Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 206
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I finished my protracted play through of StarCraft 2. Took me a few months of on again off again play.
The Terran campaign I played on normal, and it was easy to the point of being tedious and boring. I definitely feel like some pussification happened in the difficulty, and "hard" became normal, normal became easy, and easy became "This is mathematically impossible to lose unless you are a game journalist".
The Zerg campaign I played entirely on hard, and that felt about right.
The Protoss campaign I started on hard, but towards the end I caved and had to switch to normal. They just throw too many high level units at you when all you start off with are zealots and stalkers. Also too many obnoxious defense missions where it feels like Protoss are just too squishy on defense. I forget which mission it was that finally broke me and caused me to switch to normal, but it was some defense mission where your allies start off covering your east, west and south entrances, and you get repeatedly hammered from all three directions.
Then I played the epilogue on normal, because I'd already switched, and also the Nova mini campaign. They felt alright on normal. At least not tediously boring like the Terran campaign on normal.
All in all, it was alright I guess. I had to obsessively watch every dialog because I can't help myself. Which really slowed things down because the game feels like 50% dialog and 50% gameplay. The story beats of "Cure Kerrigan of her Zerg infestation, then re-Zerg her, then she saves the universe" was as dumb as it always was. Especially with that being the penultimate climax of the Terran campaign, and then completely undone halfway through the Zerg campaign. It reminds me of all those show runners that end season 1 on this show altering cliff hanger/climax, and then completely chicken out and backtrack in the first episode of season 2. Like in Santa Clarita Diet when the first season builds up towards Drew Barrymore turning into a feral zombie, and then in the first 30 minutes of the next season they cure her and go a completely different direction with the story.
It also got pretty tedious how every campaign is some weird neoliberal fanfiction about all these different peoples coming together in a melting pot where all their differences actually make them strong enough to defeat the big bad. In every single campaign. I don't remember StarCraft 1 being remotely that obnoxious and one note. Oh well.
Oh, are we ranting about Starcraft? Let me pour out a drink and ante up.
Starcraft 1 had it in a much older style, that hews closer to "White guy gets accepted into alien culture" tropes. Think The Last Samurai, or every rip-off of The Last of the Mohicans. Once you get past the first Terran campaign, Raynor is estranged from Mengsk, so the story keeps him around by just letting him tag along with the Protoss.
"Greetings. We are the Firstborn, the sons of Aiur, the Protoss. Our people are advanced far beyond your ken, both technically and psychically. We have come to do battle with the greatest forces of darkness, wielding our eldritch might in the most ancient of our sacred warrior traditions.
Also, we brought our friend Jim. He is a kind of monkey-thing, militia, motorcycle-cop. We gave him a battlecruiser; it's hilarious."
SC1 is a lot funnier if you interpret Jim as the Protoss' version of Boblin the Goblin.
But yes, the plot for SC2 is fucking stupid all around. They can't alienate any players, so all three factions have to have Good Guys, though they all splinter so much that there's someone for everyone.
My general love for Starcraft is matched and mirrored by my burning hatred for the damned defense missions. Why the actual fuck did that team think static defense missions were the best way to cap almost every campaign? And the LotV one was just actually offensive. You spend the whole campaign building up and unlocking Solarite powers, and then they take them all away for the final mission?! One of my angriest video game experiences.
Difficulty-wise, "hard" feels like the correct choice for all of them. Normal for the horrendous defense ones that feel terrible to try at.
You and I could probably discuss this for days. My friends and I were huge into SC1 and Battle.net back in the day.
Raynor always served his role well as the go-between of sorts between the different races as well as the Terran factions. The campaign story was a lot more extensive than a lot of the competitive players originally realized, and in multiplayer especially, SC1 reproved its replay value for years and years up until SC2 came out (which I was disappointed by, even in the SK professional circuit; and I used to watch Tasteless and Artosis commentary in the Code S bracket a lot).
After the first chapter of SC2, I let the story drop off for me after that, not being too satisfied with the direction of things they went. That said, did they ever finish the chapter or cliffhanger with Lieutenant Duran and his experiments he was conducting across the stars?
Same. Many, many late nights doing 3v3 and 4v4 on group calls with the boys.
Yeah,Duran shows back up in Heart of the Swarm as "Dr. Narud", and after Kerrigan's heel-face-turn he takes over as a Zerg villain personality. He was doing the Big Bad's work fusing zerg and protoss into the hybrid, which are very powerful elite enemy units that show up increasingly often as HotS and Legacy of the Void progress. Duran himself is slowly revealed to be a sort of high level eldritch horror. HotS does a lot to humanize the zerg, with actual characters that have personalities. Alexi Stukov is revealed to still be alive, if zerg-infested, and he takes the role of "human friendly zerg guy". He gives some missions to finish Duran/Narud to satisfy his vengeance after what Duran did to him and the UED at the end of Brood War.
I will say that a lot of the missions are very fun, with good replayability.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link