This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Yikes. SC2 is aging and running out of ideas, so they brought their scrapped heroine from the depths of a forgotten project and gave her her-own story. The idea has so much potential, but YEESH this was disappointing. It's not dreadful, just disappointing.
Start with the good: SCCO gameplay is alright, but very, very little has changed from the usual SC2 formula you've played for some time now. The missions bring decent variety, and you're rewarded for hunting down bonus objectives with new gear for Nova and her army which can be selected in an equipment menu. However, the gear you get is highly limited in multiple ways.
1) you can only equip ONE item per unit, and now it's "occupied", so you can't give the same item to multiple units (ie you can't give cloak to everyone.)
2) not all units are compatible with every item.
3) they range from OP (stimpack) to useless ("SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCES BUILD TIME"...15%ish is NOT significant).
The length of the game is commendable, however. Each 'pack' has about 10 missions on it, so that is technically a lot of content; it's just not exciting, and has no replay value. Oh, harder difficulties? You can play it again, but now you die faster! WHOO!
Bliz didn't listen to the community's cries on Heart of Swarm because EVERY mission is a "race" except 1-2. BLIZZARD....NOT. EVERY. MISSION. HAS. TO. BE. A. RACE. There's even a mission where a battlecruiser swoops in to escort you to your objective. Between such limited equipment, timelimits, and other timed things like that battlecruiser escort, the player has little freedom as to how to play. They can only play the way the devs tell them they can, when they can, if they can. If it's going to be THAT on-rails, why not just make it a cutscene?
*Cringes* OoOooOo speaking of cutscenes, this games plot is garbage. It has a neat twist or 2, but the story telling is slow, all the characters are forgettable, and the protagonist actively wants you do dislike her. Nova's personality resembles an angsty 14yr old. How can you make a ruthless spec ops sniper have such a childish, pouty demeanor? You know, the same personality of Kerrigan in HoS...or you know, EVERY F%*^ING CHARACTER. EVER. What is this s***, Hit-Girl In Space?? Why does every writer default to making this same, cringy, premadonna, adolescent, tryhard, SICK-BURN, YO, bull*#@ that we literally see in every. movie/video game. ever. Oh, and the token black man! He's...black. END PERSONALITY DESCRIPTION. NONE of the characters see any development whatsoever; not to the plot, not to each other, not to past events, not even to the villain! NOTHING. Everyone is a 1D, predictable, cardboard cutout.
The villain speech is so direct and non-flamboyant, she should just stick her face into the camera and slowly scream "III......AAAAAAMM....DDAAAA....BAAAAD....GUUYYYY" Her motivation isn't revealed, she doesn't tie into the main plot (but she does bring her Jimmy Stewart charisma to COOP mode's Part & Parcel, which is unbearable too), and at the end, she dies in the most anticlimactic way possible. Was it an epic duel? Was Nova ambushed and had to be saved by her old friends deus ex machina?? Nope. Bang. Ending. Nova flies away GG. Was bliz intending to tell this story to retards?
"IN DA FUTUR DERS A BAAAAD GUYYY AND A GOOOD GUYY. DA BAD GUY SAY 'IMA BE BAAADD" BUT DA GOOD GUY SAY "UNLESS I......*sunglasses*....KILL YOU" OOOH SICK BURN!11 DA GOOD GUY SHOOTED DA BAD GUY BC BAD GUY WAS BAAAAD, BUT GOOD GUY WAS TOLD "NO DONT KILL!11!" BUT GOOD GUY DO IT ANYWAY....BC SHE A LOOSE CANNON COP THAT DUDENT PLAY BY DA RUUUULES. Hey, a black man! DUUUH EEEEND!
What's really sad is how people keep gobbling this s** up! The perfect metaphor for our media today is an assembly line. No inspiration, no lovable characters, no memorable moments.
Mass production for mass consumption.
Everything devolves into Hit-Girl with her diversity sidekick and saturating it in CGI to mask the paper-thin plot with a little political correctness or a "LOL TRUMP STUPID" joke. All that's missing is the villain wasn't a Trump parody with a mission where you blow up a wall he built to keep the Protoss out, and this checks every box of a MOAR MUNNY production.
Skip it or wait for a sale if you're a die-hard SC fan.… Expand
