To comment on this article, please visit the forums.
By Michael Lowell
August 2, 2010
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
PC, Mac (Reviewed on PC)
Developed: Blizzard Entertainment
Published: Blizzard Entertainment
Released: July 27, 2010
Note A: This review looks at a product that will change long after the publication of this article, whether developers patch the game or players dissect the game rules. Things change. Bear that in mind.
Note B: This review contains mild spoilers.
Blizzard Entertainment owns real-time strategy. Not really debatable. The competition’s had moments (Command and Conquer: Red Alert, Total Annihilation, Age of Empires II, Company of Heroes), but few dabble in the Blizzard model, something closer to Street Fighter than Supreme Commander. That’s your hype train. You get five or six games a year that play like Call of Duty. It’s been seven years since something that plays like Starcraft. Oh, right. Warcraft III “sucked”. Make that twelve years.
Critics will love Starcraft II. No apparent flaws. Fancy graphics. Robust single-player. Awesome promotional campaign. No perfect score, though. See, rushing is for noobs. It’s still there. Gotta dock the game a tenth of a point. 9.9 out of ten. Game of the Year. “PC gaming is back!” Or something.
The reality? Multiplayer is go. It plays great. Single-player? A mixed bag. Elsewise? Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is a Hollywood movie coded by game designers on the accords of higher-ups, the runaway favorite for Half-Finished Game of the Year.
It’s amiss the moment you load the client. Log in, create a name. You get one shot? What? Really? Yeah. No going back, GokuSlayer. But the game is fine, right? Single-player pays the bills, right?
Jim Raynor’s account of the Terran condition borrows heavily from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and beats those mechanics with a paddle. Most missions embrace one of two tropes: “Accomplish X before time runs out”, “Fight X waves of progressively-tougher units”. There’s little difference between a competition for scrap minerals and running from a firestorm, you’re still fighting the clock. But the approach to the tropes? Memorable.
It’s a rejection of the Brood War mission model (the days of turning a small base and army into the travelling Carrier circus), and it’s damn fun. But few missions require the same focus and intensity as the company’s previous strategy outing. Warcraft III unit composition was about sustainability. Starcraft II is still about maximizing damage output. So with some exceptions, it’s still about hitting “critical mass” (where sheer numbers overcome the opposition) or loading your last save when you piss away that critical chokepoint.
What “critical mass” may look like.
In place of Warcraft III role-playing mechanics is a new take on role-playing. Well, it’s not new at all. The Japanese role-playing game perfected it: Decision-making without consequence. Each mission unlocks new toys. Yay, Firebats! Yay, Vultures! The problem? This Terran nostalgia trip bombards the player with so many options that none of them can be meaningful. Wow, the choices!
It pervades the story arc. On two occasions, you’ll “decide” the fate of supporting characters. In both instances, the character is written out post-mission. Doesn’t matter what you do. That’s not decision-making. It’s like claiming an NBA Playoff matchup will alter the course of basketball history when both teams are playing for the right to lose to the Los Angeles Lakers. Wow, the choices!
In a medium hilted with bloated sidestory, Starcraft’s minimalism was its prized asset. Why does Wings of Liberty focus on the Terrans? Blizzard Entertainment said thirty missions split between three factions couldn’t get it done. The Terrans need their own game. So naturally, the extra breathing room is wasted on “optional” missions. It exemplifies the Starcraft II single-player component. It’s excessive, the result of a blank check and a company-wide hard-on for pretty pixels. And it’s turned the world of Sarah Kerrigan and Jim Raynor into a powerful and disorganized brand of boring.
Tell me about it, Jim.
No knock on voice actors Robert Clotworthy (Jim Raynor) and Neil Kaplan (Tychus Findlay), who play a bad hand with all their conviction. The writing doesn’t click and the mission structure shreds the pacing. Picking fights with crew members after a sidequest? Don’t expect a word from the bridge commander. He’s only programmed to talk about the next mission. Deus Ex this is not. Let’s not forget Blizzard’s knack for punching the fragility of their game universes in the teeth, where the Illidan who threatened Azeroth in The Frozen Throne becomes “LOL HE WASN’T A BIG DEAL” in World of Warcraft. It’s back! It’s easy to earn the impression the story was written so World of Starcraft can soon rock your credit card.
“But multiplayer’s the legacy! Koreans don’t play competitive single-player!” And you’re right. Multiplayer is wonderful. It’s “Blizzard-quality”. It’s a more entertaining out-of-the-box strategy game than anything the company has released.
Blizzard strategy games demand a skill set that twists hand-eye and mental dexterity into knots. And those screaming about the elimination of interface crutches (crappy unit pathing, twelve-unit selection cap) don’t realize the weapons at hand are now a spectacular compromise between production, tactics, and unit control.
Despite their stranglehold on arcade-style real-time strategy, every Blizzard strategy game plays different. Starcraft II embraces the cerebral side. The game’s emphasis on hard counters is particularly notable. Immortals wreck Siege Tanks. Colossi incinerate Marines. Well, Starcraft did the same. But in that game, the design of the unit was the counter, where Dragoons laughed at Vultures until Spider Mines went into the ground. Stalkers shred Reapers no matter which way you fight the fight.
The fear? This brand of counter-unit will usher an era of “do this build order or die”. It doesn’t. Starcraft II is mind-fuck blitz chess, where players are rewarded for attacking four separate fronts with the proper unit composition. Skill still trumps. Starcraft II is merely giving the “I only lose because I get out-clicked!” audience a better chance to prove themselves.
But hey, it’s still Starcraft. You’ll lose and you will feel inferior. Tutorial and challenge modes are merely the beginner Jiu-Jitsu class before your date in the Octagon. If you stick it out, you’ll earn time with one of the most rewarding challenges in video games. And the pressing balance issues? The “rush or die” team games? The perception of a ladder dominated by Terran metal? Historically, Blizzard strategy games have been balanced through map design. Game balance is no concern here, gentlemen.
But the gaming service itself? Battle.net 2.0? Battle.net 2.0 is closer to the apocalypse than the Swarm, one of the most depressing “selling points” in the history of video games. (Look at your box. It’s there.) Lead designer Greg Canessa has ported his Xbox Live acumen to the box. It shows and it blows.
Online gaming services have four goals: Allow players to compete, rank players on those results, facilitate communication, facilitate game creation. Battle.net 2.0 barely misses a whitewash.
It gets matchmaking right. It’s damn good. Starcraft is notorious for letting slight skill discrepancies reap large dividends, in the way American Presidents win landslide victories with slim voter margins. Starcraft II rarely gets matching wrong. The other three goals? It’s pathetic. You might as well call the ladder rankings “let’s hug and hold hands”, where players “compete” against one-hundred-man leagues. It’s “Everybody Gets a Trophy Day”, where thousands across all levels of play can claim they’re number one. Communication? Forget it. No chat channels, lots of region locking. What’s that mean? I can’t play Europeans, I can’t play Koreans, I can barely communicate with Americans. And game creation? When ladder becomes too hard for eight-year-old Jimmy? The act of creating a custom game is bad enough. Creating custom content? Battle.net 2.0 uses a “popularity” system. And since you’re not the man behind Defense of the Ancients, no one will ever play your map. But I’m sure you knew all this.
I’m the top-ranked player in a random sample size, so I know what I’m talking about.
It’s one thing to witness the failings of a game service during the beta test. It’s another to see them applied to retail launch. Where previous Blizzard game launcher were “meet on server X in channel Y”, Battle.net 2.0 and Starcraft II are the opening of a George Romero flick, where we can only wonder if colleagues were consumed or simply hiding. The company’s attempt to monopolize control of their competitive video game scene will prove damaging than any software piracy. And it’s a sad indication of game development culture when the greatest obstacle to a product’s place in the Pantheon is the publisher’s own sword to the stomach.
It’s almost like someone with a gaming web site said the Battle.net forums would look like this in the post-release phase.
Does that sound harsh? Probably. After all, Blizzard’s worst day is more fun than a new Command and Conquer title. And Starcraft II is a very good game. But critics will crown it. They’ll call it legendary. And reviewers don’t understand why Starcraft and Warcraft III developed legacies: People stuck the game out. The critical acclaim for those titles reflected a course of events where South Korea embraced Starcraft and China plays the hell out of Warcraft III. Not the drunken week in ’99 where you totally owned your friends with a Zerg rush. Half-finished products don’t write the history of this industry. Even when they’re some of the most fun you’ll have all year.
Quite frankly, if this is going to be the game people play at LAN parties ten years from now, then–oh, right.
4 out of 5
(Games rated four-out-of-five are very good. In a slow twelve months, they’re dark horses for Game of the Year. Even if you don’t care for the genre, you won’t feel like your money is going to waste.)