I was ambivalent towards the release of Starcraft 2, even though I have called and will always call the first Starcraft the best RTS game of all time and no other game will ever replace it as the top spot in gaming history; Real-Time Strategy as a genre has long been played out — from when I first laid my hands on the awe-inspiring Dune 2, to the later unforgettable Warcraft series and the pinnacle that was Starcraft, to later incarnations of getting-tiresome Command & Conquers and other different takes of the genre which I didn’t bother to try out; RTS failed to generate any excitement to me as a gamer. RTS is never really about strategy, sure there are minor thinking-reaction-strategy involved, like those rock-paper-scissor rule, reacting to what your opponent does; but calling an RTS a strategy game is like calling a fighting game a strategy game, you are also thinking and reacting to different things, like if someone is sweeping, you have to block low, and thus could be countered by an overhead. RTS follows those rules and who wins and loses is determined by the player who has perfected his lightning-fast reflexes and optimization skills in his “clicks” (action) in gathering resources and building a massive army to overwhelm the opponent. In other words, an RTS game is really an arcade game where your arms and legs aren’t real limbs but the extension from which your buildings and troops and economy span. And of course my intention was not to dismiss the genre — it was as innovative as it could get when Dune 2 came out, and that was almost 20 years ago; and today, just like any FPS, it can’t really really awe an age-old gamer… there are only so many little things you could do that haven’t been done before in one way or another.
To get right down to the point: to actually talk about the game — despite what the title of this article indicates, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, is by no means a bad game… it is at most an enjoyable game that’s probably worth its purchase price. In the past Blizzard has always awed gamers in its every release since the first Warcraft, despite the fact that I didn’t personally get into WOW, I admitted that it was a phenomenal success, and landmark in the history of MMORPG that developers should be taking notes from. 12 years after the pinnacle of the RTS genre that was Starcraft, Blizzard (now Activision Blizzard) takes the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” formula to the extreme by releasing Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty. Sure the multi-player head-to-head gameplay of Starcraft 2 over the new-and-improved Battle.net is as fun and as exciting as one could imagine, but I couldn’t help but feel that I have playing the same damn game, albeit with updated graphics, kind of what it would be like to play a mod of Starcraft using the Warcraft 3 engine. If there was any praise to be reserved for Starcraft 2, those words were really meant for its predecessor that took the genre to the extreme frontier, giving it 3 races with totally different philosophies and play mechanics, and balancing the lightning-paced gameplay and growing it into a culture and eventually becoming embraced as Korea’s national sport. Nothing in SC2 stood out and spoke to me — compare to the improvement the expansion Broodwar made over the original SC, Wings of Liberty’s achievement felt minuscule . I’ve already said it, and will say it again, I was playing more-or-less the same old game packaged in modern-day technology. Where is the 4th race that fans expected and demanded? Did this really take 12 years to make?
This is the part, where we skip dissecting just what little changes Blizzard made to Broodwar, to balance the gameplay of Starcraft and bringing it into the light of the new century — like introducing way points, smarter AI, different units to offset strengths and weaknesses… none of that really matters to a casual player, and to a SC veteran, those were the minimal expectancy of what Blizzard had to offer in this sequel to its masterful and virtuoso pillar of the RTS community after a decade of promises. Now getting that out of the way so that readers can’t complain we didn’t spend countless hours dishing it out on Battle.net, we did. But there is also this meaty 20-hour long single player campaign, which probably nobody cares about, for caring about it is like caring about a storyline in a 2D fighting game — not that the story of Wings of Liberty is a disaster, it is not — all it did was giving me this familiar lukewarm feeling that is lurking at the bottom of my half-empty coffee cup which has sat untouched for all morning. Even with excellent writing and voice acting, good mission variety (out of the 26 missions we played, not one felt a rehash of another, and introducing a plethora of old familiar units which isn’t usable in Multiplayer, if one isn’t overwhelmed by the fact of it, is a plus), awesome intermission spaceship interactivity that reeks of the reminiscence of Wing Commander 2, a plethora of Easter eggs that would make Blizzard fans roll on the floor with glee, stunning cinematic sequences that would rival the latest Final Fantasy games; all that, didn’t really help me get over this cliche storyline that belonged in the 80s, an era long before the first Starcraft was even made. It was like watching Avatar — the world loved it, but I was ambivalent, for I have seen the same old tale told many many times before. And even while the campaign didn’t matter, the fact that Blizzard split this up into 3 games (2 other expansions coming) is somewhat inexcusable — forcing even those who don’t care about the storyline to have to buy the game in order to use the expansion-only-units in the Multiplayer portion that no doubt could have been introduced this time around. We can’t help but feel that Blizzard is no longer that company 20 years ago that we cared about, who made glowing gems like the Lost Viking and the first Warcraft; now it is but a subsidiary of an evil corporate giant whose first priority is to its share-holders and not to its fans.
This article wasn’t meant to criticize Blizzard or Starcraft 2 — a game that will no doubt take up the legacy of its predecessor and continue to be the most loved and played RTS game for at least another decade to come. But we couldn’t help but feel that Blizzard could have done much more (and the Blizzard from the past would no doubt have) — it could have taken the chance like it did with Warcraft 3, to make a more innovative and different game that turned out to be slightly inferior to its predecessor, it could have squeezed its creative limit to create a totally different 4th race that would forever awe its fans, it could have written a much better story that makes Mass Effect 2 seem like child’s play, and told it all in one lengthy package or free periodic update; instead Blizzard took the safest and easiest and the most profitable route: giving us the same old game severed into 3 parts promising to tell an epic story that nobody cares (or should care) about. Is it not time to lament the fact that the Blizzard we once knew and loved (just like companies like Sierra-on-Line, Origin Systems, Bullfrog…. or even Bioware) no longer exists, if physically certainly not spiritually? And that IS really the way of life — talent and love and creativity, like the small creatures in Spore, devoured by larger ones, and evolve into something devastating… and at another corner of the universe, a new sparkle of brilliance emerges.
