StarCraft 2’s expansion came out a while ago, and while I
played through it within three days of its release, I only just now started to settle
in with its multiplayer. And while I’m a
miserable, foul little child at actually beating back Zerg, Terran and/or other
Protoss, the struggle to do so is compelling and I am, slowly but surely,
working on getting better. I’m nowhere
near solid, or even adept, at present, but hey.
I’ve got lots of time to learn.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Heart of the Swarm exists now, as an
artifact. And since I write a blog about
video games, at least sometimes, I’m required to speak without any actual
authority as to how amazing StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is. And as a game, it really is something. Just as StarCraft 2 was, just as Brood War
and StarCraft the First were before it, StarCraft 2 is a spectacular game. Well crafted, well balanced, resplendent with
new doodads mixed with old doodads that make the experience of crafting a
little space army oh so very much fun.
And when it comes to mashing those armies against other
people’s armies, man. It’s great. The multiplayer, even when it involves me
losing (as is the case more often than not) is fucking fantastic. And when I lose, I always understand that it’s
my fault and, in some vague sense, feel like I can improve myself. I’ve never had a moment where I rolled my
eyes and murmured “fuck this game” to myself after a particularly grueling
loss. Instead I’ve gritted my teeth and
thought “okay, you know how that works now – time to play better.”
It’s a marvelous comment on how well designed StarCraft 2 is
that a handful of minor changes can actually throw the game into such a new and
interesting space. Heart of the Swarm
really does only add three or so units to each faction, along with some tweaks
to how other units behave, but the function of those units is in many cases so
distinct and game-changing that, by merit of their presence, Heart of the Swarm
bears little resemblance to vanilla StarCraft 2. Factions that previously played slow and
steady can now rush about the map, devastating their adversaries. Factions that lacked stalwart early game
defenses can now find ways to briefly and devastatingly turbocharge their
defenses. Units that were previously
worthless are now crucial, and units that once formed the backbone of a given
army are now recast as support units.
My race of choice, Protoss, has undergone some particularly massive
changes. A sea change has occurred in
the composition of their air force, which now allows them to conduct
devastating hit and run attacks and construct early game air defense units that
can do some devastating shit when they’re used correctly (or incorrectly for
that matter). A sluggish, often
ancillary aspect of the Protoss has been reformed as a viable, potent tactical
option that I now have to learn to both take advantage of, and defend myself
again. That most of this change comes
from the implementation of one unit, the Protoss Oracle, is even more
impressive. A single weak,
unconventional unit now allows the Protoss to field early game harassment that
allows them to devastate their enemies mineral lines and ground based armies in
skirmishes. This one shift totally
changes the entire dynamic of Protoss play, opening up new strategies, closing
down others and presenting challenges to players that simply weren’t there
before.
On the other hand, traditional tactics also work quite well
too. I’ve won most of my games to date
by proxy pyloning into an enemy base and cannoning them down while
simultaneously warp-gating in a small army of zealots and stalkers to thin out
and push around enemy forces. It’s a
nice space to be in, a middle ground of old and new that a well crafted RTS
expansion can use to totally alter play for the better. It reminds me of the introduction of the
Imperial Guard into Dawn of War 2: suddenly, play is forever changed, and if
you want to be successful you have to learn to adapt without abandoning the
fundamentals you spent so much time learning.
Of course, this comes with a bit of a twist: StarCraft 2 has
a very StarCrafty single player campaign.
Blizzard has done their best to improve the overall single player
experience by making it somewhat RPG-like in many ways, but they’re really not
fooling anyone. StarCraft 2: Heart of
the Swarm is about building a bunch of units, pressing F2 and then
attack-moving them across a map. If you
micromanage units, it gets easier, sure, and you’ll lose fewer units and finish
the map faster, but you can ignore doing that just fine. There are a handful of inspired levels where
objectives function in interesting ways and play is limited in other
interesting ways, but for the most part it’s all about attack moving, building
up, and then attack moving again. A “planet
to planet” tactical map system is really just a branching mission selection system
that only presents two branches at a time.
The upgrade system, which requires permanent choices to be made to
determine which upgraded unit you receive, is decent and rooted in a set of
well considered training missions that make the function of these upgraded
units clear and give you a chance to fuck around with them, but the upgrades
themselves are often conditionally useful.
Sure, sometimes I’m going to want my zerlings to leap across massive
spaces, but sometimes it’ll be a lot more useful to just have a shitload of the
little guys popping out every few minutes.
There’s no real reason not to let players change horses in midstream,
spare for the sake of a pared down UI that focuses on spectacle and, in the
end, doesn’t even really do that too well.
The real change on show is a leveling system for Kerrigan
that allows players to determine just how she’ll grow from battered teen into
god. Since Kerrigan is at the core of
every mission, it’s a nice twist, and it’s nice to be able to control a hero
unit in a single-player campaign (something WarCraft 3 did right the first
time). And the abilities really do
fundamentally alter play in interesting ways, ways that can be toyed with and
teased out over time because these abilities, unlike the unit upgrades, can be
swapped out between missions at will. It’s
a neat twist.
But it’s wrapped in a single player story filled with sound
and fury and bad writing, a campaign that hardcore fans will find satisfying
and anyone else will find bewildering.
It’s a classic example of bad writing in games which will be heralded as
good writing, not because it’s good per sec, but because of the spectacle
associated with each line of bad dialogue (and the exceedingly low standards we
as gamers bring to the table when we engage with a story). The between-mission cutscenes could be
replaced with snippits of Korean music videos, and I’d be just as happy –
scratch that, happier – as I am with what Blizzard has created now. Single-player campaigns in RTSes can be done
well, but Blizzard doesn’t seem interested in doing so, and really why should
they be? The single-player campaign is a
sort of trainer for them. It’s just a
tool to get players familiar with how multiplayer should feel.
That’s an iffy prospect here, however. There’s no real analog between the fast
paced, rigorous and intellectual multi that Heart of the Swarm presents and the
well-tread, plodding single player missions of attrition. In multiplayer, games are won and lost
through split second decisions and bold gambits. In the campaign, they’re won by reloading to
previous save states and moving to intercept that surprise wave of baddies a
little sooner.
In the end, Heart of the Swarm is exactly what you’d expect:
a polished, well thought out and developed expansion to StarCraft 2. It’s not exceptional or amazing, it’s more or
less the same game you’ve known and loved and yet, at the same time, it’s
totally different. At least when it
comes to the multiplayer.
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