I Like All The Pretty Reviews

I'll be blunt – I'm really not an RTS fan. For those of you not in the know, RTS stands for Real Time Strategy, a genre of game in which there is constant action, be it production of fighting units or attacking your opponent's encampment or defending your own supplies. They are a vicious, hectic sort of game which breeds competition like small children breed diseases. Anger ensues upon defeat, though perhaps that particular point is not unique to RTS. Some people will just get angry if they lose at anything. Hell, some people just get angry.

There are two franchises that really stand out as being RTS: Age of Empires and Blizzard's “Craft Dinner” series. And of the two, my personal preference is for anything that Blizzard has made. How, you ask, can I like something that I just previously stated I'm not really a fan of? Simple – Blizzard does such a good job with RTS games that they can make a hater love them. If you don’t understand, imagine somebody who hates chocolate, because he has only had non dairy baking chocolate squares. He doesn’t know any better until you give him actual chocolate. So it is with other RTS's compared to Blizzard.

First, they gave us Warcraft, and few people listened or cared. Then they gave us Warcraft 2, and we rejoiced, because we didn't know any better. Then they gave us Starcraft, and we sang their praises, for Blizzard had created something that few other companies had dared to achieve – a unique game that was engaging, diverse, and above all us, balanced. Despite the three different races, each with their own style of play, their individualized units with special feats and abilities, Starcraft managed to remain fair and playable no matter which race you chose. Then Blizzard gave us Warcraft 3, and we sort of looked at it and said: “Well, it doesn't suck”.Then we went back to playing Starcraft for another 8 years.

12 years later, Starcraft was still one of the most popular real time strategy games, especially in everybody's favourite country, South Korea (Let me just dispel a myth here: South Korea's national sport is not Starcraft. It's Tae Kwon Do). And it's easy to understand why. I remember playing the game when it was a new release, and thinking that it was abominably hard. The story didn't really engage me at the time, and I didn't much care for the diversity. Basically, a ten year old boy looked at the game and said “Oh man, those machine people sure are cool!”, as one might expect a child to say. Those memories brought me back to playing the original Starcraft again recently, only this time I didn't use cheat codes to beat every level. I toiled, strove, and finally clawed my way to the top, only to find that it was covered in robot debris and a bunch of alien carcasses.

Starcraft had its own flaws. The interface wasn't exactly friendly, though it was manageable. Hotkeys worked, but unless you really wanted to spend the time memorizing the different hotkeys for each of the races, you weren't going to be a professional player. And the game didn't provide a tutorial for hotkeys either. They were like a hidden treat, that candy you find left on a desk when you show up to class an hour and half late. Then you realize you've missed the class entirely. But hey, free candy, right?
The hotkeys only are important after you've learned the fundamentals of the game, which - despite what the tutorial levels might say – aren't as simple as gather minerals and gas, build units, win game.

There's a lot of intricate detail that goes into real time strategy. How big should your army be, when should you attack, how many units should you have gather materials? And there's no set answer, no one right solution that will solve all your problems and make you king of the RTS. That's part of the brilliance of the genre: it's so diverse. The best way to progress is to try various things, experiment with what you're given, and find a strategy that works for you. Unfortunately, the important, large scale questions that really make an RTS function are never asked by the game during campaign mode or the tutorials. You get a very basic, simplified understanding of the mechanics, and then you are shoved into the game, expected to play at peak performance, and so help your little units if you fail to live up to these expectations.

Now, it's rather ridiculous of me to be reviewing Starcraft when Starcraft 2 was released... back in the summer. Yikes, what am I doing writing this now, anyway? Well, I guess late is better than never.

Anyway, Starcraft 2 is without doubt an improvement on the original. Aside from the update of graphics – the change from realistic to slightly cartoony may offend some – the game remains largely the same. The majority of your favourite units are still there, tweaked this way and that to better perfect the notion of balance. Some got dropped on the way side, but the new units now available to each race should more than fill that hole. Unless you play as Zerg, the alien bug race who always reminds me of the Borg, even though they really aren't that similar. Either way, if you play as Zerg, you will no doubt be sad to hear that Lurkers do not exist in the multiplayer of Starcraft 2, Wings of Liberty. Don't worry – they'll be back in the next part, Starcraft 2: Whatever the Hell We're Calling It This Time.

Here's a fun point I can harp on. Starcraft 2 is actually being released in three different chunks, one for each of the three races. That means you get one campaign per instalment, as opposed to the original where you had all three races and their respective campaigns on one disc. To be fair, the Terran – hint, they are the humans - campaign on Wings of Liberty is about three times as long as the original campaign, so it does balance out, but I can't shake the feeling that this is Blizzard attempting to make us pay more money for another patch.

In fact, in a lot of ways, Starcraft 2 feels like a patch for the original Starcraft. Nothing extraordinarily new and exciting was introduced into Starcraft 2 that changed the way the game itself s played. Sure, there are new strategies, new units to fiddle with, but the objective is the same, and how you go about it is exactly the same. A lot of people will shout here “But if it isn't broken, don't fix it”. And to them I say... you're right. Blizzard didn’t need to change anything. In fact, I'm glad they didn't change anything too drastically, as it may have ruined the feeling of the game. That doesn't mean it seems any less like a patch for the old game.

Let's go back to discussing the campaign mode, which actually received some fun and interesting upgrades. Aside from the addition of achievements – because every game ever must have achievements now so you can show them off at work and have everybody make fun of you – there is now a “base” portion between campaign missions, where you can purchase upgrades not normally available in the multiplayer portion. Each time you beat a mission, you are awarded some credits, which you can spend on these upgrades. Some of them are ridiculously game breaking, which explains why they aren't in the multiplayer. In campaign, you need every advantage you can get, as the computer cheats.

Campaign also got a difficulty setting, allowing you to play on Easy, Normal, Hard, or Brutal. Hard is about the same difficulty as the original Starcraft, meaning if you're looking for some light fun, Normal is the difficulty for you. If you have never played an RTS before, try Easy for a bit, just to get used to it. If you hate yourself, play Brutal. If you love yourself, for goodness sake stay away from this game, because it is addictive and you will spend too much time playing it.

Of course, Blizzard rewards you for spending your money and enjoying their games. You will get your money's worth on Starcraft 2, and then some. But every time I praise the company of unfavourable weather, I can't help but feel like they are doing their best to sell out. There's one mission in the campaign with a day and night mechanic. At night, you get attacked by, you guessed it, somethings that are supposed to be zombies. Well, infested humans, really, but close enough. And during the day, your objective is to destroy all the infested buildings. Does everything ever now really need to have a zombie motif in it? Are zombies really that popular that inserting a reference to them in your game or story or TV show suddenly makes your medium haute couture? Blizzard has even recently released a multiplayer custom game called Left 2 Die, an obvious and painful reference to the Left 4 Dead series. I fully expect zombie culture to reach a point where there will be No 1 Left who isn't claiming to be a zombie fanatic.

Other than that, my gripes with the game are rather miniscule. The interface is effective, if a bit annoying at times – same as before. There are even more hotkeys now, and some of them have changed from the first game, so forget everything you knew. I mean that, even if you haven't played Starcraft, forget everything you knew. It isn't going to help you for anything, so just give it up and learn something practical.

The music is acceptable, if uninteresting. You barely notice it when you play, which I suppose is good for ambient music. It's not something I'd want to put on my mp3 player. It does exactly what it should, nothing more, nothing less. Some might consider this a point in its favour, though I for one am always disappointed when the music is on the poorer end. There are a few comedy songs hidden in the game, including one called Terran Up the Night, which plays during the credit sequence. If you groaned upon hearing that, you still have a soul. Congratulations.

I'm not going to tell you if you should get Starcraft 2 or not. It's one of those games you should really play a little first, decide if you are interested in it, and then purchase it. If you've played Starcraft the Original and enjoyed it, you'll want to get Starcraft 2. If you like RTS games like Age of Empires, you should consider Starcraft 2. If you think this Blizzard company is evil because of all the people who have died playing World of Warcraft, you need a reality check. Now if you'll excuse me, Olaf and I are going to take turns playing Lost Viking.