StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Trial Impressions

In March 1998, one of the single greatest real time strategy games ever developed was released, and it's a fairly safe bet to say that I have thousands of Starcraft games under my belt; both Campaign, custom, and over Battle.net. I played it and its expansion to death, and I've been anxiously awaiting the sequel.

And waiting. And waiting. And waiting some more. A little over 12 years after the release of the original, it's finally here, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The catch is that a lot has changed in the last decade; the gaming industry has matured and the original audience for Starcraft has grown up.

For my own part, I switched platforms from PC to console gaming about 6 years ago, so I don't exactly have a top of the line gaming rig any longer. With that in mind, and the fact that I have a lengthy backlog on my Xbox 360 to tend to, I decided to give StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty a pass for now. Sorry Blizzard Entertainment, but you spent too long milking World of Warcraft, and I found other things to do while waiting for my quality RTS fix.

Well, a buddy of mine purchased the game, and it comes with two Trial passes, one of which he gave to me, so I figured what the hell, might as well. I went about creating my Battle.net ID, activated my trial code, and downloaded the 7 GB file to install the game and give her a whirl.

I'm going to say right off that the sequel certainly feels like Starcraft. The opening music and even menu style feels like a brushed up version of the original classic. The Trial is the full retail game, and you're able to play it for seven hours or up to two weeks, which ever comes first. The Campaign is Terran only, and of course there's custom games and online play via Battle.net that allows you to play with all three Species.

I decided to give the Campaign's tutorials a whirl first, just to see if anything's changed, and of course the game crashed on me while loading those up. An error report filed to Blizzard Entertainment and a reboot later and they loaded properly. Nothing new in terms of basics from the original game and unit control, actions, and resource gathering is just like I remember it, so I fired up the Campaign itself.

The Campaign focuses on Jim Raynor, one of the lead Terran characters from the original. It's now 4 years after the end of Starcraft: Brood War and Raynor's back on Mar Sara, sort of fighting a revolution against Emperor Mengsk and the Terran Dominion. I say sort of because ol' Jimmy's gone from being Han Solo to a washed up Malcolm Reynolds, complete with corny western music that actually works real well.

I ended up playing through 7 Campaign missions before my trial expired, and thus far the story's been pretty cheesy, but the mission design was varied and very clever. The first few felt like most of the first missions from the original game (like the third mission, which had me holding out in bunkers against Swarms of Zerg waiting for extraction, just like 12 years ago), but after that they start to broaden the design a bit. There's one really cool mission where you need to clear out an infested colony, and during the day, you're safe, but once the map cycles to night the Infested Terrans start swarming and you need to switch to defence. Very cool.

As you progress new units and upgrades are made available as per standard, but now you have a base of operations between missions where Raynor can chat with other characters to expand the narrative and research or customize upgrades; a very cool addition for an RTS. You also have access to various units in the Campaign that aren't available in multiplayer or Custom Games.

I tinkered with some 2v2 and 1v1 against AI opponents, just to try the other Species and see how they've changed. The set up for Multiplayer is more or less the same, and I even played on Lost Temple, the map that will never die from Blizzard RTSes. Both Zerg and Protoss have seen some tech tree changes and new units added, and everyone starts with two Vespene Geysers in their bases, but the overall feel is exactly the same as once was so many years ago. This is great because the game is instantly familiar, but in my opinion this is also bad because after 12 years, it feels that there's been a lack of innovation.

Graphically, the game looks pretty nice. It defaulted to Medium settings for me, and while I was able to tinker on High for a bit, my system is older now and I ultimately had to lower everything to Low just to run the game properly. With those settings, it actually looks a lot more like Starcraft did back in 1998, which carries a certain irony for me. While the sequel does look nice, I'm personally not a fan of the cartoony art style Blizzard has implemented. I consider the Starcraft universe to be dark and gritty, and the bright and cherry colour palette and exaggerated character models just takes away from that serious feel. The few cinematics I saw are, as in Blizzard Entertainment tradition, absolutely brilliant and spectacular to behold, so there's no lacking in production values for the game.

Audio wise the game is spot on. The Firefly western tunes work great, and a lot of the same dialogue and sound effects are reused, but sampled higher or re-recorded, of course. The voice aciting is reprized by many of the same actors, save for Infested Kerrigan and Zeratul, and the overall quality is your standard chessy RTS dialogue.

Once my trial period ended, I had thoroughly enjoyed my sampling of the Campaign, at least in mission design, and I would like to experience more. Custom games were alright, but left me with such a strong feeling of been-there-done-that that I have no huge desire to jump into competitive play over Battle.net and try to relive my teenage years.

Right now, I've decided to still pass on picking the game up, though once my backlog is cleared and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty sees a substantial price drop, I'll likely bite. The other catch is, to experience the Campaign, I don't need to buy the retail game, it seems.

With the trial version, after your period expires you can still play the Campaign with no restrictions at all so long as you sign in as a "Guest." I tried it, and while Battle.net connectivity and Achievements are disabled it works perfectly, so I've added this to my back log and will eventually go through the Campaign for free unless I end up picking up the game first.

So my final impressions: For someone who's experienced the originals to death, there's no rush at all. I mean, I've waited 12 years, so what's another 6 months or so to play a prettier version of that which feels the same? If you missed out on Starcraft back in its glory days, however, I'd pick this one up now. It'll re-define your concept of what an RTS should be.

Update: It appears the 1.03 patch has corrected being able to play the full Campaign as a "Guest" past your trial period. Once your trial is up, you do need to purchase the game to continue playing the Campaign or to start a new Campaign.