Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

The Short


Pros
- Finally a sequel to Starcraft after over a decade
- Adds enough new with the old to create something that is both familiar and fresh
- Graphics are beautiful and have enough settings options to run even on crap machines
- Voice acting and sound effects are, as always, superb
- Single player has lots of RPG like options and even some adventure game style elements
- Fleshed out Battle.net is so feature-rich it's insane, and the online is all free
- Multiplayer remains strong, balanced, and is constantly being updated
- Provides options for every skillset of players, and matches you accordingly
- Easily one of the best competitive RTS games ever made

Cons
- Single player only encompasses the Terrans and is essentially a 1/3 of the story, and you only play as them except for a few missions where you play as Protoss
- Story of the single player is weak, cliche, and pretty much ruins Jim Raynor's character from the first Starcraft
- You have to be connected to the internet on your Battle.net account to play any facet of this game, including the single player
- Mac version is total crap and is poorly optimized
- Lots of the units and tactics have been carried over from the first game
- Has a heavier emphasis on microing units than the first Starcraft, making it a more difficult game for RTS noobs to get into at first
- While the single-player ranking matchup system works in theory, it does seem to sometimes screw up and put you in unfair matches
- Won't run at max settings on my computer. That's just not fair.

Welcome back to Starcraft. It will never look this good on my computer. 

The Long

Starcraft is a game that really needs no introduction. Essentially responsible for the birth of e-Sports (or competitive gaming, if you hate the term "e-Sports"), Starcraft brought games into the mainstream for a lot of people and particularly the media (though not necessarily in the United States). It was also just a straight up fantastic RTS, probably the best balanced game ever made, and has been revered with deity-like fascination by PC gamers since...well, since it came out.

So when Blizzard finally announced a sequel, people pretty much freaked the crap out. After Warcraft III changed the rules a bit, having them go back to a traditional, army based RTS was certainly welcome, and a sequel to Starcraft? Yes, please.

It got some flack because, like Brandon Sanderson and the end of The Wheel of Time, the game was split from one game into three. Starcraft II was broken up into faction-specific games, the first focusing on the Terrans (aka humans) and called Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. The idea of buying a game three times pissed a lot of people off, but we've been assured that the other two will be essentially expansion packs and priced accordingly (again, we'll see if this is actually the case), and that there was "too much story for one game."

So Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is here. Was it worth the wait? Does it do enough to merit a purchase? What the crap is going on with the story after that total downer ending of Starcraft: Brood Wars? All this and more will be sort of answered in this review!

The single player experience has been fleshed out immensely

Let's tackle the single-player experience first. Yes, it is very annoying that you only get to play as the Terrans (and the Protoss in a sort of flashback), which also means everybody on multiplayer starts as Terrans because the game doesn't properly train you on how to play the other races through its single-player (which was what Starcraft did very well). It's too bad, but they fleshed out the single-player so much it makes it easy to overlook this glaring flaw.

The game has integrated an interesting upgrade system now, in the form of unit upgrades, base upgrades, and the ability to hire mercenaries. The game is no longer just a string of missions chained together; now you are put in a sort of "hub world" in between scenarios, allowing you to have (limited) control on what missions you do next and how you (sort of) alter the plot. 

Every mission earns you both new units, buildings, and cash to spend on upgrading them. You can customize your army so the units you use most have the best upgrades, and the crap you don't like can be ignored. You can also wander around your crappy space-bar (or spaceship) and chat with people, learn about the world, or even play on the arcade. It's not the best thing ever, but it's a cool diversion to be certain. I wish they did more with it, but whatever...it's better than just cycling from mission to mission.

They just sort of...stand there, static. Not a whole lot of interaction, but it works. 

The missions themselves are all excellent. One minute you'll be protecting a colony from a zombie outbreak, the next you'll be having to float your bases from minerals to minerals as lava rises and falls. You'll race against the Zerg to be the first to blow up a Protoss base, infiltrate a science facility, and much more. Very rarely do they fall back to the standard "build a base, kill everything" scenarios that were common in the first game, which they are assuming you get plenty of in the multiplayer. 

There's also branching storylines, but the game lets you go back and replay them for the other story elements if you want to see what happens if you go the other way. This sort of renders the decisions meaningless, as you can see how both end up and this duel-choice option means none of your decisions will carry over into the main story. Each of these "sidestories" really feels separated and distant from the main game, which makes all the story parts feel completely disjointed and tacked on. It's hard to have emotional resonance when I (spoilers) both SAVED the doctor, earning her undying gratitude, and also made it so she turned into a freaky Zerg-person hybrid which I then killed. 

And here is where I rip apart the story. 

So it's already been documented that I think Starcraft II's single player story ruined Jim Raynor's character, but I'll put the brief version here. The game took Jim from the original game, who was sort of a side character next to your "commander" who was the star of the show, and made him a walking cliche. He does everything you'd expect a generic character in his position to do: laments over Kerrigan's demise, throws drunken fits when people tell him to get his life in order, gives corny inspirational speeches and always does the right thing, even if it's stupid. Jim in the first game was a reckless lawman who also did the right thing even if it was stupid, but you weren't playing as him. You sort of raised him up as this badass space vigilante, a man with a troubled past who survived through it all without blinking an eye (kind of like Batman). In Starcraft II he's broken and beaten, which yeah...it would have made sense if this game took place right after Brood War, but it didn't. This is years later; he has plenty of time to get over it. The Zerg buggered off for years and aren't a problem, he's back to being a marshall, and pretty much his life is in order. If he had demons to overcome (which, based on the original character, he would have just shrugged off anyway) it should have already happened. He shouldn't be lamenting now, he should be eager to kick ass and be himself again. 

Also the "twist" in this story (minus the awesome final one; I'm talking about a non-Kerrigan related twist) is completely predictable and honestly lame that the game clearly thinks you were going to be surprised about it. Here's a hint: don't have a voice-over in your opening sequence explaining your twist if the voice actor is immediately recognizable as the main villain. I'm just saying. 

So as it stands, I didn't like the story in Starcraft II, though the twist at the end did make me want to see what happened next. So I guess it wins because I'll buy the next game just to see what happens, but all the talk of "prophecies" and the bloated dialogue and long stares and melodrama reeks more like Star Wars prequels rather than the original trilogy. I'm going to assume Blizzard has better writers than this and they were all writing WoW: Cataclysm or something instead and now they'll be back on board, but we'll see when the next Starcraft II game comes out. 

Back to the real reason you bought the game. 

But that isn't the main reason most people bought the game. Like the Call of Duty games, most people were excited for the Starcraft II multiplayer, which the original game's is still going strong to this day. What core differences have been changed here?

I'm not going to go into specifics, since that will take too long, but I'll cover it with a blanket statement: it has enough new things to feel fresh, but keeps the core elements that make it familiar. Anyone playing Starcraft will be able to jump in and start Zerg rushing, walling with supply depots, or whatever without much problem. It's the little differences, however, that go a long way.

Major changes include the increased amount of technologies available. Almost every unit has both its standard abilities and a power, even the lowliest zergling or zealot. This means that if you are a big micromanager, your time has come. Since they took off the unit selection cap from Starcraft (which was my biggest micromanagement timesink in that game), they changed it so that your microing actually involves unit abilities rather than just being able to play the game like you want. This is a double edged sword. It's good because it adds massive amounts of depth for the players who want it, while noob players can (mostly) still survive without having to dig to deep into the ability microing. It's bad because the jump from not using abilities to using abilities skillfully is a massive one. And since most people online are really good at Starcraft II, it kind of requires you to pick up on this quickly and efficiently. 

Ultralisks are friggen huge. 

Despite that, the game is very noob friendly by design. First it has tiered "challenges" that teach you many common strategies that new Starcraft players will need to know in order to play effectively. Second, it has a fantastic ranking system that makes sure you are paired up with people of a similar skillset. This matchmaking system certainly works better than say, Halo or Call of Duty, but it still isn't perfect. I've been paired up against people way above my rank for 1v1 for no apparent reason, only to be crushed completely and efficiently. It's method of determining is also sort of borked, based on lots of factors (including clicks per minute, game length, build order, etc. at least that's what they say), but I just zerg rushed through my qualifying matches on 1v1 (which I click a lot because I'm ADD) and it put me in a Diamond league. Let me get one thing straight: I'm not a Diamond league player. But now that I'm stuck in it, I either have to wait for the season refresh or enjoy being crushed for all my 1v1 games. It's a bit annoying when the system doesn't work in your favor, and here's hoping it gets refined further either in patches or the next game. 

Carriers are still pretty awesome. 

Everything in the new Battle.net is pretty much great. It has achievements (like World of Warcraft) which give added incentive to try out crazy tactics. The matchmaking is quick and party management is very easy when playing with friends. There are tons of unlocks available, tied both to single-player and multiplayer, so you wont' feel really left if you can't win the required mutliplayer matches for new character portrats. It is kind of a huge pain that you have to have an active internet connection even to play the single-player, which shows how awesome DRM is (answer: it isn't), but I suppose it's a small price to pay for a more secure gaming experience. Blizzard also does good in providing new maps and stuff via patches and not charging for it, which shows their dedication to their fans. 

Protoss Void Rays are the bane of noobs. 

So a big question after release was this: is it really worth it? The game is so similar to Starcraft (at least on the surface), is it really that big of a jump? Well, if you are arguing that it wasn't worth it, then I welcome you to go back to playing Starcraft, as there's still an active community there, but I think Starcraft II's multiplayer blows Starcraft away. Yes, it's familiar. Yes, they took the framework from the first game and essentially copied a lot of it over. But they added so much both in streamlining control, new unit abilities, new unites in general, and the ability for more and more advanced tactics that the game really feels like a Starcraft player's dream. It's very, very clear from the design choices that the Blizzard employees played a load of multiplayer Starcraft themselves and took everything (even weird strats that weren't intended, like using Supply Depots as walls) and implemented it (like the fact that Supply Depots can be lowered now, a clear response to that tactic). This really is a project made for the fans, and it really works well. Now if only the single-player's story had been the same way. 

Though I am sad that the Zerg were switched from a sort of "build and forget" race to a "requires heavy microing to even be useful" race. I suck at them now, and I was pretty good in Starcraft. 

As it stands, Starcraft II does almost everything perfectly. Almost. It still certainly has problems, most of which I hope will be ironed out in the expansion, and there is so much here it can be overwhelming, but as it stands it is easily the best RTS on the market today. If you had any affinity for the first game, any at all, you should buy this game. Unless your affinity was for the single-player, in which case I advise to look before you leap. But if you just loved the core gameplay of Starcraft and are content fighting bots rather than people, there is still a good game here. Added that the custom map teams are again doing some wild and crazy stuff, and this game is absolutely a good investment. 

Just make sure your computer can run it. Since mine will be on just "High" graphics and a 1440x900 resolution forever. I will now shed a single tear after looking at these screenshots. 

Four out of five stars. 

Maybe your story won't suck next time, Jim.