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+--- Thread: The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) (/showthread.php?tid=7039)
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 20th April 2017
Yes, a slightly updated version of Starcraft, with its Brood War addon, is now free as of the just-released patch 1.18! It's kind of a promo for the Starcraft Remaster that Blizzard is going to release (for money) this summer, but still it's a pretty nice thing to do. Unfortunately for those of us who have owned the game forever you will need to download the new version and run that in order to play the patched game, as it requires a new install due to the updated menu interface, but once installed it works just fine, and the menus, particularly in Battle.net, definitely look better now; the old, sort of broken on modern OSes BNet interface, with its overlapping text glitches and all, is gone in favor of one that actually looks decent. It's a nice improvement. There are some other minor bug fixes in the new patch as well, and they added one new feature, real Observer support with separate slots, instead of observers having to take up some of the eight player slots.
On the other hand though, there's one problem with this: you now cannot play online multiplayer without this new version, which, since it has those updates, is not going to run on old computers that could previously run the game just fine but now are stuck running it offline-only -- the new version apparently requires more CPU power than the original release, an actual graphics card and not just integrated Intel graphics, and BNet might require an OS newer than XP, instead of running fine on anything from Win95 and up? It's not clear since there aren't system requirements. I should try this on my Vista computer and see what happens. Fixing BNet for modern computers is great, but it's unfortunate that to do that they broke it for old machines, and don't have an option to use either interface depending on system power. Ah well.
I actually played a little SC a few weeks ago, and comparing that to this, the free release sure has gotten a lot more people onto SC BNet, as you'd expect. I wonder how long it'll last... it's still nice, though! But it reminds me, as much as SC is better than WC3, WC3's BNet interface and featureset is better, both in its more powerful map editor, and in added features such as auto-matchmaking, which is much simpler than having to find something in the games-open list as you have to do here. Ah well, it's still the best game ever regardless. :)
You can get the new version either by trying to log on to BNet with an original copy of SC, which will prompt you to install and download the new version, or from the website, where you can also find information about the upcoming Remaster, which will have the same gameplay but all redone in a much higher resolution. The images you can slide between the two versions are interesting, and the new one sure is much higher resolution. Does it look better? I'm not sure about that, I'll need to see more... SC has always looked how it does, so it's kind of weird to suddenly see this highly detailed version of it, you know? We'll see. (I also hope they add auto-matchmaking in the remaster, that'd be nice... so long as SC/WC3-style UMS/Custom support is in, but I am not too hopeful there given how SC2 does things. Who knows at this point.)
It's been a while since I've played much SC, and I never was any good so I'm sure I'm even worse now, but it's still the best game ever made no question.
Site for info on the remaster: https://starcraft.com/en-us/
1.18 full download (PC/Mac): https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20754425295
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - Dark Jaguar - 20th April 2017
Me personally, Starcraft isn't even in my top 25. I mean, I like it, and it's one of the best RTSes of all time, but best game ever made? I dunno, I guess part of the problem is I have always sucked at the RTS genre anyway. It's the only genre where a legitimate measure of a player's skill is "button clicks per second", and frankly I just can't scroll and click nearly as fast as... well anyone else on Battle.net at any one time if past experience is any guide. I guess this comes across as "I suck at it therefore I hate it", but that's really not what I'm trying to say. I just could never really get into the genre as much as others, and my lack of skill plays a big part in that.
However, it's good to see they're still updating the game, and with it free, that'll help with people who never played it before. I primarily play these things for their single player campaigns, which I do a lot better at, so I can at least recommend it for that. It's got a pretty interesting story. I mean, it's kinda cliche by today's standards, and a lot of the most interesting story bits are in the manual, but it's still a pretty fun ride with generally likable characters.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 21st April 2017
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - Great Rumbler - 26th April 2017
Diablo 2 is better.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 26th April 2017
Diablo 2 was a lot of fun for a few weeks but doesn't have very good replay value. (Unless you're the type who loves loot, which I of course am very much not.)
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 16th August 2017
So yeah I got this Tuesday, just a day after its release. At only $15 getting it was an easy decision, and it's still the same amazing game I remember! This Remaster really is just Starcraft with a visual upgrade and auto-matchmaking added in, nothing else has changed, but I at least am fine with that. Sure, Starcraft is an extremely difficult game I've never been any good at, and I may be even worse now than I was 10 or more years ago because APM speed often seems to decline after your mid 20s, but it's amazing anyway.
It would be nice to win once in a while, though. I'm up to six or seven straight losses now in that new auto-matchmaking ranked mode, and no wins. Ah well, I'm having fun anyway. UMS (Custom) maps are still here too of course, and that stuff is as varied and fun as ever... tower defense has always been a favorite of mine, particularly.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 23rd August 2017
So my record is "up" to 3-14 now. This is the kind of reason why I mostly moved over to UMS games back when I was playing this game years ago, but while those are awesome Warcraft III has more options in its multiplayer that I really like. I mean, in versus and such SC is still the best game even if I'm terrible, and the single player campaign is my favorite in the genre, but UMS? It's great... but WC3 can do more. Most SC tower defense games have the players die if even one enemy leaks through, for example; this makes things really difficult compared to WC3, where you almost always have a lives system. In SC it's also much harder or impossible to have towers that do effects like Slow, Ice, things like that, which are great things to have in TD. WC3 allows for passwords, which are neat in some of the RPG maps, on top of its leveling system of course. In things like this, in-game interfaces (for how you upgrade things and such), and more, the kinds of solutions SC maps have can be interesting but often are a bit clumsier than WC3's are.
So, my favorite kinds of SC maps in UMS right now are probably things that SC does better than WC3, such as the simple but always fun Zone Control or other maps that make good use of bunkers. Those are great.
Now, I haven't played WC3 much in a long time either, but this has kind of always been my opinion on these games -- WC3 is the better multiplayer game, but SC is the better single player game. I thought that WC3's multiplayer was so disappointing compared to SC's that that made up for the slightly improved multiplayer, which is why SC is my favorite game overall. And on that note even if my record is terrible I'm having a lot of fun playing the Ranked mode. This game is still so amazing...
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 31st August 2017
Well, two things. First, shortly after I made that last post, Blizzard changed how they're counting wins. At first Remastered only counted a win as a win, but this meant that if your opponent disconnected (from the internet) during the match then you would be denied a win. They've fixed this, so now your record counts disconnects as wins, which is only fair. Oddly though in the list of games you have played in your player profile they still are listed as no-decision matches, obut they count as a win where it matters, in your record. I had several games where my opponent disconnected when they were obviously losing already, so this was a good change.
Otherwise, yes, I'm still playing a lot of this game. My record is now about 15-39 I believe, so it's not good, but I win once in a while at least, and that's nice. SC is still so addictive! And the graphics are great; it really looks like Starcraft but higher resolution, and that is perfect.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 5th September 2017
25-52. I am definitely hooked again even if I lose a majority of the time.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - A Black Falcon - 23rd September 2017
Well, I'm now 43-82, so I continue to win about a third of games. And yes I'm still hooked and playing at least one game almost every day.
The best game ever made is now free (& Remaster is coming) - Sacred Jellybean - 2nd October 2017
DJ makes a good point, RTSs ARE pretty dull. Gonna have to skip paragraphs of precise analysis and go with that.
Best game ever? Uh. I could maybe give a top 10. Silent Hill's probably in there somewhere. Hey, is that a taco truck? *walks away*