Heart of The Swarm

The original Starcraft isn't in my opinion the best game of all time, that being an accolade reserved for the majesty of the original Deus Ex, but it is my favourite and the one I've spent the most time playing over the years by a country mile. The announcement of Starcraft 2 was a huge deal for me, and the wait between the game's initial reveal and the release of its first third, Wings of Liberty in 2010 was agonizing. Wings of Liberty's single player campaign was very good, but held back from greatness by some very cliched writing, whereas the multiplayer was superb, having just enough changes to modernize and freshen things up, but not so many as to alienate series devotees.

So three years down the line Blizzard has finally put out the second part of the Starcraft 2 trilogy, which shifts focus away from the human Terrans featured in Wings of Liberty and onto the insectoid Zerg swarm and their matriarch, Sarah Kerrigan, the 'Queen of Blades', as well as making a number changes to the multiplayer game. As with Wings of Liberty, the campaign here is varied and fun and includes a fair degree of fan service (such as Kerrigan's visit to Zerus, the Zerg home planet previously only mentioned in the original game's exhaustive backstory) but is let down by a poor script and mixed quality of voice acting. The direction Blizzard have gone in with regards to plot is entirely predictable, and frequent all too convenient occurrences and less than watertight explanations lead to a niggling feeling of disappointment with how things play out. I'm still excited for the final part of the story, the Protoss-centric Legacy of The Void, although at this point I expect it to be little more than the almighty crescendo of everybody all banding together to defeat the 'Voice in The Darkness' in an apocalyptic final battle.

The changes to multiplayer include a number of new units for each faction, some minor changes to existing units and some new maps and minor aesthetic tweaks. I've only played a small number of multiplayer games, and I've yet to try all the new units, but none of them appear to represent a paradigm shift in terms of viable strategies, instead serving to plug the holes in each race's arsenal.  In my short time in multiplayer I've observed mostly the same popular strategies being employed in Heart of The Swarm as were in Wings of Liberty.

So in short, Heart of the Swarm's single player is fun and varied, even if the writing is disappointing and not a patch on what has gone before, but the multiplayer remains the apex predator when it comes to fast paced RTS thrills.