LogFAQs > #945122827

Alright, I finally started Starcraft II today. Played the first couple of missions.

Here's my understanding of the first game's story, from the few missions I've played and what I know outside the game: Starcraft is set in an alt-history universe where the Conderacy won the U.S. Civil War and went on to become a globe-dominating superpower. A guy named Jim Raynor was a rebel against the Confederates but also fought against an invasive insect-like alien species called the Zerg. He had a young woman named Sarah Kerrigan in his squad, who got left behind on a planet swarming with Zerg when a mission went belly-up, but for some reason instead of simply killing her the Zerg transformed Kerrigan and made her their queen. There were also some religious aliens called the Protoss running around. I think they were hostile toward humans for a while but then helped fight off the common Zerg threat.

In the second game, Jim is still a rebel, but the main human powers-that-be aren't calling themselves the confederacy any more. They're called the Dominion. I don't know if that was a different faction in the original game or not. In any case, the Dominion are pretty obviously evil and the game on a whole is quite gritty - there's lots of ugly killings of civilians and the like to demonstrate how tough and cynical the world is. Despite the Terran's advanced technology, people are still working as miners for a single meal. Also, everyone smokes and drinks all the time, even when they're wearing power armor with helmets and visors. It's arguably black comedy. I think the original reveal that the Confederates fly a U.S. Confederacy flag was kind of meant to be funny in the original game.

The first few missions are still basically tutorials. The very first one is meant to introduce you to the basic movement and combat controls. The next few give you really simple mining tasks and let you produce a few types of units. The larger tech tree unlocks quite slowly it seems. I'm still limited to exclusively infantry units. I have the basic marines, the medics, and a short-range heavy unit called the Firebat. Incidentally, the only one of these units that's available in the multiplayer is the marine. There are actually a lot of units that are campaign exclusive.

I've been playing on Normal since I found the first game a little overwhelming, but I think I'll bump it up to hard for the next little while. So far I haven't really had to use tactics. I've just made a big circle of units and sent them en masse at anything zerg-shaped. I guess my biggest complaint is that a couple of the early missions are 25-30 minute defense maps with no way to speed them up, namely one where you bunker down and defend against the Zerg before a ship picks you up and another where you have to escort civilian conveys. I had amassed enough troops that I had effectively won within the first ten minutes of each. That got a little boring. I can understand why they're introducing new units and concepts so slowly for the sake of player training, but maybe speeding that up at least a little would make things more fun for me.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 8/129
Currently Playing: Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty