Starcraft 2: A Year in Review

It's kind of hard critiquing Starcraft 2. On the one hand, I enjoy it enough to play it again on occasion. On the other hand, the plot is so cliched, the characters so irritating and the campaign is just not well designed at all. Before I begin, Jesus Christ, Blizzard. Put in a new game plus feature. Holy hell, that should have been there from the start if you wanted an upgrade system. But that should have been in a review I would have written a year ago. Happy one year anniversary, SC2.

Whenever I watch Day9 or Husky (I don't ladder, I like things not broken by ragequits) cast, I tend to notice some trends. These trends are the lack of synergy/polish (read: brokeness) between new units and the unrefinement of the game's mechanical interaction. That's not to say the game is bad, but the paradigm shift has been enormous and the lack of balanced unbalance has been thrown back in the favor of unbalance. The game has gone from 12 unit selection to 255, units clump together like a wad of morons (which has lead to the proliferation of AoE) and there are macro mechanics that are either busy work (queens) or could have been implemented for better strategic intrigue (here's looking at you, warp gates).

Now let me explain on the bitching. There's a notion that SC2 has borrowed too many assets from World of Warcraft. I don't believe that's true. I believe the casualization brush has painted Starcraft with an ugly fluorescent brown that tries to cater toward the regular market. Koreans will still own your face, but the common man is still able to have fun and maybe win some prize money somewhere. In a way, SC2 kind of feels like Duke Nukem Forever. The game is trying to adapt to the modern era with all the bells and whistles of modern RTS' whilst trying to retain what made the game good in the first place and ends up not doing either very well.
But all they had to do was keep the marine and shit would be good. But² the fact that Boxer cannot micro his way to victory should also be an indication that said good shit has been phoqued.

Let me begin my rant in earnest with something I can talk about from experience, the campaign. For one, you could build nothing but marines and medics and win. For two, there was a lack of missions where I could sit and turtle, build up a massive force of battlecruisers and faceroll the whole damn map. For three, the upgrade system had things that were either really good or really bad with little to no middle ground. For four, the maps were overly catered to the units that were introduced and did not leave much room for modular builds and strategies (read: I want to fill the map with spider mines and see how many kills I can get with them.)

Also, the new terran units are stupid. The viking is supposed to be an air superiority fighter, but is primarily used as a reactionary hard counter to anti-ground units (like the colossus and brood lord). The thor is supposed to be a big assault unit that tanks damage so marines can charge in and mop up everything, but is best relegated to base defense against mutalisks (and even then can get micro'd down).
As for the zerg, the baneling/infestor anti-marine thing was better suited to the lurker (correctly pronounced lunker), the ultralisk is conceivably more retarded than the dragoon (although that's a stretch), zerglings have been castrated hardcore (better pathfinding my ass), hydras are at the wrong tier and are woefully underpowered for their total cost and Idra is completely and totally fucking right.
I think Protoss is kind of balanced in terms of units and stuff, but its macro mechanics and the death ball mentality benefit them the most courtesy of high hit point units, highly maneuverable units, mobile artillery, warp gates negating the defender's advantage and all of the new UI features and superior worker pathfinding all working to their favor the most out of the the three races. Still, the immortal could stand to see more use, but it was not designed to synergize with the faster stalker. That problem could be solved with a unit speed conformity mechanic (where fast units are slowed to the speed of the slowest unit) or a unit formation toggle, both of which were present in Warcraft 3.

Honestly, the game feels like things were built around counters instead of good unit control and economic management. It's the kind of dumbing down that means nobodies can beat seasoned pros that practice for months just by having better macro and luck (again, Idra was right). And is it me, or do the pros think they're tough shit for being good at a strategy game? It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Also, fuck you Dustin Browder. Wear some pants, put your goddamn phone away, give some real answers and go make friends with an African honey badger. Jesus Christ, whose stupid idea was it to make a guy from the Command and Conquer series, a series known for tanks, retarded live action cutscenes, tanks, nonsensical plots and more fucking tanks, the lead designer for the most popular RTS in the world. Hell, the dumbass even said he brought none of his previous experience to SC2. Who would even say something as stupid as that, let alone joke about it?

I hope you'll pardon this article. I had to rewrite it a couple times because it was too vitriolic and forgot what I wanted to complain about.