StarCraft 2

I’ve been playing StarCraft the last couple nights, mostly the single player campaign because I’m definitely not a competent player in the versus arena (I didn’t play the beta, and I didn’t play that much of the original SC, pretty much through the campaign and some vs with friends) so the amount of time I spend in there will definitely be limited, but I did try a couple 1v1 against the AI, learning that hard is too hard for me at the moment… my ‘newbness’ aside…

The Campaign has been excellent so far, and I was pleasantly surprised by the depth. I don’t think I’ve played a mission yet that was a simple beat the opponent yet. There is some of that, but they always seem to add a bit of flare with things like lava overflows of low altitude areas of that map, so you have to make sure that you have your units on high ground, it’s never overwhelming because they give you a timer telling you when it’s coming, as well as notification as the cycle approaches. They also used a day/night cycle in which you switched from offense to defense, but they always included optional objectives that encouraged you to explore past those simple boundaries, and they are always tied to some sort of reward, be it points to go towards your research trees, credits to upgrade your units, or collection of mercs available, and always some kind of ‘achievement’. All of this really encourages you to go the extra mile, and explore the maps, and gives a strong sense of variety that I honestly wasn’t expecting. There is also hero based missions that start you out against the odds, and you have to use the abilities of the hero to strategically get through the enemies lines.

You get some choice in which missions you do, and each has unlocked a new unit so far, each mission catering to that unit’s strengths, it makes it sort of obvious what you have to do to win, but to be fair I’ve been playing on ‘normal’ difficulty, so I expect that it wouldn’t be so simple if you had the cahones to play like a man… I think there has been a cut scene after each mission so far, and they have definitely been up to Blizzard’s standards.

I’ve spent some time with the challenges and they’re pretty fun, more or less have been like rock paper scissors in the ones that I’ve tried but that will likely change too.

Megalodon

They need more profile pictures unlocked at the start though… pretty limited customization up front and everyone looks the same on the forums which falls into blizzard’s model, it sort of sucks now though.

I’ve also had some issues with my megalodon headset however, it took some tinkering to get output working at all which is annoying because the beauty of the USB headset is that it’s just plug’em in and go. It’s also annoying that I had to set it to be prologic output instead of 7.1 which is supported by the headset, and works outside of StarCraft, and then I couldn’t get the mic to work… it’s all working now but it was troublesome, and annoying, and when I switch from desktop speakers to headset I have to go back into the settings to re-optimize, or continue to play with “lesser” settings.

[Update: 2010-07-31]

Just got back from a mini road trip, overnighter, and was getting ready to fire up starcraft. Looks like a patch went out while I was gone… notably!

Fixed an issue with sound not playing on some 7.1 systems.

If Blizz fixed my only complaint about the game already I am going to be thoroughly impressed. haven’t got to try it yet, but I’m pretty excited

I just went through a bit of an upgrade on my PC that meant taking the whole thing apart!… should have just thrown some more new hardware in there while I was at it really… but alas I didn’t. Just a new cooling system.

In any case! for those of you interested in something mildly on-but-mostly off topic… take a peak over at my more personal space, http://seanon.net/2010/07/temperature-is-important/ this particular exercise features Cardboard Tube Samurai, and Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio

Limbo

It would appear that I pulled the ‘chute a little too early the other day before I put my last post up, since I was literally 3 puzzles away from the end of the game when I quit, and fell just short of finishing it in one sitting. So my opinion won’t have changed that much from that post.

I’m a firm believer that if you have any interest in this game at all, that you should completely avoid any and all of the major media outlets… ESPECIALLY any with videos… it is a shame when any of the experience is spoiled by such things. For instance I caught an episode of “Reviews on the Run” yesterday and in the video clips they showed with their review they showed solutions for several of the puzzles. From my personal experience only 1 puzzle was spoiled before hand and I felt genuine disappoint when I got that point. That may be the first time something like that has happened to me, which should speak volumes about the level of enjoyment I had with every minute of this game, and the quality of the experience.

LIMBO is a platform puzzler, it contains no dialog, no color, and very very few characters. But that is not to say the game isn’t beautiful, and the story isn’t compelling, in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. The game starts with a boy waking up in the middle of the woods, no preface, or pretext of any kind. Years of video game training has taught me the only thing to do in these sorts of side scrolling situations… go right young man… The media says somewhere I should have known that I was playing the part of a boy looking for his sister… I don’t know where they got that from… and i don’t care… I likened the experience to having woken up with amnesia, which helped me to related to whats going on a little better maybe.

There are 4 or 5 different types of areas that blend together seamlessly as you play, and although they were all fairly charming my favorite moments in the game were early on when the puzzles seemed to be more closely tied to the people and things found in the environment that were clearly carefully set up, but somehow felt naturally there. It made me feel like I just stumbled upon these things and that I’m coming up with my own solution even though I know thats not the case. As the game moves on I found the puzzles to look and feel more like puzzles when I approached them, and instead of using the things found in the environment to solve then, there are switches that do different things, blades, and gravity, to deal with. The puzzles are still fun and clever, but not nearly as satisfying as it was early on. Failing to solve these puzzles often ends in some gruesome greyscale murder scenes that quite literally made me cringe. That is a testament to how engrossed you get in the boy and his adventure. As a weathered gamer I’ve seen all sorts of video game murder… in all sorts of colors and context, very few if any get this sort of reaction out of me, it really was a joy to be a part of this world while I was playing.

The controls are awesome, the physics, and the weight of your character as he’s running, climbing, jumping and sliding, all feel consistent, and (for lack of a better word) ‘right’. Any time I didn’t clear a gap it felt like my fault for poor timing, not the controls.

A lot has been made of the game being short, I found it was a good length, considering the 1p in modern warfare 2 only took me 7 hours (I’m primarily a single player gamer), the fact that this game was in the 6 hour ball park, all of which was very enjoyable, and a fraction of the price. I think this game is an incredible value and completely deserves to be talked about as one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had this year. In fact I believe if the game had of carried on for another hour or 2  it would have began to feel a little stale, and the fact that their is no story based motivation for you to keep pressing on, I think it very well could have lost some people. Like most parts of this game, I found the time perfect for the genre. As it stands it left me wanting more, and that’s a good thing.

xbox 360 owners have no excuse in my eyes for not owning this game. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it’s immersive, it’s rewarding. Anyone who doesn’t have a 360 should be hassling PlayDead, begging them to get this to the platform most convenient. It’s not worth buying a console for, but this is something that no gamer should miss, and certainly not because of console exclusivity.