Yesterday I was talking about Dota 2 arcade and it was an amazing entertainment to try some of the games for the first time. Well Valve is not the only developer that gives the community tools to create their own scenarios and maps, Blizzard does it too!
I even think that Blizzard offers much more intuitive and easy to use tools to create the custom maps than the whole Source 2 from Valve. Maybe that is why so many good custom maps and mods were made in the Warcraft 3 game, because it was easy to do them.
Blizzard offers the tools to make the mods in two of its strategy games and that is Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. In the battle.net forums we can also read that Blizzard is planning to offer map editor for Overwatch too, but that is in the future for now. Most of the mods that started in the Warcraft 3 were also transferred to Starcraft 2. Also a very good thing is that you can play those arcades for free!
Starcraft 2 offers some own custom maps, but most of them we can play in the Dota 2 arcade too, but there are some modification and changes. I tried to find the games that I have played in my previous steemit post to find similarities and to review them. Well, I found Gem TD and Elements TD pretty quickly.
Somehow I did a lot better with my maze in this version and I had a lot more lucks with the special towers. There are no slates like in the original, but the towers are the same. I think this version has much more similarities with the original version than the Dota 2 arcade's version, but sadly it is made in the Starcraft 2 engine so the graphics are not as good looking as in the Dota 2 engine. However, that really depends on the person likes. :)
After a while I tried Starcraft 2's elements td too. This version offers much more difficulties and game-modes. It also give you the option to make the maze by yourself, which is a nice addition if you are playing against real players.
One big problem with Starcraft 2 arcade is that it is not popular enough. You could wait 5, 10 minutes and the game would still not be full. However, it really depends on what you want to play. The only good part is that some games are really made for a solo play. It's not that much fun without the real players though. Dota 2 is played by so many people that it will always have people ready to jump onto some arcade game for some quick entertainment.
We can really see that the depth of some of the custom maps in the Dota 2 and Starcraft 2 arcade are just not there anymore and can't beat the original. Maybe I should end this series where it all started - in the Warcraft 3. I am not sure if it is still played, but to at least try the original Gem TD one more time would be amazing. See you soon! :)
Thank you!
My previous posts:
https://steemit.com/gaming/@eirik/dota-2-arcade
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@eirik/a-new-fishy-scam-it-s-lsbtc-not-btcx
