Today, I pretty much got bored with World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 even. Needing a new gaming fix, I decided to say fuck it and pick up Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. I already know the campaign ending as I watched Kripparian play through the last parts when it came out. Just to let you know, in general I’m not one who cares too much about spoilers one way or another. I wanted to figure out if the game was worth getting. Based on Kripparian’s video, I decided to give it a shot.
Immediately, you’re treated to the opening sequence which quite possibly is Blizzard’s best to date. It looks far better than most movies these days and that’s saying a lot. However, after getting past the cinematic sequence, I immediately noticed that the quality of the game looked really shoddy on my Alienware machine. I was pretty disappointed after seeing the awesome opening sequence.
It turns out that the game had no idea how to detect my system’s capabilities. So I guessed at turning everything up to near max. Once I did that, the game looked REALLY good. Everything looked smooth and detailed. Better yet, the game play felt smooth compared to the tragedy known as Diablo Lag-acy 3. Thus far, I have not played Starcraft 2 on my Alienware box, only on my Mac and a slightly better work Macbook Pro. In both cases, the game was okay but nothing special. On my Alienware box, I have to admit that it’s quite a bit of eye candy.
The main premise of this game is playing the Zerg through Sarah Kerrigan’s point of view. It picks up where SC2 Wings of Liberty left us on a cliff hanger as Kerrigan’s physical form returns to that of a terran. However, she still possesses certain powers within her that connect her to the Zerg. Right now, this duality causes her to constantly fight with herself as she struggles between her personality as a Terran and the Queen of Blades.
In campaign mode, everything is very event driven and feels more like an Action RPG than a strategy resource type of game. Fortunately, the first campaign game you play exist as a tutorial for getting to re-learn what it means to be part of the Zerg. Right after that though, you immediately switch back to an Action RPG as you command Kerrigan and Raynor to escape. Part of that last for a while before you return to the resource management aspect. But with Kerrigan as a major NPC that you control, you often will find yourself switching between both game styles.
Like Wings of Liberty, you have a sense of “leveling” as Kerrigan progresses through the campaign. You gain more abilities for her and capabilities that act similar to talents in World of Warcraft and Diablo 3. And like those two games, you have the capability of switching between them between campaigns.
The story feels a little more serious with Kerrigan around. It’s definitely more heavy handed as Kerrigan is just one bad ass muthafucka. Even in her terran form, you don’t want to mess with her, especially as she constantly repeats, “One woman army.” In watching Kripparian’s stream, he essentially was nuking everything using Kerrigan alone.
That all said, the actual writing is pretty bleh. I thought the way they attempted to introduce us to Kerrigan, the Zerg and playing the basics was an interesting twist. But once you start producing zerglings, the game’s writing goes straight to hell from there.
Pretty much we’re set to face the very person that helped make Kerrigan the Queen of Blades: Mengsk. But there’s little that explains things between Wings of Liberty to the “tests” that Kerrigan is performing. Why is she cooperating all of a sudden?
Things get weirder after she an Raynor escape. There’s a really bad, cheesy romance scene that made me cringe and want to shave my hair. Seriously, I ended up cutting my hair because that scene was Anakin/Padme stomach churning bad. This is fucking Starcraft. You have the ultimate badass bitch who inexplicably still has feelings for Raynor. More questionable is Raynor’s hardon for a freak bug woman. Yes, her body physically appears human, but you have to wonder with all the experiments and issues she has, why would you bother? I mean, Raynor isn’t a bad looking guy and he’s hunky, the type that chicks should dig. Don’t you think there’s tons of hot babes in the universe that he could go after? Why focus all your energy on some bitch who can spike you if her PMS suddenly acts up?
But that’s the type of writing that goes on in this game. It’s nothing more than fan boy piecemeal with little originality. Take for instance, the part where Raynor gets abducted. Right after, you’re tasked to build a small army to shutdown a cannon with a device sitting the background that looks suspiciously like something from Hoth. If it wasn’t Hoth, then it could’ve been from Battlestar Galactica because the plots were pretty much identical.
The other major issue I have is that it’s apparent that Blizzard pools all their game designers to collaborate on these things. For instance, the platform chase scene is nothing more than another fucking stupid escort quest. How many of these lame ass escort quest with incoming mobs have we seen from Blizzard already? Then there’s the “go fight the elite baddie” task where the guy, upon hitting a certain percentage of health, lifts off into the air and adds come to fight you. Hello, we’ve run Azjol-Nerub a billion times already. Can we see something new?
The answer is no because while watching Kripparian’s stream, he duly noted that one campaign had Belial in it. Are you fucking serious? Has Blizzard become so desperate in creating content that they just re-skin things for their games these days?
Okay, so I might be overreacting a bit but my expectations for Blizzard are extremely high. My viewpoint is that Blizzard ought to be producing the best video games on the planet. However, I’m no longer feeling that and it’s clear that their edge slowly is dulling over time. Here, my real issue is that I wanted a resource/strategy game, not an Action RPG. If I wanted to play Doom 3, I would go and purchase Doom 3. Or just switch back to Diablo 3. But that’s not the case. I wanted to build shit and blow up shit with my armies. Instead, I’m running around these stupid maps trying to pick up stuff as if I was playing World of Warcraft.
Naturally, I could just say fuck it all and switch over to skirmish mode but I wanted to check out the story. Right now, I have little emotional attachment to anything in the game. Kerrigan is the only character that makes me feel anything (in the pants). The rest are all cardboard archetypes and even Kerrigan is a bit dull at times, acting more like Paris Hilton than the original Queen of Blades.
One thing that got me was the introduction of token female #2. The game’s cinematic sequences can occasionally get confusing and at first I thought token female #2 was destroyed but considering she gets a name, it’s obvious that at some point we’ll see some gratuitous bitch-on-bitch action. Personally, I’d like to see Kerrigan use one of her tentacles in a very Japanesey way on token female #2 and shove Raynor into a volcano. But hey, we know that Chris Mentzer isn’t a talented writer so I guess we’ll have to settle for a craptastic fight down the road.
Truthfully, what I really wanted to play was the opening cinematic as a game. The game does sport excellent graphics but the opening cinematic was insanely good. Few games really have such great cinematic sequences like Blizzard games. But it’s highly disappointing that we don’t get for the game.
I’ll probably continue playing through this for the next few days just to take a break from World of Warcraft. However, I don’t think my opinion of what I’ve seen thus far will change much.