Video Games Suck - Starcraft 2

Okay, I'm not much into writing reviews, but I figured what the hell I finished Starcraft 2, so why not write about it until the download finishes.

I have to state first, that i’m no fan of the RTS genre. I remember I played lots of hours with Dune 2 back in the day, but never got into C&C and the games after that especially when they went 3D. Some like to zoom in and out, rotate the camera but that seemed a bother to me. Starcraft was the one I liked and I got into that world easily. I tried the second title and I’m glad to inform you that I carries the same qualities while remain true to the first in terms of the whole idea and the atmosphere.

The game looks nice no complain about that. They mantained the original looks of the buildings and units. Everything is colorful and detailed. It’s nothing special, but you can tell it that it’s from Blizzard from the looks of marines and firebats having big ass shoulderplates. Somehow they like to implement that idea to every game they can. Animations are alright overall. Everything is fluent and the movements looks natural. There are cutscenes all over the game helping us get into the generic story and they are well made. They get you into the missions and are enchanceing the rewarding feeling once you§re finish the battle. Some are forgettable some are quite great. For example the one when Raynor’s force finally arrives to save the General crash landed on Char, that’s a scene I watched more than once. Of course that Matt Horner guy, captain of the Hyperion battleship has the same worried look on his face the whole game. Basically everytime he talks only his mouth is moveing and that is all. It’s the same with the blue marine guy Tychus but the constant pokerface is forgiveable on his case since that’s a part of his role. Most characters look too generic. The badass marine has a scar on his face, the mechanic at the armory is the mustache father guy from American Choppers, the researcher girl looks like the one in your mind you don’t need to see her to know how she looks. It’s just that basic. But Kerrigans face is the final word, somehow she looks so utterly generic she’s almost like a doll instead of a living unique being. Way too ordinary. Othervwise the characters are done well and their looks and gestures fit themselfs. There are some pretty cinematics that’s aren’t 3D, these animations were made normally and are with awesome quality. Good thing you can view them again later from the archive section.

In terms of sound the game shines. Fitting music comes with professional voice acting. The response of the units sounds believable and they are good to hear. Of course they had to made it like that since you’re gonna hear them all the time so they had to avoid makeing them irritating. There’s an exeption here too, the ghost unit. Ghosts sounds like lazy gay douches in an unimaginable level. When you control main characters in the field, they comment stuff makeing small conversations when something happens. There’s Tychus having the time of his life when controlling the massive war machine Odin. Once you can hear the sound as he pops open a beer inside. The black rastaman woodoo spectre talks with the jamaican accent like „betta prepaa fo da inveisah” and the ghost operative Nova is played by Viconia from Baldur’s Gate which is cool.

The game features a clearly understandable fairly simple mechanics. Of course on some occasion it’s messy to use some skills of some units if they are a part of a group making you not use them at all although some could be useful. The missions are fairly creative. You need to defend your base or some stuff for a certain time, inflitrate something with a handful of men or just vanquish everything. Plant some nuke into zerg tunnels, stand your ground on waves of infected settlers bumping in the night. Sometimes you need to make a choice to go for a mission that helps one side but is against the other resulting different rewards. But there are granted rewards after missions in the form of credits and research points you can spend on upgradeing your units and buildings or implement alien technology to them. Some enchance your vehicles damage or health, others give them some skills. Needless to say, you can’t have everything. But not every one of them are useful as there are units that sucks so much you’ll never going to use them other then when they’re forced on you on certain missions. There are other stuff you can do betwen missions like watch the UNN propaganda news, swich the jukebox to sweet home alabama or play some arcade space battle called Lost Vikings after the early Blizzard hit I played on my GBA not long ago. Unlike that game the one inside the ships cantina is far from impressive. But there’s one useful thing you can do there beside getting wasted and that’s hiring mercenary units. I strongly recommend using these guys since they have more health and a higher damage output then normal units. And best of all, they get deployed instantly which can come handy when you want to form an attacking group or need reinforcements fast. Basically you can accomplish much with just a few cloaked units, make an unpenetrable defense with long range siege tanks while marauders are fireing enemy slowing projectiles from a bunker, gather scattered materials with fast vultures or call down a nuke with a spectre or ghost. As you can see they gave thought when they created most of the units but as allways, there are some useless trash also.

The story is that Jim Raynor, a former commander gone rouge, demonized by the Dominion wants to get his revolution going, clear his name and somehow save the universe in the meantime. The story’s generic but the presentation’s fine.

Despite some flaws this game’s got me infront of the monitor again after a long time. 7,5 / 10