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Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty

July 30, 2010, 6:07 PM EDT

Story Tools

By Chris Holt

In space, everyone smokes cigars. Space cowboys sit in bars, listen to country music and drink whiskey by the gallon. The Terran space marines in StarCraft are a weathered, dirty bunch. You remove their machine guns and body armor and suddenly StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty isn't an epic sci-fi real time strategy game, but a western opera. What has always separated Blizzard's StarCraft universe from Warhammer 40,000's similar story of humans, space elves, and insect-like aliens is the characters. Warhammer is all about the war. StarCraft is all about the shifting alliances, moral failings, and complex relationships of the far future.

StarCraft II is an opus of violence, fire, and flawed humanity. After years of development, Blizzard has delivered one of the most powerful single player campaigns in recent memory, a story with surprising narrative weight and varied, compelling gameplay. Thanks to an equally strong multiplayer, StarCraft II has once again raised the bar for all others to meet.

And this is only chapter one.

When Blizzard decided to split up StarCraft II into three parts, many people whined it was a money grab. You get to play as the Terrans in Wings of Liberty, but the future expansions will detail the Zerg and Protoss campaigns. Why pay $60 for only one race, one campaign? It better be one hell of a campaign. And it is.

The story

StarCraft II picks up four years after the events of Brood War, the expansion to 1998's StarCraft. Jim Raynor, the embittered Terran hero from the first game, has now been reduced to mercenary work for a company seeking mysterious alien artifacts. Kerrigan, the self styled "Queen of Blades," has not been seen in four years but the Zerg's dormancy can't last long. Meanwhile, the splintered Protoss are in the midst of a tribal civil war with Artanis trying to unite the factions before its too late.

Surprisingly, the Terran campaign encompassed in Wings of Liberty isn't just about Raynor and his mission to hunt down artifacts and seek revenge on Dominion Emperor Arcturus Mengsk. For starters, it's not so linear. The central mission hub isn't a single screen, but rather Raynor's flagship. You can go down to the armory and talk to your sergeant-in-arms, learning more about him and what new equipment he has. You can buy upgrades for your army from credits you earn in the missions, giving the game some role-playing game flavor. Similarly, you can hop up to the lab and do research on the other species and learn new tricks that way. Or you can just hang in the ship's cantina, watch some funny news segments and listen to some silly space country music like a weird cover of "Sweet Home Alabama." Your crew appears in the various rooms and always have something to say, giving them remarkable depth and growth over the course of the game. When Raynor later allies himself with Mengsk's son against a common enemy, his crew isn't happy and they let him know it.

Blizzard is able to offer a compelling story while offering the player various choices that have a real impact on the story. Do you save or purge infested colonists? Do you knock out an enemies air support or take out their underground reinforcements? These aren't illusionary choices: they have a real impact on the game. In one mission, you can choose to throw your lot in with Tosh, a mysterious voodoo-inspired black ops "Spectre" who has offered you missions in the past and has been part of your crew. Only problem is he may be psychotic. The other choice is to listen to Nova, a spec ops ghost working for Mengsk, and instead turn on Tosh. Each result nets you a different video, but also grants you access to different units. Side with Tosh, you get Spectres. Side with Nova, you get Ghosts. You can always save your game and see which result you like best, but personally I always liked Tosh (despite his stereotypical voodoo creepinees) so I helped him break his friends out of a maximum-security prison. Nova and her failed game can go to hell.

There's an overarching plot about tracking down artifacts and going after Kerrigan, but Wings of Liberty balances this out with side stories and characters that help put some context into the game. Wings of Liberty could never work as a movie, but as an episodic TV show it would likely have a devoted following. Aside from Tosh's Spectre arc, I enjoyed first mate Matt Horner's missions that let you strike out against the murderous human emperor Arcturus Mengsk. Malcolm Reynolds would be proud.

There are also several missions that let you relive memories and visions of Zeratul, the Protoss Dark Templar. These "memories," accessed from an artifact that Zeratul gives Raynor, are some of the more difficult missions in the game and yet are unessential to finish the main plot. They're interesting in that they give the player an early sneak peak at playing as the Protoss. Most of these are simple stealth missions, but the last one, where you must hold out against an overwhelming Zerg force, is not only brutally difficult but also heart wrenching in its implications.

The gameplay

I know I wasn't the only critic who feared that StarCraft II would just be the first game with a facelift. While the fundamentally sound gameplay returns (as do most units), the Terran campaign reveals a much richer array of units and some fundamental changes in a player's strategies.

With the exception of a couple missions where you must merely blow up certain locations on the map, the single player campaign for Wings of Liberty features a number of unique twists and some really great set pieces. On one mission, you can break out some rogue agents out of a prison. In another, you use a stolen weapon to disrupt a press event. Still others let you evac civilians, hold the line, rescue persons of interest, and even outrun a firestorm before it consumes a planet.

Traditionally, the multiplayer component of a strategy game is just a mirror image of the single player campaign, but Wings of Liberty changes that by giving Jim Raynor and his crew many "classic" units from the first StarCraft that don't appear in the multiplayer. The firebat, a flamethrower infantry unit and fan favorite, appears in the single player campaign, but has been replaced in multiplayer by a fast-attack buggy called the Hellion. Similarly, the Wraith fighter is not featured in multiplayer, but appears as buildable alongside the ground-assault Banshee and the anti-air Viking fighter in the single player campaign. The Viking and Banshee are both new units and combined with the "med bus" transport, offer the Terrans a formidable upgrade in the air.

Yet, I still found it frustrating that many of my favorite units (the Medic, the Vulture, the Wraith) weren't available in multiplayer, though Blizzard had taken the time to develop and insert them into the single player game. Though the limitations on the units make for a more flawed, unique force, I support a larger variety of units that will allow me more flexibility in my strategies. Let's hope Blizzard brings factions to more factions to the multiplayer beside the standard Zerg, Protoss, and Terran unit sets.

Despite the improved graphics and retooled armies, there are some fundamental problems with Blizzard's approach to strategy games that StarCraft II didn't address. The game is more tactical than strategic, meaning you have to micromanage everything if you want to succeed. Your units have the self-preservation instincts of teenagers in a slasher film and I still encountered some pathfinding issues. While many strategy games have introduced the ability to dig in or move into different formations, StarCraft remains fundamentally simplistic in its unit functions--that's the good and bad news.

StarCraft has a dedicated online community and StarCraft II will deservedly get its own. But multiplayer battles are remarkably limited in their tactics and very similar in how they play out: they're usually decided within the first few minutes and it remains a game of economics and build orders. The strategy "turtling," or building a large base and playing defensively, is impossible in StarCraft and Warcraft. Your resources will run out, you must expand, and therefore you must expand fast or your opponent will have you surrounded. This funnels the player into certain strategies that may frustrate some players. I say this despite beating Macworld's Jason Snell in less than ten minutes. Twice.

The performance

On my Core i7 iMac, the game looked great and didn't so much as sneeze when I had my army pushing 200 units against an equally large force. The graphics are a major step up from Warcraft III, but on the whole I wouldn't consider the in-game battles a huge leap forward for the industry. The videos and interactive menus, on the other hand, speak to the high-amount of polish and effort that went into the game. Just as X-Wing Alliance made me want to explore an Alliance starship, StarCraft II made me want to explore Jim Raynor's battleship. It looks like a fun place to hang out.

The controversies surrounding Battle.net, Blizzard's online gaming service that encompasses StarCraft II's multiplayer, deserve a separate article. On the whole, the interface is intuitive and setting up games was a breeze. I thought I'd miss LAN games, but I was able to quickly add friends to my party and remove the ability for public players to hop in. I understand why Blizzard eliminated LAN, but at the same time I also understand why people are angry that such an iconic part of StarCraft (everyone setting up a LAN game in a house or dorm) is now gone forever.

Macworld's buying advice

My quibbles about limited strategies and the elimination of certain units are minor, comparatively speaking. After playing ten years of games trying to be StarCraft, it's nice for Blizzard to come back with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and once again raise the bar on sci-fi real-time strategy. The multiplayer is similar enough to the original to keep the puritans happy, while the single player campaign is a beautiful, complex, replayable, and epic journey into a world that gets more interesting every time I enter it. Oh yeah, it was worth the wait.

Chris Holt is a Macworld associate editor.

Original story - http://www.macworld.com/article/152629/2010/07/starcraft2.html