Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | |
| Posted By: Sam <sam_edge@charter.net> | Date: 11/2/01 6:46 a.m. |
In Response To: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] (Jester) : Funny ... I would think a Jeremy Soule fan would be a Total Annihilation kind
Good call, Jester. Got it in one. :) Actually, I'm one of those odd people that actually liked both TA and Starcraft. And I'm a big fan of the Uberhack project for TA..... If you haven't heard of UH, and you're a TA fan.... find it. And I'll go out on a limb here and say the TA engine is the best engine I've seen in a RTS game to date. Period. Yes, Chris Taylor is the man. Although I've got some beef with him over the crappy state that Fallout: Tactics was and is in, that honestly wasn't his fault. And yes, Dungeon Siege is on my radar. The following is IMO. Not troll- or flame-bait. Why did I pick SC over TA as a comparison? Well, commercial success is a part of that.... and SC has TA beat on that, hands down. TA got rave reviews (well deserved) but just never had the same sales as SC. I though about using TA as a comparison, but I think a lot of people out there haven't played it. (Although comparing Halo to TA would in no way be a insult) Also, while TA has the best RTS engine I've ever seen in a game, I feel that Starcraft is the best rts GAME I've ever played. TA has some unit balance issues, even with the expansion, that just aren't resolved. You have 200+ units, but in most cases 5 or so of them will dominate the rest. Also, there was no real distinction or functionality between the two sides. (Arm had the Flash, had better stats with the Berthas, and Core had heavy, slow units that died.) Makes for some screwy multiplayer, aka Flash Rush. SC, on the other hand, has only a handful of units.....but those units have personality. Like Fuolornis said above, it's a lot like chess; you have a rock/sissors/paper relationship between the units, across the 3 races, and even within a race. With fewer units, those handful are more distinct and have more personality. And you will find a use for about every unit in SC; maybe not all in a single game, but depending on what strat or counter you're trying for, you'll see the whole spectrum in play. And SC has 3 races THAT ALL PLAY DIFFERENTLY. Zerg are not Terrans or Protoss with a different sound/interface/sprite scheme Not to say that SC is perfection. It isn't. Rushing sucks. At ultra-competitive levels, SC degenerates into a game of formulaic build ques and micromanagement. Rushing -sucks-. If you play SC online, you'll see a LOT of zerglings, marines, and zealots. (I'd like to see a kill count of those character class for a typical battle.net week, compared to all the other units. That would make for some interesting statistics!) You'll see enough zerglings online to stock a few decent sci-fi movies, and still have enough left over to make James Cameron proud. And the SC interface is NOT perfection. In TA, I can take a construction unit and que up a firebase, complete with a defensive maze leading up to it. Provided my constr. units don't eat it, I will come back and find my firebase waiting on me. Oh, btw, while my constr. units were building the firebase, they were under the watchful eyes of 2 circling patrol teams, who automatically engaged and destroyed a recon probe on that flank. All without my knowing about it. I'll just come back in time to see the fighters fly in and get nailed by the air support, followed by the bombers that fly in during the lul in the air cover and blow the firebase to bits. And, no, you WON'T find that in SC. There aren't any games out there that I would even put in the same league as SC, save TA. Westwood? Westwood's offerings don't even come close. In the top rts games, it's TA and SC all the way. But, I do think that SC slightly edges out TA in defining the rts genere. Form, function, and gameplay. TA has the defining function, but SC has form and gameplay DOWN. Now if someone can just match (not even excede, but just match)the awesome interface that TA had. As a TA fan, I just HAD to set that straight. And, yes, Blizzard does have an (extremely) active fanbase..... but we're discussing this on a forum of a (largely) Bungie fanbase. Irony, huh? | |
|
| Replies: |
| Halo Gameplay Impressions | Sam | 11/1/01 9:11 p.m. |
| Sweetness! Good review! | Psyrixx | 11/1/01 9:29 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | Fuolornis Fire Dragon | 11/1/01 9:37 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | slumbermonkey | 11/1/01 9:42 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | vector40 | 11/1/01 10:22 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | Sam | 11/1/01 10:26 p.m. |
| Wow. Another very nice post. I agree totally. *NM* | Fuolornis Fire Dragon | 11/1/01 11:18 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | Aginor | 11/2/01 12:32 p.m. |
| Re: Halo Gameplay Impressions | vector40 | 11/1/01 10:21 p.m. |
| STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Jester | 11/1/01 11:09 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Fuolornis Fire Dragon | 11/1/01 11:32 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Psyrixx | 11/1/01 11:39 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | {mAc}Dark_Eagle | 11/2/01 12:15 a.m. |
| Myth 2 (RPG or RTS?) | Jester | 11/2/01 1:45 p.m. |
| Re: Myth 2 (RPG or RTS?) | RAZORBACK | 11/2/01 4:07 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Sam | 11/2/01 6:46 a.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Jester | 11/2/01 2:15 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | vector40 | 11/2/01 7:44 p.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Fuolornis Fire Dragon | 11/2/01 9:52 p.m. |
| Thanks! plus more stuff..... | Sam | 11/4/01 7:41 a.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | SoSD | 11/2/01 9:41 a.m. |
| Re: STARCRAFT?!?!? [OT RANT] | Sam | 11/2/01 11:19 a.m. |
| you played ... | customsex | 11/2/01 4:31 p.m. |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |