Video Game Review: Starcraft 2
Time to take a break from the dating and get onto other nerd topics. I figure the star/black hole rating system I developed for movies could readily be applied to music, tv shows, and video games, so I am going to play with it as well. This will be for the video game Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty.
I think it fair to say I have a certain amount of history with Blizzard (see about five years of my life flushed down the WOW drain. I still think the game is great, but I have given them a lot of my time and money) and a lot of it negative. I was not going to play this game, but then the faction shirts from the video game t shirt category started blowing up and becoming the best selling shirts, so I figured I had better see what all the fuss was about.
For those of you living in a cave and not familiar with the national sport of South Korea, Starcraft is a RTS (Real Time Strategy) game that involves collecting mineral and gas resources, using them to create troops, buildings, and vehicles, and then attack your opponent who will be doing the same thing on the other side of the map. In PvP (player versus player) you can play one of three factions, the Terrans (basic humans with cool power armor), the Protoss (high tech space elves with backwards legs and almost no facial features), and the Zerg (biological nightmares blatantly stolen from the Tyranids of 40K mashed up with Alien). Each faction plays differently and more or less requires a different style of play. Also, the Zerg are responsible for the gaming phrase “zerging it”; in other words, rushing in as fast as possible in hopes the boss drops dead before he wipes the party to the sound of Vent recriminations.
Anyway, I played the original SC a lot and enjoyed it, so despite my annoyance at giving Blizz more of my money I was happy to be playing it again. Let’s get into the review process. Stars first.
The game is still a lot of fun. I quite enjoy RTS’s and this one has all the best elements of one. Three stars. The campaign story is actually pretty cool, with choices you can make to directly influence your future actions. One star. Each of the three factions is a different style of play and fairly interesting. One star. The map scrolls with admirable speed and game play is bug free. One star. Resources are limited and require careful choices of where to direct it. You never end up with a huge surplus of resources (the Dune II issue). One star. The maps are cool, complex, and incredibly varied. One star. The between mission interface is relatively seemless, and the NPC characters are pretty cool (especially Tychus Findley). One star. If there is one thing Blizzard does extremely well it’s multi player over the web, and this game is no exception. Two stars. The graphics are extremely good, if a little cartoony. One star. When you get a mission that requires you to keep a specific NPC alive they don’t deliver said NPC in a short bus and equip him with tissue paper armor, Nerf gun, and the inclination to run straight into certain death. One star. In fact, the missions were varied, complex, and hardly ever infuriating. Two stars. The game controls and UI (user interface) are simple and extremely intuitive. One star. The AI, while not the super-genius monster the long load times would imply is coming, is smart enough to make for a challenging, complex battle. One star.
Now the black holes. The game is created by Blizzard. One black hole for personal bias. They took 12 freaking years to develop it. One BH. The game, when set on a decent graphics level, takes about 10 hours to load one mission. Two BHs. If you fail a mission and have to go to an earlier autosave it STILL takes 10 hours to load. One BH. The between game interface, while cool and entertaining, also takes about 5 hours to load. One BH. Since they aren’t getting a monthly subscription from us Blizzard has opted to screw us by only giving us one race campaign in the game, requiring us to pay $50 for the Protoss experience and AGAIN for the Zerg one. One BH. They don’t tell you what the achievements are until AFTER the mission is done, requiring you to go back at least a couple times. One BH. The mini map still tends to send your troops straight in exactly the direction that will get them killed ASAP instead of somewhere useful. One BH. You still find yourself micromanaging pretty much everything and end up with three SCV’s scratching themselves on the ass end of the map while you are distracted by other stuff. One BH.
That’s 17 stars and 10 black holes, for a net of 7 stars, and extremely good score for me. If you played Starcraft 1 this will feel like taking an old, extremely well fitting shoe and giving it booster rockets. If you didn’t but are familiar with RTS games you will pick it up with relative ease and enjoy it. If your RTS experience is limited to playing Angry Birds on your iPhone prepare for a fairly long, painful learning curve.
That’s it. Dating advice tomorrow.
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The Engine December 3, 2010 at 11:26 am
Excellent review Dave. SC II is a very well honed upgrade of the original, of course with over a decade to develop and test; I’d expect a decent product.
I have a couple items to add of my own:
The timing of the game is infamous Blizzard marketing strategy is purely to profit off their addicted fans. It’s not a coincidence that the release of SC2 was timed during an epic dry spell of content nerfing of World of Warcraft and their upcoming expansion. How many of us have ditched our WOW accounts and started examining new options in gaming for the first time in over years (I subscribed to WoW on release day)? Now, just as we finish up SC2, they’ll be ready like any other drug dealer with the new WoW expansion pack then have SC2xpII & SC2xpIII to cash in during the lulls that are sure to come. Got to hand it to Blizz, they know how to squeeze the most $$$ out of a line of code!
Also, the performance issue is huge. I’ve got a performance system just for playing games and I’ve spent a half day waiting for SC2 to load up. Perhaps the booster rockets you mentioned have a 500 second countdown?
The interface is very pretty though, but at the cost of resolution. Everything looks so big (but very detailed) on the screen, I keep trying to zoom out but I’m stuck looking at a postage stamp blown up to fit my 27″ monitor. Watching the background animations is cool but I at times I’d rather graphics like Global Thermonuclear War to be able to see the whole battlefield than scroll madly around during an engagement.
To summarize:
– I love playing Star Craft 2. It’s amazing. I can’t wait to play more and get the expansions.
– I hate Blizzard.