GameGuide » Blog Archive » StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
I grew up playing strategy games on PC.
Blizzard titles were my bread and butter, so it didn’t take much to convince me to break my long PC drought (other than a bit of Civilization IV here and there) to pick up Starcraft 2, Blizzard’s 11 years in the making sequel to a game which was acclaimed as the best strategy game ever.
Well, after working my way through the campaign of Starcraft 2, not to mention about 35 multiplayer games, to say that I have mixed feelings is an understatement.
First of all, let me say that this is a fantastically crafted game. The production values are sky-high, the gameplay is fine-tuned and the cut-scenes are gorgeous.
But this game is also more like Starcraft 1.5 than Starcraft 2: some new units, a fresh coat of graphical paint, but all in all very much the same experience as before. Not that many will complain; the original Starcraft was seen by many to be strategy perfection.
To me though, this game felt a bit dated. Maybe it’s that my attention span has been shortened by action-packed console games, but I didn’t find the gameplay – particularly in the campaign – all that gripping. Even though Blizzard does an admirable job of mixing it up (throwing in a lava level here, and a train-robbing level there,) to me it just felt tired.
The sections in between missions are another matter entirely. They are presented in a point-and-click adventure game style, and provide good character development and storyline immersion. It’s too bad that so much of the dialogue is cheesy action movie stuff, but that doesn’t detract too much from a very compelling reason to keep playing.
The multiplayer is great. It’s chess on steroids. The search function can sometimes take about 5 minutes to find a game (bring a book), but once you find an opponent, the competitive side of this game really shines. It’s a brutal environment out there, and turtling and building up your base is not a viable strategy, but there is a 50 game practice league that you can use to get up to speed.
Overall, Starcraft 2 is a polished game, and worth the money for a strategy fan, especially if you have the time (and broadband) to invest in the multiplayer. With most games finishing in under 30 minutes, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
However, I do feel that I should mention the numerous problems I had with the game crashing. Granted, I play on an Mac, but nevertheless, Blizzard apparently never releases games until “they are done.” Yet in the latter parts of the single player campaign the game crash roughly every 15 minutes. If you are on a Mac and only interested in the single player campaign, I would say that this problem is a dealbreaker. Thankfully, I haven’t had any problems in multiplayer so far.
Also, to get the most out of this game you’ll need a beast of a machine. It will run on a wide range of machines, but on my 2009 iMac with 4GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 card, I still had to set most of the graphics settings to low. It still looked nice, but that should give you and idea of what sort of setup you will need.
I do feel like Starcraft 2 is more of a swan song to a great genre than a step forward. But it’s still a very good swan song, and worth your time, especially for the multiplayer.
Reviewed on: MAC
Available on: MAC, PC
Reviewed by:
