In the words of the announcement trailer, “hell, its about time!”… and so here are a few of my first impressions of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. Needless to say these are my views of a game, which is a subjective thing.
After a lengthy install (the single DVD contains PC and Mac, and installs an 8Gb game), it was ready to download a mercifully short patch. After a typically beautiful Blizzard cinematic (most of the game cinematics are in game movies, which really shows the power of this engine) I was greeted by the Battle.net login. The new UI is clean and easy to use, and since I had played with multi-player in the beta, I jumped straight into the story-heavy single player campaign. Thankfully the history of the world and the first game and expansion is given during the install.
I fully expect this to not be the normal length for an RTS (of 40+ hours) but instead around about 20+ hours as they have split the game into 3 instalments – one for each race. The races, for those who don’t know, are Terran (human… not a surprise really), Protoss (think elves, or Eldar from 40k) , and finally the Zerg (alien hive mind creatures and my favourite). There is also the challenges section which I have yet to try but they look like being quite interesting and will add a good few hours to the single player side (as I probably fail repeatedly to try and complete them), as will trying to get all the achievements in the single player missions.
In the actual games, the UI is clean (if a bit big on my older 5:4 monitor), the units react smoothly, it looks gorgeous and clean, and even when the action gets manic you can see whats going on and react. It is wise to learn at least some hot keys and how to bind units/buildings as it does help. I cannot emphasise enough just how well it’s all put together, it may not turn to be the longest RTS ever but its very finely crafted and feels solid.
In-between single player missions there are interactive scenes where you can purchase upgrades, talk to the various characters, and of course select what missions you want to do. Each mission so far has been an increasing challenge and there is a drive to do well as the rewards help fund your research and upgrades. It quickly becomes clear, if you know about the multi-player, that there are more units in single player and they are more powerful to help drive the story and feel of progress.
Then there is of course the multi-player. It cannot be denied that a large amount of time and effort has been put into it (although so far not to the detriment of the single player). Starcraft has such a competitive pro scene that even the beta had large prize money tournaments. It is, in my mind at least, one of the most balanced multi-player RTSs out there, and one that has a constant input from Blizzard to ensure it stays that way and stays fresh, even by tweaking firing rate of units by tenths of seconds.
The multi-player does a good job of taking the newcomer through it and onto the ladder system where you find random players to pit your wits against. There are a lot of issues with the new “Battle.net 2.0” from the lack of chat rooms, no cross region play, and the problems with the real ID system, however these issues (or more accurately niggles) are either being resolved or are not that big. One is however, the lack of LAN play. If you want to have a LAN party with Starcraft 2 you have to do it over Battle.net online. There is, in essence, no offline multi-player.
It’s well worth getting into the multi-player or at the very least watching the numerous commentaries of the pro (and not so pro) level games that abound across the web (my favourites are Husky, HDStarcraft, and Day9 who is also a pro-level player), all of whom give their own unique views on the game. These games go to show the skill and concentration that goes into pro-level gaming, and why e-sports can be as fun to watch as “normal” sports.
Also included is an editor, which allows the creation of not just multi-player maps, but also single player campaigns and almost anything else you can come up with. I have seen side scrolling shoot-em ups, first person shooters, chess… its a surprisingly versatile engine and a powerful, if complicated (for anything other than creating maps) editor.
I’ll admit this post has been a bit meandering, and probably misses out huge chunks, but the game only arrived at my door 12 hours ago, and these are very early thoughts and I wanted to get my “first impressions” early, the first day before I even sleep on it.
So, in conclusion I will say, if you enjoy RTS games, pick it up, ignore the doom sayers (side note, notice how it seems to be an increasing feature of the net that its cool to hate something that’s big/popular for no reason other than they are successful?… I digress), ignore the fan boys, make your own minds up, as for me its shaping up to be a fun, well made, balanced RTS, and what more could I ask for?
So as I sign off, here is the “ghosts of the past” trailer for Starcraft II… nice…
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is out on Mac and PC and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
See Adam’s latest posts here or visit his site.
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{ 1 comment }
Make sure to upgrade your computer first. This game will not run worth anything on your 2-year old laptop that barely handles WoW. The minimum requirements listed on the box are not joking.
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