I'm not enthusiastic about "remastered" games, so when Blizzard announced when they were remastering StarCraft, I was suspicious about it. I know that an incredible amount of these remasters are for games that haven't even been out for 10 years. The original StarCraft is like 20. That's four console lives! Okay, fine, I guess I'll take it.
This review has been a long time in coming. That makes sense, because this nicely concludes a story that began to be told almost two decades ago. Like the last review, I wanted this one some time bounce around my head, and it also feels like yanking off a stubborn band aid. I marathoned this series from its beginnings on the Twentieth Century through to the end of this. And to meditate on it even more, I did it again!
Since I have expressed my thoughts on the first installment, I figured that it is time to talk about the Zerg. It's something that you need to talk to your kids about. Though they might have thoughts about experimenting with them, Zerg are very dangerous. While Zerg abuse is not a top killer, once addicted, the subject's fate is certain.
Recently, the first StarCraft 2 expansion came out. That has drawn me back into playing not just that, but the original, too. I have been reflecting a bit on a few things.
Recently, GOG started selling Diablo. Soon after, it added Hellfire to the deal. I was aware that Diablo had that expansion, but it wasn't great, and was largely forgotten. I'm not sure why GOG has bundled it, but I'm cool with it being there, because I respect complete collections. Although I've played Diablo, I don't have nor plan on playing Diablo Hellfire.
I heeded the call of nostalgia today, and played some StarCraft: Brood War.
Some time ago, I asked a friend if I could borrow a few games to play on Twentieth Century. Even though he was born in the latter 90s, he's a big fan of 90s games from id and Blizzard. He presented a few Quakes and WarCrafts. I tried playing WarCraft 1, but a few missions in, I got annoyed by the lack of build queues and a 4 unit select limit. I got a bit further in WarCraft 2, but sometimes ran out of resources before getting an army off the ground. Back in the bad old days, I had downloaded and played the WarCraft III demo quite a bit, and I remember liking it a lot better. While the base Reign of Chaos game installed and ran fine on Twentieth Century, the Frozen Throne expansion refused to install, complaining about hardware requirements, even though it ostensibly met them. So I installed these on my main rig, and this article is about the originals; not about the new Reforged remaster.
If you are employed in the gaming industry: LISTEN UP!
Even though winter is a mostly no show right now, I still stayed indoors. I got the paid DLC for Witcher 3. I decided to have another strategy break, before heading into more labryinthine open world role playing. I wanted to take a retro trip with this, so I flipped the switch (several times) on Twentieth Century.
Back when I first wrote about Supreme Commander, I noted that its sequel shares little of what I liked about it. Back in the day, being so pumped about SupCom, I got hyped for SupCom 2 after reading previews in PCGamer. I probably preordered this, too. I was a fool.
Over the past few weeks, I have been replaying Supreme Commander, specifically the Forged Alliance expansion. There's just something about massive forces fighting over continents, making things explode like nukes, that never loses its charm.
Several months ago, I was pondering about the good old days, as one is wont to do. But it wasn't good enough, I wanted to define exactly when this was.
This is just a note telling you that Sam Ebertz fails. Not only did he end his podcast without so much as a "last episode" episode, he was on the gadget show and totally wussied out on the "BLACKBERRY!"
For the sake of nostalgia, I decided to reinstall FarCry again, even though I have reviewed some bastardized (but fun) sequel and its sort of successor. This is a game that I have no doubt played for hundreds of hours, alongside SimCity 2000, StarCraft, and later, Oblivion. The game is from 2004, the great FPS year. As such, it predates PC DVD-only releases, so the game comes on 5 CDs instead. Holy crap! The game is giving me grief before I've started it.
As I may have leaked on my latest podcast, I am attempting to rebuild an old computer so I can relive the 1990s. I want to install Windows 98 on it, and play some old games on it from time to time. I don't plan on using it any more than that (maybe a perverse desire to run other things from the time). I had some stuff lying around, and I need to buy some more.
There comes a time in every young man's life to remember his past. Though others may mock him and claim that it wasn't that long ago, he still holds it dear. It may even be desirable to reclaim relics of that past before they become lost, rare, or financially unavailable. And so it is.
Oh look, an old game that's appropriate for Halloween!
Shadowrun: Dragonfall was originally DLC for Shadowrun Returns, but got turned into an expand-alone game. The game mechanics are mostly identical between the two (from what I noticed). However, Returns is set in Seattle, but Dragonfall is set in Berlin. The two have zero story continuity, aside from two characters appearing in both (not even your own), and they don't refer to anything in Seattle.
I continue to enjoy my free Xbox Game Pass trial. Halo Wars is a Halo-based real time strategy game. However, since this was made in the dark days where 360 was heavily pushed, this was designed with controllers in mind. In some way, it's a miracle that this was even released on PC, unlike every other Halo game at the time. Although Halo was originally conceived as an RTS, this has no relation to it.
Grey Goo is a real time strategy game that sneaked out in 2015 from Petroglyph. I hadn't heard of them, so I looked those guys up. Former Westwood Studios people that needed somewhere to go after EA shut them down, so they founded Petroglyph. I haven't played any of the Red Alert series, so I can't tell if this is a spiritual successor.