Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

Review by NeuroSplicer for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
One can only respect BLIZZARD for not setting a release date before they knew they could meet it. No matter that this was the most awaited game for over a decade, they would release it “whenever it would be ready”. Well, it is ready, it is here and it rocks. Too bad they kicked the respect bucket in the end. But first things first.

THE GOOD OLD GAMEPLAY GETS THE CIGAR

Seasoned and new gamers alike will appreciate the simple yet highly enjoyable gameplay. The factions are well balanced and the units perfectly valued. You gather minerals and vespene gas, you build your defenses, you upgrade, you expand, you gather your forces – and you unleash hell. Repeat as needed until satisfied.

STARCRAFT: THE QUICKENING

The game is much faster than the original. Resource gathering, building, researching and expanding all go faster now. This is something that will appeal to most and I for one liked it. It conveys an enjoyable sense of urgency, adding to the immersion. And because the game is richer and deeper, the tension just keeps mounting.

SWARMS!

The game designers either enjoyed STARSHIP TROOPERS one times too many or they are fond of killer bees documentaries. Either way, be prepared to have to deal with a lot of swarming enemies! The plains shall be soaked in Zerg blood leaving you with a thick metallic aftertaste of accomplishment.

SPACE. SPACE IS BEAUTIFUL

Visually this is the game is GORGEOUS. It looks like C&C4 was supposed to (but failed miserably). The units are detailed in design yet clearly discernible whereas the environments are superbly done (although not that variable). True, I could do with somewhat more realistic graphics but I can see that this could only be done at the expense of clarity when the number of units rises. What needs a bit getting used to is how some of the buildings do not look that different. No complaints about how they look but one can easily confuse them and build the same building twice.

COME FOR THE VESPENE GAS. STAY FOR THE STORY

The story picks up just where SC-BROODWAR left off. Following each mission nicely done videos move the single player story along (no spoilers, not to worry) that, although we are given the illusion of choosing between different paths, apparently they converge towards a predestined end.

DAMN IT JIM, WHERE IS THE REST OF THE GAME?

Why only 3 stars then? Well, in a nutshell: GREED.

Apparently BLIZZARD is trying to turn the StarCraft franchise into yet another World of WarCraft phenomenon – and, at the same time, using STARCRAFT II as the vehicle, BLIZZARD is trying to turn BattleNet into the new STEAM. Unfortunately this results in a barely palatable product and using your fan-base to advance your corporate ambitions is always tacky.

Although priced even more than a full premium game, this is not a complete STARCRAFT sequel. You would not know this by its price-tag(!) but this is only A…THIRD of the game, the first part of three: you can only play the Terran campaign. The Zerg and the Protoss campaigns will be released independently later (and priced as if they were full games, one could safely bet).

To add insult to injury, one has to keep spending even more money if he wants any “premium maps” and “premium content” sold only via the BattleNet. Since this is a game that will be played mostly online don’t be quick to dismiss this if you have a competitive streak.

OK, LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT IT – BUT THERE IS A HYDRALISK IN THE ROOM, ISN’T THERE?

Much more serious is the NeverLettingGo-OnLineActivation requirement. The game will ask for activation during installation, which also includes signing up to BattleNet (and, yes, this means that even this expensive game never becomes yours to keep). But that is not all: a periodic OnLine confirmation is also required EVERY THIRTY DAYS, FOREVER. You can play offline but no more than a month between re-activating.

Unlike the latest EA and UBISOFT flops (which have an idiotic Always-OnLine requirement), with SC2, after its initial Activation, you CAN play a single player game (campaign and skirmishes) without logging on to BattleNet. Only, to do this you have to log on as a …”Guest” (I know, a Guest to your own game and your own computer…). You will be able to save your progress but you cannot tie it to your BattleNet account later, so any progress or accomplishments are lost for your online Account. After your 30 days are up you have to re-activate once more.

That is why a Broadband Internet connection is included in the minimum system requirements. You can decide if this bothers you.

SORRY TO BRING THIS UP BUT SPAWN SEEMS TO BE MISSING FROM MY COPY…

Remember how we could take our original STARCRAFT CD to a gathering of friends, Spawn it on everyone else’s PCs and start a LAN party? Now one can play with his friends only through the BattleNet – and the Spawn function has been eliminated! Yes, that means each one of your friends now has to have his own original copy of the game!

The brass at the top conveniently forgets that the ability to Spawn games was the main reason both STARCRAFT and DIABLO acquired such huge fan-bases.

Et tu, BLIZZARD?

This is a good game, one I think we will be enjoying for years – or for as long as BLIZZARD shall allow us to do so. However, I had higher hopes for BLIZZARD’s respect to its own customers.

RECOMMENDED.

Review by L. Zhou for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
Blizzard’s (now Activision-Blizzard) obvious success today was hardly a guarantee over a decade ago, and I believe two unshakable tenets of the company back then were responsible for taking them from small game developer to the huge juggernaut that they are now: polish and care. The polish is still there, but the care is gone.

Let me begin by addressing the good stuff in Starcraft 2 first, namely, how polished the game itself is.

Graphics, sound, and game play:

You have to hand it to Blizzard, their art direction is amazing. With such comparatively low polygon count for modern mainstream computer games, there is a world of details coupled with aesthetic color schemes that could make anyone smile. I really cannot stress the attention to detail enough, such as the Terrans laying down their barracks and seeing the beams and foundations go up in real time, the lighting effects of Protoss attack beams, or the reflective organic surface of Zerg bodies. It makes the game feel alive.

The musical score and sound effects aren’t fodder to the pretty graphics either; the production values are high and one can hear all of the treble and specific timbre that goes with every explosion or laser beam that gets fired with a clarity and sharpness that’s to be expected of Blizzard’s products. As any of the Starcraft veterans know, the music perfectly complements each of the three distinct races very well, from the mellow alternative rock motifs of the Terrans, to the new-age majesty of the Protoss, to the sci-fi horror-themed screeches of the Zerg. You may not personally enjoy listening to the background music per se, but it’s undeniable that the pieces fit with each race.

The single player campaign, from the missions I have played thus far, are engaging and wholly satisfying, with the feel of an epic trilogy along the veins of high-budget Hollywood trilogies. I have always adored Blizzard’s attention to story and lore, even if the same themes (betrayal, vengeance, contrition, forgiveness, etc) are used over and over again in their other franchises, but who’s to complain? They’re classic, timeless, literary themes.

The game play is fast and action-paced, save for maybe the first 3-5 minutes of the game where everyone is building up. I can’t say that Starcraft’s brand of fast-paced, high-lethality game play is for everyone, as the learning curve to be considered moderately good is quite high. Thankfully, Bnet2.0′s matching service somewhat mitigates this difference by pairing you with someone similarly skilled by considering total games played, win-loss ratio, level of opponents, etc. How well this matches players is up to debate, but so far I don’t have any complaints.

Now for the bad stuff, which may sound confusing to new players of Blizzard games, but veterans will instantly recognize the problems addressed.

Omission of obvious Bnet2.0 features, RealID support requirement, lack of LAN support, and cost:

The original Starcraft, and each subsequent rendition of [...], has several key features that is conspicuously missing from the Bnet2.0 used in Starcraft 2, namely:

-Private channel support

-Private game features missing

-Named custom games

-Regional server options

Private channel support:

Why is there no private channel support? If Activision-Blizzard were honest with their words that they wanted a [...] experience so good that we wouldn’t want to play offline or on LAN, why leave out such an obvious feature? Private channels allow clans or friends to gather in a chatroom in [...] to organize events, discuss strategies, or just shoot the breeze in general. The lack of private channel support is a huge offense, since this was a standard feature in the days of the original Starcraft, over a decade ago.

Private game features missing:

As it is currently, to join custom games, two players would have to have each other’s game ID, and add each other to their respective friends list. Not only that, ALL friends can see and join games that are created by a user on the friend list. What if you just wanted to relax and host a random custom game with complete strangers, or host a custom game with certain friends but not others? Well, you can’t easily do this, since any friend on your list can see the game you’ve made, and can subsequently join it if they wish.

Named custom games:

Anyone who has played Starcraft or Warcraft III on [...] knows that custom game names are important. “2v2 LT no rush 20min” or “DOTA Cali ALL RANDOM” tell game seekers exactly what they’re getting into when they join these games. This is no longer possible with the current Bnet2.0, as you are only privy to the game map name, and speed of the game.

Regional server options:

In the old [...] if you had friends in different parts of the world (North America, South America, Asia, Europe), you can switch your [...] server to hop over to any of those servers and play with/against them, albeit probably with much more lag, but nonetheless, the option is there. In Starcraft 2, you are locked to the region of your purchase, so there would be no way for you to change region servers. If you’re in the east coast and want to play a few [...] games at 2am and it’s too late in the night to find many games on the east coast, you would not be able to hop on over to the west coast where it’s only 11pm, and likely more players are still on.

RealID support requirement:

The Orwellian requirement to link one’s real name and location to their PUBLIC support forum profile is ridiculous; the potential for abuse is endless, as it is for anything that reveals real, personal information. I guess one could make the argument that it is in the game’s disclaimer, or just don’t buy the game altogether.

Lack of LAN support:

This cannot be stressed enough, LAN is an integral part of modern multiplayer RTS games, even if the majority of players will not be using it often. Just because most people don’t use Radians on calculators, does that mean we should get rid of it entirely and use only Degrees? The point is, LAN settings could range from fun, social gatherings with friends, to tournaments hosted at some internet cafe; being 100% reliant on [...] to be up is hardly reassuring, especially considering that tournaments require the low latency that only LAN environments can provide.

Cost:

At $60, and with all of the previous issues addressed, Starcraft 2 is too much for its worth. I hate to say it, but as much as I love the game play and the level of polish, the price tag does not justify the clear omission of certain key features.

I love Blizzard’s RTS franchises, but it seems that Activision-Blizzard has stopped caring about the long-time fans that catapulted them to their prominence today. I love Starcraft 2′s game play and level of polish, but I cannot get past some of the egregious offenses that the game possesses.

Review by pwrkatz for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
First off, I suggest anyone wanting this game, WAIT!!! It’s too freakin’ high and you’ll be disappointed with a few things, so wait on it. That seems to be the general consensus. The new graphics are great! But it’s overpriced and for everyone out there who were expecting to play this game while traveling to someplace without a internet connection, forget it. You have to play it via the internet only. HUGE MISTAKE.

I picked up my copy yesterday like all loyal Blizzard Starcraft fans out there. It was like Christmas for me back when I was a kid. I couldn’t wait to get home and rip that sucker open. Then things became abundantly clear for me. All that delays, all the silence, no reviews, nothing coming out of the Blizzard camp except trailers I’ve been watching for 2 yrs and the promise of something new, something fantastic, and something that will make the original Starcraft look like Pong. Well, I’m still waiting to be impressed.

I am so angry about this! I can’t even articulate accurately what exactly I’m disappointed with the most. The lack of LAN playing is serious let down since it’s how I first learned to play SC. The biggest disappointment has to be the lack of stand alone playing. We live in a time where there are gaming laptops out there that are nearly as powerful and fast as desktops. Being able to play this game anywhere is one of the things I was so looking forward to and now, I learn that that’s not the case. Truth is, SC was the first game I ever played on a PC when I bought my first back in 98. (besides solitaire anyway) Staying up all night playing, spending entire weekends being a mindless zombie battling the evil swarm. Luckily, I had a treadmill. Anyway, this is bad, but not all bad. Still, it’s getting 2 stars just because of the high price and dependency on the internet just to play in single player mode. I feel as if I paid [...] bucks so I could be told what I could do with what I paid for. This isn’t like Blizzard and I gotta ask, what was the motivation for them doing this to their loyal fan base of their award winning games. Do they give out golden turkey awards for games ?

One of the impressive things about most of Blizzard products is that I could always play by myself and be happy doing that. I could play anywhere, anytime as long as I had my trusty gaming laptop. What the hell were they thinking! You have to have an internet connection to play? That’s ludicrous! No wonder they kept that tidbit quiet and kept all things quiet because there’s now way in hell this game is going to win Game of the year. Blizzard betrayed their followers and loyal fans. So, I guess when my internet is down, I’ll just have to play pong to keep myself entertained now. Needless to say, I won’t be buying SC 3 or any of SC2 expansion packs unless the online crap goes the way of the dodo Thanks Blizzard.

I’m a very patient person and I’m always positive by nature. The reviews of SC2 are pouring in and most of them aren’t positive. I feel like I’ve been robbed though like most. I love the familiar feeling I get from the game, but I guess I just was expecting something groundbreaking, something spectacular, something new. Graphics are good, storyline is great, but the game is a huge let down over all. I guess I’ll have to become a Microsoft game fan and hope they’ll come up with a good new strategy game. Blizzard, you’ve lost a fan. Good luck gang.

I’m no stock market analyst, but it’s my guess that the money you’ve made from this game so far will take a sharp decline within the next week after this bad release. This rings of the recent iPhone 4 situation. I really hope someone from Blizzard is actually reading these reviews because and respond quickly about it. I don’t think this will happen though. I really don’t think they care.

Review by Mark Silver for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
Hey, guys, want to come over for a fun LAN party/tournament for Star Craft II? Maybe order some pizza while you all have fun watching each other’s reactions? You do? Oh, too bad, you can’t. The game doesn’t have LAN. Want to meet new people in chat channels, add them to your friends list, and fight them in 1v1′s? You do? Oh, too bad, you can’t. The game doesn’t have lobby chats nor room chats. Want to play the Star Craft II campaign (or verse an AI opponent) on that long, tedious plane flight, or maybe at Uncle Bob’s house who happens to not have internet? No dice. The game makes you log in to play any part of it as a measure of “anti-piracy” even though the game was cracked within hours of its official release. Blizzard, you had the chance to make the best game ever, and it almost was, but these SEVERE flaws ruin the whole thing. If you value us as customers, fix these in a patch. Add LAN, add chat, and let us play without an internet connection. All easy enough to fix.

Review by Griswel for Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Rating:
You are in for a long and arduous journey. Then, after the installation process is complete, your arduous journey moves on to the patch. After this is complete, you must sign in, online, in order to play your game. Then you attach your sixty-dollar purchase to a particular account, and are permitted to play. Welcome to the Blizzard’s immersive adventure, featuring an online totalitarian simulation, and some kind of computer game.

If you have two kids who play, or you play and a kid plays, you will need to buy separate copies of the game for each of you if you want to have two saved games or play online under different names. The game is connected to your online account, and when you sign in you play as the name you created. Someone can play as “Guest”, but with very limited privileges.

Studies clearly show that people who steal games will enjoy them less if those of us who paid for them are run through an abattoir before we’re allowed to play.

The game itself is fine. Starcraft with new 3D images and tweaks to gameplay (begin arguing about how the tweaks are HUGE and IMPORTANT … now). All that’s really really changed is Blizzard’s ability to make us jump through hoops.