Star Craft II: Wings of Liberty - Reception

Reception

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has been met with critical acclaim since its release. It received an aggregated score of 92.39% at GameRankings and 93/100 at Metacritic. The game was particularly praised for retaining the popular RTS gameplay from StarCraft, while introducing new features and improved storytelling. GamesRadar felt that "in many ways, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty feels like StarCraft 2.0 – and that’s a good thing", stating that it "delivers on all fronts". NZGamer.com said the game was "the best RTS game released in years and one of the best games on PC". In relation to its story, GameTrailers stated, "If there's anything immediately apparent from Wings of Liberty's story, it's that the series' narrative structure has evolved well beyond the original's sparse between-sortie intermissions," calling it "an epic and entertainingly told yarn", while Eurogamer criticized the dialogue as being "flat" and the characters as being "either clichéd, banal or both". Giant Bomb echoed this view while also noting the Hyperion portion between missions, finding it to have "more depth of character, more believable pathos, more surprise twists—than I honestly expected out of the story". IGN however noted that "no doubt franchise fans will eat it up, but newcomers may be wondering what all the fuss is about while going through the early missions that lack the kind of urgency you would hope when the fate of civilization is in peril."

Joystiq was very positive towards the improved multiplayer matchmaking service, calling it "similar to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, which is a welcome change from the archaic matchmaking of Battle.net in previous Blizzard games", while GameSpot called the amount of online content "remarkable", noting the variety of maps and up to 12 player online support. When comparing the single and multiplayer modes, GameSpy felt that the single-player portion was "less inspiring, mostly because of the extremely shallow learning curve", with the online multiplayer being "so smooth, so challenging, and so much plain-old-fun". John Meyer of Wired praised the improved graphics engine, saying that it "shows decades of polish" and a "slick new presentation". Matt Peckham of PC World also noted that some buyers expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of LAN-based multiplayer gameplay, the lack of cross-realm play and the campaign being limited to the Terran race. Game Revolution, in relation to only being able to play the Terran campaign, however, pointed out that "Wings of Liberty has 29 missions; the original StarCraft had just over 30. Fair odds say the next one will have roughly the same amount; Broodwar brought about 30 too. We already got the full game for $50, and we’re getting offered two expansions. If you want to feel outraged about something, pick something else."

Ars Technica gave the overall game a verdict of "buy" and especially praised the single-player campaign as "fun as hell". They were also very impressed with the game modding tools that allow users to create their own content and distribute it to other fans. The two "ugly" issues they identified with the game were lack of LAN play and the decision to split up the regions. They suggested that these decisions were influenced by Activision rather than by the game designers at Blizzard, and felt that this would turn many people off of the game and make things difficult for people who have international friends. In a separate article, Ars Technica vigorously supported StarCraft II against a series of 1-star ratings given to the game on Amazon.com in protest against the lack of LAN play. They argued in Blizzard's defense against complaints that it was not a full game because only the Terran campaign was released, but did suggest that the customers' complaints about the lack of LAN and cross-region play were legitimate.