Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Review
Short Version: The most important lesson I learned from Starcraft II – more of the same only BETTER in every way possible can make for an absolute Masterpiece! The list of improvements are extensive: Extremely high production values, massive amounts of interesting well voiced In-game cinematics, Engaging Singleplayer missions with interesting objectives, a near limitless Map Editor, and a full compliment of Online Multiplayer features including built in league and ladders, Blizzard delivered the Best RTS I have ever played in exchange for the 10 year wait from the original!
What you’ll Like:
• The Graphics are Jaw-dropping and there’s an Insane amount of detail in nearly every aspect of the game.
• The Adventure-like Metagame that allows to you watch your recent exploits on television, play fun tunes on the jukebox, learn more about your companion characters and explore your ship and newly acquired units.
• The Added RPG elements of upgrading your units skills and abilities or hiring mercenaries with in game credits and research points acquired during missions.
• The Extremely Flexible Map Editor allows you to create nearly any type of game you can imagine, if you can get over its learning curve.
• The Branching Story Paths forcing you to choose one mission over another each with unique cinematics and consequences.
• The gameplay from the original remains intact while the new units add new layers to the games strategy.
• Best Part: All of the excellent added story-driven cinematic’s in between missions.
What you’ll Hate:
• As a result of splitting the game into 1 full game & 2 expansions – There are only a handful of Protoss assignments and absolutely no Zerg Missions.
• Battle 2.0 is fancy but ultimately less functional than 1.0. Why did they remove chat rooms, force region restrictions, and strip=out Lan Play? Oh yea. To over-monetize everything they can – be on the look out for more of this.
• Worst Part: Knowing I’m contributing to Activision’s bottom line.
Final Verdict:
9/10*
Legendary!
*Final Verdict: 9/10 If corporate influence is to be counted – then consider Battle Net 2.0 changes, Region Locking, No LAN play and The so called “StarCraft II Marketplace”
BAD ASS APPROVED! Safe Buy!
*UDPATE
Kotaku reports that the Australian version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will not be region-locked. This means Australian gamers are free to play with us guys in the USA if they choose to do so during first sign-up.
Here’s Blizzard’s Q&A to clarify things…
Q: Who is eligible to play on the North American servers?
A: All players, including those in the regions of Hong Kong and Macau, who purchase the English Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand Standard or Collector’s Edition of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will have the option of playing on the North American Battle.net® servers in addition to the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand servers if they prefer.Q: How much will this cost?
A: The option of playing on North American Battle.net servers will come at no additional cost to all players who have purchased the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of StarCraft II.Q: How will access to the North American servers be granted?
A: Our intention is to ensure that within 60 days after the launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, all players with a copy of the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version will automatically gain the ability to also access the North American servers — this will be handled through Battle.net account management.Q: How will I know when I can access the North American servers?
A: We will have additional information on how and when to access the North American servers on our StarCraft II community site.Q: What will happen with my Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand Battle.net account?
A: Once you get access to the North American Battle.net servers, you will have access to both regions for online play. You can choose which one to play on at any given time, and can switch back and forth at will.Q: How will my friends list and rankings be handled?
A: All account-specific data, including friends lists, rankings, achievements, statistics, titles, and unlockable rewards, will be tracked separately for each region’s Battle.net servers, and will not carry over between them.Q: If I have already purchased the North American version, can I also play on the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand servers?
A: No. To have the option to play on both servers, you must purchase the Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. This solution is specifically targeted to address gamers in Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand who have social relationships with North American players from previous Blizzard Entertainment titles.
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260 thoughts on “Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Review”
This review is bullshit. Only good thing about SC 2 are the cutscenes and the story. The gameplay is about as stupid and boring as the first game, you’d think they wouldve made it deeper. But its a shallow spamfest. Ofcourse Koreans cant handle anything that requires thought so I suppose they dont want to alienate 95% of their market.
Bullshit? Really? The game is wholly adequate. It does nothing new or exciting in terms of game mechanics and is fairly backwards considering the recent trend away from unit micro. The thing that really bothered me was the lack of lan play; living in a dorm with really crappy internet is not battlenet friendly.
I would totally buy Starcraft 2 if I was any good at RTS games.
I don’t think I have ever won an RTS game online ever, kind of draws me away from the genre in general.
Great game, although the dialog is a bit Over Dramatic.
I’d buy this game but i haz no moneyz and i haz no ride
I’m too lazy to work or walk.
I would most definitely get this game, if my computer could play it. My computer is about 5-6 years old, with only a small ram upgrade since the factory shipped it out. It barely played World of Warcraft, up until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out. It barely plays Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and only when any patch is not installed.
Great review, and you sold me on the last 10/10 game, I’m still playing Red Dead Redemption.
Yeah when I learn about the lost of both the other side stories, I beleved everything you include about it leaving the story hanging for a few more years. Though from what I heard is that the 2 expansions might be stand alone, not requiring the wing of liberty, though I am more wandering about the 4th race that they are talking about. No spoilers, buy the game to figure it out.
Hope to seeya on multiplayer.
I regularly play SC1 with a friend in Ireland. Seeing as I live in Canada, looks like SC2 just got knocked down my list a bit.
Well, I do know one guy who’s got a guest pass to spare, so I can at least give it a shot.
I still really don’t get why people are still bitching about lan play, they drop a small part of online play, so what, is that really a good reason to write blizzard hate mail, this isn’t infinity ward completely changing the multi player on MW2, it’s dropping a small feature, sure it made sense in 1998, wi-fi connections and high speed internet didn’t exist they way they do know (entire cities get FREE WIFI nowadays) is it really necessary to lug entire systems to other people’s houses to play multi player in 2010, when connections are much more prevalent, admittedly I myself do not engage in LAN or LAN parties (I would end up just going out of my way to mess with the other people, up to and including pulling out the network wire the moment before victor), it just seems like it’s not a real big deal, I guess I don’t get the attraction (similar to how some people don’t get the attraction of arcades) of LAN but it makes more sense to just play at home using VoIP, zerg rushing your friends with plenty of distance between you and their fist.
just my 2 cents.
well I can understand the disliking the new Multiplayer system. 1, I belong to an online star craft club for another site. We have people from all over the world and we’ve been using the lan play + hamachi to play eachother over the net. Now with the new system we won’t even be able to do that. Loses major points in multiplayer for that.
In Germany it’s only 38€, so it’s actually less expensive than most full price games we get to buy here.
Anyway, great review. And I have to agree: the music is just epic.
First off let me say I am an SC fan but here is my gripe.
This story matches almost with Warcraft blow for blow. Which is not much of a spoiler because you find this out pretty quick.
*Main characters of 2 different factions have somewhat of a romantic interest.
*Ancient godlike race creates the Protoss, Humans and Zerg.
*Ancients created Zerg to destroy the other races.
*Zerg is failing and starting to break free of the control with new Leader.
*Now Godlike master race is coming back to do it themselves.
Here’s an idea Joe… Why not dedicate an episode to the games with the most corporate Bullshit to deal with. A couple that come to mind are, of course, starcraft 2, but also Mass Effect 2 and spore. EA and Activision should beat themselves mercilessly.
So I take it you didn’t try the Guest Login option? Not the same as Spawn, but you can play through the who single-player campaign with it. Stinks for Multiplayer junkies, but it’s a sign the old blizzard fan-friendliness isn’t dead.
I’m I the only one that doesn’t want to pay a ton of money for the same game I bought all those years ago? Notice how Joe listed Gameplay as an afterthought behind Graphics, Story and Score. Hell, I don’t even think he spoke about gameplay in the review. Is the gameplay bad? Hell no! Is it the same gameplay the original had? Hell yes! They’ve had what, 12 or so year to work on it and we still have zergling rushes and terran turtles… Back in the day Blizzard used to flip the industry the finger and do whatever the hell they wanted, but today they just just slap a fresh sparkly coat of paint on their old car and pretend they bought a new one.
Maybe because none of the major advances in basic gameplay in that time could be applied without completely changing it beyond recognition? The only real changes have been cover mechanics and a reduction in focus on bases (plus huge scale but that’s only one series). They added construction ques and chained commands, removed selection limits, and generally cleaned up. What else is there? Blizzard has never been innovative, they polish existing ideas and do them better than anyone has before. I would have appreciated a Total Annihilation/ Supreme Commander style economy, but even the SC series dumped that eventually.
I don’t know, Warcraft 3 was a huge departure from Warcraft 2, and the fans hated it. I’m guessing that the experience spooked them away from being too inventive with this one. SC, WC1&2, Diablo, WoW all introduce new features to there respective genres, but SC2 seems to be more of the same.
joe also said to not fix something that isnt broken. If they changed it to much then it wouldnt be starcraft at all…
Name one RTS series that had as similar gameplay between one title and its sequel as SC1 and SC2. This is a very good game, no question, but it’s not a watershed in RTS gaming, SC1 was the watershed, SC2 is just one of the hundreds of copies. I’ll be it a pretty sparkly copy with the ability to WOW Joe with country music, but a derivative none the less. Where’s my zerg-protoss hybrids? Where’s my terran-protoss alliance?
Supreme Commander? Company of Heroes? Dawn of War? Command and Conquer (every single one but the last)? Total War? Myth? The only series I can think of that has the kind of radical change you seem to think is mandatory is Ground Control, and that actually switched completely from no construction at all to the same system the developer later used in World in Conflict (and is set so long after the first it might as well be a different setting). Even Warcraft 3, which you keep referencing as a standard, was basically the same gameplay as the earlier entries with the lone addition of giving everything special abilities you had to %^#ing micromanage.
Company of Heroes did not have a sequel, only expansions. Dawn of War 1 had expansions too, I hope you don’t mean those. Dawn of War 2 Played a hell of a lot different then DoW 1. Did you even play these or know anything about expansion vs. sequel?
It goes DOW 1 -> CoH -> DOW 2, with only minor incremental changes between steps (base building simplified further, then removed altogether; the cover system and heavy weapons placement migrated from CoH mostly intact). Last Man Standing was brand new, though.
We can move this to the forum if you want to continue, we are kind of monopolizing the thread here.
Also, did you play the campaign? There ARE Zerg-Protoss hybrids! Blizzard is just doing the same thing they did with the Legion in WC 3. making them unplayable so they don’t have to be balanced and can consist entirely of hugely powerful badasses.
I don’t really plan on giving them my money. Not yet, at least.
My point is that where are MY (the player’s) new units and gameplay? New units as opfors are cool and all, but like every other RTS out you outwit or outlast the AI or curse the developer if they toss an escort mission in the mix.
Look at C&C1 to 2. Huge difference. Same between C&C2 and 3, and 3 to 4. Now, how silly is it for Blizzard to be out innovated by EA?
While I understand the points people are making about the review score and how it is ignoring the “corporate influence” of this game I just want to interject something here. There are many games when it is prevalent they just want your money with very little effort. It is quite common to get a game and its not up to par, it doesnt work right, its unplayable, or its just not fun. These games deserve the beating they get as quite often this is because they are forced to push a game out well before they are done making it correctly.
In the case of Starcraft, I think Blizzard has more say in what they do with their games then people may give them credit for. They were a power house development before the merge with activision and I dont think Activision would be dumb enough to tamper to much with what they do- unless they stopped making money.
Anyway, Blizzard made a fun game here and I think Joe’s point is we cant always focus on the looming presence of corporate. If its always about what corporate is doing to make more money, never about fun games and what we are ultimately playing for, then what is the point at all? If the game is made well and is enjoyable to play, it should still be played. We cant downplay that aspect of a good product because of areas of the game that are not indicative of the game itself but granted not implemented very well.
I get that the locks on playing with others, and restrictions on installations, and what not are downers to what alot of people like about the game (as the biggest aspect affected in the complaints is multiplayer) but the game itself isnt broken, it’s not said to not be fun in any aspect, and is in itself still a great game.
Is that not what we want? A fun game that is worth buying and is capable of being played for a long time? While I dont suggest stopping the complaints about the restrictions (as I agree, they are valid complaints) I do not believe they affect Joe’s review as the game itself is still worth using and i think thats the point. Continue to lobby for the changes you want, Blizzard does have a history of hearing out its customer base to… some extent, but dont let that affect the fact that the game is fun.
Just my opinoin though, feel free to disagree.
haha i agree totally
I agree with Joe, this game is Fucking Amazing! The only downside I thought was no Zerg campaign and a short Protoss campaign, but everything else about the main campaign makes me forget about that. Hopefully the expansion takes care of those things. Such a good game, go out and buy it.
I really want this game. If only my comp was finished. I’m glad that those 10 years of work payed off into something that I honestly didn’t expect. I didn’t think an RTS could have all those little extra bells and whistles. I am however a little miffed that their is not a Full Protoss and Zerg campaign. But I still can’t wait to play this, and I hope that any zerg or Protoss campaign in the expansions is this detailed.
Did you know that your wish was granted? At the Comic Con Bioware revealed that there actually gonna be space starship battles in Star Wars: The Old Republic! WOO HOO!
Hey joe just wanted to let you know realid does make a diff for region lock i play with a buddie from sweden and i live in canada
A good fair review. I am especially thankful that you talked about the music. I loved the original game’s music and I am so pleased with the game music in this one. The review covered everything and, having played the game myself, I can’t agree with you more. I’m just glad there isn’t a world of Starcraft instead of starcraft . Warcraft 3 was one of my favorite games every and they totally ruined it.
[...] pentru zerg, se dezvolta in plus, mai apare ceva nou… poate ma lamuresti cineva si pe mine. Angryjoe i-a dat 10/10 __________________ Nikon D5000 + [...]
great review Joe! I’m definitely buying this!
As far as measuring the game goes, we have to remember what the legendary status is. Quoting Joe (and its not exact, but no major errors) “A [Legendary] game is not a perfect game… rather, its a game where you just don’t care about all of the flaws.” Starcraft was always a big LAN game, and I know from my friends who still play the original to this day that the multiplayer is important. Not only that, but the stated mission of the Angry Joe Army is to fight corporate and defend gaming at all cost. As such, I think it is our duty to give this game a 9/10 BECAUSE of the corporate influence so that future games will know that these additions are unacceptable.
I thought the same thing. First you, Joe, declare war on corporate influence and now you are ignoring it? For me this literally ruined the game.. that’s why I would give the game even an 8/10.
Bad move Joe.
But I was glad to see you again in a review.
(And put the review-score under the video
)
Give me a break it ruined the game for you. You can still play the game with friends I do it all the time through battlenet, it is rather simple, its not even that hard with a lan even to have them all on battlenet. How many dont have a router these days and a cable+ internet line.
Heck now even people that cant make it to your basement can still get into the game online. I also dont know what you mean about no Chat Feature either. I can chat to all my friends in that game, WoW, Diablo 2 since they would be your real friends anyways shouldnt be much trouble for them to have your real ID anyways. Sorry but there is no way anyone should buy this game is Ruined for you because there is no LAN feature (which if you look around you can find out there are ways around it, but no you rather complain about it then look for a solution.)
I got a beta key during the random selection thingy…Played I know its an awsome game but its hard on nubs to starcraft like me…You either get zerg rushed or terran turtled both result in a loss =(
i just hope somewhere in the world of blizzard this is happening…
” Ok guys time to get started on Warcraft 4″
Nuclear Launch detected!
joe whats ur bnet name and code? so i can add you there
You didn’t mention the bonuses in the Special edition, and while art books and sound tracks may not sway people, some folk might enjoy a 2GB thumbdrive with SC1 and Brood War on it.
As for the lack of chat? Well, Blizzard has been overhauling Battle.Net for some time now and they are really pushing their new communication feature and Real ID in its place. That wasn’t an Activision decision, but an internal one. Trust me, they received a lot of flak for it already.
In defense of the guest passes, if you only wanted to LAN to try the game to see if you liked it or not, the guest pass suits that need well enough. It is not a substitute for buying only one copy of the game and having it run on multiple computers, and in that I am in agreeance. (I personally do not know of any modern game off-hand that allows for that these days)
In your examples of clicking on units a bunch of times to hear their silly emotes you focused only on the Thor. Maybe a few others would have made that part of your review more interesting.
Spoiler: Nova from the canceled project, “StarCraft: Ghost” shows up in the game.
Damn Joe, calling it the greatest RTS ever is a heavy statement! Company of Heroes has reigned supreme for several years now and Starcraft is indeed going to have to put up a solid fight to take the crown. From what I’ve seen of Starcraft though, it’s still a long ways off. You’re right about the need and desire for expansions, so I reserve my judgement until we get those expansions. As of right now though, the RTS heavyweight title still belongs to CoH. Activision or THQ? Starcraft has a long ways to go. Thanks for the review, as always.
-R3.
I don’t know CoH is alright I like most command and conquer games better. Star Craft 1 was better as well. And Star Craft 2 looks and plays better then Star Craft one.
CoH to me is like a 8 out of 10 game at best. Its different though I break rts into two types the more realistic and futuristic or fantasy type. CoH is still good though. We all have our own opinions.
Going to reply to my own message and say this…. I hate command and Conquer 4 so badly that I don’t want even 1 person on this planet to think any higher of that horrible , horrible game!! So I may praise command and conquer but part 4 is terrible. I mean it!! Its absolutely dreadfully terrible!!!
- No mineral Harvesting – You get inf money.
- A rushed game play.
- Little to no defensive buildings.
- Almost no building at all besides unit.
- One of the only if not the only command and conquer game with a unit cap.
- Single Player that seems broken.
- The game is more about seeking out orbs VS intelligent combat.
The one reason I’m not picking this up, at least right away, is because I am an RTS noob. This is most definitely built for the hardcore fans of the original and I will be lost in the curve no matter how many tutorials they throw my way. If I can find WCIII again, then I’ll try and use it as a jumping point but as it stands I’m going to be pummeled and bitch slapped. Looks great, don’t get me wrong.
Very few games offer LAN support nowadays Joe. It was too scarce to warrant a continuation, and such a tragic loss at that.
Actaully, no. Even RTS noobs should be able to play this. Sure some of the later missions might seem imposible but if you keep your cool and don’t go too fast you will be able to… “beat it” or whatever.
And there’s a Ladder for noobs IIRC from the beta
No Zerg? I’m disobeying YOUR command Joe. The Will of The Swarm comes before all others. I’ve waited long enough and WE ALL KNOW, they will eventually put out a 3 game pack. Might be a year a two, but we’ve waited this long and we can endure.
LIVE FOR THE SWARM!
For the Overmind!
Wait what? Why the hell cant I get my ass kicked by Koreans? That makes no sence. Activision go and fuck yourself hard with a loaded shootgun!
“Man down, man down from sheer awesomeness!” Starcraft is not my thing, but if i can get the cash, and my older laptop will work with it, i might buy it.
(reaction to the beginning) i think joe just died very happy when he played starcraft 2
hey would it be worth saving up for the collectors edition? but as always good review
I think the fail of Battle.net 2.0 and the lack of LAN feature is more than enough to subtract a point from the games score. It also adds nothing but a shinier polish to a game which has already existed and been done many times over. The fact they split it into three different parts, I wont even touch that…
Maybe I have a unique problem but I doubt it. When I go to LAN party with my friends I have to connect to a server to bounce back to the friend with me, with rates being throttled these days how long till that craps out my connection? I have a number of friends overseas that region-locking will also screw over.
There are far too many negatives that a single player experience alone cannot make a 10/10 for.
Hey Joe i’m pretty sure that Activision have nothing to do with that … Blizzard is just taht sice WoW now, they are a great compagnie, but now a great compagny that want more money …
It’s nice to see that a lot of folks think this is a good game, and I’ll look into buying it at some point, but frankly I don’t want to help Activision at this point. Plus, I’m not a huge fan of RTSes to begin with.
I might look into this game later, when I can get it on sale, for cheap, or with some nice bonuses, but for now, I’m going to just stay away from it.
Like someone mentioned below.
I’d love to add this title to the collection. But I can’t afford a new Pc at the moment. Great review as it obvious made me so much more curious to actually get this game.
Thanks for the reviews Joe. It often gives me a better perspective whether I should actually get a game or not.
I really dont understand people who whine about the game being split into 3 parts… its not greedy, its a way to tell the story properly. Sure you have to pay for the next 2 expansions but if the campaign is as strong as the first I see no wrong in that.
The game is 12 gigs as it is with 29 missions, would people be as happy if all 3 campaigns were in the game and it had 35 missions? making the story shallow. I mean would star wars (old ones) be as good as they are if they crammed everything into one movie and made it 30min longer? I think not.
I guess people will always find something to bitch about… even if the game is amazing.
I wouldn’t come down so hard on activision for all the corporate stuff. That’s actually more or so Blizzard’s doing. Trust me being a WoW player for so long they have everyone who plays their games by the balls. Lame free guess passes, pay for everything. That’s just how Blizzard is as a company now.
some 1 PLS tel me the name of the midi intro and the heay metal ending team PLS
Fuck this, I want to buy another addicting rts (like LOTRO BFME 2 was for me), but I don’t have such a powerful computer…Screw this
You know, Joe, I’ve heard a lot from people, friends, just belittling and hating over the fact I refuse to buy this game. I’d like to, I played the Beta, it was a good time. But I also already play World Of Warcraft, I’ve seen the nickel and dimeing tactic Activision Blizzard loves to slap their patrons with, I just can’t validate the price and lack of content, but, even if it takes years, I’m sure I’ll obtain a copy in battlechest, or grouped form. Good review, keep up the epic work.
I would buy it but it’s too darn expensive. Sure I may have the money but that’s besides the point, it cost as much as 4 normal games from where I am, if it was 2 times cheaper I would have bought it even before I whatch the video.
Oh an I have played during the beta and have seen the single player and I have one major complain, it’s those damn portraits, it may not be much but most of them annoy me, most of them are really zoomed out and in SC1 they where really close to their faces. And some portraits just suck and should be changed, like the goliath(I hope I spelled it right), he looks like a fat no-life freak, and most of the protoss have chinsh like those ancient egyptian beards, and they shouldn’t, they should be round. And the voice of the new zerg overmind is disgusting… just… I just have no words.
Oh and I forgot to mention about the portraits. They aren’t that dark and mysterious, the protoss no longer feel as majestic and mysterious as they did in the first game. Especially the arcon, it no longer feels like the arcon is amost god-like.
And I agree about the multiplayer matches, unless it’s a compleate tie there is no startegy involved, when I played during the beta I felt forced to build and tech up fast, and I barelly had time to make a second base for gathereing more resources. Oh and I played only protoss in the ladder matches and unless I teched up fast to the range units I would alsmost always get killed, the protoss are way out manoeuvred by the terran and zerg.
And the terran are way too imba.
(pretty long comment… I must have bored you, sorry)
Hmm looks alright, but couldn’t they have made this sequel into a first person shooter, set it perhaps in the 50′s, and added some black blob enemies? ?
I am thinking getting a PC gaming machine to play games like this. Until I find a second job and get together with my cousin that knows more about computers than BILL GATES.
hmmm … never played part 1… should I??
I suggest you do, you will know alot more and it will be much easyer. Plus you will actually know what has happened meaning that you will get even more entertainment cos it will feel like a movie.
But If you don’t feel like it than you can just play SC2.
Ah Joe, you have so much fun making these reviews.
can’t wait for protoss expansion, dark templars are ftw
I just refuse to buy this game after they decided to nickle and dime everything, I may buy it down the road when the expansions have been released and I can buy them in a bundle and then get my full game.
Hope you can wait a long time, Blizzard usually takes 2-3 years to release anything. Its funny you say nickle and dime but Other then WoW’s subscription almost every map pack bliz ever released has been a free download.
Nickle and Dime my ass.
^Whore yourself out to 1000 fat chicks it worked on Family Guy why not IRL?
Damn it Joe i want nothing more than to buy this masterpiece. It looks amazing and i loved the first. But i cant afford a good computer.