@LitePollution9: Go No, don't hate to say that, Super Metroid rules.
Super Metroid does indeed rule, I'm just saying that I hate to say that HOTS should have had at least some suspense being that you are on an alien world where everything wants to kill you.
Alright, after finally getting the campaign to work I played it a little (as in just finished it :p) and wanted to vent some impressions. Wall of Text incoming:
At first I'd like to say, that I enjoyed the campaign in general, still, there is some stuff I'd like to rant about. First there is the story, as many of you pointed out, its quite predictable, the characters are shallow, the "twists" are basically nonexistant. The cutscenes without any action scenes made me want to skip them even when seeing them for the first time, same for a lot of the conversation. Seriously, who writes these lines? Kerrigan either with her continuous epic-speech ("I am the Swarm, the Swarm overwhelms everything, brush your teeth, eat more vegetables, yadda, yadda...") or full-out emotional ("Raynor my love, where are you?"). Well, Ducky already said it all, not much more to add. The action cutscenes were entertaining, though.
But well, I am not that big of a story guy anyway, so lets hop on into gameplay. I have to say, Blizzard did a damn good job in race and mission design to make the zerg feel "zergish". In most of the missions, I had the impression of unlimited amounts of bugs just overwhelming my enemies with sheer numbers and brute force. Removing the condition for Kerrigan to stay alive in base missions helps a lot here, its a ton of fun leading a squad of hydras and lings into an enemy base with Kerrigan, buff them with the ridiculously powerful +200 hp (zergling hp multiplies by 7!) +100% attackspeed (the dps for lings and hydras is just... ridiculous) spell and watch them tear apart bunkers, siege tanks, whatever.
One or the other mission seemed a little strange (Belial boss fight :D), but they rarely got tedious and never boring. Quite the opposite, to be exact, most missions put some kind of time restriction on you (hybrid drains your life, kill him fast; energy beams get pressed your direction, you better hurry! etc etc). Every once in a while, I would have liked a mission in between, which is just like "kill all enemies" maybe with a little twist but nothing too special, so I can take my time, build up multiple bases and kill enemies one by one, without having to rush an army and hurry to get to the next objective.
Also, just like in WoL, you have maybe 2-3 missions with a fully evolved brood, I would like to have some more. I worked hard to get these things (:p), let me play with them a little more. Maybe let me replay previous missions with new mutations (didn't check, if thats actually possible right now).
Oh yeah, the mutations... Seriously, picking just one out of 3 upgrades? 10 more health OR adrenal OR lingspeed? Thats frustrating, I want them all! Or at least 2 of them would be reasonable. The limit on the evolution strains should be enough, having these to be mutually exclusive I can live with.
Speaking of evolution strains and upgrades: The first evolutions were awesome. Jumping zerglings or 3 insta-lings per egg, jump banelings or splitting banelings! Exciting stuff. Also the evolution missions were kinda nice to see the unit in action, before you decide. Might get a little tedious on another playthrough, though, those should probably be skippable.
And later? I wanted different strains for Hydralisks, maybe one with anti-armor spines and one with a bouncing attack or multishot. And lurkers as a separate unit with their own evolution strains. Not 2 lurker versions as hydra evolution strain. I like to use Hydras, I don't want Lurkers. Same with mutas, vipers and broodlords. I wanted Broodlords shooting Banelings! Not basic Broodlords as a strain for Mutas. They really made it easy for themselves here, no need for alternative strains for Mutas, Broodlords AND Vipers, if we make them all strains of each other.
Oh and, did I miss something, or do have some units no upgrades or evolution strains at all? Aberration or Infestor for example, didn't find those.
Coming back to the missions: I like, that the missions are not that one-dimensional in terms of unit usage anymore. In WoL you could look at the unit you got for this mission and only build this unit for like half of the missions (like when you got siegetanks, vikings or battlecruisers; these missions were so obviously designed to mainly use the introduced unit that its hard to win at all without massing these units). Now I had the feeling, I could go for a unit combination I liked, or one that fits the circumstances without forcing you to use your newly-acquired unit. Granted, I mostly used Hydra Zergling all game long (and some Ultras later on), but when i tried some other units randomly, they seemed to work just as well.
Oh, and I missed something equivalent to Mercenaries, similar to Hunter Killers in SC1, just a possibility to recruit a squad of advanced zerg units. I was hoping the feral zerg guy on your ship would provide something similar but nada.
And well, I almost spent more time on getting the campaign to work than on actually finishing it. I WANT LONGER CAMPAIGNS :(
Well, anyway, I certainly had fun playing the campaign. I played on Hard btw, I found Brutal on WoL to be quite stressful, so for a sort of laid-back playthrough Hard was okay. Had some mission failures as well, but mostly earlier missions, the last missions turned out to be quite easy.
I can definitely see me playing through the campaign again a couple times, on brutal and/or with alternative unit choices, just to see, how it plays out.
My gawd.. have completed the campaign already o_O. Talk about 24/7... Not fan of rushing through that, at all. I don't understand those that start from day 1, finishing it by the end of the day... and all the rush for everything... Patience is a virtue.
Though, I would give it a month or two if I went meele and my own missions and maps along with it. Was it at least on Brutal?
Loled at faking Raynor prisoner with a gun, which is able to shot through the walls. SO, basically if Mengsk wants to visit him he will be able to kill him without even opening a door. Bullshit overload! I am The swarm mothafaka yawrrrrrrrageface!!! Despite the story bossfights are cool, but this indicators of boss attacks were fkin casual and spoiled all the fun.
Ah right, I forgot to mention gameplay. Evolutions are so OP that they made it really fun to play. WoL brutal for me was like this:
Try out something->get beaten->reload;
Get caught off-guard->base destroyed->army destroyed->reload;
Mess up some timing ->get annihilated->reload;
So it was an endless process of trial and error to find optimal strategy or die.
HotS brutal:
-max out drones->have 3-4 hatcheries-> use 10 sec enrage spell on army of hydras/slow-roaches & sometimes big zombie dudes with kerrigan ->repeat until everything is dead :D
-if base is under attack while I'm not near it->instantly spawn infinity of +10hp swarmlings.
Also Impalers. After they became available used them whenever I could. So fun to see them shred things to bits. 3-4 of those can most of the times defend any location, I've kept 6-8 of them in main army cause.. they're kinda good siege unit too.
So somehow HotS brutal felt so much easier, only failed once I think on defend the chrysalis mission.
i like the missions, same as WoL.
beyond that... nothing really positive. it's the same cardboard cut out villain crap from diablo 3. everytime an enemy pops up on my screen with abit of dialog trying to insult me this is all i can imagine.
really not a fan of the dark voice idea anymore, really not a fan of all the retconning, really not a fan of the love story.
im amazed they didn't change the ending either. after it was leaked and the reaction to it was catastrophic.
I finished the entire HotS campaign on a Hard difficulty and I didn't get that "Zerg is an endless swarm" feeling as I struggled to replace my troops etc.
Final mission is supposed to be something special but very few companies actually makes it so. Blizzard made it just to take an over hour but it lacked that something special to set it apart from the rest. Talk about a perfect moment it would have had to reveal Mengsk's actual plan to deal with the Zerg and flood the screen with some super units.
Is HOTS a masterpiece of story writing that will revolutionise humanity? Probably not... but it’s an entertaining yarn that kept me hooked. The campaign was certainly the best RTS campaign I’ve ever played and it had some real emotion in the storyline.
Maybe I’m just not the smartest person on the planet and I’m blind to the, apparently, god awful writing, cheesy dialog and pointless boss fights... but if so then I guess ignorance is bliss because I loved it.
The only minor grimace I had was Kerrigan floating off at the end, bit weird that.
I finished the entire HotS campaign on a Hard difficulty and I didn't get that "Zerg is an endless swarm" feeling as I struggled to replace my troops etc.
Final mission is supposed to be something special but very few companies actually makes it so. Blizzard made it just to take an over hour but it lacked that something special to set it apart from the rest. Talk about a perfect moment it would have had to reveal Mengsk's actual plan to deal with the Zerg and flood the screen with some super units.
It only takes 1 hour if you don't just build endless waves of Raptorlings or evolve them into Hunters. You just send them for the planetary fortresses and blow them up and the npc armies deal with most of the flanks easily, while you just send endless waves against the Palace and defend with some Hydra/Muta/Queen groups.
One thing I really hated was that once again you had no relation to the real SC2 gameplay. No Larva injection, no upgrades besides 3/3/3 and all that. It's really taking out a lot of the macro play and just makes it straight forward action. It came down to spam Drones, spam Hatchery, run upgrades on 3 Evo chambers and spam units.
One thing I liked is that on lower difficulty levels you can actually finish entire missions just with Kerrigan if you want to :)
The only minor grimace I had was Kerrigan floating off at the end, bit weird that.
A lot of people seem to forget that Ghosts got retconned a lot recently. They can now set people on fire with their thoughts, create illusions of themselves similar to the Protoss and all that. They aren't just mind-reading-cloaking-highly-trained-killers anymore.
Kerrigan used to be a PI10 as I recall before becoming the Queen of Blades. As the Queen she had a PI of 13 I think - and now they couldn't measure it with the Index anymore after she became Primal. So not that hard to imagine that she can push her body slowly up from the floor. I mean she leaps at enemies in the campaign as well.
But it's Cheesy as all hell, yeah. But if you go back and play WC3, as much as I loved that, that is also terribly cheesy and a bit obvious in writing.
Leaping is fine, I'm 100% a-ok with leaping... had she leapt up to the Leviathan I would have thought "wow... she can jump reeeeeally high" it's the gentle wafting off that I thought a bit weird. Had she demonstrated the power of flight before had I would have been fine with it. As it was I just had the scene from Simpsons in my head "But Xena can't fly" "I told you i'm not Xena... I'm Lucy Lawless"
I like that you all used different tactics in the campaign.
I used roach hydra at start and used hydra ultra after receiving ultralisks. I just a-moved across the map on brutal microing with Kerrigan to take out stronger units like warhounds and siege tanks. My Kerrigan used her primal spells (leap, dash).
In Ultralisk related evolution mission. There is a car which you can blow up. It causes Terran Marine to flip out mentioning how he had just paid that car and tries to face Ultralisks alone.
HOTS was twenty times better than WoL for these reasons:
Wings of Liberty featured a very kind of western cowboy atmosphere. It wasn't the fun action packed campaign you got from HOTS.
The first three missions made me want to spoon my eyeballs out (WoL). It was a very non-entertaining way to teach you the game.
WoL was not full of emotions, HOTS was emotionally amazing. Not just the Raynor/Kerri parts, all the characters were very full of Emotions except for Abathur and Iszha)
Why HOTS is better. (Not just ranting about how WoL sucked and I only played it for the Arcade afterwards)
(SPOILER ALERT)
The Kerrigan Leveling process was very interesting, especially after you go to Zerus.
Zerus is three missions in total, the first which lets you feed a huge ancient Zerg.
The second which transforms her into a much more detailed and neat looking Infested Kerrigan. (WoL Kerrigan was very plain, just brown and orange.)
And the third where you take out all the Primals, including the Ancient One.
After hitting level 50 or so her abilities are extremely OP (expected), almost pushing away the need for support. I comp-stomped everything with her and a few Raptor Zerglings on Casual. (I usually play Casual first for the story, then replay for achievements)
HOTS is much more fun because almost every mission involves Kerrigan, as in lets you control her fully with no interruptions such as she breaks off to another path from your command.(Where she does, it's still interesting and they provide you another hero to use. Such as Stukov with the Narud/Kerri Harry Potter styled duel, and Dehake on the Korhal sky mission with the Psi Disruptor.)
WoL had five missions which allowed control of a Hero unit. The very first one, with Raynor (Marine). Zeratul's first and third missions. (Control Zeratul + extra units. Gain Protoss Research). The Secret Mission (Castanar, and the Hybrids. You control a squad of Marines and Medics with Raynor. Interesting Factoid: This was the only mission in WoL which featured the Console choices. 'Bring up those turrets.') The final is on Char, one of the choose able missions. You take four Hero units down there with support of some Marines.
HOTS was a smash up kind of campaign, while WoL was more of a Search&Rescue/Retrieve campaign.
Smash up is not go on a planet with a sun about to go supernova, kill some protoss, and retrieve and artifact.
Smash up is obliterate EVERYTHING, even when you had to defend from Gorgons from Warfield's compound on Char.
Credits and Research really wasn't very intriguing in WoL. You'd go on some random mission and pickup stuff on the side, while in HOTS there were missions to evolve your Zerg.
HOTS had some of the most detailed objects seen so far... the city of Augustgrad blew me away, I was thinking the entire time for my zombie game "Okay... Use Stukov as some boss, Kerri as some boss... and all those awesome new doodads for a City."
HOTS also included some of the first glimpse of what's really happening with Duran/Narud/Shapeshifter-dude. (Never played BW, excuse my ignorance if that's invalid info)
Overall, I think HOTS IS WORTH IT. Even if the people not willing to upgrade can't play some maps with awesome new content, you can always make a different version. The Campaign is amazing, while the Map Editor is even better. Despite the warning, mixing WoL and HOTS dependencies should be fine.
Despite some of the flaws in HOTS, such as Raynor not being rescued on the second mission. (Seriously Blizz... I know she gained more power as a Primal.... but she psionically held and pulled/pushed Umojan Marines on the Bridge of the Hyperion before she started her rampage. It was RIGHT after Raynor was left behind. Was it her Anger? Cause THAT MAKES ABSOLUTE SENSE (Sarcasm) Why couldn't she lift Raynor's lazy butt over that little gap?! In certain cinematics, Marines jump over gaps that size. They fall from dropships and cliffs occasionally.)
Also, the artifact in Mengsk's office, if it would turn her back to semi-human again I'd be fine. He could have taken out a pistol and tried to shoot her, then Raynor storms in... They could have played it a million ways, Zagara would have taken over the Swarm... Blizzard is making this up as they go, they haven't written the entire story for LotV yet. They are starting to while the coders continue fixing irritating bugs.
Anyways, if I'd have to rate it. It's another awesome 4.5/5 Blizzard game.
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
My overall impression is that it really shows that the designers are getting used to the editor. In WoL it's quite obvious that the designers were working with a new tool. It also shows that they have been paying attention to the arcade and what games are popular there. The space-dota and hero levelling was good examples of this. The same thing can be said about cutscenes. I found the little conversations and characters to be more alive. They had somehow more interesting sci-fi thoughts of what was going on. Thats of course something thats easier to accomplish when you are working with an alien race, but still! Hots is in that sense a more relaxed and less "squeezed" product.
Favorite character is definetly the guy in the armory. One of his first "click-quotes" was something like: Zergling sensitivity to lemonjuice detected, have to modify strain". I think the humor of Hots was better, as well as the character portraits. The people designing kerrigans facial expressions made a really good job. Especially with eye and mouth animations, which were really expressive.
The mission composition was great. In the many RTS campaigns i've played through the years, most levels are the same melee gameplay, but with a storyline twist. These missions were more varying as they contained many minigames.
I know the developers wanted to give the player a feeling of how it is to be Zerg, and I think I did.I was looking forward to building a lot of critters, (small, death-friendly in huge masses) and the game allowed me to play like that. I went Zergling/Baneling/Lurker throughout most of the maps (including the final one on hard) and it went fine :D
The only thing I found lacking was Protoss. This expansion was all about Terrans and Zerg. I guess the idea was not to tap into the Protoss to give more reasons to buy Lotv. But Protoss is my fav race so... :*(
Arcade comments: I sifted through the doodads and new units and its quite a lot of new stuff! A lot of custom terran structures, including a new road system. That is very much appreciated, since the old road system was a bit... poor.
For the developers of LotV (if they read this): I would really like to see more smoke-armor type of effects. I think that would be really cool: Zeratul has his smoke-jump effect. I have this daydream about physical armor that evaporates into smoke, to become a different type of armor/unit. A morph-effect in short. Smoke is an under-utilized effect form in sc2. Like a protoss version of a viking :) Protoss are also an excellent opportunity to build in a tower-defence minigame (pylon based) where you build networks of pylons with different effect. Another type of level I miss is one of them "upside-down" levels. In these levels you start playing, you make your plan. But then something happens that opens up new fronts and a relaxed game turns into something really stressfull and confusing. In Hots you could keep your starting base throughout the entire game.
I liked the campaign mission gameplay. I could tell they pulled a lot of mechanics and things from the community (boss battles). Other missions were completely original gameplay inspired by pop culture such as infesting the Protoss ship (alien anyone?). I chuckled when the camera zoomed out as the brood queen grew like in power level overwhelming. I felt like I was playing 'altered beast' on zerus with the Kerrigan dash and jump abilities and constantly powering up into a new evolution.
The classic zerg queen is also now a full unit in the editor :)
Same for the defiler, even though he lacks some polished textures. Also, theres this other zerg flying unit which was in Brood War, but I dont remember its name.
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Super Metroid does indeed rule, I'm just saying that I hate to say that HOTS should have had at least some suspense being that you are on an alien world where everything wants to kill you.
Alright, after finally getting the campaign to work I played it a little (as in just finished it :p) and wanted to vent some impressions. Wall of Text incoming:
At first I'd like to say, that I enjoyed the campaign in general, still, there is some stuff I'd like to rant about. First there is the story, as many of you pointed out, its quite predictable, the characters are shallow, the "twists" are basically nonexistant. The cutscenes without any action scenes made me want to skip them even when seeing them for the first time, same for a lot of the conversation. Seriously, who writes these lines? Kerrigan either with her continuous epic-speech ("I am the Swarm, the Swarm overwhelms everything, brush your teeth, eat more vegetables, yadda, yadda...") or full-out emotional ("Raynor my love, where are you?"). Well, Ducky already said it all, not much more to add. The action cutscenes were entertaining, though.
But well, I am not that big of a story guy anyway, so lets hop on into gameplay. I have to say, Blizzard did a damn good job in race and mission design to make the zerg feel "zergish". In most of the missions, I had the impression of unlimited amounts of bugs just overwhelming my enemies with sheer numbers and brute force. Removing the condition for Kerrigan to stay alive in base missions helps a lot here, its a ton of fun leading a squad of hydras and lings into an enemy base with Kerrigan, buff them with the ridiculously powerful +200 hp (zergling hp multiplies by 7!) +100% attackspeed (the dps for lings and hydras is just... ridiculous) spell and watch them tear apart bunkers, siege tanks, whatever.
One or the other mission seemed a little strange (Belial boss fight :D), but they rarely got tedious and never boring. Quite the opposite, to be exact, most missions put some kind of time restriction on you (hybrid drains your life, kill him fast; energy beams get pressed your direction, you better hurry! etc etc). Every once in a while, I would have liked a mission in between, which is just like "kill all enemies" maybe with a little twist but nothing too special, so I can take my time, build up multiple bases and kill enemies one by one, without having to rush an army and hurry to get to the next objective.
Also, just like in WoL, you have maybe 2-3 missions with a fully evolved brood, I would like to have some more. I worked hard to get these things (:p), let me play with them a little more. Maybe let me replay previous missions with new mutations (didn't check, if thats actually possible right now).
Oh yeah, the mutations... Seriously, picking just one out of 3 upgrades? 10 more health OR adrenal OR lingspeed? Thats frustrating, I want them all! Or at least 2 of them would be reasonable. The limit on the evolution strains should be enough, having these to be mutually exclusive I can live with.
Speaking of evolution strains and upgrades: The first evolutions were awesome. Jumping zerglings or 3 insta-lings per egg, jump banelings or splitting banelings! Exciting stuff. Also the evolution missions were kinda nice to see the unit in action, before you decide. Might get a little tedious on another playthrough, though, those should probably be skippable.
And later? I wanted different strains for Hydralisks, maybe one with anti-armor spines and one with a bouncing attack or multishot. And lurkers as a separate unit with their own evolution strains. Not 2 lurker versions as hydra evolution strain. I like to use Hydras, I don't want Lurkers. Same with mutas, vipers and broodlords. I wanted Broodlords shooting Banelings! Not basic Broodlords as a strain for Mutas. They really made it easy for themselves here, no need for alternative strains for Mutas, Broodlords AND Vipers, if we make them all strains of each other.
Oh and, did I miss something, or do have some units no upgrades or evolution strains at all? Aberration or Infestor for example, didn't find those.
Coming back to the missions: I like, that the missions are not that one-dimensional in terms of unit usage anymore. In WoL you could look at the unit you got for this mission and only build this unit for like half of the missions (like when you got siegetanks, vikings or battlecruisers; these missions were so obviously designed to mainly use the introduced unit that its hard to win at all without massing these units). Now I had the feeling, I could go for a unit combination I liked, or one that fits the circumstances without forcing you to use your newly-acquired unit. Granted, I mostly used Hydra Zergling all game long (and some Ultras later on), but when i tried some other units randomly, they seemed to work just as well.
Oh, and I missed something equivalent to Mercenaries, similar to Hunter Killers in SC1, just a possibility to recruit a squad of advanced zerg units. I was hoping the feral zerg guy on your ship would provide something similar but nada.
And well, I almost spent more time on getting the campaign to work than on actually finishing it. I WANT LONGER CAMPAIGNS :(
Well, anyway, I certainly had fun playing the campaign. I played on Hard btw, I found Brutal on WoL to be quite stressful, so for a sort of laid-back playthrough Hard was okay. Had some mission failures as well, but mostly earlier missions, the last missions turned out to be quite easy.
I can definitely see me playing through the campaign again a couple times, on brutal and/or with alternative unit choices, just to see, how it plays out.
My gawd.. have completed the campaign already o_O. Talk about 24/7... Not fan of rushing through that, at all. I don't understand those that start from day 1, finishing it by the end of the day... and all the rush for everything... Patience is a virtue.
Though, I would give it a month or two if I went meele and my own missions and maps along with it. Was it at least on Brutal?
Loled at faking Raynor prisoner with a gun, which is able to shot through the walls. SO, basically if Mengsk wants to visit him he will be able to kill him without even opening a door. Bullshit overload! I am The swarm mothafaka yawrrrrrrrageface!!! Despite the story bossfights are cool, but this indicators of boss attacks were fkin casual and spoiled all the fun.
Ah right, I forgot to mention gameplay. Evolutions are so OP that they made it really fun to play. WoL brutal for me was like this:
Try out something->get beaten->reload;
Get caught off-guard->base destroyed->army destroyed->reload;
Mess up some timing ->get annihilated->reload;
So it was an endless process of trial and error to find optimal strategy or die.
HotS brutal:
-max out drones->have 3-4 hatcheries-> use 10 sec enrage spell on army of hydras/slow-roaches & sometimes big zombie dudes with kerrigan ->repeat until everything is dead :D
-if base is under attack while I'm not near it->instantly spawn infinity of +10hp swarmlings.
Also Impalers. After they became available used them whenever I could. So fun to see them shred things to bits. 3-4 of those can most of the times defend any location, I've kept 6-8 of them in main army cause.. they're kinda good siege unit too.
So somehow HotS brutal felt so much easier, only failed once I think on defend the chrysalis mission.
i like the missions, same as WoL. beyond that... nothing really positive. it's the same cardboard cut out villain crap from diablo 3. everytime an enemy pops up on my screen with abit of dialog trying to insult me this is all i can imagine.
really not a fan of the dark voice idea anymore, really not a fan of all the retconning, really not a fan of the love story. im amazed they didn't change the ending either. after it was leaked and the reaction to it was catastrophic.
I finished the entire HotS campaign on a Hard difficulty and I didn't get that "Zerg is an endless swarm" feeling as I struggled to replace my troops etc.
Final mission is supposed to be something special but very few companies actually makes it so. Blizzard made it just to take an over hour but it lacked that something special to set it apart from the rest. Talk about a perfect moment it would have had to reveal Mengsk's actual plan to deal with the Zerg and flood the screen with some super units.
Personally, I thought the campaign was great.
Is HOTS a masterpiece of story writing that will revolutionise humanity? Probably not... but it’s an entertaining yarn that kept me hooked. The campaign was certainly the best RTS campaign I’ve ever played and it had some real emotion in the storyline. Maybe I’m just not the smartest person on the planet and I’m blind to the, apparently, god awful writing, cheesy dialog and pointless boss fights... but if so then I guess ignorance is bliss because I loved it.
The only minor grimace I had was Kerrigan floating off at the end, bit weird that.
It only takes 1 hour if you don't just build endless waves of Raptorlings or evolve them into Hunters. You just send them for the planetary fortresses and blow them up and the npc armies deal with most of the flanks easily, while you just send endless waves against the Palace and defend with some Hydra/Muta/Queen groups.
One thing I really hated was that once again you had no relation to the real SC2 gameplay. No Larva injection, no upgrades besides 3/3/3 and all that. It's really taking out a lot of the macro play and just makes it straight forward action. It came down to spam Drones, spam Hatchery, run upgrades on 3 Evo chambers and spam units.
One thing I liked is that on lower difficulty levels you can actually finish entire missions just with Kerrigan if you want to :)
A lot of people seem to forget that Ghosts got retconned a lot recently. They can now set people on fire with their thoughts, create illusions of themselves similar to the Protoss and all that. They aren't just mind-reading-cloaking-highly-trained-killers anymore.
Kerrigan used to be a PI10 as I recall before becoming the Queen of Blades. As the Queen she had a PI of 13 I think - and now they couldn't measure it with the Index anymore after she became Primal. So not that hard to imagine that she can push her body slowly up from the floor. I mean she leaps at enemies in the campaign as well.
But it's Cheesy as all hell, yeah. But if you go back and play WC3, as much as I loved that, that is also terribly cheesy and a bit obvious in writing.
Leaping is fine, I'm 100% a-ok with leaping... had she leapt up to the Leviathan I would have thought "wow... she can jump reeeeeally high" it's the gentle wafting off that I thought a bit weird. Had she demonstrated the power of flight before had I would have been fine with it. As it was I just had the scene from Simpsons in my head "But Xena can't fly" "I told you i'm not Xena... I'm Lucy Lawless"
I like that you all used different tactics in the campaign.
I used roach hydra at start and used hydra ultra after receiving ultralisks. I just a-moved across the map on brutal microing with Kerrigan to take out stronger units like warhounds and siege tanks. My Kerrigan used her primal spells (leap, dash).
In Ultralisk related evolution mission. There is a car which you can blow up. It causes Terran Marine to flip out mentioning how he had just paid that car and tries to face Ultralisks alone.
HOTS was twenty times better than WoL for these reasons:
Wings of Liberty featured a very kind of western cowboy atmosphere. It wasn't the fun action packed campaign you got from HOTS.
The first three missions made me want to spoon my eyeballs out (WoL). It was a very non-entertaining way to teach you the game.
WoL was not full of emotions, HOTS was emotionally amazing. Not just the Raynor/Kerri parts, all the characters were very full of Emotions except for Abathur and Iszha)
Why HOTS is better. (Not just ranting about how WoL sucked and I only played it for the Arcade afterwards)
(SPOILER ALERT)
The Kerrigan Leveling process was very interesting, especially after you go to Zerus. Zerus is three missions in total, the first which lets you feed a huge ancient Zerg. The second which transforms her into a much more detailed and neat looking Infested Kerrigan. (WoL Kerrigan was very plain, just brown and orange.) And the third where you take out all the Primals, including the Ancient One.
After hitting level 50 or so her abilities are extremely OP (expected), almost pushing away the need for support. I comp-stomped everything with her and a few Raptor Zerglings on Casual. (I usually play Casual first for the story, then replay for achievements)
HOTS is much more fun because almost every mission involves Kerrigan, as in lets you control her fully with no interruptions such as she breaks off to another path from your command.(Where she does, it's still interesting and they provide you another hero to use. Such as Stukov with the Narud/Kerri Harry Potter styled duel, and Dehake on the Korhal sky mission with the Psi Disruptor.)
WoL had five missions which allowed control of a Hero unit. The very first one, with Raynor (Marine). Zeratul's first and third missions. (Control Zeratul + extra units. Gain Protoss Research). The Secret Mission (Castanar, and the Hybrids. You control a squad of Marines and Medics with Raynor. Interesting Factoid: This was the only mission in WoL which featured the Console choices. 'Bring up those turrets.') The final is on Char, one of the choose able missions. You take four Hero units down there with support of some Marines.
HOTS was a smash up kind of campaign, while WoL was more of a Search&Rescue/Retrieve campaign.
Smash up is not go on a planet with a sun about to go supernova, kill some protoss, and retrieve and artifact. Smash up is obliterate EVERYTHING, even when you had to defend from Gorgons from Warfield's compound on Char.
Credits and Research really wasn't very intriguing in WoL. You'd go on some random mission and pickup stuff on the side, while in HOTS there were missions to evolve your Zerg.
HOTS had some of the most detailed objects seen so far... the city of Augustgrad blew me away, I was thinking the entire time for my zombie game "Okay... Use Stukov as some boss, Kerri as some boss... and all those awesome new doodads for a City."
HOTS also included some of the first glimpse of what's really happening with Duran/Narud/Shapeshifter-dude. (Never played BW, excuse my ignorance if that's invalid info)
Overall, I think HOTS IS WORTH IT. Even if the people not willing to upgrade can't play some maps with awesome new content, you can always make a different version. The Campaign is amazing, while the Map Editor is even better. Despite the warning, mixing WoL and HOTS dependencies should be fine.
Despite some of the flaws in HOTS, such as Raynor not being rescued on the second mission. (Seriously Blizz... I know she gained more power as a Primal.... but she psionically held and pulled/pushed Umojan Marines on the Bridge of the Hyperion before she started her rampage. It was RIGHT after Raynor was left behind. Was it her Anger? Cause THAT MAKES ABSOLUTE SENSE (Sarcasm) Why couldn't she lift Raynor's lazy butt over that little gap?! In certain cinematics, Marines jump over gaps that size. They fall from dropships and cliffs occasionally.)
Also, the artifact in Mengsk's office, if it would turn her back to semi-human again I'd be fine. He could have taken out a pistol and tried to shoot her, then Raynor storms in... They could have played it a million ways, Zagara would have taken over the Swarm... Blizzard is making this up as they go, they haven't written the entire story for LotV yet. They are starting to while the coders continue fixing irritating bugs.
Anyways, if I'd have to rate it. It's another awesome 4.5/5 Blizzard game.
OK I think I understand a little of why HOTS story failed in some ways upon further analysis...
One thing I noticed on a second play through was that the story itself is not so terrible but the problem is that it suffers greatly because Blizzard is trying to tell too much story within too short of game. They are trying to communicate to much information to the audience at once because the game is to short to allow for the audience to experience the scope of the story. This result in characters having to use overly obvious dialog and basically tell us what is happening because there just isn't enough time to develop a love story and the quest for revenge and a mission to save the universe and a secret plot to reawaken a dead god. I mean Blizzard just tried to cram way to much story into a very small game, and they didn't really develop just one theme and stick with it, instead they tried to develop everything and it resulted in nothing being developed great, but rather everything felt forced because it was forced because the story didn't have time to move at it's own pace.
My best alternate example of a story that suffered because someone tried to tell it in to short of time was Akira the Movie vs the Comic. Now you might like the movie but if you read the comic you would realize that the comic was over 2000 pages ( http://www.mangareader.net/101-2004-1/akira/chapter-1.html ) and the movie attempted to tell me the entire story in 2 hours. The result was that a million plot holes manifested themselves in the movie even though it was based on a very well written story, the reason is because you just can't tell a giant story in a little bit of space, there will be plot holes because there isn't the time necessary to fill them in.
The only difference was that the movie Akira got away with all it's plot holes because it was very original and people were just in shock because they had never seen that type of movie before. Starcraft HOTS doesn't get away with anything because it's very non-original and we tend to compare non-original stories to better examples of the same story.
A good counter example would be Lord of the Rings, people complain about the length but at the same time the length allowed the story to be told at it's own pace and there is so much story to tell that the entire length of the movie was used in order to make sure to fill in all the little plot holes.
Now as far a video games go, the best video games are the ones that usually can't be made into movies, why? because the stories are kept very simple and focus more on the internal development and feeling of a character as opposed to a soap Opera. I actually feel that after playing HOTS it would have made a better movie than video game for the reason that it would have allowed the story to develop at a slower pace and all the soapy drama could have been developed instead of forced.
So in conclusion I now feel after a second play through that HOTS was a good story that is told badly because of being forced and rushed.
My overall impression is that it really shows that the designers are getting used to the editor. In WoL it's quite obvious that the designers were working with a new tool. It also shows that they have been paying attention to the arcade and what games are popular there. The space-dota and hero levelling was good examples of this. The same thing can be said about cutscenes. I found the little conversations and characters to be more alive. They had somehow more interesting sci-fi thoughts of what was going on. Thats of course something thats easier to accomplish when you are working with an alien race, but still! Hots is in that sense a more relaxed and less "squeezed" product.
Favorite character is definetly the guy in the armory. One of his first "click-quotes" was something like: Zergling sensitivity to lemonjuice detected, have to modify strain". I think the humor of Hots was better, as well as the character portraits. The people designing kerrigans facial expressions made a really good job. Especially with eye and mouth animations, which were really expressive.
The mission composition was great. In the many RTS campaigns i've played through the years, most levels are the same melee gameplay, but with a storyline twist. These missions were more varying as they contained many minigames.
I know the developers wanted to give the player a feeling of how it is to be Zerg, and I think I did.I was looking forward to building a lot of critters, (small, death-friendly in huge masses) and the game allowed me to play like that. I went Zergling/Baneling/Lurker throughout most of the maps (including the final one on hard) and it went fine :D
The only thing I found lacking was Protoss. This expansion was all about Terrans and Zerg. I guess the idea was not to tap into the Protoss to give more reasons to buy Lotv. But Protoss is my fav race so... :*(
Arcade comments: I sifted through the doodads and new units and its quite a lot of new stuff! A lot of custom terran structures, including a new road system. That is very much appreciated, since the old road system was a bit... poor.
For the developers of LotV (if they read this): I would really like to see more smoke-armor type of effects. I think that would be really cool: Zeratul has his smoke-jump effect. I have this daydream about physical armor that evaporates into smoke, to become a different type of armor/unit. A morph-effect in short. Smoke is an under-utilized effect form in sc2. Like a protoss version of a viking :) Protoss are also an excellent opportunity to build in a tower-defence minigame (pylon based) where you build networks of pylons with different effect. Another type of level I miss is one of them "upside-down" levels. In these levels you start playing, you make your plan. But then something happens that opens up new fronts and a relaxed game turns into something really stressfull and confusing. In Hots you could keep your starting base throughout the entire game.
I liked the campaign mission gameplay. I could tell they pulled a lot of mechanics and things from the community (boss battles). Other missions were completely original gameplay inspired by pop culture such as infesting the Protoss ship (alien anyone?). I chuckled when the camera zoomed out as the brood queen grew like in power level overwhelming. I felt like I was playing 'altered beast' on zerus with the Kerrigan dash and jump abilities and constantly powering up into a new evolution.
On Kaldir, theres a cliff with the frostmourne in it.
I thought there was a Enterprise on a holographic display when I played the first mission. I must have been really tired.
@Crainy: Go
The lich king is in there somewhere too.
In the first mission look in the zerg water tank things to see the Classic Zerg Queen.
The classic zerg queen is also now a full unit in the editor :)
Same for the defiler, even though he lacks some polished textures. Also, theres this other zerg flying unit which was in Brood War, but I dont remember its name.