[Macworld]

Post your comments for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty here

[Photonerd]

Seriously considering this one....

[ChristopherDavisHislecehp]

Have you had issues with the game crashing right before or after a single player mission?

[mojo66]

I'd be interested in how this review would sound if this game wasn't the successor of an enourmosly successful game, and if it wouldn't have been hyped over the moon.

[evshrug]

Mr. Holt,
I found your article to be just perfect to inform my biggest questions: Is this game as micro-intensive as the first StarCraft (and thus a real challenge for someone like me), is the campaign worth the admission price by itself (sounds like it is), and overall is it the right mix of classic nostalgia and creative muscle-flexing while still keeping that different-but-balanced feel that was the big thing that kept the original going for so long.

I can understand why you wouldn't particularly single out the coolness factor that Blizzard STILL releases games for Mac and PC, but the fact that they do so SIMULTANIOUSLY just really puts a favorable eye on Blizzard for me. Brings hope that the Mac platform isn't just a secondary project.

[joehollinger]

Be aware that there are known issues with 10.6.4 and SC2. The gameplay right now is pretty horrible. You can only have medium details on for the game to be playable. If you run it in boot camp and windows 7 it's inherently better. Just look at the SC2 forums on bnet. Until Apple, Nvidia and Blizzard work out the bugs, pass on it! You'd figure they had 12 years since SC1 to get it right...

[Heritor]

Oh look its Warhammer 40k with terrible graphics, dumbed down storyline, and the Tyranids renamed to Zerg...

Want a good RTS? Play Dawn of War II. Want SC 1 with better graphics and a 60 dollar price tag it doesn't deserve? Buy SC2.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Heritor, on 30 July 2010 - 04:01 PM, said:

Oh look its Warhammer 40k with terrible graphics, dumbed down storyline, and the Tyranids renamed to Zerg...

Want a good RTS? Play Dawn of War II. Want SC 1 with better graphics and a 60 dollar price tag it doesn't deserve? Buy SC2.

Starcraft has never been about the story. Blizzard isn't about story its about gameplay (primarily multiplayer gameplay). Blizzard is exceptional at building balanced and engaging gameplay experiences. There is a reason people are still playing Starcraft (1) and Diablo II more than a decade after they were released.

[cesarespinoza]

For those of us with pre i7 iMac's like my early 2009 24inch with nVidia force 9400M graphics 4 gb of ram, will this game run? for those of us who do not speak binary the specs on the box are confusing, I and many others would hate to buy the game and not have it run properly any news for us?

[drdreric]

I agree with the above comment that the way video chips are numbered now makes Blizzard's specs of "nvidia XXXX or higher" difficult to evaluate for those of us who do not follow GPU releases. A table of which Macs are good, which are passable, and which won't work well would be a nice addition somewhere by somebody!

On a different note, I would love to see Blizzard port the original StarCraft to iOS. And make it multiplayer!

[Heritor]

Stewsburntmonkey, on 30 July 2010 - 05:27 PM, said:

Heritor, on 30 July 2010 - 04:01 PM, said:

Oh look its Warhammer 40k with terrible graphics, dumbed down storyline, and the Tyranids renamed to Zerg...

Want a good RTS? Play Dawn of War II. Want SC 1 with better graphics and a 60 dollar price tag it doesn't deserve? Buy SC2.

Starcraft has never been about the story. Blizzard isn't about story its about gameplay (primarily multiplayer gameplay). Blizzard is exceptional at building balanced and engaging gameplay experiences. There is a reason people are still playing Starcraft (1) and Diablo II more than a decade after they were released.

No they are not. The success of those games were due to Battle.net which allowed for online play. This is what made the game liked so much and gave it a fan base. The gameplay however has been inferior especially since Dawn of War was better the SC while DoW II is better then both SC and SC 2 (Of which SC 2 is just a graphics upgrade of SC 1 with a new campaign).

Basically if you praise SC II then you are saying "We praise a company for doing what a Mod team could have done for free..."..

[scottij]

drdreric, on 30 July 2010 - 07:40 PM, said:

I agree with the above comment that the way video chips are numbered now makes Blizzard's specs of "nvidia XXXX or higher" difficult to evaluate for those of us who do not follow GPU releases. A table of which Macs are good, which are passable, and which won't work well would be a nice addition somewhere by somebody!

I spent a bit of time looking at that. I have a 3-year-old 24" iMac with an NVidia 7600 GT, and it took me a while to figure out whether it could run.

Unfortunately, it can't under OS X -- but it can under Windows! :-( Turns out the OS X Nvidia OpenGL drivers for the 7600 are not very good, and they haven't come out with an update in how knows how long... Guess I'll have to use BootCamp to boot into Windows to play it on my iMac.

But most nvidia cards are supported. There is in fact a table of supported video cards at Blizzard's website:

http://us.blizzard.c...categoryId=3637

This is for Windows, but with the exception of the Nvidia 7600GT, most vidoe cards newer than 3 years old are supported on both.

[ColonelClaw]

I'm hoping that the release of this massively high profile (and high quality) game will give Apple the kick up the butt they need to improve their graphics card drivers.
It's ridiculous that in this day and age I need to bootcamp my Mac Pro to play SC2. On Windows7 it runs with everything maxed out, on 10.6.4 it mostly runs with everything on minimum. Considering that's on the exact same computer it's pretty dumb, huh?

[sigma8]

Heritor, on 30 July 2010 - 04:01 PM, said:

Want a good RTS? Play Dawn of War II.

Show me the mac version.

Also, I just read about DoW2.. No base building? Elves? Re-using the same maps for many single player missions? Only a couple multiplayer maps? Online community for multiplayer is reportedly anemic in size. Sounds pretty weak.

That said, it appears to have its fans...but even if it's a good game, it certainly doesn't sound like it's clearly better than SC2. If you want to make that argument, I think you're going to have work hard at it, and you didn't. Have you even played through SC2? Or are you just fanboying it up?