To further show off their upcoming PC RTS, StarCraft II, Blizzard Entertainment has now begun releasing Battle Reports, fully commentated videos of matches between various Blizzard Entertainment developers with the current Alpha build of the game.
The first such Battle Report sees Matt Cooper and David Kim, balance designers, go head-to-head in a Protoss versus Terran match on a map called Kulas Ravine.
The video is just over 21 minutes long, and can be viewed right here or below.
My impressions of the game thus far: It certainly looks very nice and it's wonderful to see a well balanced RTS in classic Blizzard tradition, but honestly, I found it difficult to get excited over it. Why? Aside from the fact that I found it hard to take the game seriously with the silly "pro sports" commentation, the gameplay itself looked far too reminicent of the exact same experiences I was nerding out over a decade ago.
While any good sequal basically takes the original game and expands on it, enhancing the tried and true gameplay and taking it to the next level, it has been over 10 years now, and I'm looking for something a little more revolutionary than a cosmetic re-hash of the orginial Starcraft.
Maybe I'm just being pesimistic, but the more I see of StarCraft II, the more disappointed I seem to get. Regardless, it's a title that still bears watching and certainly trying out, it is Blizzard Entertainment after all, however I don't think this is a game I'll rush out and purchase right away.
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2 comments:
We agree. SC 2 simply doesn't seem to be doing anything to push the genre ahead. And it's a genre that evolved a very significant deal in the decade it's taken them to get around to making a sequel.
In Our humblest of opinions, We think Dawn of War 2 (www.dawnofwar2.com) is doing much more to advance the genre. And it's only taken Relic 4 years to do the sequel... not 10. That's on top of the two expansions they did for the original game.
-The Staff
Agreed. Personally, I'm more psyched for Halo Wars, not because it's Halo, but because if they can pull off a smooth console RTS, it will be more of an advancement for the genre than what StarCraft II is presently showing.
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