Starcraft 2

Originally posted by BackFire
The campaign in HotS isn't nearly as good as WoL.

That's very unfortunate, considering that WoL was pretty craptastic. Le sigh, but I'm not too surprised either. The story could never be as good as it once was, it reached its apex in Brood War.

I think Blizzard desperately needs a new head writer. Metzen just isn't very good anymore. He peaked with WC3. Now he just uses the same tired tropes in every single game.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
It's not a vaguely reasonable guess. It's a very odd statement for you to have made about another expansion in the first place.

That's my guess at this time. It could change as news is released about that expansion. But, apparently, it is being fast-tracked as compared to the previous expansion.

They say that about every coming expansion. There's no way it'll be coming out this year. Next year at the earliest.

So I just started playing WOL the other day, and I'm a few missions in to the campaign. I like the way the game is presented, the storyline, the world and such, but the levels are striking me as being a bit... Gimmicky.

I mean, for every level there always seems to be a "protect x" or "take out three reactors", or "get x amount of minerals before the other guys" kind of thing.

Is it like this through the whole campaign? Or are there pure, "wipe out x base" levels later on?

It's everything. It was a highly praised approach.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
It's everything. It was a highly praised approach.

It feels somewhat overdone, tbh. Maybe it's just me.

It's not. I felt the same way playing through WoL, and feel a bit of that same fatigue going through HotS.

I understand, and appreciate, that Blizzard was going out of its way to diversify the campaign and not have every mission be a "macro up and sweep the map" objective, like nearly every mission was in BroodWar and vanilla SC.

But at the same time, it can get kind of annoying being under some kind of time restraint in almost every mission, whether it be an actual countdown, or a "collect X amount of Y before they do", or "complete the objective before this natural disaster kills you" etc etc.

My favorite mission in WoL was probably the very last mission, and my favorite in HotS so far was

Spoiler:
the Alien-esque mission, where you start as a larvae and build your way up to an army.

I agree. I do not like the...do x to win stuff. As Blaxican put it, I like the more vanilla missions.

I did not like most of the single player campaign in WoL. That's probably why I did not get through a second playthrough. I played the original Starcraft and expansions single player campaigns 4-10 times over.

Ah, so it isn't just me then. I wouldn't mind if it was every second or third mission, but every mission just seems a bit much to me. I like taking the time to get to know my units, to work out which combinations work against which enemies. Being rushed around because, say, I have to stop the Queen of Blades accessing a data core, makes me feel like I don't have the time to get to know them.

Though I was pretty spoiled by the Dawn Of War games, I admit.

I liked the way the missions were. I liked having something keeping you from just turtling and massing a huge army. I never really had much of a problem massing up a large enough army too stampede across the map, either.

Probably just comes down to how fast you are in the game. A decent workaround that would please everyone would probably be if they only implemented time restraints during missions in the higher difficulties.

However, I know some of the restraints are placebos. Meaning if you actually are slow enough whatever the restraint is will simply pause. For example that mission with fire that's chasing you - it looks like the fire will catch up to you in x amount of time, however if it gets close enough it will slow down and I believe it eventually just stops.

So I finally got around to finishing the WOL campaign, and I have to say, the more I played it, the more I liked it. I found that as I got to the later levels, the game did give me less limiting missions, and more freedom to do my own thing, which I really liked.

And that story mode was excellent. Wonderful cutscenes and alternate endings for certain chains. Really good.

Waiting for HOTS to arrive, almost chomping at the bit while I wait.

Originally posted by -Pr-
And that story mode was excellent.

I really liked it. shrug

I liked the WOL campaign a lot as well. The story was by no means great but it was good compared to other modern Blizzard games. I liked the pacing and each mission was unique and fun.

The HOTS campaign wasn't as good, but worth playing.

I still haven't played HOTS. I don't know when I will. Maybe I will wait for the protoss campaign.

Considering the only other modern blizzard games are WoW and Diablo 3, both of which are generally considered abominations storywise, idk how credible that comparison is.

The comparison is perfectly credible, just perhaps not all that meaningful, as it's essentially saying the WOL campaign is simply above the horrid level of those other games.

So I'm about 2-3 hours in to HOTS. Enjoying it so far. Playing as the Zerg is an interesting thing for me, as I don't play multiplayer. Story is, already, hitting some pretty big notes, so I'm happy with it so far.

Just played a level called "Enemy Within". As a concept, it's possibly my favourite mission from HOTS so far, and makes me really see just how sneaky the Zerg can be.