Vital Stats
Genre: RTS
Players: 1-4
Online: Multiplayer
Developer: Blizzard
Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard
Entertainment
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: 7/27/10
Platforms
- PC
Starcraft II is like an echo channeled through twelve years of game design: textured somewhat by its passage, but still an echo. Blizzard has certainly reassembled all the components they used to define the realtime strategy genre, but whether that’s a good thing largely depends on your tastes.
Despite twelve years passing since Blizzard released StarCraft, realtime strategy still feels its influence. StarCraft is arguably the reason RTS means an overhead perspective, resource harvesting, and extensive micromanagement. Gamers still know what a Zerg rush is. There are eSporting leagues where players can earn six figures from sponsorships and prizes. People have died during the course of play. If any game is an institution unto itself, StarCraft must certainly qualify.
In a very real way, establishment forced Blizzard to crank out a near-carbon copy of their seminal property. When an entire culture springs up around a single game, you do not undermine that community. Sadly, that means that all the interesting information about StarCraft II is minutia: minor tweaks to a winning formula. So if you already have opinions about the first game, you can stamp them on this sequel and they’ll mostly hold.
Rumors that Wings of Liberty is one third of a full game are greatly exaggerated. The single player campaign focuses on one of the three primary StarCraft races, but there are still 26 levels with varied RTS gameplay and the three races are all present and accounted for in multiplayer. The omission of LAN support that players enjoyed for a decade is a blow to the franchise, but is more a sign of the times than a sea change in StarCraft.
As you might hope for from a direct sequel, there’s plenty of new content to test your old starcraft skills. New units and upgrades are strategic gamechangers. Notables include ground units that bound over steep terrain and inexpensive units that can swap between ground and flight. Each of the game’s three races can briefly kick its resource economy into overdrive. The single player campaign also features new play objectives. There’s a smash-and-grab level where lava tides keep you from squatting on the resources you’re harvesting. On another level you’re trying to intercept and destroy a series of supply trains.
There is also a host of small interface tweaks that will make things easier for longtime fans. The membership limit on unit groups has been virtually eliminated. Most units only have one or two abilities that require manual activation, and the hotkeys for those abilities have been standardized across units. Base structures have separate rally points for worker units and everyone else. Most of these tweaks are trivial, but after 12 years, they feel like a breath of fresh air (and a slight slowing in repetitive stress injury).
Perhaps the coolest new feature is in the single player campaign. Wings of Liberty uses a selectable mission structure that introduces a new unit in each mission. This means that you can customize your learning curve to favor the units you fancy. So if you want to get your hands on a plane that TRANSFORMS INTO A FRIGGIN’ MECH, you don’t have to wait until you’ve finished the mission with the marine that can walk and chew gum at the same time.
The downside to this flexibility is that StarCraft II‘s story had to be built for easy shuffling. Veterans of the first game will already know that each mission is accompanied by a little slice of story that helps keep the game moving. However, without a linear narrative to keep character emotions and motivations logical, the story was smoothed over with generic “lost love, spiral of despair” plotting. Where the story isn’t boring, it’s insulting. Admittedly, it doesn’t help that the leading man’s character design looks like he spent the last 12 years in the Gears of War Gym.
Stellar? Crafty?
StarCraft II keeps the old guard happy, but doesn’t really try to attract new recruits. So it’s not clear that a review is helpful to anyone. If you were already a realtime strategy fan, you probably already own the game and you’re just looking for reviewers to flame. If you’re not already a fan, so little has changed that it hardly warrants a second glance. The hardcore might be curious to know whether the changes are enough to reignite their interest in the genre, and the answer is yes, but briefly. That risk alone merits severely docking the value.
What It Costs: $60
What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $40 (demo)
•To The Genre Fan: $60 (buy)
•To The Casual: $10 (skip)
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Tags: starcraft · Starcraft II · wings of liberty2 Comments
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2 responses so far ↓
It’s so sad that most of the awesome new concepts they demoed got pulled out of multiplayer for balance reasons. Marine drop-pods, the Mothership’s time distortion field, the giant version of the THOR that could be built by SCVs, the pheonix’s burst ability, and the Battle Cruiser’s optional replacement to the Yamato Canon that made it better fighting many weak enemies at a time as opposed to one strong one.
Now the Mothership is just a giant Arbiter, the THOR is a giant Goliath, and all of the Brood War units except for the Dark Templar were removed. I don’t miss the air-support ships, but I do miss Lurkers and Medics. It’s crazy that the “new” additions to the game are as much about what they removed vs what they added.
The only real innovation over the original gameplay is the ability for some units to walk up and down on high-ground. Other than that, it’s all polish and some new units and spells.
That said, a more polished version of SC1 is still pretty tempting. I will probably eventually pick it up, though the more I see of the story missions the less interested I am. I was not at all a fan of the hero system on WC3, so I’m glad that’s gone.
At least all 3 races now have Air to ground “Bomber” units. It always bugged me that the Terrans didn’t have a stealth bomber, and now they do!
I didn’t really feel it playing through the campaign, but now that you mention it, they did remove a hell of a lot of units. That said, there are two more games coming down the pipe, and if Blizzard hopes to sell them, you’d imagine they’ll be adding more than additional campaign content.