After more than a decade in hibernation, the galaxy spanning RTS that made Blizzard a household name in South Korea is back. Once again, you’ll be asked to step into the well worn combat boots of renegade marshal Jim Raynor. Though haunted by the loss of compatriot Sarah Kerrigan, a little arm twisting will see you resume your mission to dismantle the corrupt Terran Confederacy and defend humanity from the technologically advanced Protos and numerically gifted Zerg.
The single player game commences with an optional tutorial and while veterans can safely skip it, it’s a must for newcomers to what can be an intimidating genre. It breaks the game into its most basic components, allowing you to master one before progressing to the next. After completing this mode, you’ll have no trouble establishing bases, gathering resources, generating units and attacking enemy positions. An interactive hotkey tutorial would have been nice, particularly given its importance to multiplayer. It’s the only thing missing from an otherwise excellent introduction to the game.
Unfortunately, this first impression is soon soured by what can only be described as mediocre production values. While the in-game graphics are perfectly acceptable, the in-engine cut scenes are laughably inept. When mercenary Gabriel Tosh thanks you for freeing his “brothers and sisters” from prison planet New Folsom, the camera pans down to reveal them as a quartet of hopelessly indistinct blobs. Why Blizzard didn’t transition to a pre-rendered cut-scene is beyond me. Whenever you arrive at a new planet, instead of being treated to a cinematic introduction, you’re fobbed off with a static loading screen. It feels rushed and it feels cheap.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll spend the first dozen hours or so grumbling about Blizzard, before suddenly realising that the game has its hooks into you. You’ll catch yourself mulling over defensive tactics while waiting for the train or obsessing about build orders when you should be concentrating on the Hollywood blockbuster you just forked over $17.50 to see. While the game does eventually cough up a few (admittedly spectacular) pre-rendered cut scenes, it ultimately succeeds on the back of superbly balanced gameplay and the extraordinary variety of objectives.
One level challenges you to gather resources on a planet beset by regular volcanic eruptions. Unless you remain vigilant, your miners will be swept away by lava before they can reach higher ground. Another sees you defending a world with a rapid day/night cycle. Your forces dominate the daylight hours but are incredibly vulnerable after nightfall. There is even an action RPG style level in which you guide a handful of hero units through a network of Zerg infested caves. With each level involving a new unit, a new objective, or more often than not, both, the campaign transcends the turtle and rush dichotomy of many RTS releases. You won’t have the opportunity to build a large base from scratch and seriously tech up until the final third of the game, by which time it feels like a reward rather than more of the same.
The game also takes the time to explore the human drama behind the galactic conflict, even affording you a degree of moral autonomy. At one stage, you’re forced to decide whether to defend a disease ridden Terran colony or join Protos forces in eradicating it. You’ll face three such choices and in each case, there is no right or wrong answer. While the game is largely populated with action movie archetypes, the voice cast are charismatic and credible, with Neil Kaplan particularly enjoyable as enigmatic escapee Tychus Findlay.
Of course, many of you will consider the single player story to be a secondary consideration. StarCraft II includes a broad and reliable multiplayer component featuring three distinct factions. You can face off against a single adversary, dive into an eight player free-for-all, or work with up to three other players to defeat an opposing team. The game uses your first few match-ups to determine your skill level and then pits you against players of similar ability. It must be said, however, that the average StarCraft II player is quite formidable. I lost around 10 games before I registered my first win. On one occasion my entire base was carpeted in Zerg before I had constructed a single offensive unit.
If you find yourself struggling, do what I did. Hit the net for some free advice from the enthusiastic StarCraft community. After an hour of research, I was scouting enemy bases, seizing higher ground, dominating choke points and coming to grips with the hot keys. I was learning to better manage my resources, combine units effectively and conceal the size and nature of my army. Armed with these basic hints, you’ll prevail with much greater frequency.
The game also includes a range of AI challenges, which systematically demonstrate how key units from each of the three factions can be dominant in some circumstances and hopelessly exposed in others. After just few hours of play, you’ll come to appreciate just how well balanced each of the units are and how many different strategies are available to you.
My only criticism of the multiplayer aspect of StarCraft II is that it doesn’t yet boast the variety of objectives and environmental challenges that make the single player game so unpredictable. The recent release of Burning Tide, an official DLC map featuring the same lava mechanic used in the campaign, suggests that Blizzard plan to address this deficiency. Still, these options should have been in place from day one.
Ironically, given its famously elongated development cycle, the game probably needed a few more months in the oven in order to reach its full potential. Overall, though, StarCraft II is remarkably strong offering. The solo campaign is lengthy and imaginative, the multiplayer balanced and addictive. If you have even the slightest interest in the RTS genre, this is a good place to start.
