Starcraft (2) Sucks

It's been a while, but I can't allow myself to miss the opportunity to rag on starcraft and the recent sequel: Starcraft 2; Wind of the Fanboys.

Before I really start to lay it in, let me say that both starcraft games are good strategy games and both have pretty good storylines with SC2 giving us the practically trademarked amazing cutscenes that we expect of Blizzard...

But here's the question: is it fun?

And I came out of playing the single player with this answer "meh".

I was driven to finish the campaign because of the cutscenes and the story... but I'll never touch it again for several reasons...

1. Achievements blow
   
2. The strategy for every mission is "Here's a new unit for your arsenal, build crap tons of it and WIN!" with few exceptions
3. The "branching storylines" claim is, as always, a plate of bullshit and chips.

Hey, games industry, you want to give us a true "branching" storyline? That means a story that can have remarkably different endings. Having one or two facets of the story slightly different does not count! Oh look, I chose mission B instead of mission A, I HAS GREEN BOOTS INSTEAD OF BLUE!!! GO ME!!!

*sigh*

A lot of people have been drooling over this game, and the reason they invariably give me is "SC was the best strategy game ever", when I ask why that is I get this response "It's perfectly balanced". All I have to say to that is zerg rush; and SC2 appears to have taken the safe route when it comes to sequels and pretty well transplanted the units and game system from it's predecessor almost unchanged, although they did throw in a few new units and the system has been tweaked within an inch of it's life...

I'm not interested.

Of course, you might have heard of the stupid rearrangement of battle net that apparently Activision has pushed on players, I have no comment because I'm not playing this online. If playing the original taught me anything it's that some korean kid will be my first challenger and he'll be sporting top end units while I'm still building my first barracks. Fuck no!

(and yes, I know about the ranking system and I don't care :P)

However, there is a glimmer of hope: mods. Apparently you can do quite a lot with user made content, this is something I haven't even looked at but a friend told me that you can get complete mods that will turn your SC2 into Warcraft 3, american football and all sorts.

Might be worth a look... but Blizzard, next time take a bloody risk and shake it up a little, eh?

Oh, and anyone looking for a GOOD strategy game, I point towards the amusing Dawn Of War... which reminds me, I should pick up DoW2 sometime.