This is why we’re not excited by Starcraft 2.

Commenting on the “polish” behind Blizzard games, SynCaine likens every Blizzard product as being a rehashed version of old IP. Says SynCaine on Blizzard’s next product:

…what happens when you apply the Blizzard business model to a Blizzard game and play it really, really safe? You get StarCraft 2, a highly polished port of SC1 that leaves you feeling bored and burned out halfway through your first game. When you can build a base and pull off a rush with your eyes closed using the same strategy and hotkeys you used in 1998, you’re game just MIGHT be a little too similar to its predecessor.

Starcraft was a good RTS. We never played competitively, but as someone who probably played every RTS up until Starcraft’s release (and likely sometime thereafter, too), Starcraft didn’t leave us with the impression that it was way ahead of the pack. The backstory wasn’t fantastic, the races were only marginally unique, and in truth, we can’t even say we loved Starcraft more than Blizzard’s previous RTS offerings.

So now we have Starcraft 2 on the horizon, with many bloggers already having posted early play impressions of the game. And really, we can’t help but think it’s just more of Starcraft. And that’s not to say this is a bad thing, because we’re all for sequels being “more of the same” if the formula was perfect. We just don’t think the Starcraft formula was perfect, and we’d much rather have seen something more epic for Starcraft 2. Maybe that puts us in the minority. Either way, we’re way more eager to see what comes out of the Diablo franchise, because between Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be perfect – it just needs to take one small iterative step forward.

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Tagged as: gaming, rts, warcraft