User Reviews

This review contains spoilers about the singleplayer campaign.

Starcraft 2 is the long awaited sequel to Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. The game is a real-time strategy game with three races: Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. The game features a lengthy Terran campaign and competitive multiplayer with each of the three races competing in asymmetrical warfare.

Starcraft 2's campaign is incredibly fun. The campaign follows Raynor as he leads a rebellion. The campaign introduces various new and old Terran units and allows many fun choices to be had on those units. Some of these are upgrading units with shields or to allow medics to heal two targets. The cinematics are expertly done as Blizzard is seemingly unable to do a poor job technically. The missions are varied and even the side missions are created with care. The only faults some may find with the campaign is the story. The original Starcraft had a different tone than this entry. This entry opts for a lighter tone than the original games.

The multiplayer's focus has been on its 1v1 competitive game mode. The game feels balanced enough on all but the higher ranks. Each of the races maintains a distinctive feel and grand strategy to countering one another. Any one that likes competitive strategy will like this game. The other game modes such as 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and free for all do not have as much polish and are more casual. One hope that I had for a vibrant custom map scene similar to Warcraft 3 is not in Starcraft 2. The custom maps are still present, but player counts are lower with not as many creative maps.

Even at $60 on launch, this game's singleplayer has good value. With multiplayer, this game is absolutely worth its price.

Grade: B

Virtually everything Jim Raynor or Tychus Findlay or Matt Horner says can be found in one line or another from any other movie, TV show, or video game. There's almost nothing anyone says that isn't cliché', stupid, poorly delivered, or so bland and generic you can skip it and miss out on nothing.

Remember Arcturus Mengsk of Korhal, and how the Confederacy nuked Korhal into an uninhabitable wasteland, how Mengsk fought and bled and suffered to fight them, with his rebel group the Sons of Korhal. He was a character so morally ambiguous that he would suffer in order to help civilians, and then out of utter rage and vengeance, use psi emitters to obliterate entire Confederate planets, drawing billions of Zerg onto Antigua Prime and Tarsonis.

He wanted to end the war and end the Confederacy, and not end up spending decades fighting hard guerrilla war with the Confederate remnants. He made a bad decision, it was the wrong one, but he made it, and he was going to live with it. He was like Joseph Stalin in his ceaseless aggression to power and to the safety and security of all Terrans.

The Arcturus Mengsk in Starcraft 2 is better compared with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He and his administration create laws so blatantly false and outrageous, even CHILDREN would not fall for it. And this is presented CONSTANTLY in the form of UNN broadcasts featuring an obvious parody of news pundits. One mission sees you, Raynor's rebels, liberate a civilian area from the Zerg and Dominion forces. This is then reported on the news where a field reporter reports to the UNN pundit. He then asks about civilian casualties, and the reporter says "Actually, the only civilian casualties thus far have been crossfire from overzealous Dominion forces" and as soon as she finishes, they panickedly go back to the pundit who panickedly remarks "Uh, well, there you have it ladies and gentlemen; Jim Raynor, killing innocent women and children!" The actions of Arcturus Mengsk, having civilians rounded up and slaughtered, or encouraging neighbors to spy on one another, or abandoning half his Dominion at the first sign of Zerg threat so as to protect his core worlds, is so completely out of character for the Starcraft Mengsk that it's a farce. It's buffoonery, and it's made less funny if you've played the Terran campaign in Starcraft 1.

In Starcraft, the Protoss were the big tough fanatical race. They were loyal, courageous, religious, and xenophobic. They had highly advanced technology, but otherwise were very much like the Terrans in terms of being well-rounded, with good people and bad people making good decisions and bad decisions.

In Starcraft 2, you could replace them with night elves in World of Warcraft or any random race of wizards or magicians from any medieval fantasy work involving people speaking with stunted syllables about ancient prophecies and fallen ones and doom.

TVTropes has something called "Flanderization", named for Ned Flanders in "The Simpsons". "Flanderization" refers to taking ONE character trait of an otherwise normal character, and making that trait THE defining characteristic of it, to the exclusion of all else.

This has happened BIG TIME with the Protoss, where religious fanaticism and mysticism has now become the defining trait of the Protoss. Nothing Zeratul says is not painful to listen to, straight out of every Lord of the Rings knockoff done worse.

For whatever reason, whereas Raynor and the Terrans are written at a third grade level of vocabulary and storytelling, Zeratul is written at a kindergarten level. It becomes teeth-gnashingly irritating to have a cutscene show you where to go, and to have Zeratul SLOWLY exclaim "I must go over there and link with that thing, but there are Zerg in the way! They may be... problematic", or a mission where Zerg attack your base every three minutes, and when there's thirty seconds left, Zeratul ALWAYS says "The Zerg are massing for an attack! To arms!" And then comes Zeratul's FIRST crowning moment of stupidity (because there's at least two) that comes as such a smack in the face to Starcraft fans, it becomes less the fault of the character, and more the fault of BAD WRITING. Zeratul encounters a Protoss/Zerg Hybrid, and then states in that stilted, bland and monotonous delivery "Who could have created such a thing?" DID NO ONE ON THE WRITING STAFF EVEN READ THE SCRIPTS OF THE FIRST GAME, NOT EVEN NEEDING TO PLAY IT? So while you're thinking "Duran", the next mission comes and Zeratul encounters the "ghost" of an old friend. The FIRST THING this old friend says is "I have come to you from beyond this world", and the FIRST THING Zeratul says is "But you died!" The idiocy then continues as this old friend tells the story of the Overmind and its true purpose, and Zeratul chimes in POINTLESS commentary that only shows how utterly STUPID he is, not able to use age as an excuse to not understand the concept of "lies" and "ulterior motives" and "not everything is as it seems". The old friend remarks something about the Overmind, and Zeratul says "DUH DUH BUT, THE, OVERMIND, WAS, A, MONSTROSITY!" and this old friend has to chide Zeratul like a child that it only SEEMED this way to him.

The same way you wouldn't want to see rubber-forehead aliens in "Battlestar Galactica" or slapstick comedy in "Schindler's List", I don't want to see magical fantasy-type superstition and talks of "Prophecy", "Chosen One", "Fallen One", "the Damned", "Doom", and such in a hard science fiction game.

In fact Starcraft 2 does seem at times like what Warcraft 3 did with Warcraft; turning it from low-fantasy into high-fantasy. It doesn't fit on Starcraft 2. And seeing the Starcraft series go from something dark, ambiguous, and hard, to something literally at grade-school level in its simplicity, is like watching a childhood hero succumb to drugs or alcohol.

Did they really work 12 years for this or is that just a rumor? The waiting is 12 years yes, but I figure they worked on other titles meanwhile as well, so this game was made in less years then that I believe. FANBOY RESPONS: "But... it's Starcraft made by Blizzard!!!!!! and 12 years of wait!!!1!! it wins with just the box art!!!!!!1 it's best game in the world!!!!!!!!!!!" ---

For a sequel I was hoping for Starcraft 1 + Broodwars, and new buildings and lots of new features, and what I was waiting the most after was added features to hot-keys and camera control etc. On other RTS games like Command & Conquer 3, they introduced the 3D environment, moving the mouse would give you easy access to move the camera around in different angles and formation-move, reverse-move and so on. FANBOY RESPONSE: "But STARCRAFT 1 was so super 1337 so it needs no improvements, it's awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!! even if they had made a Chess game turn-based rts game it would have been awesome!!!!!!!!11" ---

Camera settings in C&C, just hold the mouse button and move, voilà camera rotate, kill the bad guy, click middle mouse button to normalize camera view. In Starcraft 2? You need to retardedly press 'Del' and 'Insert' to momentarily rotate the camera view a little. How is this practical? Nobody will EVER use this feature while in-game fighting, nobody. Only a commentator can use this camera feature to get pretty pictures while watching a Replay. FANBOY RESPONS: "But they worked 12 years for this game, it's awesome by default!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anything else is irrelevant!!!!!!" ---

Also seems not a single building has a hot-key function, you need to put every frigging production structure into a group. Is this where the game got it's good reputation from? I thought Starcraft 1 felt hard because it's so old and they didn't know how to add these 'helpful' features and hot-keys. Then after 12 years, nothing have changed, not one single helpful game-play feature have Blizzard introduced. Oh yeah, you can't even pan around the map by holding down the right mouse button like in every other normal RTS game. Instead you hold the middle button in Starcraft 2 and it moves like a snail, so it's a useless feature. My first losses I got while playing was basically because I couldn't move the screen fast enough. I guess it's a strategic maneuver to click the mini-map 100 % and never move the screen with the mouse? Because that seems to be the only way in SC2 to move the screen without any game-play functions. FANBOY RESPONS: "BUT IT'S STARCRAFT, SHUT UP NUB, it has to be awesome!!!!!!!" ---

Also all these 'challenges' and other single-player awesome features they have so masterfully added were all basic custom maps for Starcraft 1. Why come up with anything yourself Blizzard when your fan-base have already developed all the good custom map ideas? FANBOY RESPONS: "But they were good custom maps!!!!!!!!!! And they were made for Starcraft!!!!!!! so they win!!!!!!!!" ---

Furthermore, almost not a single new buildings is introduced, every single building from Starcraft 1 is making a comeback with 3D graphics. Blizzard, ever heard of KEY STRUCTURES AND KEY UNITS MAKING A COMEBACK TO THE SEQUEL? Not copy paste every frigging building and unit from the old game. FANBOY RESPONS: "But it's Starcraft!!!!!! Doesn't matter!!!! It's Starcraft!!!!!!!" ---

Playing Starcraft 2 feels like you are playing the 12 year old Starcraft 1. Oh, and there's no formation-move or anything fancy move orders we have now in every other RTS game. Nope. Blizzard is too afraid to add in new game-play features so they didn't add in anything at all. All game-play features we have is F1 for idle Worker (right?), mouse pointer for moving and clicking. Oh, and then the only feature "ctrl + #" for adding groups. FANBOY RESPONS: "But.... it's Starcraft :/" ---

I guess the game doesn't need anything else besides those 3 things? I don't see a point why not go back and play SC1 instead.

Last comments: *Starcraft like Starcraft 2 only has 1 good thing that beats other games in the genre, and that's the fan-base. There's millions of blind players out there playing this game with 10 bind groups and 200 APM and losing games because they forgot to build a Worker 2 seconds earlier...

*Galaxy Editor so these billions of fans can give the game hundreds of awesome custom maps so Blizzard don't have to do any effort.

*Tournaments with million prize pool so Koreans can make a living.

*Hundred millions of people playing online so Automatch and online games function fast and don't have to wait for players.

Basically everything 'good' about this game is because of the fan-base. If ANY OTHER game had a similar fan-base then those games by default would be better. Starcraft without a fan-base would be absolutely nothing.

1 star for the game itself, 10 stars for the fan-base

Oh well, I might download the galaxy editor and make a awesome custom map and become rich. Or maybe win a map contest and get this game for free. Bye bye.