There are few surprises here and anyone who played a strategy title in the last ten years probably has an good idea what to do with Starcraft 2 from the minute the game is launched.īlizzard throws in some twists but they are mostly on the periphery of the experience. Superior, balanced firepower has a tendency of winning the day. There are support troops that can enhance the abilities of the strike forces. There are military units, each with advantages and clear witnesses, that need to be assembled into a coherent force in order to defeat Protoss and Zerg forces. There are buildings that need to be erected in order to get production capabilities, support military population and research upgrades for the units. There are resources, two of them as in the original, that need to be gathered with the classic MCV units.
In some ways the gameplay of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is as old school as possible. The feeling one gets is that something is missing, even if the single player is as long as it was in the original and the universe and supporting cast are better developed. Zeratul makes a quick appearance and sets up a plot which, in predictable manner, will only be fully explained once Heart of the Swarm, the game built around the Zerg, and the Protoss narrative are launched, presumably in about two years. The main forces of the Terrans pull back to the core worlds as, like in the first game, only militia and rebels are left to fight the rapidly evolving aliens. Most gamers will take the story as it is, marveling at the way Blizzard managed to get various interesting elements from a variety of sources and welt them together in a coherent universe.Īs the game starts Jim Raynor is still fighting the Terran Dominion when an old friend show up and the Zerg start coming out of their holes and assault settlements.
The first game managed to create some strong characters even if it painted with a very broad brush and a lot of people still care and want answers. Another minority will only actually play the new real time strategy title in order to get to the cutscenes and to the character development, in order to see how Jim Raynor deals with his demons and whether the Queen of Blades, formerly the red haired Terran Ghost Sarah Kerrigan, still has any humanity left deep inside her soul. A minority will ignore it wholesale, focusing on the multiplayer matches and on getting as good as possible on a tactical level. There are two ways of looking at the story of Starcraft 2. And strategy gamers will be content to return to the familiarity of Blizzard even though they might have expected something more daring after a ten year wait. Hard core Blizzard fans will be pleased to play something from the company that is not MMO related. New comers will be impressed by the production values and by the attention to detail. Those who played the original will be right at home. This is as classic as it gets, with twists limited to new units and some interesting gameplay modifiers like lava and night and day cycles.
But Starcraft 2 is not a game that innovation lovers will love. The overall world of real time strategy might have morphed, taking on a more tactical and role playing shift in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 and a previously lost grandeur in Supreme Commander 2. Starcraft is back and it's as better as it was ten years.
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