What's up this week: January 2nd, 2013

Hey all, we know it's been a little quiet over the holidays. We were hoping to get a major update out prior, but we didn't have anything that we felt hit the bar where we were comfortable showing it off. As we move into 2013, you should start seeing a lot greater frequency of updates, including more awesome content.

Shack News's John Keefer listed us as one of the most anticipated games for 2013. Check it out! And also, if you're a PC game fanatic, make sure you make a habit of checking out the Shack, as they're a fantastic source for all your gaming information desires.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/77126/ ... ohns-picks

Also, we're all back from the winter holidays - while many of us continued working over the holidays, we were almost all doing it from home, hence the lack of regular updates. We'll get a nice forum roundup this Saturday, and who knows, may even have some other cool updates in very short order. Stay tuned, and while the flood gates may not be open yet, they're slowly being opened.

Hope you all had a fantastic 2012, and 2013 is going to be AWESOME.

And I'm sure Neutrino will be along in this thread shortly and let everyone know what's up on the game dev side of things.

Cool, hope some pictures get thrown our way soon.

Oh, and the 'forum roundup' is mostly for the social media sites. Since you guys hang out here, most of you see the most interesting forum posts already. But our friends on Facebook and Google+ aren't all forum residents.

PC Gamer posted about PA too.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/01/2013-preview/12/

That's gr... wait. Someone is actually looking forward Starcraft 2's story? I just lost nearly all faith in mankind.




Still, that's great to hear that more updates are coming!

PAX IS COMING.

PA Clan Quote? ;p

Mike

I can't wait to get some new information early this year! This is by far my most anticipated game of 2013, and in a while.

Like there is anything else to look forward in Starcraft 2.

Multiplayer?!
What else should ppl look forward in SC2?
Well I actually wonder if I will even play HOTS, if PA ends up playable soon after the HOTS release I will probably play PA instead.

Everyone is tired of the multiplayer, it's boring now, just look at the server activity, it's dead(besides the korean infatuation with the game). The story is the only reason anybody else should be excited.

Like there will be something new in multiplayer =)

The multiplayer, despite its flaws, can be great fun (though it's not my thing).
Starcraft 2's story is the worst train wreck of a story I ever saw in a video game. I'd call it the SW-prequel of the video-game if I didn't actually think that the SW-prequel is good in coparison. I wish I was exaggerating.
(But this is getting off-topic, I should go and begin to code Skynet now.)

They missed Rome 2 Total war.

dead? last time I played a ranked 1v1 in Wings of Liberty it took less than 30 seconds to find a game.
That was like 4 weeks ago, I doubt that much has changed since than.

The singleplayer, despite its flaws, can be great fun. Starcraft 2's multiplayer is the most pointless spam strat I ever saw.

Thats 95% of Starcraft Multiplayer, yea in high end matches it can get interesting but then i'm only a player of Platinum level. The main skill in the game is developing your spam ball to beat the enemy if that spam ball gets defeated then hopefully you've done enough damage to stop your death so you can build a spam ball that will counter your opponents spam.

I say this as a person who actually enjoys Starcrafts single and multiplayer, though i'll probably skip multiplayer in HOTS...

I'm specifically talking about the story. The staging of the missions is well done, for people to look forward to the next batch of mission isn't shocking. When you polish the radioactive turd so much that you end up with door-thick gold plating... But the article specifically talked about the author looking forward to the story
2012 can be fun to watch. Similarly Starcraft 2's singleplayer can be fun to play. It doesn't mean that either story isn't insultingly awful on nearly every possible level.
Note that I also find the unit design to be an utter failure the same way the story is, and both are probably linked as the visuals are part of the storytelling, but I digress...

The only hypothesis I have that remotely fit the data is that for such a multi-bajillion budget game to have such a story, the writer blew the entire story budget on gambling and had to browse Starcraft fanfic websites fifteen minutes before the deadline to come up with something.

Note that I may be a bit biased. I was a fan of the first Starcraft as a piece of storytelling (partially for nostalgia, I guess), and when I find stories that are entirely composed of clichés and beginner's mistakes, I generally don't take it that bad.
I actually enjoyed watching the insane stupidity of 2012, for example.

(I won't comment on Starcraft 2's multiplayer much, I only tried it in skirmish and saw that it was definitely not for me.)

I understand the story been cliche then again I wasn't expecting a Strategy version of Mass Effect when I bought SC2

But then Blizzard were trying to get the kind of success that SC1 enjoyed and a lot of that was from multiplayer. Personally i'm not a big fan of putting twitch play into a strategy but SC2's multiplayer is ok I guess.

But I did like the minor elements on the ship in SC2's campaign I thought it was a nice touch even though it was just the illusion of choice but better than faces flashing at you from screens that switch on and off as people enter and leave the conversation.

This doesnt relate to PA

Sound like you never played CoD: Modern Warfare * single-player. It's much worse from story point, believe me.

StarCraft 2 story is very trivial and dull, yes. Initially (before blizzard was bought by activision and SC2 was separated into three parts) story was much better. But still - it's better (by movies/dialogue technical quality, at least) than many other single players nowadays. It's much better/fun to play that TA campaign, for instance =) And not so boring as SupCom campaign.

No, there is two writers - one write lore and universe development. He is good. And second one writes campaign plot - he isn't bad either. Just target audience is very wide and therefore storytelling is very dull.