Even if you don’t play Starcraft you may know someone who does. These people are constantly talking about build order and strategies. If they aren’t doing that, they are watching recordings of previous games and maybe even listening to some sort of strategy guide. If none of these technologies are available, they will be using anything their minds can turn into unit representation, movement and counter strategies. To those people who have to live through this, it will be over eventually… or just hope it does. For the sake of the of the children… if they aren’t used as pawns in this high speed chess game already, right?
If you don’t want to read about the starcraft OMG moment, skip the next paragraph.
After getting a chance to play through the Starcraft sequel a bit more, I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as Blizzard (the company that makes Starcraft and Warcraft) keeps broadening the reasons to play a game their audience is going to expand more and global domination will be in their future. This game not only keeps the solid base of the original game, but also uses a larger net for getting a wider range of types of gamers involved. If you are into the old school space invaders there is an in-game arcade machine to play that has this type of game. If you love making goals for yourself there are preset achievements/goals set for you to play the game a specific way to earn either decals, insignias, trophies, badges and character portraits. For the single player, there are different difficulty settings with various goals on top of your regular story mission, in addition there are hidden achievements that you can stumble upon. The single player campaign is also restricted to a linear path, you are allowed to choose your missions. You are also given choices on permanent upgrades that you can use throughout your campaign. The multi-player ranking system now makes sure that each team you’ve grouped up with gets ranked appropriately so you don’t have to worry about your ranking getting affected playing with your noob friends or uber awesome friends. One final bit about those concerned about online play, it is FREE. What more could you ask for?
In my eyes, the re-playability and capability with friends determines a games worth. This game definitely has high marks for both of these categories and if I haven’t converted you to try the game out, maybe the next sequel will have features similar to the SIMs and also include gambling and fantasy leagues along with free Beer Me services to round out the remainder of the male audience.
