10 Years Later and No Steps Forward: A Review of the SC2 Campaign

So while I wasn't (this has now changed) a bit fan of RTSs online, I was a big fan of RTSs. This means I've played a lot of RTS campaign, and so when I started reading online and hearing from Aaron that the campaign for SC2 was really good, I in turn got quite excited. The following is both a review of the campaign in gameplay terms and the story, the spoilers coming in the second section, so feel free to read up to the spoiler warning if you haven't completed the campaign.

In terms of overall mechanics, I was actually fairly disappointed with the SC2 campaign. I kept hearing about branching paths and upgradeable mechanics, but I feel that other games I've played have had much bigger impacts, namely the Dawn of War series. For instance, the Dark Crusade expansion technically had an entire world to conquer in what manner and whatever race you so chose, which made it a much more tactical experience in the "branching" idea. Some places you would never even end up fighting, due to the other races killing each other off in that location. While the SC2 campaign does "branch," it's usually just a question of doing one mission before another with the only real difference being maybe unlocking one unit before another. This approach also causes huge problems with the story side, but that's for below. In terms of upgrades, some of them were really useful and  I enjoyed, and they made a difference (the science vessel comes to mind) but on the other hand many of them were pretty boring. For instance, the first protoss tech unlock was insipid, many of the purchasable unlocks were I thought useless for my play-style, and a lot of them seemed to make no noticeable difference in-game. On the other hand, Dawn of War 2's upgrade and equipment system probably did have the same amount of effect as the SC2 ones, but because sometimes they had a much more dramatic effect (like replacing a heavy bolter with a missile launcher) the upgrades felt a lot different, and like I was having an effect.

The campaign did do a good job of mission variety, I suppose, but a lot of times it boiled down to a) turtle and survive or b) build up big force and kill things/capture points. I realize all RTS games do this, and SC2 tried to be different with things like lava and walls of fire, but oftentimes for me they ended up feeling more annoying than challenging. Tactics rarely seemed to matter, and for the last few missions I could just mass an air fleet of science vessels, vikings, banshees, and battlecruisers and run through without difficulty. On the other hand, Company of Heroes had less "mission variety" in that almost all of them were "kill the enemy," but the set pieces were far more interesting, and the missions far more memorable (like a Panzer tank hunt or the raid through night airdrop). Tactics seemed to actually matter there, since you couldn't just mass tanks and storm through the enemy (they'd be busy building anti-tank cannons).

The achievement system I have previously mentioned, and will not be spoken of again.

I did appreciate things like mercenaries and all the clickables in between missions, but overall as a campaign I feel it fell far short of what other moderns RTSs have accomplished since SC1.

And now, spoiler alert!

Spoiler alert!

Spoiler alert!

In terms of the campaign story, I was also very disappointed. As others have brought up, the first problem is that although the campaign was "branching," the story and characterizations also branched, being Jim would go from being overjoyed one mission at the progress versus the Dominion and a depressed drunkard the next. It made Jim in my eyes rather unrealistic and thus unsympathetic as a main protagonist. In fact, none of the characters were personally that engaging. Hansen was annoying and I was happy when Jim killed her, other science guy was basically not there, Mr. Techdwarf was boring, and while both Tychus and Tosh had interesting lines, I honestly think they were rather forgettable for secondary characters (people like Augustus Cole or Gaz being far more interesting, personally speaking). Tychus' betrayal was foreshadowed to the point of being foreshining, and the disappointment that is "mission choices" is, well, disappointing. I never felt invested nor was I all that interested, and I only really kept playing just because a) I had bought the game b) friends had said it was good so I was encouraged to finish it and c) I had already put time in so I wasn't going to quit. But I thought the Zerg "twist" was silly, the Protoss portrayal boring (oh right, we had colossal *ahem* fighting machine great at killing swarms of units hiding in Aiur, but no, getting invaded by the Zerg wasn't cause enough to activate it) and then of course patently stupid moments like our hero's Battlecruiser hooking up to an enemy warship and being stored by two, count, 2, marines.

Wait, did they just jump over something in the boarding action? Oh right, it was a shark.

I thought the whole bring Kerrigan back from the Zerg was a boring but necessary turn, the introduction of Prince Junior rather forced and uninspiring (what a textbook royal son) and General Warfield was so so boring considering he's listed in the achievements as a "main character." Perhaps this is partly a reaction to finishing reading all the published Gaunt's Ghosts novel, where all of the character (all in war, obviously) are about a 1,000 times more interesting than anyone in this game. Comparing a game to a book series is obviously unfair, but to bring up a previously mentioned character, I was sad and in disbelief when Gaz was shot in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Jim Raynor could have been hacked to death by Dark Templar and I probably would have yawned.

Lots of other things probably bothered me over the campaign, but they are all pretty minor, but the point is that in combination with the above made it so I found the campaign rather inadequate in terms of the story.



Overall, as you can tell, while I technically enjoyed the campaign, the problems were a bit too abundant for me to be comfortable recommending it. Were I still in the state where I only really played campaigns, I would be rather irate at the moment, but luckily the multiplayer component makes up for the $60 price point. I look forward to seeing whether they change or improve things in the expansions for their campaigns, since while my review is less than stellar, there's definitely still potential there, and after all I enjoyed the original SC and WC3 campaigns when I played them. I think the problem is that SC2 is SC1 in many ways, including the datedness of the campaign. The RTS world has progressed far from 1998, and while an old-style multiplayer is still fun, an old-styled RTS campaign is just boring.

-HTMC

Edit: Thought I'd share this because, well, I enjoyed writing it.