I really enjoyed StarCraft. My brother in law and I would often fire up LAN parties that were a blast, and I had a lot of fun with the single player game. I like the Jim Raynor character and the Protoss, and it was just a lot of fun splattering a pack of Zerg with a Siege Tank or Templar lightning storm. I didn’t like the Kerrigan story and the way that Blizzard seems to think that the Zerg are the most interesting (or at least the best race to sweep into a cliffhanger with), but I can at least understand what might make them think that way. I enjoyed the map maker, though I never did quite get it to do what I wanted it to.
All in all, I spent probably hundreds of hours playing with StarCraft in one form or another. It scratched my itch for game development with the editor, and my itch for some good post-WarCraft gaming. (I really liked WarCraft and WarCraft2.)
So… why not play SC2? First and foremost, I have other games that I’d rather play more, and I have less time to play overall. Second, I don’t feel like spending $60 on it. (I may yet get it on a deep sale, though.) Third, I don’t like battle.net, have no use for online multiplayer, and detest the lack of LAN play. (OK, OK, the company can be greedy and get rid of spawning games, but to excise LAN where everyone has their own copy? Lame.)
In short, I have no particularly strong antipathy toward the game, just little use for it, so it’s not a priority.
Oh, and this has always bugged me:
Terran standard...ish human
Compare that to this, an iconic Terran Marine:
Tychus Findlay, the man with the tiny head
Now, if we’re to believe that the Terran Marines are just guys in suits, normal humans with some super special armor slapped on, I’m not buying it. I can handle a RoboTech Cyclone being pitched as power armor, but not a Terran Marine. If we were to take the seminal Vitruvian Man‘s proportions (a pretty decent standard, really) and try to map dear ol’ Tychus using his head as a baseline, we might see this as his “human” shape within the suit:
Vitruvian Findlay
The proportions are all wrong. (Note, Iron Monger in the Iron Man film had the same problem. Either Stane stretched his limbs, or, um… he was controlling the arms of the supersized suit from within the torso cavity. Iron Man himself was pretty good, but the Big Bad guy… not so much.)
So either Tychus had his head shrunk to get into his gear, or his body has been painfully reconfigured to match the articulation of the suit. Either way, that sounds rather horrific. No wonder they don’t take the suits off.
I know, I know, some will blame Warhammer 40K for this (since obviously everything Blizzard does is a ripoff of Games Workshop), but look here, their Space Marines are closer to what I’d expect; armor on a well proportioned human that looks vaguely plausible. Blizzard’s “shoulder envy” is in full force in both WarCraft and StarCraft, but when it means rejiggering the humans inside the suits, well… that just seems painful to me.
Is that enough to make me not want to play the game? No… but it still bugs me, just like it bugs me when I watch Iron Man. Sure, the Terran Marines read well as bipedal, vaguely humanoid machines of war… but if I really want that, I want BattleTech. Even their Elementals maintain better armor/pilot proportions. (Though in the cross-section, that pilot’s shoulder does look a little disjointed.)
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I know everyone has their own pet hates but personally the armour in SC has never really bothered me. I’m happy to buy into the whole ridiculous nature of it. I mean, if we’re going to believe in Zerg and Protoss and what not, why not let the Marines have giant should pads? 🙂
Still, I feel the same way about computer geeks in films. Seriously, the guy in Swordfish still knows how to hack after being in prison for several years? He wouldn’t even know what the Internet was!!
I totally agree with you on all points. I don’t like Blizzard and I’m not a fan of the new battle.net. I’m still playing SC2 though. I’m a PvP hoar and SC2 is pure PvP carnage through battle.net. The strategy and skill level required to play is insane! I swear this game was designed for people like me.
Kinda sux with no LAN though.
It’s not the giant shoulder pads that bug me, it’s the proportions underneath. WoW does it pretty much right, it just has these huge shoulderpads hanging off into space, but the character articulation doesn’t change.
I’ll still probably get the game someday. Maybe once all three chapters are all out and sell in a battle chest for $40 for all three. 😉
CS, I’m not much of a PvP sort in general, but I do think I’ll tinker with it. It was fun playing with my brother in law with teams. I find I like cooperative PvP better than one on one.
Elementals are a lot beefier than normal humans though, being specifically bred for using their armor. It led to a bit of a wallbanger when both Victor Davion and Kai Allard-Liao used elemental armor in the novels.
I like the Bubblegum Crisis solution to the problem of proportion. Here’s a link of their hardshell and mecha:
Dblade, I thought the elemental warriors were just giants with enhanced reflexes. It seems to me that when I’ve seen them depicted, they were more or less human-shaped, articulation proportions and such.
…but yeah, Davion shouldn’t have been able to use their armor either way.
Thanks for the Bubblegum Crisis visual. That indeed is an interesting way to handle it. It almost reminds me of Chell in Portal, for some reason.
funny, its not the proportions that bug me most (and its just Tychus that doesn’t remove his suit, Jimmy is in and out of his throughout the game)
what bugs me is that they have all this amazing complex armor (that is somehow cheap – have you seen the trailer of Finley being suited up??) and it protects them from literally nothing. might as well be tin for all the good it does >_>
oh yeah, have you seen muscles on both Tychus and Jimmy? one was cryo frozen and other one has practically been living in a bottle and yet both look like freaking pro bodybuilders. there are some closeups of Jimmy’s arms in cinematics and dude can give Jay Cutler (current mister Olympia) run for his money. Sheesh …
personally I’m not playing it yet because I only want it for solo play, so I’m waiting for battlechest
I do not buy SC2 because this game supports several of the things that are totally going wrong in gaming nowadays.
Online Verification to play -> Dragon Age, Steam etc. also have it. I cannot use all my gear in DA:O or all expansions without going online just for the OK-check with the server. Sigh. And Steam prevents resale and independent patching for many games. Do people not realize their game is tied to the platform they bought it on if they buy it on Steam?
RealID/Social Networking -> Facebook integration is only wonderful for companies interested in super easy data mining, not for the gamer. And people love it. My buddies messaged me it is so super cool to message someone in WoW they are playing SC2. Doh. As if ICQ/Twitter etc. could not do the same and be independent. Every company is trying to create their own social network nowadays, and it sucks. Blizzard of course thinks big and goes Facebook. They have not yet given up, remember Morhaime’s menacing speech regarding RealID… “For Now”.
Polish Yay, Innovation Nay -> I appreciate Blizzard’s quality standards. Cryptic’s STO makes one despair at times when it comes to bugs that are so basic and dumb that one wants to despair for instance. But serving gamers the SAME game 12 years later? I almost went nuts as Spinks stated good ideas never get old, to which I would in general agree… but after thinking of Starcraft 2, I simply had to disagree.
I hope Diablo 3 expands the formula, otherwise I can only say, yay to GW2. I simply adore and worship the GW1 philosophy. The idea was that people will dump the game, play something else, and return once new content aka a new chapter gets delivered. Pay for new content, do not get nickle and dimed all the time, and there is no design need for grind threadmills and other crap to keep people subscribed.
I expect SC2 to nickle and dime people. Any idea why there are no Goliaths (the Mech-style robots) in multiplayer?
I tell you how this is going to work: Either you buy them together with maps in le online shoppe or you buy SC2 Part 2 of 3 to unlock them.
Basically, they sell us a 12 year old game in three parts, each part at full price. And certain maps will be paid for. I also expect league maps that require starter fees and all that.
Besides Blizzard’s shoulder-fetish they deliver a story that makes the old SC1 story look like higher literature. They tuned down the comic look, but it is still there and then combined with a boring and dead serious story full of dumbass characters and a really awful cliffhanger. You can watch all of SC2’s storyline on Youtube, if you are interested. By the way, nothing against certain art styles – but some things do not go well together, and the almost forced need to make constantly silly references to pop culture is something that also plagues the late Guild Wars content.
But, and this drives me crazy, despite all this tons of my best buddies bought Starcraft 2 despite not having played ANY RTS in ages. Blizzard, praised be thy name.
There is a saying that people get the government they deserve. Maybe it can be expanded to game design and payment methods. Right now I see a negative anti-customer trend, we are willing to accept by far too many annoying restrictions for the sake of the profit of the makers that cannot be in our interest. At the same time we are not willing to spend 5 bucks on indie games or that of lesser known studios, the games are dissected to an extent that is never applied to a Blizzard title, and then people get price conscious and say “would buy for 3 bucks”. Before they go supporting the further development of Blizzard games by paying 25 bucks for a sparkly pony.
So yeah, 12 years development for no real advancement besides a slew of gamer unfriendly crap nobody asked for.
I am not sure if I will pick this up as trilogy in the bargain bin, that depends on Blizzards future steps in enforcing their RealID. They are boiling the frog slowly.
Oh dear, I was thinking the proportions thing even before you said it. It kind of crops up in the Rifts table top game as well. It does spoil the coolness if it just looks awkward and doesn’t fit.
With star craft, perhaps more so the removal of the actually present with other people social LAN play is probably the big issue. Even if you play in different rooms of the same house, your still in the same house and are still gunna run out and shout about the game with each other after each battle.
Now here’s a question – with a generation who has been weined more on ‘social’ networks where noones physically present (facebook, internet chat rooms, etc), will this real life social elements loss be a loss? And if it isn’t, what does that say about social trends?
Not that I didn’t find the internet a better way of learning the ins and outs of chatting when I was younger, I’ll grant.
[…] Tesh is not, repeat not, playing Starcraft 2. […]
I have to say, look at classical art. A normal vitruvian human is eight heads tall. A heroic figure is frequently drawn/painted nine heads tall. Of course, it looks like Findlay may be upwards of 12 heads tall, getting a little redunculous.
I don’t know the best way to articulate this so I’ll just break it down.
Starcraft 2 is worth your $60, and if you play, you will fall in love with the Raynor character as he is. And Tychus is there, and awesome.
And you see Tychus put the suit on, if it helps.
Just going to echo a bit of what Tech said. I felt the same way about a lot of the points mentioned by other comments… and then I played the game myself through a free trial that came with my friends game.
Now as far as the suit goes… you need to realize that the hands on the suit aren’t gloves… so much as a robotic hand controlled from hand controls further up in the arm (as seen in the marine video). The feet I imagine are the same way and the shoulders appear to hold the equipment that actually powers the suit.
Now to take a bit of what Longasc said… I understand where you are coming from. Yet at the same time… when I buy a sequel to a game, I don’t want a completely different game. I want a game that takes the same theme and improves it. SC2 does this. Someone who played SC doesn’t have to completely relearn the game but at the same time there is more control and refinement in SC2.
Is it more of the same? Sure… I guess if you break it down to the basics. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know… do you play halflife 2 expecting it to be like halflife? Or do you play it expecting it to be like CoD 4 or some other completely different game?
If you don’t like sequels to movies then sequels to games probably are the same way. But in the end being mad that sequel isn’t completely different than the original is kind of silly.
It’s not the glove that bugs me; the “suiting up” cinematic makes it clear that they are powered gloves, and that’s fine. It’s the shoulder/elbow/hip/knee articulation that’s way off.
SC2 being “more of the same” doesn’t bother me too much either, since I really did like the original. I still say that 1/3 of the sequel isn’t worth $60 *to me*, but neither am I saying it’s a bad game. I’m sure I’d have a fair bit of fun with it.
I’ve also read reports of players having trouble logging into the battle.net servers, and thus being unable to play the single player offline game. That pisses me off. A lot. I find it funny that Ubisoft got a ton of crap for that sort of thing with Assassin’s Creed 2, but Blizzard gets a pass. Combine that with the RealID joke, and the *business* of Blizzard is actively getting in the way of the *game design* that yes, I really could have fun with.
Until I can play the game on my own terms, internet-free, RealID-free and cheap, I’m not playing. Maybe that makes me a terrible, terrible jerk, but as a consumer, I get to exercise that right. In the meantime, I maintain that it looks fantastic (power suit articulation silliness aside), and probably plays great. I don’t hate the game at all. It’s just that there’s just enough poop in the fudge to make it unappealing.
NP tesh. All of the clan warriors have been bred for their roles, and the aerospace pilots have much smaller bodies and larger heads to adapt to g-forces better, so my guess is elemental pilots are similar. The clans have much less genetic variation than normal people so it’s possible.
What’s my main, they can’t really control it via controls in the upper arm because of the shoulder width: you’d have to raise your upper arms like in the proportion drawing overlaying the armor, then crook your lower arms down into the mech’s shoulders and biceps. The reason why is because the mech’s chest is much thicker than the human’s. Trying to control it that way would really stress your joints.
The legs are a little less obvious. The knees in the mech are a little too high for a human being, hitting at about your ankle joints. So the knees couldn’t bend without breaking your ankles. The thighs and calves need to be a bit longer so a full human leg can fit in. Plus a human’s groin is narrower than the mechs so i’m not even sure its possible to fit the legs in.
Also, the mech can’t bend over: it’s waist is lower than the human’s waist. Touching your toes would snap you in half.
For the mech to work you’d have to make the chest thicker so the human could keep his arms to his sides to control the mech while raising the mech’s waist to coincide. Not sure about the thighs though, my guess would be just to make the mech bigger and keep the whole body in the torso.
Online-check: “I find it funny that Ubisoft got a ton of crap for that sort of thing with Assassin’s Creed 2, but Blizzard gets a pass.”
Yup, same for Dragon Age – it was not criticized that much, but anything beyond Dragon Age, CE items etc, DLC etc., requires an mandatory online-check.
We have to blame nobody but us, the gamers, for voting with our wallets that this is okay. Many do not care, as it is not a big issue to them. Just like RealID. The frog is getting boiled slowly!
“I’ve also read reports of players having trouble logging into the battle.net servers, and thus being unable to play the single player offline game. That pisses me off. A lot. I find it funny that Ubisoft got a ton of crap for that sort of thing with Assassin’s Creed 2, but Blizzard gets a pass. Combine that with the RealID joke, and the *business* of Blizzard is actively getting in the way of the *game design* that yes, I really could have fun with.”
That’s just not true. There is a play offline button. Normally I think you are right on with your calls on waiting, but definitely not this time. The single player campaign with it’s ~25 levels is worth the 60 alone, never mind with the challenge maps, and battlenet.
Also, you don’t have to be RealID friends with people. You can make friends on a “character” basis using your character name plus a number(if your name isn’t unique).
Tech, I’m not making stuff up there, I’ve simply read of players who have problems and cannot play if the Blizzard servers are down. It sounds like Steam; you have to log in online to turn offline mode on, an idiotic bit of design.
So, a question, then: Is it possible to play the game without an internet connection? As in, no registration, no battle.net login, just Offline mode out of the box, never needing the internet at any point?
Good to know you can use a character name, though. I still loathe RealID, but it’s good to have a way to opt out.
Well the other thought, is maybe just the picture there is off a little on proportions. I have to say actually watching tychus in the ingame cinematics he doesn’t appear to be that “huge” in comparison to jim raynor. As previously mentioned he is always in the suit and stands around 12 inches taller than Jim.
As far as battlenet… I haven’t had any issues and no one I’ve talked to has had issues with it. With over a million copies… someone is bound to have login issues, so I wouldn’t exclude the entire game if a handful of people out of a million have issues.
As far as the 1/3 of a game issue I was thinking about that a bit more. The original SC you had 3 short campaigns that went through the storyline farily quickly. Then you had broodwar which continued the story. So you could say you only got half the game with the original. From my experience with SC2… there was just too much story to pack into 3 short campaigns or 6 if they just had an expansion later. Being forth coming with the length of the game and how they would be releasing the game took quite a bit of courage. It looks bad… but the honesty is refreshing compared to most other game developers that release half a game… and then expect you to buy the rest as DLC.
I’ll be honest, I never played much of the original SC on battlenet. I spent most of the time trying to navigate the counter intuitive menus and figure out how to connect with my real life friends. SC2 is different. Everything is simplified and clear. The friends I have on Real ID are people I know IRL and so it works great to be able to play with the friends who I invite to my house for lan parties… only we can do it on a daily basis.
I think a lot of your reservations would fade if you actually sat down to play the game. I know it worked for me. I have 2 copies of the trial code if you are interested 😛
*chuckle*
Thing is, I know full well that my reservations are due to the way I play and what I want out of gaming. I detest the internet tether (and concurrent lack of true off-the-grid LAN) and have no use for RealID. I don’t want to be forced to use it, but if it’s optional, I’m not bothered.
I’m glad that the matchmaking is smoother (it did indeed have room to improve) and that the game itself is solid. I actually don’t have any complaints about the game design itself at present, though I suspect I’d probably find little things that bug me.
So… it’s less the game design that bothers me, more the business practices. I’m fully aware that some people don’t mind them. To each their own, I guess.
As for the armor, well… it bugs me, but it wouldn’t stop me from actually getting and playing the game. 😉 The utter stupidity of chainmail bikinis don’t stop me from having fun with WoW or nearly any other fantasy RPG.
[…] proportions on the marine armor really are that bad. If you are not seeing it, try to imagine how broad Tychus’s shoulders must be to fit in that […]