Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty
Platform: PC
Publisher: Blizzard
FingerSports Rating: 5/5
‘They’re not Space Marines, they’re Marines in space!’
Starcraft 2 is a Real Time Strategy game, featuring three unique races battling it out over various futuristic landscapes. Its pace and easy-to-learn-hard-to-master style has lent it fantastically to the competitive gaming scene.
Starcraft has always been one of my favourite RTS games, great character to it, great pacing and fantastic playability. I still dip into it every now and then for a top up on the ol’ nostalgia meter.
Naturally, the announcement of Starcraft 2 all those many moons ago made me bounce around in excitement. I followed each little development and giggled at the cinematic, proper fanboy. As soon as it was available I ordered the collectors edition, and booked a long weekend off as leave to play it. I got on the Beta as soon as was humanly possible. So please understand, I really like Starcraft…
The outline of the races:
The Terran Dominion (that’s us) are a rough and tumble, fix it with black tape type of people. They have travelled through space powered by blood and sweat, and now struggle to maintain an existence in a small corner of nowhere. Basically their colonies are groups of ex-cons and those are the nice people. Terrans have flexible units with tough structures, and flexible really is the best way of describing them. They even have the ability to lift off some of their key base structures and fly them across the map to re-locate. Their forces range from the humble marines and siege tanks to hulking battlecruisers and nukes.
The Zerg (my babies) are a nightmarish hive of aliens capable of infesting worlds with their broods and spawning vast swarming hoards of evil spiky creatures to deal horrible stabby death to whatever gets in their way. Their current leader, Kerrigan the queen of blades used to be human, until the swarm got its claws into her… The Zerg gameplay is famous for its fast swarming rushes. ‘Zerging’ someone is a common reference to a fast attack in almost any online game now. Besides that, they are fantastic at harassing and expanding, with the ability to very rapidly replenish losses. Plus they look awesome.
The Protoss are our final race, they are enigmatic and technologically advanced. They are ancient and mysterious, with powerful psionic abilities. Their society recently took a massive blow, as their homeworld was consumed by the zerg menace. In game, their psi powers give them regenerative shielding on everything, and although they are relatively few, damn do they hit hard! Even a couple of their units can very quickly ruin a worker line, and their fliers are arguably the best in the game… Protoss require careful unit control, as losses are not easily replaced!
As expected from a Blizzard title, the game is very polished. The cinematic sequences put Hollywood to shame, and I bet Pixar employees feel a bit edgy watching them. In game, things pop and crawl, they are lit up by the muzzle flashes of big guns and the buildings are really cool, with each structure doing something interesting and distracting while it does whatever it does. Very pretty game. Even the menu screens are smooth and sexy; it’s a real joy on the eyes.
The sound is great, some funny little backing tracks playing on your jukebox, the clicks and whirrs of heavy machinery. Special note goes to the in game backing tracks, they are unobtrusive to the gameplay, but really do help the atmosphere. However, the BEST thing about the sound in the Starcraft series has always been the unit responses. Keep clicking on them and they come out with some gems. Also, the way they die is classic.
The single player campaign is great, some brilliant repeatability and a series of challenges and awards will keep you playing. The story is told through a series of mission driven levels, each one unique, you don’t get the feeling that you’re just going through the motions like you can do in some strat games (C&C), and the between level cut-scenes and character interactions feature great RPG elements that really help you get to know the characters! There’s an upgrade system, a research tree and mercenaries to play about with, but you never quite get enough resources to buy them all, so you’ll have to replay it if you want to know just how good tech reactors really are… All in, it’s a great sci-fi epic, and I won’t ruin the details here, you’ll have to play it! Also, you can select what difficulty each mission will be, a very nice touch if you’re struggling on a particular level!
There are a series of additional challenges that struck me as being very nicely built – completing them will train you up on some of the multiplayer aspects of the game. These challenges range in difficulty, and will kill hours.
Multiplayer. Well what did you expect? It’s awesome. The game makes it easy to be thrown into the global ladder system, giving you a warm-up period that you can jump out of at any time and five placement games to find the right league for you… and for each game there’s almost no menu fiddling or filters to apply: you press the find game button and it finds you a game! Fancy that.
For those of you who find competitive RTS a bit much (it is very intense!) there’s a co-op mode where you can challenge yourself and your mates by battering the AI. Difficulty ranges from ‘very easy’ (insulting) to ‘Insane’ (WTF), and can be a great way of planning your co-ordinated strikes with mates.
Also to be expected with any modern title, there’s a dizzying array of awards and unlockable goodies up for grabs by doing different things in game. There’s a good selection of difficulties to these, and not just the usual ones that reward you for just playing the game…
How does it hold up to other strategy titles? As far as competitive play goes, I don’t think anything is going to be challenging Starcraft 2 for some time. For cinematic gameplay, I’m still going with Company Of Heroes. For beautiful graphic detail, there are a dozen titles – but for style and polish, for those little moments that make you go ‘cool!’ Starcraft 2 is fantastic.
Ok, so the single player only covers the Terran campaign(ish), and there are probably two more Starcraft 2 games on the way (the next one is ‘Heart of the Swarm’ or something similar) so be prepared to buy expansions if you want the whole experience. I don’t have a problem with this, in fact I hope there is a collectors edition for each one so I can dribble over the shiny shiny toys – but I know some people will bemoan having to essentially buy the same game two or three times. Let’s see how the sequel(s?) turn out before we rage at them eh?
5/5 – For strategy gamers, this one is a must have.
DukesOfDevon
