Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Status
Not open for further replies.
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Just beat the game myself, it's around 20 story missions plus smaller evolution missions, which allow you to "spec" out key units with special abilities. As for the game itself I can't wait for the third one. Now for some story spoilers.


First, HOLY SHIT IT'S STUKOV!

Kind of annoyed they didn't acknowledge Narud = Duran at all during any point of the missions involving him. Duran played a pretty big role in Brood War, and while it was nice having him back, neither Stukov nor Kerrigan had a "Oh it's Duran!" revelation, not even after his death. While the connection is so obvious a preschooler would have noticed it, I still would have liked some in-story clarification during that stories climax.

Not sure how I feel about the "Primal Zerg", on the one hand they are fucking awesome when you see how they work, just eating eachother and growing stronger and stronger like alien highlanders. On the other hand, I feel they kind of take away a bit of the heart behind the Zerg. The revelation is that the Xel'Naga never originally intended for the Zerg to be a hive mind, instead being individuals that undergo hyper evolution when devouring other lifeform essence. It was the influence of an evil member of the Xel'Naga that lead to the creation of the Overmind, which took over and mutated what Zerg it could collect into the first Swarm. This had the side effect of preventing personal mutation, meaning only mutation controlled by the hive could take place, thus the purpose of Abathur. All the purple covering Kerrigan in recent art is of her in a new Primal Zerg mutation.

Lastly, biggest issue, not enough Jimmy.
 
Terrik

Terrik

Just finished on Brutal. Really enjoyed the campaign.

I assume everyone is going to get together in the third act, give each other high-fives and take on this god in an epic 4-way showdown. Hope it doesn't take another three years.

What unit upgrades did you go for? I went for swarm zerglings, split banelings, the swarm host that can launch flying locusts, the new muta upgrade that isn't the broodlord, the Resurrection ultras, the vile roaches, and the anti-armor lurkers. I'm torn over whether I liked the spit banelings or the vile roaches more. Both were invaluable in my army. Plus, it made Kerrigan's "spawn banelings" all the more useful. I was torn over the swarm lings over the other, but I figured having a "oh crap, my base is under attack" panic button would be useful.
 
Eriol

Eriol

ScytheRexx, remember that Blizzard has no problem altering their own lore. How much has the WarCraft lore been altered across games (and I'm not even counting what they've done in/for WoW) ? Assume this is what has occurred here with the discrepancies between the SC1 manual story for the creation of the Zerg, and the in-game lore for them.

Overall, I liked it, but a bit too short, and I didn't like that it was more linear than WoL. In WoL you could jump back and forth between storylines/planets until right near the end, but in HotS, once you were on a planet, you were THERE and must finish before having a choice of planets again. It definitely gave it a different feel than WoL, but I liked the system in WoL better, as you can get tired of any one storyline IMO and want to do something else. Here you don't have that option. All of them were executed well, no doubt, but I prefer the flexibility. Personal preference maybe.

Also a little gripe here, I wish that they showed you the mission achievements on the screen where you "launch" the mission. I completed more than one mission and at the end seeing what I missed, going, "I could have done that! EASILY!" but unless you want to dive through the achievements window and record stuff down, it's not as easy as it could be, like the post-mission display is.
 
Frank

Frank

Fuckin' nothing from Blizzard still about getting my authenticator removed. I called them and was put into a massive wait queue. I don't have time for that shit.

I want to buy your game Blizzard.

LET ME.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Eriol said:
ScytheRexx, remember that Blizzard has no problem altering their own lore. How much has the WarCraft lore been altered across games (and I'm not even counting what they've done in/for WoW) ? Assume this is what has occurred here with the discrepancies between the SC1 manual story for the creation of the Zerg, and the in-game lore for them.

Overall, I liked it, but a bit too short, and I didn't like that it was more linear than WoL. In WoL you could jump back and forth between storylines/planets until right near the end, but in HotS, once you were on a planet, you were THERE and must finish before having a choice of planets again. It definitely gave it a different feel than WoL, but I liked the system in WoL better, as you can get tired of any one storyline IMO and want to do something else. Here you don't have that option. All of them were executed well, no doubt, but I prefer the flexibility. Personal preference maybe.

Also a little gripe here, I wish that they showed you the mission achievements on the screen where you "launch" the mission. I completed more than one mission and at the end seeing what I missed, going, "I could have done that! EASILY!" but unless you want to dive through the achievements window and record stuff down, it's not as easy as it could be, like the post-mission display is.
Click to expand...
Please keep all story related discussions in spoiler tags, please.
 
Shakey

Shakey

Frank said:
Fuckin' nothing from Blizzard still about getting my authenticator removed. I called them and was put into a massive wait queue. I don't have time for that shit.

I want to buy your game Blizzard.

LET ME.
Click to expand...
Good luck. The quickest way is to spend an hour or two on hold, just make sure you have a scanned copy of your drivers license ready. That's what I did when I had to remove mine. Otherwise it'll probably take at least a day with an online support ticket.
 
Frank

Frank

Bowielee said:
I can't really see how it's Blizzard's fault that the authenticator is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Click to expand...
I sent a request to them with my scanned license and such almost a week ago now. I'm not mad that the authenticator is doing it's job. I'm not even mad that it's taking so long to get it removed, just annoyed.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Unfortunately, that's going to be the case when it's a company that's dealing with consumer issues for a few million customers.
 
Frank

Frank

Probably wouldn't be such an issue if they hadn't laid off like 600 support staff last year.

Activision!
 
Shakey

Shakey

I don't care how big you are or how many customers you have. Having to wait more than two days for a response to a support ticket is way too long. That said, most of the time they are pretty good. If you're willing to waste the time waiting on the phone, they usually fix it right away. There's something messed up with how they handle online tickets though. Sometimes it can be fixed the same day, and sometimes it can take a week with no word.
 
Eriol

Eriol

Bowielee said:
Please keep all story related discussions in spoiler tags, please.
Click to expand...
I was very careful. I mention something about Zerg lore is different from the SC1 manual, and that you go to *gasp* different planets throughout the campaign! Not exactly world-shattering spoilers there. I was really careful not to mention how/why or whatever else happens outside spoiler tags.

That being said...

Duran! C'mon! How can they not mention that they're almost certainly the same damned guy? Did they just not want to animate a Duran face for that shapeshifter? It would have wrapped up his story, which would be a good thing.

Also, I predict a WC3-like ending to the 3rd part of the saga, where you control the protoss, and Raynor has a base there, as well as Kerrigan has some Zerg there. With hero units (hybrids) attacking all of your stuff, until some hero unit/macguffin does its thing on a countdown timer. So ya, pretty much exactly like the final mission of WC3 is what I expect.
 
Frank

Frank

Ugh, so it's been almost 2 weeks since I submitted to Blizzard to get my authenticator removed from my account. Nothing. Can't even call them, just get told the hold queue is full and they're not taking further calls. This shit is ridiculous.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Eriol

Eriol

The weird part about it is I submitted something to them a few weeks ago, and the service was under 30 minutes. Really. It was a ticket to change some of my personal information, and they needed the drivers license and everything. Took me longer to assemble everything I needed than for them to respond. And yes, I'm in Canada too.

One thing you may have missed: did you actually put your account name into the support request? One thing you may have missed is that their support page doesn't require you to login, so you actually need your account name in the request itself, not just from clicking through FROM your account. Given it's for an authenticator, I'm guessing you weren't logged in, but still. Triple-check that you had everything. Beyond that, I dunno.
 
Frank

Frank

After playing through it, all I can say is that Raynor is kind of a selfish douche.

Also, none of the Zerg ingame music is as ass kicking, balls to the wall, heart pumping, getting your engine revved as the Terran's. Heaven's Devils is fucking awesome.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Hey he came in at the final hour to help.

I mean, how would you like it if the woman you spend an entire game attempting to save, sending thousands to their deaths, and even shooting your best friend in the face to protect, turns around and just becomes like what she used to be?

I mean did they even get to sleep together? Because those parts down there are probably pretty scary now. :awesome:
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

ScytheRexx said:
Hey he came in at the final hour to help.
I mean, how would you like it if the woman you spend an entire game attempting to save, sending thousands to their deaths, and even shooting your best friend in the face to protect, turns around and just becomes like what she used to be?
I mean did they even get to sleep together? Because those parts down there are probably pretty scary now. :awesome:
Click to expand...
She became that to save his ass from the death prison, though.

And I'd still stick it in her nydus canal.
 
Frank

Frank

I mean throughout the whole of Starcraft. How many thousands of people died so he could get his girlfriend back?[DOUBLEPOST=1364759253][/DOUBLEPOST]"Why are we doing this?"

"It's personal."

"Yeah, tell that to the 20 wraith pilots that got shot down and eaten in that last mission."[DOUBLEPOST=1364759317][/DOUBLEPOST]

Hell, he knew that Kerrigan needed to remain in control of the Zerg, thanks to Zeratul and he was still a baby about it.

Blizzard main characters are always such whiny man-babies about the responsibility put on them without any real understanding of how every other person in the universe exists only to support them.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Maybe want to put the Raynor stuff into spoilers seeing as the entire first portion of the game is motivated by his apparent death. So, openly stating that he's still alive is a pretty big spoiler.
 
Frank

Frank

Bowielee said:
Maybe want to put the Raynor stuff into spoilers seeing as the entire first portion of the game is motivated by his apparent death. So, openly stating that he's still alive is a pretty big spoiler.
Click to expand...
I didn't know I alluded to any of that.....and then I figured you may be talking to Scythe.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Bowielee said:
Maybe want to put the Raynor stuff into spoilers seeing as the entire first portion of the game is motivated by his apparent death. So, openly stating that he's still alive is a pretty big spoiler.
Click to expand...
To be fair, no one playing actually thought Raynor was dead.
 
ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Ravenpoe said:
To be fair, no one playing actually thought Raynor was dead.
Click to expand...
Pretty much, it's not that shocking when it's so obvious he was alive. People raged and bitched about Decard Cain being killed, but at least he made it to the end of the First Act and had an on-screen death. Can you imagine if they gave Raynor an off screen death during the very first non-tutorial mission? Still, I edited the post to be polite.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top