Yes yes... you don't need to tell me how late I am to the Starcraft 2 party (the first installment, Wings of Liberty, was released in 2010)! Let's just say that I have a stupidly huge backlog of games that exist on my Steam library... and I rarely have the time or desire to open up another game launcher! So, I had avoided buying Starcraft 2 until all the expansions were out, and I only had recently held off on the Starcraft 2 bug until I saw all the games packaged together and on sale!

Still, playing through the game (all 4 releases that make up the package Terran, Zerg, Protoss and Nova) has been a real blast bringing back fond memories of the original Starcraft which was released when I was at university, with my friends and I taking over the LAN of the college (and sometimes the university) for a huge backstabbing evening of multiplayer Starcraft! We were definitely the cool kids...

The Story

Honestly, I remember very very little from the original Starcraft games from a narrative point of view, after all they were first released in 1998! However, much like the Red Alert and Command and Conquer games of the same vintage, the single player game was really a tutorial with an epic storyline that trained the player in the basics for the the all important multiplayer!

The first episode of the Starcraft 2 saga beings with the lead character Jim Raynor breaking out his old friend Tychus from a high security prison. The story is set in the years following the first Starcraft saga, and Jim Raynor is on the run with his rebels from the Terran Empire led by Arcturus Mengsk. The Zerg are on the prowl with Kerrigan (Raynor's love interest when she was human) as the Queen of Blades, and the Protoss are really nowhere to be found!

The background and character of the story is dribbled to the player via conversations with the heroes on board your ship, and the laughably terrible propaganda news channel in the Cantina. It is space soap opera to the extreme... however, the Rebel/Empire showdown starts to take a sideline as it is revealed by the exiled Protoss Zerataul that there is a much greater enemy coming to render the known galaxy into oblivion... Cheesy, YES! Grippingly EPIC, YES!

There are some pretty awesome cutscenes, all CGI rendered that have aged pretty well in the last decade or so. It isn't Chekov levels of writing... but it is still great fun to follow and wallow in!

The Game

If you played the original Starcraft... or any RTS genre from that time, things are pretty much the same. Get your base up, turtle up, churn out units and then stomp all over the enemy! Of course, in the single player game it is pretty easy... however, against human opponents in multiplayer... well, there is a reason why it is such a huge competitive e-sport!

There is still the hilarious unit barks from the original... if you keep clicking on a unit, it will cycle through the standard barks, until it starts to get to the comedy ones! Always a nice little Easter egg for those who know about it...

There is a loose Paper/Scissors/Rock dynamic... but in single player, it is pretty moot. The only critical differentiation is the air/ground dynamic, and who can attack which sphere of operations. Otherwise, with enough units you can pretty much take out anything... that said, if you try to infantry rush a fortified position or air strike a air defense network, you are in for a world of pain! There is some tactical thinking, but not lots!

A couple of gripes that I had were that the units don't really have a feeling of heft and weight to them... they sort of just float over the map, and that is the same for the buildings as well. It's a minor gripe... but the bigger one is the level of zoom that you can have on your screen. In the screenshot above, this is as far out as you can go and it still feels like you are nose to nose with the ground... I miss the Supreme Commander levels of zooming out!

There is a limited degree of unit information on board the ship that you can access about your units... it's serious with a touch of tongue in cheek... a nice laugh to read!

... and there is a very very limited form of unit customisation via irreversible strategic upgrades. Each unit has two upgrades that can be purchased with money that you earn as mission completion rewards. They are handy, and you can choose ones that complement your playstyle... but they aren't really game-changers or anything like that. I tend to choose the passive perks, as micromanaging everything is really not that fun!

The Visuals, Sound and Performance

Well... this is a nearly decade old game, and the system requirements really reflect that. Core i5 (one of the first generations), 4 GB RAM and a GTX650! Well, pretty much anything purchased in the last 5-8 years would be able to stomp on this with no problem! I do even wonder if it is possible to run on a laptop with only integrated graphics, or a weak card... this would make for a pretty cool travelling game! I really should have thought about that before installing it on my main gaming rig!

Anyway, the in-game visuals are decent... but nothing spectacular given that it is pretty damn old. There is a bit of floaty physics at work in the way that the units interact and move around the map, but those were the limitations of the time. Where the game really starts to shine is in the cut-scenes and the audio. Units sound pretty meaty and the pre-rendered cut-scenes are just a pleasure to watch!... and let's be honest, unless you are going to play this game multiplayer, then you really are here for the cheesy epicness of the story and cut-scenes!

On the starship, there is limited interaction... however, all the conversations do lead to a pre-rendered conversation which is really quite decent. I did find that this was the best part of the whole thing!

Conclusion

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is the first episode of the 4 part re-imagining of the old Starcraft franchise. At it's heart, it is a decent if unchallenging single player player game which really acts as a Terran tutorial for the real multiplayer meat of the game. Or, if you are like me, a little interactive interlude between the epic cutscene goodness of a galaxy spanning cheesy space opera!

I love it to death, despite the game being a bit underwhelming... but much of that is being fed by rose-tinted nostalgia about the original and the days of playing multiplayer in dorm rooms at university! I don't think I will wander out into the cut-throat competitive Starcraft 2 scene... but from what I hear, they have really done a great job with the team balancing, but those days are long past me.

These days, I crave a game with an end... easy ability to save, and a stupidly epic narrative that just draws me in! Consider me hooked!

Review Hardware

Played at 1080p (144Hz) on:

Intel BX80662I76700 Core i7-6700 Prozessor (3,4GHz)
6GB EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING
GIGABYTE Z170N-WIFI
Ballistix Sport LT 16GB DDR4
Samsung 960 EVO M.2 512GB
S4 Mini Case (NFC Systems)

Splinterlands (aka the best blockchain game out there!)

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