the AI for custom games does not cheat at all - it evens has Actions Per Minute throttle (which is something most non-cheating RTSes don't have!). And it sends SCV/Overlords/Drones to explore!
 
mandalareopens said:
Not sure how to quantify 10 years worth of waiting. Lots happens in a decade...

Had a few hassles (on July 27) getting the game up and running. I also suffered from the now well-documented-graphics card-overheating problem. Thankfully nothing that opening the side of my PC case didn't fix.
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Wha ? I thought it was just me... LOL

I think that since I upgraded her last year I haven't had a game that has really pushed her, till now. I had an extra fan that I didn't plug in due to noise and I have just plugged it in, problem solved.
 
RealID is for Real Friends and not for adding every Tom Dick and Harry you run into. Hand it over only to people you trust (and there is a confirmation box that pops-up).

I've given out my RealID to friends that play WoW and SC2 and it definitely a positive thing, rather than negative as this article makes it out to be. You just need to be a bit cautious to whom you hand it out, but there is nothing preventing you from blocking someone if they are griefing you. The author seemed to have reviewed battle.net from what he read in other articles, rather than personal experience.
 
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BliZZzard is the best!!! well done... its awesome.... ending was c00l... everything was just c00l!!!!... still got my 1997 disc :)
 
Tried loading Starcraft and experiencing problems. Installs on my mac and on update patch 1.0.1 at 66%, get an error message saying that it has multiple errors saving data. Everything just stops there. Can't get further. Please help.
 
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