StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Review

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (LIN) - "Your better future needs to hurry up and get here."

It's finally here.  "StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty" launched for anxious gamers around the world at midnight, July 27, 2010. Nearly 12 years after its predecessor was released, gamers could get their mitts on one of the most anticipated PC titles of all time.

I wrote in my preview that the StarCraft 2 beta secured its real-time strategy supremacy.  Well, the full retail release is flexing its muscles and exerting its dominance of the genre. If you have a PC (or a Mac, as Blizzard releases its games simultaneously for both platforms), this is the RTS game to own.

"It's about time we kick this revolution into overdrive."

The developers of StarCraft II had some mighty high expectations. They were delivering a sequel to the most-played real-time strategy game in history, one that thousands around the globe are still playing, even so many years after its release. There's no game I've been looking forward to more since StarCraft 2 was announced three years ago. Even with those high expectations, I feel like Blizzard created the finest game I've ever seen on the PC because of their devotion to both singleplayer and multiplayer modes and both casual and hardcore gamers. There is some work to be done on the Battle.net service, but from a pure gaming standpoint, StarCraft 2 is now the gold standard.

In the singleplayer experience, Blizzard has made sure things won't overwhelm you right away. They want to encourage the casual gamer and keep them from getting frustrated. There's an optional tutorial for complete novices to the RTS genre. It introduces players to the user interface and explains how to control the camera. It also gives players an idea of very basic movement and combat commands. Additionally, if you've never played an RTS game before, it shows you the important activities of construction, resource collection and managing your unit supply. It's a pretty quick tutorial, even when listening to every detail. Everything was rudimentary so this isn't something the dedicated RTS gamer will need to look at but for the novice it could be worth a look.

If you skip the tutorial and jump right into the campaign, you'll be asked how hard you want it to be. The four options, "Casual", "Normal", "Hard" and "Brutal" all have tweaks. The "Casual" difficulty will slow the game down and has dramatically fewer enemies to fight. On "Normal", you'll find yourself at the normal game speed and the standard number of enemies on maps. Stepping up the difficulty to "Hard", you'll find increased enemy numbers and battles that could be daunting for some players. If you dare select the "Brutal" difficulty, be prepared for a fight. For the review, I started out at "Brutal" before kicking it back down to "Hard" after the seventh mission for fear I wouldn't be able to finish the game in a timely manner for the review.

"You can call me Jim."

There are three main races in StarCraft II, the Terran, Zerg and Protoss. For the Wings of Liberty campaign, the storyline starts with the Terran.

In the campaign, you're thrust into the role of Jim Raynor. As the main protagonist, Raynor is not without his faults. You'll find a glass in his hand most of the time and if he's not drinking there's a good chance he's holding a gun. While on missions and in between, you'll learn new subtleties that round out his character and reveal why he is the way he is. If you watch the trailer (which you'll find in the video tab above), you'll know Raynor is a revolutionary. He certainly lives up to expectations. His exploits are small to start, rescuing civilians from oppresive local governments but grow and snowball into a more regime replacing manner as the game continues.

Without spoiling the narrative of the campaign's events, I can say there is quite a bit of diversity in the missions. While there are certainly RTS singleplayer mission classics like "hold out until rescue arrives", or "build a large army and crush your opponent", the variety offered in the gameplay keeps things fresh.

In one mission, you're given an immensely powerful laser drill. The main goal is to defend the drill long enough for it to bore through its destination but there's a twist. You can turn the drill and target enemy armies en route to your base, killing them instantly. Depending on how well you're fighting off the enemy, you may not even have to turn the drill, but the option is there and it is devastating.

On another mission, you're tasked with breaking into a prison. You're given control of one unit who bares the brunt of the work, but you get support from waves of allied units who throw themselves against the enemies defenses.

There's even a nod to fans of WarCraft III's hero system in a mission where you're given control of four units with varying special abilities.

Another aspect of the singleplayer I found particularly compelling is mission selection. You're not taken along a linear path from mission

to mission but instead given a choice of what you'd like to do. The non-linear progression allows you to choose which mission you want to complete. If you're more interested in saving a group of civilians before going off in search of an alien artifact, it's up to you. There's even a series of Protoss missions, but you don't have to do them all in one stretch. You can choose to mix in a Protoss mission, complete another few Terran missions before wrapping up the Protoss series. For most missions you'll be rewarded with a new unit to build, with increasing amounts of firepower, from infantry to artillery to air support.

One of the novel aspects to the singleplayer that isn't found in multiplayer are the additional unit and structure upgrades offered. While fighting through the missions, you'll occassionally stumble on Protoss and Zerg research items. This research is rewarded by providing you with new units, upgrades and bonuses. Additionally, units and structures can be upgraded with the credits you earn for completing missions.

You can spend your credits on more than just harder-hitting missles too. Mercenaries are willing to work for the right price. Buying their services is a two-fold process though. You have to purchase their contract to be able to build them while on a mission, a process that requires a payment each time you build them. The mercenaries are enhanced versions of units you can already make and in every case are worth the extra expenditure required for their construction.

Your experience in the campaign will be determined, in part, by how much you like to click on things. There are conversations to be had with many, if you're willing to listen. You're actually rewarded in some instances, for example, watching the UNN broadcasts will unlock an achievement and carrying on certain conversations with the crew will unlock others.

In addition to the conversations, you can also learn details about other items in the game, like a picture or pair of Zerg bones hanging on the wall, a propaganda poster or even Raynor's badge from when he was the Confederate Marshal on Mar Sara. All of these details add to the experience. There's even a jukebox that will play music and an arcade machine where you can play a mini-game called "Lost Viking" (a nod to one of Blizzard's first games, "Lost Vikings").

After you've vanquished your enemies, completed the campaign there's still more you can do. Each mission has a trio of achievements to it which require different difficulty levels for completion.

All of the small touches go a long way toward making a complete, compelling singleplayer campaign experience. Blizzard may have chosen to split StarCraft II into three releases, but at the end of the campaign, there was no letdown. This was an experience, a fantastic experience.

"Damn Jimmy, you never could read the ladies."

The singleplayer experience does not train you for taking on the throngs of people you'll face on Battle.net. In a way to prepare you for the transition, Blizzard has created a series of challenges aimed at teaching players some basic tactics.

The challenges are split up into basic, advanced and expert scenarios. For the basic ones, you're tasked with deciding what units to use in battle against preselected armies. The advanced challenges give players the opportunity to learn how to use the specialized units. The expert challenges goes a long way toward preparing players for tactics they'll see from players on Battle.net.

Blizzard has also set up a series of achievements to coax people from singleplayer into multiplayer. Playing games against the A.I. is rewarded and there's a decent range for the difficulty level of the computer player.

"The answers you seek lie within."

From my conversations with people, there's a certain intimidation factor to braving Battle.net's matchmaking system. They have bad memories of what happened in WarCraft 3 (language). Blizzard claims to have significantly refined how matchmaking works. Now, you're required to play through a series of games that will determine the level of competition you'll face. After you get through your placement matches, you'll be assigned a rating. Most likely, after that you'll be matched against similar skilled players with Blizzard's stated goal people will have a 50/50 shot at winning.

For each gametype you play, you'll have a seperate rating. Your 1v1 rating could be phenomenal, but if you have a 2v2 team it will be ranked seperately.

In addition to the matchmaking service, there's also a dynamic list of custom games with maps created using the StarCraft 2 Galaxy Editor. There variation in the custom games is astounding. When I counted the list of available maps, there were more than 250. One great improvement in the way Battle.net handles new maps is that you don't have to join a game to download the map. One of the frustrating things on Battle.net in the past was with impatient game hosts booting you from the game because you'd have