Starcraft 2 Beta Review - 6th April

Although the beta has been opened for quite a while, I'm doing the review only now as this review must be not be messed up and actually conveys what I actually think of the game from the beta experience only. Due to the fact that this game is widely anticipated, expectations were rather high and being helmed by Blizzard made the game on of the more "must-haves" of the times.

As this game is only in its beta, much of the story is not yet known but the basics is that it starts after the end of Starcraft: Broodwar and the first installment of a 3-part series focuses on the Marines or humans of the game in "Wings of Liberty". Therefore, story is out and the general idea for the beta would be on the balancing issues if the units and also bugs and glitches, whether graphical or the system itself. This review would focus on the graphics, sounds, gameplay and overall of the beta so far.

In terms of graphics, I was not too impressed with what I was looking at. It seems to look like and upgraded version of the Warcraft 3 graphics with some improvements and in space. With addition that the graphics seems so much darker and gloomy. Although the unit graphics have been changed over from 2d to 3d, they, in my opinion do not reflect the older units that most gamers are familiar with. This also goes for the structures as well where they've lost their grandness of design and even the futuristic look has been eliminated by a large amount. I'm not sure if it is a result of being unfamiliar with the new graphics, but due to the graphical changes, unit control felt very unresponsive. Even some of the units look particularly downgraded at this point, and I would like to stress one of the more obvious: why does the Zergling now have wings? They sure do look like small flies now.

I've actually one issue with the sounds department, which is:- Give Me Back the Old Sounds! The truth is, the current sounds for units and structures is very much annoying and not satisfactory. The old coarse sound of the overmind, the human voice of the Marines and the templar sounds of the Protoss bases is being wiped by the annoying Kerrigan sounds for the Zergs, electronic sound of the Marines and weak sound of the Protoss in the new game. Unit response sounds are no longer familiar and sounds like they've been running for ages and so feels so tired. Unit deaths sounds are toned down and felt like "just another unit dead" and not a part of your army. In whole, the game environment just became less lively and more monotonous.

Overall, I would say the experience felt tedious and some what unexpected for a high-profiled game. In fact, even with effort of trying to like the game, there just isn't any mood or excitement of playing it. The whole experience felt forced and pointless. Seriously, I wonder why some games these days felt repetitive and lack of quality. I used to think that Blizzard has a reputation to make addictive and polished games, but now, no longer. Hopefully, the actual game wouldn't be as bad as this game has degraded into in the beta.