Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

One of the first games I ever played on the computer (Windows 95 feels like a lifetime ago) was Warcraft 2 Battlenet edition, (something that my parents were slightly pissed off with at the time) Warcraft 2 was a fanastic game, and was probably the reason I got into real time strategy games so much....that and I developed the train of thought to make people do things for me because I know best.

Starcraft 2 is a realtime strategy game in a similar vein to Command and Conquer and Warcraft (Well warcraft is a Blizzard game what do you expect?), which means that your role is that of a general, emperor or angry man with good people skills.

In the story campaign for Wings of Liberity you take the position of Jim Raynor, leader of Raynor's Raiders, a group of freedom fighters who are trying to usurp the leader of the Terran empire, I like to think of them like the Browncoats from Firefly for about 2 minutes, and then I get misty eyed.

So, the controls are fairly simple for any command and conquer or warcraft veteran, you can move the camera using camera using the W.A.S.D. keys, or moving the mouse cursor to the side of the screen, hotkeys take a while to get used to because of the different buildings and soldiers you get and you can zoom in to see the action up close and personal.

Starcraft feels very polished and well developed and all 3 races are well balanced and each has their own unique playing style (see ZERG RUSH!) each with its own personality and little details I.E. the mech drivers who look like metal heads and sound like Arnie.

The Campaign takes place years after the original Starcraft, with the Zerg disappearing into relative obscurity and the Protoss doing their own thing which leaves Raynor to try and overthrow Arcturus Mensk because of their belief that the Dominion is just as bad as the old government that they helped overthrow, pretty much 'meet the new boss, same as the old boss'.

You play as Jim Raynor.
This hunk of manliness

Kerrigan makes her reappearance as the Queen of Blades for the Zerg during one of the early missions which leades Raynor to try and kill her because of what she has done, and you also get to see into Raynor's personality in terms of how he has reacted to all the things that have happened in the first starcraft and all the resulting occurances.

That is to say: Badly.

There isn't much I can say about the plot that won't contain spoilers, but it is a very worthwhile game and will undoubtedly give RTS fans hours of joy playing, I know I always end up coming back to it when I'm on the train or have some free time.

Although having to make a Battlenet username and password as soon as you install the game and having to tell the game that you want to play on your own without the internet on does get tedious after a while if you're like me and don't really like human beings

Final Statement Reviews

Pros
-Very slick and streamlined control system and interface
-The graphics are very nice even on lower settings.
-Very good characters and above average storyline

Cons
-Battlenet pisses me off
-Levels can get samey, but that can be said of any RTS game
-Some characters can be a little over the top 
-BATTLENET!!!!

If you liked this game you might also like

Command and Conquer, pick one any one, personally I recommend Red Alert 2
Warcraft 3
Sins of a Solar Empire

Sins of a Solar Empire

I have been a huge Real Time Strategy fan since I played Command and Conquer : Red Alert Retaliation on the Playstation 1....which any gaming enthusiast can tell you was far too long ago to remember, since then however I have changed to games like Company of Heroes, the Dawn of War franchise, Medieval 2 total war and Sins of a Solar empire to name just a few.

Sins of a Solar Empire, for those who haven't played it, is a 4X RTS game, it is in the same vein as Civilisation, in that, you are tasked to; EXpand, eXplore, eXploit and eXterminate your enemies, although this particular game is a RTS set in space...which pretty much instantly makes it better in my mind, and also a fair amount quicker.

Unrivalled Scale is quite correct when looking at this game, playing multiplayer against 2 of my friends and a couple of AI players you can have multiple solar systems to travel between and fight over which took a minimum of 5 hours (And this is only because one of my friends and I decided to turn on our other friend and call it a day).

The learning curve for this game is fairly steep, but I found that the small selection of tutorials were more than adequate, and the game let me develop my own tactical thought process for this game instead of trying to do a sort of crash course in strategic theory which would have left most players confused.

Very, VERY steep learning curve in this game.

In most 4X games graphical quality takes a back seat to gameplay, and this is no exception to that general rule, though that doesn't mean that this is by any stretch of the imagination an Ugly game, in fact that is quite far from the truth, as the rendering on the ships and constructs are fantastic, as is the designs of the suns or planets which all have little details that you wouldn't expect from many games.

Due to the expansive nature and extreme size of maps in this game, the use of strategy and tactics is key, I once split my armada in half before sending them to 2 different planets, both of which joined by interspace 'motorway' to a planet I wanted to attack, I chose both fleets and told them to attack as one, allowing me to make a strategic outflanking manoeuvre.

There really isn't much of a story for this game, it feels more like the old Battlefield games, in fact in Sins of a Solar Empire, there isn't actually a story mode, the story can be summed up as 'They all hate each other for arbitrary reasons.'

Final Review

Pros
-Massive Maps
-Allows easy use of tactics
-Great Multiplayer combat

Cons
-No story mode
-Steep Learning Curve
-Give yourself about a day to play a game of this because you will spend shit loads of time on one map without realising

If you enjoy this you may also enjoy- 

-Galactic Civilisation 2
-Dawn of War
-Starcraft 2
-Civilisation 4