Starcraft 2 came out and I bought it despite everything I wrote about it and about the beta before the release of the game. I knew I would buy it no matter what.
And I have to say that the single player is amazing, the graphics is excellent, the artistic level is high and most importantly the story is written extremely well, the single player is deep with details and the voice actors capture you into the Starcraft universe, I loved the way Wings of Liberty ended.
And I agree with the popular site reviews like IGN which gave it score 9 out of 10, Starcraft 2 deserves it.
I feel I want to point out things that some reviews didn't talk about, some negative points about Starcraft 2.
1. The price of the EU version, I live in Israel, I bought the game on the release date and it cost me 87$ USD, the EU version of the game costs 80$ USD or 60 euros, the US version of the game costs 60$.
Why the price different? Is this how Blizzard treats it's European fans? And especially in Israel which it cost more. The average person in Israel doesn't make more money than the average person in the US or the EU.
2. Region locked multiplayer, in Starcraft 2 Blizzard won't allow a European player to play with a US player.
How is this progress? We are in the year of 2010 and in the original Starcraft of 1998 you could play with anyone from anywhere, in the original Starcraft you are allowed to connect to any battle.net server you want.
Why is Blizzard doing this? To keep lag to a minimum? If that's the reason they should at least allow a EU player to add a US player to their friends list and allow them to play together, so this way only the matchmaking system default is to find games based on the bnet region.
3. The Terran technology of the year 2504 is inferior to human technology of the year 2010, here are examples:
- In Starcraft: 2504 Air units are slow, sometimes even slower than land units, In 2010: compare this to an F-22 Raptor or even Apache Helicopter - In Starcraft: Nuke missile requires a ghost to target it, In 2010: today a missile can be launched from another continent and hit on target. - In Starcraft: Units cant attack while moving. - There are many more examples if you take the time to look at what today's weapons is capable of and what you see in Starcraft 2.
I understand that all this is done so the game is balanced but for me today it makes the game feel childish and stupid
4. No LAN support, that's just evil not to support LAN.
5. Battle.net vs Steam
With Starcraft 2 we get the release of Blizzard answer to Valve's Steam digital online store. With the new Battle.net Blizzard is competing with Steam and Facebook, with the new battle.net you can buy games online and download a genuine copy digitally with a cdkey.
But if it is serious about trying to go against Steam then it must make a software client for battle.net, i'll explain why.
With Steam running in the background I can always know which one of my friends is online, Steam has a client that is not taking too many resources when it runs in the background and it allows you to see your friends and what games they play or if they are just online.
With battle.net I have to run Starcraft 2 and login with the password every time I want to know if one of my friends is online, and if I alt+tab I won't be able to talk to them when I just want to use Windows, Steam also always remembers your password, you don't need to login every time you want to play a game.
Steam has the game overlay which is much better and easier to use than how Blizzard makes you talk to your friends while you play a game,the overlay can be easily accessed with shift+tab and then hidden with shift+tab again.
The chat with friends while playing in Battle.net is much worse, you can either minimize it or use whisper, but if you whisper you have to press TAB to cycle between who you want to talk or if you use the chat windows you have to use the mouse to minimize it or close it, which takes longer to do and hurts your game more than the quick shift+tab to hide the overlay of Steam.
Then there's the name, in Steam you can change your nickname anytime you want how many times you want, with the new battle.net you can only make a character once and that's it, you can't change it anymore.
Offline mode, Starcraft 2 might have an offline mode but it doesn't let you select it when you start the game,you have to login even if you only want to play the single player.
All things considered Starcraft 2 is a good game and I do not regret I bought it for 1 second, but for me the single player is so much better than the multiplayer.
