Completed: StarCraft II

Well completed the single player campaign anyway. Obviously there is a lot more to StarCraft II: Wings Of Liberty than the story campaign but having completed the story it feels like the right time for a more detailed review.


The Campaign
The story mode of an RTS game always feels different to the basic verses mode as story brings objectives, characters, troop restrictions, time limits and things like that. In StarCraft II I found the campaign to be lots of fun. The missions where challenging enough (on medium setting) but not so hard they became frustrating. There is always at least one mission when you have a fixed number of troops and no base to build more so you have to be careful. Those kind of RTS mission nearly always get on my nerves. StarCraft II had 3-4 of those but I didn't mind this time, they were well structured and provided reinforcements at reasonable intervals. The story itself is admittedly fairly basic, tough guy rebels against fascist government and rescues girl from aliens, but it's extremely well presented. The only downside is the fact that Blizzard have split the campaign in to three separate games so we only get the Terran side of the story for now and have to wait for the Zerg and the Protoss. Part 2 StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm featuring the Zerg doesn't have a release date yet!

Cinematics
The cinematic scenes telling the story between each mission are all top quality. Apparently some are pre-rendered videos while others are rendered real-time in the engine. I have to say that if that's the case I never noticed any difference (with graphics setting mostly maxed). Great shots, good voice acting and excellent music tied it all together nicely. I think I still prefer Command & Conquer's FMV approach but this would come a close second. Also good was the spaceship hub from which you choose your mission. Making it not entirely linear allow replays to be more fun. Now of course it's not as complex as a full RPG but there are a decent number of choices.

Terran
It might be that I played them the most in the original (I don't really remember) but the Terrans feel the least changed to me. All the units I remember from the original are still there and most still look extremely similar (except higher res!). Still I have to resist the urge to turtle with them until I have a fleet of Battlecruisers or a bunch of Thors.

Zerg
The Zerg to me have always been the most complicated race to play. I guess it's a bit of a cheese tactic now but I've always been a fan of the 'Zerg Rush' despite the fact I can rarely pull it off correctly and not leave myself totally undefended. With them not being playable in the campaign they're the race I've played the least of so far, I don't recall having even built an Ultralisk yet. I have built plenty of Zerglings though!

Protoss
I'm sure the majority of people out there will agree that the Protoss are all about air superiority. While it can be fun sometimes to surprise someone with a bunch of Colossi and Archons, usually a fleet of Void Rays and Carriers is the way to victory. When playing verses matches I usually choose 'Random' for race but so far it feels like I ended up Protoss the most and I've really enjoyed playing them so far.

Verses
Now the next step for me will be to start playing in the leagues. As I've mentioned before I've played some 2v2 in the practice league and didn't do too badly, but now I'm planning to join the 1v1 league and get an official placing. I bet I end up in the bronze league, though I guess that will depend on my opponents, I might get silver. I'll have to clear an evening for that soon.