Starcraft II; or Almost Lightning In A Bottle
Few games come along when I feel the urge to review it, hell...this is only the second game I reviewed on Giant Bomb. Why am I doing a Starcraft II review? I guess in a sense, I feel this game might just be the best RTS I played since Warcraft III. There's just layers and layers of depth, and a story that is somewhat compelling.
First, let's talk about the story, or my mixed experience on it. Starcraft II doesn't have the greatest of plots, I wouldn't even consider it much of a plot, and it feels like Blizzard sloppily put together a story just to give the soloists something to do. I didn't like the customization of units, I thought it takes away skill, and it's a poor thing to do for gamers who want to get into the online modes after finishing the story. I'll be honest, if graded on it's own, I think the story shouldn't be worth $30 retail, and I'd give the single player experience a 3 star rating.
Second, there are challenges and these I feel are alright. In a way they're supposed to teach you what counters what, how to use units to their fullest abilities, and how to prevent rushes. In theory, it works. The problem is that the situations are in a very controlled environment, and gamers looking to learn from this might pick up a thing or two...but when it comes to real battle, they'll be chewed apart.
There's also a co-op mode one can play with a buddy or two, and I guess it's alright. I never touched it due to being able to just make a custom game with the same settings. I don't see why they even put a co-op menu on the list.
Single Player - 3 out of 5
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Now, let's talk multiplayer, or the real reason why people are picking up Starcraft II.
To be blunt, I have played well over 140 games in the week since release, and I have enjoyed every one of those matches. Only 20 at the most were custom games, but the rest were all hardcore 1v1 in either ranked or people I met who post on other Starcraft oriented forums. Every battle was a fight for destiny, every battle was a battle of blood, sweat and tears. I learned something from every match, I taught something in every match. It was a give and take.
Starcraft II is an online experience unlike anything before. There are faults, major faults which I hope they address.
1. Lack of custom Leagues, in the old Brood Wars days, we had iCCup and their kick-ass private league system. Starcraft II is sadly locked to just Blizzard's league, and the sense of pro-gamer community is taken away.
2. Lack of Chat Channels, it sucks. It's coming...and they better get it working.
3. Lack of Cross-Region Play, more suckage...and they promised it would be up sooner or later, hopefully the former.
Even with these faults, Starcraft II is a fantastic game that I keep going back to for the online. There's a sense of community, albeit, you'll have to go to other places to find that hardcore Starcraft community, but it's there.
I think what I love most about Starcraft II's online are the custom games, and modes. I haven't played much of it in the retail, but I have played a hell of it during the beta. A fully working DotA map is already up, tower defenses are up, a full-blown Chess game is up, and loads of others. During my off time from rankings, I end up going back to the custom games.
The online modes alone are worth the $100 price tag of the collector's edition. I haven't regretted once about the purchase, and Blizzard has me locked down for the future games.
Online - 5 out of 5
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Pros - The entire Online Modes, Achievements might force me to try single player modes again, community of Starcraft
Cons - Online flaws, and lack of structure that Brood War had, single player is a major letdown.
WTF? - Popularity System for Custom games is really really really bad.
Overall - 4 out of 5 Stars
After 12 years since the original Starcraft, Blizzard learned a lot. Sadly, they couldn't focus on the single player, and for whatever reason took 1 step forward with 2 steps backwards for the new Battle.net, hopefully before the year's end they fix it all up. Until then, I'll sleep comfortably giving the game a solid 4 out of 5.
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