12 years is a long time in anyone's calendar - and the PC gaming landscape is a very different place to what it was in 1998.
Back then, the market was flooded with RTS games, spurred mainly by the success of Westwood's genre defining Command and Conquer: Red Alert.
StarCraft, essentially a sci-fi version of Blizzard's early fantasy-based C&C rival Warcraft 2, could have been written off as yet another in a seemingly endless procession jumping on the bandwagon. But, with an appealing sci-fi setting and the twist of including three factions instead of two, it achieved a legacy which is almost unheard of in gaming.
To this day, it remained one of the most popular multiplayer games. In South Korea - where just last year the final of a professional tournament was televised on the national network - the fanaticism showed now signs of abating. Were it not for the arrival of its sequel StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty this week, it may never have.
OLD SCHOOL HABITS
In StarCraft II, you play as one of three races. The Terrans - humans with customisable, oversized, steam-punk mechanics and guns; the Zerg, hive mind Giger-esque insectoid monstrosities; and the Protoss - telepathic, telekinetic aliens with hyper-advanced weaponry and the smugness to back it up.
As RTS games go, StarCraft II is a very traditional affair. The basic mechanics will be instantly familiar to anyone who's ever played a game in the genre. If you exist in the tiny demographic of PC gamers that haven't, it goes like this...
In almost all scenarios, you start with a command centre and a few worker units with which to mine resources - in this case diamond-like minerals and vespine gas. You use these to construct buildings, which in turn produce military units.
You then use said military units to blow the enemy into its component atoms before tapping out one of many fine 'noob' based insults you've been working on. Happy days.
The mechanics are so familiar that experienced gamers may baulk at how old school the whole thing looks at fist glace. The unit renders themselves are tight enough, but at initial impressions stage, the various planetary environments, while nice looking, are pretty cdn.static.
The economy model is totally unchanged from StarCraft, and the whole scale initially hits you as a little petit compared to the vast continent-sized battlefields of the Supreme Commander franchise.
However, these aesthetics are deceptive. While the basics are... well, basic, the sheer wealth of units and their abilities get complicated enough as the game progresses. The complexities are in the gameplay itself, in the strategies you employ - not in the layout or economics. And a dip into the multiplayer arena shows just how much room there is for interpretation. But more on that later.
WHEN IT RAYNORS IT POURS
The plot picks up where the StarCraft add-on Brood War left off. Set around 500 years in the future, you play through the eyes of Jim Raynor - a refugee and with a cowboy's swagger who's been on the run causing terrorist/freedom-fighting shenanigans since the events in the first game, where he fell out with the tyrannical emperor of the human race.
Raynor has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. In the last game the love of his life, special ops assassin-type Kerrigan, got captured by the Zerg. She was brainwashed and then physically mutated into a super-strong villainess, who then took over as ruler of the insectoid race and stopped just short of wiping out all human life in the galaxy. Tsk, women, hey?
The emperor himself, Mengsk, is a sort of space hick with a Texan drawl, who was busy spending the empire's resources on tracking down Raynor - until the Zerg menace reared its salivating head again after four years of remission. As a result, everyone goes for their guns.
The storyline is pretty complex for a video game, and while it is sometimes blighted by the usual cheesy dialogue you'd expect from the medium, it's engrossing enough that the frequent CGI movies which roll the story along throughout the campaign never feel like an imposition.
Wings of Liberty's single-player campaign is mainly concerned with the Terran perspective, and the 30 or so missions will see you defending convoys, holding out from invasion until an evacuation can be arranged, espionage into enemy territory with a couple of elite units, or just levelling an Zerg base Raynor doesn't like the look of.
It's basic enough stuff, certainly to start with. In fact, some of the missions could have come straight out of the original Command and Conquer, but they do get much harder and more engrossing later on. If you're an old vet at these sorts of games, whack it on hard and you'll find it to be a very enjoyable, if retro, experience.
Between missions, there are now something akin to RPG elements. Aboard Raynor's flagship the Hyperion, you can buy mercenaries, adapt weapons, and conduct research on alien artefacts - all of which yield advantages in later missions.
Sometimes this element seems a little like window dressing, and the degree to which you can customise the outcome of future missions can be overstated. But it's a nice little touch, and overall adds a certain depth to the campaign.
That said, StarCraft didn't remain one of the most played games for 12 years because of its single player campaign. The real meat of StarCraft was, and remains, the multiplayer.
FRIENDLY FIRE
The multiplayer beta of WoL has been available for some time now, and has gained a pretty strong following already. This is where the developers earn their money. The three races manage to remain so utterly distinct, yet perfectly balanced.
Even in early stages of combat with the game's most basic units, the balance is there. Whether you choose Terran, Zerg or Protoss, it's always a fair fight. (If you can imagine a fair fight between a fat bloke with a gun, a ten foot acid-salivating lizard, and a growling mystical alien that likes punching people in the head with light sabres for knuckle dusters.)
It's here that your own interpretation of play becomes all-important. Early on in playing multiplayer, I'd just gotten used to having my arse handed to me by Zerg players, who would send an early rush of Zerglings in to take out my Terran SCVs (worker units) before they'd got a chance to finish their cornflakes - let alone get an effective war machine up and running.
Trying to counter this tactic - this time against the Protoss - I got a quick squad of marines out before anything, at the cost of early production and further SCVs. No attack came. Upon a brief, tentative scout, I happened upon a Protoss pylon just outside the end of my base - and beyond that, a row of photon cannons.
My foe had sent off a drone as soon as the game started and hemmed me in. He nearly had the game wrapped up without even building a military unit. He got served in the end, I'm proud to say - but it just goes to show how the game allows you to throw a different spin on proceedings, even at this early stage of its lifecycle.
You'll get to learn which tactics work best for you. Will you concentrate on building a lot of barracks straight away and rustle up a massed marine/marauder strike force quickly? Or will you turtle up and sit behind your defences until you've prepared a devastating fleet of massed Protoss Void Rays? Either way, prepare for it to be countered. If there's one this the multiplayer game isn't, it's forgiving.
The best players learn to adapt quickly, and take full advantage of some of the more powerful unit's special abilities in the heat of a battle. These include the Protoss Templar's psyonic storm, which can cause havoc in the middle of an enemy rush, and the Terran Ghost's ability to laser in a strategic nuke attack at the heart of an enemy's defensive line. It's tough to start with, but you don't mind losing - with the replay functions there's always something to learn in defeat.
And when it all starts to click, you begin racking up the wins - and it's all the sweeter for your previous sweat and tears.
ECONOMIES OF SCALE
It has to be said, fans of much larger RTS games involving sometimes eight times the unit cap of WoL may find it a little on the small scale. We're fans of larger scope games like that, but there are equal pitfalls to that sort of sized game.
The fact that you don't have to spend an inordinate amount of time on an ever-more demanding economy - like a sweaty accountant watching the mushroom clouds from a back office - is certainly welcome here.
In StarCraft, you never have to worry about resources to such a degree that it distracts from the actual business of blowing the sh*t out aliens - which, let's face it - is all any of us really want.
The smaller scale is a trade-off that facilitates the lightning-quick pace of the game. Any larger and that speed - and the ability to micro-manage individual unit's special abilities - would be lost. And that would significantly detract from StarCraft 2's strengths.
CAUGHT IN THE .NET
The way in which the game was launched meant no pre-release press versions were available for review, meaning there has been a fair bit of comment board spluttering before any official reviews had a chance to come out. In this context, it seems right to address some of the most common complaints we've seen.
There has been some controversy from the off about how Battle.net works, about its matching system, its reliability, and its entire validity as an online gaming platform.
In our opinion, the system is a good one. On a simple matchmaking system it's smooth, quick and seems to be effective at finding opponents on the same level. When compared to the nightmare of other online PC multiplayer gaming options, it's practically a dream.
Up to eight players can be matched up in seconds with a few mouse clicks, while an Xbox Live-style buddy list lets you create parties to take the war around the net as a group.
The question of why Blizzard tied even the single player game quite so stringently to an online platform is a valid one. But realistically the benefits outweigh the negatives.
It's true you can't play the game without an internet connection - but honestly how many people out there have a computer capable of playing new release games, but don't have an internet connection?
Making Battle.net such a required element is a Blizzard's choice - but the degree to which software is tied onto online portals is an issue for the wider PC gaming industry.
The world is a very different place now to what it was 12 years ago - and the fact is the PC as a games platform is increasingly going this way. If you're the sport of person that resents committing themselves to such a portal as Battle.net, or signing up at all, this may annoy you. But we didn't find it a particularly intrusive or inconvenient experience at all.
OTHER NIGGLES
There are two more SCII expansions coming down the line - one focusing on the Protoss and one on the Zerg. Again, Blizzard has taken a bit of initial flack for providing a 'third of a game,' but these complaints are somewhat less valid.
The single-player offering features a 30 mission campaign representing many, many hours of gaming. On top of that, there's full working multiplayer, a complete map editor and even more far-reaching customisable features. Only those with disproportionately high expectations could consider Wings of Liberty anything other than a full game.
The other main genuine complaint is that the game has the potential to be a bit buggy at times. This is a fair point, though really it's very rare that a software crash occurs - and we understand Blizzard are working on it with a patch very soon.
These sorts of very minor tech issues are par for the course in PC gaming, but the publisher has always been good at updating and tweaking games in the past - and there's no reason to believe it's going to stop now.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is in many ways is the culmination of the RTS genre to date. It takes the best of what has come before, and tightens it up into a totally accessible, yet deceptively complex pinnacle.
Like all great games - be it chess or Counter Strike - its easy to learn, and very difficult to master. It's traditional, slick, accomplished; perfectly balanced gameplay will likely keep it on the competitive gaming scene for many years to come, and with good reason.
Minor niggles such as a slightly dated look and a smaller scale than we've seen elsewhere are the price of such smooth-running gameplay - and the micromanagement that allows room for interpretation and playing style is a treat.
Ultimately, it's a price worth paying. As one of the most anticipated games of all time, Blizzard had a great deal on its shoulders with this. We're pleased to say it doesn't disappoint.
Andrew Wooden
// Overview
Verdict
The pinnacle of RTS multiplayer gaming
Uppers
Perfectly balanced combat system Slick, fast, instantly accessible game play New Battle.net makes setting up multiplayer games easy as pie
It's true you can't play the game without an internet connection - but honestly how many people out there have a computer capable of playing new release games, but don't have an internet connection?
Well there are some people who for example get stuck in a hotel for a week for work, and would like to play it in the evening ... for example ..
There will always be a situation where an Internet connection might not be available ... What about if my connection goes at home for some reason ... Does that stop me playing other games .. no it doesn;t even Steam games can be played offline ...
It's a valid concern .. that's not touched here but brushed over ...
One of those pictures looks suspiciously like an Astartes in terminator armour. Well, if you're going to steal it, steal it from the best and make it damn cool while you're at it.
There will always be a situation where an Internet connection might not be available ... What about if my connection goes at home for some reason ... Does that stop me playing other games .. no it doesn;t even Steam games can be played offline ...
when Battle.net went down for maintenance on Wed I was denied to continue my single player campaign as you could'nt log on. Signing in as a guest only allows to start a new campaign.
Its a pretty good game and the story for an RTS is excellent, the only thing im not keen on is that most levels make you rush your ass off to complete objectives and you dont get a chance to build up research and forces, just feels like your hanging in there all the time. the resorce gavering is also very tedious and a bit old school but hey ho its still fun and looks fantastic with me gtx480. so far is a solid 8 for me.
So, a game that's a rehash of a 12-year old game, with updated graphics, new campaigns and units, and absolutely nothing *new* or groundbreaking, is the pinnacle of RTS gaming?
Wow. Must suck to be Relic, or one of the others that have given us great games that expanded the genre. I know SC2 is catering to tournament play, but for "wargamers" there's nothing there.
Nothing effects gameplay? Weather? Day/Night visibility? Can you hear units through the fog of war (like CoH?). Destructible terrain? Height-dependant range of ballistic weapons? Shall I go on?
I'm sure it's a great game if that's your thing, but to me this is another amazingly well made, and well polished, Blizzard game. They're fantastic at just that. But such a high score?
I'm thinking if this game had been released by someone else, not called Starcraft, and had had three other races, it would receive decent reviews, but come under massive flak for being essentially a 12 year old game mechanic with fancier graphics.
I'm not fanboy-ing against Blizzard - I deeply admire their skill in making easily accessible games that are deeply addictive to so many players. For that, they'd get a solid 10. I just prefer giving more credit (and better scores) to those who push the boundaries, invent something new, and bring something to the table.
Those are valid points, but frankly I think 'pushing the boundaries' is overrated. Or maybe it is oversimplified. Games like Company of Heroes and SupCom are very good, and they push the boundaries in the sense that they present new mechanics for RTSs. But the fact is that these new mechanics wear out after a while. After playing through all the campaigns of CoH with the expansions I can say I'm bored to death of it, and have been so since the very first campaign. There are new mechanics but nothing more than that, the game never takes itself further than inventing some new way to play. That's not enough.
Blizzard's innovation isn't in introducing some new mechanic and forming an entire game around it. That's never been their staple. What they do is take existing mechanics and use those in interesting new ways, taking into account everything that's the absolute best. This is what SC2 is. Their starting point of design is the final point for most developers. They take the mechanic and push it in new directions. Thus, every single mission is different in the game, every encounter interesting. Every level has something for the player to notice and learn.
It doesn't just make up some new way to play and grind it to dust, it really tries to challenge the player in a different way every single time. That's why SC2 is the pinnacle of RTS gaming.
Some of the terrain is destructible, but not all of it - i.e, you can destroy a wall in order to open up a new route through the map. It's not large-scale, but it does give a variety of tactics on many of the multiplayer maps (do you blow up this wall to get easier access to those minerals knowing that it will also give easier access to your base by the enemy? etc).
Line of Sight and weapons range is height-dependant, with your LOS increased on higher ground, and your units unable to fire or see up long ramps.
There is a day/night cycle in place, but from what I've played so far it is only used in certain single-player scenarios to introduce more varied objectives and mechanics.
when Battle.net went down for maintenance on Wed I was denied to continue my single player campaign as you could'nt log on. Signing in as a guest only allows to start a new campaign.
I thought you were permitted to play offline as long as you had already set up your character on Battle.net?
It is pretty ridiculous though the fact that it has to connect to the internet for every little thing. For almost anything you click on in the main menu, there's a few second delay while it goes off telling Blizzard's paranoia server about everything you're doing.
There are two more SCII expansions coming down the line - one focusing on the Protoss and one on the Zerg. Again, Blizzard has taken a bit of initial flack for providing a 'third of a game,' but these complaints are somewhat less valid.
Hello, new member here - I enjoyed this review (one of the precious few out there so far) but I had to make a point about the comment shown above.
I for one don't consider this an 'incomplete" game - as you stated it is clearly fully functional and probably has even more to it than I expected. In my mind the point is that the money paid for any stand-alone game pays for the marketing, the engine, the scripting, the acting, etc. The following two game will use the same engine and will require little or no marketing so how can they justify charging full market price?
The answer I'm sure is that they can because they know people will pay that price but that sounds a lot more like a $30 value than $60.
I thought you were permitted to play offline as long as you had already set up your character on Battle.net?
yes, you can play offline as a guest (campaign, ai skirmishes ) but because of achievements and the worry of people "cheating" to get them, I have to be online to play my campaign. For anything to count towards your stats and personal records regarding single player and multiplayer you have to be connected to a battle.net server.
That must be some kind of strong crack you guys are smoking to give it a 93. The Single player is like an extended Babylon 5 and really isn't that engaging a story. It doesn't have the big sweep or grandeur of it predecessor. The missions, I have done most of them to death a 1000 times over. The graphics are no great leap from it's 12yr old father. Gameplay wise a tank rush still wins the day. Every evolution of the genre has been ignored. I feel like Marty Mcfly I've gone so far into the past. I can't comment on Multiplayer as it's not my thing to go up against click happy speed machines. Finally Why the **** do I have to be connected to the net to play single player. We gave Ubisoft a rocket up the rear for this, but it's ok for the almighty Blizzard to do the same. Sorry it's not. The reviews to date have been shamefully skewed by fanboyisim. It's worth a 83 at best.
So...how much do we need to reduce the score to compensate for hype and Blizzards weird ability to get unjustified scores for their games?
I'm thinking about one and half maybe two points? Not that Starcraft 2 is a bad game but to give it a near perfect score in a review that points out several major issues. Mostly that it looks/feels/plays like a game from the 90s.
They've completely ignored the advances other games have made in the genre, including their own. Warcraft 3 for example managed to keep you engaged with the main characters by making them playable units on the battlefield, a feature which SC2 seems to have abandoned for the most part. It has none of the scale of the Supreme Commander games, none of pace of Dawn Of War and none of the innovation of World In Conflict.
The missions are stale, as stated in the review, some of them are lifted straight out of the original C&C and Warcraft games. The graphics are mediocre at best. As for the plot, it's not complex, it's convoluted, as Chris Metzen derived games always are. Constant unexplained shifts in characters demeanor from "good" to "bad" and back again, and the constant betrayals and alliances...that isn't an complex story, it's a lazy story. As with Warcraft it's a story that can't justify it's characters actions so it falls back to cliches like possession, prophacies and higher powers.
Also, as Ronin pointed out, Ubisoft were made into pariahs for their internet only single player yet when Blizzard do it no one bats an eyelid. A tad hypocritical don't you think?
All in all it's a good enough game, but if it were called anything else or if it was made by any other company it would be fading into obscurity within a year.
If only... >_< SSFIV is way more balanced than any of the IIIs if you wanna go down that road unfortunately.
As far as SC2 goes, I never played the first but picked up the second thanks to all the hype and am thoroughly enjoying it so far. Can't wait to get raeped by a 2 year old Korean online.
So, a game that's a rehash of a 12-year old game, with updated graphics, new campaigns and units, and absolutely nothing *new* or groundbreaking, is the pinnacle of RTS gaming?
Wow. Must suck to be Relic, or one of the others that have given us great games that expanded the genre. I know SC2 is catering to tournament play, but for "wargamers" there's nothing there.
Nothing effects gameplay? Weather? Day/Night visibility? Can you hear units through the fog of war (like CoH?). Destructible terrain? Height-dependant range of ballistic weapons? Shall I go on?
I'm sure it's a great game if that's your thing, but to me this is another amazingly well made, and well polished, Blizzard game. They're fantastic at just that. But such a high score?
I'm thinking if this game had been released by someone else, not called Starcraft, and had had three other races, it would receive decent reviews, but come under massive flak for being essentially a 12 year old game mechanic with fancier graphics.
I'm not fanboy-ing against Blizzard - I deeply admire their skill in making easily accessible games that are deeply addictive to so many players. For that, they'd get a solid 10. I just prefer giving more credit (and better scores) to those who push the boundaries, invent something new, and bring something to the table.
This.
Maybe its just not my type of RTS. I have played it and it is a solid well made game with the usual highly polished gameplay but does it really warrant such hype and high scores considering they themselves say its SC1 with some new bits and bobs and upgraded graphics.
Only Blizzard could get away with an upgraded 12yo game getting these kind of scores.
Quite a few actually. I do have an internet connection but for certain reasons I only have a couple of gigs a month on a mobile plan (for now). That means I cannot waste what usage I have on any game that requires constant connection. I understand constant connection for multi-player but as I prefer the single player campaigns there is absolutely no point in me buying this game.
I sympathise with the anti-piracy plight of the industry but I doubt constant connection is the way to go (unless the phone companies give every person on the planet FREE internet connection....constantly).
I'm not any "sport/sort" of person, just someone who has been stopped from buying a game because I will be unable to use it.
i really like this game its a cool rts .and it still a million times better than the crap c&c4, at least you can build a base something i miss out of the new warhammer II games
For the record, you CAN play offline if you've already registered once. I just checked this myself. You won't be able to earn achievements or play the online (duh) multiplayer, but you can still play. Maybe not a constant connection, but finding a statistically relevant number of Starcraft 2 prospective players that have NO ACCESS to internet at all is a fools errand.
And, as someone said before, Blizzard is a refiner, not an innovator. How much of WoW can you say is innovative? Not a whole lot. It's still the most successful MMO out there. Why? Because it's polished to hell and back, and they got their game right the first time. By forgoing innovation for development, you give yourself more time to make sure everything is right. Why does it get so much high scores? Because scoring isn't based on how much new shiny baubles you put into a game. It helps, and new shiny things can help if something else isn't up to scratch, but just enough innovation to the story mode to keep things interesting, while simply refining the multiplayer experience is why SC2 is on top of Metacritic right now.
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Perfectly balanced combat system
