Review: StarCraft II

Rated M for PC

BY JAMES CULLINANE

We've been doing little else but playing StarCraft II since late Monday evening.

Therefore, although you may spot a few fatigue-induced fumbles, what you're reading is the real deal - we've clocked the campaign, been thrashed online, and had a good chance to verify our findings from the extensive preview sessions Blizzard were kind enough to provide us with stretching back to BlizzCon '08.

A real-time strategy game set in a war-torn universe plagued by political intrigue and beset by the constant threat of total annihilation, both StarCraft and its sequel recount the bloodied interactions of three races: the pioneering and politically corrupt human Terrans; the Protoss, an ancient and ruthlessly objective alien species; and the devouring Zerg, a xenomorphic alien swarm ruled by a single hive mind.
 
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty's singleplayer campaign picks up four years after the events of the original.

You play as Jim Raynor, a freedom fighter branded a rebel by the Terran Dominion - the ruling empire he unwittingly helped to install. Raynor's motivation is to bring down the Dominion and its ruthless Emperor, Arcturus Mengsk.

The unfolding storyline is a slightly-greyed tale of good and evil. It's compelling, expertly paced and unburdened by unnecessary aggrandisement or allusion.

Regrettably, Wings of Liberty is just one of three instalments in StarCraft II, so it's also incomplete. Particular narrative threads drop out (presumably to be picked up again in the two planned expansion packs), others occasionally feel too incidental and the conclusion is - as you'd expect - far from conclusive.

Story is frequently moot, or at least less pressing, in a real-time strategy title. It's a genre where you're often set a stage and left to deliver the story yourself.

Wings of Liberty, however, successfully introduces significant role-playing and progression elements to its fundamental base-building formula.

The staging ground for Raynor's campaign is his Battlecruiser, the Hyperion. The ship itself operates as a large interactive menu composed of four wings.

In each wing, Raynor can choose to interact with other characters in cut scenes - many of whom have additional missions for the player to complete, and almost all of whom are prepared to offer an opinion on current events.

Incidentally, all the dialogue scenes in StarCraft II are built with the galaxy editor, a development tool that ships with the game and is available for users to create their own content.

Also built with the galaxy editor is The Lost Viking, a mini-game that can be found in the cantina wing of the Hyperion. Both of these showcase what a promising tool the galaxy editor is - unfortunately, we haven't had enough time to truly sink our teeth into it.

Elsewhere in the cantina, Raynor can watch the propaganda-ridden Dominion news to gauge reaction to his campaign, or hire mercenaries. If purchased, these limited elite units can arrive by drop ship on the battlefield.
 
From the bridge, Raynor can select from any number of available missions, and the player can review past cinematics. Occasionally, Raynor will also be required to make decisions that will have divergent results as to what units are available to him in the future.

The missions themselves typically conform to the base-building mould, with objectives ranging from time challenges, survival, gathering and destruction.

Players are set up with the bare essentials after which they must accumulate minerals and vespene gas which can in turn be spent on units, defences and greater production facilities. Your standard real-time strategy fare, then.

Nonetheless, StarCraft II imbues each mission with detailed relevance during the briefing sessions - the player is never left to wonder why they're performing the task at hand. Moreover, every mission contains its own unique mechanic not to be found elsewhere in the game.
 
In addition to incrementally introducing new units and presenting players with a compounding, finely-balanced difficulty curve, players must grapple with particular challenges.

For example, you may be required to regularly move your base eastward across a map as a supernova dawn slowly conflagrates the planet you're occupying.

On the battlefield, StarCraft II isn't breaking any new ground graphically, opting instead for more cinematic presentation between missions.

Although the unit modelling and terrain details are more than capable for this style of game, Blizzard has bypassed the urge to create something that only a top-end machine will run in favour of gameplay.

Each map also contains a number of bonus objectives scattered throughout the level. Foremost among these are Zerg and Protoss research upgrades.

Back in the Hyperion's laboratory, Raynor has two tech trees to choose from and can invest research points in one of two exclusive upgrades to his structures.
 
Similarly, Raynor will also receive credits for completing missions, which he can use in the Hyperion's armory to non-exclusive upgrade his units and vehicles.

These role-playing elements add a layer of strategic depth to StarCraft II, allowing the player to customise or upgrade his or her preferred units, or perhaps to automate a task such as resource gathering.

There are more unit upgrades available than Raynor will have credits to spend, so judicious purchasing would be required were it not for the number of largely pointless new vehicles in the game.

As you progress, you'll unlock new vehicles such as the Diamondback tank. Typically, they'll serve a particular or necessary function on their introductory map, but they're easily discarded thereafter.

It could be that we're now so used to multiplayer build orders after playing the online beta so extensively (many of the singleplayer units are not available in online competitive play) that we bypass them by default, or don't understand their real advantage. Whatever the case, their relegation to the bench hardly put a dint in our progress.

The permanent upgrading system is heavily reminiscent of Relic's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. But that's what Blizzard does best - take an existing format and improve upon it. StarCraft II is not a particularly innovative title - it's not trying to be.

If anything, it brings home the point that the real-time strategy genre has been largely stagnant (Creative Assembly's Total War series to one side) since Warcraft III. Indeed, StarCraft II often feels like an in-house evolution of its sister series.

Besides, many of those real-time strategy titles that have decided to focus heavily on innovation in recent years have lost their way. Case in point, Command & Conquer 4's dramatic reinvention of the wheel that was met with, at best, mere scattered applause in March.

But perhaps the greatest strength in StarCraft II's singleplayer campaign is its illusion of scale and choice. The player is free to take or leave those new units; they can interact heavily with the characters on the Hyperion or skim across them superficially.

But should they scratch just a little, they'll find an experience rich in detail. The game's borders, its limitations, the proverbial "man behind the curtain" are especially well concealed. That makes for a deeply immersive experience like none other in its category.
 
StarCraft II's singleplayer campaign is probably enough to enshrine it in the annals of real-time strategy gaming. But the source of its assured longevity, and the reason it has induced hysteria in otherwise civil and composed grown men is its online multiplayer component.

Gamers have been playing the original StarCraft online for the last twelve years. The game's competitive circuit is as much a business as any other sporting league and its stars - in Korea more so than elsewhere - are treated with the same kind of reverence.

If the singleplayer campaign is a portly, jovial new friend you've decided should join your Friday night pub group, the game's online multiplayer is his steroid juicing twin - fast, toned, pitiless. Much of the superfluous fat has been trimmed to create a highly refined competitive experience. Matches are decided within moments and newcomers need tread carefully.

Prerequisite to success online is a thorough understanding of the unique playstyles of all three races, the Terrans, the Zerg and the Protoss.

As the singleplayer campaign is heavily composed of Terran gameplay with just a handful of Protoss missions and no Zerg missions at all, new players will have to invest some time coming to grips with the playstyles of the latter two.

To assist in that process, StarCraft II offers a series of offline challenges that are designed to hone a player's skills. Additionally, players can practice against five tiers of AI.

Even so, we expect the barrier to entry may simply be too high for the merely curious, who at the very least will have to play through five ego-deflating "placement matches" before Battle.Net 2.0 - Blizzard's new online gaming portal - places them into a league in which they can find competitive matches.

Once there, their position will continue to go up or down based on their performance. Still, once Battle.Net has ascertained your skills, its matchmaking system proves robust and it will reliably pair you at your level.
 
Multiplayer is limited to Battle.Net. Players cannot compete against one another over a Local Area Network - something that has been a point of contention among the harder kernel of longstanding real-time strategy fans.

As far as we're concerned, the lack of LAN play is only a problem if you don't have an internet connection. Playing with others in the same room is fine provided you can all access Battle.Net, and the latency shouldn't prove an insurmountable issue unless you're quietly nurturing dreams of a professional career.

In saying that, it's not a welcome method of structuring the game, and it would have been more agreeable if Blizzard had found a technological solution that allowed direct connections.

But for the experienced, or the eagerly competitive, StarCraft II's multiplayer is without peer.

Fine-tuning is always an ongoing process as more data becomes available, but already StarCraft II's multiplayer exhibits the kind of sophisticated balance and network support that will see it succeed its forebear as the last word in real-time strategy gaming.

Twelve years is an awfully long time between drinks. The original StarCraft was released in 1998. It's still wildly popular.

We don't expect StarCraft II will be any different.

- Gameplanet.co.nz

- Gameplanet