A full review of Starcraft 2 will be written and published and elaborated on later. It is also the topic of next week’s podcast. I think that the commercial success of Starcraft and Blizzard’s ability to sell ice to Inuit has some lessons for the strategy game market.
I’ve been avoiding reading other people’s reviews, but it’s hard not to miss the scores that fill my Twitter feed, and the general (but not unanimous opinion) is that this is a great game.
I still need to invest more time in skirmish and multiplayer to be sure, but for now, I don’t see greatness. I see a developer that is playing it safe, probably for some very good reasons. While it is refreshing to see an old school economy centered RTS with such great polish, this is not a game design that will breathe life into to the genre and any company that sees the amazing sales Blizzard is scoring as evidence that the real time strategy game as it used to be is back as a major market is sorely mistaken.
It is possible that as a genre wonk, who has played almost every major and most minor PC RTSes in the last decade, that I see missed opportunities where people who have left the genre for a while see old familiar mechanics they like.
It is also possible that I am crazy. A colleague whose work and opinions I greatly respect called the campaign “revolutionary”, referring primarily to its high level of audio-visual quality. I think he’s nuts, but the guy plays Dawn of War 2, so he’s not a rube.
(I understand that Tom Chick is catching some hell for his review over at Gameshark. This is not my review, only some words so that you all can get a hint of where I am coming from. Still, keep the comments civil.)
