Wings of Liberty is based four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War, where the Dominion, lead by the tyrant Arcturus Mengsk dominates the Terran sectors, the enigmatic Protoss and their clans are in disarray and seeking to rebuild their once glorious empire, and the Queen of Blades, Kerrigan has mysteriously gone silent, as her Zerg broods laying dormant on their home world Char. You play as Jim Raynor, the returning hero from the original StarCraft who leads a band of anti-dominion forces known as Raynor’s Raiders. While the Raiders seek to overthrow the Dominion and reveal Mengsk for the tyrant and traitor that he is, they are vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and are on the brink of collapse as they are torn apart by propaganda against them, and Raynor continues looking down the sights of a bottle, blaming himself for the loss of Kerrigan to the Zerg and Mengsk’ rise to power.
All this quickly changes however when an old friend of Raynor’s, Tychus Findlay, appears and offers the Raiders some jobs to find alien artifacts for a mysterious corporation. Who are of course willing to pay big bucks. This throws the revolution into full gear and progresses the story forward, which is both thrilling and full of character development.
The main Bridge in Wings of Liberty's Campaign.
Most people who played the original games and loved the story will get the biggest kick out of this narrative, as it not only reveals many new problems, but resolves some enormous ones that have lain dormant for 12 years. The story is full of twists and turns and ends one a very high note and in a somewhat surprising fashion, making us rethink the entire concept of what the next game, Heart of the Swarm will do. And though much of it is a huge level of fan service to the already massive fan base, the story is highly accessible even to complete newbies, as character development and backstory is explained clearly and with expertise.
But not only is the story superbly told, but it integrates exceptionally well with the gameplay itself. Wings of Liberty as everyone knows is an RTS game and plays much like the original; mine exotic resources in order to build a strong economy, which leads to building up a base, powerful units and eventually dominating the game. The basic concept is exactly the same as the original, and it certainly feels like StarCraft. But the single player campaign has been kicked up several notches to elevate it to something that’s not just a simple RTS with a story tacked on.
As you progress throughout the single player, you eventually end up abroad Raynor’s capital ship, the Hyperion. Here the game acts out like a point and click game, where you can talk to characters abroad the ship to learn new things, get to know them and also interact with objects. Missions are played out on the main bridge through the star map, and are presented in a non-linear fashion, allowing you to do optional (but highly rewarding) missions and main missions that give you access to new units, technology and interesting side stories of many characters. As you complete more missions, you gain access to more of the ship. Eventually you’re allowed to enter the Lab, which can be used to upgrade certain buildings and technology collected from either Protoss or Zerg research artifacts, which are scattered throughout the game in several missions. The Armory allows you to spend credits earned from missions on unit add-ons and upgrades, and the Cantina acts more as a chill out ground to watch some quite humorous news reports on the television, hire Mercenaries to use in missions, and even play a vertical scrolling shooter on the arcade machine. The game is extensive and surprisingly very deep, with several different units, options and technological upgrades to choose from which will help you in one way or the other on missions. Most missions will also give you access to new units, many of which are not even in the Multiplayer aspect of the game, so there’s plenty of things to do and see in the campaign; and we haven’t even talked about how the missions pan out.
The armory is both deep, extensive and interesting.
Missions and objectives in Wings of Liberty are ultimately played out like a typical RTS game at the core. However, the story and features are integrated so well into the mission structure that it doesn’t just feel like a skirmish, but that you’re actually fighting and doing things for a reason. Objectives are consistently dynamic and creative, with an earlier level for example requiring you to collect a special form of minerals from ancient geysers, the while fending Protoss forces off your main base and denying them from closing off many of the other geysers on the level. There’s another level which mostly consists of lava, and you have to mine 8000 minerals to complete the mission, while defending yourself from Zerg armies, and moving your workers to high ground when the lava begins to rise. It’s fast paced and exhilarating, requiring some very quick manoeuvres and consistent macro and micromanagement. The game also has several difficulty levels so if it gets too hard, you can bump the difficulty down without worry; meanwhile for the veterans, they have the brutal difficulty setting which damn well lives up to its name, forcing the player into taking on very clever AI opponents and managing his own forces at an insane pace.
The Single Player campaign will net you about 20-30 hours of play very easily. This depends on how keen you are on exploring, which we highly encourage doing so. There are plenty of secrets and Easter eggs scattered throughout the campaign, and even in our second playthrough we’re still finding new things (including a secret mission). It’s a highly replayable component of the game, and it’s obvious that Blizzard has put an incredible amount of work and detail into it, with a superbly paced and well told story that is sure to blow many minds away.
But of course, Wings of Liberty can’t have the StarCraft name without having a Multiplayer component, and as we stated in our preview of the Beta, the component is fantastic, if not very challenging. Once you’re done with the Campaign, Multiplayer and all its features await you, and it’s somehow managed to be completely accessible to newbies and veterans alike, which is surprising considering the immense level of skill that many players have shown in StarCraft. Multiplayer is spread out in leagues, which are dictated by how well you do in five placement matches. Once you’ve done your first five matches (whether it be 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, all have separate leagues), you are placed in a league which is similar to your skill level, which consist of Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. These leagues work surprisingly very well and remove much of the disparity in skill levels, and in turn allows people to fully enjoy the game and slowly become a better player. And even prior to the league matches, there is an optional practice league for completely new players, which slows down the game and walls off the entrance, allowing you to play against other newcomers to learn the ropes and slowly get up to speed with the large changes and dynamics of the game.
Yo mommaship's so fat..
And if that’s not enough for you (yes, there is more), there are the Challenge modes, which further add replayability to an already incredibly deep game. Challenge Mode is a single player component which pans out across all three races, basically teaching you what units counter what in match ups, with your job requiring you to either beat a time limit, destroy a bunch of units with minimal losses to your own, or utilise the abilities of units to maximise efficiency. You’re rated accordingly for each challenge, and there are 9 overall to be completed, ranging from basic all the way to expert mode, which requires you to only use hotkeys and not click on actual abilities. It’s a fun, addictive and fairly challenging mode that will get most new players up to speed, and test the mettle of the experienced.
Apart from the game’s insane amount of content, Wings of Liberty also looks and sounds stunning. While it’s certainly not a game that boasts technical ability, it manages to balance out great looking visuals (with incredible aesthetic) with excellent optimisation, running on three year old hardware perfectly fine. Everything has a unique and interesting look to it and are extremely well detailed, giving off a tonne of personality to a game that is already extensive in its character development. Animation work and in-game models in the single player are superbly done, and if those cut-scenes weren’t enough, you’ve got Blizzards world renowned pre-rendered work in there too, which is quite easily some of and if not the best CGI we have ever seen in a video game. The audio is a massive treat to the senses as well, with excellent sound effects, very high quality voice work (with many of the original voice actors returning) and a wonderfully composed and epic soundtrack adding to the atmosphere of the game.
If you’ve skim-read through the review or just scrolled down to look at the score, you might be surprised to see that even after all the immense praise we’ve given the game, it’s not exactly a perfect score. While the game has virtually flawless gameplay mechanics and incredible production values, we do wonder why Blizzard has chosen to do some of the things they have done with their new Battle.net 2.0 platform. While almost all of it is extremely polished and very well implemented, we question why Blizzard decided to region lock everyone and remove chat rooms. While they don’t necessarily affect the gameplay experience, region locking is somewhat redundant (though will apparently be unlocked in the near future), and the lack of chatrooms is both strange and a little disappointing, as Blizzards earlier RTS titles took pride in having such a tight-knit community in chat.
The CG work is absolutely mind-blowing.
With that said however, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is pretty much an absolute must buy for anyone even considering it, with an enormous amount of content available (and this isn’t even delving into community driven custom maps with the highly advanced free editor), an extraordinarily high level of polish and some very genre-bending single player aspects (and believe us, this is no third of a game). Blizzard once again prove their worth in the industry, and like Valve, show that the PC still has plenty of life in it, and a massive and passionate community to fuel it. The king of RTS has returned, and it’s about damn time.
I found the same with many of the units being added. There's a lot of variety in the units, which is good but by the time you realise you could have used that special unit, you have already built up a massive army and added some mercs to it, so you don't really need the specialised units.
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