beatlebrainiac

I still don't understand the hype for this game. For one thing, it's obvious it's using the GTAIV engine. That game has aged horribly, the frame rate is atrocious, and the controls are clunky. The graphics are stale too. The hair and textures look leftover from a few years ago, which would be fine if the frame rate were smoother, but it's not. I also don't get why people are willing to look past these grievances because of the wild west setting. When I think of the wild west I think of open plains, ghost towns, weapons that are slow to fire and even slower to reload. How does any of that make for compelling gameplay?  Also, will the game be able to present a compelling story in a setting that's been played and played to death? I have my doubts.  
 
Lastly, there's these early reviews themselves. Take them with a grain of salt. They're early for a reason, and that reason is $$$$$$$$$. Every single publication sending out reviews had to get the okay from Rockstar to take them to print, so of course the 10s are going to be the first to publication. I seem to remember on the bombcast a few weeks back Jeff mentioning the stale reaction the game got at previews. All this causes me to be extremely skeptical; I find it's sad that other, probably better games are getting knocked aside for a game that, like GTAIV, is hitting the shelves on a wave of hype and a wave of hype alone. How much gameplay footage did we see from GTAIV before its launch? Next to none, and it appears the same is holding true here. Rockstar are masters of this, and you're playing into their hands. 

Have to agree with the topic-creator. I get crushed by protoss every time. Like if you removed the losses I have to protoss from my win-loss record, I'd be near undefeated. I've found no acceptable and easy counter for stalkers mixed with Colossi. Even Thors get completely devastated by the Colossi. I remember reading somewhere that alot of pro players don't play as terran because the terran-protoss match-up is so broken. 

Only Mickey Rourke would star in a commercial that makes him look like a complete asshole.

You'd think so, but I've played about five matches now with no luck. Incidentally, everytime I lose I always say a bunch of random SC2 phrases to make it look like I had some uber strategy that I was working on.
"Yeah I was going for the 9Fact but he fought back my timed push." Gets em every time!

So in the beta I'm pretty pleased with the 1v1 ranking system, I've been put in the copper bracket, which is appropriate enough, because I'm not great. However, through some fluke, I have been put in the silver bracket of the 2v2 ladder. This sucks for a number of reasons; for one, I get my ass kicked every time, and secondly, I feel bad for poor sap the game partners me with.  
 
Is anyone else having bad luck with where they're at on the ladders?

I have no clue what that ad was trying to say/sell, but I love it.

So I want to say up-front that I'm about 80 percent through the game, and I'm really enjoying the atmosphere, the graphics, and the gameplay. All the different locales have nice unique features that keeps the game from becoming monotous. My biggest issue with the game is just how cliched every moment of the story is. I can't think of a single moment from the story that I haven't seen many times before in movies, tv, or other games. The character themselves are all one-dimensional with no unique characteristics. The game even pulls its biggest punch right near the start: the whole game centers on Sam getting revenge for his dead daughter, but you find out less than an hour into the game that she's actually alive! At that point, I asked myself, "if she's alive, then why am I still playing?" Another moment for me that left a bad taste in my mouth is at the very beginning of the game when, in some sort of flashback/forward, Grim is pointing a gun at Sam. They share two lines of dialogue, then the camera cuts to Grim pulling the trigger. The point is for you to think that she's killed Sam, but how many times has this exact same set-up been used before? Though I haven't gotten to that moment again, I'm extremely certain that it will be revealed that she shot someone else right next to Sam, because that's how it always happens. 
  
I know these might seem like minor quibbles in an action game, but I find it absolutely perplexing that a game with novel spin-offs and an established back-story would rely on so many cliches.