So more than 10 years ago Blizzard came out with Starcraft and the world rejoiced in RTS bliss. Some of my fondest memories of childhood came LANing Starcraft in my friend's basement. I remember the first time I played Starcraft and was just blown away by the fact that the little pictures were moving for the units portraits. Eventually though, as with most games, we all got tired of it and moved on to something else. Then came Warcraft 3, which again, blew us all away. It seemed that Blizzard was in the forefront of innovating genres that they helped solidify in the first place. It was that innovation from Warcraft 3 that kept me so enthralled with it. While not as big of game on the international tournament scene as Starcraft, my friends and I still play Warcraft 3 to this day. With the announcement of Starcraft 2 I expected this same level of innovative design that came from Warcraft 2 - Starcraft and from Starcraft - Warcraft 3, what I got instead was a painted over original Starcraft with a few new units, and old favorites stripped away. Essentially what I saw, was a more expensive expansion pack. I'll admit, I'm biased towards the ideas of Heroes in my RTS game. I love the combination of RPG and RTS, so the fact that they didn't add Heroes into Starcraft was a little upsetting. I can let that slide though, as I understand that a lot of people don't enjoy having Heroe units. Fine. The next thing that was really upsetting was the fact that there was no 4th race. 11 years. 11 years people have been waiting for this game and you don't give us a 4th race? Some Xel Naga, some hybrid protoss zergs, SOMETHING. That to me was the real blow. I kept my hopes up though. I trusted Blizzard because they hadn't let me down yet. I went to the website, checked out their updates on units, watched all the videos I could and tried to keep my excitement up. I was doing a good job of keeping my hype up for Starcraft until I started playing Dawn of War II. I was blown away, here to me was the true successor to Warcraft 3. They were able to take the RTS genre and do away with the tedious aspects and add focus more on the combat. While the game isn't perfect, the ideas that they planted were genius to me and added a whole new experiance. I honestly feel like a kid again when I play the game, thinking back on fond LAN party memories. It also left a sour taste for Starcraft 2 in my mouth. Here was physical proof that you could do more to a genre while keeping it rooted in, well, it's roots. Like I said though, I'm a sucker for Hero units, which Dawn of War II has. Even if you take out the Hero units though, the game still has enough fresh and genre defining ideas that make it a gem. Even just the simple idea of units taking cover on destructable environments gets me excited. I haven't played Starcraft 2 so all this ranting could be misplaced and I could be proven wrong as soon as I touch it. From what I've seen though it just seems like Blizzard is afraid of doing something different and put some new paint on an old model. Maybe I'm also wrong for singleing out Blizzard as well. Take a look at the new Street Fighter. Old model new paint. Is this the standard that the industry is going towards now? Maybe people think it's worth it though. Maybe they're willing to pay 50, 60$ for a game if it looks new and has some minor tweaks that could have been implemented in an expansion years ago. I truly hope not though because it's nice to see companies try out new things and experiment with fresh ideas for genres that can quickly become stale. Even if some of those ideas don't work out, at least they're trying and I have a lot more respect for a company that tries to innovate something than for a company that tries to sell me an 11 year old car as a new one.
Don't even get me started on Diablo III.