Starcraft II

Gaming For Geezers

Starcraft II – Buy this game. It does not suck.

Summary – Ten years is a long time between the original and sequel for anything, but as with all things in the prequel/sequel/remake world, if the product is good, the time interval does not matter once you have the new item in front of you. Starcraft II is just like the original, but on steroids. Lots of steroids. We’re talking testicle shriveling, soon to die from toxic shock syndrome steroids. The game is so well put together in all aspects that the sheer joy of playing a well thought out and designed product blurs our vision to any shortcomings. Sure, you may not like real time strategy games, but if you are one of those gamers who likes to stick with the familiar first person shooter and do not like to experiment with different PC game experiences, try this one out. It is a keeper. And it will have legs. Serious legs.

Storyline

In a prior review, we made fun of a real time strategy game that ripped off the space elves/human/zerg theme from Starcraft. Well we cannot do that here because this is where they reside. However, the Starcraft people ripped of Tolkien, but who hasn’t. Which leads me to a thought that has been bothering me for years. Why is it that the foundation for 95% of all fantasy story themes and as a result, related game themes been that the human race can push out hyper intelligent and magical creatures such as the elves/protoss? I mean, the elves are bi pedal, magic, and immortal. In the real world, such a species would be dominant, but in the Tolkien/Fantasy/PC Game world, short lived, selfish, emotional humans seem to dominate. It could be that we reproduce more and thus act like a virus (hat tip to agent Smith in the Matrix), but it doesn’t make sense. I mean Elrond should have instituted a mandatory breeding program and this whole orc problem would have gone away because the elves would have sufficient numbers to simply eradicate them along with the forces of Mordor.

Same problem here. For some reason the humans in this game are the dominant species and save the day. But that is about the only irritating thing, and I have to remind myself that the target audience is human. Not too many games marketed towards the Protoss/Space Elf market where I live.

OK. Back to the task at hand. In Starcraft you are James Raynor. Apparently you were some type of stud in the last major war between the Zerg/Protoss/Humans (orc/elf/humans) and have retired to be a sheriff in a remote planet where you seem to run into many hives of scum or villainy. You spend your time in a strangely spaghetti western bar drinking, and you listen to your music off a jukebox straight out of the 20^th century earth. For some reason you cannot get the copy of Freebird recorded by Lynryd Skynrd, but instead a remake by some band whose name I recognized but never listen to. Your old buddy shows up in space armor after being released from prison, but he cannot take it off as a condition of some parole. You pine away for your long lost girlfriend who is now a space spider in control of the Zerg. I am not making this up. An evil dictator is oppressing the masses, and like all good Arthurian tales, you the protagonist are going to lead a rag tag bunch of Starbucks and Apollo to collect the ancient artifacts necessary to destroy the zerg and save the day before they overwhelm the known galaxy. You do. You save your girlfriend, and the campaign ends.

Astute readers will note the multiple pop culture references above, and that is by design. The storyline drops little things here too. The Starcraft team didn’t irritate us with meaningless storylines, the cut scenes are brief and to the point and the longer cut scenes are actually entertaining. The game generates just enough emotional connection to engage you by balancing the need to tell a story with brevity. All of these storylines and the game play are punctuated with snippets of our popular culture all true nerds will have a conscious awareness. Many of the snippets remind you of something that nags at you but you don’t connect to another reference for a while. For example, the space spider girlfriend is a dead ringer for the borg chick in Star Trek First Contact. I wouldn’t be surprised if the voice actress was the same person. The similarities continue in that she obviously had a romantic past with the protagonist just as the borg queen did with Jean Luc Picard. Aliens (the movie)pops in to the game play when you build a first aid ship who reports on their movement as “in the pipe, five by five.” The space spider/girlfriend in flashbacks is a dead ringer for the Final Fantasy movie girl as well. James Raynor’s sidekick reminds me of the cowboy opera Silverado with Kevin Kline in that he wants to put the old criminal gang back together, but our hero resists. Finally, there is a long cut scene where the Protoss hero is a facsimile of a jedi knight.

I am sure there are more pop culture references here and there, but the point is that the authors of this storyline deliberately drew from the pantheon of references that us nerds who play PC games will recognize, and it enriches the experience.

Game play – The Campaign.

I prefer the model of RTS gaming used in Starcraft. Your campaign begins with short tutorial missions with limited resources and limited options. You learn how to play the game and slowly earn new unit types and structures. Like many space campaign games you progress on a semi-linear fashion through the universe picking from a few missions presented to you. The fun thing about Starcraft is that the actual tactical game play is resource driven. If you don’t harvest resources you lose. If you harvest resources too slowly, you lose, if you are harvesting resources and your enemies destroy your capability to harvest resources you lose. In other words, the strategic decisions are more akin to the real world where resources determine who wins wars, not who has the biggest guns. Here the game incorporates many of the characteristics of other games. Starcraft probably originated or at least improved these elements, but I refer to them as references.

Resource collection is one of my favorite parts of the game and it reminds me of the very old versions of Command and Conquer. That is, the way you collect your resources, how much of your industrial capacity you devote to it, and how you balance the use of your limited resources between resource collection and military units is absolutely critical. Personally, I apply the Powell Doctrine to all my Starcraft game play, which is you do not attack unless you have overwhelming force. I spend all my time and energy developing resources and military units sufficient to protect that activity against any attack. Once my resource levels are overwhelming, I simply send my entire army into the attack en masse and make quick work of the enemy. Not unlike the real world where the original combat operations in Iraq were over quickly due to the U.S.’s overwhelming force levels. Related to resource collection is base design. You must think about where you place your storage facilities, base, barracks, bunkers, air defense etc. And these decisions must reflect the terrain you find yourself in, the location of the enemy, and what you know about them. Which then links to the need for good intelligence. You cannot make good decisions about resource collection and base design until you know what you can expect to see from your opponent. All these elements combine seamlessly into a frenetic real time rush to make life or death decisions about your campaign. Just like the real world, but in this case there are no consequences and you can restart the mission if you get wiped out.

Just as rich as this resource/design/scouting experience is the actual tactical combat. You have a wealth of units to choose from ranging from masses of foot soldiers, tanks, air attack units, large air units, hybrid air/land attack units etc. There are a large number of tactics and strategies you can employ to be successful. We could talk at length about the different tactics and strategies you can use, but that is not the point of this review. The point is that this game is a canvass you decide how to paint, which is the mark of a superior real time strategy game. There is no set way to win, or lose, and you can play it over and over experimenting with new strategies and tactics. There are a few missions that feel like Warhammer, where you have a set number of units and you must achieve a limited, specific objective such as rescuing someone or destroying a target, but those simply punctuate the overall free hand strategy game.

As you can imagine, the campaign culminates in a large scale all out battle that took me a few tries to figure out and succeed, and there is a nice end cut scene. But after all that, and about 70 hours of game play you are just getting started. Once you finish this campaign you can enter the brilliantly designed single and multiplayer non-campaign game which is quickly becoming a subculture of its own.

Multi-Player

Starcraft II built this right. You can ease into the on line multiplayer experience, play cooperatively, get training, play against the computer, and play as a Zerg, Protoss, or human.

There is so much depth to this experience the quickest way to describe it is to simply relate our experience. After we completed the campaign we took the tutorial lessons. This is a training ground that allows you to use the different races, their very different structure and resource models, and their very different units. The tutorials start out with simple unit combat and teach you what units from each race can accomplish against the other race’s units. Tactical tutorials for specific missions, i.e. nuking a large number of massed enemies to designing the best defense against the Zerg horde help you get acclimatized. You will need to spend some time on the Zerg and Protoss tutorials as they are entirely different armies than the humans.

After the tutorials, we tried out some of the AI games. This is a simple map combat instance where you pick your race, your opponent’s race, the map, and how many teams are on each side. You can choose to have 1 v. 1 up to 4 v. 4. This is good practice, but the best way to learn quickly is to play the cooperative version on line and watch your teammates. Start out on medium to get some good players to learn from. After you get comfortable with the different races, or if you are like us you simply just play the human forces, you have a 50 game testing period where you can play easy level 1 v. 1 or larger maps for points which garner you some benefits.

What benefits? Not sure, but at a minimum you get some bling which you will discover when you try to change your avatar. You cannot pick anything but the frat dude picture and a few others until you level up. We haven’t had time to figure everything out yet because of our pesky careers and family obligations, but apparently the point system contributes to a complicated match up system so that you are paired with opponents with similar experience and skill levels.

We usually play the AI or the coop game with lots of opponents so we can stop playing when the phone rings or the kids wake up late at night so that we don’t shut down a game with someone abruptly after playing for an hour (those guys are dicks). At least with the AI game you don’t piss any person off, and the large coop game teammates get all your resources when you surrender to get your kid a bottle and hush them back to sleep late at night.

The long and short of it is that the best part of the Starcraft game play is quickly accessible in many different flavors in the multiplayer game. This mode is widely popular as of this article. As of today there is a subculture out there using terms like “racking” or “rocketing” or something like that. It stands for a strategy of sending out an SCV (Resource collector and builder) and setting up a barracks across the screen right next to your opponent very early in the game for the purpose of pouring all your resources into the barracks to quickly eradicate an enemy before they have a chance to build military units and defend themselves. It is like sneaking into Germany in 1929, setting up Fort Benning, training thousands of soldiers, and wiping out the National Socialists before they arm. Well not really, but sorta.

In any event, there are lots of game play opportunities out there, and the experience so far is very rich. We intend to play this for awhile. As Mr. Crusty said a few months ago, it looks like this game has legs. Buy it. It does not suck.

Methodology Summary

Excellent On Line Gaming Experience: Yes

Success in game play through teamwork and smarts: Yes

Complementary Single Player Experience: Yes

Involves Shooting Someone: Yes

Can be played over and over: Yes

Playable by a geezer who has a life and other obligations? Yes

Conclusion: Excellent single player translates seamlessly into richer multiplayer experience in this well designed and executed RTS.

Publisher: Blizzard

Developer: Blizzard

Release Date: July 2010

Best FAQ/Guide Site: www.starcraft2strategymasters.com (for multiplayer)

Price as of Today: $49.99 (Amazon)