Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Starcraft Trailer Thingy

As a fan of RTS games (though not much of a player of them), I took note when I recently learned that there would be a sequel to Starcraft (now out), the RTS everybody remembers (as opposed to Total Annihilation, an influential but poorly known game, which for its age had a far superior, even revolutionary engine*). I've never played old Starcraft and I'm not likely to try out the new one unless I get a new computer (RTS games tend to be really hard on computers), but I have to admit, I'm impressed by what I've seen.



My sister was impressed with the trailer too (note that my own judgment was not based on the trailer but on studying informative websites, because I'm a nerd like that), despite emphatically not being an RTS fan, though her admiration for it was expressed through the phrase "I'd watch it if it was a movie."

*Back in the day, when the Total Annihilation community was still young and vigorous, admitting to liking Starcraft bordered on social suicide in some circles. Well, not really, but you'd take a lot of flak. TA fans liked (and still like) TA because it had a far greater variety of units, was simple to modify, and had a physics engine, whereas Starcraft had a small group of units to keep things simple, could only be sloppily hacked, and had a combat system that ignored physics completely. It's that last point that particularly sticks in TAers' craws-these days they accept the other stuff as probably being useful and/or important and/or unable to be helped.

-Signing off.

No comments: