StarCraft II [Review]

FULL REVIEW

Fans of Blizzard games have been waiting with bated breath ever since StarCraft II was officially announced back in 2007. Blizzard has a unique reputation in the ever-shrinking world of PC games development. Hence, news of a new project –outside of WoW—was enough to induce bouts of hysteria, even if one is not necessarily a big fan of RTS genre. The news of Blizzard’s acquisition by publishing giant Activision was disheartening for many; mainly due to the dubious reputation of Activision among game critics and users. Activision was quick to cement any concerns that rose out of the acquisition by making a string of announcements that all but assured that Blizzard is going to be just another studio in a large business conglomerate.

For starters, it was decided that the three campaigns in StarCraft II will be sold as three separate games, followed by decisions like region restrictions and use of Battle.net as a digital distribution system. Since it was decided that StarCraft II will carry less content than what was originally promised, one would expect the price to reflect that change. On the contrary, StarCraft II is being sold at a price that is higher than average price for PC games. And for a price-conscious market like India, the high price point has had a more drastic effect. Our sources in the game distribution and retailing business told us that they had to completely drop StarCraft II for our market due to its relatively exorbitant price tag. Despite the game’s fan-following in India, StarCraft II would have been a hard-sell at a price tag of rupees 2,500; whereas most PC releases in India are priced between rupees 699 to 999. So if you are in India and you want to get your hands on the game, you’ll need to either order game through online game retailers or buy the digital version directly from Blizzard.

Ominous start

Since we were eager to play StarCraft II as soon as we could, we decided to opt for Battle.net digital distribution system to buy the game. A few days before the scheduled release of the game, Blizzard let potential buyers pre-load the game onto their systems. Based on our previous purchases of Blizzard games, the Battle.net system assigned South-East Asia region to our account. While we were allowed to pre-load the game, there was no indication of how much the game will cost. The game was almost a 7- GB download and it took us several days to complete the process.

This experience cleared any doubts we had that a handful of single-minded publishing conglomerates are sucking the fun out of games. In any case, we are going to attempt an objective look at the fruits of Blizzard’s labour, behind the sham of business—you know, for old-time’s sake.

Raynor’s crusade

StarCraft II is set merely four years after the incidents in the Brood Wars, which means that most of the characters from the original game are still around. Jim Raynor is a fugitive from the law and he is gathering force and resources to give a fitting reply to Mengk’s betrayal, which led to Kerrigan’s transformation into the Queen of Blades. Joining him on his mission are other returning characters like Tycus and Zeratul. Entwined with Raynor’s quest for vengeance, is the ever increasing threat from Kerrigan’s brood that looks poised to overwhelm all other life in the universe. While Kerrigan and Mensk strive for dominance, Raynor is torn between his hatred for Mensk and his love for Kerrigan.

The game’s single-player campaign explores this premise using some fresh and slick presentation techniques. Pre-rendered cut-scenes are top-notch, as expected, and the in-game cut-scenes are supported with some pretty convincing voice-acting. Game’s script does well to hold the story together and there are some good jokes thrown in to lighten an otherwise sombre mood.

Solo Campaign

StarCraft II single-player campaign pans across several planets—some of which are new to the series while others will be familiar to those who have played the original game. Each mission has one or more primary objectives and may also have several bonus objectives. 
Completing bonus mission is either rewarded by credits or by research points. Credits are used for multiple purposes—from hiring mercenary groups to fight by your side, to purchasing permanent upgrades for buildings and units. Mercenaries are an improved version of Terran units and once you have purchased their services, they can be summoned in limited numbers during single-player missions by expending minerals and gas. Zerg and Protoss research points can also be earned during certain single-player missions, and these can be used to unlock powerful upgrades for your existing units and building, or they can be used to unlock entirely new units.

At any given point in the game, there can be several missions available and these can be attempted in any order. Also at certain points during the campaign, the player needs to make a choice between two missions and this choice takes the storyline on a slightly different trajectory. These two features combine to give a fairly non-linear experience. The missions themselves have enough variety —either in terms of specific challenges or the planets’ terrain— to keep things fresh and interesting right until the end. StarCraft II also has a few Protoss missions and this helps in breaking the monotony of Terran missions. The only major gripe I have about the single-player campaign is that it has an inconclusive and underwhelming ending. The gap left by the exclusion of the Zerg and Protoss campaign is clearly felt because the game fails to deliver a conclusion worthy of all the effort put into the previous missions.

After beating the single-player campaign, players can choose to replay missions on higher difficulties or attempt the mission again to earn any locked achievement points. Besides this, there is also a challenge mode that works like rock-paper-scissors and helps the player analyze the effectiveness of one unit type against another.

Battle on the net

For many, StarCraft II is all about multiplayer face-offs and they couldn’t care less about the single-player campaign. Blizzard’s lauded Battle.net system has received a major overhaul to accommodate contemporary features and improvement of familiar features. StarCraft II features a multiplayer practice league which is essentially a series of unranked competitive matches meant as practice to hone your skills. The game also has unranked co-operative game mode where players get to team-up against the AI.

 
And then of course there are the ranked matches—the big leagues of competitive multiplayer matches. Winning games and meeting certain objectives rewards the player will achievement points and rank-points. In our experience so far, Battle.net has performed admirably—able to find accurate matches quickly. The matches themselves were pretty smooth and entirely lag-free. However, we should point out that we are yet to engage in frantic online battles with large armies facing each other off.

Blizzard has seen it fit to remove certain building and unit types from the multiplayer mode that featured in the single-player campaign. We are guessing these decisions were made to keep the game-play balance in check during online play. Also, the upgrade system and the types of upgrades available are different from the single-player mode.

Blizzard has also added current features to Battle.net system like support for Facebook, friends list, achievements, gamer-pic and VoIP. The friends list will apparently be universally accessible through the Battle.net after the release of the next instalment in the World of WarCraft series. The new system also lets players save replays of multiplayer skirmishes.

Sum of all parts

StarCraft II has been shipped with several additions and improvements; however, at its core it has been left largely unchanged. The game’s war-rules are fundamentally the same—securing mineral and vespene gas deposits is key to sustaining an army. Efficiently wiping out the opposing army— or enduring attacks—is down to knowing units’ weaknesses and abilities. We were surprised to find that Blizzard has not incorporated commonly expected options like the ability to select squadron formation or the assigning of a unit to guard another.

This has some frustrating consequences like a closely bunched squadron of units can be quickly wiped out by units that cause splash damage. Another disadvantage of not being able to select formation is that one often finds weaker units leading a squadron and more powerful units are unable to attack since they are blocked out of their firing range by units of the same army. The only work around this issue is to assign units of same type into individual groups and commanding those groups one by one. This leads to frantic micro-management during a battle and it is especially cumbersome when in defensive mode.

Single-player experience was largely an enjoyable experience and apart from the unsatisfactory conclusion, we do not have any major complaints. On the multiplayer front however, it could be a different situation all together. I am not someone who often participates in multiplayer over the Internet, so my expectations maybe a lot different from someone who spends most his game-time in the cyberspace.

On the technical front, StarCraft II appears to suffer from inefficient memory management. During some of our extended StarCraft II sessions that spanned over two or three mission, the game crashed during the loading screen. This was not a one off incidence and we observed a consistent trend of game crashing while attempting to load the next mission.

Over the course of time we expect Blizzard to address and fix at least some of its issue via game patches. The developers have already released a couple of patches for the game in this short span of time and we suspect a couple more in the pipeline.
If one looks beyond some of the inexplicable and annoying business decisions, they may find a pretty solid game in StarCraft II. However, looking beyond these issues may warrant a big heart and deep pockets.

Rating: 8.5/10

Details:

Release date: July 27, 2010 
Genre: Real-time Strategy (RTS)
Studio: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Activision
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X

PC Requirements


PC Minimum System Requirements*:
Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
12 GB available HD space
1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution

PC Recommended Specifications:
Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
2 GB RAM
512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better

*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.


Mac Requirements

Mac Minimum System Requirements:

Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newer
Intel® Processor
NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
12 GB available HD space
2 GB Ram
DVD-ROM drive
Broadband Internet connection
1024X720 minimum display resolution

Mac Recommended Specifications:

Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
4 GB system RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better