Does Starcraft II really need Heart of the Swarm?

I don't understand where you're getting that the game was done just to please shareholders. There's not one shred of evidence to support such a hostile claim. The game took an extremely long time to come out, and most of the fans have been enjoying it. There are no shareholders who wanted multiplayer to add tons of new units into the balance. If this game were released to please shareholders, it would have had minimal content and been slapped together without thought.

Calling Blizzard one of the worst storytellers in the business is flat out disingenuous. There's no way that you can think that out of the hundreds or thousands of games hitting the market every year that Starcraft is an example of the worst storyline in gaming. We get that you don't like the story - plenty of people said the same thing - but you're the only one calling them out as the worst in the business. Talk about hyperbole.

It's a fact that the game is balanced extremely well. There's no way that you could have televised matches of the best players in the world playing successfully as all three races if the balance weren't great. Most people have an opinion about which race is "best", but the fact is that at the top levels of the game, any great player is beating any other great player as any race. People who review these games generally are aware of this fact and reference it. Whether or not that makes the game good to play is up to opinion, but whether it's balanced is not.

People trolling convinces you that a game is terrible? I don't see the connection at all.

Specifically, why he doesn't find Heart of the Swarm very exciting. Tom is on the record as enjoying Starcraft II, albeit not for (most of) the campaign.

Not really. Historical data suggests that singleplayer is typically where the majority of players spend their time with any game that has a singleplayer mode at all, even if that's just the multiplayer game with bots. I wouldn't swear one way or the other about how many people may do AI skirmishes versus campaign play, especially for this particular franchise, but the campaign is certainly the main (almost only) draw for me.

Mileage may vary about whether their quality highpoint ever reached "good", but they've done a lot better than SCII's story.

Tom has been absolutely raving about the new Tomb Raider, so...probably!

Am I actually the only one who found the campaign great, and the story telling very very good ? Maybe it's because Zerg are my favorite... Well, the end of the fight vs Narud was kinda stupid and anticlimactic and cliché and everything else, but the rest is an improvement on WoL. Okay, the upgrade missions are not needed, and there's no secret mission to unlock, but that's minor problems.

I found this site after being curious at the Simcity review (which is close to what I think), and I happily read the CiV review (which indeed is another famous franchise destroyed imo), but I'm startled at seeing HotS share the same fate :/.

If there was a thing to reproach to Starcraft, it would be that there are too few different units for each race and it becomes more a fight on the mechanics (apm) than on the strategic decision of which units to build.

Your criticisms of the campaign are totally valid. I think you had a pretty bad experience, and your review reflects that. The part I took issue with was the part where you attacked Blizzard for pushing out a $40 expansion. I know you probably don't know this, as you haven't played the game regularly over the years but this isn't really a ripoff for players. The fact is, we get tonnes of free content in starcraft 2. Along with the patches that have dramatically overhauled aspects of the game since launch and improved balance, we've also seen brand new maps dropping into our map pool for absolutely free. So when I see a expansion for 40 bucks, I don't feel ripped of because I know the support will be there for years to come and I will get a lot more than what's in the box on day one. And even if I hate the core game, there are so many awesome goodies the map editor unlocks in the arcade. The entirety of brood war has been remade in starcraft 2, for example (both campaign and multiplayer). This is the same map making community that brought us DotA, and blizzards smart tools do a good job of surfacing the best of the best custom maps. There is a fancy tug-of-war game that mixes bejeweled and starcraft, several great RPGs, many interesting tower defense games and much much more.

So I get that you hated the story, that's fair. I also get that you don't like the multiplayer. But on questioning value, well, it makes me wonder how much time you've invested in the game, because you seem to be missing a lot of it. Granted if you knew all that was in this game you would probably still hate it, and that's okay, but maybe your hate will be more objective. I know reviewers can't play ever facet of a game, but in this case I think your missing key information that's making you treat the game unfairly.

My understanding of an aggregate isn't the problem, your use of it is however. If your content is being used by Metacrtic then you have an ethical obligation, regardless of the score, to offer sound insight into the game and its core mechanics which you clearly understand but instead for some reason chose not to fully grasp. When you say things like not being dedicated enough to offer meaningful insight into the new units one has to wonder why you would even mention the multiplayer. And yes, when you say you can't offer meaningful insight you are calling into question your own qualifications. I don't understand why you would say that.

I don't know how you figure I have no insight into the new units, much less how you figure that's what I've said in the review. I get the feeling that I'm trying to have a conversation with someone who just wants to gnash his teeth. Your implication that I've failed my "ethical obligations" is pretty telling.

But suffice to say, it appears my point about the units was lost on you. I don't pretend to know how they affect the overall balance of the game. All I can say is that they mostly aren't for me. I wrote pretty much exactly that, and I further briefly explained why that is. If you weren't so eager to grind your axe, I would have been happy to discuss that with you further.

A case could be made that Terran received the least ammount of changes, but on both the ladder and professional play, the changes that did happen shifted the balance of power from Terran being the most unsuccessful race before the expansion to the currently most successful race.

what kind of dick head leads his review with a picture that spoils part of he plotline?

Apologies for my previous and future inelequence and my over aggressive or passive aggressive tone, I'm working on it. But I do have an axe to grind, its with metacriric. Its easy for people to dismiss the numbers but the reality is those numbers are being used to make business decisions that effect everything from the ground level developer, up. The reviewer belonging to that pool of numbers has a responsibility to be as factual as possible with his supposition especially where a number is concerned, low or high. I think you ask some very important questions of the game but didn't offer substantial evidence from the battle field, and then make an assumption about Blizzards business Motivations. I think you need more beef.

You Jokingly descript some of the units, but fail to adequately describe in detail all the units. Why wouldn't you go into detail on what they mean for early, mid and late game or how some units react against each other? because "I don’t play Starcraft II skillfully enough to know what they accomplish in the overall picture". If that's the case, then why are you reviewing the game? Because you play a lot of RTS and feel you are very qualified. Then why not go into more detail about what those units do, how there effecting the matches you're playing and why you feel they're not for you and somewhat trite.

You then bring up a great point about StarCraft asymmetry, simplicity and precision and ask whether the new units compliment or add to that. But then you offer no evidence either way, aside from an instance of siege mode no longer requiring the upgrade and how it was confusing for your friend, but I may have missed your point. How can you ask such an import question and not go into more detail? "what does it say about me that I consider the skirmish and multiplayer the 'actual game', but I’m not dedicated enough to make any sort of meaningful judgment about how the new units affect balance?" Why would you say this? What do you mean? and if you are incapable making meaningful judgments about how the new units affect on balance, why are you reviewing the game? How can you give it a numerical value? A numerical value that persists through metacritic.

Thank you

Aw, you had to go and sound all reasonable! Dude, this is the comments section. You're supposed to just call me a retard and pledge never to come back!

I think your mistake -- maybe "mistake" is too harsh a word, but I feel strongly about this on a philosophical level -- is assuming that more words are somehow more valuable.

I can absolutely talk in more detail about the role of the different units, and I've done so elsewhere in this comments section. But I don't feel that a longer review is necessarily a better review. When I write a review, my goal isn't to spell out the details. My goal is to inform, raise questions, and entertain, often in that order. And brevity can be an important part of that. The economy of words is an important principle for a writer and one I wish more game reviewers understood.

But if someone wants more information, well, here I am. We also have a thriving forum that I participate in. And if that's not enough for you, I do a weekly gaming podcast (our last episode was about how casual players approach Starcraft II).

Also, you're reading too much into my comment about the "overall picture". I thought it was clear from the context that I'm talking about balance issues and how all the pieces fit with each other. As I said, I trust Blizzard. I know the new units went through a lengthy beta process. I'm not being dismissive about the units because they don't belong or they're poorly designed. But I am aware that they're not units I feel the need to use, so this isn't really an add-on for me. It affects my experience with Heart of the Swarm when I look at the spawn host and viper and think, "Well, I'm probably never going to use those with any degree of efficiency..."

Furthermore, like most players, I play a single race. I'm happy to dabble with the other races and I did so for this review. But I don't pretend to understand the other races as well as I do the zerg, at least from behind their own hatcheries, which -- for some odd reason -- aren't even called hatcheries! What's up with that? Nexus? Command center?

Like almost everyone else who plays Starcraft II, I'm not qualified to make judgments about its balance. That's a complex issue and you should regard with skepticism anyone who holds forth about it, particularly if they're speaking from personal anecdotes instead of data. Just go to the Blizzard forums for all sorts of useless pronouncements about balance. I have no desire to add to that noise when I'd just as soon take it on faith that Blizzard knows what they're doing.

Hmm... Whose review should I trust more? The one from the website with the gigantic Blizzard corporate ad plastered on the front, or this one? Whatever your faults are as a reviewer, at least you're taking on the role of a critic in an industry where the thing critics are afraid of the most is actually being critical. I personally enjoyed HOTS multiplayer, and welcome the new additions.

And that guy telling you to suck horse cock, I think he needs some serious help.

I never attacked Blizzard for "pushing out a $40 expansion". Furthermore, I never claimed it was a "rip-off" or "questioned the value". What a strange accusation. My feeling is that people can make up their own minds about that issue.

Furthermore, I have no idea why you think I don't like the multiplayer. What gave you that impression?

And you're right that Starcraft II has tons of extra content in the form of maps, custom games (mods), the new AI skirmish, the interface changes, and so forth. I don't know why you think I don't know about those things. But none of that is part of this review because none of that is part of Heart of the Swarm.

How many companies can you name that put a comparable amount of resources into storytelling and still manage to do it as poorly?

So, no, it's not hyperbole at all.

I cant be the only one who finds it amusingly hypocritical that this is being advertised on the site?

fair warning? LOL no one cares what you think