Sooooo Heart of the Swarm came out and i was planning on reviewing it today...but I haven't finished it yet due to my crazy weekend. So I'm gonna talk about Wings of Liberty this week to lead into my eventual review. Let's begin!
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
What is it?
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past decade I'm sure you have at least heard of Starcraft. It is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game made by Blizzard and is one of the most popular of all time in this genre. You are in control of a select amount of units, you use these units to gather resources, build new buildings, and grow your army to what ever is needed to complete your objective (usually destroy the other player). It has a fantastic story line with memorable characters and a globally played multiplayer. The game we are talking about today is that games sequel.
What's new?
At its core SC was very simple you had an arsenal of potential units at your disposal its up to you use them as you see fit. Any way to talk about all of it would take for every so I'm just going to talk about whats new in WoL since at its core its the same game.
The biggest update to the game was the graphic over haul. Since the original Starcraft was released in the '90's this is a huge improvement. It's sleek and futuristic and every race has its own ascetics unique to them. The first thing I noticed was that everything moves in this game...the battle field is alive. It really adds a lot to a game when all your buildings are active and there is planetary ambiance.
The next thing I'll talk about is units, though most of the units have returned there are a few new additions. Over all most of the units are very good, additions like transforming ground to air units, kamikaze units, and units that can climb up and down cliffs has really redefined the game. I haven't found a unit yet that I can really say is useless though some are stronger and more versatile than others.
Same with the units each race has gotten a few new tricks to play with furthering their differences and strengthening their own play styles.
Lastly the campaign, this is very different from the original. Instead of the original where you would have the whole story each game in SC2 will mainly focus on one of the 3 races. This one is focused on Terran. Through out the story you can level up your units and abilities to better you forces in each mission.
I have to say the missions in this game are amazing they are varied all have different ways to use your particular race. On top of that the focus on one race allows even deeper connection to these characters the story pulls you in. At times it gets to a war themed B-movie....but in the best kind of ways.
I'd say my biggest complaint is the single player in no way prepares you for mulitplayer. It doesn't teach you tech trees and even some of the units included in single don't exist in the multi. In addition the play style against humans is very different and even the AI set up to teach you is some what predictable (doesn't make it any less hard though).
Final thoughts
If you thought I was gonna come in here and give this a less than rave review you clearly havent read my articles but SC2 is not perfect to say the least. It is an improvement from the original in every way and will be the standard RTS for a while but if you aren't going to play the multiplayer then the story is a bit short and unfulfilling since the whole this is broken up. Also a lot of the interesting units are too specific for use in competitive play.
Overall though its the best RTS out there and it very fun and engaging and with custom maps out there for everything under the sun it has all the replay value. 9/10
See you Friday!
Edit: Sorry for lateness
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