Be Excellent To Each Other

Of course, people are actually enjoying Starcraft, while Spore was a fucking crock of shit.

Might seem a daft question.. but does it have to be connected to the internet to play?

No. It has to connect to the Internet once when you install it to set up a battle.net account, after that it's all yours.

oh goody.... means I can run it on my works laptop, when I am stuck in hotels!!

Quality is irrelevant if it refuses to install. It's just Spore was the one that made me reluctant to shell out that sort of money again for something that might be useless.

How do refunds work on Steam? Is it possible?

Yes, but Starcraft isn't on Steam.

Who is this /\00ß?

Well no, I was hoping Steam would be better for refunds. If you buy a PC game from a shop and open it, you're fucked on refunds regardless of whether it works or not, because I can't think of anywhere that will do returns on unsealed PC games.

Have a borrow of my copy and grab a friend code. Or download it from the Intermaweb.

Ah, good point - a trial would rather mitigate the install issue.

The fact that it has time-limited codes suggests it does need to connect to Battle.NET every time it starts?

Apparently not.

Christ.

I still don't understand this:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/starc ... hics-cards

How can 'busy inactivity' be more dangerous than 'busy busy'? And besides which, what happened to all graphics cards/CPUs being adequately cooled by default and thermal throttling?

Most odd.

Anyway, as for the game itself, it is truly and completely magnificent, I'm almost reluctant to play through the campaign too fast as I want to savour it all the way through. Although the cheevos may tempt me back, a lot of them are quite interesting.

Because £40.

Why's it called "wings of liberty", incidentally? Does it actually refer to anything significant, or are they selling it with a free sanitary towel?

Dunno, but my cards did indeed get hot until I added that fix (we talked about it earlier in the thread).

I assume they'd have throttled themselves before melting, but I thought it best not to find out

Detailed system requirements - might be handy for you, Cras.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/13501357

Oh wow. There's an advert screen you have to click past just to view that. I honestly expected more class from Blizzard. It's not as if anyone clicking on the starcraft 2 forum isn't aware that starcraft 2 exists.

Still, they've done a pretty good job of making it as compatible as is realistically possible. My old tank engine could probably run it with all the fancy shiny things off.

But if you get 40 hours of play out of the single player alone (it'll be plenty more than that I reckon but we'll use that as a starting figure), that's £1 per hour, what else can you do for £1 per hour in the realms of mainstream entertainment? Going to the pictures costs a lot more than that, with a depressingly high chance that the film will be shit.

£40 for a game that's this bloody good is entirely reasonable, this standard of production does not come cheap, it's been years and years in the making, Blizzard have said all along 'It'll be out when it's ready', no rush job, no quick cash-in, and now it's here it's positively amazing.

I agree that £40 is a bit of a 'hnnnngghhh' figure when you're used to snapping up all manner of alleged triple-A titles at all sorts of bargainous prices (I can't remember the last time I paid £39.99 for a PC game in a shop), but honestly, this game is different, like L'oreal, it's worth it. Or you're worth it, or something.

Whatever, just get it, you'll thank yourself.

I think it's worth the price, and I haven't even played it. Sure, I don't think every game can be priced that high, but thinking about how much you used to have to pay for a game in my Amiga days and what you pay now, I don't think we've got any room to complain.

I'd also pay £40 for Civ 5 providing it was awesome. Though I still think Colonization (the original) and Alpha Centauri represent the peak of Firaxis-dom.

It is worth every penny.

Bye bye, I'm going to play it now.

Useful system specs, ta. It's the "nVidia X or ATI Y" or better that always gets me. What does or better mean? It's not like they actually rank their cards in order of output any more.

It will be the same game when it is not more than twice the most I will pay for a game. Forty quid is a ridiculous amount to pay for a game, however good. It's been years in the making precisely because Blizzard might as well own their own mint with their world of warcraft cash cow. If anyone can afford to drop a price, it's them.

Not that I have anything against them specifically for the price, obv - they know there are tonnes of people who will pay forty quid, so I wouldn't expect them to charge much less. I'm not one of them, though.

At least they've put the specs up somewhere. I've lost count of the number of games I've considered buying, then decided they can fuck off if they're going to make me hunt around for ten minutes just to find out if I can actually use it.

That's only because the value system around games is so fucked up these days, thanks to vicious price-cutting (especially supermarkets using games as loss-leaders) and the pre-owned market. Not that things getting cheaper is a bad thing, but still, let's keep a sense of perspective.

I've made this point before, but new SNES games routinely cost £50-£60 in the early 90s (I think Doc Glyn said that'd be more like £80+ now, adjusted for inflation), I don't see how £40 is a 'ridiculous' amount to pay for a game as great in scope and content as Starcraft II is - especially considering the backend battle.net system which is essentially free, or at least, doesn't require any kind of subscription. (Unlike, for example, XBox Live.)

In fact, I went for a few beers with my bro on Saturday, two pints of Peroni cost £7.50, four rounds cost me £30. Couple of quid in the jukebox, few games of pool, couple of bags of peanuts - wallop, £40 gone in about three hours.

£40 for Starcraft II is 'ridiculous' how, exactly?

Couple more missions done last night, the second one being the nailing of 8 trains.

I love calling in the Mercs. Bunker Turrents! BIG ASPLOSHUNS!!!11

Fuck, this is good. Haven't played on my 360 on for 4 days now... maybe more. That's the power of Star Craft people!

You've only just done the trains? What have you been doing?

Did you go with


They provide a link on that very page, do they not?


Because two pints of Peroni won't cost £3.75 in a month.

The original Star Craft was one of the few RTS games I've ever really got into, so I'll definitely buy it at some point. I've just got so many games to get through at the moment and so little time.

Actually I did a mission after that on the Merc planet to get the access codes. I've only been playing 2 hours or so a night, and not every night. I'm savoring it!

Not at that bit yet. Thanks for the spoil!

Sell the other games, then you will have time and monies.

Really? I thought it came a couple before the trains.

[edit]Oh yeah, a few to go. Oh well - you don't know why.

I still love you.

Also the missions are in a tree rather than one after the other, so maybe I've done different things to you so far?

I mean I've wet nursed a Zergling and returned it to the wild, have you?

They're not really, although you can do groups of them in different orders.

Ok then, you've ruined everything...

EVERYTHING!

Because it's the summer and spending £40 to sit about the hoose instead of going out to enjoy it seems a bit mental when it'll be winter soon & this'll be a fiver.

I love this btw

9/10 at Eurogamer.

Haven't delved into the multiplayer myself so can't comment on that, but I think they got the single player campaign assessment right.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/starc ... rty-review

Obviously at £40 it's wildly and unforgivably overpriced, so wait for it to turn up in the bargain bins.

Incase no-one answered this: No.

I did answer it. And I said yes. You just write to them, explain what happened, and they take the game away from your account and refund you.

Like Dawn Of War, then?

He didn't really explain why it didn't get ten out of ten - there were practically no negatives in the review at all.

Because it wasn't made by Nintendo.

Sounds the same as massively negative review texts receiving 7/10s in the reckoning.

Even I've been considering getting this, even though I don't really get on with RTS games

It's very very nice.

Try here:
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/intro.aspx

Ooh - I'll give that a go tonight, ta.

I'm really, really looking forward to playing this.

Attention!

I have bought this. Ten pound off with some saved up Game points. Excellent. It's currently updating, so I took some time to read the back story in the manual. I'm amused to find that of the dozen or so meetings between opposing forces agreeing to a parley or alliance, not one didn't involve treachery and a sudden turn-around of fortune at the end.

My conclusion: People in the Starcraft universe are thick as shit.

'Updating 0.0%, 41 minutes wait remaining, 38% done...' argh, cheers Battlenet.