StarCraft 2 Review

This is the first part of our rather long StarCraft 2 review. If you’re worried about story spoilers, you won’t encounter them in this part as it deals mostly with the installation and multiplayer experiences. There will also be a warning posted in the next part when spoilers are imminent.

The scores given here are indicative of the game as a whole, and the second part will list the same scores.

It’s been a long, drama-filled wait for fans of StarCraft, but the sequel to arguably the most well-played real-time strategy (RTS) game of all time is finally here.

Despite arguments about trilogies, lack of LAN play and RealID gamers queued outside video game retailers in the cold and the dark to get their hands on a copy of the game the second it launched.

StarCraft 2 and its predecessor are both RTS games that feature three playable races: Terran, Protoss and Zerg.

The Terrans are humans that crash-landed on planets in what is known as the Koprulu Sector. The Zerg are a race of Xenomorph-like aliens whose strength lies in their numbers. The Protoss are a race of “psionic” (psychic, telepathic, telekinetic) aliens whose strength lies in their superior technology.

Before delving into the meat of the game however, let’s take a look at the out-of-game experience.

Packaging and installation

If you bought a retail copy of the game you would have been treated to either an excellently presented DVD case, or box in the case of the Collectors Edition. The box for the DVD case isn’t quite the same as the box the original came in but at least it fits somewhat better on a shelf.

Most South Africans are likely to buy the game at retail since the client is a chunky download at around 7.1GB. This excludes the amount you’d have to upload since Blizzard use their own torrent-based downloader.

The first big change you’ll encounter in the sequel is the need to register a Battle.net account. Unfortunately there are no two ways about this since you’ll need to connect to Battle.net at least once to activate the game.

While this is a huge problem for Internet-challenged fans it comes with benefits for those of us who have the privilege of being connected.

Installation is as simple as can be expected and the installer even entertains you with a retelling of “the story so far” during the agonising wait for the 12GB install to complete.

The second change you may notice is that you don’t need to leave the DVD in the drive to launch the game. Rather than being praiseworthy, however, I’d say this is the bare minimum I’ve come to expect from publishers or developers that opt to slap activation-based copy protection measures into their games.

Hell, it’s about time

Upon first launch you’d swear you’ve just bought a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMOG). The major user interface (UI) element on the open screen is a login form. There are some buttons on the sides to allow “guest access,” link you to account management, or change the game settings, but it’s obvious which option Blizzard would prefer you use.

“Guest Access” is what Blizzard calls offline single player. This allows you to play the game without an Internet connection, though your achievements won’t be tracked as you complete missions.

Achievements and unlockables

Each single player mission has three achievements associated with it.

The first involves completing all the primary and secondary objectives on the “normal” difficulty level. The second achievement changes depending on the mission but can also be completed on normal difficulty.

The final achievement can only be unlocked on “Hard” difficulty. It could involve completing the mission in a certain time, or destroying a particular number of enemy units or structures. Sometimes you even need to kill a certain number of units with a particular unit to unlock the achievement.

Multiplayer has its own set of achievements, such as “Win 1000 1v1 matches playing as a Random race,” or “Attack something for 20 seconds without retaliation.”

There’s a “Showcase” available from your profile page which you can use to show off your favourite achievements. These are visible to anyone that visits your profile page. Collecting certain achievements or groups of achievements will unlock certain portraits for your profile and decals for your units in multiplayer.

Mod/machinima/map-making tools

Multiplayer is arguably the largest component of StarCraft 2. It’s the part of the game that gave its predecessor its greatest longevity, though whether this remains so in StarCraft 2 remains to be seen: Wings of Liberty shipped with some incredible tools which the development team say can be used as-is to develop the expansions for the game. One developer said he’s particularly excited to see what the machinima community does with the tools they used to script their in-game cinematics.

There are some issues with regards to hosting custom maps that are a little complex to do justice in a paragraph or two. It boils down to the fact that you can only host a game using a custom map if: The map is in the top 50 most popular maps, you recently joined another game that used the map, or you published the map yourself.

Users are also given a limited amount of storage space on Battle.net for publishing custom maps. There’s a whole host of other issues introduced by a map being published multiple times to get around the system, so for more detail see luxx’s excellent post on TeamLiquid.

Speculation about future mods and custom maps aside, multiplayer is what will give StarCraft 2 the 10 year (or longer) shelf-life the original had… provided Blizzard managed to get it right twice in a row. 

Battle.net

One of the criticisms and potential obstacles to the success of StarCraft 2 is the fact that Blizzard opted to remove dedicated LAN as an option for multiplayer. This doesn’t mean that all multiplayer games are hosted on Battle.net, but it does mean that you won’t be able to play the game on your home network without a connection to the Internet.

Battle.net facilitates the connection but the connections themselves are peer-to-peer, which means that if you’re on the same LAN the traffic won’t travel over the Internet.

Blizzard tries to make up for the lack of offline multiplayer with a plethora of features in the new Battle.net. The match statistics of every single match is stored (and also available for public viewing by those who can access your profile). This includes the statistics of co-operative matches against computer-controller opponents as well as competitive matches against other players.

All these matches don’t count towards your ranking on the global ladder, however.

Setting up matches, ranked or unranked, are easier than ever. You can choose a match type and race and simply let the Battle.net matchmaker find you a game. You can also create custom games (which aren’t ranked) which other players can find via a normal game browser.

You can form parties with your friends which allow Battle.net to place groups of friends into games. It also allows you to suggest one of your friends to the party leader in the event that the party leader doesn’t have that person on their contact list.

This is a sure-fire way to encourage pub stomping, but Blizzard said that its matchmaking system has been developed to learn your skill level and place you in evenly matched games.

Unfortunately you won’t be able to play with your friends from other regions. At least not immediately. South Africans got the European English version of the game at retail, meaning we can only play with gamers who also connect to the European servers.

Blizzard announced that gamers in Australia and New Zealand would be able to change between the North American and South East Asian regions at will. One can only hope that they are working towards a region-free Battle.net, but for now that isn’t what you’re getting when you buy the game.

RealID

Blizzard’s implementation of the friends list wasn’t met without criticism.

There are two ways to add friends to your contact list. The first is by using their in-game name and numerical character ID. This process is somewhat streamlined if you’re in a game with someone, have played a game with them, or can view them in the match statistics of an existing contact.

Once in the statistics page of a match you can right-click someone’s nickname and choose to add them to your friends list.

The second, more controversial way of adding someone to your list of contacts is by using a system they rolled out to World of WarCraft (WoW) players recently called RealID.

When you create a Battle.net account Blizzard asks for your real name. This is used in the event that you order something from their store and pay for it by credit card. RealID uses the name you used when registering your Battle.net account to display to people you’ve added as RealID friends.

Think of it as a combination of Twitter, GoogleTalk/MSN/Xfire, and Facebook for Blizzard’s games.

It allows you to send “broadcasts” to your friends list (think Facebook statuses and “Tweets”), chat to them across games, and most importantly, see their “real” names. Of course, nothing but fear of retribution or some moral code is stopping you from registering your Battle.net account with a false name.

A big debate around the system started when Blizzard announced that it would begin displaying the real names of people in the official Blizzard forums whenever they posted. It wouldn’t be retroactive, but any future postings would have been under your real name rather than your account name, or alias.

There was a major backlash from Blizzard’s fanbase and the modification was cancelled. Or at least postponed.

Despite this the feature’s implementation is still less-than-perfect.

Once you’ve added someone as a RealID friend that person can see the names of all your other RealID friends, as well as easily dispatch RealID invitations to them. This is useful at the dawn of the service when your friends are adding one another in dribs and drabs so you can check out their friends lists to see if they’ve added someone you haven’t yet.

Eventually, however, this could become a privacy concern.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are already such concerns, particularly among the female player base of Blizzard’s games.

Multiplayer summary

All-in-all Blizzard has delivered a good multiplayer experience.

Reviewing multiplayer, especially when Blizzard’s games are involved, is tricky and dangerous. It’s an aspect of the game that’s always changing, and one can only hope that Blizzard will fix the issues that currently affect some players’ experience.

Other than the issues mentioned previously, there is the major issue of people disconnecting from games as the 30 second countdown to start the game begins. It’s unclear if this is caused by temperamental connections or by people intentionally griefing.

On the issue of game balance the jury is still out. Staunch supporters of the three factions will assert that the other two are far more powerful or imbalanced than their favourite.

And if the original game is anything to go by said jury will remain in deliberations until the game is eventually retired.

Part 2 of the review covers the single player aspect of the game.

StarCraft 2 << Have you played it? What do you think?