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//: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm |OT| Like Riding a Bike
- Thread starter Corran Horn
- Start date
!... mind blown, I have to check it out.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Wait... this is out? How's the campaign? can someone tell me if the story is at least better because it was dreadful in SC2, almost non-existent but I did like the cut scenes and the adventure mini-game. Is it worth playing through?
I wondered this and loaded up a mission and to no avail, the other achievements are working fine just these couple which are causing me grief.
Smoking corpses (Use of kinetic blast)
Leaping death (Use of leap strike)
Get a grip (Use of Crushing grip)
One which did give me tons of grief until i worked it out was the mastery for Planetfall, very tricky. For those ever frustrated by it the achievement appears undoable (did it 6 times to no avail) until you work out dominion structures also includes neutral non attack move structures such as statues.
The story is absolutely, unalterably bad, so much so that calling it a story gives it too much credit, suffice to say it does everything in its power to reverse WOL and go back to the status quo. That being said the cutscenes are as usual, awesome, and the mission design is pretty much flawless and enjoyable.
Again, you have to do x number in a single mission. So Kinetic Blast 50 times in a single mission, crushing 150, etc. Long and tedious as fuck.
Easiest mission I found to do it was the baneling one, since you have an essentially unlimited amount of time as long as you kill the one "boss" repeatedly.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Geez that's a bummer
Right about now I'd say "ehh I'll wait for a $10 sale" but blizz games don't drop like that. Gonna have to pass
(((Oh i mean to say ive done this with the final mission and it still didnt unlock, im at a loss now, i doubled the required number for leap strike and nothing moved.
Might contact support, really want to 100% this like i did wol
sorijealut
Member
Exactly what I thought about it too up there; the missions are excellent, and actually enjoyable for the most parts.
Geez that's a bummer
Right about now I'd say "ehh I'll wait for a $10 sale" but blizz games don't drop like that. Gonna have to pass
I cant lie to you and say the story is anything but bad, but I can say the gameplay more thank makes up for it, and no game beats a sc2 game for achievement hunting on this planet so far as im concerned.
Geez that's a bummer
Right about now I'd say "ehh I'll wait for a $10 sale" but blizz games don't drop like that. Gonna have to pass
You're buying games like sc2 for the single player story?
I enjoyed WOL missions more but im 100% sure this is because I love the terran arsenal more, I was a terran main in the multiplayer too so this helped. If i were more a zerg fan I would rate this above, its just a matter of which units bring me more pleasure. I will say this though I was astounded and how much mission variety there was, and just how well they introduced you to different mechanics and made usage of creep spread particularly appealing. Upgrade system was improved and refreshing and the single best addition was the master archives which allows you to redo any mission with any possible upgrades you could have had at that point in the game, something WOL never had and made you go through multiple play throughs to be able to experience missions differently.
The last mission is my favourite because it tells you "Heres this big fuck off defense of this structure, go kill it, means your own" which is the best type of mission for me because its so replayable. It also took me about an hour ten minutes on brutal to do, and ive done it 4 more times since.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Ty for the info regardless
Yeah, i like the starcraft lore/universe and suck at multi-player.
As someone who was receptive to the story in WOL, finding quite a few admirable qualities to it I was very sad to see HOTS go the way it did, and without any subtlety either. It DOES move the story forward, but it spends about 70% of the game getting all the chess pieces back to the start of WOL then the last 30% a mix of revenge and the future.
And the transition to the SP becoming Diablo is complete
sorijealut
Member
Well said, this is basically all you need to know about WOL-HotS. lol. Love the master archives.
Yeah, it's weird but I'm a terran main but enjoyed Hots missions better.
However, this could be due to a couple things like me having improved as a player, knowing how to tackle the missions smartly and being better planned for less stress, or maybe I'm meant to be zerg player after all
Much more linear indeed. I do think that they've done a good job of streamlining and condensing the general campaign experience, I think simple is best. I hope to see this n the final expansion as well (hopefully with more of the lore elements that we want).
Just finished the campaign, very unimpressed overall. 90% of the missions: here's a base, here's some things which you have to destroy/pick up, you have to do this within a set time otherwise you lose, oh and we're gonna send random waves of enemies at your base every few minutes. Rinse, repeat, snoozefest.
That said 10% of the missions were absolutely superb. Such as
.
Overall felt the variety was severely lacking compared to Wings of Liberty. And that ending...
That said 10% of the missions were absolutely superb. Such as
where you control a single zerg unit and spread the infection across the ship, or where you're playing as the Hyperion
Overall felt the variety was severely lacking compared to Wings of Liberty. And that ending...
sorijealut
Member
Here is an unranked replay I just played...
I'm trying to get back after a really long break.
Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!
Pretty awful now, I couldn't kill this silver toss guy for so long when I've already won the game.
http://drop.sc/310735
I'm trying to get back after a really long break.
Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!
Pretty awful now, I couldn't kill this silver toss guy for so long when I've already won the game.
http://drop.sc/310735
Thanks for sharing! I'll try and check it out tonight or tomorrow.
Yep, this doesn't hold up to the Wings of Liberty campaign whatsoever. I laughed about the WoL campaign a lot, with the silly caricatures and "EY MON LESS GO TO DA JUNGAL PLANET DONCHA KNOW" and all that, but the mission variety was outstanding and I had a great time throughout; the thin justifications didn't bother me.
HotS is so one-dimensional in comparison, with mission elements that feel like thin b-tier gimmicks discarded from the WoL campaign during production. That in conjunction with the writing hitting unfathomable new lows (ESSSEENNNNCEEE x1000 + a love story more contrived than the recent Les Miserable film), I'm not really hit with much of a positive final impression.
It's still a solid product, but despite playing as a different faction it feels redundant.
HotS is so one-dimensional in comparison, with mission elements that feel like thin b-tier gimmicks discarded from the WoL campaign during production. That in conjunction with the writing hitting unfathomable new lows (ESSSEENNNNCEEE x1000 + a love story more contrived than the recent Les Miserable film), I'm not really hit with much of a positive final impression.
It's still a solid product, but despite playing as a different faction it feels redundant.
KojiKnight
Member
Psst... you realize that Starcraft 2 is an RTS right?
Honestly, aside from the fact that the Hyperion mission gave some very much needed personality to the campaign, it was a rather boring mission. The infestation mission was even worse... it was just a move-a, occasionally spam zergling button mission.
HOTS is gonna get old very quick, is not a new game just an upgrade with a few units and not gonna take the same time to learn new things like WoL. I place my bet on mid 2014 or early 2015
I think the infestation mission really didn't live up to its potential, but the Hyperion mission was pretty damn fun. The final "boss" encounter on that mission had a rather interesting scripted attack pattern where you use the teleport ability to dodge the mines before resuming the attack.
I think the biggest issue with the HotS campaign is that even though it has less missions than WoL, it feels so padded at times. What doesn't help is that the campaign is largely designed to really take advantage of the zerg's main play style which is to overwhelm and overrun the enemy. This means after the first 1/3 of the campaign, every single base mission is exactly the same. You build up resources as fast as you can, hit 200 supply, press F2, overrun the objective(s). I don't even think that's a remote exaggeration.
Because of that, I really like the missions which are NOT base missions. Unfortunately that gets less frequent towards the end of the game, and it starts to feel really repetitive. I'm in the final chapter of the game now, and it feels like the last bunch of missions have been more or less all the same.
I think the biggest issue with the HotS campaign is that even though it has less missions than WoL, it feels so padded at times. What doesn't help is that the campaign is largely designed to really take advantage of the zerg's main play style which is to overwhelm and overrun the enemy. This means after the first 1/3 of the campaign, every single base mission is exactly the same. You build up resources as fast as you can, hit 200 supply, press F2, overrun the objective(s). I don't even think that's a remote exaggeration.
Because of that, I really like the missions which are NOT base missions. Unfortunately that gets less frequent towards the end of the game, and it starts to feel really repetitive. I'm in the final chapter of the game now, and it feels like the last bunch of missions have been more or less all the same.
Setting yourself up for disappointment.
2014 is absurd.
It's not like Blizzard chose to release Heart of the Swarm 3 years after Wings of Liberty because they thought that was the proper amount of time in between games, they released it 3 years after because it took them 3 years to make the game.
KojiKnight
Member
It's amazing how many times they reworked the expansion in that time... Also, it feels like they padded out the mission length near the end, and everything involving
stukov
(edit) The entire zerg campaign just feels like less than a month before release they realized they needed to pad the game out a bit, thats why we got evolution missions (which are supposed to show off the evolutions, but really just feel like a 10 minute long chore to pick what you want) and
Stukov
MegaKungFuRadio
Member
None of the choices from the previous save actually matter, right? At the end of the second mission, I can already tell that it's taking all the decisions from the latest save, which, in my case, are all terrible.
sorijealut
Member
Thanks again profit!
Yeah, about the only part that fascinated me was the
origin of Zerg, the ancient Zerg (but even this, as you mentioned, was devalued by the one-armed essence deprived guy lol) apart from that, there was really nothing substantial to add to the world. Their writing very much failed to tie in these different things to one objective (to kill Mengsk and to bring back the swarm?). Why is there need for the thick Russian accent general to come back from the dead? More than a few times, I've stopped and laughed at the lot of the crew they've gathered up inside the ship. It's just dripping with low quality writing.
Also, I do agree that F2 somehow made this MUCH easier.
TwiztidElf
Member
I suspect Warcraft 4 is next.
Starcraft 3? More like Starcraft 2030.
I still can remember playing it in 2007 and being all excited about how finished it felt and thought it's gonna be released soon.
And then it took them 3 more years......
Corran Horn
May the Schwartz be with you
I hope for LotV we dont have a hero unit in like every mission.
Protoss is the race where hero units seem to make the most sense though lol
Corran Horn
May the Schwartz be with you
It kinda kills if for me though when you have this OP unit on the field. I liked it in WoL where you only got a hero unit from time to time.
I don't expect that. I think it's just going to start after HotS, with Zeratul returning to his people for "judgement" only to become the reluctant leader who must unite a divided Protoss race, and rally all the factions together so they can join forces with the Terran combined forces under Raynor and Valerian, and the combined Zerg swarm under Kerrigan, and then everyone can go into the void to FINISH THE FIGHT.
Some have to be done on hard
*3 CAPITAL SHIPS LINE UP IN FRONT OF BLACK SPACE*
"Are you guys ready?"
"I WAS BORN READY DARLIN'"
I'm hoping this is the case. Just throwing something that Blizzard could possibly do. Given that the next campaign will also probably be 20 missions I hope they don't dilly dally. Seriously.
Maybe by the time LotV comes out, it'll only be 15 missions. Lol.
I'd rather have 10 quality missions with excellent storytelling and fun rather than 20 missions of crap story and good gameplay.
Metzen? You post here?