Some thoughts on StarCraft 2 thus far

I don’t know what anyone is thinking about me going down to queue up 3 hours for StarCraft II that day at Funan, but to be honest, I wasn’t really that caught up in the hype. I even almost gave StarCraft II a miss, since I do enjoy tightly balanced infantry-based multiplayer shooters more. But since Daniel Tan (UMarine) managed to get in a 10 dollar discount for my copy, I followed him together with Ignatius (better known as best_lame) down to Sim Lim Square the day before the release date to get my hands on a pre-order card. My exact thoughts after buying the card: “My god, I actually bought it.”

Truth was, I enjoyed the company a lot more in those 3 hours down there rather than the need to quell the anticipation. best_lame (we really dislike calling him Ignatius, or Iggy, or whatever other weird iterations of the base name) wasn’t there with us, but in my company was Daniel Tan and Nicholas Lee, both of whom I’ve known since secondary school. I really wanted to follow them elsewhere after getting the pre-ordered copy, but I had to be back home to run an errand, then shower and change to go drinking with a few other buddies. Didn’t get to install the game until the next day at night.

I gotta say that, having no beta experience and having watched very little beta game play SC2 videos, my first impression of the game was “wow, Blizzard impresses again”. Off-hand, the feel of the game was great and it both felt like playing an old game and a new game together. Quite a feat accomplished by Blizzard there.

But after maybe give and take, perhaps 8-10 hours of gameplay over a week plus or so, I have to say that the single player campaign is getting a little too draggy for its own good. I’m pretty sure those who have completed the campaign are going to want to punish me by revealing spoilers if they found out (I’ve gotten to the plot twist already though), but to be honest, I’ve never found the StarCraft storyline to be very exceptional, especially since I have experienced many well-varied forms of story-telling. The Lore isn’t bad, but the story isn’t anything to wow at.

Which brings me to another gripe about Blizzard games in general, especially for busy Singaporeans. Busy Singaporeans in general don’t want to worry too much about computer games, and thus they only go for the best. And in Singapore, Blizzard seems to be the best (as evidenced by the 10k people who turned up at Funan). Having experienced many Blizzard games, I have noticed that Blizzard games tend to force players to concentrate more on the mechanics of the game rather than innovate on story-telling or the video-game experience in general. This is especially true for Diablo II, where even though some poor-misguided people may label as Satanic, the hardcore players know is all about the items.

A good example would be how a StarCraft gamer is left with the rather ridiculous impression that all that makes up a Terran fleet is whatever is available in the game. Anyone with some experience in the aerospace industry will know that the starship market isn’t going to be oligopolised by just 4 main players in 4 distinctly different classes of aircraft. Granted I understand that StarCraft is a RTS game and thus, such loopholes in lore should be excused and can left to RPGs such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect. But hey, Diablo 2 is a RPG and game-mechanics are the main focus of Diablo II rather than an innovative storytelling experience. It is thus questionable to label Blizzard games as the best.

So since I found the single-player to be rather boring as of now (will get it finished in the future definitely) I decided to go ahead and watch some replays before I attempted multi-player. Sometime during the period I was slaving for my nation, I decided that I would give a shot at playing StarCraft I more intensely. When I thought back about my days playing SC1 in secondary school, where I played without a proper build order and just massed my favourite unit (Hydralisks), it was a really far cry from the way I played WarCraft III in JC. So I decided to use the WC3 model (watch replay > practice > watch replay > practice) for StarCraft I for awhile.

What I discovered was the elegance of playing Zerg. Hydralisks in SC1 were not really a grunt unit that most people think it was, at least not against the terran definitely (they are quite viable against the toss, but weren’t used all the time). A SC1 zerg player typically opened with 6 zerglings, and would add lurkers and mutalisks to his army depending on the situation. The most skilled SC1 zerg players could control zerglings, mutalisks and lurkers together in sync, which to a learning zerg player like me was like fine art. I could only manage zerglings and lurkers, or zerglings and mutalisks. Never all three together. And I never did control them too well either.

Having watched some replays by pro Zerg players in SC2, I have to say that I am utterly disappointed with what Blizzard did to the Zerg. Banelings, seriously. Are stupid. And yet they are the cornerstone of many of the Zerg games I watched. Running Banelings into worker lines is considered pro. Ok it is pro, but wth.

I’m considering picking up Terran now because I think the Reaper has lots of potential to pleasure me. Of course thats if I even will drop lots of time into MP anyway. School is starting.

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