Aha! You have to get the Blizzard launcher. I knew there had to be a catch.
Ha ha ha - you get a like because I genuinely laughed out loud.
It’s not showing in my launcher - only Starcraft II is showing. (although it does say “try it for free”).
What am I missing?
Was just about to post the same thing. Hey what the hell - how do I download the first game?
Ok figured it out
Go into SHOP
Select Classic Games
Then you have Starcraft
I see it! Downloading, thanks dude.
wow this game is OLD. With how bad this looks, I’m wondering what it looked like before the remaster. I mean, the opening cinematic is so monochrome and pixelated. The thing that looked the best? The lighter when he lights his cigar.
I played through 3 of the tutorials. Told me to build supply depots, not sure why I need those or what they do, but I built them and I WAS VICTORIOUS.
I’ll finish the tutorial tomorrow & then onto the single player campaign.
I never got into Starcraft coming off of Total Annihilation back in '98. I think it was the stuff like the selection limit, which only appeared in Blizzard RTSs for some reason. Warcraft 1 I remember you could only select 4 units at once. FOUR UNITS!
Er, only the original version is being given away for free, not the remaster!
You can’t really go home again.
One thing about SC1 was that it wasn’t really as well conceived strategically as a modern game; many skirmish maps have your mineral line (workers) in front of your base, where the enemy will appear, and others have asymmetric starting positions. OTOH i think SC2 suffers a bit from blob selecting mixed unit compositions and is maybe a bit too fast and lacks enough anti-blob firepower (no one uses High Templar it seems like in SC2 except in very specific circumstances, and Reavers / Defilers are gone). I imagine the Single Player game is going to feel very dated now.
I tried playing SC2 recently again for the first time in years and … i’m not sure i’m young enough to do this. It feels like running a marathon with my brain. I really have to force myself consciously to get into “the zone”; i mean i can play more or less but not to the level i should be able to reach. But SC2 has a ton of modes and misc. content now it did not at release. Still haven’t bought the expansions for it. It’s cool they’re releasing a remaster. I think Warcraft 3 holds up pretty well though its upkeep thing is super annoying to me from a game design perspective.
Nice reference!
I played a game of Brood War this morning against the AI. I felt transported to 1999 again. Some of it was really annoying, like the 12-unit selection limit, which made Marine-blobbing a lot more difficult.
I just picked a random map to play on, and I went to build my first supply depot on my ramp (because that’s just what you do, right?), only to find that the map I was playing on had no ramp – I was on an isolated space platform. The only way off of it was to research up to dropships and move my units around eight at a time.
I was so confused by it, but it highlighted the difference in competitive design between then and now. I don’t think Blizzard would make a ladder map today that forced you into air play. But I can imagine them making it at the time and thinking how cool and skill-testing it would be to make a map like that.
Which I think points to a lack of diversity in Blizz game design these days. Overwatch is a good example. There are several heroes that are basically never chosen - map design that purposely favours them to an extent (ie wide open maps areas to bring Widow to the fore, enclosed maze-like maps for Junkrat, maps with hazards that disable shields, etc) end up creating diversity where otherwise team selection is relatively stale. Instead they focus on the minutia of hero balance, which is ultimately a losing battle as the min-maxers drive the meta. Maps are an important part of the game and should also drive a meta of their own, but Blizz seem oblivious to that these days.
Ah, I was a little confused playing the first couple levels last night. That did not look very remastered! Can’t argue with free, though.
This is why I really loved the OSL, MSL, and especially ProLeague competitions, as the mapmakers for those tournaments often would throw out very random, unusual map that played with expectations–among the “perfectly balanced but bland” maps, of course–to force teams to adapt unusual strategies or playstyles to survive.
When the Remastered version releases, it will literally be a visual overlay on the current free version of SC/BW. In fact, like the Halo remasters, you’ll be able to press a key and switch back and forth between old and new visuals on the fly.
Sweet, I like flipping back and forth in Halo and the redone Monkey Island games. Let’s do the time warp again!
I really like Star Craft II quite a lot so I don’t see myself getting back into this one again (given I rarely play RTS games even so). However, I’m very interested indeed in a remastered Warcraft III. Back in the day (and even now perhaps) it was my favorite RTS game, one of my favorite games in general.
So, as someone who was down on the idea of this remaster initially, I think the launch event in South Korea earlier today (when the game was released in SK internet cafes ahead of the global release on 8/14) managed to flip me back. They got a series of nine showmatches featuring both retired and currently active BW players alike, and it was actually quite impressive to see all the new casting features in action along with some quality gameplay.
I strongly, strongly recommend watching the Flash/Bisu game that starts at 4:18:15 if nothing else, because it’s a damn impressive game that I don’t want to say anything more about lest I ruin it.