Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

5 Comments

1. NeuroSplicer says:

   July 29, 2010 at 2:16 pm

   One can only respect BLIZZARD for not setting a release date before they knew they could meet it. No matter that this was the most awaited game for over a decade, they would release it “whenever it would be ready”. Well, it is ready, it is here and it rocks. Too bad they kicked the respect bucket in the end. But first things first.

   THE GOOD OLD GAMEPLAY GETS THE CIGAR
   
   Seasoned and new gamers alike will appreciate the simple yet highly enjoyable gameplay. The factions are well balanced and the units perfectly valued. You gather minerals and vespene gas, you build your defenses, you upgrade, you expand, you gather your forces – and you unleash hell. Repeat as needed until satisfied.

   STARCRAFT: THE QUICKENING
   
   The game is much faster than the original. Resource gathering, building, researching and expanding all go faster now. This is something that will appeal to most and I for one liked it. It conveys an enjoyable sense of urgency, adding to the immersion. And because the game is richer and deeper, the tension just keeps mounting.

   SWARMS!
   
   The game designers either enjoyed STARSHIP TROOPERS one times too many or they are fond of killer bees documentaries. Either way, be prepared to have to deal with a lot of swarming enemies! The plains shall be soaked in Zerg blood leaving you with a thick metallic aftertaste of accomplishment.

   SPACE. SPACE IS BEAUTIFUL
   
   Visually this is the game is GORGEOUS. It looks like C&C4 was supposed to (but failed miserably). The units are detailed in design yet clearly discernible whereas the environments are superbly done (although not that variable). True, I could do with somewhat more realistic graphics but I can see that this could only be done at the expense of clarity when the number of units rises. What needs a bit getting used to is how some of the buildings do not look that different. No complaints about how they look but one can easily confuse them and build the same building twice.

   COME FOR THE VESPENE GAS. STAY FOR THE STORY
   
   The story picks up just where SC-BROODWAR left off. Following each mission nicely done videos move the single player story along (no spoilers, not to worry) that, although we are given the illusion of choosing between different paths, apparently they converge towards a predestined end.

   DAMN IT JIM, WHERE IS THE REST OF THE GAME?
   
   Why only 3 stars then? Well, in a nutshell: GREED.
   
   Apparently BLIZZARD is trying to turn the StarCraft franchise into yet another World of WarCraft phenomenon – and, at the same time, using STARCRAFT II as the vehicle, BLIZZARD is trying to turn BattleNet into the new STEAM. Unfortunately this results in a barely palatable product and using your fan-base to advance your corporate ambitions is always tacky.
   
   Although priced even more than a full premium game, this is not a complete STARCRAFT sequel. You would not know this by its price-tag(!) but this is only A…THIRD of the game, the first part of three: you can only play the Terran campaign. The Zerg and the Protoss campaigns will be released independently later (and priced as if they were full games, one could safely bet).
   
   To add insult to injury, one has to keep spending even more money if he wants any “premium maps” and “premium content” sold only via the BattleNet. Since this is a game that will be played mostly online don’t be quick to dismiss this if you have a competitive streak.

   OK, LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT IT – BUT THERE IS A HYDRALISK IN THE ROOM, ISN’T THERE?
   
   Much more serious is the NeverLettingGo-OnLineActivation requirement. The game will ask for activation during installation, which also includes signing up to BattleNet (and, yes, this means that even this expensive game never becomes yours to keep). But that is not all: a periodic OnLine confirmation is also required after that, FOREVER. Installed a patch? Reactivate. Added some maps? Reactivate.
   
   Unlike the latest EA and UBISOFT flops which have an idiotic Always-ONLINE requirement, you can play a single player game (campaign and skirmishes) without logging on to BattleNet – only, to do this you have to log on as a …”Guest” (I know, a Guest to your own game and your own computer…). You will be able to save your progress but you cannot tie it to your BattleNet account later, so any progress or accomplishments are lost for your online Account. You can decide if this bothers you. That is why a Broadband Internet connection is included in the minimum system requirements.

   SORRY TO BRING THIS UP BUT SPAWN SEEMS TO BE MISSING FROM MY COPY…
   
   Remember how we could take our original STARCRAFT CD to a gathering of friends, Spawn it on everyone else’s PCs and start a LAN party? Now one can play with his friends only through the BattleNet – and the Spawn function has been eliminated! Yes, that means each one of your friends now has to have his own original copy of the game!
   
   The brass at the top conveniently forgets that the ability to Spawn games was the main reason both STARCRAFT and DIABLO acquired such huge fan-bases.
   
   Et tu, BLIZZARD?

   This is a good game, one I think we will be enjoying for years – or for as long as BLIZZARD shall allow us to do so. However, I had higher hopes for BLIZZARD’s respect to its own customers.

   RECOMMENDED.
   Rating: 3 / 5
2. Griswel says:

   July 29, 2010 at 3:23 pm

   You are in for a long and arduous journey. Then, after the installation process is complete, your arduous journey moves on to the patch. After this is complete, you must sign in, online, in order to play your game. Then you attach your sixty-dollar purchase to a particular account, and are permitted to play. Welcome to the Blizzard’s immersive adventure, featuring an online totalitarian simulation, and some kind of computer game.

   If you have two kids who play, or you play and a kid plays, you will need to buy separate copies of the game for each of you if you want to have two saved games or play online under different names. The game is connected to your online account, and when you sign in you play as the name you created. Someone can play as “Guest”, but with very limited privileges.

   Studies clearly show that people who steal games will enjoy them less if those of us who paid for them are run through an abattoir before we’re allowed to play.

   The game itself is fine. Starcraft with new 3D images and tweaks to gameplay (begin arguing about how the tweaks are HUGE and IMPORTANT … now). All that’s really really changed is Blizzard’s ability to make us jump through hoops.
   Rating: 3 / 5
3. Tomacco says:

   July 29, 2010 at 4:54 pm

   I’ve been a Blizzard fan since WarCraft II and StarCraft has always been my favorite franchise. When they made the announcement for this game I was ecstatic and followed it completely until its release. The first game was top-notch in story-line, multiplayer, graphics/sound/music (for its time, yes) and you knew that there was an immense amount of passion poured into it. There seems to be a lot of work done to this game, but its mostly superficial and done in a very slipshod manner considering the amount of time its had to be polished.

   I should’ve known better from the moments the updates came in but I was a steadfast fanboy at first. No lan (okay, never really played lan, I can see piracy being a legitimate reason… no biggie), three expansions into one (not a problem, I’d like to see the lore expanded in this universe), Kerrigan’s VA being changed (now this one stung a bit, never saw the reason why if not just for continuity’s sake… Everyone cheered when they heard her voice in a SCII cinematic and she was definitely still able to do it), the updates stopped coming in and not a Blizzard post in sight (at first I thought it was just to keep things under wraps, but it was the same deal during Beta– which usually is a great time for feedback between devs/players. Feedback? Almost nonexistent), then we heard about Kotick and how he said he wanted to take the fun out of gaming. Hesitantly brushed that one aside, he was just talking to investors (right?). Then no chat rooms, this one didn’t really faze me until I got the game (they’re usually empty any way… or full of spam), and now I feel completely isolated. It was only through a lot hub-bub that Bliz said they would ‘eventually’ put it in in later patches. Same deal with REAL ID (where the initial plan was to include your first and last name for any forum posts that were made). Region locking… this doesn’t affect me one bit, but it’s a HUGE problem that hasn’t been addressed to my knowledge. People shouldn’t have to pay for an extra copy just to play with their friends or family in a different country. Unbelievable.

   But that’s really all game politics. The game itself is really mediocre. The awesome storyline I was hoping for, wasn’t there. It seemed like they tried too hard to follow the first game’s ever-changing plotlines of deceit and heroism. In SCII, without giving much away, just feels forced. The dialogue is awful (this I was expecting since every Blizzard game after Diablo II became a slippery slope for terrible writing and voice acting). First game had the famous Overmind speech and lines such as “I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities…”. Nothing remotely memorable in this sequel. Also feels like a watered-down Mass Effect 2 style of play that you can ‘choose’ which path to go, but done in a very basic level and basic settings (only four; armory, cantina, laboratory, bridge).

   The multiplayer is actually pretty balanced and fun, but no replay value like the original. As a Platinum player with decent APM, there is a meta-game that people hardly deviate from and usually lose if they do. Just becomes stale, whereas I had many different options in the first game. If you’re new to RTS’s, I personally just wouldn’t bother, steep learning curve for something that yields no rewarding moments after a win.

   In the end, I just feel like I contributed to a company that hardly cares for its fanbase or even gamers in general instead of getting my money’s worth on a great game.

   I’d at least wait until the price came down and to see if later patches change anything.
   Rating: 2 / 5
4. George Cano Jr. says:

   July 29, 2010 at 5:09 pm

   I played the original Starcraft back in 1998 when it came out. I experienced the thrill of late night LAN gaming in college dorms (or the computer lab). I was thrilled when they announced the sequel a couple of years ago. I got the game (collectors edition too) and have played a good portion of the game so far. Here are my impressions:

   Blizzard may have had good intentions on requiring the use of Bnet in order to utilize things like achievements and unlockables. Not to mention the ability to continue a game of Starcraft II from another machine as long as you login with your Bnet account. That is pretty handy. The problem is that, if you want to play the single player campaign using your account (without having to use the “guest” option) your machine MUST maintain an active internet connection while playing. That means (and it happened to me) if your connection gets dropped (i.e. ISP issues, tripping on the ethernet cable, Blizzard’s SCII servers go down, etc) while playing the SINGLE PLAYER portion, it will kick you out of your current game and to the main login screen. No warnings, no “Active connection lost: Please reconnect” messages. Just a sudden kick back to the main login screen. That’s right folks, playing the non-multiplayer portion of a game requires an active internet connection. There’s a misconception that the only thing that requires authentication is to register the game to your account. That is not entirely true. Yes you must authenticate the game and link it to your Bnet account (something that’s not an issue). But! When you start the single player campaign using your Bnet account, the game will periodically check to see if you still have an active connection to their server. If it doesn’t detect a connection, the game will drop you from your campaign game back to the main screen. Yes, you can use the “guest” login option instead of the bnet login, but that won’t allow you to earn achievements or keep track of your campaign progress from another machine.

   Now, on to the issue of LAN. I experienced the wonders of Starcraft over LAN back in my college days. They were wonderful indeed and memorable. The fact that SCII didn’t include this option out of the box is disappointing, but it’s not entirely a deal breaker. This alone is not worth posting 1-star reviews. I believe Blizzard indicated they’ll implement some sort of pseudo-LAN option in a future patch; we’ll just have to wait and see how that works.

   Social network implementation. I honestly don’t care or want the game to try and find my Facebook friends that are on Bnet. My social life and my gaming life are separate. With that being said, I also am appalled that the only way to add friends to your list is to use the REALID option, which means that they will see your entire first/last name. Not only that but you’ll be able to browse their friends list and see their entire names. It seems since the introduction of Facebook that privacy issues have taken a back seat, and it’s sad to see that it has now become a concern in the realm of online gaming. If I played a great match with a player named “LoLZerg”, I don’t want to know that his name is Lance Puffington, nor do I care. Blizzard should at least allow the user the option of displaying their real name to people on their friends list, or just their handle. And whether friends will have access to your entire friends list.

   Now on to some of the good aspects of the game. The game, more or less, feels just like the original Starcraft. The ability to purchase upgrades, or mercenaries, is a neat feature that helps bring some creativity to the campaign missions. The “Lost Viking” minigame on the Hyperion is a nifty feature too. Overall, SCII has a polish that allows it to compete with modern RTS games in the aspects of graphics, gameplay and innovation, but still retain the luster of the original to make it ‘feel’ like Starcraft, and not something entirely different (I’m looking at you C&C4).

   I gave this review two stars because of this reason: The game itself is fun and entertaining, but the implementation of ‘features’ like Bnet for single player play and the lack of options that made the original a hit bring it down. Blizzard seemed to try and do a little too much with the release of Starcraft II. Time will tell if they’ll listen to their customer base and address all main issues, or whether the Activision juggernaut has completely overtaken Blizzard and they are Blizzard by name only.
   Rating: 2 / 5
5. Anonymous says:

   July 29, 2010 at 7:51 pm

   Like so many out there, I’d been waiting for SC2 for a decade. Why it took so long to create part 2 for a strategy game is beyond my understanding. However, I looked past that being the Blizzard fanboy that I am, and was waiting with open arms when Starcraft 2 launched yesterday. True but funny story…Target hadn’t even stocked the game as of 2 pm on Tuesday. I know this because I had to actually ask the guy to go in the back and look for it.

   But back to the point and my review. Had this been released in oh, say, 2006 or 2007, it’s a hands-down 5 stars. The fact is that it’s 2010 now, and I think a lot of us expected a little more, like maybe “Galaxy of Starcraft.” C&C Red Alert 3 was released in 2008 and one could argue that, for singleplayer, there aren’t any significant differences between it and SC2. What we got was a plain old strategy game in 2010 that could’ve/should’ve been released years earlier and NOT for the $60 price tag< ---I'll get to this later.

   The gameplay itself takes elements from Star Wars KOTOR (interacting with different members of the crew on your ship; choosing planets to visit). This is a unique step in that you aren’t forced into the next battle after a short briefing a la Starcraft 1. You are free to wander about the areas of your ship, the Hyperion, and pick and choose your next engagement. At first it’s a little awkward but it catches on very quickly. Being able to choose the path you take through the campaign is quite nice, so thumbs up there.

   There are some major AI improvements. Wow, units will actually MOVE out of the way if another unit is trying to path through them. Finally it’s easy to manage several tasks at once and not have to babysit your soldiers. The game is very fluid and the graphics/scenery are upgraded a good bit. They give you more background and an explanation behind new units as well. Thumbs up.

   PRICE. Big thumbs down here. Let’s be honest. This is $64, with taxes, for PART 1 of Starcraft 2. I don’t care if it’s longer than any single campaign in the original game. I don’t care if there are more online multiplayer options (the fact is that not everyone gives a crap about multiplayer and I personally find it a cheap way to say a game has more depth than it really has). The fact is that you only get 1/3 of the experience for the price of a full Xbox 360 or PS3 premium game. Oh, and with those you can carry them to a friend’s house, keep them forever and ever, and play them w/out logging into an online account…which brings me to my next point…

   Battle.net. I suppose we should’ve known this was coming once Blizz forced us to merge our WoW accounts with a battlenet account. After washing loads of laundry and running some errands, this game had finally installed (takes for-ev-er) and was patched right away. Then, I’ve got to seal this bad boy to a battlenet account. Oh that’s awesome right? It’ll automatically track all my achievements and if I do any multiplayer, it’ll rank me in online ladders and whatnot. If you are w/out an Internet connection, you can still play the game…sorta. Talk about Big Brother watching everything you do, why do I need to log into an online account to play a single player strategy game! This isn’t WoW! I know that I’m in the minority here, but I do not care about achievements, and the single player campaign and its developing story is more important to me than anything having to do with multiplayer. Ahhh the good old days when multiplayer was considered an awesome “extra” to an otherwise deep and immersive game. There’s a minority of players here that are being left out with this shift to mutliplayer-centric games. It’s sad, really.

   Premium maps and other costly goodies? A sequel that is going to cost $180? Way to go, Blizz. Way to gouge your fans. This has always been about money and you’re a business, I get that. At least try to overwhelm us with entertainment so that we don’t see your greedy hands reaching into your pockets. But in a way I’m thankful you only released part 1 of Starcraft 2 because I learned my lesson. I will not purchase parts 2/3 and I would encourage others to do the same. DRM and price gouging have gone too far.
   Rating: 2 / 5