So! Having rebuilt my old XP machine to improve its compatibility, I am now able to play the original Starcraft without fatal Blue Screens every one to five minutes.
Which means I can start writing about the game, which I had previously played through only once, based on its revered status in the WC3 modding community… And which I found sorely disappointing. How does it hold up to these eyes that have seen so much more?
Continue reading “Blog 830: Make Love Not Starcraft”
I recently took a fancy to replay the original Starcraft. I remember the critical glow surrounding it from my Warcraft III days, so I was quite excited to try it… and was sorely disappointed. It just seemed to be WC3 but a bit worse. Even so, I was a teenager then, only ever played it through once hammering the cheats; so I’m curious now to appraise it more… intellectually.
Except it crashed all the time on my Windows XP machine. Not any old crashes, but full on system-reset-required Blue Screens Of Death. I had no such trouble with any other game I’d tried on Monument, and I don’t remember Starcraft doing anything like this back in the day — what could possibly be the issue?
Continue reading “Blog 829: Rolling Back the Years”
Every time I play “the Rexxar campaign”, or as it’s properly called, “OrcX”– uh, I mean, The Founding of Durotar, I want to write about it. It is the about most exquisite implementation of the Warcraft III RPG format you’ll ever see — perhaps not as inventive or bombastic or narratively compelling as anything the community ever produced, but compensating for any deficiencies with production values that are completely off the charts. This is by far the best thing Blizzard ever made, a sumptuous tour-de-force that exercises the full breadth of the engine in a way the base melee game never dares.
Today: The Founding of Durotar, by Blizzard Entertainment
Continue reading “Blog 782: The SPRPG Diaries: The Founding of Durotar”
When I went into Game, they didn’t have any copies of Legacy of the Void on display. It seems like everyone was so caught up in Fallout 4 and its midnight launch parties that poor old SC2 got lost in the noise. When the assistant had to go and rummage in the back room for five minutes, I did wonder if I’d have to go home and — horror of horrors — purchase a digital only copy.
Luckily they did have physical boxes, not that it made a difference since I had to download the game anyway. One day, I swear Blizzard will fix their stupid installer… But until then, it’s PROTOSS TIME!
Legacy of the Void will apparently be released on the 10th of November. Get hype?
Well, the hype train started with this strange prologue campaign that was released just a few days ago. Is it the promised land of a Rexxar-style Zeratul RPG?
I think you know the answer to that, but read on anyway. (There are spoilers for everything SC2 so far, if you care.)
Despite its questionable surroundings, and indeed its questionable plot, Starcraft II‘s campaign as a whole is a very strong thing. While the rest of the game is mired in eSports the campaign is almost entirely divorced from the outside world — which means it has the freedom to paint the town red.
Starcraft II was supposed to be three “games”. Not a game and two expansion packs, three “games”. With the third “game” finally pretending like it’s possibly actually on the horizon, I got the hankering to go back and replay the two other bits.
I barely had SC2 installed on this new computer when I remembered all the reasons it makes me angry.
(What was the time distance between Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne? One year? And a bit? SC2‘s time-lags aren’t even funny.)
Rao Dao Zao 