| Title | Is Starcraft II's add-on Heart of the Swarm, or More of the Same? |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Games |
| When | June 1, 2011 |
Last week, I got to play a couple of missions from the upcoming Heart of the Swarm add-on for Starcraft II. Read the coverage here..
Read the full articleCampaign is almost invariably the only thing I enjoy about RTS games. I'm sure there's a great deal of depth and subtlety to build orders and maneuvering groups of units and such, but that's not something that gets me particularly excited. All I can see is how I'm playing the same game over and over again. Campaigns (at least the good ones) give me objectives beyond growing my economy and killing that guy over there. They give those clashes of units narrative context. They introduce me to units gradually and highlight their effectiveness. And the really neat ones, like Starcraft II, have some layer of persistence between missions. In Starcraft II, I'm unlocking specialized units and powerful individualized upgrades and mercenary corps. In Homeworld, I'm amassing a huge fleet of powerful warships to do my bidding. In Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (even though the actual battles are just skirmishes), I'm unlocking powerful persistent Honor Guard units and strategic map bonuses and my defenses stick around between fights.