Starcraft II review

The original Starcraft was released back in 1998, and it’s a testimony to the game’s quality that its Brood War expansion is still played today on the professional gaming circuit. Of course, the developer, Blizzard (of World of Warcraft fame), has always had high standards.

Blizzard has taken a no-risk approach in updating its classic. Starcraft 2 is real-time strategy from its late nineties heyday. You start with a base, you harvest resources to build other structures and units, building these unlocks more powerful units, and so you build up a powerful army to bludgeon your opponent with. It may be conservative, but the effort lavished on every part of the game is obvious.

All three races from the original game make a return. This first release, with its Wings of Liberty subtitle, sets its single-player campaign around rebel Jim Raynor and his rag-tag Terran forces. Two upcoming expansion packs will deliver single-player campaigns for the technologically-advanced Protoss and the Geiger-esque Zerg. All three races are available immediately in multi-player, though, which we’ll come to later.

The 30-odd missions of the single-player campaign are a surprisingly varied bunch, and far more than a primer for the multi-player mode. In fact there are additional units here that don’t appear in competitive play, such as the flame-thrower wielding Firebats and hit-and-run Diamondback tanks. Practically every mission has an innovative twist that lifts it above the usual, ‘destroy all enemies’, objectives.

In one mission we hunted down supply trains that snaked across the map. Another saw us fighting off Zerg-infected humans from fortified bases by night, and then sallying out in the day to destroy their nests while they were inactive. One map was flooded by lava tides every five minutes, forcing our forces to cower on high ground till the magma subsided – the only problem being that all the precious resources were on the deadly flood plains. All the missions have additional objectives, and these change based on the difficulty level.

Eschewing any attempt at gritty realism, both the units and maps burst with colour. Everything is lovingly detailed, and units each have their own character thanks to great design, animation and sound effects. The maps look great, with lots of variety in their look and feel. There are no complex camera controls here, you can zoom in and out and twist the camera momentarily to see things for another angle; but none of this is at all necessary, which leaves you free to get on with the task at hand.

In between missions you can explore Raynor’s battleship. Here you can upgrade your units’ abilities and hire elite mercenary units to support your forces – both of which are paid for out of cash earned from completing missions. Most missions also provide Zerg or Protoss research opportunities, which let you make more radical upgrades to your forces. For example, you can choose between upgrading your command base’s resource collecting capabilities (boring, but useful) or fit it with a big gun and extra armour (fun, but hopefully unnecessary).

All this is presented as a series of beautifully rendered rooms. There are some great characters to interact with, and the plot is captivating for what is basically a stereotypical space opera based around a series of battles. We particularly like voice acting, and the luscious cut-scenes that punctuate key moments.

While the single player game is drip-fed to you, one new unit at time, multi-player has a startling steep learning curve. Starcraft 2 does help to soften this with challenge levels to teach you the basics, there’s then the opportunity to play up to 50 matches against other novices at a reduced pace. Though helpful, such additions show just how tough it is to get to up to speed.

Each faction doesn’t have a huge number of units, but with three completely different forces it’s still a lot to learn. Even if you stick with playing the Terrans, you’ll need to understand how the Protoss and Zerg forces work to effectively counter them. It’s still early days, but the balancing of the various units looks to be excellent, with a wide range of valid strategies. However, Starcraft is as much about unit production as it is about tactical manoeuvres. You’ll need to be quick and efficient in setting up your economy and pumping out units.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning the online Battle.net service. All of Starcraft 2 is based around this service, though you can play offline once you’ve confirmed and activated your licence key. With slick matchmaking options, online campaign save games and hassle-free patching, we feel the pluses outweigh the negatives. We installed the game on both our home and work PCs and then seamlessly played through the campaign by flicking back-and-forth between them.

It’s the most expensive PC game we’ve seen for a while – and it plays like a game from a decade ago – but this is still a masterpiece of strategy gaming. If you’ve ever enjoyed an RTS game then you should buy Starcraft 2 because it doesn’t get much better than this.