I think you should be aware that game reviews, unlike music/movie reviews, are generally FAIL nowadays. Too much influence by advertisers to rate things highly. Too many letters written to sites and magazines pressuring them to rate things highly. SC2 already falls under the first category due to the massive ad spammage over any media source with the slightest reference to gaming.

"Are these three separate games? How much will all of these games cost?
The StarCraft II Trilogy will consist of the base StarCraft II game and two expansion sets. Pricing on these games hasn't been determined at this early stage; however, we've always charged an appropriate price for the content the player receives, and we will continue to release high-quality games that offer great value."
Er, Blizzard clearly failed at this. BFBC2 costs RM129 at retail, SC2 costs RM248 (both at normal price). The first has lots of official dedicated servers in SEA, the second has Bnet SEA. But either IAH, Blizzard and/or Craptivi$ion thinks the extra RM50 is for the higher bandwidth costs in SG, whereas EA gives you the same package and can still profit by selling it for less than in the US.

And as far as I know JackAlvins does actual game development IRL.

Anyway OP,
I would say hold on your horses till SEA owners get US client access. If they seem to have no issues with playing games on the US, get the US version then. Otherwise sit it out till they roll out a SC2 bundle together with Heart of the Swarm zerg expansion or later. SC2 is simply overpriced as it is, and right now the hype wagon is clouding the judgment of too many gamers.

Played on a friend's copy, here's my tl;dr opinions:

Single player: 6.5/10
Gameplay 4.5/5, missions are well designed. Friend tells em there's no kill-em-all long big battle missions like Omega in SC:BW though...
Story 2/10 (granted I only played half of it but the story is piss-poor compared to SC1 and WC3)

Multiplayer and Battle.net: 4/10, Bnet 2.0 is still worse than 1.0 despite the marginal improvements here and there

Weight:
IAH Games publishes SEA SC2, 0/10 for SC2 SEA edition. Go look up IAH's history with screwing gamers over time and time again in Singapore.

Edit: seems like frags here has the same opinions as I do: http://malaysian-gamer.blogspot.com/2010/0...ofiteering.html

This post has been edited by yimingwuzere: Aug 4 2010, 12:00 PM

AFAIK the only limited edition Blizzard game worth RM800 or more is the original WoW limited edition. The rest are too common compared to that.

But AFAIK if thousands of gamers are willing to get their butts screwed over for SC2 at the price of two games with long multiplayer replayability, surely there's a fool who'd pay RM800 for the CE.

I was referring to the SEA edition so if you bought the US edition then I apologize. If not then I hope buyer's remorse doesn't get you because in most cases if you pay too much for something it certainly will.

This post has been edited by yimingwuzere: Aug 4 2010, 12:15 PM

Because it sets a precedent where games go up in price with no tangible improvement of quality or content to gamers if gamers choose to buy these games.

MW2 -> 60 USD for a PC game with no Sony/Microsoft console tax. Yet many people bought it. What happened next? Assassin's Creed 2 PC 60 USD. Splinter Cell US$60. And on Youbeli.com i see craptivi$ion's Singularity at RM220. If a popular game sells well despite the price gouging, the rest will follow.

This post has been edited by yimingwuzere: Aug 4 2010, 12:24 PM

1) If you're talking about the so-called 'boycotters' of Modern Warfare 2 in that steam group all playing MW2, then yes. In this case, no.

2) If you read what I've been saying so far, the bulk of my complaints are directed at the SEA version.

1) Comparing apples to oranges... can you compare this to other games instead?

2) You obviously do selective reading on posts, please reread each post in the topic.

3) I agree with "one man's meat is another man's poison". The point I'm driving at is, game companies nowadays have too much influence over reviewers, with reviewers pressured to give good scores based on the game's heavy advertising on their sites, and threatening letters, etc.

4) I'm sorry you can't find any excuses to justify the SEA edition being so overpriced compared to other multiplayer-centric AAA titles. Too bad. And BFBC2 doesn't come with bullshit DRM like Spore, so why should I complain? EA was hated only because they pushed they were pushing that DRM nonsense that punished legitimate buyers back in 2008.

5) Activision also owns Blizzard. Activision can call the shots on marketing and prices, even if they said they'd give free rein to Blizzard over game development. Fanboy all you want, this thread shows that fanboys (who blindly support whatever their idols throw out regardless of quality) will buy the game and think it's good no matter how much they pay for less compared to its predecessors...

The MW2 boycott failed, that's why gamers are now getting screwed in the butt by inflated prices. EA scored a coup by catering to the needs of PC players, so what? They're providing what Activision refused to provide to gamers, that's competition for you in a capitalist economy. They aren't holy though (eg. C&C4) nor did I ever say they are, I just said the whole BFBC2 package is a sound one that caters to the PC gamer community well and it's position being usually higher than MW2 in Steam's top sellers list is testament to that.

1. Neither SC2 nor BFBC2 are MMOGs and therefore don't use a MMOG payment system. On the PC platform there's no XBL subscription, those services died out years ago.

2. Maybe you should also question why some music artistes advice their fans to pirate their albums.

3. You quoted its average score, not the actual sound reviews there.

4. I quoted the most recent case of gamer hatred towards EA.

5. I didn't imply bad publishers cause bad games, rather in this case of Activision (or IAH or both), they set unjustifiable pricing with the SEA copy. If you actually read my comments on people inquiring if it's worth buying, I always said to look for the US edition.

Wikipedia tells me Activision was created because of Atari back in the 80s.

1) So you fall into the 'I can't beat them so I join them' category?

2) I don't encourage piracy. I admit, I pirated a crap ton back when I was still studying, but I'm making up for that by buying all those old games back. Ditto with music CDs. I don't hate it, I said SEA is not worth the money, how many times must I say that before you get it?

edit: oh wait you're a pirate yourself. Talk about hypocrisy.

1) I don't know about SSF4 as I've yet to see what extra content it adds in so I won't say anything about it.

2) Just one of the thousands of links you can find with google

3) The fact of the matter is you listed metacritic's average score and expected me to take that at face value. I don't look at aggregates.

4) That is what competition is for. And for all of EA's sins, they answered the PC gaming community with a product that satisfied them in a way MW2 didn't.

5) I might pick up the US version later, depending on whether I finish my backlog of steam summer sales purchases first.

This post has been edited by yimingwuzere: Aug 4 2010, 03:55 PM

1) It's not on PC yet IIRC. And I don't observe console games nor do I own one. I can't speak on something I don't have facts on.

2) The fact that major names like Trent Reznor (and Radiohead and others) giving the middle finger to the recording industry surely means something, ain't it?

3) So then it's too bad that I read every review and formed my own opinions on the well-written ones and ignored the bad 'let's give this game free 10/10' ones, rather than looking at the 94%.

4) Evidently you don't observe the 'Top Sellers' list in Steam.

How about you quote me sales figures for retail copies comparing MW2 and BFBC2 before you talk? You clearly said EA failed at competing with the MW2 juggernaut but you failed to provide evidence saying so, and I found evidence to the contrary.

I see 0.0 million on your link for MW2 PC, you quoted MW1 Wii sales, certainly reliable sales figures indeed.

BFBC2 sold 5 million by May

But we're talking PC sales figures here, and BFBC2 has been sitting above MW2 for the past 3 months in Steam's top sellers list...

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/21/npd-pc-r...eaching-parity/

Steam sales can be regarded as reliable PC sales figures, as digital downloads are nearly 50% of game sales.

Friend who has it tells me it doesn't cover most of brood war either.

Stardock estimates 70% of total digital sales are on Steam

Anyway NPD says digital sales are nearly 50% on PC

35% of total PC market from a single source is still a huge margin.

Not really, all depends on the local distributor. Gamers.com.my usually brings in cheap games or games with a crap ton of freebies, from what I've bought.

Cross region is necessary and not really compensation as Aussie gamers have been b****ing at Blizzard for US server access since the region lock announcement. Then again, EU and US buyers are also asking for cross server access as well. Matter of time before the constant demands will persuade Blizzard to add global cross-server features.