![]() Getting to know your crew goes a long way toward fleshing out the story. But the storytelling here is good enough that I can't wait to find out. The events in Wings of Liberty are momentous enough to completely change the landscape of the series' fiction, and I have no idea how Blizzard intends to continue the story arc. Although this is only the first act of a three-part story, you're left with enough closure to feel satisfied-as well as enough loose ends to make you really wish the next game were already here. Of course, the fallen Terran operative-turned-horrendous Zerg queen Kerrigan gets involved, Raynor's Protoss ally Zeratul shows up with an ancient prophecy, and the next thing you know the fate of creation is in jeopardy. It's mostly about the plight of downtrodden hero James Raynor and his ragtag group of rebels, who are still fighting against the human tyrant they unwittingly helped install to power in the first game. For you, there's Wings of Liberty's story-driven campaign, which I submit is both accessible and engrossing enough that anyone can enjoy it. If you're not some kind of crazed StarCraft grognard who knows what terms like "8 pool" and "natural" mean, all this multiplayer gobbledygook might sound inapplicable (if not downright nonsensical) to you. StarCraft II is still StarCraft, yes, but modernized in ways that make it feel current and will keep it viable for years to come.īut hold on a second. There are also plenty of obscure-sounding minor changes to the way the game plays-abilities that now cast unaided, the ability to group production buildings, automation in things like resource-mining-that add up to a major improvement in the way the game plays. ![]() I love the Protoss' giant laser-spewing War of the Worlds walkers the colossi and the Zerg's incredibly annoying flying siege unit the brood lord, and players will be debating the finer points of utilizing these and every other unit in the game for years. There are as many new units as old ones, and even the old ones largely behave in very new ways, and yet that sublime three-way balance is still there. It's in each race's roster of units and the game's streamlined interface that you'll find the years' worth of improvements you'd expect. ![]() That framework is carried over as you remember it from the first game. Making more units than the other guy, and using them more deftly than him, remain the two concepts key to achieving victory. Some of the story missions are downright epic.Īll that is to say that in StarCraft II, you still place unit-producing buildings around a town hall, extract minerals and vespene gas with worker units, and manage multiple production queues simultaneously to win battles. Some games, especially intensely competitive ones, are so brilliantly put-together that their inner workings are basically etched in stone. If there's ever another Quake, I'm pretty sure you'll play it in first-person with a gun protruding out of the bottom of the screen. The developers of the new NBA Jam aren't going to add an extra hoop to their sequel just for the sake of making changes. That's why StarCraft II hews to the same factions and gameplay formula as its vaunted predecessor, and why Blizzard couldn't, and shouldn't, have changed the fundamental core of what this game is. While Blizzard has revisited real-time strategy once since 1998 with Warcraft III-and plenty of other developers have refined and evolved the genre in their own ways-the elegant three-way balance of the original StarCraft has remained an institution, so close to perfection that more than a decade later it's still famously practiced as a national pastime in some parts of the world. ![]() It's a good thing the competitive part of StarCraft II is so great that a lot of players will still be busy battling it out online not just until those follow-ups arrive, but even long after they've come and gone. The Terran-focused Wings of Liberty is so good on all counts that it's going to be really tough to wait for the second and third Zerg- and Protoss-focused chapters of the story, and given Blizzard's penchant for taking its sweet time making games, that might be a long wait. ![]() Blizzard itself has poked fun at StarCraft II's long gestation with its frequent refrain of "Hell, it's about time," and while it is in fact about time, it was also completely worth the wait. Twelve years is a long time to wait for a sequel, even a sequel to one of the best games ever made. If Jim Raynor can't get it done, no one can. ![]()
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