StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

Preview from Jae - Friday, 21 August 2009 @ 3:04pm

Have you ever loved something or someone at first sight? Taken one look at it, touched it, listened to it and smelt it only to realize it truly is THE one. That’s kind of how a lot of people would feel the first time they get to touch StarCraft II. Blizzard have recently been kind enough to give journalists a few hours of the single player experience on the upcoming StarCraft II. I managed to play through about 5 missions before I got told my time was up. At that point I felt like acting like the spoilt little rich boy in the toy store that wouldn’t stop crying until he got the white power ranger. He was the best power ranger after all.

Common words in the computer game liturgy are Protoss, Terran and the almighty Zerg. If you’re not so familiar with the franchise these are the three teams in the game all vying for complete domination in the universe. Terran represent the evolved Earth human form, Protoss the sentient race and the Zerg, whom I like to call the biologically and cosmetically challenged team. The popularity of this series is well documented in Korea where there are serious tournaments between Koreans that play StarCraft 1 for a living. You can become an official Korean fan girl lusting after a competitive gamer there. Nuts doesn’t even start to describe Korea’s obsession with StarCraft having two television channels devoted to the game, the tournaments and strategies on how to play. Hardcore to the max!

My heart belonged to two RTS games before StarCraft, the original Dune series and the Red Alert C&C spin off. This meant I was fairly familiar with the basics, of harvesting resources to give you money to then buy you attack and defense units, so jumping straight into this game wasn’t hard to do. Honestly I’ve played SC1 maybe 3 or 4 times before my preview of the sequel, kind of shocking I know, but the limited time I had with the game showed that little knowledge of the series was needed to get started. Remembering that SCII will be a game released in three money making parts, all will contain multiplayer but each will contain a separate single player mode for each race. Wings of Liberty will focus on the Terran campaign giving you the controls of Jim Raynor, the familiar face of the original game.

My blue suit is better than your 3D air hockey

The first thing that stands out to you is the graphical beauty SCII displays. Watching almost a hundred Zerglings coming at you at full frame rate with absolute detail is nothing short of impressive. Jumping straight into the game you’ll see how Blizzard has revamped the main menus to take place in a point and click interactive setting. The point which you gain control is when Jim Raynor sits slouched over a bar with a whisky in hand hovering over his high tech computer. Clicking on certain items or people will trigger menu items, such as the television which will broadcast a story on the latest mission that had been accomplished or the computer which takes you to your next mission objective. Shortly after the basic missions your menu will appear in the form of the Hyperion’s hangar, the ship that appears to be where most of your planning and preparation will take place.

I won’t bother you so much with the first couple of missions. They were the basic ones where you walk here, then over there, kill some small things, find some buddies, move over there and mission complete. The first to peak my interest was the mission where you had to steal an artifact that was being heavily guarded by the Protoss. Lucky for you the Zerg have appeared and started heavy hitting the Protoss, you on the other hand have the opportunity to steal the artifact from under the Protoss’s noses. I played this one a little bit cocky taking a handful of marines and medics and heading straight for the artifact. It wasn’t long till all that were left were two medics hastily healing each other. This made me realise I was actually playing a strategy game, you know, the kind where you can’t just bum rush your way to your objective. So after a few minutes of building up my barracks and holding off some minor Protoss units I made it to my goal. The next mission continued from there by which the Zerg had completely taken over the area so you had to defend your base till the ships came to rescue you and the artifact. This is when you start to really get the hang of the game using more SCVs to build bunkers, more barracks and supply depots.

The last mission I got to play was different again. Object was straight forward, mine as much mineral as you can to reach a deposit of 8000 credits. Sounds easy enough on its own but there were two problems with the terrain. One was that the Zerg would constantly come after you and your SCVs and the other was the fact that lava would rise in intervals and destroy units that were left on lower ground. You would get enough forewarning of the lava, by about 30 seconds, but the tricky part was mining all the ore that inconveniently grew on the lower grounds. There was one moment where I was too busy fighting off Zerg to think about the lava and I had easily lost about five SCVs to the lava. The level did seem a little tedious, as the mission would take at least 15 minutes to complete, although thinking back to it the idea was to strategize and skillfully maintain your objectives.

Hot lava action

We were told at last count Wings of Liberty would have at least 28 Terran missions in the single player campaign, which according to my calculations is a whole lot of hours. Interaction on the Hyperion includes choosing your own path to missions which seem to alter the story which is told. It’s not clear whether or not the choices represent good and evil but they do hint towards that mechanic. Playing through the single mode you will have access to a wider array of armory, units which won’t be available in the multiplayer mode. A Blizzard developer that was there explained that the main reason for this is balancing issues. The plus side is that there is a lot to look forward to when playing the single mode.

I’m not too keen on going into the particulars of the types of units the Terrans have, even though I wrote them down just like a good little geek, those are what I think are the real spoilers. You do get introduced to three areas on your gunship that serve as upgrades to the game. The armory which is where you go to pay for upgrades to cater your gameplay style, the research lab which gives you upgrades that specifically counteract the Protoss or Zerg and the cantina where you can hire mercenary units to help you out during battle. I can see players spending some time on the Hyperion preparing for battles in the best way that they can. As deep as the choices may seem they are outlaid in a simplistic manner and explained well for untrained eyes like mine.

How do I get upstairs to the virtual stripper?

It is sad but expected that SCII will be a 2010 release. With Blizzard’s track record of trying hard to perfect games before they’re released you can be sure that it will be worth waiting. I thoroughly enjoyed my first encounter with the single player mode and let’s just say I may even be queuing up for a potential midnight launch of this game next year in my best Zerg cosplay.