StarCraft 2 (PC, 2010)
A fantastic sequel that carries the legacy of its predecessor well.
Nostalgia Factor: High. Memories of the original StarCraft are definitely a factor.
Difficulty: Easy to Medium. The “Normal” difficulty mode is notably easier than the original StarCraft campaign.
There’s always such an enormous amount of pressure when creating a sequel to a classic game like the original StarCraft. How much do you change from the original? Too much change and you lose the soul of the predecessor. Not enough change or new content and players may get bored or call your game “glorified DLC.” StarCraft 2 struck the perfect balance of old and new. The revamped graphics look amazing, there are plenty of new units, the expanded campaign introduces great new features, but the game still feels like StarCraft. The heart and soul of the original classic is still here.
The gameplay is still good ‘ol StarCraft. It’s incredibly polished, a modern RTS experience with many quality of life upgrades. In spite of the controversy of splitting up the campaign into three separate installments ($60, $40, and $40, respectively), the single player campaign is one of the best single player experiences in the genre, if not the best. By the way, you can now get the entire campaign (all three installments) for $40, or even less when on sale. The entire SC2 campaign has over 70 missions and adds a hub world element between missions for upgrades, character interactions, mini games, and more.
The visuals are very good, especially the incredible cinematics. I know Advent Children was a huge flop, but I can’t help but wonder if Blizzard should’ve just commissioned their cinematics team to make a fully animated movie instead of greenlighting this garbage. Anyway, the 3D models are somewhat limited for performance reasons, so the graphics will not compare with God of War 3 (one of the best looking games of 2010), but the in-game visuals do still look quite good.
The story is also very well done. It’s wonderful to revisit many familiar characters and storylines from the original StarCraft. I imagine it’s very easy to get lost or confused in SC2’s campaign if a player hasn’t played the original StarCraft. The narrative is a complicated web that leans heavily on the foundation of SC1’s story. The cinematics, the voice acting, even most of the in-engine cutscenes are very well done. It’s rare to see a Hollywood level of polish and feel so immersed in a video game.
The soundtrack also captures that Hollywood cinematic quality. It sounds like a high budget film score. Three original StarCraft composers return — Glenn Stafford, Jason Hayes, and Derek Duke — along with a few new colleagues. The result is incredible. Again, it feels like StarCraft. The Terran songs capture the same terrestrial vibes. Zerg tracks are horrifying and nightmarish, with bits of metal guitar sprinkled in. Protoss tracks are eerie and otherworldly, with moments of beauty. There are so many more tracks compared to SC1’s soundtrack, so the repetition is minimal.
My only complaint (and the reason this game is not a 10/10 for me) is that the ending of the campaign was a bit weak and anti-climactic. The story’s conclusion was written well, but the visual execution seemed rushed. An epic cinematic for the final moments would’ve been ideal, instead of the underbaked in-engine cutscenes that we got instead. There’s such a jarring difference in quality between the fantastic Wings of Liberty campaign and the final moments of Legacy of the Void. It’s very underwhelming.
I can’t help but picture rooms full of over-worked Blizzard devs, exhausted from hours and hours of crunch, wrapping up these final moments of the campaign as quickly as possible because Legacy of the Void is already overbudget, late, and Bobby Kotick has sent so many memos to ship this game immediately. I’m sure it didn’t help that a simple $15 microtransaction horse in World of WarCraft made more money than the expensive-to-produce StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. Wings of Liberty sold at least 6 million copies, but only after years of expensive development and marketing. SC2 was also a heavily pirated release (illegally downloaded over 2 million times). All of this, on top of the diminishing returns in sales of each SC2 installment, might explain why the ending of the final campaign was lackluster. C'est la vie.
In spite of the weak ending, StarCraft 2 is still a fantastic game for single-player RTS casuals like me and sweaty online RTS nerds alike. Pick up a copy on sale and enjoy one of the best RTS games ever made.