( I apologize, for this review being kind of a wall of text, I haven't had a chance to take screenshots as it isn't through Steam this time around and it's kind of tough in multiplayer to hit printscreen, minimize, and paste into Paint. I'll try to update with pictures when I have a chance. )
This is kind of a weird one for me to review. Typically in a video game I can overlook a lackluster story, because really the game is more about the gameplay to me. I mean, a great story can absolutely elevate an otherwise mediocre title. But usually a bad story doesn't hurt a lot for me (Think the original Gears of War or the Army of Two games). But in the case of Starcraft, the single player campaign exists only to tell a story. The majority of those playing the game, myself included, will play through the campaign once for the story and spend the rest of their time with the game in multiplayer matches. And in the case of this expansion, the bulk of the added content is in the single player campaign, it adds new units to the multiplayer yes, but it doesn't really change it in a meaningful way. So if that campaign has a bad story, the expansion really suffers for it.
Before it sounds like I'm hating on this too much I should point out that I really did enjoy the addition, but in order to do so I really had to stop taking it seriously altogether. Because it's just absolute garbage. This is going to include spoilers like you wouldn't believe, so if you still want to be "surprised" by the insanely predictable story, don't read it. Really the whole thing from here on out is going to be a discussion of the story, because you already know the mechanics of the game at this point if you are considering playing it, nothing has changed.
To start with I'm going to go back to the original Starcraft, where Jim Raynor first meets Sarah Kerrigan. The extent of the relationship was a little bit of playful banter, the closest they came to having a romantic relationship was when Kerrigan read Jim's mind and caught him thinking about her in some unknown perverted situation. At the end of the game, once Kerrigan betrays them all, Jim's last words to her are "I'm gonna be the one to kill you darlin'" or something to that effect. There was no love between the two. Fast-forward to Heart of the Swarm. Jimmy has gone out of his way to free Kerrigan from the zerg infestation and return her to her old self. She shows time and time again that she is still blatantly evil but everyone looks past it. She destroys a multi-billion dollar facility by controlling a horde of zerg risking hundreds of lives and everyone basically reacts by going "Oh Kerrigan! You hooligan!". Soon after the facility is attacked, Kerrigan escapes, Jimmy stays behind and is captured by the Confederates. Kerrigan sees a news clip showing a bullet hole in Jimmy's helmet and immediately swears revenge on the Confederates and Arcturus Mengsk, their leader. (before this by the way they exchange words such as "I lost you once Jimmy, I can't lose you again!", come a long way since mind reading and death threats haven't they?).
So, before I continue, just keep in mind, you are supposed to see Kerrigan as a good character, (like a good alignment, not a well written character, don't be dumb) and you are supposed to sympathize with her despite how painfully obvious it is that Jimmy is still alive. I mean seriously, the headline on the news story that shows his helmet might as well be "REBEL COMMANDER JIM RAYNOR, CAPTURED, DEATH FAKED TO LURE OUT OTHER REBELS". So from here Kerrigan just goes on a very basic revenge quest, except in this revenge quest she re-unites the previously separated zerg broods into one massive army. Commits genocide on two separate occasions, and orders her brood mothers to annihilate the entire populations of at least 4 other planets (that brings the genocide count into numbers I don't care to think about) and we are STILL SUPPOSED TO SYMPATHIZE WITH HER. She still talks like she is just doing what's necessary to get to Mengsk.
The issue here, beyond the completely contrived relationship between Raynor and Kerrigan, is that Kerrigan could sneak in and kill Mengsk any time she wanted. She is a former ghost. HER SPECIALTY IS STEALTH. Most likely it has been long enough that hardly anyone would even remember her human face, throw her in a common woman's outfit and she could probably walk right up to the guys office and kill him with all her psychic mumbo jumbo. And that's the thing that kills me. I don't understand what it was that convinced her that the only way to get to this guy, was to invade and destroy his entire city. Even better is when you finally attack the city, the rebels contact Kerrigan and ask her to give them time to evacuate the civilians from the city. Kerrigan refuses. For no reason. She just says "no we have to go now". There is no reason that they couldn't just wait. It's not like Mengsk's forces inside are suddenly going to grow new people. And it's probably safe to assume that he doesn't have reinforcements coming since Kerrigan has mercilessly slaughtered every last career soldier, and their wives and children, on every confederate planet she could find.
I'm not exaggerating either. You probably think I am. You're probably sitting there thinking, "come on, Blizzard isn't THAT far gone. Surely they at least know that we aren't going to sympathize with someone who makes Hitlers acts look like a stubbed toe and who's motivations make about as much sense!" well no, they don't know. And don't call me Shirley.
Zeratul shows up a few times, and his character is still dumbed down to being "that old wise man who shows up and delivers cryptic one liners about a prophecy". Jimmy isn't in it much until the beginning and end (he does have a really cool bit at the end though, that I won't ruin). And every other character with a speaking role is either some Zerg queen or a Terran higher-up, there are maybe 1 or 2 exceptions but they don't really matter.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're considering this for the story, and you want it to live up to the original game, or even to the low bar set by Wings of Liberty, you should give it a pass. If you don't care much about the starcraft story and just want the extra multiplayer units then yeah, go for it, I had a lot of fun getting back into the multiplayer side of it and the new units made it feel fresh again. You might even want to consider this if you don't know the background of the characters involved, and you think genocidal monsters are totes cool.
All told, for me it was a worthwhile purchase, like I said, I had a ton of fun with the new multiplayer content, and as much as the story infuriated me at times, I still enjoyed a lot of the campaign (the unit upgrade aspect of it is very fun). I guess to sum it up, I'll say this. If you liked Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, you should probably pick this up.
Starcraft 2 and its expansions are property of Activision/Blizzard
All else is ©Alexander Jenkins 2013
