I broke down and bought Starcraft II this weekend.
I don’t have time to play it. I didn’t plan on buying it, but I was such a fan of the original that I just had to. Starcraft came out about twelve years ago, and I am still playing it–that’s how good it was.
But I made the mistake of buying it as a digital download. To my chagrin, the download started and said…0% of 6.99 Gigabytes. Now, I have DSL, but it’s the basic plan that in practice gets about 100 KB/second download speed, which put the total time to get the game at around 24 hours.
I came back the next day and it was 96% done, only to see it display an error message telling me that the file was corrupted. It kept downloading though, and then I installed it: so far no errors, so we’ll see.
Right when it launched, it said “your video driver is incompatible with the game.” Doh! I downloaded a 143 MB “update” driver and the game successfully ran.
My take thus far: it’s really similar to Starcraft. The Terran race has almost all the same units, though I haven’t yet gotten to the more complex ones. Same build commands, way points, minerals/gas resources, terrain, and so on, but the graphics are 100 times better. The original Starcraft could run on a Pentium 100 MHz with pitiful RAM. Now Starcraft II can take advantage of light-year advances over the past decade in video card performance, processor speed and RAM size/speed.
I used to play almost solely online, multiplayer, but now that I am older and have less time, I think I will stick to the single-player built-in campaigns. Unless you have dedicated friends that will join you online, it is a crap-shoot at best: you join a game with some guys who have no clue or care and play against semi-pros in Korea (who are 15 years old) that stomp you in 10 minutes.
In between snacks and trains and soccer balls and piggy-back rides, after putting all the children to bed (and re-tucking them again and again and again), I will sneak in a mission of the campaign.
Any other Starcraft players out there?
Devin,
I too love Starcraft, but fortunately I don’t have a computer that can play Starcraft 2. Otherwise it would surely take over my life
Anyway, here is a video of what you need to train for. 300 actions a minute!
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/07/excellence-of-execution-video-of-starcraft-mastery.ars
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in high school on this game. If I ever get around to upgrading my PC, I might pick it up – even if just for nostalgia sake.
I relate to your love of Starcraft. I have been waiting for YEARS for Starcraft 2 and it looks like I would love it. Unfortunately, I can’t play. I realized I had an adiction to these games. Sounds stupid, but it’s no joke. it is worse than a drug for me. I get so into it it takes over and affects my life. I have been “jonesing” to just look at it for weeks. My nephew even offered to buy it for me! Talk about temptation. I can’t give in though. I think about it a few times a day and have to just ask God to keep me from it. I hope I can hold out!
I’ll admit I have about 75 multiplayer matches under my belt. Just over half in wins. I’m quite fond of its multiplayer mode (the campaign is so-so) Unlike the first game, SC2 is very good at placing you in games with opponents of similar skill – lots of give-and-take, lots of comebacks, very very fun. There’s no lag. There’s lot of achievements and rewards, beside just the win:loss ratio, which is very nice to see. The interface is very polished.
However, it is not nearly as creative as the first game – there are a few clever units and abilities but nothing terribly inventive or interesting. Some of the new units replace older, more interesting units, too. Hopefully the expansions will fill this lacuna.
Anyways, I highly recommend it.
Thanks guys for sharing your Starcraft love. I, too, was addicted to Starcraft (and other games) and played 8 hours a day at times. God broke me of the addiction by letting me suffer a carpal-tunnel like repetitive strain injury which made it very painful to play these games. However, though I think I can play this game without becoming addicted again, I have sworn off any MMOs after becoming addicted to Star Wars Galaxies five years ago or so. I only played for three or four months but that game consumed way too much time and energy.
I’m a big fan of starcraft. It’s definitely the best game I ever owned. But life has changed, and I’m in the same boat as many of you – no time to play these games. I would love to just see the new graphics in the sequel. Maybe I’ll watch a youtube video!
I just let my 13 year old buy this. He was looking for another video game like Command and Conquer. The same day he declared this to me I read this post. I figured the approval of Devin Rose was the closest thing to a magisterial endorsement I was going to get. This way when my wife objects to anything in the game I can blame you!
Hahhaa! That’s great, Randy. My wife isn’t terribly approving either; in fact, on Sunday she officially called the game “stupid” (though she was speaking half in jest).
Randy, I do remember one thing about the game: The single player campaign reaches a point where you are on a big ship, and eventually four areas open up for exploration in between the missions where you talk with various characters: the armory, bridge, lab, and cantina. In the cantina there is a holographic video in the upper left corner of a computer-generated scantily clad woman dancing.
You might want to either have him just play multiplayer online or with the single player do the cantina scenes with him or something.