StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Review

History has a way of repeating itself.  Before the release of the original StarCraft in 1998 many were skeptical about the game.  Blizzard’s Warcraft franchise was popular and doing well but many thought the company wasn’t on the right track with what was often referred to as ‘Warcraft in Space.’  Boy were they wrong.  StarCraft and its Brood War expansion destroyed that perception and proved to be both wildly successful and significantly impactful on the entire game industry.

Announced in 2007, StarCraft II would be the first Blizzard 2.0 release – meaning the first major release after the World of Warcraft hiatus most of the company spent their time on.  Major criticism hit in 2008 when Blizzard announced that StarCraft II would be split into three separate games and that each game’s single player campaign would only focus on one of the game’s races.  Despite assurances from Blizzard, many felt the decision was made as a way to squeeze more money out of the franchise and that the quality of each individual release would suffer.  Well, Blizzard has proved the haters wrong once again.

In StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, the characters we are all familiar with from the original games return and are better than ever.  Thankfully, they haven’t been transformed into something different and disappointing.  Instead, the characters have been further developed to become deeper and more human.

Back when the original StarCraft games were released, storylines and characters in games only existed as an uber-simplistic means of telling you what you needed to do during each level.  Gaming as a medium has grown over the years and standards have been raised.  Blizzard has risen to the occasion and shown that it still has what it takes to make fantastic games.

Overhauling the story and bringing the game’s characters more to life first required creating a more fleshed out back-story.  With Jim Raynor as the game’s main protagonist, this fleshed out back-story largely consists of his past and the feelings he had developed for Sarah Kerrigan before she became the Queen of Blades.

The story that is told was very well written.  As the game progresses you get exposed to new people and ideas and are able to slowly piece together earlier questions.  The game’s narrative successfully captures the golden combination of  being both epic in scale yet also personally moving.

The presentation quality is truly stunning thanks to the superb voice acting, exquisite score, and phenomenal visuals.  Blizzard has always been at the forefront when it comes to high quality cut-scenes and they have without a doubt positioned themselves as the market leader once again.  The major cut-scenes are absolutely amazing.  Words fail to describe how awesome they are.

Between the major, high-level cut-scenes, the more common presentation we receive between levels usually involves Raynor interacting with his crew members and ship.  While these scenes aren’t going to blow your socks off, they still look really sharp.

Long gone are the days of just listening to a few talking heads before rushing off to the next level.  These time periods between levels now offer dialogue that is much richer as well as opportunities to make meaningful decisions.

Completing levels earns you money (the game actually does a pretty decent job at giving legitimate reasons why you would actually get money from completing the various missions).  After each level you can mozy over to the ship’s armory where you can spend your money on upgrades for units and buildings.  There are more upgrade options than available money so you are forced to choose which upgrades you feel would provide the most benefit based on your play-style.

You also have opportunities during missions to attain research points.  These research points can be utilized at the ship’s laboratory.  Everything from unit upgrades, building modifications, and even entirely new units are available but again, you can’t have it all.  Each research opportunity forces you to choose between two different options and whichever option you don’t choose won’t ever be available again.

Another welcome feature is that you are able to decide when to complete different missions.  This works because a lot of the missions are nonlinear and involve different but related storylines.  Raynor is normally being pulled in 2-3 directions and you get to pick when to do what.  Your decision can be based on trying to advance certain storylines, on which mission rewards you want access to first, or on just whatever sounds like the most fun.

Some of the missions provide even more decisions because you will be forced to choose sides between opposing parties.  These decisions will influence the outcomes of the opposing parties as well as the rewards you get from the mission.

Blizzard has also done a fantastic job at designing varied levels.  A lot of old-school RTS games had campaigns which would get pretty boring after a while because they were just the same thing over and over again: build a base from scratch, amass a large army while building up your defense, annihilate the enemy.  This is not the case in Wings of Liberty.  While most levels tend to focus on whatever new unit you are able to build, there is a lot of other stuff going on.

One level puts you in charge of defending civilians as they run towards an airfield to be evacuated.  Another level requires you to take out key enemy structures.  Another level takes place on a barely hospitable planet which has a sort of tidal molten lava characteristic which requires you to move all of your units and equipment to high ground whenever the lava starts rising.  Another level requires you to sort of play the part of a train robber and take out trains before they can escape.  There is plenty of variation to prevent the game from getting stale.

Multiplayer has been greatly overhauled as well.  I mentioned earlier that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the first Blizzard 2.0 game.  Well, along with its release comes the new and improved Battle.net.  I could write a whole separate review going over everything that’s new with multiplayer but I’ll just leave it at this:  there is enough fun, excitement, and options to keep you happy for quite some time.

Ironically, one of the game’s best features comes from what originally was a cause for concern.  The decision to breakup StarCraft II into three separate games from the get-go was absolutely the best decision Blizzard could have made for the franchise.  Great games tell great stories.  Stories that are deep and complex and filled with life-like characters.  Splitting the game into three releases provides for a wonderful opportunity to create an amazing story arc which can span through all three releases.

Let’s be honest here though: Blizzard could have called this game StarCraft 2, the next game StarCraft 3, and the next game StarCraft 4.  Giving all three releases the StarCraft II label stems from the fact that they are all part of the same large story arc.  It’s a tricky thing to accomplish as the developer needs to make sure each release still contains a large amount of material but so far Blizzard is right on the money.  I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.

Quite simply, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the perfect sequel.  Every aspect of the game has been tremendously improved and yet with all this dramatic change, this is still 100% a StarCraft game.