I'm cautiously optimistic. My hope is it's either Toys for Bob (developers of Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure), Infinity Ward (former Neversoft devs) or Blizzard (former Vicarious Visions devs)...
I'm cautiously optimistic. My hope is it's either Toys for Bob (developers of Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure), Infinity Ward (former Neversoft devs) or Blizzard (former Vicarious Visions devs) working on this.
Just as long as they don't bring Robomodo back from the dead to royally fuck up another Tony Hawk's game.
Also I really hope we get a comprehensive soundtrack collection from both games.
Why are we hopeful blizzard will product anything of worth? This is a serious question as I wrote them off around the time of D3/Starcraft 2 as no longer being anything close to what they once...
Why are we hopeful blizzard will product anything of worth? This is a serious question as I wrote them off around the time of D3/Starcraft 2 as no longer being anything close to what they once were, and the most recent things I can think of are the WC3 "remaster" and "OW2", which uh....yeah.
The WC3 remaster was the final nail in the coffin for me wanting to support Blizzard. I'd been off WoW for years due to not having the time to play and feeling like a few hours a month weren't...
The WC3 remaster was the final nail in the coffin for me wanting to support Blizzard. I'd been off WoW for years due to not having the time to play and feeling like a few hours a month weren't worth the subscription. I was looking forward to the remaster as WC3, especially the custom games, is the game that I played constantly for years.
Seeing them not give the remaster its due felt like such a slap in the face, and made me glad I didn't preorder it. I guess Activision-Blizzard being a small independent company couldn't afford to invest too many resources into the project /s.
SC2 was the start of the rot that WoW helped cause: The plot was actively dumb, and such a deviation from the tone and literal arc's they setup in the first. Standard action scifi romance rather...
SC2 was the start of the rot that WoW helped cause:
The plot was actively dumb, and such a deviation from the tone and literal arc's they setup in the first. Standard action scifi romance rather than standard dark dystopian sci fi.
The design on a competitive level struggled hard. Lots of dumb mechanics because making some stuff easier gave you no reason to look at your base (Zerg injections being a major frustration point), and they had some awful meta's for quite some time. Lots and lots of deathball which was totally against what made BW great.
The story was definitely not nearly as good as the Brood War games, but the gameplay issues are not as dire as you're making them out to be. StarCraft 2 has had one of the most successful esports...
The story was definitely not nearly as good as the Brood War games, but the gameplay issues are not as dire as you're making them out to be. StarCraft 2 has had one of the most successful esports scenes ever, and is the originator of the modern esports scene. This doesn't happen if the gameplay isn't top tier, as many other failed esports titles have found out since 2010 when SC2 came out.
It's had its ups and downs over the past 15 years but they're just that: ups and downs. Every successful longrunning competitive scene has gone that way. It hasn't been one big long-running quagmire of dismal competitiveness. The infestor-broodlord era was probably the worst of it and it's long in the past, gone as soon as the first expansion released. The deathball issue is Protoss specific and even that was dealt with a while ago. There are balance patches affecting competitive gameplay even to this day.
Otherwise the mechanics were different than Brood War's but that's fine. A lot of the arguments about which is better is down to preference really, where BW required far more micromanaging whereas StarCraft 2 allows for more economic quasi-automation to prioritize army micro.
StarCraft 2 is still regarded as the last great RTS game. It's used as an example of how great Blizzard used to be, not an example of how they started going wrong. Especially after all this time, the amount of naysayers have died down once they saw what happened with Diablo 3 and the rest of Blizzard's output and went back to realize that the issues around StarCraft 2's first few years were basically just complaints about it not being Brood War or having some things that needed ironing out much like all their other well-regarded games had, not fundamental issues that capped the game's quality with design that incentivized the wrong things.
That's giving SC2 a lot of credit for work done elsewhere. Broodwar set the stage in Korea far earlier, as did quake, and right around that time you've got things like Dota2 and LoL which i'd...
StarCraft 2 has had one of the most successful esports scenes ever, and is the originator of the modern esports scene.
That's giving SC2 a lot of credit for work done elsewhere. Broodwar set the stage in Korea far earlier, as did quake, and right around that time you've got things like Dota2 and LoL which i'd argue were MUCH more influence on modern esports in part because they captured a larger audience or viewership.
This doesn't happen if the gameplay isn't top tier, as many other failed esports titles have found out since 2010 when SC2 came out.
Depends on how much money you throw at it, how much competition is in the niche, and how inertia you have going into it. To be clear while I do think they turned SC2 into a great competitive game eventually, if this was their first game out of the gate and it wasn't the sequel to BW with money being chucked at the prize pool it'd be one of those examples.
I don't think your assessment of the meta's tracks with what I've heard from competitive SC2 friends, but I think that's mostly too far into the details to matter as yes I agree they go up and down (although how bad the swings are is something else where I think SC2 lacked). I believe the critical point thought is on launch and for the first couple of years SC2's meta was routinely, and correctly, criticized for being things like roach/marine medic death ball.
Otherwise the mechanics were different than Brood War's but that's fine. A lot of the arguments about which is better is down to preference really, where BW required far more micromanaging whereas StarCraft 2 allows for more economic quasi-automation to prioritize army micro.
Yeah just to clarify I think the main clash here from design perspective was that you could finally PLAY SC at a higher level (because getting dragoons up a ramp didn't take an engineering degree and piano lessons), but they just smashed in what felt like very inelegant solutions like injection to the question of "well why would you ever look at your base now?". They did smooth these out, but it still strikes me as a weaker point in the philosophy because it felt like it was thrown in just because there wasn't enough for micro masters to do, and while that is a legit skill test for a RTS, I and others felt the solution itself was poor.
StarCraft 2 is still regarded as the last great RTS game. It's used as an example of how great Blizzard used to be, not an example of how they started going wrong.
Ehhh i'm not the only one who sees it as the cliff they went off of.
SC2 had:
The worst blizzard writing yet outside of WoW (which again I think is what led to a lot of blizzards later decline as it taught them content volume can make as much money as quality content). Yes D3 then NOSEDIVES even harder from SC2's "this is just a boring action romance" to "this is objectively awful and shouldn't be here" nonsense.
The requirement to buy the game 3 times at FULL PRICE. Even today this would be seen as crazy/extreme. $180 for all 3 expansions, especially when the single player was a mess and the multiplayer was having "ups and downs" while competitors like Dota/League were basically free/free but with time sink didn't help.
I do agree it's probably the last great RTS I can think of (I wish Dawn of War could get its shit together, and CoH is arguably good if it wasn't a money mine), so to be clear I see SC2 as the B- from blizzards usual A+, and that's averaging out. I really can't overstate how the business decisions and the writing signaled to me that this was a company going off the cliff, and it's why I wasn't shocked when D3 was a fiasco in 8 directions.
Edit-
Oh shit I forgot EVO on my "helped grow esports" list, although the FGC is somewhat unique there and arguably has continued to be it's own little unique thing, but still worth mentioning on the list of "what made modern esports."
Also CoD and friends but I know a lot less about that.
I'd describe BW and Quake as the old style esports scene, and DOTA2 and LOL got their approaches from the groundwork StarCraft 2 specifically laid. SC2 brought esports worldwide to a popular...
That's giving SC2 a lot of credit for work done elsewhere. Broodwar set the stage in Korea far earlier, as did quake, and right around that time you've got things like Dota2 and LoL which i'd argue were MUCH more influence on modern esports in part because they captured a larger audience or viewership.
I'd describe BW and Quake as the old style esports scene, and DOTA2 and LOL got their approaches from the groundwork StarCraft 2 specifically laid. SC2 brought esports worldwide to a popular degree, it wasn't locked to Korea by KeSPA like BW was as we got many international high level tournaments in North America and Europe which grew exponentially and started bringing in other sports off the back of SC2's popularity. And then there were the technology advancements for esports which all centred around broadcasting and spreading StarCraft 2 and that has made the biggest difference in the spread of esports. For example, StarCraft 2 inspired Justin.TV to establish Warp Prism where multiple SC2 games could be watched at once and that became so popular that it turned into Twitch.tv and modern game streaming. Even the current tournaments for LOL owe a lot of their structure to the big StarCraft 2 tournaments, including their game commentating and replay structures.
Depends on how much money you throw at it, how much competition is in the niche, and how inertia you have going into it. To be clear while I do think they turned SC2 into a great competitive game eventually, if this was their first game out of the gate and it wasn't the sequel to BW with money being chucked at the prize pool it'd be one of those examples.
The notion that SC2 would have crashed and burned if it came out with any other name from any other studio is a tall claim. Of course it being a sequel and from 2009 Blizzard gave it a lot of credence to get started but I don't see how it's a given that it would be another esports flop on the level of all those forgettable, failed games. The issue I identify with all those failed esports games was that the gameplay just didn't allow enough variety and expression like someone could find in "real" sports, but StarCraft 2 (like its predecessor) allowed for enough creativity and style that players' personalities could be displayed via the gameplay. Beyond that, there still wasn't another RTS anywhere near its level of quality at the time. In that same era, we saw C&C implode under C&C4. SC2 was just the only option for RTS fans, of which there was still an active competitive esports scene, in 2009-2010. I think it says quite a bit that the most recent successful esport RTS is Age of Empires 2's remake.
I don't think your assessment of the meta's tracks with what I've heard from competitive SC2 friends, but I think that's mostly too far into the details to matter as yes I agree they go up and down (although how bad the swings are is something else where I think SC2 lacked). I believe the critical point thought is on launch and for the first couple of years SC2's meta was routinely, and correctly, criticized for being things like roach/marine medic death ball.
I honestly don't know how they could describe the first few years of StarCraft 2 that way. There were crazy strategies and plays happening even in the 2009 beta tournaments. The first few years was full of all kinds of changes, and insane new discoveries. The marine/medic deathball was an extremely early (and novice) strategy that was hard countered by banelings which the devs specifically designed as a deathball counter... until MarineKingPrime showed the world that the best counter to banelings were the marines themselves, to start splitting up marines and microing units into formations on the fly to mitigate the splash zones and out-DPS the banelings. It was never considered a good idea to death ball as Terran again. And that was just one example, there were many giant meta shifts as players discovered and showed off all kinds of creative new timings and strategies, like the Hellion drops, the Archon toilet, clever burrowing strategies, Infestor ambushes, and more. It was only near the end of WoL's lifespan where brood lord/infestor became a problem meta, and then something early in Heart of the Storm where Swarm Hosts were very annoying.
Funny enough, the remaining scene is currently reminiscing on that area for how dynamic and fast-changing it was as people discovered more and more of the game and players and teams had so much personality.
They did smooth these out, but it still strikes me as a weaker point in the philosophy because it felt like it was thrown in just because there wasn't enough for micro masters to do, and while that is a legit skill test for a RTS, I and others felt the solution itself was poor.
I think this was just a matter of time for discovery of opportunities to employ micro at opportune moments as StarCraft 2 was a wholly new game and more dissimilar to Brood War mechanically than people initially assumed. I don't know how related this is to the above but in my following of the scene since the launch of the game, a lot of the advances were discoveries in micromanagement possibilities, and that MarineKingPrime marine splitting baneling counter was the first earliest seismic shift in the entire way SC2 was played. It was purely a micro mechanic discovery. A lot of the biggest moments in the scene came out of great micro moments too. The worst moments of SC2's competitive meta was when micro was superseded by automatic stuff, which was the issue with broodlord/infestors and swarm hosts, and also Protoss deathballs when those could reach critical mass. StarCraft 2 is at its best when micro was important enough to make all the difference.
The worst blizzard writing yet outside of WoW (which again I think is what led to a lot of blizzards later decline as it taught them content volume can make as much money as quality content). Yes D3 then NOSEDIVES even harder from SC2's "this is just a boring action romance" to "this is objectively awful and shouldn't be here" nonsense.
Oh man, the writing and story really does suck. Huge disappointment.
The requirement to buy the game 3 times at FULL PRICE. Even today this would be seen as crazy/extreme. $180 for all 3 expansions, especially when the single player was a mess and the multiplayer was having "ups and downs" while competitors like Dota/League were basically free/free but with time sink didn't help.
Quick note: the expansions were not full price, they were US$40 on release. $140 for the full package at launch prices. Not much better, but the expansions were still expansion-priced despite having as much content as the base game each.
On one hand, yeah, it sucked. On the other, we really did get three full-fledged campaigns out of it and a ton of other things with each expansion. It wasn't as bad as initially feared when first announced it would basically be three different packages. I think ultimately it was better given how long it took to get all three out, and the fact that they were more than just expansions of old. But this was also the time period where free-to-play really took off and StarCraft 2 was caught in that storm while LoL was destroying HoN out of existence. We're not even at the end of this period as Blizzard is still going through this weird free/paid wringer with the Overwatch games.
But all games had their ups and downs with their metas too, that's not exclusive to SC2, and I think it's a sign of a healthy competitive game that such fluctuations are happening as it usually comes as a result of a push-pull between high-level players and game balance changes.
Oh shit I forgot EVO on my "helped grow esports" list, although the FGC is somewhat unique there and arguably has continued to be it's own little unique thing, but still worth mentioning on the list of "what made modern esports."
Also CoD and friends but I know a lot less about that.
The FGC also benefited from the tech changes and tournament attention StarCraft 2 brought (I remember attending a DreamHack where the FGC was included and they were very grateful), and COD is actually one of the games I had in mind as a "failed esport" since they could never make it as popular as Halo, letalone Counter-Strike. R6S was the first successful FPS esport since Counter-Strike GO and even that was something of a surprise to Ubisoft but that's just what good gameplay lends to. All COD attempts were stymied by how simplistic COD gameplay is at the end of the day, there's just no room for player expression or creativity.
Anyway, a lot of ink being spilled on how good of an esport game SC2 was but ultimately I just don't think it's currently remembered as the first failure of a game (on launch) from Blizzard. It was well-received and very popular, and the long tail it had is just not something that comes out of a game with a divisive or bad launch. I really think it is Diablo 3 that was Blizzard's first launch misstep as the Real-Money Auction House directly affected gameplay mechanics and the game had to be transformed quite a bit to recover from a very disappointing first couple years.
Vicarious Visions was absorbed into Blizzard with the specific task of developing a Diablo II remaster, which actually turned out to be pretty decent. It's more about bringing in developers with...
Vicarious Visions was absorbed into Blizzard with the specific task of developing a Diablo II remaster, which actually turned out to be pretty decent.
It's more about bringing in developers with the past experience of making skateboarding games.
Many VV devs were also working on other projects like Diablo IV. At least I know of one. They were absorbed and scattered across the company. I'm not too hopeful they got the band back together,...
Many VV devs were also working on other projects like Diablo IV. At least I know of one. They were absorbed and scattered across the company.
I'm not too hopeful they got the band back together, so to speak.
I played THPS 1 and 3 on N64 to hell and back, and got my hands on PS1 version of 2 through visits to a friend's house from time to time, but interestingly when the THPS1+2 remake came to the PS...
I played THPS 1 and 3 on N64 to hell and back, and got my hands on PS1 version of 2 through visits to a friend's house from time to time, but interestingly when the THPS1+2 remake came to the PS Plus Game Catalogue where I got the opportunity to try it without spending any money, I only really played the tutorial and then noodled around the first level and felt like I had my fill. Strange how that happens, right? While I hope this is every bit as good as I heard 1+2 was, I think this series will remain a relic of my past for which even a remake cannot ignite a spark of interest in me any longer. Sentimentally glad to hear they made it though.
I played THPS 1 - 3 to death back in the day, then a few years back replayed, and 100%'d, THPS 1 on my PSP and just this year started playing THPS 1 on my Miyoo Mini. So, of course, the THPS...
I played THPS 1 - 3 to death back in the day, then a few years back replayed, and 100%'d, THPS 1 on my PSP and just this year started playing THPS 1 on my Miyoo Mini.
So, of course, the THPS remakes were high on my list, until I realized I could just replay them any time. I've even got the original hardware and a Memcard Pro! I could play the game with wireless cloud saves from my PS1 to my Miyoo if I so choose.
So, while I did get a nostalgia hit from the Spyro remake, for some reason I never bothered getting the THPS remakes - I wish they'd just make a new one. It's an amazing 'portable' game. Hop in, two minute run, you're done. Doctor hasn't called you yet? Do another. Doctor calls you a minute into your run? At most you lose a minute of your progress.
Same feeling here! I was a 1 and 2 devotee on the PlayStation back in the day. I would finish all of the characters on THPS 2 then delete my save and start a new file so I could do it all over...
Same feeling here! I was a 1 and 2 devotee on the PlayStation back in the day. I would finish all of the characters on THPS 2 then delete my save and start a new file so I could do it all over again. I was that into the game.
When the remake came out, I tried playing it, got an immediate quick hit of great nostalgia, and then burnt out on the whole thing just as quickly. I actually forced myself to keep playing it for a couple more hours just because I felt like I should, but I ultimately had to admit that the magic was gone for me. I genuinely felt bad about not finishing the remake.
I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it (it’s technically a great remake!), but for some reason it didn’t click for me either.
THPS4 is where I really got into the series. Was a big fan of 1-3, of course, but 4 was essentially the first online game I ever played. For a few years in Highschool I'd spend all of my free time...
THPS4 is where I really got into the series. Was a big fan of 1-3, of course, but 4 was essentially the first online game I ever played. For a few years in Highschool I'd spend all of my free time (at least when the dial-up connection was available) playing 4 online. Ended up forming a small friend group that played together through 4, THUG, and THUG2. The group didn't survive the "next gen" jump when Wasteland came out, but a few of us have kept in touch through social media.
Also really enjoyed the 1+2 remake. The magic of online play didn't really pan out for me, but I had a lot of fun playing the old levels and trying to find skate lines for scoring a million+.
I'm cautiously optimistic. My hope is it's either Toys for Bob (developers of Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure), Infinity Ward (former Neversoft devs) or Blizzard (former Vicarious Visions devs) working on this.
Just as long as they don't bring Robomodo back from the dead to royally fuck up another Tony Hawk's game.
Also I really hope we get a comprehensive soundtrack collection from both games.
Why are we hopeful blizzard will product anything of worth? This is a serious question as I wrote them off around the time of D3/Starcraft 2 as no longer being anything close to what they once were, and the most recent things I can think of are the WC3 "remaster" and "OW2", which uh....yeah.
The WC3 remaster was the final nail in the coffin for me wanting to support Blizzard. I'd been off WoW for years due to not having the time to play and feeling like a few hours a month weren't worth the subscription. I was looking forward to the remaster as WC3, especially the custom games, is the game that I played constantly for years.
Seeing them not give the remaster its due felt like such a slap in the face, and made me glad I didn't preorder it. I guess Activision-Blizzard being a small independent company couldn't afford to invest too many resources into the project /s.
Vicarious Visions were the ones who did THPS 1+2, which was excellent.
Also StarCraft 2 was excellent? It wasn't at all as divisive as Diablo 3.
SC2 was the start of the rot that WoW helped cause:
The story was definitely not nearly as good as the Brood War games, but the gameplay issues are not as dire as you're making them out to be. StarCraft 2 has had one of the most successful esports scenes ever, and is the originator of the modern esports scene. This doesn't happen if the gameplay isn't top tier, as many other failed esports titles have found out since 2010 when SC2 came out.
It's had its ups and downs over the past 15 years but they're just that: ups and downs. Every successful longrunning competitive scene has gone that way. It hasn't been one big long-running quagmire of dismal competitiveness. The infestor-broodlord era was probably the worst of it and it's long in the past, gone as soon as the first expansion released. The deathball issue is Protoss specific and even that was dealt with a while ago. There are balance patches affecting competitive gameplay even to this day.
Otherwise the mechanics were different than Brood War's but that's fine. A lot of the arguments about which is better is down to preference really, where BW required far more micromanaging whereas StarCraft 2 allows for more economic quasi-automation to prioritize army micro.
StarCraft 2 is still regarded as the last great RTS game. It's used as an example of how great Blizzard used to be, not an example of how they started going wrong. Especially after all this time, the amount of naysayers have died down once they saw what happened with Diablo 3 and the rest of Blizzard's output and went back to realize that the issues around StarCraft 2's first few years were basically just complaints about it not being Brood War or having some things that needed ironing out much like all their other well-regarded games had, not fundamental issues that capped the game's quality with design that incentivized the wrong things.
That's giving SC2 a lot of credit for work done elsewhere. Broodwar set the stage in Korea far earlier, as did quake, and right around that time you've got things like Dota2 and LoL which i'd argue were MUCH more influence on modern esports in part because they captured a larger audience or viewership.
Depends on how much money you throw at it, how much competition is in the niche, and how inertia you have going into it. To be clear while I do think they turned SC2 into a great competitive game eventually, if this was their first game out of the gate and it wasn't the sequel to BW with money being chucked at the prize pool it'd be one of those examples.
I don't think your assessment of the meta's tracks with what I've heard from competitive SC2 friends, but I think that's mostly too far into the details to matter as yes I agree they go up and down (although how bad the swings are is something else where I think SC2 lacked). I believe the critical point thought is on launch and for the first couple of years SC2's meta was routinely, and correctly, criticized for being things like roach/marine medic death ball.
Yeah just to clarify I think the main clash here from design perspective was that you could finally PLAY SC at a higher level (because getting dragoons up a ramp didn't take an engineering degree and piano lessons), but they just smashed in what felt like very inelegant solutions like injection to the question of "well why would you ever look at your base now?". They did smooth these out, but it still strikes me as a weaker point in the philosophy because it felt like it was thrown in just because there wasn't enough for micro masters to do, and while that is a legit skill test for a RTS, I and others felt the solution itself was poor.
Ehhh i'm not the only one who sees it as the cliff they went off of.
SC2 had:
The worst blizzard writing yet outside of WoW (which again I think is what led to a lot of blizzards later decline as it taught them content volume can make as much money as quality content). Yes D3 then NOSEDIVES even harder from SC2's "this is just a boring action romance" to "this is objectively awful and shouldn't be here" nonsense.
The requirement to buy the game 3 times at FULL PRICE. Even today this would be seen as crazy/extreme. $180 for all 3 expansions, especially when the single player was a mess and the multiplayer was having "ups and downs" while competitors like Dota/League were basically free/free but with time sink didn't help.
I do agree it's probably the last great RTS I can think of (I wish Dawn of War could get its shit together, and CoH is arguably good if it wasn't a money mine), so to be clear I see SC2 as the B- from blizzards usual A+, and that's averaging out. I really can't overstate how the business decisions and the writing signaled to me that this was a company going off the cliff, and it's why I wasn't shocked when D3 was a fiasco in 8 directions.
Edit-
Oh shit I forgot EVO on my "helped grow esports" list, although the FGC is somewhat unique there and arguably has continued to be it's own little unique thing, but still worth mentioning on the list of "what made modern esports."
Also CoD and friends but I know a lot less about that.
I'd describe BW and Quake as the old style esports scene, and DOTA2 and LOL got their approaches from the groundwork StarCraft 2 specifically laid. SC2 brought esports worldwide to a popular degree, it wasn't locked to Korea by KeSPA like BW was as we got many international high level tournaments in North America and Europe which grew exponentially and started bringing in other sports off the back of SC2's popularity. And then there were the technology advancements for esports which all centred around broadcasting and spreading StarCraft 2 and that has made the biggest difference in the spread of esports. For example, StarCraft 2 inspired Justin.TV to establish Warp Prism where multiple SC2 games could be watched at once and that became so popular that it turned into Twitch.tv and modern game streaming. Even the current tournaments for LOL owe a lot of their structure to the big StarCraft 2 tournaments, including their game commentating and replay structures.
The notion that SC2 would have crashed and burned if it came out with any other name from any other studio is a tall claim. Of course it being a sequel and from 2009 Blizzard gave it a lot of credence to get started but I don't see how it's a given that it would be another esports flop on the level of all those forgettable, failed games. The issue I identify with all those failed esports games was that the gameplay just didn't allow enough variety and expression like someone could find in "real" sports, but StarCraft 2 (like its predecessor) allowed for enough creativity and style that players' personalities could be displayed via the gameplay. Beyond that, there still wasn't another RTS anywhere near its level of quality at the time. In that same era, we saw C&C implode under C&C4. SC2 was just the only option for RTS fans, of which there was still an active competitive esports scene, in 2009-2010. I think it says quite a bit that the most recent successful esport RTS is Age of Empires 2's remake.
I honestly don't know how they could describe the first few years of StarCraft 2 that way. There were crazy strategies and plays happening even in the 2009 beta tournaments. The first few years was full of all kinds of changes, and insane new discoveries. The marine/medic deathball was an extremely early (and novice) strategy that was hard countered by banelings which the devs specifically designed as a deathball counter... until MarineKingPrime showed the world that the best counter to banelings were the marines themselves, to start splitting up marines and microing units into formations on the fly to mitigate the splash zones and out-DPS the banelings. It was never considered a good idea to death ball as Terran again. And that was just one example, there were many giant meta shifts as players discovered and showed off all kinds of creative new timings and strategies, like the Hellion drops, the Archon toilet, clever burrowing strategies, Infestor ambushes, and more. It was only near the end of WoL's lifespan where brood lord/infestor became a problem meta, and then something early in Heart of the Storm where Swarm Hosts were very annoying.
Funny enough, the remaining scene is currently reminiscing on that area for how dynamic and fast-changing it was as people discovered more and more of the game and players and teams had so much personality.
I think this was just a matter of time for discovery of opportunities to employ micro at opportune moments as StarCraft 2 was a wholly new game and more dissimilar to Brood War mechanically than people initially assumed. I don't know how related this is to the above but in my following of the scene since the launch of the game, a lot of the advances were discoveries in micromanagement possibilities, and that MarineKingPrime marine splitting baneling counter was the first earliest seismic shift in the entire way SC2 was played. It was purely a micro mechanic discovery. A lot of the biggest moments in the scene came out of great micro moments too. The worst moments of SC2's competitive meta was when micro was superseded by automatic stuff, which was the issue with broodlord/infestors and swarm hosts, and also Protoss deathballs when those could reach critical mass. StarCraft 2 is at its best when micro was important enough to make all the difference.
Oh man, the writing and story really does suck. Huge disappointment.
Quick note: the expansions were not full price, they were US$40 on release. $140 for the full package at launch prices. Not much better, but the expansions were still expansion-priced despite having as much content as the base game each.
On one hand, yeah, it sucked. On the other, we really did get three full-fledged campaigns out of it and a ton of other things with each expansion. It wasn't as bad as initially feared when first announced it would basically be three different packages. I think ultimately it was better given how long it took to get all three out, and the fact that they were more than just expansions of old. But this was also the time period where free-to-play really took off and StarCraft 2 was caught in that storm while LoL was destroying HoN out of existence. We're not even at the end of this period as Blizzard is still going through this weird free/paid wringer with the Overwatch games.
But all games had their ups and downs with their metas too, that's not exclusive to SC2, and I think it's a sign of a healthy competitive game that such fluctuations are happening as it usually comes as a result of a push-pull between high-level players and game balance changes.
The FGC also benefited from the tech changes and tournament attention StarCraft 2 brought (I remember attending a DreamHack where the FGC was included and they were very grateful), and COD is actually one of the games I had in mind as a "failed esport" since they could never make it as popular as Halo, letalone Counter-Strike. R6S was the first successful FPS esport since Counter-Strike GO and even that was something of a surprise to Ubisoft but that's just what good gameplay lends to. All COD attempts were stymied by how simplistic COD gameplay is at the end of the day, there's just no room for player expression or creativity.
Anyway, a lot of ink being spilled on how good of an esport game SC2 was but ultimately I just don't think it's currently remembered as the first failure of a game (on launch) from Blizzard. It was well-received and very popular, and the long tail it had is just not something that comes out of a game with a divisive or bad launch. I really think it is Diablo 3 that was Blizzard's first launch misstep as the Real-Money Auction House directly affected gameplay mechanics and the game had to be transformed quite a bit to recover from a very disappointing first couple years.
Vicarious Visions was absorbed into Blizzard with the specific task of developing a Diablo II remaster, which actually turned out to be pretty decent.
It's more about bringing in developers with the past experience of making skateboarding games.
Many VV devs were also working on other projects like Diablo IV. At least I know of one. They were absorbed and scattered across the company.
I'm not too hopeful they got the band back together, so to speak.
I played THPS 1 and 3 on N64 to hell and back, and got my hands on PS1 version of 2 through visits to a friend's house from time to time, but interestingly when the THPS1+2 remake came to the PS Plus Game Catalogue where I got the opportunity to try it without spending any money, I only really played the tutorial and then noodled around the first level and felt like I had my fill. Strange how that happens, right? While I hope this is every bit as good as I heard 1+2 was, I think this series will remain a relic of my past for which even a remake cannot ignite a spark of interest in me any longer. Sentimentally glad to hear they made it though.
I played THPS 1 - 3 to death back in the day, then a few years back replayed, and 100%'d, THPS 1 on my PSP and just this year started playing THPS 1 on my Miyoo Mini.
So, of course, the THPS remakes were high on my list, until I realized I could just replay them any time. I've even got the original hardware and a Memcard Pro! I could play the game with wireless cloud saves from my PS1 to my Miyoo if I so choose.
So, while I did get a nostalgia hit from the Spyro remake, for some reason I never bothered getting the THPS remakes - I wish they'd just make a new one. It's an amazing 'portable' game. Hop in, two minute run, you're done. Doctor hasn't called you yet? Do another. Doctor calls you a minute into your run? At most you lose a minute of your progress.
Same feeling here! I was a 1 and 2 devotee on the PlayStation back in the day. I would finish all of the characters on THPS 2 then delete my save and start a new file so I could do it all over again. I was that into the game.
When the remake came out, I tried playing it, got an immediate quick hit of great nostalgia, and then burnt out on the whole thing just as quickly. I actually forced myself to keep playing it for a couple more hours just because I felt like I should, but I ultimately had to admit that the magic was gone for me. I genuinely felt bad about not finishing the remake.
I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with it (it’s technically a great remake!), but for some reason it didn’t click for me either.
THPS4 is where I really got into the series. Was a big fan of 1-3, of course, but 4 was essentially the first online game I ever played. For a few years in Highschool I'd spend all of my free time (at least when the dial-up connection was available) playing 4 online. Ended up forming a small friend group that played together through 4, THUG, and THUG2. The group didn't survive the "next gen" jump when Wasteland came out, but a few of us have kept in touch through social media.
Also really enjoyed the 1+2 remake. The magic of online play didn't really pan out for me, but I had a lot of fun playing the old levels and trying to find skate lines for scoring a million+.