Okay, so I got Starcraft 2 and loaded it. It was so awesome with the music and everything. My computer is a beast now. It is 6-core AMD monster and I have a dedicated hard-drive just for big progs like starcraft 2 etc.
I especially wanted to test it because I wanted to stay on top of the current trends in computer gaming technology. But seriously, it said that I should run the game on ULTRA settings because of my video card and CPU capabilities.
So I’m running this puppy and it is HUGE on the impressive and epic scale. Everything is futuristic and the interface definitely feels like they did years of work perfecting it.
There’s only one problem:
The game is gnarly on my fan. I mean, I was on headphones and I could hear my fan. I was like, “What the heck?” Not even Fallout 3 is this demanding on my computer. It blew me away.
My computer has several fans and enough CPU’s to handle intense video encoding for HD. Running a PC game shouldn’t make me “worried.” But that’s exactly how I felt. I felt like I need to wait till I get my next-gen computer in a few years before trying the run the game again.
This is a serious departure from Warcraft 2 and Starcraft…maybe even Warcraft 3. When you loaded Starcraft on your computer, it didn’t matter if you were top of the line. It pretty much ran on a basic computer. That was because it was 2D sprites happening on a battlefield. But Starcraft 2 is totally 3D with homies talking and throwing Molotov cocktails like it’s going out of style.
I think what’s happening is that Starcraft 2 was meant to be played on “Normal” settings. But, the game is already a year or so old. I don’t get it.
Now that I think about it, Fallout 3 is actually much older than Starcraft 2. So comparing the two doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Fallout 3 was 2008 and Starcraft just came out in 2010. Even though this is only a two-year gap, it means a tremendous amount when you factor in technology leaps.
Honestly, I doubt I would be as stressed about running this game if I had an extra solid-state drive. But I can’t risk putting this bad boy on one of my solid states because I’m using them for my OS and the other one is for my music video project.
So, what I’m thinking, is that I’ll hold off on Starcraft 2 and wait till my next computer that will pretty much have solid state drives for everything.
It is so funny how PC games work. It’s almost like they are already doomed because the new ones require a computer that isn’t affordable until 2 years later. Also, with patches and bug fixes, there is no real reason to jump out and buy a new game for the PC right when they come out.
Also, with the advent of Console gaming requiring an internet connection, programmers get a free-life. I say this because they can always use the HD-system for console games to require a patch.
This wasn’t possible back in the days of NES and SNES. All bugs had to be worked out before the release date. If that didn’t happen then they would have to live with the bugs in the game. I never heard of recalls of cartridges. I only remember that there were different versions of the battery system for Zelda.
All-in-all I’m actually glad about this. It was extremely satisfying to wait so long for Fallout 3 to come out and then get completely blown away when exiting the vault. I can’t express how huge that felt.
I had a similar pumped feeling when digging into Starcraft 2, but the fan sound really did pull me back. So in a couple years I’ll jump back into it on a more powerful machine with some dedicated solid states and hopefully I’ll be able to do a real review at that time.
-Tyler